he latest findings by the Nation’s Report Card show that 63% of children across the nation cannot read proficiently at grade level by fourth grade.  That is more than half the students across the nation.  At eighth grade, 64% cannot read proficiently at grade level and even by 12th grade 63% cannot read proficiently at grade level when they graduate from high school (Nation’s Report Card 2017 scores).
 
Why can’t we teach these students to read?  Well, we can.  The problem is that we are using teaching methods in the classroom that have been proven not to work effectively for all students.  Research shows that the method you use to teach a student to read can determine whether the student succeeds and learns to read or fails and does not learn to read.  (Chronis-Tuscano et al., 2015).
 
Research proves that whole language, phonics—even systematic phonics, and balanced literacy are failed teaching methods.  Yes, I know, some children do learn to read using phonics and some even learn to read under whole language, but, if over half of the students across the nation are not learning to read proficiently at their grade level, then something is wrong.  We need a new teaching method.  As neuroimaging research has proven:  

Whole language doesn’t work. 

• Louisa Moates says that the problem with whole language is that it doesn’t work.
•  Yoncheva, Wise, & McCandliss (2015) show that whole language does not teach children to sound out words—decoding and encoding are essential for effective reading. 

Phonics does not work for many students, especially struggling students.

• Jeanne Sternlicht Chall (1967) stated that phonics leaves many students failing.
•  Sebastian P. Suggate’s 2016 study showed that phonics was not as effective as phonemic awareness teaching techniques.
•  National Reading Panel (2000) stated that even systematic phonics wasn’t effective with “low-achieving readers in 2nd through 6th grade.

 
Balanced literacy doesn’t work, either.

• Louisa Moates says that balanced literacy is simply a failed idea.
• Merely combining whole language and phonics together as balanced literacy does not correct the problems of either teaching method.  As Dr. Sally Shaywitz (see Overcoming Dyslexia, 2003) explains, “Children do not learn to read by memorizing a word list.  Most children, especially those who struggle in reading, do not learn to read by memorizing phonics rules” (p. 78). 

   
Why do these teaching methods not work? 
 
1. “Until recently, almost everyone thought that we store words by having some type of visual image of every word we know….  Many teaching approaches presume this…. [both whole language and phonics make this assumption]. We assume that if students see the words enough, they will learn them. This is not true…. I believe this assumption that we store words based on visual memory is a major reason why we have widespread reading difficulties in our country." (David Kilpatrick in Equipped for Reading Success, pp. 29-39).
 
2. “In order to read, a child must ‘enter the language system;’ this means that the child must activate and use the brain circuits that are already in place for oral language…. “ (Shaywitz, Overcoming Dyslexia, 2003, pp. 59-68).
 
3. “The letters of our printed language are supposed to represent the sounds of our spoken language…. We use our oral-linguistic filing system as the basis for word recognition…. orthographic mapping will only occur if the student has adequate phonemic awareness/analysis. If he cannot pull apart the sounds in words, he cannot align those sounds to the order of the letters…. Mapping must not be confused with phonics. Mapping and phonics differ in some very important ways….”(David Kilpatrick in Equipped for Reading Success, pp. 29-39).

What teaching methods do work?
 
We do have teachings methods that have been researched, tested, and proven to work for all students.  Researchers are beginning to develop teaching methods based on the oral language system.  One such approach being used with dyslexic students is the Davis Program. 
 
I use vowel clustering in all of my reading programs.  Vowel clustering has been proven to work with all ages, with students who have failed for multiple years, and even for students from low socio-economic neighborhoods.  (Clanton Harpine & Reid, 2009). Vowel clustering (See my book After-School Programming for At-Risk Students Clanton Harpine, 2013) teaches students to decode or break words down into individual letter sounds and then to encode or reassemble those sounds back into pronounceable words.  Vowel clustering also teaches students to build new words from a common letter sound.  There are no rules to memorize and students are never allowed to guess at a word. My vowel clustering method also teaches spelling, handwriting, oral reading fluency, comprehension, and story writing
 
Vowel clustering works with the brain and helps students relate letter sounds to their oral language system.  Vowel clustering uses visual, auditory, and hands-on teaching techniques.    Vowel clustering teaches students to match consonant and vowel sounds with their corresponding letter symbols.  This emphasizes the oral letter-sound relationship.  Remember, we are training the brain, building “pathways” in the brain.  When these neural “pathways” are developed, reading can take less than half a second.   Therefore, it is important to organize how we teach so students can organize how they learn. We want to work with the brain, not against it. Vowel clustering is a teaching approach that presents a visual and oral picture that struggling students can immediately identify with.  Visually, students match words by how they sound not by how they are spelled.  This teaches children that words can be pronounced one way but spelled another.  This visual-auditory learning technique allows students to both see and hear letter sounds (phonemes).  Vowel clustering also teaches handwriting because it is very important for students to write words correctly as they practice reading, spelling, and matching written letters to oral sounds. 
 
All of my reading programs teach vowel clustering.  Vowel clustering has been tested and proven to work with struggling, at-risk, and failing students.  A student who failed for nine years using balanced literacy and phonics, learned to read in 3 ½ years using vowel clustering.  I have even had struggling students move up four grade levels in one year using vowel clustering.  These were students who had failed multiple years in schools that taught whole language, balanced literacy, and phonics.  So yes, we can teach students to read, but to do so, we must change the methods that we use to teach reading. (see my 2019 book, After-School Programming and Intrinsic Motivation, hitting the book shelves in a couple weeks).     

We know that students who struggle in reading often have a motivation problem.  No, I am not saying that students struggling in reading are lazy.  What I am saying is that students who struggle to learn to read or have failed in reading for multiple years have developed what Dr. Kerry Hempenstall calls “self-blame.”
 
Think about it.  If you are struggling to learn to read, trying, feeling totally confused, and still failing—year after year, would you continue to work as hard as you possibly can even though you know that you are going to fail?  The answer for most of us is no.  Unfortunately, the same is true for students who are returning to school this fall still struggling to learn to read.  For this reason, all of my reading programs teach vowel clustering and intrinsic (internal) motivation (see my 2019 book After-School Programming and Intrinsic Motivation.     

We cannot continue to ignore reading failure:

• Reading failure is an education problem because it leads to academic failure and increases the number of students dropping out of school before graduation.  The Nation’s Report Card states that 63% of students tested cannot read proficiently at the fourth grade level (see my post of 1/2/2018).   It has been estimated that two thirds or approximately 6.6 million students are at high risk for dropping out of school before graduation because of reading failure.  Reading failure is a major educational problem but one that we could solve—if we’d only change how we teach reading. 

 

• Reading failure is a mental health problem because reading failure increases the risk of mental illness—anxiety, anger, depression, and even suicide.  Approximately 80% of teens diagnosed with depression have also been diagnosed with reading failure.  Children and teens are very vulnerable to feeling different than their peers.  The fear of criticism from peers, teachers, or parents over reading failure, sometimes causes students to feel inferior, even ostracized. 

 
As Morgan, Farkas, & Wu (2012) stated:  “poor readers in third grade were about twice as likely to consider themselves as angry, distractible, sad, lonely, and unpopular in fifth grade as those who had not been poor readers in third grade. Being poorly skilled in mathematics increased children’s risk of feeling sad or lonely but not of feeling angry, distractible, or unpopular. The results provide additional empirical evidence that reading failure contributes to generalized socioemotional maladjustment in young children.” (p. 360)  
 
Such feelings of inferiority can lead to anxiety and/or anger. Reading failure has been documented to show an increase in unacceptable behavior, bullying, and violence. 

• Reading failure is a criminal justice problem because 60% of adult prison inmates in the U. S. cannot read or write; 75% of these inmates dropped out of school before graduation.  About 85% of juveniles going through the courts are illiterate and cannot read or write. (National Center for Adult Literacy 2007).    

 

• As Michael Brunner (1993) of the Department of Justice explains, “The link between academic failure and delinquency, violence, and crime is welded to reading failure.”   

