Fall 2003 Newsletter

Volume 4, Issue 3

Inside This Issue

• Upgrades and Revisions
• The Word On The Street
• Frequently Asked Questions: What is the difference between Phonemic Awareness and Phonics?
• HEC Advisory Council Spotlight: Maxine Offenbach
• NCLB

Upgrades and Revisions

In May we announced the release of the first major revision of the Discover Intensive Phonics for Yourself materials in over three decades. Since many of you were out of school at that time we thought it would be helpful to present this information again. We have been shipping the new materials for approximately three months and have had exciting feedback.

HEC's goal for the design and content of the new material was to help teachers more effectively implement Discover Intensive Phonics in the classroom. We believe that we have succeeded! Chrystine Gonzalez, elementary teacher, says, "the additions of the Parent Involvement Pack and Appendix are fabulous, and the updated manuals are fantastic!" Among other things the new Teacher's Kit consists of a two-volume manual, approximately 700 pages, with a 200 page Appendix replete with games and activities. The Discover Intensive Phonics Adult Manual has also been revised. This covers the same material as the Elementary manual, but is designed for older students.

Following are a few enhancements made to the new manual:

• 300 additional pages of teacher helps
• Color-coded and tabbed teaching units
• Complete indexing
• Games and activities / Teacher suggestions
• Instructional CD-Rom, which also contains black-line masters

Some additions to the new Teacher's Kit:

• Parent Involvement Pack - materials for home use
• Vowels/ 5 phonetic skills posters
• 9 Most Common Word posters
• 2 Flip Charts
• Carrying Case

Accompanying the new Teachers Kit is the release of Version 3.0 of the Reading Horizons and Discover Intensive Phonics for Yourself computer courseware for Macintosh and Windows. Corey Triassi a teacher in Lake Havasu City AZ raved, "The upgrades in the software are awesome. When I put the new program on the computer, my students were so excited that I had to quiet them down."

There are many modifications to the new software. Reading Horizons will now allow the teacher to select whether the schwa sound or pure sound is heard in the lessons, the lesson material customizes itself to the needs of each student, there is a new Vocabulary section in the MDP, customizable login numbers, new reports, and more.

The Discover Intensive Phonics for Yourself courseware has many of the same enhancements as Reading Horizons. Hundreds of new animations and graphics have been incorporated, as well as higher quality audio for crisper sound quality.

Please feel free to contact HEC Reading Horizons if you would like a complete description, including demo CD-ROM of revisions to the program.

The Word On The Street

"I discovered that Reading Horizons also addressed the ESOL student. In our program, there were several Russian students who spoke no English, and several Spanish-speaking students. They just loved HEC! In a matter of weeks, they progressed way beyond the norm. They were also able to use their new skills with their own children, which was the purpose of initiating the family literacy program.

"After experiencing the success in that program, I decided to use it with the ABE class too. Many of our students were dyslexic and/or had very poor de-coding skills. HEC addressed all learning styles because it helped the visual learner, the auditory learner, and the kinesthetic. It also gave them privacy to learn on their own time and , at their own pace.

"One 40 year old mother of two, enrolled reading at a second grade level. She went through the 11th grade in school never being able to read due to severe dyslexia. She was humiliated and ashamed that she couldn't help her own children with their homework. After a few months using HEC, she brought her reading level up 2 grade levels, and after one year, two more levels.

"HEC is a wonderful program for both the English speaking illiterate adult and the ESOL student, as it addresses the foundation of reading, but also affords the students to work at their own pace, in their own style. It allows the instructor to provide individualized instruction. If I could have an HEC station for every student, it would be my dream. I would encourage any adult literacy institution to try this program out. I'm sure they will be as pleased as we were."

Carol Wilber
Capitol District Ed
Troy, NY

"We have used the Char-L chalkboard method and the earlier version of you software for several years. The purchase of a school license has enabled us to expand and provide decoding skills in a consistent and systematic manner to all of our students. We have completed our first four months using the new software for Intensive Phonics and Reading Horizons in grades two through eight. The student response has been excellent and the results are encouraging in both the areas of reading and written language. The students have completed between twenty and sixty lessons depending on when they enrolled in our school. The student averages 86% accuracy on the test scores. The management system, which assigns review to those students who need it, is valuable and allows each student to progress at their own pace."

Jan Storms
Resource Director
Glenwood School
Glenwood, IL

"I have used your program with students who have exited high school but couldn't read. I worked with a gentleman who was told by his school psychologist he would never read. After using Reading Horizons for six months he passed his state exam and received a high school diploma. I recommended your product at all conferences I attend. Thanks again for providing a structured reading environment for adult learners."

Patricia Duffley
TN Technology Access Center
Knoxville, TN

Frequently Asked Questions: What is the difference between Phonemic Awareness and Phonics?

Phoneme awareness and Phonics are not the same. When children demonstrate phoneme 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?" "What is the ending sound in the word pig?" So basically, phoneme 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 teaches and builds phoneme awareness. In our new classroom teacher's kit, the Appendix has a Games and Activities section. Many of the games are devoted to developing phoneme 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 phoneme awareness.

Discover Intensive Phonics for Yourself couples phoneme awareness and phonics skills in a logical, sequential, multi-sensory presentation that insures success in every student.

Linda Eversole
Certified Trainer

HEC Advisory Council Spotlight: Maxine Offenbach

"The sheer joy exhibited in their faces when they decoded a word they had only heard before but had never seen, was pure magic, and infectious."

