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kalley@erinkentconsutling.com
Twitter: @kalleyhoke

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Literacy Consultants & Consulting Services | Erin Kent Consulting

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Literacy Consultants & Consulting Services | Erin Kent Consulting

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EKC provides literacy consultants, consulting services, and literacy professional learning for schools.

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Reading and Writing Workshop in International Schools

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Reading and Writing Workshop in International Schools

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Great group focused on literacy!

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AS Brasília Launch Feb 2022 - Google Jamboard

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Launch Slides: Intentionality for Multilingual Learners

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Launch Slides: Intentionality for Multilingual Learners

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Using Inquiry-Rich Invitations to Ignite Word Learning Across ALL Grades

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Using Inquiry-Rich Invitations to Ignite Word Learning Across ALL Grades

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How do we create a sense of discovery and wonder about language? Consider how this blog post helps us consider how can we balance direct, explicit, sequential, and evidence-based instruction with inquiry?

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Looking to counteract the current level of stress in the classroom? Wondering about ways to reinvigorate spelling and vocabulary learning? Try extending an invitation... specifically, an invitation for students to actively explore and investigate words! Teachers can use open-ended questions to invite students to discover more about featured sounds, letters, patterns, parts, and words! The playfulness inherent in student-directed exploration acts as " learning mise en place," setting the conditions for word learning that sticks. These joyful opportunities are not only beneficial for young word learners. Playful, exploratory learning makes sense and matters for humans of all ages! Through this stance, teachers are able to use inquiry-rich invitations to:

These practices are substantiated by researchers and practitioners. Zaretta Hammond's work teaches that the brain craves and needs students to be active constructors of learning. Peter Gray's researched insights highlight the vast cognitive and socio-emotional benefits of play. Ellin Keene's work aroundengagement echoes the importance of open-ended and student-initiated learning experiences. Kristi Mraz and Stephanie Parsons remind us of how we open access when we build the structure and framework for learning through discovery.

What follows are actionable ideas for infusing inquiry-rich invitations into word study. Each creates opportunities for students to feel invested in learning more about sounds, letters, patterns, parts, and words themselves!
Emerging Word Learners
Emerging word learners are often found in preschools and primary-grade classrooms. They are naturally curious and need little encouragement to wonder and explore. Creating inquiry-rich invitations for these learners usually involves curating open-ended materials (loose parts) and providing opportunities to manipulate, tinker, contemplate, and create. Common examples of open-ended materials include readily-available resources found outside: sticks, pebbles, acorns, and shells. Additionally, other "loose part" options can be found in most early childhood and elementary classrooms: beads, buttons, counters, blocks, and more. For certain word-themed invitations, teachers might also set out images, letter manipulatives, word cards, etc. Prompts and questions (like those listed below) invite students to contemplate ideas and construct learning by purposefully and creatively using the materials that have been set out. Follow-up instruction and feedback then builds upon and enhances all that was initially learned. Balancing opportunities for discovery with explicit teaching results in deeper and more nuanced understanding.
Sample Invitations:
These inquiry-fueled questions encourage learners to explore sounds, letters, names, and resource tools.

What do you notice about the sounds you hear?

What can you discover about these letters?

What can you make with these letters?

How could you sort these... (letters, sounds, words)?

What's the same? What's different? (letters, sounds, words)

When do we see these words? Where could we use them?

Why, how, and when would these tools be useful?

In this classroom, content-aligned Reggio-styled provocations are set out to spark discovery. Students are welcome to explore materials independently or with peers.
Tip: There's no need to purchase anything new. Utilize and repurpose readily available loose parts and/or natural materials. These are perfect for word-themed invitations. This Reggio Routines mini-chart (Koutrakos, 2019) is a student-facing tool that can be shared after introducing this kind of learning to students.
Developing Word Learners
Very often, students in mid and upper elementary grades are actively developing their word knowledge. Since student-initiated discovery builds interest, motivation, and investment, it makes sense that teachers in these settings would also incorporate inquiry-rich invitations into word study. For example, instead of handing students a list of vocabulary words or directing them to look up definitions, students can instead jumpstart meaningful learning by investigating words/word parts and then sharing their findings with classmates. In as little as ten to fifteen minutes, students can explore sounds, recognize patterns, and begin to develop theories. Additionally, these efficient experiences offer the chance to delve into multiple meanings of words, synonyms, antonyms, cognates, and more. In the days that follow, teachers can then capitalize on this momentum by following-up with explicit instruction, guidance, and opportunities for additional practice.
Sample Invitations:
These thought-provoking prompts intend to help students actively investigate prioritized vocabulary, words, spelling patterns, and processes for learning:

How will you explore these (letters, patterns, parts, words)?

