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

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

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

Step 1:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Step 4: Engage in activities using the sound wall.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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5 More Ways to Use Your Classroom Sound Wall

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In this post, I share 5 simple things you can do to get students to engage with your classroom sound wall. I'll share simple instructional routines you can implement, sound wall games, and a special sound wall chant with lyrics you can download.

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The Kastner Collection: Best Practices for Teaching High Frequency Words

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This curated collection is comprised of professional learning presentations, video clips, professional learning resources, and instructional routines and resources to teach high frequency words aligned with the science of reading. This Wakelet will have ongoing updates. You may also access every Wakelet from the Kastner Collection at this link: https://wke.lt/w/s/mcU0bZ

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What is Orthographic Mapping?

Have you ever wondered how students memorize sight words or why some students seem to effortlessly learn new words while others can't seem to make them stick? This post is all about a theory called orthographic mapping, which was originally introduced by Linnea Ehri. More recently David Kilpatrick has written books about the topic that caught my interest and transformed my teaching. Orthographic mapping is the process of creating sound-symbol connections to recall the spelling, pronunciation, and the meaning of words.

This post uses information from a few different resources, which I will list at the bottom of the post. I highly recommend reading these books when you get a chance. This is just an overview, and I'm hoping that it inspires you all to dig deeper with those books.

(Disclaimer: I do not claim to be an expert. I'm just super interested in all of this and have been studying and attempting to apply this information as best I can. This post is my attempt to summarize and break it down in a way that makes sense to me. It's just as much for you as it is for me! I have a really hard time remembering things, so creating a post like this helps me to wrap my brain around it and hopefully remember it! Ha! I hope it can do the same for some of you.)

What Does Reading Require?

I should start with the big picture: Reading requires two skill sets: Printed Word Recognition and Language Comprehension.

This post is focusing on printed word recognition. Word recognition requires phoneme awareness (sound awareness) and phonics (alphabet awareness- which symbols link to those sounds).

This post will go into how new readers take unknown printed words and turn them into known "sight words" or words automatically recognized.

But First... What's happening in the Brain

Research says the brain reads by breaking words into sounds. Our brains are naturally wired for speech, but not for reading! (Louisa Moats) Reading is a human invention developed over thousands of years.

(To read about the evolution and history of reading, check out Maryanne Wolf's book called Proust the Squid).

Our brain relies on other systems already in place mostly in the brain's language center to work together to read. There are four systems working together when we read:

One part of the brain (orthographic processor) identifies and processes the letters and letter patterns that our eyes see on the page. It's what helps us remember letter sequences for spelling.

Another part of the brain (phonological processor) identifies, remembers, interprets and produces speech sounds. Phoneme awareness is just one of the jobs of the phonological processor.

A third part connects the word to meaning (meaning processor). When we read, the orthographic processor and phonological processor must communicate with the meaning processor to make sense of the words we are reading. Another word for this is the semantic processor.

A fourth deals with background information and sentence context (context processor). The context processor interprets words.I find this one super interesting because it mainly supports the meaning processor. As you know, context helps us determine a word's meaning by using the words around it. Although context is helpful with self correcting, but it is not effective alone word identification.

(This information is from Louisa Moats: LETRS and Marilyn Adams: Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning about Print)

The phonological and orthographic processors work together for word recognition. Automatic word recognition (identifying a word "on sight") happens after the word is read and mapped over and over and neural connections have gotten stronger and stronger. For some kids, this happens quickly after only a few repetitions, while with others, it takes seemingly endless (possibly hundreds of) exposures. (See my post on dyslexia.)

After students have mastered many words (meaning they have stored those letters patterns in their own mental lexicon), then they can begin to read using these familiar patterns. They may be quicker to read "p-an" and "m-an" because they have read "can" so many times and have "mapped" the letters a-n to the pronunciation "an".

I always tell my kindergarten students that reading begins with our ears. This is so true, but I didn't how true it was for a long time. They always get a kick out of this because of course they think reading begins with their eyes, looking at print. Reminding myself of this has really shaped how I teach reading and spelling. Read on to learn more!

Orthographic Mapping: How words become "sight words"

When students are first learning to read, they are sounding out most words. As they read more, they start to recognize words "on sight" without having to decode. But how does this happen? They need to store these letter sequences correctly (for word recognition) through orthographic mapping.

