Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons: Revised and Updated Second Edition

Thanks to this book, my son is the at the top of his class when it comes to reading. He blew the teacher away at his reading assessment. She said that once he blew through a late-2nd-grade book, and only slightly struggled through a 3rd grade book she simply stopped the test and assigned him to the advanced reading for 1st grade. I am one proud mommy! But please don't think I am boasting about my kid. He' smart, but he's not a prodigy. I am raving about this book!!! It's absolutely incredible. For those who think it's tedious or too technical, that may be. But even though many lessons, especially the early ones, are super easy, and the steps feel like overkill, it's about HOW the brain processes and builds on information. You are building a foundation for how the brain processes reading, and it happens without you even noticing. I'm not just amazed with what my son can read, but HOW he reads. He knows how to work out a new word and he almost always gets it right. This book hasn't just taught him to read, but how to think about words. It's something I never thought about, and I am so grateful. These are skills that will carry on throughout his educational career and help him not just succeed, but excel. He enjoys reading because he knows how to do it and doesn't rely on words he has memorized. I know I'm not explaining this well. Perhaps someone can comment and help elaborate. TL;DR Your kid will learn to LOVE reading because the mystery is solved. Get this book. Power through it. You won't regret it. I recommend starting as soon as your kid turns 4. UPDATE: I just had a parent teacher conference with my son's First Grade teacher, and she was telling us how well he's doing not just with reading, but sounding out words, putting word parts together, and reading comprehension. I know that she and my son's Kindergarten teacher taught him a lot, but I also KNOW that he got the solid foundation for those skills from this book. I want to jump in and tell every teacher about it! But sadly they never seem to care much. I think they think I'm over-exaggerating and believe that they are the ones that taught my son to read so well. Well my 4 1/2 year old is now going through it and he's already reading at an end-of-Kindergarten level (and we're on lesson 32). I'm also starting with my 3 1/2 year old and she's sounding things out on her own after only 6 lessons. These are three kids with very different personalities and very different learning styles. I strongly believe that this book can work for anyone. I do change up some of the wording a bit to suit each kid's different style, but that comes easily now that I know the book so well. I hope that this review helps others to make the choice to buy and USE this book. :) UPDATE #2: I just want to add one more little tidbit. My middle child is left handed and he is showing a strong tendency to write in mirror writing (backwards lettering and from right to left). This book has been helpful in teaching him to write correctly. When he writes on his own accord I don't correct him as I have no problem with him learning mirror writing as well, but when it comes to "school time" he has to do it the conventional way, which I tell him he needs to learn for Kindergarten. He would probably get this from any reading course, but I like how this book has the child follow the sounds/words with their finger and trace them too before writing. They really do cover everything and I can see how this book would be helpful for any child having difficulty, no matter how unique it may be. :) With the way it is laid out you are able to emphasize what you need to customize lessons if needed. UPDATE #3 As if my review wasn't already too long! But my kids are now in 1st, 2nd and 4th grade and I just have to say that HOW this book teaches your child to read truly sticks with them. They are still all excellent readers for their grade level. Now that my oldest is in 4th (he's the first kid I wrote about at the beginning of this review) the other kids are starting to catch up. He's reading at an end-of-fourth-grade reading level. My favorite aspect of this book is how they treat letters as blending sounds from the very beginning as greatly helped. In school they learn first the sounds, then they learn to blend. By the time they get to blending the kid thinks they have it all figured out and then they have to learn all over again! Blending should always be a part of letter learning. In this book, they are not "letters," they are always "sounds". Such a small differences that is invaluable! To this day whenever my kids are stuck we go back to the sounds and they can figure it out. Even when they start talking about the letters I say, "No, what is the SOUND?" It always helps the word "click". In this way they can sound out almost any word aside from all the lovely rule-breaking words we have in our language!

This book, Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, has been absolutely amazing. It’s super easy to read, well-structured, and very easy to teach, even if you don’t have any teaching experience. The lessons are clear, short, and laid out in a way that makes it simple to follow step by step. My child stayed engaged, and I could see real progress quickly. The instructions tell you exactly what to say and do, which takes all the guesswork out of teaching reading at home. It truly builds confidence for both the parent and the child. The price was very reasonable for the value you get, especially compared to tutoring or other programs. This is a practical, effective tool that delivers real results. If you’re looking for an easy-to-follow, affordable, and proven reading program, this book is a fantastic choice. I’m very happy with this purchase and would definitely recommend it to other parents.

