Excerpt from Phonics and Spelling Through Phoneme-Grapheme Mapping, by Kathryn E. S. Grace
“I have been looking forward to this publication for a long time. In the LETRS professional development manuals, I presented the ideas around which Phonics and Spelling Through Phoneme-Grapheme Mapping was developed, hoping that every teacher would soon be able to obtain this outstanding instructional tool. This program, fully classroom tested and theoretically sound, exploits a fundamental fact about the relationship between speech and print: the 44 speech sounds (phonemes) in English are represented by graphemes, not letters. Graphemes are letters and letter combinations that correspond to individual speech sounds and that are used in largely predictable patterns and sequences. Kathryn Grace’s innovative and effective approach highlights phoneme-grapheme relationships, depicting for students the internal details of both spoken words and written words and the patterns by which print represents speech. This program embodies the true meaning of “the alphabetic principle,” which is much discussed and seldom taught in such an engaging, logical, organized, and complete fashion. With this program, in the regular classroom or the intervention group, students will learn the fundamentals of word structure for both reading and spelling. It’s powerful; it’s fun. Thank you, Kathryn, for giving us this work.”
—Louisa Moats
Author, Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS)
