Reading Horizons Review: Pamela Bluem

This student was very dyslexic. Not with numbers, but words. Consequently, his reading level was low, and his self-confidence even lower. He needed phonics. Straightforward, letter and sound recognition, which is time-consuming and labor intensive for a correctional teacher who facilitates large classes that are held in the housing unit of a prison with 250 felons.

What this student could use was software that would lead him through the tedious task of phonemes, letter correspondence, and eventual word recognition through headphones that discretely relayed the sounds, letters, and words. Intensive and individualized education with auditory, visual and kinesthetic components. And that software finally appeared in the form of Reading Horizons Elevate. Within two weeks of daily use, this student realized the correspondence between hearing the sounds that are associated with the letters, and began to sound out words phonetically based on his study of letters and combinations. He learned to verbally spell out words he didn’t know (as he read), and to assign sounds to the letters. Eventually he could figure out the word. It was exciting as he read passages out loud to me with fewer and fewer mistakes, and to watch his confidence grow. He was on his way to becoming a reader, something that, at one time, he thought he would never achieve.

Grade Level: Adult Ed