Will adding phonics onto whole language (“blended literacy”) correct the staggering number of students who are failing in reading nationwide?  No, whole language will never be effective.  It is simply wrong and has been proven to be wrong for over 20 years (National Reading Panel, 2000).
 
Will straight phonics work?  Phonics is an old concept, not a new idea.  Phonics education was first introduced in schools in 1690 with the New England Primer.  The effectiveness of phonics depends on how you teach phonics.  At present, phonics instruction is so entangled and the term so over-generalized that I do not use it.  If you read a study or teaching technique, you must first know exactly what kind of phonics is being advocated before you can tell whether it is likely to be effective or not. 
 
Some studies overstate the case for phonics.  One such article is “Ending the Reading Wars” by Anne Castles and her colleagues (Castles, Rastle, & Nation, 2018).  They state:  “We present a comprehensive tutorial review of the science of learning to read….”  (p. 5)  That sounds excellent, just what we need, but they completely ignore all of the neuroimaging studies -- the latest scientific research on reading, such as (Keller & Just, 2009; Meyler, Keller, Cherkassky, Gabrieli, & Just, 2008; Shaywitz and Shaywitz, 2004; Yoncheva, Wise, & McCandliss, 2015).  So, be careful, yes, it is normal to place your theory in the best possible light, but it will not help children learn to read if we overstate the case.  Another research piece coming out of Australia is from Kerry Hempenstall, “Read About It: Scientific Evidence for Effective Teaching of Reading (2016).  This gives a more comprehensive and accurate description of phonics than the Castles article.  If you want a good reference on phonics, I recommend reading Hempenstall’s work.  Still, Hempenstall does not discuss neuroimaging research on reading.  If phonics enthusiasts want to lead the way in reading, using scientific research, they must stop ignoring neuroimaging research in reading.
 
Being able to watch children’s brains as they learn to read offers a whole new wealth of knowledge to the reading wars.  Phonics is better than whole language.  Unfortunately, even at best, phonics education will still leave most struggling, at-risk students in the failing category (Kilpatrick, 2016).  Why?  Phonics does not teach letter-sound relationships in the same way that the brain processes letter-sound associations.  This is what the neuroimaging research is showing us.  Phonics focuses on the letter; the brain focuses on sounds. 
 
Today’s struggling students deserve the very best we can offer in the classroom.  It is not enough to trade whole language for phonics.  Students need more. In his book Equipped for Reading Success, David A. Kilpatrick (2016) gives one of the clearest and easiest to understand explanations for how the brain processes and learns letter-sounds.  Kilpatrick explains that the brain does not recognize and store words through visual memory—seeing the same word over and over or “look say.”  The brain recognizes and stores new words in memory by sound.  The brain creates an “oral filing system.”  The brain does not file words by letter.  Sound sequences are the way that the brain stores and matches sounds.  The brain strings letter sounds together, especially vowel sounds.  The brain does not store “whole words” (Kilpatrick, 2016).  Whole language stresses whole words not letter sounds.  We do not have the ability to store whole words by memory in the brain. The brain stores words phonologically by sound. 
 
This is why whole language and all of its various varieties remain useless for teaching students to read; whole language works against the brain.  Students fail.  Yes, some students learn to read under the whole language system.  Some students will learn to read regardless of the method that you use, but 63% or 64% (depending upon the age group), according to the Nation’s Report Card (2017) have not learned to read at their respective grade level.  This tells us that whole language is a failure, not the children, not the teachers, it is clearly whole language and any school that uses whole language or any publisher who publishes and distributes whole language curriculum that is the failure.  It needs to stop—now.  Whole language has hurt enough students.  We must get rid of it.  Whole language causes students to fail in reading.  We’ve known this for years (Foorman, 1995). 
 
Neuroimaging research directly compared whole language and phonemic awareness; whole language failed; phonemic awareness techniques were successful (Yoncheva, Wise, & McCandliss, 2015).  The proof is in the neuroimaging pictures (Shaywitz and Shaywitz, 2004).  The superiority of phonological awareness has been proven study after study (Keller & Just, 2009).  Neuroimaging research showed that intensive training in phonemes (letter sounds) changed the “brain and the way it functions.” This change through phonemic awareness training allowed even struggling at-risk students to make significant improvement in reading (Meyler, Keller, Cherkassky, Gabrieli, & Just, 2008).
 
