Headfirst - a blog for primary teachers by a first grade teacher

The Science or Reading has become a big buzzword in education in the last couple of years. But what does it mean? The Science of Reading is a body of research done over several decades. This research has been done by many different researchers in many different places. Collectively, some major ideas have been proven to be effective with regards to reading instruction. These ideas are being used now to write curriculum and inform teachers about how they can teach reading in the way that most students can learn.

As an early childhood educator, I am most interested in beginning reading instruction and what the research says about this. I was lucky enough to be LETRS trained this past year. If you get a chance to take this training, DO IT! I learned so much that I wish I had known earlier in my career. It was better than what I learned during my master's program in language and literacy!

There were things that I already knew and was implementing that were confirmed, and there were things I learned that I needed to change in my instruction. Here are my take aways!

THE most important part of beginning reading instruction is teaching phonics. It is how you teach students to decode the words. If you are not convinced of this, I'm sorry but you are wrong. The research is unwavering on this finding. If you find it boring and don't want to teach it, you need to go to a higher grade because beginning readers MUST learn phonics.

In addition, phonics must be taught in a systematic and sequential way. This ensures that students do not have gaps in their breaking of the code. We used to think the English language was so haphazard that phonics instruction was just one part of learning to read. Here is a quote from the "Logic of English" that dispels this myth:

When you hear 'systematic and sequential', this is what it means. In kindergarten through second grade, tier 1 (the whole class) instruction should include phonics instruction covering the following letters, sounds, and patterns. The scope will overlap year to year to ensure mastery of the concepts.

These are available in one file here: K-2 Phonics Scope and Sequence.

There are many good phonics programs out there. A few I know of are UFLI, Fundations, and 95% Group. I am currently using UFLI in kindergarten with AMAZING results. Although I will only teach through consonant digraphs, nearly all of my students are reading and spelling CVC and words with consonant clusters consistently. #teacherproud

Phonemic awareness research has been around since the 1970s. I learned about it in college in the early 1990s. It is often misunderstood, so here is a refresher on phonemic awareness and why it is important in early reading instruction.

Phonemes are the smallest units of language. They are the individual sounds that make up words. Different languages have different phonemes. At birth, we are wired to produce them all. But over time, as children are exposed to language, their ability to produce all the phonemes is reduced. This is why it is easier to learn a foreign language at a very young age than in high school as our school system currently does.

Typically developing children can hear and produce these phonemes but need to become aware of how they are made with their mouths and airflow and where in words they appear. Using a handheld mirror during phonemic awareness and phonics activities is very helpful. Speech therapists have been doing this for years but teachers are just now learning about this tool.

Reading Rockets is a great website created by teachers who work with struggling readers. Read more about phonemic awareness on their site here:

Basics: Phonological and Phonemic Awareness.

The gist is, students needs to learn that speech is made up of sentences, individual words, word parts (like syllables and affixes), and individual sounds. The sentences, words, and word parts learning is known as phonological awareness and the individual sound awareness is phonemic awareness. It is a small distinction, but important when you are teaching it to students. This is a great graphic from LD@school.

Dr. Michael Heggerty, a first grade teacher, wrote a commonly used phonemic (actually phonological and phonemic) awareness teaching manual in 2003 that has been used by many teachers, including myself. However, research has found that his materials were a bit of overkill. Each daily lesson covers several phonological and phonemic awareness concepts, probably designed to compensate for different levels of students. Research has shown that smaller time frames on specific skills are more effective than the 20-30 minutes Heggerty's materials would take.

The most effective part of beginning awareness is to be able to tap words out into individual sounds and, conversely, blend individual sounds into words. We first start with two sounds, then three, then four and so on. Rhyming, alliteration, and syllable devision are not as important as previously thought, so it doesn't make sense to spend a lot of time on these aspects.

Phoneme isolation is being able to hear and identify individual sounds. Standardized tests and screeners given to students often have a test that targets this. When looking for students with possible reading difficulties, this skill is a great predictor, even more than knowing letter names and sounds.

Recent research has found that combining phonemic awareness instruction with letters has an even more powerful impact. Here is a video showing that.

We have known for years that the number of books read to a young child before they enter kindergarten is the number 1 predictor of reading success. But WHY? The reason is listening comprehension.

The ultimate goal of reading is understanding what is read, also known as reading comprehension. We used to think that we could effectively teach reading comprehension right alongside beginning reading instruction. This is NOT true. The reading materials that beginning readers use are not suitable for increasing comprehension. They just aren't deep enough! Questions you can ask and discussions you can have on 'Jim got a big dog. The dog has a red dish.' are not rigorous. There is no reading between the lines.

Therefore, we must read TO children to improve their listening comprehension which will lead to good reading comprehension when they are ready to read text that is meaty enough to challenge their understanding.

Of course teachers have always known that reading to children was important, both at home and in their classrooms. One thing we need to improve upon though, is the kind of books we are reading and what we do in addition to just reading the words. Fiction is great and has many important uses in the classroom. However, it is overused. Children need to acquire vocabulary and knowledge to be good readers and that means we need to be reading a lot of nonfiction to them. Good readers have background knowledge to help them understand what they are reading.

Vocabulary expansion can be done in different ways but using books with rich vocabulary and teaching it ahead of time is a great one. Showing the word and having pictures explaining it give students a visual picture to attach the word to. Then when you read it in the text, remind them of what the word means. Having students use the vocabulary in their speaking and writing helps cement these words further.

After the whole language movement, teachers had a hard time giving up the idea that students learn to read using whole words, especially if they are harder to sound out. This led to the Balanced Literacy era which is still alive and well and being used in many schools across the country. Balanced--it sounds good. But don't be fooled. It has a teaching strategy that has been detrimental to many readers and has led our country to have disturbing amounts of high school students and adults who cannot read proficiently.

You may not have heard of the 3 cueing method but you may have or still be using it. When a reader comes to a word he doesn't know, he should Cue #1 look at the picture. If that doesn't help, he should Cue #2 say the first sound. If he still doesn't get it, he should Cue #3 say a word that makes sense. This 3 cueing system has lead to readers who don't use the sounds in the word to decode it. More often than not, they just guess. This works sometimes, especially if they are a good reader who is reading something beyond their level, and they are good at using context clues. However, beginning readers do not fit this profile. They don't have enough knowledge to guess correctly, and this leads to poor comprehension. They automatically guess and try to go on instead of attacking the word. The first and only cue we should be giving readers is to SOUND OUT THE WORD. To sound the word out, they need those phonics skills!!!

One component of Balanced Literacy that is still widely used are leveled readers. These books use a leveling system (that isn't very accurate) to put levels on books. The problem with these books is that they do not take phonics skills into account. The vocabulary is controlled, but they use many "sight words" and expect the pictures to help students figure out more complex words. At the beginning, these books are very predictable and sound like the child is really reading. However, they are not decoding the words, just memorizing what they say (or they think they say).

Instead of leveled readers, beginning readers need decodable readers. These can be books or passages or even just sentences that use the phonics skills they have been taught (and some sight words) so that they can practice sounding out words. This controlled vocabulary, as you can imagine, makes the text even less vocabulary-rich. Thus, these are used to practice decoding, and comprehension is best taught by listening to books.

This is just the basics of the Structured Literacy movement. Here are some books that I recommend reading to help you on your journey. And this podcast was AMAZING!