Welcome to my website! This page provides a brief overview of my background and professional experience. It also provides a brief look at the natural, personalized approach to reading I’ve developed, with some insight into the thinking behind it. Finally, it explains my purpose in creating this website.
Theoretical Base and Classroom Experience
When my daughters were preschoolers, I became so inspired by Maria Montessori’s books that I wanted them to experience her methods. Since I didn’t have the training myself, I hired a Dutch Montessori directress and established a Montessori preschool. (See newspaper clippings about our school.)
The classroom management strategies I learned from that experience helped me later create the active reading and writing work periods described on this website.
A few years after my Montessori experience, I discovered Sylvia Ashton-Warner’s concept of Key Vocabulary, which I now refer to as a child’s Special Words. Those are the words a child uses to talk about something of special interest to them. They’re a powerful tool for a beginning reader and are at the heart of the natural approach I’m describing on this website.
Shortly after I began experimenting with Special Words, I interviewed for a position in a public, K-2, bilingual classroom in southern California. Many of the children there were not progressing well, so I was hired with the understanding that I could experiment with the Special Words strategy I was only beginning to develop. It was a one-school district where board members had children in the school and were willing to support me in any way I needed.
Close to half of my students were the children of migrant farmworkers. The rest were native English speakers. Of that second group, some had the advantage of a print-rich home environment, while others had little experience with print.
Obviously, I needed a completely individualized reading program. So, I combined what I’d learned from Montessori and Ashton-Warner and begin developing the personalized approach described on this website. Working that out during the first year or so was a somewhat hectic experience. But it turned out to be well worth the effort.
Special Words and The Steps
I call this approach Special Words and The Steps. It begins by showing a child how their “talk” looks written down. They’re fascinated by seeing their words in print and want to do it, too.
So, having captured their attention, the teacher, parent, aide, or volunteer carefully models what they’re doing as they write. They show the child how to listen for the sounds in their words and choose certain letters to spell them. Interested in seeing their words translated into print, the child watches us carefully. From that daily experience, they absorb and learn to use phonemic awareness (listening for sounds), phonics, and letter formation.
To support and ensure that a child develops reading and writing skills from that daily experience, I devised a series of follow-up activities for Special Words, known as The Steps. Doing this repeatedly with one new Special Word each day, the child begins to absorb and copy writing skills, so that soon, they’re writing independently. Finally, since reading and writing are two sides of the same coin, their new writing skills easily transfer to reading.
So, the child learns to read and write simultaneously. And they do it with the same pleasure and ease they learned to speak.
This approach can be done in any language that uses an alphabet similar to the English alphabet. So, taking this approach, non-English speakers can remain in the classroom, as long as there’s a bilingual aide or volunteer there, able to take their dictation. Then, when the child feels ready, they spontaneously switch to English.
Keeping all children together in the same classroom avoids attaching any stigma to being a non-English speaker. It also avoids any delay in beginning to learn to read. Additionally, working alongside English-speaking children in an active classroom setting allows newcomers to naturally pick up English simply by being immersed in it.
Leaving the Classroom
This approach was highly successful. Children who had previously been struggling flourished. As word spread, visitors began asking to visit and observe. With the interest those visits generated, I began showing other teachers how to organize and use Special Words and The Steps.
Eventually, the county reading specialist brought in the nationally known reading expert, Dr. Jeannette Veatch. She urged me to enter the Ph.D. program at Claremont Graduate University, to allow me to teach aspiring teachers how to take this approach.
So, after five years of classroom teaching, I followed her advice. See Professional Education and Teaching Adults.
How this Approach Differs from Traditional Methods
This personalized approach recognizes the fact that from infancy to around six years old, a child’s brain operates differently than it does later — as follows:
A Young Child’s Natural Learning Strategy
Very young children are like sponges.
They’re also natural mimics.
They spontaneously absorb and copy
What they see and hear us do —
If they find it interesting enough.
That’s how we help them learn to talk, and they can easily do the same with print. Using their natural strategy, the child develops the same skills targeted by traditional methods. But they absorb and master them through immersion — just as they so easily do with speech.
As we take a child’s dictation, their printed Special Words and sentences are immediately meaningful; they make sense, spark the child’s interest, and allow them to absorb and copy reading/writing skills. That makes learning to read easy. So, the child enjoys reading and does it — a lot. With repeated, enjoyable practice, the child becomes an avid, skillful reader.
Most adults intuitively use the child’s natural learning strategy to help them learn to speak. They model by talking to them in complete sentences, reciting nursery rhymes, and singing. They also emphasize words of particular interest to that child: milk, kitty, Mama, Daddy, etc.
But when it comes to print, many adults have a blind spot. They seem to disregard how easily they help infants learn to talk and feel they need to “teach” a child to read. So, instead of taking advantage of the child’s natural learning strategy, they analyze the act of reading and take one of two traditional approaches. They either have the child memorize phonics and sight words, then have them practice using those decoding skills on books virtually devoid of meaning to the child. Or, they teach reading with specially designed books that repeat words and sentences that, while better than those used in the first method, still have less meaning than a child’s own Special Words and sentences.
Both traditional methods make learning to read more difficult than necessary. Most children from a print-rich home or preschool environment can overcome that. However, children lacking a print-rich foundation struggle.
Those children lose confidence, fidget, complain, cry, or stubbornly resist. They may ultimately be diagnosed with a reading disability, and sometimes that’s true. However, often, that’s not the problem. Rather, it’s that neither of those approaches fully triggers the child’ natural learning strategy. (Although the basal reader approach comes closer.) In the many years I’ve used this more natural approach, I’ve found only two children who couldn’t easily learn to read and write. They also couldn’t talk, even in their home language.
My Purpose Now
I have never forgotten the children I worked with so long ago and how delighted they were to see what they could accomplish. And I frequently hear from parents now with children struggling to read. So, I’m offering this approach to help preschool, K-2, and remedial students avoid or recover from unnecessary struggle and failure.
Sharing this approach is a volunteer project in my retirement. This website is a work in progress. Try as I may, I can’t find a technician (at least one I can afford) to makethe messaging buttons work properly! So, if you have questions or comments, please contact me through my Facebook Group, Helping All Kids Write to Read.
Posts and Comments/questions to that group come directly to me and remain private unless you indicate you want them to be published.Just explain the situation, and I’ll be happy to answer your questions!