McGraw-Hill is an integrated reading program which teaches language skills and spelling as well as reading.  It is phonetically based and the children are able to read at the very beginning of the book. The first story is "Max the Cat". It teaches (as you might guess) words with the short a sound.  The stories in this series are wonderful, the illustrations are colorful and entertaining and the children love them.  This program  is  very good and offers repetition of both vocabulary and  skills. This repetition, in addition to an abundance of materials, meets the needs of all levels of learners one finds in a classroom.

  In addition to the work that we do in our basal readers during class, the children are expected to practice oral reading at home as part of their homework each night. A home reader is issued to each child as soon as he/she is able to read on a pre-primer level.  The children keep these readers as long as they need them. When they complete a reader, they return it and I give them another. It is extremely important that the children read aloud at home. This not only helps with comprehension skills, but also with reading fluency and expression.