Vantage Reading

Is This Your Child?

You have two children in your family. Your first child starts school, learns to read easily. He is very happy, and you are proud. Your second child starts school, and has difficulty learning to read. He does not want to go to school. You feel guilty, and you worry. The teacher is working hard, extra school support is provided, and testing is being done – but there is little change. People start to say, “He’ll grow out of it” and “Give him time”?

Is that it? Aren’t there other options and possibilities we are not hearing enough about?

The answer is YES! There are other solutions right here, right now.

Ensure reading success with the Vantage Reading programs.

Clumsy? Poor motor control?

Do you feel completely comfortable when you hear that “boys mature a little later”, or would you prefer to check into the following possibility?

If the visual system is dysfunctional it causes poor spatial awareness. This in turn affects motor control, causing clumsiness with locomotion and manipulation. Students with poor visual systems fail to pay attention visually. Their systems react in a more primitive and inefficient way causing flawed storage of facts in their memory systems.

A.D.D.? Restless? Poor copying?

Should a child be made to sit wiggling and working ineffectively in his seat, or should we pursue what may be a simple solution.

What about the following possibility?

If the visual system does not function efficiently visual attention is not secure. Working at near point – for example, seatwork at school – is extremely uncomfortable and young children can only stand this kind of stress for a short time. This often leads educators to think the child has an attention deficit. Vantage Reading program ensures success.

Unreadable notebook? Poor copying?

Ask an optometrist to assess “near vision skills”, and check into the following possibility.

Copying from a textbook or worksheet to a notebook may be very difficult if a student has poor fixation skills or poor accommodation. Copying from a board is sometimes impossible because of the crystalline lens’ inability to adjust to the different distances.

Awkward lettering? Cannot stay on the line? Slow to finish work?

Should we keep saying, “Stay in and do it again?” and “Try harder”, or might we consider the following?

Writing or printing properly and neatly may be affected because eyes guide the hand in writing. With poor vision skills, students often print with awkward lettering. They have difficulty keeping their work in between the lines on a page, and they are slow to complete work.

Word skipping? Misread words? Poor understanding?

For this most critical of school skills, can we afford to “give him time” when there may be the following possibility?

Reading is affected the most by poor vision skills. Students often have no accurate left to right eye movement, a skill necessary for reading books. Words and even lines are skipped, words are misread, and students do not understand what they read. Because all school subjects depend heavily on reading, a student is in jeopardy even though he may have a normal intelligence.

• Distractible? Disruptive? Aggressive? Poor social interactions?
• Is your child or a student having social problems and you don’t really know why?

Consider this.

Behaviour difficulties arise because of reading and writing problems. Teachers and parents often look for a psychological reason for poor work production and poor behaviour, while the cause may be near vision skills. Typical behaviours of students with poor near vision skills are:

• distractibility
• avoidance of reading or writing
• indications of frustration
• excessive blinking and eye strain when working at close range, or “near point”
• disruptive behaviours in class, aggressive behaviour in groups
• good attention to auditory learning
• distrust of adults who admonish them to work harder for succeed, and poor social skills.
• Reversals? Poor sight vocabulary? Can’t remember the alphabet sounds?

Why can most children learn to read quickly and easily, but not your “Johnny”?

From Kindergarten to Grade Three, students with Vision problems may:

• ·fail to remember letter forms
• ·fail to remember simple three letter words
• ·use exaggerated auditory closure to read each word
• ·have trouble with spatial concepts on paper
• ·have poor visual attention
• ·have poor printing form and reversals persisting even up to Grade Three
• ·have work production slow down as grades get higher, and
• ·fail to respond to remediation classes.

From Grades Four and up, students with Vision problems may:

• ·fall behind their peers in reading by two to three years
• ·have their work production decrease markedly as school demands increase, and
• ·show disruptive behaviour, day dreaming, behaviour excesses, and avoidance techniques. They may proceed from tension relieving activities to intentional disruption. Many students by Grade Six have hard-core behaviour problems.