Kids love to prove you wrong.
I don't know if that's just me, but they love to be like, but what about in this case? Then honestly, I will often be like, I'm sure there's some rule or I'm sure that word does not come from English origin or I'm sure that that's a name.
Hi, and welcome to the Smarter Literacy podcast from Ascend Smarter Intervention, where our mission is to simplify effective literacy instruction to make teaching literacy easier and more accessible for everyone.
We are your host, Lindsey, and Corey.
And in today's episode, we're gonna be sharing the 3 biggest misconceptions we had when we started off in our literacy intervention or instruction journey.
So, our goals for today are really to open up a conversation on some of those misconceptions when it comes to word recognition or decoding strategies specifically.
And we also want you to know that if you've Had any of these misconceptions or if any of this feels like, oh, I thought that was true.
That's absolutely fine.
We have absolutely thought these and they're very common thoughts.
And then we also wanna share one thing you can do in your instruction to incorporate mission skills into your lessons.
So in our first episode, we chatted about some of the challenges that we faced when we first started off.
So I think there was a there was a few there.
So um, definitely feel free to go back and check that one out if you haven't just yet.
But today, we're gonna be breaking down the research to make it a little bit more manageable.
And the goal here is to help build that familiarize as a kind of quick recap, when we work through the instruction journey, we like to think about these 4 phases.
So the first being familiarized, and that's where you're really digging into the research, and that one can often feel the most overwhelming because you're just not always totally sure what you should be incorporating and whatnot and how much time to spend on each.
And there's just so much information out there.
Right? So Absolutely.
So that's that first piece, and that's what we're gonna be focusing today.
But, also, we can then start to move into the next phases.
So the next phase would be where you start to systematize your instruction.
You get those systems in place.
You feel really comfortable with your curriculum or however your lessons are flowing.
Then you begin to optimize your instruction.
This is where you start to differentiate and really meet the needs of individual students.
And then the last piece is to generalize, which is where you help students start to generalize the skills that they're learning outside of their specific time with you, which we did not realize, was was something that our kids weren't doing.
So The idea is to stay focused on the phase that you're in.
But that being said, regardless of which phase of the journey you're currently in, we'd love for you to stick around for this conversation because I think it's gonna be really helpful to really just think about, are these things that you're still wondering about or even things that maybe you're having to answer these questions for parents or other educators or things like that? Absolutely.
Okay.
So jumping right in, Corey, what was one of the first misconceptions you had about word recognition or decoding instruction? Yeah.
So I think one of the biggest misconceptions I had and definitely the first, uh, that I faced was that the reading science or um, you know, evidence based practice as a lot of people are calling it the science of reading.
There's tons of different terms out there right now, but that that reading science was really only focused on those word recognition or decoding skills.
So really thinking about when we say word recognition or decoding, we're talking about phonics, we're talking about understanding those patterns.
And so, again, when I started, my first exposure into this space was orton Gillingham, and and that was what I was told.
Like, this is this is evidence based, and this is what it is.
And that was really my only exposure to that.
And so I felt like, okay.
So the science is pointing specifically to phonics and building phonics skills, and I really omitted all of the other pieces of, you know, that literacy processing triangle or really thinking about those language comprehension skills and vocabulary and executive functioning.
So I think that was my biggest misconception.
And I think the thing that we need to realize is that the research really does support that entire cognitive process, really thinking about phonology and um, you know, the sound structure as well as orthography, that visual structure.
So that is that phonics based or that word recognition piece, but there's also a lot of research that is supporting the language comprehension, their vocabulary, One of the studies that we really love is Duke and Cartwright in 2021 came out with what they call the active view of reading, um, which really expanded on the simple view of reading, which was that word recognition or decoding skills and language comprehension skills are what's going to create that effective comprehension, effective reading, and they added to that by saying, yes, and Yes.
Absolutely.
We we agree with that.
And there's this really critical component of executive functioning and self regulation that we need to incorporate in there, and we need to make sure that we're not just seeing decoding as its own sort of islands.
Yeah.
And language comprehension is its own island, but they're interwoven and connected.
And so the research really does support the connection of all of those areas.
Absolutely.
And I I have the same kind of, you know, first impression as well.
It really was kinda set up either, like, phonics, right, like, just phonics and then everything else.
Right? Like, the 2 couldn't seem to go together.
And it I even was even told that in, like, college, you know, I think it's so looking back now.
I'm like, wow.
I have come such a long way of learning and realizing, but, yeah, it it all does come together.
