Find the Vawol, Read the Rime, Learn to Read; by Miriam Cherkes-Julkowski

Dr. Julkowski is a UCONN professor who has a really revolutionary, but simple approach to reading. Rather than learning tons of "rules" and the "exceptions" or trying to read left to right phonetically, this method involves recognizing the rime (from the vowel to the end of the syllable.)

To appreciate the reason why the phonetic approach creates dysfluencies, try reading the word ‘bought’ letter by letter left to right. Notice that you don’t recognize each sound from left to right in order to read this word, you recognize the rime ‘ought’ and add the initial ‘b’.

Here are the various vowel sounds for "o.”

Log
Loge
Long
Lounge
Loyal/spoil
Cough

If children are taught to start looking at letters and track them left to right - they start with the consonant L and then add the O. Since they have a long list of possible sounds for O, their reading becomes dysfluent as they run through the possibilities. Dr. Julkowski’s method is to recognize the sound of the vowel by reading the rime (reading the chunk from the vowel to the end of the syllable as a unit) and then go back and add on the initial consonant.

This book gave me a new appreciation for the process of reading.


Vicki Boshka