“I like that I have a sequence (of phonics skills).
I don’t have to wonder about it anymore.”
This came in response to my last post which shared the importance of ensuring that we don’t have any phonics “floaters” in our “sea of floating isolated facts”. (If you missed that post, here it is.)
As I began writing Phonetic Reading with Silent Elephant “e”™, it brought into play my experience teaching in the classroom. During those many years, I had the opportunity to teach with many reading programs.
Here’s an interesting fact: they didn’t all have the exact same sequence of phonics skills. 😊
Yes, of course, they all began with the simplest concepts, probably short vowels, but after that they would shift around somewhat. Often, they would mix in concepts that were not yet taught. As you can imagine, throwing in words with concepts not yet learned is confusing to ALL kids, but to those young ones, or multi-lingual ones, or dyslexic ones or ones with other learning differences, it wasn’t just confusing, it was a BIG problem. In their confusion, they would begin to have phonics “floaters” moving into their “sea of floating isolated facts”. As I shared in the last email, we can’t have phonics “floaters” - it's a BIG problem.
Therefore, it was important to me as I began writing Silent Elephant “e”™, to know how our brains learn most effectively, to know my learners, and to know how those with learning differences process learning.
It was important to me to have a sequence for learning phonics skills for ALL children:
a sequence that was all inclusive
a sequence that was easy for every learner to understand and process
a sequence that was systematic, progressive, and logical for every learner.
Understanding how children, ALL children, learn helped me develop Silent Elephant “e”™’s phonics sequence which is a little different.
Of course, it must begin with simple, short vowels, but immediately it takes a turn. No, the turn isn’t to include something they haven’t learned yet, but instead to teach the vowels in a different order than every other reading program.
When you explore Silent Elephant “e”™, you will immediately notice that the short vowels are presented differently. They’re not in our old a, e, i, o, u order.
Instead, they’re in an order that is the most effective order for ALL children to learn to read, write and spell short vowel words. It’s an order that produces the least amount of possible confusion, even for children who are new to learning English or have learning differences.
This order has proven very successful. Every child who has experienced beginning reading, writing and spelling with Silent Elephant “e”™ has started with this solid foundation that set their journey on stable footing and they never looked back whether they were new to English, had learning differences or not!
Now, add to this that Silent Elephant “e”™ teaches them the way they love to learn and learn best with complete engagement in every step of learning. No wonder every single Silent Elephant “e”™ child has been successful. And some of these kiddos, as I have shared, were never supposed to ever learn to read!
Speaking of celebrating! Two more of my students, both high school students, are no longer in special education. They are confident, happy and eager for school every day. OH, yes, they’re both profoundly dyslexic.
Like us on Facebook, Silent Elephant “e”, LLC Group. Let’s get our Facebook group up and active and answering questions you may have about teaching reading, writing and spelling and Phonetic Reading with Silent Elephant “e”™.
Contact us at silentelephante@gmail.com or nina.silentelephante@gmail.com