For definitions of linking, splitting, blending, sequencing, association, and other unknown words, please see the GLOSSARY.

NOTE: The words in the actual Workbooks the Students use are NOT in color or color-coded; it is the students who supply the color to the vowels if the color pencil option is used, an option that is highly recommended. All the student Workbooks are printed in black and white. This color-coding of the vowel phonemes by students using color pencils is one of the many strengths of the Bannatyne Program.

Student Completion of All Workbooks is Very Important

All students should finish all the remaining Workbooks, including the Neptune Workbook (13), whether they start as beginning readers in the Pearl Workbook (1), or whether they are placed in the Galleon Workbook (6) as a result of their score on the Quick Placement Test.

Regular students entering the Bannatyne Program (as a result of completing the Quick Placement Test) at the beginning of the Ships Series of Workbooks should go through all 8 Workbooks of the Ships and Planets Series. Beginning regular (Kindergarten or beginning Grade 1) students who cannot read or write (print) should always start in the Jewels Series. It is to be hoped that from 2004 onwards most regular school students entering school will begin their reading, writing, spelling and language instruction using the Bannatyne Program. Parents can even begin to teach their pre-school children to read, write, spell and cope with written language by using the Bannatyne Program as a home-schooling program before their children enter school and while their children are in school. Many third grade students (usually 9 years old) who finish the whole Bannatyne Program in school or by home-schooling can frequently read at the sixth grade achievement level or higher, i.e., a reading age of 12 years or higher after only three years of instruction.

The Bannatyne Program is designed to bring these regular students to a high level of competency in reading, spelling, writing and by the end of their third year in school (K through 2 or 3) depending on which year they start in the Jewels Series, and this will lay an excellent foundation for all their future language studies. To stop short in the Bannatyne Program or to use only parts of the Workbooks will defeat the major purpose of the Bannatyne Program and do the students involved a major injustice.

In this respect it is also essential that teachers follow the Workbooks exactly as laid out in the Teacher Guides and carry out all the activities, games and exercises in the prescribed manner, with, of course, the full participation of the students. Sometimes it is tempting to skip some of the sections calling for the auditory-vocal involvement of the teacher with students (or to skip other teacher participation activities) but it is just these components of the Bannatyne Program that are the most important from both the educational and motivational point of view. Please never skip around in the Bannatyne Program, doing a bit of this or some of that, because, if you do, you will destroy the whole effectiveness of this linguistically logical, scientifically designed, sequential Program.

Special education students, resource room students and all other disabled or handicapped students should also be taken right through the Bannatyne Program after being given the Quick Placement Test to ascertain their starting Workbook--Pearl or Galleon.