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Teaching PA in 2022_A Guide for Educators.pdf

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Beef-Up Your Blending: Blending Techniques for Stuck Students - Orton-Gillingham Weekly

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After children have learned a few single consonant letter-sound correspondences and at least one vowel, they are ready to read some simple words. Think about it… How many CVC words can be made using the Starting 7 letter/sound correspondences (o, a, d, g, c, t, m) introduced in the first Seven less…

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In the Being a Reader program, we recommend using continuous blending for phonological awareness and reading decodable word activities. In continuous blending, words are "sounded out" with no stopping or pausing between sounds. For example, in sounding out the word am, the sound of a is held for 2 seconds, because it is continuous, and then the sound of m is said without any break between the two sounds. Phonemically, the result is "/aamm/." This scaffolding offers critical support in blending individual sounds to make a word. Presenting sounds without continuous blending (for example, /aa/ [slight pause or break] /mm/" while reinforcing the individual sounds, does not present the same opportunity to hear them in combination and recognize the word.

For an example of continuous blending, watch this .
If the students have difficulty blending, you might:

use a visual aid. Draw three blanks side by side on a wipe-off board and point to each blank as you say each sound again slowly. Sweep under all three blanks as you say the word. Then have the students say the sounds as you point to the blanks and say the word as you sweep under them.

model and have the students blend without stopping between.

the sounds, for example, "/ăămm/" rather than "/ăă/ [pause] /mm/."

practice blending when (a) orally blending phonemes during phonological awareness ("Blend"), (b) blending printed decodable words ("Sound," "Again," "Read), and (c) reading decodable words in the stories ("Sound," "Read").

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What is continuous blending, and why is it important? | Center for the Collaborative Classroom

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In the Being a Reader program, we recommend using continuous blending for phonological awareness and reading decodable word activities. In continuous blending, words are "sounded out" with no stopping or pausing between sounds. For example, in sounding out the word am, the sound of a is held for 2 seconds, because it is continuous, and then the sound [...]

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Phonemic Awareness Skills Development Tools.pdf

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"phonemic awareness" phonics literacy reading heggerty "phonological awareness"

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Heggerty Phonemic Awareness is a well-organized 35-week curriculum of daily phonemic awareness lesson plans. Developed on a systematic scope and sequence of skills, each level focuses on eight phonemic awareness Skills, along with two additional activities to develop Letter and Sound recognition, and Language Awareness.

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Decodable Word Lists_Short Vowels, Blends, Digraphs.pdf

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Driscoll: Level 1 Fundations Aligned Decodables 

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Driscoll: Level 1 Fundations Aligned Decodables 

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 12/3-12/9: GLTM: K-2 : Writing Records ( 1-2)/ K Leveled Text 

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April 2022 : GLTM: K-2: Small Groups/ Partnerships and Clubs 

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Overview of suggested restructuring

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

Flash Words and Heart Words defined

Flash Words with advanced vowels to teach with early phonics instruction

Flash Words with two and three syllables

Implementing the new model

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

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A New Model for Teaching High-Frequency Words

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

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

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

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Routine that Supports Orthographic Mapping 

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Routine that Supports Orthographic Mapping 

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HFW Instructional Routine that Support Orthographic Mapping 

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HFW Instructional Routine that Support Orthographic Mapping 

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Rally, Try It, Try It, Link Template for HFW 

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Rally, Try It, Try It, Link Template for HFW 

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HFW:  Rally/ Activate: Try It/ Try It/ Link 

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Decoding: CVC:  Rally/ Activate: Try It/ Try It/ Link 

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Many children with literacy difficulties find it hard to blend phonemes together. Word Chains games allow a child to focus on sounds without the distraction of graphemes, as each sound is represented by a counter. A single phoneme is changed and the child 're-blends' to make a new word. The Word Chain lists progress from simple CVC words, like 'dog' and 'cat', to more complex words with initial and final blends, like 'stand' and 'crisp'. This allows targeted practice of a very specific skill in just a few minutes.

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Blending Phonemes - Word Chains - Dyslexic Logic

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Resources and word-chains (also called word ladders or word chains) to support teaching blending skills for children with poor phonological awareness, from basic CVC blends to CCVCC words with long and short medial vowels.

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Small Group - Lizzie - Syllable Segmenting Beat Walk - K-2

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Advancing Science of Reading in the Early Years - K-5 Literacy Program & Curriculum | Amplify CKLA

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Webinar: Instructional Suggestions for Writing About Reading

Archived from 2022. This webinar presented by Joan Sedita for the Oregon RTIi Annual Conference begins with an overview of The Writing Rope framework for writing instruction and then presents instructional suggestions for writing responses to prompts in any subject area based on sources. Strategies are introduced for the ANSWER Routine ( Analyze the question, set Notes, Select relevant information from sources, Write the response, Edit and R evise.

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Start learning now with our free webinars and videos.

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Melissa and Lori Love Literacy is a podcast for educators interested in learning more about the science of reading, knowledge building, and high quality curric…

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Julia Lindsey's evidence-backed routines help young readers decode words efficiently so they can spend more energy on comprehending--and enjoying--what they read! You'll find:1. need-to-know essentials of how kids learn to read.2. principles of high-quality foundational skills instruction.3. teacher-approved instructional "swaps" to improve early reading instruction. Lindsey addresses content learning, culturally responsive practices, and the importance of engaging readers from the start.

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Reading Above the Fray: Reliable, Research-Based Routines for Developing Decoding Skills (The Science of Reading in Practice)

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Julia Lindsey's evidence-backed routines help young readers decode words efficiently so they can spend more energy on comprehending--and enjoying--what they read! You'll find:1. need-to-know essentials of how kids learn to read.2. principles of high-quality foundational skills instruction.3. teac...

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Article by Nell Duke: Teach "Sight" Words as You Would Any Other Word 

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Article by Nell Duke: Teach "Sight" Words as You Would Any Other Word 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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TC: How to Learn a Letter ( 1 and 2 could be reversed) 

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TC: How to Learn a Letter ( 1 and 2 could be reversed) 

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Choosing and Using Decodable Texts: Practical Tips and Strategies for Enhancing Phonics Instruction

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Amazon.com: Choosing and Using Decodable Texts: Practical Tips and Strategies for Enhancing Phonics Instruction: 9781338714630: Blevins, Wiley: Books

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Wiley Blevins - Choosing and Using Decodable Text

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How to Learn a Word ( with teacher cues) 

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How to Learn a Word ( with teacher cues) 

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Walpole: How to Plan Differentiated Reading - Complete Curriculum 

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Walpole: How to Plan Differentiated Reading - Complete Curriculum 

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Webinars Series - Erasing the Misery of Reading and Spelling Multi-syllabic Words

Do you have students who skip, guess at, or just give up when they encounter long, complex words in printed texts? Does their comprehension suffer when they are unable to read those words? There are some very functional, simple techniques you can teach students to use for reading and spelling multisyllabic words, allowing them to better comprehend what they read.

In this four-part webinar we demonstrate explicit, scaffolded teaching of multi-syllabic word decoding with various multisensory techniques, including a manipulative that is easy to access or create for use with students of all ages and grades. This " Lose the Rules " approach teaches students to ask simple questions to break words down into individual syllables, helping them become fluent and efficient decoders of all syllable types. This approach is effective across all grade levels. We also teach participants a similar set of strategies for spelling multisyllabic words syllable by syllable. Additionally, participants will learn a scope and sequence in which to teach powerful, multisyllabic word decoding and spelling, and they will receive a list of words that are effective for teaching the scope and sequence in various content areas.

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Erasing the Misery Part One covers some basic ideas about foundational literacy skills, decoding, orthographic mapping, and single syllable conventions. It shows how phonemic awareness and knowledge of the syllable types is critical prerequisite knowledge for reading big words.

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Erasing the Misery Part Two features the power of our efficient Lose the Rules approach by looking at how to decode bigger words with closed syllables. It also extends the power of our efficient Lose the Rules approach by adding strategies for including the schwa and open syllables.

On-Demand

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Erasing the Misery Part Three shows how to leverage closed & open syllables, and strategies for identifying the schwa, to breach into more syllable types, like r-controlled and vowel-consonant-e.

On-Demand
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Erasing the Misery Part Four summarizes the power of our Lose the Rules approach and adds more syllable types including vowel teams and odd syllables. It also covers some free resources available for distance teaching of these key strategies.

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Webinar Series - Erasing the Misery of Reading and Spelling Multi-syllabic Words

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Webinars Series - Erasing the Misery of Reading and Spelling Multi-syllabic WordsDo you have students who skip, guess at, or just give up when they encounter long, complex words in printed texts? Does their comprehension suffer when they are unable to read those words?

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Allen, K. (2005). Alphabet knowledge: Letter recognition, naming, and sequencing. In J. Birsh (Ed.), Multisensory teaching of basic language skills, 2nd Edition, pp. 113-150. Baltimore, Md.: Paul Brookes.

Apel, K., Masterson, J.J., and Niessen, N.L. (2004). Spelling assessment frameworks. In Stone, C.A., Silliman, E.R., Ehren, B.J., and Apel, K. (Eds.), Handbook of language and literacy: Development and disorders, pp. 644-660. New York: Guilford.

Bailet, L. (2004). Spelling instructional and intervention frameworks. In Stone, C.A., Silliman, E.R., Ehren, B.J., and Apel, K. (Eds), Handbook of language and literacy: Development and disorders, pp. 661-678. New York: Guilford.

Balmuth, M. (1992). The roots of phonics: A historical introduction. Baltimore, Md.: York Press.

Bear, D., Invernizzi, M., Templeton, S., and Johnston, F. (2000). Words their way (2nd Edition). Columbus, Ohio: Merrill.

Bryson, B. (1990). The mother tongue: English and how it got that way. New York: Avon Books.

