The first thing we are going to do is to look at how Proportional Reading (PR) software implements important concepts in teaching reading and neatly complements traditional approaches for teaching reading. Most people do not understand how good reading software does these two things.

Secondly, we are going to examine how you teach with technology. Teaching with technology is not self-evident. Once teachers understand how to do this, they see the essential role they play in making technology successful. In order to master this knowledge and take ownership of the technology, teachers must get the necessary training. Training is the key to empowerment.

Proportional Reading is a technology based program for improving reading, writing and vocabulary. Every day each student reads one-on-one on a computer doing a program tailored just for that student's needs. Students in this program progress in stages from reading a word at a time to reading a phrase at a time to reading a sentence at a time with voice assistance; then they learn how to read silently without subvocalization or other muscle movement. There are five sequential steps in the program. In addition, there are special tools for severe Dyslexics, for ADD/ADHD students who can not stay on task and for students with low motivation. At any point while they are reading, students can instantly look up the definitions of words they encounter.

The Main Goal

The goal of PR is to make reading so much fun and so successful that the joy of reading will compete favorably with less desirable alternatives like drugs and quitting.

Who Should Use Proportional Reading

The program can be used on a daily basis by all students in selected elementary grades, or it can be used just for pullouts at any grade level. The program can also be used by any student at any age to read any specifically assigned reading. The program can be done at school in after-school and evening sessions. PR can also be done at home, using a computer or just videotapes. The program provides substantial help for students at all ages and at all levels of achievement.

In elementary school it is most effective to do PR with all the children in the 3rd, 4th and 5th grades to accelerate normal development and to prevent these children from falling below grade level. In addition to helping average and good students become excellent readers, the PR program will provide remediation, IEP and ESL help to needy students during the daily PR time without student pullout. The classroom teacher runs this program with her class. No additional staff are needed.

Above elementary school the major use of the program is to help individual students in middle school, high school and college immediately read and process their assigned reading. Remediation and development of transferrable skills occurs through the process of actually reading assigned texts. This approach is very efficient. Students work independently on the computer at school and/or at home.

The Daily Routine for Elem. Class Use

When PR is used at school by all the students in a class at the same time, everything discussed in this paper takes place in 20 minutes each day per class. Every day all students in a class read on the computers at the same time for 10 minutes. Then they all write for 5 minutes about what they just read. Students enjoy the variety of tasks. The classroom teacher monitors the class and the individual progress of each student. Coordination, proper sequencing, integration and synergy connect the separate parts of the PR program. Underlying this plan is the principle that frequency of instruction is far more important than the duration of instruction.

Reading Phobia

Initially students must be able to overcome any fear of reading. Reading phobia is addressed by providing voice assistance as words are presented. It is impossible to build up frustration with this approach. Repeating the sentence after it is read a word or phrase at a time enables the whole thought to be comprehended. Students can instantly process print with this technique.

Repeated Voice and Text Correlation

Many students need repeated voice and text correlation. The goal here is to make up for the loss of one-on-one reading by parents and teachers to children. Furthermore, the effort here is to improve upon this model. Often when teachers or parents read to children, the child has no idea which word the adult is reading.

PR addresses this situation by highlighting the text that is being read out loud so there is no question as to what words the sound is associated with. Students start by reading a word at a time and then a phrase and then a sentence at a time. Words are automatically repeated in order of their importance in terms of frequency of use. The words used most often are repeated the most.

Numerous studies have shown that regular students need to see and hear a word fourteen times in order to gain possession of it, whereas learning disabled students need to see and hear the word forty-three times in order to master it. The PR voice and text approach provides this repeated correlation, and accurately, the necessary number of times for all students. The program also does this within the context of understanding great literature, not by "drill and kill". No lesson plans are needed. The lesson plan is simply one great work of literature after another. Current class reading can also be scanned and read with this program. Any text on the internet can also be immediately formatted and read with PR.

Accommodating Different Levels of Achievement

Children develop at different rates. Also, children in later classes will be at different levels, some needing remediation. PR handles these situations by providing a succession of five reading steps, presented in a natural sequence. Each student is able to start at the level where they currently are at and progress forward from there.

Underlying this ability is the discovery that the basic tools of remediation are the same tools as are used for initial development of reading skills. In other words, the same tools that allow a class to accelerate normal development in elementary school, enable any student to be helped with just the right tool for what that child needs, and progress up the same learning ladder from there. This means that all students in a class can be helped at the same time with Proportional Reading. No students need to be pulled out of class. PR builds class cohesion.

Students read at different rates. When students finish one book they start another. This way students do not have to wait for the rest of the class.

The Portable Reading Lab

There are fourteen obstacles to using technology in the classroom to improve literacy. Any one of these obstacles is enough to derail a technology based literacy program. PR handles this reality by use of a Portable Reading Lab totally dedicated to improving reading, writing and vocabulary. The lab is used continuously all day long just for this purpose. All students in a classroom are processed in the lab in 20 minutes each day.

The portable lab consists of laptop computers (Macintosh iBooks) which are rolled on small carts between classrooms. The laptops do not need electrical cords and they stay on continuously all day long. Each classroom uses the lab for 20 minutes. Then the carts are moved to the next classroom. Each portable reading lab can handle 18 classrooms a day.

The number of computers is equal to the number of students in the largest classroom. All in-struction is one-on-one, student and computer, with the teacher monitoring all students. One reading lab of, for example, 20 computers can easily handle 18x20=360 students a day.