We can solve each of these problems by changing how we teach reading in the classroom and in after-school programs.  Poverty does not cause reading failure.  Incorrect teaching methods cause reading failure.  Neuroimaging research proves that, if we change how we teach reading, even children who have previously failed can be taught to read.  Neuroimaging research shows that intensive training in phonemes (letter sounds) changes the “brain and the way it functions.” This change allows even struggling at-risk students to make significant improvement in reading (Meyler, Keller, Cherkassky, Gabrieli, & Just, 2008).  
 
Vowel clustering  teaches students to decode or break words down into letter sounds and then to encode or reassemble those sounds back into pronounceable words.  Vowel clustering does not stop at simply decoding and encoding.  Vowel clustering also teaches spelling, oral reading fluency, comprehension, and writing.  Vowel clustering has been tested and proven to work with struggling, at-risk, and failing students (Clanton Harpine & Reid, 2009).
 
Yes, we can teach children to read.  We have the teaching methods to do so.  Research proves it.  If you need statistical research to bring change to your school, my forthcoming book (hitting the shelves in September), After-School Programming and Intrinsic Motivation (2019), demonstrates eight years of research showing that children who had failed in the classroom under whole language, phonics, and balanced literacy could indeed be taught to read successfully at their age level with vowel clustering, even children from low socioeconomic neighborhoods.  We had children who moved up four grade levels in reading in one year. 
 
Yes, we can end reading failure today.  We can help all struggling students learn to read.  We just need to change how we teach in the classroom.
 
I’ll be teaching a free training workshop on vowel clustering, September 9, 2019 at 4:00 PM in Corpus Christi, Texas.  Come join us.   Click the email button at the top right of this page and ask for more information on the training workshop.

School will be starting soon and many parents will be told that their child has a learning disability in reading.  Unfortunately, some children do, but even worse is the fact that many children are misdiagnosed with a learning disability in reading.  I always encourage parents to learn as much as possible about learning disabilities, and I also encourage you to go to reputable Internet sites.  Don’t just take advice from anyone.  There is a lot of information available on the Internet that is completely and totally wrong.  There is also good information on the Internet, so, check the source.  Does the person know what they’re talking about?  For example, I recently read a blog post by Amanda Morin, a teacher who earned her bachelor’s degree in education from the University of Maine.  She also states that she had special education advocacy training from the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates.  Unfortunately, she gives inaccurate information.  She presents the following list as “signs of a learning disability:"

"Has trouble understanding and/or following verbal or written directions.

• Loses her place while reading.
• Confuses words that look similar when reading. For example: word/world.
• Reverses letter order when reading. For examples, reads "was" as "saw."
• Avoids reading or reads under protest.
• Fails to follow tasks through to completion, such as schoolwork, homework or chores.
• Tries to avoid activities that call for long periods of concentration."

​
Wrong.  These are not necessarily signs of a learning disability.  They can also be signs of a poor teaching method, inadequate teaching curriculum, poor classroom management….  The list can go on and on.  Let’s go to some reputable sources on the Internet and find a real list of learning disabilities in reading.

In a Psychology Today article written for the general public, authors give a definition and a list of learning disabilities:
 
"Learning disabilities are disorders that affect one's ability in the domains of spoken or written language, mathematical calculation, attention, or the coordination of movements. They can occur in young children but are usually not recognized until a child reaches school age. An estimated 8 to 10 percent of U.S. children have some type of learning disability….

"Some specific categories of learning disabilities include:

• Dyslexia, which causes difficulties with word recognition, spelling, and comprehension
• Dysgraphia, which results in impaired handwriting, impaired spelling, or both
• Dyscalculia, which affects the ability to learn arithmetic and mathematics
• Nonverbal Learning Disorder, marked by trouble receiving and interpreting nonverbal forms of communication such as body language and facial expressions
• Apraxia of speech, which involves difficulty saying what one intends to say
• Central Auditory Processing Disorder, which involves difficulty with recognizing and interpreting sounds

 
"For diagnosis of a Specific Learning Disorder, the affected skills must be markedly and measurably below what is expected for the individual's age, and the difficulty must significantly interfere with performance or daily activities."
 
There is a difference between poor reading habits and dyslexia just as there is a difference between sloppy handwriting and dysgraphia.  There is also a major difference between a child losing their place while they are reading and the child having dyslexia. 

Children often refuse to read or read only under protest not because they have a learning disability but because they have not been properly taught how to read.  Every day, I encounter more and more students who have been taught using balanced literacy, systematic phonics, or even whole language who are struggling, sometimes even failing, and yes, occasionally refusing to read.  These students do not necessarily have a learning disability.  Some do, but most just need a new approach to teaching them how to read. 

That is why we have been so successful with the vowel clustering teaching method.  Vowel clustering is a completely and totally new approach to teaching reading. Vowel clustering is nothing like phonics or whole language. Vowel clustering helps students relate the words they are reading to the oral language system in the brain. There is no memorization, no sight word lists, and no phonics rules.
Some of our success stories have been:

• A student who failed for nine straight years in public school is now reading.
• A student diagnosed with ADHD and failing in reading moved up two grade levels in one year.
• A student diagnosed with dyslexia and whose parents tried everything, including expensive private one-on-one systematic phonics tutoring, learned to read, and moved up to beginning chapter books in one year.
• Six children who entered the program reading at the pre-K level ended the year reading at the 2nd grade reading level.  Only one child in the group was a first grader.
• One student started at the pre-primer level (pre-K) and ended the year at the third-grade reading level while a second grader started the year reading below first grade and ended at the fourth-grade level.
• Three students moved up four grade levels in reading, four students moved up three grade levels in reading, and eight students moved up two grade levels in reading in one year. 
• A fifth-grade student moved up from the 3rd grade reading level to the 6th grade reading level in only five months using the vowel clustering teaching method. 

 
So, be careful as you read on the Internet.  Be careful when you label children or identify learning disabilities.  Be careful not to blame children for not learning when it is often a failure to teach.  No, I’m not blaming teachers.  I am blaming administrators, public school systems, and anyone and everyone who maintains teaching methods that have been proven not to work.  Whole language, systematic phonics, and balanced literacy have been proved to be failed approaches to teaching reading.  It’s time for a change.

Stores are being restocked with school supplies.  Back-to-school clothing is being advertised everywhere.  Schools and communities are sending out ads saying, “Start the New Year Right,” but are they?

No, actually, it will be another year of reading failure—guaranteed.  Why?  School superintendents, school boards, politicians, book publishers, universities training teachers, and others who actually control how reading is taught in the classroom are neither planning nor preparing changes that will make it easier for children to learn to read.  Instead, it will be the same old failed teaching methods as usual.  Most schools still use whole language, phonics, or balanced literacy—a combination of whole language and phonics.  Yet, each of these three teaching methods has been proven over and over to be a failed teaching method [see my blog posts for 4-12-2019 and 1-21-2019 for research on the failure of phonics and whole language].  Yes, that’s right, scientific research has proved that whole language, phonics, and even balanced literacy are ineffective teaching methods. They do not work for all children and are believed to be one of the main causes of reading failure.  So, why do we still use failed teaching methods?

Dr. Mark S. Seidenberg, a cognitive neuroscientist from the Department of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, describes the problem by saying,
“How reading is taught is indeed a significant part of the literacy problem in the US and other countries…. In the US, the conflicting and often strongly entrenched interests of various stakeholders—educators, politicians, scientists, taxpayers, labor organizations, parent groups—make it hard to achieve meaningful change within the existing institutional structure of public education.”  (p. 10)
 
Dr. Seidenberg points out three main problems on his new book, Language at the Speed of Sight:  How We Read, Why so Many Can’t, and What Can Be Done About It (2017):

• current teaching practices are based on outdated assumptions.
• scientific research in reading has had very little effect on how reading is taught in the classroom.
• new neurobiological brain research in reading is being totally ignored by today’s educators.

Dr. Seidenberg argues that the scientific study of reading through cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience is one of the most successful research areas being studied today. Scientific research can clearly tell us

• the brain bases of how reading skill is acquired--phonemic awareness.
• the basic mechanisms that support skilled reading—relating written script to the oral language system—spoken language.
• the causes of reading failure—primarily the teaching methods being used in the classroom.

