Kumon Reading Program
Parents have grown increasingly aware of the importance of having their children acquire good reading skills at an early age. This can often mean the difference between a child excelling or having difficulty at every phase of learning that follows. Not surprisingly, Kumon Reading is our fastest growing program.
Kumon Reading is a balanced program representing the best documented practices in reading instruction. It covers skills from understanding the sounds that make up words to the summary and critique of complex reading passages.
Good writing and speaking skills are fostered as a natural outgrowth of the Kumon Reading curriculum. Kumon students at every level read daily. That alone confers enormous benefits.
Areas covered by Kumon reading include:
- Pre-reading skills
- Phonics
- Vocabulary building
- Grammar and Punctuation
- Reading comprehension
Who goes to Kumon Reading?
- Students wishing to enhance their vocabulary and comprehension
- Children having difficulty acquiring reading and writing skills at school
- Pre-readers or early readers seeking a head start or supplement
Reading Curriculum Levels
Click on a level for additional information.
| 7A | 6A | 5A | 4A | 3A | 2A | AII | BI | BII | CI | CII |
| DI | DII | EI | EII | FI | G | H | I | J | K | L |
7A: Look, Listen and Repeat
Young students start to build the necessary pre-reading skills they will need to become beginning readers. Students begin to connect words to familiar objects and repeat words starting with the same sound.
6A: Reciting Words With Pictures
Students are exposed to rhyming words, phrases, and sentences. Students continue to develop critical pre-reading skills, including phonemic awareness, in preparation for later phonics study.
5A: Letter Sounds
Phonics exercises help students develop their pre-reading skills by saying individual letter sounds while tracing letters. Students try simple three-letter words and develop their fine motor skills. Students also enjoy ver
4A: Consonant Combinations & Vowel Sounds
Students learn consonant blends, consonant digraphs (such as the /ch/ in cheese), and long vowels with the silent e. Students continue to build their vocabulary and begin to copy letters and words.
3A: Advanced Vowel Sounds & Advanced Sounding Out
Students begin to develop their skill at sounding out words. They will learn to sound out words with a variety of letter combinations, while copying letters. They will also decode longer compound words through putting together two familiar words, as with “snow” and “man” making “snowman”.
2A: Function of Words, Reading Aloud
Students identify nouns, verbs, and adjectives, and use them in sentences. Students learn the singular and plural forms of nouns and verbs, and the comparative and superlative forms of adjectives.
AII: Sentence Structure, Sentence Topics, Thought Sequence
Students learn about the structure of simple sentences, and learn to write negative sentences, questions, and sentences in the past tense. Through reading stories and answering questions, students improve their reading comprehension skills. Technical skills such as punctuation, spelling and capitalization are also solidified. Students develop the ability to recognize a sequence of thoughts developed within a shor
BI: Subject & Predicate
Students refine their ability to identify subject and predicate in longer sentences containing modifiers such as adjectives and adverbs. Students conjugate irregular verbs, as well as study pronouns, prepositions and irregular plurals of nouns.
BII: Comparing & Contrasting
Students focus on reading comprehension and vocabulary building. Students develop their ability to define words using context clues in the stories; to identify main ideas that occur within a story to better understand the story as a whole; and to compare and contrast actions, characters and information from a passage.
CI: Constructing Sentences
Students refine their ability to identify subjects, verbs, and objects, as well as learn how to conjugate the future, progressive, and perfect tenses. Students' punctuation study continues with commas in a series, and singular and plural possessives. Students write complete sentences independently as they read interesting stories.
CII: Organizing Information
Students develop their reading comprehension, vocabulary and writing skills. Students develop their ability to construct and respond to questions using who, what, where, when and how; to interpret information in charts, as well as to take information from passages and organize it into a chart format; and to write answers independently.
DI: Combining Sentences
Students learn to write compound and complex sentences by combining simple sentences. Students also learn to extract statements from paragraphs to identify a statement as a single unit of thought. Students expand their vocabulary by studying selected words from passages.
DII: Main Idea & Paragraphs
Students continue to build their reading comprehension by identifying the topic and then the main idea. Using their knowledge of finding the main idea of a paragraph, students develop their understanding of how paragraphs flow within a passage. Students also expand their vocabulary by studying selected words from passages.
EI: Clauses
Students learn how clauses can function as nouns, adjectives, or adverbs. In addition, students learn to convert direct speech to indirect speech and vice versa. Charting exercises enable students to visualize information within a passage, which helps to develop their ability to follow and organize content logically. Students also expand their vocabulary by studying selected words from passages.
EII: Reason & Result
Students develop a better understanding of a story's sequence of events and imagery. Charting exercises help the student visualize a story, and learn how events in a passage affect a certain result or outcome. Reason and logic exercises build the student's ability to compose answers and to develop skills of rephrasing. Students also expand their vocabulary by studying selected words from passages.
F1: Referring Words, Interpreting Text, and Paraphrase
Students hone their ability to comprehend passages by analyzing referring words, by interpreting text through restatement, examples, and description, and by responding to questions in detail as they construct answers. Students also learn how to condense a text by using key words and identifying the central topic.
G: Point Making, Theme, and Story Elements
Students read advanced fiction and nonfiction texts to extract the main points, themes, and story elements from passages. They also improve their reading comprehension through summarization exercises.
H: Summation
Students develop greater sensitivity to authors' use of descriptive language. Summation exercises help students focus on specific points within passages. Students learn to condense all of the important information from a passage into a summary one third of the length of the original passage. Students are formally introduced to story elements such as plot, character and setting. Vocabulary exercises introduce Greek and Latin suffixes, prefixes and roots.
I: Persuasion
Students analyze the persuasive writing style found in speeches, advertisements and political documents. They also learn the components and strategies of the more formal "argument." The level concludes with a study of précis, the most complex form of summary.
J: Critical Reading
Exercises which focus on more subtle details of structure, theme, and character lead students to a closer reading of the text than in previous levels. The reading selections develop students' understanding of how a writer's intentions are reflected in various aspects of the work under review.
K: Elements of Literature
Students continue to develop critical reading and thinking skills through the study of advanced literature. In introductory sets throughout the level, students read non-fiction pieces introducing and explaining various literary terms such as plot, setting and atmosphere, irony, and comedy. In subsequent sets, students read extracts from novels, plays, or poems, demonstrating these devices in action.
L: Interpretation
Students gain a greater ability in understanding the meaning of a text beyond the obvious, common meaning of the vocabulary the author uses. Students are exposed to the basic elements that comprise figurative language and the interpretation of it, making them better able to decipher the plot, the values in which the author might believe, and the virtues and vices of the characters involved in the story.