The Open Court Reading Program is a core Language arts/English series used in a large number of

elementary school A primary school (in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and South Africa), junior school (in Australia), elementary school or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary ed ...

s classrooms. It was one of two reading programs adopted for use in California schools when textbooks were last chosen in 2002. The other was

Houghton-Mifflin Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (; HMH) is an American publisher of textbooks, instructional technology materials, assessments, reference works, and fiction and non-fiction for both young readers and adults. The company is based in the Boston Financ ...

Reading. For the 2008 Edition, Open Court Reading's name was changed to Imagine It!. The series is published by

McGraw-Hill Education McGraw Hill is an American educational publishing company and one of the "big three" educational publishers that publishes educational content, software, and services for pre-K through postgraduate education. The company also publishes referenc ...

. There is both praise and criticism of the program among educators. Proponents of Open Court Reading believe that its focus on

phonics Phonics is a method for teaching people how to Reading, read and write an alphabetic language (such as English alphabet, English, Arabic alphabet, Arabic or Russian alphabet, Russian). It is done by demonstrating the relationship between the so ...

and

reading comprehension Reading comprehension is the ability to process text, understand its meaning, and to integrate with what the reader already knows. Fundamental skills required in efficient reading comprehension are knowing meaning of words, ability to understand ...

strategy use, both taught with very explicit instruction, benefit children. Some critics dislike the explicit nature of instruction, suggesting that it leaves little room for child exploration or teacher creativity, as constructivist models of reading instruction such as

whole language Whole language is a philosophy of reading and a discredited educational method originally developed for teaching literacy in English to young children. The method became a major model for education in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and ...

References

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External links

Official website of SRA/McGraw-Hill
Open Court Reading publisher.
Open Court Resources.com
largest collection of free Open Court Reading Resources on the internet created by and for Open Court Reading teachers
A Yahoo Discussion Board
created by teachers of Open Court Reading to share ideas for teaching the program. * US Department of Education, What Works Clearinghouse, WWC Intervention Report, August 2012, "Adolescent Literacy: Open Court Reading", http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/interventionreport.aspx?sid=568 * Borman, G.D., Dowling, N.M. and Schneck, C. (2008) ''Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis'', 30(4), 389–407. Phonics curricula

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

Basal readers Reading (process)