Teaching HFWs by sound before sight

Earlier this week I was concerned to read that an early years teacher new to Structured Literacy (SL) was saying she was ‘mixing it up', and combining elements of explicit, direct instruction in phonics as well as some ‘look and say’ high frequency word teaching using predictable readers.

I’m sure she is a well-meaning teacher and believes some of her methods of old are effective. However, in SL our teaching is meant to follow the evidence-based, peer-reviewed science and not just what we ‘feel’ works or the results we get with a particular set of students. SL is designed to work for the most children at any given time or place.

All the terminology to be used perhaps complicates understanding. For instance, common or high frequency words (HFWs) get called ‘sight words’ by some, and then there is the difference between decodable words and irregular words (or ‘heart’ words!) to learn, too.

There are a very few HFWs that beginner readers do need to be exposed to frequently as they begin to apply their phonics knowledge to hearing, saying, reading, and spelling or writing sounds. 

However, my understanding is that we need to still explicitly explain which parts of the high frequency word they could decode and which parts are ‘tricky’ or advanced code they have yet to learn, and need memorising at this stage by ‘heart ’= hence ‘heart words’.

Brain research shows that teaching words phonetically helps strengthen the pathways in the brain that lead to efficient and effective reading, whereas ‘look and say’ methods train the brain to read inefficiently, by treating whole words as pictures rather than a sequence of sounds. 

Why am I bothering to post about this? Because refining our teaching practice is a journey that takes time, but we can also take mis-turns or end up in cul de sacs if we ignore helpful navigation. Yet we have a duty of care to our learners to speed up our skills as soon as possible, so we shouldn’t waste time in personal experiments if there is a reliable method shown to get the best results.

So, I recommend, we do the PD readings and don’t skip over the background science when adapting our teaching practice from ‘balanced literacy’ to Structured Literacy. Know ‘why’ we do something this way, and not just ‘how’.

As to any teacher using predictable readers, I advise caution: while ‘look and say’ can help children learn HFWs, we want most of their words to be mapped orthographically, rather than through visual memory, as there is a limit to how much information children can store in their working memory.

It is far better to remember sound/spelling patterns, to build hundreds and thousands of words, rather than clogging up the working memory with only a few hundred rote memorised words. 

Furthermore, guessing words by context or picture clues undermines the role of teaching children to read phonetically. It is far more important to teach children to keep their ‘eyes on the words’.

Ten HFW to teach beginner readers: the, a, I, to, and, was, for, you, is, of

https://www.readingrockets.org/article/new-model-teaching-high-frequency-words

Further reading:

https://www.phonicbooks.co.uk/advice-and-resources/free-teaching-resources/phonic-high-frequency-word-chart/ HFWs sorted by phonetic difficulty, starting from CV pattern.

https://keystoliteracy.com/blog/high-frequency-sight-words/

https://www.reallygreatreading.com/content/make-tricky-sight-words-sticky-really-great-reading-blog

https://ufli.education.ufl.edu/resources/teaching-resources/instructional-activities/irregular-and-high-frequency-words/

Warning! Warning! Enemy Approaching!

(A post about the shortage of reputable Structured Literacy PLD* in New Zealand)

*Professional Learning & Development

My attention grabbing Lost in Space analogy is for a good reason, though slightly exaggerated. Be careful out there...Let me explain.

I’m feeling pretty proud that my principal has confirmed that we’re switching to Structured Literacy (SL) schoolwide next year and we are signed up with a reputable PLD provider. (We will have seminars, workshops, online lessons, in-class demos and on-going mentoring for at least a year, probably three.)

However, not all colleagues in our SL community are fortunate to be approaching this shift schoolwide. Some are only doing it in their junior teams and some are all alone in the wilderness of ‘Balanced Literacy Land’.

Structured Literacy PLD is scarce out there.

Like a scene from Lost in Space, SL novices are in an alien desert and thirsty for knowledge and they are reaching out for something, anything to quench that thirst.

Imagine their relief when they google PLD in the EdGazette online, and up pops an advert with tantalising words, including ‘systematic’ and ‘structured’.

This is what I tried out last night and I was scared for the novices out there, hence my warning.

Now, I don’t want to be slammed with a defamation case, but a sound defence is that my opinion is based on researched and peer-reviewed facts, hence my warning: Buyer Beware!

Some PLD courses out there - tempting novices with enticing words like ‘systematic’ and ‘structured’ - are still based on Balanced Literacy and their authors defend the role of a bit of phonics, a bit of sight word memorisation and a bit of other stuff - you know, a ‘balanced diet’ of what has been used in our classes for years and with unsatisfactory results!

