The Literacy Cycle
Giving Your Students a Fresh Relationship with Print
Are your six-to-sixteen-year-old delayed, dyslexic or simply disinterested readers and writers not making as much progress as you’d like? Is their spelling confusing, reading effortful and are their sentences choppy? What your students need most is a fresh, more meaningful and engaging relationship with print. The Literacy Cycle is designed to build this relationship while simplifying instruction.
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The Literacy Cycle develops reading, spelling and sentence writing as a single, sensible and interconnected ability. Composed of six stages, students progress from single syllable word spelling to constructing words with multiple morphemes, like in+struct+ion.
They then combine two and then three words to make phrases. Finally, students arranging phrases in different ways into sentences.
By the end of the first lesson, students are reading and spelling multi-syllabic words in complex sentences. They have learned how all these parts of literacy work together in an integrated manner.
The first two stages of The Literacy Cycle (see graphic) establish a deeper and more understandable relationship with words, linking their pronunciation, spelling and meaning. This relationship is grounded in morphemes, the universal building blocks of words. Every word in all the world’s languages is either a morpheme by itself, like water, little or teach, or composed of a core morpheme, called a base, plus prefixes and suffixes, like con+struct+ion and quest+ion+ing.
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The second two stages of the Literacy Cycle establish a stronger relationship with sentences, which drives reading comprehension, fluency and written expression. Here, the word power developed by the first two stages is amplified when words are combined into phrases, the universal building blocks of sentences.
Sentences are at the top of The Literacy Cycle, as they form the gateway to written expression and reading comprehension. The Sentence Stage is also the starting point for the second half of The Literacy Cycle. Here, students learn how how to analyze, break down and manipulate phrases in sentences, and morphemes in words.
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Let’s look at each stage of The Literacy Cycle in more detail, using the lesson plan from Sparking the Reading Shift, brief enrichment and intervention programs that strengthen all approaches to instruction:
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The Spelling Stage shifts the relationship with words from the least interesting and meaningful aspects of language—letters, sounds and syllables—into a sensible meaning-building process. The primary job of spelling is to convey meaning, by consistently linking spelling patterns, called graphemes, to morphemes. Only morphemes connect spellings to pronunciations and meaning, the three patterns needed to store words in memory.
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The Morpheme Stage further shifts the relationship with print, as students discover how all words are composed of morphemes. They also link words together in morphological word families with related spellings, history and meanings. Words like heal and healthy, sign and signature, quest and question, two, twin and twenty, as well as one, once and only become easier to read and spell when these connections become clear. Morphological insight also reveals the simple patterns behind words like con+struct+ion and per+fect+ion.
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The Phrase Stage presents students with another universal aspect of language. Phrases are simply meaningful word combinations that contain either a noun or a verb, but not both. Phrases form a powerful bridge between word level skills and sentence construction and comprehension. In each Sparking the Reading Shift lesson, students first build two-word phrases composed of natural pairs, such as ice cream and making friends. Then, they build three-word noun phrases, like the kind teacher, verb phrases like talking very quietly, and prepositional phrases like in the park. They are ready for the ultimate stage.
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The Sentence Stage puts words and phrases into functional and meaningful relationships, which amplifies their meaning. No longer just an academic task, sentence writing now flows from word and phrase work, bringing them to life. This ends writing avoidance while empowering text level comprehension.
Completing the Literacy Cycle
At this point, the Literacy Cycle, and a Sparking the Reading Shift lesson, are only half complete. Students form deeper relationships with print by finding and manipulating the phrases in sentences, as well as the morphemes in words.
Once again, analyzing and manipulating the phonemes and morphemes in words solidifies decoding accuracy, fluency and spelling.
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This process teaches word reading and spelling on multiple different levels of language:
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Phonology - sound structure
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Morphology - meaning-based structure of words
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Semantics - broader word meaning includes phrases
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Syntax - the arrangement of words and phrases in sentences.
The Literacy Cycle Lesson Plan
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​​As the graphic shows, A Literacy Cycle lesson advances students' reading, spelling and writing in a step-by-step and integrated manner. Each activity is only slightly more difficult, building on the skills learned in the previous steps.
single syllable words - single morpheme words
multiple morpheme words - two word phrases
three word phrases - multi-phrase sentences. ​
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Each lesson in the sixteen lesson Sparking the Reading Shift: Language-Literacy Intervention ($28) and well as in the twelve lesson Sparking the Reading Shift: Language-Literacy Enrichment ($18) follows this step-by-step progression.
Both versions require no prep and consolidate decoding, spelling, vocabulary, fluency and sentence reading and writing into each lesson. This saves hours of prep and instructional time each week, time that is better used for more enriching and interesting activities.
​To show how The Literacy Cycle works, I will use activities and the lesson format from Sparking the Reading Shift, which I created for my special education, delayed, and underperforming students, and is now used across the English-speaking world.
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Spelling - The First and Final Stage
The Literacy Cycle starts and ends at its base—spelling. The first activity, The Word Shift Challenge, in Sparking the Reading Shift provides word chain practice that integrates sound, spelling and meaning.
