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Blog | The Educator Collaborative Community

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By Founding Director of The Educator Collaborative, Christopher Lehman

In a head spinning rush, state after state has recently defined a narrow set of "approved" literacy programs that mandate which curricula districts are and are not allowed to use. Unfortunately, within most of these programs, the body of research and practice behind the "Science of" and the "Art of" teaching reading- let's face it, writing has nearly evaporated from most approved programs-has been largely buried beneath publisher nonsense. So much so, that even one of the journalists behind this current panicrecently reported on these programs' over-bloated lack of worth, quoth the maven: "a lot of time-wasting fluff" (Wexler, Literacy Experts Say Some EdReports Ratings Are Misleading).

That article reports what many educators are now experiencing. To garner approval from politicians with limited educational experience, publishers often shoved whatever they could into program pages to earn EdReports' green bubbles of approval. I can only assume politicians were drawn to this evaluation metric because while teaching is complex, multi-layered, responsive to children, context, climate, and funding; green means more good than orange or red. Easy-peasey.

However, that simplicity belies EdReports purported purpose, "increase the capacity of teachers, administrators, and leaders to seek, identify, and demand the highest-quality instructional materials." Instead, the EdReports rating system, it is reported, was gameable by many large publishers: just add more of the things the rubric wants until the orange box turns green. To add insult to injury, it appears the rating system overvalued stuff while undervaluing actual usability. Thus, leaving us with state mandated programs like HMH's Into Reading, which has all "greens" but is so terribly convoluted that it is hard to imagine anyone who mandated it has actually been around children.

Further, EdReports appears to have handed green approvals to a number of curricula that the NYU Metro Center at the Steinhardt School of Education has found to be "culturally destructive" (Lessons in (In)Equity: An Evaluation of Cultural Responsiveness in Elementary ELA Curriculum). Specifically cited in the report are McGraw Hill's Wonders (2023 edition), Savvas's myView (2020 edition) and HMH's Into Reading (2020 edition), which the MetroCenter finds: "all three curricula used language, tone and syntax that demeaned and dehumanized Black, Indigenous and characters of color." Note: these are far from the only offenders. Bestselling author and educator, Dr. Sonja Cherry-Paul recently posted her observations about the problematic representation in Great Minds' Wit and Wisdom: "many of these texts are inaccurate and offensive," she writes. She goes on to further critique: "anyone else noticing the message to students about who knowledge holders are and what counts as knowledge?"

This is not to say that adopting shared curricula is inherently bad. As a point of comparison, I also work with districts who fully produce their own teacher-created curriculum and they, too, find large problems that require more professional time to solve than is often available. Everything from needing to search daily for resources, having unclear articulation across grades, and push-in specialists struggling to keep track of teaching from classroom to classroom. So, sometimes effective leaders work through a pilot process to adopt programs or materials in the short-term, in order to support system-level conversations and alignment. I support that when done thoughtfully. What states are approving, though, and how this is playing out in many districts, is simply ill-conceived.

Holding On To Good Teaching

First and foremost, in this election year, you should absolutely use your voice and vote in advocating for better policies and more informed decision makers at all levels. In the short term, however, we need to find ways to do the least harm and most good.

One place to begin is by clearly defining, as a school community, what we mean by using a program with "fidelity." We need to disavow the idea that any curriculum is perfect or that it knows your students better than you do. Programs don't teach. People do.

I have recently been talking with districts about the idea of "reasonable fidelity" and have used this graphic as a discussion point:

One Extreme: Treating Programs like a Scientific Study

On one extreme of "fidelity", well meaning educators, who want to do what they think is expected of them, are attempting to use programs as a script. They are trying to say every word, use every worksheet, and read from every text. They feel as if they are performing a scientific study, using every single part to see what happens.

This can be necessary, especially at first, as you are trying to get to know something new-what's the useful and useless? In part, this is due to the anti-teacher political climate, where teachers and leaders are afraid to do something "wrong" in the eyes of the state. This is also due to the ways publishers have marketed their goods, with terms like "evidence-based," "grounded in the Science of Reading," and "comprehensive." These terms are vague to interpret within the actual totality of the program: is this worksheet evidence based or just a writer's quick invention? Is this text excerpt grounded in science or was it just cheap to publish? If I don't extend this one day lesson another forty minutes, just to fit it all in, will it not be comprehensive or is this just a case of curriculum bloat?

I assure you that even in the better-ish approved programs, no one has evidence-tested every single worksheet, slide, or page of the teacher's guide. In the best case scenarios, teams of writers made their best efforts to write curricula according to a framework and philosophy. While in the worst cases... well, I honestly don't know what anyone was thinking with some of those.

Do not give programs more power than they deserve. It can be exhausting for teachers while also ineffective for students.

The Other Extreme: Going Rogue

Going rogue in your own classroom can sometimes have its benefits-like refusing to use culturally damaging texts-but it is important to recognize that children move through a system and that system needs to best support their entire journey. So as a practice, shutting your door and surviving may only bring short term relief.

There can also be consequences for going too far from a state mandate. I recall a social media conversation with noted author and Co-Founder of DisruptTexts and Multicultural Classroom, Lorena Germán, who offered the sage wisdom that two things are true at the same time: we should organize to fight and resist oppressive curriculum while also respecting that not everyone can do that resisting overtly-people also need to survive and stay employed.

Completely dismissing a state mandate may not be practical or possible for everyone. It also can keep you out of important conversations with colleagues and leaders.

One Practical Option: Using Bits and Pieces

Another approach is using a program as just one of many materials you draw from. This can often be a smart way to handle the major holes found in most of the mandated programs.

For instance, I am very worried about the millions of students who are currently getting very, very limited writing instruction. In many programs, writing looks mostly like responses to the lesson's text or parroting back content "knowledge" into graphic organizers. Now in some, like the American Reading Company's Core, students do more process writing than in a lot of other programs. However, even then, the time is still often truncated to only a week or two in a unit, with very little pre-writing and rehearsal prior to drafting. Supplementing nearly all of the currently "approved" programs with actual writing instruction would be deeply important, because teaching writing is, ahem, explicitly evidence-based.

Some states have offered waivers for bits and pieces. Such as the ability to substitute a different foundational skills program if the mandated core curriculum doesn't offer a good one-or in some cases doesn't offer one at all.
Reread that.
Why did states mandate programs under the headline of the "Science of Reading" focus on foundational skills, while many of the programs they mandated do not adequately address those skills? It's a mind-bending paradox.

For example, how a frequent state-approved program Great Mind's Wit and Wisdom does not have a sufficient foundational skills component, despite being approved for that very purpose. Yes, they say this themselves: "The Best Materials for Literacy Development Success May Not Always Come in One Box." Then why did we buy this box!? Though, dear consumer, you can purchase their supplemental Geodes foundational skills program to fill their own gap. Cha-ching!

So whether by state waiver or your own instructional expertise, using one program in conjunction with other materials is a sound option. That, of course, comes with a big disclaimer: "if you are allowed."

A Key Mindset for this Moment: Reasonable Fidelity

Whether you are using all of a mandated program or combining it with others, an essential step is to clearly define as a learning community what we collectively want and mean by "fidelity." It can help you and your colleagues get back on more solid footing and feel more empowered to make decisions.

Before curricula and materials, fidelity should first and foremost be to our students. What are their strengths, needs, goals, and interests? How can we make good choices with what we are mandated to use so that our students remain firmly at the center of decision making? When programs are sound and adaptable, this is more easy to do. When they are bad, this takes more effort.

"Reasonable fidelity," as I describe it, is then determining together what our guiding values and guardrails are so we can make choices within that structure. This means that you need to have clear conversations and agreements around what is followed, what is optional, and what can be put aside with whatever program you are using.

Questions such as:

What are scope and sequence "must dos" and what are optional?

Every unit or if not which are optional?

Every week of the unit or, if not, how and when do we decide?

Every lesson in a week or, if not, which are optional and why?

Every component of a lesson, every day? If that is not practical, what expectations?

Every word (and side box, graphic, etc.) in a lesson? If that is not practical, how do we decide?

Every worksheet/organizer?

Every text?

And, also crucially, what expectations and guardrails can we share about supplementing outside of the program? As in, can I hope online for any graphic organizer I want or do we have shared values around the needs and uses of those?

These answers are best arrived at by first reaching agreements about your shared instructional values.

This work is not necessarily easy. I often recommend to districts to be brave in these conversations. Put on the table the strengths and the challenges necessary to talk openly and make commitments. This work also takes continual learning and the answers will change over time as that learning path unfolds. For instance, you may put a greater emphasis on decodable text use now, as it is a hot topic; but later more naturally weave them into differentiated decision-making as your team becomes more confident. All said, you already have the expertise to get moving.

Ultimately, how a student develops and grows will never be equated with any publisher. It will always come down to what the district, school, and classroom achieved with and for that child.

In future posts in this series we will look more closely at some ways educators and leaders can make thoughtful decisions about good teaching, in conjunction with-or sometimes in spite of-programs.

Subscribe to our blog or follow @TheEdCollab on Instagram, Facebook, and Threads for updates on future posts in this series as well as others written by educators and for educators.

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Protecting Good Teaching in an Era of Bad Programs, Part 1 - Blog | The Educator Collaborative Community

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While these mandates will eventually fade away and morph into something else, like all things political in the world of education, many districts are currently stuck with limited decision-making, based on a shoddy metric, leading to problematic materials-the ramifications of this can last for years.

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These are resources from the past Reading League conferences.

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ReadConn Features of Effective Phonics Instruction

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ReadConn Features of Effective Phonics Instruction

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READCONN Features of Effective Instruction Phonics

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Nearly four decades of scientific research on how children learn to read supports an emphasis on phoneme awareness and phonics in a literature-rich environment. These findings challenge the belief that children learn to read naturally.

I am frequently asked why the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) conducts and supports research in reading, given that the NICHD is part of the National Institutes of Health, a federal agency that emphasizes basic biomedical science and health-related research. A primary answer is that learning to read is critical to a child's overall well-being. If a youngster does not learn to read in our literacy-driven society, hope for a fulfilling, productive life diminishes. In short, difficulties learning to read are not only an educational problem, they constitute a serious public health concern.

