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The SIPPS program is based on the premise that beginning literacy is best taught through two distinct strands—one focusing on comprehension and the other on decoding. This delineation makes sense because the main components of comprehension—academic language and comprehension strategies—differ from decoding in both their nature and the pace of acquisition. Beginning readers are able to understand language and ideas at much higher levels than they can decode. For this reason, the Common Core State Standards strongly advocate developing K–2 students’ comprehension by reading aloud to them challenging literature and informational text that is within their listening comprehension levels but may be far above their reading levels (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers 2010). In grades 3 and above, comprehension of subject-matter content is relatively grade-level specific and is accessible to all students regardless of their decoding ability, provided teachers read aloud as needed. At the same time, students differ dramatically in how easily and quickly they acquire decoding skills (Snow and Juel 2005; Tunmer and Nicholson 2011). In response, decoding instruction must be variable in its intensity and pacing, and multi-leveled both across and within grades. Approaches that combine decoding and comprehension in a one-size-fits-all, lockstep program shortchange students’ learning in both domains. On the other hand, a stand-alone instructional program in decoding is able to teach decoding in a way that is suited to each child’s needs and abilities. SIPPS is such a program.

It is helpful to think of decoding as having two separate but interwoven components: word-recognition strategies and fluency. Word-recognition strategies are the tools students have at hand to decode unfamiliar spelling patterns accurately and independently. Fluency involves reading words quickly and effortlessly with appropriate phrasing. Initially, reading is painfully slow. Massive amounts of reading practice along with the use of appropriate strategies to decode unfamiliar words ultimately lead to more natural reading rates.

Word-recognition strategies include: (1) concepts of print, (2) phonological awareness, (3) phonics knowledge, and (4) sight-word knowledge.

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SIPPS® Beginning Level

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O Concepts of print include how to hold a book, where to start, conventions of print, and knowledge of letter names. These concepts are prerequisites to more formal instruction in print-based word-recognition strategies.

O Phonological awareness is the understanding that spoken words are made up of different size units of sound: syllables (pic.nic), onsets and rimes (m.ap), and phonemes (the smallest units of sound, e.g., /s/ /ă/ /t/). Blending (putting sounds together) and segmentation (pulling sounds apart) are critical phonological tasks for reading and spelling words.

O Phonics is the study of the relationship between sounds in words and the spelling patterns that represent those sounds in print. Phonological awareness is not the same as phonics knowledge because phonological awareness does not involve print. Because English is an alphabetic system, both phonological awareness and phonics knowledge are key to reading and writing.

O Finally, knowing high-frequency sight words—especially irregular ones that cannot be easily “sounded out”—contributes to both word-recognition strategies and fluency.

Mastery of a core set of alphabetic word-recognition strategies generally precedes fluency development. Fluency is affected by these strategies in at least two ways: First, they enable students to figure out words independently. Second, they focus attention on all of the spelling patterns in words, and processing these patterns is the basis of automaticity—the quick and effortless recognition of most words (Adams 2009). Research indicates that decoding strategies that focus on using context and just initial and final consonants are not fully alphabetic and are not as effective in helping students become accurate, fluent readers (Tunmer and Nicholson 2011). As reading becomes more fluent, students are exposed to more repetition of a wide variety of spelling patterns. So, ultimately, word-recognition strategies and fluency build on each other toward effortless decoding. While fluency is also affected by sight-word knowledge, automaticity in recognizing spelling patterns is crucial. Fluency often develops slowly: many students read and write slowly for some time before fluency begins to improve. In the end, students’ success with decoding depends primarily on mastery of phonics-based strategies and on large amounts of practice at appropriate levels.

Acquisition of Alphabetic Reading StrategiesStage models of reading acquisition posit that beginning readers go through different stages in their understanding of and approaches to decoding unfamiliar words. Initially they use context as the preferred strategy for decoding print, then proceed to using spelling-sound relationships, and

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finally achieve automaticity (Chall 1983; Ehri 1987; Juel 1991; Tunmer and Nicholson 2011). Students who stay “stuck” at the context-strategy stage rely on sight words and tend to use first and last consonants as decoding cues, with limited success. A major goal of beginning reading instruction, then, is to teach students that spelling-sound information is more useful than context in decoding text. (Note that the issue here is the role of context in decoding print, not that of using context to make meaning after print has been decoded.) The SIPPS program is designed to facilitate and ensure the transition from context-based decoding to alphabetic decoding, which, with sufficient practice, leads to automaticity and fluent reading.

Fortunately, because English is an alphabetic writing system, students can efficiently read many words once they learn how to use the relationships between letters and sounds. Unfortunately, however, switching from using context to using spelling-sound strategies is both unnatural and difficult for many students. Among the reasons for this is a lack of understanding that spoken words are made up of sound units (phonemes) and that the arrangements and varieties of phonemes correspond to the print they see on a page. A successful decoding program raises students’ awareness, understanding, and use of phonemes and establishes the relationships between letters, sounds, and spellings.

The final stage of reading acquisition is characterized by automaticity—the quick and effortless recognition of most words. A key instructional strategy for building this automaticity is massive amounts of reading practice at levels where decoding accuracy is at or above 95 percent. To achieve such accuracy, students must use spelling patterns to decode.

