The Early Reading Magic Wand
In 2016 when I decided to teach my three-year-old son how to read, I went online and researched several methods of teaching a child to read early. I found a litany of expensive bulky books that rather confounded me (some with as much as over 300 pages). None detailed a simple straightforward path to achieving this goal.
So I decided to develop a method that will solve this challenge. My goal was to have a concise, sequential method that any literate adult can use to teach anyone how to read in record time.
I followed these steps in teaching my son and by the long (summer) break of 2017, at the age of four, he was already reading and understanding any text. When school resumed, he became the first and only pupil in his Pre-Primary class (Nursery 3) who knew how to read.
The teachers were astonished as he was already reading books above his grade level. They would sometimes take him to higher classes to read and explain texts that the pupils were finding challenging. This was phenomenal to them because prior to his reading ability, he was the least performing pupil in his class and was advised to repeat the play class before moving to nursery one, which I refused.
The head of the nursery school section called me and explained that as an early childhood educator with years of experience, he hasn’t gotten a result of advanced reading skills this early. We discussed, and he urged me to put pen to paper so that other children can benefit from it.
I hesitated because I wanted to get the same result again with other children to be sure it wasn’t a fluke. I have tried it again and again. It has worked perfectly well. With my daughter, I have seen the same results, but even earlier.
To date, no pupil in my son’s class matches his academic standing. This is as a result of his early reading ability which has grown to a senior secondary school level. He is now in Primary Two and has read most of the drama and prose texts I used to study for my West African senior secondary school examinations.
I am at present using the same method to assist several parents to teach their children, and the results are amazing.
The good thing about this method is that a parent (or teacher) spends only about 10 minutes or less (within the child’s attention span), at a time instructing the child. It doesn’t even have to be in a formal lesson setting. As a matter of fact, it works better informally.
This method relies on phonics but without all the drama that comes with the usual phonics programs. It engenders a deep level of phonemic awareness in the child that translates to early reading fluency.
The Early Reading Magic Wand comes with a two and three-letter-word colourful flipboard. When flipped, it produces consonant-vowel, vowel-consonant and consonant-vowel-consonant words. When I taught my son how to read, I used three small jotters with a spiral to achieve this.
It also comes with five vowel sounds picture flash cards; 21 consonant sounds picture flash cards; five long and short vowel sounds picture flash cards (backing each other for comparison). All sounds are accompanied with pictures that tell the sounds. The package also has a two and three-letter word reading book titled, I Can Read.
It is my hope that this will go a long way to solve the challenge that some parents go through with their children, who struggle unendingly to read.
