To read about “Our Twist” in GENERAL, please click here.
The “Peppermint Stick” Approach to READING
Learn to read by “reading”…not mainly by “writing”.
We do not focus our approach in just one method to learn reading such as traditional phonics or “see and say” or guessing words in context. Rather, we use a combination of teaching methods to be effective and make it fun to learn!
To help the reading skills of literacy, fluency, and comprehension “stick”, we like to combine FOUR teaching methods together with THREE kinds of student activities! They are:
1. The Phonics or Word Study Method – Sound out letters and combinations of letter patterns in order from left to right.
2. The Visual Memory Cues Method and Spelling Patterns – This is the shape of the word and/or a “photo” in the mind of what a word looks like or where it was seen before. For example, find little words within big words, recognize parts of words which are the same in words already known to expand vocabulary.
3. The Sight Words Method – Post it, practice it in repetitive stories… in other words, just memorize it. These are typical ways to learn sight words. PSLC curriculum likes to also use method #2 to help method #3 “stick” better!
4. The Method of Context Clues – This means looking at surrounding words that one already knows and the picture nearby, to guess at what the new word is! This is the method that most people use to recognize his/her own name easily as a child. The child keeps seeing his/her name on anything that belongs to him/her such as a name label on a coat or nametag, a birthday card, a photo on a wall, etc..
At the early level, it might look like a child is only “reading a picture” but this IS part of learning to read words because there is a word/picture association going on in these little minds and this association will help them to remember the new words.
Our PSLC curriculum encourages a variety of hands-on, written, and verbal activities!
Many young children are ready to learn the skill of literacy if they are taught in an appealing manner!!
For help with the placement of students in a Let Me Read Step level, our tips for teaching struggling older readers, or to understand a bit more about different common approaches to teaching literacy, please download these printable (pdf) pages by clicking on the picture:
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For these skills, the obvious main activity is of course – writing! Yet our “Peppermint Stick” curriculum loves to include some hands-on and oral aspects too! This twist really helps children strengthen their fine motor co-ordination, build confidence, and develop independent learning to express their thoughts effectively.
PSLC likes to present technical writing skills (e.g. penmanship, grammar) through something that is meaningful to write and sometimes short and fun stories, depending on the lesson. (We never like boring copy work!)
Currently, we offer printing and handwriting curriculum (all levels), a bit of grammar (multi-grade), and creative writing resources (all grades). Additional resources can be found through our affiliates, The Basement Workshop and Christian Book Distributors, especially the titles which we recommend will be listed on our webpage “What Resources Do You Use….”.
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