On the previous page, we saw a boy asking to have ice cream, for that day’s Key Word. The adult wrote his new Key Word on sturdy paper, so he could put it on his metal Word Ring — where he keeps a collection of words he recognizes. The adult also made a duplicate of the Key Word, so the child could go off on his own and do something with it.
And this is where this approach differs from speech. With speech, we model, and the child develops the skills necessary — on their own. Here, we model in much the same way as with speech — but then we intervene to guide the child’s skill development. To do this, we use 6 increasingly complex follow up activities to Key Words, known as The Steps.
So, what he does with the duplicate of his Key Word depends on where he is in The Steps. The boy in our example is just beginning, so he’s at Step 1. There, he glues the duplicate of his Key Word on a blank page in his Writing Book and draws a picture about ice cream.
Where he’ll go from here, with other Key Words as he moves through The Steps — over time and at his own pace — is shown in the illustration below.
Overview of Key Words & The Steps
As a child’s skills grow, they gradually make their way through six increasingly complex Steps. To guide their progress, the adult has a set of Indicators Of Readiness. These help decide when to move a child on to the next Step.
Using this set of criteria, a child doesn’t move forward until they’re comfortable with what they’ll be doing at that new Step. This insures that a child’s progress through The Steps is fail-safe. This is to be sure they feel confident with print. For it’s often, lack of confidence that causes a child to become a reluctant reader — or even to completely give up on learning to read.
So, gently guided along — and not moving forward until they’re ready — the child experiences no struggle, no loss of confidence, no chance of failure. Instead, they continue to enjoy what they’re doing as they either dictate to someone else what they want to say — and later — write on their own.
Moving forward as slowly or quickly as their inner timetable dictates, eventually the child will have absorbed and practiced enough to reach Step 5. There they begin to “build” their own simple sentence.
That eventually expands to three or four sentences about whatever they have on their mind that day. So, a child who’s learned to write in that way comes to see print as another way to communicate — and they enjoy and take pride in doing it.
At around that same time, they will begin to recognize words on signs, cereal boxes, etc. That’s the signal it’s time to begin thinking about moving them into the “cold” reading of simple, professionally written books.
About Skill Development
I refer to this approach as more natural than usual and point out that it’s like learning to speak. So, it could seem — at first glance — as if we’re leaving skill development to chance. But that’s far from the case. For I developed The Steps precisely because I realize how important it is to ensure skill development.
So, it’s important to stress that The Steps guide skill development. And they do it in a fail-safe way. Nothing is being left to chance here.
Therefore, if you see the logic in using the child’s natural learning strategy, and want to try it, please know you can trust The Steps to guide the child’s skills to independence.
Where to Find More Directions For Key Words & The Steps
These first two pages have given you and overview of the entire process in this approach. Beyond this, you’ll find much more detailed directions here and printable brief directions to use while working with a child at each Step here.
Why Writing First?
We start by modeling writing, primarily because it’s easier to show what you’re doing with writing than it is with reading. For writing takes making decisions we can demonstrate and talk about. We can show which letters spell the sounds in their words, how to form the letters needed, etc.
In contrast, it’s impossible to show a child what our brain is doing as we read. In fact, researchers at the University of Cambridge are still trying to determine exactly how we do it.
For more about why writing comes first, see 5 Reasons Why Writing Helps Early Reading. Also see the figure at the bottom of this page, for another way to visualize this.** This figure comes from the page in this website, The Child’s Natural Path.
Outcomes
Simply put, Key Words and The Steps have allowed the child to absorb and practice what the adult has gradually modeled — the skills that go into writing. And writing skills readily transfer to reading, as you’ll see on the following page.
So, as said on the previous page, with this approach, a child learns to both read and write at the same time. And in my experience, they accomplish it in about the same amount of time it would usually take that child to learn just to read.
The Following Page
We look next at how reading develops from Key Words and The Steps. That page also provides links to videos showing how to ease the way for a child moving into professionally written books. Plus, there, you’ll be directed to what else you can do — to help a child absorb and use phonics for spelling.
NEXT — MOVING INTO BOOKS
** From The Child’s Natural Path, another way to visualize why writing helps a child with reading:
