Words In Color (Pamphlet)

Can the teaching of reading be guided step by step by the learning of reading?

The answer is yes, and

Words in Color is its explicit unfolding

Caleb Gattegno

Educational Solutions Worldwide Inc.

First published in 1975. Reprinted in 2009.

Copyright Š 1975-2009 Educational Solutions Worldwide Inc. Author: Caleb Gattegno All rights reserved ISBN 978-0-87825-034-9 Educational Solutions Worldwide Inc. 2nd Floor 99 University Place, New York, N.Y. 10003-4555 www.EducationalSolutions.com

Words in Color

Anyone who has anything to do with the study of reading – a teacher, a clinician, an author of texts for reading – knows that it is a complex challenge. Reading is a word with many meanings, like “child”, or “competence”; and in any discussion we need to be quite clear about which kind of reading we are speaking of. Can we say that a person reads when he has memorized 100 words? or read a mystery story but forgotten its content in a week? or read a technical article with the speed and melody of his spoken speech but understood none of it?

And what do we do when we read for various purposes? How do we use our eyes? How do we relate to poetry or sacred books?

What must we do to extract new knowledge from a text? Surely reading is a know-how; or rather, a complex of skills, each calling upon a number of functionings of our minds.

To propose an approach to teaching reading which will succeed with almost anyone, we need to know how to work on these functionings in our students so that new uses of themselves become second nature. We need to be in constant, close contact with the learner – with what he needs to do at each stage and with how he can manage to do it.

THIS COMMON SENSE APPROACH WHICH CALLS FOR A TEACHING WHICH CAN BE ADJUSTED AT EVERY MOMENT TO WHAT IS GOING ON IN THE LEARNER IS THE SOURCE OF THE TECHNIQUES AND MATERIALS COMPOSING WORDS IN COLOR. © Caleb Gattegno, 1975.

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Words in Color

THE DISCIPLINE R0 Starting with beginning readers, as young or as old as they may be, we must clearly agree upon the most primitive of all the disciplines of reading: that specific sounds must be made when looking at specific designs. This discipline needs to be at work from the beginning. One needs it to read the writing of any language, at any level, and for any purpose. We call this stage of learning to read R0. auieo aau uaa To make sure that a student acquires this discipline, Words in Color proposes a game with five vowels. The signs chosen are a with the sound it has in pat, u as in up, i as in it, e as in pet, and o as in pot. In R0. “words” can be made up from combinations of signs (e. g. aau) and transformed by combining the signs differently (uaa). In English none of the “words” formed at this stage can be associated with meaning. But they are horizontal sequences of closely drawn designs written above lines (unlike Hindi), from left to right (unlike Hebrew), with spaces between them (unlike Thai), and on a succession of lines from top to bottom.

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MATERIALS Book Ro and the box of colored chalks used on a blackboard offer a hierarchy of games which make students: auieo oaoau oauie eoioie iaoueo ieoiouo oouuiieeaa 1

see what there is to do when one single sound is associated to one single sign,

2 transfer to another sign/sound correspondence what has just been learned, 3 combine the two and then see how this can be extended to the five (see margin), 4 see that the wealth of the exercises has allowed them to own all the conventions for writing English mentioned above.

So when a beginner “reads� in R0, we can observe the discipline of his saying exactly what goes with what he sees and saying what we expect all readers would say if confronted with the same designs. Al-though R0 can be done quickly in any alphabetic language, it seems to have been forgotten by all teachers before Words in Color appeared.

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Words in Color

CONSONANTS ARE SOUNDED WITH ap, pa up, pu ip, pi ep, pe op, po po↔op pop pop up pep up Clearly consonants are so named because they only “sound with” , i.e., sound with vowels; which can be sounded alone. So if we can introduce consonants in conjunction with vowels and never try to sound them in isolation, we can expect beginners to be helped. We also want to avoid having the way letters are sounded confused with the label or letter name they are assigned in the alphabet. When we work in this way, it is clear to the learners that the bricks of speech are vowels and syllables — not vowels and consonants nor the letters of the alphabet. Hence in Words in Color we introduce consonants one at a time, with each of the vowels (5) already given, making twice as many syllables (10) as there are vowels. These syllables can be combined according to the rules of R0 and then a new convention introduced. That is, two syllables can merge if (1) they have the same vowel and (2) the first ends with a vowel while the second begins with it. Then certain combinations of these syllables produce two English sentences (see margin).

