100 EZ Lessons: Part 2 Content

In the last post I talked about one aspect of the content of 100 EZ Lessons, namely, that  out of 300 or so useful sound-spelling correspondences, 100 EZ taught 80.  Another aspect of content is the skills taught.  The primary skill in reading is tracking from left to right, all through the word. While this seems obvious to those of us who read with ease, it is remarkable how many reading programs neglect, mis-teach or under-teach this skill.  Teaching larger components than the sound-spelling correspondence level--such as whole word, word parts, and word families--can interrupt the the smooth tracking from left to right, as it asks the beginning reader to pay attention to parts in the middle or at the end of the word before processing the beginning.  Left to right tracking is a skill, not a birthright.  Students learning Hebrew can have similar problems, only tracking from right to left.   Anything that causes the training of smooth (and by smooth I mean comfortable and accurate, not that the eye movements are continuous, because they're not) tracking from left to right to be inefficient should be avoided.  This is not to say that all children will have problems, I only mean that some children could have problems if they are given interfering instruction.   

My daughter developed what I call an eye stutter.  I had taught her those 300 correspondences and she could work through most words accurately.  However, she would read a sound and go back to the beginning of the word, then add a sound and go back to the beginning.  Often she would pick out the correspondences she recognized first, then fill in the rest.  It would take her an excruciatingly long time to get through a word like "excruciatingly," with its 13 correspondences (e x c r u-/OO/ c-/sh/ i-/ee/ a-/ae/ t i ng l y).  In effect, her eyes would travel back and forth across the word dozens of times before she could say what the word was.  It was tiring and frustrating and she hated reading.   So I went mucking about the internet to find a solution--well, a cheap solution.  And I found it at Debbie Hepplewhite's website, www.syntheticphonics.com.  READ EACH SOUND ONCE ALL THROUGH THE WORD (okay, I added "each sound once" because my daughter would say the sounds over and over and in the process forget everything else she had read).   It took about a week of painful sound by sound reading, but it worked and her fluency and comfort improved dramatically.

So, back to 100 EZ.  The developers created an explicit method for helping the eye track through a word and an easy script for the parent to follow during reading.  When new correspondences and words are introduced they are shown with an arrow below them.  There is a dot on the left and an arrowhead on the right.  Below each unit (I say unit because it doesn't always correspond to a correspondence, for example, when the word 'see' is introduced in Lesson 10, there is a dot under each letter 'e', whereas the correspondence would be 'ee' for the sound /ee/) is a dot or open arrow shape.  As the child reads the parent slides their finger along the line, pausing at each shape then moving on to the next unit.   As correspondences and words are reviewed the shapes underneath are removed and the child is suppose to read the word the "fast way", that is, without pausing after each sound but still left to right.  This is great pedagogy.  The instruction is clear and concise, and leads the child from skill to skill:  Correspondence knowledge to slow left to right tracking to fast left to right tracking.  The arrow lines are used continuously throughout the whole program, only being modified slightly for passage reading.  

What about the words introduced as wholes?  Generally, the program stays on task.  Occasionally, it emphasizes the end of a word such as when the word "has" is introduced the instructor is told to point to the end of the word and say, "This part says az."

In conclusion, left to right tracking is an important area of instruction and 100EZ gets it right. 

Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons-Part 1 The Content

Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons (100EZ) by Siegfried Engelmann, Phyllis Haddox, and Elaine Bruner is one of the most popular choices for home reading instruction.  Its low cost, scripted lessons, unassuming presentation have reassured parents for 30 years that they can teach their child to read.  Let's look a little closer at what 100EZ actually teaches and what makes the program effective (or not).

I'll start with a little background information.  Over the course of 1 year I analyzed over 17,000 words from two children's dictionaries for their sound-spelling correspondences.  Every word was meticulously broken down in order to construct a usable database of the correspondences which make up English.  I identified over 440 unique correspondences for the 40+ sounds of English.  I then analyzed several books from Project Gutenberg to understand how many correspondences are necessary to read adult level materials.  The books ranged from 300-350 correspondences.  These numbers are somewhat muddied by how one parses words (is it w al k or w a lk?) and the composition of  the correspondences being measured, that is, two book which each have 300 correspondences may have a different composition of correspondences. However, these numbers give us some ballpark figures:  300-350 correspondences needed to read adult level text, a minimum of 440 total correspondences.  

So, how many correspondences does 100EZ teach?  It turns out the best possible case scenario puts the number at 80.  I say best possible case scenario (BPCS) because over half of the correspondences (n=45) are introduced in the context of a word or two, without any exposition on their use in the word or their relevancy to other words.   For example, in Lesson  48 the word 'to' is introduced (expanded to 'do' in Lesson 54), without any discussion of the letter o's correspondence with the sound /OO/.  Neither is it discussed that this correspondence, o-/OO/, could be useful in other words, such as prove, approve, movie, move, tomb, womb, zoology, doing, who, whom, whose etc.  So the BPCS assumes (we'll discuss the validity of the assumption later) that children will infer from the instruction that these correspondences can be used in other words.  If we take 300 as our target and using the BPCS number 80, 100EZ teaches 27% of needed correspondences.  

What Makes A Good Reading Program

Welcome to Reading Program Junkie, the place where I can discuss the minutiae of reading instruction to my hearts content, and still keep my marriage.  My journey to RP Junkie started simply enough:  I tried to teach my oldest daughter to read.  I had assumed she would learn to read on her own or with minimal help just as her parents had (because, of course, reading is a genetic trait).  

I started with an inexpensive, off the shelf, all-in-one-book program.  Everything went beautifully until a few word families were introduced.  She was a bit confused by this but trusted her mother to know what was best.  Then the temple to Easy Reading Instruction came crashing down around me when the "silent-e" (aka "magic-e") rule was introduced.  I read the word 'live' as /l-i-v/ and then I started thinking-and saying-all the words that didn't follow the "silent-e" rule.  My daughter then refused to continue with a rule as erratic as this one.  I started on  a search to find a program that didn't teach word families and didn't teach the silent-e rule and would teach my daughter to read.  Twelve programs later, I found Diane McGuinness' Why Our Children Can't Read and What We Can Do About It.  The pedagogy fit exactly what I needed, but after trying two more programs, I knew I just had to make it up myself.  

Perhaps my habit started to justify my large outlay of cash.  Perhaps I just can't believe that there isn't a program written that would do all the things I wanted in the way I wanted. Whatever the reason, and though my daughter now reads well, I still LOVE to analyze reading programs.  Necessity has become obsession.

A good reading program is one that effectively teaches someone to read anything they want or need.  Four main areas interest me in the structure of reading programs:  

1.  Content of Instruction - All the skills and knowledge necessary to read words in context.  I do not include here all the knowledge necessary to understand words in context.  That is an issue of vocabulary and background knowledge, not reading.  

    

2.  Presentation of Instruction - The layout of the content and the activities used to teach the content.  This encompasses add on components as well as page design.  

3.  Sequence of Instruction - The logic used to progress through the content.  

4.  Instructor interface  - The ability of the instructor to use the program effectively, flexibly, and happily.