Dr. Seidenberg goes on to point out that we have decades of research showing that the only effective way to teach children to read is to teach skills that connect reading with oral speech. Here are links:Louisa Moates 1998, Gaab et al., 2007, Keller & Just, 2009, David A. Kilpatrick in Equipped for Reading Success, Meyler, Keller, Cherkassky, Gabrieli, & Just, 2008, National Reading Panel, 2000, Norton, Beach, & Gabrieli, 2015, Saygin, et al., 2013, Sebastian P. Suggate’s 2016 study, Yoncheva, Wise, & McCandliss, 2015. 

One reviewer goes so far as to state that every teacher should read Seidenberg’s book. Great idea, but the problem is that classroom teachers in today’s schools do not decide how they will or will not teach reading.  The teaching methods that are being used in the classroom this fall are mandated and handed down by school administrators, school boards, and politicians—local, state, and federal—and by money.  Yes, those who make money from whole language and phonics textbooks, workbooks, and other teaching materials do not want to see new teaching methods brought into the classroom.  In some instances, even tutors, particularly phonics tutors, do not want to see changes brought to the public-school classroom.

Yes, we can teach children to read.  We have the teaching methods to do so.  Research proves it. We just refuse to change and use a teaching method that works.  If you need statistical research to bring change to your school, my forthcoming book (hitting the shelves in September), After-School Programming and Intrinsic Motivation (2019), demonstrates eight years of research showing that children who had failed in the classroom under whole language, phonics, and balanced literacy could indeed be taught to read successfully at their age level, even children from low socioeconomic neighborhoods.  We had children who moved up four grade levels in reading in one year. 

​Yes, we really can teach all students to read.  We just need to quit fighting the “whole language-phonics wars” and start teaching with a totally new method that actually can teach children how to read.

It’s almost July and schools, administrators, teachers, and parents are already talking about how to make the next school year more successful.  The question is, how can we teach reading more effectively?  How can we help students do well in reading? Some phonics enthusiasts insist that as long as a method is teaching decoding and encoding and matching letters to sounds it will be successful.  Wrong.  Yes, teaching decoding and encoding is essential.  Teaching that letters represent sounds is essential.  The problem lies with the method that you use to teach decoding and encoding, the method that you use to teach that letters represent sounds, and the method that you use to teach students to identify letter-sound relationships.

We must remember that reading is attached to our “oral language system.”  As David Kilpatrick, an educational psychologist from the State University of New York College at Cortland who specializes in working with students with reading difficulties, explains:

• “I believe this assumption that we store words based on visual memory is a major reason why we have widespread reading difficulties in our country. Until we properly understand how to promote permanent word storage, we will continue to have many weak readers…. Orthographic mapping is the mental process we use to permanently store words for immediate, effortless retrieval…. The big discovery regarding orthographic mapping is that this oral “filing system” is the foundation of the “filing system” we use for reading words. We have no 'visual dictionary' for reading that runs alongside our oral dictionary. I suspect that the reason this idea was not obvious to researchers for the last 100 years is simple: speech is auditory and reading is visual. Because reading involves visual input, everyone presumed that it also involved visual storage. However, input and storage are not the same thing…. Mapping must not be confused with phonics. Mapping and phonics differ in some very important ways.” David Kilpatrick in Equipped for Reading Success, pp. 29-39).

 
As Dr. Kilpatrick states: 

• “Understanding why words sound different is phonemic awareness.” (p. 16)
• “… phonemic awareness is not “optional” if one wants to be a good reader.”  (p. 16)
• “Phonemic awareness is a linguistic skill that is essential for learning to read. It is different from phonics….”  (p. 18)
• “The vast majority of students with word recognition difficulties lack sufficient phonemic awareness.”  (p. 35)

If Dr. Kilpatrick is correct and phonemic awareness and phonics are not the same, and we need phonemic awareness to tie into our “oral language system,” then how should we teach students to use this oral language system?

I use vowel clustering.  My new book (to be released later this summer) documents eight years of research that shows that we have taken students from the public schools who have failed two and sometimes four years under whole language, balanced literacy, one-on-one phonics tutoring, and Reading Recovery.  We have had students move up four grade levels in reading in one year through vowel clustering.  The actual statistical data analysis for eight years of research is included in the book.  
Vowel clustering can be used in the school classroom or as I have done in after-school programs.  Why does vowel clustering work where phonics and whole language have failed?  Vowel Clustering ties into the “oral language system” that is necessary and used for effective reading. 
 
Research clearly shows that how a child learns, or the method that is used to teach a child to read is just as important as the content contained in the lesson being taught (Chronis-Tuscano et al., 2015). The teaching method used in the classroom is the key to successfully teaching students to read, comprehend, spell, and read fluently.  We must remember that reading failure is connected to crime, violence, bullying, academic failure, dropping out of school, and even suicide (see  Chapter 1 of my forthcoming new book for details on the mental health dangers of reading failure).

• The National Reading Panel (2000) stated that, “systematic phonics approaches are significantly more effective than non-phonics [whole language] …. However, phonics instruction failed to exert a significant impact on the reading performance of low-achieving readers in 2nd through 6th grades” (p. 94).

 
The students I work with at my after-school programs are, unfortunately, students who are already failing in reading. To continue to use whole language or even systematic phonics would be a disaster for these students. Phonics simply does not work for all students.  We need to face reality.

• As Morgan, Farkas, & Wu (2012) stated:  “… poor readers in third grade were about twice as likely to consider themselves as angry, distractible, sad, lonely, and unpopular in fifth grade as those who had not been poor readers in third grade. Being poorly skilled in mathematics increased children’s risk of feeling sad or lonely but not of feeling angry, distractible, or unpopular. The results provide additional empirical evidence that reading failure contributes to generalized socioemotional maladjustment in young children.” (p. 360

 
Yes, research has shown that students who are failing in reading are more likely to contemplate or even attempt suicide (Daniel & Goldston, 2009). So this is no longer an academic argument over my method is better than your method.  This is serious.  When the Nation’s Report Card shows that we have 63% of fourth graders failing and unable to read at the fourth-grade level, it’s time that we change to a more effective teaching method than whole language or phonics.  We cannot continue to make students fail by clinging to failed teaching methods such as whole language, balanced literacy, phonics, or Reading Recovery.  We have neuroimaging research that shows how children can best learn to read.
 
Yes, we can teach every child to read, we are just not willing to do it.

A phonics enthusiast recently tried to claim that decoding and encoding were just another form of phonics.  Wrong.  Decoding and encoding are not a form of phonics, nor are they used just with phonics.  Phonics does use decoding and encoding, but so does vowel clustering and many other teaching methods.  Trust me, the fact that we have been able to use vowel clustering to move children up 4 grade levels in reading in one year has absolutely nothing to do with phonics rules.  Most of the children who come to my reading clinics are failing because of whole language and phonics.  I teach many children to read who have failed with phonics, balanced literacy, and whole language.  Fortunately, vowel clustering succeeds where phonics fails. 

Let’s define terms: 

• Phonics from Foorman and colleagues: “Most [standard phonics] programs teach from the traditional perspective of grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence rules…. phonic lessons consist of instruction in initial and final sounds of consonants; short and long vowel sounds; consonant blends (e.g., cr-, srp-,-nd); consonant digraphs (e.g., ch, th, ng); silent consonants (e.g., wr, kn, -mb); and syllabication.” (Foorman et al., 2003, p. 619).

 

• Decoding: From Reading Horizons: “Decoding is the process of translating print into speech by rapidly matching a letter or combination of letters (graphemes) to their sounds (phonemes) and recognizing the patterns that make syllables and words.”

 

• Encoding: Louisa Moates shows that encoding is the exact opposite of decoding.  Encoding uses individual sounds or phonemes to build words.  Decoding and encoding are important because they are the foundation upon which reading is based.  (Louisa Moates, 1998). 

 
The methods that we use to teach children to decode and encode can determine whether a child succeeds or fails in learning to read.  The question then is:  what is the best way to teach decoding and encoding? As Reading Rockets explains:
 
“Phonics is the understanding that there is a predictable relationship between the sounds of spoken language, and the letters and spellings that represent those sounds in written language. Successful decoding occurs when a student uses his or her knowledge of letter-sound relationships to accurately read a word.”
 
