Bannatyne Reading, Writing, Spelling and Language Program
Third Edition
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Can I use supplementary materials from other programs with the Bannatyne Program?
It is not so much that "outside" supplementary programs and materials conflict with the Bannatyne Program; rather they just waste time. Any time you spend using "outside" supplementary materials is far better used moving students along more beneficially and rapidly in the Bannatyne Program. The idea of using supplementary materials is an old-fashioned teaching convention stemming from inadequate traditional reading programs which needed lots of supplementation to fill their gaps and shortcomings. Other supplementation was only intended to keep highly verbal students engaged in busy work (at the same lock-step grade or age level) while the "slower" students caught up with them--which they never did! The Bannatyne Program is a complete program with all the built-in lessons and continuous review that is necessary for a rapid, efficient learning of reading, writing, spelling and language skills. If the teacher groups the students as recommended, each group can move along at its optimum learning pace eliminating any need for a waste-of-time busy work. If you teach the Bannatyne Program carefully and thoroughly exactly as presented in the Teacher Guides, you will need no outside supplementary materials.
Then can I use say, social studies and science textbooks in my classroom if I am also using the Bannatyne Program?
Yes! There is no psychological interference from textbooks used with school subjects other than reading, writing, spelling and the teaching of language skills. Therefore DO use your other subject textbooks in class. However, it is highly recommended that you use NO other reading, writing, spelling and language skills materials while using the Bannatyne Program (see above answer). Anyway, apart from the psychological confusion in students resulting from two very different approaches to reading (such as the formal alphabet), any time spent in conventional programs can be much more profitably used in advancing students more rapidly through the Bannatyne Program.
Why does the Bannatyne Program not use flash cards?
Because the Bannatyne Program has a far superior method of teaching the same skills that flash cards are supposed to teach. The Bannatyne Program uses Speed Reading, chunking, and integrated multi-sensory-motor functions in almost every lesson which enable students to achieve between 100 to 150 words per minute reading fluency, a rate of reading achievement that flash cards can never emulate. Furthermore, flipping flash cards is nothing like the processing of consecutive words on any printed page, and, all too often, they are made up of jumbled patterns of irregular phonemes and graphemes, syllables and random word structures that have never been linguistically explained or sequentially taught. Flash cards do NOT train efficient saccadic eye-movements, left-to-right tracking, or down-the-page line-by-line tracking. (See also the above FAQ on: But shouldn't many irregular common words in English be taught as sight words--without using sounds?)
Does the Bannatyne Program work from top-down or bottom-up?
The Bannatyne Program works from bottom up and from top down; from the middle outwards and from the outside in; from the whole to the parts and the parts to the whole--all within a total synthesized, integrated, interlaced, foolproof system that teachers, parents, teacher aides and even five-year-olds can quickly learn to use. The Teacher Guides are very detailed and complete.
Can I use computer phonics programs or printed phonics programs to supplement the Bannatyne Reading, Writing, Spelling and Language Program?
No! Almost all phonics programs whether they are in print or interactive computer programs present many phonemes and graphemes to students that have never been taught in the process of teaching the current phoneme/grapheme. There are usually many other linguistic and orthographical irregularities in all such programs, and their use alongside the Bannatyne Program will only confuse students and slow them down. The same goes for any materials not included with the Bannatyne Program.
Interactive computer phonics programs are even worse because no real teacher is there to interact with the students. I will repeat here what I said in Chapter 1: The long term objectives (listed in Chapter 1) can never be achieved through a computer interface, a silent classroom, or a self-study program.
Language is communication and communication is conversational interaction between two or more people. This is a fact and there is no way around it when intelligent, rich conversational interaction between people is our eventual goal. This intelligent, conversational interaction should even spill over into our fluent reading of books, magazines and newspapers because we will then read critically, by having an interactive inner conversation with the authors, rather than the passive acceptance of what has been written.
Thus, in the Bannatyne Reading, Writing, Spelling and Language Program the teacher or parent is in an essential frequent intelligent conversational interaction with the student or students, something a computer can never do. This builds extensive comprehension, one of the many strengths of the Bannatyne Program.
There are other valid reasons why a live teacher or parent is necessary to the acquisition of superior language skills. English is a phonetic language and it is primarily auditory-vocal--which means it is based on spoken and heard sounds called phonemes. Now all the complexity of sound (phoneme) to symbol (grapheme) accentuations, orthography, identification, sequencing, discrimination, and auditory closure skills cannot yet be handled even by our largest computers or our very best computerized speech-dictation programs. No computers yet have sufficient artificial intelligence and interactive spoken conversational language, and such rich conversational computer interfaces are probably decades away. In fact, even the simple dictation feedback programs that already exist (with only 97% accuracy) do not even begin to match the extreme richness of the live human voice or ear. Therefore there is no substitute for the conversational and instructional auditory-vocal interactional input of a real live teacher, tutor or parent.
Yet another reason for a live person as a teacher is motivation. Motivation has been shown by research to be responsible for up to 80% of anyone's success story, and successful students are highly motivated by warm, kind, positive, reinforcing teachers and parents. Computers cannot emotionally interact with students, and students cannot interact emotionally with computers. Robin William's Millennium Man has not been invented yet and is nowhere in sight. The Bannatyne Reading, Writing, Spelling and Language Program uses many ways of motivating students, but the key role of a warm, live, interactive teacher or parent is pivotal. (See: MOTIVATION)
This means that the component Bannatyne Program Workbooks and Teacher Guides have to be printed out from the CD-ROMs--printed out, that is, as they are needed for the teaching/learning process. Of course, the permanent Teacher Guides need only be printed once or twice (they can also be viewed on-screen), while each student will need a hard copy of the appropriate Workbook on which he or she is currently working.
The Bannatyne Reading Program is an excellent, tested reading 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 Alexander Bannatyne, PhD
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