I responded. “I think you can do everything you need for her this summer in about an hour a day, Monday through Friday. Education is not about checklists and meeting requirements; it’s about her learning and gaining essential skills so she can achieve a love of learning and accomplishment.
]]>I was asked by the parent of a seven-year-old about summer school. The little girl was reported to be slightly behind in her reading and had expressed to her mother a dislike of school and that she was looking forward to summer, specifically, no school. The mother was considering homeschooling for not only the summer but for the next school year. She expressed that she felt overwhelmed and inadequate to the task, for teaching summer school, much less homeschooling.
She asked me, “How much time a day would I have to devote to meeting what she needs for summer school? Where do I find out about everything the school needs for her to be able to do? Some people showed me some pretty expensive and time consuming programs, should I consider these?.”
I responded. “I think you can do everything you need for her this summer in about an hour a day, Monday through Friday. Education is not about checklists and meeting requirements; it’s about her learning and gaining essential skills so she can achieve a love of learning and accomplishment. You can do it this summer, just the two of you. And it not be stressful in the least.”
“It still seems overwhelming.”
“Yes, it can feel that way with so many giving you advice. But I can put together a plan that will not only be successful, but fun. It will not be a drudgery that takes away from the freedom of a summer vacation she wants and probably needs. She stated clearly that she did not want to go to summer school, so don’t send her. That’s your first victory with her. What better way to start than letting her know the two of you can avoid her having to go to summer school or having to travel to tutoring? It’s a sure-fire way to get an early buy-in.”
“How can you possibly accomplish everything she needs in such a little amount of time? When I look at all she is expected to learn this year, it seems impossible.”
“Remember her attention span is about fifteen minutes at a time. We will work with that. And much of what I propose will not even look to her like schooling at all. She will learn a lot from what you already know as you travel, go for walks, or work in the kitchen together. Experience is the best teacher.”
“I don’t see programs out there like that.”
“You won’t. The amount of time something takes may be no indicator of whether or not she’s learning. I think you’ll see you are the perfect person for the job and the two of you will be having a summer you’ll always remember.”
“It still feels overwhelming to me,” she said.
“First, it’s the end of May,” I said. “.You have plenty of time to determine her schooling for the fall. Let’s focus on summer. She is behind in reading, but from what you have told me, she is not incredibly behind. You can do something about her reading level, it’s a major reason I wrote Great Leaps. You can, in fifteen minutes a day, make major moves in her instructional reading level. You may even get a year's growth in three months. At seven, with no major learning disabilities suspected other than reading difficulties, I can project we could have her reading at an independent level by the 4th grade, exactly when she is expected to be there. This is something you can do at home, whether you choose home-schooling or not. And you can do that, starting tomorrow if you choose.”
“I don’t think I’m well-trained enough in how to teach reading to do that.”
“You don’t have to undergo significant training. You can do this on your own or hire one of our tutors. I have embedded a considerable amount of the research into the program itself, so you can get these results. Follow the directions, and they are not difficult, and you will get the growth. Trust me, it’s not as difficult as you think. And we can either train you, provide a placement session with one of our tutors, or you can begin on your own by just following program directions. Know we’re there to answer your questions and concerns. It will work, but if you don’t get the results you are expecting, call us. We’ll reason together and come up with a plan.”
“What about the rest of the subjects?” she asked.
“Remember it’s summer and neither of you want stress. Let’s look at the next most important thing, math. At seven she needs to master simple addition and subtraction facts, but it must be more than pure memorization. For less than a hundred dollars and five minutes a day you can teach those facts, hopefully so she’ll know them quickly without hesitation. Like reading, the Great Leaps Calculation Program uses precision teaching methods with a multi-sensory program to quickly teach basic skills to mastery. This only takes four or five minutes a day. The power is in that it’s daily.”
“What about social studies and science? I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
For both, begin with where you’re at and what you like. Social studies could start with putting together a map of your neighborhood. Each day expand the map and talk about it. Who knows how far you’ll get by summer’s end. It can be great fun. You can move from neighborhood, to town, state, etc. You can explore and use Google to find out things you didn’t know about. For example, you can explore a telephone pole. What information is on that pole and what does it mean? There are all kinds of strange and wonderful things in a neighborhood. Always be open for questions and her areas of interest.”
“But that’s not what they’re studying.”
“So what? You’re teaching map skills, the organization of a neighborhood, town, and more. One step at a time, as it comes. You won’t believe just how much you’ll cover and how many interesting things there are to learn. And if maps don’t excite you, there’s architecture, the makeup of the roads and sidewalks and how they are maintained - there’s everything! Or who lives in the neighborhood, what do they do, what do they drive - you can do analysis - oh, so much. Just don’t do it all. And here’s the good part. It takes little or no planning on your part. From her responses and discussions you’ll find out quickly if she’s learning and retaining. But more importantly, is it fun, interesting and something she wants to do. If you travel, all the more opportunities to teach relevant social studies. You do have to make it reinforcing and exciting. One hint, always do something pleasurable after an activity is completed. You can do your neighborhood survey for instance, twenty minutes for her favorite tv show. Make sure to have a great snack as you watch the show together.”
“Okay, that sounds doable. As you were talking, I saw a lot of opportunities. But science is another thing altogether. I never liked it when I was little.”
“Science has a lot of opportunities for you to go with your strengths. Just like in social studies. Again, there is all the science you need right in your own backyard. Your choice: insects, plants, soil, animals, trees, the clouds, temperature, rain … Just put a plan together based on what you like and know and go from there. The secret is not in the curriculum but in the teacher! I can count the different animals at the beach, what they eat, where they live - and we could go home or to the condo and find out more.”
“This seems so easy.”
“It is. You are the perfect summer school teacher for her. I’d say, but this is what I do for a living, the most important things are her attitude and confidence towards learning. She will guide a lot of what’s going on by showing you her high interest levels. As per reading, success breeds success. That fifteen minutes will be your most important. While other students will be undergoing what is called the summer slide, your girl will be making gains. Let’s hope they’ll be huge gains, but I can guarantee that she’ll be in a better position than she is now. If she’s only a little behind, she may very well catch up.”
]]>I recently conducted a multiple baseline across subjects’ study, using the Great Leaps for Reading Digital software with elementary students that had both behavioral and literacy deficits. An excerpt from the study can be found below.
Link to the complete research paper
Figure 6. Words per Minute on Daily Grade-Level Reads.
Overall Analysis
Visual analysis of data in single case design does have weaknesses. Studies by Normand & Bailey (2006) showed interrater reliability to be only 72%, even with the raters being Board Certified Behavior Analysts. Oddly, the rating without trend lines, 78%, was higher than the interrater reliability for the data with trend lines (67%). Campbell & Herzinger (2010) concede that visual analysis is prone to Type I errors, because there is no standardized formula of observance. Because it is difficult to ascertain and compare degree of trend visually, it is appropriate to establish slope for the trend in each phase, for each student (Huitema, 1986b). Allyn & Bacon (2007) suggest two ways of doing this: Using OLS (McCain & Mccleary, 1979; Parsonson & Baer, 1978; Campbell & Herzinger, 2010; Cooper, et al., 2007), and computing slope by hand. As there is one phase for two students with an N below the required eight data points (Jenkins & Quintana-Ascencio, 2020), I have chosen to compute slope for each phase by hand. In this way, visual analyzation can be supplemented by slope numbers to facilitate more accurate comparisons of the data. The slope of the trend for each phase, for each child, with online and face to face differentiated, can be found in Table 23 below. Slope was determined by using the formula (y2-y1)/(x2-x1).
Table 23. |
||||
Slope of trend lines in phases. |
||||
Subject |
Baseline |
Baseline Online |
Intervention |
Intervention Online |
M.J. |
0.0 |
NA |
1.125 |
1.4 |
K.J. |
.50 |
NA |
1.625 |
2.5 |
T.S. |
-.067 |
NA |
NA |
8.0 |
Even with the Lexile level increasing frequently, each child did have an increase in reading level. Table 23 shows that each child did have an increase in rate and slope of their trend during the intervention stage. The slope of the trend line for each child increased in intervention, although much greater for M.J. and T.S. than K.J. The mean words per minute increased from baseline to intervention as well. This does show a replicated effect, although not a functional relation.
The Great Leaps graph, Figure 7, shows that although the level of the reading passage increased every few sessions, as students made “leaps”, progress was continual. Visual analyzation of the Great Leaps graph, Figure 7 shows the progress of each individual student. M.J. had slow, steady, upward progress. K.J. had progress that was quicker and steeper than that of M.J., while T.S. had rapid, steep progress through the levels.
When visually interpreting the graphs of both the Great Leaps words per minute and the quick read words per minute, it is important to note the similarities and differences. M.J. had data that was wildly divergent in the beginning of the intervention, then scores began to follow a similar pattern as the intervention progressed. K.J. had intervention graphs that followed the same peaks and valleys between the two data sets. Although the numbers are not the same, the acceleration and deceleration are nearly the same each day. T.S. did not have these similarities in data sets. His data sets show nearly an inverse relationship at several points during intervention (Shultz-Ashley, 2021).
Yet another piece of evidence shows that this intervention, although facing the challenge of multiple modalities, was indeed effective for these students at this time. In order to verify reading levels and insure that my subjects were two or more grade levels behind, I conducted a Test of Word Reading Efficiency-2 (TOWRE-2) assessment with every participant. In the table below, the gains of each student are evident.
Test of Word Reading Efficiency-2
Subject |
Pre-Intervention Sight Word Efficiency Grade Equivalency |
Pre-Intervention Phonemic Decoding Efficiency Grade Equivalency |
Post-Intervention Sight Word Efficiency Grade Equivalency |
Post-Intervention Phonemic Decoding Efficiency Grade Equivalency |
M.J. |
1.0 |
<1.0 |
1.2 |
2.2 |
K.J. |
2.5 |
1.0 |
3.5 |
2.0 |
T.S. |
1.2 |
1.5 |
3.2 |
2.8 |
As the reader can determine from the table, the data shows that these students had significant gains with the use of this intervention, which only lasted six weeks. Although all families continued the intervention, I do not include that data here, as I cannot verify fidelity of intervention, and certain components, such as time of day, incentives, and instructor changed.
