Dyslexia Archives - The Secret Stories

3 Common Misconceptions About the “Science of Reading”

Brain Based Learning, Dyslexia, ELL, Reading Intervention, Science of Reading, Struggling Readers, Title I

Bringing the Science of “Learning” Into Focus

The Science of Reading movement has brought so much change to our schools over the past few years—new curriculum, new resources, decodable readers replacing leveled books and even swapping old assessments that have been used for the past 20 years…for brand new ones.

Dr. Mark Seidenberg reminds us in his Yale Child Study Center Talk, Where Does the “Science of Reading” Go From Here? that we still have work to do to effectively incorporate these principles, practices and research.

And to effectively incorporate this research, we need to focus on not only effective teaching, but on effective learning. So how might the science of learning inform our practice?

My name is Leah Ruesink, and I’m an early literacy specialist, district trainer and adjunct professor from Michigan. In my previous post, I discussed how UFLI Foundations and Secret Stories belong together as the “backbone” and the “lifeblood” of science of reading-based instruction.

In this post, I want to dive deeper and discuss some common misconceptions/assumptions about the “Science of Reading,” using points adapted from Dr. Seidenberg’s talk.

Things to Keep in Mind:

We need more research on translating science to classroom practice.
Mark Seidenberg (2023) reminds us, we still have work to do to effectively incorporate these principles, practices and research. We need more “science” in the “Science of Reading.”
We need to admit what we don’t yet know, resisting the creation of new dogma.
“Thinking like a scientist involves more than just reacting with an open mind. It means being actively open-minded. It requires searching for reasons why we might be wrong—not for reasons why we must be right—and revising our views based on what we learn.” —Adam Grant
We need to learn more about what works for who (and under what conditions).
Equitable instruction applies to all learners, including the significant proportion of children who are often neglected as the focus of reading research—those who learn to read accurately and efficiently in advance of formal reading instruction.

1. Does everything need to be taught in order for students to learn?

The Assumption→ Good phonics instruction is always explicit.

Explicit instruction is crucial. But what about implicit learning?
Our brains are not wired to learn to read naturally, like we learn to speak; therefore explicit instruction is necessary….especially for our learners with the greatest needs. But what about implicit learning— does it have a place in our reading classrooms?

Well of course!

“Much, if not most, of what children learning to read in English come to know about its orthographic phonological relationships, is acquired through implicit learning.” —Hoover & Tunmer (2020).

For example…
Let’s say that you explicitly introduce your students to the /ph/ Secret Story (below). Then ten minutes later, Phoebe is underlining the /ph/ at the beginning of her name and using it to write the word phone. Later that afternoon during reading block, she exclaims, “Look, I see the /ph/ Secret in word Ralph in our book! He has the same Secret in his name that I have in mine!”

With just a couple minutes of explicit instruction, this student is already applying the skill to implicitly read and write new /ph/ words.

As Seidenberg (2023) explains:

“Explicit instruction is there to scaffold statistical/implicit learning. But only as much as needed and not one bit more.”

Secret Stories embrace both explicit and implicit learning

Grounding phonics skills in feelings, emotions, and behaviors that children already know and understand.

Early brain development occurs from back to front, with the affective, or “feeling-based” networks (which regulate the implicit behaviors that kids understand and recognize) developed long before the higher-level, executive processing centers are formed. Secret Stories takes advantage of these earlier-developing networks by connecting letter-behavior to kid-behavior to make phonics sounds more predictable. Sneaking abstract letter sound skills through the brain’s “backdoor” by connecting them to what kids already know and understand makes them easy to learn and remember.

Using Neuroscience to Deliver Phonics Faster

Secret Stories uses evidence-based embedded mnemonics

Using a simple, story-based delivery system, Secret Stories explicitly teaches the phonics patterns and their corresponding sounds, each of which is depicted with embedded mnemonic images to help kids remember and apply them. It is through this visualized, phonics framework that beginning learners can independently recall the sounds they need for reading and the spelling patterns they need for writing. In this way, the embedded mnemonics do the “heavy lifting” by helping kids keep track of which letters make what sounds. This is critical because while the sounds are made predictable by the Secrets, the phonics patterns that go with them are not. It is only through students’ ongoing reference and use of the embedded mnemonics to read, write and make sense of text throughout the day that these sound-symbol connections become orthographically mapped in the brain. Until then, Secret Stories embedded mnemonic sound wall provides the clear and “concrete” connections that beginning and struggling learners need to read and write independently .

For example….
Let’s say that you previously shared the ay/ey Secret phonics pattern to help kids decode the days of the week on the morning calendar. Later, they notice the same /ay/ Secret in words that are in the morning message and immediately recognize it as something they already know.

Because they explicitly learned the letters that make the sound, think of all the words they’ll be able to learn implicitly! Not to mention the /or/ Secret they also know and the many more words that it unlocks.

2. Is it possible to have too much of a good thing?

The Assumption→ Not all learners need the extra phonics practice, but it’s not harmful. At worst, it’s just additional practice with essential skills.

I’ve always responded in agreement to this assumption. Extra practice certainly does not feel harmful…and in fact, extra practice is absolutely necessary for some students who are in great need of reading support.

Is it possible to have too much of a good thing? Of course! The clock is ticking. The goal is to get in, get out, and move on.
—Seidenberg, 2023

“SoR structured literacy is a prodding approach, with low expectations about rate of progress” (Seidenberg, 2023). Consider the range of student abilities and skills in a kindergarten or first grade classroom. In February, you may have some students working on blending CVC words like “cap” and “sit” and others reading multisyllabic words! Yet, many of us spend 90 minutes or more every day teaching/ providing center work for a phonics skill that is either too difficult or way too easy for the majority of our students! Consider for a moment… if there is a way to give ALL learners earlier access to the codee they need to make sense of the words they see everyday …WOULD YOU WAIT?

Whereas teaching a skill requires readiness to learn, sharing stories holds no expectations. They simply linger in the brain, “incubating” the information and ideas they contain, particularly that which is meaningful to the listener. and ideas they contain. While all students benefit from this early incubation time, it’s those who struggle that benefit from it the most, as they require the most time to learn and apply new skills.

Secret Stories provides differentiated access to the code

For example….
Let’s say a student in your class is trying to write the word “house” but the ou/ow phonics pattern isn’t on your grade level scope and sequence. Would you just tell them, “I’m sorry, but you’ll need to wait until next year to learn how to read/spell the word house. In the meantime, you’ll just have to copy/memorize it.” What if there was a way for them to READ and WRITE that word now, as well as hundreds of other word with that sound?

“If you give a mouse a cookie, he’ll eat it” …and if you give kids the CODE, they’ll USE it!

We are moving way too SLOW in delivering the code kids NEED to read and write, despite how easy it is to give MORE sooner!

This can be seen in the prek/transitional kindergarten writing sample up above. Despite not having yet fine-tuned the different spelling choices, the sound-symbol relationships are clearly established, as evidenced by their use. As beginning learners gain more text experience through reading, they gain more natural insight into spelling and which patterns are correct to use in which words. Reading is by far the best teacher, and not just for spelling, but for everything, from vocabulary to comprehension. Reading is also the best way to practice, reinforce and expand phonics knowledge, that is, assuming one has enough phonics skills to read.

And herein lies an inherent roadblock for beginning and struggling readers who possess too little of the phonics code they need to read, and thus, are able to take only limited value away from daily reading and writing activities. Without advanced access to the code, it’s not possible for kindergartners and first graders teachers to keep pace with the words they see and are expected to “read” every day. Even words that are in the reading/phonics curriculum are often leaps and bounds ahead of the phonics skills that it’s teaching them.

While formal, grade-level programs and curriculums must adhere to a slower, more structured, grade-specific pace for phonics skill introduction, Secret Stories does not. That’s because Secret Stories is NOT a phonics program or curriculum, nor is it a supplement to one as there are NO lessons or activities to do. The Secrets are simply mnemonic tools to help speed-up access to the code so that kids can actually read the words they’re looking at every day in the classroom.

Click here for the Better Alphabet™ Song to automate individual letters and sounds in 2 week – 2 months and click here to read the research on simultaneous skill acquisition via the melodic mnemonic.

Dr. Seidenberg also cautions that “SoR structured literacy is a plodding approach, with often too low expectations about the rate of progress.”

The Matthew Effect on Reading Gains

The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Poorer
The more of the code kids have, the more words they can read. The more they read, the more phonics practice they get, and the better reader they become. In contrast, the less phonics skills kids have, the less words they can read and the less practice they get, decreasing the likelihood of reading success.

The More Kids Bring to the Table, the More Value They Take Away
Using the Secrets to fast-track more of the phonics code sooner helps maximize the effectiveness of the existing reading/phonics curriculum because kids can actually read the words that are in it. It also increases the instructional value of all other reading and writing activities that occur across the day in other content areas.
The goal of the game is to GET KIDS READING!
To do this, kids need advanced access to more of the phonics code sooner, and teachers need to avoid any roadblocks in their instructional path that don’t go toward this end!

3. Is heavy phonics work actually effective for students? What about with multilingual learners and different dialects?

The Assumption→ “Significant time should be spent in the classroom teaching students complex phonics terminology and rules.”

While teaching kids complex phonics rules may sound helpful (in line with explicit instruction), the focus should be on efficiency……getting kids to actually READ the words.

Seidenberg reiterates that “the goal is to facilitate cracking the code, not teaching the code. “The goal of instruction is for [the] child to learn what there is to learn – how the code works – and to gain enough basic facts to enable reading simple texts with decreasing reliance on external feedback” (Seidenberg, 2023).

Dr. Seidenberg also expresses this concern in his earlier 2022 Reading Matters article: “Phonemes, onsets and rimes, inflectional and derivational morphology, relative clauses, collocations, and other basic components of language….Does a child need to know these concepts? I shudder when I see words like “phoneme” and “orthography” being used in teaching 6 year olds. […..] I also think it’s folly to devote precious time to teaching children the “correct” pronunciation of (all 44) phonemes prior to moving on to reading” (Seidenberg, 2022).

Other well-known researchers have also expressed that the goal of good phonics instruction is to advance reading, not to teach “rules for rules-sake.”

