‘THE TIMES, THEY ARE A-CHANGIN’, HOPEFULLY FOR THE BETTER
There’s a movement afoot…It’s known as the Science of Reading. What’s that? You may be hearing more about it either from your own investigation, but more likely from the personnel at your children’s schools. This definition is taken directly from whatisthescienceofreading.org:
The Definition:
The Science of Reading is a vast, interdisciplinary body of scientifically-based research about reading and issues related to reading and writing.
-whatisthescienceofreading.org
“This research has been conducted over the last five decades across the world, and it is derived from thousands of studies conducted in multiple languages. The science of reading has culminated in a preponderance of evidence to inform how proficient reading and writing develop; why some have difficulty; and how we can most effectively assess and teach and, therefore, improve student outcomes through prevention of and intervention for reading difficulties.
The Science of Reading is derived from researchers from multiple fields: cognitive psychology communication sciences developmental psychology education implementation science linguistics neuroscience school psychology “
-whatisthescienceofreading.org
LET’S UNPACK THIS A LITTLE BIT IN PARENT/USER FRIENDLY LANGUAGE:
- Scientists, including Maryanne Wolf, Mark Seidenberg, Stanislaus Dehaene, and many more from multiple fields (cognitive/child/school psychology, speech and language, linguistics [the study of language itself], brain science, implementation science [transfer of what we know about the brain science of reading to the classroom] have been studying how reading develops in human brains.
- This research has been conducted for over 50 years now.
- The research results are pretty much the same no matter what language is studied.
- The research results allow us to identify the causes of why some humans have difficulty acquiring well developed reading and written language.
- The research results allow us to better identify which children will benefit from intervention and get going with this more intensive instruction earlier.
What’s the bottom line here in terms of the research results? Again, in parent/user friendly language:
- All human beings learn oral language through exposure and practice from birth.
- Humans require the formation of new networks in the brain in order to learn to read and produce written language through direct instruction and practice to “build a reading brain”.
- Therefore, we need to teach children in the direction of Speech—>Print (Sounds/Oral Language–>Reading/Written Language using Letter Names and Letters) instead of Print—>Speech (Reading/Written Language using Letter Names/Letters—>Sounds/Oral Language).
SPEECH (hearing sounds, words, language ———————————> 
———->PRINT (seeing letters, words, sentences, text)
ADULTS, YOU REMEMBER ‘WORD WALLS’, RIGHT?
I have been a visitor over the past couple of decades as a literacy coach in more elementary classrooms than I can recall. Nearly every classroom had a Word Wall prominently posted. It was thought to be ‘a must’ in every elementary classroom across our country. And it was considered good educational practice for sure. Do not feel that this practice reflects poorly on teachers–we did not know what we did not know about how children learn to read and spell.
Students could practice reading these high frequency words and refer to the Word Wall when producing their own written language to check the spellings of commonly used, but difficult to remember words such as: people, because, said, the, of, was, to.
These Word Walls remained ‘up’ — often front and center –all year, every year, year after year. The ones I recall of course were arranged in alphabetical order, and very colorful, with each word sometimes ‘framed’ around the shapes of the letters.
Some of them looked like this:
WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?
- Take a look at #1 on the far left . The letter ‘C’ has a key picture word next to it–cow. Well, that’s fine. I recommend stating/teaching children ‘c’ represents the sound /k/ rather than saying to children “‘c’ says /k/”. The slash lines represent ‘the sound of the letter(s) they surround’). BUT….look at the entries: Chase and Cooper. Obviously, these are students’ names. Cooper likely won’t be confused about his/her name since the first sound in Cooper’s name is indeed /k/. Chase, on the other hand, may be confused–his/her name does indeed begin with the letter ‘C’, but wait a minute….the first sound in his/her name isn’t /k/ at all—it’s /ch/. Not only may Chase be confused, but many of the other students in the class may be confused as well. This is precisely what I am talking about…this Word Wall display goes from Print—>Speech :(((
- ‘If the words have ‘frames’ around them (#2-“yellow” in a ‘purple frame’ above), it encourages students to learn word recognition using their eyes (visually) far more than their ears (auditorily), which is inconsistent with what we know about the Science of Reading in terms of how kids to learn to ‘break the code’ of the English language. Children need to connect the sounds they hear to the letters they see rather than using what they ‘see’ to attempt to ‘memorize’ what each word looks like as if it were an image representing that entire word. Readers of this blog, you may be surprised to know how many students approach reading in this way!
- Have a look at #3 on the right side in the pictures above. Note the use of uppercase letters for each word on the word wall. Using uppercase letters when unnecessary also encourages students to use uppercase letters unnecessarily.
Finally, children in many classrooms are engaged in chanting, snapping, cheering all the words on their Word Walls. Parents receive large lists of ‘Sight Words’ they are to help their children ‘learn’. Are you one of those parents?
Is this the best instructional approach and use of instructional time? I think not. Tim Shanahan points out, “Teachers, for instance, had students “reading” the words in unison to reinforce sight vocabulary. I put reading in quotes there because I’d watch the kids while they put on these performances. Often, they were mouthing without even looking at the words. Those word walls were an opportunity for the good readers to show off and for the poor readers to languish, a time waster at best.” This type of practice helps children to ‘visually memorize’ words appearing most frequently in our language, but does not help them to understand how these words ‘work’ in terms of the symbols representing the sounds of our wonderful, rich English language. I plan to elaborate on this visual approach has its limits in my next blog post.
WHY REPLACE WORD WALLS? I THINK YOU NOW MAY HAVE A BETTER UNDERSTANDING…
- Word Walls can be confusing to students! (Why is ‘Chase’ on the ‘C’ column, and ‘the’ on the ‘T’ column since the words do not begin with the /k/ or /t/ sound?…I have heard students ask these very questions.)
- Word Walls often encourage students to visually memorize words as ‘whole units’ rather than understand their sound structure and ‘crack the code’ of English.
- Word Walls review uses valuable instructional time in less than valuable ways.
- Word Walls are often ignored/not used as a reference tool when students are engaged in written language skill development, as my colleague, Tim Shanahan points out, “copying spellings does little for word knowledge.”
There is a better way to build a reading brain. Stay tuned. In my post next time, I’ll be sharing information about that better way…
A SOUND WALL!