How the Brain Learns to Read

by David A. Sousa

  • Another technique for correcting spelling is the Have-a-Go Chart (Bolton & Snowball, 1993). Students use this chart (Figure 3.6) when they need your assistance with words they have misspelled. The student writes the misspelled word in the first column. Use the sound box (Figure 3.5) to stretch the word and ask the student to listen for phonemes. After sounding out the word several times, the student writes the word again in the Have-a-Go column. If incorrect, you can write the word correctly. The student then writes the correct word in the third column. Now encourage the student to recall the correct spelling mentally and to write it again in the fourth column to enhance retention of the correct spelling in long-term memory.

  Figure 3.5 This sound (Elkonin) box technique requires the student to move a marker (or coin) into the box several times while pronouncing the letter’s sound. It helps the child detect the middle vowel sounds and thus represent them in spelling (Sipe, 2001).

  Figure 3.6 Students write the misspelled word in the first column. The teacher might use the sound box (Figure 3.5) to stretch the word and ask the student to listen for phonemes. The student writes the word again in the Have-a-Go column. If incorrect, the teacher either writes the word or refers the student to a dictionary. The student then writes the correct word in the third column and copies it again in the fourth column to enhance retention in long-term memory (Bolton & Snowball, 1993).

  • As spelling progresses, introduce children to spelling strategies they can use to help spell new words. Later, tell them about words, like colonel and could, that do not match the spelling rules they were taught.

  • A study conducted by Ahmed and Lombardino (2000) analyzed the spelling of 100 kindergarten children for letter omission and substitution, as well as letter voicing and devoicing. Based on their spelling scores, the children were identified as low, middle, or high in spelling acquisition. The researchers suggested that teachers consider the following strategies, based on the students’ spelling acquisition levels:

  Low-level spellers:

  Teach that a monosyllabic word must be spelled with a vowel (Example: cat, not ct).

  Show children how to distinguish between the name of a vowel letter and its sound in closed monosyllabic words (Example: The letter a has a different sound than its name in the word cat).

  Help children master spelling consonants that have only one letter form and a corresponding letter name (Examples: b, d, m, p, t).

  Have children practice closed monosyllables consisting of the five vowel sounds (a, e, i, o, u) and the consonants that have one corresponding letter (Examples: bat, met, sit, not, and put).

  Mid-level spellers:

  Teach the vowel-lengthening rule by adding the silent letter e after a consonant (Examples: in lake and in time).

  Help children learn to spell consonants that do not have a corresponding letter name (Examples: ch- as in child and sh- as in shop).

  Teach how to spell consonant blends (Examples: dr- as in drink, tr- as in trap, -mp as in damp, -ng as in wing, and -nk as in think).

  High-level spellers:

  Have children practice the spelling of frequently occurring vowel digraphs (Examples: -ai as in sail, -ee as in bee, -oa as in coat).

  Then practice the floss rule—double a word’s final -f -l, or -s if it follows a short vowel (Examples: buff, fill, and toss).

  Help children understand the meaning of the suffixes -ed and -ing, and practice their spellings.

  In the past, writing was often delayed until children could spell every word correctly. Such an approach inhibited the flow of thoughts necessary for children to become literate. Accepting invented spelling allowed children to engage in meaningful writing more than they ever expected. Furthermore, the processes used by teachers to correct spelling develop phonemic awareness and reading. The key to corrective spelling lies with the interventions that teachers purposefully use to guide children’s writing from invented to conventional spellings. If left alone to grapple with the bizarre nature of English orthography, children will grow frustrated with spelling. But with appropriate teacher interventions, children can overcome the orthography maze and eventually learn the rules, patterns, and exceptions that control spelling in English.

  How Teaching Writing Can Affect Spelling and Reading

  Over the past several decades, hundreds of research studies have looked at the associations between writing practices and students’ reading performance. Some studies had better research designs than others. Until recently, it was a time-consuming task to sift through these studies, decide which were well designed, and then ferret out their findings. Fortunately, in 2010, the Carnegie Corporation of New York tackled this issue and published a report of a meta-analysis that selected nearly 100 such studies that met rigid research criteria to determine which effects were consistent and significant (Graham & Hebert, 2010). Most of the selected studies covered Grades 4 through 12, but others covered Grades 1 through 3.

  The researchers used a statistical measure called effect size to measure the strength of the writing intervention used. A positive effect size means that the writing strategy used had a positive effect on the students’ reading performance. In general, an effect size of 0.20 to 0.49 indicates a mild effect, 0.50 to 0.79 a moderate effect, and 0.80 (or larger) a strong effect.

