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The Science of Reading - White Paper by Laura Stewart

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The Science of Reading - White Paper by Laura Stewart

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Orthographic Mapping

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How we learn orthographic mapping - Five From Five

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A useful activity for developing phonemic awareness and word study involves using Elkonin boxes. These boxes are commonly used for phonemic awareness activities when performed with counters only (figure 1), however, once students have an understanding of basic graphemes then letters can be used.

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Lessons specifically designed to highlight the ELA/literacy Shifts and expectations of college- and career-ready standards

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Sample Lessons from the National Center for Intensive Intervention

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Sample Lessons from the National Center for Intensive Intervention

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NCII provides a series of reading lessons to support special education instructors, reading interventionists, and others working with students who struggle with reading. These lessons, adapted with permission from the Florida Center for Reading Research and Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk, address key reading and prereading skills and incorporate research-based instructional principles that can help intensify and individualize reading instruction. The reading lessons are examples of brief instructional routines that may be used to supplement reading interventions, programs, or curricula that are currently in place. These lessons are designed to illustrate concepts and supplement, not supplant, reading instruction and interventions for struggling readers. They do not represent an exhaustive reading curriculum. It is expected that teachers would customize these lessons to meet the needs of their target students.

The NCII reading lessons are organized around the five components of reading identified by the National Reading Panel (2000): phonemic awareness, alphabetic principal or phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Intervention programs for struggling readers may focus on just one or a few of these components, or may include all five components.

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Literacy Sample Lessons to Support Intensifying Intervention

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
NCII provides a series of reading lessons to support special education instructors, reading interventionists, and others working with students who struggle with reading. These lessons, adapted with permission from the Florida Center for Reading Research and Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk, address key reading and prereading skills and incorporate research-based instructional principles that can help intensify and individualize reading instruction.

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A Systematic Phonics Scope and Sequence

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Sample Lessons from the National Center for Intensive Intervention

# data[].attributes.subject
Sample Lessons from the National Center for Intensive Intervention

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
NCII provides a series of reading lessons to support special education instructors, reading interventionists, and others working with students who struggle with reading. These lessons, adapted with permission from the Florida Center for Reading Research and Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk, address key reading and prereading skills and incorporate research-based instructional principles that can help intensify and individualize reading instruction. The reading lessons are examples of brief instructional routines that may be used to supplement reading interventions, programs, or curricula that are currently in place. These lessons are designed to illustrate concepts and supplement, not supplant, reading instruction and interventions for struggling readers. They do not represent an exhaustive reading curriculum. It is expected that teachers would customize these lessons to meet the needs of their target students.

The NCII reading lessons are organized around the five components of reading identified by the National Reading Panel (2000): phonemic awareness, alphabetic principal or phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Intervention programs for struggling readers may focus on just one or a few of these components, or may include all five components.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Literacy Sample Lessons to Support Intensifying Intervention

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
NCII provides a series of reading lessons to support special education instructors, reading interventionists, and others working with students who struggle with reading. These lessons, adapted with permission from the Florida Center for Reading Research and Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk, address key reading and prereading skills and incorporate research-based instructional principles that can help intensify and individualize reading instruction.

# data[].attributes.headline
Sample Lessons from the National Center for Intensive Intervention

# data[].attributes.subject
Sample Lessons from the National Center for Intensive Intervention

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
NCII provides a series of reading lessons to support special education instructors, reading interventionists, and others working with students who struggle with reading. These lessons, adapted with permission from the Florida Center for Reading Research and Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk, address key reading and prereading skills and incorporate research-based instructional principles that can help intensify and individualize reading instruction. The reading lessons are examples of brief instructional routines that may be used to supplement reading interventions, programs, or curricula that are currently in place. These lessons are designed to illustrate concepts and supplement, not supplant, reading instruction and interventions for struggling readers. They do not represent an exhaustive reading curriculum. It is expected that teachers would customize these lessons to meet the needs of their target students.

The NCII reading lessons are organized around the five components of reading identified by the National Reading Panel (2000): phonemic awareness, alphabetic principal or phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Intervention programs for struggling readers may focus on just one or a few of these components, or may include all five components.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Literacy Sample Lessons to Support Intensifying Intervention

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
NCII provides a series of reading lessons to support special education instructors, reading interventionists, and others working with students who struggle with reading. These lessons, adapted with permission from the Florida Center for Reading Research and Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk, address key reading and prereading skills and incorporate research-based instructional principles that can help intensify and individualize reading instruction.

# data[].attributes.headline
Sample Lessons from the National Center for Intensive Intervention

# data[].attributes.subject
Sample Lessons from the National Center for Intensive Intervention

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
NCII provides a series of reading lessons to support special education instructors, reading interventionists, and others working with students who struggle with reading. These lessons, adapted with permission from the Florida Center for Reading Research and Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk, address key reading and prereading skills and incorporate research-based instructional principles that can help intensify and individualize reading instruction. The reading lessons are examples of brief instructional routines that may be used to supplement reading interventions, programs, or curricula that are currently in place. These lessons are designed to illustrate concepts and supplement, not supplant, reading instruction and interventions for struggling readers. They do not represent an exhaustive reading curriculum. It is expected that teachers would customize these lessons to meet the needs of their target students.

The NCII reading lessons are organized around the five components of reading identified by the National Reading Panel (2000): phonemic awareness, alphabetic principal or phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Intervention programs for struggling readers may focus on just one or a few of these components, or may include all five components.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Literacy Sample Lessons to Support Intensifying Intervention

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
NCII provides a series of reading lessons to support special education instructors, reading interventionists, and others working with students who struggle with reading. These lessons, adapted with permission from the Florida Center for Reading Research and Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk, address key reading and prereading skills and incorporate research-based instructional principles that can help intensify and individualize reading instruction.

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University of Florida Literacy Institute Virtual Teaching Hub

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University of Florida Literacy Institute Virtual Teaching Hub

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In response to COVID-19, the 10 Regional Educational Laboratories (RELs) have collaborated to produce a series of...
Posted by The Florida Center for Reading Research on Thursday, April 23, 2020

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PBS LearningMedia | Teaching Resources For Students And Teachers

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Inspire your students with thousands of free teaching resources including videos, lesson plans, and games aligned to state and national standards.

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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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Read an interview with neuroscientist Guinevere Eden.

"We knew something wasn't right," said Billy's mom, Maggie Gibson.

"You can tell things are off, but you don't know specifically what," said Rob, Billy's father.

The Gibsons, from Baltimore County, Maryland, have five kids. All of them have dyslexia. They know, because they paid thousands of dollars for private testing.

But when the Gibsons showed the test results to their children's schools, administrators didn't buy it, says Rob. "The schools essentially said, 'Yeah, we understand this is a test showing abnormalities from a reputed institution that recommends a child with dyslexia have this, that and the other. And, oh, we don't agree with it.' And when we got to that disagreement it was almost like we were disagreeing over reality."

The Gibsons gave APM Reports an audio recording of the meeting where they discussed the test results with staff at their son Eddie's school. In the recording, a staff member says, "We do not suspect a learning disability."

The Gibsons wanted their children to have Individualized Education Plans, or IEPs. Those are the specialized education plans that students with disabilities who are behind in school are entitled to by federal law.

But in the recording, the school staff says Eddie can't have a disability because he has passing grades and average standardized test scores.

More than a dozen families across the country interviewed by APM Reports reported getting into similar fights with their child's school. Parents say their children figure out ways to compensate for their dyslexia and get by in school, but they aren't being taught to read. Children with dyslexia need specialized reading instruction.

"I would just constantly have these anxiety attacks and it got to a point where I refused to go to school."
- Billy Gibson

But specialized instruction is expensive. The average cost to educate a student in public school is about $12,500, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. The cost to educate a child receiving special education services can be more than twice that. When the federal special education law first went into effect in 1975, Congress committed to covering 40 percent of the extra cost of educating children with disabilities. But the federal government is only covering slightly more than 15 percent. States and local districts pay for the rest.

That's one reason schools have avoided using the word dyslexia, according to Fran Bowman, a former special education teacher who now runs an educational services company that works with school districts to train teachers. "They would say, 'We don't use the word dyslexia.' Because once you open Pandora's box, you have to serve those children."

In other words, if schools acknowledge a student has dyslexia, they may be legally obligated to provide special education.

Six special education directors from around the country interviewed by APM Reports denied their schools were refusing to use the word dyslexia to keep students out of special ed.

Kevin Gorman, director of special education in Upper Arlington, Ohio, and a former school principal in another Ohio district, said schools were avoiding the word because it wasn't a term used by the state on IEP forms. Instead, the state used the umbrella term "specific learning disability." Gorman explained that schools are so concerned about adhering to the letter of the law that they are reluctant to use terms that do not appear on official paperwork.

Avoiding the word was such a problem in schools across the country that in 2015 the U.S. Department of Education issued a special letter reminding schools that not only can they use the word dyslexia, they should use the word if it can help them tailor an appropriate education plan for a student.

It's a legal requirement for schools to identify all children who have disabilities and provide them an "appropriate" education. But many schools have resisted the approaches to reading instruction that students with dyslexia need - and that would help all children read better - because of a long-running dispute about how to teach children to read.

The reading wars

You can trace the debate in the United States about how to teach kids to read all the way back to Horace Mann, the father of the public schools movement. In the 1800s, Mann railed against the idea of teaching kids that letters represent sounds. He believed children would better understand what they were reading if they first learned to read whole words.

This came to be known as the "whole language" approach. On the other side of the debate are people who say children must be explicitly taught how sounds correlate with letters. This is commonly referred to as the "phonics" approach.

The argument over which approach is best has been intense and political, with phonics cast as a traditional, conservative approach. Think of children sitting in front of a blackboard, sounding out words as a teacher points to the letters that represent each sound.

Whole language, on the other hand, holds that learning to read is a natural process and that kids don't need explicit instruction. Expose them to lots of good books and they will learn to read. That approach is seen as the more liberal, progressive way.

As with many ideas in education, there have been big pendulum shifts over the decades. Whole language was big in the 1920s, for example, as progressive education became influential. The pendulum swung back toward phonics in the 1960s. By the 1980s, whole language was popular again.

Bowman, the former special education teacher, got extensive training in phonics in the 1970s and used that approach early in her teaching career. But she says she soon got a supervisor who told her she wasn't allowed to teach phonics. "You should be teaching by the entire word, instead of these little sounds," she recalls the supervisor telling her.

Bowman says it's easier to train teachers to use the whole language method than to train them to use phonics. She thinks that's one reason whole language has been so attractive. "School districts were like 'Wow! We can just give you a bunch of books!'"

Proponents of whole language say the approach is more than that. They promote a set of strategies that emphasize comprehension, engagement, and helping children to develop a love of literature.

But by the late 1990s, there was rising panic in the United States that too many kids were not reading well. Scores on the National Assessment for Educational Progress showed most students were not reading proficiently.

In 1997, Congress called for a National Reading Panel to determine how best to teach reading. It reviewed more than 100,000 studies and in 2000, the panel published a 449-page report that was a crushing blow to the whole language movement. There was no evidence to show whole language worked and lots of evidence that teaching children the relationship among sounds, letters and spelling patterns improves reading achievement.

This is for all kids, not just those with dyslexia.

