Structured Literacy and Dyslexia Services
Structured Literacy Intervention
One-on-one, Orton-Gillingham based instruction targeting decoding (reading words), encoding (spelling), phonological awareness, vocabulary, reading fluency, and comprehension. Explicit, systematic, and multisensory.
Understanding Dyslexia and Literacy
Understanding Literacy Skills
These six areas are Megan’s primary focus in each client session.
- Phonological Awareness
- The ability to hear and work with the sounds in spoken words, including rhyming, blending, segmenting, and manipulating sounds. These skills provide an important foundation for reading and spelling.
- Phonics & Word Study
- Understanding how letters and letter combinations represent sounds, along with patterns and rules that help children read unfamiliar words and spell more accurately.
- Morphology & Word Structure
- Understanding how meaningful word parts, such as prefixes, suffixes, roots, and base words, work together to build words and convey meaning. Morphology supports vocabulary, spelling, reading, and comprehension.
- Vocabulary & Language
- Building knowledge of word meanings, word relationships, and the language needed to understand and use increasingly complex words. Strong vocabulary supports reading comprehension and academic learning.
- Oral Reading Fluency & Accuracy
- Reading aloud accurately, smoothly, and with appropriate phrasing and expression, so that more attention can be devoted to understanding what is being read.
- Reading Comprehension
- Understanding, remembering, and thinking about what has been read, including key details, connections, vocabulary, inferences, and overall meaning.
Individualized Instruction
Each session and plan of care is tailored to the child’s individual needs, skills, and progress. The areas outlined above provide a general framework, but instruction is adjusted as needed based on ongoing assessment and response to intervention. Additional areas of support, such as rapid automatized naming (RAN), working memory, processing speed, and other underlying skills that may affect literacy development, are incorporated when warranted.
How This Differs from Tutoring
Tutoring helps students keep up with schoolwork. Speech-language services use diagnostic assessment and therapy to address the underlying reasons why reading and spelling are difficult.
Many Orton-Gillingham tutors are well trained in the method itself. As a licensed speech-language pathologist (M.A., CCC-SLP) and Certified Structured Literacy Dyslexia Interventionist (C-SLDI), Megan adds clinical training in the oral language skills on which reading is built. She can find and treat underlying language difficulties, such as weak vocabulary, sentence structure, or listening comprehension, that a reading-only approach may miss.
Each child’s plan starts with standardized and criterion-referenced assessments. It has individualized goals and changes as progress data comes in. Sessions use structured, evidence-based Orton-Gillingham methods to build phonological awareness, decoding, spelling, morphology, vocabulary, and comprehension.
Where Sessions Happen
In-School Sessions
In-person sessions with children during the school day at Megan's partner schools, Trinity Episcopal School and St. Edward's School in Vero Beach.
Teletherapy
Live, one-on-one online sessions for families across Florida. If your child does not attend one of the partner schools, teletherapy is how Megan works with your family, wherever you are in the state.
How Sessions Work
- About twice a week, 90 to 120 minutes total each week.
- A 12-week commitment is recommended so skills have time to build.
- Many families notice early progress within the first few weeks.
Payment
- Vero Speech Solutions is private pay.
- Superbills are provided (an itemized receipt you can submit to your insurance company for possible out-of-network reimbursement).
- Megan is a Step Up For Students (Unique Abilities) provider, a Florida scholarship program that can help cover services like these.
- For current rates, book a free discovery call.
Collaborative Care and Referrals
Learning and reading difficulties can have multiple contributing factors. When an evaluation or therapy suggests that a child may benefit from support beyond speech-language pathology and structured literacy intervention, Megan may recommend consultation with a trusted specialist.
- Psychologist
- A psychoeducational evaluation can provide information about cognitive abilities, academic achievement, attention, and learning. It may help clarify a child’s learning profile, identify areas of strength and need, and inform educational planning and accommodations.
- Occupational Therapist
- May be helpful when concerns involve handwriting, fine-motor skills, visual-motor integration, reflex integration, or sensory-motor needs that may affect classroom participation.
- Developmental Optometrist
- May be considered when a child experiences visual symptoms that interfere with reading comfort or efficiency, such as eye strain, losing their place, double vision, or difficulty with eye teaming and focusing.
- Physical Therapist
- May be helpful when concerns involve gross-motor skills, posture, core strength, balance, or coordination that may affect a child’s comfort and participation during learning activities.
Megan believes in a collaborative approach and, when appropriate, works alongside families and other professionals to help ensure that each child’s needs are understood and supported.