How Orthographic Mapping and Phonemic Awareness Research Can Enhance Decoding Instruction

We have had decades and decades of reading research, including literally thousands, of reading research papers that have revealed so much about how children learn to read words. Yet, along the way not much has happened with phonics and decoding instruction per se.

Yes, there have been some changes, for sure, but many things are kind of staying the same as they have for generations. What if we took another look at the modern orthographic mapping and phonemic awareness research to better inform our phonics instruction--our decoding instruction?

This 2-part video series extracts highlights from two well-respected reading research papers and offers 3 tweaks to traditional phonics instruction - all of which will launch young readers into real reading much faster than traditional approaches.


[Choose your own adventure: Watch the videos or read the transcript below.]

Video Transcript of Using Orthographic Mapping and Phonemic Awareness to Guide Phonics Instruction

Marnie: We have had decades and decades of reading research, including thousands, literally thousands of reading research papers that have shown us the way to teach reading. Along the way not much has happened with phonics per se. There've been some changes, for sure, but some things are kind of staying the same as they have been for generations, and maybe we need to take another look at the modern orthographic mapping and phonemic awareness research to better inform our phonics instruction, our decoding instruction. That's what I want to share with you today.

Marnie: I'm Dr. Marnie Ginsberg from Reading Simplified, and it's our mission to streamline reading instruction and accelerate students' reading achievement. So, let me share with you some key findings from research that have actually been around for several decades, but that now we know even more how convincing these theories are and how they have stayed the test of time. Now, maybe we can make some changes as a result of what we learned. But first, let me tell you a story. Okay?

Marnie: Have you heard the story about the newlywed couple that's having a dinner, and the husband's helping out the wife, but the wife's doing the pot roast. She cuts off both ends of the pot roast, sticks it in the oven, and the husband says, "Why did you throw out those pieces of the pot roast?" She said, "Well, that's just the way mom always did it." So, he rings up mom, and he says to his mother-in-law, "Why do you cut the ends off of the pot roast?" His mother-in-law says, "You know, come to think of it, I guess it's just what I learned from grandma. She always did it that way." So, he finally gets in touch with his grandmother-in-law and says, "My wife is cutting off the ends of the pot roast. I'm wondering where she learned that. Did you do that?" Grandma laughs and says, "Oh, yeah. I mean, I did that for years, because the pan was too small. I had to cut the ends off to get the pot roast in the pan."

Marnie: So, that's a tradition that has stayed the test of time that maybe doesn't have good strategy behind it. Right? Let's examine how some of our strategies in decoding instruction might improve if we reflect, again, on what we have learned, as I said, from this really exciting number of years of reading research. So, again, we've had a huge explosion in reading research, but maybe not as many different changes in how we teach decoding. A lot of scope and sequences in phonics are still looking pretty much the same as they have for years. Does this kind of general plan for phonics scope and sequence resonate with you?

Marnie: You start out with maybe the alphabet letters, maybe the letter names, and then later the later sounds, and then the short vowels, and then consonant digraphs, and then other short vowel words with increasing complexity with the consonant clusters at the beginning and the ends of words, like CVCC words, like help, and more complex words, like sprint. It's not until all that is covered that you move into maybe the magic E, or silent E, or vowel plus E pattern, and then maybe into long vowels, and then maybe into what we call R controlled vowels, and then maybe into diphthongs or whatever you want to call it, vowel variance, and then maybe later syllables. Does that progression look kind of like what a lot of phonics programs look like?

Marnie: It's been looking that way for many, many, many years, multiple decades. The one thing that has changed in some good ways, in many places, not all unfortunately, but in many places, we've tacked on this beginning level of phonological awareness. We do it orally for a little while, and then we're ready to start phonics instruction. Then those two types of instruction overlap for a little while, and then we kind of drop out the phonological awareness. It is great that we're including the phonological awareness, because we know at least 40% of our kids desperately need it to be able to access the code, but is this the optimal way to present it? Let's talk about that.

