At-Home & Online

1st-Grade Reading Program With Spelling and Phonics

At-Home Online Reading & Spelling Program

4.68 out of 5

51 Reviews

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Level Up Your 1st-Grader’s Reading and Spelling Skills

Research-based, results-driven curriculum
Step-by-step at-home and online lessons
Fun and engaging short, daily activities
Carefully selected reading selections and questions
Learn to spell with spelling patterns
Learn to read faster with our research-proven reading fluency training
Play card games that work on phonics skills
Feel confident and excited about reading

Scholar Within’s Co-founder Bonnie Terry, M.Ed., BCET has been featured on

CBS, FOX, ABC, NBC, and Microsoft Partners in Learning

1st-Grade Reading and Spelling Curriculum

Hand Selected Reading Passages

Your entering first-grader will feel empowered by our 1st-grade reading program’s engaging stories. Each week there are two new reading selections. We’ve chosen the best reading passages that will open your son or daughter’s world of reading. These 1st-grade reading selections were chosen to help your child learn to read independently.

Each week, you will get two digital 1st-grade reading passages for your child to read aloud. For each reading, your child will get 1st-grade reading worksheets to fill out to go with the passage that they have read. Your child will learn how to talk about and summarize the stories they have read.

Build Long Term Memory Skills

Your child will answer questions to the books that they have read in the 1st-grade reading program a day or two later. Your child will learn to remember and recall what they have read by reviewing notes that they have written or dictated about the reading.

Your entering first-grader will learn how to take notes! We have simple graphic organizers that make it easy, where they just fill in the blanks. Graphic organizers have been shown to improve memory skills by making it easy to organize ideas.

5-Minute Reading Fluency Training

Reading fluency training is one of the most important strategies used to build your child’s success with reading. Reading fluency is your child’s ability to read with speed and accuracy without conscious attention to the mechanics of reading.

Our research-proven reading fluency drills work on training your eyes to move more efficiently and smoothly left to right. They also improve your kids’ visual processing speed, or how fast they can retrieve and process what they see. You and your kids will love seeing their improvement each day.

Learn beginning phonics with interactive video spelling lessons.

Your child will learn to identify and match individual letters with their sounds. They will start to understand that spoken words are made up of individual sounds (phonemic awareness). Putting several individual sounds together makes words. The individual sounds of /b/, /a/, and /t/ come together to make the word /bat/.

Our interactive video spelling lessons explain step-by-step how words are put together. Your child will listen to a sound at a time and use their auditory discrimination skills to determine which letters correspond to the sound. Your child will learn to spell 10 new words each week according to their phonetic spelling patterns. Your child will also learn to recognize easy sight words.

Spelling Puzzles and Worksheets

Your child will love working on their spelling words with quick 1st-grade worksheets including word searches and puzzles. Each week, they will work on a specific phonetic spelling pattern and will start to identify the patterns in words. They’ll also write their words in sentences.

Rapid Automatized Naming

Rapid naming is one of the biggest predictors of a child’s success with reading. This is your child’s ability to see a shape, symbol, word, or object and to instantly recognize what it is. We have simple, custom-designed drills that you will do a practice and timed read where your child will see their progress in 3-4 days. These drills also work on their eye-tracking skills and start to move their eyes fluidly from left to right across a page.

Planning Study Skills Weekly Calendar Graphic Organizers

Build Executive Function Skills

Executive function skills are the decision making and planning skills that we all need in our daily lives. Your child will help decide when they will do certain activities and they will estimate how long each activity will take. After the activity is completed, they will reflect on how long it actually took and will start to build their time awareness and planning skills.

1st-Grade Reading Program Includes Brain-Body Activities

The brain and body work together as a machine, one designed to move through space efficiently, walking, moving, and maintaining balance. This connection allows you to see the shapes, sizes, and positions of letters on a page as well as improve eye tracking skills. As we improve the brain-body connection, reading and overall learning improve.

We have different activities each week that your kids will think are just fun games, but the activities actually work on improving their motor skills and brain-body connection.

Scholar Within Reading Program Screenshot

Research-Driven, Results-Proven Curriculum

Every component of our reading program is research-based and is specifically designed to boost your child’s reading skills. The program has been created by learning expert and board-certified educational therapist Bonnie Terry, M.Ed. She put together her 35+ years of working hands-on with children of all learning styles and abilities into this step-by-step program with custom-designed methods that you and your kids will see results each week.

Develop a Love of Reading

Reading will start to make sense to your child. Your child will develop a strong foundation of reading and overall learning skills. These skills include print awareness, phonemic awareness, letter recognition, phonics skills, and sight word recognition. Your kids will do a variety of activities that teach and strengthen all of these skills. Your child will love doing the activities in the program and will want to do them again and again.

