Helping Early Literacy with Practice Strategies (HELPS) One-on-One Program
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Teachers and reading researchers generally agree that essential components of early elementary reading instruction should target phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary. However, many educators and literacy experts have argued that reading fluency is commonly neglected as a part of a student’s core reading curriculum. In the United States, estimates suggest that at least 40% of fourth graders do not have strong enough reading fluency skills and this is a primary barrier to students’ proficiency with reading comprehension.
The main goals of HELPS are to strengthen a student’s reading fluency and confidence as a reader. As students improve reading fluency, they are better able to focus on and improve other important reading skills, including comprehension.
As is described in more detail below, HELPS is:
- Supported by rigorous research
- Appropriate for elementary school students and older learners
- Easy to access
- Feasible to use (for example, professional educators and other adults can implement it effectively and time-efficiently)
For the above reasons and many others, it is not surprising that HELPS has been used over the years with hundreds of thousands of students and implemented in more than 60 countries around the world.
If you would like to learn more about peer-reviewed studies related to HELPS research and development, <<please click here>>
A demonstration of HELPS One-on-One being used with a second-grade student.
Research Supporting the HELPS Program
HELPS is evidence-based because all of the instructional and motivational components of the program have been widely shown in past studies to effectively improve students’ reading.
Even more important, HELPS is research-validated because there have been more than a dozen rigorous evaluations of HELPS documenting its efficacy with students for whom the program is intended. These evaluations have been published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals and those interested in learning more about HELPS research and effectiveness may contact us or click here.
In addition to the many studies that have evidenced the effectiveness of HELPS, it is also included in the most recent nationally endorsed practice guide for early reading instruction. In this guide, published by the U.S. Department of Education’s What Works Clearinghouse, HELPS is highlighted as one of only a small number of reading programs that significantly improved children’s word reading, oral reading fluency, and reading comprehension.
Accessing the HELPS One-on-One Materials
The main materials for the HELPS One-on-One program include a Teacher’s Manual, a book of Teacher Passages, and a book of Student Passages. The Manual is required for learning how to implement all aspects of the program. The passages are a set of 100 systematically developed reading selections that students read as they progress through the HELPS program over time
For approximately the same cost of printing and assembling the three books yourself, our team at Helps Education Fund can professionally prepare and ship all the materials directly to you. Not only do educators find this option convenient, but 100% of proceeds from sales of HELPS materials go toward our organizational mission—including our ability to develop and freely disseminate even more high-quality educational programs.
We send you all three books assembled professionally and ready to use. 100% of your purchase supports our mission!
Training for HELPS One-on-One Program
Low-Cost Workshops
The primary focus of HELPS trainings is to show educators how to successfully implement the program and to answer all questions. Also, attendees will have opportunities to practice implementing HELPS while our expert trainers provide feedback and support.
- Generally, workshops allow educators to learn HELPS faster and more accurately than if they were to learn the program independently from the Teacher's Manual and Training Video.
- Attendees can choose to obtain continuing education credits/units (CEUs) for attending a HELPS workshop.
- The presenter can help teachers determine the most feasible and time-efficient way to integrate HELPS across multiple classrooms and with multiple types of teachers (e.g., regular education teachers, teacher assistants, well-trained school volunteers, etc.).
- The presenter can address specific questions and needs of the workshop attendees.
- The presenter can offer teachers research-validated materials and strategies for training others in a school (or district) who would eventually benefit from learning the HELPS Program.
- HELPS workshops presented for groups (such as at a specific school or school district) offer an opportunity for the school or district to build a professional relationship with the presenter, and that presenter can be available weeks and months after the workshop to address any additional questions that may arise.
Do-it-Yourself Training
Although we offer trainings on how to implement HELPS, we know that some teachers may not be able to attend a training. The HELPS One-on-One training video guides new HELPS users through several training exercises.
Before viewing the video, teachers must read Chapters 1-3 in the HELPS One-on-One Teacher's Manual to learn how to use and get the most out of the training video. Using the Teacher’s Manual and video, teachers will likely need 5 to 9.5 hours of training before being able to implement the HELPS One-on-One Program comfortably with students.
The total time of the video is 1 hour and 24 minutes. Access the HELPS One-on-One training video.
Other Ways to use HELPS
The HELPS program can be implemented in a one-on-one (adult-student) format or in a small-group format (one teacher with 2-5 students). Students within a school or classroom have different learning needs, so most schools use HELPS One-on-One with some students and use HELPS for small groups (HELPS-SG) with other students. Although HELPS One-on-One and HELPS-SG are different programs, they have many similarities and our staff can assist schools or teachers with determining when to use one versus the other with a respective student or group of students.
