Research suggests that the amount of interactive language a child is exposed to in the home correlates greatly with the development of verbal expressions and reading skills.  To put your child on the right track for language and reading development, make sure your home is a rich and encouraging language environment.

Here is a list of tips and strategies that can be used to promote healthy language growth in children:

Read together daily

Often parents stop reading to their children once the child learns to read independently.  This is a big mistake.  Parental reading skills are usually more advanced, so they can expose children to higher grammar, vocabulary, images, and ideas in speech.  Be aware when reading to your child that they often may not ask what an unfamiliar word means.  When coming across an unfamiliar word you can ask your child to define it and if necessary provide them with the definition, synonym, antonym or physical enactment of the meaning.

Don’t interrupt or fill in the blanks

Patience is essential for encouraging language development in children.  Give your child time to put their thoughts into words and opportunities to practice.  If simply waiting doesn’t do the trick for a child with word retrieval problems, then prompt them with a ridiculous alternative.  For example, if your child says, “I’m looking for the, uh… um…er…,” you can ask “rhinoceros… leprechaun?”  Usually after a few giggles the child is relaxed enough to find the right word.

Spend time each day having your child describe the details of their day or particular topics of interest or ideas

The dinner table tends to be a natural conversation venue for the family to talk and catch up on daily events.  Also, before turning out the lights in bed is another great time to let your child fill you in on the day’s events as well as create conversation and bonding time in a relaxed environment.  If your child speaks very little or has nothing to say, you can provoke them by taking a stance with which you know they’ll disagree.  For instance, if the child loves legos, say, “some people think buying legos for children is a bad idea, because they cost a lot and don’t serve any purpose.  What do you say?”

Make sure your child’s skills are constantly challenged and force to grow

Home is a place where children feel free to take risks with language.  They feel comfortable making mistakes, asking questions and discussing complex topics they would otherwise be afraid to explore.  Continue to build and challenge your child’s vocabulary.  Introduce a new word and offer its definition or use it in context that is easily defined.  For example, “I think I will drive you in the vehicle this morning instead of making you walk to school.”

Avoid electronic devices, television, etc.  whenever possible

Research has shown that the encounters that best promote language growth are interactive – back and forth, face-to-face exchanges conducted in a relatively quiet background.  Children that are receiving more noise stimulation than language stimulation will fail to develop the language skills they need to succeed in school or to communicate effectively with their parents, teacher, and peers.

Speak in complete sentences and use words with precise meanings

Instead of letting your child hear you say “ where is that thingy,” or where is that whatchamacallit” try to always speak with precision and accuracy. Model the richness of language for your child by adding multiple word meanings and using different words to express the same thought.

Karina Richland is the Founder of Pride Learning Centers, located in Los Angeles and Orange County.  Ms. Richland is a reading and learning disability specialist and speaks frequently to parents, teachers, and professionals on learning differences.  You can reach her by email at karina@pridelearningcenter.com or visit the Pride Learning Center website at: www.pridelearningcenter.com

Almost every school activity, including listening to teachers, interacting with classmates, singing along in music class, following instructions in physical education, etc, depends on the ability for students to process sounds and have a strong auditory system in learning.  But what happens if this auditory system has deficits?  Can a child still learn?

Does my child have Auditory Processing Disorder?

Auditory Processing (APD) is a very common learning disability and affects about 5% of school-age children.  Auditory Processing can present itself with many different symptoms and behaviors.  Often these behaviors resemble those seen with other learning challenges, like language difficulties, attention problems and autism.  Most children with auditory processing difficulties show only a few of the following behaviors.  No child will show all of them.  However, any child who displays several of these symptoms should be carefully evaluated for auditory processing disorder.

