Research has shown that reading a lot helps pupils acquire the essential language, cognitive skills and background knowledge that will promote academic success (Cunningham and Stanovich 1998). Avid, fluent readers "acquire new language and vocabulary, new conceptual knowledge, new comprehension challenges and new modes of thought to which they would not otherwise be exposed" (Adams and Bruck, 1995). Practice makes their word recognition skills automatic, freeing them to concentrate on higher-level ideas in their reading. Greater fluency leads to better skills, more pleasure, more information, and hence, more reading.

Struggling readers can be compared to musicians or athletes in training (Samuels, 2002) in their need for practice. Poor readers tend to read less than better readers, with the gap increasing as the pupils move through the grades (Stanovich, 1986). There is enormous variation in the amount of independent reading that pupils do outside of school, with pupils at the 98^th percentile reading 4,358,000 words per year while pupils at the 10^th percentile read 8,000 words and pupils at the 2^nd percentile report reading nothing outside of school at all (Cunningham & Stanovich, 1998). A similar disparity exists between good and poor readers in the classroom as well.

While good readers are spiraling upward to higher and higher levels of language and knowledge, struggling readers are spiraling downward into lowered expectations, lack of motivation and limited practice (Stanovich, 1986). Because their reading is so labored, they don't read, and because they don't read, they don't develop the language base or background knowledge of their peers. With every passing year, their vocabularies and background knowledge become more and more discrepant from other pupils, and it becomes increasingly difficult for them to narrow the gap and access the materials of the classroom.

In order to enjoy and profit from reading, pupils must achieve automaticity of word recognition. As long as they are struggling to decode words, their ability to gain knowledge and pleasure from reading will be limited, and their motivation to read will be diminished. Teachers can turn this process around by providing pupils with strong instruction in decoding and getting them to practice by giving them motivating books at an appropriate reading and interest level. As Stanovich and Cunningham (1998) say, "An encouraging message for teachers of low-achieving pupils is implicit here. We often despair of changing our pupil's abilities, but there is at least one partially malleable habit that will itself develop abilities-reading!"

In order for pupils to derive meaning from print they must become skilled in all six dimensions of reading, as outlined by the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education's Reading Excellence Act (2002):

• The skills and knowledge to understand how phonemes, or speech sounds, are connected to print
• The ability to decode unfamiliar words
• The ability to read fluently
• Sufficient background information and vocabulary to foster reading comprehension
• The development of appropriate active strategies to construct meaning from print
• The development and maintenance of a motivation to read

Start-to-Finish Books provides two libraries of motivating paperback books with companion computer book and audio books for older, struggling readers, from fifth graders to adults. The Gold library is suited to those who are reading at the second or third grade level, while the Blue Library is suited to those who are reading at the fourth or fifth grade level. The books in both libraries contain considerate text that acknowledges the interests and social maturity of the older pupil with reading difficulties. There are a variety of titles suitable for self-selected reading as well as books to supplement the curriculum. Designed to be used in conjunction with a strong reading and word study program, both libraries provide the critical volume of practice needed by struggling readers. Start-to-Finish books are not written to a readability formula. They are written for success: that is, they are written in an authentic manner by experienced authors who produce text that is as clear and coherent and as simple as the underlying ideas permit. The authors and editors assume that the struggling reader brings very little background knowledge and vocabulary to the reading experience. After the books are written, two speech/language pathologists and a learning-disabilities specialist, all with many years of experience teaching struggling readers, scrutinize them. The editors adapt the text to meet the needs of older struggling readers.

The Language of Start-to-Finish Books
In editing a Start-to-Finish book, editors look first at text structure. Is the story coherent and well sequenced for understanding? If it's a rewritten version of classic literature, does the voice and spirit of the original author come through? Have the most important parts of the story been included? Is there enough dialogue to keep a struggling reader engaged and motivated?

Next, the editors look for places where comprehension depends on certain conventions of literature that may be unfamiliar to the struggling reader. For example, novels often present extended dialogue where the only clue to a change of speaker is indentation. Start-to-Finish books in the Gold Library always explicitly identify the speaker in the written text. In the Blue Library books, the speakers in a passage of dialogue are not always identified in the written text, providing a bridge to move pupils closer to reading grade-level text. In both libraries, the voices and accents provided by the narrator help pupils to see the connections between the punctuation and indentation on the page and the spoken dialogue.

