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Recent Article from Fall 2003:
New Short Vowel Materials Available Now
How can a vowel be lonely? When it is missing its friend, of course. Teachers who are familiar with the Stevenson Program know how important the vowel “friends” can be. The “Lonely Vowels” is the term we use to refer to short vowel patterns in our new component of the Stevenson Language Skills Program. These special clues help students decode short vowel words easily and accurately. The new Lonely Vowels materials, which include a manual, reading book and workbook, will help you introduce short vowel words earlier in the Stevenson Program with many of your students. Introducing these words earlier will, in turn, help your students develop a wider reading vocabulary sooner and thus score better on standardized tests.“Short vowel” words, also frequently called “closed syllable” words, have always been an important part of the Stevenson Program, but most of these words were previously introduced during the second level (The Basic Blue Level). The Lonely Vowels books provide an alternative way of teaching these words during the first level of the program (the green Beginning Level books). The new materials can be applied after Integral 65 (Lesson 37 of the Beginning I Teacher Student Manual), as soon as pupils have mastered all of the essential four-letter versions of the peanut butter and jelly and layer cake words. Please note that the Lonely Vowels materials are designed to be used with the current books in the Beginning Level of the Stevenson Program. They do not stand alone.
One of the most unusual characteristics of the Stevenson Program is that it teaches words with long vowel sounds first. Author Nancy Stevenson, during her long years of teaching, found that long vowel sounds were easier than short vowels for young and high-risk students to discriminate, isolate, retrieve and blend. (For more detail, check out Thoughts on Long Vowels, Short Vowels and the Stevenson Program, available in the “Latest News” section of our website). There are also disadvantages to teaching long vowel words first, but Nancy overcame these disadvantages by applying her mnemonic clues, the crunchy peanut butter and jelly sandwich and the layer cake.
Over time Nancy developed a sequence for her program that did not present short vowel words until students had resolved their auditory processing problems and mastered a wide variety of word types. This sequence allows even severely learning disabled students to succeed. Students who are only mildly disabled (or dyslexic or remedial) are also able to build a large reading vocabulary quickly with this strategy. Unfortunately, with this sequence, the words that students learn first are not the words that are most commonly found on standardized tests. Standardized tests tend to assume that more short vowel words are taught in the early stages. For this reason, Stevenson students have tended to show a smaller increase in test scores during the first year and larger increases during the second and third years. This can be a problem for some schools, teachers or parents in this era of high-stakes state testing. The No Child Left Behind initiative reasonably insists on accountability, but the means for measuring progress are not always so reasonable. Thus, some current Stevenson students can, with mastery and comprehension, read significantly more words than many of their peers, but they still may not score as well on a standardized test.
The new Lonely Vowels books should improve the testing situation for most Stevenson students. This new component will also increase the amount of non-Stevenson reading material our students can handle during the Beginning Level. The Stevenson Program still begins with long vowel words, because we still believe they are the best sounds for young, dyslexic or learning disabled students to process. Most such students, however, can move into short vowel words right after they have developed a solid foundation of auditory processing skills. This will usually happen after they have mastered many long vowel words using the sandwich and cake mnemonics.
It is important to note, however, that the Lonely Vowels books will not be appropriate for all students. Some students with serious learning problems should not work with short vowels very much until they progress further into the Stevenson Program. Students with very severe central auditory processing deficits, pupils with severe blending issues and some other pupils, will be more successful if they continue to follow the current Stevenson sequence without the Lonely Vowels books. The User’s Guide section of the Lonely Vowels Teacher’s Manual describes these categories of students in more detail. We have reproduced this segment on the web site under “Latest News.”
The Lonely Vowels Teacher’s Manual will provide all the guidance you need for using our new approach to short vowel words. It is formatted like the Basic Blue Core Manual. Lessons cross reference the appropriate pages in the workbook and reading book, and reduced facsimiles of the practice reading material is given at the end of each lesson. You will find the prices and items codes of the new books listed on one of the coupons on the back page of this newsletter. You will also find a flyer that you can request, and of course, this information can be found at www.StevensonSemple.com.
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2002 Stevenson Learning Skills, Inc. All rights reserved.
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