Children who are beginning to read often believe that they can only read their special reading materials at school. This unit is designed to dispel that belief and focus reading instruction on reading real things. Use the natural motivation of making and doing things to help you teach real reading. Children love to feel that they have accomplished a task on their own, Reading how to do things is an important part of successfully completing any task. This book uses reading directions as a focus point for beginning reading. Activities are provided that facilitate the development of oral language, phonemic awareness, print awareness, and syntactic awareness. Skills are integrated as students begin recognizing letters and words and forming letter/sound associations. The book requires reading to, with, and by learners, with an emphasis on comprehension. As learners begins to read, they must also begin to write, so suggestions for real writing activities are included as well. Teacher information pages and reproducible patterns and activity sheets help children begin to read directions: at school, for going places, at home, while cooking. Special Features: skills checklist, bibliography, parent letters, word and phrase cards. How-To Boxes: directions and patterns for 6 make-it activities that can be used as centers at school or as a home assignment: make apple salad, string a necklace, do a science experiment, and 3 more), plus two reproducible beginning readers (What Shall I Do?, Fold It. Cut It.) with teaching ideas and reproducible word cards. Pleasing, instructive line art illustrations throughout. All 64 pages perforated for easy removal.