Nellie Dale

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Nellie Dale (February 14, 1865 - February 26, 1967) 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.

She 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 "On the Teaching of English Reading") to George Philip & Son Limited, London and then called them "The Dale Readers". The "Steps to Reading" was always her book.

To complement this book, 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). All of these were printed by J M Dent & Co. She later changed her printer to George Philip & Son Ltd, London. These books were also printed in the United States 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 ("The Dale Readers Book III" and "Notes on Book II"), but never did. Her mentor in all of this appears to have been the linguist Walter Rippmann MA (1869 - 1947) who wrote "The Sounds of Spoken English and Specimens of English" (1906 - 1911) printed by J M Dent & Sons Ltd, London.