Phonics teaches letter-sound relationships, but phonics teaches that letter sound relationships are predictable; therefore; phonics produces a rule to predict when this letter-sound relationship will evolve.  Unfortunately, letter-sound relationships are not always predictable and do not adhere to phonics rules; therefore, we end up with a long list of exceptions to the rules. 

• I recently had the pleasure of speaking with a person who is nearing retirement.  This is a very successful person.  While discussing retirement plans, my husband offered to loan a book that he had found particularly helpful.  This very successful craftsman said, “I can’t read; I can only read very easy-to-read books.”  He then went on to explain that he had been in a pullout program at school from third grade to ninth grade that taught phonics.  Obviously, it failed.
• A 15-year-old student was brought to my reading clinic because the school had said, “she could never learn to read.”  In middle school, she was given coloring book pages and shuffled off to the corner of the classroom.  The school was using “balanced literacy” in the classroom, and the student had received one-on-one tutoring in systematic phonics from early elementary school to middle school.  Again, obviously, phonics failed.  I taught the student to read in 3 ½ years using vowel clustering.
• A very smart third grader was brought to my reading clinic.  The student could not even read at the beginning kindergarten level.  The student’s parents were college-educated and had even paid for private systematic phonics tutoring.  Balanced literacy from the classroom, pullout small group phonics instruction during school, and even private one-on-one systematic phonics instruction failed to teach this student how to read.  Again, I taught the student to read in one year with vowel clustering.

These are just three examples, I have many others, but these three examples show the failure of phonics across approximately a 60-year period of time.  Two of the methods used “systematic phonics.”  These are real people, and we owe these people and thousands more a teaching method that will not fail them.  Systematic phonics is not that method. 
 
Why?
 
Phonics works against the brain instead of with the brain.  Louisa Moates (1998) explained that the manner in which phonics teaches decoding is one of its primary failings:
 
"One of the most fundamental flaws found in almost all phonics programs, including traditional ones, is that they teach the code backwards. That is, they go from letter to sound instead of from sound to letter…. The print-to-sound (conventional phonics) approach leaves gaps, invites confusion, and creates inefficiencies." (pp. 44–45)
 
As Dr. Sally Shaywitz (see Shaywitz, Overcoming Dyslexia, 2003) explains, “Children do not learn to read by memorizing a word list.  Most children, especially those who struggle in reading, do not learn to read by memorizing phonics rules” (p. 78).  Some will say, “but she talks about systematic phonics in her book.”  Yes, she does, but she also clearly states that systematic phonics will not meet the needs of all struggling students. 
 
Let’s look at what the experts say:

• Jeanne Sternlicht Chall (1967) an advocate for systematic phonics, visited over 300 classrooms.  While she concluded that systematic phonics was superior to “look say” whole language in 90% of the classrooms, she also clearly stated and warned that a purely phonics approach would leave many students failing.
• Linnea C. Ehri studied 66 phonics vs. whole language groups and again found systematic phonics to be superior to whole language but also found that systematic phonics “did not help low achieving readers that included students with cognitive limitations” (Ehri 2001). 
• As the National Reading Panel (National Reading Panel, 2000)  clearly stated,  “…systematic phonics approaches are significantly more effective than non-phonics [whole language]…. However, phonics instruction failed to exert a significant impact on the reading performance of low-achieving readers in 2nd through 6th grades….” (p. 94).  Phonics simply does not work for many students. 
• In 2013, Tunmer and associates also stated from their research that Reading Recovery (often used to teach struggling students from the classroom) was also not effective with failing, struggling students.  As they stated, “Students with phonological difficulties did poorly [in Reading Recovery].” 
• Sebastian P. Suggate’s 2016 study compared 71 phonemic and phonics intervention groups and found that “… phonemic awareness interventions showed good maintenance of effect…. phonics and fluency interventions … phonics tended not to.”

 
In the past and in the present, many experts, even those who recommend systematic phonics, clearly state from their research that they are finding problems with systematic phonics.  I am not denying that phonics is better than whole language, but if we go back to phonics, even systematic phonics, it will sentence many struggling students to failure in reading. 
 
Struggling, at-risk students who are failing need more, and we have the ability to offer them more.  Phonics will not solve reading failure; a 63% nationwide failure rate should prove that.  Neuroimaging research in reading opens a whole new chapter in reading instruction.  No matter how enthusiastic you are about phonics, you can no longer cling to an outdated phonics system that allows students to fail when there are teaching methods available that can teach those same students how to read.
 
Let’s do more than just swap opinions.  Let’s go straight to the actual research.

• Neuroimaging research has changed how we view reading:  “Today scientists can actually watch the brain as it works to read; scientist can actually track the printed word as it is perceived as a visual icon and then transformed into the sounds (phonemes) of language and simultaneously interpreted from the meaning that is stored within the brain” (David A. Kilpatrick in Equipped for Reading Success, pp. 59-68).
• Reading is more than merely associating letters and sounds:  “In order to read, a child must ‘enter the language system;’ this means that the child must activate and use the brain circuits that are already in place for oral language…. Tens of thousands of neurons carrying the final phonological messages necessary for language…. Connect to form the resonating networks that make skilled reading possible…. “ (Shaywitz, Overcoming Dyslexia, 2003, pp. 59-68).
• The new scientific understanding -- orthographic mapping:  “Until recently, almost everyone thought that we store words by having some type of visual image of every word we know….  Many teaching approaches presume this. We assume that if students see the words enough, they will learn them. This is not true…. I believe this assumption that we store words based on visual memory is a major reason why we have widespread reading difficulties in our country…. The big discovery regarding orthographic mapping is that this oral “filing system” is the foundation of the “filing system” we use for reading words. We have no “visual dictionary” for reading that runs alongside our oral dictionary. I suspect that the reason this idea was not obvious to researchers for the last 100 years is simple: speech is auditory and reading is visual. Because reading involves visual input, everyone presumed that it also involved visual storage. However, input and storage are not the same thing…. There are several types of research findings that disproved the “visual memory” theory of word storage…. Having a good understanding of how words are stored will determine what we teach, and how we teach it…. But how do words or parts of words become familiar if not visually? Here is where phoneme awareness comes into play…. The letters of our printed language are supposed to represent the sounds of our spoken language…. We use our oral-linguistic filing system as the basis for word recognition…. orthographic mapping will only occur if the student has adequate phonemic awareness/analysis. If he cannot pull apart the sounds in words, he cannot align those sounds to the order of the letters…. Mapping must not be confused with phonics. Mapping and phonics differ in some very important ways…. All of the classical methods (phonics, whole word, whole language) were developed before the discovery of orthographic mapping, so they cannot be faulted for missing some or all of the components of permanent word storage. Given the research findings about permanent word storage, we can now make the training and support of these components a central part of early reading instruction and reading remediation. If we do this, we can make substantial reductions in the percentage of struggling readers…. Students were trained in phoneme awareness, letter-sound skills, and word study skills. This allowed them to map words efficiently to permanent memory. As a result, they became good readers and no longer required extra reading help. Other studies have shown similar results.” (David Kilpatrick in Equipped for Reading Success, pp. 27-43).

  
Vowel clustering works with the brain and the way the brain processes phonemes or letter sounds.  Vowel clustering uses visual, auditory, and hands-on teaching techniques.    Vowel clustering teaches students to match consonant and vowel sounds with their corresponding letter symbols.  This emphasizes the oral letter-sound relationship.  Remember, we are training the brain, building “pathways” in the brain.  When these neural “pathways” are developed, reading can take less than half a second.   Therefore, it is important to organize how we teach so students can organize how they learn. We want to work with the brain, not against it. The vowel clustering teaching approach presents a visual and oral picture that struggling students can immediately identify with.  Visually, students match words by how they sound not by how they are spelled.  This teaches children that words can be pronounced one way but spelled another.  This visual-auditory learning technique allows students to both see and hear letter sounds (phonemes).  Vowel clustering also teaches handwriting because it is very important for students to write words correctly as they practice reading, spelling, and matching written letters to oral sounds. 
 
For more information on how vowel clustering works, watch for my new book, “Why Can’t We Teach Children to Read?  Oh but Wait, We Can.”

