Welcome to the Reading Research Recap!
I am Dr. Neena Saha, Vice President of Science of Reading at MetaMetrics and founder and CEO of Elemeno, now a part of MetaMetrics. My focus as an executive is the same as it is as a researcher–to bridge the research-practice gap so that educators can access real-time tools to support reading success. In my role expanding the understanding of research to inform teaching and learning strategies, I put together this monthly compendium of the relevant and must-read research that impacts the reading and learning landscape. I offer research highlights in digestible summary slices. Hopefully, the data and findings you see here are useful to you as researchers, educators, and district and edtech leaders. Email me at nsaha@lexile.com to share what you find insightful, and how we can make this regular installment more useful to you in your work supporting early learning success.
A quick note…
It’s been kinda a slow month in terms of reading research, which happens every so often. You can see there are less studies than normal listed below, and I’m only covering 2 in-depth this month because of that. But, you will see that I have covered the first study in a little more depth than usual to make up for it. Also, I’ll be attending the SSSR (the Society of the Scientific Study of Reading) conference next week and I’ll present some of my favorite talks and posters in August’s version!
The “P” Word Revisited: 8 Principles for Tackling Today’s Questions and Misconceptions about Phonics Instruction
Open access link provided by the authors! We listed this study back in the April edition but it was not covered in-depth. I think it has a lot of good information for practitioners in it so I will do my best to highlight the main points here.
- Why This is Important: There is a lot of talk these days about phonics instruction — which is great — since we know phonics is the most effective way of teaching word recognition (see the National Reading Panel report of the subgroups). But, exactly what “good” phonics instruction looks like, and how to implement it, can be tricky. In fact, the authors list problems that teachers encounter when it comes to phonics instruction:
- How to differentiate phonics instruction in your class?
- How to promote transfer of phonics instruction to actual texts?
- How much time to allocate in your literacy block to phonics?
- Can you modify the program (perhaps use analogy-based phonics instruction) for students who are struggling?
- Can you use patterned and leveled texts in addition to decodables?
- Are phonics rules helpful to have students memorize?
- Sight words aren’t sticking: how should I teach them?
- Key Points & What Can We Do: The authors do not directly answer all the above questions, but they do propose 8 “principles” to guide teachers which address the questions:
- Principle #1: Phonics instruction is not just about decoding, it is important because it helps children with encoding as well: it helps children learn to spell.
- Principle #2: 84% of words in English are spelled phonetically and teachers who are proficient in their own phonics knowledge can better help their students. However, it is a journey, if it seems daunting to you, “rope in” a colleague to learn with you.
- Principle #3: Our brains are more equipped to pick up patterns than rules. So, instead of having children memorize rules (two vowels go walking…) show patterns of word families instead (several phonics “rules” have too many exceptions to be of use anyway). An example they give is: instead of teaching the Floss Rule as a rule only, show word lists with that pattern. (note: I know word families are a strict no-no among some factions of SoR, but I find their reasoning sensible, and I admit I have changed my views on this.)
- Principle #4: Good phonics instruction does not have to be scripted, feel free to modify the program, slow down, or move faster based on your student’s needs.
- Principle #5: To teach for transfer, make sure you allow students a lot of time to practice. In the I do, you do, we do gradual release model, they recommend only about 20% of time should be instruction, and the remaining 80% should be application and practice.
This next statement might be the most heated in the article, so I am quoting it verbatim: “Decodable Texts—The research on decodable texts is mixed (Jenkins et al., 2004; Mesmer, 2009; Shanahan, 2018a). We advise mixing some practice reading (1) decodable texts along with (2) more natural language pattern texts and (3) controlled vocabulary texts during the beginning stages of reading.”
My thoughts: sure, that is fine, but just look at your data and know your students. I’ve taught struggling readers and have spoken with many parents of struggling readers, and there is no way that many of them could handle anything except decodable text in the early stages of learning to decode. Struggling readers might also need more repetition and practice and need to stay in decodables a lot longer. It is also a confidence thing. When you are working with a reader who has difficulties, you are not just teaching reading. You are trying to get them to put their trust in you that English does make sense and that you will help them crack the alphabetic code. This is especially true for older struggling readers who have given up trying to learn to read. There is a huge emotional aspect to this that I feel does not receive adequate air time when it comes to the discussion on decodable books. Decodable books foster a sense of confidence in students. That does not mean they should only ever be reading decodable books. If they choose to read a harder book at home, just help them sound out the words they don’t know. Also, comprehension, vocabulary, and background knowledge should be worked on via oral language (purposeful teacher read-alouds for younger children or books with audio support for older students).
