pacing OPGTR

[ca06c]

I have a 5 year old that is reading at a second grade level. We picked up OPGTR this summer to review and make sure there weren't any gaps. We're now at a point where the lessons are new information but with the "review two, one new" rhythm I'm finding it is taking us multiple days to complete a lesson (as I try to cap it at 20 minutes daily). Is this normal or am I possibly having her review too much material?

And a question on blends. She blends really well but when she sounds out a word, either aloud or "in her head", she tends to not blend. So, for example, trumpet will be sounded out as t-r-u-m-p-e-t as opposed to tr-u-mp-et but she can read the word as trumpet. Should we work more on 2 and 3 letter consonant blends or is it fine if she's able to blend the whole word? 

Lastly, does anyone have a resource as to what lessons/sections of OPTGR correspond with what grade level or Lexile range in order to find appropriate corresponding reading material? 

Thanks in advance. 

[NormaElle]

I’ve never done the review method, but I also wait until my kids have practically taught themselves to read before starting OPGTR so we can just fill in gaps and make sure they’ve got everything. But at that point, they have a certain maturity (?) that they get it without that review element. 

[Publia]

Re: pacing, it sounds like you might be able to cut back on the review portion, but I'll tell you what we did, to give you an idea of one approach. We did more or less one lesson per day as suggested, but sometimes I broke the lessons up into two (this was in the first half of the book). We skipped the first 26, as we covered the basic alphabet prior to starting on the book. Also, we rarely did the two review thing unless there was some indication that the prior lesson didn't sink in. When we did a review, it would be more along the lines of me pointing to a line or two from the prior page and having the child read that line/lines, not re-reading the whole lesson. I preferred to get in the review by practicing with other books, mostly BOB books and really easy readers, at another point in the day. The child read these books aloud and I listened/followed along. I usually just fished around in the box of BOB books or in the pile of books I'd gotten from the library to roughly match up the practice books with the lesson for a second before announcing "It's reading time!", though, so it wasn't always an exact review. But it worked nicely, so I think that a more casual approach to selecting practice books is okay. 🙂

FWIW, it's been my experience that children take longer to work through a lesson in the first half or so of the book than in the second half. We typically fly through the last half of the book. We still only do one lesson per day, but they typically take much less time (and we never did more than 20 minutes of phonics lesson per day to begin with).

I did not pay much attention to the grade levels/Lexile designations. Assuming you're seeing regular progress and the child is moving steadily into more difficult texts (and understanding them -- we use narrations and discussions for assessing that), I would recommend not focusing on that. My approach to finding books for practice after we'd exhausted the BOB sets was basically to flip through the easy readers at the library before bringing them home (Gossie, Frog and Toad, Mr. Putter and Tabby, Little Bear, etc. all seem to work fine at somewhere past the half-way point of OPGTR). The Elson Reader series is another option -- you probably want the one that corresponds to the grade that your child would be in. I think you'll quickly get a feel for what would be good practice for your child, without reference to Lexile range or other metrics.

[knitgrl]

At some point, probably a few years ago, somebody here posted the rough grade-to-lesson equivalents for this. I wasn't using it at the time, but jotted it down on a post-it note and stuck it in the book, because it seemed like useful information. Here you go:

K = Lessons 1-60

1st = Lessons 61-119

2nd = Lessons 120-180

3rd = Lessons 180-231

[ca06c]

8 hours ago, knitgrl said:

At some point, probably a few years ago, somebody here posted the rough grade-to-lesson equivalents for this. I wasn't using it at the time, but jotted it down on a post-it note and stuck it in the book, because it seemed like useful information. Here you go:

K = Lessons 1-60

1st = Lessons 61-119

2nd = Lessons 120-180

3rd = Lessons 180-231

This is helpful, thanks!

 

On 8/31/2020 at 5:46 AM, Publia said:

My approach to finding books for practice after we'd exhausted the BOB sets was basically to flip through the easy readers at the library before bringing them home (Gossie, Frog and Toad, Mr. Putter and Tabby, Little Bear, etc. all seem to work fine at somewhere past the half-way point of OPGTR).

This was my approach too but our library is shut down now and only doing online reservations for hold pick ups, which complicates things. 😞

[MeaganS]

I'm on my 4th time through OPGTR and here's what we did. I skipped the first 30 lessons or so since we didn't start until they knew their letter sounds. Then we do about 15 minute lessons every school day. At first the lessons take a day or two each but as they gain fluency, they are able to do the whole lesson in a sitting. Since they're so young, I usually take attention span into account and if they get too frustrated or distracted, we call it a day. We never did the review. With my 3 children who have completed it, it took almost exactly 2 years to finish it. DD4 is on track for that as well.

IIRC, the grade level thing knitgirl mentioned was based on Hooked on Phonics topics and grade leveling. But I might be wrong about that.