Kimberly Feehan-Ponte has been a kindergarten teacher and tutor for twenty-one years. She has a BA in Early Childhood Education. She has a MA in Education and a MA in Educational Leadership. She is a certified Reading Specialist. Clearly, education is an integral part of Kim's life!  She believes that success in reading is the cornerstone to all educational success. Because this is so important to Kim, she felt compelled to open her own reading camp, Kimber's Reading Express, in 2010.

Research indicates that singing songs helps integrate reading and writing by providing a pattern that children remember.

It also lends itself to developing reading fluency.  According to Routman (2003) and Zarrillo (2007), singing songs helps students learn phonics and builds phonemic awareness. 

Fountas and Pinnell (1996) recognized the long-term effects of singing and recommend having students "sing songs of such delight that the lyrics remain in the memory forever" (The Reading Teacher, May 2010).  

This is precisely the way Kim teaches her students at school and at Kimber's Reading Express.  

Kim's three R'sare:   Rhythm, Rhyme, and Repetition.  Through her many years of experience with a wide variety of readers, Kim has found that songs, rhymes and fun, are the keys for her students to remain motivated and to achieve success.

She uses the onset-rime approach when teaching students to read.  

Kimberly formulated her own "ditties" to insure that her students have fun while learning how to read and decode words. She decided that today's "digital natives" would benefit from an educational and fun way to learn difficult word families.  Kim has created, "Dudley's Ditties...Read to Succeed" computer game, and "Sound It Out" song CD to assist emergent readers, English Language Learners, and those with learning disabilities.