Marnie: So, as we have been kind of in a battle almost to defend the virtue of explicit, systematic phonics, which is thoroughly demonstrated by research, maybe at the same time we have stifled a little innovation in how we go about teaching phonics, our scope and sequences and maybe our activities. So, I'm going to present to you some big ideas in the reading research field that I think justify us reconsidering how we do reading, our scope and sequences, and maybe even some of our activities. So, these two big ideas, they are actually not that modern, but they've got a strong, modern research base.

Marnie: So, Keith Stanovich wrote this very influential paper, The Matthew Effects in the Acquisition of Literacy. This is his concept from one of his most famous papers, and I'll give you that citation in a second. David Share has another big idea, self-teaching, how kids learn how the read. It's through a self-teaching mechanism. So, those two big ideas--about orthographic mapping and phonemic awareness research--they come from 1986 for Matthew Effects and as early as 1995 for the self-teaching concept, and yet the research that they put forward in those seminal papers, which I will show you ... Here we go.

Marnie: These are at the top are the two papers that I want to refer to them a lot, but even though those are now 30, 40 years old, many, many research papers and research syntheses have since then demonstrated that these principles, these theories, which originally had some strong backing in these first papers, they continued to build the power and the argument that these papers really indeed speak truth into how kids learn to read. So, I encourage you to check out the top two papers, and then there's some more recent citations for you that back up a lot of the principles in those core papers, and I'm going to talk about them. So, I'm going to break these two big ideas up, first talking about the Matthew Effects in reading, and then after we talk about these big ideas, then we'll see, well, here's some new, strategic ways that we can think about phonics scope and sequence and instruction. But let's first getting into the research that I'm talking about.

Marnie: So, these are some of these big ideas from these papers. Again, these disco balls are to show you that some of these ideas have come from as early as the 60s and 70s. One that was pretty well established by the time Keith Stanovich wrote the Matthew Effects paper is that the phonological core deficit explains most early reading difficulties. In other words, a child's individual ability to process sounds and words, phonologically, will determine whether or not that child has easy reading success or reading challenges. Specifically, not just the global, phonological level, like can you hear how many syllables in a word or can you rhyme, but the very micro-specific level of individual phonemes, like in flat, flat. Each of those are phonemes.

Marnie: The smallest level of phonological awareness would be called phonemic awareness, and that has a causal relationship with reading achievement. In other words, it causes it. When you're good at it, you're going to read well. When you're bad at it, you ain't going read well, but it's not just causal. It's also reciprocal. So, as a student gets better at phonemic awareness, they get better at reading, and as they get better at reading, they get better at phonemic awareness, and it is a positive snowball for our good readers. Early reading specifically spawns a fan-spread effect via reading volume. In other words, if you start off in a good way as a reader, you are going to have a whole host of benefits, mostly because you read more.

Marnie: Here's some other core, big ideas from these two papers and other reading research. Rapid, automatic word recognition is the hallmark of reading achievement. If you're a good reader, it's easy to figure that out, because you almost invariably can rapidly recognize words in a split second, literally a split second, a 20th of a second. Good readers have advanced phonemic awareness, which is what we kind of talked about. If it's reciprocal, you're getting better at your reading, you're getting better at your phonemic awareness. And finally, after sufficient phonemic awareness, phonics knowledge, and decoding skills, readers self-teach themselves most English words. So, these are the three ingredients that get you started in recognizing words. Then you learn a lot of them deducing them yourself.

Marnie: So, let's first talk about this really awesome paper by Keith Stanovich, Matthew Effects in Reading: Some Consequences of Individual Differences in the Acquisition of Literacy. There is a lot of gold in this one, particularly ... There's so many things, but I particularly want to point out that if you are still doubting the power of directing kids to use context, you should read his evidence in 1986 that was already pretty much a slam dunk against that as being the main way good readers read. Good readers don't rely on context. As we said a minute ago, they recognize words in a split second. This is really one of the main findings of this Matthew Effects review. He says, "It is imperatively important that the prerequisite phonological skill ..." I'm sorry. "... prerequisite phonological awareness and skill at spelling to sound mapping be in place early in the child's development, because their absent can initiate a causal chain of escalating negative side effects."

