
Scholarships
To help support educators who are committed to providing the very best in literacy education and ensure dyslexic students reach their full potential.
Accessible Tutoring
To provide affordable, accessible Orton-Gillingham tutoring through our R.I.S.E. program.
Community Events
Free, accessible events that offer exceptional content and meaningful fellowship.
Social-Emotional Support
RCF is committed to providing social-emotional programming to help dyslexic students identify their strengths and build self-esteem critical to their long-term success.
Our Story & Mission
REED Charitable Foundation’s mission is to immediately make meaningful change for students and individuals with dyslexia by providing scholarships for teacher training and private Orton-Gillingham tutoring; making Orton-Gillingham training more accessible to all; hosting free community education events to provide exceptional content of best practices in general and dyslexia-specific literacy education and facilitate meaningful fellowship for families impacted by dyslexia; and providing social-emotional programming that helps students with dyslexia identify their strengths and build self-esteem critical to their long-term success.


Community Education Events

Dean Bragonier:
Founder & Executive Dyslexic NoticeAbility Inc.
October 24, 2020 @ Inaugural Dyslexia Gala: The Artists

Jonathan Mooney:
Normal Sucks Book Tour
October 16th, 2019 @ The Christ School

Kelli Suding:
Assistive Technology Supports for Students with Dyslexia
January 29th, 2020 @ The Christ School

Elisheva Schwartz from
The Dyslexia Quest Podcast
April 22nd, 2020 @ The Christ School
Educate
Why RCF?
The REED (Reading Education Endowment for Dyslexia) Charitable Foundation is committed to actively pursuing our mission to immediately make meaningful impact for students with dyslexia by hosting affordable Orton-Gillingham training for teachers, professionals and parents, providing scholarships for teachers in Orton-Gillingham training and private Orton-Gillingham tutoring for students; hosting free community education events to provide exceptional content of best practices in dyslexia and general literacy education and facilitate meaningful fellowship for families impacted by dyslexia; and providing social-emotional programming like NoticeAbility that helps students with dyslexia identify their strengths and build self-esteem critical to their long-term success.
What is Dyslexia?
According to the International Dyslexia Association, dyslexia is “a specific learning disability that is neurobiological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities. These difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language that is often unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities and the provision of effective classroom instruction. Secondary consequences may include problems in reading comprehension and reduced reading experience that can impede growth of vocabulary and background knowledge.”
What is the Orton-Gillingham Approach?
According to the Academy of Orton-Gillingham Practitioners and Educators, the Orton-Gillingham Approach (also known as “OG”) is a direct, explicit, multi sensory, structured, sequential, diagnostic and prescriptive way to teach literacy when reading, writing and spelling does not come easily to individuals, such as those with dyslexia. To learn more about OG, please visit the Academy of Orton-Gillingham Practitioners and Educators website.
What are Dyslexic Strengths?
While dyslexia does create difficulty in learning how to read, write and spell – dyslexia also comes with some incredible strengths. While supporting reading remediation for dyslexic students is extremely important – equally important are identifying and acknowledging a dyslexic child’s strengths. Some commonly recognized dyslexic strengths include, but are not limited to:
- strong memory for stories
- excellent problem solving skills
- tremendous spatial reasoning (three-dimensional thinkers)
- incredibly creative and imaginative
- high levels of empathy
- brilliant conversationalists
- excellent big-picture thinkers
- great at connections between seemingly unrelated things
- excellent abstract thinkers
- gifted at thinking “outside the box”
- strong critical thinkers
- uniquely observant
Common professions of successful dyslexics include: entrepreneurship, innovation, science, technology, sports, music, architecture, construction, design, advertising, culinary arts, marketing, artists, lawyers, film makers, writing, acting, and engineering – just to name a few. Dyslexics make up some of the world’s greatest innovators, entrepreneurs, celebrities and millionaires and billionaires. With the proper academic and emotional support – the sky is truly the limit for dyslexic kiddos.
What is “Structured Literacy”?
The International Dyslexia Association explains that Structured Literacy is considered the most effective approach to teach reading, writing and spelling to students who experience unusual difficulty learning to read and spell words, including dyslexic students. The term includes teaching students phoneme awareness (individual speech sounds that make up words), sound-symbol correspondence, patterns and conventions of print, morphology (the meaning of language), syntax (system for ordering words in sentences so meaning is communicated) and semantics (meaning). Because OG is considered a form of Structured Literacy, Structured Literacy also follows the same principles and methods of OG, including: explicit, systematic, cumulative, multi-sensory, diagnostic and responsive instruction.

What is meant by the term the “science of reading”?
The National Council on Teacher Quality refers to the science of reading as explicit, systematic instruction that encompasses all five essential components of early reading instruction, which are: (1) phonemic awareness, (2) phonics, (3) fluency, (4) vocabulary and (5) reading comprehension.

Our Team
Mary-Elizabeth Langston, MA, A/AOGPE
Owner of Park School
Alicia Braccia, Psy.D, ABSNP
Julie LaRosa Quigley
Videos
RCF Helps
2020
Sponsored FREE
Community Education Events featuring Kelli Suding, PATINS Project, Specialist in Assistive Technology and Elisheva Schwartz, Creator of The Dyslexia Quest Podcast.
Raised Over $220,000
Through RCF’s Inaugural Dyslexia Experience & Gala: The Artists
Sending 80
Teachers to Orton-Gillingham Training in January 2021.
2019
Sponsored FREE
Community Education Event
Featuring Jonathan Mooney,
Author of Normal Sucks
Raised Funds
Through the HighLIGHT
Dyslexia Fundraiser
Provided 10
Classroom Educator Scholarships
through the Academy of Orton-Gillingham
Practitioners and Educators