Sparking the Reading Shift
All Students Read, Spell, Write & Comprehend at Grade Level
In the last few years there has been an outburst of new research and methods that point to a major shift in literacy instruction. This approach, combined language-literacy learning, focuses on the four causal linguistic elements that largely determine the path of broad and continued literacy growth. This approach treats reading, spelling and writing as a single ability practiced simultaneously. The four elements, morphology, vocabulary, sentence construction, and expressive language, rarely receive the attention they deserve. This is regrettable, as they form an interconnected and self-reinforcing system that leads to noticeable progress in reading, spelling and writing by the end of the first lesson (see graphic, right).
“Core language deficits, particularly vocabulary, morphology, sentence construction and expressive language, are not just correlated with reading difficulties but are core causal factors.” Snowling and Hulme (2005)
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Combined language-literacy learning benefits all readers and writers, including dyslexic, delayed and simply disengaged students. In each lesson they learn how words and sentences, both spoken and written, are constructed using reliable, sensible and meaningful patterns. Lessons start by focusing students’ attention on how words are built from morphemes, the meaningful core of all words. Next, they practice adding prefixes and suffixes to core morphemes, called bases, to create longer and more complex words. As you will see, morphological knowledge is tightly connected to vocabulary learning.
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Then students learn to combine words into phrases, the meaningful building blocks of sentences. Finally, they practice combining phrases into elaborate sentences, enhancing expressive language. By the end of the first lesson students have read, and spelled hundreds of words of increasing complexity in sentences.
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In addition to supporting foundational literacy growth, the activities that develop these elements are easily modified into text-specific scaffolds. When used as pre-reading rehearsal practice, the scaffolds significantly improve fluency and comprehension abilities by over a grade level, when compared to a cold reading of the same text. This allows less developed readers to participate in readings and discussions of above-grade-level text.
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Before I show you the lessons I use with my students, Sparking the Reading Shift, as well as a book of scaffold stories, Sparking the Fluency Shift, let’s look at each of these essential language and literacy learning elements in depth, and explain how you can build your own activities and scaffold your classroom reading material. .
Sentences and Expressive Language
Rather than start with basic decoding instruction, combined language-literacy learning starts at the sentence level where reading and spelling abilities come alive. Sentences are the core unit of meaning in all languages. Sentence construction and comprehension abilities strongly predict and determine text level competencies. Sentences are also an excellent place to learn and solidify decoding, spelling and sight word mapping abilities.
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Linguistically, sentences form a bridge between word level elements of vocabulary and morphology and expressive oral and written language abilities. In all languages sentences are built with phrases, sentence fragments that contain either a noun or a verb, but not both. Phrases themselves form an important bridge between word level skills and sentence abilities.
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Students are constantly reading and spelling words in complex sentences. In each lesson, including the first lesson for less advanced students. Instruction follows a break-it-down, build-it-up and manipulate-it sequence. They start by breaking sentences down into three common types of phrases: noun, verb, and prepositional phrases. They then practice arranging phrases to make longer and richer sentences. Finally, they practice paraphrasing complex sentences into language that make sense to them, boosting comprehension. Together, these activities directly enhance expressive language.
Morphology and Vocabulary
All spoken and written words in every language are either a morpheme by itself, like little, power or small, or contains a core morpheme, called a base, like construction, reteaching and reading. Morphemes are the heart of the English spelling system with affixes and bases spelled in consistent and meaningful patterns. While English has the most variable sound-symbol relationships of any alphabetic language, the spelling of morphemes is incredibly stable. Listen to the pronunciation of s, i and g in sign, signature, resign, re-sign, and design. Notice how the spelling and relative meaning of <sign> is consistent even as the pronunciation of the words shift. This is a common feature of words with multiple morphemes in English.
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As you can see all multisyllabic words are actually poly-morphemic, composed of multiple morphemes. While syllables are units of pronunciation, morphemes are units of meaning, giving them great significance. Students’ literacy abilities often explode when they become aware that all words are or contain a morpheme and that all longer words are built using a base with suffixes and prefixes added as needed.
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The break-it-down, build-it-up and manipulate-it sequences for morphemes is straightforward. First, students analyze words for consistent spelling-meaning patterns embedded in morphemes. Next, they build single morpheme words using the reliable spelling patterns embedded in morphemes. Then, they add prefixes and suffixes to make words with multiple morphemes. Where many methods delay teaching multi-syllabic words for months or years, combined language-literacy learning provides practice building these vital words during the first lesson.
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Morphemes have an obvious relationship with vocabulary growth, with an almost perfect relationship between morphological and vocabulary knowledge. Children’s innate sense of morphology forms the background knowledge needed for vocabulary growth. Beginning at age two, children can infer the 60 different meanings for the word run as well as figure of the meaning of phrases as different as having the runs, running your mouth and running out of toilet paper.
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Morphological instruction also aids vocabulary growth as almost all words are members are morphological families, built from base words. Members of the family share a consistent spelling and a sense of meaning, eliminating the need to memorize individual words. For example, if a student understands that the base tract has the general sense of drag, pull or draw, then learning the spelling and meaning of words like distract, subtract, contract, traction, extraction and protracted is easily accomplished during a brief lesson. This is a key principle behind combined language-literacy learning; words are learned in relationship to other words and how they are used in sentences.