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We shall call R1 this same activity extended over as few consonants as is needed to insure that students recognize R1 1

that sentences are structured sequences of words capable of great variety and flexibility,

2 that they are carriers of meaning, to be sounded with the intonations of speech, as if they were spoken, 3 that they can be written horizontally, from left to right, with spaces between the words, with the correct spellings, and with the responsibility of putting down all that one hears as one hears it.

R1 will be the stage when the conventions for writing English (acquired in R0) become a vehicle for expressing some meanings known to a writer. R1 is also the stage when we use the discipline of R0 (saying what we see) for the purpose of hearing a spoken statement in what has been written. When someone can extract meaning from such a written sentence, the process can be called “communication” between writer and reader.

SS as in pass ‘S as in pat’s auieo 5

Words in Color

ptss m n tt ss mm nn ’s’s ‘m In Words in Color the order of introduction of the first few consonants is: p, t, s (as in is) and s (as in sit and for which two additional spellings are also given). As the last two consonant sounds are introduced in their differing colors, the two hidden ambiguities of English writing become immediately and simultaneously perceptible: (1) that the same letter can be sounded in different ways and (2) that the same sound can be written using a variety of spellings. The “restricted” language of R1 covers. therefore, all the English that can be generated from the table of signs shown here with their corresponding sounds.

VISUAL DICTATION R1 clearly presupposes R0, but not conversely. The method of forming “words” and “sentences” of R0 — pointing to signs in sequence with a pointer and called Visual Dictation #1 — has not changed. Only now this activity produces sequences of sounds which are recognized to be words belonging to our speech.

Visual Dictation #1 is a game which can be played on the successive expansions of signs found in Tables 1 (Book R1) to 7 (Book R3). The last table covering all the sounds and spellings of English, has been reproduced in color for the classroom and is called the English Fidel or Phonic Code.

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We can also touch words one after the other to produce sentences; this is called Visual Dictation #2. For this activity a number of colored word charts have been produced for the walls of the classroom.

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Word Charts # 1-2 WORKSHEETS #1 and 2 Word Chart #1 and #2 corresponds with R1, and of this set of words hundreds of sentences can be made. The following are a sample: -is it -it is -is it pat

-sit up pat -pat stops at steps -pat is upset

-torn is a nut -stamps tempt pam -I am mom's assistant

Book R1 — only 16 pages long — is printed in black on white, as are all the books in which the students work and contains material generated through R1. Corresponding exercises are part of Worksheets # 1 and # 2. This is the first of a series of 14 such worksheets which permit teachers to follow very closely the movements of students. They serve as continuous test material through the Words in Color program and offer feedback to the teacher and student at every stage of learning to read. The possibility of having “continuous feedback” from the learner is built into the materials described above. We do not think that in the learning process there is any particular moment for evaluation. Rather we would like to involve students and teachers in using their criteria at every moment to know constantly what they are doing and how.

Another important remark about R1 is that it makes possible all the successive stages. In fact it includes all the necessary processes that only need expansion as we move ahead. The student can now: 8

Words in Color

DECODING •

look at words to know what they are and how to sound them (an activity called decoding);

•

run words together in order to make phrases that make possible the insertion of melody in the reading;

a – addition s - substitution i - insertion r – reversal •

recognize that signs (or sounds) and words created out of any given set of signs are linked and that it is possible to pass from one to the other through a few mental operations (see margin); e.g.: at

a

sat

s

sit

i

spit

r

tips

•

realize that many words can be obtained from a small number of signs;

•

recognize that many sentences can be made from a small number of words;

•

understand that, besides the set of meanings and the corresponding set of sounds already established as part of himself, he also owns a set (not yet complete) of corresponding signs;

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•

recognize that meanings can be triggered by these corresponding signs as they are spoken words and that some meanings can be transmuted into them.

All of this exists in the learners after R1. We will only ask that they apply these functionings to more and more sounds and signs of the language.

MEETING THE SOUNDS OF ENGLISH R2 One expansion of all that has been done, which we call R2. makes readers fully aware of all the sounds of English. Book R2 is dedicated to this study and includes Tables 3 to 5 which also correspond to this extension. Nine colored word charts (#3-11) sketch a curriculum for this task and progressively introduce. via the mental operations of transformations mentioned above, sets of words that produce a succession of explosions made possible by the constantly expanding language. A number of spellings for the way the new sounds can be transcribed in English are also given at this stage.

