One Starfish at a Time -- Helping Children Reverse Reading Failure
How One Educator's Innovative Phonemic Training Program Transformed Literacy Instruction for Struggling Readers
In the early 1990s, Vickie began receiving heartfelt requests to help children struggling with literacy. These appeals sparked her commitment to finding effective, practical solutions.
From a grandmother:
“Eva is in second grade and can’t read. She just moved here from another school district.”
From the mother of a third grader:
“Sierra can’t read, and it’s creating social challenges for her.”
From a teacher and parent of a second grader:
“His brothers learned to read easily, but he’s in second grade and falling behind. Nothing we try works.”
From a fourth grader’s parent:
“Homework is impossible. He can’t read, spell, or write.”
From a third-grade teacher:
“Joe repeats sounds and words when reading. His parents think he stutters and want you to help.”
Motivated by these concerns, and after attending a 1993 seminar on visualizing and verbalizing, Vickie began researching the connections among reading fluency, phonemic processing, articulation disorders, and language comprehension.
Building on the work of Nanci Bell, Kenn Apel, and others, she implemented targeted phonemic awareness and discrimination exercises. Over the following months, students demonstrated measurable improvements in decoding, reading fluency, and writing skills.
Recognizing the time constraints of busy school schedules, Vickie refined her approach in the early 2000s into a focused 20- to 30-minute instructional program. Within a year of implementation, many students advanced one to three grade levels and exited speech therapy prior to entering middle school.
After retiring in 2017, Vickie published three resources: 20 Minute Phonemic Training for Dyslexia, Auditory Processing, and Spelling; Winning Solutions for Struggling Readers and Spellers; and Reading Sound Strategies: Training the Brain to Lift Words from the Page.
Beginning in 2018, she worked with Therapy Connections in Ohio, providing speech-language therapy to students in virtual school settings. During this time, she adapted her program for online delivery, launched the YouTube channel YouTube.com/@wisekids/20Min, and created 20MinutePhonemicTraining.com.
Today, Vickie continues to advise parents and educators and offers her Udemy course, How to Teach Reading and Spelling Using 20 Minute Phonemic Training.
