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Guided Reading is a form of small-group instruction that involves helping students through texts at their own grade level.

Guided Reading helps students by having them work through texts are reasonably difficult alongside a teacher with constant feedback and support.

In Guided Reading, students work independently as well as with the rest of the group and teacher. Students first read independently after being introduced to the text. They then are instructed to analyze the text deeper such as finding meaning or certain details. Once the reading is complete, students proceed to an activity that reinforces the purpose of the text.

Additional support may be implemented such as having a mix of independent and verbalized reading with the teacher.

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*Effective reading instruction involves a combination of powerful instructional settings. This post is the first in our "What is...?" series, where we define each instructional context that makes up a coherent literacy system.

What is guided reading?

Guided reading is a small-group instructional context in which a teacher supports each reader's development of systems of strategic actions for processing new texts at increasingly challenging levels of difficulty. During guided reading, students in a small-group setting individually read a text that you have selected at their instructional reading level. You provide teaching across the lesson to support students in building the in-the-head networks of strategic actions for processing increasingly challenging texts. Through guided reading, students learn how to engage in every facet of the reading process and apply that literacy power to all instructional contexts.

Why is guided reading important?

As an instructional context, guided reading:

Supports readers in expanding their processing competencies (in-the-head systems of strategic actions)

Provides a context for responsive teaching - teaching that is grounded in the teacher's detailed knowledge of and respect for each student, supporting the readers' active construction of a processing system

Allows students to engage with a rich variety of texts

Helps students learn to think like proficient readers

Enables students to read more challenging texts with support.

"In guided reading, you meet students where they are and lead them forward with intention and precision." -Irene C. Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell

What does guided reading look like?

A small group of students who are at a similar point in their reading development are seated across from you at a small kidney-shaped table. Each student reads, softly or silently, the same text individually. You guide a discussion of the text meaning and make teaching points based on your observations of the students' reading strengths and needs.
Steps in the guided reading process:

1. Gather information about the readers to identify emphases.

2. Select and analyze texts to use.

3. Introduce the text.

4. Observe children as they read the text individually (support if needed).

5. Invite children to discuss the meaning of the text.

6. Make one or two teaching points.

7. Engage children in letter/word work activity.

8. Extend understanding through writing about reading (optional).

9. Reflect on the lesson and plan the following lesson.

Becoming an effective teacher of guided reading takes time and effort; but the benefits are worth it. As you teach students, you will have the satisfaction of seeing them apply today what you taught yesterday; you will notice behavioral evidence that they are taking on new understandings; and you will see them expand their competencies and move to higher levels of texts.

To learn more about the Fountas & Pinnell Classroom™ Guided Reading Collection, click the link below.
~The Fountas & Pinnell Literacy™ Team
Check out the entire "What is?" blog series:

1. What is Guided Reading?

2. What is Interactive Read-Aloud?

3. What is Shared Reading?

4. What are Reading Minilessons?

5. What is Independent Reading?

6. What are Book Clubs?

7. What is Phonics, Spelling, and Word Study?

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What is guided reading? Why is guided reading important? And what does guided reading look like in the classroom?

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With this project, my aim is to create an overview of information about teaching literacy from throughout the course for myself and other teachers. I began with an explanation of Dyslexia and then explored the neurological aspects of reading. I proceeded to summarize the Orton-Gillingham methods of teaching literacy and incorporated details of other techniques as well. Lastly, I concluded with a brief look at literacy from different cultural perspectives.

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This webpage from Reading Rockets advises how to teach vocabulary development for children, particularly English Language Learners (ELLs).

Vocabulary can be introduced in the classroom through showing objects and images, connecting words in English to students' heritage languages, and using gestures.

It is possible to do small drills for words where a teacher explains the use and definition of the word then has the student repeat the word and learn how to use it themselves.

Students can be scaffolded in vocabulary through classroom resources like a graphic organizer, word wall, and labeled drawings.

Technology and entertainment like computers, apps, television, audio books, and more are able to teach new English vocabulary to students.

ELL students can be encouraged to practice oral language use, specifically using interactive discussion questions.

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Knowing vocabulary words is key to reading comprehension. The more words a child knows, the better he or she will understand the text. Using a variety of effective teaching methods will increase the student’s ability to learn new words.

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This website features 8 apps which can be helpful for students with Dyslexia. Three that stand out to me are:

1. Sound Literacy App which utilizes the Orton-Gillingham system to help with phonology, phonemic awareness, and building, spelling, and recognizing words.

2. Omoguru: Dyslexia Friendly-Reader is a program which can alter the appearance of text to help with readability.

3. Special Words has activities using words, pictures, and sounds to help practice word recognition. Activities include match words to pictures, matching verbalized words to written words, and matching verbalized words to pictures.

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Dyslexia is a learning disability for people who struggle with reading words. However, with effective Dyslexia programs and now with Dyslexia apps offered, children are becoming more comfortable and open with reading books and various material. Special needs children who have Dsylexia problems may also struggle with the-4-ds-no-one-is-talking-about. So lets take a look at the Dyslexia apps listed below that can help with learning

Reading Rockets

This cool Dyslexia app focuses on assessing the child's memory and listening skills. This app is divided into 6 areas that take about 10 minutes each to play. If your child is easily distracted you may want to do this app in increments to get the best possible results. Activities are also divided amongst three different age groups up to 17. The entire goal of this app is to focus on working memory, visual, processing speed, and phonological awareness.

Simplex Spelling Phonics

This Dyslexia app for children with disabilities helps improves spelling and reading skills that is through a fun interactive platform with over 50 high frequency English words. In this app your child can build several words, and focuses on remedial concepts for students who struggle with audio, visual, and tactile skills.

This cool app is based off of the Orton-Gillingham approach which is often used for children who struggle with Dyslexia. In this app children will focus on phonological processing, morphemic word building, phonemic awareness, and also helps students with recognizing and spelling English words.

Dyslexia Gold

In this app children will work on their reading fluency and reading comprehension. This app also helps children with special needs with reading and engaging through fun lessons through fluency builder skills, spelling, and times tables. What also makes this app also cool is that it focuses on vision problems to stop students from skipping words and lines. This app would greatly benefit children ages 6-15, and can be completed in the United States or United Kingdom.

Dyslexia Mom Podcast

Omoguru: Dyslexia Friendly Reader

Great not only for special needs children but also for special needs adults. Omoguru Reader is a reading tool used for people with Dyslexia that can improve reading skills in a fun and exciting way. This app helps improves readability and greatly impacts visual learners, but especially for children with dyslexia. This app will change the appearance of text and background to help support the dyslexic reader through various features that offeres difference colors for both the text and background. This app also allows for change in size such as spacing between in words to make it suitable for the reader.

Easy Dyslexia Aid - Dysgraphia Spelling & Literacy Helper

This app is one of the best Dyslexic apps and also great for Dysgraphia for people who struggle with writing, spelling, and speaking. This app uses words and short phrases to form letters and words to serve as a helping aid for your child. The Open Dyslexic Font is displayed in a choice of 8 background color combinations, as a means to help accommodate users suffering from Dyslexia and improve readability. This feature can be changed in the settings which are also easily navigated to from the main screen. Additionally, within the settings, you can choose to turn off speech output is you wish, display upper and lower case letters and change between 18 different languages.

Special Word

This app helps teaches word recognition, spoken language, listening/attention, along with hand-eye coordination skills. This contains over 96 words and pictures commonly used during the English language development, and six activities that includes (matching pictures, words, and sounds). This app can be used for children, teachers, and therapist such as a Speech Therapist to help with expressive and receptive language development.

Montessori Words & Phonics

This app helps children with reading, writing, and spelling skills by building words using a phonics-enabled Movable Alphabet. The app also helps children with first understanding that words are made up of sounds/phonics (phonemic awareness). Then, the app helps kids memorize the phonics associated with letters by providing a phonics-enabled alphabet where kids can touch each letter and hear the associated phonic. This app includes over 21 fun colorful interactive games pack with animation for your child to learn.

Additional Dyslexia Resources for Children and Teens

Overall, Dyslexia apps are a great way to get your child started with learning when it comes to reading, writing, and spelling. You can also check out these other programs that helps Dyslexic children as well. Also, be sure to check out my video of the nine accommodations that your child or teen could be receiving at school if needed.

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8 Best Dyslexia Apps For Children and Teens in 2022 - Parenting Kids and Teens

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Dyslexia is a learning disability for people who struggle with reading words. However, with effective Dyslexia programs and now with Dyslexia apps offered, children are becoming more comfortable and open with reading books and various material. Special needs children who have Dsylexia problems may also struggle with the-4-ds-no-one-is-talking-about.

