Group Reading Classes

Through classic round-robin reading groups, we teach English comprehension, phonics, fluency, expression, vocabulary, analysis, and the joy of reading, using a variety of age-appropriate, quality fiction.

We fix the problems in school reading.  In school, kids read passages and chapters then answer questions.  The students soon figure out that they can skim the reading then look up the answers.  Many kids figure out that the reading is optional.  They just turn to the questions and then look up the answers.  This is bad because kids never learn to comprehend as they read.  They never learn the skills of good readers, like metacognition (awareness of one’s own level of understanding).

Our English reading classes aim to fix this problem.  Class involves reading in a round-robin fashion, with the teacher and each student taking turns reading from a shared book.  This aloud reading improves fluency and expression while allowing the teacher to address phonics deficits.  Then the teacher stops the reading often, asking many types of questions.  When a difficult vocabulary word comes up, the teacher stops the reading and shows how to use context clues and Greek and Latin roots to gain new vocabulary.  The teacher asks basics comprehension questions, from “What just happened?” to “Why did the character do that?”.  Much of the time, students cannot answer those questions correctly, so we teach them how.  Soon the children know how to slow down and pay attention when reading, exhibiting stronger skills.  Finally, we ask analysis questions, discussing the literary devices the writer uses to create their stories. By teaching everything from symbolism and themes to imagery and story structure, we prepare our students for school.

At the end of class, the teacher assigns reading to complete before the next week.  Students are sometimes expected to log vocabulary and periodically summarize.  However, we do not push written work for reading classes because we want students to love to read.  Too much work turns reading into a burden, not a joy, and the moment we assign writing, the reading drops in importance.  Reading comes first!

Why not non-fiction?  Fiction is written with broader vocabulary, more sentence structures, and greater complexity than non-fiction shows.  Kids who master reading fiction have an easy time comprehending non-fiction.  Kids who master non-fiction in one narrow area are good at that area, but less of their reading skills carry over to other forms of reading.

Individual Reading Classes

For struggling readers, customized one-on-one classes are available.  Mr. Simon will identify issues, find strategies to address them, and create a curriculum taught by other teachers to turn struggling English readers into masterful readers.