research base sails literacy series reading...

Sails Literacy SeriesReading Program

August 2004Libby Limbrick, Ph.D.

Research Base

Web Version

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Research Base 3

Introduction ....................................................................................................... 4

Phonemic Awareness Instruction ..................................................................... 5

Phonics Instruction ........................................................................................... 8

Fluency Instruction ........................................................................................ 12

Vocabulary Instruction ................................................................................... 14

Text Comprehension Instruction ................................................................... 16

Bibliography .................................................................................................... 22

Sails Literacy Series Reading Program Research Base

Table of Contents

About the author of the Sails Literacy Series Research Base

Dr. Libby Limbrick is currently the National Director and Resource Teacher of the National Literacy Programme at the University of Auckland College of Education in New Zealand. She is a broadly recognized expert in the field of literacy development. Dr. Limbrick has been widely published in international journals, and spoken extensively at international conferences as well as U.S. news programs on the topic of reading and literacy instruction.

4 Sails Literacy Series Reading Program

IntroductionOn January 8, 2002, President George W. Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. This law contains the most comprehensive reforms of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) since it was enacted in 1965. One fundamental principle of the new law is an emphasis on teaching methods that have been proven effective, especially in the area of reading instruction.

In 1997, as part of the Reading Excellence Act, Congress mandated a study to analyze and report on the “status of research-based knowledge, including the effectiveness of various approaches to teaching children to read (focusing on the critical years of kindergarten through grade three).” The Director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, in cooperation with the Secretary of Education, formed a National Reading Panel (NRP) of leading authorities in reading research. The NRP held a series of public hearings, interviewed experts in the field, and considered more than 100,000 studies to meet the Congressional mandate. The results of its work were published in 2000 in the Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read. The research focused on studying how reading ability develops and has led to important improvements in the knowledge base for teaching initial reading skills. The report identified five areas of instruction in which mastery is essential to be a skilled reader: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. The NRP concluded that to be effective, reading instruction must integrate skills within these areas and engage children through the use of meaningful texts.

The purpose of this document is to present an overview of some of the reading research that provided the foundation for the development of the Sails Literacy Series. The document provides the scientific research (experimental and quasi-experimental studies) and practice-oriented or action research that shaped the creation of the Sails Literacy Series.

This document specifies how relevant research regarding the teaching of reading manifests itself in the instructional components of the Sails Literacy Series. By making these direct connections to the instructional materials, it is hoped that the research underpinnings of the program will become more meaningful to the classroom practitioner.

This document is organized into the strands identified in the table of contents as well as several sub-strands.

• Overview of the Sails Literacy Series provides a philosophical overview of the theory and practice of the program.

• Exerpts from Key Research Underlying the Sails Literacy Series present the reading research that was fundamental to the manner in which the program was developed. The cited research includes experimental, quasi-experimental, longitudinal, observational studies as well as research analysis and reviews.

• From Research to the Classroom discusses how the Sails Literacy Series speaks to the instructional recommendations identified by the research.

A complete bibliography of the research used in the development of this program is provided at the end of this document.

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Phonemic Awareness Instruction

Phonemic awareness can be taught and learned.

Phonemic awareness instruction teaches children to notice, think about, and work with (manipulate) sounds in spoken language. Teachers use many activities to build phonemic awareness, including phoneme isolation, phoneme identity, phoneme categorization, phoneme blending, phoneme segmentation, phoneme deletion, phoneme addition, phoneme substitution. (Put Reading First, pages 5–6)

Excerpts from Research Underlying the Sails Literacy Series“That phonological awareness facilitates the acquisition of phonological decoding and other word-level skills is supported by a large body of research documenting that most children who have difficulty

learning to read have deficient phoneme awareness and phonological decoding skills (Adams, 1990; Blachman, 2000; Liberman, 1983; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998; Vellutino, 1987; Vellutino et al, 1996). Even more impressive is convergent evidence from intervention studies showing that training and remediation to facilitate phonological awareness and the acquisition of phonological decoding skills significantly improve word-recognition skills and reading proficiency in general (Adams, 1990; Blachman, 2000; Bradley & Bryant, 1983; Snow et al, 1998; Torgenson, 2000; Vellutino & Scanlon, 1987; Velluntino et al., 1996).” (Velluntino, 2003, p. 57)

“Children who begin their reading instruction with deeper levels of phonological awareness have a ‘powerful bootstrapping mechanism to reading progress’ (Stanovich, 1992).” (Blachman, 2000, p. 486)

From Research to the ClassroomThe Sails Literacy Series programs provide a systematic instructional focus on phonological patterns with phonemic manipulation tasks introduced in an appropriate developmental

Alignment of Sails Literacy Series with the National Reading Panel

Phonemic AwarenessInstruction

Phonics Instruction

FluencyInstruction

VocabularyInstruction

TextComprehension

Instruction

First Wave – Beginning ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

Emergent – Magenta ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

Early – Red ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

Early – Yellow ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

Early – Blue ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

Early – Green ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

Fluency – Orange ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

Fluency – Turquoise ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

Fluency – Purple ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

Fluency – Gold ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

MainSails – Grade 4 ■ ■ ■

MainSails – Grade 5 ■ ■ ■

Shared Reading ■ ■ ■ ■

Poetry ■ ■ ■ ■

Audio/CD ■ ■ ■


sequence. There are multiple opportunities for focusing on the isolation, identification, and categorization of phonemes; the blending, segmentation, deletion, and substitution of phonemes; and opportunities to link these tasks explicitly to texts.

Sails Teacher’s Resource Books advocate instructional programs that implement ongoing links between phonological patterns and written texts through emphasizing the connections between reading and writing. The Shared Reading, Poetry books, and audiotapes provide opportunities for children to experience the phonological patterns of language highlighted throughout the Sails Emergent and Early levels.

Phonemic awareness instruction helps children learn to read.