What similarities and differences do you see? What could this mean?

What theories can you create (and support) about the letters, sounds, and parts of these words?

What words "go" with this topic? How are they connected? Which are most important?

Are there any more interesting and precise words with very similar meanings? Which words have very different meanings?

How could these discoveries help you as you read? Write?

How could you share what you discovered?

This remote-classroom artifact was created as part of a mini-inquiry that intended to jumpstart initial ideas around inflected endings. First, students had the opportunity to explore ideas and share knowledge. Then, the teacher guided the class as they delved further into learning about these affixes.
Tip: Strategically design prompts: ideally, these invitations are flexible enough to be used - and reused- with a variety of patterns and words. Open-ended questions (like those listed above) encourage students to investigate and discover more about words and word parts. Over time, these often become "habit of mind" questions students ask themselves. These two mini-charts: Sort It! Alike or Different and Question Craze (Koutrakos, 2019) are student-facing tools that can be shared after an introductory lesson on mini-inquiries. They remind students of their role in activating their own learning and supporting peers' understandings.
Extending Word Learners
Although time is always a consideration, perhaps the creative use of each minute is most essential when working with middle schoolers and high schoolers. When teachers have one period to integrate all aspects of literacy, high-impact efficiency matters! Content area teachers are also often looking for ways to support understanding and use of domain-specific vocabulary. Authentically embedding word work into all that's already being done is an effective solution. One example of how to do this is turning "regular" learning stations into conver-stations. For example, in many classrooms, teachers set up different learning experiences, AKA-stations. As students rotate from station to station, small groups actively investigate content area topics by viewing, listening, reading, writing, discussing, building, problem-solving, or creating. With minimal effort, teachers can easily turn these "regular" stations into conver-stations. By doing so, students have repeated and authentic opportunities to infuse domain-specific lingo as they discuss prioritized content- and related wonders, ideas, and takeaways. As an alternative, one station may also simply be presenting an inquiry-rich invitation with some accompanying words to investigate. Less is more: embedding joyful opportunities to explore words never needs to be an extra or add on!

HELPFUL HINT: If the station-rotation model of learning is new for you, check out Dr. Catlin Tucker's work. Her researched suggestions are incredibly smart and especially helpful during times of remote, hybrid, and blended learning.
Sample Invitations:
Extending word learners also benefit from delving into word-themed inquiries. Often, these center around affixes, roots, tone, mood, and content-area vocabulary.

How many ways could you strategically sort and categorize these... (patterns, affixes, parts, words)?

What theories can you create about the patterns and parts within these words? How might you clarify, substantiate, or extend these theories?

What other "related" words can you discover? How are they connected? What similarities and differences do you notice?

Where and when will you use what you discovered?

What feelings did you get as you read this piece? What words helped to create that feeling?

What words are closely connected to this topic? What words keep coming up in your conversation/reading/writing? Why?

How do you want your reader to react? How could you create this tone? What words will you choose?

How could your discoveries contribute to the learning of your classmates?

"Which One Doesn't Belong" is a playful critical thinking routine where students choose which option they believe does not fit - and explain why. It's important to note that each option represents a correct answer because there are reasons why each could be the outlier. This reading-themed "Which One Doesn't Belong" conver-station was used to help students collaboratively explore different genres and formats of texts... and the academic language aligned to each. A Final Note
Tip: Use ongoing, embedded collaborative inquiry to build community and collective capacity. This Talkin The Talk mini-chart (Koutrakos, 2019) provides a basic understanding of what students do at conver-stations. This Show Off mini-chart (Koutrakos, 2019) is a student-facing tool that can be shared with students after introducing different ways for classmates to teach others what they have learned.

