The non-profit organization Step Up For Students has added Syllables Learning Center to their list of Approved Specialized After-School Education Program Providers. Therefore, for recipients of the Step Up For Students’ Family Empowerment Scholarship for Students with Unique Abilities (FES-UA), the costs of our tutoring and assessment services are fully covered due to our Provider status!

If you live in Florida and your child has been diagnosed with dyslexia or ADHD, you can apply for the FES-UA scholarship to receive financial assistance for our services. Applications for the 2025-26 school year will open on Saturday, February 1. 

Please note that applications are restricted to students who are not currently enrolled in public school and have received a diagnosis for a specific learning difference.

Access FES-UA Scholarship Application

Step Up For Students empowers parents to pursue and engage in the most appropriate learning options for their children, with an emphasis on families who lack the information and financial resources to access these options. This nonprofit scholarship funding organization helps administer five scholarships for Florida schoolchildren, including the Family Empowerment Scholarship for Students with Unique Abilities (FES-UA). This scholarship provides students with unique needs with access to private school, homeschooling options, therapies, tutoring, and more by covering tuition and fees. For FES-UA scholarship recipients, the cost of our services is covered due to our Provider status!

If your child is a FES-UA Scholarship recipient, contact us to learn more about our one-on-one reading, spelling, writing, and study skills teletherapy sessions, and how to select us as a provider for your child.

This video outlines the steps of provider selection through the Step Up For Students Online Marketplace.

During the school year, students squeeze tutoring into a schedule packed with school, sports, homework, and other afterschool commitments. Summer frees up not only time, but also brain bandwidth — making summer tutoring at Syllables extremely productive.

Don’t miss the chance to help fill in any learning gaps and prepare your child to succeed next school year!

How Syllables Can Help

• Intensive Tutoring:  Speed up your time with us by increasing tutoring frequency or scheduling two-hour sessions. Students who complete “intensive summer tutoring” make remarkable strides and dramatically shorten the time they need to spend with us during the school year. Because our therapists are experts at keeping students engaged and active, double sessions are extremely productive.

• Brush-Up for Syllables Alumni: If your child has graduated from Syllables’ reading program, they are welcome to come in for a free retest. We will determine if your child has retained their skills and kept up with their peers. If we see any deficits, summer is a good time to fill in gaps.

• Study Skills: Did you know that we are experts in teaching kids study skills? Summer tutoring is an excellent way to develop these skills without the pressure of daily schoolwork. Learn More

• Work at Home: Parents who work with their child at home decrease their child’s time at Syllables. Make sure to complete the practice your therapist recommends between sessions. You can also visit our YouTube channel to watch demonstrations of games you can play and activities you can do at home.

• Attend a Training Session: Parents are welcome to attend our teacher training sessions (offered through our sister company, Kendore Learning). You’ll learn our proven method of teaching reading and you will leave prepared to help your child at home more than you ever thought possible! Parents of currently-enrolled Syllables students receive 40% off of Kendore Kingdom training.  View Our Training Schedule

• Sibling Screenings: Dyslexia and other learning disabilities run in families. If you have a current Syllables student and are concerned about their sibling(s), bring them in for a complimentary one-hour reading assessment. If there is an issue, we can help you make a plan.

Not sure how to structure your child’s summer at Syllables? Give us a call at 770-752-1724. We are experts at assessing students and helping you make the most of your child’s time with us.

Winter Break, when your child is not overwhelmed with school and extra-curricular commitments, is an excellent time to get ahead. Relaxed and rested children are more receptive to learning! Consider the following as you think ahead to the winter holidays.

Current Syllables Students

Fit in a few sessions to get ahead and speed up progress. Multiple-hour sessions are available.

Syllables “Alumni”

Brush up on skills by scheduling a few refresher sessions. Don’t forget that we offer free assessments for students who have “graduated” from Syllables. Schedule your assessment now so that we can develop a plan for Winter Break.

High School and College Students

We work with older students on study skills and test taking strategies. Winter Break is an excellent time to focus on these critical skills. It’s also an excellent time for high schoolers to tuck in some SAT/ACT test prep.

Call us at 770-752-1724 for more information or to schedule.

“Letter of the Week” is NOT Good Practice

It’s very common practice in preschool and kindergarten classrooms to introduce the “letter of the week.” While this method of teaching is based on good intentions, it presents problems when children are learning to sound out words (decode) and write (encode). Learning letters limits children because some important sounds in the English language are not represented by single letters (for example, /ch/, /sh/, /ow/ and /au/).  Also, alternate spellings get confusing when one sound is pegged to one letter.

Why We Teach One Sound at a Time

There are only 44 sounds in our language and the rapid automatic retrieval of those sounds is the foundation of reading. Regardless of age, in order for a student to be a fast and accurate reader, the sounds must be mastered. If a student is not able to retrieve the sounds efficiently, their accuracy and comprehension will suffer. EVERYTHING else in reading is secondary to this crucial first skill.  Once a student shows mastery, he or she will move ahead to increasingly more complex concepts.