A major downfall of my study was the increase in Lexile level of the independent measure during almost every session. I was advised to include the independent measure, but I did not realize until four weeks into the six week study, the Lexile levels were increasing rapidly, in some cases, over four hundred points. In future studies, I will have passages available that are at a mid-grade level Lexile for all independent measures.
Through this study, I have renewed belief in the efficacy of the Great Leaps for Reading intervention for children that are twice exceptional. I plan to conduct additional research in the future to determine how and for whom it works best.
]]>
Let’s open right off – reading is not figuring out with skills how to pronounce each and every word within the language. Of course phonological awareness and phonics are critical tools – don’t get me wrong, I detest the damage the whole language and now many of the balanced literacy people have done - but decoding is not reading, it is a tool of reading.
“Learning to read means learning to bring meaning to a text in order to get meaning from it.”
Many of our children with reading problems are lacking exposure to vocabulary and general knowledge. I am not kidding you when I say I taught middle schoolers who could not answer what planet they lived on, nor country or state. They could not answer where they lived beyond their town – Boardman, Reddick, Buzzard’s Roost, Shiloh. Yes, they couldn’t read, but that was only the tip of the iceberg.
For reading instruction, these students, many since 2nd or 3rd grades, have been removed from content classes, most often science and social studies, to receive their special reading instruction. We spend thousands on a process to get them help and when I read the reports, about all I get useful out of them is that the child cannot read. I am a data person, well-trained to use a variety of interventions to get growth. Why a school needs special permission to do what it takes to teach a kid to read is beyond me.
So, we put these children in classes or their parents pay for tutoring or put them in expensive schools where they will be taught all the intricacies of the myriad rules of reading – and many of these children we labeled as dyslexic, some of our brightest minds, will miss science experiments, the songs and history of our culture, and the expanding vocabulary that come from the content area instruction. It gets worse with age. And over time, many, if not most, of our regular education teachers and administrators have come to believe that if you cannot read you do not belong in their class. Or even worse, if you cannot read by 3rd grade, you’ll never read. Yes, I know all about brain plasticity and learning, but I also know the story of Helen Keller.
Why does regular ed think this way? Well, you cannot take a test if you cannot read. You cannot read the chapters or even do the homework. You cannot write. And I guess there is the supposition that you cannot understand.
Au contraire. You can certainly take a test. You could do it orally. There are programs that can read the test to the student and programs that can move speech to text. You can listen, watch and learn. I was a champion tennis player without reading a book on the subject.
This is language rich – and we are removing our children most in need of language from the richest environments of word and world knowledge. The whole language advocates withheld phonics instruction from needy children, let’s not be like them by withholding language and knowledge opportunities.
It was not all that long ago that we put dyslexic students in self- contained classes where they only had one teacher for an entire school day. Because of their reading difficulties they were not even allowed to participate with their peers in PE, art, music, vocational ed and – get this – not even lunch. And once a child found himself captured by the system and incarcerated in a special ed class – it was a life sentence – a roach motel – you check in but you won’t check out. In many places in this country – we still inordinately pull children away from their peers – and stigmatize them. That is punishing. The response of any organism to punishment is escape behavior.
My professor, mentor, and then friend, Dr. Cecil Mercer had seen my work in action at North Marion Middle School. He thought it had promise and got my permission for five copies of what we were using so his grad students could try it with a self-contained learning disabilities group at Buchholz High School in Gainesville, Florida. Master Degree special ed students would tutor – each kid would get a different tutor each day of the week. I cringed. I was taught consistency and persistency. Establish a working rapport. None of these students could independently read. Imagine someone being in school eleven years and being basically illiterate. What were they doing all that time? Playing with legos? Coloring? Chess?
With inclusion and a lot of advocacy and work we have gotten better about placement – at the same time we have been inundated with theories and philosophical reading wars – but the frontlines are not esoteric – in the real world of need I must ask – how are we doing? I need to see measured growth that generalizes into the world and needs of the students – whatever it takes. I am not a reading chauvinist – I am a teacher.
In one semester these high school students at Buccholz – Teneisha – moved from 2nd to 4th grade, Urvahsa – 2nd to 6th, Raymond – 4th to 7th – Holly – 4th to 9th – Lucious 2nd to 4th. Can you see that in one semester every one of these students – so handicapped in their academic performance that they were not allowed with their peers – moved 2 or more years in their reading. This was in ten minutes a day, with rookies. That was well over 25 years ago, we have improved – though the nation remains in a reading crisis. I just heard recently of a high school girl who started the program as nonreader is now, in one year, an independent reader. She had been in a well known phonics program for years. We keep getting this kind of growth. If you cannot get a non-reading high schooler moving three years in one year, may I ask what you’re doing and why?
The word and world knowledge these students received from public schooling was slim or none. But I would damn well bet you they could stay in line while coloring! We have come a long way since these children were excluded from their peers – disdained as handicapped – called retarded – embarrassed every day – afraid to be seen at school. You must know that when these children grow up and walk and work among us – they are no longer unusual or special – they’re like you and me.
We still regularly remove students with reading problems from the content courses of science and social studies. There are reading advocates who wish to take this model down to regular ed in 1st and 2nd grades – to have time to work on the tools of reading more intensely. Stop that insanity. Social studies starts with the home and neighborhood and expands. Science begins with the observable life around us – the land, sea and air. These chauvinistic reading zealots are doing harm not only to the children, but the very credibility of teaching reading from the science of research and product development. Have they forgotten critical language growth for the period of a child’s educational life where brain plasticity for language is at its highest? I do not need an hour a day to teach children the basic tools of phonics or work with phonological – phonemic and morphemic awareness. We can nail these essential tools of reading within the attention span of the students – fifteen or so minutes. This gives us plenty of time left to TEACH – talk, dream, learn. This should not be used to label me whole language or a balanced literacy person. My objective here is to teach reading – and reading without meaning is purely an abstraction. Reading interventions must be language rich and engaging. Every precious minute!
It is time to mention FAPE – a free and appropriate education. It is not appropriate to place a child labeled dyslexic into a varying exceptionalities ZOO. The social results of this cost saving service model has been catastrophic. It appears to me the lower the socio-economic status of the school’s environs, the less qualified the instructors and the lower the expectations. The learning potential of the student from the Bronx varies little from those of the rich private schools. The rich kids, for the most part, get the more intense and relevant instruction. This is neither democratic nor appropriate. Parents should not have to pay for their children to learn to read when in the US we have nearly the most per capita spent on public schooling on the planet. We are failing and the people know it.
Phonics lessons are not reading. It takes one hell of a teacher to make them interesting and fun. Multiplication fact memorization and working pages of math problems are calculation tools. Not math. Many teachers are so transfixed on teaching the tools or working from within the framework of a philosophy of reading, that they completely miss the point – and thus the goal of instruction. We do not teach phonics and breaking the code for the pure sake of a child being able to decode every word thrown at them. Knowing the rules and being able to “read” the word LYNX is but a step. It is pretty useless unless you know what a lynx is.
When a story or word does not make sense, you move from the language part of the brain to the processing part. Thus, if done often, you lose all sense of meaning from a passage. It is tiring. Same thing happens when you must sound out words, you have moved from the language part of the brain, Reading is language, we must get those words on the page talking to us. When we read and understand, pleasure centers often light up. I know full well a Dear John letter does not light up pleasure. But … “We went to the beach” can do it.
Our language is so filled with almost incoherent intricacies that we could teach a new rule every day of the week for three or four years and still not be done. Our children need to gain three thousand or so words a year just to keep up. Let’s do it right!
Many of our children are sounding out words at very low rates with high percentage accuracy. They sound like robots. Yes, they can sometimes answer comprehension questions because they are smart, not because they have actually read something. Fluent reading combines rate, accuracy, intonation and word/world knowledge. In our remedial classes and instruction we are boring these children out of their skulls – of course, the better the instructor, the less boring the intervention. Teaching the tricks of the trade in phonics does little or nothing in the way of increasing a child’s word/world knowledge. Yes, teach the tools! I need a hammer and saw to build a house – but moreso, I need a carpenter.
Many children now hate school, for them, it’s punishing. Their self-esteem in school is rock bottom. They are the bottom of the pecking order. Yet, we persist in our failures.
How many lessons must a child go through to be able to decode lynx or chalet? What good does it honestly do to be able to pronounce a word in print with no clue as to its meaning? Do you honestly think that all children must have rule-based teaching to be able to read such words? Let’s look at just how crazy from the child’s point of view the word chalet is. To actually decode the word you must have reached lessons on the rules of anglicized French.
ch making the sh sound
as in Chevrolet, Chevy, chauvinist, chef, chic, brochure, cache, champaign, niche, charlatan, chivalry
Out of these words, our third and fourth graders would probably encounter less than a third of them. Yet, as we look at chalet – there’s another rule that hits us. What do we do with that et?
Now we have prepared our student to go to a fancy Southern seafood restaurant and order their world famous smoked mullet dip. “We have no dip from the Malay Peninsula.”
et making the long a sound
ballet, buffet, ricochet (both rules!), beret, filet
And eau says long o
bureau, noveaux, plateau
But not beautiful
How about some lessons in German and Spanish that contradict the phonics rules of English? Don’t call the roll and ask for Jesus Garcia!
And then we have Greek and Latin roots! See, we can teach rules forever. I do not advocate for ignoring these, I just don’t see them as essential – I often must teach words and meanings without going into the intricacies of the origin of their pronunciation. As our English becomes more and more international and our people become more diverse, our language will continue to add words as pronounced in their land and culture of origin. Comprende? Capiche?
