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Transcript

Reading Multisyllable Words with Xavier, Third Grader
Xavier: I think, he - he's kind of bad. Linda Farrell: Oh. Dog Man is? Xavier: Yeah - at his job. Linda Farrell: He sure is. He chews the table leg. Oh my gosh. Reading expert Linda Farrel is working with Xavier, a third grader at Windy Hill Elementary in Calvert County, Maryland. She'll be helping him learn how to read multi-syllable words.
Xavier: ... going to study Flippy's brain.

Linda Farrell: When we visit classrooms, it's a big issue: "The kids do well with small words, but they can't read big words." So I'll ask a student to read. And they look at a word and it's volcanic and they read volcano. Or it's fanatic and they read fantasy. So they guess the most common word that has that configuration that that word looks like it has. What they don't know is how to break a word into syllables so that you're not reading a big word that you have to memorize, but you're just going, "Oh, there's a little word, a little word, a little word.
Linda Farrell: I'm gonna have you read some nonsense words. They all have short vowels. So, could you just read these three nonsense words. Linda Farrell: Good. Alright. What are these three? Linda Farrell: Your, uh, this is pretty easy, isn't it. Yeah. This is too easy. We're done with that one. Okay? Now I'm gonna teach you about reading two-syllable words. This is kinda fun.
Linda Farrell: We started with nonsense words with Xavier because often syllables are nonsense words ... that when you combine them they become real words. So teaching nonsense words is not an exercise in futility. It is preparing children to read multi-syllable words.
Ms. Farrell now knows Xavier can read one-syllable words with short vowels. Next she checks to make sure he knows what a syllable is, because breaking long words into syllables is the key to the strategy she'll be teaching him.
Linda Farrell: I just remembered something. I have to make sure you know what a syllable is. Okay. So look at me. My name is Linda. It has two syllables in it. Lin. Da. Linda. So what's your name?
Linda Farrell: How many syllables in your name? Xavier: Four. Linda Farrell: Okay. Let's stomp them.
Xavier: /Ex/, /ay/, I mean, /ex/, /zay/, /vee/, /er/. Xavier.
Linda Farrell: You got it.
Linda Farrell: How many syllables in computer?
Linda Farrell: Yes. You got it. So you know what a syllable is. Alright. Cause that's really important if we're gonna read these big words. So if I look at this word, and I want to know how to read that, the first thing I have to do is figure out how many syllables are in it. And I can do that by figuring out what the vowels are. Do you know what the vowel letters are? Xavier: 'A, e, i, o ,u.' Linda Farrell: You got it. Those are the vowel letters. So here's what I know. Every syllable has a vowel in it. So in order to figure out how many syllables there are, I have to count the vowels. So can you tell me ... how many vowel letters do you see in that word? Linda Farrell: Yep. Are they together or apart? Xavier: Apart. Linda Farrell: They are apart. If I have two vowels - letters, and they're apart, I'm going to have two syllables. So I'm gonna draw two lines right here, and I have to have a vowel letter in every syllable. So can you break that word into two syllables for me? Linda Farrell: Now this is a nonsense word, so we're gonna read it. What's the first syllable? Linda Farrell: What's the word? Linda Farrell: So read it again. Linda Farrell: And the word is ... Linda Farrell: That's a nonsense word. I just made it up. I literally just made that word up right now. I've never even seen that word before. But we now know what to do if we have a word that we don't know. So let's try another word. Linda Farrell: Oh! You got the first two syllables - you got the first syllable right. How many vowels do you see? Xavier: Three. Linda Farrell: Together or apart. Xavier: Apart. Linda Farrell: Okay. Linda Farrell: Okay. Read each syllable. Xavier: /Vol/, /cay/ ... Linda Farrell: Hmmm. What's that middle syllable? Xavier: ... /can/, /ic/. Linda Farrell: Touch each syllable and read it. Xavier: /Vol/, /can/, /ic/ ... Linda Farrell: Mm-hmm. Linda Farrell: Wait. Wait. What's that? Linda Farrell: Yeah. Let's do it again.
Xavier: /Vol/, /can/, /ic/. Volcanic.

Linda Farrell: You just read volcanic. So what are the syllables in volcanic?
Xavier: 'O' ... Linda Farrell: Those are the vowels. What's the first syllable? Xavier: /Vol/, /can/, /ic/.
Linda Farrell: I'm gonna ask you to do something. I'm erasing this. Okay. So say volcanic.

Linda Farrell: How many syllables in volcanic?
Xavier: Three.
Linda Farrell: Okay. I would like you to please see if you can spell each syllable in volcanic. So draw three lines right up here.

Linda Farrell: Do you think you can spell volcanic? What's the first syllable?
Linda Farrell: What's that syllable? What'd you just spell? Linda Farrell: Okay. Next one. Linda Farrell: Now write the whole word.
Linda Farrell: Oh my gosh. You just spelled volcanic. You couldn't even read it and now you can spell it. That is pretty good. Do you want me to see if I can get a really hard one for you?

Linda Farrell: In teaching Xavier word attack skills, it's very important that we choose words with short vowels that have only one vowel all by itself. So you'll see we're not going to have words with 'silent e,' we're not going to have words with vowel teams. So we need two questions that we can ask Xavier that can help him break a big word into syllables so that all it is is little small words that he has to put together to read a big word. The two questions are ... how many vowels do you see? Are they together or apart? And what we teach him is that ... if you see three vowels and they're apart, you're going to have three syllables, because every syllable has a vowel. And then we teach him to draw a line for each syllable, write each syllable on a line, and then read each little word and then put them together.
Linda Farrell: Let's see if we can try this one. Linda Farrell: How many vowels did you see? Xavier: Three. Linda Farrell: Okay. Could you underline them please? Xavier: I mean four. Linda Farrell: Okay. Four vowels. Are they together or apart? Xavier: Apart. Linda Farrell: So how many syllables? Xavier: Four. Linda Farrell: Okay. Linda Farrell: Could you move that 'n' over there? Okay. Linda Farrell: Okay. So read each syllable. Xavier: /Con/, /tic/ ... Linda Farrell: What's that? Xavier: /ti/, /tin/ Linda Farrell: What's this? Linda Farrell: /t/, /i/. What is it? Linda Farrell: Okay. So it's ...
Xavier: /Con/, /ti/, /nin/, /tul/. Continental.

Linda Farrell: You just read continental. Are you ready for another one?
Xavier: Mm-hmm. Linda Farrell: Okay. Here we go. Let's try this one. Linda Farrell: How many vowels do you see? Xavier: /o/ and /i/, /e/ Linda Farrell: Okay. So how many? You can underline them if you want. Linda Farrell: Why don't you start here and go this way. Yeah. Linda Farrell: Okay. So how many? Xavier: Four. Linda Farrell: Together or apart? Xavier: Apart. Linda Farrell: Okay. Linda Farrell: Do you wanna try to read it without breaking it into syllables? Try it.
Xavier: Accosh - accomplishment.
Linda Farrell: What was the word?
Linda Farrell: It's accomplishment. You are right.
As Xavier grasps the strategy, you can see him thinking through the two questions: How many vowels? Are the vowels together or apart? And he's able to read big words without writing out the syllables. Linda Farrell: What's the word?
Linda Farrell: Wilmington! It's the name of a city ...

Linda Farrell: Xavier does a great job of learning how to attack a word. After this lesson he has a strategy to help him break words into syllables and read them. He will need lots of lessons. We start with short vowels, then we move to 'silent e,' then we move to vowel teams. So it's explicit and it's systematic when we're teaching him this. Xavier responded beautifully to reading these long words.
Linda Farrell: We're gonna do one more. It is ... Linda Farrell: You got it! That was a good one to end on. High five! Yes! We'd like to thank the wonderful students and families at Windy Hill Elementary School in Calvert County, Maryland. We hope that sharing these experiences will help other children who are learning to read. Special thanks also to Kelly Cleland, Julie Donovan, Joanne Harbaugh, and their outstanding colleagues at Windy Hill Elementary ... and to Leanne Meisinger at Calvert County Public Schools. We are deeply grateful to Linda Farrell, Michael Hunter, and Nicole Lubar of Readsters for their invaluable contributions to this project.
Produced by Noel Gunther

Edited by Christian Lindstrom

Graphic Design: Tina Chovanec

Camera: Richard Chisolm

Audio: Dwayne Dell
For more information about teaching reading, please visit www.ReadingRockets.org
Reading Rockets is a service of WETA, Washington, D.C.

© 2019, WETA, Washington, D.C.

Extra tips from the session with Xavier

1. Learning Multisyllabic Words with 'Silent e' and Vowel Teams

After Xavier learns how to read words with one vowel all by itself in each syllable, the next thing we do is we teach him 'silent e,' so that if he gets a word like porcupine that has 'silent e' at the end, we teach him - we add a new question. And it is: do you see a 'silent e' at the end? So then we say, "How many vowels do you see?"

And he'll say, "Four."

"Are they together or apart?"

"They're apart."

"Do you see a 'silent e' - yeah - at the end?"

"Yes."

And then he sees a 'silent e' at the end, and you know that that 'silent e' stays in the syllable with the vowel before it. So of course they have to read one syllable words with 'silent e' before they can read multi-syllable words with 'silent e.' It's just another question. So then we read some of those.

Then the next step is to read words with vowel teams. So let's say the words is refrain. "How many vowels do you see?"

"Three."

"Are they together or apart?"

"One is apart, and two of the vowels are together."

Well, we teach you that when two vowel letters are together, they stick together in the syllable. So you're only going to have two syllables in that word. But of course, in order to read refrain, you have to be able to know that 'a-i' spells /ay/, so you would have to be able to read one syllable words with vowel teams before you go to two syllable or three syllable or four syllable. It's very simple. It's not - there aren't any really rules that we teach. It's how do you look at a word and break it up.

2. Sounding Out New Multisyllabic Words

If they saw the word 'r-o-b-i-n' and they, I said, "How many vowels do you see?"

"Two."

"Together, apart?"

"Apart."

"See a 'silent e'?"

"No."

"How many syllables?"

"Two."

"What's the word?"

"/roe-bin/."

"Could be /roe-bin/. You decoded it perfectly. Flex that first 'o' to a short 'o' instead of a long 'o.'"

So the kid goes /rah-bin/. Oh, robin. And if the word's in his vocabulary, he'll go - "Oh! Robin." And if the word robin isn't in his vocabulary, he'll go /rah-bin/, /rah-bin/. And you know it's not in his vocabulary, and you say, "That word's /rah-bin/. It's like a bird. What's that word?" " Robin."

3. Mastering Reading Accuracy

Maryland third grader Xavier is sharing one of his favorite books with reading expert Linda Farrell. Ms. Farrell is going to help him focus on reading every word accurately.
Linda Farrell: Can you read some of this to me? Can you read?
Xavier: Look. We're heroes because we save the world from Flippy. This - it says here that scientists are going to study Flippy brain.
Linda Farrell: Get the 's' on that. Linda Farrell: What's this word right here - this one right here? Linda Farrell: Yeah. Read that whole thing again.
Xavier: It says here that scien- scientists are going to study Flippy's brain.
Linda Farrell: Keep going.
Xavier: Dog Man, I have a important job for you.
Linda Farrell: What's that word? Linda Farrell: Keep reading again. Xavier: Dog Man, I have a, an important job for you.
Linda Farrell: Can you read that - an important.
Linda Farrell: Read it again.
Xavier: ... important. Dog Man, I have an portant job ...

Linda Farrell: Okay. We're gonna do this. Read this with me. An.

Linda Farrell: Important.

Xavier: Important.

Linda Farrell: Now do it. So read An.

Linda Farrell: im

Linda Farrell: por

Linda Farrell: tant

Xavier: tant
Linda Farrell: Okay. Now, read it again.
Xavier: Dog Man, I have an important job for you.
Linda Farrell: Keep going.
Linda Farrell: One of the things I notice is that teachers often will let an inaccurate reading slip by if the meaning isn't changed. Ah, it's close enough. Move on. And that is setting students up for poor comprehension.
Take for example a sentence like, "The horse got a cold." If a student leaves out the article a and reads it, "The horse got cold," the meaning changes significantly. Linda Farrell: Wait. Who's what?
Linda Farrell: That one little word that seems so inconsequential, a, made a difference in meaning. "The horse got cold" and "the horse got a cold is different." We never know when that's going to make a difference in comprehension. We have to build good, strong reading habits for students. And that means as a teacher, it's my job to help my students develop accurate reading habits so that they don't miss a question on a comprehension test because they misread a sentence. They left off an 's.' They left off, they left out an article. They added an article. They read present tense instead of past tense. They read - they read a contraction incorrectly. All of those can lead to poor comprehension. And we need, in kindergarten, first and second grade and even third grade, to be making sure that our students read accurately. It's our responsibility.
Linda Farrell: Yeah.
Xavier: Who wants to protect the scientists? Who's a good boy protector?
Linda Farrell: And what's that word?
Xavier: Who's a good boy - good protector.
Linda Farrell: Okay. I'm gonna tell you that 'v' is - that 'e' is silent. So what does that say? Linda Farrell: You got it. So read that again.
Xavier: Who - who wants to protect an, and survive?

Xavier: Surva - suh-verve?
Linda Farrell: And what does he do? Does he save people? Xavier: Yeah. He helps people. These are ...
Xavier: Who wants to protect and serve?

Linda Farrell: We're teaching students, our children, that every letter does make a difference and that when you come to an unfamiliar word, you have to pay attention to every letter. And then when you read that word two or three times, it then becomes a word that you've seen before and you just read it because it's part of your vocabulary and you've seen that spelling before.

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Reading Multisyllable Words with Xavier, Third Grader

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Reading expert Linda Farrell shows Xavier how to read and spell unfamiliar multisyllable words with one vowel letter in each syllable. First she makes sure that Xavier has three prerequisite skills: being able to read one-syllable nonsense words, knowing how to count syllables in spoken words, and naming the vowel letters.

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A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in a language. Morphology is the study of word forming elements and processes in a language. What, then, is morphological awareness and why should it have the attention of educators?

Join us for an overview of the impacts of morphological awareness on reading and spelling as well as a look at an instructional strategy.

We hope you'll enjoy watching all 8 of our Science of Reading On-Demand Webinars. The series includes:

QUESTIONS? Contact us at info@95percentgroup.com

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95 Percent Group Spring 2020 Webinar Series, Morphology

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Welcome to the University of Florida Literacy Institute (UFLI, pronounced "you fly"). UFLI is an ongoing effort by UF faculty, students, and staff to improve literacy outcomes for children learning to read.

The work of UFLI focuses on two main areas: teacher development and reader development. The place where those two overlap ... that is where the work of UFLI lives. Our programs and resources are designed to help teachers become more confident and more successful in their capacity to help kids learn to read. We do this through:

Academic programs for both pre-service and practicing educators to develop the skills and knowledge necessary to be effective reading teachers

Professional learning opportunities to help classroom reading teachers, instructional coaches, and school leaders expand their knowledge, enhance their teaching practices, and build capacity in their schools

Resources for teachers, parents, and teacher educators to use in their reading instruction

Much, much more!

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UF Literacy Institute | Where teacher development and reader development overlap

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Welcome to the University of Florida Literacy Institute (UFLI, pronounced "you fly"). UFLI is an ongoing effort by UF faculty, students, and staff to improve literacy outcomes for children learning to read. The work of UFLI focuses on two main areas: teacher development and reader development. The place where those two overlap ...

