Welcome to Sparking the Reading Shift. Despite our best efforts over 70% of students have limited reading, spelling and sentence writing abilities.This is regrettable as recent research breakthroughs and innovative methods provide near-universal access to these abilities.

Our brief enrichment and intervention programs incorporate these methods by:

Treating reading, spelling and sentence writing as a single intertwined ability
Using the universal method by which all students on the planet learn to read
Scaffolding instruction so that students with limited decoding and spelling abilities read and write complex sentences by the end of the first lesson.

These groundbreaking principles come together in The Seven Layers of Literacy Lesson Plan, which turns teaching and learning literacy into an engaging and enriching pastime.

Seven Layers of Literacy

Innovative methods arising from recent research discoveries offer a new and refreshing approach to literacy instruction. This approach, which I call the Reading Shift, starts by teaching reading, spelling, and sentence writing as a single interconnected process, not as isolated skills.

Decoding, multisyllabic word, spelling, fluency, and vocabulary instruction, as well as sentence reading, writing and comprehension, are taught together in each lesson. By integrating this abilities students discover the logic and order of our writing system, reducing stress and confusion.

The Reading Shift enables a wide range of students, from the dyslexic to the disengaged, to read and spell challenging words in complex sentences by the end of the first lesson. Emerging readers, students with limited decoding skills and secondary students who are underperforming in spelling and writing all benefit from this approach.

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The Reading Shift not only unifying reading, spelling and sentence writing, but gives students a new perspective on words, phrases and sentences—the building blocks of literacy:

Words become more than just letter patterns and syllables to pronounce. They are seen as morphemes, the meaningful building blocks that compose all words. In English, word recognition, spelling and meaning are all driven by morphemes. All words are either a morpheme by themselves, like teach, power and hope, or contain a core morpheme, called a base, with “mini-morphemes,” suffixes and prefixes, added as needed. including struct+ur+al, re+con+struct and in+struct+ion (build knowledge). Words are then learned as parts of morphological families, sharing a core spelling and relative meaning. The base struct, which means to build, has 75 family members.

Phrases, groups of words that contain either a noun or a verb but not both, turn words into concepts and ideas. Students learn to read and understand words in meaningful groups which enhances sentence comprehension. For example, Ice cream has a richer and deeper meaning than its individual words. Phrases’ meaning-building power makes them the universal building blocks of sentences. Phrases also play a big role in fluency development, in prosody, or expressive phrase reading.

Sentences, complete ideas or thoughts, are the layer of language that matters most for reading comprehension, fluency and written expression. The key to sentence learning is syntax which provides the blueprint for arranging morphemes, words, and phrases into meaningful sentences. Without syntax, sentences don't make sense – “Slowly student the talked kind lunch during.”

The Reading Shift unifies reading, spelling and writing using The Seven Layers of Literacy Lesson Plan (see graphic). The seven layers develop morpheme, phrase and sentence abilities in small and achievable steps. Each successive layer is only slightly more challenging and reinforces the previous layer. This results in noticeable success by the end of the first lesson. The Seven Layers are:

Layer 1 – Combine Morphemes and Graphemes: Students start by combining graphemes and phonemes to read and spell base morphemes - /a/ + /k/ + /t/ → act
Layer 2 – Identify Morphemes in Longer Words by analyzing morphological word families: react, action, acting, acted
Layer 3 – Combine Morphemes by adding prefixes and suffixes to a base morpheme—the way that all longer words are constructed.
re + act + ing → reacting. Unlike syllable instruction, students read and spell complex words immediately.
Layer 4 – Combine Two Words to Make Natural Word Pairs, or collocations, which abound in English – acting kindly, act out, acting funny.
Layer 5 – Combine Three Words into Phrases forming the building blocks of sentences – acted very kindly, the new student, in the class.
Layer 6 – Combine Phrases to Make Complex Sentences – The new student / acted very kindly / in the class.
Layer 7 – Develop Reading and Writing Fluency Concurrently as current research shows that they are really the same process.

