We are neck deep in helping another child figure out this reading thing. I know I’ve mentioned before that our eldest struggled (suspected dyslexia) and I had to learn how to teach my children to read using any tool that would work. The next two children learned nearly effortlessly (on my part at least). I have settled into a mostly phonics approach. There are some words that obviously don’t fit neatly into any phonics rule and must be learned by sight.
Along comes child number four, our first son. He is needing more practice with sight words. Something that has been fun to accomplish with Samson’s Classroom. This has been helping us keep our head above water so to speak. Samson’s Classroom is online and geared towards K-5th graders though anyone beginning to read or struggling with sight words, spelling or reading comprehension will find some benefit. You can try it for free and then choose an individual subscription for $30/year or a family subscription (up to 4 users) for $50/year.
We have spent most of our time with the sight word section of the website. There has been a fairly recent update that we have not been able to check out due to our use of Safari and our Flash player being out of date. For those with newer systems or using Windows based computers, this should not be an issue. We use OS 10.5.8 so cannot update more without a new OS. Other reviewers have shared about the updates (a reward system using belts as in karate) so be sure to check them all out! Thank you, Samson’s Classroom for keeping the link for Classic up so we can continue!
The sight words are studied in sets of 10 at a time. First they are presented with their spelling and used in a sentence. This step is called appropriately Study Words, your learner needs to only listen and pay attention – no interaction on this step. The second step is Missing Letters, the word is shown with some letters missing for the learner to select from those shown. The third is Letter Scramble and the fourth is Spell Words where the word is read and used in a sentence then the learner must spell it. The fifth and last step for each word is the Challenge. The sentence is read completely but shown with a word missing.
I love that everything is read aloud for the learner. Often that is not the case. I don’t mind sitting with my son, but it is nice that he can do this without me if I need to attend to something else. His progress has been slow. He is 6 and roughly first grade this year. He has been working mostly with phonics, but I can see how our sporadic flash card use for sight words has not been enough. One of the neat things I am enjoying with Samson’s Classroom? I can print off pages – worksheets and flashcards – to accompany the sets of words he is working on. We would keep the time on the computer short 15-20 minutes twice a week. This allowed him to continue practicing throughout the week.
There are two other sections to Samson’s Classroom covering spelling and reading comprehension. My son is not quite ready for the spelling section and not at all for the reading comprehension. My older three girls reluctantly helped with the reading comprehension section. We follow the Charlotte Mason model of narrations so they were frustrated by the online reading comprehension. They wanted to just tell me about it. We are working on writing more of their narrations, but this format is foreign to them.
They all do well with comprehension, but I wanted them to become familiar with this question format. We are not required to do any testing so I think it will be good for them to have some experience at least. My older girls are 3rd, 4th, and 6th grade by age. They are all roughly at a 4th grade reading level. I let them choose any story they wanted from any of the four levels. They enjoy this freedom. 🙂
The higher levels have longer passages and more questions. I like that if they answer incorrectly, the text is highlighted where the answer is found. They can then answer again. It is noted that a hint was given so you know if they had difficulty. They quickly discovered that passages from the higher levels earned more “hammer swings” than those from the lower levels. We never did discover what to do with the points earned from those swings. That didn’t deter the girls, though it still kind of bugs me.
When I first perused the site of Samson’s Classroom, I thought it was merely games with a small educational base. Upon using this I realized my assumption was wrong. The presentation of the sight words is very thorough. Many aspects of learning these words is used. Even if you think using only flashcards will suffice, I encourage you to check further into Samson’s Classroom. Their is a video to show and explain more. Don’t forget about the other reviews of fellow Crew members for more perspectives.
