Sharing Rambling, Resources and Recipes for Learning in Life

Sharing Rambling, Resources and Recipes for Learning in Life

Category: Science of Reading

RamblingsResourcesScience of ReadingUncategorized

How to Teach Phonics Based Reading

By AudreaLeave a comment

Just a bit ago, I was asked by a parent of one of the students I tutor, who is also a teacher, how I would teach reading.  Without hesitation I replied that I would start with the Six Syllable Types.

I read recently in an article by Keep Reading and Learning that “just under 50% of English Syllables are closed”.  50%!!  ANd that is just ONE syllable type.  When you teach children to decode the six syllable types, meaning whether the vowel is long or short or makes a special sound and what those special sounds are, you give them the tools to unlock the VAST majority of the words they will EVER encounter in reading. 

Within the syllable types there are a few additional rules and sounds to teach.  And outside of the syllable types there are things like broad vowel sounds, trigraphs, diphthongs and schwa to teach.  Although, some consider the schwa to be a 7th syllable type.

But, when you teach the six syllable types you are still unlocking almost all English words and you are doing it essentially by teaching 6 rules.  Once you teach these six rules to mastery you can sprinkle in a few more rules to help them with some “exceptions”.

Denise Eide, in her book, Uncovering the Logic of English, gives 31 rules that govern and explain all but less than 20 English words.  We are often told that English is so hard to read and write because it is full of exceptions.  And there are some exceptions.  But, when you realize that there are less than 20 true exceptions to the rules that govern our language it becomes a lot more manageable and it can give struggling readers and writers hope that they too can find success and enjoyment in our language!  31 rules may seem like a lot, but when you compare that to the alternative of memorizing thousands of words, 31 becomes a much more manageable number and makes so much more sense.

So, to recap.  I would always start by teaching children the six syllable types in teaching them to read (decode) and write/spell (encode) words.  If you are asking yourself what the six syllable types are, here is a list of them.  Closed, Open, Vowel Team, Silent E, R Controlled and Final Stable or Consonant-le Syllables.  I would teach them in this order as well with the possible exception of switching Vowel Teams and Silent E.  I will give a brief description of each syllable type below.  You can also download my All About Syllables printable to give you a definition and examples at a glance.

Before we dive into each syllable type, I want to point out a few other things to keep in mind when teaching reading that may seem like things everyone knows, but are actually things that should be taught to learners prior to trying to read or spell words.  Learners should be taught foundational facts like how many letters are in the alphabet (26), what kinds of letters (consonants and vowels), which letters are which, what makes a letter a vowel, and what kinds of sounds vowels make before you even talk about syllables and words.

For a letter to be a vowel it has to follow three rules.  First, it has to have a sound that you have to open your mouth to make. Second, the sound must be able to be sung (made continually without stopping). And third, it must be able to be sung LOUDLY and quietly.  If the sound of a letter floors all three of these rules then the letter gets to be a vowel.  This is why I always call y a consonant.  Its own sound cannot be sung, so I call it a consonant that sometimes makes a vowel sound.

Having students name all of the consonants in alphabetical order and all of the vowels in the same way as well as play games like you say a letter and they tell you the letter that comes next as quickly as they can without looking if possible, help to strengthen their knowledge of the alphabet and build their phonemic awareness which if one of the National Reading Panels five pillars of reading.

Once students can identify how many letters are in the alphabet, their sounds and type, then you can move onto defining a syllable regardless of type.  I have my students work through a phonics catechism which is just a series of questions I ask and memorized answers they learn and provide.  In that catechism we learn that a syllable is “a word or a part of a word with one sounded vowel”.  Because you have to open your mouth to make a vowel sound you can place your hand under your chin.  Then count how many times your chin moves when you say the word naturally.  Your chin will move every time you make a vowel sound because you have to open your mouth and each vowel sound equals one syllable.  Accurately counting syllables will again strengthen that pillar of Phonemic Awareness.

Now that your learner knows their letter sounds and types and what a syllable is, you are ready to start teaching them and practicing with each syllable type.

I always start with closed syllables because they are the simplest, although once you add in blends and/or digraphs (two letters that come together to make a new sound; ch, sh, ph, wh and th) closed syllables can become quite complex.  You can give you emerging readers and writers practice with all of these using my Closed Syllable Picture Labeling Bundle.  Also, remember that closed syllables account for about 50% of English syllables.

Simply put, and included in my Phonics Catechism, a closed syllable has “one vowel, ends in a consonant, and the vowel is short.”  It does not matter what comes before the vowel ONLY what comes after it.  So, at is a closed syllable even though it begins with a vowel because it ends with a consonant.  So are cat, splat and splash!

The syllable type that I teach after closed is open.  These two syllables are the simplest and learning them one after the other allows early readers to master the skills needed to unlock SO MANY words as well as the biggest reasons for when to use a short and when to use a long vowel sound.

An open syllable has “one vowel, ends in a vowel and the vowel is long.  Words in this group are words like the, he, so, and go.

At this point, if you haven’t already, you should be separating your letter cards as you practice sounds into beginning sounds (letters like l, k, f and s that aren’t usually spelled by themselves as ending sounds), medial sounds (vowels), and ending sounds (letters like x, b, d, t, m, n that can be used at the end of words in by themselves) and practice blending.  Then practice moving your reader back and forth between open and closed syllables by completely removing the ending consonant stack from time to time.  This makes the syllable that is left open because it now ends in a vowel and the vowel has to be read with its long sound.

The next two syllable types are really interchangeable in my opinion.  At this point it is about whichever one will allow your reader to access the most text.  You can teach Silent E and then Vowel Teams or vice versa.

A Silent E Syllable has “two vowels, one is the e at the end that makes the other vowel long”.  These are words like slide, date, note.This one is most often taught third in schools as a lot of levelized text includes silent e words.  One activity I like to do when teaching this syllable type is to use a worksheet of words or notecards with closed syllable words like slid, cut, hat on them and then a card with an e on it and have students notice the difference in reading cut and cute, hid and hide, or rate and rate.  This helps them start to notice this pattern as they encounter it in reading.  One rule you may want to teach at this point if you haven’t already is that c says /s/ before an e, i or y.  This is necessary for learners to correctly sound out words like ice, rice, mice, etc.  

