Once again we find an online blog using and interpreting the Nation’s Report Card incorrectly.  This time we have, Dr. Marion Blank, a world-renowned psychologist and expert on the development of literacy and language in children, saying that the Nation’s Report Card shows “37 percent to 40 percent of fourth graders to be reading “below basic levels.”
 
No, Dr. Blank.  Please reread the Nation’s Report Card again.  The problem is much worse than how you describe it. 
 
What the Nation’s Report Card actually shows is that in 2017 only 37% of fourth grade students, 36% of eighth graders, and 37% of twelfth graders scored proficient or above in reading (National Center Education Statistics, 2017).  To be labeled proficient, the student must be able to read at or above grade level. Read the fine print very carefully.  Be careful in reading these statistics because many, like Dr. Blank, believe that the Nation’s Report Card says only 37% cannot read; that is not what the statistics show.  What it says is that only 37% of fourth graders across the nation were able to read at a fourth-grade level.  That is less than half. 
 
The eighth grade statistics were even worse — only 36% could read at the eighth-grade level and only 37% could read at grade level by the time they reached twelfth grade.  That means that over half of fourth graders, eight graders, and even half of twelfth graders could not read at their respective grade level when tested.  We must learn how to read statistics correctly, especially those who claim to be experts.  Yes, we all make mistakes, but the children and teens who are suffering across the nation right now from reading failure cannot afford any more mistakes.  The children and teens across the United States and around the world, need the people in power to correct their mistakes and start using methods that work.

Also see my post of 1/2/2018.  

For a student to comprehend a story or text while reading, the student must have word knowledge. The student must be able to decode and encode the world’s letter sounds, and the student must know the word’s meaning (Perfetti & Joseph, 2013).  Without word meaning and understanding, there is no comprehension.  The student must also understand the world’s phonological form, not just the definition of what the word means (Safura & Perfetti, 2017).  The student must be able to recognize the word’s written form (how the letters are shaped) and recognize the letter sounds used to pronounce the word. 

Decoding and encoding skills are essential to comprehension.  Many students today are being told that they have comprehension problems, when in fact they have decoding and encoding problems.  If you are teaching from a memorized word list, you are not teaching decoding and encoding.  Students can never become effective readers as long as we rely on whole language or “look say” teaching methods.  We have the ability to teach students to read and it’s past time that we do so (see my blog post posts from 6/5/17 and 2/5/17). 

True reading comprehension means understanding the meanings of words and then being able to integrate and use those word meanings to understand a sentence, a paragraph, or an entire text.  Safura and Perfetti (2017) call this process the “word-to-text integration process.” 

• First, learning to recognize and pronounce the word. 
• Then, learning the meaning of the word, and finally, integrating that meaning into the overall understanding of the sentence being read and its association with other sentences in the text. 
  
• Then, and only then, do you have comprehension. 

Reading and comprehension strategies taught in the classroom can never be effective unless we also teach identifying letter sounds (encoding and decoding) and word meanings (Landi et al. 2013).  Neurobiological studies in reading show that comprehension is intertwined with single-word reading, comprehension of a written text, as well as listening comprehension (Landi et al., 2013).  Yes, vocabulary and definitions of words are essential to effective reading and successful comprehension (see my blog post from 5/10/18).  Classroom instruction should begin with: 

(1) phonemic awareness, teaching letter sounds.  Students must learn effective decoding and encoding skills.  Memorization does not work. 
(2) The second step is teaching vocabulary and word meanings.  Teachers must take the meanings of single words and then
(3) teach the meaning of that word(s) in a sentence.  Students learn the definitions of the word, and then how to use the word in a sentence (see my blog post of 2/14/18). 

Then finally, children need to know how to put the sentences together and connect the word meanings and sentences into a total text.  This is much more effective than simply reading a story and answering questions.  For example, how often do you stop a student and ask if they know the meaning of a word in a story?  No, students just keep on reading, ignoring the fact that they have no idea what they are reading.  I worked with a group of students once who could read very well, but then, when I ask what they had read, they had no idea.  How often do you ask if the student knows the meaning of a word in a test question? 

A parent brought a school paper to me once, and said, “She failed this.”  I turned to the student and began asking what different words meant on the page, especially from the questions.  The child did not know any of the words.  She could not read or pronounce the words, nor did she know the words' meanings. How can we expect students to comprehend if we have not taught them the meaning, definition and usage, of the words we are giving them?  Don’t just assume that the student knows what you are talking about.  Ask! Find out, what the student understands.  If students do not know the meanings of words, they cannot comprehend. 

