Both. It teaches a bunch of spelling rules and a few spelling words while teaching higher level decoding; phonics to a 12th grade level with syllables, but presented in a manner that a few K students and most 1st grade and above students can easily understand. For my K students, I do modify some of the latter lessons and expect them to do less, my K students are usually siblings in a group class.

https://responsiblehomeschooling.org/how-to-obtain-a-homeschool-transcript/ Can a Homeschooled Student Create their Own Transcript? If a homeschooling parent fails to create a transcript for a student who has completed the required material and is ready to graduate, the homeschooled student may find it necessary to put together the transcript themselves. This is legal and acceptable. However, the student should not forge the parent’s signature on the transcript. If the parent is unwilling to sign it, another individual with knowledge of the student’s academic accomplishments—a portfolio evaluator or tutor—may be able to sign instead, or the signature may be omitted entirely.

She didn't take the PSAT, and she did pretty well on the ACT, but the program that sent the letter is actually a state specific program which they sent out to 18,000 high school students this year. The state is last in the nation for percent of high school students going on to college, this is one of the things they are doing to increase the numbers of students going to college. They also pay for in state applications based on need, and pay for everyone to take the SAT. It is a conditional acceptance, you have to apply after the acceptance letter, but there are programs to help you with the application and with the fees if you need help with either. I think they're still last, but the percentages have been moving up since the program was implemented, whereas in most of the rest of the country percentages have been going down a bit.

You're welcome! I'm personally actually not a huge fan of video, ironically, and would prefer a transcript myself. Also, I wanted one for people in areas with poor internet connection or teachers that want to use the material at their own pace--there is a public school middle school English teacher using it with her students a few minutes a day, many of her students are several grade levels behind and guess from balanced literacy multi-cuing teaching.

Also in the transcript, I show how I use hints to help teach these, you learn them first with an S over them, then erase the S. With the sca, sce, sci.. syllables, I put a K over the hard c's and an S over the soft C's, go over it a few times, then erase the hints. If they miss a syllable, you go back to the syllabary, for example in table 26, if your student says tigger instead of tiger, go back to the syllabary and do the entire t syllables, ta te ti to tu ty, then point at ti and do ti, then go back to table 26 and point at ti, then read the word tiger. You also over-learn the syllables in and out of order, I like to do them both randomly and contrasting (mi, im; ba, ab, etc.). I don't really like Webster's treatment of monosyllables, I'd use Abecedarian or Phonics Pathways for 1 syllable words and just Webster's syllabary and 2+ syllable word tables.)

I have a transcript, too, in my syllables program that explains it. You can teach from the transcript if you don't want to use the videos. From the transcript: "Unaccented syllables are often mushed to the schwa sound of uh. This is especially common at the end of words. However, e’s often mush to short i: rur-al fill-et (pronounced rurul and fillit) When the last syllable is accented, the sounds will not schwa: com-pel, la-ment(accented syllables underlined) The letter u is already a relaxed sound, so it is already mushed! The letter i usually holds its sound, or at least some of its sound. The letters o and a are most likely to “mush” to a schwa uh sound. (as noted above, e’s will generally mush to a short i if they schwa, especially at the end) At the end of a word, the letter y will have its normal long i sound when it is accented, but will have a long e sound in an unaccented syllable (accented syllables underlined): de-ny, mis-ap-ply; cru-el-ty" (underlined in transcript, p. 20) Transcript link: http://www.thephonicspage.org/On Reading/Resources/SyllablesSpellSuccessTranscript.pdf

I saw your update, that is great! One more thing you can do with the letter at a time thing--print out a reading passage and have him highlight every B in blue. B, /b/, blue. Then have him read it, then highlight every d in another color (people her like orange because the college team's colors are blue and orange) and read it again. Every time you highlight the letter, you say /b/ or /d/ depending on which letter you're highlighting. You could do the same thing for the other letters with different color schemes. You can add a color for the umbrella for your umbrella story!!

Are you homeschooling him or after schooling?

There are lists out there! Blend Phonics, Webster's Speller, some of the other phonics programs on Don's Page, or, if there is a specific sound they struggle with, I google "words with oo" or "words with ou," and get a start on a list. Also, depending on how motivated/self aware the students are, you may need to number each line on their list or move a little flag to where they are so there is no question/arguing about where they are.

OK, I did some Googling and it seems it is legit--it is part of an Idaho program called "Next Steps," they give "direct acceptance" based on your grades and SAT/ACT scores, Idaho has low college attendance rates and this is a program the state implemented to try to raise collage attendance rates. Here is a news article about this, titled, "More than 18,000 students were accepted into Idaho colleges without an application." https://magicvalley.com/news/local/education/more-than-students-were-accepted-into-idaho-colleges-without-an/article_2f9d1aff-3b34-5d7a-81d7-6164ca39c38b.html The state government has a website called "Next Steps" with details about the program.

We didn't check or click on anything because she wasn't at all interested. I posted here because I did think it was a bit strange and was interested to know if it was common or not, I didn't think of it being some type of scam, but that's possible, too.

I like word lists. You go through something like my syllables program and then find what they need to work on, I usually alternate between something with 1 syllable words and 2 syllable words and alternate between the two. Once you have each student at their level and bookmarked what they're working on, you just alternate between students with their word lists. If they pre-read their own line of words while you're listening to the other student, you can get about 80 - 90% done with 2 students of what you can with 1 student. Also, if you have charts, they can be looking up the sounds themselves while you're working with the other student.

My daughter applied and was accepted to Boise State University. Recently, she got an acceptance letter from University of Idaho, which she didn't apply to. Is this common? Do most state schools share data with other schools in state? (Both are good schools, but she only applied to BSU, and only wants to go to BSU, I was just curious.)

If you work through my free syllables program, it teaches you how to use Webster's Speller. It is based on syllables, open syllables are long, closed syllables are short. You over learn the syllables in the syllabary, then it makes reading the multi-syllable words easy. http://www.thephonicspage.org/On Reading/syllablesspellsu.html

I don't know of anything online. This book is good and breaking it down into simpler explanations of the graphs and building you up, but you need to review individual science courses in each discipline for true understanding and highest scores. https://www.amazon.com/Love-ACT-Science-innovative-standardized/dp/0996832203/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=act+science&qid=1573523678&sr=8-3