This is Read by Sight
Hi everyone, you can click the image to get a sense of Read by Sight in action.
We have the volume turned down but you can see what’s going on.
The student in the video is reading the first chapter of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz aloud, and the computer is picking it up.
Each spelling that’s pronounced correctly is highlighted, giving them instant feedback. If they make a mistake, the highlight pauses and they can try again. If they get stuck, they click the speaker button to hear the pronunciation, so they’re never stuck for long.
The result is that every correct pronunciation is reinforced on the spot. And every mistake is corrected on the spot, either when the student tries again and gets it right, or when they click the speaker button to hear it.
The Ultimate Goal of Phonics
Reading instruction in the early grades is built around phonics. Phonics is a bridge, it’s a means to an end, it isn’t an end in itself. The goal is to lock in the correct pronunciation for each spelling. Read by Sight helps lock it in.
This becomes vital as students move on to chapter books, where the spellings get longer, with many more ambiguous and misleading letters, that prevent sounding out to the correct pronunciation.
Here are some examples, right from the start of The Wizard of Oz.
The first spelling includes two o’s. A student might wonder if the second o makes the first o long. And also, if the second o should be short, like the o in hot and got? And what about the y? Should it be pronounced like long i, as in A Fly Went By?
Take the spelling l-i-v-e-d. What should it rhyme with? We live in the country? Or: We saw the game live? You can’t tell from the spelling alone. You have to know it or be told. If you don’t know it Read by Sight tells you. Every single time.
O-f is pronounced as though it were spelled u-v: “uv.”
In great, if the a makes the e long, we’d have to pronounce it as greet.
And the last three letters of Kansas are s-a-s, but we don’t pronounce them sas—it’s more like z-i-s: Kanzis.
And for the ie in prairies, the rule says the e should make the i long, but that would give us praireyes instead of prairies.
Problems like these aren’t rare—they’re everywhere. They frustrate students, cause attention to drift and can make them give up.
But with Read by Sight, they become non-issues. If students try a pronunciation they’re unsure of, and the highlight doesn’t move, it’s almost reassuring because they can immediately try again. And when the highlight does move, that is learning in action.
Plus, they always have the fallback of clicking the speaker button to hear the pronunciation.
And that’s the key, that one way or another, the correct pronunciation is paired with each and every spelling, each and every time. No mistakes get through.
As adults, we know that we don’t laboriously sound out spellings letter by letter. Instead, we read by sight—we reflexively react to each spelling by uttering its pronunciation.
In learning to read, sounding out only applies to initial encounters with a spelling. On subsequent encounters, it gradually gives way as the student becomes ever more able to react to the spelling, anytime, anywhere they see it, by pronouncing it instantly and reflexively. Eventually, the reflex takes firm hold. That is what Read by Sight accelerates.
The Goal
The goal is for students to master pronouncing each of some twenty thousand spellings, instantly and reflexively, by sight—and to solve their reading problems once and for all.
Lessons could be extended beyond twenty thousand spellings, but there would be no point. By that time, students simply don’t need help anymore.
Many students may need a year to master pronouncing the full twenty thousand spellings. Some will need a second year as well. Fewer will need a third, fewer still will need a fourth.
But it doesn’t take a year—let alone three or four—for permanent gains to begin. They begin immediately, as students learn to pronounce new spellings from the very first lesson.
Typically, several encounters with a spelling are required to master it. Mastery means reacting to the spelling anytime, anywhere they see it, by instantly pronouncing it.
By the time students learn to pronounce their first one thousand spellings, marked improvements will be obvious.
By the time they learn to pronounce five thousand spellings, they’ll be well on their way to being accomplished readers. They’ll also be at or near a level from which they never would have been diagnosed with reading problems in the first place.
By the time they learn to pronounce ten thousand spellings, they’ll definitely be at that level.
A sight vocabulary of ten thousand spellings makes for a very, very accomplished reader.
That is a level that many students—including many successful ones—don’t achieve by the end of middle school, or even well into high school.
By the time students master the full twenty thousand spellings, their reading problems will be a thing of the past.
They’ll be able to effortlessly read the vast majority of spellings they encounter throughout high school and well into their college years.
And they’ll be able to effortlessly read virtually every spelling they encounter on their SAT and ACT college entrance exams.
At that point, our job at Read by Sight will be done. And your job as a parent will be done as well—at least as far as reading goes!
We have a great deal more information under the Foundations menu on our site.
Or to get going at once, click Sign Up on our Home page at ReadBySight.com.
Read by Sight can make all the difference for struggling readers. We provide the bridge from phonics that locks in the pronunciation for each spelling for the rest of students’ lives.
We hope we can do that for your child.