Lessons and Reading Practice that Interconnect English’s Sound, Spelling and Meaning Systems
Teaching reading, spelling and writing is increasingly time and energy-draining and often delivers unsatisfying results. This undermines the wellbeing of teachers and students alike. At the heart of the problem is fragmentation. Critical components of literacy instruction are taught in isolated blocks separated by hours, days, and even years instead of as a unified system. The solution is integrated language-literacy development based on universal principles that all students on the planet used to read all the diverse forms of writing.
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Integrated language-literacy development, supported by six leading theories of literacy learning (below), teaches English’s sound (phonological), spelling (orthographic) and meaning (morphological & semantic) systems as a single, self-reinforcing process, not as a checklist of isolated skills.
When the three systems work in unison, the sub-word sound-and-symbol level of decoding easily grows into meaningful word-level reading. With a firm grasp on words, creating and understanding sentences follows seamlessly.
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In practical terms, in an integrated lesson students read, spell and write words with multiple syllables and morphemes in sentences starting on day one. This realistically raises expectations and gives students a better understanding of their fuller reading, spelling and writing capabilities. This boosts motivation and lowers stress for both the student and teacher, making literacy learning more engaging and enjoyable – not simply an academic task.
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I’m Bruce Howlett, a former dyslexic, ex-biology researcher and should-be-retired special education teacher. I also host the My Most Fulfilling Literacy Lesson podcast. I created lessons that unite the three language systems using universal principles for my seven-to-seventeen y/o special education students, and, increasingly, for underperforming and disinterested readers, as well. With the help of dozens of educators and researchers, I turned these lessons into Sparking the Reading Shift, a twelve-lesson Language-literacy Enrichment program and a 16-lesson Language-literacy Intervention which I offer at cost to teachers across the English-speaking world.
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To further lower stress, both Language-literacy Enrichment ($18) and Language-literacy Intervention ($28) require no training or prep. In each 45-to-60-minute lesson your students will read, write and/or spell over 500 different words. Each page contains one of 12 brief and attention-focusing activities, complete with instructions and all required word lists, phrases and sentences.
Each page includes a response area where students play with spellings, word patterns and sentences to discover how words, their parts and combinations work together.​
Each lesson follows an A-B-E-C and Read format, so students continually A-Analyze, B-Build, E-Expand and C-Combine Words and then Read patterns, phrases and sentences to solidify learning.
This unifies the three language-learning systems from the sounds-and-symbol level to meaningful sentences by:
Building and Integrating the Sound System
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The basic building blocks of the phonological system are phonemes and spoken syllables. Phonemes are the smallest unit of sound that change a word’s meaning. As you read these words the phonemic sound patterns are instantly translated into morphemes which singly or in combinations create words.
English has a variable sound system with the pronunciation of phonemes shifting as words grow longer. Listen to the sound shifts in the underlined letters: sign-signature, social-society, heal-health, magic-magician, devote-devotion, close-closure. This is why phonemic awareness is so important. To ensure that students understand how this variable sound system works in word, in each lesson students:
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A - Analyze Sound Shifts in minimal contrast words by identifying the subtle sound differences in words: slip-slap brand-bland love-live gave-give clamp-cramp
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B – Build Word Chains using serial substitution: “This is snap, change the /a/ to an /i/. Say it and write it. Now change snip into slip → slap → flap → flip → clip → clap → clam →slam
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E - Expand Words by adding phonemes and graphemes: an ant pant plant slant
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C – Combine Phonemes and Syllables into spoken and written words
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READ Onset-rime Patterns, a step above single letter decoding – ip→rip→ip→trip→ip→strip
Building and Integrating the Spelling System
The basic building blocks of the English orthographic system are letters and graphemes. With only 26 letters we use graphemes, one or more letters, to represent the 44 English phonemes. As we read graphemes they are instantaneously translated into morphemes which compose written words.
English has the weakest phoneme-grapheme links of any alphabetic language, which is why a flexible understanding of sounds and spellings is essential. For example, the <t> in act is /t/, but in action it morphs into a /sh/ and into a /ch/ in actual.
