Bannatyne Reading, Writing, Spelling and Language Program
Third Edition
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NOTE: The Bannatyne Program is NOT an interactive computer program for students. However, the Third Edition of the Bannatyne Reading, Writing, Spelling and Language Program is presented on four CD-ROM Discs so that it can be printed out on paper by a Licensed teacher/tutor/parent (or school or other organization) to use only with his or her students as a series of 13 Student Workbooks. There is a matching set of 13 comprehensive Teacher Guides--one for each Student Workbook. On Disc 1 there is also a Handbook, Grapheme Book, Technical Information Book, a Quick Placement Test, and other essential information and materials. See SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS AND CD INFO for more details of the contents of the four Discs.
SUMMARY STATEMENT
The Bannatyne Reading, Writing, Spelling and Language Program is scientifically and linguistically designed to teach any students of any age to read, write, spell and comprehend the English language competently and with a deep understanding of how our language works. Therefore the Bannatyne Program can be used with any students who are beginning to learn to read in regular school classes, usually Kindergarten (Year 1) or Grade 1, or with three- and four-year-olds who are being Home Schooled. The Bannatyne Program has also proved very valuable in teaching all kinds of handicapped students or adults of any age (4 through 74 years) to read, write, spell and comprehend the English language to above the sixth grade achievement level, as long as they are able to converse meaningfully in simple sentences (or better). The Bannatyne Program consists of 13 scientifically and linguistically based sequential, hands-on, easy-to-use, high-interest Student Workbooks, each of which has its own comprehensive, user-friendly Teacher Guide. Because of this scientific, linguistic foundation of the Bannatyne Program all 13 Student Workbooks must be sequentially taught by the teacher/tutor/parent and learned by the students, although those non-beginning students who demonstrate some modest knowledge of reading on the Quick Placement Test may begin with Galleon Workbook 6 (see next paragraph) and complete only the last 8 Student Workbooks. The Bannatyne Program is NOT a patch-up kit because patch-up programs do NOT work. The Bannatyne Program moves students along much faster than other regular reading programs.
TWO ENTRY POINTS--BEGINNING STUDENTS WITH NO KNOWLEDGE OF READING ENGLISH, AND STUDENTS WITH SOME BACKGROUND IN READING ENGLISH
1. Students who are beginning to learn to read, write, spell, and to understand the nuances of language enter the Bannatyne Program at the Jewels Series Pearl Workbook 1.
2. Students who know how to read short words containing the simple consonants and five short vowels can enter the Bannatyne Program at the Ships Series Galleon Workbook 6.
A Quick Placement Test is included with the Bannatyne Program to make sure that student placement in the Bannatyne Program is accurate. This Quick Placement Test is available for printing out on Disc 1 (you will have to purchase the Program to see it).
THE BANNATYNE PROGRAM HAS BEEN USED, TESTED AND PROVEN VERY EFFECTIVE FOR THREE DECADES (This is the proof of the pudding!)
Please understand that the Bannatyne Program is intended for regular classroom use with regular students, even though it also causes dramatic gains for many handicapped and disabled students. Individual case studies demonstrate that regular students, on average, can advance a minimum of 2 grade achievement gains per school year and some gains have been much higher. This means that students beginning the Bannatyne Program in Kindergarten (age 5) or Grade 1 (age 6), by the time they are in Grade 3 (age 8), may on average be reading at the Grade 6 (age 11) achievement level or above within 3 years. Nine Pre and Post Testing Research Studies (using standardized tests) have proven that the Bannatyne Program had caused a variety of handicapped and learning disabled students of all ages to have school-year reading achievement gains on average of 2.0 grades (years) on average--with a range from 1.5 grade (year) achievement gains up to 3.40 grade (year) achievement gains. The groups included SLD, ADD, ADHD, ESL, MH, EH and dyslexic students. Note that this achievement gain for learning disabled students is much faster than regular students in regular elementary school classes using regular reading programs who on average only gain 1.0 achievement grade (year) gain per school year! For more details on grade achievement gain research studies see TESTIMONIALS AND STUDIES. By using the Bannatyne Program in all our schools we can raise the nation's reading achievement grades dramatically!
THE BANNATYNE PROGRAM IS TEACHER/STUDENT INTERACTIVE
The Bannatyne Program requires the active participation of the teacher with his or her students throughout all 13 Workbooks. There is no substitute for interactive conversational discussion between teacher and students, or for a teacher's motivational encouragement of students. Language is two-way communication. Remember the Workbooks are printed out on paper for students to use in the classroom. The Bannatyne Program is NOT an interactive computer program for students.
