# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Session 9 - Principles of Equitable_Inclusive (In Person).pptx

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Session 7 - Principles of Equitable_Inclusive (In Person).pptx-2

# data[].attributes.headline
Well-being in education in childhood and adolescence

# data[].attributes.subject
Well-being in education in childhood and adolescence

# data[].attributes.headline
Teaching and learning informed by assessment

# data[].attributes.subject
Teaching and learning informed by assessment

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Session 4 - Principles of Equitable_Inclusive (In Person).pptx

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Session 10 - Principles of Equitable_Inclusive (In Person).pptx

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Session 8 - Principles of Equitable_Inclusive (In Person).pptx

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Session 6 - Principles of Equitable_Inclusive (In Person).pptx-2

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Session 3 - Principles of Equitable_Inclusive (In Person).pptx

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Session 1 - Principles of Equitable_Inclusive (In Person)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Session 2 - Principles of Equitable_Inclusive (In Person).pptx

# data[].attributes.headline
Liz Fosslien - Images to Describe Complex Feelings/Big Concepts (Fosslien is an organizational psychologist)

# data[].attributes.subject
Liz Fosslien - Images to Describe Complex Feelings/Big Concepts (Fosslien is an organizational psychologist)

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.fosslien.com/images

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Speaking

Books

Press

Images

Projects

Contact

Menu

Street Address

City, State, Zip

Phone Number

Your Custom Text Here

Speaking

Books

Press

Images

Projects

Contact

prev / next

Back to Images

0

Snakes and ladders

0

Gas fuel showing burnout

0

Doing your best might look different each day

0

Growth isn't linear

0

What success looks like

0

You can still succeed

0

What you can change

0

Why I procrastinated

0

Healthy conflict

0

When I make a minor mistake

0

Cleaning the kitchen

0

Remember to check in

0

How adulthood feels

0

Important reframes

0

Remember how much progress you've made

0

Bingo for virtual meetings

0

Use your own ruler to measure success

0

Making progress

0

Getting started

0

I'm fine

0

The grass is greener

0

What others are going through

0

You can't pour from an empty cup

0

The power of belongingc

0

Great managers

0

Learning to be vulnerable

0

An act of kindness

0

Introvert wall

0

The power of small steps

0

Quarantine evolution

0

Active listening

0

An important reframe

0

Breaking the cycle

0

Psychological safety

0

Oh my god

0

Stressful email

0

People pleasing

0

Effective teamwork

0

Success and failure

0

What you can control

0

What people hear

0

Who you should try to please

0

Types of feedback

0

I can't, I will, I did

0

You don't have to endure

0

Who you can be

0

Good things take time

0

Motivation vs consistency

0

You can't perfectly plan

0

The definition of privilege

0

Getting started

590 Tahoe Keys Blvd, South Lake Tahoe, CA 96150

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Session 5 - Principles of Equitable_Inclusive (In Person).pptx-2

# data[].attributes.headline
Learning Diversity and Inclusion in IB Programmes

# data[].attributes.subject
Learning Diversity and Inclusion in IB Programmes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
[Inclusive Education in Canada] HOW WE DO SCHOOL B.C Ep1 : Bridging the Special Needs Divide

# data[].attributes.headline
Lesson planning with Universal Design for Learning (UDL)

# data[].attributes.subject
Lesson planning with Universal Design for Learning (UDL)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Lesson planning with Universal Design for Learning (UDL)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Understood.org is the resource that helps the 70 million people with learning and thinking differences anticipate the challenges, barriers, or opportunities in life and confidently reach their potential.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Sonia Nieto - Teachers Make a Difference - Mrs. Phillips & Dr. Carlin

# data[].attributes.headline
Why every school should care about inclusive education

# data[].attributes.subject
Why every school should care about inclusive education

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Jayne Pletser, Curriculum Manager for inclusive education, and Kala Parasuram, Assessment access and Inclusion Manager at the IB, talk to Sophie-Marie Odum about how schools can help remove barriers to learning
The IB believes that an inclusive education is something every IB World School should embrace and work towards. Students should be prepared to exercise their rights as citizens and take their responsibilities in the wider community. The IB Learner Profile implies a commitment to help all members of the school community to learn to respect themselves and others, as well as the world around them. Inclusivity then is larger than a recognition of cultural diversity.

