Reading On Rails™
Onboarding For Online Tutoring
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The Bristol Standard reading skills program
In 2004, we began verifying students could raise their grades by applying a memory theory while studying. It worked, so we applied our knowledge of memory to improving American reading instruction. After 14 years of continuous improvement, we had Reading on Rails.
Research Confirmed The Following Benefits
Lower frustration | Skills rise 6-8 times faster
Quick word identification | Higher fluency
Smoother reading | Higher comprehension
Reasonable Expectations Include
A better grasp of homework instructions
Self Teaching | Reading For Fun
Higher Confidence Levels
What makes Reading-on-Rails™ students more successful?
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Reading on Rails™ is Bristol Standard’s reading skills training program. The program contains over 500 phonics exercises. All are carefully designed to promote smooth fast reading. Smooth reading, or “fluent” reading, raises comprehension dramatically. It sounds like natural speech—and crucially—allows your child to place pauses where they are supposed to go. When a sentence is properly broken up into a first part, a middle part, and a last part, it’s easy to understand. That leads to high levels of comprehension. High comprehension comes from fluency. Reading fluency comes from instantly recognizing the letter patterns you see and saying them so fast and so automatically… that you can actually look ahead in a sentence to identify punctuation marks. Almost all punctuation marks actually mean the same thing… pause here. Pausing at the right locations—instead of pausing to figure out the next word—leads to high comprehension.
There are about 125 common letter patterns in English: E-A as in eat, T-H as in them, E-R as in her, S-P-L as in split, and so on. Students need explicit explanations and a lot of practice in order to learn all those letter patterns. Once they know the spelling patterns, rare spelling exceptions will stand out …because they don’t fit the letter patterns already learned. Students will teach themselves the exceptions while they’re reading for fun. This link will take you to a list of those spelling patterns, so you can test your child to see how many of those patterns they already know. The test will simultaneously produce a rough estimate of your child’s grade level.
Reading on Rails™ is all about decoding. Decoding is about 90% of reading. It’s the skill that allows readers to pronounce a word they have never seen before, even though they may not know what it means. When decoding is automatic and rapid, the student can stop worrying about what the next word is, and instead, focus on what the author is saying. That also leads to high reading comprehension.
How does Reading on Rails™ work?
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An experienced driver finds that they are often “driving on autopilot” while they are having conversations in the vehicle and thinking about other things. Similarly, a good reader will “read on autopilot” so they can listen to an author’s thoughts. In its early stages, Reading on Rails™ helps beginners recognize letter patterns by ensuring each new word is very similar to the surrounding words. As your child gets faster, word similarity gradually goes down.
To speed up your child’s reading more, we’ve cleared away thousands of roadblocks and speed bumps over the last 14 years. Plus, every session is custom planned. Reading on Rails™ also displays words one at a time to ensure your child is looking at the right word when corrected.
Parental involvement is also helpful at certain stages. Even when not helping, you’ll be able to watch tutorial sessions and monitor progress with our reusable at-home test. At first, you read to your child. Later, he or she reads to you. These changes happen so fast that we can provide a guarantee. That’s described in our enrollment document and at the bottom of the Get Started page.
Overcoming Common Roadblocks
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Weak readers struggle with writing, mathematical word problems, homework instructions, classroom embarrassment, and grades. Many young students encounter reading roadblocks. Roadblocks halt reading progress. Speed bumps slow things down. These obstacles reduce reading accuracy, fluency, and comprehension. As Reading On Rails™ was refined, we identified and eliminated every obstacle we could. Our students learn abnormally fast. Here are some of the problems we fix.
Routine Custom Session Planning
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Your tutor has been trained to listen to and classify the feedback hidden in your child’s reading responses. As a reading student goes through each exercise, his tutor considers speed, accuracy, confidence, and error types. The tutor records a 1-10 score for each exercise traversed. Sometimes a comment is added. Scores and comments guide session planning. After every session, the tutor selects exercises for the next session based on your child’s more recent records, knowledge of your child, and knowledge of memory formation patterns. Your tutor will review your child’s track record with you from time to time.
The Enrollment Document & The Outcome Guarantee
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The Reading On Rails™ Enrollment Document is sent after your first two tutorial sessions (both free). Your child’s reading outcome is automatically covered by the Bristol Standard outcome guarantee as soon as you complete the enrollment document. Then, if your child reaches the tutoring deadline but still isn’t reading on a late 3rd grade level, you get 20 free half-hour tutoring sessions. The guarantee is slightly different for adult learners. Call us for details or read about it in the enrollment document.
No-Traffic Tutoring™ | Overview & Requirements
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No-Traffic Tutoring™ is Bristol Standard’s flagship reading service. All reading tutoring is done online through Zoom. It’s highly convenient for parents, working adults, and busy students. Also, our tutors don’t have to charge you for driving.
After the free, 2-session student evaluation period, it’s time to choose a tutoring plan. You decide how many 30-minute sessions you can fit into your family’s schedule. Most parents schedule two to four sessions each week on evenings or weekends. The student outcome guarantee stays in effect as long as you’re averaging at least two half-hour sessions per week. For more details on the process, visit our “Getting Started” page.
