Welcome Teachers.
A Teachers Dream Come True- Books for you!
As a resource teacher myself, I have developed Hanson Reading using its Phonics Chart System so I could be more productive in the short period I had with students. Students came to me with all sorts of backgrounds and bits of knowledge, so I wanted a way to do a quick check on the foundation skills for decoding. I wanted every child to be proficient in those basic skills, so we could move forward with the same foundation. That challenge has evolved into 9 Skill Charts. Having only 9 Charts to master and apply has also been a rewarding choice. The children know that they will know HOW to read in only 9 Charts. That doesn’t seem overwhelming. Knowing how to read is of course just the beginning of a lifetime of building vocabulary, understanding how English is organized grammatically for comprehension and live experiences that influence comprehension. Each Chart has a sequence of skills that need to be mastered. Most of the Charts have the same sequence of Skills except for Chart 1 (Learning the letter NAMES), Chart 2 (Learning the Consonant SOUNDS) and Chart 3 (Learning the Hanson CODE Song that decodes all long an short vowel sounds. I wanted the students to be able to articulate what they were learning on all of the Charts so they could use them as a reference if a concept needed more review or if a concept was forgotten. That has served me very well. Explaining the Charts is very simple, and it has proven to be a “filing system” for children to find what they need. It has been particularly beneficial for children who were having more difficulty learning how to read. Many of these children do not have an intuitive “filing system” in their brain, and it has to be established for them to retain and apply skills. One child at an IEP meeting was asked what he was learning in Hanson Reading, and he proceeded to rattle off an explanation of each Chart, the Syllable Sequence and how he could figure out the “unfair” words in Memory Association Patterns. The psychologist was blown away, and he was quite proud of himself. Another one of my problems as a resource teacher was finding books that would serve as practice for the decoding skill we were learning. Every book had so many exceptions to the skill we were focusing on, that reading those books was almost detrimental, pointing out to the children that they couldn’t read. Why learn phonics skills if they didn’t work! It has taken me years to solve that problem, and some of the books I have made are better than others, but now there are books for each concept we teach. And I have developed practice pages without all the exceptions too that we use leading up to the books. Another issue I had to solve was the fact that the children looked at the pictures and tried to guess at the words. To fix that problem and improve comprehension, I made the books in a Read and See format. There is no illustration on the first page. I wanted the children to be great at decoding and to be able to form a picture in their mind of what they were reading without being influenced by the illustrator’s interpretation. Developing a mental image of the text is the essence of comprehension, and we can do it at the very beginning stages of reading so the habit gets ingrained. After decoding the 1st page, I ask the children to tell me about the picture in their mind. At that point, I can clarify misconceptions and expand vocabulary and even present grammatical concepts. Discussing the text is best done with a teacher who can evaluate the skills the children need to improve upon and to give praise for concepts applied successfully. The books are now available to you as fast as we can get them on-line. We have made them available in eBook form, or printable versions where you can download them, print and staple and in ready-made paper format. It is nice to have the pretty printed versions, but I am practical, and the printable version that you can download is cheap, and you can print more if you lose one. We are working to get the concepts on the Charts listed by skill so you can choose just the concept you are focusing on and be able to download those materials. It’s a work in progress, but we are helped by your questions, so fire away. My best to you, Lynne Hanson |
Choose the skill books and materials for your student.
Hanson Reading Phonics READ & See Format
BOOKS Focused on specific phonics skills: Long Vowels Only Short Vowels Only Long & Short Vowels Long & Short Vowels 2-Syllables Consonants + Digraphs 1-Syllable Consonants + Digraphs 2-Syllables Open Syllable |