Ready To Learn

How to Order the
Ready To Learn Curriculum

To order RTL curriculum contact the publisher, Atlantic Education Consultants, Boca Raton, FL:
at SSSAEC@aol.com

or click here to order online

Ready To Learn is an early childhood classroom program that is based upon
an extensive review of research on skills associated with school success.  RTL is designed to promote the learning skills and social skills needed for school success. The main skill areas in the RTL program are attending, listening, social skills, and cognitive skills such as understanding story structure and asking effective questions. These skill areas are considered the foundations upon which reading proficiency and school success are based.  Five teacher strategies are used to help students develop competence in the skill areas listed above:

• Modeling, coaching and cueing

•  Student story retelling

•  Student story telling

•  Positive peer reporting

•  Encouragement council  

The skills and teacher strategies used in RTL reflect the latest recommendations from The National Reading Panel’s 2003 publication, “Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its implications for Reading Instruction.  

In addition, three well-designed studies have been conducted to measure the impact of the Ready To Learn program with Pre-K, Kindergarten, and first grade students on their academic achievement and social skills. A fourth study with second graders using a modification of the RTL program has also been completed.   

All four studies demonstrated positive and significant gains in academic achievement and social skills for students involved in the RTL program as compared to students not receiving instruction in the RTL model. 

Two of the studies have been published in the Journal of Educational Research (JER).  One of the studies received the Research Article of the Year award from JER.  The other two studies are in progress for publication. 

     Brigman, G. & Webb, L.  (2003).  Ready to learn: Teaching kindergarten students school success skills.  Journal of Educational Research. 

     Brigman, G., Lane, D., Lane, D., Switzer, D., & Lawrence, R., (1999). Teaching children school success skills. Journal of Educational Research, 92 (6), 323-329. 

The RTL program is published by Atlantic Education Consultants, Boca Raton, FL. 

561-451-9719.  The cost is $185.00 + shipping and handling.  

The program includes two oversized story books which contain the five stories with Fuzzy and his forest friends, which introduce the skills of attending, listening, asking questions and encouragement to the children.  A teacher manual, an audio CD of the stories, and a set of classroom posters to remind the children of the key skills.

Training is available.

 The trainer comes to the district.  There are several options for training.

1.    One day training  

2.    One day training plus follow-up training using our peer coaching model.  The peer coaching model features teachers bringing back video tape of their use of one of the RTL strategies in their class.  Small groups of teachers observe the tape and use a structured format to offer encouragement on the strengths of the teacher observed as well as constructive suggestions on how to make the lesson go even better.  The peer coaching model routinely gets very high rating from the teachers. 

3.    Training trainers program.  This approach uses the training plus peer coaching approach and includes extra training/support for the future trainers who are just beginning to use the program.  Some schools have two or more teachers attend the training and use the materials for a year then train the rest of the teachers Pre-K-1. 

The cost for the one day training is $100 per teacher for the training and $185 for the materials for a total of $285.

There are no consumables or other recurring cost.  Assuming each teacher has approximately 25 students, this makes the cost per student around $12 for the first year and zero for subsequent years.