The problem with this approach is ‘a bit of this and a bit of that’, and a bit of your class will get it and a bit of your class will not. Science has shown that the BEST results for all students comes from an explicit Structured Literacy approach that is diagnostic, systematic and cumulative AND uses a systematic synthetic phonics programme from the start.

The other important point is what we now know about memory and cognitive overload. You know what this is, it’s when your brain hurts from trying to remember too much at once! (Like how it feels when you're trying to learn about SL!)

Yes children can learn sight words by memorising them. I admit I used to teach my students that way. But then they plateaued and got stuck, at around about orange or turquoise levels, and progress was slow.

This happens when children have filled up their memory banks with sight words and they have not orthographically mapped them in their brains, sound to print. In a way, it's like stuffing the letterbox at your gate with junk mail rather than using the more efficient email.

Automatic recall of ‘sight words’ is what happens when readers have mapped a word by sound into their long term memory and then it becomes readable ‘by sight’. But to get it into long term memory it has to be by sound work first, not ‘look and say’ as if it was a picture. Re-reading words already mapped by sound is a valid practice, but it has to follow the sound work first.

Sadly, some popular BL resources use picture clues and context in sentences to get children to memorise a set of about 50 high use ‘first’ words. Even worse, often the job is given to well-meaning teacher aides, who just follow the instructions.

Even more problematic is how these ‘intervention’ programmes are often used with our most struggling learners and we perpetuate their struggles by focusing on such memorisation. Such ‘pictorial reading’ is how poor readers read, when their brains are scanned, not how good readers read. 

As teachers, once we know better, we should do better.

So, Buyer Beware: Be a good reader and ‘read the fine print’ before booking any bitsy PLD in the holidays. A short course on ‘phonics’ or a short course on ‘words’ will be like drinking salty water. It will seem to work at first, but will not sustain you in the long run (nor your learners).

The Science of Reading  takes time to get to grips with at first, but it is better to go slow and steady than to dash off on a false start. (Really mixing up my analogies now!)

Thirst for knowledge but be sure to check that what you are drinking is really ‘pure’ and healthy for you and your learners in the long term.

And, if you’re finding it hard to get PLD and not keen on a DIY route, write to the MoE and your local MP. Tell them what you want and why. Let’s lift our reading results and sustain the gains.

Here’s some links to help: 

The Science of Reading: a top-level primer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2fQyaoGjIo) (Includes lots of links to other readings in the notes.)

What is the science of reading? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnkJ6VvDr2M)

https://sarahsnippets.com/how-do-we-learn-new-words-orthographic/

https://www.reallygreatreading.com/content/make-tricky-sight-words-sticky-really-great-reading-blog

https://www.inclusive.tki.org.nz/guides/dyslexia-and-learning/understanding-structured-literacy/

https://www.liftingliteracyaotearoa.org.nz/support/looking-for-pld-for-your-school

https://www.liftingliteracyaotearoa.org.nz/initiatives/connecting

NZ Teachers - Structured Literacy and Using Decodable Texts 

Lockdowns, wall banging and ripples of change

A teacher reflects….

This is a post about hope.

Last Tuesday, I had been in lockdown for 5 weeks and, apart from creating online classroom lessons, I had been able to dedicate a chunk of my time to my dyslexia advocacy work. Likewise, in my previous three lockdowns in Auckland.

A silver lining of covid-19 restrictions has been the chance to spend time on professional readings and webinars, visualising a Structured Literacy future for my school, rather than commuting, doing duties or prepping at the copier.

But on the eve of the start of my sixth week at home, I had hit a wall and was moaning to my husband about how frustrated I felt about effecting change. “I don’t think they get it. I worry all my work has been for nought. Why don’t they understand how important this is?” 

Six days earlier I had sent a large report to my principal with my roadmap for ‘how’ I thought our school could transition into Structured Literacy and transform the lives of our learners. The response….silence.

Earlier in the year I had made a presentation at a staff meeting, sowing the seeds about the ‘why’ and ‘what’. In the interim, I had been working alongside other teachers, and dropping Structured Literacy tips into the afterschool conversations in the workroom. 

You see, I am just an ordinary teacher, not in the leadership team and not even a 5-day-a-week one either. I am just a little pebble trying to make a ripple in a big pond. And I was worried that Balanced Literacy stalwarts in the senior leadership team were going to drown out my message.

