The Phonics Program
from Continental
Directly correlated to the five key
skills identified by Reading First:
Phonemic Awareness
Phonics
Fluency
Vocabulary
Comprehension
Chall-Popp Phonics
and Reading First
One of the earliest researchers to recognize the
instructional sequence for reading identified by No
Child Left Behind, and required by Reading First, was
Dr. Jeanne Chall of Harvard University Graduate School
of Education. Dr. Chall and her colleague, Dr. Helen
Popp, put into practice the results of well-founded
research to create Chall-Popp Phonics, a program
of instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, and
fluency, as well as vocabulary and comprehension.
The four books in the Chall-Popp Phonics program,
the 48 Phonics Readers and 24 Find Out Readers
that accompany them, align with Reading First and
provide systematic, explicit instruction in phonemic
awareness and phonics and address fluency, vocabulary,
and comprehension.
Instruction
Chall-Popp Phonics
Phonemic Awareness
Levels A and B (K and 1)
Phonics
All Levels (K-3)
Phonics Readers
Fluency
All Levels (K-3)
Phonics Readers, Find Out Readers
Vocabulary
All Levels (K-3)
Phonics Readers, Find Out Readers
Comprehension
All Levels
Phonics Readers, Find Out Readers
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1
Chall-Popp Phonics
Level A
Phonemic Awareness
Activities introduce each new sound.
Phoneme
Blending
Phoneme
Identity
Phoneme
Deletion
Phoneme
Blending
Review the Sounds
and Letters
Children manipulate letters of
the alphabet as part of phonemic
awareness instruction.
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2
Chall-Popp Phonics
Level A (Continued)
Phonics
Systematic, explicit instruction in
phonics is the core of the program.
Fluency
Take-home stories written
in natural language provide
opportunities for reading
controlled text.
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3
Chall-Popp Phonics
Level A (Continued)
Vocabulary
Children acquire vocabulary both
directly and indirectly as they learn
phonics and read both Take-home
stories and Early Phonics Readers.
Chall-Popp Phonics Teacher’s Edition,
Level A, page 118.
Early Phonics Readers Teacher’s Guide,
Short Vowels Set Two, page 7.
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Chall-Popp Phonics
Level A (Continued)
Comprehension
Activities and scaffolding questions
encourage children to be active readers.
Chall-Popp Phonics Teacher’s Edition, Level A, page 62.
Take-home story
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Chall-Popp Phonics
Level B
Phonemic Awareness
Phonemic awareness activities precede phonics
lessons to insure that children have a firm foundation
for learning sound-letter relationships.
Chall-Popp Phonics Teacher’s Edition,
Level B, page 61.
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Chall-Popp Phonics
Level B (Continued)
Phonics
As part of systematic instruction
in phonics, short vowel sounds are
introduced using onset and rime.
Chall-Popp Phonics Teacher’s Edition,
Level B, page 41.
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Chall-Popp Phonics
Level B (Continued)
Fluency
Take-home books in Chall-Popp
Phonics, plus Phonics Readers,
provide many opportunities for
children to read aloud using the
sound-letter relationships they
have learned to achieve fluency.
Early Phonics Reader, Book 2, cover, pages 2 and 8.
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Chall-Popp Phonics
Level B (Continued)
Vocabulary
Children acquire vocabulary both directly and indirectly as
they learn phonics and begin to read stories and use context
clues. Phonics Readers and Find Out Readers introduce useful
new vocabulary in fiction and nonfiction settings.
Chall-Popp Phonics Teacher’s Edition,
Level B, page 132.
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Chall-Popp Phonics
Level B (Continued)
Comprehension
Children read decodable stories,
including the Phonics Readers. The
Teacher’s Guide provides suggestions
to encourage children to monitor their
own reading.
Phonics Readers, Book 5,
Ice for Sale, cover and page 5.
Chall-Popp Phonics Teacher’s Edition, Level B, pages 157 and 158.
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Chall-Popp Phonics
Level C
Phonics
Early units at this level provide
instruction and reinforcement for
those students whose skills are not
firmly in place. Later units move
into language structures and higher
level phonics/spelling skills.
Chall-Popp Phonics Student Book, Level C, pages 75 and 76.
