Parents and teachers in the homeschool often feel that they have just two options when helping their students learn to read English.
Homeschool educators can take a traditional approach to teaching children to learn to read. There, difficulties often stymie and frustrate the students, making reading a chore rather than a pleasure.or
They can take a different, multidimensional approach, based on solid research in education and psychology. In this approach to teaching children to learn to read, interactivity and accessibility foster enthusiasm to learn.
Reading Buddy 2.0 was designed around the second approach. It is a comprehensive reading computer program that was constructed specifically for use in the homeschool environment. By involving the students' vision, hearing, and motor skills, this reading software continually engages and challenges while making learning a pleasurable, fun experience. For beginning students, Reading Buddy 2.0 makes learning how to read both easy and exciting.
And for homeschool educators and parents, Reading Buddy 2.0 provides extensive guidance throughout. For example, well before a child begins any lesson or practice session, she or he should take the built-in Comprehensive Reading Readiness Assessment. This tool provides the homeschool teacher with a highly detailed analysis of the child’s level of preparation for learning to read. It also suggests which of the built-in remedial materials would be useful in bringing the student’s readiness to read up to an optimal level.
By carefully documenting the students' responses throughout the its levels and tasks, Reading Buddy 2.0 provides teachers with a cumulative record of their students' performance. It also produces analyses that pinpoint the areas where more work is needed. The Syllabics Method focuses on the syllable rather than the individual letter, as does the older Phonics Method. By shifting the focus in this way, students easily learn to decide whether to read a syllable with a long vowel or a short vowel sound, a task quite beyond the capabilities of the Phonics Method. For example, using only the Phonics Method, students have difficulties understanding why the words seemingly related words must be read entirely differently. Consider: Skilled adult readers instantly recognize that first word in each of these pairs is read with a long vowel sound and the second is read with a short vowel sound. That is because those readers have implicitly mastered the six fundamental codes explicitly taught in Reading Buddy 2.0 which determine when to use the long vowel vs the short one. This simple, but critical, understanding is truly the key to a child’s success in a well-structured reading program. In addition to The 6 Secret Codes, Reading Buddy 2.0 includes the following built-in modules:
The Abbreviated Reading Readiness Assessment provides a rapid assessment of a child’s readiness to begin a program focusing on learning to read. In short order, it can tell the teacher whether the child is fully prepared or whether a deeper probe of the student’s readiness is warranted. The Reading Prep Games – With the analyses provided by the Comprehensive Reading Readiness Assessment, teachers can specify just those skills for which an individual student is weak so that she or he can focus on improving them prior to advancing to a structured reading instructional program, such as The 6 Secret Codes in Reading Buddy 2.0. The Reading Prep Games provide teachers specific game-like lessons where each focuses on a specific pre-requisite reading skill. The Word Family Fun module provides a game-like setting for extensive practice on the relationships within word families. This facilitates students generalizing their new skills to the accurate reading of entirely new words and is recommended only for students once they have begun work with The 6 Secret Codes module.
Reading Buddy 2.0 never requires that a student perform a specific task or a certain unit before moving forward. Instead, it provides advice to the educator who, after all, best knows the child’s capabilities, to make every decision about what activity to schedule next.
Reading Buddy 2.0 was devised and tested by a team of professional reading teachers and cognitive psychologists with a total of more than 75 years' experience. Their efforts led to this well-researched framework for assessing students' readiness for learning to read English, for specific and appropriate remediation (when they are not quite ready), and extensive training when they are ready.
The Core of Reading Buddy 2.0
The educational core of this ensemble of programs is called The 6 Secret Codes. It provides a thorough grounding in learning how to read using the well-researched Syllabics Method, enabling students to master a very limited set of universal rules (or codes) that govern how English words are read. With almost no memorization, students will learn to read and to spell more than 1050 of the most common English words. This remarkable reading feat exceeds the vocabulary of most second graders. When a student's reading readiness has been verified, most home school students will reliably be able to learn to read within a matter of months.
Supplemental Materials Built Into Reading Buddy 2.0
See how you can use Reading Buddy 2.0 absolutely free to teach one or more children how to learn to read. There's no obligation.
Our enthusiastic teachers have this to say:
"Andrew could read about 5 words when he started Reading Buddy 2.0, but 8 months later, he finished knowing about 3000 words! Truly amazing. Thanks so much." -- Amanda S.
"My skeptical husband was happy that we could try Reading Buddy 2.0 for free before deciding to buy it to teach Todd and Sue. What a great idea!" -- Tammy B.
"Trying to teach a bunch of 5 year-olds to read could have really been stressful for all of us, but Reading Buddy 2.0 made it a wonderful and exciting experience. It's great that you have priced it so affordably. Bless you." -- Georgia K.
Looking for a little support about teaching reading in the homeschool?
Join our lively new forum on teaching reading of English in the home school environment. Learn from others as they deal with readiness preparation, special needs learners, supervising multiple readers simultaneously...and more! Because there is so often power in numbers, our forum of home school teachers may be able to help you with insights as they teach their children how to learn to read. Click on the button labeled Reading Forum at the top of this page to continue your networking.
