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This book is a great resource (Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons). However, I also think that you should definitely give yourself some slack. I am guessing that a lot of his classmates are going to be in the same boat as him with the way this last year has gone so hopefully it will be a non-issue as they will need to be getting a lot of students back on track. Best of luck!
I'm not sure what issues your child has with reading but...
I started using this book with my daughter when she was 4. At 6, she's now reading on a 3rd grade level. Just one section a night really really helped. It's very different from other types of learning to read, but it did work very well for my daughter, so I like to share it whenever I can.
Assuming no eye/vision issues - this book is fantastic. I use it with kids that I tutor. It gets kids from knowing the alphabet to fluently reading in six weeks (sometimes less) if you work at it consistently for about half an hour per day.
We used this book when my son turned 4. Lessons are only like 10 min/day and he was reading in a couple weeks. Highly recommend it.
He is in kindergarten now and scored 99% percentile for reading.
🤣 Ha!
For you kings with kids, this is the book to use to help teach those princes/princesses how to read. The beginning can be challenging, but you will see results before you know it. 💪👧👦
I homeschool my kids. My eldest learned how to read at 3. My youngest however didn’t catch on as quickly and the only book that helped her was this:
https://www.amazon.com.au/Teach-Your-Child-Read-Lessons/dp/0671631985
She’s 7 now and reads chapter books for fun. As for writing, I purchase handwriting books that are at the state approved standard. They practice everyday . I also utilised a whiteboard with lines for them to write on for fun. Another tactic I used was buying journals for each of them, and giving them journal topics to write about. I don’t correct their journal writing, this just gives them an activity that helps integrate writing into their lives naturally. HTH
We used this book with my daughter (she’s on the spectrum, what I have heard referred to as low needs). It went very well and she started to read literally within 3 months. The book was great because it had very precise and clear instructions for the parent on exactly what to say to the child. It took us about 20mins a day for 3.5 months. We were very happy with the book and recommended it to all other parents we know as well.
Link to the book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0671631985?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share
For under $10, you can get a used copy of Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. It isn't absolutely the BEST phonics program out there, but it gets recommended all the time because it's seriously by far the best for its price point and does a reasonable and fairly thorough job of walking a beginning reader (and their parent/caregiver) through all the basics.
Grab Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons as a phonics crash-course. Emphasize to parents how much he needs to work on his reading skills over the summer. I wouldn't worry so much about the sight words if he's still having trouble blending. And cross your fingers.
You can also pick up Elephant & Piggie books to read with him. K-2 kids love them and they're fabulous for teaching print recognition.
That’s kind of like saying you’re good at driving a car so you want to build one from scratch.
Teachers go to school for years to learn this. The science behind how kids learn to read is complex. It takes explicit instruction of phonics, building phonemic awareness skills, and connecting it to orthography (writing). Not so simple.
You can try this book as a starting point: https://www.amazon.ca/Teach-Your-Child-Read-Lessons/dp/0671631985
If she can’t read or write, her education level is far below 5th grade (though I understand she was probably pushed through). Makes me wonder if she’s ever been tested for a learning disability, such as dyslexia. In that case, there are wonderful programs specifically designed to work for her, but finding a Tito is costly.
I’ve heard really great things about this book and is probably an affordable starting point without further support: Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons https://www.amazon.com/dp/0671631985/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_i_NZVBVQWMMZEN6W5VRVRH
This book was really fabulous for teaching my kids to read when they were younger than that. It tells you exactly what to say, starts with a font that makes it easy for kids to distinguish similar letters, and introduces letters a few at a time with writing. By the end, they can read page long stories and are ready for easy readers. The only thing you need besides the book is a pad of paper with printing guidelines.
https://www.amazon.com/Teach-Your-Child-Read-Lessons/dp/0671631985/
I don’t know how it would work for an 8 year old, but the scripted nature of the lessons could work well to soothe any anxieties.
Does the kid like being read to? Do you think there's something he'd like having read to him? Not to conflate the psychology of four year-old me with a seven year-old but I distinctly remember wanting to know what was on the pages of my picture books. Plus he's old enough to have some idea of what he likes. It doesn't matter if it has to be religious or you hate it, sometimes the point is just having the child follow a narrative with you.
My parents made a lot of mistakes but they did really well with teaching my brother and I to read at home. We had nightly sessions of being read to and lessons out of this book. I don't know how often you are given time with the kids.
