Teaching my Son to Read with Reading Horizons -- Months 2-3

A couple of months ago I mentioned that I was starting a program to help my son with his reading skills. We have been working on a few skills on and off over the summer, and now that school is back in session I wanted to give you an update as to our progress.

I have to be honest, we have not used this program every day this summer as originally planned. Things just get busy and hectic during the summer and we haven’t been able to dedicate our time to this on a full time basis. We have worked on the skills presented in the Reading Horizons program as much as time has allowed us to, but we have by no means dedicated our lives to it.

If you recall from my previous post, we were working on the first few letters in the lesson 1 grouping, and combining them with the letter A to make what is known as a slide sound. For example, when you combine D and A, they make the sound /DA/ as in Dad. We finished up with slides and moved onto lesson 2; which is learning about most common words, and how to take the slides and add an ending to form a word.

I may have mentioned this before, but my son is VERY difficult to work with. He is stubborn, doesn’t like to learn new things that he feels are unimportant, and especially doesn’t like to listen to me when I try to teach him something. This is very frustrating as a mother, and as a teacher. With that being said, he has done pretty well using this program. It took us a long time to get through the slides, just because he is so stubborn and it is hard to get him to work with me, but once we did things moved along fairly well.

One of the things that made this easier on both of us were the games that they suggest you play to reinforce the concepts. I wish I would have discovered these right away (perhaps if I had fully read the instructions I may have), because he learns so well when he gets a chance to “show off” his skills and perhaps get a reward for it.

Even though school has started back up, and my son is now in Kindergarten full time, I intend to keep working with him using this program. I am hopeful that we will soon have him reading at a higher level, as I know some of his peers are already reading while he is not quite there yet.

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ABOUT READING HORIZONS

The Discover Intensive Phonics program is taught through multi-sensory, direct instruction, helping students internalize decoding/word attack strategies for more accurate and fluent reading. Phonics lessons can be reinforced through the use of Discover Intensive Phonics computer software. Computerized lessons, practice sessions, and phonics activities correlate with every classroom lesson for individualized skill reinforcement.

If you are interested in trying out a sample lesson, you can try one out on the Reading Horizons home page today for free. Just go here: Sample Lesson

Another great benefit to the Reading Horizons program is the webinars they offer. They really do care about your success and the success of your student by offering free training webinars that offer tips and suggestions to help your student succeed! The latest one is called, “Why Can’t my Child Remember What he Reads?” This free webinar is taking place on September 21st at 10:00am MDT so register now to reserve your spot! Just go here: Reading Webinar