Review #1: Reading Horizons

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.