Pennington Publishing Blog

Don’t Teach Reading Comprehension

Okay, I’ll admit it; the article title is a bit of an attention grabber. However, as an MA reading specialist and author of plenty of reading programs over the years, I do believe that the title does point to some helpful advice. And I don’t believe I’m splitting hairs or making a distinction without a difference (pick your figure of speech) by advising “Don’t Teach Reading Comprehension” here while alternatively advocating “How to Practice Reading Comprehension” in my companion article. Teaching is different than practicing.

Let’s Be Honest About Teaching Reading Comprehension

Years ago I served as an elementary reading specialist, training teachers in our district-adopted reading program. I had plenty of diagnostic and instructional tools in my toolbox, ready to hand out to teachers to improve the quality of reading instruction for their classes and individual students. Fresh from my masters program, I knew stuff that the teachers did not and I felt pretty good about the level of my expertise.

At a grade level team meeting, veteran teachers were asking me about the results of their San Diego Quick Assessments, how to teach the r, l, w controlled vowels, and my take on schema theory. I was on a roll. Next, teachers tossed out their progress monitoring assessments and I suggested how to improve the fluency of Raphael, how to teach the Heart Words to Marci, and how to get Huong to practice his common Greek and Latin prefixes. Teachers were nodding their heads in a approval, and I was just about to step down from my throne and dismiss my subjects when a brand new teacher asked the question about Alberto: Even though Alberto has mastered all of his high frequency words, mastered hi Heart Words, passed the phonics tests, and has the second highest fluency rate in the class, why can’t he tell me about what he has read or answer any simple questions about the reading?

The question stopped me dead in my tracks. I faked the answer pretty well, suggesting something along the lines of confusion with his primary language (Spanish) and English, auditory problems, dietary issues, and perhaps some degree of cognitive impairment. But her follow-up question was devastating: “How can I teach reading comprehension to him?” I had no answer. We never covered that in my MA reading specialist program. I muttered something about the issue being complicated and said I’d get back to her. I never did.

Since those early years as an elementary reading specialist, I’ve also served as both a middle and high school reading intervention teacher and a reading instructor at a community college. After a few years under my belt, I’ve learned to be more like that new teacher. I ask harder questions and I’m not satisfied with simplistic or speculative answers. Today my answer to her question would be, “We don’t know how to teach reading comprehension, so don’t teach it.” However, that answer does require some explanation. First, let’s take a look at why we can’t teach reading comprehension; next, the instructional implications; and lastly in my companion article, how to help students practice reading comprehension.

Why We Can’t Teach Reading Comprehension

In the short-lived 1969-1970 television show, Then Came Bronson, a middle-aged man in a business hat pulls his family station wagon alongside the lead character, Bronson, who is riding a

“Wherever I wind up, I guess”

motorcycle.

The car driver asks, “Taking a trip?”

Bronson shakes his head and answers, “Yeah.”

 “Where to?”

 “I don’t know… Wherever I wind up, I guess.”

 “Man, I wish I was you…”

“Really, well hang in there.”

Great dialogue… We all want to be about the journey with no cares about the destination, but this attitude is simply not acceptable when applied to the subject of reading comprehension. We need to know where we are going before we figure out how to get there. So, just what is reading comprehension and how do we get there?

What is Reading Comprehension? We Don’t All Agree

I googled “reading comprehension definition” and found these top results from practitioners:

“Simply put, reading comprehension is the act of understanding what you are reading” (K12 Reader).

“Comprehension is the understanding and interpretation of what is read… For many years, reading instruction was based on a concept of reading as the application of a set of isolated skills such as identifying words, finding main ideas, identifying cause and effect relationships, comparing and contrasting and sequencing. Comprehension was viewed as the mastery of these skills.” (Reading Rockets).

“I’ve noticed that many books about reading, and specifically about comprehension for that matter, don’t even define what comprehension is. Perhaps it’s assumed that we all know what it is; or maybe comprehension is a slippery term that we have trouble grasping, or comprehending, if you will!” Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary offers this definition: ‘capacity of the mind to perceive and understand.’ Reading comprehension, then, would be the capacity to perceive and understand the meanings communicated by texts. Simple, huh? Clear. Now we comprehend comprehension! (Jeff Wilhelm, Scholastic).

Next, I googled “reading comprehension scholarly definition” and found a wide variety of results from the academics:

“We define reading comprehension as the process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement with written language. We use the words extracting and constructing to emphasize both the importance and the insufficiency of the text as a determinant of reading comprehension” (Greenleaf, Murphy, Schoenbach).

“Reading comprehension is the construction of the meaning of a written or spoken communication through a reciprocal, holistic interchange of ideas between the interpreter and the message.
. . . The presumption here is that meaning resides in the intentional problem-solving, thinking processes of the interpreter, . . . that the content of the meaning is influenced by that
person’s prior knowledge and experience” (Harris and Hodges).

“From a cognitive or psycholinguistic perspective, comprehension is viewed as a process of constructing meaning in transaction with texts” (Goodman, 1996; Smith, 2004).¹

“(Reading comprehension is) a combination of decoding and oral comprehension skills” (Hoover & Gough, 1990).²

“From a post-structuralist or socio-cultural perspective, there is no meaning that simply resides in a text until a reader with the requisite knowledge and skills constructs the meaning with the signs on a page (McCormick, 1995; O’Neill,1993).³

1,2,3 from Rethinking Reading Comprehension: Definitions, Instructional Practices, and Assessment (Serafini).

One observation: I can’t tell you how many times I read the equivalent of “After years of… there is a growing consensus that…” for diametrically opposed summaries of the reading research.

I read the experts in cognitive science. Professor Daniel Willingham from the University of Virginia is quoted in the Washington Post:

Can reading comprehension be taught? In this blog post, I’ll suggest that the most straightforward answer is “no.” Reading comprehension strategies (1) don’t boost comprehension per se; (2) do indirectly help comprehension but; (3) don’t need to be practiced.

Finally, I went to the Common Core State Standards to see how the authors weighed in on reading comprehension. The Common Core Standards divides its Reading Standards into Reading Foundational Skills, Reading Literature, and Reading Informational Text. Its Appendix A focuses on text complexity, but offers no working definition of reading comprehension. The closest we get to a definition is “the ability to perform literacy tasks.”

Instructional Implications

At this point we are, at best, left with this working definition of reading comprehension: We sort of know it when we see it, but we all don’t agree on exactly what it is and how to get it. 

Now, that’s not the worst thing in the world. It does provide some helpful hints about the limitations of reading assessments and instructional strategies. At the minimum, this working definition

(From Don’t Look Back produced by Leacock-Pennebaker (1965); Pennebaker Films)

informs our “crap detectors” and keeps us questioning authority. “Don’t follow leaders; watch your parking meters” (Dylan).

We Can’t and Shouldn’t Assess Reading Comprehension

Assessments are designed to measure stuff. If we can’t agree on what we are testing, reading comprehension assessments may actually lead us into teaching to the results of the test, rather than helping students improve comprehension. Reading comprehension tests become self-fulfilling prophesies. Additionally, publishers love comprehension assessments that test concrete skills: Think test prep materials, skill workbooks, etc.