Marnie: So, this is this positive or negative snowball is what the Matthew Effects label comes from. A previous researcher had labeled this dynamic and social phenomenon the Matthew Effects based on the Gospel of Matthew, where there is a parable where Jesus says, "The rich will get richer, and the poor will become poorer." In this sense, in academics, particularly in reading, if you can read well early, you will take on a lot of positive benefits. If you can't read well early, you will have some negative consequences. That's what he's saying here. What is it that starts the snowball? Phonological awareness and skill at spelling to sound mapping.

Marnie: He made a great case for this in this theoretical paper, which was also backed by strong research in 1986. We have even much, much more evidence that he was right, but we haven't always paid attention to it. So, he also says in his paper, "Slow reading acquisition has cognitive, behavioral, and motivational consequences that slow the development of other cognitive skills and inhibit performance on many academic tasks." You know this already. Right? If you can't read, then there's that fan-spread effect. It affects so many areas of the child's life, their psyche, their identity, their behavior, and of course their academic potential. So, it's a big deal.

Marnie: Soon after experiencing greater difficulty in breaking the spelling to sound code, that's mapping on those sounds and symbols, mapping them together, poor readers begin to be exposed to less text than their peers. If it's hard for them, the teacher won't ask them to do as much. If the teacher doesn't ask them to do a much, they will read less, or if it's hard for them, they just actually can't get through as many words in the same number of minutes. A good reader in five minutes can read 100 words potentially. A poor reader in 10 minutes, five minutes can read five, 10. So, that difference in exposure to print and reading practice, accurate reading practice, is what causes this divide that leads kids to good reading and those to frustration.

Marnie: Here's a visual of what's going on. As he said, what's going on in this positive snowball, the Matthew Effects of the rich getting richer, they start out with good phonemic awareness. They hear the sounds and words, and so they're able to map them to print. If they have that at the beginning or they're given it through good instruction, they're off to the races. It's a fast start for them, so then they feel good about themselves. They have self-efficacy. I am a reader. I can do this. So, what do I do? I read more. That is the positive snowball, that kids who get off to a great, quick start in first grade, that's what they benefit from.

Marnie: So, what happens if they have good phonemic awareness and they have this sound to spelling print? What is that combination of things? Well, we see from his paper and other papers, we know that if you are getting off to a good start, it requires a few ingredients. You have to have the concept of the alphabetic principle, the concept that a written language is code for sounds. You also have to have improving phonemic awareness, improving ability to segment, blend, and manipulate sounds in words, so that you can hear sh-op and know it's shop. If I'm asking you to change shark to mark, you know which sounds to move in and out. That's manipulation. All of those are signs, byproducts, if you will, of getting off to a fast start, because the reading is helping build your perception of sounds and words.

Marnie: Of course that means if you're reading well, you must have a strong sound based decoding approach or phonological decoding approach to reading, and as you develop that good ear for how sounds and symbols match up, then those spellings, specific spellings, get memorized. We call that orthographic mapping. You orthographically map or link very specific spellings in a specific order, that shark is S-H-A-R-K. That's represented by those sounds and that particular symbol array in your brain in this way. So, if you are trying to read the word mop as a beginner, and if you do it well and you're well prepared to become a great reader, this is the process you go through.

Marnie: You perceive that the sounds in mop are m-op, but that perception of sounds is not enough. You also have to link them with those specific graphemes or letter sounds, M-O-P. So, that's sound to symbol connection. When you see how those are lined up and you also get it stuck in your brain, that's called orthographic mapping. They're linked sounds and symbols in a particular part of your brain. It's not a visual thing in the sense that you remember the way the word looks. You're remembering a concept of M-O-P in a specific order. It's not just letter order.