Instructional implications Because learning and using spelling-sound strategies is unnatural for most students, and because the English system of phonics is complex, beginning reading has to be taught systematically and explicitly (Adams 1990; Chall 1996; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development 2000; Snow and Juel 2005). In the SIPPS program, instruction and assessment are guided by a scope and sequence of phonological awareness, phonics, structural analysis, and sight words with flexible entry points that are tailored to students’ instructional needs and varied lesson pacing that accommodates different rates of learning. A guiding principle of the program is mastery of phonics and sight words rather than simple exposure. Critical content is carefully introduced, reviewed, practiced with guidance, and applied to reading and writing. The use of choral responses from students heightens engagement, encourages risk-taking, and allows for ongoing assessment with frequent teacher feedback. Teacher-directed instruction efficiently and effectively communicates the abstract, challenging content of word-recognition strategies.

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In their review of principles and techniques for teaching reading to struggling readers, Uhry and Clark (2005) list the following features: direct instruction, frequent feedback, appropriate pacing, systematic progression from the simple to the complex, learning to mastery, unison responses, and ongoing assessment. All of these are characteristics of the SIPPS program. And in a situation where reading-instruction time is limited, this streamlined approach to teaching decoding allows more time to be devoted to other critical areas, including developing academic language, comprehension, and reasoning.

Four Developmental Phases and Their Relationship to the SIPPS ProgramStudents’ mastery of word-recognition strategies and skills follows a developmental progression across four phases in which the content and form of strategy instruction changes in very distinctive ways. These mirror widely accepted developmental sequences in spelling (Ehri 1997; Gentry 2004). The SIPPS program is based on these sequences in word-recognition strategy development. The four decoding strategy phases correspond to SIPPS instruction as follows:

DEVELOPMENTAL PHASE SIPPS LEVEL(S)

Concepts of print (a prerequisite to SIPPS instruction)

Simple alphabetic SIPPS Beginning Level (grades K–3) or SIPPS Plus (grades 4–12)

Complex spelling pattern SIPPS Extension Level (grades 1–3) or SIPPS Plus (grades 4–12)

Polysyllabic/morphemic SIPPS Challenge Level

In the sections that follow, we summarize the content and decoding strategies at each developmental phase and describe how the SIPPS program addresses each of them.

CONCEPTS-OF-PRINT PHASE (a prerequisite to SIPPS)Students begin this phase as virtual nonreaders who lack the understanding that books have front covers that list titles and authors, that there is directionality in reading (left-to-right and top-to-bottom), and that letters form words that make up sentences. Learning the names of upper- and lowercase letters and “book handling” behaviors are a major goal of this phase.

The SIPPS placement test assesses students’ identification of lowercase letter names, a crucial component of concepts of print and a prerequisite to

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starting SIPPS Beginning Level instruction (or, for students in grades 4–12, SIPPS Plus). Suggestions for teaching letter names are provided on pages 520–523 of Appendix C.

SIMPLE ALPHABETIC PHASE (SIPPS Beginning Level or SIPPS Plus)Students begin this phase as “partial-cue” readers who rely heavily on context and use some letter information, often the letters in their names (Tunmer and Nicholson 2011). They do not understand the alphabetic principle (i.e., that words are made up of a series of speech sounds that can be sounded out, left to right). At this level, instruction emphasizes phonological awareness (especially phonemic blending and segmentation), phonics (consonants and short vowels), and high-frequency sight words (both regular and irregular). Because the students’ knowledge is limited, reading-practice material is specifically designed to match the phonics and sight-word content being taught. This material is commonly referred to as “decodable text.” At this level, fluency practice focuses more on reading accuracy than on rate.

The SIPPS program teaches the content of the alphabetic phase systematically and explicitly with provisions for different starting points and different rates of learning. Because blending can be particularly difficult for students, SIPPS Beginning Level scaffolds this critical phonemic skill by initially stressing a continuous blending strategy, whereby students are taught to combine sounds without stopping. For example, the word man is sounded as /mmăănn/ not /mm/ /ăă/ /nn/. This blending strategy is practiced orally without print and is also applied to lists of printed words and to reading stories. Mastery tests that assess students’ mastery of phonics and sight words help guide the pace in which content is covered. There are also two sets of word lists for each lesson so that teachers can slow the pace of instruction for students who need it. At the end of SIPPS Beginning Level, consonant digraphs such as sh and th are formally introduced because they represent single phonemes and are easier to blend than words with consonant blends, which typically contain two phonemes.

SPELLING-PATTERN PHASE (SIPPS Extension Level or SIPPS Plus)Students beginning the spelling-pattern phase know at least 50 sight words, understand the alphabetic principle, and can decode simple short-vowel-pattern words. They are able to read simple decodable books with short-vowel patterns. Here, instruction focuses on more-complex phonics spellings, particularly the multi-letter spellings for the long vowels, the

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r-controlled vowels (e.g., car, her, shirt, fur), and other vowel pairs such as oo, oi, and ou. High-frequency sight words are also taught and, typically, decodable text is still used for reading practice.

