While I was talking with a teacher last week, she said, “I’ve tried everything, nothing works.  What do I do?  I’ve used all the new phonics techniques, reading recovery, everything….” 
 
Many teachers and parents bring students to my reading clinics saying just those words.  When you consider that reading scores just dropped another 5 points (Remember, scores dropped 2 points in 2019 before COVID.) and that more than 60% of students in 4th, 8th, and 12th grade cannot read at the proficiency level, it is no wonder that teachers, parents, tutors, and students are frustrated about reading failure. 
 
As the young teacher asked, what should we do? 

 
Neuroimaging scientific research says that, to teach students to read, teaching methods must connect with the oral language system. 

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For more on the Nation’s Report Card scores, see:  The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) released the first set of scores for 2022. They are not good. What does that mean for children in the classroom? 
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In Part 1 of this series, we are looking at what science has to say about the role of the oral language system in teaching students to read.
 
Since schools and the Internet are buzzing with talk about what scientific research says about teaching reading, let’s start by looking at some actual scientific research findings.

 
Scientific Research on Reading
 
The oral language system is how we communicate verbally (spoken rather than written).  We use spoken words to explain what we know, the information that we have learned.  We also use oral language to express ideas, opinions, and beliefs.  Oral language also includes the way we express our emotions and feelings, and how we interpret meaning.  Oral language is not written; it is derived from vocal sounds and from our oral communication experiences.  For example, a toddler can communicate orally and understand your oral communication, but most toddlers cannot read.  Reading is not something children learn naturally just by listening to others read.  Reading is a skill that must be taught.
 
Dr. Sally Shaywitz, M. D., author of Overcoming Dyslexia, who specializes in working with struggling students and students diagnosed with dyslexia, says that,

 
“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….” (pp. 59-68).
 
We activate the oral language system that Dr. Shaywitz mentioned by the way we teach letter-sound relationships. 
 
As Dr. Shaywitz goes on to explain, “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, if you are teaching in the classroom or tutoring a student, you must use teaching methods that actually connect with the oral language system, otherwise your teaching and tutoring will not be effective, especially for those who struggle the most in reading.
 
 
Do phonics and whole language connect with the oral language system?
 
No, they do not.  Whole language does not teach letter sound relationships at all, and phonics focuses on letters rather than sounds.  Therefore, neither of these methods connects with the oral language system.  Let’s look at some actual scientific research.

In his book, , Equipped for Reading Success, David A. Kilpatrick explains why.
 
“Most people assume that words are stored in visual memory. Many teaching approaches [phonics and whole language] 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.”  (pp. 29-30).

 
Why does whole language not connect with the oral language system?
 
Whole language focuses on “look-say” techniques and learning sight words. 
 
Whole language stresses whole words not letter sounds.  Therefore, whole language does not connect with the oral language system. 
 
We do not have a rolodex of words indexed in our brains.  The brain does not have the ability to store whole words.  The brain only stores words by sound.
 

We’ll talk more about how the brain records and stores sounds in Part 2, but if you’d like more information, read:  How the Brain Sorts Out Speech Sounds
 
For now, we’ll stay focused on the oral language system.

Scientific research in reading has tested the superiority of teaching letter sounds vs. teaching memorization of whole words.  Neuroimaging scientific research directly compared whole language and teaching letter sounds or phonemes.

 
Yoncheva, Wise, and McCandliss (2015) conducted a study using the word cat:

“… 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.”

This neuroimaging research study showed 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 proof is in the neuroimaging pictures.  Neuroimaging scientific research directly compared whole language and teaching letter sounds.  Whole language failed; it doesn’t connect. Teaching letter sounds connected to the oral language system and was very successful.  
 
Even though the word cat only has three distinct phonemes or sounds, students still need to break it into letter sounds. Yes, this is true even for simple one-syllable words like cat. It is better to teach students to sound out each letter sound, one letter at a time than to memorize or try to teach through repetition.  Sounding out letter sounds becomes essential for multisyllabic or compound words. 
 
