How fast does Mentava teach reading?
Most apps that claim to be educational use glittering generalities to describe their results. They refer to ambiguous “phonics skills”, a “pathway that leads to literacy” or “boosting pre-literacy skills”.
At Mentava, we care about specifics and rigor, and our curriculum is no exception. We believe that if a program claims to be educational, it should be able to clearly communicate its academic milestones and the pace at which students can complete them.
Our expectation at Mentava is that a preschooler who doesn’t know any letters can reach an early 2nd grade reading level in 6-12 months, though some students complete our curriculum much faster.
Parents unfamiliar with the Common Core reading standards are often surprised to learn how rapidly we cover them, but that’s because they don’t realize how easy they are.
The Common Core curriculum for Kindergarten is to learn individual letters and some common sight words.
Mentava’s levels 1-20 roughly align to the kindergarten Common Core curriculum and can be completed in a couple months, spending about 15-30 minutes/day.
The 1st grade Common Core curriculum has kids beginning to read simple one- and two-syllable words. It also introduces digraphs (like sh, ch, th, etc) and common long vowels like ee, oi, silent e, and so on.
Finally, in 2nd grade, students learn more vowel teams, two-syllable words with long vowels, unusual letter combinations (eg soft “g”, igh, “tch”, etc), and more sight words.
Currently, there are about 120 levels in Mentava, made up of about 2300 learning activities. The first 20 levels is all we need to mostly cover kindergarten, while levels 21-96 roughly align with the Common Core 1st grade curriculum.
Our remaining ~25 levels focus on 2nd grade concepts (sight words and non-standard letter combinations like soft “g”, “igh”, “tch”, etc) with the goal of transitioning kids into independent reading of physical books as quickly as possible.
To make this transition smoother, we organize and batch our sight words and letter combinations to quickly prepare kids for specific books. For example, we teach “-ould”, “-ouse”, and “there/where/here” to prepare kids to read Green Eggs and Ham on their own. (“Would you eat them here or there? Would you, could you in a house?”)
After level 104, students will be able to read Green Eggs and Ham. After level 109, they’ll be able to read Hop on Pop. Level 112 prepares students for the Today I Will Fly (the Elephant and Piggie book), level 115 gets through The Eye Book, level 117 covers Are You My Mother, and level 120 (activity 2342) is Waiting is Not Easy.
From there we're continuing to add content to scaffold out other beginning reader books, but we encourage families to transition away from our software and into reading mostly physical books whenever it feels right to them.
Summer is a great time to ramp up your kid's reading skills and turn them into an independent recreational reader. We’ll post about what that typically looks like and some of our favorite "early reader" books soon!