The NICHD has been studying normal reading development and reading difficulties for 35 years. NICHD-supported researchers have studied more than 10,000 children, published more than 2,500 articles, and written more than 50 books that present the results of 10 large-scale longitudinal studies and more than 1,500 smaller scale experimental and cross-sectional studies. Many of the longitudinal research sites initiated studies in the early 1980s with kindergarten children before they began their reading instruction and have studied the children over time. Researchers have studied some children for 15 years, with several sites following the youngsters for at least 5 years. Additional research sites have joined within the past 3 years to investigate the effects of different reading instructional programs with kindergarten and 1st grade children. At most research sites, multidisciplinary research teams study cognitive, linguistic, neurobiological, genetic, and instructional factors related to early reading development and reading difficulties. 1

Reading Research and Scientific Tradition

The NICHD reading research has centered on three basic questions: (1) How do children learn to read English (and other languages)? What are the critical skills, abilities, environments, and instructional interactions that foster the fluent reading of text? (2) What skill deficits and environmental factors impede reading development? (3) For which children are which instructional approaches most beneficial, at which stages of reading development? Before summarizing findings related to these questions, I would like to explain the NICHD research process.

First, the NICHD reading research program is rooted in scientific tradition and the scientific method. The program rests on systematic, longitudinal, field-based investigations, cross-sectional studies, and laboratory-based experiments that are publicly verifiable and replicable. Second, the research integrates quantitative and qualitative methods to increase the richness, impact, and ecological validity of the data. However, using qualitative research methods requires the same scientific rigor employed in quantitative studies. Third, the NICHD reading research program is only one of many programs dedicated to understanding reading development and difficulties. The U.S. Department of Education's Office of Research and Improvement, the Office of Special Education Programs, and the Canadian Research Council have supported many outstanding reading researchers (see Adams 1990 for a research review).

The cumulative work of federally and privately funded researchers illuminates how children develop reading skills, why some children struggle to learn to read, and what can be done to help all readers reach proficiency. Although much remains to be learned, many findings have survived scrutiny, replication, and extension.

The Critical Role of Phonemic Awareness

How do children learn to read English? Reading is the product of decoding and comprehension (Gough et al. 1993). Although this sounds simple, learning to read is much tougher than people think. To learn to decode and read printed English, children must be aware that spoken words are composed of individual sound parts termed phonemes. This is what is meant by phoneme awareness.

Phoneme awareness and phonics are not the same. When educators assess phoneme awareness skills, they ask children to demonstrate knowledge of the sound structure of words without any letters or written words present. For example, "What word would be left if the /k/ sound were taken away from cat?" "What sounds do you hear in the word big?" To assess phonics skills, they ask children to link sounds (phonemes) with letters. Thus, the development of phonics skills depends on the development of phoneme awareness.

Why is phoneme awareness critical in beginning reading, and why is it difficult for some children? Because to read an alphabetic language like English, children must know that written spellings systematically represent spoken sounds. When youngsters figure this out, either on their own or with direct instruction, they have acquired the alphabetic principle. However, if beginning readers have difficulty perceiving the sounds in spoken words-for example, if they cannot "hear" the /at/ sound in fat and cat and perceive that the difference lies in the first sound-they will have difficulty decoding or sounding out new words. In turn, developing reading fluency will be difficult, resulting in poor comprehension, limited learning, and little enjoyment.

We are beginning to understand why many children have difficulty developing phoneme awareness. When we speak to one another, the individual sounds (phonemes) within the words are not consciously heard by the listener. Thus, no one ever receives any "natural" practice understanding that words are composed of smaller, abstract sound units.

For example, when one utters the word bag, the ear hears only one sound, not three (as in /b/-/a/-/g/). This is because when bag is spoken, the /a/ and /g/ phonemes are folded into the initial /b/ sound. Thus, the acoustic information presented to the ears reflects an overlapping bundle of sound, not three discrete sounds. This process ensures rapid, efficient communication. Consider the time it would take to have a conversation if each of the words we uttered were segmented into their underlying sound structure.

However, nature has provided a conundrum here: What is good for the listener is not so good for the beginning reader. Although spoken language is seamless, the beginning reader must detect the seams in speech, unglue the sounds from one another, and learn which sounds (phonemes) go with which letters. We now understand that specific systems in the brain recover sounds from spoken words, and just as in learning any skill, children understand phoneme awareness with different aptitudes and experiences.

Developing Automaticity and Understanding

In the initial stages of reading development, learning phoneme awareness and phonics skills and practicing these skills with texts is critical. Children must also acquire fluency and automaticity in decoding and word recognition. Consider that a reader has only so much attention and memory capacity. If beginning readers read the words in a laborious, inefficient manner, they cannot remember what they read, much less relate the ideas to their background knowledge. Thus, the ultimate goal of reading instruction-for children to understand and enjoy what they read-will not be achieved.

Reading research by NICHD and others reveals that "making meaning" requires more than phoneme awareness, phonics, and reading fluency, although these are necessary skills. Good comprehenders link the ideas presented in print to their own experiences. They have also developed the necessary vocabulary to make sense of the content being read. Good comprehenders have a knack for summarizing, predicting, and clarifying what they have read, and many are adept at asking themselves guide questions to enhance understanding.

Linguistic Gymnastics

Programmatic research over the past 35 years has not supported the view that reading development reflects a natural process -that children learn to read as they learn to speak, through natural exposure to a literate environment. Indeed, researchers have established that certain aspects of learning to read are highly unnatural. Consider the linguistic gymnastics involved in recovering phonemes from speech and applying them to letters and letter patterns. Unlike learning to speak, beginning readers must appreciate consciously what the symbols stand for in the writing system they learn (Liberman 1992).

Unfortunately for beginning readers, written alphabetic symbols are arbitrary and are created differently in different languages to represent spoken language elements that are themselves abstract. If learning to read were natural, there would not exist the substantial number of cultures that have yet to develop a written language, despite having a rich oral language. And, if learning to read unfolds naturally, why does our literate society have so many youngsters and adults who are illiterate?

Despite strong evidence to the contrary, many educators and researchers maintain the perspective that reading is an almost instinctive, natural process. They believe that explicit instruction in phoneme awareness, phonics, structural analysis, and reading comprehension strategies is unnecessary because oral language skills provide the reader with a meaning-based structure for the decoding and recognition of unfamiliar words (Edelsky et al. 1991, Goodman 1996).

Scientific research, however, simply does not support the claim that context and authentic text are a proxy for decoding skills. To guess the pronunciation of words from context, the context must predict the words. But content words-the most important words for text comprehension-can be predicted from surrounding context only 10 to 20 percent of the time (Gough et al. 1981). Instead, the choice strategy for beginning readers is to decode letters to sounds in an increasingly complete and accurate manner (Adams 1990, Foorman et al. 1998).

Moreover, the view some whole language advocates hold that skilled readers gloss over the text, sampling only parts of words, and examining several lines of print to decode unfamiliar words, is not consistent with available data. Just and Carpenter (1987), among others, have demonstrated consistently that good readers rarely skip over words, and readers gaze directly at most content words. Indeed, in contrast to conventional wisdom, less-skilled readers depend on context for word-recognition. The word recognition processes of skilled readers are so automatic that they do not need to rely on context (Stanovich et al. 1981). Good readers employ context to aid overall comprehension, but not as an aid in the recognition of unfamiliar words. Whether we like it or not, an alphabetic cipher must be deciphered, and this requires robust decoding skills.

The scientific evidence that refutes the idea that learning to read is a natural process is of such magnitude that Stanovich (1994) wrote:That direct instruction in alphabetic coding facilitates early reading acquisition is one of the most well established conclusions in all of behavioral science. . . . The idea that learning to read is just like learning to speak is accepted by no responsible linguist, psychologist, or cognitive scientist in the research community (pp. 285-286).

Why Some Children Have Difficulties Learning to Read

Good readers are phonemically aware, understand the alphabetic principle, apply these skills in a rapid and fluent manner, possess strong vocabularies and syntactical and grammatical skills, and relate reading to their own experiences. Difficulties in any of these areas can impede reading development. Further, learning to read begins far before children enter formal schooling. Children who have stimulating literacy experiences from birth onward have an edge in vocabulary development, understanding the goals of reading, and developing an awareness of print and literacy concepts.

Conversely, the children who are most at risk for reading failure enter kindergarten and the elementary grades without these early experiences. Frequently, many poor readers have not consistently engaged in the language play that develops an awareness of sound structure and language patterns. They have limited exposure to bedtime and laptime reading. In short, children raised in poverty, those with limited proficiency in English, those from homes where the parents' reading levels and practices are low, and those with speech, language, and hearing handicaps are at increased risk of reading failure.

However, many children with robust oral language experience, average to above average intelligence, and frequent early interactions with literacy activities also have difficulties learning to read. Why? Programmatic longitudinal research, including research supported by NICHD, clearly indicates that deficits in the development of phoneme awareness skills not only predict difficulties learning to read, but they also have a negative effect on reading acquisition. Whereas phoneme awareness is necessary for adequate reading development, it is not sufficient. Children must also develop phonics concepts and apply these skills fluently in text. Although substantial research supports the importance of phoneme awareness, phonics, and the development of speed and automaticity in reading, we know less about how children develop reading comprehension strategies and semantic and syntactic knowledge. Given that some children with well developed decoding and word-recognition abilities have difficulties understanding what they read, more research in reading comprehension is crucial.

From Research to Practice

Scientific research can inform beginning reading instruction. We know from research that reading is a language-based activity. Reading does not develop naturally, and for many children, specific decoding, word-recognition, and reading comprehension skills must be taught directly and systematically. We have also learned that preschool children benefit significantly from being read to. The evidence suggests strongly that educators can foster reading development by providing kindergarten children with instruction that develops print concepts, familiarity with the purposes of reading and writing, age-appropriate vocabulary and language comprehension skills, and familiarity with the language structure.

Substantial evidence shows that many children in the 1st and 2nd grades and beyond will require explicit instruction to develop the necessary phoneme awareness, phonics, spelling, and reading comprehension skills. But for these children, this will not be sufficient. For youngsters having difficulties learning to read, each of these foundational skills should be taught and integrated into textual reading formats to ensure sufficient levels of fluency, automaticity, and understanding.

Moving Beyond Assumptions

One hopes that scientific research informs beginning reading instruction, but it is not always so. Unfortunately, many teachers and administrators who could benefit from research to guide reading instructional practices do not yet trust the idea that research can inform their teaching. There are many reasons for this lack of faith. As Mary Kennedy (1997) has pointed out, it is difficult for teachers to apply research information when it is of poor quality, lacks authority, is not easily accessible, is communicated in an incomprehensible manner, and is not practical. Moreover, the lack of agreement about reading development and instruction among education leaders does not bode favorably for increasing trust. The burden to produce compelling and practical information lies with reading researchers.

Most great scientific discoveries have come from a willingness and an ability to be wrong. Researchers and teachers could serve our children much better if they had the courage to set aside assumptions when they are not working. What if the assumption that reading is a natural activity, as appealing as it may be, were wrong and not working to help our children read? The fundamental purpose of science is to test our beliefs and intuitions and to tell us where the truth lies. Indeed, the education of our children is too important to be determined by anything but the strongest of objective scientific evidence. Our children deserve nothing less.