I was working with a student from Greensboro, North Carolina when we hit that word chalet. With his good phonics skills he said “challet”. I immediately corrected him thus, “Chalet, you know one of those rich guy wooden houses with the big, slanty roofs on the tops of mountains? When the timed reading was completed, I went back to the word. He told me what it meant. I asked him to use it in a sentence. He did. “I saw a rich man’s chalet on the top of that mountain.”
Good. Do you know there are a lot of chalets you can stay in at the ski resorts like Beech Mountain? Then we could talk about ski resorts in the country, in the world. Which would better serve the needs and interests of this middle school student? Would a lesson on the French ch and et have been more meaningful, relevant and useful? It is crucial that in the pursuit of teaching reading, we as teachers, tutors or parents do not neglect teaching about the world around us.
]]>This often involves some sacrifice and flexibility from the instructor. After school may seem like a prime time for tutoring, but if this is the time the student could be or wants to be in extracurricular activities, you may be encouraging failure. Students have been taken out of PE and art for Great Leaps, not realizing these times may be the only reason a child comes to school. All efforts must be made to select a time preferable for all. Putting together a plan for success involves thinking about a variety of issues.
]]>This often involves some sacrifice and flexibility from the instructor. After school may seem like a prime time for tutoring, but if this is the time the student could be or wants to be in extracurricular activities, you may be encouraging failure. Students have been taken out of PE and art for Great Leaps, not realizing these times may be the only reason a child comes to school. All efforts must be made to select a time preferable for all. Putting together a plan for success involves thinking about a variety of issues.
We have often taken students out of social studies or science, the content areas. When our children do not have adequate word and world knowledge, taking them away from science experiments and the wonderful lessons of great science and social studies teachers may serve to further the performance gap for our students. There is a huge learning gap going on amongst many of our students with reading difficulties, let’s not exacerbate their progress.
We do need significant work and dialogue with teachers and school administrators to recognize the importance of poor readers gaining knowledge in critical areas. There are accommodations that can be made to allow poor readers to succeed in content areas. One must not be an independent reader to be able to substantively benefit from attendance in content area courses and activities.
I have worked with students before and after school to their convenience. I have often involved the student in scheduling times. I listen and think out the decisions. Some of the best choices I have made have been in taking the student out of “impossible” situations – the one I remember the most is taking a non-reader from journal writing time. The teacher objected because of the perceived importance of journal writing, seemingly unaware that the student couldn’t read or wasn’t given options in which she could succeed.
The older a student the more embarrassing it is for them to be signaled out to their peers as being “behind.” Efforts must be made to destigmatize the intervention and sometimes the locale. For many, it would be better to be “punished” through suspension or even corporal punishment than having peers believe they are stupid.
The first solution to this lies in the tutor being cognizant of this problem. Scheduling again is critical. You must know the children and their world and perceptions to ensure students feel comfortable within the intervention.
Convenience is the biggest enemy in this. We somehow in our adult world presume that which is in the student’s best long-term interests will be understood by the student. This is just not so. Take the time and effort to understand the child’s intricate world of social interactions and needs and schedule accordingly.
The world of adult perceptions can be radically different than that of the children. Our job is to design to get optimum performance and growth from involved and motivated students.
Continually I encounter situations where Great Leaps can be offered only once or twice per week. It does not seem to compute that this is not how the program works nor has been designed. There seems to be this attitude that a little bit is better than nothing. This flies in the face of learning theory and the research.
Yes, I am aware that the one hour per week of intense instruction has been the norm for remedial tutoring. That has been for the convenience of the tutor and other practicalities of a time with limited alternatives. Our world has changed and we no longer need to be handcuffed by the past. Digital long distance learning has given us tremendous alternatives to the previous model.
Dr. Ogden Lindsley, the father of precision teaching, stated that one minute a day is more powerful than an hour a week. Thus, working within the attention span of the child five times a week is considerably more powerful than the traditional tutoring session of an hour a week. Once more, design and implementation of remediation must work within the parameters of success.
There have been those administrators who believe that in reducing the days of an intervention to twice a week rather than four or five can reach double the number of students. Little do they see that it is not about reaching more students, it is about teaching them to read. Two times a week courts failure.
I use the lifeboat analogy. If a lifeboat can handle 25 people safely and can save them. Putting 50 people in the boat does not save double, it takes the chance of losing all.
In most schools, you must schedule five times a week to get three. If I cannot get my three or more times a week, I have refused, going as far as to say the time would be better spent on the basketball court. I have spent a career in refusing to compromise when I know the consequences are virtually guaranteed failure. When we fail with a child it becomes all the more difficult to help later.
An involved and caring tutor will find the time to plan and be prepared for the activity. It is worth it to have an idea of what questions after the story reading will elicit the best responses and growth. Data must be reviewed before a session to better the tutor focus. Many administrators in schools working with paraprofessionals have often scheduled so the tutor has scant time to gather themselves.
Student data and performance should be viewed and pondered before instruction begins.
You can’t fight Mother Nature. When students are in no mood to work, there are no easy answers. Forcing it without thought is not a solution. If I have done everything possible to ensure successes and eliminate punishers, I should not be getting inordinate resistance. Teaching reading cannot be pulling teeth. If there is continued resistance a game plan is needed. I do not wish to waste my time nor the student’s.
If the student is tired, the answer is rest. If the student is hungry, the answer is food. If the student is angry or oppositional defiant, quality time must be spent in putting together a feasible strategy. I do not wish to reinforce refusal, but know damn well that forcing participation is in almost all situations, a waste of time. How can I entice?
This is one of the reasons that your first two minutes with a student must be incredibly reinforcing. The student must think this activity or plan is far better than other alternatives and that it is their best interest to participate.
This is also important, tutors must be rested and positively engaged.
Not only must errors be immediately corrected, victories should be emotionally celebrated as they occur. The further the distance between the performance and the reward the lower the impact.
We engineer a series of successes. Success builds success.
We use equal ratio chart performance measurement as opposed to equal interval measures. Percentage growth is far more valuable to us than incremental data. When you become used to seeing the trends on our charts, you will grow in the ability to make educated and valid prognostications determining future performance.
I don’t know how many times when questioning a student about a competing program I’ve heard them say, “BORING!” Many students, especially older ones, will do anything, suffer much to learn to read – as long as they are not publicly embarrassed or humiliated.
We learn from error patterns. This enables us to target these patterns and track their improvement and the effectiveness of an intervention.
The attitude and demeanor of the tutor is probably more important than the intervention itself.
You cannot imagine how many children I have met or heard of over the years who have been in one style intervention for dyslexic students for YEARS. When changes are made the shift is often to a variation on the same theme, often from one Orton-Gillingham program to another. I do not care how great an antibiotic is, it will not work on a virus. If the data is telling you there is no or minimal movement, you must think and evaluate. We have many proven scientific, evidence-based practices and interventions available to us.
Recidivism can be expected when you do not take a student to the finish line, I have come to not want to participate in research programs that work with a child three months, publish the data to career gains and notoriety for the attention. What of the child? This is not a monkey or mold on a slice of bread! When rapport has been gained and a modicum of success gained, especially when the child felt themself to be a failure and then the child dropped to guaranteed recidivism and failure – are you not setting up a life of failure? The deeper I think on this, the more upset I have become. Carry these students and their successes to the finish line. In reading we strongly suppose (and there has been no substantive research that I am aware of this, just a preponderance of font-line data) that when a student is taken to an independent reading level, there is virtually no recidivism. In all programs, when we take a child from even zero to the 2nd grade level and then cease, we lose the gains. But what does the child think who has had a modicum of success and then falls back to failure? What are the emotional and behavioral consequences? What is our moral responsibility to the child? I say it is to carry the child to the finish line, with our assumption that once the independent reading level (4.5-5.0) is reached there is little if any recidivism and environmental and motivational factors determine much further growth.
By definition, punishers reduce or eliminate behaviors. We are in the world of increasing reading behaviors.
Look at the very terminology we use when an effort is made and it is incorrect. Often we seem to shout, “Wrong!”
]]>Reading Rockets writes, “Fluency is defined as the ability to read with speed, accuracy, and proper expression.
]]>Reading Rockets writes, “Fluency is defined as the ability to read with speed, accuracy, and proper expression. In order to understand what they read, children must be able to read fluently whether they are reading aloud or silently. When reading aloud, fluent readers read in phrases and add intonation appropriately. Their reading is smooth and has expression.”
Tim Rasinski writes that “reading fluency refers to the ability of readers to read the words in text effortlessly and efficiently (automaticity) with meaningful expression that enhances the meaning of the text (prosody). Fluency takes phonics or word recognition to the next level. While many readers can decode words accurately, they may not be fluent or automatic in their word recognition. These readers tend to expend too much of their limited mental energy on figuring out the pronunciation and meaning of words, energy that is taken away from that more important task in reading comprehension — getting to the text’s overall meaning. Thus, the lack of fluency often results in poor comprehension.”
My own definition of fluency is “Fluency is accurate reading (95%+) at a rate commensurate with human speech (120 words per minute +) with correct inflection and full understanding.”
Yet, many in the public have been led to believe that fluency is nothing but reading speed. This is wrong. When I praise recorded success, such as in our Devonte video, we see comments such as, “Reading is more than speed.” That's like telling Lance Armstrong "Bicycling is more than just pedaling."
These critics seem unable to see in the video the huge growth in such a short time, the intonation, his smile of success and the obvious understanding of the material. Yes, Devonte is reading so fast (about 195 wpm) that it is almost difficult for us to hear and understand. The question needs to be, what is Devonte understanding as he reads at this high speed. Many of us can read silently at 400+ words per minute with complete understanding. Yet, if you tried to listen and understand materials read at such speeds, it would be difficult. I cannot orally read at such speeds. Yet, I can read silently at such a speed with understanding – not skipping words or skimming.