And you really need every single component in order to make that literacy instruction.
Strong.
Well, and I think one of the things that I thought too, and I think this just came from some of my early learning, and and maybe I was I don't wanna say naive.
That was just sort of what I understood at that time from where I was, but one of the things that I had been constantly told was that if students are struggling to comprehend, it's just because they can't decode.
But as soon as they can access text, as soon as they can sound out all the words, then they will comprehend.
And so I just felt like, okay.
Great.
So all I need to do is focus on make sure that they can decode these words.
And if they can decode these words and they know these spelling rules and these patterns and they can figure out what the word says, we are golden.
Yep.
And I can tell you, we are definitely not alone on this one.
I know so many other educators who have been in the same kind of bow and You know, I think just kind of relearning that as an important part of being a literacy teacher, being a literacy instructor because we wanna be there for our kids.
And to just do one or the other is not going to help.
Oh, and I think it's tricky too because it depends on the student.
Right? Anything for some students that might be the case.
Right? For some students, if we think about what their learning profile is, they might have really strong language comprehension skills to start with.
And so in that case, then, yes, the word recognition piece, um, is really kind of the missing piece, but we still need to focus on then the executive functioning piece of that and then also that kind of interweaving Yes.
Between those things and making sure they're doing that automatically.
I love that term interweaving.
It's just that's the perfect.
Like, that's the perfect description of all of this.
Perfect.
Love it.
Alright.
So what was another misconception you had about word recognition and decoding instructions? Yeah.
I think, again, it came back from really just my early experience, but I think the idea, again, coming from this phonics being really important in the word recognition skills and giving students the skills that they need to decode was that we needed to teach every possible pattern for the students.
And that included, you know, every possible phonogram pattern, every affix, every root, the etymology of every word, which is basically, you know, where does that word come from, where does it originate? Because as we know, English, is challenging because we've pulled from so many different languages.
They're missing pot.
Yes.
Exactly.
And so I think there was this idea that they needed to teach every single pattern Yeah.
To my students, and it just felt like a checklist.
Right? So I had a checklist of, like, here's all the phonogram patterns, and I'm gonna crank through all of these phonogram patterns as quickly as I can.
And I think that is important that we are explicitly teaching phonics patterns.
So there's absolutely research out there that is well documented that really explains the importance of that systematic explicit onyx instruction.
And so we wanna be incorporating that, but I also think we wanna be careful and thoughtful that we don't need to teach every single pattern, but rather, we want students to recognize that those patterns exist.
Yes.
And when those patterns exist, for example, if we see 2 vowels together, let's be looking to see, do we have a valve team? Mhmm.
Because those valve teams are gonna make different sounds, and we do want them to have that explicit practice with recognizing, for example, that O I says Oi and O Y says Oi, that's all incredibly important.
And we also want to have them start to recognize some of that on their own.
That's where that executive functioning starts to come back in where we don't want to have to feel like we had to teach them every possible thing.
It's it's sort of, I don't know, trying to come back to the analogy of, like, teaching somebody to fish a little bit.
We don't need to say Here's every possible fishing rod Yeah.
That you might have, but, like, here's generally what we wanna be looking for and how we wanna do that.
And I think students will start to make those recognitions on their own.
They'll start to be like, woah.
Yeah.
What's this pattern or what's that pattern? Right.
Right.
And, yeah, we definitely do wanna explicitly teach these patterns to our kids, but I know for me going back, I had the same, you know, kinda list that I was going through.
I gotta teach all these patterns and, you know, going back to what we just said, you know, you gotta really teach to your student.
You gotta look at your individual kid.
So I was teaching patterns that my students already knew, right, already had down pat, and they were getting bored.
And I was kinda, like, losing them because they're like, we're not really learning anything new here.
We already know this.
But she's gonna continue making us do this.
And, yeah, I would have been bored too.
So once I realized, yeah, I do have to teach these patterns, but I also wanna be teaching the patterns that are gonna be the most beneficial for my students.
And like you said, even just recognizing these patterns that maybe we haven't gone over yet, but you know they're out there and paying attention to them and and just having kind of that more of that focus and kind of mindset when you're reading and you're decoding these words or doing all the the literacy processing triangle work that the kids are just aware that what they know and what they don't know.
Exactly.
Exactly.
And we want them to see that this is a strategy that they're using.
So using each of the different phonogram patterns and using each of these rules and things like that is helping to support us when we encounter a word that we don't know.
Mhmm.
