ABOUT THE SYSTEM - teaching reading

The I CAN READ® system, incorporating the reading programme, has been developed over several years by registered psychologists and came about through research conducted between 1995 and 2000 by Antony Earnshaw and Annabel Seargeant. It is structured, cumulative and hierarchical, and is the first system in the world to direct students how to link clusters of letters to single sounds in a unique manner.The I CAN READ reading programme enables the student to see how letters combine to create invariant sounds, empowers the student to take control of his or her own reading progress and is fun and easy for children and adults. I CAN READ created the approach to reading which teaches students to analyse single sounds (phonemes) and more importantly theorised the neural linkages between the left inferior frontal gyrus and the left parieo-temporal area which subsequent research has shown enables beginning readers to phonologically link sounds and letter(s) and to assemble the sequence of sound-letter correspondences. Recent evidence using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) supports the I CAN READ approach. I CAN READ teaches three essential skills that the beginning reader needs to learn to read: • Phonemic awareness • Phonics • Blending sequences of phono-graphemes

Cumulative The I CAN READ reading programme overcomes the difficulties that beginning readers face when they learn to read and have to combine letters into blended sounds. The I CAN READ system overcomes the problem of knowing how to pronounce a grapheme when so many letters and clusters of letters can be associated with more than one sound. Commencing with simple, invariant graphemes, the student progresses to learn more difficult graphemes, building upon his or her successes on the way.