Student-driven discovery changes the tone of a classroom. The engagement, excitement, and investment that result from this kind of word play are hard to replicate. Gained insights are vital contributors to overall success. However, please know that these inquiry-rich invitations don't stand on their own. Teachers also need to strategically nurture, nudge, and deepen initial discoveries. This happens through modeling, direct instruction, and loads of along-the-way feedback. It is the combination of discovery, explicit teaching, and guided learning that yield a deep understanding of the why, what, and how of words and the know-how in how to apply and transfer word knowledge. A commitment to shared ownership recognizes that all members of a class community have the right and responsibility to contribute to collective learning.

Celebrate the synergy and spirit created through inquiry-rich, collaborative classroom experiences. Widen your lens and reimagine the possibilities for word study. When teachers highlight joy and center students as activators of learning, they simultaneously bolster understanding and create more long lasting success.

Pam Koutrakos is an educational consultant with Gravity Goldberg, LLC where she works with students, teachers, and administrators PreK- grade 12. She authored Word Study That Sticks: Best Practices K-6 and The Word Study That Sticks Companion: Classroom-Ready Tools for Teachers and Students, K-6. Both include ideas, lessons, resources, and tools for teachers of all subjects. Her third professional text is slated to be released in the coming months. Connect with Pam on Twitter @PamKou and on LinkedIn.

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Using Inquiry-Rich Invitations to Ignite Word Learning Across ALL Grades

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By Pam Koutrakos Looking to counteract the current level of stress in the classroom? Wondering about ways to reinvigorate spelling and vocabulary learning? Try extending an invitation... specifically, an invitation for students to actively explore and investigate words! Teachers can use open-ended questions to invite students to discover more about featured sounds, letters, patterns, parts,...

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EAB Essential Agreements for Word Study in G3-5

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What might you take, tweak, and/or synthesize?

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EKC

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Patterns of Power Sentence Inquiry (Jeff Anderson)

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Mini-Matrix Maker
Example Matrix
Word Searcher
Etymonline

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AS Brasilia 3-5 Next Steps Coaching Session 2 Word Study (April 2022) (2)

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AS Brasilia K-5 Next Steps Group Session 2 Word Study

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Love the idea of using inquiry to frame word work! I would also love to know more recommended book resources about grammar, word history, etc. Is there one for Portuguese? Do you have any other recommended resources for implementing grammar/word study inquiry with students?

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Love the idea of using inquiry to frame word work! I would also love to know more recommended book resources about grammar, word history, etc. Is there one for Portuguese? Do you have any other recommended resources for implementing grammar/word study inquiry with students?

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Multiple award-winning book on reading and spelling education that will transform how you think about English! Discover the method that D...

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Lessons on Rule Making and Rule Breaking in Elementary Writing

Good writers know the rules, but skilled punctuators don't simply go by the conventions. They use punctuation to make meaning. Practical Punctuation shows you how to help students discover the relationship between punctuation and meaning-and how they can use it to improve their writing.

Special Offer: Save 30% off our list price automatically when you buy 15 or more.

Dan has made it his business to delve into punctuation, and we are all the wiser for the impressive and exciting writing about the subject that he has done in this book.

Author of How's It Going? and Assessing Writers

In all the books I've read about written language, Dan's is the first to explore the mind's ear.... He has actually changed the way I read as well as write. How lucky we are to (finally) have an intellectually engaging exploration of what we have too long considered drudgery.... When you consider Dan's approach, you'll wonder how you ever taught another way.

Coauthor of Mosaic of Thought, Second Edition, and author of To Understand

Get ready to be taken by the hand by a master teacher who will show you how to teach students the rules of punctuation in clearly defined lessons. From the first page I was eager to take this book to my own teaching.

Author of The Power of Grammar

Punctuation is important. Period. Good writers know the rules, but skilled punctuators don't simply go by the conventions. They use punctuation to make meaning. Practical Punctuation shows you how to help students discover the relationship between punctuation and meaning-and how they can use it to improve their writing.

Practical Punctuation 's strategies help writers connect periods, commas, and dashes to mood, emphasis, and rhythm. Dan Feigelson's ready-to-use lessons provide opportunities to:

show students the purposes of punctuation before teaching them the rules

give writers chances to experiment with punctuating

model the thinking that goes into punctuating

teach conventions explicitly, but not absolutely

hold students accountable for punctuation in formal writing.

Feigelson's lessons are highly structured. They demonstrate how to teach punctuation as a craft tool with writers of varying sophistication or age:

beginners: ending punctuation

intermediate-stage writers: the comma

advanced writers: internal punctuation and cadence.

