OUR APPROACH

Comprehensive Language Development

Stages of Language Development

Students exercise the phonemic part of their brains to develop the necessary prerequisite process that makes reading automatic. Using multi-sensory instruction, the student develops language skills from “whole to part” (spelling) and “part to whole” (reading) using a structured, sequential hierarchy of phonics. New information is introduced in small sequential parts. Using a cumulative approach, review and reinforcement of learned phonics skills are then connected to the new information so that reading, and spelling make sense. Because fluency at the word, phrase and passage level is such a critical part of learning to read, it too is taught and reinforced explicitly.

After this stage, students delve into Anglo-Saxon prefixes, base words, and suffixes (morphemes). During this phase of reading and writing instruction, students become more proficient with spelling unknown words, enriching their vocabularies and acquiring a deeper knowledge of the structure of advanced language. They continue building upon the basic level, but fluency, comprehension and written output are developed to the point of “automatically.”

The next stage is when students build upon their morphemic level of reading instruction. A morpheme can be defined at a part of a word that contains meaning, like a prefix, root, and suffix. Using a multi-sensory approach, students will learn more than 120 Latin and Greek roots and all the spelling variations of the prefixes that attach to the roots; when the word becomes intensely multi-syllabic is when the child with language difficulties breaks down. When our students progress through the various levels of language, they use these morphemes to engage their higher order thinking skills. Spelling and reading complex words with lots of syllables and defining the words is easy because they have been taught to define the morphemes both in isolation and in context.