Orthographic Mapping is the process we use to store words into long term memory. (David Kilpatrick) These stored words are words that are recognized instantly without decoding. Skilled readers may develop orthographic mapping skills naturally, while others need more explicit instruction, guidance, and repetition to do so.

Clip art by: Educlips; Fonts by KG Fonts and A Perfect Blend Fonts

In his books Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties and Equipped for Reading Success, David Kilpatrick explains that with orthographic mapping, a reader is using the oral pronunciation of words that is already stored in memory with the correct letter (orthographic) sequences. He goes on to say the sequence of letters are anchored to the pronunciation of words. These pronunciations are already stored in our long term memory because we learn to speak well before we learn to read. I tried to break it down as I understand it here:

Developing a Phonological Lexicon

When toddlers learn to speak, each individual phoneme (sound) of a word is sequenced automatically, then stored in the brain's phonological lexicon. Basically, that word is in that child's word bank.

They can tell the difference between a cat and a hat, even though they only differ by one sound.

They recognize and interpret the sounds in those words and connect it to meaning (a furry animal or a thing you put on your head).

The phonological lexicon also includes word parts! (This will be relevant later in my post.) Once a child is ready to read, it's time to develop the orthographic lexicon.

Let's look at how this orthographic lexicon is developed.

Turning Unknown words into Sight Words

Remember that reading is a man-made skill and there is not a specific part of the brain that is designed solely for reading. Our brains use other systems in place together to make it all happen. It really is quite amazing!

The first few steps explain how phonic decoding works:

The following slide demonstrates how decoding (phonics) works. Keep in mind, this is only one piece of the puzzle. Keep reading to see what piece of the puzzle leads to word recognition!

Although phonic decoding is an essential skill for reading, it alone may not lead to future word recognition (knowing the word by sight) for all of our students. This is where orthographic mapping comes in! Think of it as going backward from phonic decoding.

With phonic decoding, students are taking the individual sounds (that they have translated from the letters) and blending them to make a whole word. (Part to whole.)

With orthographic mapping, students will take a whole word and break it into its sound parts and connect to the correct graphemes (letters or letter combinations), paying special attention to the exact sequence of letters and how it connects to the sounds. (Whole to parts.) It's this process that helps get the word stored in long-term memory.

Remember above when I said that our phonological lexicon also involves word parts? That's good news for our struggling readers because they can map common word parts and apply them to new words. Here is an illustration of how it's done:

Clip art by: Educlips and A Sketchy Guy. Fonts by KG Fonts and A Perfect Blend Fonts

Common Reading Practices to Reconsider

Using Context and other Strategies to "Read" Words

I was trained on guided reading and balanced literacy with an emphasis on reading strategies, mastering "sight words", and the belief that simply exposing kids to literacy (no matter how implicitly) would lead to successful and strategic readers. Except after a few years I realized that this worked for many of my readers (likely the ones that would learn to read in spite of their teacher or the instruction). However, this wasn't enough for some of my students.

I realized that the strategies (without explicit word study instruction) were actually just helping them compensate and cover up the fact that they couldn't decode. This was leading to constant guessing.

Turns out that contextual guessing not only doesn't help our struggling reader store the unknown word in memory, but it actually hinders them from learning the word. If they can guess, then they are not actually attending to the sequence of letters in the word. (Archer& Bryant 2001; Landi 2007)

Without strong foundational skills, these students were left to guess and use context. This is not enough. I couldn't figure out why they weren't applying certain rules that I "went over" during shared reading or for a few minutes during word work. Remember above when I talked about the phonological and orthographic processors that are in charge of word identification? These processors are linked to the context processor through the meaning processor. So that means word recognition does not happen through context.

Context does help once a word has been decoded. If a new reader decodes an unfamiliar word and doesn't get the stress right or gets one sound wrong, often then the context can help the student self correct that word. But context alone should not be the main tool in our students' reading tool belts.