"If you think you know what inclusion is, the next child who knocks on your door will challenge that belief," says Jayne Pletser, Curriculum Manager for inclusive education. "Inclusion is about breaking down barriers to learning because if learning or access to learning is problematic, students may find themselves feeling excluded from the learning process or their peer group. Inclusion is about helping them move through this and affirm their identity in different ways - who they are and who they are proud to be."

To help remove barriers during assessments, inclusive assessment arrangements (IAA) such as additional time, supports students during the assessment process. Sometimes the IB will receive unique requests, says Assessment access and Inclusion Manager Kala Parasuram: "We get questions such as: 'What can we do with oral exams for a candidate who has social phobia?' 'Or how can we help a candidate who has autism when it comes to group interaction tasks?'

"We take these on an individual basis and arrive at what we call a reasonable adjustment. We do not change the assessment task or learning outcome, but suggest adjustments so the candidate can demonstrate their knowledge, skills and abilities."

Inclusive education is a journey

To support schools on their inclusion journeys, the IB has published the 'The IB guide to inclusive education: a resource for whole school development'.

Taking into account the IB Learner Profile and its importance in empowering students, and the IB Programme standards and practices, the guide is designed to facilitate inclusive school development by increasing awareness and knowledge, and provoking discussion through reflection and inquiry. Pletser says: "Up until now we were saying to schools: 'we would like you to be inclusive' and now we have a guide that helps schools think about what inclusion might look like".

The guide consists of 43 statements, which reflect the ideals of inclusion. Each is accompanied by a series of reflective questions. It covers all elements where inclusion should be considered, such as a school's philosophy, organization and curriculum.

Although the guide aims to support schools, it does not offer a set pathway to inclusion. This would be "wrong" says Pletser, as the development of inclusion cannot be removed from the context of the school and its student population. Parasuram adds: "We hope that the new guide will provoke discussions whereby each student is given the support that they need to fully access teaching and learning."

"Schools hope we have the silver bullet for them to achieve inclusion, but we don't," says Pletser. "Instead, we hope the guide will get the whole IB community thinking about it. You might think you know what standard to choose, but when you start discussing it you may realize that it may not be right for your school, and want to look at a different standard. Inclusion is a journey; a never-ending process."

Removing labels

A lack of resources or access to appropriate therapies are barriers to access and participation and strategic school development is necessary to overcome them. Schools may also be required to develop inclusion in line with local and national legislation. Pletser says: "The guide will help schools consider what next steps in their school development plan are necessary to increase access and participation."

All students have different strengths and learning barriers can arise when the teaching and/or assessment is not geared towards enhancing these strengths and circumventing areas of unreasonable challenge. In schools where inclusion is embedded, students are taught which learning strategies will help them to achieve success. There is less focus on labels, which are not helpful, says Pletser: "They do not tell us about the individual student, their strengths or interests, but describe a whole range of issues that might have very little to do with their learning needs. Inclusion can only be successfully achieved in a culture of collaboration, mutual respect, support and problem solving."

Parasuram adds: ''The IB supports students in the assessment process based on unique learning characteristics and requirements, rather than labels."

Can schools be fully inclusive?

Inclusion is an ongoing process that will look different in every school, says Pletser. "We acknowledge and respect schools that are achieving inclusion in their own way, within their own legislations and within their allotted budgets. We don't expect all schools to be fully inclusive, but we do expect them to begin their journey."

"Attitudes can make or break the inclusive process," adds Parasuram. "We hope The IB guide to inclusive education can facilitate positive attitudes to inclusion in the whole school community."
Have you used 'The IB guide to inclusive education: a resource for whole school development'? Tell us how it has helped change your approach to offering an inclusive education: email editor@ibo.org

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why every school should care about inclusive education

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Jayne Pletser, Curriculum Manager for inclusive education, and Kala Parasuram, Assessment access and Inclusion Manager at the IB, talk to Sophie-Marie Odum about how schools can help remove barriers to learning The IB believes that an inclusive education is something every IB World School should embrace and work towards.

