Clayton Learning Lab

Kindergarten is closer than you think, and a little preparation goes a long way.

Kick to K is a small group summer class at Clayton Learning Lab designed to give rising kindergarteners a strong literacy foundation before the first day of school. We use an Orton-Gillingham approach to build the skills that research shows matter most: phonological awareness, letter-sound knowledge, and early print concepts.

This is not a generic school readiness class. It is structured, evidence-based, and taught in a small group so every child gets the attention they need.

A few spots are still available for our Tuesday session starting July 7th!

She heard it. She felt it. She wrote it. ✏️

Segmenting CVC words using manipulatives before writing helps students build true phoneme-grapheme correspondence, not just pattern matching. This is phonological awareness meeting phonics in real time.

When a student can look at a picture, pull apart each sound, and then write what she hears, she is doing exactly what the Science of Reading tells us matters most in early literacy: building the brain’s connection between sounds and symbols from the ground up.

No memorizing word shapes. No guessing from context. Just solid, systematic, sequential instruction that gives every reader a real foundation.

This is what a structured literacy session looks like at Clayton Learning Lab. 💙

These are things I see again and again working with kids who are struggling with reading.

Not because they aren’t capable.
Not because they aren’t trying.

But because important skills were assumed, rushed, or missed along the way.

When reading feels hard, it’s rarely about motivation.
It’s about instruction.

If one of these slides made you pause, you’re not alone. Many families come to us after years of feeling like something just wasn’t adding up.

And most of the time, they were right.