Teachers should rightfully be cautious about making instructional decisions from the results of the Common Core Standards-based PAARC and Smarter Balanced tests. These high stakes tests drive instructional decisions which often counter reading research and teacher judgment. The pressure to make these achievement tests the arbiters of what reading comprehension is and is not is increasingly difficult for teachers to challenge. Furthermore, each of the criterion-referenced and normed assessments purporting to measure reading comprehension have their own biases: the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement, Second Edition (KTEA-II), Wechsler Individual Achievement Test, Third Edition (WIAT-III), Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Achievement (WJ III ACH), The Gray Oral Reading Tests, Fifth Edition (GORT-5), Test of Reading Comprehension, Fourth Edition (TORC-4), Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS) Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests Terra Nova Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills (CTBS) Stanford Achievement Test, etc.

As a reading specialist for quite a few years, I also recommend not using informal reading inventories to measure comprehension. I am a huge advocate for teacher-based reading assessments, but not with comprehension. If we can’t test it (and we can’t), we can’t teach it. Make sure to avoid making reading assessments “walk on all fours.” I can’t tell you how many teachers I’ve known who use the Slosson, San Diego Quick, or the Read Naturally Brief Oral Screener and predictors of reading grade level. Wrong. And for goodness sake, avoid using the Accelerated Reader STAR test for the same misguided purpose.

The results of the above tests give us nothing to reliably inform our reading instruction. Be suspect of aggregated results which purport to provide useful instructional information. And labels can lead to silly instructional decisions, for example, tracking all far below basic readers into remedial reading classes. As if each low-performing reader had the same reading issues. Sigh.

What Doesn’t Improve Reading Comprehension

Time to step on a few toes. We may not be able to define exactly what reading comprehension is and we may not know how to assess or directly teach reading comprehension, but by any of the working definitions, assessment results, and reading research detailed in the National Reading Panel Report most of us would agree that the following practices do not improve reading comprehension.

1. Free Voluntary Reading (Sustained Silent Reading)

According to noted reading researcher, Doctor Timothy Shanahan in his August 13, 2017 article:

NRP did conclude that there was no convincing evidence that giving kids free reading time during the school day improved achievement — or did so very much. There has been a lot of work on that since NRP but with pretty much the same findings: either no benefits to that practice or really small benefits (a .05 effect size — which is tiny). Today, NRP would likely conclude that practice is not beneficial rather than that there is insufficient data. But that’s arguable, of course.

Remember that this is regarding reading comprehension, not vocabulary acquisition.

2. Teaching according to learning styles and multiple intelligences. Click HERE for the a complete debunking of these misguided approaches.

3. Visual (graphophonic) reading strategies. Over-reliance on letter shapes, pictures, and context clues to practice reading comprehension is, indeed, a “psycholinguistic guessing game” (Goodman) and the results of the whole language movement of the 1980s and 1990s strongly suggest that whatever reading comprehension is, it isn’t something that ignores the alphabetic code.

4. Leveling books for guided reading by “comprehension grade level” (whatever that means). Also, use Lexiles only as flexible guidelines for independent reading or for selecting class novels.

5. Reading ability groups by reading comprehension levels. Whatever reading comprehension is, it’s not a skill which can be taught to a flexible ability group, such as a group of students who don’t know their basic sight words.

6. Reading strategy worksheets. It’s not that worksheets don’t have a place… they do, but teaching main idea, inferencing, drawing conclusions, visualizing, and text

Don’t Teach Reading Strategies???

structure are important tools for skillful readers to acquire, but passing out skill worksheets on each and excessive practice does not teach reading comprehension. Read this article, “Should We Teach Reading Strategies?” for more reasons.

7. Reading techniques, such as close reading, the QAR strategy, reciprocal teaching, and even the KWL may be helpful, but in them of themselves they don’t teach reading comprehension and even too much of a good thing can be counterproductive.

So, if you agree with my advice: Don’t Teach Reading Comprehension, you may be interested in the specifics on How to Practice Reading Comprehension. The article goes into detail about practicing reading comprehension that way good readers do and has a wealth of article and ready-to-teach FREE resources and lessons. How about a great FREEBIE now? Here you go…

Get the SCRIP Comprehension Cues FREE Resource:

The Science of Reading Intervention Program

The Science of Reading Intervention Program: Word Recognition includes explicit, scripted instruction and practice with the 5 Daily Google Slide Activities every reading intervention student needs: 1. Phonemic Awareness and Morphology 2. Blending, Segmenting, and Spelling 3. Sounds and Spellings (including handwriting) 4. Heart Words Practice 5. Sam and Friends Phonics Books (decodables). Plus, digital and printable sound wall cards and speech articulation songs. Print versions are available for all activities. First Half of the Year Program (55 minutes-per-day, 18 weeks)

The Science of Reading Intervention Program: Language Comprehension resources are designed for students who have completed the word recognition program or have demonstrated basic mastery of the alphabetic code and can read with some degree of fluency. The program features the 5 Weekly Language Comprehension Activities: 1. Background Knowledge Mentor Texts 2. Academic Language, Greek and Latin Morphology, Figures of Speech, Connotations, Multiple Meaning Words 3. Syntax in Reading 4. Reading Comprehension Strategies 5. Literacy Knowledge (Narrative and Expository). Second Half of the Year Program (30 minutes-per-day, 18 weeks)

The Science of Reading Intervention Program: Assessment-based Instruction provides diagnostically-based “second chance” instructional resources. The program includes 13 comprehensive assessments and matching instructional resources to fill in the yet-to-be-mastered gaps in phonemic awareness, alphabetic awareness, phonics, fluency (with YouTube modeled readings), Heart Words and Phonics Games, spelling patterns, grammar, usage, and mechanics, syllabication and morphology, executive function shills. Second Half of the Year Program (25 minutes-per-day, 18 weeks)

The Science of Reading Intervention Program BUNDLE  includes all 3 program components for the comprehensive, state-of-the-art (and science) grades 4-adult full-year program. Scripted, easy-to-teach, no prep, no need for time-consuming (albeit valuable) LETRS training or O-G certification… Learn as you teach and get results NOW for your students. Print to speech with plenty of speech to print instructional components.

Literacy Centers, Reading, Study Skills close reading, Common Core Reading Standards, comprehension assessment, comprehension questions, comprehension strategies, context clues, Core Assessments, decoding, diagnostic reading assessments, encoding, fluency assessment, free voluntary reading, Greek and Latin, independent reading, Informal Reading Inventory, literacy circles, Mark Pennington, phonemic awareness assessment, phonics, phonics assessment, phonics rules, phonics worksheets, PQ RAR, QAR, reading assessment, reading comprehension, reading comprehension research, reading diagnostic, reading discussion, reading fluency, reading groups, reading intervention, reading inventory, reading research, reading screening, reading stations, reading strategies, Response to Intervention assessments, rimes assessment, San Diego Quick Assessment, SCRIP, sight words assessment, Slosson, spelling assessment, SQ3R, SSR, syllable practice, syllable rules, syllable worksheets, Teaching Reading Strategies, text dependent questions, textbook comprehension, tier 2 vocabulary, universal screening

Before my reading specialist colleagues and fellow English-language arts teachers jump down my throat, I do want to mention a few things at the outset:

• I think close reading has its place in both elementary and secondary classrooms.
• I’m still a fan of the Common Core Anchor Standards for Reading, as the document describes… not necessarily as some publishers and pundits have interpreted or applied these Standards.
• I’ve been teaching for a quite awhile in both the reading and English fields (elementary reading specialist, middle school and high school ELA teacher, and community college reading professor), so I’ve seen a few of the “educational cycles” regarding both teaching reading and literary analysis. Solomon was right: “There is nothing new under the sun.”
• Disclaimer: I am a teacher publisher and sell a terrific reading intervention program. Think biases.

