Rooted in the Science of Reading
With a steadfast commitment to staying at the forefront of reading science, you can be confident that Bridge to Reading reflects the latest best practices in literacy instruction.
Proven-Effective to Support Student Growth
Through a third-party partner, LXD Research, Heggerty’s Bridge to Reading Curriculum has been proven to support student growth and to close foundational reading skill gaps between kindergarten and first grade.
Closing Literacy
Skill Gaps
New research shows students with lower Fall RIT scores tended to gain more RIT by mid-year using Bridge to Reading, and had more significant growth than students with higher Fall RIT scores.
Research-Based Design
Heggerty’s Bridge to Reading has earned the Digital Promise Certification by demonstrating a strong research basis in product design.
Learning to read is not a natural skill.
Contrary to what many people believe, learning to read is not natural. Instead, learning to read requires explicit and systematic instruction in foundational skills as well as strong language comprehension.
There is no comprehension strategy powerful enough to compensate for the fact that you can’t read the words.
Many strands are woven into skilled reading.
Hollis Scarborough’s Reading Rope (Scarborough, 2001) illustrates the multiple strands or subskills that contribute to both word decoding and language comprehension. The Bridge to Reading Foundational Skills Curriculum provides explicit, systematic instruction for all areas of the Word Recognition strand of literacy instruction.
THE READING ROPE
“Mastering the early foundation skills of letter recognition, phonemic awareness, word knowledge, decoding, and encoding, requires conscious attention and effort at first.”
Keys to Effective & Efficient Teaching
In their book, Explicit Instruction, Anita Archer and Charles Hughes provide sixteen elements of explicit instruction that we know translate to effective and efficient teaching. Bridge to Reading embeds all of these elements including a logical scope and sequence, a gradual release (I do, We do, You do) lesson structure, and opportunities for regular assessment.
Aligned to Standards
Bridge to Reading provides comprehensive coverage of foundational skills, as found in national and state standards, such as:
and more!
Case Study: Empowering Literacy Transformation in Pasadena Unified School District
Get the inside scoop on how the Pasadena Unified School District set out to find a new foundational skills curriculum that would make a real difference in their classrooms. Read on to explore the impact of Bridge to Reading on literacy transformation.
SOURCES
- Print-to-Speech and Speech-to-Print: Mapping Early Literacy | Reading Rockets
- Kilpatrick, D. A. (2016). Equipped for reading success: A comprehensive, step- by-step program for developing phonemic awareness and fluent word recognition.
- Adams, Marilyn J. (1994). Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
- Wolf, M. (2007). Proust and the Squid: The story and science of the reading brain. New York: Harper Collins.
- Archer, A. L., & Hughes, C. A. (2010). Explicit instruction: Effective and efficient teaching. Guilford Publications.
- Fisher, D., & Frey, N. A. N. C. Y. (2013). Gradual release of responsibility instructional framework. IRA e-ssentials, 1-8.
- - Honig, B., Diamond, L., Gutlohn, L., Fertig, B., Daniel, H., Zemelman, S., & Steineke, N. (2008). Teaching Reading Sourcebook (Vol. 3, No. 2, p. 1). Arena
Press; 2nd edition (April 15, 2008). - Moats, L. C., & Brady, S. (2000). Speech to print: Language essentials for teachers (p. 304). Paul H. Brookes Pub..
- Blevins, W. (1998). Phonics from A to Z: A practical guide. Scholastic Inc..
- Ehri’s Phases of Word Recognition Development; also found in LETRS Unit 3, 181-187
- Narrowing the Third-Grade Reading Gap - Google Drive - pages 18-21, 24, 26, 31
National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching children to read. The report of the
National Reading Panel. Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Child Health
and Human Development. National Reading Panel - Teaching Children to Read:
An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on
Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction (nih.gov) Chapter 2 - Phonemic Awareness; Part 3 -
Phonics instruction Alphabetic Principle
- Baker, S.K., Santiago, R.T., Masser, J., Nelson, N.J., & Turtura, J. (2018). The Alphabetic Principle: From Phonological Awareness to Reading Words. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, Office of Special Education Programs, National Center on Improving Literacy. Retrieved from http://improvingliteracy.org. The Alphabetic Principle: From Phonological Awareness to Reading Words | National Center on Improving Literacy
- Alphabet Bridge (resource in Bridge to Reading) is based on the Alphabet Arc (FCRR)
Red Words (High-frequency words)
- Words came from these lists: Dolch, Fry, Devin Kearns
○ -- MATERIALS | Devin Kearns, Ph.D.
○ -- When possible, the red words taught match the sound-spelling being taught. - The 10 Kindergarten words that are taught in Unit 2 came from this article: A New Model for Teaching High-Frequency Words | Reading Rockets, along with the model for teaching Red Words in BTR.
- Linnea C. Ehri (2014) Orthographic Mapping in the Acquisition of Sight Word Reading, Spelling Memory, and Vocabulary Learning, Scientific Studies of Reading, 18:1, 5-21, DOI: 10.1080/10888438.2013.819356
Decodable Texts
- Choosing and Using Decodable Texts by Wiley Blevins; pages 20-21
- Mesmer (2005) Reading & Writing Quarterly - Decodable texts increase childrens’ phonics-application opportunities, which can lead to greater decoding accuracy.
- The Role of Decodable Readers in Phonics Instruction | Iowa Reading Research Center - The University of Iowa (uiowa.edu)
Phoneme Articulation
- “When teaching phonemic awareness, one of the most critical skills to develop is the ability to pronounce phonemes precisely.” (Know Better, Do Better by Liben & Liben)
- Manner of Articulation chart from LETRS, Unit 2; Vowel Valley from Speech to Print
Phonemic Awareness
- The Four-Part Processing Model for Word Recognition: Phonics – Making the Letter Sound Connection – Teaching Literacy in Grades Pre-K to 2 – 2nd Edition (pressbooks.pub) and Figure 2.1 in LETRS, Volume 1 (Moats & Tolman)
- The Hourglass Figure (Carol Tolman) LETRS, Volume 1, Unit 2
- The National Reading Panel (2000) found more than 50 “gold standard” scientific studies documenting the importance of instruction in phonemic awareness for learning to read, and preventing and treating reading difficulties.
State Standard Alignment
- Common Core State Standards for Foundational Skills; TEKS: Florida B.E.S.T. and WIDA Framework (for ML Connection)