Marnie: It's phoneme and letter order driven. So, I don't want you to think that it's just one letter, one sound. Shout, for instance, is a five letter word, but it still has three phonemes, but the student understands, the student on the way to good reading understands that it's sh-ou-t. I just did that wrong. Sh-ou-t. That's what I meant to say. So, those sounds, sh is represented by the S-H. The ow is represented by the O-U. The /ta/ is represented by the T. When the student hears those sounds and maps them to print, that is orthographic mapping. That is linking those sounds and symbols in their brain deeply, so deeply that they read words in a split second.

Marnie: So, here's a little quiz. I'm going to flash some things at you, and I want you to see what you can remember. Okay? So, watch the screen. Ready? I'm just going to do this really quickly. What did you see? Did you see some images? Did you see words? Perhaps you saw peach? Why did it jump out at you? We actually know that if you're a good reader, you can recognize words faster than you can recognize almost anything else, images, letters, colors. It's very powerful, because it's just deeply connected, orthographic learning in our brain, and it's different than the visual array, recognizing that that's a flamingo or a bell. That's a little slower for us than recognizing peach. So, that's orthographic learning.

Marnie: So, back to this positive snowball. When the kids have sufficient phonemic awareness, then they're much more likely to have automatic word recognition. These are the four ingredients that lead to the pathway of good word recognition, the type of word recognition that will serve them as they're maturing. We don't want kids just to memorize the way a few words look, like this is a tall letter and a short letter. We want them to orthographically map them in the sense that they're linking sounds and symbols in their brain and not relying on a visual only order. They're connecting sound and symbol.

Marnie: So, this is the Matthew Effects, the good Matthew Effects, in action. You get that good start, and so you start to recognize words. Then that leads to your feeling of self-efficacy as a reader, and so you read more. Guess what happens when you read more. You recognize more words. You also get better phonemic awareness. Then you just start off in this positive snowball, which doesn't stop there. There are so many other benefits that the good reader enjoys. The good reader will not just learn to recognize words quickly. She will also have better reading comprehension, better vocabulary knowledge, likely better knowledge of the world, better classroom behavior, increased reading motivation, all of those positive snowball effects from getting a fast start in reading. Of course the converse is true. If a student gets off to a slow start and can't rapidly recognize words, then all of these benefits that they could enjoy they don't, more than likely.

Marnie: So, I hope that this discussion of how reading develops can help kind of alleviate some of the tension that I think many of us observe when we're watching kids and adults read. On the one hand, research is very solidly indicating that phonological decoding or sound based processing is the route that we all need to go through to develop a good, strong reading brain. So, we're maybe laboriously going through matching sound to symbols early on, but when we do that well enough and the words get orthographically mapped, then we read them so rapidly that it's impossible to imagine that we're decoding them in the sense of converting sounds and symbols. It's so fast. It's so deeply entrenched. You see that word peach, and you're not thinking p-ea-ch anymore. You just, boom, read it.

Marnie: Research indicates indeed there is some phonological action happening, even for the most sophisticated readers, who are automatically recognizing words, but it's much less than the features of a beginning reader. Phonological awareness affects us throughout our lives as a reader, but it's super important for that beginning stage. So, maybe whole language held on for so long, because people were saying, "But these good readers, they don't sound out words." Well, they didn't sound them out maybe in your presence, because they went through a window of sound based processing, and now they're at the other end or down that rapid, automatic recognition of words pathway. They're at a different developmental stage, but the best way to get there is through the sound spelling route.

Marnie: Here's another way of thinking about it. Over time, word recognition, the processes we use to some extent change. Early on we're really active with the phonological decoding. That's what enables us to get how the code works and for the words to orthographically map. Later on we don't have to have such laborious decoding processes, but we are rapidly recognizing words. If you give kid who is a good reader a list of words, they can read them really rapidly, and that's the sign that they're most likely going to be a good reader. A very strong correlation between being able just to read a list of words and being able to comprehend text.

