Review | The Reading Lesson

I first encountered The Reading Lesson about 4 years ago. Since then I have used it long term with half a dozen kids ages 3-7 and used it as a supplement for several others. I, personally love The Reading Lesson. It is a graduated phonics based reading curriculum that can be completed as quickly as 10 weeks (9 weeks and 6 days is our record).

The complete title is The Reading Lesson: Teach Your Child to Read in 20 Lessons may be a little deceiving if you consider a 'lesson' to be something that is done in just one day. Each of the lessons is about 20-27 pages of large printed lessons. I find that usually the fastest I can get through one lesson is 3 days, though depending on the child, the teacher, the pace and a few other factors a lesson could take 10-14 days.

I love this book for many reasons, first I will talk about some of the positives:
The book teaches each letter and sound as it is needed. Each lesson introduces some letters or letter sounds. For example, in lesson 1 the letters: a, c, s, o and t are introduced along with their sounds. Children drill, practice and use those letters and only those letters to read through the words and short 'stories'. So they may read "cat sat at cot" in the first lesson.

Each lesson introduces new letters and letter sounds (i.e. short and long vowel sounds are introduced separately to reduce confusion. Special markers are used to help children distinguish between sounds and are gradually removed until the children are confidently and competently reading without them.)
The children are given the chance to drill and review the sounds, read new words, review old words, read sentences and phrases that use a mix of new words and old words.

The pages aren't cluttered with pictures, obnoxious colors and chaos that is meant to be "fun" so I find it especially good for children who are easily distracted or just don't like visual clutter. They aren't bland to look at, each page has a picture or two. The short page that contains the basic stories are always illustrated with a picture of a character or a scene.

I love the approach of teaching sounds as needed. What is the point in teaching kids at least the basic 26 sounds of the alphabet when many of them are only going to use a handful of them for the first couple of days? If your kid is going to learn to read "cat" first, then teach them c,a,t and practice blending the sounds to read the words act, cat, and the sound 'tac'

This makes it easy for kids to focus on the reading and reduces frustration from sifting through sounds they know but can't use. I have found the book accessible to children as young as 3yo, though the teaching method that I use with a 3yo who is eager to be a 'big kid' is very different from the method I would use with a 3yo who wants to read which is different still from the method I use with a 6yo that is ready to read and eager to learn how, versus a 7yo who is ready developmentally to read but doesn't want to. I have used this book extensively with half a dozen kids and it has been a success each time. I am currently using it to teach 3 children and all of them are making progress using TRL where other books or programs have failed or just fizzled.

Another great thing about TRL is that it focuses on lower case letters first. This might annoy some people, or even just seem odd, but lets think about this. The vast majority or written language is lower-case so it makes sense that kids should learn to recognize lower case letters first. Only the first letter of each sentence is guaranteed to be capitalized, along with proper nouns such as names and titles. I find this a very helpful strategy and so far this hasn't been a problem at all. I find that it reduces frustrations in some children because they don't have to divert energy to remember that
 A = a =  /a/. At the end of each lesson is a list of upper and lower case letters that you can go over gradually with your child, but I have never used them, I find that flash cards, alphabet books, games and simple worksheets have been a better way to teach which uppercase letters go to the lower case letters

I am using TRL with a boy who successfully completed Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons but is really only at an early to mid first grade reading level.

My biggest gripe about TRL is that in the early lessons, they use poor grammar even where it could be avoided. For example, in lesson 5, which introduces the last of the short vowel sounds and gives the child good practice reading cvc words one story reads:
"bob is on the bus. tim is not. bus is gone.if tim runs, tim can get the bus" Based on everything that the book itself has taught, that exact same story could have been written
"bob is on the bus, tim is not. the bus is gone. if tim runs, tim can get on the bus"
Very minor changes make the story feel a little more grammatically correct, though I concede that really only the 2nd sentence is truly off .

Well before the end of the book, your child will be reading grammatically correct stories with punctuation, capitalization, and all of that so don't let that put you off. After lesson 5, I insist that my students read from other basic readers and simple books every single day. Though sometimes you can begin reading other things after lesson 3 or 4 depending on what you have available, if the child is interested and how you feel about sight words etc...

All in all, I give this book 9.5 out of 10 stars. It is an excellent source and by the end of the program your child will be able to read on a 2nd grade level, the book can be completed by most students in about 2-8 months if used appropriately and reading is practiced everyday. I will update this post later to include photographs

Back to School Special Series

So, in honor of the Back to School Season, I'm planning a special series of articles and reviews targeted toward the PreK-3rd Grade range and I am just uber-excited to share it here.

I will be reviewing a few programs for reading, math, science and Spanish and sharing some of the best posts from some great educational blogs. Please be sure and come back during the first week of August. The programs that I will be reviewing will be

The Reading Lesson
Progressive Phonics

The Math Lesson
EnVision Math Grade 1

Raders Science4Kids Websites.

Complete Book of Spanish
Everything Kids Learning Spanish
Play and Learn Spanish

Thanks for reading and stay tuned!

This Blog Will Focus On...

The focus of this blog, is, as the name implies, early learning.
I hope to fill this blog with articles, quotes, reviews, posts and freebies of interests to those who are interested in early learning.

What is Early Learning?
---Early Learning or Baby Learning is the intentional, gradual and baby-centered education of infants and toddlers up to traditional school age. So typically teaching small babies between birth and 6 years skills, content and knowledge typically preserved for elementary aged children

Why do People Practice Early Learning?
---There are as many reasons as there are  families that practice early learning (EL). Many people do it to enrich and give focus to the time that they spend with their young children, for many families it is a bonding opportunity, EL sometimes grows out of the need to provide stimulation or therapy to children who are differently enabled than a typical child. Sometimes it is a way to train your child up for a better education than you could expect them to get at a typical public school in the USA. Others do it because they have an older child, or they were a child who struggled in elementary school and they want to spare their baby the same struggle or grief.

Who Invented Early Learning?
---There was no 'inventor'. If you look closely in history you can find that many great men and women were given an education starting from very early on with the intention of grooming those individuals for greatness. Some modern names that are well known on the Early Learning scene are Glenn Doman, Makoto Shichida, Winifred Sackville, and Sidney Ledson.

I will include links to more information about the above mentioned EL authors and pioneers. I will also include reviews of (and links to) their works as I am able.


Who Practices Early Learning?
---Early Learning, as many understand it, isn't something you practice. Its something you live. You light up the world for your young children in a very specific way but you relax yourself, you amuse your babies, you share joyfully and give knowledge and attention to your infants. You make it a habit to respect both your babies intelligence and potential. You teach your young ones to love learning and to share that love, the adventure with you every.single.day.

What This Blog is About.

This blog is about...

Education

All things educational for ages 1 to 100, because you are never too young or too old to learn.

Academics

Because in the modern world, a good chunk of education is academic.

Learning

It's my aim to highlight and profile not just the academic, but learning in general. Sentient beings learn almost an infinite number of skills and the psychology behind that learning is fascinating to me.

Quality Entertainment

What people find entertaining varies, but in general I will be sharing all sorts of quality entertainment, books, movies, documentaries, articles, pod-casts etc, that spread information, arouse delight, intrigues the imagination and in general refrains from 'dumb-ing down' ones intelligence, numbing ones moral senses or attacking the sensibilities of what I consider to be the prudent mind.