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All About Reading

Publisher: All About Learning Press, Inc.
Author: Marie Rippel
Review last updated: September 2011
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All About Reading

Marie Rippel’s All About Spelling has become one of the most popular spelling programs among home educators, so I was naturally curious about All About Reading since it correlates with All About Spelling for level one and above.

I loved Level Pre-1, which I reviewed in September 2011. Now, a few months later, Level 1 is also available. Readers for Level 2 are also available, but the other components will be available in 2012.

Level Pre-1

All About Reading Level Pre-1 teaches letters and sounds, but only short-vowel sounds. It does not teach printing. The primary focus is upon what Rippel calls the Big Five Skills ™, five components she says are foundational for a child’s future reading and spelling abilities. The Big Five are:

- print awareness: grasping the idea that printed words carry meaning and are related to spoken language
- phonological awareness: the ability to hear and identify the various parts of words
- letter knowledge: knowing letter names and sounds
- listening comprehension: as children learn to understand what they hear, they are preparing to understand what they read
- motivation to read: conveying the idea that reading is a fun experience so the child eagerly anticipates being able to read

All About Reading Level Pre-1 teaches through multi-sensory, interactive learning that can easily be adapted to each child. Components for this level are the teacher’s manual, Student Materials packet, two readers, Letter Sounds A to Z CD-ROM, puppet, card filing box, and tote bag.

The teacher’s manual provides detailed, step-by-step lesson plans that should be easy for the most inexperienced parent to use. Lesson plans include pictures and illustrations so you can see which other components of the program you are using at a glance. It should take no more than fifteen minutes to read the introduction and start teaching. The Ziggy Zebra puppet used to help teach many of the lessons is a very nicely made hand puppet.

The Student Materials packet includes My Book of Letters activity book, picture cards, letter sound cards, capital alphabet chart, lowercase alphabet chart, and a certificate of completion.

My Book of Letters , a 192-page activity book, has one or two activity sheets to be used along with each lesson. The activity pages sometimes function more as teaching tools and other times more as arts and crafts activity, but all activity sheets contribute toward accomplishing the Big Five goals. Some arts and crafts activities might be simplified for children who don’t seem to need as much of the cut-and-paste craft work. You will need some additional resources for the activity pages: scissors, glue, crayons, markers, scraps of fabric and yarn, paint, toothpicks, cotton swabs, construction paper, colored pencils, hole punch, star stickers, pipe cleaners, glitter, and twigs.

The cards in the Student Materials packet are printed and perforated on card stock, ready for you to separate and store in the special card filing box that comes with the complete set. The alphabet charts are used as teaching tools. Capital letters are taught first, then lowercase.

The readers are two beautifully-illustrated, hard cover books that could stand on their own. The Zigzag Zebra and Lizard Lou both feature finely detailed black-and-white drawings by Donna Goeddaeus that are a delight in themselves. The Zigzag Zebra introduces letters and their sounds in the context of rhymed text that often is a bit silly—just what children love. Alligators, kangaroos, frogs, snails, yaks, and other “critters” are the subject matter. Lizard Lou continues in the same vein but with lengthier poems, some from famous authors and many by Renee LaTulippe. Readers are not used for reading practice as one might expect. Instead they are used to develop listening comprehension and recognition of sounds in relation to illustrations. Poems contain sentence structure and vocabulary likely a little beyond what is already familiar to most preschoolers, so you might have discussions about some of the words and sentences. The nature topics themselves are also likely to engender discussion. I see this as a positive feature in the way that reading great books to older children exposes them to the beauty of language and the nuances of vocabulary and usage.

The Letter Sounds A to Z CD plays in a computer. This is a very simple program that displays the letters of the alphabet. Children click on a letter to hear the sound. Again, only short vowels are included. Parents already familiar with the phonetic sounds might not need this, but it should be very helpful to those who do not. Pronunciations of individual letters are very difficult to record without adding extra sounds, so in this recording there are sometimes “uh” sounds following consonants that might be slightly confusing. Also, with my ear buds the sounds for the letters “m” and “n” seem indistinguishable to me. Better headphones might make the sounds more distinct.

All of the components in the Pre 1 program work together very nicely as pre-reading program. But the range of activities also contributes to the development of other readiness skills as children work with following directions, cutting, and coloring as well as listening, comprehending, identifying syllables auditorially, making inferences, developing vocabulary, and otherwise acquiring the Big Five skills.

You can purchase individual components, but you will probably want to purchase one of the packages. The Deluxe package includes everything while the basic includes all items except the puppet, the tote bag, and the card filing box. Ordering through my affiliate link below, you get a free activity book that correlates with the program.

Level 1

At Level 1, the five key components shift a little from the Big Five skills taught in Level Pre-1. Now, those key components are phonological awareness, phonics/decoding, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

Before starting Level 1, students should already know the alphabet and be able to identify both upper- and lower-case letters. They might have completed Level Pre-1, but that is not required if you have introduced the alphabet in some other fashion. Lessons in Level 1 cover both short and long vowels as well as some consonant digraphs, some sight words, and even some compound words.