The teacher says, "Tell me the word you get it you change the /t/ in spit to an /n/" The student then spells the word, saying each sound, then says and writes the word.
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This change provides practice with two of the most challenging aspects of decoding, consonant clusters, like tr and dr, as well as medial vowel shifts. This allows students with even limited decoding and spelling abilities to master these patterns after one or two lessons.
We also discuss how how the shift of one letter and sound in send created a new morpheme, sent. ​
There are two addition sound-spelling-meaning activities in Sparking the Reading Shift, as well as morphological activities that strengthen word identification and meaning.
“Reading words and spelling words are two sides of a coin.”
- Linnea Ehri
The Morpheme Stage
While the spelling stage has students build and manipulate single morpheme / syllable words, the morpheme stage of the Literacy Cycle has them build poly-morphemic words. There are five morphological activities in Sparking the Reading Shift.
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Morphological Word Sums
The top activity (left) The top activity shows students how all multi-syllabic / poly-morphemic words are created in English. Sums are giving a list of word sums, they say the word and spell the affixes. Then they write the word and read it. This activity allows even students with minimal reading skills to read, spell and remember longer words during the first lesson.
The Morphological Matrix, below, affords students the ability to create a morphological word family by combining easy-to-read morphemes. Students first read the affixes and the base, then they try to find words that they know. They draw lines to make the word reacting. They then write the word sum, re+ act + ing , and then write the whole word as they spell it. If the student gets stuck, the teacher asks, "What is re plus act plus ive?"
There is an almost perfect correlation between the growth of morphological knowledge and vocabulary knowledge.
– Wagner et al. (2007)
The Two and Three Word Phrase Stage
​The next small steps have students combine words into phrases, first with two word natural pairs, and then with three word phrases.
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In the phrase building activities, students actively join words. This requires active attention and linguistic skills. In both activities, the teacher just tells the students to find phrases that make sense, draw lines between them, and then write and read the phrase.
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If the student can't initially read the words, the teacher reads them. Then the student reads the words while searching for phrases.
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The Combining Phrase Stage
​In Building Sentences with Phrases Challenge students read two sets of three-phrase sentences where the phrases are scrambled. After the read the sentences in grammatical order, they write the completed sentences. Finally, they read the sentences, again. After reading, spelling and writing the words in sentences almost all students have committed the words to sight word memory.
There are five phrase activities in each Sparking the Reading Shift lesson.
Phrases, Prosody and Fluency
Phrases are important to fluency, as well. Prosody, reading phrases in sentences with appropriate tempo and emphasis, enhances fluency and comprehension.
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​This activity combines repeated reading with prosody practice. Each lesson in Sparking the Reading Shift ends with a stepped word or phrase reading activity, often called sentence pyramids.
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The student slowly reads a line, pausing at each slash mark, which helps build prosodic reading. Students repeat each line until they sound smooth, not like a robot.
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Speed is not the goal. Smooth, expressive reading is. I haven't met a dyslexic or delayed student who couldn't read these passages fluently during our first session together. ​
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Phrase reading with prosody consistently raises reading comprehension by a grade-level or more. It is as effective and more efficient than repeatedly reading a whole chapter. ​
​This activity is included in each lesson of Sparking the Reading Shift. It is also used as rehearsal practice in Sparking the Fluency Shift, a collection of 36 short stories arranged by levels of text complexity. Each story is preceded by two pages of prereading rehearsal practice to build fluency and comprehension the more difficult words and sentences.
Sentences - The Top of the Literacy Cycle
You have taken your delayed, dyslexic and disinterested students from figuring out single syllable words, to reading and spelling poly-morphemic words while writing sentences with multiple phrases--in a single lesson.
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The sentence stage not only boosts sentence writing but teaches students the structure of sentences. This is essential for writing as well as comprehension.
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The Sentence Matrix Challenge gives students a structure that enables them to successfully write complex sentences of their own making. Students simple pick the combinations of phrases that they want to read and write. This promotes the critical feeling of self-efficacy, the belief in your ability to succeed, which drives motivation.
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Put it in Your Own Words Challenge builds sentence awareness and comprehension through paraphrasing. Working on one phrase at a time, students rewrite it, using simpler words. Teachers help with vocabulary, as needed. I've never met a student who resisted writing in this manner.
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As with all stages, there are two sentence building activities in each lesson. This mix interwoven approach means that each lesson includes twelve brief and varied activities that keep attention and motivation high.
Sparking the Reading Shift
​Each lesson in Sparking the Reading Shift contains 12 activities that span the sentence, phrase, morpheme and word levels of language. As you have seen, students are constantly reading, spelling and writing in an undivided manner.
The activities contain words proficient readers and writer frequently use. To produce the activities, I simple asked myself, "what type of words and sentence structures do I want my special education students to read, spell and write?" This created a higher expectation that my students routinely met.
The activities are presented as word games, or challenges, Each page is a ready-to-use word and sentence activity, with brief instruction. A thirty-minute session once or twice a week is enough to quickly produce noticeable growth. This is a consumable workbook, as students are continually reading, spelling words and writing phrases and sentences in the book.
