Quick Phonics Programs

[alysee]

I have taught 3 students/1 taught himself(gifted 2E) how to read. The first two used 100EZ Lessons and the next used Phonics Pathways. My current 4.5yo is so eager to read. She knows almost all of her letter sounds thanks to leapfrog but I still find her a bit young and she needs something colorful and flashy. I was originally going to use All about Reading with her but I think it may be too slow for her. Is there a quick and dirty colorful phonics program you would suggest? 

[HomeAgain]

I'd suggest Sing, Spell, Read & Write.  Go through it as quickly as you want, slowing down where she needs more work.  It's colorful, orderly, and has multi-sensory activities.  There are games and the worksheets are fun.  She can read through 17 different books per level, all in color.

[Ellie]

2 hours ago, HomeAgain said:

I'd suggest Sing, Spell, Read & Write.  Go through it as quickly as you want, slowing down where she needs more work.  It's colorful, orderly, and has multi-sensory activities.  There are games and the worksheets are fun.  She can read through 17 different books per level, all in color.

I thought it was out of print. Where can you buy it?

[HomeAgain]

3 hours ago, Ellie said:

I thought it was out of print. Where can you buy it?

I thought so, too, but Rainbow Resource had kits again when I looked about a month ago.  I ended up buying the student pages for level 1 because I have the rest.

[ElizabethB]

I have never used it but supposedly Happy Phonics is colorful and game based:

https://www.rainbowresource.com/product/039229/Happy-Phonics.html

You could try Blend Phonics, print out each book on different colored paper. It's mastery based and free to print so easy to move fast. You can add in games and teach the words from the whiteboard to make it more fun.

http://www.donpotter.net/education_pages/blend_phonics.html

Don also has all the words on cards, you can play relay race and other games with them--in a sound them out manner, not as sight words, but as decoding cards.

If you want to get through the sight words quickly, here's how to teach them all with phonics, they're 50% of any running text so it does help to learn them if you are teaching them with phonics with a student who learns quickly. They way they teach them in schools as wholes is bad and causes guessing. Cute and colorful bookmark version:

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On Reading/Resources/40LSightWordsBookmarks.pdf

I also have blending cards that make things more fun, at the end of my sound charts:

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On Reading/Resources/40LChartsCombined.pdf

Print out the colored versions or use black and white and color in with colored pencils. Run a car or stuffed animal over words while blending to make it more fun.

I also have a fun game to get in extra blending practice:

http://thephonicspage.org/On Phonics/concentrationgam.html

 

Edited September 10, 2022 by ElizabethB

[Clarita]

Dash into Reading is cute, colorful and the stories are sweet.

I'm not strong in reading so I didn't really know how to make that into a full reading program, but it seems like people do. 

[BusyMom5]

Exact same situation- I got AAR and its been a good fit.   My DD seems to be a quick learner,  probably would test gifted if we tested her (we won't be).  I like that there are so many stories to read- I just do not have time to search the local library for books at the right level.

[Ellie]

On 9/10/2022 at 12:59 PM, HomeAgain said:

I thought so, too, but Rainbow Resource had kits again when I looked about a month ago.  I ended up buying the student pages for level 1 because I have the rest.

Well, what do you know?! I also found a website which sells it--not the publisher, apparently, but at least it's a website. 🙂

Edited September 13, 2022 by Ellie

[Clarita]

FWIW I thought AAR would be too slow for my son too, but it actually turned out to be perfect. He can read above the phonics we are learning in AAR, but it helps him solidify whatever he's figured out on his own. Also he really enjoys doing it. 

[Clarita]

I don't think AAR is a quick phonics program though.

[Xahm]

You may want to look into ProgressivePhonics.com It's a series of free books online that are made to be buddy-read. Parents read the black text while kids read the red. I think it works really well for quick learners to pick up on, and the stories are fairly funny. There are some worksheets that coordinate with it. It's clearly a project of love for the creator, though she seems to have stopped updating it before she planned to.

