The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading

We are just under halfway through this workbook and it's working so well that I had to share (and will update as necessary). My 4.5 year old daughter is truly learning to read using this book (and some Bob books to help reinforce what she is learning). It's worth noting that we skipped over the beginning part which teaches letter sounds, as she already knew them heading into this. At the risk of sounding like a lazy parent, she learned those pretty effortlessly (on my part) using a zoo-phonics practice video on YouTube and some knock-off Zoo-Phonics flashcards from Pinterest. (The video is not even the official Zoo-Phonics one, but instead the one by the "Best San Diego Reading Tutor" on YouTube https://youtu.be/bFr_S4Jn-tg.) I would turn it on once a day before letting her watch another show until she knew them, so I can't comment on the first part of this book. We picked up from the first lesson that begins to teach combining letter sounds into words. We do a lesson each day that we have time in the mornings during her baby sister's nap or after her baby sister goes to bed at night. For anyone who has read The Well-Trained Mind, there is a passage that talks about how your kid may not love the chore of learning how to read, but that you do it each day anyway and treat it like an ordinary part of your day that must be accomplished, like brushing your teeth. It's true that my daughter isn't begging to do this book with me each day. But it's also true that when I say "it's time for our reading lesson" she agrees without much fuss and is very proud of the progress she had made so far. As a parent, there is almost no prep work to this. It's scripted, so you just open it and go. It took me a little while to get the rhythm of things, but once you have a few lessons under your belt, it will feel like second nature. There is a lot of repetition in the script, but that is a contributing factor in its success. My daughter knows what to expect and can focus on whatever new sound combo or grammar rule we are learning that day. Lessons average around 20 minutes and I like to keep things moving along by using a bell (actually an app that functions like a bell called service bell) and dinging it after each new word she reads correctly (or at the end of each sentence read correctly as we have advanced). If she starts dragging her feet and asking "when will reading be over?" the motivation of hearing that "ding" usually helps a lot! (We use a different bell sound from the same app for errors and then she can correct herself and get the "right" bell sound as needed.) The book is dry, repetitive, straightforward and completely black and white with no pictures. It's not exciting on its own. This is also why it is so effective. Kids absolutely cannot guess their way through it. They are forced to sound out words and follow the decoding rules. They also learn new skills in a methodical way. At the recommendation of another commenter here, we bought the complete set of Bob books to accompany this workbook and they pair up very nicely to reinforce what she is learning in this workbook. Most importantly, there is a good amount of review built into each daily lesson so she is retaining what she has already learned while learning new skills. There are some really fun optional games at the end of some of the lessons that we again reward with a ding of a bell for each correct answer she gives. She really loves the games! I highly recommend this book to anyone who has a kid that is ready to start putting those letter sounds together and is willing to sit down with their kid for 20 minutes a day to help them do so. It works!

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this book! I am a trained public school teacher, and I have never had the process of learning to read broken down into such easy steps! It's just like Jesse Wise says, "learning to read is easy." And simple! And cheap! The thing I like best is that this book is scripted. I don't have to worry about saying the wrong term, or forgetting what comes next or if I'm saying everything I can, etc. I don't have to worry about having all my materials, either. This book truly lets you sit down on a chair without getting up to get things and have a reading lesson for 2 minutes minimum. It starts with 26 lessons on the sounds of all the letters. You don't progress to other lessons till the first 26 lessons are mastered. My daughter is just 4, so we're going really slow (we're still on A), but I'm confident now that I'll be able to teach her to read and not screw it up just by being myself! If only I had read this book while teaching my 2nd graders--I could have been so much more effective! Update: It's been 3 years now. I taught my 4 year old daughter with her 3 year old side-kick brother sitting with us. What's so good about this book is that after the 27th lesson (the first real "reading" lesson after going through the 26 letters), the student can read right away, which you can't do with 100 easy lessons. They BOTH started reading almost right away (we started on Bob books and worked our way up). Pretty amazing to have a 4 and 3 year old reading to themselves. They were both fairly fluent readers by 5 and 4 (reading level 4 easy readers). The last lesson in the book is reading "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious". We watched Mary Poppins to celebrate. Now at 7 and 5, they read anything they want to. For my 7 year old, that's Harry Potter, Madeliene L'engle, Roald Dahl, The Hobbit and any other good story she can get her hands on. For my 5 year old, that's The Way Things Work, The Bible, The Dangerous Book for Boys, harmonica/piano/music books, the side of the water heater and anything else non-fiction. Because they have the reading levels of 4th graders, they know as much or more. Wow! I can't think of a better blessing, and all because of this really easy to use book. I'm starting my 4 year old boy this year. He can't wait to read, and I know it won't take long, thanks to The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading. A pivotal book in the primary home school repertoire.

Good

I have taught 2 children how to read with this. It may take a lot more time but I also believe it helps with spelling and as a poor speller myself, I have learned quite a lot.

Great for teaching my two sons to read. We're having fun and the improvement is easily seen in the boys efforts and ease to complete the simple lessons.

This book is great, we home educate and currently use this book. It is straightforward and simple and gives parents back the power when it comes to helping their child to read. I have always had a strong aversion to heavily product based phonics systems-someone is making a lot of money out of parents. This book consists of 231 simple scripted lessons. We find it easy to follow. You just need some blank index cards and a pen and later on, a magnetic board and some magnetic letters. There are suggestions for first reading books but its really possible to use any reading books your child likes. My daughter likes that the lessons are short and we spend the rest of the day spotting the new letters in our home and any where we go to reinforce it. We waited until we were certain our daughter was ready to read so she is finding it a lot of fun.

An absolutely brilliant aide for teaching reading. My toddler self-started reading at 2 years, 7 months so having this structured guide to build on her interest and to simply explain the more complex non-regularities of the English language has been great. The lessons are short and simple as well as easy to follow for both adult and child. The omission of pictures is ideal to allow children to focus on the words and letters and to omit guessing them through images. A great purchase.