cabritadorada Posted December 2, 2016 Share Posted December 2, 2016 (edited) As the title says, I'm in love with this app/program...has anyone else used it with their dcs? We did AAR pre-reading over the summer before K (DD is in public school) and I was attempting AAR Level 1 at home since her school does "whole language" with leveled readers and DD is getting nothing from it--but with AAR she was having a ton of trouble blending and was extremely resistant to the level 1 lessons. DD just completed lesson 10 of headsprout, which is an "assessment level" with fluency sheets to check for weak spots--and I'm so pleased with her progress and the lack of resistance I'm getting from DD when it comes to reading. Edited December 2, 2016 by cabritadorada 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JumpyTheFrog Posted December 4, 2016 Share Posted December 4, 2016 Just a warning. After about lesson 40 or so, it becomes much more about sight words and less phonics based. I didn't like my kids being encouraged to memorize words like "probably." 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RenaInTexas Posted December 4, 2016 Share Posted December 4, 2016 Both my kids loved it. The comprehension level is pretty good too. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cabritadorada Posted December 4, 2016 Author Share Posted December 4, 2016 I see what you're saying, HoppyTheToad - I haven't previewed past episode 23 but I've read the synopses to 80. It does look like the pace changes at 40 and you get comparatively more sight words. I'd still call in strongly phonics-based though. DD is now 11 lessons in the only sight word on headsprout is "the" (at DD's school they're still introducing letter sounds and not pushing blending that hard, but the kids have 20 sight words they're supposed to know--so that's kind of my point of comparison). The thing I'm really loving about Headsprout is how the phonics are organized. Every sound segment that is introduced is completely stable--so, "ee" will always sound like "ee" in English, and "an" will always sound like "an," "v" is "v" and so on. Part of our struggle with sounding out with AAR was that right from lesson 1-- the short /a/ is introduced with with /p/ and /m/...and /a/ does *not* sound the same in "map" as it does in "Pam." It's subtle, but there's and extra leap the the child needs to make during blending to get to the word. DD wasn't getting it all the time and was getting super frustrated. If you're being introduced to stable sound segments and then blending words like: see, Lee, van, can, ran, etc. It's a lot easier of a bridge to blending, at least for my kid. We'll see how it goes past lesson 40, though, the program definitely changes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JumpyTheFrog Posted December 4, 2016 Share Posted December 4, 2016 Yes, I had good results with my oldest for the first half of the program. I think lessons 40-80 helped reinforce his bad habit of guessing at words though. With my second child, we only did the first half of the program to avoid that problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sbgrace Posted December 4, 2016 Share Posted December 4, 2016 (edited) One of mine was sight reading pretty early on--really early on in his case. He's probably an anomaly, and he has a really good visual memory. I didn't realize it for a while, but he couldn't blend words he wasn't seeing in Headsprout. I think it was working well for the other. It was over 6 years ago when I used it and it may have changed. I don't remember an assessment level for example. I stopped it and went to I See Sam and Progressive Phonics. Edited December 4, 2016 by sbgrace Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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