• Delayed speech.
• Persistent articulation errors.
• Abnormally soft, loud, flat, formal, or “pedantic” speaking voice.
• Difficulty conducting casual conversations.
• Difficulty reading or spelling due to problems discriminating word sounds.
• Difficulty following oral directions.
• Difficulty organizing behaviors.
• A tendency to appear quiet, distracted, or off topic during group discussions or to interrupt or blurt out answers.
• Long delays before responding to questions or instructions.
• Preferences for nonverbal tasks or a markedly higher performance IQ than verbal IQ.
• Difficulty taking notes.
• Worsening performance in higher grades as oral instruction load and receptive language demands increase.
• Difficulties with inference, abstraction, and figurative language.
• Difficulty hearing in the presence of background noise.
• Difficulty understanding what’s said.
• A tendency to ask for restatement or clarification, or repeatedly saying “what?” or “huh?”
• Marked difficulty understanding speakers with particularly high or low-pitched voices or with prominent accents.

How does Auditory Processing affect my child’s learning?

Children with Auditory Processing Disorders have difficulties distinguishing the sounds or phonemes in spoken words, especially those in complex words and sentences.  This is referred to as Auditory Discrimination Deficits.   If a child has difficulties discriminating sounds in language, then words will sound unclear or distorted as well as many will sound alike.  This in turn will affect a child’s development of language skills.  They may have trouble speaking and listening, because of problems learning basic grammar and word meanings.  Many vowel and consonant sounds may sound the same to them, especially when spoken quickly.   As a result, not only will they have difficulty hearing the differences between words that sound alike (think, thing, sink, thin) they will also have difficulty understanding the connections between those words and the letters used to represent them.

This is why children with Auditory Processing Difficulties often have trouble with reading and spelling.  Since they cannot hear the sound distinctions between words, the rules linking sounds to letters and letter groups can be hard for them to master.

Most children with Auditory Processing Disorder have difficulty hearing in the presence of background noise.  This is referred to as Auditory Figure-Ground Deficits.  Although the children often hear well enough at home or in quiet environments, they may appear hard of hearing or even functionally deaf in noisy environments such as school.

In the classroom, a child with Auditory Processing Deficits will have great difficulties staying focused on a listening task.  This is referred to as Auditory Attention Deficits.   If a teacher is giving a lecture, for example, the student might listen in for a few minutes but then drift off and daydream missing out on significant amounts of information.

Students with Auditory Processing Challenges have great difficulties remembering information given.  This is referred to as Auditory Memory Deficits.  If the teacher says, “get a piece of paper and a pencil out of your desk and write down your spelling words,” the student may get confused because there are too many commands at once.  Impairments in the auditory memory deficits can severely weaken not only long-term memory but also language development and comprehension.

How can a child with Auditory Processing Disorder get help?

The sooner a child with Auditory Processing Disorder is given proper teaching strategies, particularly in the very early grades, the more likely it is that they will have fewer or milder difficulties later in life.  These students will need a very structured, systematic, cumulative, repetitive and multisensory teaching method such as the Orton-Gillingham approach.  By using a multisensory approach the student will be able to learn using the visual and kinesthetic modalities while simultaneously strengthening the auditory channels.

The best learning environment for a student with auditory processing is always one-to-one with very minimal distractions and outside noises.  Students who have severe auditory processing disorder may need an intensive training program to catch up and stay up with the rest of their class.  During this intensive training, students will overcome many reading, writing, spelling and comprehension difficulties and learn strategies that will last a lifetime.

Teachers and parents both need to remember that Auditory Processing Disorder is a real condition.  The symptoms and behaviors are not within the child’s control.  Children with Auditory Processing Disorder are not being defiant or being lazy.  A child with Auditory Processing Disorder can go on in life and become just as successful as other classmates.

Karina Richland is the Founder of Pride Learning Centers, located in Los Angeles and Orange County.  Ms. Richland is a certified reading and learning disability specialist.   Ms. Richland speaks frequently to parents, teachers, and professionals on learning differences, and writes for several journals and publications.  You can reach her by email at karina@pridelearningcenter.com or visit the Pride Learning Center website at: www.pridelearningcenter.com

As the school year ends, many students are busy during the summer months with camps, play dates, recreational activities and vacations. Some students might even be bored during the long summer months. When summer ends, students go back to school and often forget much of what they learned the previous year. This is what we call the summer learning loss.