Once students have moved from words and sentences to full text passages and stories, then students must be taught (4) to evaluate what they are reading while they are reading.  Students should be taught to ask questions in their head as they read:  What is this story about?  Who is the main character?  It’s like reading a mystery story and asking: Who did it?  A list of questions at the end of a story will not teach this type of internal mental evaluation.  Sometimes students must be encouraged to stop and look up the meaning of a word and then reread a passage instead of just continuing.  Training the brain to monitor what you’re reading as you’re reading is a learned skill, and if we will follow these four simple steps in teaching reading comprehension, we can improve the way students read and comprehend.

Phonemic awareness means being able to identify letter sounds.  Phonological awareness stresses helping children learn to work with letter sounds.  The National Reading Panel (2000) emphasized that phonemic awareness is essential if you want to teach students to read.  Memorization, “look say,” or whole language techniques do not work (see my blog posts from 6/5/17 and 2/5/17). 

Phonological awareness includes learning to break words down into syllables, to identify combined phoneme sounds, to identify words with similar and dissimilar sounds, to blend or split segmented sounds, and to manipulate sounds by changing letters in words and thereby creating new words.  I use word games to teach phonological awareness (see my blog post from 1/27/18 for a more complete description of phonemic and phonological awareness).  All of my reading programs include word games to help children understand and identify vowel sounds in words.  Word games are just another approach for teaching phonemic and phonological awareness to the students.  My word games include vowel-clustered flash cards, letter tiles for spelling, complete the sentence games, and add a letter/take away a letter type games to enhance reading ability.

One of my most successful and popular word games is called Match the Sound.   This game is played with word walls at a bulletin board, or on a table, or even on the floor.  Match the Sound is simply another teaching method used to strengthen phonemic and phonological awareness.  Where some children learn best by practicing words in a puppet play, other children respond best to the game approach.  We absolutely never include competition in our word games, and we do not offer extrinsic prizes or rewards.  We play the game as a team, and we play the game for the fun and enjoyment of playing a game together. We work together; there are no winners or losers. 

At my Reading Orienteering Club after-school program, we turned the bulletin boards into word walls.  The children would take turns reading a word out loud and then matching the word to its vowel sound on the word wall.  This was just another approach for helping children learn how to practice letter sounds, read new words, and spell. Again, the words were always presented in vowel clusters and correct manuscript style writing and formation of letters was emphasized. This helped the children to identify the different vowel sounds and to be able to read what they had written.  The 4-steps (see my blog post from 2/14/18 for a description of the 4-step procedure) help them learn each new word.  The children were not told that they had missed the word; instead, children were told that the word was tricky.  As a team, they then used the 4-steps to capture the word and learn the new word.  Correct manuscript handwriting style was also encouraged (see my blog post from 4/12/18 for the importance of handwriting when teaching reading).

We need to be extra-careful when we talk about teaching reading. A new Microsoft ad talks about helping at-risk students learn to read by “breaking words into syllables” and improving reading speed:

“Help all students improve comprehension and reading speed with free Microsoft Learning Tools that reduce visual crowding, enable text highlighting and voicing, and break words into syllables.”  

As I mentioned in my May 24th blog post, fluency is more than mere reading speed.  Comprehension is more than merely answering questions (see blog post of 5/10/18).  Teaching a struggling student to read takes more than simply breaking words down into syllables, highlighting words, and enlarging the print size.  If we want to teach children to read, we must teach letter sounds (see blog post from 1/27/18).  Highlighting words on a computer screen is not bad, but children who struggle to read need to be taught that letters represent sounds. 

Struggling students need more.  If you really want to teach struggling students to read, you must teach letter sounds, especially vowel sounds (Shaywitz, 2003).  Simply breaking words into syllables does not teach letter sounds.  Even if you are able to teach a struggling student to read a simple story by practicing the words over and over, you still have not taught the student to read.  Until the student can transfer the knowledge that you teach to any story, any book, you have not actually taught the student to read.  It is not fair to pretend to teach a student to read when we actually have the research, the knowledge, and the evidence to show how to teach struggling students to read.  At my reading clinic, students sometimes move up 4 grade levels in reading in one year, able to read many things, not just one story.