Scholar Within’s Co-Founder Bonnie Terry, M.Ed., BCET has been featured on…

Scholar Within's Co-Founder, Bonnie Terry, has been featured on CBS, Fox, NBC, Microsoft Partners in Learning and more.

Reviews from Parents

Fun learning!

Child: Age 9 • 3rd grade • Neurotypical

Scholar Within was a program attentively engaged in by my 9 year old, who was doing all right, but was not fast at reading. The reading/word drills pages were immensely helpful to him. He needed to differentiate similar words that had slight variances. He became more specific with reading letters. He particularly enjoyed the special reading assignments online. He was quick to login, identify the week, and find the readings. His reading speed has increased, and he is more alert to find details, having organized the thoughts of the reading assignments in a systematic way, as outlined in the activities book. This program was recommended to us by a reading specialist, who has decades of experience and a joyous, encouraging attitude. My 9 year old consistently had a positive, "let's do this" spirit. He enjoyed the work. The units organization is a help to a child, because aspects are the same from unit to unit. He enjoyed finding what was new on his own. I am glad that I invested in this carefully structured, intentional learning program. I found nothing negative about it whatsoever, particularly having a 9 year who enjoyed the work, to his profit and was determined to increase his reading speed.

We needed a program that would relief some pressure from me and bring something new into our reading journey. Both kids needed to start below their grade level but were able to move quickly though the material and the improvement we saw was wonderful! Each assessment we did showed mark improvements especially in speed. We were already doing mind-body exercises but it was wonderful to have it coming from this program and not directly from mom. Very happy we added this to our routine. Thanks!

This program is amazing. My son just did week one this week and has loved it! He actually said “That was so fun! I didn’t think it would be, but I like this!” The program perfectly rounds out the curriculum he is using, and I’m so happy I found it! Thank you for creating this!

This has been THE BEST spelling and reading program we've used for homeschooling so far! Both of our boys(age 10, 5th grade, and age 12, 7th grade) love this program! It's laid out so well and very easy for them to navigate. What I love most about the reading program is that it's teaching them to take notes. So often this skill can be lost especially with homeschoolers, but not with Scholar Within! The reading selections vary and my boys are always interested to see what they'll be reading about next. My oldest is a strong reader but struggled with spelling and because this program focuses so much on spelling patterns, he's finally getting it! He's doing well with it and nothing makes me happier than watching my kids as things click, they succeed and how proud they feel. THANK YOU Scholar Within!!

Best curriculum I’ve seen so far for homeschoolers! It’s precisely organized by week and day, for everything. Which I have yet to experience by all other programs claiming the same. This program even tapers the workload to ease in on Monday, peak midweek and taper down Friday. Though they have a couple suggested alternatives with a handy calendar, the primary schedule is our favorite and keeps the day and week on track. There isn’t an easy way to take a day off without catching up or skipping. So it isn’t quite self paced as mentioned, namely because everything is executed so well and organized to perfection! It’d just be easier to take the week off than try to catch up if you missed more than a day – but that’s what makes homeschool special anyway. No makeup sick work or jamming in school while on vacation. This program is what I expected for homeschool curriculum but never found. I almost considered returning to regular school because it’s so costly and laborious putting materials with worksheets and tests. Scholar Within is a game changer! I wish they covered more topics honestly. The daily drills bring a lot of confidence because there is not an expectation to read a set amount of words. Plus, they naturally improve just by reviewing the words right before the one min timed drill. No additional practice needed! So smart! He begs me to do drills every day. Zero struggles. Then students chart their word count progress right after, so they see improvement everyday. He’s so proud of himself for the first time ever with reading and spelling. Brilliantly designed to help kids organically challenge themselves without the pressure of comparison or expectation of a certain number. He loves that he can review notes and I love that this program clearly teaches how to take effective, useful notes. Schools don’t even teach that and I had to learn in college which was hard. We’ve homeschooled two years now and I’ve spent so much time and money with the “big” guys to no avail. Not with Scholar Within. Everything is perfectly paired and materials are exactly sequences to online. Each worksheet page says what lesson week and matches exactly to what is shown online. We spent four days on the trial and bought the year subscription without hesitation. Mind you I’d already spent over $400 for the semester with other curriculum. The materials prep for printed workbooks is staged so you might want to consider that before setting your start date. We subscribed a couple days before their packing materials. It shipped in a couple days later and we received our free printed materials 5 days after signing up for the year! So we don’t even have to wait the extra week we thought we would. The boy 4th grade cheers, screams and thunderous happy dances are a sight I’ve rarely seen. The morning of materials arrival he was keeping track for the delivery truck like it was a toy ordered from Amazon. Thank you so much! We’re so excited for the year to come! A few days is all you need to see the value. It’s easy to use and improvements happen on day two for every student. Best online program by far!

