Lessons & Reading Practice
that Turn Fragmented Reading Instruction
into Integrated Language-Literacy Development
We’d like to show you lessons and coordinated reading practice based on universal literacy learning principles that all students on the planet use to learn to read all the diverse forms of written language. When applied to English, these principles simplify instruction and lead to noticeable progress in a broad range of literacy abilities – from word recognition and fluency to sentence construction and comprehension.
This approach, integrated language-literacy development, intertwines the four major components of spoken language with the many ways they are represented in print, starting from the first lesson. Teachers quickly discover that their students are capable of reading, spelling and writing words with multiple syllables and morphemes in sentences without the need for repetitive or isolated skill instruction. Language-literacy integration not only saves hours of prep and teaching time a week but also provides the biggest student motivators - success and understanding.
I’m Bruce Howlett, a former biological researcher who struggled with literacy for over four decades. While looking into the scientific roots of my reading, spelling and writing problems, I decided to become a special education teacher. I quickly became frustrated by my students’ slow progress and lack of engagement with existing methods. This prompted me to work with a speech therapist and a cognitive scientist to create lessons that merged literacy and language instruction. During the first month working with them my own literacy struggles noticeably subsided.
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Never fully satisfied, I have continued to develop activities based on emerging research and innovative practices over the last 20 years. During the pandemic, I decided to throw out these lessons and start over by focusing on fresh research, a problem-solving approach common in science. The resulting lessons that I created for my seven-to-seventeen-year-old students, Sparking the Reading Shift, and the integrated reading practice, Sparking the Fluency Shift, (versions for six-year-olds are coming!) are based on seven universal principles of literacy development:
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Language and literacy development are inseparable, with every sentence that you read and write dependent on the Big Four Components of spoken language – sounds (phonemes), the meaningful parts of words (morphemes), whole words (semantics) and sentences (syntax). These four are represented in print (orthography) in myriad ways.
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The level of development of the Big Four and closely related vocabulary knowledge largely predict and determine literacy progress – far more than print abilities.
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The more connections a reader has with a word, the easier it is to decode, and understand fluently. These connections include knowledge about a word’s sound and spelling, its relationship to other words and its multiple meanings.
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In English, the primary connections are between Phonemes, Orthographic spellings, and Morphemes which have an inseparable bond, abbreviated as POM. These form Semantically meaningful words, which combine into Syntactically meaningful sentences, adding two Ss – POM + SS. This lays the foundation for literacy development.
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Here is a list of a few of the researchers who support the general principles behind POM + SS:
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POM by Linnea Ehri and Susan Gray, ‘the bonding of pronunciation, spelling and meaning,’ as the key to orthographic mapping / sight word reading.
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Triple word form in Virginia Berninger's Theory of Literacy
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The Eternal Literacy Triangle by Mark Seidenberg, linking “orthography, phonology and semantics sequences”
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Letter, sound and meaning cognitive flexibility by Nell Duke and Kelly Cartwright, the central part of the ‘bridging processes’ in their Active View of Reading
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POSSuM: Phonology, Orthography, Semantics, Syntax, Morphology’ by Maryanne Wolf, the key to decoding, fluency and deep reading.
The Universal Way That All Readers on the Planet Learn to Read
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Researcher David Share recently demonstrated that the Combining Principle behind POM + SS is the universal way that all students on the planet learn to read the great variety of written languages. Simply, sound, symbols and morphemes form the blocks in a fantastic Linguistic Lego set that all readers snap together to build sentences.
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Universal Literacy Learning, according to Share, always develops in two stages. All readers develop phonological transparency, where words are pronounced automatically. Simultaneously, they develop morphological transparency where the meaning of words, all combinations of morphemes, are effortlessly understood. You are experiencing both transparencies right now. Reading success arises when the phonological roots and the morphological branches work together to nourish the continuously growing tree of literacy.
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Fluent and meaningful text reading is universally viewed as the foundation for deep reading. Fluency arises when all the components of literacy are working in a coordinated manner. Sparking the Fluency Shift, a collection of 36 short stories, shows readers how the POM + SS components work to build fluency and meaning in text. Each story is preceded by rehearsal practice with the more challenging words, phrases and stories, leading to growth in fluency and sight word abilities (see below).
These universal principles may seem abstract but in practical terms they are quite simple; In each and every lesson in Sparking the Reading Shift students are reading, and spelling words with multiple syllables and morphemes, and using them in sentences. This not only develops basic literacy abilities but also turn readers into:
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Expert Linguistic Lego Builders
Neuroscientist D.J. Bolger’s compares the combining principle to playing with a giant set of . Bolger states that “the #1 thing to know about literacy 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.”
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Each page in contains a word challenge activity that follows an A-B-E-C format. Readers soon learn that words are just puzzles made of predicable POM + SS parts by:
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A- Awareness – an awareness of the sound, spelling and meaning patterns gives readers the ability to monitor what they say, hear and read. Notice how your POM + SS awareness helps you figure out this sentence: Da libraryer tolded a boys not tah outclude me with the lunch eaters.
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B- Building words from a large variety of Phonemic, Orthographic and Morphological parts.
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E- Expanding these words by combining syllables and morphemes.
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C- Combining words into phrases (going to the store, in a while) and sentences.
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Professional Pattern Seekers
Language learning and literacy are both driven by pattern recognition abilities. This is a challenge in English as it has the weakest connections between the most basic patterns -- letters and sounds -- of any alphabetic language. In contrast, the relationship between graphemes (letter patterns) and morphemes is quite strong. Grapheme-morpheme patterns abound, including in morphological word families (run, running, runner, unrunable), morphological relatives (sign, signature, resign, re-sign, design, designate) and semantic patterns (running his mouth, having the runs, a runny nose, a run on the bank). These also significantly contribute to vocabulary and spelling growth.