COMPREHENSION
The whole purpose of reading is to comprehend the content in a variety of ways, and pre and post testing studies show that the Bannatyne Program does this very effectively. In three studies (using a standardized test) of Specific Learning Disability (SLD) students in different age ranges, the following results were obtained for pre and post testing of student PARAGRAPH COMPREHENSION which is identical to actual reading:
Remember that regular students in regular classrooms with regular reading programs improve only ONE grade level of achievement per school year. Thus, in the key area of reading comprehension the Bannatyne Reading, Writing, Spelling and Language Program has been proven to produce excellent results. The achievement level gains in word recognition and spelling have also been proven to be similarly greater than those achieved by regular students in regular classes using regular reading programs. (See: TESTIMONIALS AND STUDIES)
HOW COMPREHENSION IS TAUGHT AND LEARNED IN THE BANNATYNE PROGRAM
The whole purpose of reading is to comprehend the content in a variety of ways, and as shown above, pre and post testing studies show that the Bannatyne Program does this very effectively. Each of the 34 Stories in the Program has an extensive question and answer discussion format for comprehension training that involves students conversationally in an in-depth logical training in terms of recall, inference, induction and deduction. Of course, as far as the students are concerned, this logical training of comprehension is implicit in the multiple questions and answers (which are printed in the Teacher Guides). Another innovation in the Bannatyne Program is that every word, when it is initially presented by the Teacher, is discussed conversationally in each of its common dictionary meanings with full student participation. Additional comprehension training is built into all the Activities of the Bannatyne Program. For example, many, many words have their key meaning illustrated by a picture.
INTEGRATED AND INTERLACED PROGRAM
The Bannatyne Reading, Writing, Spelling and Language Program is an integrated multi-sensory-motor involvement program, which means that seeing, hearing, articulating and hand-movements are being actively used at the same time by students throughout the Workbook Activities. In effect this means that the actual words the students are learning to read are the same words they are simultaneously learning to comprehend, to write, to spell, and to use in a wide variety of language Activities--all in the same sets of lessons. Thus reading, writing, spelling and language are fully integrated and interlaced from the teaching/learning point of view. Note again that the highest grade gain on pre and post test studies using the Bannatyne Program is often in Reading Comprehension. (See above)
USER-FRIENDLY
Even four- and five-year-olds quickly grasp the arrangement of the content of the Bannatyne Program and happily know what to expect as the Activities recur in a neat sequential order. Teachers have ALL the Step-by-Step information they need to teach the Bannatyne Program in the extremely comprehensive Teacher Guides, one for each of the thirteen Workbooks. The practical teaching/learning "environment" of the Bannatyne Program is seamlessly simple, and quite easy to grasp and use, even though the underlying linguistic technology may appear complex. Like a fine reliable watch the unseen works may be intricate but the face is easy to read and understand.
THE BANNATYNE PROGRAM TEACHES MASTERY OF HOW THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE WORKS
Students going through the Bannatyne Program are doing much more than just learning to comprehend, read, write and spell effectively; they are learning the many intricate ways in which our phonetic language functions (for example, from auditory closure to chunking, from code-breaking to speed reading) which gives them a natural mastery over all the linguistic processes involved. Some students have later extended this knowledge to successfully learn other Western European languages.
AGE-NEUTRAL
Students of all ages from four to seventy-four find the content of the Bannatyne Program interesting and absorbing. The content and presentation of the Key Words, Stories, Cartoons, Crosswords and other games appeal to everyone from small children to older children, to teenagers, and to adults of all ages.
TASK-ANALYZED: NOT ONE "BIT" OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IS USED IN THE BANNATYNE PROGRAM UNTIL IT HAD BEEN THOROUGHLY TAUGHT BY THE TEACHER
Every phoneme (all 17 vowel phonemes, 48 consonant phonemes), every grapheme (124 unique spellings), every word part (prefixes, suffixes, core words, etc.), grammar (punctuation, possessives, verbs, nouns, etc.), syntax (rearranging word order in sentences), lengths of words (number of graphemes and syllables), and component usage frequencies (of phonemes, graphemes, words) was fully task-analyzed into a sequential ease of learning order which was then utilized for the assembling and construction of the Bannatyne Reading, Writing, Spelling and Language Program. Therefore...
