Distar reading program opinions

That is just not true. The orthography was to help children distinguish letters in their initial learning. It is phased out later in the program. In twenty years of teaching, I've found the only ones the letters bothered were the parents or teachers, certainly not the kids.

The "odd" orthography is in the Reading Mastery Program, the newer version of Distar. There is also a Direct Instruction reading program called Horizons which does not use the orthography. There is yet another DI program, Journeys, which is more of a language arts program. The new programs have outside reading oportunities available. I have used all the DI programs in my LD setting for many, many years and my students have been very successful.

I don't find student success boring. Yes, I have to bring enthusiams to everything I teach. We also use the program in the regular classrooms at my school. Those students too are successful. Every good program deserves to have enthusiasts. But I was a college student- and somewhat easily bored.

Thanks for the kudos- I shall need to look more closely at this one. OK, it was twenty years ago that I saw Distar in what was supposed to be action. It wasn't very active. Yes, newer versions may be different. Yes, it is possible that my memory is imperfect. I am NOT the person who claimed it was boring -- quite the converse, I'm the person who said I was trying to use it for some kids who needed it.

I'm also the person who regularly posts about the need for those three dirty little four-letter words, time and hard work. Squirmed, cried, absolutely hated it. So I changed tactics.

I started finding ways to encourage her to want to read. She loved it. I then reinforced the words she was learning in the easy lessons books with games, abs a program called reading eggs online. We are still working through the book but two lessons per week.

We make a funny sentence with every individual word she reads the fast way. Sometimes her favorite paw patrol character joins us. Nome, Thank you for your comment. I have found that not worrying about sticking to the script and not working on it every day like the book recommends has gone a long way in making it more pleasant for my boys too.

There are plenty of good resources out there for teaching reading. My three year old is on lesson We do about 4 lessons a week. Now that they are transitioning out of the distal orthography, he is really struggling with the vowel sounds.

Do you have any recommendations? He was doing so well, now it seems like he has taken many steps backwards. A year later, I used the book with him again. I went back to Lesson 50 and then we finished the entire book without a problem. So you may want to just stop and revisit it again later. Read books to him, try Starfall. I read somewhere that once you finish Easy Lessons, a child would be at approximately 2nd grade reading level. Once we finally finished Easy Lessons, I found it still took awhile for my son to transition out of that book to actually being able to read other books.

I used all the books Easy Lessons recommended, and we went through them very slowly, but he struggled. It almost seemed like the change happened overnight. He was suddenly reading fluidly and he was reading complicated words, which would have confounded him a month earlier. I started to wonder if all my effort in teaching him to read really mattered that much — it was just going to happen when he was ready and those brain connections happened!

I hope this has helped, and I wish you the best of luck. Let me know if you have any other questions. My daughter knows her letter sounds but not her letter names. She knows 19 sight words. Do you think that she can use this book without knowing her letter names and just the sounds? They teach the sounds first and the letter names later in the book. So yes, I think it would work just fine!

The writing portion of each lesson is a good break between reading and screen time so that the reading portion has time to set in. Reading is such a critical gateway to learning everything else in the world that I would HIGHLY recommend these lessons as soon as your child is interested in letters. Thank you for your comment, Samantha. Reading that early is not possible for many children, but hooray for your son, if he can. Have fun with it. Worked great for my child the summer before first grade.

The big issue is making it fun and interesting. No color in the pdf version I used, which disappointed my child. We often did the lessons in two sittings. I think when she was younger she would not have had the attention span, but who knows.

Life is long. Thank you for sharing your experience! I agree. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Google account. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account.

Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. Thanks so much to my readers for inspiring me to write this. I hope it helps. Click here to purchase. Now back to the original post…. A couple of points about how this book teaches reading: The book teaches the child to sound out words by blending the sounds together instead of pausing between sounds. The book also uses an altered orthography or symbols to help the child read.

He always looked forward to seeing the picture, so this gave him an incentive to finish the lesson. Yet I can see where the pictures and stories might not interest older children.

The book also requires the student to write two or three sounds at the end of each lesson. Fortunately, my son was already writing well and enjoyed this part too. Making my child excited about reading is the first step in getting him to read. Yet, as we got further into it, things changed. Here are some tactics I employed: I made sure we had plenty of time to do the lessons. I was also more likely to take a day off from a lesson if we were busy with errands whereas in the beginning, I kept a tight daily schedule.

Read about our experience with it two years later here: 1st Grade Homeschool Reading Share this:. Like this: Like Loading I do recommend this method, but you do have to be careful to keep the lessons relaxed and fun. Thank you very much for sharing your experiences using this book! Mama of Letters. Hi Anna! Thanks for the comment.

Than you for sharing. Nome Like Like. Anna, I bought this book for my 6 year old daughter in the 1st grade. Thanks, Jess Like Like. Thank you for your comment, Walter! Hi Crystal…Thanks for your comment. I completely agree to blurb — In only 20 minutes a day, this remarkable step by step program teaches your child to read with the love, care and joy only a parent and child can share!

Definitely they will have a good vocabulary and will be fast readers once they will start reading, but till that time you as a parent need to work on acquiring reading skills in the same way we work with our kids to learn any other new skill like swimming or skating.

So as a parent, you first need to understand the book yourself and once you are clear with the approach, its cakewalk. They are well developed lessons which make learning super easy for kids. It says children will learn to read within chapters One chapter each day that means in 3.

She still loves when I read to her and I know she will soon grow out of my lap and will soon be reading Harry Potter and Enid Blyton on her own. But till then, I am enjoying this phase of reading together.

I would love to hear your experience in teaching kids to read. Rashmi Sehgal is the mother of two adorable kids, 4 and 1-year-old fondly known as Angel and Lil prince on her blog. She wears the dual hat of mother and IT Professional who juggles between work and kids trying to maintain balance between both worlds.

She is a voracious reader , avid blogger , Shopaholic, love to experiment different way of learning and unlearning things with her daughter and take pleasure in reading books to her daughter. She writes at rashworld. May 8, May 27, Parentous 3 Comments.