Berninger, V. Vaughan, K., Abbott, R., Brooks, A., Abbott, S., Reed, E., Rogan, L. and Graham, S. (1998). Early intervention for spelling problems: Teaching spelling units of varying size within a multiple connections framework. Journal of Educational Psychology, 90, 587- 605.

Bryant, P., Nunes, T. and Bindman, M. (1997). Children's understanding of the connection between grammar and spelling. In B. Blachman (Ed.), Foundations of reading acquisition and dyslexia, pp. 219-240. Mahwah, N.J.: Erlbaum.

Carlisle, J.F. and Stone, C.A. (2005). Exploring the role of morphemes in word reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 40(4), 428-449.

Carreker, S. (2005). Teaching spelling. In J. Birsh (Ed.), Multisensory teaching of basic language skills (2nd Edition), pp. 257-295. Baltimore, Md.: Paul Brookes.

Ehri, L.C. (1998). Grapheme-phoneme knowledge is essential for learning to read words in English. In J.L. Metsala & L.C. Ehri (Eds.), Word recognition in beginning literacy, pp. 3-40. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Ehri, L. (2000). Learning to read and learning to spell: Two sides of a coin. Topics in Language Disorders, 20(3), 19-49.

Ehri, L. (2004). Teaching phonemic awareness and phonics. In P. Mc- Cardle and V. Chhabra (Eds.), The voice of evidence in reading research, pp. 153-186. Baltimore, Md.: Brookes Publishing.

Ehri, L. and Snowling, M.J. (2004). Developmental variation in word recognition. In Stone, C.A., Silliman, E.R., Ehren, B.J., and Apel, K. (Eds.), Handbook of language and literacy: Development and disorders, pp. 433-460. New York: Guilford.

Grace, K. (in press). Phonics and spelling through phoneme-grapheme mapping. Longmont, Colo.: Sopris West.

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Moats, L.C. (2003). The speech to print workbook. Baltimore, Md.: Paul Brookes.

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

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

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Transcript

Learning 'b' and 'd' and Reading Short Vowel Words with Aiko, Second Grader
Linda Farrell: Okay. We're gonna have a lesson. And we are gonna have some fun ... Today reading expert Linda Farrell will be working with Aiko, a second grader here at Windy Hill Elementary in Calvert County, Maryland. Ms. Farrell will help Aiko with telling the difference between the letters 'b' and 'd,' keeping her eyes on the text rather than looking up to think of words, and reading words with short vowels. Linda Farrell: Do you ever get your 'b's and 'd's mixed up? Linda Farrell: Sometimes? Well, let's see if we can't fix that.
Linda Farrell: Aiko confuses 'b's and 'd's. She's in the second grade. And it's going to get in the way of her reading. So we have to fix that problem. Lots of children confuse 'b's and 'd's. They look alike. It's a ball and a stick. So we know we have to straighten that out, because that's going to hurt your reading because there are lots of words with 'b's and 'd's.
Linda Farrell: We're gonna work on fixing that. So we're gonna learn about our 'b' hand. Have you ever used your 'b' hand?
Linda Farrell: They have a 'b' hand. Their 'b' hand, it looks like a 'b.' Here's the circle. Here's the line. And we teach them to not guess and to slow down and compare your hand to the letter.
Linda Farrell: This is your 'b' hand, okay? So I'm gonna put this little rubber band on you, so you can remember which one's your 'b' hand. So which one's your 'b' hand? Aiko: This one. Linda Farrell: Okay.
Linda Farrell: I don't tell a kindergartener, a first grader, or a second grader, "It's your left hand," because they don't know which one is their left hand. Sometimes I don't even know which one's my left hand. When we first teach it, we put something on their hand. We might put a sticker. I put a rubber band on Aiko's hand so that when I say, "Where's your 'b' hand?" she's got something that reminds her. Three lessons she won't need the rubber band anymore. She'll know what it is. Some kids get it right away.
Linda Farrell: Would you put your 'b' hand up like this ... and make a fist. And then put your finger out. Okay? That is your 'b' hand. And I'm gonna show you why it's your 'b' hand. Go like this. We put this down here. And this letter is a 'b.' And your hand looks like this letter. Can you see that? We have the circle right here. Where's the circle on the letter? Point to the circle on the letter. And where's the circle on your hand? Yeah. Right there. Where's the stick on the letter? Show me a stick on your finger. This is your 'b' hand because the stick is on the same side of the circle as your finger. So your finger and your, and the stick are on the same side of the circle.
Linda Farrell: Lots of kids get 'b's and 'd's mixed up - kindergarten, first and second grade. It does not mean that they have dyslexia. Students who have dyslexia have phonological processing issues. They do not differentiate sounds easily. Their problems are primarily related to phonological awareness. 'B/d' is about shapes. That is not about sounds.
Linda Farrell: Will you put your 'b' hand by the 'b'? Yep. And is your finger on the same side of the circle as the stick or on a different side of the circle? Aiko: Same side. Linda Farrell: The same side. Yeah. Let's go down here. Is this a 'b' or a 'd'? Linda Farrell: Okay. And when you answer, I want you to look down here and compare it. Here's what you did. You went [looking upward]. Well, you're not gonna figure it out unless you look and you compare. Okay. So you have to look and say, "Ooh, I can tell." So is that a 'b' or a 'd'? Ms. Farrell's explicit lesson about recognizing the shape of the letter 'b' will take some time to sink in for Aiko. And there's a common habit she'll need to deal with. When Aiko is working on identifying a letter, she often looks up to think, looking away from the letter.
Linda Farrell: The answer to what is an incorrect letter or an incorrect word is in the print. And we have to teach Aiko to keep her eyes on the print, on the words, when she's reading, or the letters. I've worked with many kids that have this same difficulty. And I'll say, "Keep your eyes on the words," and they can't do it, because their habit is so strong that they can't try to do what I'm asking them to do and remember to keep their eyes down. So we just practice keeping your eyes down.
Linda Farrell: We're gonna practice looking down here, okay? So I'm gonna ask you a question, and you can't look up until I go like this [pounds fist], okay? So you keep looking down. Don't look up. Look down. Look down. Look down. Look down. [pounds fist] Now you can look up. Okay. Let's try it again. Look down. Look down. Look down. [pounds fist] Eventually, Aiko will need to have images of words stored in her brain. This is critical to the immediate word recognition necessary for fluent reading. When students say a word without looking at it, they miss opportunities to develop those images. Linda Farrell: So hold your hand up here. So I'm gonna go 'a,' cause I don't need my 'b' hand. But do I need my 'b' hand for that letter? Linda Farrell: Yes, I do, cause that's a 'b' or a 'd.' So I have to put my 'b' hand and ... let me see. Is that a 'b' or a 'd'? Which one do you think? Ohp. Where are you gonna look? Linda Farrell: Yes. Okay. Is that a 'b' or a 'd'? Linda Farrell: Let's try that. Put your 'b' hand next to that. Okay. Is your finger on the same or a different side? Aiko: Different. Linda Farrell: Different. So is that a 'b' or a 'd'? Linda Farrell: Yes. And we're gonna keep looking down. Remember? You don't get to look up until I stomp. Okay? So now, I want you ... we're gonna go just right to here. Okay? So watch me. 'a, d, s, b.' You do it. Okay. Put your hand up here for the 'a.' Okay. Do it. Aiko: 'a, d, s, b'? Linda Farrell: Okay. Now. See how far away your hand is? You gotta go like this. And you know where you looked when you read? You looked at me. But where are you supposed to be looking? Linda Farrell: Yep. At the letter. So. Okay. So we did those four. You do these four.
Linda Farrell: And this is isolated practice. I see lots of teachers who use a 'b' and 'd' hand or a 'b' hand. But they only do it when the kid misses a word. So, "Oh, you read 'bog' as 'dog.' Use your 'b' hand." You don't have to use your 'b' hand. If it's not "bog," it's "dog." We've gotta have isolated practice to rewire the brain ... to stop guessing and start looking. And that's what we did with Aiko. Aiko has pretty significant 'b/d' issues. With this kind of practice, she could solve her 'b/d' issues, I believe, in three to four weeks if we did this every day.
Linda Farrell: You got it. Do you think you can do 10 in a row? Linda Farrell: I think you can. Let's try it. Okay. Aiko: 'x, b, d, a' Linda Farrell: [whispering] Hand down. Is your finger on the same side or a different side? Aiko: Different, so it's a 'd.' Linda Farrell: Yes. Okay. Aiko: 'o, b, c, d, j' Linda Farrell: Ten out of 10! That's ... After a little more practice with 'b' and 'd,' Ms. Farrell will help Aiko work on another skill ... reading short vowel words without sounding them out aloud first. And Aiko will need to lean on her new skills ... distinguishing between 'b' and 'd' using her 'b' hand, and concentrating on looking down at the words while she thinks. Linda Farrell: Can you just read these words right here? Linda Farrell: Could you read these words right here please? Linda Farrell: Could you check and see if that's a 'b' or a 'd'? Use your 'b' hand. Is that a 'b' or a 'd'? Linda Farrell: It is a 'd.' So what's ...
Aiko: 'd' ... did
Linda Farrell: Okay. Linda Farrell: What's the word? Linda Farrell: Look down. Always keep your eyes on the words. Linda Farrell: Okay. You got five words right. Can you touch and say that word?
Linda Farrell: It is hug. Read them all again.

