a source for how Webster's was implemented in 1863

[Bics]

So many of us want to use Webster's Speller, and I have studied over ElizabethB's and Don Potter's sites, trying to glean every last grain of instruction on how to do so best, as it was done in its hey-day.  I know, I know, we are all trying to do that--

 

For background, as I was researching phonetic reading instruction for my then-four-year-old (who I had already began subjecting to sight word flashcards-cringe), I was also reading the Little House books to her.  When you read those, you eventually get to the spelling bee in--hmm-either The Long Cold Winter or Little Town on the Prairie--sorry, momentary lapse--anyway--

 

The townspeople are bored and organize Literary meetings to amuse themselves.  One night it is a spelling bee, and Laura, Pa, and another man end up in the dramatic finale.  Well, Wilder recreates the scene by quoting the actual spelling, and what I noticed then was that they were spelling by syllable.

 

Don Potter's instructions for the syllabary outline this same process.  B-A spells BA.  

I used this with said eldest all the way through mastering the syllabary and the one-syllable words before the first table of two syllables (BAker, SHAdy, LAdy).  She hated it.  I dropped it at two syllables and took to writing spelling instead.  She was older, it made some sort of sense...

 

And since then I have tried all kinds of other things, but I keep going back in my mind and late at nights to researching how to effectively use Webster's--because in the meantime my second child detested Webster's also through Kindergarten.  

 

So, tonight, this popped up:  https://archive.org/details/10309476.4087.emory.edu

 

Setting aside the objectionable purpose of the revision, look closely at page 23 where the teacher is given actual directions!

And, if you continue to glance through the pages, intermittently there are reminders to have the pupils not only spell by syllable, but also to give the vowel sound of the accented syllable.  Later, even adding things like "tion as shun."  wow.

 

Is anyone else excited by this? I had never seen the added step of giving the accented syllable vowel sound, etc.  Anyone knowledgeable on the subject want to weigh in on when that was added, or is this an example of what we have all been seeking--the "how they implemented this" stamp?

 

Thanks! 

[MistyMountain]

I have mixed feelings about Websters. It did help my kids and their reading level went up but I wish it had more instruction. I really felt like I was just guessing how to implement it and so I did not give much instruction with it besides reminding the bolded was accented and the unbolded was swa. I am not sure what they mean by spell by saying the accented syllable so it does not help as much as I needed. I should look over Don Potter's syllable instructions. What I always never could tell is why words were accented where they were and why they made one swa sound over another. It helped reading the words in the list but when you get to an unknown word how do you know where the accent is. It got my kids through to about the 6th or 7th decoding level but I still feel they could use a little more. It was too much to write out so I used it for reading not spelling so it did not improve spelling for my weak speller.

 

What you are saying though makes sense. I feel my youngest who is in the very beginning stages does better when she does blend the first part of a word as a syllable. I just remembered about the first part of Websters and I should have her practice those before a lesson rather then the short list in phonics pathways that I have been using. I should copy it bigger though. I do not think Websters has enough one syllable practice for her.

Edited December 3, 2016 by MistyMountain

[Bics]

MistyMountain,

Here is the jumbled mess in my mind of how these books were implemented: Spelling was considered prerequisite to reading.  If you can spell it, you can read it.  The converse is not necessarily true--just because you can read it doesn't mean you can spell it.  Even as the readers, such as McGuffey's, were being used, the first step was learning to pronounce and spell the new words in isolation before seeing them in context.

 

I was setting the timer and working for 15 minutes a day,with my K'er, per prevailing homeschool wisdom.  Gentle, methodical, etc.  There is no pressure on the child to learn in a certain time frame.  Well, we never really got anywhere!  Now, as I look back at Laura Ingalls Wilder books, it seems like there was an expectation that what the teacher set the pupils for a lesson that day would be MASTERED, either by when he/she called for recitation later that day, or studied at night to be ready for class the next day.  Students were expected to devote themselves to memorizing that amount of set work, no matter how long it took them.  This is completely missing in my home, and most others' if forums and bloggers can be used as a mirror of what is going on in our homeschools across the board.  So, I wonder if this is one of the reasons we are not getting the same results with the same materials that generations ago did.  

 

Thoughts?  

