Reading Magic

STUDENT AUDIO: OFF ON AUTO

TEACHER AUDIO: OFF ON AUTO

TEXT ASSISTANT: OFF ON

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If student has someone
assisting with ReadingMagic
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WELCOME TO THE STEPS PAGE
This is where the magic begins! The first time you begin using Lighting, the words in the 7 STEPS should be the easiest words your student can read correctly, but is reading slowly and with hesitation (typically more than 3-4 seconds). To view a different set of 7 words, you can click any of the gold boxes at top numbered 1 to 36 which corresponds to the weeks in a typical school year. Lessons 1 & 2 provide a review of consonant sounds and will be available at a future date. Lesson 3 begins with the most common short a words in early elementary reading books.

It is important to understand that maximum comprehension of a sentence or paragraph cannot be achieved if your student has difficulty reading the words. He or she must be able to read the words quickly and easily. When this is achieved comprehension automatically skyrockets and reading becomes a lot more fun! This certainly makes sense and is what we will accomplish here in the 7 STEPS. By the way - the ability to read words quickly and easily is called FLUENCY in the "reading business."

We will have audio available to assist both the student and teacher with each STEP. We are working on this currently and should be completed soon. A green button to the left of the checkbox can be used to "talk" to your student, telling them what to do in that STEP. In fact, the student audio button will inable your student to complete the entire 7 STEP Lesson with little or no teacher assistance! Won't that be nice! The blue T button (for Teacher) will be visible to the right of the checkbox and explains what you (as the teacher) will want to accomplish in that STEP and how to do it correctly. This may give a reminder of the sounds, strategies, etc and is very helpful for parents and teacher assistants. In essence, the T button will be your instructor reminding you what needs to be done to insure you do the STEP correctly with your student. Once you become familiar with the program, you shouldn't need much help from the T button. If you see the green and blue buttons next to the checkbox, please click the red OFF buttons at top next to student and teacher audio. Next is a brief overview of each STEP.

7 STEPS EXPLAINED
STEP 1 - You simply tell your student the common vowel sound in the list words and have them repeat it. This takes 15 seconds at most.

STEP 2 - Your student will learn to blend the first consonant and vowel sound together (therefore, reading only part of the word and learning left to right eye-movement).

STEP 3 - You do what's called the Echo Trick, here you say the sound up to the vowel sound (like what the student did in STEP 2), the student then looks at the final letters and makes these sounds to say the entire word.

STEP 4 - Students take what they learned in STEP 3 but now add the final consonant sounds and read the entire word slowly.

STEP 5 - The fun begins. Here, you will use the built-in stopwatch-timer to time how fast your student can read the list words. Typically, after 5-10 attempts they will have gone from 8 seconds to being able to say the words in under 3 seconds!

STEP 6 - Shows two pages of an ongoing reading book that uses only the five list words and previous list words.

STEP 7 - Your student begins a comprehension exercise that uses pictures and definition clues to determine if the student knows the meaning of the words. A great feature of STEP 7 is that it includes audio to guide students through the exercise and allows you to take a well deserved 10 minute break!

Remember, you must say the list words 5 times before going to STEP 6

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I see your student audio is not set to automatic. This means you won't be able to hear my friends read the questions to you. If you have a teacher next to you reading the questions then that is fine, but if you are doing this by yourself, you need to turn on automatic reading of questions. You can do this quickly by pressing AUTO above the gold boxes or by clicking the green button below.

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Welcome to ReadingKEY Lightning!
So glad you could join us! You're about to watch your student(s) erupt with a dramatic improvement in reading ability! The amount of progress you'll see will occur within the first 10-15 minutes and reach a level you most likely never thought possible. In fact, some of our clients become a little emotional in seeing something they hadn't seen previously. By using a sequence of very special STEPS, we've found a way to open the doors into the learning areas of the human brain and light them up like the 4th of July! We've done all of the organizing for you - clearly marking each step, thereby making Lightning extremely easy to use. If you've never seen your child smile or show excitement during your reading program, things are about to change.

TEACHES 520 MOST COMMON WORDS
Lightning teaches the 520 most-common reading words used in early elementary literature and textbooks. After finishing the program, your student will be reading at a solid 2.2 - 2.3 Grade level. All words are organized in lists of five words that share the same vowel sound and listed from most-common to least-common. It's not an exaggeration to say most students will advance one year in reading abiity in two or three months! This is possible because there are 104 separate word lists in the 36 Lessons and each Lesson is typically completed in 15-20 minutes. So, completing one list per day = 104 days. Two lists per day = 52 days. Three lists per day = 35 days. On top of this, your student will now have the powerful skill of being able to decode (figure-out) the majority of unknown words he/she sees in the future. This is a skill that he/she will take with them for the rest of their life!

Where Do I Begin? Find Starting Lesson
Lessons are numbered 1-36 which can be seen in the gold bar boxes at top. These 36 boxes correspond to the number of weeks in a typical school year. The first thing you need to do is locate the Lesson where you want to begin. To do this, both you and your student sit next to the computer. Have your student read the five words at the beginning of our program by clicking on the Lesson 3 gold box at top. If he/she can read the words easily without hesitation (typically under 3-4 seconds), you can jump to higher Lessons by clicking the numbered boxes in the gold bar at top. Keep asking your student to read the five words in the different lists in the Lessons. Eventualy, you will find a list of words where your student is able to read the words but begins showing hesitation or taking longer than 3-4 seconds. When this appears with several lists, you should have located a good "starting point." It is ALWAYS good to start 5-10 lessons earlier than your identified starting point.

Tap to Begin
Once you pinpoint your starting list of five words - click the blue "Tap to Begin" button above the list words. This will take you to our STEPS page which will show the 7 Steps you will use to begin the magic with Lightning.

Anyone can be an Expert Reading Teacher
Along with professional teachers, Lightning is designed for tutors, parents, grandparents and friends! We are currently adding audio clips to each step to make this process a breeze. While the program works exceptionally well in acclerating learning in children with little or no reading ability, Lightning truly shines when used with students in higher grades who are reading anywhere between early 1st and middle 2nd grade level. Our early research found that child learning ability improves rapidly by simply teaching words in small groups of five. Only when mastery of five words is shown (by reading words quickly and easily in less than 3 seconds), do we then advance to another set of five words. Along with this, by grouping words together that share the same vowel sound, the rate of learning improves further.

AUDIO OOMING SOON
Audio is not yet completed for all Lessons in ReadingKEY Lightning. Before you begin, you need to set the audio preferences. Audio is a big part of our program. At the top of each list you'll see a green button - a checkbox - and a blue circle "T" button (T stands for Teacher). If you click the T button, audio will play explaining what you (as the teacher) should be doing in this STEP. The green button is meant for the student and explains what they (as the student) should be doing. This is helpful if they are working on their own without teacher assistance. When you finish a STEP, you simply click the checkbox, which then sets you up for the next STEP in sequence. Above the gold bar, you will see options for teacher audio and student audio. If this is set to ON, then audio will play only when a green or blue T button is pressed. If audio is set to AUTO, then the audio will automatically play after clicking a checkbox. Auto can only be set for one teacher of student button (not both). New teachers could wear ear phones in one ear (farthest from the student), thereby allowing them to hear both the teacher audio and student.