Offering professional reading support in the comfort of your home. Our reading tutors work with all types of reading needs, e.g. dyslexia. We are trained in Orton Gillingham and Wilson, and we travel to:
Manhattan- Upper East Side, Midtown East, Murray Hill, Gramercy, Union Square, East Village, Soho, Upper West Side, Midtown, Chelsea, West Village, Chinatown, Lower East Side.
Brooklyn- Kensington, Midwood, Windsor Terrace, Park Slope, Ditmas Park, Boro Park, Clinton Hill, Fort Greene, Prospect Heights, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill, Brooklyn Heights, Downtown Brooklyn, Ditmas Park, Kensington, Prospect Park South, Midwood, Canarsie, Flatbush, Crown Heights, Greenpoint, Williamsburg, Prospect Heights, Bay Ridge, and Dyker Heights.
Queens– Sunnyside, Woodside, Long Island City, Astoria
Long Island- near Baldwin.

For more information: http://brooklynletters.com/services/reading-specialists-and-interventionists/

If you are interested in a licensed speech language therapist (pathologist) coming to your home, please contact us, craig@brooklynletters.com or call us at 347-394-3485.

We work with all ages (babies-adolescents) and all types of speech and language delays and concerns. We service many neighborhoods in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. We travel to the following neighborhoods:

Manhattan- Upper East Side, Midtown East, Murray Hill, Gramercy, Union Square, East Village, Soho, Upper West Side, Midtown, Chelsea, West Village, Chinatown, Lower East Side.

Brooklyn- Kensington, Midwood, Windsor Terrace, Park Slope, Ditmas Park, Boro Park, Clinton Hill, Fort Greene, Prospect Heights, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill, Brooklyn Heights, Downtown Brooklyn, DUMBO, Ditmas Park, Kensington, Prospect Park South, Midwood, Canarsie, Flatbush, Crown Heights, Greenpoint, Williamsburg, Prospect Heights, Bay Ridge, and Dyker Heights.

Queens-- Sunnyside, Woodside, Long Island City, Astoria

We look forward to working with you!

Self-regulation is critical to a child’s learning and development. Self-regulation is a person’s ability to maintain their arousal level and a level of alertness that is appropriate for the demands of the environment. Children and adults use various strategies and techniques to maintain self-regulation throughout their daily lives. Many of these strategies are sensory based and help our nervous systems sustain physiological regulation in order to participate in social activities, daily living activities, and other age appropriate activities. Sensory processing is a key ingredient to a child’s self-regulation.

Sensory information that our bodies process includes:

• Proprioceptive input: Gives our bodies information of body position and where our body is in space.
• Vestibular input: Provides information to our body about movement and changes in head position.
• Tactile input: Sense of touch through our bodies, hands, and mouth; allowing us to interpret what we feel.
• Auditory input: Sense of hearing, allowing us to interpret what we hear.
• Visual input: Sense of vision, allowing us to interpret what we see.

Our bodies take in sensory information from the environment and process that information, resulting in a behavior in response to the environment. When children have difficulty processing sensory information or have difficulty adequately registering the sensory information, difficulties in self-regulation can result.

Just a few examples of how adults sustain regulation on a daily basis using sensory strategies include:

• Chewing gum to help sustain attention.
• Going out for a massage or engaging in physical exercise when feeling stressed.
• Lying under a heavy blanket when relaxing and falling asleep.
When a child has difficulty with self-regulation, it can impact the child’s ability to participate in school activities, in activities of daily living, social activities, etc. For example, if a child has difficulty sustaining an optimal level of arousal and is very active they will potentially have difficulty listening to classroom instruction, difficulty following the classroom routine, etc. Another example is a toddler who has difficulty tolerating transitions and difficulty self-soothing. This toddler may have difficulty utilizing tools or strategies to assist with self calming, like engaging in a calming movement activity, getting a hug for comfort, knowing what to expect through a visual schedule, etc.

Here are a few questions to consider when looking at a child’s functioning and determining whether difficulties with self-regulation may be contributing to your child’s learning potential:

• Does your child have difficulty staying seated or sitting still during tabletop tasks?
• Does your child have difficulty transitioning between activities?
• Does your child have difficulty sustaining attention to a conversation, activity, or task?
• Does your child have difficulty self-soothing when upset?
• Does your child have difficulty filtering excessive noise resulting in difficulty sustaining attention?
• Does your child have difficulty following multi-step directions or multi-step activities without requiring assistance?
• Does your child have a low activity level?
• Does your child seem to get lost while completing a task, delaying his/her ability to complete it in a timely manner?

