Why We Launched SPARK Literacy Foundation
Reading is the skill that every other skill depends on. A child who can't read well by third grade has a hard time learning science, history, or math word problems. Most of those children never catch up.
In the United States, about four in ten fourth graders read below a basic level. This is not because they can't learn. Most were never taught clearly how written English works. Instead, they got a mix of letter names, rules, exceptions, and words to memorize by shape. Some children work it out anyway. Many don't. The ones who don't are mostly in schools with the fewest resources to help them.
We think that can be fixed, and that the fix starts with how reading is taught in the first place.
We started SPARK Literacy Foundation to bring one proven approach, Sound-to-Print (Linguistic Phonics), to the children and schools who need it most.
Here is what Sound-to-Print is, and why we believe it will transform how children are taught to read.
Reading starts with the sounds children already know
Every child who can talk already knows—implicitly—the sounds of their language. Sound-to-Print teaches reading from there. Children learn that writing is a code for speech, and that each letter or letter group stands for a sound they already say every day.
A different starting point
Most early reading instruction starts with print. Children see a letter, learn its name, and are told the sound it "makes." Then come rules, exceptions, and lists of words to memorize by sight.
Sound-to-Print turns that around. It starts with speech. There are 40+ sounds in spoken English (and 25 sounds in spoken Modern Hebrew). Writing is simply a way to record these sounds. Once children understand that, print stops being a pile of rules and becomes a system they can figure out.
Letters don't make sounds—people do!
The core ideas
Sounds come first. Children learn to identify the sounds in words, then learn how each sound is written. The sound always remains primary.
Print is a code. Each sound can be written in one or more ways. Children learn the code as a system that makes sense, not as a list of rules and exceptions to memorize.
Reading and spelling are the same skill, running in both directions. Sound-to-Print teaches students that the alphabetic code is a reversible code, so decoding (reading) and encoding (spelling) are taught together from day one.
Nothing to memorize by shape. Even "tricky" words are made of sounds and spellings. Children decode them instead of guessing.
Why this matters for the children we serve
When reading is taught as a set of rules and exceptions, many children become confused and fall behind. Those children are far more likely to be in under-resourced schools. By the time they are flagged for help, they have already lost years of confidence and learning.
Sound-to-Print is built for prevention, instead of intervention.
Teach the code clearly in the early grades, and fewer children need rescuing later.
The research behind it
Sound-to-Print, also known as Linguistic Phonics, grows out of the research of psycholinguist Diane McGuinness. Her work showed that the best way into an alphabetic writing system is the way the alphabet was designed: sounds first, symbols second.
For a full explanation of the method, see What is Sound-to-Print?, Why Our Children Can't Read (1997), Early Reading Instruction (2004).
Beyond English
Every alphabetic language records speech sounds. That's why Sound-to-Print works across languages, and why it fits bilingual classrooms so well. Our Israel Bi-Literacy Initiative brings this approach to children learning to read in two languages at once: Hebrew and English.
SPARK funds teacher training and coaching for schools that serve the children who need it most.
Bring Sound-to-Print to your school
