Your Students Will Progress from Reading Simple Words to Writing & Understanding Complex Sentences Today

Did you know that reading, spelling, and sentence-writing difficulties stem from the same source? Not only do these abilities share overlapping skills, but they also rely on the same underlying language processes. In fact, recent research clearly demonstrates the benefits of teaching these critical components of literacy as an interconnected whole, rather than as isolated skills.

When literacy components are taught concurrently, students—including those with limited decoding and spelling skills—can successfully read multisyllabic words, spell complex vocabulary, and write sophisticated sentences by the end of their very first lesson.

This isn’t magic. When reading instruction is strengthened with spelling and sentence-writing practice, literacy skills develop in unison. Reading accuracy, fluency, comprehension, and written expression all flourish simultaneously— achieving the primary goals of literacy instruction all at once.

To give my students and fellow educators easy access to this groundbreaking approach, I created the Seven Layers of Literacy Lesson Plan. In every lesson, students progress systematically from word building to sentence comprehension and composition.

Because each layer builds on the previous one in a sequential, scaffolded manner, students are continuously reading, spelling, and writing ever-more complex words and sentences. The result is immediate, noticeable progress that motivates both students and teachers alike.

The first layer contains word building activities that tie decoding, spelling and word meaning together in longer single syllable words:

Layer 1 – Build Progressively Longer Words: Instead of learning simple CVC words students start by practicing building successively longer words: a → an → and → band → brand → brands

The next two layers involve what researcher Maryanne Wolf calls the "secret sauce" of literacy—morphemes. The meaning of every word in English is conveyed through these building blocks. Every word is either a standalone morpheme—like teach, young, or power—or is built from a core morpheme with prefixes and suffixes added as needed. Morphemes drive word reading, spelling, and vocabulary acquisition.

Layer 2 – Identify Morphemes - Building Blocks of Words: Students then learn to recognize morphemes, the meaningful parts that form all English words: re+spect+ful spect+at+or dis+re+spect
Layer 3 – Build Complex Words with Multiple Morphemes: Next, Students learn how all longer words in English are con + struct + ed → constructed from "mini-morphemes," suffixes and prefixes, and a central morpheme, called a base. With the Seven Layers Lesson Plan students learn to read and spell complex words during the first lesson.

Once students learn how to build words, they are ready to combine them into phrases, which amplify meaning. A phrase is simply a group of words containing either a noun or a verb. More importantly, phrases serve as the universal building blocks of sentences.

Layer 4 – Combine Words into Phrases: With a good handle on simple words, students learn the power of combining them into two- and three-word phrases: ice + cream → ice cream the + young + student → the young student
Layer 5 -- Sequence Phrases into Rich Sentences: Next, students combine phrases into sentences:
The young student + ate ice cream + in the park.

Finally, students practice combining phrases into sentences. The process of arranging words and phrases is called syntax. It is the level of language that matters most for reading fluency, written expression, and overall comprehension.

Layer 6 – Write and Understand Complex Sentences: Who? The young student. Was doing what? Eating ice cream. Where? In the park.
Layer 7 – Build Reading & Writing Fluency in Unison: Finally, students practice phrase reading (prosody) and writing together—a proven way to increase both fluency and comprehension.
The young student / ate ice cream / in the park.
The young student ate ice cream in the park.

Focusing on morphemes as the building blocks of words, phrases as the building blocks of sentences, and syntax as the blueprint for building rich, meaningful sentences unlocks dramatic improvements in reading fluency, written expression, and comprehension—especially for students who have struggled with literacy for years.

Getting Started is Ridiculously Easy

Cover Intervention Second Edition 3-26.png

I'm Bruce Howlett, host of the For the Love of Literacy podcast. For decades, I personally struggled with reading fluency, spelling complex words, and sentence writing. Driven to help my disabled, delayed, and disengaged students, I initially created lessons based on phonemic awareness, speech-to-print, and orthographic mapping. While these methods benefited tens of thousands of students, they ultimately provided me with partial relief.

Reading and writing only became truly meaningful and enjoyable when I studied with experts in morphology, syntax, and language comprehension. With their guidance, I created the Seven Layers of Literacy Lesson Plan. I consolidated these dynamic student lessons into a 16-lesson intervention and a 12-lesson enrichment program called Sparking the Reading Shift.

I also know firsthand the toll that endless workshops and elaborate training take on overwhelmed teachers. That’s why all the training you need is built directly into the examples below. Each page in Sparking the Reading Shift is a ready-to-use activity—complete with instructions, word lists, and plenty of room for students to read, spell, and write.

This isn’t a passive, fill-in-the-blanks workbook. Instead, the activities are intentionally designed using proven cognitive learning principles:

Attention-focusing Activities: A dozen varied, two-to-four-minute activities per lesson keep students focused, engaged, and motivated.
Desirable Difficulty: To learn, students need instruction that doesn't explain everything, requiring them to figure out critical points.
Retrieval Practice: Frequent opportunities to recall, rehearse, and apply new concepts ensure long-term retention.
Deliberate Practice: Highly targeted activities develop specific language and literacy skills, one layer at a time. Nothing is taught that doesn’t actively advance student understanding.

Sparking the Reading Shift will you hours each week by seamlessly integrating reading, spelling, sentence writing, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension into one streamlined instructional block

Below are the hardest activities to teach in each layer. You will figure them out in under a minute. A few pointers:

The text in blue is the student response.
Don't worry if the words seem too hard. The sequential, scaffolded approach allows students to read, spell and write complex words in the first lesson.
Notice that students are always reading, spelling and writing.