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Chall-Popp Phonics
Level C (Continued)
Fluency
At this stage, students can be encouraged
to read aloud the poems that introduce
each unit as well as the Take-home books,
Phonics Readers, and Find Out Readers.
Chall-Popp Phonics Teacher’s Edition,
Level C, page 129.
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Chall-Popp Phonics
Level C (Continued)
Vocabulary
The Phonics Readers and stories in
Level C introduce relevant vocabulary for
everyday reading. Prefixes and suffixes,
synonyms, antonyms, and homonyms
are introduced. Vocabulary for reading
nonfiction is introduced as well in the
Discover Nature Take-home books and
the Find Out Readers.
Find Out Reader,
Book 10, Weather
Chall-Popp Phonics Teacher’s Edition, Level C, page 161.
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Chall-Popp Phonics
Level C (Continued)
Comprehension
The Discover Nature Take-home books and Reading a
Story and Writing activities in Chall-Popp Phonics Level C,
along with recommended library books for reading, help
students establish their understanding of text.
Chall-Popp Phonics Teacher’s Edition,
Level C, page 156.
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Chall-Popp Phonics
Level D
Phonics
Units 1, 2, and 3 of Level D provide a complete review
of phonics principles for those students who are in
need of instruction or review. Older students whose
skills are in doubt will benefit from the review.
Chall-Popp Phonics Student Book, Level D, page 10.
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Chall-Popp Phonics
Level D (Continued)
Vocabulary
In addition to story vocabulary taught in
earlier units, Unit 4 includes higher level
phonics/spelling skills such as silent letters.
The last two units focus on language skills
that develop vocabulary such as prefixes
and suffixes, synonyms and antonyms.
Unit 6 introduces the dictionary.
Chall-Popp Phonics Student Book,
Level D, pages 137 and 138.
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Chall-Popp Phonics
Level D (Continued)
Fluency
Throughout Level D there are nonfiction articles
for students to read aloud in groups or silently.
Tales from Around the World are included in
each unit. These longer reading selections are
recommended for group reading.
Chall-Popp Phonics Teacher’s Edition,
Level D, page 128.
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Chall-Popp Phonics
Level D (Continued)
Comprehension
The Teacher’s Edition provides suggestions to
help students gain meaning from their reading.
Library books related to each selection are also
suggested with each selection.
Chall-Popp Phonics Teacher’s
Edition, Level D, page 127.
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How Research Guided the Development of
Chall-Popp Phonics
The Chall-Popp Phonics program was created
because more than 70 years of research has shown that
children who learn phonics achieve better scores on
tests of word identification, accuracy of oral reading,
silent reading comprehension, and fluency than those
who do not learn phonics. Perhaps the earliest and most
dependable research was that of Jeanne Chall herself
(Learning to Read: The Great Debate, Stages of
Reading Development). Beginning to Read: Thinking
and Learning About Print, by Marilyn Jager Adams,
published in 1990, provided a thorough analysis of
the research that reached the same conclusion. More
recently, the report of the National Reading Panel
showed that research continues to attest to the value
of direct, explicit instruction in phonics. Other studies of
importance include those by Grossen, Perfetti, Feitelson,
Iverson and Tunmer, and Snow, Burns, and Griffin.
The instructional design of Chall-Popp Phonics
was guided by research on prerequisites to reading:
phonemic awareness and visual discrimination, phonic
generalizations and word patterns, syllabication, the
study of affixes, and automaticity. Teachers are alerted
to the prerequisite skills, outlined by Helen Popp, that
may slow down the student’s progress in acquiring
reading skills. Those explicitly addressed in Level A
(kindergarten) include instructional vocabulary; concepts
about letters, words, sentences, and stories; the concept
that print represents sound in a left to right, top to
bottom sequence; and motor skills (letter tracing).
Research over many years by I.Y. Liberman and
colleagues focused on the importance of phonological
tasks and phonemic awareness. Similarly, Chall, Roswell,
and Blumenthal, Durkin and others have found that
phonemic awareness was a strong factor in the success
of beginning reading instruction. Chall-Popp Phonics
emphasizes these skills systematically through rhyming,
segmentation, blending, hearing sounds that are
represented by initial and final consonants and also
vowels, consonant substitution, and eventually syllabication. The use of phonograms (onset and rime) as a
vehicle for segmenting and blending is supported by
the work of Wylie and Durrell, as well as Treiman.
