Reading with TLC

To other parents or teachers:

I was so thrilled with Reading with TLC that I wanted to write a letter to share my experience with anyone who may have a child, or a student, who is struggling with reading. My hope is that more children will have the opportunity to learn with TLC, because it was the key that unlocked the world of reading for my son, David.
Before we were introduced to Penny Castagnozzi and the Reading with TLC system, David struggled to read. (He was eventually diagnosed with phonemic awareness and processing issues.) By the end of first grade, he was seeing a reading specialist in school, and at home we were trying every program out there. What we learned is: the TLC approach is like no other. The proof is how quickly David started reading with TLC.
Reading with TLC is a clever, effective, and engaging program. The Lively Letters spring to life on the page, making sounds of their own and interacting with the other characters (when W follows the O he pulls her hair and she says, “Ow!”). The memory tricks and mouth cues (F is a quiet lip-biting sound) further reinforce the sounds and provide the subtle support needed to master basic letter sound knowledge. The cards are used in fun activities where the student is building and sounding out words that are either real or nonsense (my son calls these “alien words.”) For David, the English language’s seemingly arbitrary sounds, letters, and words came together to finally make sense.
As his reading progressed, the Sight Words You Can See helped improve his reading fluency, as did TLC’s techniques for managing multi-syllabic words and texts of increasing levels of difficulty. I’m happy to say that he is now reading easily at grade level.
I don’t often write letters, but it seemed important for me to share the success of the TLC program. It’s made all the difference for us.
Sincerely,
Kathleen P., Scituate, MA
January 2003