/Language Arts

Research tells us that a strong reading/language arts program is built on five components: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Odyssey Reading focuses on these five building blocks in a comprehensive curriculum that interweaves listening, speaking, reading, and writing. By applying skills in a language rich environment, young readers and writers expand their knowledge and develop a love of the subjects.

For young readers, Odyssey supplements the systematic and explicit instruction in phonics, meaningful instruction in context, and direct instruction in decoding and comprehension with unique decodable readers. The decodable readers are "versions" of the unit story designed with components to assist struggling readers in being successful with the text. Young readers also have their own writing tool, Story Creator, an age-appropriate place where they can write, read, tell stories, and illustrate their thoughts.

CompassLearning's reading comprehension and vocabulary products for students in grades 3-8 use a revolutionary Interactive Conversation Interface that engages students more deeply in the learning process. Founded on scientifically-based brain research into how students learn and retain information, the curriculum uses technology to simulate a conversation between the user and the software program by creating a "person" who responds to the student in the same way a human being might. It's a method of using solid instruction to engage students and create learning that sticks. And because this interactive software automatically individualizes instruction, it can meet the highly diverse needs of today's classrooms.

Students can also use Odyssey Writer's suite of tools to develop the skills in organization, analysis, synthesis and communication necessary for research and essay writing. Teachers aid this learning through rubric-based assessment that guides students as they grow to meet state writing standards.

Weave it all together and you have a reading/language arts program that supports each student's learning style and level of achievement.