There are no rules to learn when learning phonemes and sounds, 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 or sound clusters (decode) and then put those letter sounds back together and read or pronounce the word (encode). 
 
 
Why does phonics not connect with the oral language system?
 
Neuroimaging research shows that phonics does not teach letter-sound relationships in the same way that the brain processes them.  Phonics focuses on letters; the brain focuses on sounds.  As we have discussed before, struggling students will most likely not be able to learn to read from either whole language techniques or systematic phonics. 
 
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For more about this research, see:  Tutoring Hint #8:  Stick with Real Scientific Research in Reading.  Do Not Fall for Gimmicks.  Scientific Research Is Helpful for Tutoring. 
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Some people may be saying that they teach phonemes or sounds in preschool or kindergarten and then I switch to phonics in first grade.  Wrong.  That's not what the research says.
 
Even the National Reading Panel (2000), said teaching letter-sounds was more than just teaching phonemes in kindergarten. 
 
 Yes, the National Reading Panel talks about phonics, but if you look more closely the panel actually tested three teaching methods, not just whole language and phonics.  The panel also tested phonemic awareness as a teaching method.
 
The term “phonemic awareness” has become distorted in schools.  Many teachers tell me, “That’s just learning sounds.”  Wrong.  As indicated by this quote from the National Reading Panel, phonemic awareness is a teaching method.
 
“… teaching students to manipulate phonemes with letters yields larger effects than teaching students without letters, …. PA [phonemic awareness] training is more effective when children are taught to use letters to manipulate phonemes. This is because knowledge of letters is essential for transfer to reading and spelling."
 
 
Therefore, when we teach letter sounds, we need to teach students phonemes using letters instead of just oral sounds.  Students need to match the actual letter with the sound. 
 
When you are teaching do not match letter sounds to pictures, instead match letter sounds to letters without a picture.  You want students to learn to associate the oral sound with the written letter, not a picture.  We read with words not pictures.  If you are tutoring, this is where manipulatives (letter tiles, letter cards) can really be helpful, but do not match the sound to a picture.  Match the sound to the letter without a picture. 
 
Yes, scientific research has tested the effectiveness of teaching letter sounds instead of teaching phonics.  In 2016, Sebastian Suggate conducted a study comparing 71 phonemic and phonics intervention groups.  He found that: 

“… phonemic awareness interventions [letter sounds attached to oral language system] showed good maintenance of effect…. phonics and fluency interventions … tended not to.”

  
Why are we not using teaching methods that connect with the oral language system?
 
If both whole language and phonics do not connect with the oral language system and teaching methods must connect with the oral language system in order for students to learn to read, then is science research in reading actually telling us that we should change how we teach students to read?  What teaching methods should we be using instead of whole language and phonics?
 
Neuroimaging research has changed how science views reading.  As Dr. Kilpatrick explains,
 
“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” (pp. 59-68).
 
Dr. Kilpatrick continues: 

“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)

 
So, as Dr. Kilpatrick states, phonemic awareness and phonics are not the same. Remember, we need phonemic awareness to tie into our oral language system. So, how should we teach students to use the oral language system?  I use vowel clustering.
 
  
Teaching Letter Sounds
 
Teaching letter sounds and connecting to the oral language system is much more effective for teaching students to read than phonics teaching techniques.  I have also found this to be true in my own research with vowel clustering. 
 
Vowel clustering teaches letter sounds and connects to the oral language system.
 
Study 1:  Camp Sharigan with children of Mexican descent from an inner-city neighborhood
 
Randomly selected students participated in my Camp Sharigan week-long, 10-hour after-school reading program.  Compared with students from the same after-school program who participated in homework help and one-on-one systematic phonics tutoring, the Camp Sharigan students showed significantly more improvement than the phonics/homework group in spelling, reading, sight words, and comprehension.  After follow-up testing one year later, results showed that the Camp Sharigan students were still scoring higher.  Camp Sharigan is only a one-week program.  There was no follow-up intervention, just retesting.  Camp Sharigan uses vowel clustering.

 
Study 2:  Camp Sharigan with children from a suburban public school

Students participating in the reading clinic

“… showed significant improvement in reading, spelling, and sight word recognition, while students in the control group showed no improvement in any category.  In fact, students in the experimental group actually surpassed students in the control group for all three outcomes, indicating that the immediate effects of the intervention were quite substantial.”

​From the results of the study as described in  Chapter 3, we see that the experimental group (the Camp Sharigan students) showed substantial improvement over the homework/phonics group. ​The bar graphs show the number of errors, or the number missed by students in each group.  Notice how much the Camp Sharigan students improved.

The Internet and the news media are buzzing with the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) scores released on September the 1st.  In case you haven't heard, reading scores for 4th graders dropped five points.  Yes, this was a drastic drop that is quickly being blamed on COVID.  But is the pandemic the only problem?
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For the actual report, see:  The Nation’s Report Card Shows a Major Drop in Reading Scores.  Why?
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The 2022 test scores are low, yes, partly because of COVID, but mostly because of the way reading is taught in the classroom—teaching method.  Notice, I did not say teachers, I said teaching method.

 
Exactly what went wrong and who is to blame? 
 
Yes, the sudden five-point drop in reading scores for 4th graders between 2020 and 2022 was mostly caused by the pandemic.  Let's face it, for the past 2 ½ years school classrooms have been in turmoil.  So, the drop in reading scores should not be a surprise to anyone.
 
The question is, where we place the blame?
 
Was online teaching to blame?

Online teaching can be effective. Again, it depends on how you were teaching online.  What kind of curriculum were you using?  Let me give an example.  When the lockdown was first announced, I was teaching at my reading clinic where two students had just moved up two grade levels in reading using vowel clustering after only 48 hours of instruction.  Both of these students had entered my reading clinic reading below grade level. 
 
During the lockdown, I began teaching online.  I'm a group specialist.  I design psychological educational programs that emphasize the therapeutic healing power of working together in groups.  Therefore, teaching online was totally new for me, as it was for many teachers.  No, the way that I taught at my reading clinic did not just automatically transfer to online teaching. 
 
One student who I worked with during the lockdown was a full year behind.  This was a very bright student who always attended in-class instruction before the lockdown.  There were no diagnoseable learning difficulties and the student was not dyslexic.  But the student was a year behind before the pandemic.  During the lockdown, the school sent home stacks and stacks of worksheets, sometimes videos to watch online, and sometimes nothing at all. 
 
Worksheets do not teach. We have years and years of research that document that if a student does not already know the information, a worksheet will not teach it to them.  I had to start creating online curricula.  The next year, the parents took the option to enroll the student in an actual online program with curriculum that was written to be used online.  I continued to work with the student.  It was hard because the online curriculum assumed that the student was at grade level.  The student was not, but the student actually covered two years of learning in one year with online curriculum.  The student not only caught up to grade level but moved ahead.
 
So no, I do not believe that online teaching is to blame for a 5-point drop in reading scores.  Once again, the problem is the method that we use to teach reading, regardless of whether it be online or in the classroom.  Teaching method, not teachers and not poverty, is the cause of reading failure.

 
Won’t simply returning students to the classroom solve the problem?
 
No, returning students solves nothing.  Just sitting in a classroom is not what enables students to learn.  Research shows that curriculum can be one of the most important ways that schools can help students learn because when you select a reading textbook, you are also selecting a teaching method.  
 
As Matt Chingos and Grover Whitehurst stated in their Brown Center on Education at Brookings report,
 
“Students learn principally through their interactions with people … and instructional materials….”

