Customer Reviews

The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading

5 star:		(48)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I (homeschooling mom) was very skeptical when I first received the book: No pictures! Then we (my 6-year old twins and I) started. And we loved it! We are half way through the book, and both kids read fluently. In their free time they pick up other books or anything else readable that they can find.

The (231) daily lessons are very well structured, take about 10-15 minutes each, and provide excellent in-text directions for the teacher, so there is no preparation time. And I learned that because there are no pictures, the focus is on decoding the letters and applying the phonics rules without any distraction.

Optional activities/games are fun to choose from. I recommend getting the pre-printed index cards that go along with the lessons and games (directly from Peace Hill Press, about $5.00).

The book ends with "Reading a Really Long and Silly Word": supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Imagine your new reader to read that properly without problems, and YOU helped them to get there.

After completing 89 lessons in this book, my daughter and I are calling it quits. We've worked on it on and off for over a year (she's 5 now), and for the sake of preserving a love of reading, have decided to shelve it. This book has been helpful in a number of ways; it is great for giving a parent the sense that they can indeed teach their own children, that reading is easy, and laying out a path for doing so. I have found it useful as a reference book, i.e. to show me what to introduce, remind me what the actual "rules" are, and give me direction for our lessons. However, there have been some significant problems.

1) The layout of the pages is daunting for a child. There are lots of words, no pictures, nothing to visually set apart the words that the child reads except that they're a bit larger. It seems overwhelming and very un-child-friendly.

2) The practice stories often make no sense, and fail to capture my daughter's interest at all. An example from today: "The black snake did wish that he had a snack of mice. The snake did scan the grass to prey on mice. The grey mice sat on the rock and ate nuts. The snake came to the rock. Hey! The mice fled. They hid in holes. The snake will have no snack this day." Awkward wording, nothing particularly interesting about that, no pictures. The optional follow-up activity is to illustrate this story and label the items.

3) The practice sentences are way too long, and overwhelm new readers. For example, the child has just been introduced to the "fl" blend (lesson 50), and reads the sentence, "Ducks in flocks flit and flap on the flat pond." This sentence is too long, has onomotopeic words with which they may not be familiar (flit), and makes them use the new rule 4 times!! Very frustrating for a child struggling to learn a new rule. This was one of 6 new blends introduced in this one lesson.

4) Exceptions are often introduced before rules. For example, today we learned that the vowel pair "ea" can sometimes make the long-a sound, as in great, break, steak. Okay, so my daughter goes to read "please", and says, "place". Of course! She's never been taught that "ea" USUALLY says the long-E sound. The old "when two vowels go walking" would have been helpful to learn first, not later. Also, today she learned that "ey" can say the long-A sound. So "smiley" is smilay until a later lesson... you get the picture. This has come up more than once.

5) Very rigid rules, introduced in a logical, but not necessarily helpful, order. Much more actual reading could be possible much sooner if they'd go ahead and introduce some of the more helpful rules out of sequence.

6) It would be helpful to introduce a number of sight words much earlier. Kids learn sight words very quickly, and a few of them up front can make many more books accessible.

If your child is VERY motivated to learn to read, I do think that this book will work. My 3-year-old son has this drive, and the first few lessons (we skip the letter-learning part) have taught him the basics of CVC words. But he would learn that just as easily if I just stuck some magnets on a board. My daughter is very global in her thinking, and is more interested in the content of stories than in mastering reading technique, and this book sends her running for cover. Honestly, I dread it, too. Fortunately she is now at the point where she can read basic easy readers, so we're going to drop this book, use it as a reference tool only, and continue with McGuffey Readers, Bob books, and everything on the library's easy reader shelf. For my other 3 kiddos, I'll be investigating other options.

This is everything a homeschooling parent could be looking for in a reading program and more. After only a few days of using this book with my 7 and 5 year old boys, I am seeing amazing results and am very happy with my decision to buy it. No more guesswork on how to teach certain concepts; the writers actually tell you what to say and how to say it. They also suggest optional games and songs to further engage kids and reinforce concepts, making this program all the more fun and thorough. My only suggestion for improvement would be to have the teaching words typed in a slightly larger print/font (that was something I really appreciated about "Phonics Pathways", the other reading program I highly recommend). Bravo, Jessie Wise, on another job well-done and our children thank you for it!