Feigelson includes a handy teacher's reference guide to punctuation as well as grade-by-grade guidelines that make assessing punctuation simpler. And his interviews with world-renowned authors will help you and your writers better understand the power punctuation has to impart meaning.

Read Practical Punctuation and help students make choices with punctuation-instead of letting punctuation rules make choices for them.

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Good writers know the rules, but skilled punctuators don't simply go by the conventions. They use punctuation to make meaning. Practical Punctuation shows you how to help students discover the relationship between punctuation and meaning-and how they can use it to improve their writing.

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Word Nerds takes you inside classrooms at a high-poverty urban school and shows how two teachers implement creative, flexible vocabulary instruction that improves their students' word knowledge and confidence, enhances classroom community, and increases achievement. Leslie Montgomery and Margot Holmes Smith weave vocabulary into each school day using multisensory instruction that includes music, art, literature, movement, games, drama, writing, test-taking skills, and technology. Along the way, they turn every student into a lover of language.

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Word Nerds takes you inside classrooms at a high-poverty urban school and shows how two teachers implement creative, flexible vocabulary instruction that improves their students' word knowledge and confidence, enhances classroom community, and increases achievement. Leslie Montgomery and Margot Holmes Smith weave vocabulary into each school day using multisensory instruction that includes music, art, literature, movement, games, drama, writing, test-taking skills, and technology. Alo

About the Author(s)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: What's the Big Deal About Vocabulary Instruction?
Chapter 2: Classrooms That Foster Word Confidence
Chapter 3: Making Introductions
Chapter 4: Squeezing the Juicy Words-Adding Synonyms and Antonyms
Chapter 5: Active Vocabulary Practice
Chapter 6: Celebrating to Validate
Chapter 7: Spreading Vocabulary Wings
Chapter 8: Learning Through Assessment
Epilogue: End of the Year
Appendixes
References
Index

Word Nerds takes you inside classrooms at a high-poverty urban school and shows how two teachers implement creative, flexible vocabulary instruction that improves their students' word knowledge and confidence, enhances classroom community, and increases achievement. Leslie Montgomery and Margot Holmes Smith weave vocabulary into each school day using multisensory instruction that includes music, art, literature, movement, games, drama, writing, test-taking skills, and technology. Along the way, they turn every student into a lover of language.

You can create a quote by adding products to your cart and selecting Quote in checkout.

Shipping Details

In stock. Free ground shipping. No minimum.

Word Nerds takes you inside classrooms at a high-poverty urban school and shows how two teachers implement creative, flexible vocabulary instruction that improves their students' word knowledge and confidence, enhances classroom community, and increases achievement. Leslie Montgomery and Margot Holmes Smith weave vocabulary into each school day using multisensory instruction that includes music, art, literature, movement, games, drama, writing, test-taking skills, and technology. Alo

About the Author(s)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: What's the Big Deal About Vocabulary Instruction?
Chapter 2: Classrooms That Foster Word Confidence
Chapter 3: Making Introductions
Chapter 4: Squeezing the Juicy Words-Adding Synonyms and Antonyms
Chapter 5: Active Vocabulary Practice
Chapter 6: Celebrating to Validate
Chapter 7: Spreading Vocabulary Wings
Chapter 8: Learning Through Assessment
Epilogue: End of the Year
Appendixes
References
Index

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Word Nerds takes you inside classrooms at a high-poverty urban school and shows how two teachers implement creative, flexible vocabulary instruction that improves their students' word knowledge and confidence, enhances classroom community, and increases achievement. Leslie Montgomery and Margot Holmes Smith weave vocabulary into each school day using multisensory instruction that includes music, art, literature, movement, games, drama, writing, test-taking skills, and technology.

