Let’s pause now to consider how this approach is like learning to speak. For I started the section of the website, on Writing/Reading, by describing the child’s natural learning strategy. I also pointed out we see that natural strategy very clearly by looking at how a child learns to speak. And I said this approach to reading is much like learning to speak — except we’re more intentional about it.
So let’s compare the two now. Here, Key Words capture the child’s interest. So that’s the same as with speech, where the adult emphasizes such words as Mommy, Daddy, milk. Also, I’m both cases, we immerse the child in the entire process.
That is, we don’t break writing/reading into their component parts — phonics and sight words — and have the child memorize them. We plunge the child into the entire act of writing, then help them slowly acquire the skills involved . That, too, is the same as speech. For we don’t stay silent around an infant, then one day present them with words we want them to memorize.
One Big Difference
But there is one big difference: With speech, the child follows their own inner guide to both copy and practice what they find interesting. But here, we guide the child’s practice, using The Steps.
So, having the child work through The Steps is the most obvious difference between speech and this approach. And I want to emphasize that, for you may run into the popular argument that since speech apparently develops in a different area of the brain from reading, we must break reading into its component parts and teach it directly. That is, we must have the child memorize phonics first. (And some include memorizing sight words in this, too.)
But I don’t accept that argument because I’ve done it very much in the way the child develops speech — as I’ve described here.
So, I would say those holding the phonics first argument, just haven’t yet seen how it can be done in very much the same way as speech. And in doing so, we allow the child’s natural learning strategy to do it — with pleasure and ease.
That’s important to recognize, for too many children — especially those not from a print-rich environment — struggle and fail, when expected to memorize things that make no sense to them.
And that, basically, is why I’m working so hard to put these ideas out there.