WHERE READING BEGINS
Poor or delayed reading occurs when the pupil has not learned to analyse the sounds that make up the spoken word. They see a word as a picture, outline or a shape rather than a (phonologic) sequence of sounds to be blended.
When this tendency remains as the pupil’s dominant strategy for recoding words after the age of six, it indicates a delay in neurological development or an unsuitable instructional method for the process of reading. To avoid such an outcome, reading instruction must begin with the knowledge of the speech sounds (the phonemes) made by the alphabet letters.
The first step in learning any language is to know the alphabet – the letters (graphemes) and their speech sounds (phonemes) that make words . Without that knowledge the correct pronunciation of English becomes impossible: consequently, the meaning of the words is lost.
The speech, or phonetic sounds of the alphabet letters (referred to as phonemes) are easily identified by extracting the initial sound of words as they are spoken. So we start with a song that pronounces beginning sounds.
Click here for the English Alphabet song in sight and sound.
Having begun with singing the phonetics of the English alphabet, the next step is to introduce the tasks for achieving phonologic awareness, the essential prerequisite to reading. The progressive goals and activities are set out in the manual “STEPPING AHEAD!” (Click on Products to view ’Reading for Sure'™ catalogue).
The preliminary skills which are acquired in the STEPPING AHEAD! program are phoneme awareness ( identifying sound-letter correspondence) and phonologic awareness ( the blending of speech sounds to make words). This is a progressive program which taps first into the early childhood perceptual process as perceiving things, including words, in the form of pictures or ‘logo-graphics’.
Phonologic awareness is then practised at the simplest level through a phonologic primer, FAT CAT SAM.
The first reading book, FAT CAT SAM, enables the reader to process all the words accurately and independently. This is possible because the text is composed only of regular words – that is, those words where the pronunciation corresponds with the spelling, mostly in monosyllabic words with a sequence of consonant, short vowel, consonant.
The next step in reading is the processing of irregular words – words in which the pronunciation does not correspond with the spelling. This is a major challenge because three out of every four words in English consist of vowel combinations which do not have a constant pronunciation (such as ‘ea’ and ‘ou’). Until the reader has acquired a wide reading experience in English, the pronunciation of each word is largely a guessing game. Those readers who are uncomfortable with guessing stop reading, thereby severely restricting their chances of acquiring sufficient reading experience to become automatic readers (processing new and irregular words by sight).
The Solomon Method solves the problems caused by the irregular word in English through the Reading for Sure™ program. The Reading for Sure System teaching Kit provides a systematic instructional method which is introduced when pupils have achieved sound by sound reading of regular words in FAT CAT SAM but are unsure and lacking in confidence when faced with irregular words in print. The Reading for Sure system simply adds a pronunciation code to existing print. It adapts the model of standard dictionary pronunciation codes while dispensing with the usually daunting dictionary to work out pronunciation.