Today, I'm excited to introduce another Fast-Acting Phonics Fix.
This quick activity I'm about to introduce is perfect for students who struggle with blending sounds to decode unfamiliar words.
So, whether you have only a few days remaining with your students at the end of the school year,
Or your mid-year data shows your students aren't meeting foundational skill benchmarks –
This quick fix could be the answer you're looking for.
Because the truth is:
Your time to make big gains with your students –
– Is limited.
So, you’ll love the fact that–
This simple strategy improves reading skills, even if you only spend 5 minutes daily practicing it with your students.
– A worthy time investment for a big boost in student achievement…don’t you think?
So, this strategy called – the Blend As You Read decoding strategy – helps students successfully decode words by targeting blending.
It’s so effective, yet so simple. We package it in our activity, Read It.
So, if you take 15 minutes to watch the video below or just 7 minutes to read the post – you’ll be ready to implement this strategy by the next time you see your students.
Let’s go!
Watch Read It in Action
Inspiration from a Children’s Book Author
To give you an anchor for what I’m about to share…I’m stealing borrowing an idea from this book series.
The Who Would Win series by Jerry Pallotta is a huge fan favorite.
Pallotta will pit two animals, like the killer whale versus a great white shark, and then write about their characteristics.
Based on the info, Pallotta will declare a winner at the end of each book.
So, my question to you is: Who do you think would win?
Ok, let the games begin…
So, when we teach kids to attack an unfamiliar word, there are two mainstream choices.
There are obviously more than just two – but there are two that dominate the mainstream.
And they've been pitted together, one against the other, in a research study.
Who would win?
Our first contender – the Segmented Approach.
In this approach, you ask the children to look at the word “sat,” say each sound,
/s/ /a/ /t/,
and then read the word.
I also call this approach the “Sound, Sound, Sound, = Word,” approach.
Have you seen this approach in a reading program? (Do you use it?)
You may because, like I said, this is a mainstream method.
Our second contender – the Blend As You Read decoding strategy.
In this approach, instead of saying each sound separately, the child goes straight into blending the first two sounds as she reads each sound.
With this approach, you ask the student to look at the word “sat” and have him blend the first two sounds together:
/ssssaaaa/
and then drop in the final sound
/t/.
Yes, the difference is subtle…
In both strategies, you look at the phonics and try to put the sounds together.
So which of these strategies for blending is the one seen the most in reading curricula?
You guessed it – segmenting…
But is it the winning approach?
The Winning Word Attack Strategy from Research
Nope – not according to the research.
The Blend As You Read strategy is the clear winner.
The most recent researchers to study this call it “connected” or “continuant phonation.”
Some folks call it “continuous blending.”
At Reading Simplified we call this strategy Blend As You Read. And it made quite the splash as Gonzalez-Frey and Ehri pitted these two specific approaches to blending against each other.
And Gonzalez-Frey and Ehri noted that,
We were surprised that children learn to decode so quickly given that they could not decode nonwords on the pretest.
The researchers taught students a segmented, or the sound by sound, strategy. And they found that kids struggled to decode with this approach.
Then, they taught them the Blend As You Read strategy. And the kids then learn to read so quickly!
Now, that was just one study.
And it's not wise in the research world to declare a winner based on one study.
But there have been other studies predating that, such as the one by Weisberg and colleagues.
You can also read more from Gonzalez-Frey and Ehri here.
I also baked this decoding strategy that Gonzalez-Frey and Ehri call “continuant phonation” into the I.E.S. funded Targeted Reading Intervention (recently re-branded “Targeted Reading Instruction.”
This continuous blending strategy was just one feature of the Targeted Reading Intervention which is on the What Works Clearinghouse and has one of the highest effect sizes on Evidence for ESSA. This is especially remarkable considering the intervention averaged only about 5 hours of instruction per struggling reader!
What Does this Mean for Decoding Instruction Tomorrow?
Even if your reading program doesn’t utilize a segmented approach to blending, it's probably not too much of a lift to switch over to the Blend As You Read approach.
I talk about this and other shifts from traditional approaches here and here.
We should be clamoring for programs that include Blend As You Read from the start and have other components that are based on the science, right? Or we should at the least be curious about approaches that are more aligned to the science.
And this one blending strategy is critical!
Now, if you have kids who are high flyers and they learn to read easily, maybe neither of these makes that big of a difference.