SIPPS Extension Level and SIPPS Plus explicitly and systematically introduce complex-vowel spellings following a sequence determined by their applicability to the 1,000 most frequent one-syllable words in print (Shefelbine 1994). Mastery is developed through frequent review of spellings both in isolation and in “mixed lists” of decodable words that contain both new and previously taught phonics elements. Strategic correction routines for students’ errors are a critical component of the instruction. These routines are designed to help students correct their errors in ways that reduce the chances of future errors occurring. For example, when students say rid for ride, the teacher walks them through the final-e generalization by asking: “Is there an e at the end?” Pointing to the first vowel, the teacher says, “Long or short?” “Sound.” “Read.” Such a correction is significantly more instructional than just telling the students the correct answer. High-frequency, irregular sight words are also taught.

POLYSYLLABIC/MORPHEMIC PHASE (SIPPS Challenge Level)In the past, the uniqueness and importance of polysyllabic strategies have often been overlooked in both developmental and intervention reading programs. There is little research support for traditional approaches that emphasize counting syllables and division rules. Shefelbine (1990) found that focusing more on syllabic units significantly increased the polysyllabic decoding skills of fourth- and sixth-graders with decoding difficulties. This approach was further validated in a follow-up study with struggling readers in grades 4–6 (Bernard and Larson 2000). This is the research that is the basis of SIPPS Challenge Level. At this phase, the students have mastered much of single-syllable phonics and many high-frequency sight words. Their reading level is between first and second grade, but they have difficulty reading polysyllabic words.

Single-syllable units Adams (1990) maintains that a skilled reader’s ability to parse and identify long words is based upon her knowledge of spelling patterns. This does not mean that a student can become a skilled reader simply by learning a limited number of syllables. Such an interpretation is incorrect not only because there are too many syllables (more than 5,000, according to Adams), but also because a set of letters that constitutes a syllable in one word may not be a syllable in another word. What kinds of spelling patterns, then, might be emphasized in a program of instruction? While syllabication is more than identifying a set of memorized syllables,

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teaching certain syllables should still be helpful. Affixes that function as syllables are worth considering because they are limited in number, occur frequently, and, especially in the case of suffixes, are reasonably consistent across words.

Support for another, more general, category of syllable is found among linguists who agree that only certain combinations of vowels and consonants are permitted in English syllables and who generally accept the existence and utility of two types of syllables—open or free-vowel syllables (e.g., mo) and closed or checked-vowel syllables (e.g., om) (Groff 1971). The ability to identify open and closed syllables in print not only enables students to pronounce frequently occurring kinds of units but also helps them to perceive likely units without the aid of division rules.

Additional support for teaching affixes and open and closed syllables comes from a study by Shefelbine, Lipscomb, and Hern (1989). They found a significant relationship between a student’s sight knowledge of these kinds of syllables and the student’s ability to read real, polysyllabic words; they further noted that some students could not accurately pronounce common syllables in isolation even when given plenty of time. Clearly, an important part of identifying syllables in a word is being able to “read” each syllable unit. Some students do this poorly and hence are unable to read words even when the words are divided for them.

Henry, Calfee, and Avelar LaSalle (1989) identified six syllable types that students need to master as part of learning polysyllabic decoding strategies: open syllables (bo), closed syllables (ob), vowel–consonant–final-e syllables (-ite), syllables with vowel pairs (ee), r-controlled syllables (er), and consonant-l-e syllables (-ble).

Identifying syllables within words Readers are required to identify and combine likely syllables in polysyllabic words. Although some syllables are units that frequently occur in words (e.g., affixes), others are recognized on the basis of the frequency with which certain strings of letters occur (Adams 1990). According to Adams, the relative strength of inter-letter and spelling-pattern associations determines which letters are perceived as a unit. For example, readers perceive that par is a syllable in partial and partake but not in partly and parade in part because of the surrounding letters. Whether a string of letters is a syllable is partly dependent upon the surrounding letters. Thus, identifying syllables in words requires more developed and complex knowledge of letter and spelling patterns than does reading single syllables in isolation. As for instruction, Adams suggests that teachers encourage their students to attend to “likely” letter sequences in syllables, words, and blends and digraphs, but Adams does not make clear

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how this general recommendation might best be carried out. Studies done by Shefelbine (1990), Shefelbine, Lipscomb, and Hern (1989), and Shefelbine and Calhoun (1991) support what is called “a syllabic unit approach,” in which syllables are emphasized more than division rules.

SIPPS Extension Level emphasizes closed syllables and consonant-l-e syllables. Challenge Level develops the ability to read all six common syllable units accurately and automatically in several ways. Open and closed syllables, the basic building blocks of polysyllabic decoding, are mastered in a strand called “Transformations” in which students apply vowel generalizations to sets of syllables with vowels in different positions (e.g., bo-bov-ov). In another strand, students learn sight syllables that consist of Latin- and Greek-based affixes and roots as well as consonant-l-e patterns, such as -dle in handle. The remaining three syllable-types (final-e syllables, syllables with vowel pairs, and r-controlled syllables) are covered in an optional single-syllable phonics strand.