Full Use of the Lab

During the few periods when classes are not using the reading lab, the Special Needs and ESL departments use the lab for children that have been pulled from class. Certain other periods during the school day could be for general student use on a sign-up basis. These students might otherwise be in study hall.

Students also take scanned material home to read on their own home computers. Alternatively, they take home videotapes of the same presentation to read on their TV and VCR. These approaches alone increase the school year from 9 to 12 months without adding one day to the school year or one hour of additional teacher salary (2 hrs. a day at home amounts to 1/3 of the school year).

Paying for Leased School Computers

During before school and after school hours, Monday through Thursday, a fee based oppor-tunity is provided students for a guaranteed time slot with a computer. Students can type papers, read assigned books, develop reading skills, build their vocabulary, surf the internet or watch selected DVD movies. During the week, fee based adult instruction and scanning books can occur in the evenings. Consultations with the PR trainer could take place at any of these times. Overnight, the computers can be set to automatically produce videotapes for home use. On Friday and the weekends the laptop computers can rent out to select families or make videotapes for home use.

During the summer and during long school brakes, computers can be used at a community center, used for summer school, used for teacher training, or rented out for home use by teachers or students.

Cognitive Interval

Students vary in how much text they can process at one time. Students naturally progress from reading a word at a time to reading a phrase at a time, to reading a sentence and then a paragraph at a time. The teacher initially assesses each student as to whether they should read a word, phrase, sentence or paragraph at a time with voice assistance, or whether they should read silently.

Accommodating Different Pausing Needs

There are thirteen different types of pauses that humans use in order to read and comprehend. Most students only use a few of these thirteen options. However, there are many different possible combinations and students will differ from each other in their needs. PR enables all students to have exactly the types of pauses they need and to have them presented in just the right order for their needs. Pausing is used in both voice and text reading and silent reading. Students choose to have their pausing provided either automatically or manually. The teacher advises each student on this.

In voice and text reading the primary use of pausing is to allow students time to decode the selected text before hearing it read out loud.

In automatic pausing with voice and text reading, the longer a word the longer the pause time that is given before the word is pronounced; the longer the phrase or sentence, the longer the pause time that is given before this selection is read out loud. In other words, the pause time is equal to the time that is needed to decode that amount of selected text. Automatic pausing frees the student to think about the content, rather than focus on pushing buttons.

Alternatively, the student can use manual pausing to have just as long as he or she wants before hearing the sound. The student presses enter when ready to advance. Manual pausing guarantees that the student won't ever feel rushed; it is used if the student needs more or less time than is given with automatic pausing.

In silent reading pausing determines the amount of time between sentences. Some students need a lot of time between sentences to think about what they just read. Other students only need a very little pause between sentences. A third group of students need to be able to adjust the amount of time on each sentence to just what they need.

In silent reading pausing also determines the speed of text presentation. Longer words auto-matically stay on the screen (pause) for more time than shorter words. Also, there are 12 speeds for overall text presentation.

The Basic Learning Algorithm

In order to master decoding, automaticity and fluency PR uses a challenge response-answer-echo presentation. Basically a selection of text is presented on the screen and then the student has time in which to decode that text. Then the text is heard read correctly. If the student made a mistake or did not say anything, the student echoes what he or she heard the computer say. There are no bells or whistles that ring when the answer is correct. Essentially what you have is programmed learning that is applied to reading for meaning. The pursuit of thought and content is always foremost. This approach provides a painless way to learn as you read.

Phonetic instruction in PR is provided not by drill and kill exercises, but by interactive voice and text correlation in actual literature.

Sentence Repeat

In PR the sentence is optionally repeated for a number of very important reasons. These have to do with decoding, automaticity and fluency, visualization and thinking about what was just read.

1. Overcoming Normal, Initial Roadblocks. Children in kindergarten and first grade can not process a whole sentence at a time. This is one of six developmental delays these students have that are completely normal. PR provides compensation for all these delays, immediately allowing these students to grow from real stories.

These students can also not read small print. They need to have just one word presented on the screen at a time in large letters. In addition they get quickly frustrated about failure to decode; they need voice assistance and repeated voice and text correlation on most words. They also take so long to get from the beginning of the sentence to the end of the sentence that they have forgotten what the sentence is about by the time they have reached the end of it. They have also focused so much on decoding that they have not visualized the thought of the sentence as a whole.

For all these reasons each sentence is repeated as a fluent entity. The sentence is just heard, not displayed. This is done twice. The first repetition enables the students to hear the words together as a whole and to visualize them. The second repetition enables the students to practice their visualization of the sentence, making sure that their movie includes all the elements of what was in the sentence. They also try to say in their head how the sentence will end before they hear it re-read. This approach enables students in kindergarten and first grade to start working on visualization, auditory memory and thinking about what they have just read.

This approach also enables students in kindergarten and early first grade to read real books. The teacher reads a book with the class in the traditional reading group. Then the kids read the same book on the computer. Reading can instantly be far more than reading dumbed down books that are mostly pictures and heavily rhymed. Press F1 to start this approach.

2. Decoding, Automaticity, Fluency, Thinking and Visualization. More advanced first graders are able to read one word at a time highlighted in the sentence and have the sentence displayed as a whole as it is repeated out loud twice. Many students in the second part of first grade and second grade read this way. Students in need of severe remediation in the third grade and above are able to read this way. The essential difference here is that words are shown in context. This approach is started on the computer by pressing F2.

In this approach, the student has time to take everything he or she has just learned from voice assistance the first time through the sentence and use this learning to read the sentence correctly the second time through. This time through the sentence the student also visualizes what the sentence is about and thinks about it.

