Looking for an effective homeschool reading curriculum to help you confidently teach your child to read?
Check out this PRIDE Reading Program review.
This post is sponsored by PRIDE Reading Program. I was sent this program to review. I was compensated for my time and work. As always, all opinions are my own. Read the full disclosure policy here.
Choosing a Homeschool Reading Curriculum
One of the most important tasks we take on as homeschool parents are teaching our children how to read. For me, the task of ensuring my children develop strong reading skills has at times felt overwhelming.
Using a tried and true systematic method for teaching children to read can lighten the challenge.
For that reason, I am happy to share this PRIDE Reading Program review.
The Orton-Gillingham Method
PRIDE Reading Program uses the Orton-Gillingham approach to teach children to read, write, and spell.
The Orton-Gillingham method is an extremely structured, systematic, cumulative, and repetitive process. The method uses a multisensory step-by-step process to ensure children learn every phoneme in the English language.
Children with dyslexia will benefit a great deal from the Orton-Gillingham method used in the PRIDE Reading Program.
Is PRIDE Reading Program a good fit for your child?
The goal of PRIDE Reading Progam is to help children learn to read, spell, and write.
The program is perfect for struggling and beginning readers.
Any students with a specific reading disability like dyslexia would benefit from being taught with their systematic, multisensory phonetic approach.
PRIDE Reading Program Offers a helpful placement test to assist you in determining what level is appropriate for your child.
I am using the PRIDE Yellow Program Kit – Level 1 with my youngest son.
What comes in the PRIDE Yellow Program Kit – Level 1?
Children using the yellow program kit will learn their short vowels, FLOSS spelling rules, consonant digraphs, blends, and sight words
The physical items for the PRIDE Reading Yellow Program Kit arrived well packaged and beautifully illustrated. In my opinion, the physical materials are quality, durable resources that can be used year after year if handled with care.
In our program’s reading kit we received:
PRIDE Yellow Student Workbook – Second Edition: The student workbook contains words, sentences, decodable stories, spelling/sentence dictation pages, graphic organizers, and fluency lists for developing reading, writing, and comprehension skills
Sound Cards and Letter Tiles: The sound cards are used throughout the program to introduce letters, sounds, and reviewing skills. The letter tiles are color-coded for each letter sound concept.
I’m happy with the quality of both the sound cards and letter tiles. My son loves using the moveable letter tiles to build words.
I use paper clamps to easily store and organize our PRIDE Reading sound cards. This ensures they are easily accessible and none go missing.
Pride Activity Kit: includes a white dry erase board, black and red dry erase markers with an eraser, reading tracker, game dice, and PRIDE tote bag.
PRIDE – Yellow Book Online Teaching Guide – Second Edition: This is an online teaching guide. It walks you through the skills to teach, and when and how to teach them.
Learning to Teach using PRIDE Reading Program
I particularly like reading programs that use letter manipulatives along with the lessons and activities. I’ve noticed that this just helps keep my children enthused about lessons. For those reasons, I was excited when I unpackaged the program and materials.
Upon examining the student book, I was surprised to find that there were no instructions. Instead, the teacher’s guide and scripts for teaching the lessons are solely found on the Pride Reading Program site. You cannot complete lessons without it.
Before starting any lessons, I completed the Pride Reading training program. I worked my way through a series of video tutorials of how lessons are to be performed.
After each set of tutorials, I completed a quiz to ensure I understood how that section of the program worked.
I am pleased with how the training program is set up. The tutorials were clear and concise leaving me confident in how I would teach the lessons to my child.
How we use the PRIDE Reading Program
Every lesson is divided into three sections: Introduction Lesson, a Practice Lesson, and a Reinforcement Lesson.
Each lesson begins with a review and drill of consonant sounds using the sound cards. Admittedly, I was tempted to skip this step as my son already knew the consonant sounds.
Now, I realize that would have been a mistake. While going through the review and drill, I realized my son would confuse lower case b and d. This drill gave us the opportunity to correct this.
Next, we continue to work through more lessons.
Lessons include having my child stand, extend his writing arm in front of him, and “write the letter in the air”. This is a fun way for him to memorize the formation of letters and the letter sound.
Pride Reading Program Review: Thing to Consider
This program is not independent work for your child. You will need to be actively going through each step with your child, following the lesson steps.
If you have concerns about finding dedicated one-on-one time to teach reading lessons consider the recommendation below. This was taken directly for Pride Reading Program’s site and maybe helpful for gauging the amount of time required.
“In order for students to make the maximum amount of progress, we recommend that the student receives an uninterrupted 60-minute lesson 4-5 days a week. For younger students, the lessons may be broken into 30-minute blocks.”
Overall, I am tremendously satisfied with PRIDE Reading Program. My son and I are having fun learning as we progress through the lessons and I will continue using the PRIDE Reading Program.
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