# data[].attributes.headline
Meeting Student Diversity in the Classroom

# data[].attributes.subject
Meeting Student Diversity in the Classroom

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
[Inclusive Education in Canada] HOW WE DO SCHOOL B.C. Ep2: Forging Friendships

# data[].attributes.headline
Research summary Universal design for learning (UDL) and inclusive practices in IB World Schools

# data[].attributes.subject
Research summary Universal design for learning (UDL) and inclusive practices in IB World Schools

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Kavita Rao, Rachel Currie-Rubin and Chiara Logli-CAST Professional Learning

The International Baccalaureate (IB) is committed to ensuring that inclusive education is practised in IB World Schools. Universal design for learning (UDL) focuses on creating accessible learning environments for all learners, including students with disabilities, students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and students who are gifted and talented. This exploratory study examined how IB educators implement inclusive practices and UDL in their classroom and school settings. Data was collected using an online survey and participant interviews to gather information on how inclusive practices are being implemented by teachers and administrators across all three IB regions (Africa, Europe, Middle East; Asia-Pacific; the Americas). The results indicate that IB educators are implementing inclusive practices at high levels, although their degree of knowledge about the UDL framework itself varies. IB teachers and administrators are familiar with various strategies to differentiate instruction, integrate flexible options during instruction, and implement instructional strategies to engage and motivate all learners. The strategies these educators use are consistent with IB approaches to teaching and learning and align with UDL guidelines.
Research summary (PDF, 115 KB) Full report (PDF, 2.6 MB)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Universal design for learning (UDL) and inclusive practices in IB World Schools (2016)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Kavita Rao, Rachel Currie-Rubin and Chiara Logli-CAST Professional Learning The International Baccalaureate (IB) is committed to ensuring that inclusive education is practised in IB World Schools. Universal design for learning (UDL) focuses on creating accessible learning environments for all learners, including students with disabilities, students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and students who are gifted and talented.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
[Inclusive Education in Canada] HOW WE DO SCHOOL B.C Ep3 : Learners in Progress

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Building Classroom Community Through Daily Dedications

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
[Inclusive Education in Canada] HOW WE DO SCHOOL B.C. Ep4: Teaming Up

# data[].attributes.headline
Using Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in the IB classroom 

# data[].attributes.subject
Using Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in the IB classroom 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
[Inclusive Education in Canada] HOW WE DO SCHOOL B.C Ep5 : Power To Parents

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Myth of Average:  Todd Rose at TEDxSonomaCounty

# data[].attributes.headline
The IB guide to inclusive education: a resource for whole school development

# data[].attributes.subject
The IB guide to inclusive education: a resource for whole school development

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Carol Dweck - A Study on Praise and Mindsets

# data[].attributes.headline
PYP Nano - Getting to know your learners

# data[].attributes.subject
PYP Nano - Getting to know your learners

# data[].attributes.body
https://changeagent.nelrc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/37-Math-Is-a-Civil-Right.pdf

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
OISE experts: 11 back to school tips for teachers

September 1, 2016

As thousands of students head back to the classroom, parents and teachers alike will be focused on ensuring students begin on the right foot. What's equally important is ensuring teachers are also well-equipped and mentally prepared to tackle the new year.

So, here at OISE, we've tapped into some of our leading education experts for top back to school tips for teachers.

If you're a teacher, read below for how to help ensure you score a 10/10 as you head back into the classroom and look to mold the minds of future greatness!

Tips for teachers

1) Get to know your students
Get to know your students on an individual basis. Take the time to develop strong and respectful relationships with each of them. This will pay off down the road - whether in helping you understand their individual differences, resolving potential issues and establishing the trust necessary for a collaborative approach to student success.