A Vowel Team Syllable has “two vowels TOGETHER; when two vowels go walking the first one does the talking and says its name”.  The letter combinations I teach as vowel teams are ai and ay, ee and ea, oa and oe.  The nice thing when helping learners spell these vowel teams is that with ai and ay as well as oa and oe is you can teach that USUALLY ai and oa are found in the initial and medial positions in words and ay and oe at the end.  For ee and ea, I tell learners that ee is used most often and that the reason for the two different spellings of this sound is for the many homophones (words that sound the same, but are spelled differently and mean different things) that have the long e in them like peak and peek, see and sea, meat and meet.  For these words I try to teach students clues that help with the spellings as they come to mind, for example you EAT mEAT, you use two eyes to sEE and pEEk, so they are spelled with two e’s.

The last two syllable types are the least seen, but still very helpful to learn about for both reading and spelling.  They are R Controlled Syllables and Final Stable Syllables (also called Consonant-le Syllables).

An R Controlled Syllable “has one vowel followed directly by an r which makes the vowel make a special sound”.  These are the combinations ar, er, ir, or and ur.  Similar to the vowel teams two of these have helpful sounds that set them apart from the others and they are ar and or.  Each of these have a unique sound that only they make.  They can each make the /er/ sound at the end of a word in an unaccented syllable, but they are the only ones that say their specific unique sound of: ar = /ar/ and or = /or/.  The tricky culprits within this syllable type are er, ir, and ur.  All three of these say /er/ and can be found in all positions of words.  Again as with the /ee/ sound, one of the reasons for the variant spellings of /er/ is for the purpose of differentiating between homophones like fur and fir as well as turn and tern.  

The last syllable type I teach is Final Stable Syllables.  A final stable syllable has “a consonant-le”.  These syllables are the only syllable type that cannot be a full word on their own.  They will always be the last syllable of a root word.  There may be a word like handling that does not actually end in the c-le, but that is just because there is a suffix added to the end of the root/main word.  Some of these syllables are fle, cle, dle, ble, gle.  These words can have a closed syllable as in the word humble or an open syllable as in able come before them.

Some curriculums also will teach the schwa as a syllable type.  I teach this more as a variant pronunciation of the vowel sounds than a separate syllable type.  One reason to teach it as a syllable type is because the schwa sound depends on the accent of the syllable containing the vowel.  So, these are the syllable types that I teach, the order I generally teach them and the main set of rules that I start with when teaching a child to read.  I hope you find this post helpful.  If you do, please share it with other parents and teachers who would enjoy and benefit from it as well.

EducationRamblingsResourcesScience of Reading

Syllable Types, Part 2

By AudreaLeave a comment

In Syllable Types, Part 1, we talked about the 6 syllable types you will find in just about any article you look up, product you look for or purchase and in any phonics program you try. Today we are going to talk about 2 more types that are not always included. Even though they are not always included they are valuable to know about. These syllable types help with understanding the pronunciation of words and some more seeming rule exceptions that actually have an explanation or another rule they are following. These two types of syllables are Diphthong Syllables and Schwa Syllables.

It was interesting to me in thinking about this post last night and as I am writing it today to realize that although, I have always been taught about these syllable types in conjunction with learning how to syllabicate (diagram syllables) multisyllabic (2 or more syllables) words. However, 6 of the 8 types will be encountered by readers in single syllable words. All the syllable types except Consonant le and Schwa Syllables can be found in single syllable words. Cat is a Closed Syllable, he is an Open Syllable, white is a Silent e Syllable, meet is a Vowel Team Syllable, mark is an R Controlled Syllable, and boil is a Diphthong Syllable.

The Consonant le syllables are sometimes called Final Stable Syllables because they come at the end of words (final) and they are their own syllable (stable syllable). Since the C-le Syllable contains it’s own vowel sound, it is it’s own syllable, but none of them form complete words. Therefore they cannot be found in single syllable words. Schwa’s are dependent for position on accented syllables within a word. Therefore, to my knowledge no single syllable words would be Schwa Syllables. However, I do know that we as American’s get lazy with our pronunciation of vowel sounds within words at times and therefore may have created some schwa single syllable words based purely on dialect instead of English rules.

Okay let’s get to the subjects of the day, Diphthong and Schwa Syllables. I will discuss both of these individually. We will talk about what they are, why they are not always included in Syllable Type lists and how they effect readers’ decoding and pronunciation skills and abilities. First up, Diphthong Syllables.

  1. Diphthong Syllables

Diphthong Syllables are not always included in syllable lists and programs because not all programs, teachers, people, differentiate between diphthongs and vowel teams. Remember, a vowel team is technically a team of two vowels that follow the rule “when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking’ and says it’s name’. Vowel teams therefore would only include ie, oe, ai, ee, ea, and most programs would include ay here. I don’t love that inclusion because y is not a vowel. I would personally be more likely to include ue because both letters are vowels and follow the rule for the u saying it long vowel sound and the e being silent. I am honestly not sure why programs do not include ue, unless it is because it is not common. Another possible reason may be because according to some articles I have read, the e is in words like true, is not a part of a vowel team, but an obscure use of silent e because English words don’t end in u.

Merriam Webster defines a diphthong as “linguistics : a gliding (see GLIDE entry 1 sense 4) monosyllabic speech sound (such as the vowel combination at the end of toy) that starts at or near the articulatory position for one vowel and moves to or toward the position of another”. So, a diphthong has a sound that includes two sounds blended or glided over together, but not really a blend of the two sounds the letters would make individually as in blends like bl, tr, fl, etc. Also, there are still two different sounds instead of two letters coming together to make one new sound like digraphs sh, ch, ph, th, wh. Here are the most common diphthongs I think of; oi as in oil, oy as in boy, au as in sauce, aw as in saw, ou in sound, and ow in low or cow.

One thing to keep in mind about the diphthongs oi and oy are that they make the same sound. Another thing is that oi is generally at the beginning of or in the middle of words like oil and soil. Lastly, oy is generally at the end of words like boy or enjoy (en-closed syllable, joy-diphthong syllable).

With au and aw they again make the same sound like oi and oy. This time it is au that is typically found at the beginning of or in the middle of words like audit (aud-diphthong syllable, it-closed syllable) and sauce. And aw comes generally at the end of words like saw and slaw.

Ou and ow are the same as au and aw in respect to having the same sound and the second letter determines their placement in words. Ou is found in the middle of words like found and at the beginning of words like out. Ow is found at the end of words like cow and endow (en-closed syllable, dow-diphthong syllable). The unique thing about ow is that is has two sounds. It makes it’s traditional matching sound to ou in bow (bending at the waist as a sign of respect, pride or gratitude), but also a long o sound in snow and bow. So, this is one spelling that it is important to teach children both sounds for from the beginning. That way when they come to the word b-o-w, they can use both pronunciations and context from the text to determine the correct sound to use.

