Developing Proficient Readers

Kumon Reading is a balanced program incorporating the best practices in reading instruction. It's designed to develop core skills, from understanding the sounds that make up words to the summary and critique of complex reading passages. Kumon students ultimately learn to comprehend a wide variety of texts, and gain the fluency needed to compose clear and correct language.

Reading Curriculum Summary

    • Word Building Block

      1. Look, Listen & Repeat
        Reciting Words
        Letter Sounds
        Consonant Combinations & Vowel Sounds
        Advanced Vowel Sounds & Advanced Sounding Out
        Function of words

      2. Sentence Building Block

      3. Sentence Structure, Sentence Topics, Thought Sequence
        Subject & Predicate
        Comparing & Contrasting
        Constructing Sentences
        Organizing Information
        Combining Sentences

      4. Main Idea and Paragraphs
        Clauses
        Reason and Result

      5. Referring Words, Interpreting Text, and Paraphrase

      6. Summary Block

      7. Point Making, Theme, and Story Elements
      8. Summation
      9. Persuasion
      10. Critical Reading
      11. Elements of Literature
      12. Interpretation

Core Principles

The reading program uses authentic literature and skills instruction to develop the language skills of each individual student. As a result, reading and writing skills are developed concurrently. Later, fundamentals like sentence structure, grammar, and punctuation are introduced in the context of reading exercises and supplemental reading so that children continually build their vocabulary and strengthen their comprehension. In this way, the program sequentially nurtures the skills and critical reasoning abilities they'll need to identify, organize, express, and intrepret written ideas. These are precisely the tools they'll need to cope with critical reading at the high school level, and beyond.

The program is worksheet based, individualized to each student and self-paced to the degree of effort the student puts out.

Building Comprehension

              Kumon students learn by reading short excerpts from respected sources, often award-winning literature, and completing a variety of exercises that may ask them to draw comparisons or contrasts, interpret text or pursue a line of reasoning, apply vocabulary, even analyze the author's intentions or stylistic devices. Students work toward an understanding of intricate passages and the ability to summarize them accurately. They are continually exposed to and engaged by rich and varied material that they may very well encounter in school English courses.

              Honor Roll and Program Completion

              The advantages of developing critical reading skills nurtured by Kumon go far beyond the school subject of English. Such skills are ultimately required for every academic subject your child will pursue and are also extremely useful in important test-taking situations like the SAT or ACT.

              Kumon recognizes the achievement of all students studying six months or more ahead of grade level every quarter (March, June, September and December). Something magical happens to students at this point in their studies, concentration and focus improve, a sense of accomplishment becomes evident and they typically go into "Kumon autopilot".

              There are 23 levels in the reading program (Pre-school to High School). After each concept in a level is mastered, an achievement test is administered and the next level is started.