Building Bridge to Reading (Part 2)

This blog post highlights the critical role of foundational skills in literacy and introduces Bridge to Reading, a curriculum that merges phonemic awareness and phonics instruction to support educators and enhance students’ reading abilities. The program is designed for a concise 30-minute daily instruction, providing teachers with research-backed resources to improve student’s reading skills and promote a lifelong love for reading and writing.

Table of Contents

• Our Guiding Questions
• Supporting Teacher Development
• Following Reading Research
• Phonemic Awareness  
• Phonics 
• Sound Articulation
• Phoneme-Grapheme Connections  
• Explicit Instruction
• School to Home Connection
• Developing Independent Readers
• References

Foundational skills are more important than ever.

The most recent NAEP scores show that literacy rates over the last 30 years have remained unchanged. For many, this is a wake-up call, but for many educators, this is a reality that is witnessed firsthand every day.

Research shows us that nearly all children can be taught to read by the end of third grade with direct, explicit, differentiated instruction (Torgeson 2009); however, the 2022 NAEP scores continue to show 66% of 4th-grade students reading below a proficient level.

So, the question stands: How can we transform our literacy practices to meet the needs of our learners?

National assessment trends reveal that a lack of foundational literacy skills remains a critical issue at the end of third grade. In order to eradicate these daunting statistics, we aimed to put tools in teachers’ hands to address this crucial component to fight our country’s literacy crisis.

Our new curriculum, Bridge to Reading, combines the trusted Heggerty phonemic awareness lessons with explicit phonics instruction and provides teachers with the tools and strategies they need to teach children to read using effective, science-based methods.

Our Guiding Questions

Our team’s thought process while writing Bridge to Reading was grounded in the following questions:

• What can we put into the hands of educators that will build their capacity to apply the science of reading research?
•  What if a foundational skills curriculum could go beyond the what to get to the why behind the lessons?
•  How can we support delivery methods so students can more quickly grasp abstract phonic concepts to become skilled readers?

These questions led us to create an intentional design for Bridge to Reading that is research-based and builds students’ knowledge.

Bridge to Reading includes all the components teachers need to provide comprehensive foundational skills instruction in 30 minutes each day. We know that instructional time is valuable, and we want to maximize the impact within the literacy block.

Each Bridge to Reading lesson includes 6-8 phonemic awareness skills that lead into systematic phonics lessons. Student practice pages, decodable texts, multi-sensory learning aids, and progress-monitoring tools allow for students to apply what they’ve learned and allow for teachers to have a window into students’ understanding.

The print and digital resources provide support through professional learning and empower you, as the educator, to provide differentiated instruction to meet the needs of all learners.

The teacher editions provide clear language and guidance for instruction, as well as specific implementation strategies to support teachers’ use of the curriculum in both whole group and small group instruction.

? Free Webinar: Bridge to Reading: A Closer Look at Heggerty’s NEW Foundational Skills Kit. Watch this informative and engaging webinar to discover how Bridge to Reading can help your students bridge to reading success!

Supporting Teacher Development

Bridge to Reading takes the guesswork out of foundational skills. We focus on helping teachers and students understand why instruction in both phonemic awareness and phonics is essential. The Bridge to Reading curriculum provides everything teachers need to implement daily whole group phonemic awareness and phonics lessons and can be implemented seamlessly alongside a core curriculum.

Many members of the Heggerty team have been classroom teachers, literacy coaches, and/or reading specialists. In these roles, we used a variety of curricula and resources to provide reading instruction for the students in our classrooms. As we planned for Bridge to Reading, we knew we wanted to create something that teachers would find accessible for instruction and, at the same time, provide the teacher with the why behind the instruction.

Unlike other phonics curricula, Bridge to Reading goes beyond the script to help teachers and students understand why phonics instruction matters. Teachers will find opportunities to expand their professional knowledge daily and build confidence as literacy educators.

