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What is acceleration and why is it important?

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What is acceleration and why is it important?

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See pages 51 and 84 for instructional practices and why they work.

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Scientific research has shown how children learn to read and how they should be taught. But many educators don’t know the science and, in some cases, actively resist it. As a result, millions of kids are being set up to fail.

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Second Grade and Third Grade Student Center Activities Phonemic Awareness | Phonics | Fluency | Vocabulary | Comprehension

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Phonological Awareness Training plus Letter Knowledge Training was found to have potentially negative effects on oral language, positive effects on print knowledge, potentially positive effects on phonological processing and early reading/writing, and no discernible effects on cognition.

Phonological Awareness Training plus Letter Knowledge Training is a general practice aimed at enhancing young children's phonological awareness, print awareness, and early reading abilities. Phonological awareness, the ability to detect or manipulate the sounds in words independent of meaning, is considered to be a precursor to reading. Phonological awareness training (without letter knowledge training) can involve various training activities that focus on teaching children to identify, detect, delete, segment, or blend segments of spoken words (i.e., words, syllables, onsets and rimes, phonemes) or that focus on teaching children to detect, identify, or produce rhyme or alliteration. The added letter knowledge training component includes teaching children the letters of the alphabet and making an explicit link between letters and sounds.

A summary of the effectiveness of an intervention in an outcome domain, based on the quality of research, the statistical significance of findings, the magnitude of findings, and the consistency of findings across studies.

For more, please see the WWC Glossary entry for rating of effectiveness.

An indicator of the effect of the intervention, the improvement index can be interpreted as the expected change in percentile rank for an average comparison group student if that student had received the intervention.

For more, please see the WWC Glossary entry for improvement index.

The percent of each characteristic is based on the sample size of all studies meeting standards that reported data on the characteristic.

Percentages below may not add to 100 percent.

Last Updated: December 2006

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WWC | Phonological Awareness Training plus Letter Knowledge Training

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Phonological Awareness Training plus Letter Knowledge Training was found to have potentially negative effects on oral language, positive effects on print knowledge, potentially positive effects on phonological processing and early reading/writing, and no discernible effects on cognition. Phonological Awareness Training plus Letter Knowledge Training is a general practice aimed at enhancing young children's phonological awareness, print awareness, and early reading abilities.

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Includes phonics instruction related vocabulary

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Two of the nation's most popular early literacy programs that have been at the center of a debate over how to best teach reading both faced more new critiques in the past few weeks, receiving bottom marks on an outside evaluation of their materials.

EdReports-a nonprofit organization that reviews K-12 instructional materials in English/language arts, math, and science- published its evaluation of Fountas and Pinnell Classroom Tuesday, finding that the program didn't meet expectations for text quality or alignment to standards. The release comes on the heels of the group's negative evaluation last month of the Units of Study from the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, another popular early reading program.

Together, the two reports received the lowest ratings EdReports has given for K-2 curricula in English/language arts, and they're among the three lowest for ELA in grades 3-8.

"The materials don't reflect the shifts-text quality and complexity-especially in K-2," said Stephanie Stephens, EdReports' ELA content specialist for early literacy, referencing key components of the Common Core State Standards-a big part of the organization's review criteria.

These two literacy brands, both published by Heinemann, command large shares of the early reading market.

How these programs attend to foundational skills-teaching students to recognize and manipulate the sounds in words, and then matching those sounds to written letters-is one of the main focuses of the critique. It's also something that EdReports turned a renewed attention toward.

In its two responses to the reviews on the EdReports website, Heinemann wrote that the EdReports' rubrics aren't a good fit for programs like Fountas and Pinnell Classroom and Units of Study.

"FPC greatly values the importance of responsive teaching and the teacher agency required to adjust, extend, and enrich learning based on individual student needs," reads one response. "The EdReports rubric provides no way to measure these deeply valuable components of an effective literacy system."

This ethos of teacher agency is one of the reasons that Fountas and Pinnell and the Units of Study are so popular with educators. Both give teachers, and oftentimes students, choice over materials and activities. Still, the EdReports reviews could affect whether schools continue to use them, said Morgan Polikoff, an associate professor of education at USC Rossier who studies K-12 curriculum and standards.

Kareem Weaver, a member of the Oakland NAACP Education Committee and the co-founder of FULCRUM, an Oakland group that advocates for evidence-based literacy instruction, said that the reviews could provide the impetus for school districts to reconsider the use of programs that he says don't work for all kids.

"I'm really hoping it will make people do a double take," he said.

