Who are We?

   We are the Jay Patterson family. Both Jay and Jeanne are experienced public school instructors. Jay has been teaching Language arts, Journalism, Creative Writing, Literature and Drama since 1973. He presently teaches in a small community in Central Minnesota. Jeanne began her classroom teaching in 1971 where she taught for 5 years. She continued teaching as a home educator for 15 years. Both Jared and Joel were home schooled from the time they became school age. Jared graduated from Fergus Falls Community College as well as our home school in the spring of 2000. In 2003 he received his B.S. Degree in Electrical Engineering from North Dakota State University having also completed all requirements for Computer Engineering. He received his M.S. Degree in Computer Science in 2004. Joel graduated from Northwest Technical College as well as our Home School in the spring of 2002 with an A.A.S. Degree in Telecommunications Technology/Info Systems. He attends Minnesota State University Moorhead where he completed his major in Technical Management in May of 2004 and is currently adding another. He is scheduled to graduate in May of 2006 with a B.S. Degree in Graphic Communications .

   Jay is the author of three books: Grammar Works-Equipping Students with Tools to Master the English Language, Reading Works-Gleanings from My Journey along The Writing Road to Reading, and Writing Works-An Analytical Approach to Writing. These published works came about as a result of his present responsibilities in his school as a teacher of at-risk students and at the prodding of his workshop participants over the years. Jay and Jeanne have also authored many support materials that accompany these texts including Ayres List Primers A and B.

   Jeanne, who provides much of the phone and e-mail consulting included in the price of tuition, has classroom teaching experience as well as being a veteran home educator. When she is not taking your calls, she stays busy proofreading and editing Jay’s books, co-authoring the primers and developing materials in a continuing effort to remove confusion and make the method ever easier for you to teach.

Why Did We Begin This Endeavor?

   When Jared was 9, in spite of the fact that he could read very well and possessed an impressive speaking vocabulary, it seemed hopeless that he would ever master spelling, the most difficult of English skills. Jeanne went looking for a curriculum that offered a broader, more comprehensive approach to teaching spelling. In her search she was introduced to the pioneering work of Mrs. Romalda Spalding, The Writing Road to Reading.

   After struggling with that method for a school year, Jeanne was convinced that it was a gold mine, but needed encouragement and help in understanding how to deliver it effectively. She signed up for and "convinced" her reluctant secondary teacher husband to accompany her to what he considered an elementary training workshop presenting this multisensory approach. This in turn introduced us to the work of Dr. Samuel T. Orton, an eminent neuropathologist in the early part of the Twentieth Century. Dr. Orton had done extensive research on how the mind best learns how to read. There have been many curriculum spin-offs from his research one of which is WRTR.

   A deep intrigue with the empowering nature of this research-based program was born. As Jeanne continued to use it in our home school, Jay began to use it in his classroom at school. That was in 1991. In our journey with this material, we have made many discoveries about how to make this approach truly user-friendly without compromising the method. We also discovered that people who had tried The Writing Road to Reading were in need of encouragement. They began asking us to show them how we had been able to effectively implement the WRTR in both our home school and public school classrooms with successful results. At first we resisted, since we did not feel we could say, "This is the way it should be done." We could only say, "This is what we have found to work." We were finally convinced by people needing help to merely show them what it was that we were doing and leave it to them to determine whether or not what we had to share was of value. Since then we have presented a minimum of three workshops each summer.

   Questions from the workshop participants about how to deliver grammatical concepts to their students prompted Jay to write Grammar Works. Almost immediately after it was written, workshop participants began asking us to write a another manual which would become a "roadmap" for implementing The Writing Road To Reading. Once again we resisted, but after years of pleading by those workshop participants, we printed an expanded syllabus complete with take home workshop notes. This was intended for and available exclusively to workshop participants. It was several years later that the pleading of those all across the nation, for whom it was just not possible to attend a workshop, convinced us to try a pilot program to see if Reading Works could be a valuable tool even without benefit of having attended a workshop. Those who were a part of that pilot program convinced us that it could be a valuable and effective tool for anyone willing to follow it carefully.


What Is Our Philosophy of Approach?

(Grammar Works pg.3)

   To accomplish any task, we need a clear vision, a precise goal, and a well defined purpose. There are two foundational premises which are germane to the direction of Grammar Works and Reading Works. These premises become our vision, our goal, and our well-defined purpose.

   Explicit phonics builds orthographic expectancies at an automatic level.

   Precise grammar builds syntactical expectancies at an automatic level.

   Automaticity, in phonics instruction and in grammar, must be at the heart of all language instruction. The typist who masters fingering and can type swiftly with few errors, can fly over a page successfully. We who teach language desire this same mastery and automaticity as relates to grammar and phonics. We want language skills built into the minds of our student. We want these skills to become automatic.

   To be automatic is to be so well practiced and so well coached that performance becomes virtually instinctive. Performance becomes spontaneous, involuntary, and unpremeditated. We do because we know. We do because we are well practiced. The neurological record in our minds is precise as relates to language usage. We know how the words of our language best work together. We know how the phonograms of our language best work together.

   What we expect to see at any point in the writing process or reading process, whether that includes a certain punctuation mark or a certain pronunciation of a word, is what we know to be true, and we conform our written language and our spoken language to that practiced standard.

   As we endeavor to teach syntax (how words work together), we aim to conform our neurological record to accepted norms for language usage. The history of our language has created a hodgepodge of spellings. To make spelling sensible requires explicit or precise instruction in sound/symbol relationships and the rules governing these relationships when the phonograms combine together to form words.

   A proper orthographic (spelling) record that serves a student well is built slowly and persistently over time. Grammar and/or syntax works the same way. The two premises above allow us to focus on the why of language instruction.

   We want well practiced, automatic, extremely well sharpened minds with expectancies which dictate excellence in spelling and reading and writing and speaking, and we want these expectancies to operate at an automatic level. This is who we are.

Why Is Literacy Such an Important Issue Today?

   We need a nation of quality thinkers. We need a people who can write well, spell well, read well and speak well. We need citizens that handle our language carefully and handle it well. We need an educated populace that can discern the intent and probable consequences of ideas. It was this concern that prompted Thomas Fleming to write the following:

   All of these add up to what I call metalinguistics. We are asking students to develop their knowledge of our language in an incredibly comprehensive way. I know of no other training that can compare.

   Metalinguistics then becomes a wonderful training program for the mind that provides opportunities for creating scholarship and introduces the tools necessary to achieve academic excellence.

   It is the character development and the intangible qualities offered that places metalinguistics in a class by itself. Students can learn acute listening skills, perseverance, delayed gratification, attentional capacity, accuracy, comparative analysis, logical thinking and personal discipline. Students gain an incredible self-worth and an improved work ethic as they experience the intrinsic success built into this program and the motivation that naturally follows. They grow to understand that consistent effort over time and a commitment to quality yields abundant fruit. Instead of timidity there is confidence. Instead of discouragement there is hope. This is who we are.