Compare AAR to LOE or...

[coastalfam]

We use AAR, and it's fine, but I am displeased with the readers. I feel my beginning readers need larger print and a cleaner page. I like the OG approach. AAR is fine for one of my beginners, though the books are really frustrating for him, as well as the fluency practice pages. For my other beginning reader, the AAR readers are a total no-go. Can't even use them. Looking to try something that is similar approach, but caters to children who need a cleaner page and large print. Can anyone comment on how Logic of English, or Reading Lessons Through Literature, or something with the OG method or similar compare? My struggling reader has Down syndrome, so very clear materials help, large print, visual helps, activities such as games. Just lots of opportunity for variation in presentation and repetition to reinforce previous learning. Thanks!

[wendyroo]

Logic of English might fit your needs.

 

It's claims to fame are that 1) it has a lot of varied activities: acting our words, distinguishing the sounds in words, playing card games with words, etc.  It also offers suggestions for many optional activities like meals celebrating a certain letter or treasure hunts and 2) it incorporates handwriting into the lessons.

 

The readers, at least in the first level which is the only one I have experience with, are part of the workbook.  They are designed with only text at the bottom, and then the child cuts out the pictures and glues them on the correct page.  So, for example, one page says "cat in cup" at the bottom, and the child reads that, decides which picture matches and glues it on to make his own "readers".

 

I personally found the various elements of LOE difficult to juggle.  For level A, they list 11 components to the program (teacher book, workbook, game tiles, reference sheets, etc.).  I had a hard time figuring out how to divide the lessons between days...especially because I tried to arrange it such that the jumping, scavenger hunt, act out these words activities fell at the end of our sessions - otherwise it was too hard to reel in the kids once their blood was pumping.

 

It is a good program, but eventually we jumped ship and switched to something with far fewer moving parts.

 

Wendy

[TheAttachedMama]

I have tried just about every reading program known to mankind at some point.....so just ask me.   ;)   (My two older kids are dyslexic.)   

 

I also feel like LOE is a lot more complicated to teach with all of those components.   Some people enjoy all of those components, but I felt like it overly complicated.   Also, the fact that it tries to teach more than just reading (handwriting for example) made it difficult to use for my kids who have some LDs.    We needed JUST a phonics/reading program because they were often at different stages in other language arts areas.    

 

We LOVE all of the Barefoot Ragamuffin curricula, so I have been SO tempted to switch over to Reading Lessons through literature for spelling.   However, after looking over samples, I can tell it wouldn't work well for my dyslexic kids.   It probably works just fine for a more typical kid, but those readers make way too many leaps for my kids.   There is also not enough review.   They cover stuff way too quickly for my kids.     And the "rules" in AAR/AAS are written so much more clearly.   Marie Rippel is really good at taking something complicated and making it as simple and straightforward as possible.    The ELTL rules remind me more of Spalding.   They are the same basic information, just not as straightforward IMHO.  

 

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Even though I love AAR, I had to modify the program quite a bit.   We dropped a lot of the components.    We also didn't love the readers.  (By the time I got to level 2, we dropped the readers completly because they were too hard.)   We also really disliked the fluency sheets.    And the word cards caused my children to develop a bad habit of sight reading/guessing in an attempt to "master" their cards.   

 

I ended up doing the following:

 

Step 1: Daily Phonics Lesson/Review using the AAR teachers manual and the letter tiles.   We did review sound cards, but we stopped reviewing the word cards.   (Although I would review blending those words with the letter tiles and practice them that way.)   We also stopped using the fluency sheets until my kids were much older (in AAR 4) and could handle them.   

 

then....rest and do something different for awhile.... :)

 

Later in the day, 

Step 2:   Practice reading

We ended up using the "I See Sam" readers.   I highly recommend these.  We would re-read one story from a previous day and then do one new story each day.    Whenever they had a problem with a word, we kept our letter tiles near by and would build and sound out the word using these.  (This was especially handy when words had more than one syllable. )   

 

At first glance, these readers appear like every other reader out there.   However, they are much, much better.   They slowly and systematically drip feed the phonetic code to the kids, and then review, review, review, review.   They are the only things that actually built up fluency in my kids.   And they had so much more fun reading stories than fluency sheets.

 

The "I See Sam" readers don't line up exactly with the order phonemes are introduced in AAR, but they are pretty close.   (You can see in the front of each reader which phonemes are introduced and make sure that your child is familiar with the letter sounds before they read the story.   For example, early on, the kids learn ee makes the long e sound as in "see".   This isn't introduced in AAR until later, but we pulled the letter tile out early and practiced blending words with that tile and sound before we read the story in our morning phonics lessons.  We ignored all of the rest of the instructional material in the beginning of the books.    )   

Edited February 5, 2017 by TheAttachedMama

[ealp2009]

I have used LOE A-D with my son and am now using it with my daughter. The workbook pages are clean and there is not a lot on the page. There are lots of games and kinesthetic learning opportunities. I like the readers. I feel like there needs to be more of them at the B, andC levels so I used the BOB books at the B and C level. Once you are in D you can read anything and you don't need readers so much.

 

 

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[coastalfam]

Hmm... Okay. Interesting info. Sounds like LOE might be overkill for my Kindergartener. I do modify AAR to make it work for him a bit better, and we use B.O.B. books with as much frequency as the AAR readers, because they are much less frustrating. I will look into the I See Sam books, too. Thanks. I'm almost wondering if all the juggling and array of components of the LOE could be really nice to have for my older son who has Down syndrome. He has some big issues with his working memory, so the more ways we can get things to long term memory the better off we are. Sometimes we end up working on a particular phoneme for over a week, sometimes we have to come back and review because they are forgotten. Rooting the learning in meaningful activity helps, as annoying as dedicating a meal to a particular phoneme sounds to me. LOL Gonna have to give this some thought. Thanks for the input.