HEC Reading Horizons e-Newsletter

Volume 9, Issue 2
Spring 2008

Inside This Issue:

• Comprehension and Fluency Depend on Strong Decoding Skills
• Discover Intensive Phonics Correlates with Core Reading Programs
• The Impact of Experiencing Workshops
• Success Story: Deon Goshorn
• Skill Review: Decoding Skills #1 and #2
• ESL Trail

Comprehension and Fluency Depend on Strong Decoding Skills

I think we all agree that the desired outcome of reading is comprehension. Many educators feel that a lack of sufficient comprehension strategies is a significant contributor to poor reading skills. On the other hand, much attention and many articles have recently focused on the need for fluency and the idea that, rather than comprehension strategies alone, some students simply lack sufficient fluency to achieve desired comprehension.

Timothy Rasinski of Kent State University says, "Fluency is the ability to read the words on the printed page accurately, effortlessly, or automatically so that readers can preserve their limited cognitive resources for the more important task in reading – comprehension. Fluency is important because it is the gateway to comprehension." This idea was confirmed in a study by Duke, Pressley, and Hilden (2004). Their research estimated that 75 to 90 percent of students with comprehension difficulties had reading fluency problems that were a significant cause of their comprehension problems. They concluded that fluency can and should be taught, even into the adolescent grades – especially for struggling readers.

However, most students who struggle with fluency and comprehension need to go one step farther. Fluency can be demonstrated only when the student has very little work to do at the word level. They no longer struggle with decoding words and are able to focus their attention on the meaning of the text. Therefore, if we focus only on fluency and comprehension when the underlying problem is one of word recognition, fluency and comprehension will still lag behind! Decoding skills, including phonemic awareness and phonics, must precede fluency! Readers must develop their decoding skills to the point that decoding occurs effortlessly.

The theory of automaticity asserts that there is a limited amount of attention that can be applied to the task of reading. The task of reading requires readers to do two critical tasks at once: Readers need to simultaneously (1) decode the words they are reading while, at the same time, (2) comprehend the text (LaBerge & Samuels). When decoding develops into an automatic process, minimal attention is required to decode the words, thereby freeing attention for making meaning of text (Griffith & Rasinski, 2004). Readers must learn to process words so automatically and effortlessly that they have the mental time and capacity left to construct and reflect on meaning and message.

Discover Intensive Phonics provides an easy way for students to acquire these all-important decoding strategies. Instruction involves students in such a way that learning takes place rapidly. It allows students to fully develop fast, effective decoding skills and phonemic awareness. Students who struggle with fluency and/or comprehension will benefit significantly from the intervention targeted at word-reading strategies provided by the Discover Intensive Phonics program.

Discover Intensive Phonics Correlates with Core Reading Programs

Although many schools across the country have mandated the use of basal programs as their mode of teaching reading, most basal programs fail to cover phonic instruction adequately. The basic phonic instruction in almost all basal programs is taught in random order rather than in a solid sequence. Teachers express frustration at not being able to give their students a more firm foundation for reading. Many basal programs cover some, or even most, of the basic phonic instruction, but they lack the structure and depth of learning needed by many beginning and all struggling students.

Discover Intensive Phonics provides the explicit, sequential phonics foundation that is missing in basal reading programs. Letter/sound associations and word formation are taught using multi-sensory, direct instruction, followed by remarkably effective instruction in word patterns. The program progresses through teaching the remaining 42 Sounds of the Alphabet and culminates with syllabication and word analysis.

Over the past several years, teachers have asked how they can effectively implement Discover Intensive Phonics into their basal programs. We are happy to report that HEC Reading Horizons has recently prepared correlations for teaching Discover Intensive Phonics with the following basal programs: Harcourt Trophies, Scott Foresman-Reading Street, and Open Court. HEC reviewed the phonics instruction in each basal program, compared it with the Discover Intensive Phonics instruction, and prepared a basic guide showing the areas in which the same skills were presented. This correlation allows teachers to teach phonic skills using the structure and sequence of Discover Intensive Phonics and still take advantage of the activities and stories in their basal program that reinforce those skills.

HEC Reading Horizons Basal Implementation Guides were created to help teachers take the guesswork out of how to use the Discover Intensive Phonics method with their basal program. These guides will become important as teachers begin to realize how easy it is to use Discover Intensive Phonics with any basal program. Discover Intensive Phonics is the needed foundation for every student as they learn to read or learn English as a new language.

Click here to view the implementation guides

The Impact of Experiencing Workshops

Reading Horizons material and software are very explicit and teacher friendly, but nothing can replace the empowerment and confidence that comes from receiving detailed instruction from one of our workshops.

As teachers, we know that there is nothing worse than standing up in front of a classroom full of students, trying to teach something with which we are not completely confident. It feels a little like standing in front of a firing squad or being thrown to the wolves! Reading Horizons material and software are very explicit and teacher friendly, but nothing can replace the empowerment and confidence that comes from receiving detailed instruction from one of our workshops.