How much proof do the schools need?  No, tacking on phonics this fall will not make whole language education work.  Students will continue to fail as long as schools continue using whole language.
 
Switching to phonics is also not the answer.  Schools absolutely must teach letter sound relationships—phonemic awareness.  Phonics, like whole language, still focuses on whole words.  Phonics, unlike whole language, does teach letter sound relationships, but the emphasis is on the letter and the word—not the oral letter sounds.  I learned to read in the 50’s with phonics, and some children will learn with phonics who did not learn through whole language.  The students need more.  Children need a system that will allow all students to learn.
 
Vowel clustering teaches both phonemic and phonological awareness by teaching children to decode and encode letter sounds in order to read words (Clanton Harpine, 2008). All of my reading programs teach phonemic awareness (learning letter sounds) and phonological awareness (learning to work with letter sounds).  Phonemic awareness teaches children to recognize that letters of the alphabet represent sounds.  Phonological awareness teaches children to work with letter sounds to build multisyllable and compound words.  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 has been tested and proven to work with all students, including struggling, at-risk, and failing students.
 
In my reading clinic, I have worked with children who had failed multiple years and had even been retained.

• Students who failed under whole language in the classroom came to the reading clinic and succeeded.  The same children came to my program and studied vowel clustering and returned to the classroom successfully reading at their age level.  Even if a student has been retained, we stress sending the child back to the classroom reading at their actual age level.  Some children have moved up 4 grade levels in reading in one year.
• Failing at-risk children placed in Reading Recovery by the schools learned with vowel clustering.  Reading Recovery failed, but the same students succeeded with vowel clustering.  They returned to the classroom reading at age level.
• Even failing special needs students placed in one-on-one pull out programs in phonics who couldn’t learn to read came to the reading clinic.  These same students came to the reading clinic and with vowel clustering they succeeded.  They learned to read.
• Balanced literacy failed as well, combining whole language and phonics, but vowel clustering taught the children who failed in the schools under “balanced literacy” to read at their respective age levels.  Yes, some children moved up 4 grade levels in reading in one year through vowel clustering.  We have the data to prove it, and the data will be presented in a new book coming out in 2019.

Yes, we have teaching methods that work.  We just are not using them in the schools, in our after-school programs, or with our one-on-one pull-out tutoring.  Reading failure impacts people across their entire life.  The Department of Education shows through statistical studies that 85% of juveniles in the court system are “functionally illiterate:” they cannot read.  Reading failure is a lifelong problem; 70% of adult prison inmates are unable to read above the fourth-grade level, and 21% of the general adult population reads below the fifth-grade level (National Center for Adult Literacy, 2007).  Reading failure is a nationwide, growing problem.

Unfortunately, most students return to the classroom this fall to whole language.  Yes, each fall, most schools tack on something new.  The change that is coming for most schools this year is adding phonics onto whole language—“balanced literacy.”  Phonics is not a new teaching method and neither is “balanced literacy.”  Some schools have already made the switch to “balanced literacy.”  Balanced literacy is also a failure.  So, the schools that are saying, “we’ve added phonics” are still going to fail.  Schools cannot and will not be able to teach struggling at-risk students to read by merely tacking on phonics.  Students need a complete and total change in teaching methods.
 
In Part 3 of this discussion on phonics, I’ll look at what we could do if we focused teaching reading with methods grounded on phonemic awareness principles.

As teachers and students start gearing up to head back to school this fall, the Internet is buzzing with advice.  Be careful.  There is a lot of bad advice, advice that is not research-based or advice that has not been tested with at-risk and struggling students.  Examples are the ones that say, “teach your two-year old to read.”  Yes, there are probably some children who may learn to read at two years of age, but that is not the norm, nor should you fall for such nonsense.  There’s also, “teach your child to read in 10 easy lessons.”  Some children may learn to read in 10 easy lessons—but not all.  Remember, anyone can post anything on the Internet.  Look at their research.  If they do not list rock-solid research findings, I’d be suspicious.  
 
Teaching a student to read is hard work.  Learning to read as a student is hard work.  If someone is telling you that they can teach any child to read in 10 easy lessons, you want to be very cautious of such claims.  I have been teaching at-risk students to read for over 17 years.  It takes more than 10 easy lessons.  Yes, we can teach at-risk students to read.  If we use the correct teaching methods, I believe all students can learn to read.  Research has also proven that the teaching methods that we are using in the classroom are the main cause of reading failure—not teachers, but the teaching methods (Foorman et al., 2015). 
 