Students apply their knowledge of syllable units in three other strands. In “Reading by Syllables,” real words are written on the board syllable by syllable with no space or marking between syllables. The students read each new syllable after it is written and then read the word as a whole. This form of instruction is appropriate because it allows the students to view likely letter sequences in the context of surrounding syllable units without artificial markings that do not occur in natural print. In a related routine called “Morphemic Transformations,” the students practice reading base words, which are then transformed by adding a series of affixes (e.g., nation, national, international, nationality, nationalism). Support for attention to the morphological structure of words is provided by Moats (2010) and Nagy, Berninger, and Abbot (2006). In a less-scaffolded strand called “Reading Entire Words,” the students are presented with polysyllabic words as wholes rather than syllable by syllable. This time the students themselves are encouraged to identify possible syllables in a flexible manner—first noting any irregular suffixes at the end and then deciding which syllables are open and which are closed. This approach is similar to the “free-wheeling” syllabication strategy advocated by Groff (1971). Two syllabication generalizations are included to help the students identify open- and closed-syllable patterns: for a vowel followed by two or more consonants, try a short sound, and for a vowel followed by a single consonant, first try a long sound and then try a short sound. In the last strand, called “Guided Spelling,” students learn to apply their knowledge of syllables and morphemic units to spelling polysyllabic words.

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FLEXIBLE GROUPING AND ASSESSMENT THAT INFORMS INSTRUCTIONBecause students start school with varied literacy-related skills and learn to read at different rates, in any one class or grade teachers are confronted with many different levels of word-recognition ability. Instead of teaching “grade-level” decoding skills to all students, teachers need to assess their students and group them according to their actual knowledge of phonological awareness, phonics, and sight words. This is especially the case for K–3 teachers. Teaching students above their development level is unlikely to result in optimal growth because the skills at each level build on those acquired at the previous level. Teaching more advanced students below their level also affects optimal growth because they are not covering new skills that they are ready to learn.

In the SIPPS program a single placement test (one for grades K–3 and another for grades 4–12) is used to determine not only which SIPPS level to use but also at which lesson to start within that level. SIPPS Beginning Level, Extension Level, and Plus all have multiple entry points, which further optimize student instruction. This approach benefits all students: lower-level students are taught below-grade-level content that is a prerequisite for more advanced levels; on-grade-level students continue to move up; and above-grade-level students receive instruction that accelerates their progress.

Word-recognition StrategiesAs described earlier, word-recognition strategies are the tools students use to decode unfamiliar text. Word-recognition strategies include: concepts of print, phonological awareness, phonics, sight words, and syllabication and morphemic analysis.

CONCEPTS OF PRINTAs stated earlier, students’ mastery of concepts of print, particularly letter names, is a prerequisite to starting SIPPS Beginning Level or SIPPS Plus. As stated in Appendix C, “SIPPS Assessment and Placement: K–3,” students need to know the names of 20 of the 26 letters before starting the SIPPS program.

PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESSPhonological awareness is the understanding that there are different units of sound in speech. These units include syllables, onsets and rimes (in the word mat, m is an onset and at is a rime), and phonemes. Phonemes are the smallest units of sound in speech; mat has three phonemes (/m/ /ă/ /t/) as

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do laugh (/l/ /ă/ /f/) and ax (x represents two phonemes, /k/ and /s/). Since phonemes are the most difficult units for students to understand, instruction often starts with larger units such as syllables or rimes.

Different phonological tasks also vary in difficulty. Rhyming and identifying beginning and ending sounds are easier than blending (putting sounds together: /m/ + /ă/ + /t/ = mat), which is easier than segmenting (pulling sounds apart: mat = /m/ + /ă/ + /t/). Manipulating sounds in a word by adding, dropping, or switching sounds is the most difficult of all.

SIPPS Beginning Level covers all of these tasks, but blending and segmenting are emphasized, since these higher-level skills are the most critical for reading (Adams 1990; Pressley 2006; Snow and Juel 2005). Blending becomes increasingly complex, beginning with compound words and syllables and moving through onsets and rimes to phoneme blending. Phonological awareness is primarily aural, but blending and segmentation strategies are applied to print as soon as the students know enough letter-sound relationships (Pressley 2006). In SIPPS Extension Level and SIPPS Plus, blending, segmentation, and manipulation of phonemes are stressed.

PHONICSThe way sounds are represented by print in English is complex, because there are at least 43 sounds and only 26 letters. English uses various combinations of letters, particularly of the six vowel letters (including y) that are used to represent 18 vowel sounds.

Because English spelling is not strictly phonetic (it is also morphemic), decisions have to be made about which spelling-sound relationships are most valuable to teach. (We use the phrase “spelling-sound relationships” because so many sounds are represented by combinations of letters rather than by a single letter.) The charts on pages 558 and 559 list high-utility spellings for 43 sounds. When a sound has more than one common spelling, all the spellings are listed in a column. Sample words and a suggested mnemonic are given for each spelling. Note that some sounds are continuous in the sense that they can be prolonged without distortion. Sounds that cannot be sustained are called “stop” sounds. It is important for teachers to know this distinction because continuous sounds are easier to blend when they are said continuously. SIPPS Beginning Level initially and deliberately avoids words with initial and medial stop sounds because they are harder to blend. Examples of continuous and stop sounds in the spellings taught in the SIPPS program are:

O Continuous consonants: f, h, l, m, n, r, s, v, z

O Stop consonants: b, c, g, j, k, p, q, t, w, x, y

O Continuous consonant digraphs: th(2), sh, wh_, ph, _ng

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O Stop consonant digraphs: _ch, _tch

O Continuous vowels: all short vowels (a_, e_, i_, o_, u_); long e; long o; oo(2) as in moon and book; aw as in law; and the r-controlled vowels er, ir, and ur as in her, shirt, and turn

The vowel spellings on the chart are based on an analysis of the 1,000 most frequently used single-syllable words, which showed that some vowel patterns are more consistent and frequent than others (Shefelbine 1994). For the SIPPS program, we selected only high-utility relationships and paid careful attention to a sequence of instruction that empowers students to read many words as early as possible. The mnemonics used in SIPPS Beginning and Extension Levels help the students remember the sounds of the various spellings.

