Spaulding Method for Toddlers - Teach Reading with Fridge Magnets

[Wolfwind]

My 2yo loves phonics, but refuses to sound out words.  After much frustration, I pulled out a copy of Spaulding's "The Writing Road to Reading" I bought a while back and looked through it.  Lo and behold, it's possible to adapt it for EL kids who can't yet write!  (Spaulding probably hates me.)  I'm sharing this in case anyone else is in a similar situation.

You don't actually need a copy of the book to follow this method; everything is available online.  You'll need to read carefully through this site: http://www.ontrackreading.com/homeschooling/the-ontrack-reading-homeschooling-program.  He sells workbooks, but you don't need them, and all the other info is here.  He made quite a few improvements to the original WRTR, several of which I had done myself, and it saves buying the book!  You'll also need to google "Extended Ayres List" and teach the words on that list in that order.

The only other things you need are a marker, index cards (I recommend the multicolored set), and homemade refridgerator magnets.  I bought a pack of three A4 sized magnet sheets that were supposed to go in a printer at Hobby Lobby for around $7.  I just wrote the phonograms on the white side and cut them out.

The Spaulding Method is called "The Writing Road to Reading" for good reason.  She advocates not teaching reading until after teaching children how to write each letter perfectly.  But by using fridge magnets (which my kids, at least, love), we can start much earlier.

The first step is to learn the phonograms.  Spaulding has 70; the On Track to Reading site has about 80, for reasons he explains.  I wrote each one on an index card, with its sounds on the back if I had trouble remembering, and made up stories to help my daughter learn them.  I'll post my stories later; they're pretty simple.

Once the first fifty phonograms are learned, Spaulding starts spelling words.  We sit next to the fridge and I put out about ten phonograms (less right at first, more as she got the hang of it), some of which are in the word.  I say the word and use it in a sentence.  ("Go.  We go to the store.  Go.")  Sometimes I have to say each sound in the word seperately.  ("gggg...oooo.  What's the first sound in ggg...ooo?")  We look for the phonogram that comes first.  Spaulding emphasizes that if more than one phonogram could make the sound, you tell them which one to use; don't talk about other possibilities in other words.  ("Go starts with g.  Good!  Next we use the phonogram that says o, oh, oo.")

Spaulding says that first graders should learn 30 words a week.  I scaled that down a bit, although after several weeks, we're almost doing that many.  At first my daughter could do 3 at a time, a few times a day.  We would introduce 3 new words in the morning, then review new and old words other times throughout the day.  Now we're up to 5 at a time.  Occasionally we only review and don't learn anything new.

After learning 86 words, Spaulding says to add another time each day for the child to write a sentence.  Ask them to use one of their new words in a sentence.  Teach capitalization and punctuation as it comes up.  Teach them to ask for help with new words they haven't learned that are part of their sentence.  We will be starting this next week; I'll post how it goes!

After 149 words, kids should start reading books!  There is no reading instruction as such; just ask them to read.  Help them with any words they struggle with, but they should be able to sound out new words just by virtue of all the spelling instruction.  There's a list of books on the On Track to Reading Website; they're basically children's classics like Robert McClosky, "Madeline," Dr Seuss, etc.  My daughter should get to this point in a few months.  I'm excited!  We'll see how well it works then.

[waterdreamer]

Thank you for sharing!! Maybe this is something I should prepare ahead of time for my Baby Z.

[teachingmykids]

When you start working on spelling do you have them spell the word themselves or do you help them with that?

[Wolfwind]

I helped quite a bit at the beginning and backed off over time.  It went sort of like this:

Let's spell the word go.  We go to the store.  Gggggg....ooooooo.  Go.

What's the first sound in go?  ggg....oooo.  gggggggggggggg...oo.  (More and more pronounced until she gets it right; if she didn't I would eventually just tell her.)

Where's the phonogram that makes that sound?  (If she can't find it after a little, I point to the general area and see if she can tell.  Or just give her two and have her pick the right one.)

Good!  Go starts with g.  Put it right here.  What comes next?  g...oooooooooo.  (Until she says O or I have to prompt her.)

For the o sound we use the phonogram that says o, oh, oo.  Which one is that?  (Help her if she needs it.)

Great!  Put it by the first one.  Go!  Big Girl A spelled the word go!

With harder words I still have to do this, but most of the time, I just say the word, say it slowly, and let her figure it out.  But that's after maybe a month of practicing.

[teachingmykids]

Thanks my toddler doesn't tell me the sounds very often but she can point to them. I was thinking of teaching my 2 year old and my 4 year old the phonograms. The reading method isn't working for my 4 year old so I was thinking of switching to spelling. He knows the 26 letter phonograms. My 2 year old doesn't say them but if I give her a few choices she will point to them. I tried practicing a little more to get her to say them but she just won't but she recognizes them and could point to letter tiles.