An example: if I wrote “Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania” and showed it to you for one second and then hid it – many of you could tell me word for word what I presented. You read every word at a speed of higher than 500 words per minute. Yet, you cannot orally read those words to me in one second – not even close. Going as fast as I could, it took me 3 seconds to get it all out.
When looking at the read/reread intervention, reviewers have not looked at the strong work in design and step-by-step reading development – nope, Great Leaps has been judged as a simple program of repeated speed drills. Left out in these critiques of my work is the phonics section, the innovative work in high frequency word phrases (designed to eliminate high frequency word errors while teaching improved intonation and chunking) and the innovative attack on comprehension.
Sadly, the incorrect use of the word fluency has led many to not giving Great Leaps its due. Speed is an important component of fluency, but of course speed alone is useless without accuracy and comprehension.
By Kenneth Campbell
]]>No one likes to look for a handout from friends and family BUT the reality is that this isn’t for YOU. It’s for the kids! We’ve heard teachers find success using tools like GoFundMe or Fundraise or Pledge Cents to purchase necessities for their students. At $129/year for a student subscription you can expect to get well over 2 years of reading growth for even the most challenging of students! Your friends and family will commend you for your effort and your students’ lives will be changed for the better because of their growth! Don’t be shy! Most people are well aware that teachers have paid much out of their own pockets for their students.
Tips for Success: When setting up a fundraising campaign for your classroom be sure to make the need clear! Don’t use student names BUT make them aware of the challenge, be transparent about what you plan on purchasing and draw some sympathy. Let them know the expected results and that you’ll provide updates on their progress on your Facebook page (again not using names) so that they can see the impact their donation has had on your students! Also awareness is key. Don’t just post it once on Facebook then give up when no one responds. Reach out personally to friends and family that you know have it within their means to donate. It may save some time to make a template message that explains the details and tag a personal message onto that. Potential donors to consider outside of your immediate circle may include your physician, real estate agent, attorney, dentist, and the owner of shops you frequent.
With COVID many of us feel more detached from our community than ever, but charitable giving is a wonderful way for groups to impact their community. EVERYONE supports education and sees the necessity of reading! Many want to help but do not know how. Remember, you can also enlist volunteer tutors to help you in your work with the students. Consider appealing to religious organizations, especially your own church, mosque or synagogue. If you are not an active member, these religious organizations and their members see the value in charitable donations for at risk kids and will contribute. They may need to hear facts concerning our present reading crisis. There’s also clubs like Kiwanis, Rotary, and Lions to name a few that exist in most communities who make charity a fundamental component of their organization! If you are in a university or college community, do not forget that fraternities and sororities and other organizations take part in fundraisers for worthy projects. You will be surprised at the altruism of these young adults - they have a lot of energy but often do not know a worthy place to put it.
Tips for Success: The power in these organizations is in their members. Try to connect with the right person in the organization who will get your message out to the members! Do they have a newsletter? Be in that newsletter. Do they make announcements in their meetings? Make an announcement or connect with a member that will for you. Again awareness is KEY. Make sure to articulate the significance of the problem for example the impact that literacy has on kids’ lives in the community. You need to be able to simply state the importance of getting the necessary resources to you so you can be effective. Also just like before, set a clear financial goal and say exactly what you will do with those donations. Be transparent. You also need to have a simple way for them to donate. This could be through a gofundme or fundraise campaign mentioned above. You could also consider a venmo or a paypal link they can go to and send funds directly to you. If using Paypal make sure they send it through “Friends and Family” so that Paypal doesn’t take a fee from your donations! Sadly, the funds you receive are not tax deductible unless it can be done through a school or organization with the proper status.
Resources include the ever popular Donors Choose where you can easily set up a project for your classroom and get it funded by both total strangers OR your own network that you share it with. There’s also Class Tag that’s a neat communication tool for parents and teachers which can both increase your effectiveness as a teacher while helping generate funds to go towards your students. Next is the Supply a Teacher program for schools with 50% or more students that are a part of the free and reduced lunch program. It will provide you boxes with a year’s worth of essential supplies that just might open up funds in our budget for a program like Great Leaps. Here’s a couple grants you can apply for that are geared towards reading.
IRA Regie Routman Teacher Recognition Grant - $2,500
From Failure to Promise - $500
Underfunded teachers are sadly, a common problem, all exacerbated by the pandemic. There are a number of resources specifically for you! Is this a depressing reality in our country? Of course, but your mission as an educator is to make a difference in your students’ lives and if you’re able to independently (with funds you generate) show awesome success using Great Leaps, our sincere hope is that you’ll be able to present your successes to your principal, administrator, school board or district and get their financial support next year.
Local chapters of professional organizations such as the Council for Exceptional Children, the International Dyslexia Association, the Learning Disabilities Association, the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers and the NAACP often give grant awards to teacher members each year. Your PTO/PTA often gives teacher supply grants.
Tips for Success: Your key is effort. You may be surprised at the impact of your altruism and love of teaching has upon your world. And we know, it sometimes can feel as if you are begging when you seek necessary funding, rest assured that is lightyears from the truth! Yes, we must strive to do our best for our students, but that call does not necessitate taking necessary monies from your family. Your pay is low enough. You may even find more respect in the community than you feel in your day to day work. You may need to try a combination of different sources to get the amount funded that you need. Also, keep an eye on the timelines. If you’re interested in a grant put the application deadline in your calendar A WEEK before the actual one so that you get things submitted early.
Hopefully this was helpful and if so please share it with others who may get value out of it! If you have additional strategies or resources that can help, please let us know in the comments or send us an email!
A note from the author Ken Campbell:
I spent a career on the frontlines as a special education teacher. My classroom had a token economy - somebody had to buy the prizes for the students! Most often that somebody was me.
I got creative. The local theater had a fund-raising event for a school. One of the parents of a child from my class not only found the resource but did all the work to win this.
A parent received a major settlement when her child, one of my students, was killed in a school bus crash. She supported my room for years, then supported the teacher who took my place.
A professor of mine supported my endeavors.
Yes, I know exactly what it’s like to spend money out of my own pocket for my kids but there are many who can help.
]]>As we work to build and enhance comprehension skills with emergent readers and those with reading difficulties, we must define comprehension. From my behavioral perspective, I see three essential elements: the rate of reading must approach the rate of human conversation with a low number of errors (errors should be in the range of one percent); the reading must be done with proper inflection; and the student must have adequate word/world knowledge. For this well thought out idea, I am grateful to the work of professor, Bill Wolking and psychologist, Henry Tenenbaum, early University of Florida leaders in the precision teaching movement.
Rate: Rate remains an ignored and even controversial element as essential for reading comprehension. When rate, even with inflection is lower than 75 words per minute, it is very difficult for anyone to follow the train of thought. Comprehending a passage of five thousand words or more becomes virtually impossible when reading is at such low rates. The slower the rate of reading, the more difficult it is to have reading endurance or stamina. The brain must process inordinately slow reading with an intensity that is exhausting. This fatigue kills the endurance necessary for most practical reading.
Assessments that do not consider reading rate are seriously incomplete. Rate measurement being seen as critical sets precision teaching apart from the herd. In my opinion, reading rate is the most essential measure involved in the teaching of reading to prosody. It is also important that rate be measured and charted with regularity in reading instruction, preferably daily, minimally three times a week. I prefer the use of equal ratio charts that show percentage rather than incremental growth. Fifteen minutes a day as an effective amount of time is in stark contrast to the present therapeutic one hour a week of reading therapy or tutoring. Note, in a school setting you must often schedule reading instruction five times a week so that you get the necessary three times. The sessions need not take up more than ten to fifteen minutes. To quote one of my mentors, Dr. Ogden Lindsley, “A minute a day is more powerful than an hour a week.”
Inflection: Inflection is reading with proper expression. This also includes the expression necessitated by punctuation. The Spanish have something on us by placing the question mark or exclamation mark not only at the end of a sentence but at the beginning. Thus, reading with expression in English inherently implies the ability to use contextual clues to accurately guess upcoming punctuation, a skill rarely mentioned in remediation.
Early readers are virtually all word callers which makes perfect sense. It is our job in instruction to regularly teach inflection (another reason for oral reading work). The only effective method I can see for developing and enhancing this is through regular modeling. Whenever a young word caller or robot reader moves along one word at a time – it is proper to read a sentence that has just been read back to the student with proper or even slightly exaggerated inflection. When doing this, think of how a librarian reads stories to young children. After modeling a sentence or two, have the student read it back to you exactly as modeled.
A book could be written on teaching inflection and its many nuances. Ignoring the teaching and measurement of proper inflection in working with students as you teach reading is untenable. Show the student what a sentence or two should sound like and have them repeat it to you with that proper infection.
Ignoring instruction in rate-building with proper inflection in all populations of children with reading problems is not acceptable. Measuring without time as an element makes little sense. If student anxiety has been induced by the idea of them being timed, I would state that this is a teacher-induced anxiety. We have many options on how to time readings without the student even being aware that a timed exercise is occurring. We have options in instruction.
These two tenets of proper reading instruction have often been criticized and lumped with the term reading fluency. Incessant attacks on those who carefully measure and record rate must be answered. A child may have been taught to figure out any word in existence through training in phonics and rules - but if that child is not reading with a rate approaching the speed of conversation with proper inflection, there can only be scant comprehension.
On YouTube there is a video showing the growth of a 4th grade boy from 25 words per minute on a 2nd grade passage to 195 words per minute on a grade appropriate passage. This movement and reading growth came in approximately one year through long distance digital tutoring. This was phenomenal growth that has since shown itself to be substantive and meaningful in the boy’s life. Yet, the tutor has been constantly criticized.
