A program was designed to improve the reading skills of the second grade at-risk students in a suburban K-6 elementary school located northwest of Chicago, Illinois. The second grade at-risk students could not read fluently at the conclusion of the academic school year, and consequently did not exhibit strong reading comprehension skills. A developmental delay of the children's oral language, a deficiency in language processing, the presence of learning disabilities, lack of phonemic awareness, lack of attention to print, and lack of reading practice were the major probable causes identified. Solution strategies chosen to meet the needs of this population included use of the whole language approach combined with the principles of the learning styles movement. The chosen interventions were designed to develop reading fluency, automatic word recognition, and comprehension skills. They were intended to help the at-risk students acquire a solid ground for the reading process through their own style of acquisition of knowledge to empower them to succeed in life-long learning. Results indicated that the seven students in the experimental group increased their oral fluency accuracy, increased their level of word recognition, and answered comprehension questions with accuracy to a greater degree than did the control group of six students, who were taught using a traditional approach to reading instruction. (Contains 45 references and 14 tables of data. Teacher interview questions, a letter to parents, homework instructions and checklists, a parent questionnaire, and a child questionnaire are attached.) (RS)