Dear Parents,

     We all want our children to be well educated. We believe that education is one of the keys to success. But we are sometimes concerned that the schools our children attend are not providing the right kind of programs; yet when we look at overburdened schools and teachers, we wonder how teachers can do as much as they do. Sometimes we volunteer time and money to help our children's schools. Sometimes we visit school and talk with teachers. Sometimes we run for the school board and try to make policy changes. Sometimes we give up and send our children to different schools or pull them out entirely and homeschool them.

      I was a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder for a long time - 29 years. During that time, I helped prepare a lot of English teachers for America's schools. I'm pleased that most of them turned out to be fine teachers. But the disappointment I most often heard from them, especially the most dedicated ones, was that they were unable to provide even a small amount of the individual attention their students needed.

     My study of spelling. During my last eight years on at CU, I studied the teaching (and learning) of spelling skills. (Yes, we do more than play football at CU!) What I found did not encourage my English teacher graduates much. I found something very distressing - that it is very difficult to teach things like spelling to more than one student at a time. Whole class teaching, at any level, tended to be ineffective for teaching spelling to many students.

     At one time, I was convinced that there were good spellers, fair spellers, and non-spellers. I once believed that spelling ability was so genetically implanted that no matter what program was offered, the same good spellers would spell well, the same average spellers would do a fair job, and the same non-spellers would do poorly. I actually believed that kids were born with an ability (or lack of ability) to spell.

    Others seem to believe that, too. Some teachers have simply given up on spelling. They let their students use invented spellings for years, never correcting their errors, never really teaching them to spell ``the way big people do." These teachers may believe, as I did, that genes determined spelling ability.

     The problem, rather than with genes, seemed to be with whole-class teaching/learning environments. When good tutors worked with individual students, starting from where the students were and taking them through a reasonable curriculum, even the non-spellers improved. The average spellers improved a great deal.

     My conclusion was that one answer to improving spelling skills was to provide more tutorial experiences for students. Of course, the sad reality was that no school I knew could provide the level of tutorial support needed.

     The mix that started a company. My friend Terry Wubbena, a long-time software developer for Bell Laboratories, took the bait when I suggested the computer might provide some limited tutorial-like experiences for students. It wasn't long before he had designed the architecture for a program that would truly support students as they were developing spelling skills. Schoolhouse Learning Solutions began when our two minds came together to address what we both recognized as a real need.

     We each left our current positions so we could concentrate totally on developing educational software that would help solve the spelling problem. My curricular design was simple. I would begin with clusters of words sharing common phonetic principles. We would build a prototype at that beginning level, then add more advanced levels if it seemed we were on the right track.

     Terry experimented with different computer technologies and quickly discovered that we needed a real voice to pronounce words and sentences if our programs were to be successful. That meant using a CD-ROM, since our files would be immense.

     We completed our first program and began trying it out with children of friends. To our great joy, the kids actually loved the program. We even had kids fighting over who got to use the program next!

     Edutainment. Let me take a moment to share something with you. Before Terry and I began working on our programs, we felt we had better look at spelling programs that were available. After all, we weren't anxious to spend two years without salaries doing something that someone else had already done. So we looked at programs.

     What we found, of course, was ``edutainment." I've written a short piece you may find interesting. I call it ``Why our programs work and others don't" and you can call up a copy by clicking on the title (if you are on-line). You might find that little critique of ``edutainment" programs interesting.

     What we found was a lot of games which required students to do something before they could progress or continue playing the game. The ``something" was what students were supposed to be learning. It was also the reason most parents bought the programs. What we found, of course, was that the kids developed pretty good game-playing skills but didn't learn much else. Some of the programs didn't provide much learning opportunity even if the game wasn't the chief reason to stay with the program. One highly rated spelling program contained only 72 words, all arranged in random order, with no real emphasis on learning anything but the game. We found the game confusing; the kids who used the program didn't seem to care much about anything but typing the right letters so they could continue with the game.

     We vowed to develop programs that actually helped kids learn something AND which engaged kids in real learning.

     Program development. We felt our first program was successful enough so that we should develop another level. The next level of our spelling program included the 2,000 words most frequently used by writers. In my study, I had constructed a huge database of words used in student writing; we used that as a starting point. We inserted the additional words most commonly used by adults, and from that we developed our 2,000 word base.

     In our first program, children capitalize on their natural tendencies to spell words the way they sound. In our second, they are helped to learn the words they are most apt to use. We were pleased to find that approximately 600 of the 2,000 most frequently used words are words the children learned in phonetic families in The Sounds of Spelling. That reminded us that even those single syllable word-family words were useful to young writers.

     We called our second program Spelling Words We Use. Students who learn to spell all of these words will have mastered over 80% of the running words they will use in most of the adult writing they will do.

     We soon discovered that some of the most difficult words were not in the 2,000 word database. Homonyms and other commonly confused words probably needed special attention, so we developed Homonym Revue: Spelling Commonly Confused Words. The program was capped off with Spelling Difficult Words , a program that helps students learn those words that many adults find hard to spell.

     Our spelling program includes more than 5,000 words. Students who use this program may not master all 5,000, but the techniques we have used should help them learn most of those words, especially if they have some parental support. You will be pleased to see how easy it is to sit down with your children and help them with spelling problems when you have these programs.

    Some suggestions for using the programs. We suggest you try one or more of our programs. You will probably find them easy to use. Holly, our teacher, tells you everything you need to know.

     After you have completed 20 or 30 word activities, exit the program. Bring it up again, but this time, be a teacher. Instead of clicking on your name, click on the word Teacher in the upper left-hand corner of the page. The menu gives you opportunities to insert (or delete) the names of students who will use the program. The more important thing for you is ``Show a student." Click on ``Show a Student." Click on your own name. You will see a report of your progress right there on the screen. See how easy it will be for you to keep track of your child's progress!

     Because all the successes and errors are printed there on the screen, you will be able to determine which words your children need help with. You can go back to the section of the program where the problem words are found or, better yet, you can sit down and provide one-on-one help.

     Geography. Our US Geography program ``Learning the States" comes out of the same concerns and is designed with the same goals in mind as is our spelling program. Students who use this program actually learn the names and locations of the states; they actually learn the names of the capitols and the states they go with; they even learn to spell the names of the states and their capitols. And they seem to enjoy learning these things!

     We provide the same information to you as in the spelling programs. You can pull down the ``teacher" menu and learn which states, if any, have presented problems for your children. And you have a concrete basis to use as you help your children master these important facts.

    I believe you will like these programs. I believe your children will, too.

 Sincerely,

 Dr. Miles C. Olson, President
 Schoolhouse Learning Solutions, Inc.
 Professor Emeritus
 University of Colorado at Boulder