These are only a few questions related to possible self-regulation difficulties. If difficulties with self-regulating is impacting daily life and your child’s ability to participate in age related activities to their fullest potential, an occupational therapy consultation or evaluation may be beneficial. Occupational therapy can assess a child’s individual sensory needs and self-regulation capacity to assist with increase in functional independence.

Here are a few examples of techniques that an occupational therapist could utilize to assist you and your child with their self-regulation:

• Create social stories: creating a story about the child and identifying their arousal level (our bodies move slow, just right, and fast).
• Creating a sensory diet that is specific to the child’s sensory system and needs, to help provide needed sensory input to maintain regulation.
• Increasing a child’s self-awareness and ability to identify their own arousal level.
• Providing sensory rich experiences for the child to engage in to increase opportunities for the child to receive the sensory input that they may need.
• Engaging in sensory based community activities that provide the sensory information that the individual child may benefit from.

Dr. Neeha Patel is a licensed occupational therapist who offers a holistic approach to therapy, drawing from evidenced-based practice techniques, sensory integration theory, neurodevelopmental treatment, family-centered care, and a play-based approach. She is Sensory Integration and Praxis Tests (SIPT) certified, and has extensive experience helping children from birth to 16 years old with sensory processing delays, fine and visual motor delays, social skills, pre-writing and handwriting skills, as well as in their primary activities of daily life. She has worked with varying diagnoses including autism spectrum disorders, learning disabilities, developmental delays, developmental coordination disorder, cerebral palsy, disruptive behavior disorder, and down syndrome. Neeha has special interest and completed her doctoral work in the area of cultural sensitivity when working with children and their families. Neeha offers home, school, or community visits in Brooklyn and Manhattan (Upper West Side, Midtown, Chelsea, Clinton, West Village, Soho, Tribeca, Union Square, Murray Hill, Gramercy Park, Upper East Side).

Do you want experienced NY State certified teachers specialized in reading intervention supporting your child’s reading development at your home? Susan Littman, Jo-Ann Kalb, and Shelley Padilla will help your child become a more confident reader while addressing decoding (sounding out letters), reading fluency, reading comprehension, and encoding (spelling).

Sounds too good to be true but you have come to the right place. Our reading specialists are trained in a variety of approaches including Great Leaps, Sounds in Motion, Orton Gillingham, PAF, and Shelley Padilla is Certified Wilson Instructor.

If your child has additional oral language, receptive language, and auditory processing difficulties, our language specialists (licensed and certified speech language pathologists) address these issues in addition to reading and writing difficulties. Contact Craig at craig@brooklynletters.com & 347-394-3485 .

Meet our reading support staff:

Susan Littman—NY State Certified Reading Specialist, NY State Licensed ELA Teacher, & Literacy Coach

Susan Littman is a NYS Certified Reading Specialist, a NYS Licensed English Language Arts Teacher, and a Literacy Coach, who has helped many students with reading difficulties in elementary and middle schools. Her education includes a Masters in Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, and a Masters in Literacy with a special focus on reading disabilities from Long Island University. She also has worked extensively in several District 15 schools, including in P.S. 321 and M.S. 821.

Initially, the process begins with an evaluation of your child’s readings skills, using standard reading assessments, personal observation and interaction with your child. Input from you, the parents, and your child’s teachers, is also vital to get a better understanding of your child’s strengths and struggles. Then, based on your child’s instructional needs and goals, Ms Littman will develop an individualized reading plan. This targeted intervention is customized to help your child make progress, whether the issues are decoding words and/or reading comprehension.

Ms Littman has created a welcoming space in her centrally located Park Slope brownstone where she sees students after school or on weekends. It is a quiet room where a child can concentrate and where distractions are minimized. Here, in this comfortable, supportive environment, Ms Littman will teach your child the strategies and skills s/he needs to become a confident, competent reader.

