Great Leaps Reading Program

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Great Leaps Reading Program

• Lindsey Calabrese
• Emily Lewandowski

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What is 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

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T/F

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

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Reading Competence

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

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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

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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?

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Error Correction

• 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

• Errors are
• Verb tense changes
• Loss of place
• Omitted lines/words

• Errors are not
• Dialectical differences
• Speech impairments
• Self-corrections

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T/F - An error is

• (7) Self-correction
• (8) Verb-tense change
• (9) Omitted line

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  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.

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Name the three major areas that Great Leaps
targets.

• (10)
• (11)
• (12)

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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

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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. 

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Stories

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

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Monitoring Progress

• - Student progress is monitored, charted, and
  rewarded on a daily basis

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Name one advantage to a program like this?

• (13)

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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

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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

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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 instructors
  manual, phonics probes, sight word lists, and
  oral reading selections

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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 childs social
  level, not reading level

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How much do these cost.

• (14) Primary
• (15) Middle School

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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?

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Contact Information

• Diarmuid, Inc,
• P.O. Box 357580
• Gainsville, FL 32635
• US Toll Free (877) GRLEAPS (457-3277)
• info_at_greatleaps.com
• www.greatleaps.com

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Bonus.

• What state is Great Leaps located?