Reading Program

correction - I meant K-6.

I found some good reviews of major reading programs on the site I will list below. I will tell you in advance that Open Court came out on top. But are you meaning a comprehensive reading program or just a decoding program? There are some good decoding programs like Phono-graphix that aren’t by major textbook publishers, but you’d have to piece together the rest of the reading program.

Go to the section that says “Adopting a Reading Series?”

http://www.auburn.edu/~murraba/

Janis

Thanks Janis! I am looking for a comprehensive program.

I am a private tutor that works with ld kids K-6. My specialty is reading after remediation. I could not find any program that was really comprehensive for the ld child that could be used as a tutoring tool. Every program I looked at was either too simple with many areas left out, or words followed no patterns. Because of this I wrote my own Comprehensive Reading Program. It has had great success, and is being used in a resource class as a beta. It includes words by families (95 lessons), sight words, patterning, impress spelling, word find endings, vocabulary, fill-ins, sentence reading practice, sentence writing, multiple syllable words with sentence reading practice, and crosswords for multiple syllable word definitions. Another program I wrote teaches the sounds of the letters and the beginning blend sounds. If you are interested, I can send additional information to you.

In Diane McGuiness’ new book, Growing a Reader From Birth (chapter 5 is excellent by the way), she is enthusiastic about a British program called Jolly Phonics. Go to www.jollylearning.co.uk/ It shares the same underlying assumptions as PhonoGraphix but has better materials for teachers.

[quote=”Joan”]I . Because of this I wrote my own Comprehensive Reading Program. It has had great success, and is being used in a resource class as a beta. It includes words by families (95 lessons), sight words, patterning, impress spelling, word find endings, vocabulary, fill-ins, sentence reading practice, sentence writing, multiple syllable words with sentence reading practice, and crosswords for multiple syllable word definitions. Another program I wrote teaches the sounds of the letters and the beginning blend sounds. If you are interested, I can send additional information to you.[/quote]

I am interested. I am homeschooling my son who is having some difficulty reading and writing. How can I contact you? My email address is [email protected] Thanks, Bernadette

I think this person is looking for a program for her whole school district.
They are not likely to go with something that is not a major publisher. In that case my vote is for “Open Court”.

On your own comprehensive program you might rethink “word families”. Generally with some exceptions (ie “all” which the OG programs teach as a “unit”) these are not a good way of teaching reading. Take a look at the inexpensive book “Reading Reflex” as to the current science on reading.
But a short explanation would be that say you teach “ow” as in how, now, cow— what happens when the “ow” is pronounced “oe”, the kid will not be flexible to handle that kind of switch. A letter does not *equal* a phoneme as in the letter “a” says the “a” in “cat”, a letter (or group of them) is a *representation* of a phoneme. Maybe this sounds like just semantics but this is an important consideration.

Back in my youth (300 or so years ago) I was doing lots of this, word shape, word families, etc. I cringe on some of this.
Take a look also at the page that Janis suggested, and there is a bit more on the above.

—des

Des, what would be your reply if they would consider something other than a major company? What would be the best program out there for classroom use?

If they want a comprehensive program??
Maybe Sopris West (not exactly a tiny company— but not one of the biggies either) “Language!” My understanding is this is an OG based program which includes everything, however, not sure if non-trained people can use it effectively or if it is good for all kids including non-disabled ones. I suppose Janis would be better at that one as she has actually used it.

Another possibility is EPS’ (or at least you get it there) series Get Ready for the Code; Explode the Code, and Beyond the Code. The first books are phonemic awareness; and then phonics and then Beyond the Code deals with comprehension, etc. Not sure how comprehensive this is.

Or they could split the whole thing up say using Phonographics; Rewards (Sopris West), Great Leaps for fluency (though Rewards deals with fluency) and something else for comprehension (??).

BTW, have also heard good things on Jolly Phonics but think that is phonics only.

—des

I am a teacher in a British school and I use Jolly Phonics. I have been using it since January and the results have been remarkable. I also know of other people who are using it with great success. The Jolly Phonics handbook costs around 20 pound sterling and has everything you need in it. There are also additional materials available if you want to add to this, but they are not necessary.

I would recommend that you read the postings in the Reading Reform Foundation www.rrf.org.uk/index.htm It is a UK site, very similar to this with an excellent forum.

A good book to read is Why Schoolchildren Can’t Read by Bonnie MacMillain.

I don’t know what info is already on this sight, as I haven’t had time to read it but I would like to say that it is important to avoid children learning words by sight as they rely on this method rather than using segmenting/blending to read/spell. Children with good memories appear to be reading well because they can remember a large sight vocabulary, but they eventually become stuck because they do not have phonic strategies to enable them to read. I would truly recommend having a look at the above forum. There are also links to research that may be of help.

If you have trouble with the above link, try again later, as I think their site is temporarily down.

The site is still down, however we have had much discussion about this here as well. Esp. with a reading fad going around the US called Whole Language. Dont’ know if this has hit the other side of the pond yet, but basically it encourages kids to guess on words and tells us that reading is natural, like speech.

Most of us here are fairly educated on why that all is not the case.

I have never seen Jolly Phonics but it sounds like a great program for the younger set.

—des

Des, there has been much debate here in the Uk too about whole language reading. From the research it seems that this approach is the cause of so many children failing to learn to read. They need a phonics, whole-through-the-word approach in order to have the necessary skills to read unknown words.

There are some excellent discussions going on about the whole reading debate on the UK sites if you are interested. Are there any similar discussions going on elsewhere that you know about?

Sorry to hear Whole Language crossed the pond!!
Yes, I think about 44% of the kids exposed to it will fail.

