Randy Feldman has been a Hollywood movie and television writer for over 30 years. He will discuss the journey that led him to write the Hallmark Channel movie “The Reading Room” and how that ultimately inspired him to form his own nonprofit -- P.O.R.T.A.L. (People Offering Reading, Teaching and Literacy). He will also examine the evolution of current storytelling trends in popular entertainment and its possible effects on this generation of learners.
Here, you’ll find answers to some common questions. If you don’t see the answer you need here, post your question to the forum and you’ll receive great insight from other teachers and users of our programs.
A good answer begins with an analogy: If good literature gives kids wings, then phonics enables them to decipher their flight plan.
Reading is a complex process. Young students need to learn many important strategies to become successful, independent readers. One of those critical strategies is phonics—recognizing letter-sound relationships. Phonics helps children achieve automatic word recognition so that they will be able to read fluently and with understanding.
What should you look for in a phonics program to ensure this instructional support? Consider these points:
A good phonics program is systematic. It suggests a sequence of skills that are important to the needs of the emerging reader. Its logic is clear and accessible. It offers intensive — not hit-or-miss — practice with sufficient reinforcement to ensure mastery — not just a mere mention — of individual skills.
Research clearly shows that children learn in different ways: some are auditory, some visual, some tactile. A good phonics program respects individual learning styles and provides ways to reach every learner through multi-sensory teaching techniques. The lesson design allows you to tailor activities to meet the needs of every child.
Written practice is important. Many children need that visual-tactile experience to secure what they've learned auditorially. Paper-and-pencil activities not only strengthen skills, they also help you to evaluate student progress. They offer quick feedback for easy diagnosis, systematic review, and maintenance.
A good program is designed by teachers, with teachers' needs in mind. It has a strong balance between teacher-directed activities and independent student practice. It's flexible, accommodating your "teachable moments," and provides options for groups and individuals.
A good program allows teachers to integrate phonics with content-area activities. It supports the transfer of phonics knowledge to all of the language arts: spelling, listening, writing, and vocabulary development. And it applies and reinforces skills through real reading.
"An overwhelming body of evidence shows that students who have the benefit of early phonics (instruction) become better readers than those who do not. Isn't it time to tone down the debate about reading theory and to turn our focus to a more-important issue: What works best to give all kids a chance to become powerful, lifelong readers? It's clear that phonics makes a critical contribution toward that goal." -Christine McArtor
"When you are pondering the question, 'What are the components of a successful reading program?', your ultimate goal should be to have (your students become) star readers by the end of the school year. The reason you need to focus on a star is because a star has five points, and there are five components that are necessary for effective reading instruction to occur in your classroom. These five components are phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension.
"Phonemic awareness is the ability to isolate and manipulate sounds of language. Phonics is 'the alphabetical principle,' which is mapping sound to print. Vocabulary is the ability to understand and use a broad variety of words. Fluency is the ability to read with accuracy, automaticity, and expression. Comprehension is the ability to understand what is read by applying appropriate strategies. Each component builds on the next for effective instruction.
Systematic and explicit instruction is essential when instructing students in the five components of reading. Discover Intensive Phonics is a very systematic and explicit program. The skills are taught step by step in a sequential format. One skill builds upon the next skill, and each lesson provides various examples of words for practice and reinforcement of the concepts. The teacher models very specifically to the students how to mark each word in order to discover the pronunciation of the word. As the students work at the board or on small slates at their desks, the teacher can clearly see the level at which the students understand the concepts. In my classroom, I teach remedial reading students in the first through fifth grades. To reinforce the decoding skills, I have the students become 'Teacher for the Day' after I have modeled a specific skill. As 'teacher,' students write the word then verbally explain each marking code to the class. The word is then read and placed into a meaningful sentence.
"Scientific research emphasizes the importance of the five components of reading so that every child will become a successful reader. It is important that Discover Intensive Phonics be taught starting in kindergarten and continue to explicitly be taught until third grade. After third grade, the concepts should be reinforced to ensure that students are applying their previously learned knowledge.
"Students cannot move on to the components of vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension unless they can unlock the door to decoding. Ask yourself these questions: 'Am I giving my students the necessary foundation to become successful readers? What would the world be like if every child was a reader?’
"Let your star shine as an educator, and provide your students with effective instruction in the areas of phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension."
