At-Home Online Reading & Spelling Program With Phonics and Spelling Patterns

Physical Products

30-Day Money-back Guarantee

We offer this program because we love seeing parents and their kids succeed. It is an extraordinary experience to watch parents empower their kids, and we are 100% committed to your success. For your part, the success of the program relies on your commitment to completing the weekly activities as outlined.

We are so confident that our Reading Program and Spelling Program will be a life-changing experience for you that we offer a no-risk 30-day guarantee on our printed material kits.

If you are unsatisfied with the print materials and program within the first 30 days, just ship us back the printed material, and we’ll refund your purchase excluding actual shipping cost and return shipping. Materials must be unused and in a resaleable condition. The material must be postmarked within 30 days of receiving the material.

Bonus free physical products must be returned in their original, unused, new, and resalable condition. If the bonus free item is not returned, you will be charged for the full cost of the bonus free item.

If you think you might return or cancel the program, print out the material at home before using any of the physical material.

Online Programs

14-Day Money-back Guarantee

We offer this program because we love seeing parents and their kids succeed. It is an extraordinary experience to watch parents empower their kids, and we are 100% committed to your success. For your part, the success of the program relies on your commitment to completing the weekly activities as outlined.

We are so confident that our Reading Program and Spelling Program will be a life-changing experience for you that we offer a no-risk 14-day guarantee. If after completing the program’s first week’s activities within the first 14 days from the initial sign-up, simply let us know, and we will refund your purchase. If you purchased print materials with the online program, actual shipping costs will be excluded from your online program refund.

Bonus free physical products must be returned in their original, unused, new, and resalable condition. If the bonus free item is not returned, you will be charged for the full cost of the bonus free item.

If you think you might return or cancel the program, print out the material at home before using any of the physical material.

7-Day Free Trial

We offer a 7-day free trial only on the Monthly Reading & Spelling Program Membership.

This gives you a chance to try the program without having to pay. If you cancel within the first 7-days, you will not be charged. If you are considering the yearly option, this is a great way to try the program first before deciding to upgrade.

All other membership options require an upfront payment. For these other membership options, we offer a 14-day money-back guarantee.

Our 14-day money-back guarantee starts when you sign up for the program.

If you signed up for the 7-day free trial and you are still within the 7 days, you can cancel the program on your own. Log in to your account, click Go to Program, go to My Account > Settings > Membership, and you can cancel your account from here. If you cancel within the first 7-days, you will not be charged.

After sign up, you will be asked what grade your child is currently and whether they are above grade level, at grade level, or below grade level by 1-3 years in their reading skills.

Give your best estimate. If the material you choose is too easy or too hard, contact us and we’ll adjust your account.

Additionally, you can choose a couple of sample reading passages at the grade level you think your child is capable of reading proficiently.

Have them read aloud to you. Make a note of any repetitions, substitutions, omissions, or mispronunciations they make. Then ask them at least five comprehension questions.

Instructional level is reading without mistakes with a 93% accuracy and a minimum of 75% comprehension.

The program materials and teaching videos are delivered and accessed online. Each day you will print out a few pages of handouts to use with your kids. Most of the lessons and activities are done offline at a table or outside.

There are a lot of fun activities and games. With grades K-3, most of the activities are done with the parent and child together. For grades 4 and above, there are a couple of activities done with the parent and child together, and the rest the child can do independently.

The short answer is yes!

Each day there are a few handouts to print out and instructional videos to watch. Each day’s actual activities should only take 45-60 minutes of actual work.

The first week takes a little bit of time and prep to get up to speed, but by the second week, the activities become second nature.

We often suggest breaking up some of the activities to different parts of the day.

1. Print out the handouts
2. Watch the short videos either by yourself or with your kids to know what to do (about 5 minutes)
3. Do the fluency training with your kids (5 minutes)
4. Activities for comprehension, phonics, brain-body, and executive function rotate throughout the week (20 – 40 minutes)

Executive function is your ability to plan and organize. It’s also your ability to strategize and pay attention to and remember details. Executive function also involves flexible thinking. When we read, we also use our executive function skills.

There is a direct correlation between executive function and reading skills. Your ability to comprehend depends on your ability to retrieving word meaning and integrate that with prior knowledge. That specific skill involves executive function. When executive function skills improve, overall reading and learning skills improve.

Research on teaching reading and spelling dates back to the early 1930s, first with Samuel Orton and then later with Anna Gillingham. They developed a teaching approach, the Orton-Gillingham method (OG), to help struggling readers and spellers. Their teaching methods include what is currently considered best practices: sequential, phonics-based systems that teach the basics of word formation before whole meanings.

