HEC Reading Horizons e-Newsletter

Volume 8, Issue 2
Summer 2007

Inside This Issue:

• K-12 Reading Solution in Red Clay
• Shaping Up in South Hennepin
• Why Does 'Cat' begin with a C and 'Kitten' Begin with K?
• FREE UPGRADE!!
• Basal Implementation Guides
• Questions and Answers

K-12 Reading Solution in Red Clay

“We had so many students coming to middle and high school (who) could not read,” remembers Angela Ogunde. “We were in need of an intervention.”

Then Ogunde, a special-education curriculum coordinator for the Red Clay School District in Wilmington, Delaware, discovered an intervention in the form of a literacy program called Reading Horizons.

“After seeing the (initial Reading Horizons) presentation,” she says, “I was convinced that this was a program that would help them. The methods allowed them to ‘prove’ words, and that was the hook for me. We (at the district) felt that this program would teach them the basic phonics and other decoding skills they may have missed.”

It turns out that her hunch was right. Now entering their third scholastic year with Reading Horizons, the administration, teachers, and students of the Red Clay School District have been reaping the benefits of their hard work and dedication to the program. “We first started using Reading Horizons in all of our middle and high schools for special-education students,” she recalls. “We offered several trainings and even did one-on-one coaching with teachers.”

It wasn’t long before the literacy program’s popularity began to spread like wildfire across the district.

“Teachers began to report that the students (who) were using it loved it and were improving their reading skills,” Ogunde explains. “Word began to get around that a new reading program was being used with the secondary schools and how successful it was. We began to get calls from elementary teachers and principals wanting more information. Upon getting the information and seeing demonstrations on how Reading Horizons worked, many of the principals bought the program and are now using it in their schools.”

“All (of the) teachers who have used the program have reported increases in reading skills,” she states. “Students have even made gains in their test scores.”

Ogunde speaks with high praise of the creative way in which one of the district’s middle schools has chosen to implement Reading Horizons.

“Every morning,” she explains, “the school starts the day with a 40-minute reading intervention or enrichment class, depending on the need(s) of the students. One teacher wanted to create a Reading Horizons class during this 40-minute period. The teacher began to give them direct instruction as well as software reinforcement. By the end of the year, every student had made significant gains!”

In summation, she proclaims, “Reading Horizons works.”

Shaping Up in South Hennepin

Many people reach a critical point in their lives when it becomes necessary to either “shape up or ship out,” as the old saying goes. Doraine Bingham is assisting her adult literacy students to acquire the skills necessary to do both.

The SHAPE (South Hennepin Adult Programs in Education) program, based in Bloomington, Minnesota, does the “shaping up” (so to speak) through dedicated instructors, like Bingham, who are focused on preparing participants to then “ship out” into their respective spheres of influence fully armed with newly acquired literacy skills.

“I love teaching literacy,” Bingham proclaims. “It is so fulfilling to see how happy it makes students when they learn and how grateful they are to have all these ‘light bulbs’ turn on with the Intensive Phonics method.”

The Discover Intensive Phonics (DIP) methodology, she says, has had a significant impact on her students’ ability to learn more efficiently and has greatly assisted her in her teaching efforts. She first learned of DIP at a tutors’ training seminar held in Minneapolis in 1990.

“By the time we were through,” she remembers, “I was so excited about it, I could hardly wait for Monday so I could try it on my students and some who had trouble learning with another method. Intensive Phonics worked immediately.”

In the 17 years since then, Bingham has spent, literally, thousands of hours teaching adults (mostly those in their 40s, 50s, and 60s) the techniques and skills presented in DIP.

“Before I had had Intensive Phonics,” she recalls, “one of the first students I taught, Tom,* age 36, had little schooling and couldn’t seem to learn, so I took him to a learning disability school to be tested. They sent a letter to us saying he would never be able to progress any farther, which was devastating to him and his wife.”

Not satisfied with that kind of assessment, neither Bingham nor Tom gave up hope.

“Along came a day (when) I took the class for Intensive Phonics,” she continues, “and things changed for Tom, but it became necessary for him to quit coming. He never forgot what we were learning and, 16 years later, he is back again to go on where we left off. He loves decoding; he is now 60.”