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No matter what grade you teach, what state your school is in, and what level of diversity is present in your classroom, students have the right to be shown

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Kids First from Day One: A Teacher's Guide to Today's Classroom

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Kids First from Day One: A Teacher's Guide to Today's Classroom [Hertz, Christine, Mraz, Kristine] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Kids First from Day One: A Teacher's Guide to Today's Classroom

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Assessing Reading: Multiple Measures, 2nd Edition - Teacher Professional Learning | Literacy, Math | MTSS

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Curriculum Adoption Curriculum Implementation Literacy Coaching & Site Implementation Support Early Literacy Planning & Implementation Collaboration Publisher Approved Professional Learning Online Elementary Reading Academy Adolescent Literacy Solutions Curriculum Adoption Curriculum Implementation Rise in Math Math Coaching Online Math Academy Onsite Math Academy Teaching Reading Sourcebook 3rd Edition Curriculum Adoption Curriculum Implementation Literacy Coaching & Site Implementation Support Early Literacy Planning & Implementation Collaboration Publisher Approved Professional Learning Online Elementary Reading Academy Adolescent Literacy Solutions Curriculum Adoption Curriculum Implementation Rise in Math Math Coaching Online Math Academy Onsite Math Academy Teaching Reading Sourcebook 3rd Edition

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Clemens, N., Solari, E., Kearns, D. M., Fien, H., Nelson, N. J., Stelega, M., ... Hoeft, F. (2021, December 14). They Say You Can Do Phonemic Awareness Instruction "In the Dark", But Should You? A Critical Evaluation of the Trend Toward Advanced Phonemic Awareness Training. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/ajxbv

Clemens, Nathan, et al. "They Say You Can Do Phonemic Awareness Instruction

Clemens, Nathan, Emily Solari, Devin M. Kearns, Hank Fien, Nancy J. Nelson, Melissa Stelega, Matthew Burns, et al. 2021. "They Say You Can Do Phonemic Awareness Instruction "in the Dark", but Should You? A Critical Evaluation of the Trend Toward Advanced Phonemic Awareness Training" PsyArXiv. December 14. doi:10.31234/osf.io/ajxbv.
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They Say You Can Do Phonemic Awareness Instruction "In the Dark", But Should You? A Critical Evaluation of the Trend Toward Advanced Phonemic Awareness Training

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A trend has emerged across schools in the United States in which phonemic awareness is viewed as much more than a component of beginning reading instruction. This perspective argues that "phonemic proficiency", evidenced by mastery with advanced tasks such as phoneme elision or substitution, is an important target for assessment and instruction well beyond initial grades.

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Not long ago, I dared question the evidence supporting the teaching of "advanced phonemic awareness." That elicited negative reactions from some educators who found my assertions threatening. Their notion was that if I raised doubts about this, then balanced literacy, whole language, cueing systems and the fall of the Republic would be manifest upon the land.

I'm not saying that there aren't balanced literacy fanatics who cheer when I tell the truth about something like that (I wish they were as happy when I explain why it's a bad idea to teach kids to guess words from context in place of reading).

Okay. I say there is no evidence for teaching advanced phonemic awareness and some readers are ticked off and dismissive and others are chanting, "Hooray for our side."

But this hypothesis- that we may need to teach advanced PA - is too important to leave in this fog of virtue signaling and side choosing.

This idea of advanced phonemic awareness was popularized by David A. Kilpatrick, a psychology professor at the State University of New York at Cortland. David has had a long career in school psychology and academia and may be the best-read scholar when it comes to things alphabetic.

How better to evaluate this idea than to turn to the source himself? He, more than anyone, knows from whence it came and the evidence, if any, that supports it. We recently spent a couple hours exploring these issues, and I reread the relevant portions of his landmark, 2015, book. Essential of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties.

David thought a major clarification was needed. In his 2015 book, he used the terms "phonemic proficiency" and "advanced phonemic awareness" interchangeably to refer to a cognitive or linguistic skill. He never used these terms to refer to any specific instructional activities. Nevertheless, many educators have conflated advanced phonemic awareness with the notion that certain teaching activities, namely phoneme deletion and substitution, were required. That notion came from some readers of his book, not from David. He never claimed that all kids needed to be engaged in deletion or substitution tasks.

This misunderstanding has led David to abandon the term "advanced phonemic awareness" altogether. He still refers to the underlying ability that all students must develop as phonemic proficiency. When suggesting relevant instructional activities, he describes them specifically (e.g., blending, segmentation, deletion, substitution). The point is to distinguish the ability that students must learn from the instructional activities we use to promote that ability.

More interesting are his insights regarding phonemic proficiency.

