The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading Revised Edition (Paperback)

The Instructor Guide begins with a How to Use section, followed by the phonics lessons. If you are new to teaching phonics or unfamiliar with phonics as a reading method (like this writer who learned to read through Dick and Jane and the look-say method), you may want to read Part 2 first. Here, the "ordinary" parent finds sections on preparing a young child to be a reader, managing the reading session, encouraging a child to be a reader, working with remedial readers, a key to phonetic symbols as well as a collection of questions and answers. The phonics instruction starts with short-vowel sounds; then it progresses through consonant sounds; short-vowel words; two-consonant blends; consonant digraphs; three-consonant beginning blends; long-vowel sounds; silent-e words; long-vowel sound spellings; other vowel sound spellings; other spellings for short-vowel sounds; silent letters; r-changed vowels; two-syllable words; other letter patterns and silent letters; possessive words and contractions; other spellings for the long-e sound; plural and hyphenated words; three-syllable words; endings, suffixes, and prefixes; more letter patterns; and a final section on homonyms, homophones, and homographs. Following a typical pattern, lessons are scripted with necessary supplies clearly noted. Intermingled with the instructor's words are explanations of phonics specifics [i.e. ng looks like a consonant blend (two distinct sounds blended together), but it is actually a consonant digraph (two letters representing a single speech sound)]. These explanations are extremely helpful for the "ordinary" parent who wishes to understand phonics terminology. Many lessons include optional follow-up activities to review the lesson or previously learned material. All of the Student materials previously found in the Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading Manual are now found in the separate Student Book.