The Reading Lesson with CD-ROM [Paperback]

Charan Langton (Author), Michael Levin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2001

We all want our children to read. With great pride we watch our children learn the alphabet and sing the ABC song. We buy picture books and read to them every night. When she can recognize a particular word or he can write his name, we are thrilled. But this is still far from reading the way we understand it. We try to teach reading, but often do not know where to start. So easy for us, reading seems so difficult and confusing to teach.

We found ourselves in this situation when our daughter was four years old. She learned the alphabet, and we were waiting for her to start reading some simple words. We sent for several commercial reading programs, the same ones you often hear advertised on the radio. What we got back was a slew of cassette tapes and flash cards. Our daughter would not sit and listen to the tapes, and the flash cards were all over the house. We also bought software programs for learning to read and found them too shallow and haphazard. Disappointed, we began to make our own simple exercises and stories for her to read. We read books on reading instruction for children, researched academic material, talked to parents and teachers, and began to develop a simple daily reading program. Michael's understanding of child psychology and development, and my desire for a simple, easy-to-follow method, led to the program you hold in your hands.

We have created the Reading Lesson for parents who want to teach their children to read and for instructors teaching basic reading skills to children. The program is suitable for both home schooling and classroom use. It is structured, clear and simple but it does require direct involvement of the parent or a teacher, which we believe is a key element in learning to read.

The Reading Lesson is designed for any child who shows interest in books and reading. Some unique features of this course also make it useful for older children with reading difficulties. What makes this program special The Reading Lesson offers an easy-to-follow recipe for teaching children to read. It takes a child with no reading skills to about the second grade level in reading. Never-too-hard and never-too-easy, step-by-step the lessons teach phonics and build the sight vocabulary. We begin the lessons with three to four sounds and introduce sight words as we go along. Word recognition skills develop through the use of key words. Once these key words are learned using Phonics, we encourage the child to read them as sight words to gain fluency. Certain words such as you and do are difficult to explain using the phonic principles. These and other non-phonic key words are presented as sight words. The Reading Lesson uses a controlled vocabulary of developmentally appropriate words. The vocabulary of the program closely corresponds to the 500 most commonly used words in English. We use many of these words as key words. The Reading Lesson does not follow the alphabet. Instead, we begin by teaching the most common letters in the English language. That way, the child can begin reading words and simple stories from the very first lesson. There are no boring drills. All reading is context oriented. You will hear your child say, "Look, I can read!" after the very first lesson. Happiness is knowing that you are making it possible. The Reading Lesson uses only lower-case letters in the first ten lessons of the course. Often young children do not know the lower-case letters well. Realizing that ninety-five percent of all letters in print are lower-case letters, this is where we start. Upper-case letters are introduced later in the program. For children who know the capital letters of the alphabet, the transition from the lower-case to the upper-case letters is easy. The Reading Lesson uses special typography. The letters are large in the early lessons and get smaller as we progress. The words are spaced far apart, and page clutter is kept to a minimum. We use special symbols to help the child learn the complex and irregular rules of English pronunciation. Children often confuse certain letters, such as b and d. There are special marks to help the child distinguish these two letters. The Reading Lesson is designed for children ages 4 to 8. Since most children in this age group cannot follow if-then rules, or rules such as i before e except after c, we have kept all rules to a bare minimum. Your child will learn these rules in due course as part of the school curriculum. We do not even teach the difference between vowels and consonants. As you will see, your child can learn to read just as well without knowing any of these rules.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Eric really likes the program and I am surprized at how he can distinguish the words with very little help from me. -- Terry Presnell, Castro Valley, CA

I've been using the Reading Lesson for my 4-year old. He loves it and has been making remarkable progress...I highly recommend it. -- Rene Paufve, America on line

The Reading Lesson is the perfect first reader. It teaches one main concept at a time. The stories are fun... -- Ann O'Brien, San Ramon, CA --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Publisher

How to do the lessons There are twenty lessons in this book. Each lesson will take about two weeks to complete. Before starting a lesson, we suggest that you read the instructions for that lesson. Take a moment to practice how to say the sounds. Each letter is paired with a picture.