Studies show that summer loss for all students equals about a month of academic learning. For students with learning disabilities, this loss may amount to as much as 3 months! Weaknesses in memory, processing speed, attention and language cause valuable skills to weaken rapidly. As a result, students will have to spend more time reviewing at the beginning of each school year in order to catch up.

Continuing instruction during the summer months can help greatly reduce learning loss as well as gives students the opportunities to dedicate more time than is possible during the school year to remediate and get ahead. Students can make amazing progress during these long summer months!

Pride Learning Center offers Reading and Writing Summer Programs for students of all ages. We offer an intensive Orton-Gillingham reading and writing program (3 hours M-F), as well as standard sessions (1 hour once or twice a week) between June and August.

Summer Catch – Up Program

Do in 4 weeks what would normally take 30-40 weeks!

Our Pride Intensive offers the most dramatic results. Our reading specialists will provide the needed support to get students at grade level during the long summer months. Your child still gets a summer break, as sessions are typically only 3 hours a day five days a week depending on family choice and goals established at the initial consultation. There are still plenty of hours in the day to play, go to the beach or just relax.

Sample Daily Schedule:
9:00 – 10:00 Orton-Gillingham Reading Instruction
10:00 – 10:30 Technology Based Reading Instruction
10:30 – 11:00 Snack, Fun and Movement
11:00 – 11:30 Writing Instruction
11:30 – 12:00 Orton-Gillingham reading Instruction

Summer Get-Ahead Program

Summer is such a great time to review material and get ahead on next year’s curriculum! We offer programs in reading, writing, spelling and comprehension for those students who want to attend Pride once or twice a week.

Reading Readiness at Pride Learning Center
Pre-K – Kindergarten

Pride’s early intervention program will teach your child to read and get ahead in school. By working through our multisensory, Orton-Gillingham reading program step-by-step, your child will learn alphabetic knowledge and understanding of the alphabetic principles in a fun yet structured environment. Your child will receive a strong and solid reading foundation that will last a lifetime.

Reading and Spelling at Pride Learning Center
Grade K – Grade 8

Pride’s multisensory, Orton-Gillingham reading and spelling program is action oriented and involves constant interaction between our Reading Specialists and your child. Each student at Pride learns to read in a systematic, cumulative, structured and step-by-step process. Each lesson encompasses the skills of decoding, encoding, fluency and reading comprehension. Your child will become a strong and independent reader.

Reading Comprehension
Grade 2 – Grade 12

Pride’s highly successful research-based Reading Comprehension Program teaches students to draw meaning from text and to verbally express their understanding of it. Utilizing nonfiction-reading passages on a variety of subjects, the skills that are taught prepare students for standardized tests and provide valuable practice in nonfiction reading knowledge on a wide range of subjects.

Writing Skills
Grade 2 – Grade 12

Pride’s writing skills program effectively teaches essential skills in careful order: from parts of speech, to sentence structure, to paragraphs, to complete essays. For the reluctant beginning writer, our program provides the essential foundation in thinking and writing skills. For the more proficient and advanced writer, it offers opportunities, strategies, and techniques to apply them.

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Pride Learning Center has locations in Los Angeles, Redondo Beach, Newport Beach and Mission Viejo. For more information visit www.pridelearningcenter.com or call 866-774-3342 ext. 1

Poor readers in middle and high school can be brought up to grade level and kept at grade level with one to two years of instruction using a specialized program intended for students with dyslexia such as the Orton- Gillingham.  This approach is multisensory and students use the visual, auditory and kinesthetic channels simultaneously when learning new skills and reading concepts.  It is structured, sequential and cumulative.