Linda Farrell: Okay. You got six out of six right. When you read this word, you went /k - i - t/. Did you hear yourself do that? Okay. It's okay. I want you to do that in your head. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna close our mouth until we're ready to read the word. It goes like this. [pause] Did. [pause] Ad. I have to think those sounds in my head. So can you do that? Let's read these.
Linda Farrell: [whispering] Mouth closed. Linda Farrell: Okay. Now. Two things: you got five right. Can you? What's that word?
Linda Farrell: It is kip. And the other thing is, you looked up. So we're gonna practice looking down. Okay. You're gonna look down, look down here until I stomp, okay? [pounds fist] You can look up. Okay? Do it again. [pounds fist] Now you're gonna read, and you can't look up until I stomp, okay? So remember, you're not gonna look up until I stomp, so I'll hold this, okay? So start reading.
Linda Farrell: [pounds fist] That was perfect. You kept your eyes down the whole time. Can you check and see if that's a 'b' or a 'd'? Use your hand. Use your 'b' hand. Linda Farrell: Yeah. So what's the word? Linda Farrell: It is. We're gonna go over here ... and again, don't look up until I stomp. So read those. Linda Farrell: You can use your 'b' hand, right there. In one short lesson, Aiko has made a lot of progress. She's learning to keep her head down as she reads, focusing on the letters. She's using her 'b' hand to help her identify her 'b's and 'd's more accurately. And she's reading words as a whole rather than sound by sound. As she practices and works toward mastery of these skills, her reading will get better and better.
Linda Farrell: Mud. You kept your eyes down and you got 'em all right! Six out of six! Yes!
We'd like to thank the wonderful students and families at Windy Hill Elementary School in Calvert County, Maryland. We hope that sharing these experiences will help other children who are learning to read. Special thanks also to Kelly Cleland, Julie Donovan, Joanne Harbaugh, and their outstanding colleagues at Windy Hill Elementary ... and to Leanne Meisinger at Calvert County Public Schools. We are deeply grateful to Linda Farrell, Michael Hunter, and Nicole Lubar of Readsters for their invaluable contributions to this project.
Produced by Noel Gunther

Edited by Christian Lindstrom

Graphic Design: Tina Chovanec

Camera: Richard Chisolm

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

© 2019, WETA, Washington, D.C.

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Learning 'b' and 'd' and Reading Short Vowel Words with Aiko, Second Grader

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Linda Farrell: Okay. We're gonna have a lesson. And we are gonna have some fun ... Today reading expert Linda Farrell will be working with Aiko, a second grader here at Windy Hill Elementary in Calvert County, Maryland.

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TC Quick Phonics Assessments for Progress Monitoring and Matching Students to Decodables 

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TC Quick Phonics Assessments for Progress Monitoring and Matching Students to Decodables 

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https://padlet.com/sfindley2/e85xcvtrvlfr3l03

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I was recently developing some PowerPoints and activities for a comprehension training session about the role that text structure plays in reading comprehension. One of the related topics that is unfamiliar to many teachers was Cohesive Devices (sometimes called Cohesive Ties, and also known as anaphors). I thought I'd devote this post to explaining cohesive ties and how they might affect reading comprehension, especially for younger students or English language learners.

Cohesive devices are words or phrases used to connect ideas between different parts of text. There are three main types of cohesive devices:

Pronouns that refer back to a previously mentioned noun.
Example: Jim went out to the playground. He played on the swings.

Substitution of a synonym for a previously mentioned noun.
Example: There was a lot of food, but she only ate the bread.

Transition words and inter-clausal connectors such as so or because

Example: Jim played on the swings. Later, Jim played ball.

Example: Mary was late, so she took the bus. Mary was late because she took the bus.

Cohesive devices affect comprehension because they help readers integrate information between sentences in a text. The pronoun, synonym, or transition word is tied to a previous word, phrase or clause (the antecedent). Many students, even skilled readers, never consciously think about authors' use of cohesive devices. It is helpful for teachers to draw attention to this kind of text structure, especially for students who have difficulty comprehending a series of sentences that include cohesive ties. Children with poor reading comprehension make more errors on questions that can only be answered if a pronoun has been correctly resolved. They are less likely to supply the appropriate anaphor in a cloze task. For example, "Steve gave his umbrella to Andrea in the park because ___ wanted to keep dry." (Carlisle & Rice, 2002; Cain & Oakhill, 2007) Also, poor comprehenders' difficulties are particularly pronounced when there is intervening text between the anaphor and it's antecedent.
Examples
Look at the two examples below. The cohesive ties are linked to their antecedents with arrows. Notice how there can be multiple cohesive ties within a single paragraph!

Instructional Suggestions
As a means of drawing students' attention to cohesion, have them identify all the words that "stand for" other words, phrases, or a clause in a short, familiar passage from material students are reading. For young children, many of the read aloud texts that teachers use to develop vocabulary and comprehension include examples where the author has used pronouns, synonyms, and transitions to connect sentences. For good readers, an activity such as this may be all that is necessary to encourage greater attention to the connections between sentences. The following are some recommendations for students who have difficulty understanding cohesion (Maria, 1990):

Have students match the cohesive tie with its antecedent. There are several ways to do this. Students may draw arrows from the cohesive ties to the words they replace, write the antecedent above the cohesive tie, or write the same number over words that are linked. Some students may benefit from applying one of these techniques as they read.

Have children read a passage and answer questions that require comprehension of cohesive ties.

Delete pronouns from a passage, and have students fill in the blanks.

Give students a passage in which names and other sentence components have been unnecessarily repeated. Ask them to substitute cohesive ties for the repetitious information.

At times, the antecedent of a pronoun may be somewhat ambiguous. Some children may need to be taught how to use "clues" such as number and gender to figure out what pronouns stand for.
Example: Joe and Laura went to the beach. He played in the water while she looked for shells. Afterwards, they had a picnic lunch.

In other instances, children may need to draw on background knowledge and reasoning skills to determine the most probable antecedent of a pronoun. In the following example, it more likely refers to the mall than to the bank since John was able to conduct his business at the bank: John went to the mall after he deposited some money in his account at the bank. It was closed.

References:

Cain, K. & Oakhill, J. (2007). Reading comprehension difficulties: Correlates, causes, and consequences. In K. Cain & J. Oakhill (Eds.) Children's comprehension problems in oral and written language. New York: Guilford Press. pp. 48-49

Carlisle, J.F. & Rice, M. S. (2002). Improving reading comprehension: Research-based principles and practices. Baltimore, MD: York Press. pp. 129-130

Joan Sedita

Joan Sedita is the founder of Keys to Literacy and author of the Keys to Literacy professional development programs. She is an experienced educator, nationally recognized speaker and teacher trainer. She has worked for over 35 years in the literacy education field and has presented to thousands of teachers and related professionals at schools, colleges, clinics, and professional conferences.

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What are Cohesive Devices and how do they affect comprehension? - Keys to Literacy

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I was recently developing some PowerPoints and activities for a comprehension training session about the role that text structure plays in reading comprehension. One of the related topics that is unfamiliar to many teachers was Cohesive Devices (sometimes called Cohesive Ties, and also known as anaphors).

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One of my colleagues told us that we should not be teaching guided reading lessons or comprehension skills or strategies. We're using a core reading program that includes those kinds of things. He says that the science of reading proves that we would get higher reading achievement by teaching more social studies and science (he's our science teacher) and dropping the comprehension instruction that we are providing. He's really vocal about this. Can you help us shut him up? Shanahan response:
Your colleague is partly right. Knowledge about the world is a valuable commodity in reading comprehension. Education should both nurture curiosity and provide the means to fulfilling it - increasing what kids know about science and social studies (and literature and the arts, too.

He goes wrong, however, when he suggests that doing that should take the place of reading instruction. Such instruction can provide your students with a lifetime ability to increase their knowledge independently. Research does not support the idea of simply increasing knowledge about the world results in some automatic improvements in reading ability. There are types of reading comprehension instruction that can provide those kinds of results. Basically, your colleague is very unscientifically going beyond the empirical evidence and overstating his case.

Comprehension instruction is complicated and multivariate - there isn't a single type of skill or approach that is likely to be sufficient. I can't possibly, in the space available here, provide a complete map to what can be included profitably in a reading program.

Research shows that explicit vocabulary and morphology teaching make a difference. We should commit some of the comprehension real estate to increasing what children know about word meanings and how words express those meanings.

Likewise, instruction in how to recognize and use the organizational structure of texts has been well researched, with lots of positive outcomes. Including that is a no brainer.

Strategy instruction - that is, teaching students to execute certain actions before, during, and after reading that can increase their understanding and recall - works too, though admittedly that can be overdone. Such teaching is beneficial, but the regimens of instruction that have been evaluated have tended to be brief and focused on a narrow range of behaviors. But they work.

Not long ago I devoted a blog to the idea of teaching students to read sentences because of the need to makes sense of syntax or sentence grammar. While the general teaching of formal grammar hasn't been found to hold water when it comes to building comprehension, teaching students to make sense of sentences certainly has.

And, what about literature? I haven't gotten into that but hope to soon. Too often those who are promoting knowledge leave that out of the equation, as if nothing of value is gained from commerce with fictional stories and novels, poetry, and drama.

Yeah, all those things deserve instructional time, attention not likely to be provided in social studies or your colleague's science classes.

Let me give one more example of what we need to teach in reading comprehension. Its inclusion is advocated by many of the top researchers in the field - and they have the data to prove it. I haven't written here about this topic before, but it is one that is well worth exploring: cohesion.

Authors try to convey a coherent message through their writing. They do that with several linguistic devices and communications conventions. Readers then try to convert this information into a mental representation of that message. Readers don't put the text itself into their memory (we're not computers). No, we translate what we read, and that translation requires recognition and use of those devices the author put into the text.

For example, here is a brief passage used in a study of cohesion instruction (Baumann, 1986):

Michael got the chicken pox. Then Tom did too.

Michael said, "Wasn't that a terrible sickness?"

"It sure was," Tom said. "Were you as sick as I was?"

To comprehend this text the reader has to make a number of connections. It is necessary to recognize that "did too" refers to "got the chicken pox," and that "sickness" and "It" stand for chicken pox, and that "you" is Michael, and "I" was Tom. Readers who fail to make those connections aren't going to understand what this text is about.

Prior knowledge - the knowledge the reader started with - can help a bit; it is likely helpful to know when you start out that chicken pox is a form of sickness, though this text is simple enough I suspect someone could make the right connections in this case strictly based alone on the linguistic information the author has provided. That might be harder to do if the text was much longer and the distance between the links were greater or if there were more possible choices.