The Seven Layers of Literacy Lesson Plan was inspired by David Share’s Blueprint for a Universal Theory of Learning to Read. Share shows that all students learn to read the various types of written languages using the combining principle. “Novice” readers combine phonemes and graphemes to spell morphemes, so words are easily pronounced. Students advance to the “expert morphological stage” where words are read automatically and with meaning. Then, in all languages, students learn to combine words into phrases, and phrases into sentences.

I created Sparking the Reading Shift to make this transformative approach available to my students and all underperforming readers, spellers and writers. Each lesson in the twelve-lesson enrichment version and the sixteen-lesson intervention follows the seven-layers lesson plan. Fewer lessons are needed due to the high level of integration. Success is assured as students are constantly reading, spelling and writing. Each layer introduces a slightly more complex literacy concept which also accelerates growth. Students soon enjoy reading and write willingly.

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Why I Value This Approach

I'm Bruce Howlett, a special education teacher and a former research biologist. I also host the For the Love of Literacy Podcast Spotify Apple Podcasts, where we discuss innovative language, literacy and learning methods based on current research and innovative methods.

These issues are personal as I struggled with reading, spelling and writing skills well into my forties. I then used my research background to create lessons that are used throughout the English speaking word--including the largest volunteer reading initiative in the U.S.

However, spelling, sentence writing and complex text still presented difficulties. So, four years ago, I threw out decades of lessons and decided to build new ones based solely on current research breakthroughs and emerging approaches, outlined above.

With the help of my podcast guests, I incorporated this learning into Sparking the Reading Shift and Sparking the Fluency Shift. Below is a Reading Shift lesson, followed by an explanation of Fluency Shift reading practice. My six-to-sixteen-year-old students now fully enjoy reading and willingly engage in classroom writing assignments.

And now in my seventies, I read constantly, enjoy writing and spelling no longer disrupts my thought process. There is no reason for students to struggle like I did.

Layer One
Reading & Spelling Single Morpheme Words

The Challenge - figure out how sound, spelling and meaning work together to create new words that are easy to read accurately and with understanding. .

The Method -- Phoneme substitution word chains - The student shift a word's spelling and pronunciation to create a new meaningful word, a morpheme

Strengthens: decoding, segmentation and blending, spelling and word recognition.

Sparking the Reading Shift contains two additional word recognition activities.

“Reading words and spelling words are two sides of a coin.” - Linnea Ehri

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Layer Two
Recognizing Morpheme Patterns

The Challenge - figure out how to identify the base morpheme as well as common prefixes and suffixes. Discover how all longer English words are are constructed. .

The Method - Morphological Analysis - Circle the prefixes and suffixes, revealing the base word. They write the base, spell each word as a "word sum" and use the word in a sentence.

Strengthens: Decoding, spelling, multisyllabic word reading, sentence writing and vocabulary.

Layer Three
Building Poly-Morphemic Words

The Linguistic Challenge -- figure out how to combine prefixes and suffixes with base morphemes to build complex words.

Morphological Word Sums

Students read and then rewrite word sums, words divided into morphemes, as whole words. The words are grouped into morphological word families.

Morphological Matrix

Students link suffixes and prefixes to a base word, write the word as a word sum and then as a whole word.

Strengthens: Decoding, spelling, multisyllabic word reading and vocabulary

There are five morphological activities in Sparking the Reading Shift.

There is an almost perfect correlation between the growth of morphological
knowledge and vocabulary knowledge. Wagner et al. (2007)

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Layer Four
Building Natural Word Pairs

The Linguistic Challenge: Now that students have a handle on single words it's time to combine them into phrases.

Two Word Natural Pairs (Collocations)
Students must figure out which two word combinations make sense.

Three Word Phrase Building
Next, students make phrases, the building blocks of sentences. Students enjoy this challenge task as it respects their cognitive & language abilities.

Strengthens: Decoding, word recognition, language abilities, spelling, writing and vocabulary

Layer Five
Connecting Phrases to Sentences

Linguistic Challenge -- figure out the correct order of phrases to make a meaningful sentence. This activity is often used to assess sentence comprehension.

Students figure out how to combine phrases into meaningful sentences. Then they write the phrases in sentence (syntactic) order.