End Notes

1 See Fletcher and Lyon (in press) and Lyon and Moats (1997) for reviews of NICHD reading research findings. Contact the author for a complete set of references of published research from all NICHD reading research sites since 1963.

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Why Reading Is Not a Natural Process - ASCD

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I am frequently asked why the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) conducts and supports research in reading, given that the NICHD is part of the National Institutes of Health, a federal agency that emphasizes basic biomedical science and health-related research. A primar

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Leveled texts can still be used for language based acquisition and comprehension - consider for the higher strands of the rope. Avoid using leveled texts to teach decoding.

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The Data Wise process can help teams use the data. Understanding our assessments (their strengths and limitations) are key to helping us use data to help ourselves and kids. It can make planning and work easier!

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Generating Text Dependent Questions using Complexity

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Generating Text Dependent Questions using Complexity

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Generating Questions from Qualitative Dimensions of Complexity

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Not only do the rubrics help to choose text for students, they can also help to identify appropriate scaffolds to help student access more complex text.

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If you need to refresh on DIBELS administration, this document links each section.

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Lots of information here... maybe use this with a coach?

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Digging Deeper with DIBELS Data - ppt download

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Overview and resources for all things Notice and Note

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Overview and resources for all things Notice and Note

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There isn't a resource or set of strategies that I've seen make more of a difference in student's comprehension (assuming students can decode well and read fluently) that as accessible to students to improve their thinking.

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An opportunity to share and discuss ideas that provide transformative education for all students.

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Not as fancy, but an overview of the fiction signposts

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Notice and Note are my favorite comprehension lessons. They are so concrete, easy to follow and improve student thinking quickly. This is an outline and some resources for Nonfiction Notice and Note strategies. Nothing replaces the book, but it's a great resource.

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Hi friends! It's been a while, but I'm excited to say that I have several posts coming soon. I have most of them half done. LOL! I know, I know, focus Sarah! Get one done and then the next. ha! I have had a lot of questions recently about syllable types and syllable division rules, so here we are! This post will go into what syllable types are, examples of each, and why its important to teach them.

What are Syllable Types?

There are 7 written syllable types used in English spelling (six if you combine vowel teams and diphthongs). You can see them below:

This visual shows you an example of a two syllable word, how it would be divided, and the types of syllables in each.

The following explain in a little more detail. You can find these Syllable Type Posters HERE.

Why Teach Syllable Types?

To read and spell, students need to know these syllable types. Knowing these syllable types makes decoding and encoding easier and more efficient. There are only 5 vowels (6 if you count y), but they make several sounds! Knowing the syllable types helps to narrow down what sound to make.

If you are teaching your student to read multi-syllable words, instruct them to apply syllable division "rules" first. Then they can decode each syllable based on what type of syllable it is is. ( Read more about syllable division here)

Closed Syllables

I teach the closed syllable type first. A closed syllable has one vowel followed by one or more consonants. This vowel is usually short (see exceptions below). Closed syllables include CVC words, and digraphs and blends with short vowels (cat, with, shop, block, slip, etc.).

If you would like a very detailed unit about one-syllable closed syllables, click HERE. If you would like a unit about two-syllable with closed and open syllables, click HERE.

Open Syllables

Next, I teach open syllables. An open syllable ends with a vowel and that vowel makes its long sound. There are not many one-syllable words that open (me, be, she, so) but there are tons of multi-syllable words with open syllables in them.

Open syllables includes words that end in y as well (by, try, baby). This is when I introduce y as a vowel.

You can find a detailed unit on open syllables HERE. Like I mentioned above, I also have a unit that focuses on two-syllable words with open and closed syllables. You can find that HERE.

Silent e

Next I teach the VCe pattern: When a syllable has this pattern, the letter e will be silent and the vowel will often say its long sound.

NOTE: This "magic" e that makes the first say its name is just one of those jobs. The silent e does so much more than I originally thought! Click here to read a post about the many jobs of the silent e. There is SO much more to the silent e!

Click here for resources for the silent e. So far, I only have one-syllable resources, but soon will have some t wo-syllable silent e syllable division practice.

Consonant +le

Consonant + le is one of my favorites to teach because it explains so much! In fact, this is one of the other jobs of the silent e that I was talking about. The e is silent but it does not make another vowel say its name. Instead its purpose is to be a "marker". See, every syllable must have a vowel. This e is there to do just that. It makes this a syllable!

Unlike the other syllable types, it is never a word by itself.

It is always at the end of a word and it's in the unaccented syllable. (What's that? Click here to read more.)

It's also the only syllable type where you can't hear the vowel sound.

Consonant +le can be -cle, dle, tle, ple, fle, gle, kle, ble, and zle.

R-Controlled Vowels

R-controlled vowels are often referred to as the "Bossy r". This is a great name because with a r-controlled vowel syllable, the r "controls" the vowel sound. Bossy r is a tricky one! It's tricky because it only changes the vowel sound when that vowel is before the r.

Here are some bossy r resources for one-syllable words.

Vowel Teams

Vowel teams and diphthongs are often put together as one syllable type, but for me, it makes sense to separate them. I'm not a linguist so I may be wrong about this, but here's why I separate the two:

With vowel teams, there are two or more letters that together make a vowel sound. Most of these are long vowel sounds, (but it can be a short sound, like ea saying /e/ in bread). I include ow (as in flow) with the vowel teams when it makes the long o sound, but when it makes the /ou/ sound like in cow, I consider it a diphthong.

With diphthongs, there are also two or more letters that together make one sound, but the sound is a completely new sound, not one of the traditional short or long vowel sound.

I don't have a detailed pack for vowel teams yet, but I do have some resources for one-syllable words with vowels teams. You can find those HERE.

Clip art is from Whimsy Workshop

Diphthongs

Diphthongs are the trickiest of all in my opinion, because they just have to be memorized. Like I mentioned above, a diphthong is when two or more letters make one new sound.

Click here for a resource that includes oo, ou, ow, ue, ew, and ui (the sounds /oo/ and /ou/).

Clip art is from Whimsy Workshop and educlips.

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Related Blog Posts

Make sure you read my post about syllable division and Structured Literacy, too! Below is a link to a collection of blog posts about all things reading related.

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Syllable Types - Sarah's Teaching Snippets

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Hi friends! It's been a while, but I'm excited to say that I have several posts coming soon. I have most of them half done. LOL! I know, I know, focus Sarah! Get one done and then the next. ha! I have had a lot of questions recently about syllable types and syllable division rules, so here we are!

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Syllable division rules show us how to break up a multi-syllable word into its syllable parts. There are six main syllable division "rules " to guide us.

How is Syllable Division done?

It all starts with the vowels. Find the vowels in the word. It helps to underline or highlight them.

Find the patten of the consonants and vowels (VCV, VCCV, VCCCV, VCCCCV, C+le, VV).

Use the syllable division rule (shown below) to divide the word into its syllable parts.

Why Should we Teach Syllable Division?

Learning the rules of syllable division provides our students with an effective strategy for chunking up those bigger words into more manageable parts. I see it as another "tool" for their "tool belt" that leads to more accuracy while reading.

Understanding syllable division also helps students to determine what the vowel sound will be. As I learn more, I see this works best when incorporated with morphology (think prefixes, suffixes, and roots). When I first learned syllable division, I only learned syllable division without the consideration of morphemes (which are the smallest units of meaning in our language). I now teach my students to look for familiar prefixes, suffixes, and even roots (for older kids) first. If there aren't any, then begin syllable division.

To get to that point though, we need to teach them those syllable division rules and give them enough practice with them so that it becomes more automatic. All the while, I'm teaching new prefixes and suffixes to them so those can also become more familiar. I think the two actually go together well. But I digress! Back to syllable division!

The first thing to know is that every syllable must have a written vowel. The very definition of a syllable is an uninterrupted unit of speech with one vowel sound.

Syllable Division "Rules"

Here are the syllable division rules on one page:

Here is a picture from my classroom:

As I mentioned above, first thing to know about syllable division is that it's all about vowels!

Every syllable needs a vowel, so we can determine (usually) how many syllables there are based on the number of vowels.

Vowel teams and diphthongs count as one syllable even if there are two vowels because they work together to make one sound.

Same with silent e. The e doesn't make a sound so it doesn't get it's own syllable.
The exception of course is the syllable type consonant -le. This syllable is found in words like little, bubble, table. You cannot hear the e, but it does get its own syllable. It buddies with the l before it and the consonant before the l. More about that later, though!

Syllable Division Rules

The following slides show the main syllable division rules.

Rule #1: Two consonants between the vowels: VCCV Pattern

The first syllable division rule is VC/VC, which stands for vowel-consonant-consonant-vowel. Train your students to find the vowels in the word. They are our starting point. In words with the VCCV pattern, there are two consonants between the two vowels. Usually, we split between those consonants.

See the step by step directions with blue and yellow letters below. (Before teaching this, you should teach your students about open and closed syllable types. For the word basket, split between the s and k. The first syllable is bas and the second syllable is ket. Each syllable has a vowel.

Of course there are always exceptions.

One exception is when there are R or L blends, like in the word secret. We keep R and L blends together, so instead of splitting between those consonants, we keep them together and move them to the second syllable.

We also keep digraphs and units (ing, ink, ang, ank, ost, olt, ind, ild, olt) together. Never split those!

Rule #2 & 3: One Consonant between the Vowels: VCV Pattern

There are two options here! This slide shows both ways.

More commonly, you would split VCV syllables the before that consonant. This leaves your first syllable open, so the vowel would be long.

In the word silent, the letter l is the middle consonant between the vowels. We move that to be with the 2nd syllable: si-lent.

In the word bonus, the letter n is the middle consonant between the vowels. We move that to be with the second syllable, leaving the first syllable open (because it ends with a vowel) bo-nus

Sometimes though, we do the opposite. Sometimes, we split VCV syllables after the consonant. In this case, we close that first syllable, leaving that vowel short.

In the word robin, the middle consonant b moves with the 1st syllable making rob-in. The first syllable rob is closed by the b.

In the word visit, the middle consonant s moves with the 1st syllable making vis-it. The first syllable vis is closed by the v.

Rule #4: Three consonants between the vowels.

In the case of three consonants between the vowels, we usually split after the first consonant.

In the word conflict, the letter nfl are between the vowels. The first consonant n goes with the first syllable and the other two (fl) go to the 2nd syllable: con-flict.

See below that there are the usual exceptions.

We never split digraphs, blends, or units.

Also, a word this big can often be a compound word. Instead, you would split between the two words.

Rule #5: Four Consonants Between the Vowels

This is super similar to the last one. Split after the first consonant, unless it is a compound word. There are not as many of these words, and honestly when you're getting into words this big, I tend to shift my focus to morphology.