Marnie: Here's another important point that was in that Matthew Effects paper, but doesn't often get talked about. I think it's going to relate to something we're going to talk about later with phonics strategies. Remember, I said this earlier, that phonemic awareness is reciprocally related to reading achievement. So, here's another positive snowball. As the student gets access to the code, they have to have some phonemic awareness, so they either need it cognitively, naturally, or we need to provide it to them through instruction. But then guess what gives them the best ongoing development in phonemic awareness. It's reading. They keep getting better. If you see the word back today and tomorrow you see the word black, you are getting finer tuned understanding of more and more sophisticated words. The B-L is a little more difficult. You have to perceive different things, as opposed to a three sound word like back. A four sound word like black is a little harder.

Marnie: So, mostly the reading research would suggest that reading practice is the best phonemic awareness training. We need to give kids who can't get into the code, we certainly need to give them support to develop phonemic awareness in whatever way we can. But if we can move them into real reading as soon as possible, then the reading itself, if it is sound based decoding, phonological decoding, mapping sounds and symbols, it is going to be building their phonemic awareness. If kids need more than that, because that's not enough, then we can certainly provide that. But the faster we get kids reading, the faster they'll have development of phonemic awareness. In fact, most of us who are maybe over the age of 35 have never been trained in phonemic awareness, but we most likely are really good readers, and we got that way through reading. Some kids don't naturally develop that, so we have to prepare them for that, but reading is a fabulous training for phonemic awareness.

Marnie: Finally, to kind of nail this message of this Matthew Effects paper home, really drill it down, the kids that get off to a good start by rapidly acquiring the ability to read words, they get on this train to successful reading, and it starts in first grade. Guess what. Sadly, that train leaves the station in first grade. If the kids don't get on that train of rapidly acquiring how reading works, the odds are probably eight to nine out of 10 won't do well in reading, not because of something developmental with the child as much as just that's not how our school system works. Reading is learned in kindergarten and first grade, and then the train moves off. It leaves the station in first grade.

Marnie: So, then that begs the question, are we being strategic with early, rapid word recognition? Could we adapt some of our scope and sequences and some of our activities to make sure that those who don't have the natural, intrinsic ability to perceive the sounds of words, that they would be given instruction that gave them the power to do that and move quickly into recognizing real words and feeling that same self-efficacy that a kid who has a natural bent for reading. So, that's I think one message that we need to take home from this Matthew Effects paper, not just ... Of course it's important to get intervention, but maybe we can also be strategic in our decoding instruction, so that we can give this opportunity for rapid, early word recognition to more and more kids. Okay? Are we prioritizing this with the way we're laying out our reading programs?

Marnie: Here is a little anecdote, a little demonstration to give you the concept about some of the ideas I'm suggesting we reconsider. So, if you are a first grader, and you're learning to read, and you can read Frog and Toad, like this, this is an old, but still very commonly used text, if you can read this in first grade, you are probably feeling pretty good about your reading. You are feeling self-efficacious. You are off to a good start. You may have rapid word acquisition, and you most likely have a good ear for phonological decoding. Another principle that I want you to keep in mind, if we're talking about rapid acquisition, is this, that just 300 words, the most frequent 300 words, they represent 65% of written English. So, more than half of English words are represented by 300 words.

Marnie: Now, some people would have taken that and say, "Okay. Let's just do flashcards. Let's give kids ... drill them in these sight words." I'm not saying that. Don't worry. I want still to validate the research for sure that the best way to learn those 300 words is through the phonological decoding route,absolutely no question. But are our phonics materials thinking about the fact that these 300 words really matter a lot? A lot of our phonics materials will choose words like bog, and hog, and cot. Some of the time those may be needed. Absolutely. I have developed programs where those were used, but I've also developed a program where I emphasize words that are more likely to be used from particularly the most frequent 300. Here on this page, in this Frog and Toad Book, all those words in yellow are from the top 300. Notice it's a vast majority of the book. The words that aren't in the top 300 are fairly easy to decode if you have some advanced phonics knowledge, like toad, and wait, and mail, mailbox, feeling, porch. Most of them are three sound words and a couple multi-syllable words.