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Infographic on Dyslexia from organization Go Red.

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Dyslexia is characterized by an unexpected difficulty with learning how to read.

Specific struggles involve phonology; recognizing and manipulating sounds in language; decoding words; breaking down and sounding out phonemes; recognizing and retrieving words.

Dyslexia has no connection with a student's general intelligence.

Around 80-90% of children with learning disorders have Dyslexia and upwards of around 20% of children may have the condition when accounting for the many who go undiagnosed.

Dyslexia can lead to difficulty with keeping up with material in school, negative self-image, and trouble with complex topics like reading clocks or learning a new language.

Recommendations for instructing students with Dyslexia:

Multi-sensory decoding instruction.

Consistent repetition and review of literacy skills.

Accomplished via phonological awareness, sight word drills, comprehension strategies and more.

Provide accommodations including extra time for assignments, allowing assignments to be verbal, and incorporating interests in schoolwork.

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Reading Rockets defines Dyslexia as a neurobiological learning disability that is located physically within the brain but risk factor may be increased by certain environmental conditions.

Common misconceptions of Dyslexia include that it occurs more often in boys than girls; it affects only English-speakers; and that people with Dyslexia never learn how to read.

It is difficult to create the infrastructure to screen all children for Dyslexia, causing many students to be undiagnosed.

Teachers are not able to diagnose children but can take note of their language development.

Some children may be struggling due to not having support and encouragement which they need from a teacher.

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III. Dyslexia Awareness: My Dyslexia Story

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III. Dyslexia Awareness: My Dyslexia Story

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This is a video from a British historian named Kat Marchant who discusses her experience throughout life with Dyslexia.

Kat was undiagnosed for much of her life until she received assessment during her time at university.

One main point Kat makes is that she feels much more affected by the negative self-perception caused by how others reacted to her reading ability rather than the Dyslexia itself.

She was told throughout her schooling that it seemed like there were "two students" between the classroom and assignments that were turned in.

This has contributed to Kat feeling a large amount of anxiety and impostor syndrome even after being formally diagnosed.

Part of why Kat enjoys using YouTube as a platform to teach is because it allows her to verbally express herself much more comfortably than through writing.

Knowing that I was dyslexic meant that I felt that I was able to work in a way that suited me rather than attempting to fit my work into the particular formulaic way that other people worked

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There are some attempts in psychological research to find factors that can increase likelihood of Dyslexia. According to this study, the most common background of children diagnosed with Dyslexia is having family with Dyslexia which may indicate that it can be a genetic condition. Another risk factor is having language difficulties but this can be a difficult characteristic to clinically assess before reaching school age.

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This webpage offers advice for parents on help with receiving a formal diagnosis of Dyslexia for their child. Information includes assessment procedures, recommendations of who in the child's circle to communicate with, and important reminders about systems like IEPs.

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The Importance of Diagnosing Dyslexia

Dyslexia cannot be self-diagnosed or confirmed through online assessments. To receive help and accommodations in your child's school, you will need to obtain an official psychoeducational evaluation. This is often referred to as a "psych ed evaluation," or simply, an "evaluation." Undiagnosed dyslexia can manifest itself in your child in multiple ways. Common issues can include anxiety, anger and frustration, social skills and behavioral issues, lack of confidence and even depression.

Your child may try to hide their problem by memorizing or guessing, but frustration will continue to build, especially when schools expect their students to transition from "Learning to Read" to "Reading to Learn." Getting a dyslexia diagnosis can provide understanding and comfort to both your child and you. It is the first step in getting your child the help he or she needs.

If you move forward with seeking a diagnosis, a licensed psychologist should give certain tests to assess for dyslexia. These may include the following - tests of intellectual ability (IQ), academic skills including reading, writing, and math, and phonological processing. Assessment of reading should include single-word reading, nonword reading, reading fluency, and reading comprehension.

How Do I Get My Child Evaluated?

A psychoeducational evaluation can be obtained from your public school district's psychologists. However, depending on your school, the district-based psychologists may not diagnose or recognize dyslexia. Psychoeducational evaluations can also be obtained from some universities and from independent psychologists. A referral list is available upon request.

What Do I Do While I'm Waiting For A Diagnosis?

While you wait for an evaluation appointment, a good start to getting your child the help they need is to explore tutorial assistance.

How Can I Learn More About Dyslexia?

One of your first responsibilities as the parent of a potentially dyslexic student is to become as educated as you can about dyslexia. These Resources are a good starting point. It is also extremely helpful to refer to our website often, and subscribe to our newsletter for the latest news and helpful articles.

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Before a Dyslexia Diagnosis - The Dyslexia Resource

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The Importance of Diagnosing Dyslexia Dyslexia cannot be self-diagnosed or confirmed through online assessments. To receive help and accommodations in your child's school, you will need to obtain an official psychoeducational evaluation. This is often referred to as a "psych ed evaluation," or simply, an "evaluation."

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Three Main Take-aways:

1. There are several parts of the brain which are involved with processing language and literacy. Generally, the right side of the brain handles understanding the semantic meaning of language, while the left side is able to learn advanced skills like reading automatically.

2. Brain imaging in children with dyslexia generally finds reduced activity in areas like the occipital-temporal region that are in charge of automatic reading, while increased activity in other parts like the lower-frontal areas.

3. Neural pathways in the brain dealing with literacy are able to change through instruction that involves a variety of sensory input and rapid-paced drills.

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Diagram of parts of the brain involved in literacy from LD@school.

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Reading is considered to be a fundamental skill for our lives, but it must be explicitly learned.

There are several components of our brain involved in reading and language.

The temporal lobe is able to distinguish sounds of speech.

Our Broca’s area is located on the left frontal lobe and it handles how we create speech as well as understand language.

We have myelin throughout our brain which is a material that transports signals of information.

There is a correlation found between children who excel at reading at an early age having particularly strong myelin signals.

Meanwhile, some children with dyslexia have been found to have inaccurate myelin signals.

There are several characteristics of a strong literacy program based on neurological research:

Literacy practice based on “high-intensity” intervals is highly beneficial.

Strengthening of brain connections through utilizing full spectrum of information/senses.

Utilize tactile input such as drawing out letters in sand.

Visualize letters/words mentally.

Draw words in the air at the same time as saying it verbally.

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Reading operates as follows neurologically:

The faculties of spoken language are instinctive, but written language is trained.

Written text is recognized by the brain then converted to meaning.

There are two main systems that handle literacy:

The Broca’s area and parieto-temporal region break down and analyze words.

The occipital-temporal region allows for effortless, automatic reading.

Students who struggle with reading at an early age are oftentimes unable to develop the ability of automatic reading.

Instead, other non-automatic parts of the brain are used instead.

Sally and Bennett Shaywitz offer several points of advice to help instructors teach students how to read using both regions of the brain:

Reading comprehension must be taught in a systematic, comprehensive, and explicit way.

Instructors need to establish foundational reading skills before beginning to read words fluently.

It is recommended to teach reading fluency through oral reading with feedback and guidance.

Example: Give decodable booklets that have the student practice letter-sound linkages.

Evaluate lesson plans using the following guidelines:

Check for scientific evidence of program effectiveness.

See if students feel empowered to analyze unfamiliar words or rely on guessing.

Does the program include reading practice, fluency development, building of vocabulary, and writing, understanding, as well as discussion of stories?

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Dyslexia has roots in how the brain processes linguistic information. There is a mix of under-compensation in certain key areas while overcompensation in others.

The brain can “rewire” these pathways through practice that involves activating all regions of the brain.

Sedita has two primary suggestions for programs used to teach literacy:

One is having a large amount of meaningful practice that involves having students be exposed to a wide variety of texts.

Students must also be given in-depth instruction that cover foundational reading skills.

It has been found that administering proper reading techniques to dyslexic students is able to cause brain activity like that of students without dyslexia in imaging studies.

Intervention is best accomplished at an early age when the brain has the most plasticity meaning ability to reorganize itself.

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This webpage breaks down an Orton-Gillingham lesson into four main components:

1. Visual Drill

2. Auditory Drill

3. Phonemic Awareness Drill

4. Blending Drill

Depending on the student and their skill level, certain drills may need to be emphasized or modified. While the Orton-Gillingham method has a defined structure, it is also highly adaptable for different learning contexts.

