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Learning how to read is certainly among the most important skills that I want my children to learn in our homeschool. Once they know how to read, they can spend a lifetime reading for both pleasure and education. We recently had the opportunity to review the PRIDE Reading Program Beginning Consonant Level Kit from the PRIDE Reading Program with my five-year-old kindergartner.
The first component to the program is an instructor training course. This online course walks you through each type of activity that you will be doing with your student to ensure that you understand the various directions and are ready to instruct your student. This course takes about 2-3 hours to complete and covers all levels of the program.
The PRIDE Reading Program is based on the Orton-Gillingham methodology and is a very structured approach to literacy. For the PRIDE Reading Program Beginning Consonant Level Kit each lesson is focused on a beginning consonant and has three sessions, an introduction, a practice, and a reinforcement session. We chose to complete one full lesson each week, thus doing reading three days a week and learning a new letter each week.
Each week consisted of basically the same activities, but with the new letter and a review of the letters that had already been covered. Each session included five or six short activities revolving around the letter. The sessions are laid out step by step on the computer for the teacher to read and work through with the student. Once you have completed that session you mark it complete and can move on to the next session.
On the days where my son was being cooperative and working hard, it took about 10-15 minutes to complete a session. Some days he loved the program and some days he resisted it and it took about 30 minutes to complete the lesson.
The activities in each session were varied and multi-sensory, including sky writing, tracing, repeating, giving each sound a motion, and listening for the letter sounds. The step by step nature of the program made it very easy for a child to feel successful and make slow but steady progress. There is a lot of repetition which will work well to encourage mastery for those that are struggling with reading, but it may feel like too much repetition for a child that is not struggling. In that situation, I would suggest covering the information at a faster pace.
My son has been resistant to reading instruction, but I could tell that he was making progress and find him identifying the sounds he recognizes in words as we go about our day to day lives. For example, he came up to me repeating a word yesterday so that I could hear the /k/ sound for C.
If you are looking for a systematic Orton-Gillingham methodology approach to reading, this may be a great fit for your family. It is simple to use, takes only a few minutes a day, and is through enough to help ensure that a child fully grasps and retains the information presented. This program is perfect for someone that is looking for a step by step scripted approach to phonics. Be sure to check out the website for more information about the PRIDE Reading Program and click on the graphic below to check out the reviews from other Review Crew members who reviewed a variety of different levels of the program.
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