FREE READING PROGRAM

Turning around an entire school in just 20 days is possible!

Teaching every child in your school to read in twenty days is not only radical

but saves thousands in program cost. Turning the reading establishment on its

head and saving a lost generation is a radical idea. Spending education budgets

on great literature for students, instead of reading software, basal readers, 

reading intervention programs, and teacher in-service training is a radical idea.

Insuring that all students have a real future is just a pipe dream if we stay on 

this path of chasing reading rainbows. Teaching ten years in high-poverty 

schools, with over 85% of the students at risk, has taught me we have lost 

our way and the establishment is broken. We buy into every program that

comes down the pike promising success, yet here we are failing our most 

needy students. Putting great literature, poetry, and books in children’s hands

is the foundation of Reading Boot Camp, not predigested workbooks, endless 

teacher-made work sheets, and needless teacher made busy work. Reading 

Boot Camp is back to basics with a sledge hammer to the outsider. 

Students find it rewarding and fantastic!

Why Not Try Something New

Giving students books that are three or four years above grade level may seem

counterintuitive to what you have been taught yet students know the words in

auditory memory. Most students come to school with almost 2,000-5,000 

words in auditory memory. By intermediate grades they have 5,000-10,000 

words in auditory memory. Learning 2,000 words in 20 days seems to be 

virtually impossible until make connections between auditory memory and 

words on the page. The see and say method from the 19th century holds true 

today. Reading Boot Camp all reading activities are reinforced with auditory 

cues from the teacher, students, or audio books. They just need to practice and

practice decoding them and hearing them. We focus on all aspects of good 

reading skills but always in the context of great literature.

Building on Fairy Tales, Fables, and Classic Children’s Literature Students get 

board very easy and finding literature that keeps them coming back for more

is a challenge. Stories like the girl with no hands perks up even the most ardent

critic of reading and books. Reading Boot Camp is more than rote decoding 

drills, word analysis, comprehension, reading strategies, vocabulary, word 

attack, and journal writing. It’s giving students a profound foundation in 

wonderful classic literature. Students read Aesop’s Fables, The Brothers 

Grimm, The Blue Fairy Book, Alice In Wonderland, and even Chinese Proverbs.

Students that still turn their nose up at even the best literature are given

individualized fairytales. I take a classic fairytale and personalize the stories just 

for them. I always pick one that is very tough to get the most out of the reading.

Learning Vocabulary Indirectly Children learn the meaning of most words 

indirectly, through everyday experiences with oral and written language--e.g., 

through conversations with adults, through being read to, and through reading

extensively on their own. Students learn language by listening and making 

connections and struggling readers need those audio cues even more. 

Struggling students sitting silently with a book will get very little out of the 

experience without the auditory component. Students always have the 

ability to listen to a model reading. When I read, the students read, or the 

computer reads, students always have the text in front of them. Learning 

Vocabulary Directly Children learn vocabulary directly when they are

explicitly taught both individual words and word-learning strategies through 

reading engaging literature. Reading Boot Camp is designed to build 

automaticity of the 2000 most-used, written words in English. Fluency 

drills and accuracy drills reinforce the connections to word meanings the 

students already possess in auditory memory.

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