Has anyone here used Word Shark?

My son has used word shark both at school and at home. It did help him a bit, but as we subsequently discovered, his difficulties are auditory, visual and he is also dyslexic . The thing that did help him however, was Toe by Toe, a very very structured reading scheme which teaches through phonics. Try www.toebytoe.co.uk I think it is wonderful. It appears to be a bit boring as each page needs to be ‘done’ every day for three consecutive ‘tick days’, but instant recognition of success is very appealing to pupils. I have used it extensively in my classes of EBD pupils. They learn to listen to sounds and can then use them in their reading and spelling. My son’s spelling increased a huge amount and has continued to improve since he completed the book. It is long, 293 pages I think, but all the information is in the book, and you need nothing else to supplement it. Coaching pages are a great help, taking the parent or teacher, support assistant etc, through the instructions for each page. It can be bought for about £22 and is available mail order. Unfortunately, I have posted mine off to America for someone to look at, but sample pages are available to look at on the web site. Good Luck, please e-mail me and let me know what you think. By all means, try word shark … there is a maths one too! What does not work for one pupil, may work for another. There are other programmes that may help too, I’ll get some info sorted and let you have that if you send me your e-mail address.
Janet Manogue.

Has anyone else used “Toe by Toe”? Has it proved successful for your students?

Thanks Janet,
I’m definitely going to take a look at them. Hopefully I can find a company that will ship to the U.S. if I decide to order.

By the way, I’ve also been looking at another UK product called Gamz. Are you, by chance, familiar with this one?

Laura, I have never heard of Gamz, but I will have a look for it in the catalogues and try to find anyone I know who has used it. I’ll let you know!
Janet.

I appreciate your help! :-) Also, I don’t know if you received my email, but thanks for the information about Toe by Toe. I’m going to look into it. We did PG, but anything that may help him gain more fluency (or help with gaining automatic recognition) would be great.