Grade-level Reading with Fluency Scaffolds
In combined language-literacy learning, word, vocabulary and sentence activities have another purpose; they are easily transformed into scaffolds that give below-grade-level readers immediate access to at- or above-grade-level text.
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To grow as readers, students need practice with complex text that expands their abilities far beyond what decodable and leveled books provide. In his new book, Leveled Reading, Leveled Lives, Timothy Shanahan shows that the greatest growth in comprehension as well as reading engagement comes from text that contains challenging words, sentences and vocabulary, not from text that offers little to learn or figure out.
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Shanahan promotes the use of rehearsal practice, prereading fluency activities where students practice the more difficult words, vocabulary and sentences before they are encountered in a text. Teacher simply picks out a handful of these elements, using them as the text for the word and sentences activities described above. Rehearsal practice repeatedly raises fluency and comprehension abilities by over a grade level when compared to cold reading of the same text.
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The scaffolds should be of a desirable level of difficulty, just difficult enough to focus a student’s attention and language skills. Too easy limits learning, too hard overwhelms the student.
Sparking the Reading Shift
​Each lesson in Sparking the Reading Shift contains all the word and sentence break-it-down, build-it-up and manipulate-it activities described above. Sparking the Reading Shift comes in two versions, both for seven-to-seventeen y/o.
Language-literacy Intervention ($28) contains 150 page,16 one-hour lessons. This version is for students who have required extensive instruction from special education, classroom or reading teachers.
Each page is a ready-to-use word and sentence activity, with brief instruction. A thirty-minute session 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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Sparking the Reading Shift: Language-literacy Enrichment ($18) contains 120 page,12 hour lessons in a consumable workbook format. This version contains the same word, morphological, phrase and sentence activities as in Language-literacy Intervention but in a briefer, 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. Bruce@ReadingShift.com
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See a sample lesson below ​​​​​​
Sparking the Fluency Shift
To continually grow as readers, students need to be exposed to challenging words and complex sentences in increasingly difficult text. This is how our most proficient students continually grow as readers. Researchers including Timothy Shanahan, Matthew Burns and Elfrieda Hiebert have shown that readers, including struggling readers, make the most growth when they read text one or two grades above their actual grade. For delayed readers this means text at a frustrational level. Reading at this high level is achievable using a special type of repeated reading called rehearsal practice that boosts fluency and comprehension. ​
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Simply, students rehearse the more challenging words and sentences as pre-reading practice using activities that increase accuracy, fluency and comprehension. Extra attention is given to unfamiliar and multisyllabic words, challenging vocabulary, as well as to complex sentences containing multiple phrases. When these words and sentences are encountered in a text they are read with greater fluency, accuracy and comprehension.
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Research shows that this approach significantly improves fluency, provides at least a grade-level improvement in comprehension and expands vocabulary knowledge over a cold read of the same text. Rehearsal practice with challenging text also solidifies basic word reading, limiting the need for isolated skill instruction.
To offer our students these advantages, we created Sparking the Fluency Shift, a collection of 36 short stories that provide increasingly challenging words and sentence structures. The stories range from beginning first grade to a solid sixth grade level, providing a path to above grade-level reading, a level typically achieved by fluent readers.
Each story is slightly more difficult than the previous story. Students typically move up a level every week which provides constant positive feedback to students and reassurance to teachers.
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Each story is preceded by two pages of rehearsal practice drawn from 12 activities that develop fluent, meaningful and enjoyable reading experiences. The 150-to-400 word stories were chosen by eight-to-twelve-year-old students based on their interests. The topics range from making friends and dealing with conflicts, to fantasy stories about time travel.
After rehearsal practice, students often read the stories with little assistance or interruption. Reading becomes an easier, engaging & enriching activity – not just an academic task. ​
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For a free, three-story sample from Sparking the Fluency Shift complete with rehearsal practice activities at the 1st, 3rd and 5th grade levels, click here
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Both Sparking the Reading Shift and Sparking the Fluency Shift are available in PDF format for immediate download or in print, by mail (scroll right below).
Consider your printing costs for the120-to-170-page books when choosing between the PDF and print version. US Priority Mail is only about $8.
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Meet The Author
I’m Bruce Howlett, a former biology researcher and should-be-retired special education teacher who struggled with literacy until the age of 44. I then started creating reading lessons with a speech therapist for our mutual students, initially focusing on phonemic awareness. I soon noticed improvement in reading fluency and spelling, as well as listening comprehension. This sparked my continuing interest in the relationship between literacy and language.
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However, reading, spelling and writing still presented challenges. So, for the last twenty-five years I have continued to study emerging research, looking for more satisfying methods for my special education students, and, increasingly, for underperforming and disinterested readers – as well as for myself.
During the pandemic I did what researchers often do when confronted with partial solutions – I threw out all my existing lessons and started over by working backwards from the latest research. This led me to dozens of educators and researchers who are equally as passionate about providing students with enhanced language-based literacy instruction. The result is Sparking the Reading Shift and Sparking the Fluency Shift.
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I'm also the host of For the Love of Literacy podcast that provides a platform for innovative educators and researchers to discuss language-literacy integration - from morphemes and spelling-meaning relationships to sentence construction and reading complex text- Spotify Apple Podcasts
A Combined Language-Literacy Lesson
Here are the activities that develop combined language-literacy learning, as well as provide the format for word, morphological, phrase and sentence scaffolds. In Sparking the Reading Shift, each activity is called a challenge, providing practice with a desirable level of difficulty.
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