When the sentence is repeated as a whole entity the second time, students read the words with automaticity and fluency, keeping up with the voice and pausing at the commas and period. Students also practice their visualization of the sentence, making sure that their movie includes all the elements that were in the sentence. They also try to say in their head how the sentence will end before they hear it re-read.
The sentence is also repeated twice for the same reasons when students read a phrase at a time and when they read a sentence at a time.

3. Recognizing Words Quickly. Students who are doing silent reading also have the option of having each sentence automatically repeated. The first reason for this is so that they can catch a word that they missed the first time through the sentence. As students first try a new speed, they will not be familiar with how the longer words look at the shorter exposure. Less frequently used words will need to be looked at closely during the sentence repeat until they become familiar at the new shorter exposure. Very short sentences are not repeated.

4. Comprehension Improvement. The second reason for having the sentence automatically repeated during silent reading is to help the student think about what was just read. The student should try to say how the sentence is going to end before they see it. They can do this because they have just read the sentence. This approach provides review as the students read the text the first time through. This approach forces children to think about what they have just read. Also, it is extremely effective for students in upper grades reading complicated textbooks. Very short sentences are not repeated.

Proportionality to Speech

One of the key strengths of PR is that presentation of text is always proportional to real human speech; hence the name Proportional Reading. Proportionality to speech has a number of advantages:

1. Decoding, Automaticity and Fluency. In voice and text reading, individual words and vocabulary lists can be heard in real human voice and then synthesized voice. Students learn to read initially with voice accompaniment where the synthesized voice used is very similar to actual speech. This capability enables the teaching of decoding, automaticity and fluency.

2. Avoiding Pushing Buttons. Even the pausing, or absence of sound, is proportional to speech. As discussed earlier, automatic pausing enables students to concentrate on content rather than on pushing buttons.

3. Avoiding Frustration. As discussed earlier, manual pausing is another way to get the right amount of decoding time. Both automatic and manual pausing are interactive, and both approaches are true to real life situations (ie, reading with a parent or tutor). In both cases the amount of pause is proportional to actual speech.

4. Comprehension Aid. In silent reading students process a thought at a time, the same way this is done in speech. When we speak we believe, or hope, that we are communicating a thought at a time. What we actually do to do this is to speak one word at a time, take longer to say the longer words, and pause between sentences. In silent reading in PR, these three features also occur. Words are presented on the screen one word at a time; the longer the word, the longer it stays presented on the screen; and there is a pause between sentences. This visual simulation of speech is so close to actual speech that the mind adds an inner sense of the actual voice. This is the inner voice. This inner voice is not achieved by forming the words with the muscles in the mouth or throat. This technique is also called Visual Listening.

This ability to hear an inner voice provides a wonderful aid to comprehension and a check on whether or not the student understands what is being read. This inner voice is heard clearly no matter how fast the student is reading. When the student can not hear an inner voice, then the student knows he or she needs to re-read the selection and probably check the definition of a word or phrase. Students quickly learn to rely on their inner voice.

Furthermore, because the voice is visually simulated there is no distortion as it is speeded up. Proportional presentation of text allows a slow motion affect to take place: regardless of how fast the text is processed, the playback in the mind appears to be at normal speaking speed. These discoveries enable students to read very fast and still feel like they are being read to.

5. Rhythm and Music of Text. Proportionality also means that in silent reading there is always a sense of the rhythm and music of the text, even if the text is not actually heard read out loud. Experiencing the music of speech greatly enhances the comprehension of reading. Short words tend to be direction words that introduce, lead towards and define relationships with their objects, which usually tend to be longer words. Feeling the rhythm of text also greatly increases the pleasure of reading.

6. Avoiding Fixations. Many students can not learn to read by reading a group of words at a time (fixation reading). Some students have eye movement or other vision limitations that make this impossible. Many other students can not read a number of words at a time because there is no continuity with real human voice with this approach. For example, it is impossible to say two words at the same time. Furthermore, it is impossible to pause at the end of one sentence before starting the next sentence if you see the end of one sentence and the beginning of the next sentence at the same time. In PR, students learn how to read up to 1,000 wpm without ever loosing continuity with human speech; the transition from reading out loud to silent reading becomes possible and easy for students.

Reducing Guessing

Many students in third and fourth grade and above guess at words far more than necessary. They do not realize that the first thing they should do when they come to a word they do not know is to back up and actually sound out the text that is there. Unnecessary guessing takes three main forms:

1. Misreading an individual word because it was guessed at rather than decoded.

2. Changing a main word and the little words around it. Changing the little words is done to make sense of the change in the big word. This is called cognitive dissonance.

3. Guessing at a whole phrase or the rest of the sentence, so as not to have to deal with it. This is called cognitive projection.

Proportional Reading reduces all three types of guessing immediately. With the presence of sound, students quickly realize that they do far better to first back up and try to actually decode a word they do not know rather than to just guess at it and continue in a forward direction. This new approach is easily transferred to regular reading.

Self-Defeating Attitudes

Some students display self-defeating attitudes transferred from their life outside school. PR provides a platform to show these kids that they have control over their destiny and that there are more successful ways for them to advocate for themselves than they are presently using. The teacher shows them that they can have instant success with a different attitude. They experience this success, and hopefully adjust their attitudes.