Not surprisingly, younger readers are more likely than older readers to have difficulty with those seemingly straightforward pronoun references - like you for Michael. Or, that older readers who can make those kinds of links might struggle to make causal connections in a science text such as in the following example (Best, Rowe, Ozuru, & McNamara, 2005):

"Plants lack a nervous system. They cannot make quick responses to stimuli."

One would hope that a reader, if asked "why can't plants make a quick response to stimuli?" would answer, "Because they don't have a nervous system" even though the text didn't explicitly say this, but only implied this connection by arraying these sentences in this fashion.

Of course, nobody's perfect. An author may provide a text that allows readers to easily recapture the intended coherence, while others may seemingly be more cavalier - perhaps they expected their readers to have knowledge that they didn't.

One might assume that all readers would be best served by the authors who produce texts with the highest degree of coherence. That would appear to provide the best support for readers. Let's face it, if the author is explicit about connections within a text, then more of us should be able to recognize and use those connections.

It turns out, according to research, that some readers earn more from relatively low coherence texts (e.g., McNamara, 2010; Ozuru, Dempsey, & McNamara, 2009). The more knowledgeable and better readers usually learn more when they are forced, by the text, to engage in more mental processing - generating more inferences and the like. Such readers may give high coherence texts a more superficial once over since it is so easy for them to understand, that they end up with lower comprehension and learning. Alternately, when reading more coherent texts the poorer and less knowledgeable readers tend to do better with comprehension. When reading less explicitly coherent texts, these readers may fail to make the necessary connections or fill the gaps that such texts require, so comprehension suffers.

What that points out is that readers need to learn to negotiate a range of texts - texts that differ in coherence, and, consequently, in their challenge level. Increasing one's knowledge can help with that - at least, if the knowledge and the subject of the text match - but research has found that it is possible to teach students to negotiate the cohesive ties and connections that the author's build into their texts. It is this kind of negotiation that needs to be taught in our reading comprehension lessons.

One of the problems with the research on this topic is that it goes under a variety of titles. Some researchers focus on cohesion and cohesive ties - the linguistic repetitions and links themselves, while others categorize it as a kind of inferencing, the mental action that cohesive elements require. Still others might emphasize specific types of cohesion (e.g., referential, causal, temporal, anaphora, cataphora), or relegate this kind of thing to a superordinate category like Executive Function. I might recommend cohesion training, while a colleague may tout inferencing instruction - when we mean the same thing.

In any event, linguists have done a fine job of identifying and categorizing the many forms of cohesion (Halliday & Hasan, 1976), psychologists have developed innovative techniques for measuring the degree of unity or cohesiveness in texts (e.g., Graesser, McNamara, Cai, Conley, Li, & Pennebaker, 2014; Sheehan, 2013), and there are scads of studies showing the correlation of ability to interpret cohesion ties and reading comprehension (e.g., Duran, McCarthy, Graesser, & McNamara, 2007; Gasparinatou & Grigoriadou, 2013; Hall, et al., 2015; MacLean & Chapman, 1989; Schmitz, et al., 2017). Such studies have found these relations with a variety of text types (including science texts) and with students across a wide range of ages and abilities.

Most importantly, there are a number of studies showing that it is possible to raise reading comprehension by explicitly teaching such skills (e.g., Bauman, 1986; Best, Rowe, Ozuru, & McNamara, 2005). Elleman, 2017; Gallini, Spires, Terry, & Gleaton, 1993; Garcia-Madruga, et al., 2013). This kind of teaching has been effective with a wide range of ages and abilities - but has been especially powerful with low performing readers.

This kind of instruction should explain this aspect of language, providing many examples. Then teachers should provide direct instruction in how to deal with these kinds of connections through a text. This could include both modeling (showing students how to connect the ideas across sentences, paragraphs, and longer expanses of text), and guided reading (having students try to make these connections with explanations). This might be followed by exercises that give students more practice. These might take the form of worksheets, with the students trying to find the references for particular words or phrases or fill-in-the-blank pages. Or, another possibility, is to have students read a text and answer wh-questions about the passages.
Teachers should also raise these kinds of questions during regular group or class shared or guided reading activities. These kinds of activities should take place with a variety of texts.

Along with those earlier mentioned areas of comprehension instruction, this kind of work can have a positive impact on students' reading ability.

Tell that to your colleague - but then also make sure that your kids are learning plenty of content, both in his science classes and in your reading lessons. Every reading assignment is an opportunity to expose children to information about their world. With a little diligent attention and effort, that information can become knowledge available to support future reading. The lessons in vocabulary, syntax, cohesion, and text structure should increase students' ability to gain that information in future reading.
References
Baumann, J. F. (1986). Teaching third-grade students to comprehend anaphoric relationships: The application of a direct instruction model. Reading Research Quarterly, 21(1), 70-90. doi:https://doi.org/10.2307/747961

Best, R. M. , Rowe, M. , Ozuru, Y. & McNamara, D. S. (2005). Deep-Level Comprehension of Science Texts. Topics in Language Disorders, 25 (1), 65-83.

Cox, B. E., Shanahan, T., & Sulzby, E. (1990). Good and poor elementary readers' use of cohesion in writing. Reading Research Quarterly, 25(1), 47-65. doi:https://doi.org/10.2307/747987

Duran, N. D., McCarthy, P. M., Graesser, A. C., & McNamara, D. S. (2007). Using temporal cohesion to predict temporal coherence in narrative and expository texts. Behavior Research Methods, 39(2), 212-223. doi:https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193150

Elleman, A.M. (2017). Examining the impact of inference instruction on the literal and inferential comprehension of skilled and less skilled readers: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Educational Psychology, 109(6), 761-781. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu00 00180

Gallini, J. K., Spires, H. A., Terry, S., & Gleaton, J. (1993). The influence o macro and micro-level cognitive strategies training on text learning. Journal of Research & Development in Education, 26(3), 164-178.

García?Madruga, J. A., Elosúa, M. R., Gil, L., Gómez?Veiga, I., Vila, J. Ó., Orjales, I., . . . Duque, G. (2013). Reading comprehension and working memory's executive processes: An intervention study in primary school students. Reading Research Quarterly, 48(2), 155-174. doi:https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.44

Gasparinatou, A., & Grigoriadou, M. (2013). Exploring the effect of background knowledge and text cohesion on learning from texts in computer science. Educational Psychology, 33(6), 645-670. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2013.790309

Graesser, A. C., McNamara, D. S., Cai, Z., Conley, M., Li, H., & Pennebaker, J. (2014). Coh-metrix measures text characteristics at multiple levels of language and discourse. Elementary School Journal, 115(2), 210-229. doi:https://doi.org/10.1086/678293

Halliday, M. A., & Hasan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English. London: Routledge.

Hall, S. S., Kowalski, R., Paterson, K. B., Basran, J., Filik, R., & Maltby, J. (2015). Local text cohesion, reading ability and individual science aspirations: Key factors influencing comprehension in science classes. British Educational Research Journal, 41(1), 122-142. doi:https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3134

MacLean, M., & Chapman, L. J. (1989). The processing of cohesion in fiction and non-fiction by good and poor readers. Journal of Research in Reading, 12(1), 13-28. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9817.1989.tb00300.x

McNamara, D. S. (2010). Strategies to read and learn: Overcoming learning by consumption. Medical Education, 44(4), 340-346. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2923.2009.03550.x

McNamara, D. S., Crossley, S. A., & McCarthy, P. M. (2010). Linguistic features of writing quality. Written Communication, 27(1), 57-86. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/0741088309351547

Ozuru, Y., Dempsey, K., & McNamara, D. S. (2009). Prior knowledge, reading skill, and text cohesion in the comprehension of science texts. Learning and Instruction, 19(3), 228-242. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2008.04.003

Schmitz, A., Gräsel, C., & Rothstein, B. (2017). Students' genre expectations and the effects of text cohesion on reading comprehension. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 30(5), 1115-1135. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-016-9714-0

Sheehan, K. M. (2013). Measuring cohesion: An approach that accounts for differences in the degree of integration challenge presented by different types of sentences. Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 32(4), 28-37. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/emip.12017

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Comprehension Instruction That Really Helps - Teaching Cohesion

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One of my colleagues told us that we should not be teaching guided reading lessons or comprehension skills or strategies. We're using a core reading program that includes those kinds of things. He says that the science of reading proves that we would get higher reading achievement by teaching more social studies and science (he's our science teacher) and dropping the comprehension instruction that we are providing.

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Reading Rockets: Text Structure Strategy 

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Reading Rockets: Text Structure Strategy 

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Meyer, B. J. F. (1975). The organization of prose and its effects on memory. Amsterdam: North -Holland.

Meyer, B. J. F., Brandt, D. M. & Bluth, G. J. (1980). Use of the top-level structure in text: Key for reading comprehension of ninth-grade students. Reading Research Quarterly, 16, 72-103.

Meyer, B. J. F., Middlemiss, W., Theodorou, E., S., Brezinski, K. L., McDougall, J., & Bartlett, B. J. (2002). Older adults tutoring fifth-grade children in the structure strategy via the Internet. Journal of Educational Psychology, 94 (3), 486-519.

Meyer, B. J. F., & Poon, L. W. (2001). Effects of the structure strategy and signaling on recall of text. Journal of Educational Psychology, 93, 141-159.

Meyer, B. J. F., Wijekumar, K., Middlemiss, W., Higley, K., Lei, P., Meier, C., & Spielvogel, J. (2010). Web-based tutoring of the structure strategy with or without elaborated feedback or choice for fifth- and seventh-grade readers. Reading Research Quarterly, 45, 62-92.

Wijekumar, K. K., Meyer, B. J. F., & Lei, P. (2013). High-fidelity implementation of web-basedIntelligent tutoring system improves fourth and fifth graders content area reading comprehension. Computers & Education, 68, 366-379.

