Volume 6, Issue 3
The use of Discover Intensive Phonics for teaching secondary and adult English as a Second Language students has increased significantly over the past few years. It recently became apparent that additional materials specifically designed for these students would be a beneficial resource.
Teaching Discover Intensive Phonics to English language learners involves teaching English phonology in a much more explicit way than is usually the case in ESL, but educators who have done so have realized many benefits:
Discover Intensive Phonics does not claim to be an ESL course, but it is highly effective in helping ESL students sort out individual sounds, correctly pronounce and blend the sounds of English, understand the patterns of English words (resulting in good reading and spelling skills), improve pronunciation, experience accent reduction, and increase English vocabulary.
The Discover Intensive Phonics course in and of itself accomplishes all these goals, but in order to provide a non- English speaker with extra practice and reinforcement of skills, we developed an ESL workbook that is correlated lesson-for-lesson with Discover Intensive Phonics course instruction. We were privileged to receive valuable advice and assistance from Maryruth Farnsworth, Director of International TESOL Internships at Brigham Young University. We’re indebted to her for the direction she offered and for her valuable editing skills.
Special ESL icons in the teacher’s manual provide additional help and suggestions and refer to corresponding lessons in the workbook.
The new full-color ESL Workbook is a consumable item—the only consumable item in the course—and it provides a personal tool for each student, enabling studemts to increase their ability to read, write and spell in English. Discover the Discover Intensive Phonics ESL Workbook for your students!
“For the past 2 years I used the Open Court series and all 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 method) and prove the words. When there was more than one spelling for a particular phonic sound (i.e. long u = u; u_e; 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 program into the Open Court and it worked fine. I have done this over the years with Scribbner, Lippincott, and Harcourt Brace reading series.”
Joan Parrish Idaho Falls, ID
“After 37 years of teaching, I know how important it is to have the child working at the chalkboard so I can tell if a child can really hear the sound we are working on. I can tell if the child has any serious problems with reversals and if he/she does, it can be corrected right then and there. There are rules which can be embedded in the students’ minds for the rest of their lives. There is little cost for the Discover Intensive Phonics program as it is done on the chalkboard, thus no workbooks or dittoes are needed.
“I have found that when teaching Discover Intensive Phonics there are many other aspects of language arts that can be incorporated. We talk about meanings of words we are writing. It is a perfect chance to make sure letters are made correctly and we have found that writing is much improved. The use of capital letters and punctuation is also included. The daily review and drills provide for even the slow learner. Everything is planned out with very little teacher preparation.”
Sharon Wacaser Paris, Illinois
When Charlene Koplin first heard about Reading Horizons, she never guessed she would soon be praising it as the most effective reading program she’d ever used. The fact that Reading Horizons was advertised as a phonics program did not spark her interest. “I thought that sounded really limited,” Koplin says, “and I needed to do a lot more with my students. But I went to the training, and . . . it grabbed me. It was really fun!”
A special education English teacher at Granite High School in Salt Lake City, Utah, Koplin has been teaching for over 23 years. Her students’ reading abilities have ranged from elementary school levels to reading at grade level but with very poor writing skills. When she fi rst implemented Reading Horizons in her classroom, Koplin’s goal was to see each student’s skills increase by one grade level in a year, and she wasn’t convinced it would happen. Then came a providential accident.
“We had a computer failure,” Koplin recalls, “so I had to give them the pre-test again, and I was just sick. I thought, ‘This is going to invalidate my data.’” Koplin’s students had been using Reading Horizons for only four weeks when she readministered the pre-test, and she was amazed to discover that there had already been two to three years’ progress in that short amount of time. “I thought, ‘No, there is no way this is really happening.’ But it happened over and over and over with these students. I just couldn’t believe it. [The students] got really charged.”
Summer came, and Koplin became nervous. She wasn’t sure her students would retain their new skills over the summer break. When the students returned to school in the fall, Koplin administered the pre-test once again. To her surprise, many of the students had improved over the summer. Why? Because they were reading. “One of my students said he picked up a book for the fi rst time and read,” Koplin says. Other students bought magazines and read all summer. Koplin attributes this to the confi dence her students had gained as their reading and writing skills improved.