Andrea Rowson was teaching in a public school in Ohio when the report was released, but she says she didn't learn about the findings until years later. "What happens in public education is a lot of initiatives come through, a lot of information gets thrown at schools. New regulations, new this, new that," she said. "And I think it was just one of those things where (schools) said 'OK' and didn't really realize how huge it was."

'I'm not going to be anything. I don't have any dreams'

In 2012 when the public schools in Baltimore County refused to give the Gibson children IEPs, Rob and Maggie decided to hire a lawyer. "All we wanted was to secure their right to learn in public school," said Maggie.

Their son Billy was in middle school and struggling. "It just got so overwhelming," he said. "I would just constantly have these anxiety attacks and it got to a point where I refused to go to school."

Trying to get him the help he needed for his dyslexia was turning into a long and contentious process. Maggie and Rob felt that for Billy and his older sister, time was running out. They decided to send them to the Jemicy School, a private school for students with language-based learning differences in Owings Mills, Maryland.

Jemicy has about 380 students in grades one through 12. The hallways are covered in student artwork and there's a woodworking shop where students can take geometry. For students who struggle with written language, learning by doing is especially helpful.

Class sizes at Jemicy are capped at 12. The school also provides intensive reading remediation in small-group tutoring sessions.

In a recent tutoring session, Josie and Christopher - fifth-graders in their first year at Jemicy - were seated at a table with a teacher. They were working on the letter combination double vowel "oo."

"I talk to a lot of upper-class white families who were able to take their kids out and send them to private school. Those kids are doing well now, and we didn't have that opportunity."
- Pam Guest

"What are the two sounds that 'oo' make?" the teacher asked.

Christopher responded confidently with the long vowel sound that "oo" makes in the word "school." But there's another sound "oo" makes. Josie and Christopher didn't catch on.

"'Uh' as in 'book,'" said the teacher.

This tutoring is based on an approach known as Orton-Gillingham, named after Samuel Orton and Anna Gillingham, early 20th century pioneers in dyslexia research and remediation. They figured out that children with dyslexia struggle to understand how sounds and letters correspond. To teach them to read, they need to be explicitly taught the rules of the way written language works. Orton and Gillingham developed a systematic approach for doing this. Their ideas form the basis for a number of effective instructional approaches in use today.

When Billy Gibson started at Jemicy as a ninth grader, he wasn't sure he would finish high school. His dream was to be an artist, but his middle school art teacher gave him C's because he didn't follow written directions. Billy went into Jemicy thinking, "I'm not going to be anything. I don't have any dreams."

But Jemicy's small classes and intensive reading instruction helped him catch up and gave him confidence he'd never felt in school. On his first day, he says an art teacher noticed him doodling and told him she thought he could be a great artist. "You should take my class," Billy remembers her saying to him. "I won't give up on you."

Billy graduated from Jemicy in 2017. He's now studying 3D computer animation at the Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida. His goal is to work in the film industry. "Hopefully someday you'll be in the movie theater and see my name on the credits of the big screen," he said.

More than $60,000 a year

Billy's mom Maggie noticed a difference at Jemicy right away. As the parent of kids with dyslexia in public school, she says you get used to being in fight mode. "You're fighting for it to be recognized that your kid needs X, Y and Z," she said. "And then you go into Jemicy and you have a teacher conference and the teachers sit down and say, 'You know, we think your child would benefit from this, this and this. And we notice that your child needs' - whatever it is. And you're like, 'Oh my gosh! We're speaking the same language. We're all noticing the same thing.'"

But to send two kids to Jemicy cost more than $60,000 a year. Maggie and Rob are fortunate: He's a physician and they got financial help from their children's grandparents. But five private school tuitions weren't in their budget. So, with their lawyer, the Gibsons kept fighting with the Baltimore County Public Schools to try to get their three other kids better help.

The Gibsons eventually got the school system to pay for two of their children to go to Baltimore Lab School, a private school for students with learning disabilities. The Gibsons don't think they would have gotten that if they hadn't hired an attorney. Getting what you need for a kid with dyslexia is a rich man's game, says Maggie. The Gibsons estimate their family has spent more than $350,000 - including legal fees, private tutoring and tuition - to get their five dyslexic kids what they needed to be successful in school.

Without help from grandparents, Maggie says she and Rob probably couldn't have made private school work. "What does a person do that doesn't have the luxury of other people to help them?" she said. "What do you do?"

Pam Guest, for example, did not have the financial means to send her son Dayne to private school. "I talk to a lot of upper-class white families who were able to take their kids out and send them to private school. Those kids are doing well now, and they're able to go to college," she said. "And we didn't have that opportunity."

Dayne went to the Baltimore County Public Schools, too. There's no evidence that Baltimore County has more of a problem than other public school systems when it comes to identifying and providing proper instruction to students with dyslexia. But officials with the Baltimore County Schools are now admitting they have a problem. "We need to do better," said Rebecca Rider, who's been director of special education for the Baltimore County Public Schools since 2014. Under her leadership, the school system has begun to train teachers in Orton-Gillingham. Before this effort began in 2016, the county schools did not have anyone trained to provide this instruction.

Stephen Cowles, a lawyer for BCPS, said the school system is making more of an effort to identify students with dyslexia. As a result, he says the county is paying for more students to go to private schools. In the 2016 fiscal year, the county paid nearly $40 million dollars for students with disabilities who could not be appropriately served in public schools to go to specialized private schools. BCPS couldn't say how much of that money is being spent on students with dyslexia.

But helping students with dyslexia is not just about expanding special education services. Research suggests that if students with dyslexia got effective early reading instruction in their regular classrooms, some of them may not need intensive, specialized instruction. The problem is that many teachers do not know how to teach reading effectively.

Thousands of teacher preparation programs

In 2000, the National Reading Panel identified five key components of effective reading instruction. Ten years later, the U.S. Department of Education decided to find out whether people coming out of teacher preparation programs had learned those five components.

New teachers could correctly answer only about half the questions on a multiple-choice test. They rated their own preparation in how to teach reading as below "moderate."

In 2016, the National Council on Teacher Quality, a think tank in Washington, D.C., analyzed syllabi from undergraduate elementary teacher preparation programs and found that fewer than 40 percent covered all the components of effective reading instruction. And that was a big improvement from 2014 when NCTQ found just 17 percent of teacher preparation programs taught all five components.

What are teachers learning about how to teach children to read?

"We learned a lot about creating a literature-rich environment," said Rowson, the Ohio teacher. She got her initial training in the 1980s and says she learned nothing about phonics; in fact, she says her professors were against the idea of explicitly teaching children the relationship between sounds and letters. She learned the whole language approach.

Rowson says she didn't learn how to teach children to read until she was trained in Orton-Gillingham. She now trains teachers in Upper Arlington, Ohio, a school district that has significantly changed how it teaches reading in response to a formal complaint filed by a group of parents.

Amelia Smith, a teacher in Upper Arlington who got her degree in elementary and special education in 2012, says by then there was recognition that phonics was important. "We knew what it was but we weren't taught how to teach it," she said.

Upper Arlington

Read about an Ohio school district that changed the way all kids are taught to read.

One reason teachers are not being better prepared to teach reading is there's still an ideological fight going on about whole language versus phonics, according to Jule McCombes-Tolis, chief academic officer for educator training initiatives at the International Dyslexia Association. She spent more than two decades as a professor in teacher preparation programs. "The division in higher ed in reading is alive and well," she said.

McCombes-Tolis says in the wake of the National Reading Panel report, many teacher educators who believed in the whole language approach promoted the idea of "balanced literacy" instead.

But balanced literacy is basically whole language with some phonics mixed in, says Tim Shanahan, a literacy expert who served on the National Reading Panel. "Balanced literacy began as the notion of a different attempt to try to settle the reading wars. It's supposed to be the best of both worlds."

Shanahan says what's wrong with balanced literacy is that it combines a whole bunch of things that don't work with a little bit of what does work, and that's not good reading instruction. He thinks a big problem with teacher preparation programs is that many of the people who are teaching the reading instruction courses don't know the science of reading that well.

"The folks who teach these courses range in their knowledge dramatically," he said. Enroll in a teacher preparation program and your instructor might have a Ph.D. and be familiar with the latest research, says Shanahan. But "you could have somebody who - this person teaches four other things for us and we'll give them an extra course in reading instruction. They have last year's syllabus and they do their best," he said.

There are thousands of teacher preparation programs in the United States and there's very little oversight of them. In higher education, the faculty typically controls the curriculum. There is no one authority to hold accountable for how teachers in America are trained.

States do have some power and many are trying to exert more control over what gets taught in teacher preparation programs as well as what is happening in public schools when it comes to students with dyslexia.

As of this month, 41 states have some sort of dyslexia law, regulation or resolution. The laws and regulations vary widely. Some require graduates of teacher preparation programs to pass science of reading tests; others encourage public schools to provide teacher training on how to identify dyslexia.

33 states have passed dyslexia laws since 2012

An analysis by APM Reports shows that while most states have taken some kind of action to address the needs of kids with dyslexia, the laws often go unenforced and unfunded. Read more.

Sources: LegiScan, Decoding Dyslexia and staff research

Most of these laws have passed in the past few years partly due to parent advocacy groups pushing for change.

Pam Guest is a leader of one of these groups, Decoding Dyslexia-Maryland. Decoding Dyslexia has chapters in all 50 states. In Maryland, the group succeeded in getting a bill through the legislature to establish a task force that reviewed how students in the state are identified and treated for dyslexia. Now the group wants funding for a pilot program to demonstrate best practices when it comes to not only helping students with dyslexia, but to teaching all children how to read.

Even though it's too late for her son, Guest says she's determined to change things so what happened to Dayne won't happen to other kids.

"It's simple," she said. "Teachers must be able to teach children how to read."

Update: Oct. 24, 2017 The map and story have been updated to reflect new analysis of state laws pertaining to dyslexia.

"Hard to Read" is one of three audio documentaries this season from the Educate podcast - stories about education, opportunity, and how people learn.

CORRESPONDENT/PRODUCER
Emily Hanford

RESEARCH AND PRODUCTION FELLOWS
Jeffrey Bissoy-Mattis
Lila Cherneff
Josh Marcus

PRODUCTION HELP
Josie Fan
Liz Lyon
Chris Julin

Special thanks: Amare, Curtis, Forrest, Hadassah, Inez, Jordan, Norah, Oliver and Ryan.

Support for this program comes from Lumina Foundation and the Spencer Foundation.

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How American schools fail kids with dyslexia

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There are proven ways to help people with dyslexia learn to read, and a federal law that's supposed to ensure schools provide kids with help. But across the country, public schools are denying children proper treatment and often failing to identify them with dyslexia in the first place.

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The Educate podcast is all about education. We care about equity and opportunity and how people learn. We dig deep into education research. We're curious about how research translates into policy - or not. We think good teaching is hard. We think history has a lot to tell us about why things are the way they are. We believe in vivid storytelling.

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A podcast about education, opportunity, and how people learn.

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How Explicit Writing Instruction Can Compensate for Gaps in Background Knowledge

Guest: Natalie Wexler

Writing is potentially the most powerful lever we have for building knowledge and improving reading comprehension. It can uncover gaps in background knowledge that prevent students from accessing grade-level material. And, because writing helps new information stick, it can also boost students' academic performance.

But writing is the most difficult thing we ask students to do. If inexperienced writers are asked to write at length, they can easily become overwhelmed as they juggle everything from spelling to word choice to organizing their thoughts. And if students are asked to write only about personal experience or topics in a separate writing curriculum, writing won't help them acquire the knowledge they need to succeed in school.

