BRAVO Methodology

The instructional component of the Lyric Reader architecture is based upon an instructional methodology I call BRAVO (Bridging Readers’ Acquisition of sight Vocabulary via Oral language). BRAVO combines many of the best features of the instructional models described above.

BRAVO is designed to use children’s existing oral language as a scaffold to help them build their sight vocabulary. It uses the contextual, meaning, and phonemic knowledge that children have about words in their oral vocabulary to scaffold their acquisition of orthographic knowledge. It is this knowledge acquisition that builds children’s sight vocabulary. Once a child knows a word's orthography that word belongs to the child’s sight vocabulary.

The BRAVO methodology combines culturally relevant reading material, word recognition strategies and a five-step word adaptation program that scaffolds the child through the process of adapting an oral vocabulary word into a sight vocabulary word.

Five Step Word Adaptation Program

Step 1:  Hearing

Since BRAVO uses the child’s oral language as a scaffold, the first step of the process is for the child to hear the word, thus activating the word’s phonemic representation in the child’s mind. In essence, this step is designed to activate the oral knowledge that the child has of a word.

Step 2:  Seeing

Upon hearing the word, the next step of the process is for the child to see the word. Now the child can make a connection between a word’s phonemic and orthographic representations. The goal of this step is for the child to start forming connections between a word’s phonemic and orthographic representation. Thus, a student at anytime can request to hear what a word sounds like.

Step 3:  Using

For a child to add a word to their sight vocabulary she must "do something" with the word. If this were not the case then building a sight vocabulary would be easy, since all a child would have to do is read a word and it would become a part of our sight vocabulary. The activities in Lyric Reader (described later) are designed to require the child to think critically about the words in order to construct an artifact.

Step 4:  Constructing Meaning

BRAVO makes the assumption that a child understands the meaning of many of the words in their oral vocabulary. For those words a child does not understand, it is important to provide an opportunity for the student to construct a meaning. Lyric Reader provides this opportunity. When the child does not know the meaning of a word an example sentence, definition, and similar words are provided.

Step 5:  Writing

Writing reinforces the connection between oral and written language. Writing a word enables a child to strengthen their ability to recall a word (Clay 1990). Researchers (Sulzby & Teale 1986) have documented the role that writing plays in children learning to read. Programs, for instance IBM’s "Writing-to-Read", have been developed to purposely build the connection between the two. It is possible to look at a student’s writing to get an understanding of their knowledge of letter-sound relationships. Thus writing is an important component of the BRAVO methodology.

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Last modified: April 12, 1998