Close Reading: Don’t Read Too Closely

But the problem that I have is that…

Some educators are making close reading and text dependent questions their only means of teaching reading comprehension and literary analysis. Over the last decade, close reading has just gotten “too big for its britches.”

A few definitions…

Although somewhat a false dichotomy because they really are two sides of the same coin, most educators use reading comprehension to mean “learning to read” and literary analysis to mean “reading to learn.” The former is seen as the stuff of elementary school and latter is practiced in secondary and post secondary.

In a nutshell, close reading means reading to uncover layers of meaning that lead to deep comprehension.  The strategy, despite permutations, utilizes text dependent questioning to complete three reading tasks: In the first read, students focus on the most important textual elements (key ideas and details). During the second read, students focus on how the text works (craft and structure). For the third reading, students focus on what the text means to the reader and how it connects to other experiences (integration of knowledge and ideas).

Historical Perspective

I do feel a bit of historical context may help explain where the close reading strategy came from and why we shouldn’t go overboard by using this strategy as our primary means of teaching reading comprehension and literary analysis.

Reader Response Theory

The reader response theorists emphasized the interaction of the reader and the text. Perhaps the greatest contributor to this field would be Louise Rosenblatt with her transactional reader-response theory, developed through many influential works beginning in the 1930s until her death in 2005.

Rosenblatt argued that a reader’s life and literary experiences and emotions influence the meaning derived from the text. The meaning of a text is shaped by what the reader brings to the text, what the author writes, and the context in which it is read. Thus, what the text says is both subjective and objective. Some in the reader response camp would go so far as to argue that text only has meaning when involving the reader.

The New Criticism Movement

In contrast to reader response advocates, the New Critics of the late 1960s, such as I. A. Richards, argued that a literary work should be read as is and apart from the outside influence of the reader and the historical, sociological, and psychological influences of a given text. Those in the New Criticism movement argued that the task of the reader is to discover the objective meaning of the text (what the text says in-it-of-itself) in its own context. The New Critics first coined the term close reading to describe this process of text dependent literary analysis. Those in this camp would believe that to properly understand the meaning of a text, readers need to put aside their own perspectives and biases. Some would go so far as to suggest that the author’s intended meaning should not be considered; only what the text says itself should be discussed and analyzed.

Many reading and English teachers leaned upon the instructional strategies of popular philosopher and educator, Mortimer Adler, to apply the tenets of New Criticism to focus on the meaning of the text itself.

Text Complexity

Mortimer Adler

Pre-dating the New Critics, Mortimer Adler (along with co-author  Charles Van Doren) popularized the essential techniques of what later became known as close reading with his influential How to Read a Book: The classic guide to Intelligent Reading in 1940. Check out an interesting discussion between Adler and Van Doren HERE. 

Adler, especially, was concerned about the populace’s preference for easy-reading literature instead of the more challenging classics. Adler advocated reading the Great Books, especially those which inculcated the ideas of Western Civilization. As I write, I’m looking at my set of Harvard Classics on the bookshelves.

Adler developed the rudiments of the close reading strategy to help readers tackle the textual complexity of these challenging books. His belief that everyone could understand any literary work, given the right instructional tools, was highly influential in the 1950s and 1960s. Many educators in private and some public schools developed Great Books programs to implement Adler’s ideals.

Like Adler, the authors of the Common Core State Standards believed that students were not being exposed to complex texts. The authors relied heavily on the 2006 ACT report, Reading Between the Lines, to argue that K–12 reading texts had been “dumb-downed” over the last 50 years and that teachers need to increase the levels of text complexity to better prepare students for college and careers, which will demand better readers. In Appendix A the authors summarize the relevant reading research:

Jeanne Chall and her colleagues (Chall, Conard, & Harris, 1977) found a thirteen year decrease from 1963 to 1975 in the difficulty of grade 1, grade 6, and (especially) grade 11 texts. Extending the period to 1991, Hayes, Wolfer, and Wolfe (1996) found precipitous declines (relative to the period from 1946 to 1962) in average sentence length and vocabulary level in reading textbooks for a variety of grades… Carrying the research closer to the present day, Gary L. Williamson (2006) found a 350L (Lexile) gap between the difficulty of end-of-high school and college texts—a gap equivalent to 1.5 standard deviations and more than the Lexile difference between grade 4 and grade 8 texts on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

Unlike Adler, the Common Core authors did not advocate a return to the Great Books to increase text complexity. Instead, they legislated a move to informational/expository texts, such as technical documents, non-fiction novels, and articles. However, the authors adopted and expanded upon Adler’s close reading strategies to access these complex texts.

Text Dependency

One hallmark of close reading is its dependence upon the text to inform the reader. Two of the primary Common Core authors, David Coleman and Susan Pimentel, have argued against the reader-centered approach to reading comprehension, in which what the reader brought to the reading (prior knowledge) and what the reader took out of the reading (in light of the reader’s own experience and needs) were primary emphases.  Instead, in Appendix A of the Common Core State Standards these authors have championed the idea that to develop reading comprehension and understanding of complex texts, the questions which teachers use to prompt student engagement with the text need to be text dependent, not reader dependent.

Classroom Application

Close reading in one good reading strategy to promote reading comprehension and discuss the author’s ideas and information. However, there are pitfalls to avoid.

1. As Alex Reid says, “Arguing ‘against close reading’ … is not an argument to say that we should stop paying close attention to texts.” In fact, other reading strategies are just as effective as the close reading strategy. Check out “How to Teach Reading Comprehension” for ideas.

2. The close reading technique necessitates reading brief passages, documents, short articles, etc. The breadth of longer text and the author’s flow of ideas, development of theme and character, etc. are not possible. Yes, teachers need to move away from exclusively teaching novels, but reading longer text produces stamina and joy. Too much close reading does not foster a love for reading.

3. Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. Any instructional time is reductive, so don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Some advice from Timothy Shanahan, reading researcher at the University of Illinois at Chicago:

Of course, not every text deserves a close read. Sometimes it’s okay to be interested only in the story—considerations of craft and structure and deeper implications are beside the point. And classroom reads don’t always have to emphasize close reading; the key is to incorporate close reading into your instruction, not use it exclusively. No one knows how many teacher-led close reads would be a good idea, but don’t overdo it; one or two close reads every couple of weeks (some taking place over multiple days) seems like the right dosage.

4. Close reading tends to produce teacher-dependence, rather than equipping students to become skillful independent readers. True that close reading and accompanying text dependent questions can teach students the tools to unlock the meaning of complex text; however, the value of independent reading at accessible independent levels of word recognition produces the same results by exposing students to the vast array of ideas, text genre, and vocabulary development. See this collection of articles advocating the value of independent reading, especially as homework HERE.

Additionally, teachers need to help students monitor their own reading with self-generated questions. The five SCRIP Comprehension Strategies reading comprehension strategies work for both narrative and expository text and provide a language of instruction for literary analysis and discussion: Summarize, Connect, Re-think, Interpret, and Predict.

