The Ball-Stick-Bird phonic reading system, developed by psychologist Dr. Renée Fuller, derives its name from the way it teaches the alphabet. With Balls (circles), Sticks (lines), and Birds (angles), the student can make all the letters of the alphabet. But story reading does not wait for alphabet mastery. Already with the presentation of the fourth letter the hilarious adventures of Vad of Mars begin.

These adventures package principles from neuroscience and child psychology thereby greatly increasing learning ease, speed, and reading pleasure. Instead of senseless drill, the repeated phonic lessons are immediately utilized in another goofy science fiction adventure.

The Ball-Stick-Bird books are 100 to 150 pages long, 8 1/2 by 11 inches in size. They are printed on thick shiny paper so that eager, moist hands won't create smudges. And they are in color. At present, the system consists of ten books of different but related stories that take the student from zero to adult reading.

Research has shown that with Ball-Stick-Bird there was no such thing as dyslexia or learning disability. Pre-schoolers and elementary students became avid readers with astonishing speed. Adults with a history of learning disability, and even the severely retarded, easily learned to read with comprehension. These data and the questions they raised about human intelligence were reported and discussed at several symposia on Ball-Stick-Bird, as well as during Continuing Education workshops, at Annual Meetings of the American Psychological Association. The Ball-Stick-Bird successes, conflicting as they do with achievement expectations based on IQ and psychological evaluations, led to a new theory of cognitive organization. Called the story-as-the-engram theory of cognitive organization, this theory has fascinating implications for the wide-ranging potential of the human mind.

About Ball-Stick-Bird the Journal of Developmental Education said "Dr. Fuller provides us an unparalleled opportunity for a paradigm shift with potentially far-reaching consequences for education, not just in reading but in total intellectual development."

Dr. Fuller went to Swarthmore and Hunter Colleges, was a Phi Beta Kappa and graduated with honors in psychology. She received her M.A. in experimental psychology from Columbia University, and her Ph.D. in 1963 in physiological psychology from New York University. From 1960 to 1966 she was Research Scientist at Letchworth Village, New York State Department of Mental Hygiene, responsible for the psychological and developmental evaluation of the New York State study of phenylketonuria. As project director at the Staten Island Society of Mental Health from 1966 to 1967, Dr. Fuller directed the evaluation of premature infants. Then, as chief of Psychological Services, Rosewood Hospital Center, Maryland Department of Mental Hygiene from 1967 to 1973 she organized a psychology department involved in applied and basic research in the field of human development.

One of her experimental programs dealt with the cognitive changes following Ball-Stick-Bird intervention. For this work she received Fairleigh Dickinson University's Distinguished Achievement Award. The American Psychological Association devoted a lengthy symposium to the results of the reading system and its implications for intelligence theory. An expanded version of this initial symposium on Ball-Stick-Bird appeared in book form under the title IN SEARCH OF THE IQ CORRELATION. The American Psychological Association has since devoted several Continuing Education workshops to the Ball-Stick-Bird reading system, and the story-as-the-engram theory of cognitive organization.

The story-as-the-engram theory, contrary to usual conceptualizations of intelligence, is anchored in the applied world of person to person communication. Dr. Fuller has shown how we can facilitate linguistic development, which in turn facilitates how we organize our cognitive world. This capacity with its increase in thinking ability can be greatly enhanced through educational intervention. The Ball-Stick-Bird reading system represents such a successful intervention.

In addition to developing the Ball-Stick-Bird reading system, and the story-as-the-engram theory of cognitive organization, Dr. Fuller has published widely in the field of clinical physiological psychology. At present she is continuing her work in developing learning programs and writing books and articles about how children learn. She is consultant to numerous school systems, universities, and departments of education, as well as to homeschoolers.