Video Transcript

Hello, and welcome. My name is Irene Daria, and I'm a developmental psychologist specializing in teaching children how to read. I did my dissertation on how children learn to read, and I've written a series of books on the subject. I've taught the children of many celebrities how to read, as well as hundreds of other children, both privately and in public school. I've also trained teachers to apply the science of reading to their work with their students.

With all those qualifications under my belt, what I'm about to tell you may surprise you: teaching a child how to read is so easy and so much fun, and absolutely anyone can do it. All you need to know is how to teach reading the right way, and that's what I will be sharing with you today.

I'm going to give you clear, step-by-step instructions on exactly what to say and do with a child, and provide you with fun worksheets, games, online activities, and little books that children will be able to read after just their first few lessons.

In order to learn how to read, children need to know two things. They need to know how to sound out words. That's called phonics. And they need to know a small bank of sight words. Those are words that need to be memorized because they either don't follow phonics rules or they follow a phonics rule the child hasn't learned yet.

Teaching phonics and sight words correctly means teaching them systematically. That sounds much more complicated than it is. To teach something systematically just means you're going to be following a system or a plan so that everything that follows builds on what came before.

With phonics, that means you're going to begin with teaching short vowels. Those are the sounds you hear in short, three-letter words like cat, hit, hug, hop, and pet. Five vowels, five short vowel sounds.

Then you're going to move on to blends. Those words are a little bit longer, usually four letters. They still have short vowels in them, but now they have two consonants either at the beginning or the end of the word, each of which gets sounded out. Those are words like clap, stop, sink, and king.

Then comes something called digraphs. Those are the sounds made by the letter combinations ch, sh, th, and wh. You will hear them again with short vowels in words like chip, ship, that, or which.

Then you move on to long vowels, and you introduce them with short little two-letter words like he, hi, and so. Children are moving into something different. They're moving into long vowels. Then you teach the silent e rule. That is, again, longer words, and e is going to appear at the end of the word.

In a word like kite, the e doesn't make a sound, but it makes the i say its name, or it makes its long vowel sound. Those are words like cape, kite, and hope.

Once a child has mastered those rules, he or she can read a word like metropolitan, which is a really long word. But look at how you will teach a child syllables—not at this point; this is like a year's worth of phonics—but I just wanted to show you how it builds systematically: met, the e is short; ro, that's the two-letter little word where the o is long; pol, short o; i, short i; tan, short a. Put it all together: metropolitan. Amazing.

If a child has never seen this word but knows his phonics rules, he'll be able to sound it out. You can see why, if a child has not mastered his or her phonics rules, this word will completely throw them and they will be stuck. So phonics is very, very important.

Children do also need to learn a small number of sight words. Those should also be taught systematically, and that means teaching them in their order of frequency of use. “The” is the most commonly used word in the English language, so that is the first sight word that a child should learn. We'll be talking more about sight words later.

Now that you know the order to teach things in, let's begin doing it. Very exciting. This is a big moment for you and a big moment for your child or your student. The first phonics rule you will teach your child or student is short vowels, specifically words that have short vowels in them. These are short, three-letter words like cat, hip, and hop.

At the moment, those are the only sounds—the short vowel sounds—that you will be teaching your child. So don't get into the whole idea of short and long. Kids find those terms—“short” and “long” vowels, very confusing. Don't say to the child, “Today we're going to learn the sound of short a.'” Just say, “Today we're going to learn the sound that a makes,” or, when you get to it, “the sound that i makes.” Just call them the sounds.

When we get to long vowels later on, we will use a different word. There's a nice, friendly way of introducing long vowels so that kids really understand what the concept is. So don't say short. Just say the sound that the vowels make.

When it comes to teaching short vowels, I—and all the teachers that I've trained—use my book. You don't need to get it to benefit 100 percent from this video, but everything that you need is in the Steps to Reading: Short Vowels workbook. If you are interested, you can order it from my website, stepstoreading.com. It's Book 1 in a series of four books. Book 1 is on short vowels and the first set of frequently used sight words.

Just a little bit of a backstory: when I first began offering private reading lessons, word spread like wildfire about how well the children were learning how to read, and not just about how well the kids were reading, but about how much the kids loved their lessons. They were learning, they were having fun, and they were feeling great about themselves.

Before I even had a website or business cards or even a listed business phone number, dozens of parents were calling to sign their kids up for lessons. I was following a method that now is known as the science of reading. Many other people follow the method, but in addition to following the phonics method, I mixed in all sorts of games and fun online activities like Starfall.

