Michael Bend, a teacher and educational consultant, is the author of the ABeCeDarian Reading Program. He lives in Ithaca, NY.
About
2 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Michael Bend, a teacher and educational consultant, is the author of the ABeCeDarian Reading Program. He lives in Ithaca, NY.
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
When was this program developed and please explian how it is multi-sensory.
Thanks So Much!
Kathryn
Comment by Kathryn Smith — March 17, 2008 @ 2:12 pm
The program was initially developed in 2000, and has been continuously upgraded and expanded since then. For more details, please visit the ABeCeDarian website listed in the blogroll. I also suggest you join the Yahoo discussion group for ABCD–there is a link to this group on the main ABCD website.
I’ll try to have a post soon about the topic of multisensory education, because there are many interesting and complex ideas embedded within that concept.
The short answer regarding the multisensory character of ABCD is as follows:
Every lesson is designed to show the student how letters represent sounds. In almost every exercise, therefore, students are seeing a letter or letter combination and saying its corresponding sound in isolation. Sometimes this is done by manipulating letter cards, and sometimes by writing letters. Formal handwriting instruction is integrated into the beginning level of the program, and students at all levels regularly “say-and-write” the words under study, i.e., they say the sounds of the word one at a time as they write how the sounds are spelled.
There is, however, no skywriting or tracing letters in shaving cream or tracing sandpaper letters or that sort of thing. I think those activities are rather benign, so I wouldn’t object per se if a teacher used them while doing ABCD lessons, but I am concerned that in some classrooms they take away from the kinds of focused practice that most efficiently helps students learn to read and spell words. The kinesthetic activity that is most germane to beginning reading/spelling is handwriting and actually writing the letters and words.
I know there will be parents and teachers who will swear that skywriting or some such technique was the activity that opened up reading for their child. But my understanding of the research is that for kinesthetic practice activities other than fluency writing letters and words, the evidence base in their support, as they say, is slim. Reid Lyon, for instance, has nothing very positive to say about these techniques.
There are, however, very interesting and unresolved issues regarding certain rhythmic motor gestures that might help with timing issues in the brain associated with fluency and retrieval. I’m thinking of the work that people have done over the years with regard to the relationship between music and phonics, the work of the Interactive Metronome people, and to some extent, even the work of the FastForword people. On this topic, however, we still have more questions than answers. I am agnostic, but curious.
This might be more detail than you wanted for a reply. In the event that you were a died-in-the-wool Orton-Gillingham proponent, I thought I should have a somewhat lengthy reply that you could disagree with. If, on the other hand, you are yourself agnostic and curious, I hope my comments have given you something interesting to think about.
Happy Teaching!
Michael
Comment by michaelbend — March 18, 2008 @ 3:53 pm