When a student falls behind in a key area of their education, they may need remedial instruction. Remedial classes are often recommended by teachers, but they may not always be well understood by parents and students.
To help you better understand how remedial classes work, this post covers:
- What remedial classes are (including different types)
- What to look for in remedial classes
- The best remedial classes for both math and reading
What Are Remedial Classes?
Remedial classes are designed for students who have fallen behind their grade level in core academic skills, typically focusing on math or literacy. Gaps in these foundational skills can prevent students from keeping pace academically with their peers.
Skill gaps can also lead to social challenges. Students may become withdrawn in the classroom, sometimes developing anxiety or depression around school, and in some cases, may even refuse to attend school.
Remedial education, also known as developmental education, aims to help students catch up and close the skill gap. This often leads to increased confidence and a renewed love for learning.
Remedial programs can be delivered:
- In school, as an alternative to regular classes
- Before or after school, as a supplement to the regular school day
- Outside school, by a third-party provider
Though the term “remedial” can sometimes carry a negative connotation, it’s important to note there is no shame in taking a remedial class. It doesn’t mean a student is academically weak. For instance, many students experienced learning loss due to the pandemic and needed to catch up, regardless of their prior academic abilities.
What to Look for in Remedial Classes
When evaluating the best remedial classes for your child, consider the following factors:
- Personalization: Remedial students may have learning differences such as dyslexia, dyscalculia, or ADHD. A good remedial teacher will take these into account and adjust their teaching methods accordingly. For example, dyslexic students may benefit from more auditory or kinesthetic input.
- Flexible scheduling: Consider whether it’s more convenient for your family to have classes during school hours, before school, after school, or during school holidays. Look for a provider who can accommodate your family’s schedule.
- Learning soft skills: In addition to literacy and numeracy, soft skills like time management, self-awareness, and emotional self-regulation are vital for long-term success. Providers who understand this will teach students these skills to support their remedial learning and build a foundation for future development.
- In-person and virtual options: Some students prefer in-person learning, while others may feel more comfortable learning from home. Additionally, transportation may be a concern for families. The best providers offer flexible options for both in-person and virtual classes.
In the rest of this article, we’ll explore leading providers of remedial education courses to help you find the best fit for your child.
Specifically, we’ll cover:
1. Fusion Academy: Personalized Remedial Education
Fusion Academy is a private middle and high school where students work 1-to-1 with their teachers. This unique model allows lessons to be personalized to each student’s learning style and needs, enabling them to progress at their own pace.
This approach is particularly beneficial for remedial students, who may struggle in traditional school environments. Teachers can customize lessons to address learning differences such as dyslexia and dyscalculia, ensuring targeted support.
Fusion operates in 18 states across America, including California, Texas, New York, Tennessee, and Florida.
Click here to explore our list of 80+ Fusion campuses and find one near you.
We also offer flexible online learning through Fusion Global, with the option to combine in-person and online classes in a hybrid model tailored to individual needs.
Fusion provides remedial classes in both reading and math. Admission is typically based on a standardized MAP test, which helps teachers assess the student’s level and estimate the time required to close the skill gap. For students who dislike tests, assessments can also be based on parental feedback or school reports.
In addition to remedial classes, Fusion offers various forms of academic support, including full-time programs, part-time programs, tutoring, and post-secondary counseling.
Fusion’s Remedial Reading Programs
Fusion offers two remedial reading programs, with placement determined by a student’s reading percentile from their MAP test results during enrollment:
- Reading Skills and Strategies: For students between the 15th and 40th percentiles.
- Structured Literacy: For students at the 15th percentile or below.
Note that Structured Literacy is currently in pilot at 30 campuses nationwide and may not yet be available in your area. If this is the case, rest assured that students below the 15th percentile have also achieved success with the Reading Skills and Strategies program.
Reading Skills and Strategies
Fusion’s flagship remedial reading class, Reading Skills and Strategies, combines self-study through the industry-leading Lexia PowerUp Literacy platform with direct 1-to-1 teacher instruction.
This hybrid approach is unique, as most remedial reading programs rely solely on software. Research shows that while software-based interventions can be helpful, combining self-study with teacher-led lessons is significantly more effective. Students benefit from having a teacher to provide accountability and guide them through challenging material.