The most important thing to do in regards to diphthongs and growing readers is to teach them the sound or sounds for these letter combinations so that they will start to recognize then as a sound unit instead of two separate letter sounds. One activity you can use to help your reader start to recognize these letter combinations as a single unit is after a lesson on them have them find all of that combination on a page of a book they are reading or a printed passage or in a magazine or newspaper. You can just have them find as many as they can for 1 minute, so it doesn’t become a huge laborious task. And, if you are using an authentic text (one you are reading anyway or a magazine or newspaper) instead of a decodable text (one devoted to specific letter or letter combination sounds) they may not find any. That is okay, just looking for them will help them make the connection to look for and see these letters as one letter sound unit.

The importance of knowing that diphthong’s form a syllable is that it reiterates to readers that every sounded vowel is a syllable. Syllabicating words with diphthongs in them helps readers become more fluent in recognizing these letter pairs (all of them have two letters as the root di- at the beginning of the word shows. Di- means two.) Fluently recognizing these letter combinations and being fluent in knowing their sound or sounds will greatly aid you growing reader as they encounter longer and more complex words in their reading journey.

2. Schwa Syllables

Schwa Syllables are syllables when the single vowel in the syllable makes a distorted sound. The sound it makes is the short u sound of /uh/. This can happen with any vowel. To be completely honest schwa’s are very complicated to explain thoroughly for me. That is because the placement of a schwa sound has to do with accented and unaccented syllables. I think that it is very valuable to teach young children about accented and unaccented syllables. I think it is less helpful to try to teach older, struggling readers. The reason behind this is that young children can learn new things easily, in most cases, and can therefore, most likely, be taught to hear the accent in words fairly easily. However, for older people like myself or my middle school students who have not been exposed to accented syllables and have not been trained from an early age to hear the accent, it can be VERY difficult to learn.

Different ways to syllabicate the word banana.

The most critical thing to teach students about the schwa syllables and schwa in general is again the sound it makes. That way growing readers have another option for when they are decoding (sounding out) unknown words and the actual vowel sound as dictated by the syllable type (open or closed) doesn’t work. For instance in the word banana, you can syllabicate it a few different ways, ban-an-a, ba-na-na, ba-nan-a. According to open and syllable types and the vowel sounds each uses (closed syllables have 1 or more consonants after the vowel and use short vowel sounds, open syllables end in a vowel and use long vowel sounds), the pronunciation of the word changes based on which syllabication you use. The first option, ban-closed, an-closed and a-open would be pronounced ban-an-ay, not how we say the word. The second option, ba-open, na-open, and na-open would be pronounced bay-nay-nay, still not how we say the word. The last option, ba-open, nan-closed, and a-open would be pronounced bay-nan-ay, our last option (and the correct one), but still not how we say the word. Insert schwa syllables and we can finally get to the correct pronunciation. Because the middle syllable is accented (said with more force) it is pronounced correctly as a closed syllable with a true short a sound. However, the unaccented first and last syllables both use the schwa sound of /uh/ for the a. Therefore, we finally get our pronunciation of the word as buh-nan-uh. And the syllables are ba-schwa syllable, nan-closed syllable, a-schwa syllable.

To review, our last two syllable types are diphthongs and schwas. These are most important in helping readers have additional sounds for decoding (sounding out) words. Both of these syllable types are important and I believe that they should be included when teaching syllable types. How deep you go beyond the sounds of the diphthongs and the schwa depends on the needs of your readers and the complexity of the texts they have progressed to.

If you have taught these syllable types to your child or class, how did it go? If you found this information helpful please like this post! Please share your thoughts and experiences below so that we can continue to learn together!

EducationRamblingsResourcesScience of Reading

Syllable Types, Part 1

By Audrea2 Comments

According to different programs there are always 6 different syllable types, but there can be as many as 8. The six basic syllable types are Closed Syllables, Open Syllables, Silent e Syllables, R Controlled Vowel Syllables, Vowel Team Syllables and Consonant le or c-le Syllables. Other programs add Diphthong Syllables and Schwa Syllables. Today we will discuss what each of the basic 6 syllable types are and why knowing them is important to helping learners on their reading journey.

First let’s talk about what the syllable types are and what they mean to reading. The syllable types are simply a way of identifying the role of the vowel in each syllable and informs the reader of which vowel sound to use in each syllable. It will tell the reader if the single vowel is long or short. It also tells the reader which of two vowels are sounded if there are multiple vowels in a syllable. The last thing it tells the reader is if the sounded vowel makes a sound that is different from it’s long or short sound as in the case of c-le, r controlled, diphthong and schwa syllables. Now we will talk about what each of the basic 6 syllable types are.

  1. Closed Syllables

The first syllable type children learn to read are closed syllables. This is because the first kind of words children are typically taught are CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) words. These are the most basic form of closed syllables. A closed syllable is simply a syllable that ends in a consonant. A lot of people remember what a closed syllable is, by remembering that the vowel is closed in by a consonant. This syllable type always uses the short sound for the vowel in the syllable. It is a syllable with a single vowel that is followed by a consonant. Simple examples of this are am, cat, get, and hut. This rule for a closed syllable using a short vowel sound is the reason for some otherwise seemingly extra letters in words like letters. It may seem redundant to have two t’s in the word letters until you realize that the syllable break comes between the two t’s and if there was only one t then it could change the word to having a long e sound and then the pronunciation would change to match the word liters.

To review, a closed syllable is a syllable with one vowel that is followed by one or more consonants. Some more examples are in, kit, snack and the first syllable FIDdle.

2. Open Syllables

The next syllable type children are typically taught is open syllables. They are the opposite of closed syllables. In these syllables the last letter is a vowel. So, these syllables are often remembered as the vowels being open to say their names (long sounds). Remember you can use whatever terms you would like to use to help your individual learner or learners remember these syllable types. But, be careful to call things by their proper names as often as possible (long sound instead of a vowel saying it’s name) to help your learner progress faster and have fewer “new” things to learn. I discuss this idea more thoroughly in my post on Silent e.

3. The third syllable type we will discuss is Silent e Syllables.

Silent e syllables are syllables that have an e at the end of the syllable that make the other vowel in the syllable make it’s long sound as in the words make and hike. One thing that can be kind of tricky for learners when they are syllabicating with Silent e Syllables is that sometimes, when the Silent e syllable comes at the beginning or the middle of the word (when it is not at the end of a word), the e may get dropped. This depends on what comes after the Silent e Syllable. These are still Silent e Syllables even though the e is missing like the middle syllable in misTAKen, or the first syllable in LIKing.