Using Leveled Readers

So here's where I'm really going out onto a limb and I may ruffle some feathers. I no longer use leveled books and the traditional guided reading method with my beginning readers. Eek! I said it! Hear me out though. Think about those beginning leveled readers (levels A-D). What are your kids mainly doing? They are using the picture, looking at the first letter and guessing. Context plays a big part, too. There are few if any opportunities for students to actually apply phonic decoding skills with words they can actually be successful with. This goes against all of the research on how we learn to read.

That isn't to say that there isn't a place for leveled books later. I do use them once my students have a stronger foundation. In kindergarten, I would only use those leveled readers for those kids who can map more effortlessly. You know who they are. They are the ones who can learn sight words easily and who decode quickly. They are the exception though. I would still not use those alone, even with those kids. I want to make sure those kids who can seemingly read, have a strong foundation too. I would still spend a lot of time on phonics and morphology skills. I would also check their spelling skills! (See this post about spelling instruction.)

With the average kindergartener, I would not rush those sight word flash cards or the leveled readers. I would spend more time giving them opportunities to apply their newfound phonics skills in context using controlled texts. More about that below under Implications for Teaching. I do think there is a time and place for guided reading. I just think if we rush it too soon before foundational skills are in place and before they have had time to map words and word parts, we are setting some of our readers up for failure or for bad reading habits.

The Sight Word Myth

When I began teaching, I was taught (or maybe I inferred based on the methods I was taught) that good readers simply see a whole word and memorize it. Give 'em a set of flashcards and have at it. This is based on the assumption that we memorize words using our visual memory. Turns out, when we see a word, the input is visual but we do not store them visually.

Written words are actually stored (for later recall and recognition) on many levels at the same time: Phonologically (pronunciation), orthographically (spelling), and semantically (meaning). According to David Kilpatrick (and other researchers), there is actually a small correlation between sight word vocabulary and visual memory (although it does help with letter identification). There IS a strong correlation between sight vocabulary and phonemic awareness. As I explained above, to store a word permanently, students need to use phonemic awareness and letter knowledge to "map" that word's orthography (spelling).

If that's all too much to take in now, just think about this:

The whole language theory rests on this idea of using visual memory to store words. For years, I assigned sight words without any teaching behind them. I didn't think I was practicing whole language techniques, but actually, I was just by doing this. For years, I guided my kids to rely on context and other strategies that did not require them to really dissect the word. These strategies are fine to use as long as strong foundational skills about our language are explicitly taught. I was sort of missing that last part though. 😉 And a big reason I didn't dedicate more time to phonics and morphology is because I believed that English didn't make sense (and quite frankly I didn't know anything about it!) That's the second myth- that sight words are mostly irregular and don't make any sense. More about that in this post about English orthography.)

One more thing that I thought was really interesting is that the average human memory can only actually hold 2000 individual symbols (Diane McGuinness: Why our Children Can't Read and What to do about it), yet the average adult knows 40-60,000 words (and a well-educated adults knows 200,000). (Denise Eide: Uncovering the Logic or English) That's quite the discrepancy between how many words our oral language uses vs. how many words our brain can memorize.

This is a big hole in the whole-language/memorize-sight-words-without -phonics approach. I cringe when I think about how I "coached" my students to just see it and say it when I showed them a "sight word". I actually told them not to sound it out! AGH! I was under the impression that they had seen this word enough time and it should just be popping into their head. But guess what Sarah from the past... if it didn't pop out of their mouths, then it wasn't properly mapped in their memory. What I was doing was encouraging them to guess the first thing that looked like that word.

Now I know that with guidance, my students can and should "sound out" these high-frequency words instead of guessing. Now I know what you're thinking. Many kids do seem to just memorize those sight words pretty effortlessly. That's true enough, but they are still using the same process of mapping word parts and words, just faster. I think of those kids as the kids that will learn to read in spite of teaching methods or proper instruction. There are definitely those kids. But what about the 20% or more that don't?

The science tells us that skilled readers (like you) read words on a page effortlessly because you are "matching the words with spelling images that have been mapped or stored in your brain"..."Your reading circuitry is in place.". (Brain Words How the Science of Reading Informs Teaching by J. Richard Gentry and Gene P. Ouellette) Our brain has a lot of work to do to get to that point though. We need to listen to the science of reading and apply it to our teaching practice.

How To Teach High-Frequency "Sight" Words?

