ARC Course Description

Overview

ARC is a reading enhancement program designed to develop and enhance reading, spelling, and comprehension skills for students third grade and up. This program incorporates both phonics and phonemic awareness (the ability to notice, think about, and work with the individual sounds in spoken words).  It begins with the smallest unit of sound and proceeds to build sounds into syllables, syllables into words, and words into sentences. The ARC Reading Enhancement Program typically produces a three-month or longer accomplishment for each month invested.

Biblical Content

Although ARC does not explicitly reference Bible verses, the reading selections depict God as the Creator and reinforce biblical character traits such as stewardship, respect, and accountability.

Structure

The ARC Reading Enhancement Program includes ninety-six, forty-five minute lessons. There are four sections in every lesson:

•  Oral Language and Speech – students listen and respond aloud while following along with the CD

•  Listening-Writing – students write answers to questions based on the day’s lessons

•  Fun with Words – students are asked to identify syllables, sounds, and words

•  Comprehension – students review vocabulary and read aloud from the lesson

Each lesson uses the Quadriad-Perception Building technique: hearing to speaking; hearing to writing; seeing to writing; seeing to speaking.  The more senses a student uses, the more they will retain.

Parental Involvement

The ARC program relies heavily on parents to “coach” their students. Before the student reads their first lesson story, the coach should demonstrate several errors to listen for, (substitutions, mispronunciation, words pronounced by the coach, disregard for punctuation, insertions, repetition, and omissions).  After the story's completion, the coach then provides correct pronunciations of the word(s) that trouble the student and writes them in the student’s Dictation Book and Answer Book for review. If there are more than two errors in a section, the coach should encourage the student to return to the CDs and repeat those sections. If there are two or less errors per section, the coach should proceed to ask the script questions contained in the Teacher’s Manual, being cautious not to reveal the correct answer; (students must come to the correct conclusion themselves).

It is important to note that the coach should never add to the ARC program. By doing so, you take the risk of adding something that is not consistent with the teaching method of ARC and may do more harm than good.