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"Finally, a book that has the power to stop the literacy pendulum swings! In Shifting the Balance, Burkins and Yates skillfully explore 'balanced literacy' and 'the science of reading' to find the sweet spots where they overlap, connect, and actually complement one another. The result is a resource that raises our level of instruction while helping children discover and reap the joyful rewards of reading."

"What are the research-based, critical elements for teaching reading? In Shifting the Balance, Jan and Kari give you the information, classroom examples, and tools to help you make the best decisions around six key shifts for instruction. After reviewing the misunderstandings, the science, and the needs of your students, you will be able to audit your current practices (individually, in a PLC, or system-wide) to provide responsive and effective literacy learning for all your students."

"In Shifting the Balance, Jan and Kari invite us to reflect and reexamine our beliefs about teaching reading. They gently nudge us to rethink and possibly adjust our early literacy practices. Jan and Kari have taken on this controversial topic by embracing vulnerability and modeling what it means to be truly reflective practitioners. This book is a must read for new and veteran teachers!"

"In Shifting the Balance, Kari and Jan have masterfully dispelled many of the myths and misunderstandings associated with reading instruction. Additionally, they offer classroom teachers and coaches six simple, practical shifts that have the power to transform the way we teach children how to read. Indeed, balanced literacy and science do exist in harmony, and we practitioners can offer our children both concurrently. Thank you, Kari and Jan, for this important work that is sure to change lives!"

"In Shifting the Balance, Jan Burkins and Kari Yates provide a safe space for teachers to courageously examine some long-held balanced literacy practices and turn a critical eye to where those practices have gotten out of balance. If you're willing to be vulnerable and move towards resolving the gap between research and practice, this book provides actionable steps you can take to shift your thinking and bring instruction into alignment with the scientific evidence."

"Shifting the Balance is a welcoming opportunity to reexamine our familiar teaching practices. Without judgment, Burkins and Yates invigorate these practices by inviting educators to make scientific shifts in the systems that have been in place for years. This book will revolutionize reading instruction and in turn, the lives of countless students."

"This book speaks to teachers. It is overwhelmingly clear that Jan Burkins and Kari Yates have been and are immersed in the world of today's classrooms. Shifting the Balance will help many rethink instruction in ways that will support all students. In the current version of the Reading Wars, it is difficult for any of us to say we were wrong about some of our beliefs or practices. And thus, few do. However, Jan Burkins and Kari Yates have done just that. This is as commendable as it is unusual."

"This book found me at just the right time! Shifting the Balance gives voice to the questions I've had in my mind about Balanced Literacy and the Science of Reading and provides clear insights on how to connect the best parts of both to benefit early readers. Throughout the book, Jan and Kari confirm practices worth holding onto while providing actionable next steps I can't wait to implement with students to strengthen my reading instruction."

Dr. Jan Burkins was an elementary classroom teacher for seven years and a literacy coach for seven years. She has worked as a part-time assistant professor, a district literacy leader, and is currently a fulltime writer and consultant.

Kari Yates is an author, speaker, consultant and staff developer with a passion for helping busy literacy educators thrive. Her experiences include classroom teacher, special education, Reading Recovery teacher, elementary principal and district literacy coordinator.

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Shifting the Balance: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Balanced Literacy Classroom

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Shifting the Balance: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Balanced Literacy Classroom

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Letter ID and Sounds
Phonological Awareness
Phonics

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natashya@erinkentconsulting.com

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Word Chaining List from Burkins and Yates

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Word Chaining List from Burkins and Yates

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The newest addition to Scholastic's "Science of Reading" collection is an early literacy handbook written by a teacher for teachers. This book is about decoding and phonics. Lindsey uses her impeccable body of research to create a powerful translational work interpreting reading science. She employs a scaffolded approach to teaching foundational skills, starting with decoding and oral language, moving through phonemic awareness and sound-spelling knowledge, and ending with fluency. Of particular value is the focus on bridging to practice: activities and lessons presented here can be used immediately in the classroom. The book is predicated on the "Essential Instructional Swap" of substituting ineffective activities for more effective, evidence-based routines. For example, "Fewer Rhymes, More Phonemes" and "Less Pointing to Text in Predictable Books, More Engaging in Shared Reading." The depth of research backing this text cannot be overstated. Lindsey refers to the findings of meta-analyses throughout, and the book sports a beefy and current reference section. VERDICT This title can be used as a handbook for professional educators; its clear organization and focused language will be useful for early literacy teachers.-Jennifer Townesα(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

" Reading Above the Fray is a wonderful resource, a book I read from cover to cover. The scholarship is impeccable, citing the central and most impactful studies surrounding foundational skills and their importance to reading acquisition. Authored by a passionate educator, the book is rich in stories, lessons, activities, and ideas. It is a joy to read and will become a well-worn guide for teachers and students of reading!"Book Smart: How to , Julia masterfully connects the deep research base on how kids learn to read to what teachers can do tomorrow in their classrooms. What I love even more about the book is her focus on the joy of helping students develop the tools they need to achieve reading success."

- ANNE E. CUNNINGHAM, Professor, Learning Sciences and Human Development, University of California, Berkeley; author of Develop and Support Successful, Motivated Readers Letter Lessons and First Words: Phonics Foundations That Work

"This book speaks to something near and dear to my heart-the power of early literacy to lead to lifelong learning and immeasurable opportunities. With clarity and precision, Dr. Lindsey cuts through the distracting noise around reading instruction. Her book should be required reading in preservice and inservice programs. With it, we can chart a course forward to literacy for all."

- SHARIF EL-MEKKI, Chief Executive Officer, Center for Black Educator Development

"One of the best books I've read on decoding and phonics. With passion for teaching, Dr. Lindsey interprets reading science in ways that are directly transferable to the classroom. Her book is chock full of techniques, activities, and strategies-a veritable 'go-to' resource. This is exactly the kind of translational work the field needs!"

- SUSANNE NOBLES, Chief Academic Officer, ReadWorks

"Accessible, timely, and easy to use, this is a book that needed to be written for teachers, literacy coaches, and school administrators looking to develop efficient and effective literacy instruction. Dr. Lindsey simplifies the complexities of foundational skills instruction, synthesizes research by bridging it to practice, and provides routines that can be implemented the very next day. I predict it will become a primary resource that educators return to time and again."

- REBECCA MILES, Early Literacy Consultant and Coach Coordinator, Berrien Regional Educational Service Agency

"If you think a professional book about decoding and foundational skills can't be engaging, think again! Dr. Lindsey artfully combines wit, wisdom, and classroom realism with evidence-based routines that we can implement immediately. Most important, she centers each chapter on children, calling us to value and build upon the strengths, perspectives, and cultural assets they bring. This book is a win for educators and, by extension, the children and families they serve!"

- ANNIE PETROZZELLI SPEAR, Literacy Specialist, Consultant, and Author

"Elementary teachers have been waiting for this one! Dr. Lindsey explains not only the 'why' behind the essential elements of decoding, but also provides explicit guidance and routines to help any teacher swap out ineffective practices for more effective and efficient research-based ones. She makes it easy to align instruction to reading science
and teach 'above the fray.'"

