Advice on Using Ultimate Phonics

If at first your student thinks the program starts out too easily, show him or her the lessons near the back of the book that comes with Ultimate Phonics. There the student can see how the program gradually leads to advanced reading. By starting out with simple lessons, the program helps the student to be careful in learning to read details accurately, like not changing "the" to "a," for example.

Make the student responsible to use the program and come to you when he or she is ready to read from the book. Tell your student to use the software and work through each computer page of one lesson. Then say, "When you think you're ready, come to me with the book and read the lesson you worked on." When the student comes to you with the book and can read the lesson with no errors, check it off on a sheet of paper. I insist on no errors to help students become accurate readers.  You can explain to them that changing words changes meaning sometimes, so it must be avoided.

If your student makes one or more errors, explain what the errors were.  Then tell the student that he or she can try to read it to you again after practicing with the computer first. The student should then go through the lesson again, especially focusing on the sentences at the end of the lesson. He or she may complain and balk at redoing a lesson on the computer for just one error. My students did at first. But when they realized that I insisted on it, they amazingly became very careful about their reading. Since they didn’t want to go back over a lesson again, they practice harder with the computer before coming to you! Funny how that works.

Tell your student that for every ten lessons passed, he or she will get a reward of some kind, which you can decide on together. For example, the reward for passing ten lessons could be anything that would be valuable to the student, such as a food treat, a video rental, etc. Or the points could count toward a larger reward. For example, every ten lessons could count for ten points toward going swimming or bowling for which he or she must earn 30 points.

You might even sit down with the student and make a menu of possible ways to spend these points. I sometimes gave my students a ticket to opt out of a school assignment, such as "No math today - You may use the computer to play games for 30 minutes." This could be a reward for passing, say, 15 lessons. There are 262 lessons in the program and you might say that when the whole thing is finished, there will be a big reward, maybe a fishing or a camping trip, for example.

Also, read through the thin yellow booklet that comes with the program for details on using Ultimate Phonics. E-mail us at info@academicsupport.net if you have any questions.

Ultimate Phonics Reading Program
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