2) Reflect diversity
Nurture a respectful and inclusive classroom culture. Teach, practice, and appreciate open-mindedness and awareness, explicitly demonstrating respect for many aspects of diversity, including race, ethnicity, socioeconomic situations, religion, gender, national origin, family composition, sexual orientation, physical/health or psychological difference, learning style, and political affiliation. Create an environment in which all students feel they are safe, equal and special and teach the importance of being active citizens who question and counter prejudice.

3) Respond to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Research the history of the land your school is located on. Help students develop a greater sense of the Indigenous peoples who once lived there and continue to live in the community. Educate yourself on Indigenous teachings and incorporate them into your classroom. This will help foster a sense of awareness, appreciation and understanding of Indigenous peoples.

4) Set professional learning goals
Determine a practice you want to get better at, be creative and take a risk. One example might be committing to improving classroom assessment by working to provide more timely and descriptive feedback to students.

5) Clean slate
Allow each student to begin anew. Do not judge little Jane and Jim for their indiscretions last term - give students the chance for a fresh start. And that goes for older, adult students too! And, on this note, don't show favouritism! Each student should feel they have an equal chance to learn, grow and shine.

6) Be you!
Let your students see that you love what you do. Find out what they did over the summer and share some of your experiences. Did you go on vacation? Spend time at a cottage? Go to your son's or daughter's soccer tournament? Let them see who you are and the kind of interests you have. They'll see you as not just a teacher, but a person too, which can bode well as you build your teacher/student relationship.

7) Enlist a 'critical friend'
Identify a "critical friend" on staff who will both support and challenge your professional practice in productive ways. The added perspective will help you adjust your teaching practices to ensure you're at your best.

8) Classroom management
Classroom management is a key ingredient for a smooth school year. Spending the first few weeks- or even month- reinforcing, in fun ways, rules and routines is paramount. Every rule created can be included under "Respect for Self & Others" - which cannot be emphasized enough!

9) Don't be their friends!
This tip is especially important for new teachers: Establish positive relationships with your students, but don't seek to be their friends. Attempting to have a friendship with your students is a recipe for loss of control!

10) Be flexible
It's important to have lesson plans, but when unexpected teaching opportunities arise, take advantage of the moment. Let your students help drive your teaching! As well, teachers plan so much in a given day and often try to cover everything; in doing so, they stress themselves out, but more significantly, they stress out their students...leading to classroom management issues! It's okay if your plan for the day shifts.

12) Self-care
Take care of YOU! Remember to live a healthy, balanced life full of exercise, nutrition, sleep and friends. Your health and happiness will show in the classroom and make for a happier, healthier environment too!

We hope these tips will serve you well as you begin the new school year. Feel free to share our top tips for students with those in your classes as well.

Good luck!

Special thanks to our OISE expert contributors: Richard Messina, Ann Lopez, Charles Pascal, Steven Katz, Doug McDougall & Genie Kim

Related

12 back to school tips for student success at OISE
Follow @OISEUofT
'Like' us on Facebook

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
11 back to school tips for teachers by leading OISE experts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Calling all teachers: Have you thought about how to foster an inclusive classroom, or instill respect in your students for members of the LGTBQ community? Here are some tips to be mindful of as you begin a new school year.

# data[].attributes.headline
Inclusive access arrangements: Decision pathway

# data[].attributes.subject
Inclusive access arrangements: Decision pathway

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Inclusive access arrangements- Decision pathway

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The UDL Guidelines are a tool used in the implementation of Universal Design for Learning, a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn.

# data[].attributes.headline
The Archeology of the Self (Deficit Mindset)

# data[].attributes.subject
The Archeology of the Self (Deficit Mindset)

# data[].attributes.headline
Meeting Student Diversity in the Classroom

# data[].attributes.subject
Meeting Student Diversity in the Classroom

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Ok, so this story is about my mom...well not completely, but it starts with her. But before I go further I should tell you a little bit about her.

Imagine a 5'2 3/4" tall, cute, nice, 63 year old with great skin. And now add a homemade colourful fluorescent moo-moo with matching crocs and a big smile. My mom (and her twin sister) are ACTUALLY the sweetest creatures that have ever lived. She is always happy except for these 3 things get her mad:

1. Cable TV and how there is never anything on

2. She thinks that there should be a grandfather clause that allows people over 60 to still smoke at the beach, and

3. She can no longer buy fabric at Walmart

She loves lays chips and the colour blue, buying tables, going to the dollar store, quilting and the beach. In fact, you will often find her at the beach with a table, wearing the colour blue eating lays chips and quilting under an umbrella that she bought at the dollar store.

