“The more you read and study and experience life, the more words you add to that dictionary in your brain.”
“New information from cognition psychology demonstrates how having a deep level of knowledge of words in the brain-including how to hear them, say them, read them, and spell them correctly-turns out to be a very big deal.”
“The alphabetic principle is the understanding that each grapheme or letter (or in some cases a group of letters) must map onto a sound or phoneme. Children who understand the alphabetic principle know that letters represent sounds that form spoken words.”
“Rethinking reading instruction and increasing focus on word reading will also not replace contextual reading activities or other teaching that focuses on known important areas such as phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension; these are all vital elements of reading instruction. Rather, the discussions in this book are intended to add to your teacher knowledge and, most importantly, give you effective research-based tools to add to your current instructional practices to make your teaching more efficient and effective-to the benefit of all students.”
“Leading developmental theorists, including Linnea Ehri of City University of New York and David Share of University of Haifa, for instance, have written extensively on how children learn to read words, and they make a clear distinction between sounding out words (serial decoding) and rapid retrieval of words from memory by sight (sight word reading).”
“This differentiation between decoding (phonics) and visual word recognition (sight word reading) is reflected in models of skilled reading from cognitive science. Dual-route models of skilled word reading are descriptive models that account for how word reading proceeds via two possible routes or pathways.”
“the dual-route model includes a sublexical route (focused on units smaller than a word) that involves a serial letter-sound conversion and a lexical or orthographic route that recognizes words as wholes (Coltheart 2005; Coltheart et al. 2001)-in other words, two routes to reading.”
“Lexical and Sublexical. Sublexical serial decoding is what readers do when they decode a word using phonics or chunks of phonics patterns to “sound out” the word from beginning sounds moving on through to the ending sounds. It’s called sublexical because it involves breaking the word or lexicon into its smaller parts. A lexicon is the stock of words in a language. Lexical therefore refers to whole words, and orthography refers to the whole word’s spelling. A dual-route model includes both sublexical (phonics) and lexical/orthographic/whole word, sometimes called “sight word,” components. Both routes are needed for proficient reading.”
“bringing the whole word visual recognition route and the letter-sound conversion route together is a critical missing piece of instruction for making learning to read easier and more efficient through children’s acquisition of brain words. Remember, brain words are stored representations of spelling patterns, syllables, and words, linked by neural circuits to sound and meaning in a readers’ spoken language system.”
“It is important to point out that a word’s orthography, linked to sound and meaning, is what we call a brain word—a spelling pattern that is stored in the brain. We now know that for reading, spelling patterns stored in the brain are a very big deal. If the child can spell a word correctly, she likely can read it with comprehension!”
“word reading goes through consolidated-alphabetic phase, where the child begins to store longer chunks of letter strings in memory. For example, the two letters of at may be consolidated into one chunk /ăt/, making for easy analogizing from mat to cat, hat, fat, and sat. In this phase the eleven letters of interesting may be consolidated into four chunks: in-ter-est-ing. These chunks of letters and corresponding sounds are stored in memory leading to (orthographic) representations at the syllable and eventually whole word level, allowing for so-called sight word reading (Bhattacharya and Ehri 2004).”
“although the earliest phases of reading and spelling reflect reliance on phonologically based processes (sounding out to hear sounds in words and matching sounds and letters), orthographic knowledge (learned spelling patterns) becomes increasingly important as reading and spelling skills develop and the learner begins to rely on longer and longer strings of letters, stored in memory as chunks and eventually whole words. These are the spelling representations stored in the brain—the brain words-that are so critical for efficient writing and reading. Brain words are learned through experience with print and, as we will present throughout this book, spelling instruction offers an especially powerful mechanism to create accurate, high-quality brain words. These brain words are then available for a lifetime of use in spelling and reading.”
“It is important to remember that when we learn and store spelling in the brain, when we create brain words, these become linked to sound (i.e., pronunciation) and also to meaning. We use our preexisting knowledge-that is, our oral vocabulary-to anchor the spelling and pronunciation into memory. Charles Perfetti, a notable cognitive science researcher, describes this process as one of developing “lexical quality” (Perfetti 2007); here, quality refers to the accuracy of stored information for the spelling, the pronunciation, and the meaning and of the integrity of the connections between these components of word identity. And successful reading comes from having high lexical quality. When we encounter a new word in print, we need to store all three components; there needs to be attention directed to the spelling, the pronunciation, and the meaning.”