5. Publishers and school district personnel have produced ready-to-use close readings, many of which only focus on factual or literal text dependent questions. Teachers need to ignore these or supplement with pre-reading and reader-response activities, and add on higher order inferential and application questions. David Pearson, Professor Emeritus at U.C. Berkeley has concerns about the Common Core authors’ narrow and restrictive views about text dependent questions. Pearson fears that “We will operationally define text dependent (questions) as literal, factual questions, forgetting that LOTS of other questions/tasks are also text-reliant.” For example, comparison and contrast questions both use the text and go beyond the text.

6. Teachers do need to pre-teach (the “into” of reading), even with close reading. Accessing prior knowledge and gap-filling are still essential vehicles to promote the reader’s understanding of complex text. The role of the reader still has a place in understanding text. Reading remains a two-way street. Yes, we teachers may have gone overboard with reader response in the past. The KWL (Already Know, Want to Know, What I Learned) reading strategy and its variations come into mind. Because the first two components are reader-centered, there are significant limitations. Students don’t know what they don’t know and they similarly don’t know what they Want to know. Or, they may Want to know what is inconsequential, trivial, or not available in the reading or available resources. More HERE.

Grant Wiggins, educator and author of the influential Understanding by Design, argues for a balanced approach in close reading in his article, Authentic Education:

As I noted in my previous post, this does not mean, however, that we should ignore or try to bypass the reader’s responses, prior knowledge, or interests. On the contrary, reading cannot help but involve an inter-mingling of our experience and what the author says and perhaps means. But it does not follow from this fact that instruction should give equal weight to personal reactions to a text when the goal is close reading. On the contrary: we must constantly be alert to how and where our own prejudices (literally, pre-judging) may be interfering with meaning-making of the text.

Literacy Centers, Reading, Spelling/Vocabulary close reading, close reading strategy, Common Core Standards, literary analysis, Reading Anchor Standards, reading comprehension, reading strategies, reading worksheets, text dependent questions

Teachers often struggle with how to teach English accent rules for multi-syllabic words. Teaching students the syllable and accent rules

How to Teach English Accent Rules

through effective practice will noticeably improve their word attack and spelling skills. The accent rules and teaching procedure work well for both primary English speakers and English language-learners at all grade levels.

How to Teach English Accent Rules

1. Teach students that every syllable has one vowel sound.
2. Teach students the syllable patterns. Teaching inductively from examples to rules works much better than the converse strategy. Here’s How to Teach Syllables (includes a great free resource) without all the CVC, CVVC, etc. jargon.
3. Show students how accented syllables are louder than others in the same word. Stand in front of students with one hand at your side. State your preferred title e.g. Mr., Ms., or your first name as a verbal cue and then snap and clap the syllables of your last name slowly. A snap indicates the unaccented syllable and a clap indicates the accented syllable. Don’t clap more than once in your last name even if there is a secondary accent. Save this instruction for high school. Note: For primary students, you may wish to substitute a thigh tap for the snap. Tell older students to fake the snap if they can’t do it. If your last name is only one syllable, e.g. Smith, adopt a pseudonym.

Ask students do the same, cueing them with your title. Repeat a bit faster and then once more quite quickly so that students are blending your last name. Ask for a few student volunteers to demonstrate with their last names. The teacher should cue with their first names.

4. 4. Show students how accented syllables are higher than others in the same word. Stand in front of students with one hand at your side. State your title (Mr. Miss, Ms. or Mrs.) or your first name as a verbal cue and then swipe and hold your hand away from your body to indicate the pitch of each syllable as you pronounce your last name. For example, Say, “Mister…” (hand at side) “Pen” (high pitch; hand swiping to and held at a ninety degree angle) “ning” (low pitch; hand swiping lower and held at forty-five degree angle) “ton” (low pitch; hand swiping again and held at same forty-five degree angle). “Pen-ning-ton. Pennington.” Ask students to stand and do the same, cueing them with your title. Repeat a bit faster and then once more quite quickly so that students are blending your last name. Ask for a few student volunteers to demonstrate with their last names. The teacher should cue with their first names.
   5. Practice the louder and higher syllable accenting with the 10 Accent Rules. Download this great resource.

Get the English Accent Rules FREE Resource:

The Science of Reading Intervention Program

The Science of Reading Intervention Program: Word Recognition includes explicit, scripted, sounds to print instruction and practice with the 5 Daily Google Slide Activities every grades 4-adult reading intervention student needs: 1. Phonemic Awareness and Morphology 2. Blending, Segmenting, and Spelling 3. Sounds and Spellings (including handwriting) 4. Heart Words Practice 5. Sam and Friends Phonics Books (decodables). Plus, digital and printable sound wall cards, speech articulation songs, sounds to print games, and morphology walls. Print versions are available for all activities. First Half of the Year Program (55 minutes-per-day, 18 weeks)

The Science of Reading Intervention Program: Word Recognition includes explicit, scripted, sounds to print instruction and practice with the 6 Daily Google Slide Activities every grades 4-adult reading intervention student needs: 1. Phonemic Awareness 2. Blending, Segmenting, and Spelling 3. Sounds and Spellings (including handwriting) 4. Heart Words Practice 5. Sam and Friends Phonics Books (decodables). Plus, 6. Digital and printable sound wall cards, Elkonin sound box dictations, speech articulation songs, sounds to print games, and multi-syllabic decoding. Print versions are available for all activities. First Half of the Year Program (55 minutes-per-day, 18 weeks)

The Science of Reading Intervention Program: Assessment-based Instruction provides diagnostically-based “second chance” instructional resources. The program includes 13 comprehensive assessments and matching instructional resources to fill in the yet-to-be-mastered gaps in phonemic awareness, alphabetic awareness, phonics, fluency (with YouTube modeled readings), Heart Words and Phonics Games, spelling patterns, grammar, usage, and mechanics, syllabication and morphology, executive function shills. Second Half of the Year Program (25 minutes-per-day, 18 weeks)

The Science of Reading Intervention Program BUNDLE  includes all 3 program components for the comprehensive, state-of-the-art (and science) grades 4-adult full-year program. Scripted, easy-to-teach, no prep, no need for time-consuming (albeit valuable) LETRS training or O-G certification… Learn as you teach and get results NOW for your students. Print to speech with plenty of speech to print instructional components.

Click the SCIENCE OF READING INTERVENTION PROGRAM RESOURCES for detailed program description, sample lessons, and video overviews. Click the links to get these ready-to-use resources, developed by a teacher (Mark Pennington, MA reading specialist) for teachers and their students.

Get the SCRIP Comprehension Cues FREE Resource:

Get the Diagnostic ELA and Reading Assessments FREE Resource:

*****

Reading, Spelling/Vocabulary accent rules, English accent rules, Mark Pennington, morphology, multi-syllabic decoding, reading skills, reading strategies, syllable division, syllable rules, syllable worksheets, Teaching Reading Strategies

As more teachers are teaching reading strategies (all helpful) to help students access, understand, and analyze text independently, let’s not overlook the obvious: How to Improve Reading Comprehension.

As a reading specialist, I am constantly surprised by teachers who tell me that they have never learned how to teach reading comprehension or think that reading strategies alone will do the job. If you’ve never learned how to teach reading comprehension, the following advice and FREE Resources are just what the doctor ordered.

Despite what many believe, reading is not a natural process; it needs to be taught, and not just caught.

A reader’s comprehension of any text (narrative or expository) depends upon the quality of the internal dialogue between the reader and author. “Talking to the text” significantly increases reader comprehension and promotes retention as well. Tons of reading research on this. Check out my Pennington Publishing Blog for dozens of articles on this. However, reader-author dialogue is not a skill acquired by osmosis. It requires instruction and practice. Doesn’t everything?