Especially at the lowest levels, struggling readers often stumble over specific words, grammatical structures and word orders in reading. Start-to-Finish editors change the text at the gold level to remove as many of these stumbling blocks as possible, enabling pupils to read more smoothly-freeing them to think about the ideas in the book.

Based on their collective experience of listening to pupils' oral reading errors, Start-to-Finish editors have developed an approach that includes an extensive set of guidelines for writing and editing easy-to-read text. All guidelines are applied flexibly with sensitivity to the particular context and educational needs of the pupil. The following are a few examples of the many guidelines used for the Gold Library:

1. Avoid using a word that is hard to decode as an adjective right before a noun.
   For example, because pupils tend to read the word scarred as scared, change She saw his scarred face to She saw that he had a scar on his face.

2. Do not end a sentence with a transitive verb when the next sentence begins with a noun.
   Ken was teasing. Mandy and Kris grinned.

   Pupils may ignore the period and read this as Ken was teasing Mandy and Kris and then get confused when they come to grinned. Therefore, change the sentence to the following:

   Ken was teasing Mandy and Kris. They grinned.

3. Take special care with the word little when it is used to mean very little as in
   Ben had little money.

   Pupils will be familiar with the use of little as an adjective meaning small and a little meaning a small quantity, but they are often confused when little is used as in the above sentence to emphasize how very little there is of something. Often they insert an article, as in Ben had a little money. To make sure struggling readers get the intended nuance, change such sentences as follows:

   Ben didn't have very much money or Ben had very little money.

Gold Library books are about 5,000 words long. Approximately 70% of those 5,000 words come from a short list of the 330 most frequently occurring words in text. An additional 20% of the words come from a graded list of words that researchers have found to occur in primer through third grade texts. Also considered in word choice is phonetic regularity, providing many opportunities to practice the decoding skills being taught in the classroom, such as letter-sound associations, sound blending, onset and rime (words ending in a family of sounds such as -all, -ost, -ine), identifying root words (e.g., finding shine and carry in words with suffixes such as shining and carried), and dividing words into syllables (base/ball, in/ven/tion). Printable teacher materials support these practices by providing lists of names and key words with a breakdown into syllables, roots, prefixes and suffixes.

On the computer screen, the Gold Library books are presented one page at the time, with word-by-word highlighting paired with human speech. Pupils can click on individual words to hear them pronounced by the narrator. The companion paperback book matches the on-screen layout line-by-line, allowing pupils to make the transition easily from the computer experience to the paperback book.

When pupils' decoding skills become automatic enough for them to move into the books in the Blue Library, they are presented with more challenging vocabulary, idioms, word order, metaphors, and other forms of literary expression. Each Blue Library book contains about 10,000 words, about twice the length of a Gold Library book. At this level, pupils are supported with sentence-by-sentence highlighting as they follow along with the narrator, and they can click on each individual sentence to hear it read aloud. Single-word support is provided only for more difficult words, especially those that appear on graded word lists at the fourth-grade level and above. Pupils are expected to be able to handle the easier words on their own or by hearing them in sentence context. Thus pupils continue to be successful while moving toward greater and greater independence. The clear pronunciation of an expert reader is available at the click of the mouse to help Start-to-Finish readers build strong connections between the printed word and the sounds, syllables and stress patterns of spoken language.

Motivation
The combination of deficient decoding skills, lack of practice, and difficult materials result in unrewarding early reading experiences that lead to less involvement in reading-related activities (Cunningham & Stanovich, 1998). Pupils with a history of failure simply don't have the motivation to read, therefore they are not benefiting from the positive effects of reading volume. Some schools rely on sustained silent reading to give their pupils the reading practice they need, but for this to work, it is critical that the books selected be at the pupils' recreational reading level, and poor readers often choose books that discourage rather than encourage them to read (Samuels, 2002). The Start-to-Finish library is designed to give them choices that will make them want to keep reading.

Motivation is high with Start-to-Finish books because of the way the books are written, edited, narrated and placed into software. The narrator provides excitement, often using different voices and accents which pupils eagerly imitate. The carefully written text and computer support ensure that pupils will be successful and will attend for longer periods, achieving automaticity and acquiring the background knowledge and vocabulary that will make it easier to get into the next book and onto the next level of reading difficulty.