Phonemic awareness instruction aids reading comprehension primarily through its influence on word reading. (Put Reading First, page 6)

Excerpts from Research Underlying the Sails Literacy Series

“The results of this study provide strong support for the importance of linking phonological training with learning to read. They are also in keeping with another study that linked phonological training with Clay’s (1985) teaching procedures (Iversen & Tunmer, 1994; Tunmer, 1994; see also Chapter 9) and are consistent with the findings that phonics-based methods of teaching reading are more effective than methods that omit explicit phonics teaching.” (Hatcher, 1994, p. 168)

“It appears to be the combination of instruction in phoneme awareness and learning to connect the sound segments to letters that makes a difference.” (Blachman, 2000, p. 489)

“Research, grounded in a common theoretical framework, now provides evidence that instruction that heightens phonological awareness and that emphasizes the connections to the alphabetic code promotes greater skill in word recognition – a skill essential to becoming a proficient reader.” (Blachman, 2000, p. 495)

“Onset-rime awareness and phonemic awareness play important roles in reading development.” (Shaywitz et al., 2000, p. 247)

“The treatment children who had the benefit of phonological awareness instruction in kindergarten and a phonetic approach for both reading and spelling remained significantly ahead of the control children in reading words and non-words at the end of second grade.” (Blachman, 2000, p. 491)

“A reciprocal relationship between early phonological awareness and early literacy acquisition has been confirmed by a number of investigators.” (Blachman, 2000, p. 486)

From Research to the ClassroomInteraction with rhyme, rhythm, and alliteration within the Shared Reading and Poetry books provides many opportunities to enhance, extend, and refine children’s phonemic awareness within literary contexts. Use of these texts, within small-group or whole-class contexts, focuses children’s attention on associations between letters and sounds.

Phonemic awareness instruction helps children learn to spell.

The explanation for this may be that children who have phonemic awareness understand that sounds and letters are related in a predictable way. (Put Reading First, page 6)

Excerpts from Research Underlying the Sails Literacy Series“To decode new words, beginners must know how to blend phonemes. To remember how to read individual words, beginners must be able to segment words into the phonemes that match up to graphemes, so that they can compute connections between graphemes and phonemes and store them in memory (Ehri, 1992, 1999). Phonemic segmentation skill is essential for constructing probable spellings as well as remembering correct spellings of word. (Griffith, 1991). In fact, all the processes involved in learning to read and write words require P.A. (phonemic awareness) (Ehri, 1994).” (Ehri & Runes, 2002, p. 115)

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“Substantial correlations were found at each grade level between the phoneme manipulation skills assessed in this study and a combined reading and spelling score.” (Blachman, 2000, p. 485)

“A child’s invented spellings are positively influenced by instruction that heightens phonological awareness and connects the sound segments to print.” (Blachman, 2000, p. 490)

From Research to the ClassroomThe emphasis on phonological patterns—onset and rimes; morphological elements; blends, digraphs, and vowel combinations; and on phonemic segmentation throughout the Emergent, Early, and Fluency levels—enhances children’s development of an awareness of the phonological and graphic components of words. This awareness helps the learner in establishing a “spelling conscience,” essential for efficient and effective spelling.

Phonemic awareness instruction is most effective when children are taught to manipulate phonemes by using the letters of the alphabet.

Phonemic awareness instruction makes a stronger contribution to the improvement of reading and spelling when children are taught to use letters as they manipulate phonemes than when instruction is limited to phonemes alone. Learning to blend phonemes with letters helps children read words. Learning to segment sounds with letters helps them spell words. (Put Reading First, page 7)

Excerpts from Research Underlying the Sails Literacy Series“Given that young children have trouble thinking multidimensionality, given that they do not easily retain strategies, and given the preponderance of evidence that phonemic awareness has been shown to be critical to young children’s reading success (see Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998), it would seem sensible to follow Paris and colleagues’ (1986) suggestion to focus young children’s attention on the associative learning tasks of attaching phonemes to

letters and names to symbols.” (Smolkin & Donovan, 2002, p. 143)

“Byrne and Fielding-Barnsley (1991) conclude, as have others (e.g. Gough & Walsh, 1991) that in order to understand the alphabetic principle, children need both phonological awareness and knowledge of how the sounds are represented in print.” (Blachman, 2000, p. 488)

From Research to the ClassroomIn the First Wave, Emergent, Early, and Fluency levels, the phonemic focus is on individual phonemes, and on matching letters to sounds. Opportunities for letter identification accompanied by an emphasis on phonemic awareness enhance children’s control over the alphabet code and thus promote growth in word recognition.

Phonemic awareness instruction is most effective when it focuses on only one or two types of phoneme manipulation, rather than several types.

One possible explanation for this is that children who are taught many different ways to manipulate phonemes may become confused about which type to apply. (Put Reading First, page 7)

Excerpts from Research Underlying the Sails Literacy Series“There is considerable evidence that (phonological awareness) instruction is enhanced when the connections to print are made explicit.” (Blachman, 2000, p. 487)

“An important implication of the research reviewed in this chapter is that teachers need to understand and provide for the individual differences in phonological awareness (Lieberman & Shankweiler, 1991) that they will encounter in their classrooms, especially in kindergarten and first grade. Although not every child needs an explicit program in phonological awareness, every teacher of young beginning readers should know why such instruction is important and how and when to provide it.” (Blachman, 2000, p. 496)


From Research to the ClassroomIn First Wave and Emergent texts, the focus is on initial letters, progressing to blending and segmentation of the phonemes in words, and phoneme substitution in the Emergent and Early Red texts. In addition, Early Yellow and Blue texts provide specific instruction in blends (in initial and final positions), onset and rimes, and the phonological patterns of word endings and contractions.

At the Fluency Orange level, the emphasis is on phonological patterns of prefixes and suffixes and on differentiation between long and short vowels. The Sails Literacy Series supports the teachers’ knowledge of how to provide phonemic and phonological awareness instruction. At the same time, the teacher’s notes provide an appropriate caution that children’s learning must be monitored and that they should ensure that the phonemic focus is relevant to the children’s stage of learning.

Phonics Instruction

Systematic and explicit phonics instruction is more effective than non-systematic or no phonics instruction.

Systematic and explicit phonics instruction makes a bigger contribution to children’s growth in reading than instruction that provides non-systematic or no phonics instruction. The hallmark of programs of systematic phonics instruction is the direct teaching of a set of letter-sound relationships in a clearly defined sequence. The set includes the major sound/spelling relationships of both consonants and vowels. [Texts used for systematic phonics instruction] give children substantial practice in applying knowledge of these relationships as they read and write.

