Putting Struggling Readers on the PHAST Track A Program to Integrate Phonological and Strategy-Based Remedial Reading Instruction and Maximize Outcomes

• Published in: Journal of learning disabilities Vol. 33; no. 5; pp. 458 - 476
• Main Authors: Lovett, Maureen W., Lacerenza, Léa, Borden, Susan L.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Thousand Oaks, CA Sage Publications 01.09.2000; Sage; SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
• Subjects: Application; Approaches; Biological and medical sciences; Canada; Child; Children; Children with disabilities; Classrooms; Cognition; Combined Modality Therapy; Decoding; Decoding (Reading); Direct instruction; Disability; Dyslexia; Dyslexia - rehabilitation; Early Reading; Educational psychology; Efficacy; Elementary Education; Humans; Identification; Integrated approach; Integrative approach; Intervention; Language Acquisition; Learning; Learning disabilities; Medical sciences; Metacognition; People with disabilities; Phonemic Awareness; Phonics; Phonological awareness; Phonology; Problem Solving; Program Design; Programmes; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Readers; Reading ability; Reading comprehension; Reading Difficulties; Reading disabilities; Reading disabled children; Reading Instruction; Reading Programs; Reading Skills; Reading Strategies; Remedial education; Remedial Reading; Remedial Teaching - methods; Remedial Teaching - trends; Segmentation; Semantics; Sound; Special education; Special education. Orthophony; Speech Disorders - rehabilitation; Studies; Teaching methods; Treatment Outcome; Treatments; Whole Language Approach; Word recognition; Human; Nervous system diseases; Word; Metacognition; Cognition; Identification; Language disorder; Rhyme; Educational program; Communication disorder; Reading; Metalinguistics; Treatment; Information processing; Phonology; Strategy; Neurological disorder; Child; Special education
• ISSN: 0022-2194; 1538-4780
• DOI: 10.1177/002221940003300507

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.