We map them the same way we would any other word. If it is "irregular", we point the irregular part(s) out and still map it. There are a few high frequency words that really don't make sense ( could is one I still can't figure out), but most are either off by one sound or they can be explained by a "generalization" or morphological connection. (Read more here)

Here is another visual that you can download.

Click here to download this guide along with the Map It board.

Here's another example with the word "want".

Click here to download this.

Implications for Teaching

All of the technical and scientific stuff here is interesting and relevant to understanding how our students learn to read and, perhaps more importantly, why some kids struggle so much. So now, it's our job as teachers to take this information that has been given to us by these amazing researchers and apply it to our teaching practices in the classroom.

I explain below a few ways that I've done that, but one thing I want you to walk away with is spelling. I know a trend is to throw spelling out the window. Heck, I even believed in that trend for a while. Here's what you should throw out the window: (1) Spelling lists that are random. (2) Spelling tests that just promote memorization. (3) Spelling lists that put too many spelling patterns at once.

As you will see below, spelling should be integrated into your instruction and can be done with your reading instruction. Encoding and decoding go hand and hand. Asking our students to hear a word, think about knowledge of spelling patterns, and then attempt to write that word is actually very helpful and fits in with all of this research. The key is to follow up with the correct spelling, pointing out the correct sound-symbol correspondence using the methods shown below. Hope this helps!

Process for Orthographic Mapping

Hand clip art by Creative Clips

Here is an example that you may do in late 1st grade or early 2nd grade:

Here is what a small group follow up lesson may look like:

The Role of Phonemic Awareness with Orthographic Mapping

Kilpatrick talks a lot about the importance of advanced phonemic awareness skills with orthographic mapping, like phoneme addition, deletion, and substituting. You will not need to continue this with all of your students. Kilpatrick says that "Typically developing readers will naturally analyze any whole word phonemically and establish an orthographic representation of that word." However, you will have students who do require this guided practice with advanced phonemic analysis.

Kilpatrick states that weak readers do not naturally engage in orthographic mapping because they lack those advanced phonemic awareness skills.

Below are some pictures from my small group work. We do a lot of phonemic segmenting with bingo chips and, when they are ready, continue with advanced phonemic skills.

For a kindergartener, I would say "Break up the word map". They would push the chips as they say /m/ /a/ /p/. Then I would say, "Take away the /m/. What do you have now?" (ap). Then I would slide over a new bingo chip and say, "This is /s/." I would place it where the /m/ was and ask, "now what is the word?" (sap).

For first and second graders, it gets a little tricker. You may ask your students to break up sled, then ask them to take away the /l/ and add in /p/. That takes phonological working memory (they are holding those sounds in their head long enough to do something with them) and phonological awareness/analysis.

Kilpatrick recommends doing more advanced phonemic awareness activities as students get older. Admittedly, I was not doing enough of this. I did a ton with kinder and beginning first, but then I focused on phonics and didn't put time into advanced phonemic awareness. Now that I do put time into it, I really see the value!

Below is just regular phoneme segmenting and connecting to graphemes. I have a set of sound boxes for several phonetic elements.

You can grab printable Sound Boxes here and digital sound boxes here.

After Mapping: Gaining Automaticity with Word Parts

Below is a chart I used after mapping word parts. I had a similar chart for my first and second graders once they learned silent e, vowel teams, r-controlled vowels, etc.

Under that star on the chart above, put irregular words that you have taught. For example, is, has, and was could go there. Map it first for your students, then add it to your chart.

Below shows some charts for silent e and vowel teams.

Here are some activities I've done with my students after word parts have been mapped:

I've used this activity as a follow-up after we have initially mapped a word:

Click here for these cards and many other decoding resources (including Google Slides)

And of course sometimes you just have to mix it up with phonics games! Our students work so hard and often need soooooo much repetition, so making it a game whenever possible is huge!

Click here to download a free template to make a Word Part Race as shown below:

Making your Word Sort Meaningful:

I used to think word sorts were a waste of time because I saw students just looking at the spelling of the word and matching it without reading it. Now I see how valuable they are as long as the right delivery is there. 😉 Below shows a picture of ways that I use sorting that I feel does support orthographic mapping.