Rule #6: Consonant -le

On paper, I've always had this as #6, but I actually found myself teaching this one after #3 because it came up earlier since it is so common. A great example is the word little.

Following this rule, we see the -le at the end and count one back to make lit-tle. Consonant +le in this word is t+le.

This is the syllable type where there is no vowel sound. You only hear the consonant and the /l/ or /ul/.

Rule #7: V/V

When there are two vowels next to each other, but they are not vowel teams or diphthongs (more than one letter making one sound together), then you split between the vowels. These two vowels do not share a sound. I think this is the hardest for my students to decode usually. I wait to teach this one because it can be very confusing!

That first vowel is always long and that second one usually sounds like a schwa.

Compound Words

I've already mentioned this a few times as an exception to the other rules, but it's really a rule all on its own. If the word is a compound words, don't worry about the other rules, just split between those two words.

Affixes: Prefixes and Suffixes

I almost put this one first because it's so important, but I didn't want to confuse. It is super helpful for students to get in the habit of always looking for prefixes and suffixes. This starts in kindergarten with the suffix -s!

I teach my students to always "chunk out" the prefixes and suffixes and to focus on the base word first. This requires direct instruction with all the different prefixes and suffixes.

In first grade, they commonly will see -s, -es, -ing, -ed, -er, -est, re and un. 2nd graders regularly see -ly, -ment, -ful, -less, -able, pre-, dis-, mis-, and so many more!

In some cases, suffixes like -ed don't necessarily make a new syllable (jumped, camped, etc), while in others (rented, busted) it does make another syllable. But that's even more reason to teach them about prefixes and suffixes! Our students will cover the -ed in jumped, then see only one vowel and one syllable. After reading jump, they will then uncover -ed and decide how to pronounce it "jumpt, jump-ed, or jumpd".

You can learn more about this HERE.

3 Syllable Words:

When dividing a word with more than two syllables, first check for affixes (prefixes and suffixes). Then start at the left with the first two vowels, divide those syllables, then move to the right.

If you're interested in just these syllable division posters and some practice pages with all syllable types, you can find them HERE. The practice pages come in two formats: tabbed notebook (shown below) and also regular full-page worksheets.

Resources for Syllable Division

Here is a sneak peak of a few of the practice pages.

And because I'm so indecisive and have created and recreated so many posters over the years, I included all sets of visuals shown in this post. You can just choose your favorite and print!

However, if you already own my S yllable Division with Open and Closed Syllables, I also added these posters to that pack! You can find that HERE.

(If you're wondering what the difference is, this pack above has a lot more practice pages, but just focuses on open and closed syllables because it is part of my systematic units and has detailed lesson plans. The new, smaller pack above that has just the posters and 40 practice pages for all syllable division rules. It includes open and closed syllables then has another section with all the other syllable types. It is not part of the systematic units and does not have the detailed lesson plans.)

Here are a couple of syllable activities that I've done:

For these two, I put the first syllable in one color and the 2nd on another color. Students read the syllables and matched them to make real words.

This next activity was a review activity after learning all syllable types. I wrote words on note cards. I gave each student one at a time. They read the card to the group and then together we determined which pattern it followed. (Students would copy the word on their white board first and do the syllable division individually.) We sorted them into the correct column. The next day I used colored transparencies to chunk a certain syllable. For each word, I would ask for the first or second syllable. Students would say the syllable and then we would highlight that part.

What are Syllable Types?

This post is all about the syllable division rules. But you also will want to know the syllable types. As I mentioned above, I have a pack that focuses on syllable division with only open and closed syllables, which are two of the 7 syllable types. Want to read about the other syllable types? Click HERE to read more about syllable types.

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Syllable Division Rules - Sarah's Teaching Snippets

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Syllable division rules show us how to break up a multi-syllable word into its syllable parts. There are six main syllable division "rules" to guide us.

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A great resource for vocabulary supports that can increase the richness of language in the classroom.

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This aligns with Quick Reads but also provides great visuals that are content based.

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The Content-Area Word Pictures depict imageable concepts that are essential to specific content areas. When students become familiar with some of the key words within a subject, build on that knowledge by reading aloud tradebooks on those subjects. Take a look at these books in TextProject's Read Aloud Favorites.

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CT.gov - Connecticut's Official State Website

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It seems that JavaScript is not working in your browser. It could be because it is not supported, or that JavaScript is intentionally disabled. Some of the features on CT.gov will not function properly with out javascript enabled.

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Reading comprehension, simply stated, is the act of understanding and interpreting what we read. What happens in our students' brains as they read is anything but simple! Skilled reading depends on a wide range of abilities - everything from concrete, masterable skills like decoding to complex, hard-to-pin-down thinking skills like making inferences.

What makes a skilled reader?

Why is it that reading comes more easily to some children than others? What makes a skilled reader? Reading researchers have described skilled reading in different ways (Duke, Pearson, Strachan & Billman, 2009; Sedita, 2006; National Reading Panel, 2000), but there are abilities and behaviors that most skilled readers seem to have in common:

A clear purpose for reading and an ability to monitor and adjust their reading to serve that purpose

Word attack skills that allow them to accurately, automatically decode words

Vocabulary knowledge and oral language skills that help them understand the meaning of words and sentences

Background knowledge, including content knowledge and literacy knowledge

Thinking and verbal reasoning skills such as drawing inferences

Strategies for constructing and revising meaning as they read, such as making predictions and asking questions about the text

The motivation to read and to apply what they learn

Why is "strategic" reading important?

Comprehension "strategies" are behaviors that researchers have consistently observed in skilled readers. We explicitly teach these behaviors so that all of our students can benefit from them. Strategic readers understand what they read, but their comprehension doesn't stop there. They also notice and reflect on their own reading. By teaching comprehension strategies, we help our students to be aware of their own thinking - to be metacognitive - as they read.

Draw on Prior Knowledge

We tap into students' prior knowledge by asking questions like, "What do you know about jellyfish?" And there's nothing better than seeing the excitement on the face of a first-grade expert who raises his hand to say, "Some jellyfish are phosphorescent!" Encouraging our students to draw on their own knowledge and experience not only helps them understand what they read; it also builds their curiosity and their motivation to read more.

Draw Inferences

If we read aloud a story that starts, "She was so excited to get to school that she practically jumped out of bed," and ask the class, "What time of day is it in this story?" some of our students will infer that the events of the story are happening in the morning.

We can boost students' ability to "read between the lines" in this way by intentionally calling attention to inferences they (and we) make throughout the day. Over time, they will come to understand that making inferences helps them understand why events are happening in a certain way, why characters act the way they do, and what might happen next.

Self-Monitor

Skilled readers monitor their comprehension during and after reading. By helping our students be aware of when they understand and when they don't, we empower them to "fix" their own understanding and learn more from their reading.

Form Mental Images

Skilled readers often form mental images - pictures in their mind - as they read. Readers who picture the story during reading, research shows, understand and remember what they read better than readers who do not. The video below offers a glimpse into a first-grade classroom where students are guided to visualize and to write and draw using their mental images.

Summarize and Retell

Throughout their school years, our students will be expected to determine what is important in texts and to retell or summarize what they have read. By explicitly teaching them to identify and connect important ideas in a text, we give them the tools to remember and synthesize their reading in both oral and written form. In this blog post, How to Teach Summarizing, researcher Timothy Shanahan talks more about why summarizing and retelling are so important for our students.

How... and How Much... to Teach

A tried and true way to introduce metacognitive strategies to our students is to narrate the process ourselves using a "think-aloud." We might say, for example: "I noticed that when I read that part about the storm, I got a picture in my mind of the boat tipping sideways and really big waves splashing over the side." That's a think-aloud intended to help students understand what it means to make a mental picture.

In recent years, there has been some debate about the value of teaching comprehension strategies. Willingham & Lovette (2014) have compared using strategies to understand a text to deploying "strategies" to build an IKEA desk. The strategies for building the desk might be something like:

1. Think about the desks you have put together in the past;

2. Find the "main" pieces to work with and start assembling

3. As you work, stop and ask yourself if it looks correct.

As Willingham and Lovette explain:
The vague Ikea instructions aren't bad advice. You're better off taking an occasional look at the big picture as opposed to keeping your head down and your little hex wrench turning. Likewise, reading comprehension strategies encourage you to pause as you're reading, evaluate the big picture, and think about where the text is going. And if the answer is unclear, reading comprehension strategies give students something concrete to try and a way to organize their cognitive resources when they recognize that they do not understand.
The limitation of the "strategies" approach to building a desk, though, is that it really only works if you already know how to build a desk! The same is true of comprehension; readers can't effectively apply metacognitive strategies unless they already understand much of what they've read.

Let's take, for example, the sentence "The earth is only one of the sun's many satellites." One student might have read or heard another book about the solar system and infer that the author is referring to the other planets (or other objects) orbiting the sun. But this "strategic" move depends on having a significant amount of vocabulary and background knowledge already in place.

Bottom line? Spending a limited amount of time teaching comprehension strategies can help our students be metacognitive and independent in their reading, but skilled comprehension ultimately depends on language comprehension.

Why is language comprehension important?

Skilled reading is not possible without language comprehension - the ability to understand spoken language - and word recognition. This is the common-sense concept underlying the Simple View of Reading proposed by Gough & Tunmer (1986). A reader might have strong oral language skills or extensive background knowledge on a topic, for example, but if she can't read the words on the page, it may affect her ability to understand or to learn from a book on that topic. The converse is true; a student who easily decodes a word but who has never heard the word before or doesn't know what it means will struggle to comprehend as well. (For a more in-depth explanation of word recognition and recommendations for supporting students in developing strong word recognition skills, see the Phonics module.)

The Scarborough's Rope model (Scarborough, 2001) goes into more detail than the Simple View of Reading. Scarborough's Rope looks at language comprehension and word recognition as two strands that twist together into the strong "rope" of skilled reading. The language comprehension and word recognition strands are each woven from smaller strands.

Lessons and activities that build language comprehension are helpful for all students and are particularly important for students who are English-learners or who speak a dialect of English at home that's different from the texts they encounter at school. Guidance for language comprehension instruction can be found in the In Practice section of this module. Additional supports for English-learners can be found at Colorin Colorado.

Background Knowledge
The knowledge and language needed to be successful in learning a content topic
Our students understand a text better - and learn more from it - when they have some familiarity with the topic. We can help our students build background knowledge by:

Encouraging them to make connections to their previous experiences and related knowledge

Intentionally introducing and discussing new information and connecting it to what students already know

Literacy Knowledge
The knowledge and understanding of how books and print materials convey meaning
Our students come to school with different levels of literacy knowledge. Some may not yet know that the print in books carries meaning. Some may flip confidently through a book pointing to the occasional familiar word. Some may already be reading. But our students can still benefit from explicit teaching and rich discussion of:

Concepts of print: Print awareness plays an important role in our students' literacy development. It can even be a predictor of future reading achievement. A preschooler earnestly "reading" a book held upside-down is an adorable reminder of why concepts of print matter. See this article to learn more.

