Ripple Effects combines constructivist and instructivist approaches to developing working, real world, Language Arts literacy in every student.  It is aligned with LA content standards for listening, speaking, reading, writing and media analysis.

Self-regulated engagement with personally relevant content

Content for all reading is anchored in the visceral, personal challenges of each student’s life.  More than 5000 screens of content enable all students to start with their own base of personal experience.  They can choose from more than 550 topics, from acne or ADD to Zoloft. Through the award winning Whole Spectrum Intervention System, they can pursue any or all of them through whatever instructional modes they prefer: analyzing scenarios, watching movies, writing in their journals, testing their comprehension with interactive games. They analyze characters and situations, make inferences, draw conclusions, and always apply what they are learning to their own lives.

Repetition and drill in sentence structure, organization, vocabulary

This novel approach is not at the expense of traditional methods of teaching. The software tutoring program also uses repetition and drill to teach basic sentence structures related to cause and effect, teaches logical steps in problem solving,  builds a vocabulary of effective interpersonal communication, and  promotes clear, logical, expressive autobiographical writing. 

 ELL and SWD accessible

The multiple, engaging, interactive processes that are part of every one of these lessons do not substitute for, nor supplant, the vital, drill-to-mastery work in decoding that many ELL and dyslexic students also need. Topics like “ELL” and “dyslexia,” as well as “strengths,” “perseverance,” “self confidence” and “managing feelings” are designed to develop these students’ capacity to persevere with phonics even when it is hard.  In the Ripple Effects program, students who have not yet mastered decoding skills are not left with reading materials designed for much younger children. Through peer narrated text, on issues that are inherently engaging, struggling readers can temporarily leap frog the process of symbol decoding to develop the higher order thinking skills needed to comprehend both books and people, starting with themselves.