Anyways, So her and I both live on Davie street, 3 blocks apart. She proudly declares herself as "living in the heart of the village," and we will often meet at our neighborhood coffee local, Melriches.

One other thing about my mom is that she is very reflective and often bursts out profound one-liners. Like one time she called me up and left a message on my phone that simply said, "Shelley, I'M IN LOVE!" and then I made this face.

Only to find out later that she had recently watched a documentary about Leonard Cohen and convinced herself that he was her true soul mate. ANYWAYS...So one afternoon, as we sat at Melriches, and she declared, "you know, we could all learn a lot from the gays." And then I made this face.

Before I could respond, however, she continued into a lovely monologue about how happy she is that she lives in a community that values diversity and how everyone is different and that it's ok! And she's right, people CAN learn something from people who are gay, and she CAN walk down the street in her fluorescent moo-moos and matching crocs, and the only people who turn their heads to stare, are women (and men) who want to know where they can buy a set.

She absolutely meant no disrespect to gay people, (or her daughter) by calling us an adjective, so I used this opportunity as a teachable moment.

"So ma, you know that gay is an adjective right?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I mean that you can't call people adjectives when we are people, we are nouns!"

"Oh.... Well that's what I meant."

Now one more thing you should know is that I inherited a few things from my mother. We are Danish, We both have cute toes and apple shaped bodies, and we both manage some mental health issues.

"I know ma, but what if people called you an adjective, like crazy?" (Which we have both extensively experienced in our lifetime)...this one got her.

So we de-constructed this a bit, and discussed different adjectives we had experienced and compared them with each other. What made some terms ok and not others? Some terms were adjectives. Some were nouns. Some were used grammatically correct and others were not.

And some were mean and should never be spoken.

We used the stem, "If we saw each other walking down the street, what would we say?" as our litmus test. We tried everything!

1. Oh look, there is a gay (no)

2. Oh look there is a crazy (no)

3. Oh look there is a Danish (I am not a pastry)

4. Oh look there is Shelley! (Totally)

5. Oh look there is Shelley, who is crazy (ummm still no)

6. Oh look, the Gay Danish! (I don't even know what this means)

7. Oh look! There is my mom! (Yup)

8. Oh look, there is Danish Shelley (sure...at a Viking festival)

9. Oh look, its BGS!!! (Big Gay Shelley) - (only on the August long weekend please and thank-you)

So we eventually agreed to just call each other by our names Ma and Shelley. My mom learned her adjective lesson, and we moved on to the next profound reflection.

BUT THEN!!! I started thinking (and we all know what that means) sleepless nights and multi-tasking through meetings. Labels! We all do it. We label and categorize our students all the time, well-meaning or not. Our days as educators are constantly FILLED with words associated with and used to describe kids.

I remember the days when I was a student and the words used to describe me. I thought about myself as a teacher, a consultant, a speaker and a person and the words I use to describe others.

... And then I started to make a list, and I have been adding to it...for 3 days.

Let me also just mention that the words I have listed have been heard in a variety of contexts including (some more surprising than others)- My UBC class, a special education conference, a collaboration seminar, IEP meetings, a staff room, the pub, coffee with a parent and dinner with colleagues, to mention a few. Regardless of setting, person, time, and/or tension, labels and categories were present, and I am just as guilty as any.

May I present to you... the list.

Low, modified, bright, illiterate, adapted, gifted, slow, modified, special, low end, waste of space, gay, Deaf, learning disabled, bad, poor, handicapped, Queer, good, problematic, core, vulnerable, grey area, crazy, smart, problem, downs, normal, low and slow, mute, non readers, bottom of the barrel, Chinese, drug users, challenged, teachers pet, high flyers, special ed, behaviour kids, brown, life-skill, brain damaged, Tier 1/2/3's, resource kids, risk takers, Natives, on the spectrum, Muslim... and lets not forget the acronyms!!!! A's, H's, G's IEP kids, ELL/ESL kids, SPEDS AND of course the ever present - Those are "your" kids (which I realize is not an adjective).