You start with recognizing letters (both upper and lower case) and learning the sounds the letters make. If she is interested in learning more I know folks who have really liked this method: https://www.amazon.com/Teach-Your-Child-Read-Lessons/dp/0671631985
I started doing it with my 3.5 year old (this is on the early side) but she doesn’t want to do it yet. I’ll check again in a few months.
I know I’m late to this thread but if you are looking for a resource that is realistic for your circumstance here is something we used in my family.
‘Teach your child to read in a 100 easy lessons’ https://www.amazon.com/Teach-Your-Child-Read-Lessons/dp/0671631985
Ok, not sure if this is helpful for you or not, but I am using this book to teach my kindergartner to read. It tells you what to say and teaches reading phonetically. You don’t have to know anything to teach with the book, you just read the directions to the learn. Because he is 13 and not 5, I am not sure how your brother would respond, but if he wants to learn, you could teach him. Good luck.
https://www.amazon.com/Teach-Your-Child-Read-Lessons/dp/0671631985/ref=nodl_
If you're really wanting to put some effort into it, this book is a classic. All three of my children learned to read this way.
Agree! I just bought this book. I don't have it yet but the praises people give it are absolutely amazing! https://www.amazon.com/Teach-Your-Child-Read-Lessons/dp/0671631985/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=teach+your+child+to+read+in+100+easy+lessons&qid=1613513387&sprefix=Teach+your+child+to+&sr=8-3
Buy/loan every one of your students this book and ask their parents to spend 15 minutes a night reading it with them:
https://www.amazon.com/Teach-Your-Child-Read-Lessons/dp/0671631985
Sorry, but if children can't read by third grade, they more than likely have shitty parents. It's unfortunate that you have to work so hard and beg for money to pull these kids out of a a hole their own family dug for them.
We have this book and so far my child is doing well with it. Good luck!!
OMG, it's full of stupid content that's unimaginative and not very fun. Every parent I know who has used it has hated it. BUT, it is pedagogically sound, and it does the job. "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons".
https://www.amazon.com/Teach-Your-Child-Read-Lessons/dp/0671631985 If your kids are like mine, be prepared to take more than 100 days -- you'll have to take breaks, and you may have to take a lesson in two days. But, in a year, things should be done, and your child should have basic skills in reading. (Like I said in a different comment, we had to quit once, and then start up again about a year later with both kids.)
I would do it again. It's not fun, but it's definitely useful. I often fantasize that in my copious free time, I'd design a new version that was actually fun and happy. But, this does the job.
I used Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons for all three of my daughters. It's a great book for young ones as the lessons are short and it uses a phonetic system which is similar to Montessori. Good luck!
I got this book to get my kid reading. He is 5. He was not very good with the sight word method. He thought all words that started with the same letter were the same and if he got it wrong would keep guessing other words rather than sounding it out. We modified the lessons a bit to go quicker. It does require an adult to use. It uses the phonics method. You might can fly through some of the early lessons if the kid knows some of the sounds already. This book is for kids that do not have a reading disability. It is for those that struggle with other teaching methods. You don't even have to get through all 100 lessons. Some stop at 50ish but I kept going with my son until 70ish. It works for most kids.
Basically you'll have to become one of those kyoiku parents everyone hates; simple osmosis from Thomas the Tank Engine reruns is not sufficient. Head over to r/homeschool and do some research, they have experience with the nuts and bolts of formally teaching their own kids English (which is what you'll be doing). Your kid is still a bit young but when he's bigger you might give this book a try. I'm going through it with my five year old now and we spend about 10-15 minutes a day doing the lessons. It can be a bit of a slog at times but teaches reading, pronunciation (reading a lot of words slowly to make sure the sounds are correct) and writing. Teaching one's own child is insanely fun and rewarding... If you outsource by throwing your kid into a school you'll never experience that kind of bonding.
My son just turned two and can reliably recognize all the letters (upper and lower), knows their sounds, and can count and recognize numbers up to 12. We got there by reading to him every day, letting him watch Leap Frog Letter Factory, playing on the Starfall website (usually 2 letters a night), and interacting with him throughout the day (alphabet puzzles, number games, etc).
I can tell he's ready for more, but I feel like it's too soon to try to teach him to read. We've decided to stop trying to progress and just reinforce his letter and number recognition. I've been putting together a bunch of games and activities for letters and their sounds, numbers, shapes (including the more advanced ones), patterns, and sorting/categorizing.
If you still want to begin teaching your son to read, you could look at Progressive Phonics and Starfall (both free online programs), or Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons (book).