Students with dyslexia in middle and high school have the same basic problems as younger poor readers and need to learn the same skills.  These problems, however, are complicated by years of feeling failure and frustration.  Many middle and high school dyslexics no longer believe that they can be helped.

The course of action in helping a child with dyslexia through school may seem like an eternal endeavor to most families, but eventually all the hard work pays off.  The dyslexia that caused the child to have difficulties learning to read in the beginning, will also cause troubles later on with spelling, writing, learning a foreign language, and frequently in learning algebra.

Skipping the basic skills of reading is a huge mistake.  An older student with dyslexia who lacks basic awareness of speech sounds cannot learn to read unless this problem is addressed.  This student will need to begin with phonological awareness, followed by sound-letter correspondences.  Unfortunately, there is no shortcut to learning how to decode words fluently and accurately, and no way to bypass this stage altogether of learning to read. Although it is tough in the beginning, nothing is more motivating than success, once students experience appropriate Orton-Gillingham instruction.

A middle and high school student with dyslexia will need an Orton-Gillingham program that is intense enough to close the reading gap.  Up to two hours daily may be needed to bring a student to grade level. In general, the larger the gap between the student’s skills and the grade level, the more intense the intervention must be to catch up.

Karina Richland is the Founder of Pride Learning Centers, located in Los Angeles and Orange County.  Ms. Richland is a Certified reading and learning disability specialist.   Ms. Richland speaks frequently to parents, teachers, and professionals on learning differences, and writes for several journals and publications.  You can reach her by email at karina@pridelearningcenter.com or visit the Pride Learning Center website at: www.pridelearningcenter.com

The school year is coming to an end and as a parent of a first grader your thoughts are probably turning towards second grade.  Is your child ready for second grade reading?

How do you know? 

Here is a list of benchmark reading accomplishments for first grade that was included in a report prepared by a National Academy of Sciences panel titled Preventing Reading difficulties in Young Children, Catherine E. Snow.

• Makes a transition from emergent to “real” reading.
• Reads aloud with accuracy and comprehension any text that is appropriately designed for the first half of grade 1.
• Accurately decodes orthographically regular one-syllable words and nonsense words (e.g., sit, zot), using print-sound mappings to sound out unknown words.
• Uses letter-sound correspondence knowledge to sound out unknown words when reading text.
• Recognizes common, irregularly spelled words by sight (have, said, where, two).
• Has a reading vocabulary of 300 to 500 words, sight words, and easily sounded-out words.
• Monitors own reading and self-corrects when an incorrectly identified word does not fit with cues provided by the letters in the word or the context surrounding the word.
• Reads and comprehends both fiction and nonfiction that are appropriately designed for grade level.
• Shows evidence of expanding language repertory, including increasing appropriate use of standard, more formal language registers.
• Creates own written texts for others to read.
• Notices when difficulties are encountered in understanding text.
• Reads and understands simple written instructions.
• Predicts and justifies what will happen next in stories.
• Discusses prior knowledge of topics in expository texts.
• Discusses how, why, and what-if questions in sharing nonfiction texts.
• Describes new information gained from texts in own words.
• Distinguishes whether simple sentences are incomplete or fail to make sense.
• Can answer simple written comprehension questions based on material read.
• Can count the number of syllables in a word.
• Can blend or segment the phonemes of most one-syllable words.
• Spells correctly three-and four-letter short-vowel words.
• Composes fairly readable first drafts using appropriate parts of the writing process (some attention to planning, drafting, rereading for meaning and some self-correction).
• Uses invented spelling/phonics-based knowledge to spell independently, when necessary.
• Shows spelling consciousness or sensitivity to conventional spelling.
• Uses basic punctuation and capitalization.
• Produces a variety of types of compositions (e.g., stories, descriptions, journal entries) showing appropriate relationships between printed text, illustrations, and other graphics.
• Engages in a variety of literary activities voluntarily (e.g., choosing books and stories to read, writing a note to a friend).

