suitability of hooked on phonics

Hooked on Phonics is usually not useful for dyslexics, and I wouldn’t recommend it.

For home use, I recommend the book “Reading Reflex” by McGuiness. You can purchase a $59 parent supplement for this approach that includes worksheets and manipulatives on cardstock (that you have to cut apart yourself). If nothing else, I recommend that you check the book out from the library and read the first three chapters. This will give you a good handle on reading essentials.

Wilson is an approach often used in schools. It is a lock-step approach that lends itself to group instruction, but isn’t particularly efficient. Also, I believe it is more suited to older children.

What you may want to do is allow the school to use Wilson for the remainder of the school year. Meanwhile, educate yourself on reading methodologies and plan to use “Reading Reflex” over the summer. I think you will see a profound difference in efficiency between the two programs. They are not particularly compatible, so I do not recommend using both approaches at one time.

Nancy

I have also used Earobics 1 with my younger students as reinforcement of phonemic awareness.

www.earobics.com

Janis

You might also check out the software that is offered by Sound Reading Solutions. It provides a lot of work in phoenemic awareness as well as sound-symbol association. It is a lot less tedious than Earobics, although it is less intensive. If you call them up, they will send you a demo of the software, which can also be viewed on the site if you have enough computing power. Cost is about the same as Earobics.

Hooked on Phonics is fun — but its’ not designed for kids with dyslexia. (Neither is Reading Reflex, though it targets the specific skills that most kids with dyslexia struggle with in an efficient way — but depending on the severity and nature of the reading problem more review and practice and structure would need to be built in).
One problem with many phonics programs is they assume that the student is at least tuned into the sounds — and most kids are, without thinking about it. However, some need to be taught that it’s the sounds that are what the phonics is about or they’ll find ingenious ways to rely on visual cues for doing the activities, and they won’t be learning the “phon” part of the phonics at all.
However, if what a kid needs is more practice working with the sounds, then many phonics games & programs would be helpful, especially if the parent is sensitive to making sure the sounds and not visual cues are being attended to.

I second the recommendation of the Sound Reading CD. This has been a wonderful supplement to Phono-Graphix for some of my students. I think it is both less boring and more useful than Earobics.

Nancy