“In my 25 years of teaching I have never seen this kind of growth.”

When a teaching position became available in my hometown, I jumped at the chance to apply, but to be honest, the first year didn’t go so well. Having worked in education for well over 25 years, I have seen my share of reading programs come and go and in previous roles, I used different approaches to teach reading with varying success.  I used our district's literacy curriculum, and depending on the learner, I often found myself supplementing the curriculum, but not really being able to address the underlying issues of poor decoding, spelling, and writing.  

Knowing I needed to try something different, I attended three dyslexia training sessions, and sought support from administration. We implemented a new curriculum and again saw varying success. I found myself still looking for the magic bullet, a more comprehensive reading program specifically for use with our most struggling readers and students with dyslexia.  

Fast forward to last spring.  Our district decided to implement the SLANT System and our team was trained in August.  I have been using SLANT since and have seen tremendous growth in our students.  Data from September to December 2023 indicates that 88% of our students saw from 33% to 142% increases in words read per minute. On our STAR reading assessment our students' experienced 7 months growth in a period of 3 months.

After completing the SLANT training offered by my district, I decided to participate in SLANT’s year long practicum, to deepen my knowledge and become structured literacy and dyslexia certified. In my years teaching I have never seen this amount of growth and our school’s reading interventionist agrees.  We feel fortunate to have been trained in SLANT and to have the opportunity to use our new knowledge and skill set with our most struggling readers, who are 2-3 years behind in reading.  I am not sure we have found the magic bullet, but I think we are pretty close!