Touchphonics™ is a manipulative, multi-sensory instructional system designed to develop students’ phonics knowledge as they discover patterns in the structure of words. Touchphonics provides instruction for the core reading skills of phonemic awareness; sound-to-symbol correspondence; and sound substitution, segmentation, and blending. While phonics is the system of sound and symbol relationships, word structure knowledge includes the organization of the elements of phonics into patterns. Touchphonics lessons include systematic, sound-by-sound decoding activities along with instruction in structural patterns to help students understand how sounds and spellings vary depending on the letter-combination patterns within words.
Touchphonics is research-based. It was developed by Dr. Robin Steed and has been tested and proven to be effective in reading laboratories at Brigham Young University, where it dramatically increased the reading skills of students previously weak in phonics. In subsequent field studies in Exeter, New Hampshire; Santa Ana, California; and District 8 in the Bronx, New York, students made significant gains compared to control groups: in New Hampshire, 50% of the students performed better than the control group; in California, students performed 200% better; and in New York, students performed one grade level higher. Touchphonics also meets the standards of the National Reading Panel and follows the guidelines established for Reading First, which recommends direct, systematic instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. For more information about the research basis for Touchphonics, download the file Touchphonics: Research-Based Reading by Ken Barker, EdD, from the Learn More section of this page.
Students and their teachers have given high marks to Touchphonics. Students learn to read and spell quickly because they use visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile modalities as they match sounds to symbols and build new words. Students experience success by starting with words that follow simple patterns, quickly progressing to more complex patterns. Building words with the Touch-Units— textured plastic letter units—allows them to participate physically and maintain attention on instruction. Teachers find it easy to teach with Touchphonics. The Touchphonics program kit includes everything needed to explicitly, systematically, and engagingly teach the scope and sequence of phonics, from consonants and vowels to borrowed sounds and morphemes. For customer comments about Touchphonics, see the Testimonials in the Learn More section.
Features
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Provides systematic, explicit phonics instruction for grades K–3
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Covers visual, auditory, and tactile/kinesthetic modalities in
decoding skill practice
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Teaches core reading skills such as phonemic awareness, sound-to-symbol
correspondence, segmentation, blending, and substitution
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Is especially effective for at-risk, ELL, and LD students
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Meets the research standards of the National Reading Panel and
follows the guidelines established in the report “Put Reading
First: The Research Building Blocks for Teaching Children to Read.”
For more information on individual components in this series, click on a title below.
View sample pages or download a lesson from many of the books in this series.
