On The “Writing Road to Reading”: The Spalding Method

Pam Autrey, Ph.D.

Maria Montessori and Romalda Bishop Spalding were contemporaries and share many outstanding attributes. Both of them used scientific observation of children on which to base their education philosophies; both their names and their work became synonymous; both took what had already been done by others and combined these elements to develop their curricula; and both approaches have lasted over many years (Montessori schools will celebrate their hundredth anniversary in 2007 and Spalding’s work has been used successfully for forty years).

After Spalding graduated from Columbia Teachers College, she was frustrated in her first classroom because she realized they had not taught her how to teach reading, writing, and comprehension to children. Like Montessori, Spalding gave a lot of attention to details and thought children were capable of a lot more than we give them credit for, however neither woman has received the attention they deserve in 99% of college education courses. While that is changing, it is interesting to note that John Dewey and other philosophers do not have education approaches named for them. As males in academia, they did not work in classrooms. John Dewey’s wife, Alice, actually ran the first university laboratory school Dewey set up in Chicago.

We have chosen to use the Spalding method, also called “the writing road to writing,” because it is thorough and teaches all the sounds a phoneme (whether alphabet letter or blend) makes from the very beginning. Montessori did not devise her English language materials although they were based on the work she had already done and she worked closely with the educators in England who did create these materials. They opted to teach only the sound most often used for each phoneme (e.g., we teach a as /ă/). In the Spalding approach, we teach all of the sounds a phoneme makes (e.g., we teach a as /ă/, /ā/, and /ah/).

The Montessori language materials work well in concert with the Spalding approach, which has three requirements: paper, pencil, and mind. Children write the sounds they are learning as they learn them. Each year, because it is a scaffolded curriculum, we begin at the beginning and reteach. This way, there are no gray areas in children’s understandings. Through daily Oral Phonogram Reviews, Written Phonogram Reviews, and Spelling Dictation, we ensure each child is able to analyze words for spelling and meaning. In all, they learn 70 phonograms which make the 45 sounds of the English language.

English is an alphabetic language, that is, the symbols do not have an obvious relation to the sounds they make. Although Montessori elementary students study the history of writing and how we got our alphabet, reading is a skill which must be taught. It is different from speaking in this way because babies are pre-wired to learn speech (which Montessori thought was the greatest achievement of our lives). The Spalding system connects sounds to symbols to writing, using a multi-sensory (kinesthetic/tactile, auditory, and visual senses) approach. As Montessori taught, what is in the mind must first be in the hand, which is the muscle of the mind.

The Montessori primary materials provide students with plenty of opportunities to use the pincer grip, necessary for writing, thereby strengthening fine motor skills. With Spalding, great attention is given to the posture required for good penmanship and to the pencil grip. We use a six-sided pencil (Ticonderoga is good). Children do not learn though drills and rote practice but are taught how to analyze words for spelling and writing. The teacher models, coaches, scaffolds and fades (withdraws when children no longer need them). The student articulates what they are learning, reflects on their own writing and those of their peers, and eventually crosses the bridge from learning to read to reading to learn. This last stage is called exploration. The ultimate aim is connecting the child to books and through books, to the world. The Montessori language and research materials enrich and deepen the scaffolding effect of Spalding’s approach.

I was able to attend a Spalding workshop for kindergarten through third grade this summer. Regina Marshall, from Austin, was our trainer and she brought many years of experience to the workshop. We look forward to this upcoming year to educate readers with this approach. If you are interested in learning more about the Spalding method, I encourage you to visit their website: www.spalding.org.