This criticism has often come under the mantra “reading is more than speed.” I have urged those with such a critique to once more watch the video. The speed is just about as fast as the boy’s mouth can move, yes, he is flying. He is flying so fast that listening is even difficult. However, careful analysis shows that this reading occurs with inflection, an observation of punctuation and most importantly, full prosody. The student was reading about football, relevant to him and his world. Equally important, are his smiles and self-confidence, all evident in comparison to the incredible frustration shown in the initial video. This is a success story showing far more than rate growth in a particular student. Not shown in the video is the subsequent impact of the intervention in this student’s life. The intervention generalized. When we can get a child reading independently at approximately the 4.5 grade level - there is little chance of recidivism.
Reading obviously involves more than speed – reading fluency is more than speed reading. Fluency involves rate, inflection and complete understanding. Ignoring speed and inflection are critical errors. Perhaps those in our field when told that “reading is more than speed” should respond with equal intensity, “Reading is more than pronouncing a word correctly.”
Word/World Knowledge: Our third critical element in reading comprehension is word/world knowledge. We must know what a word is in the context of what we are reading. As our reading becomes more and more refined, we often need associated background knowledge for a given reading selection for it to make sense to us.
An example: my granddaughter was having problems that really frightened us. Her wonderful and skilled pediatrician had picked up a slight growth in head size. We had seen other symptoms that had us concerned. There was an immediate MRI done. I had the results faxed to me from the hospital in Jacksonville to my home in Gainesville.
When I got the fax, even though I could read every word of the summary, even with proper intonation, I had no idea of what I had just read, even when the information was critical for me. When I took the time to define words, I still did not comprehend what was being reported. You see, I am not a brain scientist nor a medical doctor. I did not have the training in vocabulary nor the experience to make sense of the report. That is the importance of world and word knowledge in comprehension.
Luckily for me and my understanding of what was going on with my granddaughter, a member of my little church in Micanopy, Dr. Floyd Thompson, was a brain scientist with the Brain Institute of the University of Florida. I read the report to him over the phone and he completely understood what I was reading – I guess my knowledge and proper pronunciation of scientific words came from experience with Greek and Latin roots. Floyd explained that this was hydrocephalus, yes, what we call “water on the brain” and that without medical intervention it would prove devastating. From the observation by the pediatrician to actual brain surgery seemed less than a week. I was more than impressed. As for my granddaughter, the surgery was successful with no ramifications. She is now a wonderful, intelligent adult.
World knowledge, a necessity in education, is what we impart to our students daily – through language, conversations, shared articles and more. Imparting world knowledge is one of the most satisfying aspects of being a teacher. When I can take a group of young students to the Black Hills of the Dakotas in 1870 and in the next story the following week to the steppes of Tsarist Russia and then to searching for the Loch Ness Monster – that is teaching, I must keep it relevant, I must ensure full understanding as I work with the group to build comprehension skills. There is no greater nor more fun way to build and increase reading comprehension than through the use of a group reading. During such readings, when I see that a student does not understand a word or concept until he/she uses such a word on their own volition – I become the more powerful teacher. I plan for this growth from the activities I have chosen. Word/world knowledge is an essential component of reading comprehension.
In summation, for there to be reading comprehension, a student’s reading rate must approach the rate of human conversation with only 1 to 2% errors; the student must read with proper inflection; and there must have adequate background knowledge.
]]>
Use the real world around us to reinforce their interests and curiosities. For example, if your child is fascinated by reptiles after reading a book about them go visit your local pet shop to ask questions and connect the text to reality. There’s plenty of free opportunities to do this and if you make a habit of it, they’ll be excited to finish books and looking forward to that reward. This concept goes both ways. When there’s an activity they love, reinforce it with some books! Many popular cartoons or video games also have comic books. Virtually any interest a child has can be reinforced with reading. Soon the kids will start to see how reading opens doors to exploring their interests in the world.
Sometimes it’s hard to know if a book is actually good. You want to help them find something that they’re interested in AND that is within their reading level. Knowing if they’re interested in a book or not is fairly simple, but how do you know if they can actually read it comfortably? Find an excerpt of the book either online or pick a page at the store. Have your child read it to you out-loud. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but they shouldn’t be making many errors and should have full comprehension of what they’ve read. If the instructional reading level is 10% errors, they should only have errors on about 5% of word’s read. Use your ears and common sense to see if they are getting it. Listen for inflection, when you understand what you are reading it shows in the sound of the voice. Many children have been taught to figure out words accurately, the problem is they do not fluently read.
Staff picks of our favorite kids books grades 3-12Pictures or no pictures?
There are pro’s and con’s to both. Books without pictures allow a child to use their powerful imaginations to put themselves into the story or decide what the characters and places look like based on the world around them. Books with pictures or comic books can provide added details and excitement to a story that may be difficult for an author to communicate at a lower reading level. It can also be more engaging for kids who have shown a joy in art or drawing. They can appreciate and be inspired by the art in the books. A fun activity is having your child draw or paint a picture from a book they are presently reading turning it into a multi-sensory activity.
Audio books for dyslexic students?
While the most valuable thing you can do over the summer is begin a reading intervention like Great Leaps to teach them to read, you could also find audio books that capture their interest and stimulate the language part of the brain. Most language obtained after third grade is through reading. Dr. Ken Pugh of Yale has pointed out that reading is listening with your eyes. Thus, if vocabulary is increasing by listening with your eyes (reading) you should get similar results when a child actively listens to books on tape. If you listen with them, remember you can pause, ask them questions and have discussions on what you’ve just heard. What do you think will happen next? Why do you think this character did that? What would you have done in that situation? It appears that entertaining television does little to enhance vocabulary development.
You, the parent, reading consistently will normalize the activity in your house and show your child that reading is relaxing and a normal activity of day to day life. Spark conversations and show your own excitement over a book or article that you have read that may be of interest to your child. Modeling a desired behavior is powerful.
There’s lots of value in reading to your child each night. This allows the opportunity to expose your kids to books that are a little bit beyond their own reading and language level. This also provides the opportunity to talk and put their thoughts into words working on their expressive language. Encourage them to ask questions about words they don’t know. Help them learn the new word with examples of its use. Building this positive routine can make kids look forward to bedtime.
Staff picks of our favorite kids books grades 3-12
With the digital age, there are less and less people subscribing to magazines but we recommend you subscribe to a couple to be delivered in print to have around the house. Do your kids like video games? Sports? Horses? Science? There’s magazines out there for just about anything. You can also make an activity out of cutting out pictures to make collages of their favorite story or interests.
Language is the prerequisite to reading. This summer, make a conscious effort to have conversations with your children and ask them all kinds of open ended questions. Try to get them to make up stories or ask them about something fun that happened when they were with their friends. Give children the time to think independently and respond. Remember mad-libs? Where the kids fill in the blanks of a story? Give me a noun, a verb etc. That’s another great way to show them the power of language. Here’s a link to some free mad-libs you can do with them. https://www.woojr.com/printable-mad-libs-for-kids/
Be very careful and intentional about making reading and learning a positive experience. If they do not like a book that you’re reading to them, or a book they’ve started to read themselves, don’t force them to finish it. To tell you the truth, you are wasting valuable time. In my own life, if a book cannot engage me in the first twenty to thirty pages, I find something else. It is not the time to talk about how much that book cost. There are thousands of great books to choose from, and it doesn’t matter if you think it’s good or not; what matters most is if they enjoy it and are excited about reading it. If they have a required summer reading list, there are ways to make that rewarding too. Just use incentives wisely or make a game out of it. If they are required to read an awful book - and yes, some requirements are absolutely dreadful - be honest with your child and work as a team to get the drudgery out of the way. Always follow the completion of what may be an unpleasant or forced task with an enjoyable activity. Be a team member or coach in these endeavors.
]]>Luckily, Great Leaps Digital has already been implemented at a distance from private tutors for several years and we were at least able to help our schools and students get back up and running with their reading remediation.
]]>Luckily, Great Leaps Digital has already been implemented at a distance from private tutors for several years and we were able to help our schools and students get back up and running with their reading remediation. Reading is such an essential skill for all students, it’s encouraging to see it get prioritized during all of this. If you are in need of a reading program that can be used at a distance, Great Leaps is a great option and here’s some information to get you started and tips for using Great Leaps Digital at a distance.
Also if you are a parent looking for online reading tutoring, we’ve got you covered. Just go to tutoring.greatleaps.com, create an account and sign up for a reading screening with one of our trained tutors to see if it’s right for you!
To see if this is right for you, every new account starts with a 14-day free trial that will allow you to add up to 10 students. Giving it a shot is free and easy to set up, so why not give it a try? https://digital.greatleaps.com/account/sign-up
You never know what type of devices your students may have access to. Because of this, Great Leaps Digital is a web-application. This means you can access it on any relatively updated internet connected device. This includes laptops, tablets, and even phones. Checkout our minimum system requirements if you would like more details https://digital.greatleaps.com/help/frequently-asked-questions
When working at a distance, you can either use a computer with a webcam and pull up the video chat next to our reading program OR you can use a phone for the video chat and a tablet for the reading program. In desperate times, you can use a single tablet for both the program and the video chat BUT this will usually not allow you to see both the program and the video chat at the same time. Also, the student can use the digital program on a smart phone BUT we highly discourage this. This is only to be used when better options are not available, but it will still work and be effective if necessary.
Because we have a history of doing GL Digital at a distance, we have some insights as to the strengths and weaknesses of different, free video chats. Here’s a video made to help this transition on short notice but I’ll also leave the pros and cons of each below https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVy93g3RS9M
Pros: Easy to use, You can initiate calls so that it will ring on the student’s device, Many people have macs
Cons: Exclusive to apple. No built in scheduling Function. No built in recording option. Will need two devices if you don’t have a mac laptop.
Pros: Works well with poor connection, can initiate calls, works on all devices, most people have a facebook
Cons: May have to add a parent to friends list, No build in recording
Pros: Available on all devices, can initiate calls, built in video recording
Cons: Can be a bit glitchy, may have to create an account or recover your old one
Pros: Good scheduling feature, works on all devices, most people already use gmail
Cons: Takes a couple steps to be able to initiate calls, no built in video recording, screen may mirror text.
