Ultimate Phonics Reading Program #review

 We have an emerging reader in our house! This was my first time teaching reading and I'm loving that I get to be the teacher and watch my child's face as he deciphers words. You can almost see his brain working and the light bulb going off when he 'gets' a word!  We have a full curriculum we've been using but I was offered Ultimate Phonics Reading Program by Spencer Learning as a review and I thought, why not?

Drop down shows the lesson components by using the arrows you can progress through the program naturally or use the drop down to jump sections

about:

This phonics program is a downloadable program that you put on to an actual computer. There are 262 lessons and each lessons has four components -

• Idea/Pattern
• Word List
• Words
• Sentences

The idea is that each lesson could take the student a few minutes daily or several times a week.

Pattern section gives the phonic and a sample word

The program is very simple. You load your lesson and use the mouse to click through each part by clicking on advancing arrows. The program has a built in voice that is very computer sounding (think War Games or Steven Hawking). When you hover your mouse over a letter the program tells you the sound and over the word it tells you the word. 

The word list are more challenging as the student moves to higher lessons

How We Used It:

As I mentioned earlier my kindergarten student is currently learning to read. I downloaded this program to my main computer. I was worried to do this because my computer is actually pretty old but I had no issues downloading or running it on my computer. J-man has worked on the first 3 lessons as they are inline with the exact C-V-C words he is currently learning. We are taking our time on this and working towards fluency and mastery. I'm in no rush to complete the program. Typically I sit with my son has he works through the short lesson making sure he is actually reading the words and at least trying to sound them out if it is something he is unsure of - however I have let him sit and do it by himself. I think this was the most interesting part - seeing him try to sound a word out, get it, then scroll his mouse over the word to see if he did it right. I could see the look of satisfaction on his face when he accomplished his goal.

The yellow part in the WORD section can be sounded out separate or all together depending on how you scroll your mouse

 My Thoughts:

When I first opened this program and started playing with it, I really didn't think this was going to be anything special. It is very simple and then you have the computer voice which was odd to me. However as soon as my son heard that voice he came right over. He wanted to see what was onscreen. So while this program lacked the bells and whistles that I would have expected - it didn't matter one bit! It's simplicity truly works and it works well! We have a little booklet that has word list that are similar to this program but having the pronunciation is wonderful! Jace is able to hear the sounds and words in real time. It is also helpful to me because I don't actually know all the phonic rules and I'm getting a bit of a refresher while watching him. We will be using this in our homeschool this year to be a supplement to our phonics curriculum - which I think is saying a lot. I'm really thankful to have found such a useful tool! 

Sentence section finishes the lesson and puts together what you've practiced in the lesson

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