[Mandabplus3]

Yep this will work it has the teachers tick of approval 
This is pretty much how I am teaching my kindy class and how I taught my son to sound out words. It's perfect for non verbal children as they can do it from speech TO written rather than being forced to say something.
I don't use magnets at school yet purely because I haven't taught them enough sounds to bother yet. We have only mastered 6 letters ( which is 9 sounds) this year ( its week 3) as such I use our letter cards to make a word and they read it out to me. Next week we will have enough vowels to use magnets and have them make words for me. Some of them have made words with the cards already.
I like the phonograms in the Spaulding method. They cover everything well and are actually possible to teach.
To do this with 2-4 year olds you will need to do quite a bit of repetition, use the same words often, teach some sight words separately, and be very patient with modelling breaking down word sounds.

[MummyRoo]

Manda, do you think this will help my son read words as a whole? He loves phonics and letter sounds but is stuck at sounding out words - he can say the word once he's sounded out the letters slowly, but seems to have no memory for sight reading - even if we are reading a two-word sentence he won't be able to sight-read the first word once he's sounded out the second...

Thanks for the links Wolfwind - I tried googling yesterday after you mentioned that all you needed to know could be found online without buying the books but the best I managed to find was a general overview of the method. This has saved me a lot of time

[teachingmykids]

Thanks. My 2 year old is verbal. Her speech is pretty typical for her age. She just doesn't say the sounds of the letters when I ask her but can point to the correct one. I hoping with working with her more she eventually get to that point but I also don't want to frustrate her doing the same thing over and over.

[seastar]

Wolfwind - karma for this thread. How do you think this approach compares to All About Spelling?

[Wolfwind]

MummyRoo - I'm hoping it will help my daughter sound out words too.  Spaulding claims it will, so in a few months we'll see!  I'm glad you liked the link.  I think that site is awesome.

teachingmykids - I think you could just skip asking what sound comes first.  My daughter often picks up the correct magnet without saying anything.  The first time, you might have to just tell her: "Gggg..o starts with g. [hold up the g magnet]."  Actually, I think that's what I do sometimes.  Then when you review, just let her find the magnet on her own when you say the word.

seastar - I don't know anything about All about Spelling, but I just looked over their website.  It seems very similar.  If I wanted a boxed curriculum, that looks like a great one.  It seems to use a lot of the same ideas I came up with, plus a lot more.  I will keep it in mind if I need a boxed curriculum someday.

[Mandabplus3]

Mummy roo
Hmm no reading memory? Never came across it. Sounding out words is tiresome and hard work but usually kids can remember at least one word from before they sounded out another. Children who continually sound out words need lots more practice sounding out words. Basically. Some kids do it a lot ( as their primary method of reading) others do it as little as possible. Eventually with practice they nearly all come good. 
Have you tried silly sentences? Make "fat butt" or " big butt"  in magnets and see if he remembers the first word! 
Have you actively taught ALL the different reading strategies? There are quite a few ways to get a word right. I am going to look for a link for you

[MummyRoo]

Hi Manda. I am hoping it is as much stubborn refusal as lack of memory, but he has yet to read a single word without sounding out the letters individually. We did a lot of flashcard reading when he was tiny, which he enjoyed but never showed me he could actually recognise the words. We started Reading Bear in September and he very quickly got the hang of sounding out words and has very little trouble reading by sounding out all the letters in the word and putting them together - even adding new letter combinations like sh and th he's picked up almost immediately. He just hasn't ever once read a whole word without sounding it out first, or made any show of recognising any of the words he has sounded out AND seen hundreds of times as flashcards, like cat. In a two-word sentence by the time he's sounded out the second word he's 'forgotten' (or is unwilling to try and remember) what the first word said, even in silly sentences or with his own name. He doesn't even recognise his name as a whole word - he just guesses from the capital N.

I hope that by changing it round so instead of just sounding out whole words we are making words by putting the individual sounds together that it will help him make some sort of connection to reading whole words, kind of like the opposite of breaking them down to sound them out. It can't hurt to try. It is just frustrating - I hope it is just his innate hatred of being tested (that I have seen in almost every aspect of EL since birth) and that when he wants to read whole words, then he will start doing so without my help. This *is* the child who told me that asking him to practice his maths facts was "making his brain tired"    and Maths is something he really loves and finds easy... unlike reading, which is rarely fun for more than a couple of minutes at a time, even when there are no difficult words and he gets to run laps of the hall between reading each one!

[teachingmykids]

Mummy roo
Hmm no reading memory? Never came across it. Sounding out words is tiresome and hard work but usually kids can remember at least one word from before they sounded out another. Children who continually sound out words need lots more practice sounding out words. Basically. Some kids do it a lot ( as their primary method of reading) others do it as little as possible. Eventually with practice they nearly all come good.   

