Episode 112: From Sound to Success — The Phonics Journey

Unlock the secrets of teaching young children how to read effectively, as I navigate the ongoing debate in early literacy education. What if the key to successful reading is not being fully embraced by our schools? Join me in exploring the powerful evidence behind phonics instruction and why some schools still cling to outdated methods. Discover how states like Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas are leading the charge in revolutionizing reading programs. I’ll discuss the neuroscience behind reading and highlight the vital importance of systematic phonics, especially for children in low-income and inner-city areas where reading skills are seen as a lifeline to a brighter future.

Join me as I recount my own journey of teaching my children and grandchildren to read through the engaging and effective world of phonics. Learn how turning phonics practice into a fun game can transform young learners into proficient readers, able to decode unfamiliar words with ease. I challenge the whole-word approach and emphasize the joys of reading for pleasure, which research shows can significantly enhance reading skills. Don’t miss out on ways to instill a lifelong reading habit during school breaks and beyond. I invite you to share your own experiences and join the conversation as we champion the future of K-12 education one phoneme at a time.

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Chapters

• 0:54 Debates on Teaching Early Reading
• 18:59 Effective Strategies for Teaching Early Reading

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:55

Welcome to another episode of K-12 Education Untangled. My name is Dr Kim J Fields, former corporate manager turned education researcher and advocate, and I'm the host of this podcast. I got into this space after dealing with some frustrating interactions with school educators and administrators, as well as experiencing the microaggressions that I faced as an African-American mom raising my two kids, who were in the public school system. I really wanted to understand how teachers were trained and what the research provided about the challenges of the public education system. Once I gained the information and the insights that I needed, I was then equipped to be able to successfully support my children in their educational progress. Support my children in their education progress. This podcast is at the intersection between education, research and parental actions. If you're looking to find out more about the current trends, issues and themes in education that could affect you or your children, and you want to know the specific actions you can take to support and advocate for your children, then you're in the right place. Thanks for tuning in today. I know that staying informed about K-12 education topics is important to you, so keep listening. Keep listening.

Speaker 1: 2:34

In this episode, I'll be discussing why teaching young children how to read is still being debated and the reasons behind it. Do you know what type of reading program is being used to teach your children reading? This is an important question to answer, because the system that your child's school is using may not be backed by science. You already know that proficient reading leads to knowledge acquisition, but what's the best approach to teaching reading? I discussed the debate about how to teach reading to early learners as well as what the research dominantly indicates is the best method. Let's untangle this. Although research has long shown that teaching early elementary students phonics is the most reliable way to learn how to read, most of the current debate around reading instruction is focused on the approaches to teaching, because many schools don't currently follow research-based best practices in this area.

Speaker 1: 3:41

Some parents and educators in several states have started to push advocacy efforts when it comes to teaching early reading. These states, including Mississippi, alabama, arkansas, tennessee and Texas, have started to propose sweeping changes to how reading is taught. Some of the states are also requiring that teachers pass a test in reading science and that elementary schools must certify that their curricula addressed the key components of reading. In Wisconsin and California, parent advocacy groups have framed reading instruction as a social justice issue. Parents particularly want assurances that K-3 teachers get trained in evidence-based early reading instruction. Many parents indicate that the thing that keeps them up at night is their children's ability to read. In many inner-city schools, parents know that if they don't make sure that their children can read, there's a potential prison cell waiting for them. The future for children from low-income homes depends more on their school's ability to teach evidence-based instruction when compared to children who have access to other resources.

Speaker 1: 5:01

There's an explicit need for phonics instruction in early literacy lessons. Instruction in early literacy lessons. Although there's a plethora of research on how to teach early reading, analyses of reading curricula have not always been forthcoming. As of a couple of years ago, the Education Week Research Center asked K-2 and special education teachers what curricular programs and textbooks they used for early reading instruction in their classrooms. The top five curricular programs and textbooks included three sets of core instructional materials the units of study for teaching reading, developed by the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project. For Teaching Reading, developed by the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, and Journeys and Into Reading by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. There were also two early intervention programs which targeted specific skills certain students needed to practice on Leveled Literacy Intervention and Reading Recovery by Fountas and Pinnell, it was determined that, after analyzing these materials, many instances in these programs diverged from evidence-based practices for teaching reading or supporting struggling students. Although these programs taught the importance of phonics, how phonics was taught was inconsistent. Taught the importance of phonics, how phonics was taught was inconsistent. In fact, phonics tends to be buried in many of these commercial reading programs, and the programs were also teaching students to approach words in ways that can undermine phonics instruction.

