Step-by-step
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for K-3
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The Reading Lesson
Message Board,
hosted by Dr.
Michael Levin
We
all want our children to read. With great pride we watch our children
learn the alphabet and sing the ABC song. We buy picture books and read
to them every night. When she can recognize a particular word or he can
write his name, we are thrilled. But this is still far from reading the
way we understand it. We try to teach reading, but often do not know where
to start. So easy for us, reading seems so difficult and confusing to
teach.
We found ourselves in this situation when our daughter was four years
old. She learned the alphabet, and we were waiting for her to start reading
some simple words. We sent for several commercial reading programs, the
same ones you often hear advertised on the radio. What we got back was
a slew of cassette tapes and flash cards. Our daughter would not sit and
listen to the tapes, and the flash cards were all over the house. We also
bought software programs for learning to read and found them too shallow
and haphazard. Disappointed, we began to make our own simple exercises
and stories for her to read. We read books on reading instruction for
children, researched academic material, talked to parents and teachers,
and began to develop a simple daily reading program. Michael's understanding
of child psychology and development, and my desire for a simple, easy-to-follow
method, led us to creating The Reading Lesson.
We have created the Reading Lesson for parents who want to teach their
children to read and for instructors teaching basic reading skills to
children. The program is suitable for both home schooling and classroom
use. It is structured, clear and simple but it does require direct involvement
of the parent or a teacher, which we believe is a key element in learning
to read.
The Reading Lesson is a multimedia program incorporating video and CD-ROMs.
It is designed for any child who shows interest in books and reading.
Some unique features of this course also make it useful for older children
with reading difficulties. The program has also been used with children
with ADHD, LD, autism and Down syndrome.
Who we are
We are husband wife team of Charan Langton and Michael Levin. Our company
is located in San Ramon, California. San Ramon is a suburban town near
San Francisco Bay area.
Michael
I am a physician specializing in behavioral, attentional and learning
problems in young children. I had always wanted to recommend a book
to
parents of my patients but never found a suitable resource. When our
daughter
was four and my wife became interested in teaching her to read, and my
interest in developing an easy to use, step-by-step course took a new
turn.
This coming together of my professional interest and at the same time
wanting to teach our daughter to read led us to creating this developmentally
appropriate reading course for teaching children to read.
I have incorporated all my knowledge about children's learning and development
in this program. The pages are clean, with little distraction. The material
per page is limited. Child gets a feeling of accomplishment from the very
first lesson by reading little stories. The techniques used combine phonics,
high frequency word recognition and guided reading. We were fortunate
to have some very prominent people in the field of education among our
friends and who helped us liberally.
We tested the program with my patients, many of whom had severe attentional
and developmental problems and I am proud to say that this program is
the best for this particular group of children.
After we did the book, Charan began to work on software to go with
it. The software is complementary to the book and helps to engage
the child
as well as provide an additional mode of learning. Our software is
quite different from others in that it very comprehensive. It
is entertaining
but it is not edutainment. It is loaded with content and so should
not be compared with Reader Rabbit type of programs which in
my opinion are
inadequate in teaching children to read.
I went to medical school at NYU, did a Pediatrics residency at Children's
Hospital in Los Angeles and Cedar Sinai Hospital. I then did training
in Child Psychiatry at UCLA. Currently I am in private practice in
San
Ramon, California where I am the Medical Director of East Bay Psychopharmacology
Group and see young children for various developmental and learning
problems.
Previously, I was the Medical Director of the Child Development Center
at UC-Irvine and have been an Asst. clinical professor in the UCLA
Neuro-Psychiatric
Institute and at Stanford University.
My website: http://www.ebpharm.com
Charan
My goal was simple. I just wanted a simple step-by-step program so I could
teach my daughter and son to read.
After we tried the Hooked on Phonics package, I purchased a book by Siegfried
Engelmann, called "Teach your child to read in 100 easy Lessons."
I didn't know it then but this is a very popular book for parents. I
liked it a lot. But, I began having problems with it right away. The
stories
were a bit too long for my four year old. The major flaw of the book
is that it completely ignores the fact that English is not 100% phonic.
There
are many common words that just can not be read using phonic rules.
Words like, would, do, no etc. So I began to make a list of such sight
words
along with the lessons. I also found the scripted format of the book
confining and felt that it was not necessary to have the funny looking
fonts. A
distorted typography as is done in this book is just not necessary.
Then one day after feeling frustrated, I said to myself, "I will
do my own reading program!" And we did! Of course, it took us nearly
five years to do so. Our
two children, Nina and Victor who were the initial guinea pigs
and hundreds of children in Michael's practice provided a
ready
validation
of our
approach.
I
have a day job working as an engineer. You can see my website dealing
with communications engineering at www.complextoreal.com.
Nina and Victor
I did all the programming of the CDs at first but now my son Victor has taken over some of the programming. Nina, our daughter manages much of the business and is involved in product development. She was just accepted to UC Berkeley. Victor is at UC Santa Barbra, majoring in Engineering.
It is them at the top of the page posing with the first edition of The Reading Lesson many years ago. They both learned to read with this program and have always been avid readers beacuse if it.
If you have a young child. 4 to 5 years old, and even if you are using some other program, try The Reading Lesson. You will be convinced that it is an all around ideal program for your child.
Every product on our site is a labor of love for its creators. Fonts4Teachers is developed by Ramon Abajo, a teacher and a wonderful person from Los Angeles. This font package is superb and I recommend it because I used it myself for developing the Writing Lesson.
Thank you very much for looking at our program.
Giggle Bunny is a trade mark of the Mountcastle Company.