Kinder-Write

Update of September 2009

Dr. Robert Rose, MD.

September, 2009

During the school years of 2002-2004 I asked five first-grade teachers and five kindergarten teachers to help me find out if teaching young students to print the alphabet "fluently" (that is, legibly and at a rate of 40-letters-per-minute or better) resulted in the successful acquisition of literacy and the prevention of reading problems. This was done on a free yahoogroups listserv. I used the 94 first-graders as a control group, and the 106 kindergartners as an experimental group. (The kindergarten teachers tried to induce printing fluency, the first-grade teachers did not.)

The results were highly positive.

Between April and June of 2008-09 I had another half-dozen kindergarten teachers try the same experiment. Only one teacher gave correlation data through the end of the school year, and she had 23 of her 24 students reading with good comprehension by the end of kindergarten.

We believe that all highly successful K-1 teachers stress the practice of writing alphabet letters. Many kids learn to read before they write well, but ALL young school kids who lag in reading skill are dysfluent at writing. (Fluency in writing, before "dyslexia" sets in, gives kids the ability to mentally envision what written syllables look like, and it confers to ability to identify randomly presented alphabet letters rapidly, a very good predictor of reading success in rising first-graders.)

Anyone who would like to participate in this year's study may join my free listserv by sending ANY email to k1writing-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Best,

Bob Rose
Jasper, GA
rovarose@aol.com

Page created September 4, 2009. Anne Pemberton. Updated Thursday, October 1, 2009 . AP.

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