He begins with Linnea Ehri's theory of orthographic mapping. That theory "explains how children learn to read words by sight, to spell words from memory, and to acquire vocabulary words from print" (Ehri, 2014, p. 5). Basically, young readers need to develop sufficient knowledge of the letters and phonemes so that printed words and spelling patterns can be connected with phonological representations in the mind. It is these phonemic representations that are the anchors that secure that information in memory.

Readers only briefly and occasionally "sound out" words when they read. That would be too slow and laborious (a fact that troubles balanced literacy proponents). Orthographic mapping, like any kind of fast mapping (the concept was drawn from the language learning literature) is about getting information into memory quickly and effortlessly.

Not surprisingly, Dr. Ehri champions teaching letter names, spelling, and phonemic awareness so that students can fully segment (analysis) and blend (synthesis) the sounds. This means they could separate words into their phonemic parts proficiently and reassemble them. Those abilities play an obvious functional role in orthographic mapping. As the National Reading Panel reported, teaching PA improves reading achievement (NICHD, 2000).

That's where most of us leave it and why I dared question claims that students may require more PA than that. And, that's where it gets interesting...

You see, David isn't like most of us. He didn't see that research as complete. Oh, he bought into the idea that kids needed explicit instruction in PA, he just wondered if that was sufficient for everyone.

No idle wondering was this.

It led him back through a plethora of studies to see what was going on with kids who didn't succeed and why some word-reading interventions ended up with better results than others.

He concluded that some kids with core phonological processing deficiencies needed more help developing these phonemic anchors. Meeting typical early learning criteria (e.g., knowing letter names and sounds, segmenting words phonemically) simply were not getting these children far enough.

Studies have reported that older students demonstrate much greater phonemic proficiency than younger students. That means the ability continues to grow beyond the period of explicit teaching that is now often provided in grades K-1. We have long known that PA and reading are reciprocal - PA development improves early reading and reading practice extends PA.

Kilpatrick's hypothesis is that for most kids, developing PA to the point where they can fully segment words is all that is needed to get things rolling-the PA automaticity that supports orthographic mapping naturally develops from there. He concludes that "business as usual" reading and spelling instruction and reading and writing practice are all that are needed to keep PA proficiency developing. Except...

Except for those kids with core phonological deficits . . . the ones who simply don't get enough PA support from usual reading experience. They would, he hypothesizes, benefit from from more extended PA instruction to promote the phonemic proficiency displayed by typical readers. The point of this isn't to engage kids in particular kinds of practice (e.g., deleting phonemes, adding phonemes, reversing phonemes), though engaging in some of them may be part of such practice - David thinks that could be beneficial. No, the purpose is to enable orthographic mapping.

Is this a goofy theory? I didn't think so, but who am I? I, again, went to the source. Who would have better insight into the value of this hypothesis than Linnea Ehri?

She has a somewhat different conception of the form that this advanced development may take but she agreed with many (most) of his predictions of what would work and with whom and why it would matter. So, not a crazy idea at all. (Maybe those people who claimed me to be an idiot might be onto something.)

Remember, however, my complaint about "advanced PA" wasn't about its potential accuracy or its value as a hypothesis that could help advance our understanding. No, my problem was with folks who were extending PA instruction in the classroom for everyone, states adopting more extended or rigorous PA standards for all, and the like. Kilpatrick agreed with this concern. He said most students should not require this degree of PA training. He wasn't abandoning the idea that students needed phonemic proficiency that exceeded the abilities to segment and blend, just acknowledging that those extended levels of proficiency develop naturally in most students. (Remember, his 2015 book was focused on struggling readers.)

What of all of that?

David did look at a lot of studies and his ideas did emerge from the patterns he noticed in the word-reading intervention literature. To many that would seem to make his claims research-based and scientific. But a direct study that compared the efficacy of different kinds of PA instruction would be needed to convince the scientific community. David believes that the patterns he identified in existing studies provide valuable clues about best practices, not this is a "fully established scientific finding."

For instance, Richard Feynman, the Nobel prize winning physicist wrote: "When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition."

That just means that you need to test those patterns that you think you saw in the original data. In this case, if you taught PA to the point that some kids could do those more complex phonemic manipulations while staying to segmentation and blending with the others, you'd find out whether that kind of teaching was advantageous. It might be, but until such studies are done, we won't know.

I wondered how Linnea Ehri felt about that. One could understand she might choose to embrace David's hypothesis as a way of advancing her own theory.

