Sound Steps to Reading (Handbook): Parent/Teacher Handbook

Try "Sound Steps to Reading," a synthetic phonics reading and spelling program by Diane McGuinness. This is a brand new program, 1st edition just published in December 2008. I highly recommend it. It is, judging by the lack of Amazon reviews up to this point, an undiscovered gem. I can't say enough good things about it and am constantly recommending it to every parent and teacher I know who needs to teach children to read. I'm afraid I won't do it justice for lack of time, but here goes for now:As well as being from the modernized style of phonics programs classified as "synthetic phonics" or "linguistic phonics," which enormously improve on traditional phonics programs, it also has a number of other strengths:Completely streamlined to include only those activities that solid research has shown clear evidence of significant benefit; doesn't rely on gimmicks (such as singing, color-coding, hand-signals, CD-ROMs, computer games); stories do not have any illustrations, yet are very appealing to my 4 ½-year-old (this is a strength, not weakness of the program, as it encourages my child to decode/sound-out the words; if there were pictures he would be guessing more); the program leads your child painlessly through to a very high level of spelling patterns not dealt with in traditional phonics programs.However, a few caveats:This program requires a little more writing & spelling then I would imagine some other reading programs do (this is good, as the research shows that writing & spelling greatly enhance and speed up the learning of reading). So you should be prepared for your child to copy and spell (i.e. write by sounding out/segmenting the word one phoneme at a time while in turn writing down the likely spelling of each respective phoneme) during each lesson (not just to read).You should be prepared to do new things such as call the letters by the sounds they most frequently stand as a symbol for, not by their letter names (e.g. DON'T call the letter O "oh", the letter M "em", the letter E "ee", the letter V "vee", the letter F "eff", the letter X "ecks", or the letter H "aich"; INSTEAD call them respectively: "ah", "mmmmm", "eh", "vvvvv", "fffff", "kssss" and "hhhh----".Also, I think Primary Phonics, by Barbara Makar is still one of the best (if not THE best) sets of phonics readers available (a lot of people like Bob's Books and those are similar in concept, but Primary Phonics is much more thorough, extensive, and VERY entertaining. But Primary Phonics doesn't follow the new sequence of Sound Steps (which saves "magic E" and "long" vowels for near the end of the program); it follows the old phonics sequence of introducing "magic E" words right after students have mastered "short" vowels.Oh, yeah...the author says that Sound Steps is intended for 4 to 6-years-old kids, but I think it's probably good for older kids too, as it teaches through to a very advanced level of spelling patterns...get both books in the program: the parent/teacher handbook AND the sound-targeting storybook...and the author suggests her spelling program, Allographs II, as a follow-up for even more advanced spelling/reading study.P.S. Stay away from sight-word method reading programs. Some children have been known to make fast progress in the first few years of reading, relying on their excellent visual memory of words, only to fall behind later when it's discovered that their excellent word memory has become a crutch which early on prevented them from needing to learn how to sound out words. Then they find themselves overwhelmed by an ever-increasing number of sight words they must memorize while other children merely sound the new words out...Good luck!

I just bought this for my son at the recommendation of his reading tutor, and have found it as helpful for me (in helping him read) as I've found it for him (in becoming a stronger reader). The book does a fabulous job at explaining the complexity of the English language and the importance of focusing on sounds vs letter sounds. Definitely recommend it.

Exactly as expected

Make sure you buy the companion, Sound Targeting Storybook. These little books are very basic, graphics wise---very desktop publishing circa 1990s. But, content wise McGuinness is a pro. I'm going to see how well her approach works.

Affordable and awesome! My son is reading at the second grade level as a three year old. It took about 9 months to go through both books ( we took our time and only read when he felt like it).

Great for homeschooling!