“research by Gene and others (Ouellette and Tims 2014; Ouellette 2010; Shahar-Yames and Share 2008) has shown that spelling practice is even more effective than decoding experiences in establishing these spelling patterns in the brain.”
“The ultimate goal of word study for all beginning readers and for all word types is to build a store of detailed and accurate spelling representations in each child’s brain—that is, to establish brain words. Continuing to add brain words through explicit systematic spelling instruction also extends beyond second grade to help achieve reading proficiency at higher grade levels.”
“The culmination of this research has been the identification of what is now referred to as the neurological reading circuit.”
“We are not born with the reading circuit already in place-it requires rich language and literacy experiences to develop to its fullest extent. This is why early childhood experiences, including early education and literacy teaching, are critical—they help shape the reading brain!”
“The neurological reading circuit foremost depends on the integration of known speech- and language-processing areas of the brain. These areas are activated through hearing and auditory processing. This is why phonological awareness is so important and why invented spelling is such a great starting point for children to match an auditory analysis with print.”
“The Word Form Area is believed to house the dictionary of word patterns and spellings that a reader has been exposed to and mastered. These are our brain words. Critically, these brain words are used in both reading and spelling (Purcell, Jiang, and Eden 2017). This is where chunks of letters or parts of words are recognized and where detailed, brain-based syllable and word representations are stored. As Richard describes, it is where readers see a word’s spelling in their mind’s eye (Gentry 2004). The Word Form Area completes the reading circuit and accounts for both skilled and deficient reading. It is the brain area that appears to best distinguish strong from poor readers and has been implicated in dyslexia (Dehaene 2009).”
“Researchers have repeatedly shown that learning to read results in observable changes to the reading brain and, in particular, to a stronger role of the Word Form Area and stronger links between the various brain regions involved in reading and writing. And this is built on a foundation of speech, language, sound-letter knowledge, and auditory/phonological processing.”
“Word reading requires decoding; decoding requires the integration of alphabetic knowledge, phonological awareness, and phonics knowledge/ skills to connect pronunciations to strings of letters in long-term memory. This integration happens in the child’s brain, linking letters, sound, and meaning.”
“Marilyn Adams in her groundbreaking book, Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning About Print (1990)”
“Even the most intensive teaching of phonological awareness is not enough to bring about the storage of accurate brain words. As described by William Tunmer and colleagues (1988), phonological awareness is “necessary but not sufficient” for learning to read (50).”
“Analytic Versus Synthetic Phonics. Analytic phonics begins with a whole word and the child analyzes its sounds and letters (whole to parts). Analytic phonics is sometimes associated with the practice of using the first letter to “guess” the word. Synthetic phonics begins with learning the letter-sound parts individually and synthesizing the parts by blending each part into a whole (parts to whole).”
“In summary, although phonics instruction in general has an impressive research backing, it is far from perfect, especially when it fails to teach brain words.”
“The Three Cueing System (Including a Caveat for Interpreting Running Records). A whole language interpretation of the three cueing system is that proficient readers rely on the interdependence between three cueing systems for word identification and comprehension: (1) semantic or meaning cues, (2) syntax or grammar cues, and (3) graphophonic or letter-to-sound cues. Some of the roots of the three cueing system harken back to Marie Clay’s early work in New Zealand with primary readers where cueing systems were assessed with running records (Clay 1979) and later to reading miscue analysis (Goodman, Watson, and Burke 1987; Adams 1998). Marie Clay’s monumental work called for teachers-especially teachers of beginning reading -to know their students well and keep records of their current reading behavior to see how they progressed over time. Teachers were to observe beginners move through leveled texts, and Clay was confident that well-trained teachers would be able to assess their progress and know when to move them to the next higher level (Clay 1991).”