Empirical evidence in support of a best order
for teaching the letter/sound correspondences and
generalizations is not definitive, but research evidence
does support the decision to teach first those single
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consonant letter correspondences that are discriminated
more easily, both visually (Popp) and orally (Francis);
those sounds that are more easily sounded in isolation
(Francis); and those which in combination yield a
large number of high frequency single-syllable words
(see the studies of Venezky, Clymer, and Roswell and
Chall). In Chall-Popp Phonics the most useful phonic
elements and generalizations for identifying words are
taught earliest; the harder or less reliable generalizations are taught later in the program.
As an extension of decoding instruction, children
are taught to look at chunks of words—first with
syllabication and then with affixes. Sternberg and
Powell and O’Rourke provide evidence that even older
students are not aware that deconstructing words into
their parts can help with deriving their meanings. In
his summary, Stahl states that facility and ease
in identifying polysyllabic words, and in inferring
their meanings from a knowledge of prefixes, suffixes,
and roots, helps students with comprehension.
Chall-Popp Phonics teaches strategies for breaking
words into their component parts using syllables and
affixes. The prefixes and suffixes selected for inclusion
in the program are based on the research of White,
Sowell, and Yanagihara, who found that third graders
who were given training on the nine most frequent
prefixes and a strategy for deconstructing words into
roots and affixes performed better than a control
group on several measures of word meaning.
Research also guided the creation of the pages
in the Chall-Popp Phonics student books. Formats
for pages were tested informally with students and
teachers in selected Cambridge, Massachusetts,
schools; teachers who have used the program also
provided feedback and were helpful in making decisions
for the latest edition. Research has also shown that a
teacher is critical to the success that students achieve
in learning to read. John B. Carroll concluded that
teachers who understand the fundamentals of the
relationship of print to speech will be better equipped
to help all their students. The teacher’s editions of
Chall-Popp Phonics have been designed and written
to provide specific background phonics information
on every page for teachers who may not have had the
advantage of formal study in teaching phonics.
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About the Authors
Jeanne S. Chall
Jeanne S. Chall, former professor at Harvard University, was director of the graduate program in reading
and language at the Graduate School of Education. She founded the Harvard Reading Laboratory and was
its director for 25 years. Dr. Chall was the author of more than 200 books, articles, and tests, including
Learning to Read: The Great Debate, Stages of Reading Development, The Reading Crisis: Why Poor
Children Fall Behind, and the Dale-Chall readability formula.
Dr. Chall served on the Board of Directors of the International Reading Association and the National
Society for the Study of Education. She was a member of the National Academy of Education and the
Reading Hall of Fame. Dr. Chall was honored for her research and scholarship by many associations,
including the American Psychological Association, the American Educational Research Association, the
International Dyslexia Association, and the International Reading Association.
Helen M. Popp
Helen M. Popp is a former Associate Professor of Education at Harvard University. She has worked with students and educators for many years on relating theory and research to reading instruction. Challenged by
her earlier work as a librarian and primary school teacher, Dr. Popp focused her research and instruction
on young children’s acquisition of reading as well as the development of their skill and interest in reading.
Dr. Popp has written many articles and has been a member of the editorial board of the Harvard
Educational Review. She has served as a consultant/advisor to many projects and organizations, including
Project Literacy at Cornell University, WGBH-TV, Boston, the Children’s Television Workshop, the National
Institute of Education, and the U.S. Office of Education. She has been active in the International Reading
Association, the American Education Research Association, and the National Council of Teachers of
English.
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References
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Learning About Print. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1990.
Perfetti, C.A. Reading Ability. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1985.
Carroll, John B. “Thoughts on Reading and Phonics,”
(paper presented at the meeting of the National
Conference on Research in English), Atlanta, GA,
May 9, 1990.
Perfetti, C.A. “Language Comprehension and Fast
Decoding: Some Prerequisites for Skilled Reading
Comprehension.” In J. T. Guthrie (Ed.) Cognition,
Curriculum and Comprehension. Newark, DE:
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Popp, Helen. “Selecting Initial Reading Instruction
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Chall, Jeanne S., and Feldman, Shirley. “First Grade
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Stanovich, K. “Romance and Reason,” The Reading
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Treiman, R. “Onsets and Rimes as Units of Spoken
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Reading First
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