Textbook Critique - Entry Point

Discussion:

This book, Entry Point is a phonics orientated textbook for remedial students that need to

learn how to read English.  The book goes step by step, using the same method as

Hickey.  But the authors add sight words,  to the lessons to facilitate the reading.  Most

lesson introduce one new letter, except for the first lesson which teaches 3 letters.

In order to better teach the students, I would add the letter arch and the alphabet cards.

The letter arch is useful to teach the order of the letters in the alphabet.

One point about how the authors teach the students to read, is that they suggest that the

teacher read aloud the text before the students read it,  I don't recommend this as these

type of students probably have very good memories and will memorize the text right

away. I would let the students grapple with the text first and correct only when absolutely

necessary.

At the beginning of each lesson, I would add the alphabet arch, lower case letters and

upper case letters, then do the letter cards with the drawing on the back, but here I would

use the words that the books give in the word rose, then go through all the exercises in the

lessons.  At the end of the lessons, if there is time, then I would do the games that are

described in the teacher's guide. One very good thing, is after a few lessons, there is a

quiz in the student's book. I would definitely have the students do the quiz as a self-check

on the student's own learning.


Rachael Alice Orbach - English teacher