The program is designed to transition seamlessly between self-study and teacher-led instruction based on the student’s needs. A typical 50-minute class is split approximately 50:50, with a slight emphasis on supervised self-study. Students attend two classes per week and must complete 30 hours of instruction to successfully finish the program.
The online platform used in this program is Lexia PowerUp Literacy. Here’s a preview of what it looks like:
Lexia has been a leader in evidence-based literacy solutions for over 40 years. PowerUp focuses on three core components of literacy: word study, comprehension, and grammar. Using machine learning, the platform adapts to each student’s performance, ensuring personalized and targeted support for their unique needs.
PowerUp is designed to be engaging, fun, and interactive. The platform includes colorful games and features like streaks and completed levels, adding a gamification element that motivates students to improve their literacy skills, even without additional support.
Teachers can use Lexia to track student success and progress. The software offers a breakdown of each student’s progress by topic, allowing teachers to see areas that need more improvement. Lexia flags both achievements and challenges, empowering teachers to take the appropriate actions to ensure student success.
Structured Literacy
Structured Literacy is a remedial literacy class designed for students in the 15th percentile or lower in reading ability.
The program is grounded in the Orton-Gillingham methodology, originally developed for students with dyslexia. Unlike Reading Skills and Strategies, Structured Literacy uses a multisensory approach to teach reading skills. This includes auditory techniques, like knocking sounds, and kinesthetic methods, such as using gel boards, alongside traditional visual approaches.
Here’s an example of what a gel board might look like:
This multisensory approach is ultimately more engaging for students below the 15th percentile than a traditional classroom setting.
Note that Structured Literacy is also beneficial for students who speak English as a second language and find reading challenging, even though it wasn’t specifically developed to teach non-native speakers of English.
Fusion’s Remedial Math Program
Fusion’s remedial math class is aimed at students in 6th grade or higher who have reached at least a 4th grade level in math and need a supplement to regular school.
The program combines direct instruction from a teacher with an adaptive online learning platform. This is a unique approach, since most remedial math solutions are one or the other: either solely online or solely in-person tutoring after school.
We found in our research that the students using a purely software approach often lack the accountability and support they need, while purely in-person tuition doesn’t always adapt to each student’s level of math knowledge or learning style. Hence, Fusion decided to create a solution that is the best of both worlds.
Typically, 50-minute classes are held twice a week, either at a Fusion campus or on Zoom from home. Students generally need to spend 30 hours in classes in order to successfully complete the course. There’s no test or grading system, and the course isn’t aligned to Common Core, so the student will simply either pass or fail depending on the amount of time and effort they put in.
The online software that Fusion uses to support their math remediation class is called ALEKS.
Here’s what it looks like:
ALEKS is what’s known as an adaptive platform, meaning that it uses machine learning to create a unique learning path for each student that auto-adjusts based on their progress over time. This is helpful, as it ensures that students will neither be bored by math that’s too easy, nor overwhelmed by math that’s too hard.
A typical math class involves a mixture of solving practice problems with a teacher on a whiteboard (which can be a Zoom whiteboard for remote classes) and supervised self-study inside ALEKS. If a student gets stuck, their teacher is there to help them. ALEKS also has a feature that allows students to check their work, and shows them a detailed explanation of how each problem can be solved.
Self-Study in the Homework Café
In addition to their time spent in remedial classes with a teacher, students of both our literacy and math classes are encouraged to spend additional time outside of class engaged in self-study.
For our reading programs, we recommend an optional extra hour of self-study per week. For our math class, we recommend 2 hours of self-study on ALEKS, and students need to spend at least 30 hours of self-study in order to pass the class.
When remedial classes take place on a Fusion campus, we encourage students to go to the Homework Café after class, which is a dedicated place for learners to study quietly together.
The advantage of this is that it removes the need for the student to take homework home with them. It also offers an opportunity to connect socially to other Fusion students, which is something we place a lot of emphasis on. Even Fusion Global offers an online Homework Café to this effect.
That being said, if students are unable to go to the Homework Café for whatever reason, this is totally fine — it’s not something that will work for all families. Fusion prides itself on being flexible to your needs, particularly in terms of how classes are conducted and in terms of how much study time is needed outside the classroom.