Pros: Good scheduling feature, able to record sessions, easy to set up, available on all devices
Cons: Download required, it mirrors your screen, recently we have learned that it is getting hacked (unlikely but possible).
Though it’s still simple as ever, there’s some usage tips that will just make your experience a bit smoother. This video will explain more in depth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhrhL3ahzXU
Hopefully this was helpful, and your students can continue making Great Leaps from home!
]]>From 1994
North Marion Middle School
Citra, Florida
Ken Campbell
1. Great Leaps was designed because of a great need. Upon my return to North Marion Middle School I was absolutely shocked at our high number of non-readers. I was also frustrated at my inability to impact. I had all the skills necessary to teach reading – yet because of a myriad of reasons I could not within the context of my classroom meet the needs of my students.
There is no magic in teaching reading. But to teach reading to these dysfunctional readers there must be a plan – there must be methods available. With adolescents there must be a measure of respect and privacy. A one-on-one is almost demanded by the situation.
And yes, I know as well as you do that we cannot afford the $40k plus necessary to have me. So, I’ve tried to put what I know and have learned into a reading program. Our data indicates this was done.
One out of ten – perhaps one out of every five of our students are completely dysfunctional readers. It’s difficult for me to watch these children move from 6th grade non-readers to 8th grade delinquents to 9th grade dropouts. Reading is a key.
2. Great Leaps incorporates a number of reading and behavioral theories. The majority of the research supporting the program comes from precision teaching. In conjunction with precision teaching comes a strong belief that decoding skills (phonics) are an essential tool for dysfunctional readers. A reading tactic called “the neurological impress method” refined by precision teachers into something called “read reread” is utilized.
The program is designed to be reinforcing, not punitive. In reinforcing, then demands (or consequences) can prove effective. When the students are motivated – and ours are – success follows.
Great Leaps generates its own data from which decisions are made. We are in the midst of re-designing the sight word element of the program into a sight phrase format. This is a data-based move.
Finally, much of this is based upon my own experiences – successes – failures.
3. To enter the program there must be a critical reading problem and unfortunately, there must be room. We serve 40 to 50 students and have a least this many waiting.
For the most part, those in our program have oral reading proficiency rates at a first-grade level or lower. But we also served a young gifted student – we achieved our goals rather efficiently; with the results being noticed by her gifted teacher within two weeks.
4. Great Leaps tests daily. We believe in mastery learning – and demand extremely high percentages of accuracy coupled with a demand for fluency and speed.
To my ability I have tried to build the decision-making process into the materials.
To analyze long-term success, we compare present performance levels with the student’s original reading diagnosis. This is updated annually on all our students served in the program as well as upon many students who have not been served.
5. I have designed much of what we are and have adapted the rest from materials on hand. At present this makes it virtually cost free.
In a self-contained program no additional costs – short of training – would be required. To implement this at a school for all students, there would obviously be other costs. Administrators know the details of this better than I.
]]>The original Great Leaps has been recently converted and improved to a digital format that allowed long distance tutoring. Lisa Skisland, tutoring students (they in their homes and she from hers), over approximately one school semester, achieved growth levels outlined below. To be clear, this is not a study, it is an independent analysis of student data and growth with seven of her students.
DIBELS is a reading assessment developed by the University of Oregon. They measure anything from Letter Naming Fluency, Phonemic Segmentation Fluency, Nonsense Word Fluency, Word Reading Fluency and Oral Reading Fluency. In this case, Great Leaps Tutor, Lisa Skisland, tested her students in Oral Reading Fluency using the DIBELS 8 Benchmark Assessment. This is a nationally normed assessment of oral reading fluency. Students were given the assessment at a distance, getting the passages handed to them immediately before doing the timings and none of the students shown had taken a DIBELS assessment at their schools.
Lisa tested 7 of her Florida students at the beginning of the Fall 2019 semester, and again at the end of the semester, which is the middle of the school year. All of her students showed gains on their grade level oral reading fluency, gaining on average an average of 24.66 correct words per minute, tests being administered 15-20 weeks apart. 4 out of 7 students have IEPs, 5 have been retained a grade for poor academic growth and all are receiving no other independent tutoring. I would like to highlight several students and their growth:
To provide context, we’ve highlighted DIBELS standards for third and fifth graders in the middle of the year above that are represented through colored lines on the student’s charts below. The benchmark goal is in black, while reading at or below the red is considered at risk and in need of instructional support.
C.B is a 10 year old boy in Florida. He has an Individualized Education Program (IEP) in school and has been working with the Great Leaps Digital program for 2 ¾ years. As you can see from the graph, C.B. was 54 correct words per minute (cwpm) from the 5th Grade Fall Benchmark goal and, having jumped 32 cwpm, Cohen is now only 29 cwpm from his mid year DIBELS goal. Cohen had a 51% increase in rate and is currently succeeding in school.
N.B. is a 9 year old girl in Florida who currently has an IEP in her public school. She was retained in the 3rd grade and that is when she started her Great Leaps work. After 2 months of Great Leaps with fidelity, N.B. tested on grade level in an independent evaluation given by her school. Above are the results of her DIBELS Benchmark Assessment after only 7 months of Great Leaps work. She increased her cwpm by 129% and is now reading 30% above the Benchmark goal for her grade and even surpassed the blue “Above Benchmark Level”. N.B. is about to be moved forward into 4th grade by her school because of her improvement in reading.
I.H. is a 10 year old girl from Florida, currently in the 3rd. Grade, who has an IEP in her public charter school. Having been retained in 2nd grade, she started Great Leaps at the end of 2nd grade, unable to fluently read a first grade story. She has been working with Great Leaps for a year and in the 15 weeks between assessments she has increased her cwpm by 104%. Her last report card put her on the A/B Honor Roll (Gen. Ed.) for the first time in her life.
While we know that students improve quickly with Great Leaps given with fidelity, it is refreshing to see this growth with independent measures. Great Leaps is effective with a variety of students, and if your child is in need of reading help, it’s best to intervene early. Try out Great Leaps Digital for 14 days at digital.greatleaps.com or give us a call at 877-475-3277.
]]>Sign up today to get 25% off off your first month! (automatically applied)
As a parent, you will get to select from one of our trained tutors based on their bio, availability, and eventually the reviews they have gotten from other parents. Each tutor’s bio will explain their credibility, reason behind why they’re tutoring and other interests they have that might help them relate to you and your child. Also listed is their availability, broken down into 15-minute blocks, the length of a Great Leaps Tutoring session. When you create your account, everyone begins with a FREE 15 minute session with the tutor of your choice. This will give you the opportunity to essentially “try out” a tutor for free. That tutor will do a reading screening with your child to see if they would benefit from Great Leaps. They will also provide you with some error analysis on your child’s reading problems, if appropriate, and answer questions you might have about the program.
Now that you feel reassured that this is the right tutor and program for you, take a look at their schedule and choose 5 times per week to connect via video chat for 15-minute tutoring sessions. This will be paid for on a monthly basis, and the times you choose will repeat each week. Schedule times that the child can have access to a laptop or computer with a webcam, a strong internet connection, and a space the child can work that’s mostly free of distractions. Please choose a time you can monitor and assist when needed. The last session of each month you will meet with the tutor who will explain your child’s growth over the past month, any challenges they are working on, and answer questions you might have. If you’re thrilled with the results, (and we’re confident you will be) you can sign up for your next month! You’ll then have the option to switch to another tutor if you choose, OR stick with the same one and continue to strengthen that relationship! If you feel unsure and want our help choosing a tutor, contact Great Leaps and we will happily recommend a tutor that we feel will work best with our child!
As you’re well aware there are MANY reading programs out there, and they all claim to get fantastic results with their students. You might have even spent a ton of money getting your student tested for disabilities and on programs that didn’t work. We hope we can save you some trouble and save your child the frustration and embarrassment of being behind. The simple goal of this article is to show you what differentiates Great Leaps Digital from other popular online reading programs and why we do things a certain way. We recommend you use these criteria when choosing a program so you don’t find yourself a few hundred dollars short with no results and a growing frustration.
Many programs make bold claims but fail to have any 3rd party research done on the program to truly back those claims. This is a very important criteria in determining if a program is legitimate and can be reliably effective or not. Lot’s of programs make big claims based on studies that they funded and results that they filtered which kills their credibility. Unfortunately it can be really difficult to evaluate the studies, but we still recommend you take this into consideration.
Great Leaps Digital Reading Program: Great Leaps Reading has been researched twice, both showing significant gains in fluency. The first study was done by Dr. Cecil Mercer in collaboration with author Kenneth Campbell in 2000 that yielded 2 years of reading growth per year. This was later confirmed in an additional study by Sally Spencer and Franklin Manis in 2010. These were done prior to the addition of our depth of knowledge questions that target comprehension. These studies were also prior to our digital reading program which has been averaging even better results. We are working on getting academic research done on this to confirm what our data has shown ASAP. Students in Great Leaps Digital working 5 times per week have grown an average of 2 years in the first 18 weeks!
Phonics are the building blocks of any language. Additionally, the English language is particularly tricky, so direct instruction in phonics and different letter combinations is essential for a student to build a strong foundation for their reading.
Great Leaps Digital Reading Program: One third of the intervention is dedicated to work in phonics. The exercises start at the most basic level of sounds in isolation and then works sequentially through different letter combinations amounting to 65 phonics exercises in total. This is essential practice for all students but especially students with dyslexia who will likely struggle most through this section.
Students that are behind in reading are often frustrated and have lost their academic confidence. A major aspect of any program for students that are behind is re-motivating them and rebuilding that self confidence. This often translates to other areas of school and will lead to better performance and remove their hatred of school and academics.