Marnie: So, here's another way to be thinking strategic about the what words we're asking students to look at and also asking them what letter sounds we're asking them to learn. So, typically, the alphabet drives early reading instruction, and a lot of programs don't even let kids really start to read words until they've mastered or the teacher has covered all 26 letters of the alphabet. We certainly need to learn the letter of the alphabet, I'm not arguing against that, but do we have to learn it all at first? Could students read words and feel self-efficacious at some beginning level when we prioritize certain letter sounds and certain words?

Marnie: For instance, the letter Z. Everyone's going to teach it if they're teaching the alphabet, but it's not in any of the most 300 frequent words, the most frequent 300 words, none, zilch. Same with Q-U. The letter J is just in one word out of 300, just. The letter X is just in two. But look over there at the E sound, the E as in family, the E as in read, the E as in he, we, and she, the E as in seem, the E as in story, or study, or very, or every. There are 47 words in the top 300 that have the E sound. So, which should we prioritize in our scope and sequence? If we're going to want them to read the Frog and Toad book, does the Z really matter in the first week or the first month, or can the E sound give them a lot more possibility? That represents actually a little more than 15% of the most frequent words.

Marnie: There are other advanced phonics spellings, like the spellings in A. There's 22 of those in the top 300. There's 28 ers in the top 300. That's really where the tools are to be able to attack those first 300 words. So, what if we were to reconsider our scope and sequences and design them not entirely, but more on the high frequency spellings that would lead them to high frequency words and maybe connecting those two ideas? Yes. It's still really important to think about level of difficulty. I agree, most programs start out with short vowels, and we should probably do that, because that creates a level of reliability and predictability that the student can figure out this whole decoding thing. Then we throw at them the trickiness of advanced phonics, like the long vowels and all of the other vowel variations. But we can still modify it and, again, maybe not be driven so much by the alphabet, but more by other features of the spelling system that are going to help them get rapid acquisition of text. So, don't wait for the real reading until after the alphabet is so-called covered.

Marnie: So, here's another way of looking at ... Remember, that scope and sequence I suggested at the beginning is kind of a classic, general idea. Maybe we don't start with all the alphabet. Let's start with the ones that matter, M, and S, and T, the Wheel of Fortune letters, A and I. Those are high frequency, short vowels, a few high frequency, consonant digraphs, like W-H in which, and when, and where, and the C-H in which and each, and the S-H in wish is not a high frequency one, but there are other S-H words that are high frequency words. We think about those. They would drive our early reading instruction, so that we give kids a handful of sounds, and then we give them words that are in simple books that they can read and start to feel, "Oh. I've got this." Then they'll start to recognize high frequency words, because they are orthographically mapping them sound to print, and they're seeing them more.

Marnie: Another category there is where we've got all the CVCC possibilities. Again, this is not actually very common in the top 300 words. There's only one word in the top 300 that have a CCVCC pattern, like plant, and there are no six sound words, like sprint. So, a lot of programs try to make sure that we're really hitting the short vowels and pushing it to more and more, finding the more difficult words. We start with three sounds. Then we move to four. Then we move to five. Then we move to six, and it's only later that we introduce long vowels or other advanced phonics. But those words are not what make up the bulk of the top 300 words, and only 32 of the 300 have even one cluster, like stop or must.

Marnie: So, we could delay that pressure in learning how to perceive all the sounds and words, and we could introduce the avalanche of information they do need to learn for advanced phonics earlier, but mostly stick with three sound words. When they're developmentally ready, because phonemic awareness is more challenging than just learning new information, if you understand how the code works, then they'll be more prepared to pick up how to read the word plant, and sprint, and stand, and stamp later on. But we don't want to hold off for too long on the information that drives most of early reading acquisition. Remember, 47 of the top 300 words have the E sound and its various spellings. We shouldn't be waiting four, six, nine months before we get into that domain.

