Literacy Now

In many classrooms we visit, “sight words” receive a very different kind of instruction than other words, taught primarily as an exercise in visual memorization. In this post, we explain why sight words should be taught much as you would teach any other words.

First, a note about terminology: The term sight word means any word that can be read automatically (Ehri, 2005). Ultimately, any word can and should be a sight word, not just words from the Dolch or Fry lists, for example. For skilled readers, virtually all words have already become sight words. At this point, readers no longer need to engage in decoding (e.g., /c/-/a/-/t/ = /cat/); using an analogy (e.g., cat: like bat with a c); or using sentence context to figure out the words (Ehri, 2005)—they can now read them automatically, without conscious attention. In contrast, often people use the term sight words to mean high-frequency words, many of which do not follow typical English letter–sound relationships (e.g., said, some). They think that these high-frequency words must be learned by sight, without graphophonemic analysis, because of their irregularities. In the remainder of this post, we explain that this is not the case, and we use the term high-frequency words, meaning words that are very common in English, whether regularly or irregularly spelled.

Memorizing high-frequency words holistically is not the answer. The most powerful mechanism for eventually accessing words by sight is use of the graphophonemic structure, a process that amalgamates the word’s units into memory (Ehri, 1978). Here are five principles to keep in mind when teaching high-frequency words:

Principle One: Teach high-frequency words along with phonemic awareness, individual letter–sound relationships, and a concept of word (e.g., Flanagan, 2007). In our observation, a great deal of high-frequency word instruction occurs too early—before children have these important pieces in place. For example, some children do not even have a concept of word or understanding of the word boundaries in print and how these map to letters, and yet they are memorizing letter sequences in “sight words.” Similarly, before they even understand the alphabetic principle they are chanting words.  Without a concept of word or alphabetic insight, children will have the mistaken impression that words are unsystematic, and learning will be inefficient in any case. High-frequency word instruction should occur on basically the same pace as instruction in word decoding in general.

Principle Two: Ask students to use graphophonemic analysis to read high-frequency words (Ehri, 2005). But be sure that instruction intersects with children’s developmental stage (e.g., Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, & Johnston, 2012). For example, when working with an emergent reader who is solidifying consonant sounds, focus them on the /t/ in to. When working with a full alphabetic reader, teach that in the word and, the a says /ă/, the n says /n/, and the d says /d/. Do this even for words that are not spelled using common letter–sound correspondences. For example, for the word was, we teach that w says /w/, a says /ŭ/, and the s says /z/. This kind of instruction builds a phonological representation of the word, which supports learning of the word.

Principle Three: Teach high-frequency words in groups that have similar patterns. For example, instead of teaching the word some as a rule breaker, explain that it is like come, above, and love.

Principle Four: Use high-frequency words to help children learn to decode new words. In one study, children were taught high-frequency words, such as long, can, and her, either with relatively little attention to the letter–sound relationships within them or with extensive analysis of their letter–sound relationships (Ehri, Satlow, & Gaskins, 2009). Children taught the words with full graphophonemic analysis were better able earlier on to analogize from those words to new words—for example to say, “If I know long, then I know strong.’’

Principle Five: Practice reading high-frequency words in sentences and books. Although we want children to analyze words individually, they also must read them within the context of sentences and books. It is critical that young children understand that reading high-frequency words enables them to unlock meaning within texts of interest to them.

In sum, we recommend you approach the teaching of high-frequency words, or what you might have been referring to as “sight words,” much as you approach the teaching of other words. Such continuity in instructional approach would be out of “sight”!

Nell K. Duke is a professor of Literacy, Language, and Culture at the University of Michigan, a member of the ILA Literacy Research Panel, and the author of Inside Information: Developing Powerful Readers and Writers of Informational Text Through Project-Based Instruction. Heidi Anne E. Mesmer is an associate professor of Literacy at Virginia Tech and a member of the ILA Literacy Research Panel. Her research focuses on text and beginning reading instruction.

The ILA Literacy Research Panel uses this blog to connect ILA members around the world with research relevant to policy and practice. Reader response is welcomed via e-mail.

