KESC English Reading Program

All of KESC middle school & junior high reading tutoring programs are aligned to the State standard and follow the standards and recommendations by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), the International Reading Association (IRA, and National Institute for Literacy. Research by the National Reading Panel (NRP) of this group showed that:

1. Teaching children to manipulate phonemes in words was highly effective under a variety of teaching conditions with a variety of learners across a range of grade and age levels
2. Teaching phonemic awareness (PA) to children significantly improves their reading more than instruction that lacks any attention to PA.
3. Systematic phonics instruction produces significant benefits for students in kindergarten through 6th grade and for children having difficulty learning to read.
4. Older children receiving phonics instruction were better able to decode and spell words and to read text orally, but their comprehension of text was not significantly improved.
5. Systematic synthetic phonics instruction was significantly more effective in improving disabled and low socioeconomic status (SES) children’s alphabetic

KESC reading program incorporates the above research findings to customize appropriate reading units to help your child develop and apply reading strategies in the following key areas

1. Alphabetic (Phonemic Awareness (PA) Instruction, Phonics Instruction),
2. Fluency,
3. Comprehension (Vocabulary Instruction, Text Comprehension Instruction).
4. Vocabulary building

PA instruction provides children with essential foundational knowledge in the alphabetic system. Characteristics of PA training found to be most effective in enhancing PA, reading, and spelling skills include:

1. Explicitly and systematically teaching children to manipulate phonemes with letters,
2. Focusing the instruction on one or two types of phoneme manipulations rather than multiple types, and
3. Teaching Children in small groups.

Phonics instruction is a way of teaching reading that stresses the acquisition of letter-sound correspondences and their use in reading and spelling. The primary focus of phonics instruction includes:

• Helping beginning readers understand how letters are linked to sounds (phonemes) to form letter-sound correspondences and spelling patterns and
• Helping them learn how to apply this knowledge in their reading.

Fluency

Fluent readers are able to read orally with speed, accuracy, and proper expression. Fluency is one of several critical factors necessary for reading comprehension but is often neglected in the classroom. Recent research on the efficacy of certain approaches to teaching fluency has led to increased recognition of its importance in the classroom and to changes in instructional practices.
Kamas approach to improving fluency follows NRP recommendations which include the fact that reading practice is an important contributor to fluency and can be taught by

1. Guided repeated oral reading which encourages students to read passages orally with systematic and explicit guidance and feedback from the teacher, and
2. Independent silent reading encourages students to read silently on their own, inside and outside the classroom, with minimal guidance or feedback.

Comprehension

Comprehension is critically important to the development of children’s reading skills and therefore to the ability to obtain an education. Reading comprehension is essential to lifelong learning for all subjects. Kamas approach to improving comprehension follows NRP recommendations themes in the research on the development of reading comprehension skills, namely:

1. Cmprehension is an active process that requires an intentional and thoughtful interaction between the reader and the text;
2. There is link between students’ achievement and the teachers ability to better equip students to develop and apply reading comprehension strategies to enhance understanding.

KESC Reading program ensures that learned skills are built on knowledge of previous skills and new skills are introduced when a previous prerequisite skill is mastered from phonemics to phonics to comprehension to fluency.
KESC Middle school & junior high reading tutoring program provides more intensive academic enrichment to help the student advance and improve in the following:

Word Knowledge
Critical reading skills
Reading Comprehension
Vocabulary
Technical writing
Fluency

KESC uses in-house and state approved assessment tools to determine the student's competency in reading fluency, the impact of instruction and its tutoring strategies on the student’s learning, and continuous academic competency leve in Reading. See more details of KESC's plan for Cognitive Diagnostics Assessment

CALL KESC at 412 894-8595 or email kescinfo@KESC.com for more details. We Guarantee that 45 hours of KESC tutoring will change your child's Reading ability for life