“The point of phonics isn’t to provide readers with exactly correct pronunciations of words, but only “close approximations” —Dr. Ann Cunningham

Phonics instruction should tip students off to some of the more frequent and useful orthographic patterns, but it should never attempt to impart them all.” —Dr. Timothy Shanahan, 2022

Secret Stories removes the complexity

Teaching phonics isn’t rocket science

When we are teaching these complex rules we have to ask…”What is this for? Does it help them READ or SPELL words? Is the phonics vocabulary/terminology necessary in order to advance the reading or spelling of the words?
Using high-level, abstract terminology is not the best, fastest route to connect with young learners who are “concrete-level” thinkers, nor is it most helpful for older struggling readers who often have issues with language processing and working memory.
At the level it’s being discussed, it’s simply not needed (e.g. kids don’t need to know there is a “diphthong” in the word how, or that there is an “r-controlled vowel sound” in the word her in order to read and spell those words). Adding unnecessary complexity only serves to delay access to these critical pieces of the code that could otherwise be easily given at the kindergarten. The goal is for kids to be able to use the phonics patterns to READ and SPELL, not to identify the phonics category into which they fall.The video below shows a beginning kindergartner easily recalling these “r-controlled vowel” sound/spellings, even though most reading/phonics curriculums don’t formally introduce them late first or early to mid second grade.
WHY WAIT?

Secret Stories provide efficiency AND engagement

When you align phonics “rules” to letter behavior, everything becomes much easier because kids can logically deduce the “most and next most likely” sounds. This, in turn, helps support facilitate and support the cognitive flexibility needed for advanced decoding. Without cognitive flexibility, learners are left to identify words based on “rules and exceptions,” and this includes the need to memorize easily decodable “heart words” at the beginning grade levels.

“Recently, there has been a great deal of correlational investigation into the importance of cognitive flexibility in decoding. Enough convincing, high-quality work to conclude flexibility to be an essential property of proficient decoding ability. Kids who lack that kind of flexibility are at a disadvantage.” —Dr. Tim Shanahan (2022)

Imbuing the Secret Stories strategies into existing reading/phonics curriculum helps kids to become flexible decoders, using the Secrets they know to figure out new words. The video below shows first grade ELL students applying their “phonics flexibility” as they ponder the spelling of the word light after having already successfully decoded the word. The critical thinking playground that emerges from their conversation shows how adept even beginning and inexperienced learners be in using what they know to logically predict the “most and next most” likely sounds of letters.

Teaching phonics isn’t rocket science, nor should it be given that the “end-user” of our instruction is a 5 year-old who is likely to be licking the carpet and eating his shoe! And yet, we can still give him enjoy easy access to the code he needs to read, and delivered in a way that makes perfect sense.

Secret Stories provides teachers with “deliverable buckets” to get phonics knowledge to the “end users”

Aligning phonics instruction with the Science of Reading requires not only understanding how the brain learns to read, but how the brain actually learns. Understanding the nexus between the “science of reading” and the “science of learning” provides insight into how we can deliver phonics faster and make skills more accessible to all learners, and from the earliest possible grade levels.

“Neuroscience carves a clear path, but it is up to us to head its message.”
—Dr. Kurt Fischer

Follow Leah Ruesink @TheEarlyLiteracyCoach on Instagram for more on Secret Stories and the Science of Reading, and continue the conversation in the Science of Reading Meets Science of Learning Group on Facebook!

Join the conversation in the Science of Reading Meets Science of Learning Group on Facebook and follow Leah Ruesink on Instagram at @TheEarlyLiteracyCoach on Instagram.

March 2, 2024

Meta-Analysis & Literature Review

Brain Based Learning, Dyslexia, ELL, ESSA Evidence Tier I, Reading Intervention, Science of Reading

April 25, 2023

Decoding Words for Reading with Phonics “Secrets”

Digital Resources for Online Learning, Dyslexia, ELL, First Grade, Guided Reading/ Word Work, Homeschoolers, Kindergarten, Reading Intervention, Science of Reading, Sight Words, Struggling Readers

Decoding Sight Words with Phonics Secrets is finally DONE!!
But before I share more about this, I wanted to explain why I created it in the first place….

It’s always seems odd to me when I hear questions like…. “How do I know which Secrets to teach for each sight word?” or “Is there a list of sight words that has the Secrets I need to teach with them?” or my favorite, “I don’t have time to teach the Secrets because of all the sight words that I have to teach!” (Can you see the irony in that last one?)

Phonics Keys to UNLOCK WORDS for Reading

Secrets are keys to unlock words. It’s really that simple. If kids don’t know the Secrets (a.k.a. phonics skills), then how can they read the words? Without the code, beginning and struggling readers have to rely solely on memorizing words while they wait for the slow pace of grade-level phonics instruction to catch-up.

That means if Howard wants to write about his pet mouse in kindergarten or first grade, he’s out of luck because the ou/ow phonics “skill” won’t formally introduced for another 1-2 years, about midway through second grade. Howard’s mouse will literally be DEAD by the time gets the sound for “owwww” that he needs to write about it his mouse, or to read about it…..let along to make make sense of his own name!

From a common sense perspective, it seems ridiculous to make kids wait 3-4 grade level years (from pk-2nd grade) for the “whole” code they need to read and write from the first day of kindergarten. But this is the nature of the beast when teaching “abstract” phonics skills to “concrete” level thinkers—who are often eating their shoes and licking the carpet during your reading instruction! ;-)

Enter the BRAIN SCIENCE
Research on early brain development shows that the brain develops from back to front, with the social-emotional “feeling” based systems developing far earlier than the higher-level, executive processing centers (which are actually the latest area to fully develop).

While traditional phonics instruction targets “underdeveloped” higher-level processing centers for skill mastery, Secret Stories sneaks through the brain’s backdoor, using muscle memory to fast-track individual letter sound mastery (in 2 weeks to 2 months) and aligning phonics skill concepts with “universally familiar” frameworks of learner-understanding.

Secrets aren’t skills, they’re just stories that kids already know, based on behaviors they already understand, like: having a crush, not getting along, getting hurt, being left out, being a good line leader, being sneaky, doing what your mom or babysitter tells you when they’re nearby, and of course, everything “superheroes!”

These connections exist in the earlier-developing emotional systems, or “feeling” based centers of the brain…..or what I like to refer to as the “tattling centers!” This is the part of kids’ brains that can easily keep track of all the social and emotional “goings-on,” like the behaviors of their classmates. By aligning letter behavior with kid behavior, they can easily keep track of, and even predict the most and next most likely sounds of letters, just as easily as they keep track of the behavior of their classmates and with just as much FUN!

NEW Decorative Square Flashcards

So WHY WAIT?
Research shows that explicit, systematic and sequential phonics instruction is key, so it’s important to follow a scope and sequence. However, your scope and sequence should never tie your hands and prevent you from giving kids MORE of what they need to do what they’re ALREADY doing! Think of your scope and sequence as your “playground,” and the Secrets as the “muscles” kids need to maximize their time playing on it. The best way to ensure that kids take away maximum instructional value from your existing reading or phonics program is to give them the tools they need to actually READ it!

What IS a Sight Word?
Did you know that for experienced readers, virtually EVERY word is a sight word? That’s because the definition of a sight word is ANY word that’s recognized by sight, meaning that it has already been “orthographically mapped” in the brain. For beginning and struggling readers, the transfer of unfamiliar words into sight memory is the ultimate goal, but NOT through rote memorization of word lists.

Kids must be able to actively “decode” words by connecting letter patterns (graphemes) to sounds (phonemes), and to do this they need to know more than just the sounds of individual letters. They need to know the sounds that letters make when they get together, which commonly referred to as phonics skills. But they can’t wait 3 to 4 grade level years to learn them.

Waiting that long means that kids still have to memorize all of the words with phonics skills in them that they haven’t learned yet, which research shows is detrimental. Even teaching them as “heart words” (which are words that must be memorized “by heart” until such time as the phonics skills needed to read them are taught) kids are still having to memorize words that could be instantly read with the Secrets.

Decoding Sight Words with Phonics Secrets

So let’s get back to WHY I created this pack by addressing the three comments shared at the top about sight words.
1. “How do I know which Secrets to teach for each sight word?”
While it’s usually pretty straight forward to know which Secret or Secrets to teach for which words, sometimes it can be tricky. For example, Howard needed the “ou/ow” for the word mouse, not to mention for his own name. And there’s another Secret in is name too, which is “ar.” Just knowing these two Secrets empowers Howard (no “ow” pun intended!) to unlock hundreds of other words too, like: how, now, about, around, flower, are, hard, far, and so many more. Now imagine the alternative, which is making poor Howard wait until 2nd grade when this phonics skill is “supposed” to be introduced. Think how many MORE words poor Howard (not to mention the rest of the kids) would have to just memorize. So again, why should we wait?!

While words like mouse and Howard may be obvious, sometimes you do have to think outside of the box when it comes to certain words. Take, for example, common high-frequency words like: of, was, want, some, come, love, what, etc. By traditional phonics standards, these words are considered to be non-decodable, and thus relegated to becoming “heart words” to be memorized “by heart.”

But the beauty of the Secrets is that they aren’t binary phonics “rules” that either work or don’t. They are behaviors, which means that kids can “think-through” the most and next most likely sounds of letters and ultimately figure out the word. (You can learn more about this here.)

To make it easy, I’ve embedded the first 100 Dolch and Fry words (as well as several other common high-frequency words) with Secret sound graphics so that both teachers and students can easily see the Secrets and the sounds they make in the words.

2. “Is there a list of sight words that have the Secrets I need to teach with them?”
Not only are there lists of words alongside the Secrets that are needed to crack them, but the words are organized in ways that provide variations for structured literacy practice (i.e. to see, read, write, spell and even make new words with the same Secrets) to solidify the connection between phonemes (sounds) and graphemes (Secrets phonics patterns) and help support orthographic mapping in the brain. This process of cementing sound-symbol (i.e. “speech to print”) connections in the brain is the foundation of Secret Stories® instruction, and key to a Science of Reading-based approach to effective phonics instruction.

Editable templates are also included for each part so that you can use your own words for your specific grade level, with those “pre-embedded” with the Secret sound images servings as a guide. As with everything-Secret Stories®, through use, you become the expert by internalizing the concepts and making them your own. (This is the ultimate my goal for each Secret Stories® supplement that’s created, to understand how to use the Secrets even better!)

3. “I don’t have time to teach the Secrets because of all the sight words that I have to teach!”
I hope that after reading all of the above, this one is obvious. If kids DON’T know the phonics Secrets, how can they read the words?!! What exactly are you teaching if not the code kids need to actually read the words they’re seeing every day?

As teachers, our goal can’t be to have our kids just “look at words” all day but not actually read them. That’s just going through the motions and checking the box, not teaching them to read.

