This is a photo of David working with one of our many students. We are particularly grateful to this student as he gave his permission to be photographed and videotaped for this lesson. We now use a video made of this session in our tutor training to demonstrate the Read Now methodology in action. This student expressed his appreciation of the teaching approach and demonstrated great improvement by the end of this session.

Working with students, one on one, is the heart of the READ NOW program. Our methodology is based on the reality that silent reading is a procedural memory skill, like riding a bicycle. By reading a given text aloud to a student, and giving the student a chance to effectively read it silently, the neural network that makes silent reading possible is built up. The tutor is also there to help the student recognize mistakes, because a trial and error approach with repeated, sustained effort, can rapidly improve the student’s reading skill. Our data shows that this methodology produces an average reading improvement rate of 1 grade level for about every three sessions. This has proven to be true when the student and tutor meet in person or via telephone tutoring in tandem with the SILENT READING TEACHER application.