Speaker 1: 6:42

Several of these curricular interventions operated under the understanding that students use multiple sources of information or cues to solve words. Those cues often include the letters on the page, context in which the word appeared, pictures or grammatical structures of the sentences. The teacher presents these cues as saying things like check the picture, try something else, or does that look right Now? To me this seems to resemble teaching reading through the whole words approach, a method of teaching reading that I have never been an advocate of hypothesize what word would work in the sentence takes away their focus from the word itself, which lowers the chances that they'll use their understanding of left sounds through the word part by part and be able to recognize it more quickly the next time they see it. This type of curriculum used for teaching. Reading is used by about 20 percent of K-2 and elementary special ed teachers, although some reading program developers are stepping away from this method. The truth of the matter is that poor readers do use different sources of information to predict what words might say, but research indicates that skilled readers don't read that way. Neuroscience research has shown that skilled readers process all the letters in the word when they read them, and they then are able to read connected text very quickly.

Speaker 1: 8:26

Phonics is the best way to understand meaning through context of a word in the sentence. Many of those previously mentioned early reading programs were designed to teach students to make better guesses, under the assumption that it would make children better readers. However, the problem is that it trains kids to believe that they don't always need to look at all the letters that make up the word in order to read them. For teachers using these programs, the teacher guides can be overwhelming, and most teachers just use the pieces of that teaching material that they are most comfortable with in order to avoid overwhelm. For some early readers, learning to read only clicks once they practice phonics, usually by reading decodable books.

Speaker 1: 9:18

Now, decode simply means to sound out the words. These types of books are written with a high proportion of words that are phonetically regular, meaning that they follow common sound spelling rules and mostly include words with phonics patterns that children have already learned. Teachers, though, are divided when it comes to decoding books. 23% indicate that beginning readers should be using these types of texts most often, while 61% said that students should be reading books with high-frequency words, predictable sentence structures and pictures that emphasize meaning. These types of books are often called leveled books, and they are rated on a difficulty scale. Teachers then focus on matching students with books at their level. Teachers also criticized that decodable books, because of their language constraints, are boring and stilted because they contain contrived stories. Many experts suggest that decodable books aren't the only books that young students should read. They should read various types of books. The decodable books are just a stepping stone to be used during a short window when students are first learning to sound out words or decode.

Speaker 1: 10:43

Learning how to decode words using phonics is a foundational skill, but so is teaching vocabulary and meaning from content. Research has shown that once students can sound out words, their reading comprehension is mainly dependent on their language comprehension or the background and vocabulary knowledge that they bring to a text, as well as their ability to follow the structure of the story and think about it analytically. Experts indicate that before students can garner this kind of information from print, that before students can garner this kind of information from print, they can do it through oral language by having conversations about the meanings of words, telling stories and reading books out loud. Further reading comprehension is the product of decoding ability and language comprehension. Children who can't sound out words won't be able to read, no matter how much vocabulary they know or how much they know about the world. The opposite is also true. If they don't have the requisite background knowledge, children won't be able to understand the words that they read on the page. As students progress into the second, third and fourth grades, reading materials become more challenging. There are bigger words, harder concepts and more assumptions about what students already know about the world. So it's important that children start engaging with rich content early on so that once they are expected to read it on the page, they understand what's going on. As very young children learn words, they start to form connections in the brain, joining synonyms together or relating words that are used in similar situations. The key thing to remember is that knowledge building is a long-term process compared to learning foundational skills like phonics. As of April 2023,.

Speaker 1: 12:46

At least 29 states and the District of Columbia passed legislation over the past decade that was aimed at improving early reading instruction and student outcomes. However, the findings from those outcomes were mixed. These policies were linked to improvements on states' year-end standardized tests, but only states with comprehensive policies that included support, training and funding that were implemented by the third grade saw gains on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the test known as the Nation's Report Card. Overall states with any kind of literacy policy saw gains in high-stakes reading tests in grades three through five, with the biggest gains in the third grade. Students improved by 7 to 14 percent of the annual academic growth of a typical third grader. The policies also seemed to slightly reduce disparities in socioeconomic or racial achievement gaps based on results from these tests. According to the nation's report card, only 35 percent of fourth graders are proficient readers and the gap between low and high performers has grown.

Speaker 1: 14:05

A survey in 2019 showed that 75 percent of teachers working with early readers teach three-cuing, an approach, as I previously mentioned, that tells students to take a guess when they come to words they don't know, by using context, pictures and other clues, with only some attention paid to the letters. More than a quarter of teachers indicated that they tell emerging readers that the first thing they should do when they come to a word they don't know while reading is to look at the pictures even before they try to sound out the word. These techniques are not backed by science. They are methods that are used by struggling readers, because proficient readers pay attention to the letters. The survey pointed out that there is a willingness among teachers to spend time on phonics. In fact, most indicated that they spent 20 to 30 minutes a day on it. But the time spent on phonics was coupled with a commitment to cueing, which research has shown actually counteracts with phonics instruction. By encouraging students to look away from the letters on the page, teachers are learning to teach foundations of reading from their trusted colleagues and mentors. So it gets passed from classroom to classroom, which may not be the best thing. Classroom, which may not be the best thing.

