Intensive Reading Camp

Successfully solving your child's reading problem is a vital part of making school and homework less stressful and more successful.  Improving reading skills leads to better grades, builds a positive self-image and empowers your child with the skills needed for a lifetime.

For the past 12 years, Colorado Reading Center has been making a difference, one child at a time. Over this time some things have become apparent to us about successfully improving reading skills.

First, remediation is most successful when it is done intensively, which means daily stimulation. Just like going to the gym, if you exercise once a week you will not get much of a response from your body. But, daily workouts produce outstanding results. The brain responds in much the same way. Reading programs are much more effective when administered daily.

Second, children need to see change happen quickly in order to get them to ‘buy into’ the process and do their best. Months of tutoring can seem like a lifetime to children. Children don't mind working hard when they can see the results.

The Testing

We want to make sure that your child will be successful. To do this we start by administering standardized testing to determine your child’s specific needs. The testing takes about an hour, and is followed by a consultation with the parents to review the results and answer questions. We will do the same battery of tests at the end of the camp to measure the gains. This also provides an opportunity to congratulate your child for working hard and making great progress, and any follow-up recommendations.

The Camp

There are two sessions, a morning session (9-noon) or an afternoon session (1-4 p.m.) The student will work, one-to-one, with a tutor for 50 minutes and then have a 10 minute break before beginning the next 50 minute session. Snacks and drinks are available during the break, and often a ball can be seen bouncing around the room or a Frisbee tossed with great accuracy.

The student will work with a different tutor each hour to provide a fresh interaction for the student to help keep the process interesting. During each session, the task changes about every 10 minutes to keep the child from becoming bored or frustrated.

Because of the way the program is structured, the child will have many successes every hour, which builds confidence and self-esteem. Rather than be told they are wrong with a response, the child will be asked a series of questions that allows them to discover the correct answer. The program is called Phonological Analysis with Synthetic Phonics (PASP)

The Research

According to 30 years of study by the National Institutes of Health, direct and specific instruction in phonemic awareness tasks, when combined with synthetic phonics, is the most effective way to teach reading. It is also the most effective way to remediate reading problems.

In addition to incorporating these generally researched methods, there is a body of research specifically on the PASP program and its effectiveness. Over the past 12 years, our students have averaged a 2.8 year gain in word attack skills with just 60 hours of instruction.