Crew Review: Pearson Homeschool; Reading Street Grade 3

Vendor Name:  Pearson Homeschool

Vendor Contact:  Pearson Homeschool Contact Us Page

Name of Product:  Reading Street Grade 3

Price:  $124.99 for the homeschool bundle

Age/Grade Range: 3rd grade

Pearson Education has been providing textbooks to schools and they have now entered into the homeschool market and I was given the Reading Street Grade 3 set to use in my home with my 3rd grade daughter.  Before I tell you what we thought while using this program I’m going to tell you a little bit about Reading Street Grade 3 before telling you what we thought about this curricula.

The first part is the Guide on the Side which is as it says on the cover “a customized literacy approach for the third grade teacher.”  There is a lot of information in this book, which is written for the class room teacher, more than the homeschool teacher.  It explains how to use this curricula for a classroom complete with break downs for times for each area of study such as phonics/reading, writing, comprehension, and vocabulary.  This proved a bit confusing and a bit more information than I needed to use this with one student – I liked the research findings – but overall I didn’t see this as something that aided me in teaching as there were no suggested lesson plans for a homeschool parent and really nothing to help the homeschool parent organize how to use this in the home.

Next are the text books themselves, there are two for Reading Street Grade 3, and they are just like what you’d be handed in school.  Beautiful hard covered books, complete with a space to record students name and condition of book at the beginning and end of the school year.  They are colorful and with the large print they are easy to read for the child who is at reading level or struggling with being at grade level.  Each week has a theme so for unit two week 1 the theme surrounds plant and animal structures and everything the child is learning about will revolve around that theme.

The last two components of the set are the Teacher’s Resource CD and the Exam CD, both run once they are inserted into the disc drive and are easy to navigate.  If your child likes to do worksheets then the Teacher’s Resource CD is perfect, as it contains all the needed worksheets for each lesson/week along with the answers for the teacher.  The Exam CD is just what it sounds like, it allows all tests, exams and assessments to check on the students learning and other areas of comprehension.

I was very excited at first when I found out I was going to get this to review, although after reading the Guide on the Side I became very confused at how exactly a homeschool family is supposed to utilize this – I don’t spend an hour or more on teaching reading/writing/literature and to me it seemed like it was just very ‘school’, which I do my best to avoid.  My daughter did enjoy the colorful book and the easy to read stories, some of which I thought were too easy for a third grader and were not what I would consider high quality literature.  I picked and chose what we’d use each week and still keep it within the four day school week that we use.

I looked through each week and decided what my daughter needed to work on, mostly skipping the phonics as some of the skills I was not sure what they meant such as CVC.  Concentrating on vocabulary, spelling, reading and writing skills versus the phonics – which if your child needs that or you want to teach it is included.  I didn’t use a lot of the worksheets because my daughter gets easily stressed with lots of worksheets and for the most part it seemed to be more busy work, but if your child enjoys worksheets there are plenty of them and they are easy to print off from your computer.

While I liked the product it needed a lot of tweaking and a lot of reading on my part in order to make it usable for a homeschool student.  Since I believe that reading, spelling, vocabulary and even writing can be easily learned through literature and being read to instead of through text books and worksheets.  I can see where the first time homeschool parent could definitely utilize this, or a family whose children are coming out of a school or even a homeschool parent who used to teach in a school and needs this kind of program.  I prefer a more streamlined and laid out curricula instead of one that needs a lot of tweaking and prep work on my end.  Yes, we liked it and we’ll probably continue to use it as a reader for practice and I may use it for my son when the time comes as he likes worksheets.  If you’d like to see what other homeschooling parents thought of this and other Pearson products visit the Schoolhouse Review Crew blog.

**Disclaimer:  As a member of the Schoolhouse Review Crew, I received this product, at no cost to me, in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are mine.

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