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- Principle #6: You can use different methods of phonics instruction as long as it is systematic and explicit. For example, you can use synthetic phonics (part-to-whole: matching letters to sounds), analogic phonics (whole-to-part-to-whole: word families compare and contrast), and analytic phonics (whole-to-part: word sort with spelling patterns). I couldn’t do all the activities justice here, but if you are interested in it, read the full article via the open-access link above.
My thoughts: synthetic vs analytics vs analogic phonics is getting a lot of attention recently, and I didn’t know that there is no solid research favoring one method over the other…makes sense to use a combination of approaches but would like to hear other thoughts on this as well…
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- Principle #7: Differentiate instruction by administering screeners with follow-up diagnostic assessments to form 3-4 small groups based on where they need the most instruction. This does not mean you don’t do whole-class instruction, but the authors said to keep whole-class instruction to about 10 min.
- Principle #8: The ultimate goal of phonics instruction is automaticity in word recognition. We don’t want to keep children in phonics instruction any longer than necessary. I heard a quote recently along the lines of phonics instruction should be “as fast as possible, as slow as necessary.” Keeping in mind this ultimate goal, the authors show how full phoneme segmentation ability and phonics knowledge are required to orthographically map high-frequency words (which is why students can still struggle with them).
The authors conclude with the notion that teacher training (rather than a single program or curricula) is paramount.
What do teacher educators know about English spelling?
- Why This is Important: Decoding (word reading) and encoding (spelling) are really two sides of the same coin. Student spelling can provide insight into which specific skills they are missing. Therefore, it is important that teacher educators (or, the teachers who teach teachers) know how to convey this importance, and help teachers perform error analysis on student spelling. This study conducted a survey of teacher educators knowledge on English spelling.
- Key Findings: Teachers generally had knowledge about basic spelling patterns, “…75% or more of teacher educators answering items correctly related to the spelling of “ch” versus “sh,” the final “-dge,” “ou/ow,” the “rab- bit rule,” final long “a” in a one syllable word, and suffix “-ed.” But, many teachers found items related to African American Vernacular English more difficult: “…teacher educators seemed to also struggle with items regarding AAE- and Spanish-related spellings with 45% or fewer answering these items correctly.”
- What Can We Do: This survey is a first step in figuring out what teacher educators know. It can be helpful in pointing out areas that colleges of education need to work on: “Initiatives designed to encourage teacher educators to deepen their knowledge of complex spelling patterns as well as common spellings related to AAE and Spanish-speaking students are needed.”
Phonics
A Comparison Of Guided Reading And Systematic Phonics Approaches To Supplementary Reading Instruction (dissertation, not yet peer-reviewed) “ A randomized controlled design was used, and first grade students were assigned to receive either explicit phonics or guided reading intervention three days per week for approximately thirty minutes each lesson. Reading fluency and a broad reading measure served as dependant variables. Results indicated that explicit phonics instruction was more effective than guided reading for students reading below grade level but was not more effective than guided reading for above grade-level. Significant results were not found for broad reading.”
Dibels Data Informing Literacy Intervention in Primary Grades (dissertation, not yet peer-reviewed).
Dyslexia
Evaluation of the “Three Steps in Screening for Dyslexia” Assessment Protocol Designed for New Zealand Teachers (Open access!) “Traditionally, the New Zealand Ministry of Education opposed the recognition of dyslexia. However, since 2007, the Ministry of Education’s position has started to change, evidenced by the development of a working definition. In 2021 the Ministry of Education released Three Steps in Screening for Dyslexia (TSSD), an assessment protocol designed to support teachers to screen for dyslexia…The authors discuss three changes that could be made to improve the validity and reliability of the TSSD…”
The identification and classification of struggling readers based on the simple view of reading (Open access!) “…All three groups demonstrated reading comprehension difficulties, but the dyslexia group showed particular weaknesses in word processing and phonological areas, the SCD group showed problems deriving meaning from oral language, and the mixed group showed general deficits in most measures. The findings suggest that the SVR does have the potential to determine reading profiles and differential intervention methods.”