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Vocabulary Surge: Level A™
Who is it for?
Vocabulary Surge™ is for classroom teachers in grades 2-8 who provide instruction in Language Arts, science, and social studies in upper elementary, middle school, and junior high. It can also be used by teachers who work with students receiving special education, English Language Learners, and intervention groups.
How It Works:
Vocabulary Surge™ is offered as a series of two levels with increasingly more difficult morphemes. Level A (grades 2 and up) introduces the concept of word parts and guides students in examining the meaning and structure of high-utility word parts in order to build the most words in the English language. Levels B is more difficult and addresses content areas in higher grade levels. Each book can be used separately because Level B includes a review of important roots and affixes covered in Level A.
Level A Lessons include:

Lessons 1-2: 26 compound Anglo-Saxon words

Lessons 2-3: 90 Anglo-Saxon words with inflected endings

Lessons 4-10: 68 most common affixes-200 Anglo-Saxon words with affixes

Lessons 11-16: 48 common Latin roots-200 Latin words

Lessons 17-20: 37 common Greek combining forms-225 Greek words

Teacher's Guide includes everything you need to begin your instruction:

5-day lessons

20 weeks of instruction

15 minutes per day

Manipulatives

Downloadable Student Worksheets

Word Lists

CCSS Alignment Chart

Vocabulary A Sample

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Who is it for? Vocabulary Surge™ is for classroom teachers in grades 2-8 who provide instruction in Language Arts, science, and social studies in upper elementary, middle school, and junior high. It can also be used by teachers who work with students receiving special education, English Language Learners, and intervention groups.

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Etymonline - Online Etymology Dictionary

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The online etymology dictionary (etymonline) is the internet’s go-to source for quick and reliable accounts of the origin and history of English words, phrases, and idioms. It is professional enough to satisfy academic standards, but accessible enough to be used by anyone.

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Leaders & Learning in Literacy: The Tolman Hour Glass

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Mehta, P., Foorman, B.R., Branum-Martin, L., and Taylor, P.W. (2005). Literacy as a unidimensional construct: Validation, sources of influence, and implications in a longitudinal study in grades 1 to 4. Scientific Studies of Reading, 9(2), 85-116.

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Moats, L.C. (1996). Phonological spelling errors in the writing of dyslexic adolescents. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 8, 105-119.

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Moats, L.C. (2004). Language essentials for teachers of reading and spelling (LETRS), Module 2, The Speech Sounds of English, and Module 3, Spellography for Teachers. Longmont, Colo.: Sopris West Educational Services.

Moats, L.C. and Rosow, B. (2002). Spellography. Longmont, Colo.: Sopris West.

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Many young readers are puzzled by the rules and exceptions of spelling. Research shows that learning to spell and learning to read rely on much of the same underlying knowledge. Learn more about the relationships between letters and sounds and how a proper understanding of spelling mechanics can lead to improved reading.

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Written by: Mary Kate Bolinder

The English language is filled with some delightful sounding words. Melody. Precipitation. Choreography. Surprise - these words originated from other languages! Many of the words in our contemporary English language are influenced by centuries of oral and written language from countries and cultures around the world. Therefore, one standard phonics rule does not apply across all words, which is why it can be so difficult for young learners and English Language Learners to master these unique spelling patterns.

Let's dig into the etymology and phonetics of the English language today, and how we can improve our spelling instruction with a global approach to word study.

The History of the English Language

To understand English word origins, we need to explore the history of the English language. The main influences on the English language can be broken down into four parts: Anglo-Saxon, Latin, French, and Greek.

Anglo-Saxon

This is the oldest layer of the English language. Many of the oldest and most commonly used words in English are Germanic in origin. Some examples include:

Number words

Common words like if, the, what, where

Feelings: love, glad, hope

When the printing press was brought to England in the 1400s, spelling of English words became standardized. Are your students frustrated with r-controlled vowels? You can thank Old English standardized spelling for that! In Old English, words like "heart" and "beard" most likely rhymed. But as the English language spread and more dialects grew, pronunciations of words changed, even though the spelling stayed the same. Did you know that 98 of the Dolch 100 words are of Old English origin? This can make it so frustrating for students who are trying to "sound out" the words. It's just not possible with our modern English pronunciations. And to remember the spelling patterns for each of these words takes time, practice, and exposure.

While English is a Germanic language, French is a Romance Language. English borrowed many words from French. Just a few examples are:

mansion

bouquet

violet

author

French introduced new spelling patterns into the English language, including

ch as /sh/, as in chic, charade, parachute

final é pronounced /ā/: cafe

Looking for tips on how to teach /sh/ spelling? Check out our sample lesson in this Science of Reading blog post.

Latin

Latin may be a dead language, but its influence on contemporary English lives on. More than half of the words in the English language have a Latin base. The Renaissance reinvigorated the English language with many words we still use today, such as:

Working on prefixes and suffixes? You're learning words the Latin way! Latin words also introduced this structure to the English language. Latin words begin with a root word, and include a prefix before the root, and a suffix following the root.

Greek

As English-language speakers began to explore new fields of study, they borrowed words from Greek. Many of the specialized words for math and science are of Greek origin, such as:

Greek also introduced different sounds and spellings to the English Language.

ch for /k/: chorus, technology

long final e: me, psyche, Nike

Orthography

Orthography, or how we write our language, is a complex study. With the English language drawing from the conventions and spellings of so many other languages, you can imagine why some young learners struggle to keep all the different spelling patterns and pronunciations in check! Teaching word origins as a part of spelling and language instruction in a 2nd grade classroom may help some learners master these tricky spelling patterns faster. Once students begin to recognize these patterns, they can begin to apply it to their spelling.

I think it's really important for students to know that the United States does not have an official language. While many people in this country speak English, the United States actually has more languages spoken in it than any other country in the world! The English language is growing and changing every day. New words are constantly being added to English, influenced by other languages and cultures. Think emoji, or fluffernutter! Learning the history and origin of English words can give students a better understanding of unique spelling patterns.

Word Origin Extension Activities

New Vocabulary Words: If you come across a new vocabulary word, see if you can figure out its word origin based on the spelling and pronunciation. Keep track of the new words and their origins on a class tally chart.

Funny Words: We love this list of 100 Funny Words in the English Language. Have students choose a word from the list, and research the word's origin. Do they notice any spelling patterns in the word that are unique to its origin? Share the word, origin, and definition with the class. Students could even create their own illustrated classroom dictionary with interesting words in the English language.

For more fun spelling activities, check out our Spelling Practice Activities!

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Teaching Kids About How English Word Origins Affect Modern Spelling

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Many of the words in our contemporary English language are influenced by centuries of oral and written language from countries and cultures around the world. Therefore, one standard phonics rule does not apply across all words, which is why it can be so difficult for young learners and English Language Learners to master these unique spelling patterns.

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Brice, R., Connecting oral and written language through applied writing strategies. Intervention in School and Clinic, 2004. 40: p. 38-47.

Carlisle, J. and C.A. Stone, Exploring the role of morphemes in word reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 2005. 40: p. 428-447.

Carlisle, J., Morphological processes that influence learning to read, in Handbook of language and literacy: Development and disorders, C.A. Stone, et al., Editors. 2004, The Guilford Press: New York.

Green, L., et al., Morphological development in children's writing. Journal of Educational Psychology, 2003. 95: p. 752-761.

Henry, M., Spelling instruction in the upper grades: The etymology/morphology connection. Perspectives, 2005. 31: p. 30-32.

Joshi, R. and P. Aaron, Spelling: Its development, assessment, instruction, and the science of it. Perspectives, 2005. 31: p. 1-4.

Moats, L.C., When older kids can't read. Educational Leadership, 2001. 58(6): p. 36-40.

Nagy, W., V. Berninger, and R. Abbott, Contributions of morphology beyond phonological to literacy outcomes of upper elementary and middle-school students. Journal of Educational Psychology, 2006. 98: p. 134-147.

Tolman, C., Working smarter, not harder: What teachers of reading need to know and be able to teach. Perspectives, 2005. 21: p. 15-23.

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Morphology describes how words are formed from building blocks called morphemes, the smallest unit of meaning in a word. Students who don't understand this structure have trouble recognizing, understanding, and spelling words. Find out how proper instruction can help them learn this key skill.

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Teacher question:
Are there any resources that provide a list of morphemes to teach at each K-5 grade level? I have been looking for a definitive list of morphemes that is organized by grade level like the Fry sight word list. I often come across research about how L1 and L2 students acquire morphemes, but I am looking for a list that represents the morphemes that students will most likely see in print at each K-5 grade level. Does anything like that exist? Thank you for your time.
Shanahan's response:

The short answer to this question is, "No, I don't know of such a list."

But when have I ever been satisfied with the short answer to anything?

Let's make sure we're all in agreement as to what constitutes a morpheme? Basically, a morpheme is the "smallest grammatical unit." It isn't the same thing as a word, and yet many words are morphemes. The distinction turns on whether the unit (the morpheme or word) can stand on its own. Words have to have that kind of independence, while morphemes don't require it.

Thus, bags, trucked, running, and redirect are all words in the English language while bag, s, truck, ed, run, ing, re, and direct are all morphemes. Each morphemic unit carries meaning, but sometimes morphemes can do that independently (bag, truck, run, direct), and sometimes they need to be combined with other morphemes to be considered a word (s, ed, ing, re).

I admitted ignorance on this issue, and I've tried to turn that ignorance to your advantage. I contacted Jeffrey and Peter Bowers. Both are outstanding scholars (Jeff at the University of Bristol in the UK, and Peter at WordWorks Literacy Centre, in Ontario) who are particularly knowledgeable about teaching morphology to improve literacy. They've both published widely on the issue, and both have chided me when they felt I wasn't paying sufficient attention to how words work morphologically. These days I know no one better able to provide you with a thoughtful answer to your question, and boy was I right!

Word Matrix: a map of a word family

Word Sums: reveal underlying structure of any complex word (a word with more than just a base)

un + help + ful + ness > unhelpfulness

Here is Peter Bower's response (with my light editing)

I have no knowledge of such a list, but I wouldn't recommend one anyway.

My recommendation based on theory not direct research evidence - is that the main value comes from teaching all or many members of a morphological family at one time with the matrix and word sums (see the attached figure illustrating a matrix and word sum). In the younger grades I start with free bases [those morphemes that stand alone as words], but once that is established, I have no trouble introducing bound bases [the units that can't stand alone]. This relates to the research we cite about the value of studying meaningfully related items at one time rather than disconnected items.

Instead of a "scope and sequence" of morphemes to teach, what I recommend is starting with words in the children's vocabulary, analyzing such words to find their bases, then looking for other members of that family.

The point is not that there is a "scope and sequence" of morphemes to teach. Rather there is a kind of a "scope" of orthographic concepts that we want students to learn, and teachers can address those concepts based on whatever words are central to the readings they are introducing to the students.

A brief list of those concepts that should be taught would include:

Every word is a base or a base with something else (another base or affix)

Bases and affixes (morphemes) are the meaningful building blocks that construct words.

We can analyze complex words into constituent morphemes with word sums and show their interrelationship with a matrix.

English spelling prioritizes consistent spelling of morphemes over consistent pronunciation of morphemes. (This is why we refer to morphemes by their spelling not their pronunciation. The base of the word action is not referred to by the pronunciation of the word act. Instead it is referred to by its spelling. The base "a - c - t". This is the same as the fact that we don't refer to the <-ed> suffix by one or all of its three pronunciation, we call it by it's spelling "e-d suffix.")

Thus, we need to understand grapheme-phoneme correspondences from within the context of morphological families. (e.g. we learn the phonology of the grapheme by studying morphological families).

There are reliable conventions for the three suffixing conventions.

Studying and understanding the suffixing conventions is not primarily about improving spelling accuracy, it is about being able to analyze hypotheses about connections between words. We can test the hypothesis that has a base only if we know vowel suffixes replace final, non-syllabic s (image/ + ine -> imagine).

The "structure and meaning test": To determine that two words share a base, we need evidence from both structure (word sum) and meaning (etymology). So with the earlier example of words related to (play, playing, playful, replay, playhouse), we can prove all of those words can be analyzed with word sums with coherent affixes and bases. But we can also show that they all go back to an Old English root plegan, plegian for "frolic, move rapidly". However, the word which can be analyzed structurally turns out not to be related. It does not belong in the morphological family with the others because it goes back to a Latin root plac(ere) for "fold". So to "display" is to "unfold".

If we are going to teach children how their writing system works, we need to teach them the interrelation of morphology, phonology, and etymology. As we have pointed out, this is why Structured Word Inquiry (SWI) is not about "adding" morphological instruction to phonics instruction - its about teaching how the system works.

This is why I argue that SWI teaches grapheme-phoneme correspondences more explicitly and accurately than phonics. Phonics instruction (under the definition of associations of pronunciations and letters without reference to morphology or etymology) cannot explain the grapheme-phoneme correspondences in countless words like does or rough or every or homophones, and so on. So many people miss the absolute detail into orthographic phonology that comes with SWI.

Here are some videos to illustrate my point.

Grade 2 Morphology

A teacher showing investigations from his class.

Grade 1 Morphology

Investigating grapheme-phoneme correspondences - with the context of morphological word sums.

Kindergarten Morphology

A kindergarten lesson I taught introducing the word sum and matrix that touches on grapheme-phoneme correspondences like the pronunciation of the <-s> suffix for /z/ and /s/.

It's as simple as starting with the "known" and then expanding from that. Even if kids know all the words in a morphological family (e.g. play, playing, playful, replay, playhouse) the lesson is not about new vocabulary, but learning how word structure links words. That concept can then be applied anywhere.

The other thing I keep in mind when choosing morphological families to investigate is the orthographic concepts a family has to offer. If I've established the fact that words that share a base share a spelling and a meaning connection, then I can introduce a base like with words like actor, acting, react, and action as a way to introduce the fact that the pronunciation of morpheme might change but keep the spelling. In that way we learn the phonology of t is not the "t sound", but that the grapheme can write /t/ when that is the appropriate sound. I've attached an example of a lesson I've used for that before.

I also draw on the <-ed> suffix from early on to highlight this same concept that morphemes do not have pronunciations until they are in a word. The pronunciation of a word like is another useful one to get rid of this idea of a "t sound" since this very common pronunciation of a very common suffix is what is typically thought of the "t sound," but their ain't no /t/!

And then you also encounter words that give rise to the need to teach all the suffixing changes.

These are concepts teachers need to learn and they can bring into work with their class as they investigate words."

Shanahan again

I don't disagree with Peter on any of this, except I'm not as dismissive of the kind of list that you are requesting. I don't see it as mutually exclusive from the curriculum goals that he specified or contradictory of the kind of instruction he described.

Many teachers, when referring to morphology or "structural analysis", actually are talking about affixes alone, and not the bases. If that is the case here, there are some lists like that which present the most common prefixes and suffixes from textbooks in grades 3-9 (White, Sowell, & Yanagihara, 1989). You can easily find those lists on line and you could definitely make use of those lists to make sure that you are hitting all the notes if you do the word sums and matrixes that Peter recommends.

Otherwise, I haven't been able to come up with a graded list of bases for you to use. But I have passed your letter along to my friends at MetaMetrics (the Lexile people) and have asked if they could produce such a list from their language corpus of more than 1 billion words. Stay tuned!
See comments here ›

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What Should Morphology Instruction Look Like?

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Are there any resources that provide a list of morphemes to teach at each K-5 grade level? I have been looking for a definitive list of morphemes that is organized by grade level like the Fry sight word list.

