Category Archives: literacy

Largest US school system to change how reading is taught

Posted on May 9, 2023 | Leave a comment

With half its students unable to pass reading tests, the City of New York has decided to change the way it teaches reading.

CVCC twin consonants

Starting this fall in some schools and in the fall of 2024 in others, “the science of reading” will ground all reading instruction.  This means that students will focus on learning sounds associated with letters (phonemes) and on joining those letter sounds (phonics) to form words.

Chancellor David C. Banks will announce the change today (May 9, 2023).  He hopes the new approach will change the current outcome in reading instruction in which half the city’s third through eighth graders are not proficient in reading.

The city’s schools are divided into 32 local districts.  Each district can choose one of three acceptable reading programs, all of which focus–to varying degrees–on phonics.  Research has shown that a phonics-based approach to learning to read produces the best results for primary grade students.

The city’s principals’ union is opposed to a one-size fits all approach in the city’s 700 elementary schools.  Teachers say they need training.

Local school districts within the city will have some choice in how to proceed.  They must choose one of three reading programs: Into Reading, Expeditionary Learning, and Wit & Wisdom.  They can and in some cases must supplement these programs with more systematic phonics instruction.

One advantage of the unified approach is to provide students who transfer from one New York school to another a single reading curriculum.  Another is to follow the mandate of New York’s Mayor Eric Adams, who has dyslexia, to teach reading using a phonics-based approach.  Still another is to provide teachers with materials that have been shown to work, so each teacher doesn’t need to seek materials independently.

The change will start this fall in city school districts showing the least proficiency in reading.

New York is the latest and biggest school district to show dissatisfaction with the way reading has been taught and to turn to a research-supported approach.  Poor student performance on reading tests, parents’ demanding change after Covid 19 educational losses, and a growing cohort of students who cannot read are propelling changes in reading instruction throughout the US.

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Posted in dyslexia, letter sounds, literacy, methods of teaching reading, phonemes, phonics, reading research

Hooked on Phonics

Posted on April 16, 2020 | Leave a comment

When you are teaching a child to read, it is important to use supplementary materials.  One such reading instruction series is Hooked on Phonics.

Why I like and recommend Hooked on Phonics:

  • Book 1 of Hooked on Phonics teaches VC and CVC words, introducing short a, i, o, u, and e in that order. Most phonics instruction begins this way.
  • New words are introduced in rows of up to six words, often with fewer than ten new words per page. With lots of white space, the appearance of the pages is friendly.
  • The large typeface looks like children’s printing with the a’s and g’s easy to read.
  • Each new vowel sound is introduced with a vivid picture of a word which begins with that letter sound (although not many children today know what an ox is).
  • Hooked on Phonics intersperses 17 one- or two-page illustrated stories, throughout Book 1. The attractive stories are well-illustrated with humorous black and white line drawings.  The captions of the stories use mostly CVC words.  The stories continue through all five of the instruction books.
  • Newly introduced words are reviewed over and over.
  • Book 2 continues with CVC words, teaching beginning word blends, which continue the one-letter-to-one-sound relationship established in Book 1. This kind of logic makes sense to children.
  • Book 3 expands CVC words by introducing end-of-word blends; it also introduces a few suffixes like -ing and -ed, which create two-syllable words.
  • Book 4 introduces long vowels (silent e and double vowels)in one-syllable words.
  • Book 5 introduces two-letter vowel sounds (harder than Book 4 words), three-letter beginning blends (harder than book 2 blends), and soft c and g.
  • Students don’t need to write anything to use this series, a plus for students who balk at writing.

What I don’t like about Hooked on Phonics:

  • Book 1 introduces 44 sight words along with 168 VC and CVC words. In other words, about 20% of the words to be learned in book one are sight words, not phonics words.  With so much memorizing to be done, children might think memorizing words is as important as sounding out words.  This misunderstanding of how new words are decoded—memorized rather than sounded out—can inculcate bad reading behaviors in beginning readers.</li
  • The first blends introduced to children (ch-, sh-, and th-) are not blends at all. They are digraphs, letter combinations whose original sounds are ignored and replaced with new sounds. This  can confuse children who are learning that English is a logical sound system.  Teaching digraphs at this point does not make sense.
  • The reading books that accompany the series can be hard to read. One Level 2 book, for example, uses the words “detective,” “ghost,” “house,” “kitten” “thanks,” “meow,” “blanket” and “white,” words which are far beyond the reading ability of a child learning to form beginning blends in one-syllable, short-vowel words.
  • Some easy phonics rules (adding an s to form plurals, pronouncing double consonants such as -ll at the end of words as a single sound, and pronouncing -ck at the end of words as a single sound) are not mentioned. Why not?
  • Two- and three-syllable words are barely mentioned, and advanced phonics is not covered at all. In my teaching of reading, I meet children who learn phonics using one-syllable words only.  Yet children need word attack skills for pronouncing long words, for recognizing roots, prefixes and suffixes, and for spelling certain kinds of words.  Phonics for so many children stops before these skills are learned and guessing at words begins.

The advantages far outweigh the disadvantages of using Hooked on Phonics as a supplement to beginning reading instruction.  With online access now available for phones, computers and tablets, kids who are attracted to technology have a reason to like the series as much as their parents and teachers.

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Posted in CVC words, digraphs, guessing at words, Hooked on Phonics, literacy, methods of teaching reading, phonics, practice reading skills, reading readiness., sight words, syllables

What to do when a child says “It hurts” as he reads

Posted on August 8, 2019 | Leave a comment

I was talking to my friend about her summer visit with her grandson who is about to start first grade.  Together the two of them were reading a beginner reader.  The boy was reading the three- and four-letter words well.

But when he came to a longer word, he would look up with sad, sad eyes  and say, “It hurts!”

“What hurts?” his grandmother would ask.

“That word hurts.  It’s too big,” he would say.

It would be a funny story if the pain the boy felt were not real.  I have seen this with other children too.

In particular I have seen children squirm when we first attempt  CVCe words after mastering CVC words.  That silent e at the end of words seems like an impossible hurdle:  so intimidating that children would rather stop learning than face it.

I’ve seen the fear, too, when children are learning how to read two-syllable words.  When there are twin consonants, as in “little” or “yellow,” and I tell them to split the word between the identical consonants, there is no problem.  But when we attempt to read syllables in words with different consonants between two vowels such as “Wilson” or “random,” the children freak.

Their fear is real.

One time I moved from CVC to CVCe words with a girl who had had no previous phonics learning.  She could read most CVC words easily, so I spent only a few lessons reviewing them before moving on to CVCe words.  She looked at those words as if they were spitting fire.  She stopped speaking, shook her head, crossed her arms in front of her and pushed back her chair.  We had reached the limit of her understanding, and she feared what lay ahead.

If this happens to you, I suggest

Figure out where the student’s learning boundary is. What has the student learned fairly confidently, and what next step brings on fear.

Begin each lesson with a review of what the student already knows. Compliment the student.  Make students believe in their abilities.

Introduce the next concept slowly, incrementally. For example, if you are introducing CVCe words, start with only one vowel such as a.  Don’t try to teach all five vowels in the same lesson.

Show the child similar words with and without the silent e, such as “cap” and “cape,” and “tap” and “tape.” Or “mit” and “mitten,” and “kit” and “kitten.”  Since replacing first consonants is easier than replacing second consonants, stick to the same second consonant for the first lesson.  Keep as much of the words the same as you can so there are fewer variables.

If at the next lesson the student seems to have forgotten the previous lesson, accept that and start again. Some children move quickly through phonics, and others move slowly, or stall at learning certain skills.

If the child learns slowly, advance slowly. There is no right or wrong length of time to learn phonics skills.  What you are teaching the child is a life-long skill, so if it takes five months to conquer CVCe, so what?  Over a lifetime of 80-plus years, isn’t it better to learn to read well than to forever “hurt” when you see hard words?

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Posted in beginning readers, CVC words, letter sounds, literacy, methods of teaching reading, phonics, reading readiness., reading tips, silent "e" words, syllables

So you’ve decided to teach your four-year-old to read–part 2

Posted on January 20, 2019 | Leave a comment

Once you are sure your child can hear and say the sounds of the English language, the next step is to make your child understand that we use letters to represent those sounds.child making letter T with his body

One good way is to explain that people a long time ago figured out how to make pictures of sounds.  Those pictures of sounds are called letters.  In English those pictures are called ABC’s.

