Get Wisdom! Literacy Complete Curriculum

By Ronald Kirk

The Get Wisdom! Literacy Complete Curriculum provides phonics, spelling, reading and elementary grammar. Our rigorous phonetic training not only produced advanced literary skills among the youngest students, it also corrected all kinds of childish habits, dyslexia, and even childish attitudes. In schools where I regularly trained literacy teachers, we never failed to teach anyone to read, including numbers of dyslexic children of various ages through adolescence, and even a severely dyslexic mature adult.
A key component in our education system, the Get Wisdom! Complete Literacy Curriculum offers comprehensive Christian Education for Faith, Character, Wisdom, Excellence, Accomplishment, first via training in the historic Biblical faith, thinking, wisdom and skill that built early America and led to the world's first self-governing republic based in Biblical Christian thought and living.
The Get Wisdom! Biblical Education Program, upon which Literacy rests, results from over forty years of comprehensive Biblical and historic study of educational purposes, theory, and crafted classroom practice. It is an everyman's approach to a complex subject, proven accessible to anyone over decades. Hillsdale College's education department's Professor Walter Lewke took an interest in this approach to literacy for the reading program there. New Hope Uganda Children's Ministries serving orphans has used an early form of Get Wisdom! for over thirty years producing a new generation of family and culture oriented young people. They have produced the highest academic achievements in Ugandan schools. These accomplished sons and daughters of Kasana are becoming their nations leaders.
The Get Wisdom! Education Program, in programmed study format, introduces this ground-breaking work including fast-track training toward systematic and specific Biblical thinking and action for any life subject or topic. School subjects are strategic and foundational life subjects.
The go deep portion of this training starts with Get Wisdom! Making Christian Heroes of Ordinary People, published separately. Get Wisdom! reestablishes the Biblical vision, now almost, for life once common in America, and restores the spiritual and intellectual tools required. For over twenty-five years, we quickly and very successfully trained excellent classroom teachers in a matter of months.
School and Classroom Principles and Methods, also published separately, then applies the practical worldview training of Get Wisdom! specifically to the classroom. Principles and Methods restores the historic Biblical educational Knowledge, Wisdom, Skill, Character, Faith, and Stewardship of Society required for a mature, Biblical Christian walk.
The Get Wisdom! Literacy Complete Curriculum builds on this foundation, but does not depend on its mastery for ready use in the classroom, thus serving the novice and the accomplished teacher alike.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ronald Kirk
• Release date: Dec 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005779405

Ronald Kirk

Replacing atheistic behavioral psychology with an updated historical Biblical educational philosophy, Ron Kirk developed and tested custom teacher training and curriculum and classroom teaching of the school subjects in every grade from kindergarten to adult. Ron carefully identified educational purpose, methods, and strategic content, with startling results regardless of native gifting or educational experience. Challenged young people overcome toward remarkable accomplishment. Children and adults with poor education experiences likewise overcome their challenges, even dyslexia. Ready students soared beyond ordinary expectations, often advancing several years over their peers.

Book preview

The Get Wisdom! Literacy Course, the result of decades of pioneering research, crafted classroom use, and subsequent refinement intends to meet the needs of both the home school mom needing all the help she can get as quickly and simply as possible, and the needs of the serious education learner with some time to invest in equipping toward becoming a master teacher.

The method of this admittedly complicated challenge is to approximate programmed instruction techniques. At certain decision-making points—in particular, whether to use Quick Start or Go Deep—we will offer web-page-like hyperlinks to the appropriate places. We also provide links to related materials at the Get Wisdom! website.

Note, that because I anticipate non-linear use of this book by learners and teachers, I have provided multiples of the same links throughout. I pray this will not wear on the reader’s patience, and thank you for bearing with this necessary imposition.

Also note that eBook formats offer limited internal linking. For this reason, I have limited Table of Contents Links to major topics. Again, I pray this is not a source of frustration for the kind reader. Section headings in the book link back to the Table of Contents. The Spelling and Vocabulary Lists link to a special index at the end of the book, the head of which is accessible from the Table of Contents.

