The Chance Zone is for children ages 8 - 10 years of age or grade levels 4 - 6. The goal is to provide a language rich environment including books, audio tapes, computer exercises designed to provide a solid foundation of language and literacy experiences. Students enrolled in this zone can expect improved fluency, vocabulary, reading comprehension and writing skills.

The curriculums used in the Chance Zone are the award winning Fast ForWord and Reading Assistant programs designed by Scientific Learning Corporation, the Lindamood Bell LiPS, Seeing Stars and Visualization & Verbalization curriculum and our unique formula for literacy success. Depending upon the needs of the student, a combination of these programs will be implemented on a cycle of about 10 weeks. Pre-testing and post-testing are used to measure the effectiveness of the programs at the start and completion of a cycle. Parents can request to receive daily, weekly or monthly progress reports for their child. All of the literacy programs implemented are research based.

The after school program has been designed around the belief that it takes a village to educate children. Empowered with more than five years of research, our program has been designed in response to the feedback from parents and children alike. Parents have expressed difficulty having their children receive tutoring for an hour or two and then rushing home to complete homework, make dinner and then rush to get the children ready for bed so they can do it all over again the next day. Children have expressed frustration with having so much homework and tutoring to do that they never having time to play and have fun. Our after school program has been designed to address these very real concerns.

From 3:00 - 6:00, children will participate in our computer based programs, receive homework assistance from trained volunteers and have opportunities to be involved in exciting recreational games and activities. A small healthy snack is provided to ease the hunger until dinner time. Since we have been using this approach, student motivation and improved reading proficiency has been outstanding. Below is a general overview of the structure of the after school program:

Summer is an important time for student learning. It has been well researched that students, who regularly read books or magazines over the summer, will return to school having maintained most of the skills gained the previous school year. However, students who do not read during the summer will lose many of the skills gained and enter school with a deficit. This is known as the summer reading gap.

Our summer literacy program is an opportunity to provide students with a rich literacy adventure to help sustain and improve summer literacy challenges. It is designed for studentsΜ in grade 1 through grade 6. Parents can expect research based techniques and students can expect their summer days filled with lots of fun and engaging activities. Students have improved in their overall language and literacy skills and have an experience that will make them want to return every summer.