Sample Lesson

Dear Camille:

My son just received Vol 1 for Christmas. I'm still unsure how to use it. Could you talk me through how a sample lesson might go? Thx.

Verena

I'm excited for you Verena. Thank you for your email. I glad to know you received the book and hope it helps your son in his efforts to learn to read. The lessons are all organized the same in Volume 1 for convenience purposes (as well as volume two and three). Each chapter has a whole language/sight word(s) for the child to memorize (that are also displayed on flip cards for you to cut out), and a phonics lesson for you to teach your son. The preface to these lessons is that your son does need to know his alphabet sounds (short vowel and long vowel sounds).

The sight words are words that don't usually have a phonetic rule that correlates to them and just need to be memorized. Also, in volume one I drew from my experience teaching Kindergarten- when teaching the short vowel sounds. Each phonetic lesson consists of creating words from a word pattern. Your son uses the cut out letters (provided in the beginning of the book) to insert at the beginning of the pattern word to sound out. He sounds out the word. If it makes a word he is familiar with, he would write this word down on the lines provided underneath.

After this review, the words just learned are then highlighted in their corresponding colors (green- memorized words, blue- phonetic words) in the following chapter. The text is meant to be read with an adult (or someone who is able to read the words in black that your son will not know how to read.) This book is a "phased in" approach, so that your son will only be responsible for the words he knows how to read, but will still feel like he is reading the Book of Mormon. I find that with beginning readers they have fun attempting the words in black that they might know, or have learned at school. It is a fun conquering feeling for them.

Each chapter also has a Gospel Review Activity/Questions for comprehensive purposes.

I hope this helps, please let me know if you have any other questions.