 

If one takes the idea of mastering a syllabary, then focusing on words with long and short vowel sounds in all their spelling patterns (one syllable words), then beginning two syllable words consisting of long and short vowel sounds,(albeit also learning about accented syllables getting their natural sound, unaccented syllables getting their reduced sound), and continuing to longer multi-syllabic words, that student still can't pick up a book and read it.  Why? because he is still missing instruction on oa, ai, ow, ou, au, etc.  I ended up making flashcards from the chart in The Writing Road to Reading and teaching these so my child could begin reading--otherwise she would have been incompetent in the eyes of everyone judging homeschoolers under a microscope--but it was such a hodgepodge that eventually I feel like I stymied her progress just by having too many irons in the fire.

 

If I were to pick up Webster's again with a beginning reader, I would still start with the syllabary. Then I would progress through the one-syllable words as written.  I would begin two-syllable tables when I got there for reading fluency, but skip to other one-syllable tables that deal with digraphs, plurals and such for spelling.  If a child has done all the work of mastering those syllables, I think it would be refreshing to see how they would work to build long words.  However, in a world where the beginning reader is expected to conquer all one syllable words (even ones like young, old, out, boat, brown, snow,) I think this might be a solution.  Webster's progression is kinder to the beginner, but, in my experience, no one in my daughter's first-grade Sunday School cared that she could spell, but they were embarrassed for her that she couldn't read.  It affected how she began to see herself as a reader, and honestly, I wasn't immune myself.  I felt pressure to get that girl reading, and I quit emphasizing spelling in order to do it.  Sigh.  Now I am having to back-track on spelling.

 

All that to say, I was excited to see these more detailed instructions at the link.  It appeared to me to go something like this:

"Baker.  B-A, ba. K-E-R, ker. Baker. Long a in accented syllable."

"Nation. N-A, na. T-I-O-N, shun. Long a in accented syllable, tion pronounced shun."

"Graceful. G-R-A-C-E, grace. F-U-L, ful. Graceful. Long a in accented syllable, c pronounced like s."

 

Another thing I didn't do for my first attempt to use Webster's was dictation.  I didn't understand it then, and there were no directions I saw to do so.  Now, I realize those sentences are in there to be studied for dictation exercises.  However, they seem to often have words with phonograms in them that haven't been introduced yet.  How should that be handled? 

 

To address your concern about being able to determine where the accent lies in an unfamiliar word in a book, I would guess maybe Dr. Webster saw a need for that as well, and that was part of his motivation for his dictionary?  I don't know.  Maybe being explicitly exposed to different tables of words accented in differing ways made one aware of trying out accents on unfamiliar words until one sounds familiar, or as a last resort going to the dictionary.  

[Bics]

mshanson3121, yes, Don Potter has been gracious enough to create this:

http://www.donpotter.net/education_pages/spelling_books.html

[Hunter]

I love old teacher manuals! They are a bit of a hobby of mine. I really like the TMs of Eli J. Hoenshel. I have read the math books of many other authors that were peers of Joseph Ray. Charles McMurry and his siblings wrote a lot of teacher instruction materials.

 

I often can apply those instructions to similar books that have been professionally reprinted and are more politically correct. There is a ton of misunderstanding of educational methods of the past.

 

If you google, "chronological snobbery" you might find the explanation of that term interesting.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronological_snobbery

Edited December 4, 2016 by Hunter

[Hunter]

Oh, and thanks for the link! That is a facinating book in so many ways.

[Hunter]

Hoenshel's instructions for "Chart Work"

 

https://books.google.com/books?id=u1cXAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA11&lpg=PA11&dq=hoenshel+chart+work&source=bl&ots=KgInW47pfO&sig=Aprad9WZRHKvipwGdl8u5R-gUWQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjQ4cau49rQAhUi44MKHfTJCJcQ6AEIQzAK#v=onepage&q=hoenshel%20chart%20work&f=false

 

Instructions for "Stories from Number Work" on pages 13-14

 

https://books.google.com/books?id=Zn8SAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Edited December 4, 2016 by Hunter

[Hunter]

If you are teaching cursive first, pages 10-12 of Olney's A Primary Arithmetic and Teacher's Manual is very helpful.

 

https://books.google.com/books?id=2ttHAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Edited December 4, 2016 by Hunter

[Hunter]

Waldorf 1st grade fairy tale emphasis is probably based off of McMurry or whoever he is quoting, here, starting on page 47.

