# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
for supporting decoding and beyond

how it works

Beyond Decodables aims to support young readers' success in reading by allowing children the chance to decode words in a meaningful context. Our collection of complimentary books, created in collaboration with Boston Public Schools, are highly research-based and approved by experts, teachers, and children. Using our Six Aspects of Beyond Decodables, learn about how these books were written to support Pre-K-2 students and teachers.

We suggest using our resources for small group reading activities.

Pick

Print

View

Most texts are available in digital editions (projectable PDFs) and printer-friendly editions.

Print using "two-sided, short edged binding." Fold or staple together for a finished book.

decodable books for kids

Pick Your Sets of Texts

deepen your practice

Check out our founder, Dr. Julia B. Lindsey's new book, now available everywhere books are sold.

In this book, Dr. Julia B. Lindsey's evidence-based routines help young readers decode words efficiently so they can spend more energy on comprehending-and enjoying-what they read! You'll find:

​

● Need-to-know essentials of how kids learn to read.

● Principles of high-quality foundational skills instruction.

● Teacher-approved instructional "swaps" to improve early reading instruction.

​

Reading Above the Fray addresses content learning, culturally responsive practices, and the importance of engaging readers from the start.

subscribe to
beyond decodables

Get downloadable texts and resources sent straight to your inbox. Join our mailing list for exclusive access to newly added resources for decoding and beyond.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Free Books for Kids | Beyond Decodables | Teacher Resources

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Beyond Decodables provides access to free kids books online with a focus on phonics and diversity. Kids books include decodable words related to CVC words, consonant diagraphs, CVCe Words, Multisyllabic Words, Consonant Blends, and Long Vowel Patterns.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) at the Institute for Education Sciences (IES) publishes practice guides. A practice guide is a publication that presents recommendations for educators to address challenges in their classrooms and schools. They are based on reviews of research, the experiences of practitioners, and the expert opinions of a panel of nationally recognized experts. This page highlights the practice guides focused on language and literacy.

Click on a practice guide to review its recommendations.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
IES What Works Clearinghouse Practice Guides

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) at the Institute for Education Sciences (IES) publishes practice guides. A practice guide is a publication that presents recommendations for educators to address challenges in their classrooms and schools. They are based on reviews of research, the experiences of practitioners, and the expert opinions of a panel of nationally recognized experts.

# data[].attributes.body
The purpose of this guide, including its accompanying decision-making flowcharts, is to help educators understand how to analyze and use student data to drive instrutional and intervention decisions.

# data[].attributes.headline
Section 1: Rigorous Texts and Reading Development

# data[].attributes.subject
Section 1: Rigorous Texts and Reading Development

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection: Listen to a portion of this podcast episode to learn more. Focus on minutes 9:10 – 17:25, in particular.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
S2-07. Research, comprehension, and content-rich literacy instruction: Sonia Cabell

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Amplify Education - Science of Reading: The Podcast

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.title
S2-07. Research, comprehension, and content-rich literacy instruction: Sonia Cabell

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection: Watch as literacy expert William Van Cleave answers the question, With the Increase in technology use, does handwriting instruction really matter?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Writing SOS: With today's technology is handwriting instruction important?

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
KEY TAKEAWAYS• The science of reading is a consensus of what has been learned through decades of research.• The science of readiWhat is the Science of Reading

# data[].attributes.headline
Module 1, Section 1 Learning Connection: Defining Guide live link

# data[].attributes.subject
Module 1, Section 1 Learning Connection: Defining Guide live link

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Science of Reading: Defining Guide provides a firm definition of what the science of reading is, what it is not, and how all stakeholders can understand its potential to transform reading instruction.

# data[].attributes.body
2:00 Video

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Science of Reading Basics, Part 1: The Reading Brain

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection #1
- Read Sections Labeled "Dive Deeper" Project on screen and use drop down to present to group. Participants can keep notes on notice and wonder.

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

MTSS is a framework many schools use to provide targeted support to struggling students.

The goal of MTSS is to intervene early so students can catch up with their peers.

It screens all students and aims to address academic and behavior challenges.

MTSS stands for multi-tiered system of supports. It's a framework many schools use to give targeted support to struggling students. You may also hear it called the MTSS framework, the MTSS process, or the MTSS model.

MTSS is designed to help schools identify struggling students early and intervene quickly. It focuses on the "whole child." That means it supports academic growth, but many other areas, too. These include behavior, social and emotional needs, and absenteeism (not attending school).

The tiers of support are a huge part of MTSS. They get more intense from one level to the next. For example, a child getting small group interventions may need to "move up" to one-on-one help.

MTSS supports the adults at the school, too. The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) - the main education law for public schools - cites MTSS as a way to increase teacher effectiveness. ESSA gives states funding that can be used for professional development to help teachers use MTSS.

MTSS isn't the same thing as response to intervention (RTI). MTSS is more comprehensive. But it may include the three tiers of RTI.

About the author

About the author

Peg Rosen writes for digital and print, including ParentCenter, WebMD, Parents, Good Housekeeping, and Martha Stewart.

Reviewed by

Reviewed by

Melody Musgrove, EdD served as director of the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) in the U.S. Department of Education.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
MTSS stands for multi-tiered system of supports. It's a framework many schools use to give targeted support to struggling students. Read about the MTSS model and process.

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Multi-Tiered System of Support, or MTSS, is an inclusive system of support for all students, and encompasses Universal Support, Additional Support, and Intensified Support. First in the MTSS trilogy, this SWIFT clip by Dan Habib highlights how SWIFT schools implement Universal Support, which relies on a core curriculum aligned with academic standards. School leaders apply Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles, which helps teachers provide instruction using diverse methods in order to include every child in the general education classroom. Schoolwide Integrated Framework for Transformation (SWIFT) is a national K through 8 technical assistance center that builds school capacity to provide academic and behavioral support to improve outcomes for all students through equity-based inclusive education. To learn more about SWIFT, visit http://www.swiftschools.org

# data[].attributes.headline
Section 1: Reading Profiles Identified by a Simple View of Reading  (Links to Several  interventions-in a video series by Linda F.)

# data[].attributes.subject
Section 1: Reading Profiles Identified by a Simple View of Reading  (Links to Several  interventions-in a video series by Linda F.)

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection:
https://education.ohio.gov/Topics/Learning-in-Ohio/Literacy/Third-Grade-Reading-Guarantee
Use RIMP videos for this as well

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Aouad, J. and Savage, R. (2009). The component structure of preliteracy skills: Further evidence for the simple view of reading. Canadian Journal of School Psychology, 24 (2), 183-200.

Catts, H., Adlof, S., and Weismer, S. (2006). Language deficits in poor comprehenders: A case for the simple view of reading. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 49, 278-293.

Gough, P., Hoover, W., and Patterson, C. (1996). Some observations on a simple view of reading. In C. Cornoldi and J. Oakhill (eds.), Reading comprehension difficulties: Processes and intervention (pp. 1-13). Mahway, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

*Gough, P. and Tunmer, W. (1986). Decoding, reading, and reading disability. Remedial and Special Education, 7, 6-10.

Hoover, W. and Gough, P. (1990). The simple view of reading. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2, 127-160.

*Kamhi, A. (2007). Knowledge deficits: the true crisis in education. ASHA Leader, 12 (7), 28-29.

*These articles are short and easy to read.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Simple View of Reading is a formula demonstrating the widely accepted view that reading has two basic components: word recognition (decoding) and language comprehension. Research studies show that a student's reading comprehension score can be predicted if decoding skills and language comprehension abilities are known.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
For a downloadable PDF click here. Summer 2016
By Carolyn D. Cowen

IDA infographics help make complex information easy to digest, remember, and share and are made for a wide audience-those new to dyslexia and related literacy/learning issues as well as the experts. Please share our infographics as well as our Fact Sheets to raise awareness about dyslexia and to help support the policy and practice changes needed to bring effective instruction (particularly in reading) to every child with dyslexia in every classroom across the nation.
Author's Note: You may need to zoom in to read small text.
Carolyn D. Cowen, Ed.M., is the Social Media Editor/Strategist for the International Dyslexia Association's Examiner. She also serves on the Board of Trustees for the Newgrange School, Ann Robinowitz Education Center, and Laurel School and on the Board of Directors for the Research Institute for Learning and Development. Carolyn is especially interested in creative ways nonprofits and movements can "power the mission with the message." Follow her on Twitter .

More infographics!

Good News! Most Reading Difficulties Can Be Resolved or Greatly Diminished (April 2016)

How Widespread Is Dyslexia? (February 2016)
Copyright © 2016 International Dyslexia Association (IDA). We encourage sharing of Examiner articles. If portions are cited, please make appropriate reference. Articles may not be reprinted for the purpose of resale. Permission to republish this article is available from info@interdys.org.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What Is Structured Literacy? - International Dyslexia Association

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Free English uppercase and lowercase interactive alphabet arc to help students learn letter names, order, and shape.

# data[].attributes.headline
Section 2: Text Readability and Text Selection

# data[].attributes.subject
Section 2: Text Readability and Text Selection

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection: Read a short article about the opportunity myth from The New Teacher Project. These sections discuss how the amount of time spent working on grade-level standards directly impacts student achievement, as well as how teachers can utilize their class time most efficiently while upholding high expectations to influence student performance.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Different Resources, Different Results | The Opportunity Myth

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
What can 4,000 students teach us about school? Read The Opportunity Myth.

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection 1: Watch from 14:30-22:30 on the recorded webinar as literacy expert Dr. Jan Hasbrouck discusses reading fluency, and specifically reading rate. Listen for her explanation regarding reading rate and comprehension. Can reading too fast be detrimental to comprehension?

# data[].attributes.headline
Section 1: Language Development (1 of 3)

# data[].attributes.subject
Section 1: Language Development (1 of 3)

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection 1: Read this blog post from Reading Rockets that summarizes the National Early Literacy Panel report on developing Early Literacy.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The National Early Literacy Panel looked at studies of early literacy and found that there are many things that parents and preschools can do to improve the literacy development of their young children and that different approaches influence the development of a different pattern of essential skills…

# data[].attributes.headline
Section 2: Handwriting Components and Dysgraphia

# data[].attributes.subject
Section 2: Handwriting Components and Dysgraphia

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection: Read this fact sheet about dysgraphia to explore how integrating direct, explicit handwriting instruction for all students will help prevent difficulties from growing for those at risk of dysgraphia.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Share This: `

Dysgraphia is a specific learning disability that affects how easily children acquire written language and how well they use written language to express their thoughts.

Dysgraphia is a Greek word. The base word graph refers both to the hand's function in writing and to the letters formed by the hand. The prefix dys indicates that there is impairment.

Graph refers to producing letter forms by hand. The suffix refers to having a condition. Thus, dysgraphia is the condition of impaired letter writing by hand, that is, disabled handwriting and sometimes spelling. Impaired handwriting can interfere with learning to spell words in writing. Occasionally, but not very often, children have just spelling problems and not handwriting or reading problems.

Research to date has shown orthographic coding in working memory is related to handwriting.

Orthographic coding refers to the ability to store unfamiliar written words in working memory while the letters in the word are analyzed during word learning or the ability to create permanent memory of written words linked to their pronunciation and meaning. Children with dysgraphia do not have primary developmental motor disorder, another cause of poor handwriting, but they may have difficulty planning sequential finger movements such as the touching of the thumb to successive fingers on the same hand.

Children with impaired handwriting may also have attention-deficit disorder (ADHD)- inattentive, hyperactive, or combined inattentive and hyperactive subtypes. Children with this kind of dysgraphia may respond to a combination of explicit handwriting instruction plus stimulant medication, but appropriate diagnosis of ADHD by a qualified professional and monitoring of response to both instruction and medication are needed.

Dysgraphia may occur alone or with dyslexia (impaired reading disability) or with oral and written language learning disability (OWL LD, also referred to as selective language impairment, SLI).

Dyslexia is a disorder that includes poor word reading, word decoding, oral reading fluency, and spelling. Children with dyslexia may have impaired orthographic and phonological coding and rapid automatic naming and switching.

Phonological coding refers to coding sounds in spoken words in working memory. Phonological coding is necessary for developing phonological awareness-analyzing the sounds in spoken words that correspond to alphabet letters. If children have both dysgraphia and dyslexia, they may also have difficulty in planning sequential finger movements.

OWL LD (SLI) are disorders of language (morphology-word parts that mark meaning and grammar; syntax-structures for ordering words and understanding word functions; finding words in memory, and/or making inferences that go beyond what is stated in text). These disorders affect spoken as well as written language.

Children with these language disorders may also exhibit the same writing and reading and related disorders as children with dysgraphia or dyslexia.

Without diagnosis, children may not receive early intervention or specialized instruction in all the relevant skills that are interfering with their learning of written language. Considering that many schools do not have systematic instructional programs in handwriting and spelling, it is important to assess whether children need explicit, systematic instruction in handwriting and spelling in addition to word reading and decoding. Many schools offer accommodations in testing and teaching to students with dysgraphia, but these students also need ongoing, explicit instruction in handwriting, spelling, and composition. It is also important to determine if a child with dysgraphia may also have dyslexia and require special help with reading or OWL LD (SLI) and need special help with oral as well as written language.

Initially, children with impaired handwriting benefit from activities that support learning to form letters:

playing with clay to strengthen hand muscles;

keeping lines within mazes to develop motor control;

connecting dots or dashes to create complete letter forms;

tracing letters with index finger or eraser end of pencil;

imitating the teacher modeling sequential strokes in letter formation; and

copying letters from models.

Subsequently, once children learn to form legible letters, they benefit from instruction that helps them develop automatic letter writing, using the following steps to practice each of the 26 letters of the alphabet in a different order daily:

studying numbered arrow cues that provide a consistent plan for letter formation;

covering the letter with a 3 x 5 card and imaging the letter in the mind's eye;

writing the letter from memory after interval that increases in duration over the handwriting lessons;

writing letters from dictation (spoken name to letter form); and

writing letters during composing for 5 minutes on a teacher-provided.

Students benefit from explicit instruction in spelling throughout K-12:

initially in high frequency Anglo-Saxon words;

subsequently in coordinating the phonological, orthographic, and morphological processes relevant for the spelling of longer, more complex, less frequent words; and

at all grade levels in the most common and important words used for the different academic domains of the curriculum.

Throughout K-12, students benefit from strategies for composing:

planning, generating, reviewing/evaluating, and revising compositions of different genre including narrative, informational, compare and contrast, and persuasive; and

self-regulation strategies for managing the complex executive functions involved in composing.

