It is a serviceable coil bound 166 page book. The print is very clear. The coil binding allows the book to be laid flat, with half the book folded back. The two pictures will give you some idea of the book. The contents are essentially the same as Webster’s 1908 Elementary Spelling Book. I switched from columns to rows to encourage the development of good left to right scanning of text when reading. Practically all of Webster’s diacritical marks have been retained. I typed the entire book over a three year period. I have used it with several students, with excellent results.

You can see my KJV Bible and fountain pen in the background. Webster built upon the solid foundation of the Bible. My Nationwide Blend Phonics Campaign has purposefully avoided any reference to the Bible so that it would have a fighting chance to become the dominant method for teaching phonics in publics schools in America. Next to Webster, Blend Phonics is – I believe – the best phonics method available for public schools. On the other hand, my Webster, like the original, is unashamedly Christian. All of the original Christian content is intact.

My coworker, Mrs. Elizabeth Brown, has been using my editions of Webster ever since I started typing them. She believes that her students have made more progress learning to read on higher levels by the use of Webster than any of the other excellent phonics programs she has used over the years. My experience has been the same.

I encourage Christian Schools and Home School parents to teach their students and children with this freshly typed edition of Webster’s Spelling Book and send comments to this Blog. The only way we will ever prove that Webster’s Way was the Right Way to teach reading is to give it a try. I am convinced that modern criticism of Webster’s method will evaporate in the bright light of the success that children experience.

It is important to realize that no reading method today can even come close to Webster when it comes to to teaching millions of children to read for a period of over 200 years.

The Syllabary is a tremendously powerful tool for teaching students to read without guessing. It overcomes the distortion that inevitably accompanies trying to sound out strings of isolated phonemes. As linguistics know, coarticulations means that speech sounds overlap and are modified by the sounds around them.

Using the syllabary is very helpful for students who have problems blending or sounding-out words. Syllables also avoid the problem of guessing since the meaning of the syllable is in the acoustic field and not in the semantic field. Students who learn syllables first will not be tempted to guess the meaning of words from shape or context. Student should be taught both to read and spell (using oral letter names and written letters). Teaching syllables will go a very long way in preventing the unwanted symptoms of dyslexia. Syllables are also a very valuable ally in overcoming dyslexia.

Mrs. Brown has a very helpful movie that explains she how teaches the Syllabary. You can download the Syllabary I am using in the picture above at: Webster 1908 Syllabary. Here is a Student Progress Chart that I made for Webster. The Progress Chart will work with any printing of the 1908 Elementary Spelling Book.

At the end of my edition of Webster 1908, there is a chart that gives the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Equivalent (level) for the Webster’s practice sentences. It is very informative to learn that there is a very smooth progression from grade level to grade level, from beginning to very high literacy levels. Mrs. Brown tells that her students find their progress through the grade levels very motivational.

Webster Back Cover

Yesterday I published my personally typed edition of Webster’s 1908 Elementary Spelling Book. I call the new book, Noah Webster’s Spelling Book Method for Teaching Reading and Spelling for the Twenty-First Century. I have been working on this 166 page document since 2007. I was motivated to begin the project to republish Webster after reading Miss Geraldine Rodger’s article, “Why Webster’s Way Was the Right Way.” Like most educators, I did not realize that the spelling books were used to teach reading, not just spelling. The students learned to spell columns of words that were organized into orthographic units. The students started by learning the alphabet and then learned to sound-out groups of syllables in a syllabary. Then they proceeded to learn to spell literally thousands of words organized by orthographic principles.

The 1908 Elementary Spelling Book is essentially the same as the 1829 edition. Before 1829 Webster followed the common custom of putting numbers over the vowels to indicate the variable pronunciation of the vowel letters. In 1829 he switched to macron, breve, and other marks of pronunciation similar to those used in modern dictionaries. As I typed up more and more pages of Webster’s 1908 Spelling Book, I taught the pages to my students at the Odessa Christian School. The results were phenomenal. I saw student who had a long history of reading problems overcome their problems to become excellent readers and spellers. I sent the evolving manuscript to Mrs. Elizabeth Brown, who used it with her tutoring students. One of the main reasons I went to all the labor of preparing the book for publication for purchase was Mrs. Browns’ insistence that parents would rather purchase the book than run it off on a printer and bind it themselves.

You can purchase your spiral bound copy of Webster’s Spelling Book Method for Teaching Reading and Spelling for the Twenty-First Century from my Cafe Press Store.

http://www.cafepress.com/DonPotterTutoring

This sign is a wonderful Christmas present from two of my tutoring students. The girls are sisters in first- and third-grades.

I really appreciate these girls because they “get it.” They understand that guessing is the enemy of expressive oral reading, rapid silent reading, and high comprehension.