I wanted my tutors to do exactly what I did in each lesson, so I felt very much that I needed to write down and tell them exactly what to say and do with a child in each lesson, very step by step, exactly as I would do it. Then I saw a wonderful thing. They used the lessons I had written, and their students learned to read just as well as they would have if I, with my Ph.D., had been working with them. I thought that was just miraculous.

My goal now is to help as many parents and families as I can, so I decided to publish what I do with the kids in these workbooks so that parents could really easily use them with their kids at home, and teachers could use them really easily in a classroom. They have been used in classrooms and in after school reading programs with great results. We always hear from the kids, 'This is fun.' More than having fun, it really warms my heart to see how beautifully they learn to read.

That said, let's take a look at what to do, what the first step is with teaching a child short a. You're going to begin by teaching words with short a. The way you're going to begin is by engaging and motivating and getting the child excited about the process he is about to embark on. You're going to do that by using a really fun website called Starfall. It's totally free for the activities that we're going to use it for, and the first page in my book tells you exactly how to log in.

Let me just briefly show you what you will find on it. There is a letter block page. You're going to click on the letter A. The letter A is introduced. You should let the child do the clicking because it engages his or her senses. They like playing and working on the computer, so let them click wherever the stars are sparkling.

I'll show you just a few of the online pages in this activity. This one's my favorite. Kids love this astronaut. It ends with a game for them to play: drag the letters to the correct basket. Every letter in that alphabet block page has a different little video and different activity, so it's a really great website for you to know about.

That's how we begin with short a: with something really fun on the computer.

Then we move into reading their first short little word. You want to teach the kids that when letters are far apart from each other, they make their sounds. Again, here are instructions on exactly what to say and do.

I'm just going to read this page to you. “Point to the letter a in the illustration above.” You would point to the letter a and ask the child, “What sound does a make?” They will make the short a sound, hopefully.

Then point to the letter t and say, “What sound does t make?” They will say, again hopefully, “t.” If they don't, it is time to reinforce the letter sounds with them. Go back to Starfall and do the “a” and the “t” game, and use magnetic letters and whatever else you may do to reinforce the letter sounds. But most kids will say it.

Then, on the page, what is in boldface letters is exactly what you should say to the child. It says: “When letters stand alone or are far apart from each other, each letter will make its own sound.” On the next page, they have their first word, which is “at.”

Again, there are instructions for you on what to say and do. You would say to the child, “When a and t stand side by side, their sounds combine to make a word.” Point to the word at in the illustration above. You would point and say, “This word is at, as in, I will meet you at the park, or the car stopped at the corner. Now you read it.” The child should say, “At.” So, first word.

Next—and this is part of what I meant about why kids have fun—is a board game that reinforces, like a worksheet in disguise, the sounds of a and t and the word at. The way you would play this game, by the way, is that you should have a die at home. Ideally, use one with dots so the child can count out the number of dots when the die lands. That's also good for reinforcing math skills.

Each of you should have a marker. Put a marker on each space. These are little fish—an orange fish and a plastic fish. You can use whatever you have around the house. You can use game pieces from other games. You can use erasers. You can use coins, whatever you have handy.

Let's say you roll a three. You would both be on start, and then you move three spaces: one, two, three. You read what is in each circle that you passed. In this case, you would read a, t, at. This circle has the letter a, then the letter t, then the word at.

Then let's say the child goes. Let's say they rolled a five. They would move five spaces: one, two, three, four, five. They would read a, t, at. Lots of fun, very effective. It reinforces a and t, and they learn the word at.

Again, there are more instructions which tell you exactly what to say and do. There is a page where, depending on the child's age, either the child can write in the letters—there's a letter bank down here—or you write the letters for them and then they read the word that's created. Here, the letter b would go in and they would then read b, a, t: bat. The next letter is c. You would write the letter c here and the child should read c, a, t: cat.

Then there are more worksheets. I'm obviously not going to go through every single worksheet, but they're very cute and they're fun. Here they have to write the word and circle the picture that goes with the word. For cat, they would circle the picture of the cat. For mat, they would circle the mat. For hat, they would circle the hat, and so on. Here they circle the letters that make up the word that's shown in the picture.

