PINE STATELEARNING

Reading Tutoring

Structured, multi-sensory literacy intervention that incorporates the last 30 years of reading research (about the role of orthography in reading). Our instruction is tailored for students who are struggling due to underlying skill gaps in phonological awareness or orthographic processing, or who have missed instruction due to other neuro-differences (like ADHD or ASD).

A tutor smiling and holding up a word card during a one-on-one reading lesson

We know that this process makes getting started a little slower than typical tutoring, but the most important step is properly understanding each learner's cognitive and academic profile, and where their skills are when they start. This enables us to find the right curriculum fit, right schedule and frequency of intervention, and right tutor for our learners. We are trained in multiple, research verified methods, which allows us to match our learners with the curriculum they are most likely to have success with.

Assessment first

Every student at PSL begins with a comprehensive assessment. Pre-assessment allows us to create each student's learning map: identifying the specific processing and academic skill gaps underlying the difficulty.

For each area we teach, we look at current academic abilities in the context of the learner's sensory cognitive profile. Phonological awareness, orthographic processing, rapid naming, working memory, executive function, verbal and nonverbal abilities, and social-emotional state are all considered when choosing methodologies and mapping out a learner's plan.

The results of our pre-assessment and a comprehensive file review, along with a parent interview about response to previous intervention, determine which methodology we use to support each skill in a student's plan. These factors directly shape the individualized learning plan, where to begin in the curriculum, and what goals are appropriate for the instructional period.

Progress monitoring

Instruction is structured, cumulative, and monitored continuously to ensure measurable progress. Each lesson is tailored to the exact level and need of the student, using the structured, research-based program or combination of programs indicated by their unique profile.

We report progress every 20 hours of instruction or at the end of each trimester. Parent updates include detailed tracking of where the student is in the curriculum, what they have mastered, what they are currently working on, and what comes next.

See a sample parent update (redacted) →

Methodologies

We assess each student's cognitive and academic profile before instruction begins so we can select the right program(s) for how they learn. For some of our reading students that is Orton-Gillingham based instruction. For others, one of the following:

Orton-Gillingham
Structured, sequential teaching of the rules of English decoding and spelling: phonograms, syllable types, syllable division, and morphology (how prefixes, roots, and suffixes carry meaning). This program is ideal for students with high verbal and orthographic skills, with weaknesses in phonological awareness and decoding. For students with significant struggles in orthographic processing, attention, verbal processing, or dysgraphia in addition to dyslexia, this program can be challenging. But if a student starts young and has a straightforward dyslexic profile, this grandfather of all programs can be a great fit.
Seeing Stars® (Lindamood-Bell)
Seeing Stars®: Symbol Imagery for Phonological and Orthographic Processing develops the ability to visualize letters in words. This facilitates rapid retrieval of common patterns in English, like graphemes and prefixes and suffixes, as well as fast and automatic sight word recognition. Because reading and spelling can be tracked separately, we can prioritize the reading expectancies (rules) that will get a learner reading on the page quickest, then go back and refine spelling. It takes into account a wide range of modern research about how our brains learn to read, and has been validated by the What Works Clearinghouse and the National Center on Intensive Intervention.
LiPS® (Lindamood Phoneme Sequencing®)
Teaches phonological awareness and decoding by giving multi-sensory articulatory feedback on mouth positioning at the grapheme and phoneme level. The mouth actions of each speech sound help students with motor planning, giving a concrete anchor for students who struggle to find the sounds in their mouth. This is often the starting point for students with the most significant phonological awareness gaps. Even when students do not need a full LiPS® curriculum, we embed the prompts within our other reading curriculums, as we have found that using mouth cues is a more direct way to teach sounds than cue words (like a-apple-/a/).
Visualizing and Verbalizing® (Lindamood-Bell)
Develops nonverbal imagery as the basis for reading comprehension. Used for students who read accurately but do not retain or connect with what they read, it helps students develop nonverbal visual schema, allows them to monitor for understanding, and teaches the verbal and language basis for reading comprehension. This program is unique in how deeply it teaches reading comprehension, and in how adaptable it is to different cognitive profiles. Students who are stronger verbally than nonverbally, and students who are stronger nonverbally but struggle to explain themselves, can both benefit from it.

