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what's the advantage of Pathway Readers over Little Bear, etc?
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I bought a couple of Pathway Readers at a homeschool booksale yesterday, and looking through them, I’m not seeing the advantage of using them over quality easy reader books like the Little Bear books. What am I missing?
For me, there was no advantage except I wasn’t having to continually be going to the library to find books for my son to read. He really liked Pathway Readers, but we also enjoyed lots of other books from the library too mixed in. Maybe someone else has better insight, but they are a very affordable reader that was packed full of lots of enjoyable stories.
We have both, but the Little Bear books are just down in our library as a fun extra reading (not part of our schooltime). My kids pick them out all the time for me to read to them.
I liked the Pathway Readers because my kids related to the children in the stories and learned little lessons about honesty and hard work from them. Also, they seemed to be a nice progression from one to the next slowly getting harder.
We like to alternate a phonics reader with some “fun” books like Little Bear, Dr. Seuss or Frog and Toad. We mostly use McGuffey readers because I like the speed it progresses at as well as the stories. We have used Pathway Readers as well, but my DC prefer the stories in the McGuffey readers.
I also think the nice thing about graded readers is that there is a steady progression. We usually stick with just these until they finish the primer, then start adding in some regular early readers.
I agree about the steady progression, it’s easy to know what to use next. However; my children didn’t care for the Pathway readers at all, I think the stories became too much of the same thing. We use Bob book readers first that someone gave to us, then I after they are sounding out words I get books that they are interested in. I found they are much more eager to read when it’s a book they look forward to, so for me it’s worth the search to find appropriate level books for them, especially for my boys.
For dd8 the controlled vocabulary helped build fluency. There are only a few new/unknown words per chapter. This means a different story to practice the same words on each time. Also, the progression from short sentences with pictures on every page to paragraphs with hardly any pictures made the jump to chapter books much easier. She was “stuck” in easy readers because chapter books were so intimidating to her. By the time we were through the second grade book she had started picking up the shorter chapter books on our shelves for her own free reading.
I don’t think they are “better” than Little Bear or Frog and Toad, but they did have some benefits for dd8 and I will likely use them again for the rest of the clan.
I agree, steady progress and controlled vocabulary helped my reluctant reader feel some real success. He loved the stories and felt like the characters became friends; he wondered what was going to happen next. He giggled sometimes during readings. My DD in g3 at the time asked if she could have her own Pathways reader for next year because of it. So we have the set now. Just nice to have a wholesome helpful read on hand, Kwim?
We have read the Treadwell Primer (yesterday classics) and will be starting the McGuffey readers in a couple weeks. For us, little bear became too easy pretty quickly. Once we finished 100 easy lessons, they were not a challenge. We will be alternating between McGuffey and Early Readers next year, the McGuffey to stretch her skills and the easy readers to work on tone and rhythm to her reading.
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