- KATHARINE NOONAN, English Language Arts Instructional Coach, District of Columbia Public Schools
- HEIDI ANNE MESMER, Professor of Literacy Education, Virginia Tech; author of Reading Above the Fray

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

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

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Word Study Documenting. Adapt to fit YOUR Curriculum progression

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Literacy Consultants & Consulting Services | Erin Kent Consulting

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Literacy Consultants & Consulting Services | Erin Kent Consulting

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

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Text Project

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The Reading GPS gives teachers information about whether students are moving toward the goal of proficient reading.

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Phonemic Awareness Skills Development Tools

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For each of these seven must haves, Wiley shares lessons, routines, word lists, tips for ELL and advanced learners, and advice on pitfalls to avoid regarding pacing, decodable texts, transition time, and more.

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A Fresh Look at Phonics, Grades K-2: Common Causes of Failure and 7 Ingredients for Success (Corwin Literacy)

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Amazon.com: A Fresh Look at Phonics, Grades K-2: Common Causes of Failure and 7 Ingredients for Success (Corwin Literacy): 9781506326887: Blevins, Wiley: Books

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Flyleaf Publishing - Online Materials Portal

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For Students - Flyleaf Publishing - Online Materials Portal

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Decoding Focused Reading Group Examples & Blank

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Decoding Focused Reading Group Examples & Blank

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PA & Phonics with Reading/Writing
PA, Phonics & Reading
Connect, Practice, Transfer
New Concept & Review Word Work

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

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Blending Phonemes - Word Chains - Dyslexic Logic

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

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Lots of Resources available on this website! You may have to register...

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The Six Shifts Where Science of Reading Meets Balanced Literacy. We provide resources, professional development, and literacy audits for busy literacy educators like you.

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These are high quality decodables and FREE!

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Free Books for Kids | Consonant Digraphs | Beyond Decodables | Teacher Resources

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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.

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Decodable Word Lists_Short Vowels, Blends, Digraphs

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Developing and sharing resources is at the heart of what UFLI does. Teachers, parents, school leaders, teacher educators ... there is something here for everyone. Take a spin through our resource hubs, explore our digital word work apps, and catch up on UFLI webinars.

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Developing and sharing resources is at the heart of what UFLI does. Teachers, parents, school leaders, teacher educators ... there is something here for everyone. Take a spin through our resource hubs, explore our digital word work apps, and catch up on UFLI webinars.

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Wiley Blevins
Links to purchase High-quality Decodables

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science of reading research, phonics instruction must follow a defined scope and sequence with ample review and repetition. Each skill is explicitly introduced and applied in ways that get students thinking and talking about how words work.

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Word Ladder - Blank Word Ladder - 3-Letter Blends Word Ladder - Digraphs

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This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Today we're going to talk about blending lines - a powerful, easy-to-use tool that will help your students become masters at decoding!

It's the fourth post in our 10-part series about teaching phonics.

Blending is the stringing of letter sounds to read a word.
There are two main types of blending:

Successive blending

Final blending

*Weird but important note: Some phonics experts use the terms "successive blending" and "final blending" differently. Beck and Beck ( Making Sense of Phonics) use the terms as I will use them in this article. Wiley Blevins, in his book ( A Fresh Look at Phonics) switches the terms around.

Successive and Final Blending
Successive blending
Successive blending is an excellent way to introduce blending to your students, and children who struggle will benefit from extended use of this approach.

The power of successive blending is that it helps students keep the sounds in their heads; short-term memory issues are a real problem for students who sound out p-a-t and come up with "tan."

While you should phase out successive blending after a few weeks, Beck and Beck recommend temporarily bringing it back when students start reading words with beginning blends (such as flat and swim).
Final blending
Final blending (which I like to call "sound by sound blending") is more efficient and the method you should use when your students understand the concept of blending.

However, if you are working with an individual student who is struggling, switch back to successive blending.
Watch this quick video to understand both types of blending.
(For a longer video of successive blending, see this post.)

Best practices for teaching blending

In his book, A Fresh Look at Phonic s, Wiley Blevins share these tips for teaching blending:

Model and practice blending often (every day for early readers).

When starting blending with new readers, use words that start with continuous sounds (such as mmmm and sssss).

Practice blending before reading a story (at least 20 words in 1st grade and up).

Select blending lines that include minimal contrasts so students have to fully analyze the words.

Create lines that allow you to informally assess your students.

Make sure your lines contain differentiated practice to meet everyone's needs.

Include sentences in your lines.

What are blending lines?

Blending lines are lines of words that students sound out using their phonics knowledge. Blending lines allow students to practice the new focus skill and review previously learned skills.

Students should read the these lines after the lesson but before reading their decodable book.

You can use the lines with a whole class or in a small group phonics lesson.

Sample blending lines
Wiley Blevins' tips for using blending lines

Model only one or two words at the beginning of the word set. You want your students to do the work.

Have students read the words chorally the first time through (observe to see which students drop out as the words become more challenging).

Revisit the lines by pointing to words in random order and calling on students to read them. Remember to call on struggling readers for the easier lines and advanced readers for the challenging ones. Keep the whole class engaged by having them give a thumbs-up to indicate when a word is read correctly.

Use the lines for multiple days of instruction as a quick review or warm-up.

Make copies of the week's lines for students to take home and practice.

Make sure that the time spent on the lines is no more than 5 minutes at a time.

More sample blending lines
So what do you think?
Are you ready to give blending lines a try?

It can be tricky to write your own blending lines, but I've made it easy for you!

As you can see in the above image, I've created a planning sheet for you that reminds you what to focus on for each line.

After you type in the words on the planning sheet, they auto-populate into the student page.

The page prints without the blue boxes, making it the perfect practice sheet for your students.

Just sign up below to get the freebie!

Check our the rest of our phonics series!

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Are you wondering how to use blending lines in your phonics lessons? We're here to help - with editable blending lines!

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About the cover artist

Elizabeth Close is an Anangu woman from the Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara language groups in the APY Lands in outback South Australia. She was born in Adelaide and spent much of her upbringing in remote communities, learning her language and receiving cultural education.

'This artwork represents the literacy and numeracy learning journey, and the path towards independent learning. The circles represent the collaborative learning and supports around children with specific learning difficulties, including children, schools, families, SPELD SA and others.'  Elizabeth Close, Artist.
Click here for printing tips

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About the cover artist Elizabeth Close is an Anangu woman from the Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara language groups in the APY Lands in outback South Australia. She was born in Adelaide and spent much of her upbringing in remote communities, learning her language and receiving cultural education.

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Scope and Sequence from Wiley Blevins Curriculum

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Sadlier ELA Blog Chinese New Year Activities for Elementary Students Every January or February, I enjoy teaching my students about Chinese New Year, otherwise known as Spring Festival....