Reviews critique text complexity, foundational skills

Since its launch in 2015, EdReports has recruited educators-teachers and other instructional leaders-to conduct its reviews, and to develop the rubrics used to judge materials. These rubrics measure alignment to the Common Core State Standards, usability in a classroom setting, and other indicators of quality, such as text complexity.

The company is one of the few organizations that provides external evaluations of curricula, and its reviews have a wide reach: As of 2020, EdReports said that at least 1,084 districts use its reviews, including 89 of the 200 largest districts in the country. (There are about 13,400 school districts in the United States.)

Fountas and Pinnell Classroom failed to pass the first gateway. In K-2, reviewers said that core texts didn't meet standards for quality or complexity, and that speaking and writing assignments didn't require students to use evidence from the texts they read. EdReports also critiqued Fountas and Pinnell's text leveling system, which it said was "not accompanied by an accurate text complexity analysis and a rationale for educational purpose and placement in the grade level." The group gave a similar evaluation for the program in grades 3-8.

While the K-2 program's word study lessons teach phonics, "the program does not present a research-based or evidence-based explanation for the sequence" of instruction, reviewers found. The report also claims that the program doesn't consistently devote enough time to systematic instruction in phonological awareness, phonics, and fluency.

Units of Study also didn't pass EdReports' first gateway, which measures alignment to the common core. For grades K-2, reviewers said that texts featured in the materials "are not appropriately complex for the grade level and do not build in complexity over the course of the year." They also noted that the program focused mostly on reading skills instruction, rather than "questions and tasks aligned to grade-level standards," like asking students to use information from the text to support opinions.

Instruction in foundational reading skills like phonological awareness and phonics, they said, "lacks a cohesive and intentional scope and sequence." The review also notes that the materials rely on cueing strategies for word identification: prompting students to draw on pictures, context, and sentence structure-along with letters-to figure out what words say. But research has shown that pulling students'attention away from the letters can lower the chances that they'll use their knowledge of letter-sound correspondences to read through a word, making it less likely that they'll be able to map the spelling to the spoken word in their memory.

Reviewers found text complexity lacking in grades 3-8, as well, and they said that the program lacks "a variety of regular, standards-aligned, text-based listening and speaking opportunities," as well as opportunities for on-demand writing and systematic vocabulary development.

Not every program reviewed against EdReports' new rubric received low marks. Open Court, the third program reviewed with the new tools, fared better. It partially met expectations at the first gateway, and also at the second gateway, which measures knowledge building. In grades K-2, reviewers reported a research-based approach to foundational skills instruction, but noted that there wasn't enough practice with encoding-hearing sounds and converting them into written language.

Reviewers said that only some texts were "appropriately complex for the grade level," and also said that the program missed opportunities for standards-aligned activities. They had the same critique for the grades 3-5 materials.

Publishers claim that EdReports tool is mismatched to their approach

As part of the review process, EdReports solicits publisher responses to its evaluations, posted publicly on its website. McGraw Hill, which publishes Open Court, and Heinemann both critiqued the review process in their responses.

The McGraw Hill response claimed that EdReports had overlooked end-of-unit opportunities for students to demonstrate knowledge, citing the curriculum's unit-long "Inquiry" process.

Heinemann criticized the EdReports review process for omitting texts that students read outside of whole-group instruction.

In Units of Study, students only spend limited time in a whole-group "minilesson," before moving on to the reading workshop, during which they apply the skills taught in the minilesson to independent reading, reading with a partner, or working with the teacher one-on-one or in small groups. FPC is structured similarly, with whole-class minilessons but also guided reading, independent reading, and student book clubs.

Heinemann's responses argue that EdReports' review design prioritizes textbook-style reading curricula, and fails to capture the quality of texts that students might read on their own or in small groups. The publisher did not respond to EdReports' critiques of foundational skills instruction.

Stephens, of EdReports, said the group is not discriminating based on design and approach, but rather evaluating whether students have guaranteed access to grade-level text. "If they're using independent reading at their level, there's not a guarantee that's at grade level," she said.

Separately, Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell, the program's namesakes and founding authors, have begun to publish a 10-part blog series rebutting claims that their program is not aligned to reading science.

In the series, the authors defend their program's use of cueing and other strategies that are central to their materials but which studies have shows are ineffective, like leveled reading groups.

"This is always the challenge of applying a rubric to things that differ in a lot of ways. It's an imperfect science," said Polikoff, of USC Rossier. "The question is, is it better than not having it? And to me, the answer is yes."

EdReports is working with one set of criteria, and can give teachers information about how programs line up according to that criteria-information that is often hard to come by, Polikoff said. There aren't many avenues for teachers to find third-party evaluations of materials, he added.

