I attended a workshop on the R.E.W.A.R.D.S. program today. It is published by Sopris West (they are on the “net”). The program develops students’ competency with decoding multisyllabic words. It is structured, organized and comprehensive. It begins with a 13 unit review of the vowel patterns, teaches common word parts, gives students practice with recognizing word parts, builds their speed and teaches them strategies to read multisyllabic words. Cognitive flexibility is taught; try the sound (short sound) and if that doesn’t work, try the name (aka the long sound).
There is lots of practice with these activities. Affixes are taught and practiced. From unit thirteen through 20 the students focus more on words, though they continue to practice the word parts (some of us used to call these syllables) and strategies. Students then work at reading words in sentences as well as in a content area selection. Students are progressed from using pencils to mark vowels and word parts as an aide to decoding, to using their eyes.
This program does, in a comprehensive fashion, what I have been putting together on my own. It is fairly simple to learn and can be implemented by an instructional aide. Plus, it is cost effective.
Looks like it fills a gap many of us have found in many reading programs.
Re: Good Reading Program for "Advanced Code"
You would need a student book and the Teacher’s edition. Without the teacher’s edition, you really wouldn’t know what to do and say, plus a couple of activities for each lesson are only in the T.E.
Thanks! Looks Interesting!
I’ve seen it but haven’t really investigated. I’m getting ready for new groups, too.
Re: Thanks! Looks Interesting!
I have been using Rewards with my 8th grade students. We are on lesson 9 and they are doing extremely well. I can’t wait to get to lesson 13 and begin sentence and passage reading. Rewards has the fluency practice built into it. The passages are interesting and challenging. My kids are doing great. Today they all spelled historically, extrinsic, responsible and showmanship. I use yesterdays word usage words for bellwork. They can look back at the lesson and then write each word in a sentence. Then we read their best sentence. When we started they could not have read these words much less constructed a sentence with them. You need good basic code knowledge to use this program. It really is for older kids. I would not use it with low third grade. If kids stuble over one or two syllable words then do Reading Reflex with them until they have the code down. Rewards jumps right into pretty difficult words and teaches many prefixes and suffixes at one time. It is excellent for older readers who have difficulty decoding large words.
Question
I looked at the Sopris website and found a package of 10 student books. This would be 10 copies of the same book? There is only one student book then? If so, I could have the whole deal for about $110. That’s pretty good. Affordable in anyone’s shrinking budget.
Re: Question
I went to the workshop and received the teacher material and one student book. I copy the student book for my students. You absolutely must have the teache book. The masters for the overhead transparencies are in that book plus, some of the oral activities are only in the teacher book.
Re: Thanks! Looks Interesting!
My son can read many 3 and 4 syllable words, but will occassionally stumble. We just finished reading “A Mouse Called Wolf” by Dick King-Smith (the author of “Babe”).
Although we did this taking turns (he read one page and I read the next, etc…), I have to admit he read it pretty well. He struggled with a lot of the words, but I’d hold my finger over parts of them and have him figure out the “chunks.”
The book overall is somewhat difficult (richer language than most 3rd grade books). Every sentence has numerous multisyllable words. But I really liked the edition I used because the print was relatively large. And it’s not always easy to find challenging books with good-sized print!
I think he’s basically finished with PG. I’ll probably review some of the code with him over winter break. But I expect he may breeze through it pretty quickly. In addition, we’ve started working on recognizing parts of words like morphographs.
Sometimes, he’ll do these funny things like easily read a word such as “concurrently” and then later, while writing, forget what the letter “v” looks like and ask me how to write it.
I find that I work on many different levels with him. Sometimes he’ll be decoding large multisyllable words and other times I’m having him write and say aloud the names and sounds of the “lesser used” letters in the alphabet. And it’s not like he hasn’t seen or heard them over a million times, he just needs the extra review.
Perhaps, I’m best off just working with him as I’ve been doing and letting the school do REWARDS with him next year. I’m glad to hear it’s a good program.
Hi Anitya,
If a parent wanted to use this at home what books would be necessary to implement the program? Could one effectively use it by just ordering the Student Book (or is it necessary to have all the books in the program)?
I know my son’s school uses Rewards, but only for 4th grade and up (according to the publisher’s recommendations). Although my son is in 3rd grade, he has done PG and could use more practice and instruction with multisyllable words. Would this program be appropriate in this instance?
Thanks for your thoughts!