Our EIS Summer Camp Reading Clinic offers a research-based reading approach that provides explicit, systematic, and responsive instruction during the reading learning process.

The program is designed for Elementary students and provides 2 hours of daily instruction over a four-week period, totaling 40 hours of intensive small-group support. Instruction is tailored based on an analysis of reading screener results to ensure targeted intervention. The programs we implement to meet students’ needs include Seeing Stars and Visualizing & Verbalizing.

The science of reading is the converging evidence of what matters and what works in literacy instruction, organized around models that describe how and why. An important model in early reading research is the simple view of reading. It says that reading comprehension (RC) is the product of decoding (D) and language comprehension (LC), or RC = D x LC. Learning to read for understanding requires sounding out and recognizing words—decoding—but it also requires making meaning of the words and sentences we hear—language comprehension.

Jiban, C. (2024, February 15).

Symbol Imagery for Phonological and Orthographic Processing in Reading and Spelling.

Symbol Imagery, the sensory-cognitive ability to create mental representations for sounds and letters within words, is a primary sensory-cognitive domino needed for processing the phonological and orthographic parts of reading and spelling. The three sensory-cognitive functions are phonemic awareness, symbol imagery, and concept imagery. Each function underlies the component parts of reading, and each can be identified, stimulated, and applied to language and literacy development.

*Phonemic Awareness is the ability to auditorily perceive the identity, number, and sequence of sounds in words. 

*Symbol Imagery is the ability to create mental representations for the sounds and letters within words, encompassing the ability to visualize the identity and sequence of letters in words. 

*Concept Imagery is the ability to create an imaged gestalt (whole) for language and thought.

Through repeated instruction, using the Seeing Stars program, symbol imagery can now be measured, developed, and applied to literacy skills.

Seeing Stars by Nanci Bell, Second Edition 2013

Visualizing & Verbalizing for Language Comprehension and Thinking

Language comprehension is the ability to connect to and interpret meaning for both oral and written language. It includes the ability to recall facts, get the main idea, infer, conclude, predict, and evaluate. Language comprehension is a cognitive act.

The Visualizing & Verbalizing program is grounded in the evidence that cognition, including reading, requires two codes, the verbal and non-verbal code. Two primary deficits are causal in preventing students from performing to their reading potential: weak decoding and weak comprehension. These two processes each use imagery in a unique and specific manner, symbol imagery and concept imagery. Concept imagery is dynamic imagery that rapidly depicts actions, scenes, faces, movements, colors, etc. The development of concept imagery is the explicit purpose of the Visualizing and Verbalizing program.

Visualizing and Verbalizing by Nanci Bell, Second Edition 2007