Sparking the Reading Shift comes in two versions, for seven-to-seventeen y/o. Language-literacy Intervention ($28) contains16 one-hour lessons. This version is for students who have required extensive instruction from special education, classroom or reading teachers.​​​
Sparking the Reading Shift: Language-literacy Enrichment ($18) contains 120 page,12 hour lessons in a consumable workbook format. This version contains the same word, morphological, phrase and sentence activities as in Language-literacy Intervention but in a briefer, accelerated format. For disfluent, disinterested & underperforming readers, including students reading at grade-level.
If you are unsure of which version to use, then start with Language-literacy Enrichment.
Email me with questions. Bruce@ReadingShift.com. ​See a sample lesson below ​​​​​​
Sparking the Fluency Shift
​I was dissatisfied with the progress my students were making reading decodables and leveled books. I also wanted to bring the advantages of the Literacy Cycle to reading practice. So, I created Sparking the Fluency Shift, a collection of 36 one-page stories, each of increasing complexity and length.
The stories start at a basic first grade (~6 y/o) to a solid sixth grade level. I wanted to give my students the opportunity to read above grade level, as all their proficient peers do.
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There are up to eight stories per grade level. Each story is slightly, but noticeably more difficult than the previous story, which provides much needed motivation. With such small steps between each story, readers often progress to a more difficult story every few weeks.
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Each story is preceded by two pages of rehearsal practice, prereading fluency and comprehension boosting exercises that complement the stages in the Literacy Cycle. The more difficult spellings, poly-morphemic words and vocabulary, and complex phrases and sentences from each story are extracted and put into reading activities that are similar to those in Sparking the Fluency Shift.
Each story is preceded by two pages of rehearsal practice activities. By practicing the hard parts to fluency beforehand, students go on to read the story with greater fluency, accuracy and comprehension—and with the need for far fewer corrections.
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​​In his new book, Leveled Reading, Leveled Lives, Timothy Shanahan shows that the greatest growth in comprehension and reading engagement comes from text that contain challenging words, sentences and vocabulary. Sparking the Fluency Shift provides exactly these challenges. ​Shanahan promotes rehearsal practice, which he shows raises comprehension scores by a grade level or more over a cold reading of the same material.
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Rehearsal practice is at the heart of each story in Sparking the Fluency Shift ($20). Each of the thirty-six, 150-to-400-word stories is preceded by two pages of rehearsal practice covering the challenging words and sentences.
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​​The topics and the content for the stories were chosen by my very judgmental preteen and teenage students. The topics range from making friends and resolving conflicts, to fantasy stories about time travel.
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For a free, three-story sample from Sparking the Fluency Shift complete with
rehearsal practice activities at the 1st, 3rd and 5th grade levels, click here
​​Both Sparking the Reading Shift and Sparking the Fluency Shift are available in PDF format for immediate download or in print, by mail (scroll right below).
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Consider your printing costs for the120-to-150-page books when choosing between the PDF and print version. US Priority Mail is only about $8.
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Literacy Struggles are Personal
I’m Bruce Howlett, a former biology researcher and the host of For the Love of Literacy podcast. I struggled with reading, spelling and writing for decades. When I went to teach a science course at a school for disadvantaged teens, I realized that their literacy difficulties were similar to mine. I then became a special education teacher, and applied my research background to investigate literacy.
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I spent the next two decades investigating the causes of, and a comprehensive solution for literacy difficulties. While I found partial answers, from phonemic awareness to speech-to-print, my students and I still struggled to read, spell and writing for enjoyment.
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Four years ago, I threw out all the lessons I created and started creating activities based on the most recent research findings. I met scores of people, many of whom have been featured on the podcast, who have created innovative literacy solutions.
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With their help, I created a set of activities that have finally permitted my students to love reading, and no longer fear spelling and writing. I compiled the activities into Sparking the Reading Shift which comes in two versions: a 12-lesson enrichment program for students reading at or below grade level, as well as a 16-lesson intervention for students experiencing prolonged literacy difficulties.
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I continually add and revise the activities in both versions, which I offer at no cost. Email me at Bruce@ReadingShift.com
A Combined Language-Literacy Lesson
Here are the activities that develop combined language-literacy learning, as well as provide the format for word, morphological, phrase and sentence scaffolds. In Sparking the Reading Shift, each activity is called a challenge, providing practice with a desirable level of difficulty.
Check out our new podcast
For the Love of Literacy
Spotify Apple Podcasts
Fostering Fascination with Words and Sentences
Building a Strong Foundation for Structured Literacy
How Dyslexics Make Sense of Written English
Sight Words and Morphology with Linnea Ehri and Pete Bowers
Bruce Howlett on the
Overarching Approach to Literacy
Simplifying Reading Instruction with Integrated Multicomponent Learning
Long-term Literacy Success with Sight, Vocabulary & Multisyllabic Words
An Overarching Approach to Reading that Both SoR and BL Teachers Will Embrace