The PCI Reading Program is a research-based curriculum created specifically to teach students with developmental disabilities, autism, and significant learning disabilities how to read. Levels One and Two teach 280 sight words and "real-world" nouns and verbs through a comprehensive system of repetition, "hands-on" practice, controlled-vocabulary reading, and high-interest activities. Nonreaders become successful readers word by word, reading 42 engaging, full-color books along the way. Level Three serves as a bridge between the whole-word visual discrimination approach in Levels One and Two and the decoding required of independent readers. To promote student success, instruction is carefully scaffolded to introduce students to the process of decoding by unveiling sounds that are embedded within the sight words they already know how to read. Comprehension skills, including setting, main idea, and cause and effect, were selected based on an analysis of the types of questions on alternative state assessments.