Every student is provided with a premier digital learning curriculum that meets their needs. Students have the opportunity to work on flexible learning programs in reading, literacy, math, Writing and test preparation.

Practice test preparation is also provided for grades 4-12. Practice examination instruction and test strategies for all content and core subject tests are offered. Our practice test preparation includes preparation and instruction for quarterly and annual district and state-mandated tests.

Middle and high school students can enroll in one of our national SAT or ACT college test preparatory classes. Our SAT and ACT curriculum provides learning and practice test preparation in all content testing areas (e.g., English, reading, science, mathematics, social science and writing). Our Basic Skills Knowledge curriculum provides skills in math, science and literacy for 7th and 10th grade students who must take state and district proficiency tests and high school graduation competency tests. The Basic Skills curriculum is also a preparatory program for adult literacy learners before they enroll in their Graduation Equivalency Development (GED) option.

Adult learners who enroll in the Grade Equivalency Course (GED) Program to prepare for this test are assigned a Certified Teacher who will provide guided instruction in every area of this test. In our GED Program, adult learners can also enroll in individual courses that they may need to master, including any of the Basic Skills National Test courses, which will increase their knowledge in 9th–12th grade core subject content areas. Our Premiere course selection guarantees a quality curriculum that covers both the scope and depth of the subject students will learn.

Source: Retrieved July 10, 2016 from: http://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading_math_g12_2015/

For this learning option, students must forward, email or upload their school assignments or current course material so that their intervention tutor can design the intervention learning plan and goals that focus on what is being taught in your child’s classroom. “The Nation’s Report Card is the only ongoing assessment of students’ performance in the U.S. in different subject areas.” 1

1 Source: Retrieved July 10, 2016 from: http://www.nationsreportcard.gov/#?grade=4

Transition Intervention is also supported by Gifted Apples’ Adaptive©, Prescriptive© or Sequential© curriculum, which provides flexible learning that is cumulative and builds upon previously learned material.

Pre- and post-test assessment and continuous, ongoing progress monitoring are integral parts of ensuring that your child is achieving success. All online learning sessions and virtual classroom interactions are digital and recorded so that you and your child can go back and review the learning objective and gain feedback on learning progress.

Your child’s tutor or interventionist will always provide explicit, direct and specialized instruction that supports transitional learning at the skill and conceptual levels.

Students can schedule to meet with their teacher when it is convenient for them and receive instruction, practice, take tests, complete homework and ask questions—all from the comfort of their home.

Students can log into their account at any time and work on their course, complete assignments and prepare for their transition sessions and online class, giving them more time to learn and master the content.

Gifted Apples’ researchers realize that developing math competence during primary and intermediate grades is essential to later success in math. Students who did not receive early intervention to repair deficits in math still struggle with math concepts, causing difficulty completing in-class math assignments and homework. Students who do not understand math during class time and find it embarrassing to constantly ask questions in the presence of their classmates will ultimately find their math homework challenging, leaving many unanswered problems unsolved. This continuous cycle throughout the school year ultimately leads to lower proficiency on math tests and, sadly, poor grades.



According to the National Assessment of Education Progress and the Nation’s Report Card (2013) data, only 40% of 4th graders and 33% of 8th grade students performed at or above proficiency on basic mathematics standards by the end of high school.

Source: Retrieved July 16, 2016 from:
http://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading_math_2015/#mathematics?grade=4

NOTE: The NAEP mathematics scale ranges from 0–500. Black includes African Americans, and Hispanic includes Latinos. Race categories exclude Hispanic origin. Beginning in the 2014–15 school year, states could additionally categorize students as eligible for the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) by including them in their Community Eligibility Provision; therefore, the percentage of students categorized as eligible has increased in comparison to 2013. Readers should interpret the NSLP trend results with caution. See more information about the NSLP data at http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/mathematics/interpret-results.aspx.

Source: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), various years, 1992–2015 Mathematics Assessments.

What are the Opinions of the Nation’s 12th Grade Students?

Gifted Apples’ tutors provide direct and explicit math instruction designed to ease the emotional challenges that secondary students feel after years of struggling in math classes and receiving low grades. The concept of “ease” is especially significant for mathematics, which involves many branches and strands, each with its own concepts and procedures.

The concept of “ease” in delivering math instruction cannot be stated enough. Our math tutors have years of experience and can anticipate misunderstandings and decrease confusion during the instructional process by providing precise explanations of math concepts while carefully sequenced and integrated instruction is being delivered. The purpose of this instructional format is to close learning gaps as quickly as possible.

The emphasis on drill and practice is structured so students understand the conceptual basis underlying the math processes for solving problems. Students can feel confident when a cumulative review is administered to assess the learning of their drill and practice activities.

Reading is infused into math instruction once word problem-solving begins. The foundational skills of reading (i.e., word meaning, fluency and comprehension) are taught as balanced, direct instructional targets and then applied to a variety of word-problem types.

