Developmental phonics/handwriting

I have started using Riggs' phonics curriculum with Elisabeth, as she has shown interest in learning more about letter sounds. While their website is very poorly designed, and their teaching methodology is overly structured, the concept behind it is quite clever.

They suggest a multi-sensory approach to teaching the letter names, shapes and sounds that I think is remarkably effective. Here is a rough version of the routine they suggest:

1. Show the child the particular grapheme (on a flash card).
2. Demonstrate how to form the letter on a whiteboard or paper.
3. Say the sound(s) the grapheme makes. Then . . .
4. Ask the child to say the sound(s) the grapheme makes.
5. The child writes the letter(s) in the prescribed manner.

So what are the strengths?

1. I'm attracted by the fact that the routine incorporates looking, listening, speaking and writing, since it can play on whatever the child's strong suit is to reinforce the connections.
2. I also really like that they teach all of a grapheme's sounds outright. For example, for the letter c, they teach both the 'k' and 's' sounds outright.
3. They teach how to write each letter. I think that explicit teaching makes the learning process far easier for the child - and makes their practice consistent.
   
4. They teach the graphemes in sequence by the motion used to write it so that the child has repetition to reinforce the particular strokes before moving on to new strokes.

I didn't realize how well it was working (on the writing side) until this week. We were in the laundromat, and I had brought Elisabeth's wipe clean book for her to play with while I folded the laundry. There happened to be a four year old there, and Elisabeth wanted to share her book with him. When he started to write a particular letter, I heard her say,

"No, you start here and go around and up and down."

She had internalized the procedure well enough to teach others! Hopefully all of the other pieces of instruction will stick as well.