We don’t have the luxury of time to just “look” at words all day long and NOT take advantage of these opportunities to give kids the Secrets they need to actually READ them! Especially not now, given the loss of learning that’s occurred over the last two years. We need to take advantage of what we know about the brain’s systems, not just for learning to read, but for learning, in general, so as to work WITH the brain, not against it. The first step to doing this is to teach in a way that actually makes SENSE!

Secret Stories Science of Reading-Based Instruction

So on that note, this email was a lot longer than I intended it to be, but I really hope it’s helpful as we gear up for another school year. Every day, I see so many great conversations about this and other topics in the Secret Group. It’s wonderful to read the in-depth conversations about Secret Stories and the Science of Reading now that so many states have provided training over the summer. I love seeing Secret Stories mentioned in different state trainings for LETRS, Reading 360, Phonics First, etc, as a way to help streamline and fast-track learner-access to the code.

Everyone’s ultimate goal is to make phonics make sense so that it’s easy for teachers to teach and for kids to learn—even if they’re sucking on their shoe while they’re doing it! ;-) Kindergarten teachers know exactly what I’m talking about!

You can watch a short video about the Decoding Sight Words with Phonics Secrets pack made by Sheryl Nicholson, whose tireless efforts in working with me over the past several months to create this pack are the reason that it’s ready in time for school to start!💗 And to read a post by Sheryl explaining more about how she uses Secret Stories® in her classroom, click here.

Decoding Sight Words with Phonics Secrets on Teachers Pay Teachers

You can also find Sheryl in the Secret Group, which I’m thrilled to say now has over 40K members! If you’re not already a part of it, we would love for you to join us….as in there, the conversation never stops!

And you can find Decoding Sight Words here or by clicking on the picture up above.

Until Next Time,
Katie

April 6, 2022

Orthographic Mapping with Secret Stories® Science of Reading Center Mats

Brain Based Learning, Digital Resources for Online Learning, Dyslexia, Phonics for Dyslexia, Reading Intervention, Science of Reading, Struggling Readers

How to Make Phoneme Grapheme Word Mapping Mats

This blog post has been reproduced, with permission, from Shelly Mahn’s blog. It provides step-by-step directions on make the Secret Stories® Phoneme Grapheme Word Mapping Mats that are included in the Science of Reading Secret Stories® Centers on TpT. (All links mentioned can be found inside the product.)

Note: To make these mats, you must first purchase the Science of Reading Secret Stories® Centers on Teachers Pay Teachers here. (Active Amazon links mentioned in the tutorial below are included in the product.)

August 3, 2021

Teaching My “Differently-Wired” Child How to Read

Autism, Brain Based Learning, Dyslexia, First Grade, Home School Connection, Homeschoolers, Phonics for Dyslexia, Social Emotional Learning Channels, Struggling Readers

A guest post by Elizabeth George, a mother and “unexpected homeschool teacher” to a neurodiverse first grader with Autism.

Teaching Neurodiverse Learners

Dyslexia, Autism, ADHD and More

I am the parent of a neurodiverse child, which means that my child’s brain is wired differently. This causes him to think, learn and sometimes behave differently. This catchall phrase, “wired differently,” includes everything from ADHD or learning disabilities (like dyslexia), to children who are gifted or autistic. It’s a term used to describe kids who move through the world in a less typical way.

If you’re like me and have a child whose brain is differently wired, you may have found yourself unexpectedly homeschooling during the pandemic. No sooner had we learned how to navigate special education advocacy, than our focus had to shift to the actual educating. Neither I, my husband, or our children knew for how this was going to go on. I’m not going to lie, it was a steep learning curve for all of us, but it was one we had to climb for my amazingly resilient, curious, anxious and autistic first grade son.

In kindergarten, it became apparent that dyslexia was mixed into our son’s learning profile. An education that began with a team of seven special education teachers, support professionals and trained therapists, was now down to just his father and me, along with my parents, who also live with us. Now, upon finding myself unexpectedly and solely responsible for the monumental task of teaching my struggling reader, I went to the experts. I read, watched, and listened to everything I could for several hours each night. What I found was that several years ago, there had been a “reading war” that no one had won. However, proponents of both sides (Whole Language and Phonics) did appear to have come to a truce, and that truce was known as Balanced Literacy.

Both sides, those advocating “phonics” (decoding letter sounds) and those advocating “whole language” (learning whole words by sight) seemed to make good points, and so in my confusion, I contacted the Education Department at the University of Texas. (Note to Special Needs Parents: Universities offer tons of free resources and training courses as part of their research. I’ve taken the Behavioral Tech certificate training for applied behavioral analysis (ABA), communication training for Speech therapists, and much more all for free. Google search your local university’s Education, Special Education, Child Development, Neuroscience, and Psychology Departmental Studies, which are usually listed on each Department page website.)

The Science of Reading

As it turned out, the University of Texas was doing a study on reading for kids with learning differences. Unfortunately, my son was too young to be eligible. I asked for an exception, but the professor in charge gave me access to his doctoral students to ask questions and find out about the most effective resources, instead. Lost and worried, I scheduled a call and received excellent direction from an amazingly sweet doctoral student in the UT’s Special Education Program. I was advised to evaluate of the effectiveness of any program based on whether it was aligned with the “Science of Reading,” a term I had never heard. So deep into the rabbit hole I went, researching everything I could find…and I’ll save you the weeks and/or months of research by giving you the following terms to speed your search:

Science of Reading
Scarborough’s Reading Rope
Simple View of Reading
Florida Center for Reading Research
National Reading Panel
Multisensory Instruction
Orton-Gillingham Curriculum
Phonemic Awareness
Orthographic Mapping

If your child’s brain is wired differently (ASD, ADHD, SPD, dyslexic, etc.) or if they are disabled, then you know that what works for most neurotypical children may not work for yours. The other sad fact is that there are many so-called “cures” and “quick-fixes” being advertised to parents of special needs learners. Most of us have fallen for one or more of these ads for apps, programs, books, diets, supplements etc.., promising speech gains, reading improvement, better focus, reduced meltdowns, and the like. For special needs parents, finding truly effective resources for your child is like finding the proverbial “needle in the haystack.”

After purchasing a few different programs and curriculum, I was running out of patience and money….AND MY KID STILL COULDN’T READ. What’s worse, practicing all of these different programs with him had become a nightmare, and if I’m honest, our relationship was suffering. There is nothing worse for a parent than watching your child struggle and not knowing how to make it better.

In an attempt to find out why nothing I did was working, I started reading what teachers were posting in Facebook groups, like The Science of Reading – What I Should Have Learned in College. Surely, if anyone knows about reading, it’s teachers, right? Time and time again, they suggested the Secret Stories to jump-start reading, especially for beginning and struggling readers. They were very clear that while Secret Stories was only one piece of the reading puzzle, it was an extremely important one—which was giving kids easier access to more of the phonics code, faster.

In fact, the Secret Stories came up so often that I had to find out what it was, and see whether it might be the piece that my child was missing… or, if yet again, it was something that worked only for neurotypical kids. So I found the Secret Stories Facebook Group and watched some of Katie Garner’s conference presentations on YouTube and within 30 minutes, I was hooked. No, not hooked…I was INSPIRED! (Katie is the creator of Secret Stories and she presents at conferences around the world, many of which are posted on YouTube.)

So, I proceeded to watch every YouTube video associated with her name to learn everything that I could, but it still had to pass the “taste” test by the boss—my very intelligent and anxious autistic son. By this point, he’d been through three different reading programs….and lots of tears. After so much failure and anxiety (his and mine), I gave him just a taste of one Secret Story. I told him the “secret” about the letters that were “in love,” which are au/aw. This one that I’d heard Katie tell so many times in the videos I’d watched and the image was also free to download on the website. I presented it just as Katie had explained, telling my son that I had a “big, grown-up Secret about reading,” and I really played it up, copying all of Katie’s acting gold!

HE….WAS…HOOKED!!

“Mom, are there more?”

Now if you’re a parent of a differently wired kiddo, then you know how extremely amazing it is to get your kid’s full attention with anything on the first try…we’re talking out the gate, pure interest! He actually said, “Mom, are there more?” I almost cried, but that wasn’t part of the script, so I held it together. Then cool as a cucumber, I told him that I’d check, but because these were “grown-up” reading Secrets, he may not be big enough yet to learn more, and so I would have to ask the Secret Stories teacher first. ;-)

The rest of the day, we circled the aw/au in every word that we found it, even food labels! Everywhere we saw those letters, we would use the secret to sound-out (decode) the words. The biggest win wasn’t just that my son remembered the phonics sound through the story, but that he was actually able to apply it…. AND enjoy doing it!!!

Excited about this turn of events, I staged my next test, which was to sing The Better Alphabet Song. I had heard Katie explain in the videos that the Better Alphabet isn’t really a song, but a muscle memory exercise that fast-tracks mastery of the individual letters and sounds in 2 weeks to 2 months. Rather than relying on under-developed “higher-level” cognitive processing for skill mastery (which typically takes a year in kinder), the Better Alphabet targets earlier-developing (and more easily accessible) muscle memory pathways (in the lips, tongue and teeth) to connect the letter names to their sounds and take them in fast. My son had already been working on learning the individual letters sounds for years now, so what’s two more months?

So, I set my plan up, telling my son that if we learned the letter sounds with the Better Alphabet, that would surely prove to the “Secret Teacher” that she could trust us with the rest of the Secrets. Honestly, as I’m typing this, I can’t believe it happened, but he BEGGED me to watch/sing it—over and over and over again. One week later, he had all of the individual letters and sounds down pat! And then he immediately started asking me if the teacher had sent the Secrets yet. That was it, I was sold. I ordered the Decorative Squares Kit and I was ready to live, eat and breathe these Secrets! This was what success looked like, and we could both taste it!

(Note: The Decorative Square posters are actually part of the classroom kit, but if you don’t have the wall space to put up all of the big posters, you can get the Parent/Home Bundle instead, as it’s made specifically for home use.)

For perspective, I should share that I actually have two sons, and that my “neurotypical” four year old is just along for the ride, singing and watching the Better Alphabet on video along with his brother. That said, after two weeks, my four year old didn’t just know the letter sounds, he was using them to sound out three letter CVC words (i.e. cat, bit, dog, mom, dad, etc..). My mind was blown! I hadn’t even tried to start teaching him yet, aside from just reading to him. I was ecstatic about BOTH their progress, and now all of us were stalking the mailbox, waiting for our “Top Secret” Secret Stories book!