[Texts used for systematic phonics instruction] include books or stories that contain a large number of words that children can decode by using the letter-sound relationships they have learned and are learning. (Put Reading First, page 13)

Excerpts from Research Underlying the Sails Literacy Series“However, initial phonics instruction should proceed hand in hand with activities to facilitate phonological awareness, because acquiring this skill facilitates a conceptual grasp of how the alphabet works (and vice versa)…. This is most effectively done through shared and interactive reading.” (Velluntino, 2003, p. 70)

“Good phonics instruction

• should develop the alphabetic principle

• should develop phonological awareness

• should not teach rules, need not use worksheets, should not dominate instruction, and does not have to be boring

• provides sufficient practice in reading words

• leads to automatic word recognition

• is one part of reading instruction.” (Stahl, Duffy-Hester, & Stahl, 1998, summarized from pp. 330-355)

“Hiebert (1999) makes the case for children reading text that provides practice with high-frequency words, along with opportunities to apply decoding skills and use meaning-based cues.” (Cunningham & Cunningham, 2002, p. 94)

“Gaining knowledge of rime patterns may be particularly important for learning to decode the ‘vowel plane’ of words because of the difficulty of vowels and how vowel sounds are affected by other letters in the word, particularly the consonants that follow them (Berent & Perfetti, 1995; Goswami, 2000).” (Cunningham & Cunningham, 2002, p. 95)

“A variety of phonics instructional activities that emphasize transfer help children at all levels

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learn phonics without boredom.” (Cunningham & Cunningham, 2002, p. 97)

“Research indicates that children need to develop phonemic awareness and sequential decoding and have regular opportunities to apply their phonics skills. The research, however, does not support a narrow reliance on isolated phonemic awareness and synthetic phonics instruction with highly decodable text as the only or even the best way to teach phonics, let alone reading.” (Cunningham & Cunningham, 2002, p. 106)

From Research to the ClassroomSails First Wave, Emergent, and Early levels provide systematic and explicit instruction for developing and strengthening letter/sound relationships with multiple opportunities to practice the application of the relationships in motivating and meaningful texts.

In First Wave and Emergent texts, the focus is on initial letters, progressing to an analysis of the phonemes in words and phoneme substitution in the Emergent and Early Red texts, with explicit and systematic instruction on blends, digraphs, and vowel patterns using onset and rime patterns in Early Yellow, Blue, and Green texts. Early Green texts introduce silent letters. In each text and in the accompanying Teacher’s Resource Books, teacher’s notes provide clear and specific instructional strategies to support effective instructional interactions. Appropriate caution is provided in the teacher’s notes to monitor children’s learning and ensure that the phonics instruction is relevant to the children’s stage of learning.

Systematic and explicit phonics instruction significantly improves kindergarten and first-grade children’s word recognition and spelling.

Systematic phonics instruction produces the greatest impact on children’s reading achievement when it begins in kindergarten or first grade. (Put Reading First, page 14)


“Practice in using letter chunks to help decode new words will also facilitate the development of orthographic awareness and more efficient decoding and spelling skills.” (Velluntino, 2003, pp. 70-71)

From Research to the ClassroomWord recognition of high-frequency words combined with explicit and systematic focus on letter/sound relationships, both in isolation and within meaningful texts, and practice in using word chunks (e.g. onset and rime, analogy, word endings, and blends/digraphs) are a feature of Sails First Wave, Emergent, and Early levels, which also strengthen children’s word recognition and spelling.

Sails Teacher’s Resource Books identify as a target for the Emergent and Early level the naming of letters; matching letters and sounds; recognizing blends, digraphs, compound words, contractions, suffixes, onset and rime patterns, and using graphophonic cues in reading. These literacy behaviors are all implicated in developing children’s spelling competencies.

Systematic and explicit phonics instruction significantly improves children’s reading comprehension.

Systematic phonics results in better growth in children’s ability to comprehend what they read than non-systematic or no phonics instruction. (Put Reading First, page 14)

Excerpts from Research Underlying the Sails Literacy Series“Research has also converged on the conclusion that skill at decoding can be developed by instruction and that children lacking such skills will fall behind in reading acquisition if not given specific and structured instruction in decoding.” (Cunningham & Stanovich, 2003, p. 671)


“Given that young children have trouble thinking multidimensionally, given that they do not easily retain strategies, and given the preponderance of evidence that phonemic awareness has been shown to be critical to young children’s reading success (see Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998), it would seem sensible to follow Paris and colleagues’ (1986) suggestion to focus young children’s attention on the associative learning tasks of attaching phonemes to letters and names to symbols.” (Smolkin & Donovan, 2002, p. 143)

From Research to the ClassroomThe First Wave, Emergent, Early, and Fluency levels put the instructional focus on decoding, use of analogy, and onset and rimes, followed by application of phonics skills within motivating and meaningful texts, enhancing comprehension through word recognition, prediction and use of contextual cues and ongoing monitoring of meaning.

Sails Teacher’s Resource Books’ emphasis on attention to phonological patterns integrated with semantic and syntactic cues with ongoing use of effective strategies of sampling, predicting, confirming, and self-correcting quickly, confidently, and independently (Teacher’s Resource Book, p. 6) when meaning is lost improves children’s reading comprehension.

Systematic and explicit phonics instruction is effective for children from various social and economic levels, and is particularly beneficial for children who are having difficulty learning to read and who are at risk of developing future reading problems.

Systematic phonics instruction is beneficial to children regardless of their socioeconomic status.… Systematic phonics instruction is significantly more effective that non-systematic phonics instruction in helping to prevent reading difficulties among at-risk students and in helping children overcome reading difficulties. (Put Reading First, pages 14–15)


“Finally, the findings from this study, and others that have been considered here, suggest the following ideas for good teaching practice with reading-delayed children:

1. The teaching of reading and writing are integrated

2. Text is provided at an appropriate level (90-94%) reading accuracy

3. Awareness of words’ component sounds is explicitly taught

4. Letter names and sounds are both taught

5. An explicit link is made between sounds and letters within words

6. Children are taught how to cross-check visual, letter/sound, syntactic, and semantic clues.” (Hatcher, 1994, p. 176)

“I suggest that students must be taught the codes needed to participate fully in the mainstream of American life, not by being forced to attend to hollow, inane, decontextualized sub-skills, but rather with the context of meaningful communicative endeavors; that they must be allowed the resource of the teacher’s expert knowledge, while being helped to acknowledge their own “expertness” as well; and that, even while students are assisted in learning the culture or power, they must also be helped to learn about the arbitrariness of those codes and about the power relationships they represent.” (Delpit, 1988, pp. 280-298)

From Research to the ClassroomThe First Wave, Emergent, Early, and Fluency levels are carefully structured to meet the developmental needs of all children. The systematic introduction to phonological knowledge and phonological skills through explicit instruction and motivating texts to consolidate phonological understandings ensures that all children’s learning is optimized. Texts with repetitive structures, rhyming words, and alliteration are particularly appropriate for ESL children and those for whom the development of literacy skills is challenging.

