This paper describes two studies to determine the effectiveness of a technique for teaching graphemic bases in linguistic patterns and for teaching the combining of these graphemic bases with beginning sounds. Designed to complement the Hawaii English Program, the teaching procedure used both group instruction and peer interaction-it was brief, incorporated materials apparently of high interest for children, and was easy to install. Using first-grade and second-grade children, the first study provided no evidence that the group learned to generalize either graphemic bases or the process of blending beginning sounds and graphemic bases to make a word. The teacher and consultants, however, felt that the students were learning. The study was repeated with the same subjects, preceeded by additional teaching. Results were similar to those of the first study but suggested that the method used for teaching graphemic bases can be effective in teaching sight words to students. Since only three of the six children learned to decode new words of the same or similar graphemic base, the methods can be considered only partially successful. (HOD)