The most effective approach to helping students learn to interact with the text is to teach students how to begin and carry on the conversation with the author. Specific cueing strategies prompt the reader to talk to the text and the author. These cueing strategies assign readers a set of tasks to perform while reading to maintain interactive dialogue with the text.

I’ve developed five cueing strategies, using the SCRIP acronym, which work equally well with narrative and expository text. The SCRIP acronym stands for Summarize, Connect, Re-think, Interpret, and Predict. Teaching students to question the text they read by prompting themselves with the SCRIP strategies will help them understand and better remember what they read. Click here to get three great resources absolutely FREE: 1. SCRIP classroom posters 2. Five one-page fairy tales to teach each of the SCRIP strategies 3. SCRIP bookmarks.

Get the SCRIP Comprehension Strategies FREE Resource:

Here’s how to use those resources: Do a Think-Aloud to teach students how you carry on the conversation with an author. Start with the each of the five fairy tales to focus on one SCRIP strategy per lesson.

1. Tell students that you are going to demonstrate what good readers do as they silently read.
2. Read a few lines out loud and then alter your voice (raise the pitch, lower the volume, or use an accent) to model what you are thinking. Stop and explain what the voice altering meant and keep this voice altering consistent throughout the Think-Aloud.
3. Prompt your dialogue with the focus SCRIP strategy. Use this specific language of instruction.
4. Don’t over-do the amount of your Think-Aloud thoughts. Once or twice per every paragraph is about right. Don’t interrupt the flow of the reading.
5. Have students read the same fairy tale as a “pair share.” One student reads a paragraph out loud and does a Think-Aloud, referencing their SCRIP bookmark to prompt their dialogue with the author. Then the next reads a paragraph, etc.
6. De-brief. Ask students if they think they understood the text better because of your verbalized thoughts (and theirs) rather than just by passively reading without talking to the text.
7. Select your own reading and do a Think-Aloud, using all five of the SCRIP strategies

The Science of Reading Intervention Program

The Science of Reading Intervention Program: Word Recognition includes explicit, scripted instruction and practice with the 5 Daily Google Slide Activities every reading intervention student needs: 1. Phonemic Awareness and Morphology 2. Blending, Segmenting, and Spelling 3. Sounds and Spellings (including handwriting) 4. Heart Words Practice 5. Sam and Friends Phonics Books (decodables). Plus, digital and printable sound wall cards and speech articulation songs. Print versions are available for all activities. First Half of the Year Program (55 minutes-per-day, 18 weeks)

The Science of Reading Intervention Program: Language Comprehension resources are designed for students who have completed the word recognition program or have demonstrated basic mastery of the alphabetic code and can read with some degree of fluency. The program features the 5 Weekly Language Comprehension Activities: 1. Background Knowledge Mentor Texts 2. Academic Language, Greek and Latin Morphology, Figures of Speech, Connotations, Multiple Meaning Words 3. Syntax in Reading 4. Reading Comprehension Strategies 5. Literacy Knowledge (Narrative and Expository). Second Half of the Year Program (30 minutes-per-day, 18 weeks)

The Science of Reading Intervention Program: Assessment-based Instruction provides diagnostically-based “second chance” instructional resources. The program includes 13 comprehensive assessments and matching instructional resources to fill in the yet-to-be-mastered gaps in phonemic awareness, alphabetic awareness, phonics, fluency (with YouTube modeled readings), Heart Words and Phonics Games, spelling patterns, grammar, usage, and mechanics, syllabication and morphology, executive function shills. Second Half of the Year Program (25 minutes-per-day, 18 weeks)

The Science of Reading Intervention Program BUNDLE  includes all 3 program components for the comprehensive, state-of-the-art (and science) grades 4-adult full-year program. Scripted, easy-to-teach, no prep, no need for time-consuming (albeit valuable) LETRS training or O-G certification… Learn as you teach and get results NOW for your students. Print to speech with plenty of speech to print instructional components.

Literacy Centers, Reading, Spelling/Vocabulary, Study Skills comprehension worksheets, cueing strategies, Mark Pennington, metacognition, phonics, reading comprehension, reading strategies, reading worksheets, schema theory, Teaching Reading Strategies

SCRIP Comprehension Cues

Often teachers assume that summarizing is the same for both writing and reading. However, the purpose and task of summarizing is considerably different for these literary activities. Whereas the purpose of a writing summary is to identify the main or controlling idea or argument with supporting major details to put the thrust of exposition into a nutshell, the purpose of a reading summary is to build comprehension. This article focuses on reader-generated summarizing as a means of building reading comprehension. Students need to summarize to increase comprehension.

Now to make sure we are on the same page, we are not discussing reading a summary or abstract prior to reading a textbook chapter or article. This is an important means of building prior knowledge and a critical component of any good read-study method. My own PQ RAR read-study method emphasizes the importance of reading any available summaries prior to reading the text.

Instead, we are discussing why summarizing while reading is important and how to teach your students to do so.

First, the why. Reading research has consistently shown a statistically significant correlation between high levels of reading comprehension and high levels of active engagement with text and, conversely, low comprehension with low engagement. We call this engagement internal monitoring. Numerous studies have confirmed that “retrieving relevant knowledge during reading is essential for monitoring” (Otero & Kintsch, 1992; Vosniadou, Pearson, & Rogers, 1988). One important component of monitoring is summarizing.

A great way to demonstrate this internal monitoring is with a reader-author dialog. Try this think-aloud with your students to model what goes on inside a good reader’s head as the reader monitors text.

But what about summarizing, specifically?

“Summarizing and reviewing integrate and reinforce the learning of major points…these structuring elements not only facilitate memory for the information but allow for its apprehension as an integrative whole with recognition of the relationships between parts” (J. E. Brophy and T. L. Good, 1986).

“In a synthesis of the research on summarizing, Rosenshine and his colleagues found that strategies that emphasize the analytic aspect of summarizing have a powerful effect on how well students summarize” (1996).

Next, the how. Internal monitoring is more efficiently “taught,” rather than just “caught.” Readers can be taught to summarize while reading by learning and practicing  cueing strategies. Cueing strategies are simply prompts to focus the reader on the active and analytical tasks of reading.

Poor readers tend to view reading as a passive activity. The cueing strategies provide readers a set of tasks to perform while reading to maintain active dialogue with what the author says and means. The author of this article has developed five cueing strategies, using the SCRIP acronym, which work equally well with expository and narrative text. The SCRIP acronym stands for Summarize, Connect, Re-think, Interpret, and Predict.

Take the time to explicitly teach and model each of the five strategies. Emphasize one strategy at a time on a given text. Since Summarize is the focus of this article, let’s begin with a teaching script to teach this strategy.

Summarize to Increase Comprehension

“Summarize means to put together the main ideas and important details of a reading into a short-version of what the author has said. A summary can be of an entire reading, but it is more useful to divide your reading up into sections and summarize each section as you read.”

“Today we are going to learn why it is important to pause your reading at certain places and summarize sections of what you have just read and then we will learn how to do this.”