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This is Part 1 of a series of posts about what is included in an Orton Gillingham lesson plan. Many assume an Orton Gillingham lesson only includes phonics. While explicit instruction of many phonics skills is a large part of an OG lesson, a quality lesson covers SO many more aspects of our language. This post will dive deeper into the first part of an Orton lesson including the visual drill, the auditory drill, and a blending drill/phonological awareness activity.

A Little Foundation First:

The English language is an alphabetic one. Specifically, it is made up of 26 letters and 44 phonemes. Although decoding depends on letter-sound correspondence, it is also important to ensure that students know the letter names.

-Firstly, knowing the letter names provides a common language for discussing letters, sounds, syllables, and words.

-Secondly, many letters or letter combinations have more than one sound. For example, the letter <c> can say /k/ or /s/. It will be crucial for the student to know the letter names before learning the different sounds they may represent.

-Thirdly, many letter names provide a hint to the letter sound. For example, the name of the letter <p> starts with the sound that it represents (/p/). So, learning the letter names will help the student master many letter-sound correspondences.

-Students need to solidify their letter-names so that they can fully engage in discussions about these letters and how the sounds in our language are mapped to them.

The Visual and Auditory Drill of an Orton Gillingham Lesson:

A quality Orton Gillingham lesson is completely individualized and based on the needs of the student. Using initial and/or ongoing assessments and error tracking, the teacher includes 10 phonogram cards in the drill pack. The teacher will review these skills in the visual/auditory drill and as part of the student's word and sentence reading/spelling EACH lesson. As the student masters a skill, the teacher then removes that card from the pack. After the teacher introduces a new skill, she adds that card to the drill pack for review.

Video an example of the Visual and Auditory Drill of an Orton Gillingham Lesson

VISUAL DRILL

After a warm-up drill to prime the student's brain for learning, the teacher will initiate the VISUAL DRILL. In this drill, the teacher shows the student the front of the card with the grapheme on the front. The student says the sound that the grapheme represents and simultaneously traces the letter(s) shape on a textured surface. If the student knows more than one sound for the grapheme, he says both sounds and traces for each sound. This continues for all cards in the deck.

AUDITORY DRILL

In the AUDITORY DRILL, the teacher faces the card deck towards herself. She says the sound of the first grapheme. The student then repeats the sound. Next, he writes all the spellings in order of frequency that he has learned so far that represent that grapheme. This continues until the teachers dictates all the sounds and the student writes the corresponding spellings for each sound.

Traditionally this has been done in person with the teacher sitting across from the student. Recently there has been more need for virtual sessions. So you may want to consider using FREE online card decks like for virtual tutoring sessions. If you want written instructions for the visual and auditory drills, check out this FREE resource.

Blending Drill and/or Phonemic Awareness:

As part of any good Orton Gillingham lesson, the teacher creates the lesson based on the individual needs of the student. For this part of the lesson, some students may require a phonemic awareness drill, some a blending drill, and others may need both.

Phonemic Awareness drill:

There is a continuum of phonemic awareness skills. The teacher should first assess these skills and explicitly teach them to the student as needed in a systematic manner. These drills include only letter SOUNDS. You can read more about those skills in another of my blog posts. Below is one example of a phonemic awareness drill. This requires the student to isolate a sound and then delete the sound. Higher-level PA drills like this lead to orthographic mapping of sounds for efficient, long term memory and retrieval of words.

Blending Drill :

While phonemic awareness deals with only sounds, a traditional blending drill requires the student to blend together sounds represented by letters. When first starting out, work with only two sounds/graphemes at a time. Work up to the student blending CVC syllables and then words with consonant blends. These can be real or nonsense words. The student's ability to blend more letter sounds will often depend greatly on their phonemic awareness skills. Below is an example of a simple blending drill of CVC syllables.

These are the first parts of a basic Orton Gillingham lesson. In this other blog post , I will dive into the review and reinforcement parts of a lesson, new information, grammar, oral reading, comprehension, vocabulary, written expression, and more!

After comprehensive training, teachers learn how to provide immediate and specific error correction. They also learn how to offer non-verbal cues, handwriting instruction, and multisensory techniques to support the student's learning. Most importantly, they learn the "why" behind the parts of each lesson and how the skills weave together to support overall skilled reading. All of these components can be done in person or virtually. I encourage you to read the blog post of one of my colleagues, Carolina Orton-Gillingham,on how to set up an Orton lesson for a virtual tutoring lesson. All parts of an Orton Gillingham lesson can be done virtually and with multisensory strategies. Carolina Orton-Gillingham explains all the components you will need to make your virtual lesson complete!

Would you like to learn more about becoming an Orton Gillingham tutor? Check out quality trainings I hope that you will follow my blog and read my next post about other important parts of an Orton Gillingham lesson.

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This is Part 1 of a series of posts about what is included in an Orton Gillingham lesson plan. Many assume an Orton Gillingham lesson only includes phonics. While explicit instruction of many phonics skills is a large part of an OG lesson, a quality lesson covers SO many more aspects of our language.

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Example of Orton-Gillingham blending drill cards from Pride Reading Program

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This video covers a full demo of a Recipe for Reading-based lesson involving visual and kinesthetic materials.

The lesson begins with drills reviewing previous letters.

The teacher then has the student review letters by shaping and underlining the letter then verbalizing it.

Then the lesson involves blending of letters into full words using a blending board. The teacher has the student clearly verbalize each letter individually before saying the whole word.

The student is also asked about real and fake words occasionally.

The teacher proceeds to use vowel tents to point out vowel sounds found in a set of words.

The lesson then involves a review of sight words. If a student does not remember a word, they tap it out on their arm.

The lesson plan concludes with an assessment of the student's ability to spell the sight words using verbalization, tapping, and writing out the word.

This video is a great example of how kinesthetic learning drills for literacy function.

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Recipe for Reading Lesson Steps 1-3 with Comment

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III. Small Group Orton-Gillingham Instruction

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III. Small Group Orton-Gillingham Instruction

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This video provides an overview of how to utilize the Orton-Gillingham methods for teaching literacy in a group setting:

The teacher begins with an auditory drill of the letter "a."

Students are given praise and stars when succeeding for gratification.

The group is asked how to manipulate the letter in a word as well, and then are challenged with different vowels and consonant combinations.

The group then performs dictated sentences where they gradually work through each word in the sentence, one by one.

Fingerspelling can be incorporated simultaneously which should be established at the start of the year.

When students perform independent practice, they should alternate between working with others at the same and different Orton-Gillingham level.

Independent practice may involve working together to determine real and nonsense words, or finding mystery words using vowels and tactile letter squares.

All activity should be kinesthetic to some degree.

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Professor Klein in this two-part video series provides an overview of how to instruct a sound drill demo using Recipe for Reading:

Start by assessing the abilities of the target learner and reviewing recipe for teaching.

Print out and prepare materials for the letters that will be focused on.

Start the drill by going to the required page for the letter and utilizing the listed drills.

Example Procedure:

Shuffle letter cards with excited emotion.

Give the student a card and ask the student to give back the sounds that the letter makes.

For some students, a key word and a picture can be utilized on the back of the card.

Then have the student re-shuffle the cards and phonetically record all the sounds for each letter that they draw.

Proceed to combine letter cards into words by sounding letters one at a time then combining them into words.

Have students sound out the words and recognize repetition of letter sounds. This is done by sounding out each part of the word

Additional activities: write letters out on papers; write letters in the air; dot lowercase letters; read aloud words with vowels; read decodable phrases; etc.

Sound drills should be repeated for each letter until the student demonstrates automatic fluency. Then new letters can be introduced.

Every sequence must be accompanied by sound drills.

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Syllabication is a technique for reading multisyllabic works that breaks down each syllable into one of the eight syllable types.

The eight syllable types defined here are Closed; Open; Magic - E; Consonant-le; Vowel Teams; Bossy - R; Dipthong; Schwa.

The video demonstrates syllabication for the word "fantastic."

Begin by underlining each vowel.

Label the consonants between each vowel with a "c" for closed.

Divide the word with a line between each pair of closed consonants.

Read the word by chunks before blending them all together.

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Helpful Hints: SYLLABICATION - WHAT IS IT?

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Syllabication example from the Syllabication video above.

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This chart offers a comparison between the Orton-Gillingham method and the Lindamood-Bell systems.

Orton-Gillingham explicitly demonstrates letter-sound relationships.

OG also focuses on kinesthetic associations with writing out letters and connecting this with verbal expressions of the letters.

