Book excerpt: Reading, Writing, and Phonics Too ® is a how to teach reading and writing book for parents and teachers. Instructions for parents and teachers combine with hands-on lessons for their children. The parent/teacher portion of the book provides instruction and illustrations plus coaching notes with each page of the 37 student lessons. The student lessons take children from the reading and writing readiness stage to where they are effective and enthusiastic readers and writers. Each of the 37 lessons has a lesson word which includes the sounds and letters necessary to build phonemic awareness and letter/sound correspondence. The lesson words, letters, and sounds are introduced by the teacher, Mat the rat. Following Mat's introduction, the students learn to spell and sound the word. Each lesson embeds its lesson word in at least two stories or poems which are studied for reading comprehension. The lesson words also form the basis of a printing and handwriting activity. Finally, each lesson culminates with a composition activity based on the lesson word.