In this issue we would like to spotlight the newest member of our Advisory Council, Maxine Offenbach. Maxine is from Tampa, FL and is well recognized for her efforts with students from all walks of life, especially the mentally and physically challenged. We are excited to have her on-board and appreciate her willingness to serve as a council member.

"I began teaching Special Education in 1967, yet my first awareness of the difficulties of creating a literate population in our schools came when I read "Why Johnny Still Can't Read, A new look at the scandal of our schools" written in 1981 by Rudolph Flesch. In it, Flesch points out one of the reasons for the high illiteracy rate in the United States is the lack of phonics instruction in our schools. Then after reading "The Marva Collins Story" in which Mrs. Collins discussed teaching Shakespeare to inner city children, I was wondering what role phonics played in her success, since both she and Flesch had mentioned it. As a product of teacher training in the '60's I had never been exposed to the use of Intensive Phonics to teach reading even though one of my college professors was one of the leading reading experts in the country at that time. Then in 1983, I attended a reading conference organized by Charlotte Lockhart. I was there to understand why students, who weren't retarded, were not learning how to read.

"After a 40 minute presentation of Mrs. Lockhart's Discover Intensive Phonics For Yourself, I began to realize that I hadn't really learned the mechanics of teaching reading. The letter sounds are the keys that I had been missing and like a light bulb moment, it now all seemed so easy. I then sat through a second DIPFY (Discover Intensive Phonics for Yourself) session and was truly captivated. I purchased the program, returned to my Tampa public school classroom and experienced phenomenal success teaching my special education students to read. They were learning more and comprehending more in less time than ever before and with more accuracy than I thought possible.

"My program supervisor wanted to check the validity of the very positive results with other special students, so I attended a full day DIPFY training in Miami. Upon my return, a pilot project was established in which ten classes were chosen to be studied. I trained 5 teachers using Mrs. Lockhart's program, and 5 other classes without the DIPFY program were used as a control. Research was then independently gathered and compiled and the statistics were impressive. The five classes using the DIPFY program demonstrated a year and a half worth of growth in word attack skills in just six months, which is definitely not expected in retarded children.

"With that success I began conducting teacher training workshops with DIPFY throughout Florida and at reading conventions in Scottsdale, AZ, and San Francisco, CA. My success with DIPFY is highlighted in my letter of testimony to the United States Senate hearing on the Causes of Illiteracy and in the testimony that was given before the Florida State Appropriations Subcommittee on "Teaching Teachers To Teach Reading." "After my presentation to the committee and answering the question as to why, if our present "whole word" method is so successful in teaching reading, why are we having to teach remedial reading to college freshmen all over the country. When the Dean from the University of Florida College of Education was asked the same question, he was unable to adequately refute my arguments about the efficacy of teaching Intensive Phonics from the first grade. To paraphrase Dr. Jeanne Chall of Harvard, "We need to teach children to learn to read in first and second grade so that they can read to learn from third grade on." DIPFY was the Star.

"With 34 years in public education, I continued to teach reading to students of normal, gifted and retarded intelligence. I also continue my work with teachers on the wonders of Discover Intensive Phonics for Yourself.

"Below are comments taken from my testimony to the United States Senate:

"I have always taught those labeled as "hard to teach," the disturbed, the retarded and the learning disabled and have always experienced some success by year's end. This has changed so completely for me since the introduction of DIPFY. I can now see hourly successes. I am also aware of how I can affect a change in my student's spelling, writing and comprehension skills, which improve so dramatically by using this simple and foolproof approach. The students become independent, gain self respect and are "happy learners." Their learning skills are awakened and retained by the continuous use of the "listening method" at the chalkboard.

"I was concerned that my students would not be able to remember the 42 sounds, five phonetic rules, and two rules of decoding. To my amazement, this was easy for them and they were hungry for more. We started out slowly, to the point of "over learning" the sounds of the alphabet, but were able to move at a quickened pace. Their excitement at being able to sound out and use simple, clear cut decoding rules helped to encourage their self esteem. This enthusiasm at being able to see for themselves their own progress was only surpassed by my own and my supervisor's enthusiasm. The sheer joy exhibited in their faces when they decoded a word they have only heard before but had never seen, was pure magic, and infectious. New words became precious stepping-stones. They wanted to do more and more and became self motivated."

NCLB

Are you leaving any students behind?

Our individualized products, Discover Intensive Phonics for Yourself and Reading Horizons, comprise the perfect reading solution for students of all ages who struggle with reading. We all recognize the significant role that NCLB plays for educators in the United States. We have decided to devote a small section of our newsletter to information we receive in regards to NCLB.

The following is an excerpt from the School Reform News, June 2003 edition:

In the latest NAEP scores for reading, only the results for fourth graders have been released. These show little change from earlier scores or achievement levels. It only showed slight improvement in reading scores over the three decades from 1971 to 1999. In the 1998 NAEP reading assessment, proficient level in grades 4, 8, and 12 were only 31,33, and 40 percent respectively. In other words, approximately two-thirds of U.S. students cannot read proficiently. And three quarters of U.S. students cannot write proficiently.

"In the initial stages of reading development, learning phoneme awareness and phonics skills and practicing these skills with texts is critical. Children must also acquire fluency and automaticity in decoding and word recognition. Consider that a reader has only so much attention and memory capacity. If beginning readers read the words in a laborious, inefficient manner, they cannot remember what they read, much less relate the ideas to their background knowledge. Thus, the ultimate goal of reading instruction for children to understand and enjoy what they read may not be achieved."

— G. Reid Lyon — Why Reading is a Natural Process
Chief of the Child Development and Behavior Branch of the NICHD