Will the new school year bring change?  There is always change.  The problem with change is that the changes implemented in the schools are often incorrect or ineffective changes.  Therefore, reading failure continues, children and teens continue to struggle and suffer, and real constructive change never reaches the school classroom.
 
For example, we are seeing “phonics” mentioned more often.  Many schools are claiming that they are using phonics.  There are approximately 6 different types of phonics being used; so, the questions that you want to ask are:  What kind of phonics instruction are you using?  Do you teach decoding and encoding with your phonics instruction?  Is there any research to show that the type of phonics that you are teaching helps improve reading scores?  Or, are you using “balanced literacy?”
“Balanced literacy” is actually the disproven whole language approach with some phonics tacked on (Moates, 2000).  Balanced literacy has been proven ineffective; it doesn’t work (Foorman et al., 2003).  Yet, many schools claim to be using “balanced literacy.”  It sounds nice; but, unfortunately, it is ineffective
 
Phonics is defined as knowing letter-sound relationships.  Knowing and understanding letter sounds is essential for effective reading.  The problem is the way you teach these letter sound relationships.  There are many phonics methods being advertised [see my previous blog on the confusion on phonics’ teaching methods 7-9-17]:

• Embedded phonics instruction tacks phonics onto whole language teaching methods and has been proven through research to be ineffective (National Reading Panel, 2000).
• Analogy phonics uses rimes and looks for similarities but looks at similarities in whole words.  Memorization is required.  Research shows that this is not an effective method (National Reading Panel, 2000).
  
• Analytical phonics, sometimes called implicit phonics, emphasizes common sounds, often uses the first letter in a word (dog, dad, day, do), relies on rules, and is attached frequently to whole language teaching techniques.  Again, it doesn’t work (Hempenstall, 2016; Johnson & Watson, 2004).
• Systematic phonics has demonstrated that it can be helpful, but research has also shown that it is not enough.  Again, it depends on how you teach systematic phonics.  Systematic phonics can still leave at-risk students confused.  They need more.  To be effective, systematic phonics must teach handwriting and letter formation.  It must also teach both decoding and encoding skills (Hempenstall, 2016; click on the .pdf link).
  

 
Whole language works against the brain’s natural mental processes.  Whole language focuses on the whole word and has been proven over and over not to work. 

Simply saying that your school includes phonics instruction is also not the complete answer to reading failure.  It depends on how the school teaches phonics. 

Schools must do more.  Schools must also recognize that phonics does not work for all at-risk, struggling students.  Phonics focuses on letters.  The brain focuses on sound relationships (Kilpatrick, 2016).  See the upcoming next post of this blog for a better understanding of why simply tacking on phonics will not help teach children to read.

A Twitter user asked me to clarify the terms phonemic awareness and phonological awareness.  I am happy to explain, because yes, I know that these terms can be confusing.  Yet, teachers will encounter these two words, and they need to understand them.
 
Phonemic awareness is when a child sees the word cat and immediately begins to break the word down into individual phonemes or sounds. Phonemic awareness teaches students to break words down into letter sounds (decode) and then put those sounds back together to pronounce or read the word (encode) (see Shaywitz, Overcoming Dyslexia, 2003).
 
Phonological awareness is when the child sees the word cat, breaks the word down into letter sounds, can pronounce the word, and can then take that knowledge and work with it.  This may mean that the student can manipulate the word cat by adding or subtracting letters to make new words:  can, cattle, calf.  The student can break words into syllables.  This also means that the student knows what the word means and can use that word in a sentence (for a complete description of phonemic and phonological awareness see Kilpatrick, 2016). 
 
So, phonemic awareness is the identification or decoding and encoding of letter sounds.  It is part of phonological awareness, which is the ability to work with letter sounds, to build new words from a common letter sound (particularly vowel sounds), and to break words into syllables. 

Now, what is phonics?  Phonics methods emphasize the letter rather than the sound.  Phonics education starts with the letter.  With phonemic and phonological awareness, you start with the oral sound and build toward the letter and the word.  Phonemic and phonological awareness give us a totally different teaching method that evidence shows to be superior to teaching the old-style phonics approach.
 
