Pennington Publishing Blog

Research consistently validates the systematic, explicit phonics instruction for older students featured in The Science of Reading Intervention Program. Of course, the trick is that in your reading intervention, ELL, ML, SPED, or adult literacy class, you (no doubt) have four types of struggling readers:

1. Some struggling readers have mastered some, but not all sound-spelling patterns.
2. Some struggling readers have a shaky mastery of phonics and need a thorough refresher to improve their decoding accuracy.
3. Some struggling readers have primary language influences other than English and need to apply these connections and adjust to their differences.
4. Some non-readers need comprehensive, A to Z instruction in cracking the alphabetic code and may require some second-chance instruction and practice, as well. These may include SPED students or cognitively impaired students.

The rest of this article will briefly explain how The Science of Reading Intervention Program addresses the needs of these students, and the following 12-minute YouTube sample lesson will show you a complete lesson in real time… well your students, classroom interruptions, computer issues are always the time-variables 🙂

First, let’s examine my approach to phonics instruction for older students to see if you want to keep reading. I began using systematic, synthetic phonics instruction as a district reading specialist back in the 1990s with the Open Court program. Worked wonders! My students and teachers also experienced success with the related Breaking the Code program for reading intervention, ELL, and SPED students. However, it took two (or even three) years of two-hour literacy block instruction for older students to get close to reading at grade level. I began experimenting and researching a similar, but different, approach for older, struggling students.

Open Court and Breaking the Code (and the vast majority of Orton Gillingham-style) programs use the print to speech instructional method. Nothing wrong with this approach! However, I’ve found that a speech to print instructional method has more advantages for older, struggling readers.

1. It accelerates learning. The Science of Reading Intervention Program covers and helps students master the entire scope and sequence of the aforementioned programs in 18 weeks, 55 minutes per day.
2. The speech to print approach builds on older students oral language lexicons/language structures and those of non or limited English-speaking students.
3. It focuses more on problem-solving strategies than rules application. Now don’t get me wrong; I value reading, spelling, syllable, and syntax rules. (I am more aligned with print to speech colleagues in this respect.) However, too much focus on rules bogs down instruction. I want my students to progress as quickly as possible (and they do, too).

Dr. Louisa Moats neatly summarizes the instructional priorities I have incorporated in my program:

“One of the most important jobs for… the teacher of students with reading problems is to foster awareness of phonemes (speech sounds) in words and to help children acquire the ability to articulate, compare, segment, and blend those phonemes” (Moats 2004).

So, back to the four types of struggling readers… How does the speech to print approach in my program address each set of needs?

For 1. Some struggling readers have mastered some, but not all sound-spelling patterns.

Rather than beginning the year with a slew of diagnostic assessments and launching into small group differentiated phonics and spelling instruction, my program provides a phonics, spelling, and fluency screener for program placement, but utilizes whole-class, explicit instruction and guided practice for each of the 54 segmenting-spelling-blending Say it! Spell it! Read it! lessons. True that these types of students will be learning and practicing some of what they already know, but gap-filling the rest.

For 2. Some struggling readers have a shaky mastery of phonics and need a thorough refresher to improve their decoding accuracy.

Often, these students are forced to practice, practice, practice in depth that which really only requires a refresher in context. The accelerated pace of the instruction and practice meets the needs of these types of students.

For 3. Some struggling readers have primary language influences other than English and need to apply these connections and adjust to their differences.

So many variables here, but the program makes use of students’ phonics and spelling knowledge in their primary language to transition to English reading and writing. Plus, the sounds to print approach pinpoints the differences that students learning English need to know.

For 4. Some non-readers need comprehensive, A to Z instruction in cracking the alphabetic code and may require some second-chance instruction and practice, as well. These may include SPED students or cognitively impaired students.

For these students, often the recursive nature of language acquisition means more practice. Yet, pinpoint, targeted practice. In my program, 13 assessments are administered at the mid-year point after all 54 phonics and spelling lessons have been completed. Corresponding activities and worksheets, designed for individual and/or small group work are assigned as needed.

Check out a sample phonemic awareness opener from my program for older students and see how easy it is to teach to all three types of your students!

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