Although many of the techniques used in R1 are also used in R2, the climate is different in R2 precisely because students are in contact with expanded powers of themselves. They feel that they can compose longer sentences and ones where the meanings are shaded; that more of their spoken language is objectified; that systematically they are progressing through the jungle that their language is —scouting, charting, covering, surveying, owning it with more certainty. The systematic and fully comprehensible 10

Words in Color

games, the vital feedback that students receive, the learner's contact with himself and his language create criteria that go beyond the immediate, beyond memory, and give the confidence that only comes with mastery. Although each exercise is limited, its potential is sensed as indefinitely extendable. With so little new added or requested, words materialize through the dynamics of transformation, and the boundaries indeed explode one after the other. No fatigue is experienced in this work.

Rather, students feel elated by their being linked with what they have already established and also secure with what is in front of them and appears easily conquerable.

The result is a new kind of relationship to reading and writing. It is not only the content of what one looks at that absorbs the self.

Simultaneously one feels that the powers of one's mind have become available so that one can try to do more with oneself in the field. If the teacher challenges with more demanding exercises, students give themselves a chance to see how easily they can cope with these. If they find such an exercise is somehow beyond them but sensed as reachable, the learners wish to be capable of doing it. In these circumstances teachers are essential and there are steps they can take to make new challenges manageable. For instance, at one point a little longer pause here or a stress put there by the teacher can force a certain awareness. If the student indicates that some interference to learning still exists there are various silent techniques for taking him past it. When we meet students in this way, we understand that it is the exercises, not the content, that build the reader in them. Thus we can say: reading is the byproduct; the education of one's powers is what is actually taking place.

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COMPREHENSION A disciplined beginner, doing by himself what is required, finds himself looking, seeing, and uttering what is written with a melody that is so similar to the spoken language that he hears the statement read as a statement spoken. This transmuting of what is on paper into what makes available all one's past, deposited in the functionings of the spoken language, brings with it “comprehension.” Reading is only a transmutation of what we hear when people talk to us. And it follows that the motivation to read what is presented with care is the same as when one listens to what others bring to one’s life through speech.

When using the materials with such awarenesses, teachers discover the tremendous contribution of the spoken language in the education of the reader in each of us. The earlier this becomes clear to us as teachers and the earlier we see how to use it through the Words in Color materials and techniques, the earlier we will find how much students can help themselves in becoming competent readers.

WORKSHEETS #3-7 Worksheets 3-7, each consisting of 16 pages of progressive exercises that go with classroom work in R2, give evidence to learners that they are reaching mastery. The continuous feedback they provide is invaluable for the teacher, who has to attend to so many individuals. The open-ended nature of the exercises gives students great latitude in the research they can

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do to answer questions and many opportunities to be inventive.

The students’ work, produced when they study individually, can be shared in special group sessions to increase the awareness of others in the class. And this sharing, because of its variety, can make students know each other in the fields of reading and writing just as they can on the playground in group games.

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Word Charts #3-5 In R2 students have to become acquainted with almost four dozen additional sounds of the English language and some of

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their spellings. When all this new material is seen at once, it represents a hefty amount, but the systematic approach imbedded in the various materials of Words in Color makes that task seem manageable at each stage. We have mentioned how in this phase the forty-eight pages in Book R2 go hand in hand with 10 more colored word charts and 5 more worksheets’. Switching from one to the other becomes easy if, for instance, the teacher starts by putting up one new colored word chart near the preceding ones and lets the students decode all the words (except the few that the teacher needs to give to establish the new signs /sounds associations). Because students decode intelligently and are not told what to say, the discipline of R0 and R1 is extended. Students will still only say what they see.

Color is a better clue than the teacher’s voice: first, because it is permanently there at the students’ disposal and second, because it remains consistent while voices change — varying in pitch, intonation, volume, etc. Having the colored words permanently displayed on the wall charts has other advantages: •

it is so much more efficient than verbal explanations for showing that the same sound may be spelled in various ways or the same sign may trigger various soundings;

•

it is left to each student to choose one of the words from those displayed to establish for himself the arbitrary connection between sound and color; and

•

the learners do not have to burden their memory since they may refer back to a word which they already know in order to decode parts of new words they may be working on.