I bought the program for my daughters in Kindergarten and Grade 2 and I can't rave enough about it to my family and friends. It offers a variety of lessons in reading and spelling to keep your child engaged in the learning process. I also found customer service to be very efficient and helpful when I reached out to them about a question. Highly recommend this program!

Boring. My daughter hated it. It was a daily battle to try to get her to do it. Eventually we gave up. She loves to read and the program was making her dread reading.

My daughter has really struggled with spelling over the years – she is now in seventh grade. This program has been one of the best programs to help her grow in her ability to spell. Thank you!

I started using this program after a TON of research. I needed a good fit for my 8 yr old dyslexic daughter. I'd say she 1.5-2 reading grades behind. We tried the summer program and loved it. This program was very simple and easy to acclimate to, which was a blessing bc these days I don't have the time and energy to deep dive learning new programs. Scholar Within was instantly engaging and with the easy to follow step by step layout it made everything so approachable. I had to reach out through chat a few times and always received responses quickly and they were kind, helpful, and encouraging. 5 star customer service! I like how you can change the levels within the program (I started lower so that I could build her confidence) and the variety within lessons. You might see that some are saying there's a lot of printing, I was at first concerned about this but it really wasn't bad. I'd just print a few lessons ahead of time and keep them in the folder. It was actually pretty easy and only took 1-2 minutes. They also have an option for some of the weeks to buy pre-printed materials. Do what works for you 🙂 My daughter said she really liked the games too.

I was a newbie to homeschooling when I signed up for this program. Now I realized, after almost a year of homeschooling, that this program is too expensive. It does have good content, but the way it is delivered is very boring that my children don't want to use it. Please make sure you do lots of research before you sign up.

Included in the Program:

Weekly Reading Selections
Reading Comprehension Questions
Reading Fluency Training Drills
Phonics and Spelling Video Lessons
Spelling Worksheets and Puzzles
Video Instruction
Graphic Organizer Forms
Note-Taking Printables
Executive Function Activities
Brain-Body Activities
Card Games
Daily Emails
And More!

Everything you need to teach 1st-grade reading and spelling at home

Step-by-step, online and offline lessons

Carefully selected online reading passages

Tap-to-read, online read-aloud technology

Take notes offline with graphic organizers

Offline reading fluency training

Spelling and phonics video lessons and tests

Learn to spell with spelling patterns

Offline puzzles and worksheets

Vocabulary and word-attack card games

Offline planning and time-management
activities

Executive function and mind-body activities

Print at home or get materials shipped to you

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FAQs

How do I choose a grade or reading level?

After sign up, you will be asked what grade your child is currently and whether they are above grade level, at grade level, or below grade level by 1-3 years in their reading skills.

Give your best estimate. If the material you choose is too easy or too hard, contact us and we’ll adjust your account.

Additionally, you can choose a couple of sample reading passages at the grade level you think your child is capable of reading proficiently.

Have them read aloud to you. Make a note of any repetitions, substitutions, omissions, or mispronunciations they make. Then ask them at least five comprehension questions.

Instructional level is reading without mistakes with a 93% accuracy and a minimum of 75% comprehension.

Is the reading and spelling program all online?

The program materials and teaching videos are delivered and accessed online. Each day you will print out a few pages of handouts to use with your kids. Most of the lessons and activities are done offline at a table or outside.

There are a lot of fun activities and games. With grades K-3, most of the activities are done with the parent and child together. For grades 4 and above, there are a couple of activities done with the parent and child together, and the rest the child can do independently.

Does it really only take 45-60 minutes a day?

The short answer is yes!

Each day there are a few handouts to print out and instructional videos to watch. Each day’s actual activities should only take 45-60 minutes of actual work.

The first week takes a little bit of time and prep to get up to speed, but by the second week, the activities become second nature.

We often suggest breaking up some of the activities to different parts of the day.

What does a typical day look like?

Print out the handouts
Watch the short videos either by yourself or with your kids to know what to do (about 5 minutes)
Do the fluency training with your kids (5 minutes)
Activities for comprehension, phonics, brain-body, and executive function rotate throughout the week (20 – 40 minutes)

Are there live classes?

No. We currently do not have live classes.

We have designed this program to be step-by-step with bite-sized activities. You won’t have to worry about missing a Zoom class, being late, or your kids being still in their pajamas. You can do the activities in the program on your schedule and make up missed days at your convenience.

We have video spelling instruction that your kids will follow along with their corresponding worksheets. If you want feedback on your child’s work, send us a picture of it via email.

Multisensory reading and spelling instruction

Different from other summer reading programs, in this summer reading program, your child will learn through seeing, hearing, and doing. Learning to read through multiple senses builds stronger associations, improves retention, and speeds up recall skills.

In other words, learning to read in this way makes reading easier and automatic. This at-home and online reading program is specifically designed with short activities that integrate hearing, seeing, and doing.

