The Missing Piece

The Missing Piece

How to Make Wilson, Project Read,
and other Orton-Gillingham-based Reading Programs
More Effective and More Efficient

Add research-based activities that take only minutes a day to your Wilson or other Orton-Gillingham derived program to quickly increase the number of students who demonstrate proficiency on state exams.

The Basic Fact: Wilson, Project Read, and other Orton-Gillingham (OG) derived programs do not have materials and activities that develop automaticity at the critical points of the decoding process. The Fischer Decoding AutomaticityMaterialscan be used in conjunction with these programs to add this vital component for fluent reading.

Some Specifics (details below):

One missing critical component of most programs (other than Concept Phonics) is a set of materials and activities for developing orthographic automaticity. The Fischer Worksheets (part of Concept Phonicsand the Decoding Automaticity set) provide powerful, efficient automaticity drills on the orthographic units within words.
In addition to developing orthographic automaticity, struggling readers must synchronize their phonological processors with their orthographic processors in order to decode fast. The Fischer Contrast Cards (another part of Concept Phonicsand the Decoding Automaticity set) provide exercises for synchronizing these processors on the letter clusters so that students use the correct sound for that letter cluster.
Wilson, Project Read, and most other OG-derived programs do not develop sight-word automaticity on individual words efficiently. The Fischer Speed Drills for isolated words do this, and do it very well.

Details (numbered as above):

The orthographic processor is where and how the brain processes print when reading. It has to process the individual letters and the letter clusters that make individual sounds or clusters of sounds. Brain research conducted in the last ten years indicates that students with reading problems process print slowly and ineffectively.

An example of an automaticity drill is a worksheet that has students mark the vowels in closed and (vc) and magic-e (vce) syllables. Many students who have been in an OG-derived program perseverate on the short vowel sound when beginning to read vce words. Their orthographic processor has to become automatic at recognizing the vce pattern, which requires for the first time that they process the end of the word along with the vowel. Students are timed informally while doing the worksheet, being asked to do as many as they can in ___ seconds. The seconds will vary with the age of the student. (Brain research indicates that the visual pathway where orthographic processing takes place is not fully developed in normal readers until well after they begin school.)

Another example is processing the letter cluster that determines the sound of c. When the soft c is introduced, students can do the worksheet that requires them to mark the c with a k or s. Other worksheets have students mark letter clusters embedded in words. For instance, one set of worksheets has them mark digraphs; others have them mark vowel-r clusters and others have them mark vowel digraph and diphthong clusters. These can all be done at the time those units are taught in the OG program being used.

Considerable brain research conducted by Zvia Breznitz and others has indicated that one of the hallmarks of poor readers at all ages is the lack of synchronization of thephonological and orthographic processors. The Fischer Contrast Cards are designed specifically for this.

An example is the contrast of using the short vowel sound when reading closed syllables (vc) and the long vowel sound when reading magic-e (vce) syllables. The phonological processor has to become automatic at saying the long sound of the vowel for this orthographic pattern. When vce syllables have been introduced and students have marked the vowels on the worksheet for two or three 45-second sessions, they then respond to contrast cards, saying just the sound of the vowel. The contrast cards contain words so that the vowel cluster is embedded in the print that students will be required to process when they are reading. It takes less than one minute to do all five vowels.

Another example is the use of the soft c and g. After completing three or four 45-second sessions marking the worksheet, students use the contrast card to say the sound of c when it is followed by the vowels; they do the same for g. One card works on the ce-ca and the ge-ga contrast, another works on the ci-co and the gi-go contrast, and the third works on the cy-cu and the gy-gu contrast.

The Fischer Speed Drills serve to transform decodable words into sight words, so that students do not need to stop and sound them out or struggle to remember the irregular ones. The Speed Drills sets contain one-syllable words for each of the spelling patterns taught in any phonics program, along with the phonetically irregular words. These speed drills are extemely effective and efficient in building fluency.

Are these materials effective?

Yes! Teachers in resource rooms have gotten students up to grade level goals within a year.

How much time do they add to my teaching?

Kindergarten and first grade teachers get their lowest readers automatic on vowel sounds in less than five minutes a day by using these research-based activities.

Research by Dr. Fischer and othershas demonstrated with students as young as kindergarten that the long and short sounds for the vowels should be taught simultaneously. Dr. Fischer’s Decoding AutomaticityMaterialswill do this in just minutes a day.