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Rehabilitation |
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Stars Early Reader Program for Grades 1 & 2
The negative effects of early reading problems can have a lifetime negative consequences on students. Students who have fallen behind risk more than just bad marks if appropriate corrective action is not taken. Thankfully, research now suggests that reading problems are preventable for the vast majority of students particularly if they take part in an early reading intervention program which focuses on preventing problems in literacy from developing rather than trying to correct problems after they have become established.
The Stars Early Reader Program stresses reading as an active, meaningful, and constructive process. Pre-Reading activities build or activate relevant reading background, knowledge, concepts, and vocabulary. Students are taught to monitor their own reading to make sure it makes sense and that word recognition errors do not detract from meaning. The texts we use focus on reading for not only practice but more importantly for enjoyment and information.
The Stars Early Reader Program holds fluency, the practice of recognizing words accurately and rapidly and grouping words into meaningful phrases, as a major goal.
Stars Reading Intervention Program for Grades 3 & Up
Studies show that many students in grade 3 and above are reading considerably below their age-appropriate level. While in itself this is troubling, the more disconcerting finding is that the gap between these less able readers and the more capable readers continues to widen across the grade levels. In other words, poor/slow readers tend to fall further and further behind their classmates as they continue through school.
Stars Reading Intervention program is an intervention program versus a remediation program. By this, we mean that our goal is to move students through the program as quickly as possible. Remedial students tend to stay remedial students for life. Also, our intervention program is offered in addition to the students’ regular classroom reading instruction versus having the students pulled out during language arts classes. Finally, our program uses a mix of fiction and non-fiction materials versus using the typical remediation program books which have had their vocabulary and sentence structure simplified.
Stars Reading Intervention program follows a very systematic instructional plan made up of 5 central components; Revisiting, Reviewing, Rehearsing, Reciprocal Teaching, and Responding/Reflecting. By having students reread or revisit previously read materials and discuss them helps to build fluency and develop comprehension while connecting learning to read with independent reading. Students also review their previous lessons using their graphic organizers to demonstrate their comprehension. The next step in the reading system is to pre-read or rehearse the text to predict the information, question, or begin graphically organizing which helps set the purpose for reading. Students then verify their predictions, answer their questions, clarify and summarize what they have read by teaching their consultant. Finally, students conclude their day’s lesson by writing a response to the text or completing their graphic organizers, and/or discussing and sharing their reflections.
Stars Language Arts Intervention Program for Grades 1- 8
The Stars language arts program has been developed to help children to not only learn to communicate, express, and organize their ideas in written form, but also to draw students attention to the details of the printed word in order to extend the student's word identification skills. Language arts skills take a great deal of practice and although a student may be a good reader it cannot automatically be assumed that they are going to be good writers. Therefore, the Stars language arts program builds students' abilities to manipulate language and to express themselves more clearly and to engaging in the full process of writing, including revising and editing.
The primary components of the Language Arts program are as follows:
Writing Forms Fiction Non-Fiction Essays Summaries Book reports and reviews Letter/ Email writing Research papers and reports Poetry
Language Expression Usage Sentence formation Sentence structure Paragraph formation Paragraph structure
Language Arts Curriculum Language Mechanics Sentence, phrases, clauses Quotations and dialogues Writing conventions Editing Skills Spelling Grammar Punctuation
Four Stars Language Study Skills Program for Grades 1 to 8
The Four Stars study skills program has been developed to help children who have trouble getting organized and staying on task. All children struggle with these skills, but some need extra assistance in this area to really excel at school. Once they have mastered these skills, learning becomes much easier and school marks improved.
Every Four Stars program builds some training in study skills into the learning process. For instance, all students are expected to maintain their own learning binders and all programs require students to use various graphic organizers to stay on top of their lessons and overall learning.
The Four Stars study skill program focuses on the following areas:
ŕ Avoiding delays and ending procrastination ŕ Organizing and planning work ŕ Improving study habits ŕ Improving attitudes towards school and studying ŕ Time management ŕ Determining ŕ Interpreting graphs and tables |