—des

Whole language came from across the pond.

What percentage will succeed or fail with another approach? Do you know?

How do you define fail?

If you are using the NAEP statistics, be aware that this test is administered first in 4th grade. This test is not about phonics, it is about comprehension.

While I do believe there is a segment of population that must have a very sequential approach to decoding skills, etc, I do not believe this is the case for all. I fear we are using statistics inappropriately and sometimes to “prove” things they never proved.

I don’t believe the success/failure rate is as different between programs as you may suggest it is. Perhaps this is due to the fact that 49% of the popultion ALWAYS falls below the 50th percentile, by definition. So, if you set a standard to represent what, in theory, the average student at the 50th percentile or better will or should accomplish (mind you, this is all very theoretical), then is it any wonder, depending upon where you arbitrarily place your bar, that many will fail to achieve this standard? Indeed, a respectible percentage will surely fail this standard. Now, whether this is 35%, 38% or 44%………….tests are like apples and oranges oftentimes.

By the way, this testing is not just about decoding words, it is about APPLYING THINKING SKILLS to print. a very concrete thinker will not do as well as a more advanced thinker. Phonics programs don’t teach this.

Do we realize what we are saying when we toss statistics around?

Well Anitya, I believed that that we were mostly of one mind on Whole language in this forum. Perhaps I am wrong here. If I were not wrong, I would need to be MUCH more careful re the statistics that I use. Naturally we could argue that whole language combined with other things is not a bad thing, I certainly do not.

Since I assumed (wrongly I guess) that that we were mostly NOT whole language advocates, then I wasn’t going to go into so much trouble.

My comments to guest from across the pond were suggesting that majority of us (at least) were not whole language proponents.

Take a look at the more serious research by B. Foorman if you really want the nos.

—des

Gosh I mean that I don’t think it is bad to mix whole language and other stuff.

—des

As far as mixing, my personal opinion is that “whole-language” does a lot of things in the wrong order and at the wrong time. Many (although not all) of the activities are very good and have been used by good teachers for many years. The problem is that it works better to teach and learn a skill before you insist on students using it. For example, reading children’s literature in the class — great idea. Definitely kids should not be kept on a strict regime of only one textbook series. But trying to teach the first steps of reading from randomly-chosen library books, as is done here — no way, a recipe for disaster.

As far as success or failure, you have to go to large statistical studies and look at averages over large groups. Success would be defined as the average of the large group being fiftieth percentile or hopefully better, and failure as the average for a large group being measurably below fiftieth percentile.
Those studies have been done — see the report of the National Reading Panel and go into the bibliography for detail — and the recommendation is absolutely clear — systematic synthetic phonics in every classroom, guided oral reading for fluency, and a *variety* of comprehension activities. It is in that variety of comprehension activities that many “whole-language” ideas are good. (Not the guessing or predicting theories, which have been repeatedly disproved.) Yes, systematic phonics should be in every classroom, and no, phonics is not the whole subject of reading, just the foundation skill which has to be fleshed out with lots of real reading.

As far as how many kids fail, that depends on where you set the line that you define as failure. But however you set it, since the spread of scores in “whole-language” is lower than the spread of scores in a class that teaches a systematic program, yes, more kids do fail.

You make a good point on the order of skills. I have heard of people mixing systematic phonics with whole language, but don’t know how they are doing it. I suppose that if they first really do teach the kids to sound out words and blend then of course you should mix in as much real literature as possible. But I don’t know that there is anything *new* about that.

I think the problem comes when you try to teach phonics with regular literature. I can’t quite imagine great literature of all say CVC words. (There are some teach me to read books by Dr. Seuss but compared to his “real books” they are pretty lame.) Then there are the guiding reading type books.

I agree with Virginia that the proof is out there.

Sure some kids will read if you held them upside down and flashed cards at them (stay tuned “the reading upside down method” :-)). I think there is enough proof out there that reading is NOT natural like speech. Since it isn’t natural you have to teach it even to non-disabled learners. To have kids guess at words isn’t teaching.

—des

Back to the original topic, a less know program I’d comsider for a complete language arts program is an adaptation of the Spalding program. It has detailed lesson plans and would be easier to use than Spalding. I doubt you’d get a whole system to adopt it, but it is very good from what I hear. It is from the Riggs Institute.

http://www.riggsinst.org/index.shtml

I have the Phonics Handbook from Jolly Phonics, and I’d love to use it if I could find a 5 year old!

Janis

des, it’s guest here from across the pond. The forum I mentioned is up and running again. There is a new posting on there about the ‘regularity’ of English. We are lead to believe that the English language is not easy to learn because of it’s irregularities, however, I was surprised to learn that it is in fact over 98% regular. This means if children are taught by using a sound synthetic phonics basis, they will be able to read most irregular new words by using the phonics skills learned. If children use ‘whole language’ methods they are relying on their memory of sight words and guessing.

We know that we have to rely on more than just phonics, however, only those who know how to crack the alphabet code will be able to read and spell.

By the way, I have nothing to do with the site that I recommend, it is just an excellent site run by professionals like yourself. They have a new newsletter which can be downloaded. There are references to recent research which shows without doubt the harm we are doing to children by teaching whole word methods. www.rrf.org.uk/index.htm

Hadn’t you heard? Often, reading pro blems are rooted in sensory integration struggles. By holding the chlid upside down and flashing cards at them, their brains activate on the reverse side and dominance issues are thus compensated for by equivalent synapse resonation. I’ve got the research here somewhere…. :lol: :lol: :lol:

Sue, is this a wind-up? I can’t imagine what you mean.