The Principles of Effective Literacy Instruction
The English language has the most complex written code in the world. Poor teaching practices over the last 200 years has resulted in a high failure rate. For decades, over 40% of children fail to gain adequate literacy. This failure rate is not the fault of parents and teachers. Like everyone else in the English speaking world, they simply lack an understanding of the true logic of the English Alphabet Code. The fact is, they’ve been teaching it backwards! Teachers need to have a thorough understanding of the English Alphabet Code and how it works. Once they do, they can align their teaching practices with the following principles.
Phonemes are the basis of the English Alphabet Code. The letters of the alphabet are not. Letters don’t ‘say sounds,’ people do. Speech sounds are coded by letters. This is the logic of our code. Teachers and parents need to teach in a sound-to-print orientation.
Success with literacy depends on phonemic awareness. Yet, it doesn’t come naturally to human beings. Young children must be carefully trained to ‘unglue’ the sounds in words for reading and writing.
There are 42 phonemes in American English. The most common spelling of each one makes up the ‘Basic Code.’ We must teach the phonemes of English as the basis of the code, not ‘the alphabet.’
24 of the English phonemes are coded with single letters. We call this subset of the English language the Simple Code. It’s English’s simplest logic, because there’s one (and only one) letter for each sound. In addition, each of these phonemes are the easiest ones to hear. This is why we teach them to children first. An automatic association of these sounds to their letters is a goal by the end of kindergarten.
18 English phonemes are symbolized by 2 letters that together represent one sound. Children learn these digraphs in first grade: ch sh th th ng qu oo oo er ar or oy ow a-e ee i-e o-e and u-e. Most children readily learn that two letters can represent one sound.
A high percentage of children struggle to learn many of the Basic Code digraphs. For one thing, children commonly struggle to see the ‘e’ at the end of words and produce the sounds associated with four of the ‘long vowels:’ /a-e/ /i-e/ /o-e/ and /u-e/. This is because these digraphs are separated by another letter, and it can take practice for them to see them as one ‘team.’
Furthermore, nine of the phonemes are dipthongs, complex sounds consisting of two phonemes produced in quick succession: /a-e/ /i-e/ /o-e/ /u-e/ /oo/ /ow/ /oy/ /x/ and /qu/. They can be tricky for children to hear as one sound unit.
There’s also code overlap to deal with: oo as in moon, and oo as in book are different sounds, yet they’re symbolized by the same letter team. /th/ as in ‘thing,’ and /th/ as in ‘this’ are different phonemes as well, voiced and unvoiced.
Children need repeated practice to learn these 18 phoneme/digraph associations, and for them to become reflexive.
36 of English’s phonemes have multiple spellings. For example, the sound /ee/ can be spelled 10 different ways, as in the following words: meet, seat, chief, funny, she, police, deli, receive, eve, and key. This is the Complex Code level for the second grade. Children practice reading and writing words organized by phoneme. In this way, they’re able to logically anchor the spelling variation to the Basic Code. They discover patterns as they read and write words from these collections. This is how their brains start recording the logic of probability that governs our spelling code.
There are 39 instances of ‘code overlap’ in English. This is when a letter (or letter digraph) stands for more than one sound. For example, the letters ‘ou’ can stand for five phonemes, as in the words: out, soup, soul, touch, and cough. Children practice reading and writing words organized by spelling in order to discover all the sounds mapped to each grapheme.
Reading and writing are reversible processes. To read a word (decode), we ‘sound it out.’ To write (encode), we ‘sound it in.’ Children practice both sides of literacy to master the code.
Writing is a powerful tool for learning at every level of the curriculum. Writing exercises a deeper level of memory than reading. We teach children to ‘say the sounds’ as they’re writing, causing neural connections to be formed between the phonemes and the graphemes.
There are 3 skills required for English literacy: blending, segmenting, and phoneme manipulation.
Blending is the main skill for reading. The main skill for reading is blending. The sounds in a word must be said in quick succession for it to be heard and recognized by the reader.
Blending relies on ‘echoic memory.’ There must be silence for the mind of the student to hear and synthesize the sounds of each phoneme into a word. Noisy classrooms, music playing, and teachers talking can inhibit this process.
The teaching of letter names does more damage to children than anything else. They must unlearn them, and focus on letter sounds in order to unlock the code. Children who are unlearning letter names are often slower to read, because their first reflex when seeing the letters isn’t the code that unlocks the meaning. It takes time to mentally discard letter names and remember the associated phoneme. Saying the sounds slowly makes the word difficult to hear, and the child unsuccessful.
Segmenting is the main skill for writing. A word must be taken apart and its constituent phonemes written successively. Children should be ingrained with the habit of ‘saying the sounds’ as they write each letter. If this is done, they become good spellers who don’t drop or add sounds to words.
Children should be given a series of objects to keep track of the phonemes in words as they’re writing. This makes learning concrete and manageable.
Phoneme manipulation is the skill needed for dealing with code overlap. It’s the ability to switch one phoneme out of a word and replace it with another. Since we have 39 graphemes which stand for more than one sound, children start building this skill early on.
Success with early literacy instruction is very important. Children need successful experiences to build confidence, which gives them the will to continue learning. When the above principles govern early literacy instruction, we can ensure that nearly every student gains success with literacy.