Phonics Programs for Struggling Readers | The Secret Stories (2023)

Thinking Outside the Box About Letters and the Sounds They Make

You can’t think outside the box if you don’t know what’s in it!

Secret Stories® ensures that all learners, regardless of age, own everything that’s “in the box” when it comes to letters and the sounds they can make—so as to prepare them for the incredibly difficult task of accessing higher level text.

Its brain based and accelerated approach to traditional phonics skill mastery makes Secret Stories® one of the most highly effective, reading intervention tools available for struggling, upper-grade readers, who simply have no time to waste.

By shifting instructional emphasis from skillpractice to skill understanding, Secret Stories® shortens the traditional learning curve for phonics mastery—eliminating time-consuming sight word practice, memorization of phonics rules, and always having to tell students, “It just is…It just does…You’ll just have to remember…” whenever they can’t sound out or spell a word.

Secret Stories® makes use of already existing, learner frameworks of social and emotional experience and understanding, creating a familiar thinking-construct in which kids can easily identify the most likely sounds of letters, even in unfamiliar text.

Kids who know the Secrets understand thatfriendships between letters can change how they behave when they get together in words.

For example, the vowels behave differently when they’re hanging out on their own, versus whenMommy E® or the Babysitter Vowels®are nearby. Kids as young as pre-K and kindergarten can understand that Mommy and the Babysitters are the “triggers” for determining whether or a vowel will be “short and lazy” or use its superpowers to say its name—even in long, multisyllabic words!

Regardless of text level, there’s virtually no word that kids can’t crack when they know the Secrets. Aligning complex phonics skills to familiar concepts that learners already understand enables struggling readers to quickly gain power over text. Within this familiar context, inexperienced readers can predict the most and next most likely sound behaviors of letters in text as easily as they would the most likely behaviors of their own friends and classmates.

Learning to Read vs. Reading to Learn

While reading at the beginning K-2 grade levels focuses mainly on decoding, the instructional momentum shifts to comprehension at the intermediate grade levels and beyond. Ideally, students will have crossed over the instructional hump by third grade, having “learned to read” so that they can “read to learn.” Ideally, students should always be learning to read and reading to learn if they are to develop adequate content and language knowledge to read proficiently.

Struggling readers, however, can have a difficult time making this transition, often expending too much effort on decoding the text, with little left over to actually digest it. This division of mental processing power can often give the appearance of difficulty with comprehension, whereas it can more likely be attributed to the lack of automaticity with text. Only when readers are able to decode text with little to no conscious processing does the brain have enough space and energy to fully attend to the higher-level process of comprehension (i.e. drawing inferences, making predictions, pulling information from text, etc.).

Secret Stories® Phonics Works with the Brain

Research validates the need for continued phonics instruction for struggling students into the higher grade levels, especially for ensuring encoding (writing) fluency.

“Children who can’t read much by age nine are in serious trouble. By then, teachers expect them to have finished learning to read and to start seriously reading to learn.” —Pamela Snow

Understanding written text is the product of decoding and listening comprehension. Decoding refers to the ability to convert print into sound and to read fluently. When decoding skills are poor, they will place important constraints on reading comprehension(Gough & Tunmer, 1986).

Given the time, energy and resources that are spent working with struggling, upper-grade readers on comprehension, it is important to know that these efforts often treat only the symptom and not the root cause, which is most often a lack of automaticity with text.

Secret Stories® activates every learning channel through multi-sensory instruction, strengthening learners’ ability to receive, store and retrieve information. By introducing information to the brain from as many angles as possible, more neural connectionsare created and strengthened. As a result, student learning is more holistic and multidimensional.

Many students have difficulty with one domain, but do better with another. By employing avariety of instructional strategies that engage multiple modalities andpathways for learning, information is more likely to be stored in the different learning networks, providing learners with more avenues for bothretention and retrieval.

Stories Activate Every Learning Channel and Act as Strong Memory-Holding Templates in the Brain

“When the newinformation is presented in a familiar storyform, the memory structure facilitates thebrain’s retention of that information.” —Dr. Judy Willis

Secret Stories® establish supportive conditions in the brain forlearning and remembering, acting as “memory enhancers,” providing a sort of mental map upon which newinformation is more easily laid.

By presenting phonics concepts in a story-based format, Secret Stories® receive a higher level ofpriority in the brain, using anemotional hook to engage curiosity and increase levels of learner engagement.Secret Stories® puts the whole brain to work, activating multiple areas of the brain, simultaneously.Research shows that the more widespreadthe connections, the deeper the learning.

Secret Stories® activates the social and emotional centers of thebrain that aid memory, and unlike directinstruction, skill content delivered throughstorytelling promotes the formation of multilayeredmemories that result in deeper learning experiences and easierskill retrieval. Additionally, the brain becomes more active when telling orlistening to a story, prompting higher levels of learner engagement.

“Thebenefits of embedding abstract skill content into stories is a greatpedagogical strategy because it increases learner-curiosity and thethought processes that support it. If a student is not interested in a topic,they probably don’t have enough knowledge or experience in that area todevelop the sense of curiosity.” —Dr. Mary HelenImmordino-Yang

It is neurobiologically impossible to think deeply about things you don’t care about (Immordino-Yang, 2016).For those working withstruggling readers at the upper grade levels, it can be difficult to fosterlearner curiosity about letter sounds and phonics patterns. This is why the social-emotional “affective” learning domain is the ideal doorway through which to channelthese critical skills.

