Kindergarten through Fifth Grade

Parents of Kindergarten students often call us with concerns about their child being ready for the first grade. Often they have had very little pre-school experience and still need to learn to write their first and last name or recite their birthday, phone number, and address. In addition to these skills our goal is for them to learn all of their upper and lower case letters, beginning sounds, fine motor skills, addition and subtraction concepts. These students also work to develop good one-to-one correspondence, classification, sound blending, and concepts like rhyming, synonyms and antonyms.

The majority of our first and second grade students need individualized programs emphasizing phonics (word attack) skills, and sight words, reading comprehension, oral reading, spelling, and writing. Students learn to write stories and type them on the word processor. In addition to addition and subtraction, they may need to work on telling time, understanding coin values and adding money. The big challenge in math for many students in the second grade is regrouping (also called renaming or borrowing and carrying).

Third graders have the added responsibility of learning cursive writing and multiplication. By this time most of the sight words are easily recognized, but many students are still having trouble with digraphs and diphthongs. Most students have learned to read more fluently and are challenging themselves to start reading "chapter books". Oral reading, silent reading, and reading comprehension are emphasized, as well as spelling, vocabulary, development, and story writing. Students who develop more independence are able to read directions in textbooks. Problem solving is a regular part of each lesson.

Fourth and fifth graders are becoming much more independent in their work. Decimals and fractions are a major part of their math curriculum. Study skills, test-taking skills, and organization skills are necessary tools for keeping up grades.

At all grade levels, students are able to work on skills which may not have been developed in previous grades as well as working ahead on more advanced skills when ready. Our holistic approach allows students to work on a combination of skills during each lesson. This makes our programs unique. Many learning centers concentrate only on language skills or math skills. Our retest scores continually show improvement in all areas because most students have holistic programs, which combine reading, math, spelling, writing, and vocabulary. When these skills are combined with our study skills programs, the normal outcome is improved self-esteem and better school performance.