Teach Your Child to Read in Just Ten Minutes a Day [Paperback]

Sidney Ledson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 6, 2006

Reveals the phonic program by which preschoolers as young as two begin reading at the Sidney Ledson Institute for Intellectual Advancement (see www.sidneyledsoninstitute.com). This light-hearted, yet scientifically advanced, method permits parents, schoolteachers and even babysitters to quickly teach children of all ages to read.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Born, London, England, 1925. Raised in Toronto's east-end from 1927. Served in the RCAF during WWII as an electronic technician, then attended the Ontario College of Art.

Art Career: A complete description is to be found in A Dictionary of Canadian Artists (1971), by Colin MacDonald. Paintings hung in the Royal Canadian Academy, the Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolors, the Canadian National Exhibition, The Royal Society of Portrait Painters (London, England), and the Annual Paris Salon (France). Lectured for the Art Gallery of Ontario. Executed many portraits of prominent Canadians and film stars (in both Hollywood and England) as well as commercial art (advertising, magazine and newspaper illustration).

Music career: Played alto, tenor, and baritone saxophones, clarinet and flute in various dance bands and small combos (1945-1955), dance-work and jazz, in Canada, U.S., and Europe.

Acting: Little Theatre work in Ottawa and private productions working with the then-unknown Rich Little and Dan Aykroyd. Stage hypnotist at military bases in Europe.

Incidental vocations: munitions assembly tech, photographer, sales rep (life insurance, real estate, Encycolpaedia Britannica, Fuller Brush, automobiles, advertising and printing), short-order cook, taxi driver.

Literary career: Wrote five stage plays, a comedy TV series (Back-page Challenge, aired on Ottawa cable-vision: produced, directed and starred), feature articles for the Ottawa Citizen, magazine articles, press releases and promos (as Information Officer for two federal government departments), radio reports (as a CBC freelance broadcaster). Books published before formally entering the field of education: The FUNdamental French Language Program, and Grammar for People Who Hate Grammar (this latter published in both England and Canada).

Educator: Created a phonic reading program employing games to teach my own children, then ages two and three. The quick success of this venture prompted a study of reading technology to learn why similar quick success was difficult in schools. I subsequently wrote Teach Your Child o Read in 60 Days. The book remained in print 23 years and sold an unprecedented 35,000 in Canada plus U.S. sales. A boxed version of the reading program was then produced, requiring me to make several promotional tours across Canada and the U.S.

I then learned of the proven relationship between early literacy and heightened intelligence. So, on completing a study of past intellectual titans, and of manufactured geniuses, and of conclusions reached in the fields of psychometrics and epistemology (which deal with the measurement of intelligence, the conditions that advance or retard it, and establish its limits), I wrote Raising Brighter Children.

Finally, on deciding to provide for others people's children in intellectual advantage I had inadvertently given my own, I established a center in 1980 offering a special program designed to stimulate intellectual growth. Results confirm that in three years (or fewer) of attendance, children's intelligence rises to genius-level (IQ 140-145).

Education was never my chosen field. I began as an amateur. The subject fascinated me and propelled me to begin a study of the mechanics of learning, and to do so without thought for an eventual income or educational stature. I was enthralled by the notion that learning could be speeded or slowed (a spin-off from B.F. Skinner's pioneer work with teaching machines in the late 1950s). This helped me to understand my own aversion to public schooling and my decision to leave school at age 16.

Product Details

• Paperback: 242 pages
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing (July 6, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1412015545
• ISBN-13: 978-1412015547
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #141,898 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

65 of 65 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The funnest program available! kids read lots of fun words right away, no guessing, no sightwords!, June 17, 2008

By 

3_Angels - See all my reviews

This review is from: Teach Your Child to Read in Ten Minutes a Day (Paperback)

The program presented in this book is pure phonics just like in the perennial favorite "Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons" and it works. The backbone of the program is a fun little game called blocks that motivates kids to get through the early stages of learning to read. The author chooses to start with fun words like up, cup, and cat whereas most programs start with am, sam, and see. Phonics is nothing new, but the reason this book is so useful is the wealth of knowledge it gives parents on the science of teaching a child to read. After reading the book, all you need in order to sit down and teach your child to read is the list of 32 steps to remind you what order to proceed in and a little creativity about how to make it fun. There are not day to day lesson plans, because for a young child that isn't the most effective teaching method. Essentially the child needs to practice word blending, letter sound association, and left-to-right decoding. Ledson explains how to make these activities part of your daily routine. Lots of examples are given on how to make learning to read into games which you could copy directly, or even better if you are creative, you can make up the games as you go along to fit your child's unique interests. In addition to games, the author suggests using puppets as fellow learners to help motivate and captivate children and that worked really well for us. A puppet can encourage a child to try again ten times as often as a parent and the kids still giggle. In our public school, kindergartners are asked to memorize 100 sight words all about 3 letters long. That is a lot of hard miserable work, my child was in tears when she got the list the last month of preschool. The next week we started this program and it was easy and fun, no more tears. She only had to memorize 54 sounds, mostly one letter long and they were part of a game! Then she was able to start reading real books and enjoy it.

