Nellie Dale
Encyclopedia
Ellen "Nellie" Dale was a British
school teacher who created one of the earliest books on teaching reading.
The earliest school-based literacy
education was started by Dale at Wimbledon High School
from 1892 to 1909. Ms Edith Hastings, to whom Dale dedicated her book On the Teaching of English Reading, was headmistress of Wimbledon High School for Girls from 1880 to 1908.
Dale published several books, starting in 1898 with On the Teaching of English Reading (green cover) with J M Dent & Co., London, England. This book taught the alphabetic principle
and phonemic awareness
. She taught the voiced and unvoiced consonants, vowels and silent letters by using different colors (black, blue, red and yellow, and she had her students step out the syllables. She showed her students how to notice voiced and unvoiced consonants.
Walter Crane
published the Readers under the title The Walter Crane Readers in 1899 with J M Dent & Co in London. Dale later moved her books (excluding her first one) to George Philip & Son Limited, London and then called them The Dale Readers.
The Steps to Reading was also her book. To complement it, Dale contemporaneously published The Steps to Reading (red cover), The Dale Readers First Primer (blue cover), The Dale Readers Second Primer (yellow cover) and The Dale Readers Infant Reader (green cover). In the United States
, these books were also printed by D Appleton & Co.
Dale later published The Dale Readers Book I (brown cover), The Dale Readers Book II (pink cover) and a revised book entitled Further Notes on the Teaching of English Reading (green cover) covering her original books plus The Dale Readers Book I in 1902. She intended to print further books, but never did. Her mentor in all of this appears to have been the linguist Walter Rippmann MA (1869-1947) who published The Sounds of Spoken English and Specimens of English (1911) in her book On the Teaching of English Reading.
She also used a Tabulating Frame and Pricked Sounds for Embroidery, the latter are only found in the Toronto Public Library, no copy of the tabulating frame has been found.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
school teacher who created one of the earliest books on teaching reading.
The earliest school-based literacy
Literacy
Literacy has traditionally been described as the ability to read for knowledge, write coherently and think critically about printed material.Literacy represents the lifelong, intellectual process of gaining meaning from print...
education was started by Dale at Wimbledon High School
Wimbledon High School
.Wimbledon High School is an independent girls' school in Wimbledon, South West London. It is run by the Girls' Day School Trust and celebrated its 130th birthday on November 9 2010, having been founded by Edith Hastings in 1880. WHS educates girls between the ages of 4 and 18.The motto is "Ex...
from 1892 to 1909. Ms Edith Hastings, to whom Dale dedicated her book On the Teaching of English Reading, was headmistress of Wimbledon High School for Girls from 1880 to 1908.
Dale published several books, starting in 1898 with On the Teaching of English Reading (green cover) with J M Dent & Co., London, England. This book taught the alphabetic principle
Alphabetic principle
According to the alphabetic principle, letters and combinations of letters are the symbols used to represent the speech sounds of a language based on systematic and predictable relationships between written letters, symbols, and spoken words...
and phonemic awareness
Phonemic awareness
Phonemic awareness is a subset of phonological awareness in which listeners are able to hear, identify and manipulate phonemes, the smallest units of sound that can differentiate meaning...
. She taught the voiced and unvoiced consonants, vowels and silent letters by using different colors (black, blue, red and yellow, and she had her students step out the syllables. She showed her students how to notice voiced and unvoiced consonants.
Walter Crane
Walter Crane
Walter Crane was an English artist and book illustrator. He is considered to be the most prolific and influential children’s book creator of his generation and, along with Randolph Caldecott and Kate Greenaway, one of the strongest contributors to the child's nursery motif that the genre of...
published the Readers under the title The Walter Crane Readers in 1899 with J M Dent & Co in London. Dale later moved her books (excluding her first one) to George Philip & Son Limited, London and then called them The Dale Readers.
The Steps to Reading was also her book. To complement it, Dale contemporaneously published The Steps to Reading (red cover), The Dale Readers First Primer (blue cover), The Dale Readers Second Primer (yellow cover) and The Dale Readers Infant Reader (green cover). In the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, these books were also printed by D Appleton & Co.
Dale later published The Dale Readers Book I (brown cover), The Dale Readers Book II (pink cover) and a revised book entitled Further Notes on the Teaching of English Reading (green cover) covering her original books plus The Dale Readers Book I in 1902. She intended to print further books, but never did. Her mentor in all of this appears to have been the linguist Walter Rippmann MA (1869-1947) who published The Sounds of Spoken English and Specimens of English (1911) in her book On the Teaching of English Reading.
She also used a Tabulating Frame and Pricked Sounds for Embroidery, the latter are only found in the Toronto Public Library, no copy of the tabulating frame has been found.