I like to call this approach the
....
The TASSI ('Trace And Sound Sensory
Imprint') approach.
I
became aware of the enormous amount of 'baggage' that
failing readers carry around with them. Failure seems to
lead to an expectation of more failure. More failure
equates with additional stress - the classic downward
spiral.
Hence the 'Low Stress' tracing component. It follows that
this 'Low Stress' approach would be beneficial to all
learners, as we know that stress and anxiety are
detrimental to the process of accessing information from
long term memory (the "I just go blank in exams."
syndrome).
With tracing there is no stress and no margin for error. In
other words the student is guaranteed success . As
educators we know that the first response is the strongest
- get it wrong the first time and the result is confusion.
Hence it follows that TASSI offers an advantage to those
learners just starting out, thereby avoiding the
possibility of failure altogether. The bonus factor is that
handwriting tends to improve.
So what is being
'imprinted'?
* letter sound correspondence - m = mmm
* letter combination correspondence - ou as in 'ouch'
* letter name correspondence - m = 'em'
(letter sounds, being more directly involved in reading and
spelling, take precedence)
* left to right processing - does not confuse 'from' and
'form'
* punctuation procedure - when is it appropriate to use a
comma?
* spelling rules - the 'e' makes the 'c' say sss and
sometimes makes the 'g' say 'jjj' (cent/gent)
* a bank of high frequency irregular words - said does
* grammatical sentence structure - I was / they
were
In short, a bank of
knowledge, related to spelling and writing,
that directly supports reading.
While tracing and sounding, the student
has no other 'processing clutter' happening at the same
time and the brain is free to take on the information at
hand. The next step in the process is 'dictation' of words,
sentences and short passages - and lots of it. So the brain
now needs to 'access' the information that has just been
imprinted but is at the same time free of the creative
process and more likely to gain accuracy at the skill based
level. This is the interim step towards competent sentence
and story writing.
Happy
stress free teaching and learning
v