Matthew Alexander, the director of elementary literacy and numeracy for Hall County Schools in Gainesville, Ga., said his district relies both on outside evaluation and internal data in making decisions about what programs to use.

Hall County uses one piece of Fountas and Pinnell Classroom-the Phonics, Spelling, and Word Study component-across its 20 elementary schools. The district also use its Benchmark Assessment System.

Alexander plans to discuss the review with other leaders in the school system, as it relates to their phonics instruction. But he's hesitant to make any quick changes, because Hall County only started using Phonics, Spelling, and Word Study in the 2019-20 school year, right before the pandemic hit.

"If we were seeing that in our schools, that our kids were not making gains as readers, we would certainly look to see if we would shift our resources in a different direction. But with just three years of non-typical data, it's hard to make that statement," Alexander said.

Review tool changes address foundational skills, program 'bloat'

The low ratings on some indicators in these reviews stem from changes to EdReports' review tools.

In 2020, EdReports announced its first revision to its criteria and its evidence guides-a sort of handbook for reviewers that helps them identify evidence that programs meet, or don't meet, the criteria. Part of this update are two key changes to how reviewers evaluate English/language arts materials.

One has to do with how reviewers approach foundational skills instruction in K-5. Criteria and evidence guides are more specific about when and how these skills should be taught.

For example, criteria that require systematic and explicit teaching in the alphabetic principle, phonemic awareness, phonics, and other skills has now been split into four subcategories, each with its own grade-by-grade breakdown of what students should be able to do in the evidence guide.

The revision brings the comprehensive ELA reviews more in line with the stricter criteria in stand-alone reviews of foundational skills, which EdReports launched in 2019, said Stephens. This way, she said, comprehensive reading programs will be judged as rigorously on their foundational skills components.

Still, Stephens thinks that the programs reviewed under the revised tools would have fared similarly under the originals. The revision provided "clarity," she said, rather than an entire new scoring system.

The other change to the review process concerns what EdReports calls program "bloat."

If a program says, for example, take 15 minutes a day for reading and 20 minutes for foundational skills, is that actually doable with the materials provided? Or is there too much content to feasibly get through? The program should offer a "clear and concise" pathway through the standards, Stephens said.

EdReports has also made some changes to its math review process, and has updated its criteria for gateway 3, which measures usability, across all subjects.

"These standards are much better for identifying practices in programs that are wildly off base. They're a pretty good firewall in recognizing the programs that are wildly misaligned with reading science and with practices that have been shown to be ineffective with most kids. ... That's really good," she said.

Still, she said, even if a program passes the review, its success or failure is going to come down to how the skills are taught in the classroom.

Weaver, in Oakland, said that the field needs more information about the effectiveness of popular reading materials. "What [EdReports] doesn't do is it doesn't talk about student achievement results. It doesn't talk about how kids do with the program. And that's fine, because they don't claim to do that. But a lot of districts think they do," he said.

"Alignment with the standards is the bare minimum that we should be able to expect from the curriculum," Weaver said.

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New Curriculum Review Gives Failing Marks to Two Popular Reading Programs

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Two of the nation's most-used literacy programs are facing new criticism.

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Leslie.perkins
Stars2122

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Here are my best tips, hints, and advice for teaching phonemic awareness with the Michael Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Curriculum, which is an amazing resource for Pre-K, Kindergarten, and primary teachers. Once you know how to use it, it takes NO PREP TIME whatsoever, and the payoffs are HUGE! However, until you develop a routine for using it that keeps your class engaged, it can be difficult to implement. In this post, I will show you how I have made this curriculum work well for me, how to make the lessons go smoothly, and show you a video of my Transitional Kindergarten (TK) class doing the daily exercises.

If you are not familiar with the Michael Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Curriculum, allow me to introduce you to it! The book is compact and easy to use, and each daily practice session can take your class through every single phonemic awareness skill that they will need- all in just about ten to fifteen minutes! I have found it absolutely INVALUABLE in helping my class develop these vital pre-reading skills quickly and fairly easily. The video of my TK class doing the daily exercises will show you just how well the program works. You won't BELIEVE what they can do- and the video was just taken in JANUARY! And remember: most of them only just turned five in October or November!

First of all, you will want to take a look at what it is. You can download sample lesson plans on their website at this link. They have uploaded a plan from the Pre-K book for week five and week 20. (I've been using this Pre-K book this year with my Transitional Kindergartners.) There is also a plan from the Kindergarten book for week eleven, and the Primary book for week 6, which is usually used in first grade. I used the Kindergarten book for several years when I taught Kindergarten.