“First, the why. I know that pausing to summarize in the middle of your reading takes a bit more time than just reading without pausing, but not too much. You also might be worried that you might lose your concentration if you pause, but actually pausing to summarize will help you concentrate even more. Dividing your reading into sections will help you focus on understanding and remembering smaller chunks of reading, one at a time. You will also be able to remember each chunk of reading and apply your memory to the next reading section. It’s like playing a leveled video game: First, you master one level and the game pauses before you move on to the next level with new graphics, characters, or problems to solve. You use your summarized knowledge of how to beat the first level to help you master each following level, one at a time. After time you will be able to master most or all of the game. In the same way reading in sections and then summarizing will build your understanding of the whole reading.”

“Next, the how. As you know already, authors use paragraphs in articles or textbooks built upon the main idea known as the topic sentence. Most, but not all of the time, the topic sentence is the first sentence of the paragraph. In stories, authors start new paragraphs to signal something different in setting, plot, description, or dialog.”

“Paragraphs connect to each other to continue a certain idea or plot event. When a major change takes place, the author frequently uses transition words to tell the reader that something new is being introduced. Textbooks often use boldfaced subtitles to signal new sections. When the reading begins a new section, pause to summarize what you just read in the last chunk of reading.”

“For articles or textbooks use What, How, and Why as question-starters to help you put into your own words a short version of what you just read. For stories use Who, What, Where, When, and Why question-starters to help you do the same.

“Let’s take a look at a fairy tale that many of you will have read or heard about and practice how to divide a reading up into sections and summarize as we read.”

Here is a one-page version of “The Little Boy Who Cried Wolf” for you to download, print, and distribute to your students. Have students read each section and complete the summary. Then discuss why the section was a good chunk after which to pause and summarize and have students read their summaries. Coach as to what to and what not to include in reading summaries from your student examples. Check out a YouTube video demonstration of the Summarize Comprehension Cue, using “The Boy Who Cried Wolf“ fairy tale to illustrate this strategy. The storyteller first reads the fairy tale without comment. Next,  the story is read once again as a think-aloud with interruptions to show how readers should summarize sections of the reading as they read to monitor and build comprehension.

If you have found this article to be helpful, check out the next comprehension strategy, “Connect,” and the resources to teach this cueing strategy.

Get the SCRIP Comprehension Cues FREE Resource:

The Science of Reading Intervention Program

The Science of Reading Intervention Program: Word Recognition includes explicit, scripted instruction and practice with the 5 Daily Google Slide Activities every reading intervention student needs: 1. Phonemic Awareness and Morphology 2. Blending, Segmenting, and Spelling 3. Sounds and Spellings (including handwriting) 4. Heart Words Practice 5. Sam and Friends Phonics Books (decodables). Plus, digital and printable sound wall cards and speech articulation songs. Print versions are available for all activities. First Half of the Year Program (55 minutes-per-day, 18 weeks)

The Science of Reading Intervention Program: Language Comprehension resources are designed for students who have completed the word recognition program or have demonstrated basic mastery of the alphabetic code and can read with some degree of fluency. The program features the 5 Weekly Language Comprehension Activities: 1. Background Knowledge Mentor Texts 2. Academic Language, Greek and Latin Morphology, Figures of Speech, Connotations, Multiple Meaning Words 3. Syntax in Reading 4. Reading Comprehension Strategies 5. Literacy Knowledge (Narrative and Expository). Second Half of the Year Program (30 minutes-per-day, 18 weeks)

The Science of Reading Intervention Program: Assessment-based Instruction provides diagnostically-based “second chance” instructional resources. The program includes 13 comprehensive assessments and matching instructional resources to fill in the yet-to-be-mastered gaps in phonemic awareness, alphabetic awareness, phonics, fluency (with YouTube modeled readings), Heart Words and Phonics Games, spelling patterns, grammar, usage, and mechanics, syllabication and morphology, executive function shills. Second Half of the Year Program (25 minutes-per-day, 18 weeks)

The Science of Reading Intervention Program BUNDLE  includes all 3 program components for the comprehensive, state-of-the-art (and science) grades 4-adult full-year program. Scripted, easy-to-teach, no prep, no need for time-consuming (albeit valuable) LETRS training or O-G certification… Learn as you teach and get results NOW for your students. Print to speech with plenty of speech to print instructional components.

Literacy Centers, Reading, Study Skills comprehension strategies, comprehension worksheets, Mark Pennington, reading strategies, Sam and Friends Phonics Books, Teaching Reading Strategies

One of the true joys and responsibilities of parenthood is teaching your child to read. But wait… isn’t that the teacher’s job? Of course it is, but the best approach is always an effective and complementary home-school partnership. As a parent of three boys, an MA Reading Specialist, and an author of numerous reading textbooks, I have a few practical tips to help you teach your child to read and read well. And the tips work equally well with four-year-old and fourteen-year-old readers.

Developing a Literate Home Environment

Plenty of research studies demonstrate a positive correlation between skilled readers and their literate home environments. Having books and other print media visible and readily accessible in the home fosters a certain reading atmosphere. Discussing books while driving to school or waiting in the doctor’s office builds comprehension and vocabulary. Modeling reading in the home shows the value you place on literacy. Reading a newspaper after dinner, rather than watching a re-run of The Big Bang Theory, says something to your child.

Reading to Your Child

Reading to your child, regardless of age or reading level, certainly makes a difference. Reading out loud helps model expression and attention to punctuation. Reading out loud also provides an opportunity to model “talking to the text.” Practicing reading as a reader-author dialogue will help your child understand and retain textual information far better than readers who simply passively read the printed words.

Try modeling my SCRIP Comprehension Strategies to teach this interactive reading: Summarize means to put together the main ideas and important details of a reading into a short-version of what the author has said. Connect means to notice the relationship between one part of the text with another part of the text. Re-think means to re-read the text when you are confused or have lost the author’s train of thought. Interpret means to focus on what the author means. Frequently authors suggest what they mean and require readers to draw their own conclusions. Predict means to make an educated guess about what will happen or be said next in the text. Good readers check their predictions with what actually happens or is said next.

Getting Your Child to Read on Their Own

Although watching and listening to an expert about how to use a tool has some value, learning to use that tool on our own is the goal. Teaching your child to be an effective independent reader requires consistent and sufficient practice, but also a bit of teaching know-how.

First, let’s address the reluctant reader problem. Waiting for your child to want to read will produce a long wait for many parents. Although you would love your child to be avid reader, few children fit into that category. None of my three boys liked to read, but all did. They were required to read throughout the year (summers and vacations too), sometimes by their teachers and sometimes by me for thirty minutes reading, five days per week. Over the years all three boys read an amazing amount of books. Sometimes we permitted comic books, magazines, and newspapers, but mostly books. And our boys read both expository and narrative texts. We did offer some free choice, but not always, and independent reading requirement continued until they got their drivers’ licenses. All three boys are now avid readers as adults.

Next, let’s discuss how to select books for independent reading. As I mentioned, we did offer some free choice, but within certain parameters. Knowing that independent reading is the most efficient means of vocabulary acquisition, I suggest that parents should strive to help their children select books at close to the 5% unknown word level. In other words, a child should know and be able to define or explain the meaning of most all, but not all words on a given page. The 5% unknown word recognition level provides enough unknown vocabulary words to enable reader acquisition through context clues, but not too many unknown words to interfere with comprehension. Some dictionary use makes sense, but a readily parent can help with essential words as well.

