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A promise kept ...
Ruth Worden Frank’s commitment to
her students and their parents inspired the PRC program. About
the author.
In my thirty-plus years of teaching
Special Education, the use of the PHONETIC READING CHAIN has made the
most significant contribution to the lives of deficient readers, and thus
has been the source of my greatest personal and professional satisfaction.
Donald Dowling, Greece
Central School District, Apollo Middle School
Labeled as a slow learner
who would always have learning problems, our 12 year old went from 4th
grade to 10th grade level (school records) after covering only two-thirds
of the PHONETIC READING CHAIN. His current 8th grade teachers can't believe
he ever had a reading problem. Thank you so much!
M. Schwendiman, Rochester, NY
Read more comments
Ruth Worden Frank graduated Magna
Cum Laude from SUNY, Potsdam State Teachers College in 1944. She began
her teaching career in Rochester, New York, teaching 6th grade for the
city school district.
After taking time off to raise a family of five,
Mrs. Frank returned to teaching in 1966, this time tutoring learning disabled
students for the Board of Cooperative Educational Services. In 1969 she
was recruited by Dr. Louis Messineo, Director of Special Education, to
become a full time Special Education teacher. It was during her tenure
here that Mrs. Frank authored the Phonetic Reading Chain. She taught reading
for the next ten years, retiring in 1979.
Mrs. Frank has written numerous articles and been
a contributing author on the subject of designing reading programs for
students with special needs. A long-time member of the Reading Reform
Foundation, she has been invited many times to conduct workshops and give
presentations of her program all across the United States.
Mrs.Frank continues to enthusiastically assist
and support teachers, tutors, parents, and students from her home office
in Rochester, New York.
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The Phonetic Reading Chain:
Conceived in a classroom
Upon returning to teaching in 1969 after raising my five children, I
designed what became the PRC series because the intelligent junior-high
school students assigned to me had not previously learned to read words
accurately. Their standardized reading achievement levels were no higher
than grade 3.
I made a promise to their parents that I would teach them to read.
The school district believed Gillingham and Stillman (1940) was the best
and most appropriate reading program, and I was directed to use it. I
was reluctant, however, since many in the class had been through it for
up to four years with no measurable improvement in reading ability.
My research into teaching the decoding disabled lead me to the conclusion
that these intelligent students needed a structured, controlled system
- one totally free from confusion - that would teach phonetic decoding
skills and their reading applications clearly and quickly. Appropriate
and interesting oral reading material, designed to be "guess-free"
by using words comprised of learned letter-sounds and learned sight words,
was also needed to cement the learning.
I decided to teach short vowels singly and to separate them with intervals
of time in their introduction. Why? Because diagnostic testing showed
that lack of knowledge of short vowel sounds was a major factor contributing
to the students' inability to read even one-syllable words accurately.
They would need time to master one short vowel before learning another.
I also decided that there should be a fairly long separation of time
between short and long vowel instruction so that short vowel sounds would
be mastered before long vowel instruction would begin. Most long vowel
words are not the easier one-syllable words such as "make" and
"time". The great majority of long vowels are found in multisyllabic
words where the long vowel may be in any syllable. As with short vowels,
I decided long vowels would be taught separately.
Other adaptations were made to minimize confusion for the student, including:
- A
lengthy separation between hard g and c and soft g and c instruction.
- The inclusion
of additional letter-sound associations.
- Separation
of b and d instruction.
- Omission
of dictionary work while decoding skills and their application were
being learned.
- A different
method of teaching sight words.
The working model for the PHONETIC READING CHAIN series started that
September. Every evening I wrote oral reading material for the next day,
at first using words I would think of that included just the letter-sound
associations my students had been taught.
After deciding on the order in which the letter-sound associations would
be introduced, I went through the dictionary looking for multisyllabic
words that would "fit" each unit and organized them into unit
lists. Words from each list were divided into one-syllable words, two-syllable
words with accent on the first syllable, two-syllable words with accent
on the second syllable, three-syllable words with accent on the first
syllable, three-syllable words with accent on the secondsyllable and so
on, up to as many as seven syllable words.
End-of-year comparison scores with diagnostic test scores administered
at the beginning of the year showed such impressive improvement that I
was asked to continue with the same group of students the following year
so as to finish what I had started with them.
The tremendous success of those wonderful students inspired me to publish
the PHONETIC READING CHAIN series so I could share this new, effective
method with my fellow teachers, and with concerned parents of children
with diagnosed decoding disability. Since those humble beginnings the
program has been revised several times to reorganize the oral reading
material in a way that learning to read all words accurately would be
made even easier.
The program is easy to teach, and very practical for parents who wish
to home school their child, or provide after-school tutoring. I wish all
of you great success as you pursue the miraculous gift of reading for
your students.
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