Mastering Book Language
The Key to
Reading, Spelling & Writing Success
Most students struggle with reading, spelling, and writing for one simple reason: a limited ability to read, compose, and understand the complex words and sentences found in books. Book language—from the fairy tales we read to young children, to the chapter books and graphic novels popular with elementary students, to the texts used in secondary grades—is five to twenty times more complex than everyday speech.
For many students, book language feels like a foreign language—filled with multi-syllable words, unfamiliar vocabulary, and complex sentences. Words aren't as simple to decode, and even familiar words gain new layers of meaning. For instance, the word "run" has more than 60 definitions and appears in hundreds of everyday phrases, like "running late" or "run down."
Yet this rich language is exactly what students need to understand when reading and express when writing. Fortunately, recent advances in literacy instruction put mastery of complex language within reach for every student.
Language development is at the heart of literacy and underlies most reading and writing difficulties. Up to 60 percent of students with dyslexia also have developmental language disorders (DLD), and almost all experience some degree of language limitation. Today, dyslexia is increasingly recognized as a comprehensive language and writing disability, as reading comprehension and sentence-writing difficulties—the ultimate goals of literacy instruction—frequently co-occur.
The good news is that learning complex language comes naturally to children. Throughout their school years, students naturally acquire thousands of new vocabulary words and learn to weave them into longer, more elaborate phrases and sentences. As they read, listen to, and discuss complex text, book language stops feeling like a foreign language.
At Reading Shift, we create lessons that reflect this advanced perspective on literacy, allowing even students with limited decoding and spelling skills to make noticeable progress with complex language by the end of their very first lesson. In fact, this approach benefits any student who struggles with—or is simply uninterested in—reading, spelling, or writing.
The three key principles behind The Reading Shift are:
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Develop spoken and written language in unison, by emphasizing morphemes (the universal building blocks of words), phrases (the universal building blocks of sentences), and syntax—the blueprint for arranging morphemes, words, and phrases into sentences.
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Teach reading, spelling, and sentence writing as a single, interconnected process—not as separate skills. Students learn the linguistic system of patterns and relationships that forms the foundation of literacy.
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Enhance language develop with cognitive learning principles: Learning increasingly complex language requires stronger attention, reasoning, and problem-solving abilities. All activities in The Reading Shift are designed using evidence-based cognitive learning principles that enhance memory and strengthen learning.
Let's look at each of these principles, in depth.
Develop Spoken and Written Language in Unison
There are three major but often overlooked components of spoken and written language that every sentence in English (graphic). Learning how to use morphemes, phrases and sentence structure in a ever-growing manner is the key to mastering complex language.
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Morphemes: Every word, spoken or written, is composed of meaningful units called morphemes—the fundamental building blocks of words. Words are either morphemes by themselves, like teach and water, or are composed of a base morpheme and suffixes and prefixes, like re+teach+ing and con+struct+ion. Morphemes drive word recognition, spelling, and vocabulary growth
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Phrases are groups of words that contain either a noun or a verb, but not both. Phrases are the universal building blocks of oral and written sentences, and bridge the gap between individual words and full sentences. They also amplify the meaning of words. "The cold ice cream" carries a richer meaning than the isolated words. Phrases are also an essential component of reading and writing fluency.
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Syntax: Syntax is the arrangement of morphemes, words, and phrases to construct meaningful sentences. It is the level of language that matters most for reading and writing fluency, reading comprehension, and written expression. Ultimately, sentence-level skills strongly predict and largely determine overall text-level comprehension.
“[If] you want to turn on the language network in the brain, [instruction] must be syntactically structured.” Julie VanDyke
"Students who struggle with syntax struggle with comprehension, even when their decoding & vocabulary were accounted for." Nippold (2017)
Reading, Spelling & Writing as a Single Interconnected Process
The Reading Shift develops reading, spelling, and sentence writing as a single, interconnected process—not as separate skills. To easily accomplish this, we developed The Seven Layers of Literacy Lesson Plan.
We then created the 12-lesson Sparking the Reading Shift: Language-Literacy Enrichment, and the 16-lesson Sparking the Reading Shift: Language-Literacy Intervention. First, you'll see how to add complexity to lessons and then provide sample activities from Reading Shift.
