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Reflect
by
OLD ONE
Reading instruction has taken a dramatic turn in our state in the last few years with the launching of the R.I.S.E. (Reading Initiative for Student Excellence). Current classroom teachers are being retooled, and colleges and universities are revising their programs to include instruction in the science of reading. The value and importance of universal screenings, phonological awareness, and phonics are being recognized. Research points to direct, explicit, and systematic instruction in phonological awareness and phonics as an effective way to teach students who struggle with learning to read (Birsh and Carreker, 2018). Additionally, dyslexia laws are now in place which has resulted in teachers being trained in how to identify students with characteristics of dyslexia and how to teach these students how to read utilizing multisensory instruction (Birsh and Carreker, 2018).
When I graduated college in 1999, I felt well prepared for my first classroom. I would be teaching fourth grade, so teaching reading should be easy. I was immersed in whole language instruction during my teacher preparation, so I knew I would not use the textbook. I would have choice for my students, and we would read lots of books. I soon realized that there were students who needed more than reading by osmosis (Moats, 2017). During my graduate work, reading instruction had transitioned to balanced literacy. Now I had some assessment tools within my reach, knowledge of the five components of reading, and strategies to utilize and teach in order to improve reading instruction. Unfortunately, balanced literacy still did not reach every learner, and I wanted to know why. What piece was I missing? I began to further my quest for how to help struggling readers and decided I needed to further pursue the answers through entering a doctoral program.
I left the classroom in 2013 and embarked upon higher education while working on my doctoral degree. Immersing myself by studying and researching assessment, intervention, dyslexia, structured literacy, and the science of reading, I quickly learned how much I still had to learn about reading instruction. One of the most profound experiences I have had is examining reading development and instruction in conjunction with speech-language pathologists. This has been eye-opening and a real game changer in reading instruction. The speech and language connection is a very different way for teachers to view reading problems. However, if we acknowledge Piaget’s (1959) research that speech is actually a child’s first language, it would only seem logical that we utilize what we know about speech, language, and linguistics in teaching young children to read. After additional study in the science of reading; brain research; phonemic awareness, phonics, and dyslexia programs; in conjunction with coursework and subsequent research with faculty in the Communication Sciences and Disorders department, my approach to reading instruction has shifted and caused me to reflect on the four things I wish I had known as a reading teacher.
(1) Oral language development is critical to reading instruction. Listening and speaking are natural and automatic unlike learning to read. When children learn to speak, they do not learn individual sounds, or phonemes, as they do when learning to read. The earliest unit a child produces are whole-word patterns, for example mama. These speech patterns are a continuous flow of generally uninterrupted overlapping sounds that are not naturally divided into segments or syllables as they are in reading. Instead, speech is produced in breath groups rather than individual words often resulting in phrases being learned as a whole word such as coaton instead of coat on and iloveyou instead of I love you.
Interestingly, the bulk of phonological development takes place over ages one to three - well before students enter a classroom. While children may enter the classroom fully able to speak, what they are often lacking is phonemic awareness or the understanding that speech is made up of phonemes or individual sounds because of the continuous flow of speech (Yopp, 1992). Phonemic awareness is critical in learning how to read.
Learning to talk requires time for development and practice in everyday situations. This continues well after students begin school. Speech language pathologists possess an in-depth knowledge of oral language development and language related to learning to read. Teachers need to tap into this knowledge in order to build upon this foundation to further develop a child’s language as a prevention to the development of reading difficulties.
(2) There is an order to teaching sounds. Continuous sounds are generally the first sounds taught in reading instruction, and they are the easiest to teach. These phonemes are one continuous sound that keeps going. Because they are stretched out sounds, continuous sounds are easier for students to blend. These sounds are made by the letters m, s, f, l, r, n, v and z (Moats, 2010). Stop sounds are often taught next. These sounds have a definite beginning and ending where the sound stops. A little puff of air should be felt when the sound stops. These sounds are made by the letters b, c, d, g, p, t, k, and j. Stop sounds are categorized by being either voiceless or voiced (Birsh and Carreker, 2018; Moats, 2010). Students can be taught how to recognize this by putting their hand on their neck or vocal cords. If a vibration is felt when the stop sound is made, it is a voiced sound. If no vibration is felt, it is a voiceless sound. These sounds are then further categorized by if the sound is made by the lips, tongue behind the teeth, or in the back of the mouth (Moats, 2010).
In order to be able to blend words, students need to be taught vowels. No longer is it enough to only teach that there are five vowels: a, e, i, o and u, and those vowels have either short or long sounds. Now, recognizing the placement of the mouth when vowel sounds are made is important. The tongue, jaw, and lips work together to create the shape of the vocal tract. Moats created the vowel circle or vowel valley to depict the order of the vowels from the smallest opening of the mouth to the largest opening of the mouth (Birsh and Carreker, 2018; Moats, 2010).
The main idea is to teach sounds that are easiest to articulate to most difficult to articulate - moving from front to back in the mouth. There is an order to use based on placement in the mouth, not based on the most frequently used letters. This makes it acoustically able to be managed while reducing the cognitive resources required to complete the task ensuring the task is not too complex too early to help eliminate phonological problems. It is important to remember that phonemes are the smallest units of sounds. These sounds should be taught before print is involved (Moats, 2010). Therefore, letters need not be taught before sounds (Birsh and Carreker, 2018). Once several sounds are learned, CV sequences can be introduced because they are easy to articulate with minimal tongue movement followed by CVC words. Speech-language pathologists have been learning and utilizing this information in working with students. Imagine how much greater of an impact a classroom teacher or reading specialist could make if they, too, utilized this information in working with students.
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