A “Backdoor” for Learning

Up to this point, I’d accumulated all of the ingredients that I needed to teach my son to read except the Secret Stories. I had Orton-Gillingham SPIRE Curriculum (since Secret Stories is not a “program”), Heggerty (for phonemic awareness, since isolating sounds in words was a particular weakness for my son), Usborne Books (for background knowledge, since kids can’t comprehend what they have no knowledge about), and even some extra “sprinkles” on top in the form of the Magic School Bus Science Club and Usborne Coding for Beginners with SCRATCH. But without the Secret Stories, these ingredients just wouldn’t “bake,” and my kids didn’t want to eat it. Knowing the Secrets gave them access to phonics skills in a way that their brains were ready to hear and understand.

The Secrets bypass the struggle. They are not magic, and Katie is not an actual unicorn (although it feels like she is!) She just uses neuroscience to carve a path for learning to read that goes straight through the brain’s backdoor, bypassing obstacles that many learners face when forced through the traditional “front”—especially those like my son.

As Katie explains in this video clip, the brain develops from back to front—with higher-level, executive functioning/ processing centers taking far longer to develop than the early-developing “feeling” based networks. Like so many kids who are wired differently, my son’s executive functioning (which is what Katie calls the “front door”) is impaired. He struggles with the order of things, multi-step instructions, short term and working memory, auditory processing deficits, knowing left from right, and more. But the Secrets don’t rely on the front door like traditional phonics programs do.

Instead, they bypass executive functioning and attach to already existing frameworks of understanding—the part of his brain that knows how it feels to get hurt,
“Owwww!”….

…..that understands why to stick his tongue out at his little brother when he’s being annoying, “Thhhh!”

….and that knows all about Superheroes, and that they are often in-disguise!

The Secrets align letter behavior with kid behavior to make their sounds easily predictable. But here’s the interesting part, my son has a hard time predicting the behaviors of his neurotypical classmates and peers, so how could he predict these complex letter behaviors if they acted the same? The answer is, they don’t. In the Secret Stories, the behaviors are fixed, and this is comforting for him…. au/aw are always in love and say “ahhhhh”…. ou/ow always play rough and get hurt, “owwww!”…. and /th/ never gets along and always stick out their tongues and say, “thhhhhh!”

And for the rare times that the letters don’t behave as expected, there is always a “next most likely” sound option to try, based on the story. It gives him comfort to know that when letters don’t make the sounds they’re supposed to, it’s because there’s a secret in the word, and that it’s the letters that are misbehaving—it’s not because he is wrong or failing. That’s a huge shift for him, and it goes a long way in reducing his anxiety. Now he has a stress-free way to figure out the words.

Just two months into our Secret Stories journey, and my son went from struggling to sound out the word C-A-T, to reading the entire Usborne early reader series. He’s gone from tears and meltdowns at just the sight of a book, to reading an entire early reader to our whole family at the dinner table—WITH PRIDE! Now he’s noticing Secrets in words that are everywhere, and he’s even making up his own, like this one…. “E and X are wonderful friends, and when they are at the front of the line, E loans X his superpower so X can say his name, in words like: exit, exceptional & excellent!”

With each new Secret, his reading and spelling power continues to grow. The Secrets have given him access to the reading code in a way that systematic phonics drills could not. They reframe the structured literacy lessons in our OG program in a fun, multisensory way that he can easily remember. They make words understandable and “figure-out-able,” and he delights in the idea that he’s privy to the “grown-up” reading secrets! And at this point, our whole family is in on the act, with grandma deserving an Oscar for her portrayal of the “Excited Secret Stories Receiver!” ;-)

At the time of this writing, we are now a full FIVE months in, and he continues to amaze me with his progress. After reading the Writing Revolution, I started using stem sentences to reinforce learning other subject areas. For example, Butterflies are amazing because…. Butterflies are amazing so….. Butterflies are amazing but…. and because of all the Secrets he knows, not only can he read the stems, but he can sound out all of the words that he wants to write on his own. He can use the Secret Stories posters independently to find the sounds (for reading) or the phonics spelling patterns (for writing) that he needs.

The ability to work independently is huge. When he was in school, he needed direct supervision and assistance to complete everything: coloring, art, workshops, etc… An adult had to sit with him and help him write every word, as he owned none of the code. Now he owns all of it, and the Secrets are his to play with and use as HE chooses to express his thoughts and ideas. No longer is he just copying random words from a word wall, or waiting for someone else to tell him what to write. That ownership is critical to his academic self-esteem, and it constantly reinforces for him what I knew all along, that HE IS CAPABLE!

His Tools for Reading and Writing

Knowing the Secrets has done so much for him. He uses them to decode new vocabulary words in all of our subject area lessons, including one the life cycle of butterflies.

He uses his them to write birthday cards, and to read his own birthday message written on the sidewalk (He even underlined the Secrets he used to read it!)

He used the them to write about the plan he made for our new garden.

He uses them to advocate for what he wants.

He even uses them to write a love letters to friends that he misses.

And while he loves to use the Secrets to write what he wants, he enjoys building words and practicing spelling with the Secret Stories Digital Stickers. While they can be used digitally, we printed ours out, cut them apart, and then put magnet stickers on the back. BAM! A low-pressure spelling game that he can use to build words without the added pressure of writing. We use these instead of letter tiles for all our spelling activities!

We even used them to make little flip books to reinforce the Secrets and practice decoding words.

Equal Access to ALL of the Phonics Code

Just like a ramp provides access to buildings for those who need it, Secret Stories provides access to reading for kids who need it, making them the most impactful accommodation on any 504 or IEP learning plan. The Secrets gave my son access equal access to the whole phonics code he needed to read and write.

Perhaps I’m a just pessimist, but I used to believe that there was a limit to the gains my son could make, and that even the Secrets would only get him so far. But now, honestly, I know that the sky’s the limit.

If I could go back in time and tell myself just one thing to do on that terrifying day that our school shut down and I became an unexpected homeschooler, it would be to find Katie Garner and the Secret Stories. These were the missing ingredients that my son needed to learn how to read.

Elizabeth George

May 16, 2021

Phonics Intervention for Struggling Readers

Dyslexia, ELL, Reading Intervention, Second Grade, Struggling Readers, Vowels

(This post was originally posted on I Teach What’s Your Super Power Blog, and excerpts pertaining to the Secret Stories® have been shared here, with permission from the author.)

Struggling Readers and the Phonics Divide

I had never heard of the Secret Stories until a teacher I thought highly of at a previous school swore by it with her first graders. It sounded interesting, but it was an “in one ear out the other” kind of thing, and I didn’t think about it again.

Fast forward to January of this year, and there was a CLEAR phonics divide in my second grade classroom between the “haves” and the “have-nots.” While some of my second graders were rocking and rolling with their sound knowledge, picking it up easily from the lessons embedded in our literacy block; others were still struggling with short /a/.

Enter Secret Stories…..
So here’s the quick version of Secret Stories: (not an affiliate link, I just love it!)

1. The Secret Stories have stories and posters for all of the different phonics skills and sounds.
For example, instead of teaching the r-controlled vowels as a phonics “skill,” I can tell my kids the secret about how er, ir, ur are terrible, awful, horrible, no-good drivers, and always have to slam on their breaks and say “Eerrrrrrrrrrrr!” (like in the words: her, turn, bird, curve, etc…). Then we connect the sound with the action to engage the full body and anchor the sound-symbol connection into their muscle memory for easy retrieval.

2. The Better Alphabet Song– We sang this daily, twice a day, EVERY day for at least two weeks. Instead of singing the name of the letters, you sing, “A says- ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah, but it can also say- ay ay ay ay ay ay ay ay.” It keeps going through all the letters and literally ALL of the sounds each can make individually, including the short and long vowel sounds (known as the Superhero Vowels®), the hard and soft sounds for /c/ and /g/, the combined /qu/ sound, and even all three sounds for /y/ (known as Sneaky Y®). There is a CD (or musical download) included so you’re not on your own with this.

3. Because the Secret Stories isn’t a grade level “program,” it fits into what you’re already using. You DO NOT wait to introduce one sound (or Secret) a week, but instead, you give kids the Secrets they need to read and write words throughout the day. So you’re always looking for opportunities to use the Secrets they know while sharing more. (The ongoing constant use and reinforcement quickly establishes a deep level of skill-ownership.) The author’s point was, “Why should kids wait until February to learn about r-controlled vowels when they need them NOW?!!” Agreed.

Small Group Intervention for Struggling Readers

My initial intention was to use the Secret Stories specifically with my struggling readers who had significant phonetic weaknesses as an intervention. However, my “small” group got waaaaay bigger than I planned because the majority of my students wanted to join in! Some of my strongest readers were strategically placing themselves around my group of struggling readers on the rug while pretending to read a book, just so they could listen in! Eventually, I invited anyone that wanted to join in, and I consistently had 12-15 kids in our “intervention” group.

Our reading intervention time consisted of reviewing previously introduced Secrets, introducing new ones, and them practicing them both orally and on white boards. On Fridays, we would “collect” all of the words with Secret Stories phonics patterns in them, which helped me know which ones I needed to reinforce. Incorrect answers are as informative as correct answers! If we had an extra minute or two during our morning messages, we would play “word detectives” and look for the Secrets in it!

I would ask things like,“Find a word with these two friends who are all about the balls….” or
“Find a two-syllable word with a bad driver in it….” or “Find a word with that has a sneaky letter in it….” etc…..

Even though we didn’t start the Secrets until mid-year, I absolutely saw a 100% difference in both their reading and spelling. Next year, I will be starting with the Secrets week one!

As Secret Stories is not available as a “digital” download, it’s more expensive (about $100 for the book, posters and CD). But I was in a full on panic over having so many struggling readers in my classroom, and so I was more than willing to spend the money to make my life easier. If you don’t have the $100 to buy it personally and you can’t get your school or PTA to buy it for you, it would definitely be worth setting up a Donor’s Choose project.

Secret Stories allows me to quickly introduce a significant number of phonics skills in a short amount of time, and in a way that all of my students could easily remember and understand. Knowing the Secrets also gave us a common language that we could use when talking about the letters and sounds. “I’m looking for Secrets,” became one of our most-used print strategies!

Secret Stories is one of my favorite teacher-things, not only because of the growth that I saw with my students, but because of how much they love them and enjoy using them!

Never miss a Secret (or a Secret-freebie surprise!) by subscribing to the Secret email blast!