In response to COVID-19 and schools moving to virtual learning, Helps Education Fund developed and tested a new model for implementing the HELPS program virtually. Pilot tests suggest that our virtual approach is just as effective as our original in-person approach to HELPS.
We are now offering online workshops for educators to learn our Virtual HELPS Program. Attendees of those workshops will also receive (absolutely free) our systematically developed digital tools to accompany Virtual HELPS implementation.
In addition to English, the HELPS program is currently available in Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. Please click the respective link below to learn more about each of those programs.
- Leamos para Avanzar (the HELPS Program adapted for Spanish)
- HELPS-PB (the HELPS Program adapted for Brazilian Portuguese)
Additionally, HELPS is being translated and adapted into other languages and our Helps Education Fund team is always interested in exploring new collaboration opportunities that result in HELPS adaptations into additional languages. Like all programs provided by Helps Education Fund, our aim is to rigorously develop and evaluate the programs and then offer them free or low-cost. Please contact us if you are interested in learning more about adapting and translating HELPS into another language.
Frequently Asked Questions About HELPS
When asked “How does HELPS work?” educators often want to know what teaching strategies are integrated within the HELPS Program.
HELPS strategically combines each of the instructional and motivational strategies most associated with improved outcomes for reading fluency and (as a result) reading comprehension. Specifically, HELPS systematically integrates each of the following teaching and learning strategies, all within an engaging 10-15 minute session with a student:
- Repeated reading of ability-appropriate text
- Model reading (i.e. having students listen to a more skilled reader read a passage aloud)
- Systematic error-correction procedures
- Verbal cues for students to read with fluency and for comprehension
- Goal-setting (that is, practicing text until a predetermined performance criterion is met)
- Performance feedback, combined with graphical displays so that students can easily see their progress and improvements
- Systematic praise and a structured reward system that highlights students’ accomplishments and increases their motivation to do their best during each HELPS session
In addition to its integration of the aforementioned strategies, HELPS is effective because it allows students to work through a rigorously developed curriculum of reading passages (that is, the HELPS reading curriculum of passages). Using specific decision rules for a student to read each respective passage at a set fluency level, this systematic reading of passages within the HELPS Curriculum ultimately allows students to build their text reading fluency. Research with HELPS not only shows that students develop better text reading fluency for brand new reading content, but they are also better able to comprehend the new content. The HELPS Teacher’s Manual provides additional detail about how HELPS works.
Because all students must develop reading fluency in order to become successful readers, HELPS can be used with learners of all ages as long as they have at least some proficiency in basic decoding skills. Most often, HELPS is implemented with students in grades 1 through 5. However, research and practice have also shown how HELPS can be effective with learners who are in grades 6 and above and have not yet developed proficient text reading fluency.
HELPS is a highly structured intervention that can be used by all types of professionally trained educators, including classroom teachers, reading specialists, intervention teachers, school psychologists, speech-language pathologists working in schools, librarians, and more.
We also have more than a decade of success with training hundreds of community volunteers to use HELPS with 100% accuracy. Just like students who receive HELPS from a professional educator, students who receive HELPS from community volunteers make significant improvements in their reading.
Community volunteers can include virtually anybody who is interested and committed to learn the program. Just as some examples, we have worked to recruit and train HELPS tutors from community-based nonprofit organizations, corporate partners, universities and high schools, faith-based organizations, parents from Parent-Teacher Associations (PTAs), and other individuals from the community who contact us and want to become a HELPS tutor.
If you want to learn how to implement HELPS, click one of the links below to get started:
- List of upcoming HELPS trainings for individuals who want to learn the program.
- Contact us to learn how we can train you and others from your team. Team-based trainings include, for example, multiple educators from one school or school district, or multiple community volunteers from one organization.
Although training is required to fully learn how to implement HELPS accurately and effectively, the following demonstration video offers an example of what a HELPS session looks like when used with a second grade student.
Click here to see a demo video
After watching the demonstration video, if you want to learn how to implement HELPS, click one of the links below to get started:
- List of upcoming HELPS trainings for individuals who want to learn the program.
- Contact us to learn how we can train you and others from your team. Team-based trainings include, for example, multiple educators from one school or school district, or multiple community volunteers from one organization.