Lindamood-Bell has students investigate the properties of sound and how humans express language.

There is an emphasis placed on how the mouth produces sound as well as on what letter sounds seem similar to each other.

Orton-Gillingham and Lindamood-Bell are two of several different types of literacy programs that share some features but are in many ways fundamentally different.

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There are several differences between the Orton-Gillingham Approach and the Lindamood-Bell program.

Here is a link to a chart prepared by two experts in both Orton-Gillingham and Lindamood-Bell.

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Comparing OG to Lindamood-Bell - Northwest Dyslexia Resources

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There are several differences between the Orton-Gillingham Approach and the Lindamood-Bell program. Here is a link to a chart prepared by two experts in both Orton-Gillingham and Lindamood-Bell.

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This article from Kids Health provides details of different types of reading disorders including Dyslexia.

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Trusted information on everyday and complex child health conditions from The Hospital for Sick Children.

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Blue elements are from the class and Purple elements are from my research.

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Activity for reading involving dividing a story into sections having students practice then read together. There are many different modifications possible for Reader Theater:

Using easier scripts when needed

Using readable font

Allowing for greater practice time

Considering the needs, wants, and interests of the students

Give students chances to write scripts themselves

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Language Arts

Reader's theater lesson plans (with scripts):

Reader's theater scripts:

Math

Teachers can use reader's theater as an instructional technique for mathematical word problems. This example could be used for a reader's theater about 100's day and the concept of 100 .

Social Studies

Here are reader's theater scripts about America in varying reading levels.

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Reader's theater is a strategy for developing reading fluency. It involves children in oral reading through reading parts in scripts. In using this strategy, students do not need to memorize their part; they need only to reread it several times, thus developing their fluency skills. The best reader's theater scripts include lots of dialogue.

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Mrs. Judy Araujo, M. Ed., CAGS, Reading Specialist

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Reader's Theater helps students develop fluency skills.

Fluency is the ability to read with proper rate, accuracy, and expression.

Reader's theater encourages students to practice fluency. Therefore, students do not memorize their lines. Instead, they follow the script intently, waiting for their parts to read with great fluency and expression.

Here are some great reader's theatre scripts!

Check out the reader's theatre lesson plans!

P.S. "Whether you use the spelling theatre or theater will depend on where you hail from. In American English, the spelling is theater; in Britain and the rest of the English-speaking world, theatre is used. The spelling you choose- theater vs. theatre-should align with your audience's preference" ( Grammarly).

Edited on 02/23/2022
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VectorStock Image Fluency is the ability to read with proper rate, accuracy, and expression. Reader's theater encourages students to practice fluency. Therefore, students do not memorize their lines. Instead, they follow the script intently, waiting for their parts to read with great fluency and expression. Here are some great reader's theatre scripts!

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Partner Reading is an activity that involves having students work together in pairs through texts:

Begin by choosing a reading for the class

Divide students into pairs based on having stronger readers work with readers who need more help

Demonstrate how the player reading activity works to the class

Assign the strong readers as "players" and the weaker readers as "coaches." Have the "players" read aloud with the "coaches" correcting any mistakes. Then have the students switch roles once the first session of reading is completed.

Points can be given for correctly read sentences.

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This paper offers a wide array of strategies to teach children literacy based on research of the brain.

For phonics, the most successful type of reading program was found to be the synthetic/explicit method which involves associating sounds with letters then blending them together as in Orton-Gillingham.

In vocabulary, it is found that the amount of vocabulary children know is largely impacted by their family background.

The authors recommend teaching a large amount of literature, establishing an understanding of English morphology, and creating a strong knowledge of sight words.

To teach reading fluency, it is recommended for teachers to guide students through reading.

The teacher begins with modeling reading fluency by orally reading a passage.

Meanwhile, students observe the pronunciation and tone of the reading.

The students then read the passage as a class together with the teacher.

Finally, the students read the passage independently.

Once students are able to skillfully navigate reading and detecting words, it is important to target reading comprehension.

Teachers must model breaking down texts to extract meaning and then have students practice doing so themselves.

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VII. Inspirational Passages for First-Third Grade Students

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VII. Inspirational Passages for First-Third Grade Students

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A large set of reading passages about children making a difference around their lives with accompanying questions at the Q & R reading levels.

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8. First-Third Grade Inspirational Reading Passages Set

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I. Teaching Reading to African American Children

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I. Teaching Reading to African American Children

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When teaching literacy, it is important to be thoughtful about the the many language varieties of English here in the United States which are often discriminated against such as African American English (AAE). This article offers one perspective on how to teach literacy while not diminishing AAE at the same time.

The key point of this article is to teach students who speak AAE with a dual-language program.

One important strategy to use when teaching is to make the similarities and differences between AAE and General American English (GAE) clear in the classroom.

Students' knowledge of AAE should be used as a bridge to learn more about GAE. Cases may come up such as teaching conjugation of verbs which should incorporate comparisons with conjugation between AAE and GAE.

Children who utilize AAE at home but then learn GAE in schools oftentimes have similar experiences to bilingual students. This is an important aspect of AAE that is oftentimes unrecognized.

Teachers are encouraged both to learn about the language variation of English and see how these impact learning, as well as teach their own students about the diversity of English.

Class materials should be used that incorporate differences between AAE and GAE such as in phonics.

Accommodations can be given to students learning GAE such as extra time for assignments and exams.

Teaching GAE should be accomplished while not disrespecting the use of AAE.

One example given is if a child says "This is my backpack," the teacher can respond with stating "Yes, this IS your backpack. Let's put it away." where the use of AAE is responded with the use of GAE without any demeaning correction.

Language variation is a natural part of human language as a whole. While we teach students how to read and utilize GAE, we must also recognize and respect the many different types of English we have around us.

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Reading depends on spoken language.* This is a simple statement with profound consequences for children whose spoken language differs from the language they are expected to read. For most children, the language skills they bring to school will support learning to read, which is mainly learning to understand their spoken language in a new form: print. However, some children's language skills differ in important ways from the classroom language variety, and teachers rarely receive sound guidance on how to enhance their literacy instruction to meet these children's needs.

Teaching reading to children whose language differs from the oral language of the classroom and from the linguistic structure of academic text adds an additional layer of complexity to reading instruction. There is a large and growing body of evidence indicating that language variation impacts reading, ¹ spelling, ² and writing ³ in predictable ways. In particular, it has been demonstrated that mismatches between the language variety spoken by many African American children in their homes and communities and the written language variety encountered in books and other text can slow the development of reading and writing. ⁴

The focus of this article is the impact of one language variety, African American English (AAE), on literacy development and on teaching, assessing, and learning. Our goal is to describe aspects of instruction, curricula, and assessment that may create obstacles to literacy for African American children (compounding the effects of other factors, such as growing up in systemically under-resourced neighborhoods) and to share ways to modify instructional practices to benefit AAE speakers in significant ways.

African American English

Many African American children are bidialectal speakers of English. That is, they speak two varieties of English: African American English and General American English (GAE). Whereas AAE is frequently spoken in the child's home and community, GAE is used in reading, writing, educational contexts, commerce, and the media. One of the major educational linguistic tasks for school-aged African American children who speak AAE is to bridge the two varieties in order to develop strong literacy skills. Importantly, for many African American children, particularly those growing up in communities enduring chronic poverty, though GAE may be encountered through media, such as television, it becomes prominent upon entry into school. GAE is the medium of instruction, and in school it is learned through exposure and modeling in the classroom. Also important, not every African American child speaks AAE, although most do. ⁵

The history of AAE has been fraught with social, educational, and political judgments about AAE's legitimacy and value. ⁶ AAE is a systematic, rule-governed variety of American English spoken by a community of speakers connected by race, culture, identity, and language. That fits the linguistic definition of a "dialect," but the term is problematic for other reasons. (See the "Changing Language About Language Variation" sidebar on the right; although we support a transition from dialect to language variety in colloquial usage because of misconceptions about dialects, we also use dialect occasionally in keeping with how it is defined in linguistics.) AAE has been referred to as "bad English," "poor grammar," and "ghetto" by people outside of its community of speakers. As a result, attempts to introduce AAE into classrooms or to leverage it to teach children who speak it how to read have been met with great resistance. ⁷ Unfortunately, these negative views of AAE sometimes become conflated with the children who speak it, and expectations for them are lowered. It is important that teachers understand that language varieties are linguistically equal, even when they are not socially equal. The social stigma surrounding varieties spoken by linguistic minorities can be compounded by race and class, but they are as linguistically valid as other dialects and highly valued by the people who speak them.