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A - Analyze Syllable/Morpheme Patterns by find common word parts:
inclusive – exclusive – included – expensive – explosive – excluded
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B - Build Words from Syllables using linguistic knowledge: pan – ex – sion → expansion
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E - Expand Regular Verbs: open, opens, opened, opening
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C - Combine Words into Sentences: they large treehouse a built → they built a large treehouse
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READ Pattern Expansions: am → amp → ramp → cramp → clamp → lamp → amp → damp → dam
Building and Integrating the Meaning System
Students who master phoneme-grapheme relationships read and spell accurately but not always deeply. The foundation of the meaning system in all languages is composed of a primary layer of morphemes, then a semantic layer of meaningful words and phrases, and a top syntactic layer of meaningful sentences. This is why sentence comprehension is one of the strongest indicators of text comprehension.
The strong relationships between graphemes and morphemes, as seen in the examples below, further strengthens spelling skills and comprehension. Sparking the Reading Shift constructs meaning in this layer-by-layer manner by building spelling-meaning relationships.
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A – Analyze Morphemes using Word Sums: reaction → re + act + ion inactive → in + act + ive
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A – Analyze Phrases for Similarities and Differences: pictures with bright colors vs pictured with light colors
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B – Building Words with Morphological Matrixes, a table of prefixes, suffixes and a base word
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C - Combine Phrases into Sentences:
in the brisk wind – swayed slowly – the tall trees → The tall trees swayed slowly in the brisk wind -
E – Expand Words into Morphological Word Families: Find <sign> in each word and use it in a sentence: sign signature resign re-sign assignment design significant designate
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READ Morphological Word Families: act – acting – action act – actor – actress – act acted- inaction
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READ Sentence Pyramids: the - the boy - the boy caught - the boy caught the ball
For a ready-to-use sample lesson with activities found in both Sparking the Reading Shift: Language-literacy Enrichment and Sparking the Reading Shift: Language-literacy Intervention click here.
Linguistic Lego Makers, Word Detectives, Master Meaning Makers
To ensure success with literacy components that grow continually through secondary school and beyond, including spelling, sight word and vocabulary knowledge, as well as sentence construction and comprehension, our students develop three more essential characteristics:
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Linguistic Lego Builders
Neuroscientist D.J. Bolger states that “the #1 thing to know about reading is that words are like Legos, they are made from parts or pieces, that are fun to play with… the language that students construct is an amazing thing.” When I look at all the words, phrases and sentences in the above examples all I see are Linguistic Lego Blocks, with the activities showing students how to seamlessly snap the blocks together.
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Word Detectives
Word Detectives take Linguistic Lego building to the next level, solving the mystery of unfamiliar words. Readers confront possibly 150,000 unfamiliar and uncommon words through secondary school. Word Detectives approach these words as if they are puzzles made of familiar sound, spelling and meaningful blocks which connect them to words they already know. Once the mystery is solved the pronunciations and meaning of the word is instantly retrieved from memory. This is why proficient post-primary students’ fluency and comprehension increases as words become more complex and unfamiliar.
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Master Meaning Makers
Master Meaning Makers apply their word solving skills to find hidden meaning in the connections between graphemes and morphemes, word parts and whole words. They know that a word’s meaning is only fully revealed in sentences; brush may be a verb, a noun or have a different meaning in a phrase - “She had a brush with death while brushing her wind-brushed hair with a black brush.” This is why sentence comprehension strongly predicts text comprehension.
The Universal Theory of Literacy Learning
The six major theories that support integration of the phonemic sound, orthographic spelling and morphological meaning system:
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David Share's Universal Combinatorial Model (2025) states that all readers of all written languages on the planet develop literacy by combining a “novice” sound and spelling systems with the “expert” morphological and semantic system. Universally, literacy progresses through three phases, a sub-word letter-and-sound stage, a morpheme / word-level phase which lays the foundation for the meaningful words-in-combination sentence phase.
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Nell Duke and Kelly Cartwright's Active View of Reading (2022) emphasize that bridging processes including vocabulary, morphology, and “grapho-phonological-semantic flexibility”, pull all the components of literacy together, which are best taught “simultaneously.”
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Maryanne Wolf calls the integrated components POSSuM (2021), with the P - phonemic and O - orthographic combining with the meaningful components of language, S - semantically meaningful words, S -syntactic sentences and M - morphemes which Wolf calls the "secret sauce of literacy".