When schools select a failed or disproven teaching method, they are contributing to reading failure.  Reading failure leads to academic failure.  A student who cannot read cannot excel in social studies, in science, or even in math.  Reading is essential; therefore, schools must select curriculum that will enable teachers to teach children to read: all children.  Just putting our students back in the classroom is not enough.

 
The question is, how are we teaching students to read in the classroom? 
 
I’m a psychologist.  Since reading failure is one of the root causes for mental health concerns, I must teach students how to read in order to help them correct the mental and psychological problems they are facing.  I cannot use a failing teaching method.  In many instances, I am working with struggling and/or failing students.  Students come to my program because they have failed in the classroom using whole language, balanced literacy, and even systematic phonics.  They have lost confidence; they no longer believe it’s possible for them to learn to read. Students need a teaching method that restores their self-efficacy (belief that they can learn again) by teaching them to read effectively.  I use vowel clustering.  I do not use phonics, whole language, cueing, guessing, reading recovery, or any other method presently being used in most public-school classrooms. 
 
Why not? 
 
Because the schools have tried these different methods with the students who I teach, and the methods have failed.  Students need a teaching method that will help them learn to read and be successful in the classroom.
 
Let’s look at another table from the NCES that charts how well students were reading before the pandemic.  This particular graph does not include the new 2022 scores.  You will recall from the earlier NCES chart that reading scores dropped from 220 in 2020 to 215 in 2022.

 
What does this chart tell us?
 
This graph shows how poorly our teaching methods have been working since 1992.  There is very little improvement.  This graph also shows that the 2020 scores are not the first drop in reading scores.  Look at 2019—a two point drop. 

So far, only the 4th grade scores have been released, so let’s look at those. For 4th grade, we see that the average reading score in 2019 was 220 which was two points lower than the average score in 2017 (222).  Why did scores drop?  Students were in the classroom.  We had full in-class instruction.  This was before COVID.  A 2019 survey of more than 600 elementary schools blamed the drop on balanced literacy teaching methods—a mixture of whole language and phonics. 
 
As one report stated,

“A 2019 survey of more than 600 elementary-school teachers by Education Week found that more than two-thirds used a balanced-literacy philosophy, although most also said they incorporated “a lot” of phonics.” 
 
In 2001, No Child Left Behind established that all students, pre-kindergarten through high school, should be at the proficient level for their grade by 2014.  We fell short of that goal.
 
Proficient level on the NCES scale means students are able to read at or above grade level.  Not proficient identifies students reading below grade level.
 
From 1991 to 2019, reading scores have improved very little.  Again, teaching methods.
The problem is not just COVID or the 2022 drop in reading scores.  Reading failure and below proficient scores have been a long-standing problem. We’re doing something wrong.  We need to change how we teach reading, especially since more than 60% of 4th graders could not read at the proficient level in 2019.

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For more on the 2017 and 2019 scores, see:  Reading Wars are Over!  Phonics Failed.  Whole Language Failed.  Balanced Literacy Failed. Who Won?  It Certainly Wasn’t the Students.
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What teaching methods are schools now using?
 
 
During the lockdown and even today as students return to the classroom, some schools rely heavily on worksheets.  As one author explained,
 
“A worksheet does not teach, no matter how hard you believe they do, they just don’t. Children, young children especially, need time to explore concepts and manipulate materials in order to learn. A cut and paste worksheet on the life cycle of a butterfly is really just giving them cutting practice, not teaching them about the life cycle.”

“Hands on learning benefits all learning styles, even those kids who love to write.”

 
Researchers have been studying worksheets for years.  Harris Cooper, Jorgianne Civey Robinson, and Erika A Patall  conducted a study entitled, Does Homework Improve Academic Achievement? A Synthesis of Research, 1987–2003. 

Combining their research on worksheets with their focus on homework, they concluded that worksheets do not teach.  Unless the student already knows the material being covered on the worksheet, the student will learn absolutely nothing from the worksheet, except frustration and a sense of failure.  They also concluded that worksheets and homework do not improve academic achievement, test scores, or overall learning.
 
