The Horizons First Grade Phonics Readers are to be used as a companion to the Horizons First Grade Student Workbooks. For each lesson in the Student Workbooks, there is a corresponding story in the Readers. The story will illustrate and demonstrate the primary concept of the lesson. Most first grade students should not be expected to read the first forty stories independently. The student may still require some help with some of the words. The teacher or parent should make word cards for the words that the student does not know. The word cards should be reviewed with the student frequently. As the student's vocabulary increases, the student may be able to go back to the first forty stories and read them independently.