For anyone undertaking such a great work as providing education to God’s children, I say relax. Walk by faith, be diligent, and let the Lord bring the fruit of your efforts in due season. This is exactly how the Bible requires we approach the teaching of our children. God Bless your efforts for our Lord and His children!

Literacy Introduction

Undermined by materialistic education and now largely neglected, nearly universal Christian literacy once powered Western Civilization—especially its nearly uniquely Christian ability for self-government, liberty, justice, and generosity. Early Americans, New England especially, required early literacy and Bible knowledge, and the skills to apply it to all of life. This course intends to restore this heritage.

Once all children, and with good reason, learned written English using phonics—a representation of articulate sounds of speech by letters. Since children ordinarily learned words by their component sounds, phonics is the closest we have to a natural approach to learning literacy, that is according to the Creator’s design.

In the 1930s United States, upon an evolutionary view of man, the sight-say method of learning to read began systematically to replace phonics instruction. I received sight-say instruction. I believe from this I have always suffered a mild dyslexia, as have many others. The idea of sight-say readings assumes that by teaching only higher order skills, without more fundamental ones, the social engineers can hurry evolution along. This was the similar basis for the horrible failure of New Math. Rather building on firm foundations represents the time-tested approach to education by Judeo-Christian cultures. As I began to learn a phonetic approach to reading and writing in anticipation of literacy training of young people, I became persuaded that everyone who learns to read has acquired at least an intuitive skill in phonics. I’m sure I did.

I based our fledgling literacy program at the Master’s School, at the suggestion of mentor James B. Rose, on Romalda Spalding’s Writing Road to Reading. While Mrs. Spalding held to an evolutionary view of man, she nonetheless established her approach on an improved version of the sound historic heritage of phonics training. From ages past, at least in the heritage of cultures embracing the Bible, people have understood the need to train their children’s ability for literacy and everything else (Proverbs 22:6). Neglect of such training in us innately sinful creatures increasingly hardens into habit and character, a kind of twisting or short-circuiting of innate abilities. (This is the opposite of behaviorism’s child development notions.) God provided child education to negate that short-circuiting toward real ability of any and every kind (Deuteronomy 6:4-7; also Exodus 18:20; Leviticus 10:11; Proverbs One; Ephesians 6:4). Remember, God’s Word is a literate Word, requiring literacy to understand it. Phonics offers an effective means to train abilities in literacy. The discipline of learning phonics, moreover, provides a powerful base of faith and character to enable learning in every other area of life.

A somewhat modified form of the Spalding Method provided the basis for our universally successful literacy training approach. In the history of the schools where I trained literacy teachers, we never failed to teach anyone to read, including numbers of dyslexic children of various ages through adolescence. In one remarkable case, we taught one brilliant, mature woman—who could before only learn from audio books—how to read and write. Likewise, we helped her correct mathematics learning dysfunction, both rooted in visual short-circuiting. Training corrected these deficiencies. This lady went on to replace her provisional high school diploma—a sham—with a mainstream one. She quickly went on to master’s level courses at Yale University.

As with other parts of the Get Wisdom! curriculum, we strongly urge studying the foundational principles and gaining skills in thinking Biblically in a broader sense before undertaking to teach another in this phonics approach to literacy. The better one understands and embraces God’s view of life, the nature of mankind, the better equipped as an educator. This view provides the historic, most powerful means of all accomplishment, including literacy. This understanding includes our potential and limits, Christ’s ability to change us fundamentally, how He does that, and how systematically to reach our potentials in faith by His grace.

This curriculum developed out of a sensibility of God’s unique Providential Hand on America. It is our responsibility to be stewards of the gifts He granted us. English is our language. Of course, every nation has likewise God’s grace and Providence toward it. We see an exponential rise of God’s grace as He makes the faith of Christ rapidly expand in our age. It is only right those previously blessed, bless their neighbors in turn. It is a peculiar blessing of God’s ways that a few principles govern great diversities of expressions. Thus, we have found that the same historic-Biblical approach that has worked for English-speaking countries and the United States can and will work everywhere and with all languages, with unique expressions resulting. For example, my Pastor Chris Hoops used the Spalding approach to phonics to teach young people New Testament Koine Greek, using the simpler modern Greek pronunciation. A similar approach applied to the music curriculum found kindergartners quickly mastering the scale with perfect pitch, as well as other musicianship skills.