Join this informative podcast as we talk with esteemed researcher and author Natalie Wexler. She will share ways to make writing less overwhelming by starting at the sentence level and how to include writing activities in the content of the core curriculum. This is an approach that shouldn't be limited to English classes. It can have powerful effects in any subject-and at any grade level.

Digital Divides, Opportunity Gaps, and Literacy Achievement

Guest: Matthew Hiefield

How can districts ensure all students have the same opportunities to the best education if all facets of learning are not equitable? The Digital Divide is not just about devices and the Internet, but it is also about pedagogy in our classrooms and opportunities for students. In this podcast, we will explore the different types of digital divides that occur in our schools with an award-winning equity expert, and we will also address the impact these divides have on literacy learning. Join us and see what you can learn from our guest as he shares the ways he and his district strive for absolute learning equity.

Nurturing Teachers and Students: Creating a Safe Space for Teaching and Learning in Troubling Times

Guest: Judi Dodson

Today, more children are arriving at school with significant social and emotional vulnerabilities due to the chronic stress and trauma of the pandemic. Our students have experienced stress and trauma in the past, but this moment is unique because the experience is more universally shared. This period is also exceptional because our teachers have experienced the chronic stress, loss, and uncertainty of the pandemic as well as our students. Teachers are often given the role of superheroes in our society, but we cannot ask teachers to give of themselves what they do not have. While it is urgent we address our students' social and emotional needs, it is equally urgent that we address the needs of our teachers, if they are going to help students.

This podcast will address hands-on activities and strategies for supporting teachers and students with care and connection. Language allows us to identify and express our emotions. Our use of language to assist in our efforts to connect with our students can transform traditional instruction into "trauma-informed" instruction. Language and connection have the power to heal. Connecting with students does not cost money and can create a climate and culture that can change a child's life.

We Know HOW to Teach Children to Read: Let's DO It!

Guest: Dr. Jan Hasbrouck

Too many students in our classrooms struggle with learning to read. This does not need to occur. Research has shown that approximately 95% of all students can be taught to read at grade level, including those with learning disabilities and dyslexia. How can we meet the needs of every student in today's classrooms? We'll discuss the characteristics of students who become our struggling readers along with research-supported and classroom-proven approaches to successfully address these students' needs.

Getting Reading Right: Why California Overhauled the Way Literacy Is Taught

Guest: Margaret Goldberg

In 2017, students, teachers, and activists filed a class action lawsuit (Ella T. vs. the State of California) arguing that state education officials knew there was a crisis of reading and writing in California public schools, but had failed to develop a plan to address it.

That lawsuit resulted in a $53 million settlement - money that didn't go to the plaintiffs, but rather to 75 of the lowest performing schools in the state-an acknowledgement that the ten students who sued represent hundreds of thousands who have been failed by a broken educational system.

Last year, the schools engaged in professional development through the Sacramento County Office of Education and developed literacy action plans that intend to overhaul how they teach literacy. Educator Margaret Goldberg led sessions to help site leaders plan changes to their curricula, assessments, and teaching strategies. She now mentors the literacy coaches of these schools and works as an early literacy coach at one of the sites.

Listen as we talk to Goldberg, a full-time literacy coach, co-founder of The Right to Read Project, and an integral part of the solution in her state. Listeners of this podcast will be inspired as Goldberg shares the state's new approach, process, exciting outcomes, and her experiences witnessing literacy outcomes improve.

In this podcast, Goldberg will discuss:

The difference between "then" and "now"-and how a new approach to teaching reading based on Structured Literacy and the science of reading will alter the trajectory for thousands of students

The process used to deepen educators' understanding of the research about reading and how they apply that to coaching

What implementation looks like now, and how it will evolve in coming years

What school leaders and literacy teams at each of these schools are learning, and how they plan to change the way reading is taught

Righttoread.com, and how you can get involved

Maximizing Equity & ESSER III Funds: Smart Decision-Making for Districts to Accelerate Learning for ALL Students

Guests: Jon Hummell, Brittany Martin

As districts prepare for the remainder of this school year and the many needs ahead, educators must make crucial decisions for appropriate use of ESSER III funding. However, before purchasing priorities can be planned, there are important questions to ask and new funding parameters to explore that will help all educators make the best decisions to ensure educational equity for every student. Additionally, looking back at last year's funding decisions can help inform the best use of new funds. Join Lexia® Learning's Director of State Initiatives, Jon Hummell, and Education Department Relations Manager, Brittany Martin, for an illuminating podcast conversation about strategies and considerations for effectively leveraging relief funding.

In this podcast, our funding experts will discuss:

Determining whether district purchases with previous funds were effective or not

Lessons learned about the investments districts made so far

What do these purchasing decisions mean going forward?

What are some of the best ways to use ESSER III funds?

How can spending decisions improve and advance a district toward equity?

And much more!

How Handwriting Supports the Science of Reading

Guest: Laura Stewart

After taking a backseat in the education world for many years, handwriting is back. While assistive technology can help students with writing problems, it does not remove the importance of teaching explicit handwriting. Handwriting reinforces reading and spelling skills, and is linked to reading and spelling achievement. In this insightful podcast, you will learn how handwriting supports the science of reading and strategies educators can use immediately in the classroom to build handwriting into their daily lessons.

In this podcast, listeners will learn:

The connection between handwriting, reading, and writing

The evidence around two "great debates"

Printing or cursive?

Handwriting or keyboarding?

Key recommendations for handwriting instruction

We hope you will join us.
Listen Now

What Assessment Data Tells Us About the Equity Gap

Guest: Dr. Roland Good III

The Equity Gap, or differentials in race, ethnicity, income, language, and background, has become even more prominent during the pandemic. Minority students from low-income communities were among those most affected by the lockdown and the move to remote learning-where they faced social and economic stress in their families and communities. In this important podcast, assessment expert Dr. Roland Good explores the Equity Gap and how it affects assessment data. You will also learn about reporting tools educators can use to discover skill gaps and provide students with the support they need.

In this podcast, Dr. Good will discuss:

Please join us for this informative and engaging discussion with EDVIEW360 Podcast Host and Education Leader Pam Austin.
Listen Now

Enid Public Schools: Transforming Teacher Knowledge Through Literacy Professional Learning

Guest: Kristen Jones, Curriculum Director, Enid Public Schools, Enid, Oklahoma

For our podcast, we talk with Kristen Jones, LETRS Literacy Champion and Curriculum Director at Enid Public Schools in Enid, Oklahoma. This inspiring educator will share how Enid Public Schools used literacy professional learning to transform teacher knowledge and raise student achievement.

Jones will discuss steps taken by Enid Public Schools as they implemented LETRS professional learning district-wide. She'll also address how the training increased teacher knowledge of the science of reading and transformed the school district and community, leading to the school district becoming one of the winners of the first Dr. Louisa Moats Award for Excellence Implementing the Science of Reading.

Jones will also address:

Why her district chose a program aligned with the science of reading

How the district encouraged teacher buy-in

Challenges faced in a district-wide implementation

Tips for administrators to roll out a new literacy professional learning program

We hope you will join us.
Listen Now

The Science of Reading: A Defining Movement

Guest: Dr. Maria Murray, Founder and President of The Reading League

The future depends on our children and one way to fully empower them is to recognize that literacy is a fundamental right in society. Join Dr. Maria Murray-founder and president and CEO of The Reading League-for an innovative podcast episode as she explains why the science of reading is now regarded as a defining movement and addresses the need to protect the integrity of its findings so that the promise of successful reading outcomes for our students can be realized.

In this podcast, Dr. Murray will discuss:

Defining the Science of Reading

Recognizing literacy as a human right

What the Science of Reading is NOT

'Science' separates what the Science of Reading is

What we have learned; What we still have to learn

How to be good citizens for the Science of Reading

Creating equity and much more!

You don't want to miss this engaging conversation!
Listen Now

Education Funding Series Part 2: Understanding ESSA and Other Funding Options

Guest: Victoria Akosile, SIIA
The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) is a hot topic. ESSA is intended to ensure that all students receive a high-quality education that prepares them for long-term success, and includes a repeal of the Adequate Yearly Progress report in favor of state accountability. With every state having their own plan for ESSA, it is hard to know how to get started. We're here to help! In this podcast, you will learn how to find out the accountability requirements of your state, how to obtain funding for your school or district, and much more.

Additional topics include:

We hope you will join us!
Listen Now

Education Funding Series Part 1: The CARES Act

Guest: Jon Hummell
During uncertain times-and as schools recover from a year like no other-education funding is more important than ever. The CARES Act, which passed in April 2020, includes $13.2 billion for an Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) fund and $3 billion for a Governor's Emergency Education Relief (GEER) fund in order to help school districts overcome the unique challenges associated with the pandemic. Join us for the first podcast in our funding series and learn everything a school or district administrator needs to know about the CARES Act.

Topics include:

How to get much-needed CARES Act funding to your school/school district

What funding options are available through the CARES Act

The best way to determine school/district needs

How states and school districts are spending their CARES Act funds

Why ESSA-Rated Solutions are Needed to Address Equity Gaps

Guest: Pam Austin
Despite the efforts of the American education system to provide an equal education for all students, achievement gaps between disadvantaged and more advantaged students remain and often lead to negative outcomes.

The passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) represents an opportunity for districts to choose intervention solutions that bridge the gap and help all students receive an education that prepares them for future success. In this informative podcast, host Pam Austin will discuss why ESSA-rated solutions are so important in addressing equity gaps and offer strategies for educators to immediately use in the classroom.

During the podcast, we will discuss:

We hope you will join us.

Look Ahead to Summer and Fall Success Using Spring Assessment Data

Guest: Dr. Kelly A. Powell-Smith
With vaccination efforts in full swing, September is likely to see a strong return to in-classroom instruction. How can educators prepare for summer school or a new school year after students have seen extended periods outside the classroom? In this important podcast, assessment expert Dr. Kelly Powell Smith-vice president and associate director of research and development at Acadience-shares the key indicators that educators should look for when reviewing spring literacy assessment scores, along with how to pinpoint where students are struggling so you can plan for summer or fall intervention and instruction.

The Science of Reading: Why Didn't We Learn What We Needed to Know in College?

Guest: Donna Hejtmanek
Research shows a gap between what teachers know about reading and whether or not they are prepared to teach it. Why are teachers graduating from college without the skills they need to teach reading? Join former educator Donna Hejtmanek as she discusses this topic and shares the story behind creating her incredibly popular Facebook group "Science of Reading-What I Should Have Learned in College."

How to Use Sound Walls to Transform Reading Instruction

Guests: Dr. Mary Dahlgren, Dr. Antonio Fierro
We now know sound walls should replace word walls in the classroom, but what are the best ways to integrate them into your daily lesson to educate and engage your students, including English language learners? In this informative podcast with literacy experts Dr. Mary Dahlgren and Dr. Antonio Fierro, our educators share tips about how to use your sound wall to transform reading instruction.

The Importance of Explicit Reading Instruction

Guest: Dr. Anita Archer, explicit instruction expert and author
Explicit reading instruction is an approach to teaching reading that is based on research about the brain and how we learn, combined with structured and sequenced literacy instruction. Join explicit instruction expert Dr. Anita Archer for this informative podcast as she discusses the importance of explicit instruction and how it promotes achievement for students of all reading levels.

