Alphabet Skills - Beginning Phonics - Comprehension - Love of Reading

Goals
In this program, your child will build the foundation for the first critical years in school. All students in this program experience success and gain confidence, as they learn and practice the alphabet, beginning phonics, and comprehension skills.

Our long term goal is to help you make sure your child becomes an avid reader. Children who read for pleasure, outside of school, become strong readers and confident students, and are able to enrich their lives through contact with great literature.

Instructor
Instructors are drawn from the faculty of the Institute of Reading Development. Curriculum design and instructor training are supervised by Paul Copperman, a Presidential appointee to the National Council on Educational Research, and the author of Taking Books to Heart: How to Develop a Love of Reading in Your Child.

Format
This lively class, engaging for both you and your child, is an ideal early classroom experience for young learners. The program is conducted as a workshop, a format that facilitates full participation and allows the instructor to provide individual attention and the appropriate level of challenge and encouragement for each student. Class time is divided into short segments, each devoted to an enjoyable activity, such as reading, discussion, games, dramatization, music, or art activities centered on great children's literature. At home, students use workbooks and great children's literature to continue to practice.

The class meets for one hour and 15 minutes, once a week for five weeks. Your child will practice at home for 20-30 minutes, four times per week.

Skills

Alphabet Skills & Beginning Phonics:
The program includes instruction in alphabet skills and beginning phonics. This instruction is provided in class, as well as through the highly successful and engaging workbook and audio CD, Pole and Vole Stories. This workbook and CD provide phonics instruction in an adventure story format.

See sample pages from Pole and Vole Stories (PDF document).

Comprehension Skills:
Students learn to relate the characters and events of great children's literature to their own lives. In this way our students become active readers with strong comprehension. Students also learn to imagine more clearly what is described by the author, to identify more completely with the thoughts and feelings of characters, and to actively anticipate what comes next in the story.

Materials
All of the materials we use are designed to build beginning reading skills and encourage a love of reading. Students receive a phonics workbook, Pole and Vole Stories. This beautifully illustrated workbook (with accompanying CD's) will hold your child's interest and generate enthusiastic participation because it teaches beginning phonics skills using adventure stories, characters, and music. Participants also receive a Course Workbook and Parent Manual, which contains in-class exercises, homework activities for each week of the course, and, for parents, a detailed overview of all skills and activities contained in the program.

See sample pages from the Course Workbook and Parent Manual (PDF document).

You and your child will also receive the Reading Development Booklist, an important tool for building strong reading skills and the lifelong habit of reading for pleasure. The Reading Development Booklist summarizes hundreds of the very best children's books. By using the recommendations, which are organized by level of difficulty, you and your child will know what books to choose and what sequence to read them in. Your child's instructor will evaluate your child's stage of reading development and provide guidance on where your child should begin in the booklist.

See sample pages from Reading Development Booklist (PDF document).

Tuition is $229.

Registration & Information
For more information or to register, call the enrollment staff at the Institute of Reading Development at 1-800-978-9596, 8a.m. - 10p.m. Monday-Thursday, 8a.m. - 9p.m. Friday and 10a.m. - 4p.m. Saturday.

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