Then they play another game: Bingo. There are instructions for how to play Bingo in case you never played it or don't remember how to play it. There are flash cards. Cut out these flash cards, stack them one on top of each other facing up, and each of you gets a game board.

Cheat, meaning stack the cards in your child's favor, because it is fun for kids to win. It feels good. It feels terrible, even if you're reading all the words, if you're losing all your Bingo games. I always stack the cards so it's not too obvious, but so it ends up that the child wins most of the games. They should definitely win the first game. Use your discretion for how many other games you'll have them win, but kids love this.

When I did this pre-workbook, when everything was handwritten and I was creating all the materials, I played this with my son. We played with pennies, and he got to keep the pennies when he won. He loved that. So that's just another thought for you.

Next step: sight words. Sight words are words that need to be memorized. They are very common words that appear in most of the stories that kids are learning how to read at this stage. There are not a lot of them at this point, but they're very, very important for children to learn because they will enable them to read a lot of stories.

Let's look at what's very important about sight words, something that is often overlooked. Sight words should be taught according to their frequency of use. Makes sense, right? If words show up a lot in a story or stories, then it's very important that a child knows those words, as opposed to words that don't show up very often.

The most frequently used word in the English language is “the.” Therefore, “the” is the very first sight word that children should learn to read. The next two most common words are” is” and “on.” Once kids know these three sight words, they will be able to read sentences like, “The cat is on the mat.” Notice cat and mat follow the at-ending rule that kids have already learned.

Right now, kids will be learning the word the, and only the word the. Then they'll move on to their next short a rule. “The” should be the very first word that children learn to read. That typically is not what happens in classrooms. Instead, most teachers teach from something called the Dolch list, D-O-L-C-H. That's a guy's last name. It is a list of the 220 most common words that are not nouns.

Problem number one with that list is that it was made in 1936, so it's a little outdated in terms of what words are appearing in stories kids are reading today. Problem number two, and a much bigger problem, is that instead of being listed in order of frequency of use, the Dolch list—which has been broken down into words kids need to learn in pre-K, kindergarten, first, second, and third grade—lists those words in alphabetical order.

Let's look at what that means. I found this list online, and it is very representative of what happens. The most common word in the English language is all the way down here. “The” is number 32 out of 40 words. What that means is that when teachers follow the Dolch list, kids will be learning words like away, come, down, funny, here, help, jump, and little before they learn the word the, which is the most important word for them to know.

The word “is’’—guess where it is? “Is “is on this list. “Is” is a little bit better positioned than “the” was. It is the pink word here, and it is number 17. But still, kids would be learning come, away, and funny before they learned the word is. “On” doesn't even appear on this list at all. It appears on the kindergarten list in this position, which means kids would be learning words like black, brown, came, good, and have before they learned the word on.

You get the picture. It is very important that sight words be taught in order of frequency of use, and that is indeed what we do in Steps to Reading: Book 1. We call them power words because knowing them will increase kids' reading power right from the beginning: the man, the hat, the cat. “The” is used all the time.

A little tip I have for you is that when you read to your child at home before bed, that time should be just for pleasure. Don't use that time for teaching, because part of becoming wonderful readers and loving to read is having that wonderful memory of Mommy or Daddy or another loved one reading stories to them.

But when you are reading with your child and the word the appears in the story, tell the child to read just that word, only that word. Don't get motivated and have them read short a words or other words. Just have them look for the word the. That will really reinforce the learning that they have done of the word, and it is fun for them. It doesn't interfere with the pleasure that they're taking from having you read the rest of the story to them.

So that is our first sight word: the.

Next, kids will learn to sound out words that end in an. Kids have learned at. These pages are going to already be looking a little familiar to you, and familiarity is great. It gives you confidence and it gives the child comfort. Kids love predictability in these books, and they love, 'Oh, I did a lesson like this on the word at. Now here's the word an.' Same idea. You'll do the same kind of stuff that you did with at.

You have the worksheet where you write the letter in for the kids, and they read it. Here already they begin differentiating between words with t and n at the end. The instructions tell you to say this to the child: “Read each word out loud. Circle the word that goes with the picture”' So have your child read each word out loud: cat, can. Then they should circle the word that goes with cat. Bat, ban: they should circle bat. Fat, fan: they should circle fan. Rat, ran: they should circle rat, and so on. You get the idea.

There are more adorable worksheets, and then, hooray, they read their first sentences.

That is a big deal!