Corey Triassi Remedial Reading Teacher Lake Havasu City, Arizona
I recently looked at the reading material sent home with my first-grade grandchild, and I saw a sentence that looked like this:
The horse in the park looked like a zebra.
That single sentence contained the following:
My grandchild did rather well in feeling his way through the material, but it was not because he had a proficient knowledge of the word structure underlying our system of writing. He was limited to his knowledge of letter-to-sound correspondences and depended heavily on the clues provided: a picture of a horse in the park with shadows from an adjacent tree, which gave it the appearance of a zebra.
I couldn't help but think of how well the Discover Intensive Phonics program lays the foundation for good reading by teaching the phonetic structure in a logical sequence. We would never expect a student to begin multiplication, fractions, or division before we had thoroughly taught the value of numbers and how to add and subtract.
Have you noticed that students who are poor readers do well in math? Why is this so? Because math has understandable logic and structure! By applying this same logical structure to reading, Discover Intensive Phonics is able to build one concept upon another until students not only read well but also spell proficiently and write effectively.
It's true that it may take a student a few weeks longer to get into the regular reading series, but when they do — watch out! Teachers at Perrine Elementary in Twin Falls, Idaho, put Intensive Phonics to the test with their first grade students. They held back their readers until they had completed the Five Phonetic Skills. Then, lo and behold, when they handed their students their first book, they read it immediately and went on to the second. By the end of the first grade year, their students were reading books normally used mid-year in second grade!
Each step in the Discover Intensive Phonics system builds on that which has already been taught. As each new sound is introduced, it constantly reinforces, adds, and builds new patterns of language structure.
How important is this structure to the ultimate desired outcome of producing good readers? Marily Adams, in her study Beginning to Read, states, "A word can map instantly, effortlessly and accurately from sight to meaning only to the extent that its unique, ordered sequence of letters has been learned and over-learned through experience."1
Approximately 2/3 of our students will learn to read no matter the method of instruction, but the other 1/3 will not see the "logic to language" unless they are shown it through a logical, sequential presentation.
Word counts in student textbooks reveal that 50 percent of the print is accounted for by only 109 different words, with the remaining 90 percent being composed of only 5,000 different words. It is reasonable to suppose that, not too far into their schooling, most children will be able to quickly recognize most of these words by sight. But how are they to cope with the tens of thousands of other words they will see?
The coherence of text depends strongly on its frequent words (it, that, the, this, and, because, when), but the information in a text depends upon its less-frequent words (e.g., doctor, infection, medicine, mold, bacteria, protect, disease).
Our goal is to produce fluent readers. Research indicates that the most-critical factor beneath fluent word reading is the ability to recognize letters, spelling patterns, and whole words effortlessly, automatically, and visually. Moreover, the goal of all reading instruction—comprehension—depends critically on this ability!2
Middle school, high school, and adult students quickly see the logic in the sequential presentation of Discover Intensive Phonics. They can complete the course within three-to-six months. Once they have done so, they have the tools to read words of any length – no need to concentrate just on survival words. ESL students love to see that there is indeed "logic" to English!
Teaching the phonetic structure of our language in a logical sequence will ensure success. Discover Intensive Phonics gives you that assurance!
Linda L. Eversole Certified National Trainer
1Adams, Marily Joyce, Beginning to Read: 1990. Center of Study of Reading. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
2Ibid.
Phonemic awareness and phonics are not the same. When children demonstrate phonemic awareness, they display their knowledge of the sound structure of words without any letters or written words present. A teacher may ask, "What word would be left if we took the /r/ sound from rat?" or "What is the ending sound in the word pig?" So, basically, phonemic awareness is the ability to detect the sound within a word without visual aid. In the Discover Intensive Phonics for Yourself approach, students hear a sound dictated, and they must then write the letter represented by that sound on the board. This multi-sensory, direct instruction approach teaches and builds phonemic awareness. In our new classroom Teacher's Kit, the Appendix has a Games and Activities section. Many of the games are devoted to developing phonemic awareness. Additionally, many of the computer activities dictate sounds and require that the student respond by identifying the appropriate letter on the keyboard.
Phonics skills require the ability to link sounds with letters, making a letter/sound association. This means that, when a student actually sees a letter, he recognizes it and associates it to its sound. Thus we can see that the development of phonics skills depends on the development of phonemic awareness.