A WIDE VARIETY OF STUDENTS CAN SUCCEED (AND HAVE ALREADY SUCCEEDED) WITH THE BANNATYNE PROGRAM
The task-analyzed and "bit-by-learning-bit" sequential assembly of the Bannatyne Reading, Writing, Spelling and Language Program means that success is permanently built-in to the Program. The "learning bits" are so tiny and so thoroughly taught that, for all practical purposes, failure is not an option for students who can converse fairly well (at least to an average three- to four-year-old level) in English or their own native language. In the Bannatyne Program each new "bit" of the English language is added to the body of knowledge the student has already thoroughly learned. Many thousands of students from age 4 to adult have already succeeded in their mastery of English by completing the Bannatyne Program. It is excellent for homeschooling. (See: TESTIMONIALS AND STUDIES)
THE BANNATYNE PROGRAM IS ACTIVITY ORIENTED, WITH THE FULL MULTI-SENSORY-MOTOR AND NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL INVOLVEMENT OF STUDENTS
All the Activities of the Bannatyne Program involve all the multi-sensory-motor and neuropsychological functions of students all the time: hearing, articulating, seeing, arm and hand movement, comprehension, hand/eye coordination, both hemispheres, recognition and recall memory, etc. For more details see: EIGHTY-EIGHT TECHNIQUES However, as a preview, here is a short list of some of the more important, sequentially graded, content-controlling, organizational principles on which the Bannatyne Program is founded. (For a complete list see Chapter 1 in the Technical Information Book)
MOTIVATION IS BUILT-IN TO THE BANNATYNE PROGRAM
The Bannatyne Program has dozens of motivational methods and materials built into it and these include motivating children, teenagers and adults. In addition, Chapter 7 in the Handbook is devoted to describing hundreds of ways teachers can motivate students of all ages. (See: MOTIVATION OF STUDENTS for this information)
HIGH INTEREST CONTENT AND FORMATTING
The formatting, story content, frequent illustrations, games, and even the sequence of the activities are each specifically designed to be of high interest to students of all ages because a lot of effort went into researching these aspects of the Bannatyne Program.
88-PLUS TECHNIQUES BUILT INTO THE BANNATYNE PROGRAM
All available resources for the teaching and learning of reading, writing and spelling were carefully examined and evaluated before they were included in the construction of the Bannatyne Program. A whole lot more teaching and learning techniques were also added by the author. A detailed annotated list of these 88-plus techniques is presented in EIGHTY-EIGHT TECHNIQUES.
THE BANNATYNE PROGRAM IS RESEARCH BASED IN EVERY TINY ASPECT
The content and construction of the Bannatyne Reading, Writing, Spelling and Language Program is based on extensive published research into every aspect of reading, writing, spelling, linguistics, psycholinguistics, neuropsychology, eye-movements, learning disorders of all kinds, motivation, intelligence, childhood development, human relationships and comprehension. (See the Handbook and the Technical Information Book for details. Also see: RESEARCH-BASED PROGRAM on this website.)
EASE OF USE: It is worth emphasizing again that the Bannatyne Reading, Writing, Spelling and Language Program is very easy to use, by both students and teachers. Although all the above components and ideas may sound complex they are so seamlessly and effortlessly incorporated into the Student Workbooks that even four and five-year-olds quickly understand the layout and formatting of the lessons, and enjoy doing them with constant success; so do teenagers and adults. The detailed easy-to-understand Teacher Guides not only clearly explain each lesson Step-by-Step and tell you exactly what to say, but also provide you with ready made lesson plans thus saving you the trouble of having to write them yourself.
NOTES:
LICENSE AGREEMENT:
Make sure you are in accord with the License Agreement whenever you use any of the Bannatyne Program. When any teacher, tutor, parent, school or other organization purchases a License for the Bannatyne Reading, Writing, Spelling and Language Program they have agreed to accept all the terms of the License Agreement and abide by them. See LICENSE AGREEMENT.
The Bannatyne Reading Program is a comprehensive, integrated reading program, writing program, spelling program, language program, and comprehension training program. The Bannatyne Reading Program is unlike any other reading programs currently available. This means you will find many features which are only in the Bannatyne Reading Program. In some Commonwealth countries the program may be referred to as: Bannatyne Programme, or Bannatyne Reading Programme.
Bannatyne Reading, Writing, Spelling and Language Program -- Copyright © 2003-2005 Alexander Bannatyne, PhD
Last updated: August 9, 2005
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