About Reading Tree

The Story Behind Reading Tree

It all started, I think, when my daughter was ready for preschool. I was working as a Program Advisor for the Federal Childcare Food Program, a job that required me to travel all over Texas. I was missing out on my daughter's milestones while she was at daycare, and that hurt my heart unbearably. SO, I took a job teaching kindergarten. The curriculum was ABeka and that was where I was introduced to teaching handwriting directionally. It was labor intensive instruction, but the results? Almost miraculous. ALL my students were reading and their handwriting was beautifully neat and wonderfully organized. I was hooked!

About the time ABeka decided to jettison their manuscript instruction in favor of teaching cursive in Kindergarten, I decided to create my own manuscript handwriting curriculum. ABeka named the lines "Upstairs, Downstairs, Basement" but I had already found that most Texas students had no idea what a basement IS, so I chose, "Treetop, Midline, Ground, and Roots." It was much easier to go outside and point to a tree and draw the tree with its parts in the right place than to explain basements!

In the ensuing 35 years I was in the classroom, I taught Pre-Kindergarten through eighth grade and at every level, I always had to deploy my handwriting instruction because I always had children come to my classroom confused by their handwriting and stymied in their reading. Over the years, I developed the language I have provided in my curriculum script which I constructed to make instruction concrete and entertaining. I have taught or retrained students from pre-kindergarten through post high school over the last 40+ years and I have never failed to make remarkable progress by working with the students to remove their letter writing directional confusion.

When I was teaching at a Fine Arts Magnet School in Houston ISD, I had wonderful opportunities to attend Gifted and Talented workshops and conferences where Brain-Based Education classes were often offered. Gifted and Talented strategies are MARVELOUS for ALL students and I love any exploration of Brain-Based instruction and insight. When I was working on my Masters, I spent a great deal of my Graduate work in classes that expanded my understanding of Brain-Based instruction. And, I discovered that consistently 40% of my students were struggling with reading tracking BECAUSE they formed some or many of their letters backwards and upside down. Children with a brain dominance in language were able to overcome the obstacles created by the way they mis-formed their letters; however, students whose brains were math/spatial dominant were consistently and profoundly stymied in their efforts to track the words across the page.

In my introduction to my Curriculum Script and Teaching Notes, I noted that "When America was the most literate nation in the history of the world, American teachers' pedagogy was, I believe, very similar to what I have cobbled together after 35 years in the classroom." Handwriting instruction in both manuscript and cursive is critical to helping children learn to read and to continue growing in their ability to think and catalogue their thoughts in an efficient and easily accessed manner. This curriculum is a tried and true vehicle for beginning that kind of instruction. May GOD bless your work on behalf of your children!