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Mena’s Story
Mena learns to read 1

Okay, so this is a photo substitution of Mena (courtesy of iStock) and that’s not her real name. She didn’t want her name or a photo of her used, because she was afraid the kids at school would somehow see this and make fun of her…Understandable, but also very sad. We’re here to change that stigma…

This is “Mena”. She is in the fifth grade in a Rhode Island public school. She couldn’t read. But Mena is very lucky. How is that possible? Read on…

It takes a good advocate, the right approach, and financial support…

Mena’s mother is a strong advocate for her daughter and knew that Mena needed help to learn to read and write. She speaks Spanish primarily and she described how this was a barrier to her for getting Mena the help that she knew she needed. Mom managed to get Mena tested and received a diagnosis of Dylsexia. The led her on a search for the right kind of intervention. Mena’s mother is so grateful to have found RITES and its dyslexic specialization, thanking her RITES teacher sincerely after every session.

When Patti, Mena’s RITES Reading Specialist, was first paired with Mena as her RITES tutor at the beginning of November, 2023, she had this to say:

“Mena was quiet, but friendly. Her face lit up as she told me about her large, loving family, how good she was at math, and how much she liked to draw. She became very quiet and sad when I asked her about reading. Mena did not like to read and explained to me all the strategies she had learned to avoid getting called on in class, such as looking down, pretending to read or write, and staying on the same page as her classmates. She shared how her 5th grade teacher always introduced new words, but not ‘her words’ – words she knew how to read. I told her my hope for our sessions was to increase the amount of ‘her words’ and to teach her strategies to help her read on her own.

Mena smiled, reached out for my hand and touched it gently as she said so sweetly, but with urgency, ‘Please help me.’

At that moment, I felt such a sense of responsibility to do just that and to help her become as independent a reader as possible.

Just four months later, Mena is so proud to count the amount of words in her practice deck at the end of each session. She currently has 95 consonant-vowel-consonant words with digraphs and blends, and words with long vowel sounds and silent-e spellings. She has recently begun to be introduced to 2-syllable words with shore vowel sounds (i.e. rabbit).”

These skills are typically taught and learned in first to second grade. Mena is in fifth grade, about to head into middle school. But, the amount of progress she has made in such a short amount of time (four months, tutoring in hour-long sessions, twice a week), speaks to the abilities of her RITES tutor to teach the way she learns best, and to Mena’s willingness and determination to learn to read.

In Mena’s own words…

Mena learns to read 2

Photo courtesy of iStock

Mena responds very well to direct, multisensory teaching strategies, paired with systemic, sequential lessons focused on phonics within the Orton-Gillingham approach. She enjoys reviewing previously taught words, playing games with words to reinforce the concepts, and reading and writing words, sentences and stories within the structured lesson. Here’s how Mena sums it up:

“We do work here. We practice a lot, but it’s fun. It is fun to come here and learn.”

We know we are making a huge difference in Mena’s life. Here’s more from her RITES teacher, Patti:

“Here is a really special moment: this happened around the middle of December [just about a month after they started working together]. We hold our sessions at the local library. Mena started showing an interest in taking out decodable books that she could read at home. Her mother and I helped her get a library card and then we went to look for a book. She walked around and saw one of the books we had been working with, “A Kiss for Little Bear” by Else Holmelund Minarik. As she stood in the aisle in front of the bookshelf, she picked the book up and began reading it aloud. I motioned to her mother to come over.

Mena read the whole book as I pointed to any words she had trouble with by gesturing towards the vowel and she reread it. She kept looking at her mother with such pride. I was so focused on the words and how she was reading, I was looking down at the book. When I looked up, I saw that her mother was crying. Mena saw her too and beamed. She then read the story to the end. At this point, all three of us were in tears! I will never forget that night. What we do with our students is so important. We are teaching so much more than reading.”

Another barrier for this family was the cost of tutoring.

Research shows that effective intervention is, at minimum, twice a week. Thanks to generous donors to the RITES Finacial Assistance Program, Mena receives the highest level of the most effective, direct instruction, without having to pay the price.

However, Mena’s story is just beginning.

Through the work with her RITES tutor, she is just starting to “crack the code” of reading. This is Mena’s assessment of her own progress, as shared with her RITES teacher, Patti:

“Although she knows she has a long way to go, she feels she has made about ‘26% progress’ so far in her reading journey and is very proud of how big her word card deck is growing.”

The reality is, Mena will need many more months of structured literacy work.

This involves specialized, multisensory, systematic intervention – in order to close the gap with her peers and be able to read for meaning, instead of focusing on the process of reading, as is expected for fifth grade and beyond.

Mena and her RITES tutor are investing hard work into her future. Won’t you invest in her, too?

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