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Morphology is the study of words and their parts. Morphemes, like prefixes, suffixes and base words, are defined as the smallest meaningful units of meaning. Morphemes are important for phonics in both reading and spelling, as well as in vocabulary and comprehension.

Teaching morphemes unlocks the structures and meanings within words. It is very useful to have a strong awareness of prefixes, suffixes and base words. These are often spelt the same across different words, even when the sound changes, and often have a consistent purpose and/or meaning.

Free vs. bound

Morphemes can be either single words (free morphemes) or parts of words (bound morphemes).

A free morpheme can stand alone as its own word

A bound morpheme only occurs as part of a word

-s as in cat+s

-ed as in crumb+ed

un- as in un+happy

mis- as in mis-fortune

-er as in teach+er

In the example above: un+system+atic+al+ly, there is a root word (system) and bound morphemes that attach to the root (un-, -atic, -al, -ly)

system = root un-, -atic, -al, -ly = bound morphemes

If two free morphemes are joined together they create a compound word. These words are a great way to introduce morphology (the study of word parts) into the classroom.

For more details, see: Compound words

Inflectional vs. d​​erivational

Morphemes can also be divided into inflectional or derivational morphemes.

Inflectional morphemes change what a word does in terms of grammar, but does not create a new word.

For example, the word <skip> has many forms: skip (base form), skipping (present progressive), skipped (past tense).

The inflectional morphemes -ing and -ed are added to the base word skip, to indicate the tense of the word.

If a word has an inflectional morpheme, it is still the same word, with a few suffixes added. So if you looked up <skip> in the dictionary, then only the base word <skip> would get its own entry into the dictionary. Skipping and skipped are listed under skip, as they are inflections of the base word. Skipping and skipped do not get their own dictionary entry.

Another example is <run>: run (base form), running (present progressive), ran (past tense). In this example the past tense marker changes the vowel of the word: run (rhymes with fun), to ran (rhymes with can). However, the inflectional morphemes -ing and past tense morpheme are added to the base word <run>, and are listed in the same dictionary entry.

Derivational morphemes are different to inflectional morphemes, as they do derive/create a new word, which gets its own entry in the dictionary. Derivational morphemes help us to create new words out of base words.

For example, we can create new words from <act> by adding derivational prefixes (e.g. re- en-) and suffixes (e.g. -or).

Thus out of <act> we can get re+act = react en+act = enact act+or = actor.

Whenever a derivational morpheme is added, a new word (and dictionary entry) is derived/created.

For the <act> example, the following dictionary entries can be found:

verb

1. to make into an act or statute: Parliament has enacted a new tax law.

2. to represent on or as on the stage; act the part of: to enact Hamlet.

From Dictionary.com - enact

noun

1. a person who acts in stage plays, motion pictures, television broadcasts, etc.

2. a person who does something; participant.

From Dictionary.com - actor

Teachers should highlight and encourage students to analyse both Inflectional and Derivational morphemes when focussing on phonics, vocabulary, and comprehension.

For more information, see:

Prefixes, suffixes, and roots/bases

Many morphemes are very helpful for analysing unfamiliar words. Morphemes can be divided into prefixes, suffixes, and roots/bases.

Prefixes are morphemes that attach to the front of a root/base word.

Suffixes are morphemes that attach to the end of a root/base word, or to other suffixes (see example below)

Roots/Base words are morphemes that form the base of a word, and usually carry its meaning.

Generally, base words are free morphemes, that can stand by themselves (e.g. cycle as in bicycle/cyclist, and form as in transform/formation).

Whereas root words are bound morphemes that cannot stand by themselves (e.g. -ject as in subject/reject, and -volve as in evolve/revolve).

Most morphemes can be divided into:

Anglo-Saxon Morphemes (like re-, un-, and -ness);

Latin Morphemes (like non-, ex-, -ion, and -ify); and

Greek Morphemes (like micro, photo, graph).

It is useful to highlight how words can be broken down into morphemes (and which each of these mean) and how they can be built up again).

For example, the word <unreliability> may be unfamiliar to students when they first encounter it.

If <unreliability> is broken into its morphemes, students can deduce or infer the meaning.

So it is helpful for both reading and spelling to provide opportunities to analyse words, and become familiar with common morphemes, including their meaning and function.

Compound words (or compounds) are created by joining free morphemes together. Remember that a free morpheme is a morpheme that can stand along as its own word (unlike bound morphemes - e.g. -ly, -ed, re-, pre-). Compounds are a fun and accessible way to introduce the idea that words can have multiple parts (morphemes). Teachers can highlight that these compound words are made up of two separate words joined together to make a new word. For example dog + house = doghouse

There are numerous ways to highlight morphemes for the purpose of phonics, vocabulary and comprehension activities and lessons.

Highlighting the morphology of words is useful for explaining phonics patterns (graphemes) and spelling rules, as well as discovering the meanings of unfamiliar words, and demonstrating how words are linked together. Highlighting and analysing morphemes is also useful, therefore, for providing comprehension strategies.

Examples of how to embed morphological awareness into literacy activities can include:

Sorting words by base/root words (word families), or by prefixes or suffixes

Word Detective - Students break longer words down into their prefixes, suffixes, and base words

e.g. Find the morphemes in multi-morphemic words like: dissatisfied unstoppable ridiculously hydrophobic metamorphosis oxygenate fortifications

Word Builder - students are given base words and prefixes/suffixes and see how many words they can build, and what meaning they might have:

Prefixes: un- de- pre- re- co- con-
Base Words: play help flex bend blue sad sat
Suffixes: -ful -ly -less -able/-ible -ing -ion -y -ish -ness -ment

Etymology investigation - students are given multi-morphemic words from texts they have been reading and are asked to research the origins (etymology) of the word. Teachers could use words like progressive, circumspect, revocation, and students could find out the morphemes within each word, their etymology, meanings, and use.

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Morphology is the study of words and their parts. Morphemes, like prefixes, suffixes and base words, are defined as the smallest meaningful units of meaning. Morphemes are important for phonics in both reading and spelling, as well as in vocabulary and comprehension. Teaching morphemes unlocks the structures and meanings within words.

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Morpheme Magic – Lessons to Build Morphological Awareness

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Teachers and students alike, will become captivated by words as they explore together the world of language and morphology, and build awareness of morphemes, the meaningful parts in words.

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Improving Morphemic Awareness Using Base Words & Affixes [WVC247] - $29.00 : Kendore Learning Store, Teaching Supplies & Educational Equipment

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Kendore Learning Store Improving Morphemic Awareness Using Base Words & Affixes [WVC247] - helps students recognize and manipulate base words and affixes 5-7 minute lessons covering compound words and bases with prefixes and suffixes designed for students who are studying morphology 82 lessons, incl…

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Improving Morphemic Awareness Using Latin Roots & Greek Combining Forms, 2nd Edition ISBN 9780990515869

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Improving Morphemic Awareness Using Latin Roots & Greek Combining Forms, 2nd Edition ISBN 9780990515869 [Sandra Donah, Ed. D] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Improving Morphemic Awareness Using Latin Roots & Greek Combining Forms, 2nd Edition ISBN 9780990515869

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The Phonics Wall itself is the main component of our system. It is a color-coded, interactive, multi-sensory tool used to help a child learn the most common phonemes and graphemes needed to decode and encode most words. It will be hung or placed in your classroom to be used as a reference when readi

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Phinder | A Resource for Phonics Lessons

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This is a free website that allows teachers and researchers to find words that match certain letter-sound patterns. Teachers can create word lists for phonics lessons, and researchers can find words for word recognition research.

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Heart Word Magic - Read and Spell High Frequency Words | Really Great Reading

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Heart Word Magic - Help Students Learn to Read and Spell High-Frequency and Sight WordsHeart Word Magic is a complimentary teaching tool designed to help students learn to read and spell high-frequency words and sight words, particularly those that aren’t very decodable. Show your students the animations, then try these fun, hands-on free Student Practice

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Welcome to the University of Florida Literacy Institute (UFLI, pronounced "you fly"). UFLI is an ongoing effort by UF faculty, students, and staff to improve literacy outcomes for children learning to read.

The work of UFLI focuses on two main areas: teacher development and reader development. The place where those two overlap ... that is where the work of UFLI lives. Our programs and resources are designed to help teachers become more confident and more successful in their capacity to help kids learn to read. We do this through:

Academic programs for both pre-service and practicing educators to develop the skills and knowledge necessary to be effective reading teachers

Professional learning opportunities to help classroom reading teachers, instructional coaches, and school leaders expand their knowledge, enhance their teaching practices, and build capacity in their schools

Resources for teachers, parents, and teacher educators to use in their reading instruction

Much, much more!

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UF Literacy Institute | Where teacher development and reader development overlap

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Welcome to the University of Florida Literacy Institute (UFLI, pronounced "you fly"). UFLI is an ongoing effort by UF faculty, students, and staff to improve literacy outcomes for children learning to read. The work of UFLI focuses on two main areas: teacher development and reader development. The place where those two overlap ...

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Free English uppercase and lowercase interactive alphabet arc to help students learn letter names, order, and shape.

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Is My Kid Learning How to Read? Part 1: Purple Challenge

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Leaders & Learning in Literacy: The Tolman Hour Glass

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Overview of suggested restructuring

Teach 10-15 "sight words" before phonics instruction begins

Flash Words and Heart Words defined

Flash Words with advanced vowels to teach with early phonics instruction

Flash Words with two and three syllables

Implementing the new model

You are welcome to print copies for non-commercial use, or a limited number for educational purposes, as long as credit is given to Reading Rockets and the author(s). For commercial use, please contact the author or publisher listed.

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A New Model for Teaching High-Frequency Words

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Integrating high-frequency words into phonics lessons allows students to make sense of spelling patterns for these words. To do this, high-frequency words need to be categorized according to whether they are spelled entirely regularly or not. This article describes how to "rethink" teaching of high-frequency words.

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Phonics: Ten Important Research Findings

Countless research studies have been conducted on phonics instruction. Much of this research has focused on the usefulness of phonics instruction and the best ways to teach children about sound-spelling relationships. Below is a list of ten of the top research findings regarding phonics.
#1: Phonics Instruction Can Help All Children Learn to Read
All children can benefit from instruction in the most common sound-spelling relationships and syllable patterns in English. This instruction helps children decode words that follow these predictable sound-spelling relationships and syllable spelling patterns.

Phonics instruction is particularly beneficial for children at risk for learning difficulties - those children who come to school with limited exposures to books, have had few opportunities to develop their oral languages, are from low socio-economic families, have below-average intelligence, are learning English as a second language, or are suspected of having a learning disability. However, even children from language rich backgrounds benefit from phonics instruction (Chall, 1967). As Chall states "By learning phonics, students make faster progress in acquiring literary skills - reading and writing. By the age of six, most children already have about 6,000 words in their listening and speaking vocabularies. With phonics they learn to read and write these and more words at a faster rate than they would without phonics."

Phonics instruction is therefore an essential ingredient in reading instruction. The purpose of this instruction is to teach children how to read with accuracy, comprehension, fluency, and pleasure. The early ability to sound out words successfully is a strong predictor of future growth in decoding (Lundberg, 1984) and comprehension (Lesgold and Resnick, 1982). Weak decoding skills are characteristic of poor readers (Carnine, Carnine, and Gertsen, 1984; Lesgold and Curtis, 1981). Readers who are skilled at decoding usually comprehend text better than those who are poor decoders. Why this is so can be gleaned from the work of cognitive psychologists. They contend that we have a set amount of mental energy that we can devote to any task (Kahneman, 1973). Since decoding requires so much of this mental energy, little is left over for higher-level comprehension. As decoding skills improve and more and more words are recognized by sight, less mental energy is required to decode words and more mental energy can be devoted to making meaning from the text (Freedman and Calfee, 1984; LaBerge and Samuels, 1974).

In addition, successful early decoding ability is related to the number of words a reader encounters. That is, children who are good decoders read many more words than children who are poor decoders (Juel, 1988). This wide reading subsequently results in greater reading growth. Children not only learn more words, but they become more familiar with the common spelling patterns of English which, in turn, helps them decode longer words.

Phonics instruction also helps to get across the alphabetic principle (that the letters of the alphabet stand for sounds) by teaching the relationship between letters and the sounds they represent. Beginning readers learn better when their teachers emphasize these relationships (Chall, 1996).
#2: Explicit Phonics Instruction Is More Beneficial Than Implicit Instruction
According to Chall (1996), "systematic and early instruction in phonics leads to better reading: better accuracy of word recognition, decoding, spelling, and oral and silent reading comprehension." The most effective type of instruction, especially for children at risk for reading difficulties, is explicit (direct) instruction (Adams, 1990; Chall, 1996; Honig, 1995; Evans and Carr, 1985; Stahl and Miller, 1989; Anderson et al, 1985.). Implicit instruction relies on readers "discovering" clues about sound-spelling relationships. Good readers can do this; poor readers aren't likely to. Good readers can generalize their knowledge of sound-spelling relationships and syllable patterns to read new words in which these and other sound-spellings and patterns occur. Poor readers must rely on explicit instruction.

Although explicit instruction has proved more effective than implicit instruction, the key element in the success of explicit phonics instruction is the provision of multiple opportunities to read decodable words (that is, words containing previously taught sound-spellings) in context (Stahl, Osborn, and Pearson, 1992; Juel and Roper-Schneider, 1985; Adams, 1990) and ample modeling of the application of these skills to real reading. In fact, students who receive phonics instruction achieve best in both decoding and comprehension if the text they read contains high percentages of decodable words. In addition, by around second or third grade, children who've been taught with explicit phonics instruction generally surpass the reading abilities of their peers who've been taught with implicit phonics instruction (Chall, 1996).
#3: Most Poor Readers Have Weak Phonics Skills and a Strategy Imbalance
Most poor readers have a strategy imbalance. They tend to overrely on one reading strategy, such as the use of context clues, to the exclusion of other strategies that might be more appropriate (Sulzby, 1985). To become skilled fluent readers, children need to have a repertoire of strategies to figure out unfamiliar words (Cunningham, 1990). These strategies include using a knowledge of sound-spelling relationships, using context clues, and using structural clues and syllabication strategies. Younger and less skilled readers rely more on context than other, often more effective, strategies (Stanovich, 1980). This is partly due to their inability to use sound-spelling relationships to decode words. Stronger readers don't need to rely on context clues because they can quickly and accurately decode words by sounding them out.

Unfortunately, children who get off to a slow start in reading rarely catch up to their peers and seldom develop into strong readers (Stanovich, 1986; Juel, 1988). Those who experience difficulties decoding early on tend to read less and thereby grow less in terms of word recognition skills and vocabulary.

A longitudinal study conducted by Juel (1988), revealed an 88% probability that a child who is a poor reader at the end of first grade would still be a poor reader at the end of fourth grade. Stanovich (1986) refers to this as the "Matthew Effect" in which the "rich get richer" (children who are successful decoders early on read more and therefore improve in reading), and the "poor get poorer" (children who have difficulties decoding become increasingly distanced from the good decoders in terms of reading ability).
#4: Phonics Knowledge Has a Powerful Effect on Decoding Ability
Phonics knowledge affects decoding ability positively (Stanovich and West, 1989). Early attainment of decoding skill is important because this accurately predicts later skill in reading comprehension (Beck and Juel, 1995).

