Get Your Child OnTrack Reading is our new program for teaching beginning reading. On this page you will find a brief explanation of the program, some preparatory information, and free access to the first five lessons. This program is not for every parent, nor will every young child be ready for it. We have found in field testing that parents have varying preferences for the type of program they want to use with their child. Our program requires consistent parental/adult supervision throughout, for example.
To begin, read the introductory material below. If you decide to try the program, the first five lessons are free as a download farther down this page. Try sampling those lessons to determine if our program is a good fit for both you and your child.
First: The Fine Motor Skill Requirement
In our program your child will be required to print both lowercase (small) and uppercase (capital) letters in most lessons. To see if your child is ready, use the link below to download the first two pages of Appendix 2: Forming Letters Correctly. It includes a practice sheet for the six letters covered in the Lessons 1 to 5. The size of the letters is approximately the size your child will be printing them. If you doubt your child is ready, you should wait a bit before trying our program.
About the Program
Get Your Child OnTrack Reading is a 130-lesson phonics program a parent can use to teach a child to read. The program requires no prior knowledge of the alphabet. It consists of a 245-page workbook that uses a direct instruction model of teaching. That is, you will be provided a scripted lesson plan indicating what you are to say as each new concept is introduced.
Scope: The program covers phonics material taught in kindergarten, first, and second grade. It also includes the OnTrack Reading Multisyllable Method that will prepare your child to read multisyllable words commonly encountered in the third and fourth grade and above.
Time to Complete: Each lesson can be presented in about 15 to 20 minutes, but you will also be doing regular reviews of past material, so your lesson time might be somewhat longer. Some lessons might even consist mostly of review. Based on field testing so far, we anticipate that the entire program can be presented over about two years of schooling.
Getting Started
Notation for Sounds: Phonics is all about sounds. To read about sounds, we need a notation for each sound. Before starting the program with your child, download Appendix 1: Notation for the 44 Sounds at the link below and familiarize yourself with some of the notation.
Proper Letter Formation: Your child will be printing letters throughout the program, so review the formation of the letters in Appendix 2 that you downloaded earlier.
Previewing Each Lesson: Before presenting a lesson to your child, prepare for it by going over the entire lesson yourself. The lines in bold text in each lesson are the script. They are all that you will be saying to your child.
Flashcards: During reviews, flashcards are available for your child to practice recalling the sounds associated with the 95 letters and digraphs covered in the program. The flashcards for the first six letters and the instructions for using them can be downloaded at the link below.
Prepare for Lesson 1
Download Lesson 1 at the link below and read over it carefully before presenting it to your child. This is one of the longest lessons in the program in terms of what you have to read yourself, but going over the lesson with your child should only take 10 to 15 minutes.
Decide Whether to Continue and Offer Feedback
If Lesson 1 went well and you want to continue, you can download Lessons 2 through 5 below. If those lessons also go well and you want to continue the program, we are currently field-testing it with several parents. If you agree to provide feedback as you use the program, we will send you a free copy of the workbook. Just email us at [email protected] to see if we are still in need of additional field testers. Include some comments on how the first five lessons went with your child. (Note: If you've decided not to use our program after trying it, feel free to send us an email explaining your reasons.)
We will make this offer of a free workbook until we feel we have sufficient field testers. The workbook has gone through one round of field testing with favorable results. However, due to comments received then, we made several improvements and we want to evaluate their impact. Once we have enough field testers signed up, we will make the program available on our website at a price yet to be determined.
We realize this program isn't for everyone. It requires adult supervision throughout and the printing requirement means that it is not suitable for very young children. For those reasons, we are providing the first five lessons as a sample of the program. We will probably continue to do that because we want parents to know whether the program is a good fit for them and their child before ordering it.
Summing Up
If the sample lessons went well for both you and your child, you will find that our program moves quickly, provides comprehensive phonics instruction, and teaches a multisyllable decoding method that your child will easily understand and will put to good use.
And, finally, the purpose of our phonics program is only to teach your child how to read. It's important that you continue reading to your child as usual, and that your child begins to read on his own as the lessons progress. Reading should be fun for both of you and something that you enjoy together in the expectation that, eventually, your child will be reading independently.