Also among Bingham’s many past and present pupils are a large number of ESL students who, she says, “want to be able to speak more fluently, and many want to go on with their education in college, etc. Intensive Phonics is what makes all they have been trying to learn easier. … (It) takes the mystery out of words.”

“I have taught people from nine different foreign countries and the U.S.,” she adds. “They are all so grateful, and it makes me feel very happy and fulfilled to help them.”

“One student of mine,” Bingham says, “is from Tanzania and had never been to school here or there. She was 50 when we started, and she learned very quickly with this method. She has achieved her citizenship and thanks me for that every time we meet.”

*Name has been changed.

Why Does ‘Cat’ Begin with C and ‘Kitten’ Begin with K?

Spelling with C and K is a basic skill taught as part of the Discover Intensive Phonics for Yourself program. It appears to be just a spelling skill, but stay tuned—it’s so much more!

First, to help students discover the pattern, place lists of C – K words on the board:

By examining the word lists, students discover the vowels following the letter C are A, O, and U. Those following K are the vowels I and E. The rule is: When you hear the sound /k/ at the beginning of a word, listen for the vowel sound! If you hear the sound of A, O, or U, spell the word with a C. If you hear the sounds of I or E, spell it with a K! To help students remember the rule, teach them the following rhyme: “K takes I and E, C takes the other three!” This simple spelling rule is right 100 percent of the time with words in English. The only exceptions are names and foreign based words such as ‘karate’ or ‘kangaroo.’

So, how is this more than just a spelling skill?

First of all, it’s a great review of vowel sounds. Students have just completed learning of all their vowel sounds at this point, and now they are asked to listen to and distinguish the vowel sound in order to make the choice of spelling with C or K.

Secondly, the soft sounds for C and G are not taught when the initial alphabet sounds are taught. Instead, by helping students become initially ingrained in the use of C and K when they have the sound /k/, it becomes easy later on to show them that, when the vowels I and E stand with C, there is always—100 percent of the time—a sound change! The resulting sound will ALWAYS be /s/. That’s what makes the C-K skill 100 percent, and teaching this simple skill takes the guesswork out of deciding when the consonant C says /k/ or /s/!

FREE UPGRADE!!

At HEC Reading Horizons, we are committed to ensuring that all of the software products we produce stay on the cutting edge, even as new technology is released almost every day. This requires a substantial investment of time and money but produces material that has the power to save customers time and improve instruction for students. Further, nothing is more frustrating than computers/software that don’t work properly. Purchasing new computers and updated operating systems can result in technical difficulties for existing software. It is imperative that software customers monitor their curriculum to ensure that they are accessing all of the critical features that are incorporated into new releases and that the software is current and will work with newer computers.

HEC Reading Horizons is a customer-driven company, and we want every teacher and administrator to get the most out of their product purchase, immediately and in the long run. In accordance with that goal, we have incorporated upgrade and renewal policies that offer tremendous value to customers. For example: Current Network / Stand Alone customers, who have purchased version 3.0 (released in April 2003), qualify for a FREE upgrade to the current software (version 4.1). This is a standing policy; all customers qualify for a free upgrade to the subsequent release and will receive it upon request. All the customer needs to pays is a $25 shipping and handling fee. The following upgrade (software release) can be purchased at 50 percent off of the retail price, and the subsequent release to that is a free upgrade … and so on. This allows all of our customers to stay current with a minimal investment.

Online customers are required to pay a 15 percent annual renewal fee (on the anniversary of the original purchase) in order to maintain access to the program. Paying the renewal fee also qualifies online customers for free updates and upgrades as they’re released. Again, this represents tremendous value, as it allows customers to stay current for a nominal, annual investment.

Everyone working in education understands that budgets are everything. It is imperative for all customers to understand the importance of staying current and to budget the appropriate funds to ensure that their students have access to vital reading material.

Basal Implementation Guides

Although many schools across the country have mandated the use of basal programs as their mode of teaching reading, most basal programs fail to cover phonic instruction adequately. The basic phonic instruction in almost all basal programs is taught in random order rather than in a solid sequence. Teachers express frustration at not being able to give their students a more firm foundation for reading. Many basal programs cover some, or even most, of the basic phonic instruction, but they lack the structure and depth of learning needed by many beginning and all struggling students.

