DECODING TUTORING
DECODING TUTORING
As Featured In:
Our Decoding Tutors Travel To Your NYC Metro Area Home! Expert In-Person 1:1 Decoding Tutoring | Free Consultations and Meet & Greets with our professionals.
Our Decoding Tutors Travel To Your NYC Metro Area Home! Expert In-Person 1:1 Decoding Tutoring | Free Consultations and Meet & Greets with our professionals.
Brooklyn Letters owns and operates four Letters websites, providing the best tutoring services across the Tri-State area. We travel to you in Brooklyn, Manhattan, The Bronx, Queens, Staten Island, Yonkers, Long Island, Connecticut (CT), Westchester, and New Jersey (NJ) for offering
private pay literacy and math tutoring for school-aged students.
Literacy Specialists
We travel to you and we also offer remote services. Our Literacy Specialists work on decoding, encoding (spelling), reading comprehension, and writing skills. We also assist children on the autism spectrum.
- Wilson/Fundations
- Orton Gillingham
- Reading Comprehension
- Decoding & Encoding
- Spelling
- Reading Fluency
Literacy Specialists
We travel to you and we also offer remote services. Our Literacy Specialists work on decoding, encoding (spelling), reading comprehension, and writing skills. We also assist children on the autism spectrum.
- In-person Evaluations
- Remote Evaluations
- Writing
- Handwriting
- ELA Tutoring
- ISEE Tutoring
- Orton Gillingham
- Wilson/Fundations
- Reading Comprehension
- Decoding & Encoding
- Spelling
- Reading Fluency
Brooklyn Letters Launches Must-Have NYC Dyslexia Guide for Parents
A practical NYC-focused handbook to help parents spot dyslexia, get evaluations, and secure vital school supports. Read more here: https://brooklynletters.com/understanding-dyslexia-in-nyc-guide.
Key features of Understanding Dyslexia in NYC include:
- Comprehensive Sign Recognition: Learn how dyslexia presents in preschoolers, children, and teens, enabling earlier identification and intervention.
- Decoding Educational Acronyms: Understand the crucial differences between IEPs, private evaluations, and various school-based supports.
- NYC-Specific Policies: Gain an overview of New York City’s dyslexia screening policies and available services within the DOE.
- Curated Local Resources: Explore a carefully vetted list of trusted NYC-based neuropsychologists, tutors, and schools specializing in dyslexia.
- Actionable Next Steps: Find practical guidance on referrals, structured literacy programs, and how to navigate both public and private educational options, including insights into insurance reimbursement.
Whether families are engaging with the Department of Education, exploring private intervention options, or seeking clarity on insurance coverage, this handbook serves as an indispensable tool, empowering them to take proactive steps for their child’s success. Understanding Dyslexia in NYC is now available for purchase on Kindle Edition at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/
About the Author: Craig Selinger is the founder of Brooklyn Letters, a private practice dedicated to providing high-quality speech and language therapy and literacy services. With years of experience working with children and families in New York City, Craig is a passionate advocate for early intervention and effective support for children with learning differences.
About Brooklyn Letters: Brooklyn Letters is a leading provider of speech, language, and literacy services in New York City, committed to helping children and adults achieve their full communication potential. The experienced professionals we work with offer personalized evaluations and therapy tailored to individual needs.
Contact
Take the first step toward supporting your child’s literacy journey today! Grab your copy of Understanding Dyslexia in NYC: Navigating NYC’s School System: A Dyslexia Handbook and arm yourself with the essential tools and knowledge to navigate NYC’s education system with confidence. Empower your advocacy and give your child the support they deserve!
Common Core English Language Arts (ELA) Standards & Worksheets
Brooklyn Letters Launches Must-Have NYC Dyslexia Guide for Parents
A practical NYC-focused handbook to help parents spot dyslexia, get evaluations, and secure vital school supports. Read more here: https://brooklynletters.com/understanding-dyslexia-in-nyc-guide.
Key features of Understanding Dyslexia in NYC include:
- Comprehensive Sign Recognition: Learn how dyslexia presents in preschoolers, children, and teens, enabling earlier identification and intervention.
