How did Denise Eide develop, research and test her rule based spelling system?

[jc623]

Hi all,

My question is, how did Denise Eide develop, research and test her rule based spelling system?

I have read the book and find it very interesting. But before I want to teach it to my children, I want to understand where this system came from.

 

I want to understand how Denise developed and found a correlation between her rules, the phonograms, and all English words. Also, to proof, such a system requires a reasonable high level of mathematics.

 

If somebody could explain it to me I would feel much more confident in teaching the logic of English myself. 

[maize]

The phonograms are based on the Orton-Gillingham system, which has been around for a long time--I think since the 1930's?  Denise added four phonograms to the basic O-G list of 70, for a final count of 74 in her program. 

[RootAnn]

When I read her book, I strongly suspected that she took a training seminar for The Writing Road to Reading (Spalding) or Spell to Write ans Read (Sanseri). I remember her referencing the training in a video.

 

There are various books which show the patterns of the phonogram sounds in use in English (The ABCs and All Their Tricks, maybe? The Mother Tongue? I can't remember.) Eide borrowed from the work of others and then made her own tweaks (adding phonos, subtracting phonos, changing/adding sounds, etc).

 

She states in a FAQ on her website that she used The ABCs and All Their Tricks when deciding on phonograms to include and how to order their sounds.

Edited December 4, 2016 by RootAnn

[Hunter]

English differs by geography and time. Phonograms and rules, even on exactly the same sounds, can be divided and categorized many different ways. Just look at the pronunciation keys in dictionaries.

 

There is no right or wrong. And no matter which phonics system is used, it gets messy and often silly in the more advanced lessons.

 

Logic of English Essentials never got finished, right? I'm assuming it was abandoned? And the newer version is just complete overkill for many of us.

 

Blumenfeld's Alpha-Phonics is free, now. Don Potter wrote phonograms for it that are also free and paired to the American Heritage dictionary. Because the phonograms are linked to a modern dictionary, there is no need for increasingly advanced levels using a specialty phonics system.

 

The Merriam Webster dictionary is broken up the same as the AH, but just uses different symbols. I'm attached to the Merriam-Webster Concise Large Print dictionary, so just converted a couple symbols to the MW symbols.

[maize]

agreeing with Hunter that there is not exact correspondence between a set of phonograms and all English words; for the O-T systems I am familiar with the pronunciation of some words has to be modified to fit the phonogram system. Which I personally find a bit ridiculous but oh well.

 

Many children do not require or benefit from such complex teaching of phonics, I really think it depends on the child.

[Hunter]

A very easy to use phonogram set is Phonics Made Plain, by Mott Media.

http://www.mottmedia.com/pages/publications.asp?Pub=phonics

It can be used with any readers. The thing I like least is that the cards are big and bulky. The poster is awesome. The cards include information with links to The ABCs and All Their Tricks. The Mott Media TM for their republished ORIGINAL McGuffey Readers includes information on how to use the phonogram cards that can be applied to any reader set or even real books.

 

Here are links to some of what I discussed above.

REVISED Alpha-Phonics (not the original Italic usually sold to homeschoolers)

http://blumenfeld.campconstitution.net

 

Don Potter phonograms

http://donpotter.net/PDF/alpha-phonics_phonograms.pdf

Edited December 5, 2016 by Hunter

[Hunter]

Jc623, phonics was a hobby of mine for a couple years. I bought a lot of stuff, spent a lot of time studying it, and sometimes wasted student time on things that provided little payback for them. After all that messing around, I knew I like Alpha-Phonics best, but the revised book was tricky to get. As soon as the book went free, I never used anything else again.

[ElizabethB]

The percentages in the ABCs come from the Hanna study of the most common 17,000 words in English. My charts are based on the original study, it has a few sounds missing from the ABCs. The study is 1,200+ pages long, the book seller I bought it from spent a lot of postage sending it to me!

 

Here are the charts with percentages:

 

http://www.thephonicspage.org/Phonics%20Lsns/phonogramsoundch.html

Edited December 7, 2016 by ElizabethB

[Hunter]

The percentages in the ABCs come from the Hanna study of the most common 17,000 words in English. My charts are based on the original study, it has a few sounds missing from the ABCs. The study is 1,200+ pages long, the book seller I bought it from spent a lot of postage sending it to me!

 

Here are the charts with percentages:

 

http://www.thephonicspage.org/Phonics%20Lsns/phonogramsoundch.html

Thanks. I have something similar to this in a more cumbersome format. I need to buy ink for my little portable bluetooth printer and print this out. Ink just went on today's errand list.

[MistyMountain]

The percentages in the ABCs come from the Hanna study of the most common 17,000 words in English. My charts are based on the original study, it has a few sounds missing from the ABCs. The study is 1,200+ pages long, the book seller I bought it from spent a lot of postage sending it to me!

 

Here are the charts with percentages:

 

http://www.thephonicspage.org/Phonics%20Lsns/phonogramsoundch.html

Shouldn't the schwa sound of A would be more common then less then 1 percent. Some of those surprised me based on the phonograms we have them learn.

[Hunter]

Shouldn't the schwa sound of A would be more common then less then 1 percent. Some of those surprised me based on the phonograms we have them learn.

The letter A is probably the letter than is most different from system to system. Before you can assign percentages, you have to choose how to divide sounds. Sometimes schwa, ah, and aw are all one sound. Sometimes they are divided into 2 or 3 sounds. Some systems have more than 5 sounds for A.

