Quality Counts

Used successfully in public and private schools throughout the United States and Canada

The effectiveness of this method was documented in research conducted in five, low-income, ethnically mixed schools in a mid-sized New England urban area. The 100 poorest readers in five Title I schools were given two years of supplemental instruction using this method, in addition to classroom reading instruction, in first and second grade. At the end of second grade, 69 percent of those students were no longer in the state's remedial category on the national Degree of Reading Power (DRP) test. In the one school that tested the method in second and third grades, between 64 and 76 percent of the students in different years moved out of the remedial category according to the DRP post-test. On the state story reading test the students did even better, with successes ranging from 86 to 92 percent.

Fun Phonics materials are organized in a progression which will be familiar to teachers trained in Orton-Gillingham and other phonics-based programs. However, teachers need not be trained in phonics to use the program successfully. The comprehensive and easy-to-follow Teacher's Manuals enable the materials to be used by teachers and tutors who have not “learned the rules” of our complex language system. Teachers can rely upon the careful selection and progression of word choices, and the scripts provided, to help students recognize the patterns which underlie English.

These materials are often used in special education resource rooms and by private schools for children with learning disabilities. They are also well-suited for use by teachers and tutors in Response to Intervention Programs (RTI) providing small-group instruction for Tier 2 students. Use of the Gallistel-Ellis Test of Coding Skills will help focus instruction on the specific coding/decoding skills which a student in any RTI tier lacks, and will measure progress in attaining these skills.

These materials rely upon principles which are supported by recent brain research. The brain constantly searches for patterns. When it recognizes these patterns it can incorporate them and build complex frameworks which support automatic retrieval. Careful selection and presentation of the differing patterns of written English enable the struggling reader to remember and gain automaticity in this pattern recognition.