The Bridge to Reading team intentionally created a curriculum that balances the latest research with the realities of the classroom. “Doing more” doesn’t mean giving more time. It doesn’t mean spending your nights planning new lessons or attending multiple days of professional development. Knowing the many stressors teachers face first-hand (Travers, 2017), we want teachers to have the tools they need to provide comprehensive foundational skills instruction.

For twenty years, teachers have loved the Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Curriculum for its accessible instructional model, as it was first created to meet the needs of students in a 1st-grade classroom. This same energy and expertise have now been expanded in the Heggerty Bridge to Reading program to offer teachers explicit instruction in both phonemic awareness and phonics in order to help all students become readers.

Bridge to Reading’s Teacher’s Editions focuses on building teacher knowledge and providing a comprehensive scope and sequence with explicit language and guidance for Tier 1 instruction.

Each daily phonemic awareness lesson includes eight phonemic awareness skills, providing practice with the skills of Rhyme, Phoneme Isolation, Blending, Segmenting, and Manipulation. The lessons include teacher support with explicit teacher language, hand motion icons, and QR codes for additional digital resources, including lesson demonstration videos, via myHeggerty to help build teacher capacity.

Each phonics lesson outlines daily preparation details and materials, unit concepts, and targeted skills and is fortified with dynamic strategies such as “Jump In and Jump Out” for review and assessment, “Boost and Expand” for differentiated instruction, and on day 4 of each week, a Multilingual Learner Connection activity is provided for additional support.

One of our mantras when creating the content was “teach to train.” We wanted the instructional materials to be something that teachers would not just teach but that the materials would further their own understanding and knowledge base. Research shows that teachers often receive very little training on applying reading instruction that follows the science of reading (Hudson et al., 2021). That’s why Bridge to Reading includes step-by-step, sequential professional development training through on-demand videos that help teachers build knowledge of foundational literacy skills and curriculum.

? Shop Bridge to Reading: Bridge to Reading combines explicit phonics instruction with Heggerty phonemic awareness lessons for a comprehensive approach to early literacy instruction.

Following Reading Research

The Bridge to Reading team has intentionally planned the scope and sequence based on various science of reading conceptual models (Petscher et al., 2020; Scarborough, 2001; Tunmer & Chapman, 2012; Snow et al., 1998). Curricula designed in this way are proven to improve student reading outcomes (The Reading League, 2022). Bridge to Reading includes explicit and systematic instruction for both phonemic awareness and phonics. 

Phonemic Awareness  

Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and identify the sounds that make up spoken words, called phonemes. We emphasize and explicitly teach phonemic awareness in Bridge to Reading because of its importance as a foundational skill for reading and writing proficiency (Brady, 2011; Boyer & Ehri, 2011; Liberman, 1999), and explicit instruction is effective as an instructional practice (Blevins, 1998; Castle et al., 2004). Throughout the phonological and phonemic awareness lessons, the hand motions are provided as multisensory support, which can be beneficial to support learning of letter names and sounds (Langille & Green, 2021; Schlesinger & Gray, 2017). These hand motions allow children to see a visual anchor for the sounds they are working with. Teachers use their right hand as the beginning and their left hand as the end of the word to help children see the motions moving from left to right, the same way we map print. Children can also mirror the teacher and use hand motions as well. If children require a more concrete visual than hand motions, teachers can choose to use Elkonin boxes, Unifix cubes, or felt to represent the parts or sounds in words.

Phonics  

Phonics is the ability to identify what the sounds in spoken words look like in written words (e.g., the relationship between sounds and letters or groups of letters), which is another crucial skill for reading and writing. We include phonics instruction in Bridge to Reading because of the evidence that phonics instruction supports comprehension for early readers (Connelly et al., 2001). Children develop letter-sound correspondence and learn to decode words in print.