New Year, New Name, Same Assessment: What Happened to DIBELS Next?

Guests: Guests: Alisa Dorman, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at Acadience® Learning and Kristen Biadasz, Senior Product Marketing Manager of Assessment at Voyager Sopris Learning®
Valid, reliable, and research-based assessment is crucial to helping educators predict early reading success and to identify students experiencing difficulty acquiring foundational literacy skills. Add in a novel virus and an abrupt switch to remote learning in the spring-followed by an uncertain fall where return to school was either in-person, remote, or a hybrid environment-and you have a school year like no other. Now, educators are left seeking meaningful assessment data they can trust to assist their students, regardless of the learning environment.

As 2020 began, the assessment you knew as DIBELS Next® acquired a new name, Acadience® Reading K-6. Do you know why the name changed and that Acadience Reading (and its product family) are the only assessments developed by authors Dr. Roland Good III and Dr. Ruth Kaminski, based on 30 years of research? Join us as we discuss how Acadience Learning assessments can be used to support data-driven instructional decisions and improve

If you used DIBELS Next in the past, and/or are thinking about how to use assessment to drive student instruction in your school or district, this is a can't-miss podcast.

Equitable Practices in Assessment, Grading, and Reporting in the Time of COVID

Guest: Dr. Thomas Guskey, Professor Emeritus in the College of Education, University of Kentucky
The past year has uncovered more equity issues in education than in years before. The struggle to provide equitable access to technology, learning tools, emotional support, and even meals is now at the forefront of educators' minds as they struggle to keep learning going forward for their students. Join us for a timely discussion about equity in education, specifically around assessment, with assessment expert Dr. Thomas Guskey.

The Impact of COVID Learning Loss on Reading Fluency

Guest: Dr. Tim Rasinski, Professor of Literacy Education, Kent State University
This school year, the importance of closing reading gaps and maintaining strong skills is more important than ever due to COVID learning loss and a shift to remote learning. Join us for a timely and insightful podcast with respected literacy expert and author Dr. Tim Rasinski, as he discusses the long-term impact of COVID learning loss on reading fluency and skills. Dr. Rasinski will share strategies educators can use to help students maintain strong reading skills, whether they are learning remotely or in the classroom.

Our Journey from Dyslexia to Literacy

Guest: Lois Letchford, author of 'Reversed'
Lois Letchford was told by a teacher that her son, Nicholas, was "the worst child (she's) ever seen in (her) 25 years of teaching." Instead of giving up and giving in, Letchford became a passionate advocate for literacy and children who have been left behind by the educational system. Join us for an inspiring conversation as she shares how she helped her son beat the odds and overcome dyslexia, and how she discovered her own dyslexia.

Preparing Educators for Remote Learning Success During an Uncertain Fall: A Conversation with Rick Ferdig

Guest: Dr. Rick Ferdig, Summit Professor of Learning Technologies and Professor of Educational Technology at Kent State University
Unlike Spring of 2020, this fall we have the opportunity to prepare for distance learning as students return to the classroom. But many questions still remain-will students return to the classroom or remote learning, or both? Will educators be ready? What can school leaders do to help educators prepare for blended or remote learning? Join our timely discussion with remote learning expert Dr. Rick Ferdig, an educator with over 20 years' experience in blended-learning instruction, as he discusses how to help educators plan for a school year unlike any others we have experienced.

Righting the Wrongs of the Elementary Education System: A Conversation with Education Journalist Natalie Wexler

Guest: Natalie Wexler, literacy expert and author of The Knowledge Gap
The American elementary education system continues to value so-called reading comprehension skills over knowledge, when in fact those skills are largely dependent on knowledge. Low-income students continue to struggle while children of educated parents with higher-income levels acquire more academic knowledge and vocabulary outside school, giving them an additional advantage over their more disadvantaged peers. In the past twenty years, a regime of high-stakes reading and math tests, intended to address educational inequity, has only exacerbated the problem. But there is much that schools can do to provide all students with access to the kind of knowledge that can boost outcomes on tests and in life.

Retire Your Word Wall: How Sound Walls Support the Science of Reading

Guest: Mary Ellis Dahlgren, Ed.D., literacy expert and president of Tools 4 Reading
According to the science of reading, students need to master phonemic awareness skills before they match the sounds to print, and phonics instruction is needed before students begin decoding text. We know this information, yet A-Z alphabetical word walls are still used in many classrooms, requiring students to match print to speech instead of sound. In this podcast, literacy and sound wall expert Dr. Mary Dahlgren will share why it is so important to implement a sound wall in the classroom and how it benefits reading development.

Running the Distance and Beating the Odds: Dyslexia Is a Superpower

Guest: Jared Blank, runner, dyslexia advocate/public speaker
At the age of 5, Jared Blank was diagnosed with Dyslexia and Sensory Processing Disorder. With the support of his family and community, he beat the odds. Once told he would never graduate from high school, Blank graduated from the University of Southern California and earned two Masters degrees. In 2018, he ran the World Marathon Challenge (seven marathons, on seven continents, in seven days) to raise awareness for the International Dyslexia Association ®.

The Ties Between Social Emotional Learning and Language and Literacy Development

Guest: Dr. Brandi Kenner, Founder and CEO of Choice-filled Lives Network
Did you know language development is one of the most critical cognitive functions that supports social and emotional learning? During this podcast, educator and Reading League presenter Dr. Brandi Kenner takes an in-depth look at the ties between language and literacy development and SEL, including the role an educator plays in keeping learning brains activated and empowering student voices.

Educator Accountability: Preparing for the Tough Literacy Challenges Faced by English Language Learners

Guest: Antonio Fierro, reading consultant, award-winning educator, and LETRS instructor
Schools are failing to support English language learners by not providing educators with the knowledge they need to teach reading effectively. With literacy leading as the main indicator of academic success, it is time for educators to accept responsibility for preparing ELLs for the tough challenges they face along the path to literacy, and learn ways to help these students reach literacy success.

In this podcast, Dr. Antonio Fierro shares his journey from English learner to award-winning educator. He talks about the knowledge he gained from working with educators across the country in the science of reading, including the crucial knowledge educators need to work effectively with ELLs.

Blended Learning: The Importance of Technology in the Literacy Classroom

Guest: Carl Hooker, author, blogger, and innovator
In recent years, many school districts have implemented a blended-learning model of literacy instruction that incorporates teacher-taught curriculum with student-driven technology. This shift creates a more flexible classroom for the educator, and also offers more opportunities to tailor instruction to individual student needs, especially students who are struggling. In this podcast, Hooker discusses the future of blended learning, why it is so important in the classroom, and how it can help create new learning opportunities for students who are struggling. If you currently use a blended-literacy program in your classroom, or are considering using one, this podcast is for you.

Visible Learning for Literacy: Maximizing Teacher Impact and Accelerating Student Learning

Guest: John Hattie, author and learning/teaching expert
If you agree with John Hattie's statement, "every student deserves a great teacher, not by chance, but by design," then this podcast is for you. Become a "change agent" in your district, school, or classroom as you learn from a respected expert about how you can implement the practices that accelerate student literacy.

Dyslexia Screening: What You Need to Know

Guest: Dr. Roland Good, President, Acadience Learning
Dyslexia screening is crucial to verifying the presence of dyslexia and providing the diagnostic documentation required for eligibility in specially designed programs throughout a student's educational career. Dyslexia screening results also provide educators with the intervention strategies they need to help students reach their full academic potential. Join this podcast to learn more about how to use data to pinpoint the signs of dyslexia and create a roadmap to student success.

Implementing SEL in Your School/District: Why Student Success Depends Upon It

Guest: Andrea Samadi, author and program developer at Achieveit360
School districts and government agencies across the country are seeing the importance of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) in the classroom. SEL is an essential factor in providing students with the knowledge, attitude, and skills they need to succeed in school, careers, and life. In this podcast, Samadi discusses tools, resources, and ideas to implement proven strategies backed by the most current neuroscience research to help you achieve the long-term gains of implementing a SEL program in your school or district.

American Schools Are Failing Students with Dyslexia: What Can We Do about It?

Guest: Emily Hanford, senior correspondent and producer, APM Reports
Across the country, public schools are failing to identify students with dyslexia and, therefore, unable to provide the intervention and treatment they need. In this special podcast for Dyslexia Awareness Month, Emily Hanford, APM Reports senior correspondent, discusses how American schools continue to shy away from the word "dyslexia" and teach students with reading approaches not backed by scientific evidence. How can we help these students? What kinds of instruction are the most helpful?

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Guest: Thomas C. Murray It's no secret: School and district leaders set the tone for the culture within the organization. Although every employee is ultimately responsible for creating an environment where students want to be, school leaders must model the way.

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Science of Reading: The Podcast, hosted by Susan Lambert, delivers the latest insights from researchers and practitioners in early reading. Listen today!

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Atlanta Speech School Pop-up Early Learning

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Atlanta Speech School Pop-up Early Learning

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Eight weeks of free video lessons including stories, enrichment activities, and songs, based on the critical parts of a preschool day.
Enroll Now

Video Lessons for Families from Real Educators

Available for free from any computer or smartphone

8 weeks of flexible activities broken down into easy-to-follow steps

Designed to support your child's development in empathy, language & literacy

Morning songs that build language skills

Story reads that emphasize age-relevant vocabulary

Enrichment activities that build motor & math skills

Fun Friday activities to connect with our community!

Pop-Up Toddler

Designed for children 1-2 years old and their families.
Toddler Lessons
Pop-Up Preschool

Designed for children 3-4 years old and their families.
Preschool Lessons The Cox Campus is committed to ensuring literacy and justice for all. Through impactful strategies and learning experiences, families, educators, and anyone who works with children can make a difference by bringing the science of reading within reach for each child.

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Powered by the Atlanta Speech School and the Cox Campus. Our goal is to meet the needs of families by providing free online learning experiences, so your child can learn and grow in the safest possible environment - your home.

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Teaching Irregular "Heart" Words from UFLI

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Teaching Irregular "Heart" Words from UFLI

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University of Florida College of Education

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Many common words present challenges to children because they are irregular in some way. An irregular word is a word that presents a challenge for decoding. These words contain elements that do not follow the most common letter-sound correspondences. Some words are permanently irregular. In these words, the sounds of the letters are unique to that word or to a very small number of words. Other words are temporarily irregular. This means that the student has not yet learned the letter-sound correspondences in the word.

Although irregular words can be challenging, there are effective methods for teaching them. The good news is that, in most common irregular words, only one or two letters don't adhere to expected phoneme-grapheme correspondences. This means children can learn to decode most of the word, and they only have to learn one or two letters "by heart." The Heart Words materials below can be used to teach irregular words this way. This approach can promote children's orthographic mapping.

Once an irregular word has been introduced and taught, which includes sounding out the decodable parts and recognizing the part(s) that need to be learned by heart, flash cards can be an effective tool for practice. For many readers, irregular words are committed to memory after only a few (1-4) exposures. A struggling reader may need 20 or more exposures to the same word before it can be recognized on sight.

Here's a helpful article about teaching irregular words.
https://www.readingrockets.org/article/new-model-teaching-high-frequency-words

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Many common words present challenges to children because they are irregular in some way. An irregular word is a word that presents a challenge for decoding. These words contain elements that do not follow the most common letter-sound correspondences. Some words are permanently irregular.

