Authors Get Sound Advice : Kids in Capistrano Unified School District compose stories in a computer-based program called Writing to Read.

Kimberly Anderson has just written her first short story, complete with nonstop action, suspense and danger. It doesn’t matter that the story has only 56 words and that 10 of them are misspelled. Spelling and punctuation will come later. In the meantime Kimberly, 6, will keep writing.

And so will all the other kindergarten and first-grade pupils in the Capistrano Unified School District. For one hour a day, children in the district participate in an unusual computer-based program called Writing to Read. The program is designed to teach children how to write what they can say and how to read what they write.

Using a phonetic spelling system, the program shows children how letters represent sounds, which produce words. The children are then encouraged to make up their own stories and write them out, using pencil and paper as well as IBM computers.

“They have the ability to write anything by sounding it out,” says Patty Ward, a first-grade teacher at Arroyo Vista Elementary School in Rancho Santa Margarita.

For example, Breanne Speicher, 6, wrote a very long and complicated story using many words she had heard but could not read. So, in her story “changed” came out as “chad” and “scared” became “serd.” But when it came time to read her story, Breanne read it perfectly, word for word, because she knew exactly what she had written.

Later, with help from Ward and Karn Rounds, who runs the “Writing to Read” lab at Arroyo Vista, Breanne will learn the correct spelling for all the words in her story.

“Parents get so hung up on spelling,” Ward says, “but spelling tests don’t teach children how to spell. It’s seeing the word and using the word; it’s developmental. They say it, write it, use it.”

Throughout the program the phonetic spelling is accompanied by the standard “book” spelling taught in regular classrooms, according to Rounds. “They might write like as lk and then see it spelled right. The more they are exposed to the correct spelling, the more they recognize the correct spelling. And we do have a spelling check on the computer and after they have written (a word), they can see how it is spelled.”

The “Writing to Read” system does not take the place of classroom instruction, Rounds says. It is strictly a supplement to the reading and writing that goes on in the day-to-day classroom. “It reinforces what’s going on in the classroom so they feel comfortable with reading and writing,” she says.

“The more they write, the more they read, and the more they read, the more they write.”

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To help children get started in the program, the writing lab uses “word banks,” lists of words based around themes.

For example, a recent session included words relating to Halloween. Words such as witch, black, cat, scary, spooky, goblin, haunted and house were printed on construction paper and arranged around a gigantic picture of a pumpkin. Then, before the session, Ward and Rounds read each word to the children. Afterward, the pupils broke into small groups and began to write their stories.

“We give them frames to work from,” Rounds says, “but it is amazing how within a month they pull away from these frames and get started working on their own. They just take off.”

Most children in the recent session stayed within the “Halloween frame” and wrote stories using Halloween words, but others such as Breanne broke new ground and wrote completely original stories using words they might never have seen before.

“In another two months they’ll all have plenty of ideas of their own,” Ward says.

Although the word pumpkin was not on the list, some children wanted to use the word in stories they were writing, so Ward encouraged them to sound the word out and spell it on their own. Afterward, she gave them the correct spelling and praised them for how close they had come and for their willingness to try a new word.

“This is so risk free,” says Rounds, whose 11-year-old son, Nicholas, participated in the district’s pilot program five years ago. “There’s no pressure, and it doesn’t make any difference what level the child is on. They all grow, and we let them go at their own pace. It’s less stressful and the child wants to come to school. That’s why the program is so good.”

The kids like the program so much that even after they’ve moved on to second grade, many of them want to keep coming to the lab, Rounds says. Her son loved the program, she says, even though he had a vision problem and was having reading difficulties.

“He learned it was OK to try, and it helped him feel good about himself and about school. He’d sit down and write his stories and he succeeded.”

Since then, many other pupils in the Capistrano Unified School District have succeeded, too, according to Dick Campbell, principal at Arroyo Vista. “The kids not only learn how to read, but they become really zealous writers,” Campbell says. “They like to write.”

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The teaching technique is not new, according to Campbell, but is based on an old concept that became very difficult to use in today’s large classrooms of 30 or more children.

But in recent years, the technique was updated and adapted for the computer, allowing children to interact with the computer-based instructional program as they work with words and attempt to write their stories. The lab at Arroyo Vista includes 12 computers with a digitized voice attachment that enables the computer to “talk” to the child.

The lab has eight stations and during the hourlong sessions, children break into small groups to work together.

At the first station four pupils, wearing headphones, sit at computers working on individual words and sounds. They learn that cat, cup and clock all start with C and have the same sound. From the computer, the children proceed to the next station to work with tape-recorded lessons based around the words they’ve learned at the computer. There they learn to write the words they hear.

The children’s next stop is the writing table, where Ward helps them compose stories using pencil and paper. After writing the story in pencil, the pupils go type the story into the computer.

With help from Rounds, the stories are printed, and the children proceed to another station where they draw illustrations.

The remaining three stations consist of a listening library, a reading corner and a table where children play games using words from the current word bank.

“You can teach kids to read a whole lot of ways,” Campbell says, “but this way is really effective. The whole thing develops naturally. It improves their ability to spell. Their reading ability improves, and I’ve seen some of the most original and enjoyable things kids have written.”

As Rounds says: “The imagination of a child is wonderful, and we let them use their imagination. Sometimes seeing what they produce, I get goose bumps I get so excited.”