LOCATION: Home office at 399 2nd Street (Park Slope) and Ms. Littman makes Brooklyn home visits.
TYPE OF SERVICES: Initial reading evaluation, consultation with teachers and other involved specialists, individualized reading intervention plan
EXPERTISE: Students with phonemic awareness, phonics, and reading comprehension difficulties.
AGES: All ages.
HOURS: Flexible, after school and on weekends.
CONTACT: 917-287-3776 susan@brooklynletters.com

Jo-Ann Kalb NY State Certified Teacher & Reading Interventionist

After a successful 30 year career teaching grades 1, 2 & 5 in Park Slope, including 10 years as a school librarian, Jo-Ann Kalb became a Reading Intervention teacher in 2003. Jo-Ann is currently a Reading Intervention teacher at PS 10 in Park Slope and is able to work with small groups as well as one on one. She received training in the following research based literacy programs: Great Leaps, Sounds in Motion, Rewards & Orton Gillingham based Wilson Reading and PAF. She uses a combination of programs and strategies gleaned from her long professional career to work with students who struggle with reading, phonemic awareness or dyslexia.

She offers one on one tutoring and group work. Jo-Ann typically recommends at least two sessions per week to see progress with a young reader who is struggling with decoding. She does an initial reading assessment prior to creating a treatment plan. I engage the family in the learning process and leaves follow-up work for the student to complete. Jo-Ann tailors the program to meet the child’s individual needs and provides all materials. She can also arrange after-school or summer groups using the Sounds In Motion program: a phonemic awareness program that takes advantage of children’s movement while learning consonant and vowel sounds.

Read more about her rave reviews!

LOCATION: Manhattan and Brooklyn (Park Slope, Windsor Terrace, Prospect Heights, Bay Ridge, Ditmas Park, Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill, Brooklyn Heights, and Fort Greene).
TYPE OF SERVICES: Initial reading evaluation, reading intervention using research based reading programs.
EXPERTISE: Working with children who have phonemic awareness problems and/or dyslexia.
AGES: 5-10
HOURS: Home-Visits: Mon, Wed-Fri 3:30-7PM, Sat & Sun 10 AM-3 PM
CONTACT: joann@brooklynletters.com

Shelley Padilla, M.S. NY State Dual Certified: Special Educator and Elementary Education & Certified Wilson Reading Specialist

Shelley Padilla is a New York licensed Elementary Education (Pre K, Kindergarten, Grades 1-6)/Special Education teacher earning a Bachelor of Science in Elementary and Special Education from Buffalo State College and a Masters of Science from Adelphi University in Mental Retardation and the Emotionally Disturbed. Padilla found her love for teaching by becoming involved in Special Education since an early age, working as a camp counselor in Special Ed camps, and subsequently has taught several types of special needs children in various school settings around the country, including self-contained classrooms for elementary grades and resource room for grades K-5.

Shelley Padilla has achieved Certified Wilson Instructor status, specializing in working one-on-one with Special Education students in grades 4-12 and has also trained in the Wilson Fundations Program; a phonics-based program for young children (K-3), and currently oversees and supports teachers using this program. Additionally Padilla is training other teachers in the Wilson Reading Program at a K-12 Special Education school on Roosevelt Island, NY.

Shelley Padilla excels at changing the lives of children that have difficulty in reading by allowing them to see how being a better reader can affect many areas of their lives especially in education. Padilla utilizes her skills to collaborate with teachers, therapists and parents in order to maximize the achievements of students in their educational and emotional needs. Padilla really knows how to make learning to read fun and exciting while showing her students all the possibilities available to them when they learn to appreciate the world of reading.

The Wilson Reading System directly and systematically teaches students to achieve success in reading. Unlike traditional phonics programs, Wilson Reading instruction is very interactive and multi-sensory, thus teaching total word construction and not just phonics. Students learn to encode (spell) and they learn to decode (take words apart) as part of their reading process. Evidence shows that when a direct systematic, code-based instruction is skillfully implemented by a Wilson Reading knowledgeable teacher, it is the most effective approach for problem readers.
The ability to read and comprehend depends upon the rapid and automatic recognition and decoding of single words. This is dependent upon the ability to segment words and syllables into phonemes (smallest unit of sound). This system is based on the multi-sensory language techniques and principals first described by Dr. Samuel Orton and Anna Gillingham.

LOCATION: Manhattan (Upper West Side, Upper East Side, Murray Hill, Gramercy Park, Clinton, Chelsea, Union Square), Queens, and Long Island.
TYPE OF SERVICES: Initial reading evaluation and reading intervention.
EXPERTISE: Working with children who have difficulty with decoding (deciphering letters when reading), reading fluency, and/or encoding (spelling) issues, including working with students with dyslexia.
AGES: Kindergarten through High School
HOURS: Home-Visits: Wed. after 4, Thurs. after 3, and weekends.
CONTACT: shelley@brooklynletters.com & 917-719-6925.

