I successfully used this book to help my children begin to read, but this isn't all I used. It was a great start, but we needed more phonics instruction. Children need to learn how to read phonetically. Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons is a program that builds a firm
phonics foundation. Some children will learn how to read simply by
going through this book with a parent,
while other children will need
more explicit phonics instruction coupled with multi-sensory activities.
From the "Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons" website:
"Children
easily move step–by–step with phonics (sounds for letters) and learn
the essential skills (left out of other phonics programs) to blend the
sounds into words. Built on this unique phonics foundation, children
quickly start to read those words in fully illustrated stories. This
book was designed to be user–friendly for parents, grandparents, tutors
or others who want to teach young (3– to 6–year old) non–readers. The
book contains 100 twenty–minute lessons that are clearly color–coded
and scripted (including how to motivate, teach, and correct) so that
both you and the child you are teaching can be successful. How
successful? After kids complete the 100 lessons they read on a solid
second grade level. Although the book alone can be used, Dr. Phyllis
Haddox, co–author, has also developed supplemental materials—training
video tape, training audio tape, flashcards, and full–sized sounds
sheets. See
Training Materials for a complete description."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dr. Kerry Hempenstall, Division of Psychology, School of Health
Sciences, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), Australia,
wrote the following explanation of how "phonemic awareness" is taught in
Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons:
Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons (Engelmann, Haddox, &
Bruner, 1983) was developed as a program for parents to use with
preschool or struggling readers. It is developed from a school-based
reading program Reading Mastery Fast Cycle I/II Reading Program
(Engelmann & Bruner, 1988; a former version of which was known as
Distar).
The program follows the Direct Instruction principles of design, and
the
content emphasises the explicit teaching of *phonemic awareness
(rhyming, blending, segmenting) along with 44 letter sound
correspondences. These selected correspondences allow for the
decoding of 95% of the sounds in the students' typically available
reading texts, and close approximations for 98% (Burmeister, 1975, cited
in Grossen, 1995).
The phonemic awareness skills of blending and segmenting are taught
orally initially, because there are fewer elements in the oral than
the written task, and hence less likelihood of error. Blending is
taught as a simultaneous rather than discrete-sound format -
"mmmaaat" rather than "mmm-aaa-t" because the stimulus sequence of
sounds is really a stretched form of the word "mat", rather than a
broken form in which the elements are completely separated. The authors
argue that the mastery of continuous blending is a worthwhile
objective because it provides more salient clues to the pronunciation
of words. The oral blending activities proceed from large intra-word
clusters to single phoneme blends.
"Let's play say-it-fast. My turn: motor (pause) boat. (Pause) Say it
fast. "Motorboat". From: Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons
(Engelmann, Haddox, & Bruner, 1983, p.31).
To assist the mastery of simple two phoneme blends an additional step is
included in the model-test sequence. The sequence becomes
model-lead-test, thus providing an additional prompt. "First I'll say
am slowly. Listen: aaammm. Now it's your turn to say the word slowly
with me. Take a deep breath and we'll say aaammm. Get ready. aaammm
Your turn to say the word slowly by yourself. Say aaammm. Get ready.
"Aaammm." From: Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons (Engelmann,
Haddox & Bruner, 1983, p.31).
Blending activities begin in the first lesson, and segmenting written
words into constituent phonemes in Lesson 9. This latter process is
assisted by the use of marks under the word that prompt the sounds
one by one at the required pace. See Table 39 for an example of a
blending sequence.
Table 39 Script for Blending Activity Task 9 WORD READING 1. (Point to
sat.) You're going to touch under the sounds as you sound out this
word and say it fast. (Touch under s.) What's the first sound you're
going to say? "sss." (Touch under a.) What's the next sound you're
going to say? "aaa." (Touch under t.) What's the next sound you're
going to say? "t." 2. Touch the first ball of the arrow. Take a deep
breath and say the sounds as you touch under them. Get ready. Go.
(Child touches under s, a, and t and says "sssaaat." (Repeat until
firm.) 3. Say it fast. "sat." Yes, what word? "sat." You read the
word sat. Good reading. From: Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy
Lessons (Engelmann, Haddox & Bruner, 1983, p. 53).
Other activities include: rhyming to promote a sensitivity to word
families based on common endings (or rimes); sounds-writing because
it prompts attention to the letter shape, and helps forge the
association between shape and sound; story reading (from Lesson 13)
involving successive segmenting and blending; and, picture
comprehension (from Lesson 13). Pictures are provided after the story
is finished to assist comprehension, but to avoid the picture cues
being used in place of print cues in the decoding task. Sight words
(from Lesson 13). Words that have been practised sufficiently often
(using the segment-blend procedure) for them to begin to become
familiar are "read the fast way", that is, the child slides his
finger under the letters to prompt a thorough viewing, but does not
sound out the word, rather he reads it orthographically.