Our workshops, either one day or two, take you through the methodology, the materials, the software, the games, and supplements and give you the opportunity to see a lesson modeled. As trainers, we know how important it is for you as teachers to have the chance to ask questions, see examples, and get insight from other teachers attending the workshop. We are currently conducting trainings for several of the Job Corps across the nation. Every teacher I have trained, from the new to well seasoned, has been surprised by new concepts that they were unaware of, such as the C-K rule and the decoding skills that give you specific guidelines for breaking words into syllables. One teacher stated, "I now know how to explain rules and exceptions visually, multimodalities and kinesthetic aspects." We have a lot of fun, and we all leave knowing more and feeling more confident about the program and how to use it in our classrooms.

As teachers, we know that students learn best by good modeling, multi-sensory instruction, and hands-on experience with the material. Teachers are no different from their students. Our workshops present the material through modeling, multi-sensory instruction, and hands-on learning to make sure you really know how to use the materials. I taught a couple of wonderful women at the Hawaii Job Corps. One was 79 years old and one of the most amazing teachers I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. She had been trained in several methods over the years, but she expressed how much she "particularly appreciated the hands-on aspects, the board exercises, and work at the computer with specific participation." I love meeting these wonderful teachers and having the opportunity to give them the confidence to empower themselves and their students.

-Shantell Berrett

Success Story: Deon Goshorn

"It makes me feel good to know that teachers are happy, children are happy, and we’re having success."

"As a principal," states Deon Goshorn, "it makes me feel good to know that teachers are happy, children are happy, and we’re having success."

Goshorn, principal at Iron Springs Elementary School in Cedar City, Utah, does not attribute all of this what would seem to be an epidemic of happiness to some kind of chemical in the food in Cedar City nor to any kind of brainwashing. A reading program called Discover Intensive Phonics for Yourself (DIP), it seems, is successfully aiding students at the school in their efforts to learn to read and write well.

"The teachers enjoy teaching it," she says. "I don’t even remember having a teacher say that they didn’t enjoy teaching it. It’s a good program, and, immediately, they see that it’s doing what they want to have happen in their classroom. It is teaching the skills those children need to have."

"The other most important thing to me is the children like it," Goshorn continues. "(To me), it’s got to be enjoyable to teach, and it’s got to be enjoyable to learn, but it also has to be successful. And we are seeing success. Children are (learning) how to decode their words better or gain fluency because of knowing how to decode faster. So, children are doing better with that program, and we’re seeing that success."

Word has gotten out, it seems, about what is going on at Iron Springs. The administrators, teachers, and students aren’t the only ones who are pleased with the program.

"Parents are grateful we’re teaching phonics," she proclaims. "Many parents will say (to me), ‘Finally the schools are teaching phonics.’ I am hearing from teachers in other districts and from other schools who came and want to have the same program to the point that, I think, every school in our district now (teaches) with Discover Intensive Phonics. They really enjoy doing the phonics program."

One of the challenges for the more than 500 students at Iron Springs, Goshorn says, is that the school has experienced 14 percent growth and a mobility rate of 30 percent, which means that children are always coming and going. Nevertheless, the administrators and teachers are channeling their efforts to keep track of each individual.

"Literacy, in an elementary school, is everyone’s business," she mentions. "Everybody here is involved in literacy, down to custodians. … Every teacher is a part of the team. We have the resource teacher. Instead of just doing special ed., our resource teacher is also fully involved in what we’re doing every day in the classroom and looking for interventions for children who are not being successful. … We have the reading specialist, who coordinates that effort with the resource teacher. And then our special educator, who works with children who are more disabled, is also part of the team."

"The role of collaboration is to make sure every child’s needs are met – that not one child slips through the cracks," Goshorn says. "And we mostly talk about children at-risk, or children who are not being successful in the classroom in Tier I. It’s so easy for two or three weeks to go by, and a teacher just doesn’t realize that that much time has gone by, and this child is slipping. But when we talk about it every single week, those children don’t have a chance to slip very far before we’re picking up on it and taking care of their needs."

Skill Review: Decoding Skills #1 and #2

A skillful reader's ability to read long words fluently depends on his or her ability to break words into syllables. The two decoding skills allow students to break words of any length into syllables so they can apply the Five Phonetic Skills to determine the word's pronunciation. The two decoding skills are:

• If there is only one guardian consonant following the vowel, that consonant will move on to the next syllable.
• When a vowel is followed by two guardian consonants, the consonants will split. The first consonant will stay in the first syllable, and the second consonant will move on the next syllable.

These skills are gradually internalized and become automatic, resulting in greater reading speed and fluency.

ESL Trail

Visit ESL Trail, a Web site full of useful information for teaching ESL students. Here is an excerpt:

"While there are many exceptions to the rules of syllable stress in English, some helpful guidelines exist that can be used to predict stress. Use the following guidelines to teach your students how to predict stress as you see fit. Ensure that your students understand the concept of syllables prior to teaching word stress to facilitate the teaching of these principles. Also, it may be necessary to explicitly teach your students what word stress is, emphasizing that every word that is two or more syllables contains one syllable that is stressed higher in pitch, longer, and louder than the other syllable(s) in the word. This is referred to as primary stress. The syllable that receives the second-most stress is referred to as secondary stress. Although secondary stress could also be acknowledged when teaching your students word stress predictability, the information contained in this document refers only to primary stress."

To view more helpful hints, go to ESLTrail.com.