RATES

Manhattan: $110-$130 per hour and either Jo-Ann Kalb or Shelley Padilla can work in your home.
Brooklyn: $100-$120 per hour and Jo-Ann Kalb works in your home.
Queens: $100-$120 per hour and Shelley Padilla can work in your home.
Long Island (Nassau County): $100-$120 per hour and Shelley Padilla can work in your home. She resides in Baldwin.

The beginning of the school year is an ideal time to consider a neuropsychological evaluation for your child if he/she is struggling. Please contact her directly for further information. Dr. Whitman offers a free 30 min. consultation by phone or by e-mail: lindsay@brooklynletters.com & 347-560-1399

Dr. Lindsay Whitman conducts neuropsychological assessments with children and adolescents. A neuropsychological evaluation is most helpful to parents who suspect their child or teen may have a learning disability, developmental delay, attentional problem, or who is displaying behavioral or psychological difficulties (anxiety, depression) that may be interfering with their cognitive or academic functioning. This type of evaluation is best for parents who desire to truly understand why a child or teenager may be struggling to meet developmental, academic, or social milestones. A neuropsychological evaluation identifies which kinds of interventional or supportive services would best support a child or teen through these challenges.

Dr. Whitman has evaluated children and adults with a variety of developmental and learning risk factors including developmental delay, autism spectrum disorder, learning disabilities, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), traumatic brain injury, and psychiatric/mood difficulties. At New York University, she obtained specialized expertise in the cognitive assessment of individuals with seizures/epilepsy. Dr. Whitman has presented empirical research at national and international neuropsychology conferences and has published peer-reviewed articles on issues related to cognitive functioning in individuals with epilepsy and aspects of adolescent personality development. She is a certified coach for Cogmed, evidence-based, computerized, non-pharmacological intervention designed to strengthen attention and working memory skills in children, adolescents, and adults. This fun and engaging program was developed by Swedish neuroscientists, is easily completed in your home, and is an excellent alternative to medication for individuals struggling with attentional difficulties.

Dr. Whitman is a licensed clinical psychologist in the state of New York. She completed a PhD in clinical psychology/neuropsychology at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science/The Chicago Medical School. She completed clinical internship at West Virginia University School of Medicine and a two-year postdoctoral fellowship in neuropsychology at New York University Comprehensive Epilepsy Center. She also holds a masters degree in early childhood risk and development from Harvard Graduate School of Education and a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University. Dr. Whitman has met the education and training requirements of the American Board of Clinical Neuropsychology to become board certified in clinical neuropsychology. She is currently in the process of obtaining board certification.

What would I learn about my child from a neuropsychological evaluation?

*General intellectual functioning (IQ)
*Academic achievement skills (word reading and phonetic decoding skills, mathematics, spelling, reading comprehension, writing skills; ability to apply academic knowledge or perform in a timely manner)
*Attention (auditory, visual, ability to sustain skills over time)
*Executive functioning (working memory, planning, problem solving, and organizational skills; ability to reason, inhibit responses when needed, and/or be behaviorally “flexible”)
*Learning and memory (verbal and visual)
*Language (expressive/receptive, naming, verbal fluency)
*Visuospatial/visuoconstructional skills
*Fine motor dexterity and coordination (handwriting, pencil grip, ability to complete written tasks in a timely and efficient manner)
*Psychological and Emotional Functioning (parent, teacher, self-report)
*Personality

Contact: lindsay@brooklynletters.com, 347-560-1399 www.lindsaywhitmanphd.com
PAYMENT: Private pay only. Dr. Whitman does not accept insurance but is happy to provide a receipt for out-of-network reimbursement. Cash or check accepted.
HOURS: Wednesday & Friday 9AM-5PM
LOCATION: One Grand Central Place, 60 E. 42nd Street New York, NY.
TYPE OF SERVICES: Neuropsychological evaluations for children and adolescents. Dr. Whitman is also able to conduct neuropsychological evaluations with adults.
EXPERTISE: Dr. Whitman is trained in the evaluation of children and adults with learning disabilities, developmental delay, intellectual disabilities, and all other clinical conditions associated with cognitive difficulties (e.g., AD/HD, autism spectrum disorder). She is trained to evaluate children and adolescents with medical conditions such as epilepsy/seizures, traumatic brain injury/concussion, and perinatal toxic exposure (e.g., alcohol, lead).