In this, the seventh of our discussion on vowel clustering, I want to discuss the concept of building words.  Phonics and other teaching methods primarily talk about how to decode or break words down into letter sounds.  Decoding is essential.  Vowel clustering also teaches decoding, but vowel clustering goes a step further.  Vowel clustering teaches building words as well.
 
Building words is important because students must understand the relationship between letters and oral sounds.  As Dr. Nadine Gaab, newly-appointed Assistant Professor at Children's Hospital at Harvard Medical School, says, “Learning to read an alphabetic language requires mastering grapheme-phoneme correspondences (i.e., mapping the sounds of auditory language to the letters of the written language system)” (Gaab et al., 2007, p. 296).
 
As Dr. Gaab goes on to explain, before students can learn to read they must master the grapheme-phoneme relationship between alphabetic letters and the oral sounds those letters represent.  In other words, students must be able to map or neurologically associate the sounds of auditory language with the letters of written words. This is what vowel clustering teaches through the concept of building words.  Dr. Gaab and her research team have shown that preschool children, early elementary school readers, and even adults demonstrate positive improvement in reading skills after receiving training in letter-sound relationships.  “Sound training,” Dr. Gaab says, is more than just saying that phonemes represent sounds.  You must actually teach the relationship between the sounds and the letters.  We automatically learn to speak a language just by listening to parents and those around us speak, but we do not automatically learn to read just by listening to oral sounds or by listening to someone read. A research team from the McGovern Institute for Brain Research summarized this concept by explaining that in order for students to learn to read, spoken oral sounds must be mapped onto the letters of the alphabet that are used to make the spoken words (Saygin, et al., 2013). 
 
Understanding letter-sound relationships or mapping the oral sounds of spoken language to the corresponding printed letters that represent those sounds (Norton, Beach, & Gabrieli, 2015) is essential for students learning to read.
 
When I teach vowel clustering, I teach students to build words, such as with the sound at.  Students start with:  at, bat, cat….  Then they change to:  an, can, fan….  Also used ap for cap, map, ….  We begin teaching letter-sound relationships with simple one syllable words.  The main rule for word building is that the vowel sound stays constant—does not change.  For example, building words with the short a vowel sound would mean that you cannot insert such words as able, cake, car….  Yes, these words use the letter a, but they use different sounds for the letter a.  Remember, there are seven sounds for the letter a and 22 different ways to make those sounds.  In word building, you teach one sound at a time.
 
At-risk readers should be taught how to build words from a common letter sound so that they can understand the individual sounds that make up a word. When you teach students how to build words, use a vowel cluster. 

What do I mean by a vowel cluster?  A vowel cluster is all the sounds for a vowel.  For example, as I’ve said before, the letter a uses seven different sounds and it makes these seven different sounds with 22 different letter combinations.  Phonics describes these sounds as “irregular vowel sounds.”  At-risk students become confused when you teach short vowel sounds (A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y), then long vowel sounds with silent E; then, later still, phonics comes back and teaches “irregular vowel sounds.” 
 
With 63 to 64% of fourth grade students across the nation not even able to read at the fourth-grade level, we obviously have a problem with the method that we are using to teach students to read (see Nation’s Report Card).  Whole language, phonics, and even balanced literacy (combining the two together) are not teaching children to read.  Yet, these children can learn to read, even struggling students (Meyler, Keller, Cherkassky, Gabrieli, & Just, 2008).
 
I’ll quote Dr. Shaywitz again (see Shaywitz, Overcoming Dyslexia, 2003).  Yes, I’ve quoted her many times before, but she says it better than anyone. Dr. Shaywitz’s explanation is so clear that there is no way we should not be able to understand.  “Children do not learn to read by memorizing a word list.  Most children, especially those who struggle in reading, do not learn to read by memorizing phonics rules” (p. 78).  The question remains then, why are we still teaching whole language and phonics in the classroom?
 
Vowel clustering works and we have the data to prove it.  Watch for my new book coming out this summer from Springer documenting eight years of research data showing how effective vowel clustering can be.  Yes, we have had students move up four grade levels in reading in just one year.

A parent asked me this weekend, “When should I start my child on reading?  She’s four years old and will be starting preschool this fall.  Should she be reading when she starts?”
 
The answer is no. If the child picks up reading on her own (and some children do), then that’s fine, but absolutely no child should be pushed to read at four years of age.  If your preschool is trying to teach children to read at four years of age, tell them they are doing it the wrong way.

Four-year-olds should be learning the alphabet, both the capital letters and the lowercase letters.  I frequently see third graders who do not know or recognize lowercase alphabet letters; therefore, we obviously need to spend more time teaching the alphabet. It’s like building a house: you can’t start with the roof. You have to build the foundation first, and if you do not build a solid foundation your house will fall down.  If you do not build a solid foundation in reading, the child will always have trouble.

We assume that because a child has been shown both capital and lowercase letters that they have learned them. This is not the case and this is one of the first big mistakes often made in teaching reading.

First, start with the alphabet. Teach both the capital letters and lowercase letters. Teach them separately. Then mix the capital and lowercase letters up and make sure that children can actually identify both capitals and lowercase letters.  Don’t show them in order.  Rearrange the letters so that the child is actually looking at the letter and actually identifying the letter, not just remembering it from the song.

Second, teach children to write the alphabet letters. Yes, I know that we do not teach handwriting anymore, but we should.  Handwriting is directly linked to learning to read.  Buy a manuscript writing tablet and teach your child to shape and write their letters correctly before you try to teach the child to read.

Then, after your child has mastered identifying and writing the alphabet—both capitals and lowercase, teach letter sounds.  No, I did not say teach word lists or simple stories.  I said teach letter sounds.  Start with the consonants.  Vowel clustering teaches students to recognize that the letters of the alphabet represent sounds.  I devote an entire chapter on teaching consonant sounds in my new upcoming book:  Why Can’t We Teach Children to Read?  Oh but Wait,We Can.

When we try to teach children to read, we rush to teach words and stories before we have even laid the foundation for learning about words.  Four-year-olds should learn about the alphabet.  Teach the alphabet first.  Then, you will have a much stronger foundation for teaching reading.

Vowel clustering teaches students to read one step at a time: (1) learn to identify the alphabet letters—both capitals and lowercase, (2) learn to write and shape the letters correctly on manuscript writing paper not sprawled across a paper without lines, and (3) learn to identify sound(s) that each letter represents.  This is the kind of foundation that vowel clustering is built upon.  Once the child has letter identity, letter shape, and letter sounds, then you are ready to introduce simple words, but not before.  Build the foundation before you try to add on the roof.

A parent recently contacted me because her child’s school had told her that her son was going to be retained in first grade because of his failing grades in reading.  She frantically asked, “What can I do?”
 
Retention (repeating a grade) does not work, neither does social promotion (simply moving a student on to the next grade).  For a more complete discussion on why retention does not work for failing students, see my article in The Group Psychologist.
 
We know that one of the main causes for reading failure is the method used in the classroom to teach students to read.  Whole language teaching methods, even when combined with phonics, simply do not work (see my blog on 1-21-19). 
 
If we use the correct teaching methods, neuroimaging research proves that even children who have previously failed can be taught to read.  Neuroimaging research shows that intensive training in phonemes (letter sounds) changes the “brain and the way it functions.” This change allows even struggling at-risk students to make significant improvement in reading (Meyler, Keller, Cherkassky, Gabrieli, & Just, 2008). 
 
As Yoncheva, Wise, & McCandliss, 2015 explain, “teaching students to sound out ‘C-A-T’ sparks more optimal brain circuitry than instructing them to memorize the word ‘cat.’” They conclude that “different instructional approaches to the same material may impact changes in brain circuitry.”
 
I still think Dr. Sally Shaywitz (see Shaywitz, Overcoming Dyslexia, 2003) explains the problem best, “Children do not learn to read by memorizing a word list.  Most children, especially those who struggle in reading, do not learn to read by memorizing phonics rules” (p. 78).  Therefore, the first thing a parent must do is seek a new teaching method for their child.  Merely repeating a grade will not necessarily teach the material to the child.  A new teaching approach should be instituted. This may be tutoring, an afterschool program, or one-on-one with the parent at home.  I use vowel clustering.  We have had students move up four grade levels in one year in reading using vowel clustering. 
 