Please contact us if you would like to preview a demonstration video of HELPS being implemented virtually.
Yes, HELPS can be implemented virtually. Virtual implementation was fully developed throughout the spring of 2020 and has now been thoroughly tested with hundreds of students in diverse locations and settings.
Yes, HELPS has been developed and researched for use in both a one-on-one (adult-student) and small-group instructional contexts. The page you are reading now focuses on HELPS One-on-One, but from this link you can learn more about our HELPS Program for Small Groups (HELPS-SG).
Read more about virtual HELPS implementation in this section.
Of course, every student has a unique set of characteristics, reading strengths, learning needs, etc. It is therefore impossible to know how many HELPS sessions are needed to best support every individual student, but past research with HELPS has provided a wealth of information related to how often it should be used for it to be highly effective for most students. The following summarizes key information on this topic and we encourage you to contact us if you have any questions.
- A HELPS session can be comfortably implemented in 10-15 minutes once the adult has been well-trained.
- Research shows that HELPS can significantly improve students’ reading fluency and comprehension when at least 3 sessions are provided each week (approximately 10-15 minutes per session).
- It is not recommended to implement more than one HELPS session in a day; instead, when improving text reading fluency, it is important to spread out the sessions over several days.
- Although research shows that students who receive at least 3 sessions per week make significant reading improvements over time, students can certainly benefit by getting more than 3 sessions per week if that is preferred by the educator.
- Students appear to benefit most from HELPS when they receive at least 30 total sessions over the course of at least 7-10 weeks. Additionally, some evidence suggests that the more sessions a student receives, the more the student benefits. For instance, receiving 40 total sessions over multiple weeks appears better than getting 30 sessions, and 50 total sessions is better than 40 sessions. However, even with 30 total sessions, most students make significant reading improvements.
- Research suggests that some students can make significant improvements with fewer than 30 HELPS sessions, but we recommend that students receive at least 30-50 total sessions because this is most associated with the strongest impact.
The HELPS Program Teacher’s Manual provides even more information about how frequently to use HELPS as well as considerations for assessing its effectiveness with individual students.
The HELPS One-on-One program—including all necessary implementation and training materials—is free to download, print, and self-assemble within 3-ring binders.
Alternatively, for the same cost of printing and assembling the HELPS materials yourself, our team at Helps Education Fund can professionally prepare and ship the materials directly to you—which many educators find more convenient. Not only do educators find this option convenient, but 100% of proceeds from sales of HELPS materials go toward our organizational mission—including our ability to develop and freely disseminate even more high-quality educational programs.
Click here to access the HELPS materials
If a school uses a tiered approach to providing struggling learners with interventions (such as RTI or MTSS models of intervention), HELPS can easily be used within a tiered intervention model. In fact, school districts throughout the U.S. and internationally often use our HELPS One-on-One Program at Tiers 2 and 3 of common 3-tier models, and they use our HELPS Program for small groups at Tiers 1 and 2. For more information about using HELPS in a tiered intervention model, please contact us.
Although the HELPS One-on-One Program was originally designed for students in grades 1-4, we quickly learned that teachers wanted to use HELPS for students in grades 5 and above who still did not have proficient text reading fluency. In some cases, educators also began using HELPS with adult learners. Since HELPS was originally developed in 2009, we now have research and numerous educator testimonials indicating that HELPS can be effective with learners of any age who are needing to improve text reading fluency. In this way, HELPS can be used effectively with students in elementary, middle, and high school, and even with adult learners.
However, to use HELPS with students in grades 6 and above, the teacher will need to ensure that the motivational strategies integrated within HELPS are age appropriate. The HELPS Teacher’s Manual provides guidance about age-appropriate considerations and adaptations.
We can also support teachers with supplemental materials. To use HELPS with students in grades 5-8, please download important supplemental materials using the button below. If you would like to use HELPS with learners from grade 9 to adult, please contact us and we can offer materials and/or support.
Preliminary evidence suggests that, on average, English Language Learners (ELLs) benefit as much from the HELPS Program as non-ELLs.
When evaluating a subset of HELPS Program research participants who received English as a Second Language (ESL) services, ELLs who received HELPS tended to improve their reading much more than ELLs who did not receive HELPS. Furthermore, differences between these groups were evident across a range of different reading skills, including comprehension.
In short, preliminary findings support teachers’ use of HELPS with ELLs.
Please contact us if you have any questions that are not answered on this page or you simply want to talk with one of our HELPS experts.