One way to help children achieve the ultimate goal of reading instruction, to make meaning of text, is to help them achieve automaticity in decoding words (Gaskins et al, 1988). Skilled readers recognize the majority of words they encounter in text quickly and accurately, independent of context (Cunningham, 1975-76; Stanovich, 1984). The use of graphophonic cues (knowledge of sound-spelling relationships) facilitates word recognition abilities. In fact, a child's word recognition speed in first grade was found to be a strong predictor of reading comprehension ability in second grade (Lesgold and Resnick, 1982; Beck and Juel, 1992).

However, the inability to automatically recognize frequently encountered words affects reading in the following ways (Royer and Sinatra, 1994):

1. Since words can be stored in working memory for only a limited amount of time (approximately 10-15 seconds), slow decoding can result in some words "decaying" before a meaningful chunk of text can be processed.

2. Devoting large amounts of mental energy to decoding words leaves less mental energy available for higher-level comprehension. This can result in comprehension breakdowns.

#5: Good Decoders Rely Less on Context Clues Than Poor Decoders
Good readers rely less on context clues than poor readers do because their decoding skills are so strong (Gough and Juel, 1991). It's only when good readers can't use their knowledge of sound-spelling relationships to figure out an unfamiliar word that they rely on context clues. In contrast, poor readers, who often have weak decoding skills, overrely on context clues to try to make meaning of text (Nicholson, 1992; Stanovich, 1986). Any reader, strong or weak, can use context clues only up to a certain point. It has been estimated that only one out of every four words (25%) can be predicted using context (Gough, Alford, and Holley-Wilcox, 1981). The words that are the easiest to predict are function words such as the and an. Content words - the words that carry the bulk of the meaning in a text - are the most difficult to predict. Researchers estimate that content words can be predicted only about 10% of the time (Gough, 1983). A reader needs to use his or her knowledge of phonics (sound-spelling relationships) to decode these words.

"The whole word method (meaning emphasis) may serve a student adequately up to about second grade. But failure to acquire and use efficient decoding skills will begin to take a toll on reading comprehension by grade 3." Jeanne Chall, 1996

#6: The Reading Process Relies on a Reader's Attention to Each Letter in a Word
Eye-movement studies have revealed that skilled readers attend to almost every word in a sentence and process the letters that compose each word (McConkie and Zola, 1987). Therefore, reading is a "letter-mediated" rather than a "whole-word-mediated" process (Just and Carpenter, 1987). Prior to these findings, it was assumed that readers did not process each letter in a word, rather recognized the word based on shape, a few letters, and context.

Research has also revealed that poor readers do not fully analyze words; for example, some poor readers tend to rely on initial consonant cues only (Stanovich, 1992, Vellutino and Scanlon, 1987). Therefore, phonics instruction should help to focus children's attention on all the letters or spellings that make up words and the sounds each represents by emphasizing the full analysis of words. In addition, phonics instruction must teach children strategies to use this information to decode words. This attention to the spelling patterns in words is necessary for the reader to store the word in his or her memory. It also helps the reader to become a better speller because the common spelling patterns of English are attended to to a greater degree and thereby more fully learned (Ehri, 1987).
#7: Phonemic Awareness Is Necessary for Phonics Instruction to Be Effective
Before children can use a knowledge of sound-spelling relationships to decode words, they must understand that words are made up of sounds (Adams, 1990). Many children come to school thinking of words as whole units - cat, dog, run. Before they can learn to read, children must realize that these words can be broken into smaller units - and sounded out. Phonemic awareness is the understanding, or insight, that a word is made up of a series of discrete sounds. Without this insight, phonics instruction will not make sense to children. Some students with weak phonemic awareness skills are able to make it through the first couple years of reading instruction by memorizing words. This strategy breaks down when the number of unique words in text increases in grades three and up. Therefore, if weak phonemic awareness skills are not detected and corrected, these students may enter the intermediate grades with a very serious reading deficit.
#8: Phonics Instruction Improves Spelling Ability
Reading and writing are interrelated and complementary processes (Pinnell, 1994). Whereas phonics is characterized by putting together sounds to form words that are printed, spelling involves breaking down spoken words into sounds in order to write them. To spell, or encode, a word a child must map a spelling onto each sound heard in the word.

Spelling development lags behind reading development. A word can generally be read before it can be spelled. The visual attention a child needs to recognize words is stored in his or her memory. This information - the knowledge of the spelling patterns of English, also known as orthographic knowledge - is used to spell. Spelling, however, requires greater visual recall than reading and places higher demands on memory.

Good spellers are generally good readers because spelling and reading share an underlying knowledge base. Poor readers, however, are rarely good spellers. Phonics is a particularly powerful tool in improving spelling because it emphasizes spelling patterns, which become familiar from reading. Studies show that half of all English words can be spelled with phonics rules that relate one letter to one sound. Thirty-seven percent of words can be spelled with phonics rules that relate groups of letters to one sound. The other thirteen percent must be learned by memorization. Good spellers have not memorized the dictionary; they apply the phonics rules they know and have a large store of sight words.

Writing, in turn, supports a child's reading development because it slows the process by focusing the child's attention on how print works. Poor spellers experience difficulties in both writing and reading. Poorly developed spelling ability also hinders vocabulary development (Adams, Treiman, and Pressley, 1996; Read, 1986).
#9: A Teacher's Knowledge of Phonics Affects His or Her Ability to Teach Phonics
A teacher's knowledge of phonics has a strong effect on his or her ability to teach phonics (Carroll, 1990; Moats, 1995). This knowledge of the English language enables the teacher to choose the best examples for instruction, to provide focused instruction, and to better understand students' reading and writing errors in relationship to their developing language skills. I highly recommend that all teachers take a basic course in phonics or linguistics to gain further insights into our language that can be used in the classroom in productive and purposeful ways.
#10: Knowledge of common syllable patterns and structural analysis (affixes, roots) improves students' ability to read, spell, and learn the meanings of multisyllablic words.
For many children, reading long words is an arduous task. Explicit instruction in the six common spelling patterns, the most common syllable types (e.g., VCe, VCCV,), prefixes, suffixes, roots, and word origins helps students recognize larger word chunks that makes decoding easier and aids in figuring out a word's meaning. For example, it may be efficient for a student to decode text containing simple CVC words such as cat and ran sound by sound, it is not efficient to decode text containing words such as transportation and unhappy sound by sound. Rather, it is more efficient to recognize common word parts such as trans, port, tion, un, and happy and blend these larger chunks to sound out the word.
Here are some helpful articles and videos about phonics . . .
http://teacher.scholastic.com/reading/bestpractices/phonics/questionstranscripts.htm
http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/teaching-phonics-wiley-blevins
http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/frequently-asked-questions-about-phonics
http://teacher.scholastic.com/clifford1/resfound.htm
Here are some of my favorite web sites . . .
Scholastic (for Parents): www.scholastic.com/parents/
Scholastic (for Teachers): http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/
Reading Rockets (for Parents and Teachers): http://www.readingrockets.org/
The Society for Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI): http://www.scbwi.org/
Disney's Family Fun: http://familyfun.go.com/
Q & A
Do you have a question for me about teaching your child to read? If so, email me and I will post your question and answer.

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teaching phonics and word study in the intermediate grades

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phonemic awareness activities for early reading success

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Wiley Blevins Author " Page Not Found " Phonics: Ten Important Research Findings

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Countless research studies have been conducted on phonics instruction. Much of this research has focused on the usefulness of phonics instruction and the best ways to teach children about sound-spelling relationships. Below is a list of ten of the top research findings regarding phonics.

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Make instruction active and engaging to turn students into skilled readers.

English is an alphabetic language with 26 letters. Alone and in combination, they stand for 44 sounds. Phonics instruction is the teaching of these spelling-sound correspondences. Learning the basic phonics skills we typically teach in kindergarten and in first and second grades gives students a way to sound out approximately 84 percent of the words in English-language text. That's a powerful tool!

But reading is more than sounding out words. Once we sound out a word, we have to attach meaning to it. We string together the meanings of the words in a sentence and relate it to what we know already to understand the message. From a simple handwritten sentence such as "This Sunday, we are going to Grandma's" to a tale about three little pigs to an informational book about sharks, children are eager to crack the code of our written language to enjoy stories and build knowledge. Phonics instruction sets all of this in motion.

The Science of Reading

Phonics has been central to the national conversation surrounding the "science of reading," but it is not alone. Old models of reading, such as the "simple view of reading" (Gough and Tunmer, 1986) and "reading rope" (Scarborough, 2001) have reemerged to clarify the role of phonics in reading instruction.

The simple view of reading says that reading comprehension is a product of decoding (achieved through phonics instruction) and language comprehension (achieved by building vocabulary and content knowledge). One without the other does not result in comprehension, and both need an instructional emphasis in an early reading curriculum.

The reading rope extends this understanding by showing how, as word recognition skills improve (through phonics and decoding instruction) and readers become more strategic in using their language comprehension skills (e.g., vocabulary and background knowledge), they begin to intertwine like a rope, creating skilled readers.

The discussion has widened our view on the research around early reading instruction by looking at the evidence provided by scientists in medicine, psychology, and education. For example, researchers have taken pictures of the brain as readers read. These functional MRIs show how the parts of the brain work together to help us read. What's undeniable is that the mental pathways used by skilled readers are different from those used by unskilled readers.

One important brain research study out of Stanford University taught the participants one of two ways to read a new alphabetic text: sounding out the words using phonics or learning words by sight as whole units. What did they find? That participants who read by sounding-out words activated the parts of the brain that skilled readers use to access text. Readers who learned to read by sight-memorizing whole words behaved in ways that mirrored
the brains of unskilled readers.

The participants who learned by sighting whole words got off to a fast start, but their learning was not transferable to new, unknown words; they hit a wall. Study participants who learned to sound out words got off to a slower start; it was work, and sometimes, it was hard work. But that learning transferred to new, unknown words, and the sounding out readers were able to surpass the sight-readers.

Unfortunately, too many of our nation's students spend the first year or two in school focusing primarily on reading texts by sight-memorizing words and story patterns through leveled texts, with few or no words that can be sounded out based on phonics skills. Is this the case with your students? Phonics instruction with follow-up reading in decodable, phonics-based texts is a strategy that works best.

Picking a Curriculum

School and district administrators have a responsibility to ensure that the hallmarks of good phonics instruction are firmly in place in the curriculum they choose.

Strong phonics instruction requires a skilled, informed teacher and seven key characteristics:

1. Readiness skills. Phonemic awareness and alphabet recognition are the two best predictors of early reading success, and they play a critical role in beginning phonics instruction.

2. Scope and sequence. A curriculum should feature a well-defined scope and sequence that build from simple to complex with built-in review and repetition.

3. Blending. Teaching students how to sound out words being read must be modeled and applied frequently.

4. Dictation. Guided spelling helps students transfer their growing reading skills to writing.

5. Word awareness. Activities such as word sorts and word building engage students in conversations about words, solidifying their understanding of how words work.

6. High-frequency words. Students need to master the most commonly used words in English. Some are irregular, and others must be taught before students have the phonics skills needed to sound them out.

7. Reading connected text. Decodable texts-those with a high percentage of words that can be sounded out-have the biggest impact on accelerating mastery of phonics skills; writing about these texts further extends their instructional impact.

These resources should also be evaluated to avoid the common barriers that limit student success (see "The 10 Common Breakdowns in Phonics Instruction"). Principals play a significant role in evaluating teachers' effectiveness in implementing these resources.

The two words most closely associated with strong phonics instruction are "explicit" and "systematic." "Explicit" means that sound-spelling correspondences are initially taught directly to students, rather than using a discovery (implicit) method. The teaching is intentional. Students are taught, for example, that the /s/ sound can be spelled with the letter s.

Systematic means that the instruction builds from simple to more complex skills with built-in review and repetition to ensure mastery. Systematic phonics instruction has a clearly defined scope and sequence rather than being random, and it builds from the known to the new in steps that make learning easier to grasp.

The best phonics instruction is also active, engaging, and thought-provoking. Students "play" with letters and sounds and discuss what they observe about how words work to deepen their understanding. Phonics instruction involves talk, observation, and application so that the skills can be transferred to all reading situations.

This can be challenging for administrators who haven't taught the primary grades or don't have backgrounds in early reading. Videotaping master teachers implementing phonics lessons and analyzing key aspects of those lessons can improve teacher feedback and aid student learning.

To assist in teacher observation and ensure your phonics program is paying off, check the administrator "look-fors" surrounding key aspects of phonics instruction (see "What to Look for in Phonics Instruction").

Use these as a springboard for feedback to ensure that the phonics instruction your teachers deliver is effective, efficient, and impactful-instruction that accelerates student learning and prepares them to be skilled, lifelong readers.

The 10 Common Breakdowns in Phonics Instruction

Many phonics and reading curricula have flaws that stand in the way of maximizing student learning. Since we have only a few years to get students to master basic phonics skills, we need instruction that's efficient, effective, and impactful. That requires us to take a critical look at curricular materials and remove any barriers standing in the way of rapid student growth.

There are 10 common barriers to phonics instruction:

1. An inadequate or nonexistent review and repetition cycle. Many curricular materials focus on exposure, rapidly moving from one phonics skill to the next. Most students need significantly more time in applying the skill after the initial introduction to achieve mastery-often at least four to six weeks.

2. Lack of application to real reading and writing experiences. Learning sticks when applied, and students need to apply their growing phonics skills to reading and writing daily in texts with ample decodable words.

3. Inappropriate reading materials to practice skills. Decodable texts are an essential part of each day's phonics lessons. Leveled texts often don't contain enough decodable words to bring all students to mastery.

4. Ineffective use of the gradual release model. Whoever does the thinking in a lesson does the learning, so teachers must not oversupport lessons; the teacher's role is to model, provide ample practice opportunities,
and offer corrective feedback.

5. Losing time in transitions. Phonics lessons often require a lot of resources, such as books and manipulatives. Too much time is lost distributing and collecting these materials; these moments need to be preplanned around review skills and treated as important instructional moments.

6. Limited teacher knowledge of research-​based phonics routines and linguistics. Building teacher capacity around phonics and linguistics, including key instructional routines, has been proven to increase student learning.

7. Inappropriate pacing. Lessons need to be fast-paced and engaging, focusing on the most high-
​impact activities (blending, dictation, word building,
and reading and writing about decodable texts).

8. A lack of comprehensive or cumulative mastery assessment tools. A big issue with phonics instruction is when there isn't enough review and repetition. Use comprehensive assessment tools to place students along a phonics continuum, and cumulative assessments to check mastery and/or decayed learning and make course corrections.

9. Transitioning to multisyllabic words too late. Students encounter a large number of multisyllabic words in grade 2 texts, yet phonics instruction at that level generally doesn't address longer, more complex words early enough or with enough intensity.

10. Overdoing it (especially in isolated skills work). Equal attention must be paid to phonics and building vocabulary and content knowledge. Rich, interactive, daily read-alouds-especially around science and social studies concepts-are beneficial.

What to Look for in Phonics Instruction
1. Blending (Modeling how to sound out words)

This is a fast-paced activity during which the teacher models one or two words, then has students do the rest the first time.

Blending word sets are revisited quickly by calling on students, rows, etc. They are also revisited multiple times throughout the week.

Copies of blending word sets can be used for independent and at-home work.

2. Dictation (Guided spelling)

Dictation begins in kindergarten.

The teacher extends sound box activity by having students replace counters with letters.

The teacher analyzes student writing for evidence of the use of taught phonics skills.

