Core reading programs are a huge part of curriculum in education today and it is vital that educators and administrators evaluate a program before implementing it into their school. In my evaluation between two programs, I chose to look at the Houghton Mifflin Reading program and the Harcourt Trophies Reading program. I decided that I was going to look at second grade for each program. After completing the evaluation guide, I decided to write a few pros and cons of each program. After looking at the Trophies program from 2007, I found there to be more cons than pros. I didn’t like the organization of the book. It felt like the lessons were too spread out and it didn’t lay the lessons out in a way that I could follow easily. I think it is
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I had a lot more pros for this program than cons. For this program, I really liked the organization and found it way easier to get the hang of the organization. This one also offered research-based results from implementing this program in Chicago Public Schools, which is the area that I was to teach. I think it was great that they had graphs showing the success of the program in raising the scores of students for reading because it really shows how great this program can be for teachers. This program also did a great job of having fluency practice for students with different instructional levels. The program also explicitly teaches comprehension skills and has a lot of them that are taught and then consistently used throughout the program. When it comes to the high frequency words and vocabulary introduced in each theme, the Houghton Mifflin explicitly taught the vocabulary and had more instruction on the high frequency words than the Trophies program did. For example, when the high frequency words are taught in the Houghton Mifflin program, they lay out the instruction with teaching it, guided practice and applying the words. The only downfall was that the book didn’t offer a lot of special needs instruction ideas, but there was a lot of instruction for English Language Learners. Overall, I enjoyed this program and thought it was a lot better than the first one I looked
I had a lot more pros for this program than cons. For this program, I really liked the organization and found it way easier to get the hang of the organization. This one also offered research-based results from implementing this program in Chicago Public Schools, which is the area that I was to teach. I think it was great that they had graphs showing the success of the program in raising the scores of students for reading because it really shows how great this program can be for teachers. This program also did a great job of having fluency practice for students with different instructional levels. The program also explicitly teaches comprehension skills and has a lot of them that are taught and then consistently used throughout the program. When it comes to the high frequency words and vocabulary introduced in each theme, the Houghton Mifflin explicitly taught the vocabulary and had more instruction on the high frequency words than the Trophies program did. For example, when the high frequency words are taught in the Houghton Mifflin program, they lay out the instruction with teaching it, guided practice and applying the words. The only downfall was that the book didn’t offer a lot of special needs instruction ideas, but there was a lot of instruction for English Language Learners. Overall, I enjoyed this program and thought it was a lot better than the first one I looked