Many students struggle with reading fluency.  Schools often teach that fluency is the speed with which you read.  Children are often timed while they read, and sometimes parents are even encouraged to time their children as they read at home.  Shaywitz and Shaywitz (2007) report from their research that timing children can be harmful.  Reading fluency has absolutely nothing to do with how fast you can read (Shaywitz, 2003).  Reading fluency is instead how smoothly the child reads, how accurately, and whether the child understands and can comprehend the material (Wolf & Katzir-Cohen, 2001). Shaywitz (2003) explains that repetition, rereading the same oral passage over and over is the best way to teach reading fluency.  Fluency training should start the minute children begin learning to read. 

Unfortunately, most children do not want to sit and read the same story over and over.  To fill this need, we incorporate puppet plays into our program design.  Children read and practice reading a puppet skit to present during their make-believe TV show, and they will eagerly reread the same skit several times to practice and be ready for the show.  So, our program includes puppetry as a fun way to help children practice fluency, grammatical sentence structure, reading with emphasis and expression, and conveying ideas to an audience.  For an audience to be able to understand what they were saying, the children often had to speak more slowly rather than seeing how fast they could read.  Puppet plays provide an excellent way for children to practice fluency and also brought parents and family in at the end of the session to witness the children’s weekly improvement and accomplishments. 

Reading comprehension and listening comprehension engage different processes in the brain and must be taught separately.  First, students need to comprehend what they read.  The second kind of comprehension is listening and comprehending while someone reads aloud to the student.  There is also a difference between listening to someone read a story out loud and simply listening to someone give oral directions.  So, the third kind of comprehension comes into play when we listen to directions spoken orally.  Each form of comprehension involves different brain cells and requires that different mental processes be engaged (Block, Schaller, Joy, & Gaine, 2002).  Neuroimaging studies have shown that while the brain uses similar regions of the brain for reading comprehension and listening comprehension, the brain engages and uses these regions of the brain in diverse ways.  The brain uses a unique set of processes for each aspect of comprehension:  cognitive processing, executive functioning, and working memory (Baker, Zeliger-Kandasamy, & DeWyngaert, 2014).

The first problem is silent reading.  In school, lessons often emphasize silent reading and answering multiple choice test questions after a story (Ness, 2011), but comprehension is too complex a process to be taught by simply previewing, reading a story, and answering a set of questions (Pardo, 2004).  Research has shown that students need intrinsic motivation, decoding/encoding skills, vocabulary knowledge, and self-monitoring skills in order to be able to comprehend what they read (Block, Schaller, Joy, & Gaine, 2002).  Self-monitoring skills are especially important because students must stop when they do not understand what they are reading.  Many children just keep reading or skip over words that they do not know.  If students are reading silently, how can you tell whether they have trouble processing what they are reading or are failing to comprehend because they do not understand the meaning of the words that they are reading?  If students do not know the meaning of the words used in a test question, how can you determine whether they did not comprehend the meaning of the story or simply did not understand the meaning of the words in the test question?  We cannot teach comprehension through silent reading and answering questions at the end of the story.
 
The second problem is that, too often, students are not taught vocabulary words or the meaning of words.  Students will never be able to comprehend what they are reading if they do not understand the meaning of the words that they are reading.
 
A third mistake in teaching comprehension is that schools often do not teach oral listening comprehension.  Too often, educators do not check to make sure that students in the classroom understand oral directions or understand when stories or passages are read out loud.  We need to be teaching students to comprehend what they read as well as what they hear being read or spoken to them.
 
At the Reading Orienteering Club (ROC), we emphasize three different kinds of comprehension.  The workers at the workstations READ the directions to the children rather than simply explaining what needs to be done.  This helps the children understand what they are being asked to do, but also develops their listening comprehension skills.  Oral explanations and clarifications are also used at the workstations—teaching comprehension from oral directions.  Therefore, both types of listening comprehension must be taught.  Students must listen and comprehend directions that are read orally by workstation helpers.  Then, they ask questions when they do not understand.  Oral explanations and clarifications from the workers at the workstations then allow children to engage their listening skills and comprehension while both listening to oral read directions and oral spoken directions. 
 
Reading comprehension is also taught at the ROC.  Read and Spell word lists and vowel-clustered stories are interspersed throughout the workstations to give children practice reading lists of words and also reading the words in the context of a story.  
 