Phonemic awareness, phonological awareness and phonics are not the same, nor do they use the same teaching methods.  Phonemic awareness is a subset of phonological awareness, but phonics education is an entirely different approach to teaching letter sounds. 
 
Phonics is a means of teaching the relationship between letters and sounds.  The emphasis is on letters or groupings of letters.  There are between 4 to 6 different approaches used for teaching phonics.  Of these 6 different phonics teaching techniques, systematic phonics is the only phonics method that has shown any success in teaching children to read.  Unfortunately, research also shows that systematic phonics leaves many students confused (Hempenstall, 2016; click on the .pdf link).
 
Systematic phonics instruction entails the direct teaching of letter-sound relationships and uses a specific sequence or learning pattern.  Research shows systematic phonics instruction to be the most effective phonics method, but be careful.  There are many different approaches for teaching systematic phonics.  To be effective, systematic phonics must teach decoding and encoding instead of memorization or a list of rules.

Personally, I have completely stopped using the word “phonics” because the word is being used so many different ways—many of which represent ineffective teaching methods.  Instead, I use only phonemic and phonological awareness and vowel clustering.
 
Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic awareness describes when students are taught to hear and recognize letter sounds, identify letter-sound relationships, and decode and encode phonemes.  A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound that can be identified. 
 
The word cat is a common example for teaching phonemic awareness.  Neuroimaging research shows that it is much better to teach students to sound out the word cat (one letter sound at a time) than to teach students to memorize or simply recognize the word cat.  The word cat has three distinct phonemes or sounds.  Students need to break words into letter sounds, even a simple one syllable word like cat. It is better to teach students to sound out each letter sound, one letter at a time, even for multisyllabic or compound words.  There are no rules to learn when learning phonemic awareness, and students are never asked to guess at a word or to memorize a word list.  Students are taught to break all words down into individual letter sounds (decode) and then put those letter sounds back together and read or pronounce the word (encode). 

Phonological Awareness

Phonological awareness incorporates many skills, including phonemic awareness.  Phonological awareness also teaches letter sounds and includes breaking words into syllables.  This is very important when the student is ready to learn multisyllable words or compound words.  Phonological awareness teaches students to work with words.  Students can be taught to add or take letters away to make new words:  the word at can be changed to the word am by taking the letter t away and adding the letter m.  This is a simple example, but the same is true with more complex words:  back, black, sack, stack, act, actor, acrobat.  Building new words with a common vowel sound helps students visualize how words are formed.  Some people will tell you that phonological awareness is just about sound and does not involve alphabet letters or words—wrong.  Phonological awareness teaches the relationship between letters and spoken sounds.  Yes, phonological awareness involves working with the actual written word, breaking the word down into letter sounds, and then understanding how to use that word to express ideas.

Vowel Clustering
 
Vowel clustering incorporates phonemic and phonological awareness by teaching 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; click on the .pdf link).
 
Vowel clustering teaches both phonemic and phonological awareness by teaching children to decode and encode letter sounds in order to read words (Clanton Harpine, 2011). 

I spoke with a teacher this past weekend who said, “Everyone’s talking about vowel sounds.  I took one look on the Internet, and I’m totally confused.  What is the best way to teach vowel sounds?”

There is a lot of confusion on the Internet.  Some ideas are good, and have been tested and proven to work.  Some ideas have not been tested and do not work; they will only cause struggling students more problems.  Let’s look at some of the bad ideas first.  Then, we will look at vowel clustering and show the right way to teach vowel sounds. 
 
Bad Methods.  Do Not Use.

