Communities In Schools is the nation's largest dropout prevention organization. Communities In Schools champions the connection of needed community resources with schools to help students successfully learn, remain in school and prepare for life.

Programs

After School

Communities In Schools has partnered with Discovery to create an after school tutoring/mentoring program. CIS also provides educational materials and trips at Discovery. Discovery is located at the Clay County School Campus. Tutors/mentors are asked to spend time helping kids with homework, math, reading, and special projects.

Sight For Students

Qualified students receive free eye exams and eyeglasses through a national vision service plan partnership. This program is for low-income students under age 18 without Medicaid or vision insurance. Students may be referred by anyone.

Great Leaps Reading

Great Leaps Reading Program is a program designed by Kenneth Campbell from Gainesville, Florida that helps students overcome a variety of reading problems. Great Leaps Reading is widely implemented across the country. Students with reading problems have responded with significant gains.

Communities In Schools has partnered with Hayesville Elementary to implement Great Leaps Reading since 1998. One volunteer coordinator overseas all of the tutors in the program. The tutors attend a training session which usually takes about three hours. The students that participate in the program are chosen by their classroom teacher. Students work individually with an instructor and the materials for less than ten minutes per day (three days per week minimum). The materials (one instructor’s manual and one student notebook) are age appropriate and comprehensive.

Great Leaps is a supplemental reading program that is divided in three major areas: (1) Phonics: developing and mastering essential sight-sound relationships and/or sound awareness skills; (2) Sight Phrases: mastering sight words while developing and improving focusing skills; and (3) Reading Fluency: using age-appropriate stories specifically designed to build reading fluency, reading motivation, and proper intonation.

The Phonics takes students from identifying sounds in isolation to being able to sound out cvc,cvvc, and cvce patterns. This enables students to (with contextual clues) decode unknown words with a high degree of success. The Sight Phrases use phrases to teach sight words while significantly increasing focusing skills. Teaching sight words in isolation has not worked for most students with reading problems. The Great Leaps approach of using sight phrases helps to minimize the age old problem of readers continuously missing words such as these, them, of, off, from, etc. The stories have been designed and written to not only significantly increase reading fluency, but also motivate students to want to continue reading. Use of point of view, humor, rhyme, and rhythm all contribute to a powerful fluency-building intervention.