When a child who is learning English as their second (or third) language lags behind in reading English, we recognize that the learning curve is steeper because the child is learning to both speak and read a second language. We have not given this same consideration to children who use two dialects. Although AAE and GAE overlap more than two distinct languages, research has demonstrated that using two varieties can complicate learning new, language-influenced skills (i.e., reading and writing) as much as using two languages. In fact, the subtle transformations between the cultural and the general varieties of a single language may be even more difficult for young children to detect and resolve than the more obvious differences between two languages. ⁸ By design, curricula and instructional activities for children who are learning English take their dual language status into account. Extending these same benefits and considerations to dual variety speakers could have comparable, positive consequences for African American children.

By far the most studied variety of American English, AAE's characteristics in the five primary domains of language (morphology, phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics) have been well-documented in adults and are becoming better documented in children. ⁹ These investigations have demonstrated that as used by young children, AAE primarily involves variation in verb morphology, syntax, and phonology (see "Key Features of African American English" below). Because reading depends on spoken language, AAE is significantly implicated in learning to read.

Impact on Reading

The influence of AAE on reading has been a particular emphasis for research focused on school-aged African American children. Because reading depends on spoken language, AAE is an obvious candidate for understanding disparities in reading achievement between African American children and their white and Asian peers. Having documented these disparities for more than 50 years, perhaps it is time to examine potential solutions-such as materials and practices that are sufficiently sensitive to the needs of AAE speakers. ¹⁰

One key issue is the amount of dialect present in a child's language, which is referred to as dialect density. Dialect occurs on a continuum from low to high use. For example, children for whom dialect influences less than 10 percent of their oral language are said to have low dialect density; those for whom dialect influences 50 percent or more of their oral language have high dialect density.* Differences in density impact reading and writing in important ways. ¹¹ The higher the dialect density, the further the child's speech is from the language used in reading and writing. Simply put, linguistic distance influences how much instruction and practice a child is likely to need to bridge the differences between oral language at home, oral language spoken by the teacher, and the written language of books and other texts. ¹² The more AAE that a child uses, the more likely that reading, writing, and spelling growth may be slowed, ¹³ contributing to the reading struggles of African American children in later elementary school and adolescence. ¹⁴ Challenges in learning to read are not inevitable for children who speak AAE, but greater attention to the impact of their language on reading and writing development is critical.

The culture of education demands that AAE speakers engage in additional language learning compared with GAE speakers. Requiring AAE-speaking children to switch to GAE without using their linguistic strengths in AAE to bridge the two varieties represents a significant encumbrance. Children are required to demonstrate linguistic flexibility ¹⁵ at the same time that their cognitive resources are being allocated to learning the language of the classroom along with a wide array of new academic and social skills.

Some children manage these additional linguistic and social demands, but many do not. For example, AAE speakers already know how to conjugate verbs but must also learn a second set of rules for conjugation in GAE. Learning the second dialect involves discovering what is different in GAE, compared with what the child already knows in AAE. Although progress in reading is related to facility with GAE, providing the additional time and relevant opportunities to acquire knowledge of AAE and GAE differences tends not to be a priority in most schools or curricula. At school entry, AAE speakers' exposure to GAE varies and typically lags behind monodialectal GAE speakers simply because their language experiences prior to school entry do not always include GAE. Analogous effects are seen in bilingual children, who need extra time and support to become fully proficient in both their home language and English. Importantly, given that both bilingual and bidialectal speakers are typically stronger in one language or variety than the other, achieving parity between the two can take considerable time.

Nonlanguage Factors

In addition to the differences between AAE and GAE, other factors contribute to the difficulty many African American children experience with academic achievement in general and reading in particular. Some factors are related to the child's immediate environment, such as socioeconomic status and family factors; other factors are related to the broader social, economic, and political context, especially educational opportunity and quality, housing security, and access to adequate nutrition and healthcare. Of these, socioeconomic status (SES) has received the most attention. The impact of reading difficulties on many aspects of emotional health and well-being have also been examined, albeit to a lesser extent.

Socioeconomic Status

Income inequality and educational inequality have been linked historically. ¹⁶ Recent analyses suggest that disparities in students' academic achievement by race and socioeconomic status have remained virtually unchanged for the past half century. ¹⁷ In the United States, income, wealth, and access to higher education are unequally distributed. Although policymakers, researchers, and others have long talked about "achievement gaps," differences in academic performance between high- and low-SES students are more accurately referred to as opportunity gaps. For students from lower-SES backgrounds, their achievement often does not represent their potential to learn, but it does reflect the inequality in opportunity to learn resulting from lower-quality and less-abundant educational, social, and material resources that often plague children in both urban and rural environments.

The opportunity gap has been calculated as a 1.0 standard deviation disparity in achievement between children in the highest- and lowest-SES ends of the distribution. ¹⁸ This difference represents a disparity of approximately four years' worth of learning in both math and reading, and it persists through high school. Notably, among AAE speakers, nearly 100 percent of high-density dialect users are from low-income families and communities. ¹⁹ Thus, high density of dialect seems to reflect the social isolation characteristic of neighborhood poverty ²⁰ that limits experience with and exposure to GAE. In the classroom, this frequently translates into poor reading performance.

Emotional Health and Well-Being

The persistence of reading difficulties among most African American children, and the challenges it presents for other learning that depends on reading, often has negative effects on confidence, self-image, and willingness to engage in school. ²¹ Struggles with reading become aversive and can promote avoidance of the activity. Unsuccessful educational outcomes are associated with numerous negative consequences, many of which have lifelong impacts. Because these are well known, we turn to a less discussed concern.

For individuals who succeed at becoming bidialectal and managing the associated educational demands, there are other personal costs to consider. Biases surrounding the use of AAE can be very harmful to children, negatively affecting not only their motivation in the classroom but also their linguistic identities. Usage of GAE is expected and valued in educational and other institutional contexts. Effective use of GAE in such contexts involves not only learning and using GAE but also inhibition of AAE, which requires cognitive effort. Similar to bilingual speakers, bidialectal speakers engage in monitoring their own speech to evaluate its appropriateness and self-correct as needed. They may actively avoid speaking in fear of producing non-GAE expressions. They may consciously engage in mental translation from AAE to GAE before speaking, and they may compose utterances to conform to linguistic expectations rather than speaking freely. Anecdotally, African American college students for whom switching from AAE to GAE does not occur automatically report great concern about participating in discussions in the college classroom for fear of "saying it wrong." When AAE is the speaker's culturally and personally authentic code, using GAE is an adaptation to external constraints, including pressure to assimilate. Corrections of AAE as "bad English" convey to the speaker that their cultural language (and therefore their culture) is inadequate or defective. As a result, the use of GAE may be performative rather than authentic.

Assuming different personas in differing contexts, in this case school and home, creates the "double consciousness" described by sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois. ²² Monitoring the presentation of self, which includes language, carries cognitive and emotional costs. Cognitively, it is an additional task to be performed while engaged in other activities (such as reading). Emotionally, it involves continuous self-evaluation, criticism, and correction. Research on this topic is almost nonexistent, but it is a part of the bidialectal experience that needs close attention. ²³

Recommendations for Teaching

Speaking AAE is not inherently an obstacle to becoming a reader, but it becomes one when children's specific needs are not recognized or addressed. The issues we have reviewed suggest many supportive steps school systems and educators could take. We offer six recommendations below to help school systems and educators begin reconsidering how they engage African American children who are becoming bidialectal and learning to read. Collectively, the essential supports mainly involve (a) providing sufficient opportunities to learn; (b) using materials and practices that are effective given the students' backgrounds; and (c) eliminating the unwarranted stigma associated with using AAE and instead focusing on effectively addressing the educational needs of AAE speakers in ways that build on their knowledge rather than disparaging it.

1. Expand teachers' knowledge of language variation.

As part of their professional training, prospective teachers usually are made aware of a number of cultural differences that may affect education. However, language variation and its impact on reading and instruction are rarely emphasized. Teachers who gain this background will know that language variation is a universal linguistic phenomenon and that AAE, like other dialects, differs from the codified, more general version of American English used in education but is otherwise linguistically unremarkable-it is a "standard" example of dialectal variation, so to speak. They could also gain greater understanding of how such variation affects educational goals and practices, as discussed below.