Watch Kendore Learning Executive Director Jennifer Hasser explain in greater detail.

Oh, the back-to-school craziness! The lazy days of summer have come to an abrupt end and our homes and minds swirl with more logistics than we can possibly manage. The worry we felt in May has faded, so when it comes to jumping into fall tutoring, it’s easy to pause and say, “we’ll just wait and see how things go.”

If you have a child who struggles, it’s important to make choices with a long term perspective. Remediating a learning issue gives children the skills and tools they need for a lifetime. If that voice inside your head is telling you there is a problem, don’t wait…listen!

In this quick video, Jennifer Hasser puts learning struggles in perspective to help you as you make choices for your child.

We have fantastic news! Our training program and Structured Literacy curriculum have been officially reaccredited by the International Dyslexia Association (IDA) and the International Multisensory Structured Language Education Council (IMSLEC). Back in 2018, our curriculum, staff, and facilities went through the rigorous IMSLEC and IDA Accreditation examination process and passed with flying colors and high accolades!

During the accreditation process, IMSLEC and IDA conducted an in-depth review of Kendore Learning’s Structured Literacy curriculum, which is used one-on-one with students at Syllables Learning Center and in classrooms across the nation through our Kendore teacher training program.

With these important seals of approval, Kendore Learning and Syllables Learning Center remain among the elite ranks of programs across the country recognized to help students with dyslexia and related learning differences.

Parents who send their children to Syllables Learning Center can rest assured that their child is receiving the highest level of reading therapy available.

Learn About Our Accreditation Process

Learn About Our One-On-One Tutoring

Summer is shorter than ever! Parents often come to us with grand ideas for an “intensive summer” at Syllables, but they also want to take breaks for vacations and camps. It’s important to set expectations for what can be accomplished during our ever-shrinking summers. In this helpful video, Executive Director Jennifer Hasser, M.Ed., addresses this important topic and provides recommendations.

Let’s talk nonsense!

We are frequently asked why we use nonsense words with students. Parents and teachers worry that nonsense words will confuse their children and will interfere with learning new words. While we wholeheartedly agree that students need to work with real words, we also know that nonsense words play an important role in effectively teaching students how to read and spell.

Many young children have excellent memories and are able to memorize one syllable words without understanding how the words’ sounds connect with their letters. When these students eventually are introduced to multisyllabic words that do not contain memorized words, the child is lost.

If a student has been given a strong foundation in the alphabetic principle (connecting sounds with letters) through real and nonsense words, more advanced words won’t deter them in the future. For example, if we ask a student to sound out the nonsense word “lat,” we are reinforcing the sounds /l/, /a/, and /t/. Students who have learned to decode (read) and encode (spell) using letter sounds will not be deterred if the words they encounter are unfamiliar or as they increase in difficulty. They will not have to resort to memorization of large words because they will possess the tools they need to decode. Later, as the child is exposed to more advanced words, they will see words like “latitude” and “bilateral.”  They will learn that roots like “lat” are not necessarily nonsense after all —  “lat” is a Latin root that means “side.”

Working with nonsense words will not confuse a child in terms of vocabulary because if a word is not assigned a meaning, the child will not use it. For instance, the student who decoded the word “lat,” in school will not come home and say, “Mom, can we have lat for dinner?” or “I really would like a new pet lat.” Since the word has no meaning, it will not interfere with the child’s growing vocabulary. On the other hand, it will help with their reading and spelling for years to come.

Watch Video

Bedtime reading is a treat for natural readers. But for kids with dyslexia or other learning issues, curling up with a good book at bedtime is not the best way to end the day. It is important not to pair frustration and struggle with the act of reading, and if your child is tired, they will become frustrated quickly. If you have a child who finds reading challenging, it’s time to rethink the bedtime routine!

Click on the video below for helpful suggestions.

Working memory is the brain’s system for temporarily storing and managing the information required to carry out complex tasks such as learning, reasoning, and comprehension.

Children with poor working memory typically have difficulty remembering multi-step tasks and instructions. They also may have issues with impulse control, because their brain cannot hold the thought of both an action and its consequence at the same time.

Working memory has a profound impact on reading because sounding out words requires that a child hold each sound in working memory before putting those sounds together. For instance, a child with a working memory deficit may sound out /b/, /a/, /t/, and then go back to say the word, only to find that they have forgotten the sounds they just decoded. The child will then guess by saying “butter” or “bite.”

One of the best ways to help a struggling reader who has working memory deficits is to help reading become automatic. Teaching good decoding strategies creates automaticity, which frees up working memory space.

Learn more about working memory by watching the video below: