Why it works
Is your child ready to read?
The proper steps to learn how to read...
1. Learn pre-reading foundational skills
identify syllable patterns in words
decode words through listening
use verbal blending
demonstrate sound discrimination
2. Learn reading foundational skills
pair sounds to letters in a systematic order
understand the sounds receptively and expressively (being able to identify sounds through hearing them and being able to say them)
blend sounds together without pausing
3. Master reading skills
identifying letters in different fonts
writing and typing the correct sound heard
reading new words independently from one's own sound knowledge
demonstrating reading comprehension
Learning this way makes it EASY, so we call it the Easy Way.
Our lessons are built for kids
Fast-paced
Going through the tasks makes time fly.
Fun
Interactive lessons with fun exercises and stories.
Parents and caregivers will look forward to lessons as much as the child!
Easy to Access
All lessons are delivered through google classrooms using boom cards.
Lessons are self-paced and require an instructor to read the lesson to the child.
Proven to be effective
Foundations Workshop has been using this lesson series with children in a private in-home setting for over 10 years with a 100% success rate!
It is now time to bring it to the public! Let your child benefit from this effective series.
(Sample from Reading Foundations Online Series)
Most People Learn the Hard Way.
Learning to read is hard and most people learned how to read the hard way. The hard way involves...
no foundational skills
not understanding how to sound out words
not being able to read new words by sounding it out
not understanding how to spell words in the future
no phonics or phonics are taught wrong
relying on whole-word and rote memorization (repeating sounds or words until memorized)
introducing more sounds before mastering current ones (information overload)
children with dyslexia having trouble identifying letters
children with ADHD being unable to focus
and lots of forgetting
The hard way doesn't build a child's foundation.
There are lots of reading programs out there, and lots of them make the following foundational mistake:
They focus on rote memorization.
Rote memorization is the most inefficient way to learn.
Rote memorization requires that you look at a piece of information that you've never heard of before and repeat it to yourself over and over until you memorize it. This is very difficult, boring and time consuming for kids to do. That's why, at times, children feel that it is impossible and end up developing negative feelings towards learning.
Because it's hard, they will develop work-arounds, including relying on pictures to give them hints about what the word could be, or scrolling through every word they know that has a similarity to the unknown word until the teacher says it's correct. They continue this until they memorize the word through whole-word memorization, never learning phonetics.
It doesn't have to be done the hard way. Join us and make reading EASY!
Foundations Workshop uses a scientifically proven systematic way to teach reading that builds a solid foundation for all future reading.
The SCIENCE behind the EASY WAY
Your Mind Web
Imagine your mind as a giant web of dots. Each dot is a piece of information that you know and all your dots are connected to each other by association. This is called...
Relational Frame Theory.
When we think, our mind bounces around between different pieces of information, unconsciously creating connections and making it easier to remember information we've learned.
When you hear a new piece of information, it becomes an isolated dot, lost in your web of information. That little dot has one of 3 choices:
CHOICE 1: Attach to another dot for instant memorization (using their mind web)
CHOICE 2: Repeat the single piece of information until it's remembered (Rote Memorization)
CHOICE 3: Disappear
When learning to read the hard way,
You're creating isolated memories.
And they often
Disappear.
How should your child learn?
Mind Web
(The Easy Way)
Fast memorization
Effortless learning through simple tasks
Builds creative thinking
Additionally teaches reading comprehension
Proven to help with Dyslexia, ADHD and other learning disabilities
Creates a reading foundation for future reading
VS
Rote Memorization
(The Hard Way)
Slow memorization
Requires excellent focus and memorization skills
Poor or no reading foundation built for future reading
Build your Child's Mind Web
To attach dots in your child's mind web, they must first have the web. At Foundations Workshop, we build it!
Pre-reading foundations are key.
If you build your child's pre-reading foundational web, they will easily be able to connect dots when later learning how to read.
Most reading programs skip this step!
The best way to build a child's pre-reading foundational web is to utilize the following:
introduce sounds systematically
teach verbal blending
identify verbal word patterns
increase familiarity with visual discrimination and sound writing/typing
Careful usage of visuals. They can often give away the answer.
What about other Reading Programs?
Reading programs can claim to be a "good" program because they include phonics, but it doesn't mean that they present it correctly. The internet is saturated with phonics programs and songs, but many of them have incorrect pacing and make mistakes, such as adding "uh" at the end of letters when pronouncing their phonetics.
The best way to find a "good" reading program is to look at studies and find evidence-based programs that have proven themselves successful for many years. For our reading program, we chose the most successful of all the top programs to serve as the foundation for our lessons.
Our Reading Program
Foundations Workshop ONLY uses evidence-based programs and we are dedicated to staying up to date with the latest research.
Our program is heavily influenced by the best work of Dr. Siegfried Engelmann, the man who brought phonics to the world!
Foundational Evidence-Based Programs
Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons is a tried and true favorite developed by Siegfried Engelmann, Phyllis Haddox and Eliane Bruner. This method has been teaching children how to read since 1983!
His program came out on top in the 1970's study that pitted the 9 top reading programs against each other!
Dr. Engelmann's method of Direct Instruction (DI) is used to teach children how to read by systematically teaching phonics (which was new at the time). This became known as the Distar Method. The Distar Method involves careful pacing, pattern recognition, reading comprehension, and letter writing to create a solid foundation of the letters.
Reading Mastery Transformations (published in 2021) was Dr. Siegfried Engelmann's most recent program related to reading. This program uses the same core method as in his book listed above. What makes the Reading Mastery series shines is its parallel language arts program. The language arts lessons build comprehension and critical thinking skills. The Reading Mastery series is also introduces letter discrimination exercises to increase mastery of letter identification.
Lessons developed by Behavior Analysts
Foundations Workshop
Foundations Workshop was created when there became an overwhelming need for behavior analysis in education. Children are still being taught how to read the hard way in schools due to simply not knowing there are evidence-based programs, being too expensive, and/or the material being hard for instructors to digest. Foundations Workshop is dedicated to spreading knowledge of the easy way by developing their lesson series and creating access to it in an affordable and user-friendly way for teachers, therapists and parents to use.
It's the EASY Way.
Our lessons are fast, easy, fun, and proven to be effective. We use the systematic structure of the lessons in the Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons book and the discrimination training exercises from the SRA's Reading Mastery Transformations direct instruction program. We also have the following:
A dyslexic-friendly font in all lessons.
Fast-paced and fun to keep children's attention.
Lessons formed by combining the top evidence-based reading programs to ensure the best results and secure reading mastery.
Utilizing Relational Frame Theory.
Lessons are created by Behavior Analysts.
Access to Behavior Analysts through Google Classrooms and Google Meet.
Behavior Analysts have experience teaching those with learning disabilities.
Over 10 years of using this lesson series to successfully teach children to read.
Join us and Learn how to Read in 100 lessons!
Your child will thank you for teaching them how to read
the Easy Way!