Supporting this cumulative skill acquisition and skill synthesis model
are clear scripted correction procedures. There are two basic
principles - the first is that correction be applied immediately
following the error, rather than delayed until the end of a sentence,
or waiting for self-correction. The purpose of the program is to
teach accurate decoding of words based on information provided by the
print, rather than relying on contextual cues to prompt a word's
pronunciation. Hence, the correction redirects the child's attention
to the source of the information - the word. The second principle
specifies the basic correction structure - the child is notified of
the error, given the correct response, allowed to practise this
response, and finally tested on the original task before moving on.
Additionally, a delayed test presented later in the lesson is often
recommended.
The change from Distar orthography to normal print occurs over a three
lesson period (Lessons 74-76), and after that time all print is
conventional. By this stage the child is reading stories of about 200
words orthographically, and answering comprehension questions.
According to the program designers the child should be reading at
around a Year Two level at the completion of the program. The shift
from letter by letter decoding to orthographic whole word recognition
occurs in students who are able to analyse fully word structure
(Stanovich, 1991), and have had many opportunities for practice of
such words in isolation, and in connected text - particularly with
words containing high frequency spelling patterns (Ehri, 1994).
"According to Ehri's (1992) work, the most effective way for
beginning readers to store sight words in memory is to analyse fully
the sounds in the spoken word and to match those sounds to the letters
in the printed form of words. To do this, readers must know how to
segment pronunciations of words into their smallest sounds, and they
must know which letters typically symbolise those sounds." (Gaskins,
Ehri, Cress, O'Hara, & Donnelly, 1996, p. 315).
Given that the content of the 100 Lessons program focuses on the skill
areas currently accepted as critical, that the style of teaching
employs empirically supported effective-teaching principles, and that
the instructional design principles ensure ample massed and spaced
practice - it is reasonable to acknowledge that the authors' claims
that decoding instruction leads to eventual skilled whole-word
recognition are defendable. Additionally the strong empirical evidence
of the program effectiveness, described by Grossen (1995), and
recognised in the Reading Excellence Act and by The American
Federation of Teachers adds credence to the claims.
TOPA In a sub-study within my thesis, I measured changes in 26 students'
phonemic awareness over about 7 months during which 13 took the 100
Lessons program while the others acted as a waitlist control. I used
the Test of Phonological Awareness (TOPA) (Torgesen & Bryant,
1994) which measures the capacity to use phoneme segmentation (or at
least phoneme isolation). It provides analytic tasks that require
children to be aware of, and be able to identify individual phonemes
presented to them orally in a word. In the Early Elementary version,
they are required to isolate the last sounds in 20 words, and compare
them to those of other words. The authors describe the test as one
of phonological sensitivity (or shallow phonemic awareness) rather
than explicit (or deep) phonemic awareness because the test does not
require the manipulation or pronunciation of the phonemes in the
presented words (although one presumes such a capacity would be
helpful). In Yopp's (1988) factor analytic study, two factors were
noted within the phonemic awareness construct, each relating to the
level of demand on working memory. This test provides line drawings
of the words in order to reduce the working memory requirements of
the test. The test is designed to be used for early identification or
screening (it can be used as a group test). In this study, it was used
as a measure of change in phonemic awareness over the period of the
intervention. The maximum possible score is 20 (indicating mastery),
and raw scores were used in all analyses.
Results for TOPA were analysed using a single-factor between-subject
analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), with transformed pretest scores
serving as the covariate and transformed posttest scores as the
dependent variable. An initial test revealed no violation of the
assumption of homogeneity of slopes, F(1, 22) = 1.27, p = .273. With
the pretest results partialled out there was a significant overall
difference between the experimental and control groups, F(1, 23) =
53.90, p < .001. Results for log transformed scores for TOPA were
also analysed using a two-way mixed analysis of variance (ANOVA). The
within-subjects factor was time (pre vs. post); the between-subjects
factor was group (experimental vs. control). No significant main
effect was found for group, F(1, 24) = 0.03, p = .865, power = .04,
but a significant main effect was found for time, F(1, 24) = 42.80, p
< .001, power = 1.00, and the group-by-time interaction, F(1, 24)
= 40.41, p < .001, power = 1.00. Follow-up testing of the
interaction using simple main effects found no significant difference
between the experimental and control groups at pretest, F(1, 24) =
2.18, p = .153, power = .29, and at posttest, F(1, 24) = 2.52, p =
.125, power = .33. Further, no significant pre- to posttest
difference was found for the control, F(1, 24) = 0.02, p = .897,
power = .04, d = -0.06, but a significant pre- to posttest difference
was found for the experimental groups, F(1, 24) = 83.20, p < .001,
power = 1.00, d = 1.30, and the magnitude of effect was large for
the experimental group. Under the Cohen (1988) convention, d= 0.2
constitutes a small effect size, d= 0.5 a medium effect size, and d=
0.8 a large effect size. Slavin (1990) argued that an effect size
above 0.25 should be considered educationally significant. The d=1.30
for the change in phonemic awareness was impressive.