Orton-Gillingham based

Research on teaching reading and spelling dates back to the early 1930s, first with Samuel Orton and then later with Anna Gillingham. They developed a teaching approach, the Orton-Gillingham method (OG), to help struggling readers and spellers. Their teaching methods include what is currently considered best practices: sequential, phonics-based systems that teach the basics of word formation before whole meanings.

Learning through all three senses (auditory, visual, and tactile-kinesthetic) is essential. This multisensory approach has been proven effective for students of all abilities, including those with dyslexia and other learning challenges.

The Scholar Within Reading Program incorporates these OG principles and strategies along with the latest research on learning.

Orton-Gillingham Instructional Components for Optimal Learning:

Multisensory: Uses all of the senses (auditory, visual, and tactile-kinesthetic)
Sequential: Proceeds step-by-step in a logical sequence
Incremental: Each lesson builds upon prior learning
Cumulative: Constantly and consistently reviews previously taught concepts
Individualized: Meets each student’s individual needs
Phonogram-Based: Words are based on combining letters and letter combinations known as phonograms (the sound-symbol relationship, also known as the Alphabetic Principle)
Explicit: Stated clearly and in a detailed manner

30-Day/14-day money-back guarantee

Physical Products

30-Day Money-back Guarantee

We offer this program because we love seeing parents and their kids succeed. It is an extraordinary experience to watch parents empower their kids, and we are 100% committed to your success. For your part, the success of the program relies on your commitment to completing the weekly activities as outlined.

We are so confident that our Reading Program and Spelling Program will be a life-changing experience for you that we offer a no-risk 30-day guarantee on our printed material kits.

If you are unsatisfied with the print materials and program within the first 30 days, just ship us back the printed material, and we’ll refund your purchase excluding actual shipping cost and return shipping. Materials must be unused and in a resaleable condition. The material must be postmarked within 30 days of receiving the material.

Bonus free physical products must be returned in their original, unused, new, and resalable condition. If the bonus free item is not returned, you will be charged for the full cost of the bonus free item.

If you think you might return or cancel the program, print out the material at home before using any of the physical material.

Online Programs

14-Day Money-back Guarantee

We are so confident that our Reading Program and Spelling Program will be a life-changing experience for you that we offer a no-risk 14-day guarantee. If after completing the program’s first week’s activities within the first 14 days from the initial sign-up, simply let us know, and we will refund your purchase. If you purchased print materials with the online program, actual shipping costs will be excluded from your online program refund.

If you think you might return or cancel the program, print out the material at home before using any of the physical material.

7-Day Free Trial

We offer a 7-day free trial only on the Monthly Reading & Spelling Program Membership.

This gives you a chance to try the program without having to pay. If you cancel within the first 7-days, you will not be charged. If you are considering the yearly option, this is a great way to try the program first before deciding to upgrade.

All other membership options require an upfront payment. For these other membership options, we offer a 14-day money-back guarantee.

Our 14-day money-back guarantee starts when you sign up for the program.

If you signed up for the 7-day free trial and you are still within the 7 days, you can cancel the program on your own. Log in to your account, click Go to Program, go to My Account > Settings > Membership, and you can cancel your account from here. If you cancel within the first 7-days, you will not be charged.

What if my child has learning disabilities, dyslexia, and ADHD?

This program has been designed by learning disabilities expert and board-certified educational therapist Bonnie Terry, M.Ed., BCET.

Bonnie originally designed this curriculum in her private learning center in the 1990s where she saw kids with dyslexia, ADHD, auditory processing disorder, kids on the autism spectrum, and numerous other learning challenges.

She learned first hand what worked and what didn’t.

Bonnie was only able to see kids twice a week for an hour each time and had to figure out a way to make progress in reading and spelling in that short amount of time.

She discovered specific multisensory activities worked.

She discovered that she could teach spelling through spelling patterns while teaching individual sound components of letters.

She discovered that you could train your eye muscles for reading just like you can train your body for sports.

She discovered that to successfully teach reading, you must teach all 5 principles of reading (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, comprehension and vocabulary).

She discovered that teaching through hands on games is not only fun but strengthens kids skills and associations with learning.

She discovered teaching by the Science of Reading before it was known as the Science of Reading.

Parents and teachers kept asking what it was that she was doing in her learning center because of the transformative results the kids saw in such little time.

She realized that she needed to make this curriculum available to all students.

When you teach in these ways, all kids can successfully read and spell, not matter whether they have learning challenges or not.

Since her private learning center, Bonnie Terry, M.Ed., BCET has teamed up with her son, Nick Terry, who is a design and technology expert to create Scholar Within.

This way, they’ve been able to bring Bonnie Terry’s original curriculum into a step-by-step format that all families can do at home with their kids and teachers can do with their students.