New System Solves Reading Delays

The following is a hypothetical story which happens in real life quite often.

8-year old Dovid: Ma, I have a stomach ache. I don’t want to go to school.
Mrs Yidowitz: You’ve been having lots of stomach aches the past few weeks, but funnily it’s only on school days. What’s the matter?

Dovid: I don’t know, but I’m not going to school no matter what.
Mrs Yidowitz: I’ll tell you what. I can’t promise you can leave school forever, but I’ll let you stay home just for today, if you tell me exactly what’s bothering you. But I want the whole truth.

Dovid: The teacher asked me to read in front of the class and I can’t do it. I’m never walking into that class again.
Mrs Yidowitz: How about I speak to your teacher and arrange that you won’t have to read in front of the class?

Dovid: Well anyways, school’s really boring, and I’m not good. I think I’m the dumbest in the class. They read Siddur and Chumash all day long. I hate Chumash.

Mr and Mrs Yidowitz realized that their Dovid needs major kriah help. Later that night, they sat down to discuss how to best help their son succeed in school:

Mr Yidowitz: How do we go about this? We have no money. I guess if we have no choice, we’ll borrow. It’s pikuach nefesh for our son. Who knows what can happen to him if he never learns how to read?
Mrs Yidowitz: I’ve done research. There’s an intense program that costs $7,000 where they teach intense kriah for a few weeks or months, but he will have to leave school. There’s also a program for $5,000 where they do brain exercises to cure the area of the brain responsible for reading, but he’ll still need to relearn kriah afterwards.

Mr Yidowitz: That’s a fortune, and who says it will work? What if Dovid doesn’t cooperate?
Mrs Yidowitz: Well, there’s not much choice. It’s either that or sending him to a special school that costs a minimum of $15,000 per year.

Mr Yidowitz: Why can’t we work with him on kriah ourselves? Maybe, he doesn’t practice enough; yeshivas don’t spend enough time on kriah.
Mrs Yidowitz: I have been trying to help him for the past two years with his kriah homework but it was really frustrating. All the other boys in his class know basic kriah. Dovid obviously has a problem. I think he needs a specialist who knows how to teach him in a different way.

Mr Yidowitz: If only there were a book or system that taught kriah this ‘different’ way, We could use it at home or get someone at school to work with him. That would be so much cheaper and then we could track his progress without having to risk so much money. $7,000 is a lot of money.
Mrs Yidowitz: That sounds nice in theory, but I don’t think there is anything out there like that.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was something like that?
“Well, now there is!”

A new 5-Stage kriah system, titled Seder Kriah is geared specifically for children with reading delays. This is a big breakthrough. In years past, if a child didn’t catch on to the skill of reading by a certain age, they were called dumb and set up for academic failure. Help was rare. We live in a time that people are recognizing the need for intervention, but the cost can still be prohibitive.

A kriah curriculum made specifically for children with reading delays is a big step in recognizing the need to reach these children and providing a much-needed solution. Seder Kriah is colorful and engaging, and kriah pages geared to children that struggle are intertwined with kriah brain exercises. Seder Kriah combines all the benefits of a kriah specialist in a single workbook series.

Seder Kriah is the work of kriah remedial experts and is based on the techniques of contemporary reading specialists:
Orton-Gillingham Multi-sensory Techniques
Sound Speech Production Awareness
Phonological Awareness
Visual Awareness

Seder Kriah has been published by Cheder Darchai Limud and is available for detailed sample viewing and purchase at www.torah4children.com/#!seder-kriah/qum9q