2. Expand children's knowledge of language and the world prior to school entry.

Many AAE-speaking children are less ready than their peers to benefit from reading instruction on the first day of kindergarten because they are not familiar with the school dialect. But young children are exceptionally good language learners; AAE speakers could gain greater facility with GAE in a language-intensive pre-K environment that provided rich and abundant access to both oral and written language. In 2018, only 38 percent of Black 3- to 5-year-olds were enrolled in preschool, compared with 43 percent of their white peers. ²⁴ This disparity in early childhood education should not only be eliminated-we should invest in greatly expanding access to high-quality, language-focused preschools throughout our most under-resourced neighborhoods.

Children learn language via exposure and use, not explicit instruction. In the course of a school year, teachers whose own language backgrounds vary would provide thousands of examples of utterances in each variety and would model the ways that people who speak somewhat differently successfully communicate. Children can learn pronunciations of words and ways to conjugate verbs that differ from their own language use if given sufficient opportunities to learn them. Children can also gain greater awareness of conditions that govern movement between codes (e.g., their use in different settings or with different individuals), a critical skill for any child who speaks two languages or two varieties. Learning more about GAE does not require extinguishing knowledge of AAE, any more than learning a second language requires unlearning the first. Rather, it places AAE speakers on a more equal footing with children who have learned GAE in the home, while still honoring the need, and desire, to communicate with their families, communities, and friends who also use AAE.

Parents and other caregivers can also be encouraged to create additional language-learning opportunities for children outside of school. Efforts to gain families' participation will be more successful if their role in helping their children thrive is emphasized; parents and caregivers are committed to the success of their children but often do not know how to help. Reading books to children may provide a vehicle for introducing linguistic expressions and aspects of the world beyond their immediate experiences. The language in books for children includes vocabulary and grammatical constructions that differ from those in everyday speech, and thus are not available anywhere else except books. ²⁵ "In the light of the moon a little egg lay on a leaf" is the first line of an enormously popular book for very young children, ²⁶ but few people talk that way. Shared reading can provide a context for expanding children's world knowledge and giving them additional practice in using language. For parents who do not read well themselves or are uncomfortable with reading, educators (as well as librarians and others who engage with families) can help caregivers find books paired with audiobooks that parents and children can listen to together. The audiobooks do not take the place of books but allow parents and children to interact around the book, listening to the story together, and prompt parents when to turn the page.

Parents can also provide language-learning opportunities simply by having conversations with their children. Parents are often encouraged to talk to their children, but it is important to stress having conversations that are, by definition, interactive. This kind of talk encourages turn-taking, requiring input from both the caregiver and child. If teachers are concerned about how much conversation is happening outside of school, it might be helpful to send children home with conversation starters, encouraging them to be the catalysts for sparking family conversations. For example, educators could: teach or make a game at school, then send it home with children and encourage them to teach it to their families; encourage the class to ask a parent or caregiver to teach them how to make their favorite food and write down the recipe to share at school; or read a book to the class several times and then send it home with students to share. In each case, children rehearse the skill or activity at school first, making them eager to show what they have learned when they get home. Both parents and children get very excited about this kind of sharing; it removes the burden from both to figure out how to do or initiate what the teacher has instructed and makes children proud to share what they have learned.

3. Use classroom materials and practices that are effective with AAE speakers.

The curricula and support materials produced by major educational publishers assume that GAE is the language of the child and the classroom. With rare exceptions, these materials do not accommodate differences in language background or provide clear guidance about appropriate practices for children who need support to become bidialectal. Unfortunately, this means that it is left to classroom teachers to develop materials and practices on their own. The table on the right provides a list of the major features of AAE likely to be present in young children's language use. It is not an exhaustive list but provides some guidance regarding the language structures that children use and what they will need to learn to speak, read, and write in GAE. Especially in the case of phonology, the table highlights places where children may need extra time to learn a new phonological form because it differs significantly from their own sound system. Here, we note several key implications for instruction.

Phonological awareness: It is commonly assumed that spoken word play, such as rhyming, develops phonological awareness (knowledge of the structure of spoken words), which facilitates later reading acquisition. The activity emphasizes perfect rhymes such as bear-care, which share the same rime (pronounced air). Perfect rhymes are less prominent in AAE word play than other types of phonological overlap, however. ²⁷ Indeed, for any child whose language variety impacts the vowel system, the words that rhyme will differ. For example, for an African American child in the southern United States, the word thing may rhyme with either king or rang, depending upon how it is pronounced. Moreover, even perfect rhymes work differently because AAE phonology allows optional deletion of final consonants in some cases. For example, cold and hole can rhyme in AAE because of deletion of the final /d/. The net effect is that these activities do not always function in the same way as for GAE speakers.

Phonemic awareness: Tasks such as deciding if two words begin or end with the same sounds bring attention to phonemic structure, which is a key to learning spelling-sound correspondences. The validity of the exercise can again be vitiated by differences in pronunciation. When the task involves comparisons of initial phonemes (e.g., ball, book), AAE and GAE speakers perform comparably. In contrast, some AAE speakers may perform poorly on comparisons involving final consonants, because they are variably included in AAE. It may take AAE-speaking children as much as a year longer to master phonemic awareness in the final position of words. 28 Deciding that cold and hole do not end in the same sound may be difficult if cold is usually pronounced cole. When children take longer to acquire such knowledge, we should not assume that they are less capable learners. We should realize that AAE speakers are learning both a new oral language variety and to identify final consonants (whereas GAE speakers only have to learn the latter).

Phonics: Learning the correspondences between the spellings of words and their pronunciations is an important step in learning to read. Instruction typically assumes that words are pronounced as in GAE. What happens if the child's pronunciations are different, as occurs for many words in AAE? For example, a teacher might write the word gold on the board, pronounce each of the component sounds, and model how they are blended to form gold. For a GAE speaker, the lesson is about the correspondences between four letters and four sounds. The lesson is different for an AAE speaker who pronounces it gole. AAE speakers may be able to figure out the correspondence between the teacher's pronunciation and their own, but translating between the two involves extra effort and a single spelling now corresponds to two pronunciations. Then, in a future phonics lesson, AAE-speaking children may be confused as they learn to spell the homophonic word goal.

We have investigated these conditions using computational models that learn phonics (i.e., spelling-sound correspondences). ²⁹ The models first learned the GAE pronunciations of a large set of monosyllabic words. In the AAE condition, half the words had different pronunciations than in the GAE condition because of final consonant deletions. The models were then taught the correspondences between the spellings of the words and their GAE pronunciations. Although both models could learn the correspondences with sufficient experience, the AAE model took much longer because it was learning the alternative pronunciations of half the words at the same time. This model provided an explicit, mechanistic account of the impact of mismatches between the oral and written language system that children who are becoming bidialectal invariably encounter.

Reading aloud: Reading aloud is an important, widely used learning activity. Children's accuracy and fluency as they read aloud is an indicator of their progress and provides opportunities for feedback-but learning two varieties can make the task more difficult. A child who knows the AAE and GAE pronunciations of cold needs to produce one and suppress the other. The child may be able to generate the "correct" (for the school setting) pronunciation, but may do so more slowly, giving the appearance of lack of fluency. Researchers have found a tradeoff between rate and accuracy when African American children read aloud, such that they achieved a lower score on fluency because they slowed down their reading in order to improve the grammatical accuracy of their oral reading. ³⁰ In this same study, as the complexity of reading passages increased, students appeared to sacrifice reading accuracy in an effort to manage the lexical and syntactic complexity of passages. These outcomes provide evidence of the active decision making that can constrain the cognitive resources that bidialectal readers are able to apply to oral reading. In addition to reducing fluency while reading aloud, this may impact reading comprehension. (Similar results are found among children who are becoming bilingual, but their challenges with reading aloud in English tend to be better understood.) When reading aloud occurs in front of other students, the appearance of lower proficiency can be deeply embarrassing and can create aversion to reading.

Attention and effort: Children who are still learning the school dialect have to focus greater attention and effort on understanding the teacher's speech, which can detract from being able to focus on the content. In a busy classroom setting where the teacher is harder to hear or see, the impact will be greater. These difficulties can be lessened for children by providing in writing any important information that has been presented orally, as well as providing visual supports whenever possible. In addition, we encourage teachers to become more familiar with AAE in order to better comprehend and communicate with children and families who are high-density AAE speakers. ³¹

4. Provide enough time on task.

Sensitivity to the time a child who is becoming bidialectal may need to master a new language skill is critically important. A child who has more to learn to reach a goal needs more time to get there. ³² It takes ample learning opportunities, sufficient practice, and, for many children, additional instruction. This requires rethinking our views about what constitutes "typical" developmental trajectories. Instead, teachers should offer as much learning time in early childhood and throughout the elementary grades as needed for African American children to enter the middle grades as confident readers and writers.