To help you get a feel for the difference between the three levels, I took a picture of the lesson plan for week 26 from all three of the books. You can see them below and throughout this post. Just zoom in to take a closer look! You'll notice that each week usually has two or three pages, and you read them going DOWN. So in the photo below for the Pre-K book, Monday starts at the top of page 58 and proceeds down through the left side of pages 59 and 60. Then Tuesday starts in the second column of page 58 and then proceeds down pages 59 and 60.

The basic differences between the books, other than the scope and sequence which can be found here, is that there are a lot more examples in the drills in the Kindergarten and first grade books. So the Pre-K book actually goes much faster, even though there are often three pages per week rather than two, as in the K and first grade books.

Start at the Beginning of the Book- (No Matter What Time of Year You Begin)
I must admit to you that when I was first introduced to the Michael Heggerty Phonemic Awareness curriculum, I quickly developed a love/hate relationship with it. I heard about it at a conference, and decided to purchase one for my own classroom with my own money. (At the time, it was about $60, and it's now $74.99, and that's for a FULL YEAR, printed curriculum!) When I got back to my classroom, we were on about the 16th week of school, so I turned to week 16 and tried to give my class their first lesson. I assumed that my class could handle it since I had been teaching them phonemic awareness skills up to that point. (Cue the dramatic music here...) WRONG! I was totally SHOCKED to find that my students absolutely could NOT answer the questions or do the exercises!

So, I studied the manual a bit more, backed it up to week eight, and tried again. But NO- they still could NOT do the drills! I was totally dismayed and more than a little chagrined to find that I had to start at the very beginning! That first year with it was rocky, I got discouraged, and only used the book intermittently. And guess what? It got harder the more I skipped it! That's because it is designed to be used DAILY.

Consistency is the Key
Like many skills, consistency is the key to learning phonemic awareness, and daily practice makes the difference! I use the program consistently four days a week. (There usually isn't time on the day we do STEM buddies, go the library and computer lab!) But otherwise, it's on my daily schedule. It's actually quite easy to plan for! You just cross off a fifteen minute time block for the Heggerty Book Phonemic Awareness exercises, and turn the page to the next week on Fridays! lt's an easy lesson plan, no prep habit!

Now that I have used both the Kindergarten version and the Pre-K version, I can tell you that once you get going, you can probably jump forward a week here and there if needed. You can also go backwards and review a week. Just don't skip the first eight weeks or so, because they help set the stage for the skills that are coming later.

Keep the Pace Up
Once both you and the kids know the routine, the quicker you can take them through the exercises, the happier you'll all be! It's easier to keep the kids' attention if you keep the lesson moving than if you go slowly. The kids will get a TON of repetition on every skill, so there is no reason to dwell on each one. Please note that the video below has been edited for time to make it short enough for you to watch the whole lesson easily. The lesson was seven minutes, and the video has been edited down to just three minutes. However, it still DOES show ALL of the components of the pre-K lesson. This is from week 22 or so.
Don't Stop the Lesson Once You Start
Let your class know that you will not call on them if they have questions during the lesson. If someone raises a hand to stop you to ask a question, just shake your head, "no," meaning, "Not right now- wait a few minutes." Teach kids a secret signal to use if they need to visit the restroom, such as holding one finger up to ask permission.. That way, you can nod or shake your head without stopping. My Transitional Kindergartners have gotten so good at their Heggerty phonemic awareness lessons that we usually get through them in about seven minutes, not counting singing the ABC song at the beginning and the Nursery Rhyme at the end! We use our Nursery Rhyme DVD for that! It even has the Alphabet Song on the end of it, too! Below you can see an example of one of the Nursery Rhyme videos with motions that we do afterwards!
Use Consistent Hand Motions for the Exercises
The Heggerty book includes descriptions of hand motion cues to use for many of their exercises, but not all. You can also see the ones that I use in the video. Of course, you can always make up your own! But I would highly suggest that you be consistent with your movements. If you teach the kids to "punch the ending sound" one week, then stick with that unless there is a reason to change it. And here is a tip: When you are testing your kids, demonstrate the skill you are looking for by using the same motions you use in the book. It will help them understand what skill you are looking for and your scores will be that much better!

