OnTrack Reading

Having been trained to use the Phono-Graphix curriculum set forth in the book Reading Reflex, I feel strongly that a few simple changes to The Spalding Method would improve it significantly. Also, I’ve read the questions that users of The Spalding Method have asked most frequently on various websites over the past several years, and the changes suggested here would eliminate some of them.

Add the /ee/ Sound to Phonograms “i” and “y”

The first, and easiest, modification involves Spalding’s treatment of the letters i and y. Apparently dictionaries from the first half of the 20th century declared that the /ee/ sound in words like happy (happee) was really an /i/ sound. Realistically, there probably were some parts of the country, particularly in the southern United States, where the ending sound fell close to an /i/ sound, and that people said “I’m happi to see you,” but at least today nearly every child says a clear /ee/ sound at the end of words like happy, fancy and silly.

In a similar vein, English has imported a lot of words where the letter i also represents the /ee/ sound such as pizza, taxi and confetti. Plus, today’s child hears an /ee/ in happier and happiest. Yet, Spalding advocated teaching only two sounds for the letter i, those being the /i/ sound in big and the /ie/ sound in find.

Now, Spalding Method advocates argue long and hard against making any changes whatsoever, and that’s understandable, for if one starts to tweak a curriculum it’s not long before the original curriculum has been buried under the changes. Plus, reading instructors are notorious for striking out in their own direction anyway, so tweaking is inevitable once it’s allowed.

Nevertheless, all that is needed to make this change is to make the simple addition of one sound to each of the phonograms (Spalding refers to letters and digraphs as phonograms) for i and y. Children will easily buy into this because that’s what they are hearing anyway, and it will eliminate one of the most common questions from new users of The Spalding Method.

Drop the /i/ Sound from Phonograms “ie” and “ey”

Ms. Spalding’s insistence that words like happy end with an /i/ sound rather than the more realistic /ee/ sound caused her to add a complication to the phonograms ie and ey because, for the sake of consistency, she then had to concede that under her regimen words like valley and lily ended in /i/ sounds also. This led to the ey and ie phonograms each having an unnecessary third sound, /i/, so that ey represented /ee/ (key), /ae/ (they) and /i/ (valley) and ie represented /ee/ (field), /ie/ (pie) and /i/ (lilies).

In today’s common dialects, most of her /i/ examples for those two phonograms sound like clear /ee/ sounds, so in both cases the /i/ sound can be dropped from their respective phonogram cards. The result is to add one sound to two phonogram cards and drop one sound from two different phonogram cards resulting in no net change in complexity. More important, the end result would be what children (and their adult teachers and parents) actually hear in the affected words.

The next page in this section of the Guide will cover the rest of the minor changes I would suggest for some of the other phonograms taught in the Spalding Method. At a minimum, I would strongly advocate any parent or teacher using the method to make the simple changes presented on this page of the Guide.

Next: More Spalding Modifications, or return to the OnTrack Reading Home Page.