The ABeCeDarian Reading Program doesn't attempt to provide radically new teaching techniques, but it does offer unparalleled efficiency in helping students develop into fluent and accomplished readers.
ABeCeDarian achieves efficiency in the following ways:
ABeCeDarian is divided into 4 levels:
Highlighted links allow you to download sample material.
Level A is for non-readers or very beginning readers. Each lesson combines:
Beginning instruction presents words such as sat, mop, and rug that are constructed out of a consonant, vowel, and consonant using only single-letter consonants and the so-called "short" vowels. (The term "short" vowel is never used with the students. Each letter is referred to only by its sound.) Level A is divided into 3 sections, each presenting about 8 new sounds.
After students master all the sounds for the
single-letter consonants and vowels, they learn the two-letter
combinations sh,
ch, th, and
ck. Until the presentation of ck in
the final
unit, there is a strict one-to-one correspondence between letters and
sounds: each spelling represents only a single sound, and each sound is
represented by only a single spelling.
The high-frequency words the, a,
is, of, to,
and I, are also presented in Level A. These words
have sounds or spellings not otherwise presented at this level and are
the only words learned as wholes, rather than being analyzed into their
individual sounds. The remaining high-frequency words are taught in
Level B, when students have a more complete understanding of the
spelling system.
When a student completes Level A, he will be able to read automatically
over 100 words. Most kindergarten students who use the program will be
able to read text in the curriculum at rates of 40 or more words
correct in a minute by the end of the school year.
Students may also practice the material presented in Level A
in an online computer version.
In addition to the material provided in the student workbooks and
reading books teachers should supplement ABeCeDarian
instruction by providing storybook reading using 3rd party decodable
texts such as the Bob
Books by Scholastic, Set 1 of the Primary
Phonics storybooks published by Educators Publishing Service
or the Reading
for All Learners Program (RALP) storybooks.
Materials needed for Level A
Level A Blending/Segmenting Practice is a freely downloadable set of exercises specifically designed for students who can read at a 3rd grade level but who read very slowly and have few skills at reading unfamiliar words.
Level B covers material at the 1st and 2nd grade level. At this level students learn that many sounds are spelled multiple ways and that many spellings represent more than one sound. This information is presented in the context of engaging sorting exercises contained in Student Workbooks B1 and B2. Specifically, students are given a sound and shown the various ways that the sound can be spelled. The so-called long-o sound can be spelled, for instance, oa, o-e, o, ow, oe, and ough. Students are presented a list of words which they read and sort according to how the target sound is spelled. The words for the sorting exercise are coded to make it clear which letters are representing which sounds. Specifically, there is a space between each grapheme (i.e., the letter or letter combination used to spell a sound) and multiple letter graphemes are underlined. Thus the word "boat" is presented as b oa t.
Following the sorting exercise, students are given another list with words containing the same target sound, but this time the words are not coded. The students have to play "I Spy" and underline how the target sound is spelled. After finding the target spelling, students again read the word.
Then students are presented with a list of 16 high frequency words, many of them containing the target sound for the unit. Students read these words, copy them, and then say each individual sound of the word as they underline how that sound is spelled. Students continue to practice reading these words until they can do so easily.
Further practice reading these words is provided in each unit by having students read a series of sentences containing many of the words analyzed in the unit. Students practice reading these sentences until they achieve designated fluency targets. To ensure that students are paying attention to the meaning of the sentences as well as trying to read them quickly and accurately, each sentences is presented in cloze format, with a single word missing. Students supply the missing word from two choices presented at the end of the sentence. These sentences are "decodable." That is, they have only the code that the students have been explicitly presented. The sentences in each unit focus on using high frequency words that have the sounds and spellings the students sorted at the beginning of the unit.
In the final four units of Workbook B1, students also practice
reading
decodable fables from Aesop.
In the course of these exercises, students learn the multiple-letter vowel spellings (oa, ee, eigh, etc.), the past tense ending -ed, and simple yet effective techniques to read two-, three-, and four-syllable words.
Materials needed for Level BThis level is designed for students who read at the third
grade level or higher but who read very slowly or can't
sound out unfamiliar words reliably. It contains essentially the same
content as in the regular Level B, but presented in an accelerated
format. Whereas the regular Level B in a regular 1st grade classroom
represents about 24 weeks of instruction, the Short B is designed to be
completed in 3-5 weeks. Moreover, unlike the regular Level B, there is
much work with nonsense words, so that students must use their blending
and segmenting skills and phonics knowledge to read and spell the words
and not merely recite words they have already memorized as visual
wholes.
Materials needed for Level B - Short Version
Level C is designed for students at a 3rd or 4th reading level. It presents English and Latin prefixes, suffixes, and root words with accompanying exercises to help students read and spell these words easily as well as to learn what they mean.
A companion workbook called Spelling Patterns helps students learn the three major suffix-adding spelling patterns as well as when to use ck, tch, dge, and a doubled consonant before final le.
Materials needed for Level C
| Age and reading level of student | Appropriate ABCD Level |
| Kindergarten and beginning 1st grade students | A1/A2 |
| Students who are mid-first grade age and older who are non-readers or very beginning readers |
A Short Version |
| Students of any age reading at 1st/2nd grade level | B1/B2 |
| Students age 10 and up who can read at a 3rd grade level or higher but who have poor word reading accuracy or fluency |
B Short Version |
| Students
of any age reading at 3rd/4th grade level or students reading at a higher level who don't know much about prefixes, suffixes, and root words |
C/Spelling Patterns |
| Students of any rage reading at 5th/6th grade level or students reading at a higher level who don't know much about Greek root words | D |