GLAD® and the Science of Reading V: Decoding

 There has been a lot of push-back in recent years about the Science of Reading and teaching phonics to English learners.

Not too long ago I attended a bilingual education conference. In one of the plenary sessions, the speaker pronounced that there’s too much emphasis on phonics. “We already know how to do that. There isn’t anybody who’s not teaching phonics!”

I couldn’t disagree more.

There are thousands of teachers, like me, who not only didn’t receive any instruction in our teacher prep programs how to teach foundational reading skills, but also work(ed) in districts who follow outdated models of reading that underemphasize or completely disregard teaching foundational skills. And this has been happening for decades.

I think that the push-back toward the emphasis on phonics instruction is a worry that it will replace or overshadow the other components of literacy and language instruction that multilingual students need.

The detractors of SoR have also spoken out against the various new laws in many states that focus on how reading should be taught and the myopic interpretation by districts how these laws are applied. They frequently make the point that it’s not all about phonics. 

However, I believe this early emphasis in the conversation about teaching foundational skills is because they have been ignored for so long. It’s the missing piece that we need to put back into our instruction. 

We can do that while also retaining opportunities for language development and oracy. Rather than silo language and literacy – let’s bridge them.

What does the research say about phonics instruction and ELs?

They need it.

Language is a collection of sounds that are put together to make words. Putting words in a certain order creates phrases and sentences that we can use to express thoughts in writing. All readers of English need to know the sounds and letters.

Research is clear that the best way to teach reading is through systematic phonics instruction. This is true for native speakers and multilingual learners. Those are just the facts, ma’am.

What doesn’t work:

Little to no phonics instruction

When looking at how time is allocated in many districts’ reading instruction blocks, grade level plays a big role. Even if everyone has a 90-min reading block, phonics will naturally play a larger role in 1^st grade than it will in 5^th grade.

Tim Shanahan offers a 30-40 minute ‘sweet spot’ for daily primary phonics instruction, and 15-20 minutes for word study and morphology in the upper grades.

“Often, even when they have a phonics component in the reading program, phonics can get short shrift because the teacher glides through the lessons so quickly little is learned. Remember, the point isn’t just to teach some sounds and pronunciations, but to teach students to decode – that means engaging them in trying to recognize patterns or sound out words or spell words or to write accurately from teacher dictation. Those take time.”

Too much phonics instruction

However, in the current pendulum swing of states mandating how schools should teach reading, some schools have interpreted these new laws with a narrow focus. The new problem in today’s schools have swung from underemphasizing to overemphasizing phonics instruction.

In the above example of a 90-minute reading block, it is important to note that foundational skills aren’t the only thing teachers should pay attention to. The other components of reading that we have discussed in this series are equally important -  word recognition, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

A 90-minute block of phonics instruction at any grade could have the unintended consequence of squelching kids’ desire to read. Let’s face it, that sounds pretty boring.

Dr. Christie Baird, Early Childhood Coordinator at OCDE Project GLAD® National Training Center explains, “A child needs the amount of phonics that they need. We need to do a better job at assessing when they have learned a skill and moving them along. Not every child needs 90 minutes of phonics a day at a remedial level.” 

3 cueing system

The 3-cueing system is a teaching methodology that has been around since the 1960’s. It advocates teaching students a system for figuring out unknown words from context, syntax, and sometimes using the first letter or two of a word.

The result is that students aren’t reading words, they’re guessing at words. Proficient readers use sounds and letters as much as possible to decode words. When teachers use the 3-cueing system to teach decoding, they unintentionally create poor readers.

What does work:

Culturally responsive orthographic mapping

Teachers have a rich opportunity to support students who are learning two languages simultaneously. Even teachers who are not dual language teachers can bridge two languages by making connections between the sounds of those languages and highlighting cognates.

Elsa Cardenas-Hagan, a bilingual speech-language pathologist and an associate research professor at the University of Houston, explains that English has twice the sounds as Spanish. Teachers can highlight for students which sounds are the same, then introduce the new sounds and link them to letters.

Cardenas-Hagan gives the example of a student trying to spell the word ‘boot’ as ‘but’. Instead of marking this as an error, it is an opportunity for the teacher to reinforce that the student wrote the correct Spanish vowel sound that is made with the letter u, then make the connection that in English that sound can also be spelled with oo.

Teachers need to do the work of knowing some connection between two languages. This will certainly be easier for bilingual teachers but even a few connections will honor students’ culture and identity as well as give mono-lingual teachers an asset-based view of what their students can really do.

 More opportunities for oracy

Many of the reading skills and instructional strategies that work for native English speakers work just as well for English learners. But in addition, ELs need more. It’s not enough to be able to decode the word. ELs learn best when the words can be put in context with the content they are learning in order to make meaning. Particularly for words with multiple meanings.

Think of how many meanings there are for the word ‘trunk’. Comprehensible input practices like, visuals, gestures, and multiple repetitions, along with sounding out the phonemes and teacher scaffolding for word meaning will help students orthographically map the word.

Research shows that for each new word a student learns they need to orally repeat it 11-85 times in order for them to own that word, where it can be retained with its multiple meanings in the correct context, and recalled at will.

Dr. Baird from the Project GLAD® NTC wants to see teachers incorporate more intentional opportunities for oral language development using developmentally appropriate practices. Children learn through play and whole-body movements. Students should be given opportunities to play with language as they practice it through multiple oral representations of words. Bringing chants, songs, and poetry into the classroom is one great way to do that.

What other strategies can OCDE Project GLAD® offer for phonics and phonemic awareness?

If you get the opportunity to attend an OCDE Project GLAD® Foundations training at the kindergarten or 1^st grade level, we encourage you to do so. There are many opportunities modeled to modify the GLAD® strategies for a primary class and incorporate phonemic awareness.

The strategies enhance any systematic phonics program a teacher may be using by integrating the language acquisition piece that is so important for our ML students.

Just one example of many is the ABC book. This can be used for phonemic awareness or phonics practice – it just depends how you sing the song!

ABC Book – Like all GLAD® strategies, the ABC book is linked to the content in a unit of study. The teacher starts by making a list of vocabulary words, one word per letter. Then, using a primary dot font that can be downloaded for free, make pages with the capital and lowercase letters in one corner and the word that starts with that letter in the other corner.

With the students on the carpet, the teacher models letter writing, students skywrite the letters, show pictures and do sketches of the word. And there’s a chant that accompanies each page.

            Big A, little A, (or capital A, lowercase A)

            What begins with A?

            Animals, animals, A, A, A 

If you’re working on phonemic awareness modify the last line of the chant:

            Animals, animals, /a/, /a/, /a/

The teacher then asks, “What other words start with the letter ____ ?” Write and sketch on the chart.

Later, teams or pairs of students will get their own ABC pages (only a couple per day) and they will write and sketch words they know that start with that letter.

If you want to see this in action, please join us this spring for Acceleration 201: Vocabulary Boost. The ABC Book is just one of several GLAD® strategies we cover to support vocabulary development and early literacy skills.

Thanks for reading,

Jody and Sara

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Sources:

https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/the-science-of-reading-and-english-language-learners-what-the-research-says/2022/04

https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/what-the-science-of-reading-should-look-like-for-english-learners-its-not-settled/2022/04

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/science-of-reading-the-podcast/id1483513974?i=1000577166740

 https://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/blog/a-gallimaufry-of-literacy-questions-and-answers

https://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/blog/three-cueing-and-the-law