In the past, I have taught daily phonics, but it was more so of teaching a skill such as short /a/ and then some words to go along with it. The students learned and knew the sound for short /a/, but they were memorizing a group of words that were given at the beginning of the week for the assessment. With Reading Horizons, the students are able to go beyond just memorizing a group of words, but actually learning the skill and able to build words with the skill. They are also able to read more words in context just from knowing the rules of each phonetic and decoding skill. Since using this program, I am seeing more of my students actually sound out words when reading and writing. They are using the slides and making progress with their reading and writing. The students are not let down when they make a mistake. The students take time to look at the letters in the word to determine the phonetic skill, and then try again to say it successfully. This program has built a class of more confident and comfortable readers. No one is afraid to try! Also, I have seen many gains from a teacher's perspective. After taking the Winter English Language Arts MAP test, my students went from 12.5 % in the Fall to 76.5% for the Winter. I feel that this success comes from students being able to apply what they learned in Reading Horizons daily lessons to being able to successfully master many of the skills and be able to read what the questions are asking them to do. I would recommend this program to everyone!
Grade Level:
Elementary, Secondary