Say the child’s name.  Emphasize the sound at the beginning of the name.  Then show or draw the letter which the child’s name begins with.  You don’t need to call the letter by its name yet; rather, call the letter by the sound it represents.

For example, if your child’s name is Teddy, say his name emphasizing the “t” sound at the beginning of the name.  Show or draw the letter “t” but when you point to it, say the “t” sound.  Collect or point out objects which begin with the same sound.  Help the child to see that the “t” sound is in many words.  Kids will hear the sound more readily at the beginnings of words.

Some kids catch on fast and you can add another letter sound almost immediately.  For others you should focus on one sound at a time for several days.  Start with names of family members.  Focus on the first sound of the name, not middle sounds or ending sounds.  Move on to objects the child sees or uses daily.  Keep reviewing the letter sounds the child has already learned.

Stick to sounds which follow a one-to-one sound-to-letter correspondence.  For now, avoid names like Yvonne or Celine in which the first sound of the name is not represented by the letter usually associated with that sound.  Names which begin with digraphs like Shelly or Thad should also be avoided for now.  Four-year-olds can understand one-to-one logic.  Save words in which one sound is represented by two letters until later.

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Posted in ABC's, digraphs, early childhood education, exceptions to phonics rules, learning, letter sounds, literacy, methods of teaching reading, phonics, reading readiness., reading tips, sounds of English, teaching tips

The place of phonics in reading instruction

Posted on October 31, 2018 | Leave a comment

True or false?

  1. Speaking is natural. Reading is not.
  2. All students learn to read differently.
  3. Kids in early grades should receive explicit phonics instruction.
  4. About 2/3 of US fourth graders can read proficiently.

(The answers are at the end of this blog.)

How kids learn to read, how reading should be taught, and how teachers of reading should be taught are still controversial in the US. This is despite an 18-year-old exhaustive study of research on reading—the National Reading Panel— authorized by Congress in 2000 which found that phonics should be the basis of reading instruction.

Even with overwhelming research, many teacher training colleges do not teach would-be teachers how to teach phonics.  And so the graduates of those schools do not teach their students through a phonics-based approach.  As a result, 60% of US fourth graders are NOT proficient readers, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Students who don’t read well by fourth grade

  • Are more likely to fall behind in other subjects.
  • Are less likely to finish high school.
  • Are more likely to be poor readers their whole lives.
  • Are more likely to be poor.
  • Are more likely to be imprisoned.

Scientific research shows that a phonetic approach to reading is crucial.  Our brains are wired to learn to speak and walk without instruction, but we cannot read without instruction.

Yet in 2016, the National Council on Teacher Quality, after reviewing the syllabi of US teacher training programs, found that only 39% are teaching their would-be teachers how to teach reading based on phonics.  This is 18 years after the US study was published!

In other words, teacher training school are either ignoring the research about how children learn to read or are willfully disregarding it.  And as a result, many students are not learning to read.

When I studied for my master’s degree in education in the early 1990’s, I took a reading course in which the instructor belittled the role of phonics in learning to read.  She said it was one of many factors, all about equal.  I thought phonics was fundamental, but I didn’t have the scientific research to back up my position.

But for the past 18 years we have had overwhelming research that shows that a phonics-based approach to teaching reading is what works best.

If your child is struggling to read, find out if his or her teacher is teaching reading using a phonics-based approach.  If you are taking your child to a tutoring center to learn reading, make sure the center is using a phonics-based approach.  If you are teaching your child to read, use phonics.

What do I mean by phonics?

  • Identifying the sounds of English. Sounds, not ABC’s, come first.
  • Matching those sounds with symbols (letters) which represent those sounds
  • Merging those sounds and symbols to form words.
  • Identifying patterns among the symbols (for example, an “e” at the end of a one-syllable word) which change or influence the sounds letters make.

(The answers are true, false, true and false.)

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Posted in ABC's, letter sounds, literacy, methods of teaching reading, phonics, reading research, reading tips, sounds of English, teaching tips, US education

When a word has a single consonant between two vowels, sometimes (not often) the consonant goes with the first syllable.

Posted on August 26, 2018 | 1 comment

Usually when a two-syllable word has a single consonant between two vowels, the consonant goes with the second syllable.  This pattern forms a first syllable ending in a long or open vowel.  Some words like this include

  • minus
  • tulip
  • pupil
  • motel

Because the majority of two syllable words with a consonant between two vowels follow this pattern, children should learn this as the rule before they learn exceptions.  Lists of words like this are available in many reading workbook series or online.