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Sails Teacher’s Resource Books provide specific information on the instructional possibilities of the texts and instructional approaches through which phonological skills can be taught and practiced.

Systematic and explicit phonics is most effective when introduced early.

Phonics instruction is most effective when it begins in kindergarten or first grade…. As instruction proceeds, children should be taught to use this knowledge to read and write words. (Put Reading First, page 15)

Excerpts from Research Underlying the Sails Literacy Series“[An early start in reading as a prediction of later achievement] is a stunning finding because it indicates that if students get off to a fast start in reading as indicated by their first grade decoding, word recognition and comprehension, then they are more likely to engage in more reading activity as adults.” (Cunningham & Stanovich, 2003, p. 670)

“The results of this study provide strong support for the importance of linking phonological training with learning to read. They are also in keeping with another study that linked phonological training with Clay’s (1985) teaching procedures (Iversen & Tunmer, 1994); Tunmer, 1994; see also Chapter 9) and are consistent with the findings that phonics-based methods of teaching reading are more effective than methods that omitted explicit phonics teaching.” (Hatcher, 1994, p. 168)

“[Children] who crack the spelling-to-sound code early on appear to enter into a positive feedback loop.” (Cunningham & Stanovich, 2003, p. 672)

From Research to the ClassroomFrom the very early First Wave texts designed for beginning readers at a kindergarten level, there is systematic and explicit phonics instruction. Each level builds on and extends the phonological skills introduced and practiced in the previous level. A key principle that informs the carefully structured texts is that phonological knowledge must be

utilized in reading words in texts. This reinforces as early as possible that decoding and reading are purposeful activities. Each text throughout the series is supported by teacher notes that provide guidance in instructional approaches and highlight the importance of repeated opportunities to apply and use the developing phonological skills.

Phonics instruction is not an entire reading program for beginning readers.

Along with phonics instruction, young children should be solidifying their knowledge of the alphabet, engaging in phonemic awareness activities, and listening to stories and information texts read aloud to them. They also should be reading texts (both out loud and silently), and writing letters, words, messages, and stories. (Put Reading First, page 15)

Excerpts from Research Underlying the Sails Literacy Series“Good phonics instruction

• should develop the alphabetic principle

• should develop phonological awareness

• should not teach rules, need not use worksheets, should not dominate instruction, and does not have to be boring

• provides sufficient practice in reading words

• leads to automatic word recognition

• is one part of reading instruction.” (Stahl, Duffy-Hester, & Stahl, 1998, summarized from pp. 330-355)

“Adequate initial reading instruction requires a focus on using reading to obtain meaning from print, understanding the sub-lexical structure of spoken words; exposing the nature of the orthographic system, practice in the specifics of frequent regular spelling-sound relationships, and frequent and intensive opportunities to read.” (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998, p. 223)

“The combination of both skills and strategies is particularly important in light of evidence that phonics skills may be insufficient support for young


readers and writers without an understanding of how to apply such information to decode and encode unfamiliar words.” (Dahl, Scharer, Lawson, & Grogan, 2003, p. 335)

From Research to the ClassroomThe Sails Literacy Series provides opportunities for a range of effective reading strategies to be explicitly taught and practiced using authentic language and contexts that are meaningful to children. Phonological skills are explicitly taught but with generalization to authentic and motivating contexts emphasized.

With focus on phonemic awareness and phonics (and especially graphophonic relationships), the series emphasizes the importance of developing automaticity in high-frequency word recognition, vocabulary development, oral language, knowledge of text structure, and engagement in a wide range of texts with the ultimate purpose of becoming self-motivating and monitoring independent readers and writers. Throughout the series, explicit links are made between reading and writing so that decoding and encoding are seen to be purposeful and enjoyable activities.

Fluency Instruction

Repeated and monitored oral reading improves reading fluency and overall reading achievement.

Repeated oral reading substantially improves word recognition, speed and accuracy as well as fluency. To a lesser but still considerable extent, repeated reading also improves reading comprehension. Isolated word recognition is a necessary but not sufficient condition for fluent reading…. Developing reading fluency in texts must be developed systematically. (Put Reading First, page 30)

Excerpts from Research Underlying the Sails Literacy Series“Fluent reading depends heavily on a great deal of practice in reading, spelling, and writing. It also depends on reading and re-reading materials at an appropriate level of difficulty.” (Velluntino, 2003, p. 60)

“Fluency is both an antecedent to and a consequence of comprehension.” (Sweet & Snow, 2003, p. 5)

“Adequate progress in learning to read English (or any alphabetic language) beyond the initial level depends on sufficient practice in reading to achieve fluency with different text.” (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998, p. 4)

“The development of reading fluency has been a neglected part of reading instruction despite the fact that many reading authorities consider it to be an important part of the reading curriculum.” (Reutzel & Hollingsworth, 1993, p. 325)

“Harris and Hodges (1995) dictionary definition states that fluency is freedom from word identification problems. The latest conceptualizations of fluency, however, have been extended beyond word recognition processes and now include comprehension processes as well (Thurlow & van den Broek, 1997).” (Samuels, 2002, p. 167)

“Jenkins, Stein, and Wysocki (1984), for example, found that students who encountered 10 repetitions of a word while reading acquired more word knowledge than did students who encountered the same word only twice. It is obvious that as students read more, they will have more frequent encounters with commonly used words.” (Samuels, 2002, p. 173)

“Other research evidence also show that repeated exposures to the same words leads to improvements in fluency (Jenkins et al., 1984; Topping & Paul, 1999).” (Samuels, 2002, p. 174)

“Because the fluent reader dedicates little capacity to word recognition, most of his or her capacity is available for comprehension. Word recognition skills matter in comprehension.” (Pressley, 2002, p. 292)

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From Research to the ClassroomThe First Wave and Emergent texts support the development of fluency through the use of repetitive text patterns using naturally purposeful texts. Automatic recognition of high-frequency words to enhance reading fluency is a key feature of all texts at emergent and early levels. Throughout the series, at each level, children have many opportunities to use the same vocabulary in varied texts.

