Vowel Clustering Works with Students Struggling in Reading

By Elaine Clanton Harpine, Ph. D.

Vowel clustering simply means to teach words by sounds rather than by letters. There are no rules to memorize, and students are never allowed to guess at a word. Vowel clustering teaches students to decode or break words down into individual letter sounds and then to encode or reassemble those sounds back into pronounceable words, to learn the meaning of the word, and to use the word correctly in a sentence. We call it the 4 Steps.

My vowel clustering method also teaches spelling, handwriting, oral reading fluency, comprehension, and story writing. Vowel clustering has been tested and proven to work with struggling, at-risk, and failing students—all ages. A student, who failed for nine years using balanced literacy and phonics, learned to read in 3 ½ years using vowel clustering. I have even had struggling students move up four grade levels in one year using vowel clustering. These were students who had failed multiple years in schools that taught whole language, balanced literacy, and phonics.

Why does vowel clustering work so well? Vowel clustering works with the brain. Memorization works against the brain, regardless of whether you are memorizing words from a word list or memorizing phonics rules. Struggling students typically have difficulty memorizing.

So, how do we activate these brain circuits? By the way we teach letter-sound relationships.

Vowel clustering recognizes that vowels are the most important sounds for children learning to read and teaches all the sounds for a vowel in a cluster. With the letter a, the children learn all seven sounds used by letter a and the 22 different letter combinations that can be used to make those seven sounds. The traditional phonics approach was to teach the “short vowel sounds” and then the “long vowel sounds using silent e.” The other sounds were called “irregular

sounds,” but irregular vowel sounds cause children the most confusion. Teaching vowels in clusters teaches children to learn all of the sounds for each vowel in an organized pattern. It’s easier and less confusing, and it works directly with how the brain assimilates and organizes letter sounds.

Vowel clustering teaches all of the sounds for letter a at the same time; therefore, students can see from the first day that the letter a is not just a long and short sound. Even my first graders go to the vowel board and work with letter sounds so that they can learn how words are pronounced and spelled at the same time.

This picture shows the vowel board from my new book, Why Can’t We Teach Children to Read: Oh But Wait, We Can. Since we are talking about the long a vowel sound, we will look at the vowel board for long a. Look at page 160 in the book.

If you have questions about vowel clustering, please contact me: clantonharpine@hotmail.com I am always happy to help.