One workstation is totally devoted to reading.  The children read out loud to a volunteer.  The reading workstations employ the progressive step system (Steps 1, 2, 3) so that each child can read a beginning chapter book.  We want children to practice decoding and encoding words contained in oral passages (stories), but we do not want the stories to be above the child’s ability level.  Everyone starts at Step 1 and works their way up. 
 
We do not use multiple-choice test questions for teaching comprehension.  At the ROC, the children are asked:  Who, What, When, Where, and Why?  Who was the story about?  What happened in the story?  When did the story take place?  Where did the story take place?  And why is this a good or a bad story?  Would you recommend for someone else to read this story?  At the ROC reading clinic, we want the children to fully engage their thinking and analytical processes so that they truly understand and comprehend the stories that they read. 
 
We also use the 4 steps (explained more completely in my 2/24/18 blog post).  The 4 steps are to (1) break the word down letter-by-letter, sound-by-sound, learning to pronounce the word correctly; (2) practice spelling the word out loud and then write the word correctly on paper; (3) give a definition for the word by looking the word up correctly in the dictionary, and (4) write a sentence using the word, making sure the word is used correctly and that the sentence is grammatical.  Children too young to write a sentence can give the sentences orally.  All children write the words correctly on manuscript writing paper, making sure that they are shaping their letter correctly.  Writing is one of the stages in learning to read (see 4/12/18 post).

The children are encouraged to read both fiction and nonfiction.  They even pretend to have their own TV show and became TV reporters.  They report on the books they read, or give factual information about a topic being studied, such as outer space or the ocean.  The TV shows give an extra challenge to students who are ready to take on harder reading material.  The progressive step system allows struggling students to be full participates in the TV show.  They work with age/ability appropriate reading material or become puppeteers. All students can learn to read and comprehend what they read, but we must start at the beginning and teach the decoding and encoding of letter sounds.  We must emphasize phonemic awareness.  Then, we must take letter sounds one step further, we must pull the sounds together into words, sentences, and stories.  Comprehension begins with letter sounds and ends with word meaning.  Students cannot read and comprehend what they read if they cannot decode and encode letter sounds into words.
 
Teaching both reading and listening comprehension is essential for effective reading.  Leading researchers in comprehension are stating that we need interventions that teach encoding, decoding, and comprehension (Cutting, Eason, Young, & Alberstadt, 2011).  At the ROC reading clinic, we teach encoding, decoding, and comprehension at the same time.

 
Parents (and even teachers) are confused as to why we spend so much time teaching handwriting in my reading clinic.  The simple answer is that emphasizing handwriting helps children improve their reading abilities.  Research shows that just looking at and identifying letters on a chart does not help children learn to read or enhance their reading ability (Li & James 2016).  Even practicing using letters on a computer, iPad, or other electronic device does not improve letter recognition or reading skills (James & Engelhardt 2012).  If children are to receive any benefit for reading, then the children need to write and correctly shape the alphabet letters (Dinehart 2014).  Handwriting differs from typing.  Keyboarding or typing involves selecting letters.  Neuroimaging research shows that shaping the letters by hand requires the student to engage language, working memory, and cognitive processing skills (Gimenez et al. 2014).  Handwriting engages the brain and requires the student to manage and remember the letter symbols.  Visual, typing, or oral practice does not.  Although it uses a different section of the brain, handwriting facilitates and uses phonemic and phonological awareness.

So, we teach handwriting from day one as we teach phonemic awareness or letter sounds.  If children are to learn to read, they must also learn to write legibly.  Scribbling does not count and does not teach the brain to identify and recognize the letter sounds.  I use tracing sheets.  I have the children trace the letters at first to learn the shape of the letters.  Then we say the letter sounds.  We use three or four different colors of colored pencils and trace over the letters several times.  By tracing the letters with colored pencils, the children can tell when they’re on the dots and when they are off the line.  I use tracing sheets that have the arrows so that children can learn to make and shake their letters correctly.  I tell the children, “we are training your brain.”

If the letter is not written correctly, the child erases and tries again.  We start with simple words for handwriting the same as we start with simple words for reading and spelling.  These three processes are taught together.  If we are teaching words that use the at sound; we first trace and write the letters.  Then, read, write, and spell words that use the at sound:  at, cat, fat, rat, mat, hat.  Repetition helps children learn to make their letter shapes, just as repetition helps children learn to read and spell.  We then add these new written words to one of our creative art projects, such as a paper towel tube rocket.  We say to fuel a rocket we need 25 new words.  These words can be as simple as at, cat, bat.  Or the words can be multisyllable or compound words using the same phonemic sound:  acrobat, astronaut, afternoon.  Each child works at their individual ability level, regardless whether it be with beginning sounds or more complex sounds.

