The Multisensory Reading Center is live, teleconference based tutoring for dyslexic students (children and adults). The teleconference is 45 minutes, once a week, with daily exercises done online, which usually take about 15 minutes. All you need is internet access and a webcam.

An expert gives each student an evaluation, then tutors them based on their specific needs. They use Orton-Gillingham methodology, with the curriculum designed by Lexercise. This is a highly structured language therapy, focusing on phonemic awareness (hearing sounds in words), understanding how syllables work, prefixes, suffixes, grammar, parts of speech, and vocabulary. Tutoring is done with a multi-sensory approach, to engage visual, auditory and kinesthetic learners. There is an eight week guarantee: if the student does not make at least one year of progress in eight weeks (96% accuracy or greater), they will provide one more month of tutoring for free.

The pricing is $98 per week, billed in four week session cycles, for approximately $395 a month. You can use your flexible health spending account to cover the cost.

Jen Parra, M.Ed, LDT, CALT, CDT was our tutor, and from the beginning she was excited about helping us. My daughter, Leah, is nine years old, and has moderate level dyslexia. Jen quickly helped my girl feel at ease, and explained things in a way that was easy to understand.

We ‘met’ with Jen on Tuesday mornings for our 45 minute, live session. Jen would explain what they would be working on that day, have Leah do exercises verbally, written, and by watching words on the shared screen. The rest of the week, we would then do additional exercises online to re-enforce the spelling rules that had been taught. I would do two or three exercises with Leah, such as timing her as she read as many words from a list as she could in one minute, or having her decide how many syllables a word had.

Then Leah would play a timed, space themed game or two that re-enforced the rule(s) taught that week. These were matching style games and a sort of ‘select the correct word before the word bubble hits the ground’ game.  The matching game might have the student match a base word with the same word with a suffix (sing and singing).  The word bubble game would have the computer speak a word, and the student must click on the written word before it hits the bottom of the screen.

Pros: Leah did progress one year in her reading level. The highly structured teaching and re-enforcement was perfect for Leah to be able to retain the information. The instructions were easy to understand, and the 15 minute a day practice was manageable.

Cons: Even though dyslexics need repetition, Leah was often annoyed by it, especially the matching games. That being said, it was not difficult work, and powering through a three minute, unpleasant task is not asking too much.

I would recommend this program to anyone needing language therapy. The instruction is clear, scheduling is easy, and you can contact the instructor with questions or concerns any time.

-Product review by Tyna Begley, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, January, 2018