ABOUT US
OUR MISSION
Our mission is to empower students to learn independently by teaching them how to understand everything they read.
OUR BELIEFS
We believe that every student can achieve academic success.
All Guth Learning books include enough examples and practice exercises to ensure mastery of each concept.
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We believe that every student is a unique learner.
Our lessons can be taught in different ways allowing teachers to choose the method that matches each student’s needs.
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We believe the learning process should not be frustrating for students or teachers.
Our curriculum offers systematic, explicit instruction so every lesson is easy to understand and easy to teach.
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Cathy Guth
Founder & Owner
Our Founder
CLASSROOM TEACHER, PRIVATE TUTOR, TEXTBOOK AUTHOR
Throughout 40 years of teaching, Cathy Guth has passionately promoted the belief that with a targeted approach and the proper materials, every student can reach a higher level of academic success.
When Cathy transitioned from classroom teacher to private tutor and wasn’t able to find the books and materials her clients needed – lessons that were explicit, incremental, and easy to understand – she wrote her own curriculum. When her unique approach proved effective with all types of learners, she compiled her lessons into textbook series and made them available to public, private, and home schools. Cathy is currently working on an all-inclusive Language Arts curriculum for grades K-5. Although much of the curriculum is written, only the decodable readers for K-1 have been published. Stay tuned for updates.
In Cathy’s spare time she enjoys long mountain hikes, playing pickleball with friends, and any activity that includes at least one of her five grandkids.
Our Story
UNIQUELY RESEARCHED
As a 2nd grade classroom teacher, Cathy Guth used differentiated instruction and evidence-based curriculum to teach students how to read fluently. Yet some of those fluent readers still didn’t understand most of what they read.
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To find a solution, Cathy continually asked every student she tutored why they answered comprehension questions the way they did. Their responses revealed how they were processing and how they drew faulty conclusions. Cathy found that most students were making the same types of comprehension mistakes.
UNIQUELY DEVELOPED
Reading Comprehension: Books One, Two, and Three
Using her research, Cathy developed a curriculum that explicitly teaches students how to comprehend. There are 100s of excellent books on the market that test comprehension skills by having students read passages and answer questions. But this is the FIRST READING COMPREHENSION BOOK that directly teaches students how to understand sentences, paragraphs, and entire passages. We don’t test comprehension skills; we use the science of reading to teach students how to comprehend.
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ACT Prep
Until 2004, Guth Learning did not offer ACT tutoring even though many clients requested it. Cathy had resisted adding ACT instruction because her own experience with standardized tests had been frustrating. She eventually took a full-length ACT practice test, scored a perfect 36 on the reading section, and discovered that the habits she had been teaching middle school students enabled her to comprehend, analyze, and remember entire passages of difficult text. Over the next few years, Cathy developed an ACT curriculum and helped 100s of students secure college admission and scholarships. In 2016, at the request of two area high schools, Cathy transformed her private-tutoring curriculum into a textbook series that could be easily and effectively taught by any teacher.
UNIQUELY PROVEN
Since reading is an essential component of college and workplace readiness, Cathy wanted to demonstrate that the single best thing students can do to impact their learning is to improve their reading comprehension skills.
Consider the following test scores from Student A and Student H:
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Both students had similar ACT baseline scores from a test taken in September as juniors.
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Both students received the same ACT Prep instruction during their junior year.
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The only difference was that Student A also completed Reading Comprehension: Book One. Motivated by her success in April, Student A completed part of Reading Comprehension: Book Two and then took a 3rd ACT test in June.
It’s never too late to develop new reading habits.