So, why do we keep using worksheets in the classroom and sending worksheets home as homework?  Good question, but in most school systems, worksheets and homework are a district decision, not an individual teacher decision.  Change must come from the school board or the state.
  
The schools are buzzing with “science of reading” talk.  As I stated earlier, I completely and totally support scientific research in reading, but just labeling our teaching methods science of reading will not teach students how to read.  We want to find methods that work with all students. 

​
For more on the science of reading, see:  Tutoring Hint #8:  Stick with Real Scientific Research in Reading.  Do Not Fall for Gimmicks.  Scientific Research Is Helpful for Tutoring.
 
Let’s look at an example.  I have cited this example before, but it is definitely worth citing again because it speaks so directly to the importance of using teaching methods that work with all students.  It also illustrates how changing the teaching method can turn a student from failure toward success.
A 15-year-old was brought to my reading program, reading at the pre-kindergarten level.  She knew her consonant sounds but none of her vowel sounds.  She had failed for nine straight years.  She had an extensive violence record.  She lived in a single parent household from the housing project area in her neighborhood.  She, her parent, and the school were completely convinced that she would never learn to read.  The school had tried balanced literacy, reading recovery, and even one-on-one systematic phonics tutoring.  The student could not even read simple words like cat or dog.  With the vowel clustering teaching method, she learned to read in 3 ½ years.  How?  Vowel clustering, the method that I teach in my new tutoring book. 

It is never too late to teach someone to read.  Vowel clustering works with all ages, and it is perfect for one-on-one tutoring, a small group, or an entire class.

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.  I use creative art therapy as a teaching tool with vowel clustering to help teach students how to read.
 
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For an example on how to use creative art therapy, see:  Tutoring Hint #7:  Intrinsic Motivation Is Better than Extrinsic Rewards
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Vowel clustering teaches students to match 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.

 
Does teaching method really make that much difference?

Yes, changing the method that you use to teach reading can even help a student who has failed for nine years become a successful reader.
 
As Dr. Mark Seidenberg states in his book, Language at the Speed of Sight:  How We Read, Why so Many Can’t, and What Can Be Done About It, the reason phonics did not work for my 15-year-old student and for many students is that it does not connect with oral speech.  Vowel clustering works directly with the oral language system.  This is why we have been so successful using vowel clustering with struggling and failing students.
 
As Dr. Seidenberg goes on to explain, real scientific research has had little effect on how reading is being taught in the classroom today.  If we simply return students to the classroom and do not change how we teach reading, reading failure will continue. 
 
We have the knowledge to stop reading failure.  The question is will we use that knowledge, or will we cling to old ideas and teaching methods that have proven to be ineffective.  We cannot just blame COVID for all of our reading failure problems.  Reading failure existed before COVID. 
 
Soon, we will look at some of the scientific neuroimaging research that Dr. Seidenberg was talking about.  But before we move on, we need to consider the effects of reading failure.
 
September is National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month.  I had two students contemplate suicide.  Once they were able to talk about their feelings, both students explained that they were tired of being teased and laughed at because they couldn’t read. 
 
Reading failure is a serious problem.  If you know someone who is struggling with suicidal feelings or with reading failure, be a friend, help them seek professional help.
 
I am always available to help anyone struggling with reading failure.  Contact me.  I can help.

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) just released the first set of scores for 2022.  The NCES was not testing during the early days of the pandemic, so this is the first Nation’s Report Card since 2019. 
 
The Director of the Institute of Education Sciences, Mark Schneider, said that reading scores went down five points.  Although this first report is only for nine-year-olds, this age group is considered a major benchmark in reading progress.  Therefore, the 5-point drop in reading scores causes concern. 
 