3. Reading Connected (Decodable) Texts

Decodable/accountable texts are a daily part of phonics lessons.

The reading of these texts focuses on decoding strategies, checking comprehension, and building vocabulary.

4. High-Frequency Words

Are teachers using a research-based routine to accelerate mastery?

Are more challenging words (e.g., words that begin with th and wh) cycled throughout the year?

5. Word Awareness Activities (Word sorts, word building)

Follow-up discussion about what students learned about how words work.

Performed every week, and in small groups for students needing more support.

6. Readiness Skills (Phonemic awareness and alphabet recognition)

Is there more focus on the "power skills" of oral blending and oral segmentation in K-1?

Are students assessed for more complex phonemic awareness skills at the end of grade 1?

Are instructional resources available for teachers in grades 2 and 3 to work on these skills?

Are the skills taught in a progression or in multiple levels for a whole group?

Are supports such as sound boxes and counters provided?

Does the instructional language result in confusion (e.g., rhyme)?

Does the alphabet sequence enable students to make words early on?

7. Professional Development

Can you build capacity to bring teacher control to reading instruction so they can be more responsive to individual student needs?

Is fidelity to flawed resources hurting student growth?

Can you restructure professional development to differentiate individual teachers' needs?

Wiley Blevins is the author of A Fresh Look at Phonics, Phonics From A to Z, Meaningful Phonics and Word Study, and the International Literacy Association's Literacy Leadership Brief "Meeting the Challenges of Early Literacy Phonics Instruction."

Copyright © 2021. National Association of Elementary School Principals. No part of the articles in NAESP magazines, newsletters, or website may be reproduced in any medium without the permission of the National Association of Elementary School Principals. For more information, view NAESP's reprint policy.

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Make instruction active and engaging to turn students into skilled readers.

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FREE Beautiful Online Decodable Phonics Books for Early Readers and Dyslexia

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Here's a great resource of free decodable books and stories found online. I use these fabulous readers as supplements with my students that I tutor reading online. All early readers can benefit from using decodable texts. Decodable texts are essential for dyslexic students. Contact Lisa at abctutorusa@gmail.com

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Access various reading and math resources and educational tools related to Lexile and Quantile levels for teachers and parents.

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Specific Phonics Approaches

The NRP found that using synthetic phonics instruction-the explicit teaching of letter-sound correspondences and then the blending of sounds to form words-resulted in improved reading abilities and that effect sizes of these interventions were larger than other comparison interventions. In addition, the NRP found reading programs that combined synthetic phonics with a focus on larger-units also produced positive results (NICHHD, 2000, citing Lovett et al., 2000). Following the NRP report, a U.S. Department of Education teacher practice guide recommended teaching students to blend letter sounds and sound-spelling patterns from left to right to sound out a "recognizable pronunciation." The Department of Education advised teachers to begin with simple consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words students already know and then show students how to blend the sounds while providing feedback as they work toward independence and gradually progress to new and longer words (Foorman et al., 2016, p. 23). The NRP report indicates that systematic and explicit instruction in phonics is the most effective way to ensure reading growth (Berninger et al., 2003; Boyer & Ehri, 2011; Henry, 2003).

Teaching Both Decoding & Encoding

Research shows that to become proficient readers and writers, early readers need to learn decoding and encoding skills. Helping children understand sound-symbol connections by learning the visual-to-auditory relationship between letters and sounds is essential for learning to read (decoding) and learning the auditory-to-visual relationship is needed to write words (encoding). In a review of research in this area, Foorman et al. (2016) concluded there is strong evidence for teaching decoding and encoding skills, especially in grades K-3. Weiser and Mathes (2011) conducted a review of the research about effective instruction for learning to decode and encode words and noted that research is especially strong in support of teaching encoding skills to students who are at risk of literacy failure. They found that learning to manipulate phoneme-grapheme correspondences enhances literacy performance and there is a synergistic relationship in using encoding and decoding instruction. Weiser and Mathes conclude there are long-term benefits from teaching children encoding beginning in kindergarten.

Pairing Phonics Instruction with Text

Research conducted by Adams (1990) found that systematic instruction in phonics is more effective for all readers-struggling through advanced-when it is paired with the reading of meaningful, connected text. The NRP verified Adams' research (NICHHD, 2000), and later research confirmed the NRP review (Brady, 2012, Dehaene, 2009; Moats, 2012; Strickland, 2011). The What Works Clearinghouse recommends starting early with daily reading of connected texts as soon as students can identify a few words (Foorman et al., 2016).

Excerpt from Successful Intervention Builds Student Success: Applying the Many Layers of Structured Literacy and Reading Research for Struggling K-5 Students by Voyager Sopris Learning.

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The NRP found that using synthetic phonics instruction-the explicit teaching of letter-sound correspondences and then the blending of sounds to form words-resulted in improved reading abilities and that effect sizes of these interventions were larger than other comparison interventions.

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Publisher:

SAGE Publications

Publisher:

SAGE Publications

In a Fresh Look at Phonics, Wiley Blevins, author of the blockbuster Phonics from A-Z, explains the 7 ingredients of phonics instruction that lead to the greatest student gains, based on two decades of research in classrooms.For each of these seven must-haves, Wiley shares lessons, routines, word lists, tips for ELL and advanced learners, and advice on pitfalls to avoid regarding pacing, decodable texts, transition time, and more.A Fresh Look at Phonics is the evidence-based solution you have been seeking that ensures all students develop a solid foundation for reading.

Product Details

ISBN-13:

9781506326887

Publisher:

SAGE Publications

Publication date:

07/21/2016

Series:

Corwin Literacy

Edition description:

New Edition

Pages:

304

Sales rank:

29,187

Product dimensions:

7.30(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Wiley Blevins has taught elementary school in both the United States and South America. A graduate of Harvard Graduate School of Education, he has written over 15 books for teachers including Phonics from A to Z, Building Fluency, Teaching Students to Read Nonfiction, and most recently, A Fresh Look at Phonics, (Corwin Literacy 2016). He has authored elementary reading programs, conducted research on topics ranging from fluency to using decodable text, and regularly trains teachers throughout the U.S. and Asia. His current interests include using adaptive technology and working with districts to correct instructional and material deficits. Wiley lives in New York City and also writes children's books.

Table of Contents

Section 1: The Key Ingredients for Phonics SuccessSuccess Ingredient 1: Readiness SkillsBackground and Key CharacteristicsBest Practices and Look-Fors for SuccessCommon Instructional PitfallsDay Clinic: Examine Your PracticesNext Steps to Leap ForwardSuccess Ingredient 2: Scope and SequenceBackground and Key CharacteristicsBest Practices and Look-Fors for SuccessCommon Instructional PitfallsDay Clinic: Examine Your PracticesNext Steps to Leap ForwardSuccess Ingredient 3: BlendingBackground and Key CharacteristicsBest Practices and Look-Fors for SuccessCommon Instructional PitfallsDay Clinic: Examine Your PracticesNext Steps to Leap ForwardSuccess Ingredient 4: DictationBackground and Key CharacteristicsBest Practices and Look-Fors for SuccessCommon Instructional PitfallsDay Clinic: Examine Your PracticesNext Steps to Leap ForwardSuccess Ingredient 5: Word Awareness Activities (Word Building and Word Sorts)Background and Key CharacteristicsBest Practices and Look-Fors for SuccessCommon Instructional PitfallsDay Clinic: Examine Your PracticesNext Steps to Leap ForwardSuccess Ingredient 6: High-Frequency WordsBackground and Key CharacteristicsBest Practices and Look-Fors for SuccessCommon Instructional PitfallsDay Clinic: Examine Your PracticesNext Steps to Leap ForwardSuccess Ingredient 7: Reading Connected TextBackground and Key CharacteristicsBest Practices and Look-Fors for SuccessCommon Instructional PitfallsDay Clinic: Examine Your PracticesNext Steps to Leap ForwardPlus One More Essential Success Ingredient: You!Section 2: 10 Common Causes of Phonics Instruction FailureIntroductionReason 1: Inadequate or Nonexistent Review and RepetitionThe ProblemHow to Fix ItReason 2: Lack of Application to Real Reading and Writing ExperiencesThe ProblemHow to Fix ItReason 3: Inappropriate Reading Materials to Practice SkillsThe ProblemHow to Fix ItReason 4: Ineffective Use of the Gradual Release ModelThe ProblemHow to Fix ItReason 5: Too Much Time Lost During TransitionsThe ProblemHow to Fix ItReason 6: Limited Teacher Knowledge of Research-Based Phonics Routines and LinguisticsThe ProblemHow to Fix ItReason 7: Inappropriate Pacing of LessonsThe ProblemHow to Fix ItReason 8: No Comprehensive or Cumulative Mastery Assessment ToolsThe ProblemHow to Fix ItReason 9: Transitioning to Multisyllabic Words Too LateThe ProblemHow to Fix ItReason 10: Overdoing It (Especially Isolated Skill Work)The ProblemHow to Fix ItClosing ThoughtsReferences

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A Fresh Look at Phonics, Grades K-2: Common Causes of Failure and 7 Ingredients for Success / Edition 1|Paperback

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In a Fresh Look at Phonics, Wiley Blevins, author of the blockbuster Phonics from A-Z, explains the 7 ingredients of phonics instruction that lead to the greatest student gains, based on two decades of research in classrooms.For each of these seven must-haves, Wiley shares lessons,...

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Denise Eide has her hand on the heartbeat of the literacy crisis and is pointing to a way out. Having grown up in a disadvantaged family and struggled with math, Denise understands the hopelessness experienced by students who struggle with illiteracy. She has a gift for connecting people to answers, providing hope, and empowering and motivating others to action.

After completing her B.A., Denise began study for her M.A. in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Minnesota. While pursuing her degree, Denise worked with non-profit organizations to develop ESL curriculum. She also taught English at a University in Russia. During this time she discovered that Eastern Europeans think systematically about language. Her students asked many questions about spelling to which her best answer at the time was, "That is an exception. English has evolved; therefore, it is not logical."

When her sons struggled to learn to read, Denise began to research how to help them. She sought training in an Orton-Gillingham approach to reading, where she discovered answers to her sons' reading difficulties, to her own questions about spelling, and to the questions posed by countless students.

In order to share her excitement, Denise put together a forty-five minute presentation called "The Logic of English." While giving this presentation, she began to touch the heart of the literacy crisis: two-thirds of U.S. students read below grade level. Wherever Denise shares, people rush forward to tell her their personal stories. Scientists, mathematicians, and engineers concur that this information would have transformed reading and spelling education for them. Teachers exclaim that everyone is talking about the problem, but that Denise is the first person bringing hope and answers. Parents and community leaders become passionate about changing their communities.

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Uncovering the Logic of English: A Common-Sense Approach to Reading, Spelling, and Literacy

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Amazon.com: Uncovering the Logic of English: A Common-Sense Approach to Reading, Spelling, and Literacy: 9781936706211: Denise Eide: Books

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phonics and spelling through phoneme grapheme mapping

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Phonics and Spelling Through Phoneme-Grapheme Mapping

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Phonics and Spelling Through Phoneme-Grapheme MappingWritten by Kathryn E. S.

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Sound walls are becoming more common in classrooms thanks to a clearer understanding of the science of reading.

A quick search on Teachers Pay Teachers shows there is a demand for materials for sound walls, but not all the information out there is accurate. While well-intentioned, we need to understand why a sound wall is set up differently than an A-Z alphabetical word wall and how to use a sound wall effectively. The goal is to elevate daily instruction during Tier 1 by reviewing the 44 speech sounds and the options for spelling each of the sounds. By doing this daily review, it becomes automatic for students to access sounds and know how to match spelling to each sound. A confusion between letters and sounds still exists on the part of the teacher in many situations. For example, the silent letter grapheme represents the /n/. (When you see the diagonal lines with a letter in between, this represents the sound.)

Our goal is to help you transform word walls into sound walls. Many practices are being used with word walls that we can adjust to use with sound walls. Following is some advice for teachers making the change from a word wall to sound wall. These tips can be used to guide the explanation of how to set up a sound wall.

Step 1:

We begin with the speech sounds and then add the print. Phonemes can be classified by articulatory features that have to do with placement in the mouth, airflow, and voicing. Begin by talking about how your lips come together when saying the /p/. Notice what happens with your tongue when you say /l/, it is lifted in the top of your mouth behind your teeth. There is also a vibration when saying /l/, and we call that voicing. During a two- to three-week period, introduce all of the 44 speech sounds by the articulatory features.

Don't confuse this with all of the spellings of the sounds. By introducing each phoneme, you are giving students an organizational structure to understand the foundation of our language. Even in kindergarten, you are asking children to blend and segment words with all of the speech sounds. Segment the sounds in book, /b/ /oo/ /k/. You wouldn't teach students to read with /oo/, but they use the sound in their speech all of the time. Why not teach the sound explicitly and discuss how we make that sound, what it looks like, and feels like? Once the sound is obvious, it will be much easier to attach the different graphemes for reading and spelling.

Step 2: Attach a keyword to help students remember the sound.

It is unnecessary to print words on different colored paper or outline the shape of a word. Please do not do those things that distract from learning about phonemes (sounds) and graphemes (print).

Once a sound is introduced, teach the most common letter or grapheme that represents the sound. For example, after introducing /p/ teach them that is the most common spelling for that sound. This is easy initially in kindergarten but becomes more complex in first grade because children have to learn about digraphs and vowel teams that are used to spell many sounds.

Step 3: Daily review and discuss all of the sounds that have been introduced.

What are the six stop sounds? /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, /g/

What are our vowel sounds? Ask children to repeat each vowel sound as you point to either a picture of a mouth forming that sound or a keyword that represents the sound. Find the / ā/, and what are the spellings we know for this sound? Commons spellings for / ā/ ai, ay, a_e, and a. These will be the most common spellings used in first grade. Use this information to help students attend to sounds as you are segmenting and blending words during your phonemic awareness practice. As they focus on phonemes during their phonological awareness exercises, this connection between speech and print is enhanced and elevates the understanding of how the two work together.

Step 4: Engage in activities using the sound wall.

Identify the distinguishing features of voiced and voiceless consonant phonemes; orally produce individual consonant phonemes after correct teacher modeling of the voicing distinction: /p//b/; /k//g/; /t/ /d/; /f/ /v/; /sh/ /zh/; /th/ /th/; /ch//j/; /s/ /z/

Explore the way related groups of phonemes are pronounced: stops /p/, /b/, /t/,/d/,/k/, /g/; hissy sounds /f/, /v/, /th/, /th/, /s/, /z/,/sh/; nasals /m/, /n/,

/ng/; glides /h/, /w/, /wh/, /y/; and liquids/l/ and /r/.

Play the speech-sound guessing game. Students imitate the sounds and/or look in a mirror to answer questions such as, which sound is made with the lips-/p/ or /k/? Which sound is made with the mouth wide open-/ŏ/ or /w/? Which sound is made with the tongue between the teeth-/f/ or /th/?

Say /b/, /b/, /b/, and then try saying the same sound with your lips together and popping the air out with your voice on. Now, keep doing the same thing with your lips and your breath but turn your voice off. What sound? /p/ /p/ /p/.

Do a picture sort with /p/ and /b/. In this classroom, the teacher has the students working with the confusing sounds /p/ and /b/ which are only differentiated by voicing.

Step 5: Use the sound wall for independent learning by problem solving.

