Thoughts on All About Reading

[Green Bean]

In my decision making process of what to use to teach my 5 yr old to read, I keep coming back to this one (or MP FSR). I have enjoyed reading the LOE thread so much that I wondered if we can maybe have a similar discussion/input about AAR. What you love, what you don't, why you chose this over others, all the good stuff.

[Xahm]

I chose it this year, starting levels 1 with my K-er and 3 with my 2nd grader, for a few different reasons. I taught my oldest to learn to read for free, very easily. My second was having a little harder time but really benefited from All About Spelling. I had a third coming up into Kindergarten who seemed to learn reading very easily. I also have a fourth running around. I had too many spinning plates to plan out my own lessons and didn't want to overlook anyone or anything. I decided something planned out for me would help with consistency and sanity. 

I chose AAR specifically because I like letting writing skills be separate. My K-er is flying through, becoming a very successful reader quickly, but he's barely 5 and would be slowed or frustrated tremendously by any volume of writing. Also, I got the first 3 levels cheap at a used curriculum sale and liked them all enough to search out the fourth, which I also got used. The new price is likely worth it, I'd say, particularly as it's easy to resell at a fairly high price.

The things I like: -Things are laid out in a way that's easy for parents and children to get in the rhythm of without becoming tedious. -There are lots of short activities, which makes it easy to hold little-kid attention spans and switching from one to another seems to give that momentary break that helps things sink in. -The program gets kids reading simple things very quickly without sacrificing phonics. Some programs seem to front-load the memorization, teaching all the sounds a letter represents before anything else. AAR starts with the most common sounds, then adds in more complications later. -There's more practice in it than my kids need. The fluency passages are infamously long, but if course you choose how much of them to do based on your child's needs. I think it's better to have extra practice in a program that can be done as needed rather than pay for a program and still have to scramble to get more resources. -There's a fair amount of prep work up front (maybe 4 hours to fully set up a level) but if you do it the way they suggest, you can easily reuse for later siblings with no set up. If you buy used, you may be able to get one already completely set up, as a couple of the ones I got were.

[barnwife]

I am currently using AAR with one child. It is absolutely working for him.

That being said, it wouldn't be my first choice for most NT children. One reason is price. Our first learned to read with Webster's speller and Progressive Phonics. Though he could read at that point, he lacked confidence. So we did some of OPGTR and he really took off.  Those programs are all easy to use and cheap.

Kid #2 tagged along and was an independent reader after using Progressive Phonics.

Then along came Kid #3. He has dyslexia and the programs that worked for his siblings just weren't enough for him. I chose to move him to AAR (considered Barton) and it was absolutely the right choice for him. I chose AAR because it's cheaper and I thought he would enjoy it more. I really wanted his buy-in.

He enjoys it as much as he will ever enjoy a reading program. It has a lot of parts, which is something I personally never would choose. (word cards, letter tiles or app, activity book, teacher's manual) I totally understand why it has all the parts, I just prefer more streamlined. 

Basically, I think AAR is a good (better than, even) program for students who need it. I just also think it's overkill for a lot of kids, when there are many simpler, more straightforward and cheaper options out there.

 

[CTVKath]

I am currently using AAR with a 10yo who was delayed in reading because of eye convergence issues which were corrected with vision therapy. We absolutely love it. I used inexpensive Phonics Pathways with my 12yo and it worked perfectly fine for her. However, she sees what my son and I are doing with AAR and often comments that she wished she could have used it. And I will pull her over to learn alongside us every couple of weeks or so for something she didn't get taught. Not a reading concept but something fun like the names of all the groups of animals or something like homonyms. My 12yo has read all the books that go with AAR. My 10yo has enjoyed all the stories even though he is an older learner. We sped through AAR levels 1-3 during his 3rd grade year and we are going slower with AAR4 for his 4th grade year. Last year, my son loved all the daily games and activities. Being 10 this year, he doesn't love them as much but doesn't object to them at all. And again - for something I know my daughter hasn't done, I'll have her come do the game or activity too. Looking back with today's knowledge, I'd have bought AAR to use with my daughter. 

[Clarita]

I chose AAR because the charter school I homeschool with gives it to me for free. I was pretty hesitent about it because it was a bust when my kid was newly 4. Now we really like it. The trick for us was getting my kid fluent in CVC words and teaching him rhyming and syllables.

AAR Pre-reading I think could be improved. I wish it was more of a here are the skills needed at the pre-reading stage and here are the activites from begining to mastery. I had to look through the teacher's manual to find all the activities associated with different phonemic awareness skills then do them.

AAR level 1 If someone were to ask me when to start this level I would say (based on my experience) when your kid can easily read CVC words. This might be different for an older child, but for a young child it's a lot of work per lesson if they are starting from scratch (with just knowing letters and letter names). The practice offered in AAR is more practice than a typical child needs. Don't listen to the people who tell you that you need to do ALL of the fluency sheet because even the teacher's manual says you don't (especially with younger children). To me the fluency sheets are a good indicator that you need to slow down and/or take a pause from the lessons. So if it's taking your kid days to read through a fluency sheet it's an indicator to pause the lessons and just work on reading words with the phonics they know - read signs, buddy read easy books, etc. The advice of doing all the fluency sheet and keep chugging along is what made the program a bust for us early on and now we really enjoy it after our break.

The fact that it doesn't include handwriting is a reluctant pro for me. Currently I just sort of use HWOT K in the order of AAR level 1 letter introductions, but the letter introductions are much faster than the amount of handwriting practice my kid can do. Sometimes instead of cutting and gluing on the worksheets I have my kid write the stuff (I have him match by drawing a line and, as many as he wants, to write the words). Sometimes I wish I didn't have to cobble the handwriting part to match the reading, but I guess in reality it is better for my kid. 

 

[Elle Tee]

I love it. I was using an all-in-one language arts curriculum for my 6-year-old and I think he had a bit of a "summer slide" between K and 1st grade and I realized that trying to do it all together just wasn't working for us and I didn't have enough teacher experience to try and tweak the curriculum we had. I was hesitant to invest in AAR but it helped that I have two other kids in the pipeline so I figured it would get plenty of use. The biggest thing it did for us was confidence -- my son just needed to take a step back to the phonogram basics, which is where level 1 starts, so he could learn at a more gradual, logical pace, and I needed something that was very thoroughly laid out so I didn't have to be constantly questioning if I'd missed something. Now I'm using it with kid #2 and she ended up picking up a lot of sight words on her own so at this point, near the end of level 3, it's mostly just to help fill in some gaps, but she still loves the games -- we didn't use the fluency sheets much with her. We also barely used the readers after level 2 because they got a bit too long too quickly for both of my kids -- so holding off on ordering those (they're expensive but probably have decent resale value) could save some money in the later levels for some people. 

[Green Bean]

Thank you everyone!

Edited April 1, 2022 by Green Bean