 

https://books.google.com/books?id=TgFFAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Edited December 4, 2016 by Hunter

[Bics]

Hunter, thanks for chiming in and the links!  I read the first part of Hoenshel's Chart Work (Language Lessons and Elementary Grammar), but I wouldn't use his methods that are outlined there.  He is using what came to be known as the look-say method, or whole language, to learn to read.  The problem with education books written in this time frame is that they are being influenced by the work being done to teach deaf persons to read--I find this same problem with Charlotte Mason's recommendations in early reading.  What seemed a good idea at the time has not turned out to be so.  Now that we can track what parts of the brain are firing when tasks are being performed, there is an observable basis for not creating the habit of seeing the word as a whole.  His suggestions to notice where the tall letters are and that sort of imaging is dangerous, according to the reading research I have seen, and fits with my own experiences within a public school classroom.

 

I look forward to looking at the other suggestions, though!  We do begin cursive first, so I am particularly interested in the one you earmarked for that.  

ETA:  I figure nothing I said was new information to you; I am just trying to further the conversation. :)  I always read your posts with avid interest.

Edited December 5, 2016 by Whippoorwill

[Hunter]

Hoenshel is phonics. One meaningful word at a time, and then another meaningful word that just has one letter that is different. Hoenshel is good for very young or low functioning students. Some beginners find symbols that do not make up words too abstract. There is no starting place that is meaningful to them.

 

My oldest son, that did not read until he was 8, was given straight phonics in K at a school. He had no idea what phonics was. It all went right over his head. At the end of the year, the teacher used him as an example to the school board, of her observation that ONLY abstract phonics first is not best for all children. He was one of her oldest children in the class, a leader, a phenomenal artist with no trouble writing. He would have been a deer in headlights even with Webster though, without anything else first.

 

I started some look-say with him, and then some Hoenshel type lessons, and then he understood phonics. With that child, he even needed some look-say first. I was a super young mom, didn't know what I was doing, had no money. I just traced some pictures from his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle coloring book and wrote him a story. A lot of the words we were only focusing on the first letter of the nouns, for phonics. But that is what got him started. Michaelangelo start with M. He learned M. Now I had his attention for all M words.

 

I definitely have had success with look-say with wee ones just not ready to read yet, and certain kinds of LDs. It is a foot in the door, and yes, phonics need to be hit hard, once the floor is in the door, but SOME students just that type of start.

 

When I have started with a new tutoring student, I have thrown it all at them and then pay careful atttention to what sticks. If I can just get one word understood, like Hoenshel uses hat, and Beechick's in the 3 R's uses God, then I can go from there, one letter at time. For most students, I would prefer a student know about 10 short vowel nouns, before starting Webster.

 

Look-say ONLY is a disaster for many children. Some CAN learn to read with just look-say, though. I did. At 4 and on my own, by memorizing Go Dog Go. I didn't get any real phonics overseas in K. First grade meant a move to another country and although there was some phonics in my overcrowded slum school, I wasnt listening, and only got the worksheets right because I was doing them backwards from what I learned in look-say.

 

I have to go run a time sensitive errand and will write more later.

[Hunter]

Whippoorwill, have you seen this old thread about an 1836 Home Library?

http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/544351-the-home-library-in-1836–what-did-it-include/

 

When Websters was most popular before the 1836 McGuffey's Readers, children would have been exposed to look-say instruction through catechisms and psalters. They would have memorized by hearing and reciting/singing, and then gradualy picked out the words to what they had memorized. I need to look for the link, but what Ella Francis Lynch suggested to be done with Hiawatha was exactly what was being done with the catechisms and psalters.

Edited December 5, 2016 by Hunter

[Hunter]

Start on page 75 of this Ella Frances Lynch book. She is using Hiawatha, but anything worth memorizing can be used.

https://books.google.com/books?id=9JBJAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=educating+the+child+at+home+hiawatha&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiJ35XBgd7QAhVHBsAKHVGZAAYQ6AEILzAA#v=onepage&q=educating%20the%20child%20at%20home%20hiawatha&f=false

[ElizabethB]

Interesting link, I will have to read more later, thanks!!

 

I have a bit more instructions now about how to teach it for a DVD series I am working on integrating Blend Phonics and Webster for the elementary age. It is the transcript in the teacher section.

 

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/syllablesspellsu.html

 

I also found some information in the slave narratives in the education section of the narratives about how Spellers were used, here is a compilation of the best quotes I found.

 

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Phonics/index.html

Edited December 7, 2016 by ElizabethB