4. R Controlled Syllables

R controlled syllables are syllables that have a vowel follwed directly by an r. Whenever a vowel is followed by an r it makes a different sound than it’s long or short sound or sounds (remember a makes two short sounds, /a/ as in cat and /o/ as in all, and u makes two long sounds /U/ as in cute and /oo/ flute). The trickiest part of r controlled vowels is that three of them make the same sound. This actually simplifies things for reading, but it complicates spelling a bit. er, ir and ur all say /er/ as in fern, bird, and urn. ar and or are easier to remember and distinguish because they generally have their own unique sounds, ar says the sound /are/ and or says the sound of the word it spells /or/. There are sometimes like in the words, word or world, when or says /er/ like er, ir and ur. But, generally, these two r controlled vowels have their own sound. Once your reader has mastered their letter names and sounds it is a good idea to start teaching them the sounds of the digraphs (two letters that come together to make a new sound) wh, ph, sh, th and ch, and the r controlled vowels along with other letter combinations that make specific sounds that are separate from their individual sounds.

5. Vowel Team Syllables

Vowel teams are two vowels that are side by side that follow the rule of, when two vowels go walking the first one does the talking and says it’s name. (Okay, I know, more cutesy stuff, I told you it’s a hard habit to break!!) There are only 6 true vowel teams, although some programs include some diphthongs (letter combinations that include vowels that make a different sound like oi, oy, aw, ow, au, and ou) in their vowel team list. The 6 true vowel teams are ai, ea, ee, ie, and oe. You will find words like said, head, and cutie that bring up either exceptions or other rules for these letter combinations. But these combinations typically follow the rule of the first vowel being long and the second vowel being silent as in mail, sea, see, pie, and toe. So, teaching your reader that these teams make one sound and that sound is the long sound of the first vowel is a reliable reading rule for them to lean on.

6. Consonant le Syllables

Consonant le Syllables are found at the end of words and I have heard them actually called final stable syllables. This syllable type falls into one of those lesser known reasons or rules for a Silent e that I mentioned in that previous post. These syllables actually have a distorted or schwa vowel sound to them. The vowel sound for all of these is a short /oo/ sound. Words like stable, wobble, fiddle, indelible have a consonant le syllable as their final syllable. This syllable type will only be found at the end of multisyllabic words as they cannot stand alone as their own word and they always occur at the end of a word. The only possible exception to these being at the end of a word would be if a suffix has been added after it or it is a compound word like stablehand.

Although, some programs include the two other syllable types of Schwa and Diphthongs and I certainly think they are worth discussing, I will save them for another post. This one covers the 6 basic syllable types and includes a lot of information to digest in one sitting. I also plan to do a post on how to syllabicate or diagram syllables within words to help your reader decode longer and more complex words.

EducationRamblingsResourcesScience of Reading

C vs. K; Unlocking the Spelling Mystery with the C and K Rules

By AudreaLeave a comment

The sound /k/ is one of the sounds with the most variants in it’s spellings. You can spell this sound using a c or a k or the letter combination of ck. That can make it seem very complicated to know how to correctly spell this sound. Fortunately there are rules to help guide us to know which spelling to use when.

We will start with c. You can use the letter c to spell the sound /k/ which is called the hard sound of the letter c at the beginning of words or the end of words. It can be used at the beginning of words when the letter coming after the /k/ sound is an a, o, u or any consonant. Some words that show this are cat, cot, cut and crash. You can use it for the /k/ sound at the end of words, but generally only after the short i sound as in the suffix -ic in the word iconic or in a words like epic. One of the best ways I have seen to remember the times to use c for the /k/ sound at the beginning of words is a drawing of a cat. Cat starts with a c because the next letter is an a. In the picture of the cat, the eyes are a’s, the nose is an o and the mouth is a u. The collar on the cat has the word consonants on it. Below is a picture of the cat that has everything but the consonant collar. I downloaded this picture as a free download from Ashley Ann on Teachers Pay Teachers. And here is a link to a sort that I have in my store, Basics Rethought, at Teacher’s Pay Teachers for students to use for practice or as proof of mastery after learning about the rules for both c and k at the beginning of words.

Use c to spell /k/ before an a, o, u or any consonant!

The letter k is used to spell the sound /k/ before an e, i or a y. Examples of this are key, kite, and the name Kyle. The best way that I have seen this represented is with a kite. I am posting a photo of the kite below, again from the free download from Ashley Ann on Teachers Pay Teachers. The reason we must use a k to spell /k/ before these letters is because when c comes before the letters e, i, and y, it makes it’s soft sound /s/ instead of the /k/ sound. Examples of this are city, center and cyclone. This information needs to be taught to students with the above information about using the letter c to spell /k/ at the beginning of words before students are ready to use my c/k Picture sort. K is also used at the end of words when the /k/ sound follows a consonant sound or a long vowel sound like in trunk and meek. K is also the spelling for /k/ in silent or magic e words as in make or like. This is because when c is followed by a silent e it makes it’s soft sound of /s/ instead of the hard sound of /k/ as in mice.

Use the letter k to spell /k/ before an e, i or y.

Our last rule to talk about today is for using c and k together to spell the /k/ sound. -ck is used to spell the /k/ sound at the end of one syllable words when it comes directly after a short vowel sound as in the word duck. This is the reason you will often see a hyphen in front of -ck on Phonics cards or in teacher’s manuals or writings about Phonics. The hyphen stands in for the rest of the word that would come before the -ck since -ck is only used at the end of words.

That’s it!

Use c to spell /k/ at the beginning of words before an a, o, u or any consonant.

Use k to spell /k/ at the beginning of words before an e, i, or y.

Use c to spell /k/ at the end of words following the short i sound.

Use k to spell /k/ at the end of words after a consonant or long vowel sound or in a silent e word.

Use -ck to spell /k/ at the end of one syllable words directly after a short vowel sound.

Please share how it goes teaching these rules to your learners! If you have specific questions I can help, with please comment below. If you find this post helpful in teaching your reader please like or comment below! Thanks for reading this, happy reading AND happy teaching!!

EducationRamblingsResourcesScience of Reading

Phonics, the base of it all!

By Audrea2 Comments
Yes, they did their own hair this day! They were SO excited to do Phonics together today!