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From Phonics to Reading | Grades K-3 | Sadlier School

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From Phonics To Reading is a comprehensive foundational skills program that supports students on the path to early reading and writing.

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Lucy Calkins and Colleagues Units of Study

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Home / Our Series - Jump Rope Readers

Michael Rae-Grant and Lucy Calkins, Series Editors

What makes a book "just right" for a beginning reader? The answer is simple. A book is just right if the child can read it and wants to read it. Anything else is "just okay" at best. But, if you work with beginning readers, you know it's not easy to find these "just right" books.

On the one hand, there are books that beginners want to read but can't. Most picture books and chapter books fall into this category. Surprisingly, so do many of the early readers and I-can-reads you see in libraries and bookstores. On the other hand, too many of the decodable books that we see in classrooms aren't particularly enticing, even if beginners can read them. We think beginning readers deserve better.

We want all readers to begin as we aim for them to continue-with enthusiasm for reading and excitement to pick up the next book.

Download the Overview View Samples and Summaries

Introductory Video from Lucy Calkins and TCRWP Coauthors

"Teachers and students in our district have been loving the Jump Rope Readers. As a district, we purchased several different brands of decodable texts to find what teachers and students liked best and over and over, we hear how the Jump Rope Readers are the easiest to use and that students love the beautiful pictures and great story lines. We are grateful for this resource that allows us to easily match students to books that match the phonics work they are currently doing and that the books provide such lovable and fun stories."
- Jenn Nelson (Saline Area Schools, MI)

Four Key Qualities of Beginner Books

Influential reading researchers Richard Anderson and Freddy Hiebert described the key qualities that educators should look for in books for beginning readers in a report they wrote for the National Academy of Education. They wrote:
"Writing the first selections a child will read is a difficult balancing act. Ideally, the selections will be:

interesting (so that students will want to read them);

comprehensible (so that students are able to understand them); and

instructive (so that students will learn from them)."

Of course, a quality that underlies all of this is representation. When books are an accurate reflection of our beautifully diverse world, children find them considerably more interesting and comprehensible, so we added that foundational idea to the list of essential priorities that informed the development of the Jump Rope Readers series.

Interesting and Comprehensible

As you explore the Jump Rope Readers, you'll notice the books are arranged into different series, each starring a distinctive main character. There's Nick, who loves dinosaurs, and Ana with her big imagination, Tam, who's full of energy and mischief, Imran, who's a bit shy at first, and many more. In addition to getting to know these lovable main characters, we also get to know their diverse families. All the Jump Rope Readers take place in the same dynamic, inclusive urban neighborhood, so characters from earlier books make special guest appearances in later ones, extending stories in ways that will engage and delight beginning readers.

The fact that the Jump Rope Readers are arranged into series makes them more engaging to kids, and also makes them especially comprehensible. Series books feature familiar characters who react to problems in predictable ways. Once kids know who the characters are, they know what to expect, and this helps them follow the story. To ensure that kids understand the key characters and their relationships, each series begins with a "book one" that lays out these elements. In set A, "book one" is a picture book that teachers can read aloud to kids. In set B, it's a decodable book that kids can read on their own.

Example: Titles in the Red Series, featuring Tam and Nat

Representative

When kids open a book and see characters who look, live, or act like them, it helps them connect not only to the characters, but to the act of reading.

Instructive

Like all decodable books, the Jump Rope Readers start off simple, then gradually grow in complexity as more phonics content is added. The books follow a scope and sequence of letter-sound correspondences and high-frequency words that aligns with the phonics progression behind the Units of Study-and this same progression, or one quite similar to it, informs most other phonics programs as well.

Within this progression, the texts don't introduce every letter-sound correspondence in the English language (there are over two hundred), but rather focus on those letter-sound correspondences that occur most frequently in print, providing kids with an efficient path toward more advanced reading.

Overall, the scope and sequence offers a steady "ramp" into early trade books. By the time students have finished the last Jump Rope Reader, they'll have lots of letter-sound correspondences under their belts, and they'll be ready to tackle familiar series such as Fly Guy, Yasmin, Henry and Mudge, or Sofia Martinez. Ready, that is, for a deep dive into the wider world of children's literature.

To view the Scope and Sequence for the titles within each set, check out the Series Overview (pages 10 & 12).

Series Components

The Jump Rope Readers series consists of 66 high-interest decodable books and six accompanying read-alouds, organized into two classroom sets, each composed of two boxes. Together, these books gradually and systematically introduce beginning readers to new letter-sound correspondences and high-frequency words. Along the way, they also introduce memorable characters, exciting adventures, and the foundational elements of literary fiction.

Set A Includes:

Set B Includes:

View Samples and Summaries

Click on the button below to read sample books from each box and view the book Summaries Chart. The Jump Rope Readers Summaries Chart offers a closer look at the engaging storylines in the books and important details about opportunities to practice phonics skills across the series. We suggest that you review this information to make choices about which sets you will use in your classrooms and whether you might want additional sets of certain boxes to allow more than 6 students at a time to access any given set within the series. The book summaries also convey the spirit of the Jump Rope Readers series, depicting a dynamic, inclusive, urban neighborhood and the diverse families who live there.

Series Introduction Videos from the Authors

Ordering Information

The links below offer the online ordering options for the Jump Rope Readers. Please be sure to reach out to your local Heinemann sales rep to discuss your purchasing options.

Additional Purchasing Options

Individual Series Sets

Related Resources

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Jump Rope Readers - A Series of High-Quality Decodable Books

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Jump Rope Readers - A Series of High-Quality Decodable Books from Lucy Calkins and Colleagues

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Workshop Planning Across Week -Mock-up Detailed

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This reading intervention was developed and tested by Dr. Jessica Toste and colleagues at The University of Texas at Austin. The program materials were redesigned for open access by the Toste Team in October 2022. We are excited for you to use the Word Connections program! We look forward to continued feedback from teachers and students.

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

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

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

African American English

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

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

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

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

Impact on Reading

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

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

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

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

Nonlanguage Factors

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

Socioeconomic Status

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

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

Emotional Health and Well-Being

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

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

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

Recommendations for Teaching

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

1. Expand teachers' knowledge of language variation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. Provide enough time on task.

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

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

5. Respond constructively to AAE use in the classroom.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Final Takeaways

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

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

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

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

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

Endnotes

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

[illustrations by Ojima Abalaka]

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Teaching Reading to African American Children

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

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Word Recognition Resources - UFLI
Word Connectors - A reading intervention program that focuses on introducing new multisyallbic words as they learn about phonics features.

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Great Website matching books with morpheme bases (and sometimes concepts)

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Great Website matching books with morpheme bases (and sometimes concepts)

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Could use as a resource...

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Literacy Resources | Can Do Kids Academy

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The Can Do Kids website is full of ready-made resources to support teachers and learners in their study of English orthography.