Lastly, let’s get real. Without accountability your child will not read or will not read well. Teaching your child to read at home does require some monitoring. A daily discussion of the reading during dinner or on the way to the soccer game, using the SCRIP Comprehension Strategies as discussion prompts, will ensure careful reading and promote comprehension development as well. And what better way to keep the lines of communication open with your child than to discuss the world of ideas within the pages of a book? Teaching reading to your child may be an important parental responsibility, but it is also a true joy that will turn your child into a lifelong reader.

Mark Pennington, MA Reading Specialist, is the author of the comprehensive reading intervention curriculum, Teaching Reading Strategies. Designed to significantly increase the reading abilities of students ages eight through adult within one year, the curriculum is decidedly un-canned, is adaptable to various instructional settings, and is simple to use–a perfect choice for Response to Intervention tiered instruction. The program provides multiple-choice diagnostic reading and spelling assessments (many with audio files), phonemic awareness activities, blending and syllabication activities, phonics workshops with formative assessments, 102 spelling pattern worksheets, comprehension worksheets, multi-level fluency passages recorded at three different reading speeds and accessed on YouTube, 644 reading, spelling, and vocabulary game cards, posters, activities, and games.

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Each of the above resources is included for teachers to review components of my two reading intervention programs. Click on the provided links to view video overviews and to download sample lessons.

Teaching Reading Strategies

The Science of Reading Intervention Program

Pennington Publishing provides two reading intervention program options for ages eight–adult. The Teaching Reading Strategies (Intervention Program) is a full-year, 55 minutes per day program which includes both word recognition and language comprehension instructional resources (Google slides and print). The word recognition components feature the easy-to-teach, interactive 5 Daily Google Slide Activities: 1. Phonemic Awareness and Morphology 2. Blending, Segmenting, and Spelling 3. Sounds and Spelling Independent Practice 4. Heart Words Independent Practice 5. The Sam and Friends Phonics Books–decodables 1ith comprehension and word fluency practice for older readers The program also includes sound boxes and personal sound walls for weekly review.  The language comprehension components feature comprehensive vocabulary, reading fluency, reading comprehension, spelling, writing and syntax, syllabication, reading strategies, and game card lessons, worksheets, and activities. Word Recognition × Language Comprehension = Skillful Reading: The Simple View of Reading and the National Reading Panel Big 5.

If you only have time for a half-year (or 30 minutes per day) program, the The Science of Reading Intervention Program features the 5 Daily Google Slide Activities, plus the sound boxes and personal word walls for an effective word recognition program.

PREVIEW TEACHING READING STRATEGIES and THE SCIENCE OF READING INTERVENTION PROGRAM RESOURCES HERE for detailed product description and sample lessons.

Literacy Centers, Reading, Spelling/Vocabulary dyslexia, independent reading, reading comprehension, reading programs, reading strategies, reading to your child, reluctant readers, teaching reading

Sam and Friends Phonics Books: Decodables for Older Readers

Teaching phonics is an essential ingredient to effective reading instruction. Learning the phonetic code teaches the beginning or remedial reader to make efficient and automatic judgments about how words are constructed. Mastery of the basic sound-spelling correspondences will also pay significant dividends once the student begins reading multisyllabic expository text. In this article, you will learn the basics of evidence-based continuous blending (also known as connected phonation).

A prerequisite (some would argue a byproduct) of learning the phonetic code is phonemic awareness. Before beginning phonics instruction, it is necessary to diagnose students’ phonemic awareness. If the following six whole-class assessments indicate mastery of only one, two, or three components, it would be advisable to delay phonics instruction until at least three components have been mastered. A terrific batch of phonemic awareness activities is listed here. If four, five, or six of the components has been mastered, it would be advisable to begin phonics instruction and concurrently “backfill” any unmastered phonemic awareness.

Phonemic Awareness Assessments

Give the Phonemic Awareness Assessments (see end of article), and record these results on the progress-monitoring matrix. Teach the phonemic awareness activities concurrently with the following phonics instruction. Have your students practice along with the “New Alphabet Song” to solidify their mastery of the alphabet. Secondary teachers may be in for a little shock regarding how many of their students are rusty or don’t know the song and letter identification.

Continuous Blending

A new research study on “connected phonation” (Gonzalez-Frey & Ehri, 2021) suggests that the synthetic phonics (blending each sounds-spelling) approach, known to be the preferred method of phonics instruction, can achieve quicker and better results by using connected phonation, also known as continuous blending. In this approach the student blends through each syllable, not isolating and putting together the individual sounds.

However, for students who still struggle with decoding and for all students who have progressed through and mastered basic phonics, many reading researchers and teachers recommend adding analytic phonics (comparing analogous onsets and rimes) to help students orthographically map these word parts into sight syllables. Following is noted reading researcher, Dr. Tim Shanahan on the value of this approach:

When children know their phonics skills but struggle to read or spell words, then working with word analogies and getting kids to thinking about alternative pronunciations of spelling patterns (bread, break, bead) is the way to go.

The idea of combining synthetic and analytic phonics instruction violates no research, and if done well, may help more kids to succeed https://shanahanonliteracy.com/blog/which-is-best-analytic-or-synthetic-phonics?fbclid=IwAR1mnr5iyehCD9epzUeXKuIC9dGlmqGq8wieyKUPVfuoGapQrMmWxc8yMGU.

Students can learn all of the common sound-spellings in just 18 weeks of instruction. Each day, blend 2 or 3 words from the previous day’s blending activity. Next, introduce 3–6 new words which focus on the lesson’s sound-spellings. Although some students may already have mastered the sound-spellings, this reinforcement will transfer to unmastered sound-spellings and boost reader confidence. Using a dry-erase whiteboard or display projector, write consonant sounds in black marker and vowel sounds in red. Make sure to clip, and not elongate, the consonant sounds. For example, don’t say “bah” for /b/. Follow this script for effective whole-class continuous blending:

About the Continuous Blending Instructional Sequence

This instructional sequence has been carefully designed to reflect years of reading research and teaching experience. This is the most effective sequence to introduce the phonics and spelling components. Here are some rather technical notes that make this instructional sequence superior to other instructional designs.

1. The most common sounds are introduced prior to the least common sounds.

• Weeks 1-3: Short vowels and consonant sounds
• Weeks 4-5: Ending consonant blends and “sh” and “th” voiced consonant digraphs
• Weeks 6-7: Beginning consonant blends, “wh” and “tch” consonant digraphs, “sh” and “th” unvoiced consonant digraphs
• Weeks 8-9: Long vowel sounds and silent final e
• Weeks 10-11: Long vowel sounds and r-controlled vowels
• Weeks 12-13: Diphthongs
• Weeks 14-15: Vowel-influenced and irregular spellings

2. Order of instruction separates letters that are visually similar e.g., p and b, m and n, v and w, u and n.

3. Order of instruction separates sounds that are similar e.g., /k/ and /g/, /u/ and /o/, /t/ and /d/, /e/ and /i/.

4. The most commonly used letters are introduced prior to the least commonly used letters.

5. Short words with fewer phonemes are introduced prior to longer words with more phonemes.

6. Continuous sounds e.g., /a/, /m/, are introduced prior to stop sounds e.g., /t/ because the continuous sounds are easier to blend.