So if there's a word that we're looking at that we're like, yes, we've committed that to orthographic memory, that's amazing.
We can just use that.
We don't need to use the strategies for every single word, but we do wanna use these strategies when we come to a word that's unfamiliar Absolutely.
To us.
And so I think in that same line, I think that was just another misconception that I had too was that like you said, I'm gonna go through this list of phonics patterns, and I'm gonna do it in this very systematic order, which again, is good.
We do wanna be building in a progressive framework.
Mhmm.
But I also was sort of holding my students back.
A little bit, like you said, like, oh, we haven't explained that pattern yet.
So because I haven't explicitly taught you, for example, that ai says a in the middle of a word or syllable, that we can't read any text that has an AI word in it because I haven't taught you that just yet.
Yes.
Yeah.
Oh my gosh.
Absolutely.
That's that became a big hold up, I feel like, for me and the beginning of my instruction was, like, decodable text only.
And That's oh my gosh.
That's so not real reading.
It's boring for you.
It's boring for the kids, and the real learning isn't happening.
Right? Absolutely.
And there's a place.
There's always a time in place.
Right? So it's not to say that that we don't need decodible We're certainly not saying that.
There's definitely a place, especially for your young readers when we're thinking about, you know, kinder first, even as we get into second, there is that time and place to practice and to have that opportunity but we also don't want them to only have access to that.
We also want to give them an opportunity to access, um, you know, higher level text and different text, and we want them to start to be able to see, I don't know this word.
And that's okay.
It's okay if they experience words that they don't know because that's gonna happen your whole life.
I still read things that I don't know the word, and I'm gonna have to either sound it out.
And so then I'm like, okay.
Great.
I can use one of my word recognition strategies.
I can try and break this into syllables and think about each of the different sounds.
I might need to look it up.
Yep.
Um, but that that is a strategy.
And looking for those patterns and finding those patterns and recognizing the patterns that we do know is a strategy for the words that we don't know, but we wanna give students opportunity to come to those words that they don't know so that they have that opportunity to say, oh, I don't know this word.
Can I break it down? Can I think about how many syllables? Can I think about that? And I think that was something I was really afraid.
Of doing.
I felt like they had to have a 100% accuracy and everything they read.
Yes.
Yeah.
And that's where I was too.
And, again, how you were saying, you as a reader, like, you'll come I mean, that happened to me last night.
I was reading a book and I came across a word and I was like, oh, I'm gonna really have to pause on this one.
And I'm still not exactly sure if I am reading it correctly, but in my brain, I broke it down.
And I'm like, okay.
I think I can kinda get through this and get through the pronunciation.
I might have to go look it up later just to make double check, um, make sure.
But, also, I feel like that's where you become a stronger reader when you have that little bit of struggle of not every single word is easy and that you just know off the top of your head, you you kind of build those skills and you pause and you think and you use those skills and strategies you already have built up.
Absolutely.
And I think too that's where your executive functioning is really going to come in.
And so that's when we talk about that interweaving again and knowing that the research is really talking about the active view And really, this isn't just about decoding, but this is about recognizing this is a strategy.
When do I use this strategy? Cause I talked a lot in that article specifically about strategy use.
And, like, how do I know when to use each strategy? And I think the reason that we sometimes lose our students or they think it's not real reading is because we don't help them see this is when you would apply this.
Yeah.
And the only opportunity they have to see when they would apply this is in those opportunities where, oh, I don't know how to read this.
Okay.
Great.
Let's pause.
Yep.
Let's stop.
Let's break it down into syllables.
Let's think about each of the sound patterns.
Let's look for patterns we know.
Yep.
And that's where that shows up.
So, again, I think, you know, we need to make sure that we are explicitly teaching phonogram patterns, but I think we can let off some of the stress I have to teach every single one and come back to the bigger picture Yeah.
And say, yes.
We want to give students enough explicit instruction that they recognize those patterns exist and that they can use that and when they can use that at this, you know, again, we've got the sound level, we've got the syllable level, the word level, the sentence level, the passage level, but it's really at that, you know, sentence and passage level that we really need them to start to recognize.
Oh, I don't know this.
How can I use and apply this strategy? Exactly.
Exactly.
So were there any other misconceptions you had about word recognition, um, and that did coding instruction? Yes.
I'm sure there were many.
Um, I'm I'm sure that I probably still have some misconceptions.
I think it's a journey for all of us, but I think the biggest one was that students don't need to work on these skills after grades 2, 3.