For reasons I have never fully understood, all my tutoring students have been taught to read by guessing from a memorized base of sight-words and context clues. Instead of decoding words by paying close attention to their spelling patterns, they have been taught to guess from multiple clues.

I have found the following “Secret of Reading” to be the best advice I can give my students to help them improve their reading almost overnight.

Mr. Potter’s Secret of Reading; “Look at all the letters the right way, and no guessing.“

Every teacher should have a “No Guessing Zone” sign in the front of their classrooms to remind the students. In fact, I am planning to start selling signs just like the one above as soon as I get a Market Place set up on my own website: www.donpotter.net.

At our school, we teach cursive-first. The kindergarten  students write fluent cursive. My granddaughter came to my school in third-grade from a public school, where they do not teach cursive till third or fourth grade, if even then. She now has some of the most beautiful cursive handwriting you have ever seen.

2.  I put my phonics lessons online in 2004, made possible with God’s help—the work was done I was pregnant and very tired. (August 2004)

3.  While typing up Robert Sweet’s Interview for Children of the Code, I found Don Potter’s website.  A search for Hazel Loring’s Blend Phonics led me to Don.  (September 2004)

4.  After publishing my “History of Reading Instruction” page, I was contacted by Geraldine E. Rodgers, who informed me that most of my history information was wrong and encouraged me to read her History of Beginning Reading. (November 2006)

5.  I read through her History of Beginning Reading twice, confirming its claims with old books I owned and two trips to the Library of Congress.  This led me to try Webster’s Speller with my daughter, with amazing results.  (My first Webster use: September 2007)

6.  Don Potter’s frequent e-mails about the MWIA led me try finally try it with my remedial students.  I have found it to be a very powerful assessment tool.  It is especially helpful for diagnosing students that seem to read at grade level but are struggling with “comprehension” issues that are usually masked phonics problems.  (My first MWIA use: 2007)

7.  I have now used Webster’s Speller combined with Blend Phonics with two classes of remedial students.  (Spring 2008 and Fall 2009)  The help of volunteers from my church allowed us to reach 16 students from a school ranked in the bottom third of the state of Arkansas in reading.  Previous methods allowed most of my students to read at grade level after 6 to 30 hours of work, and a few were reading one grade level above their grade.  A two month course, twice a week for 90 minutes, had the spring and fall classes improving, on average, 2.3 and 1.5 grade levels per student!  There were also 4 students that were reading more than one grade level above their grade.  

Webster is a very powerful method.  I have a page explaining how to use Webster’s Speller, and another page with instructions for tutoring a student or group of students, including a step-by-step guide to Blend Phonics that has verbatim instructions I used with our remedial classes.  I look forward to sharing more about exactly how to use these powerful resources and gain insights from others teaching with these resources.  The volunteers helping teach my class had a lot of great suggestions that made the class a lot better!

2. I noted in Geraldine Rodger’s book, The Hidden Story, that Spelling Books were used to teach beginning reading. (2/2/02). Read some choice quotes I selected from the book. (7/29/04)

3. Geraldine Rodgers sent me a surprise essay, “Why Noah Webster’s Way Was the Right Way.” The essay made so much sense that I determined to figure out how they taught beginning reading with the Syllabary and Tables of words divided into syllables and classified by accent placement. (June 2002)

4. I started working on publishing a no-frills, easy-to-read edition of Webster’s 1824 American Spelling Book for use my classroom and free Internet distribution. (October 6, 2006)

5. I published a web page dedicated to the Spelling Book Method of Teaching Reading. (8/11/08)

6. This last year, I have retyped Webster’s 1908 Elementary Spelling Book using rows instead of columns. This edition is seeing heavy use in my daily tutoring. It will be available for free download or purchase before the summer is over. (Sometime in 2009). Here is a GoogleBook edition for now: Elementary Spelling Book.

Conclusion: Liz and I have been amazed at the rapid progress our students have experienced when we started teaching Webster’s Syllabary and Word Tables. Liz and I look forward to sharing with you our growing experience with this old but unrivaled reading and spelling method.

On 12/30/11, Don added a link to his new edition of Webster’s 1908 Elementary Spelling Book. Click on the “Webster” tab to go to the link for the book.

Who is we?  I’m posting this (Liz), but we is Donald Potter and Elizabeth Brown.  

Between us, we have tutored for over 30 years, tutoring hundreds of students.  We have found that phonics first, no sight words, and syllables is a powerful combination.  We hope to use the power of the 21st century (computers) to unleash the power of the 18th century (teaching reading with Spellers and Syllables.)

Between us, we have tried out scores of different phonics methods.  This blog will share what we have learned.  We invite you to share your phonics successes, whether you teach 1 or 100.

We dedicate this site to Geraldine E. Rodgers, whose writings helped us clarify our own thinking about phonics and gave us the courage to try syllables on our students.