I met Karen on my ninth birthday! We met online so she could show me how her program works. I had never seen anything like this before.

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When we started our lessons, my goal was to learn how to spell words. I even wrote that goal in my notebook!

 

I felt embarrassed at school, because I don't learn in the same way as other kids.

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I used to get my b's and d's mixed up, even though I tried to use the trick they taught me at school. Karen's tricks ended up helping me so much. It was easy to remember the stuff she taught me, because her songs got stuck in my head!

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I used to spell words the way they sounded. Like, I would write the word "speld" instead of "spelled." Now that I know the Floss Rule and the Doubling Rule, I can spell "spelled!"

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Karen also taught me how to STOP and THINK before I spell. 

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I'm a better reader now too. If there's a word I don't know how to read, I know how to divide it up and figure it out.

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Karen writes a lot of stories for her students, so we can practice reading. I love her stories!

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Our lessons have helped me a lot at school. The other day, I was taking a test, and I had to create a diagram to show my answers. I started thinking about our lessons, and I thought, "What would Karen do?"

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Then I knew: she would use her color-coding strategy! So that's what I did, and it came out great!

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Our lessons even help me in math. I've never understood what a quadrilateral shape was, until I studied Greek and Latin with Karen. Now I know that quad means "four" and lateral means "side."    So quadrilateral means "four sides." That helped me on my test!

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In our lessons, we didn't just learn how to read and spell English words. We studied words from SEVENTEEN different languages!

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Karen's SMART Check system is pretty awesome too. It taught me how to check my work, and I use it at school when I take my tests. It reminds me to re-read my work and look for mistakes. In fact, I am such a good proofreader now, that I help Karen edit her work! 

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I've actually helped Karen make her program better in a bunch of ways. Karen really likes my creative ideas, and she has worked them into her program! She even put my ideas into her workbooks, so that other students can use them too!

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Karen's program has helped me so much! It's amazing what she can do to help students with dyslexia! She made everything feel easy, and she taught me to embrace my dyslexia! And now, I am a really good reader and speller!