Customer Reviews

Get Ready to Read: A Practical Guide for Teaching Young Children at Home and in School

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I am a brand new Nursery Teaching Assistant at a private N-6 school in Philadelphia. In my search for books to help me learn more about teaching young childredn to read I found this wonderful work. Dr. Gould is a clear, inviting writer who knows her subject very well and is full of ideas to help parents and teachers with this important and sometimes challenging area. Full of anecdotal stories from her own practice and replete with easy and fun activities for both the teacher/parent and the young child.

This is the best pre-reading book I have seen. The specific games, tips, and exercises would also work for should-be-readers who are stuck. The author has lots of real experience. She supports phonics over purely "whole language". For a different but not incompatible approach to pre-reading, reading, and writing, see "Montessori Read & Write : A Parent's Guide to Literacy for Children by Lynne Lawrence. They build skills and get your child to reading. Probably best for child 3 - 6/7 years old. They are *not* in-a-rush, "learn to read" books. If you want that, try "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" by Siegfried Engelmann, et. al.

This book was very helpful in that it breaks "reading readiness" skills into several distinct areas and suggests many games to play with your kids to help them along. Two suggestions that I found very helpful were:

1. Start teaching only the lowercase alphabet, since this is what kids will use most and see around them the most

2. "Don't teach the ABC's" - in other words,
A) Refer to letters by their sound, not their name. Point to "T" and say /t/, not /tee/. This gives kids the info they need to start reading sooner and not get confused by trying to pronounce words using the letter names (ie, "MAN" is not pronounced /em ay en/.
B) Don't emphasize knowing the alphabet song or being able to sequence the letters alphabetically. That can come later.

My one complaint about this book is that the author is very heavy-handed in her insistence that everyone should do formal reading "lessons" with their children as early as three years old. She is quite insistent too that the more difficulty kids have with reading skills, the more important it is to teach them early so they will already know how to read before they start school. I fond her emphasis on "don't fall behind or the sky will fall in!" was a bit jarring.