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Reading Revolution™
Methodology Overview
Reading Revolution™ offers a truly revolutionary, uniquely effective approach to teaching reading and spelling. At the heart of Reading Revolution™ is the understanding that people learn in many different ways: modern learning theory recognizes at least seven "intelligences" or pathways to learning. Our activity-based methodology engages every intelligence and learning style by incorporating songs, physical activities and interactive games, as well as the use of manipulatives, Activity Book pages, and numerous language opportunities.
Building on a thorough, systematic progression of skills, our program transforms any student into a confident and enthusiastic reader. The resulting program is fun, fast, and effective - even for the most challenged learners. Reading Revolution™ truly "Leaves No Child Behind." Reading Revolution™ has proven to be extremely effective among students with substantial language disabilities, severe dyslexia, dyspraxia, audio and visual processing disorders, mild autism and Downs Syndrome.
Reading Revolution's™ curriculum teaches phonemic awareness, reading and spelling words, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension using explicit, systematic and cumulative strategies and techniques that give students the skills and motivation they need to read with confidence. The following are a sample of some of the Reading Revolution™ strategies and techniques.
PHONEMIC AWARENESS
Definition: The ability to focus on and manipulate the sounds that make up words.
Strategies used to master this skill:
- Stretching out sounds and words
- Identifying first, last, and medial sounds using Sound Movements which are specially designed Reading Revolution™ hand gestures
- Pronouncing letter sounds accurately and differentiating between similar sounds using Sound Movements
- Orally manipulating sounds in words by using a ball game to delete, add or substitute sounds in words.
READING AND SPELLING WORDS (Decoding and Encoding)
Definitions
Decoding: The ability to connect the single-letter shapes to the letter sound (as well as connecting sounds to paired letters and letter clusters), and to slide these sounds together to make words.
Encoding: to say a word and to write the letters, (as well as pairs of letters and clusters of letters) that make up that word.
Strategies used to master this skill:
- Using Sound Movements to anchor the letter symbol to the sound it makes
- Using Sound Movements to help students slide the sounds together to form words and to spell words
- Becoming detectives to discover patterns in phonetically regular and phonetically irregular words by investigating clues and discovering the spelling patterns
- Developing Memory Hooks to remember the spelling of one-of-a-kind words
FLUENCY
Definition: The ability to read text smoothly and effortlessly using appropriate phrasing, following punctuation, and reading with appropriate expression.
Strategies used to master this skill:
- Training students' eyes to visually track text, lining up letters in reading order, seeing more than one word at a time, seeing phrases, and helping the eyes move from one line of text to the next using a Reading Revolution™ technique called Finger Sliding
- Obey Punctuation Marks using a Reading Revolution™ technique called Road Signs
- Reading with expression using a Reading Revolution™ technique called Word Coloring
VOCABULARY AND COMPREHENSION
Definition: The ability to understand words and text and remember what is being read.
Strategies used to master this skill:
- Attaching meaning to words and text at every step in the reading skills progression. Strengthening vocabulary and language development by giving students the skills necessary to note, sequence and summarize events in text using a Reading Revolution™ technique called Picture Notes, a form of graphic notation to put text into long-term memory
- Formulating questions about the text to clarify what they read
- Experiencing and imagining text using all the senses
Reading Revolution's™ methodology works for all students regardless of socioeconomic status, reading level, or literacy background.
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