January 10, 2020

Tricking the Dyslexic Brain Into Reading: A Backdoor Approach to Phonics

Brain Based Learning, Dyslexia, Home School Connection, Homeschoolers, Orton Gillingham, Phonics for Dyslexia, Reading Intervention, Social Emotional Learning Channels, Struggling Readers

Dyslexia, Reading, Phonics & the Brain

Dyslexia

So what is dyslexia? Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is often genetic, and that is neurological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities. These difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language. Dyslexic learners find it difficult to recognize and process letters and sounds accurately and automatically, and can also struggle with paired associate memory and/or orthographic memory. (For more on dyslexia, what it is, and what it isn’t, click here.) It’s a neurological, often genetic disorder that makes

Some researchers in the field, however, believe that dyslexia is not always organic, but the result of ineffective reading instruction and a lack of phonics skill acquisition at the earliest grade levels. Regardless, the specific learning challenges, deficits and observed behaviors are very similar, as is the need for instruction to circumvent the inherent areas of learner-weakness and tap into alternative areas of strength. And these learners have many areas of strength! Dyslexia does not affect intelligence, as most students with dyslexia are of average or even above-average intelligence.

Dyslexic children, as well as dyslexic adults, are often the quintessential “backdoor” learners—looking for effective “work-arounds” to solve problems, and often exhibiting high levels of creativity in doing so. For dyslexics, the “front” door might be closed, but the backdoor is WIDE open!

They may not move from “A” to “B” to “C” as per the traditional learning path, but they somehow find a way….even if it means having to skip “B” entirely, circle “F” twice, and then work they way back around to “C!” Traveling these unconventional paths allows them to observe more, think differently, be creative and build tenacity.

The key to helping dyslexic learners struggling to read is to provide them with an easily accessible, backdoor approach, so as to accelerate access to the phonics skills needed to read and write, and from the earliest possible grade levels.

The answers lie in the brain science.
(Before reading on, learn more about “backdoor” skill-access for struggling readers, here.)

Reading Intervention for Dyslexic Learners

Beth Guadagni M.A., a Learning Specialist at The Yellin Center for Mind, Brain, and Education, explains how dyslexic children can make great progress with reading when they’re given appropriate, intensive, and high quality intervention early. The following is an excerpt from her original post, which can be found here.

There are lots of good interventions that can be very effective in improving reading decoding. Remember that early intervention is critical, so if you suspect your child may have real reading problems, it’s best to consult an expert without delay.

Multi-sensory instruction and teaching techniques that recruit a child’s sense of touch, as well as their eyes and ears, is one of the most effective methods for teaching letter-sound pairings to children with weak phonemic awareness or paired associate memory. Similarly, kids with weak orthographic memory may respond better to multi-sensory methods, like tracing sight words on a textured surface, rather than simply drilling with flashcards. Multi-sensory teaching allows students to absorb information through different channels and can be extremely effective. For very intensive multi-sensory instruction, look for specialists or centers that teach using Orton-Gillingham or Linda Mood-Bell’s curricula.

For teachers and parents, one of our favorite interventions for students who struggle with weak paired associate memories (i.e. difficulty connecting the phonics patterns to their sounds) is Secret Stories by Katie Garner. It pairs pictures of letters and letter combinations with stories that explain “why” the letters make the sounds they do. Our favorite is the explanation of the au/aw sound (They have crushes on each other, so whenever they’re together, they say, “Awww!”). This clever technique helps kids understand the “logic” behind letter sounds, instead of simply having to memorize information. Context, especially when it’s fun and already familiar, really help kids with poor paired associate memory learn quickly.

phonics for dyslexia paired associate memory

Many children with decoding difficulties, regardless of the cause, can comprehend more sophisticated material than they are able to read independently. It is important to give these students access to reading material that is at their intellectual level. Reading aloud while the child follows along is one way to do this. It also provides the added benefit of repeated exposures to words paired with correct pronunciation. Over time, this will help strengthen their weak paired associate or orthographic memories and improve their skills. For busy parents or kids who want a bit more independence, audiobooks are fantastic for kids to practice this on their own, as long as they can follow along with the text as they are listening.

Finally, practice, practice, practice! Accurate, fluent reading is the result of hundreds of hours spent with written words, so as to become automatic with letter patterns. We encourage lots of practice reading at home, but with a few cautionary notes. First, be aware that continued drilling without results can be very frustrating for your child, and may even be futile if the method he’s using isn’t one that’s best for his kind of mind. If he’s reading as often as his classmates, but falling further and further behind, ask his teacher or a reading specialist what other techniques he should try. Secondly, remember that reading, particularly for younger kids, should be a fun! Try to strike a balance: kids should not forgo reading because it’s hard, but reading shouldn’t feel like a grueling obligation either.

I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Elisheva Schwartz on the Dyslexia Quest Podcast (links to broadcasts, below). I first became aware of this popular podcast on Dyslexia after listening to an interview with Harvard-trained neuroscientist and researcher, Dr. Mary-Helen Immordino-Yang, whose research on learning and the brain is incorporated into the Secret Stories “backdoor” approach to accelerate phonics for reading and writing.

In the two-part podcast interview with Elisheva shared below, we discuss learning issues that are associated with dyslexia, and why the Secret Stories® are often referred to as “Phonics for Dyslexics”. To play, click the arrow under each of the descriptions, and for additional podcasts on the topic, visit www.elishevaschwartz.com. You can also access Secret Stories® free video library by subscribing on YouTube.

The Dyslexic Brain: A Backdoor Approach to Phonics for Reading – Pt. 1

CLICK THE ARROW (ON LEFT) TO PLAY PT. 1

The Dyslexic Brain: A Backdoor Approach to Phonics for Reading – Pt. 2

CLICK THE ARROW (ON LEFT) TO PLAY PT. 2

Finally, I wanted to share this review that I stumbled upon online. I am always so grateful when parents take the time to reach out and share their child’s struggles and successes, and while this one wasn’t sent to me directly, it was filled with some good information and helpful insight that I thought I would share.

How I Helped My Dyslexic Child Learn to Read

This book changed our life. I’ve taught my dyslexic daughter to read using the Secret Stories®.

After trying the regular phonics “programs,” Secret Stories was recommended by our homeschool support group. With the Secrets, we didn’t have to give up learning phonetically, despite my daughter having auditory processing problems.

We sat down with a print out copy of the first McGuffey Reader, and when we came to a Secret Story (i.e. letters not making the sound that they should) we looked it up its “secret” the book. The pictures that went with each Secret made them so easy for her to remember, not just the phonics pattern, but the sound/sounds. The Secrets helped her brain easily retain the phonics patterns and sounds that before she could never get, no matter what we tried or how many times we practiced them.

I’ve also begun using Secret Stories with my severely language-compromised son, and he giggles as we “make” the Secrets he knows out of his Theraputty (another great product) and make the words come alive! I’ve also used the Secret Stories in a fun way at our homeschool group—I made little capes with the Superhero Vowels® sewn onto the back to wear when the vowels “say their names!”

Seeing my daughter now want to read and write ALL the time is such a blessing, as it’s been a long road to get here! If she hadn’t learned the Secrets, I don’t think we would have ever made it to where we are now.

I wish every school would use Secret Stories along with their reading curriculum, as it’s so easy, and it covers all of the learning bases: kinesthetic, visual, auditory, and even emotion. It can help everyone, but especially those who don’t learn the “normal” way.

Learn more about how Secret Stories® can help struggling readers access critical phonics skills for reading and writing.

Learn the “secret” phonics stories that go with the pictures here!
…..and never miss a Secret (or a Secret-freebie surprise!) by subscribing to the Secret email blast here!

March 20, 2019

What Dyslexia Isn’t….and How to “Fast-Track” Orton-Gillingham Phonics Instruction with Secret Stories®

Brain Based Learning, Dyslexia, ELL, Home School Connection, Homeschoolers, Orton Gillingham, Phonics for Dyslexia, Reading Intervention, Struggling Readers

What Dyslexia Isn’t…

As promised, I’ve asked reading specialist, Heather Vidal, to come back and shed more light on dyslexia, what it is, and more importantly, what it isn’t—despite the common misconceptions. If you are a new subscriber, or if you missed Heather’s previous guest post about how she uses Secret Stories® in conjunction with Orton-Gillingham to meet the needs of her dyslexic students, you can read it here.

I would like to preface Heather’s post by addressing the recent debate on use of the term “dyslexia” and its efficacy as a diagnosis for struggling readers, along with the International Dyslexic Association’s definition of dyslexia—

“Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities. These difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language that is often unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities and the provision of effective classroom instruction. Secondary consequences may include problems in reading comprehension and reduced reading experience that can impede growth of vocabulary and background knowledge.”

Dyslexia and the Brain

A diagnosis of dyslexia can help to shed light on a reader’s struggles and identify the best form of intervention. There is a wide gap between what we know about the brain and how we teach kids to read, and that the most critical variable in effective K-2 literacy instruction is early intervention by way of teacher knowledge and expertise.

Dyslexic Brain

It is vital that teachers know about and understand the brain science so as to properly align instruction with the basic tenets of brain based learning, particularly in regard to what research shows is the weakest link in our reading and writing instruction—teaching phonics.

A Guest Post by Heather Vidal, Orton-Gillingham Reading Specialist

Katie has graciously invited me to share more about what dyslexia is (and isn’t!) and why the Secret Stories® method works within a curriculum for dyslexic students. You can read my other post here) As a reading specialist, private tutor and curriculum developer who works specifically with dyslexic students learning to read, I often get questions about what dyslexia is, but it’s actually easier to explain what Dyslexia is not.

What Dyslexia Is NOT

Dyslexia does not mean that students read entire words or sentences backwards.
While some dyslexic students do flip letters and transverse words, this is not the only sign of dyslexia, and some dyslexic students don’t do this at all.

Dyslexia is not a sign of low IQ.
In fact, many children diagnosed with dyslexia are found to have higher than average IQ’s. Dyslexia is not correlated with IQ, but a difference in the way a dyslexic person’s brain works.

Dyslexia cannot be outgrown.
With the proper instructional approach, students can become excellent readers. However, this does not mean that they no longer have dyslexia.

Dyslexia is not rare.
While numbers vary, the International Dyslexia Association has found that between 15-20% of people have some degree of Dyslexia.

Diagnosing Dyslexia

Using Secret Stories® to Fast-Track Orton Gillingham Instruction

So what does all this have to do with Secret Stories®?
At one of the first trainings I took regarding the Orton-Gillingham approach, the trainer explained dyslexia like this—

“Imagine comparing a page of text to a brick wall. An efficient reader can see the mortar in between each brick (letter sound) and the different color variations that each brick possesses (the possibilities of letter sounds). If you were dyslexic, you would know you were looking at a wall, but segmenting each brick would be very difficult.”