• Instruction is organized and designed to teach students how to recognize concepts of varying problem types that they will encounter in their classroom instruction and on high-stakes school and district-mandated tests.
• The combination of in-depth drill and practice on conceptual math procedures, infusing reading foundational skills to comprehend mixed word-problem types, and ongoing formative and summative assessments provides students with familiarity with solving novel word problems.
• Students do not have to create a solution strategy each time they see a different word-problem format, but rather they will recognize various word problems as familiar using their set of solution rules learned from their Gifted Apples’ Math Tutor.
  

When students develop mental maps or "schemas,” for problem types taught in the Prescriptive Intensive Math sessions, they learn which set of solution rules to apply in order to solve a variety of word-problem types.

Dyslexia & The Older Reader

Many students struggle to learn to read for many reasons, including lack of motivation and interest, weak preparation from the pre-school home environment, weak English language skills, or low general intellectual ability (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998).

Although it is challenging to provide appropriately targeted instruction for older students with dyslexia who continue to struggle with reading, it may be even more challenging to provide sufficient amounts of instruction in small enough groups to accelerate their development. Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and / or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities. Secondary consequences may include problems in reading comprehension and reduced reading experience that can impede the growth of vocabulary and background knowledge (Shaywitz, 2003, pp. 122-127).

Gifted Apples provides individualized, intensive reading interventions within a structured framework to:

• Students with specific reading disorders (Dyslexia);
• 4th grade and older students who struggle with reading
• Students at-risk for developing reading problems, including English language learners

Especially important are expert findings that:

• Students do not “outgrow” reading problems (Francis, Shaywitz, Stuebing, Shaywitz, & Fletcher, 1996; Juel, 1988; Torgesen & Burgess, 1998).
• If students do not receive high-quality instruction and intervention, early reading problems often develop into serious reading difficulties (Stanovich, 1986).
  

According to researchers, “effective early interventions, as well as remedial instruction that is powerful enough to accelerate students’ rate of reading growth, almost always involve extra small groups or 1:1 instruction for periods of time varying from 20 minutes a day to 90 minutes a day, four or five days a week” (Elbaum, Vaughn, Hughes, & Moody, 1999; Scamacca et al., 2007; Torgesen, 2005).

At Gifted Apples, our goal is to provide more powerful interventions to older dyslexic students than they may frequently receive in special education. It is also important for our students to acquire phonemic decoding skills if the instruction they previously received in the earlier grades was not sufficient to help them with the foundational reading component.

Over a quarter of 8th-grade students and more than one-third of 4th graders do not read well enough to understand important concepts and acquire new knowledge from grade-level text. For students with learning disabilities, the numbers are of greater concern.

Experienced educators and researchers have experienced the below-average reading performance of dyslexic readers, which is far below average even though they do not present with low or below-average cognitive abilities. If dyslexic students continue to struggle with reading during their early school experience, they have not acquired the skills from the reading instruction that has been provided. By the time many students with dyslexia reach 4th and 5th grade, they have missed out on so much reading experience that it may be a challenge for them to catch up and close the reading gap without intensive intervention.

Many scholars refer to older dyslexic students who are extremely behind in reading as "non-readers" due to the “nature and duration of instruction required to “normalize” the reading ability of the dyslexic reader.

Learners who are dyslexic yet do not receive intense interventions continue to struggle throughout their academic schooling with phonemic awareness and perform poorly on tests of phonemic decoding, text reading fluency, and spelling.

Gifted Apples provides explicit instruction in basic reading skills if students are still experiencing difficulty with decoding, fluency and comprehension. These foundational components of reading overlap, causing a “word reading bottleneck” (Fletcher et al., 2007) and inhibiting reading growth. It is important to continue to work to improve their functional reading skills, yet it does not make sense to allow a severe “bottleneck” in reading to stop the learning process that is required to be successful in a career, in college and in the world as an independent individual in society.

The primary differences between instruction appropriate for all children in the classroom and that required by children with relatively severe dyslexia are related to the manner in which instruction is provided.

Balanced structure means that each lesson is individualized within the word, with a fluency and comprehension framework supported by responsive reading instruction and a menu of strategies for each of the five critical areas of reading.

Gifted Apples provides a balanced approach to reading instruction where each foundational component is taught during every session, with a greater intensity of time and intervention given to each domain of reading as the instructional process moves forward.

The three foundational domains of reading are:

• Phonological (sound)
• Orthographic Speed Processing (fluency-speed naming of sound-to-letter correspondences required for reading; and
• Comprehension (organizing and retaining knowledge for learning)

Gifted Apples provides a balanced approach to reading instruction where each foundational component is taught during every session with a greater intensity of time and intervention given to each domain of reading as the instructional process moves forward.

Interventions that we provide are individualized within a framework and categorized into 5 areas that are critical to the reading improvement of older struggling readers: (1) word study, (2) fluency, (3) vocabulary, (4) comprehension, and (5) motivation.

