Questions about the program

1. What sets Great Leaps apart from other reading programs?
2. For whom was Great Leaps designed?
3. In which settings can Great Leaps be used?

4. What comes with the Great Leaps Program or Package?

5. What is the difference between a Program and a Package?
6. Does Great Leaps bring students up to grade level in reading?
7. Why doesn’t Great Leaps Reading offer pictures or tape recordings of the stories?
8. Why do you insist on the use of that strange-looking chart?
9. Which level should I purchase?
10. What about reading comprehension?

What sets Great Leaps apart from other reading programs?
         Great Leaps has never claimed quick fixes. Great Leaps is inexpensive, easy to implement, and follows time-proven tactics to remediate students with reading difficulties. Great Leaps comes from the behavioral perspective – one skill mastered leads to the next, punishment tactics have been eliminated and students are motivated through crafted successes. This can be done in less than ten minutes per day. This can be done with a teacher, parent, tutor, or volunteer.

For whom was Great Leaps designed?
         Great Leaps was designed as a supplemental reading program for students with significant reading problems. Students measured beyond the 4th/5th grade reading level should not need Great Leaps. The K-2 Book was designed for all five and six year olds and is beneficial for 2nd and 3rd graders with significant decoding and/or phonological awareness difficulties. Many therapists using other programs (LIPS, OG, Wilson, etc.) have used Great Leaps phrases and stories as a fluency intervention.
         The Math Program was designed for students being introduced to whole number manipulations or older students having significant problems working with numbers.

In which settings can Great Leaps be used?
         Great Leaps is a one-on-one program which has been used successfully in a variety of settings. It has been used in reading labs where up to 40 students per day receive intensive reading remediation. It has been used within regular classrooms, where teachers find a few minutes to work with students who have particular difficulties. It is used in homes by parents and grandparents. It is used by reading/academic therapists, many of whom train the parents to do the program daily. It has been used with America Reads tutors throughout the South.

What comes with the Great Leaps Program or Package?
When you purchase a Great Leaps Program or Package there is really nothing else to buy – unless you need a count-down timer or photo-copying of the Progress Charts is difficult for you. Then you should purchase a timer and/or charts. Ample stories are included and Stories Collections need not be purchased.
         All Great Leaps programs begin at a very low level and work progressively toward more difficult material. All manuals should be purchased at the social level of the student, NOT THE READING LEVEL. One does not progress from the elementary to the middle school program – both programs begin at the pre-primer level of reading and work toward an independent reading level.

What is the difference between a Program and a Package?
         The program has been primarily used by parents or an administrator evaluating the program. The package is in actuality two books, a teacher’s manual (including directions, the 3 teaching sections, and an appendix) and a student manual (the 3 teaching sections.) This allows teachers to sit across from pupils. It also allows the tutor to keep notes on student progress without students intercepting those notes.
         The K-2 program does not include a student edition because of the nature of the instruction at that level. Emergent readers require considerable hands-on intervention.

Does Great Leaps bring students up to grade level in reading?
         Great Leaps brings children to an independent level of reading – this may, or may not be at grade level. When a child reaches the 4th/5th grade reading level, we believe an independent level has been reached at which the environment becomes important in further reading progress. Motivation becomes more important than reading instruction. Tactics move from instructional to motivational.
         Many students have moved considerably past the 5th grade level of reading while using Great Leaps because they had considerable advanced skills which were being impeded because of a class of errors which were remediated. For example, children who have had high rates of “sight” word errors make substantive reading score gains when this problem area is adequately remediated.

