How I taught Sparkle to read

When Sparkle was almost four, the dad of one of her playmates mentioned he wanted to teach his almost five year old daughter to read. He wasn't quite sure what plan he was going to use, but he was very enthusiastic about the idea. I asked him to let me know what he did, as I'd probably try the same thing with Sparkle in a year.

The dad's ideas were in the back of my mind when I stumbled across an ancient copy of "The Ready-to-Read, Ready-to-Count Handbook" at the library, and I checked it out. It was a quick read and an eye opener, because it talked about teaching children as young as three to read. Suddenly my daughter wasn't too young to learn how to read.

However, as much as I liked the book, it didn't feel quite right to me. Not wanting to invest in a learn to read program without more information, I started looking at more learn-to-read resources at the library. I checked out the ever-present "Learn to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" book from the library. I read the reviews on Amazon and heard of more learn-to-read titles. I found "Phonics Pathways," "Reading Made Easy," "Reading Reflex," "Bob Books," and "Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading," and I checked all of them out from the library. I liked the idea of teaching reading, but all of the programs seemed like too much work or too boring - flashcards, covering up pictures, long lists of words, rhyming drills, funky type, etc.

Then I in my searching, I came across the title "The Reading Lesson" by Michael Levin and Charan Langton ( http://www.readinglesson.com/.) It sounded great - like 100EZ Lessons, but without the funky type. My library had only one copy of the book, and there was a long list of people who already had it on hold. So, I put it on hold and waited several months until it was my turn. In the meantime, I got the LeapFrog "Letter Factory" and "Word Factory" movies and let my daughter watch them while I cooked supper.

When the book finally arrived, I loved the look of it. It combined my favorite parts from all the other reading programs that I had looked at.

• The pages are uncluttered. There are a few small pictures or one big picture per page. All the text the student sees is text for the student to read.
  
• The text starts very large, and gradually gets smaller.
  
• The book uses a special typography to indicate what vowel sound to use and letters that work together, like "th" "sh" and "ch." But the special typography is faint and doesn't obscure the normal letter shape.
  
• The program is open and go. Just open the book and start reading. No flashcards, no chalkboard/whiteboard. No pre-reading instructions. No looking for readers. No games to setup or put away.
  
• The student has to actually figure out each word. The pictures are few enough that they can't be used to guess the words. In general, words aren't listed with all the same ending sound. There is a new page to read each day, so the student can't just memorize the text.
  
• The book includes sentences and full stories for the student to read from almost the beginning. The stories are cute for a young reader. No separate readers required.
  
• There is no handwriting.

However, I was still skeptical. Could reading a page a day from such an inexpensive book turn my daughter into a reader? I hadn't bothered trying any of the other learn-to-read books with my daughter, but I decided to give "The Reading Lesson" a try.

My daughter loved it. She flew through the first several pages, probably because she had the LeapFrog videos memorized. The date for returning the book to the library loomed, and I was finally ready to put some money into teaching reading and bought my own copy.

Over the months we developed a "you read to me, I'll read to you" approach to the "The Reading Lesson." She'd read page or two to me, then she'd run to get a book for me to read to her. The whole process took less than fifteen minutes a day, about three days a week. Some days she struggled to do one page. Other days she'd zoom through two pages. In the summer, I signed her up for the library's summer reading program, and she read her own books. On busy weeks, we'd skip "The Reading Lesson" completely, then jumped back in when things calmed down.

About a year after we started, we finally finished "The Reading Lesson." My daughter had already long since been reading other books from the library. We took her to her favorite restaurant to celebrate, and I tucked "The Reading Lesson" away to save for her younger sister.