Even though our daughter started reading very early (1 month before turning 3) I want to make sure she has every opportunity to become the best reader she can be. We use All About Reading as our main reading curriculum but when I saw The Reading Lesson Book I had to get it. I wanted to see if it would enhance what our daughter has already learned. This book has 20 lessons and each lesson has sounds and letters to learn. When a new letter is introduced the teacher page before the lesson will tell you how that letter should be pronounced. The very beginning shows the difference between a letter, word and a sentence. I like this because when a child is first learning to read they probably do not know there is a difference. They may only know that a page has a bunch of letters in it.
The book starts off with combining two letter sounds to get before moving onto sounding out a full word. I was surprised that lesson 3 has the “th” sound. The book really just has the child read “the” but it does show “this”, “that” and “there”. Instead of having “the” as a sight word the book says that since “e” is not underlined that it is silent and to skip it when you sound out the word. However, I do not like this because when we say “the” we do not drop the “e”. Since we pronounce “the” differently I teach it as a sight words. One thing that I really do not like in The Reading Lesson Book is that instead of teaching things like “ck” as a sound together they say that the “k” is silent. To me this may get confusing for kids on when a letter needs and does not need to be silent.
Just like with All About Reading it has you sound out words like “an” and “am”. We however do these words as sight words just like with “the”. I think it maybe just a dialect thing. We are in Texas but have relatives in London, England. They pronounce the words like both these curriculums want you to but in Texas we pronounce them differently. It is an easy fix for us since I teach them as sight words. This does not inhibit the learning process.
Something that is pretty neat about this curriculum is that it asks which sentence is correct. This helps the child learn that there are spelling errors. Some of the lessons are longer so it may take awhile to finish them. I would suggest that you go at your child’s pace so it is not overwhelming for them. This curriculum also goes over compound words. I think this book does go through reading at a good pace and goes over quite a bit. For us personally, I prefer All About Reading better but I would suggest The Reading Lesson Book as well. I’m the back of the book they show you can go to their website and get a downloadable program that will go along with The Reading Lesson Book. We have not tried these but they may help your student as they go through this program.
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