Toe by Toe: A Highly Structured Multi-sensory Reading Manual for Teachers and Parents

I found this book when I was desperately trying to find something to help my 7 year old son learn to read. He is bright, very articulate but struggled with reading and didn't want to try anymore. He loved being read to, but didn't want to read to us. Because he couldn't read very well it also meant that he couldn't read the questions on his maths worksheets very accurately, so his confidence was plummeting. Most of the time he didn't want to try because it was hard and he didn't believe that he could do it. His school was unsupportive and his teacher just regarded him as a problem. We have since found out he is dyslexic but we didn't know that then, because it was difficult to tell if he couldn't do it because he so often refused to do it and we had no experience of dyslexia so we didn't recognise the signs. So I was doggedly searching through Amazon looking for ideas, and after a false start which a different book I found Toe by Toe. It starts with the individual letter sounds, my son though it was a bit babyish and beneath him, it builds and builds to an astonishing level of complexity. When I got the book I read the last exercise and hoped but wondered how on earth we could get to that standard. We started on Jan 2nd and finished in December, we missed very few days. Even when he could see the progress he was making my son still didn't always want to sit down and do it. But it was non-negotiable. On some days we had fun with it. I explained the meanings of advanced words, which helped him to remember them. We both made up silly definitions for the nonsense words. He started to tell all sorts of people about Toe by Toe. So from being a year behind in his chronological reading age he is now 2 years and 2 months ahead and he reads for pleasure - which is huge change.....new worlds are opening up for him. Yesterday I heard that he has been moved up a maths group. What this book has enabled us to achieve feels nothing short of a miracle. I can see my son's confidence growing little by little. It has been a hard grind, but very rewarding. As long as you are prepared to stick with it progress will be made. What this book has enabled us to achieve feels wonderfully miraculous. Keda Cowling is a genius.May 2023 updateIt’s 10 years since I wrote my original review, I feel so strongly about the ability of this book to transform lives I felt compelled to update my review, just in case it helps to persuade someone to invest in this book - the money to buy it and the time needed to work through it with your child/ student/ friend. Without doubt as a result of completing this book the trajectory of my son’s life changed massively for the better. As he went through school he achieved a reading age of 18 by the time he was 13 year’s old. He is confident, he can read anything with ease and he is happy. He gained strong GCSE results, the only subject that was “a bridge too far” was French, so with the school’s agreement that was dropped from his timetable. He is currently doing his A levels and expects to go to University in the autumn. In addition to Toe by Toe I recommend audio books from Audible. He loved them and still does, most are space fantasy stories, but there are also factual ones like the Etymologicon which explains the origins of words. My son’s vocabulary developed faster and further than most of his classmates’ did. This meant that while his reading ability was still embryonic, he had an English skills he excelled at. He is still Dyslexic, he would score 1 and 0 in the weekly spelling tests in Year 3 despite lots of practice at home, the words were just to difficult for him. We agreed with the school that he would have his own more basic lists of words to learn each week so that he could make progress. Over the years his spelling has improved (it would still be judged as being behind his chronological age, but it is functional, and using a laptop at school from Y3 has helped with this. In most instances he can now see when a spelling doesn’t look right (I’m sure his reading ability has contributed to this). This is a massive step, because before he would spell the word “said” incorrectly in 4 different ways, all within the same paragraph. He now writes A’ level essays for History of the standard required to get a decent grade.I am so thankful that I found Toe by Toe, sometimes doing it was a slog because my son just didn’t want to sit at the table and focus, other days it was a complete joy to do together. We both had an immense feeling of achievement when we finished the book. As a Mum it is the thing I am most proud of. His life chances and opportunities have expanded a thousand fold as a result of being able to read, is happy and confident in his academic ability. I can’t wait to see what did does next!

I started Toe by Toe with my profoundly dyslexic son on the recommendation of a friend when he was 6. We have been working on this over the last 19 months and are now 3/4 of the way through. We spend 20 minutes 4-5 times a week. The book is very structured with straight forward instructions. This means that I can coach him having no personal teaching experience . There are no distractions which works well for a child with significant literacy and attention issues. The mix of real and made up words using syllable division and over-learning really works. There is no doubt that it requires motivation to stick at this but the improvement is real and has been sustained. His reading age has increased from 5 years 5 months at the start to 8 years 1 month in 17 months. This has been truly amazing and the progress has far outstripped that expected by his teachers. He is now keen to read and this improvement has been significant for his learning in all subjects. His twin without literacy issues has benefited from the syllable division technique and his reading has also improved dramatically. We have also used Stareway to spelling with great success for my dyslexic son and Stride Ahead with my 9 year old in order to improve fluency and hence comprehension. Keda Cowling has produced a truly fantastic resource that I would really recommend. It has been a bit of a labour of love but worth every minute to now see the results which are truly amazing!This is a work book so buy newEditIt has taken 2 years and we have now finished! Reading age has increased from 5 years 5 months at the start, to 10 years 7 months at the end, with an actual age of 8 years 0 months. The single intervention of using Toe by Toe has without a doubt changed his life. Thank you Keda Cowling.

Really happy with the progress my two children are making. Their class teacher has commented on how much their reading is improving.