When we came to Little Giant Steps two years ago, Timothy was barely passing 2nd grade. He wasn’t reading very well, couldn’t remember things that he learned the day before, couldn’t concentrate because the noise in the classroom bothered him and he was just really frustrated. At home, just cleaning his room was extremely overwhelming for him.

One of the first things we noticed after he was on the program for about four months is that he was able to clean and organize his room with little supervision. It is like we have a different child!

Timothy has been back in public school for 4th grade (after being home schooled for 1½ years and focusing on the Little Giant Steps program) and is making mostly A’s and a few B’s. His reading has improved beyond our wildest hopes. He has improved exponentially in every academic area. His teacher said, “I don’t know what you did with him, but this is not the same child as in 2nd grade.”

I met with Timothy’s dyslexia teacher recently because she sent out results of her end of year testing. Even though the report showed that his scores increased in every area, I wanted to know if this was satisfactory progress. His teacher said, “N o it wasn’t just ok progress, it was GREAT progress!”. She said he was the “STAR of the class” and that all of the students look to him. For example, at the beginning of the year he could read 15 out 50 words. At the end of the year he could read 45 out of 50 of the words on this specific test. She said most kids do not make this much progress the first year!!! She said, “You know, he still has a whole year left in this class.”

Here are Timothy’s TAKS scores for this year: • Reading: 93 (only missed 3 out of 40). This score is one point away from “commended”. • Math: 82 (only missed 8 out of 42). Because of this score, he will not be pulled out of class next year for math tutoring. • Writing: 72 (only missed 7 out of 28). His writing improved a lot this year and I know it will continue to improve next year.

We are so proud of him and he is proud of himself, also. These scores are just more evidence to substantiate that the ND approach to learning is incredibly successful!

D. C. in Frisco, TX May/2009

John was diagnosed with dyslexia in 2005 while in first grade at our local public school. He could barely write legibly, spelling tests were impossible and he was in the lowest reading group in the class. He couldn’t remember ‘sight words’ (i.e. ‘the’, ‘and’, ‘an’) that he had studied the night before and he struggled with math concepts. He started saying things like “I’m not a very smart boy” and getting upset when he couldn’t do his homework. Since John was still making good grades on his report card, he didn’t qualify for services within our school district, so we withdrew him from public school and began our search for help.

From 2005 to 2008, John attended three different schools, spent two years in private tutoring with a reading specialist and we spent over $30,000 in private school tuition, tutoring and testing with very little progress. In 2008, we finally found hope at the most unlikely of places, a home school curriculum fair, where Jan Bedell of Little Giant Steps was giving a presentation.

We began the Little Giant Steps program in October of 2008 and have been working through the program for sixteen months. We have had great results, especially in reading comprehension and word recognition. John’s reading comprehension went up two grade levels in the first four months of the program and went up another two grade levels over the next year – four grade levels in sixteen months! His word recognition increased almost four grade levels within this same time period. His auditory and visual processing has greatly improved, too, which has helped him in all areas of study. John can now read with much greater ease and confidence. He is able to ‘see’ more effectively when reading, no longer passing over punctuation marks or losing his place. He has made great strides as a result of the ‘Little Giant Steps’ program.

I always knew John was bright and I am so thankful to the Little Giant Steps program for helping us open the door for future academic success.

Jeannie, 6/10