Reading and Spelling Program: Fundamental Building Blocks of Academic Success
Hardy Reading/Spelling Program provides the four essential skills needed for reading success:
1. Print Tracking: Print tracking is the underlying processing skill needed to see the words on the page as you move your eyes across each line of print. Print tracking weaknesses can cause your child to add extra letters to words, skip words, or miss parts of words. These difficulties may require your child to read a line over and over again to understand it since all the information is not getting through.
2. Automatic Word Recognition: In the early stages of reading and spelling, students learn to match letter shapes with the 44 sounds of the English language using phonics to sound out each word. This practice develops neural pathways for the sounds and letter patterns used in reading. Over time, these pathways become more efficient so sounding out each word is no longer required to read and spell the words. This is called automaticity.
Strong readers and spellers have developed automaticity so they quickly recognize sight words as well as patterned, phonetic words without guessing or sounding them out each time they see them.
This automaticity in connecting phonetic sounds with letter patterns and visual memory of sight words gives your child the necessary foundation for tackling familiar and unfamiliar words while reading text.
3. Comprehension: Simply recognizing words and reading them accurately isn’t enough for reading success. The meaning of the words must quickly create a mental picture. If your child is slow to picture the meaning of the information, they need to re-read it and listen to the words in their mind over and over to convert the words into meaning. Without the ability to quickly grasp the meaning, your child will struggle because they miss critical pieces of information and comprehension of the assignment takes so long that they become frustrated before finishing.
4. Fluency: Fluency is the ability to read easily and understand what you’re reading so that reading is a pleasant experience that makes learning fun. Fluent readers can use reading to immerse themselves in new experiences that help them become lifelong learners who are able to develop new areas of interest and easily add new skills to enrich their work and lives.
The Hardy Reading/Spelling Program starts with an assessment to determine how well students track print, understand word patterns, recognize sight words, and comprehend word meanings.
The Hardy Reading/Spelling Program designs a ‘blueprint’ plan to address weak skill areas and support development of essential reading/spelling skills as students work toward becoming fluent readers and spellers.
The formula for fluency is :
PT + A + C = F Print Tracking + Automaticity + Comprehension = Fluency
Reading/Spelling Programs:
Print Tracking Program:
Computer guided training helps your child practice smoothly moving eyes across text and gives reading practice to check on development of vocabulary and comprehension.
Automaticity Program: Wordquest Reading/Spelling Program
Hardy Wordquest is a unique kind of reading program that combines choreographed hand and foot movements on a dance mat with computerized reading lessons that teach the word patterns and sight words your child must master and immediately recognize to read and spell successfully. By developing automaticity, your child will be able to read more efficiently and concentrate on the meaning of what is being read rather than struggling to recognize words on the page.
A daily video will lead your child through an easy-to-follow dance of specifically-timed hand and foot movements done in conjunction with the reading lesson. Every lesson is structured to emphasize the critical sight and patterned words every student must master to be a successful reader.
After their movement-based lesson, your child can go to the video library to choose games that reinforce the day’s lesson and give them practice with learning the day’s words. They can play interactive reading games, review vocabulary, or practice for their post-quiz.
When your child encounters a word that is difficult to remember, they can use our ‘marching tool’ for reinforcement to help cement it in memory before completing the lesson.
Finally, your child will take a quick quiz on the words they learned from their video lesson. The quizzes are scored as soon as they are completed and feedback about which words have been mastered and which ones need more practice is given instantly.
When your child has mastered every word, they earn a ‘Star of Excellence’. They have the opportunity to practice any words they missed until they master them and get them correct. Once all of the words are mastered, your child receives a ‘Star of Excellence’ on their ‘Reward Board’.
Comprehension Program: Picture This!
Two kinds of memory govern comprehension – auditory and visual. They work together in a two-step process when we read.
Step #1: First you quickly ‘hear’ the word in your head.
Step #2: Then you immediately translate that information into a mental image that ‘explains’ the meaning. This is why some children have difficulty remembering the ‘small’ words that don’t have readily available mental pictures like the words of, if, or….
If your child gets stuck in the first step and has difficulty picturing the information, comprehension will be difficult.
Hardy Comprehension Program: Picture This! strengthens your child’s ability to use mental pictures to remember information, follow directions, and answer questions.
Fluency Program:
Fluency is a skill that your child develops step by step as print tracking, automaticity, and comprehension improve. Computerized fluency programs combine the three essential reading skills – print tracking, automaticity, and comprehension – to improve fluency as your child moves toward reading at grade level.
The formula for successful reading is:
PT + A + C = F
Print Tracking + Automaticity + Comprehension = Fluency