Marnie: I believe also kind of tangential to this topic is that this whole scope and sequence is based on an adult's worldview. We have a worldview as mature readers, and we're analyzing the spelling system from a perspective that's not child-like. The child, we know now, is really having to take the sounds and the words that they already know and translate that into symbols that they recognize, that they will learn to recognize. That's what the phonological decoding process is, sound to symbol. They already know sounds. They can speak. We just have to map them onto print. So, they don't need to know all of these labels in order to read. They just need to know that this can be ... this ah can be represented this way, and this sh can be represented that way.

Marnie: So, Diane McGuinness, in '96, was very popular for her book, Why Our Children Can't Read and What We Can Do About It. She got this idea into my head then, and I've been using it ever since, that just break it up into a more simple dichotomy, not all those things about vowel variance and R controlled vowels. It's just really the basic code, which is just a nice, gentle way to introduce kids to print, which would be some consonants, the short vowels, and some consonant digraphs. Get them reading, and then get them into the advanced code, which would basically include all the long vowels, and all the vowel variants, and the R controlled, and the diphthongs. The child doesn't need the label. It's great that we understand these variances, but the child doesn't need the label in order to attack a word and to translate the sounds that they hear in the word to the symbols that they're seeing. So, that's more of a child's worldview, if we kind of simplified some of our language and our way of thinking. Also, it makes it simpler for the teacher to plan, if this is their progression.

Marnie: So, I'm going to propose one scope and sequence that I use at Reading Simplified. This is based on some of these principles that I've talked about before, but it's not the only way. But I hope that you see that some of the things I was talking about ... how we need to think more about rapid word recognition and which sounds we should prioritize. You'll see that embedded in the concepts in this scope and sequence. So, it's one possibility for us to reimagine our decoding instruction, since we know so much more now about makes for an early, good reader.

Marnie: So, the first thing that I want to draw your attention to is this pathway on the left, these major goals that are connected through the arrow. It's starts with the number one goal of making sure that your students can blend and manipulate three sound words, blend, segment, and manipulate three sound words. That's the main goal. That's how they're going to get the concept of the alphabetic principle, and that's how they're going to get started phonologically decoding, and that's how they're going to read words. That's how those words will become orthographically mapped.

Marnie: We don't need to worry if they know the Q, or the Z, or the X yet, or even the J. The minutia of each specific alphabet letter is not nearly as important as the main goal of getting them to blend three sound words. We start at a simple, three sound level, because phonemically it's more simple, and also it's more likely to stick with more short vowels. That's just for a season though, so they get some nurturing into how the code works, and then they can develop more sophistication later.

Marnie: So, you see in steps one through four they're being introduced to the alphabet. That's actually a little concession, because the culture's so expecting that we first have to teach the whole alphabet, but maybe you wouldn't even need to do this. As a reading tutor, I don't make sure that I have Z, and T-C-H, and Y, certainly as the ya sound, I don't necessarily make sure that I have that before I move into this step five. I'll explain more of that. But the main driver of steps one through four is learning mostly the most important, high frequency sounds and then also those short vowels in order of frequency, A, and then I, and then O, then E, then U. That's the tools that you're trying to give them, the information you're giving them, why you're focusing on that blending goal.

Marnie: But at the same time, we're also teaching them phonics and focusing on helping them to blend, and read real words, and be in real text. We're also mapping our phonics information to high frequency words, insofar as we can. So, we are teaching short A, so we'll also be highlighting more short A high frequency words, like have, and had, and can, and and, and has, and than. When we add in the short I, we then fold in more high frequency, short I words, this, and which, and if, and will, and him. So, there's an attention to the word work that we do and the texts that we give to not just the phonological decoding, but also which words are more frequent. A lot of phonics programs are just so focused on making sure the student's getting good phonological decoding, which is really important, that they just pick words willy-nilly, and we miss the opportunity to zero in on, well, let's at least learn how to read the word had, and can, and and, and has, and than, before we worry about van.