Strengthens: Spelling, linguistic reasoning, sentence writing and comprehension. There are 5 phrase activities in Sparking the Reading Shift.

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Layer Six
Writing & Understanding Complex Sentences

The Linguistic Challenge -
Find the Hidden Meaning Challenge has students identify the meaning of phrases in a sentence, a powerful way of building comprehension.

The Build a Better Sentence Challenge is a paraphrasing activity, where students figure out how to swap phrases to change the meaning of a sentence. This deeper understanding of sentences is strongly correlated with text comprehension.

Strengthens: Spelling, reading and writing fluency, sentence writing and comprehension.

Layer Seven
Word, Phrase & Sentence Fluency

The Linguistic Challenge - Read, spell and write sentence fluently.

Sentence Matrix Challenge - Students combine phrases into sentences of their choosing. Quick writes are a powerful way of improving writing.

7th Layer Read-Spell_Write Challenge - The final activity provides students with a chance to show themselves how far they have progressed. The words in black are read, while the blue words are read and written. For example, in the third row, the student would say, "act plus ing, kind + ly is acting kindly," then the student would write acting kindly.

Strengthens: Spelling, fluency, sentence writing and comprehension, as well as greater motivation and engagment.

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Enhanced Fluency and Comprehension Practice
Sparking the Fluency Shift

I was dissatisfied with the progress my students were making reading decodables and leveled books. I also wanted to bring the advantages of the new perspective on words, morphemes, phrases and syntax to their reading practice. So, I created Sparking the Fluency Shift, ($24) a collection of 36 one-page stories that grow in complexity and length. The stories start at a basic first grade (~6 y/o) and end at a solid sixth grade level. This gives students the opportunity to read above grade level, as all their proficient peers do.

There are up to eight stories per grade level. Each story is slightly, but noticeably more difficult than the previous one, so readers often progress to a more difficult story every few weeks. This provides much needed motivation.

Each story is preceded by two pages of rehearsal practice, pre-reading fluency and comprehension-boosting exercises. Students practice reading the more difficult spellings, longer words, vocabulary, and complex phrases and sentences before they encounter them in the stories.

In his new book, Leveled Reading, Leveled Lives, Timothy Shanahan shows that the greatest growth in comprehension and reading engagement comes from text that contain challenging words, sentences and vocabulary. Sparking the Fluency Shift provides these challenges. Shanahan also promotes rehearsal practice, which he says raises comprehension scores by a grade level or more over a cold reading of the same material. The topics and the content for the stories were chosen by my very judgmental preteen and teenage students. The topics range from making friends and resolving conflicts, to fantasy stories about time travel.

For a free, three-story sample complete with rehearsal practice activities at the 1st, 3rd and 5th grade levels, click here

Sparking the Reading Shift

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As you have seen, Sparking the Reading Shift is committed to advancing students' literacy skills using advanced research and innovative methods.

Each page is a ready-to-use word or sentence activity, complete with word lists and brief instruction.
A thirty-minute session once or twice a week is enough to quickly produce noticeable growth.
There is no need to stick to a fixed schedule as spreading a lesson out over a week or so produces satisfactory results.
This is a consumable workbook, as students continually read, spell and write words, phrases and sentences directly in the book.

Sparking the Reading Shift: Language-Literacy Enrichment ($24) and Sparking the Reading Shift: Language-Literacy Intervention ($32) both use the same activities and follow the Seven Layers of Literacy Lesson Plan.

Language-Literacy Intervention contains 16 one-hour lessons, starts with simpler words and progresses more slowly. It is widely used with students aged seven to seventeen who have required extended support from a special education or reading teacher. 160 pages

Language-Literacy Enrichment is for students aged six to sixty who have any manner of reading fluency, spelling and/or sentence writing difficulties, including students reading at grade level but not enjoying it. If you are unsure email Bruce@ReadingShift.com or try the Enrichment program. 130 pages

Sparking the Reading Shift is used for RTI, or as supplemental instruction. It is compatible with the full range of literacy approaches. There is no prep involved and it is designed for new teachers and homeschooling parents to use without training.

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. Email me with questions. Bruce@ReadingShift.com.