Wijekumar, K., Meyer, B.J.F., Lei, P. (2012). Large-scale randomized controlled trial with 4 th graders using intelligent tutoring of the structure strategy to improve nonfiction reading comprehension. Journal of Educational Technology Research and Development. 60, 987-1013.

Wijekumar, K., Meyer, B.J.F., Lei, P.-W, Lin, Y., Johnson, L.A., Shurmatz, K., Spielvogel, J., Ray,M, & Cook, M. (2014). Improving reading comprehension for 5 th grade readers in rural and suburban schools using web-based intelligent tutoring systems. Journal of Research in Educational Effectiveness, 7:4, 331-357, DOI: 10.1080/19345747.2013.853333

Wijekumar, K., Meyer, B.J.F., Lei, P-W, Hernandez, A., August, D. (in press). Effects of web-based text structure instruction for 4-6 th grade Spanish Els reading comprehension. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal.

Williams, J. P., Hall, K. M., Lauer, K. D., Stafford, K. B., DeSisto, L. A., & deCani, J. S. (2005). Expository text comprehension in the primary grade classroom. Journal of Educational Psychology, 97, 538-550.

Williams, J. P., Stafford, K. B., Lauer, K. D., Hall, K. M., & Pollini, S. (2009). Embedding reading comprehension training in content-area instruction. Journal of Educational Psychology, 101, 1-20.

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Implementing the Text Structure Strategy in Your Classroom

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Learn how to implement a research-based text structure strategy that infuses text structures at every step of reading comprehension instruction, beginning with the introduction of the lesson, previewing of text, selecting important ideas, writing a main idea, generating inferences, and monitoring comprehension.

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This is the second of three posts examining the Simple View of Reading, one of the pillars of the "science of reading" (SoR) approach to reading instruction. In the previous post I noted that the SVR makes an important point-that reading involves the child learning how print represents words in the spoken language they already know-and that people expect it to have further implications for instruction. Here I look at the contrast between what the authors of the SVR proposed and how it is being used in the SoR. In the third post I look at what later studies of the SVR showed, and consider what is gained by linking the SVR to other pillars of the SoR such as the Reading Rope (Scarborough) and the report of the National Reading Panel. I'll end with some broader observations about the use and misuse of research in deciding educational issues.

What Is and Isn't in the SVR

Here is how the SVR is typically presented for educators. This illustration is taken from an explainer from The Reading League, an NGO whose mission is furthering the SoR. (Click on figures to embiggen.)

Think of this picture as a snapshot of conditions that exist as children begin learning to read. They understand spoken language at a 5-6 year old level. They will be able to comprehend texts (at that level) if they learn how the written code represents words they know from talking and listening. The multiplication sign indicates that both components are necessary: reading comprehension is zero if either of the components is zero.

What are the instructional implications of this statement, beyond the important general point about the need for print instruction? To go any further we'll need to consider a few more things: what, when, and how.

What means specifying what's in the circles. "Word recognition" is a convenient bit of jargon but we need to say more about what it involves in order to decide what to teach and how to assess progress. The same holds for language and reading comprehension, although at the outset the main concern is reading words.

When means considering when specific types of knowledge and skills are acquired over time, a crucial issue for instruction. How much the child knows, what they need to learn, and what they are able to learn change over time. The SVR focuses on one developmental fact, that spoken language (ability to speak as well as comprehend) develops ahead of learning about print; therefore learning to read turns on gaining knowledge of print and its connection to spoken language. It doesn't speak to how reading develops over the next several years (or language, either).

How refers to learning: how different skills and types of knowledge are learned. Learning is conspicuously missing from the "science of reading"-remember, the picture of SVR in Figure 1 is just a snapshot of the state of the child's knowledge. It's not a description of how they got there or how they progress. Humans have two main ways to learn: via explicit instruction and via implicit learning. Explicit instruction you know. Implicit learning is the way brains pick up on patterns in the environment, without conscious attention or awareness. We update this knowledge all the time, as we do what people do: read and talk, write a paper, drive a car, make dinner. Achieving the right balance between these two types of learning, and adjusting it as students progress, is crucial to helping them learn efficiently and effectively.

The SVR doesn't address these what, when, and how questions. That is why it is a huge leap to go from the SVR to conclusions about instruction.

We could stop this discussion of the SVR here. Yes, it makes an important basic point that changes how people think about learning to read once they hear about it. No, it didn't address other issues that are closer to the classroom. Fortunately, there are other places to look for that.

In my view, stopping here is the appropriate step, but I have to address some lingering concerns:

* Many people are trying to use the SVR as a framework, filling in some of the missing information. How is that going?

* What about the 150 studies supporting the SVR? Do they address the what, when, and how questions?

* How much is gained by coupling the SVR with other studies in the canon, such as the Reading Rope or the 5 Pillars of Reading from the NRP report?

Word Recognition and Decoding

Many people have recognized the limits of the SVR and tried to extend it in various ways. Doing this makes the limitations of the SVR as a framework for instruction more apparent. Dividing things up into print knowledge, language comprehension, and reading comprehension runs into problems- even though the basic point about the need for instruction about print is valid

Let me illustrate this by asking: "word recognition"-what is that? Yes, I know: it's recognizing words. But to take this to the classroom we need to get more specific. It's not a trick question, but as you'll see, it isn't actually that easy to answer.

The print-related component is called "word recognition" but that isn't right because beginning readers already know how to recognize words, from spoken language (researchers call this "auditory word recognition"). Reading builds on this existing skill. No problem, we change "word recognition" to visual word recognition (VWR). The language comprehension part on the right in Figure 1 is really "spoken language comprehension", which includes auditory word recognition. (It also includes language production, just as the print part also includes writing, but these parts weren't included in the simple view.)

With these clarifications we have Figure 2 (I've omitted the = reading comprehension part to save space):

Are we good? Well, you can't teach "visual word recognition." That is a label for what we want learners to be able to do. Teaching has to focus on the kinds of knowledge that are involved, mainly words and their properties, which can be taught.

Trying to do this within this version of the SVR creates additional instructional puzzles. Visual and auditory word recognition share a lot of parts-for example, meaning. We don't represent the meaning of a word once for reading and another time for speech. Word meanings develop from using spoken and written language, and from experiencing the world (perceiving and acting). This common store of information is accessed in different ways in performing different tasks (reading, spelling, hearing, talking, others). Shouldn't science-based instruction be consistent with these basic facts?

The same issue arises for phonology: it's used in both reading and comprehending speech (also speaking). We therefore need phonology in both circles, but people don't have one phonological code that they use in reading and a different one for listening and talking. Same for vocabulary and morphology. Same for essentially everything, even print.

Again: Trying to make sense of the SVR at the level of detail that's required for instruction creates paradoxes and contradictions.

Bear with me just a little longer. I know this is a slog.

Decoding "Decoding"

What if we put "word recognition" entirely in the language comprehension part, and limit the print component to "decoding," meaning using knowledge of the mappings between orthography and phonology ("phonics") to pronounce letter strings (words like must and novel/nonce words like nust)? The purpose of phonics instruction is to enable this process. Decoding starts with overt pronunciation ("sounding out"), but readers soon begin to do this without speaking, using phonology, a mental code that is based on the pronunciations and sounds of words. I'll call this "orth→phon" for short.

Now we've got this:

This is the other main interpretation of the SVR, as seen in illustrations like this one (from here), but also found elsewhere:

Call this SVR.D. This graphic does not say the same thing as Figure 1 because "decoding" as described here is not the same as "visual word recognition." The latter refers to any process by which people recognize written words. "Decoding" refers here to something more specific, generating phonological codes from print, which only works for some words in English. Such codes can be used to pronounce letter strings aloud. They can also be used to recognize words if the phonological code matches one for a word that is known from spoken language.

"Decoding" in this sense and "word recognition" work with different kinds of spelling patterns. Here's a summary:

Which version of the SVR are you using?

If you're feeling confused about the term "decoding," you're not alone. I just described the traditional concept of "decoding", which predates the SVR and has been the basis for phonics instruction in the US since the 19th century. In English, only words that obey phonics rules (sometimes called grapheme-phoneme correspondences) can be decoded. "Decodable texts" are mainly composed of words that use grapheme-phoneme correspondences/phonics rules that the reader is assumed to have been taught.

Decoding in this sense does not work for words whose pronunciations violate the rules. These were traditionally termed "sight words," but they are also called "heart", "trick", or "snap" words, with various proposals about which words should be included, how they are read, and how they should be taught. Those details don't matter here. Under all of these proposals there are exceptions that have to be learned and recognized some other way. If there is a rule for pronouncing but, cut, and nut, it will not work for put.

Gough and his colleagues used the term "decoding" in a different way: as a synonym for "word recognition."

For the simple view, skilled decoding is simply efficient word recognition: the ability to rapidly derive a representation from printed input that allows access to the appropriate entry in the mental lexicon, and thus, the retrieval of semantic information at the word level. Hoover and Gough (1990), p.130.

This is how jargon gets in the way of understanding. Gough and colleagues were referring to the processes by which words-all kinds of words-are recognized. They were agnostic about the details. Unfortunately, they chose to label this component "decoding," which already had a different, narrower meaning. This created massive confusion that has now spread to the "science of reading."

For example: If you look closely, Figure 4 is attributed to Gough and Tunmer (1986) and Hoover and Gough (1990). The print component is labeled "decoding", as in these articles. However, Gough and colleagues did not use "decoding" to mean the "ability to use sound-symbol relationships to read [some] words". In fact, they pointedly questioned the relevance of this kind of decoding to beginning or skilled reading. Thus the illustration does not accurately represent Gough et al.'s own proposal.

Does this matter? Well, yes. The SVR is one of the main research studies on which the science of reading is based. These observations suggest that people do not agree on what it means. In Figure 4 it is being used to justify teaching children to decode in the traditional sense, which Gough and colleagues did not propose or endorse. That assumption is coming from somewhere else and requires its own justification In other contexts, the component is taken as "word recognition" and used to sanction other methods.