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This initial work on the colored charts serves as a foundation for the complementary work in the related black on white materials.

Work in R2 proceeds with joy, demanding what students can give and are ready to give. Being systematic, the approach will take advantage of all that can happen in a class where individual learners know what they are doing.

MEETING THE SPELLINGS OF ENGLISH R3 In R3 students need to become immersed in one last characteristic of the language — its use of about 400 signs which are used to write the 52 or so sounds we distinguished in R2.

Already about one hundred spellings have been met in R2. but now we want to complete the job of teaching reading. The frame of reference is twofold: (1) to make people able to write, according to an accepted standard, anything that they can say and (2) to make them know that they can utter like anybody else what they read, even if they cannot reach the meaning some texts are supposed to convey (for instance, in fields where the reader is uninitiated).

R3 is needed by everyone who wants to call himself literate. It does not mean, however, that one can read for all purposes. At this stage, for example, we do not want to use the printed word for other tasks, like extracting new knowledge from books (R4) or gaining various experiences through contact with writers who have different purposes in writing (R5, R6, R15, etc.). R3 is a necessary condition for all of the subsequent kinds of reading,

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although not a sufficient condition. That is why we shall have to speak of R4, R5, . . .R12, etc. Whereas R0 - R3 represent a clear hierarchy, the successive R’s do not. Rather, we can think of them as uses of R3 which call for a different use of the reader, depending on the purpose of his reading. R3 is the last level required by all the following R’s, and that is why we can speak of the completion of literacy when R3 is truly completed.

The techniques of R2 remain available when working in R3.

Some of the materials used are, as before, a book (Book R3), tables 6 and 7 in Book R3, colored word charts 12-20, and worksheets 8-12. Book R3 like Books R1 and R2, is also very thin (only 48 pages), but now students shift to becoming more aware of spelling.

R3 also involves students in a number of other new awarenesses.

They are most visible in the appearances of: MORE MATERIAL 1

a Book of Stories where sentences are strung together to produce stories (called Visual Dictation #3 when formed with a pointer on the charts).

2 exercises in Worksheets #8-12 that create concern for consistency, truth, the function of words, and the meaning of precision or elegance in statements; 3 Worksheets #13-14 that use exercises in reading to widen one’s awareness of language and even of life; 17

Words in Color

4 the Fidel (or Phonic Code) charts for the wall that sum up the journey from the beginning of R0 to the end of R3 and display in one arrangement all the sounds and spellings of English; 5 the Word Cards for the study of the function of words and the structure of sentences.

In addition, as the vocabulary on the charts widens, as samples of words whose spellings are unusual are added, as more sophisticated statements can be made, as the restrictions diminish, it becomes clear that all the materials and the techniques can only take care of a number of components of what we can do with the language. The enormous powers cultivated by the approach become available to the students who now want to exercise all of themselves as extensively as possible.

It is then that we can introduce them to the whole of the world of print, to the shelves of libraries where they will find books to enjoy, to learn from, to be triggered in many directions: that of the imagination, of travel, of the transcendental, and soon.

Books become keys to doors that lead to universes. R3, because of its cardinal place in one’s education and one’s future, becomes most important and requires the dedication of teachers so that it is cared for appropriately.

When all 20 of the colored word charts are hanging on the wall, their uses can be expanded almost indefinitely. We have developed techniques which can be acquired in our workshops for teachers that show it is possible to extract from the few hundred words on these charts a profound acquaintance with English. This intimacy will also serve the students’ own 18

Words in Color

education because so many of their functionings (intellectual and affective) are called upon in these exercises. We can ask students, for instance, challenges as broad as: “Make out of the words in front of us statements that can qualify as sarcastic, or austere, or intimate, or absurd, or comical, or false, or plausible, etc.� and obtain as many different samples as can come to those students. The set is there for all to look at, but each person selects a particular subset that does what the special dynamics of his mind suggests. If the results are shared, they multiply the yield and stress personality, temperament, imagination, individuality, and possibilities of the language. The work in groups, then, serves that of the individual, and conversely. This gives a new meaning to classwork, which now becomes a real opportunity to expand oneself while contributing to other people’s growth.

READING TO ACQUIRE NEW KNOWLEDGE R4 R4 can only be touched upon here. It is the particular kind of reading which uses R3 to enter the world of acquiring knowledge via the printed word. In R3 it is the act of reading itself that produces knowledge. It may, for instance, produce new awarenesses by accident or in contrived statements, such as definitions, in which all the words in a sentence serve to convey the meaning of a new one. (A string of definitions at the beginning of an elementary geometry textbook is a good example.)

