Get a young reader off to a great start?
Help a child who is having problems?
Enrich the skills of a good reader?
Then I Can Read! is the place for your child! We use the world’s most effective phonics-based reading curriculum to produce dramatic gains in children’s reading abilities, and we do it at about half the price of most tutoring centers.
Getting a great start
Enroll at the beginning of your child’s kindergarten year, and by first grade
he or she will be reading at the top of the class. Kindergarteners who join us
in Fall and complete our three-semester beginners’ program generally enter
first grade with third- to fifth-grade reading skills. (We also take
kindergarteners in the middle of the school year.)
Helping a problem reader
Do you have a first grader who is not reading? Does your older child struggle
with books that he or she really needs to read? I Can Read! produces
dramatic improvements in the skills of problem readers. Our goal is to achieve
one entire year’s worth of progress every semester!
Enriching a skilled reader
I Can Read! can help keep your child’s reading
skills at the cutting edge. Our classes offer intense skills instruction and
advanced reading practice that simply isn’t available elsewhere.
If your child is six or older and cannot fluently read
materials that are suitable for his or her grade level, then
specialized reading instruction might be helpful. It is possible
that your child is just a late bloomer and will eventually pick
things up. However it is also possible that your child needs more
instruction and perhaps a different sort of instruction than he
or she has received so far. Our reading
test page shows you how to test your
child using books that are appropriate for children at various
grade levels (based on two standard "readability
scales" and research on what children actually read).
If your child is not reading at all, we administer a placement
test to help determine whether your child is ready to read. If
your child reads with difficulty, we administer another test to
determine whether our program can help. If our program is not
right for your child or if your child is simply not ready to
read, our placement test should indicate this and we'll advise
you either to wait or to seek some other form of instruction.
Most children who have trouble reading are trying to tackle
the entire job in one gulp. When they open a book, they are
overwhelmed by an ocean of unfamiliar markings. There are well
over 100,000 English word families and well over half a
million distinct English words, more than enough to intimidate
any child.
A typical first grader already knows and uses over 14,000
spoken words. Most children would be very powerful readers if
only they could recognize the thousands of written words that
they already know verbally. Imagine your child being able to read
everything that he or she can say! I Can Read! teaches
young children how to convert written words into the spoken words
they already know. We teach our older students the many details
that they need to know in order to become fluent. Lessons are
carefully arranged into a logical, systematic sequence that
anyone, even a small child, can understand.
Our students learn the basic skills that allow them to
recognize almost any written word, and we help them practice
those skills until they become almost totally automatic. Then we
show our students how to assemble written words into meaningful,
coherent sentences. We have one final and achievable goal: reading
a story should be just as easy as listening to someone else read
it!
There are two things that make I Can Read! a great
solution for both you and your child:
Our curriculum for young
children is SRA Reading Mastery, a reading program that
has been shown successful in more independent scientific research
than any other reading program, and which far outstripped the
performance of all competing programs that were studied in the world's largest-ever education research
project. In this project, Reading Mastery raised the
reading scores of entire schools by twenty percentile points on
nationally normed reading tests.
Reading Mastery combines two proven teaching
strategies supported by decades of research: phonics and direct
instruction. Phonics produces dramatic gains in
children’s reading ability by giving them the keys to
"unlock" written words. Direct instruction is a highly
interactive teaching style that motivates children to participate
and improves their retention. Because of this unique
instructional style, our teachers provide most of the benefits
of one-on-one tutoring, even though our students are organized into small
groups. We can actually
achieve better results with a small group than your child might get with an
individual tutor who is using a less effective
curriculum. So even at two or three times the price, you
might not be able to find a more effective program than I Can
Read!
For children in the higher grades we use a related curriculum
from SRA called Corrective Reading. This curriculum is
written by the same authors and is based on the same principles
as Reading Mastery, but it is designed for older children.
Corrective Reading moves at a faster pace than Reading
Mastery, and it uses language and methods that are appropriate
for more mature students.
During each semester we provide 39 hours of instruction, covering one complete unit of our curriculum. Each I Can Read! semester follows one of these formats:
This intensive schedule is necessary to build strong reading
skills. Class times may be different in different communities, so
please check our Scheduled Classes
page for details.
The total fee is just $695, which includes an initial placement test and all class materials except for optional recommended books. Your child receives a total of 39 hours of instruction, so our tuition is under $18 per hour, which is about half the cost of most tutoring centers. According to our most recent analysis (conducted in August 2001) an equivalent amount of instruction at our closest-priced competitor would cost you $1550 during your first semester and $1365 for each subsequent semester. Click here for our complete price comparison.
If you have already enrolled one child at the normal price (above) then the fee each additional child in the same family enrolled in the same semester is $595.
We offer a money-back guarantee. If you've brought your child
to at least 90% of the classes and you're not satisfied that your
child has made substantial reading progress, just call us and ask
for a refund. Complete information will be provided in our
parents' guide that your child will receive in class.
Doing this on a Saturday would certainly be more convenient,
but unfortunately it wouldn't work. Our curriculum uses
continuous reinforcement to help your child retain all the
information. Three days per week is actually the minimum
that we can do and still expect success. This is why we run the
class on three or four weekdays rather than on a weekend.
Many remedial reading classes do not teach a substantial
amount of phonics, and so they may not provide children with the
specific skills they need to recognize unfamiliar words. Since
poor word recognition is the root of most children's reading
problems, your child may never have received the type of training
that he or she needs. Even if your child has had some phonics
instruction, there are very few classes that offer as much
phonics or that deliver it with the effectiveness of I Can
Read!
I Can Read! is designed primarily for mainstream
students, but it can also help some children who are classified
as mildly LD or BD, including children with Attention Deficit
Disorder (ADD or ADHD). Our curriculum has built-in classroom
management techniques that virtually eliminate classroom behavior
problems because the children are so thoroughly engaged in the
interactive teaching experience. The curriculum is also well
known for its ability to teach children who were originally
thought to have learning disabilities but who actually just
needed more instruction in word decoding strategies. However, our
program is not designed to help children who have severe
("low incidence") disorders that inhibit learning. At
our initial placement test on the first day of class we will tell
you if your child can benefit from our program.
If your child is not reading at all upon entering our program,
you can expect that it will be several weeks before he or she is
actually reading. This is because we teach many basic skills
before we get to the point where we expect your child to read. By
the time reading starts, your child is prepared to succeed and
will almost certainly have a positive experience. Children who
are already reading upon entering the program may also require
several weeks of training before they start exhibiting improved
performance.
That depends on your child and his or her current level of
reading skill. Each semester we offer several classes that
operate at different reading levels, so it is possible for a
child to take a class at one level during one semester and then
take the next higher level the next semester. If your child is
not reading at all, then we recommend taking two semesters. For
example, you might enroll your child in a Winter session and then
follow it up with either a Spring or Fall session. (Please
remember that the availability of a second session may be limited
by customer demand.) If your child can read but is having
difficulty, one session might be enough. Unless there is a
special problem, we should be able to turn your child into a
reasonably fluent reader in at most two semesters.
If you have reserved space by registering, your child will be
placed in the class if our placement test indicates that your
child is appropriate for the class. However if the placement test
suggests that your child's current skills are at either too
limited or too advanced for our class, we will recommend that
your child not attend. Also, placement of all children is
dependent upon our meeting our minimum enrollment levels.
We're glad you asked! Please visit our Scheduled Classes page for more information!