Review | Progressive Phonics

Phonic readers are simple stories that are told using words that follow simple, graduated phonic patterns that enable children to practice reading using a controlled vocabulary of sight words and phonetically decodable words.

The are several series  of them, but today I'm going to be reviewing a set that I consider to stand out for two reasons. One, they are interesting! (most are boring!) Two, they are fun! (most are boring) Three, they are free! (many are, but few are are interesting, fun and free! surprisingly, many companys will sell you sets of basal phonic readers for a pretty penny!) Four, they are progressive!

Progressive Phonics are a series of graduated, basal readers to be shared with children by an advanced reader (doesn't have to be an adult) where the newbie reader reads only the highlight words and the advanced reader reads the rest of the rhyme, poem, stories so that you can both enjoy the story rather than reading "Cat sat at mat. Cat sat at hat. Cat sat. Cat sat at mat" you can read

"Look at my cat
 His name is  Hello Yellow
 and look at him eat
 a bowl of yellow jell-o"

"Look at his hat

 His hat is very yellow. Did
 my cat make his hat 
 from a bowl of jell-o"

"And look at that mat
 that funny mat is yellow
 I think my cat sat 
on a bowl of yellow jell-o"

Where the child would read the red bold words and the advanced helper would read the rest. They are silly, enjoyable stories that your child reads with a partner or a parent and as they progress more and more of the reading is the childs responsibility so that by the end of the series you child will be reading passages that feature more advanced phonic rules and patterns and focus on homophones.

This program is a great supplement to almost any basic reading program and is suituable for grades PreK- early 3rd grade depending on the student and how its used. As you progress you can trade off reading with your child or student and by the time you read the last book, even though only a few focus words are designated student words, your students could probably read the whole book themselves, though you may not want to give up the fun of reading silly passages together.

This resource is 100% free and is very neat, however the update schedule is delayed and while some of the earlier books have been revised into a new format, the older books haven't been yet. I have used progressive phonics for about 4 years now so have had ample time to be annoyed by the consitent inconsisitency of their updates. However, if basal readers are something your student benefits from then it wont be long before both of your are possibly fed up with the mundanity of most basal readers so progressive phonics offers a refreshing, interesting and fun option to choose from among the plethora of 

I give this resource a score of 7.5/10.