We have just finished our 5 Day Challenge focusing on one of our powerful activities “Swap It!” Parents and teachers saw firsthand and were astonished at what a remarkable difference integrating multiple reading sub skills into one activity can do to advance a beginning or struggling reader! And so much faster than other methods they tried. Let me show you how.
Rather than separating each of these subskills as we see in most mainstream programs like the following:
15 minutes of Phonemic awareness instruction
15 minutes of Phonics instruction and activities
10 minutes of Sight word practice
This is the pattern we find in most mainstream programs however there is a better way! At Early Readers Academy we integrate rather than separate these activities to accomplish ALL of the above skills and a lot more in a lot less time, only 5 minutes! In fact, we have been doing it for years with thousands of kids getting higher than expected outcomes ALL with a solid decoding foundation!!!
Now that I have your attention, I want you to know about this revolutionary method of reading instruction that is a key time saver for parents and teachers to get our kids to read faster and with great accuracy! Here at Early Readers Academy, we develop in every reader a solid decoding foundation that will launch them as a confident, fluent reader who can decode unfamiliar words with ease and flexibility!
In a mainstream program these same skills would take approximately 45-60 minutes of mainstream activities vs 5- minutes of our "Swap It" or other word building activities.
Parents and teachers are amazed at children who didn’t even know a single letter sound, let alone any phonemic awareness, phonics skills, or word recognition learn all these skills in one of our powerful activities called "Swap It."
Janet, a mom of a struggling reader said, "was blown away" by the impact on her daughter from using just this one multi-integrated activity at Early Readers Academy.
"This program is great! My daughter said “I rock this” while we went through todays lesson! Having b/d/p all in one list was helpful for her to sort them out visually. She was definitely a guesser when reading books and would try to memorize as much as she could and then get defeated and refuse to continue when she couldn’t remember. Last night was a first, with a little reminder to use her decoder skills she made it through her entire book without giving up! I am blown away by the impact this has had on my daughter in less than a week!"
Janet- Parent, Grade One
Wow! To move a child from guessing to actual decoding is quite an accomplishment- especially in less than a week! Normally it can be quite a challenge as you have to retrain them to learn the system of decoding words. Once they do, then you can breathe a sigh of relief that they can leave the guessing game behind them! The results of this integration are not unique, it has happened for so many others who have used our program with similar, exceptional results. See what more of them have to say at the end of this blog..
Just think about how much TIME you save as a parent, a homeschool mom, and as a teacher with fewer resources, less planning, less instructional time, less frustration AND your child is launched into reading confidently, smoothly and pretty darn fast!
The time saved and the growth your child will make in reading is outstanding in such a short period of time. In our Bright Futures Reading System and in our challenge, parents and teachers saw children improve one to three levels in 2, 3 and 4 days of using our program for 5-10 minutes daily.
It’s not uncommon for me to see a beginning reader who is 3-4 years old learning more about phonics information and phonemic awareness with this one simple activity than they do in months with other programs.
“My daughter is enjoying “Swap It.” She insists on doing it herself and is becoming very confident at identifying the letter sounds, the sounds in words and building the words. Impressive!” Sara -Parent of 3-year-old
What are children learning in only one of our many Early Readers Activities such as "Swap It?" Each child will engage in numerous, integrated sub skills. What skills are the children practicing when they manipulate these letter sound tiles?
Several you say?
Yes! Here are some of the sub-skills that were addressed by just this one integrated activity.
-phonemic segmentation
-phonemic manipulation
-consonant letter sound knowledge
-short vowel letter sound knowledge
-decoding
-spelling
- word identification and vocabulary connections
-concept of the alphabetic principle
-auditory discrimination
Notice how many sub-skills were integrated and practiced all at once in the matter of a few minutes! Simple, brilliant and extremely productive!!
If you’d like a more scholarly dive into this activity and its benefits, read this article written by Bruce McCandliss, Isabel Beck, Rebecca Sandak, and Charles Perfetti. These researchers term their activity a “Word Building” technique which is the same as our Early Readers Academy activity called “Swap It.” With just this simple activity, these researchers demonstrated significant growth in phonemic awareness, decoding, and even….comprehension. Remarkable!!