Why doesn’t Great Leaps Reading offer pictures or tape recordings of the stories?
         The very second one inserts a picture into a story, certain decisions have been made which may be at odds with the child’s view of the story. Decisions have been made on age, ethnicity, region, boy-girl ratios, and so forth. All of these may tend to alienate the reader from the story’s intent.
         The 2nd reason story pictures are not included is they encourage illogical guessing. For instance, a child encountering the word "mammoth" upon seeing the picture of one, would often say elephant – even though elephant starts with a short e.
         Tapes, though offering modeling, tend to (in my opinion) remove or lessen a piece of the joy of reading. Getting a joke on your own, catching a trick ending, and so forth, are all a significant part of the joy of reading. You give away those endings you take a certain amount of pleasure away. In so doing, you may seriously impede motivation.
         We utilize the strength of modeling by encouraging tutors to model a sentence or two the student is having difficulties with and then have the student read the sentence. This does not give away any of the joys of discovery while building skills.

Why do you insist on the use of that strange-looking chart?
         That chart you think of as strange is an equal ratio or multiply-divide chart. It shows relevent movement whereas the equal interval or add-subtract chart does not. On the equal ratio chart a child improving in oral reading from 100 words per minute to 110 words per minute would show a very slight movement of less than a sixteenth of an inch (hardy noticeable). You could hardly "see" the difference between the two.
         However, mistakes moved from 12 errors per minute to 2 errors per minute, would be a movement of an inch or so. Though the same movements of 10 – significant differences are charted. From 12 to 10 is significant movement and the equal ratio chart discerns this, whereas an equal interval cannot.
         In a nutshell, our equal ratio chart shows percentage movement. It is only difficult because it looks different. It is no more difficult than teaching a six year old to do dot-to-dots.
         If you choose not to use our chart, please chart – or at the very least – record and share the gained data. It is an essential element of the program.

Which level should I purchase?
         You should purchase the program at your child’s social level. If you have a fifth grader half-way through his/her fifth grade year of school, you should buy the middle school (Grades 6-8) level, because socially your child is closer to middle school interests than elementary. Some students began the elementary program in the 4th grade and finished the same elementary program in the 6th grade. Overlap is ok.
         If you have an 8th grader reading on level but noted with fluency problems and someone has advised Great Leaps, please give us a call. There is a good chance our program is not appropriate for your needs. Yet, tactics (at no cost and very little work) exist. If this is your problem, check the bulletin boards or post a question and you’ll find out just how simple and effective fluency work can be.
         If you have two children needing help, in most cases one book will suffice. For adolescents either the middle school or high school will work. The only time two books would be necessary would be when a first grader and a fourth grader need help. Our first grade program is not remedial, nor would we recommend the such.

What about reading comprehension?
         Three elements seem to impact comprehension. First, the speed of the reading (with a lack errors) must approach conversation rates. Second, there must be correct intonation or inflection. We can teach these two with Great Leaps.
         Third, the student must have prior knowledge or experience with the subject matter. I can read a physics text at a very high rate, with very few errors, with very good intonation – yet, will comprehend little or nothing of what I just read. I have neither experience nor motivation in the subject of physics.
         I’ve seen very few programs actually working on comprehension. Most merely measure comprehension. Here is what my friends Dr. Henry Tenenbaum (practicing in Sarasota, Florida) and Dr. Bill Wolking (retired professor from the University of Florida) wrote about comprehension. Excuse the advanced vocabulary, they’re both in the genius range of intelligence.

"...if readers can understand conversational speech, and are then taught to read so that text comes to control a behavioral repertoire similar to conversational speech in terms of both rate and inflection, then reading comprehension ought to be similar to the comprehension of conversational speech. This prediction is likely to be limited to cases in which the vocabulary and grammatical structures presented in the text read does not exceed the reader's previous experiences with spoken vocabulary and grammatical structures."

"...the combination of high oral reading rate with inflection, a condition approximating conversational speech, increased both the accuracy and speed of intraverbal responding (comprehension), more than any other combination of variables."


Tenenbaum, Henry A. and Wolking, William D. Effects of Oral Reading Rate and Inflection on Intraverbal Responding. The Analysis of Verbal Behavior. 1989, 7. 83-89