“Hundreds of published peer-reviewed research studies have shown that skilled readers are able to rapidly recognize and read printed words, regardless of whether the words are presented in context or in isolation (e.g., Cunningham 2006; Landi et al. 2006; Martin-Chang, Ouellette, and Bond 2017; Wang et al. 2011). When new or difficult words are encountered in context, it is still the letter-sound associations that provide the first and most efficient route to reading, not the meaning or syntax from context.”
“Knowledge of Spelling Is the Key. As stated by researcher Marilyn Adams: “The best differentiator between good and poor readers is repeatedly found to be their knowledge of spelling patterns and their proficiency with spelling-sound translations.” (Adams 1990, 290)”
“Use Phases Not Stages. In the current scientific literature, the concept of developmental phases conveys that one phase may gradually move into the next-with adjacent phases possibly overlapping-so that a child may be in Phase 3 moving into Phase 4. Stages conveys a more stringent requirement, often implying a more immediate cutoff from one period of development to the next, as if climbing a staircase where you can be on only one step at a time (Ehri and McCormick 2006). We now know development is more accurately depicted as phases rather than as absolute stages.”
“Phase 0: Non-Alphabetic”
“Phase 0 word readers and writers are unable to use the alphabet. Phase O spellers may use approximations of letters, but they don’t know the letters of the alphabet,”
“In attempting to read words in Phase 0, the child does not use the letters in the word to cue reading because she has no alphabetic knowledge. The child may recognize a few words from memory when she sees them in the environment.”
“Phase 1: Pre-Alphabetic”
“Pre-alphabetic spellers use letters, but they do not know that the letters”
“represent the sounds of the word they are attempting to write.”
“With Phase 1 pre-alphabetic word readers, the letters are basically ignored. Phase 1 readers aren’t using letters to read words because they do not understand that letters represent sounds in the spoken word. They can’t decode, and just as in Phase 0,”
“Phase 2: Partial Alphabetic”
“Phase 2 writers and readers make a giant cognitive leap. They are beginning to see how the alphabetic system works! You will see them start using the alphabet to spell and even to read words by matching some of the letters to sounds in their spoken language albeit their knowledge of the system is limited.”
“The word reading is likewise limited to cueing on only some of the letters. Because processing spelling and word reading in this phase involves only part of the letters in words for both spelling and reading, Phase 2 is called partial alphabetic. Children in Phase 2 are unable to use full phonemic segmentation ability with letter matches for either spelling or reading words. These students need to further refine their phonological awareness and need more focused and engaged experience with print to continue their progress down the pathway to literacy.”
“Phase 3: Full Alphabetic”
“Phase 3 spelling in most cases is “a letter for a sound” spelling. With full alphabetic spelling virtually every sound in the word is represented, but the spelling is slow and deliberate. Often you can hear a child say the sound and then watch as he writes the letter for that sound in the word.”
“In Phase 3 full alphabetic word reading-cueing on a letter for each sound-greatly increases the volume of words children can read.”
“It’s important to remember that Phase 4 really jump-starts the express pathway in the Word Form Area, using consolidated chunks of phonics patterns for automatic recognition as children map to other words, including polysyllabic words for quicker and easier decoding.”
“These Phase 4 chunks include prefixes, suffixes, root words, onset patterns, rime patterns, and syllable patterns drawing largely from Anglo-Saxon derivations but even occasionally from Latin and Greek (Moats 2015/2016; Henry 1989).”
“Phase 1 Pre-Alphabetic Spelling (formerly precommunicative spelling): Expected no later than the first half of kindergarten. This is the “babbling” stage of spelling. Children use letters for writing words, but the letters are strung together randomly and you can’t read them. The letters in Phase 1 spelling do not correspond to sounds.”
“Phase 2 Partial Alphabetic Spelling (formerly semiphonetic spelling): Expected no later than the end of kindergarten. This is when spellers first know that letters represent sounds. They perceive and represent reliable sounds with partial sound-letter spellings. Spellings are often abbreviated, representing initial and/or final sounds.”
“Phase 3 Full Alphabetic Spelling (formerly phonetic spelling): Expected no later than the middle of first grade. Students in this phase almost always spell words with a letter for each sound. They perceive and represent all of the phonemes in a word, though spellings may be unconventional. Children in Phase 3 often use a technique called finger spelling to determine the sounds in a word, and they write a letter for each sound.”