Word Study: Phonological Processing and Phonemic Awareness

Explicit and direct instruction is provided to students who struggle with the phonological processing of phonemes in isolation, segments for blending sounds together, or decoding words and nonsense words. Vocabulary development of expressive and receptive language concepts Building background knowledge and conversational skills through read-alouds and think-out-louds about story elements (setting, characters and events)

What is an At-Risk Reader?
Are ELL Students At-Risk for Reading Problems?

At-risk Readers are children who have difficulty with reading, resulting from a variety of factors and circumstances. The cause of reading is important, but the type of reading difficulties that prevent a student from reading and speaking fluently and learning from what they read is the primary focus of Gifted Apples’ Literacy and eLearning Tutors.

As an English Language Learner, your child may be at-risk for reading difficulties and continue to struggle with reading because the amount of instruction in English Language Development required to close the language gap cannot be provided during the academic school day. The language gap may result in poorer academic performance in all of your child’s content area classes (i.e., math, history, and science), not just reading or English.

With Gifted Apples’ ELL Tutors, your child will be provided with English Language Development instruction, which may include all or some aspects of each component, including the following interventions and strategies:

1. The five foundational skills of reading (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension)
2. Oral language development in academic vocabulary and conversational speaking
3. English language development instruction using the features of English (sentence structure (syntax), grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and the use of social language)

Other reasons your child may need to begin at the fundamental skills level are:

• If your family has recently arrived in the U.S. from another country,
• If your child has never enrolled in school,
• If your child has experienced interrupted schooling,
• If she or he has attended school in the U.S. but has not learned basic blending and decoding skills and is not able to recognize words automatically
• If your child’s school does not have a Newcomer’s Program or English Language Development for ELL students
  

• Learning is guided so that your child will learn how to discuss and write about concepts from the lessons she or he is working on with the ELL tutor.
• Your child will practice and learn numerous strategies, such as think-alouds, directed-reading-thinking activity and learning logs, which promote critical thinking and reasoning.
• Your child will learn how to clarify confusing information and predict what might happen as they read short passages.
• Critical-thinking strategies will provide knowledge of concepts rather than encouraging memorization of single skills.
• Your Gifted Apples ELL Tutor will model thinking out loud and how to clear up confusion during reading. Your child will receive direct and explicit instruction using a variety of “thinking-during-reading” strategies critical to learning what good readers do while reading silently.
• English and second language learners must learn concepts instead of individual skills in order to become proficient in the English language used for academic achievement.

Grades 4–12 ELL Assessment of Foundational and Oral Language Reading Proficiency includes:

• Language: receptive and expressive language; morphological and pragmatic language skills
• Phonological Awareness: ability to identify and blend phonemes in words; manipulation of phonemes; hearing isolated sounds and blending to form words; recognition and production of rhyme
• Rapid Naming/Word Fluency: Speed of naming words or symbols
• Reading Fluency: Score of reading accuracy and rate
• Oral and Silent Reading Comprehension: Reading long and short printed passages
• Literal and inferential reading comprehension
• Spelling Writing: Relationship between phonemes and the spellings that represent sounds in written words; orthographic processing; semantic (meaning); and morphological (word parts: base, suffixes, and prefixes).

After screening and assessment, your child will begin on the reading component of the highest difficulty and will be provided with a complete and sequential progression of instructional intervention for the skills within that component, beginning with the most basic tasks, then moving on with sequential pacing to more complex tasks.



• Data from ongoing progress monitoring of reading growth is used to guide adjustments to interventions so that your child continuously receives instruction that effectively accelerates their reading growth on the target skills being taught.

Gifted Apples provides individualized, explicit and intensive reading intervention within a balanced and structured framework for older English language learners in grades 4 through 12.

• Explicit instruction occurs during each scheduled intervention session. Explicit and direct instruction refers to the level of intensity required to increase students’ phonological and phonemic knowledge, word fluency speed, and oral language text reading accuracy.
• Second language learners also require more intensive, direct instruction that is scaffolded and cumulative in order to maintain the knowledge they have acquired, building upon newly learned skills in order to decrease the severity of their symptoms.
• Decoding, Fluency and comprehension are the foundational components of reading, which overlap, causing a “word reading bottleneck” (Fletcher et al., 2007) and also inhibiting reading growth for English language students.
• Instruction is individualized within the framework of planning based on data from screening, standardized tests, pre-assessments and ongoing adaptive assessment to measure progress.
• Each lesson provides a “balanced structure” of the three foundational components of reading, which include the five (5) areas critical to improving reading.
• In scheduled amounts of time, intervention sessions cover word study, fluency, comprehension instruction and text-responsive writing to assess understanding.
• Instruction is sequential, scaffolded and cumulative, so that skills learned build upon one another along the learning continuum as the instructional process progresses forward.