Reading HorizonsReviews on record for readinghorizons.com

My student has worked his way through to the last chapter in the Reading Horizons Elevate program. We are currently finishing up that last chapter. I have been very disappointed with the program and my student has made very little progress. He is 11 and struggles with dyslexia. There are so many bugs with the program itself - the system constantly has issues when the user types in words often not allowing the user to type at all. This requires you to restart the program a few times before it works again (THIS HAPPENS SO MANY TIMES AND IS INCREDIBLY FRUSTRATING!). The system will ask the user to select a word and the user will select the correct word, however, the system will say that it is wrong and then show you the same answer as the correct answer. They system will also ask the user to spell words that have homophones (same pronunciation, different spelling - like sea/see, two/to/too, etc.) but it will not define they word they are to spell, so you have to just guess which one they are wanting. Additionally, the tests, quizzes, and practice portions of the program use a computer-generated voice that can be difficult to understand at times. I have reported all of these issues multiple times throughout our use of the program, and none have been fixed. Another issue I have with the program is that it focuses so much on decoding words instead of the repetition of actually learning words. I think decoding can help initially, but I can't say it has helped my student learn how to read any better. The lessons are so short with very little practice time. They give the same amount of emphasis and practice on basic skills as they do highly complex skills. I feel like they should have multiple lessons for some of those more complex skills that take a lot longer to learn. You also can't review the actual lesson without resetting the lesson - forcing the student to repeat it all over again. They have a quick review, but it is exactly that... it barely covers anything and there is no explanation as the the 'why' things are done that way. It only reviews the words covered in that lesson. The quizzes and tests also require the student to memorize what exactly each decoding skill is - and it will say which of these words fit decoding skill #1 - so the user has to memorize what each one is, which doesn't seem like an important thing to memorize, esp. for students who have difficulty with memorization. Also, there is a ridiculously difficult skill level jump between chapters 4 and 5. The words for chapter 5 are so much more difficult and it makes no sense how that difficulty level jumps so drastically, so quickly. The library options are very limited, and my student has had difficulty finding articles that are even remotely interesting - and I would have to agree with him on that. All-in-all, we spent 5 months working through this program, and my student's reading improved by 30% based on the initial baseline test. That also included A LOT of additional reading practice outside of this program that I believe was far more effective. I would definitely NOT recommend this program.

The further I move through the chapters the less I like the program. It is gimmicky. The lessons take longer than the manual states. The 62% of students that do not need this approach to be strong readers and writers are able to follow and understand the more complicated lessons, however the 38% of students that struggle continue to struggle, even with Reading Horizons. If I have to read and reread and reread a lesson to understand it, I doubt 7 and 8 year olds are going to follow it. My students might be able to mark 1 guardian star or two in the isolated lesson, but in “real life” writing or reading they are not applying it. As a veteran primary grade teacher I have seen many trends come and go. It will be no different with reading horizons. They say “but it’s researched based”, well you can find research to lean in whichever way you want. I wish my district wouldn’t waste the money on it. But it’s what’s trendy in education at the moment.

I am very thankful for the cooperation and I would like to recommend

As a new Kindergarten teacher it has been easy to learn the Reading Horizons method. I am still learning, but it isn't hard. I have seen my kids really enjoy it as they are learning the Slide that they get excited when they write their two letter slide with their arrow at the bottom and as we say the sounds together, they are proud of themselves when I tell them they are close to reading a word! Then we add the 3rd letter and they are so excited when I tell them they just read a word!! yay!!

This is the first year our school district has implemented Reading Horizons, and working with the team has been outstanding. Haley Merrill, Customer Success Manager, has been easily accessible and always provides a quick response. She provides targeted support and troubleshooting for individual teachers. Reading Horizons has facilitated teacher professional development for our school district, provided coaching opportunities and created a resource page curated to the needs of Teachers of English Learners. Reading Horizons Discovery and Elevate provide a structured literacy program that focuses on reading foundational skills for ELs at grades K-12. Based on feedback we’ve received from teachers, Reading Horizons has been convenient and accessible for remote, distance and hybrid learning and provides access to online tools and resources. Through Reading Horizons teachers have access to reports that provide detailed data to monitor student progress and target specific student needs. We highly recommend this program for building foundational literacy skills for English Learners.

Completing the much needed Modules in order to get the fabulous kits to enhance my Special Ed students phonics and reading fluency was challenging. I owe everything to Ms. Haley Merrill who went above and beyond to guiding me and helping me. She is an angel because when I was ready to give up, she encouraged me to continue and trouble shooted with me . Thank you Ms. Merrill for your kindness and patience.

Amazing material! If you have wondered where to start with phonics, or low readers in the class, look no more. This has in class resources which provide all the necessities a teacher needs, as well as online software. You can assign lessons, and even exit tickets. It helps the students be engaged and is very in helping them retain info. It works miracles in helping students decode big words.

I have used Reading Horizons as a Reading and Phonics intervention or small groups of English Language Learners. I love the well rounded program with many facets including review, instruction, dictation, transfer cards, little reader books, practice pages, tests, and games. I also appreciate the introductory chapter that talks about phonemic awareness which is usually the first step prior to reading and decoding about listening to sounds creating sounds and manipulating sounds we hear and speak. Some of the skills of phonemic awareness would be rhyming, hearing the amount of syllables in the word, hearing the words in a compound words, telling all of the sounds you hear in a word, etc. I know there are different versions of the instruction manuals but I’ve got as I’ve gone through many of the example words, some words I feel would be proved with different symbols and marks for example when a vowel is not marked as a schwa when it could be. Some of these words may have already been changed in updated versions of the manuals. As a parent I love the program and I felt it would be important for my children to know these reading, phonics, spelling, grammar rules in English, So I told my kids that if they would let me teach them the 100 lessons that I would give them one dollar per lesson so they could earn $100 for going through the program with me. We have not finished going through the program as a family but we are close, we are in the 90s. I have also told a university literacy program about Reading Horizons. I recommend that they use this program to preservice teachers in their phonics training. Thank you Reading Horizons!