Unpacking the Writing Road to Reading

A fair warning

Warning: This series of articles covers material up to grade 5.

You know when you miss the exit on the freeway - well, here’s a legal U-turn for you. Consider turning back.

A place for you to practice reading with your kid is ready and waiting: Game 1 - learn the sounds a letter makes.

This is not me being clever, using reverse psychology. No! This content covers the ins and outs of writing and reading. Teachers learn this stuff to be better teachers. It takes 5 years to see the child progress through it.

This is NOT required to start reading, to build confidence, to inspire joy. It’s the opposite! It’s rules.

Still here? Ok.

TL;DR

Why am I doing this?

I want to stay a step ahead of my kid.

After a month on-and-off linking letters to sounds, he’s spending more time on 3-letter words. He’s trying to sound-out and write words. Yet I find myself lacking consistent explanations. So I went looking and came across The Writing Road to Reading.

The promise: The Writing Road to Reading, or the Spalding Method, equips children and adults with the best tools to master the foundations of the English language.

70 phenomes and 30 rules!

Unpacking will take a series of articles. The articles will build on each other. If you read my other articles you know the drill: master one, add the next.

Overview (this article)
The rules - part 1 (downloadable)
The rules - part 2 (downloadable)
The rules - part 3 (downloadable)
The phenomes - group 1 (downloadable)
The phenomes - group 2 (downloadable)
The phenomes - group 3 (downloadable)
The phenomes - group 4 (downloadable)

I hope to come up with clever names for these, for now I’m roughing them in. Join me as I try to grasp these myself.

As I go through this learning, I’ll try to think of ways to add more games, maybe even a scorecard to track our progress towards the 100. No promises. This is new territory.

The saving grace

100 things to learn seem daunting.

I find some peace by reminding myself that the majority of children grasp these rules by grade 5. This removes the pressure to be perfect. It gives me persmission to have fun with my kid.

Permission? I’m a dad - I don’t need permission. I do enjoy finding fun ways to teach my kids the little bit I know.

My go-forward thesis: small leaps

Here is what success looks like to me:

Say the sound a letter makes > ‘I did it!’ > Fun > ‘Let’s do another one, dad!’

If my kid builds his confidence, feels a sense of accomplishment while having fun - he’ll ask for another.

We’re talking about a flywheel to build momentum, which I wrote about in this article.

Unblock reading one sound at a time. Small leaps = success!
Address complexity over time in bite sized chunks. Take small leaps here and there = success!
Milestone: Our kid is reading at this point! That’s awesome!
As they read, they’ll commit words to memory. Spelling becomes easier, almost automatic.
The 30 rules for spelling will come after. And guess what? They’ll already know a bunch, making for a smaller leap = more success!

The question

The question I have right now is: how can I turn theory, 100 rules, into small leaps?

Pre-mortem

Before we dive in, let’s consider how this could go wrong. A good old pre-mortem.

Why not read by writing?

The challenge I see is that it’s too much at once. Too many stumbling blocks to go from zero to reading “a cat sat on a hat”.

Don’t belive me?

Consider trying to figure out how to spell out a word with the sound A (as in the song A-B-Cs) in it. Could be ‘a’ or ‘eigh’ or a few other letter combinations.

To do it correctly, consistently, your kid must learn 5 of the 30 rules. That won’t build confidence today. Those are not small leaps. Toddlers like fun - rules aren’t fun.

Rules > “I can’t do it!” > “Help me!” > Frustration > Big feelings = Not success.

So, unless we can turn this theory into our flywheel, we’ll hit a wall on this project. Not fun.

Consider age and temperament

That said, each kid is different. You know your kid best.

Can they sit still?
Can they calmly tolerate making mistakes over and over?

Mine can’t, not yet.

It’s too risky. A steep hill to climb with a kid that doesn’t have the stamina, the patience, the self-regulation to overcome so much frustration.

My preferred approach

If all else fails, we’ll still have the games we already have!

The 3 games I wrote to promote universal literacy. I explain my approach in this article and you can take the first steps by learning the foundational sounds a letter makes.

Confidence over competence I say.

Competence comes from practicing, adding new rules to be a better speller.

Start with “a letter is a symbol, a letter makes a sound”. Teach them 5 letters and they can read CVCs, that’s in game 2.

We could stick to just the basics and leave the rest to the education system. Depending where you live, you might not want that.

This series is for you.

Diving into the theory

Still here?

Cool. You’re like me. You want to have the end in mind. You want to go deep, maybe get stuck. Or maybe you’re curious to know the “logic” behind the English language. The Writing Road to Reading method promises to explain it.

Let’s start with “The rules - part 1 (includes a downloadable)” (this is a working title, no link yet).

References

Check out the Spalding Method for yourself.