Discover Intensive Phonics for Yourself couples phonemic awareness and phonics skills in a logical, sequential, multi-sensory presentation that ensures success in every student.
Linda Eversole Certified Trainer
First, I must clarify that there are now two types of training available.
The first is a seven-hour, hands-on instruction requiring active participation on the part of those attending. It involves them entirely in the learning process. The training gives teachers a complete overview of the course and integrates the use of the curriculum materials, games, parental involvement pack, mastery checks, etc. Each is simultaneous with the methodology instruction.
The second is the newly released online workshop announced in this newsletter. It, too, guides teachers through the Discover Intensive Phonics for Yourself curriculum with interactive participation and is an excellent alternative to hands-on training where funds are limited. It also provides a commendable resource for new teachers hired after the majority of the staff have already been trained or a brush-up for those who may have been trained previously.
Either type of training is far better than no training at all for several reasons:
If you haven't had a teacher training at your location, consider the idea of having one. Up to 25 participants may attend, so if you only have eight or 10 teachers, invite another school to join you and share the cost. The workshop is active, stimulating, and lots of fun. Best of all, however, are the end results: Students who learn with Discover Intensive Phonics for Yourself show marked improvement in reading, spelling, handwriting, and all other subject areas. Give it a try! Discover Intensive Phonics is making a difference!
*Reading Horizons recommends that users plan to conduct annual workshops. We want to keep teachers up-to-date with the latest techniques.
Following are comments offered by attendees at a recent workshop that was conducted in Preston, Idaho:
Recently, a lovely educator shared with me an article written by Pat Wolfe for publication in Educational Leadership. It entertained the interesting idea that some of our current research substantiates the conclusions and practices proposed by educators as far back as the ‘30s, including the work of Madeline Hunter, Alfred Whitehead, John Dewey, and Barak Rosenshine, to name a few. She made the point that it is possible that the effective teaching strategies of 20 years ago are still relevant today and that we can now look to current cognitive and neuroscientific research to help us understand why.
Ms. Wolfe noted three important items that I felt had relevance to the teaching of Discover Intensive Phonics.
First, as an example, she used Hunter’s work relating to the importance of an anticipatory set: a way of helping students attend to the relevant data of upcoming instruction. This emphasis on setting the stage for learning fits precisely with research on the attentional mechanisms of the brain.
“The only way to get information into the brain is through our senses. At any one moment, our sensory receptors (the eye, the ear, and so on) are simultaneously bombarded with an enormous amount of data. If we were able to pay conscious attention to all this sensory information, we would go mad! To keep us sane, our brain immediately starts sifting and sorting through all the sensory input and gets rid of irrelevant material.”
You see, there is no such thing as a student who is not paying attention! Since the brain is always paying attention to something, what we call “inattentiveness” may just be the student focusing on something other than what the teacher intends.
What relevance does this observation have to Discover Intensive Phonics?
1) Discover Intensive Phonics involves the students in such a way that they are focused on what they are learning. They are the ones spelling the word. They are the ones proving the sounds. Student attention is involved and directed. The brain is constantly searching through existing neural networks to find a way to make sense of incoming data. The direct instruction technique employed in Discover Intensive Phonics establishes an anticipatory set, which increases the possibility that the brain will search through the right networks and attend to relevant information.
Next, Ms. Wolfe again referred to Madeline Hunter and a phrase she often used: “Practice doesn’t make perfect; it makes permanent.” What an important caution with regard to allowing students to continue making the same mistakes over and over again. If we practice something incorrectly, our neurons don’t know the difference and make the permanent connections incorrectly.
2) While students work with Discover Intensive Phonics at the chalkboard or whiteboard, teachers have the opportunity to observe every student’s work and can offer immediate feedback. Errors are contrasted with corrected work for reinforcement. A student’s spelling, handwriting, decoding, and vocabulary skills are all obvious and observable. Discover Intensive Phonics offers the kind of practice that makes permanent and perfect!
Thirdly, Ms. Wolfe emphasized that current research is increasing our understanding of the importance of prior knowledge and the reason it plays such a crucial role. Information, neuroscientific research explains, is not stored in a specific location in the brain. Rather, it is stored in various locations — in the visual, auditory, and motor cortices — and is joined in circuits or networks of neurons. It appears that, each time we recall an event or a previous experience, we literally reconstruct it by using the same circuit or circuits we used to store it. Therefore, the more modalities we use to store the information or experience, the more pathways we have available to access it!
