What is Headsprout Early Reading?
Headsprout Early Reading is a supplemental beginning reading program for students in Pre-K through 2nd grade who are not yet reading or who are in the beginning stages of the reading process. Designed to teach the foundational skills and strategies that are critical in becoming a skilled, fluent reader, this Internet-based program creatively captures the attention of the young reader through the use of engaging, highly interactive activities, and serves as an on-line tutor, providing one-on-one instruction.... Many unique aspects inherent in the design of Headsprout Early Reading facilitate the student's acquisition of early reading skills.

How is Headsprout Early Reading aligned with Reading First?
Headsprout Early Reading incorporates the five critical components of reading instruction cited by the National Reading Panel and Reading First: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.

Research Support for Headsprout Early Reading
In sum, the content and design of Headsprout Early Reading reflect scientific research with an abundance of instructional strategies in phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. The developers of Headsprout Early Reading have produced a wide array of evidence that most children who work with the program acquire the specific skills it is designed to teach.

Strengths & Weaknesses
Strengths:
1. Every student response is acknowledged with appropriate reinforcement and feedback.
2. All lessons are highly interactive and provide multiple opportunities for practice, which in turn, increase student involvement.
3. The sequence of sounds in this program were chosen because of their consistency in pronunciation.
4. Sounds are held out or stretched during pronunciation and sounding out of words.
5. A high focus on all aspects of fluency: establishes automatic letter-sound and word recognition, models expressive readings of text, and provides multiple opportunities for repeated readings that are geared to increasing speed.
6. Decodable texts are used to provide students with the chance to apply the skills they have been learning.
7. By weaving cumulative review throughout all episodes, the potential for increasing the retention of skills and strategies is augmented.
8. The program adapts to a student's pattern of response, offering corrective feedback and teaching routines that are supportive and instructional.
9. Even though the program does not use voice recognition technology, the design of instruction encourages frequent oral responding, which is verified by a model for comparison.

Weaknesses:
 None were noted.

"The sole purpose of FCRR Reports is to be a reliable resource for teachers and administrators as they evaluate the alignment of instructional materials to Reading First guidelines and determine the degree to which programs are consistent with current scientific research in reading." - From the FCRR web site