This month, annual reports were being written, budgets tallied and strategic plans made for next year. Time was running out…

In desperation, yesterday, I resent my emailed report to the principal and asked “Did you get this? What do you think?” He’s a man of few words but the joy of hearing ‘yep, we’re signed up, starting end of year’ was immense, intense, like a heavy load had been lifted from my shoulders and I was buoyant, no longer drowning in guilt.

Guilt...about letting teachers dismiss my noticing of the early signs of my own son’s dyslexia and waiting for five years to intervene.

Guilt… about training as a teacher and not having the nous to challenge the lack of specific ‘training’ about teaching literacy.

Guilt...about acquiring ‘stuff’ and ‘resources’ for my classroom, rather than acquiring ‘knowledge’ first and foremost about my learners.

Guilt...about teaching ‘balanced literacy ‘ and 3-way cueing and basically failing 15 years of struggling readers, until I learned better.

The first lockdown last year gave my husband and I time to reflect on our working lives. Did we have enough savings to cope if he lost his job? Did he want to take early retirement? Had we been successful in either of our careers? How did we measure success in that regard?

I reflected that I had entered teaching inspired by my brother, a dyslexic, and my dream had been to help more people learn to read and write. I couldn’t honestly say I had achieved that goal, because every year I had so many ‘target students’, teacher code for struggling students.

So my husband and I both set work and non-work goals, and one of mine was to refocus my teaching so I could transition from the classroom to specialist tutoring. 

Although I had been expanding my knowledge around struggling learners in the previous two years, my study intensified from autumn last year and that is how I found Spelfabet, the DEB (Dyslexia Evidenced Based) support group and Lifting Literacy Aotearoa. I found others like me, people passionate about equitable access to education for all.

So my goal shifted from training as a specialist tutor to helping my colleagues, school and wider teaching community learn how to transition to using Structured Literacy. I wanted to lift up many more learners through systemic change in our educational sector, rather than just the few who could afford tutoring.

In my teaching career, I estimate I have failed at least 75 students, if I count 5 ‘target students’ per year who were struggling readers and writers.

It is with great satisfaction that I know moving to Structured Literacy at my school will help 200 children per year, including the 40 to 50 children who would usually be our ‘target students’.

So the good news is, even if I change jobs or I retire to become a ‘lady who gardens’, at least I can leave my school knowing the torch has been handed on to others. My teaching colleagues will learn how to ensure all our students can be successful at cracking the reading and writing code. It won’t necessarily be easy, for teachers or students, but perseverance will pay off.

Remember I said this post was about hope.

Advocacy can be lonely work. You may be alone in your school, or a parent struggling with your child at home. You may feel like you are banging your head on that ‘wall’.

But by sharing our knowledge and supporting one another in our network of dyslexia advocates, we can make change, even if it is one child at a time. What wonderful results we can hope for if we can make it one school at a time!

Be the change you want to see, and don’t give up!

One ripple can turn into a wave.

Teachers pack school hall to learn, on a Saturday!

It was not a paid school day nor a union meeting but a ‘yearning for learning’ that got more than 250 teachers from throughout Auckland at a meeting in East Auckland on Saturday [26 June], to learn how to upskill in literacy teaching in their own time.

The demand for professional learning in this area is growing rapidly, as teachers embrace the motto: "When you know better, you do better.” So much so, that teachers like me are willingly giving up weekend time with family and friends to sharpen their skills.

The event was organised by Structured Literacy-Auckland, a social learning Facebook page that has grown to nearly 4000 members in the past year. This was the third region-wide meeting the group has hosted. Free tickets to the event sold out. Some who wanted to attend could not fit in the hall due to restrictions on the size of the venue, Sunnyhills School hall in Pakuranga.

Teachers, like me, yearn to learn more about Structured Literacy to address the lack of effective literacy training they have received on it in initial teacher education programmes at most of our universities and in on-the-job training.

Structured Literacy features in the Ministry of Education recommendations for  inclusive teaching of dyslexic learners. But the approach has yet to be rolled out to all classrooms as best practice for all students, despite close to 50 years of research proving it is the most effective and efficient way to teach reading and writing.

School inspectors in the UK know this to be true and now make posts about what they are looking for when checking schools are up-to-scratch in teaching literacy. (See here.)

A few trailblazing schools in NZ, such as Kaiapoi North in Canterbury and Sunnyhills in Pakuranga, have made the switch and word about their positive results is spreading like wildfire.

Literacy coach and academic Dr Janice Belgrave of Canterbury, in a recent blog post for J and J Literacy, believes Covid-19 lockdowns are partly to thank for the increased interest in Structured Literacy. The forced non-contact time with students allowed teachers the chance to pursue professional readings on the topic. It’s a silver lining of sorts, she says.