3) Discover Intensive Phonics employs the audio, visual, kinesthetic, and tactile modalities in the learning experience. The unique marking system employed throughout the course allows students to construct multiple pathways for remembering important encoding and decoding principles.
I heartily agree that current research is certainly substantiating the conclusions and practices proposed by excellent educators from the past. Through her excellent teaching strategies, Charlotte Lockhart—the author of Discover Intensive Phonics—employed scientific principles that are now coming to light through current neurological research. Research only continues to add more luster to an already illuminating phonics program.
Throughout the Discover Intensive Phonics program, phonemic awareness is taught with the introduction of letters/letter combinations (graphemes) followed by the sounds (phonemes) in each of the lessons. The program teaches how to identify the sounds when decoding real and nonsense words. With the newly revised version of the Discover Intensive Phonics materials (software and teacher direct-instruction materials), a phonemic awareness component has been added.
In the computer software (elementary version 4.0), phonemic awareness activities and assessments have been added. These assessments and activities cover similar concepts as those presented in DIBELS.
A phonemic awareness section, which provides lessons, activities, and assessments to aid teachers in phonemic awareness instruction, has been added to the teacher direct instruction volumes. A new tool called Word Builder has been created to help strengthen phonemic awareness through phoneme identification, substitution, and manipulation. We also have stories with controlled vocabulary in our Little Books. Each story incorporates the phonic skill taught and builds upon previously learned skills.
The program aids in fluency by teaching students to “slide” sounds together to form words. Fluency becomes an issue when a student has to stop and sound out each letter in a word. Also, the Most Common Words are laid out in a pattern and are presented on the computer (lesson) in a way that is easy to remember what the words say as they are read in context. When you combine the “sliding sounds” method with memorized sight words, you will promote good fluency as a reading skill. When I taught my students the Discover Intensive Phonics methodology, my weekly CBM scores (fluency tests) were very good. You have to remember that this phonics program is a supplemental program, not a reading series. It does not meet the needs for comprehension or critical-thinking skills; however, neither do most reading programs. A truly dedicated and efficient teacher helps develop those skills in students.
In our spring newsletter, we examined a few of the warning signs and early indicators of dyslexia in a child. Thankfully, research has shown that early intervention with explicit, systematic phonics can actually rewire the brain and that struggling children can become skilled readers. But what about older students and adults? Can systematic phonics be instrumental in helping them improve their reading, as well?
The journal Neuron reported the findings of a collaborative study by Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center and Georgetown University Medical Center, confirming the following: “New research shows that phonics-based instruction can actually change brain activity in adults with dyslexia, resulting in significant improvements in reading.”
Senior researcher Lynn Flowers, Ph.D., stated, “With about 112 hours of phonics-based instruction, adults with dyslexia had significant improvements in reading and changes in brain activity while reading.”
You see, dyslexia is not an overall defect in language but, rather, a localized weakness within a specific component of the language system: the phonologic module. Sally Shaywitz, author of Overcoming Dyslexia, compares the phonologic module to a language factory – the functional part of the brain where the sounds of language are put together to form words and where words are broken down into their elemental sounds: “So, just as proteins must first be broken down into their underlying amino acids before they can be digested, words must first be broken down into their underlying phonemes before they can be processed by the language system.”
Discover Intensive Phonics provides a systematic organization of our language that allows an adult to advance accurately and quickly through the learning process. As they progress through the logical structure of Discover Intensive Phonics, the unique, multi-sensory marking system employed throughout the program becomes an extremely beneficial tool. To acquire a new word, a person must scrutinize the inner details of the word and not gloss over it. For the most part, analyzing each letter and letter group in a word is the only way an accurately stored representation may be formed. Sally Shaywitz compares this to detective work — the more clues, the greater the chance of solving the mystery! Discover Intensive Phonics’ unique marking system guides students through a word, helping them identify that word’s sound structure. It builds a detailed and accurate replica of the word in the students' neural circuitry. Research tells us that the more detailed and accurate this replica, the more likely they are to recognize the word when they come across it again. As students use the marking system to decode hundreds of words, they develop strong brain patterns. The brain relies on patterns of connectivity, and those patterns are continually reinforced and strengthened as a result of repeated practice and experience.
So, can phonics indeed help adults with dyslexia? With 26 years' experience teaching adults and adolescents to read using Discover Intensive Phonics we could have told them the answer would be yes, but it’s great to have the research on our side, too!