References

Bear, D.R., Invernizzi, M., Templeton, S., & Johnston, F. (2012). Words their way​ (5th​ ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Ehri, L.C. (1978). Beginning reading from a psycholinguistic perspective: Amalgamation of word identities. In F.B. Murray, (Ed.), The development of the reading process (International Reading Association Monograph No. 3). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Ehri, L.C. (2005). Learning to read words: Theory, findings, and issues. Scientific Studies of Reading, 9(2), 167–188.

Ehri, L.C., Satlow, E., & Gaskins, I. (2009). Grapho-phonemic enrichment
strengthens keyword analogy instruction for struggling young readers. Reading & Writing Quarterly: Overcoming Learning Difficulties, 25(2–3), 162–191.

Flanigan, K. (2007). A concept of word in text: A pivotal event in early reading acquisition. Journal of Literacy Research, 39(1), 37–70.

There is considerable interest across the United States in increasing the number of children who are reading at grade level by the end of third grade (e.g., Rose, 2012). Some responses to this interest, such as mandatory retention policies, are not supported by the weight of research evidence (e.g., Reschly & Christenson, 2013). In contrast, research offers substantial support for the impact of professional development, coaching, and specific instructional practices on literacy growth (e.g., Carlisle & Berebitsky, 2011; Purcell-Gates, Duke, & Stouffer, in press; Yoon, Duncan, Lee, Scarloss, & Shapley, 2007).

In Michigan, an Early Literacy Task Force has been formed to support professional development, coaching, and the use of research-supported instructional practices statewide. This is no small task. Michigan has 540 Local Education Agencies (LEAs) and 56 Intermediate School Districts charged with providing various kinds of support to those LEAs, as well as a variety of nonprofit and other organizations that interact with literacy education.

To provide leadership in this context, Michigan’s Association of Intermediate School Administrators (MAISA), through its General Educational Leadership Network (GELN), formed the Early Literacy Task Force. The Task Force comprises representatives from a number of relevant organizations in Michigan, including not only Intermediate School Districts, but also the Michigan Reading Association, the Michigan Department of Education, the Michigan Association for Computer Users in Learning, the Michigan Elementary and Middle School Principals Association, the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, and many others.

In our first meeting, we agreed there is an enormous need in Michigan to get on the same page about effective early literacy instruction—on the same page about the content of early literacy professional development for Michigan teachers, the focus of literacy coaching, and the literacy instructional practices we want children to experience. Toward that end, we developed two documents, which you can access at the following links:

Essential Instructional Practices in Early Literacy: Prekindergarten

Essential Instructional Practices in Early Literacy: Grades K to 3

In developing the documents, we relied heavily on research and focused on high-utility instructional practices (for further information about the purposes and use of the documents, please see their introductory sections). Given the effectiveness and range of these practices, we believe that focusing professional development and coaching on them could make a measurable difference in reading-by-third-grade outcomes. We are pleased that the documents have already received considerable attention—not only in Michigan but elsewhere in the United States and beyond. Plans are underway to create professional development offerings and materials, including an extensive library of video clips, to support learning about the practices.

Additional documents, such as Essential Practices in Literacy Coaching and Literacy Essentials School-Level Companion Document are also in the works. Task Force leaders Joanne Hopper (MAISA GELN Director), Naomi Norman (Interim Assistant Superintendent, Achievement & Student Services at the Washtenaw Intermediate School District and the Livingston Education Agency), and Susan Townsend (Director of Instruction & Learning Services at the Jackson Intermediate School District), report a degree of collaboration and unity among education stakeholders that is unprecedented in Michigan. We are now in the same book and, with continued effort, we will be on the same page as well.

Nell K. Duke is a professor of Literacy, Language, and Culture at the University of Michigan, a member of the ILA Literacy Research Panel, and author of Inside Information: Developing Powerful Readers and Writers of Informational Text Through Project-Based Instruction.

The ILA Literacy Research Panel uses this blog to connect ILA members around the world with research relevant to policy and practice. Reader response is welcomed via e-mail.

We did take a more exploratory, student-driven discussion during class where I was just sparking an idea that the students would run with. At one point, they literally turned in their seats toward each other, and that’s when I knew they were super engaged not only with me, but with each other. It was AWESOME.