Some children do make reversals (reversing direction letter faces along a vertical axis), inversions (flipping letters along a horizontal axis so that the letter is upside down), or transpositions (sequence of letters in a word is out of order). These errors are symptoms rather than causes of handwriting problems. The automatic letter writing instruction described earlier has been shown to reduce reversals, which are less likely to occur when retrieval of letters from memory and production of letters have become automatic.

If children have both handwriting and spelling problems, the kinds of handwriting instruction described earlier should be included along with the spelling instruction.
Are educators in public schools identifying children with dysgraphia and providing appropriate instruction in public schools?
In general, no. Although federal law specifies written expression as one of the areas in which students with learning disabilities may be affected, it does not clearly identify the transcription problems that are the causal factors in dysgraphia-impaired handwriting and/or spelling-for impaired written expression of ideas. Some of the tests used to assess written expression are not scored for handwriting or spelling problems and mask the nature of the disability in dysgraphia. Content or ideas may not be impaired. All too often, the poor writing or failure to complete writing assignments in a timely fashion or at all is misattributed to lack of motivation, laziness, or other issues unrelated to the real culprit-dysgraphia. Children who are twice exceptional-gifted and dysgraphic-are especially under-diagnosed and underserved.

Teachers mistakenly assume that if a student is bright and cannot write it is because the student is not trying.

Yes. See Berninger (2007a) and Milone (2007) below for assessing handwriting problems associated with dysgraphia. Also, see Berninger (2007b) and Berninger, O'Donnell, and Holdnack (2008) for using these tests and other evidence- based assessment procedures in early identification, prevention, and diagnosis for treatment planning and linking them to evidence- based handwriting and spelling instruction (also see Troia, 2008).

In summary, dysgraphia is a specific learning disability that can be diagnosed and treated. Children with dysgraphia usually have other problems such as difficulty with spelling and written expression, as well as dyslexia and, in some cases, oral language problems. It is important that a thorough assessment of handwriting and related skill areas be carried out in order to plan specialized instruction in all deficient skills that may be interfering with a student's learning of written language. For example, a student may need instruction in both handwriting and oral language skills to improve written expression. Although early intervention is, of course, desirable, it is never too late to intervene to improve a student's deficient skills and provide appropriate accommodations.

Berninger, V. (2007a). Process Assessment of the Learner, 2nd Edition. Diagnostic for Reading and Writing (PAL-II RW). San Antonio, TX: The Psychological Corporation.

Berninger, V. (2007b). Process Assessment of the Learner II User's Guide. San Antonio, TX: Harcourt/PsyCorp. (CD format) ISBN 0158661818. Second Edition issued August, 2008.

Berninger, V. (2007). Evidence-based written language instruction during early and middle childhood. In R. Morris & N. Mather (Eds.), Evidence-based interventions for students with learning and behavioral challenges. Philadelphia: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Berninger, V., O'Donnell, L., & Holdnack, J. (2008). Research-supported differential diagnosis of specific learning disabilities and implications for instruction and response to instruction (RTI). In A. Prifitera, D. Saklofske, & L. Weiss (Eds.), WISC-IV Clinical Assessment and Intervention, Second Edition (pp. 69-108). San Diego, CA: Academic Press (Elsevier).

Berninger, V., & Wolf, B. (in press-a). Teaching students with dyslexia and dysgraphia: Lessons from teaching and science. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes.

Berninger, V., & Wolf, B. (in press-b). Helping students with dyslexia and dysgraphia make connections: Differentiated instruction lesson plans in reading and writing. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes. [Spiral-bound book with teaching plans from University of Washington Research Program.]

Graham, S., Harris, K., & Loynachan, C. (1994). The spelling for writing list. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 27, 210-214.

Henry, M. (2003). Unlocking literacy. Effective decoding and spelling instruction. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing.

Milone, M. (2007). Test of Handwriting Skills- Revised. Novato, CA: Academic Therapy. Distributed by ProEd, Austin, TX.

Moats, L. C. (Winter, 2005/2006). How spelling supports reading: And why it is more regular and predictable than you think. American Educator, 12- 22, 42-43.

Troia, G. (Ed.). (2008). Instruction and assessment for struggling writers: Evidence-based practices. New York: Guilford.
The International Dyslexia Association (IDA) thanks Virginia W. Berninger, Ph.D., for her assistance in the preparation of this fact sheet.
Yates, C., Berninger, V., & Abbott, R. (1994). Writing problems in intellectually gifted children. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 18, 131-155.

The International Dyslexia Association (IDA). IDA encourages the reproduction and distribution of this fact sheet.
If portions of the text are cited, appropriate reference must be made. Fact sheets may not be reprinted for the purpose of resale. © Copyright 2020. The International Dyslexia Association (IDA). For copyright information, pleaseclick here.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Many teachers have already reorganized our leveled libraries because we learned that, according to Fountas and Pinnell, "levels have no place in classroom libraries." Sorting books into bins labeled by theme or topic is time-consuming, but it's not a difficult task. We immediately see that offering students more choice in their reading materials and teaching them to monitor their own reading for accuracy and comprehension is rewarding. However, books at the lower levels, "predictable books," pose a challenge that is not so easily solved.

Problems with Predictable Books

Predictable books are designed to teach children not to depend on decoding to tackle unfamiliar words-they are purpose-written to teach children to predict, or guess words-so what children do with low-level books is not actually reading. Some students climb up the levels by transitioning away from picture-cues and predictable sentences, but others hold tightly to the guessing strategies that are reinforced by predictable books, and time with these books slows their decoding progress. For beginning readers, decodable books provide a more reliable path to authentic texts, and using them for phonics instruction and fluency practice offers a "helps all, harms none" approach to teaching reading. But what, then, should we do with all our predictable books?!

Rethinking the Instructional Purpose

To repurpose predictable books for activities other than reading, we need to look at them with fresh eyes and new criteria. More important than the level stamped on the back cover is the contents inside.

We can ask ourselves, What are the features of this individual book that make it a useful teaching tool? A single book may have more than one useful feature and it might be repurposed for any number of language development, writing, or art activities.

We've listed out some of the features you might look for in predictable books and have drafted example activities to help with lesson planning. (You'll find descriptions and links to the example activities below this table.)

Predictable Book Types

Types

Activities

Examples

Single sentence per page with a single story word
1. (RE)WRITE THE BOOK
Composing Simple Sentences

Cumulative illustrations
8. TALK AND TURN THE PAGE
Language Development for Beginning English-learners

We've drafted ten lesson examples-one for each of the ten book types-to show how predictable books can be repurposed for instruction designed to build students' oral language, writing skills, and creative abilities. The exemplar texts all come from the Green Kit of Leveled Literacy Intervention (LLI), but any predictable texts with the similar features would work well. Repeating these lessons with multiple books can deepen students' learning and, if you pull away the scaffolds, many of these activities can become literacy centers.
Click on the activity title to see the lesson example.
Composing Simple Sentences

This activity gives students a purpose for composing grammatical sentences that apply the phonics and high-frequency words they have been taught. Books that have a single sentence per page and that include a "story word" to go with the picture (typical in books Levels A and B) work best for this activity.

Narrative Writing

In some predictable books, the pictures are the most interesting part. A book like, Oh No! (Level A) tells nearly the whole story through the illustrations. Discussing the pictures and creating a story requires students to draw inferences, share observations, and tell/write a story in sequential order.

Writing Speech or Thought Bubbles

The illustrations in predictable texts often communicate the personalities, feelings, and interactions of characters and, to the extent the text tells a story, mirror the story's narrative structure. The pictures provide a built-in scaffold for students as they think about and discuss what characters might be saying (or thinking).

Grammar Instruction

The repetitive sentence structure in predictable books can be used to teach students the parts of speech and how to use those parts to compose increasingly complex sentences (orally and/or in writing). Strategies from Guided Language Acquisition Design (GLAD) benefit language learners of all levels.

Sentence Combining

For this activity, students use paired sentences from a predictable text to generate more complex sentences. Depending on students' language and writing ability, you might choose to do more or less sophisticated sentence combining. The difficulty of the activity can also be varied by determining how much of the writing is completed by the teacher or the students

Writing Conventions

At Level C and above, predictable books tend to have punctuation, like quotation marks and commas, as well as text features, such as bolded words and dialog tags. A big book can provide multiple opportunities to show students the written conventions you would like to see in their writing.

Spelling High-frequency Words

This activity is best suited to irregularly spelled high-frequency words, such as do and one. Students get repeated practice identifying, saying, writing, and correctly spelling high-frequency words in the context of complete, grammatical sentences. Focus this activity on words recently taught during reading instruction so students receive extra practice and learn to spell the words correctly for their own writing.

Language Development for Beginning English-learners

In this activity, students have multiple opportunities to point to images and say what they are. Using sentence frames provides students with repeated practice producing complete, grammatical sentences with the vocabulary they are learning.

Vocabulary Picture Cards

This activity previews or reviews vocabulary related to a topic. As you select words for vocabulary cards, target words that are grade-level appropriate and that will be high-utility in and outside of the classroom.

Labeled Collage

Because so many predictable books are on the same topics (gardens, farms, playing, etc.) it's easy to make book sets. A few books on the same topic, preferably each with a different type of illustration, make great raw material for a collage.

Separator

Onward and Upward!

Predictable books are not the best tool for teaching students how to read, but they can be put to good use in class discussions, ELD or writing lessons, literacy centers, and art. The activities we've shared are just a starting place and we'd love to hear what other ideas you have for using predictable books.

Balanced Literacy instructional change leveled books

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What Do I Do with All These Predictable Books?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Many teachers have already reorganized our leveled libraries because we learned that, according to Fountas and Pinnell, "levels have no place in classroom libraries." Sorting books into bins labele...

# data[].attributes.headline
Section 1A: Phonological Awareness Overview

# data[].attributes.subject
Section 1A: Phonological Awareness Overview

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection #1: Speaking in phonemes is not an intuitive part of our language. We need to be sure we practice precise pronunciation so we can accurately model for instruction and so we can assess our students’ development. Practice as you follow along with this modeled demonstration.

# data[].attributes.headline
Section 1: Step 1 Problem Identification (1 of 3)

# data[].attributes.subject
Section 1: Step 1 Problem Identification (1 of 3)

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection 1 of 3

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Universal Screening K-12.pdf | Powered by Box

# data[].attributes.body
2:00 Video

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Science of Reading Basics, Part 2: The Simple View of Reading

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection #2
3:13 Video

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Multi-Tiered System of Support, or MTSS, is an inclusive system of support for all students, and encompasses Universal Support, Additional Support, and Intensified Support. First in the MTSS trilogy, this SWIFT clip by Dan Habib highlights how SWIFT schools implement Universal Support, which relies on a core curriculum aligned with academic standards. School leaders apply Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles, which helps teachers provide instruction using diverse methods in order to include every child in the general education classroom. Schoolwide Integrated Framework for Transformation (SWIFT) is a national K through 8 technical assistance center that builds school capacity to provide academic and behavioral support to improve outcomes for all students through equity-based inclusive education. To learn more about SWIFT, visit http://www.swiftschools.org

# data[].attributes.headline
Section 2: The WHAT of Tier One (1 of 2)

# data[].attributes.subject
Section 2: The WHAT of Tier One (1 of 2)

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection #1

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Literacy Instruction & English Language Learners

# data[].attributes.headline
Section 2: Dyslexia Defined (assign articles-share out)

# data[].attributes.subject
Section 2: Dyslexia Defined (assign articles-share out)

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection
Pages 11-14

# data[].attributes.headline
Louisa Moats (skip to 25:36 to 31:00) Best explanation of what is structured literacy-our language is made of these structures

# data[].attributes.subject
Louisa Moats (skip to 25:36 to 31:00) Best explanation of what is structured literacy-our language is made of these structures

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Webinar - Knowledge and Practice Standards for Teaching Reading - Dr. Louisa Moats 15May2019

# data[].attributes.headline
Section 3: Scaffolding for Rigorous Text

# data[].attributes.subject
Section 3: Scaffolding for Rigorous Text

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection: Review pages 14 – 22, Toward a Curriculum for Teacher Preparation and In-Service Professional Development, of this document written by Louisa Moats. You should also review the chart on pages 18 – 19.

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection 1:

Notice how student practice is maximized by choral reading during this small group instruction. Think about how choral reading is being used to improve the students’ reading rate and expression. Notice how the teacher also responds to individual errors with corrective feedback.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Video 36: Choral Reading (REL Southeast)

# data[].attributes.headline
Section 1: Language Development (2 of 3)

# data[].attributes.subject
Section 1: Language Development (2 of 3)

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection 2: Read this article about the importance of oral language for literacy development.

# data[].attributes.headline
Section 3: Handwriting Assessment and Explicit Instruction 

# data[].attributes.subject
Section 3: Handwriting Assessment and Explicit Instruction 

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection: Watch this short video to guide your students in using a tripod pencil grip.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Module 8 Learning Connect 3 Tripod Pencil Grip

# data[].attributes.headline
Section 1B: Development and Instructional Sequence of PA (1 of 2)

# data[].attributes.subject
Section 1B: Development and Instructional Sequence of PA (1 of 2)

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection #1: Watch as a teacher gives explicit instruction in segmenting and blending syllables to a small group of students.

# data[].attributes.headline
Section 1:  Problem Identification (2 of 3)

# data[].attributes.subject
Section 1:  Problem Identification (2 of 3)

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection 2 of 3

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Screening: What Is It and Why Is It Important?

# data[].attributes.body
KEY TAKEAWAYS • Spoken and written language are composed of receptive (listening and reading) and expressive (speaking and writing) components. • Spoken language, written language and their associated components (receptive and expressive) are each a synergistic system comprised of individual language domains. • Children are naturally able to develop a capacity for spoken language but must be taught written language (reading and writing).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Language

Language is a rule-governed behavior. It is defined as the comprehension and/or use of a spoken (i.e., listening and speaking), written (i.e., reading and writing), and/or other communication symbol system (e.g., American Sign Language).

Spoken and written language are composed of receptive (i.e., listening and reading) and expressive (i.e., speaking and writing) components.

Spoken language, written language, and their associated components (i.e., receptive and expressive) are each a synergistic system comprised of individual language domains (i.e., phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics) that form a dynamic integrative whole (Berko Gleason, 2005).

Descriptions of the five language domains follow:

Phonology-study of the speech sound (i.e., phoneme) system of a language, including the rules for combining and using phonemes.

Morphology-study of the rules that govern how morphemes, the minimal meaningful units of language, are used in a language.

Syntax-the rules that pertain to the ways in which words can be combined to form sentences in a language.

Semantics-the meaning of words and combinations of words in a language.

