Take Control of Your Child's Literacy Journey

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Fads are for fashion. Teaching should be timeless.

In today’s classrooms, reading instruction often lacks consistency, uniformity, and effectiveness. Children are taught using various methods that focus more on contextual clues and reading “crutches” than on actual literacy skills. This leaves children ill-equipped for more advanced reading and comprehension as they progress through school.

Funnix

If you’re a parent frustrated by the weaknesses in current reading instruction programs, you’re not alone. We’ve heard from numerous parents who recognize the gaps in their children’s education and want to give them better tools for academic success.

For parents looking to take control of their children’s literacy journey, Funnix is the perfect solution.

Today’s reading instruction programs often focus on “fixing” specific issues children encounter when learning to read instead of focusing on proven, consistent methods that build good habits from the ground up. In a New York Times op-ed titled “We Know How to Teach Kids to Read,” author and linguistics professor John McWhorter discussed the issues with fad teaching methods and the value of proven, phonics-based reading instruction.

McWhorter highlighted the key findings of a study conducted in the 1960s, called “Project Follow Through.” In the study, education scholar Siegfried Engelmann implemented the phonics-based Direct Instruction (DI) program in 10 sites nationwide that taught 75,000. The study saw overwhelming success with many four-year-olds reading at an eight-year-old reading level. Importantly, the study also found that DI worked for ALL students, regardless of race or background.

For parents who want to ensure their children learn to read using this proven program, Funnix offers research-validated reading instruction for Pre-K through 3rd Grade. With 220 lessons built on authentic Direct Instruction, your child will learn to read using the proven strategies that saw significant success from 1960 to 2023.

By combining explicit instruction and entertaining stories, Funnix will help your child read at a 3rd-grade reading level in just one thirty-minute lesson per day. DI worked in the sixties, and it still works today, allowing all students to become proficient readers. With Funnix, your child will learn all core reading skills including:

Phonics: Matching sounds to letters and letter groups
Comprehension: The ability to convert words into broader ideas
Phonemic Awareness: Identification of the sounds that make up words
Reading Fluency: The ability to gain meaning from a text as a whole
Vocabulary: Knowledge of diverse words

Funnix is fully aligned with the Science of Reading!

Funnix’s lesson design helps students overcome bad reading habits by providing a solid foundation of literacy skills, rather than trying to lean on clues that are neither consistent nor reliable, such as nearby images and guessing at unknown words based on nearby words they do know. Funnix ensures children have all the tools they need to translate letters and words into meaningful ideas.

How Funnix Works

Each lesson is only 10% new material.
The other 90% applies previous concepts in a way that helps the child understand applied context, which improves retention.
Funnix starts with predictable letter sounds, then gradually introduces exceptions.
Phonetic prompts are included early on, then slowly removed to eliminate your child’s dependency on them over time.
The end result is a child who has truly mastered reading written English.

Children begin the reading program with a placement test to ensure they are placed correctly. As children progress through the lessons, instruction can be modified to accommodate each child’s learning rate. If a child needs additional time to master certain skills, they will review a lesson before moving on to the next. If a child is progressing quickly, their lessons will be accelerated to ensure they stay challenged enough to engage with the program.

At Funnix, our lessons are designed to help your child develop their reading skills at a steady, manageable pace. The program offers the perfect balance of new material and familiar concepts. Each lesson builds on skills developed in previous sections, helping your child feel more confident as their knowledge grows. They will never be overwhelmed by too much new information at once.

Your child’s reading journey begins with learning basic letter sounds, then forming those sounds into words, then shaping those words into stories. This sounds-words-stories framework remains consistent throughout the program so your child will never be introduced to a word with unfamiliar letter sounds, or stories with unfamiliar words. All aspects of the Funnix program are designed to set your child up for success!

Our lessons are written to keep your child challenged and engaged, without getting fatigued. They’re simple enough to be fun, yet challenging enough to give your child a sense of accomplishment when they complete them.

New sounds are introduced and practiced for a few lessons before they appear in words.
New words featuring those sounds are presented in lists, not stories. This allows your child to build confidence as they read each story with minimal mistakes.
The words are formed into stories so your child can put their reading skills into practice.

This framework makes it easy for you to help your child with lessons. The program is already structured in the correct sequence so you and your child can simply follow along. Each lesson is built on previous concepts with a small amount of new material added in, so your child can build on the strong foundations laid in earlier lessons. We know how important it is for children to feel successful in their reading journey and our lessons are designed to help children feel confident, not discouraged as they gain new skills. You’ll love seeing your child’s confidence grow along with their reading skills.

With Funnix, children truly learn how to read, finishing the program with a vocabulary of over two thousand words and the ability to figure out any new word on their own. Funnix is more than simply learning how to read — Funnix helps children become better lifelong learners.

Guide your child step-by-step through the most successful and least frustrating path to reading and comprehension. Subscribe today and prepare your child for success through the power of reading.