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Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade

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Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade

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Assisting Students Struggling with Reading: RTI and MTSS in the Primary Grades

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Assisting Students Struggling with Reading: RTI and MTSS in the Primary Grades

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This practice guide was prepared for the WWC by Mathematica under contract ED-07-CO-0062.

The following research staff contributed to the guide: Kristin Hallgren, Scott Cody, and Cassie Pickens Jewell.

These videos were prepared by WestEd under the Doing What Works Contract (ED-PEP-11-C-0068).
All videos are based on recommendations from the WWC practice guides and are designed to complement the guides.

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response to intervention assisting students struggling with reading: response to intervention and multi-tier intervention in the primary grades beginning reading struggling reading elementary student reading multi-tier intervention tier 1 tier 2 tier 3 reading instruction progress monitoring screening explicit instruction supplemental instruction

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WWC | Assisting Students Struggling with Reading: Response to Intervention (RtI) and Multi-Tier Intervention in the Primary Grades

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This guide offers five specific recommendations to help educators identify struggling readers and implement evidence-based strategies to promote their reading achievement.

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Improving Reading Comprehension in Kindergarten through Third Grade

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Improving Reading Comprehension in Kindergarten through Third Grade

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WWC | Improving Reading Comprehension in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade

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Students who read with understanding at an early age gain access to a broader range of texts, knowledge, and educational opportunities, making early reading comprehension instruction particularly critical. This guide recommends five specific steps that teachers, reading coaches, and principals can t…

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What Has Research Taught Us About How Children Learn to Read?

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What Has Research Taught Us About How Children Learn to Read?

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Seidenberg- What Has Reserach Taught Us About How Children Learn to Read.pdf

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Find science of reading resources, recommended books, and professional development videos to build your professional knowledge.

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The Reading League (TRL) is a national education non-profit led by educators and reading experts
dedicated to promoting knowledge to reimagine the future of reading education and accelerate the
global movement toward reading instruction rooted in science. Our purpose is to increase knowledge
of scie…

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This channel is about teaching and learning the building blocks of words - sounds and their letters (i.e. Phonemic Awareness and Phonics, two key subskills for learning to read and spell). I'm a Speech Pathologist in Melbourne, Australia.

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FIVE from FIVE aims to improve literacy levels by ensuring all children receive effective, evidence based reading instruction.

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Teachable Moments Videos - AIM Institute for Learning & Research

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Teachable Moments Videos - These brief conversations with experts in the field of literacy, neuroscience, language and education, filmed during visits to AIM, are intended to address commonly asked questions, preview or review critical information or create further interest in topics related to student achievement.

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An international and interdisciplinary collaborative non-profit organization bringing researchers, practitioners, educators, and technology specialists to bring literacy to all

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Shanahan on Literacy has a variety of literacy blogs in one place. Find out here the information that can use by teachers and parents in teaching and assessing reading, writing, and literacy. Read more here!

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OSDE: Parent Community Engagement resources

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OSDE: Parent Community Engagement resources

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The Oklahoma State Department of Education is committed to strengthening and increasing family and community engagement to support student learning. The Office of Family and Community Engagement provides guidance, resources and support for families, schools, and communities as they work together to build meaningful partnerships that promote student success. We know these partnerships ultimately lead to significant gains in student achievement.

Register

Registration For The 2021 Connected Together & Stronger Than Ever National Family And Community Engagement Conference is now open. For more information and to register, click here.

New Resource

The Oklahoma Family Engagement Framework invites families, schools, and communities to partner to support student learning. It brings research and local experience together to create a vision for family engagement.

Oklahoma Family Engagement Framework

Covid-19 Resources

The successful reopening of school buildings and planning for potential short-term disruptions to instruction will require a renewed effort by our school leaders to plan and support family and community engagement. New resources are now available to help you identify key opportunities for engaging families.

New Resources:

Engaging Families in Reopening Our Schools

Engaging Families to Support Distance Learning

Oklahoma's Pathways for Family Engagement

Family and Community Engagement is a shared responsibility among families, schools, and communities to build relationships that support a child's learning and growth from birth through college and career. These four pathways will help establish strong family, school, and community partnerships.

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The Oklahoma State Department of Education is committed to strengthening and increasing family and community engagement to support student learning. The Office of Family and Community Engagement provides guidance, resources and support for families, schools, and communities as they work together to build meaningful partnerships that promote student success.

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OSDE: Engaging Families in Reopening Our Schools

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OSDE: Engaging Families in Reopening Our Schools

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Children's knowledge of letter names and shapes is a strong predictor of their success in learning to read. Knowing letter names is strongly related to children's ability to remember the forms of written words and their ability to treat words as sequences of letters.

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William Van Cleave: Syntax Matters webinar

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William Van Cleave: Syntax Matters webinar

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William Van Cleave: Grammar Builder Charts

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William Van Cleave: Grammar Builder Charts

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William Van Cleave: Grammar Builder Dice

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William Van Cleave: Grammar Builder Dice

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Anita Archer: Explicit Instruction for Vocabulary (Kindergarten)

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Anita Archer: Explicit Instruction for Vocabulary (Kindergarten)

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Vocabulary Instruction - K

Grade Level: Kindergarten

School: McKinley Elementary School

Location: Tacoma, Washington

Materials: Honk!: The Story of a Prima Swanerina by Pamela Duncan Edwards

Videographer: Dima Yaremenko
Elapsed Time: 6:16

Introduction:Even as students enter kindergarten, there are huge differences in their individual vocabularies. If we are to narrow the achievement gap that students from different economic levels exhibit in the upper grades, we must provide systematic, robust explicit vocabulary instruction in the primary grades.

One of the best sources of vocabulary words is the books that we read aloud to students. In this video, the students have listened to the book Honk!: The Story of a Prima Swanerina. They are being introduced to the meanings of three words from the story.

This vocabulary instruction is presented at the end of a 90-minute reading period including the reading of Honk! The troops are restless. This video is a great reminder of the difficulties in delivering instruction and maintaining the attention of the students. There is no doubt about it ... teaching is hard work.
Focus: As you watch this video, ask yourself:
1) Did the Teacher use an instructional routine for teaching each vocabulary term including these steps:
a) Introduce the word?
b) Present a student-friendly explanation?
c) Illustrate the word with examples?
d) Check students' understanding?
e) Review the words?

What other good practices did you observe?

What suggestions would you give the teacher?
Feedback: 1) Did the Teacher use an instructional routine for teaching each vocabulary term including these steps:
a) Introduce the word?
b) Present a student-friendly explanation?
c) Illustrate the word with examples?
d) Check students' understanding?
e) Review the words?
The teacher followed all of these steps when introducing each word. At the end of the lesson, the teacher reviewed the words. This video shows that the practice of using instructional routines supports teachers even when the group is a little more challenging (though very sweet).
2) What other good practices did you observe?
During the lesson, the teacher actively involved the students by having them:

Say answers as a whole group.

Share ideas with their partners.

Share ideas with their partners and then with the class.

Respond with movement and facial gestures.

The instructor augmented the vocabulary instruction by:

Adding the use of gestures and movement.

Checking understanding using examples and non-examples.

Conveying the usefulness in learning the three words.

Adding humor.

What suggestions would you give the teacher?
If I taught this lesson again, I would do these things:

Perhaps, teach the vocabulary at a later time in the day after reviewing the read-aloud. OR

Create a better environment that would promote student attention by:

Putting the last two rows of children in chairs so they would be more visible.

Reorganizing the seating arrangement so that the inattentive students were closer to the teacher.

More carefully selecting the partners.

Reorganizing the schedule of activities so that the students would have an activity at their desk before this lesson.

Be careful in the choice of words. I would teach the word 'practice' rather than 'practiced'. It was confusing to switch between the two words.

But most importantly, I would be careful that I acted as if I expected participation. At the end of video, when the students did not all respond, I simply did a "do over". "I need everyone." As soon as I started to expect participation and instigated gentle "do overs", the students began to respond more consistently. It reminded me, "It is not what we tell students we want, but how we act in concert with our requests that students attend to."

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Explicit Instructions | Effective and Efficient Teaching

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Grade Level: Kindergarten School: McKinley Elementary School Location: Tacoma, Washington Materials: Honk!: The Story of a Prima Swanerina by Pamela Duncan Edwards Videographer: Dima Yaremenko Elapsed Time: 6:16 Introduction:Even as students enter kindergarten, there are huge differences in their individual vocabularies.

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Modeling Retell - 1st

Grade Level: First Grade

School: Waiakea Elementary School

Location: Hilo, Hawaii

Videographer: Dima Yaremenko
Elapsed Time: 8:00
Introduction: When comprehension strategies are introduced, they should be carefully modeled so that students will have a good idea of how to proceed. During modeling, the teacher should show and tell students how to perform the strategy. If the demonstration is long, it is also wise to elicit responses from the students. In this video, Dr. Archer is modeling how to retell a factual article using word prompts.

Focus: As you watch this video,
List any good practices that you observed. Feedback: List any good practices that you observed. During the lesson, the teacher: 1. Elicited responses from the students including:

Group responses (Choral responses)

Partner responses

Thumbs up/down.

2. Maintained the attention of the students by:

Being prepared for instruction

Using a perky pace

Monitoring students as they worked with partners

Creating a positive environment

Acknowledging students for their efforts withpositive comments and the butterfly clap.

3. Modeled retell by:

Showing and telling students how to retell

Involving students in the retell.

4. Monitored and coached students by:

Moving from partners to partners.

Using the monitoring strategy: "Walk around. Look around. Talk around.

Prompting them with "What happened next?"

5. Monitored and adjusted the lesson by:

Directing partners to prompt their partners with the question, "What happened next?"

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Explicit Instructions | Effective and Efficient Teaching

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Grade Level: First Grade School: Waiakea Elementary School Location: Hilo, Hawaii Videographer: Dima Yaremenko Elapsed Time: 8:00 Introduction: When comprehension strategies are introduced, they should be carefully modeled so that students will have a good idea of how to proceed. During modeling, the teacher should show and tell students how to perform the strategy.

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Achievethecore.org :: Instructional Practice Guide: Academic Word Finder

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This guide is a practical tool that teachers, and teacher-trainers, can use (and re-use!) in order to build fluency with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).

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SAP: EL Support for Writing and Discussion

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SAP: EL Support for Writing and Discussion

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It is important for English Language Learners to be able to participate fully in grade-level writing and discussion activities. As they continue to develop English language skills, they may benefit from specific scaffolding strategies designed to support their access. This handout describes, and provides examples of, three research-based strategies:

Sentence frames/Starters

Signal Words

Word Banks

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Achievethecore.org :: ELL Supports for Writing and Discussion

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It is important for English Language Learners to be able to participate fully in grade-level writing and discussion activities. As they continue to develop English language skills, they may benefit from specific scaffolding strategies designed to support their access. This handout describes, and pro…

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Resources for building and assessing student fluency to improve reading comprehension

The activities in this weekly reading routine are designed to support growth in all three areas of reading fluency (accuracy, rate, and...

Grades K-12

This seven-step protocol outlines how to perform small group interventions for middle school and high school students reading below gra...

Grades 6-12

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Resources for building and assessing student fluency to improve reading comprehension The activities in this weekly reading routine are designed to support growth in all three areas of reading fluency (accuracy, rate, and... Grades K-12 This seven-step protocol outlines how to perform small group interventions for middle school and high school students reading below gra...