Teaching block-style handwriting is essential for teaching reading.  We cannot have effective reading without effective handwriting.

LD Online recently stated on their website that  “36 percent of the nation's fourth graders cannot read at a basic level, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.” [3]  This is wrong.  While their website offers many good suggestions, their citation and understanding of the Nation’s Report Card is wrong.

The National Center for Education Statistics through their 2017 Nation’s Report Card actually says that 37% of fourth grade students, 36% of eighth graders, and 37% of 12th graders scored proficient or above in reading (see my 1-2-18 blog post for the exact scores). To be labeled proficient, the student must be able to read at or above grade level.  This means that LD Online should have read the results correctly and reported that approximately 63% of children across the nation (all races combined) were unable to read at grade level by 4th grade.  It is significantly different to say that approximately 63% of children across the U. S. cannot read at grade level by 4th grade.  The 2017 scores are lower than the reading scores were in 2015.  So, reading failure is getting worse, not better.   Also see this link to Petrilli’s evaluation of the most recent scores. 

In schools and in many after-school programs, motivation takes the form of extrinsic rewards, prizes, or even food.  Such extrinsic rewards have been proven to be ineffective (Deci & Ryan, 2016).  In all of my reading programs, I use only intrinsic motivation, that is internal motivation, motivation that comes from within.  The children read because they want to read, not because they are required to or want to obtain a prize or reward.  We wanted to kindle in each student a desire to read and enjoy reading.

I use hands-on projects to help generate intrinsic motivation (see ch. 8; Clanton Harpine, 2008).  It is not possible for a teacher, parent, or tutor to motivate a student, but you can create a motivating environment (see ch. 6 in Clanton Harpine, 2015).  The group-centered format is perfect for creating an intrinsically motivational environment.  At each session in my reading programs, the students travel from workstation to workstation to practice vowel clustering by reading, decoding, encoding, and working with the words being introduced that day.  Workstations with individualized rotation increase intrinsic motivation and individualize instruction.  Individualized instruction is essential for intrinsic motivation. 

Each day, a different vowel cluster is taught at the workstations with both my Camp Sharigan (Clanton Harpine, 2011) program and my Reading Orienteering Club (see ch. 4, Clanton Harpine, 2013) after-school program.  To increase intrinsic motivation, the students use the words they are learning to work with and place these words on puppets, rockets, and a variety of other hands-on projects.  Completing a project helps struggling students learn organizational skills and learn to read and follow directions.  The students work hard to complete their projects.  The hands-on puppet projects are used for a puppet play at the end of the week at both Camp Sharigan and the Reading Orienteering Club. 

These hands-on projects become teaching tools and are also motivational tools to encourage students to want to learn.  They are not simply arts and crafts projects; they are a teaching technique placed within a supportive group-centered prevention program that focuses on both teaching and counseling.  I want to undo the harms of reading failure.   I want to encourage children to try again and believe that they can learn to read.  Intrinsic motivation works hand-in-hand with vowel clustering because students must have skills if they are going to believe that they can read and then build an internal desire to read.  A progressive step system of learning is essential in rebuilding an intrinsic desire to learn.
 
Click on images to go to Springer website where chapter downloads are available. The books are also listed on Amazon.

All of my reading programs use progressive steps, Step 1, Step 2, Step 3.  Having everyone progress through a series of steps keeps children from being labeled or stigmatized as slow readers.  At both Camp Sharigan and the Reading Orienteering Club after-school program, all students start at Step 1, regardless of age or ability.  They proceed upward through the steps until they reach their ability level or capture five words. (My research found that working with five words at a time was best).  Stopping after five words are captured, this insures that children are not given work that is too hard for them. 
 
Capture is another word for missed.  Instead of saying the child missed the word or the word is wrong, I say that the word is tricky, so, let’s capture it and learn the word.  I want children to be challenged but not overwhelmed.  Children capture 5 words that they cannot read or spell.  They capture and learn each word using the 4 steps (discussed in my 2-14-18 blog post). 
 
