Bannatyne Reading, Writing, Spelling and Language Program
Third Edition
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How long should a Bannatyne Program teaching session be for various ages and/or kinds of students?
Again this depends very much on the type of student(s), their motivation, and the effectiveness of the teacher, parent or tutor. The length of the session is often determined by the officials in charge of the overall school schedules and programming. Most students can cope with a session that lasts 45 to 60 minutes if the teacher is highly encouraging and implements fully all the motivational factors and materials built into the Bannatyne Program. Some small children and infants will need shorter periods of instruction and only trial and error can tell you the optimum length of sessions. The same goes for handicapped and disabled students. One hyperactive attention deficit disorder student may be able to cope with only short sessions of say 25 minutes, but another will be highly motivated to hang in there for 45 minutes. On the other hand almost all students can cope with daily sessions (for five days a week) if they are available.
Incidentally, because the Bannatyne Program teaches reading, writing, spelling and language content and skills in one integrated program, the regular school classroom teacher can use all the teaching times allocated to reading, writing, spelling and language to teach the Bannatyne Program. However it is best not to have any single session last longer than 60 minutes, so if a second session is possible in any one day please schedule it for another time during the day, or before and after morning break.
How many sessions per week are recommended, and how many pages of the Bannatyne Program should I do in one session?
This also depends on the ages and types of students, the official scheduling, the teacher's skills, student motivation, and (in the case of private tutoring) parental schedules and finances. Almost all students of any age and type can assimilate knowledge and skills from the Bannatyne Program once every day for a school week of five days. As mentioned above, 60 minutes should be the maximum for any single session, and no more than two separated sessions a day should ever be implemented. In this respect the age and attention span of students is a key factor. The younger children (3 or 4 years) may be only able to cope with 30-minute sessions. So-called ADD and ADHD students of any age will probably (but not always) need sessions of less than an hour (say 45 minutes), but do one session a day if possible.
As for how many pages should be done, remember the Bannatyne Program is self-pacing and therefore you fit into the session the number of discrete task-activities (not "pages") any given class, group or student can comfortably and happily accomplish. I would recommend that any discrete task-activity within the Bannatyne Program be finished within a particular lesson, rather than leaving students dangling in the middle of doing that discrete task-activity. This completion of a discrete task-activity before the end of a session may take some skill in timing on the part of the teacher. By "discrete task-activity" I mean, for example, finishing the Auditory Closure Game for a specific Key Words page once you have started it, or finishing discussing the meanings of all the words on a particular page once you have started discussing them, or finishing the words that contain a specific blend once you have introduced students to that blend. I do not mean, for example, that you have to finish the entire Key Words Activity, or the Dot Game, or all the Story activities during one lesson; with most Major Activities that is neither desirable nor possible.
The Bannatyne Program cannot be "broken down" into page units of work because many discrete task-activities are to be found on any single page, and one particular page will take a lot longer to work through than another. The most important consideration is not to establish pre-set quotas of work and/or time, but rather, to be sure that your students remain happily motivated and that the lessons are being gently assimilated with understanding. In practice, using common sense, you can stop a Bannatyne Program lesson almost anywhere and then pick it up again in that same place in the next Bannatyne Program lesson.
Do I have to use the color pencils with students?
Using the color pencils with all students is highly recommended because it increases the effectiveness of the Program from every point of view, including motivation, because colors are interesting and preoccupying. Your students will also become much better spellers now and in later years because the orthography of the 17 vowels and their 76 discrete phoneme-to-grapheme spellings will have been thoroughly overlearned by the use of color-coding the vowels by the students.
However, if for some reason you are adamant about not using the color pencils then do not use them, but please do not scrap the Bannatyne Program because, even without the color pencils, it will still be much more effective in teaching reading, writing, spelling and language (and your students will learn more quickly) than any other traditional program.
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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