NOW thank goodness I didn't hear anyone say the R-Word because I may have tripped them.

I will let you decide which labels were used appropriately or not, but I will point out the discrepancy between positive and negative terms. Which labels were you called? Which would you add? I know you remember them; they are not words we forget.

Why do we do this? Why do we need to group people into categories? Is it more effective, efficient, shorter or easier to remember? Is it what we hear, or all we know? Or maybe we say them to harm. I have been told, that some people say them because they can't keep up with the political correctness.

But I don't know. Are these reasons good enough? I mean, would you ever see a person on the street and say, "Oh look, here comes a paraplegic" because it is efficient to say? NO!

Another important question that I ask myself all the time is, if you heard that, would you say something? And to be honest, I didn't say anything anyone in my 3 days of listening. Why?

We (teachers, people, society) are SO focused on labels and categories. To be fair, however, I understand that sometimes they are helpful. They can define culture, build pride and even help bring to the table difficult and social justice issues. The "idle no more movement" is a perfect example of that. And if we are really being honest, labels and categories are the reason I even have a job! Categories are how schools get funding (although that's not a lot presently!!)

Is there a point, however, where in our label obsession, we forget the person we are labeling? And additionally, how do the labels we place on others affect the people we are labeling? In the book "Choice Words" by Peter Johnston, he reminds us that the language we use creates us and defines the world we live in. The words we use also make a difference to how people see themselves and how they exist in our world. Words are powerful!

This issue has seriously got me thinking about how I use words my in my world. My friend Leyton also reminded me of an excellent point (as he often does) He gently asked me, "How many remarkable people in the world do not fit into ANY category, or into traditional systems and labels. Like you?!"

SO, with the help of colleagues, a few articles and my mom, here is some criteria and guiding ideas to assist you in the use of words.

Everyone can read, write and communicate - expand your definition - try and argue this with me!! (examples: non-readers/writers, non verbal, etc.)

We no longer use these words: mute, mentally handicapped, illiterate, brain damaged, the R-Word or any statements that starts with "they suffer from..."

There are some groups that use labels to define their culture (for example Deaf, Queer, Danish, Muslim, Canucks, and some people with Autism.) If this is you, slap a capital letter on the word, put it on a shirt and wear it with pride because you were born that way baby!

Say the following labels only if you want to get tripped by me. (Bottom of the barrel, low and slow, waste of space etc.) Just. don't.

PLEASE!!!!! Regardless of adjective or noun... Avoid "a/an or the", followed by label and a period (For example, An Autistic. A Gay. The bright kids. The Queer. A gay daughter).

And lastly, If your choice of words are not ones that you would say to a student or their mother's face directly - complete the following procedure:

1. Write it on a piece of paper

2. Stick your gum in it

3. Burn it

4. Sweep up the ashes

5. Put the ashes in a glass of diet coke

6. Add Mentos to the glass

As an alternative, try these:

There is a movement called person-first language that I encourage everyone to explore and reflect on. I have linked some articles below to help you do this. It is actually really easy, you do exactly what it says, use the person first (for example, a student with a disability, Joan who is Danish, Shelley who is gay, a kid who needs support, A student who has a learning disability, a teacher who needs a vacation).

If you, by accident, use person-first language to someone who prefers the capital letter non-person first tshirt version - I PROMISE they will be less offended than the alternative situation. Referring to people first will never be politically incorrect - it's safe.

If the above option doesn't work for you, you could just try calling them kids, students or people.

If the above two options don't work for you, you can always call them Shelley, Kate, Leyton, Carole, Gillian, Faye or (insert name here).

Here is the bottom line because I have discovered that people like them. After my reflections and readings and discussion, I have come to this conclusion:
The only label that we should use before a students name is 'ours,' except for my mom, because she is mine.
OH! And.... Sign the R-Word pledge. So I don't trip you.