When a student asks how to spell " meet," ask them to find the /ē/ and look at the choices for spelling that sound. This is much more efficient than asking them if they can find a word that sounds like or rhymes with " meet." By using a sound wall and connecting directly to the graphemes, students have much quicker access to mapping speech to print.

If a student stumbles on the word like " night" while reading, point out the and direct them to the long card on the sound wall. What do we know about this spelling and the sound it represents?

Let's keep this conversation going. Please add your comments and questions below so we can add to the understanding of sound walls at work in a classroom.

Listen to Mary's podcast about the importance of Sound Walls here.

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Implementing a Sound Wall: Because We Need to Distinguish Between Sounds and Letters

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Sound walls are becoming more common in classrooms thanks to a clearer understanding of the science of reading. We need to understand why a sound wall is set up differently than an A-Z alphabetical word wall and how to use a sound wall effectively to elevate daily instruction during Tier 1 by reviewing the 44 speech sounds and the options for spelling each of the sounds.

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Sound walls guide students to investigate phonemes and make informed choices when they're unsure how to spell out a sound.

Dominic Trevett / Ikon Images

A colleague recently messaged us, "How and why should teachers use sound walls-and are they different from word walls?" We believe that both word walls and sound walls can be of value in the classroom, but there are distinct differences between the two.

Word walls, a print-to-speech tool, are organized by a word's initial letter. This can get tricky when you have a word like knot, which begins with the letter K and the sound N. That's where the sound wall comes into play, helping students spell words by listening to the phonemes, or the smallest unit of sound in speech in a word.

Sound walls are speech-to-print tools used to categorize phonemes. The word cat, for example, has three phonemes, c/a/t. In the English language, we identify about 44 phonemes using the 26 letters of the alphabet. In many ways, grasping the sounds of the 44 phonemes is like cracking a code for our early learners. Sound walls allow students to investigate sounds and eventually learn high-frequency words.

Some common materials for sound walls include mouth articulation cards, phoneme group labels, sound cards for phonemes, and sound spelling cards with power bar. For instance, the power bar is a visual cue to show how often the particular spelling of the sound is used. The sound /k/ has three different spelling patterns: "c," "k," and "ck." The power bar cards give clues to show students how often a certain spelling pattern is used in words. This way, students can make more informed spelling choices when they're unsure about how to spell out a sound.
Courtesy of TN Department of Education
Here, the "c" spelling has the largest bar, so this is the spelling most often used for the /k/ sound.

Organizing the Wall

Creating the sound wall before school begins can help teachers consider exactly where each new sound should be positioned. Arranging common sound patterns, mouth position cards, and power bar cards together creates organization.

When setting up the sound wall, arrange consonants on the left and the vowels on the right. The consonants are organized according to the type of sound/phoneme (stops, fricatives, affricates, glides, liquids, and nasals) and if the sound is voiced or unvoiced. The vowels are organized in a V shape called the vowel valley. The vowel valley on your classroom wall will show how the mouth looks and feels as each vowel sound is vocalized. At the top of the valley, the mouth is mostly closed, and slowly, as you descend in the valley, the mouth opens.
Courtesy of Danielle Rusk Carter
Once the sound wall is organized and affixed to your classroom wall, cover each sound with a piece of paper (in the image above, blue paper was used). When sounds that have not been taught are concealed, the wall is initially a mystery to students. Each day, review the sounds already introduced, and reveal a new sound by removing the blue paper. Finally, if appropriate, add the sound card. The sound card is an image and matching word serving as the example for the phoneme.

Depending on the grade, sound walls may look and progress differently. In kindergarten, for example, not all sound patterns are introduced, so the wall may not be completely uncovered at the end of the year.

In my (Danielle's) kindergarten classroom, the following five steps help me support my students:

1. Review: Reviewing all previously learned sounds and reciting a chant for each sound: /d/, /d/, /d/, /d/ as in dog (the word being the sound example for that pattern).

2. Practice: Practice the new sound for the day, focusing on mouth and tongue positions. We use small mirrors when possible to observe our mouths.

3. Notice: Notice if the chin drops to determine whether the sound is a consonant or a vowel. Ask students to place the top of their hand flat under their chin to feel the drop. Query students, "Did you feel your chin drop? Does the sound belong in our vowel valley?"

4. Explore: Explore the new sound. Practice singing the sound together. Can the sound be held out, or does it stop? Query students, "Can you hold the sound out like a musical note?"

5. Determine: Determine if the sound is voiced or unvoiced by feeling for vibrations in the throat. Ask students to place their entire hand lightly around their neck. Then, make the sound and feel for vibrations, and ask them, "Can you feel the vibration?"
Courtesy of Danielle Rusk Carter
Spicing Up the Sound Wall

If you're looking to add some color to your basic sound wall configuration, consider taking photos of your students' mouths making the stops, nasals, fricatives (and so on) and post their mouth images on classroom walls or on your classroom digital portfolio. Students can then use these images to make individual mini-books for future reference; and if they have access to iPads, the Book Creator app works nicely for this purpose. Teachers can even generate QR codes on each sound and capture video of student mouth positions with sound. Now students can use the QR code to verify sounds and mouth positions.

To ensure that students retain the sounds they've learned, here are a few tips to incorporate sound wall learning into the existing school schedule:

Highlight use of the sounds; continually refer to the wall throughout the day and not just during the literacy block.

When teachers notice that students have mastered a sound, it can be uplifting to let students teach their peers about the sounds they're familiar with-for example, saying "Wow, Oliver and Samhar both have the "oo" sound; if you need help, ask Oliver or Samhar."

Set up mirrors in front of the sound wall to get students to practice the sounds as part of their daily routine.

Add a lowered table or floor space under the sound wall where students can freely sit while writing. They can use the wall for referencing sound card words, self-checking spellings, and practicing sounding out to support independent writing.

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Using Sound Walls in Early Elementary Classrooms

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Sound walls guide students to investigate phonemes and make informed choices when they're unsure how to spell out a sound. Dominic Trevett / Ikon Images A colleague recently messaged us, "How and why should teachers use sound walls-and are they different from word walls?"

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You are welcome to print copies for non-commercial use, or a limited number for educational purposes, as long as credit is given to Reading Rockets and the author(s). For commercial use, please contact the author or publisher listed.

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Transitioning from Word Walls to Sound Walls

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Sound walls support students with learning those tricky high-frequency words. They also support students in retaining and learning to read unfamiliar words on their own. A sound wall does the work of matching our articulation of speech sounds/phonemes to the letters/graphemes that represent those sounds.

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The Neuroscience of Learning - Bruce McCandliss

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Which Children Benefit from Letter Names in Learning Letter Sounds?

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Typical U.S. children use their knowledge of letters' names to help learn the letters' sounds. They perform better on letter sound tests with letters that have their sounds at the beginnings of their names, such as v, than with letters that have their ...

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by Dr. David Kilpatrick

This book is a game-changer for both parents and professionals. It is a must-have book for any parent helping their child overcome reading difficulties. A great companion book to Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties, this book is a practical guide to implementing a step-by-step program in phonemic awareness as part of a comprehensive literacy program. Full of amazing insight and resources that teachers can use immediately in the classroom.

Appropriate phonological awareness assessment for ages 5 to 105.
Includes: Part 1 (What needs to be done), Part II (How to do it), Part III (Training exercises), and Part IV (Appendices/resources)

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Equipped For Reading Success by David Kilpatrick is the complete guide to mastering essential reading skills. Discover the best ways to teach and practice reading comprehension, decoding, fluency, and more. Get your students equipped for success today!

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About the Online Materials
About the Editor
About the Contributors.
Foreword  Sharon Vaughn
Preface
Acknowledgments

I   Introduction to English Learners, Language, and Literacy
1  Teaching Literacy Skills to English Learners
Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan

2   Language and Literacy Development
Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan

3   Components of Literacy Instruction for English Learners
Eric Tridas

II  The Components of Literacy and English Learners
4  Phonological Awareness Development Among English Learners
Virginia Lovelace-Gonzalez

5  Phonics Development Among English Learners
Kenneth Nieser and Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan

6   Reading Fluency Among English Learners
Coleen D. Carlson

7   Vocabulary Instruction Among English Learners
Sharolyn D. Pollard-Durodola

8   Reading Comprehension Among English Learners
Colleen K. Reutebuch

9   Spelling Development Among English Learners
Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan and Alessandra Rico

10   Writing Development Among English Learners
Linda O. Cavazos and Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan

Appendix  Using Technology to Adapt and Enhance Instruction for English Learners
Elaine Cheesman

Index

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english language learners; els; esl; esol; teaching reading to english learners; language and literacy for english learners; bilingual instruction; teaching bilingual children; knowledge and practice standards; national literacy panel; components of reading; big five essentials of reading; dual language learners; structured literacy; ida; elsa cardenas-hagan; elsa cardenas hagan

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Literacy Foundations for English Learners

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About the Online Materials About the Editor About the Contributors.

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Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties (Essentials of Psychological Assessment)

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Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties (Essentials of Psychological Assessment) [Kilpatrick, David A.] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties (Essentials of Psychological Assessment)

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Language Essentials for Teachers, Third Edition

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Languages across the world have unique phonemic systems. For individuals learning English as a second language, it is common for the phonemic system of their first language to influence the production of sounds in English.

Resources listed below are intended to contribute to foundational awareness of potential cultural and linguistic influences. There are variations within cultures, and regional and dialectal variances exist in all languages. Therefore, a single chart/page on cultural and/or linguistic features is not meant to provide a comprehensive overview. Clinical judgment, client/patient/student and caregiver input, and additional research are needed to ensure culturally responsive services.

How Can I Use This Information?

Speech-language pathologists can use this information to:

Identify sounds in a client's phonological system for languages other than English.

Determine phonemic influences of a client's native language on English.

Identify sounds from the client's first language that may not exist in English or identify sounds in English that do not exist in someone's native language.

Recognize that even if there are similar sounds across two languages, they may not be used the same way. For example, in some languages a sound may only be used at the ends of words and not as a word-initial sound.

Audiologists can use this information to:

Correlate the client's audiogram and the sounds of the client's language(s).

Recognize and respond to amplification needs.

Identify the effect of the individual's phonemic system on speech audiometry assessment.

Modify materials and procedures during speech audiometry assessment.

Phonemic Inventories and Cultural and Linguistic Information

ASHA has compiled resources on the phonemic systems for the following languages:

Amharic

Arabic

Bosnian

Burmese

Chinese

English

English Phonemic Inventory [PDF]
Dialect
Haitian Creole

Hindi/Urdu

Hmong

Japanese

Korean

Navajo

Pashto and Persian

Polish

Russian

Spanish

Somali

Somali (Portland State University)

Tagalog

Vietnamese

Refugee Profiles/Information
ASHA's policy documents state that SLPs and audiologists must consider the sound systems of all the languages used by a client in order to provide appropriate assessment and treatment services.
Websites with Phonemic Inventories

If you have any questions, please contact ASHA's Office of Multicultural Affairs at multicultural@asha.org.

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Phonemic Inventories and Cultural and Linguistic Information Across Languages

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A list of phonemic inventories across multiple languages

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The PAST can be downloaded above. Please also download and carefully read the instructions before using. Information can also be found in the manual “Equipped for Reading Success” by David A. Kilpatrick, Ph.D in chapter 11 on how to effectively use the test. Make sure to also practice using the test before using it with […]

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Knowledge & Tools Improve Literacy

TX Reads is dedicated to improving student reading outcomes by helping school administrators and teachers overcome the challenge of implementing structured literacy, grounded in the science of reading. Increase the number of children reading on grade level by aligning instruction with the science of reading. It is the most effective method for teaching kids to read.
The Science of Reading is our passion!

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TXReads is a project by Literacy San Antonio to increase the number of children reading on grade level by empowering teachers to align instruction with the science of reading. Research proves that aligning instruction with the science of teaching reading is the most effective method for the most kid

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Learning to Read. What can eyetracking tell us?

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Literacy Academy on Demand | Ohio Department of Education

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Louisa Moats - Keynote Address at 2018 Reading League Conference

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Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies

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Lecture by Dr. Stanislas Dehaene on "Reading the Brain"

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Ohio Department of Education and Workforce

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Literacy Academy 2020: The Reading Brain - Michelle Elia

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CarolynTurner   "The Simple View of Reading - It's Not So Simple"

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The Conscious Competence Ladder: Understanding the Learning Journey

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The Conscious Competence Ladder: Understanding the Learning Journey

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Updated: April 3, 2018

The International Dyslexia Association's Educator Training Initiatives (ETI) Committee has refined the Knowledge and Practice Standards (KPS) to bring greater specificity to how knowledge of the standards could be assessed in the context of coursework and how practice applications of Structured Literacy could be demonstrated in supervised practicum contexts.
Overview of the KPS
The KPS define the knowledge and skills that all teachers of reading should possess to teach all students to read proficiently. To view the Knowledge and Practice Standards, (Also available in Spanish: click here.)

In the summer of 2018, IDA will begin aligning educator preparation resources, including publications, webinars, and information briefs, with the KPS to support their use in pre-service and in-service educator preparation contexts.
KPS and Program Accreditation
IDA Accredits pre-service and in-service educator preparation programs on the basis of their ability to document alignment with the KPS, as articulated in the IDA Accreditation Handbook (under development). Programs interested in learning more about IDA Accreditation are encouraged to complete this inquiry form. A representative from the ETI Leadership Team will be in touch within one week of receipt. To reach a member of the ETI Leadership Team with specific questions related to the accreditation process, please click

For a list of Accredited Educator Preparation Programs: Higher Education, click HERE.

For a list of Accredited Educator Preparation Programs: Independent, click HERE.
KPS and Educator Certification
The Center for Effective Reading Instruction (CERI) requires candidates to present evidence of their having mastered the content of the KPS by earning a passing score on the Knowledge and Practice Examination of Effective Reading Instruction (K-PEERI) and for select certifications, passing scores or ratings on supervised practicum requirements. For more information about CERI certification, please click HERE.

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Knowledge and Practice Standards for Teachers of Reading - International Dyslexia Association

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The Science of Reading: Defining Guide provides a firm definition of what the science of reading is, what it is not, and how all stakeholders can understand its potential to transform reading instruction.

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Abstract

This study tested four complementary hypotheses to characterize intrinsic and extrinsic influences on the order with which preschool children learn the names of individual alphabet letters. The hypotheses included: (a) own-name advantage, which states that children learn those letters earlier which occur in their own names, (b) the letter-order hypothesis, which states that letters occurring earlier in the alphabet string are learned before letters occurring later in the alphabet string, (c) the letter-name pronunciation effect, which states that children learn earlier those alphabet letters for which the name of the letter is in the letter's pronunciation, and (d) the consonant-order hypothesis, which states that children learn earlier those letters for which corresponding consonantal phonemes are learned early in phonological development. Participants were 339 four-year-old children attending public preschool classrooms serving primarily low-income children. Children's knowledge of each of the 26 alphabet letters was assessed, and these data were tested for the four hypotheses using a linear logistic test model (LLTM). Results from the LLTM confirmed all four hypotheses to show that the order of letter learning is not random, in that some letters hold an advantage over other letters to influence their order of learning. Implications for educational policy and practice are discussed.

View full text

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An investigation of four hypotheses concerning the order by which 4-year-old children learn the alphabet letters

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This study tested four complementary hypotheses to characterize intrinsic and extrinsic influences on the order with which preschool children learn the names of individual alphabet letters.

