The Intensive Phonological Awareness (IPA) Program

The scope and sequence of the program flows nicely from week to week. A great foundational tool for beginning and struggling readers.

This is an excellent resource that every educator of beginning or struggling readers should have. Unfortunately so many teachers do not fully understand how to teach reading effectively to struggling readers (the “check the picture, guess the word” crew). I highly recommend this book to any educator looking to give those bottom kids that just won’t budge the instruction in phonological awareness that they NEED to learn to read WELL.I use David Kilpatrick’s Equipped for Reading Success as Tier 1 (whole group) instruction and you couldn’t pay me to give it up. It is so quick (one minute activities) and the strategies used reach 80-90% of the children in my first grade class. I use the phonemic awareness strategies when in teach spelling and phonics and incidentally in small group instruction. I prefer Equipped for Reading Success for the extensive information it provides, short lessons and ease of use to the the longer lessons in Phonemic Awareness in Young Children (which is recommended by the authors of this book).However, I LOVE IPA!!! I love that the intervention in this book is structured as GAMES. I am currently using this program with 6 of my at risk, struggling students after school. By the end of the school day, these kids are dirt tired and games are the most effective way to reach them. This is my first year using the IPA program but I can already see that my kids are making progress. It is tempting to push them through the lessons faster or skip weeks when they seem to have already mastered the skill, but I have to keep reminding myself that sustained, systematic INTENSIVE intervention is what they need (these are the kids that backslide and lose their letter sounds after the weekend, or holiday breaks). They are getting it! They are now constantly commenting on the sounds they hear in words throughout the school day (which can actually get annoying when you are reading a book aloud, but I’ll never tell them!) Engagement in any intervention is half the battle and games are the best weapon we have!

I am a speech-language pathologist and have found this phonological awareness curriculum to be the best I have used. It takes some time to prepare the materials but it is well worth the effort. (Much less time than having to create my own materials!) All the materials you need to implement the curriculum are downloadable. There are no outside materials required. Most importantly my students are showing significant gains in their phonological awareness skills. Amazing product for the price and I would highly recommend it to teachers, reading specialists, and speech-language pathologist.

Was recommended by our SLP. It is very good.

I've read many reviews of people disappointed that the CD for resources is not sent with the book. That is correct. There is no CD. If you check page ix, titled "About the Ancillary Material," you will find the instructions about how to download everything you need.