Is AAR a full year, or 1/2 year?

[BusyMom5]

I got AAR, and looking at it, I'm not sure if it's supposed to last an entire year, or 1/2 a year?  How much of a lesson do you do each day?  I've been busy organizing it, cutting up the games and such, and it just doesn't look like it will last a full school year?  Do you do a lesson per day?  2 per week?  What parts do you do each day?  Do you just set a timer?

[xixstar]

Depends on how much gets done. Some lessons can take 2-3 days. Fluency sheets usually took 2 days to finish. Read a story lesson took only one day. This is all for AAR1 we haven't started 2 yet.

 

We did the review every day.

[OneStepAtATime]

What level?

 

This really depends on the child/age/level/developmental stage and how they do with the lesson. Sometimes they may breeze through. Sometimes they may struggle. And some kids do better with shorter lessons, once or maybe twice a day while others may do fine with a longer lesson.

 

Until you actually start using it you may find it difficult to pace it out.

 

Good luck.

[Heart_Mom]

I would say it generally takes about a year, but it could be faster or slower than that ... really depends on your child. We just work on it for a while each day (5-15 minutes depending on the age/attention span of the child) and call it good. (I've used AAR Pre, AAR 1, and AAR 2.)

 

I love this program ... and I've used at least 5 phonics programs in the past (with my older children) before AAR was available. :)

[BusyMom5]

AAR3-  I am not teaching how to read, instead it's adding things like prefixes, endings, and some new phonograms.  It's also building stamina and fluency.  This age can already read early readers, beginner chapter books, ect.  I find the lessons sort of confusing- some fluency pages are very long, some are just one side.  Some lessons are a lot of review, others are new and I wish they had more practice (like the one on finding the base word).  I think we can easily do 2 lessons per week, which would make this last about 27 weeks, or about 3/4 of a school year.  I think it's important to do this level, but maybe it should go faster?  Or do I slow it down and make it last the entire school year, and add more LA things?

[SparrowsNest]

I am doing AAR 3 right now with my dd8.  She doesn't really *need* it per se, but I just want to do my due diligence where reading is concerned.  We usually spend 1 day per lesson unless we come across something I see we need to work on. 

 

I've also just started AAR 1 with my dd6.  We're using it to learn to read.  So we take our time, stretching a lesson out with plenty of review.  One thing I like about AAR is that it can work in both situations -- it has the ability to slow down (with review, re-visiting fluency sheets, doing the crafty activities, re-reading stories, etc.) or to speed up (skip the review, go straight to the difficult words in the fluency sheets, skipping the crafty things, etc.) according to the needs of the child.  

 

I guess "it depends" is not much help for planning, though!  

[Momto6inIN]

My DD7 went more slowly through the beginning of AAR1 and often each step took 2-4 days with lots of review. But once it "clicked" she began reading anything and everything and flew through the rest of that and most of AAR2 in K. We often took 2 days to get through the fluency sheets, but 1 day for the other steps..

 

In 1st grade she finished AAR2 pretty quickly. At that point, I considered skipping AAR3 & 4 because she was reading pretty well on her own, but I didn't want to "miss" anything important in phonics. So instead we just went quickly through the lessons and the stories in the readers but skipped the activities and fluency pages and just had her read a bit from a simple chapter book to me every day for fluency instead. So that usually took just 1 day/step. At that pace she finished all of AAR3 and half of AAR4 in 1st grade. She also began AAS in 1st grade and since that reinforces the skills from AAR, I felt comfortable with not doing "all" of AAR.

 

This year for 2nd grade we'll do the same with the rest of AAR4 until she finishes. Then she'll continue with AAS and reading out loud to me every day as well as on her own.

[RKWAcademy]

My twins finished AAR 1 in about 5 months.  We didn't rush at all.  Some lessons took several days, some took only one.  AAR 2 was going faster (we are taking a break for a month or so) towards the middle as their stamina picks up.  I'd say it will be a total of 4-5 months, also. 

[lexi]

Well it took my son a year and a half for level 1. And it looks like about the same for level 2.

My daughter is doing a level per year almost. My kids must be very slow readers.....I wish we could move more quickly. I want them to read!!!

[Love_to_Read]

I don't think you can count on it progressing at a steady pace, honestly.  Reading skills don't always fit into a box where each skill takes the exact same amount of practice to master.  It's nice to get into a rhythm, but I think it's best to just set an approximate length of time and play it by ear as to how many days it takes to finish a lesson comfortably.  Some lessons will take longer than others.  I've had kids whiz through short a in a flash, then need a ton of extra slow practice to get the hang of silent e, then work at a moderate pace through some vowel teams, etc.  We just put in a good effort...something like 2-3 easy segments, or 1-2 harder segments...then move on to the next subject. I monitor for attention/comprehension in deciding when to call it a day. I like to finish enough to feel like they accomplished something, but not so much as to become weary or bored, as that won't get retained as well.  If you are always pressing to finish a certain amount at an even pace, I feel like you might overlook the bumps in the road where a lesson needs to slow down or speed up to be more effective according to how the child is doing with the material.

[pitterpatter]

We're finishing up AAR4 this summer. DD turned eight a couple of months ago. We are using AAR to remediate/fill in gaps, as we suspect mild dyslexia, which is more pronounced in her spelling. We started with AAR3 at the beginning of February, I believe. We complete one lesson per day, so that's either new learning with a practice sheet, green cards and games, or the green card, fluency sheet, short game and story from the reader, depending on what's up that day. We should finished AAR4 right before we head back to school this fall...early-to-mid-August. We have waylaid AAS during this time.

 

I think it really does depend on the child and his/her stamina and your goals.

 

FWIW, there aren't too many two-pagers in AAR3. Luckily, many words on those practice sheets are repeats from the green cards and games. I did sometimes split them up into two days, though. Also, AAR4 is pretty intense, IMO...not so much in terms of workload, but it's primarily words of three or more syllables. There are a lot of suffixes that are not as straight-forward in term of pronunciation...a lot of advanced decoding and words that often don't divide neatly into syllables. There are many unknown words, which make them more difficult to decode. I'd definitely take my time with AAR3, if you don't think your DC will be up to that in three-to-four months.

 

ETA: The bulk of the work of AAR is in those practice/fluency sheets. I would never skip them for the sake of speed. The green cards feature words that are common, thus familiar and easier to decode. DD rarely has trouble with these because they are words from her bank of vocabulary. However, the practice sheets can be challenging and truly test her decoding skills.

[MerryAtHope]

Work for about 20 minutes per day and see how far you get. Some lessons might be easy, and your dd might breeze through them. Others might be difficult for her. Then you'll want to spend more time doing tile demonstrations, reviewing the word cards, doing the activities, splitting up the fluency pages into smaller chunks if needed, and so on. They get the words/concepts in 5 ways (tiles, activities, fluency pages, word cards, readers), and the word cards stay in daily review until mastered. (If the word cards stack up, you don't do them all each day--just rotate through a portion of them for 2-3 minutes and continue on in the book). You can spend as much or as little time on a concept as your child needs, and can bring back previous fluency pages/activities/readers if she needs more practice etc... Here's one example of a typical week for a student who struggled.