ReadSpell: Troubleshooting Set Zero

ReadSpell is divided into nine sets, zero through eight. In this post and the next few, I share a free preview of what’s inside.

Irrespective of whether you use ReadSpell or any other method/program to teach reading and spelling, you will encounter brick-walls. This is normal. This is expected. In fact, I’d assume something is amiss if you don’t encounter any difficulty.

Every set in ReadSpell includes a troubleshooting section which answers a vital question that is rarely ever asked:

What if the student is unable to do what the program assumes (s)he can?

For instance, the student is still getting letter identification wrong while the teacher has moved on to reading and spelling words. Or the student keeps mixing up the short <i> and short <e> sounds (says ‘bet’ for ‘bit’ or vice versa) while the teacher is already moving on to longer and more complex words.

Gaps like these usually go unnoticed or are disregarded by parents and teachers who assume that the student will get it eventually. They are not completely wrong. Growth in literacy is not linear. The student can certainly learn other things and catch up on pending knowledge along the way. The issue is that, far too often, they simply don’t.

My solution is not to turn literacy into a strictly linear progression and stop teaching until the student learns everything that’s already taught. It is, however, to not leave things to chance. It is to know what the student knows and what’s holding them back, and then to find ways to teach the missing knowledge, perhaps differently, and provide additional practice before the gaps begin to accumulate and eventually appear as one large tangled lump of failure.

In each set’s troubleshooting section in ReadSpell, you will find a collection of resources that I have created as a result of loving observation of my students’ errors and struggles. This section, like the rest of ReadSpell, will keep getting updated with newer resources that I create as I keep teaching and learning with students. Teachers who have purchased ReadSpell are also able to write to me with brick-walls they hit with their students. I create new materials in response. The goal is to be ready with remedial materials for any learning problems that may arise.

Forture favours the prepared.

1. The student is very young and/or needs to be taught the letters of the alphabet from scratch.

   1. Highlight-a-Letter by Abby Mullins

2. The student mixes up letters such as <b> and <d>.

   1. Introduction and Usage Guide

   2. Lowercase Confusions

   3. Uppercase Confusions

3. The student struggles to see lowercase and uppercase as the different versions of the same letter.

   1. Letter Matching

4. The student struggles to remember the order of the letters.

   1. Fill in the Blanks Lowercase

   2. Fill in the Blanks Uppercase

5. The student cannot distinguish between letters and words.

   1. Letters vs. Words

It is important to note that, sometimes, brick-walls are created not by assumptions, but by wrong information presented in the curriculum. Many phonics curricula tend to provide orthographically incorrect information which seem to help at the moment, but create learning issues later on. These issues are often labeled as exceptions to the rule, and students are expected to learn a large number of exceptional spellings by “sight”. Worse, the student is expected to just get it, and when they don’t the blame is laid entirely on them for not trying hard enough.

If your student was able to easily learn “sight words”, you wouldn’t be reading this post, would you?

ReadSpell endeavours to provide orthographically accurate information to students at all times even if it means a pattern might be harder to teach or take longer to learn.

• This way, ReadSpell lays the foundation for an accurate schema of English orthography in the minds of students. There are no exceptions, only explanations of how the spelling system works.

• This way, ReadSpell ensures the student’s spelling progresses as well as his/her reading.

• This way, ReadSpell tackles pedagogical challenges as exactly what they are: pedagogical challenges. It finds ways to teach complex spelling explanations with multiple dimensions to students of all ages and abilities without changing orthographic facts to make it more palatable to students or teachers. Complex concepts can be taught when we know how to teach.

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