Well, so what? Isn't Figure 4 a reasonable place to start? Readers need to learn to decode (original sense) or something like it. We'll also need to add procedures for dealing with the exception words. This can go in the print component of the SVR, sure. But where's the payoff? Despite all this effort to amend the SVR, we are back at Square One: how do we teach children to read words quickly and accurately given the properties of written English? So far we've only managed to describe the problem, not how to solve it.

Getting a little tired of this? Me too. And yet the same issues arise if we examine other targets of instruction such as vocabulary and morphology. The SVR again does not directly address these topics and so carries zero direct implications for instruction. If we were to expand the SVR to incorporate these types of knowledge, where would they go? Like meaning, they seem to belong to both components. Does that mean we teach each of them twice? Note that morphology presents the same challenges as phonics: "rule-governed" patterns with lots of exceptions (see, for example, the past tenses of verbs). Syllables, too.

These are the puzzles that arose in 1980s research on learning to read. They are arising again in approaches to instruction based on this work-for example, debates about which words to treat as "heart" words or "sight words" and in how to teach phonics. The articles show Gough and colleagues struggling to describe "word recognition" and "decoding" using the concepts that were available at the time. They knew that readers needed to learn how spelling represents phonology and that at least some instruction was required in order to break the code. But instruction about what? They were skeptical of phonics rules, which seem like clumsy approximations of the complex system readers learn. Moreover, fluent reading seems very unlike applying rules to a series of letters. Having to memorize exceptions to the rules such as said and done creates an onerous burden for the learner and misses the fact that they overlap with many "rule-governed" words. Gough and colleagues' use of "decoding" was confusing but perhaps understandable. They were using it to refer to word recognition procedures that they correctly intuited had to exist but couldn't quite figure out.

A solution came a few years later when McClelland and I applied new ideas about how brains learn to reading. In this account, people learn a network of mappings between spelling, sound, and meaning. These mappings reflect patterns that exist across words. Unlike rules that apply every time a pattern is encountered, the mappings vary in frequency and consistency. This knowledge can be closely approximated by simple neural networks that learn based on similarity: learning about one pattern facilitates learning other, overlapping patterns. Such networks can easily learn patterns that are hard to describe in words, for example that - ook is pronounced one way in book, cook, and look but differently in spook, which overlaps with spoon and spool, which pattern with boon and cool. The same procedures are used in reading all words; there isn't a separate one for words that violate the rules. The network uses what it has learned from words to process letter strings it has never seen before.

Phonics rules, on this view, are a convenient fiction. They put parts of this complex web of knowledge into words. They are not accurate descriptions of what is learned, but they are useful because they make explicit instruction about the system possible. Explicit instruction has two purposes. First, it draws attention to what the child can learn: orthographic patterns that map, with varying frequency and consistency, to phonological patterns (and thence to meaning, if the pattern corresponds to a word known from speech). Learning the rules themselves is less important than getting clued into the fact that such patterns exist. The second function of explicit instruction is to get the orth-phon system off the ground quickly. With some patterns established, learning based on the similarity across patterns can proceed, with less and less reliance on a teacher for feedback as knowledge accumulates.

This framework, which has many other bits, took a long time to fully develop. It runs counter to very strong intuitions about reading, and so took a while to gain broad acceptance among researchers. In my view, the "science of reading" is recapitulating this history. At the moment, it is focused on the Gough-era concepts and running up against the same puzzles. The good news is that there is a lot of very useful stuff to come.

The point of this excursion was to examine what happens if one takes the SVR seriously as a framework for early reading instruction. Attempts to be more specific about the print component run into theoretical and practical complications. We know that the reader needs to learn to read and understand words quickly and accurately; that this involves linking written and spoken language; and that the properties of written English make this challenging. After stepping through possible extensions of the SVR, we arrive back at Square One: how to teach children a system with productive patterns but many words that violate the main patterns in varying degrees, including most of the most common ones. (I've also noted that there is a possible solution just over the horizon but for now we are focused on the SVR and other classic SoR studies.)

There are still a few loose ends. First, it's said that 150 studies support the SVR. Do these studies address the what, when, and how issues? Second, do other studies that are pillars of the SoR, such as the Reading Rope, provide details that are missing in the SVR? How far can we get with what we've got? We need to look.

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Decoding "The Simple View of Reading" II

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This is the second of three posts examining the Simple View of Reading, one of the pillars of the "science of reading" (SoR) approach to reading instruction. In the previous post I noted that the SVR makes an important point--that reading involves the child learning how print represents words in the spoken language they already...

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An important strategy to help students build their vocabulary is use of context - i.e., using the clues or hints provided in the text that surround an unfamiliar word to help guess the meaning without depending on a dictionary. This can include words, phrases, or sentences that appear before, after, or close to the word. It can also include visuals or headings embedded in the text - basically anything that helps a reader understand the meaning of an unfamiliar word. Expository, non-fiction text tends to offer more context clues than narrative text.

The main goal for developing students' ability to use context is to aid comprehension, not to teach words in-depth. When students encounter and "stumble" over unfamiliar words that are essential to making meaning of a passage, their comprehension suffers. If the context provides clues to the meanings of these words, comprehension is aided.

Use of context does not come naturally to many students. It takes time to become proficient with this strategy - students benefit from explicit instruction and guided practice. Studies have shown that when students are taught to use context clues they become better at figuring out the definitions of words compared to students who are not directly taught this skill (Kuhn & Stahl, 1998). The first step is helping students recognize when they don't know the meaning of a word and the need to make reasonable judgements about how to address that lack of knowledge.
Types of Context Clues
There are categories of types of clues that are useful for teachers to know, described below with examples from classroom texts. Knowledge of these types of clues benefits the teacher in terms of finding examples in text to use for explicit instruction and practice. However, it is not helpful to expect students to identify the type of clue provided in text. Shanahan (2022) points out that the research synthesis noted above by Kuhn and Stahl determined persuasively that students benefit from instruction for use of context, but it was not category training that helped, only the actual practice in figuring out word meanings from context.

Synonym Clue: A word that is similar to he word is provided.

Example: Water soaks into the ground pores, or spaces, among the fragments of soil.

Example: It was a triptych, or three-paneled, painting.

Contrast Clue: The word is contrasted with another word, usually an antonym.

Example: Unlike a compound, an element cannot be broken down into simpler materials.

Example: Volunteering to join the army offers the choice that a draftee does not have.

Instruction Using Classroom Text Examples
Rather than using contrived examples on worksheets to practice use of context, instruction works best when explicit instruction and guided practice is provided on a regular basis using examples from text that is already being used in the classroom. Teachers should review text and be on the lookout for examples where context clues are provided prior to assigning text for student reading.

Graves (2006, p. 99) suggests teaching students the following four-step strategy for inferring words from context:

1. Read carefully and ask yourself, "Does this make sense?"

2. Notice when you don't know the meaning of a word and slow down. Read that sentence at least once more, looking for clues.

3. If necessary, go back and reread the sentences before and after, looking for clues that help you figure out what the word might mean.

4. When you figure out what the word might mean, substitute your guess for the difficult word and see if it makes sense. If it does, keep on reading. If it doesn't, try again.

Context Doesn't Always Provide Clues
It is important to emphasize with students that use of context doesn't always work! Research shows that sometimes when readers attempt to derive the meanings of words in context they may get them wrong (Pressley et al., 2007). This may be because the student does not have enough prior knowledge to make sense of the clues in the text, or it may be that the clues are misleading. Contexts vary in how much information they provide a reader. Sometimes the context provides a direct explanation of the meaning of a word as shown in the examples of types of clues above, and in this example where the meaning of photosynthesis is directly stated in the previous sentence:

Up to this point we have been referring to the process in which light energy is used to make food simply as the food-making process. But this important process has its own special name: photosynthesis.

Sometimes the context provides some information about an unfamiliar word, but not enough for the student to be aware of its full meaning, as shown in the example below where the student may guess that a vaccination has something to do with preventing disease, but there is not enough information to discern just what a vaccination is.

In order to gain active immunity to a disease, one of two things must occur - either you come down with the disease, or you receive a vaccination.

Beck, McKeown, and Kucan (2002) identified some text as "misdirective" (i.e., leading to a misunderstanding). Here is an example of a misdirective from their book Bringing Words to Life where the students might wrongfully assume that Ginny admired Sandra's dancing:

Sandra had won the dance contest, and the audience's cheers brought her to the stage for an encore. "Every step she takes is so perfect and graceful," Ginny said grudgingly as she watched Sandra dance." (p. 4)

Shanahan (2022) suggests including examples sometimes from real text where words can't successfully be figured out from context, rather than using contrived examples to avoid what he calls "over consistency". He points out that this is being realistic with students about how use of context really works in most reading situations.
Using Word Parts
Another strategy for determining the meaning of an unfamiliar word is to use knowledge of meaningful word parts (roots, prefixes, suffixes), which is the subject of a blog post I wrote in 2018 titled Using Morphology to Teach Vocabulary. Carlisle (2007) maintains that incidental word learning through contextual clues and morphological analysis is the primary means through which students acquire new vocabulary. Frey and Fisher (2011) suggest teaching students to "Look inside the word and outside the word to see what you know." When used in tandem, use of word parts (inside the word) and use of context (outside the word) can be very helpful.
Additional Resources References

Beck, I.L., McKeown, M.G., & Kucan, L. (2002). Bringing words to life: Robust vocabulary instruction. New York: The Guilford Press.

Carlisle, J.F. (2007). Fostering morphological processing, vocabulary development, and reading comprehension. In R.K. Wagner, A.E. Muse, & K.R. Tannenbaum (Eds.). Vocabulary acquisition: Implications for reading comprehension. New York: The Guilford Press.

Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2008). Word wise and content rich: Five essential steps to teaching academic vocabulary. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Graves, M.F. (2006). The vocabulary book. New York: Teachers College Press.

Kuhn, M.R., & Stahl, S. A. (1998). Teaching children to learn word meanings from context: A synthesis and some questions. Journal of Literacy Research, 30, 119-138.