How fast does it work?

My daughter completed steps 1-32 (kindergarten) in 3 weeks at age 5 1/2, spending an hour a day playing games with me(she knew half the alphabet when she started). In three more months she completed the next level (first grade) spending 20 minutes a day. In two more months she had read her first 100 books. I never taught her sight words, but about half way through the second level she started kindergarten. She passed off the entire list of 100 sight words on the first day of school using phonics--only, struggling on "been" and "said". I had a friend who teaches at another school say she heard teachers talking about my daughter's amazing reading ability.

My son, age 4, needed lots of practice decoding left to right. We did about 5 minutes a day several times a week for over a year and he still was unsure, it was just games though, so he didn't get frustrated or feel dumb. Left to right was never destined to be easy for him, the games we played served as therapy to rewire his brain. He would certainly have been labeled dyslexic (like three generations of my family before him) if not taught to read by the phonic reading method. My son took about a year to finish the first 32 steps. His kindergarten teacher commented that although he wasn't "reading" like a few of her other students that he showed amazing confidence in sounding out new words, better than the students who were reading. Also, he was writing up a storm! (another fringe benefit of phonic reading instruction.)

I started my third child at age 2 on the 32 steps. She went through the first 32 steps in the course of a school year. She learned left to right reading automatically with no problem! We would spend time working on it for about 5 minutes at a time once a week and the rest of the learning was just conversations, refrigerator magnets, playdough letters, letters on cereal boxes, etc.

Pros of this method

*Don't have to memorize a single sight word (my kids can't/won't do that).

*Kids never think of learning to read as any more difficult than learning the alphabet song.

*Kids don't develop dyslexia (disordered reading). I come from a family where about half of the people in three generations suffer from an intense difficulty in learning how to read (aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers, nieces, nephews, and so on). As a child, four of the five children in my family received intensive phonic reading therapy after learning to read proved unsuccessful. Then we moved to a new state where they didn't do this for struggling readers. The fifth child was labeled dyslexic and put in special education. (I taught him to read in the eighth grade and he is now a history major at a prestigious university, a very reading intensive field of study.)

*This method helped me spot reading problems that had been invisible with my daughter while she tried whole word method unsuccessfully and tearfully in the last several months of preschool.

*When kids graduate from this program they don't have to read boring repetitive books that insult their intelligence. Repetitive books are whole-word method, my kids can really read and aren't limited to books with 30 or less words.

*I've noticed that this method of reading instruction makes WRITING easier for kids. My kids write all the time, they don't think about it, it is just second nature because if they know how a word SOUNDS, they can write it and if they have read it a few times in a book, they spell it correctly too. This puts them miles ahead in school.

Cons of this method

*this method requires a lot of thought and preparation from parents.

*you use treats and candy to get them started, which have to be weaned away eventually.

*because it is easy, it is SOOOO tempting to rush a child through the program too fast, keep telling yourself "easy and fun, don't push too fast". The first 6-7 steps should take much, much, much longer than the rest.

*the program doesn't have lesson plans. That is because you don't need one, you just say "U" makes this sound "UUUUU" an play games to reinforce it, after reading the book, you know what to incorporate into the games to be successful, however some people see this as a negative.

The second level of this program is sentences. Since my kids were reading so well by then, rather than games, I typed up the sentences in the book and printed them out 6 per page to make a reader. The kids read each "page" in the reader 3 times before moving to the next. This level was very easy to teach and I believe this is what could be expected for most kids. The first 32 steps take more effort, time, and creativity, but are more memorable. My kids still talk about how much fun it was.

55 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not as user-friendly as I wanted, October 20, 2002

By 

S. Bradley (Hood River, OR United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Teach Your Child to Read in Ten Minutes a Day (Paperback)

This book is full of good information, but I was looking for something more in the lesson plan style, rather then just prose. It makes a good compliment to Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons by Siegfried Engelmann, which I purchased at the same time and have found very effective with my children. Engelmann's book is more pre-structered, where this book gives more of basic guidelines and turns you loose. Great together, if you're just looking for one, I'd suggest choosing based on which way you feel comfortable teaching.

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Fun Is A Bonus, August 24, 2000

By 

Maureen Horrocks (Fort McMurray, Alberta Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Teach Your Child to Read in Ten Minutes a Day (Paperback)

This book was great for its clear directions, great ideas and good advice. I was amazed by the complete acuracy of how the suggested activities would take place. Not only will you learn how to teach phonics, but how to instill the fun of learning. On cue, my three year old responded to the "lessons" with giggles, laughter and begged for more. This book is great for anyone that wants to see the joy and delight of any child as they learn to read. The challenge will be to keeping it to only ten minutes a day.