The Science of Reading Intervention Program

The Science of Reading Intervention Program: Word Recognition includes explicit, scripted instruction and practice with the 5 Daily Google Slide Activities every reading intervention student needs: 1. Phonemic Awareness and Morphology 2. Blending, Segmenting, and Spelling 3. Sounds and Spellings (including handwriting) 4. Heart Words Practice 5. Sam and Friends Phonics Books (decodables). Plus, digital and printable sound wall cards and speech articulation songs. Print versions are available for all activities. First Half of the Year Program (55 minutes-per-day, 18 weeks)

The Science of Reading Intervention Program: Language Comprehension resources are designed for students who have completed the word recognition program or have demonstrated basic mastery of the alphabetic code and can read with some degree of fluency. The program features the 5 Weekly Language Comprehension Activities: 1. Background Knowledge Mentor Texts 2. Academic Language, Greek and Latin Morphology, Figures of Speech, Connotations, Multiple Meaning Words 3. Syntax in Reading 4. Reading Comprehension Strategies 5. Literacy Knowledge (Narrative and Expository). Second Half of the Year Program (30 minutes-per-day, 18 weeks)

The Science of Reading Intervention Program: Assessment-based Instruction provides diagnostically-based “second chance” instructional resources. The program includes 13 comprehensive assessments and matching instructional resources to fill in the yet-to-be-mastered gaps in phonemic awareness, alphabetic awareness, phonics, fluency (with YouTube modeled readings), Heart Words and Phonics Games, spelling patterns, grammar, usage, and mechanics, syllabication and morphology, executive function shills. Second Half of the Year Program (25 minutes-per-day, 18 weeks)

The Science of Reading Intervention Program BUNDLE  includes all 3 program components for the comprehensive, state-of-the-art (and science) grades 4-adult full-year program. Scripted, easy-to-teach, no prep, no need for time-consuming (albeit valuable) LETRS training or O-G certification… Learn as you teach and get results NOW for your students. Print to speech with plenty of speech to print instructional components.

SCIENCE OF READING INTERVENTION PROGRAM RESOURCES HERE for detailed product description and sample lessons.

PREVIEW TEACHING READING STRATEGIES and THE SCIENCE OF READING INTERVENTION PROGRAM RESOURCES HERE for detailed product description and sample lessons.

FREE DOWNLOADS TO ASSESS THE QUALITY OF PENNINGTON PUBLISHING RESOURCES: The SCRIP (Summarize, Connect, Re-think, Interpret, and Predict) Comprehension Strategies includes class posters, five lessons to introduce the strategies, and the SCRIP Comprehension Bookmarks.

Get the SCRIP Comprehension Strategies FREE Resource:

Get the Diagnostic ELA and Reading Assessments FREE Resource:

Reading, Spelling/Vocabulary alphabet, connected phonation, continuous blending, decodable, decode, how to read, how to teach reading, Mark Pennington, phonics, phonics assessment, phonics test, phonics worksheets, reading strategies, sound-spelling, sound-spelling cards, spelling, spelling worksheets, teach phonics, teach reading

Learning phonics is the key to reading automaticity (fluency) for beginning and remedial readers alike. The research is clear that teaching the alphabetic code explicitly and systematically is an essential component of effective reading instruction. Now, this is not to say that there isn’t a place for some sight word and word family (onset and rime) instruction, but the primary means of reading instruction must be the sound-spelling system.

Plenty of phonics-based programs do a fine job of providing that systematic instruction. However, some do the basic job, but will bore both students and teachers to tears. Learning to read is hard work, but it should also be fun. Reading instruction that is interactive and enjoyable will teach positive associations with reading to both beginning and remedial readers. Simple drill and kill exercises simply will not.

These phonics games use the free Pennington Publishing Animal Sound-Spelling Cards. Of course, other phonics game cards such as the S.R.A. Open Court® or Breaking the Code® ones will do nicely. You will also need the set of free Consonant Blend Sound-Spelling Cards once the Animal Sound-Spelling Cards have been mastered. The phonics games are divided into Easy, Medium, and Difficult levels to allow teachers to effectively differentiate instruction. Using effective whole class diagnostic assessments such as the Vowel Sounds Phonics Assessment and the Consonant Sounds Phonics Assessment will inform the teacher’s choice as to which levels of games will be appropriate for each of their students.

Teachers may also wish to purchase the Reading and Spelling Game Cards from the publisher. Printed on heavy duty cardstock in business card size, these game cards will help your students master phonics, spelling, and sight words.

Each game card set includes the following:

• 43 animal sound-spelling vowel, vowel team, and consonant cards
• 45 consonant blend cards
• 60 alphabet cards (including upper and lower case with font variations)
• 90 rimes cards with example words
• 108 sight-spelling “outlaw” word cards
• 60 high frequency Greek and Latin prefix and suffix cards with definitions and example words
• 60 vowel and vowel team spelling cards
• 90 consonant and consonant blend spelling cards
• 30 commonly confused homonyms with context clue sentences
• 60 most-often misspelled challenge word cards

Download and Print: Phonics Cards (Animal Sound-Spelling Cards and Consonant Blend Cards) Phonics Games (Easy, Medium, and Difficult Level Phonics Games) NSS (The Names, Sounds, and Spelling Rap)

The Science of Reading Intervention Program

The Science of Reading Intervention Program: Word Recognition includes explicit, scripted instruction and practice with the 5 Daily Google Slide Activities every reading intervention student needs: 1. Phonemic Awareness and Morphology 2. Blending, Segmenting, and Spelling 3. Sounds and Spellings (including handwriting) 4. Heart Words Practice 5. Sam and Friends Phonics Books (decodables). Plus, digital and printable sound wall cards and speech articulation songs. Print versions are available for all activities. First Half of the Year Program (55 minutes-per-day, 18 weeks)

The Science of Reading Intervention Program: Language Comprehension resources are designed for students who have completed the word recognition program or have demonstrated basic mastery of the alphabetic code and can read with some degree of fluency. The program features the 5 Weekly Language Comprehension Activities: 1. Background Knowledge Mentor Texts 2. Academic Language, Greek and Latin Morphology, Figures of Speech, Connotations, Multiple Meaning Words 3. Syntax in Reading 4. Reading Comprehension Strategies 5. Literacy Knowledge (Narrative and Expository). Second Half of the Year Program (30 minutes-per-day, 18 weeks)

The Science of Reading Intervention Program: Assessment-based Instruction provides diagnostically-based “second chance” instructional resources. The program includes 13 comprehensive assessments and matching instructional resources to fill in the yet-to-be-mastered gaps in phonemic awareness, alphabetic awareness, phonics, fluency (with YouTube modeled readings), Heart Words and Phonics Games, spelling patterns, grammar, usage, and mechanics, syllabication and morphology, executive function shills. Second Half of the Year Program (25 minutes-per-day, 18 weeks)

The Science of Reading Intervention Program BUNDLE  includes all 3 program components for the comprehensive, state-of-the-art (and science) grades 4-adult full-year program. Scripted, easy-to-teach, no prep, no need for time-consuming (albeit valuable) LETRS training or O-G certification… Learn as you teach and get results NOW for your students. Print to speech with plenty of speech to print instructional components.

SCIENCE OF READING INTERVENTION PROGRAM RESOURCES HERE for detailed product description and sample lessons.

Reading, Spelling/Vocabulary alphabet, decodable, decode, how to read, how to teach reading, Mark Pennington, phonics, phonics activities, phonics assessment, phonics cards, phonics flaschcards, phonics flash cards, phonics games, phonics practice, phonics test, phonics worksheets, reading strategies, sound-spelling, sound-spelling cards, spelling, spelling cards, spelling flash cards, spelling flashcards, spelling worksheets, teach phonics, teach reading