First, Read, Spell and Understand Complex Words:
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Read Complex Words:
Rather than focus on just decoding, Reading Shift develops The Three Word Forms, combining phonemes (pronunciation), and graphemes and morphemes, which together provide spelling and meaning. -
Spell Complex Words
Next, students learn that every word in all the world's languages is either a morpheme, a meaningful chuck by itself, like water, power or teach, or contains a core morpheme call a base and suffixes and prefixes, as needed. They spell and read morphological word sums: con+struct+ion → construction un+heal+th+y → unhealthy -
Understand Complex Words
Next, Combine Words into Two Word Natural Pairs and Three Word Phrases
One or more words that contain a noun or a verb – not both
Phrases combine unrelated words into new concepts - Ice Cream
The Building Blocks of Sentences
Finally, Combine Phrases into Engaging Sentences
Practice developing reading and writing fluency which are overlapping skills, both linguistically and neurologically. Then develop sentence comprehension, the strongest predictor of text level comprehension.
Examples below.
Enhance Language Develop with Cognitive Learning Principles
I’m Bruce Howlett, host of the For the Love of Literacy podcast, where we explore cutting-edge research and innovative methods that unite language and literacy. I’m also a former research biologist and a "supposed-to-be" retired special education teacher. More importantly, I personally struggled for decades to read with stamina, spell complex words, and write cohesive sentences.
Five years ago, dissatisfied with both my students' progress and my own, I began researching advanced literacy methods alongside language and learning specialists. The result is The Seven Layers of Literacy Lesson Plan.
I also wanted my students to learn in an engaging way—without making instruction a repetitive, demotivating endurance contest. The key was to build activities that engage both their language abilities as well as them cognitively.
The result was 18 activities that form each lesson in Sparking the Reading Shift. Let me show you how these activities and the Seven Layers of Literacy use cognitive learning principles to develop an understanding and appreciation of complex written and spoken language.
Layer 2 Spell Complex Words
Practice Building Words with Morphemes - The Key to Spelling
All words are composed of morphemes, including a core morpheme called a base and prefixes and suffixes. Identifying morphemes in words is the key to reading, spelling and understanding complex words.
Uncover the Hidden Word Challenge: Students figure out how to identify the base morpheme in words . This is how all complex English words are are constructed.
Increased Complexity: There is no delay in learning to read and spelling words with multiple syllables and morphemes.
Day One Teaching Success: You simply show students how to circle the easy-to-read suffixes and prefixes which reveals the core morpheme, called a base, which all English words contain. The key to reading & spelling longer words.
Additional Spell It Activities: There are two more Spell Complex Words activities, one that introduces morphological word sums which divides words into their component morphemes - con + struct + ion
Layer 3 - Understand Complex Words
Learn how All Words are Composed of Morphemes
Build Bigger Words Challenge - Morphological Matrix
Understanding how words are composed of meaningful chunks called morphemes is the key to word recognition, vocabulary growth and spelling in English. Students simply draw lines between the affixes and the base, a core morpheme found in all words. Then they write the word as a word sum and as a whole word.
Increased Complexity: Students build vocabulary-enriching morphological word families.
Desirable Difficulty: Figure out how to combine prefixes and suffixes with base morphemes to build complex words.
Day One Teaching Success: You simply demonstrate how to combine the morphemes to make the first word and how to write them as word sums with + signs separating the morphemes.
Additional Mean It Activities: There are two additional morphological activities, in addition to the Spell Complex Words activities.
Layer 4 Create Rich Phrases
The Building Blocks of Sentences
Build a Three-Word Phrase Challenge: While most reading programs stick to word-level instruction--sometimes for months- students learn to build phrases during the first lesson. Phrases form a nice bridge between word study and sentence construction. More importantly, phrases are the building blocks of sentences. This activity involves retrieval practice. One information is taught, learning happens wht it is retrieved, rehearsed and applied in context.
Increased Complexity: Students immediately practice combining, spelling and reading words into phrases. Spelling the phrases solidifies them in memory.
Desirable Difficulty: Figure out how to build three word phrases. This is a language comprehension activity.
Day One Teaching Success:
Additional Combine It Activities: Sparking the Reading Shift includes a natural word pair building activity and a phrase comparison activity.
Layer 5 Create Engaging Sentences
Combine Complex Phrases into Sentences
Build a Sentence Challenge: Why teach students about words and how they join to phrases and then neglect sentence work? This activity is often used to assess syntactic, or sentence structure, abilities which is tied to language comprehension. I have never met a special education student who couldn't successfully complete this exercise on day one.
Increased Complexity: During the first lesson students are building complex sentences with two- and three-word phrases.
Desirable Difficulty: Figure out how to combine three scrambled phrases to make meaningful sentences. Enriches comprehension skills.
Day One Teaching Success: Students with language difficulties may need
Additional Activities: Sparking the Reading Shift includes two additional sentence construction activities that aid comprehension.
Layer 6 Fluency with Elaborate Sentences
Develop Reading & Writing Fluency Concurrently
Sentence Matrix Challenge: Both reading and writing fluency involve effortless assembling of phrases. In reading, this is called prosody.