Early detection of risk of reading difficulties using a working memory assessment battery (Open access!)
Comprehension
A longitudinal randomized trial of a sustained content literacy intervention from first to second grade: Transfer effects on students’ reading comprehension. “We developed a sustained content literacy intervention that emphasized building domain and topic knowledge from Grade 1 to Grade 2 and evaluated transfer effects on students’ reading comprehension outcomes…After implementation of Grade 1 thematic content literacy lessons and summer support for reading, treatment group students experienced smaller summer losses on a domain-general measure of reading than control group students. Following the sustained implementation of thematic content literacy lessons in science through Grade 2, treatment group students also outperformed their control group peers on a science content reading comprehension outcome (ES = .18). Furthermore, we found transfer effects on science content reading comprehension that varied by passage-item type (near-, mid-, and far-transfer passages determined by the inclusion and number of directly taught words in passages).”
Reading fiction and reading minds in early adolescence: A longitudinal study (Open access!) “Results showed that children’s self-reported fiction, but not their non-fiction reading was associated with ToM. Further, the association was concurrent but not longitudinal: fiction reading and ToM at age 13 were associated but fiction reading at age 11 did not predict ToM at age 13.”
Can e-books foster child language? Meta-analysis on the effectiveness of e-book interventions in early childhood education and care “Children benefited significantly more from the e-book interventions compared to regular childcare (g = 0.85). Activities with e-books were also ahead of print storybook reading in ECEC (g = 0.45). The effectiveness was mainly moderated by story repetition and number of sessions, and by their embeddedness in the classroom. E-books were primarily researcher-developed and included congruent functions to foster language development.”
Explaining Performance in Word Reading and Comprehension Across Ages: An Analysis of Multiple Hypotheses with the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test, Fourth Edition “…At the comprehension level, the publisher endorsed an expanded simple view of reading, where oral reading fluency skills mediate the effects of word reading and oral language skills on comprehension. Using structural equation modeling with correlations provided in the technical manual, these analyses investigated multiple hypotheses stemming from publisher-endorsed theories. Results conformed to much of the publisher’s word level theories, but they were more equivocal at the comprehension level. Implications for WIAT-4 interpretation are discussed…Support for the Oral Reading Fluency subtest reflecting an intermediary skill between decoding and comprehension appears more tenuous. It may better represent another indicator of examinee decoding performance, given its relatively lower language influence, and strong association with decoding skills.”
New Tech & Reading
I thought both of these studies were a really clever way of using new technologies. The first one was from the team at Google:
LaMPost: Design and Evaluation of an AI-assisted Email Writing Prototype for Adults with Dyslexia “ In this paper, we introduce LaMPost, a prototype email-writing interface that explores the potential for LLMs to power writing support tools that address the varied needs of people with dyslexia. LaMPost draws from our understanding of these needs and introduces novel AI-powered features for email-writing, including: outlining main ideas, generating a subject line, suggesting changes, rewriting a selection. We evaluated LaMPost with 19 adults with dyslexia, identifying many promising routes for further exploration (including the popularity of the “rewrite” and “subject line” features), but also finding that the current generation of LLMs may not surpass the accuracy and quality thresholds required to meet the needs of writers with dyslexia. Surprisingly, we found that participants’ awareness of the AI had no effect on their perception of the system, nor on their feelings of autonomy, expression, and self-efficacy when writing emails.”
An analysis of children’ interaction with an AI chatbot and its impact on their interest in reading “…Multiple data sources from 68 students participating in a 6-week reading activity were collected and analyzed. It was found that students perceived a high level of social connection with the chatbot. In particular, students talking with the chatbot maintained a stable level of situational interest in the value dimension, while the interest of those who did not participate in the book talk with the chatbot faded significantly…The results provide insights into how a chatbot with AI techniques can create a positive reading experience to sustain students’ interest in learning.”