Consider Changing the Language of the Book to Match Your Testing Language
If you are required to give your district assessments by using specific language, then consider changing the language in the Heggerty book to match the language of the test. For example, if you are required to say, "What is the final sound of this word?", then refer to the ending sounds as "final sounds" instead. I hope that makes sense. Your students will likely internalize the language of the book the way you teach it daily.
What if the kids can't answer the questions?
Every now and then you may come to a new skill drill that your kids are unfamiliar with and cannot answer. So for example, you may say, "Blend these sounds together: /m/ /a/ /t/" and then find yourself waiting for the kids to say "Mat!" but nothing happens! In that case, I just tell them what to say. So if I say, "Blend these sounds together: /m/ /a/ /t/..." and the kids don't know, then I say, "It's mat. Say mat." The kids say it, and then I go on to the next one. "/s/ /a/ /t/" and I wait for a response. If nobody says the answer, then I say, "Say sat." They all say it, and I continue on like that until we get to the end of the drill.

And then this is the important part: I go back to the beginning of the drill and repeat it, to see if they can remember any of it and give the answers without me telling them. If even SOME of them can, the rest of them will join in, and we're off! Often, I have to repeat this routine for about a week or so until they get it and can do it without me prompting them. Generally, if just a few of them start to get it, the rest of them will start to follow suit. Soon, the rest of the class has it too!

Watch this other Heggerty lesson that I filmed in my friend Mrs. Rico's classroom. She was kind enough to allow me to do a demo lesson in her room! This was taken during her third week of school, and it was only their SECOND week using the Heggerty book! So the kids didn't really know all of the answers, especially in terms of beginning and ending sounds. So if they didn't know an answer, I told them, they repeated the answers, and we just kept going. In this case, I chose not to repeat the exercises because we were being filmed. But normally, I do!
Another Way to Practice Sound Segmentation
If your students are having trouble finding all of the sounds in a given word, (AKA sound segmentation,) check out our newest version of the Sounds Fun Phonics DVD! It has a "Sound it Out" section after each song, in which letters appear one at a time (with the sounds being said) until a word is formed, and then the kids read the word. I suggest that you have the kids practice doing this WITH THE SOUND TURNED OFF, so that they can give all of the sounds in each word, and then read the word! Give it a try and see if it helps! (The special "Sound it Out" section in the video below starts at about one minute thirty seconds into the movie.)
Use Hand Motions for Letter Sounds
We use the hand motions for the letter sounds from Zoo Phonics when doing the Heggerty book. So if I ask for the beginning sound of a word, I expect them to give me the Zoo Phonics signal for that letter. This helps a great deal because the children are kept actively involved and because I can SEE that they are paying attention and participating. You can find them at ZooPhonics.com or even on YouTube.
Another Way to Practice Sounding Out Words
We use these Word Family songs to practice sounding out words also! Even if the children are not ready to practice sounding out words in print, they can begin to learn how to sound out words orally, and this is a really fun way to do it- via music and movement! It's available with internet streaming On Demand on Vimeo for a $7.99 per year rental fee, or you can purchase the Word Family DVD for $15 here.
What if kids don't want to participate?
It's can be easy for kids to slip into a "phonemic awareness drill coma" during this time. Unless you keep the energy, excitement, and pace up, kids can get bored and will start to tune you out. One year when I taught Kindergarten, I had to first insist that everyone put their hands UP in front of them in the "ready position" before I started any drill, or half of them would just sit there and ignore the drill! I could see that their mouths weren't even moving at all! However, once I insisted that they put their hands up before I started any drill, that mostly stopped.

Sometimes it helps to point to the kids that call out the answers first and gush over what a great job they did! That usually helps get the kids excited about being the one to be acknowledged and they all start trying harder.

This year in TK, I have a few kids that like to sit and play with their fingers and pick at the carpet while we do the Heggerty book! A few times, I've had to warn a child that I would re-do the exercises with him alone during playtime, since he missed them. After that happened a few times, we all know now that I'm not bluffing! A simple reminder that I can do it again later suffices!

This is a photo of me, Heidi, with "the" Michael Heggerty, the author of the phonemic awareness curriculum! I got a chance to meet him once when we were both presenting at the same conference, the Illinois ASCD Kindergarten Conference! I actually got to take a training that he gave on using the book. Sadly, he has since passed away, but I am really thankful that I got to meet him and that I have this picture.

I hope that this has helped! And by the way, I am not an affiliate of the Heggerty publisher! Just a fan. Let me know if you have questions about using it and I'll see if I can help you out!

And by the way, if your kids don't know all of the letter sounds, be sure to give them a multisensory boost by having them sing and dance to learn their letter sounds!

- Heidi

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Tips for Using the Michael Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Book

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Here are my best tips, hints, and advice for teaching phonemic awareness with the Michael Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Curriculum, which is an amazing resource for Pre-K, Kindergarten, and primary teachers. Once you know how to use it, it takes NO PREP TIME whatsoever, and the payoffs are HUGE!