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Stareway To Spelling ensures a student can remember and recall at will all of the 300 most used words in English. A. We consider that a child should be 7 years old before starting the Toe By Toe. That said, don’t consider 7 years old as the absolute minimum age to start Toe By Toe. As a parent or teacher you will know the child best. You will know when the child is capable of studying Toe By Toe. If the child is younger than 7 we would suggest that you do the following. ‘Drill’ the short and long vowel sounds and the initial consonant blends until there is little or no hesitation beforehand. This would be adequate preparation for the first part of the book. It would ensure that they got off to the ‘flying start’ which can be so important for confidence and motivation. Astonishingly, these 300 words form 72% of the all the words that we regularly use. The problem with many of the words is that they are not phonetically consistent (that is to say, how a word looks and how a word sounds varies). Anyone who struggles to 'decode' words when reading also struggles to retrieve and ‘encode’ words when writing and spelling. In effect, for struggling readers, the ‘sight’ and ‘sound’ of words do not work well together for them. There is only a weak connection between the two. The neural pathways are not well established so for some, the correct choice of letters and their placement does not come easily.
They should be able to appreciate that reading is not a chore, but something to do for entertainment as well as enlightenment. The success of Stareway to Spelling is its unique RAWS process: Read – Analyse – Write – Spell. The exercises are fun and the student is encouraged to learn more as they see rapid improvement in their writing and spelling skills.It is for this reason Stareway To Spelling focuses on the high-frequency, 300 most used words in English Toe By Toe schemes in the majority of schools in the UK are run by teaching assistants. Most teachers, of course, do not have the time to give 20 minutes of individual attention to one child so most schools use TAs in the role of Toe By Toe tutor. It is important that the TA carefully follows the instructions as laid down in the manual but - as long as they do so - no formal training is required.
Keda spent almost all her teaching career at one school – Sandal Road Primary School in Baildon, UK. After observing that some students’ reading difficulties persisted despite careful instruction, she began teaching students in her home after school each day. Though a relatively unknown term at the time, dyslexia fascinated Keda and she began to conduct her own research, which became the basis of Toe by Toe. Over the ensuing decades, Toe by Toe became the fully functioning system it is today. As with all Keda Cowling’s literacy manuals, Stareway To Spelling is a complete self-contained teaching aid that can be used by qualified teachers or by classroom assistants, parents or indeed any literate associate. Precise instructions, developed during years of classroom research, ensure that progressive improvement can be achieved at an early stage. By the end of the manual the student will have strengthened the link between sight and sound, which is vital for the correct recall of words for spelling. To a large extent the timing targets in Stride Ahead are arbitrary. In essence, we have timed a ‘normal’ person reading the passage at ‘normal’ speed and then added a few seconds to come up with our target. Therefore, it does not really matter whether students are achieving the precise target. From decades of experience, we believe it is more natural and far easier for struggling readers to discriminate between the various sounds by using the schwa. Keda realised very early on in her research that struggling readers need to make a clear distinction between sounds. She found it is NOT a problem for them to transfer these more distinct sounds to words later. Non-trained staff or parents find it much easier (more natural, perhaps?) to demonstrate the sound in this way. For example, the precise sound of the letter ‘L’ causes much confusion for student and tutor alike. However, if tutors prefer to follow the conventional wisdom that’s OK – Toe By Toe will still work its magic!A. For motivational purposes, it is essential that students maintain a sense of momentum and progress. This is especially the case with teenagers. A. Stride Ahead is more suitable for older students, usually secondary school students or adults. However, some primary schools also use it in years 5 and 6 (age 10 or 11 years old). Typically, they would begin with a ‘benchmark time’ of 20 seconds and make several mistakes and / or get tongue-tied.
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