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Karina Richland, M.A. is the Founder and Director of Pride Learning Centers, located in Los Angeles and Orange County.  Ms. Richland is a certified reading and learning disability specialist.   Ms. Richland speaks frequently to parents, teachers, and professionals on learning differences, and writes for several journals and publications.  You can reach her by email at karina@pridelearningcenter.com or visit the Pride Learning Center website at: www.pridelearningcenter.com

1. If a child is diagnosed with dyslexia, there are no medication treatments proven to be efficacious. The treatment of dyslexia is complex. According to authors like Pennington and others it involves a phonic-based approach to reading because the problem of phonological coding is so central to the disorder. Examples of programs, which teach letter sound relations, are the Orton Gillingham, DISTAR, etc. The issue of remediation of spelling dyslexia seems to be fairly complex and several centers do not make spelling a direct target of remediation.
2. Authors like Pennington have advised against the idea of parents tutoring their dyslexic children, not just because they lack specific expertise but because there is a conflict between the two roles that make a parent-child tutoring situation too emotionally charged to be successful.
3. I believe a psychiatrist should treat whatever degree of inattention secondary to ADHD may exist on a child with dyslexia. While minimizing any potential side effects from stimulant medication, i.e. loss of appetite and weight, it is worthwhile optimizing inattention deficits through the prescription of medication on a child with dyslexia.
4. There are diagnostic boundaries that need to be monitored on a longitudinal basis. In other words, if the expectation of parents or teachers is that with remediation of inattention through medication management, deficiencies secondary to dyslexia will also fall into place, these assumptions have to be identified and corrected. This is often a set up for delaying the necessary treatment of a child with dyslexia. This delay is often painful to witness because the large majority of children with untreated dyslexia eventually become demoralized, some of them clinically depressed. I have seen in 15 years of practice, children with dyslexia who barely compensate for their deficiencies in an educational environment that is still very alphabetic so to speak, for example in the teaching of languages, (heavily relying on grammar). As time goes by, children with untreated dyslexia become school avoidant, and often resort to maladaptive patterns in order to compensate for loss of self-esteem.

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Dr. Pablo de Amesti Davanzo, MD is Senate Emeritus of Psychiatry, University of California, Los Angeles and former National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Career Development Awardee.  He completed his residency training in Psychiatry at Duke University in 1993 and his fellowship training in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at UCLA in 1995.  He is currently the psychiatrist of the Child and Family Guidance Center Northpoint Intensive-Outpatient Day Treatment Center in Northridge, CA.  Dr. Pablo Davanzo can be reached by voicemail at his Brentwood office (310) 571-1519.

The Kindergarten school year is coming to an end and as a parent your thoughts are probably turning towards first grade.  Is your child ready for first grade reading?  How do you know?  Here is a list of benchmark reading accomplishments for kindergarten that was included in a report prepared by a National Academy of Sciences panel titled Preventing Reading difficulties in Young Children, Catherine E. Snow.

