September 2007

EXCITING NEW WORKSHOP to Accelerate Reading Achievement
What do you do when you have students who excel, take in everything like sponges, want to take on more challenges than you had in mind, or easily jump to the analysis, synthesis, and evaluation levels of learning all the time? Hopefully, you let them go, cheer them on, and guide them when they need assistance. This question occurred to me as I started to describe one of our S.M.A.R.T. teams and what they have done with their knowledge of the programs replicated at the MLRC. I liken them to the students described above. The dynamic teachers are reading specialists from Fairmont School District in Fairmont, MN. They have taken their knowledge of and experience with these MLRC programs:

S.M.A.R.T.
HSAS (Hemisphere Specific Auditory Stimulation)
Introduction to Dyslexia Program Teaching

and combined them with many of their existing reading intervention programs to create the Fairmont Reading Acceleration Program (FRAP). Students struggling with reading are assessed with FRAP's unique assessment progression, to determine which intervention is the best starting place for each student on their reading therapy progression. S.M.A.R.T. (also called Boost Up) is the foundation of this progression and it continues up to specific decoding, vocabulary and comprehension interventions. All the interventions work with the visual, auditory, and kinesthetic stimulus and have demonstrated phenomenal gains for Fairmont's students at ALL grade levels. Their success and satisfaction have been so strong that they were motivated to create a workshop in order to "spread the good word." The FRAP workshop demonstrates how to assess and accelerate students' reading achievement. They wanted to partner with the MLRC to offer this workshop to other S.M.A.R.T. educators and the first opportunity is coming soon:
November 12 - 14 at the MLRC in Minneapolis
Join us for this exciting NEW workshop!

FRAP Brochure (download pdf)

Registration Form (download pdf)

So, what do we do when we have teachers who excel and want to take on bigger challenges? We let them go and cheer them on! And now, we are able to share their "extra credit" project with you.