Great Leaps Reading Program

1. Great Leaps Reading Program Lindsey Calabrese Emily Lewandowski

2. Whatis it? • Not designed to specifically teach reading • Supplementary reading program for individuals of all ages who are at risk for or have significant reading problems • Students measured beyond the 4th/5th grade reading level should not need Great Leaps • Emphasizes fluency, with the assumption that comprehension will improve as the child becomes a more fluent reader • Includes progress monitoring chart

3. T/F • (1) This program is designed to teach reading. • (2) Students reading beyond the fifth grade level would not benefit from this program.

4. Reading Competence • Efficient automatic word identification, allows the brain to focus more attention on comprehension and less on physically reading the word

5. How it works • Teachers, paraprofessionals, or volunteers administer the lessons • One-to-one fashion • 5-7 minute practice sessions • Minimum of three days per week • Student reads one timed reading from each section including phonics, sight phrases, and stories • Each reading is timed for one-minute • Goal is for the student to read each page with no more than 2 errors

6. Questions • (3) Minimum days a week needed? • (4) How much time does the examiner allow for each probe? • (5) How many different categories of probes are there? • (6) What is the error goal?

7. Error Correction • Errors are: • Verb tense changes • Loss of place • Omitted lines/words • Errors are not: • Dialectical differences • Speech impairments • Self-corrections • Immediate • Model the correct response • Never punish errors. Instead encourage the student to “sound it out” or “give it a try” or ask, “What do you think it is?” • When mastery is attained on a page, the student “leaps” to the next page of slightly more difficult material

8. T/F - An error is…… (7) Self-correction (8) Verb-tense change (9) Omitted line

9.   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 • (3) Reading Fluency: using age-appropriate stories specifically designed to build reading fluency, reading motivation, and proper intonation.

10. Name the three major areas that Great Leaps targets. • (10) • (11) • (12)

11. Phonics • Identifying sounds in isolation • Sounding out cvc (rat), cvcc (rack), and cvce (rake) patterns • Enables students to decode unknown words with a high degree of success

12. The Sight Phrases • 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 • Uses frequently missed site words such as these, them, of, off, from, etc. 

13. Stories • Increase reading fluency • Motivate students to want to continue reading • Uses point of view, humor, rhyme, and rhythm

14. Monitoring Progress - Student progress is monitored, charted, and rewarded on a daily basis

15. Name one advantage to a program like this? • (13)

16. Advantages • Easily implemented • Can be used successfully by a wide variety of professionals, paraprofessionals, and volunteers • Requires only 5-10 minutes of intervention per day per student • Student progress is monitored, charted, and rewarded, thus increasing student motivation • Inexpensive

17. Cautions • Great Leaps is designed to be a fluency-building program, not a complete reading program. • The Five Big Ideas include: phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension • Phonics are not taught explicitly • practiced within a fluency context • Phonemic awareness, vocabulary, and comprehension are not directly addressed • However, Great Leaps stresses that increased fluency can produce broad benefits in reading ability, including improved grade-level reading scores and increased reading comprehension

18. Training & Ordering • Training videos and/or trainers provide a 3 hour initial training for Great Leaps • Most users find the instructions which come with the program adequate to begin implementation without training • Assistance is available through direct contact with the authors via phone or electronic mail • One Great Leaps Reading Package per instructor • For each level, kits contain an instructor’s manual, phonics probes, sight word lists, and oral reading selections

19. Program Levels (& Cost) Primary (K-2): $66.00 Intermediate (3-5): $110.00 Middle School (6-8): $110.00 High School (9-12): $110.00 Adult : $110.00 • Purchase the program at your child’s social level, not reading level

20. How much do these cost…. • (14) Primary • (15) Middle School

21. Which level would you buy? • (16) Fifth grader half-way through his/her fifth grade year of school? • (17) First grade student? • (18) Ninth grade student reading at a fifth grade level? • (19) Tenth grade student reading at a seventh grade level?

22. Contact Information • Diarmuid, Inc, P.O. Box 357580 Gainsville, FL 32635 • US Toll Free: (877) GRLEAPS (457-3277) • info@greatleaps.com • www.greatleaps.com

23. Bonus…. • What state is Great Leaps located?