Slingerland lessons are designed to build on the elements of language learning that students are most likely to be confident in. For most students, that is speaking and listening (even if they don't like to do either).

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Instruction begins with modeled oral language and speech, builds handwriting skills, and progresses to writing and reading.

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Lessons are carefully planned so that students build skills one step at a time. Those skills are then incorporated into many learning tasks so students get sufficient practice to learn them correctly and internalize them.

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For instance, if a first grade student is just learning letter formation, they learn the letter's name and shape. The teacher models self-directed language to guide letter formation. Students practice forming the letter (with corrective feedback), and write it multiple times. Later in the lesson, they will work on the sound-letter association, practice spelling known words that use that letter and sound, and move on to write a sentence or paragraph using those spelled words. Towards the end of the lesson, they will practice letter-sound association, decoding new words that use that letter-sound combination, and reading text where that letter-sound combination appears. 

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That's a lot of ways to integrate what looks like a simple task, like writing an a. Our multisensory (multimodal) Approach gives your student and their brain the most opportunity possible to make the connections that are central to developing literacy skills.