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Planning the Small Group Reading Lesson: Teach and Guide Small Group Instruction
I just completed a review of 147 reading texts used in our colleges of education to teach teachers how to teach reading (National Center for Teacher Quality (NCTQ). One troubling observation I made is the lack of guidance to help teachers and soon-to-be teachers understand how to structure small group reading instruction. To be clear, guided reading, a popular small group practice, is a prevalent feature throughout these texts, and it is perplexing that this universal custom lacks consistency. Authors of these texts present guided reading in ways that reflect their personal views of how reading should be taught, and unfortunately many of these views are not reflective of what we have learned about best practices in reading instruction, especially for our very young and struggling readers.
A New "Guided Reading"
Guided reading was originally designed to provide a comprehension focus. However, now, guided reading has become a small group catch-all wherein any reading skill, including 'word work' or decoding lessons are also taught.

Since the term guided reading is so universal in our schools, I propose that we redefine this small reading group practice to empower teachers to TEACH first then GUIDE our students to become proficient readers. The structures I propose incorporate the most effective overall teaching practices and those specific to reading instruction. Please download these two informative syntheses of the research on overall effective teaching practices and follow along with me on this journey as we design a small group structure that is easy to use and adapt to our students' needs. Principles of Effective Instruction and Seven Strategies
The Small Group Structure
We will create a framework, which may be new to many of you, or remind you of lesson structures you have used in the past. A framework helps us be more efficient in our planning - we all need that! If you use a reading program, it probably provides a lesson framework for you, steps that you follow. If you do not have a program, this framework will be especially helpful for you. Either way, having a structure into which you plug your lessons parts will ensure that you teach systematically and explicitly. As you read through this framework, know that it is just that. It will be up to you to insert the content that is responsive to your students' needs and plan your instruction for each part of the lesson in the framework.
The Small Group Lesson Framework
Our teacher lives are complex and demanding enough. Having a consistent framework helps simplify our planning, and meets a requirement of systematic instruction - a routine that fills teacher and student need for consistency.

With a program, this framework will work. Insert the elements from your program, add additional practice activities.

Without a program - It will take a little extra work on your part, but you can do it! You need a skills sequence, and words and reading materials that are matched to the target decoding elements listed in the skills sequence. You will also need practice activities.
The STEPS Framework - Teach then Guide Adapted from Next STEPS in Literacy Instruction, Smartt and Glaser. Paul Brookes Publishing.
The framework works well for decoding lessons, but is adaptable to teaching other reading components as well.
S - Set up for Learning (The Warm-Up) 3-5 min
Begin your lesson with a review of a skill students have learned. This serves to prime the pump for learning something new. This step wakes up the brain for learning, motivating students through active involvement at a high rate of success.

Choose the skill you want to review and plan an active way to review it.

Warm-Up Ideas: (Remember - use words and material students have learned in earlier lessons)

Phoneme segmentation with head-waist-toes,

Encoding from teacher dictation with moveable letters,

Quick flash & say grapheme sounds, read, spell, or use vocabulary terms

Student picks a word from pile, reads it and turn to partner, uses it in a sentence. Alternate turns.

Reread story or sentences from a previous lesson.

T - Teach (I Do - Teacher Voice is Dominant) 3-5 min
In this step the teacher explicitly teaches the new skill through explanation, modeling, showing and telling. Students will hear you say, "Today we will learn..." "Watch me. Listen." "My turn."

Ideas:

Use a white board to model decoding the new grapheme,

Point to and teach word parts,

Demonstrate decoding of words

Present and teach the orthography and meanings of vocabulary words

Demonstrate a comprehension process

E - Engage (We Do - Teacher and Student voices together) 3-5 min
With your support, students engage with, and briefly practice the skill just taught to them. This gives the teacher an indication of whether the students need more instruction before the next lesson step.

Ideas:

Students practice decoding words as the teacher points to words on a white board, a pocket chart, or with moveable letters as teacher creates them.

Make sure students HEAR, SEE, SAY and WRITE the words.

The teacher provides corrective feedback and scaffolds the process, stepping back to allow students to work independently, or stepping in to reteach, as needed.

P - Practice (You Do & We Do - Student voice with Teacher voice when needed for correction, praise, reteaching) 15-20 min
In this step, students practice the new concept multiple times. Teacher guides students to apply what they have learned, providing more instruction, corrective feedback, and specific praise.

Ideas: Students practice their skill with -

Sound spelling boxes, (here is a video of a 2nd grade teacher using this practice process)

Moveable letters to encode, (teacher dictates words and students tap phonemes and spell the words)

Games to practice reading words automatically, (only games that ensure students are reading words MULTIPLE times) Here is a resource for these activities.

Read decodable or other controlled text to practice the words just learned.

S - Show you Know (Assess learning) Quick 3-5 min
During this closing step, students are asked to demonstrate their learning. Teachers want to know, "Did the students master this skill?" Teachers keep data on student performance to help them plan future lessons.

Ideas:

Students may read a list of the words just learned,

Spell dictated words or sentences,

Produce word meanings,

Complete a timed progress monitoring measure.

Tips to make your small group instruction powerful!

Reading and spelling - decode and encode - in the same lesson

Engage students - we want multiple student responses.

Include isolated word reading and sentence, story, reading.

Taught and guided... your small group lessons will become easier to plan and teach when you use a framework in which you TEACH and students PRACTICE (a lot!) the skills you teach.

Part 1 - Morphology - The New Awareness

I am devoting two blogs to this topic. This blog, Part 1, will create an understanding of morphological knowledge and awareness. Part 2, will delve into what learning and teaching morphological awareness looks like in our classrooms.

After reading the title of this blog, you probably fell into one of two camps: 1) I'm intrigued, or 2) I'm scared, or maybe one foot in both. Either is OK, either is who you are! Read on...

You may recall the news exploding with research about the importance of phonological awareness in 1999 and the NRP publishing their findings, also supporting this "unfamiliar" component of reading. Teachers everywhere were trying to grasp what phonological awareness meant, thought they understood it only to find that it took several workshops, classes, attempts to 'teach' it, before they realized that they "maybe" understood it. Perhaps this challenge has been more recent for you.

Anyway, now that most teachers have heard of phonological and phoneme awareness, and great strides have been made to incorporate it into our literacy instruction, we have another awareness to understand and teach - morphological awareness. Hold onto your hats - dictionaries, lesson plans, and word lists - here we go again!

I believe that morphological awareness has been slow to gain momentum in our reading curriculum because it is scary. Many teachers hear morphology or morphological awareness and shut down or turn away. I don't blame them. I don't blame you! We know we can't teach something we are not familiar with, something we know very little about. So, I suggest here, that we focus on learning not instruction. Let's focus on being learners right along with our students. If we are going to teach morphological awareness, we need to develop our own awareness AS we teach it. I think you will be amazed at how much you already know and teach! You know more than you know, now we need to create an awareness of what you know and build upon it. You can do this!
Why Morphological Awareness?
Morphological knowledge has the potential to affect literacy skills in at least three ways, through word recognition, comprehension, and motivation. Morphological knowledge impacts decoding, spelling, vocabulary knowledge, and comprehension. And the findings continue. Morphological awareness:

Makes a powerful contribution to word reading abilities.

