Reading and Writing Programs

The Reading Program, developed by our staff, is a reading and spelling program that integrates the latest research in reading success with strong processing strategies to help learners become accurate, comfortable, automatic readers and spellers.  The program encompasses the following components.

• Phonemic awareness and phonics are integrated throughout the program.
• Reading fluency is addressed using the research-based strategies of teacher modeling, repeated reading, and progress monitoring to maximize students’ fluency development.
• Visual recognition of words is developed through consistent recognition of common clusters of words.
• Neurological Impress reading provides experience in word recognition, comprehension and reading fluency. It uses all of the senses-seeing the word, hearing the word, saying the word and kinesthetically tracking the word with the finger.
• Activities designed to develop students’ vocabulary and ensure that they understand what they read are incorporated throughout the program.

Easing Into Reading helps in the development of sound-to-letter matching, an essential part of phonetic reading development, with a variety of tasks that emphasize the consistent verbalizing of sounds from visual symbols and the written recording of letters from dictated sounds.

Reading and Reasoning, developed by our staff, helps students develop an “inner voice” that directs them in monitoring comprehension.

Listening/Reading Comprehension and Retention (Visualizing and VerbalizingTM) teaches comprehension and retention skills through a process in which the student visualizes what is heard or read as though actually witnessing the event. The steps of this process are as follows:

1. The student shares the visualized image with the learning specialist.
2. The student, with the assistance of the learning specialist, further elaborate as appropriate from single words to single sentences, multiple sentences, paragraphs, and pages.
3. Finally, the student notes details about the whole chapter that was read or heard, which fosters student understanding and retention of information contained in a whole chapter.

At each step in the process, the student practices listening, oral reading, and silent reading comprehension. Emphasis is placed on formulating a complete, accurate understanding of what is read or heard and determining the most important details and supporting events. Higher level thinking skills are developed through interpretive and critical level questioning.

Writing Skills Development is the staff-developed program for teaching students essential writing and composition development skills. Taught skills include:

• Sentence structure
• Paragraph construction — identification and expression of topic sentences and support sentences, creation of outlines
• Advanced formatting skills, as appropriate for individual level
• Content mapping, charting, Venn diagramming, and other composition development techniques
• Common punctuation rules and practice in locating punctuation errors
• Attention skills to assist in identifying errors in written or typed work

These skills are taught using Self-regulated Strategy Development (SRSD). This approach is designed to teach students the strategies used by skilled writers, while simultaneously teaching them strategies for self-regulation. It encourages students to monitor, evaluate, and revise their writing, which in turn reinforces self-regulation skills and independent learning.