Layer One
Build Progressively Longer Words

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

The Activity: Word Chains -Manipulating graphemes (letters) and phonemes (sounds) in linked words is more powerful than learning them in isolation. The student shift a word's spelling and pronunciation to create a new and longer or shorter word. All words are both pronounced and spelled.

The Teacher Explains: “This is trip. Tell me the word you get if you change the /i/ to a /a/. Then say the word real slowly as you write the letters for the sounds - ttt--rrr--aaa-ppp. Then write the word.” Help with spelling and pronunciation, as needed.

Note: The upper left hand table contains all the words and sound shifts.

No need to read the instructions more than once or twice.

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

Layer Two
Identify Morphemes - Building Blocks of Words

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 Activity: Uncover the Hidden Word. Students simply circles the prefixes and suffixes in a word, revealing the base word. They write the base, then spell each word as a "word sum" and finally, use the word in a sentence.

The Teacher Explains: "If you circle the prefixes and suffixes in each group of words, you will find a core word, a base, which carries the meaning. Write that word in the “What is the base?” box. Then re-write the word as a word sum with a + sign between the parts. Finally, complete the sentence to show that you understand the word. Add at least three words."

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

Layer Three
Build Complex Words with Multiple Morphemes

The Challenge - Figure Out how to combine prefixes and suffixes with base morphemes to build complex words.

The Activity: Build Bigger Words using a morphological matrix, a three column table with prefixes, a base and suffixes. Students link suffixes and prefixes to a base word, write the word as a word sum and then as a whole word.

The Teacher Explains: “We’re going to build words using morphemes, the meaningful parts of all words. You are going to make words that are related to help. I’ll show you how to make the first word, in plus form - inform , by drawing connecting lines. Then you will write the word, first using the + sign to separate the parts, and then write the whole word. Can you find more words this way? If you can’t find eight words, I’ll give you suggestions."

Notice: The upper righthand corner table contains a list of suggested words.

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)

Layer Four
Combine Words into Phrases

The Challenge - Figure Out how to make meaningful three word phrases

The Activity: Build a Meaningful Three Word Phrase by figuring out which word makes sense inside a phrase.

The Teacher Explains: "Read the words in the right column. Then draw lines connecting each word to the phrase where it fits best. Now, write the word in the blank and then the three-word phrase in the right column. When you have completed all five phrases, read them in order.

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

There are four different phrase building activities in Sparking the Reading Shift

Layer Five
Sequence Phrases into Rich Sentences

The Challenge - Figure Out the correct order of phrases to make a meaningful sentence. This activity is often used to assess sentence comprehension.

The Activity: Build a Sentence Challenge - Students figure out how to combine three scrambled phrases to make meaningful sentences. Then they write the phrases in sentence (syntactic) order.

The Teacher Explains: "First, read the phrases. Next, figure out which phrases can be combined into a meaningful sentence. Draw lines to connect these phrases. Finally, writes the sentence on the lines, below.”

Strengthens: Spelling, sentence writing and comprehension.
There are 4 phrase activities in Sparking the Reading Shift.

Layer Six
Write & Understand Complex Sentences

The Challenge - Figure Out the meaning of phrases in a sentence, a powerful way of building comprehension.

The Activity: Find the Hidden Meaning Challenge - students answer grammatical questions to figure out the meaning of phrases.

The Teacher Explains: "Sentences are built from phrases, groups of words that provide meaningful information. These sentences are divided into three phrases, that tell us who or what, the action and when or where. Read the sentence then figure out what the phrase is about, then write it on the correct line. If you want, I’ll read the sentence for you.”

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

Layer Seven
Build Reading & Writing Fluency in Unison

The Challenge - Figure Out How to Make Three Phrase Sentences

The Activity: Sentence Matrix Challenge - Students combine phrases into sentences of their choosing. Quick writes are powerful way of improving writing accuracy and fluency in a meaningful manner.

The Teacher Explains: "Pick one phrase from each column and combine them into complete sentences. Every sentence must include the phrase in bold. Don't Forget to capitalize and the period."

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

Enhanced Fluency and Comprehension Practice
Sparking the Fluency Shift

A great way to transform reading skills into fluent, meaningful literacy competency is to practice them in connected text. However, text that is too difficult will only frustrate developing readers. A scaffolded, step-by-step approach helps ensure that they will make noticeable, continuous progress.

To provide my students with enriched reading practice, I created "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.

This approach also moves readers into richer and more complex texts, which is essential for long-term growth in fluency and comprehension. Elfrieda Hiebert’s Teaching Words and How They Work and Timothy Shanahan’s Leveled Reading, Leveled Lives both demonstrate the importance of practicing with complex texts to support literacy development. They emphasize that reading above-grade-level text not only strengthens comprehension but also increases enjoyment. Decodable texts and many leveled books often lack the complex characters and plots that engage and excite readers.

The topics and content of the stories were chosen by my very opinionated preteen and teenage students. The topics range from making friends and resolving conflicts to fantasy adventures involving time travel.

Sparking the Fluency Shift includes two pages of teaching suggestions. However, parents and new teachers consistently report that they can begin using the rehearsal activities and stories immediately and with confidence.

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

Cover Enrichment Second Edition 3-26.png

Sparking the Reading Shift

As you have seen, Sparking the Reading Shift builds reading, spelling, sentence writing, and comprehension skills in a logical and sensible manner.

It is easy for educators, new teachers, and parents to use without training.
Each page contains a ready-to-use word or sentence activity, complete with word lists and brief instructions.
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.
This is a consumable workbook in which students continually read, spell, and write words, phrases, and sentences directly in the book.

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 is widely used with approaches as different as Orton-Gillingham and Balanced Literacy.

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

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.