The Halifax Learning Advantage

When you enroll in a program at Halifax Learning, you'll be working with expertly trained reading practitioners, not tutors. Our reading experts are rigorously trained and receive ongoing training and support. We are also a research hub for experts in the field. In addition to instruction in evidence-driven programs, Halifax Learning families receive:

• Ongoing feedback
• Communication with support staff (psychologists, teachers)
• Initial, progress, and final assessment reports

Our programs are designed to meet the specific needs of struggling students to ensure effective, sustainable results. 

• We provide a comprehensive program that maximizes student success.
• We target essential reading skills. 
• We focus on results and close reading gaps. 
• We offer scientifically driven, sustainable results.

Grounded in research

Halifax Learning consistently meets and surpasses expectations. Robust third-party assessments confirm that teachers we train gain valuable skills, and their students achieve meaningful outcomes. Our ongoing research doesn’t just validate our efforts, it also informs our program improvements and offerings.

In studies, our program produced statistically significant and important results for struggling readers’ word decoding skills, a foundational part of a student’s reading journey. The program also has positive impacts on word reading accuracy and reading comprehension. Receiving our instruction in small groups increases students’ reading skills and helps make progress in closing the reading gap.

• Speeded practice of sublexical patterns made important contributions to students' increased reading fluency and comprehension skills, meaning that it helped kids both read better and understand what they read better, too. 
• Our program improved reading skills for older, at-risk students.
• Our program was effective in boosting reading fluency and comprehension for students who are struggling with reading fluency in particular. 

How Does Halifax Learning Align With Expert Opinion?

Experts recommend: 

• small instructional groups
• clear and concise explanations 
• explicit instructional sequences 
• more opportunities for immediate positive feedback and error correction 
• more skillful orchestration and integration of elements

→ Visit our Research Library for past and active research projects. 

Phonological awareness to the point of automatcity

Struggling readers almost exclusively lack the foundational skills required to become fluent readers. Students in the our program develop this skill with an emphasis on phonemic and phonetic activities using a multi-sensory approach. The goal is to automatically recognize, process, and manipulate any combination of the 44 sounds of the English language. 

Halifax Learning develops phonological awareness and achieves automaticity in each class. Students complete 105 carefully sequenced lessons over the course of three program phases. They are explicitly and systematically taught all the sounds and spellings that form the foundation of the phonetic and alphabetic system of English.

Further, we’re continually assessing how automatic our students are becoming and how this phonological automaticity impacts reading fluency. Want to learn more? Check out this research article by Dr. Jamie Metsala and Dr. Margaret David: Improving English reading fluency and comprehension for children with reading fluency disabilities.