The Red Ladder, Inc. is proud to present Help Me Read™ - a strong tool to help students learn to read. According to the U.S. Department of Education, “Evidence strongly suggests that students who fail to read on grade level by the fourth grade have a greater likelihood of dropping out of school and a lifetime of diminished success.”

Reading First, the most significant reading reform, was created by President George Bush and Congress. This is the centerpiece of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. The goal of Reading First is to ensure all children can read at the third-grade level by the end of grade 3. Help Me Read™ has the same goal – students reading on grade level by the third grade!

Two events helped to lay the groundwork for Reading First – the passage of the Reading Excellence Act in 1998 and the release of the National Reading Panel Teaching Children to Read report in 2000.

The National Reading Panel found students need to be taught the following skills to become good readers:

• Phonemic awareness
• Phonics
• Fluency
• Vocabulary
• Text comprehension

Help Me Read™ targets all five skills.

For additional research information, please see Research Base for Reading Instruction.

Also, check out the additional graphs on the increases in reading proficiency when students used the Help Me Read™ program.

What Works in Reading?

Phonemic Awareness Skills refer to the ability to manipulate the sounds that make up spoken language. Children who have these skills have an easier time learning to read and spell than children who have few or none.

Help Me Read™ systematically introduces students to letter/sound associations through many different activities including:

• oral blending
• oral segmentation
• recognizing beginning sounds
• isolating sounds
• recognizing ending sounds
• sound manipulations

Phonics Skills refer to the understanding of relationships between letters and sounds. Phonics instruction significantly improves children's word recognition, spelling, and reading comprehension.

Help Me Read™ provides many opportunities for students to learn and practice phonics skills through:

• identifying rhyme
• generating rhyme
• producing rhyme
• identifying and working syllables
• analyzing letter-sound relationships
• identifying and reading word families
• writing letters

Fluency Skills refer to the ability to read a text with accuracy, speed, and expression. Fluency provides a bridge between word recognition and comprehension.

Help Me Read™ builds in fluency practice in every grade level kit. It also has a built-in assessment system to help teachers monitor student progress. Some examples are:

• reading and rereading text
• oral reading practice
• reading word lists/ phrases
• reading one-on-one with an adult
• timed readings
• miscue analysis and running records

Vocabulary refers to the words one needs to know to communicate effectively. Vocabulary is developed indirectly – engaging in oral language, listening to others read, and reading on their own. It is also developed directly by teaching individual words and word learning strategies.

Help Me Read™ focuses on vocabulary development by using the following activities:

• identifying word parts
• identifying and reading word families
• use of context clues
• oral reading
• listening and following directions
• word learning strategies

Comprehension refers to the ability to understand and gain meaning from what has been read. Comprehension is the reason for reading. Children will be more motivated to read when they understand what they are reading.

Help Me Read™ incorporates comprehension activities into every grade level kit. These activities are purposeful and active:

• answering questions
• question/answer relationships
• story structure/order
• summarizing
• predicting
• mental imagery

So - What Works in Reading? HELP ME READ™