Already you are seeing how things work. Everything builds systematically, and already they can read little sentences like, “The rat sat. Pat the cat. The bat sat. The cat sat. Pat the man.” Big cause for celebration!

I really recommend celebrating in a small way that also adds to the joy of learning to read. Really celebrate each step, because kids then can see, Wow, I'm making progress. Now I can read words that end in at. I can read the word the. I can read words that end in –an.

Next, you will teach them the word “is.” Then you play Bingo with words that end in --at and --an. Kids love the Bingo games.

Next they learn the word on. Then this is a really great activity. It's called Silly Sentences.

Again, there are directions for you on exactly what to do. You get these words. This gray block consists of sight words: the, is, and on. The white block consists of words that end in t and n. Cut them all out and then lay them out face up on the table. Then you and the child take turns making either real sentences or silly sentences.

An example of a real sentence would be, maybe, “The cat is on the mat.” A silly sentence would be, “The fat pan is on the van.” A pan can't be fat, so that's silly. This is also the beginning of reading comprehension. They're paying attention to the sentences they're putting together. Kids get a big kick out of making silly sentences and real sentences. They really can see what they can do.

There are more worksheets. They learn short a words that end with different endings, and then they play another Bingo game. They really, really like it. Let them win. Let them keep the pennies. You see how the Bingo board is bigger now. The Bingo was smaller in the beginning. This would have looked very intimidating just a few lessons ago, but they can do this now. They can read all these words.

I'm actually not sure if I said that, from the flash cards, have your child read the word out loud when you play Bingo. Then each of you should look for the word on your board and place a marker on the board when you find the word.

More sight words—or power words, as I call them—are “as” and “has.”

Vocabulary is very, very important, especially if you are a teacher. I trained teachers and helped teachers teach reading at a school in Harlem, and the vocabulary for many of these children, some of whose parents were new to this country or spoke Spanish at home, was something that we really needed to teach. They did not know what a pit was, for example. Most would not know what a yam is, a dam that holds back water, or a ban, which means to make something illegal. So you will work on these vocabulary words with them.

Then the child can read a story. That is a really big deal for them! Imagine being able to read a book, no matter how little it is. It is a big deal. The very first book that they will read is a book called Mat. It is a Bob Book. This is sold as part of a set of little phonics readers: very short, very easy: “Mat. Mat sat. Sam. Sam sat.” And so on. They're doing a lot of sitting, but you get the idea. You should read the word “end” to them: “The End.” They are thrilled to be able to read the story.

They will also be able to read a story called Sam, which is also in Bob Books. Again, don't get overambitious with them. If the child wants to read it, let them. If it doesn't come from the child, save the story for the next lesson, because that feeling of celebration will continue into the next lesson: “Oh, look, wow, you can read another story.” They'll feel really wonderful about themselves.

Throughout Steps to Reading: Short Vowels, you're told which stories your child can read and where to find them. There are also stories on Starfall. Again, I'm not going to show you—although I'm tempted to, because it's really adorable—for the sake of time. Actually, I will. They're very cute.

Let me show you how this works. You are on Starfall's main page, and just like before with the letter sounds, you're going to click on Kindergarten. Underneath the ABC blocks, you will see there's a picture of a little mouse and it says, “Learn to Read.” Click on Learn to Read, and then you get these columns. In the center column, it says Book, and you will see the stories. The first five stories have to do with the five short vowel rules that children need to learn. Next to each of those stories is a game that they can play using that particular short vowel.

Up here is a story called Zac the Rat. To the left are games that have to do with short a. Let's just take a look at Zac the Rat and why these stories are so cute. Now it's pointing to click on the arrow. Again, you hear the sound. Now have the kids read the story. Do not have them click on the word, because if they do, the website reads the word for them, and you want the kids reading the word themselves.

Have them read the words: “Zac is a rat.” Then look, this is what makes this really fun. If you click on the picture, Zac does stuff. Very cute. They love it. Again, they hear the sound of short a. Let's go back to Zac on his can. “Zac sat on a can.” The child should read that. Again, if you click on the picture of Zac, things happen to Zac. The short a sound is reinforced again, and Zac does stuff. You get the idea. I won't go through the whole story, but they are really very, very, very cute stories.

That brings us to the sound of short i, which is a big deal. They're on to their second phonics rule. If you notice, the book is divided into steps. I recommend following that division. Don't try to do too much in one sitting. I have seen and experienced with my own children that if they do too much at once and then nothing for a few days, they tend not to remember it as well as they would if they do a little bit at a time. A little bit at a time is really good.