In this, the fifth in our series on vowel clustering, I want to speak directly to the parent of the first grader.  Yet, the suggestions that I offer apply to every single student of any age who is struggling in reading.  I taught a 15-year-old to read who had failed for nine straight years.  I used these same vowel clustering principles.  Must start at the very beginning with all students, regardless of their age.  If the student is failing or struggling, completely reteach.
 
Make sure that the student knows and understands the sounds for all alphabet letters.  We often think that students know their alphabet.  In the classroom, the capital alphabet letters are taught side-by-side with the lowercase alphabet letters.  Many children do not learn the lowercase alphabet letters.  We read primarily with lowercase letters; therefore, when students encounter these lowercase letters in words and stories, they are confused and lost.  Separate the capital and lowercase letters.  Have your student practice capital and lowercase letters separately.  Also, do not always practice alphabet letters in alphabetical order. Mix the letters up. Practice the sounds for each letter both with the capital letters and with the lowercase letters.  For the vowel sounds: A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y, teach each vowel separately.  Since the vowels have numerous sounds, practice only the letter name at first. 
 
In phonics, they teach the short vowel sound for each vowel.  No.  It is much better to teach just the letter sound.  For example, the letter a says its name A.  Explain that there are seven different sounds for the letter a, but we will begin by just learning the letter name for the vowel.  In this way, you let the child know that vowels have many sounds, not just a long and a short sound. 

Practice handwriting.  Handwriting and reading are connected.  If the brain cannot recognize the words that a student writes, the brain is not going to learn the words.  Dr. Shaywitz (see Shaywitz, Overcoming Dyslexia, 2003) explains that handwriting is one of the critical steps in “rewiring the brain.” Instead of “rewiring,” I call it retraining the brain.  Therefore, improving a student’s handwriting is one of the first steps in helping a student learn to read.  It is not enough to just be able to sing the alphabet song.  The student must be able to identify and say the name of each alphabet letter.  Then, the student must be able to write the letters correctly.

Once your student is familiar with identifying and writing capital and lowercase letters, you are ready to begin teaching vowel sounds.  Vowel clustering recognizes that vowels are the most important sounds for children learning to read and teaches all of the sounds for a vowel in a cluster.  With the letter a, the children learn all seven sounds used by letter a and the 22 different letter combinations that can be used to make those seven sounds.  The traditional phonics approach was to teach the short vowel sounds and then the long vowel sounds using silent e.  The other sounds were called “irregular sounds,” but irregular vowel sounds cause children the most confusion.  Teaching vowels in clusters teaches children to learn all of the sounds for each vowel in an organized pattern.  It’s easier and less confusing, and it works directly with how the brain assimilates and organizes letter sounds—connecting synapses and building pathways.  Vowel clustering simply means to teach words by sounds rather than by letters. 

The next question is, how do we teach students vowel sounds?  Vowel clustering teaches all the vowel sounds in clusters.  Remember, there are seven different sounds for the letter a, and the long a sound is just one of those seven sounds.  The long a vowel sound can use:  ea, ai, ay, ei, ey, eigh, and silent e.  Of course, the letter a can also make the long a vowel sound when it stands alone, as with the word apron.  So, if you are only introducing students to the long a sound through silent e, you have created a problem and confused struggling students, especially when you come along later and introduce irregular vowel sounds.  Irregular vowel sounds that are thrown in later is how most students get lost while learning vowels. This is also one of the main reasons that phonics fails with at-risk students.

Reading, spelling, and writing (creating sentences or a paragraph or more) are all interconnected in the brain.  They should all be taught, starting in kindergarten and throughout school.  If a teacher uses vowel clustering, a beginning student can learn to read, spell, and write a vowel-clustered sentence.  Vowel clustering teaches students to work with letter sounds. 

For example:  While teaching the short a vowel sound on the first day of class, you can teach students to combine the word at with various consonants and spell a list of words by just using at.  Examples would be: at, bat, cat, fat, hat, mat, pat, rat, sat, and vat.  Children can practice pronouncing, spelling, and writing these words. Then, you might ask the children to write a story.  Tell them they are only allowed to use at words.  You'll need to allow the and a just to make sentences complete. 

Example:  The cat sat at a mat.  A fat rat sat at a hat.  The cat spat at the rat. 

The children can then add to this story when they learn an.  They might add: 

The rat ran.  The cat ran at the rat.  The rat ran faster. 

Young children do not need long, complicated sentences. They do need to learn vowel sounds.  Learn one vowel sound at a time. Start with a.  Do not go on to the next vowel sound until the child has learned all seven sounds for the letter a.

Someone recently asked me if vowel clustering was another form of phonics.  No!  Vowel clustering and phonics are completely and totally different teaching approaches. 
 
Vowel clustering teaches students to decode and encode letter sounds to pronounce and read words (Clanton Harpine, 2013). There are no rules to memorize, and students are never allowed to guess at a word. Vowel clustering teaches students to decode or break words down into individual letter sounds and then to encode or reassemble those sounds back into pronounceable words.  My vowel clustering method also teaches spelling, handwriting, oral reading fluency, comprehension, and story writing.  All of my reading programs teach vowel clustering.  Vowel clustering has been tested and proven to work with struggling, at-risk, and failing students.  A student, who failed for nine years using balanced literacy and phonics, learned to read in 3 ½ years using vowel clustering.  I have even had struggling students move up four grade levels in one year using vowel clustering.  These were students who had failed multiple years in schools that taught whole language, balanced literacy, and phonics.  So yes, we can teach students to read, but to do so, we must change the methods that we use to teach reading. 
 
This is the fourth in my series on vowel clustering.   So far, we have defined vowel clustering and how it differs from whole language and phonics [for a more direct comparison between vowel clustering and phonics see my blog posts for August 2018, September 2018, November 2018; click the buttons on the right].  We have also talked about how vowel clustering works with the brain, discussed the importance of handwriting and learning to read, and in this post, we are talking about letter sounds.  Just to summarize the research findings that we’ve discussed so far, researchers tell us that:
 
“Children do not learn to read by memorizing a word list.  Most children, especially those who struggle in reading, do not learn to read by memorizing phonics rules.” (Shaywitz, 2003, p. 78)
 
Systematic phonics “did not help low achieving readers that included students with cognitive limitations.” (Ehri 2001)
 
“… teaching students to sound out ‘C-A-T’ sparks more optimal brain circuitry than instructing them to memorize the word ‘cat.’ [thereby concluding that] “… different instructional approaches to the same material may impact changes in brain circuitry.” (Yoncheva, Wise, & McCandliss, 2015)
 
“… the motor experience of manually creating letterforms helps children discriminate the essential properties of each letter, which leads to more accurate representations bolstering both skilled letter recognition and later reading fluency.”  (Gimenez et al. 2014, p. 155)
 
If we use the correct teaching methods, neuroimaging research proves that even children who have previously failed can be taught to read.  Neuroimaging research shows that intensive training in phonemes (letter sounds) changes the “brain and the way it functions.” This change allows even struggling at-risk students to make significant improvement in reading (Meyler, Keller, Cherkassky, Gabrieli, & Just, 2008). 
 
Our task, then, is to find a teaching method that works for all students. I believe that all students can learn to read, and I have worked the past eighteen years to develop and prove that vowel clustering can teach all students to read. 
 
Why does vowel clustering work so well?  Vowel clustering works with the brain.  Memorization works against the brain, regardless whether you are memorizing words from a word list or memorizing phonics rules.  As Yoncheva, Wise, and McCandliss (2015) stated, “teaching-induced differences” can determine whether a child fails or succeeds in learning to read.  Dr. Sally Shaywitz summarized the importance of using the correct teaching method by saying:
 
“In order to read, a child must ‘enter the language system;’ this means that the child must activate and use the brain circuits that are already in place for oral language…. tens of thousands of neurons carrying the phonological messages necessary for language… Connect to form the resonating networks that make skilled reading possible….” (Shaywitz, Overcoming Dyslexia, 2003, pp. 59-68).
 