Achieving Quiet

Teachers must maintain quiet for the PR program to work. It turns out that quiet means a lot more than auditory silence. It also means the absence of visual distraction and the absence of physical invasion. Quiet also means privacy, the absence of other students observing and copying each others work. All this is achieved in PR by eight steps:

1. The teacher explains to the class why quiet is necessary.

2. Strict discipline is maintained to prevent talking during PR. Children must raise their hand and be recognized before talking. Consequences are meted out to infractors on an arms length basis. There is no discussion or backtalk allowed. Accomplices do not have to be caught.

3. Partitions are used on the computer carts to eliminate visual distraction, enable physical isolation and provide privacy. All students face a wall.

4. Baroque music is provided on earphones as an option for those who are writing or reading silently on the computer. Music is not allowed for those reading with voice and text on the computer because the music interferes with hearing the voice clearly.

5. A set of house rules is used to keep students in place. There are no bathroom breaks allowed during PR except for emergencies. Students are required to stay in place until they switch groups or leave the lab. Computers are assigned in certain cases to prevent bad combinations of students. A disruptive student is optionally moved away from the other students. A repeated offender is ordered to sit just outside the reading lab, in isolated quiet time.

6. All students stand up to read at the computer cart. This approach eliminates all problems associated with chairs. Students optionally do their PR writing at their desks.

7. All students read on the computer or write at the same time. This approach eliminates distrac-tion caused by activity variation among the students at any given moment.

8. Specific software tools help ADD/ADHD students stay on task, focused, quiet and still.

Writing Improvement and Accountability

Writing improvement takes place in a number of specific ways. Teacher involvement is important.

1. Students are taught a foundation of decoding, automaticity and fluency to enable them to process print in order to have something to write about. Basically, students can not write about what they have read if they do not have this foundation.

2. A great deal of work is done helping the students to visualize descriptive text and think about what they have just read. This is also done so they will have something to write about. Students who can decode but can't write need help visualizing; the teacher observes this need immediately and gives the student instruction.

3. Students are asked to write each day about what they have just read. They have to tell what the selection of text was about. Spelling does not count, but sentence structure is important and does count. In other words, this is recall writing and it is topic development writing. Nothing is gone over by the teacher prior to the writing. Students develop their ability to visualize and think about what they have just read as they recall it in writing. This is excellent preparation for state tests.

4. The teacher checks each student during the writing period to make sure that he or she is doing quality writing and putting out meaningful effort. The teacher easily checks each student by walking up to the student and reading what they have written for about twenty seconds.

The teacher also checks the writing of students by checking their writing during the time that they are reading on the computer. Students are instructed to leave their writing books open to their most recent writing when they get on the computer to read. The teacher comes around to each student and briefly reads their writing.

5. A specific writing schedule is followed:

Monday: All students write describing what they just read; they tell what the text was about.

Tuesday: All students write their feelings about what they just read. Students choose one of six questions to answer. They write down the number of the question they are going to answer. Then they write their answer, using their feelings and thoughts. This activity empowers students with the ability to divulge and express their thoughts and feelings.

Wednesday: All students read the same short piece on the computer and then write about it. The teacher evaluates each student's comprehension and writing. A sheet with questions on it is given to each student, before or after the reading. This way the teacher can have the students read for information or for recall. Students write their name on the top of the sheet and write their answers below the questions and on the back of the questions. This weekly assessment of compre-hension allows for immediate correction in the setting used by each student to read.

Thursday: Students write their answer to a special question the teacher poses, comparing a character in their PR reading to a character in another book the class is reading.

Friday: All students write about what they have just read, telling what the text was about. Students in third grade do not do this. Instead, they work with a children's dictionary CD. Initially they have to look up and copy out the main definition for each of eight selected words.

6. If students finish their writing before their classmates, they choose between the following:

a. They can work on their book reports. Students have to write a short book report on each book they read before picking another book. If the book report shows that they got nothing out of their reading, the teacher orders them to re read the book. This provides accountability on the students. Students need to learn to ask for help if they need it; this activity provides the incentive.

b. They can write short sentences using the words they have looked up and defined the day before when they were reading on the computers. This activity builds vocabulary.

c. They can edit their previous writing.

d. They can have a conference on their writing with their teacher. The teacher comes to them, the student does not leave his or her computer.

7. Students must be held accountable for their writing, but they must also be given the opportunity to express themselves. The PR writing program will realize the following additional concepts:

a. Half of the fun of reading is sharing what you have learned or felt or experienced in what you just read. One of the best ways of doing this is to write about what you have just read. Many students start to have a lot of fun writing during PR time.

b. Many other students find that they just have to force themselves to write and do so for a few minutes in order to realize that they have a lot to say and can write quite easily.

c. Many students who write daily in PR have found that the blank page becomes a "friend" with whom they enjoy communicating. They develop a lifelong "friendship" with the page by doing this writing in PR. They find that writing is a way to express their feelings anytime they wish.

d. As you write about what you read each day, your writing starts to pick up the style and language of what you are reading. This is a very easy way to improve your writing almost automatically.

e. If you do nothing with what you have just read, you can start to get board just reading. Writing is one way to complete the reading experience.

Improving Reading Speed

Effort is made to improve reading speed only to the extent that speed improves comprehension. Students need to read at a certain minimum speed in order to maximize concentration and understanding. In addition, students must be able to read fast enough to finish reading what they are tested on. They must also be able to read fast enough so that they can do homework or seatwork in a reasonable time.

Statistics on comprehension and reading rate for any large group of students will show that the best readers, those reading with 90% to 100% comprehension, are mostly reading above the subvocalization level. This is 220 to 240 words per minute. At this speed it is impossible for most people to keep up and still form the words with their lips or whisper them, etc.