I just got Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy lessons by Sigfried Englemann, and I really like it. https://www.amazon.com/Teach-Your-Child-Read-Lessons/dp/0671631985/ref=sr_1_1?crid=29V5FOUV5M5A5&keywords=100+easy+lessons+to+teach+your+child+to+read&qid=1574571485&sprefix=100+easy+le%2Caps%2C240&sr=8-1
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Every kid is different - my oldest learned the alphabet at 2, and just quized her on 3 letter words at mealtimes every now and then. I'd write them out in front of her, and then cut them up and see if she could remember which word was which. She'd notice letters on signs, then words. If I wrote things on a page for her, she'd want to carefully trace it. She started writing letters to people before she knew how to read - so she had "love" and "you" memorized early on. Then I got Usborne first reading set, and she just took off.
My son, however, is 4, and doesn't know the alphabet (but if they're not learning something in preschool - it's because they're brains are learning something else!) The book Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy lessons is PERFECT for him. No memorizing the alphabet necessary, just learning how to read and write "sounds" to start with. And it changes some of the confusing letter shapes and letter combination shapes to help distinguish different letters from each other that are commonly mixed up. I know this is how he's going to learn to read, and he enjoys it.
Look up D'naelian for handwriting - that's what I grew up using, and will use for my kids - but I couldn't find it until I knew what it was called!
I'm using Math-U-See, which comes with counting blocks that I think will be way more useful for my second kid than my oldest. They all learn so differently, the wonderful thing about homeschooling is getting to adjust it to suit the kids learning style and your teaching style. I'm interested in finding out more about classical education math, but haven't found much out.
The two best reading programs I've met are Logic of English or All About Reading. I've also seen a lot of positive feedback from people using the much cheaper Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, but I didn't personally care for the book when I ordered it and sent that back. Logic of English and All About Reading are both very systematic approaches to the phonetic basis of reading and will help get your child moving in the right direction (remember to move at his own pace!).
For math, my kid worked through a kindergarten math workbook and then another for first grade. I've sort of let her pick-and-choose which pages she'd like to work on and given her some help as she needed it. But we've also played tons of math games, like Math Dice Jr, Labryinth, War, and worked through a few songs videos like Jack Hartmann's subitizing videos.
Friends highly recommend this book: https://www.amazon.com/Teach-Your-Child-Read-Lessons/dp/0671631985
My daughter also plays games on Homer and her ability to write some letters unassisted has been great. She also gets Haggerty lessons at Pre-K; we practice rhyming at home.
What reading curriculum is your school using? Is it balanced literacy (repackaged whole language, 3-cueing, readers/writers workshop, etc.)?
Don't work on sight words. Instead incorporate phonics into literacy-based intervention for your kids with language impairment. I would love to say to have the reading interventionist, SPED teacher, or gen. ed. teacher be solely responsible for targeting decoding, but that doesn't usually happen, at least as things currently stand in the US.
Working on phonemic/phonological awareness won't have much of an effect, especially in the absence of print.
Here are some resources I use:
https://www.freereading.net/wiki/Find_Activities.html
https://www.parkerphonics.com/books
https://www.amazon.com/Teach-Your-Child-Read-Lessons/dp/0671631985
For context:
My kiddo is ADHD with language processing disorder; he went to speech early on, because we caught it early, and he went for a few months & was caught up. We started on reading super early because I knew it would be difficult. And it was.
The two best sources are going to be “Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons” and any of the many Orton-Gillingham resources available.
Check out Siegfried Engelmann's Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons.
I taught mine to read with this in 100 lessons and reading stories to them everyday
https://www.amazon.com/Teach-Your-Child-Read-Lessons/dp/0671631985
Public schools haven't been great at education for quite awhile now.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0671631985
Overall I would say the book is working really well for us.
I have a 5 year old who is also not a big fan of distance kindergarten. I don’t think remote learning is a great way to teach reading and writing, so I try to supplement at home. I recommend these books:
https://www.amazon.com/Teach-Your-Child-Read-Lessons/dp/0671631985
Do you read to him stories he’s interested in every day? For young kids, reading to them is an important way to develop a lifetime love of books, connect with your child and teach vocabulary, more important for them at that age than explicit reading instruction.
Kindergarten teachers seem to love to push sight words, but a phonics-based approach like the book I linked to above is backed by solid research to build the groundwork for successful reading. Stay away from reading approaches that emphasize memorization or guessing. Kids need to learn the skills to sound words out.