Discover Intensive Phonics provides the explicit, sequential phonics foundation that is missing in basal reading programs. Letter/sound associations and word formation are taught using multi-sensory, direct instruction, followed by remarkably effective instruction in word patterns. The program progresses through teaching the remaining 42 Sounds of the Alphabet and culminates with syllabication and word analysis.

Over the past several years, teachers have asked how they can effectively implement Discover Intensive Phonics into their basal programs. We are happy to report that HEC Reading Horizons has recently prepared correlations for teaching Discover Intensive Phonics with the following basal programs: Harcourt Trophies, Scott Foresman-Reading Street, and Open Court. HEC reviewed the phonics instruction in each basal program, compared it with the Discover Intensive Phonics instruction, and prepared a basic guide showing the areas in which the same skills were presented. This correlation allows teachers to teach phonic skills using the structure and sequence of Discover Intensive Phonics and still take advantage of the activities and stories in their basal program that reinforce those skills.

HEC Reading Horizons’ Basal Implementation Guides were created to help teachers take the guesswork out of how to use the Discover Intensive Phonics method with their basal program. These guides will become important as teachers begin to realize how easy it is to use Discover Intensive Phonics with any basal program. Discover Intensive Phonics is the needed foundation for every student as they learn to read, or learn English as a new language.

We invite you to visit our Web site to view the Implementation Guides:
readinghorizons.com/community/implementation

Questions & Answers

Q: What core skill areas does the Discover Intensive Phonics program cover to meet NCLB?

A: Discover Intensive Phonics for Yourself aligns to the five core areas, as defined by the National Reading Panel: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension, in addition to teaching spelling strategies (unique marking system) and grammar skills. Students receive these skills through direct teacher instruction in the regular classroom setting or through an individualized program (special education teacher and/or computer software). Students practice each skill explicitly and systematically, beginning with phonemic awareness, then work through increasingly difficult skills.

• PHONEMIC AWARENESS—The ability to hear, identify, and work with individual sounds or phonemes in spoken words and the knowledge that the sounds of spoken language work together to make words.
• PHONICS AND DECODING—Relationship between graphemes (letters) of written language and phonemes (individual sounds) of spoken language. The distinctive marking system in Discover Intensive Phonics empowers students with a unique strategy to recognize familiar words and to decode unfamiliar words.
• FLUENCY—When teaching the slide concept, fluency is a natural outcome of the Discover Intensive Phonics course. The blending and sliding process taught early in the course helps students to correctly decode and pronounce words smoothly, going from left to right, thus reinforcing the correct process of reading text on a page.
• VOCABULARY—Development of vocabulary through repeated exposure to a wide variety of words (orthographic awareness). Almost every word dictated in the course (excluding nonsense words) is used in a context sentence to ensure vocabulary development, and practice is provided in the Sounds Essentials manual (written) and computer lessons (oral).
• COMPREHENSION—Using words in context and developing fluency as a bridge to comprehension. Instruction in phonemic awareness improves a student’s ability to read words more fluidly and accurately, thus improving reading comprehension. The Little Books contain controlled-vocabulary stories that are sequentially designed to follow the phonic skills and Most Common Words taught in the Discover Intensive Phonics course.

Q: Is the Discover Intensive Phonics program effective for students with special needs?

A: Yes. With Discover Intensive Phonics for Yourself, each student is able to work at his or her own pace and level. The program reaches the lowest-level readers while offering the ability to tailor fit the lesson sequence to more advanced readers. The multi-sensory methodology respects students’ individual learning styles, ensuring that instruction is on-target for each student. Students suffering from dyslexia and other reading disabilities have a crucial need for an explicit, systematic phonics program. The simple-to-complex sequence of Discover Intensive Phonics for Yourself, along with its emphasis on phonemic awareness, makes this program ideal for students with special needs. Additionally, the unique marking system utilized in the Discover Intensive Phonics approach and the multi-sensory instructional techniques employed have proven to be extremely effective for students who suffer from dyslexia. Current research reveals that intensive phonics training and phonics-based computer reading programs can actually rewire crucial neural circuitry in students who have trouble learning to read.