Impacts reading comprehension positively.

Improves spelling and written compositions.

And we also know that for our vulnerable students, literacy skills are positively impacted when morphological awareness is taught during intervention.

Morphological awareness uniquely predicts reading and writing skills even when other linguistic awareness skills are considered.

In some cases, morphological awareness is the sole or strongest predictor for reading and spelling ability.

Wow! I know that this information certainly caught my attention!
Morphological Knowledge and Morphological Awareness - A Primer
First of all, it is important to know that a morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in a language. Sound familiar? A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a language. A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning. A single unit of meaning, a morpheme, for example, is the word book. However, if we change the word to books, we now have two morphemes, the base book and the inflectional suffix, the plural, which changes the meaning. So -s is also a morpheme in this word. You know this. You intuit this. You know that when you add /s/ to book, that the meaning changes to more than one book. There is an implicit quality to your knowledge of words and their morphological construction. This is morphological knowledge - this knowledge might be implicit, you just know this at a subconscious level, and it might be explicit, you can put into words what you know about morphemes. Either way you have an understanding of how words convey meaning when you have morphological knowledge.

Morphological Awareness takes knowledge a step further. This level of understanding refers to the ability to consciously consider and manipulate the smallest units of meaning in spoken and written language, including base (and root) words and affixes, or prefixes and suffixes (Apel, 2017).

Similar to the auditory phoneme awareness tasks we give to our students, "Say grow without /r/", "go", we can use auditory tasks with morphemes too. "Say swimming. What is the base form? Swim. What is the suffix ending? -ing. Change the suffix ending to /s/. Swims. Change the base to drink." What did you end up with?

Another exercise might sound like this, "Say convention. What is the Latin Root? -ven -Change the Latin root to struct. What is the word?" What did you end up with?

These exercises are examples of how we can engage students in a conscious manipulation of morphemes and help to create morphological awareness. Of course, we want to include the meanings of the affixes and roots - ven(t) means to come and stru(ct) means to build - and also include writing and reading the words to help develop orthographic mappings for these words and their morphemes.

If you just had a quick sweat come on when we started talking roots and meanings... remember, we are focusing on learning, not instruction...yet!
Development of Morphological Knowledge and Awareness
Linguists have recorded accounts of 2 and 3 year-olds experimenting with their morphological knowledge: A 3-year old saying, "I jellied my toast." "Deers eated the flowers." "I unpaperclipped it apart." It is amazing how these young speakers of the language intuit these morphological changes to convey meaning!

Here is some morphological development information for you:

Growth in phonological and orthographic awareness taper off after the first 3 or 4 years of school.

In contrast, morphological awareness showed some growth in the early years, but more substantial growth after 4th grade.

Researchers suggest that the three kinds of linguistic knowledge - Phonological - Orthographic - Morphological - work together contributing to literacy development.

Following are some suggested guidelines for you:

Once students are beginning to decode multisyllabic words you can start with compound words. Be explicit, "These are free base words. They can stand alone but we can also combine them to make one word that means something different than one word alone."

Tip: the second word in a compound word explains the first. Pinecone - a cone from a pine tree. Housefly - a fly that comes in your house. Backpack - a pack that we wear on our back. Notebook...??

Then, here is a general rule of thumb to from our planning for teaching awareness of morphemes:

First and second grades - add suffixes to words that require no spelling changes. (help - helpful, sad - sadly, storm - stormy)

By mid-second grade - teach beginning spelling rules for adding suffixes. (swim - swimmer, hide - hiding, cry-cried)

Start with common prefixes: in-, un-, dis-, mis-, fore-, re-, de-, pre-, a- (These are derivations and change the meaning of the base/root)

Teach inflections: -s, -es, -ed, -er, -est, -ing. Then, -ly, -less, -ness, -ship, fold, -ment.

We all know that it takes years of practice to build the orthographic mapping for the words that require spelling changes - drop it, double it, change it. Continue instruction for several years! Correct misspellings and reteach continuously!

Move into roots and derivations big time once students are in fourth grade. You do not have to wait until fourth grade to introduce and build curiosity, but this is where a lot of your instruction will lie.

Focus on yourselves as learners for now. Pay attention to words. Foster your curiosity about words and look them up. Scroll down to Word Origin in Dictionary.com and you will find information on the affixes, roots, bases, and even some etymology - the history words, the stories behind words.

Next time, in Part 2, we will focus on instruction!

References:

Apel, K. (2017). Morphological awareness development and assessment: What do we know? Perspectives on Language and Literacy, 43, (2), 11-16. Spring 2017.

Carlisle, J.F. & Goodwin, A.P. (2004). Morphemes matter: How morphological knowledge contributes to reading and writing. In: Handbook of Language and Literacy, eds. Stone, Silliman, Ehren, & Apel. Guilford Press: NY, NY.

Word Sorts... of a Different Sort
How many times has a colleague shared something with you, have you watched an instructional video, or read an article and said to yourself, "I used to do that! I haven't done that for a long time - I wonder what happened?"

It is pretty common in this day and age of multiple resources bombarding teachers with "new and different" materials and ways to teach, that we put aside those tried and true practices that got results. We all need change in our lives, perhaps that is what drives us to constantly seek and try new tools in our classrooms.

Word Sorts is one of those tried and true processes. Whether word sorts are applied regularly or sporadically in your classrooms this blog provides suggestions to help your Word Sorts become more effective. A Word Sort is only as effective as the amount of reading practice that actually takes place during the sort - reading practice that includes connection to orthography and meaning during that practice.
The Practice Potential
Word sorts have the potential to really build up your students' practice quotient, but have you noticed that many times students perform word sorts and don't even read the words? I have observed students doing word sorts and just looking at the target graphemes in the words and sorting them into categories based on spelling - but NO reading takes place.

The word sort is a wonderful, and powerful activity when we understand the important roles of the brain's orthographic processor as it functions in cahoots with the phonological and meaning processors. Yes, these separate distinct areas of the reading brain (visual, sound, and meaning), work in tandem to help students recall how to read a word, bring meaning to the word, and also how to spell it. In other words, when students recognize and read a word and know what it means, the likelihood of spelling the word correctly improves!

Try these steps to bring word sorts back into your regular practice routines - or to revamp the word sorts you are already doing.
Prepare the materials:

1. Prepare your list of words. These should be words from your phonics lesson for the week, or your spelling list. Choose a few words from previous lessons that will benefit from some review and add these to the list. You want the group of words to include more than one vowel sound as you will be asking students to group words by sound and you want them to differentiate by sound AND spelling.

2. Moveable words, words written on separate slips of paper that students move around into groups, work best for these sorts. Direct your students to create their moveable word 'slips' using one of the two methods: 1) Students write their words on separate 'slips' of paper and collect them in a baggie or envelope. This can be done over a couple of days, introducing the words in groups as you study the words with students. 2) Create a grid of the printed words and students cut them out. Remember, reading the words comes first. Make sure students can read the words they will be asked to sort and spell.