Bidialectal children may take more time to gain the knowledge that supports skilled reading, but that is a byproduct of acquiring more knowledge to connect with the knowledge that they already have. ³³ Educational outcomes for these children are modulated by numerous factors, including educational quality, amount of experience using each language variety, and availability of educational resources in the home and community. Successfully addressing these initial challenges-and doing so in a way that values the home language variety-can eventually yield the many personal, social, and economic benefits of being bidialectal.

5. Respond constructively to AAE use in the classroom.

Teachers face difficult choices when students use AAE in the classroom. If AAE is viewed as "bad English," the response may be to provide a GAE correction, which conveys to children that their home language is bad. It should be possible to help children learn the classroom language variety without negative messages about AAE. With very young children, in preschool through first grade, simply providing full-form models of classroom language is helpful. For example, if a child is deleting the copula, a teacher can cheerfully produce the same utterance, making the copula salient and lengthening the child's production slightly.

Child: "This my backpack."
Teacher: "Yes, this IS your backpack. Let's put it away."

After several such opportunities to learn, children who were once deleting the structure will begin to include it. This is a common, effective technique used in interactions designed to enhance language development that can be easily applied in a classroom.

Based on a classroom observation, a researcher ³⁴ provided an example of a teacher who corrects Joey, a third-grade boy, who pronounces the word street as skreet (which is a common cultural and regional variant). When Joey says Orange Skreet rather than Orange Street, his teacher replies by saying, "Not skreet. Say street." Joey responds, "Skreet." His teacher makes him read the sentence again, but Joey continues to say skreet. The classroom teacher corrects him again in front of the class. When the teacher finally leaves him alone, he continues to read aloud, but this time haltingly, mumbling and fearful of saying the wrong thing and being further embarrassed by the teacher. This is a great example of what not to do. By treating the phonological variation in the child's reading as an error, the teacher eroded Joey's self-confidence, making him likely to be more resistant to reading aloud in the future. It is an experience he will likely never forget! A more helpful approach would be for Joey's teacher to make a note of the skr/str pronunciation and include it in a whole-class language lesson without singling out Joey or any other child. This is typically a regional variant. Since Joey is doing it, there are likely others who are as well, and everyone would benefit from spending time learning the sound-phoneme mapping for this consonant cluster.

At the other extreme, many teachers are averse to commenting on children's use of their home language variety, concerned that it is not their role to encourage becoming bidialectal. The philosopher Jennifer M. Morton discusses issues of justice and ethics associated with dialect differences. ³⁵ She acknowledges the perceived need to accommodate GAE given its importance for health, education, and employment under existing circumstances but also the threats to personal and cultural integrity that adopting GAE entails. The need for one group to adapt to the language and culture of another in order to thrive is an intrinsic form of inequality. She concludes that gaining knowledge of both GAE and AAE is nonetheless the most favorable accommodation to non-ideal circumstances.

Teachers need additional guidance and opportunities to engage in professional dialogue on this issue. Not responding to use of the home variety is an instructional choice that conveys information about linguistic expectations. The challenge is to balance the need to respect children's language and culture, while helping them gain additional facility with the classroom language variety because it serves other functions (as in learning to read).

6. Recognize the impact of bidialectal experience on comprehending and producing language.

Becoming fluent in using two languages or dialects is a positive achievement, but there are bumps along the way, such as the interference between codes that often occurs in comprehension and speaking or reading aloud. Slower responses, dysfluencies, and other "errors" occur because the child's knowledge of the two codes and how to use them is still developing, not because the child lacks the ability to learn. Many studies have demonstrated that children who speak AAE also understand GAE. They may be slowed down in some areas where the two dialects contrast, as we noted above. With few exceptions, AAE and GAE are mutually intelligible. Given sufficient time and relevant experience, bidialectal speakers, like bilinguals, will learn to navigate the two codes in both oral language and print.

Final Takeaways

Most languages have several within-language varieties. An inclusive way to think about language varieties is that they occur along a continuum from those that differ little from the general variety to those that are more distant. This framing includes all communication practices across all speakers ³⁶ and does not consider one variety to be superior. It allows us to put languages and speakers in their proper perspective as equally valued, especially as we support children learning to read and write. All children need to have the skills to make linguistic choices across contexts: formal, informal, home, school, speaking, reading, or writing. Even within these contexts, there are choices that require varied skills, such as writing a report for school, writing a thank-you card for a birthday gift, or writing a text to meet up with friends.

Above all, our shared goal should be for all children to become good readers; this requires practice with reading. For children who speak more than one language variety, learning to read requires learning the differences between their oral language and print, in addition to the inconsistencies of English orthography, making supportive instruction and abundant practice even more critical for mastering reading. The burden placed on the child can be tremendous, but it can be mitigated by effective, culturally responsive instruction and through being given the time needed to master new skills.

Finally, teaching children who are becoming bidialectal to read does not require an entirely new, separate theory of reading instruction. The same elements that have been identified for all developing readers to break the code are necessary for children who speak AAE as well. What differs is the delivery of these elements. Reading is a language-based task; introducing language variation affects the efficacy of many standard instructional practices and reading-related activities. The impact of language variation on reading is not an intractable issue. Adapting instruction and materials to encompass and embrace such variation reduces the load for both teachers and students, allowing them to reach their respective goals.

Julie A. Washington is a professor in the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine. A speech-language pathologist and fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, she directs a Learning Disabilities Research Innovation Hub and the Dialect, Poverty, and Academic Success Lab. Mark S. Seidenberg is the Vilas Research Professor and Donald O. Hebb Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he also codirects the Language and Cognitive Neuroscience Lab. Seidenberg's work is supported by the Deinlein Language and Literacy Fund.

*The exception is the case of deaf children who use a visual-gestural, rather than spoken, language. ( return to article)
†Although this assertion is anecdotal, it is based on our combined 70 years of experience. ( return to article)