Structures of various genres: Narrative text (stories) and expository or informational text follow predictable patterns and include common elements. No two books are exactly the same, of course, but having a sense of what to expect in a text based on its genre gives our students a framework for comprehension.

Vocabulary Knowledge
The knowledge of words and word meanings
It should go without saying that our students will have a harder time comprehending a text if they don't know the meaning of individual words in that text. Vocabulary plays a crucial role in listening, speaking, reading, and writing tasks throughout the school day. The good news is, we have many, many opportunities to notice, discuss, and model the use of words throughout the school day as well! (Vocabulary and vocabulary instruction are addressed in greater depth in the Vocabulary module.) The chart below, from the Teaching Reading Sourcebook (CORE), explains the four vocabulary forms:

Language Structures
The knowledge of a language's grammar
In any language, English included, words and sentences combine in predictable patterns. These patterns make up a language's grammar - its overall "rules" and conventions - including punctuation, capitalization, word order (syntax), word usage, and verb tense. Because we've internalized English grammar, we know that we're more likely to see a man eating chicken than a man-eating chicken! Dr. Timothy Shanahan addresses the role of grammar in comprehension in more detail in this blog post, Grammar and Comprehension: Scaffolding Student Interpretation of Complex Sentences.

Verbal Reasoning
The ability to understand and reason using words
Verbal reasoning is the way we think with - and about - words. Most of the learning our students do in school relies on understanding what we say, understanding what they read, or both. From following directions in kindergarten, to learning to read, to deciphering complex text in the upper elementary grades and beyond, verbal reasoning lets our students follow instructions, understand concepts, and problem-solve around words.

What does verbal reasoning look like in practice? In the sentence, "I ran home and so did he," verbal reasoning tell us that "he" ran home, too, even though the exact words "he ran home" do not appear in the sentence. And when we read the sentence, "In August, my living room is a sauna," verbal reasoning lets us know that the author is probably not talking about literally spending summer evenings in a steam-filled cedar box!

What should we keep in mind when matching students to texts?

What Makes a Text Complex

We know intuitively that Go, Dog. Go! is less complex than Hamlet. But what makes a text complex? The Common Core State Standards (2010) identify three factors that should be considered in evaluating how complex a text is and whether it is appropriate for a particular reader.

Qualitative: Only a knowledgeable human reader can evaluate a text from a qualitative standpoint. When we ask ourselves questions like, "How much background knowledge is needed for my students to make sense of this book?" or "Will this book be accessible to my English-learners?", we are making qualitative judgments.

Quantitative: The quantitative aspects of a text are things like word frequency and sentence length that we don't have a practical way to determine for every book in our classroom libraries. Quantitative descriptions of texts (e.g., Lexile level) are typically generated by computer software.

Reader and task: Characteristics of a particular reader (such as level of motivation or background knowledge) and of the task she is being asked to do (such as the format of the response) can help us determine whether a text is appropriate for that reader and for that task.

Supporting documents for the Common Core Standards include lists of high-quality texts for each grade level. For the primary grades, complex texts are taught primarily through read-alouds because our students are not yet automatic in their decoding. By using different texts for different purposes (decodable texts for decoding practice and read-alouds for comprehension work) students who take longer to master foundational skills can still have a chance to develop academic language, vocabulary and background knowledge.

What Makes a Text "Considerate" (or Not)

Our students' comprehension may vary depending not only on their reading and language abilities, but also on how "considerate" a particular text is - how well it accommodates the range of different readers' needs and abilities. "Considerate texts" (Armbruster & Anderson, 1985) support comprehension through features such as an introduction, a clear sequence of topics, and the use of cohesive words (e.g., however, in summary, for instance). Text cohesion - how clearly sentences are structured and how logically sentences are strung together into paragraphs - can make a text more or less considerate of the reader, too.

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Reading comprehension, simply stated, is the act of understanding and interpreting what we read. What happens in our students' brains as they read is anything but simple! Skilled reading depends on a wide range of abilities - everything from concrete, masterable skills like decoding to complex, hard-to-pin-down thinking skills like making inferences.

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To access a fun activity, word list, & phonological awareness survey, don't miss our Teacher Tips, Fun Facts, Check It Out!, and Word of the Week at the end of the blog!

What Is Phonemic Awareness?

Phonemic Awareness is the awareness of and ability to manipulate the individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words (Kilpatrick, 2015). Phonemic awareness is a subset of the broader category of phonological awareness, which is one's conscious awareness of and ability to "play with" the sound structures in oral language (Paulson & Moats, 2010).
Download our Phonological Awareness Assessment>>
Six Layers of Phonemic Awareness: Improve Students' Reading Using Their Ears

Reading With Your Ears? What if we told you that you could improve your students' ability to read unfamiliar words without showing them a single printed letter? As crazy as it sounds, it's true! This is because one of the major skills underlying the successful decoding of printed words, phonemic awareness, is a purely auditory and oral skill. It may not be "reading with your ears" in the literal sense, but the sounds we hear and play with words are what allow us to ultimately pull the print off the page with our eyes when we decode.

Read our Blog What Is the Difference Between Phonological Awareness & Phonemic Awareness?

What Is the Importance of Phonemic Awareness in Decoding?

Kilpatrick (2015) tells us that phonemic awareness is an essential part of the process of storing words in one's sight word vocabulary; that is, the body of words (high-frequency or not) that an individual can decode quickly and effortlessly. "Phonemic awareness is what allows us to anchor the sounds in a word to the written sequence of letters that represent those sounds" (Kilpatrick, 2015). This process is called orthographic mapping. Studies have shown that students with better phonological awareness skills can handle this mapping process more proficiently than those with weaker phonological awareness skills (Kilpatrick, 2015). The goal of decoding is to build words into our sight word memory, and phonemic awareness allows this to happen!

Why Are the Six Layers of Phonemic Awareness Essential to Learning to Read?

Adams (1994) emphasizes that while phonemic awareness is essential for learning to read, it is not easily established, and children need explicit instruction to gain the necessary skills. This makes it extremely important for teachers to understand that there are various layers of phonemic awareness and that each of these layers represents a skill that can be developed through targeted instruction and practice. These layers build from the simplest phonemic awareness skills at the bottom of the pyramid to the most complex at the top. These are skills that can be modeled, practiced, and established through oral wordplay.

The Six Layers of Phonemic Awareness: Definitions & Examples of Instruction at Each Layer

Phoneme Isolation: Hearing and isolating the individual phonemes (sounds) in spoken words represents the first layer of skilled phonemic awareness. Isolating phonemes entails knowing that a word is made up of a sequence of sounds and that the individual sounds in words can be differentiated from one another. Beginning sound isolation activities are a great way to help students develop their phoneme isolation skills. Beginning sound isolation is simply pulling the first sound off of a spoken word. Students can isolate the first sounds in words, as in /b/, bear, or /s/, soap.

Blending: Moving up the pyramid, we come to a slightly more complex phonemic awareness skill, phoneme blending. Phoneme blending, which is basically combining sounds, involves listening to and pulling together isolated phonemes to create words. This process requires a student to hold the individual elements in his/her mind as the word is created, thus challenging a student's active working memory. When beginning readers sound out a word, they use letter-sound knowledge to say each sound in a word (/b/ /ă/ /t/), and then blend the sounds quickly together to read the word ( bat).

S egmenting: The third layer in the pyramid is phoneme segmentation. This is the ability to divide a spoken word into its component sounds (phonemes). In a segmentation activity, students are given a word like mad, and then they segment it, or "stretch" the phonemes, /m/ /ă/ /d/. As they are saying the sounds, they can extend a single finger for every phoneme that they hear, starting with the thumb: /m/ (extend thumb), /ă/ (extend index finger), /d/ (extend middle finger). Lastly, they blend the phonemes together as they bring their hands back to their chests and say the word, mad.

Manipulation: Truly refined phonemic awareness includes even more advanced skills, like phoneme addition, deletion, and substitution, all three of which are considered phoneme manipulation. These are the top three layers of the pyramid. Phoneme manipulation is generally more challenging than segmenting and blending phonemes. Manipulation requires students to hold phonemes in their working memories long enough to isolate specific phonemes, add, delete, or substitute (delete and then add) specific phonemes, and then blend the phonemes back together to form a new word. These types of activities are an excellent way to build refined phonemic awareness, particularly for students who may have already mastered phoneme segmentation and blending.

Phoneme Addition: Phoneme addition involves adding phonemes to a given word to produce a new word. For instance, starting with the word we and adding the phoneme /k/ to the end turns it into week. Phoneme addition can be done with more complex words as well; starting with the word bell and adding the phoneme /t/ at the end turns it into belt.

Phoneme Deletion: Conversely, starting with the word guide and deleting the final phoneme, /d/, creates the new word, guy. A more complex example of phoneme deletion might include removing one phoneme from a two-sound blend. Starting with the word blast and deleting the initial phoneme, /b/, results in the new word, last.

Phoneme Substitution: Phoneme substitution, the most advanced of all the manipulation skills on our pyramid, requires that a student knows how to both delete and add phonemes. In a phoneme substitution exercise, a student might be asked to drop the short i sound in kit and replace it with the long i sound. When they do, kit becomes kite. This is done through a few intricate steps that are performed automatically and without conscious thought for strong, fluent readers. These steps include recognizing the component parts of the known word (segmenting the word into its phonemes), isolating a specific phoneme, deleting that phoneme, adding the new phoneme, and blending the phonemes together to say the new word. Did you notice that these steps include every one of the lower five layers of the pyramid? That's right -phoneme substitution, our top layer, encompasses every single layer of the phonemic awareness pyramid. If even one of these lower skills is weak, students will struggle to substitute phonemes.

The Importance of Phoneme Substitution

Teachers are often comfortable with and therefore put the instructional focus on the phonemic awareness skills toward the bottom of the pyramid, particularly phoneme blending and phoneme segmentation. Although these skills are undoubtedly important in helping students as they are learning to decode, it is actually the top of the pyramid, with the more complex phonemic skills, that is often left out of classroom instruction and, where we need to pay the most attention, particularly as students move beyond the primary classroom. Kilpatrick (2015) tells us that research suggests that "phonological manipulation tasks are the best measures of the phonological awareness, skills needed for reading because they are the best predictors of word-level reading proficiency" (page 155) because phoneme manipulation (adding, deleting, and substituting) is actually the layer of phonemic awareness that is the most closely related to reading connected text (Kilpatrick, 2015).