Struggling Readers and Reading Intervention

Students who can’t read fluently can stumble for years because school is built on the idea that after third grade, everyone can read; the work shifts from learning to read to reading to learn. To access complex text, students must possess both the “code-based” skills to read it and the “meaning-based” skills to understand it. Struggling readers who expend too much energy on decoding the text have little left over to actually digest it. Students who cannot read well fall further behind on all subjects— science, history, and even math.

Used as a reading intervention, Secret Stories® targets already primed, social and emotional learning systems to accelerate mastery of the critical “code-based” phonics skills needed to read and write, without impeding the momentum of on-grade level instruction. By aligning phonics instruction with familiar frameworks of learner experience and understanding, Secret Stories® sparks genuine interest and increases the level of learner engagement. In this optimal learning state, students can begin to drive their own learning and instruction, which is the evolutionary ideal (Immordino-Yang, 2016).

Secret Stories® transforms phonics skills kids have to learn into “secrets” they want to know, making them important and something that kids care about.

“My students were almost frenzied in their demands to hear more and more of these secret explanations for words and sounds that had never made sense to them before, and these are the kids who act like they couldn’t care less 99% of the time! Just watching their faces light up as everything started to come together for them was incredible. What a FIND the Secret Stories are—if only I’d had them years ago! Every child deserves to know the Secrets!”
—Edie, Fourth/Fifth Grade SLD & Intervention Teacher

Teaching Reading to “At-Risk” and Struggling Learners

Amy Mitchell, Reading Intervention

I just wanted to send you an email to let you know how much you inspire me and motivate me to keep chugging along with my son. He’s our first, he’s in kindergarten, and this year has been such a challenge. He’s never really been interested or curious about reading or writing, no matter how we present it. When his teacher sent home flashcards with letters, we found it just wasn’t working for him. The letters and sounds, no matter how long we worked on them, just weren’t sticking. I was concerned so I went looking for a better way to teach him his letters and sounds. I found it! I watched Katie Garner’s keynote on YouTube and the information shared made SO MUCH SENSE to me (and I’m not a teacher).I immediately sought out Secret Stories. The day it arrived, we immediately started on the “Better Alphabet Song,” and now, not only can he sing the song on his own, but he can identify ALL of the letters and sounds independently! He has even started teaching his three year old sister (what better way to master a subject than to teach it to someone else, right?). I’ve also continued to sprinkle in the Secrets as we read/write together and he LOVES THEM! He naturally gravitates toward storytelling so this couldn’t have been a better fit for him. I have told histeacher about the Secret Stories, as well as another teacher who presented at our school’s literacy night, and other moms whose kids are struggling, as well. I just wanted to say thank you from the bottom of my “still-struggling-to-help-my-son-but-feeling-a-lot-more-hopeful” heart!

Meghan, Kindergarten Parent in Ohio

Since your workshop, I’ve seen these strategies in action in many schools, and the SAI/Reading Teachers have all been praising the results with their students throughout this year. I’ve recommended you to several principals, and just wanted to let you know what a ‘hit’ the ‘Secret Stories’ were becoming here! Thanks so much!
Sandra, S.A.I Director/ Supplemental Educational Services in Florida

The Secret Stories were the reason that my dyslexic son learned to read with delight rather than drudgery. He’s in third grade now and we review the stories often, and he is thriving, thanks to you!
Julia, Parent in Michigan

The occupational therapist for our district just came to me in happy, excited tears over Secret Stories! An district leader brought her in to talk to me because she was asking about Secret Stories, as her students were all excited about it! She said they were telling her all about Superhero Vowels as if they were “Superman,” and how they have “short and lazy” disguises, like “Clark Kent!” She said, “I am so excited about this, and I think it could be “world changing” for my kids that need OT in writing!” She was tearful and sooo very happy to learn about Secret Stories, and hugged me and thanked me for just knowing so much about it. I’m so glad to be a small part of spreading this wonderful resource to kids who need it most!
Amy, Title Teacher in Virginia

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Ican’t say enough about the Secret Stories! My students always feel so smart when they learn complicated phonics patterns (as “secrets”) that often their older siblings don’t even know! There’s nothing else like it— the kids just see it and get it! The phonics stories take no effort for the kids to remember, and they also provide lots of cues for me, so that when a student is having trouble reading or writing a word, I can give a quick hint to the story (“secret”) and the student instantly knows the story for the phonics pattern or sound they need. I can’t say enough about the difference they’ve made!

Susana, SPED Teacher in Kansas

My entire class is at least onelevel above grade-level in reading, with most 2 or 3 levels above, and it’s only January!!! And their developmental spelling is improving every day!
April, First Grade Teacher in Kentucky

After just two days of teaching with the Secrets, I realized I could no longer teach reading or writing without them! It is absolutely amazing how easily kids remember them!

Virginia, At-Risk Kindergarten Teacher in Illinois

Your presentation at Parent’s Night was just outstanding, and I couldn’t wait to get back home and try out some of the ideas that you shared with my son. After only a month, what a difference it has made in his learning—I’m just amazed! He reads to me without struggling and getting frustrated, and even sat down and wrote out sentences for his classwork without asking me for help on how to spell a word!!! I can’t wait to see what happens over the next month. His confidence has soared and he’s sounding out word after word after word. I’m crying by the way! One month ago he crawled under his bed crying and calling himself stupid for not being able to sound out words. Today he is looking around to see if there’s a word he can try to sound out! Thank YOU!!!!

Terry, Parent in Alabama