Soft Skills
In addition to building fundamental reading and math skills, all of Fusion’s remedial classes emphasize the development of soft skills. These soft skills are a prerequisite to all forms of learning, both at school and throughout life. Our ultimate goal is to equip each student with foundational skills that will serve them into adulthood, regardless of where they begin at Fusion.
The teacher’s dashboard includes a dedicated soft skills section to actively monitor progress. Some of the soft skills we track include:
- Building an awareness of students’ strengths to boost confidence
- Setting goals based on individual skill levels and tracking progress
- Helping students manage their time effectively outside of Fusion
- Checking in emotionally to assess readiness for learning
- Understanding students’ unique learning styles and leveraging them for success
2. Kumon
Your local Kumon center is a good place to find remedial support in both reading and math. Students attend 1-to-1 classes twice a week at the center and complete assignments at home on the other five days.
Kumon offers support for all levels of math and literacy, from preschool to high school, with each student’s ability assessed through an initial placement test.
Kumon’s proprietary learning model focuses on students completing worksheets, allowing them to skip rote learning and lectures, and instead progress at their own pace.
3. Mathnasium
Mathnasium offers remedial 1-to-1 math classes, both online and in person. The company has developed its own math courses for children of all ages, available at 1,000 centers across the country. The curriculum is customized based on an initial assessment, ensuring it matches your child’s math knowledge.
Remedial students will appreciate that Mathnasium has a strict policy of not assigning additional homework, though tutors do work with students on their existing school assignments.
Parents can pay per lesson or opt for a monthly subscription. For those wanting their children to socialize with like-minded students, Mathnasium also offers math-themed summer camps.
4. HippoCampus
If your child needs remedial math support, but doesn’t enjoy traditional math lessons, HippoCampus could be a great option. This website offers thousands of videos covering a variety of school subjects, with a strong focus on math.
The videos are designed to be entertaining and engaging, often featuring animation and humor. You can let your child explore on their own or create a custom playlist with the videos you’d like them to watch. Playlists cover math topics from middle school to college-level courses.
HippoCampus is free, making it an excellent choice for low-income students.
5. Yup Math
Yup Math is a platform where you can book 1-to-1 remedial sessions with expert math tutors 24/7. The backend is user-friendly for parents, featuring a family portal to track your child’s progress from class to class.
The platform’s main advantage is its stringent tutor selection process, with fewer than 5% of applicants being accepted. This ensures that your child’s math tutor is highly qualified.
Additionally, tutors receive ongoing training from Yup Math, and the company has a partnership with Stanford.
6. Nessy
Nessy is a remedial reading program for children aged 6–11, though middle school students can also benefit from it. The platform is primarily online, but Nessy also provides hundreds of downloadable worksheets and flashcards for offline use.
The reading experience on Nessy is highly gamified, with students earning “Nessy Nuggets” by completing tasks. These can be exchanged for trophies and additional unlockable games. Even the assessment feature is gamified as the “Nessy Challenge.” Based on the assessment results, students receive a personalized learning plan to work through at their own pace.
7. Read 180
Read 180 is a remedial reading program commonly integrated into classroom teaching but can also be used at home with a student app. The coursework is designed for students in grades 3–12 and employs a multi-tiered system of support (MTSS) to assist students at all levels of reading ability.
Based on the latest literacy science, Read 180 aims to help students develop two years’ worth of literacy skills in just one year, enabling them to catch up with their peers as quickly as possible.
8. Voyager Passport
Voyager Passport is a remedial reading program for students in grades K–5. The program includes 30-minute lessons designed for both self-study and classroom use, focusing on the five facets of reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.
In addition to the lessons, Voyager Passport provides bonus resources for both students and teachers. Students benefit from interactive ebooks, a sound library, handwriting videos, and audio recordings. Educators are supported with lesson-planning materials, graphic organizers, and activity suggestions.
Find the Best Remedial Class for Your Child
We hope this article has helped you find a suitable remedial provider for your child’s math or literacy needs.
For more information about the personalized remedial courses provided at Fusion Academy, feel free to reach out or schedule a visit to one of our campuses. We’d love to hear from you.
