Halifax Learning

The Halifax Learning Centre has a long history of building strong, confident readers in greater Halifax and around the world. The Halifax Learning Centre was established in 2006 by Sarah Arnold, who brought more than a decade of experience working in a broad array of literacy programs. The Halifax Learning Centre was rooted in the SpellRead program... , a gold-standard reading program used in many American public schools. SpellRead derived from the passion of Kay MacPhee, a mom from Prince Edward Island who was determined to teach her profoundly deaf child to read. Kay spent 25 years learning and developing techniques to enable the hearing-impaired to acquirelanguage skills for reading. At the request of a local physician, Kay began to work with students who were said to be learning disabled or dyslexic. She found they could not hear the sounds of the language, similar to the circumstance of a hearing-impaired student. Between 1998 and 2001, SpellRead's effectiveness received attention from local and international literacy leaders, including Dr. Reid Lyon at the National Institutes of Health, and Dr. Joe Torgesen, the Director of Florida Center for Reading Research. SpellRead was rigorously tested through numerous formal clinical studies, the results of which are published in the Florida Centre for Reading Research and What Works Clearinghouse through the US Department of Education. These results show SpellRead to be the number one program in developing reading comprehension. SpellRead was brought to Halifax in the late 1990s with support from Dr. Wayne MacDonald, the Chief of Psychology at the lWK Childrens Hospital. Today, the program is widely accepted and promoted by psychologists, speech therapists and educators alike.Read More