Open Court has two stand-alone phonemic awareness kits for kindergarten and first grade. There are many opportunities to practice high frequency words, but little instruction for them. The kindergarten program has excellent rebus high frequency books providing confidence to beginning readers. Questions relate to the world and careers, rather than personal experiences. There are comprehension strategies in think alouds, but they are lacking in written responses.
All questions are oral in the upper grades.
The program expects too much of emergent readers and writers. Writing is strong for high functioning younger students. The program teaches students to write good summaries with opening and closing sentences, dialogue, and word choice. There are not enough opportunities to write an entire paper at the upper levels. Spelling for upper levels does not have enough practice.