In PR there are 12 speeds for silent reading (F1-F12). These speeds advance from 60 words per minute to 1,000 words per minute. Students reading at F7 are reading at 220-240 words per minute. This speed is the goal for students to reach with PR. It is not necessary to read any faster. A few students can reach this goal at F6, but not many. F7 is where the advance really takes place.

Any student who has learned to overcome muscle movement and subvocalization with PR, will tell you that hearing an internal voice is much easier than forming the sounds of the words with your muscles. They will also tell you that making pictures of what you read becomes much easier. This is the promise of PR; once you get to F7, reading not only becomes much easier but it becomes a lot more fun and a lot more successful.
About half of all students get to F7 on their own. The remaining 50% need help from the teacher to see how to do this. The teacher plays a very important role at this point.

Specifically, about 50% of all students will make steady progress up to the point of overcoming subvocalization and then hit a snag. At this point they will start to read one way with their eyes and another way with the muscles in their mouth, lips and throat. The two styles of reading will conflict with each other with the result that frustration and boredom occur. Teachers need to help these students over the hurdle of subvocal-ization. This can be done in about five minutes per student. However, if the teacher does not do this, the student can begin to falter.

Technically, many students can not go from the known to the unknown by incremental steps; they need to make a big jump. The teacher can quickly help these students do this with the PR program by jumping the speed two notches; usually from F5 to F7. Students can no longer continue to say the words with their lips or voice; they begin to hear an inner voice instead. Once students personally experience reading with the inner voice and that they can do it, they build on this foundation.

Teachers also help each student determine which type of pausing is best for that student to use in silent reading, and whether or not sentences should be automatically repeated. Most students follow the same pattern of choice. At speed F4 and F5 most students want extra pause between sentences. At speed F6 most students want less pause (standard pause) between sentences. At speed F7 and F8 many students want and need to have the sentence repeated. At speed F9 and above students want manual pause between sentences. Students will change in their needs as they grow. Pausing and sentence repetition choices will often determine whether or not a student can comprehend.

Achieving Theta

Reading silently in PR enables students to enter the Theta state. This state of mind helps students in a number of different ways:

1. Improving Visualization and Concentration. When students read silently between 240 and 420 words per minute they are reading 4 to 7 words per second. For fifty years it has been known that seeing 4-7 flashes of light per second entrains the brain in the Theta state (other states are Alpha, Beta and Delta). All the great meditation in the world has been checked to occur in the Theta state. This is the state of maximum concentration, maximum visualization and maximum creativity. In other words, just at the point where students are freed up from concentrating on forming words with their muscles, they are best able to visualize the words they are reading, maximize their focus on content and think creatively about what they are reading. Viewing proportionalized text at speed F7 or higher makes all this happen. PR enables students to reach, experience and reproduce this state.

2. Reducing Stress. The more you let go and open up, the more you relax and become receptive, the more you will be able to get out of your reading. Students realize this from their experience with PR. This kind of letting go of control is found in both prayer and meditation. It is just the opposite of stress. One basic discovery of PR is that you can not let go and be stressful at the same time. Students doing PR find over and over that they are able to forget their stress during their reading time. Teaching the modern young child how to escape stress for a few minutes each day is a necessary and wonderful accomplishment. People of all ages can master this technique.

3. Improving Creativity. When students read silently in PR they hear an inner voice. When they reach the Theta state of concentration and relaxation, their real self will start to have a conversation with the inner voice at certain times. The comments of the real self to the inner voice are insights of pure creativity. Students doing PR reading learn to achieve this creative environment and to experience and capture the flashes of creativity.

Gifted and Talented Students

In PR gifted and talented students get a daily program of great literature in which they can excel. These students have daily access to a library of the world's great literature, specially formatted for doing PR. This opportunity rarely occurs in public school education. The PR program does a phenomenal job of improving good students (in addition to helping troubled readers and average readers). Gifted students are often ignored in today's public schools. PR can help prevent brain drain to private schools or loss of motivation in the best students.

Reading Texts at Grade Level

PR enables all students in elementary school, middle school, high school and college to read texts at grade level. Students can easily read a section of text with PR and be ready for the higher level class discussion on that material. Any book can be scanned and read with PR. Any text on the internet can be immediately formatted for reading with PR.

ADD/ADHD

Many students with ADD/ADHD find they can focus and read well with PR. This is because PR speeds up the presentation of material to match the rate needed by the student. Extensive research has shown that many students with ADD/ADHD are easily distracted not because they need a shot of medicine, but because they are bored. The reason they are bored is because the rate of input of material into their mind is normally much slower than the rate at which they can process this material. The result is boredom.

In PR silent reading the material is sped up to match the input processing speed needed by each student. Students also listen to Baroque music while they read silently with PR. The faster many of these students read silently with PR, the more they stop random physical motion and focus on what they are reading. These results are demonstrable within five minutes.

Unfortunately, many ADD/ADHD students in elementary school have been so bored for so long that they have not developed the necessary vocabulary to read without voice assistance. Often their decoding, automaticity and fluency are so bad that they simply can not read silently. On the other hand, these few students will not stand for hearing the voice read to them at normal speed and they will not stand to hear the sentence repeated. The result is that day after day there are a few students in each class who fail to stay on task. These students also frequently disturb other students. They greatly frustrate their teachers.

Many teachers mistakenly think the solution is to have these few students pulled out from the class and monitored closely by one-on-one human intervention. This idea will not work either in the short term or in the long term.