Sometimes a student, even a third grader, may only be able to read or complete the work at the Step 1 level.  That’s okay.  Regardless of a child’s age, each child works through the steps, advancing one step at a time to the best of their ability.  All children are encouraged and supported in their accomplishments.  The steps and workstations are not labeled or identified by age or grade.  First and third graders work side by side at the same workstation, at the same time.  As children see improvement, their self-efficacy, their belief that they can learn to read, improves as well.  Children who see themselves improving begin to believe in themselves and to believe that, yes, they truly can learn to read. 
 
The step system of progression is stressed by having students begin reading vowel clustered stories (a story that uses only one vowel sound at a time) on the first day.  For example, I wrote The Story of At.  Every word in the story is built on the at sound:  The cat sat at a black hat.  The sentences in the story are very simple, so each child who knows the consonant sounds can decode the words and read the story. 

To reduce the frustration that failure causes students to feel, I use a 4-step teaching method to help children learn to read words.  When students encounter a word that they do not know or cannot read, the word is called a tricky word.  They capture the word, and then use the 4 steps to learn the word.  I use the word capture instead of saying that a student missed a word.  This helps students overcome the feeling that they have failed.  Yes, they know that they missed the word, but they like blaming the word for being tricky, and to be perfectly honest, words and letter sounds are tricky. 

The 4 steps are to (1) break the word down letter-by-letter, sound-by-sound, learning to pronounce the word correctly; (2) practice spelling the word out loud and then write the word correctly on paper; (3) give a definition for the word by looking the word up correctly in the dictionary, and (4) write a sentence using the word, making sure the word is used correctly and that the sentence is grammatical.  Children too young to write a sentence can give the sentences orally.  All children write the words correctly on manuscript writing paper, making sure that they are shaping their letter correctly.  Writing is one of the stages in learning to read.

By using the 4 steps, students can learn the word’s meaning and usage instead of just learning the phonemic sounds or pronouncing a word.  Learning how to spell a word and learning the meaning of a word is very important.  To read effectively and fluently, students need to learn how to read or pronounce words, to spell, to define, and to use words correctly in a sentence or story.  Teaching techniques such as the 4-steps help students to achieve these goals. The 4 steps fit perfectly into my overall teaching plan with vowel clustering in a group-centered format.

One of the fundamental teaching techniques that I use to combine phonemic and phonological awareness is a technique called Read and Spell.  Read and Spell works perfectly with vowel clustering.  Remember, I use workstations with individualized rotation (see my blog posts from 1-16-2018 and 1-19-2018).  That is why I incorporate Read and Spell into my group-centered (learning and counseling) workstation format (See Chapter 4 in my After-School Prevention Programs for At-Risk Students, Clanton Harpine, 2013).
 
At the workstations, children take turns reading and spelling vowel clustered words.  Words are taught in clusters—similar vowel sounds. Workstations provide vowel clustered reading lists and vowel clustered stories for students to read.  The workstation reading lists and stories are graded by difficulty.  Beginning children can read from the list as well as providing challenge for more advanced students.  By using step-by-step progression, all children can read from the same list.  For example, the first five words use the vowel sound being taught at the workstation but are very simple:  at, cat, bat, hat….  Then, there are middle-level words:  sandy, panda, have, asked….The Read and Spell word lists at the workstation goes on to include more challenging words but words that include the vowel sound being taught:  cattle, cracker, astronaut.  Each multisyllable word includes the short vowel sound for A. 
 
This step-by-step progression allows all students to work together at their own ability level.  The workstation helper never attempts to have beginning readers read the more difficult words.  Children read up to their ability and then stop.  The workstation instructions clearly say:  Read and Spell until you capture 5 words.  Each child ONLY reads until they capture 5 words for reading and/or spelling.  The key to using the Read and Spell technique is to remember that you never have students try to read harder words than they are ready to read.  This is why you stop once a student has captured 5 words.  This is true for reading and spelling.  I’ll talk more about the concept of capturing vs. missing words in a later blog discussion.  For now, see my description on using the concept of capturing words instead of missing words in Chapter 4 of Group-Centered Prevention in Mental Health:  Theory, Training, and Practice (Clanton Harpine, 2015).  Capture means that the child cannot read or spell the word.  The children capture new words that they do not know, and then use the 4-steps to learn the new words. (For how to use this concept, see Chapter 4 in After-School Prevention Programs for At-Risk Students.). 