3. Alternately, you can ask your students to write the words as they perform the sorts. In this case, make sure students have practiced reading the words and are familiar with them. Students will need paper and pencils or white-boards.

The Sorts:
Use these teacher-directed sorts in the order presented. The sorts can be done in the same lesson or spread them out over a few days. You can start by asking students to find different ways to sort their words and share with partners how they sorted their words. But to strengthen the 'miles on the words' reading quotient, follow this open sort with the following purposeful teacher-directed sorts.

Number one rule for word sorts: If you touch it, you read it. Lips in motion - LIM. You want to HEAR students reading the words. Kids will be touching the words all the time as they move them into groups - every time they touch the word is a potential read-it opportunity! If students are writing the words into their sorted categories, your rule can be read it before and after you write it!
Prepare Three Types of Sorts:
Start with a Sound Sort. This sort will ask students to think about the phonemes in the words. Your sound sort will depend upon your words. Study your word list ahead of time to determine the sound sort(s) you will use (one or two sound sorts is enough). Some examples include:

1. Ask students to find words that rhyme and put them together.

2. Ask students to find words that share the same vowel sound. For example, if the words have double oo with the two vowel sounds, shoot and brook, ask students to group words that have the same vowel sound as book.

3. Your words might lend themselves to long and/or short vowel sounds.

4. If you have a nice selection of words with two phonemes for C (/s/ and /k/) you could sort by consonant sound.

5. If your word list is multisyllable, you can ask students to sort words by accent - eg., Find all the words that have an accent in the second syllable.

The goal for this sort is to get kids reading and paying attention to the phonemes in the words.

1. Next, do a spelling sort. Ask students to find all the words that spell a certain phoneme with a given spelling. For example:

1. Find all the words that spell /z/ with an S.

2. Find all the words that have /ow/ spelled with OU.

3. You might even ask students to find words that have a schwa vowel sound and group them by spelling of the schwa if your word list has multisyllable words (the schwa only occurs in an unaccented syllable of a multisyllabic word).

2. Lastly, end with a meaning sort. Students will really be reading the words for this one. I suggest you start with a closed sort, one directed by you.

1. Find words that will go with the topic 'animal'.

2. Find words that would fit under the heading school.

Students love to create their own meaning sorts too. After you model for them how to create categories for groups of words, ask students to create a category sort for the class to do.

Finally, end your sort with "Feed the Bag". Students read each word one last time as they put them into their 'bag', or envelope.

Word sorts of this sort will really make a difference in your students' word reading, spelling, and reading fluency with comprehension!

I have been contemplating the topic and content of this blog on every mountain trail and pathway I traveled this summer - and I am fortunate to say my contemplation covered multiple miles! It was a glorious summer and I hope you can say the same - heat and all!

Reading comprehension is a stimulating topic for us to consider. This blog explores comprehension with you, down pathways and up a few difficult mountain trails, into territory you may not have considered before. There is a wealth of comprehension research out there that is waiting for you to discover and possibly review from previous study.

What does it take to READ with comprehension? Well, of course decoding must happen first, and hopefully decoding and simultaneous connection to meaning, with these processes, decoding and language comprehension, happening automatically, working in sync. So, let this discussion of comprehension rest firmly on our understanding that we must include daily decoding instruction to ensure that our students are accessing the written code.

What does it take to TEACH reading comprehension? It takes a deep understanding of how written language works, of how academic language is different than spoken language so that we can build our students' understanding of the written word, its organization, and its structure. To teach comprehension requires a deep understanding of how to guide students to think about what they read as we teach how to connect ideas and synthesize information while reading.
The Layers of Comprehension
Let's talk through the layers of comprehension as if we are planning a reading comprehension lesson. The first layer sets the foundation for all of our planning. It will guide us in the decisions we make before reading, during reading, and after reading.

Layer One - Establish a purpose for reading. What do you want your students to come away knowing and able to put into words after they read? What will you guide your students to THINK about while they are reading? Studies show that long after the reading is over, the information students recall is directly related to the purpose that was set for reading.

Do: Set a purpose for reading - make sure the purpose is meaning related, not simply the application of a 'strategy.' Meaning related example: Understand that cultures differ and are defined by their food, clothing, and family/community relationships. Compared to a non-meaning related example: Apply compare and contrast. While it is true that you may lead students to the goal of reading, the purpose, by asking them to compare and contrast cultures, the purpose you set, based upon the meaning of the passage, will guide your instruction.

Layer Two - What is your students' background knowledge for the topic and the concepts presented in the reading? As you consider this, be aware that students' background knowledge includes understanding how the text is organized, its structure - especially for expository texts.

Think About and Plan: What structures did the author use to organize the content? How will you help your students understand the structure to help them organize the information as they read?

How will you quickly and efficiently set the stage and stimulate their background knowledge for the reading? You don't need to spend a lot of time here - let's get to reading as soon as we can!

Here is a great guide to expository text structures, their associated vocabulary terms, and graphic organizer examples for each.
Layer Three - Is there any vocabulary that students would benefit from hearing and using before reading?
Do: Choose just a few terms from the passage to use in your introductory comments about the passage. What terms are presented within context that will help students determine a sense of meaning? Guide students to verbally reason their thinking about word meaning based on context. Will technical terms need additional clarification other than what the author provides?

Use this vocabulary organizational tool to help you gather, sort, and determine which words to spend time teaching before reading and quickly during reading.

Layer 4 - Are there any inferences that students might not make, especially inferences that contribute to the comprehension goals?

Do: Locate these inferences and be prepared to ask pertinent questions that will lead students to make the crucial inferences. Or, be prepared to model your own thinking, make your thinking visible to your students to demonstrate how to connect ideas and provide the missing information.

Layer 5 - What writing exercise will lead students to put into words what they have learned?

Do: What better way to circle back around to the set purpose for reading, than to ask students to put into their own words what they have learned. We know when we are asked to write about what we have learned, we learn that information at deeper levels. Make sure to ask student to rehearse orally what they will write before they write. Hearing others' ideas, and sentences can be very helpful for your students with developing language skills.
In Closing - Comprehension Strategies
The meaning of comprehend is "to understand the nature or meaning of; to grasp with the mind." We know that any number of us can read a passage and will come away with a similar understanding, hopefully the understanding that the author intended. But we also know that each of us brings a little something unique, connections to our personal experiences, to the meaning we grasp. This synthesis results in what is called the Mental Model, or what will be our enduring understanding.

Each of the layers you just read about includes some aspect of language that is overlooked by our determination to teach comprehension strategies. Comprehension strategies are important, they differentiate between several varying and important ways in which we cognitively consider text as we strive to synthesize information, as we strive to "grasp with the mind." Use the academic language of comprehension strategies; model the application of those strategies. Make your lessons stronger by doing this within the context of getting to the gist of the purpose for reading.

I hope this blog has been helpful and that when you plan your next lesson, you will have a heightened awareness of setting a purpose and focusing on that purpose as you consider structure, vocabulary, inferencing, guiding questions, and your students' final writing exercise. You are going to create powerful lessons!