“Phase 4 Consolidated/Automatic Alphabetic Spelling (formerly transitional spelling): Expected by the end of first grade. Children in Phase 4 spell words in chunks of letter patterns using their knowledge of phonics patterns. They may think about how words appear visually; a visual memory of spelling patterns is apparent. Spellings exhibit conventions of English orthography like vowels in every syllable, VCe and vowel digraph patterns, correctly spelled inflectional endings, and memory of recurring English letter sequences in chunks of phonics patterns.”
“Conventional Spelling (formerly correct spelling): Expected throughout elementary and high school. Children develop brain words over years of systematic explicit spelling study while expanding their vocabulary and spoken language system through reading and writing. In this phase, correct spelling is categorized by instructional grade-level expectations.”
“Once you have an understanding of the expectations within each developmental phase, scoring the students’ spellings becomes much more straightforward; in our experience, teachers tend to become familiar with the scoring process rather quickly.”
“Phase observation is a boon to early literacy success for spellers, readers, and writers and a powerful tool for reading teachers. Making the connection between spelling and reading is a transformational concept and a missing link that can lead to better reading and higher test scores.”
“A spell-to-read teaching approach promotes and integrates important foundational skills and develops and consolidates the routes to word reading along with the various processing areas of the reading brain.”
“Our spell-to-read, listening-first five-step sequence-Hear-It, Say-It, Write-It, Read-It, Use-It—can easily be incorporated into any classroom and builds a dictionary of key words in each beginning reader’s brain that will be available for a lifetime of use.”
“In Phase 1, kindergarten children begin to visually perceive and process alphabet letters-they learn to write their names, identify some letters, and even recognize a few words based on environmental cues. With appropriate reading and writing instruction the kindergartner’s brain begins to change some more.”
“The move to Phase 2 evokes further brain changes as alphabetic symbols (letters) start to be matched to stored representations for sounds and at the same time speech codes are being connected with pronunciations in the child’s spoken language along with higher-order language skills for sentences and comprehension.”
“In Phase 3, often in the first half of first grade, brain changes help children decode words with one-to-one letter-to-sound mapping and encode or spell words with sound-to-letter mapping as the sounding out route to reading develops.”
“Then the magic happens. In Phase 4 the developing Word Form Area begins to store phonics chunks and words for automatic retrieval. The chunks include high-frequency long and short vowel patterns, some affixes such as -s and -ing, at least five of the basic syllable types, and meaning-based word parts such as the in and to in into, the can and not in cannot. It’s in this consolidated/ automatic alphabetic Phase 4 that the Word Form Area begins to show up in neuroimaging and at the same time self-teaching kicks in (and that’s probably why it seems like “magic”), orthographic learning takes off, and the routes to reading become intertwined So that by the end of first grade (for some kids early in second grade) the complex reading brain circuitry is basically in place with a dictionary of chunks of phonics patterns and words: for end-of-first graders perhaps three to four hundred brain words are stored in their lexicon-their internal dictionary in the brain-that can be retrieved automatically for reading and writing.”
“In fact, students who read twenty minutes a day process a whopping 1.8 million words a year in the dictionary in their brains (Shaywitz 2003). In essence, every time students read a word, that word is re-presented in the dictionary in their brains, so the more they read, the more their vocabulary grows, optimizing their comprehension by igniting their connections between oral vocabulary and brain words.”
“Recall that lexical representations-stored word knowledge-consist of sound, meaning, and spelling.”
“In a nutshell dyslexia is a biologically based condition that makes it difficult for children or even adults to learn to read fluently and spell correctly. In laymen’s terms, the typical brain organization for reading and spelling does not function as expected in dyslexia even though the learner may be intelligent and in a stimulating environment. It’s important to remember that dyslexia is the most common learning disability and one that has a genetic component. If you have dyslexia, it’s likely that others in your family do too. We know boys are more likely than girls to be diagnosed with dyslexia although dyslexia is found in both sexes (Siegel 2006).”
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