Pupils who begin the Start-to-Finish library soon experience the thrill of recognition as they see words and names reappear and connections form between books. For example, a pupil who reads the Gold Library Nick Ford book, The Graveyard Mystery, will encounter references to the Civil War and to Mark Twain's hometown. Within the library the pupil will then have the opportunity to learn more about the Civil War through biographies of Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, or a retelling of Red Badge of Courage. Pupils can also follow up on Mark Twain by reading the Start-to-Finish retelling of his short story Life on the Mississippi and his novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. When they become fluent enough to read the Blue Library books, pupils can read a retelling of Tom Sawyer as well. Gradually, as pupils work their way through the library of both self-selected and teacher-selected books, they begin to experience the pleasure and comfort of recognizing names, concepts, words, and background knowledge. This is an experience that good readers take for granted. Moreover, the struggling reader now has knowledge to share and contribute to classroom discussions with academically successful peers.

Vocabulary and Idioms
Research has shown that pupils need more than dictionary definitions to learn vocabulary (Stahl and Fairbanks, 1986) — they need to see words in meaningful contexts. Stahl and Fairbanks (1986) recommend that vocabulary instruction provide directed exposure to new vocabulary in the context of sentences and stories. In both libraries, Start-to-Finish books provide memorable contexts for new vocabulary.

In the Gold Library, the writers and editors keep the vocabulary as simple as possible, but always with the educational needs of the pupil in mind. For example, in the Start-to-Finish series about Ancient Egypt, the editors did not change ancient to old, even though ancient is harder to read, because it would be worth the difficulty for struggling readers to learn the word ancient, along with words like hieroglyphic, pharaoh and archeologist. Pupils need these words to follow up on an interest in Egypt, and they need these words to talk about or write about the subject. The computer support allows pupils to receive the exposure they need to master these words. In addition, words that are likely to be unfamiliar to pupils are introduced in simple contexts that make their meanings clear.

In the Blue Library, pupils see more abstract vocabulary. They also see words used in more varied ways, with prefixes and suffixes that change their meanings and parts of speech; e.g., mortal/immortal, kind/kindness, fury/furious/furiously, gain/regain, agree-/agreement, harm/harmless/harmlessly. Pupils who are being taught how to analyze words according to prefixes, suffixes and roots according to word study methods such as those suggested by Cunningham (2000) or Stahl (1999) will find many opportunities to do so in the Blue Library books. Printable teacher materials provide lists of these words so that teachers can use them for both instruction and assessment.

The Key Word lists in Start-to-Finish teacher materials are designed to be as easy to read as the books themselves. Pupils in classrooms are often sent to dictionaries to look up unfamiliar words, only to find that the definition provided is more difficult than the word itself. Start-to-Finish Key Word lists use a different approach, often using explanations, examples, and context instead of formal definitions. These lists provide a bridge to the use of a standard dictionary.

Carlisle, et al (2001) has shown that poor readers have particular difficulty on words that change in pronunciation when a suffix is added, such as nature-natural. This is exemplified by a pupil with reading and language difficulties who can read the word necessary but struggles to read the name Fort Necessity in the Blue Library Start-to-Finish book Against All the Odds. The pupil can use the narrator's pronunciation and single word auditory support to compensate for this difficulty.

Poor readers have difficulty when words are used in non-literal ways, such as fork in the phrase a fork in the road. Idioms and metaphorical language are carefully controlled in the Gold Library and used more plentifully in the Blue Library. Idioms and figures of speech that are considered worth teaching are carefully placed in contexts that make their meaning clear. The expression of the narrator's voice helps pupils to understand idiomatic language. Printable teacher materials, including lists of the words, names, and idioms in each story, give teachers a basis for word and language study.

Background Knowledge and Comprehension
Comprehension is intimately tied with background knowledge, vocabulary, and decoding skills. Struggling readers are constantly confronted with materials that are too difficult for them. When they read such materials they leave their errors uncorrected because they have no hope of having the text make sense. This does not happen with Start-to-Finish books because after pupils listen to the narrator read a page they know that the text makes sense, and they quickly begin to self-correct and monitor their comprehension. Because pupils read these books with good comprehension, every Start-to-Finish experience builds knowledge and vocabulary that makes the next book easier to pick up and easier to finish.