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Planning the Small Group Reading Lesson: Teach and Guide Small Group Instruction I just completed a review of 147 reading texts used in our colleges of education to teach teachers how to teach reading (National Center for Teacher Quality (NCTQ).

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Amazing tools to use with kids! May not share tools, only website.

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Has some excellent resources -sign up and make an account

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Empowering educators with the literacy resources and training to help every child achieve reading success.

Trust Tools 4 Reading for the resources you need for your elementary classroom.

We're proud to welcome to our team:

Nova Williams Assistant Director of Learning Services-Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment

Mercer Island School District, WA

"I love the Kid Lips cards, Kids Lips Instructional Guide with the user-friendly lessons, and the Phoneme/Grapheme cards. Our teachers love them, too."

Erika Gordon Kindergarten Teacher

Kalispell, MT

"This class was amazing. It was encouraging to me in reminding me that what I was doing with my kindergarten was the right thing to do, even if others weren't doing it. And it gave me so, so, so many new things to try this next year. I appreciate all the extra articles that were linked and have printed and read almost all of them so far. What an amazing class. Thank you!"

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Tools 4 Reading provides great resources for your classroom such as Phoneme/Grapheme Card and Kid Lips.

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Systematic instruction includes the direct presentation of skills and concepts in a pre-specified sequence taught in a logical, defined order that builds on prior learning. For example:

Skills and concepts begin with simple and move to complex.

Student objectives are clear, concise, and driven by ongoing assessment results.

Students are provided with appropriate practice opportunities which directly reflect explicit instruction.

Explicit instruction includes instructional routines that consist of teacher modeling, guided practice, supported application, and independent practice. For example:

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Systematic instruction includes the direct presentation of skills and concepts in a pre-specified sequence taught in a logical, defined order that builds on prior learning. For example: Skills and concepts begin with simple and move to complex. Student objectives are clear, concise, and driven by ongoing assessment results.

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from Vocabularians (2015)

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Article Phonics is the Thunder Morphology is the Lightning

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Article Phonics is the Thunder Morphology is the Lightning

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The English spelling system, or orthography, is morphophonemic, representing linguistic information about how to pronounce a word (phonemic) and how to determine its meaning and usage (morphemic). Morphemes are the smallest units of semantic or grammatical information in a language. Morphemes are prefixes, suffixes, roots, and bases-the smallest meaning-bearing elements, the building blocks of vocabulary. Morphology is the study of word structure or word formation with morphemes. Finally, morphological awareness (MA) refers to "the ability to consciously consider and manipulate the smallest units of meaning in spoken and written language, including base words and affixes" (Apel, 2017). English words are morphophonemic. If phonemes are thunder, then morphemes are lightning, and they both exist in English words.

Many teachers capitalize on the morphophonemic nature of the English spelling system in literacy instruction. Students who learn both phonics and morphology will correctly decode tripod, for example, rather than saying trip-od (obliterating the meaning entirely). These students will recognize the prefix tri- and correctly parse tri-pod at the morphemic juncture. Hopefully, they will know the morpheme tri- means 'three' and, with context, gain a sense of the word.

Through phonics, children will learn that fetched has three sounds, or phonemes: /f/ /ĕ/ /ch/. Blending and segmenting sounds in words is key to learning to read and spell. Children will hear one syllable in the word fetched and therefore may want to spell it *fecht, until they learn the tch trigraph and the suffix -ed. When they learn about morphology, including the inflectional suffixes -ed and -ing, they will hopefully recognize two morphemes in fetch-ed.

Eventually-and sooner rather than later-youngsters need to learn the most common morphemes. By adding the suffix -ness to the end of a word, we create an abstract noun. The feeling of joyfulness. The concept of happiness. Keep in mind, ness is a closed syllable, readily decodable, learned early in phonics programs. The spelling of this suffix is always the same, and it is always placed at the very end of a word: -ness in neatness, sweetness, repleteness. The suffix -ness can never be placed in front of another suffix. Peace-ful-ness, not peace-ness-ful.

Prefixes and suffixes are collectively called affixes. The prefix sub- (also a closed syllable) means beneath, below, or less than in submarine, subtraction, subdermal. We affix sub- to the front of the base word human, resulting in subhuman. Understanding what is meant by subhuman relies not only on morphologically parsing the word into sub-human, but also on context and vocabulary nuance. This is veering into comprehension.

Recently, through a systematic review and meta-analysis by Liu, Groen, and Cain (2024), a stable association has been found between reading comprehension and morphological awareness (MA) in students learning to read English as a first language. This is the first systematic review and meta-analysis that addresses this question, and the findings are telling, indicating a large (r =.565) and significant effect for the association between MA and reading comprehension in 13,790 students across the ages of 6-16.

So, once children have learned the basics of phonics and English orthography-once they have begun to read one-syllable words via a systematic, explicit, sequential approach to phoneme-grapheme correspondences (PGCs), we can begin to layer on the affixes, to add the meaning inherent in the morpheme. Do not delay. Do not wait until fourth grade or until fluency is achieved in all syllable types and phonograms. Many morphemes are easily decoded.

Consider the prefixes that mean not or negative for example: un-, non-, dis- ( untap, nonfat, disjoin). These prefixes are formed with basic closed-syllable patterns. Likewise with suffixes: When children can decode plant, they can-with lessons in morphology-decode and understand planted, planting, planter, planters-and eventually, the more complex notion of a plantation. This academic word ends in the derivational suffix - ion (sometimes taught in elementary curriculum as -ation, -tion, -sion). Indeed, derivations ending in - ion, such as pro-duct-ion and re-flect-ion, begin to crop up more frequently in mid-elementary grades and must be addressed to help establish advanced decoding skills along with vocabulary and comprehension (Anglin, 1993; Ebbers, 2017).

Empirical evidence shows MA is essential to literacy, and at a much younger age than once thought (Apel, 2017; Levesque, Breadmore, & Deacon, 2021; Levesque & Deacon, 2022; Liu, Groen, & Cain, 2024). Morphology instruction begins in K-1 with affixes and with compound words like sunshine and shoebox. Lessons in morphology begin in kindergarten and will likely make an even greater difference in second grade and beyond, when school texts contain more derivations, which are morphologically complex (Anglin, 1993).

read ing

read able

un read able

For children with reading challenges, including dyslexia or any type of obstacle to phonological awareness, visual and hands-on lessons in MA will likely add a great deal to a phonics approach. A growing body of evidence suggests that, with instruction, MA might help compensate for phonological challenges (Brady & Mason, 2024; Georgiou, Vieira, et. al, 2022; Law & Ghesquière, 2021). Morphemic chunks are typically larger and thus more visual than graphemes, as in predict-able and even pre-dict-able. Also, structure is consistent: Prefixes are placed in front of the base, like an engine, and suffixes at the end, like a caboose, making them stand out. Lessons with morphemes can be quite colorful, visual, multisensory, and hands-on. Students can build words with morphemes and bases using Post-it® notes, letter tiles, recycled building blocks and legos, or recycled paper squares. They could color-code and highlight morphemes within words, sort words by morpheme, create word family displays, etc. The ultimate goal is to use morpheme clues and context clues to comprehend passages.