Her response?

"David's hypotheses need to be tested directly with controlled studies that examine whether training improves phonemic proficiency, the involvement of grapho-phonemic proficiency, and whether this facilitates sight word learning in typically developing readers and struggling readers."

Nothing self-serving there. Just a scientist frankly evaluating the science.

Oh, and, perhaps more on point, is David Kilpatrick's own take on the matter:

"We completely agree that a study is needed in which the only difference between groups is the nature and extent to which phonemic skills are developed. Indeed, that was supposed to happen last year with 200 severely reading disabled students. But due to COVID-19, that got scrapped."

Maybe, I'm not the idiot or whole language devotee some of you presumed.

Where does that leave us?

1. Kilpatrick, Ehri, and Shanahan agree that there is substantial evidence showing a clear benefit from explicitly teaching young readers to perceive the sounds (phonemes) within spoken words and to link these sounds with letters and spelling patterns. Getting kids to the point of full segmentation in PA is a reasonable goal for regular classroom instruction.

2. We agree that the engine of learning words is not rote memorization but a deep knowledge and proficiency of phonemes and letters in words.

3. We also agree that there are some students who manage to accomplish those levels or degrees of PA efficiency but for some reason still fail to accomplish orthographic mapping.

4. We all agree that more needs to be done for those kids, but here there are some variations in our thoughts about what is needed.

5. Kilpatrick has a cool theory that suggests that instruction could profitably automatize phonemic analysis skills - enabling orthographic mapping. That instruction would not be for all students but only for those who don't get to that point of "sight word" reading. We all agree that his idea may be correct.

6. We also all agree that this idea is worth testing and that until it is tested, it has the status of a sensible data-based hypothesis, but that it is not a proven method for improving reading achievement. Until there is such evidence, "advanced PA mandates" and the like is the work of politicians and salesmen rather than scientists and educators.

Oh, and given the unfortunate misuse of the term "advanced phonemic awareness," let's join David and abandon its use. Rest in peace, advanced phonemic awareness.

Thanks, David and Linnea. Your generosity in helping me with this blog entry is deeply appreciated. Your integrity and deep devotion to a true science of reading is laudable. Of course, if I've gotten anything wrong here, that's on me - not you.

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Not long ago, I dared question the evidence supporting the teaching of "advanced phonemic awareness." That elicited negative reactions from some educators who found my assertions threatening. Their notion was that if I raised doubts about this, then balanced literacy, whole language, cueing systems and the fall of the Republic would be manifest upon the land.

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At wordtorque, we believe all educators deserve the opportunity to deepen their own understanding of English orthography. New insights will help each teacher, from K-12, be more effective in doing what they love most - empowering students.

We offer professional development that supports agency in critical thinking, vocabulary, reading and spelling, across all subject areas. Through scientific investigations of the structure of words, uncover the logic of the English spelling system and build a bank of tools and strategies you and your students can use to analyze, synthesize and find relationships among words.

Join a workshop in Bangkok, or participate in training @yourschool, and give your students greater control of their language, literacy and thinking skills.

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wordtorque | professional development in English orthography

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Word Inquiry workshops in Bangkok and at your school supporting student agency in critical thinking, vocabulary, reading and spelling, across all subject areas.

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BeyondtheWord is an orthographic learning journey...

my journey and the journey of many others who are empowered and inspired to investigate how the structure of the English spelling system really works.

Lyn, based in Tasmania, Australia, works as an international educational consultant. Lyn has been an educator for 40 years, teaching and consulting in Australia and internationally. She has taught a wide range of children from Early Childhood to upper primary

Currently, Lyn consults with many schools and educators in Australia, North America, Europe and South East Asia. She runs a variety of workshops for schools, teachers, students and parents to support the effective and engaging implementation of the structure of the English spelling system.

Lyn's passion is guiding and inspiring others; children and adults, on an orthographic learning journey

of real discovery and enlightenment.

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Lyn, based in Tasmania, Australia, works as an international educational consultant. Lyn has been an educator for 40 years, teaching and consulting in Australia and internationally. She has taught a wide range of children from Early Childhood to upper primary Currently, Lyn consults with many schools and educators in Australia, North America, Europe and South East Asia.

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AS Brasilia K-2 Next Steps Coaching Session 2 Word Study (April 2022)