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This 2020 update to the 1999 foundational report reviews the reading research and describes the knowledge base that is essential for teacher candidates and practicing teachers to master if they are to be successful in teaching all children to read well. (Louisa Moats, American Federation of Teachers)

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Teaching Reading Is Rocket Science: What Expert Teachers of Reading Should Know and Be Able to Do

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This 2020 update to the 1999 foundational report reviews the reading research and describes the knowledge base that is essential for teacher candidates and practicing teachers to master if they are to be successful in teaching all children to read well. (Louisa Moats, American Federation of Teachers)

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Listen to this audio documentary on the Educate podcast. Subscribe now.

Molly Woodworth was a kid who seemed to do well at everything: good grades, in the gifted and talented program. But she couldn't read very well.

"There was no rhyme or reason to reading for me," she said. "When a teacher would dictate a word and say, 'Tell me how you think you can spell it,' I sat there with my mouth open while other kids gave spellings, and I thought, 'How do they even know where to begin?' I was totally lost."

Woodworth went to public school in Owosso, Michigan, in the 1990s. She says sounds and letters just didn't make sense to her, and she doesn't remember anyone teaching her how to read. So she came up with her own strategies to get through text.

Strategy 1: Memorize as many words as possible. "Words were like pictures to me," she said. "I had a really good memory."

Strategy 2: Guess the words based on context. If she came across a word she didn't have in her visual memory bank, she'd look at the first letter and come up with a word that seemed to make sense. Reading was kind of like a game of 20 Questions: What word could this be?

Strategy 3: If all else failed, she'd skip the words she didn't know.

Most of the time, she could get the gist of what she was reading. But getting through text took forever. "I hated reading because it was taxing," she said. "I'd get through a chapter and my brain hurt by the end of it. I wasn't excited to learn."

No one knew how much she struggled, not even her parents. Her reading strategies were her "dirty little secrets."

Woodworth, who now works in accounting, 1 says she's still not a very good reader and tears up when she talks about it. Reading "influences every aspect of your life," she said. She's determined to make sure her own kids get off to a better start than she did.

That's why she was so alarmed to see how her oldest child, Claire, was being taught to read in school.

As long as this disproven theory remains part of American education, many kids will likely struggle to learn how to read.

A couple of years ago, Woodworth was volunteering in Claire's kindergarten classroom. The class was reading a book together and the teacher was telling the children to practice the strategies that good readers use.

The teacher said, "If you don't know the word, just look at this picture up here," Woodworth recalled. "There was a fox and a bear in the picture. And the word was bear, and she said, 'Look at the first letter. It's a "b." Is it fox or bear?'"

Woodworth was stunned. "I thought, 'Oh my God, those are my strategies.' Those are the things I taught myself to look like a good reader, not the things that good readers do," she said. "These kids were being taught my dirty little secrets."

She went to the teacher and expressed her concerns. The teacher told her she was teaching reading the way the curriculum told her to.

Woodworth had stumbled on to American education's own little secret about reading: Elementary schools across the country are teaching children to be poor readers - and educators may not even know it.

For decades, reading instruction in American schools has been rooted in a flawed theory about how reading works, a theory that was debunked decades ago by cognitive scientists, yet remains deeply embedded in teaching practices and curriculum materials. As a result, the strategies that struggling readers use to get by - memorizing words, using context to guess words, skipping words they don't know - are the strategies that many beginning readers are taught in school. This makes it harder for many kids to learn how to read, and children who don't get off to a good start in reading find it difficult to ever master the process. 2

A shocking number of kids in the United States can't read very well. A third of all fourth-graders can't read at a basic level, and most students are still not proficient readers by the time they finish high school.
Percentage of U.S. fourth-graders below basic level in reading
When kids struggle to learn how to read, it can lead to a downward spiral in which behavior, vocabulary, knowledge and other cognitive skills are eventually affected by slow reading development. 3 A disproportionate number of poor readers become high school dropouts and end up in the criminal justice system. 4

The fact that a disproven theory about how reading works is still driving the way many children are taught to read is part of the problem. School districts spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on curriculum materials that include this theory. Teachers are taught the theory in their teacher preparation programs and on the job. As long as this disproven theory remains part of American education, many kids will likely struggle to learn how to read.
Percentage of U.S. 12th-graders proficient in reading
The origins

The theory is known as "three cueing." The name comes from the notion that readers use three different kinds of information - or "cues" - to identify words as they are reading.

The theory was first proposed in 1967, when an education professor named Ken Goodman presented a paper at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in New York City.

In the paper, 5 Goodman rejected the idea that reading is a precise process that involves exact or detailed perception of letters or words. Instead, he argued that as people read, they make predictions about the words on the page using these three cues:

graphic cues (what do the letters tell you about what the word might be?)

syntactic cues (what kind of word could it be, for example, a noun or a verb?)

semantic cues (what word would make sense here, based on the context?)

Goodman concluded that:

Skill in reading involves not greater precision, but more accurate first guesses based on better sampling techniques, greater control over language structure, broadened experiences and increased conceptual development. As the child develops reading skill and speed, he uses increasingly fewer graphic cues.

Goodman's proposal became the theoretical basis for a new approach to teaching reading that would soon take hold in American schools.

Previously, the question of how to teach reading had focused on one of two basic ideas.

One idea is that reading is a visual memory process. The teaching method associated with this idea is known as "whole word." The whole word approach was perhaps best embodied in the "Dick and Jane" books that first appeared in the 1930s. The books rely on word repetition, and pictures to support the meaning of the text. The idea is that if you see words enough, you eventually store them in your memory as visual images.

The other idea is that reading requires knowledge of the relationships between sounds and letters. Children learn to read by sounding out words. This approach is known as phonics. It goes way back, popularized in the 1800s with the McGuffey readers.

These two ideas - whole word and phonics - had been taking turns as the favored way to teach reading until Goodman came along with what came to be known among educators as the "three-cueing system."

In the cueing theory of how reading works, when a child comes to a word she doesn't know, the teacher encourages her to think of a word that makes sense and asks: Does it look right? Does it sound right? If a word checks out on the basis of those questions, the child is getting it. She's on the path to skilled reading.

Teachers may not know the term "three cueing," but they're probably familiar with "MSV." M stands for using meaning to figure out what a word is, S for using sentence structure and V for using visual information (i.e., the letters in the words). MSV is a cueing idea that can be traced back to the late Marie Clay, a developmental psychologist from New Zealand who first laid out her theories about reading in a dissertation in the 1960s. 6

Clay developed her cueing theory independently of Goodman, but they met several times and had similar ideas about the reading process. Their theories were based on observational research. They would listen to children read, note the kinds of errors they made, and use that information to identify a child's reading difficulties. For example, a child who says "horse" when the word was "house" is probably relying too much on visual, or graphic, cues. A teacher in this case would encourage the child to pay more attention to what word would make sense in the sentence.

Goodman and Clay believed that letters were the least reliable of the three cues, and that as people became better readers, they no longer needed to pay attention to all the letters in words. "In efficient word perception the reader relies mostly on the sentence and its meaning and some selected features of the forms of words," Clay wrote. 7 For Goodman, accurate word recognition was not necessarily the goal of reading. The goal was to comprehend text. 8 If the sentences were making sense, the reader must be getting the words right, or right enough.

These ideas soon became the foundation for how reading was taught in many schools. Goodman's three-cueing idea formed the theoretical basis of an approach known as "whole language" that by the late 1980s had taken hold throughout America. 9 Clay built her cueing ideas into a reading intervention program for struggling first-graders called Reading Recovery. It was implemented across New Zealand in the 1980s and went on to become one of the world's most widely used reading intervention programs. 10

But while cueing was taking hold in schools, scientists were busy studying the cognitive processes involved in reading words. And they came to different conclusions about how people read. 11

Scientists take on three cueing

It was the early 1970s, and Keith Stanovich was working on his doctorate in psychology at the University of Michigan. He thought the reading field was ready for an infusion of knowledge from the "cognitive revolution" that was underway in psychology. Stanovich had a background in experimental science and an interest in learning and cognition due in part to the influence of his wife, Paula, who was a special education teacher.

Stanovich wanted to understand how people read words. 12 He knew about Goodman's work and thought he was probably right that as people become better readers, they relied more on their knowledge of vocabulary and language structure to read words and didn't need to pay as much attention to the letters.

So, in 1975, Stanovich and a fellow graduate student set out to test the idea in their lab. They recruited readers of various ages and abilities and gave them a series of word-reading tasks. Their hypothesis was that skilled readers rely more on contextual cues to recognize words than poor readers, who probably weren't as good at using context.

They couldn't have been more wrong.

"To our surprise, all of our research results pointed in the opposite direction," Stanovich wrote. "It was the poorer readers, not the more skilled readers, who were more reliant on context to facilitate word recognition." 13

The skilled readers could instantly recognize words without relying on context. Other researchers have confirmed these findings with similar experiments. It turns out that the ability to read words in isolation quickly and accurately is the hallmark of being a skilled reader. This is now one of the most consistent and well-replicated findings in all of reading research. 14

Other studies revealed further problems with the cueing theory: 15

Skilled readers don't scan words and sample from the graphic cues in an incidental way; instead, they very quickly recognize a word as a sequence of letters. That's how good readers instantly know the difference between "house" and "horse," for example.

Experiments that force people to use context to predict words show that even skilled readers can correctly guess only a fraction of the words; this is one reason people who rely on context to identify words are poor readers.

Weak word recognition skills are the most common and debilitating source of reading problems. 16

The results of these studies are not controversial or contested among scientists who study reading. The findings have been incorporated into every major scientific model of how reading works.

But cueing is still alive and well in schools.

Picture Power!

It's not hard to find examples of the cueing system. A quick search on Google, Pinterest or Teachers Pay Teachers turns up plenty of lesson plans, teaching guides and classroom posters. One popular poster has cute cartoon characters to remind children they have lots of strategies to use when they're stuck on a word, including looking at the picture (Eagle Eye), getting their lips ready to try the first sound (Lips the Fish), or just skipping the word altogether (Skippy Frog).

There are videos online where you can see cueing in action. In one video posted on The Teaching Channel, 17 a kindergarten teacher in Oakland, California, instructs her students to use "picture power" to identify the words on the page. The goal of the lesson, according to the teacher, is for the students to "use the picture and a first sound to determine an unknown word in their book."

The class reads a book together called "In the Garden." On each page, there's a picture of something you might find in a garden. It's what's known as a predictable book; the sentences are all the same except for the last word.

The children have been taught to memorize the words "look," "at," and "the." The challenge is getting the last word in the sentence. The lesson plan tells the teacher to cover up the word with a sticky note.

In the video, the wiggly kindergarteners sitting cross-legged on the floor come to a page with a picture of a butterfly. The teacher tells the kids that she's guessing the word is going to be butterfly. She uncovers the word to check on the accuracy of her guess.

"Look at that," she tells the children, pointing to the first letter of the word. "It starts with the /b/ /b/ /b/." The class reads the sentence together as the teacher points to the words. "Look at the butterfly!" they yell out excitedly.

This lesson comes from "Units of Study for Teaching Reading," more commonly known as "reader's workshop." 18 According to the lesson plan, this lesson teaches children to "know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words." 19

But the children were not taught to decode words in this lesson. They were taught to guess words using pictures and patterns - hallmarks of the three-cueing system.

The author of Units of Study for Teaching Reading, Lucy Calkins, often refers to cueing in her published work. 20 She uses the term MSV - the meaning, structure and visual idea that originally came from Clay in New Zealand.

Then there is Fountas and Pinnell Literacy, started by Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell, teachers who learned the MSV concept from Clay in the 1980s. 21

Fountas and Pinnell have written several books about teaching reading, including a best-seller about a widely used instructional approach called "Guided Reading." They also created a reading assessment system that uses what are called "leveled books." 22 Children start with predictable books like "In the Garden" and move up levels as they're able to "read" the words. But many of the words in those books - butterfly, caterpillar - are words that beginning readers haven't been taught to decode yet. One purpose of the books is to teach children that when they get to a word they don't know, they can use context to figure it out.

When put into practice in the classroom, these approaches can cause problems for children when they are learning to read.

'That is not reading'

Margaret Goldberg, a teacher and literacy coach in the Oakland Unified School District, remembers a moment when she realized what a problem the three-cueing approach was. She was with a first-grader named Rodney when he came to a page with a picture of a girl licking an ice cream cone and a dog licking a bone.

The text said: "My little dog likes to eat with me."

But Rodney said: "My dog likes to lick his bone."

Rodney breezed right through it, unaware that he hadn't read the sentence on the page.

Goldberg realized lots of her students couldn't actually read the words in their books; instead, they were memorizing sentence patterns and using the pictures to guess. One little boy exclaimed, "I can read this book with my eyes shut!"

"Oh no," Goldberg thought. "That is not reading."

Goldberg had been hired by the Oakland schools in 2015 to help struggling readers by teaching a Fountas and Pinnell program called "Leveled Literacy Intervention" that uses leveled books and the cueing approach. 23

Around the same time, Goldberg was trained in a program that uses a different strategy for teaching children how to read words. The program is called "Systematic Instruction in Phonological Awareness, Phonics, and Sight Words," or SIPPS. 24 It's a phonics program that teaches children how to sound out words and uses what are known as "decodable books." Most words in the books have spelling patterns that kids have been taught in their phonics lessons.

Goldberg decided to teach some of her students using the phonics program and some of her students using three cueing. And she began to notice differences between the two groups of kids. "Not just in their abilities to read," she said, "but in the way they approached their reading."

Goldberg and a colleague recorded first-graders talking about what makes them good readers.

One video shows Mia, on the left, who was in the phonics program. Mia says she's a good reader because she looks at the words and sounds them out. JaBrea, on the right, was taught the cueing system. JaBrea says: "I look at the pictures and I read it."

Courtesy of Margaret Goldberg, Oakland Unified School District

It was clear to Goldberg after just a few months of teaching both approaches that the students learning phonics were doing better. "One of the things that I still struggle with is a lot of guilt," she said.

She thinks the students who learned three cueing were actually harmed by the approach. "I did lasting damage to these kids. It was so hard to ever get them to stop looking at a picture to guess what a word would be. It was so hard to ever get them to slow down and sound a word out because they had had this experience of knowing that you predict what you read before you read it."

Goldberg soon discovered the decades of scientific evidence against cueing. 25 She was shocked. She had never come across any of this science in her teacher preparation or on the job.

And she started to wonder why not.

Balanced Literacy

People have been arguing for centuries about how children should be taught to read. The fight has mostly focused on whether to teach phonics.

The whole language movement of the late 20th century was perhaps the zenith of the anti-phonics argument. 26 Phonics instruction was seen as tedious, time-consuming and ultimately unnecessary. Why? Because - according to the three-cueing theory - readers can use other, more reliable cues to figure out what the words say. 27

Marilyn Adams came across this belief in the early 1990s. She's a cognitive and developmental psychologist who had just written a book summarizing the research on how children learn to read. 28 One big takeaway from the book is that becoming a skilled reader of English requires knowledge of sound-spelling correspondences. 29 Another big takeaway is that many kids were not being taught this in school.

Soon after the book was published, Adams was describing her findings to a group of teachers and state education officials in Sacramento, California. She was sensing discomfort and confusion in the room. "And I just stopped and said, 'What is it that I'm missing?'" she recalled. "'What is it that we need to talk about? Help me.'"

A woman raised her hand and asked: "What does this have to do with the three-cueing system?" Marilyn didn't know what the three-cueing system was. "I think I blew all of their fuses that I did not [know what it was] since this was so fundamental to being an elementary reading teacher," she said. "How could I present myself to them as an expert on reading and not know about this?"