Person First Resources
People First Language: Dignity, Not Semantics Showing Respect by Being Direct Person-First Language The Significance of Semantics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Posts about Inclusion written by Shelley Moore

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Differentiated Instruction & Universal Design Ideas

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The UDL Guidelines are a tool used in the implementation of Universal Design for Learning, a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn. Learn more about the Universal Design for Learning framework from CAST. The UDL Guidelines can be used by educators, curriculum developers, researchers, parents, and anyone else who wants to implement the UDL framework in a learning environment. These guidelines offer a set of concrete suggestions that can be applied to any discipline or domain to ensure that all learners can access and participate in meaningful, challenging learning opportunities.

Reenvisioning the UDL Guidelines

Because the UDL Guidelines are meant to be informed by feedback from the field as well as new research, they have been updated several times in the past. We are in the process of updating the Guidelines once again in our UDL Rising to Equity initiative.

This update will focus specifically on addressing systemic barriers that result in inequitable learning opportunities and outcomes. CAST aims to develop a transparent, inclusive, and community-driven process. If you are interested in collaborating and staying updated on our progress, we invite you to complete a brief survey.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The UDL Guidelines are a tool used in the implementation of Universal Design for Learning, a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn. Learn more about the Universal Design for Learning framework from CAST. The UDL Guidelines can be used by educators, curriculum developers, researchers, parents, and anyone else who wants to implement the UDL framework in a learning environment. These guidelines offer a set of concrete suggestions that can be applied to any discipline or domain to ensure that all learners can access and participate in meaningful, challenging learning opportunities.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Learn about CAST’s Universal Design for Learning framework, fostering inclusive educational experiences and improving learning outcomes for all learners.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A class of 6-7 year olds in the United States inquires into the central idea, "A community is impacted by the involvement of its members" under the transdisciplinary theme of How We Organize Ourselves.

A class of 7-8 years olds in Germany inquires into the central idea, "The properties of construction materials influence the design of buildings and structures" under the transdisciplinary theme of How the World Works.

Signs and Symbols

A class of 5-6 year olds in Australia inquires into the central idea, "signs and symbols can be used to communicate a message" under the transdisciplinary theme of How We Express Ourselves.

Language and Race/Ethnicity

A Theory of Knowledge class in the United States explores language as a way of knowing by reflecting on the question, "How does the language we use shape the way we think and understand race and ethnicity? Does language construct reality or describe reality?"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
All for One and One for All A class of 6-7 year olds in the United States inquires into the central idea, “A community is impacted by the involvement of its...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why I Can't Remember Things -- How ADHD Affects Working Memory

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Universal Design for Learning - Sandra Levey (1)

# data[].attributes.headline
Supporting diverse readers in reading and writing

# data[].attributes.subject
Supporting diverse readers in reading and writing

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Shelley Murphy_Caught in the Middle Chapter

# data[].attributes.headline
Overview of Collaborative & Proactive Solutions with Dr. Ross Greene

# data[].attributes.subject
Overview of Collaborative & Proactive Solutions with Dr. Ross Greene

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
At a glance

A strengths-based IEP uses student abilities to help work on weaknesses.

IEP goals are built around what the student can do and how the team can use those abilities.

Helping students identify and leverage their strengths, interests, and preferences can lead to more self-awareness and self-advocacy.

But more and more schools are shifting the focus from deficits to a strengths-based approach. This kind of IEP gives much more weight to a student's strengths, interests, and preferences. The team not only identifies strengths but leverages them to help address weaknesses.

Here's what you need to know to help develop a strengths-based IEP for your child.

What strengths-based IEPs are

A strengths-based IEP looks at abilities as well as weaknesses. It looks at what students can do, what the team wants them to do next, and how strengths might be used to set goals to help address a particular need.

How strengths-based IEPs work

There's no one way to develop a strengths-based IEP. But here are some common elements and approaches.

Use a strengths finder before the IEP meeting. These kinds of student self-assessments can help IEP teams develop a strengths-based IEP. A strengths test not only tells the IEP team about kids' abilities. It also tells the kids about their own abilities. And these insights can be a guiding force throughout the IEP meeting.

