YMCA READS! Curriculum

YMCA READS! focuses on early reading intervention to prevent later school failure. It uses a research-based curriculum: the SIPPS (Systematic Instruction in Phoneme Awareness, Phonics and Sight Words), which is supplemented with the Kidzlit Program.

Together, SIPPS and Kidzlit address the five essential components of early literacy:

  • phonemic awareness (i.e. the ability to discriminate between sounds and sequence them within words);

  • phonics (i.e. the relationships between sounds and the letters that represent them);

  • fluency (i.e. the quality and speed of oral reading);

  • vocabulary and

  • reading comprehension.

These skills are taught through games, movement, multisensory materials, carefully sequenced lessons and stories selected from good children’s literature.

Kidzlit

Kidzlit is a program published by the Developmental Studies Center, a non-profit publishing company based in Oakland, California. It includes fifty stories written by recognized authors, and selected because they highlight “life lessons” such as sharing, friendship, problem-solving, honesty and other topics vital to social development. In small groups, students learn to share their ideas, take turns, listen to others, and reflect about stories that relate to their own experience.

The SIPPS Program

The SIPPS Program, based on the research of Dr. John Shefelbine from

Sacramento State University in California was selected for the YMCA READS! Program for several reasons.

  • It has a high success rate in schools with high poverty rates.

  • It can be taught by trained mentors.

  • It is systematic: each lesson builds on the previous ones; students go at their own pace, and need to master one level before moving on to the next one.

  • It is explicit: children learn to decode (read) and encode (spell) words, sentences and stories through direct instruction, in ways that make sense to them.

  • It is data-driven: periodic assessments guide instructional decisions such as level of difficulty, pace and grouping. Students who need more intensive intervention work one-on-one, while others might work two-to-one or in small groups.