This is the reading instruction show.
I'm your host is always Dr. Andy Johnson.
The topic of today's podcast is this.
The science of reading advocates that we teach children to guess at words.
They're advocating a graphing phoning word guessing game.
Now, Tim Shanahan, Weasel Mott's,
Linnea Airey, Wilson reading systems, Horton Gillian, him profiteers,
science of reading advocates, the International Dyslexia Association,
and all the other plucky little phonyx penguins are advocating that we teach children to read
by guessing at words.
Now, let me explain.
Their skills first approach to reading instruction is based on the phonological processing model.
Sometimes called the simple view of reading.
This model defines reading as a combination of decoding and sounding out words and listening.
Essentially, you sound out words and then you make a guess and then you listen to the speech in
your head. And here's where the guessing comes in.
If you come to a word you don't recognize, students are taught to put all the sounds to the letters,
then put all the letters sounds together, then to guess what the word is based on the sounds.
This is nothing more than a graphing phonym word guessing game.
The phonics penguins are teaching children to guess at words.
And we've got to put a stop to this horrible, horrible travesty of reading instruction.
It's rooting America.
It's causing global warming.
Now, you can see this graphing phonym word guessing game take place by listening to children read
who've been hyper-foneticized. These are the ones who've been hit over the head day after day
with systematic sound and guess instruction to the detriment of any other kinds of reading.
They get so much sound and guess instruction that they come to believe that reading is sounding out
words and guessing and not creating meaning. So, during reading, of course, their sole focus
is on sounding and guessing individual words. You can see this during their oral reading.
The hyper-foneticized child will come to an unrecognized word and begin moving down the line,
moving down the line, putting a sound to each letter, putting the sounds together,
and then making a guess based on the letter sounds. This is the graphing phonym word guessing game.
The typical scenario goes something like this. The child is reading, then stops at an unrecognized
word. The teacher will say, sound it out, as if the child had never thought of that. And they'll
make a guess. Animal. Then the teacher will confirm or disconfirm the guess. That's right, Sam.
This graphing phonym word guessing game will take six to ten seconds. Then the child will
continue reading until that child comes across another unrecognized word and the graphing
phonym word guessing game will start again. And during this word guessing process,
the child is expected to engage in two cognitive operations simultaneously,
creating meaning and graphing phonym word guessing. But sounding and guessing takes a lot of time
and uses a lot of space in short-term memory, putting all the sounds to letters, putting
all the letter sounds together to make words, and making a graphing phonym guess.
But short-term memory is very limited. It can hold only about seven entities for about 15 seconds.
You can't hold all these letters and letter sounds, put them together, guess at the word,
and try to make sense of your reading all at the same time. It's just too much to do in a small,
cognitive space. So instead of creating meaning, the child focuses on what their sounder,
guesser's instruction has taught them to do, focus on individual letters and sounds.
Put all the sounds together and make a guess. This is preposterous. Yet this is what the science
of reading promotes. The science of reading is based on the phonological processing model.
This perspective is based far more on conjecture than actual science, but the science of reading
advocates still using the term scientifically based reading instruction, when in reality it
should be conjecture based reading instruction. Instead of the science of reading, they should
call it the conjecture of reading. The graphing phonym word guessing game. Now just some basic
things. The difference between real reading teachers and sound guessing teachers. Real
reading teachers teach phonics in a systematic fashion. Yes, they do. Now systematic instruction
is different from standardized one size fits all instruction. Systematic means they teach
letter sound skills as students are ready for them in meaningful context to the greatest extent
possible. Also they use direct and explicit instruction and they use some system to keep
track of what is taught and when students have mastered each letter sound. And they now students
have mastered the skill when they observe them using the skill in an authentic reading or writing
context. As opposed sound guessing teachers are given a list of letter sounds and patterns.
Sound guessing teachers start at one end of the list and march all students through the same list
in the same order whether they're ready for the skill or not. Advanced readers are moved through
this list a little faster and struggling readers are moved through the list a little slower so
that they can catch up. Real reading teachers create activities to develop all three queuing
systems so the child doesn't have to guess at words. Instead the child can use three types
of informations to recognize words and create meaning. This is what real reading teachers do.