Endnotes

1. M. Brown et al., "Impact of Dialect Use on a Basic Component of Learning to Read," Frontiers in Psychology 6, no. 196 (2015); and J. Washington et al., "The Impact of Dialect Density on the Growth of Language and Reading in African American Children," Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 49, no. 2 (2018): 232-47.
2. C. Kohler et al., "African American English Dialect and Performance on Nonword Spelling and Phonemic Awareness Tasks," American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 16, no. 2 (May 2007): 157-68; and N. Terry, "Relations Between Dialect Variation, Grammar, and Early Spelling Skills," Reading and Writing 19, no. 9 (2006): 907-31.
3. Brown et al., "Impact of Dialect Use"; and C. Puranik, L. Branum-Martin, and J. Washington, "The Relation Between Dialect Density and the Codevelopment of Writing and Reading in African American Children," Child Development 91, no. 4 (2020): e866-e882.
4. Brown et al., "Impact of Dialect Use"; and Washington et al., "The Impact of Dialect Density."
5. H. Craig and J. Washington, "Oral Language Expectations for African American Preschoolers and Kindergartners," American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 11, no. 1 (2002): 59-70; J. Washington and H. Craig, "Morphosyntactic Forms of African American English Used by Young Children and Their Caregivers," Applied Psycholinguistics 23, no. 2 (2002): 209-31; and C. Connor and H. Craig, "African American Preschoolers' Language, Emergent Literacy Skills, and Use of African American English: A Complex Relation," Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 49, no. 4 (2006): 771-92.
6. J. Baugh, Out of the Mouths of Slaves: African American Language and Educational Malpractice (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999).
7. J. Baugh, Beyond Ebonics: Linguistic Pride and Racial Prejudice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
8. J. Siegel, Second Dialect Acquisition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
9. R. Fasold and W. Wolfram, "Some Linguistic Features of Negro Dialect," Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 3, no. 4 (1972): 16-49; and W. Wolfram, C. Adger, and D. Christian, Dialects in Schools and Communities (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999).
10. E. Ferrer et al., "Achievement Gap in Reading Is Present as Early as First Grade and Persists Through Adolescence," Journal of Pediatrics 167, no. 5 (2015): 1121-5, e1-e2; and W. Teale, K. Paciga, and J. Hoffman, "Beginning Reading Instruction in Urban Schools: The Curriculum Gap Ensures a Continuing Achievement Gap," Reading Teacher 61, no. 4 (2007): 344-48.
11. Washington et al., "The Impact of Dialect Density"; Puranik, Branum-Martin, and Washington, "The Relation Between Dialect Density"; and J. McDonald and J. Oetting, "Nonword Repetition Across Two Dialects of English: Effects of Specific Language Impairment and Nonmainstream Form Density," Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 62, no. 5 (2019): 1381-91.
12. Brown et al., "Impact of Dialect Use."
13. Brown et al., "Impact of Dialect Use"; Washington et al., "The Impact of Dialect Density"; and Puranik, Branum-Martin, and Washington, "The Relation Between Dialect Density."
14. A. Tatum, Teaching Reading to Black Adolescent Males: Closing the Achievement Gap (Portland, ME: Stenhouse, 2005); and A. Tatum, "Breaking Down Barriers That Disenfranchise African American Adolescent Readers in Low-Level Tracks," Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 44, no. 1 (2000): 52-64.
15. L. Makalela, "Moving Out of Linguistic Boxes: The Effects of Translanguaging Strategies for Multilingual Classrooms," Language and Education 29, no. 3 (2015): 200-17.
16. E. Hanushek et al., The Unwavering SES Achievement Gap: Trends in U.S. Student Performance, working paper, National Bureau of Economic Research, March 2019; and E. Hanushek et al., "The Achievement Gap Fails to Close," Education Next 19, no. 3 (2019): 8-17.
17. Hanushek et al., The Unwavering SES Achievement Gap; and S. Reardon, "The Widening Income Achievement Gap," Educational Leadership 70, no. 8 (2013): 10-16.
18. Hanushek et al., The Unwavering SES Achievement Gap; and Hanushek et al., "The Achievement Gap."
19. Washington et al., "The Impact of Dialect Density"; and Puranik, Branum-Martin, and Washington, "The Relation Between Dialect Density."
20. B. Rankin and J. Quane, "Neighborhood Poverty and the Social Isolation of Inner-City African American Families," Social Forces 79, no. 1 (2000): 139-64.
21. S. Rowley et al., "Framing Black Boys: Parent, Teacher, and Student Narratives of the Academic Lives of Black Boys," Advances in Child Development and Behavior 47 (2014): 301-32.
22. W. Du Bois, "Double-Consciousness and the Veil," in Social Class and Stratification: Classic Statements and Theoretical Debates, ed. R. Levine (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), 203; and W. Du Bois, "Strivings of the Negro People," The Atlantic, August 1897.
23. L. Delpit and J. Dowdy, eds., The Skin That We Speak: Thoughts on Language and Culture in the Classroom (New York: New York Press, 2002).
24. National Center for Education Statistics, "Preschool and Kindergarten Enrollment," in The Condition of Education (Washington, DC: US Department of Education, 2020).
25. J. Montag, M. Jones, and L. Smith, "The Words Children Hear: Picture Books and the Statistics for Language Learning," Psychological Science 26, no. 9 (2015): 1489-96.
26. E. Carle, The Very Hungry Caterpillar (New York: World Publishing Company, 1969).
27. A. Shollenbarger et al., "How African American English-Speaking First Graders Segment and Rhyme Words and Nonwords with Final Consonant Clusters," Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 48, no. 4 (2017): 273-85.
28. S. Thomas-Tate, J. Washington, and J. Edwards, "Standardized Assessment of Phonological Awareness Skills in Low-Income African American First Graders," American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 13, no. 2 (2004): 182-90.
29. Brown et al., "Impact of Dialect Use."
30. H. Craig et al., "Performance of Elementary-Grade African American Students on the Gray Oral Reading Tests," Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 35, no. 2 (2004): 141-54; and C. Thompson, H. Craig, and J. Washington, "Variable Production of African American English Across Oracy and Literacy Contexts," Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 35, no. 3 (2004): 269-82.
31. T. Beyer, K. Edwards, and C. Fuller, "Misinterpretation of African American English BIN by Adult Speakers of Standard American English," Language & Communication 45 (2015): 59-69.
32. M. Seidenberg and M. MacDonald, "The Impact of Language Experience on Language and Reading," Topics in Language Disorders 38, no. 1 (2018): 66-83.
33. Thomas-Tate, Washington, and Edwards, "Standardized Assessment."
34. B. Wright, The Brilliance of Black Boys: Cultivating School Success in the Early Grades (New York: Teachers College Press, 2018).
35. J. Morton, "Cultural Code-Switching: Straddling the Achievement Gap," Journal of Political Philosophy 22, no. 3 (2014): 259-81.
36. Makalela, "Moving Out of Linguistic Boxes"; and O. García and C. Sylvan, "Pedagogies and Practices in Multilingual Classrooms: Singularities in Pluralities," Modern Language Journal 95, no. 3 (2011): 385-400.

[illustrations by Ojima Abalaka]

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Teaching Reading to African American Children

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Reading depends on spoken language.* This is a simple statement with profound consequences for children whose spoken language differs from the language they are expected to read. For most children, the language skills they bring to school will support learning to read, which is mainly learning to understand their spoken language in a new form: print.

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Infographic of linguistic features of African American English from American Federation of Teachers.

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This paper provides a summary of how the current philosophies on teaching literacy in Sweden have been developed and what models are popular.

Since 1980, the national education curriculum in Sweden does not advise one particular method of teaching literacy instead it is teacher- and school-dependent.

Generally, teachers utilize a mix of phonics/skill-based instruction with teaching the meaning/analysis of written texts.

While most teachers in Sweden teacher reading and writing in parallel, some utilize a 'writing-to-read' approach where students learn to read from writing.

There is also a rise in teaching reading and writing in combination with speech/dialogue.

In the 70s and 80s, there were differences between teachers on whether to teach literacy starting with letters and words (bottom-up),  starting with reading larger sets of texts rather than focusing on specific words (top-down), or a starting with the children's speech and having students decide the content of literacy classes.

In a study from 2007 of 30 student teachers in first grade classes, all 30 individuals taught literacy using letter-sound correspondences as in instruction taught in this course. However, it was noted that there was a lack of teaching comprehension strategies.

One belief in Sweden is that the end goal of achieving literacy is more important than the methods used to do so.

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Japan has one of the highest rates of literacy in the world as well as a system for teaching literacy quite different from ours in the United States. This paper features a long analysis of the methods used for teaching literacy in Japan in 2007.

Japanese utilizes multiple writing systems:

Hiragana is phonetic and uses symbols to represent syllables. Japanese has 112 different syllables while English has around 3500. There are 71 hiragana letters with 5 for vowels, 1 for the consonant n, and 65 for consonant-vowels.

Children begin with learning only hiragana which can be picked up faster at an early age than phonemic languages like English.

Katakana is used for transcribing spoken language as well as incorporating foreign words.

Kanji is a large set of adopted Chinese characters which are  used to differentiate meanings of context-based words and express ideas.

There are as many as 11,000 kanji with around 2,000 being taught by the end of high school.

Many young children do not receive formal instruction in literacy until the first grade, but oftentimes have foundational understanding of hiragana already from learning at home.

This is accomplished through books, magazines, activities, and more.

One exception is that there are some schools which begin teaching kanji via drills starting from kindergarten.

Japanese schools primarily consist of whole-class instruction ranging from 3-40 students.

Literacy classrooms in the first grade oftentimes cover far fewer texts per month than in American classrooms and teach them in a thorough and methodical manner.

Part of the reason is for textual analysis/reading comprehension.

However, the main purpose is to accommodate for different skill levels in utilizing hiragana. The result is that many students who arrive to the classroom struggling with hiragana are able to learn up to their grade-level, but students who can start to read beyond their grade-level are not given a chance to do so at school.

The literacy classroom generally features teachers reading aloud followed by the class reading aloud, then individual students reading aloud with evaluations throughout.

This is followed by multiple activities involving answers questions about texts from the teacher, a class-wide discussion, acting out of the scene, and finally having the class sing together.

Compared to the United States, in Japanese literacy classrooms, there is less time spent by students traveling around the room, less time spent without teacher guidance, and much shorter classwork sheets that are more directly related to the lessons.

Oral reading is given strong priority and teachers make sure to establish both verbal and written understanding of unfamiliar words.

There is a large emphasis placed on the literary choices and meaning within text of literature alongside correct form of grammar/spelling.

Some aspects of this model can be incorporated in literacy classrooms here when teaching reading comprehension.

While Japan has a more literature-oriented philosophy of teaching literacy, the United States has a skills-oriented philosophy.