Putting Struggling Readers on the PHAST Track

Abstract

PHAST (for Phonological and Strategy Training) is a research-based remedial reading program that attempts to capitalize upon current research on reading disabilities and their remediation. The focus of the program is on the primary obstacles to word identification learning and independent decoding that most disabled readers face and the steps necessary to help these children achieve independent reading skills. A framework of phonologically based remediation was used as a foundation upon which a set of flexible and effective word identification strategies were scaffolded in an integrated developmental sequence. The program uses a combination of direct instruction and dialogue-based metacognitive training, with the pedagogical emphasis shifting from an initial direct instruction, remedial focus to increasingly metacognitive-strategy-based methods. A continuum of intervention over 70 hours provides both (a) remediation of the basic phonological awareness and letter-sound-learning deficits of disabled readers and (b) specific training of five word identification strategies that offer different approaches to the decoding of unfamiliar words and exposure to different levels of subsyllabic segmentation. Explicit instruction in the application and monitoring of multiple word identification strategies and their application to text-reading activities continues throughout the PHAST Program. PHAST training provides the disabled reader with the opportunity to become a flexible reader who approaches new words in or out of context with multiple strategies and has the ability to evaluate the success of their application. The PHAST Program was developed following the controlled evaluation of its components in laboratory classroom settings and recent positive results from their sequential combination. PHAST represents a new integrated approach to programming in this area using instructional components that have already demonstrated their efficacy with children with severe reading disabilities.

Exploring Differential Effects Across Two Decoding Treatments on Item-Level Transfer in Children With Significant Word Reading Difficulties: A New Approach for Testing Intervention Elements

“…Children received 60 lessons, twice a week for 1.5 hours/lesson, of either the Phonological and Strategy Training (PHAST; Lovett, Lacerenza, & Borden, 2000) or Phonics for Reading (PFR; Archer, Flood, Lapp, & Lungren, 2002) taught in small groups by trained graduate student research assistants at a university in the Southeast United States. Both programs focus on teaching both single and polysyllabic words through systematic application of decoding procedures.…”

“…PHAST is a multifaceted decoding program developed by Lovett and colleagues (see Lovett, Lacerenza, Borden, et al, 2000) that provides training in (a) phonological awareness and simple grapheme-phoneme correspondences and (b) five word-identification strategies that offer different approaches to the decoding of unfamiliar single and polysyllabic words and exposure to different levels of sublexical processing. In this study we focus on the strategies associated with keywords, variable vowel pronunciation, and peeling off of affixes (see Lovett et al, 2000).…”

“…In this study we focus on the strategies associated with keywords, variable vowel pronunciation, and peeling off of affixes (see Lovett et al, 2000). …”

“…This requires a sublexical system that can quickly establish and reliably retrieve word-specific spellings that activate pronunciation across a wide variety of orthographic patterns representing simple mono- and more complicated polysyllabic words (see Gough, Juel, & Griffith, 1992; Perfetti, 1992). However, many decoding programs disproportionately focus on sublexical connections at the grapheme-phoneme level, reducing the potential of instruction to promote connections across more complex orthographic-phonological sublexical units (see Berninger & Abbott, 2002; Lovett et al, 2000; Morris et al, 2012). While we recognize the critical importance of simple grapheme-phoneme connections to the acquisition of the alphabetic principle in developing readers, we theorize that over-reliance on simple grapheme-phoneme corresponce instruction may limit the formation of larger orthographic-phonological connections needed to establish new lexical entries with more complex spelling-to-sound relations (Ehri, 2014; Perfetti & Stafura, 2014).…”

“…To accomplish this we compared the responsiveness of children with RD, 3 rd – 6 th grade, who were randomly assigned to 60 lessons of either Phonological and Strategy Training (PHAST; Lovett, Lacerenza, & Borden, 2000) or Phonics for Reading (PFR; Archer, Flood, Lapp, & Lungren, 2002). PHAST and PFR vary in the level of sublexical training emphasized, with PFR emphasizing simple grapheme-phoneme correspondences and PHAST stressing multiple levels of orthographic-phonological connections.…”