Manhattanville College to Require Phonics Course for All K-2 Education Students

HARRISON, NY — This fall, Manhattanville College will become the only undergraduate and graduate school of education in the New York Metropolitan area to include a one-credit phonics lab in its curriculum.

Many teacher education programs in the nation do not require a phonics course, which enables teachers to teach beginning readers in kindergarten through grade 2 how letters and syllables correspond to sounds.

“Teachers in America read about using phonics as a teaching method, but they are not taught HOW to use phonics in the classroom to improve reading, writing, spelling and comprehension,” said Sandra Priest Rose, founder of Manhattanville College’s Rose Institute for Learning and Literacy.

The new course, Understanding and Applying Phonics in the Classroom, is designed to introduce the principles of phonics, including the origins of the English Language, morphology, phonemes, syllable types, common spelling patterns and an introduction to multisensory teaching.

“Many elementary school educators are not taught traditional phonics,” said Shelley Wepner, dean of Manhattanville’s School of Education. “Phonics is an important component of literacy instruction in the early grades. We believe that this new, required program will greatly improve the K-2 learning process in New York.”

“Beginning in September, 2017, any student of education seeking certification in Childhood, Early Childhood and Childhood with Special Education at Manhattanvile will be required to take this one credit lab course,” said Vicki Fantozzi, Chair of Curriculum and Instruction at Manhattanville. “It is an exciting new venture and a much needed program,” she added.

In addition to this course requirement, Manhattanville’s School of Education also houses The Rose Institute for Learning and Literacy. This institute offers a 13-credit graduate certificate program designed primarily for current Early Childhood, Childhood, Special Education and/or Literacy educators that prepares teachers to use a phonics-based approach to teaching reading.

Modeled after the pioneering work of Dr. Samuel T. Orton, and adapted by Romalda Spalding, this approach, combined with an intensive in-school teacher training program, has been offered by The Reading Reform Foundation of New York for over 33 years and uses a multisensory approach to teaching reading, writing, spelling and comprehension.