Dyslexia can manifest in many ways, but all of these ways come back to students having difficulty reading and spelling (and most often, segmenting words into individual sounds.) Since dyslexia is classified as a neurobiological learning disability, the best way to help dyslexic learners is to utilize instructional methods that are compatible with the way the brains works.

Click here for more.

Dyslexia is classified as a learning disability that causes students to struggle with fluency, word recognition, and poor decoding and encoding skills (Lyon, Shaywitz, & Shaywitz, 2003, p. 2). Seventy plus years of research has shown that the best way to help dyslexic kids learn to read is to employ a multi-sensory, phonics and linguistics based approach to reading instruction that offers continuous feedback.

All of these tenets are compatible with Orton-Gillingham and Secret Stories approach, but using the two together (in my opinion) is the best way to help students with dyslexia learn to read well. Secret Stories activates the brain’s earlier-developing social and emotional systems for learning (i.e. the brain’s “back-door”) and provides students with meaningful connections to all of the foundational phonics skills covered in an Orton-Gillingham based curriculum.

Differences Between Secret Stories® and OG

When speaking with Katie a few days ago, she shared some of the questions she receives from teachers asking about the differences between the Orton-Gillingham and Secret Stories methods, so for those who are interested, I’ve made this handy chart of the two reading/phonics programs/tools.

Orton-Gillingham Phonics Hopefully this helps clear up some of the differences, but if you have any questions, please send them my way— TreetopsEducation@gmail.com. You can also check out my Teachers Pay Teachers Store here.

By applying a brain based approach to reading instruction through the combined use of these two powerful teaching tools, teachers can reach not only dyslexic students, but all students who struggle with learning to read—providing more meaningful (and fun) ways to learn!

For more information about dyslexia, visit The International Dyslexia Association.

Heather MacLeod Vidal is a Orton-Gillingham certified reading specialist and curriculum writer for Treetops Educational Interventions in St. Petersburg, Florida.

References
Lyon, G.R., Shaywitz, S.E., & Shaywitz, B.A. (2003). Defining dyslexia, comorbidity, teachers’ knowledge of language and reading. Annals of Dyslexia, 53, 1-14.

I am so grateful to Heather for taking the time to share her insight and expertise! If you have any questions or comments for Heather, you can leave them in the comments below and she or I would be happy to answer them.

August 21, 2018

Wanna Know a “Secret” About Orton-Gillingham Phonics Instruction?

Brain Based Learning, Dyslexia, First Grade, Guided Reading/ Word Work, Kindergarten, Orton Gillingham, Phonics for Dyslexia, Reading Intervention, Struggling Readers, Teaching Writing, Title I

Orton Gillingham and Secret Stories Phonics Method

Learn the “Secrets” About Orton-Gillingham Phonics Instruction

I receive so many questions about whether or not Secret Stories® can be used with Orton-Gillingham phonics instruction, and if so, how.

If you’re familiar with or already use Secret Stories®, then you know that it is not a phonics program, but an “accelerant ” used to fast-track access to the whole code that kids need to read and write—and from the earliest possible grade levels! The Secrets are like “steroids” that pump-up your existing reading curriculum and/or phonics program to make the learning go “warp-speed!” Not more reading instruction, just better and more efficient, as the Secrets are always there….always teaching, and always ready for use to read and spell words! (This was the focus of my previous post, which you can read here.)

Orton-Gillingham phonics instruction, like Secret Stories®, is a multi-sensory approach to reading. I love seeing the two paired together, as they are a reading “dream-team!” They compliment each other beautifully, with Secret Stories® fast-tracking learner access to “high-leverage” phonics skills that can otherwise take years to acquire; and Orton-Gillingham providing an optimal reading and writing “playground” on which kids can use them! (This combination is especially effective with dyslexic learners and other struggling readers.)

Heather MacLeod Vidal, a learning specialist and curriculum writer from St. Petersburg, Florida, is an expert in Orton-Gillingham phonics instruction, and has been incorporating Secret Stories® into her OG lessons for years. I’ve asked her to share her insight and ideas here.

Orton-Gillingham and Secret Stories®

Greetings from sunny Florida!

I am so excited to write a guest post for Katie because I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Secret Stories. You see, I work as a reading specialist in a fabulous school in St. Petersburg Florida, and I actually write my own Orton-Gillingham phonics-based curriculum to help meet the needs of my kiddos.

For those of you that aren’t familiar, Orton-Gillingham is a multi-sensory approach proven to work with students struggling with reading, writing, and spelling. It is primarily suggested for students diagnosed with Dyslexia (which some numbers put at 17% of the population!). Here’s the thing though….sometimes, working with the same approach every day can get a little bit stale for students. This is where Secret Stories comes in!

As a reading specialist, I have the amazing luxury of seeing students in a one-on-one environment, so I scaffold all of my lessons for each student. The amazing thing that I have found about Secret Stories is that I can jump around and hit the Secrets as they align with my Orton-Gillingham phonics instruction lesson plans.

This means that when we cover open syllables, I don’t have to teach “vowel y” anymore. Now my students know the Secret Story about Sneaky Y®, the “sneaky cape stealer of e and i!”

Click to view the above Secret Stories® Phonics Flash Cards
(w/the Secret sound picture on one side & the story on the other!)

We act it out with pillowcases that have Sneaky Y® with /e/ and /i/ felt letters glued to them. My students can get into the role by simply clothes-pinning the correct cape to their shirt as they read a given word.

Sneaky Y® Capes

(For another cute “teacher-made” idea for Sneaky Y® storytelling with and hands-on fun, check this out!)

When it’s time for Secret Stories Mommy E® to make her debut, my hair goes up in a bun and my glasses are placed promptly on my face. My students love how insistently I ask them to speak up and “say your name”, and I love that they remember the Mommy E® rule!

Secret Stories Mommy E® tells any vowel that’s one letter away, “You Say Your Name!”
(And to crack those tricky, multi-syllabic words, watch this video to learn the Secret Stories Babysitter Vowels® trick!)

You see, this type of multi-sensory activity is precisely what Orton-Gillingham phonics instruction is all about. Without getting too technical, in order to build connections (known as “synapsis”) in the brain, we need to provide students with meaningful ways to remember a given skill. The more meaningful, the more connections, and the more the learning will “stick!”

You can repeat yourself 50 times, but if it is not in a way that is meaningful to your student, they still might not remember it! I promise you, your dyslexic students are much more likely to remember a skill if they have something special to connect it to!

Here’s the thing though, Secret Stories and OG do not have to be paced side by side. This year at my school, something really special started happening. One classroom teacher started using Secret Stories, and I saw glimpses of understanding in those students before having the Orton-Gilligham phonics instruction.

One of my kindergarteners who is severely dyslexic came to me on the day that I was planning to teach the /th/ rule in with Orton-Gillingham, and something amazing happened. She noticed that I had written several /th/ words on the whiteboard. I kid you not, my student said, “T and h are so rude to each other! They are always sticking their tongues out at each other!”

The “TH” Secret Phonics Poster /NEW “Decorative Squares” Set

I nearly fell out of my chair! This was a student who had just recently mastered her consonant sounds after months of intensive Orton-Gillingham phonics instruction tutoring. Yet, here she was, teaching me about a skill that she had already learned after hearing it just a couple of times in her class. This initial introduction in her class stuck with her so that by the time she was ready to work with me on the skill, she already had an idea of what the consonant digraph should look and sound like. And that is the magic of the Secret Stories!

This is her writing sample after just one day of explicit /th/ phonics instruction. Notice that while she still has many areas to work on, she correctly identified the /th/ in both its unvoiced (“with”) and voiced form (“the”). These connections continued throughout the year, and my students from that classroom were more prepared to tackle new skills since they had been introduced to the Secret in their classrooms.

Kindergarten writing sample: “I go with my dad to the playground near my house.”

(Click here to view more kindergarten writing, as well as first grade writing with Secret Stories®)

Orton-Gillingham phonics instruction can (and in my opinion should) be used with Secret Stories brain based phonics stories in order to help build the neural pathways necessary for learning phonics skills. I am so glad to have found the Secret!

If you are interested in more on how Orton-Gillingham phonics instruction works with Secret Stories, I will be doing another post on this topic for Katie soon, so stay tuned!

Orton-Gillingham Phonics Instruction Curriculum

Guest Post by:
Heather MacLeod Vidal
Learning Specialist/ Curriculum Writer for Treetops Educational Interventions
St Petersburg, FL

I want to thank Heather for taking the time to share this, as I think it’s great information for all those wondering if and how Secret Stories® and Orton-Gillingham phonics instruction could be used together. And as Heather mentioned, I will be sharing two more posts on this topic that Heather has written for my blog, which should be posted there within the week.

And if you would like to read more about Secret Stories®, I would invite you to check out this recently published article published in the Arkansas Reading Journal, which you can download here. I am excited to be one of the keynote speakers at the Arkansas Reading Conference this October.

Until Next Time,
Katie Garner
https://www.KatieGarner.com

July 30, 2018

Dear Katie,

I love reading your blog! I’ve used your free Zoo Keeper Writing Strategies with my kinder class and the children really related, always showing me “how many animals (i.e. sounds) they caught” in their words!

I’ve taught both 1st and 2nd grades for years, and now am in my seventh year of teaching kindergarten. As many of your letter pattern stories are, of course, geared toward 1st and 2nd, I was wondering if you had some that were more geared more toward kinder?

Also, at what point would you begin introducing the Secret Stories in kinder… after the majority know most of their letters?

Gratefully,
Marian M.
Kindergarten Teacher

(Download the Free Zoo Keeper Strategy Pack and watch this video clip to see how it works!)

FREE Secret Stories® Phonics Writing Strategy Pack— "Zoo Keepers and M&M Quizzes"

Free Secret Stories® Zoo Keeper Writing Strategy

“Zoo Keeper and M&M Quizzes” for Early Grade Writing!

I love Marian’s question, as it goes right to the heart of why I created the Secret Stories® in the first place, which was to break down the grade level walls of phonics instruction that limit early learner-access to the code!

Before I answer it specifically, I want to prepare you for the paradigm shift we’re about to take when it comes to what kindergarten can do and when they can do it, and I think these links will help! So here are a couple of guest posts by kindergarten teacher, Kjersti Johnson (post 1 and post 2) along with a couple of eye-opening, kindergarten-related video clips here and here.

So let’s get started by opening up a can of worms about WHY we do WHAT we do WHEN we do it when it comes to the “code” that kids need for reading and writing!