Note the use of blanks in various spellings. They are important because they signal where and when certain spellings can be used in single-syllable words. For example, ai_ cannot be used at the end of a single-syllable word in English, while _ay can be used only at the end. In pronouncing the sounds of the spellings, be careful not to distort them by adding the sound /uh/ at the end. Distorted sounds are hard to blend into words. With a few exceptions, all the consonants can be said without an /uh/. The sounds for b, d, and g require a tiny /uh/. Three controversial sounds are qu, w, and y. We recommend the following pronunciations: qu = /kwh/ as in “quick” (note that /wh/ is voiceless), w = /woo/ as in “my wound is bleeding,” and y = /ye/ as in “hear ye, hear ye.”

Most of the spellings shown in the chart are taught as one-to-one relationships; the students are taught the sound for each spelling rather than a rule for a group of spellings. (Some rules—such as “when two vowels are together, the first one is long and the second one is silent”—are “true” less than 50 percent of the time and should not be taught at all.) However, a few generalizations are taught in the SIPPS program:

O If there is an e at the end, the first vowel is long (made, these, fine, home, use).

O The letter c followed by e, i, or y sounds like /s/ (cent, city, cycle).

O The letter y at the end of a single-syllable word sounds like long i (by).

O The letter y at the end of a two-or-more-syllable word sounds like long e (baby).

O One vowel at the end of a syllable is long (we, hi, bozo) (taught only in Challenge Level).

O One vowel not at the end of a syllable is short (end, hat, picnic) (taught only in Challenge Level).

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Exceptions to these generalizations (such as give and have) are taught as sight words, as are words with low-frequency spellings (such as ue and oe) and problematic spellings (like ie).

There are eight voiced/unvoiced pairs of sounds that use the same mouth formations; the use of the voice box distinguishes the two sounds. For example, consider v and f. Say the sound of v continuously while covering your ears. Now say the sound of f while still covering your ears and note the difference. The following voiced/unvoiced pairs of letters share this characteristic:

b/p, g/k, d/t, v/f, j/ch, w/wh, z/s, th/th

This information is relevant in beginning reading instruction because students watch the teacher’s mouth for clues about what sounds to use in spelling a word. The students may confuse unvoiced and voiced sounds because the sounds “look” the same and because they do not realize the importance of the voiced/unvoiced contrast. In such a case, a student might spell van as fan.

The most common spelling pattern in English is the short-vowel pattern. It is also the most consistent in the sense that short-vowel sounds generally have only one spelling. This is one reason beginning reading instruction starts with short-vowel patterns. The second-most-common vowel pattern in single-syllable words is vowel-plus-final-e. The instructional sequence in single-syllable phonics in the SIPPS program is strongly influenced by the relative frequency with which vowel spellings occur among high-frequency words. Such relatively infrequent spellings as oi and oy are taught toward the end of SIPPS Extension Level.

SIGHT WORDSThe SIPPS program teaches two kinds of sight words:

O Irregular, high-frequency sight words that cannot be sounded out, such as of, was, and could

O Regular, decodable words that students cannot sound out yet because they have not learned enough phonics, such as see and like

Close to half of the 81 sight words in SIPPS Beginning Level are regular, with more of them occurring in the first half of the program when the students know relatively little phonics. (These sight words are listed in Appendix G, “Sight Words Index.”) The program starts with words such as I, see, the, you, can, and me because they are so useful in writing a variety of different sentences. Initially, the stories in SIPPS Beginning Level are sight-word based. This is because it is easier for very beginning readers to learn sight words than to sound out words. It is not until Lesson 9 and Lesson 11, the

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second possible entry point, that students learn the short vowel a_, which is first used in decodable words in Story 12.

Most of the 120 sight words in SIPPS Extension Level are high-frequency, irregular sight words. (These are listed in Appendix G, “Sight Word Index.”) Teachers have the option of teaching other sight words related to those that are formally taught. (These are listed in Appendix I, “Irregular Sight Word Families,” of the Extension Level Teacher’s Manual.) Approximately one-quarter of the 2,000 highest-frequency words are irregular. Knowing these words greatly empowers students’ ability to read regular text. Because learning sight words is labor-intensive, it makes sense to focus on words that cannot be sounded out and that occur frequently. Since SIPPS Plus covers the content of both Beginning and Extension Levels, it initially teaches both regular and irregular sight words and then focuses mainly on irregular sight words. (The SIPPS Plus sight words are provided in the “Sight Words Index” appendix at the back of the SIPPS Plus Teacher’s Manual.)