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The activities in this weekly reading routine are designed to support growth in all three areas of reading fluency (accuracy, rate, and expression). Detailed guidance is given on how to implement the routine during in-person (or virtual synchronous learning), virtual asynchronous learning, or limited access/technology situations. See how and when to implement research-based activities such as model reading, choral reading, independent practice, and student performances to build fluency skills.

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The activities in this weekly reading routine are designed to support growth in all three areas of reading fluency (accuracy, rate, and expression). Detailed guidance is given on how to implement the routine during in-person (or virtual synchronous learning), virtual asynchronous learning, or limited access/technology situations.

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Achievethecore.org :: Read Aloud Project

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These lessons can be used immediately in the classroom and for professional development. Learn how to create your own standards-aligned lessons using high quality trade books, or train educators in your district.

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Reading Simplified - streamilined instruction, accelerated achievement

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What's the single best indicator of a good reader?

Rapid, or automatic, word recognition. But young readers...and most striving readers...utterly and totally lack automatic word recognition.

There are thousands of activities that can boost automatic word recognition. Yet, one has been shown through research to be the best activity for rapidly building word recognition speed: re-reading practice.
And what if I told you there was a repeated routine that has the power to double or even TRIPLE the words your kids learn in one week?
It's true!

I'm going to show you a Repeated Reading Routine that will help kids recognize more and more words automatically. On top of this, this re-reading routine will also help develop students' decoding skills, fluency, and even

Sound good?

Great! Let's talk about why repeated reading is so important ( in case you need convincing!)

{To watch a video of my repeated reading routine, hit play below}

Why is a Repeated Reading Routine so Important?

Repeated reading gives kids the confidence and motivation to read fluently and process words automatically.

Research shows that repeated reading paired with guidance and feedback from peers, parents, or teachers are effective in improving a variety of reading skills. According to the U.S. National Reading Panel report, re-reading helps improve students' overall reading ability and makes words "stick."

There's no doubt that repeated reading is a powerful benefit to kids of all stripes, so how can you maximize impact of this strategy?

I talked about the importance of strategic practice in oral reading in my previous blog post, but now I'm going to discuss the three stages of re-reading for rapid growth - so hold onto your hats and let's jump straight in!

Stage 1: During Guided Reading/Small Group Instruction

Re-reading begins with small group instruction where the teacher matches the text selection to the Word Work based on the target sound. This is especially important in the beginning when kids are new to the decoding system. If you're targeting the short "a" or "i," choose a selection of text that also focuses these sounds.

Next, have your students take turns reading aloud new text with coaching from the teacher. This gives each child a chance to read out loud with the teacher's feedback.

One-to-one coaching helps students decode and get better with word identification. However, it's also essential that the teacher holds all of the other students accountable by making sure they're following along with eyes on print.

After each child has read, it's time for the teacher to model a slow (but expressive) read . Kids gain a second exposure to the words before moving onto the third reading session, which involves students chorally re-reading the passage together.

Stage 2: During Literacy Centers/Independent Time

After working with a teacher, the students are ready to do some independent reading. The goal is to have the students re-read the day's passage until it's MASTERED.

The time it takes for a student to master the text will vary from student to student. Some kids might get it within their first few tries while other kids will need more practice before they've mastered the text - and that's okay!

Remember - the goal is to encourage your students to get enough repetition, so they can master the text and move onto a new text!

Don't forget to have your students re-read passages from previous days to review. Yes, you want them to master the new text of the day, BUT you also need to make sure they can re-read previous texts.

Stage 2: During Literacy Centers/Independent Time

After working with a teacher, the students are ready to do some independent reading. The goal is to have the students re-read the day's passage until it's MASTERED.

The time it takes for a student to master the text will vary from student to student. Some kids might get it within their first few tries while other kids will need more practice before they've mastered the text - and that's okay!

Remember - the goal is to encourage your students to get enough repetition, so they can master the text and move onto a new text!

Don't forget to have your students re-read passages from previous days to review. Yes, you want them to master the new text of the day, BUT you also need to make sure they can re-read previous texts.

Techniques to Support Re-Reading Success

Some kids may find all this repeated reading routine uninspiring.

Here are a few tips and ways that you can make re-reading more feasible and enjoyable for your students:

Buddy reading

Listening along with a CD, computer or tablet

Support from a teaching assistant, volunteer or older student

Students recording themselves on tablet/iPad (perhaps submitting to or for the teacher to review)

Students timing themselves to chart their progress

Students preparing for a presentation reading to a group or class (including readers' theatre)

Students read at home with parental support

Stage 3: Next Day During Guided Reading/Small Group Instruction

The third and final step takes place the following day when you expect the kids to come to the reading table having mastered the text. Of course, this doesn't always happen, and some kids will need more support and practice before they've learned the text.

Ask the students to re-read yesterday's passage chorally and some individually. Keep an eye on your students to identify which kids may need some extra help to catch up with the rest of the group.

This is the stage where the accountability of learning really kicks in. It's an excellent assessment, and by having kids re-read the same passage they read the previous day, you can see if they're fluent or not. If not, they may need some more practice and encouragement before they can master the text.

Benefits of this Repeated Reading Routine

This re-reading routine for rapid growth is incredibly beneficial for teaching kids those all-important high frequency words. Repeated reading has a string of positive effects on reading achievement, fluency and even reading comprehension.

Again, here are the main benefits of this repeated reading routine:

Improves word identification

Increases reading fluency

Develops decoding skills

Helps students gain confidence

Improves reading comprehension

Let me know if you try out our repeated reading routine and share your results!

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Repeated Reading Routine for Fluency - Reading Simplified

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Teaching kids all of the sight words can take a lot of time, right? But there's actually a super easy way you can speed up the process with re-reading! In my latest blog post, I share an effective Re-Reading for Fluency Routine that quickly builds sight word automaticity, decoding AND fluency.

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Learn how brain scientists are working to solve the puzzle of why some children struggle to read and others don't.

Learn more about effective classroom strategies to help kids understand - and care about - what they read.

Professional Development Webcasts

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One reading researcher describes reading comprehension as the "essence of reading." Find out more about how to improve reading comprehension for all students - from young preschoolers to students who are struggling and children with learning disabilities. Refresh your reading comprehension instruction!

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More resources: Vocabulary: self-paced course Target the Problem: Vocabulary Vocabulary Apps Topics A-Z: Vocabulary Vocabulary refers to the words we must understand to communicate effectively. Educators often consider four types of vocabulary: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Listening vocabulary refers to the words we need to know to understand what we hear.

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Oral Language: Expanding Your Child's Vocabulary

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Talking to your child helps expand vocabulary, develop background knowledge, and inspire a curiosity about the world - all of which help with learning to read! Here are some simple activities you can do at home to get your child ready to read.

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A big part of learning English is learning how to actually speak it.

Now, this can be tricky to practice in classroom settings.

After all, you can't have meaningful one-on-one conversations with every single student every single class.

This is why it's important to find speaking activities that will include everyone and make learning fun!

Here are 8 different ESL speaking activities for kids to add to your lesson plan!

Contents

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere.Click here to get a copy. (Download)

1. Investigative Journalist

The basis of investigative journalist is for students to interview one another in pairs and present their findings.

It can be used for groups at all skill levels from beginning to advanced, as long as you tailor it to their levels.

Beginners may ask their partners about their family structure, favorite colors and foods, pets and hobbies.

Intermediate students could practice past tense structures by asking about their partner's childhood or what they did over the summer.

Advanced students might benefit from a murder mystery version of the game, where each student is assigned a character to play and the game concludes with the "murderer" being sussed out as a result of the questions.

A great way to prepare students for this versatile activity, no matter their level, is with authentic videos of English conversations from FluentU.

FluentU takes authentic videos-like music videos, movie trailers, news and inspiring talks-and turns them into personalized language lessons.

The FluentU videos are all organized by level and come with interactive captions, flashcards and exercises to help students pick up new words as they watch.

Through these supercharged English dialogues, news reports, interviews, movie clips and more, they'll get comfortable with the types of basic English conversations investigative journalist requires.

Students can access FluentU from their devices as well as it's available as an app for iOS and Android.

2. Debate

Debate is another classic that can incorporate pair or group work, depending on the size of your class.

Create groups and assign each group or pair a side of an argument. Allow the groups time to research their topic and form their argument.

Then you can have the students execute their debate.

While this may sound like a more advanced activity, you can easily tailor it to age and level.

You might have your older and more advanced students arguing a political or ethical issue, while you can just as easily have your younger students argue which candy bar is better.

Debate is made even more interesting when you present students with authentic materials to use as support for their claims.

Check out this video if you want to see how a debate should be run:

3. What's Your Secret?

What's your secret? is a pair work activity that truly involves the whole class.

In this game, each student writes a secret down on a piece of paper, things like: "I play the clarinet." or "I have a twin."

The papers are placed in a hat and each student draws one: that's where the game begins.

The game can either be played by allowing students to mill about the classroom freely or by setting up a speed dating scenario, where each pair has 1 minute to speak before rotating.

Students may ask one another yes/no questions-they may not ask directly if what's on the piece of paper is true about them or not.

Students then must guess to whom the secret they drew belongs.

4. It's Your Turn: Teach a Class!

This is a fun activity for advanced ESL students that reinforces their learning by having them teach something to the class themselves.

Depending on your class size, you can have each student present something on their own or work in pairs or groups. You assign each student, pair or group a grammar, vocab or culture point that they'll have to teach to the class.

They then have to prepare activities and lesson plans to teach the point to the class.

Be sure to assign a time limit depending on how much of your classroom time you'd like to dedicate to this activity.

Unlike many of these other activities, the conclusion portion of this activity is built right in: when the students teach the class, the teacher should play the role of the student, but you may evaluate the lesson at the end and feel free to correct any mistakes the "teachers" make!

5. Following Directions

Following directions is an interesting game that offers a change from classroom routine.

In this game, each student in the pair draws a picture, keeping their paper shielded from the eyes of their partner.

Ideally, pictures should be fairly geometric. Once the picture is complete, they explain to their partner, using words only, how to replicate the image.

For example, if a student has drawn the stereotypical square house with a triangle roof, he might say: "Draw a square in the middle of the paper that's about a third of the size of the paper. Draw an equilateral triangle on top of the square, using the top side of the square as the bottom side of the triangle."

The goal of this game is for each partner to replicate the other's drawing going by these spoken directions.

This activity is great for not only practicing speaking skills, but listening skills as well. If you want to make things competitive, you can offer up a prize for the group that has the best drawing!

6. Yes, No Game

Games can be a great way to mix things up and keep students interested in learning.

This is a game where the only two words that students aren't allowed to say are yes and no.

Pair students off and have them take turns asking each other questions. Students may answer the questions however they like, they just can't say yes or no.

When a student loses, he or she is out and the winning partner is paired with another winning partner. In this way, you can create a tournament of yes, no.

Other versions of the game also forbid "maybe" and "I." Consider these versions when the game is lasting too long or students need an extra challenge.

7. Guess Who

Guess who is a version of 20 questions that focuses entirely on people.

Students draw the name of a famous person out of a hat (you'll need to prepare these slips in advance!) and their partner tries to guess who's on the paper by asking a series of yes/no questions.

Like yes, no, guess who can be turned into a tournament-style game.

To add a cultural aspect, you can have a lesson beforehand on various famous figures in English culture and then have the students play this game to remember who they are.