If you really think about it, what are kids supposed to do with just bits and pieces of the reading and writing code? How can you read OR write about your pet mouse with only a third, or even two-thirds of the code? And that’s all most early grade level learners have to work with, given that it takes multiple grade level years to teach it all…. and that’s if they’re on grade level!

The individual letter sounds (which kindergartners spend an entire year learning) provide very little bang for the buck when it comes to using them to reading and writing, as they are actually the least likely sounds that the letters will make when they get together in real words! This makes the brain’s job as a “pattern-making” machine extremely difficult, as it seems that letters are never actually doing what they’re supposed to!

And simply adding the blends and a few digraphs to the mix in first grade doesn’t help all that much, which is why kindergartners and first graders can barely read or write anything! At least not anything that hasn’t been “memorized” (ENTER SIGHT WORDS, STAGE RIGHT!)

sight word don't work

And the sight word “parade” begins…

Sight words help compensate for the gross lack of phonics skills at the beginning grade levels, and are often taught in order to meet the required text-level assessments. For early grade teachers, rote memorization of high-frequency sight words can feel like a necessity when considering that the phonics skills kids need to read them aren’t even on their grade level scope and sequence. This is because traditionally, phonics skills are “divvied-out” in bits and pieces across multiple grade level years—from PreK to 2nd.

While teaching kids in kindergarten and first grade to memorize words instead of reading them might feel like a necessity for beginning grade teachers, this rote memorization is far from the ideal—from either a developmentally or from a brain-based perspective. (You can read more about this here or by clicking the link under the picture below.)

Secret Stories® Phonics— Stanford University Brain Study on Sight Words

Why Kids Shouldn’t Memorize What They Could READ!

Moreover, the less skills kids bring to the table, the less value they take away from daily reading and writing experiences in the classroom.

Imagine that you’re a Morse Code operator, just assigned to a naval ship.

But there’s a problem.

You are only in the first year of a three year Morse Code training program, which means that you barely know even one-third of the code. Yet you are expected to send and receive messages on day one.

You think to yourself……
“How can I possibly be expected to accurately send and receive messages with not even one-third of the code? What about all of the sounds I haven’t learned yet? How will I be able to figure out what the incoming messages say? And worse still, how can I send messages if I don’t know the code for all of the words? Should I just leave those parts blank, or just fill up the page with the parts of the code that I do know? Or maybe I could just forgo what the captain wants me to send and just write what I can spell instead?”

Dear Captain,

I like the sub. It is big. It is fun. It is really fun.
I like it so so much. I really really like the big fun sub a lot!

These are common strategies that beginning (and struggling) learners will also use in order to get around all of the parts of the code that they don’t know or haven’t yet been taught— of which there are many!

A scope and sequence cannot accurately predict which parts of the code learners will need to read their favorite book or to write the stories they want to tell. The /th/ digraph is considered a 1st grade skill by grade level scope and sequence standards, even though /th/ can be found on every line of every page in every book! In fact, kindergartners will encounter the /th/ pattern literally hundreds of times on their very first day! (And don’t even get me started on the letter /y/!) The bottom line is that just like with Morse Code, you need ALL of it to do ANYTHING with it!

Secret Stories® Phonics — The Brain is a "Patten-Making" Machine!

The Brain is a “Pattern-Making” Machine

Click here to learn more

So the burning question is how to provide our earliest grade level learners with access to the “whole” code when it takes an entire for many kids to just learn the alphabet? The answer lies in the brain science. Brain science lights a path straight through the brain’s backdoor via the earlier developing, social and emotional “feeling” networks. By targeting phonics instruction to the affective learning domain, we can bypass areas of inherent early (and struggling) learner weakness (i.e. the higher level, executive processing centers) and tap into alternative areas of strength.

Secret Stories® does this in a variety of ways, beginning with channeling the individual letters and sounds through muscle memory (i.e. body intelligence) for accelerated mastery in just two weeks to two months— and that’s for kinder and PK! (And we’re not just talking the “basic” letter sounds, we’re talking every possible sound that a letter can make by itself, from hard and soft /c/ and /g/, to the long and short vowel sounds, to the positional sounds of /y/, and even /qu/…. and all while they eat their shoes and lick the carpet. (And if you actually teach preK or kinder, then you understand exactly what I mean— Lol!)

Individual Letter Sound Mastery in 2 weeks to 2 months!

During the two week-two month time frame while the individual letter sounds are seeping in via muscle memory, they are also learning about the letters’ “secrets”, (i.e. Secret Stories) which are what they do when they don’t do what they should! The Secrets explain all of the crazy sounds that letters make when they get together, and even some of the strange things they can do when they are by themselves!

Shared as short little stories that are easy to remember and understand, they are ready for immediate use in both reading and writing! And because Secret Stories® aligns letter behavior to learners’ own behavior (by way of already familiar “social and emotional” frameworks) they can easily predict their most and next most likely sound behaviors, just as they could predict the behavior of their own classmates.

Download the Free Secret Stories® Mini-Poster Sample Pack!

FREE Secret Stories® Phonics Mini-Poster Sampler Pack

Our brains thrive on patterns and making things make sense, and the Secrets make letters make sense!And the earlier the grade level, the MORE they are needed, as they have virtually nothing else to read or write with! Kinder will naturally pick up and remember the Secrets BEFORE all of the individual letter sounds have taken hold, as the time frame for muscle memory to kick in is between two weeks to two months, whereas the Secrets are instant! Stories are easy for kids to remember because stories are HOW kids remember! And stories are developmentally harmless, so when they are ready to plug it in and use it, they can… but until that time, it’s simply a story!

Shifting early grade reading/ phonics instruction from brain-antagonistic to brain-compatible requires that we FEED the brain, not FIGHT it, and Secret Stories Stories® are its favorite treat! They can (and should!) be given all day long, throughout the entire instructional day—anytime and anywhere they are needed to help read or spell a word. Every Secret you give them is one more “tool” in their tool belt that they can bring to the reading and writing table, so as to bring more value away!

Secret Stories® Phonics — "Feed the Brain, Don't Fight it!"

Thinking “Outside the Box” with Letters & Sounds

So to answer Marian’s questions…

The Secrets are not bound by the traditional “grade level walls” for phonics instruction that limits learner-access to the code. To share only certain Secrets at certain grade levels would presume that learners at lower grade levels don’t need them, and how could that be true if they are reading and writing across the instructional day beginning in kindergarten? Nor can we possibly say WHICH Secrets a learner will need to read the book he picks from the library or to write a word in a story he wants to tell.

Like the Morse Code operators, kids need ALL of the code, so NEVER wait to share a Secret!

Share them simultaneously with the individual letter sounds, whenever and wherever they are needed, whether it’s on the morning calendar or on the lunch menu! Remember that to a Morse Code operator (or to a beginning reader/writer) a /th/ is going to come in a LOT more handy than a /t/, so never hold back the tools that you know kids need to read and write every day!

Why Wait If We Don’t Have To?!!

Why hold back what kids so desperately need every hour of every day in our classrooms when they are working with text? If the brain science provides a “secret” backdoor passage through which we can so easily sneak phonics skills, why wouldn’t we use it?

Secret Stories® Phonics — Sneaking Skills through the Brain's Backdoor!

A “Backdoor Delivery System” for Accelerated Skill Access

Until Next Time,

Katie Garner :-)

Never Miss a Secret! Subscribe to the Newsletter!

Secret Stories® Makes PhonicsMake SENSE!

Secret Stories Phonics— Cracking the Reading Code with the Brain in Mind!

Try a “taste” of the Secrets with YOUR class
and see the difference they make!
Click to Download the FREE Secret Stories® Mini-Sample Poster Pack!

For a list of upcoming conferences, or for information on scheduling a school or district professional development workshop, click here.

www.TheSecretStories.com

Secret Stories® Cracking the Reading Code with the Brain in Mind!

Comments:

Brian HopkinsMarch 31, 2014 at 9:52 PM

I can’t wait to play The Better Alphabet song with my students tomorrow. Thanks for sharing!

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Katie GarnerApril 1, 2014 at 2:34 PM

At this point in the year, you might want to ‘go all the way’ and try the “Letter Runs” with them! Here’s the link to that- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHUwuuXsh-0 ……….and don’t forget to try it BACKWARDS!!
(you can also switch from ‘long’ to ‘short’ vowel sounds throughout to keep the challenge high :) as well as change the tune to: Happy Birthday, The Star Spangled Banner, etc…
Looking forward to hearing how they do!

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Julie DavisMarch 31, 2014 at 10:35 PM

So many great ideas and a great song!!!! Definitely going to try this with my kids! Thanks!!!
Julie

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lorenaMarch 31, 2014 at 10:40 PM

The Morse Code Operator is a great analogy! Thank you for this post. :)
lorepuckett at gmail dot com

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Mrs. McHaffieMarch 31, 2014 at 10:46 PM

I subscribed!! I will be trying this with my kiddos as well!

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Namie JamesonApril 1, 2014 at 12:25 AM

I attended the Illinois Reading Conference last month and couldn’t get into either of your sessions! I couldn’t even get close to the doorway :(
Folks were setting chairs out on both ends of the corridor to hear you, but unfortunately my ears are too old to hear from that far away so I gave up! I’m hoping to have better luck seeing you at the Natl Elementary Principals Conference this summer.

You should know that your ‘Secrets’ are an ongoing topic of conversation at our school and have had an incredible impact on our student achievement this year. As a school administrator, it’s been truly amazing to witness the progress made at each grade level, especially by our most at-risk. I’m just in awe, as are our parents (which is always a good thing!)

My teachers were so disappointed that I couldn’t get into your session, as they promised the kids that I would take a picture with you to show them. Apparently the teachers that came to your sessions last year tried, but it was too crowded and you had too many people around you afterwards. I told them that this year was even worse, given that I couldn’t even get through the door!

Hopefully I’ll have better luck seeing you in July!

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Katie GarnerApril 1, 2014 at 2:42 PM

I know… it was CRAZY! The committee tried to avoid the overcrowding problem that happened last year by putting both sessions in the ballroom but I think their overall attendance this year was just too high, which ultimately is a good thing (but understandably frustrating when you can’t get into what you want to see).

I will most definitely be at the Principal’s Conference in July and I’ll even save a seat for you, just in case ;)

Thanks for your kind email, and please let your teachers (and students) know how happy I am to hear of their progress (and we’ll definitely take that picture, as well!)

Looking forward to meeting you in July,
Katie

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PatienceApril 1, 2014 at 1:00 AM

This is incredible. I appreciate the work that has been put into programs like this and the accessibility of them to other educators and parents. Thank you and well done.

