Our Company

The roots of the HEC Reading Horizons products, Reading Horizons at Home and Discover Intensive Phonics at Home, are grounded in an intensive, explicit, systematic phonics program crafted in the early 1970s by education professional Charlotte Lockhart. Ms. Lockhart, a former elementary instructor and principal, created the original Discover Intensive Phonics for Yourself curriculum in response to students' poor reading performance in her school's reading programs. By tutoring students in her office daily while employing Orton-Gillingham-based techniques that incorporated multi-sensory, high-kinesthetic / verbal / visual learning cues, Lockhart was able to teach her students quickly how sound and letter relationships create words. Young students learned to read and spell and lives were changed.

HEC Reading Horizons, located in North Salt Lake, Utah, distributed Charlotte Lockhart's instructional manuals for over 20 years. In 1984, HEC Reading Horizons created companion software, which provided individualized instruction and accompanying hands-on practice with Charlotte Lockhart's product, for elementary aged students. In 1987, however, the HEC staff became aware of the vital need for a sequential, basic reading program for adults. They applied for and were awarded an SBIR (Small Business Innovative Research) grant from the federal Department of Education to produce the Discover Intensive Phonics for Yourself software for non-reading adults; the result was Reading Horizons. Thousands of sites and hundreds of thousands of older students have since reaped the benefits of the development of the Reading Horizons program.

Our Products

The Reading Horizons at Home and Discover Intensive Phonics at Home, computer software program, along with corresponding direct instruction materials, have taught hundreds of thousands of adults and youth to read. In literacy programs nationwide, even non-readers have advanced several grade levels of reading ability while using this interactive, multi sensory software that deals exclusively with basic reading and word attack skills. Our products have been used successfully in thousands of elementary, middle, and high schools; community college ABE programs; workplace and community literacy locations; and adult and youth corrections programs, as well as for individuals at home and in home schooling settings.

We continue to improve existing products and add exciting new elements to our collection of effective literacy tools. We invite you to explore our Web site for information about how our products can benefit you or someone you know. Feel free to contact us with questions or comments.