Since then, Koplin has worked with many more students who have experienced phenomenal grade level gains using the Reading Horizons program. One of Koplin’s students struggled with severe dyslexia, and as a result, his reading and writing skills had not progressed beyond the second grade level. “He worked so hard at this,” Koplin relates, “and I thought, ‘I’m afraid to promise him [success].’ But he is reading at eighth grade level now. [His] written language is up to fi fth grade, which is a miracle.” Another of Koplin’s students decoded words on an eleventh grade level, but wrote on a second grade level. Koplin offered Reading Horizons to him as a program to improve his spelling. Now, not only has his writing ability gone up to a seventh grade level, his reading fluency has also greatly improved. A third student, whose native language is Spanish, began using Reading Horizons to learn English. Her oral language has improved, and her reading level has doubled. Reading Horizons has helped her spelling as well. “I feel really fortunate to have this program at our school, [and] to have a principal who would invest in us,” Koplin says. “We’re now implementing [the Reading Horizons program] in our adult community school.”
Koplin sees the effects Reading Horizons has had on her students every day. “To have a student [who] is at a kindergarten level as a junior [in high school] be able to read now at the fi fth grade level,” she says, “to hear [students] say they want to go to college, and . . . have the confidence now that they can, you can’t put a value on that.”
If you are interested in registering for a workshop in Utah, you can do so online. Just visit our website and choose "Products and Services," then "Professional Development." Then select the training and date you'd like to attend. The workshops will be held at the University of Utah Reading Clinic.
* To be conducted at our offices in North Salt Lake
Our Web site is evolving . . . we are making some great changes that will make our Web site easier to navigate! We hope you will visit it on a regular basis to watch the evolution and get infromation. Here are just a few of the things you can fi nd on our Web site:
For the first time in its history, Reading Horizons recently printed and mailed thousands of catalogs to all of our contacts and customers, making it easier to see the big picture of all our company has to offer. If you did not receive a catalog, or need more to share with associates, please call us at 800-333-0054. We will be happy to send a catalog to you! Included in the catalog is a new demo CD that has been reworked to be more user-friendly and specific. It is a great way to fi nd out more about the Discover Intensive Phonics and Reading Horizons programs and how they can be of benefit to beginning or struggling readers.
In an exciting new partnership, Reading Horizons has collaborated with the University of Utah Reading Clinic (UURC) to offer specialized workshops for educators interested in developing more effective school and tutorial phonics instruction. These workshops, entitled “Discover Intensive Phonics (DIP),” focus on decoding the syllable structure of the English language and how this knowledge can help struggling readers become more successful at identifying, spelling and reading words.
The open enrollment Discover Intensive Phonics Workshops, which take place at the UURC’s Murray, Utah location, are fun and engaging and include systematic, hands-on instruction that mimics actual classroom instruction. Discover Intensive Phonics is based on Orton-Gillingham principles of instruction, which were developed specifi cally for students with severe reading diffi culties (e.g., dyslexia) and have been demonstrated to be highly effective in helping students to overcome these seeming roadblocks. Discover Intensive Phonics’ unique marking system, word attack skills and multi-sensory techniques help students recognize basic English syllable patterns when they encounter unfamiliar words in reading and spelling.
In the two-day workshop, an overview of the Discover Intensive Phonics method is presented. The overview starts with basic letter-sound connections and ends with the decoding of multisyllabic words.
Undergraduate and graduate university credit is available for all UURC workshops and practica. For more information or to register for a Discover Intensive Phonics workshop, please visit the UURC website at http://www.ed.utah.edu/uurc/ or call 801-265-3951.
The University of Utah Reading Clinic (UURC) 5282 South 320 West Suite D110, Office 112 Murray, Utah 84107 Phone: (801) 265-3951 Fax: (801) 265-3620 Email: uurc@ed.utah.edu Website: http://www.ed.utah.edu/uurc/ Director: Dr. Kathleen J. Brown