For students to understand what they read, we teach students foundational reading skills, expand their vocabulary and oral language, address the difference between text structures, and develop their metacognitive skills to monitor their comprehension. Using a multisensory approach, students learn how to hear the individual sounds within words to learn how to manipulate sounds. We continuously incorporate morphological awareness exercises in the sessions to enhance their spelling, decoding skills, and understanding of unfamiliar words. Students learn to preview the text to strengthen their background knowledge, develop their oral language, and scan for unfamiliar words. In addition, they learn how to discern various text structures to help them develop an organizational framework of the text to identify the main ideas, details, vocabulary, and relationships between concepts. We begin to teach note-taking skills immediately, so students begin to translate their understanding into their own words, organize their learning, and see note-taking as an essential interconnected component of reading. We pride ourselves in making our time with students fun, and meaningful and engaging them with topics they find fascinating.  
 

So students can approach the text strategically, we teach them the various text structures, so they develop an organizational framework of the text. This helps them to In addition to understanding the text structure, it’s critical for them to preview the text to recall and build background knowledge and sweep the text for unfamiliar words. Forming a picture in mind:
 

• Identifying the Gestalt (big picture) vs. details

• Inferencing

• Self-questioning  

• Summarizing 

• Vocabulary

• Semantics

• Fluency

• Activating prior knowledge