Education   

Selected for Success:
How Headsprout Reading Basics™ Teaches Beginning Reading1

T. V. Joe Layng, Ph.D.2

Janet S. Twyman, Ph.D.

Greg Stikeleather, MA.

Section I

Selected for Success: How Headsprout Reading Basics™ Teaches Beginning Reading

Reading proficiency is a crucial foundation for success in all academic areas, yet we are a nation faced with a reading crisis. Four in ten children have literacy problems, and over 40% of our nation's fourth graders score below basic reading levels (National Center for Learning Disabilities, 2001). Learning to read is a formidable challenge for more than 50% percent of our nation's school children (Lyon, 1998), and parents spend billions of dollars each year on extracurricular books, software, tutors, and other reading aids. Teachers and schools face the challenges of finding the best teaching method, implementing these methods in large classrooms, and accommodating students' widely varying abilities and readiness. Despite the time and money spent on solving the reading difficulties of our nation's children, the problems aren't disappearing. Headsprout, a Seattle-based applied learning sciences company, has been working on a solution that bridges the efforts of parents, schools and agencies with the goal of preparing children for success in any core reading program chosen by a teacher, school, or school district.

Headsprout spent nearly 3 years and $5 million in a major research and development effort to build a beginning reading program that incorporates principles derived from the scientific investigation of early reading with principles derived from the experimental and applied analysis of behavior. The result of this effort is Headsprout Reading Basics, a balanced, phonics-based reading program that teaches the skills and strategies necessary to sound out and read words. Delivered over the Internet, children learn essential reading skills through multiple interactions with engaging, cartoon-based episodes set in the entertaining environs of Space World, Dinosaur World, Undersea World, and Jungle World. Kids, parents, teachers, and learning scientists alike verify the effectiveness of Headsprout's methods in providing children with the skills they need to succeed in classroom reading instruction.

Key Skills and Strategies: Students and Teachers' Best Friends

Although phonics instruction has drifted in and out of favor in the educational establishment, a large body of research points to its essential role in the process of teaching children to read. In April 2000, the Congressionally mandated National Reading Panel reported that early systematic phonics instruction improves children's reading and spelling abilities (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000). Research also suggests that the absence of explicit instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics can cause learning problems that put learners at a permanent educational disadvantage unless they are corrected by the end of the third grade (National Reading Panel, 2000).

The Public Library Association (n.d.) points out that "research has shown that there is nearly a 90% probability that a child will remain a poor reader at the end of the fourth grade if the child is a poor reader at the end of first grade." The research suggests that Headsprout's approach of explicit instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, and a strategy for sounding out words can prevent many children from developing learning problems and can give almost all children an equal opportunity to become good readers. When Headsprout children arrive at school, they will be prepared no matter how large or small the role phonics plays in their classroom. Headsprout Reading Basics is a teacher's ally (not a teacher's replacement), giving students a boost in essential skills and raising the likelihood of reading success in a busy classroom, or before formal classroom instruction even begins.

Research has identified five basic, interconnected sub-skills that all children must master if they are to become proficient readers (The National Right to Read Foundation, n.d.), all integral to Headsprout Reading Basics. First, beginning readers must develop what is called phonemic awareness-the recognition that all words are made of separate sounds, called "phonemes." Second, beginning readers also need to learn phonics, which is the ability to link these sounds to the specific letters or combinations of letters representing them in written language. This association between letters and sounds must become fluent so that learners can decode words almost instantly. Beginning readers must learn a strategy to sound out the sequence of phonemes in a word and blend the sounds back together to read whole words. Third, a learner's spoken vocabulary must be extended to become a reading vocabulary. They must understand that the words they read have meaning just as do the words they say. Further, they should come to understand that words they read have meaning even if they have not yet encountered that meaning. Fourth, reading fluency is important to reading success. Fifth, comprehension of what is read is essential. The seeing and saying of words, although essential, is not sufficient to create a good reader. Children must understand what they read, and be able to act on that understanding.

Headsprout Reading Basics tackles these five important features in the following way:

  1. Phonemic Awareness — Phonemic Awareness instruction is integrated throughout many of Headsprout Reading Basics' teaching routines. Learners hear letter sounds in order to select visual stimuli, and then hear them again as confirmation of selections. Learners are asked to say the sounds and then listen to cartoon characters say sounds, and then select the character that "said the sound just like you did." Learners put the sounds together, hear them slowly blended, say them slowly blended, and then hear the sounds said fast as whole words, and eventually say the words fast. They learn to not only identify and say the sounds letters make, both independently and as blended units, but to listen to and identify the sounds they say, a critical step in becoming a speaker as own listener.
  2. Phonics — In Headsprout Reading Basics children learn 34 carefully chosen phonetic elements that maintain a consistent pronunciation in over 85% of the words in which they appear. This early consistency is extremely important to ensuring the transfer of segmenting and blending skills learned in the program, to words encountered outside the program. This allows the natural outcome of reading in a social environment to become the critical consequence for reading. By using one, two, and three letter combinations learners find that sounds can be combined to make meaningful units of phonemic information. Further, learners quickly discover that some sounds can have other sounds inside them and that sound units can be combined to make new sounds. Headsprout Reading Basics' instructional strategies result in learners reliably "adducing" these insights in a discovery-learning environment, rather than having to be directly taught. They learn to use their phonics knowledge for sounding-out words in isolation, as parts of sentences, and when reading stories with words they have not been directly taught.
  3. Vocabulary Development — Headsprout Reading Basics provides a critical foundation for early vocabulary building, particularly as it affects reading. An essential component of vocabulary growth is the concept that words are made of sounds, that when put together, have meaning. Headsprout Reading Basics teaches that words have meaning, and that they make sentences that, in turn, make stories. Learners begin to add words that are likely to be in their spoken vocabulary to their reading vocabulary. Through the use of character names, they learn that words they may have never before encountered have meaning as well. More phonetic elements are added as the initial sounding-out strategies are learned; the words made from the elements are practiced to ensure that they become a permanent part of the learner's vocabulary. Once the sounding-out skills are firmed and all 34 sound elements taught, a typical learner would, in less than 15 hours of instruction, have a reading vocabulary of over 500 words. Throughout the program exercises are provided that have learners match sentences made from their newly learned words to pictures of objects and actions to ensure that learners have a basic understanding of the words they are reading.
  4. Reading fluency, including oral reading skills — Fluency is a critical element to all Headsprout Reading Basics activities. Often, fluency work is left to end of the reading process, when a learner practices reading sentences. Headsprout understands that fluency at the component skill level is critical to fluency at the composite skill level (Johnson & Layng, 1992; LaBerge & Samuels, 1974; Samuels & Flor, 1997). From as early as lesson one, learners engage in fluency building activities for finding sounds in words. By lesson 4, learners are building fluency on words made up of the sounds they have learned in the previous lessons, and by lesson 5, learners read their first story. In the 40 lessons that comprise Headsprout Reading Basics, 38 fluency-building opportunities have been specifically designed to build a strong reading repertoire. In fewer than 15 hours of instruction a learner will have read twenty-three separate stories. Most of the stories are designed for learners to read independently, however, others are to be read with someone else, such as a parent. These stories are more complicated, punctuated with sentences learners can easily read. Learners, thereby, are exposed to fluent reading at a higher level then they can currently handle, and must pay close attention so they can read "their" sentences when it is their turn.
  5. Reading comprehension strategies — An article about beginning reading began with the following observation (paraphrased): If "Look at the ceiling" is written on a black board, and a person says, 'look at the ceiling,' the person is decoding, if the person's head tilts back and a glance upward is observed, the person is comprehending (Goldiamond & Dyrud, 1966). Though overly simplified, it emphasizes the important point that the evaluation of comprehension requires indicator responses that are separate from simply seeing and saying words or sentences. These indicator responses are key to teaching and evaluating comprehension. Accordingly, Headsprout Reading Basics employs frequent use of comprehension indicators to test whether what is being decoded is also being understood. Carefully designed indicators are used to teach self-observation as well as sentence and story comprehension. After each reading exercise, learners must choose one of three pictures that go with the sentence. The pictures vary in such a way as to ensure that the words in the sentences have been read and are understood. From as early as lesson five, learners understand that the sentences they read are not simply lists of words, but units of meaning.

Headsprout Reading Basics offers a truly balanced approach to beginning reading instruction that shrinks the chasm between phonics traditionalists and advocates of whole language reading instruction (see Rayner et al., 2002). While it has its foundation in teaching learners to identify letter-sound combinations and combine them with other letter-sound combinations, it incorporates elements that do not appear in many phonics programs. For example, Headsprout Reading Basics teaches children to read full sentences and stories and comprehend their meaning. Moreover, Headsprout has addressed learner and teacher concerns about the rule-filled, exception-filled English language. Too often, learners are expected to begin reading by memorizing rules that dictate sound/letter associations only to have to memorize further exceptions to those rules. The English language uses the 26 letters of the alphabet to represent 44 sounds - sounds that can be written in over 400 different ways. To untangle this confusing web for the beginning reader, Headsprout Reading Basics begins with very consistent letters and sounds, such as "ee," "v," "cl" and "an." As noted earlier, the sounds in Headsprout Reading Basics are stable (read the same way) in over 85% of their occurrences, greatly increasing the likelihood of learners reading the word correctly. For example, a child who learns "ing" pronounced as it is in "sing" will be correct when using that pronunciation in 99% of other occurrences. With Headsprout Reading Basics, learners gain confidence early in their ability to sound out without being distracted by the challenge of memorizing the English language's many vagaries.

1To appear in D. J. Moran & R. Malott (Eds.) Empirically supported educational methods, St. Louis, MO: Elsevier Science/Academic Press.

2Senior Scientist, Headsprout, 127 Broadway Ave. E., Suite 300, Seattle, WA 98102, joe@headsprout.com, www.headsprout.com


back to section homenext

Return Home

About CCBS

Membership

Links

Store

Behavior Analysis

Computer Modeling
of Behavior

Aging Gracefully Autism Behavioral Safety
 Book Reviews
 Commentaries
 Education
Everyday Life
 Parenting
 Organizational Behavior Management Pets & Animals
 Verbal Behavior Virtual Community

Copyright ©1997-2009 by the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies.
All rights reserved.

Feedback or questions about the
Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies or our website?
Contact our webmaster or
our Executive Director, Dr. Philip N. Chase.

The Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies Publication Office
is located at the following address:
336 Baker Avenue
Concord, Massachusetts U.S.A. 01742-2107

Telephone: (978) 369-CCBS (2227)
Facsimile: (978) 369-8584

Visit other sites through the Behavior Analysis Webring:
[ Previous 5 Sites | Previous | Next | Next 5 Sites | Random Site | List Sites ]