In a study of the use of comprehension strategies by good and poor readers at the high school level, Kletzien (1991) found that poor readers' use of comprehension strategies was better on simplified texts than on texts that were more difficult for them to read. Kletzien's poor readers were not an identified learning disabled population but rather pupils between the 18^th and 49^th percentile in reading comprehension. One might expect struggling readers whose skills are below the 18^th percentile to have their use of comprehension strategies even more strongly affected by reading difficulty. Start-to-Finish Books provide opportunities for pupils to work on comprehension strategies at a manageable reading level that frees their mental resources for higher-level thinking.

Comprehension activities in the Gold Library are kept simple and literal. The goal of the activities is to allow pupils to succeed with an independent comprehension task. After each chapter, the computer presents a brief summary of the chapter (a modified cloze passage) containing eight blanks. The pupil scrolls through five possible answers to complete the sentences. The computer scores and graphs the results.

In the Blue Library, the multiple-choice comprehension tests at the end of each chapter are more inferential, and encourage pupils to pay attention to non-literal meanings of words. Pupils must go beyond the exact words of the text to find the underlying meanings. Two tests are included after each chapter: a Questions test and a Word Meanings test. The tests can be turned on or off according to individual pupil need. The Questions test provides why and how questions about the story. The Word Meanings test asks questions about vocabulary, idioms, and metaphors from the story. Printable open-ended questions challenge pupils to think further and write about what they have read.

Fluency
Fluency has been defined as "the ability to read connected text rapidly, smoothly, effortlessly, and automatically with little conscious attention to the mechanics of reading such as decoding" (Meyer and Felton, 1999). Part of smooth and effortless reading is the use of appropriate phrasing and intonation.

When pupils are having difficulty at the decoding level, they don't have enough attention available for comprehension. Samuels (2002) writes, "the problem facing the beginning reader is that at any given moment there is a limited amount of processing space or attention available for decoding and comprehension, and each task by itself occupies a considerable amount of the limited processing space available. The dual tasks of decoding and comprehension require more attentional energy than is available."

Research has shown that repeated reading is an effective way for pupils to develop reading fluency. When a pupil reads the same passage repeatedly, the number of word recognition errors decreases, and reading speed increases, as does oral reading expression. The benefits of repeated reading hold up even if pupils don't record and chart their speed and accuracy. (Samuels, 2002). Dowhower (1994) reported that the research on the positive effects of repeated reading was so strong that repeated reading should be "woven into the very fabric of daily literacy instruction."

Practice in context has some advantages over practicing word lists (Levy, 2001, p. 359) in that it provides the "opportunity to improve the integration of skills needed for fast reading with comprehension." In the Blue Library, a fluency practice feature includes a recorder to give pupils the opportunity to practice repeated reading in context with the narrator always close at hand to model careful articulation, good rate, and optimum phrasing and emphasis.

Using the Fluency Practice feature after each chapter, pupils are presented with a passage to read and record multiple times. Pupils can listen to their own recordings after each trial and see how they are progressing in their ability to bring out the meaning of the text. They can also hear individual words or the entire passage read again by the narrator. The fluency that pupils usually hear by the third or fourth reading leads to an increase in confidence and self-esteem. When teachers use these recordings to monitor fluency, they also gain a window into their pupils' reading comprehension. Fuchs, Fuchs and Maxwell (1988) found that pupils' fluency was more highly correlated with their scores on a standardized reading comprehension test than were oral and written retellings, question answering, or cloze tests. Shinn et al (1992) provide additional support for the use of fluency measures to monitor progress in reading.

The considerate text and computer support of the Start-to-Finish libraries give pupils the support they need in order to learn important new words and idioms, sentence structures, word orders, literary conventions and background knowledge. By minimizing the difficulties and by supporting challenging text, Start-to-Finish books give pupils the freedom to enjoy reading more and build the volume they need to become better readers.

Start-to-Finish Books are a collaborative design by experts in the fields of reading, language, learning disabilities and educational technology. It was developed using proven principles of reading research.

Start-to-Finish Collaborators
A team of editors does the final editing of every Start-to-Finish book, each with more than 25 years of experience in the fields of reading, language and learning disabilities. The editors revise the text to meet exacting standards. These standards represent research and best practices in the fields of linguistics, language acquisition, reading and learning. The editors are:

Dorothy Tyack, MA — Dorothy is a learning disabilities specialist and director of the San Francisco/Burlingame Scottish Rite Center for Childhood Language Disorders. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Learning Disabilities , Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders , Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, Journal of Child Language, and Language, Speech and Hearing Services in Schools. She is co-author of Language Sampling, Analysis and Training: A Handbook(Tyack & Venable, 1998). Dorothy is an editor for Start-to-Finish Books.