But students need to know that a few words don’t follow this rule of pronouncing the consonant with the second syllable.  Some words are pronounced with the consonant ending the first syllable and forming a CVC first syllable.

I have not found readily available lists of words like these, so I am including some here.

  • manic, panic, colic, comic, frolic, sonic, tonic
  • oven
  • Janet, planet
  • punish
  • olive
  • livid, timid, valid
  • delta
  • rebel, shrivel, level, civil, devil, hovel, Nevil
  • deluge
  • lizard, wizard
  • driven, given, Kevin, seven
  • second

To find if a word is an exception to the rule, have the student pronounce the word with the consonant starting the second syllable (following the rule).  If the student does not recognize the word, then have the student pronounce the word with the consonant ending the first syllable.  Many times this second pronunciation will make sense, but not if the student is unfamiliar with the word.  In that case, you will need to pronounce the word correctly for the student to hear and explain the meaning of the word to help the student remember it.

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Posted in exceptions to phonics rules, literacy, methods of teaching reading, phonics, pronunciation of words, reading strategies, syllables, teaching tips

Which comes first—reading or writing?

Posted on July 8, 2018 | Leave a comment

For many little kids, writing comes first.  Not writing words but writing pictures to tell stories.

I was with a four-year-old recently, and listened as he explained his drawing on a white board in his house.  On the left were three smiling stick figures—a tall one who was waving, a medium-sized one with long hair, and a short one.  “That’s my dad, that’s my mom, and that’s me,” he said.

Next was what looked like a rocket ship in motion.  “We are flying,” he explained.

Farther along in the drawing was a circular object.  “That’s the moon,” he said.

“Are you going to the moon?” I asked.

“No!” he said, rather disgusted with my reasoning.  “We are going to Brazil.”

At the far right of the white board were the long-haired stick figure and the short stick figure, almost falling off the edge of the white board.  “Now me and Mom are in Brazil.”

This story’s ideas came from the child’s head—he will be traveling to Brazil soon with his mother—but also from the many books his parents have read to him (and the many cartoons he has watched).  From those sources he has unconsciously learned that stories are written in English from left to right; that they have a beginning, middle and end; that they are told in chronological order; and that they contain characters who do something.

This child can write his name.  He knows the alphabet in English and in Portuguese.  He can read some sight words in English.  But he cannot write a story in words.

Yet he can write a story in pictures, incorporating many of the fundamental aspects of story-telling.

So which comes first—reading or writing?

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Posted in fiction reading, literacy, reading-writing connection

The younger the student, the shorter the reading lesson

Posted on February 11, 2018 | 2 comments

Many four-year-olds can learn to read, but their lessons must be short and involve games and manipulatives to keep them engaged.

That’s what I have learned from many years of teaching little kids to read.  After about ten minutes, many little ones lose interest or become distracted.  Then it is time to stop or to move on to a different approach.

For example, last week I worked with a four-year-old girl who is learning to associate sounds with letters and to form her first CVC words.  The lesson was supposed to last 45 minutes, but after 30 minutes, she could no longer sit still.  Here is what we did in that half hour:

  • We began using letter tiles which she loves to touch. She would pull one of the 26 letters I had presorted and tell me the sound associated with that letter.  She knew all but two, “v” and “y,” so we set aside those two and every few minutes we reviewed them.
  • Next, we reviewed last week’s lesson, making CVC words with tiles the vowel “a,” words like “cat,” “man” and “bad.” For five minutes she participated, moving some of the letters herself, but then she noticed my necklace and wanted to wear it.  I let her, but from her attention was diverted.  After another few minutes we moved on.
  • I had created BINGO cards using CVC words, so her next task was to identify the word I said from among the nine words on her card. This worked for a few minutes, but then she became distracted by the BINGO markers themselves—pieces of plastic I had cut out—and she started making patterns with them.  Enough of that.
  • We returned to making words with the tiles to no avail. I cut the lesson short, grateful that she had worked for a half hour.