Pressley, M., Disney, L., & Anderson, K. (2007). Landmark vocabulary instructional research and the vocabulary instructional research that makes sense now. In Richard K. Rosenshine, B., & Stevens, R. (1984). Classroom instruction in reading. In P.D. Pearson, R. Barr, M.L. Kamil, and P.B. Mosenthal (Eds.), Handbook of reading research, 745-799. New York: Longman.

Shanahan, T. (2022). Blog post: Teaching Students to Use Context

Joan Sedita

Joan Sedita is the founder of Keys to Literacy and author of the Keys to Literacy professional development programs. She is an experienced educator, nationally recognized speaker and teacher trainer. She has worked for over 35 years in the literacy education field and has presented to thousands of teachers and related professionals at schools, colleges, clinics, and professional conferences.

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Vocabulary Strategy: Use of Context - Keys to Literacy

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An important strategy to help students build their vocabulary is use of context - i.e., using the clues or hints provided in the text that surround an unfamiliar word to help guess the meaning without depending on a dictionary. This can include words, phrases, or sentences that appear before, after, or close to the word.

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I recently read an interview that you did. When you talk about kids needing to recognize when they don't know a word and how to figure it out - did you mean to leave them on their own to do that? When you mention 'passive scaffolding' it makes me think you do. I know a lot about vocabulary instruction and my view of passive scaffolding as a first-line technique is pretty dim. Glossaries or dictionaries are frustrating. What kids need is to be able to integrate relevant aspects of word meaning into the context to come up with an understanding of what the sentence means and how it adds to understanding of the text overall. And helping students cultivate that ability is best achieved through teacher-student interactions, questioning and discussion. Am I misunderstanding your views on this?

Shanahan responds: RELATED: Why I Encourage Teaching Children to Read Disfluently
I believe good vocabulary instruction has five goals: (1) Increase the numbers of words that children know and the richness of their understanding of those words; (2) Build an understanding of morphology (the meaningful parts of words and how words relate and make meaning); (3) Develop an ability to infer or estimate word meaning on the basis of context; (4) Foster an appreciation of diction and awareness of how words convey tone and an author's attitude; and, (5) To teach students to use dictionaries, glossaries, and thesauruses effectively. A good regime of vocabulary instruction will try to accomplish all of those.

My comments in that interview were focused specifically on goal 3, teaching students to use context to determine the meanings of unknown words that readers may confront in text. My belief is that most reading programs tend to include a handful of context exercises and then undermine those lessons with how they guide reading the rest of the year.

Think about it.

The publisher or teacher tries to anticipate words that students might not know in an upcoming reading selection. This prediction invariably leads to pre-reading lessons aimed at building familiarity with those likely-to-be-unknown words. This makes a certain kind of sense. To the extent that the kids manage to learn the words their reading comprehension of that text should be elevated.

But I don't think that's the right goal.

I don't care how well the students comprehend a story that I'm teaching. At least not initially. I do care about what they learn that will help them to read successfully on their own.

To me that means that those kinds of words should not necessarily be pre-taught.

Someone should take a good look at the text. Can the meanings of any of those words be figured out from context (or from morphological analysis)? If they can be, then those words should not be pre-taught.

We need to give students a chance to deal with such of words in real reading situations.

Think questions - not reading preparation lessons.

If a word's meaning can be determined from context, the teacher should be prepared with a question that will reveal whether students got it. If they did, that's great. There's nothing more to be done.

But if they don't, then teachers need to take them back to the text and guide their efforts to determine the meaning. In some cases, this might be a demonstration. In other cases, the teacher may point out the key information. In still others, it might be nothing more than a direction to reread the sentence or paragraph.

That's what I mean by passive scaffolding. The teacher should know what she is trying to teach - she wants the kids to use context to determine word meanings. The students, however - in this kind of lesson - won't even know which words the teacher has focused on. Their task isn't to use context, like in a worksheet exercise, but to read the text with comprehension. That's why I prefer questions about the text rather than questions about the words.
When the prairie plants were uprooted, the animals that depended on them lost their food source.
For example, look at the following sentence that I lifted from a fourth-grade text:

Students, I think, can get the meaning of "uprooted" from the context, the morphology, or a combination of the two. Of course, I can ask students right out, "What does uprooted mean?" Or, "What does the author mean by uprooted?" Those are legitimate vocabulary questions.

However, my preference would be a question like, "What caused the animals to lose their food source?" That is not a direct vocabulary question, but a comprehension question that can only be answered by dealing with the vocabulary.

If the student answers, "Because the prairie plants were uprooted," then I'll ask directly about the meaning of that word. Or, if they say, "Because the prairie plants died," I might ask, what word did the author use to reveal that fact.

The point is to get them to use the vocabulary to make sense of the text and those kinds of questions guide them to think about the word meanings in a comprehension-centric fashion.

Defining words is just one of many skills that one must orchestrate during a successful read. The teacher should only scaffold if the students fail to make sense of what the author was trying to communicate with that word. That's what makes it passive. The teacher is observing carefully and responding to student behavior, not trying to lead things or to head things off.

That doesn't mean there is no place for introducing some words prior to reading. Not all words can be kenned through context or morphology, so giving kids a leg up on a challenging text is very reasonable - especially if you think those are valuable words.

That doesn't mean that there is no place for worksheets or digital exercises for practicing with context or morphology. But students need support in using context and morphology in real reading situations, too. You can't provide that kind of support if you're always pre-introducing the words, trying to avoid a problem instead of getting the kids to confront it.

That doesn't mean that you can't still teach those words that you had the students deal with through context or morphology. The meaning of those words can be reinforced through direct instruction after the reading.

If I understand your concern:

No, my point was not to suggest that just having kids read would be sufficient to build vocabulary skills. As a student myself, I read a lot, but paid little attention to word meanings. If I didn't know a word, I just kept rolling. My comprehension didn't take off until I made a concerted effort to expand my vocabulary - an effort that included being sensitive to unknown words, using context and dictionaries to figure them out, and lots of drill and practice. With that kind of regimen, my reading comprehension soared.

I had to do that on my own.

Our students should have more help than that, including that kind of passive or responsive vocabulary teaching. I think the confusion has to do with the word, "passive." The lesson is passive from the students' point of view since no one is going to tell them ahead of time the purpose of the lesson or the words that are the focus of this part of the lesson. But what is passive for the student is highly active for the teacher. She has familiarized herself with the affordances of the text and is going to probe to determine whether the students successfully made use of these affordances to comprehend the text. If not, she is ready to intervene with teaching geared to getting students to address that omission. Her teaching is responsive (perhaps a better description) and, yet, her watchfulness is not that general attentiveness to teachable moments, but a highly focused sensitivity to specific student behaviors in very specific parts of the text.

READ MORE: Shanahan On Literacy Blog

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Use Context in Vocabulary Learning | Shanahan on Literacy

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Use Context in Vocabulary Learning: Empower Students to Embrace Context! Learn How to Foster Word Sensitivity in Reading! Read now!

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You wrote recently that it was a good idea to teach comprehension skills, but our school district says we shouldn't, that it's prior knowledge that matters. Do you know the baseball study? Have you read Natalie Wexler's research? It is really difficult to trust research when everyone tells us something different.
Shanahan response:

I feel your pain.

There are research results and there are interpretations of research results. What research has been done, what these studies have found, and whether these studies were any good shouldn't be points of disagreement. But interpretations of what a study means or what actions you should take based on it are going to lead to different claims and I'm sure that is confusing.

That's why I go to great pains to distinguish whether I'm reporting research findings or making claims based upon them. When I do the latter, I try to explain my reasoning so readers can determine whether they think my position is sound.

A few of my own rules for research interpretation:

(1) Always distinguish research results and opinions.

(2) Don't make claims on the basis of a few studies (it's okay to use a study as an example as long as it's an example of more than itself).

(3) Don't prescribe instruction unless research has found it has benefited learners (no matter how tantalizing the theories and correlations may be, don't trust them until they have been tried).

So, what I can tell you about prior knowledge? Prior knowledge refers to the knowledge readers have in their heads prior to reading a text. There is a substantial and extensive body of research going back to Bartlett's 1932 study that reveals that readers use their knowledge to understand text. Case closed on that (and that is not an opinion).

But what does this mean for reading instruction? That's where interpretation begins to intrude.

One conclusion that many of us draw from the research is that it's a good idea for kids to know a lot. The more knowledge and experience they can bring to texts (or life) the better. Instructional practices consistent with this would include providing high quality teaching in social studies, science, and the arts. Some schools - in their efforts to improve reading neglect those subjects and I think this body of research suggests that to not be a good idea.

Another conclusion that seems consistent is that we should make sure the texts we use to teach reading are meaty. Why waste time? If kids are reading, why not expose them to high quality literature and informational texts. Following up later on these readings to ensure that this valuable content is retained seems like a good idea (and this makes sense for the earlier mentioned social studies and science texts as well).

Media is another potential avenue to knowledge, and that means encouraging Carmen Sandiego and Bill Nye the Science Guy rather than Angry Birds.

Yep, there are a lot of things one could do to increase kids' knowledge, and that, presumably, in the long run could help to make kids better readers. Not many arguments there.

But then we get to the baseball study that you mention. This is a cool study (Recht & Leslie, 1988), that was nicely done. The researchers had 7 th and 8 th graders read a text about a baseball game. They divided the students into four groups: good readers who were high or low in baseball knowledge, and poor readers who were high or low in baseball knowledge. They found that reading ability contributed less to comprehension success than the students' levels of knowledge about baseball. Good readers with high prior knowledge did no better than poor readers with high prior knowledge when it came to reading comprehension. But it doesn't prove what a lot of people seem to think it does.

