A. This differs for every student. The severity of the student’s reading problem determines the time needed to finish Toe By Toe. For example, dyslexic problems range from severe to mild. A student of average disability receiving 30-minute daily sessions may complete Toe By Toe in 5-6 months. However, a severely dyslexic student may take much longer. In this case it is vital that the student is made to feel they are making steady progress toward the ultimate goal: TO READ! Encourage them to believe that a mysteriously difficult skill is well within their compass.

Toe By Toe is a small red book designed for anyone who finds reading difficult. This includes weak readers who struggle to decode or those with dyslexic difficulties.Toe By Toe provides a sense of progress and momentum from day one. It is this that keeps them motivated and ‘on task’.

It is for this reason Stareway To Spelling focuses on the high-frequency, 300 most used words in English Astonishingly, these 300 words form 72% of the all the words that we regularly use. The problem with many of the words is that they are not phonetically consistent (that is to say, how a word looks and how a word sounds varies). Anyone who struggles to 'decode' words when reading also struggles to retrieve and ‘encode’ words when writing and spelling. In effect, for struggling readers, the ‘sight’ and ‘sound’ of words do not work well together for them. There is only a weak connection between the two. The neural pathways are not well established so for some, the correct choice of letters and their placement does not come easily. Keda’s ‘Little Red Book’ has now taught literally hundreds of thousands of struggling readers how to make some sense of the world they live in. Toe By Toe is used in more than 20,000 schools around the UK and Ireland, as well as gaining converts in more than a hundred different countries all around the world. This includes primary and secondary schools, Higher Education colleges, basic training institutions, prisons, young offenders’ units and military camps.A. The length of time necessary to finish the manual depends very much on the severity of the student’s reading problem. A. We consider that a child should be 7 years old before starting the Toe By Toe. That said, don’t consider 7 years old as the absolute minimum age to start Toe By Toe. As a parent or teacher you will know the child best. You will know when the child is capable of studying Toe By Toe. As a result of this offer, Keda’s house was soon overflowing with struggling readers. Keda even designed an extension to her house to include a custom-built classroom and persuaded her doting husband Albert to build it. From decades of experience, we believe it is more natural and far easier for struggling readers to discriminate between the various sounds by using the schwa. Keda realised very early on in her research that struggling readers need to make a clear distinction between sounds. She found it is NOT a problem for them to transfer these more distinct sounds to words later. Non-trained staff or parents find it much easier (more natural, perhaps?) to demonstrate the sound in this way. For example, the precise sound of the letter ‘L’ causes much confusion for student and tutor alike. However, if tutors prefer to follow the conventional wisdom that’s OK – Toe By Toe will still work its magic!

Keda spent almost all her teaching career at one school – Sandal Road Primary School in Baildon, UK. After observing that some students’ reading difficulties persisted despite careful instruction, she began teaching students in her home after school each day. Though a relatively unknown term at the time, dyslexia fascinated Keda and she began to conduct her own research, which became the basis of Toe by Toe. Over the ensuing decades, Toe by Toe became the fully functioning system it is today. The next time the student read there is almost always a huge improvement in both speed and accuracy. As with all Keda Cowling’s literacy manuals, Stareway To Spelling is a complete self-contained teaching aid that can be used by qualified teachers or by classroom assistants, parents or indeed any literate associate. Precise instructions, developed during years of classroom research, ensure that progressive improvement can be achieved at an early stage. By the end of the manual the student will have strengthened the link between sight and sound, which is vital for the correct recall of words for spelling. Only when a student achieves automaticity in the decoding process when reading can fully focus on text meaning. A. As in the previous answer, both manuals can be used in the same lesson. Again, we recommend alternating between a reading lesson one day and a spelling lesson on the next. Alternatively, some people prefer to finish or partially complete Stride Ahead before starting Stareway.The success of Stareway to Spelling is its unique RAWS process: Read – Analyse – Write – Spell. The exercises are fun and the student is encouraged to learn more as they see rapid improvement in their writing and spelling skills. She divided the children into two groups. A control group where conventional methods were used, and her ‘guinea pigs’, where Keda tried anything and everything to see what would work. Keda Cowling, creator of the Toe by Toe manual, was born in 1926 in West Yorkshire. Although forced to leave school early for financial reasons, Keda maintained a love for school and her books. She never lost this passion or her burning desire to become a teacher, finally qualifying in 1968 at the age of 42. Despite this late start to her teaching career, she would develop methods that would change the lives of thousands of struggling readers worldwide.