All About Reading Level 1 uses the same letter tiles as does All About Spelling Level 1, and those tiles will also be used through additional levels of both programs. All About Reading Level 1 is available as the basic All About Reading Level 1 Kit that does not include the Interactive Kit with the letter tiles. The basic kit does include the teacher’s manual, the student packet, and three readers. The student packet in the basic kit includes the student activity book, phonogram cards, word cards, and a viewfinder bookmark. (The perforated phonogram and word cards need to be taken apart and stored in a box.)

There are two Interactive Kits: basic or deluxe. Both kits include the letter tiles and magnets, The Basic Phonograms CD-ROM, and Reading Divider Cards (to separate the phonogram and word cards in a storage box). The deluxe kit adds a customized storage box for the cards, star stickers to be used on the progress chart, and a custom tote bag for storing all of your components. If you are also using All About Spelling, you can purchase only the individual items from any of the interactive kits that you might want rather than either one of the Interactive Kits.

In addition to the essential items from All About Reading, you should also have a 2’ x 3’ magnetic board for both storing and working with the phonograms. You will also need two re-sealable baggies for separating your letter tiles. (Some tiles will be used for levels 2 through 7 so you should keep those separate in a safe place for the time being.)

While Level 1 is very much an interactive program, it drops some of the arts-and-crafts activity of Level Pre-1. It takes a little time to set up your tiles and separate the phonogram and word cards. Once you are set up, the program is very easy to use. Detailed lesson plans are scripted and illustrated, making it simple for the inexperienced parent or teacher to present the lessons. A parent or teacher not familiar with the sounds of the phonograms can pop The Basic Phonograms CD-ROM into a computer, then click on any phonogram to hear the pronunciation. Note that this CD is the same one used in All About Spelling.

The first lesson teaches the sounds of four letters: /m/, /s/, /p/, and /ă/, using phonogram cards and letter tiles. If a child does not know any sounds at this point, you will need to proceed a bit more slowly, possibly extending this lesson until he or she has mastered these sounds. This lesson also introduces blending for three-letter words, using the letter tiles. Then tiles are used to demonstrate how switching the first letter (e.g., using the words sam and pam) changes only the initial sound. Students also learn to identify vowels and consonants which are color coded on the tiles. Activity sheets in the student workbook add additional practice and, sometimes, additional instruction. For example, the first worksheet has four words that students are to cut out and match with four pictures: Pam, Sam, map, and sap. Instructions mention that Pam and Sam are names that start with capital letters. (These two letters have the same form as their lower case forms and should not be confusing.) The first lesson concludes with students practicing reading three word cards and then listening to twenty minutes of read-aloud. Students can then put a sticker on their progress chart.

Lessons continue in this fashion, sometimes alerting parents/teachers with strategies for common problems they might encounter. The introduction of letters follows a progression similar to that of other intensive phonics programs, gradually introducing vowels with consonants in a way that allows students to begin reading immediately.

The workbook is a major component, adding much variety to the lessons. The third lesson introduces “fluency practice” with words and sentences on pages in the workbook. Instructions on page 43 in the Teacher’s Manual include tips on using the fluency practice sheets to prevent overwhelming some beginning readers.

Every lesson includes a short reading game or activity to motivate young learners. For example, lessons four and ten add a simple bingo game and the Word Flipper™ phonogram manipulative is introduced for lesson six.

The three hardback readers for Level 1 are top notch like those for Level Pre-1. They have lovely illustrations and relatively interesting content for vocabulary-controlled reading material. The stories are written by Marie Rippel and Renée LaTulippe. Illustrations are by Donna Goeddaeus, Matt Chapman, and David LaTulippe.

As I noted earlier, students are expected to be able to recognize both upper- and lower-case letters before beginning Level 1. Only lower-case letters are included on the letter tiles and phonogram cards. There is little instruction on upper case letters in Level 1 other the brief mention about names in the first lesson and other names that appear on the word cards and instruction regarding the word /I/. The third lesson includes the words Dan, Dad, and Tap that all have upper case letters that look different than their corresponding lower case forms, so it is essential that children have prior instruction regarding upper-case letter forms. If you are starting with Level 1 and children do not yet recognize upper-case letters, I suggest that you either teach these upper case forms as you encounter them or work on them within a handwriting program alongside All About Reading.

Note that All About Reading does not have students write phonograms or words, but All About Spelling does do so. Still, neither program requires much writing practice so that will need to happen via some other method. You can easily use another spelling or language arts program alongside All About Reading if you choose to do so.

In summary, All About Reading Level 1 offers a very reasonably-priced option for an interactive, multi-sensory reading program that is scripted and easy to use. All components except the student workbook and star stickers are reusable, so the value is even greater when you use it with more than one student.

Pricing

Level Pre-1
Basic package: $79.95
Deluxe package: $119.95

Level 1
Basic kit: $99.95
Interactive kit - basic: $28.95
Interactive kit - deluxe: $48.95

Click on the pictures below to order through my affiliate link to help support this website. The second picture is a link for a free activity book for Level Pre 1.

Instant Key

  • Suitable for: one-on-one instruction
    Need for parent/teacher instruction: high
    Prep time needed: minimal
    Teacher's manual: essential
    Educational philosophy: phonics, multi-sensory
    Religious perspective: secular but "Christian friendly"

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