So by the time they have finished, you know, kinder 1st and second, they are done with these foundational skills.
And even when we look at you know, some of the standards, um, especially, like, thinking about phonological awareness.
So phonological awareness is kind of part of this word recognition instruction.
It's really that that connection of the sounds to the visual print.
And what you'll see when you look at, you know, state standards or standards as a whole is that there are no phonological awareness standards after grade 1.
Yeah.
Or a lot of the assessments that we're assessing students' ability to read don't even give phonological awareness.
Uh, it's not presented to students after grades too.
You know, it's, like, it looks like they tested out or or they've graduated, but, really, they're just like, no.
They should have these skills.
We just assume that they have them.
Yeah.
Exactly.
And I I can save from experience.
I I was a secondary literacy specialist, and even though, yes, I was working in a t tier 3 setting most of the time.
I also pushed into some tier 2, and I can tell you our kids need these skills way beyond that 2nd, 3rd grade level.
Even if it's just something we come back to and just practice or review.
Right? It is never ever going to hurt them to be able to continue working on these skills.
Absolutely.
And I think it comes back to when we can look at things potentially in more depth.
So, for example, if we were thinking about a CK pattern and it's like, okay, my students already know that CK says.
Mhmm.
Awesome.
Maybe that's something that they learned when they were in Kinder for a second.
That was a time in which that was exposed to them.
We can absolutely start to expand that out and say, great.
Now that we know that, do we know when to use it? Oh, we use c k to spell at the end of a single syllable word following a short vowel.
So then all of a sudden, it's like, okay.
So we need to understand, you know, how many syllables there were.
We need to understand that if we've got multi syllabic words, we're probably more likely to use a c Yep.
In that position and also that we're not gonna see um, c k and the initial, right, at the front of a word.
Right.
We're gonna really see that at the end of a word or syllable.
Right? So that's the other tricky piece there, um, because you will have some kind of exceptions and things like that where they'll be like, oh, but what about in the word chicken? And you're like, okay.
Well, we have chick is our base word and then it.
Like, uh, I'm sure there's some reason for that.
I don't really know.
Right.
But I always do that.
I'm like, I'm sure there's a reason for that.
We could look into that if you want.
And oftentimes, they're like, nah, it's okay.
Oh, me too.
Eve.
I think I even with my student last night, it was like, somewhere somewhere down the line, someone decide this is rural.
I don't know why.
It is what it is.
It is what it is.
It is what it is.
And then they think, you know, but even being able to do that and then saying, okay.
But if we do hear that in the initial position, then we need to choose between c or k, because those would be our spelling options there.
And you could even then start to get into, well, we're gonna use, um, c most of the time unless it's followed by kind of that e I y.
Right.
We're gonna get a sound.
And so you can get more in-depth with these things.
And so that's where when you start looking at, you know, your upper elementary, your middle school, even your high school students.
Absolutely.
They don't know these rules.
And so just to say, hey.
I just wanna explain why this exists for you.
They're like, oh, that makes so much more sense.
Yeah.
I can even though, again, I was a middle school of literacy specialist, c k, that pattern was my bread and butter.
I was constantly working on that with kids because again, they knew the sound, but when to use it, That was questionable for some kids.
You know? And, again, kind of when we're looking at that sound in the beginning of a word, it was surprised me how many times a kid would use a k instead of a c or vice versa.
Yep.
And having to be like, okay.
Let's go back and let's kind of re examine this rule.
Exactly.
And I think that's one of the things for secondary level students or even upper elementary students that you can start to look at is the frequency at which these patterns are occurring and that kind of thing.
It's just interesting to them.
And then they can kinda be like, oh, alright.
Well, that's giving me.
I always tell them.
I'm I wanna give you some of the math behind this too.
And then all of a sudden, they're like, alright.
I'm locked in now.
This makes sense to me.
Yeah.
And they do.
They do learn it.
And then you can always kinda review.
I guess sometimes I'd always do like a felt like it was like a little trivia.
Oh, so when do we use this? And, like, and they could repeat it back to me.
And it was always fun for them.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And I think to one of the things that I like to tell my older students as we're working on these word recognition skills.
Sometimes you'll get them saying, I already know this, or we do know this.
And sometimes we'll say, yes.
Absolutely.
And that's great.
We can still practice it.
It's just like if you were doing sports and you're doing your jumping jacks or your push ups.
Yeah.
I know you know how to do a jumping jack.
I know you know how to do a push up.