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Katie GarnerApril 1, 2014 at 2:43 PM
Thank YOU and I’m so glad you found the post here on Mrs. Jump’s Blog!!

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Ms. Perry’s PeachesApril 1, 2014 at 11:06 AM

This was an amazing find. Thank you Deanna Jump for sharing this! I am purchasing the alphabet vertically as I write this. I am so inspired by this motor memory approach. Thank you!
Katie GarnerApril 1, 2014 at 2:52 PM

So glad you found the post, and be sure to use the vertical alphabet for the “Letter Runs” too… they’re so much fun!! I put the link in the answer to the first comment at the top :)

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Lauren O’RourkeApril 1, 2014 at 11:54 AM

I am so glad I am subscribed to your blog so that I can find and appreciate programs like this. As a first year teacher, this information makes me see things in a new perspective. I would love the opportunity to use this program in my classroom for my students. I would love the opportunity to share this approach with others given the scientific research that has gone into this. Thanks so much to the developer(s) of this program and the difference it is going to make in teaching.

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Katie GarnerApril 1, 2014 at 2:33 PM

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Katie GarnerApril 1, 2014 at 2:50 PM

You’re so welcome, and as a new teacher, you would probably get a better perspective/ context if you watch the VLOGS, starting with #1 here….https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziT4bautiGk ……

I am gearing up to make the next set before I have to leave town again for conference, with the focus being on “What to do when a “Secret” doesn’t work?!!” as that’s actually where the fun begins for learners with regard to their daily interactions with text becoming a virtual “playground” for critical thinking!!

In the meantime, don’t hesitate to ask, should you have any questions, and thanks again for your comment!

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HuskergirlApril 1, 2014 at 9:43 PM

I’m excited to have a song to share with my kiddos. I would love to win your kit as I am always looking for ways to reach my struggling readers.

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YouAreMySunshineApril 2, 2014 at 2:43 AM

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YouAreMySunshineApril 2, 2014 at 2:57 AM

I just discovered Secret Stories and the Better Alphabet Song today and I’m in love! I love how engaging it is and how it can meet so many different learning styles! I really like how you put so much thought into the position of the mouth when you did the action for short a on the you tube video. I’m always looking for new ways to make learning meaningful and fun for my kids (why I was on this blog) and feel like I have hit the jackpot with this find! I wish I could go back in time and could have done this with my class since day one. We review letter sounds and phonograms daily- and I’m embarrassed to admit but it b-o-r-i-n-g the way I’m doing it now and definitely something I want to improve on. This is just what I needed and will totally transform how I teach phonics. So excited to make something that was not so fun into something I know my kids will not only love doing but truly benefit from.
Katie GarnerApril 3, 2014 at 10:19 PM

LoL…. I remember feeling the same way when I’d stumble upon something that would completely change the way I teach! I’d always feel SOOO badly for my previous classes, who I sometimes felt, learned ‘in spite’ of me….especially my very first year – ugh :(

I remember wanting to buy my whole class t-shirts with- “I survived Mrs. Garner’s 1st Year Teaching!!” written across the front!! ;)

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L.SmithApril 2, 2014 at 10:43 AM

I think this sounds fabulous and I will be trying this out with my title students. I notice that my title students DO NOT know their alphabet-ever, nor their sounds. This should be the answer!

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Katie GarnerApril 3, 2014 at 10:46 PM

It’s funny you mention this, as often readiness issues are more pervasive with Title I learners, for a variety of reasons.

These ‘work-around’ strategies (i.e. motor/ muscle memory for individual letters and sounds; social/ emotive connections/ cues for complex pattern sound retrieval) are crucial for learners struggling with cognitive readiness.

For these learners, in particular, the ability to GIVE these core reading and writing skills, rather than having to wait on ‘developmental readiness’ in order to TEACH them, truly makes all the difference!!

So many of the problems that Title I learners face stem from the fact that in the first few years of school, they are ‘slaves’ to their own developmental readiness, resulting in their having to continually play on an uneven playing field!

By using brain research findings to circumvent these pitfalls, we can actually avoid these deficit areas in the brain entirely, targeting the stronger, more capable areas instead!

(Hope this makes sense…. have had glass of wine!!! :)

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L.SmithApril 2, 2014 at 10:45 AM

I think this sounds fabulous and I will be trying this out with my title students. I notice that my title students DO NOT know their alphabet-ever, nor their sounds. This should be the answer!

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DeniseApril 2, 2014 at 10:04 PM

I am a HUGE Secret Stories fan….I use your very first Secret Stories set! Every year, my students amaze me with their writing and reading and they looove their “stories”.
I am so glad to view your videos and your updates here. I learn something new everytime. Thanks so much !
Denise

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Katie GarnerApril 3, 2014 at 10:51 PM

Oh my! You HAVE been using them for a while then!!

I’m so glad you found the videos and updated info on the Secret Stories website, as I’ve really been working hard to ‘flesh-out’ the basic strategy-base.

I’m curious if you’ve been in the same grade level since you started using them or if you’ve moved around a bit?

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DeniseApril 4, 2014 at 8:13 PM

I have only taught Kindergarten…30 years total. I can’t remember exactly how long I have had my set of Secret Stories…maybe since 2000/2001?? .they are just part of my routine. Like I said….my kids constantly amaze me with their progress.
My best teacher friend went to your workshop …she was so impressed, she came back and told me all about this great new program. I was so excited I purchased the set with my own money and have been using it ever since.
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Candi BridgesApril 2, 2014 at 10:23 PM

I will be sharing this with my new teammates of next year’s Kindergarten. Soooo excited!

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kathleen wrightApril 3, 2014 at 6:01 AM

Hello. I have a question. Why don’t you do all three A sounds– A as in apple, A as in gate, and A as in about? I have a chant that I made up years ago with the sounds, but it has all three common A sounds that beginning readers come across in their reading. Just wondered why three Y sounds, but not three As. Thanks for letting me know. Kathleen
Katie GarnerApril 3, 2014 at 11:55 PM

Great question! And the answer actually lies in the ‘rule-of-thumb’ I used when creating the “Secrets” in the first place, which was to “avoid having too many cooks in the kitchen” when it came to identifying the most useful phonics rules!!
(and by useful, I mean ‘only what’s necessary to be able to read and write,’ given that the goal is to give learners at the earliest grade level EVERYTHING they need to jump into working with text…. both reading and writing!!

Because the brain will require an explanation for anything encountered on a fairly frequent basis in text- there could be ‘no stone left unturned’ when it comes to accounting for the various letter patter sound possibilities. This, however, is different from teaching “rules for rules’ sake” (i.e. the less useful and/ or less frequently occurring phonics rules/ sound patterns).

My rule of thumb was to account for only those patterns/ sounds that occurred ‘5 times or more’ in text, given their likelihood to be encountered often enough by learners to require an explanation.

Patterns/ sounds occurring LESS than five times would are either put in “Word Jail” OR ‘rehabilitated’ …. so as to avoid having an ‘overcrowded prison system’ / overcrowded word wall, both of which are equally ineffective ;)

As for your specific question regarding the letter a and providing the ‘uh’ or ‘schwa sound’ being taught/ included in the “Better Alphabet Song” as an additional sound option…. this would be an example having ‘too many cooks in the kitchen,’ in that there is too little value/ purpose in teaching it.

What I mean by this is, if a beginning learner knows the SECRETS, he will attack a word like ‘about’ or ‘around’ with a ‘short a’ sound, as he knows that Mommy e isn’t ‘one letter away’ and thus can’t make a ‘say its name.’ Attacking these words with the short a sound will STILL result in learners (even lower level Kindergartners!!) still being able to ‘get the word.’ In other words, they will still recognize that the word is ‘about’ or ‘around,’ regardless of the fact that they attacked it with the short a sound …… The presumption is that learners can and will apply at least a “grain of common sense” in recognizing the word, and my experience with the ‘lowest of the low’ kindergartners proves this out!!

By taking into account the differences between how words can sound, depending upon how they are sounded out, I was able to determine which required SECRETS and which were, for lack of a better term….”figure-out-able!!” LoL!

With the Sneaky Y, all THREE sounds had to be accounted for, as they are all vastly different (y as in yellow, y as in July, and y as in mommy) ….. Each are entirely different sounds and thus, each must be accounted for with logical explanations as to what / why causes each to occur.

Again, with the ultimate goal being to GIVE learners EVERYTHING they need to read and write at the EARLIEST grade level, so as to allow EXPERIENCE to be the best teacher….. it was necessary to think in terms of training “ER Doctors” ….. preparing them for what’s ‘most likely’ to roll through the door, while spending less time preparing them to handle the “plague” ;)

I hope this helps to clarify the basis for the SECRETS, and I promise to get into more detail about exactly this in upcoming posts…. you’re just one step ahead with your great question!!!!

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kathleen wrightApril 4, 2014 at 5:43 AM

Thanks for this. I get the frequency point. We could never teach beginning readers all the sounds that letters CAN make in this isolated way– look at the VERY many sounds that ‘o’ can make when paired with ‘h’ when ‘ho’ comes at the beginning of a word! :) The only reason I added the ‘a’ sound heard at the beginning of words like around and about as a third sound in my chant, was because my guys weren’t getting that kind of word by knowing just the first two possible ‘a’ sounds… but maybe it was not the isolated sound that ‘a’ makes in that case that was the issue, but the fact that they were saying “ar…” as the beginning ‘sound’, instead of the necessary two syllable “a-r…” When they kept saying ‘ar, ar, ar” instead of ‘a’ when starting words like around, they got stuck. They seemed to get it better when they had that third ‘a’ sound to try. Thanks for sharing why you do it this way– always more food for thought– I can teach 100 years and I’ll still be growing my own brain :)
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Mrs. TolbertApril 3, 2014 at 6:59 AM

This sounds awesome! I’ve been looking for a way to help my kinder. Can’t wait to try it!
Jada
jadawtolbert@gmail.com

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Tracy WysongApril 3, 2014 at 8:31 AM

What a great idea! LOVE this and can’t wait to use it with my kinders! Thanks for sharing!

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Julie PlowmanApril 3, 2014 at 2:10 PM

This article really intrigued me! As I was reading the “why” of certain discrepancies, I was picturing specific students I’ve had along the way. thanks for sharing

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Katie GarnerApril 4, 2014 at 12:02 AM

Getting learners to ask “why” is actually our goal,
as the “WHY” equals “CRITICAL-THINKING!”
:)
JenApril 3, 2014 at 10:03 PM

I LOVE secret Stories! My students Love hearing the stories behind each letter or letter pair.

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