The SIPPS program teaches sight words using routines in which students read, orally spell by letter name, and then reread each sight word. This routine focuses students’ attention on three critical cues: all the letters, in sequence, from left to right. As the students learn more letter-sound correspondences, they begin to associate the letters with the sounds they are learning. A significant, added advantage of spelling sight words by letter name is that students also become better spellers of the irregular sight words they are learning to read. During the sight-word-practice component of each lesson, it is important for teachers not to skip the “spell” part of the routine even when the students read words correctly.

SYLLABICATION AND MORPHEMIC ANALYSISGood readers do not sound out polysyllabic words sound by sound, but rather read and spell by syllables and morphemic units (Adams 1990; Shefelbine 1990). Shefelbine, Lipscomb, and Hern (1989) found that students who were proficient in reading single-syllable words still struggled when confronted with polysyllabic words. An earlier section (“Polysyllabic/Morphemic Phase” on page 540) provides a research-based rationale for the SIPPS program’s initial attention to learning syllable types and morphemic units, what we call the “building blocks” of polysyllabic decoding.

Polysyllabic decoding begins in SIPPS Extension Level and SIPPS Plus in which students learn to decode two-syllable words with five of the six generally recognized syllable types: closed syllables containing short vowels, consonant-l-e syllables (e.g., -dle as in handle), syllables with final e (e.g., -treme as in extreme), syllables with vowel pairs (e.g., -teen as in fifteen), and syllables with r-controlled vowels (e.g., -per as in whisper). A few common suffixes such as er are also introduced. In SIPPS Challenge Level, closed

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syllables (short vowels) are contrasted with open syllables (containing a single long vowel at the end, as in bo).

Recognizing meaning-based Latin and Greek affixes and roots also supports polysyllabic decoding. A total of 128 syllable and morphemic units are introduced and reviewed across the 75 lessons in Challenge Level and across three grade-level spans. Specific grade-level content is presented in three lists:

O A lists are for second-graders (and possibly higher-grade-level English Language Learners).

O B lists are for third-graders (and possibly higher-grade-level English Language Learners).

O C lists are for students in grades 4–12.

Being able to recognize the syllables at sight greatly enhances students’ ability to read and spell words by syllables and morphemic units.

The Development of Reading Fluency

ACCURACY, AUTOMATICITY, AND PROSODYThere is a growing consensus that fluency involves three components: accuracy, automaticity, and prosody (Kuhn, Schwanenflugel, and Meisinger 2010; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development 2000; Rasinski et al. 2011).

Accuracy Accuracy involves reading words correctly, regardless of speed, and is measured as a percentage (number of words read correctly divided by number of words read times 100).

Reading accuracy is the focus of SIPPS Beginning Level. Its goal is to make the students “alphabetic readers”—readers who can sound out unknown words and choose to do so rather than relying on consonant sounds and context. Students become accurate readers by mastering the three central components of the SIPPS program: phonological awareness (especially blending), phonics, and sight words.

Automaticity Automaticity entails reading words quickly and effortlessly without taking time to sound them out slowly. It is usually measured as a rate in correct words per minute. Automaticity is a critical component of reading because it is a prerequisite for comprehension (Samuels 2004, 2006). Students who read very slowly are focusing so much attention on decoding the print that they cannot attend to making meaning (LaBerge and Samuels 1974). Readers who are not automatic frequently also do not like to read, and they have a difficult time reading silently.

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Reading automaticity becomes an instructional priority after students become accurate readers (Chall 1996; Juel 1991). M. J. Adams (2009) explains how sounding out words accurately is a key decoding strategy for becoming automatic. It is a complicated process involving overlapping letter/sound “memory traces” that, after enormous amounts of reading practice across many months, enables students to read words quickly and easily, including words that they have never encountered. Ironically, sounding out words, which makes students slow readers, in the end, after much practice, makes them fast and automatic. For this very reason, non-automatic students should not be encouraged to read faster and faster. If there is an emphasis on speed, students will stop sounding out words and instead will start guessing. Note that struggling readers, rather than sounding out all parts of a word, tend to use this strategy—using first and last consonants and the context of the passage (Stanovich 1980).

Fluency is often evaluated in terms of 50th percentile rates +/–10 correct words per minute on oral fluency norms (Hasbrouck and Tindal 2006). However, we emphasize that rates are reliable only when students are clearly reading material in which reading accuracy is at instructional or independent levels. Reading rates are meaningless when students are attempting to read frustration-level materials.

Automaticity becomes a priority in SIPPS Extension Level, particularly in the second half when students begin reading to themselves easy-to-read trade books for at least 30 minutes every day. The goal of the program is to have all students become automatic readers by the end of Extension Level.

Prosody Prosody involves reading sentences and paragraphs with proper phrasing, intonation, and expression. It also has a comprehension component: Some level of comprehension is generally required to read a text with meaningful prosody. When the content is too difficult to understand conceptually, students often revert to word-by-word reading. Rubrics are used to evaluate prosody.

Prosody is addressed across all three levels of the SIPPS program. In SIPPS Beginning Level, students read each sentence twice. In the “first read,” the teacher focuses on accuracy of decoding. Prosody becomes a factor in the “second read,” when students reread the sentence at a more natural pace, thereby allowing them to focus on the meaning. In SIPPS Extension Level, students are given time to figure out unknown words before each sentence is read chorally in a more prosodic manner. The comprehension component of prosodic reading is further encouraged by the questions at the end of the decodable stories in both Beginning and Extension Levels. When students start reading trade books, teachers can check on comprehension by having students retell what they have read.

