When we first started homeschooling, I had no idea what I needed to do to teach my children to read. I do not have a child-education background and I honestly couldn’t remember how I came about learning to read, myself. However, like any homeschool mom, I began to research resources for teaching reading. I found a language arts curriculum that I felt checked all the boxes, but soon realized it wasn’t a great fit for my new emerging reader.
EDUCATION IS NOT A RACE AND HOMESCHOOLERS HAVE THE ABILITY TO CHANGE WHAT ISN’T WORKING
We got about half way into the lessons when my eager, and excited learner began to lose interest in reading. The connection between reading and phonics was simply not happening.
The frustration grew when new phonics rules were introduced that contradicted the lesson we just learned previously. My child was getting hung up on the “rules” of phonics rather than simply reading. This was when I knew this method of teaching my child to read wasn’t effective.
Shortly after this realization, I learned about Charlotte Mason. Her method of teaching reading seemed to be the glimmer of hope we needed.
I encourage you to read how she approached reading lessons in her first volume Home Education starting on pages 199. You can read it for free on Ambleside Online’s website here. Actually, this entire blog post will make the most sense if you read pages 199-222, first.
READING BY SIGHT
In Miss Mason’s volume, she gives a couple detailed examples of how a reading by sight lesson went. The first thing to remember (and probably the most important) she states, “The teacher must be content to proceed very slowly, securing the ground under her feet as she goes.” pg. 204 Home Education.
Our reading by sight lessons are inspired by Charlotte Mason, but I am not claiming that this is the only way to achieve teaching reading, nor is this the “perfect” Charlotte Mason way (there’s no such thing, friend).
However, after just a few weeks of using this method, I can confidently say my child has been introduced to many new words, embraces reading challenging words, and actually enjoys our lessons again!
STEPS TO READING BY SIGHT
First, I select a passage, about 1-2 sentences to start. A poetry book, or nursery rhyme works great but any living book could work. Choose ten new words your child will learn from the passage.
PREP-WORK BEFORE THE LESSON
Prepare a “word box” with the ten words cutout from the reading selection. I simply type up the passage in a word document and print 3-4 copies. Print out, and cut out each word. (Yes, this is time consuming, but I can get this prep-work done in 20 minutes if I plan ahead).
Why multiple copies of the passage?
“The point is that he should see, and look at, the new word many times, so that its shape becomes impressed on his brain.” Pg 213 Home Education
Download my Reading By Sight checklist for free here!
For us personally, I break up these steps in two days. However, every family will be different and you can easily adapt to make it work for your homeschool rhythm to complete in a single day or spread it out in an entire week.
HELPFUL TIP
It is helpful to have letters available for word building. We love to use these Montessori letters, but you could even print and cut out letters from paper for a cheaper option. Just be sure to save them in a baggie as you’ll use them multiple times in each lesson.
READING BY SOUND
Miss Mason gives another very detailed example of how to approach a reading by sound lesson in her Home Education volume starting on page 219.
This is essentially a word-building or spelling lesson, but no matter what you call it, slow and steady is still our aim.
These lessons can take more time than the reading by sight lessons. We tend to break it up into two lessons but can very easily be extended to more.
STEPS TO READING BY SOUND
Continue with the “word box” you’ve used in the reading by sight lessons. You will build new words from the words already learned.
PREP-WORK BEFORE THE LESSON
Take a look at the words from the previous reading by sight lesson. Make a list of ending sounds from those words (for example, ‘Queen’ has the ending sound ‘een’. ‘Hung’ has the ending sound ‘ung’, ‘Lace’ has the ending sound ‘ace’ ect.). Note the ending sounds on an index card so you can refer to it during the lessons.
Download my Reading By Sound checklist for free here!
HELPFUL TIP
This is a great way to introduce blends for words such as TR, CH, SH, ect. If you’re not quick to come up with new words that have the same ending sound (like me), you can simply pull up Google on your phone and search “words that end with ___”.
WORDS THAT SOUND THE SAME BUT ARE SPELLED WITH DIFFERENT ENDING
From pages 219-220, Miss Mason suggests that if a child brings up a word that sounds the same but does not actually have the same ending letters, simply tell your child that particular word is spelt with different letters and move on.
“Tommy will, no doubt, offer ‘note’ and we must make a clean breast of it and say, ‘No, note is spelt with other letters’; but what other letters we do not tell him now. Thus he comes to learn incidentally and very gradually that different groups of letters may stand for the same sounds. But we do not ask him to generalise; we only let him have the fact that n-oat does not spell the symbol we express by ‘note.”
STORING YOUR READING LESSONS
Once we have completed our lessons, the cut-out words, my index card with the list of our initial 10 words from the passage and ending sounds all go in a little baggie.
I also note on my index card the book and page number which I found the passage from so I can reference later if needed. If you have multiple children, you can use these words over again, and without having to reprint everything!
You could even pull one of the word baggies out for a tabletop activity during read aloud, at a restaurant or just for fun!
Aside from our reading by sight and sound lessons noted above, reading independently for 10-20 minutes a day has been another great pillar for reading practice. You can see some of our personal favorite early readers here under “learning to read“!
OTHER RESOURCES FOR GENTLE CHARLOTTE MASON READING LESSONS
If you want to try Miss Mason’s approach to reading, but maybe creating your own reading lessons seems intimidating, there are options to purchase instead! I personally haven’t used these, but the reviews are promising and the creators behind them are lovely homeschool mamas, too!
Living Lessons in Reading with the McGuffey Eclectic Primer from Katie over at Little House Learning Co.
Free and Treadwell First Reader Reading Lessons from Leah over at mylittlerobins.com || @mylittlerobins
I hope this breakdown was helpful of how we approach reading lessons, Charlotte Mason-inspired! I am no way an expert, nor a Charlotte Mason purist.
As my children progress in their reading confidence, we will introduce more formal spelling, dictation along with sentence structure and phonics. This is just the very beginning for us!
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This is such a well-thought-out, well-researched post! Any family looking to get started teaching reading this way will surely have a confident start after reading this!