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Alignment with Reading First “Components of Effective
Reading Programs”

The Reading First legislation requires that schools receiving Reading First funding implement programs that incorporate “five essential components of effective reading instruction” derived from “scientifically-based reading research.” Success for All is built around these five components, as follows.

1. Phonemic Awareness

The ability to hear, identify, and manipulate the individual sounds—phonemes—in spoken words. Phonemic awareness is the understanding that the sounds of spoken language work together to make words.

Success for All First has a strong emphasis on phonemic awareness in its new kindergarten program, KinderCorner, in line with the requirements of Reading First. KinderCorner initially emphasizes phonemic awareness in fingerplays, rhymes, songs, and games in which children learn how to manipulate the sounds in words. Program components that introduce beginning reading instruction include auditory blending and segmenting and sound manipulation to help children hear the separate sounds in the words that contain the particular phonemes. Students use games such as Alphie Talk and Sound Fingers to gain individual fluency with blending and segmenting.

2. Phonics

The understanding that there is a predictable relationship between phonemes—the sounds of spoken language—and graphemes—the letters and spellings that represent those sounds in written language. Readers use these relationships to recognize familiar words accurately and automatically and to decode unfamiliar words.

Success for All’s beginning reading programs focus on a systematic, synthetic phonics approach for grades K–1. Specifically for Reading First, we have added a new component, called FastTrack Phonics. This component introduces letter sounds in a rapid, engaging format at the beginning of reading instruction. FastTrack Phonics includes brief video vignettes, called the Animated Alphabet, to help children make solid associations between letter shapes and letter sounds. Students then move into phonetic readers that introduce sounds and sound blending strategies step by step, adding one letter sound in each story.

Children learn the sounds and sound-blending strategies in fast-paced group lessons, practice them with partners, and then apply them in stories with a very high proportion of decodable words. Children know that every word they encounter is decodable using the letters they have learned, unless it is one of a small set of sight words that they have been taught. The program emphasizes short vowels initially and then introduces long vowels and vowel diagraphs. Teacher text and pictures, called “readles,” provide context for the phonetic stories to make them engaging and meaningful. The children take home and keep these little books which are often the only books they own. They practice reading these books to their family members for homework.

Children build their emerging decoding skills using Share Sheets, which they complete in structured dyads. Share Sheets give children practice with phonemes, decodable words, sight words, and brief sentences, all coordinated with the decodable stories.

3. Vocabulary Development
Development of stored information about the meanings and pronunciation of words necessary for communication. There are four types of vocabulary:

• Listening vocabulary—the words needed to understand what is heard
• Speaking vocabulary—the words used when speaking
• Reading vocabulary—the words needed to understand what is read
• Writing vocabulary—the words used in writing

Success for All emphasizes all forms of vocabulary development, at all levels. In kindergarten, KinderCorner provides thematic units that build children’s background knowledge and vocabulary, emphasizing science and social studies topics relevant to the children’s lives, such as body awareness and communication. All of the literature and activities are integrated around a common theme, providing a meaningful context and repetition necessary for vocabulary acquisition. A program called BookEnds, used in kindergarten and 1st grade, introduces vocabulary concepts, such as colors, shapes, occupations, seasons, senses, animals, and plants, in a fast-paced, systematic series of daily activities. Story Telling and Retelling (STaR), also used at the K–1 level, involves teachers reading books to children, with a major emphasis on vocabulary development.

This process continues in grades 2–3 with a Listening Comprehension program. At the 2nd-grade level and above, children work together on structured vocabulary development activities that culminate in writing “meaningful sentences,” sentences that show the meaning of vocabulary words that are introduced in children’s stories, in basals or trade books. Writing and writing vocabulary are emphasized in grades K–3. Writing from the Heart introduces writing in grades K–2, using an informal writing process approach. Then Writing Wings is used starting in 3rd grade with a more formal writing process, with children writing multiple drafts of compositions in partnership with a peer response group. Writing vocabulary is also an emphasis in story-related writing activities that are part of Reading Roots and Reading Wings in grades 1–3.

4. Reading Fluency, Including Oral Reading Skills

Fluency is the ability to read text accurately and quickly. It provides a bridge between word recognition and comprehension. Fluent readers recognize words and comprehend at the same time.

It is not enough for children to be able to decode. They must decode rapidly enough to facilitate comprehension of the text. To this end, Success for All places a strong emphasis on fluency. Children in grades K–3 engage in an activity called “partner reading.” Working in pairs, children take turns reading to each other, alternating pages. The emphasis of this oral reading is building fluency and automaticity, as well as learning to read with expression and confidence. While children are engaged in partner reading, teachers take children aside to carry out one-to-one oral reading assessments, which include assessments of fluency, accuracy, and comprehension.

Success for All is also introducing additional elements focused on building fluency and automaticity. The incorporation of formal tracking of growth in fluency and expression will motivate students to read frequently and to monitor their fluency as they read.

5. Reading Comprehension Strategies

Strategies for understanding, remembering, and communicating with others about what has been read. Comprehension strategies are sets of steps that purposeful, active readers use to make sense of text.

Comprehension is the ultimate goal of reading and is a key focus of Success for All at all grade levels. In particular, Success for All incorporates direct teaching of metacognitive comprehension strategies, such as retelling, prediction, summarization, use of graphic organizers, question generation, SQ3R, and self-assessment.

In Story Tree (kindergarten) and Story Telling and Retelling (STaR; 1st grade), teachers read stories to children and then give them 3 Success for All–Reading First opportunities to retell the stories, to take picture cards representing the main elements of the story and put them in sequential order, and to predict the outcomes of stories. The children also dramatize the stories and complete story maps to learn the main elements of each story.

STaR becomes Listening Comprehension at the 2nd-grade level. It continues a focus on prediction, adding a focus on identifying characters, settings, problems, and problem solutions in narratives; use of graphic organizers to represent the content of expository and narrative texts; and our own version of SQ3R called SQRRRL, for Survey, Question, Read, Restate, and Review what you Learned. Starting at the 2nd-grade reading level, Success for All uses “Treasure Hunts,” which ask children to answer questions about the main elements of the stories they are reading, to make predictions about how the stories’ problems will be resolved, to summarize stories, and to write their own brief compositions in connection with the stories. Students work on Treasure Hunts in structured, heterogeneous cooperative learning teams of four members. Treasure Hunts are written to accompany all widely-used basal series, including the new Open Court, Houghton Mifflin, and Harcourt basals written for the California and Florida state adoptions. In addition, Treasure Hunts exist for hundreds of narrative and expository trade books, from 1st- to 8th-grade reading levels. For several of the larger states, Treasure Hunts have been adapted to the specific standards and assessments used in the states.

In grades 2 and above, Success for All provides reading comprehension exercises focused on specific comprehension skills, such as finding the main idea and understanding fact vs. opinion, cause and effect, figurative language, and words in context. Again, these reading comprehension units are used in cooperative teams, which prepare their members for assessments that they take individually.

English Language Learners
Success for All has a set of additional components designed to increase the reading vocabulary of English language learners being taught in English, and to prepare them for the language they will encounter in KinderRoots and Reading Roots (grades K–1). This English as a Second Language (ESL) adaptation includes suggestions to teachers to use such proven strategies as Total Physical Response and realia to introduce vocabulary, and concept cards to show pictures of words used in the KinderRoots and Reading Roots stories. In addition, Success for All introduces a series of video vignettes, brief skits that introduce the vocabulary in the stories children are about to read. These vignettes, called Word Plays, can also be used with English proficient children, who can also benefit from the visual, compelling presentations of vocabulary that may be new to many young children.