Recently Alejandro, from Espacio IJ, commented that the education market is very much alive, specially in development of specific tools, skills and abilities for children. Alejandro talked about how the math market is with initiatives like Kumon, which in Spain indicates that there are 20,000 students and 220 academies, in addition to schools, which includes 21 levels of mathematics and 27 reading and is of Japanese origin . He also talks about Aloha Metal Arithmetic which since 1993 has 7,500 students in 400 schools and is of Malaysian origin. In addition there are also Ucmas, with 8,000 students in Spain and Smartick, a web page that facilitates that the kids can improve their math skills by practicing 15 minutes a day.
In addition to mathematics, another fundamental competence is that of learn to read. And here is also Kumon with more than 2,600 students solving that need in Spain. And is that read was, is and will continue to be the knowledge base. Therefore, educating competent readers who are able to understand what they read and who enjoy the fact of reading, is essential to contribute to the formation of responsible citizens.
The challenge of the Kumon Spain reading program is develop the student's reading competence in a self-taught way. That is, that the student himself is able to read and understand any type of text with a critical vision, and that it acquires that capacity progressively by itself.
The teaching material of the reading program includes 27 levels of exercises and each one includes 20 booklets that increase complexity. The teaching material addresses from learning to reading and writing, to the critical analysis of texts. The booklets are added the recommended Kumon bibliography that are classified readings according to the level of reading comprehension and that includes widely disseminated titles of children's and youth literature collecting a variety of genres, both fiction and nonfiction.
For all those parents who have an interest in knowing more about these programs, we leave the link to Kumon at the end of the article.