 

Some systems use extra rules and fewer phonograms, or fewer rules and more phonograms.

 

There is no "right" way to do this.

[MistyMountain]

I thought that was just diving them up by the sounds they make after analyzing words with them. It had examples of sounds phonograms made that were not part of typical systems. The ah was tripping me up to because I say it as aw. They just ignored words with schwa it seems like ahead and away etc. I know there are different accents but there should be a standard and if it somehow grouped aw and uh as one sound it still seems the percentage should be higher then .2.

[Hunter]

I'd have to look again, but that document had A as five main sounds, not 3 like Spalding and some others?

 

Short a

long a

Ah

Aw

Schwa

 

schwa is what is left over after words have the option of being categorized as ah or aw?

 

This is how the Merriam-Webster does it. I don't teach the schwa, but just the 4 main sounds, unless it comes up in a word we look up in the dictionary. I'm in the northeast and we clearly say ah and aw differently, and the dictionary we use, uses different symbols for ah and aw. Sam Blumenfeld was from the Norhteast and wrote Alpha-Phonics with ah and aw separately. Don Potter wrote his list of phonograms with ah and aw. EVERYTHING I use does ah and aw. I'm just going with the flow.

 

I teach: a, A, ah, aw.

 

Anything with a schwa is taught as an exception or squeezed into ah or aw.

[Hunter]

Okay, I downloaded the charts again to look at them.

 

I don't know why A is like that on that chart.

[ElizabethB]

There is a question next to the schwa A because unlike some of the others, the study did not track the percentage of time that A was schwa'd, maybe because beginning schwa a is so frequent in words like alike and alone. I don't know why it was not tracked.  Anything that the schwa was not tracked, I put a ? in the percentage for the schwa.

 

Here is a chart I use with my students that shows the two letter vowel teams with the size of the boxes representing how often each sound is used, a new one page version of my vowel charts, based on the same percentages:

 

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/Resources/OnePageVowelChart.pdf

 

 

[ElizabethB]

I thought that was just diving them up by the sounds they make after analyzing words with them. It had examples of sounds phonograms made that were not part of typical systems. The ah was tripping me up to because I say it as aw. They just ignored words with schwa it seems like ahead and away etc. I know there are different accents but there should be a standard and if it somehow grouped aw and uh as one sound it still seems the percentage should be higher then .2.

Schwa is separate from ah. The ah sound is when it is like in the sound in father, ma, and pa. That occurs very rarely.

 

Schwa happens in a word like alike where the a would normally be long as in beginnng e in even or o in open, but is schwa'd because it is unaccented and unaccented a's and o's often schwa. Also, depending on emphasis, you may say a schwa or not or "mush" it halfway between the original vowel and short u, although e's and i's often "schwi" to short i as in moment and imagine.

 

You can also have a schwa when the vowel would normally be short, but schwa is more frequent from an expected long vowel.

Edited December 10, 2016 by ElizabethB

[Hunter]

Elizabeth, a in ball is just lumped into ah in your system, instead of a separate sound of aw?

[Hunter]

Don Potter and Alpha-Phonics use 4 sounds.

http://donpotter.net/PDF/alpha-phonics_phonograms.pdf

 

I think the revised Riggs used 4 sounds instead of 3, but I cannot remember. The author of Riggs died before finishing her revised series.

 

I'm really attached to a, A, ah, aw, schwa to match the Merriam-Webster.

 

I have been told that in parts of the USA other than the northeast, accents make it very hard for students to hear the difference between ah and aw, and that it is an unnecessary burden to labor early readers with it.

[ElizabethB]

Elizabeth, a in ball is just lumped into ah in your system, instead of a separate sound of aw?

 

I used whatever the Hanna study used for the charts, not how I teach them, but it is really a small percentage of words in the scheme of things, there are 96 words of 17,000 with this pattern.  I don't remember where the study lumped it in with.   

 

I actually have taught the sound pattern several different ways, depending on the phonics book I am using.  But, I have never had a student who had a problem with a in ball, it is such a common pattern and not difficult for most children, although it is a bit difficult linguistically to categorize and place for adults.

 

The all words are common and used repeatedly and also used in compound words, but there are total not that many of the base words.  For example, baseball, football, windfall, rainfall, downfall, forestall, installment.

[MistyMountain]

Spalding used 4 too but I do like 5 to distinguish aw and ah. I knew some people do not distinguish between aw and ah but I did not realize that it was only in the northeast they did. I guess since it is only a small number though they do not need to make it a separate sound.

Edited December 11, 2016 by MistyMountain

[Hunter]

I never knew that ah and aw made up such a small percentage of A words. I'm trying to wrap my brain around that. Some of the ah and aw sound words must be used a lot, because we use the sounds a lot--I think.

 

I don't think ah and aw are only differentiated in the northeast, but we do distinctly differentiate in the northeast, and some other places outside the northeast do not differentiate at all. I have had adults on this forum ask me what I even mean.

 

I think the most important thing is to be able to be consistent. I couldn't be consistent with a curriculum that was so different than other finished curricula, didn't match a dictionary, and not fininished itself. So even though I own a PDF copy of Logic or English, I don't use it. I mostly bought it to see the grammar lessons, but those are not finished either.

Edited December 11, 2016 by Hunter