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The Research
The ResearchFirth, 1985:
Children go through 3 stages as they learn about words. The last is the ORTHOGRAPHIC stage, in which children begin to see patterns and use these patterns to identify words without sounding them out. |
How It's Applied in The Chunk Reading ProgramThe 4 Chunk Charts teach 64 rimes/chunks or patterns. These chunks or patterns develop children's ORTHOGRAPHIC skills. |
Juel, 1988:
Juel found that phonemic awareness is an important precursor to success in reading. |
In the Chunk Reading Program, students HEAR the blends and chunks BEFORE they are asked to recognize or spell them. |
Adams, 1990:
Adams tells us that letter sound correspondences are more stable when one looks at rimes than when letters are looked at in isolation. Of 286 phonograms that appear in primary grade tests, 95% of them were PRONOUNCED THE SAME in every word in which they appeared. |
This program includes rimes identified as highly productive (i.e., occurring with great frequency) – ALL 37 rimies identified by Adams, and ALL rimes identified by Wylie & Durrell. |
Firth, 1985:
Firth found that writing and spelling may help in the development of alphabetic knowledge. |
Match-O, the program's spelling component, FORCES students to LOOK at the rime or pattern of a word and to write the new word, matching the word's "chunk" to the "helping word chunk."
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Samuels, 1988:
Samuels determined that the purpose of phonics instruction is NOT to learn to "sound out" words, but to learn to recognize words quickly, so comprehension can be attended to. |
In multisensory ways, 64 high frequency chunks and patterns are learned and kept in the students' long term memory bank to access automatically when seeing an unknown word.
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Taylor & Nosbush, 1983:
These researchers found that reading connected text will improve comprehension AND word recognition, rather than just reading words in isolation. |
The program includes 16 high interest stories with embedded chunks and patterns learned in the four Chunk Charts.
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Anderson, Hiebert, Wilkinson & Scott, 1985:
These researchers recommend that good phonics instruction be completed fairly quickly by the end of 2nd grade. |
1st graders typically complete the Chunk Reading Program by the end of February. 2nd graders REVIEW all the Chunk Charts and complete the program by winter break or earlier.
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Stahl, 1992:
"Phonics" instruction teaches children about the orthographic code of our language and the relationships of spelling patterns to sound patterns. |
The Chunk Reading Program provides a comprehensive "mapping" of 64 patterns/rimes to the sounds that they represent. It provides "helping words," photos, movement, games, and other multisensory means to engage the students' interest so they can decode and spell with automaticity.
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