·         Hand motions or signals—No, I did not make this up.  Hand signals do not work.  It is much better to simply teach the student to break words down into letter sounds.  Teach students to work with letter sounds—not hand motions or signals.
·         A PowerPoint with sounds and action buttons—Computers and tech are all the rage, but research shows that computerized learning is less effective than working with  students in person.  What happens if a student becomes confused or has a problem?  Unless your program is able to teach or understand the student’s problem, the student becomes confused and frustrated.
·         Naturally, worksheets and even digital games are listed—Again, it depends on the game or worksheet.  Worksheets have never proven to be effective teaching tools; they are only for practice once the lesson has been learned.  Worksheets do not teach students who are confused and do not understand a concept.
·         Teaching the most frequently used vowel sounds first, then adding on the other irregular sounds later.  This is an old-style phonics practice that has been proven over and over to be confusing; it is ineffective for struggling students.
·         Word lists with all of the vowel sounds mixed together on one list.  Never.  Teach vowel sounds one at a time.  Do not try to teach a sound for each of the vowels all at the same time.  In other words, do not teach the short vowel sound for all 5 vowels at the same time.  Yes, you may get away with this approach for short vowel sounds, but what happens when you try to teach long vowel sounds?  Letter a alone has 7 letter combinations for the long a sound, plus a sound when it stands alone.  If you try to teach all of these long vowel sounds for letter a at the same time that you are teaching all of the long vowel sounds for e, i, o, u, then you have a group of completely, totally confused students.
·         Picture cues for each sound.  What happens when stories do not have picture cues?  If you have not taught your students to work with the letters and sounds instead of relying on pictures, they are lost and confused.
·         First letter in a word—This is a faulty concept often used in whole language:  ten, to, take, time….  The problem is that the brain does not sort, organize, or conceptualize new words by the first letter.  To build vowel cluster pathways in the brain, you must teach vowels in clusters.
·         Songs—Fun but not always useful for decoding and encoding letter sounds.  Students must learn how to break words down into letter sounds and then put those sounds back together and pronounce or read the word.  We do not have a song that teaches decoding and encoding.
·         Tongue twisters—Again fun, but how do you teach vowel sounds with tongue twisters?  There are 7 different letter combinations just for the long a vowel sound.  How can you teach these combinations with a tongue twister?  We need to stop looking for cutesy ideas and look for actual ideas which will help students learn to read.
·         Mixing vowel clusters—Be careful: some methods introduce ir, us, aw, ue, ay, ou, ie, ea, oy together in the same lesson.  Yes, these are vowel clusters, but they do not fit together.  You cannot just pull out a list of random vowel sounds and say that you are teaching vowel clusters.  Vowel clustering organizes vowel sounds in visual and auditory patterns to make it easier for students to learn. 

The Right Method
 
Many teaching methods talk about vowel clusters, but it is the way you teach vowel clusters that makes the difference.  Vowel clustering teaches the vowel sounds in sound clusters for each vowel—one sound at a time.  For example, all of the letter a sounds must be taught before going on to the next vowel.  This allows students to develop a complete understanding for letter a before adding the next vowel sound.

his is the second in my series about vowel clustering.  I previously mentioned that it is important to use phonemic awareness teaching methods—teaching that alphabet letters represent sounds. Research shows that phonemic awareness methods are much more effective than teaching students to memorize “look say” word lists (see my blog post on 6/23/17 on whole language) or phonics rules (see my blog post on 7/9/17 for the danger of phonics methods being used in schools).  Phonemic awareness is even more effective than the “balanced literacy” approach that some schools are using.
 
Vowel clustering teaches both phonemic and phonological awareness by teaching children to decode and encode letter sounds in order to read words (Clanton Harpine, 2010). All of my reading programs teach phonemic awareness (learning letter sounds) and phonological awareness (learning to work with letter sounds).  Phonemic awareness teaches children to recognize that letters of the alphabet represent sounds.  Phonological awareness teaches children to work with letter sounds to build multisyllable and compound words.  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 has been tested and proven to work with all students, including struggling, at-risk, and failing students.
 
So far in our series on vowel clustering, we have established that
·         Letters represent sounds.
·         We read primarily using lower case alphabet letters.
·         Vowels are a key factor in how a word is pronounced.

The next question is how do we teach students vowel sounds?  Vowel clustering teaches all of the vowel sounds in clusters.  The traditional phonics approach was to learn the short vowel sounds for a, e, i, o, u, and then to learn the long vowel sounds for the same vowels.  The critical difference here is that when using phonics, beginning students are only taught long vowel sounds with silent e, such as:  cake, tree, ice, tone, use.  Yet, looking just at the long vowel sound for the letter a, we see an immediate problem with the phonics method.  There are seven different letter combinations that can be used to make the long a vowel sound:  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. 

Instead, it is much better to teach students all of the sounds for the letter a in a cluster 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 word wall, an auditory learning technique through oral reading and spelling of new words as they are matched to their letter sound on the vowel clustered word wall.  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 on a vowel clustered word wall.
 
Vowel clustering is an easy method to teach.  If you have questions, contact me by clicking the e-mail envelope on the top right-hand corner of this page.