Comprehensive pre- and post tests are provided in this program. These tests provide a true phonemic x-ray to determine the exact levels of a student’s phonemic and decoding skills. (Click here on PRE-TEST to view.) 


Each of the 58 phoneme lessons includes a vocabulary comprehension, cloze exercise, assessment at four different levels.  (Click here on LESSON ASSESSMENT to view.) This enables the teacher to quickly assess student mastery at their designated levels. The multi-level nature of the test helps teachers differentiate for individual students.


Every four or five lessons there is a word recognition assessment called a Fishing Tournament located at the back of the workbook and in the reproducible Fishing (Teacher’s) Guide. This allows the teacher to assess retention of the words over a longer period of time and can guide re-teaching. (Click here on FISHING TOURNAMENT to view.)


All of these assessments are great for the regular classroom teacher to assess the students’ progress and to monitor and adjust instruction.  These assessments are excellent for special needs teachers and dyslexia and reading specialists to document need for intervention and to document the progress made toward individualized goals.


Students keep track of their own progress using the Fishing Record chart at the back of their books.

Fishing With Phonics is comprehensive and forms a tight net of the 60 most used phonemes in the English language.  It’s very difficult for your highest or lowest students to slip out of this net and not learn. Each phoneme in each lesson is used at four levels of words from one syllable words with no blends to three and four syllable words.(Click here on INDEX to see all of the phonemes that are covered. Click here on LESSON SAMPLE to see the multi-levels in each lesson.)


Fishing With Phonics uses a simple structured step by step routine to systematically teach decoding, sight word, vocabulary and fluency skills.  Phonemes and sight words are all taught in families with related characteristics.  One step builds upon another and the phonemes and sight words are introduced from the simplest to the most complex.


The skills in Fishing With Phonics spiral.  Almost every phonemic word introduced in one lesson is imbedded in the program in a subsequent lesson, usually in the Words In Sentences (page B) portion. Students see and practice each word more than one time. Sight words or Slippery Fish are also spiraled into other sight word lessons.  The Funny Fish, nonsense word, section of the program is where most of the specific phonemic spiraling is done.  (Click here on FUNNY FISH to see a sample.) Continual daily use of the phoneme card deck and the sight word decks in the program provide the repetitious spiraling review necessary for student mastery of difficult sight words and phonemes.