100 easy lessons

[lilyka]

Befor the boards went down someone had started a thread for people to who were using teach your child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons to come aand share. So I thought I would restart it. Here is my report:

We are on lesson 56 and she is doing good. She reads easily enough, but has trouble keeping all the sound streight. She hates doing it but we are almost done (most of the end lessons are stuff she already knows) and sometimes you just have to do stuff you don't like. Only reading the story once has realy helped.

[Ryan]

We're still using "100 Easy" too. We are in the 60's and we have slowed down a bit. Definitely only reading the story once. As long as she can answer the questions while we are reading I figure she has grasped enough. She is amazing me with her reading skills when she reads signs while we are out. I can hear her sounding out words all the time. It's wonderful. I'm wondering how the switch to sounds without the little helps will be (around lesson 75 when they take away the lines over the long vowels, for example) but from repetition she has learned to sight read so many words I'm hoping it won't be too difficult. She has been reading the first set of Bob Books to me with ease and she enjoys those more than the stories in "100 Easy."

[Leslie in MD]

Hi everyone. If you've noticed - maybe not - me, your board moderator, has been GONE for a while! Yikes! huge computer problem. Sorry to leave you all hanging. I've been missing all you computer friends :o). Hopefully my problems are over.

Anyway, I think it sounds like you two are doing great (or should I say your little ones are doing great??). From experience - I already completed 100 EZ with my older child - he didn't really have a problem going from the "scripted" letters to the plain letters. By that time, they are just learning to follow the spelling rules. It may take some prompting and encouragement at first, but you shouldn't have a problem. If you did have any difficulties with certain sounds, go back to when that sound was introduced and show your child how the letters were "scripted" before and how they look now and just say they still make the same sounds.

My youngest is on lesson 61 now. I haven't been very dilligent lately with the holidays and shopping :o) but he's doing great and I'm not in any big rush. He read all the choices off the kids menu at Denny's tonight, so I'm feeling pretty good ;o). Anyway, keep the updates going! I'm so encouraged to hear your good news. Leslie in MD

[zealsmom]

Ok. I am rebuilding the archives because all of this was lost in the transition.

Leslie, you have already heard this.

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE teach your children to READ, not just decode. Of course, Phonics has it’s place but don’t base your entire “Reading Lessons” on it! This is why we have so many children that get turned off to reading; no one ever taught them how to make reading come alive. Please don’t get stuck in a Phonemic Disaster. Just because your child can read a newspaper, doesn’t mean they know what it SAID.


Teach them to infer, to question, to determine importance in their reading.
Teach them about Sensory Images that make the text come alive.
Teach them to access their Background Knowledge and connect it to the text.
Teach them to make self-to-text, text-to-text, and world-to-text connections in order to give MEANING to what they have read.
Teach them to think metacognitively, that is, to THINK about their THINKING! If you don’t do this with your own reading, then LEARN so that you can model behaviors of a good reader.

I understand that I may have stepped on some toes, and for that I apologize. I wonder if this is the right forum to put this out there. A good book about teaching Reading Comprehension is “Mosaic of Thought” by Susan Zimmerman and Ellin Oliver Keene. Although it is written with school teachers in mind, it is a helpful resource that outlines good reading and something I would recommend to anyone trying to teach ANYONE to read.

[Ryan]

I would agree that phonics isn't everything but it was good place for us to start and my daughter enjoys being able to sound out most words. She has had no problems with comprehension and always asks if she doesn't understand something. I have no plans to ONLY teach her phonics but I do believe phonics is very important. My MIL, who never learned phonics but, instead, learned to figure out words based on their context, can't spell ANYTHING. Of course, in the english language phonics doesn't always help there but it's a good start. I am happy with where we are at now and will move on from there. I will check out the book you mentioned, though. I am always interested in her learning from different angles. However, because we mostly unschool, these lessons were good for us. I simply leave the book on the shelf and when she wants to do a bit she chooses how much of the next lesson (or lessons) she wants to do at the moment. All of the lessons are short and follow the same format so she knows what comes next and will decide on her own whether she wishes to go on or stop. Some days she does more than one lesson other days she does only a small piece or none. This book is set up well for that. I want her to love reading and allowing her to set her own pace with this book has helped. Also, now she is able to pick up beginner books and "decode" (as you say) the words in order to UNDERSTAND and COMPREHEND the stories. When she is laughing while reading and can't wait to tell me about the story she just read I know she comprehends what it is about.

[zealsmom]

Ryan - It's exciting to me to hear about young children laughing to themselves while reading (or questioning, or wondering, or making predictions). That's what it is all about. Awesome!

[Ryan]

I agree. I cracks me up when she is giggling as she reads something. Or she'll say, "that doesn't make sense; why'd he do that?" when a character in a story does something silly. I love when books open up a whole new world for them.

[lilyka]

My dd has begun sounding out things and writing letter to her real and immaginary friends. It is so awsome to see it all come together.

[pcjen]

Just wanted to add my .02 to the discussion. I did 100 EZ with my 4yo dd and it went very well. We did a lesson every day. Some days we struggled, I will admit, but we stuck to it and she never wanted to quit, no matter how frustrated she got. We're done with it now, she's reading like crazy, and I'm one proud mama.

Want to second the comprehension stuff. We stopped reading the story twice and I would just ask her the questions at the end all at once. She would often comment on the story which showed she was "getting it."

(I'm now searching for a good math program to start with her if anyone wants to suggest something.)

[Leslie in MD]

pcjen, in case you didn't see it, look at the thread about Saxon Math and you will see what I said about a great math program called Singapore Math. If you couple Singapore Math with some nice manipulatives, I think it is a great program. We use cuisenaire rods, shapes, counters, number boards, etc. to make the math experience well-rounded. Hope this helps!
Leslie in MD

[lilyka]

Woohoo, my baby read her first real book yesterday.

Sorry , just needed to share

[Ryan]

Wonderful lilyka!!

[2Late2BCreative]

I was so glad to find this thread. I have been doing 100 for over a year now...it's not always been EASY lessons...but I have seen such progress!! Making the change to 'regular' words vs. the 'funny' writing was a huge stress. I decided to start over and it's going great. We do about 2-3 lessons a day. She's gotten so much better at saying all of the sounds as I touch under them and not stopping inbetween. I am hoping we will have a better transition when it comes time to go from funny writing to regular....around lesson 75 or so??? not sure exactly. The stories are sometimes SO long.

[onlyzombiecat]

I am up to lesson 14 with dd now.
Dd can say the sounds fine on their own but I'm having a little trouble getting her to sound out a whole word with the sounds in the correct order. We are just starting that though so practice will probably improve that.
Dd wants to do it. If she hated it or were unhappy I would adapt it or find something else to teach her to read because I don't want reading to have negative associations.

[meowee]

This is a good book but it has a major flaw IMO-- specifically that the lessons get much more difficult as the lessons progress, before all the sounds are introduced. So if your DC freaks out at the looooong story in lesson 51, and refuses to cooperate, she won't have learned about 20 sounds. IMO the book should introduce all the letter sounds before the lessons start to get harder. This would probably make it 200 lessons LOL.

My DD burned out on this book around lesson 61. The stories get too long and the type too small. It intimidates her. There are still some sounds to be learned, so I have to scramble a bit to teach them to her independent from the book.

She prefers a whole language approach, using real literature, but she so far has been much slower to read than my other children. It may turn out that she is just slower to read overall, regardless of the method we take.

We only read the stories BTW. She simply will not do the words or the exercises. So we use the book as a reader.

[HRC121799]

When I looked at that book it just seemd overwhelming! Kudos to those of you who it worked for though!