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Mark Seidenberg's Connectionist Theory (2016) is based on his literacy triangle with phonology, orthography and semantics forming the corners. After an initial stage, literacy grows by readers implicitly recognizing regularly occuring patterns in words.
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John Kirby and Peter Bowers' Morphological Binding Theory (2017) which states that phonology, orthography and semantics are bound together by morphology, the only language element that influences the pronunciation, spelling and meaning of words.
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Linnea Ehri's Orthographic Mapping Theory states that for readers to advance from letter-sound decoding to knowing the meaning and pronunciation of a word on sight, a word's spelling, pronunciation and meaning must be "consolidated" in semantic memory.
Sparking the Reading Shift
We created Sparking the Reading Shift primarily to simplify and clarify literacy instruction for our students. However, we wanted to hand both novice and experienced teachers lessons based on current research that enables them to experience success with students starting with their first meeting.
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Sparking the Reading Shift comes in two versions:
Language-literacy Intervention ($28) contains 170 page, 16 one-hour lessons. Each page is a ready-to-use word sequencing activity, with brief instruction and word lists - see morphological activity at left. This version is for students who have required extensive instruction from special education, classroom or reading teachers. A thirty-minute lesson once or twice a week is enough to quickly produce noticeable growth. This is a consumable workbook, as students are continually reading, spelling words and writing phrases and sentences in the book.
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Language-literacy Enrichment ($18) contains 120 page, 12 forty-five-minute lessons in a consumable workbook format. This version uses the same activities as in Language-literacy Intervention but with an accelerated format. For disfluent, disinterested & underperforming readers, including students reading at grade-level. If you are unsure of which version to use, then start with Language-literacy Enrichment.
Email me with questions or help with lessons. Bruce@ReadingShift.com
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See a sample lesson below or download the a ready-to-use lesson here
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Sparking the Fluency Shift
I wanted my students to practice reading that allow them to apply their language and literacy skills to connected text. I was dissatisfied with their progress using decodables and leveled books, as these too do not reflect our best understanding of literacy development. Neither set high expectations, use vocabulary-expanding words or provide a direct path to grade-level reading.
So, I created Sparking the Fluency Shift ($20), a collection of 36 short stories arranged by accurate measures of readability. Each story is only slightly more challenging than the preceding story, creating small steps between levels. There are up to eight levels for each grade. Readers commonly move up a level every week or two rather than waiting months as with popular leveling approaches. This provides both the student and teacher with much-needed motivation and frequent positive feedback.
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For readers to make substantial progress they must continually be reading text with challenging words. To achieve this, each story Sparking the Fluency Shift is preceded by two pages of rehearsal practice. Students repeatedly read the more challenging words, phrases, and sentences in each story before they encounter them in the stories. While the activities are similar to those found in Sparking the Reading Shift, they are designed to improve fluency, including expression. As a result, students read the following story with greater ease and comprehension. Even multisyllabic and unfamiliar words read fluently.
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I want my students to read above grade level, like their more advanced classmates do, who often read two or more grades up. Students who read at grade level, the 50 percentile, often don't read fluently or with sufficient meaning. The 36 stories Sparking the Fluency Shift range from beginning first grade to a solid sixth grade level, so there is no limit on how far a student can advance.
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While Sparking the Fluency Shift directly supports Sparking the Reading Shift the book is widely used with all underperforming readers. No training is required. Parents love it. Teachers often take Sparking the Fluency Shift home to use with their own children.
For a PDF with three sample stories and rehearsal practice activities click here​​​​​​
Start Developing Language-Literacy Tomorow
Both Sparking the Reading Shift and Sparking the Fluency Shift are available in PDF for immediate download or in print, by mail (scroll right below).
Consider your printing costs for the 120-to-170-page books when choosing between the PDF and print version.
US Priority Mail is only about $8.
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A Linguistic Lego Lesson
This is a lesson from Sparking the Reading Shift that uses activities from the first three lessons in both versions.
The activities are designed to actively engage readers in linguistically challenging practice that takes them from sounds to sentence reading and writing in each lesson. The lessons follow an A - Analyze B - Build E - Expand and C - Combine format. While this is a different approach, ask yourself if these are the types of words and sentences that you want your students reading, spelling and writing.​