Marnie: So, as soon as we get some proficiency with blending three sound words and we know a lot of the short vowels most of the time, then we want to move them quickly into the advanced code, the long vowels and other vowel variations, because there's so much information that we want them to learn. So, they might spend a week or two weeks, depending on how young they are. A typical first grade class would just need a week on step number five, which is the O sound. The O, as in go, or the O in home, the O in boat, the O in slow, and the O in toe. At the same time they're doing that, they're also going to be learning some high frequency words that relate to the O sound, like more, and so, and no, and go. Some people don't hear more as the O sound. That's fine. So, that's the next stage there with our arrows on the left.

Marnie: After they can blend and segment three sound words, we want them to start learning advanced phonics, because there's so much of it, and they can handle it. We can still keep them at three sounds if the phonemic processing isn't there, isn't quite ready, because later we can add that in. But most of our instructional programs are so focused on the 26 letters of the alphabet. That's just barely scraping the surface of what's above the water, but really there's 200-ish, 244 graphemes. That's all the stuff that's underneath the water level. The underside of the iceberg has so much more than just the 26 letters of the alphabet, so we need to get them into that as quickly as possible, because that's what will strategically allow them to read those high frequency words, will give them the ability to rapidly recognize 65% of their text, and give them the sense that they are feeling self-efficacious.

Marnie: Then later on we're still building their advanced phonics, maybe in step eight there is the I sound, maybe the vowel plus E pattern or magic E, silent E pattern, but then we can also keep folding in more sophisticated consonant clusters. So, they could do stop, and stomp, and stamp. They could also do the word float, because now we've added in long vowels, and they're more developmentally ready for that, especially if they are, you know, moving into the second half of their fifth year of life, as opposed to being four and a young five and trying to blend words like stomp, and stink, and sprint. Those are harder phonemically, and they're not as needed early on. So, we can put things in their order of priority. So, if you look back to this same page from Frog and Toad, only two words have a CCVC or CVCC pattern, the word frog and the word sent. Most all of the other words though have an E or an A, the A in day, the I in time, the A in wait, the A in mail, the A in always, and the A in makes, and the E in unhappy, and empty, and me.

Marnie: Then finally we're going to move into multi-syllable instruction and still keep teaching advanced phonics, because there's so much of it. The er sound works really well when you're learning multi-syllable chunking, because there's high frequency words, again, like number, mother, water, father. After that, kids are much better prepared to become fluent. So, this is a one page view of a scope and sequence of a phonics pathway that is more designed to build that rapid acquisition of words. It's going to increase the likelihood anyway that a child would be able to read words more rapidly than a traditional scope and sequence, where we're going to spend a month or six weeks on learning all the alphabet.

Marnie: So, I want you to just consider maybe not this particular scope and sequence. There's a lot of things that research can still ask, and address, and answer about how we can do the minutia of day to day phonics instruction. We know phonics. We know phonemic awareness. We know phonological decoding, and orthographic mapping is the route. We know a lot about what that should look like. It should be multi-sensory. It should be explicit. It should be systematic, but we don't know for a fact which system, and we don't have all of the intricacies mapped out. So, as we do know that you have to get rapid acquisition of reading to get into the good cycle, or at least the odds are that that's what our society has built into our school system, then maybe we should re-envision what our scope and sequences look like and even some of our decoding strategies.

Marnie: So, I want to talk about the decoding strategies later. That will tie in more with the Share paper about self-teaching. So, I took us from the Matthew Effects, the urgency of getting kids rapidly recognizing words, into rethinking phonics. But when we dive into the Share paper, that will bring even more light into how we could re-envision our scope and sequences and our strategies. So, I hope you are kind of intrigued and not too shellshocked by some of these counter cultural ideas that we might be able to rethink how we get our kids rapidly acquiring the skill of reading, so that they're getting on that train for successful reading. Thanks.