Pragmatics-the rules associated with the use of language in conversation and broader social situations.

The five basic language domains are part of a continuum which spans to higher order language skills, such as discourse, which is impacted by skills in the pragmatics domain.

Higher order language skills include inferencing; comprehension monitoring; interpretation of complex language, such as jokes and puns; and use of text structure knowledge. Metalinguistic awareness is requisite for the development of higher order language skills and is defined as "the ability to think about and reflect upon language" (Gillon, 2004, p. 10). Metalinguistic awareness includes phonological awareness, morphological awareness, syntactic awareness, semantic awareness, and pragmatic awareness. Metalinguistic skills are also critical for self-regulation and self-monitoring.

Spoken Language

Written Language

Pragmatics

(includes discourse)

understanding of the social aspects of spoken language, including conversational exchanges

social use of spoken language, including production of cohesive and relevant messages during conversations

understanding point-of-view, needs of the audience, etc.

conveying point-of-view, intended message, etc.

See ASHA's resource titled Developmental Norms for Speech and Language for more information.

Language Acquisition and Use

Language learning and use are determined by the interaction of biological, cognitive, psychosocial, and environmental factors. Language evolves within specific historical, social, and cultural contexts. Communication difference/dialect is a variation of a linguistic symbol system used by a group of individuals that reflects and is determined by shared regional, social, or cultural/ethnic factors (ASHA, 1993).

Effective use of language for communication requires an understanding of human interaction, including nonverbal cues, motivation, and sociocultural roles.

Relationship Between Spoken Language and Written Language

Phonological awareness underlies the ability to manipulate speech sounds (i.e., phonemes) in spoken words. It has been found to contribute notably to reading and writing development (Al Otaiba, Puranik, Zilkowski, & Curran, 2009; Lemons & Fuchs, 2010; Scarborough, 1998). Components of phonological awareness include syllable awareness (e.g., one syllable in "c ap" vs. two syllables in " ag ain"), onset-rime awareness (e.g., onset: cap vs. rime: c ap), and phoneme awareness (e.g., "cap" contains three phonemes: /k/ + /æ/ + /p/)

When instruction in phonological awareness is paired with knowledge of letter names (i.e., graphemic awareness), then phonics, a core written language skill for reading and writing development, is being addressed.

See ASHA's Practice Portal pages on Spoken Language Disorders and Written Language Disorders for more information.

Language Disorder

A language disorder is an impairment in comprehension and/or use of a spoken, written, and/or other communication symbol system (e.g., American Sign Language). The disorder may involve the form of language (phonology, morphology, syntax), the content of language (semantics), and/or the function of language in communication (pragmatics) in any combination (ASHA, 1993). In some cases, augmentative/alternative communication may be required for individuals demonstrating impairments in gestural, spoken, and/or written modalities. (ASHA, 1993).

Language disorders may persist across the lifespan, and symptoms may change over time (Bashir, 1989). Further, a language disorder can be a distinct diagnosis or may occur within the context of other conditions.

A regional, social, or cultural/ethnic variation of a symbol system should not be considered a disorder of speech or language (ASHA, 1993).

Relationship Between a Language Disorder and Social Communication Disorder

Children with language disorders may also present with social communication difficulty since social communication comprises social interaction, social cognition, pragmatics, and language processing. More information about social communication can be found on ASHA's Social Communication Disorder Practice Portal site.

References

Al Otaiba, S., Puranik, C., Zilkowski, R., & Curran, T. (2009). Effectiveness of early phonological awareness interventions for students with speech or language impairments. Journal of Special Education, 43(2), 107-128.

American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. (1993). Definitions of communication disorders and variations [Relevant Paper]. www.asha.org/policy/.

Bashir, A. S. (1989). Language intervention and the curriculum. Seminars in Speech and Language, 10(3), 181-191.

Berko Gleason, J. (2005). The development of language (6th ed.). Pearson Education.

Gillon, G. T. (2004). Phonological awareness: From research to practice. Guilford Press.

Lemons, C.J., & Fuchs, D. (2010). Phonological awareness of children with Down syndrome: Its role in learning to read and the effectiveness of related interventions. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 31(2), 316-330.

Scarborough, H. S. (1998.). Early identification of children at risk for reading disabilities: Phonological awareness and some other promising predictors. In B. K. Shapiro, P. J. Accardo, & A. J. Capute (Eds.). Specific reading disability: A view of the spectrum (pp. 75-119). York Press.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Language is a rule-governed behavior. It is defined as the comprehension and/or use of a spoken (i.e., listening and speaking), written (i.e., reading and writing), and/or other communication symbol system (e.g., American Sign Language).

# data[].attributes.body
2:00 Video

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Science of Reading Basics, Part 3: Scarborough’s Reading Rope

# data[].attributes.headline
Section 2: Intensifying Instruction (1 of 2)

# data[].attributes.subject
Section 2: Intensifying Instruction (1 of 2)

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection #1

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Multi-Tiered System of Support, or MTSS, is an inclusive system of support for all students, and encompasses Universal Support, Additional Support, and Intensified Support. Second in the MTSS Trilogy, this short SWIFT clip by Dan Habib highlights how SWIFT schools implement Additional Support: interventions for specific skills often given to small groups of students that last only as long as needed. School leaders use Universal Screening to predict which students need support beyond what Universal Support offers, in order to include every child in the general education classroom. Schoolwide Integrated Framework for Transformation (SWIFT) is a national K through 8 technical assistance center that builds school capacity to provide academic and behavioral support to improve outcomes for all students through equity-based inclusive education. To learn more about SWIFT, visit http://www.swiftschools.org

# data[].attributes.headline
Section 2: The WHAT of Tier One (2 of 2)

# data[].attributes.subject
Section 2: The WHAT of Tier One (2 of 2)

# data[].attributes.body
Encourage participants to annotate the vertical alignment document as directed in the presentation slide.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Structure of Ohio's Learning Standards for English Language Arts

Revision of Ohio's Learning Standards in English Language Arts

Ohio educators, many of whom engage daily with Ohio students, drove the process to make improvements to Ohio's Learning Standards for English Language Arts as part of a periodic review. In many cases, the changes reflect instruction already taking place in Ohio's classrooms. The clarifications in the revised standards will guide districts in modifying, not replacing their existing local curriculum, instructional plans and materials. In addition to the information available now, we will be providing additional resources to help educators learn about, and begin using, the revised standards.

Ohio's Learning Standards for English Language Arts (adopted 2017)

In 2015-2016, Ohio embarked on an updating process resulting in revised standards that the State Board of Education adopted in February 2017. The 2018-2019 Ohio's State Tests will assess the content of the revised 2017 standards.

Appendices to the Standards

The updated appendices to the standards reflect the revisions adopted in 2017 for English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects. Go to our Instructional Strategies page to find more information on text complexity, as described in Appendix A.

These documents, represented by strand, show how the standards progress from kindergarten through grade 12 for each of the college and career readiness anchor standards.

Additional Resources for Understanding Ohio's English Language Arts Learning Standards

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ohio's Learning Standards for English Language Arts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Structure of Ohio's Learning Standards for English Language Arts Revision of Ohio's Learning Standards in English Language Arts Ohio educators, many of whom engage daily with Ohio students, drove the process to make improvements to Ohio's Learning Standards for English Language Arts as part of a periodic review.

# data[].attributes.headline
Section 3b: Neurobiological Profile of Dyslexia (2 min) Dr. Brett Miller

# data[].attributes.subject
Section 3b: Neurobiological Profile of Dyslexia (2 min) Dr. Brett Miller

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection
2:27 Video

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Dyslexia Research at NICHD: A Get To Know NICHD Video

# data[].attributes.headline
Section 1: Our Standard English Writing System (A History-LETRS manual 1 may have some extra for this section)

# data[].attributes.subject
Section 1: Our Standard English Writing System (A History-LETRS manual 1 may have some extra for this section)

# data[].attributes.body
No Learning Connection

# data[].attributes.body
To further reinforce approaches to teaching rigorous texts to all learners within the classroom, watch this short, illustrated video. The video discusses five access points for readers in the classroom when it comes to tackling rigorous texts. The video discusses the importance of establishing purpose and teacher modeling, of guiding close and scaffolded reading of texts, of facilitating collaborative conversations, of encouraging and supporting wide independent reading, and including quality and targeted formative assessments.

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection 2:

What aspects of reading fluency are the focus of this brief video? Observe how Ms. Flavin uses echo reading to model and encourage reading with expression.

# data[].attributes.headline
Section 1: Language Development (3 of 3)

# data[].attributes.subject
Section 1: Language Development (3 of 3)

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection 3: Read this article from the American Educator by Hart and Risley. In this article the authors discuss some of their research that investigated children’s vocabulary development, external factors that influence a child’s vocabulary development, and potential long-term impacts of differences in early childhood on later accomplishments.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
During the 1960's War on Poverty, we were among the many researchers, psychologists, and educators who brought our knowledge of child development to the front line in an optimistic effort to intervene early to forestall the terrible effects that poverty was having on some children's academic growth. We were also among the many who saw that our results, however promising at the start, washed out fairly early and fairly completely as children aged.

In one planned intervention in Kansas City, Kans., we used our experience with clinical language intervention to design a half-day program for the Turner House Preschool, located in the impoverished Juniper Gardens area of the city. Most interventions of the time used a variety of methods and then measured results with IQ tests, but ours focused on building the everyday language the children were using, then evaluating the growth of that language. In addition, our study included not just poor children from Turner House, but also a group of University of Kansas professors' children against whom we could measure the Turner House children's progress.

All the children in the program eagerly engaged with the wide variety of new materials and language-intensive activities introduced in the preschool. The spontaneous speech data we collected showed a spurt of new vocabulary words added to the dictionaries of all the children and an abrupt acceleration in their cumulative vocabulary growth curves. But just as in other early intervention programs, the increases were temporary.

We found we could easily increase the size of the children's vocabularies by teaching them new words. But we could not accelerate the rate of vocabulary growth so that it would continue beyond direct teaching; we could not change the developmental trajectory. However many new words we taught the children in the preschool, it was clear that a year later, when the children were in kindergarten, the effects of the boost in vocabulary resources would have washed out. The children's developmental trajectories of vocabulary growth would continue to point to vocabulary sizes in the future that were increasingly discrepant from those of the professors' children. We saw increasing disparity between the extremes-the fast vocabulary growth of the professors' children and the slow vocabulary growth of the Turner House children. The gap seemed to foreshadow the findings from other studies that in high school many children from families in poverty lack the vocabulary used in advanced textbooks.

Rather than concede to the unmalleable forces of heredity, we decided that we would undertake research that would allow us to understand the disparate developmental trajectories we saw. We realized that if we were to understand how and when differences in developmental trajectories began, we needed to see what was happening to children at home at the very beginning of their vocabulary growth.

* * *

We undertook 2 1/2 years of observing 42 families for an hour each month to learn about what typically went on in homes with 1- and 2-year-old children learning to talk. The data showed us that ordinary families differ immensely in the amount of experience with language and interaction they regularly provide their children and that differences in children's experience are strongly linked to children's language accomplishments at age 3. Our goal in the longitudinal study was to discover what was happening in children's early experience that could account for the intractable difference in rates of vocabulary growth we saw among 4-year-olds.

Methodology

Our ambition was to record "everything" that went on in children's homes-everything that was done by the children, to them, and around them. Because we were committed to undertaking the labor involved in observing, tape recording, and transcribing, and because we did not know exactly which aspects of children's cumulative experience were contributing to establishing rates of vocabulary growth, the more information we could get each time we were in the home the more we could potentially learn.

We decided to start when the children were 7-9 months old so we would have time for the families to adapt to observation before the children actually began talking. We followed the children until they turned three years old.

The first families we recruited to participate in the study came from personal contacts: friends who had babies and families who had had children in the Turner House Preschool. We then used birth announcements to send descriptions of the study to families with children of the desired age. In recruiting from birth announcements, we had two priorities. The first priority was to obtain a range in demographics, and the second was stability-we needed families likely to remain in the longitudinal study for several years. Recruiting from birth announcements allowed us to preselect families. We looked up each potential family in the city directory and listed those with such signs of permanence as owning their home and having a telephone. We listed families by sex of child and address because demographic status could be reliably associated with area of residence in this city at that time. Then we sent recruiting letters selectively in order to maintain the gender balance and the representation of socioeconomic strata.

Our final sample consisted of 42 families who remained in the study from beginning to end. From each of these families, we have almost 2 ½ years or more of sequential monthly hour-long observations. On the basis of occupation, 13 of the families were upper socioeconomic status (SES), 10 were middle SES, 13 were lower SES, and six were on welfare. There were African-American families in each SES category, in numbers roughly reflecting local job allocations. One African-American family was upper SES, three were middle, seven were lower, and six families were on welfare. Of the 42 children, 17 were African American and 23 were girls. Eleven children were the first born to the family, 18 were second children, and 13 were third or later-born children.

What We Found

Before children can take charge of their own experience and begin to spend time with peers in social groups outside the home, almost everything they learn comes from their families, to whom society has assigned the task of socializing children. We were not surprised to see the 42 children turn out to be like their parents; we had not fully realized, however, the implications of those similarities for the children's futures.

We observed the 42 children grow more like their parents in stature and activity levels, in vocabulary resources, and in language and interaction styles. Despite the considerable range in vocabulary size among the children, 86 percent to 98 percent of the words recorded in each child's vocabulary consisted of words also recorded in their parents' vocabularies. By the age of 34-36 months, the children were also talking and using numbers of different words very similar to the averages of their parents (see the table below).

Families' Language and Use Differ Across Income Groups

13 Professional

23 Working-class

6 Welfare

a When we began the longitudinal study, we asked the parents to complete a vocabulary pretest. At the first observation each parent was asked to complete a form abstracted from the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT). We gave each parent a list of 46 vocabulary words and a series of pictures (four options per vocabulary word) and asked the parent to write beside each word the number of the picture that corresponded to the written word. Parent performance on the test was highly correlated with years of education ( r = .57).

b Parent utterances and different words were averaged over 13-36 months of child age. Child utterances and different words were averaged for the four observations when the children were 33-36 months old.

By the time the children were 3 years old, trends in amount of talk, vocabulary growth, and style of interaction were well established and clearly suggested widening gaps to come. Even patterns of parenting were already observable among the children. When we listened to the children, we seemed to hear their parents speaking; when we watched the children play at parenting their dolls, we seemed to see the futures of their own children.

We now had answers to our 20-year-old questions. We had observed, recorded, and analyzed more than 1,300 hours of casual interactions between parents and their language-learning children. We had dissembled these interactions into several dozen molecular features that could be reliably coded and counted. We had examined the correlations between the quantities of each of those features and several outcome measures relating to children's language accomplishments.

