Reading Horizons is a fairly intensive program, aimed at helping struggling readers. As I have one of those, I decided it would definitely be worth a try. We're using the interactive software for ages 10-adult.
At first, truthfully, Cassia was a little reluctant to use it. She thought the first few lessons were "just dumb. I know what a bag is!", but, we persevered (at my insistence), and she soon changed her tune as the lessons ramped up! Each lesson presents a sound/set of sounds, and has the student complete a variety of exercises to really cement the concepts. They work in lessons on grammar, punctuation, and more, along the way. There are also built-in reviews of "Most Common Words", words such as "the", "you", "people", etc. Many of the lessons have a secondary part, which is vocabulary review of the concepts just learned, as well as those from previous lessons.
The first chapter/unit went by pretty quickly, as a lot of it was review work for her. We're in the second chapter/unit now, and while there's still some review, it is definitely getting more challenging for her!
What I like about this program is that I can see her developing confidence. It used to be that when I asked her to read to me (outside the constraints of the program), she would really resist, I think mainly from a feeling that she couldn't do it, or would at least struggle in the process. While she's still not a fluent reader, yet, she is now willing to try, and she's doing pretty well! I like that there is a lot of review built in--this is something that works well with her (like the spiral approach in Saxon Math). And that I can set a passing percentage for the lessons... I have it set at 85% as a minimum for moving on, though she hasn't scored anything under 90% so far.
Let's just say that yesterday, I caught her reading a story in the Teacher's Guide to her Elson Reader! She said "It's pretty hard, but I did read some of it." And believe me, that is a HUGE step up for the girl who claimed she would never be able to read!
Disclaimer: I did receive a free copy of the interactive software in return for reviews.
Thanks for the review! I've heard of this one but it's one that we've never tried. It sounds pretty good!
ReplyDelete