This program requires internet access, a webcam, a microphone, and the ability to run the Zoom application smoothly from your computer, tablet, or smartphone.
If you can watch video online (“streaming video”), your internet connection is fast enough for online tutoring. These days, most devices (laptops, tablets, & cell phones) have a webcam and microphone built in. Your school’s library or “media center” will definitely have all these capabilities. Sometimes our students even join tutorial meetings while their parents are driving! This works well most of the time. Online tutoring saves you money and helps keep you out of rush-hour traffic.
Parents have the ability to monitor sessions from their work if desired.
If, for some reason, you feel you need to cancel or reschedule a session, please inform your tutor as early as possible, so the tutor can try to fill the open time slot helping another student. Different tutoring plans handle cancelations differently. Most parents choose flextime plans, which allow the rollover of canceled sessions. Restrictions apply. Tutoring plans can be suspended while you’re family is indisposed. See plans and pricing.
Remote After-School Tutoring (Child On Campus)
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Your Reading on Rails™ tutor can easily tutor your child while your child is at school—if the school has no objection. This can take place in a “media center”/library, during your school’s after-school program, or in your child’s elementary classroom while the teacher winds up the workday. Just contact your school and provide them with address of our website – BristolStandard.com – to get started.
Accent Reduction | English As A Second Language (ESL)
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Parents & Teachers
Children under about 13 years old, will usually learn to speak English without a strong accent. Younger children trying to learn English often fall way behind in reading because English letters don’t represent speech sounds they’ve heard before or sounds they can easily reproduce. In addition, reading lectures provided in a language that’s foreign to the listener are often incomprehensible. This type of problem affects children of recent immigrants and other linguistic groups. Children in these groups can fall so far behind that advanced reading lessons become unclear and ineffective.
Reading statistics vary, but always show these children are at higher risk of developing more severe reading problems than their peers. These problems can interfere with their education well beyond 3rd grade and probably affect about 2/3 of immigrants in second grade. The solution is simple. Assume there will be a problem and intervene with effective tutoring immediately. This is not the time for a wait-and-see approach. After graduating from Rails, children with Latin linguistic roots (Italian, Spanish, French, & Portuguese roots) will be able to read in both English and their mother tongues.
Executive Immigrants
As an important businessman or woman you may wish to communicate more effectively in business meetings and sales meetings. Learning a second language is hard if it’s approached inefficiently: We suggest a 3-step approach.
- Begin by reducing your accent. Rails covers all 43 American speech sounds and quickly reduces foreign accents.
- As you move into the advanced Rails sections, you are simultaneously practicing your new accent as you learn to blend American speech sounds from left to right.
- Now that you can read English, you simply read about things you are interested in to improve grammar, vocabulary, and meeting communication.
We meet with students via the Zoom application. We find it highly convenient for students, parents, and teachers.
This program requires internet access, a webcam, a microphone, and the ability to run the Zoom application smoothly from your computer, tablet, or smartphone.
Visit Para Madres Latinas for information specific to Spanish speaking mothers.
For more information about accent reduction/modification, click here our relevant blog article entitled: Unlocking Clear Communication: The Importance of Accent Reduction and Neutral Speech
Reading Insurance™ | Progress Monitoring
We often work with children who aren’t behind. A child who is ahead in reading enjoys demonstrating his talent for his peers and relatives. A child who is behind finds reading embarrassing and avoids the practice he or she desperately needs. By third grade, fifty-one percent of Georgia children are behind in reading. Many are turning their backs on reading and reading teachers, but after third grade, most homework requires reading. Reading Insurance™ is designed to prevent these problems with quarterly reading check-ups.
Like you, we just want to make sure everything stays on track. A child who is only slightly behind can catch up quickly, then enjoy being a reading leader in his or her classroom. Reading Insurance™ is designed for children who are five to nine years old. The ideal child for our insurance is either slightly ahead, on track, or just a little behind.
By using Zoom for online reading check-ups, we can detect issues while they’re still small. If your child has begun falling behind, we can put him back in the top third of the class quickly. By catching problems early, you save money because less tutoring is required. By watching each check-up session, you can keep tabs on your child’s progress and assure yourself that you have identified a highly competent reading tutor—in case you ever need one. Bristol Standard tutors use the Reading on Rails™ system, which is 6 to 8 times faster than the reading programs used in typical schools. This peace of mind costs less than 200.00 per year. Prices are on our plans page.
Every three months, we remind you by phone and e-mail when it’s time to schedule the next quarterly checkup. You can pose questions or sign up by contacting us. This short video shows you how to get 15 months of protection for the 12-month price.
Reading Curriculum
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Because Reading on Rails students learn 6 to 8 times faster than most and are about twice as likely to become strong readers, our goal is to change how reading is taught in Georgia. This includes adding the Reading on Rails supplement to the program roster for all 200 districts in Georgia, teaching thousands of teachers how to be more effective, and setting up numerous controlled studies to prove our claims.
Our district services include:
- Reading Curriculum Consulting
- Controlled Studies (design & administration)
- Reading Curriculum Access
- Teacher Training
For more detailed information, visit our School Districts section of bristolstandard.com.