Phoneme substitution is the critical breakthrough skill a child needs to teach themselves how to read new words. As illustrated in the images above, if a student encounters a new unfamiliar word, like moth, they can use their knowledge of a word that they already know (like math) to teach themselves how to read this novel word. Remember that manipulation activities require students to hold phonemes in their working memory long enough to isolate specific phonemes, add, delete, or change specific phonemes, and then blend the phonemes back together to form a new word. Kilpatrick (2015) states that "training in phonemic manipulation has a substantial long-term impact on reading."

Fun Strategies to Use
Sneak some advanced phoneme manipulation practice into the school day!

"Reading problems can be prevented if all students are trained in letter-sound skills and phonological awareness, starting in kindergarten."

- Kilpatrick (2016)

When I first learned about phoneme manipulation, I thought there is no way that my kindergarten students will be able to do that this year. I was AMAZED at how quickly my students caught on and they had so much fun doing it. They're more prepared for 1st grade than any other class I've ever promoted, and I have DIBELS data to prove it!

-Jenna K, Teacher, New York

Download our complimentary Teacher Resources
Phonological Awareness Survey.

This survey enables one-on-one assessment of phonological and phonemic awareness skills that are essential underpinnings of accurate and automatic decoding.

Discover Reading at the Word Level

Click here to link to a word chaining activity we call Word Math>> Add word chaining activities to your day and help students practice their advanced phonemic awareness skills. Use deletion, addition and substitution to chain these words:
strap → trap → rap → rash → ash → lash → latch → batch → botch → blotch
This activity can be done as a pure phonemic awareness exercise without showing students any letters. However, in our illustrate that these advanced phoneme manipulation skills can also be used with word chaining activity we letter tiles to help students encode and decode complex single-syllable words with digraphs, 2-sound blends, and 3-sound blends.

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Contact us anytime. Our mission is to provide educators with the most efficient and effective tools for teaching phonemic awareness, phonics concepts, word attack skills, accurate reading and fluency. Student outcomes are our number one goal. No one knows their students better than educators. Therefore your thoughts, strategies, student successes and feedback are held in high esteem!

References

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Six Layers of Phonemic Awareness - Really Great Reading Blog

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row][oneThird] Subscribe to our BlogTo access a fun activity, word list, & phonological awareness survey, don't miss our Teacher Tips, Fun Facts, Check It Out!, and Word of the Week at the end of the blog![/oneThird][twoThird] What Is Phonemic Awareness?Phonemic Awareness is the awareness of and ability to manipulate the individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words

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Small Group Resources - SUPPLEMENTAL to Heggerty

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Small Group Resources - SUPPLEMENTAL to Heggerty

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The resources here are designed to supplement Heggerty, not replace tier 1 instruction. The pictures are very helpful for students who do not have a strong vocabulary. They will provide scaffolds and vocabulary development.

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Phonemic Awareness and Beginning Reading

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Jenn Serravallo updated supports for the teaching decoding chapter. 

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Jenn Serravallo updated supports for the teaching decoding chapter. 

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Writing - IRA Kaia and the Bees Grades 3/4.docx

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Reading IRA Kaia and the Bees - grades 1/2.docx

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Sharks - IRA Level 2 National Geographic  Grade 1.docx

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TC Read Aloud Chapter - Guide to Workhshop

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TC Read Aloud Chapter - Guide to Workhshop

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A great "cheat sheet" to help with demands at each level.  Be cautious when using leveled texts, ensure you are not encouraging students to predict the word through pictures. 

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A great "cheat sheet" to help with demands at each level.  Be cautious when using leveled texts, ensure you are not encouraging students to predict the word through pictures. 

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Poetry for fluency and comprehension practice

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Poetry for fluency and comprehension practice

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Moving to more advanced syntax can be what is hindering your student's comprehension. Understanding this and supporting skills during workshop are critical for higher levels of text.

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Reading is the act of processing text in order to derive meaning. To learn to read, children must develop both fluent word reading and language comprehension (Gough & Tunmer,1986). Language comprehension is built upon vocabulary and morphology, knowledge, syntax, and higher-level language skills.

How Syntax Contributes to Reading Development

Syntax refers to the formation of sentences and the associated grammatical rules ( Foorman, et al., 2016 ). "Syntax skills help us understand how sentences work-the meanings behind word order, structure, and punctuation. By providing support for developing syntax skills, we can help readers understand increasingly complex texts" ( Learner Variability Project).

Syntactic skills are correlated with reading comprehension and language comprehension (Westby, 2012), although the nature of the relationship is still being studied (Oakhill, Cain, & Elbro, 2015). A number of recent studies have shown that syntax and grammar are predictors of later reading comprehension ability (Logan, 2017).

Promoting Syntax Development in the Classroom

Knowledge of how grammatical elements such as pronouns, lexical references, and connectives function in sentences allows young children to follow the ideas in a sentence and understand its meaning (Oakhill, Cain, & Elbro, 2015). Children do not need to know the names of these grammatical terms, but they do need to develop understanding of how sentences work in natural speech and in text. Working with sentences can be part of a class's engagement with complex text. Complex text offers rich language; teachers can facilitate a discussion of short snippets of text to help students parse rich sentences and develop understanding.

Teach Linguistic Structures Such as Pronouns, Lexical References, and Connectives

Teaching these support students to track and follow the meaning within sentences (Oakhill, Cain, & Elbro, 2015).

Example: Marcy was very thirsty for a cold drink* so she gulped her iced lemonade* quickly!

Pronouns: she, he, his her, their, they, them

*Lexical references: when a different word or phrase is used to refer to the original word

Connectives: and, also, because, so, then, before, during, after

Teach Word Functions by Asking Students a Series of Questions About a Sentence

Example from Literacy How: Our wet, hairy dog crawled under my bed during the thunderstorm.

Ask who or what did it? dog (looking for the namer/noun - the who/what)

Ask what did it do? crawled (looking for the action word/verb - the do)

Ask 'how many, what kind, which one? wet, hairy (looking for adjectives describing the namer)

Ask where, when, how, why? under the bed, during the thunderstorm (looking for adverbs that tell about the action)

Teach Sentence Structure, Sentence Types, and How to Build Sentences

Developing syntax can involve examining how sentences are built, learning to expand sentences, and learning to combine short, choppy sentences into longer, grammatically correct sentences. Studies have shown positive effects of sentence combining on reading comprehension (Scott, 2009).

Syntactic Awareness, Teaching Sentence Structure, from Keys to Literacy

Sentence structures that are challenging for children to comprehend. See Juicy Sentence Guidance , from Achieve the Core

Formal Frames/Academic Phrases, from Literacy How (Resource)

Recommendation 3 from the IES Practice Guide "Teaching Elementary Students to Be Effective Writers:" Teach students to become fluent with handwriting, spelling, sentence construction, typing, and word processing (Resource) (p. 30-32)

Sentence Expanding, from Iowa Reading Research Center (Resource)

Sentence Combining, from Reading Rockets ** (Resource)

Learn More About Syntax Development

Considerations for Students Learning English

English learners should have equal opportunity to meaningfully participate in all literacy instruction. The WIDA Can Do Descriptors highlight what language learners can do at various stages of language development.
Taking Bilingualism into Account
"It's important that young ESL students recognize word order and sentence structure. As students get older and progress with English, it becomes more difficult to correct syntax problems. In many cases, older students translate their native language directly into English without considering the word order that changes between languages" (Lubin, 2020).
Supports for English Learners

Create a rich language environment so English Learners "can be exposed to lots of rich, natural, complex language from which the learner would begin to unconsciously internalize patterns" (Krahshen, 1981).

Support English learners when they encounter complex syntax in academic texts. Such syntax would include passive voice, comparatives and logical connectors, modal auxiliaries, verb phrases containing prepositional phrases, and relative clauses (Freeman, 2004).

"Use cloze activities in which students receive a passage with some of the words missing. Teachers could delete different types of words to help students focus on different aspects of syntax" (Freeman, 2004).

"Use interactive supports to promote comprehension and expose students to a variety of communication styles" (WIDA, Instructional Supports, 2015).

"Spend time and effort engaging students in discussions of the meaning of sentence-level chunks and within the sentence, phrasal chunks, each day. The focus here is to have structured conversations in which children learn how academic discourse works" (English Learner Success Forum ).

Scaffolds to Support English Language Learners in Sentence Writing, from Achieve the Core (Resource)

Interactive reading grade 2, from Colorin Colorado ** (Video)

Text Complexity and Language for English Language and Language Minority Students, from Stanford University (Research)

Sentence Level Fluency for Newcomers, from English Learners Success Forum (Activities)

Do's and Don'ts of EL Instruction, from English Learners Success Forum (Instruction)

The WIDA Instructional Supports provide a reference list of appropriate graphic, sensory, and interactive supports to use with the WIDA Can Do Descriptors when instructing language learners.

References

Foorman, B., Beyler, N., Borradaile, K., Coyne, M., Denton, C. A., Dimino, J., Furgeson, J., Hayes, L., Henke, J., Justice, L., Keating, B., Lewis, W., Sattar, S., Streke, A., Wagner, R., & Wissel, S. (2016). Foundational skills to support reading for understanding in kindergarten through 3rd grade (NCEE 2016-4008). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE), Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved from the NCEE website: What Works Clearinghouse.

Freeman, D. & Freeman, Y. (2004). Essential linguistics: What you need to know to teach reading, esl, spelling, phonics, grammar. Heinemann: Portsmouth, NH.

Gough, P. B., & Tunmer, W. E. (1986). Decoding, Reading, and Reading Disability. Remedial and Special Education, 7, 6-10.

Krashen, S.D. (1981). Bilingual education and second language acquisition theory. In Schooling and language minority students: A theoretical framework. (p.51-79). California State Department of Education.

Logan, J. (2017). Pressure points in reading comprehension: A quantile multiple regression analysis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 109(4), 451.

Lubin, M. (2020, March 23). A Simple Guide to Teaching Young ESL Students About Syntax. Retrieved August 24, 2020

Oakhill, J., Cain, K., & Elbro, C. (2015). Understanding and teaching reading comprehension: A handbook. New York: Routledge.

Scott, C.M. (2009). A case for the sentence in reading comprehension. Language, speech, and hearing services in schools, 40 2, 184-91.Westby, C. (2012). Assessing and remediating text comprehension problems. In A.G. Kamhi & H.W. Catts (Eds.), Language and reading disabilities (3rd ed., pp1-23). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Disclosure Statement: Reference in this website to any specific commercial products, processes, or services, or the use of any trade, firm, or corporation name is for the information and convenience of the public, and does not constitute endorsement or recommendation by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE). Our office is not responsible for and does not in any way guarantee the accuracy of information in other sites accessible through links herein. DESE may supplement this list with other services and products that meet the specified criteria. For more information contact: RMB252@mass.gov.