What are the benefits of this integrated approach to foundational reading skills?
1. Saves time for both the instructor and the child
2. Provides the essential transfer of skills necessary for a child to read independently the next day and onward.
3. Develops the sound-based (phonemic) decoding accuracy required to be a strong reader and speller.
The overwhelming results prove you can have a much more effective and efficient product if you mix phonemic awareness, phonics skills and word recognition at the same time you teach decoding and letter-sound knowledge.
In our Bright Futures Reading System we teach multiple, integrated sub skills: consonants, vowels, phonemic awareness (all forms), decoding and word recoginition ALL in our one activity called Swap It. ALL of our 4 main activities integrate multiple sub-skills to get our readers reading accurately and quickly!! This makes the process much more enjoyable with No muss and No fuss!!
After working with hundreds of students and watching others work with thousands of students, we testify that students learn to read more rapidly and easily with an integrated approach as opposed to teaching the skills separately.
And, the National Reading Panel demonstrated the value of this key component to word identification when they noted significantly greater impact from phonemic awareness when it was integrated with letter-sound instruction.
Finally, consider this admonition from Marie Clay, creator of Reading Recovery:
“The lowest literacy achievers will have extreme difficulty bridging any gaps in the teaching programme and linking together things that have been taught separately.” Integration is key if we want to see ALL readers succeed!!
Learning letter sounds and decoding skills with our system has been the game changer for many, many children learning to read! Now it’s your turn to give our Bright Futures Reading System a try! See what a difference our system of integrating multiple reading skills together can make!!!
Here’s what other parents have said about using our integrated activities, where we teach real reading in the context of real words right at the start!!
“Sophia did so well with lesson 2! She was laughing and having a great time which is a complete turn-around from the usual tears when it comes to reading. I’m surprised to see such a big change in her in so little time!” Katie - Parent, Grade 1
“My daughter is doing great with this activity. I think she is ready to move up! She is finally excited about reading and having fun with it.” Kara - Parent, Kindergarten
“Day 2 complete! I think the Level 2 list made her slow down a bit more to think about things and try to identify what she was hearing. I really do like the error correction tips as I struggle as a parent with how to correct without crushing confidence or providing the answer. Works so much better now that we have silly sounding words that need fixing!”
Jessica- Parent, Grade One
“Austin Nailed it! He showed extreme confidence and said “easy” after each word lol. Never thought I would hear that! Thanks for explaining things so well and making it fun!”
Jonelle- Parent, Grade Two
"My son woke up today (Saturday) wanting to do his Swap It words right away. He’s excited to finally be getting it!" Amanda - Parent, Grade Two
“My daughter is doing great with the Early Readers Academy! She takes her time sounding out the words and putting it all together AND she was able to get all the words! She really focuses and loves that she understands more. It is building confidence with her home reading she brought home too!
Learning this has also helped me support her better and gives me a better understanding how to help her more.” Barbara - Parent, Grade One
“Wow! We moved onto level 3 and she aced them as well! She’s figured out the system. It is so great to see her mastering these words no problem and have her light up when each one is correct. She is wondering when her next one on one with Miss Mary is- she really enjoyed that!” Carli - Parent, Grade One
“Day 3 went pretty smooth. We started with the level 2 lists then went to the level 3 as they wanted to keep going. By the end they were catching their errors on their own. Having the vowels in different colours has helped make sure they include those. Prior to this they would often leave vowels out in their writing.” Jesslyn – Teacher, Grade One
"My daughter continues to rock the lessons each day. She even tried to read the shopping list tonight with a lot of success sounding out all the words! She is eager to continue to learn more each day." Beth - Parent, Kindergarten
"Watching my students improve and read me words and sentences has been amazing!! YAY for SWAP IT!" Crystal- Kindergarten Teacher
To get your child to learn to read fast integrate multiple skills into every activity you do! At Early Readers Academy we've got it all planned out for you. Come along and join us at Early Readers Academy where we build strong reading foundations to accelerate reading!
Mary Printz aka Miss Mary is the co-founder of Early Readers Academy and Accelerated Potential Academy. She is a seasoned educational consultant, researcher, Reading Consultant and Developer and International speaker. You can contact her at info@acceleratedpotentialacademy.com