SRA has 120 lessons designed to last 40 minutes a day, five days a week. Students work in small groups with a teacher or paraprofessional trained in the program. The lessons are not designed to provide students with new information or skills, but rather to provide further instruction on previously taught skills. SRA provides students with daily review and practice.
SRA Early Interventions follows the hierarchy of skills laid out in Reading First. All components of Reading First are included in the SRA Early Interventions Program, including phonemic awareness, letter/sound correspondence, word recognition, fluency and reading comprehension. Because SRA is a supplemental practice and review program, Reading First provides the necessary vocabulary practice.
The SRA Early Interventions program offers students a safe learning environment in which objectives are clearly stated. The students are not asked to do more than they are ready for and the teachers model new skills before asking students to do them. The students are asked to respond as a group before individual students are elicited for a response. The students are also provided with many opportunities to practice skills. This gives them the chance to master the skills before they are asked to perform alone.
SRA is not a standalone program. It is a supplementary program designed to assist struggling learners. It may not be particularly effective at identifying all struggling readers. In addition, many educators feel the SRA teacher training is not long enough. SRA offers a one-day training session that could be more effectively taught over a four-day period.