| |
The Reading First legislation requires
that schools receiving Reading First funding implement
programs that incorporate “five essential components
of effective reading instruction” derived from
“scientifically-based reading research.”
Success for All is built around these five components,
as follows.
The ability to hear, identify, and
manipulate the individual sounds—phonemes—in
spoken words. Phonemic awareness is the understanding
that the sounds of spoken language work together to
make words.
Success for All First has a strong
emphasis on phonemic awareness in its new kindergarten
program, KinderCorner, in line with the requirements
of Reading First. KinderCorner initially emphasizes
phonemic awareness in fingerplays, rhymes, songs, and
games in which children learn how to manipulate the
sounds in words. Program components that introduce beginning
reading instruction include auditory blending and segmenting
and sound manipulation to help children hear the separate
sounds in the words that contain the particular phonemes.
Students use games such as Alphie Talk and Sound Fingers
to gain individual fluency with blending and segmenting.
The understanding that there is
a predictable relationship between phonemes—the
sounds of spoken language—and graphemes—the
letters and spellings that represent those sounds
in written language. Readers use these relationships
to recognize familiar words accurately and automatically
and to decode unfamiliar words.
Success for All’s beginning
reading programs focus on a systematic, synthetic phonics
approach for grades K–1. Specifically for Reading
First, we have added a new component, called FastTrack
Phonics. This component introduces letter sounds in
a rapid, engaging format at the beginning of reading
instruction. FastTrack Phonics includes brief video
vignettes, called the Animated Alphabet, to help children
make solid associations between letter shapes and letter
sounds. Students then move into phonetic readers that
introduce sounds and sound blending strategies step
by step, adding one letter sound in each story.
Children learn the sounds and sound-blending
strategies in fast-paced group lessons, practice them
with partners, and then apply them in stories with a
very high proportion of decodable words. Children know
that every word they encounter is decodable using the
letters they have learned, unless it is one of a small
set of sight words that they have been taught. The program
emphasizes short vowels initially and then introduces
long vowels and vowel diagraphs. Teacher text and pictures,
called “readles,” provide context for the
phonetic stories to make them engaging and meaningful.
The children take home and keep these little books which
are often the only books they own. They practice reading
these books to their family members for homework.
Children build their emerging decoding
skills using Share Sheets, which they complete in structured
dyads. Share Sheets give children practice with phonemes,
decodable words, sight words, and brief sentences, all
coordinated with the decodable stories.
- Listening vocabulary—the
words needed to understand what is heard
- Speaking vocabulary—the words
used when speaking
- Reading vocabulary—the words
needed to understand what is read
- Writing vocabulary—the
words used in writing
Fluency is the ability to read text
accurately and quickly. It provides a bridge between
word recognition and comprehension. Fluent readers
recognize words and comprehend at the same time.
It is not enough for children to
be able to decode. They must decode rapidly enough to
facilitate comprehension of the text. To this end, Success
for All places a strong emphasis on fluency. Children
in grades K–3 engage in an activity called “partner
reading.” Working in pairs, children take turns
reading to each other, alternating pages. The emphasis
of this oral reading is building fluency and automaticity,
as well as learning to read with expression and confidence.
While children are engaged in partner reading, teachers
take children aside to carry out one-to-one oral reading
assessments, which include assessments of fluency, accuracy,
and comprehension.
Success for All is also introducing
additional elements focused on building fluency and
automaticity. The incorporation of formal tracking of
growth in fluency and expression will motivate students
to read frequently and to monitor their fluency as they
read.
Strategies for understanding, remembering,
and communicating with others about what has been
read. Comprehension strategies are sets of steps that
purposeful, active readers use to make sense of text.
Comprehension is the ultimate goal
of reading and is a key focus of Success for All at
all grade levels. In particular, Success for All incorporates
direct teaching of metacognitive comprehension strategies,
such as retelling, prediction, summarization, use of
graphic organizers, question generation, SQ3R, and self-assessment.
In Story Tree (kindergarten) and Story
Telling and Retelling (STaR; 1st grade), teachers read
stories to children and then give them 3 Success for
All–Reading First opportunities to retell the
stories, to take picture cards representing the main
elements of the story and put them in sequential order,
and to predict the outcomes of stories. The children
also dramatize the stories and complete story maps to
learn the main elements of each story.
STaR becomes Listening Comprehension
at the 2nd-grade level. It continues a focus on prediction,
adding a focus on identifying characters, settings,
problems, and problem solutions in narratives; use of
graphic organizers to represent the content of expository
and narrative texts; and our own version of SQ3R called
SQRRRL, for Survey, Question, Read, Restate, and Review
what you Learned. Starting at the 2nd-grade reading
level, Success for All uses “Treasure Hunts,”
which ask children to answer questions about the main
elements of the stories they are reading, to make predictions
about how the stories’ problems will be resolved,
to summarize stories, and to write their own brief compositions
in connection with the stories. Students work on Treasure
Hunts in structured, heterogeneous cooperative learning
teams of four members. Treasure Hunts are written to
accompany all widely-used basal series, including the
new Open Court, Houghton Mifflin, and Harcourt basals
written for the California and Florida state adoptions.
In addition, Treasure Hunts exist for hundreds of narrative
and expository trade books, from 1st- to 8th-grade reading
levels. For several of the larger states, Treasure Hunts
have been adapted to the specific standards and assessments
used in the states.
In grades 2 and above, Success for
All provides
reading comprehension exercises focused on
specific comprehension skills, such as finding the
main idea and understanding fact vs. opinion,
cause and effect, figurative language, and words
in context. Again, these reading comprehension
units are used in cooperative teams, which
prepare their members for assessments that they
take individually.
Success for All has a set of additional
components designed to increase the reading
vocabulary of English language learners being
taught in English, and to prepare them for the
language they will encounter in KinderRoots and
Reading Roots (grades K–1). This English as a
Second Language (ESL) adaptation includes
suggestions to teachers to use such proven
strategies as Total Physical Response and realia to
introduce vocabulary, and concept cards to show
pictures of words used in the KinderRoots and
Reading Roots stories. In addition, Success for All
introduces a series of video vignettes, brief skits
that introduce the vocabulary in the stories
children are about to read. These vignettes, called
Word Plays, can also be used with English
proficient children, who can also benefit from the
visual, compelling presentations of vocabulary that
may be new to many young children.
|
