How PAL Came to Be

My husband and I began homeschooling our children over twenty years ago when our oldest was five. It was a delight to teach them at home, but reading did not come easily to them. I tried many different reading programs, but nothing seemed to work. I felt like a failure because, while my nine year old struggled through Little Bear, my friends’ four and five year olds were reading at a much higher level. When I was introduced to IEW in 2001, I was excited to hear Andrew explain about his training in Canada with Anna Ingham and her Blended Sound-Sight Program of Learning. Since it sounded like the perfect program, I searched for and purchased her book describing the process but was saddened to find that ready-made materials were unavailable. However, because my kids were still struggling to learn how to read, I began to experiment with the ideas in the book, creating my own materials and figuring out how to implement them in our home. I was amazed at the effect that each of her ideas made on my kids and their ability to read. Since I had successfully written lesson plans for IEW, they asked me to use what I had learned from the Ingham program to create reading and writing materials for homeschoolers. With the help of my eldest daughter, a budding graphic designer, we created the Primary Arts of Language or PAL. During the writing my youngest daughter was just six, so she and my older children helped me test the materials as I developed them. I’ll never forget the day that I brought all the games to our high school cooperative classes for assembly and testing to ensure everything worked right. As the teens played the games, I heard delighted sqeals, â€Å"Hey, I got it!† I figured that if high schoolers found the games engaging and fun, they would be a hit with the primary level as well, and they are! In the arts of language, writing goes hand-in-hand with reading.  I  had learned with my dyslexic children that  I  could model the composition process while they were still learning how to print and spell. Thus, the PAL lessons guide the teacher in this modeling so that when students are ready to write, they already have  practiced the process enough orally to easily transfer it to paper. This gentle introduction thoroughly prepares students for the full Structure and Style program in the grades to come. Since it was published by IEW in 2011, we have received countless testimonials from parents whose children have enjoyed learning to read and write with PAL. My favorite testimonies come from parents who had just about given up on teaching their child to read and finally, thanks to PAL, found success.  I am eternally grateful to Anna Ingham and her daughter, Shirley George, for having developed the system that enables parents to successfully teach their children to read and write.   Log in or register to post commentsJill Pikes blog Log in or register to post comments PALS Program Permalink By skywatchr7Feb13 After using the IEWs Writing with Structure Style for my oldest daughter, I was so impressed with the program that I examined the PALS program for our 5 year old. He already had a good grasp on his letters and their sounds, but we were looking for a program that would give him a strong, fun approach to learning to read and write. We are now in lesson 21, and we are not disappointed. Though he doesnt care for the cutting and gluing that comes with some of the work pages, our son anticipates adding stickers to the phonics farm each week. As a parent, I appreciate the gentle but steady approach to teaching sight words along with blended letter sounds. He is beginning to apply what he is learning in the PALS program to other early readers. Log in or register to post comments