S/O Thinking of dropping ETC. Dancing Bears with non-remedial student?

[SeaConquest]

My oldest (technically K in the fall) has been making steady reading progress over the last year with Progressive Phonics and the Nora Gaydos books. He has almost completed the entire series of readers in both programs. I was planning to use ETC with him as a phonics review and gentle introduction to spelling, but, after several weeks of it, I have been feeling some of the misgivings that were articulated in another thread, I am now considering curriculum hopping to Dancing Bears, but has anyone used this program with a non-remedial student? He would seem to slot into the Fast Track program. 

 

For some reason, I feel like the morpheme approach might be more appealing to him going forward. Although he is making progress, and while I think that he will hate the cursor (because he has a nasty habit of guessing), I am just not sure if O-G is really clicking for him. Any feedback is appreciated.

 

 

[Cheryl in CA]

:lurk5: I haven't done this yet but will be once my order arrives on Monday, so I'm interested to hear what others say too :)

 

Is he able to read this sentence?

 

"Our teacher is waiting for us in the hall."

 

If he can read it word-perfect and without prompting he would use Fast Track. 

 

[alisoncooks]

I am using DB with my oldest -- who struggles greatly with reading (we're in book B ).

Because of the quick progress that oldest made, I've decided to start youngest DD on it this school year.  She can read most CVC/CCVC/CVCC words, but I'm going to start her in DB A since it ramps up fairly quickly and it's easy to accelerate.

 

I do have some reservations with Dancing Bears -- it doesn't introduce long vowel sounds (as a general group) until book B.  (Other "advanced" sounds are introduced in Book A, such as /ar/ and /ee/ and so on...)  So I guess I'm saying that the progression in DB is atypical of most American phonics programs (and, therefore, most beginning readers your child may encounter).

 

Also, I did want my DD's to be --at least-- exposed to some of the "rules."  So we've done other things to supplement DB (both have done AAS 1, this year we're starting CLE LA, which has some phonics stuff in the first few years.)

 

HTH.  I guess it was a lengthy way to say:  yes, I'll be using it with a non-remedial student and I think it'll work fine! ;)

And just a note re: the cursor.  My  oldest DD resisted the cursor at first but I made her stick it out for about half of the first book.  After that I relaxed about it -- but if she gets in the guessing habit or makes several mistakes in a row, I bring it back out.

[SeaConquest]

We do talk about the OG rules, as Progressive Phonics does lay them out and he has had exposure to all the OG phonograms through PP, RLTL1, Nora Gaydos, and the LOE phonogram app. I'm just not sure where to go from here for phonics reinforcement. I like that DB uses word chunks. I think that will really appeal to him visually and help him to expand beyond ccvc, cvcc, and compound words.