We can answer that question with an unequivocal yes!
The reasons for poor reading skills in adults are many and varied. They may stem from lack of education, transient lifestyles during the early years of schooling, learning disabilities, or dyslexia. For the most part, however, all older students have a need to improve in one (or more) of three areas — word attack skills, fluency, and comprehension.
No program surpasses Discover Intensive Phonics in teaching word attack skills. The presentations are concrete, sequential, and logical — they "make sense." Now, we all know that it's not an easy thing to "make sense" of the English language, but Discover Intensive Phonics presents the foundation for reading in such a way that it is understandable and logical. Through hands-on interaction, adults soon find that they can not only read but also spell! The biggest problem you'll find with adult students is that they want to progress too rapidly. Each lesson needs to be practiced until it is internalized. The program is cumulative, so reinforcement of previously learned skills is automatic, but progressing too fast won't give students time to really understand the application of what they have learned. Make sure that adults receive adequate practice through the Mastery, Drill, and Practice offered on Reading Horizons computer courseware or through multi-sensory instruction at the board. It is vital that they thoroughly understand each step before they proceed to the next.
Fluency comes automatically with increased word attack skills and through consistent practice. Understanding word patterns — the likely and unlikely sequencing of letters — allows an adult to comfortably move forward with confidence.
Adult — especially adults who are poor readers — are generally good listeners, and they already have an understanding of much of the vocabulary used in their workplace and in the media. So, even though Discover Intensive Phonics does not provide specific exercises for comprehension, you will see an automatic increase in comprehension as an adult's word attack skills improve.
Yes, adults and youth can definitely make tremendous progress in their reading skills through the use of Discover Intensive Phonics — and in a relatively short period of time (Approximately five-to-six months). If you've never tried teaching this program to an adult, do it! You'll be amazed!
First of all, a lot depends on the kind of class you have. If your students were taught with Discover Intensive Phonics in kindergarten, they will come into your class with a good working knowledge of the names, sounds and formation of the alphabet and of blends. They should also be able to write any three-letter word most blends and read most controlled reading to that point.
On the other hand, you may have a class in which the kindergarten did not bring students to this level, so it will be your job to teach the material mentioned above. This will necessitate more time, of course. It is our goal for a first grade class to complete the course through the two decoding skills. If you have not received a copy of the kindergarten and/or first grade timelines, just give Reading Horizons a call at 800-333-0054 (toll free), and a copy of that information will be sent to you.A kindergarten teacher and a first grade teacher, each of which has taught Discover Intensive Phonics for over five years, prepared these timelines. Their experience and suggested timelines are very valuable and should be of significant help.
Linda Eversole Nationally Certified Trainer Discover Intensive Phonics for Yourself
Before teachers will go to the trouble of providing a standing workspace for each student, they must be convinced of the effectiveness of the active participation provided through direct, multi-sensory instruction. So, before we talk about space, let's look at the benefits – first to the teacher and then to the student.
There is power in standing up at the boards that is not achieved when a student is sitting at a desk. Standing is active; sitting is passive. Find the space! Make the space! Ask for the money needed! Recruit parents, PTA members, or volunteers to help make boards! (It's a great Eagle Scout project!) Do whatever it takes to get the children up and learning. The rewards are well worth it!
Small chalkboards can be purchased and put in small spaces around the room — even on doors. These smaller boards can be secured to the wall (or to carpeted wall) with Velcro.
If you don't want to buy them, make them!
Once the boards are prepared, it is best to have them lined. Make lines that are three inches apart with a dotted line in between at 1½ inches. Permanent markers work on chalkboards. Visa Vis brand markers work on whiteboards (they won't erase but can be removed with water, if needed). The lines are critical for teaching handwriting and for helping with discipline at the board. Make two or three writing lines so children of different heights can reach them easily.
Assign an individual board or a space on the larger boards for each child. (These places can be rotated.) Placing a star or some other item on the floor to show the students where they should stand is also helpful.
If you have questions for one of our certified trainers, please e-mail Reading Horizons at info@readinghorizons.com.
Discover Intensive Phonics for Yourself offers a wide variety of important, multi-sensory involvement for students. Initially, the course engages students in multi-sensory activity at the chalkboard. Using direct instruction techniques, teachers dictate individual phonemes, slides, words, and nonsense words. Students then repeat the information and write it on lined boards. Auditory, visual, tactile, and kinesthetic modalities have all been employed in the learning process!
