A Review of Wanda Sanseri’s “Spell to Write and Read”

If any of you talked with me in person last summer, I likely told you that I planned to teach Samuel how to read. Well, we’re still working on that! Samuel makes progress every week in his learning, and I make progress in my teaching. I’ve been encouraged over the last couple years by moms in our Classical Conversations (CC) community who told me that reading didn’t really “click” for their younger boys until around age eight. (Also a likely time for a young boy to go through a growth spurt, I’ve heard. I can’t imagine what a growth spurt then will be like for Samuel because he’s already so tall!) I’ve also met four-year-old boys who can read already. Learning to read seems to be a long, winding journey–a process like no other–no matter the age of the young person involved.

CC recommends using Wanda Sanseri’s Spell to Write and Read (SWR for short) to teach children to spell, read, write, and reinforce how to understand and use the English language well. Sanseri uses quite a few different techniques to achieve this goal, including how to write letters using clockwise/counter-clockwise as a guide, studying and memorizing phonograms and spelling rules, and then applying both of those guidelines to lists of spelling words. You can use the curriculum with beginning readers all the way through high school. You can also use the curriculum as a refresher course for non-beginning readers of any age.

Next, on to the review!

What I Like About “Spell to Write and Read”

First, SWR comes with a variety of resources. You can buy a special notebook for charts and spelling lists, a pack of phonogram cards along with a pack of spelling rule cards, the WISE Guide for Spelling (a book that contains spelling word lists and instructions on how to best use them) and more. Here you can find training videos about how to use SWR and more information about the curriculum itself. This many resources allows the teacher to choose what works best for her and her family (or students–I do believe that some private and public schools use SWR). We bought the SWR core kit. So far, I’ve used every part of the kit except the phonograms CD, and found them all generally helpful (more on that below).

Second, I, the mom, learn from SWR! For someone who likes words and grammar, SWR is especially fun and makes me appreciate all the ways to “play” with the English language. Sanseri goes into great detail about how the English language came to sound like it does today. She discusses how many of our base words originate in other languages and explains how they don’t fit in with typical English word pronunciation. Have you ever wondered why we pronounce the word “nation” with a “sh” sound? The “ti” comes to English from Latin, and in Latin “ti” says “sh.” So fascinating.

Third, I especially liked how Sanseri instructs educators to teach their students to write letters. She begins by encouraging parents to explain the way a clock works to their children. A clock moves in a clockwise direction from numbers one through twelve. Then, students practice moving in the direction of a clock. Finally, students learn to write counter-clockwise letters first, the “opposite of clockwise” (a, d, c, etc.). (I kept a clock on top of the desk and asked Samuel to practice telling me the difference between clockwise and counter-clockwise.) Students focus on the motion of making each letter instead of on making the letter look perfect. Eventually students learn to write top-to-bottom letters (l, t, etc.) followed by other, more challenging letters. This way of teaching letters helped me focus on one thing–one motion–at a time as I taught Samuel.

What I Don’t Like About “Spell to Write and Read”

First, in relation to point number one above, SWR does make some aspects of reading overly complicated. Sanseri recommends that you expose your students to all 70 phonograms within the first few weeks of using the curriculum. While this might work for an older student or perhaps a more-ready student, Samuel found thinking about all 70 phonograms befuddling. He got them mixed up, felt overwhelmed, and melted down more times than I can count. This could mean that he just wasn’t ready to start reading, but it could also mean that SWR might benefit from some recommendations for younger students. Either way, something wasn’t working, and we made some changes that we like so far.

Second, and this might sound odd, SWR isn’t really all that fun. I know–one cannot determine the usefulness of a curriculum by how “fun” the curriculum appears. However, reading itself is so enjoyable I do feel like teaching your students how exciting reading can be has great value. We read to learn and understand, but we also read to relish the wisdom, beauty, and adventure in a good story. So, while the background information about the English language is informative and fascinating for adults, the part of the curriculum meant for students seems a little dull. My creative and energetic six-year-old boy needed something with more life and whimsy.

Third, Samuel kept trying to write his letters the way SWR prints them on the phonogram cards. So, instead of writing an “a” with a loop and a tail, he wrote an “a” just like the printed lowercase letter A’s in this sentence. He also still tries to write the letter G just like this one: g. Sanseri explains that she chose to print the cards this way because this is how children will read their letters in print. I completely understand. Instead of showing Samuel the actual phonogram cards, I started writing the letters out for him. This made our copywork time more effective and less frustrating.

Conclusion

Overall, SWR has proved helpful by setting up an excellent foundation for Samuel’s future reading endeavors. We did make a few changes to the way we use SWR, including combining some pieces from the recommended reading guidelines from the “A Delectable Education” podcast. I’ll share more about that in the future!