However, to be clear, and lest we get ahead of ourselves, we first learn to read through a sequential phonics approach. We do so because it works (Foorman, 2023; National Reading Panel, 2000). We do so because those who seek to read and write in English require a map, a code. English is a sprawling language built on numerous etymological layers: Germanic/Anglo-Saxon, Latin, Greek, French, and Other (Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic, etc.). We see these various origins reflected in English spelling. For example, the sound /sh/ is spelled sh in ship, but also ch in quiche and /ci/ in spacious. English orthography is complex.

Having said that, English spelling is nonetheless fairly regular, with phoneme-grapheme alignment in about half the words analyzed for spelling predictability, and about 80 percent after rethinking the vowel. These figures are based on a watershed analysis of more than 17,000 words (Hanna, Hanna, Hodges, & Rudorf, 1966). Their landmark study was more recently revisited (Fry, 2004) and in more advanced computational models (Coltheart et al., 2001). These various types of word analyses provide evidence that English is not a hot mess of irregularities in spelling. Some experts contend only about 4 percent of English words must be learned whole, by memorization-the true irregularities (Joshi, Treiman, Carreker, & Moats, 2008). Thus, we do teach phonics well, adding in sight-word recognition, morphology instruction, and a little etymology to make the lexicon more accessible.

We teach phonics but we do not stop at phonics. It is insufficient in the long run and will only achieve so much (Castles, Rastle, & Nation, 2018). Help students "get to know" the word through the lens of phonics/phonology and through the lens of spelling/orthography and gradually through the lens of meaning/morphology and semantics. Bind all this linguistic information into a robust, multidimensional, well-consolidated mental representation of the word, and ground it in context and knowledge about the world (Ehri, 2020; Perfetti & Stafura, 2014).

Finally, encourage children to practice their newly learned linguistic skills with short decodable books aligned to their individual level. The decodables should be assigned only after the student has demonstrated knowledge of the phonetic and/or morphemic unit-linguistic skills gained through explicit instruction. Teach children well, so that when they finally do get to crack open their little beginner book they experience enough success to enjoy it and to develop self-efficacy-that "I can! I will!" feeling. Celebrate effort and growth. Create a love for all kinds of books: Fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Experience the joy of vivid children's literature together.

Please join my EDVIEW360 webinar, "Building Reading Skills in Grades 1-4: Strategic Reading Practice," at 4 p.m. (CT), May 8. I'll share more, including tips and strategies. You can register here.
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Anglin, J. M. (1993). Vocabulary development: A morphological analysis. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 58(10), v-165.

Apel, K. (2017). Morphological Awareness Development and Assessment: What Do We Know? Perspectives on Language and Literacy, 43(2), 29-34.

Brady, S., & Mason, L. H. (2024). A Literature Review of Morphological Awareness Interventions and the Effects on Literacy Outcomes. Learning Disability Quarterly, 47(1), 16-29. https://doi.org/10.1177/07319487231171388

Castles, A., Rastle, K., & Nation, K. (2018). Ending the reading wars: Reading acquisition from novice to expert. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 19(1), 5-51. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1529100618772271

Coltheart, M., Rastle, K., Perry, C., Langdon, R., & Ziegler, J. (2001). DRC: A dual route cascaded model of visual word recognition and reading aloud. Psychological Review, 108(1), 204-256. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.108.1.204

Ebbers, S. M. (2017). Morphological awareness strategies for the general and special education classroom: A vehicle for vocabulary instruction. Perspectives on Language and Literacy, 43(2), 29-34.

Ehri, L. C. (2020). The science of learning to read words: A case for systematic phonics instruction. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(Suppl. 1), S45- S60.

Foorman, B. (2023). Learning the code. In S. Cabell, S. Neuman, & N. Patton Terry (Eds.). Handbook on the science of literacy (pp. 73-82). New York, NY: Guilford Press. 000-Cabell_Book.indb (thereadingforum.com)

Fry, E. (2004). Phonics: A Large Phoneme-Grapheme Frequency Count Revised. Journal of Literacy Research, 36(1), 85-98.

Georgiou, G. K., Vieira, A. P., Rothou, K. M., Kirby, J. R., Antoniuk, A., Martinez, D., & Guo, K. (2022). A Meta-analysis of Morphological Awareness Deficits in Developmental Dyslexia. Scientific Studies of Reading, 27, 253 - 271.

Hanna, P. R., Hanna, J. S., Hodges, R. E., & Rudorf, E. H. (1966). Phoneme-Grapheme Correspondences as Cues to Spelling Improvement, USDOE Publication No. 32008. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Joshi, M., Treiman, R., Carreker, S. H., & Moats, L. C. (2008). How Words Cast Their Spell: Spelling Is an Integral Part of Learning the Language, Not a Matter of Memorization. American Educator, Winter 2008-09, American Federation of Teachers.

Law, J. M. , & Ghesquière, P. (2021). Morphological processing in children with developmental dyslexia: A visual masked priming study. Reading Research Quarterly, 57(3), 863-877. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2022-02072-001

Levesque, K. C., Breadmore, H. L. , & Deacon, S. H. (2021). How morphology impacts reading and spelling: Advancing the role of morphology in models of literacy development. Journal of Research in Reading, 44(1),10-26 https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2020-47286-001

Levesque, K., & Deacon, S. (2022). Clarifying links to literacy: How does morphological awareness support children's word reading development? Applied Psycholinguistics, 43(3), 921-943. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/applied-psycholinguistics/article/clarifying-links-to-literacy-how-does-morphological-awareness-support-childrens-word-reading-development/8BA65B23729527F2C3377E7AAF1CC0F9

Liu, Y., Groen, M. A., & Cain, K. (2024). The association between morphological awareness and reading comprehension in children: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Educational Research Review.

National Reading Panel (2000). Teaching children to read, an evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction: Reports of the subgroups. Washington, DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. https://www.nichd.nih.gov/sites/default/files/publications/pubs/nrp/Documents/report.pdf

Perfetti, C., & Stafura, J. (2014). Word knowledge in a theory of reading comprehension. Scientific studies of Reading, 18(1), 22-37. https://doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2013.827687

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Thunder and Lightning: Sound and Meaning in a Morphophonemic Language

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The English spelling system, or orthography, is morphophonemic, representing linguistic information about how to pronounce a word (phonemic) and how to determine its meaning and usage (morphemic).

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Phonics Instruction for English Learners - Keys to Literacy

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This post focuses on instruction of phonics for English learners. English learners benefit from the same explicit instruction of literacy skills, including phonics, as native English speakers, keeping in mind the special considerations of English learners regarding oral language proficiency, vocabulary and background knowledge, and attention to addressing new sounds (phonemes) of English. A structured literacy approach to teach phonics should be used: explicit, systematic, cumulative, and diagnostic.

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