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While Sparking the Reading Shift develops these meaning-based patterns, we don’t neglect the phonological, or pronunciation, side of reading. Syllable and onset-rime patterns (ap-sap, ap-slap, ap-cap, ap-clap, ap-lap, ap- flap), and sentence pyramids (we – we go – we go to – we go to the – we go to the store) help readers immediately read words on sight.
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Expert Word Detectives - Solving the Mystery of Unfamiliar Words
Word Detectives know how to figure out the pronunciation and meaning of the thousands of unfamiliar words that they confront each year by finding familiar and predictable POM patterns in challenging words. Readers will confront about 150,000 unfamiliar words in print through secondary school. Sparking the Reading Shift creates Words Detectives by showing readers how to figure out a variety of word puzzled pieces in longer words:
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P – Phonemic pieces help flex the pronunciation (set for variability) “It sounds like unhellthy or unheelthy?
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O – Orthographic knowledge helps partially decode words – “Looks like UN-heal-thy”.
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M – Morphological pieces help reveal the meaning of words – “The meaning must be related to heal”.
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S – Semantic abilities like synonyms help with strategies like, “I know that cure is a synonym for heal.”
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S – Syntactic knowledge helps with checking contextual meaning - The doctor told him it would take time to heal from the unhealthy activity.
With this knowledge Word Detectives develop self-teaching abilities, teaching themselves between 2000 and 5000 new sight and vocabulary words a year.
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Master Meaning Makers
Meaning is also constructed using the combining principle, so Meaning Makers recognize that:
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Words are composed of one or more meaningful parts, morphemes.
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Reading comprehension is then a word-by-word process where even one misread noun or verb disrupts a sentence.
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The clear meaning of a word is only revealed in a sentence, as with the word brush in He got a brush to brush the dog.
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Sentences multiply the meaning of words - His bark is greater than his bite.
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Sentence structure and word meaning work together. Who is the subject of this sentence? Jack saw the boy driving down the street.
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This makes sentence comprehension a strong predictor of text comprehension, forming a foundation for advanced literacy abilities.
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Fully Fluent Readers
Deep fluency is a hallmark of advanced reading across the planet. The earliest step is automaticity, where words are read on sight, without laborious decoding. Signs of deep fluency include expressive reading and prosody, flexible reading rates, and natural phrasing free from robotic reading. Neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf, who arranges POM +SS as POSSuM, has shown that deep fluent reading arises when these components and word knowledge are integrated on a neural level. The continued growth of deep reading abilities depends on strengthening this system.
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Sparking the Fluency Shift integrates the components and word knowledge using a collection of 36 short stories arranged by accurate measures of readability. Before students read each story they practice the more challenging words, phrases, and sentences using rehearsal practice. These activities take advantage of the power of repeated reading by developing fluency with difficult words before they are confronted in print. This allows students to read the stories with greater ease and comprehension, so reading doesn’t feel like an academic task.
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Sparking the Fluency Shift aims to have students read above grade level, as proficient readers do. Each grade from first (~6 y/o) to sixth (~11 y/o) is divided into up to eight levels per grade, creating small steps between levels. With support from the rehearsal activities, students routinely move up a level every week or two rather than in months as with other leveling approaches. This provides much needed feedback for both the student and the teacher.
While Sparking the Fluency Shift ($20) is designed to provide reading practice for it is beneficial for all underperforming readers, from special education students to disinterested students reading at grade-level.
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Simplify Your Life and Engage Your Reluctant Readers
Sparking the Reading Shift comes in two versions:
Language-literacy Intervention ($28) is a 170 page, 16-lesson workbook for students who have required extensive remedial instruction by special education or reading teachers. Each page is a ready-to-use Linguistic Lego Word Challenge, complete with instructions. A thirty-minute lesson once or twice a week is enough to quickly produce noticeable growth. No training or special knowledge required, see sample lesson, below. This is 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) is a 120 page, 12-lesson consumable book 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. Contains the same activities but with fewer and more challenging activities per lesson. No training is required. See a sample lesson, below.
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Sparking the Fluency Shift ($20) also requires no training as is widely used by parents and first-year teachers. The rehearsal activities and stories contain simple instructions, including tips for fluency modeling and deepening understanding.
The combination of Sparking the Fluency Shift and Sparking the Reading Shift provides a strong language-literacy foundation, offering your students the best chance to perform like your more capable students.
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Available in PDF for immediate download and in print, by mail (scroll right below). Consider that Priority Mail in the U.S. often costs less than the printing costs for the 100+ page books.
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Feel free to email me directly with any questions, comments or concerns – Bruce@ReadingShift.com
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A Linguistic Lego Lesson
This is a typical lesson from Sparking the Reading Shift. The lessons deeply engages students in words and how they work. It follows the POMSS sequence, starting with phonemes and spellings, then building meaning with morphological awareness, whole word patterns, phrases and sentences. Each lesson ends with a variety of fluency activities. Note that only a few examples for each activity are shown.
Sparking the Reading Shift uses a generative learning approach, a well-regarded vocabulary, morphology and spelling method. Each year proficient readers learn thousands of sight, spelling and vocabulary words. It's impossible to teach all these words. Students need to generate the meanings of new words, based on their knowledge of how words work.
STARS explicitly shows readers general patterns, principles and relationships and how to analyze and assemble words, phrases and sentences. Then students practice playing with words so that they know how to decipher unfamiliar words.
