The Writing Road To Reading by Romalda B. Spalding

First, a quick demonstration...

Here is an oral phonogram review, done with my four year-old daughter, Imogen. She is learning the first 31 phonograms of the program and so far has had about 8 lessons.

My Experience

Back in 1996 there were only a handful of Spalding teacher trainers in Australia. I was fortunate enough to be working at the speech pathology clinic where three of them practised.

Mary Ruth Reed (now Mendel) trained me and set me to work with an ever-growing client list and the kind of mentoring people only get to dream about.

I saw mainly children, on a one-to-one basis. At full capacity I would have been teaching Spalding 25 hours a week on average.

I have been using it to a greater or lesser degree now for twelve years.

Students are shown and asked to repeat up to 70 phonogram cards. These phonograms range from the sounds of the single letters in the alphabet to letter combinations such as /th/, /igh/ and /ough/.

Students then practise writing selected phonograms. They are instructed to say the phonograms at the same time as they write them. This gives the program a multisensory basis.

The next task is to use the phonograms to construct words from the Ayers Word List.

Students are assessed and placed in the appropriate section of the word list and progresss thorugh to higher and higher levels as the program continues.

The words from the list are also analysed by students and the phonograms within them are marked using a simple visual system. Students also mark words which conform to up to thirty spelling rules within the program.

Positives

Having such knowledge of the workings of the English language is a privilege for teachers and often a delight for students.

Spalding's method is based on the Orton-Gillingham approach to language and so conforms to the highest scientific rigour.

This method has the best handwriting component I have seen. It teaches neat, workable script that helps to eliminate reversal of letters and numbers in students.

Once learned, this program provides teachers with meaningful, effective lessons for students of all ages and abilities.

Spalding extends from word building to vocabulary extension, sentence formation, paragraph deconstruction and construction and comprehension actions. Its scope is unrivalled.

Downsides

The teacher training takes between five and ten days of full time study and is relatively expensive if you want the training done properly.
In my experience, there have been students who are insufficiently phonemically aware to get the most out of this program, though Spalding is one of the few literacy acquisition programs I have seen that goes far enough to boost phonemic awareness for most students, but not all.
Sometimes Spalding can be too in-depth. If your students are constrained by time or money, the contact hours that Spalding requires to be effective are too many.

Summary

If you are a practitioner who has the opportunity to see students for many contact hours, Spalding is a top-class program.Spalding is also the best and most easily implemented whole-school literacy acquisition program I have ever seen.

Unfortunately, it is not a quick fix, but represents a large commitment of time, money and effort.

Fortunately, with the Spalding Program, you get what you pay for - world-class results.

SBI!