We suggest investing in the Get Wisdom! Making Christian Heroes of Ordinary People basic course and School and Classroom Theory and Methods. But if you have a more immediate need, you are welcome to consider the course material for any topic. Start anywhere you like. Our Quick Start sections offer detailed help to real learning into the classroom without loads of previous investment. Nonetheless, we urge learning the Biblically grounded fundamentals of teaching and learning as means to becoming accomplished learners and master teachers.

Note that while the Quick Start outlines are not elegant reading, they are instructive. With them, you can quickly get an overview with considerable detail for an introductory and useful understanding. They are worth the grind.

Decision Time...

Starting Place to Plan Your Curriculum Strategy—See Welcome to the Get Wisdom! Education Program (free eBook)

Take the Basic Course and Training Manual in practical applied-faith Biblical thinking, education, and action—Get Wisdom! Making Christian Heroes of Ordinary People eBook.

Build a Successful School or Classroom by studying how successfully to build an education program from a few Biblical principles applied to every part of the program—School and Classroom Principles and Methods.

Quick Start

If your need for curriculum content and method is immediate, go directly to:

Literacy Quick Teacher Training—An effective Historic, Biblical Approach

Literacy Teacher Notebook—Teacher Introduction, Background, and Instruction

Model Schedules for Reading and Writing—Detailed Classroom Scheduling

Course Content for the Literacy Teacher—Teacher and Student Model Notebooks

Literacy Quick Teacher Training

Introduction to Literacy

The following outline comes from the Get Wisdom! teacher training program. It was crafted in the classroom, and used to teach many successful classroom and home school teachers over decades.

I. What is Language?

A. Use Webster's 1828 Dictionary

B. Speaking

C. Writing

D. Reading

E. Conclusions

1. Agreement needs articulation and order

2. Governed by common usage and rules from best use

3. Built from elements: sounds & letters, words, sentences

4. Language is a skill acquired by study and practice

II. What does the Bible say about language?

A. Language given to man (Genesis 1:28, 2:20, 2:23)

B. Language for God-man & man-man communication (Ex. 4:30)

C. Purpose

1. Remembering

2. Instructing

3. Arguing a point; reasoning

4. Passing on heritage

5. Outlet for inspired creativity

6. Covenants

7. Expression of proven learning

D. Since God speaks with excellence, our language should be excellent

III. History

A. English from Persian, Greek, Latin, Germanic, French

B. English from great empires: Persian, Greece, Roman, English/American

C. Links on the Chain of Christianity

1. Egypt (hieroglyphics—pictures, graven images)

2. Sumeria (cuneiform—writing in syllables)

3. Hebrews (letters: consonants, vowels—possibly introduced by God at Mount Sinai in the Ten Commandments)

4. Phoenicia and Canaan (phonetic letters)

5. Greece and Rome (high expressions)

6. Middle Ages (most could not read; Alfred the Great)

7. John Wycliffe (1382, Morning Star of the Reformation)

8. William Tyndale (English Bible from original languages)

9. William Shakespeare (Bard of the Bible)

10. Noah Webster

D. Cultural influences

1. Naked (Saxon) vs. nude (Latin/French).

2. Naked has negative connotation (shame).

3. Nude has a sexy, worldly positive connotation.

4. These are culturally conditioned!

5. Noah Webster favored the masculine, hearty, language of liberty and Christianity—the Saxon father of the English language.