It's a provocative study alright. But it's a one off. There aren't other studies with this kind of finding (lots of studies show the importance of knowledge, but no other one pits reading up against knowledge in this way - interesting that this has not been replicated in more than 30 years). Not only is it the solitary study on this, it was conducted with only a single text and that one designed to be used in a research study. Kind of hard to generalize very far from that in my opinion, though obviously there are people who think this is the definitive empirical evidence on this issue (such as whoever is making policy in your district).

Would I stop teaching reading or reduce the amount of reading instruction or end reading strategy instruction because of the baseball study? Nope, I wouldn't, but if there were an accumulation of such findings, I could be so persuaded. (Recht and Leslie themselves didn't draw this conclusion either, though in what amounts to an afterword they speculated on what it might say about the value of comprehension strategy instruction-which, of course, they didn't actually study--it was speculation, not a finding).

One interesting thing about this study that isn't discussed is that the students weren't grouped on the basis of comprehension strategy use but on reading ability. If the study results can be interpreted (and this part is entirely interpretation) to mean that comprehension strategies shouldn't be taught, then likewise this study should lead us to reject any other kind of reading instruction (such as decoding, vocabulary, increased amounts of reading, etc.). I'm not willing to go there myself.

Knowing the importance of prior knowledge, I'd likely do what Recht and Leslie actually recommended in their study - instigating students to use their knowledge when reading. Though I would do this in a science or social studies class where I'm trying to maximize their knowledge.

Respectfully, that isn't what I'd do in a reading class.

Here my goal isn't to ensure immediate comprehension of today's text, but to make kids successful independent readers. That's where strategies come in. If I'm always providing kids with the appropriate background knowledge to understand each text used for instruction, then how do students ever learn to take on a text on their own? And, what can they do to take on texts for which they don't already have a bunch of relevant knowledge?

I'm not satisfied with the claim (and this is a claim, not a research finding) that readers can't understand texts unless they have a lot of background knowledge. If that were true, we could never negotiate cultural boundaries or go beyond our very limited life experiences.

Cyndie and I have spent the past couple of years reading classical works of physics, biology, economics, philosophy of science, communications, political science, philosophy and history - works that we clearly have insufficient background for. But you know what? We're able to make sense of them, albeit not as easily as we can take on a crime noir story of Dashiell Hammett or Anne Tyler's latest novel.

That's where strategies come in. They let readers in on the secret that if you are intentional and strategic you can make sense of texts, even if you lack the background for them. That's why some smart people embrace reading as a "vaccine against populism, racism, and nationalism" (Mario Vargas Llosa, 2010); reading is more than finding information in texts that agrees with what we think we already know. It allows us to break the bonds of experience, superceding what we know.

There are literally hundreds of studies showing that teaching certain strategies improves reading comprehension, so, despite any claims to the contrary, I do encourage the teaching of such strategies. However, for the most part these studies are brief. They show the value of strategies, but they don't make the case that strategy instruction alone is the way to go or that we should invest lots of time in strategy teaching.

Given the great emphasis on knowledge as the source of reading comprehension, there is one strategy I'd really like to see emphasized more.

That is teaching students not to believe too deeply in their prior knowledge. You see, research not only shows that knowledge contributes to comprehension, but to miscomprehension as well (a research result, not an opinion). Readers need to be more open to what authors have to say without allowing current "knowledge" to dominate the process.

Show me a reader (or listener) who views communication and learning as being mainly about applying one's knowledge, and I'll show you unbridled egotism and unnecessary misinterpretation. Self-skeptical reading is the opposite of knowledge-dominated reading and we ought to make certain that kids both know a lot and that they are not entirely self-satisfied in their knowledge.

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Prior Knowledge and Reading Comprehension | Shanahan on Literacy

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This blog entry explores what is known about the role of prior knowledge in reading comprehension and what teachers can do to help kids to benefit from this. It specifically reviews the famous baseball study, revealing that it doesn't show that reading comprehension strategies aren't a bad idea.

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Knowledge about the world fuels a child's reading comprehension and critical thinking. We share stories from schools that use "knowledge-building" curricula from the earliest grades to inspiring effect.

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Reading Comprehension Revisited, the inaugural season of our podcast, has achieved 100,000 downloads - and counting! With six short episodes (which are roughly 30 minutes each), it is perfect for professional learning. Host Natalie Wexler has developed a new companion study guide in response to numerous requests from educators.
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Every student deserves a knowledge-building literacy curriculum

To develop students' reading comprehension muscles from the earliest grades, leading schools use English language arts (ELA) curricula that are carefully designed to build background knowledge in science, history, literature, and the arts, alongside sound foundational skills instruction.

Introducing all young children to rich disciplinary content and vocabulary levels the playing field for learning. Knowledge is like an interest-bearing savings account: the more you know, the faster you learn. Therefore, growing knowledge about the natural and human world in the early grades is an essential equity investment, and it sets the stage for a lifetime of critical inquiry and analysis.
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Knowledge about the world fuels a child's reading comprehension and critical thinking.

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I am an instructional coach for a reading intervention program. We are a pull-out program for K-8 LD students. We are implementing an evidence-based approach in our word level reading instruction, but we are struggling to lock down a framework to address reading comprehension. As we pull students out of the core curriculum (1-3 hours daily for 2 years), we want to make sure that we are building skills that will transfer to any academic setting. Do you think it is worthwhile to spend time addressing comprehension? Or should we just be chipping away at our students' word level reading issues since improved decoding will have a higher rate of transferability outside of the According to the Simple View of Reading decoding and language skills have two separate developmental trajectories. We wonder about the benefits of developing speaking and listening skills separately from decoding. Is this appropriate, especially for upper grades (4-8)? Could you direct me to a scope and sequence of listening comprehension skills? We need a tool to monitor progress and target instruction. Shanahan's response:
The simple view of reading has been very useful, but if you take it too literally you'll stray from evidence-based reading instruction real fast.

What has come to be called the simple view of reading can be traced back to the early 1970s (Gough, 1972; Venezky & Calfee, 1970). Its basic premise is that the only thing special about reading is decoding and that there is no such thing as reading comprehension. Once a reader is able to decode a text aloud, then listening comprehension takes over.

This approach has been useful for prioritizing early and intensive decoding instruction (if it is the only reading skill, then we better get it right). It also clearly conceptualizes reading as being a product of decoding and language and nothing more, which organizes research and practice in a neat way.

But over the past couple of weeks, I've run into three instances of people telling me that they were considering no longer teaching reading comprehension in favor of working on listening comprehension because of the simple view.

There are a number of problems with doing this.

First, listening comprehension and reading comprehension are correlated, but they are not equivalent. Research has long shown that people comprehend what they read and what they listen to at different levels of proficiency and that these proficiencies differ by age level (e.g., Goldstein, 1940; Mesherbi & Ehrlich, 2004; Sticht, 1974). That wouldn't be the case if reading comprehension and listening comprehension were the same thing.

Second, a substantial number of studies show that oral language and reading comprehension are related, but that these relations are far less than a unity (NELP, 2008). What I mean by that is that if you got all students up to the highest levels of oral language proficiency, you would definitely reduce the amount variation in reading comprehension. But that would still leave a lot of variation in reading comprehension.

Third, there is a substantial body of research showing that oral language and written language differ in several ways (Chafe & Tannin, 1987). There are words that people don't use orally that appear in text. Sentence lengths differ greatly across written and oral language which places different loads on memory. Style, proportions of adjectives and prepositions, degree of narrativity of the language, and so on all differ. Being a good listener means comprehending with easier and more involving language than what one confronts in text. Again, teaching students to listen may well be valuable (I think it is), but I don't think that because it will improve reading comprehension.

Fourth, no study has found any reliable transfer of ability from listening comprehension to reading comprehension (van den Bos, Brand-Gruwel, & Aarnoutse, 1998). The reason I strongly support phonics instruction is because we have a extensive number of studies that consistently show giving such teaching advantages children in learning to read. If there were a similar body of studies showing that teaching listening improves reading comprehension, then I would encourage the teaching of listening and oral language as a good way to go. There not only isn't a "body" of such research, there aren't even single studies showing that teaching listening comprehension or other aspects or oral language improve reading comprehension. Teaching listening comprehension is not the teaching of reading comprehension, no matter its other value.

The one exception to this is with second language learners (August & Shanahan, 2008). If you don't know English, that is a definite inhibitor of English reading comprehension. Building the oral English of English Learners can make a big difference in their reading comprehension and that should definitely be happening in school. Claude Goldenberg's work shows that the informal development of conversational English is not enough to enable these students to do well in reading academic materials.

Given all of this, I would definitely encourage you to have both a strong decoding intervention (and I would include some text fluency for that), but another intervention that teaches students how to make sense of written language. NICHD reported many years ago the insufficiency of decoding instruction to meet the needs of a large percentage of struggling readers, and recently Rick Wanger and his colleagues have shown the great numbers of students who struggle with reading but who have sufficient decoding skills.

The instruction in that kind of language or comprehension oriented intervention should focus on teaching students some of the intentional reading strategies that have been found to improve reading comprehension (NICHD, 2000) as well as how to deal with various features of written language including syntax, cohesion, text structure, depth of information, tone, and other features of text and content.

Of course, students should be reading text within such an intervention and I hope that those texts would be high quality and value in terms of both their presentation and the content that they include. It is important to make sure the kids came away both with greater proficiency for comprehending such texts and with content learning.

If kids are to miss as much content as you indicate, then I would strongly encourage you to consider what else can be done to ensure that these students learn about our social and natural world. Think expanded school days, parent involvement, media, text inclusion in your program and so on.

The simple view shouldn't be the simplistic view. Until we have evidence that teaching oral language improves literacy, we ought to focus our teaching on those things most likely to advantage the students-that is what has successfully advantaged them previously. According to a great deal of empirical research, that is cognitive strategies and written language. Given your purpose, I'm not recommending a listening comprehension curriculum, but I would encourage you to focus on written language learning and getting those kids to read more than words.

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This blog entry explores the relationship between oral language development and reading comprehension. It explains that no research supports the idea of teaching oral language to improve reading comprehension.