Give students a leadership role in IEP meetings. Having students actively participate in parts of the IEP meeting can help in many ways. For example, students can lead the part of the meeting where they share what they discovered about themselves when taking the strengths test.

Student involvement in IEP meetings can deepen the discussion about strengths. It can also give kids a sense of ownership when they get to help make decisions about their IEP.

Reframe the way the IEP team talks about strengths. Too often, IEP teams discuss a student's strengths by saying things like "What I like about Elana is...." And these kinds of comments can be hard to connect to the rest of the IEP in actionable ways.

But IEP teams can reframe the strengths discussion so it focuses on abilities: "What does Elana do well?"

For example, if Elana struggles in math, what does she do well in that subject? Can she work independently? Does she prefer to work in groups? Is she able to use a calculator? Strengths-based IEPs aim to start with a strength for each of the skill sets discussed in this section.

Weave strengths into IEP goals. This is the heart of a strengths-based IEP. IEP goals are built around what the student can do and how the team can use that ability to work on an area of weakness.

It's important for IEP goals to be SMART ( Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Results-oriented, and T ime-bound). Incorporating your child's strengths into SMART goals can make the goals even stronger. It helps kids see how to make progress by leveraging what they're good at.

Here are a few examples of how a strengths-based IEP goal could differ from a SMART goal that isn't strengths-based:

The common goals and the strengths-based goals set the same expectation for student progress. But only the strengths-based goals use the student's abilities and interests to help chart a path to progress.

The potential of strengths-based IEPs

Strengths-based IEPs aren't widely used yet. But as more schools make strides in student-led IEPs and other areas, they may inspire more districts to rewrite their IEP templates. Adjusting these templates can help ensure that strengths are discussed throughout the IEP meeting, not just in the first section.

In the meantime, you don't have to wait for your child's school to change its IEP template. There's a lot you can do right now.

Key takeaways

Strengths tests and self-assessments can help deepen the discussion about strengths.

Strengths-based IEP goals use a student's abilities, interests, and preferences to help chart a path to progress.

Involving students in IEP meetings can help the team think about ways to develop strengths and work on weaknesses.

About the author

About the author

Julie Rawe is the special projects editor at Understood.

Reviewed by

Reviewed by

Brian Stack, MEd is the principal of Sanborn Regional High School in Kingston, New Hampshire.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Strengths-based IEPs: What you need to know

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
What is a strengths-based IEP? Find out how this type of IEP focuses on student strengths to set IEP goals, and see examples of strengths-based goals.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
IEP Development and implementation: Considering the Student, the Environment and the Academic Domain - LD@school

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Add to favorites Click here to view a transcript of this webinar recording. In this webinar, Dr.Rhonda Martinussen and Dr.Todd Cunningham discuss the development and implementation of a student’s Individualized Education Plan (IEP) from various perspectives, including the need to consider the academ…

# data[].attributes.headline
Richardson & Shupe - The Importance of Teacher Self-Awareness

# data[].attributes.subject
Richardson & Shupe - The Importance of Teacher Self-Awareness

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Richardson & Shupe - The Importance of Teacher Self-Awareness

# data[].attributes.headline
“The focus on academic achievement is crowding out the school day, when more time should be devoted during school hours to helping students, especially in high school, find ways to overcome their emotional frailty and build resilience.”

# data[].attributes.subject
“The focus on academic achievement is crowding out the school day, when more time should be devoted during school hours to helping students, especially in high school, find ways to overcome their emotional frailty and build resilience.”

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
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."

Share and discuss on Facebook
Support for this program comes from the Spencer Foundation and Lumina Foundation.
Sign up for email notifications
We're interested in hearing what impact APM Reports programs have on you. Has one of our documentaries or podcasts changed how you think about an issue? Has it led you to do something, like start a conversation or try to do something new in your community? Share your impact story.

Enter your address below and we'll let you know when we publish new stories.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How a flawed idea is teaching millions of kids to be poor readers

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
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.