Course objectives

A. Government: Character required (Seven principles)

B. Character to handle language righteously—trained

C. Foundational Skills

1. Posture

2. Relaxation

3. Listening

4. Following directions

5. Accepting corrections cheerfully

D. Subject skills

1. Letters and sounds

2. Words and spelling

a. orthography

b. etymology, including roots, prefixes and suffixes

c. lexicography

3. Elocution

4. Grammar: Sentence, parts of speech, paragraph, essay, story, poem

The method

A. Present introduction to read/write—give examples

B. Comment on Spalding

C. Teacher notebook: 4'R subject

D. Background on the English language for students

E. Posture—straight back and neck, space to lean forward, angle paper,

F. Introduce phonograms

1. Sounds

2. Forms of letters

3. Forms of capitals

G. Phonogram practice

1. Oral with cards

2. From dictation

3. Penmanship and phonogram practice

H. Teaching spelling—see Reading and Writing notes

1. New spelling list

a. Teacher defines words according to student ability

b. Teacher notes historical etymology and sense of meaning

2. Special considerations

a. Pronunciation or elocution

i. elevated, spelling, common or colloquial, and affected

ii. Webster's pronunciation rules—highest expression

iii. Schwa (short u's) serves to sound many short or unaccented vowels, but not all

iv. Consonants stable, vowels unstable over time

b. Etymology

i. Meaning

ii. Root meaning (historical sense)

iii. Construction by a word's parts, root, suffix, prefix (Reading Teacher's Book of Lists, Webster's 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language)

iv. Examples to look up in the dictionary: season, read, draw, window, orange, fast, nation (birth, state or quality of)

3. Class spelling practice

4. Home spelling practice

5. New year spelling diagnostics

I. Quizzes and standard tests

1. Weekly quizzes corrected by students

2. Standard test once per month starting January

J. Reading and Writing development schedule

K. Typical Read/write week

L. Cursive writing—Modified Spencerian (published 1800s penmanship style)

1. Style of lower-case letters

2. Style of Capitals—the main element of cursive style

3. 52-degree angle

M. Other subjects: correct spelling, turn in practices, consider in spelling grade

N. Spelling notebooks

1. Spelling lists

2. Scope and sequence for spelling words

3. Spelling principles

a. See

b. Add the text of the rule which the sample page covers

c. Drill for mastery

O. Reading

1. Understanding words

2. Understanding ideas: explicit and implied

a. Understanding the thought of the sentence

b. Understanding paragraphs

c. Understanding essays, chapters, books

3. Technical reading

4. Elocution: Elevated v. colloquial

5. Use McGuffey's eReaders and McGuffey’s Classroom Lessons, for daily classroom reading lessons. Take McGuffey’s Readers in order. They go from the very basic, limited-vocabulary and mostly single syllable words to get started, up to a master’s degree level of literacy for advanced readers, usually high school level.

6. Keep permanent reading records: progress through McGuffey's

P. The 1828 Dictionary

Pioneering educator Noah Webster, after his conversion to Christ, spent ten years mastering twenty-six languages, and then spent ten more years to compose America’s only mainstream Biblically grounded dictionary.

Q. Grammar and Composition (see Grammar Quick Teacher Training Notes—coming)

R. After the Get Wisdom! Spelling curriculum

1. Continue to use every subject to teach spelling and vocabulary

2. Correct students' spelling in all subjects

3. We use selections from McGuffey's and common, advanced vocabulary for spelling and vocabulary course.

Examples

See Model Schedules for Reading and Writing and Detailed Classroom Plans Primary for Go Deep detailed daily scheduling.

I. Typical Reading/Writing Week

A. Primary (including Kindergarten—four- to six-year-olds)

1. Monday

First Session—one hour

Give new spelling words (all)

Second Session-3/4 hour

First Grade—Individual reading

K—Phonogram practice from dictation (penmanship)

(or All-phonogram practice (one at board))

2. Tuesday

Practice spelling words—new and some review words (all)

First Grade—Individual reading

K—Individual reading or individual phonogram practice

3. Wednesday

First Grade—Writing practice

K—Individual reading

First Grade—Individual reading

K—Individual spelling practice and reading aloud

4. Thursday

Practice spelling words—new and some review words (all)

First Grade—Individual reading, writing, or spelling practice (penmanship)

K—Phonograms from dictation (penmanship)

(or All—Write sentences)

5. Friday

First Grade—Reading aloud

K—Individual spelling practice (penmanship)

Spelling quiz

Reading for good spellers

B. Elementary

1. Monday

First Session—one hour

New Spelling

Second Session-3/4 hour

Instruction*

Reading

*Instruction in one of phonograms, spelling rules, dictionary, penmanship, grammar, or other instruction incidental to reading and writing