Reading skills hierarchy

When we are looking at a reader's skills, these are the areas we are thinking about. Where the learner falls in this hierarchy explains a lot about their current level, as well as the best path to help them catch up.

Phonological processing Orthographic processing Higher-order processing
Comprehension & Understanding
The goal
Higher-order processing
Oral Reading Fluency
Rate, prosody & expression
90% orthographic
Oral Reading Accuracy
Connected text | Applying skills in context
20%
80% orthographic
Sight Word Recognition & Orthographic Encoding
Orthographic application | Automatic retrieval
30% phonological
70% orthographic
Decoding & Encoding
Single syllable → complex → multisyllabic | Spelling patterns & OG rules. This skill changes from a phonological skill to an orthographic one as students move from sounding out single syllable words to multisyllabic words.
65% phonological
35% orth.
Phonological Awareness
The foundation of reading: this dictates the way our brains organize auditory information. Onset, rhyme, segmenting, blending, manipulation.
The blueprint
Orthographic Processing
The visual blocks that we use to build our language. We need to recognize them quickly and automatically to be proficient readers.
The bricks

Together, these form the foundation all other reading skills are built on.

Our pretesting determines the areas of need and we teach them sequentially. See a sample skills assessment (redacted) →

What the research says

The evidence is consistent: more structured hours of the right kind of instruction leads to more growth.

Dosage predicts gains
A landmark meta-analysis spanning 40 years of reading intervention research found that for every additional hour of structured intervention, student outcomes improved measurably. Dosage was the only intervention characteristic that significantly predicted gains after controlling for all other variables (Hall et al., 2023). A review of 14 meta-analyses confirmed that explicit, systematic intervention of higher dosage rather than duration across years yields stronger effects, particularly for students in upper elementary grades and beyond (Al Otaiba et al., 2023).
Intervention changes the brain
A six-year randomized controlled trial led by Stanford University found that children who received intensive Seeing Stars® instruction grew the visual word form area, the brain region responsible for word recognition, while children who did not receive intervention showed no comparable change (Yeatman et al., 2026). fMRI research shows that after intensive, structured intervention, children with dyslexia demonstrate increased activation in key reading regions, bringing their neural patterns closer to those of typical readers (Shaywitz et al., 2003).
Change comes quickly with intensity
White matter structural changes have been observed in as little as two to three weeks of intensive instruction (Huber et al., 2023). Research on intensive early reading interventions found the strongest results with smaller groups and higher frequency (Wanzek et al., 2018). Research from Georgetown University showed that approximately 120 hours of Seeing Stars® instruction led to both increased brain activity and improved reading outcomes in children with dyslexia.
Lisa Murphy, founder of Pine State Learning

Start with a free 15-minute consultation.

This quick conversation helps us hear your concerns and guide you to the next steps. We will get you set up to start tutoring, an independent academic evaluation, or a home learning kit, or send you to the professionals who can help if we cannot. If asynchronous works better for your schedule, please feel free to send an email with your initial questions.

Book a free 15-minute consult
207.426.4267 lisa.murphy@pinestatelearning.com
Our Commitment to Equity

We are committed to working against the way that racial and socioeconomic privilege manifests itself in the identification and remediation of learning disabilities.

We do what we can by offering need based scholarships, providing services in some of Maine's lowest resource schools, and working pro-bono with grant based educational advocates for Maine's most economically disadvantaged students with the toughest cases. This is how we do what we can to help ALL students get what they need.

Dyslexia tutoring in Maine: structured literacy intervention with Orton-Gillingham, Seeing Stars®, and LiPS®, in person and online.