Sails Teacher’s Resource Books detail guided reading instruction processes that provide focused oral reading opportunities for fluency to develop through engaging with the natural rhythms of language in meaningful contexts.

Fluency is further encouraged through the Shared Reading texts with accompanying audio CDs. Both in the Shared Reading context with the whole class or a small group, and through follow-up individually or with a peer, children can listen to and read along with the audio CDs. The repeated encounters with text in an enjoyable context enhance automaticity of word recognition, extend vocabulary knowledge, and foster comprehension.

No research evidence is available currently to confirm that instructional time spent on silent, independent reading with minimal guidance and feedback improves reading fluency and overall reading achievement.

The research suggests that there are more beneficial ways to spend reading instructional time than to have students read independently in the classroom without reading instruction. (Put Reading First, page 25)

Although silent independent reading may be a way to increase fluency and reading achievement, it should not be used in place of reading instruction. (Put Reading First, page 29)

Students can be helped to become more fluent readers by (1) providing them with models of fluent reading and (2) by having students repeatedly read passages with guidance. (Put Reading First, page 26)

Excerpts from Research Underlying the Sails Literacy Series“Stahl and Kuhn (2002) reviewed research evaluating different approaches to repeated reading of text to promote fluency and concluded that reading and rereading texts for fluency is more effective when teachers monitor and model fluent reading. They also describe a promising approach to fluency instruction (Fluency-Oriented Reading Instruction [FORI]) based on five principles: (1) Lessons should be comprehension oriented, even when smooth and fluent oral reading is being emphasized, so that children should never lose sight of the importance of understanding what they read; (2) children should read as many texts at their “comfort” level as possible; (3) children should be supported in their repetitions of the text until that text becomes fluent; (4) children should have an opportunity to read with partners in order to increase the amount of time spent reading in school; and (5) children should increase the amount of reading they do at home (p. 583). Stahl and Kuhn (2002) also suggest that the texts children are asked to read should follow what they call the “Goldilocks principle” – they should be at the child’s instructional level (see also Heibert & Martin, 2001, for research documentation of this idea).

“Suggested activities to implement these principles include the use of curriculum-based materials, teacher modeling, shared reading, choral reading, and echo reading, along with daily free-reading periods at school, during which children are provided with high-interest materials they can read comfortably, in addition to a home reading program that is structured and monitored by the teacher.” (Velluntino, 2003, pp. 72-73)

From Research to the ClassroomSails Teacher’s Resource Books provide guidance in appropriate guided reading strategies that maximize instruction time and enhance fluent reading for increased comprehension. The emphasis is consistently on comprehension even though smooth and fluent oral reading is being emphasized. Children are encouraged to never lose sight of the importance of understanding what they read. Monitoring of fluency is advocated using oral


reading running records. Proforma on which to record running records are included in the Teacher’s Resource Books.

Shared Reading Texts with accompanying audio CDs provide models of fluent reading to which the children can return individually or in small groups to read repeatedly.

The Sailing Solo series includes varied motivating and engaging texts with relevant illustrations encouraging children to systematically read and re-read either individually or with another child or adult, thus increasing fluency. These are supplementary and complementary to the instructional texts. Independent reading is advocated as being a critical contributor to fluency when it provides practice, in addition to, and as a follow up to, explicit instruction.

Vocabulary Instruction

Children learn the meanings of most words indirectly, through everyday experiences with oral and written language.

Young children learn meaning through conversations with other people, especially adults. Children learn word meanings from listening to adults read to them. Children learn many new words by reading extensively on their own. (Put Reading First, page 35)


“At least some children learn 2,000 or more new words per year, most of these apart from explicit instruction. The high rates of vocabulary growth seen in many children occur only through immersion in massive amounts of rich written and oral language.” (Nagy & Scott, 2000, p. 280)

“We agree with Nagy et al. (1987) and Cunningham and Stanovich (1998) that word learning does occur during normal reading and that wide reading is a necessary and probably a causal factor for large

levels of vocabulary growth.” (Baumann, Kame’enui, & Ash, 2003, p. 761)

“Researchers know that students learn word meanings incidentally through oral and written contexts.” (Baumann, Kame’enui, & Ash, 2003, p. 775)

From Research to the ClassroomThe Sails and MainSails texts provide multiple opportunities for incidental vocabulary development through discussion of the concepts in the texts, and the relationships to prior experiences and other texts. Sailing Solo provides further opportunities for vocabulary extension through independent reading.

Sails Teacher’s Resource Books describe oral language achievement goals that highlight activities leading to indirect vocabulary growth. (e.g. Early Red, pp. 3-7; First Wave Beginning, pp. 3-5).

The “Think Tanks” throughout the MainSails series encourage students to discuss the content of the texts through the sections “Think about the Text: Text to Self (discussion of response to text); Text to Text (comparison with other texts); and Text to World (discussion of other events/situations with connections to the text). Collaborative discussion with peers and adults further supports incidental vocabulary acquisition. See also Teacher’s Resource Book p. 2.

Shared Reading, reading to children, and listening to audio CDs with accompanying texts provide opportunities for children to experience new vocabulary in meaningful contexts, or familiar vocabulary being used in new ways. Extensive vocabulary growth is enhanced through immersion in rich environments of written and oral texts.

Sails Shared Reading and Poetry texts feature imaginative, humorous, and interesting stories and poems with language patterns that are progressively more complex. The texts extend and deepen vocabulary learning indirectly.

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Although a great deal of vocabulary is learned indirectly, some vocabulary should be taught directly.

