Ready to read

Nanette Sample's compassion for struggling readers began when she was young.

She watched her brother, who'd been diagnosed with three types of dyslexia, labor while learning to read. He was very bright; he simply learned differently than most children.

Today he reads very well, she said, but getting there wasn't easy.

Sample hopes to help people who struggle like her brother did. A little more than two years ago, she started The Reading Cottage, a tutoring service that uses phonics to teach people how to read. Last summer her husband, David, joined her in the business, which is located at their home off Middle Road.

Traditional classrooms tend to use a "whole language" approach to reading, in which students memorize entire words instead of learning the sounds that make up a language. Teaching phonics gives children another way to learn, David Sample said.

"It's a great way to start kids out reading," he said. "Students who read well do better. They understand how to break down words instead of memorizing."

The Samples both have education backgrounds. David's degree is in health education; Nanette's is in elementary education. They spent two years after college teaching in Hong Kong.

Although she has classroom experience, Nanette Sample prefers working with individual students.

It's a perfect preference for a reading tutor. Children who can't read as well as their peers often are uncomfortable reading in groups, Sample said.

"There are some kids who've developed such a particular feeling about their disability," she said. "The private nature is exactly what they need."

Many of these students come into their first lesson discouraged, she said. They often have self-deprecating quirks, such as slapping their foreheads or wincing, after making a mistake.

But within a few weeks, Sample said, those quirks disappear as the students get excited about their progress. They still make mistakes, but they can see themselves improving.

Lizzie Selders, 14, has experienced that progress. She first came to The Reading Cottage in April 2006, near the end of her sixth-grade year at Deer Park Elementary.

"I was only at, like, second-grade reading," she said. "I struggled so bad and failed at everything."

Selders, who has a form of dyslexia, struggles with big words. Her eyes bounce around when she looks at a page, making it difficult to read sentences.

Her inability to focus on what she was reading made school miserable. She struggled reading story problems in math. She was frustrated trying to finish history assignments.

But after 15 months at The Reading Cottage, Selders has gone up two reading levels. Reading story problems is easier, her spelling has improved and she's doing "way better" in history.

"It's actually helped a lot," she said.

The program can help people of all ages, David Sample said. He has tutored three adults this year.

His first grown-up student couldn't even read The Reading Cottage ad in the classifieds, Nanette Sample said. A friend - one of the few aware of his disability - saw it and told him about it.

He came in with a pre-first-grade reading level, she said. Three and a half months later, he was reading at a second-grade level.

"To make that kind of progress is just amazing," Sample said. "A ton of learning and basic skills happen at that level."

She watched his excitement and confidence grow each time he came in and reported to her husband, who was tutoring him.

"He'd come in and tell David what he was able to do each day," she said. "It gave him hope."

Adults and children alike are taught using the Action Phonics program, a multisensory, phonetic approach to reading. Instead of learning whole words, students break down words into the sounds and syllables that make them up.

The first step for each student at The Reading Cottage is a reading test. This provides clues about what the problem might be, although neither Sample nor her husband officially diagnose their students.

The test also determines at what level each person reads. The Samples put students' instruction levels anywhere from a half to a full grade level ahead of where they tested.

"We don't want to discourage them, but we want to challenge them," Nanette Sample explained.

Regardless of reading level, students start their sessions with "first-step blending." They read different groups of letters that aren't words but that combine letters to form different sounds.

Each student must read these letter groups in a very specific way. Sample demonstrated, pointing to the letters "OMO" in the reader.

"Ohhhhhmmmmmohhhhh," she said loudly, drawing out the word and holding each sound for several seconds, as though savoring the sensations each letter made in her mouth.

In everyday speech, people typically pronounce vowels for 1/50 of a second, she said. Increasing those sounds' duration and intensity makes a much deeper impression on the brain, which will help students connect those sounds with the words they're reading.

After several minutes' practice overexaggerating letter sounds, students progress to a graded reader. Sample flashes word combinations at them, covering other words with index cards.

This conditions the brain to recognize words quickly and accurately, David Sample said.

"It trains brains to go to where the confusion occurs," like to the "R" in "broad" and "board," he explained.

Next, students practice reading longer words by trading syllables with Sample. She reads the first syllable, the student reads the next and so on, until they've sounded out the entire word. Students can trade syllables with themselves as well.

This helps relieve the anxiety some people feel when they encounter a large word, David Sample said.

"If they take the whole word, they think, 'I can't do it,'" he said. When they're trading syllables with a tutor, "they don't have to do it."

These are tools students can use forever, he added. Usually, if people fumble with a word, they move on quickly. Sample and his wife want them to stick with it and sound it out.

"The goal is to give readers the tools to persevere," he said.

Students don't have assigned homework, but they are encouraged to read for 15 to 30 minutes every day. The longer they continue with the program and the more they improve, the more likely they are to read each day.

They don't have to read from books. Selders typically fulfills her half-hour online, reading e-mails and messages from friends or reading sites about modeling. But she's reading other things, too; if her mother leaves a newspaper on the counter, Selders will pick it up.

"Now I'm interested in reading things," she said. "It helped me, like, 100 percent. It's really been helping me in just everything."

For more information about The Reading Cottage, call 892-1875.

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or by e-mail at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com