Learning through all three senses (auditory, visual, and tactile-kinesthetic) is essential. This multisensory approach has been proven effective for students of all abilities, including those with dyslexia and other learning challenges. 

The Scholar Within Reading Program incorporates these OG principles and strategies along with the latest research on learning. 

Orton-Gillingham Instructional Components for Optimal Learning:

• Multisensory: Uses all of the senses (auditory, visual, and tactile-kinesthetic)
• Sequential: Proceeds step-by-step in a logical sequence
• Incremental: Each lesson builds upon prior learning
• Cumulative: Constantly and consistently reviews previously taught concepts
• Individualized: Meets each student’s individual needs
• Phonogram-Based: Words are based on combining letters and letter combinations known as phonograms (the sound-symbol relationship, also known as the Alphabetic Principle)
• Explicit: Stated clearly and in a detailed manner

Reading Fluency is the ability to retrieve words automatically and easily, almost without thought. When you read nearly effortlessly and accurately, you are able to hold pieces of information (text) in your mind which improves your overall comprehension. 

Dr. Sally Shaywitz, the author of Overcoming Dyslexia, states, “Fluency Training is one of the most important things a parent can do to help their child improve their reading skills.” Improving your reading fluency is one of the easiest things you can do to improve your reading skills.

Our summer reading program includes short reading fluency activities that you will do each day. This activity only takes 5-minutes and your kids will see and chart their progress each day. These specific activities work on eye-tracking skills, visual processing, and rapid automatized naming. In other words, these activities help your kids learn to read faster. You can download the first fluency activity here for free.

Reading comprehension is your ability to understand and use what you have read, listened to, or watched.

In our summer reading program, your child will use our custom-designed graphic organizers to organize information of what they have read into a graphical display. This is a critical component in improving reading comprehension. These organizers make note-taking easy. 

Additionally, story structure, summarizing, question answering, and question generation are all critical pieces of comprehension. We also include these components of comprehension in our summer reading program.

No. We currently do not have live classes.

We have designed this program to be step-by-step with bite-sized activities. You won’t have to worry about missing a Zoom class, being late, or your kids being still in their pajamas. You can do the activities in the program on your schedule and make up missed days at your convenience.

We have video spelling instruction that your kids will follow along with their corresponding worksheets. If you want feedback on your child’s work, send us a picture of it via email.

The program was designed by learning expert Bonnie Terry, M.Ed., BCET. The curriculum in the program was designed over the course of Bonnie Terry’s 35+ years of teaching from hands-on in her former private learning center and now, in an at-home and online environment. Bonnie has worked with kids of all abilities, whether they are struggling, have learning challenges like dyslexia, auditory processing disorder (APD), and ADD/ADHD, or are just looking to advance faster.

The National Reading Panel has made it clear that the best approach to reading instruction is one that incorporates:

• Explicit instruction in phonemic awareness
• Systematic phonics instruction
• Methods to improve fluency
• Vocabulary instruction
• Ways to enhance comprehension

Scholar Within’s summer reading program includes these components through short step-by-step multisensory activities. The program is Orton-Gillingham based and is the perfect way for your kids to not only keep their skills up over summer but to get ahead, make learning easier, and spend less time on homework come the fall.

This program has been designed by learning disabilities expert and board-certified educational therapist Bonnie Terry, M.Ed., BCET.

Bonnie originally designed this curriculum in her private learning center in the 1990s where she saw kids with dyslexia, ADHD, auditory processing disorder, kids on the autism spectrum, and numerous other learning challenges.

She learned first hand what worked and what didn’t.

Bonnie was only able to see kids twice a week for an hour each time and had to figure out a way to make progress in reading and spelling in that short amount of time.

She discovered specific multisensory activities worked.

She discovered that she could teach spelling through spelling patterns while teaching individual sound components of letters.

She discovered that you could train your eye muscles for reading just like you can train your body for sports.

She discovered that to successfully teach reading, you must teach all 5 principles of reading (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, comprehension and vocabulary).

She discovered that teaching through hands on games is not only fun but strengthens kids skills and associations with learning.

She discovered teaching by the Science of Reading before it was known as the Science of Reading.

Parents and teachers kept asking what it was that she was doing in her learning center because of the transformative results the kids saw in such little time.

She realized that she needed to make this curriculum available to all students.

When you teach in these ways, all kids can successfully read and spell, not matter whether they have learning challenges or not.

Since her private learning center, Bonnie Terry, M.Ed., BCET has teamed up with her son, Nick Terry, who is a design and technology expert to create Scholar Within.

This way, they’ve been able to bring Bonnie Terry’s original curriculum into a step-by-step format that all families can do at home with their kids and teachers can do with their students.