So, how do we activate these brain circuits?  By the way we teach letter-sound relationships.  Neuroimaging research shows that phonics does not teach letter-sound relationships in the same way that the brain processes them.  Phonics focuses on the letters; the brain focuses on sounds. 
 
“Most people assume that words are stored in visual memory. Many teaching approaches presume this. We assume that if students see the words enough, they will learn them. This is not true. Children with reading problems often cannot remember new words, even after many exposures.”  (David A. Kilpatrick in Equipped for Reading Success, pp. 29-30).
 
Kilpatrick explains that the brain does not recognize and store words through visual memory—seeing the same word over and over or “look-say.”  Instead, the brain creates an oral filing system.  The brain does not file words by letter.  Neither whole language or phonics works with the brain’s oral filing system.  Students who cannot memorize whole language word lists cannot memorize phonics rules, especially rules for irregular letter sounds. If we go back to a phonics approach, we will leave many students failing in reading when we have the scientific knowledge to teach every student to read.  Struggling students need educators to move forward, to read and understand what scientists are saying, and to use new scientific methods to help struggling students learn to read. 
 
Vowel clustering teaches letter sounds.  At all of my reading clinics, I work with children in small groups, use the group-centered format that combines learning and counseling, and teach vowel clustering. 
 
Vowel clustering begins with the lower-case alphabet.  Vowel clustering teaches students to recognize that the letters of the alphabet represent sounds.  Students are taught to sound words out letter by letter instead of guessing.  Students must be able to identify both the capital letters and lowercase letters to be able to read.  We read mostly lowercase letters, but schools often teach only the uppercase letters. The first step to teaching a student to read is to teach the lowercase alphabet: (1) to recognize each lowercase letter (and know the letter name), (2) to know the letter sound(s) for each lowercase letter, and (3) to be able to write the lowercase letters correctly using manuscript style paper and letter formation.
 
Vowel clustering recognizes that vowels are the most important sounds for children learning to read and teaches all the sounds for a vowel in a cluster.  With the letter a, the children learn all seven sounds used by letter a and the 22 different letter combinations that can be used to make those seven sounds.  The traditional phonics approach was to teach the “short vowel sounds” and then the “long vowel sounds using silent e.”  The other sounds were called “irregular sounds,” but irregular vowel sounds cause children the most confusion.  Teaching vowels in clusters teaches children to learn all of the sounds for each vowel in an organized pattern.  It’s easier and less confusing, and it works directly with how the brain assimilates and organizes letter sounds—connecting synapses and building pathways.  Vowel clustering simply means to teach words by sounds rather than by letters.  See Chapter 1 in my After-School Prevention Programs for At-Risk Students (2013) and Chapter 4 in my Group-Centered Prevention in Mental Health (2015) for examples of how this concept is applied in teaching children to read.
 
Today’s struggling students deserve the very best we can offer in the classroom.  It is not enough to trade whole language for phonics.
 
The next question is, how do we teach students vowel sounds?  Vowel clustering teaches all the vowel sounds in clusters.  Remember, there are seven different sounds for the letter a, and the long a sound is just one of those seven sounds.  The long a vowel sound can use:  ea, ai, ay, ei, ey, eigh, and silent e.  Of course, the letter a can also make the long a vowel sound when it stands alone, as with the word apron.  So, if you are only introducing students to the long a sound through silent e, you have created a problem and confused struggling students, especially when you come along later and introduce irregular vowel sounds.  Irregular vowel sounds that are thrown in later is how most students get lost while learning vowels. This is also one of the main reasons that phonics fails with at-risk students.
 
The vowel clustering method uses a vowel center where children learn to match the vowel sounds.  Children learn to match words with the letter sounds; therefore, emphasizing the letter sound relationship and helping children to build and connect the sounds with their oral filing system.

The sounds are taught in clusters before going on to the next vowel.  Remember, we are training the brain, building pathways in the brain; therefore, it is important to organize the way we teach so that the students can organize how they learn.  We want to work with the brain, not against it.  If we teach in a haphazard fashion, struggling students become confused.  Vowel clustering presents a visual picture through use of a vowel clustered vowel center, that uses an auditory learning technique through oral reading and spelling of new words as they are matched to their letter sound on the vowel clustered vowel center.  This enables students to see and hear the letter sounds.  Vowel clustering also teaches handwriting because it is very important that students write the words correctly as they practice reading, spelling, and matching letter sounds at the vowel clustered vowel center.
 
A mother told me yesterday, “She’s addicted to reading.  Before your Camp Sharigan program, she never wanted to read.  Her reading grade in school has gone up 20 points.  She can’t wait to get home and read.”
 
You, too, can help children become “addicted” to reading.  Change the method that you use to teach children to read.  I use vowel clustering, and it works.

I apologize for my tardiness in continuing our series on vowel clustering.  I have been busy completing a new book that will be released hopefully sometime this summer that presents research data on the eight-year success story of vowel clustering in an after-school program with children who had failed for multiple years in reading.  For those who are interested, I’ll let you know when the book is released, but for now, back to vowel clustering.

Vowel clustering begins with the lower-case alphabet.  Vowel clustering teaches students to recognize that the letters of the alphabet represent sounds.  Students are taught to sound words out letter by letter instead of guessing.  Students must be able to identify both the capital letters and lowercase letters to be able to read.  We read mostly lowercase letters, but schools often teach only the uppercase letters. The first step to teaching a student to read is to teach the lowercase alphabet: (1) to recognize each lowercase letter (and know the letter name), (2) to know the letter sound(s) for each lowercase letter, and (3) to be able to write the lowercase letters correctly using manuscript style paper and letter formation.
      Handwriting and reading are connected.  If the brain cannot recognize the words that a student writes, the brain is not going to learn the words.  Dr. Shaywitz (see Shaywitz, Overcoming Dyslexia, 2003) explains that handwriting is one of the critical steps in “rewiring the brain.” Instead of “rewiring,” I call it retraining the brain.  Therefore, improving a student’s handwriting is one of the first steps in helping a student learn to read.  It is not enough to just be able to sing the alphabet song.  The student must be able to identify and say the name of each alphabet letter.  Then, the student must be able to write the letters correctly.  As a research team from California explained, learning to write and shape letters correctly is essential:

“Recent neuroimaging studies have concluded that while free-form handwriting practice clearly supports reading acquisition, typing and even tracing do not. Impressively, James and Engelhardt (2012) showed that preliterate children recruit well established reading related brain regions, such as the fusiform gyrus, posterior parietal cortex, and the inferior frontal gyrus, during letter processing exclusively after handwriting practice compared to typing or tracing. The emerging consensus is that the motor experience of manually creating letterforms helps children discriminate the essential properties of each letter, which leads to more accurate representations bolstering both skilled letter recognition and later reading fluency.”  (Gimenez et al. 2014, p. 155)
     
The way a student writes or shapes letters is very important for students learning to read (James & Engelhardt, 2012).  I had a parent tell me once, “I know that her handwriting is terrible, but I brought her to you for you to teach her to read.”  I explained how important handwriting is to the reading process.  I use manuscript paper and manuscript style writing tools because, if the student’s brain cannot recognize the letter that the student has written, the student will not be able to read the alphabet letter.  I use traditional “tracing with direction arrows” for practice.  I give the students colored pencils (especially the erasable kind) and have them trace a letter over and over with different colors to see what colors they can make.  Adding a little fun makes the task more enjoyable.  I have the children use manuscript writing paper for all of their writing.  As I tell students, “we’re training our brains to recognize these letters so that our brain can identify the letters when we see them in a story.”  I use manuscript writing paper and block manuscript writing style.  Since my emphasis is to teach students to read, I teach only block style handwriting, not cursive.  So, the first step in learning to read is to learn to identify and write the alphabet letters correctly, both capital and lowercase letters.  The next step is to learn the letter sounds.

This is part 2 of my series on vowel clustering.  The key concept behind vowel clustering is that it works with the brain to make it easier for children to learn to read.  How?  First, let’s take a few minutes to talk about how the brain works when we read.
 
