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| Earlier this year (these books did not come with what I got.) |
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| Earlier this year (this book came with level 2.) |
We are very happy with our reading curriculum, The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading by Jessie Wise and Sara Buffington. It can be all you need to teach someone to read from the very beginning with letter sounds to multi-syllable words at the fourth grade level. The grade levels, however, are not indicated in the book. It focuses on ability level, not comparing to public school standards. But it still would be nice to know what level your child is on. (If you know of a website the give an assessment test for free, please post a comment so I can share.)
I got all levels of Hooked on Phonics Deluxe version (the "old" 5 level version) at a yard sale a few years ago for only $25! I didn't use it as my primary teaching tool for Builder Boy, but it was good to have the leveled, phonic based readers for him to read and practice with. Using the HOP workbooks as a guide, I wrote down all the blends and teams from OPGTR (up to lesson 134) and HOP (all 5 of the 'old' levels) and synced them like I did with the K level OPGTR, HOP, and Bob Books.
Here is what I came up with, and what I think is a good guide of what grade levels the first 15 out of 25 sections (134/231 lessons) of The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading are.
Kindergarten: HOP K level covers CVC words and a few sight words. That's OPG up to lesson 40 (sections 1-3.)
First grade: HOP Levels 2 & 3 (orange and red) are suppose to be 1st grade. Both deal mostly with consonant blends and some digraphs, OPG lessons 41-63 (sections 4 & 5.)
Level 2 covers the beginning blends (lessons 50-52, section 4) and some of the Consonant Digraphs found in section 5 of OPGTR.
Level 3 covers the ending blends (lessons 41-48, section 4.)
Second Grade: HOP Levels 4 & 5 (green and blue) are suppose to be 2nd grade. This is where things get more complicated.
Level 4 covers:
- Long Vowel, Silent-E words (OPGTR section 7)
- some of the Common Spellings for long vowel sounds A, E, I, and O (sections 9-12)
- Y=/e/ (lesson 200, section 20)
- the basic R-Changed Vowels (section 16)
- -all (lesson 118, section 13)
Level 5 covers:
- some of the Common Spellings for the Other Vowel Sounds (OPGTR section 13)
- igh=/i/ (lesson 134, section 15)
- shr (lesson 55, section 5)
- str, scr, spr, spl (lesson 63 and 64, section 6)
- squ (lesson 53, section 4)
- kn, wr (lessons 146 and 154, section 15)
- soft c, soft g (lessons 77-79, section 7)
Level 5 mostly covers some common spellings for vowel sounds and then skips around in a seemingly random fashion (or at least in a pattern I personally am unable to decipher) adding a few more letter combinations to finish out the program.
Gaps in HOP that OPGTR cover: HOP Level 4 skips Long Vowel U with the Silent-E (section 7) and teaches short words with long vowels (like be, so, etc.) as sight words through out the levels with no explanation. Only a few of the Common Spellings for Long Vowel sounds A, E, I, and O (sections 9-11) are covered, while U (section 12) is ignored.Common Spellings for Other Vowel Sounds are only about half covered (section 13.) Other Spellings for Short-Vowel Sounds (section 14) is completely ignored, and only 3 out of 20 of the Silent Letters (section 15) are taught.
I would consider anything in OPG Lesson 134 (section 15) and up to be 3rd and 4th grade.
Overall I consider OPGTR to be much more thorough and a better foundation for further reading than HOP. It also explains the rules and the whys of reading, where the HOP workbooks merely present the sound and the words that use it. In my option HOP is much more suited as a supplement to children attending a brick and mortar school rather than a stand alone program. This only applies to the "old" version. I do not know what changes they have made in their "new" books. (If you do have the "new" version and would like to share your experience with it, please comment. I would love to hear about it.)
For a more precise comparison please refer to the chart below.
*The below chart is missing the red level comparison. The chart will be downloadable once I find the red level workbook and input the data.*
| HOP | OPGTR | ||||||
| Level 2 (orange) | Level 4 (green) | Level 5 (blue) | |||||
| ch | 57 | a_e | 65, 66 | oy=/oi/ | 122 | ||
| th, th | 59, 60 | i_e | 69 | oi=/oi/ | 123 | ||
| sh | 55, 56 | o_e | 71 | ou=/ou/ | 121 | ||
| wh | 61 | u_e | 74 | ow=/ou/ | 120 | ||
| sm, sn, sp, sl, | 51 | e_e | 67 | au=/ô/ | 117 | ||
| sc, sk, sw, st | ee=/ē/ | 89 | aw=/ô/ | 116 | |||
| fl, gl, cl, bl, pl | 50 | ea=/ē/ | 90 | oo=/ōo/ | 106 | ||
| gr, fr, br, cr, pr, | ow=/ō/ | 99 | oo=/ŏo/ | 113 | |||
| dr, tr | 52 | oa=/ō/ | 98 | igh | 134 | ||
| qu | 18 (Q) | ai=/ā/ | 84 | ind | |||
| ay=/ā/ | 86 | shr | 55 | ||||
| Level 3 (red) | y=/ī/ | 95 | str, scr, spr, | 63, 64 | |||
| y=/ē/ | 200 | spl | |||||
| ar | 154, 156 | squ | 53 | ||||
| er | 168 | kn | 154 | ||||
| ir | 169 | wr | 146 | ||||
| ur | 170 | soft c, g | 77-79 | ||||
| or, ore | 157, 158 | ||||||
| eer | 175 | ||||||
| ear | 166 | ||||||
| are | 163, 164 | ||||||
| air | 165 | ||||||
| all |
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The links above from Peace Hill Press and Hooked on Phonics are linked to those companies' pages; the pictures are a link to the Amazon listings.
The Hooked on Phonics picture link is to what I purchased at the garage sale, not what is currently offered by HOP. I have no knowledge of their "new" sets, though I have heard that the concepts and levels are pretty much the same.
for him to have "real books" for him to read. To prevent confusion and frustration I did not want him to read a HOP or a Bob book that had words that Builder Boy had not learned yet. So I went through the 5 HOP books that came with the (old) K level and the first set of Bob Books and wrote down the words in each lesson of OPGTR and each new word in the books and I synced them (because I'm weird like that.) I thought there was a chance that someone out there might be interested in this information, so here it is.
