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It is a method that develops confidence through learning how to
learn. By means of small steps, we start right at the beginning
to build knowledge. Each lesson not only provides new facts but
reinforces previously learned ones. The student learns new facts
in every lesson while retaining what has already been mastered.
This is the driving force behind both dEcode™ Reading and dEcode™ Math.
History and Development of dEcode™
As a clinical psychologist specializing in reading problems over
the past twenty five years, Dr. Cooper's work has focused on the
hands-on treatment of children diagnosed with "dyslexia" and various
other learning problems. Her understanding of reading problems
and the dEcode™ system she developed for reading were forged by this experience
and the success she has been able to achieve within the clinical
setting.
In the course of daily contact with students who were unable to
read or reading with great difficulty, she found that reading
problems could be associated with a wide spectrum of other factors,
including language deprivation, poor motor skills, or family problems.
In addition, by the time they reached her, almost all of her students
had suffered emotionally from their failure to read easily, and
would typically describe themselves as "stupid". While none of
these factors proved to be the key to providing the practical
help she was seeking, a pattern did begin to emerge.
In spite of demonstrating average to above average intelligence,
the students of concern were reading well below age and grade
expectations. Also while all read at levels below those typical
for their tested IQs, few of her students could be considered
unintelligent, and many were highly intelligent. In fact, their
intelligence was often responsible for what reading skills they
did possess, by permitting them to develop a variety of tactics
which simulated reading behaviour, despite their real, fundamental,
disabilities. Dr. Cooper noticed that visual memorization, subtle
extrapolation of meaning from context or syntactical setting,
and reference to illustrations were some of the ways in which
her students were managing to extract meaning from written words
without being able to read in the normal sense. What all of these
children had in common were significant problems with decoding
individual words, or more basically - deciphering the series of
sound/letter combinations, with either accuracy or automaticity.
As a result, they experienced reading, at whatever skill level
they had managed to attain, as a laborious chore, a triumph of
will power and intelligence over fundamental problems with the
basic, underlying skill.
At the same time, Dr. Cooper began working with a profoundly deaf
student who was able to read with no difficulty at all. In her
work with this student, she became very sensitive to the auditory
processing that underlies spelling, reading, and the language
arts. In spite of the fact that reading decoding appears to be
a visually based skill, the literature and her own clinical experience
began to demonstrate otherwise.
When Dr. Cooper examined her other pupils from the perspective
of auditory processing, she discovered that in nine cases out
of ten, the student failed in general to have a solid phonological
sound-to-symbol match. This failure at the most basic level was
occurring despite these students having already been exposed to
a wide variety of conventional educational programs, including
traditional phonics methods and/or whole language programs. Therefore,
she began to develop her own method of treatment for reading problems
geared to addressing the specific difficulties she was identifying
so consistently.
Over eighteen years of subsequent development, the dEcode™ method was formulated and refined. It essentially teaches individuals
to decode at a reflex level, i.e. reading decoding being a rapid
response without the need for conscious effort or the need to
labour through "figuring out" words. During this period, Dr. Cooper
discovered that the techniques involved were helpful not only
to the severely dyslexic students who were her first concern,
but to a number of other groups, i.e. illiterate adults, children
just learning to read, ESL students, students who wish to enhance
their basic reading skills, etc. Because of the very positive
response from parents of children who have benefitted from this
method, the dEcode™ system was created to bring this program to a wider audience.
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