Stride Ahead: An Aid to Comprehension

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Keda Cowling, creator of the Toe by Toe manual, was born in 1926 in West Yorkshire, attending school during the depression of the 1930s. Sadly, like many others, she was denied the chance to take up a scholarship at the local grammar school. 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. As a tutor, you are not going to succeed without the active co-operation of students. Inspire them and ensure they never lose heart. 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 retired as a teacher at her primary school in 1989. She used her teacher’s pension to finance Toe By Toe and it was finally published in 1994. It has become a phenomenal success. Since publication, Toe By Toe has sold more than 500,000 copies, helping hundreds of thousands of people to overcome their reading difficulties and as a result, dramatically change and improve their lives.

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. A. Stride Ahead is more suitable for older students, usually secondary school students or adults. However, some primary schools also use it in years 5 and 6 (age 10 or 11 years old). Toe By Toe provides a sense of progress and momentum from day one. It is this that keeps them motivated and ‘on task’.Stride Ahead is the natural ‘next step’ from Toe By Toe. Toe By Toe teaches ‘decoding’ skills. This enables students to read more fluently with good pronunciation. However, many still need help in making sense of the written word. This is what Stride Ahead helps to improve. A. The methodology underpinning the manuals is exactly the same. Both are equally effective at improving students’ reading ability and their confidence and self-esteem. Toe by Toe USA has been altered slightly to reflect differences between British and American English with regard to vocabulary, spelling and the use of certain idioms. Q. In 'Section C' of the exercises, do students have to achieve 13 seconds when reading each word in the list 3 times? A. No. Toe By Toe requires that each student has a reading coach for every exercise; it teaches students to read and tutors to teach. We believe this is the result of their minds being too occupied with the mechanics of decoding the written language. It leaves them unable to give adequate attention to the meaning of the text.

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 next time the student read there is almost always a huge improvement in both speed and accuracy. A. No. Words that have been spelt incorrectly (“negatives”) need only go through RAWS on one occasion, on one condition. That students are able to spell the words correctly on 5 consecutive occasions (see above). In practice, some negatives will go through RAWS only once. Others may need to go through the procedure many times. They should be able to appreciate that reading is not a chore, but something to do for entertainment as well as enlightenment. Toe By Toe can be found in use in many diverse places worldwide, ranging from Aboriginal prisoners in the deserts of Western Australia, to posh prep schools in the highlands of Kenya, to remote regions of the Yukon in Canada. It is used in the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic and the Gilbert Islands in the South Pacific. Maori school children use it in ‘buddy schemes’ and it is working well with ethnic Chinese children in Hong Kong and Singapore.The effect that horses and dogs had on her daughter’s healing process inspired Anne. She wanted to create a space where people could engage with horses in a way that might alter the trajectories of their lives. A. Older students often resist starting with the absolute basics (letter sounds, etc) so Stride Ahead makes a few assumptions in terms of students’ prior knowledge. The 3 preliminary exercises ensure that the necessary skills to study Stride Ahead are in place. It is a good idea to challenge them to see how many consecutive words they can read perfectly before stumbling. As a rough guideline, if a student studied Stride Ahead 30-minute every day, the average time to complete Stride Ahead would be 2-3 months.

A. It is difficult to be specific. So much depends on the severity of the student’s spelling problems together with the frequency of lessons. Basis on four 20-minute lessons per week, most students will complete the manual within six months. In the late 70’s Keda Cowling created a unique syllable division which was incorporated into the reading manual Toe by Toe. Over the last few years this system has successfully taught thousands of people – dyslexics and non-dyslexics alike – to read (i.e. decode). This success has been due to the application of this easy-to-use syllable division and the structured over-teaching of the phonemes in question. A. We believe that the proportion of students who cannot learn to read using Toe By Toe is minuscule. As long as a coach follows the instructions to the letter, Toe By Toe can successfully help almost any child to read. Where the scheme ‘fails’ it is often for traced to two causes: Often these students become very adept at disguising their poor reading skills. They use ‘guesswork’ allied with contextual clues to get meaning. Because these ‘guesswork’ techniques hide a student’s poor reading skills, often their teachers are not even aware that the student has a problem.Stride Ahead is the natural ‘next step’ from Toe By Toe. Toe By Toe teaches ‘decoding’ skills. This enables students to read more fluently with good pronunciation. However, many still need help in making sense of the written word. This is where Stride Ahead helps.

A. Toe By Toe is a finely structured programme. A list of contents might tempt some coaches to begin coaching part way through the text. Please follow the programme as presented in the manual. The diagnostic system encounters and highlights weaknesses as the student works through the book. Stride Ahead is a study book, written for students who can read, but who have difficulty in understanding and comprehending written text.Anne’s vision for Stride Ahead is for everyone who interacts with the organization to benefit from it; that each client, horse, volunteer, donor, vendor, or ally moves closer to their fullest potential as a result of their experience with Stride Ahead. Author Keda Cowling believes that this inability to extract meaning from a text results from their minds being too ‘busy.’ That is, they think too much about the mechanics of decoding the written language. This results in them being unable to give adequate time and attention to the meaning in a text. A further consequence is that they become stressed in time-limited situations (like tests, exams or work-related situations) and so fail to perform to the best of their ability. Just try to do any ‘manipulating’ discreetly so students remain unaware that they have ‘failed’ (as they might see it) in any reading task. The Stride Ahead Manual is for anyone who can read, but who still has difficulty in understanding what they are reading. A. Students with reading difficulties will establish a word in their short term memory. However, they are likely to forget it just as easily unless we fix the word in their long term memory.