A very powerful and simple PR solution exists for these problems. One PR tool enables the text to be read out loud as fast as the student wants. The student moves his eyes over the text keeping just ahead of the sound. When the sound gets to the word the student is looking at, the student looks forward to the next longer word, or word next to a comma or period. The student gets excellent practice in voice and text correlation, pacing, hearing an inner voice and thinking about what was just read. The process is so engaging and so fast that the student stays focused and on task and quickly gets his or her work done.

ESL Students

Having sentences read interactively a phrase at a time with voice assistance and then hearing the sentence repeated fluently as a whole sentence provides rapid reading progress for many ESL students. Hearing vocabulary lists read initially in real human voice also helps these students. Learning to read text silently with PR helps more advanced ESL students think in English rather than to constantly translate and decode.

Boredom

The PR program provides many solutions to regular boredom. These are often surprising.

1. Students are often bored because they are ready to move up in their reading. Students who start to improve their reading and are not helped to progress to the next step when they are ready to do so often get bored. Teachers move students up when the students are ready to advance.

2. Teachers help many low functioning students identify that they are ready to move up.

3. Teachers help many inner city students advocate for themselves. Often these students will not be able to express their boredom. Sometimes these children do not think they are entitled to any feelings. Other times they are so used to failure that they just fail to get started day after day, or they act out in other ways, instead of communicating the fact that they have made real progress and are bored.

4. Principles of gaming are applied to reading. This results in incredible focus and desire to advance to the next stage of improvement. Students love doing this program and growing.

5. Students learn what is possible for them to do by watching other students on the computer. Students want to advance and be like their peers.

6. The world's great literature is used as subject matter. This material is very engaging.

7. Students learn to think about their reading.

8. Students learn to make a movie as they read and to hear an inner voice, instead of forming sounds of words with their muscles. Students also learn to read faster so ideas come into their minds faster. All this makes reading far more rewarding and far less work.

9. Students get help overcoming subvocalizaton if they need assistance in doing this.

10. Students do a number of different activities each day during PR. Students count on and enjoy the daily routine of PR.

11. Students are in control of their own destiny in PR. Most students rise to this opportunity. They are very proud of their progress and care about advancing.

12. Students get a chance to do something with their reading, namely write about it. This is very self-fulfilling for many students.

Remedial Reading Groups

Small groups of remedial reading students can benefit from PR as well. The teacher has the text read out loud a sentence at a time. The teacher stops the presentation at any time to develop a conversation about what was just read. Student focus has been found to be very high with this approach.

Editing Your Writing

The ability to hear text read aloud by paragraph, without any special pausing, provides the ability to edit your writing by hearing it read. Students can instantly stop, make corrections, and then continue on from the beginning of the line they just corrected. Many mistakes which can not be caught by a spell checker, can be caught by hearing the text read out loud.

Transferrable Skills

All the skills learned in PR are transferrable to regular reading.

Special Situations

PR provides immediate help for the following special situations:

1. Machine gun reading, where students do not pause at commas or periods (no flluency).

2. Reversals.

3. Regressions.

4. Skipping words due to problems starting and stopping eye movement or cognitive projection.

5. Tracking issue: skipping lines; wandering eye.

6. Physical excuses rather than proper modeling.

7. Problems with contrast and brightness of text.

8. Need to change the color of letters.

9. Lack of phonetic skills for longer words.

10. No ability at all to decode.

11. Low motivation and ADD/ADHD

12. Need for large type.

13. Delayed audio processing.

14. Brain Trauma: need for multipath learning and/or reduction of information overload
15. Uncontrolled physical movement.

16. Need to double process each sentence.

17. Sequencing difficulty.

18. Macular Degeneration.

19. Speech and Language problems.

20. Deafness.

Introduction of Concepts

PR provides a scripted set of lesson plans for introducing the key concepts of this program. The teacher can have the script for each new topic read out loud to the students, or he or she can print it out and introduce it. Alternatively, the teacher can introduce a subject and then have the students listen to it on the computer as they view the text. Secondly, all subjects needed for guiding individual students are also provided in separate script form. The teacher can have the student listen to the appropriate selection of advise, and/or present it live.

At the beginning of the school year PR topics and activities are introduced in each class to students together with their teacher. Principles are introduced one at a time and build on themselves. The progression of initial training is very normal and easy for teachers to administer and for students to master.

The initial two weeks of PR in a new school are done with a PR trainer. Everyone gets up and running smoothly on the computer before the PR trainer leaves.

After school, teachers gather on six separate days for 1.5 hours per day for instruction in PR. They receive PDP points. This instruction compliments the PR classroom instruction. No substitutes are required. No special in-service days are needed. Each day a separate subject is covered:

1. Combining good teaching with good technology.

2. The daily routine.

3. Operating the controls and trouble-shooting.
4. The five types of one-on-one student PR assessment.

5. PR class testing and understanding and using the test results.

6. Monitoring the PR class.

Mind Projection

The PR platform enables students to watch their minds at work 20-30 inches in front of their heads. This simple distancing capability enables many students to instantly see and understand concepts that they have probably heard many times before without absorbing.

Pragmatic Realization Therapy (PRT)

All initial evaluations of students follow a specific 8 step program for rapid personal growth. These steps facilitate pragmatic self-realization by and in the student that the suggested change is very possible, easier and far more rewarding than continuing with the old ways. This 8 step approach actually empowers students for change. Administrators are often shocked by student "compliance" with the new program.

