Sarasota PC Monitor
The Reading Lesson
A Software and Book Review
by Elsie M. Mason
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.Have you ever noticed that your young child may be ready to learn to read? Don't let that moment go by without investigating further. Here are just two of the signs that you may encounter:
- Your offspring may ask what a word in a book says, because it looks familiar. After being told how to say the word, your child points to the word on any page it appears and says it.
- As you drive your car, your youngster (while pointing to signs along the way) keeps asking, "What does that sign say?" If you have told him before, he'll tell you what it says.
What do you do if the youngster is not in school yet? One way to teach reading is to use "The Reading Lesson", a structured phonic teaching method developed by Dr. Michael Levin and Charan Langton. This program was developed for children from 4 to 8 years of age and takes the child with no reading skills to second grade level.
The introduction to "The Reading Lesson" workbook explains how you can get the most out of the reading lessons. The computer program parallels the workbook so that you can use them together. As stated in the book, the program was set up for you to go over each lesson with the child or children facing the computer and then go to the lesson in the workbook. The book covers several letters and combinations of letters in each of twenty lessons including words formed with those letters. The lessons teach phonics and build the youngster's sight vocabulary at the same time. You'll find that each lesson contains stories of increasing length and complexity as you continue through the book. At the end of the book is an official, black-and-white certificate of achievement to present to a child with his or her name on it.
When you put the accompanying CD into the CD-ROM drive, the program automatically causes "The Reading Lesson" to be displayed on the screen with an entertaining "Giggle Rabbit" to help the young student proceed from Lesson One through Lesson Twenty. In each lesson, the computer program provides the sounds of letters, words beginning with those letters, and words made with combinations of those letters. Animated figures illustrate the words. A youngster can "play a game" by picking the correct word in a group of two or more words. He or she can use the keyboard to copy words that the program has provided on the screen. Throughout the program, upbeat music and animated figures help make reading a happy learning experience. Finally, at the end of Lesson Twenty are two colorful certificates of achievement with a space for the child's name on each. Either one can be can be printed for presentation to the youngster.
Two important things for parents to remember are that a small child's attention span is much shorter than ours and that learning to read should be an enjoyable experience. A youth will carry throughout life his ability to read as well as an enthusiasm for or dislike of reading. It is very important at the beginning that the youngster develops an eagerness to read. If you stop before the child tires of it, he will look forward to learning more the next day.
This reading program teaches in a way that I have found through experience to be very efficient. As a young tutor, then as a parent and an active volunteer in the public schools, I have helped with various reading programs and worked individually with young students learning to read, as well as taught my own children before they started school. It is wonderful to see new vistas opening to a youngster as he or she is learning to read.
The Reading Lesson teaches the child to decode or read. The book states: "Decoding should not be confused with reading comprehension. Our goal is to give the children basic reading skills so they can begin to read independently." However, illustrations and animated figures do help with reading comprehension, as well as keep the youngster's interest.
This program requires at least a 200MHz CPU with 32MB RAM, a CD ROM drive, 40MB hard drive space, a sound card, a 256 color monitor or above, and Windows 95 or above. A printer is optional..
The Reading Lesson book with the accompanying CD are produced by the Mountcastle Company of San Ramon, California (mntcastle@earthlink.net). The set can be purchased locally for only $29.95. :
Copyright 2001. This article is from the October 2001 issue of the Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL 34277-1889. Permission to reprint is granted only to other non-profit computer user groups, provided proper credit is given to the author and our publication. We would appreciate receiving a copy of the publication the reprint appears in, please send to above address, Attn: Editor. For further information about our group, email: admin@spcug.org/ Web: http://www.spcug.org/
The Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc. has 1,300+ members and was established in 1982. We are members of the Assoc. of PC User Groups (APCUG), the Florida Assoc. of PC Users Groups, Inc., and we are members of the America Online Ambassador Program.
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