Now they're starting the sound of short i. When you begin a new vowel with them, always review the vowel that came before. Say to them, 'Okay, today we're going to learn the sound of short i, and let's listen to it on the computer.' Again, all these instructions are here for you.

You're going to listen to the i on Starfall’s letter block page. Another thing that I want to show you: if you go to the letter block page, I had mentioned that there are circles down below that have vowels in them. They're right here. For i, you click on the circle that has the i in it and the song plays: “The big hit went into the mitt. Can you hear short i in it?” Now I want to hear you sing it.

You can use this in your classrooms, too. You can project it onto your whiteboard. Kids love it. They do sing it. You can all sing it as a class for as long as you're working on short i. Really fun, very effective, because it helps them learn that sound of short i.

Now continue to progress through Steps to Reading: Short Vowels. Again, this is going to now be familiar. They're going to learn “it” in this section. Before, they began with at and an. Here, they're beginning with “it.” Lots more worksheets. Then they learn the word “in.” Again, there are instructions for you on exactly what to say and do. They learn the sight word “to.”

They play Bingo with n and t at the end of words with short i. They learn words with p and g at the end of short i words. Now they can read another story. It's called Jig and Mag, in Bob Books Set One. I wonder if I forgot to tell you about a story. I did, and I'm sorry. In the workbook, it will tell you when the kids can read the story.

This is a big deal because it looks like a bigger book. This is back in the short a section. They can read this book. This is a set of readers called Primary Phonics. It's available from Educators Publishing Service. Again, I have no affiliation with them. On my website, I have a list of decodable readers kids can read and you will find links to all of these stories.

You can also ask your library to get these for you. You can ask the library to get you the Bob Books, too. Most libraries should be able to, if they don't have them, request them for you from other libraries.

This is a great book, a sweet book: “Tab is a cat. Tab has a pal. The pal is Mac. Mac is a rat. Mac has a cap. Tab has a nap on the mat. Mac has a nap on Tab.” Not Tolstoy, but wonderful for these beginning readers. Imagine how exciting it feels to them to be able to read this little story. If you own these books, let them color in the pictures. Let them really make the books their own so that they have a sense of ownership and a sense of pride. Really wonderful stories for them to read.

The next sight word is “was.” Then again, there is a little very early reading comprehension: does the sentence make sense? The tan cat was... and they have two words here to choose from: fat or win. You say to them, “Which word makes sense to put on the line?” Obviously, it would be fat. Then they can read, “The tan cat was fat.” But did you hear what I just said? They can read. THEY CAN READ!!! They can read this. That is a big, big deal for them.

No frustration. No reading stories with words they've never seen before. There's a sense of comfort. Everything about this feels good to them as they learn more. Now we do more adorable things here.

Here is a game board. Again, there are instructions for you on how to play, but it's the same way that we played the “at” and “an” game. You put a marker on the start, both of you. You roll a die, and then you read as many words as you rolled: bat, bit, fat, fit, sat, sit. There is an alternation of the a and i in the words, so it is very, very good practice.

There are different endings at the end of the word, so again they differentiate between them. Very fun and very helpful in terms of their learning. They can read another story from Primary Phonics, which again is like a big boy or a big girl book, called The Tin Man.

Speaker points to the words on the page: You see “the,” the most frequently used word in our language. Tin, short i. Man, short a. “Has” they have learned as a sight word. “Is” they have learned as a sight word. “The” appears three times on this page. You can see how common it is. “To” appears twice on this page. There are all sorts of short a and short i words. The little bank of sight words that they've learned is priceless.

Wonderful. Very happy child. Very happy you, teaching your child how to read. Speaking of very happy you, now they learn the sound of short u. They're on to their third phonics rule. Again, a big deal. You're going to do the ABC letter blocks. You're going to do the song on Starfall, and then you're going to read them this funny cartoon.

This is a funny story, actually. After the very first child I ever taught how to read professionally had been taught short a and short i, we did just a little bit of short u. As I said, it's important to review. Begin each lesson with a review. So we began our next lesson, which was going to continue short u, and I said to her, “Okay, what sound does a make?”

She made the short a sound.

Then I said, “What sound does i make?”

She made the short i sound.

I said, “What sound does u make?”

She said, 'Uhhhhh..” the way we do when we can’t remember something.

I said, “That's right!”