[rebcoola]

On 9/10/2022 at 2:26 PM, ElizabethB said:

I have never used it but supposedly Happy Phonics is colorful and game based:

https://www.rainbowresource.com/product/039229/Happy-Phonics.html

You could try Blend Phonics, print out each book on different colored paper. It's mastery based and free to print so easy to move fast. You can add in games and teach the words from the whiteboard to make it more fun.

http://www.donpotter.net/education_pages/blend_phonics.html

Don also has all the words on cards, you can play relay race and other games with them--in a sound them out manner, not as sight words, but as decoding cards.

If you want to get through the sight words quickly, here's how to teach them all with phonics, they're 50% of any running text so it does help to learn them if you are teaching them with phonics with a student who learns quickly. They way they teach them in schools as wholes is bad and causes guessing. Cute and colorful bookmark version:

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On Reading/Resources/40LSightWordsBookmarks.pdf

I also have blending cards that make things more fun, at the end of my sound charts:

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On Reading/Resources/40LChartsCombined.pdf

Print out the colored versions or use black and white and color in with colored pencils. Run a car or stuffed animal over words while blending to make it more fun.

I also have a fun game to get in extra blending practice:

http://thephonicspage.org/On Phonics/concentrationgam.html

 

Happy Phonics was great for middle with ADHD only downside is cutting it all out.

[KSera]

On 9/13/2022 at 5:18 PM, Xahm said:

You may want to look into ProgressivePhonics.com It's a series of free books online that are made to be buddy-read. Parents read the black text while kids read the red. I think it works really well for quick learners to pick up on, and the stories are fairly funny. There are some worksheets that coordinate with it. It's clearly a project of love for the creator, though she seems to have stopped updating it before she planned to.

This is what I was going to say. For a quick, natural learner, I found it to be very easy and enjoyable.

[ElizabethB]

8 hours ago, rebcoola said:

Happy Phonics was great for middle with ADHD only downside is cutting it all out.

🤣

I actually hate cutting things out, too. 

If my students are old enough, I have them help me cut out the cards for my nonsense word game. I had a 4th grade girl with a younger sibling super excited that I let her use a sliding cutter, she wasn't allowed because her sister wasn't old enough to use one. I was just happy to have help cutting the cards, enthusiastic help is even better. If they're too young I do the cutting in advance. Group classes, adult volunteers help.

[exh]

I’ve been using 100 easy lessons with my 3yo son and we are at lesson 31 right now. He actually isn’t bothered by the lack of color of the book, but seems more intimidated by the idea of reading alone - he can sound out everything fine and gets most of the questions right, but the story tasks seem to make him really nervous. Wonder if we should switch too.

[HomeAgain]

5 hours ago, exh said:

I’ve been using 100 easy lessons with my 3yo son and we are at lesson 31 right now. He actually isn’t bothered by the lack of color of the book, but seems more intimidated by the idea of reading alone - he can sound out everything fine and gets most of the questions right, but the story tasks seem to make him really nervous. Wonder if we should switch too.

You didn't ask, but there are ways to make this work for you. I think lessons 20-40 are the hardest for kids in this book.  Lesson 20 is when they really start stringing words together and it's a make-or-break moment, but also because these 20 lessons require a development that a kid may not quite have yet.  The book is heavily condensed from the Reading Mastery program, so lessons 35-40 would be about the end of K, beginning of 1st grade, not 35 days into the work.

I don't know if it'll help, but our solution for this had a few prongs.

1. I made cards that go with the first 50 lessons.  We could stretch out a lesson by not using the book at all, just the cards, and making our own silly sentences to read.

2. We did "Throwback Thursdays", where every week we skipped back 10 lessons (or 20, as we got further in) and did a lesson the kid knew well.  That way it wasn't always hard work.

3. We spent a lot of time on "side quests".  We focused on reading skills not associated with reading.  The books Developing The Early Learner and ThinkFun logic games were some of my kids' favorites, but we also used Anno's Math Games, lots of art and music study, and imaginative toys.

 

I think 3 is pretty young for a reading program, and I don't know of many that have the necessary development in place to go beyond the beginning of any program if they're being taught.  There's something about turning 4 or 5 that helps the brain develop the logic and memory needed for decoding.  I will say that after I started putting the three things above into place, kids I helped found it much easier to go through 100 EZ lessons and there was less stagnation in different parts.

