Bravo! Tutoring – Helping Kids with Dyslexia Thrive

Dyslexia is a common learning difference where the brain processes language differently than in other learners. If your child has dyslexia, you probably spend a lot of time worrying. That’s completely normal! Dyslexia is difficult to understand and hard to successfuly treat.

But here’s the good news. With the right supports, such as movement-based instruction, brain integration sessions, structured phonemic awareness training, and targeted sensory activities, children with dyslexia can become confident, capable readers and learners.

Although twenty percent of the population has dyslexia, this learning disability is commonly misunderstood. For starters, dyslexia does not involve a lack of intelligence or effort. As a matter of fact, children with dyslexia have normal or above average IQ’s.

This intelligence can make it harder for the child, though. To begin with, since the dyslexic child is bright, awareness is there. This means the child with dyslexia is aware that their performance isn’t as good as peers.

Also, expectations from parents, teachers, and family members put intense pressure on the dyslexic learner, since they are obviously bright and usually verbal. Telling a child with dyslexia to try harder simply won’t work! Chances are, the child is already working hard to start with. Nagging and pushing only serve to put the child on edge.

So…What Exactly Is Dyslexia?

Dyslexia is a specific learning difference that affects how the brain connects sounds, symbols, and meaning.

Because dyslexia changes the way children process written language, it shows up as slow, inaccurate, or effortful reading and spelling. There is great news, though! Dyslexia responds well to structured, multisensory instruction that engages the whole brain and body. In addition, movement must be part of this equation.

Why Movement?

Kids with dyslexia are usually tactile learners. This means they learn by doing – not by seeing or hearing. Most classrooms spend the bulk of teaching time spent in a lecture format. This is where kids sit and listen while the teacher talks. If your child is dyslexic and learns by doing, this model can be torture.

In addition, teachers and schools will supplement this learning model by including visuals such as the white board, a projector, or classroom handouts. Once again, this is hard on the dyslexic learner, as this child learns by doing, not by seeing.

Add movement to the equation, and your dyslexic learner starts to connect the dots. The sad news is that very few schools spend adequate time having kids do hands on activities. Even science is often spent having students read from a book and answering questions. This is really reading comprehension, not actual science.

Kids with dyslexia usually love science because they get to use their hands in real experiments. If they are forced to read from a book about science, their eyes glaze over.

Sadly, hands-on programs in the higher grades have been cut as well. Many programs such as auto mechanics, cooking, home economics, welding, etc. have been discontinued due to the expense. But if administrators and legislators sat up and took note, they would see that 48% of America’s prison population has dyslexia. Doesn’t it make more sense to invest in dyslexic people when they are young so they have a more prominent future?

What Dyslexia Looks Like in the Classroom

Most people have no idea what a dyslexic child undergoes every long day of the school week. It is like the child is sitting in a classroom with the teacher speaking in a different language. Learning is different for kids with dyslexia, which is why they need unique tools to help them succeed academically, especially in reading.

A dyslexic child might have:

difficulty decoding words (sounding them out) and recognizing familiar words quickly
trouble with spelling, letter reversals or inconsistent letter formation
slow, choppy reading and reduced reading comprehension when tasks rely on speed
challenges with phonological tasks such as blending sounds and segmenting words
strong thinking, reasoning, creativity, or oral language skills coexist with reading difficulty
verbal and personable but reading, writing, and spelling skills don’t reflect this

How Dyslexia Affects Learning Beyond Reading

Reading is foundational to most schoolwork. When decoding and fluency are difficult, children may:

Avoid reading tasks and fall behind in content areas
Require extra time to complete assignments and tests
Appear to know material orally but struggle to show it in writing
Experience frustration, lowered self-esteem, or anxiousness around schoolwork
Sound out words incorrectly
Show inconsistencies in sounding out words
Know letter sounds one moment in time then don’t know the same letter sounds another time

Why Movement and Brain Integration Matter

Dyslexia is fundamentally about how the brain integrates information. Movement and coordinated sensory experiences help build the neural pathways that support attention, working memory, cross-modal (sound-to-symbol) mapping, and automaticity.

Automaticity simply means that a skill can be done automatically.

An example of automatic skills we do are typing, driving, and riding a bike. At first, it is difficult to coordinate all the micro-skills into the one bigger skill. But after enough of the right kind of practice, the big skill becomes easy and we don’t have to think about doing it.

Reading works the same way.

Movement does three powerful things when kids are learning to read:

It activates bilateral coordination and rhythm, which support language sequencing.
It increases attention, arousal regulation, and the brain’s readiness to learn.
It develops motor planning and body awareness—skills linked to timing and language processing.

