Teach Children to Read with PRIDE Reading Program {A Review}

Disclaimer: I received a FREE copy of this product through the HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way.

My daughter has been succeeding with the Primary Accelerated Review (PAR) book and purple PRIDE Reading Program Level 4 Kit!

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If you have a child just learning to read - or one who has struggled with decoding and encoding for some time, PRIDE Reading Program can help! 

My daughter and I have been using this effective structured literacy program regularly for over a month now and both agree that the program is exactly what its website claims it to be:

"an easy-to-use, structured literacy, Orton-Gillingham curriculum for children of all ages (that) uses engaging, multi-sensory methods to teach reading, writing, spelling, and comprehension."

Let me unpack that quote while explaining our experience thus far...

The PRIDE Reading Program is easy-to-use - and has GREAT Customer Service

Using the PRIDE Reading Program, takes only four easy steps.

1. Assess your child simply.

To begin the PRIDE Reading Program, you use a quick online or printed assessment in order to see where to place your child.  

For most children, placement will be at Levels 1-3. For my daughter, however, due prior experience with Orton-Gillingham programs, placement looked a bit higher.

Thus, I called customer service to ensure that I was about to place my daughter correctly. When I did so, a kind representative asked and answered questions about my daughter's prior experience, specific assessment test results, typical approach to learning, etc.

Together, we decided to start my daughter off with the green Primary Accelerated Review (PAR) book and, then, to move her to the purple PRIDE Reading Program Level 4 Kit. 

This has proven a wise decision, since the materials have worked well for my daughter, so I am grateful for the counsel of the PRIDE Reading Program's customer service!

2. Order your program kit.

Ordering is a snap online and, if our experience is anything to go by, your kit will come in quickly and will include everything that you need to teach, right down to a white board, markers, zippered pouch, and tote bag!

3. Complete the helpful PRIDE Reading Program training.

While you wait for your kit to come in the mail, you, as a parent/teacher, can take an easy-to-complete online training course that teaches you how to use the PRIDE Reading Program.

This training is FREE with your purchase of the program kit and ensures that you - or anyone who works with your child - can provide quality Orton-Gillingham reading instruction with no degree, certification, nor expensive training required!

The training course course is delivered as an 11 lesson, self-paced module that allows you to view video clips of live teaching sessions and asks you to take simple online quizzes to be sure that you understand the method and its use. 

4.  Start teaching with confidence and clarity!

Once you receive the physical program materials in the mail, you can easily access a scripted online teaching guide and begin to strengthen your child's literacy skills.

Step-by-step, the PRIDE Reading Program truly is easy to use.

But what is "structured literacy" and "Orton- Gillingham"?In a nutshell, Orton-Gillingham structured literacy is a method for teaching kids to read, write, spell, and comprehend that has proven especially effective with people with learning differences. To date, it is the best method we have found to teach my daughter with reading challenges how to read and spell.

In more detail, structured literacy  is an evidence-based, explicit, systematic, and cumulative approach to reading, writing, speaking, and listening which focuses on phonological awareness, word recognition, phonics, decoding, spelling, and syntax which you can read more about here.

Orton-Gillingham is one method of structured literacy that has been developed to teach non-readers and struggling readers how to read, write, spell, and comprehend using a multisensory approach.

The approach has been proven especially successful for children with dyslexia, auditory and visual processing disorder speech deficits, and other learning differences and is summed up well by this infographic:

You can learn more about the Orton-Gillingham method, get a picture of how a lesson works, and discover how the method is evidence-based at the PRIDE Reading Program website. 

Does the PRIDE Reading Program Work?

In my experience, the PRIDE Reading Program works just as it aims to - with ease of use, effective teaching techniques, at a self-set pace that works for you and your child! 

Does my daughter agree?

In a word, "Yes!", my daughter agrees that the PRIDE Reading Program works!

Over the past month or so, using sky writing, arm tapping, letter building, sound association, visualization, and more, she has been filling in gaps with short vowels, the FLOSS spelling rule, consonant digraphs, blends, long vowels, multisyllabic words, welded sounds (like "ang" and "ink") and sight words in regular 10'-60' 1:1's with me using the PAR book and has progressed on to learning and reviewing vowel dipthongs, 3+ syllable words, suffixes, and more using Book 4.

