My six-year-old son, who is highly distractable and has Aspergers, has worked on this program for a total of 10 days now. Already I've seen enough progress to want to take the time to write a review, something I very rarely do.
A little about my son's background might be useful to parents who are shopping for programs. Thanks to the Starfall website, and (to a lesser extent) Hooked on Phonics, he had by age three acquired a strong foundation in the basic phonograms-- recognizing long and short vowel sounds, and single consonant sounds. Largely because of his hyperactivity and attention deficit however, he made zero (ZERO) reading progress at his subsequent private preschool and kindergarten programs. In kindergarten, every time he was compelled to read simple words (he would not do it on his own)he worked by sounding out letters laboriously, even if he was reading a word for the second or third time. It was not hard to see that reading was exhausting, and with his short attention span, he hated it.
As for his handwriting, he learned to write capital letters in preschool (age 5), using the Handwriting Without Tears system, but he seemed thoroughly bored with the work. At 6 in his Montessori kindergarten, he enjoyed copying words for interesting projects, but he seemed to have no fixed plan for writing any letter, and his letters looked very different from one moment to the next. His b's and d's were often reversed (he could not recognize the letters reliably), and he wrote them by attaching circles to lines ("bat-and-ball" style). His teachers, though excellent in many respects, seemed unconcerned with these bad habits. I bought embossed handwriting worksheets thinking these would be easy to trace, but when my son used regular paper he lapsed into old habits.
Recently I started searching for the program by which my elementary school taught me to read over 30 years ago. Eventually I found the Spalding Method online, and I'm pretty sure that this is the same program that challenged me when I was a kid. I don't think I leapt at the work with quite the enthusiasm the book suqgests students will have. I remember my mom thought it was over-the-top and something of a pain whenever she had to help me with homework. By the end of first grade, however, I was a good reader, and I grew up loving to read.
So, as mentioned above, my son has been working hard in this program (at home; no local schools use it) for 10 days now, which means I have been working hard, too. We are only just moving past the upper- and lower-case alphabet-writing phase, which is very rules-based, and which several times has felt excruciating. (One day my son asked if we could please do some addition and subtraction problems instead.) That said, his handwriting is starting to look pretty darn amazing, and is beginning to become a routine, so that he doesn't have to "reinvent the wheel" every time he starts to write a letter. I am very excited, furthermore, with the meaningful way the program gives children for delineating lower case d from lower case b, because it seems to be working for my son. Spalding encourages kids to feel the ways in which their mouths form the sounds of these letters. The tongue curves to make the sound of d, and when writing this letter the first thing we do is make a curved, open shape. Lower case b is a "line letter" however, because we begin it by making a line. We can remember this because the lips form a tight line when we make the b sound....
Just as the book's title says, the program teaches reading through writing; children learn to spell first, analyzing words to identify and mark the phonetic rules at work in each sample. The theory is (I think), that by the time children have learned to spell using this method--which is intentionally kinesthetic and multi-sensory in its approach--the phonograms will be so thoroughly ingrained in the child that reading will not require the constant and exhausting sounding-out that has been a problem for my son in the past. I can believe this based on our experience so far. While it is typically difficult for him to focus on work, he is faring better with this approach because it engages his body (through handwriting, conscious articulation....)as well as his mind. He is learning the sounds of multi-letter phonograms now, and writing the "letter teams," as we call them; I expect he'll start the spelling/analysis phase of the program in about a week.
I bought this fourth edition based on other parents' comments regarding the better instruction and the cuttable phonogram cards found in this version . I am happy with it, though I can't compare it to other editions. I will say that, as cheap as I am, having cut out the 70 enclosed cards using a paper cutter, laminated the cards, and re-cut them, I think I would be willing to buy the card set for $20, had I to do it all over again. Also, the vinyl record in the back of this version is cute in a retro sort of way, but my son and I both have appreciated the fact that official videos giving the pronunciation of the phonograms are available on Youtube. [...]
I've written a lot here, but consider it a sign of my appreciation for this program. It requires work, but for us, the work is proving to be well-spent.
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There is a newer edition of this item:
Writing Road to Reading 6th Rev Ed.: The Spalding Method for Teaching Speech, Spelling, Writing, and Reading
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Only 9 left in stock (more on the way).
$19.94
(223)
Only 9 left in stock (more on the way).
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