The initial Reading Skills Program menu has three selections, which address fluency and decoding. We use the SRA Corrective Reading curriculum. You can order those books directly from the publisher, or we can send you these books at our cost. We chose this curriculum over 20 years ago because of its rigorous pedagogy. Our charts reveal how smoothly the stories increase in complexity, with just a few new sounds and spellings introduced in each passage. When you sign up, have your student read the Diagnostic Page. We can then assign the appropriate Grade Level materials and set up your menu, consisting of three fluencies:
The Timer for Reading Passages. The Passage Number, previous scores, and aim are listed to the left of the timer, which is started by pressing the Space Bar.
In the National Institutes’ search for effective “Scientific Research Based Interventions, (1983) the SRA Corrective Reading program yielded the best results of all programs tested. Your school is likely not using this curriculum because its classroom approach requires rigorous training and the stories were written at least 50 years ago. It is more likely that they have chosen one of the other currentlyupdated and “approved” programs like Read Naturally, Wilson, Reading Recovery, or Read 360. Each of these programs has decoding and fluency activities which are part of the routines in each remedial class. However, to be effective, these components must be practiced not just in class, but a few times daily, every day – which is rarely possible. Parallel to your school’s remedial activities, CyberSlate Reading Fluencies use the SRA materials. which also introduce the sounds and spellings in a developmentally organized way, so when your student completes the CyberSlate fluencies, he is being introduced to sounds and combinations in roughly the same order as most of the remedial programs. This parallel introduction will rarely create obstacles because the items being learned are not synchronized. A far greater advantage will accrue because the student is getting vital extra practice, and if the two approaches are not compatible, the conflict will show immediately on the Celeration Chart and an immediate adjustment can be made. And by the way, although the SRA Stories were written over 50 years ago, they do not refer to events in history, and are entertaining reading.
Sometimes a student’s screening and charts will indicate that he is struggling to discriminate the sounds. If so, we will recommend a phonemic awareness program based on Orton-Gillingham rubrics. CyberSlate’s phonemic awareness program is called Fluent Auditory Discrimination. If the charts indicate that the student can discriminate sounds and signs but is not fluent in doing so, CyberSlate will add on a series of fluencies to practice the sounds, and recognize sound changes within words (Transformers.)