After all 1,318 observations had been entered into the computer and checked for accuracy against the raw data, after every word had been checked for spelling and coded and checked for its part of speech, after every utterance had been coded for syntax and discourse function and every code checked for accuracy, after random samples had been recoded to check the reliability of the coding, after each file had been checked one more time and the accuracy of each aspect verified, and after the data analysis programs had finally been run to produce frequency counts and dictionary lists for each observation, we had an immense numeric database that required 23 million bytes of computer file space. We were finally ready to begin asking what it all meant.

It took six years of painstaking effort before we saw the first results of the longitudinal research. And then we were astonished at the differences the data revealed (see the graph at left).

* * *

Like the children in the Turner House Preschool, the three year old children from families on welfare not only had smaller vocabularies than did children of the same age in professional families, but they were also adding words more slowly. Projecting the developmental trajectory of the welfare children's vocabulary growth curves, we could see an ever-widening gap similar to the one we saw between the Turner House children and the professors' children in 1967.

While we were immersed in collecting and processing the data, our thoughts were concerned only with the next utterance to be transcribed or coded. While we were observing in the homes, though we were aware that the families were very different in lifestyles, they were all similarly engaged in the fundamental task of raising a child. All the families nurtured their children and played and talked with them. They all disciplined their children and taught them good manners and how to dress and toilet themselves. They provided their children with much the same toys and talked to them about much the same things. Though different in personality and skill levels, the children all learned to talk and to be socially appropriate members of the family with all the basic skills needed for preschool entry.

Test Performance in Third Grade Follows Accomplishments at Age 3

We wondered whether the differences we saw at age 3 would be washed out, like the effects of a preschool intervention, as the children's experience broadened to a wider community of competent speakers. Like the parents we observed, we wondered how much difference children's early experiences would actually make. Could we, or parents, predict how a child would do in school from what the parent was doing when the child was 2 years old?

Fortune provided us with Dale Walker, who recruited 29 of the 42 families to participate in a study of their children's school performance in the third grade, when the children were nine to 10 years old.

We were awestruck at how well our measures of accomplishments at age 3 predicted measures of language skill at age 9-10. From our preschool data we had been confident that the rate of vocabulary growth would predict later performance in school; we saw that it did. For the 29 children observed when they were 1-2 years old, the rate of vocabulary growth at age 3 was strongly associated with scores at age 9-10 on both the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT-R) of receptive vocabulary ( r = .58) and the Test of Language Development-2: Intermediate (TOLD) ( r = .74) and its subtests (listening, speaking, semantics, syntax).

Vocabulary use at age 3 was equally predictive of measures of language skill at age 9-10. Vocabulary use at age 3 was strongly associated with scores on both the PPVT-R ( r = .57) and the TOLD ( r = .72). Vocabulary use at age 3 was also strongly associated with reading comprehension scores on the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills (CTBS/U) ( r = .56).

The 30 Million Word Gap By Age 3

All parent-child research is based on the assumption that the data (laboratory or field) reflect what people typically do. In most studies, there are as many reasons that the averages would be higher than reported as there are that they would be lower. But all researchers caution against extrapolating their findings to people and circumstances they did not include. Our data provide us, however, a first approximation to the absolute magnitude of children's early experience, a basis sufficient for estimating the actual size of the intervention task needed to provide equal experience and, thus, equal opportunities to children living in poverty. We depend on future studies to refine this estimate.

Because the goal of an intervention would be to equalize children's early experience, we need to estimate the amount of experience children of different SES groups might bring to an intervention that began in preschool at age 4. We base our estimate on the remarkable differences our data showed in the relative amounts of children's early experience: Simply in words heard, the average child on welfare was having half as much experience per hour (616 words per hour) as the average working-class child (1,251 words per hour) and less than one-third that of the average child in a professional family (2,153 words per hour). These relative differences in amount of experience were so durable over the more than two years of observations that they provide the best basis we currently have for estimating children's actual life experience.

A linear extrapolation from the averages in the observational data to a 100-hour week (given a 14-hour waking day) shows the average child in the professional families with 215,000 words of language experience, the average child in a working-class family provided with 125,000 words, and the average child in a welfare family with 62,000 words of language experience. In a 5,200-hour year, the amount would be 11.2 million words for a child in a professional family, 6.5 million words for a child in a working-class family, and 3.2 million words for a child in a welfare family. In four years of such experience, an average child in a professional family would have accumulated experience with almost 45 million words, an average child in a working-class family would have accumulated experience with 26 million words, and an average child in a welfare family would have accumulated experience with 13 million words. By age 4, the average child in a welfare family might have 13 million fewer words of cumulative experience than the average child in a working-class family. This linear extrapolation is shown in the graph below.

But the children's language experience did not differ just in terms of the number and quality of words heard. We can extrapolate similarly the relative differences the data showed in children's hourly experience with parent affirmatives (encouraging words) and prohibitions. The average child in a professional family was accumulating 32 affirmatives and five prohibitions per hour, a ratio of 6 encouragements to 1 discouragement. The average child in a working-class family was accumulating 12 affirmatives and seven prohibitions per hour, a ratio of 2 encouragements to 1 discouragement. The average child in a welfare family, though, was accumulating five affirmatives and 11 prohibitions per hour, a ratio of 1 encouragement to 2 discouragements. In a 5,200-hour year, that would be 166,000 encouragements to 26,000 discouragements in a professional family, 62,000 encouragements to 36,000 discouragements in a working-class family, and 26,000 encouragements to 57,000 discouragements in a welfare family.

Extrapolated to the first four years of life, the average child in a professional family would have accumulated 560,000 more instances of encouraging feedback than discouraging feedback, and an average child in a working-class family would have accumulated 100,000 more encouragements than discouragements. But an average child in a welfare family would have accumulated 125,000 more instances of prohibitions than encouragements. By the age of 4, the average child in a welfare family might have had 144,000 fewer encouragements and 84,000 more discouragements of his or her behavior than the average child in a working-class family.

Extrapolating the relative differences in children's hourly experience allows us to estimate children's cumulative experience in the first four years of life and so glimpse the size of the problem facing intervention. Whatever the inaccuracy of our estimates, it is not by an order of magnitude such that 60,000 words becomes 6,000 or 600,000. Even if our estimates of children's experience are too high by half, the differences between children by age 4 in amounts of cumulative experience are so great that even the best of intervention programs could only hope to keep the children in families on welfare from falling still further behind the children in the working-class families.

The Importance of Early Years Experience

We learned from the longitudinal data that the problem of skill differences among children at the time of school entry is bigger, more intractable, and more important than we had thought. So much is happening to children during their first three years at home, at a time when they are especially malleable and uniquely dependent on the family for virtually all their experience, that by age 3, an intervention must address not just a lack of knowledge or skill, but an entire general approach to experience.

Cognitively, experience is sequential: Experiences in infancy establish habits of seeking, noticing, and incorporating new and more complex experiences, as well as schemas for categorizing and thinking about experiences. Neurologically, infancy is a critical period because cortical development is influenced by the amount of central nervous system activity stimulated by experience. Behaviorally, infancy is a unique time of helplessness when nearly all of children's experience is mediated by adults in one-to-one interactions permeated with affect. Once children become independent and can speak for themselves, they gain access to more opportunities for experience. But the amount and diversity of children's past experience influences which new opportunities for experience they notice and choose.

Estimating, as we did, the magnitude of the differences in children's cumulative experience before the age of 3 gives an indication of how big the problem is. Estimating the hours of intervention needed to equalize children's early experience makes clear the enormity of the effort that would be required to change children's lives. And the longer the effort is put off, the less possible the change becomes. We see why our brief, intense efforts during the War on Poverty did not succeed. But we also see the risk to our nation and its children that makes intervention more urgent than ever.
Betty Hart is professor of Human Development at the University of Kansas and senior scientist at the Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies. Todd R. Risley is professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Alaska Anchorage and director of Alaska's Autism Intensive Early Intervention Project. The two have collaborated on research projects for more then 35 years. This article is excerpted with permission from Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experiences of Young American Children, Copyright 1995, Brookes.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
During the 1960's War on Poverty, we were among the many researchers, psychologists, and educators who brought our knowledge of child development to the front line in an optimistic effort to intervene early to forestall the terrible effects that poverty was having on some children's academic growth.

# data[].attributes.headline
Section 4: Direct Instruction-Print to Cursive

# data[].attributes.subject
Section 4: Direct Instruction-Print to Cursive

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection: Watch this video to see a demonstration using explicit visual and verbal prompts for both print and cursive letters.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Module 8 Learning Connect 4 Print and Cursive

# data[].attributes.headline
Section 1B: Developmental and Instructional Sequence for PA (2 of 2)

# data[].attributes.subject
Section 1B: Developmental and Instructional Sequence for PA (2 of 2)

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection #2: This article provides guidance and instructional video examples for using Elkonin boxes for PA instruction. Check out the embedded link for using this strategy with Spanish speaking students.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Blachman, B. A., Ball, E. W., Black, R., & Tangel, D. M. (2000). Road to the code: A phonological awareness program for young children. Baltimore: Brookes.

Clay, M. (1993). Reading Recovery: A Guidebook for Teachers in Training. NH: Heinemann.

Elkonin, D. (1971). "Development of Speech". In A.V. Zaporozhets and D. B. Elkonin (Eds.). The Psychology of Preschool Children. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press.

Ellis, E. (1997). How Now Brown Cow: Phoneme Awareness Activities.

National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel. Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction (NIH Publication No. 00-4769). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Elkonin boxes build phonological awareness skills by segmenting words into individual sounds, or phonemes. To use Elkonin boxes, a child listens to a word and moves a token into a box for each sound or phoneme. In some cases different colored tokens may be used for consonants and vowels or just for each phoneme in the word.

# data[].attributes.headline
Section 1: Problem Identification (3 of 3)

# data[].attributes.subject
Section 1: Problem Identification (3 of 3)

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection 3 of 3

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Share This:

By Nadine Gaab, Ph.D.

A diagnosis of developmental dyslexia in elementary school is primarily based upon a "wait-to-fail-approach." This approach requires a child to demonstrate a significant struggle to learn to read over a prolonged period of time before more intensive (quality and quantity) interventional strategies are discussed and eventually put into place. Paradoxically, although a diagnosis of dyslexia usually is not given before the end of second grade or the beginning of third grade (after the requisite period of failing), intensive interventions are most effective in kindergarten or first grade

intensive interventions are most effective in kindergarten or first grade

(Wanzek & Vaughn, 2007).

Not only has this added to the difficulty of remediation, this practice of delayed identification of dyslexia can have tremendous psychological and clinical implications. Children with dyslexia show an increased incidence of internalizing anxious and depressive symptomatology (Mugnaini, Lassi, La Malfa, & Albertini, 2007) and are less likely to complete high school (Jimerson, Egeland, Sroufe, & Carlson, 2000) or to enroll in programs of higher education (Dougherty, 2003).

So, why are we not identifying children at risk earlier and providing them with the resources and tools they need to learn to read as early as possible? Here, I will review three common myths associated with early screening for children at risk for dyslexia.
MYTH 1: Signs of dyslexia can be seen only after two to three years of reading instruction.
While a diagnosis of dyslexia currently requires repeated failure learning to read, this does not mean that early signs of dyslexia cannot be observed in preschool (or possibly earlier). Deficits in phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, verbal working memory, and letter knowledge have been shown to be robust precursors of dyslexia in children as young as age three (Puolakanaho et al., 2007).

A recent study of more than 1,200 kindergartners in New England not only identified six independent reading profiles, including three dyslexia risk profiles, but also showed that these reading profiles are remarkably stable over a two-year window (Ozernov-Palchik, in press).

Furthermore, studies involving brain measures, such as electroencephalography or magnetic resonance imaging, have shown that the brain characteristics of individuals with dyslexia can be observed as early as infancy and preschool, especially in children with a genetic risk for dyslexia.

A longitudinal dyslexia study in Finland, which followed children from birth until age 8, showed that early differential brain measures could distinguish at-risk children who later developed reading problems from those who did not (Leppanen et al., 2010). Additionally, several studies have shown alterations in white matter (the highways that connect two brain areas and enable fast information flow) in young prereading children who subsequently developed a reading disability (Wang et al., in press; Kraft et al., 2016).

These studies suggest that these children are stepping into their first day of kindergarten with a brain less optimized to learn to read. Why wait three or more years before we give them access to additional resources essential for improving their reading performance?

Why wait three or more years before we give them access to additional resources essential for improving their reading performance?
MYTH 2: Even with early screening, early intervention is not effective.
It is certainly true that most reading interventions are designed for older children who have been struggling for some time. However, converging evidence points to the importance of high-quality classroom reading instruction in early grades and early interventions for at-risk students (e.g., in a small-group setting) to improve the effectiveness of remediation (Blachman et al., 2004).

A meta-analysis comparing intervention studies of at least 100 sessions reported larger effect sizes in kindergarten and first grade than in the later grades. Furthermore, a meta-analysis across six studies revealed that when at-risk beginning readers received explicit and intensive instruction, 50 to 90% of these children reached average reading performance levels (Torgesen, 2004).

Without high-quality instruction and intervention, early reading problems can manifest as serious reading disabilities later on (Stanovich, 1986). Moreover, several studies have shown that the brain's ability to change and adapt in response to experience (brain plasticity) decreases throughout the childhood years (Johnson, 2001; Johnston, 2009) and that certain skills are harder to acquire after a 'sensitive period' (Johnson, 2005). For instance, for most people, learning to speak a second language, especially without an accent, comes with relative ease in early childhood but becomes more difficult later in life (Birdsong, 2001).
MYTH 3: Early screening costs too much for school districts, and there is no time for additional testing.
There is some truth to this statement. Each school and district must determine the costs of early universal screening. However, many districts already have valid tools for screening the key indicators of dyslexia on hand-the same tools used in second or third grade to assess children who repeatedly fail to learn to read. Reading specialists or special education teachers already may be trained to administer these assessments.

Early assessment could be conducted prior to the start of kindergarten (e.g., in combination with some pre-kindergarten events that already occur), at daycare centers, preschools, or even in collaboration with pediatricians' offices at the four- or five-year-old well-visits. This may add some personnel costs, but would reduce screening hours and associated costs later in the school year and beyond.

Additional resources are needed for the interpretation and dissemination of the screenings and their results. Various companies now offer the scoring of standardized tests with turnarounds as fast as two weeks, and several online screening tools currently under development aim to reduce both labor and early screening costs.

