I talked with Laura pretty extensively yesterday, FINALLY getting my bottom in gear to do a more formal investigation of The Writing Road to Reading method.
Ella has not been struggling with reading, but there has been no "magic" moment where she just reads, yet. Madison had a magic moment right before she was six, where she just decided she was damned well going to read the Boxcar Children books, and so she sat down and just forged ahead, ignoring the words she didn't know. Ella is 5 months past six and I know if she just decided to focus a lot and just try it on her own all the time, like when she encounters signs, then I know something would click. Don't get me wrong, she's a fairly competent reader and speller for six, but I know it could be better.
And for Madison, well of course she reads as well and as fast many adults, but I've written before about how she has not been focusing on spelling. When you give her something just out of context to spell, she's terrible. Even though our AVKO spelling has been working quite well and she's getting better, things haven't really "clicked" where she's spelling lots of words that she hasn't memorized. That kid needs a method and a theory for everything, and so that's why English spelling hasn't really progressed for her.
Well, I think this method will really work, for both of them. It's a combination of memorizing all of the possible sounds (in order!) for letters and letter combinations, and then writing words with their representational symbols to make it clear which letters make which sounds.
I already had the phonogram cards from way back when Laura first recommended this to me (YEARS ago), and so I started today just flashing them to the girls and getting them to say the various sounds for each in order. They actually liked this. Ella went up to Card 42 before I could see it was a little much, and Madison went through the whole stack of 70. They like it. I went online and bought The Writing Road to Reading : The Spalding Method of Phonics for Teaching Speech, Writing and Reading, volume 4 for 6 whole dollars today, including shipping. Eventually, we'll be writing words with the notation for the various sounds, which is a kind of method Madison should really like, and which should really cement the spelling in her head.
Laura, did I mention that you're right? You're right. As it says in the little blurb in the upper right-hand corner of the blog, I'm grateful for your expertise.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment