Meet Robbie, who is in Grade 4 at Ben Bronz Academy. Last year, he arrived in November, a non-reader. On the WRAT-III, he was able to read the first word, 'in,' after which he began word-calling randomly. We started Robbie in four 45 minute classes of FAD each day, spotted between classes in Meta Learning, Arithmetic, and Science. He also did reading timings three times at home each evening, and twice each day on weekends. Robbie and his parents always made sure they completed the home reading fluencies. In April, we dropped one class in FAD, adding Let's Read at Ben Bronz.

In October this year, Aileen observed Robbie devouring a Harry Potter book, so she asked him to retake the WRAT in an alternate form. He scored Grade 6.7. Here are his charts of Reading Passages. Click here to see a detailed report of Robbie's FAD exercises.

Robbie's first one-minute timings were on FAD Reading sheets that used words limited to the sounds he had learned in the FAD fluencies. His low starting rates at each level indicate that he was learning new words on each sheet. Through several timings per day, he maintained better than x2 acceleration.

By late February, Rob had covered all of the sounds on the fifteen FAD reading Fluencies, and successfully moved to SRA Decoding B1 (Grade 4 level), passing a Story in an average of 6 days. His first score on each new read is rising, indicating that he is retaining a sight word vocabulary.

This chart shows how many times each day Robbie read. The more times he read each day, the quicker he passed from level to level. Superimposed on this chart is a cumulative scoring of his levels (the squares.)

Each time Robbie read, he entered the scores on the computer. If he was at home, he sent the scores in through the Internet. This chart has the times of day in equal intervals up the side. Each dot shows the time of day Robbie read.

Our data indicate that one-minute timings spread throughout the day, at school and at home (as in the chart above) are more effective than a few timings once in a day. During the summer, Robbie took a few weeks off. He came to summer camp in July, passing 4 levels during that time. All of these charts show Robbie's best score each day on one minute timings in reading the passages. He passes from one level to the next by reaching the criterion of 150 words per minute after the learning opportunities are subtracted. (Robbie does not like practicing Hard Words, so he checks himself as he reads, and has very few Learning Opportunities.) He is also completing one minute timings in reading isolated lists of words selected from the passages, which are not shown here.

As Robbie approached the end of Book 1, he began passing in less time. He began Decode B2 (Grade 5) in January.

Robbie is still accelerating in his passing levels in Decoding B2 (end of Grade 5.) As noted above, he tested at a Grade 6.7 level on the WRAT in October, and he looks forward to each day's class story break, because he volunteered to read the third Harry Potter book to his fellow students, and his reading is so smooth that they are entranced.