 

[exh]

5 hours ago, HomeAgain said:

You didn't ask, but there are ways to make this work for you. I think lessons 20-40 are the hardest for kids in this book.  Lesson 20 is when they really start stringing words together and it's a make-or-break moment, but also because these 20 lessons require a development that a kid may not quite have yet.  The book is heavily condensed from the Reading Mastery program, so lessons 35-40 would be about the end of K, beginning of 1st grade, not 35 days into the work.

I don't know if it'll help, but our solution for this had a few prongs.

1. I made cards that go with the first 50 lessons.  We could stretch out a lesson by not using the book at all, just the cards, and making our own silly sentences to read.

2. We did "Throwback Thursdays", where every week we skipped back 10 lessons (or 20, as we got further in) and did a lesson the kid knew well.  That way it wasn't always hard work.

3. We spent a lot of time on "side quests".  We focused on reading skills not associated with reading.  The books Developing The Early Learner and ThinkFun logic games were some of my kids' favorites, but we also used Anno's Math Games, lots of art and music study, and imaginative toys.

 

I think 3 is pretty young for a reading program, and I don't know of many that have the necessary development in place to go beyond the beginning of any program if they're being taught.  There's something about turning 4 or 5 that helps the brain develop the logic and memory needed for decoding.  I will say that after I started putting the three things above into place, kids I helped found it much easier to go through 100 EZ lessons and there was less stagnation in different parts.

 

Thank you so much for your advice! I’ll definitely try the things you suggested.

I am fully aware that 3 maybe too young and we are ready to take a break any moment if we hit a block. But he’s doing so well with blending and other aspects of reading that I feel like I’m barely doing any teaching, yet he is really scared of potentially making a mistake and has very little confidence. Maybe I’ll also try supplementing with something more colorful and flashy. Thanks again for the helpful advice!

[Clarita]

14 hours ago, exh said:

I am fully aware that 3 maybe too young and we are ready to take a break any moment if we hit a block. But he’s doing so well with blending and other aspects of reading that I feel like I’m barely doing any teaching, yet he is really scared of potentially making a mistake and has very little confidence. Maybe I’ll also try supplementing with something more colorful and flashy. Thanks again for the helpful advice!

This is pricey, but my son really like these when he didn't have much confidence. https://wasecabiomes.org/collections/biome-readers/products/complete-set-of-parts-of-the-biome-readers-new

I definitely think you can look at what they offer and make your own. How I used it is I just have my son match pictures/objects to single words until he gained confidence doing that. Then I had him match sentences to pictures, which with enough sentences to pictures became a story. My son really likes non-fiction so I did get him the biome readers. Occasionally if we are getting too monotonous with AAR we just do a biome folder instead.

[Malam]

On 10/20/2022 at 6:38 AM, HomeAgain said:

1. I made cards that go with the first 50 lessons.  We could stretch out a lesson by not using the book at all, just the cards, and making our own silly sentences to read.

Anki card or physical cards?

[HomeAgain]

10 hours ago, Malam said:

Anki card or physical cards?

Physical.  I created it in Office. It's about 60 pages of nearly every word in the first 50 lessons sounded out.  Each card has notes on it for my own use: the lesson numbers the word/sound corresponds to and possibly a teaching note.  Those are tiny at the top and bottom.  Printed, and laminated, I had a full deck where I could make the book the "treat" and spend as much time as needed with each new piece before that.

[Ottakee]

Another option is www.iseesam.com.  I used this with my kids.   You just teach the phonics as it comes up in the little stories.

[maize]

On 9/10/2022 at 5:48 AM, alysee said:

I have taught 3 students/1 taught himself(gifted 2E) how to read. The first two used 100EZ Lessons and the next used Phonics Pathways. My current 4.5yo is so eager to read. She knows almost all of her letter sounds thanks to leapfrog but I still find her a bit young and she needs something colorful and flashy. I was originally going to use All about Reading with her but I think it may be too slow for her. Is there a quick and dirty colorful phonics program you would suggest? 

Reading Eggs has a Fast Phonics program if you want to consider something on a screen.