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.