If the child is able to use semantic information, syntactic information, and graphophonological
information, that child is better able to recognize words and doesn't have to guess at words.
Instead the child uses metacognition to see if the unrecognized word makes sense.
Sound guessing teachers teach children to use only one source of information to recognize words,
graphophonological information. This leads to sounding and guessing.
Real reading teachers immerse children in real authentic reading and writing experiences
as soon as possible. The purpose here is to read and write for pleasure. Children do a lot of this
with real reading teachers. Hence they are able to practice their systematic instruction
in authentic reading and writing contexts. Sound guessing teachers believe that children need to
be made ready before they're able to read. So they're given a lot of fake books to read
with controlled vocabulary that sounds nothing at all like the language around them.
Dan the man sat on a fan. Look, look, Dan sat on a can. The can belonged to a man named Stan.
That's called a controlled vocabulary. Sound guessing teachers believe that children need
to be made ready to write before they're able to write. Any writing they do is these students
write words on worksheets. Real reading teachers do not teach children to guess at words like the
sound their guessers do. We focus on teaching children to create meaning with print. Now I'd
like to end with four points of clarification. And first of all, you'll have to admire those
plucky little phonics penguins who are so adamant in their opposition to anything other than sounder
outer word guessing instruction. Here's a bit of pin Guinery I recently came across.
The writer was very adamant and stating that the queuing approach to reading instruction
doesn't work. That's what the penguin said. The three queuing approach to reading instruction
has been debunked. She said it doesn't work. So clarification number one, there is no such thing
as a queuing approach or a three queuing method. The three queuing systems is not an approach to
teaching reading. It's not a method. It's not a technique. It's not even a strategy. But knowing
this will not prevent the penguins from stating this over and over again. The three queuing systems
in reading refers to the three systems the brain uses to recognize words during the act of reading.
As we encounter text, we use three queuing systems to recognize words, phonological,
semantic and syntactic. These systems work together to enable us to quickly and efficiently
recognize the words on the page so we don't have to guess. Second point of clarification,
reading programs that use only a phonics based approach develop the least efficient of the
queuing systems while ignoring the development of the two more efficient queuing systems.
The most efficient are the semantic and syntactic. The least is the phonological or the graphophonological.
Doesn't mean we don't address all of them. It does. But addressing just the graphophonological
actually makes it harder for children to learn to read. You're asking them to create meaning with
print using only one third of their word recognition brain. All students benefit most from instructional
programs that simultaneously develop all three queuing systems. Point number three, word recognition
and word identification are not the same. And this is the basis of a lot of confuser
rate going on. Again, recognizing words is different from identifying words. The three
queuing systems work together to recognize words, not identify words. Let me clarify.
Why? Recognizing words is when we encounter a word in print and we automatically know what it is.
We recognize it instantly. We don't have to process the individual letters and put them
together in short-term memory to form words. Identifying a word is when we encounter a word
in print and we don't recognize it. It's in the dictionary in our head or our lexicon,
but we don't immediately know what that word is. We don't recognize it. So we have to consciously
employ a strategy in order to identify it. We have to intentionally decide to use some sort of plan
or tactic to figure out what in the heck that word is. And there are four word identification
strategies. The first one is word parts or analogy. Looking for familiar word parts or patterns within
the words. Sometimes this is known as large unit phonics. More themic analysis. Looking for familiar
prefixes, suffixes, affixes, and roots within the word. Context clues. Looking to see what makes
sense within the sentence. And letter clues. Sounding out the letters and putting the letters
together to create words. We teach students to use all four of these strategies. And the fourth idea
related to what I just said. We teach the strategy to develop the skill. We teach the word identification
strategy, those four, explicitly using very direct and very explicit instruction. We teach this strategy
so they do it automatically. Teach the strategy to develop the skill. We teach and practice them.
All four of these strategies and eventually these cognitive operations become internalized
and automaticity is achieved. A strategy and a cognitive sense is something we consciously
employ. A skill is something that occurs automatically. We teach the strategy to develop the skill.
All right. This has been the reading instruction show. We've been focusing on the graphing,
phoning, word guessing game that science of reading advocates are teaching children. They're
teaching our children to guess at words and we must, must stop that.