She said, “What's right”

I said, “The sound. That is the sound that short u makes.”

She said, “I didn't remember the sound, but now I always will. I'll just say, uh, and I'll never forget it again.”

So I wrote that up as a little cartoon to share with your kids. They think it's very funny. They will start saying that u makes the uhhhhhh sound, and that's okay. Let them do it. Humor and laughter are wonderful things.

Now they're up and running, and they're going to learn the sound that u makes. Again, you're going to write in these letters here, or they can if they are interested in writing it. If they're not, don't force it. You're not teaching your child to write at this point. You are teaching them how to read, so you can write the letter and have them read the letters.

There are more worksheets with u. Lots of fun worksheets. Let them color in the pages if they want to. Here, this is great: what a difference one letter makes. The instructions that you will say to them are: 'Read the words in each row out loud. Circle the words in each row that are the same.' This row has bug, bun, and bug, so they should circle bug and bug. Point out to them that just changing one letter at the very end makes a completely different word.

There is more Bingo, more stories, and the book tells you exactly what story the child can read. Now there is another board game. Can you see how everything is beginning to build so systematically and beautifully? This board game consists of short a, short i, and short u words so that they practice differentiating between the letters. They have fun doing it, and they continue to become more and more masterful.

Again, there is a vocabulary page. Then, look at how we're zipping through this. They are going to learn the sound of short e. If you were here in person, I would say, “Okay, now what should they do? How should they start?” You would most likely say they should start with the alphabet blocks and the alphabet song on Starfall. Then they're going to do worksheets.

Do you see? You are now a master at teaching children how to read. You know exactly what to do, and doesn't that feel great? I know, when I was looking for workbooks before I was a psychologist and needed to teach my son, I would go into Barnes & Noble. This was a while ago, so there were not the resources that are available online. But even if I look now online, so many of the phonics workbooks have a consonant on one page, an a on the next page, an i on the next page, then a consonant, then some other letter. It's all jumbled together and doesn't build systematically.

This really, really builds systematically, which is important because, one, that's the best—the really only—way of teaching reading effectively, and because it makes the kids feel great. They are really, really aware of what they have learned and can do.

Then there is the classic bed trick. Children at this age often have a hard time differentiating between the letters b and d. They get that mixed up. Perfectly normal. Our brains are not born knowing that we read from left to right. Hebrew is read from right to left. Our brains wire themselves according to the language that we're learning, and they wire themselves according to being able to differentiate letters that look the same but are reversed. If your child is reversing letters in kindergarten, first grade, or second grade, don't worry. Perfectly normal.

That said, a great way of teaching them to differentiate between b and d is to use the bed trick. If you notice, b has the line on this side of the letter, and so that's the side of the bed. D is here. In the book, you teach them that trick, and then they play a game with words that begin with b. Right away, they get to practice differentiating b and d. You can put that to work, and you can also now use that whenever you come across a b-and-d-trick word in stories that they read.

I know I said that very quickly because I'm getting worried about how long we are spending together. I hope it's not too much of your time. But pretend this is the bed. B is the first letter, so it's on this side of the word, and the bedpost sticks up just like a b's line sticks up here. D sticks up here at the end of bed, just like the line sticks up in a d. They should put their hands over a b or d on the page, and then, according to whether the line is on this side or that side, they will be able to tell if the letter is a b or a d.

Next, short o. Again: alphabet blocks, letter circle. You will do similar worksheets to what you did in the lessons before. There is a Bingo game, more stories, lots of stories they can read now. In Bob Books, there are four stories for short o. One is called Dot. Then there are Mac, Dot and Mit, and Dot and the Dog. On Starfall, they can read a story called Mox's Shop. They learn another sight word: for. They have another board game that uses all words along with a, i, u, and o, and more vocabulary.

At the end of the book, there is a chart that reviews the sight words, or power words as we call them, that are in this book. Make sure your child can read these words. Then you celebrate. They get a diploma: 'I Can Read.' And they really can read.

It's a certificate of accomplishment presented to—and fill in the child's name and date—and you should sign it, because you should be very proud of yourself.

You were a big part—I'm actually tearing up because I know what this feels like as a mother—you were a big part of teaching your child how to read. That is the greatest gift that you could ever, ever give your child.

That brings us to the end of this presentation on short vowels and how to begin teaching your child to read.

I hope you enjoyed this presentation. It was a pleasure, and best of luck teaching your child how to read. Take care.