When I began working on this approach with children in my own classroom, I had only read Ashton-Warner’s book, Teacher, and experimented with Key Words during my practice teaching in a kindergarten class where the teacher occasionally used it. There, I found it so powerful, that I was determined to figure out how to make Key Words the basis for an entire literacy program.
Diving Right In
My first (and only) job interview was in a one-school district in the farm country, in Ventura County, CA, where, both native- and non-English speakers were struggling with traditional reading programs. So, I brought a child’s collection of words on a word ring with me to my job interview, where I took a respectful, but firm “take it or leave it” stance, explaining the benefits and my desire/determination to experiment with this approach. They recognized the possibilities, hired and gave me the freedom and support needed to experiment. So I jumped right in — well over my head — and struggled to develop a program from scratch. It was not easy– took a couple of years to work things out — but eventually it paid off in huge dividends for the children.
Going In Gradually: 2 Examples
Now, I’ve developed this website for others who feel as I did — trying to save them some of the struggle I went through. And while I hope some will jump all the way in, as I did, I also realize that’s not possible in many school districts. So, I want to encourage those in that situation to move toward this — gradually.
To that end, following are two examples of how teachers adopted Key Words and The Steps for use in their existing programs.
Both of these teachers were in the study I did of Outstanding Effective Classrooms. Following is how I described them at the time.
Grace
Grace has a 1st grade class of 31 children and was also in my study of Outstanding Effective Classrooms. She has no aide, so she recruited two mothers as volunteers who each come in one day a week. They had three afternoons of training and three days of classroom observation before beginning to work with the children.
Her school uses a professionally published reading program, Open Court, which allows for a “workshop” time, when the children are busy with independent activities. She and/or the mothers give words to some of the children while the others are working in centers or on their workshop activities. The children who get Key Words do their illustration on the following day, during their workshop time. Each child gets a word twice a week.
Grace says that there is tremendous interest in The Steps activities, and her children call The Step 3 strips “puzzle sentences.” They especially like to clip their book on the easel so they can paint their picture instead of using the pens. This is her first year to use this program, and she reports enthusiastically that this is the first time 100% of her children can write independently by the end of the year.
Cheryl
Cheryl has a 1st grade class of 29 children, and she has an aide. At the beginning of the year, she used the Steps as her reading readiness program. She and her aide worked together to give words to all the children each morning.
Then as they began to develop some literacy skills, she moved them into her basal reading program. At that point, Cheryl took over the basal program and left her aide to give words.
They worked on language arts skills together in this way all morning. Each child read with Cheryl, got their word from the aide, did their Steps follow-up activity, and then were allowed to work in an art, science, or math center of their choice for the rest of the time.
She reports that the children’s skill and interest in writing is higher than ever before, and that now, at the end of the year, she has 5 children on Step 3, 18 on Step 5, and 6 on Step 6.