Yes, early screenings entail significant costs, but given the costs associated with remediation and the treatment of accompanying psychological and medical problems (e.g., depression, anxiety, and psychosomatic conditions related to academic stress), the benefits of early screening outweigh the costs.

It is important to note that the re-allocation of resources for early identification/intervention should not negatively impact intervention efforts in older grades. More specifically, there will be students in older grades who need intervention, and funds used for early intervention should not be taken from the funds currently allocated for older students. If early screening and early intervention achieve expected goals, eventually there should be fewer older students who need that intense intervention. In the interim, those who missed the early screening and intervention still exist. Also, once early screening and early intervention become routine and effective (even with a 50 to 90% success rate), there will be some older students who continue to need support.
What should early screening look like?
I recommend incorporating eight key characteristics when determining an optimal screening battery for an individual classroom, school, or district. The first letters of these characteristics spell the acronym SCREENED.

It is important to note that teacher training is an essential piece in the screening equation. Teachers need to know how to address specific deficits once a child has been identified in order to implement early evidence-based instruction for all at-risk students.

vidence-based response to screening: The best early screening battery will not make a difference if classroom instruction/intervention does not target the specific deficits with evidence-based instruction/intervention. The goal is not to refer the at-risk children to special education but to address their specific deficits within the classroom environment.

It is important to note that teacher training is an essential piece in the screening equation. Teachers need to know how to address specific deficits once a child has been identified in order to implement early evidence-based instruction for all at-risk students. Furthermore, additional teacher training, professional development, classroom resources, and increased districtwide dyslexia awareness benefit all students.

Educators and researchers must work together to ensure that all young students are SCREENED, to ensure their access to evidence-based instruction/intervention, and most importantly, to maximize their joy in learning to read.
References
Wanzek, J. & Vaughn, S. Research-based implications from extensive early reading interventions. School Psychology Review, 36, 541 (2007).

Mugnaini, D., Lassi, S., La Malfa, G. & Albertini, G. Internalizing correlates of dyslexia. World Journal of Pediatrics, 5, 255-264 (2009).

Jimerson, S., Egeland, B., Sroufe, L. A. & Carlson, B. A prospective longitudinal study of high school dropouts examining multiple predictors across development. Journal of school psychology, 38, 525-549 (2000).

Dougherty, C. Numeracy, literacy and earnings: evidence from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Economics of education review, 22, 511-521 (2003).

Puolakanaho, A. et al. Very early phonological and language skills: estimating individual risk of reading disability. J Child Psychol Psychiatry, 48, 923-931 (2007).

Ozernov-Palchik, O. et al. Longitudinal stability of pre-reading skill profiles of kindergarten children. Developmental Science (In press).

Leppanen, P. H., Hamalainen, J. A., Salminen, H. K., Eklund, K. M., Guttorm, T. K., Lohvansuu, K., Puolakanaho, A., & Lyytinen, H. Newborn brain event-related potentials revealing atypical processing of sound frequency and the subsequent association with later literacy skills in children with familial dyslexia. Cortex, 46, 1362-1376 (2010).

Wang, Y. et al. Development of tract-specific white matter pathways during early reading development in at-risk children and typical controls. Cerebral Cortex, doi:10.1093/cercor/bhw095 (In press).

Kraft, I. et al. Predicting early signs of dyslexia at a preliterate age by combining behavioral assessment with structural MRI. Neuroimage, 143, 378-386 (2016).

Blachman, B. A. et al. Effects of intensive reading remediation for second and third graders and a 1-year follow-up. Journal of Educational Psychology, 96, 444-461 (2004).

Torgesen, J. K. Avoiding the devastating downward spiral: The evidence that early intervention prevents reading failure. American Educator, 28, 6-19 (2004).

Stanovich, K. E. Matthew effects in reading: Some consequences of individual differences in the aquisition of literacy. Reading Research Quarterly, 21, 360-407 (1986).

Johnson, M. H. Functional brain development in humans. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2, 475-483 (2001).

Johnston, M. V. Plasticity in the developing brain: implications for rehabilitation. Developmental Disabilities Research Reviews, 15, 94-101 (2009).

Johnson, M. H. Sensitive periods in functional brain development: problems and prospects. Developmental Psychobiology, 46, 287-292 (2005).

Birdsong, D. & Mollis, M. On the evidence for maturational constraints in second language acquisition. Journal of Memory and Language, 44, 235-249 (2001).

Washington, J. A. Early literacy skills in African-American children: Research considerations. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 16, 213-221 (2001).

Mancilla-Martinez, J. & Lesaux, N. K. The gap between Spanish speakers' word reading and word knowledge: a longitudinal study. Child Development, 82, 1544-1560 (2011).

Pennington, B. F. Reading Disabilities: Genetic and Neurological Influences. (Kluwer, 1991).

Wolff, P. H. & Melngailis, I. Family patterns of developmental dyslexia: clinical findings. Am J Med Genet, 54, 122-131, doi:10.1002/ajmg.1320540207 (1994).

Dr. Gaab, Ph.D, is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Boston Children's Hospital and the Harvard Medical School and a member of the faculty at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She received a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Zurich in Switzerland. She did postdoctoral training with John Gabrieli, Gary Glover, and Paula Tallal at Stanford University and MIT. Her current research within the Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience at Boston Children's Hospital focuses on auditory and language processing in the human brain and its applications for the development of typical and atypical language and literacy skills.
Copyright © 2017 International Dyslexia Association (IDA). We encourage sharing of Examiner articles. If portions are cited, please make appropriate reference. Articles may not be reprinted for the purpose of resale. Permission to republish this article is available from info@dyslexiaida.org.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
It's a Myth That Young Children Cannot Be Screened for Dyslexia! - International Dyslexia Association

# data[].attributes.headline
Great Resource for activities for all components of Structured Literacy 

# data[].attributes.subject
Great Resource for activities for all components of Structured Literacy 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
From 2004 to 2010, a team of researchers and teachers at FCRR collected ideas and created Student Center Activities for use in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade classrooms. The activities are designed for students to practice, demonstrate, and extend their learning of what has already been taught, sometimes with teacher assistance and sometimes independently. Students can complete the activities in small groups, pairs, or individually.

Accompanying these Student Center Activities is a Teacher Resource Guide that offers important insights on differentiated instruction and how to use the Student Center materials.

Component

Name of the reading component: Phonological Awareness (PA), Phonics (P), Fluency (F), Vocabulary (V), or Comprehension (C). Each component is color coded: PA is purple, P is orange, F is red, V is green, C is blue.

Subcomponent

Name of the reading subcomponent, which is a subskill of the component.

Activity Name

Activity Number

The letters correspond with the reading component (PA, P, F, V, or C). The numbers are listed in ascending order within each component. The activities are sequenced from simple to more complex within each component and subcomponent.

Student Icon

The suggested number of students for the activity. One student icon indicates that students may work independently or with a small group. Two student icons indicate that the activity requires students to work in pairs. Two student icons with a plus sign indicate that the activity requires two or more students.

Objective

States the goal of the activity, which is aligned with the subcomponent.

Materials

Materials are located on the pages that follow the Activity Plan. Most materials are non-consumable to be prepared and used repeatedly (e.g., word cards can be laminated). Some materials are consumable and will need to be duplicated for each student doing the activity. Other materials, such as counters, are commonly found in most classrooms.

Activity Statement

One sentence explanation of the purpose of the activity and what students do to complete the activity.

Activity Steps

The first step describes how to setup the center. The second step begins with: The student, Students, Working in pairs, or Taking turns depending on the number of students needed to complete the activity. The second step also starts the series of steps to complete the activity. The next steps explain what the student does to complete the activity. The last step lists one of three accountability methods: Self-check, Peer evaluation, or Teacher evaluation.

Example

A visual of the activity and key materials.

Extensions and Adaptations

Suggestions that extend or provide an adaptation for additional practice on the skill addressed in the activity. Materials for the extensions and adaptations are included after the pages that align to the Activity Plan.

Users may use the FCRR Student Center Activities resources as long as modifications are not made, the resources will only be used for non-profit educational purposes, and the copyright belong jointly to the Florida Department of Education and the Florida Center for Reading Research. These resources may not be used for any commercial purposes. These resources on our site may be linked to but not reposted, reproduced, modified, or copied to other sites. For questions about the use of these resources, please contact The Florida Center for Reading Research at fcrr@fcrr.org.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
From 2004 to 2010, a team of researchers and teachers at FCRR collected ideas and created Student Center Activities for use in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade classrooms. The activities are designed for students to practice, demonstrate, and extend their learning of what has already been taught, sometimes with teacher assistance and sometimes independently.

# data[].attributes.headline
Module 1, Section 3 (Use the Set up Before the ies summary article)

# data[].attributes.subject
Module 1, Section 3 (Use the Set up Before the ies summary article)

# data[].attributes.body
Set up the activity with this thinking:
How do they teach reading in their schools, and is that meeting the needs of all the diverse learners they are striving to teach? A powerful aspect of the science of reading is that it provides methods to evaluate what works systematically. This section discusses the power of consensus documents and how they are developed. Two consensus documents are used as examples to help participants gain a deeper appreciation for how the science of reading provides a clear roadmap for teaching all students. LEARNING CO

# data[].attributes.body
Michelle Elia
10:15 Video

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Michelle Elia  "You Can't Intervene Your Way Out of a Tier One Problem

# data[].attributes.headline
Section 2: Intensifying Instruction (2 of 2)

# data[].attributes.subject
Section 2: Intensifying Instruction (2 of 2)

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection #2

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Multi-Tiered System of Support, or MTSS, is an inclusive system of support for all students, and encompasses Universal Support, Additional Support, and Intensified Support. The final installment of the MTSS Trilogy, this short SWIFT clip by Dan Habib highlights how SWIFT schools implement intensified support: ongoing specially designed instruction, extra support, and other services for a few students. General and Special Educators use progress monitoring data to discern which supports students need in order to include every child in the general education classroom. Schoolwide Integrated Framework for Transformation (SWIFT) is a national K through 8 technical assistance center that builds school capacity to provide academic and behavioral support to improve outcomes for all students through equity-based inclusive education.
To learn more about SWIFT, visit http://www.swiftschools.org

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection #1
5:46 Video

# data[].attributes.headline
Section 4: Behavioral Presentation of Dyslexia (share prior to section 4-friendlier version of the 2 videos)

# data[].attributes.subject
Section 4: Behavioral Presentation of Dyslexia (share prior to section 4-friendlier version of the 2 videos)

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection
8:45 Video

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Dr. Linnea Ehri’s List of Instructional Guidelines for Enhancing Orthographic Mapping and Word Learning

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In a recent discussion with Dr. Linnea Ehri, she wrote up and sent over a document with instructional guidelines that follow from her theory of orthographic mapping and research studies. She gave p…

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection 3:

Watch and note how alternated reading differs from traditional round robin reading. As individual students read, Ms. Flavin provides immediate corrective feedback and guides students through using decoding techniques to target and improve reading accuracy and fluency.

# data[].attributes.headline
Section 2: English Language Structures and the Shift to Academic Language (1 of 4) 

# data[].attributes.subject
Section 2: English Language Structures and the Shift to Academic Language (1 of 4) 

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection 1: Read this article from Reading Rockets about word study in the K-2 classroom. This article describes what word study is and gives some tips for implementing it in the classroom.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Bear, D.R., Invernizzi, M., Templeton, S., & Johnston, F. (2000). Words their way: Word study for phonics, vocabulary, and spelling instruction (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Bear, D.R., Invernizzi, M., Templeton, S., & Johnston, F. (2008). Words their way: Word study for phonics, vocabulary, and spelling instruction (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Bear, D.R., & Templeton, S. (1998). Explorations in developmental spelling: Foundations for learning and teaching phonics, spelling, and vocabulary. The Reading Teacher, 52(3), 222-242.

Beckham-Hungler, D., & Williams, C. (2003). Teaching words that students misspell: Spelling instruction and young children's writing. Language Arts, 80(4), 299-309.

Brand, M. (2004). Word savvy: Integrated vocabulary, spelling and word study, grades 3-6. Portland, ME: Stenhouse.

Brown, G.D.A., & Ellis, N.C. (Eds.). (1994). Handbook of spelling: Theory, process, and intervention. Chichester, England: Wiley.

Cambourne, B. (1995). Toward an educationally relevant theory of literacy learning: Twenty years of inquiry. The Reading Teacher, 49(3), 182-190.

Clay, M. (1997). An observation survey. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Clay, M. (2001). Change over time in children's literacy development. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Cunningham, P.M. (1995). Phonics they use: Words for reading and writing (2nd ed.). New York: HarperCollins.

Cunningham, P.M., & Hall, D.P. (1996). Making words: Multilevel, hands on, developmentally appropriate spelling and phonics activities. Carthage, IL: Good Apple.

Dudley-Marling, C. (1997). Living with uncertainty: The messy reality of classroom practice. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Ehri, L.C. (1992). Review and commentary: Stages of spelling development. In S. Templeton & D. Bear (Eds.), Development of orthographic knowledge and the foundation of literacy: A memorial Festschrift for Edmund H. Henderson (pp. 307-332). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Fountas, I.C., & Pinnell, G.S. (1996). Guided reading: Good first teaching for all children. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Gee, J.P. (2001). A sociocultural perspective on early literacydevelopment. In S.B. Neuman & D.K. Dickinson (Eds.), Handbook of early literacy research (pp. 30-42). New York: Guilford.

Goswami, U.C., & Bryant, P. (1990). Phonological skills and learning to read. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Hughes, M., & Searle, D. (1997). The violent "e" and other tricky sounds: Learning to spell from kindergarten through grade 6. York, ME: Stenhouse.

Invernizzi, M., & Hayes, L. (2004). Developmental-spelling research: A systematic imperative. Reading Research Quarterly, 39(2), 216-228.

Joseph, L.M. (2000). Developing first graders' phonemic awareness, word identification and spelling: A comparison of two contemporary phonic instructional approaches. Reading Research and Instruction, 39(2), 160-169.

Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. New York: Cambridge University Press.

McCarrier, A., Fountas, I.C., & Pinnell, G.S. (2000). Interactive writing: How language and literacy come together, K-2. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Pinnell, G.S., & Fountas, I.C. (1998). Word matters: Teaching phonics and spelling in the reading/writing classroom. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Richgels, D.J. (1995). Invented spelling ability and printed word learning in kindergarten. Reading Research Quarterly, 30(1), 96-109.

Rogoff, B. (1990). Apprenticeship in thinking: Cognitive development in social context. New York: Oxford University Press.

Schulman, M.B., & Payne, C.D. (2000). Guided reading: Making it work. New York: Scholastic.

