There’s a big fight in “teaching reading” about phonics versus whole word methods. The thing I like about our curriculum is that it uses BOTH for reading and then hammers phonics and spelling rules all the way to 6th grade. That takes care of both ends. Love it. However, the book we use, and even the guide to WRTR can be CONFUSING, right? So here’s my attempt to help you out.
What is it?
So, the very first thing to know is that we use it as a SPELLING program. In schools, it’s used to teach reading too. Teachers dictate the words, the children repeat and write them. At the end of the list, the kids dictate in unison back to the teacher as she writes on the board. They correct their spelling notebook. They segment and read the words together for spelling (read: crazy, unaccented pronunciation) and then read them together in a different order for normal speech. This hits the phonics and the whole word method. The marking system makes a picture in the child’s head of the word, in addition to providing a way to catalog the rules. The spelling notebook is then used in all their other Language Arts subjects. All of the composition that week comes from it. All of the grammar teaching is tied up in the spelling list. And so on.
Once upon a time, Orton and Gillingham (OG) teased out all the rules of how reading English works and applied it to dyslexic kids with great success. Somewhere in that process, Spalding worked with/for/near them. I dunno. Anyway, she left and developed her own thing. It’s not NEAR as representative of real pronunciation as OG, but she still did something GREAT.
Spalding developed a marking system for cataloging the application of rules to each word.
Having a dyslexic child in an OG intervention, I can tell you that OG is far and above more accurate for pronunciation! The session and rules are customized to your accent and personal pronunciation patterns. Like, we pronounce the L in milk and film, but lots of folks don’t. So our lessons deleted that off of the “silent letter” list.
That is SUPER for a dyslexic kid that needs a system of dependable rules to PREDICT a spelling, but they aren’t organized into a memorable system. So, Spalding’s rules and word analysis are sometimes WAY off from how a normal person would say it, but her idea to make an organized marking system is GENIUS. She systematized it.
Why is it so hard?
People get degrees in OG. Almost every program out there requires a LOT of work on mom’s part to understand the material she is teaching. Spell to Read and Write, Scientific Spelling, WRTR, all of them. The only exception is All About Spelling. But, dang, you will PAY out the nose it. So, the rest of this post assumes you aren’t going to shell out.
What are the A-Z lists?
Another story. Once upon a time, a dude named Ayers made a list of high frequency words and organized them according to spelling difficulty. Go look at the link. The lists are really short in the first seven levels.
Even after it was “extended,” those lists were really short. There just weren’t more words that fit the early categories. That’s why the first list is “A-G.” She crammed all the first seven levels together so that it would be a decent sized list. Every hundred words or so after that, we get another package of phonograms and rules. But, until you get past G, the new rules and phonograms didn’t add enough bulk to the lists to merit their own section.
What’s the goal?
The goal is to work your way through all the lists A-Z by the end of 6th grade.
Did you know that? I didn’t. Anyway, as with everything, MODG is totally flexible, but that’s the overall goal. If you do 20 words a week, 30 weeks a year, you will get through it. But, that’s not in the plans. You will have to go faster than that since the first 7 weeks have NO LISTS. Also, know that in Spaldling schools, 3GRD is List O!