Gail Venable, MS, CCC-SLP — Gail has been a speech-language pathologist with the San Francisco/Burlingame Scottish Rite Center since 1974. She specializes in language and reading disorders. She is co-author of the Diagnostic Profile Form (Solina & Venable, 1986) and Language Sampling, Analysis and Training: A Handbook(Tyack & Venable, 1998). She has taught courses in language sampling and language disorders in children for the Communicative Disorders Department at San Francisco State University. Gail is an editor for Start-to-Finish Books.

Jerry Stemach, MS, CCC-SLP — Jerry Stemach is an AAC and Assistive Technology Specialist with credentials in elementary and special education. Through his work at the Scottish Rite Center for Childhood Language Disorders in San Francisco, he acquired expertise in language sampling and analysis and worked with colleagues to develop strategies for teaching reading to pupils with significant language and literacy challenges. Jerry's works include Word Express: The First 2,500 Words of Spoken English (Stemach & Williams, 1988) and Passport to Reading Independence, a phonics-based reading program. Jerry just retired from the Sonoma County Office of Education's Adaptive Technology Center in Sebastopol, California, where he and his colleagues extended these reading strategies through the use of assistive technology to pupils with multiple disabilities. Jerry is currently the Director of Content Development for Start-to-Finish Books.

Dr. Ted S. Hasselbring, Ed.D — Instructional decisions for the technology components were based on the research and guidance of Dr. Ted S. Hasselbring, Ed.D. — Dr. Hasselbring is the William T. Bryan Professor and Endowed Chair in Special Education Technology at the University of Kentucky. Over the past twenty years, Dr. Hasselbring has conducted research on the use of technology for enhancing learning in pupils with mild disabilities and those who are at risk of school failure. He has authored more than one hundred book chapters and articles on learning and technology and serves on the editorial boards of six professional journals. He is also the author of several computer programs. Dr. Hasselbring spent 17 years as Co-Director of the Learning Technology Center at Vanderbilt University.

References
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Carlisle, J., Stone, C., & Katz, L. (2001). The effects of phonological transparency on reading derived words. Annals of Dyslexia, 51, 249-274.

Cunningham, P. (2000). Phonics they use (3rd ed.). NY: Addison Wesley Longman.

Cunningham, A. & Stanovich, K. (1998). What reading does for the mind. American Educator. Spring/Summer.

Dowhower, S. (1994). Repeated reading revisited: Research into practice. Reading & Writing Quarterly: Overcoming Learning Difficulties, 10, 343-358.

EDL Core Vocabularies. (1989). Austin, TX: Steck-Vaughn.

Fuchs, L., Fuchs, D., and Maxwell, L. (1988). The validity of informal measures of reading comprehension. Remedial and Special Education 9, 20-28.

Kletzien, S. (1991). Strategy use by good and poor comprehenders reading expository text of differing levels. Reading Research Quarterly, XXVI, 1, 67-86.

Levy, B. (2001). Moving the Bottom: Improving reading fluency. In M. Wolf (Ed.), Dyslexia, fluency and the brain (pp. 357-379). Timonium, MD: York Press.

Meyer M. & Felton, R. (1999). Repeated reading to enhance fluency: Old approaches and new directions. Annals of Dyslexia. 49, 283-306.

National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction (National Institute of Health Pub. No. 00-4749). Washington, DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (2002). The Reading Excellence Act: http://www.ed.gov/offices/OESE/REA/overview.html

Samuels, S. (2002). Reading fluency: Its development and assessment. In A. Farstrup & S. Samuels (Eds.) What research has to say about reading instruction (pp. 166-183). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Shinn, M., Good, R. Knutson, N., Tilly, W., and Collins, V. (1992). Curriculum-based measurement of oral reading fluency: A confirmatory analysis of its relation to reading. School Psychology Review 21: 459-79.

Stahl, S. (1999). Vocabulary Development. Cambridge, MA: Brookline Books.

Stahl, S. and Fairbanks, M. (1986). The effects of vocabulary instruction: A mode-based meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 56 (1), 72-110.

Stanovich, K.E. (1986). Matthew effects in reading: Some consequences of individual differences in the acquisition of literacy. Reading Research Quarterly, 21, 360-407.