Phonics is the first step that all of the oral work with language takes toward building a strong relationship with written language. The word phonics is based on the root phon or phone which means sound. You may remember from my post on Phonemic and Phonological Awareness that the suffix -ic means “having to do with or in regards to”. That means at its “root” (pun intended!!) Phonics just means having to do with sound. And that is what it is. It is teaching children what sounds each letter makes. ALL of the sounds each letter makes (long and short vowel sounds, soft and hard c and g sounds, or multiple sounds for a digraph). It is also what sounds different digraphs, trigraphs, quadgraphs, diphthongs, and vowel teams make.

Here is some more information about what each of those letter combinations are. Di-, tri- and quad graphs are just letter combinations that make a new/different sound. Di is a root that means two, so these are the two letter combinations of sh, ch, wh, and ph. Tri means three so that includes combinations like igh, tch, dge. Quad means four so that means a four letter combination like eigh. Diphthongs are vowel or vowel and consonant combinations that make a blended or new sound. Some examples of these are ou, ow, oi and oy. Vowel teams are two vowel combinations that follow the rule of “when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking and says its name”. The term vowel team is used for various combinations in different programs and trainings, but to me there are only 6 true vowel teams because they include only vowels and they follow the above rule. They are ea, ee, oe, oa, ai, and ie.

Once learners have mastered with BOTH accuracy and automaticity the sounds of the letters, they can start using their Phonemic Awareness skills to put those sounds together to sound out AND spell words. This is a key thing to remember. True phonics should include instruction in both decoding (reading) and encoding (spelling) words. Learners do not have to have all the letter combinations mastered before starting to use phonics to read and spell. In fact they can begin using their Phonological skills to read and write as soon as they have mastered with accuracy and automaticity as few as two letter sounds like /a/ and /m/ or /o/ and /n/. As learners are working on and mastering their letter sounds they should be using them to read and write as soon as possible. Doing this will help their learning in two ways. First, it will help them see the value of what they are learning and help them remain engaged in the learning. Second, it will help ingrain their learning deeper as they practice applying their new knowledge in different ways.

This is essentially all that Phonics is. It is teaching learners explicitly the sounds that go with each letter symbol and then giving them as many and as varied opportunities to use/apply that information in BOTH reading and writing. There are just a few more things I would like to mention though, that strengthen a good phonics foundation.

One of those things is the rules that govern many of the sounds letters make. Although, typically these rules are more important for spelling, they do affect reading skills as well. One of the rules that affects reading is the type of syllable you are reading. A closed syllable (one that ends in a consonant) uses a short vowel sound. An open syllable (one that ends in a vowel) uses a long vowel sound. Recognizing and understanding this will help readers gain efficiency because they no longer have to try both vowel sounds, they can just read the correct sound the first try. There are between six and eight syllable types depending on the program you are using or learning from. Each of these syllable types gives specific information to help with reading and spelling. A strong foundation in Phonemic Awareness is again important here because it will allow children to know where words break between syllables. Other rules like an a says /o/ when it follows a w or comes before an l, help with both reading and spelling. Words like want are no longer just sight words, they are words that follow a specific rule. This is an example of how, although there are certainly exceptions to the rules in the English language, there are fewer than many of us think or thought, once we learn the rules that govern our language. I am only now starting to feel like I know about more of these rules than I don’t thanks to a mentor of mine who is a Dyslexia interventionist and whose original degree was not in teaching, but in English itself. It is vital that there is instruction in these rules that govern our language within Phonics instruction to ensure students can read AND spell unknown words based on rules and sounds, not just the words included in the lessons or weekly spelling list or the word list in the back of their decodable reader.

The other is the VITAL importance of teaching spelling as a part of Phonics instruction. Yes, this series of posts is about the pillars of Reading, but without using Phonics for spelling you are taking half of the equation and ability from the learners. Students will progress more quickly with reading the letter sounds they are being instructed in than they will in spelling them. However, once they have mastered letter sounds and practiced applying that knowledge in reading they need to be given the opportunity and expectation to use that same knowledge in writing/spelling. If they cannot use the known letter sounds correctly and consistently in spelling and writing, both scripted like a spelling test and free like journal writing, it should not be considered a mastered skill and more practice must be given.

Here are some things to remember about Phonics:

It is the explicit instruction of letter and letter combination sounds

It must include application practice in BOTH decoding/reading and encoding/spelling

It must include instruction and drill of the rules that govern which letter/letter combination sound OR letter/letter combination to use when spelling a sound (i.e. both ch and tch say /ch/, but are used in different words and places in words)

If you have any great tips to share about teaching Phonics to your students please share in the comments so that we can all learn from you! What has been your best resource for learning the rules that govern our language? What questions do you still have about Phonics? I look forward to hearing from you.

EducationRamblingsResourcesScience of Reading

Fluency, Everything is Coming Together!

By AudreaLeave a comment

As I dive more and more into the Science of Reading, I am actually surprised that fluency remains one of the pillars for reading. Before you jump to conclusions that I’ve lost my mind or any understanding of what reading has to accomplish to be successful, let me explain.

First, I would like to say how grateful I am for the chance to write these posts. What started as a way to help readers, specifically my sister, understand more about reading as they work to help children learn to read, has become a way for me to understand reading better and organize my thoughts more about it. Writing these has helped bring more clarity to each piece of reading and the way they fit together and I am SO grateful. Having that clarity gives me more focus and the combination of the two will help me to do a better job of helping my daughters and my students traverse the sometimes rocky terrain of reading.

Back to fluency and explaining my thoughts on why it seems odd as a pillar of reading. First, why I think it remains a pillar. To be sure you must be a fluent reader to comprehend well. Fluency is also what takes reading from a lesson or a chore to a pleasure and an adventure. And these facts are, I’m sure, the reason it IS one of the five pillars of reading. The reason I say I am surprised that it is left as a pillar is that the more I read and learn about the Science of Reading, the more I realize that fluency is a byproduct of accuracy and automaticity of the foundational skills of reading.

To kind of paint a picture of this, I find it helpful to think of Scarborough’s Reading Rope which is based on the Simple View of Reading. The Simple View of Reading says that reading is made up of two parts: decoding and language comprehension. Decoding is a blend of Phonemic and Phonological Awareness. As a learner becomes accurate and automatic in both of these skills, they become a quick and efficient Orthographic Mapper. Once they become an efficient orthographic mapper, they build a larger and larger sight vocabulary and reading becomes more and more effortless. This then adds the third element of decoding which is sight recognition. This would reach by many definitions or assessments fluent reading. Strength in these three areas alone would give students a high score on tests like DIBELS ORF, it would aid them in the timely completion of STAR and MAP tests. But, without the other half of the simple view of reading, all of these abilities come to naught. That is because if all the learner has is decoding fluency then they cannot understand or remember or apply anything they read. Reading has become almost rote memorization. To me this drains reading of all of it’s color, drama and interest. It truly just becomes the job that so many struggling readers see it as. Interestingly enough, most struggling readers see it as a dreary chore, not because of a strength in decoding alone, but rather a deficit in decoding even if they have a strength in Comprehension. This leads us to the other half of the Simple View of Reading.