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DEVELOPING READING FLUENCY: PRACTICE READING CONNECTED TEXTBackground Researchers agree that the key to developing fluency is consistent and extensive reading practice (Samuels 2004). In addition to reading practice guided by the teacher, the SIPPS program uses two kinds of independent reading practice: (a) Fluency Practice, in which students read aloud to themselves and (b) Individualized Daily Reading (IDR), where students read silently to themselves with a greater emphasis on comprehension.

Across the three levels of the SIPPS program, there is a progression in (a) minimum length of independent practice, (b) kinds of reading materials, and (c) mode of reading (aloud to self or silently). The more accurate students become, the longer they are expected to read to themselves.

Fluency Practice is for non-automatic readers, who need to read aloud quietly (Hasbrouck 2006). One reason these readers need to read aloud is that they tend to skip words when they read silently. The research on what reading rates determine when students are automatic is limited. To determine auto maticity in primary level materials, the SIPPS program uses Guszak’s (1985) suggested first-grade reading rate benchmark that enables students to read for meaning: 60 words per minute. We add the stipulation that accuracy levels be at least 95 percent, preferably at or above 98 percent. When students’ reading rates are consistently 60 correct words per minute (with high accuracy) in unrehearsed material, we recommend they begin to transition to Individualized Daily Reading (IDR), in which they engage in silent reading with a greater emphasis on comprehension.

The following chart summarizes the suggested progression from Fluency Practice to IDR:

LEVELFLUENCY PRACTICE/IDR LENGTH

KINDS OF MATERIALS MODE OF READING

Beginning/Plus Initially: 5 min. Increases to: 10 min.

Decodable texts Out loud to self (Fluency Practice)

Extension/Plus Initially: 10 min.Increases to: 30 min.

Decodable texts and trade books

Out loud to self (Fluency Practice); silent when automatic (IDR)

Challenge At least 30 min. Trade books Out loud to self (Fluency Practice); silent when automatic (IDR)

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Independent Reading Practice The National Reading Panel did not find that independent reading practice such as SSSR (self-selected silent reading) resulted in definitive gains in fluency (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development 2000). Our view is that many of the studies that were reviewed (a) included poor decoders, who were not ready for independent reading, and non-automatic readers, who should have been reading aloud rather than silently, and (b) involved self-selected materials that were not at the students’ appropriate reading levels. The SIPPS program’s Fluency Practice and IDR (Individualized Daily Reading) routines differ from SSSR in the following ways:

O Text is matched to students’ decoding levels.

O Students with limited decoding skills read independently for 5 minutes or less in the initial lessons of SIPPS Beginning Level. As they become more proficient, they read for longer periods of time.

O Non-automatic readers read out loud to themselves.

O Automatic readers read silently and are held more accountable for comprehension.

Teachers play an active role in selecting materials for Fluency Practice/IDR. In Beginning Level and in Extension Level through Lesson 23, students normally read the most recent decodable stories. However, lower-level stories can and should be selected for students who cannot read the current selections at 95–100 percent accuracy. We do not recommend letting students pick decodable selections because some students will always choose the easiest stories, while others will choose stories that are too difficult for them. In Beginning Level, for example, some students will want to read stories from the first ten lessons because they are predictable and sight-word based.

Starting in Lesson 16 of Extension Level, the students transition from reading the first part of the story chorally to reading the entire story quietly aloud to themselves at their own pace. Some students will soon reach a rate of 60 words per minute and be ready to transition to reading silently.

In Extension Level Lesson 24, students begin reading “easy reader” trade books such as Little Bear and the Henry and Mudge series. This expansion of the students’ reading “diet” is based on the research of Kirkman (2003), who did an extensive analysis of the phonics and sight-word patterns in trade books often read in the latter half of first grade. Kirkman determined that several series of books should be accessible to students who have mastered at least 60 high-frequency, irregular sight words and phonics patterns that include short-vowel, long-vowel, and r-controlled spellings. Students have learned most of this content by Lesson 24 of SIPPS Extension Level. (See Appendix B, “Fluency Practice/Individualized Daily Reading,” in the

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Extension Level Teacher’s Manual for suggested series of books based on Kirkman’s research.)

In order to achieve automaticity, students at this level need massive amounts of practice in connected text. As discussed earlier, when students take the time to sound out hundreds of different words, it eventually leads to the effortless and “quick” recognition of words that is necessary for silent reading with higher levels of comprehension.

A significant advantage of trade books, when students are still reading quietly aloud to themselves, is that we can have the students read different books. We purposefully avoid having students read the same trade books at the same time because overlapping, “in sync” reading can be very distracting. On the other hand, reading different books results in “white noise,” which is unobtrusive and less noticeable. Another advantage of having students read different books is that there is less competition to finish a book first.