When I interviewed her for this review, this is what my daughter had to say:

I wanted (the PRIDE Reading Program) to help me read, because I am not very good at reading. I have tried many programs and wanted something easy to help me fill in gaps. 

We started with an assessment test online. It was okay, but my results were mixed because we have used other programs before. So, my mom called the company and we got a small book to use for review and another lesson book. 

We got the green review book, the purple Level 4 book, a white board, a black and a red white board marker, a white board eraser, a cloth pouch, a reading tracker, a zippered pouch, letter tiles, a sound chart, letter cards with two cardboard packs, and a cloth tote bag to store it all. 

My mom was able to access the Teaching Guide online. 

When I saw all the materials, I thought, Wow. That's a lot of stuff and I had mixed feelings, because usually more stuff is more work and more brain hurt. 

It actually didn't hurt that bad.  

We started off with the green book. What I liked about it is that there is a lot of white space per page. I also liked that the pages are not complicated. It is easy to follow and you got to the know the pattern of the lessons.  

I was able to complete the book with success. I may not know every word in the book, but I know a good proportion and filled in some gaps. 

What I didn't like is the sentences that you read are just a bunch of random sentences that have nothing to do with one another. For example, one sentence was "Max can pat the cat," and the next was, "The bag has a tag." I think they do this so children cannot just guess what the next sentence will be about and so they can use target words, but I found it annoying. 

The stories were better, and I understand the pattern they were trying to use with prediction in the beginning paragraph, visualization in the middle, and most important thoughts at the end, but there was a repeated grammar error that drove me insane. They used "did" plus a verb instead of the past tense.  I understand why they did that because they had not taught the past tense and past tense spelling can be difficult, but it made it sound like improper English. 

The word lists, though, I thought, were good. They had clean pages with white space so I could actually focus on decoding.

The Spelling Pages were good at the beginning, but, then, as the book went on, they were not as good because they always have the same amount of lines, but the number of sounds, words, and sentences fluctuates, so, sometimes there were not enough lines to write on.  

We used the tiles at first, but, then, we transferred to just writing on the whiteboard, because the tiles take up so much more time, and I am capable of writing on the whiteboard, so I asked my mom if we could. I was successful, so she let me. 

The cards are good. They are color coded and helped me review sounds quickly.

Overall, I am glad we used the green code. It gave me a more solid foundation to work on Book 4. 

I have used Book 4 a little but, too. It is a lot like the other book.

We can use it with flexible times and I think using it 15 minutes a day works great for me. I will probably finish Book 4.
I would recommend this to other people and these are the reasons why: 

(1) I would recommend it to people who don't like busy pages, because, in other programs, they sometimes have the stuff you are trying to read and the parents guide on the same pages, and these are nice clean pages. 

(2) I would recommend it to someone who does not have a certain amount of time they can spend on it a day - sometimes an hour, sometimes five minutes, because you can stop and start as you need. 

(3) I would recommend it to parents who don't have a lot of background, because it is scripted. 

I would not recommend it to parents who do not want to be on a computer, because the lesson plan only comes online. My mom got frustrated with that sometimes, because she wanted to do our lessons outside, but could not seen her screen. (If she bought a fancy phone, everything would be fine, but she refuses...) 

Overall, I think it was a good program. Thank you very much.

As you can see, my daughter had a lot to say about the PRIDE Reading Program and most of it was good. For a kid that has tried many reading programs and not always found success, this is BIG!

The PRIDE Reading Program has successfully helped my daughter and I get back into a habit of regular 1:1 literacy time with ease and success! I am delighted by this and encourage anyone that seeks am easy, effective, evidence-based approach to teaching reading to try the PRIDE Reading Program out.

The program does not have bells and whistles - and for kids like mine who don't like busy pages and are active in many activities - meaning that at-home, 1:1 lessons need to happen in short, steady, effective snippets, the PRIDE Reading Program is ideal!

Learn more and see what others think about the PRIDE Reading Program. 

Multiple families with kids of all ages and reading abilities reviewed the PRIDE Reading Program as part of the Homeschool Review Crew. Click through to find their perspectives.

You can also find PRIDE Reading Program on social media!

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