Here, they are taking the whole word (the picture card) and they must first use phonemic awareness skills to segment the onset and the rime. Then they have to isolate that rime (for example, "ad") and match it to the correct letter sequence. This may be easy for some, but let me tell you, it is a challenge for many! That means it's worth doing!

If you are using word cards instead of picture cards, you just need to make sure they are reading them. If they are doing it as an independent activity, they likely will just try to match without reading. But if you do it as a small group activity, where they are whisper reading the word card and you are guiding, it can be quite effective.

Click here for picture and word cards (Print /laminate and Google Slides).

Next Steps: Phonic Decoding with Controlled Texts

After all the mapping, give your students opportunities to practice phonic decoding in context. Here are a few ways I provide controlled decodable texts.

In that first picture (the sentence ladders), I had them identify familiar rimes before reading. This group was working on silent e and we had mapped several word endings (rimes) with silent e.

First, I had students whisper read word endings that they spotted.

Then I called on students to share one they found.

I instruct them to say, "a-l-e, ale".

I would underline those word endings as they read them to me.

The other pictures just show normal decoding with sentences, but you can connect by asking, What ending do you see in the word pig? or Which word has the ending et?

Click here for decodable sentence resources.

I also use decodable short stories. You can find some decodable passages (also available as Google Slides) here.

What Skills Are Needed For Orthographic Mapping?

1. Sound-Symbol Awareness: Explicitly teaching and reviewing graphemes (letter or groups of letters that represent a sound) is the first important step.

As I've mentioned before, students need to recognize and produce the sound associated with a symbol with automaticity. This begins in kindergarten with the alphabet. (To read a blog post about systematic alphabet instruction, click here. To get resources for systematic alphabet instruction, click here.)

2. Phonemic awareness: I can't say it enough how important this is. Integrate it into you classroom daily!

Start with rhyming and isolating initial sounds (integrate into alphabet instruction), then move on to stretching words to hear medial sounds and ending sounds.

Next, you can move into phoneme segmenting (breaking words into individual sounds). You can easily do this with the whole class by finger spelling words. You don't need to wait for students to learn letters before doing this. Students may know one letter or all their letters, but they may (or may not) be equally good at this skill. You can start phonemic awareness activities day 1 in kindergarten!

Eventually you merge these two skills and that's when the magic happens. Since I've already been working on phoneme segmenting with finger spelling, they will be ready to start orthographic mapping using word parts or words with familiar letters they have learned. You can even start mapping when your students only know a few letters! Once I've taught my first set of letters, I start modeling phoneme segmenting. Some students are not ready to do this one their own, but others are. At this point, I'm modeling these skills.

As you map these word parts, add them to your chart of sticky notes shown above. Then review them daily. This can be done with the whole class, then you can reinforce as needed with small groups. Some kids might be ready to read more words, while others may need more time with each word part. Make a clear sequence to follow to keep you on track.

3. Phonological Long Term Memory: This is that phonological lexicon I was talking about earlier. Interestingly enough, dyslexic students can have a great phonological long-term memory but not have adequate phoneme awareness/analysis skills to effectively map the printed version of these words into long-term memory. You'll have to read Kirkpatrick's book to learn more!

Advanced Phonemic Awareness

One thing that I was missing when I originally wrote this blog post was the importance of continuing to do advanced phonemic drills with students beyond first and second grade. Kilpatrick's book Equipped for Reading Success has a whole section dedicated to drills you can use with. your students. He also provides a free assessment so you know where you need to begin with your students. How does this relate to learning new words? Kilpatrick talks about how typically developing readers may naturally engage in the process of mapping words. However, weaker readers will not naturally engage in this process because they lack the phonemic awareness skills.

References for Orthographic Mapping

The majority of information from this post can be found in David Kilpatrick's books, which I highly recommend. This blog post is just the tip of the iceberg. Reading his books will give you a deeper understanding and provide a lot more background as well as examples of how to teach.

After reading his book, I went back and read articles and research studies that he recommended. Dr. Louisa Moats has a whole series called " target="_blank" aria-label="undefined (opens in a new tab)" rel="noreferrer noopener">LETRS, which I also highly recommend. I went to a presentation of her several years ago and that was a game changer for me. It led me to all of this. Her books are easy to understand and so thorough! This one shown below is the first. If you are pressed for time, simply google her name and read the free articles she's written.