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massachusetts department of elementary and secondary education

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Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

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The goal of the Massachusetts public K-12 education system is to prepare all students for success after high school. Massachusetts public school students are leading the nation in reading and math and are at the top internationally in reading, science, and math according to the national NAEP and international PISA assessments.

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Everything that Literacy How produces is well researched.

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What is it?

Oral language (OL), sometimes called spoken language, includes speaking and listening-the ways that humans communicate with one another. OL skills provide the foundation for word reading and comprehension. They are at the heart of listening and reading comprehension, serving as a predictor for both.

What is it?

Oral language (OL), sometimes called spoken language, includes speaking and listening-the ways that humans communicate with one another. OL skills provide the foundation for word reading and comprehension. They are at the heart of listening and reading comprehension, serving as a predictor for both.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why are oral language skills important to literacy?

Oral language is the foundation of written language

Reading is a language-based skill. The relationship between oral language and reading is reciprocal (Kamhi & Catts, 1989) with each influencing the other to varying degrees as children progress through school.

You must be able to understand language at an oral level in order to be expected to understand it at the text level.

It's difficult to learn to read words if you do not know what they mean

Children with weak oral language skills are at risk for learning to read and comprehend.

What is Academic Language and how do I teach my students to use it in my classroom?

Academic Language, also referred as Academic or Standard English, is the language of the classroom and text. Students must have a command of Academic English in order to achieve in school. Teachers should be attuned to their own spoken language and model Academic English by creating spaces and providing opportunities where they would expect their students to use Academic English in both written and oral forms. With younger children, begin with explicit teaching and modeling. Show and Tell, and Circle Time are great places to expand sentences and provide models with Academic English. And keep in mind that all children-whether native English speakers or English Language Learners-receive the same practice and correction. For older children, consider starting with writing because the students have time to think about academic language, as well as time to revise. Then, after giving time to rehearse, ask students to make an oral presentation.

Tips for teachers and administrators

Establish classroom routines for oral language practice by assigning "purposeful partners" as talking and working buddies. Think carefully about how to pair students to increase rigor and cognitive output. This may take up to three weeks of trial and error. Consider your students' behavior and cognition-e.g., will pairing two quiet students prompt each to speak up, while pairing chatty students help them be better listeners? Formally train partners to turn toward each other, to look each other in the eye, to each take a turn answering a prompt, and to be alert for a call back signal. Integrate a brief purposeful partner task into every activity to increase numbers of students participating and to develop an efficient, familiar routine.

Explicitly teach and practice "academic language," the language used in the classroom and workplace, the language of text and assessments, and the language of academic success and power. Try these academic phrases.

Use this formal frame activity to help students produce competent verbal or written responses. These begin as sentence starters, but add critical grammatical and lexical clarification and support.

Beware of a too quiet classroom! You should hear the hum and buzz of children talking to one another and engaging with the teacher throughout the day.

Read More to Learn more

Beck, I.L., & McKeown, M.G. (2001). Text talk: Capturing the benefits of read aloud experiences for young children. The Reading Teacher 55, 10-35.

Gatlin-Nash, B. (Summer 2020). Linguistic differences and learning to read for nonmainstream dialect speakers. Perspectives in Language and Literacy 46 (3), 28-32.

Goldenberg, C. (Summer 2013). Unlocking the research on English learners. What we know-and don't yet know-about effective instruction. American Educator 4-12, 38.

Hirsch, E.D., Jr. (Spring 2003). Reading comprehension requires knowledge-of words and the world. American Educator 27 (1), 10-22, 28-29, 44.

Komesidou, R., & Hogan, T.P. (Summer 2020). Preschool language precursors to later reading problems. Perspectives in Language and Literacy 46 (3), 37-41.

Spear-Swerling, L. (Summer 2016). Listening comprehension, the Cinderella skill. Giving the neglected stepchild her due. Perspectives on Language and Literacy 42 (3), 9-15.

Literacy How Professional Learning Series

The Literacy How Professional Learning Series translates the latest reading research into how-to instruction. The Knowledge to Practice book Series-Phonemic Awareness and Phonics, Syntax, Vocabulary, and Comprehension-is based on the current and comprehensive Literacy How reading model. It draws upon the authors' decades of expertise and experience working with thousands of general and special education teachers. The Series emphasizes Pre-K-3rd grade conceptual and skill development. Teachers of older emerging or struggling readers will also find these tools useful.

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Oral language (OL), sometimes called spoken language, includes speaking and listening-the ways that humans communicate with one another. OL skills provide the foundation for word reading and comprehension. They are at the heart of listening and reading comprehension, serving as a predictor for both.

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4) How can I support my Multilingual Learners' oral language development?
Oral language development-in both English and the home language-should be a central focus in teaching Multilingual Learners (MLs). Although not all programs provide intentional dual language instruction, research suggests that dual language education is optimal for young ML children's learning and development26 -this is the ideal goal for programs to reach. Oral language strategies should be used intentionally to promote both languages. Key oral language skills include expressive and receptive vocabulary, listening comprehension, and grammatical knowledge, all of which are critical for future reading comprehension.²⁷ Teachers should incorporate rich and high-quality language experiences with back-and-forth exchanges in both languages, as consistent with the program's language model. Such interactions foster language development and achievement.²⁸

ML children's developing language skills may also include code switching, or using words and phrases from both languages in a single sentence or exchange (check out the Toolkit on Code Switching from the Office of Head Start for more information). Such switching is a normal part of bilingual development and demonstrates children's flexibility in drawing on the resources they have in both languages (read this Fact Sheet on Translanguaging for more information on how multilingual children use their full language repertoire to make sense of and communicate information). While MLs may have a smaller vocabulary in each language initially and lack some "translation equivalents,"²⁹ educators should account for and encourage vocabulary use in both English and the home language. It is important for teachers to serve as strong language models in the languages that they speak. Further, they need to be clear about which language will be used at different times (language allocation).30 Teachers should also highlight the similarities and differences between the languages children speak and English in order to support children in making connections. By providing high-quality, culturally appropriate language interactions in both languages relevant to children's experiences, educators help ML children develop a solid foundation in both of their languages, which will support future literacy and content learning.31

The following evidence-based strategies should be used with a specific purpose in mind, as consistent with the program's language model, and differentiated and tailored to each individual child's level and needs (which should be determined through continuous assessment).Oral language practices should be integrated with the other strategies presented in this Toolkit. For K-3 teachers, refer also to the California K-3 ELD Standards that highlight oral language interactions for MLs.

Strategies in action

Overarching Strategy: Provide language-rich environments to support each language.

Evidence-Based Strategies

4A) Provide high-quality, responsive, and extended talk in each language, including longer utterances with varied vocabulary, a mix of open-ended and scaffolding questions, providing child-friendly definitions for new or unfamiliar words, recasting or repeating an erroneous utterance in a corrected form, and engaging in back-and-forth exchanges.

4B) Ask questions in each language, including a mix of open- and closed-ended questions, to elicit talk from children.

4C) Repeat and elaborate/expand on children's talk in each language, for example, with adjectives, adverbs, or clauses that are related to the topic the child is discussing.

4D) Incorporate songs, rhymes, and chants in each language, and connect them to content learning.

Overarching Strategy: Provide explicit vocabulary instruction in each language.

Evidence-Based Strategies

4E) Select commonly used academic words (e.g., observe, demonstrate, cycle, evaluate, conflict) and content-specific words or phrases (e.g., energy, habitat, food chain, law, freedom) from the focus of study and incorporate them in instruction.

4F) Explicitly teach words through multiple modalities of writing, speaking, and listening (e.g., vocabulary picture cards, word maps, visual aids, props, word walls, gestures, drawings).

4G) Reinforce target words by using them throughout the day and across contexts (e.g., present word during morning meeting, post on word wall, engage with associated objects and words during small group or free choice learning time).

4H) Provide hands-on, inquiry-based experiences (such as designing and carrying out experiments) to help give language meaning and purpose.

Strategies are interrelated

Individual strategies across the different instructional topics are interconnected and should be implemented together, in a purposeful and connected manner throughout instruction, and not in isolation. Make sure to also consider your classroom or school's language model when implementing the strategies and adapt accordingly.

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Alignment with Existing California Educator Guidance Documents & Resources

The Multilingual Learning strategies are closely aligned with existing guidance documents and resources for educators in California. Learn how Oral Language Development strategies align with these existing resources, or to see how the standards align across all strategies, visit the alignment reference guide page.

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Oral Language Development * Multilingual Learning Toolkit

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4) How can I support my Multilingual Learners' oral language development? Oral language development-in both English and the home language-should be a central focus in teaching Multilingual Learners (MLs). Although not all programs provide intentional dual language instruction, research suggests that dual language education is optimal for young ML children's learning and development26 -this is the ideal goal for programs to reach.

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Oral language is one of the most important skills your students can master-both for social and academic success. Learners use this skill throughout the day to process and deliver instructions, make requests, ask questions, receive new information, and interact with peers.

As a teacher, there's a lot you can do during your everyday lessons to support the development of strong oral language skills in your students. Today's post, excerpted and adapted from Dyslexia, Dysgraphia, OWL LD, and Dyscalculia , by Berninger & Wolf, gives you 14 ideas for supporting oral language development in your students who are verbal. These teaching strategies can help students with specific language disabilities (including dyslexia), and they can boost the language skills of your other learners, too. Try these and see which ones work best for your students!

Encourage conversation.

Every social interaction gives students a new opportunity to practice language. Some of your students might need a little guidance from you to engage in conversations, so spark interactions whenever you can. Ask questions, rephrase the student's answers, and give prompts that encourage oral conversations to continue.

Model syntactic structure.

Your students may not use complete oral syntax in informal speech, but encourage them to do so when they're in the classroom. When a student uses fragmented syntax, model complete syntax back to them. This builds oral language skills and gives students practice in a skill necessary for mastering written language.

Engage in eye contact with students during instruction and encourage them to do the same. Maintaining eye contact will help learners gauge their audience's attention and adjust their language, their volume, or the organization of their speech. This will help them be better understood, communicate more clearly, and successfully interpret nonverbal cues about their clarity.

Remind students to speak loudly and articulate clearly.

Ask students to feel the muscles used for speech while they're talking and monitor their volume and articulation. Remind them that clear and loud-enough speech is essential for holding the attention of the group and communicating their information and opinions effectively.

Have students summarize heard information.

Encourage students to verbally summarize or otherwise discuss the information they hear. This should begin in kindergarten and continue with increasingly difficult questions as students grow older. Teach students to ask for clarification when they don't understand something, and emphasize that they can ask you directly or query fellow students.