Specific word instruction: Teaching specific words before reading helps both vocabulary learning and reading comprehension. (Put Reading First, page 36)

Extended instruction that promotes active engagement with vocabulary improves word learning. (Put Reading First, page 36)

Repeated exposure to vocabulary in many contexts aids word learning. (Put Reading First, page 36)

Word learning strategies: Using dictionaries and other references aids. (Put Reading First, page 37)

Using word parts. Knowing some commons prefixes and suffixes (affixes), base words, and root words can help students learn the meaning of many new words. (Put Reading First, page 38)

Using context clues. Because students learn most word meaning indirectly, or from context, it is important that they learnt to use context clues effectively. (Put Reading First, page 40)

Excerpts from Research Underlying the Sails Literacy Series“Research has documented that students’ active involvement in identifying and learning vocabulary is critical to vocabulary learning and related content learning.” (Ogle & Blachowicz, 2002, p. 261)

“The current version of that (research-based) program (Graves, 2000) includes four components: wide reading, teaching individual words, teaching word learning strategies, and fostering word consciousness.” (Graves & Watts-Taffe, 2002, p. 142)

“Vocabulary instruction is most effective when learners are given both definitional and contextual information, when learners actively process the new word meanings, and when they experience multiple encounters with words. Additionally, discussion is likely to be a helpful part of word study (Stahl, 1998).” (Graves & Watts-Taffe, 2002, p. 143)

“The most widely recommended and most useful strategy (for teaching word-learning strategies) is that of using context (Graves, 2000; Stahl, 1998; Sternberg, 1987).” (Graves & Watts-Taffe, 2002, p. 143)

“Using word parts to unlock the meaning of unknown words is another widely recommended strategy (Blachowicz & Fisher, 1996) and doing so is well supported by research (Anglin, 1993; White, Power, & White, 1989; Graves & Hammond, 1980) validated procedures for teaching prefixes, and White, Sowell and Yanagihara (1989) validated procedures for teaching prefixes and suffixes.” (Graves & Watts-Taffe, 2002, p. 144)

“Vocabulary instruction promotes word knowledge that enhances text comprehension.” (Trabasso & Bouchard, 2002, p. 182)

“Results from a study of word frequency and word knowledge (Ryder & Slater, 1988) also support the importance of repeated exposures.” (Blachowicz & Fisher, 2000, p. 508)

“Teaching vocabulary becomes not a simple process of teaching words but one of teaching particular words to particular students for a particular purpose.” (Blachowicz & Fisher, 2000, p. 517)

“Various semantic relatedness and prior knowledge approaches, such as semantic mapping and semantic feature analysis, are effective techniques for teaching new concepts to students of varied abilities and different cultural and ethnic backgrounds.” (Baumann, Kame’enui, & Ash, 2003, p. 770)

“It appears that only frequent, rich instruction on words critical to story understanding, particularly when instruction extends beyond the confines of the classroom, affects comprehension.” (Baumann, Kame’enui, & Ash, 2003, p. 769)

“There is some evidence that teaching contextual analysis (e.g. Jenkins et al., 1989; Sternberg, 1987) and morphemic analysis (e.g. Graves & Hammond, 1980; Nagy et al., 1993; White, Power, & White, 1989) as transferable and generalizable strategies are effective means for students to learn word meanings independently.” (Baumann, Kame’enui, & Ash, 2003, p. 776)


From Research to the ClassroomIn the Teacher’s Resource Books for First Wave Beginning; Emergent Magenta; and Early Red, Yellow, and Blue, there is explicit reference to oral language targets to “increase spoken vocabulary” (p. 5).

Focus words, both high-frequency and interest words, are highlighted in the texts. Vocabulary development is enhanced through repeated exposure and opportunity to discuss the words. The repetitive structure of the texts further increases visual and aural exposure to vocabulary. Visual information encourages discussion of the concepts with many opportunities for teacher/peer modeling of vocabulary and discussion to clarify meanings.

At Fluency levels, the target is to “extend and enrich vocabulary” through discussion and clarifying of words (Teacher’s Resource Book, pp. 5, 17, 20, and Guide Notes in each text). The guided reading approach advocated and described provides opportunities to examine and discuss word parts, with a specific focus on morphological elements such as base words, prefixes, suffixes (affixes), and the effective use of context to enrich vocabulary understanding. Children are encouraged to be active learners of vocabulary through engagement with texts that are exciting, varied, and relevant to their lives and interests.

New vocabulary is introduced throughout the series and in a range of contexts, and for a range of purposes, to ensure repeated exposure. Guide Notes identify opportunities to clarify vocabulary understandings, examine use of word classes, investigate homonyms, synonyms, antonyms, and similes. Links between verbal and visual representation of vocabulary intensify vocabulary understanding. Extension of understandings of vocabulary, through semantic mapping, is proposed as a component of guided reading and within the advocated responses to the texts in Fluency levels and MainSails Grades 4–5.

Through guided reading, teachers are encouraged to discuss vocabulary, introducing, examining, and reinforcing vocabulary developing “word consciousness.”

The MainSails series provides texts with increasingly varied and complex vocabulary. Students are encouraged to clarify understandings of new vocabulary and to examine vocabulary used in a range of contexts and for a range of purposes. Exploration of literacy devices — e.g. similes, metaphors, and personification — further enhances students’ conceptual understanding and extends vocabulary.

Text Comprehension Instruction

Text comprehension can be improved by instruction that helps readers use specific comprehension strategies.

Good readers are purposeful. Good readers are active. (Put Reading First, page 48)

Comprehension strategy instruction helps students become purposeful, active readers who are in control of their own reading comprehension. The following six strategies appear to have a firm scientific basis for improving text comprehension.

• Monitoring comprehension: Comprehension-monitoring instruction teaches students to be aware of what they do understand, identify what they do not understand, and use appropriate “fix-up” strategies to resolve problems in comprehension.

• Using graphic and semantic organizers: Graphic organizers can help students to focus on text structure as they read, provide students with tools they can use to examine and visually represent relationships in a text, and help students write well-organized summaries of a text.

• Answering questions: Research shows that teacher questioning strongly supports and advances students’ learning from reading. Questions give students a purpose for reading, focus their attention on what they are to learn, help students to think actively as they read, encourage students to monitor their

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comprehension, and help students to review content and relate what they have learned to what they already know.

• Generating questions: Teaching students to ask their own questions improves their active processing of text and their comprehension.

• Recognizing story structure: Students who can recognize story structure have greater appreciation, understanding, and memory for stories.