Conversely, a number of parents in lockdown lessons also got to see what their children could do or couldn't do in reading and writing, and began questioning how literacy is taught at school. Some existing methods just didn't seem to make sense.

Most regions in the country now have a Structured Literacy support group, run by teachers in their own time, as they work to adapt their classroom practices. Many have sprung up under the auspices of Lifting Literacy Aotearoa, formed in mid-2020, a non profit organisation advocating for a shakeup of our literacy teacher training schemes, classroom instruction and literacy resourcing.

The group calls Structured Literacy the ‘first best solution’ to solving literacy underachievement in Aotearoa New Zealand. Chair of the steering committee, Alice Wilson, says current Ministry of Education approved practices are failing too many students. Our poor literacy ratings in international surveys attests to this.

“We want to urge the ministry to  take a deep look at the Science of Reading research, seek out the experience of those schools already following a Structured Literacy approach, and fund Professional Learning Development and support for schools equitably,” she says. If necessary, she adds, the MoE could “commission an independent panel of experts” to advise them further. (See full press release here)

Teachers, nevertheless, may still go out in droves in their own time, say I. Once you start seeing the joy successful early reading brings to your youngest learners through Structured Literacy, it brings deep satisfaction to teachers who have long struggled with knowing how to help their struggling learners. 

The best thing about Structured Literacy is that it helps our struggling learners and it helps accelerate our more able learners, too. It is beneficial for all and harmful to none. 

This is both an exciting and challenging time to be a teacher in New Zealand. “Once you know better, you do better.”

Groups teachers can join for more information:

https://www.liftingliteracyaotearoa.org.nz/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1112672342417494

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1200435063675166

https://www.facebook.com/groups/540348696631772

Horrakapotchkin! Dag Nab It! Kapow!

 

Kia ora!

Glad I’ve got your attention. Apparently, all blogs are meant to have catchy titles. I am a teacher and I am a learner, so this blog is about both those things.

I am learning to blog and I am learning to advocate for a change to Structured Literacy teaching in schools throughout New Zealand Aotearoa.

There are wiser people out there with good definitions on Structured Literacy (SL), so I’ll put in a link for you here.

Older kiwi teachers like me will instantly recognise the Margaret Mahy homage in my title (and a bit of Batman cartoon viewing time, too.)

Let me be clear. I love good literature. I can spend hours immersed in a novel or a long-form news journal. 

Some people say teaching reading is about creating a love of reading. Well, I beg to differ. I just want to start with getting kids to love coming to school.  

I want them to come to school because they can start to learn to read, not get made to feel dumb because “it’s too hard”.

Case in point, let’s call him Tim. He is in Year 4 and nearly 9-years old. For the first few years of school, he would hide under tables on arrival.  After a while, Tim would start playing with other students, but he would rarely speak to adults. 

During guided reading, when I was his classroom teacher, he would finger point and answer comprehension questions. But he would never read aloud and I could not get him to complete assessment tasks. He was stuck at Yellow/Blue reading levels.

Tim, as you can guess, had a troubled family background and suffered from anxiety. But because he was rarely at school, he was never put forward for the traditional interventions available through the Ministry of Education (MoE).

So I worked to build up Tim’s trust and his oral communication. I did lots of scaffolding to reduce his stress when engaging with tasks across the curriculum.

This year I am his Tier 2 intervention teacher and he has a classroom teacher also beginning her SL journey like me. Together we have had a breakthrough.

For the first time, I have been able to begin assessing Tim. (I used parts of the free Little Learners Love Literacy screening tools). I began instructing him with sorting sound/letter picture cards with a buddy for support, then we moved onto practising handwriting letter shapes. 

Next it was recording sounds/letters on whiteboards. Earlier this year Tim declared “I can’t read!” but we persevered gently.  Later, he began writing CVC words and reading them back to us.

Through my guidance, Tim’s teacher started using SPELD SA free phonics passages with her target students. Now she has started incorporating the new Ready to Read phonics books from the MoE, too.

(Our school has not formally approved the SL approach, so we are working on a shoe-string budget. We have no other decodable books, apart from a few Letters and Sounds readers and some digital downloads, such as Really Great Reading passages. However, the biggest difference for Tim has come from increased teacher knowledge, not ‘things’.)

Now, when I go to collect Tim for his small group lesson with me, he leaps out of his chair to come to do his work. Tim is reading! 

