The Spalding Method at a Glance

Several times throughout the course of earning my reading endorsement, there were moments when I wondered when everything would “click” together. I had a ton of information that I was trying to process, and process it did, but in bits, when what I was looking for was the big “Aha!” moment. I had many small epiphanies, as I made my way through understanding what how to take all these facts that I knew and piece them together in a meaningful way, but perhaps, the biggest moment of “Eureka!” came to me only when I became certified in learning the Spalding method.

The Spalding Method takes the two subjects most dear to me –English and Reading—and combines them in such a way that knowing how to read (the act of putting sounds together to make words and to understand those words so that they have meaning and connection) becomes impossibly easy to do. If you have a reader at home that struggles with any aspect of reading, the Spalding Method will be a beacon of hope and success for your child, and I am not one to exaggerate.

First, the Spalding Method believes in going back to the basics, so the first thing a student masters is all 70 sounds of the phonograms (letters and letter combinations that make up one or more sounds). Not only do they learn all of the sounds, but they also learn the rules of when the phonogram can and cannot be used. And, we’re not talking about just older kids – have you ever seen a class of second graders repeat sounds and rules with absolute certainty? Let me tell you, it’s a sight to see!

The Spalding Method also ensures that the print and sound connection is solidified in the student’s mind. Handwriting is practiced, and while being written by the student, the student says all the sounds of that particular phonogram. Talk about semantic encoding (learning in such a way that keeps information in the long-term memory).

What follows (very succinctly) include vocabulary instruction, reading comprehension instruction, writing instruction (grammar, too!), and assessments that track the progression of reading growth. I hate to say something is fail proof, but folks, some things just are ….

Melissa M. Loukas

Excellence in Academics Tutoring, LLC.

"We work with parents, so their children excel."

www.excellenceinacademicstutoring.com

eatbiz@cox.net

480.882.8933

Understanding What You Read

In today's world of education, where testing seems to be the marker of student achievement and student learning, reading for understanding has definitely become a phrase where "Reading between the lines" is its synonymous counterpart. With different types of questions, text structures, and a vast array of literary elements thrown in for good measure, "reading for pleasure" seems to be an expression that has been thrown to the wayside. But have no fear: with reading strategies that turn abstract thought into concrete understandable language, your child can be a successful reader who will then turn reading for a purpose into reading for pleasure!

A good place to start when estimating what your child understands is by getting him to figure out the difference between when he's confused and when he's not, while reading. If he's rereading it several times, if he's finished a page and cannot state what happened, or if he reads the same sentence on the page over and over because his mind is drifting, the chances of him being confused are likely. So, what do you do to help your student overcome this confusion?

First, make your student aware that the above signs show that he's not understanding what he's reading. Anyone can read words if he's literate, but if those words can't be meaningfully connected to his own experiences or if he doesn't have a reaction to them, then it's about as useful as being able to read aloud a foreign language, but not having a clue as to what it means.

Secondly, since we're on the subject of being able to relate to what's being read, let's talk about something called "prior knowledge". Prior knowledge just means that your child already knows things through school, you, and life experiences. When he uses that prior knowledge and accesses it because of a book, it means that he can take what's being read in a book and connect to it to experiences of his own. So, if he's having trouble with text on the page, have him start with stuff he can understand on the page. Is the main character being ridiculed for not fitting in with the crowd? Is he the popular student who has serious aspirations but hides them to maintain his image? If he can relate to the character or plot, positively or negatively, it's a stepping stone to understanding the plot that's harder to break down.

Some other steps to getting your child to understand what he's reading involve vocabulary, context clues, and using word indicators to better understand what the next thing will say. If you find that your child still struggles, and you and your family live in the Phoenix area, please contact Melissa Loukas at eatbiz@cox.net or visit http://www.excellenceinacademicstutoring.com/. Reading comprehension is within your child's grasp.

It Is as Easy as ABC ... Really!

So easy, in fact, that the letters "A," "B," and "C" don't even enter the equation in learning how to read ... well, not until much later, anyway. The reason this is so correlates to the idea of what reading experts call Phonemic Awareness (PA). Phonemic Awareness is the idea that words are made of individual sounds, and because of this, these individual sounds can be manipulated to make new words (How the Brain Learns to Read 33).

According to the National Reading Panel, phonemic awareness and letter knowledge (knowledge that the letters of the alphabet correspond to a sound, or phoneme, in spoken speech) are the two best predictors of how well a child will learn to read during his first two years of instruction. So, even though there is always controversy in whether a phonemic approach vs. a whole language approach (that learning how to read can be acquired through the way spoken language is acquired) is better, research indicates that children who have systematic and explicit instruction in phonemic awareness do better. And if you think about it, it is logical for the following reasons:

• thorough instruction in the basics of reading does not focus on the letter, but the sound of the letter, or if you want to be fancy, the phoneme. In fact, practice at first, focuses on nonsense words, because explicit instruction in hearing the different sounds in a "unit" is more important than realizing that the /b/ sound is appointed to the letter "b." If a learning reader cannot distinguish between the /b/ and /d/ sound, what difference does it make if the child knows what "b" and "d" is?


• mastery of phonemic awareness leads to learning readers becoming better spellers. If a student knows that the sounds /m/ /a/ /p/, put together, spell "map," it is only because proper instruction in phonemic awarness allows the child to understand that those sounds put together make a word that has a meaning.


• Meaning, then, leads to comprehension, and comprehension is key for students learning how to read. That is a key reason why reading instruction based on phonemic awareness is much more beneficial than instruction based on a whole reading approach. Frequently, if you take a word from a book that a student knows because of a whole reading approach, and isolate it, the student will not be able to read it outside of the context she knows. However, if a student knows the sounds (phonemes) of a word, she can read that word, independent of whether it is in her favorite bedtime book.

Ultimately, systematic and explicit instruction in phonemic awareness is key to having a successful reader at home. Of course, as the National Reading Panel suggests, there are other contributing factors, such as quality and intensity of instruction, the quality of teacher or tutor, and the motivation of the student. However, with a solid base of instruction being based on phonemic awareness, with the right instructor and motivations, the other factors fall into place, nicely.

For more information about finding a quality tutor, please visit my website, http://www.excellenceinacademicstutoring.com/. For further reading from Melissa M. Loukas, please visit englishtutorblog.com.