Wilson: Successfully Teaching Reading and Spelling

According to the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress report (NAEP), millions of students in middle and high schools across the nation struggle to read in school every day. The number of students scoring at or below basic level in overall reading skill is astounding:

• 71 percent of 4th grade students;
• 71 percent of 8th grade students; and
• 73 percent of 12th grade students.

And while students from elementary school through college lack basic literacy skills, this problem does not just affect our children; some 27 million adults are functionally illiterate as well.

Although it's easy to blame the educational system, overcrowded classrooms and dwindling budgets for this problem, the fact is that many people, regardless of their age, have not been able to acquire reading and writing skills because their learning needs have never been properly assessed. The majority of these people are subject to a core deficit at the most basic level of language skill: that of phonologic coding. They have never acquired what so many of us take for granted - an internalized ability to analyze the structure of words in English and apply their understanding of that structure when reading and spelling.

Whether caused by dyslexia or some other language-based learning difficulty, a late introduction to English or over-reliance on whole language programs, this deficit must be corrected by direct, multisensory, structured language teaching.

Wilson’s mission is to provide teachers with the skills and tools they need to help their students become fluent, independent readers. We prepare teachers to use our multisensory, structured language programs and strategies to successfully teach reading and spelling.

Edward Wilson leads a class of students.

Maryann Piccirilli instructs Joseph Harlacher at St. Peter's in Worcester, MA, Summer, 1999.