A Dyslexia Intervention Program That Works

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I have tried my best to educate myself on different interventions that would help my students throughout my teaching journey.  When it came to students with dyslexia, my research was taking me down several different avenues. There are so many interventions that exist but most of them fail to provide the science behind them. Teaching children to read is quite scientific, and that is especially true for children with dyslexia. When I focused my research on interventions that were scientifically proven to help struggling readers, I found  Take Flight: A Comprehensive Intervention for Students with Dyslexia.

Take Flight is a step above tutoring and is considered dyslexia therapy. Please visit our post, Understanding Dyslexia in Four Points, if you would like a better understanding of what dyslexia is and why scientific reading instruction is needed.

What is Take Flight?

Take Flight (TF) is a multisensory, structured approach to teaching written by the education staff of the Luke Waites Center for Dyslexia and Learning Disorders at Scottish Rite for Children (SRC) hospital. Take Flight builds on the success of previous dyslexia intervention programs developed at SRC: Alphabet Phonics, Dyslexia Training Program, and TSRH Literacy Program.  It is a two-year, Orton-Gillingham-based curriculum designed for students who have been identified as having dyslexia.

The reason Take Flight initially caught my attention is because the whole program is developed based on research!  Research and data!  These are two words I absolutely love as an educator.

If you’d like to see the research summary, please follow this link.

Take Flight Components Broken Down

Take Flight focuses on the five key components of basic reading instruction that have been scientifically identified by the National Reading Panel.  The following descriptions have been taken in part from the SRC website.

1. Phonemic Awareness: The ability to identify and manipulate sounds and serves as a critical element to reading and spelling.  Take Flight includes a systematic exploration of the articulation of phonemes and is fully integrated within decoding and spelling instruction.

2. Phonics: Teaching students letter sound correlations.  TF instruction is now introduced at a faster pace in the lesson sequence, allowing more time for practice toward accuracy and automaticity and for more guided reading practice.

3. Fluency: The ability to read accurately, smoothly and with expression. TF fluency instruction incorporates guided and timed repeated reading of decodable words, phrases and connected text

4. Vocabulary: Vocabulary is expanded and enriched in TF by developing morphological knowledge, word relationships, figurative language, syntax and semantics by direct instruction and in the context of reading.

5. Reading Comprehension: A combination of scientifically-supported techniques is used for instruction in reading comprehension. These strategies include cooperative learning, comprehension monitoring, question generation, story structure, summarizing and inferencing.

Who Can Administer Take Flight?

Take Flight trained therapists are called Certified Academic Language Therapists (CALTs). CALTs have extensive training needed to serve students with dyslexia.

In order to become a CALT a person must:

  1. Hold a bachelor’s degree  
  2. Go through a two year training program 
  3. Complete a minimum of 700 clinical teaching hours 
  4. Submit video demonstrations, book reports and chapter reviews
  5. Complete a minimum of 200 instructional hours
  6. Pass an exam that results in certification by the Academic Language Therapy Association

More information on CALTs can be found here.

What does an average Take Flight lesson look like?

Take Flight therapy sessions are 1 hour per day, recommended 3 to 4 days per week.  This is one hour of multi-sensory, direct instruction.  

Prior to the first day of therapy, reading progress monitoring must be done on each student.  This includes a phonics screener, a fluency assessment, and a single word decoding exercise.

In each Take Flight lesson, we cover the following topics:

  • Alphabet: This involves reviewing, sequencing, identifying letters, and alphabetizing.
  • Reading Decks: Every new concept learned has a reading card associated with it.  All cards that have already been taught are reviewed each lesson.
  • Auditory and Visual Discovery: New concepts are introduced with an auditory discovery followed by a visual discovery- multi-sensory!
  • Handwriting Practice: Handwriting practice is given in the form of letters, words, and sentences through each lesson. In TF, all writing is done in cursive.
  • Decoding Words and Sentences: Students have the opportunity to decode words and then sentences that involve their new learning.
  • Rapid Automatic Practice: Students engage in practicing their new learning by reading single words with fluency.
  • Instant words: Every therapy session, we focus on 10 instant words that have been identified as the most commonly used words in the English language.
  • Phonemic awareness: With the use of sound pictures, students identify sounds and create words. They also practice manipulating the sounds to create new words.
  • Spelling: Students receive practice writing single words followed by sentences that incorporate their new learning.
  • Comprehension: Comprehension is developed through the use of books and cards to expand skills such as vocabulary, grammar, inferencing, summarizing, and critical thinking skills
  • Fluency: In Book 3, students begin reading for fluency in the form of words, phrases and passages.

Take Flight Success

You do not need a dyslexia diagnosis to be a candidate for Take Flight. Every child can benefit from an explicit, multi-sensory, structured literacy program. Visit our guide to reading benchmarks and signs of dyslexia as well as our guide to speech benchmarks and signs of dyslexia if you are unsure of your child’s reading progress.

If you feel like your child is exhibiting signs of a struggling reader, please visit our services page to check availability for dyslexia therapy. All of our sessions are virtual and we offer free consultations.

We are so incredibly thankful to be able to provide Take Flight to students and see the life-changing impact it has on their lives. They are finally able to find success in reading and that motivation pushes them forward to keep going.  

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