Reading Instruction

There are several reading instruction materials developed by Joseph Strayhorn, M.D., and published by Psychological Skills Press.

Before you even begin formal instruction, you read the child a bunch of stories in which the heroes are letters, who can only communicate to humans by getting together and saying their separate sounds. You can lay the foundations of reading in the preschool years by reading these stories to the child. Plus, the letters model helpful, kind acts.

Read more about the Letter Stories

You can also start playing for the child the CD, "What the Letters Say," which teaches letter-sound correspondence through music. Simply by listening and/or singing along, the child gets familiar with the basic building blocks of reading.

Meanwhile, you read to the child many short illustrated stories constructed so as both to create interest in narratives and to model patterns of kindness, productivity, fortitude, and other psychological skills. The child gets familiar with the words and plots of the stories.

When it comes time for formal instruction in reading, the Manual for Tutors and Teachers of Reading is your guidebook. It goes thoroughly into exactly what to do and how to do it. These methods have been tested in research studies. This book contains exercises, illustrated stories, word lists, and almost everything else to form the basis of early reading instruction.

If you're a teacher, you can use the Manual for Tutors and Teachers of Reading and let your students use the less expensive and shorter booklet, Student Booklet on the Foundations of Reading. It contains all the student material that was in the Manual, but omits the material directed to teachers.

As soon as the child is ready for reading simple stories, he or she can begin with the illustrated stories in the Manual or the Student Booklet. But very soon after that, the child is ready to read the unillustrated stories in Programmed Readings for Psychological Skills. This book contains over a thousand vignettes, most of which are a hundred words each. Each vignette is followed by a comprehension question. The book starts out at kindergarten level and gradually moves to about third grade level. By the time the child finishes it, he or she has learned lots about psychological skills as well as about reading.

After Programmed Readings for Psychological Skills, the child reads an unillustrated book of similar format: A Programmed Course in Friendship-Building and Social Skills. Again, reading practice is combined with the most crucial concepts about human relationships.

At the same time, the child returns to the Illustrated Stories that Model Psychological Skills and The Letter Stories, and reads them aloud, having heard them read many times before.

Meanwhile, the child is reading trade books, picture books, chapter books -- whatever is fun and useful.

When the child can read fluently, the child is now ready to start reading Manual for Tutors and Teachers of Reading, for a different purpose: becoming a tutor for a younger child, and helping that child through exactly the same steps that he or she once went through.

A few more ideas on teaching reading