Celebrating 20 years of Scarborough’s Rope

Today’s session will focus on the DECODING STRAND: Settled and Unsettled Science

Presented by LOUISA MOATS, ED.D.

LOUISA MOATS, ED.D.

• Lead Author of LETRS

• Author of Speech to Print

• Author of many journal articles, book chapters, & policy papers (Teaching Reading IS Rocket Science)

• Researcher, Consultant (semi-retired!)

• Insert photo please

Today’s Agenda

• Definitions

• Research support before 2001

• New evidence since 2001• Reciprocity with spelling• Cognitive & neuroscience research• Research on instruction

• Linking research to practice• What? For whom? When? How?

• Evidence for effective practices; the issue of teacher knowledge

• Questions

Definitions

Decoding – “…learning and applying the many correspondences between particular letters and phonemes, so that the pronunciation of the printed word can be figured out”

…”phonological decoding is the most reliable guide to word recognition” (Scarborough, 2001)

Phonics – the system of correspondences between phonemes and graphemes; also, a component of reading instruction

Word recognition – fast, accurate recognition of printed words; the result of mapping speech to print by using multiple sources of information about language, both spoken and written

Decoding (alphabetic principle, spelling-sound correspondences)

Research Before 2001

Reviews and Consensus Reports Prior to 2001

• Chall, 1967

• Adams, 1990 (US Department of Education)

• Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998 (National Research Council)

• National Reading Panel, 2000 (US Congress/NICHD)

• Rayner, Foorman, Perfetti, Pesetsky, Seidenberg, 2001 (Psychological Science in the Public Interest)

Preponderance of Evidence…(Ehri’s summary of NRP findings in The Voice of Evidence, 2004)

• Words are not read by visual shapes, or contextual guessing, or whole word memory

• Sight word learning depends upon the application of letter-sound correspondences; these provide the glue that holds the words in memory for quick reading

• “…requires knowledge of phonemic segmentation, letter-sound correspondences, and spelling patterns to bond the complete spellings of specific words to their pronunciations and meanings in memory”

Various Ways of Teaching Phonics

• Synthetic – blending the PGC’s into the whole word

• Analytic – using the whole to analyze the parts

• Phonics through spelling – speech to print

• Embedded phonics – extracting correspondences from exposure to whole words, with context clues from text

• Analogy phonics – If you know “clock” you can read “smock”

• …all compared to “whole language” in which phonics is non-existent, minimal, incidental, and/or treated as a last resort

Meta-Analysis of Systematic Phonics Instruction, 38 Gold Standard Studies (NRP)

• Systematic means “all the major correspondences are taught and are covered in a clearly defined sequence”

• Systematic phonics instruction is more effective than non-systematic or no phonics instruction

• It is effective across a variety of conditions

• It facilitates reading acquisition in younger and older readers

• Its greatest impact is in grades K-1

• Synthetic programs yielded a bigger effect, especially in classrooms

• Early evidence showed big effects with English Learners

Teaching Decoding,What Have We Learned Since 2001?

Consolidation of Cognitive Research on Reading (Seidenberg, 2017)

• Implicit learning of print-speech correspondences must occur; it involves pattern extraction based on increasing exposure to print

• What we teach explicitly is equivalent to what must be learned

• We learn “statistical dependencies” through experience with print

• Orthography is “quasi-regular” – on a continuum of predictability

• Instruction helps establish the mechanism or mental architecture for implicit learning (self-teaching)

Familiarity with Orthographic Patterns Helps Speed Word Recognition

.

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-ate -ait -eight -aight

date

fate

gate

grate

hate

late

mate

rate

crate

bait

gait

wait

strait

freight

weight

straight

Brain imaging studies of

response to decoding instruction

7th-Grader, Before and After Remediation (University of Texas,

Houston)

Brady’s Review of Phonics Instruction Since the NRP (Reading League Journal, 2020)

• Synthetic phonics results in significantly greater progress in beginning reading instruction (K-1)

• Analytic phonics (e.g., word sorts) can be helpful in reinforcing knowledge of spelling patterns

• 2nd grade students with weaker skills do better with teacher-managed, code-focused instruction (Connor et al., 2007); better readers ALSO benefitted from phonics in 2nd grade

• Teaching phonics is not and should not replace or be in opposition to lots of reading with a focus on comprehension

Reciprocity with Learning to Spell

• Spelling knowledge facilitates vocabulary growth and speed of word recognition (Treiman, 2017)

• Weiser, B. and Mathes, P. (2011) Using encoding instruction to improve the reading and spelling performances of elementary students at risk for literacy difficulties: a best-evidence synthesis. Review of Educational Research.

• Ouellette, G., Martin-Chang, S., & Rossi, M. (2017). Learning from our mistakes: Improvements in spelling lead to gains in reading speed. Scientific Studies of Reading, 21, 350-357.

How We “Map” Words in Memory (Kilpatrick, 2015)

r e d h a s

h a v e

/h/ /ă/ /v//r/ /ĕ/ /d//h/ /ă/ /z/

/red/ /haz/

Orthographic

Mapping

/hăv/

Resolution of (Never Ending) Controversy?