Snowball, D., & Bolton, F. (1999). Spelling K-8: Planning and teaching. York, ME: Stenhouse.

Templeton, S. (2003). Spelling. In J. Flood, D. Lapp, J. Squire, & J. Jensen (Eds.), Handbook of research on teaching the English language arts (2nd ed., pp. 738-751). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Treiman, R., & Cassar, M. (1997). Spelling acquisition in English. In C.A. Perfetti, L. Rieben, & M. Fayol (Eds.), Learning to spell: Research, theory, and practice across languages (pp. 61-80). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes (M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, & E. Souberman, Eds. & Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Wertsch, J.V. (1998). Mind as action. New York: Oxford University Press.

Williams, C., & Hufnagel, K. (2005). The impact of word study instruction on kindergarten children's journal writing. Research in the Teaching of English, 39(3), 233-270.

Williams, C., & Lundstrom, R. (2007). Strategy instruction during word study and interactive writing activities. The Reading Teacher, 61(3), 204-212.

Williams, C., & Phillips-Birdsong, C. (2006). Word study instruction and second-grade children's independent writing. Journal of Literacy Research, 38(4), 427-465.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Word Study Instruction in the K-2 Classroom

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Word study is an approach to spelling instruction that moves away from a focus on memorization. The approach reflects what researchers have discovered about the alphabetic, pattern, and meaning layers of English orthography. This article describes nine tips for implementing a word study program in your classroom.

# data[].attributes.body
via Tim Odegard @ MTSU

# data[].attributes.headline
Section 1C: Intensifying Instruction in PA (1 of 2)

# data[].attributes.subject
Section 1C: Intensifying Instruction in PA (1 of 2)

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection #1: Some students’ home language use differs from the language used at school. Read this article to gain more insight about language variety and learn instructional strategies that support African American English speakers in particular.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
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]

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Teaching Reading to African American Children

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
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.

# data[].attributes.headline
Section 2: Step 2 Problem Analysis ( 1 of 3 )

# data[].attributes.subject
Section 2: Step 2 Problem Analysis ( 1 of 3 )

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection 1 of 3: Look at pages 25 & 26 to learn more about tier 2 Dyslexia screening (Intervention Based Diagnostic Assessments)

# data[].attributes.headline
Module 1, Section 3: ies Guide Summary (10 pages-Practice Guide is over 100 pages)

# data[].attributes.subject
Module 1, Section 3: ies Guide Summary (10 pages-Practice Guide is over 100 pages)

# data[].attributes.body
KEY TAKEAWAYS • A research-informed consensus on how to teach reading has been reached based on decades of research from multiple independent research teams. • Ongoing research will refine how best to teach reading, but we have solid consensus on what to teach and how to teach it right now. • We must directly teach all children foundational literacy skills and support their continued development of vocabulary, background knowledge and inference-making abilities in support of reading comprehension.

# data[].attributes.headline
Michelle Elia ~ How reading is processed in the brain 

# data[].attributes.subject
Michelle Elia ~ How reading is processed in the brain 

# data[].attributes.body
5:00 video

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Defining Guide Video Series: Michelle Elia Explains How Reading is Processed in the Brain

# data[].attributes.headline
Section 3: Students with Characteristics of Dyslexia

# data[].attributes.subject
Section 3: Students with Characteristics of Dyslexia

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection
Read Pages 16 & 17

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection #2

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
An Overview of Structured Literacy-Knowledge Check

# data[].attributes.headline
Section 3: Structured Literacy Instruction

# data[].attributes.subject
Section 3: Structured Literacy Instruction

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection 4: Regional Educational Laboratory Program. (n.d.). Professional Learning Communities Facilitator’s Guide for the What Works Clearinghouse Practice Guide Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade. Institute of Educational Sciences.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Professional Learning Communities Facilitator's Guide for the What Works Clearinghouse Practice Guide Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade

The Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Southeast developed a Professional Learning Community (PLC) Facilitators Guide to support educators in the implementation of recommendations from the What Works Clearinghouse's Practice Guide Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade. The practice guide focuses on the foundational reading skills that enable students to read words, relate those words to their oral language, and read connected text with sufficient accuracy and fluency to understand what they read. The practice guide, developed by a panel of experts comprised of researchers and practitioners, presents four recommendations that educators can use to improve literacy skills in the early grades.

Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) are a form of professional development in which small groups of educators with shared interests work together with the goals of expanding their knowledge and improving their craft. REL Southeast developed PLC materials focused on the practice guide that were designed to assist a literacy leader in guiding a professional learning community in applying the recommendations from the practice guide. The materials include a facilitator's guide, participant activities, and videos. The facilitator's guide includes a framework for facilitators to conduct each of the ten PLC sessions. It also includes participant activities, discussion questions, small- and whole-group activities, and implementation and reflection activities. The participant's activities include reflection questions, lesson plan examples and templates, video-viewing guides, and sharing opportunities. The videos illustrate practices presented in the foundational reading skills practice guide.

Facilitator's Guide and Handouts

View, download, and print the full facilitator's guide as a PDF file (1.8 MB)
View, download, and print the handouts as a PDF file (558 KB)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
educational improvement; excellence in education; educational research; statistics; statistical data; statistical surveys; national center for education evaluation and regional assistance.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Professional Learning Communities Facilitator's Guide for the What Works Clearinghouse Practice Guide Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE) conducts unbiased large-scale evaluations of education programs and practices supported by federal funds, such as Reading First and Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

# data[].attributes.headline
Section 2: English Language Structures and the Shift to Academic Language (2 of 4)

# data[].attributes.subject
Section 2: English Language Structures and the Shift to Academic Language (2 of 4)

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection 2: This video from the International Dyslexia Association (IDA) is a webinar about morphology. In this webinar, Sue Hegland discusses how morphology supports vocabulary development. You can choose to watch the entire video but are encouraged to pay particular attention to minutes 3:10 to 27:02.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Morphology: Important from the Beginning

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Berninger, V., & Graham, S. (1998). Language by hand: A synthesis of a decade of research on handwriting. Handwriting Review, 12, 11-25.

Connelly, V., Dockrell, J., & Barnett, J. (2005). The slow handwriting of undergraduate students constrains overall performance in exam essays. Educational Psychology, 25, 99-107.

Edwards, L. (2003). Writing instruction in kindergarten: Examining an emerging area of research for children with writing and reading difficulties. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 36, 136.

Graham, S., Harris, K. R., & Fink, B. (2000). Is handwriting causally related to learning to write? Treatment of handwriting problems in beginning writers. Journal of Educational Psychology, 92, 620-633.

Graham, S., Struck, M., Richardson, J.,& Berninger, V. (2006). Dimensions of good and poor handwriting legibility in first and second graders. Developmental Neuropsychology, 29, 43-60.

Graham, S., Weinstein, N., & Berninger, V. (2001). Which manuscript letters do primary grade children write legibly? Journal of Educational Psychology, 93, 488-497.

Other helpful sources

Berninger, V. (2004). Understanding the graphia in dysgraphia. In D. Dewey & D. Tupper (Eds.), Developmental motor disorders: A neuropsychological perspective (pp. 328-350). New York: Guilford.

Berninger, V. W., & Amtmann, D. (2003). Preventing written expression disabilities through early and continuing assessment and intervention for handwriting and/or spelling problems: Research into practice. In H. L. Swanson, K. R. Harris, & S. Graham (Eds.), Handbook of Learning Disabilities (pp. 345-363). New York: Guilford.

Troia, G.A. (2006). Writing instruction for students with learning disabilities. In C.A. MacArthur, S. Graham, & J. Fitzgerald (Eds.), Handbook of writing research. New York: Guilford.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Berninger, V., & Graham, S. (1998). Language by hand: A synthesis of a decade of research on handwriting. Handwriting Review, 12, 11-25. Connelly, V., Dockrell, J., & Barnett, J. (2005). The slow handwriting of undergraduate students constrains overall performance in exam essays. Educational Psychology, 25, 99-107. Edwards, L. (2003).

# data[].attributes.body
Our brains are wired to see faces and images. The bike is still a bike despite the direction. Until the letter is orthographically mapped, our brain cannot differentiate the direction. For students who are struggling, focus on one letter. Have a "b hand" and only focus on the letter b.

# data[].attributes.headline
Section 1C: Intensifying Instruction in PA (2 of 2)

# data[].attributes.subject
Section 1C: Intensifying Instruction in PA (2 of 2)

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection #2: Watch as a teacher intensifies phonemic awareness instruction for a small group of students by focusing on the articulatory features of consonant sounds.

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection 2 of 3: Watch this video to learn how to accurately measure at risk students through diagnostic assessments.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In this video developed for the Illinois Center for School Improvement, Dr. Rebecca Zumeta Edmonds discusses how screening tools can provide a more accurate measure of at-risk students within the context of a multi-tiered system of supports.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How can we advance our screening tools to provide a more accurate measure of at-risk students?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In this video developed for the Illinois Center for School Improvement, Dr. Rebecca Zumeta Edmonds discusses how screening tools can provide a more accurate measure of at-risk students within the context of a multi-tiered system of supports.

# data[].attributes.headline
Module 1, Section 4: Ohio's Plan to Raise Literacy

# data[].attributes.subject
Module 1, Section 4: Ohio's Plan to Raise Literacy

# data[].attributes.body
KEY TAKEAWAYS • Conceptual frameworks of reading development are based on decades of research into how reading develops. These have been highlighted in this course and the Ohio’s Plan to Raise Literacy Achievement. • Instructional recommendations included in this course and the Ohio’s Plan to Raise Literacy Achievement are based on the science of reading – decades of research from numerous independent research teams. There is considerable consistency and agreement on what to teach and how to teach it based on decades of research that constitutes the science of reading

# data[].attributes.headline
Section 4: Using Data to Make Decisions (1 of 3)

# data[].attributes.subject
Section 4: Using Data to Make Decisions (1 of 3)

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection #1
Read Pages 18 & 19

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection #3

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1997). Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life. New York: Basic Books.

Danielson, C. (1996). Enhancing Professional Practice: A Framework for Teaching. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. ED 403 245.

Sternberg, R. J., Torff, B., & Grigorenko, E. L. (1998). Teaching triarchically improves student achievement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 90(3), 374-384. EJ 576 492.

Tomlinson, C. (1995). How to Differentiate Instruction in Mixed-ability Classrooms. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. ED 386 301.

Tomlinson, C. (1999). The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of all Learners. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. ED 429 944.

Vygotsky, L. (1986). Thought and Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Winebrenner, S. (1992). Teaching Gifted Kids in the Regular Classroom. Minneapolis, MN: Free Spirit.

Winebrenner, S. (1996). Teaching kids with Learning Difficulties in the Regular Classroom. Minneapolis, MN: Free Spirit. ED 396 502.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Differentiation means tailoring instruction to meet individual needs. Whether teachers differentiate content, process, products, or the learning environment, the use of ongoing assessment and flexible grouping makes this a successful approach to instruction.

# data[].attributes.body
2:38 Video

# data[].attributes.headline
Section 4: The 3-Cueing System Contradiction

# data[].attributes.subject
Section 4: The 3-Cueing System Contradiction

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Listen to this audio documentary on the Educate podcast. Subscribe now.

Molly Woodworth was a kid who seemed to do well at everything: good grades, in the gifted and talented program. But she couldn't read very well.

"There was no rhyme or reason to reading for me," she said. "When a teacher would dictate a word and say, 'Tell me how you think you can spell it,' I sat there with my mouth open while other kids gave spellings, and I thought, 'How do they even know where to begin?' I was totally lost."

Woodworth went to public school in Owosso, Michigan, in the 1990s. She says sounds and letters just didn't make sense to her, and she doesn't remember anyone teaching her how to read. So she came up with her own strategies to get through text.

Strategy 1: Memorize as many words as possible. "Words were like pictures to me," she said. "I had a really good memory."

Strategy 2: Guess the words based on context. If she came across a word she didn't have in her visual memory bank, she'd look at the first letter and come up with a word that seemed to make sense. Reading was kind of like a game of 20 Questions: What word could this be?

Strategy 3: If all else failed, she'd skip the words she didn't know.

Most of the time, she could get the gist of what she was reading. But getting through text took forever. "I hated reading because it was taxing," she said. "I'd get through a chapter and my brain hurt by the end of it. I wasn't excited to learn."

No one knew how much she struggled, not even her parents. Her reading strategies were her "dirty little secrets."

Woodworth, who now works in accounting, 1 says she's still not a very good reader and tears up when she talks about it. Reading "influences every aspect of your life," she said. She's determined to make sure her own kids get off to a better start than she did.

That's why she was so alarmed to see how her oldest child, Claire, was being taught to read in school.

As long as this disproven theory remains part of American education, many kids will likely struggle to learn how to read.

A couple of years ago, Woodworth was volunteering in Claire's kindergarten classroom. The class was reading a book together and the teacher was telling the children to practice the strategies that good readers use.

The teacher said, "If you don't know the word, just look at this picture up here," Woodworth recalled. "There was a fox and a bear in the picture. And the word was bear, and she said, 'Look at the first letter. It's a "b." Is it fox or bear?'"

Woodworth was stunned. "I thought, 'Oh my God, those are my strategies.' Those are the things I taught myself to look like a good reader, not the things that good readers do," she said. "These kids were being taught my dirty little secrets."

She went to the teacher and expressed her concerns. The teacher told her she was teaching reading the way the curriculum told her to.

Woodworth had stumbled on to American education's own little secret about reading: Elementary schools across the country are teaching children to be poor readers - and educators may not even know it.

For decades, reading instruction in American schools has been rooted in a flawed theory about how reading works, a theory that was debunked decades ago by cognitive scientists, yet remains deeply embedded in teaching practices and curriculum materials. As a result, the strategies that struggling readers use to get by - memorizing words, using context to guess words, skipping words they don't know - are the strategies that many beginning readers are taught in school. This makes it harder for many kids to learn how to read, and children who don't get off to a good start in reading find it difficult to ever master the process. 2

A shocking number of kids in the United States can't read very well. A third of all fourth-graders can't read at a basic level, and most students are still not proficient readers by the time they finish high school.
Percentage of U.S. fourth-graders below basic level in reading
When kids struggle to learn how to read, it can lead to a downward spiral in which behavior, vocabulary, knowledge and other cognitive skills are eventually affected by slow reading development. 3 A disproportionate number of poor readers become high school dropouts and end up in the criminal justice system. 4

The fact that a disproven theory about how reading works is still driving the way many children are taught to read is part of the problem. School districts spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on curriculum materials that include this theory. Teachers are taught the theory in their teacher preparation programs and on the job. As long as this disproven theory remains part of American education, many kids will likely struggle to learn how to read.
Percentage of U.S. 12th-graders proficient in reading
The origins

The theory is known as "three cueing." The name comes from the notion that readers use three different kinds of information - or "cues" - to identify words as they are reading.