Movement Makes Learning Easy for Kids with Dyslexia!

The Bravo! Learning System incorporates brain integration as one of its most integral components. To learn best, a student should have a balance between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Messages cross the corpus callosum with ease and the child learns and applies what was learned. Grades are consistent with learning, and everyone is happy.

When a child struggles to get these neural pathways in the right place, then learing is more difficult. Through eye movement, cross lateral exercises, and specific academic skill targeting, it’s easy to repattern the brain for optimal learning.

Kids with dyslexia are, in essence, wired incorrectly. This isn’t an academic death sentence. But here’s the most exciting news for a child with dyslexia: new nerual pathways can be built at any age, and then learning can take place with ease.

Phonemic Awareness: the Cornerstone of Reading

Phonemic awareness – hearing, identifying, and manipulating the individual sounds in words – is the single strongest predictor of reading success.

In simpler terms, phonemic awareness is basically the ability to sound out words.

Phonemes are the smallest units of sound in the English language. Examples of phonemes are small words like “cat”, “lip”, “hem”, “mom”, and “cup”. Kids with dyslexia struggle to sound out and recognize these small units of sound when taught with traditional methods.

When they are provided phonemic awareness instruction using the Orton-Gillingham method coupled with movement and cross lateral movements, then learning happens with light speed!

For children with dyslexia, phonemic work must be:

Explicit and systematic – taught step by step
Multisensory – paired with movement, visuals, and tactile supports
Repeated with fast, focused practice to build automaticity

Kids with dyslexia struggle with phonemic awareness. They start to sound out words and start off strong. Due to weakened visual and auditory processing skills, they make mistakes after the strong start. They often panic and end up making mistakes. All too soon, bad habits set in.

Kids with dyslexia will not learn to decode words with traditional phonemic awareness instruction. They need movement, color, cross-lateral motions, and predictability in order to intrinsically learn to sound out words correctly.

The Bravo! Reading Program Makes Reading Easy!

Kids who come to Bravo! Tutoring learn to read with the Bravo! Reading Program, where instruction is catered to the dyslexic learner.

For example, most kids don’t receive enough instruction and practice on how to sound out two letter words. Dyslexic learners especially need more time to do this, but are usually bumped up to three letter words too soon, and confusion sets in.

They need more time and physical activities with two-letter words before they move to three-letter words. The Bravo! Reading Program had kids use dot dabbers or bingo markers to read. This not only makes it fun, but it solves that whole movement issue.

With this phonemic awarenss combination, kids with dyslexia learn to read and succeed academically quickly and easily.

Visual, Auditory, and Sensory Activities: Bridging Senses to Symbols

Because dyslexia often involves weaker auditory processing and less automatic visual-letter mapping, interventions are important for helping the child make progress.

At Bravo! Tutoring, we help your child to simultaneously strengthen:

Auditory skills: sound discrimination, phoneme blending and segmentation, auditory memory
Visual skills: letter recognition, tracking, visual memory for words, and form/shape discrimination
Cross-modal integration: matching sounds to letters, mouth shapes to phonemes, and gestures to graphemes

How Bravo! Tutoring Structures Lessons for Lasting Learning Success

We keep provide full sixty minute sessions with focused activities – visual, auditory, brain integration, and academics
Our reading instruction follows a logical sequence: phonemic awareness → phonics (sound-letter mapping) → decoding → fluency → comprehension.
We make practice active and joyful—movement and focused activities increase motivation and learning
The use of cumulative review helps retain knowledge – we have your child regularly revisit mastered skills while adding new ones
We provide immediate corrective feedback and lots of positive reinforcement

When to Seek Professional Evaluation

If a child consistently struggles with decoding, spelling, rapid naming, or other reading tasks despite classroom support, it might be time to seek a formal evaluation.

Early identification helps you put your child on a track for success instead of failure.

At Bravo! Tutoring, we offer a Learning Evaluation for only $79.00. When your child is evaluated through our quick process, you will discover:

How your child learns best
Indications of dyslexia and dysgraphia
Visual and auditory memory abilities
Visual and auditory discrimination levels
Phonemic awareness strengths and weaknesses
Grade level reading
Auditory processing abilities
Visual motor integration capabilities
Eye tracking skills

Dyslexia is a different way of learning, not a limit on learning. With structured phonemic instruction, purposeful movement and brain-integration activities, and targeted visual and auditory work, children with dyslexia can build strong reading skills and regain joy and confidence in learning.