We're still gonna do it because we're activating the muscles that we need.
And in this case, we're activating the neural process is that we need.
Same thing if you're doing, you know, music and you have your warm ups for your vocal warm ups.
Like, it's the same idea.
And so oftentimes I'll tell them totally good.
We're just warming up our brains so that we're ready.
Absolutely.
And that's why I always said that with my students, to my older students and they 100% when they're like, oh, yeah.
This really is just a warm up.
This is getting us ready for what we're gonna be moving into.
There was no fighting, like, at all.
They did not try to fight me on that.
They understood 100% why we were going back and doing that.
Awesome.
So to keep this actionable, how can we effectively incorporate word recognition skills into our lessons across the grade levels? Yeah.
So I think one of the easiest ways to do this when you're first starting out or even at any point really in your journey is to really consider incorporating a pattern or a rule of the week.
Um, and that can really just be something where depending on your setting and depending on, you know, whether you're in the general education classroom or an intervention, a small group setting, you have a specific phonogram pattern, for example, that you're working on or a specific syllable type that you're working on or a specific spelling rule or ethics, maybe.
So you're looking at a specific prefix or suffix pattern.
And just pointing that out and pulling attention to that at the very beginning of the week or the beginning of your lesson Yeah.
And saying, hey.
Let's remember about what this rule is.
Let's think about when do we use this.
Let's think about where we find this.
Like, let's just talk about this pattern.
So, for example, if we were talking about CK, we would just say like, alright, who can tell me, you know, what this pattern says? Let's think about when do we use it? Let's think about some words that maybe have that pattern.
And really just focusing on that and then being able to have students start to find that pattern in their reading, in their writing, in their math problems, wherever it is.
And so almost what you're doing, you could almost put you know, with the flash card or the pattern up on your whiteboard and say this is the pattern that we were focusing on this week.
And I want you to find it everywhere because that's also gonna help to support that executive functioning of this is the rule.
Yeah.
This is what we're looking for.
I want you to see if you can find examples that follow the rule if you can find examples that don't follow the rule, that's awesome too.
Let's talk about it because kids love to prove you wrong.
I don't know if that's just me, but they love to be like, but what about in this case? Yeah.
And I'm like, that's amazing.
I love that you're thinking about that and that level of debt.
And, honestly, I will often be like, I'm sure there's some rule or I'm sure that word does not come from English origin or I'm sure that that's a name and names do not follow our rules at all.
Yep.
Yep.
That's that's been my one of my go tos.
Also, when they're like, when I say, oh, I maybe it's not an, you know, uh, English, uh, like, the origin is English and they'll be like, well, what origin is? I'm like, guys, we're gonna have to do a deep dive if we're gonna be going into all that.
So it's but they do.
They find it fun and interesting.
And to make them more interested in language overall is always a plus.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And I think, you know, again, when they feel like, oh, I'm gonna prove I'm gonna prove you wrong.
I'm out to get you, then they're looking for it.
And that's when you're also like, that's awesome.
Like, whatever it's gonna take, to get you doing this is great.
And so, yeah, I would just use a pattern, a rule, and just pull focus on to that specific pattern or rule.
Um, and whether you are gonna go really deep into it, so in a lot of our lessons, we will spend a good amount of time talking about what does that look like at the sound level? What does it look like at the word level? What does it look like in an individual syllable or what syllable type would we find this pattern in? Mhmm.
Moving all the way up through the sentence, the paragraph, the passage level, we're gonna we're gonna spend that time because we're in this intervention space.
But if you're in the general education classroom, it's absolutely fine to keep that higher level.
Yeah.
And just say, hey.
This is what we want to be looking for, and I want you finding this in everywhere that you can.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
And, again, the goal is not to overwhelm yourself.
As we mentioned in the previous episode, it is to just have one thing you can do.
So try it out.
Let us know how it goes.
If you're not confident with all the rules just yet, no worries.
We are going to have a link to our comprehensive rules guide in our show notes, and you can just work through one pattern at a time.
Or if you want extra support, we'd love to have you join us in our delivering smarter intervention program or our 5 core components of literacy library where we have ongoing monthly coaching calls and can walk you through the specific to your setting and your students.
In our next episodes, we are gonna be sharing more about what you can do to support the other critical skills that students need to read and write effectively.
Which there are a few, at least.
So we'll have many things to talk about.
Awesome.
Well, we look forward to hearing from you, and we'll see you next time.
Thanks for listening to this episode of a smarter literacy podcast.
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