AAR 4 or alternative for a young reader?

[Momof4sweetkids]

My dd is 5 yo and we are halfway through AAR 3. She's a natural reader and is fluent at this level. She reads books like Rainbow Magic Fairies on her own. I'm trying to decide if we do AAR 4 after this, wait for a bit or do an alternative? Since she's so young, I'm a little worried AAR 4 will be past her vocabulary level and feel like reading nonsense words. On the other hand, she could use some more practice with 3+ syllable words to gain confidence in decoding them. Thoughts?

[wendyroo]

At that level, I really like WISE OWL Polysyllables: Advanced Skills for Young Readers.  It targets words that are longer and more advanced, but still fully phonetic.  For example, it might have the word diplomacy. Then it will have a couple sentences using the word in such a way that the student can infer its meaning. When it first presents each word, it inserts dashes between the syllables and bolds the stressed syllable to help the kiddo sound it out. And then in the sentences the words are written normally so the kids can try to segment it on their own. Each page is just filled with six to ten or so words with their sentences.

I have my kids read one page out loud to me each day - short and painless.  It allows me to evaluate if there are any phonics skills that need review.  It offers great practice with fluency and decoding multi-syllable words, and is also a fabulous vocabulary resource.

Edited December 7, 2022 by wendyroo

[KSera]

33 minutes ago, wendyroo said:

At that level, I really like WISE OWL Polysyllables: Advanced Skills for Young Readers.  It targets words that are longer and more advanced, but still fully phonetic.  For example, it might have the word diplomacy. Then it will have a couple sentences using the word in such a way that the student can infer its meaning. When it first presents each word, it inserts dashes between the syllables and bolds the stressed syllable to help the kiddo sound it out. And then in the sentences the words are written normally so the kids can try to segment it on their own. Each page is just filled with six to ten or so words with their sentences.

I have my kids read one page out loud to me each day - short and painless.  It allows me to evaluate if there are any phonics skills that need review.  It offers great practice with fluency and decoding multi-syllable words, and is also a fabulous vocabulary resource.

I have not seen those and  they look like just the right series for my 5 year old reader. Do you know what book comes right before the above one? We haven't finished our basic phonics curriculum yet, but my dc took off and is reading everything everywhere, including books that are far over his phonetic reading level which leads to more guessing than I'm comfortable with, though he does really pretty darn well. We need something faster/more advanced to get through all the more complicated sounds that I'm currently just pointing out when he stumbles on a word with a more advanced phonogram (like "laugh" or "though"). The above looks great, but I think backing up one book from it might be even better?

(We've used some Progressive Phonics and then Dancing Bears up to this point, and they are too slow. This dc doesn't need that much repetition before moving on to new sounds.)

[wendyroo]

1 hour ago, KSera said:

I have not seen those and  they look like just the right series for my 5 year old reader. Do you know what book comes right before the above one? We haven't finished our basic phonics curriculum yet, but my dc took off and is reading everything everywhere, including books that are far over his phonetic reading level which leads to more guessing than I'm comfortable with, though he does really pretty darn well. We need something faster/more advanced to get through all the more complicated sounds that I'm currently just pointing out when he stumbles on a word with a more advanced phonogram (like "laugh" or "though"). The above looks great, but I think backing up one book from it might be even better?

(We've used some Progressive Phonics and then Dancing Bears up to this point, and they are too slow. This dc doesn't need that much repetition before moving on to new sounds.)

I don't think it is a series. I think it is just a stand alone book.

In your shoes, I might see if your library has The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading or Phonics Pathways or something similar. Those cover all of phonics in one book, and are pretty easy to skim through and only do lessons that the child needs. I used The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading with my youngest that way - we would spend our 15 minutes of reading time just reading the sentences at the end of a bunch of lessons until we hit on one that had words she didn't know. Then we would start there and work through as many lessons as she needed (over the next few days) until we were back into concepts she knew and could breeze through.

[KSera]

52 minutes ago, wendyroo said:

I don't think it is a series. I think it is just a stand alone book.

In your shoes, I might see if your library has The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading or Phonics Pathways or something similar. Those cover all of phonics in one book, and are pretty easy to skim through and only do lessons that the child needs. I used The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading with my youngest that way - we would spend our 15 minutes of reading time just reading the sentences at the end of a bunch of lessons until we hit on one that had words she didn't know. Then we would start there and work through as many lessons as she needed (over the next few days) until we were back into concepts she knew and could breeze through.

I have Phonics Pathways, so I could try that. I’ll take a look at the later lessons in it.  I was thinking the Blend Phonics program might be the precursor to Wise Owl. 

[Momof4sweetkids]

3 hours ago, wendyroo said:

At that level, I really like WISE OWL Polysyllables: Advanced Skills for Young Readers.  It targets words that are longer and more advanced, but still fully phonetic.  For example, it might have the word diplomacy. Then it will have a couple sentences using the word in such a way that the student can infer its meaning. When it first presents each word, it inserts dashes between the syllables and bolds the stressed syllable to help the kiddo sound it out. And then in the sentences the words are written normally so the kids can try to segment it on their own. Each page is just filled with six to ten or so words with their sentences.

I have my kids read one page out loud to me each day - short and painless.  It allows me to evaluate if there are any phonics skills that need review.  It offers great practice with fluency and decoding multi-syllable words, and is also a fabulous vocabulary resource.

Thank you, this looks promising!

[countrymum]

I would save AAR 4 for later I think. I did it with my dd years ago in K or 1st maybe? She reads fine today, but I'm pretty sure she has forgotten it all and certainly applies none to spelling! I also have reminded her about multisyllabic words many times since then both for reading and spelling ...

Edited December 7, 2022 by countrymum

[Stoppingby]

Check out IEW PAL. The first lessons would be too easy.... but it moves at your pace. (70 lessons or so). I can’t remember all of it but it uses poems to spot letter sounds and has fun games. They use stickers and animals to reinforce sounds. In the last lessons they are decoding large words. We went through it pretty fast.

[Foofaraw]

On 12/6/2022 at 8:12 PM, KSera said:

I have not seen those and  they look like just the right series for my 5 year old reader. Do you know what book comes right before the above one? We haven't finished our basic phonics curriculum yet, but my dc took off and is reading everything everywhere, including books that are far over his phonetic reading level which leads to more guessing than I'm comfortable with, though he does really pretty darn well. We need something faster/more advanced to get through all the more complicated sounds that I'm currently just pointing out when he stumbles on a word with a more advanced phonogram (like "laugh" or "though"). The above looks great, but I think backing up one book from it might be even better?

(We've used some Progressive Phonics and then Dancing Bears up to this point, and they are too slow. This dc doesn't need that much repetition before moving on to new sounds.)

There’s an accelerated version of Dancing Bears called Fast Track.