The second part of the Simple View of Reading is Language Comprehension. Now, like was discussed in my post on comprehension, comprehension is truly the understanding of BOTH what one reads AND what one hears. That is why it is called language comprehension in this view and not reading comprehension. According to Scarborough’s Rope, Language Comprehension is made up of background knowledge, vocabulary, language structures, verbal reasoning, and literacy knowledge. As you can see very little of this comprehension is actually based on reading. Rather it is based on talking. That is why when a teacher is trying to help students grow in comprehension their lessons must include lots of conversations. It is also why we need to facilitate conversations with our students, with our children at home, with our nieces and nephews and grandchildren. The more they talk and the more words they are exposed to in conversation, the greater their reading comprehension will become. This is because they then already have a foundation of strong knowledge of word meanings. Then as that Comprehension or knowledge of meanings is mixed with their decoding skills of Phonemic and Phonological Awareness and Orthographic Mapping then a reader is truly FLUENT. They are able to read accurately, with a natural rate of speed AND with the appropriate expression based on their understanding (comprehension) of the text.

Here’s a recap. Fluency remains a pillar of reading because without it reading doesn’t work. However, it is a pillar that, even more than the others, CANNOT stand alone because it is gained only through the development and success of the other pillars. Therefore, fluency rarely if ever needs to be targeted for remediation or intervention. It will naturally occur as you strengthen the other skills necessary for reading. It stands as a good example and important reminder that NONE of these pillars are meant to be alone. There are five pillars because the institution of reading cannot be held up by any one of them. If a learner is only strong in one, then that part of their reading will stand tall, but it will always be skewed as the other parts fall and slide and slant every which way. Fluency sets the example and the is the final marker of how reading is the coming together of five key parts to create one whole and balanced reader!

Happy reading! Let me know of any examples you have of seeing fluency grow, not from explicit fluency instruction, but from a learner growing either in a deficit pillar skill or in all of them simultaneously. I look forward to hearing your success stories, both to learn from you and to celebrate your victories!

EducationRamblingsResourcesScience of Reading

Comprehension, the Last Building Block!

By Audrea1 Comment

Comprehension is the last bit of knowledge and ability to be or become a strong reader. It is last because if a learner does not have an accurate AND automatic foundation in both Phonemic Awareness and Phonics or Phonological Awareness then they will not be able to read fast enough to remember what they have read. Or if they are able to read fast enough, but the majority of their brain power is going to figure out what the letters on the page are actually saying, they will not have the mental energy to put into discovering the meaning of what they are reading. It is still one of the main building blocks of reading because it is vital for reading success. After all if you can read anything and read it quickly, but then can remember or tell nothing about what you read, what good is it!?! Simply put, comprehension is the ability to recall and understand something. In our case the ability to remember and understand something we have read.

This pillar of reading is the one I feel the least knowledgable about. It’s the one I feel the least competent to help students with. However, I am developing a greater knowledge of it as I learn more about the other pillars of reading and as I teach more students how to read. I also think that one of the reasons it is so hard to help my middle school students with it is because, for them, reading has become this completely compartmentalized thing. The phonemic awareness and phonological parts have been so hard for them for so long that they have spent all of their energy just trying to read/figure out the words on the page and they have never even really tried to understand those words. Also, some of how we teach and assess their reading has lent itself to this idea. Students develop a way of thinking that says you can read just to get the words off the page, but not to learn anything. But, if a child never reads just to get words out, like on a DIBLES test. Or if that is never the only kind of reading they do AND their reading often or always includes questioning or discussion of what was read, then they automatically have a habit of comprehension. And they realize that it is an expected part of reading.

I know that comprehension can be broken down into sub-skills like main idea, comparing and contrasting, summarizing, and more. And I honestly think, from my experience as a teacher, that this breaking apart of comprehension is what makes the overall skill of comprehending so muddy and hard to, well, comprehend. If a person can read a book and tell you all about it, if they can tell you what the author’s point in writing it was, some of the key parts and share their personal take aways from it, then they comprehended it. They may not answer one specific question about the book accurately, but still be able to do all of the aforementioned things. And, so again, even though their answer to that one question was incorrect, I would still say they were successful in comprehending what they read. But, if we break all of the questions down and label each one with a specific sub-skill of comprehension then all of a sudden because of one missed question there is a problem with their comprehension. All of a sudden, because of one missed question, this person can’t summarize or infer or whatever the sub-skill attached to the question was.

Partly because of this and partly because of my experiences with children, I feel like it is better to teach and work on comprehension as a whole. Then yes, if over time and looking at several different kinds of writings (articles, books, passages, essays, excerpts, poems, advertisements) you see a pattern emerging that shows that a learner is struggling in one area of comprehension, then you may want to focus on working only on that one sub-skill. However, if we are in the habit of teaching comprehension as a whole then we will be exposing learners to all the sub-skills of comprehension in a myriad AND multitude of ways. And that, the repetition and different types of exposure and practice, will be the best thing to get them to proficiency in comprehension as a whole.

I feel like we in education work hard to break every overarching skill we deem necessary down into as tiny of parts as possible. And I totally understand the thought process behind this. If all we know is that a learner struggles with comprehension, how are we supposed to fix it? Because maybe they can answer any question about the reading that was explicitly mentioned in the text, but anything that they have to figure out on their own is a complete mystery. Well, like we discussed in the above paragraph, we don’t want to unfairly say they can’t comprehend when really they just can’t infer. So, there are very valuable things that can be gained when we break big skills into smaller ones. Unfortunately, what I see happening is that we are not just breaking big skills into tiny skills to understand where a learner has gone astray, but we are also breaking big skills into tiny skills when we are teaching students. The result is that we now have 10 lessons to teach instead of one on a skill. Before we could have read a novel to the class and talked about main idea and perspective, about summarizing and inferencing and all the other things that go into comprehension as we read. Now, the teacher rarely has time to read a full novel to their class AND have rich discussion about what they are reading. And it’s this rich discussion that generates learning in all of these sub-skills! They don’t have time because they have to teach a myriad of mini-lessons on each sub-skill of comprehension. They may have to teach a main idea lesson with these 10 excerpt paragraphs. After that they need to teach inferencing with a Brain Pop video. They will also need to teach basic comprehension with recall questions on the Science article they just read. Then they will use summary to talk about the article they read next week. They’ll be waiting to summarize until next week because there are four more main idea lessons with excerpts that have to be taught this week, and we can’t confuse the students with too many skills at one time. The thing is that none of these sub-skills were ever meant to be a stand alone ability. They are just part of strong comprehension ability.