Sound Articulation  

The Bridge to Reading curriculum intentionally includes instruction on how to articulate sounds, which has been shown to support phonemic awareness skills (Boyer & Ehri, 2011; Ehri, 2014; Castiglioni et al., 2003). Instructional language and modeling for how the mouth is shaped when producing different sounds is provided through Sound Wall Articulation cards, as well as explicit teacher instruction and opportunities for student practice when new sounds are introduced. To create our sound wall cards and sound wall card videos for myHeggerty, we worked with speech and language pathologist Deb Santefort. We recorded children saying all 44 phonemes, or sounds, of the English language. These photos and videos are used throughout the new curriculum to help students visualize the shape our mouths make to articulate each phoneme.

Phoneme-Grapheme Connections  

Bridge to Reading also teaches how sounds map onto letters rather than what each letter sounds like, which has been recommended by researchers as a more intuitive and effective method to help develop students’ phonemic awareness, letter-sound knowledge, decoding skills, and ultimately reading comprehension (Moats, 1998; Petscher et al., 2020). This is included in the phonemic awareness lesson instruction and can also be found during phonics instruction when introducing new sounds, letters, and red words.

Explicit Instruction

Bridge to Reading incorporates explicit instruction with opportunities for guided and independent practice (Archer & Hughes, 2010). The curriculum includes materials that are logically sequenced, provide step-by-step instructions, with daily application and practice opportunities for learners, and opportunities to monitor student progress. The curriculum also includes physical and digital materials that align with the lessons and support explicit instruction and practice (Rosenshine, 2009). 

School to Home Connection

Bridge to Reading also encourages school-to-home connections by providing a parent newsletter resource that teachers can access via myHeggerty and send home to families each week to give insight into the skills the children are working on and ways to continue to build upon these skills at home. The newsletter includes take-home decodable passages and, when developmentally appropriate, access to decodable e-books that align with the target skills they have been working on.

Developing Independent Readers

We recognize the importance of supporting students while encouraging autonomy in learning new materials. That is why Bridge to Reading implements the gradual release of responsibility approach, which has been linked to higher literacy and reading skills (Pearson & Gallagher, 1983; Fisher & Frey, 2007; Lloyd, 2005). The curriculum outlines the “I do, We do, You do” lesson structure by introducing learners to new topics, modeling the concept, and including independent practice in every lesson (Fisher & Frey, 2013). The Teacher Editions include daily guidance for teachers to implement the gradual release of responsibility model in every lesson.

Learners also have multiple opportunities for application through reading and writing in their Student READ books, where students independently apply and practice the learned concepts each day. Student READ (Ready, Engaged, Active Decoders) books provide opportunities for independent practice, applying sound-spelling relationships, developing decoding and encoding skills, improving fluency, and mastering high-frequency Red Words. 

Each of the consumable workbooks include:

• Weekly openers with clear “I can” statements, helping students identify learning objectives
• Letter formation practice linked to sound-spelling relationships, when appropriate.
• Encoding and decoding opportunities matched to the sound-spelling relationship taught
• Practice with reading and spelling weekly Red Words
• Weekly passages (over 80% decodable) for students to apply new learning to connected text reading.

Our mission at Heggerty is to equip teachers with effective and engaging products and professional learning opportunities that help prepare and empower all students to become lifelong readers. What’s more, the design of this curriculum allows teachers to seamlessly flow through the word recognition portion of their literacy block with little to no interruption. Bridge to Reading is focused on helping all learners develop the essential tools to become skilled readers, gaining a solid foundation of phonemic awareness and phonics, and building confidence along the way. We are committed to following the research about how our curriculum can best serve students. Bridge to Reading sets the stage for all children to become lifelong readers and writers. 

References:

Archer, A. L., & Hughes, C. A. (2010). Explicit instruction: Effective and efficient teaching. Guilford Publications.

Boyer, N., & Ehri, L. C. (2011). Contribution of phonemic segmentation instruction with letters and articulation pictures to word reading and spelling in beginners. Scientific Studies of Reading, 15(5), 440-470.

Blevins, W. (1998). Phonics from A to Z: A practical guide. Scholastic Inc.

