I have had the experience of observing a group of fifth grade students in an inner city elementary school struggle with reading. Out of 425 students at this school, 150 of them are reading at their expected level. To deal with this problem, the school has trained its teachers to be able to teach the Wilson Reading System. Students have been put in to groups based on their reading level and divided amongst the teachers of the school. For the first hour and a half of each school day, I observe this particular group of fifth graders that read at a second grade level, take part in this program. This school is attempting to fix their struggle with student's abilities to read by implementing this Wilson Reading System. How does this system function and plan to help these young generations? Are we going to see major improvement in their abilities?
             A special educator, Barbara Wilson and her husband, Edward, developed the Wilson Reading System in 1988. Their aim for the program was to teach struggling student's the structure of words. The program does this in a systematic and cumulative manner. According to the Wilson Language Training Corporation, the Wilson Reading System is based on 10 principles of instruction that resulted from widespread research in the field of reading. These critical points explain how this program is effective to the struggling students.
             „P Critical point 1: Teach sounds to automaticity. This point emphasizes the importance of automatic and fluent sound knowledge. Sound drills are practiced daily to help address sound-symbol connection (phoneme-grapheme correspondence). Many other reading and phonics programs only teach symbol to sound, when the Wilson program teaches both directions: sound to symbol and symbol to sound.
             „P Critical Point 2: Teach total word structure - not just sounds. The focus of this critical point is to teach word structure systematically. Studen...