Therefore, I think that comprehension should be broken down into it’s sub-skills when assessing a student who is struggling with comprehension. BUT, I think that all of the sub-skills should be taught together in as organic (naturally occurring) of opportunities as possible.

The other big take away that I KEEP getting with each of these pillars of reading from the Science of Reading is the importance of spoken or verbal language in ALL of the pillars. It is no less important with comprehension. Before a student can comprehend what they read they have to be able to comprehend what they hear. I have encountered a very few students who have a much higher comprehension ability with what they read than with what they hear. BUT, this is rare and an exception rather than the rule. If you look at dyslexic students for example, who often struggle with and are behind in reading, their oral comprehension abilities are generally excellent and often far above their age or grade level. This means that although, they may have a terrible time reading a book and telling you anything about what they read (even a very short passage), if they listen to an audio book they can often tell you all about it, even if that book is above their grade level. This is also why young children can retell chapter books when they can barely sound out cvc (consonant, vowel, consonant) words like cat.

Remember, we develop our oral language before we read. AND we repurpose some of those language areas of our brain for the task of reading. That is why children should always be exposed to texts that are above their current reading and even learning levels. They need this exposure to scaffold their oral language development. And the more developed their oral language is, the stronger their foundation for learning to read and read well.

My current main take aways about comprehension are as follows. First, if a child struggles with oral comprehension they are likely to struggle with reading comprehension. Second, we must teach comprehension as a whole including conversations about things read by the students AND to the students that ask them to summarize, infer, compare and contrast and all of the other comprehension tasks. Third, as with all reading skills, oral language needs to be a large part of learners instruction in comprehension. We need to talk about what we read to them, they need to talk about what they read to themselves, and they need to read out loud. Fourth, without an adequate oral vocabulary, students will struggle with reading comprehension. And lastly, if students have not developed accuracy AND automaticity in Phonemic and Phonological Awareness they will not be able to read fluently enough to support their reading comprehension.

EducationRamblingsResourcesScience of Reading

Vocabulary, What It Is and What It Isn’t.

By Audrea2 Comments

Vocabulary is what most of us would think it is. It is the knowledge of the meaning of words. The difference from what I thought of as vocabulary and what I have come to think of it is how much oral language contributes to it. When I think of vocabulary I think of the vocab tests I took in school and that I have given to my students. However, I have come to understand that those types of vocabulary lessons and tests will have a limited impact on students’ vocabulary skills. However, a students’ oral vocabulary can have a big impact on their learning and vocabulary skills.

Just like the phonemic awareness skills that I have talked about in another post, vocabulary can be learned orally. As children learn to speak and they have conversations with their families and the people around them, they are developing their strongest vocabulary skills. If there is not enough conversation or the people they talk to have limited vocabularies, then their vocabularies will be limited too. This is why it is imperative that we force children to put their devices down and have conversations. They need to talk to each other and to their families and to their teachers. They need to research things they love and talk about them. They need to do book talks and describe the meaning of unknown words that they learn in their reading. This is because their oral vocabulary is the biggest indicator of their vocabulary skills. If a student has accurate and automatic Phonemic Awareness, accurate and automatic Phonological (phonics) Awareness and a limited oral vocabulary they will still struggle to map words efficiently. Because words are mapped by meaning, students who can decode words, but don’t know what they mean will struggle to map them quickly. They can still map them based on their knowledge of the meaning of the letter sounds and the reasons for the letters making those sounds. This knowledge and meaning will not be as useful as the meaning of the words themselves, though. However, if a student has that accurate and automatic foundation in phonemic and phonological awareness AND a strong oral vocabulary then they will grow their sight vocabulary much faster. This means that they will increase their fluency in reading much faster and efficiently.

This does NOT mean that there is no place for vocabulary tests, roots lessons and learning new words during Read Alouds, Book Studies, Science and Social Studies lessons. It does mean that we cannot rely on them for the building of students’ vocabularies. We need to build students’ vocabularies through class discussions, debate and life experiences and activities. We need to share with our students the value of face-to-face conversations. We need to draw them in by using big words and calling things like sounds by their actual names like phonemes. We need to call digraphs digraphs instead of just letter teams or pairs. Every opportunity you have to expose children to new words and meanings we must take.

The main takeaways are that vocabulary comes mainly through oral language and that we should do our best to provide our children and students with a rich oral vocabulary environment. When children or students have a limited oral vocabulary we can help them by providing these rich oral environments. We can still use vocabulary tests and roots lessons to build on what they know, but we need to remember that there is no substitute for having conversations! That is why we feel like we know that students or children have learned or mastered words when they start to use them when they talk. Vocabulary should be a never ending adventure in learning, there is always more to learn! Let me know some of the strategies that you have used successfully to help children grow their vocabularies!

Also, if you enjoyed this post you may enjoy these posts on the other pillars of reading:

Phonemic Awareness, What Is it and Why Does It Matter?

Orthographic Mapping

The Difference Between Phonemic and Phonological Awareness

EducationRamblingsScience of Reading

The Difference Between Phonemic and Phonological Awareness (as I see it)

By Audrea2 Comments

These two terms are often used interchangeably and they are related. However, they are not exactly the same. Some of the differences can be found or highlighted in looking at the roots within each word.

Let’s start with Phonemic Awareness. The root phono means sound. A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in language. So Phonemic Awareness is the awareness of all the small sounds that fit together to make words in our spoken language. Then, it goes beyond just hearing all of those sounds to being able to delete them or add new ones or move the sounds around in words. All Phonemic Awareness skills are based in oral language. They are aural skills, aural meaning “relating to the ear or the sense of hearing”. A person does not have to be able to read at all to be able to learn Phonemic Awareness skills. Phonemic Awareness skills include things like rhyming (identifying and producing), segmenting words into syllables (and being able to accurately drop syllables and know what portion of the word if left), segmenting words into individual phonemes/sounds, blending individual phonemes/sounds into words, deleting individual phonemes and knowing what is left, changing individual phonemes to create new/different words.

