Table of Contents

From the Introduction

Reading is:

Print is systematic at the level of the RIME. To find the
rime, find the vowel and go through the end of the syllable: ag in rag, age in rage, ig in rig, ight in right. The whole rime is what tells you which sound goes with the vowel. In these examples, it tells you which sound the G takes as well. The rime tells you which O to use in lOG vs lOGE vs lONG.

This is why Timothy Blodgett, the third grader who named this book and whose writing makes up the cover art, says that when you read, first you should Find the “Vawol”.

Even though Timothy is smart, charming and motivated, he
did not come to this awareness easily. From first through third grades, his reading curriculum had failed to show him that reading was systematic. It failed to tell him that he could find the logic he needed at the level of the rime. This book is written to show how Timothy and children like him can and do learn to read, RIME FIRST. They can learn if they are provided with the right kind of reading instruction.

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From Chapter 1

Perceiving the Structures of the Print Code

In order for children to “crack the code” they need to learn
three kinds of awareness, each of which is enhanced by the others:
PHONEME awareness, ALPHABETIC awareness, ORTHOGRAPHIC awareness. Morphologic awareness comes later. Together, these awarenesses help the child get over the very difficult and very real obstacle that speech sounds overlap while printed letters don’t.

The challenge in reading is to map discrete, sequenced letters onto those speech sounds that are not discretely sequenced. The examples coming up should help in making this point

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Alphabetic awareness is the awareness that letters have
sounds that roughly line up with sounds within words. The letter C in cat represents what is roughly considered the first sound. But, in actuality, speech sounds overlap. They are coarticulated.

Any consonant-vowel combination is coarticulated such that the way the consonant is produced and therefore sounds is colored by the vowel, and the vowel is similarly colored by the consonant. Try one. Get ready to say the word CAT. Before you actually produce the sound, feel what is happening in your mouth: stretched lips, pinched at corners, constriction at the back of your throat. Since C is the first letter in the word you’re about to say, the gesture you are about to make must be the one that is at the beginning of the hard (sounds like K) sound of C. Now, get ready to say the word COT.

From Chapter 4

In this view, rules are singularly nonadaptive and create rigidity that runs in direct opposition to fluency. Most importantly, they do not run true to the real way in which information, i.e., the code, is organized.

Speech patterns themselves are too dynamic to capture in a hard and fast, rulified print code. The a in ability changes at least slightly in ability vs portability; the short i in silk is articulated differently than the short i in slid . Print is also dynamic in its response to speech, variously reflecting language of origin, meaning units (morphemes like -ed in cooked), articulation challenges and a myriad of print conventions. Where the landscape is dynamic in this way, responses to it need to be poised for dynamic, fluid adaptation as well.

The bailout reaction to this kind of complexity has been whole language, which, unfortunately, has ignored the critical realities of the code almost entirely. The reductionistic reaction has been phonics, i.e., an indefensible attempt to create rules and more rules that can be the very basis for dysfluency; the basis for
failing to adapt smoothly to changing circumstances, especially within the phonological field.

The proposal here is that patterns of rime units provide the “best cut” in the information field; the one that supports achieving fluency.