First — I’ll explain why I claim Key Words and The Steps are powerful.
In my K-2 classroom, half my students were the children of migrant farm workers. Most came to me speaking no English. Their parents were illiterate, so they had very little — if any — experience with print.
I started them immediately with Key Words. Occasionally one of them had to be gone for awhile early in the school year, while their family followed the crops. So I’d save their collection of Key Words, hoping they would be back.
Returning several weeks later, even a kindergarten child would remember most of the Key Words on their Word Ring. They were not able to “read,” in the traditional sense. So there was something powerful enough about their own special words, that they “stuck.”
With the combination of Key Words and The Steps, all of my students learned to read and write.* And they did it without struggling — even those who’d come to me with no idea of what print was for. It just took them a little longer — to fill in that gap.
What Made That Possible?
In graduate school later, I began to see the answer to that. First, I wasn’t trying to train the children to read. So I did not have them try to memorize anything. So those children coming in with no idea of print were never confused or discouraged by having to try to remember which isolated sounds matched the foreign squiggles the teacher called “letters.”
In addition, it appears to be a combination of things that explains the power of what we were doing. For not only were the children working with topics they were especiallyinterested in (their own Key Words), they were —
- being allowed to use their inborn learning strategy to absorb and copy the skills involved,
- they were allowed to move along a natural path toward a new way to communicate, and writing comes before reading as they move along that natural path** and
- they were creating something with a “real life” purpose as they worked.
To explain, using Key Words as the basis for learning to read and write makes the child’s work meaningful to them — thus they’re more interested in 
doing it. That is, they’re not trying to memorize the bits and pieces that go into reading — just because someone tells them to.
Instead, communication was the goal. They’re learning those skills by using them to communicate their ideas. (See the image below and check out Why Writing First?)
Further, working on The Steps has a purpose of its own. For they create books they can enjoyed using. For they “read” them repeatedly to themselves and to others.
So the power of Key Words & The Steps comes from allowing the child to to follow their natural strategy: to absorb and copy/practice skills and concepts while doing something of strong interest — that as an added bonus — also has a “real life” purpose.
The Child’s Path Toward Communication Though Print
I believe the desire to communicate is inborn, and that we should view using print as simply a more complex way of fulfilling the child’s innate desire to communicate.
So we should not see our challenge as “teaching reading” — and thus break reading down into its component parts and having the child to acquire them separately. Instead, we should look to the fact that a child is trying to communicate in various ways — from birth forward. Then instead of seeing reading as something we train a child to do, we should look at how a child learns to talk and mirror that process as best we can.
I also believe that failing to do so is why so many children struggle, even fail to learn to read and write. (The image below comes from Why Writing First?)
__________
- There was just one exception — a kindergarten child who also could not talk –even in his own home language.
__________
* During the 5 years in my K-2 classroom, virtually all the children using Key Words and The Steps learned to both read and write. There was just one exception — a kindergarten child in my class who also could not talk — even in his home language.
I believe the desire to communicate is inborn, and that we should view using print as simply a more complex way of fulfilling that innate desire to communicate. So we should not see our challenge as “teaching reading” — and thus break reading down into its component parts and train the child to acquire them separately. Instead, we should look to the fact that a child is trying to communicate in various ways — from birth forward. Then we should look at how a child learns to talk and mirror that process as best we can.
I also believe that failing to do so is why so many children struggle, even fail to learn to read and write. (The image below comes from Why Writing First?)