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Toe by Toe: A Highly Structured Multi-sensory Reading Manual for Teachers and Parents
£28.50
Toe by Toe
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Additional information
| Publisher | K & H Cowling (1 Dec. 1993) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Paperback | 291 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 0952256401 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0952256403 |
| Dimensions | 21 x 2.7 x 14.8 cm |
by Bea
My son and I started this book over 12 months ago on 5th November 2012, we are now three quarters of the way through! I hope that by the middle of 2014 we will have completed it. Although it is a long, hard slog and a real commitment thank goodness for such an excellent resource. My son was 9 when we started using this book with a reading level of 7.4. We were awaiting an assessment for dyslexia (subsequently confirmed) but I desperately wanted to help him to learn to read with or without this confirmation.
He was getting extra phonics classes and speech and language therapy at school and yet still wasn’t reading. I despaired for him and his future if he wasn’t able to read the most basic instructions for his homework let alone even completing the task required.
I remember showing him the book the day it arrived from Amazon and going to the last page! I said, by the time we have finished this book, George, you will be able to read all the words here. Imagine how fantastic that will be. Tonight he was reading words such as cynic and concern – something I only dreamt of 12 months ago. Recently he returned from school with a certificate for most improved across the curriculum as well as one for being a hard worker.
We are taking it fairly slowly as doing the exercises can get dreary after a while (we read books specifically designed for kids with dyslexia which are high in content but low in complex vocabulary on the days we aren’t doing Toe by Toe). I also feel that by taking it slowly my son has more time to assimilate what he has learnt and is more willing and ready to tackle the next stage in Toe by Toe. And doing the exercises aren’t always completed without frustration on his part and me digging deep for patience. However, I have found bribery works wonders and he is allowed to chose a new toy or DVD after finishing the next quarter / third of the book.
I have read many excellent books about dyslexia which have helped me to understand the condition (I suspect I have mild dyslexia myself as I still can’t spell, pronounce unfamiliar words correctly or do mental arithmetic!) but this is the only resource that has actually helped my son to learn to read and for that I thank the authors from the bottom of my heart.
by Sherbert Lemon
I found this book when I was desperately trying to find something to help my 7 year old son learn to read. He is bright, very articulate but struggled with reading and didn’t want to try anymore. He loved being read to, but didn’t want to read to us. Because he couldn’t read very well it also meant that he couldn’t read the questions on his maths worksheets very accurately, so his confidence was plummeting. Most of the time he didn’t want to try because it was hard and he didn’t believe that he could do it. His school was unsupportive and his teacher just regarded him as a problem. We have since found out he is dyslexic but we didn’t know that then, because it was difficult to tell if he couldn’t do it because he so often refused to do it and we had no experience of dyslexia so we didn’t recognise the signs. So I was doggedly searching through Amazon looking for ideas, and after a false start which a different book I found Toe by Toe. It starts with the individual letter sounds, my son though it was a bit babyish and beneath him, it builds and builds to an astonishing level of complexity. When I got the book I read the last exercise and hoped but wondered how on earth we could get to that standard. We started on Jan 2nd and finished in December, we missed very few days. Even when he could see the progress he was making my son still didn’t always want to sit down and do it. But it was non-negotiable. On some days we had fun with it. I explained the meanings of advanced words, which helped him to remember them. We both made up silly definitions for the nonsense words. He started to tell all sorts of people about Toe by Toe. So from being a year behind in his chronological reading age he is now 2 years and 2 months ahead and he reads for pleasure – which is huge change…..new worlds are opening up for him. Yesterday I heard that he has been moved up a maths group. What this book has enabled us to achieve feels nothing short of a miracle. I can see my son’s confidence growing little by little. It has been a hard grind, but very rewarding. As long as you are prepared to stick with it progress will be made. What this book has enabled us to achieve feels wonderfully miraculous. Keda Cowling is a genius.
May 2023 update
It’s 10 years since I wrote my original review, I feel so strongly about the ability of this book to transform lives I felt compelled to update my review, just in case it helps to persuade someone to invest in this book – the money to buy it and the time needed to work through it with your child/ student/ friend. Without doubt as a result of completing this book the trajectory of my son’s life changed massively for the better. As he went through school he achieved a reading age of 18 by the time he was 13 year’s old. He is confident, he can read anything with ease and he is happy. He gained strong GCSE results, the only subject that was “a bridge too far” was French, so with the school’s agreement that was dropped from his timetable. He is currently doing his A levels and expects to go to University in the autumn. In addition to Toe by Toe I recommend audio books from Audible. He loved them and still does, most are space fantasy stories, but there are also factual ones like the Etymologicon which explains the origins of words. My son’s vocabulary developed faster and further than most of his classmates’ did. This meant that while his reading ability was still embryonic, he had an English skills he excelled at. He is still Dyslexic, he would score 1 and 0 in the weekly spelling tests in Year 3 despite lots of practice at home, the words were just to difficult for him. We agreed with the school that he would have his own more basic lists of words to learn each week so that he could make progress. Over the years his spelling has improved (it would still be judged as being behind his chronological age, but it is functional, and using a laptop at school from Y3 has helped with this. In most instances he can now see when a spelling doesn’t look right (I’m sure his reading ability has contributed to this). This is a massive step, because before he would spell the word “said” incorrectly in 4 different ways, all within the same paragraph. He now writes A’ level essays for History of the standard required to get a decent grade.
I am so thankful that I found Toe by Toe, sometimes doing it was a slog because my son just didn’t want to sit at the table and focus, other days it was a complete joy to do together. We both had an immense feeling of achievement when we finished the book. As a Mum it is the thing I am most proud of. His life chances and opportunities have expanded a thousand fold as a result of being able to read, is happy and confident in his academic ability. I can’t wait to see what did does next!