  Three major findings emerged from this extensive meta-analysis. Students’ reading performance improves significantly when teachers

  • ask students to write about the text they just read;

  • teach students to be better writers; and

  • increase the amount of time that students write.

  Several other strategies, which were subsets of the major findings, also produced reasonable effect sizes. Table 3.1 summarizes the effect sizes of the three major findings and their subcategories. The meta-analysis reveals that practices such as summary writing, note-taking, answering questions, and extended response all have a positive impact on students’ reading competence. These results imply that, for older students, teaching reading and writing together helps students develop more literacy skills and knowledge. These results can also guide teachers at all grade levels as they design age-appropriate writing strategies for their students.

  Fluency Instruction

  Fluency is the ability to read a text orally with speed, accuracy, and proper expression. It represents the reader’s ability to shift from concentrating on the decoding process and focusing more on the content of the text. Case studies report that fluency is one component that is often neglected in the classroom. Children who lack fluency read slowly and laboriously, often making it difficult for them to remember what has been read (recall the limited capacity of working memory) and to relate the ideas expressed in the text to their own experiences. Frequent practice in reading is one of the main contributors to developing fluency.

  Fluency bridges the gap between word recognition and comprehension. Because fluent readers do not need to spend much time decoding words, they can focus their attention on the meaning of the text. With practice, word recognition and comprehension occur almost simultaneously. Of course, a student will usually not read all text with the same ease. Fluency depends on the reader’s familiarity with the words, and with the amount of practice reading the text. The fluency of even skilled readers will slow down when encountering unfamiliar vocabulary or topics. To read with expression, readers must be able to divide sentences into meaningful chunks that include phrases and clauses. As comprehension speed increases, readers develop a sense of knowing when to pause appropriately at the ends of sentences, and when to change tone and emphasis.

  Table 3.1 Effect Sizes of Studies of the Impact of Writing Strategies on Reading

  SOURCE: Graham and Hebert (2010).

  Fluency and Automaticity

  Although the terms are often used interchangeably, it should be noted that fluency is not the same as automaticity. Automaticity is the fast and effortless word recognition that comes after a great deal of reading practice. I
t does not refer to reading with expression. Thus, automaticity is necessary, but not sufficient, for fluency. Two approaches, each of which has several variations, have been used to teach fluency:

  • Guided repeated oral reading. This approach encourages students to read passages aloud several times and receive systematic and explicit guidance and feedback from the teacher.

  • Independent silent reading. This approach encourages students to read silently on their own, inside and outside the classroom, with minimal guidance and feedback.

  Researchers have investigated these two main approaches and have found the following (NIFL, 2001):

  • Monitored repeated oral reading improves reading fluency and overall reading achievement. Students who read passages aloud and receive guidance from their teachers become better readers because this process improves word recognition, speed, accuracy, and fluency. It also improves reading comprehension, but to a lesser extent. This approach even helps struggling readers at the higher elementary grade levels.

  • Round-robin reading—where students take turns reading parts of a text aloud, but not repeatedly—in itself does not increase fluency. This may be because students usually read a small amount of text and only once. Furthermore, the children are likely to pay attention only when it is their turn to read.

  • Children become good readers when they gain an increased sensitivity for how the printed word relates to how it is pronounced. This ability requires the child to pay attention to letter strings and the phoneme sequences in those strings. Children who have attained this ability can read pronounceable nonwords, and the pronunciation errors that they make in reading are plausible. When this occurs, the child’s brain is apparently doing some form of phonological recoding—that is, recoding the spellings so they can be pronounced. Opportunities for this recoding occur when children read aloud to a parent or teacher. Feedback from these attempts build up the child’s recognition of the written (orthographic) form of unfamiliar words. Several research studies conclude that reading aloud promotes the acquisition of printed word representations in the child’s mental lexicon and builds meaning (Biemiller & Boote, 2006). Not surprisingly, other studies have found that students’ oral reading fluency in first, second, and third grades is a reliable predictor of how well they score on high-stakes tests of reading comprehension at the end of third grade (Wanzek et al., 2010).

  • Many studies indicate that good readers read the most and poor readers read the least. The suggestion here is that the more children read, the better their fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. However, these findings do not indicate cause and effect. It is possible that the more children read, the better their fluency. But it may just be that better readers simply choose to read more.

  • The popular belief that fluency was a direct result of proficiency in word recognition is not supported by recent research. Although word recognition is a necessary skill, fluency is now seen as a separate component that can be developed through instruction. Informal reading inventories (IRIs), running records, and miscue analysis are appropriate measures for identifying problems that students are having with word recognition, but are not suitable measures of fluency. Simpler measures, such as calculating words read correctly per minute, are more appropriate for monitoring fluency.