The teachers drew her a Venn diagram of the three-cueing system. It looked something like this:

Adams thought this diagram made perfect sense. The research clearly shows that readers use all of these cues to understand what they're reading.

But Adams soon figured out the disconnect. Teachers understood these cues not just as the way readers construct meaning from text, but as the way readers actually identify the words on the page. And they thought that teaching kids to decode or sound out words was not necessary.

"The most important thing was for the children to understand and enjoy the text," Adams said. "And from that understanding and joy of reading, the words on the page would just pop out at them."

She would explain to teachers at every opportunity that explicitly teaching children about the relationships between sounds and letters is essential to ensure all kids get off to a good start in reading. But she got tons of pushback from teachers. "They didn't want to teach phonics!" she recalled in frustration.

In 1998, Adams wrote a book chapter about how the three-cueing system conflicts with what researchers have figured out about reading. She hoped it would help put three cueing to rest. 30

By this time, the scientific research on reading was gaining traction. In 2000, a national panel convened by Congress to review the evidence on how to teach reading came out with a report. 31 It identified several essential components of reading instruction, including vocabulary, comprehension and phonics. The evidence that phonics instruction enhances children's success in learning how to read was clear and compelling. National reports on reading a few years later in the United Kingdom and Australia came to the same conclusion. 32

"When I got into the classroom and someone told me to use this practice, I didn't question it."-Stacey Cherny

Eventually, many whole language supporters accepted the weight of the scientific evidence about the importance of phonics instruction. They started adding phonics to their books and materials and renamed their approach "balanced literacy."

But they didn't get rid of the three-cueing system.

Balanced literacy proponents will tell you their approach is a mix of phonics instruction with plenty of time for kids to read and enjoy books. But look carefully at the materials and you'll see that's not really what balanced literacy is mixing. Instead, it's mixing a bunch of different ideas about how kids learn to read. It's a little bit of whole word instruction with long lists of words for kids to memorize. It's a little bit of phonics. And fundamentally, it's the idea that children should be taught to read using the three-cueing system.

And it turns out cueing may actually prevent kids from focusing on words in the way they need to become skilled readers.

Mapping the words

To understand why cueing can get in the way of children's reading development, it's essential to understand how our brains process the words we see.

Reading scientists have known for decades that the hallmark of being a skilled reader is the ability to instantly and accurately recognize words. 33 If you're a skilled reader, your brain has gotten so good at reading words that you process the word "chair" faster than you process a picture of a chair. 34 You know tens of thousands of words instantly, on sight. How did you learn to do that?

It happens through a process called "orthographic mapping." 35 This occurs when you pay attention to the details of a written word and link the word's pronunciation and meaning with its sequence of letters. 36 A child knows the meaning and pronunciation of "pony." The word gets mapped to his memory when he links the sounds /p/ /o/ /n/ /y/ to the written word "pony."

That requires an awareness of the speech sounds in words and an understanding of how those sounds are represented by letters. 37 In other words, you need phonics skills.

Here's what happens when a reader who has good phonics skills comes to a word she doesn't recognize in print. She stops at the word and sounds it out. If it's a word she knows the meaning of, she has now linked the spelling of the word with its pronunciation. If she doesn't know the meaning of the word, she can use context to try to figure it out.

By about second grade, a typically developing reader needs just a few exposures to a word through understanding both the pronunciation and the spelling for that word to be stored in her memory. 38 She doesn't know that word because she memorized it as a visual image. She knows that word because at some point she successfully sounded it out.

The more words she stores in her memory this way, the more she can focus on the meaning of what she's reading; she'll eventually be using less brain power to identify words and will be able to devote more brain power to comprehending what she's reading. 39

But when children don't have good phonics skills, the process is different.

"They sample from the letters because they're not good at sounding them out," said David Kilpatrick, a psychology professor at SUNY Cortland and the author of a book about preventing reading difficulties. 40 "And they use context."

In other words, when people don't have good phonics skills, they use the cueing system.

"The three-cueing system is the way poor readers read," said Kilpatrick.

And if teachers use the cueing system to teach reading, Kilpatrick says they're not just teaching children the habits of poor readers, they are actually impeding the orthographic mapping process. 41

"The minute you ask them just to pay attention to the first letter or look at the picture, look at the context, you're drawing their attention away from the very thing that they need to interact with in order for them to read the word [and] remember the word," Kilpatrick said. In this way, he said, three cueing can actually prevent the critical learning that's necessary for a child to become a skilled reader.

In many balanced literacy classrooms, children are taught phonics and the cueing system. Some kids who are taught both approaches realize pretty quickly that sounding out a word is the most efficient and reliable way to know what it is. Those kids tend to have an easier time understanding the ways that sounds and letters relate. They'll drop the cueing strategies and begin building that big bank of instantly known words that is so necessary for skilled reading.

But some children will skip the sounding out if they're taught they have other options. Phonics is challenging for many kids. The cueing strategies seem quicker and easier at first. And by using context and memorizing a bunch of words, many children can look like good readers - until they get to about third grade, when their books begin to have more words, longer words, and fewer pictures. Then they're stuck. They haven't developed their sounding-out skills. Their bank of known words is limited. Reading is slow and laborious and they don't like it, so they don't do it if they don't have to. While their peers who mastered decoding early are reading and teaching themselves new words every day, the kids who clung to the cueing approach are falling further and further behind. 42

These poor reading habits, once ingrained at a young age, can follow kids into high school. Some kids who were taught the cueing approach never become good readers. Not because they're incapable of learning to read well but because they were taught the strategies of struggling readers.

'So what if they use the picture?'

Once Margaret Goldberg discovered the cognitive science evidence against cueing, she wanted her colleagues in the Oakland school district to know about it too.

Over the past two years, Goldberg and a fellow literacy coach named Lani Mednick have been leading a grant-funded pilot project to improve reading achievement in the Oakland schools. 43

They have their work cut out for them. Nearly half the district's third-graders are below grade level in reading. Goldberg and Mednick want to raise questions about how kids in Oakland are being taught to read.

They meet every couple weeks with literacy coaches from the 10 elementary schools in the pilot program. They read and discuss articles about the scientific research on reading. At a meeting in March, the coaches watched the video of the "picture power" lesson.

"This teacher meant well," Mednick said to the coaches after they watched the lesson. "It seemed like she believed this lesson would ensure her students would be on the road toward reading."

Mednick wanted the coaches to consider the beliefs about reading that would lead to the creation of a lesson like "picture power." The Oakland schools purchased the Units of Study for Teaching Reading series, which includes the "picture power" lesson, as part of a balanced literacy initiative the district began about 10 years ago. The district also bought the Fountas and Pinnell assessment system.

The coaches saw right away that "picture power" was designed to teach kids the cueing system. But they said many teachers don't see any problem with cueing. After all, one of the cues is to look at the letters in the word. What's wrong with teaching kids lots of different strategies to figure out unknown words? 44

"I remember before we started looking at the science and everything, I thought to myself, 'Reading is so hard for kids, so what if they use the picture?'" said Soraya Sajous-Brooks, the early literacy coach at Prescott Elementary School in West Oakland. "Like, use everything you've got."

But she's come to understand that cueing sends the message to kids that they don't need to sound out words. Her students would get phonics instruction in one part of the day. Then they'd go reader's workshop and be taught that when they come to a word they don't know, they have lots of strategies. They can sound it out. They can also check the first letter, look at the picture, think of a word that makes sense.

Teaching cueing and phonics doesn't work, Sajous-Brooks said. "One negates the other."

Goldberg and Mednick want to show the district there's a better way to teach reading. Schools in the pilot project used grant money to buy new materials that steer clear of the three-cueing idea. Two charter school networks in Oakland are working on similar projects to move their schools away from cueing.

To see what it looks like, I visited a first-grade classroom at a charter school in Oakland called Achieve Academy. 45

One part of the day was explicit phonics instruction. 46 The students were divided into small groups based on their skill level. They met with their teacher, Andrea Ruiz, at a kidney-shaped table in a corner of the classroom. The lowest-level group worked on identifying the speech sounds in words like "skin" and "skip." The highest-level group learned how verbs like "spy" and "cry" are spelled as "spied' and 'cried" in the past tense.

There were also vocabulary lessons. 47 The entire class gathered on a rug at the front of the classroom to talk about a book Ms. Ruiz read out loud to them. One of the words in the book was "prey."

"What animals are a chameleon's prey?" Ms. Ruiz asked the children. "Or we can also ask, what animals do chameleons hunt for food?"

The kids turned and talked to each other. "A chameleon's prey are bugs and insects and other chameleons and mice and birds," a little boy explained to his classmate. "That's it."

Other vocabulary words these first-graders had learned were posted on cards around the classroom. They included: wander, persevere, squint and scrumptious. The kids weren't expected to read those words yet. The idea is to build their oral vocabulary so that when they can read those words, they know what the words mean.

This comes straight from the scientific research, which shows that reading comprehension is the product of two things. 48 First, a child needs to be able to sound out a word. Second, the child needs to know the meaning of the word she just sounded out. So, in a first-grade classroom that's following the research, you will see explicit phonics instruction and also lessons that build oral vocabulary and background knowledge. And you will see kids practicing what they've been taught.

After their vocabulary lesson, the kids did "buddy reading." They retreated to various spots around the classroom to read books to each other. I found Belinda sitting on an adult chair at the back of the classroom, her little legs swinging. Across from her was her buddy Steven, decked out in a yellow and blue plaid shirt tucked neatly into his jeans. He held the book and pointed to the words while Belinda read.

"Ellen /m/," Belinda paused, sounding out the word "meets." She was reading a decodable book about some kids who visit a farm. Almost all of the words in the book contain spelling patterns she'd been taught in her phonics lessons.

"I am a farm here," Belinda read.

Steven did a double-take. "A farmer here," he said gently. Steven's job as Belinda's reading buddy was to help her if she missed a word or got stuck. But that didn't happen much because Belinda had been taught how to read the words. She didn't need any help from the pictures, either. She barely glanced at them as she read.

To be clear, there's nothing wrong with pictures. They're great to look at and talk about, and they can help a child comprehend the meaning of a story. Context - including a picture if there is one - helps us understand what we're reading all the time. But if a child is being taught to use context to identify words, she's being taught to read like a poor reader.

Many educators don't know this because the cognitive science research has not made its way into many schools and schools of education. 49

Ruiz didn't know about this research until the Oakland pilot project. "I didn't really know anything about how kids learn to read when I started teaching," she said. It was a relief when she came to Oakland and the curriculum spelled out that kids use meaning, structure and visual cues to figure out words. "Because I came from not having anything, I was like, 'Oh, there's a way we should teach this,'" she said.

I heard this from other educators. Cueing was appealing because they didn't know what else to do.

"When I got into the classroom and someone told me to use this practice, I didn't question it," said Stacey Cherny, a former teacher who's now principal of an elementary school in Pennsylvania. She says many teachers aren't taught what they need to know about the structure of the English language to be able to teach phonics well. She says phonics can be intimidating; three cueing isn't.

Another reason cueing holds on is that it seems to work for some children. But researchers estimate there's a percentage of kids - perhaps about 40 percent - who will learn to read no matter how they're taught. 50 According to Kilpatrick, children who learn to read with cueing are succeeding in spite of the instruction, not because of it.

Goldberg hopes the pilot project in Oakland will convince the district to drop all instructional materials that include cueing.

When asked about this, the Oakland superintendent's office responded with a written statement that there isn't enough evidence from the pilot project to make curriculum changes for the entire district and that the Oakland schools remain committed to balanced literacy.

Oakland's situation is no different from many other districts across the country that have invested millions of dollars in materials that include cueing.

"It feels like everyone's trusting somebody else to have done their due diligence," Goldberg said. "Classroom teachers are trusting that the materials they're being handed will work. The people who purchase the materials are trusting if they were on the market, that they will work. We're all trusting, and it's a system that is broken."

'My science is different'

If cueing was debunked decades ago by cognitive scientists, why is the idea still in materials that are being sold to schools?

One answer to that question is that school districts still buy the materials. Heinemann, the company that publishes the Fountas and Pinnell and Lucy Calkins' products that the Oakland schools use, earned somewhere in the neighborhood of $500 million in 2018, according to earnings reports. 51

I wanted to know what the authors of those materials make of the cognitive science research. And I wanted to give them a chance to explain the ideas behind their work. I wrote to Calkins, Fountas and Pinnell and asked for interviews. They all declined. Heinemann sent a statement that said every product the company sells is informed by extensive research.

I also asked Ken Goodman for an interview. It's been more than 50 years since he first laid out the three-cueing theory in that 1967 paper. I wanted to know what he thinks of the cognitive science research. Of the major proponents of three cueing I reached out to, he was the only one who agreed to an interview.

I visited Goodman at his home in Tucson, Arizona. He's 91. He uses a scooter to get around, but he's still working. He just finished a new edition of one of his books.

When I asked him what he makes of the cognitive science research, he told me he thinks scientists focus too much on word recognition. He still doesn't believe accurate word recognition is necessary for reading comprehension.

"Word recognition is a preoccupation," he said. "I don't teach word recognition. I teach people to make sense of language. And learning the words is incidental to that."

He brought up the example of a child who comes to the word "horse" and says "pony" instead. His argument is that a child will still understand the meaning of the story because horse and pony are the same concept.

I pressed him on this. First of all, a pony isn't the same thing as a horse. Second, don't you want to make sure that when a child is learning to read, he understands that /p/ /o/ /n/ /y/ says "pony"? And different letters say "horse"?

He dismissed my question.

"The purpose is not to learn words," he said. "The purpose is to make sense."

Cognitive scientists don't dispute that the purpose of reading is to make sense of the text. But the question is: How can you understand what you are reading if you can't accurately read the words? And if quick and accurate word recognition is the hallmark of being a skilled reader, how does a little kid get there?

Goodman rejected the idea that you can make a distinction between skilled readers and unskilled readers; he doesn't like the value judgment that implies. He said dyslexia does not exist - despite lots of evidence that it does. 52 And he said the three-cueing theory is based on years of observational research. In his view, three cueing is perfectly valid, drawn from a different kind of evidence than what scientists collect in their labs.

"My science is different," Goodman said.

This idea that there are different kinds of evidence that lead to different conclusions about how reading works is one reason people continue to disagree about how children should be taught to read. It's important for educators to understand that three cueing is based on theory and observational research and that there's decades of scientific evidence from labs all over the world that converges on a very different idea about skilled reading.

The cognitive science does not provide all the answers about how to teach children to read, but on the question of how skilled readers read words, scientists have amassed a huge body of evidence.

Goldberg thinks it's time for educators across the country to take a close look at all the materials they use to teach reading.

"We should look through the materials and search for evidence of cueing," she said. "And if it's there, don't touch it. Don't let it get near our kids, don't let it get near our classrooms, our teachers."

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How a flawed idea is teaching millions of kids to be poor readers

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For decades, schools have taught children the strategies of struggling readers, using a theory about reading that cognitive scientists have repeatedly debunked. And many teachers and parents don't know there's anything wrong with it.

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Scientific research has shown how children learn to read and how they should be taught. But many educators don’t know the science and, in some cases, actively resist it. As a result, millions of kids are being set up to fail.

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Maryanne Wolf is a scholar, a teacher, and an advocate for children and literacy around the world. She is focused on the impact of digital media on the reading brain.