And the powerful effect this is having on Tim is heart warming to see. But I wish I had had these tools when I first was responsible for teaching him 18 months ago. 

I don’t care whether Tim goes on to read Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera  or all the books in The Harry Potter series.

But I do care whether Tim  learns to read and write so that he can engage in all aspects of his education.

I do care whether he has the skills to write a birthday card to his baby brother, read a shopping list, follow the instructions to play a game, apply for a job, open a bank account, enrol to vote, and write a post on his preferred social media site. You get the picture.

I do not think SL is about turning us all into avid readers, just as when we practise soccer skills at school, not all of us are going to join a pro soccer team as adults.

But being literate and numerate is a basic human right in a modern society. I want that for all my learners, so they aren’t excluded from living what most of us experience, a regular life.

And while I can’t change Tim’s present home life, I can make his time at school a positive and life-affirming experience. 

Nga mihi,

Miss Anon

Footnote: Be sure to read my future post about the value of reading  high quality children’s books in a Structured Literacy approach, to build your learners’ vocabulary and comprehension skills, and their understanding of the wider world.

Structured Literacy is not a ‘this OR that’ approach with phonics instead of rich literature experiences, as some critics claim. SL is an ‘AND AND’ approach. Who doesn’t want to give their learners the best of both worlds! 

But it starts with explicit direct instruction (EDI) in foundation skills, as happened for Tim, with oral language skills and phonics skills, step by step. 

ABOUT ME - “Miss Anon”

 

1. What is your strongest area of expertise?

2. What issues would you most like to learn about? 

3. When it comes to the state of the world,

where do you feel the most urgent need for change?

Welcome to my new blog. 

Kia Ora!

Chances are you’ve landed here because, like me, you are a New Zealand teacher embarking on a Structured Literacy journey, or curious about taking your first tentative steps.

Perhaps you are a parent or a school leader and are interested in ‘walking in my shoes’ for a while, to see things from another perspective. Welcome to you, too.

First, I’ll address the photo snips above. When I started thinking about blogging, I landed on pages that wanted to show me how to monetise my writing efforts.

So to clear that up, do I have any conflicts of interest? Am I trying to sell you something? Well, no. I am already paid a regular wage as a teacher in a state school. I have no other business at present, though in the future I might become a literacy coach or a private tutor in that far-off land called ‘semi-retirement’. 

Instead, I started this blog by seeking guidance on how to be a social activist, hence the questions I asked myself above.

1. What is my area of expertise? 

• I have an intergenerational family history of special education learning differences (dyslexia, ADD, hearing loss, and vision impairment.) 

• I have 16 years of classroom teaching experience, 7 years of preschool teaching experience and 7 years of newspaper reporting. 

• My expertise here is that of an education communicator, aiming to bridge understanding about education issues between the public, parents, teachers, literacy experts, and New Zealand school administrators.

2. What issues would you most like to learn about? 

• I am on a journey learning about Structured Literacy and attempting to embed it in my teaching practice in a primary school. 

• I am advocating for inclusive education in NZ state-run schools, implementation of the Learning Support Action Plan and adopting the strategy outlined in the manifesto of Lifting Literacy Aotearoa.

3. When it comes to the state of the world, where do you feel the most urgent need for change?

 

• I want to lift the literacy achievement of ALL my learners and extend this into my wider community, beginning with the adoption of Structured Literacy practices.

• In my local community, there are background home-school issues around child poverty: poor or precarious housing, a lack of healthy food, stressful family dynamics (time-poor, inattentive, depressed, violent), low socio-economic status...This list can go on and will take years to resolve, depending on our collective will and leadership as a nation.

• BUT as an educator I can help my students learn to read and write so they can fully access the curriculum and advance their learning and future social outcomes. Step by step, beginning with explicit direct instruction in the early years, we can build a more equitable Aotearoa New Zealand.

 

A note on my anonymity

• I am blogging anonymously to protect the identity of my students and family members, who I may reference from time to time. 

• Likewise, I am protecting the reputation of my school that is only taking tentative steps on its Structured Literacy journey. This causes frustration for me, as I am further along the path. So this will be the subject of some of my posts. 

• I love my school and fellow teachers but we are at an important crossroad in NZ education. Advocating for picking up the pace of change is why I am bothering posting. 

• I am hoping other teachers in other schools may be able to pick up the ball and run faster than me, and perhaps some of the public can cheer from the sidelines, advocating for change, too. 

 

Nga Mihi,

Miss Anon

Nā to rourou, nā taku rourou, ka ora ai te iwi 
With your food basket and my food basket, 
the people will thrive.