Make Summer 2026 the Breakthrough Season for Kids And Teens With Dyslexia
- Daniela Feldhausen
- 4 days ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
How Can Summer Tutoring Help My Child Or Teen With Dyslexia Get Ahead Before Next School Year?
Summer is a unique window of time. With fewer demands from school and more open days, students who struggle with reading and spelling can make meaningful gains with the right support. For kids and teens with dyslexia, summer 2026 offers an ideal opportunity to strengthen core literacy skills, build confidence, and return to school ready to succeed. At Kids Up Reading Tutors, our Summer Reading Program is designed specifically for this purpose, with personalized, structured literacy tutoring that meets your child or teen where they are and helps them move forward much faster than they could during the school year.
In this article we explain what makes summer tutoring so effective for learners with dyslexia, how our program works, and how you can decide if this is the right fit for your family.
In This Post
Why Summer Matters For Students With Dyslexia
Summer break is a period when academic momentum can either stall or accelerate. Without regular practice, many students lose ground in reading and other subjects over the break, a phenomenon often called the “summer slide.” While most students can bounce back once school starts, learners with dyslexia may experience more significant skill decay without intentional literacy practice. This can make the first months of the new school year a struggle rather than a season of growth.
Conversely, summer presents a less pressured environment where learners have more mental space to focus on the skills that matter most. With fewer competing demands, students can spend quality time building foundational reading and spelling skills that may be difficult to learn during the busy school year.
Research supports the idea that high dosage, one-on-one tutoring in reading produces stronger gains than group instruction or classroom learning alone. In fact, studies of daily individualized virtual tutoring have shown that students can make multiple months of learning growth in relatively short periods of focused instruction, far beyond what they would typically achieve in standard classroom settings.
What The Kids Up Summer Reading Program Includes
At its core, the Summer Reading Program from Kids Up Reading Tutors is individualized, one-on-one tutoring that follows a structured plan tailored to your child’s or teen’s unique reading profile. This program is not a small group or shared class. Instead, each learner has a dedicated tutor who:
Targets your child's or teen's specific skill gaps in reading and spelling
Moves at your student’s pace so that concepts are mastered before moving on
Adjusts instruction in real time based on ongoing assessment and performance
This focus on the foundational skills that underpin reading and spelling helps learners
build stronger phonological skills,
improve decoding (reading) and encoding (spelling) speed and accuracy,
read more fluently,
and ultimately leads to deeper reading comprehension than they would achieve with general reading tutoring.
Because the program is virtual and one-on-one, it can fit around family schedules, camps, sports, travel, and work plans. Many families even continue tutoring while they are away, fitting sessions into morning blocks or quieter parts of the day. Others choose to pause during vacation and resume when they return. The flexibility makes summer tutoring a practical option for busy families.
Another advantage of this structure is that families get consistent feedback and weekly updates from their tutors, so parents always know what skills are being practiced and how their child is progressing.
How The Program Works
Kids Up Reading Tutor's Summer Reading Program is straightforward to start and easy to tailor to your child’s or teen’s needs.
1. Introductory Call
You begin with a call to discuss your student’s reading history, strengths, challenges, and goals. This conversation helps the tutoring team understand where your learner is now and where they need to go (hopefully by the beginning of the new school year)!
2. Reading Screeners
Before tutoring begins, we administer phonological and phonics screeners. These are brief assessments that give us a clear picture of your student’s foundational literacy skills. The results help shape a tutoring plan and identify which skills need priority attention.
3. Choose Tutoring Intensity
During the summer, families can choose how often tutoring sessions take place, up to five times per week. More frequent lessons leads to faster progress, because students have more regular opportunities to learn and practice new skills.
4. Tutor Matching
After the screeners, we match your student with a tutor whose experience, personality and teaching style best fit their needs. This matching process is thoughtful, because building trust and strong rapport between student and tutor leads to better engagement and smoother progress.
5. Start Tutoring
Tutoring begins with the first lessons designed around your student’s skill profile. Each session builds on the last, helping your learner make cumulative gains in decoding, spelling, fluency, and comprehension.
6. Ongoing Communication
Starting with the first week of tutoring, you'll receive progress charts and weekly updates. These updates keep parents informed about what skills are being addressed and how your learner is progressing week to week.
If you're wondering how well Zoom will work for your child, Kids Up offers a “Zoom Guarantee” that lets you try the tutoring for a week. If you don’t love the experience, Kids Up won't charge you for that week of tutoring.
Real Progress Happens Over Summer
Every summer, learners make measurable progress that changes their relationship with reading and school. Students who struggled to decode grade-level text begin to read more fluently. Teens who avoided reading because it was effortful start engaging with more challenging material with confidence. Kids and teens make significant gains that allow them to start the new school year far ahead of where they finished the previous school year.
These gains are not just about reading skills. They also build confidence, reduce frustration, and help students feel more capable as learners across all subjects. Reading improves, spelling improves, and learners start to participate more actively in classroom discussions, homework, and independent reading.
Is This Summer Tutoring Right For Your Child Or Teen?
The Kids Up Summer Reading Program is a strong fit for learners who:
Struggle with reading or spelling, with or without a formal diagnosis of dyslexia
Want to make dramatic gains in reading and spelling over the summer
Need flexibility to fit tutoring around other summer plans
It is also a good option for
students who already read well but struggle with spelling,
students who are reading and spelling well and are looking for an extra challenge
Even if your child or teen has tried tutoring before without seeing results, this structured, evidence-based approach will unlock progress where other methods have fallen short.
Getting Started With Summer 2026 Tutoring
Summer 2026 is an excellent time to invest in your child’s or teen’s reading future. The combination of personalized instruction, structured skill-based practice, and flexible scheduling will help learners with dyslexia and other reading-related challenges make significant progress that sets them up for success in the coming school year.
To get started, schedule an introductory call and demo. The process is free and gives you a clear plan for how summer tutoring could work for your family.
Your child or teen can make this summer a turning point, strengthening core reading skills, building confidence, and setting the stage for academic success in 2026 and beyond.
What Sets Kids Up Reading Tutors Apart?
Evidence-based instruction with Orton-Gillingham+
Based on the Science of Reading
Data-driven systematic, explicit instruction
For all learners, with or without dyslexia/dysgraphia
Kids & teens get caught up ASAP
Customized, 1-on-1 sessions with a dedicated tutor
High-dosage tutoring (2-5x/week) via Zoom
Focused, with an end in sight (not endless tutoring & investment)
Flexible scheduling
45/60 minute sessions
Daytime/evenings/weekends/summer
Team of tutors; switch tutors if needed for schedule changes
Our Zoom Guarantee: Try it for a week. Love it, or it's on us!
Visit KidsUpReadingTutors.com to learn more.
Book your free 30-minute call and demo with Kids Up Reading Tutors below.
