We All Can Read – Orton-Gillingham Phonics Program | Learn to Read at Any Age

Hello. My name is Jim Williams and I am the author of the program We All Can Read.

We All Can Read is a step-by-step intensive phonics program designed for older students and adults who never received systematic phonics instruction as children. I developed this program specifically for students beyond the second grade and all the way up through high school and for adults as well.

In my experience, older students who have difficulty in reading have difficulty in reading because when they were in grades K through 2, they did not receive a thorough systematic foundation in the phonetic basis of our language. And individuals who failed to receive that foundation in the early grades, as a matter of general course, never received that foundation. Because once children get beyond the second grade, the schools by and large do not teach phonics in a systematic way.

Now when I talk about phonics, I’m talking about the fact that there is a direct and consistent relationship between letters and sounds in our language. English is a phonetic language. Not all languages are phonetic. As an example, the Chinese language is non-phonetic. The characters in their language do not represent sounds.

But in English, we have 26 letters that represent 42 sounds. And from these 42 sounds, we construct over a half a million words in vocabulary. English is the largest vocabulary of any language in the world. And we write all of these over half a million words with just 26 letters.

The key to becoming a good reader and a good speller is to learn the relationship of letters and sounds in our language. And that’s what intensive, systematic pPhonics is designed to do, to teach you the code which underlies the entire system of reading and writing in our English language.

Anyone, virtually anyone, can become a successful reader regardless of that person’s age if that person receives instruction in systematic phonics. And that’s what this program is designed to do.

I am going to provide you in a very structured, sequential way with all of the information you’re going to need to be able to look at a word, sound the word out, and accurately read the word. Not only that, but you will also gain the skills necessary to be able to spell words with a high degree of accuracy. And that’s what systematic phonics is designed to do.

This program called We All Can Read is unlike any other phonics program you’ve ever heard about. If you will follow this program through to the very end, you will experience profound and lasting gain in your ability to read, to spell, and to comprehend.

Captain Laura Wickett: I think that the guard owes it to their soldiers to afford them the opportunity to enhance their basic skills. And one of their basic skills is to read. The soldier who can’t read, he’s a safety hazard. The soldier who can’t read, he’s an operations hazard. He can’t follow an off-order in the infantry. Digging a foxhole and staying there for 15 days isn’t all it takes to be a good infantryman.

The soldier should be afforded the opportunity to do the best he can do or she can do on SQT tests or any type of developmental programs. And if they don’t have that basic skill, they’re not going to go anywhere with it.

Narrator: The Georgia Army National Guard has recognized that to survive on today’s technologically advanced battlefield, a soldier must be able to read and comprehend. Unfortunately, not all have developed the necessary skills to do that. Now the Georgia Guard has introduced a unique literacy training program. Its goal, to provide an intensive two-week course to enhance reading and comprehension skills of soldiers testing below a 10th grade reading level. Guard Education Services Officer, Captain Laura Wickett.

Captain Laura Wickett: Well, it’s a whole lot cheaper for the Guard to continue to educate these soldiers and give them their basic skills than it is to discharge them and retrain, send a new soldier to basic training and AIT and to retrain him or her and everything that they’ve already taught an older soldier, but he’s not available anymore because he didn’t have a GED or he didn’t have enough of the basic skills to successfully complete PLDC.

Jim Williams: Now, if you would say, oh, oh, you’d say, well, that must be vowel group four because it has two vowels together. But vowel rule six says, no, it doesn’t say, oh, it says, ooh, like it’s moon.

Most people have no idea that the English language is phonetic and that there is a system involved in the way our code has developed for writing words down and thus for spelling. And so when you show someone that there is logic to our language, that it’s not an incomprehensible – different kinds of things thrown together in a chaotic way, that there’s a system that a person, once he learns that system, can use to unlock or decode words, it literally changes people. It changes them in their ability to live successfully.

Narrator: Atlanta-based reading consultant, author, and teacher Jim Williams developed the curriculum for the two-week course.

Jim Williams: You know, reading is probably the first task, the first intellectual task a young child is asked to master. And if a child is not successful in school in the first few years in mastering the reading process, all sorts of emotional problems develop, problems that will follow a person through his entire life. And I have found even in this class, working with adults, that those wounds that start in kindergarten or pre-kindergarten or first grade, people carry those wounds with them for their entire lives. And that’s why I say this is, I feel like I’m a healer as much as a reading teacher in that by enabling a person to, for the first time in his life perhaps, achieve success in this very basic human activity called reading, you enable a person to heal inside because there are all sorts of emotional wounds that go with a person who has difficulty in basic reading.

