Lesson plans are prepared from the actual scripts used by TV producers and include skills related to social studies, oral language, reading, writing, and skills that affect learning rate such as memory, grammar, and visual and auditory integration. Teachers use rapidly paced oral response drills designed to increase accuracy in articulating, listening, handling complicated syntax, and master vocabulary meaning. Students move through increasingly difficult levels of reading material as they practice the previously taught strategies on supplemental material. Teachers and students operate video cameras, VCRs, and TVs for use in learning, processing, and expressive activities. Students become camera persons, directors, technicians, and actors as they confirm their ability to read at the end of each session by videotaping and playing back their dramatizations.
Students produce their own documentary on a topic related to the script.
Significant student reading gains were duplicated by replicators representing a gamut of populations from grades 4-10 using standardized reading achievement tests.