Sight Words – The Red Letter Set was developed to address the portion of students in the class that are unable to move forward in reading and progress with the rest of their peers. A challenging hurdle is memorizing lists of sight words that every kindergarten student is presented with during the first weeks of school. These lists – The American Heritage, Dolch, and even the more detailed Fry are all important and are introduced in our Red Letter program. However, they are not presented as such or in the designated way. Using the Red Letter method, most of these words are comfortably decoded along with the rest of the vocabulary.
Still, not all words are decodable. We therefore refer to these remaining words as Tricky Critters and the students are given instructions for dealing with them. Dealing with Tricky Critters help us to think out of the box.
This is a full language arts program. The Spelling and Written Language Guide prepares students for written expression.
A detailed video with colorful graphics guides the teacher through each of the 8 lessons in the program. The companion pages in the Teacher's Lesson Guide summarize each of the 8 lessons from the video for lesson planning. It is all teacher and parent friendly and designed with homeschooling in mind.
We know you will enjoy using, and also have great success with this method which culminates well past an approximate sixth grade reading level. Due to the broad scope of skills and depending on the individual students, this program could take as little as one year, or certainly longer considering individual differences.
Tricky Critter
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This multisensory set moves the students through 1200 word cards. These are NOT flash cards. The learner is not encouraged to say the word quickly, but rather to analyse and match. Since 85% of us learn things visually, we have provided the students with a visual method to aid in this analysis.
Following the workbook, the meticulously written stories in the The Red Letter Set Reading Book correspond exactly to the structured vocabulary taught in each particular lesson. The decodable vocabulary is methodically presented and therefore tightly controlled through the first third of the reading stories. No surprises! Afterward, in addition to the specific decodable vocabulary of each lesson, appropriately placed challenge words are interspersed and cleverly interwoven in delightful and wonderfully illustrated stories that flow smoothly to the very end. This is all detailed in The Teacher's Story Guide.
Little Red Riding Hood and Lucille, an entertaining spin-off of the Red Letter Set, is a 24 page 8 x 11 hardcover fun story book. Join Little Red Riding Hood as she decodes words on signs on her walk to Granny's using the skills from the program. Get to know us with Red Riding Hood and Lucille, just click on Special Offer below, $9.95 including shipping.
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The analysis of these words enables the users to unlock thousands of words they have never seen before. Students enjoy the approach and thrive because they can achieve success quickly, right from the first lesson. The students then make the transition from the red letters to regular print using the The Red Letter Set Workbook.
JUST FOR FUN
The colorful attractive materials that accompany this set support its visual appeal. The teacher will have six large charts which should be displayed from the beginning of the year.
The Red Letter Set
An enormous amount of research has established that phonemic awareness and phonological awareness are necessary to support students who experience difficulty learning to read. Dr. G. Reid Lyon, former Chief of Child Development at the National Institute of Health, stresses that for struggling readers instruction should begin with just listening for the small, distinct letter sounds. Then move the students to the visual where these letters are joined together to produce sounds in words. Dr. Joseph Torgesen, of the Florida Center of Reading Research at Florida State University, concurs that reading words begins with identifying the sounds of word segments---chunks of letters joined together. Dr. Sally Shaywitz, who did intensive work with dyslexic students, details what a good reading program should include. The following brief notes are just some of the areas Dr. Shaywitz describes which must be addressed using systematic and direct instruction.
- Phonemic Awareness---noticing, identifying, and manipulating the sounds of spoken language
- Phonics---how letters and groups of letters represent sounds of spoken language
- Sounding out words---decoding
- Spelling
- Reading sight words
The same observations and conclusions, of the aforementioned, led to the development of The Red Letter Set decades ago while working with struggling readers. More importantly---a successful, creative technique was developed in those early years to accomplish these goals. At that point in time, students with various learning disabilities were the responsibility of the classroom teacher. However---individual struggles notwithstanding, amazingly all students eagerly gravitated to the bold, visual method of the Red Letter Set. The approach created a balance within the classroom. The Red Letter Set became the great equalizer. Interestingly, when this approach is actually seen in practice, there is no doubt that this method is a solution for an array of problems.
Surprisingly, in the intervening decades, little has been done to change the way reading is taught---guessing at the correct word is still prevalent and not a winning scenario for struggling readers. Little has changed with regard to innovation and/or direction for reading interventions. Too many states today continue to report unacceptable reading scores.
Students using The Red Letter Set, however, immediately respond to the dynamic approach because the word attack format is like a visual game of Hide and Seek. The students learn to seek out the letter combinations that are hiding in a given word. The results with these most vulnerable of students are astounding. This program has been extremely successful with students of all learning levels because the format and presentation are fun.
Ask the teachers! Ask the parents! Ask the students! Read the reviews and comments from parents and teachers.