Now, let’s go back. Give me the sound that h / u/ makes. mane. mane. Say the word. humane. humane. humane. Good. Now, look what happens. Let me write it right here. Look what happens if you drop the e from the end of that word. Human. Human. Human. But let’s, let’s phonetically break the word into syllables.

Last year, when I was teaching a basic reading program for PLDC, and at that time, the people that were selected to participate in that class had not been able to successfully complete their work in the PLDC program, and after three or four days, basically flunked out and were put into the basic reading program. And one soldier in particular was extremely hostile his first day. In fact, I talked to the sergeant major, and he said that he came very close to instigating procedures against the man when he was informed he would have to take a remedial reading course.

The man came into the program, and the first couple of hours I gave him a lot of room because I realized he was under a lot of stress to be in there. But over a period of days, he began to really open up and talk to me and to the other people in the class. And he told me that reading was a problem in his life that he had taken tremendous pains to hide from other people his entire life. He had done very well in his job. He had gone as high as he could go without with his reading skills. In fact, he was doing his best to cover his reading in deficiency so that he wouldn’t lose his recent promotion.

And he told me, in fact, he had never even been able to admit to his wife that he had a reading problem because he was so sensitive about it. And I think this is one consistent feature that I have to deal with in working with adults is that it’s a very closely guarded wound. And that they have, it’s a very private part of themselves that they’ve gone to great pains to not let anyone find out about. And part of the healing process in our program here is that for the first time, these men and women can come into this room with other people and admit that I do have a problem here. And just to be able to say that to other people after hiding it for an entire life is very, very powerful.

Specialist Archie Mincy: I was trying to make schools and I lost my father. I was the oldest child, so I had to drop out of school. I couldn’t work five days and go to school five days, so I just dropped out.

Narrator: Specialist Archie Mincy of Swainsboro’s Company A, 878th Engineer Battalion, is a student in the class.

Specialist Archie Mincy: I was trying to do a lot of things coming up in the guard, and every time I wanted to go to school, and I couldn’t make it because I knew I didn’t have GED. And so I kept talking with our first sergeant, and he told me, your slot is there, it’s up to you. So I kept on trying.

Specialist Michael Long: I just, when I was in school, I just wanted to do something to pass to get my diploma, and that’s all I really wanted to do. I’ve always sort of like been the type of person to want to do better for myself, but in this case, I just didn’t. I was successful after I finished high school, and my civilian job, you know, it calls for reading. I guess I know my job, not that I know how to read that well, but I know the job well enough to perform, but I still need to know how to read better.

Narrator: Specialist Michael Long is communications chief with Atlanta’s 190th MP Company.

Specialist Michael Long: Well, Saturday when we arrived here, people had an attitude, real negative attitude, and even Sunday when we went to the class, people still had a negative attitude. But Sunday evening after the instructors, you know, talked to us and everything, people lightening up, and then like Monday, I think everybody in the class had a positive attitude, and people go around to each other now. They’re making it public that, you know, this class is helping me, and it’s not just I’m doing something for the Guard, I’m doing something for myself.

Staff Sergeant Arthur McClain: The first half a day, the first half a day, everybody was a little reluctant to say, hey, I don’t want to be a part of this, I’m no dummy, man, I don’t need this, I’m grown, you know. It was pride, saying, you know, hey, I don’t want nobody to know that I got a problem in reading. After getting into it, the first couple of hours, it don’t take two, three days as getting into the program, the first couple of hours after getting into it, everybody relaxes, and it makes sense, you know. What we didn’t get in school begins to make sense to us now.

Narrator: Staff Sergeant Arthur McClain of the 878th Engineer Battalion.

Staff Sergeant Arthur McClain: The Guard has got to be a reading guard now. It can’t be the good old boy system is out. Technology has dictated that for us that we got to read. It’s not something we want to do. It’s a must. It’s a must that we do that.

Soldier: It’ll help me, you know, like PLDC school or anything to advance as far as reading because there’s TMs and different manuals we have to read or MOS tests that have tested. Maybe be words or sentences or something we cannot maybe understand, don’t know how to read because we don’t have the basic skills.

Staff Sergeant Arthur McClain: Nowadays, there’s nothing that we do that that it don’t call for reading. You know, anything we do when we buy things, it’s got to be assembled, but we got to learn how to read to put our Christmas toys together for our children. Everything we do is going to be a part of this.

Captain Laura Wickett: They’re learning sounds that they never knew existed before. They’re learning that although there are basic sounds, 26 sounds in the in the alphabet and every letter has its own sound or a combination of sounds, that once they leave this class, if they choose not to continue, that’s their choice. But as long as they continue, it takes one book and they can carry that book with them the rest of the time that they need and just keep working out of that book.