• Knows the parts of a book and their functions.
• Begins to track print when listening to a familiar text being read or when rereading own writing.
• “Reads” familiar texts emergently, i.e., not necessarily verbatim from the print alone.
• Recognizes and can name all uppercase and lowercase letters.
• Understands that the sequence of letters in a written word represents the sequence of sounds (phonemes) in a spoken word (alphabetic principle).
• Learns many, though not all, one-to-one letter-sound correspondences.
• Recognizes some words by sight, including a few very common ones (a, the, I, my, you, is, are).
• Uses new vocabulary and grammatical constructions in own speech.
• Makes appropriate switches from oral to written language situations.
• Notices when simple sentences fail to make sense.
• Connects information and events in texts to life, and life to text experiences.
• Retells, reenacts, or dramatizes stories or parts of stories.
• Listens attentively to books teacher reads to class.
• Can name some book titles and authors.
• Demonstrates familiarity with a number of types or genres of text (e.g., storybooks, expository texts, poems, newspapers, and everyday print such as signs, notices, labels).
• Correctly answers questions about stories read aloud.
• Makes predictions based on illustrations or portions of stories.
• Demonstrates understanding that spoken words consist of a sequence of phonemes.
• Given spoken sets like “dan, dan, den,” can identify the first two as being the same and the third as different.
• Given spoken sets like “dak, pat, zen,” can identify the first two as sharing a same sound.
• Given spoken segments, can merge them into a meaningful target word.
• Given a spoken word, can produce another word that rhymes with it.
• Independently writes many uppercase and lowercase letters.
• Uses phonemic awareness and letter knowledge to spell independently (invented or creative spelling).
• Writes (unconventionally) to express own meaning.
• Builds a repertoire of some conventionally spelled words.
• Shows awareness of distinction between “kid writing” and conventional orthography.
• Writes own name (first and last) and the first names of some friends or classmates.
• Can write most letters and some words when they are dictated.

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Karina Richland, M.A. is the Founder and Director of Pride Learning Centers, located in Los Angeles and Orange County.  Ms. Richland is a certified reading and learning disability specialist.   Ms. Richland speaks frequently to parents, teachers, and professionals on learning differences, and writes for several journals and publications.  You can reach her by email at karina@pridelearningcenter.com or visit the Pride Learning Center website at: www.pridelearningcenter.com

Like many DSM-IV diagnoses, the symptoms of ADHD actually overlap with many other diagnoses making a correct ADHD diagnosis more difficult than it may seem.  Inattention is just one individual symptom of ADHD, not the hallmark of the disorder that many think it is.  ADHD is a disorder of the brain’s frontal lobe.  The frontal lobe controls what are known as Executive Functions which include the skills of: Planning, Working Memory, Attention, Problem Solving, Cognitive Flexibility, Emotional Regulation and Inhibitory Control of Behavior.  The hallmark symptoms that separate ADHD from all other diagnoses involves the disruption of one’s Executive Functions and manifest as a lack of self control, recklessness, thoughtlessness, and an inability to think of about behavior before acting.  This kind of impulsive behavior can range from being extremely disruptive (i.e. the child that runs around the room during class) to more mild (i.e. the child who interrupts others while they are speaking).

Basing an ADHD diagnosis solely on criteria such as inattention or hyperactivity is what frequently leads to misdiagnosis. An incorrect diagnosis of ADHD can potentially be extremely damaging to a child (or an adult) because academic and medical decisions are frequently made based on this diagnosis.  Parents who are concerned about their children having ADHD should consult with an expert in the field who conducts psychoeducational evaluations in order to correctly differentiate ADHD from learning disorders, anxiety disorders, depression, Bipolar Disorder, and Asperger’s Syndrome.  These other diagnoses are frequently mistaken for ADHD and all lead to diverging courses of treatment and academic intervention.

Children who are experiencing depression and anxiety are often preoccupied with anxious and depressed thoughts which can be extremely distracting and may manifest as a child who is struggling to pay attention due to a mood disorder rather than ADHD.  Children with ADHD can sometimes struggle socially because they may be so scattered in their thinking that they have difficulty listening to what peers say leading them to miss subtle social cues.  This is often mistaken for Asperger’s Syndrome which is a much more severe disruption of a child’s ability to function in social settings.  At times the highly energized and impulsive behavior of a manic episode is mistaken for ADHD.  This is particularly dangerous as the stimulant medication that is successful in treating ADHD, makes manic episodes much worse.  The symptoms that differentiate a manic episode from ADHD are severe insomnia, irritability, and grandiosity.

Given the wide range of disorders that can mimic the appearance of ADHD, it is prudent for concerned parents to seek a psychoeducational evaluation for their children to ensure that the diagnosis that is made is the correct one.  This will lead to much more effective and expedient treatment and remediation of academic weaknesses.

