The Reading Lesson: Teach Your Child to Read in 20 Easy Lessons Author: Michael Levin MD Charan Langton MS | Language: English | ISBN:
0913063029 | Format: PDF
The Reading Lesson: Teach Your Child to Read in 20 Easy Lessons Description
The Reading Lesson is a bestselling program that teaches young children to read in 20 easy lessons. It is designed as a step-by-step course for parents who want to teach their young children to read at home. The teaching method is based on phonics and key-word recognition, and with its innovative and guided approach, the 20 step-by-step lessons provide an easy-to-follow recipe for teaching children to read. Developed by pediatrician Michael Levin, the program has also been used successfully for children with disabilities.
How do I use the Reading Lesson?
There are twenty lessons in this book. Each lesson takes about two weeks to complete (with about 15 minutes of study per day). Before starting a lesson, we suggest that you read the instructions for that lesson. Each lesson begins with an introduction and a description of how to proceed. For example, lesson two introduces the letters “m”, “d”, and “r”. At the beginning of the lesson, there is an introduction with some words of advice and thoughts on how to go through the sounds of those letters and how to read them in words.
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. 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, since these words are used in later lessons.
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 teach the child basic sound blending. The special typography and font style the book uses will help your child to identify and separate the letters she already knows. These bars, dots, and special graphics 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.
How fast should I go through the book?
The length and the pace of the daily lessons will vary with your child's age and abilities. We suggest the following schedule: For children under five, one page per day will suffice and maintain their concentration on the lesson. For children between five and six, two to three pages per day will be sufficient. For children over six, three or more pages per day will be fine.
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.
How old should my child be when we start the Reading Lesson?
The book is meant for children between the ages of 3 and 8. 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!
The Reading Lesson is a totally developmentally appropriate course that is easy to follow, and makes learning to read fun for parents and kids. The book is an easy and cheap solution to teaching your children to read at home, and has been a success with families all around the world. Give it a try – you’re sure to love it.
- Paperback: 448 pages
- Publisher: Mountcastle Company; Second Edition, Second edition edition (April 1, 2002)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0913063029
- ISBN-13: 978-0913063026
- Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.5 x 1.2 inches
- Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
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.
My daughter loved this book (The Reading Lesson: Teach Your Child to Read in 20 Easy Lessons). She is currently in kidergarten and reading on a late second to early third grade level. We used this book during her preschool years.
I taught my daughter to read using "The Reading Lesson", but I used Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons to teach my first child. Both books use a similar approach. I believe that "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" gives the teacher (parent) a stronger foundation in teaching reading, and I used some of the tools I had gained from experiencing that method when teaching my daughter. The strength of "The Reading Lesson" is it's child-friendly appearance and approach. "Teach Your Child to Read..." is fully scripted and has the parent's script and child's assignments jammed together. My son hated it after a while. "The Reading Lesson" is not quite as strong of a program, but the pages are easy and fun for a child to look at. My daughter always wanted to do "just one more" page. Once we got to lesson 12 or 13 her reading started taking off. We actually didn't finish the book because she had gained enough tools to continue learning to read on her own.
The cover is a little misleading when it says "teach your child to read in 20 easy lessons". "Lesson" here is more like a unit. Each "lesson" may be 10-15 pages long, and is not designed to be completed in a day. With young children you would probably only do one page a day, where you might do several with older/highly motivated children.
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