Cracking the Code to Decoding

Oct 28

Recap:

In today’s podcast, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Julia Lindsey, author of Reading Above the Fray. Julia is a literacy expert and reading researcher. In this episode, she helps us bust some common myths about decodables. Full show notes here.

Meet Dr. Julia Lindsey

Early literacy expert and former kindergarten and first grade teacher
Taught in NYC in a school that combined writer’s workshop, guided reading, and systematic phonics instruction, but noticed she didn’t have tools to help struggling students.
Continued her pursuit of a better way to teach reading by earning a PhD from University of Michigan. There, she learned about reading research and how teachers can teach it to the best of their abilities.
Now helps schools and districts and organizations help translate research into practice to ensure teachers can influence kids to reach their full reading potential.
Author of Reading Above the Fray: Researched-based Routines for Developing Decoding Skills

Tell us more about your book, Reading Above the Fray.

This book is all about foundational reading and particularly decoding.
Allows teachers to have access to the science of reading research and practical ideas they can implement in their classrooms right away.
Activities included in the book are extremely accessible to teachers and promote high-impact changes within the classroom.

What makes a proficient reader?

A proficient reader:

recognizes words.
comprehends individual words and sentences.
makes meaning out of a large amount of texts.
is a fluency reader who reads with prosody and expression.
is someone who learns from the text and can fully access it.
weaves in many different skills all together.
takes time to grow!

Since proficient reading is the “end game”, can you tell us how to get there?

Decoding!

Decoding is our “route to automaticity.”
Decoding is the most efficient way to recognize an unknown word.
When students are able to decode, they are able to make connections to sound and spellings and eventually a word’s meaning (orthographic mapping).
If we practice decoding, it will eventually lead us to be automatic with our words.
It’s the key that allows readers access to proficiency.
We must teach decoding on purpose!

What do you mean when you say, “teach decoding on purpose”?

Sometimes what happens is teachers are teaching decoding “a little bit.” We build words, sound them out, etc.
What we really need is to teach it intentionally and on purpose. It should be built throughout our entire day and throughout a child’s elementary school career.
Doing isolated tasks won’t quite cut it - we must bring excitement to decoding so we can systematically help kids read bigger words in isolation and in context.
Ensure we are bringing prominence to decoding as well as teaching it systematically and explicitly.

What are some myths you’ve found about decoding?

Myth: Teaching kids to decode is going to kill their motivation.

Easy myth to bust! Studies have shown that good skill leads to reading motivation.
Because it’s easier to do something you’re good at, we as teachers must give them access to do that through teaching them how to decode.

Myth: Decoding isn’t related to spelling and should be taught separately.

Wrong again! Encoding (spelling) is the opposite of decoding, so we should be teaching these two skills simultaneously.
Research shows that encoding may even benefit orthographic mapping more than decoding.

Myth: Decoding should be reserved for just grade K-2.

We know this just isn’t true because there are plenty of grades 3-5 students who need support, and they deserve access to those basic foundations.
Some research says 85% or more of upper elementary kids who struggle with comprehension also struggle with decoding, so we must keep addressing this need in the upper-level classrooms.
Upper-level grades are also reading large words, and we need to give them access through those words by practice decoding, syllabication, morphological analysis, etc.

Myth: Students should only read decodable texts.

Decodable texts are constrained - so there’s only so much we can do with them in the way of comprehension, oral language, syntax, etc. Because of this, they’re not meeting the needs of some students.
Once a student is proficient, he or she needs to move on to authentic, grade-level texts so they can learn about words through reading.
For students who aren’t ready to move onto authentic texts, rich read alouds and shared reading will be hugely beneficial.

Myth: Decoding a word isn’t related to understanding a word’s meaning.

Orthographic facilitation is the idea that when students are shown the spelling of the word, it helps them with the word’s meaning.
Research actually shows that if students are being taught a new vocabulary word, having them decode or spell the word helps them remember the word’s meaning.
It should be more than just showing them a picture, because reading and spelling supports them in the meaning.
This is a good reminder that all of these reading systems (decoding, encoding, orthographic mapping, etc.) are connected!

At what phonics skill should we move kids from decodables to authentic texts?

First, it will serve us well to stop thinking about decodables and authentic texts as black and white, one or the other. There’s tons of text that fall in between these categories, such as multiple criteria texts.

These texts are highly decodable (but not 100%) and are associated with a content area.
These texts try to support readers in many ways all at once.
Check out Julia Lindsey’s Beyond Decodables for examples of these texts.

At this point in time, there’s just one study that can help us answer this question. This study looked at a 2nd grade classroom where students independently read authentic grade-level texts and decodable texts. The study found that decodables helped all students, but reading the grade-level texts truly only helped those students that were already on grade level in phonics.
This tells us that:

Students who are not on grade level in 2nd grade phonics scope and sequence will still need decodable texts.
Students who possess the phonics skills we expect 2nd graders to have likely no longer require decodables. These students should be proficient and fluent and able to handle multi-syllabic words.

Check Out Dr. Julia Lindsey!