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Great Leaps Reading uses proven
instructional tactics with powerful motivators to remediate a variety of
reading problems. Efficient in both cost and time expenditure, Great
Leaps Reading is widely implemented across the country. Students with
reading problems have responded with significant gains.
Students work individually with an instructor and the materials for less
than ten minutes per day. The materials
are age appropriate
and comprehensive.
(Depending on the severity of the reading problem, one to two school
years is the average length on intervention.)
Great Leaps is divided into three major areas: (1) Phonics: developing
and mastering essential sight-sound relationships and/or sound awareness
skills; (2) Sight Phrases: mastering sight words while developing and
improving focusing skills; and (3) Reading Fluency: using
age-appropriate stories specifically designed to build reading fluency,
reading motivation, and proper
intonation.
The Phonics section takes students from identifying sounds in isolation to being
able to sound out cvc, cvcc, and cvce patterns. This enables students to
(with contextual clues) decode unknown words with a high degree of
success.
The Sight Phrases section uses phrases to teach sight words while significantly
increasing focusing skills. Teaching high frequency words in isolation
has not worked for most students with reading problems. The Great Leaps
approach of using sight phrases helps to minimize the age-old problems
of readers continuously missing words such as these, them, of; off,
from, etc. Great
Leaps was the first major published program to actively use "sight
phrases" for the express purpose of sight (high frequency) word
generalization.
The Reading Fluency sections contains stories designed and written by Kenneth Campbell to not
only significantly increase reading fluency, but also motivate students
to want to continue reading. Use of point of view, humor, rhyme, and
rhythm all contribute to a powerful fluency-building intervention. As
students achieve goals in each area of concern, they advance to a more
challenging next step. For the first time in their lives, many students
begin experiencing consistent reading success.
Great Leaps Reading has been researched and used successfully in schools
across the country. Great Leaps has the support of special education and
reading specialists in many universities. One of the differences of
Great Leaps is that decisions have been built into the materials,
allowing parents, volunteers, and classroom assistants (as well as
professional staff) to successfully implement current research-based
practices.
Great Leaps is not complicated. A typical training session takes about
three hours. Most users find the instructions which come with the
program adequate to begin implementation without training. Although the
appearance and strategies appear simple, Great Leaps has its origins in
over thirty years of instructional research and practice from the world
of precision assessment and teaching.
For more information or to volunteer,
please send a message using the
contact page.
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