The 2022 Nation’s Report Card measured improvement from the start of the COVID pandemic to the return of in-class instruction in 2022.  Unfortunately, there was no improvement, not even with students in the 90th percentile. 

I have many other success stories, but I mention these two because the schools had tried and given up on these students.  Like Dr. Pallas, they didn’t think that it was possible to teach these two struggling students. 

I insist that it is possible to teach struggling students.  The problem is not the students, nor the teachers, nor the parents.  It’s also not poverty or low socio-economic neighborhoods.  Actually, many of the students that I teach come from the housing projects in their neighborhood. 
The problem is the methods that we are using to teach struggling students.
 
The Justice Department has said that “delinquency, violence, and crime are welded to reading failure.”  Bullying in school is also said to share a direct link with reading failure.  We’ll talk more about these psychological harms later. It has been estimated that 85% of adolescents and youth in the courts are classified as “functionally illiterate” and that 70% of prison inmates are not able to read above the fourth-grade level.  ​

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For more on this research, see Chapter 1 in After-School Programming and Intrinsic Motivation:  Teaching At-Risk Students to Read.
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For more on the struggle over teaching methods, see:  Reading Wars are Over!  Phonics Failed.  Whole Language Failed.  Balanced Literacy Failed. Who Won?  It Certainly Wasn’t the Students.
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Take a second look at the graph

Everyone is blaming COVID for the dramatically low scores, and COVID and the pandemic are obviously the cause of the major drop in reading scores over the past two years.  Look again though at the graph at the top of the page.  The last two years are not the only problem.
 
No, low test scores in reading didn’t just start with COVID.  Educators have been fighting over reading for years, while struggling students have been failing for years. 
 
Remember, we said earlier in Tutoring Hint #4 that over 60% of students in 4th, 8th, and 12th grade could not read at grade level according to the 2019 Nation’s Report Card. The 2019 test scores were recorded before the pandemic.

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For earlier research, see:  Tutoring Hint #4:  Never Give Up
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So, yes, COVID is the cause of the drastic drop from 2020 to 2022, but what about the other low scores?  What about the students who were struggling and failing before COVID?
We have a major reading failure problem, and it is time for a change. 
 
 
So, what should we do about these low scores?
 
Swapping phonics for whole language is not the answer.  Yes, phonics may help the students in the 90th percentile, but systematic phonics will not help the students in the low 10th percentile group. 
 
Remember what the National Reading Panel said in their 2000 report?  The National Reading Panel  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).

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For more on the National Reading Panel, see:  Tutoring Hint #8:  Stick with Real Scientific Research in Reading.  Do Not Fall for Gimmicks.  Scientific Research Is Helpful for Tutoring.
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What about low-achieving students?
 
The low 10th percentile group of test takers are “low-achieving readers.”  Phonics will not teach these low-achieving students to read, even phonics advocates agree.  We must offer a different method for teaching struggling students.

We can teach struggling students, but we must change our teaching methods to do so.  I’ve even had failing students move up four grade levels in one year with vowel clustering.  We have the teaching methods to teach each and every struggling student how to read.  We just refuse to turn loose of the old battle between phonics and whole language and try something new, even when vowel clustering has been proven through university research to succeed.  No, we’d rather see students fail than change our ideas and our teaching methods.
 
As Thomas Kane, an economist at the Harvard Graduate School of Education explained, we cannot just keep doing what we are presently doing. 
 
“Somehow, we’ve got to figure out how to help students learn even more per year in the next few years, or these losses will become permanent. And that will be a tragedy.”
 

It's time for a change in how we teach students to read.  Phonics is not enough.  COVID caused the drastic 2-year drop in 2022, but it’s not the only cause of low reading scores.

Tutoring is one of the methods being advocated by the schools and government educational agencies. 

​Tutoring is a perfect way to help struggling students.  Through tutoring, we can use a different teaching method—a method that works with low achieving struggling students.  I use vowel clustering, and it works.