Great Leaps Digital Reading Program: First of all, we start students off easy so that they can make goals early and often to build momentum and confidence! In addition, constant positive reinforcement from the instructor establishes a great working relationship that lasts through more challenging material later in the program. Additionally, 15 minute sessions make it easy for a tutor to maintain focus throughout the entire session. And lastly, our fun and age appropriate stories make reading enjoyable again for the students rather than trying to force feed in more content.
This is the basis of “Why” the programs work. The method behind the madness so to speak. Some programs try to implement these just with computer software which often means they have to make compromises and making it ultimately less effective than having a real instructor.
Great Leaps Digital Reading Program: The first most important method is immediate correction. In Great Leaps, the instructor says the correct word or phrase immediately after the student makes an error to build that new neural pathway. Other programs attempt to do this with software that listens and reads it back BUT this is often times inaccurate, less immediate and doesn’t account for a student’s accent. Real instructors use judgement as well to give the student an opportunity to sound it out before making a correction.
We also use modeling. After a student completes an exercise, our instructors pick a section to practice that the student made a few errors on to build speed, accuracy, and proper intonation. First the instructor reads the passage, then instructor and student read them together and finally the student reads it on their own. Purely digital programs also attempt to reconstruct this but in this case it relies on trusting that the student is performing as instructed. These programs can often be cheated by the student so that they can avoid academic performance.
Lastly, we use positive reinforcement that helps change the student’s entire attitude towards academics. Through praise over accomplishments and sequential nature of making goals, the students build self confidence. Additionally, many struggling students likely have built very negative relationships with adults and possibly the parent that has tried to teach them in the past to no avail. This positive relationships often changes that outlook where purely computer based programs aim to reinforce through "gamifying" the intervention so they hope to achieve rewards within the game.
Call the companies customer service and talk with someone in their team about your child. Call them out on their criticisms that you see online and see what they respond with. Are they speaking in circles and dodging the questions OR are they there to answer your questions and help you help your child?
Great Leaps Customer Support: We have a dedicated support member who is a Great Leaps tutor herself! Lisa draws from real experience and an intimate knowledge of the program to give you credible advice and answer any of your questions. Additionally, the author Kenneth Campbell is also available from time to time to field more challenging questions regarding student behavior or teaching strategies for more challenging students.
So it’s important that you get to try something out before making a pretty big financial and time commitment to something new! There’s a good chance you’ve already spent money on having your child evaluated
Great Leaps Digital Reading Program: There is a 14-Day Free Trial of our program that can give you some great insight into how it works and hopefully you can make some progress with your student! If you tutor your own child, it will cost $129 per year (or if you are in a school and have 5+ students $59 per year) and most students finish a program in 2 years. Often times however, parents have a difficult relationship with their child when it comes to schoolwork and they would like a trusted private tutor to ensure better results. We now offer 1-on-1 online tutoring for $299 per month which costs over two years $7,176. I know that sounds like a lot of money, but it’s less than most competitors that offer private tutoring, with results that out perform others.
]]>Reading fluency and comprehension is arguably the most important skill our children learn during their time in school. It impacts nearly every subject matter directly and is crucial for independent learning that comes outside of school and in our adult lives. Sadly, across the country the school systems have been failing students in need of this vital skill. Many of them continue on, year after year, in school while remaining functionally illiterate! This summer, several organizations have had huge success with struggling students and deserve to be highlighted in hopes that others will follow their lead! Here's one of our favorites!
The Sanctuary on 8th Street is attacking this problem head on and winning back the community! Through utilizing the Great Leaps Reading Program and with support from the North American Literacy Initiative, they have had an exciting level of success with their at risk students. The Sanctuary on 8th Street took it upon themselves to organize caring adults to make a real change in the lives of struggling students! They’re now up to over 100 students in their school and summer programs!
Checkout this great video to learn more about their story! (Be warned, this video may elicit an emotional response and inspire YOU to join their mission!)
Sanctuary on 8th Street video from Cal Findeiss on Vimeo.
Last year they truly made GREAT LEAPS! The students worked hard alongside their caring volunteers and staff! Here are the results from 5 months of Great Leaps instruction!
2nd grade students moved 2.48 years ahead!
3rd grade students moved 1.98 years ahead!
4th grade students moved 1.65 years ahead!
5th Grade students moved 2.85 years ahead!
Thanks to each and every school, teacher, parent, volunteer and student who have made Great Leaps happen in 2019! There are exciting things happening with our digital reading program and we’ve continued to hear incredible stories about your students that inspire us to work harder each and every day! CONGRATULATIONS to all of our students working hard out there!
GET STARTED WITH GREAT LEAPS
Get Your 14-Day Free Trial Here!
Or
Contact us About Doing a Pilot Program in Your School or District
(877) 475 - 3277
glinfo@greatleaps.com
]]>Rachel was 6 years old at the start of this video. The youngest of six children, Rachel was heartbroken that she could not read but, as you can see, she was afraid to try. I met with her daily and while it was supposed to be a 15 minute a day session. It often took double that amount of time because Rachel was, as you see, completely shut down.
However, success breeds success and our small steps led to great leaps ahead! As she got goals on her letter sounds we moved into the Great Leaps Phonics program and added on the other two sections as she was able. Rachel learned that she was improving daily - even a few more words or a few less errors was a big deal - and as she did better she skyrocketed up! Part of the philosophy of the Great Leaps Reading program is putting a “W” on the board early and often. When Rachel learned that she could get goals she began to try harder to get them and we were off and running!
NOTHING builds self-esteem like success and your students can succeed if things are broken down into tasks that set them up for success from the beginning. Ask Rachel and the rest of the Great Leaps students and they will all tell you that they are getting better every, single day. Our students with dyslexia deserve to know daily that they are getting better. You can get the same results, we can help! |
- Lisa Skisland, Great Leaps tutor
]]>
But the problem is...
It is obvious that certain capabilities like these come with enormous associated costs. It would be unthinkable to use these for all transportation needs considering how unnecessarily slow, expensive, and demanding on infrastructure and crew they are compared to the other options. Instead of using one of these for a project, people could use something more like 1,000 dump trucks with similar or even less resources. If they need to launch a rocket, the crawler-transporter system is still there in Cape Canaveral operating as it was.
In education, it is often insisted upon that we spare no expense in providing the best but usually as a consequence the reach is limited, and many times what looks good to people, being the most complicated, hardest to train, highest tech, taking the longest time… is not even the method for the job. The top of the line crawler-transporter for instance would fail if it had to quickly transport a load across a long distance, let alone to take a budget and achieve that goal thousands of times over. Spend a trillion dollars and the crawler-transporters still won’t accomplish what some trucks can do.
Why is it that this consideration of precision and purpose does not make it to more emotionally charged topics like the education of children? Children’s success in education is sometimes a lot harder to pinpoint and be held accountable toward than something as purely quantitative as moving a pile of dirt. That does not mean it cannot be measured, and indeed quantitative measurement is of the utmost importance. When solving a problem is both more complicated and more emotionally charged, the notion of efficiency sometimes goes up in smoke because the idea of “cutting corners” would be a moral betrayal of the children. Wishing for it, however, does not make much more money come in, and even in rare cases with nearly unlimited resources, that data-insensitive set of motivations would still lead to avoidable failures. Successful results depend even more on approach than they do on resources.
Of course cheap solutions can sometimes fail to reach what is needed even more often than expensive options. But how do people determine if they are wastefully and slowly moving common truckloads with crawler-transporters or if they really have a rocket and actually need one? That requires the frequent collection of data in the classroom, and an appropriate plan in response. Many students in our experience begin with very poor reading skills and would certainly test deficient and struggle in school, but become remediated at a rapid pace when they are given the Great Leaps reading intervention. For this tragically large and easily preventable population of students, more intensive instructional methods designed for severely dyslexic students would demand more highly trained school resources than exist, and only slow their progress. Often the limitation of options considered leads to many struggling students receiving no one-on-one reading intervention at all, when it could be done in minutes with volunteers or paraprofessionals!
Why is it that there is a shamefully large population of non-readers who are quickly remediated when given a relatively cheap intervention?
School systems are lacking in precision and it is the resources they already have which are not being utilized appropriately. Willing volunteers fill the communities. Education paraprofessionals sometimes fill the copy rooms or wait around looking at their phones, and other times may be occupied with tasks which do not translate to student results. Students fall through the cracks. It was with heavy consideration of what resources are already available that Great Leaps was created. Students can be pulled individually from their regular or special ed classes and only miss 15 minutes of instruction, and the program is proven to be effective with quickly trained paraprofessionals and volunteers. The cost is small compared to what schools are already spending, or what neglect will cost our students themselves down the road, and it pays off quickly when students regain confidence as they reach the skills necessary to actually keep up with and benefit from their normal classes.
In the larger scheme of things Great Leaps is a solution for a very common and terrible problem, but not the solution for everybody or everything, and it is an entire change of mindset necessary for our school systems to be able to precisely target all of the different problems faced. A concerned parent with considerable wealth could afford their child expert private tutoring for any and all subjects, but few people have this wealth and the school system certainly does not have that funding or depth of highly trained staff available for everyone. We could sit around wishing for or even demanding a crawler-transporter type solution for all students, or we could measure and look at data, identify specific problems, and advocate flexible solutions using the resources available. Children are falling through the cracks and we need to act now.
These little balls of motivation will definitely get your students exited to learn!
Ingredients:
1 cup. Old-fashioned rolled oats
1/2 cup. Mini chocolate chips
1/4 cup. Chopped peanuts
1/4 cup. Raisins
1/4 cup. Mini M&Ms
3/4 cup. Creamy peanut butter, melted
1 tbsp. Honey
Kosher salt
Directions
Places that I have remotely used Great Leaps!
Now, this is nowhere near a comprehensive list. When I first started tutoring Great Leaps it was before the digital version of the program had been released. I would work with my student at his kitchen table on my way home from my day job. Well, usually. Sometimes he would forget and I would find him a few blocks away at the park. Books and timer in hand I would call to him and he would tell his friends he would be right back and we would do our probes right there in the park. Or if we missed a day during the week we would work together at church (I figured it was okay to do Great Leaps work on Sunday- if it’s okay to heal someone on the Sabbath surely it’s okay to teach them to read!)