This book not only begins with a straightforward, easy-to-understand method, but it keeps going where most expensive reading programs leave off.

It wholly maintains phonetics and encourages the student to sound through longer words without any integration of the whole language approach.

The result is children who can read more difficult passages fluently at a very young age thus giving them literary freedom.

I am a teacher and a Language Arts' specialist. Because I am home schooling my own child, I ordered Wise's book as I felt I wanted a book specific to phonics instruction (and I love The Well-Trained Mind). I didn't want my son to miss something important along the way (yes, even teachers feel insecure about their own kids).

Although it's helpful to think about different vowel sounds and consent blends/digraphs, I find that Wise's very structured lessons are too limiting for us. Maybe it's my kid, but he is much more interested in learning to read in context than through the lessons (The Bob Books are a big hit, as are the I Can Read books). In fact, he even says the "boring" word when I pull out the book. Uh Oh. We do little bits throughout the day and I only focus on those areas where I can see he needs more support (as he taught himself to read at the age of 4). We do try to get as silly as possible as there is great potential for making up extremely goofy rhymes thanks to the helpful lists of word families.

A note of caution: Wise favours the terms "little a" and "big A", which can be confusing for children (upper case and lower case, although more technical, are more accurate descriptors than size). In addition, describing vowel sounds as "short" and "long" is also confusing for a child as you can draw out the "short" a in "cat" to be as long as the "long" a in "take". Unfortunately, these are the conventional terms used to differentiate vowel sounds; however, we choose to describe them differently at our house.

For the insecure or inexperienced "teacher", this book will help you understand the important phonetic concepts to cover with your child. *Your* child may enjoy the lessons and you may have peace of mind that you are being thorough. I do urge you to keep in mind that most early readers are children who are frequently read to and that not all children are ready to read at a very young age. Certainly, not all children need rigid phonics instruction to learn to read (although knowledge of phonics is important but it can be taught in the context of reading aloud with your child).

And feel free to deviate and make things a bit more fun (contrary to what Wise states, learning to read can be entertaining).

I'm using this with my 4-year-old son. Before I started homeschooling him, I had him in a private preschool, where he learned all his short-vowel and consonant sounds, as well as some basic math (beyond simple counting that is). In spite of that, I didn't skip the first two sections that teach short-vowel and consonant sounds, but I did cover two letters a day instead of just one. Otherwise I've followed the program the way it's laid out.

I gave the book 4 stars because it's simple, orderly, and lives up to it's name. However, I have a few issues so far that kept the book from getting 5 stars.

1) The poems in the first two sections. Yes, kids are great at memorizing things, but these are horrible. The very first letter caused problems for my son, who kept trying to say "first vowel" for both lines because the lines were so similar. Patterns are a wonderful way to memorize things, but these patterns weren't consistent. It made me wonder whether Jessie Wise had field-tested these on a variety of children before publishing them. I'm sure some kids will get them, but the combination of boring and inconsistent is a little too much for the short-vowel poem. The consonant poem is better - the pattern is consistent, and it's a little more fun (my son loved saying "/b/,/b/, bat" even though I didn't ask him to learn the poem), but after the short-vowel poem I opted to skip it. In my son's case it wasn't needed.

2) Other reviewers have noted a lack of phonemic awareness training, which I also noted. This may be due simply to the fact that the book was never intended to address that area, but some direction here from the author would be helpful - if for no other reason than not every "ordinary parent" will realize that it could be helpful to address that explicitly if their child doesn't pick up on it on his own. I found other books to supplement in that area.

3) The lack of illustrations were not a problem - in fact I prefer it that way - but the text intended for the child and the adult needs to be set apart much better than it is. Yes, the fonts are different, in both size and style, but that's just not enough. I would recommend either boxing the text intended for the children or printing in two colors. Even I have to look twice on occasion to see which parts I'm supposed to read to myself, read out loud, or have my son read - and this is after I've reviewed it before sitting down with him!

4) I found it necessary to supplement with other activities for drill. I used the activities in the lessons, but they weren't much fun and I do think it's important to make drill fun even if the lessons themselves are treated as work. Adding an element of fun can make the difference between a child who learns willingly and a child who fights you every step of the way.