Speaker 1: 15:41

Phonics is a skill that focuses on listening to words and hearing and sounding them out. By doing so, young children learn the rhythm and sound of language. When the rhythm is recognized, children can then break sentences into words and words into syllables. Surprisingly, music improves phonic awareness. Songs prepare young children for the language that they will come across in real life. Children's songs, which are usually short and repetitive, with processable tools and melodies. These are crucial early literacy skills for young children to improve for success in later academic life. Songs can be used to practice and reinforce consonants. Songs like Mary had a Little Lamb with the repetitive L, or Row Row, row your Boat with repetitive R, provide young children with the chance to practice certain sounds. Nursery rhymes are another tool to teach phonics awareness.

Speaker 1: 17:09

Most educators believe that the single most important activity that a child can do during the summer that's related to learning is to read for pleasure. That's because research as early as the 1970s concluded that reading was the only activity that will strongly and consistently relate to summer learning. Educational researchers have declared that a lack of access to books during the summer break could translate to a two-month loss in reading achievement for children from low-income families. Given these facts, the reality is that children are reading for pleasure much less than they have in past decades. In 2020, the National Assessment of Educational Progress asked US kids ages 9 and 13 whether they read for fun almost every day, and 42% of the 9-year-olds said that they read almost daily for fun, compared to 53% in 2012. In 2020, only 17% of 13-year-olds said they read almost daily for fun, compared to 27% in 2012. These findings revealed just as students' performance on the National Reading Assessments continues to drop. Access to books during the summer is a key component to ensuring that children read them. A recent biennial nationally representative survey by Scholastic revealed that 20 percent of children aged 17 and under aren't reading any books at all over the summer, mostly due to a lack of access over the summer. Mostly due to a lack of access.

Speaker 1: 19:00

With what I've been discussing thus far, how does this specifically apply to you? Here are the action steps you can take regarding this topic. I'll start out with a little background and story. I taught my children and two of my grandchildren to read by using one simple technique phonics. Phonics is the only real way to learn how to sound out letters and letter blends. I made a game out of it by placing flashcards with letters on various household furnishings. For example, I would place one flash card on an end table, one on a coffee table, one on a dinner table, one on a counter, etc. And as the child passed by one of these objects, they had to phonetically sound out the letter. I moved on from there by teaching letter blends the same way and incorporated the use of toys like small blocks in which they could build simple CBC words or consonant-vowel-consonant words by recognizing the letters and letterblends and pronouncing them phonetically. I then introduced them to reading simple books. This worked quite well. I never bought into the theory of learning how to read using whole words, because if a young reader runs into a word they don't know, how will they be able to pronounce or sound out that word. Phonics, in my opinion, is the way to go, plain and simple.

Speaker 1: 20:33

Research has shown that children whose parents engage and encourage reading for pleasure develop into stronger readers than those whose parents associate reading with only academics or an academic skill. It's important to carve out a daily reading routine at home or even on the go, for example during car trips. It's also important to know various ways to access books during the summer and to become familiar with local public libraries and the summer robust reading programs that many of them provide. Many of the programs have summer reading contests where the child who has read the most books over the summer wins some type of prize or reward, even if there is no program in place, you can develop a reward system, and it's important to emphasize the experience of reading for pleasure in and of itself. The key to this is to allow your children to choose books and the format that they prefer. The main idea is for you to encourage your children to make reading a habit, especially during the multiple breaks that they tend to have over the school year and most notably over the summer break. Here are this episode's takeaways.

Speaker 1: 22:06

There is an explicit need for phonics instruction in early literacy lessons. Phonics is a skill that focuses on listening to words and hearing and sounding them out. By doing so, young children learn the rhythm and sounds of language. When the rhythm is recognized, children can then break sentences into words and words into syllables. Research has shown that engaging and encouraging early readers to check the picture when they come to a tricky word or to hypothesize what word would work in the sentence, takes their focus away from the word itself, which lowers the chances that they'll use their understanding of letter sounds through the word part by part and be able to recognize it more quickly the next time they see it. Poor readers use different sources of information to predict what words might say, but research indicates that skilled readers don't read that way. Neuroscience research has shown that skilled readers process all the letters in the word when they read them, and then they are able to read connected text very quickly. Phonics is the best way to understand meaning through context of a word in the sentence. Children who can't sound out words won't be able to read, no matter how much vocabulary they know or how much they know about the world. The opposite is also true. If they don't have the requisite background knowledge, children won't be able to understand the words that they read on the page.

Speaker 1: 23:53

What's been your experience with how your children learned or are learning how to read? Let me know your thoughts by leaving a text comment on my podcast website, k12educationuntangledbuzzsproutcom. Again, leave me a text comment about your thoughts on the teaching of reading and your experiences with your particular children. You can leave that text comment at k12educationuntangledbuzzsproutcom. If this is the type of subject matter and discussion that resonates with you, please follow my podcast on whatever service you're listening to this. You can also follow my podcast by going to k12educationuntangledbuzzsproutcom. Forward slash follow. Thanks for tuning in and listening to this episode. I hope you'll come back for more K-12 educational discussions with even more exciting topics to untangle. Until next time, aim to learn something new every day.