  • Research evidence remains inconclusive on whether instructional time spent on independent silent reading with minimal guidance and feedback improves fluency and overall reading achievement in young readers. There are hundreds of studies showing that the best readers read the most and the poorest readers read the least. But these studies yield correlations, and a correlation does not mean causation. It could just be that better readers simply decide to read more. Some studies have found no correlation between silent reading and improved fluency, including in the primary grades (e.g., Prior et al., 2011; Reutzel, Fawson, & Smith, 2010), or improved comprehension (e.g., Hale et al., 2010).

  • Given that instructional time is limited, there may be better ways to spend reading time in the classroom than silent reading. Nonetheless, you should encourage students to read more outside of school rather than devote instruction time to independent reading. Students could also read on their own in class during independent work time when, for example, they have finished one activity and are waiting for another one to begin. Independent reading does build a reader’s vocabulary. Some researchers estimate that young readers who engage in independent reading for just 10 minutes a day read over 600,000 more words each year than students who do no independent reading. Increasing the reading time to 20 minutes a day raises the words read to over 2 million a year (Hart & Risley, 2003).

  How Do I Teach Fluency?

  • Have students read aloud and provide effective guidance and feedback to improve their fluency. Students need instruction in fluency (a) when their word recognition errors exceed 10 percent when reading a text they have not practiced, (b) when they cannot read orally with expression, or (c) when their comprehension is poor after reading a text orally.

  • Combine reading instruction with opportunities for your students to read books at their independent level of reading ability. One technique is to use literature circles where small groups of students discuss a piece of literature in depth. The group is formed by the choice of the book rather than by ability. Literature circles allow students to discuss, on their own, events, characters, and their own personal experiences related to the story. This process helps students engage in reflection and critical thinking as well as construct meaning in their interactions with other students. For more information on literature circles, see the “Resources” section.

  • Read aloud daily to your students. By your being a good model of fluent reading, students learn how a reader’s voice can help text make sense. Then have the students reread the text, perhaps up to four times to improve fluency. Students can practice reading aloud in several ways. The methods are listed in Figure 3.7 in the order of increasing student independence and of decreasing teacher involvement (Carbo, 2003).

  • Shared reading. This is an interactive reading activity in which students join in the reading of a large book as guided by the teacher. After placing the book on an easel so it can be easily seen, the teacher uses a pointer to guide the reading, pointing to the words as they are read. The teacher may wish to read the text first, asking students to predict a word or phrase or summarize what is happening. Later, the teacher and students take turns reading, and choral reading may also occur. The goal is to work toward phrase fluency rather than reading the text word by word.

  Figure 3.7 This diagram illustrates the range of teacher and student involvement for various models of teaching reading.

  SOURCE: Adapted from Carbo (2003).

  • Student-adult reading or neurological impress. In this one-on-one method, the adult provides a model of fluent reading by reading the text first. The student then reads the text, and the adult provides encouragement and assistance as needed. The student rereads the passage three or four times until fluency is attained. In a variation of this method, called neurological impress, the teacher reads a passage softly into the student’s dominant ear as they both use their fingers to follow along in the text.

  • Tape/digital-assisted reading. An audiotape or digital recording of a fluent reader is used for this strategy. The reader should read at a speed of about 80 to 100 words per minute to ensure that the students can follow the words and gain meaning. At first, the students read the passage to themselves. Then they listen to the recording and follow along, pointing to the words in their books as the reader says them. Next, the students read aloud along with the recording several times until they can read the text independently.

  • Choral (unison) reading. Students read along as a group with an adult reader, either from a big book or from their own copy. Choose a text that is short and aimed at the independent reading ability of most students. Begin reading and invite students to join in as they recognize the words you are reading
. After three or four readings, the children should be able to read the text independently.

  • Partner or paired reading. This technique pairs a more fluent reader with a less fluent reader. The more fluent student reads first, providing a model of fluency. Then the less fluent student reads aloud while the stronger partner provides assistance with word recognition and feedback. Another format is to pair readers of similar fluency to reread parts of a story to each other.

  • Readers’ theatre. In this activity, students rehearse (but do not memorize) and then perform a play in front of their classmates. They read from scripts that have been taken from books rich in dialogue. A narrator may be used to give any necessary background information, and the students read lines as characters in the play. This novel approach provides an enjoyable opportunity for rereading text, practicing fluency, and promoting cooperation among the students in the class. Numerous studies show the effectiveness of readers’ theatre. For example, one study of nearly 200 fifth-grade students found that the students in a readers’ theatre group had significantly higher achievement scores in word recognition and reading comprehension (Trainin & Andrzejczak, 2006). Readers’ theatre is appropriate for students in second grade through high school.