5) I've also found it necessary to supplement with decodable readers that are a little more fun for my son than the passages in the book. There's nothing wrong with those passages, but there's nothing like the satisfaction of reading an actual book, no matter how simple (I picked up the Bob Book series). Jessie Wise and her daughter, Susan Wise Bauer, actually recommend this in their book, The Well-Trained Mind.

Lastly, we're not done yet. If I run into anything else as we continue I will add a comment. Overall I still recommend this book, but it would be nice to see some of these issues addressed in the next edition. Even with these issues it's a solid, carefully-laid out phonics program presenting completely in a single volume.

UPDATE: I've changed my rating to five stars. We've completed 2/3 of the lessons at this point and I'm extremely pleased with my son's progress (although his enthusiasm leaves something to be desired on occasion, proving he's a normal boy). My only other complaint is the occasional use of words that haven't been introduced yet in the reading passages. A fairly minor issue to be honest, since my son usually managed to get the word right without hints from me, but good to be aware of.

I've only used this book for a week--gotten through just the vowels--and so far I love it. Each lesson is short, but includes plenty of repetition to help you child hear and remember the letters sounds. And the use of poems and other techniques are working--after just 5 days, my son is confident about the short vowel sounds. The lessons are completely scripted, giving the instructor the exact words to say, along with instructions about things to show or write down for your child and suggested responses from the child. We tried the 100 Lessons book for teaching reading and found it confusing and a little awkward. This one is super straight-forward and easy to follow.

This book works well for a child (like my oldest) who is extremely driven and oral repetitiveness feeds her the logic needed to process reading. However, my second child is a visual learner that learns quickly when her interests are engaged and there is an activity for reinforcement. This book does not work very well for her. There are no pictures, activities, or much of anything other than "repeat after me" lines. She is painfully bored with simple oral recitation, and I will be making some changes so as to not continue her strong disdaine for our reading time. I want to foster a LOVE for reading.

If you love reading, you know how valuable literacy is for children. We read stories as a family with our children, ages 3 1/2 & 5. We also enjoy trips to the library and finding new books together. I've watched them grow to love books, and naturally begin to develop language & reading readiness in these early years.

I'm a public school parent, not a homeschooler, but I believed that my kids would love reading if they knew how to do it. So, I invested in this book, and have been very pleased. I wasn't sure how to teach them to read, and wanted to keep enjoying life together without a lot of pressure to teach & learn. The Ordinary Parent's Guide is a great resource for several reasons.

1) it recognizes that most parents don't think of themselves as reading/literacy teachers. It is encouraging, informative, and realistic. I appreciate all of the tips to "if ____ isn't happening, put it away for _____ months and then try again."

2) it is laid out so that you can spend 10 minutes a day without setting up a "classroom" and "homeschooling" your little ones. It uses simple poems, songs, and memory games to make the process fun for everyone. It also uses very inexpensive tools, like index cards, to help teach (no computer games or fancy book series needed).

3) The author understands the value of knowing how to read & the need for kids to love learning. Her lessons help them progress quickly, so they can have early success & build confidence.

4) The exercises work. My older child was already starting to pick up on words, phonics, and sentences in concept, and these exercises helped me give him the tools to take off. He's reading nicely, and soaks up all of the phonics rules like a sponge. My younger child didn't recognize all of the letters yet, though he could sing the A-B-C's. By a couple months in, he knows the letters, but understands the role of vowels & can sound out a few words as he sees them.

It's worth picking up as a resource, or a day-by-day guide of literacy activities at home.

I started this book right after 100 Easy Lessons by Siegfried(loved it) and followed up with Parent's along with Spelling Workout A.

Upon completing 100 Easy Lessons she was able to read most 1/2 easy readers but we needed to fill the gap with spelling rules and just plain old practice.

This combination has given my 6 year old daughter such confidence. She is picking up books and tackling them head on because she has the tools to do so. We are on Lesson 155 and half way through Spelling Workout A and she loves it.

I think the spelling program along with the reading fuels the learning process.

I absolutely love this book because it is repetitive enough to build confidence and it weaves review throughout the book so there is a continuous strand of practice all along the way.