I started my Blend Phonics web site back in 2007 when I began using Hazel Loring’s 1980 Reading Made Easy with Blend Phonics for First Grade with my tutoring students. Reading Made Easy with Blend Phonics for First Grade interested me for several reasons: It was free. It was very simple to teach and learn. It proved highly effective.
I feel that many phonics program are prone to failure because they are too complicated for many teachers and parents. I taught Saxon Phonics years ago, but it takes extensive training and is prone to failure because of its complexity. The same is true of Spalding and many other phonics programs. It is not that the programs are not effective in theory and even practice with extensive training, but they are prone to failure in anything but ideal situations.
I first offered Reading Made Easy with Blend Phonics for First Grade back in 2003 as a free document on my Don Potter website. That website is something of a never-ending personal journal with links to my research and free publications.
I would like for every first-grade teacher in America receive a copy of Loring’s Reading Made Easy with Blend Phonics for First Grade. I am convinced that this 25-page pamphlet could transform education in America.
I also have made available a brief introductory demonstration lesson on Blend Phonics.
Don Potter
Odessa, Texas
Great review! I love the Don Potter site : ) – but I didn’t learn of it till I had finished teaching phonics. I had used a different but quite similar intensive phonics program – and it is a method that works amazingly well!
The Don Potter site is helpful to homeschooling families — especially those who are on a limited budget.
“You get what you pay for.” One area of education we don’t want to skimp on is reading instruction. It we don’t pay now, we’re pay later with truncated reading ability and interest. We need to avoid going for the free, cheap, easy programs that don’t go the distance.
Thanks for the recommendation. I had not heard of that program before. I love the Spalding method, but you are right that it is difficult to implement. If I ever have to teach phonics again, I’ll look into it more!