When the boys entered Kindergarten I spent hours researching the perfect reading curriculum, and then it failed horribly. Part of the way through their 1st grade year they came out with All About Reading 1, and it was love at first sight. There are a lot of components in All About Reading, and after using it for 4 years, I think I’ve finally worked out our All About Reading schedule.
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First, let’s talk about what makes up an All About Reading* lesson.
- A game, I always do this at the end of the lesson because it’s the most popular component.
- A story, this is not every lesson, usually every other lesson.
- Another shot of the game, there’s a wide variety of them.
- Making words with letter tiles, we use the spelling board I made.
- “Flash cards,” words that review the sound learned that lesson.
- Reading page, I couldn’t find a picture of my kids doing this, so no picture.
- Reviewing previous words from other lessons. I’ll admit I do not always remember this one, but we will review old games from previous lessons.
Scheduling All About Reading LEVEL 1
For AAR1* I set a timer for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes I stop. My daughter was able to do 15 minutes, but my boys really could only handle 10 minutes.
Each day I would complete part of a lesson. I would alternate what parts were completed, but almost every day we included the game for the lesson. It made the day go smoother. So one day we would read the flash cards, then a section of the reading page, and finally the game.
Some important things to note for AAR1:
- The reading pages are LONG, break them down into sections. If I only required 1 section I got less frustration.
- You might take 5 days for a lesson, or longer, it’s better to take it slow than to hurry, especially at this stage.
- Do not worry if you take 2 weeks for your child to read a story. It will get faster.
On days we read it a story it was especially important to set a timer, my boys would get frustrated if we took longer than 10 minutes, and it was a struggle then to read the stories.
Scheduling All About Reading Level 2
With AAR2* their attention span is a little longer. With this level I increased the timer up to 15 minutes. We still had lessons that might take several days (that first open syllable lesson comes to mind, they really struggled with that). In level 2 I expected them to be able to read 2 of the sections on the reading page once we started working on that at the beginning of level 2. By the end of level 2 I was expecting them to read the whole page.
It really helped the pages were shorter and more broken up. I think All About Learning Press took feedback that level 1 could be overwhelming, and adapted. I’ve been impressed by the improvement from level to level as it’s come out.
For reading stories I still kept the timer at 10 minutes, BUT we might spend a few extra minutes at the end playing a game together. I found scheduling All About Reading level 2 much easier than level 1.
Scheduling All About Reading level 3 and 4
Somewhere towards the end of AAR2 and the beginning of AAR3* my kids reading just exploded. Planning lessons at this point became a breeze. At this point most days we can fit in all of the elements of a lesson with no problems. The lesson flows smoothly, partially because they know what to expect already.
Side note, I also think All About Learning Press took another note because these lessons were printed slightly differently making it easier to prepare the lessons ahead of time. I’m happy to note AAR4* also had easy to set up lessons.
At this point my kids’ attention is sufficient I can schedule 20 minutes for a lesson if I need to.
I’ve also discovered, for us at least, somewhere around the middle of AAR3 we can change from scheduling 1 All About Reading lesson to covering 2 lessons in one day. Not ever day, but most days they’re already familiar with the concept, this just firms up what they were figuring out.
Superman is really eager to finish 3rd grade reading, so he’s pushing to cover 3 lessons a day. That’s a bit ambitious even for me, but I’m glad he wants to do this.
Other All About Reading posts and Reading Resources
All About Reading spelling board
Organizing All About Reading lessons
Teaching Reading to Multiple Kids
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