• Summarizing: Instruction in summarizing helps students to identify or generate main ideas, connect the main or central ideas, eliminate redundant and unnecessary information, and remember what they read. (Put Reading First, pages 49-53)

Excerpts from Research Underlying the Sails Literacy Series“Proficient readers of informational text:

• are purposeful and actively engaged in what they read

• attend to both the external physical organization of text and the internal structure of ideas

• are strategic and employ a small set of powerful strategies.” (Ogle & Blachowicz, 2002, p. 262)

“The work of several researchers confirms that students are aided in understanding when they are guided to use the author’s underlying text organization.” (Ogle & Blachowicz, 2002, p. 263)

“Given that students are purposeful and actively engaged in what they read and that they attend to both the external physical organization of text and the internal structure of it, they also need to read strategically and employ a small set of powerful strategies.” (Ogle & Blachowicz, 2002, p. 264)

“Readers who were trained in comprehension monitoring improved on the detection of text inconsistencies, on memory for text, and on standardized reading comprehension tests. Training in comprehension monitoring can be used

successfully in grade levels 2 through 6.” (Trabasso & Bouchard, 2002, p. 179)

“Teaching readers to use systematic, visual graphs in order to organize ideas benefited readers in remembering what they read and improved reading comprehension and achievement.” (Trabasso & Bouchard, 2002, p. 179)

“Instruction of question answering [techniques] leads to an improvement in memory for what was read, in answering questions after reading passages, and in strategies for finding answers.” (Trabasso & Bouchard, 2002, p. 181)

“There is strong evidence that question generation instruction during reading benefits reading comprehension.” (Trabasso & Bouchard, 2002, p. 181)

“The story structure instruction improved comprehension of stories.” (Trabasso & Bouchard, 2002, p. 181)

“Further the instruction of summarization improves memory for what is read, both in terms of free recall and answering questions.” (Trabasso & Bouchard, 2002, p. 182)

“Teachers should monitor students’ use of comprehension strategies and their success at understanding what they read. Results of this monitoring should, in turn, inform the teacher’s instruction.” (Duke & Pearson, 2002, p. 212)

“To summarize, we have identified six individual comprehension strategies that research suggests are beneficial to teach to developing readers: prediction/prior knowledge, think-aloud, text structure, visual representations, summarization, and questions/questioning.” (Duke & Pearson, 2002, p. 224)

“[In the late 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s, there was] an explosion of research about the efficacy of teaching children to use the structure of texts, both narrative and expository, to organize their understanding and recall of important ideas.” (Duke & Pearson, 2002, p. 216)


From Research to the ClassroomThe Sails Literacy Series is based on a premise that effective readers are active, problem-solving, and self-monitoring. The texts are optimally developed to be used for explicit teaching, guided practice, and independent reading. The Teacher’s Resource Books focus on approaches; e.g. Shared Reading, Guided Reading, and independent reading that encourage students to become motivated, purposeful readers. Students are scaffolded to integrate prior knowledge, utilize a range of comprehension strategies, and apply these understandings gained from texts for a range of purposes and in a range of contexts.

Comprehension Monitoring

Sails First Wave, Emergent, and Early: From initial text encounters, children are encouraged to self-monitor their comprehension and think critically. Teacher questioning develops an expectation in readers that they will develop strategies to cross-check visual and verbal information. This includes using graphophonic, semantic, and syntactic cues to confirm understanding.

Fluency: At Fluency levels, the identified students’ targets include using the strategies of sampling, predicting, confirming, and self-correcting quickly, confidently, and independently. Teacher notes suggest questioning to focus students’ behaviors on these strategies.

MainSails: There is a strong emphasis on self-monitoring and using visual and verbal information to think critically about the author’s purpose and their own response to the texts. The Teacher’s Resource Book (p. 2) states: “The MainSails books, like previous books in the Sails Literacy Series, support students as they continue to develop strategies and understandings that enable them to gain conscious control of a range of text types and visual information.” The structure of the text, the “Think Tanks,” and the Guide Notes provide support for the teacher and students to achieve this.

Using graphic and semantic organizers

The Early, Fluency, and MainSails texts include the use of graphic and semantic organizers as strategies to examine and evaluate information from the texts. In processing the textual information and then presenting their response visually as well as verbally, the students’ comprehension is deepened and extended and memory for texts information strengthened.

Answering questions

Throughout the Sails Literacy Series, the Teacher‘s Resource Books and Guide Notes provide guidance in asking questions that go beyond the literal, enhancing inferential, analytical, and evaluative understanding of text by students through discussion generated within guided reading instruction, or through buddy and collaborative reading. MainSails includes a section in each text; Think about the Text, which generates discussion; and question answering between pairs or groups of students which takes their comprehension of texts to deeper levels and applies their understandings to other contexts.

Generating questions

Teacher questions designed to spur critical thinking provide models and guidance for the generation of self-questioning and of peer questioning to enrich discussion of texts and further deepen comprehension.

The reciprocal teaching strategy of questioning encourages question generating. Fluency and MainSail texts are optimally designed to be a stepping stone to reciprocal teaching contexts. Furthermore the section on Thinking about texts, and the “Think Tanks” throughout the series enhance the questioning of self and others that can assist in the clarifying of concepts and enrichment of comprehension.

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Recognizing story structure

Texts at the Early, Fluency, and MainSails levels provide models of a wide range of text types. The Early texts include examples of narrative, reports, and procedural texts as well as models of a range of texts that include both visual and verbal information. At Fluency levels these are extended, and further developed at the MainSails levels, with informational reports, letters, descriptions, explanations, arguments, reviews, etc. In each text at the Fluency levels, criteria to assist the interpretation of the text and to guide the writing of the text type is provided. These guidelines provide opportunities for explicit explanation and suggestions for further guided and independent practice. Using these “frameworks,” students are supported to develop a deeper understanding of how texts work so as to increase their comprehension and memory for texts and strengthen their writing of a range of text types.

Summarizing

From Early levels onward, children are supported to summarize information in texts through identifying key ideas and responding in verbal or visual modes. Strategies to guide summarizing are advocated in the Teacher’s Resource Books and Guide Notes for Fluency levels, with proformas to record summaries provided. Within the MainSails series, there are several texts for which the Guide Notes provide explicit instruction in writing summaries and opportunities for practice.

Links to writing

Throughout the Sails Literacy Series, clear links are made between reading and writing, particularly through representing understandings about texts in verbal and visual modes. At the Fluency and MainSails levels, the links are made explicit. Teacher guidance is provided in using understandings of text structure, and the conceptual understandings in the text, as the basis for guided writing.

Students can be taught to use comprehension strategies.