8. Make a Movie

Making a movie is a fun way to keep students engaged and teach them the importance of speaking.

You can have the whole class do one movie together, split into groups or split into pairs.

If the kids are younger, you can give them a script they need to read out loud. If the kids are a bit older, you can even let them write and perform their own script.

If you do choose to provide the script, try to find the script for a movie that will be familiar to students, such as a Finding Nemo or Shrek.

Try to encourage your students to memorize as much as they can. I recommend at least having a rule that they must look at who they're speaking to in order to avoid a robotic "reading voice."

You can either just have the students perform their movie in front of each other or you can actually record it.

I'd highly suggest recording the movie because then you can play it back for the students to hear their own speech and how they're doing.

Now you have eight different ESL speaking activities to try next class.

You can even mix things up and add your own variations to make things more interesting!

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere.Click here to get a copy. (Download)

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8 ESL Speaking Activities for Kids Sure to Keep Them Entertained | FluentU English Educator Blog

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Need some ESL speaking activities for kids? This post will give you eight fantastic speaking activities that you can try with your students next class! These activities are fun and engaging and make for an easy lesson plan! From playing games to making movies, your sure to find something your students will enjoy!

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Mystery Bag: Developing Oral Language Skills (1st grade)

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Mystery Bag: Developing Oral Language Skills (1st grade)

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oral language activities - Yahoo Search Results Video Search Results

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The search engine that helps you find exactly what you’re looking for. Find the most relevant information, video, images, and answers from all across the Web.

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Anita Archer: Cause and Effect (3rd grade)

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Anita Archer: Cause and Effect (3rd grade)

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Explicit Instructions | Effective and Efficient Teaching

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Anita Archer: Word and Sentence Dictation (2nd grade)

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Anita Archer: Word and Sentence Dictation (2nd grade)

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Explicit Instructions | Effective and Efficient Teaching

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Grade Level: Second Grade Subject: Spelling (encoding to support decoding instruction) School: Roosevelt Elementary School Location: Vancouver, Washington Videographer: Dima Yaremenko Elapsed Time: 8:28 Introduction: Spelling instruction is important for a number of reasons. Obviously, correct spelling of words is a necessary underlying skill for all types of written communication.

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Anita Archer: Decoding Instruction (1st grade)

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Anita Archer: Decoding Instruction (1st grade)

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Explicit Instructions | Effective and Efficient Teaching

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Decoding Instruction Kindergarten

Grade Level: Kindergarten

School: Kihei Elementary School

Location: Maui, Hawaii

Videographer: Dima Yaremenko
Elapsed Time: 12:39
Introduction: While the goal of reading instruction is always comprehension, systematic decoding instruction must occur in the primary grades to form the foundation for comprehension. We must always remember that decoding is necessary, though not sufficient, for comprehension (Students also need sufficient vocabulary and background knowledge and language skills.) There is no comprehension strategy powerful enough to compensate for the fact you can't read the words.

Focus: As you watch this video,
1) Feedback: 1) Note any good instructional practices. Note any good instructional practices.
o When introducing the initial set of words, the teacher used the following steps with each word.

§ (Writing first letter.) "What sound?"

§ (Writing second letter.) "What sound?"

§ (Running finger under two letters.) "Blend it."

§ (Writing third letter.) "What sound?"

§ (Running finger under three letters.) "Blend it."

o When rereading the list of words, the teacher again used an instructional routine so that all "cognitive energy" could be placed on the words not the task.

§ (Pointing to word.) "Sound out this word. Put your thumb up when you know the word."

§ "Whisper that word to your partner." (Teacher monitors individuals.)

§ (Tapping on word.) "What word?"

§ (Erasing word.) "Gone word."

Reread and sentences to increase automaticity on the words.

Stressed meaning even as words are being read

Modeled "curiosity". "I wonder...."

Gained responses from students (choral responses, partner responses, thumbs up, acting out).

Supported the English Language Learners through clear language, repetition, gestures, and demonstrations.

Maintained a positive climate.

o Smiled and nodded at students.

o Verbally acknowledged them.

o Reinforced them with "Gone Word" game and Special Clap.

Put the back row of children in chairs so that they could see the instruction.

Delivered the instruction in an engaging manner.

Conveyed the joy of teaching and learning.

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Explicit Instructions | Effective and Efficient Teaching

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Grade Level: Kindergarten School: Kihei Elementary School Location: Maui, Hawaii Videographer: Dima Yaremenko Elapsed Time: 12:39 Introduction: While the goal of reading instruction is always comprehension, systematic decoding instruction must occur in the primary grades to form the foundation for comprehension.

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Anita Archer: Summary Writing (1st grade)

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Anita Archer: Summary Writing (1st grade)

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Summary Writing Using a Frame - 1st

Grade Level: First Grade

School: Waiakea Elementary School

Location: Hilo, Hawaii

Videographer: Dima Yaremenko
Elapsed Time: 10:14
Introduction: One of the most effective procedures for increasing comprehension is to have students write a summary of what they have read. When writing a summary, the student must carefully consider the information within the passage, select the most salient information for the written summary, and combine ideas when possible into a single sentence. In the process, the student must be conscious of the organization of a

paragraph, the flow from one sentence to the next, and the conventions of writing including spelling and punctuation.

Because of the complexity of writing a summary, primary students initially need a great deal of scaffolding to ensure success. Providing students with a writing frame is one way to support early summary writing. In this video, the students are completing a writing frame summarizing an expository article that they have read on the stages of the life of a butterfly.

Focus: As you watch this video,

1) List any good practices that you observe during this video segment.
Feedback 1) List any good practices that you observe during this video segment. During the lesson, the teacher: 1. Elicited responses from the students including:
* Group responses (Choral responses),

* Partner responses,

* Partner responses followed by individual responses, and

* Thumbs up/down.
2. Maintained the attention of the students by:
* Being prepared for instruction,

* Using a perky pace,

* Monitoring students as they worked with partners, and

* Creating a positive environment.
3. Supported students in writing a summary by:
* Guiding students in filling in a frame.

* Modeling rereading of the frame as they proceeded and asking

"Does it make sense."

* Modeling spelling strategies including:

"Look and copy." (caterpillar, chrysalis)

Saying a word slowly. Segmenting the word into sounds and

writing the corresponding letters. (cracks)

* Providing support for spelling by listing words on the overhead.
4. Provided very clear expectations throughout the lesson by:
* Getting students' attention before giving directions.

* Having students put their pencils in the air when important directions

were given. When doing this, students had to lift their bodies and

attend to the teacher.

5. Monitored and coached individual students by using the strategy of Walk around, Look Around, Talk Around.

* Walking around (Circulating around the room.)

* Looking around (Examining students papers.)

* Talking around. (Providing praise, encouragement, and corrections.)

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Explicit Instructions | Effective and Efficient Teaching

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Grade Level: First Grade School: Waiakea Elementary School Location: Hilo, Hawaii Videographer: Dima Yaremenko Elapsed Time: 10:14 Introduction: One of the most effective procedures for increasing comprehension is to have students write a summary of what they have read.

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Anita Archer: Explicit Instruction for Vocabulary (2nd grade)

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Anita Archer: Explicit Instruction for Vocabulary (2nd grade)

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Vocabulary Instruction - 2nd

Grade Level: Second Grade

School: McKinley Elementary School

Location: Tacoma, Washington

Materials: Wolf! By Becky Bloom

Videographer: Dima Yaremenko
Elapsed Time: 7:54 Introduction:
The students have listened to the read aloud book, Wolf! by Becky Bloom. During the reading of the book, brief explanations of words were given. Three words were selected for explicit, robust vocabulary instruction: concentrate, impressed, and educated.

Focus: As you watch this video, ask yourself:

1) What instructional steps were used to introduce each of the vocabulary words?

2) What other good instructional practices did you observe?
Feedback:

These instructional steps were used:

Write the word on the board or show it on a screen.

Pronounce the word or guide students in using their decoding skills to determine the pronunciation of the word.

Have students pronounce the word, repeating the word a number of times if the word is unfamiliar or difficult to pronounce.

Be sure that the definition contains only known words and is easy to understand.

The examples can be concrete, visual, or verbal.

Verbal examples were used to illustrate concentrate, impressed, and educated.

Use one of these methods:

Ask "deep processing questions".

Have students discern between examples and non-examples.

Have students generate examples.

The instructor:

Group responses (choral responses) when the answers were short and the same.

Partner responses when the answers were long or different.

Partner responses followed by individual turns.

Thumbs up to indicate that they had an answer.

Infusing decoding in presentation of words by having students read the long words by parts.

Involving the students in the examples.

Providing multiple exposures to each word.

Relating the words to their use in the read aloud book.

Reviewing words at the end with simple word associations.

Suggesting ways that the words could be used.

c. Coached students during partner responses allowing students to experience success when they answered in front of classmates.
NOTE: In the video entitled Read Aloud - Wolf 2nd, the students participate in the reading of the book, Wolf! After the read aloud, students are taught three words from the story as shown in this video.

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Explicit Instructions | Effective and Efficient Teaching

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Grade Level: Second Grade School: McKinley Elementary School Location: Tacoma, Washington Materials: Wolf! By Becky Bloom Videographer: Dima Yaremenko Elapsed Time: 7:54 Introduction: The students have listened to the read aloud book, Wolf! by Becky Bloom. During the reading of the book, brief explanations of words were given.

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Fluency is the ability to read a text accurately, quickly, and with expression.Fluent reading builds stamina for reading lengthy or complex texts. Reading fluency serves as a bridge between word recognition and comprehension.

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From Lisa Meechan a site with links to free decodable text

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From Lisa Meechan a site with links to free decodable text

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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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The Thirty Million Word Center for Early Learning 

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The Thirty Million Word Center for Early Learning 

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Directed by Dr. Dana Suskind, the TMW center is an innovative, evidence-based intervention program designed to help narrow the language gap between children from lower-income families and those in wealthier households.

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TMW Center for Early Learning + Public Health

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The case for revolutionizing child care in America

This Planet Money feature on Dana Suskind's new book, Parent Nation, explains that "millions of kids in America are getting left behind during their first three years of life - years that a heap of scientific evidence says are crucial to their brain development." And "To fix that, (Suskind) argues, America needs much stronger policies to support parents and caregivers at this early stage."

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TMW Center for Early Learning + Public Health

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The case for revolutionizing child care in America This Planet Money feature on Dana Suskind's new book, Parent Nation, explains that "millions of kids in America are getting left behind during their first three years of life - years that a heap of scientific evidence says are crucial to their brain development."

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A blog from Little Miss DHT

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Why Fluency is a Foundational Skill

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Why Fluency is a Foundational Skill With Dr. Jan Hasbrouck

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Alphabet Recognition Pages - WorksheetWorks.com

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Create a worksheet: Recognize letters of the alphabet in nonsequential order

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A Syntax-Focused Kindergarten Lesson from Literacy How

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A Syntax-Focused Kindergarten Lesson from Literacy How

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Ohio Department of Education: Literacy Academy: Understanding the How and Why of Sound Walls

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Ohio Department of Education and Workforce

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Understanding the How and Why of Sound Walls

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

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

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Dr. Mary Dahlren

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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.

Mary Dahlgren, Ed.D., is a national LETRS® trainer and a literacy consultant at Tools 4 Reading. She is the coauthor of Fundamentals of Literacy Instruction, targeted professional development for teachers in grades K-3.