I also highly recommend Brain Words How the Science of Reading Informs Teaching. So much great information.

Here is research by Linnea Ehri: click here

Related Blog Posts

For more about how to teach reading, click here.

For more about the Science of Reading, click here.

Resources

I have tons of resources for phonic decoding and spelling!

If you're looking for a systematic approach to reading and spelling, click HER E to check out these units.

I also have a few different phonemic awareness resources (printable and hands on). Click here for those.

I also have several printable intervention packs, like the one shown below. Click here to get to those.

Digital Resources

I have several Boom decks for word building including cvc words, digraphs, consonant blends, silent e, vowel teams, ck words, bossy r, and diphthongs. I set these up to be like sound boxes. With this resource, students can tap the picture to hear the word, then they drag the letters to the empty boxes to spell the word. These are self-checking, which is great because then students can try again if they make an error.
Click HERE to see all of the digital word building decks.

Click HERE to read a blog posts all about Boom Decks.

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How Do We Learn New Words? Orthographic Mapping - Sarah's Teaching Snippets

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Orthographic mapping is the process of connecting pronunciation of a word with letter sequences to permanently store words into long term memory.

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Copy of Copy of  Explicit Phonics Intervention Plan (2021)

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Shifting the Balance: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Balanced Literacy Classroom

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Amazon.com: Shifting the Balance: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Balanced Literacy Classroom: 9781625315106: Burkins, Jan, Yates, Kari: Books

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This is the final post in a blog series on the SoR 90-Minute Literacy Block. It focuses on whole group language comprehension instruction for kindergarten, first and second-grade students. In it, I identify which skills you should teach during your language comprehension instruction and offer suggestions for activities you can do to teach those skills.

If you teach K-2 students, you are likely familiar with Scarborough's Reading Rope. It is a model that shows how the different "strands" of reading are all interconnected, yet independent of one another. It contains two main sections: Word Recognition and Language Comprehension which each comprises of several smaller strands. When all of the parts intertwine, it results in skilled and accurate, fluent reading with strong comprehension. But if just one strand is weak, it affects the rope (and the reader) as a whole.

In earlier posts in this blog series on the 90-minute literacy block, I focused on the word recognition part of the rope. I explained how to provide small group and whole group word recognition instruction during your literacy block. I identified specific skills to teach and offered you Science of Reading-aligned word recognition resources to help you do so.

Today, I am excited to move on to the part of the reading rope that focuses on Language Comprehension. I will identify which skills you should teach during your language comprehension instruction and offer suggestions for activities you can do to teach those skills.

What is Language Comprehension Instruction?

For the final 20 minutes of the 90-min literacy block, bring the students back to the meeting area and focus your instruction on language comprehension. Language comprehension is the ability to understand the different elements of spoken or written language, like the meaning of words and how words are put together to form sentences. There are a number of subcomponents to language comprehension. They are:
-Background Knowledge -Vocabulary -Language Structures -Verbal Reasoning -Literary Knowledge
We must provide explicit instruction in each of these subcomponents throughout the week. They can be taught through your read-aloud, choral or shared reading, or direct instruction.

So let's take a closer look at each of them...

Building Language Comprehension Through Background Knowledge

Plenty of studieshave shown that background knowledge plays an enormous role in reading comprehension. Students rely on background knowledge to make sense of what they are reading and it is particularly important for our students who are still relying heavily on decoding. The more you know about a topic, the easier it is to read a text, understand it, and retain the information.
Here are some simple activities you can do throughout the week to activate and build your students' background knowledge before a read-aloud:

Use Preparatory Texts. Providing simpler, preparatory texts in anticipation of a more complex reading task can be very helpful in building background knowledge and reading confidence. Reading a simplified text that addresses topics or themes similar to the ones in the more complex text you'll be reading aloud, is a simple and engaging way to build background knowledge.

Use a K-W-L Chart. The tried-and-true K-W-L chart is always an effective way of gauging students' background knowledge about a topic or concept. Students share what they already know about the topic in the K (What I Know) section and then add questions in the W (What I Want to Know) section. Finally, you can discuss their learnings (as you read and after you read) and add them to the L (What I Learned) section.

