Sopris West - Rewards program

It’s excellent although you need some creativity and dramatic flair to keep kids engaged! An enjoyment of words helps. There are lots of opportunities for vocab enrichment. The only thing I have discovered is that each lesson (with a small group of students with reading difficulties) took me about 1 1/2 hours. So instead of being able to finish a lesson per 50 min. period, it was more like one and 1/2 periods per lesson. I have not carried a group all the way to lesson 20 due to lack of time but I think the later lessons (13-20) would take about two complete periods to finish. Mostly this is because with my groups they need a lot of vocabulary development, but these were 5th graders. Older students might be familiar with more of the words. The program requires minimal preparation and is scripted (although you may deviate from the script after you’re familiar with the format). I’ve recommended it to people because it’s relatively inexpensive, easy to implement and effective. It also has research to document its effectiveness. That’s my input—oh, I’d like my 5th graders this year to do it, but they are still having significant difficulty with single syllable words—this program is for help decoding 3—5 syllable words. I’m thinking about it but I don’t think right now that this group is ready for REWARDS.
Hope this helps and enjoy the training.