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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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(Free) The books are grouped in a developing order based on the order of sounds introduced in the Jolly Phonics early literacy program.

Each book is published with suggestions on how parents, tutors and teachers can get the most out of the book.

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Free downloadable decodable books.

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Professional Learning Module on text types with resources for decodable text

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Linda Farrell: Using Decodable Books and Early Leveled Readers Appropriately for Beginning Readers

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Linda Farrell: Using Decodable Books and Early Leveled Readers Appropriately for Beginning Readers

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Voyager Sopris Webinar Series

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Emily Gibbons Blog: The Best Resources for Decodable Book and Passages

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Free Decodable Chapter Books from Simple Words

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Free Decodable Chapter Books from Simple Words

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Six free decodable text chapter books from Simple Words

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Sample Chapter Books from Simple Words- 6 books.pdf

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IES Guide: Teaching Elementary School Students to Be Effective Writers

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IES Guide: Teaching Elementary School Students to Be Effective Writers

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From the University of Kansas: WRITE           Writing stRategies for Instructional Technology in Education (WRITE) was developed for educators to better understand and then apply effective technology solutions aligned with evidence-based writing interventions. WRITE is designed to support instructional interventions for all students, especially those who struggle with writing. 

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From the University of Kansas: WRITE           Writing stRategies for Instructional Technology in Education (WRITE) was developed for educators to better understand and then apply effective technology solutions aligned with evidence-based writing interventions. WRITE is designed to support instructional interventions for all students, especially those who struggle with writing. 

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A DO NOT MISS RESOURCE!

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About WRITE

Writing stRategies for Instructional Technology in Education (WRITE) was developed for educators to better understand and then apply effective technology solutions aligned with evidence-based writing interventions. WRITE began at the University of Kansas with funding through the US Department of Education's Office of Special Education Programs. WRITE is designed to support instructional interventions for all students, especially those who struggle with writing.

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WRITE - Writing stRategies for Instructional Technology in Education

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Writing stRategies for Instructional Technology in Education (WRITE) was developed for educators to better understand and then apply effective technology solutions aligned with evidence-based writing interventions. WRITE began at the University of Kansas with funding through the US Department of Education's Office of Special Education Programs. WRITE is designed to support instructional interventions for all students, especially those who struggle with writing.

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From Keys to Content Writing Professional Book Study Guide (for use with the Keys to Content Writing training book) The Writing Rope: Grades 3-12 WAG (Writing Assignment Guide) Writing Beliefs Poster Writing is Thinking Poster Writing Process Steps Template for Collecting Source Information W Cards Comprehensive Information Writing Checklist [French] Comprehensive Information Writing Rubric Comprehensive Argument Writing Checklist Comprehensive Argument […]

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One Sentence At A Time: Data-Based Instruction in Beginning Writing: A Manual

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One Sentence At A Time: Data-Based Instruction in Beginning Writing: A Manual

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Judith Hochman and Natalie Wexler

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Recorded webinar: The Simple View of Writing

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0:00 / 57:28•Watch full video

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by Kidz Skillz

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0:00 / 4:00•Watch full video

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Handwriting Manuscript Stroke Descriptions

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JavaScript is not active on your browser. This webite requires JavaScript in order to function.

Handwriting Worksheets

These are the latest versions of the handwriting worksheets. They have been rewritten to use sweeping lines instead of static fonts. This results in natural curves that match how cursive lines are actually written. Some additional formats and features will be added as we continue development. Please let us know if you have any issues using them.

Copyright © 2002-2023 WorksheetWorks.com All Rights Reserved.

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teaching materials worksheets printables math fractions handwriting geometry homeschooling classroom teachers parents geography spelling language puzzles

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Find worksheets about Handwriting Practice

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Orthographic Mapping: What It Is and Why It Is So Important

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Orthographic Mapping: What it Is and Why It's So Important

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A New Model for Teaching High Frequency Words: Linda Farrell, Tina Osenga, and Michael Hunter

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How Should I Teach Sight Words?

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Share Get link Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Other Apps

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A New, Phonics-Based Approach to Teaching High Frequency Words (handout)

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3.HANDOUT HF Words CO READing Farrell_Hunter.pptx.pdf

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Make Tricky Words Sticky: https://bit.ly/2Rf9KZb

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Blog: Teach "Sight Words" As You Would Other Words

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Blog: Teach "Sight Words" As You Would Other Words

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ILA- Nell Duke and Heidi Mesmer

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In many classrooms we visit, "sight words" receive a very different kind of instruction than other words, taught primarily as an exercise in visual memorization. In this post, we explain why sight words should be taught much as you would teach any other words.

First, a note about terminology: The term sight word means any word that can be read automatically (Ehri, 2005). Ultimately, any word can and should be a sight word, not just words from the Dolch or Fry lists, for example. For skilled readers, virtually all words have already become sight words. At this point, readers no longer need to engage in decoding (e.g., /c/-/a/-/t/ = /cat/); using an analogy (e.g., cat: like bat with a c); or using sentence context to figure out the words (Ehri, 2005)-they can now read them automatically, without conscious attention. In contrast, often people use the term sight words to mean high-frequency words, many of which do not follow typical English letter-sound relationships (e.g., said, some). They think that these high-frequency words must be learned by sight, without graphophonemic analysis, because of their irregularities. In the remainder of this post, we explain that this is not the case, and we use the term high-frequency words, meaning words that are very common in English, whether regularly or irregularly spelled.

Memorizing high-frequency words holistically is not the answer. The most powerful mechanism for eventually accessing words by sight is use of the graphophonemic structure, a process that amalgamates the word's units into memory (Ehri, 1978). Here are five principles to keep in mind when teaching high-frequency words:

Principle One: Teach high-frequency words along with phonemic awareness, individual letter-sound relationships, and a concept of word (e.g., Flanagan, 2007). In our observation, a great deal of high-frequency word instruction occurs too early-before children have these important pieces in place. For example, some children do not even have a concept of word or understanding of the word boundaries in print and how these map to letters, and yet they are memorizing letter sequences in "sight words." Similarly, before they even understand the alphabetic principle they are chanting words. Without a concept of word or alphabetic insight, children will have the mistaken impression that words are unsystematic, and learning will be inefficient in any case. High-frequency word instruction should occur on basically the same pace as instruction in word decoding in general.

Principle Two: Ask students to use graphophonemic analysis to read high-frequency words (Ehri, 2005). But be sure that instruction intersects with children's developmental stage (e.g., Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, & Johnston, 2012). For example, when working with an emergent reader who is solidifying consonant sounds, focus them on the /t/ in to. When working with a full alphabetic reader, teach that in the word and, the a says /ă/, the n says /n/, and the d says /d/. Do this even for words that are not spelled using common letter-sound correspondences. For example, for the word was, we teach that w says /w/, a says /ŭ/, and the s says /z/. This kind of instruction builds a phonological representation of the word, which supports learning of the word.

Principle Three: Teach high-frequency words in groups that have similar patterns. For example, instead of teaching the word some as a rule breaker, explain that it is like come, above, and love.

Principle Four: Use high-frequency words to help children learn to decode new words. In one study, children were taught high-frequency words, such as long, can, and her, either with relatively little attention to the letter-sound relationships within them or with extensive analysis of their letter-sound relationships (Ehri, Satlow, & Gaskins, 2009). Children taught the words with full graphophonemic analysis were better able earlier on to analogize from those words to new words-for example to say, "If I know long, then I know strong.''

Principle Five: Practice reading high-frequency words in sentences and books. Although we want children to analyze words individually, they also must read them within the context of sentences and books. It is critical that young children understand that reading high-frequency words enables them to unlock meaning within texts of interest to them.

In sum, we recommend you approach the teaching of high-frequency words, or what you might have been referring to as "sight words," much as you approach the teaching of other words. Such continuity in instructional approach would be out of "sight"!
Nell K. Duke The ILA Literacy Research Panel uses this blog to connect ILA members around the world with research relevant to policy and practice. Reader response is welcomed via References . is a professor of Literacy, Language, and Culture at the University of Michigan, a member of the ILA Literacy Research Panel, and the author of Inside Information: Developing Powerful Readers and Writers of Informational Text Through Project-Based Instruction. Heidi Anne E. Mesmer is an associate professor of Literacy at Virginia Tech and a member of the ILA Literacy Research Panel. Her research focuses on text and beginning reading instruction.
Bear, D.R., Invernizzi, M., Templeton, S., & Johnston, F. (2012). Words their way ​ (5th​ ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Ehri, L.C. (1978). Beginning reading from a psycholinguistic perspective: Amalgamation of word identities. In F.B. Murray, (Ed.), The development of the reading process (International Reading Association Monograph No. 3). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Ehri, L.C. (2005). Learning to read words: Theory, findings, and issues. Scientific Studies of Reading, 9(2), 167-188.

Ehri, L.C., Satlow, E., & Gaskins, I. (2009). Grapho-phonemic enrichment
strengthens keyword analogy instruction for struggling young readers. Reading & Writing Quarterly: Overcoming Learning Difficulties, 25(2-3), 162-191.

Flanigan, K. (2007). A concept of word in text: A pivotal event in early reading acquisition. Journal of Literacy Research, 39(1), 37-70.

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In many classrooms we visit, "sight words" receive a very different kind of instruction than other words, taught primarily as an exercise in visual memorization. In this post, we explain why sight words should be taught much as you would teach any other words.

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Strategies for Teaching "Irregular" Tricky Words

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Maria S  Murray: Strategies for Teaching Irregular/Tricky Words

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A Word about Sight Words

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A word about sight words - Five from Five

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What are sight words and do they have a place in early reading instruction? The term 'sight word' can be confusing because it is used in numerous ways in the context of teaching reading. Phonetically irregular (or less regular) words are often referred to as 'sight words' because they are difficult for beginning readers to decode [...]

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Literacy How: Phoneme Blending and Segmenting

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Literacy How: Phoneme Blending and Segmenting

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In this video, a Literacy How Mentor models a multi-sensory approach to the use of the articulation properties of sounds to introduce and explain consonant phonemes.  She demonstrates and discusses the position of the mouth, tongue, teeth or lips, and the activity of the vocal cords (voiced/unvoiced) during the production of a sound.

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Infographic: How We Learn to Read: The Critical Role of Phonological Awareness and many others

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Reading skills provide the foundation for academic success. From the beginning of school, students should be taught different ways of using language to help them learn and communicate about academic content. This brief discusses two areas of literacy development that students must learn so that they can do well in school: foundational reading skills and academic language.

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Improving Literacy Briefs | National Center on Improving Literacy

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Reading skills provide the foundation for academic success. From the beginning of school, students should be taught different ways of using language to help them learn and communicate about academic content. This brief discusses two areas of literacy development that students must learn so that they can do well in school: foundational reading skills and academic language .

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This site also includes: Phonemic Awareness Basic, Phonemic Awareness Games, Phoneme Sound Production.

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Free Resources to Teach Your Child to Read

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Video: Phoneme Segmentation Watch Dr. Louisa Moats, reading expert and consultant, demonstrate activities for teaching segmentation and connecting sounds to letters.

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The contents of this website were developed in part with funding from the U.S. Department of Education. However, the contents do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department, and you should not assume their endorsement. Contact WestEd at dww@wested.org for further information.

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Explicit Instructional Routines for Teaching Phonemic Awareness: Phoneme Blending