- Decoding Educational Acronyms: Understand the crucial differences between IEPs, private evaluations, and various school-based supports.
- NYC-Specific Policies: Gain an overview of New York City’s dyslexia screening policies and available services within the DOE.
- Curated Local Resources: Explore a carefully vetted list of trusted NYC-based neuropsychologists, tutors, and schools specializing in dyslexia.
- Actionable Next Steps: Find practical guidance on referrals, structured literacy programs, and how to navigate both public and private educational options, including insights into insurance reimbursement.
Whether families are engaging with the Department of Education, exploring private intervention options, or seeking clarity on insurance coverage, this handbook serves as an indispensable tool, empowering them to take proactive steps for their child’s success. Understanding Dyslexia in NYC is now available for purchase on Kindle Edition at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/
About the Author: Craig Selinger is the founder of Brooklyn Letters, a private practice dedicated to providing high-quality speech and language therapy and literacy services. With years of experience working with children and families in New York City, Craig is a passionate advocate for early intervention and effective support for children with learning differences.
About Brooklyn Letters: Brooklyn Letters is a leading provider of speech, language, and literacy services in New York City, committed to helping children and adults achieve their full communication potential. The experienced professionals we work with offer personalized evaluations and therapy tailored to individual needs.
Contact
Take the first step toward supporting your child’s literacy journey today! Grab your copy of Understanding Dyslexia in NYC: Navigating NYC’s School System: A Dyslexia Handbook and arm yourself with the essential tools and knowledge to navigate NYC’s education system with confidence. Empower your advocacy and give your child the support they deserve!
Common Core English Language Arts (ELA) Standards & Worksheets
Training/Certifications
Training/Certifications
TESTIMONIALS
Meet the CEO
Presented at:
Decoding and encoding are essential components of early literacy development for children across the NYC metro area, including Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, Staten Island, Long Island, the Bronx, New Jersey, Connecticut, Westchester, Philadelphia, Martha’s Vineyard, and the Hamptons. Decoding involves translating printed words into sounds to support reading, while encoding is the reverse—using individual sounds to build and write words. At Brooklyn Letters, independent providers support neurodivergent learners, including those with dyslexia, ADHD, autism, and other learning differences and learning disabilities, who often face challenges in mastering these foundational skills. Through multisensory, diagnostic-prescriptive instruction, educational specialists tailor their approach to support each child’s unique learning profile, building strong reading and writing habits.
In order to read and write, we must first become phonologically aware by acquiring the ability to understand that words are built from smaller sounds or phonemes. This phonological awareness allows us to segment words into smaller sounds and, conversely, to build entire words from smaller sounds. When we learn to read, we start by making associations between each letter and its corresponding sound. Learn what is phonology. Discover the importance of phonological processing in learning to read and write.
To master sound-symbol association, children must understand that there is a correspondence between letters and sounds. They must understand the visual to the auditory relationship between letters and sounds (decoding/reading) as well as the auditory to a visual relationship (encoding/writing) in order to read and write efficiently.
People with dyslexia may have difficulty decoding words, recognizing letter-sound relationships, and mastering fundamental reading skills. Read this article to learn more about dyslexia, recognize the signs, impact, support, and accommodations, how to identify the indicators, and get a diagnosis, post-diagnosis steps, approaches, assistance, how to boost self-worth, and many more!
Learn how early literacy benefits from both print-to-speech and speech-to-print instruction, creating connections in the brain that link new knowledge about the alphabet to what children already know and are continuously learning about words.
The Five Pillars of Reading stresses the importance of phonemic awareness and phonics in building the foundations of literacy in young learners. Learn what is structured literacy.
Check out these resources for teachers and caregivers- courtesy of Dr. Miles of Brooklyn College, CUNY. It includes Reading Ready (a word reading curriculum for educators and manual for parents/caregivers), activities for Phonemic Awareness (highly engaging activities to support phonemic awareness), High-Frequency Word Activities (featuring 400+ words), and Grapheme-Phoneme Mapping Exercises (phonics and spelling through phoneme-grapheme mapping).