2. Tuesday

Individual reading

Phonics, penmanship, sentences, instruction*, review

3. Wednesday

Reading, spelling practice

Sentence writing, phonogram practice

4. Thursday

Reading

Spelling practice, phonogram practice

5. Friday

Spelling Quiz, individual reading

Grammar practice

C. Upper Elementary

1. Monday

First Session—one hour

Give new spelling words (all)

Second Session-3/4 hour

Instruction*

Reading

*Instruction is in one of phonograms, spelling rules, dictionary, penmanship, or other instruction incidental to reading and writing

2. Tuesday

Individual reading

Phonics, penmanship, instruction, review

3. Wednesday

Reading

Instruction

4. Thursday

Reading

Spelling practice, phonogram practice

5. Friday

Spelling Quiz, individual reading

Reading

II. Sequence for spelling for 7th-12th grades

A. Take a diagnostic test of the complete Get Wisdom! Spelling list. Form first lists from missed words of the diagnostic.

B. Teach phonograms and phonogram rules—require memorization

C. Teach use of dictionary

D. Begin Get Wisdom! Spelling list according to diagnostic results

1. Give spelling words phonetically & define

2. Give missed words first—50 to 100 at a time, depending on grade level. Then take up the starting position in the Get Wisdom! Spelling list for regular lessons.

3. Practice words, write sentences for meaning. Teach students to give context for meaning.

4. Those not needing study, take quiz only, or no work.

E. Teach spelling practice method.

F. After Get Wisdom! Spelling list, use the Get Wisdom! Vocabulary List for spelling and vocabulary.

III. Spelling Principles—the government over spelling (See A Concise Statement of the Spelling Principles)

IV. Schedule for Reading and Writing (See Model Schedules for Reading and Writing and Detailed Classroom Plans Primary)

Literacy Teacher Notebook

An Introduction to the Whole Work

These notes result from intensive research to bring Biblical principle to the practice of teaching and learning the knowledge and skills of English literacy. For the Christian, there ought to be no significant gap between theory and practice. Thus, over forty years of classroom and home school experience the method has proven this method. The very form of the content here suggests a tested approach to emulate. You will no doubt form your own unique system. Nonetheless, structuring research is a fast-track path to learning, reflecting the very nature of the created universe itself where everything exists as a unique individual in relationship with every other individual. The structure here can be helpful to the serious teacher-as-learner.

The first part of this—the Literacy Teacher Background Notebook, is a presentation of personal research in the development of a whole new approach to education and curriculum we now call Get Wisdom! I used the historical Biblical principles of scholarship that we identify in Get Wisdom! Making Christian Heroes of Ordinary People and in School and Classroom Principles and Methods. By this scholarship approach, I sought to discover how the Scriptures apply to real life—in this case literacy. Biblical principles variously include faith, character, productivity, generosity, righteousness, justice, and liberty. We seek self-consciously to relate the curriculum to its Biblical imperatives at every point. (For important background on this point, refer to the Get Wisdom! Making Christian Heroes of Ordinary People Training Manual and School and Classroom Principles and Methods.

The second section beginning with Course Content for the Literacy Teacher, represents practical application in detail. If you are in a hurry to get material to the child, I suggest skipping the first two sections and moving right to the Model Schedules for Reading and Writing and Detailed Classroom Plans Primary for detailed classroom implementation through the grades.

Quick Start Overview

Language

Articulate speech used to communicate ideas from one person to another. The first complete unit of thought is the sentence, containing a subject and a telling about the subject. Expanded wholes of thought communication include paragraphs, chapters, essays, treatises, etc. In the other direction, to provide means to understanding, we can break the sentence into parts of speech, words, phonetic and letters composition of words.

I. Articulate

Care in forming writing and speech is necessary.

II. Agreement

Since communicate consists in sending and receiving of information, effective communication requires agreement and consistency.

III. Government or rules of common usage are necessary to maintain agreement in communication. In other words, to communicate in the elevated manner godliness requires, we must keep a covenant for language or standard.

IV. Sin nature in a world under the curse Because we live in a world under the Adamic curse, we no longer