The theory was first proposed in 1967, when an education professor named Ken Goodman presented a paper at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in New York City.

In the paper, 5 Goodman rejected the idea that reading is a precise process that involves exact or detailed perception of letters or words. Instead, he argued that as people read, they make predictions about the words on the page using these three cues:

graphic cues (what do the letters tell you about what the word might be?)

syntactic cues (what kind of word could it be, for example, a noun or a verb?)

semantic cues (what word would make sense here, based on the context?)

Goodman concluded that:

Skill in reading involves not greater precision, but more accurate first guesses based on better sampling techniques, greater control over language structure, broadened experiences and increased conceptual development. As the child develops reading skill and speed, he uses increasingly fewer graphic cues.

Goodman's proposal became the theoretical basis for a new approach to teaching reading that would soon take hold in American schools.

Previously, the question of how to teach reading had focused on one of two basic ideas.

One idea is that reading is a visual memory process. The teaching method associated with this idea is known as "whole word." The whole word approach was perhaps best embodied in the "Dick and Jane" books that first appeared in the 1930s. The books rely on word repetition, and pictures to support the meaning of the text. The idea is that if you see words enough, you eventually store them in your memory as visual images.

The other idea is that reading requires knowledge of the relationships between sounds and letters. Children learn to read by sounding out words. This approach is known as phonics. It goes way back, popularized in the 1800s with the McGuffey readers.

These two ideas - whole word and phonics - had been taking turns as the favored way to teach reading until Goodman came along with what came to be known among educators as the "three-cueing system."

In the cueing theory of how reading works, when a child comes to a word she doesn't know, the teacher encourages her to think of a word that makes sense and asks: Does it look right? Does it sound right? If a word checks out on the basis of those questions, the child is getting it. She's on the path to skilled reading.

Teachers may not know the term "three cueing," but they're probably familiar with "MSV." M stands for using meaning to figure out what a word is, S for using sentence structure and V for using visual information (i.e., the letters in the words). MSV is a cueing idea that can be traced back to the late Marie Clay, a developmental psychologist from New Zealand who first laid out her theories about reading in a dissertation in the 1960s. 6

Clay developed her cueing theory independently of Goodman, but they met several times and had similar ideas about the reading process. Their theories were based on observational research. They would listen to children read, note the kinds of errors they made, and use that information to identify a child's reading difficulties. For example, a child who says "horse" when the word was "house" is probably relying too much on visual, or graphic, cues. A teacher in this case would encourage the child to pay more attention to what word would make sense in the sentence.

Goodman and Clay believed that letters were the least reliable of the three cues, and that as people became better readers, they no longer needed to pay attention to all the letters in words. "In efficient word perception the reader relies mostly on the sentence and its meaning and some selected features of the forms of words," Clay wrote. 7 For Goodman, accurate word recognition was not necessarily the goal of reading. The goal was to comprehend text. 8 If the sentences were making sense, the reader must be getting the words right, or right enough.

These ideas soon became the foundation for how reading was taught in many schools. Goodman's three-cueing idea formed the theoretical basis of an approach known as "whole language" that by the late 1980s had taken hold throughout America. 9 Clay built her cueing ideas into a reading intervention program for struggling first-graders called Reading Recovery. It was implemented across New Zealand in the 1980s and went on to become one of the world's most widely used reading intervention programs. 10

But while cueing was taking hold in schools, scientists were busy studying the cognitive processes involved in reading words. And they came to different conclusions about how people read. 11

Scientists take on three cueing

It was the early 1970s, and Keith Stanovich was working on his doctorate in psychology at the University of Michigan. He thought the reading field was ready for an infusion of knowledge from the "cognitive revolution" that was underway in psychology. Stanovich had a background in experimental science and an interest in learning and cognition due in part to the influence of his wife, Paula, who was a special education teacher.

Stanovich wanted to understand how people read words. 12 He knew about Goodman's work and thought he was probably right that as people become better readers, they relied more on their knowledge of vocabulary and language structure to read words and didn't need to pay as much attention to the letters.

So, in 1975, Stanovich and a fellow graduate student set out to test the idea in their lab. They recruited readers of various ages and abilities and gave them a series of word-reading tasks. Their hypothesis was that skilled readers rely more on contextual cues to recognize words than poor readers, who probably weren't as good at using context.

They couldn't have been more wrong.

"To our surprise, all of our research results pointed in the opposite direction," Stanovich wrote. "It was the poorer readers, not the more skilled readers, who were more reliant on context to facilitate word recognition." 13

The skilled readers could instantly recognize words without relying on context. Other researchers have confirmed these findings with similar experiments. It turns out that the ability to read words in isolation quickly and accurately is the hallmark of being a skilled reader. This is now one of the most consistent and well-replicated findings in all of reading research. 14

Other studies revealed further problems with the cueing theory: 15

Skilled readers don't scan words and sample from the graphic cues in an incidental way; instead, they very quickly recognize a word as a sequence of letters. That's how good readers instantly know the difference between "house" and "horse," for example.

Experiments that force people to use context to predict words show that even skilled readers can correctly guess only a fraction of the words; this is one reason people who rely on context to identify words are poor readers.

Weak word recognition skills are the most common and debilitating source of reading problems. 16

The results of these studies are not controversial or contested among scientists who study reading. The findings have been incorporated into every major scientific model of how reading works.

But cueing is still alive and well in schools.

Picture Power!

It's not hard to find examples of the cueing system. A quick search on Google, Pinterest or Teachers Pay Teachers turns up plenty of lesson plans, teaching guides and classroom posters. One popular poster has cute cartoon characters to remind children they have lots of strategies to use when they're stuck on a word, including looking at the picture (Eagle Eye), getting their lips ready to try the first sound (Lips the Fish), or just skipping the word altogether (Skippy Frog).

There are videos online where you can see cueing in action. In one video posted on The Teaching Channel, 17 a kindergarten teacher in Oakland, California, instructs her students to use "picture power" to identify the words on the page. The goal of the lesson, according to the teacher, is for the students to "use the picture and a first sound to determine an unknown word in their book."

The class reads a book together called "In the Garden." On each page, there's a picture of something you might find in a garden. It's what's known as a predictable book; the sentences are all the same except for the last word.

The children have been taught to memorize the words "look," "at," and "the." The challenge is getting the last word in the sentence. The lesson plan tells the teacher to cover up the word with a sticky note.

In the video, the wiggly kindergarteners sitting cross-legged on the floor come to a page with a picture of a butterfly. The teacher tells the kids that she's guessing the word is going to be butterfly. She uncovers the word to check on the accuracy of her guess.

"Look at that," she tells the children, pointing to the first letter of the word. "It starts with the /b/ /b/ /b/." The class reads the sentence together as the teacher points to the words. "Look at the butterfly!" they yell out excitedly.

This lesson comes from "Units of Study for Teaching Reading," more commonly known as "reader's workshop." 18 According to the lesson plan, this lesson teaches children to "know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words." 19

But the children were not taught to decode words in this lesson. They were taught to guess words using pictures and patterns - hallmarks of the three-cueing system.

The author of Units of Study for Teaching Reading, Lucy Calkins, often refers to cueing in her published work. 20 She uses the term MSV - the meaning, structure and visual idea that originally came from Clay in New Zealand.

Then there is Fountas and Pinnell Literacy, started by Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell, teachers who learned the MSV concept from Clay in the 1980s. 21

Fountas and Pinnell have written several books about teaching reading, including a best-seller about a widely used instructional approach called "Guided Reading." They also created a reading assessment system that uses what are called "leveled books." 22 Children start with predictable books like "In the Garden" and move up levels as they're able to "read" the words. But many of the words in those books - butterfly, caterpillar - are words that beginning readers haven't been taught to decode yet. One purpose of the books is to teach children that when they get to a word they don't know, they can use context to figure it out.

When put into practice in the classroom, these approaches can cause problems for children when they are learning to read.

'That is not reading'

Margaret Goldberg, a teacher and literacy coach in the Oakland Unified School District, remembers a moment when she realized what a problem the three-cueing approach was. She was with a first-grader named Rodney when he came to a page with a picture of a girl licking an ice cream cone and a dog licking a bone.

The text said: "My little dog likes to eat with me."

But Rodney said: "My dog likes to lick his bone."

Rodney breezed right through it, unaware that he hadn't read the sentence on the page.

Goldberg realized lots of her students couldn't actually read the words in their books; instead, they were memorizing sentence patterns and using the pictures to guess. One little boy exclaimed, "I can read this book with my eyes shut!"

"Oh no," Goldberg thought. "That is not reading."

Goldberg had been hired by the Oakland schools in 2015 to help struggling readers by teaching a Fountas and Pinnell program called "Leveled Literacy Intervention" that uses leveled books and the cueing approach. 23

Around the same time, Goldberg was trained in a program that uses a different strategy for teaching children how to read words. The program is called "Systematic Instruction in Phonological Awareness, Phonics, and Sight Words," or SIPPS. 24 It's a phonics program that teaches children how to sound out words and uses what are known as "decodable books." Most words in the books have spelling patterns that kids have been taught in their phonics lessons.

Goldberg decided to teach some of her students using the phonics program and some of her students using three cueing. And she began to notice differences between the two groups of kids. "Not just in their abilities to read," she said, "but in the way they approached their reading."

Goldberg and a colleague recorded first-graders talking about what makes them good readers.

One video shows Mia, on the left, who was in the phonics program. Mia says she's a good reader because she looks at the words and sounds them out. JaBrea, on the right, was taught the cueing system. JaBrea says: "I look at the pictures and I read it."

Courtesy of Margaret Goldberg, Oakland Unified School District

It was clear to Goldberg after just a few months of teaching both approaches that the students learning phonics were doing better. "One of the things that I still struggle with is a lot of guilt," she said.

She thinks the students who learned three cueing were actually harmed by the approach. "I did lasting damage to these kids. It was so hard to ever get them to stop looking at a picture to guess what a word would be. It was so hard to ever get them to slow down and sound a word out because they had had this experience of knowing that you predict what you read before you read it."

Goldberg soon discovered the decades of scientific evidence against cueing. 25 She was shocked. She had never come across any of this science in her teacher preparation or on the job.

And she started to wonder why not.

Balanced Literacy

People have been arguing for centuries about how children should be taught to read. The fight has mostly focused on whether to teach phonics.

The whole language movement of the late 20th century was perhaps the zenith of the anti-phonics argument. 26 Phonics instruction was seen as tedious, time-consuming and ultimately unnecessary. Why? Because - according to the three-cueing theory - readers can use other, more reliable cues to figure out what the words say. 27

Marilyn Adams came across this belief in the early 1990s. She's a cognitive and developmental psychologist who had just written a book summarizing the research on how children learn to read. 28 One big takeaway from the book is that becoming a skilled reader of English requires knowledge of sound-spelling correspondences. 29 Another big takeaway is that many kids were not being taught this in school.

Soon after the book was published, Adams was describing her findings to a group of teachers and state education officials in Sacramento, California. She was sensing discomfort and confusion in the room. "And I just stopped and said, 'What is it that I'm missing?'" she recalled. "'What is it that we need to talk about? Help me.'"

A woman raised her hand and asked: "What does this have to do with the three-cueing system?" Marilyn didn't know what the three-cueing system was. "I think I blew all of their fuses that I did not [know what it was] since this was so fundamental to being an elementary reading teacher," she said. "How could I present myself to them as an expert on reading and not know about this?"

The teachers drew her a Venn diagram of the three-cueing system. It looked something like this:

Adams thought this diagram made perfect sense. The research clearly shows that readers use all of these cues to understand what they're reading.

But Adams soon figured out the disconnect. Teachers understood these cues not just as the way readers construct meaning from text, but as the way readers actually identify the words on the page. And they thought that teaching kids to decode or sound out words was not necessary.

"The most important thing was for the children to understand and enjoy the text," Adams said. "And from that understanding and joy of reading, the words on the page would just pop out at them."

She would explain to teachers at every opportunity that explicitly teaching children about the relationships between sounds and letters is essential to ensure all kids get off to a good start in reading. But she got tons of pushback from teachers. "They didn't want to teach phonics!" she recalled in frustration.

In 1998, Adams wrote a book chapter about how the three-cueing system conflicts with what researchers have figured out about reading. She hoped it would help put three cueing to rest. 30

By this time, the scientific research on reading was gaining traction. In 2000, a national panel convened by Congress to review the evidence on how to teach reading came out with a report. 31 It identified several essential components of reading instruction, including vocabulary, comprehension and phonics. The evidence that phonics instruction enhances children's success in learning how to read was clear and compelling. National reports on reading a few years later in the United Kingdom and Australia came to the same conclusion. 32

"When I got into the classroom and someone told me to use this practice, I didn't question it."-Stacey Cherny

Eventually, many whole language supporters accepted the weight of the scientific evidence about the importance of phonics instruction. They started adding phonics to their books and materials and renamed their approach "balanced literacy."

But they didn't get rid of the three-cueing system.

Balanced literacy proponents will tell you their approach is a mix of phonics instruction with plenty of time for kids to read and enjoy books. But look carefully at the materials and you'll see that's not really what balanced literacy is mixing. Instead, it's mixing a bunch of different ideas about how kids learn to read. It's a little bit of whole word instruction with long lists of words for kids to memorize. It's a little bit of phonics. And fundamentally, it's the idea that children should be taught to read using the three-cueing system.

And it turns out cueing may actually prevent kids from focusing on words in the way they need to become skilled readers.

Mapping the words

To understand why cueing can get in the way of children's reading development, it's essential to understand how our brains process the words we see.

Reading scientists have known for decades that the hallmark of being a skilled reader is the ability to instantly and accurately recognize words. 33 If you're a skilled reader, your brain has gotten so good at reading words that you process the word "chair" faster than you process a picture of a chair. 34 You know tens of thousands of words instantly, on sight. How did you learn to do that?

It happens through a process called "orthographic mapping." 35 This occurs when you pay attention to the details of a written word and link the word's pronunciation and meaning with its sequence of letters. 36 A child knows the meaning and pronunciation of "pony." The word gets mapped to his memory when he links the sounds /p/ /o/ /n/ /y/ to the written word "pony."

That requires an awareness of the speech sounds in words and an understanding of how those sounds are represented by letters. 37 In other words, you need phonics skills.