Additionally, because each student's work is taking place right before her eyes, the teacher has immediate feedback and can supply appropriate intervention, where needed.
This same multi-sensory activity is then duplicated in a different format when lessons are reinforced with either Reading Horizons or Discover Intensive Phonics interactive computer courseware. The software lessons not only reinforce the classroom instruction, but computers seem to somehow "connect" certain students in ways that, as yet, we don't totally understand. Particularly for older students, the multi-sensory activity on the computer is invaluable.
Finally, the games and activities listed in the Enrichment section of each lesson are a must for young students. They provide a wide variety of engaging, multi-sensory involvement in phonemic awareness, letter-sound recognition, blending, Most Common Word identification, phonologic memory, and spelling. If you haven't tried these multi-sensory activities, begin using them today! They provide a very necessary component to the total program.
First, I would give a quick, one-on-one phonics assessment to see the areas in which the student is proficient skill-wise. That assessment would include knowledge of alphabet sounds and the ability to recognize them in words and manipulate them within a word to create other words. I would also check the ability to rhyme (some students can relate reading with rhyming skills). Then I would check the ability to decode single-syllable words to determine if he/she knows the correct vowel sound in the word(s). Technically, I would begin with the lowest phonetic skill, testing only a few words at a time, and progress sequentially through the program until I found where the student was lacking in knowledge. I wouldn't assume by the age of the student that early phonetic skills are understood. In doing so, the teacher may create greater gaps in the student's knowledge of decoding words. Once the teacher has determined where the student is with his/her knowledge of phonic skills and decoding words, that is where I would begin the lessons.
If the student is in a small group situation for instruction, you may need to assign other work to the remaining students in the group while you give one-on-one instruction to the new student, or you may need to assign an aide to work with him/her.
If this is a whole-class group situation, perhaps an aide or parent helper could work with the new student, giving individual instructions on the lessons to help him/her catch up with the class.
Bringing a student up-to-date with a class is very difficult at the mid-year point. Not only do you have to determine the student's ability to decode, read, and understand what was read, but you also have to take in to consideration their self-esteem, as well.
Students begin to reduce the skills that are marked during the introduction of Decoding Skill #1 (syllabication). Technically, the only “mark” that is left out is the guardian star, and it is left out at the teacher or student's discretion. The remainder of the markings (vowels, blends, Digraphs, Special Vowel Sounds, etc.) remain intact to assist the reader in decoding unfamiliar words.
Eventually, as students become more exposed to various reading material and word vocabulary rather than physically marking words, they begin to mentally mark words as they read.
My name is Joan Parrish, and I taught 1st grade for 13 years. For the past 11 years, I have been teaching Discover Intensive Phonics in my classroom along with the school district's adopted reading program. As you know, about every five-to-six years, school districts adopt new reading programs for the elementary schools to use. Since the NCLB Act, the most popular programs are Open Court and Houghton-Mifflin. For the past two years, I had to use the Open Court series and all of the materials it incorporates into the reading/language program. When I taught the phonics workbook, I taught the students how to mark the sounds according to the Discover Intensive Phonics for Yourself method and prove the words. When there was more than one spelling for a particular phonic sound (i.e. long U = U; ue; ew; oo; ui), I taught one spelling and used the decodable book with it. Then I spent a bit of extra time reinforcing that skill before introducing another spelling and decodable book. I incorporated the Discover Intensive Phonics for Yourself program into Open Court, and it worked fine. I have done this over the years with the Scribbner, Lippincott, and Harcourt Brace reading series. If some of your teachers are having problems, I would love to talk with them and try to help them use the Discover Intensive Phonics for Yourself program.
We have already crossed the threshold stating that Discover Intensive Phonics can be taught effectively regardless of the initial sound used for consonants in isolation. BUT I must make one final comment regarding the usefulness of the "schwa" element when teaching the hearing-impaired.
Every sound has two parts: frequency (or pitch) and intensity (or loudness). Thinking of a piano is a great way to understand frequency. The notes on the left side of the piano are low-frequency, or low-pitch, notes. The notes on the right side are high-frequency, or high-pitch, notes. Other examples of low-frequency sounds are a bass drum, thunder, or a deep male voice. Examples of high-frequency sounds are a shrill whistle, squeal, or high female voice.