The app Teach Your Monster to Read is a great one that held my kid’s interest. My kid doesn’t like Dreambox, which is the math app he’s supposed to be using, but he was motivated by Prodigy, a math app for grades 1-8 that feels more like a video game and also teaches math. He wants me to be heavily involved with everything he does though, which is exhausting if I also have work to do and would like him to just be self-directed and learn on his own for awhile. He’s starting to be able to do that, but it takes a lot of practice and positive reinforcement for the times he is able to focus and do something on his own. These kids are just learning how to be students. It takes time and practice.
For getting my child to pay attention during zoom, it has been a constant struggle. I think the best way is simply rewarding/praising the behavior you want to see more of. If you see him looking at the screen and listening to his teacher even for a minute, praise him to the skies for it. Tell other people in his hearing how proud you are of the work he’s doing in school. Look for anything he is doing on task and really draw attention to it and give him praise. That seems to work better than constantly nagging about the bad behavior (which I confess I’m also guilty of). It’s so hard at this age, especially for active young boys. Try to be empathetic of his needs while still making clear to him consistently what the expectations are, and give him rewards and praise every time he meets those expectations.
You've gotten great advice here on how to reach out for help. Being a mom is a hard job. Encourage your wife to find someone to talk to about that too. Or let her know she can cry on you! I still have moments with my 9yr old and 11 year old sons when I'm sure I'm completely screwing them up, and cry on my husband. Also, if it can be of any help, we used this book ( https://www.amazon.com/Teach-Your-Child-Read-Lessons/dp/0671631985#ace-g2093936695 ) to teach our boys to read and it was amazing. It also works on pronunciation and seemed to really help with foundations of spelling for our kids.
> Go Google a news editor's job.
I literally did a few posts up. Here's a recommendation for you
I can't help you with reading comprehension; the educational system in this country is broken. Consider picking up some material. Anyway, let's move back to what you're wrong about: 87 Percent of Americans Unaware There's Scientific Consensus on Climate Change
Feel free to cite your own sources stating there's no settled science when it comes to climate change, and I'll explain to you why you're wrong as patiently as possible ;)
Not related really, but when he is ready to learn to read, I highly recommend this one
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0671631985/
Maybe all the text in Skyrim gets him in the mindset to learn ;)
As I said in this comment,
the only truly scientific teaching methodology is "Direct Instruction" (DI) by Siegfried Engelmann and co.
Here's a pdf version of the DI reading course designed to be delivered by parents.
(See the amazon reviews for context.)
If you study the instructional engineering displayed there,
the correct solution (or range of solutions) to the problems you raised should be obvious.
In the course,
you first make sure the learner can hear/say a word slowly,
and recognize it and say it fast.
eg, if you give them a prompt like:
- listen: "mmmaaannn". say it fast!
they can respond:
- man!
Then you can teach them a single pronunciation for each symbol,
(in this eg "m", "a", and "n")
and they learn to point to each symbol in a word in order, pronouncing it.
After they're done this, they've "sounded it out",
which is exactly the same as "saying it slow",
so they can apply the exact same "say it fast" operation they just learned to read the word.
So this is the simple method of "sound-it-out/say-it-fast", which I call "siosif".
Obviously in the Old Orthography System (OOS), there is no single consistent siosif system.
You start teaching that way, but it drags on with all the stupid exceptions and complicated rules within rules that you have to teach...
So our goal with the New Orthography System (NOS) is that all words can be read by siosif,
so each symbol should have only one sound
(obviously you need to use quite a few digraphs, but those can simply be ligatured in the teaching material, or underlined together or whatever).
So obviously NOS needs to pick a particular pronunciation to base itself on.
Let's call this NOS Dialect "NOSD".
For learners whose native dialect is different from NOSD,
this implies just one simple pre-reading task:
Can the learner:
- listen to an utterance in NOSD
- repeat it in NOSD
- then repeat it in their native dialect
I expect that, generally, a learner will be able to do this even without explicit teaching,
but even if not, all you need to do is pre-load it,
just like how you use "say-it-slow/say-it-fast" as the scaffolding for "sound-it-out/say-it-fast".
In short, NOS is not designed to fulfill some abstract idea of phonemic perfection.
The point is to get rid of as much of possible of the ridiculous suffering of native anglo kids learning to read for the first time
(as well as English learners, whether or not they already have an idea of reading from some language).
But whatever, like I said, human civilization is realistically hopeless,
and no problems like this will ever actually get solved.
I mostly just read books with short words to my almost-4 year old, but my friend was recently raving about this book of lessons, it might be something you're interested in: http://smile.amazon.com/Teach-Your-Child-Read-Lessons/dp/0671631985