Then there is Phonological Awareness. Since this still has the root phono in it, it still related to the sounds of our language. It includes now the root logos though which means “reason, idea or word”. Phonological Awareness is taking the knowledge of and ability to hear the multiple sounds in a word and recognizing that each of those sounds are attached to some symbols in written language. These skills are the ability to sound out a written word by knowing which sound goes with each letter or letter combination in a word. Phonemic Awareness skills should be in place PRIOR to developing Phonological Awareness skills so that a person is only learning to match sounds to symbols and they already have the ability to segment, blend and manipulate those sounds once they are matched.

One MAJOR thing to remember about both of these skills is that they need to be accurate AND automatic! In education we have often fallen short with these skills by only teaching to accuracy. However, if it is not also automatic then reading is often still labored, slow and inefficient. When measuring automaticity in his book, Equipped for Reading Success, and his subsequent assessment, the PAST, David Kilpatrick sets the measure of automaticity as being able to respond correctly within 2 seconds. This means that when you are working on letter names and sounds and you show a learner the letter b and ask for the name they should correctly name it within 2 seconds before they can be considered to have mastered that skill. It also means that if you say time and ask for a rhyming word, that the a correct answer like lime should be given within 2 seconds to be considered to have mastered producing rhymes. This rule of thumb can be used for checking to see if learners have actually mapped words later on in their reading journey by showing a word you think they have mapped and asking them to read it. You will know they have mapped it if they correctly identify the word within 2 seconds without sounding it out. This idea of teaching to accuracy AND automaticity should be applied to all areas of memorization skills and many other types of learning skills like math facts, patterning, suffix and root meanings or even vocabulary word meanings.

EducationRamblingsResourcesScience of Reading

Orthographic Mapping

By Audrea2 Comments

In this post I am going to try to explain orthographic mapping. I will not be able to fully explain it because I am still adding to my understanding of it. When you read texts, books or publications from the experts in the Science of Reading, you may hear about a person’s orthographic lexicon and their sight word vocabulary. Understanding what is meant by those two terms will help you understand orthographic mapping a bit more.

First up, orthographic lexicon. This is simply an individual’s lexicon, which means a vocabulary (dictionaries are sometimes referred to as lexicons) of words that they recognize and can read on sight. They no longer have to sound them out, they recognize that string of letters as a word instantaneously EVERY time they see it. It is called an ORTHOGRAPHIC lexicon because ortho means right, correct or straight and the person reads these words correctly every time they see them. Graph means to write or draw, so again the person reads these words correctly every time they see them written. The suffix -ic simply means having to do with reminding us that the lexicon/vocabulary has to do with correctly read written words. So an Orthographic Lexicon is a person’s VOCABULARY or collection of words that they read CORRECTLY every time they see them WRITTEN down.

Secondly, we will cover what is meant by sight word vocabulary in the Science of Reading. If you have been teaching for any length of time you have likely heard of sight words. You may even remember learning “sight words” when you were in school. In these contexts “sight words” are actually just high frequency words. This means they are words that appear often in our language and if you can read these words you will be able to read the majority of texts you have to read. However, within the context of the Science of Reading sight word vocabulary refers only to a person’s orthographic lexicon, those words that an individual can read correctly and instantaneously on sight, regardless of context or font.

The process of getting a word from being a random string of letters to a word within a person’s orthographic lexicon is called orthographic mapping. The most enlightening thing about orthographic mapping, in my opinion, is that it is NOT based on sight. Unlike letter names and sounds that are learned by sight, we map words based on meaning. This is where that repurposing of language centers within the brain comes into play. When children or people are learning new words and orthographically mapping them (committing them to memory) they use the portions of the brains where the meanings and definitions of words are stored, not the sight parts of the brain. This explains why you may see someone familiar in the hallway, but not remember their name even though you can tell by sight that you know them. But, if you’ve orthographically mapped the word brown, you will automatically and correctly read it every time you see it. You won’t know it one day and forget it the next.

This understanding of the fact that we use meaning to get to words to “stick” instead of repetitions or visual/sight practice is the biggest game changer for me in understanding orthographic mapping. It means that if a child sounds out a word repeatedly, but has no understanding of the meaning of the word it will take longer to map the word. The meaning can be based on why the letters make the sounds they make in the word. For example, you may teach a student why circle has the /s/ sound for the first c (because it is followed by an i), but it has the /k/ sound for the second c )because it is followed by the consonant l). Or it can be based on the actual meaning of the word circle (that it is a round shape with no corners or sides).

There are several strategies that help readers map words more quickly. One is the use of sound boxes. This is particularly helpful for words that don’t sound like they are spelled like the word said. If you are using sound boxes with said you would need 3 boxes even though there are 4 letters. You only use one box for each sound regardless of how many letters it takes to spell it. The first box would be for the s that says /s/, the second box would be for ai that says /e/ and the third box would be for the d that says /d/. This strategy is actually to help students learn to spell words correctly. However, attaching the meaning of which sound is spelled with which letters can help the reader map the word more quickly. Stopping to discuss the meaning of a word that the reader does not know (how to read OR the meaning of) will also help with mapping. Thirdly, discussing the meaning of the whole sentence after figuring out a word that the reader could not read on their own, but knows the meaning of helps speed up orthographic mapping. A good reader needs 3-4 exposures to words to map them into their orthographic lexicon. Struggling readers need up to 20 or more. Studies have been done up to about 16 exposures, but then the difference in recognition starts to drop off so studies have not really been done on higher numbers of repetitions.

This is where and why having a strong verbal vocabulary is important to people as they are learning to read. As long as words remain simply strings of letter sounds with no real meaning to the reader, they will struggle to map the words and their reading rate (speed of reading) will remain slower. Another interesting thing to keep in mind before we leave this subject is that David Kilpatrick, one of the leaders in the study of the Science of Reading, says that we can work with young children to help them map words, but that mapping doesn’t really pick up until third and fourth grade. This is a tricky and possibly reassuring thought for some of our struggling readers in 2nd grade. It is vital that they have a strong and accurate knowledge of letter sounds and rules, but if they have a strong and complete phonics foundation and are still a slow reader it is likely that their orthographic mapping has just not picked up yet. This does NOT mean we should not be intervening for these students. It does mean that if speed is their only deficit, they may not be behind. Interventions should focus on phonics and phonemic skills to make sure that they are BOTH accurate AND automatic with all of those skills AND on building their verbal vocabulary through read alouds, class discussions and conversations. Their speed should be increasing. If it isn’t or if they are lacking in either ACCURACY or AUTOMATICITY in phonics or phonemic skills they need continued intervention on those things.