How To Combine Charlotte Mason’s Reading Principles with “Spell to Write and Read”

A few weeks ago, I reviewed Wanda Sanseri’s reading curriculum Spell to Write and Read (SWR). I shared what I liked and disliked about the curriculum and gave some background information about our reading experiences thus far. (Here’s a link to the post just in case you missed it.) In this post, I’ll share how we combine Charlotte Mason’s reading principles outlined in the “A Delectable Education” podcast (ADE for short) with Sanseri’s methods and resources from Spell to Write and Read.

In Spell to Write and Read, Sanseri recommends beginning by teaching your student all 70 phonograms. Students don’t need to memorize all 70 before they can move on, they just need to be somewhat familiar with them all. Next, students learn about vowels and consonants and review the phonograms divided this way. Finally, students may begin whatever spelling list reflects their current abilities.

When I listened to Episode 46 of the ADE podcast, we were somewhere in the middle of learning vowels and consonants and beginning the first spelling list in Sanseri’s WISE Guide for Spelling. Even after listening to ADE’s suggestions, I decided to stick with SWR because we had already started out that way. Samuel seemed to be making progress in his phonograms, which encouraged me to continue onward with the program.

A couple weeks later, after slowly finishing our first spelling list and beginning the second, I reached a breaking point. Nothing was working! Everything was falling apart! We really, really needed something different than Sanseri’s spelling lists. I still feel amazed at how fast things can go from moderately well to incredibly frustrating so fast in the world of homeschooling.

I thought back to what I listened to and learned about in the ADE podcast, but I still liked the idea of learning to think about words in terms of phonograms (which include both individual letter sounds and the sounds groups of letters make–‘o’ says ‘ah’ and ‘igh’ says ‘eye’). The ADE podcast discusses teaching individual letter sounds and then using those sounds for word-building, and also teaching sight words. So, I took all of these principles that I liked, and combined them into something that works for me and for Samuel, and something that might work for you, too!

Here’s a typical reading lesson outline for us:

{1} I keep all the letters, uppercase and lowercase, written up on our giant chalkboard. We begin our reading lessons by going through and saying all the sounds each letter makes (according to Sanseri’s phonograms). Sometimes I write the letters in a mixed-up order on the board and ask Samuel to match the letter to the sound I make. I say something like, “Show me the letter that says k,s.” (He points to the letter ‘c.’)

{2} Next, we move on to word-building. We began by learning words that end in ‘ot’ and then moved on to words ending in ‘at.’ I write the word ending up on the board six or seven times in a row in the same color, and then write the beginning letter in a different color. Samuel sounds out each word. We’re also continuing to work on multiple-letter phonograms. As of right now, I incorporate ‘ch,’ ‘sh’, and ‘th’ into our reading practice. The world-building section of our chalkboard ends up looking something like this:

hot not shot rot pot lot

We’re also working on memorizing the sight word ‘the.’ When we see the word ‘the,’ I remind Samuel, “T-h-e spells…” and let him finish.

{3} For future lessons, I’ll continue to add in more multiple-letter phonograms as word endings or beginnings as we word-build. As ADE suggests, I also plan to add in more complex words from the poems we read as sight words. I keep track of what we’ve already learned on our chalkboard in two columns:

(Word endings)
ot
at

(Multiple-letter phonograms)
ch
th
sh

Eventually, I’ll probably have to move my records to a copy somewhere else so I can include sight words as well. We also use our chalkboard for math, so I can’t take up too much space with reading lessons. I can imagine the techniques I use will change as Samuel gets older and becomes more proficient, too. I look forward to the day when we can both enjoy some quiet reading time, together!

Do you have any successful young readers? How did you teach your students to read?