• Bowers’ 2020 critique in Educational Psychology Review

• Fletcher, Savage, & Vaughn’s response:

“We conclude that there is consistent evidence in support of explicitly teaching phonics as part of a comprehensive approach to reading instruction that should be differentiated to individual learner needs. The appropriate question to ask is not the superiority of phonics versus alternative reading methods, including whole language and balanced literacy, but how best to combine different components of evidence-based reading instruction into an integrated and customized approach that addresses the learning needs of each child.”

Decoding(Bridging Research to practice)

Cognitive Foundations of Reading

Hoover & Tunmer, 2020 -- The Cognitive Foundations

Model of Reading Acquisition

Therefore, What We Need to Teach …

• Phoneme identity and phoneme segmentation

• Knowledge of letter forms for reading and writing

• The “alphabetic principle,” or how graphemes represent phonemes

• “Alphabetic coding skill” or observation of letter patterns and the various ways that print represents speech

• All common phoneme-grapheme correspondences• Syllable pattern spellings for vowels• Common morphemes (prefixes, roots, suffixes)

• Flexible application to word recognition out of and within text

IES Practice Guide on Teaching Foundational Skills (Foorman et al., 2016)

Levels of Evidence

RECOMMENDATIONS Strong Moderate Minimal

1. Teach students academic language skills, including the

use of inferential and narrative language, and vocabulary

knowledge.

*

2. Develop awareness of the segments of sounds in

speech and how they link to letters. *

3. Teach students to decode words, analyze word parts,

and write and recognize words. *

4. Ensure that each student reads connected text every

day to support reading accuracy, fluency, and

comprehension.

*

Phonics and Decoding

Classroom Instruction

Evaluating a Scope and Sequence: Does It Have…

High frequency correspondences to less predictable correspondences

Attention to both phonological confusability of sounds and orthographic confusability of letters

Simple syllables (no blends) before complex syllables (with blends)

Coverage of most common PG correspondences, reliable syllable patterns, common morphemes as meaningful units

Single syllable to multi-syllable words

Inflectional morphology (-s, -ed, -ing, –er, -est) to derivational morphology

• Review/reread familiar text

• Phoneme awareness or listening task

• Explain new correspondence pattern

• Provide guided practice with immediate feedback

• Vary the supervised practice with the concept

• Spell pattern words and write sentences

• Read decodable text

24

Generic Framework for a Phonics/Word Study Lesson (K-2)

25

Explicit Phoneme-Grapheme Mapping

wet w e t

went w e n t

when wh e n

wish w i sh

witch w i tch

26

The Importance of Teachers’ Content Knowledge

• Teachers at 2nd and 3rd grade level who have better knowledge of language are more effective, especially with poor spellers who depend on instruction (Puliatte & Ehri, 2018)

• “Sustained change in teacher knowledge from [PD] interventions is driven by development of content knowledge, opportunities for collaborations with peers, access to modeling and coaching, and expert guidance” (Goldfeld, Snow et al., SSR, 2021)

• Teachers who have the requisite content knowledge get better results (Piasta et al., 2009; McCutchen et al., 2002)

What We Need to Know

• The speech sounds of English and which ones can be confused• Many reading problems originate with underdeveloped phoneme awareness

• Explicit awareness of phonemes provides the mental “anchor” for mapping speech to print and securing words in memory – so phoneme awareness should be included in the phonics lesson routines

• The concept of a grapheme as that which represents a phoneme

• The common patterns and conventions of letter use (orthography)

• Knowledge of morphology and how English represents it

• Etymology – the affect of word origin on word spelling

Common Graphemes for Phonemes

• so slow joke beau though

• he see read happy these piece

• mutant mute few euphony cue

• ruby root rude true suit chew

soup through

The Vowel Spelling Chart (Moats & Tolman, 2019)

yūcute

few

universe

feud

Etymology or Language History

What language did these words come from?

• character, chorus, chlorophyll, orchestra• Greek

• church, chin, rich, such• Old English

• charade, chagrin, machine, cache• French

Common Orthographic Conventions in English

• Which letters can never end a word?• V (have) j (judge) I (pie, cry) u (cue, chew)

• When do we use –ck?• Immediately after a stressed short vowel (deck, flock, truck, pack)

• Why does “title” have one t in the middle, and “little” has two?

• Title begins with an open syllable; little begins with a closed syllable, and the final syllable is “tle” or a “consonant-le final syllable”

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Phonics and Decoding

Intervention

Characteristics of Effective Intervention with Word-Level RD (Fletcher et al, 2019)

1. Differentiation based on assessment(timed and untimed word recognition; knowledge of phonics,

phoneme awareness, morphology; text reading speed/accuracy)

2. Intensity sufficient to produce gains in relative standing

3. Use of a lesson format and routines – for systematic, explicit teaching

4. Immediate corrective feedback and reteaching as necessary

5. Structure of language: phonemes, graphemes, syllables, morphemes, word meanings, concepts of word use

What do you think are the main obstacles to widespread

application of research on phonics and decoding?

Question 1

In what ways can the instructional materials available

to you be improved?

Question 2

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