The findings of this small study are consistent with other research
indicating that phonemic awareness activities embedded within a
systematic, explicit phonics program may be sufficient to induce the
alphabetic principle in all but the most phonemically-resistant
students. This latter aspect has the potential for educational cost
savings - in that specialised phonemic awareness programs may be
applied more sparingly (and thus more efficiently over a wider
population) if one can identify those students unlikely to progress
with a less intensive approach. For the others, exposure to a well
constructed phonics program (with some phonemic awareness activities
embedded) may be sufficient to stimulate adequate phonemic awareness,
and assist students to progress towards reading independence.
*[The relationship between phonics and phonemic awareness is often
misunderstood. Phonemic awareness is an aural/oral skill that (at
least in part) can exist without contact with print. At an advanced
level, it involves the capacity to dissect the spoken word, and
manipulate the resultant sound segments. Until contact with writing
however, there is no communicative value in developing such a skill,
and many children do not routinely pay attention to these meaningless
segments of speech, and hence do not develop this capacity.
It is now apparent that one can enhance phonemic awareness skills
through the implementation of a dedicated phonemic awareness program.
However, it is not clear whether this represents the only means of
achieving the objective. There is some evidence that a reading
program that draws attention to the relationship between written word
parts (including graphemes) and oral word parts (including phonemes)
may promote the growth of phonemic awareness without the application
of a dedicated phonemic awareness program. Standing against this
suggestion is the argument that unless a student has an understanding
of the structure of spoken words first, then focussing on such
structural issues in the written form may be ineffective (Juel, 1993;
Lindamood, 1994; Simner, 1995; Torgesen, Morgan, & Davis, 1992).
Yet it may be possible that both the alphabetic principle and
phonemic awareness can be evoked through a phonics-emphasis reading
program, carefully taught (at least for those students with some
threshold level of phonemic awareness). The question is probably best
addressed as an empirical one, as there are still a number of
unresolved theoretical issues relating to phonemic awareness. In
particular, the question of how separate (in time) phonemic awareness
and phonics instruction needs to be is unresolved. It may be that
for some students dedicated phonemic awareness programs will increase
their chances of doing well, but for others the introduction of
letters in conjunction with phonemic awareness activities (Hatcher,
Hulme, & Ellis, 1994) is sufficient for the fomentation of
phonemic awareness in parallel with decoding skill. ]
References Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the
behavioural sciences (2nd ed.), Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Earlbaum.
Ehri, L. C. (1994). Development of the ability to read words: Update.
In R. Ruddell, M. Ruddell, & H. Singer (Eds.). Theoretical
models and processes of reading (4th ed. pp. 323-358). Newark, DE:
International Reading Association. Engelmann, S., & Bruner, E. C.
(1988). Reading Mastery. Chicago: Science Research Associates.
Engelmann, S., Haddox, P., & Bruner, E. (1983). Teach Your Child
To Read In 100 Easy Lessons. New York: Simon & Schuster. Gaskins,
I. W., Ehri, L. C., Cress, C., O'Hara, C., Donnelly, K. (1996).
Procedures for word learning: Making discoveries about words. The
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base for Reading Mastery, SRA. [On-line]. Available:
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& Ellis, A. (1994). Ameliorating reading failure by integrating
the teaching of reading and phonological skills: The phonological
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Reading across the life span (pp. 95-109). New York: Springer-Verlag
Lindamood, P. C. (1994). Issues in researching the link between
phonological awareness, learning disabilities, and spelling. In G. R.
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disabilities: New views on measurement issues (pp. 351-374). Baltimore,
PH: Brookes Publishing Co. Simner, M. L. (1995). Reply to the
Ministries' reactions to the Canadian Psychological Association's
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research, and practice. Englewood Ciffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Torgesen,
J. K., & Bryant, B. (1994a). Test of Phonological Awareness.
Austin, TX: Pro-Ed. Torgesen, J. K., Morgan, S. T., & Davis, C.
(1992). Effects of two types of phonological awareness training on
word learning in kindergarten children. Journal of Educational
Psychology, 84, 364-370. Yopp, H. K. (1988). The validity and
reliability of phonemic awareness tests. Reading Research Quarterly,
23, 159-177.
Dr. Kerry Hempenstall, Division of Psychology, School of Health
Sciences, RMIT University, PO Box 71, Bundoora, VIC 3083 Australia.