You need to be consistent in how you sound out the letters. However, a word of caution is needed: no two children or even adults will say a sound in exactly the same way. Regional accents and children's relatively weak auditory and articulation skills account for the variations. In the classroom this fact is particularly obvious. It is impossible to make all children say a sound in the same way. Encourage your child to make the closest possible sound to the one suggested in the lesson but allow some leeway. Blending sounds and reading new words is what counts. Learning phonics is an important, however, an intermediate step. So do not insist on absolute accuracy in sounding out the individual letters if it is difficult for your child.

You may consider purchasing the Reading Lesson CD-ROMs. Through animation and simple games, these multimedia companions will make learning to read fun. For very young children, we suggest, the Sounds of Letters DVD, another good way to teach phonics.

For many young readers (including children who are familiar with the alphabet), the letters in words seem to melt together. The instructions in Lesson One show how to blend the sounds. The bars under each sound unit will help your child to identify and separate the letters she already knows. These bars are there as guides and are used to blend the sounds into words. This process is called sounding out. At first, blending is difficult for most children. You will need to help the child but he will get better at it with practice.

Each lesson consists of words, exercises and short stories. When reading the words, ask the child to tell you what the word means. Before you read the story, read the title and talk a little bit about the content of the story. Your child may also enjoy these stories on our animated StoryBook CD-ROM.

Approximately 300 key words form the basis of reading skills in this course. Each lesson introduces a set of key words. Your child should learn them well before you proceed to the next lesson. These words are used in later lessons. How fast should you go The length and the pace of the daily lessons will vary with the child's age and abilities. We suggest the following schedule: For children under five, one page per day For children between five and six, two to three pages per day For children over six, three or more pages per day

Children have a very short attention span. Try to keep each lesson under fifteen minutes and spend no more than five to seven minutes per page. If your child is young, don't rush. Work at a leisurely and comfortable pace. Remember: you have plenty of time to complete the course and, if necessary, to go back and repeat the course before your child starts reading instruction in school.

We do not suggest that you try to teach a child under the age of three to read. Contrary to some books that suggest that you can teach infants to read, there is no proof that such a thing is possible. Children need certain developmental skills before they can read. Flashing cards with letters and words at a baby is a fun thing to do and makes us feel like good parents, but it does not work.

If your child is reluctant to do the lessons, you may be going too fast. Slow down the pace. Always try to stop the lesson just before the child gets bored. If your child is having real trouble staying on task and learning the material of the first lessons, he may not be ready for this program. Put it aside for the time being and try again in a few months.

In every lesson, there are individual sentences as well as little stories. Most children prefer to read only the stories. They are happy to show-off, and love to be praised when they do it right. The sentences, although they contain words from the stories, present somewhat greater reading difficulty because the child cannot guess the words from the context. Stories make guessing easier. Children need to develop both of these types of reading abilities, so we advise not to skip the sentences just because the child does not want to do them.

Children learn to read faster and more easily if they learn to write letters and words at the same time. Our brain receives direct messages from the movement of our finger joints and remembers the shape of each letter. Through writing exercises, a connection between sound and letter is made. We highly recommend the Writing Lesson CD-ROM which has printable pages for daily practice to learn complementary hand writing skills.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Mountcastle Company (March 1, 2001)
• ISBN-10: 0913063118
• ISBN-13: 978-0913063118
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (165 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,040,570 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

181 of 187 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How I taught my 2 and a half year old to read., July 22, 2003

By 

Fernando Chapa (Chatsworth, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Reading Lesson: Teach Your Child to Read in 20 Easy Lessons (Paperback)

I have taught three children to read trying various methods at different stages in their development.

After researching & almost one thousand dollars on reading programs I finally settled on "Teach Your Child to Read in 20 Easy Lessons" for my two year old son. My research has led me to several conclusions, among which are:

* Different types of reading programs may work better at different stages in your child's development. For example, "How to Teach Your Baby to Read" by Glenn & Janet Doman, works best for children under two.
* If your child is approximately 4 years or older and DOES NOT HAVE ANY LETTER RECOGNITION, then a program like "Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons" may work best.
* Hooked on phonics may work well for children over the age of six who already have some reading skills, but are having problems.
* Bob First (Scholastic) books are good for kids 4 and up. Younger kids may have problems with the Bob First books because the print is too small.
* Do NOT teach the alphabet to kids under 3 years old. They will learn to read more easily if instead, starting with lower case letters, you first teach the sounds a letter makes. They can easily pick up the names of the letters once they are well into their reading program.

