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

~ (Author), Charan Langton (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Five Star Excellent!... Simply spectacular! Extremely resourceful. Take my advice. This book works!" -- A StoryBook Wever's Book Reviews - Jennifer LB Lesse

I found it to be a very appealing program that would be especially beneficial to homeschoolers. -- Bellaonline.com, Terri Bittner, Homeschool host

Product Description

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.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Mountcastle Company; 2nd edition (April 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0913063029
• ISBN-13: 978-0913063026
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (102 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #23,933 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 43 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.

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

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

By	Helene "emmau3" (Hampton Bays, NY USA) - See all my reviews

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!

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A READING PROGRAM WELL WORTH THE MONEY, August 9, 2002

By A Customer

I would highly recommend this book for anyone looking to give their child a head start in reading. I purchased the book along with the CD-ROM for my 5 yr. old daughter. She enjoys the reading lesson so much that she reminds me daily, "it's time for the reading lesson". Before purchasing the reading lesson I downloaded the first two lessons (free) from thereadinglesson.com website and my daughter was thrilled that she knew how to read. Prior to the reading lesson my daughter had trouble remembering words and letter sounds. But just after a few lessons she would remember words and sounds easily. We read 3-4 pages a day for maybe 15 minutes. It's been about a month and a half and my daughter is now on lesson eight and reading (words in lesson eight) with minimal help. She also just had her interview for kindergarten and her teacher was amazed at how much she knew. Each lesson begins with brief instructions and tips on reading. I would suggest purchasing the book along with the CD-ROM (not only because it's fun) but the child would learn the correct way to sound out letters. The program is so simple with amazing results!