But for those who struggle and those who are dyslexic, this is a big deal.
Introduction to the Fast Acting Phonics Fix: Read It
Continuous phonation, A.K.A. Blend As You Read is the strategy we start with in our core Word Work activity, Read It, in the Reading Simplified system.
Notice all the things happening with this activity:
Just as in the Switch It activity, we have a powerful activity with an evidence-based strategy that employs a lot of subskills including:
- The concept of a word,
- Phonics information,
- Segmenting,
- Phonemic blending,
- Alphabetic principle, and
- Left-to-right tracking.
Along the way, they will also learn some spelling.
Remember this is what the research calls “connected phonation” while we call it “Blend As You Read.”
It doesn't so much matter what you call it, as long as you coach this decoding strategy.
It goes like this with the word, “slap,” written on a dry-erase board:
Teacher: Okay. Let's put these sounds together – put the first two sounds together. (Teacher uses a card to cover the “a” and “p.”)
Student: /ssssslllllll/
Teacher: Put all three together. (while uncovering the “a”)
Student: /ssssslllllaaaaaa/
Teacher: Uncover “p.” (without a verbal prompt)
Student: /p/
Teacher: Nice. Okay. Great job. You put the sounds together. Now say each sound. Say the sounds as you write below the word.
Student: Student uses dry-erase marker and writes each letter as she says the sounds.
Teacher: Okay. Now erase and say the sounds.
We end the activity with the teacher and student Erasing the Sounds As They Say Each Sound.
It's another practice opportunity for:
- phonemic segmentation and
- letter sound knowledge.
That's just a little reinforcement game.
But the main thing is to put the sounds together as you go.
That was an example of what Gonzalez-Frey and Ehri and previous researchers have found to be the more effective approach to teaching decoding of an unfamiliar word.
We carry this practice of Blend As You Read into Sort It and Guided Oral Reading of new decodable text with the new sound pattern in our Reading Simplified 3-part lessons like this.
Examples of Read It in Action
A Variation of Our Fast-Acting Fix: Mystery Word Envelope
Jennifer Glueck, Reading Simplified Expert Teacher, taught us an engaging variation of Read It called “The Mystery Word Envelope.”
I don’t want to give too much of this away, so just take a look with the mini-video below!
Learn more about the Mystery Word Envelope and snag a gift to begin implementing this fun blending activity here.
Read It in a Small Group
In this next example below Read It is employed with a small group of first-grade struggling readers.
I start with Read It word cards fanned out in my hand. One student in the small group chooses a card and lays it down in front of him or her.
I then use a card to drag across the end of the word and support the student to use the Blend As You Read strategy to decode the word.
You’ll hear me sometimes quickly use the word in a sentence or define it with a student-friendly definition.
And then all the students Say and Write the word on the board and end each word round by playing the erase game.
Read It for Older Students
Read It is also a decoding strategy that can work for your fifth grader or a 15-year-old who's struggling with reading.
It might be easy for them to read the word “set,” but can they blend the sounds in a five or six-sound word?
The same principle that we're guiding our kids to do at the three sound level works for kids up and up the levels. If they are struggling with multisyllable words, then they may benefit from our Blend As You Read by Chunk approach.
So don't think of this as just a beginning strategy!
And if your students have blending challenges, get more tips here.
Finally, if you didn’t get the chance, you may want to check out our other Fast Acting Phonics Fixes: #1 Switch It and #3 Sort It.
That’s All There Is to Our Fast-Acting Phonics Fix – Read It
Your Turn!
Have you switched from a sound-by-sound approach to the Blend As You Read decoding, strategy?
Inquiring minds want to know….
I am wondering if the letters are covered, how will students gauge whether it is an open or closed syllable , whether the vowel is long or short.
Example:
Hid hide sat say
Let them see it at a glance at first. Then cover if they need the Blend As You Read decoding strategy help. We begin this blending strategy with mostly short vowel words, so the question is usually moot.
We don’t want to be covering the words for very long – this is just a temporary strategy to get those who are poor at blending and/or those who don’t “get it” a leg up.
Once students are putting the Blend As You Read decoding strategy into play, we usually move them out of the short vowel, Basic Phonics, level and into Adv. Phonics. They will then begin to encounter long vowels and learn how to Flex It (our next most important decoding strategy!) which will help when they don’t know which vowel sound is the best fit for a given word.