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In R4, however, a person must initiate some actions in addition to reading the text, before a string of words yields its meaning. A reader may need to make some diagrams, for instance, because the words do not suffice. If meanings are generated in this way, then words can be connected with the diagrams and replace them. Then we can integrate into our vocabulary and our awareness of what language can do the concepts developed through perception, images and the dynamics of these two.

So R4 can be reading (R3) associated with drawing. It might also mean that one dissects, or dismantles and reconstructs, or reflects, or evokes experiences, or reads related material. If, on the other hand, understanding a book requires ten years of prior study, R4 is not yet taking place. A person will need R4 on top of those years of study.

One can also see that R3 cannot open up fields of knowledge requiring skills not yet owned. We would first need to be acquainted with the numerous skills involved in architecture, for instance, before we could use reading as a means of acquiring new knowledge in that field (R4). Also R3 may not be adequate for acquiring the skills involved in a given field, say farming. But going to a farm with a book on farming can change R3, into R4.

Being on the farm makes the apparently same activity (reading a book) very different, because now one’s perception, not imagination or intelligence, is mobilized by the reading.

READING FOR OTHER PURPOSES R5

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R6 It is clear that not all kinds of reading have the same demands as that needed to acquire new knowledge (R4). R3 may be sufficient, for instance, to read stories for pleasure (which we can label R5) or to read in order to gain experience by proxy (which we can call R6). This is particularly the case if no one is going to test whether any specific information is left with the reader at the end.

There are many more meanings of the activities that follow R3, but which are still lumped under the name “reading.” Some of them are found in the following incomplete list: READING HAS MANY MEANINGS •

proof reading (R7) so that we do not miss spelling mistakes or printing and typing errors;

•

reading as an editor (R8) so that we do not leave grammatical errors, inconsistent and/or unnecessary statements;

•

reading in order to make a summary (R9), which means that we recast what was intended to be conveyed by a text, without all the additional components used by the writer for other purposes;

•

reading for the purpose of translating (R10), which requires that we know exactly what a writer wants to convey in each sentence or paragraph so that we put it into another language whose requirements are different; 21

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•

reading for edification (R11) which means taking in whatever one wants from a text with no obligation to stress the rest of the text;

•

reading for inspiration (R12) which is looking at a text for an affective charge that will propel one beyond where one is in a particular area;

•

and reading to know the language. This can mean several things. It might be reading to know the language in terms of structures (R13) as grammarians do; in terms of the origin of words (R14) as etymologists do; in terms of kinds of writing (R15) as literature specialists do; in terms of changes in time (R16) as some linguistic historians do; in terms of what it reveals of the writers (R17) as some psychologists do; in terms of what it reveals of the times (R18) as historians do; in terms of what is mechanical (R19) as computer science specialists do.

Twenty meanings of reading (R0-R19) have easily been isolated.

Many of us use a number of them throughout the day, and some of us use two or more of them simultaneously. This is what all of us do, although in schools only R0 - R3 and a certain amount of R4 is usually called for.

Words in Color, in cooperation with willing and informed teachers, takes care of R0 - R3, and provides the best basis for the various R’s that follow. At least we are clear on the demands of school education and meet them head on. Literacy can be accomplished early and swiftly, giving students the foundations to participate meaningfully, and in a way that makes sense to

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them, in the various activities of a culture which expresses itself through printed words.

WRITING WR0 Writing has not been stressed in this booklet, but in Words in Color it develops hand in hand with reading. At each stage of learning to write, there are specific skills to master so that we have the vehicle to say all we want to a person whose distance will not allow us to talk to him. There are many meanings to the word writing. WR0 may be just holding onto a pen so that we manage to put marks on paper which resemble a given model enough to be recognized by others. WR25 may be writing an elegy and WR10 any short story. This classification we leave to our readers.

CONCLUSION The quick study above tells us that Words in Color claims to be a complete program for teaching reading from R0 to R3. It also says that it is possible to use the techniques and materials for a deeper education of the awareness of all students. Specifically this means that Words in Color provides a number of successive applications and expansions that would make students into competent linguists, writers, and people able to use reading as a means to expand their knowledge.

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