Model and guide sentence construction.

Some students have trouble getting started with the wording of a sentence. Saying the beginning word or phrase for the student can help the student structure their response. Give students time for thinking and formulating an oral or written response. Students' explicit experience in both producing their own oral language and processing others' language will help facilitate their comprehension of reading material.

Explain the subtleties of tone.

Your students have probably experienced playground arguments related to tone; misunderstandings are common when students are using loud outdoor voices. Remind your students how tone of voice-which includes pitch, volume, speed, and rhythm-can change the meaning of what a speaker says. Often, it's not what they say, it's how they say it that can lead to misunderstanding of motives and attitudes. Ask your students to be mindful of tone when they're trying to get a message across, and adjust their volume and pitch accordingly.

Attend to listening skills.

Ensure that your students are listening by using consistent cues to get their attention. You might use a phrase like "It's listening time" to give students a reminder. Some students might also benefit from written reminders posted prominently on your wall.

Incorporate a "question of the day."

During each school day's opening activities, ask a question to encourage talk. (You can even write one on the board so your students can read it and start thinking about their answer as soon as they come in.) Start with simple one-part questions like "What is your favorite animal?" If a student doesn't answer in a complete sentence, model a complete sentence and ask the student to repeat your model. Once your students are successfully answering these simple questions in complete sentences, move to two-part questions that require more complex answers: "What is your favorite animal? Why?"

Compile a class booklet of students' phrases.

Give your students a sentence to finish, such as "When my dog got lost I looked..." Have each student contribute a prepositional phrase to complete the sentence (e.g., at the grocery store, in the park, under the bed). Then have your students create a class booklet by writing and illustrating their phrases. When all the phrase pages are assembled into a booklet, students can practice reading the very long sentence with all the places they looked for the dog. Encourage them to come up with a conclusion to the story.

Some students may have difficulty with abstract concepts such as before, after, or following, and with sequences such as days of the week or months of the year. To help students learn and retain these concepts, you may need to present and review them many times and in multiple ways. For example:

You might ask students to identify which holiday comes in each month and then review holidays for other months in sequence: "Groundhog Day is in February. What holiday is in March? In April?"

Have students identify the month before or after a given month. "May is before June and after April." "May is between April and June."

Question to boost comprehension.

Asking questions before and after a reading assignment not only helps sharpen oral language skills, it also helps students think about what they're reading and absorb information from the words. You might try the following strategies to facilitate reading comprehension:

If there's an introduction to the story or passage, ask students to read it and answer purpose-setting questions: "Where does the story begin? "What kind of story or article is this? Why do you think so?"

Ask students to predict outcomes: "What will happen? How do you know?"

After the reading, ask students to reveal whether their predictions were correct and identify where the ending or conclusion begins.

Have students summarize the passage: "Who were the characters?" "What was the plot?" "What was the outcome?" "What was the main idea?" "What were the supporting details?"

Teach for oral reading fluency.

Oral reading fluency refers to how rapidly, smoothly, effortlessly, and automatically students read text. The goal is accurate and fluid reading with adequate speed, appropriate phrasing, and correct intonation. Here are a few activities that aid fluency:

Sentence completion: Read a phrase and signal for a student to complete the sentence. Then read another phrase and signal another student to complete the next sentence. This activity provides good modeling of rhythm and inflection and builds reading group skills.

Round-robin repeated reading: Each student reads a sentence, paragraph, or page, and then the next student gets a turn. Prompt each student to read with rhythm and fluency.

Partner reading: Paired readers choose a quiet, cozy spot to practice reading to one another. This activity provides additional practice after reading in small groups.

Monitored reading: Ask an aide or parent volunteer to listen to a student's oral reading and watch for good phrasing and rhythm.

Repeated reading: Parents may assist with repeated reading at home by asking students to read orally the same 150- to 200-word passage repeatedly over several days. Students do not have to spend more than 10 minutes rereading each night.

Never assume students understood your instructional talk.

You use oral language every day to teach-but some students may not be getting your message. In this chart from Berninger & Wolf's book, Beverly Wolf shares some examples of how students in her classroom misinterpreted sentences delivered orally:

Be aware of the potential disconnect between what you say and what your students hear. Go over your message and present it in multiple ways to be sure all students understand.

***

Oral language is one of the foundational building blocks of learning. Try the suggestions in today's post with your students, and give them the boost they need for future academic and social success.
Dyslexia, Dysgraphia, OWL LD, and Dyscalculia
By Virginia W. Berninger, Ph.D., & Beverly J. Wolf, M.Ed.

Learn how to provide effective instruction for students with learning disabilities while meeting the needs of all students! The first teacher training text to cover all four learning disabilities that require differentiated instruction, this book prepares educators to deliver explicit and engaging instruction customized to the needs of their students. Critical insights from diverse fields blend with lessons learned from actual teaching experience.

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Quick Interactive Language Screener™ (QUILS™)
A Measure of Vocabulary, Syntax, and Language Acquisition Skills in Young Children
By Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Ph.D., Jill de Villiers, Ph.D., Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek, Ph.D., Aquiles Iglesias, Ph.D., and Mary Sweig Wilson, Ph.D.

Early identification is the first step to helping children with language delays improve their skills. Find the children who might need help with QUILS, a one-of-a-kind tool that helps you evaluate whether children are making language progress appropriate for their age group.

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14 Ways to Improve Your Students' Oral Language Skills - Brookes Blog

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UPDATED: 3/23/22 Oral language is one of the most important skills your students can master-both for social and academic success. Learners use this skill throughout the day to process and deliver instructions, make requests, ask questions, receive new information, and interact with peers. As a teacher, there's a lot you can do during your everyday [...]

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Nell Duke -  Beyond the Simple View of Reading

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Nell Duke -  Beyond the Simple View of Reading

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Reading Research Quarterly - 2021 - Duke - The Science of Reading Progresses  Communicating Advances Beyond the Simple View

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Scaffolding is an instructional technique in which a teacher provides individualized support by incrementally improving a learner's ability to build on prior knowledge. Scaffolding can be used in a variety of content areas and across age and grade levels. Within education, the social learning theory of Vygotsky is generally credited with providing theoretical basis for the practice, where he describes the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). Scaffolding provide special type of help that assists learners move towards new concepts, skills, or understandings. Actually, Vygotsky himself never mentioned the term of scaffolding. It was first introduce by Jerome Bruner, David Wood, and Gail Ross (1976) while applying Vygotsky's concept of Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) to various educational contexts .

Vygotsky defined scaffolding instruction as the "role of teachers and others in supporting the learners development and providing support structures to get to that next stage or level" (Raymond, 2000)

Teachers provide scaffolds so that the learner can accomplish certain tasks they would otherwise not be able to accomplish on their own

(Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000)

The goal of the educator is for the student to become an independent learner and problem solver

Characteristics of scaffolding

Research about scaffolding includes different definitions of it and different emphasis of components of socio-cultural learning theory. One common model for defining and describing scaffolding includes contingency, fading, and transfer of responsibility.

Purpose of the Scaffolding

Scaffolding is widely considered to be an essential element of effective teaching as all teachers almost certainly use various forms of instructional scaffolding in their teaching. In addition, scaffolding is often used to bridge learning gaps which is the difference between what students have learned and what they are expected to know and be able to do at a certain point in their education. One of the main goals of scaffolding is to reduce the negative emotions and self-perceptions that students may experience when they get frustrated, intimidated, or discouraged when attempting a difficult task without the assistance, direction, or understanding they need to complete it.

Types of the Scaffolding
Instructors can use a variety of scaffolds to accommodate different levels of knowledge. The context of learning may require more than one scaffold strategy in order for the student to master new content. When we teach students who are not physically present in the classroom, instructors need to adapt to the environment and their scaffolding needs to be adjusted to fit this new learning medium. It can be challenging to find a way to adjust the verbal and visual elements of scaffolding to construct a successful interactive and collaborative learning environment for distance learning. The recent spread of technology used in education has opened up the learning environment to include hypermedia, hypertext, collaborative learning environments, and web-based learning environments. A recent review on the types of scaffolding used in online learning identified four main types of scaffolding:

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Procedural Scaffolding
Procedural scaffolding helps learner use appropriate tools and resources effectively. Besides, it is also supports learning on how to navigate the course environment and engage in learning activities. Lack of standard design templates leads to learners having to understand the structure of the course and how to navigate the course environment.

Conceptual Scaffolding
Conceptual Scaffolding helps learner decide what to consider in learning and guide them to key concepts. Conceptual scaffolding guides the learner regarding what to consider during learning. One of the strategy is by using knowledge maps to scaffold learning.

Below is the benefits of using knowledge maps:

reducing cognitive load

facilitating the representation of relationships

facilitating higher order learning - analysis, synthesis, evaluation

providing many paths for knowledge retrieval

supporting the communication of knowledge

Strategic Scaffolding
Strategic Scaffolding helps learner find alternative strategies and methods to solve complex problems. It's emphasizes alternative learning pathways and tailored instruction to support individual students. Besides, strategic scaffolding also r equires an understanding of the individual learning preferences of learners and level of prior knowledge. This kind of scaffolding also may require strategies to help simplify and organize information and r equires frequent dialogue with student.

Metacognitive Scaffolding
Meta cognitive Scaffolding supports learner in developing thinking and manage their learning. This scaffolding prompts students to think about what they are learning throughout the process and assists students reflecting on what they have learnt (self-assessment). This is the most common research area and is thought to not only promote higher order thinking (HOT) but also students ability to plan ahead. Generally, metacognitive scaffolding can be divided into categories that encourage students' metacognition in learning.

Establishment of learning goals

Plan to achieve goals

Development of strategies for effective learning and management

Tracking learner progress

Monitoring potential outcomes

Based on results of planning and monitoring methods

Allows learner opportunity to determine effective or non‐effective processes

Results may require revising or modifying learning strategies

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Scaffolding - SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT THEORY BY VYGOTSKY - GROUP: MOCKINGJAY

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Scaffolding is an instructional technique in which a teacher provides individualized support by incrementally improving a learner's ability to build on prior knowledge. Scaffolding can be used in a variety of content areas and across age and grade levels.

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First Grade Supports for English Language Learners in Reading

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Second Grade Supports for English Language Learners in Reading

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Third Grade Supports for English Language Learners in Reading

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Fourth Grade Supports for English Language Learners in Reading

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Fifth Grade Supports for English Language Learners in Reading

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G4.1R Read Aloud Mango, Abuela, and Me 2019-2020

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G2.1R Read Aloud Plan The Honest to Goodness Truth

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G1.1R Read Aloud Plans The Day You Begin

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Increase the level of vocabulary work with words that you already use all day long.