Short version of review: this method is powerful and it works. That makes it a sorely-needed, crucial tool these days, so I'm surprised this book isn't a lot more famous than it is. It should be: with parents willing to put in the time, this book could help a lot of kids bridge the gap many fall in to, trying to learn to read in the public school system. This is a better way in some regards as kids clearly benefit from the sustained adult interaction this book's method requires. My suggestion: make it a regular daily event, lasting just for the attention span of your child, and the results will amaze you. At first I was put off by the "100 Easy Lessons" title - why not Ten Easy Lessons? Or maybe even "Five Medium-Hard Lessons" if they get the job done? But no, even in our short-cut era you'll want to accept no substitutes: this book, written in the 1980's by a team of professional educators and by now refined and revised to a smooth, glossy polish, is based on the university-researched and tested "Distar" reading program (whatever that means - read about it in the book) which in practical terms gives you a complete professional training resource to teach your kid to read. As far as I can tell, the "Distar" system starts the kids out with a complete letter-based sound and phonics system so they can learn to 'decode' even new words from their constituent letters. I have been astonished again and again at my daughter's skill in sounding out and decoding words she's never seen before (she just turned five and is about to enter kindergarten), surprising herself and her happy dad when she realizes she's done it and exclaims the new word in gleeful triumph! Here is the big pitfall the book avoids: *you won't confuse your child.* Reading is a very complex skill to learn or teach, and parents tend to rush things, bumping their kids off a conceptual cliff, though with good intentions. Here all parental instructions printed in red type and the book literally tells you what to say. Thoroughly preparing the parent, the book's concise but crucial introduction has excellent practical instructions to the parent and, most importantly, tables that show you exactly how make all the phonics sounds correctly. Also included are tables showing how to teach your kid how to actually write letters (writing exercises are in each lesson), helping them learn to form letters easily and correctly (this is important too - kids are very creative at forming letters in bizarre ways and pick up bad habits quickly). So the bottom line here is that you don't have to take the time to become an effective teacher yourself (a huge task) - the book does it for you, laying out a fail-safe, carefully planned and graded path of instruction, introducing new sounds, words, and difficulties with obvious thought and care. This means your child accelerates smoothly, and you won't push her/him off that cliff by suddenly tossing in something that completely baffles the child. This is a big problem even with very smart kids - they rarely convey their puzzlement if they really don't understand something, while most likely you will keep going, not noticing the child has stopped, disconnected from the continuity of what they're learning. Putting reading skills together the first time means the whole task has to form a steadily-accumulating, coherent whole in their minds. When that process is working, kids learn very quickly and make big leaps on their own. Typology in this book is phonetically helpful also, as the little 'stories' presented are printed in a slightly modified alphabet which adds some basic pronunciation marks to help kids over 'silent' letters, complex sounds (th, ch, sh) and other little pitfalls. Also, short oddly-pronounced words (to, for, was) are carefully introduced as special cases. In doing this, the texts of the book's quirky and slightly amusing little stories can move quickly towards advanced reading skills, through their dozens of carefully-graded steps. The obvious problem with the phonics-based approach is that phonics are really a crutch: pretty soon you want your kid to stop sounding out words letter-by-letter and gain the ability to read whole words and groups of words at a time. The book has copious instructions for doing this, teaching kids to see and read the 'fast' way by the halfway mark, but I feel that extra repetition of lessons or sections of them is useful in getting the kid to literally 'switch gears' as they start to recognize groups of words at high speed. Again, if you approach it systematically, this will work well. I can't imagine a better or more thorough tool for accomplishing what this book promises to do. In the course of about six weeks this summer my daughter has easily mastered its first half and her pace accelerates every day. I'm a grateful dad - this is just what I was looking for. An easy call: five stars! (PS - an excellent preliminary resource in immersing your child in the basic phonetic sounds is the set of five Leap Frog DVD's, particularly the Talking Letter Factory, Talking Word Factory, and so on (one does math, but it's good too). These are nicely animated with music, and kids tend to get them completely absorbed into their brains in a big hurry, making the opening stages of this book's learn-to-read project much, much quicker and easier, with letters immediately understood as phonetic 'sounds' and not the names of the letters - a distinction I had to clarify for myself).

Book looks boring but my kids enjoyed the stories and it builds in such a way they never got frustrated. Used the book to teach 2 of my kids and now started with my three year old.

We have personally become big fans of Siegfried Engelmann because of this book. Based on Direct Instruction system: meaning teaching in very small incremental steps. If you are not able to teach your child how to read through this book, then there can be 99.9% two reasons only... 1. Your child is too young, so you need to try after a couple of months, OR 2. You are not following the book instructions properly, so read again the instruction part and focus on what are you missing out.

A veces los niños que entienden inglés pero su lengua principal es otro idioma, tienen problemas para leer en el cole porque cuando leen utilizan los fonemas de su lengua principal, estos no encajan con lo que tienen aprendido del inglés en la cabeza. Ha sido una gran ayuda, paso por paso, y ahora lee y entiende sin problemas.

We're on lesson 29 and he's learned so much already! I'm impressed with how he tries to sound things out in daily life as well. I love the script and my son gets so excited when there's a new sound or when he reads something new. This book makes teaching phonics-based reading so simple. We are supplementing with BOB books. I'll update this review if my opinion changes as we continue to work through the book.

I read so many of these reviews when I needed encouragement for my child and they helped me keep going. Im paying it forward by writing this review. The book works, I am actually teaching my child how to read. He is 4 years old and asked me to learn how to read. A few weeks before he turned 4. I saw a lot of very expensive online courses and before I went that route decided i would try this book. We’re on lesson 25 and while 1-7 were a breeze, when we starting learning how to blend in words” say it without stopping” It became a chore, he didn’t want to Do it anymore. However I wanted to teach him that he could do “ hard things” so we kept going, but we were still hitting a wall. We took a break, then I took the advice of someone here who talked about using small dinosaurs as a reward for finishing each lesson. Once I implemented that he wanted to persevere for his surprise. To make it even more fun I purchased these small car toys ( I think it was 20 euros for a bag of 60 tiny cars) put them In a bag and I would blindfold him so he would get to pick one surprise out of the bag once he finished his entire lesson. Also I broke the lessons into two because sitting after preschool for an entire lesson was too much for him. In the weekends I would try to do one session in the morning and one in the afternoon. Anyways now by lesson 25 he is blending words really well, connecting the slow word To the fast word and remembers most of his sounds. I will provide an update once we get to lesson 50. To the parent reading this, keep going and trust this method, take breaks if needed and don’t be scared they’ll forget, they won’t. This method works. Stay positive, and also reward yourself! Teaching a child how to read is also challenging for the parent!