What is Hear It! Say It! Learn It! ^™?   Hear It! Say It! Learn It!^™ is an interactive speech and language program that teaches intense awareness of 16 speech sounds and letters. It helps children improve their speech, auditory discrimination, auditory processing, visual discrimination, early reading, and fine motor skills!

HSL includes two Program Resource Books and an interactive CD-ROM. First, the therapist/teacher has the student complete a Resource Book task. To reinforce what he/she has learned, the student then completes the corresponding activity on the CD-ROM.

HSL introduces a target sound along with a sound “image” ( Bubble Sound “B”). The child then listens to an auditory bombardment story, completes auditory discrimination tasks, and learns to recognize and write the letter. As he/she becomes familiar with the letter that makes the sound, the language-literacy loop begins to form. There are also optional worksheets for letter-writing practice, extension activities for more sound- and letter-identification practice, and assessments to establish benchmarks and monitor progress.

What letters and sounds are part of Hear It! Say It! Learn It! ^™ and why?  HSL teaches the B, F, M, T, G, P, D, K/C, H, V, N, W, L, S, R, and J sounds and letters. These are the most common consonant singletons at the beginning and ending of simple CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words. HSL does not include Q, X, and Z—which occur much less frequently in CVC words—and digraphs and blends because they represent a level of complexity beyond the scope of the program.

There are four units to the program with four sounds/letters in each unit. To avoid confusion, the teaching sequence of the sounds/letters is maximally contrastive within each unit. For example, a student first learns B (voiced, bilabial, plosive) and then learns F (unvoiced, labiodental, fricative).

Who can implement Hear It! Say It! Learn It!^™?   Speech-language pathologists, special educators, reading specialists, and classroom teachers can all use HSL with individual students, small groups, and even full classes.

Can I use the CD-ROM alone—without the Program Resource Books?   HSL is a step-by-step learning program. The most comprehensive way to implement this program is to follow the specific guidelines in Resource Book 1 in which the child completes a Resource Book task and then the follow-up activities on the CD-ROM. We do not recommend using just the CD-ROM.

Is Hear It! Say It! Learn It!^™ evidence based?   HSL is based on Adele Gerber’s Beginning Reading Through Speech approach. The first trial for the approach was in 2000-2001 with 38 students who scored “Below Basic” on the pretest of Houghton-Milton Test of Emergent Literacy. Over a six-month period, all 38 students improved from “Below Basic” to “Basic” or “Proficient” in the 12 areas tested—rhyme, beginning sounds, blending onsets and rhymes, concepts of print, letter naming, segmenting onsets and rhymes, phoneme blending, phoneme segmenting, word recognition, fluency, word writing, and sentence dictation.

Who will benefit from Hear It! Say It! Learn It!^™    HSL is perfect for children who are beginning to learn sounds and letters and are at the beginning stages of early reading—appropriate for preschool through 3rd grade, depending upon the needs of the child.

HSL will benefit other children as well. Children with auditory discrimination or auditory processing needs, phonological processing issues, and visual perceptual difficulties can all benefit from activities in this program. The introduction to each sound helps children become aware of what their lips, tongues, voices, and lungs are doing for that sound. The auditory tasks teach students to listen to the difference between sounds and to identify target sounds. The letter identification tasks focus on the visual discrimination of letters. Additional activities involving forming the letter, creating a letter flash card, and practicing early writing all help develop fine motor skills and offer a kinesthetic aspect to learning. HSL’s extension activities promote carry-over learning of all the above skills.

Can Hear It! Say It! Learn It! function as an RtI program?   HSL is evidence based and provides pre- and posttests, unit assessments, and a midway and final review. Resource Book 1 includes data collection sheets, and the interactive CD-ROM tracks data for an unlimited number of students. The guidelines for implementing the program are in Resource Book 1.

Where do I begin if the student already knows a letter and its sound?   The HSL authors suggest allowing the student to listen to the auditory bombardment story, to make the flashcard, and to master each activity on the CD-ROM before moving on to the next chapter.

Should I read the Auditory Bombardment Story, or let the student watch/listen on the CD-ROM?   You have the choice of reading the story, having the student listen to the story on the CD-ROM, or both. Your decision may depend on the size of the group, or if you have students working on different chapters simultaneously.

When do I choose “No Text” or “Text” for the Auditory Bombardment Story on the CD-ROM?  Choose “No Text” in the beginning, so the child can listen to the auditory bombardment story without the distraction of text. Once the student has completed the unit and mastered the letter/sound for the chapter, choose “Text” and allow the student to listen to the story again while looking for the target letter.

What computers will the program work with?   HSL will work with Windows^® computers that run Windows XP ^® or Vista^® and Macintosh^® computers that run OSX^®.

Does the program install on the computer’s hard drive?   No, HSL runs from the CD-ROM drive and generally does not require installation from a person who has administrative rights to the computer. The program, however, saves data and student progress files to the computer’s hard drive, so have your students work on the same computer each time they use HSL to preserve and record their progress..

Can I use the program on more than on computer?   Yes, you can have different students work from different computers; however, the CD-ROM has to be loaded into a computer’s disk drive to work properly. You will need two disks, for example, if you want two students to use the program at the same time on two different computers. (Remember: Since HSL saves data and student progress files to the computer’s hard drive, have a student work on the same computer each time he/she uses HSL to preserve and record the child’s progress.)

How many students can I enter into the program?   HSL can save data on an unlimited number of students. You can easily erase student data files you no longer need.