Dear Parents,
Failure Free was created for Alan, David, and Jeff - and all the other students I failed to teach to read when I was their teacher. It was created for their parents who put their trust in me. Most importantly, it was created for the teachers and directors who (like me) are given the awesome responsibility of trying to teach reading to students who seem to defy traditional reading instruction - our hard-core, non-readers.
Let me start by telling you that I am first and foremost a teacher. I have spent the past thirty years of my life teaching either in the classroom, at the university or as a consultant. I have worked from Head Start to high school; from the inner city to suburbia. Yet, while I was being recognized for my excellence in the classroom (listed in Outstanding Teachers in Exceptional Education; receiving a teaching increment for superior teaching), I left the classroom frustrated and burned out.
I was frustrated because I could not reach kids like Alan, David, and Jeff. No matter what I tried (and I tried everything I could find) I couldn't get them to read.
They appeared to be stuck at the symbol level. Not only did they show the classic signs of number and letter reversals, they also seemed to be "phonetically deaf." They couldn't rhyme, analyze or synthesize. Their short-term memory was weak and when they read aloud or sounded out words, they didn't know what the words or the passages meant.
Many could "read" entire passages without a single error. However, they did so in a monotone voice, with little or no expression and when I asked what they read, they would say, "I don't know!"
What made matters worse, was that these kids trusted me. They would try anything I asked of them. They traced wooden letters and wrote in the sand. They tried explicit phonic instruction. They tried implicit phonic instruction. They did patterned reading. They tried the sight method, the basal method, the language experience method as well as linguistic training. Quite frankly, if there was a new approach, I tried it. If there was a new seminar, I attended it.
Yet, after all this, David still couldn't read, Alan was retained and Jeff was suspended his last week in junior high school because he "refused to do" his assignments (I bet the fact that he couldn't write a single legible sentence might have had something to do with it).
These experiences still haunt me. So do the teary-eyed pleas from their parents literally begging for help. Try as I might, I just couldn't help them. I didn't know what to do- I do now.
For the following twenty years, I have actively developed a research-based methodology that would work for the estimated 440,000 students sitting in America's classrooms with a total sight vocabulary of less than 50 fifty words! I called that methodology The Failure Free Reading Methodology because it was so successful with these hard-core non-readers.
I also found some very exciting and positive news about working with non-readers. First and foremost is that they can succeed. We are experiencing an 88% success rate and higher with students, across the nation, testing below the 10th percentile!
Secondly, we can provide a productive reading experience that meets the critical needs of non-readers; such as:
- the need to work in age-appropriate materials
- the need to read independently
- the need for a consistent approach
- the need for repetition
- the need to see immediate progress
- the need to develop confidence
- the need for success
- the need to be challenged
- the need to learn at the fastest appropriate rate
- the need to self-correct
- the need to learn by doing
Finally, while many reading programs state that they work with the bottom 20 percent, what they really mean is that they will serve students who go as low as the twentieth percentile and no further. If they do go further down, they generally do so under strict restrictions such as: the exclusion of special education students, previously retained students and non-english speaking students.
Failure Free makes no such restrictions.
The Failure Free Reading Program is so successful because it reduces reading to its simplest form. It does this by controlling for the instructional factors crucial to reading success: repetition, sentence structure, and story content. Failure Free Reading incorporates the best of all reading philosophies into an exciting, easy to use, workable program for America's students.
Failure Free Reading was originally designed for use in the classroom now thanks to the demand from dedicated parents we are able to offer the Failure Free Reading program as an in home solution.
Please take the time to look over our site. Call our clients and take pleasure in knowing that there really is a workable solution for your child, regardless of age or reading level. I only wish I had it twenty years ago when I was working with Alan, David and Jeff.
Respectfully,
Dr. Joseph F. LockavitchPresident - Failure Free Reading