Crypto-Knights #1: Silent E

Welcome to the world of the Crypto-Knights!  This comic book miniseries is designed primarily to help your students or children in their ongoing quest to read skillfully and enthusiastically, making use of carefully scaffolded decoding strategies as well as their own inspiration.  These strategies have been developed over more than three years of teaching, study, and research through the University of Pennsylvania Department of Linguistics and the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California.  These comics have been enjoyed by hundreds of students in Philadelphia and Denver public schools, and we hope to continue this tradition around the world.  

The Crypto-Knight Method (CKM) is a unique and exciting interactive individual literacy tool that uses specially designed graphic novels to engage struggling readers through real-life themes presented through the fictional super hero context, while also targeting specific word decoding rules progressively.  This means that CKM is geared to both: 

* stimulate young readers’ enthusiasm about words, codes, puzzles, and their role in the modern world, and

* provide them with the tools they need to actually tackle these challenges critically, efficiently, and with heightened  confidence.  

People often remark that the spelling system of the English language seems like a total mess--full of exceptions, exceptions to exceptions, and useless baggage.  Why doesn't war rhyme with car?  Why is it pronounced people if it has an o in it?   This sentiment is not entirely unfounded.  It's hard to come up with a reasonable way to explain to a third grader why wind (as in the element) should be pronounced differently than wind (the verb), or why doubt still has a b in it (without getting into a long and hairy discussion about Old English etymology having to do with a messy slew of 11th century Scandinavian invasions).  But through reading these comics, students develop simple and concrete ways of understanding and decoding the majority of words in the English language, and a confidence in decoding that helps them tackle a range of intimidating spelling rules. Your support with the reading rules and interactive challenges throughout the comics will add greatly to their acquisition of these strategies.