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Dr. Maloff is a Clinical Psychologist who practices privately in Beverly Hills.  He specializes in psychological and psychoeducational testing.  His work is frequently used to inform medical, educational and psychotherapeutic decision making.  Dr. Maloff frequently participates in IEP meetings to ensure that private schools and public school districts are meeting a child’s academic needs.  He also provides expert testimony regarding psychological and psychoeducational testing in legal proceedings.

Jared Maloff Psy.D.

(310) 712-5480

www.BeverlyHillsPsychologist.com

How is my child doing keeping up in class?

Start out by asking the teacher how your child is doing overall. Is he or she ahead, behind, or right on target indicated by grades compared with the average student at the national level? You might want to gain information about this level your child is at. Also ask the teacher if she or he feels that your child will remain at this level- and why.

What information and skills will my child be expected to accomplish by the end of the year?

All children, whether struggling, average, or gifted need to meet higher academic standards and expectations in school. Ask the teacher what your child will have mastered by the end of the school year in reading, math, science and social studies. If your child has already achieved those goals, ask the teacher if there are more challenging academic standards in place in this classroom. If the teacher answers “yes” then ask to please see these. If your child is struggling with the coursework then discuss with the teacher what specific remediation and support is your child receiving. Again ask to see the specific program and what is actually taking place to assist your child in progressing forward.

How are you assessing and monitoring my child’s progress?

Your child needs to be evaluated and monitored during the entire school year to determine progress, remediation needs and advancement of subject areas. During your conference ask your child’s teacher what kind of information he or she is using to evaluate your child and how often these assessments are conducted.

As a parent, what can I do at home to stay involved in my child’s academic progress?

Studies have shown that children who receive regular educational support and encouragement at home do better at school and tend to excel beyond the average.
All teachers welcome and encourage parental involvement, so now is the time to ask how you can help your child at home improve his or her areas of weakness and build on his or her strengths. Ask your child’s teacher to recommend some outside enrichment activities to support his or her learning aside from home and school.

Does my child have friends?

Academics are not the only subjects you will want to discuss with your child’s teacher. Find out how well your child interacts with others, participates in groups and shows value and respect to the teacher and classmates. Talk to the teacher about what you can do to reinforce these qualities, along with what academic lessons you can teach at home to help your child become a more well rounded person.

At the end of the meeting you will want to clarify and summarize all the points discussed during the conference. This way both you and the teacher are better able to develop a mutual understanding and agreement.

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Karina Richland is the Founder and Director of Pride Learning Centers, located in Los Angeles and Orange County.  Ms. Richland is a certified reading and learning disability specialist.   Ms. Richland speaks frequently to parents, teachers, and professionals on learning differences, and writes for several journals and publications.  You can reach her by email at karina@pridelearningcenter.com or visit the Pride Learning Center website at: www.pridelearningcenter.com

Pride’s fun-filled yet intensive one-on-one reading program has become so popular that we even draw families from all over the globe.  Recent students have come to Pride from China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, France, England, Canada and even the San Fernando Valley.

Sample Daily Schedule:

9:00 – 10:00: Orton-Gillingham Reading Instruction

10:00 – 10:30: Computer Based Reading Instruction

10:30 – 11:00: Snack, Fun and Movement

11:00 – 11:30: Written Expression

11:30 – 12:00: Orton-Gillingham Reading Instruction

Times:

9:00am – 12:00pm or 1:00pm – 4:00pm Monday – Friday

Our Summer 2012 program runs weekly from June 25th – August 31^st.  You can sign up for any weeks you like during those dates.

Tuition is $980 weekly

Take advantage of our Discounts!

• 10% off early registration by April 31, 2012
• 10% off for returning families
• 20% off for bringing a friend
• 15% off if you register for 4 or more weeks

Space is limited and our summer sessions fill up quickly.

Call us today at 866-774-3342 to request a registration form.  Or email us at info@pridelearningcenter.com