Tracey Tutor
by Stephanie Tracey and Barbara Markland
Reviewed by Anna1111
Ordering Information: Visit the Tracey Tutor website. Be sure to let them know you heard about Tracey Tutor on HomeschoolChristian by using the code HSC when you order. Thanks!
The Pre-Reader Bundle and the Abundant Bundle are reviewed here.
The Tracey Tutor program is nothing short of amazing! It is a gradual, incremental, thorough and comprehensive program that will teach you to tutor your older child (or adult student) to overcome learning disabilities and obstacles and become an outstanding beginning reader.
This program was written by Stephanie Tracey, a mother whose dyslexic daughter was in sixth grade, and could not read. Despite years of instruction, the schools had been unable to teach her to read. They said she just needed to try harder, or that she wasn't as smart as her brother. Mrs. Tracey would not accept that answer, and set about to teach her daughter to read. After succeeding at what the schools could not do, Mrs. Tracey worked as a professional reading tutor for nearly twenty years, then teamed up with Barbara Markland to create a package that other tutors could use to achieve the same successes.
What does the program contain?
First, a look at what it does not contain: there are no dancing teddy bears; cute, catchy songs; or nursery rhymes. There aren't even any pictures. It has nothing that will make an older student feel embarrassed or babied. And, there is nothing that will distract a student of any age from the task of reading.
What it does have is a very gradual and thorough, slow-moving, mastery-based program that begins at the very first reading lessons (What is a short /A/ sound? How do we combine a short /A/ with a /T/ to make a two letter syllable?) then moves on to more and more complex spelling combinations, until your student has thoroughly mastered the art of beginning reading. It covers the short vowel words, consonant-vowel-consonant words, words beginning and ending with blends of two or three consonants, digraphs, r-controlled words, soft /c/ and /g/, /tch/, /dge/, /ng/, /nk/, and common suffixes and how they are added. It does not move on to more difficult phonics concepts, such as diphthongs, long vowels, silent E words, or combinations of vowels.
The Pre-Reader Tutor Manual is a set of ten lessons which teach the short vowel sounds, consonant sounds, and how to combine a vowel and consonant to form a two letter word or syllable. The packet works with one short vowel at a time, combined with many different consonants. These are the building blocks for later words which will end in two letters - such as adding a /P/ to /AN/ to get pan. This manual includes a Power Point DVD with an on-screen discussion of the concepts being taught, and the "Tracey 2-Tap Pre-Reader" set of manipulatives as well as the "Lots of Letters" packet, which teach introductory reading mastery of the two-letter words or syllables. This set is for the student who has not yet grasped the concept of basic letter sounds and of blending two letters, and helps ensure a solid foundation is built in this essential skill before the student begins to attempt the reading of words. This packet stands alone, and is not part of the Abundant Bundle.
The in the Abundant Bundle is keyed to the centerpiece textbook, Dictation Imagination!, which has twenty-eight mastery-based lessons with drill on word lists of increasing difficulty, sequential learning lessons, lessons that teach a single concept, reinforcement of mastered concepts, and spelling drills.
Each chapter of Dictation Imagination is keyed to a packet of manipulative cards in the "Dictation Companion" box, which includes mix-and-match cards, flash cards, and cards which can be folded or moved about to reinforce new combinations.
The Radical Readers and their accompanying Teacher Workbooks provide practice in reading comprehension and reading of sentences, as well as writing practice involving the mastered words. This is especially helpful, as some struggling readers do fine with flash cards, but have much more difficulty with sentences. Again, there are no pictures, so students will not be insulted, distracted from reading, or be able to guess at the sentences. The student will practice reading a huge variety of sentences using nearly every possible combination of the words they have mastered.
The Divide & Win book teaches how syllables work, and patterns for anticipating when vowels will be pronounced as schwa.
The package also includes a Spelling Drill Sheets booklet, tablet and board to practice writing, spelling and syllabification.
A stand-alone component of the package is the Tracey Tapper packet, which is for tactile drill of vowel-consonant words and syllables, as well as for drill of consonant-vowel-consonant words. This includes words that end in /CK/, double consonant (such as /ZZ/) and begin with /QU/, and those that begin or end with "letter clusters" - groups of two or three consonant blends. The Tracey Tapper will teach words of three to six letters in length which involve a short vowel and two consonants or sets of consonant blends.
The program uses tactile, visual, and audio materials throughout, so that whether your learner is kinesthetic, visual or auditory, he or she will be able to excel.
The Tracey Tutor program is strongly phonics-based, and designed especially for the struggling reading student, regardless of age.
When this program teaches a concept, it does not give two or three examples and expect the student to catch on to the rest. Instead, it teaches every variation on that concept. For instance, with the word family AT joined with a single starting consonant, you could expect to find not just CAT and HAT, but also BAT, FAT, MAT, PAT, RAT, SAT, TAT, and VAT, as well as nonsense words that follow the pattern (these are thought to be especially helpful with phonics since they ensure that the concept is understood). Each concept is then drilled until it is easy. The drill involves not only visual reading, but also uses the tactile materials that come with the program.
Recommendation: This is an outstanding program that should work for any child who is capable of learning to read – and for quite a few students who have been deemed incapable of learning to read!
It is ideal for the student who has reading difficulties and is past the earliest grade levels and just isn't "getting it" for some reason - whether diagnosed or undiagnosed. It is best suited for the older elementary or teen student, for adults, for those struggling to learn to read English as a second language, or for students with special challenges such as dyslexia or Down syndrome.
If your student has been exhibiting melt-downs or seems to despair of ever learning to read, this program will help get him or her focused and enjoying reading again. Because it is so gradual and incremental, learning will seem much easier and therefore not be so daunting and overwhelming.
Because it is all taught on a mature level, with no songs, pictures or other content associated with very young children, it will not insult or embarrass the more mature student.
The style of presentation is exactly what you might expect if you spent a lot of money for someone to come to your home and teach an older child or adult to read – straightforward, no-frills presentation, practice, and drill.
This program would also work with a normal beginning reader, since it is brilliantly done and includes no distracting pictures or gimmicks. But, since it is so gradual and drill-intensive, it is probably better suited to the struggling, slightly more mature student who needs tutoring than to the accelerated beginning learner. A gifted young child who doesn't struggle with learning to read may find this program frustratingly slow-moving.
If you want a thorough program that will give you confidence as a teacher, ensure that you teach a struggling reading student excellently, and leave no learning gaps in the first part of phonics and reading instruction, this program may well be the perfect one for you!
HomeschoolChristian.com resources related to this review:
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