Here's what happens when a reader who has good phonics skills comes to a word she doesn't recognize in print. She stops at the word and sounds it out. If it's a word she knows the meaning of, she has now linked the spelling of the word with its pronunciation. If she doesn't know the meaning of the word, she can use context to try to figure it out.

By about second grade, a typically developing reader needs just a few exposures to a word through understanding both the pronunciation and the spelling for that word to be stored in her memory. 38 She doesn't know that word because she memorized it as a visual image. She knows that word because at some point she successfully sounded it out.

The more words she stores in her memory this way, the more she can focus on the meaning of what she's reading; she'll eventually be using less brain power to identify words and will be able to devote more brain power to comprehending what she's reading. 39

But when children don't have good phonics skills, the process is different.

"They sample from the letters because they're not good at sounding them out," said David Kilpatrick, a psychology professor at SUNY Cortland and the author of a book about preventing reading difficulties. 40 "And they use context."

In other words, when people don't have good phonics skills, they use the cueing system.

"The three-cueing system is the way poor readers read," said Kilpatrick.

And if teachers use the cueing system to teach reading, Kilpatrick says they're not just teaching children the habits of poor readers, they are actually impeding the orthographic mapping process. 41

"The minute you ask them just to pay attention to the first letter or look at the picture, look at the context, you're drawing their attention away from the very thing that they need to interact with in order for them to read the word [and] remember the word," Kilpatrick said. In this way, he said, three cueing can actually prevent the critical learning that's necessary for a child to become a skilled reader.

In many balanced literacy classrooms, children are taught phonics and the cueing system. Some kids who are taught both approaches realize pretty quickly that sounding out a word is the most efficient and reliable way to know what it is. Those kids tend to have an easier time understanding the ways that sounds and letters relate. They'll drop the cueing strategies and begin building that big bank of instantly known words that is so necessary for skilled reading.

But some children will skip the sounding out if they're taught they have other options. Phonics is challenging for many kids. The cueing strategies seem quicker and easier at first. And by using context and memorizing a bunch of words, many children can look like good readers - until they get to about third grade, when their books begin to have more words, longer words, and fewer pictures. Then they're stuck. They haven't developed their sounding-out skills. Their bank of known words is limited. Reading is slow and laborious and they don't like it, so they don't do it if they don't have to. While their peers who mastered decoding early are reading and teaching themselves new words every day, the kids who clung to the cueing approach are falling further and further behind. 42

These poor reading habits, once ingrained at a young age, can follow kids into high school. Some kids who were taught the cueing approach never become good readers. Not because they're incapable of learning to read well but because they were taught the strategies of struggling readers.

'So what if they use the picture?'

Once Margaret Goldberg discovered the cognitive science evidence against cueing, she wanted her colleagues in the Oakland school district to know about it too.

Over the past two years, Goldberg and a fellow literacy coach named Lani Mednick have been leading a grant-funded pilot project to improve reading achievement in the Oakland schools. 43

They have their work cut out for them. Nearly half the district's third-graders are below grade level in reading. Goldberg and Mednick want to raise questions about how kids in Oakland are being taught to read.

They meet every couple weeks with literacy coaches from the 10 elementary schools in the pilot program. They read and discuss articles about the scientific research on reading. At a meeting in March, the coaches watched the video of the "picture power" lesson.

"This teacher meant well," Mednick said to the coaches after they watched the lesson. "It seemed like she believed this lesson would ensure her students would be on the road toward reading."

Mednick wanted the coaches to consider the beliefs about reading that would lead to the creation of a lesson like "picture power." The Oakland schools purchased the Units of Study for Teaching Reading series, which includes the "picture power" lesson, as part of a balanced literacy initiative the district began about 10 years ago. The district also bought the Fountas and Pinnell assessment system.

The coaches saw right away that "picture power" was designed to teach kids the cueing system. But they said many teachers don't see any problem with cueing. After all, one of the cues is to look at the letters in the word. What's wrong with teaching kids lots of different strategies to figure out unknown words? 44

"I remember before we started looking at the science and everything, I thought to myself, 'Reading is so hard for kids, so what if they use the picture?'" said Soraya Sajous-Brooks, the early literacy coach at Prescott Elementary School in West Oakland. "Like, use everything you've got."

But she's come to understand that cueing sends the message to kids that they don't need to sound out words. Her students would get phonics instruction in one part of the day. Then they'd go reader's workshop and be taught that when they come to a word they don't know, they have lots of strategies. They can sound it out. They can also check the first letter, look at the picture, think of a word that makes sense.

Teaching cueing and phonics doesn't work, Sajous-Brooks said. "One negates the other."

Goldberg and Mednick want to show the district there's a better way to teach reading. Schools in the pilot project used grant money to buy new materials that steer clear of the three-cueing idea. Two charter school networks in Oakland are working on similar projects to move their schools away from cueing.

To see what it looks like, I visited a first-grade classroom at a charter school in Oakland called Achieve Academy. 45

One part of the day was explicit phonics instruction. 46 The students were divided into small groups based on their skill level. They met with their teacher, Andrea Ruiz, at a kidney-shaped table in a corner of the classroom. The lowest-level group worked on identifying the speech sounds in words like "skin" and "skip." The highest-level group learned how verbs like "spy" and "cry" are spelled as "spied' and 'cried" in the past tense.

There were also vocabulary lessons. 47 The entire class gathered on a rug at the front of the classroom to talk about a book Ms. Ruiz read out loud to them. One of the words in the book was "prey."

"What animals are a chameleon's prey?" Ms. Ruiz asked the children. "Or we can also ask, what animals do chameleons hunt for food?"

The kids turned and talked to each other. "A chameleon's prey are bugs and insects and other chameleons and mice and birds," a little boy explained to his classmate. "That's it."

Other vocabulary words these first-graders had learned were posted on cards around the classroom. They included: wander, persevere, squint and scrumptious. The kids weren't expected to read those words yet. The idea is to build their oral vocabulary so that when they can read those words, they know what the words mean.

This comes straight from the scientific research, which shows that reading comprehension is the product of two things. 48 First, a child needs to be able to sound out a word. Second, the child needs to know the meaning of the word she just sounded out. So, in a first-grade classroom that's following the research, you will see explicit phonics instruction and also lessons that build oral vocabulary and background knowledge. And you will see kids practicing what they've been taught.

After their vocabulary lesson, the kids did "buddy reading." They retreated to various spots around the classroom to read books to each other. I found Belinda sitting on an adult chair at the back of the classroom, her little legs swinging. Across from her was her buddy Steven, decked out in a yellow and blue plaid shirt tucked neatly into his jeans. He held the book and pointed to the words while Belinda read.

"Ellen /m/," Belinda paused, sounding out the word "meets." She was reading a decodable book about some kids who visit a farm. Almost all of the words in the book contain spelling patterns she'd been taught in her phonics lessons.

"I am a farm here," Belinda read.

Steven did a double-take. "A farmer here," he said gently. Steven's job as Belinda's reading buddy was to help her if she missed a word or got stuck. But that didn't happen much because Belinda had been taught how to read the words. She didn't need any help from the pictures, either. She barely glanced at them as she read.

To be clear, there's nothing wrong with pictures. They're great to look at and talk about, and they can help a child comprehend the meaning of a story. Context - including a picture if there is one - helps us understand what we're reading all the time. But if a child is being taught to use context to identify words, she's being taught to read like a poor reader.

Many educators don't know this because the cognitive science research has not made its way into many schools and schools of education. 49

Ruiz didn't know about this research until the Oakland pilot project. "I didn't really know anything about how kids learn to read when I started teaching," she said. It was a relief when she came to Oakland and the curriculum spelled out that kids use meaning, structure and visual cues to figure out words. "Because I came from not having anything, I was like, 'Oh, there's a way we should teach this,'" she said.

I heard this from other educators. Cueing was appealing because they didn't know what else to do.

"When I got into the classroom and someone told me to use this practice, I didn't question it," said Stacey Cherny, a former teacher who's now principal of an elementary school in Pennsylvania. She says many teachers aren't taught what they need to know about the structure of the English language to be able to teach phonics well. She says phonics can be intimidating; three cueing isn't.

Another reason cueing holds on is that it seems to work for some children. But researchers estimate there's a percentage of kids - perhaps about 40 percent - who will learn to read no matter how they're taught. 50 According to Kilpatrick, children who learn to read with cueing are succeeding in spite of the instruction, not because of it.

Goldberg hopes the pilot project in Oakland will convince the district to drop all instructional materials that include cueing.

When asked about this, the Oakland superintendent's office responded with a written statement that there isn't enough evidence from the pilot project to make curriculum changes for the entire district and that the Oakland schools remain committed to balanced literacy.

Oakland's situation is no different from many other districts across the country that have invested millions of dollars in materials that include cueing.

"It feels like everyone's trusting somebody else to have done their due diligence," Goldberg said. "Classroom teachers are trusting that the materials they're being handed will work. The people who purchase the materials are trusting if they were on the market, that they will work. We're all trusting, and it's a system that is broken."

'My science is different'

If cueing was debunked decades ago by cognitive scientists, why is the idea still in materials that are being sold to schools?

One answer to that question is that school districts still buy the materials. Heinemann, the company that publishes the Fountas and Pinnell and Lucy Calkins' products that the Oakland schools use, earned somewhere in the neighborhood of $500 million in 2018, according to earnings reports. 51

I wanted to know what the authors of those materials make of the cognitive science research. And I wanted to give them a chance to explain the ideas behind their work. I wrote to Calkins, Fountas and Pinnell and asked for interviews. They all declined. Heinemann sent a statement that said every product the company sells is informed by extensive research.

I also asked Ken Goodman for an interview. It's been more than 50 years since he first laid out the three-cueing theory in that 1967 paper. I wanted to know what he thinks of the cognitive science research. Of the major proponents of three cueing I reached out to, he was the only one who agreed to an interview.

I visited Goodman at his home in Tucson, Arizona. He's 91. He uses a scooter to get around, but he's still working. He just finished a new edition of one of his books.

When I asked him what he makes of the cognitive science research, he told me he thinks scientists focus too much on word recognition. He still doesn't believe accurate word recognition is necessary for reading comprehension.

"Word recognition is a preoccupation," he said. "I don't teach word recognition. I teach people to make sense of language. And learning the words is incidental to that."

He brought up the example of a child who comes to the word "horse" and says "pony" instead. His argument is that a child will still understand the meaning of the story because horse and pony are the same concept.

I pressed him on this. First of all, a pony isn't the same thing as a horse. Second, don't you want to make sure that when a child is learning to read, he understands that /p/ /o/ /n/ /y/ says "pony"? And different letters say "horse"?

He dismissed my question.

"The purpose is not to learn words," he said. "The purpose is to make sense."

Cognitive scientists don't dispute that the purpose of reading is to make sense of the text. But the question is: How can you understand what you are reading if you can't accurately read the words? And if quick and accurate word recognition is the hallmark of being a skilled reader, how does a little kid get there?

Goodman rejected the idea that you can make a distinction between skilled readers and unskilled readers; he doesn't like the value judgment that implies. He said dyslexia does not exist - despite lots of evidence that it does. 52 And he said the three-cueing theory is based on years of observational research. In his view, three cueing is perfectly valid, drawn from a different kind of evidence than what scientists collect in their labs.

"My science is different," Goodman said.

This idea that there are different kinds of evidence that lead to different conclusions about how reading works is one reason people continue to disagree about how children should be taught to read. It's important for educators to understand that three cueing is based on theory and observational research and that there's decades of scientific evidence from labs all over the world that converges on a very different idea about skilled reading.

The cognitive science does not provide all the answers about how to teach children to read, but on the question of how skilled readers read words, scientists have amassed a huge body of evidence.

Goldberg thinks it's time for educators across the country to take a close look at all the materials they use to teach reading.

"We should look through the materials and search for evidence of cueing," she said. "And if it's there, don't touch it. Don't let it get near our kids, don't let it get near our classrooms, our teachers."

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

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

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

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
For decades, schools have taught children the strategies of struggling readers, using a theory about reading that cognitive scientists have repeatedly debunked. And many teachers and parents don't know there's anything wrong with it.

# data[].attributes.headline
Section 3: Fluency (Intensifying Instruction)

# data[].attributes.subject
Section 3: Fluency (Intensifying Instruction)

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection: Watch as reading expert Linda Farrell works with a second-grade student on all three components of reading fluency, helping the student progress from 38 words correct per minute to 80 during this lesson.

Notice the order in which she focuses first on accuracy, then rate, and then expression. Pay close attention to her comments at the following time stamps:

8:14 – Reading rate is not solely about speed but speed and accuracy.

9:00 and 14:05 – Set reasonable goals and move them incrementally.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Reading Fluency with Chloe, Second Grader

# data[].attributes.headline
Section 2: English Language Structures and the Shift to Academic Language (3 of 4)

# data[].attributes.subject
Section 2: English Language Structures and the Shift to Academic Language (3 of 4)

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection 3: This article from Perspectives on Language and Literacy discusses the importance of morphological awareness and etymology in the development of reading skills. The author provides several suggestions for assessment and instruction in general and special education classrooms

# data[].attributes.headline
Section 2A: Concepts of Print and Letter Knowledge

# data[].attributes.subject
Section 2A: Concepts of Print and Letter Knowledge

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection: Watch as students practice letter naming with an activity that also starts developing the concept of stress/accent.

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection 3 of 3: Read pages 10 & 11 to learn more about the differences between summative, formative, and diagnostic assessments

# data[].attributes.body
What are the capacities and skills needed to read? • When do these skills and capacities develop? • How does this development shift across early to middle childhood?

# data[].attributes.headline
Section 4: Using Data to Make Decisions (2 of 3)

# data[].attributes.subject
Section 4: Using Data to Make Decisions (2 of 3)

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection #2

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
All Resources | Expert Interview

Sign in to share, email, rate, comment or favorite.

In this interview, Dr. Donald Compton explains the purpose of universal screening, describes how it fits into a multi-tiered intervention system, and discusses using screening to identify students at risk for reading problems and place them into appropriate interventions.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
All Resources | Expert Interview Sign in to share, email, rate, comment or favorite. In this interview, Dr. Donald Compton explains the purpose of universal screening, describes how it fits into a multi-tiered intervention system, and discusses using screening to identify students at risk for reading problems and place them into appropriate interventions.

# data[].attributes.body
Learning Connection #4

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
To Group or Not to Group - That Is the Question

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We're being told to spend about 30 minutes delivering whole group instruction and then spend the next 60 minutes meeting with small groups of students while the other students work in literacy stations to practice skills previously taught either independently or in partners/groups.

# data[].attributes.body
3:19 Video