Example from the Reading Orienteering Club:

Read and Spell until you capture 5 words:  add, bad, cab, dad, back, act, actor, acting, bash, cattle, bashful, cabinet, damage, afternoon, adversity, basket, caterpillar, dancing.  Write any words that you captured on manuscript paper.  If you have trouble shaping your letters correctly, practice on the writing guide first.  If you have trouble spelling a word, use the 4-steps: (Step 1) always say the letter sounds and spell the word, (Step 2) give a definition, (Step 3) use the word in a sentence, and (Step 4) write the word correctly.  (Clanton Harpine, 2016).
 
Manuscript writing paper and the correct manuscript writing style are emphasized (see my earlier blog posts from 11-8-16 and 10-2-16).  Research states that if the brain cannot recognize the letter written, it will not record and remember that letter or word (Shaywitz et al., 2004; Yoncheva et al. 2015).  Therefore, with all the teaching techniques, emphasis on the lowercase alphabet is stressed (see my blog post from 10-21-17).  Read and Spell interventions combine perfectly with our hands-on learning workstation approach because the read and spell instructions and word lists can be written directly onto the page of directions for each workstation.  Vowel clustering, the 4 steps, and Read and Spell are used at six of the eight workstations for the Reading Orienteering Club after school program to create a strong, easy-to-use instructional technique.  You can apply these same principles to your group-centered workstations.
 
The other big question that arises with the Read and Spell concept is:  How do I handle individualized rotation when I have children already working on reading and spelling?  Simple, you pull the new child in and have them sit down and start spelling with the others who are already working at the workstation.  Adding an extra speller is easy; it doesn’t require that you change what you are doing.  NEVER have a child sit aside or wait until you finish with another group. 

Remember, you only want 3 children at a workstation, but you can easily add a third child into a workstation group of 2 that is already working on Read and Spell.  Just say, “Come and join us.  We’re spelling words.  Sit down and give it a try.”  Then, go right back to where you were with your group.  If you have more than 3 students arrive at your workstation, encourage the extra students to look around the room and find an empty workstation.  The children need to work at every single workstation at each session, and workstations change each day. Never leave a child sitting and waiting for a turn.   The group-centered prevention format makes certain that every student is fully engaged in learning from the minute they walk into the room, until they leave to go home. 

​Click on images below; chapter downloads and complete books are available. Complete books are also available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble. 

From a nationwide study  of over 100,000 approaches to teaching reading (National Reading Panel, 2000), we learned that phonemic awareness was the key to teaching children to read (see my 6-23-2017 blog post for more details).  Phonemic awareness simply means teaching letter sounds not memorization of whole words.  Phonemic awareness stresses the encoding and decoding of letter sounds in words.

The next question is:  What is the best way for teaching phonemic awareness.  Some people are claiming phonics, but we needed to be very careful about using the word phonics.  The word phonics is being used in so many different ways (my 7-9-2017 blog post describes phonics techniques) and to describe so many different teaching approaches that I, personally, never use the word.  The word phonics is just too confusing; furthermore, even though, some phonics approaches use letter sounds, most do not actually focus on phonemic awareness.  So, I stay clear of phonics.  Remember, the goal is to teach phonemic awareness—not memorization of phonics rules.  The same children who cannot memorize a list of sight words, cannot memorize a list of phonics rules.  I use vowel clustering—no memorization needed (see my 6-5-2017 blog post, where I give a more detailed description of vowel clustering). 

All of my 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.  The children must learn to decode (break down) words into letter sounds and then encode (reassemble) those sounds back into pronounceable words (Shaywitz, 2003).  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, 2010).  Children are taught to sound words out letter by letter instead of guessing.

Vowel clustering emphasizes the lowercase alphabet, sounding out letter sounds and combinations of letter sounds.  Students are never asked to memorize word lists or to memorize phonics rules.  One of the unique features of vowel clustering is that it teaches all of the sounds for a specific 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 vowel sounds,” but it is these irregular vowel sounds where most children get confused.  Teaching vowels in clusters teaches children to think and learn all of the sounds for each vowel in an organized pattern.  It’s actually easier and less confusing than old-style phonics, and vowel clustering works directly with how the brain assimilates and organizes letter sounds—connecting synapses and building pathways (Shaywitz, 2003).  Vowel clustering is my primary approach for teaching phonemic awareness.