The first lesson in the 20 Easy Lessons book starts by introducing your child to the sounds made by five of the most commonly used letters in the 500 most commonly used words of the English language. Whereas the book recommends spending up to 5 minutes on one page, I only spent about 15 seconds per session and two sessions per day, for a total of 30 seconds per day. Just long enough to point out the letters and say the sounds. The first couple of times (I introduce any new concept) I do not ask my child to repeat anything. The next couple of sessions, I asked my child to repeat after me while I pointed to the letters. After another couple of sessions, your child will be saying the letter sounds as you point to the letters. After a few days, we were going through half a page a day, and repeating each page two or three times. After a month of this, you will be able to cover one page at a time (instead of half pages).

Every so often, the book has a worksheet that may not be developmentally appropriate for your child (e.g., matching letter sounds to a picture of an animal that starts with the same sound). Skip these worksheets if your child is too young.

My child is on lesson 7 and can easily read sentences like "Pam got a fish in the pet shop. The cat wants the fish, but the cat can not swim." He is able to read words that he doesn't know by sounding them out.

I few more tips to consider.
* Do not teach your child if either of you are in a bad mood, hungry, or distracted in any way.
* Get rid of all distractions during a lesson (e.g., T.V., radio, ringing phones, talking people, etc.)
* Teach your child every day, including weekends.
* Make the lessons short. Start with 10 to 15 seconds per session. At 2 years 8 months old, my son's sessions are now about 1 minute long, once or twice per day.
* If your child is reluctant, try the following. "Would you like to go outside and play after your reading lesson?" or "Lets play with the Play-Dough after our reading lesson".
* Sometimes you can use hand puppets to help with the reading lesson.
* I have a Rubbermaid container that I call the Treasure Chest. It is filled with many little toys I purchased at the 99 cent store. Sometimes I use this by saying, "Let's have a reading lesson and then you can pick a treasure from the treasure chest."
* Do not force your child. If he or she doesn't want to do the reading lesson, take a day off and try a different tactic the following day.
* Read books to your child on a regular basis.
* When out and about, point out words to your child that he or she already knows.
* If your child makes a reading mistake during a session, do not say "No" or "That's not correct". Sometimes you can just let it slide. Other times you can help them by telling them the answer.
* Try not to pressure your child to show off his or her reading skills to other people.

I have many more ideas and opinions, but not enough space.

I think that kids 2 years to 5 years old will get the most benefit out of this book.

53 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Reading Lesson - Excellent Tool for Guided Reading, December 28, 2000

By 

Joan Benjamin (Danville, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Reading Lesson (Spiral-bound)

Hello. I am a second grade teacher and I would like to share my experience with this reading program, The Reading Lesson. The Reading Lesson is an excellent way to supplement any primary grade reading program. It carefully covers all necessary phonics, thus guiding the beginning student in phenomic awareness and reinforcing the letter-sound relationships to remedial readers. Because it is easy for first and second graders to use and they enjoy it (The children in my class love this program) they can work on it independently, I use it during center time. I like the way the program uses a finger to help the student "read through" the words. I do this in my guided reading groups so the reinforcement in a computer program is very helpful. Even if there are no computers in your classroom the workbooks are well thought out, organized by sounds, and the letters are big. Another great part about this program is that it contains almost all of the sight words we teach in the primary grades, so even students who know sounds can use it to practice their sight words. Basically, I am very pleased with this product and it has added a lot to my reading program. I have seen big improvments in my student's reading and know The Reading Program is the reason for some of this success.

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Reading Lesson, August 1, 2001

By 

Helene (Hampton Bays, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Reading Lesson: Teach Your Child to Read in 20 Easy Lessons (Paperback)

My grandson Luke, age 6, started to learn how to read this past year in kindergarten. I wanted to help him increase his skills over the summer and found "The Reading Lesson" on the internet. There were 2 chapters to download to see if you would like the book. I tried them out on Luke and he loved them. We are now on Chapter 5 and Luke's skills have skyrocketed! We also got the companion CD. I use this as his reward for finishing a chapter. The CD reinforces what you learn in the book. It is very pleasing to a child, with easy to understand word exercises and games. One of Luke's favorites is the fishing boat game on the CD. This book is an excellent tool for very early readers or a great companion for beginning school readers. If your child is ready to read, this book is a must! It has everything you need to help your child learn to read. I also think this book would be excellent for teaching adults to read. Can't say enough about the book. GREAT!