Both my older kids were stuck in the sounding out phase for quite a while. It is so frustrating to watch. I was worried for a while that something visually was going on with my dd because she was much older than your ds when she went through it. She is doing good now and making much faster gains and finally seems to know in less time how to turn something into a word she recognizes. I don't know why things clicked eventually but they did. The perspective is letting me know that ds will get through it too but it still is a hard phrase to watch. My oldest actually uses the spalding method at school but they don't give us the instructions on what they are doing at school.

Mommy Roo I brought a used AAR with ds and also have a used AAS I used with dd. It taught dd how to spell in one lesson but then it moved rather slow.They have the kids learn the first 26 phonograms first and cover more later where spalding covers more upfront. I haven't been through the whole thing but AAS does teach spelling but to be complete it is supposed to be used with AAR with teaches sounding out words and it isn't working for ds. I like that it is Orton Gillington like Spalding but they seem a little different to me. AAS seems to cover less than Spalding does with spelling then Spalding does and isn't the reading aspect of the program. It might cover a similar amount of the program since I have only done the first few lessons and not the whole thing but it has 7 breakdowns to be complete and that seems like quite a lot. I like AAR but it hasn't ended the sounding out thing. I switched around so much for my kids but I think I am going to give the Spalding method a go.

My kids did learn some whole words from watching meet the sight words. I recommend that.

[Wolfwind]

These are some of the stories I used to teach my daughter the sounds of the phonograms.  They're organized by the spelling that shows on the front of the card.  Most of them have multiple sounds; look on the On Track to Reading website for a list.  I didn't write any for the basic sounds of the consonants that only have one sound each, because we used "The Amazing Action Alphabet" (http://seeheardocompany.com) to learn those before I started this program.

I highly recommend getting a multi-colored pack of index cards and making each story a different color.  That makes it much easier to keep track of the cards when your toddler takes them to play with!

The Girl Who Loved to Eat Phonograms: a, e, i, o, u, y, ie, ow, ea
(This one stars Big Girl A's six month old sister, who tries to eat the phonogram cards.  You could use a favorite animal or character instead.)

Once upon a time there as a little girl who loved to eat phonograms.  She went for a walk one day looking for phonograms to eat.  Along came a phonogram saying "O, O, O."  (Hold up the card and say the first sound.)

She said, "I'm going to eat you!"

The phonogram said, "Ooooh!" (Second sound on the card.  If there are only two sounds, the phonogram runs away now.)

She said, "Yes, I am!"  She tried to grab the phonogram!

It ran away, saying, "Oooo!  Oooo!" (Third sound on the card.)

I would usually do 3 cards at a time.  The last time, instead of running, the phonogram lures the baby into a hole.  In the hole she finds all sorts of good baby food and decides not to eat phonograms anymore. 


Brave H: ee, s & sh, g & gh, c & ch, wh, ph, th

Once upon a time, this phonogram was walking along.  (Hold up card.)  It said, "s, s, s."  (First sound on the card.)

Suddenly, it bumped into this phonogram!  (Bump it into ee card.)  It started to scream, "EEEE!  EEEE!"

The phonogram was so scared, it fell over, saying "Z! Z!" (second sound on the card, if applicable), and ran away.

It found this phonogram (put down ee and pick up h), who said, "Join me and I'll help you be brave."  (Put down h and initial consonant card; pick up sh.)  They joined together and said,

"Sh, sh, sh."

Now this new phonogram was brave and went back to the screaming ee and calmed it down.



Fighting Friends: ue & ew, au & aw, ei & ey, ai & ay, oi & oy, oa & oe & ui & oul

Once upon a time, a phonogram was walking along saying, "au, au, au."

Another phonogram came up saying "aw, aw, aw."

"What?  You can't say aw.  I say au."

"No, I say aw!"

"No, I say au!"

They fought and fought.  Finally they decided to be kind and share.  aw said, "I'll say aw at the end of words."

"OK, I'll say au in the middle," said au.

And then they walked off together as friends, saying, "aw, au, aw, au."


Pretty Talking Tails: le, me, ne, se, ze, ce, ze, ed (sounds that only come at the end of a word)

Once upon a time there was a bird who had no tail.  He heard of a mountain where there were tails, so he went and got this one.  (Hold up le card.)  Then he flew off.  As he flew, he heard someone saying, "ul, ul, ul."  But there was no one there!  He heard it again, "ul, ul, ul."  But he was still alone.  "ul, ul, ul."  It was right behind him!  He looked at the tail.  "Do you say 'ul'?"  "ul," said the tail.  Hmm.  But it was a very pretty tail, so he flew on.

He meets other birds and tells them to go get tails and they do, following the same pattern.

[teachingmykids]

I finally had a chance to look over the site. It is a lot of info to take in. I am happy though that it has a multi-syllable section because I can work on that with my oldest. I am going to work on teaching the littles the phonograms and then move onto spelling with them.

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