With a five-year-old last week, the situation was much the same.

child playing card memory game

  • I corrected the few pages of phonics homework she had done while she dumped a container of letter tiles and put them in ABC order, chatting all the time.
  • She told me the sounds associated with each letter, reminding me that “k” and “c” make the same sound. She gets mixed up with “g” and “j,” so we set them aside to review as the lesson progressed.  I pulled letters to make words with beginning blends, such as “smell” and “stun.”  She said the words but in a few minutes, she lost interest.
  • We moved on to a workbook in which she read tiny sentences using CVC and CCVC words.
  • Finally I dictated a few words with blends in them and she wrote them.
  • A half hour passed, the scheduled time for her lesson.  Now she got her reward:  time to build houses out of the letter tiles.

For all elementary school aged children I plan several parts to each lesson, but for the youngest, I need one activity for each seven to ten minutes to keep them engaged.

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Posted in ABC's, blends, CVC words, how to make learning fun, letter sounds, literacy, methods of teaching reading, phonics, practice reading skills, reading readiness., reading strategies, teaching tips

When is it most useful to discuss a reading passage with poor readers?

Posted on December 19, 2017 | 1 comment

Is it most useful before reading? During reading? Or after reading?

During reading.

From my experience, engaging students while they are reading makes the greatest positive impact. It helps students pull greater meaning from the text they are reading, and it models the kinds of thinking good readers do.

What kinds of questions help?

• What does that mean? “That” could refer to a vocabulary word, a sentence or a concept.
• What is confusing or hard to understand? Often a teacher can tell that something the student has read confuses him, but the student doesn’t say so. Even if the student says, “I don’t know,” the teacher likely has ideas about what is difficult to understand. Identifying the problem—an idiom, a metaphor, a reference to another part of the text—and explaining it can be vital to the student’s understanding.
• Who is she? What is her relationship to ___? Sometimes poor readers fail to recognize relationships among characters or the role of a particular character in the text. Or they may fail to recognize that Jean Louise and Scout are the same person.
• What will happen next? Predicting shows students know enough of a story to say what is possible. Not being able to predict might indicate students are not following the plot or a character’s emotional response to a situation.

Modeling by an adult is important for struggling students. “Hmm. I wonder what Nate the Great will do next?”  Or “What is a spinning wheel anyway? I’ve never seen one. Have you?” Or “A red letter day? What in the world is a red letter day?”

Struggling readers need to see that asking questions while they are reading is not a sign that they are dumb; it is a sign they are intelligent. They need to know that good readers ask lots of questions as they read, and if they don’t know the answers, they find out—stopping in the middle of their reading to ask an adult, a dictionary or the internet.

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Posted in asking questions, comprehension, critical thinking, literacy, methods of teaching reading, practice reading skills, reading comprehension, reading strategies, reading tips

Help! My daughter reads words backwards

Posted on November 19, 2017 | Leave a comment

My daughter was reading, “The cat saw catnip,” and she read, “The cat was catpin.”  She does this all the time, and she can’t tell the difference between “b” and “d” no matter how many times I teach her.  What’s going on?

Young child writing C-A-T.

There could be many causes.

Vision problems.  Some children have subtle vision problems not detected by distance charts.  You might have her vision tested by an eye doctor.

Directional confusion. This is a particular vision problem.  Can your child mimic your arm movements when she stands facing you?  Does she mix up down and up, and top and bottom?  Does she mirror write letters and numbers—writing a “b” for a “d”?Two fists with thumbs up and knuckles touching make letter "b" and "d" with a BeD visualized between the two thumbs.

Sequencing problems. Does she say “felt” when she reads “left” or “form” when she means “from”?  (I still do that when I am stressed.)

When a word ends with an “s,” does she say the word as if it begins with an “s,” such as saying “slow” when she reads “lows”?  Does she move words around in sentences, changing the word order?

Mixing up little words. Does she stick in articles (a, an, and the) where they don’t belong, or omit them entirely?  Does she substitute one small word for another, such as “and” for “a” or “for” for “from”?

Maturity.  How old is your daughter?  Every youngster I have taught reading to has had the problems you mention.  I gently correct the child when she makes a mistake, or I say “d” or “b” before she can read a word to help her.  Usually by the age of seven, these problems disappear.  If your child is four or five, these reversals are probably developmental.  However if your child is in first or second grade, you should ask to have your child tested for dyslexia.  Most public schools have reading experts who are trained to deal with these problems.

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Posted in dyslexia, literacy, mixing up letters, reading readiness., skipping words