Student Assessment (5 Ways)

Every student is assessed on a regular basis. This is done five different ways:

1. At the beginning of the school year each student is assessed for which setting he or she should start at. A video recording can be made of 3 minutes of reading for each student.

2. Every three months all students are given a formal 12 minute test which measures their comprehension, reading rate and ability to write about what they have just read. These tests are given in early September and on December 1, March 1 and June 1. Scores are compared.

3. The teacher privately assesses one student a day in the second half of PR session. This means that every student in the class is privately assessed once a month. Changes in the student's setting are recorded in the Class Setting Sheet which records monthly each student's setting.

4. Every Wednesday all students read the same short piece of text and answer comprehension questions about it. This writing and compre-hension is graded and recorded. During the reading part of this test, the teacher does a quick check of each student's comprehension to make sure students are not reading too fast. Students are ordered to slow down if necessary. Students whose writing shows that they need specific help in their reading are given the specific help indicated by their writing.

5. Each day the teacher checks each student's writing journal for whether or not the student is on task and making an effort.

Monitoring Students

Monitoring consists of what the teacher does during the PR session each day. There are five major monitoring functions to perform:

1. The teacher must make sure the students get started quickly and correctly.

2. The teacher must keep the students quiet.

3. The teacher must make sure the students write each day during the PR session. The teacher must check on the students as they are writing to make sure they are on task and that they realize that they are accountable and that their teacher cares that they do a good job.

4. The teacher must perform all assessments.

5. The teacher must help the students as they grow. Growth in PR is very fast and very substantial. It is so fast that students often need a little help making transitions to the next level. Furthermore, many children, especially from the inner city, do not know how to advocate for themselves correctly; nor do they know when they are doing something right or wrong. For all these reasons students often need a little help moving to the next step. Finally, half of all children will need a little help from the teacher overcoming subvocalization.

Need for an Open Mind

Teachers must realize and believe that there is a technological solution for almost every reading difficulty. Once teachers start to use technology, they discover many instant solutions to problems. These solutions are often very surprising. Teachers must know in advance that this is going to happen and be prepared for this to take place. The major point here is that the teacher needs to recognize that with technology change in students can occur instantly, or has just taken place. The teacher needs to constantly have an open mind during PR. Labeling students is very risky because change can occur so suddenly. The teacher must also be aware of how he or she can unintentionally impede progress in PR. Here are some of the main ways these situations take place:

1. Students will not tell the teacher correctly how they feel. Students may be in denial of their feelings; they may not realize that they are acting out; they may not be able to recognize that they have made progress; they may feel the teacher does not care about moving them up; or they may feel the teacher has made up his or her mind about them and that it is too risky to try to tell the teacher that they have changed their position or made progress.

2. Often only a slight change in technology is all that is necessary for a student to blossom. Often the student only needs to shift from automatic to manual pausing. Sometimes the child just needs to adjust the contrast and brightness of the screen. Many times the child desperately needs to move up. Frequently a student only needs a few minutes help in learning how to think about what was just read, how to visualize, how to reduce guessing or how to overcome subvocalization. Sometimes the child only needs to type to begin writing. A few students need voice-to-type dictation capability.

3. Teachers who have trouble doing the PR program themselves sometimes inadvertently project this condition onto their students. The result is that sometimes they don't let their students repeat the sentence when necessary or advance when ready. Teachers can easily correct this condition once they recognize it.

Teachers should really try to experience how the different tools feel when they are being used correctly. It is usually much easier to recommend the right tool for a student if you have personal, experiential understanding of that tool.
4. Occasionally, a teacher may feel that he or she should use PR time to prepare teaching in other areas. The situation here is not that the teacher does not care or that she is not a good teacher, but that the teacher does not recognize that good teaching practices must be applied to PR and during PR time. The PR program does not work just by itself. You can not recognize what is going on in PR if you are not participating in it.

5. The first day a new activity is introduced students will test the limits of that activity. This is built in human nature; it is part of our survival instinct. Students may also be very surprised, excited or happy initially. Any teacher that judges a new activity by the student's reactions to it on the first day of use is doing the program a major injustice. Teachers must expect an initial adjustment period when any new technology is introduced. Judge the new activity on the third day of use.

6. Each student needs different settings as they develop their reading skill. Many of these settings are very different from how the teacher likes to read. It is imperative that the teacher listen to each student as well as observe that student. Student input is critical to the teacher being able to give good advise. Teachers must not assume that they know what is best. Experimentation and student feedback is often necessary. The teacher is really a co-traveler with the student in order to determine the right setting at each stage in the student's growth. Both together are navigating the path forward.

This is a very different type of teaching for many teachers. However, teachers also find that student respect and student progress is often greatly accelerated with this approach. Many students will do almost anything for a teacher when they feel the teacher cares about their observations, opinions and feelings.

7. Becoming an expert in using technology to improve reading is a growth process. It is not something that is totally self-evident or already fully known by most classroom teachers. Teacher cooperation is essential for success. Teachers in the same grade must share their best PR practices with each other. Teachers must be open to growing and improving. Teachers must be open to suggestions and correction from each other and from the PR trainer. Also, successful teachers with PR "do not sweat the small stuff".

Two different grades can have completely different rates of success with PR depending almost totally on teacher attitude. Just one or two negative teachers in a grade can stifle cooperation in that grade. This will happen even if all the other teachers in that grade want to share ideas and cooperate.