Effective comprehension strategy instruction is explicit, or direct. The steps of explicit instruction typically include direct explanation, teacher modeling (“thinking aloud”), guided practice, and application. (Put Reading First, page 53)

Effective instruction helps readers use comprehension strategies flexibly and in combination. Multiple-strategy instruction teaches students how to use strategies flexibly as they are needed to assist their comprehension. In a multiple-strategy instruction called “reciprocal teaching,” the teacher and students work together so that the students learn four comprehension strategies: asking questions about the text, summarizing parts of the text, clarifying words and sentences and predicting. (Put Reading First, pages 53-54 abridged)

Comprehension strategies are not ends in themselves; they are means of helping your students understand what they are reading. (Put Reading First, pages 55-56)

Excerpts from Research Underlying the Sails Literacy Series“Students of diverse backgrounds must be provided with instruction in comprehension and composition processes requiring higher-level thinking about texts. Instruction in word identification or phonics is insufficient, because fluency in word identification does not lead automatically to improvements in comprehension.” (Ogle & Blachowicz, 2002, p. 274)

“Good comprehension instruction includes both explicit instruction in specific comprehension strategies and a great deal of time and opportunity for actual reading, writing, and discussion of text.” (Duke & Pearson, 2002, p. 207)

“The model of comprehension instruction we believe is best supported by research does more than simply include instruction in specific comprehension strategies and opportunities to read, write, and discuss texts – it connects and integrates these


different learning opportunities. Specifically, we suggest an instructional model including the following five components (adapted):

1. An explicit description of the strategy and when and how it should be used

2. Teacher and/or student modeling of the strategy in action

3. Collaborative use of the strategy in action

4. Guided practices using the strategy with gradual release of responsibility

5. Independent use of the strategy.”

(Duke & Pearson, 2002, pp. 208-209)

“The level of motivation students bring to a task impacts whether and how they will use comprehension strategies (Dole, Brown, & Trathen, 1996; Guthrie et al., 1996).” (Duke & Pearson, 2002, p. 211)

“Explicit attempts to get students to engage in prediction behaviors have proved successful in increasing interest in and memory for stories. (Anderson, Wilkinson, Mason, & Shirey, 1987).” (Duke & Pearson, 2002, p. 213)

“Instruction that entails students thinking aloud also has proven effective at improving comprehension (see Kucan & Beck, 1997, for a review).” (Duke & Pearson, 2002, p. 215)

“It appears that the effects are most stable for the texts in which the instruction has been embedded (Singer & Donlan, 1982).” (Duke & Pearson, 2002, p. 216)

“Research on engaging students in the process of generating questions about the texts they read, although not definitive, is generally positive and encouraging (see Rosenshine, Meister, & Chapman, 1996, for a review).” (Duke & Pearson, 2002, p. 223)

“It is clear based on the literature reviewed so far that by the middle elementary grades students can learn comprehension strategies and can learn to use them to increase understanding and memory of text.” (Pressley, 2002, p. 303)

“The most powerful extensive experimental literature evaluating instructional effects on comprehension is with respect to comprehension strategies. There has been much experimental evidence establishing that when readers are taught to use comprehension strategies, their comprehension, in fact, improves.” (Pressley, 2002, pp. 297-298)

From Research to the ClassroomComprehension is at the heart of the Sails Literacy Series. Throughout the Teacher’s Resource Books and the Guide Notes, the emphasis is on the development of integrative comprehension strategies to develop literal, inferential, interpretative, and evaluative understandings of the texts.

In the texts for beginning readers in Sails First Wave Beginning; Emergent Magenta; Early Red, Yellow, and Green, the instructional focus is particularly on teaching decoding skills, the development of sight words, teaching vocabulary meanings, prediction skills based on relating prior knowledge to text, and extensive, instructional strategies that have been identified through research as being integral to the development of sound comprehension. There is an emphasis on the establishment of self-monitoring of comprehension through integration of grapho-phonic, semantic, and syntactic cues and the encouragement of a meta-cognitive approach to reading.

Throughout the texts there are opportunities to enrich comprehension through effective and efficient integration of visual information from illustrations and text features to which the Guide Notes bring the teachers’ attention. Students are encouraged to use imagery and visual representation of conceptual understandings.

Within the framework of Guided Reading instruction, explicit attention is given to approaches that provide an explicit focus on strategies for enhancing comprehension with many opportunities to practice. Monitoring of comprehension is supported by the provision of running record and retelling proformas and a range of response tasks that enable the student to demonstrate comprehension through verbal and visual modes.

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With the MainSails series, there is opportunity for guided practice in, and an expectation that students will use, comprehension strategies. Through the Teacher’s Resource Book there are guidelines for teachers to provide explanation, modeling, guided practice, and independent practice in using a range of strategies. These are further reinforced through the provision of blackline masters that provide opportunities for the cooperative use and discussion of the comprehension strategies that have been included in the guided instruction.

Fluency Orange and Turquoise and MainSails provide opportunities for instruction and practice in the comprehension strategies of questioning, clarifying, summarizing, and predicting that constitute multiple strategy instructional routines. Although not developed to be used for “reciprocal teaching,” they provide a focus on these strategies that are the critical components of the research-

based reciprocal teaching routine known to enhance comprehension. Explicit teaching of these strategies within the context of the highly motivating texts encourages students to integrate these self-questioning strategies into their independent reading.

A particular strength of the entire Sails Literacy Series, and particularly the MainSails, is the use of visual language to complement and extend the meanings through the verbal elements of the text. The students engaging with these texts, on their journey to becoming literate, are in a world that requires them to comprehend and critically engage with multi-literacies, that is with texts that are comprised of visual and verbal elements. Many texts in their world will be multi-modal, and both linear and non-linear. The juxtaposition of the visual and verbal elements in the Sails Literacy Series is preparing them to be literate in a future world.


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Blachman, B.A. (2000). Phonological awareness. In M. Kamil, P. Mosenthal, P. Pearson, & R. Barr (Eds.), Handbook of reading research: Vol. 3 (pp. 483-502). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

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Dahl, K.L., Scharer, P.L., Lawson, L.L., & Grogan, P.R. (2003). Student achievement and classroom case studies of phonics in whole language first grades. In J. Flood, D. Lapp, J. R. Squire, & J. M. Jensen (Eds.), Handbook of research on teaching the English language arts (2nd ed.; pp. 314-338). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Delpit, L. (1988). The silenced dialogue: Power and pedagogy in educating other people’s children. Harvard Educational Review, 58(3), pp. 280-298.

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Ehri, C., & Runes, S.R. (2002). The role of phonemic awareness in learning to read. In A. Farstrup & S.J. Samuels (Eds.), What research has to say about reading instruction (3rd ed.; pp. 110-139). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

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