Our brains actually assemble words into phrases before we speak.
In this activity, students get to pick which phrases to combine into sentences, which heightens engagement. This, too, is a language/reading comprehension activity as well as a good sense of syntax - sentence structure.
Increased Complexity: By the end of the first lesson students are independently combining complex phrases and writing complex sentences.
The Challenge: Figure out how to combine phrases into sentences.
Additional Sentence Fluency Activities including sentence pyramids and a phrase / prosody activity.
Layer 7 Comprehend Complex Sentences
Apply Spoken Language Comprehension to Written Language
Find the Hidden Meaning Challenge: Students answer grammatical questions to figure out the meaning of phrases. Nouns, verbs and prepositional phrases are core building blocks not just of sentences but of grammar, the blueprint for language. This strongly influences overall reading comprehension.
Increased Complexity: Sentence comprehension based on connecting spoken language skills, including grammar, one day one.
The Challenge: Figuring out the function of phrases in a sentence, a powerful way of building comprehension.
Additional Comprehension Activities: Sparking the Reading Shift includes paraphrasing and sentence combining activities for comprehension.
Sparking the Reading Shift
I consolidated the Seven Layers of Literacy Lesson Plan and the 18 activites into two streamlined programs: the 12-lesson Sparking the Reading Shift: Language-Literacy Enrichment and the 16-lesson Sparking the Reading Shift: Language-Literacy Intervention.
As you have seen, Sparking the Reading Shift builds reading, spelling, sentence writing, and comprehension skills in a logical and sensible manner.
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It is easy for educators, new teachers, and parents to use without training.
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Each page contains a ready-to-use word or sentence activity, complete with word lists and brief instructions.
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A 30-minute session once or twice a week is enough to produce noticeable growth quickly. There is no need to follow a fixed schedule, as spreading a lesson over a week or so also produces satisfactory results.
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This is a consumable workbook in which students continually read, spell, and write words, phrases, and sentences directly in the book.
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Language-Literacy Intervention ($32) contains 16 one-hour lessons. It begins with simpler words and progresses at a slower pace. It is widely used with students aged seven to seventeen who require extended support from a special education or reading teacher. 148 pages
Language-Literacy Enrichment ($20) is designed for students aged 6 to 60 who experience reading fluency, spelling, and/or sentence-writing difficulties, including students who read at grade level but do not enjoy reading.
If you are unsure which program to choose, email Bruce@ReadingShift.com or start with the Enrichment program. 130 pages
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 the 120-to-150-page books when choosing between the PDF and print version. US Priority Mail is only about $8.
Purchasers of print material are three times more likely to implement the instruction compared to digital downloads.
Email me with questions. Bruce@ReadingShift.com.
Sparking the Fluency Shift
Immediate, Successful & Motivating Fluency & Comprehension Development
I also realized that the controlled text in typical decodables and leveled readers didn't directly or explicitly develop book language. So, I created Sparking the Fluency Shift—a book featuring 36 short stories spanning early 1st-grade (~6 years old) to a solid 6th-grade reading level. Proficient readers typically read above grade level and for pleasure. So, I wanted to my students to have the opportunity to read at this level.
Rehearsal Practice: Every story is preceded by two pages of rehearsal activities, offering focused practice with challenging spellings, vocabulary, and sentence structures before students encounter them in the stories.
As a result, students read the stories with significantly greater fluency, comprehension, and enjoyment. Comprehension scores typically improve by over a grade level compared to a cold reading of the same material.
Allow me to demonstrate the benefits of The Seven Layers of Literacy Lesson Plan using activities shared across both versions of Sparking the Reading Shift. These activities are also used for rehearsal practice in Sparking the Fluency Shift, simply modified for oral reading.
Sparking the Fluency Shift ($24), a collection of 36 short stories, each preceded by rehearsal practice featuring pre-reading fluency and comprehension-boosting exercises. Students practice reading the more challenging spellings, longer words, unfamiliar vocabulary, and complex phrases and sentences before encountering them in the stories. As a result, they read the stories with significantly greater accuracy, fluency, comprehension, and enjoyment. Comprehension scores typically improve by a grade level or more compared to a cold reading of the same material.
The stories begin at a basic first-grade level (approximately age 6) and progress to a solid sixth grade reading level. This gives students the opportunity to advance to above-grade-level reading levels, just as their proficient peers do.
Each grade level contains up to eight stories. Each story is slightly but noticeably more challenging than the previous one, allowing students to confidently move up book levels more frequently. This provides much-needed motivation for both students and teachers alike.
For a free, three-story sample complete with rehearsal practice activities at the 1st, 3rd and 5th grade levels, click here
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