Role of the Principal

The principal must be pro-actively involved to make PR work. He must provide each teacher doing PR with a fixed and protected time to do PR each day. The principal must provide prerequisite training for the teachers and time each week for the teachers to share ideas about PR with each other. The principal and the Language Arts administrator must work together to protect the PR time each day; PR must be a stated priority of the administration as well as of the principal. The principal must provide the proper number of computers and carts, or the program won't work. Ideally the principal should also have the school reading teacher provide daily assistance in PR until the classroom teachers are fully up to speed.

Getting Students to Care

A great deal of actual experience has clarified a few points about how to get students to care about their PR work.

If students feel the teacher actually cares about them doing something, then many students will do it. This is especially true for inner city kids. Teachers must communicate that they actually care. They must insist on quiet; they must be in the same room with the students; they must focus on the students and not be correcting non PR papers. Teachers must also have students write each day during PR, and they must check each student's writing each day.

Many students feel that they can't fail if they do not try. Other students quit as soon as they run into the least bit of difficulty. A third group of students have no concept or belief that improvement comes with practice. For all these reasons teachers must check to make sure that all students are trying to do the assigned task.

There is no time for the teacher to sit down during the short time each day doing PR. The teacher should check each student in turn, standing behind the student. The teacher should check that each student at a computer gets started reading correctly and is staying on task with his or her reading. The teacher can also check the previous day's writing of this student while the teacher is at the computer, if this writing has not been checked already. The teacher should also check each student's current writing to make sure the student is doing quality writing and is on target. Students who need specific help should get it on the spot.

Teacher feedback indicates that the use of partitions on carts definitely reduces student distraction and greatly improves student focus and output. However, partitions only work if the teacher walks around through the students. The teacher can not see the students if the teacher chooses to sit down. If the teacher sits down, the teacher usually can not maintain quiet or keep the students on task.

Actually, standing up for the few minutes of PR and rotating amongst the students as you evaluate their work turns out to be both very easy, and very rewarding. This is actual teaching. Sitting down by one's self and trying to keep a class quiet from your seat turns out to be very frustrating, minimally productive and very boring. Also, frequently alternating between sitting down and jumping up is very discomforting. Staying on your feet (except when you are doing a one-on-one assessment with one student) is a win-win solution both for you and for your students.

You do not stop teaching during PR. Continuous teaching is all important in the PR process. PR only performs specific tasks. Students need to be directed, evaluated and helped as they progress through these tasks. Without teaching, PR won't work. Each day in PR each student should get one-on-one attention from the teacher as well as one-on-one time on the computer. The PR program enhances real teaching.

Continuity with Other Teaching

The PR Program enables teachers to tie in the PR instruction with other class reading the teachers are doing:

1. The books read in PR can be the same ones read during the rest of the class time.

2. Troubled readers can pre-read on the computer the book chapter being read in class.

3. The book report required in PR upon finishing each book can be completed according to the format developed by the teacher in the rest of the class time.

4. Every Thursday students tie in their current reading in PR to something else they are studying in the classroom or to a recent special event.

5. A number of the Great Books can serve as wonderful parallels and contrasts to the books being read in class.

Helping African American and Latino Students; Helping Low Income Students

These students get as much help as they need with Proportional Reading. They can do well on state testing. All students in a class use the same program at the same time. No extra resources or staff are needed for any special group of students. Everyone improves.

Vocabulary Growth

Students in fourth grade and above are able to press a keystroke and instantly look up any word as they read in PR. They will hear the word pronounced and then they will see the major definition displayed and read out loud. If they need more depth, they can press a second keystroke and have the full definition displayed and read aloud.

This approach to vocabulary building is based on ease of operation and on the desire to understand the meaning of what was just read. This is not a "drill and kill" approach to vocabulary building. Each day students 4th grade and higher should look up and write down the main definition of at least two new words during their PR reading time.

Students in third grade and below are too young for the adult dictionary. They use a children's dictionary with lots of animations and very simple definitions. Each Friday the entire reading period is spent on the dictionary. Two students can optionally work as a team on each computer. Everyone uses earphones. First, students have to look up and write down the definitions of a short list of words. After doing this students can play on the dictionary, looking up animations or playing dictionary games. Young students love doing this.

Vocabulary lists can be made up by students or teachers. In addition, the list of the 1,000 most frequent words is provided. These words can be heard read out loud word by word. There are various speeds and pausing approaches available. There is no sentence repeat in these tools. Students can even hear new words read out loud in real human voice.

At any point a student can type in a word to look up which has been taken from normal book reading. The main definition or all the definitions will be displayed and read out loud.

Summary

Proportional Reading combines with good teaching to overcome most of the reading problems found in school. PR provides a daily framework for excellent teaching and for getting a tremendous amount accomplished each day within just twenty
minutes. PR provides the ability for each child to have exactly the one-on-one help that child needs. Individualized pausing is provided each student as needed. The program provides the interactive practice, reinforcement and repetition required by each student. All this would be completely impossible for a teacher to provide for more than one student at a time, at best.

PR frees up the teacher to do the necessary higher level teaching functions for all the students in the PR class. The teacher introduces the concepts and provides initial demonstration, assesses each student's progress, advances each student when ready, helps each student over hurdles, maintains quiet, gives daily feedback on writing providing evaluation and correction, and keeps the students focused and on task doing quality work. PR is not magic. It is an integrated program of very effective tools which produce profound results when combined with good teaching.

© PROPORTIONAL READING, 2002

PROPORTIONAL READING
P.O. Box 335
Beverly, Mass. 01915
Toll Free 1-866-619-READ
Phone (978) 927-9234
Contact Person: John F. Adams
Internet: http://www.proportionalreading.com
Internet e-mail: proread@tiac.net