Validation Studies

BEGINNING AND EXTENSION LEVELSStudy 1 A two-year pilot study of SIPPS Beginning and Extension Levels was conducted at an elementary school in northern California that serves a population of socioeconomically disadvantaged students, including many English Language Learners. During the first year, students in first through sixth grade who received SIPPS instruction gained an average of 1.6 grade-equivalents in reading (decoding) ability, as measured by the Slosson Oral Reading Test (SORT) (Slosson 1990). (On average, students are expected to gain 1.0 grade-equivalent per year.) The substantial gain of the SIPPS instruction group did not occur by chance: there were 72 students in this group and the estimated standard error of the gain is 0.1 grade-equivalents. This estimated standard error suggests that more than 90 percent of those who receive SIPPS instruction will gain between 1.4 and 1.8 grade-equivalents. Bilingual students showed even greater improvements in reading (an average gain of 2.4 grade-equivalents), and gains were observed for students who were initially below grade level in reading as well as for those who initially were at or above grade level. Similarly, during the second year of the study, students who received SIPPS instruction gained an average of 1.5 grade-equivalents in SORT reading scores. An even larger sample size of 129 students made the statistical precision of this gain estimate even greater: the estimated standard error was 0.08 grade-equivalents. Bilingual students once again showed even greater improvement (average gain of 2.8 grade-equivalents). The gains were statistically significant in both years.

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Study 2 A second, comparative study of the SIPPS program in a different district involved two program schools (one of which serves large numbers of Hispanic and economically disadvantaged students) and two matched comparison schools that were using another systematic phonics program. A total of 547 students in first through third grades were assessed in the fall, prior to the beginning of instruction in reading, and again in the spring. Students who received seven months of SIPPS instruction showed significantly greater gains in decoding (approximately four more months of growth in grade-equivalent scores from the Slosson Oral Reading Test) than comparison students (p < .006, ES = .24). The differences were greatest for the school with a large Hispanic, low-SES population, relative to its matched comparison school (p < .003, ES = .38). (Further information about this and other SIPPS research studies is available at collaborativeclassroom.org/research-sipps-research-results.)

CHALLENGE LEVELStudy 1 Shefelbine (1990) evaluated the merits of a precursor to SIPPS Challenge Level in a field-based study with four fourth-grade classes and four sixth-grade classes from three schools serving a heterogeneous, lower- and middle-class population in an urban school district. The study utilized a quasi-experimental design with a pretest and a posttest and a treatment and a control group. There were 28 fourth-graders (14 syllabication-instruction and 14 control) and 23 sixth-graders (15 syllabication-instruction and 8 control). In accordance with the teachers’ wishes, the students were assigned to a condition by class rather than randomly.

Over a six-week period, a university professor (the author of the study) and a graduate student took the syllabication-instruction group out of its language-arts classes and taught 30 ten-minute lessons, one lesson a day. The fast-paced, teacher-directed instruction consisted of four teaching routines: syllabic transformations, sight syllables, reading by syllables, and reading entire words. Students in the control group stayed in their regular language-arts classes and received no special instruction.

The students receiving the syllabication-instruction made significantly greater progress than the control students in their ability to identify polysyllabic words on two graded word lists: the San Diego Quick Assessment (La Pray and Ross 1969) and the word-identification subtest of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests (Woodcock 1987). This was true for the students in grade 4, F(3,24) = 5.4, p < .05; the students in grade 6, F(3,19) = 13.7, p < .01; and the students in grades 4 and 6 combined, F(3,47) = 14.5, p < .001.

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Study 2 Bernard and Larson (2000) evaluated the merits of SIPPS Challenge Level in a field-based study with fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade students in two schools serving a heterogeneous middle-class population in a large suburban school district. The study utilized a quasi-experimental design with a pretest and a posttest and a treatment and a control group. There were 22 fourth-graders (11 syllabication-instruction and 11 control) with 4 teachers, 21 fifth-graders (11 syllabication-instruction and 10 control) with 4 teachers, and 7 sixth-graders (4 syllabication-instruction and 3 control) with one teacher. In accordance with the teachers’ wishes, the students were assigned to a condition by class rather than randomly.

Over a three-month period, the regular classroom teachers and, for one group, a reading specialist, taught the syllabication-instruction groups during their language-arts classes. A total of forty 25-minute lessons were taught, one lesson a day. The fast-paced, teacher-directed instruction consisted of six basic teaching routines: single-syllable phonics review, syllabic transformations, sight syllables, reading by syllables, reading entire words, and guided spelling. The students in the control group stayed in their regular language-arts classes and received no special instruction. As a whole, the students receiving the syllabication instruction made significantly greater progress in their ability to identify polysyllabic words as measured by the Slosson Oral Reading Test (Slosson 1990). The mean growth in words read was 33.4 for the syllabication-instruction group and only 13.4 for the control group. The SIPPS Challenge Level group was able to read two-and-a-half times more words than the control group. A t-test of the two groups indicated that the difference was clearly significant: df (48), t = 5.89, p < .001. T-tests results for the fourth- and fifth-grade groups respectively were df (20), t = 3.05, p < .01 and df (19), t = 4.42, p < .001.

Conclusion These studies support the value of directly teaching students how to pronounce and identify syllables and then showing them how such units “work” in polysyllabic words. The results of both studies are particularly encouraging when one considers that the dependent measures involved real words that were neither directly taught nor patterned after words that were taught. The second validation study further indicates that the program can be successfully taught by regular classroom teachers.

While the program components appear to be effective in developing and remediating students’ polysyllabic word-recognition strategies, it should be noted again that such instruction is only part of a complete literacy program that includes wide reading to develop fluency and comprehension as well as direct instruction in content vocabulary and in comprehension strategies.

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