Brady, S. (2011). Efficacy of phonics teaching for reading outcomes: Indications from post-NRP research. In S. Brady, D. Braze, & C. Fowler (Eds.), Explaining individual differences in reading: Theory and evidence (pp. 69–96). New York, NY: Psychology Press.

Castiglioni-Spalten, M. L., & Ehri, L. C. (2003). Phonemic awareness instruction: Contribution of articulatory segmentation to novice beginners’ reading and spelling. Scientific Studies of Reading, 7(1), 25-52.

Castle, J. M., Riach, J., & Nicholson, T. (1994). Getting off to a better start in reading and spelling: The effects of phonemic awareness instruction within a whole language program. Journal of Educational Psychology, 86(3), 350.

Connelly, V., Johnston, R., & Thompson, G. B. (2001). The effect of phonics instruction on the reading comprehension of beginning readers. Reading and Writing, 14, 423-457.

Ehri, L. C. (2014). Orthographic mapping in the acquisition of sight word reading, spelling memory, and vocabulary learning. Scientific Studies of Reading, 18(1), 5-21. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10888438.2013.819356 

Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2007). A tale of two middle schools: The differences in structure and instruction. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 51(3), 204–211.

Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2013). Gradual release of responsibility instructional framework. IRA e-ssentials, 1-8.

Hudson, A. K., Moore, K. A., Han, B., Wee Koh, P., Binks-Cantrell, E., & Malatesha Joshi, R. (2021). Elementary teachers’ knowledge of foundational literacy skills: A critical piece of the puzzle in the science of reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 56, S287-S315. https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/rrq.408 

Langille, J., & Green, Z. (2021). The impact of multi-sensory -phonics programs in teaching English as an additional language. Canadian Journal of Education/Revue Canadienne de l’Education, 44(4), 1024-1050.

Liberman, A. M. (1999). The Reading Researcher and the Reading Teacher Need the Right Theory of Speech. Scientific Studies of Reading, 3(2), 95-111.

Lloyd, A. (2005). Information literacy: different contexts, different concepts, different truths? Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 37(2), 82-88.

Moats, L. (1998). Teaching decoding. American Educator, 22(1), 42-49.

Pearson, P., & Gallagher, M. (1983). The instruction of reading comprehension. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 8(3), 317-344.

Petscher, Y., Cabell, S. Q., Catts, H. W., Compton, D. L., Foorman, B. R., Hart, S. A., … & Wagner, R. K. (2020). How the science of reading informs 21st‐century education. Reading Research Quarterly, 55, S267-S282.

Rosenshine, B. (2009). The empirical support for direct instruction. In Constructivist instruction (pp. 213-232). Routledge. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780203878842-19/empirical-support-direct-instruction-barak-rosenshine 

Scarborough, H.S. (2001). Connecting early language and literacy to later reading (dis)abilities: Evidence, theory, and practice. In S.B. Neuman & D.K. Dickinson (Eds.), Handbook of early literacy research (Vol. 1, pp. 97– 110). New York, NY: Guilford.

Schlesinger, N. W., & Gray, S. (2017). The impact of multisensory instruction on learning letter names and sounds, word reading, and spelling. Annals of Dyslexia, 67, 219-258.

Snow, C. S., Burns, S. M., & Griffin, P. (1998). Preventing reading difficulties in young children. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.

The Reading League. (2022). Science of Reading: Defining Guide. https://www.thereadingleague.org/what-is-the-science-of-reading/ 

Torgesen, J. (2009). Preventing Early Reading Failure and its Devastating Downward Spiral. National Centre for Learning Disabilities.

Travers, C. (2017). Current knowledge on the nature, prevalence, sources and potential impact of teacher stress. Educator stress: An occupational health perspective, 23-54.

Tunmer, W. E., & Chapman, J. W. (2012). The simple view of reading redux: Vocabulary knowledge and the independent components hypothesis. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 45(5), 453-466.

U.S. Department of Education. Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 2022 Reading Assessment.