Struggling Decoders

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Rationale: why it's important

Personal Experience

* classroom instruction moves too quickly

*anxiety, anger and depression can be issues for children with dyslexia (Humphrey and Mullins, 2002).

*need a lot of repetition

*need to evaluate effective teaching

*understand the impact on the lives of children

learning takes time, goal-orientation, supportive feedback, accumulated successful practice and frequent review (Hattie & Yates, 2014).

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Reading and the Brain

-learning to read requires the visual input of words, recognition of the written word, access to meaning as well as pronunciation and articulation of the word. These two paths in the brain work phonologically and semantically

- learning entire words doesn’t allow for generalization to the vast amount of words in our language

-teaching whole words delays the learning of reading as it trains the wrong word area of the brain

- teaching systematic grapheme to phoneme representation is neurologically supported

Deheane, S. (2009). Reading in the brain: The science and evolution of a cultural invention. New York: Viking.

How psychological science informs the teaching of reading (mod 1 842)

Mather, N., Shaywitz, B. A., & Shaywitz, S. E. (2013). Toward a Synthesis of Cognitive-Psychological, Medical/Neurobiological, and Educational Models for the Diagnosis and Management of Dyslexia. Oxford Handbooks Online. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199796304.013.0030

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Phonological Awareness

Importance of phonological awareness for struggling decoders

Phonological Core Variable Difference Model provides evidence that the core phonological processing at the phoneme level (Stanovich, 1988)

-with poor phonological processing learning grapheme to phoneme correspondence is difficult (Stanovich, 1988)

-neurological differences in those who struggle at the phonological level

-Phonological and Strategy Training Program (PHAST) is appropriate to offer the entire class as part of an integrated systematic program for reading, spelling and writing (Lovett, Lacerenza & Borden, 2000).

-PHAST program demonstrates strong learning outcomes as it delivers a sequential combination of the phonological and strategy-based instruction (Lovett et al., 2000).

Cain, K. (2011). Reading development and difficulties. Oxford: BPS Blackwell.

Shaywitz, S. E., Morris, R., & Shaywitz, B. A. (2008). The Education of Dyslexic Children from Childhood to Young Adulthood. Annual Review of Psychology,59(1), 451-475. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.59.103006.093633

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Decoding Skills

When teaching decoding skills you are "training a mentality", a set of strategies to approach new words, and map them into long term memory stores. We cannot teach every word the student will need to know. (Kikpatrick, 2015)

Chunk blending allows sounds to be added to the phonological loop which decreases working memory load (cat --> c, c+a=ca, ca+t=cat; two chunks of auditory information at a time. Blend as you Read approach as stated by the program Reading Simplified

In response to the functioning of different coding and memory systems, storing and retrieving types of information

Involves verbal/auditory and visual short-term memory components (Schaars, Segers & Verhoeven, 2017)

Sight word teaching versus Phonics

"letter- sound decoding is the primary vehicle beginning readers use for reducing the load on visual memory"

active analysis of language structures

acquisition of sublexical (letter level) knowledge

phonological and orthographic awareness

alphabetic knowledge

general orthographic knowledge

composed of individual speech sounds (phonemes)

combinations of speech sounds (syllables, onset-rime units)

consider the use of Figure 1: Cognitive processes and different types of knowledge entailed in learning to read

Vellutino, F. R., Fletcher, J. M., Snowling, M. J., & Scanlon, D. M. (2004). Specific reading disability (dyslexia): What have we learned in the past four decades? Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry,45(1), 2-40. doi:10.1046/j.0021-9630.2003.00305.x

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Morphology

-breaking words into their base, prefix and suffix provides understanding at the smallest meaning level of the word

-it is argued there is growing consensus that phonics instruction misses some children and “little or no evidence that phonics is effective for spelling, vocabulary and reading comprehension.” (Bowers & Bowers, 2017)

-emphasize the “English spelling system is designed to represent both pronunciation and meaning and the spelling of most if not all English words can be explained once constraints of phonology, morphology and etymology are jointly considered.” English is not full of exceptions with sight words to be memorized but is based on a logical system.

tools to read long words , the ability to separate words into their morphological parts, longer words become less daunting

Bowers, J.S., Bowers, P.N., (2017) Beyond Phonics: The case for teaching children the logic of the English spelling system. Educational Psychologist, 52(2), 124-141

Deacon, S. H., & Kirby, J. R. (2004). Morphological awareness: Just “more phonological”? The roles of morphological and phonological awareness in reading development. Applied Psycholinguistics,25(02). doi:10.1017/s0142716404001110

Goodwin, A., Lipsky, M., & Ahn, S. (2012). Word Detectives: Using Units of Meaning to Support Literacy. The Reading Teacher,65(7), 461-470. doi:10.1002/trtr.01069

Kirby, J. R., Deacon, H. S., Bowers, P. N., Izenberg, L., Wade-Woolley, L., & Parrila, R. (2012). Children's Morphological Awareness and Reading Ability. Read Writ,25, 389-410. doi:10.1007/s11145-010-9276-5

Kruk, R.S., & Bergman, K. (2013). The reciprocal relations between morphological processes and reading. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 114, 10-34.

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Considerations for teaching

low range first grade students benefit from

*hands on phonics activities

*children active decision makers

*activities writing for sounds

comparing and contrasting sounds and spelling patterns

finger pointing while reading

combining onset and rime instruction with sequential letter-sound decoding

McGill-Franzen, A., & Allington, R. L. (2011). Handbook of reading disability research. New York: Routledge.

*Many students with dyslexia set perfectionistic and unattainable goals. By helping the child set an attainable goal, teachers can change the cycle of failure (Schunk, 1990).

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Interfering factors

*poor working memory

* cognitive factors: phonological awareness, verbal short-term memory, orthographic awareness, rapid naming and processing speed

*attention

*cognitive load theory

Mather, N., Shaywitz, B. A., & Shaywitz, S. E. (2013). Toward a Synthesis of Cognitive-Psychological, Medical/Neurobiological, and Educational Models for the Diagnosis and Management of Dyslexia. Oxford Handbooks Online. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199796304.013.0030

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Resources

Teachers:

Reading Simplified

A Balanced Literacy Diet

Reading Rockets

Orton Gillingham: check for research

Teach Your Monster to Read

*see program evaluation