SRA Reading Mastery?

It is a very good program and very effective. It is rather different from Reading Reflex as you will find when you sit down and compare them:) but I would not be reluctant to use it. Having a choice is a good thing though.

Robin

Kathye:
Kathye:

I’d like to add to Robin’s post to you. She writes:

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Reading Mastery does not address decoding skills once students reach Reading Mastery 3. So you would still need a good decoding/encoding program to help those other students who enter your classroom. Also, you might want to consider supplementary comprehension activities that go beyond recall/inferencing. Unfortunately, Reading Mastery does not do a good job with higher order thinking skills. But, don’t get me wrong, it’s a great program for transitioning a child from all decoding to reading for meaning. Not only that, the program inspires confidence in students. (It’s almost impossible to do poorly on their tests!). I administered the Unit 1 Test of RMIV to one of my students on the last day of school who has great difficulty in the area of comprehension. He earned 100% on the test. He was ecstatic!

Marilyn

Thank you both for helpful advice. I think I may use the Reading Mastery materials to supplement other approaches. It is always good to get suggestions from others.
Thanks Again,
Kathye

If the SRA Reading Mastery tests are so easy that they are almost impossible to do poorly, does it give an accurate assessment of the child’s comprehension? How would the child perform on other tests of comprehension?

D:

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Unfortunately, SRA Reading Mastery tests only test recall skills. It does not give an accurate assessment of the child’s true comprehension skills. That’s why it is so necessary to supplement this program with other comprehension programs. That’s also why I explained that RM is a good transitioning program to use to develop fluency and vocabulary comprehension.

While using this program, it would also be beneficial to use other programs such as Lindamood-Bell’s Visualizing and Verbalizing in order to teach those higher order thinking skills. No child is going to pass state mastery tests from working in Reading Mastery alone!

Marilyn

Hi!
I use the Reading Mastery Fast Cycle (I and II) in my Resource Center and have had success with it. I should add, however, that I do not use it the way intended because I think it insults the kids a bit with it’s “signals” and the like. I use the teacher edition to help teach the “method” of the reading or sounding out, but cannot bring myself to hold up my hand or say the scripted lessons. I like how the lessons are planned, the repitition of the words, and the ease of which the kids find success. I agree with the others that it shoould not be the sole reading in your class, as the kids need a bit more for comprehension. I also teach Reading REcovery which is almost the opposite philosophy of the SRA program, but I have managed to combine the basics from both programs and found a great deal of success. In fact, my students (grade 2-4) almost all have gained 2 years (one student gained one year and a half, another grew more- he is now on grade level) and have a number of tools to use instead of decoding alone. You may want to look at some books regarding methods used in Reading Recovery, and choose those that you think may help your students. Good luck!!!!

Thanks for the clarification!

Hi, I asked questions about Reading Mastery before school began and before I knew the restraints I would be dealing with in trying to help my children. I teach Resource for the first time in 27 Years of experience and most of my children come to me for 1 period a day (55 min). I am to teach reading, writing and math in this time period as well as reinforce classroom skills. I have spent 3 weeks strugling to put together a program that would successfully do all this, but I can not get it together. I attended a Workshop on SRA on Friday and was told SRA’s Corrective Reading or Fast Cycle would be a better fit under these circumstances. What do you think? I feel to pressure get up and going now as most students 2nd -5th are at least 2 years behind in reading. I bought Reading Reflex before school started and use it with my 1st grader and lowest 2nd grader, but the others think it’s silly. HELP!
Kathye