Ray Hall, educational consultant for the National Institute For Direct Instruction, visited the B-R elementary Monday and Tuesday. He was here to provide feedback on the reading, language, spelling and math programs taught at B-R.The reading Program, Reading Mastery, teaches students essential decoding and comprehension skills. The beginning grade levels teach students how to break the code and to read fluently. The intermediate grade levels use social studies and science concepts in stories to teach students how to learn from what they read. The upper levels introduce students to many pieces of classic literature.
The language program teaches receptive and expressive language skills. The early levels focus on the oral language concepts that students need to understand the academic classroom and start the students on the writing process. The middle levels provide full immersion into narrative writing. The upper levels move students into expository and critique writing plus higher order thinking skills.
The math program, Connecting Math Concepts, is designed so that all students will learn to compute, solve problems and think mathematically. The rationale for the program is that understanding math requires making connections between related math concepts and the world around us. The program ensures that students understand these connections, and it establishes relationships between concepts and their applications.