There is no one central area of the brain that controls reading.  Instead there is a “network of connections or synaptic pathways.”  When these pathways are developed, reading a word can take less than half a second, but reading does not happen automatically, it must be taught.  The method that we use to teach reading is what keeps some children from learning how to read [see my previous blog posts on ineffective teaching methods--August 2018, September 2018, November 2018; click the buttons on the right].  Effective reading involves building interconnections or pathways between five different reading-related regions of the brain (Zhang et al., 2014).  Neuroimaging research often studies the “functional connectivity” or interactions between these regions of the brain.  Effective readers display strong “functional connectivity” while poor readers do not.  Students with dyslexia may show a decrease or disruption in “functional connectivity.”  This “functional connectivity” directly relates to reading ability (Koyama et al., 2011); so, we need to discover how we can develop or increase “functional connectivity.”  There is a shared neural basis.  It is the “coordination of spontaneous activity within the reading network” that makes reading possible.  The key finding in all of this research is that “functional connectivity” can be taught (Zhang et al., 2014).  Neuroimaging research clearly shows that at-risk students, who have previously failed in reading, can be taught to read (Keller & Just, 2009).  The neuroimaging study by Keller and Just (2009) showed at-risk children improving in reading when phonemic and phonological awareness techniques were used.  Vowel clustering is a method that teaches both phonemic and phonological awareness by teaching children to decode and encode letter sounds in order to read words (Clanton Harpine, 2013). That decoding and encoding builds connectivity.
 
Vowel clustering teaches students to decode or break words down into letter sounds and then to encode or reassemble those sounds back into pronounceable words.  Vowel clustering also teaches spelling, handwriting, oral reading fluency, comprehension, and story writing.  Vowel clustering has been tested and proven to work with struggling, at-risk, and failing students.  I’ve even had struggling students move up four grade levels in one year using vowel clustering (watch for my new book coming later this spring).  These were students who had failed multiple years in school.  Yes, we can teach students to read, but to do so, we must change the methods that we use to teach students to read. 
 
One mistake some people make in teaching letter sounds is to teach children by the first letter in a word, saying these words are similar:  bell, bike, ball, book.  Unfortunately, although each of these words starts with the same consonant sound—the letter B, the brain does not organize words by beginning letter sounds.  When you introduce new words that contain several vowel sounds as in the example above, it is very confusing to children who are struggling to read.  The brain identifies words by (and we learn to pronounce words by) the vowel sound in the word.  Therefore, we need to teach children to read by using words that have common vowel sounds:  at, back, cat, fat, hat, mat….  If we teach using the organizational structure that the brain uses, it makes it easier for at-risk students to learn.  I call it vowel clustering.  The children in my reading clinic learn to decode and encode words by vowel sounds.  For example, the letter A has 7 sounds and 22 different letter combinations to make those sounds.  Vowel clustering also teaches all of the sounds for a vowel in a cluster.  With the letter A, the children learn all seven sounds used by letter A and the 22 different letter combinations that can be used to make those seven sounds.  The traditional phonics approach was to teach the “short vowel sounds” and then the “long vowel sounds using silent e.”  The other sounds were called “irregular sounds,” but irregular vowel sounds cause children the most confusion.  Teaching vowels in clusters teaches children to learn all of the sounds for each vowel in an organized pattern.  It’s easier and less confusing, and it works directly with how the brain assimilates and organizes letter sounds—connecting synapses and building pathways.  Vowel clustering simply means to teach words by sounds rather than by letters.  See Chapter 1 in my After-School Prevention Programs for At-Risk Students (2013) and Chapter 4 in my Group-Centered Prevention in Mental Health (2015) for examples of how this concept is applied when teaching children to read.

​January was a busy month for the Camp Sharigan Project.  

In January, Camp Sharigan, a one week, 10-hour group-centered program, was conducted in Corpus Christi, Texas.  It was a fabulous week.  As often the case, the community organization and the local university are planning to extend the program in the fall by coupling the one-week Camp Sharigan with the year-long after-school Reading Orienteering Club.  We’re busy working on the details.  Camp Sharigan will be released in a new 3rd edition format this summer that includes a new vowel center workstation.  If you are interested in the new edition, let me know.
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Meanwhile, the community-university collaborative project in Aiken, South Carolina continued.  This is the tenth year for the Reading Orienteering Club in Aiken.  The program returns with new university student staff this semester.  When you use a written program packet, staff changes do not need to slow progress.  Ready-to-use program packets for both Camp Sharigan and the Reading Orienteering Club make them easy to use at any location.  A new 3rd edition of the Reading Orienteering Club program is also being released later this summer.  Watch for details.

In August 2018, September 2018, and November 2018, I wrote a complete series showing why Phonics, while better than whole language, is not the answer to reading failure.  I’ll simply direct you to that body of research on my earlier blogs [August 2018, September 2018, November 2018; click the buttons on the right].  I still think Dr. Sally Shaywitz (see Shaywitz, Overcoming Dyslexia, 2003) explains the problem best, “Children do not learn to read by memorizing a word list.  Most children, especially those who struggle in reading, do not learn to read by memorizing phonics rules” (p. 78).  Enough said about whole language and phonics.  The research is conclusive.  The proof is in the neuroimaging pictures.  You either believe the research or you do not.  Whole language, in all of its forms has failed.  Phonics, in all of its forms, while better than whole language, is still a failure because it works against the brain and how the brain learns to read.
 
I’ll be teaching a free training workshop on vowel clustering, January 26th at 10:00 AM in Corpus Christi, Texas.  Come join us.  This is also the beginning of a ten-part series here on vowel clustering.  If you have questions, contact me. (Click the mail button on the top right.)

Let’s begin by defining vowel clustering.  Vowel clustering teaches children to decode and encode letter sounds to read words (Clanton Harpine, 2010).  As Dr. Shaywitz states, children must learn to decode (break down) words into letter sounds and then encode (reassemble) those sounds back into pronounceable words if they are to learn to read (Shaywitz, 2003). Children are taught to sound words out letter by letter instead of guessing. Vowel clustering emphasizes learning the lowercase alphabet and sounding out letter sounds and combinations of letter sounds.  Students never memorize word lists or phonics rules. 
 
Vowel clustering recognizes that vowels are the most important sounds for children learning to read and teaches all of the sounds for a vowel in a cluster.  With the letter a, the children learn all seven sounds used by letter a and the 22 different letter combinations that can be used to make those seven sounds.  The traditional phonics approach was to teach the “short vowel sounds” and then the “long vowel sounds using silent e.”  The other sounds were called “irregular sounds,” but irregular vowel sounds cause children the most confusion.  Teaching vowels in clusters teaches children to learn all of the sounds for each vowel in an organized pattern.  It’s easier and less confusing, and it works directly with how the brain assimilates and organizes letter sounds—connecting synapses and building pathways.  Vowel clustering simply means to teach words by sounds rather than by letters.  See Chapter 1 in my After-School Prevention Programs for At-Risk Students (2013) and Chapter 4 in my Group-Centered Prevention in Mental Health (2015) for examples of how this concept is applied in teaching children to read.
 
At all of my reading clinics, we work with children in small groups and use the group-centered format that combines learning and counseling.  All of my programs use vowel clustering:

·         A student who failed for nine straight years in public school is now reading.
·         A student diagnosed with ADHD and failing in reading moved up two grade levels in one year.
·         A student diagnosed with dyslexia and whose parents tried everything, including expensive private one-on-one tutoring, learned to read, and moved up to beginning chapter books in one year.
·         Six children who entered the program reading at the (pre-K) level ended the year reading at the 2nd grade reading level.  Only one child in the group was a first grader.
·         One student started at the pre-K level and ended the year reading at the third-grade level, while a second grader started the year reading below first grade and ended at the fourth-grade level.
·         One student moved up four grade levels in reading, four students moved up three grade levels in reading, and eight students moved up two grade levels in reading. 
·         The next year, 2 students moved up four grade levels in reading, 3 students moved up three grade levels in reading, and 6 students moved up two grade levels in reading. 
 
Vowel clustering works.  We will be using vowel clustering teaching techniques with Camp Sharigan in Corpus Christi, Texas and with the Reading Orienteering Club program in Aiken, South Carolina.  Both programs start on January 28th.  Contact me if you would like to participate.
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