Embrace multimedia. Multimedia can often provide a wealth of information that we wish we could all experience firsthand. It can introduce children to important words and concepts in a highly motivating way and build a shared knowledge base among all of your students.

Provide Visual Aids. Simply print out images related to the topic you are reading about. You can talk about them, label them, post them and refer to them while reading.

Building Language Comprehension through Vocabulary Instruction

A rich and extensive vocabulary helps students make sense of what they are reading and allows them to enjoy a wider variety of books. As their decoding skills grow, knowing the meaning of words will make it easier for them to read texts with words they have never seen in print. They will spend less effort reading and become more confident readers.

A Vocabulary Instructional Routine

This vocabulary routine is adapted from The Reading Teachers Top Ten Tools course and can be done using vocabulary words you have pulled from your read-aloud.

Step 1: The teacher says the word and students repeat it 3x. This will help build memory for how the word sounds.

Step 2: The teacher writes the word and reads it. The teacher provides a friendly definition and includes the part of speech if appropriate.

Step 3: The teacher uses the word in context (at least 3 different ways). It is helpful to pause and prompt the students to say the word when it comes up in the sentence.

Step 4: Help students to associate the new word with something memorable. They can do this by drawing a quick sketch of something that will help them remember the word, or by using it in a sentence.

Step 5: Students turn and talk to a partner and share sentences that use the new vocabulary word. They can just speak the sentences or write and then share.

Teaching Language Structures

Language structure consists of a complex set of rules and conventions that allow us to communicate with one another verbally and in writing. Students need our explicit instruction on the structure of the English language as they are learning how to read.

The components that go into language structure include syntax and semantics. The syntax is the arrangement of words in a phrase or sentence. Semantics is the meaning of the text. It looks at how words and phrases combine to create meaning and how an author's word choice affects that meaning.

Teaching Verbal Reasoning

Verbal reasoning refers to understanding when and how words are figurative and when they are literal. When we talk to students about the meaning of words, phrases, tones of voice and even body language, we help them to develop and practice their verbal reasoning skills.

To help your students develop their verbal reasoning skills you can ask questions during your read aloud that require them to make inferences. When they make an inference based on what text says and what they already know, they are using verbal reasoning skills.

Highlight interesting language such as metaphors that you encounter in reading. For example, if the text reads "The beach was a zoo", stop and discuss that this probably means the beach was very busy that day, not that it was actually like a zoo!

Teaching Literary Knowledge

Literary knowledge gives students an understanding that text is organized in a specific way. This includes things like the fact that we read from left to right and top-to-bottom, and turn the pages from left to right. It is understanding that there is a difference between letters and words, and there are spaces between written words. While these things seem totally obvious to us as adults, they are things that we must explicitly point out and teach to our students.

Students also gain literacy knowledge by being exposed to a wide variety of genres and styles. The more types of reading a child encounters, the more advanced their literacy knowledge becomes.

Give your students plenty of opportunities to discuss what they notice about the way different texts are organized. Model how you use different text features to deepen your understanding.

Take a look at this blog post for ideas and activities for your students to distinguish between fiction and non-fiction.

I hope the information I have shared here today and throughout this blog series will bring more effective literacy instruction to your classroom and help you make the most of your 90-minute literacy block!

- PIN for LATER -

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Language Comprehension Instruction in the 90 Minute Literacy Block

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This is the final post in a blog series on the SoR 90-Minute Literacy Block. It focuses on whole group language comprehension instruction for kindergarten, first and second-grade students. In it, I identify which skills you should teach during your language comprehension instruction and offer suggestions for activities you can do to teach those skills.

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How to Teach Phonemic Awareness in Kindergarten, 1st, & 2nd Grade | Phonemic Awareness Activities

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Professional Learning for Educators Grades Pre-K-5 | Lexia

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Welcome to the Youngstown State University repository on the science of reading. This site contains numerous resources to support the science of reading, and will assist you in the teaching of reading in your classroom. The repository is brought to you by the Department of Teacher Education through funding from the Ohio Dean's Compact for Exceptional Children.

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Welcome to the Youngstown State University repository on the science of reading. This site contains numerous resources to support the science of reading, and will assist you in the teaching of reading in your classroom. The repository is brought to you by the Department of Teacher Education