And then that student moved away, several hundred miles away. And naturally we stopped working Great Leaps together. Only he hadn’t made it all the way to the finish line of independent reading and he slid back again. With the advent of the digital program we once again began working together, only now the places we could be had grown exponentially! Now, I could be in a hotel room and he could be at football practice. I could be home in my office and he could be at camp. The possibilities were endless.
As were the unique ways we met challenges. When I first started using Great Leaps Digital my student did not have internet at home. So, for the first two months I was using the digital, and he was using the book form of the program and we used a cell phone to connect the two of us. I had the advantages that digital tutoring offers (Great Leaps Digital does the charting, or record keeping, for you) which was a great benefit when using a phone to connect with my student and because I was using a tablet I didn’t have to worry about how to turn pages while holding a phone. My student was able to use the book form of the program to work from, enabling him to continue working on his reading when and where he wanted without internet. The results we got were exactly what the results historically are when you are working across a table with a student—he jumped more than two years in his reading grade level in those first two months!
A few weeks ago I was in New York City for business and there was no way I was going to be back home in time to work with my students. I try very hard not to cancel and, as the trip was last minute, I did not have a substitute teacher lined up (another thing that is enhanced by Great Leaps Digital - a substitute teacher need not be local to you or to the students, the world is a lot smaller with the digital version of Great Leaps!) As it was raining on and off I had to go inside but there was room to set up in Starbucks at their Times Square location and set up we did. Grabbed the hotspot off of my phone to run the computer, plugged in headphones to cancel out the background noise for my kiddos and we were off! My students did not miss their sessions and I got to have a good cup of coffee and Junior’s Cheesecake while I was in the city that doesn’t sleep!
Truth is, with the addition of Great Leaps Digital the possibilities are endless. Have a student that is home for an extended amount of time? No problem. Have a shortage of reading specialists for your schools? No problem, instead of tutors traveling to the students in each of your schools that need help you can connect them via technology you already have and they can work with students in each school without having to leave their office! Tutoring a child that spends summers with the other parent? Now they do not have to forego their reading remediation to spend time with their family. Each session takes around ten minutes of their day and is not burdensome no matter where you are!
Give us a shout to let me know the different places you have used Great Leaps! My most unique location is Times Square and the student that “travels” the farthest to work with me is 1000 miles south of my office. Where are you and where are your students? With Great Leaps Digital distance is no longer a factor when finding students to tutor!
By Lisa Skisland
]]>Check out the Great Leaps Language Growth for Emergent Readers book if your student is in second grade or below or go to the Language Growth for Grades 3-8 book if your student is older. With sections on Phonemic Awareness, Morphemic Awareness and Rhyming as well as lessons in building vocabulary and eliciting expressive language the Great Leaps Language Growth Program can address many of the other areas that your student may be having a hard time in.
And for our students who are struggling in math we have a full line of math interventions. Imagine spending 2-3 minutes a day working on math with your student and them actually learning their times tables! We have math books for the basic operations as well as two books on fractions and a book on decimals. Click here to find the Great Leaps Oral Calculation books if your student can use some help in getting those math facts to really stick.
Let’s make this school year be the one that your child shines their brightest in all subjects!
By Lisa Skisland
]]>Here is a quick list of what is an error and what to do for each:
Immediately say the correct word and click it as an error.
Say the correct word and click it as an error.
Say the word they skipped (include a word or two around it) and click it as an error.
Redirect them and click the first word of the line to mark an error.
Say the section correctly and click a word before or after the error to mark it.
The following are NOT errors:
For example, saying ‘seester’ instead or ‘sister’ or saying ‘pin’ instead of ‘pen’, depending upon where you are from, are not errors. Model the correct pronunciation but do not mark accents as errors.
As we model the lines smoothly and briskly our students will catch on and smooth out.
Again, this is something that we do not mark as an error but instead, we address it in modeling. If a student reads a section with wrong or flat expression model a line or two of that section for them and work on them reading it just the way you do.
Accuracy matters when reading - imagine reading a passage with 10% of the words missing from it. Be consistent and those errors will disappear as fluent and accurate reading takes their place! Accurate and fluent reading is a key component in comprehension as well. It is difficult to draw the meaning from separate words.
By Lisa Skisland
]]>Fresh out of college, Jake Hackett landed in an old high school and what he saw there broke his heart. There were kids in their late teens that were reading below the second-grade level and there was, like in most high schools, little if anything that was being done to teach reading to these teenagers.
Instead of just bemoaning the fact, he did something about it. He gathered some volunteers, got donations from the community, and did a summer program. 20 kids, all reading at or below the second-grade level, came to the Grady High School Reading Camp each day. They did Great Leaps in the morning and team building exercises in the afternoons, all over summer vacation.
The program looked like summer programs but here was the magic. All 20 kids reached independent reading by the end of the summer. Not to mention that disciplinary rates with those students went down 90%.
He did it again the next summer with a new group and had the same results. And again! Four years in a row! He took new batches of kids through his reading camp and every year a new batch of high school students had their lives changed by learning to read!
No matter what age your student is, it is never too late to learn how to read! Great Leaps changed lives for high school students back then and it still is today. Loving people like Jake, like yourself, can still change the world for your students. Thank you for caring enough to do so!
Here's a link to the video of his program made at the time "Grady Summer Reading Camp"
By Lisa Skisland
]]>The other changes are pretty impressive as well-- even more impressive in some ways. He is not only reading better but gaining skills that will help him continue to read better. He is learning to focus in on the places that give him a hard time. For example, we spent a very long amount of time on one probe in the Phrases section-- almost two weeks and I had actually spoken to Ken for about half an hour on what I could do to help Devonté get through it. The page had 22 words that had 'f's in them -- of, off and for are incredibly hard for Devonté to distinguish from each other and that's a whole lot of places to stumble when one error means you do it again the next day. D is sensitive and he felt like he was never going to get it. He rode it out though. I used some of the suggestions Ken had, kept hacking away at it, and did not settle for part way. We spent maybe and extra minute or so a day working on some specific ways to help him beat that page and you know what? Not only did he do it (and that was a beautiful day right there!) but now, two weeks and several probes ahead in each section, when he sees those words and others that he struggles with he is very deliberate and focused with them. He reads better because of that stubborn probe. He is more focused because of it. He is less sensitive about making mistakes because he is understanding what I said from the beginning, that mistakes are opportunities to learn. He is growing not only in his reading but in his attitude about reading and it is beautiful to see! Walked in to do Great Leaps with him the other day and there were two school library books on the table. They were chapter books and definitely not low level readers at that. I asked him about them and they were not assigned by the school but picked out by him!
This is not me bragging on my own ability here-- I did not write this stuff, not my program.... This is me bragging on my nephew (who, when I arrived at the park, told his friends at the park that he'd be back in a few minutes because he had something to do and came happily to a bench to work with me today!) and me bragging on the program-- I am truly blessed to be tutoring with Great Leaps!
By Lisa Skisland
]]>Whether your child is seven or fourteen this can seem like an overwhelming problem and one that seems to show up in more than just the classroom. Kids that can’t read know they can’t read and the last thing they want to do is admit it, leading to behavioral problems going hand in hand with the academic issues that arise—anything to avoid admitting that they cannot decode the words on the page. And unfortunately, while there are many things that are taught successfully in group situations such as classrooms, because of the vastly different proficiency levels in a classroom it is almost impossible to help a struggling reader catch up. They need help, individualized help, and it needs to come sooner rather than later. Once a student is in third grade the large majority of their new vocabulary words are gained through reading. Without that growing vocabulary it is easy to see how they just slip further and further behind. In the United States, approximately 19% of graduating seniors cannot easily read and understand a newspaper. Those are the ones that graduate…
To watch your child struggle with reading is heartbreaking. Homework is a nightmare for everyone involved—I have watched time and time again students working until ten and eleven o’clock every night because they just can’t read well enough to do the work. It is frustrating for the student and for the parent as well. Report cards are a nightmare. Oftentimes the school offers programs that do not get it done and you feel helpless as you watch your child getting deeper and deeper into the hole in all subject areas.
As a parent you know your child needs an intervention.
And I am here to tell you that in most cases, you can be that lifeboat for them with ten minutes a day.
Ten minutes: Enough time to pack their lunch, comment on a Facebook post, eat a sandwich, or Teach them to read.
Yes, Great Leaps has been used in classrooms for over twenty years but it has also been used by lunch ladies, janitors, parents, grandparents, paraprofessionals, college students and a wide array of other groups of people for that much time as well. When Great Leaps was being written in a middle school in rural Florida Ken Campbell specifically set out to write a program that did not need a professional teacher to administer it and he has kept the program that way to this day. If you can read, you can teach reading. And because he knew that the human attention span is about 6-8 minutes he wrote a program that fits within that timeframe (I say ten minutes because I figure you need to grab the book and maybe clear off a spot on the table. Ten minutes is the most it should take you!)
Ogden Lindsley, the father of Precision Teaching, believed strongly that one minute a day was more useful than an hour a week. 22 years of Great Leaps data concurs. The average growth using Great Leaps is almost two years per school year. One third of those students will jump several grades in the first nine months of the program! And the best part is that you can indeed do this with your child with the program and ten minutes a day!
Where is your ten minutes? Maybe when you first get home as a way to spend special time with your child one on one? Or after dinner, so you can end your Great Leaps time with dessert? Maybe your ten minutes will vary between waiting for a sibling to be done with soccer practice some afternoons and at home on other days—the program is portable and with ten minutes being all you need you can adapt it to work into your own special situation.
Ten meaningful minutes. One on one attention with your child that can literally change their lives one leap at a time. Let’s make it happen!
By Lisa Skisland
]]>