Frequency is measured in hertz (Hz). A low-frequency sound is about 500 Hz and lower. A high-frequency sound is about 2,000 Hz and higher.
Now let's talk a bit about intensity, or loudness. If a sound is loud, it has a high intensity. If a sound is soft, it has a low intensity. Intensity is measured in decibels (dB). A high-intensity sound has a high decibel level, and a low-intensity sound has a low decibel level. A very soft whisper is about 25 dB. Conversation ranges between 50 and 60 dB. We experience discomfort with sounds over 90 dB, and sounds over 110 dB can be painful.
Our hearing "threshold" is the lowest intensity at which be begin to hear sound. The normal hearing threshold is between 10 and 25 dB.
Humans can typically hear frequencies between 32 and 32000 Hz and intensities 10 dB and louder.
Our speech sounds spread across many frequencies and vary in intensity. Sounds requiring our voice (or voiced sounds) are more-low frequency sounds. These include the consonants J, L, M, V, Z, and all of the vowel sounds, with U/u (same as the schwa) and E/e being in the lowest range. Sounds that are made without our voice (unvoiced sounds) are more-high frequency sounds and include F, G, K, S, sh, T, th, etc.
If a student can hear normally in the low frequencies but not in the high frequencies, he will be able to hear most of spoken conversation but may not hear many of the high frequency sounds of speech, such as F, sh, and T. If a student has a mild or moderate hearing loss throughout all frequencies, normal conversation may sound like a whisper.*
Joining a low-frequency vowel element with the consonant (or using the schwa with consonant sounds in isolation) will produce the lower-frequency sound that can more easily be heard.
That’s just a thought that bears considering — especially if you happen to work with students who may be hearing impaired.
*Pediatric Education Services, Primary Children's Medical Center: "Let's Talk about Hearing and Testing."
Have you, as a teacher, ever seen classes that were using the Discover Intensive Phonics for Yourself program and thought, "That program really is so logical, so sequential and easy to teach, and I can see that the students make tremendous progress, but I just can't teach the isolated sounds of the alphabet using the SCHWA!"? Unfortunately, many teachers have avoided this highly effective course for that very reason. I've written this article to put your minds at ease and to let teachers everywhere know that the Discover Intensive Phonics for Yourself program can be just as effective if you teach isolated sounds in their pure form or with the schwa (vowel element). I know this for a fact, because over the past 18 years of presenting this program to teachers nationwide, I have taught multitudes of teachers who are instructing students in in middle school, high school, or adult education classes. Obviously, these students have already learned a "sound" for their consonants and vowels, yet without re-teaching the sounds they already know, they progress through the Discover Intensive Phonics course in a matter of weeks.
For those of you who may not be familiar with the SCHWA, let me give a brief explanation. The dictionary says that the "schwa" is an unstressed vowel sound. It is represented by an upside-down E and has the sound of short U/u, /u/. The word "schwa" is of Hebrew origin. Since all five vowels can use the "schwa" sound, I refer to it frequently as the “generic vowel.” In the Discover Intensive Phonics for Yourself course, author Charlotte Lockhart uses the schwa joined with the consonants in isolation in order to accomplish three primary objectives:
The key to success with the Discover Intensive Phonics for Yourself program, however, is not determined so much by the use of the SCHWA as it is by the SLIDE. Students begin immediately to slide from the consonant sound to the vowel A/a (/a/). Mastering the slide helps the student in many ways. First, they focus on the need to read from left to right. Next, they learn to smoothly join the sounds, and, as new vowels are introduced, they learn to slide to each vowel sound. Finally, they add the ending consonant sound and are able to produce smooth, fluent reading.
Once students begin the slide process, it really doesn't matter how they have learned the consonant in isolation as long as they slide successfully to the vowel sound.
For example, whether students have learned the consonant B/b as /b/ or /buh/, they will be successful if they can slide to the vowel A/a in the B-A slide, ba. The final consonant is then added, and they can read bad, bag, bat, ban, etc.
Upcoming versions of the Discover Intensive Phonics for Yourself and Reading Horizons computer courseware will feature the ability to hear the sounds of the consonants in isolation with our without the schwa. We invite all teachers to take advantage of the tremendous results guaranteed through teaching Discover Intensive Phonics for Yourself!
Linda Eversole Certified National Trainer
