Author Description

This program is designed to meet the needs of learning disabled teenagers who have not mastered decoding skills. The program will work best with teens who are on a second to fourth grade reading level. The program assumes that the student already knows most initial and final consonants, and some sight words. The pace of the program is geared for the older student (middle school or high school). The stories are of high interest, involving problems that are often encountered by inner city adolescents. The stories run like a novel, with character development and problems that continue from one chapter to the next.. Some of the topics that are reflected in the stories are: humor, instigating arguments, dealing with insults, fighting and how to avoid fighting, sports, boyfriend/girlfriend relationships, hazards of smoking, danger of drinking and driving, dealing with anger, snapping on friends, crime, abusive parents and spouses, loyalty, love, when bad things happen to good people, and long range life goals. Before reading a story, students are taught to spell and to read words from a word list. The words are in linguistic patterns. If a student can spell a word, he will be able to read the word. The program can be taught in one year or less, leaving each student with spelling and decoding skills for most of the phonemes in the English language. Teenage sudents will have the thrill of being able to read a book that was not made for little kids.