Online Homeschooling Support
Fran is available to work with homeschooled students, including those who are temporarily staying at home during the coronavirus health crisis. Individualized lessons in reading (phonics/decoding and reading comprehension), spelling or writing can be arranged. Please contact us for additional details.
Reading, Spelling, and Phonics
Teton Reading Intervention specializes in developing remedial programs for students with specific language-based learning disabilities — particularly dyslexia — as well as those struggling to develop strong reading and spelling skills due to a lack of appropriate instructional opportunities. We provide instruction for students ranging from kindergarten through high school.
Our reading tutoring program relies on the Orton-Gillingham approach, a direct, explicit and systematic phonics-based reading method. It is considered the most effective instructional approach when working to remediate dyslexic students. Fran Lunney, the instructor behind Teton Reading Intervention, has many years of experience teaching phonics programs derived from the Orton-Gillingham approach, including Project Read Phonics and the Wilson Reading System.
For the past 10 years, Fran has also relied on the Lively Letters program, a method geared towards tutoring younger students. Lively Letters is a research-based curriculum in which the 44 sounds of the English language are presented as lively characters with personalities that interact.
This multisensory approach “combines imagery, hand and body cues, music, and humorous stories to turn abstract letters into engaging, lively characters.” Lively Letters allows students to develop long-lasting letter and sound associations and blend sounds more fluently. As students build their reading skills, they will work to develop fluency with text that incorporates the sounds and patterns they have learned. Lively Letters is paired with a sight word reading program. Fran was so impressed with the progress that his younger students made with this program that he became a national trainer for the program.
Educational Assessments
In addition to offering academic tutoring to address each student’s specific needs, Teton Reading Intervention provides a range of reading assessments that provide valuable insights into a student’s overall learning profile and academic needs.
Our assessment services can play a key role in identifying areas of concern and devising an instructional plan that will lead to greater academic success. Reading assessments range from brief screenings that take no longer than 1-2 hours to more comprehensive evaluations that measure a wide array of foundational skills. A comprehensive assessment from Teton Reading Intervention measures:
- Phonological awareness
- Rapid naming
- Word reading
- Word attack skills
- Reading fluency
- Oral reading comprehension
- Silent reading comprehension
- Spelling
- Sound-symbol awareness
- Vocabulary
Teton Reading Intervention uses standardized, norm-referenced and criteria-referenced assessment tools recognized by educational professionals.
Written Expression
Teton Reading Intervention also provides a full range of instructional services in the area of written expression. Fran has taught writing at all levels, from elementary school through high school. He often works with students who are struggling to generate well-written sentences and paragraphs, but he also helps more advanced students working on multi-paragraph essays and creative writing pieces.
A writer himself, Fran has published poems in literary journals and articles in fly-fishing magazines. This experience provides him with additional perspective and expertise when instructing students.