SpellRead is a unique science-based phonological auditory training program for struggling readers. The program focuses on phonological automaticity and reading fluency while providing explicit comprehension and vocabulary instruction.
Aligned with current reading research and backed by independent research, SpellRead provides an integrated, multi-sensory approach that builds a student’s sound system and then bridges it with students’ oral language.
It’s never too late to learn!
Students hear, manipulate, and process sounds, and then master the relationships between sounds and letters. By working on mastering the sounds of the English language, beginning with those easiest to hear and manipulate to the most difficult, and by combining rigorous phonemic and phonetic activities with active reading and writing, SpellRead doesn’t just accommodate deficiencies, but changes how students read.
SpellRead reliably improves reading fluency and comprehension across diverse populations.
The SpellRead program is based on specific skill mastery and consists of 105 sequential lessons broken down into three phases:
Success at each lesson and phase of the SpellRead program is dependent on mastery of the preceding lessons and levels. As students’ word-level skills, fluency, automaticity, vocabulary, and comprehension develop, the emphasis, content, pacing, and complexity of reading instruction modulates over time. As word-reading efficiency is gained, the contribution of active decoding effort decreases (because it has become automatic) and the contribution of background knowledge, vocabulary, and broader language skills increases.
Phase A provides the foundation for the SpellRead program, training the auditory processing function of the brain to hear and manipulate the 44 sounds of English so that students develop a “sound processing reflex” - automatically and directly recognizing each sound without needing to make associations with rules that hinder automaticity.
Phase B builds on this foundation, teaching secondary spellings, consonant blends, syllabication, and auditory/visual automaticity to the two-syllable level.
Phase C continues the development of fluency with polysyllabic words and introduces the most common clusters (such as “tion” in “invention”) as well as, pronunciation and spelling of verb forms. Phase C is intensely language oriented and students apply their cumulative word-level knowledge from phases A and B.
SpellRead Instructional Cycle
Every instructional session is divided into three program elements.
1.Linguistic Foundations which forms the core of the SpellRead program, explicitly and systematically teaches students all the sounds and spellings that form the foundation of the phonetic and alphabetic system of English.
2.Active Reading is an opportunity for students to apply the skills that they develop during Linguistic Foundations as they become engaged in print. With a conversational approach, the teacher guides the use of strategies such as retelling, summarizing and determining the meaning of new vocabulary.
3.Writing Connections is purposeful writing by summarizing the Active Reading text, recalling story events, retrieving facts, sequencing, summarizing and determining the main idea. Students write freely without worrying about spelling, punctuation, and grammar. As they gain confidence, they will become more aware of writing conventions and apply them to their writing.
