It is said that necessity is the mother of invention. In searching for teaching material to use with students who needed to develop basic reading skills, I discovered that most curricula were not particularly effective with my students, and so I started devising my own lessons. Through trial and error and after fifteen years of fine tuning, I was ready to publish Reading and Spelling Pure & Simple: Phonics-Based Lessons for Elementary, Teen, and Adult Students. This is the book that you have in front of you.
In my weekly meetings with struggling readers or non-readers, I noticed that most of them tried to read by guessing at words. This was troublesome, because guessing, instead of genuinely reading words on a page, does not constitute real reading. My students inspired me to create a program that would meet their needs and literally take the guesswork out of reading.
This book provides:
- Complete instructions for teaching students of any age how to read and spell.
- Lessons designed for one-on-one instruction that can be applied also with small groups.
- Lessons configured so that students may learn at their own pace.
- The introduction of alphabet letters in a sequence that enables students to read at least seven words by the end of the first lesson.
- An easy-to-teach format designed so that anyone who is literate can give the lessons. (This was important for our remedial reading program since the instructors differed from week to week.)
- An emphasis on reading, comprehension, and spelling. Reading and spelling are skills ideally learned at the same time.
- A format that eliminates the option of guessing. Pictures and illustrations are absent from our lessons to keep students from having clues that might facilitate guessing. Students are given no choice but to focus on the letters of the words.
- A system for documenting student achievement, using an at-a-glance format.
Reading and Spelling Pure & Simple develops reading, comprehension, and spelling skills in 90 lessons. The core of the program is a mere 77 pages. That’s it! The rest of the book is support material for the tutor or teacher.
The lessons in this book have been used with success with students in public and private schools, home schools, church ministries, and literacy programs. Students learning English as a second language (ESL) have done well with this material, as have persons diagnosed with attention deficit disorders and dyslexia. By Lesson 90, students typically will be reading at an advanced level and will have a sizeable vocabulary.
I wish to emphasize that these lessons are based on many hours of research and observation from my many years of teaching experience. Educators at all levels of instruction and a broad band of professionals reviewed the material and helped hone it.
— Deede Cauley
March 2012