Research & Validation | Ready4Reading: A Literature Review

Ready4Reading Evidence Portfolio

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As outlined, Ready4Reading provides language support in Spanish, Cantonese, Vietnamese, and Hmong for students developing phonemic awareness and early phonics skills in Wiley Blevins (phoneme level) and Short Reads Decodables (select phonics skills). As students begin to apply decoding skills in Read and Know, support is offered exclusively in the language of instruction to improve comprehension. • Wiley Blevins Teaching Phonics offers multilingual learner scaffolds at the lesson level, with one or more language supports per target skill. Lessons guide sound transfers and spelling matches for select languages in sidebars called “Language Supports.” The program also provides unique support on linguistic variations for students speaking Chicano and African American English in the “Linguistic Variations” section in the sidebars. • Short Reads Decodables provide explicit recommendations to support multilingual learners in the teacher guide, with one set of supports (four to eight tips) per group of 10 student cards. These recommendations typically guide teachers on how to help students compare the linguistic features of English to their home languages. The support aims to build students’ skills and confidence in sounding out letters and words in short texts. The guidance provides support on challenge areas (e.g., long vowels) and “confi dence boosters” (e.g., continuous consonants, cognates) to encourage language transfers for select, high-need target skills. The guide provides occasional support to build background knowledge with unfamiliar elements of English found in short texts, such as homophones, metaphors, and idioms. Examples of recommendations include: o The letters m and n have sound transfers in Spanish, Cantonese, Vietnamese, and Hmong. The program guides multilingual learner students to sound out the letters and share sample target-sound words in their home languages. o The letter p has a spelling match in Spanish, Vietnamese, and Hmong. The letter d has a Spanish, Cantonese, and Hmong spelling match. Ready4Reading coaches students to trace out and build these letters using classroom materials so that they can see how these shapes are different.

o In Spanish, the letter d sounds similar to the English digraph th . Tell Spanish- speaking students to say the word dedo and use its d sound to say the and this.

o The letter v has a direct sound transfer and spelling match in Spanish, Vietnamese, and Hmong. It does not exist in Cantonese. Help Cantonese speakers learn this letter sound through play. Ask small groups of students to pretend to play the violin while singing /vvvv/ at different tones. Then, have them make a list of words in this set with the letter v and underline the v . o The short- u sound has an approximate sound transfer in Spanish and Cantonese. Spanish speakers might say duck like “dook,” and Cantonese speakers might say cub like “cab.” The program guides teachers to list words with the short- u sound that students can use to practice, such as duck , cub , tug , and run .

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