Learn the scope and sequence at-a-glance: all concepts (K-2) and the 6 types of syllables found in English orthography, why it’s important to teach syllables, and the sequence in which students learn about spoken and written syllables.
Read about Literacy Milestones.
FREE ORTON GILLINGHAM PROGRAM
Phonemic Awareness
Phonemic awareness refers to the knowledge and understanding that words are built from and can be broken apart into smaller segments of a sound called phonemes. Phonemic awareness is one’s ability to hear, recognize, and manipulate sounds heard in words- think of it as the ears to brain connection.
Phonemic awareness can be taught even before a child learns to read or identify printed letters. When babies are born, they are processing phonemes when parents speak and sing to their bundle of joy. In the English language, phonemic awareness means being able to identify its approximately 44 phonemes. Additionally, teaching letter sounds with letter names is an effective way for students to grasp the concept of phonemes.
Phonics
Whereas phonemic awareness refers to one’s ability to recognize sounds or phonemes in words, phonics mastery means understanding that letters (graphemes or printed letters) of the alphabet represent sounds (phonemes)- think of it as the ears, eyes, and brain connection. A child who has mastered phonics can sound out new or unfamiliar words on their own. The child is “cracking the code” and is receiving feedback by listening to oneself sound out words.
Teaching phonics is all about establishing the relationship between sounds and printed letters or printed letter combinations. Starting with the printed letter-sound correspondence, a child then learns how to match sounds to letters and uses this relationship to understand printed words.
Importance of Symbol Imagery in Reading and Spelling
Sensory-cognitive skills such as phonemic awareness and symbol imagery are key in developing a child’s reading and spelling skills. Phonemic awareness refers to one’s ability to process sounds in a word, which helps a child read and spell by sounding out. However, the English language is not always phonetic, which is why many children have difficulties recognizing sight words and words that are not spelled according to their letter sounds. That is where symbol imagery comes in.
Symbol imagery involves both phonological and orthographic processing or the visual patterns of words. It refers to an individual’s ability to visualize letters and identify word patterns with their mind’s eye, allowing them to instantly recognize sight words because they have developed an extensive knowledge of them. This is crucial as reading fluency relies primarily on mastery of sight words and contextual information.
Students with strong symbol imagery show no difficulties even when encountering new or unfamiliar words, can recognize letters or common words quickly, and can self-correct their errors. At Brooklyn Letters, strengthening symbol imagery is one of the functions we focus on to help your child become a fluent reader and skilled speller.
At Brooklyn Letters, the reading specialists we work with provide Orton-Gillingham and Wilson tutoring services to help your child master the underlying principles of phonological awareness and symbol imagery needed to become a skilled reader. We offer doorstep or at-home and online tutoring. Click here to get to know the literacy specialists we work with and find out more about reading fluency tutoring services.
Peter W.
Special Educator And Childhood Literacy Specialist, Pre-K 4th Grade, MS, PhD
Erica
Bachelor of Science in Childhood and Special Education (Grades 1-6) and MSEd in Behavioral Disorders
Isabel F.
M.S. Education for General
& Special Education,
NYS Certified Educator of
Childhood General & Special Education
Clint K.
Master’s in General
and Special Education
Alexa S.
Masters in Elementary Education;
Orton Gillingham Trained and Experienced
Kaitlyn
Bachelor’s degree
in Childhood Education
(Grades 1-6), Master’s Degree
in Special Education
(Grade 1- Grade 6)
Brian
MAT in Early Childhood Education,
Certificate in Childhood Education (Grades 1-6)
Prefer to call or email? Text or call (917) 426-8880 or email [email protected]
You’re Not Alone—We’ll Guide You Through Every Step
Parents often feel unsure about whether their child’s literacy challenges are typical or indicators of deeper decoding or spelling difficulties. Our literacy specialists will walk you through the entire assessment process—from reviewing prior evaluations to creating targeted, research-backed literacy goals. We make the process clear, supportive, and stress-free so you know exactly what your child needs next.