So reflected a preservice teacher we work with, following a lively discussion about Black Lives Matter in an urban 11th-grade English classroom. We are struck by this moment and by the teacher’s excitement.  For her, this moment is unusual and exemplary. Our work focuses around the question: How can such moments of dialogic teaching become more typical, rather than remarkable, in literacy classrooms?  Mary and her colleagues defined dialogic teaching as “the instructional designs and practices that provide students with frequent and sustained opportunities to engage in learning talk” (Juzwik, Borsheim-Black, Caughlan, & Heintz, 2013, p. 5). When teachers create space for such talk, students have an opportunity to build on their own and each other’s ideas and connect them into coherent lines of thinking and inquiry over time (Alexander, 2008; Boyd, 2016). When teachers purposefully nurture and sustain such a stance, they make a dialogic classroom environment possible. Dialogic classroom environments bolster student literacy achievement growth (e.g., Murphy, Wilkinson, Soter, Hennessy, & Alexander, 2009), prepare students for participation in democratic life (Juzwik et al., 2013), foster student engagement (Kelly, 2008), and create more humane and sustainable workplaces for teachers.

Dialogic tools

Mary’s research team identified dialogic tools as a key component of literacy teaching that successfully provided students with opportunities for learning talk (Juzwik et al., 2013). They identified both teacher- and student-centered tools such as anticipation guides, teacher-scripted questions, four corners, fishbowls, and literature circles. Teachers and students collaboratively use these tools in planning and classroom practice to scaffold learning talk (Alexander, 2008; Juzwik et al., 2013). We and the teachers we work with find these tools helpful for instructional planning, both short-term (lesson) planning and long-term (unit or yearlong) planning. For example, English teacher Liz Krause puts up a word chart of dialogic tools behind her desk to provide a reminder as she plans. Others provide students with sentence stems or discussion phrases or rubrics to focus students’ attention on dialogic moves.  
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Dialogic tools embedded in dialogic stance

Talking to learn is more than just increasing student talk or implementing particular tools. Using dialogic tools is more effective when embedded in a broader dialogic stance over time: “A teacher adopting a dialogic stance listens, leads and follows, responds and directs” (Boyd & Markarian, 2015, p. 273). A dialogic stance involves more than successfully enacting some dialogic tool. It further entails a sustained focus on the potential of student and teacher ideas to promote learning and inquiry. For example, a fishbowl tool should focus on the students and teacher building ideas together, not on students performing the elements of a good discussion. At the end of a fish bowl, instead of evaluating how the discussion went, students can instead consider questions about which ideas challenged them most or supported their thinking about a text. These questions emphasize listening, learning, and talking with each other. When teachers orient their classroom practices toward learning talk over the long term, a dialogic classroom environment where students and teachers learn together becomes possible.

Mary M. Juzwik is a professor at Michigan State University. She is also the coeditor of Research in the Teaching of English and coauthor of Inspiring Dialogue: Talking to Learn in the English Classroom. Mandie Dunn and Ashley Johnson are doctoral students in curriculum, instruction, and teacher education at Michigan State University.

The ILA Literacy Research Panel uses this blog to connect ILA members around the world with research relevant to policy and practice. Reader response is welcomed via e-mail.

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An earlier post noted that Curriculum-Based Measurement has come to dominate classroom assessment, and thus curriculum, and that it is not helpful in informing instruction. Teachers need information that helps them see reading and writing through the learners’ eyes. What do students know about print—its purposes, forms, and content? What strategies do they use to make meaning as they read an author’s text or compose one of their own? Effective instruction builds from children’s current strengths while “nudging” them to form new understandings about literacy processes, purposes, and content just beyond their current reach.

Teachers using ongoing curriculum-based assessments are actually good at determining whether a child’s literacy is more and less developed (Taylor, Anselmo, Foreman, Schatschneider, & Angelopoulos, 2000). For example, in the early grades there is much information in a child’s writing. Merely getting children involved in making books yields a great deal of information about each child’s knowledge of print and how books work, while simultaneously engaging them in long-term projects that build writing stamina. Observing and conferring with young writers provides teachers with information about children’s composition processes and word making, without having to do any testing (e.g., Ray & Cleaveland, 2004; Rowe & Wilson, 2015). For example, from a child’s invented spelling patterns a teacher might recognize that assistance with phonemic awareness is needed (wt = wanted) or not needed (trubl = trouble) and which words are well known and can be used as instructional anchors. But we can also learn about the child’s sense of genre, his or her language choices, punctuation knowledge, how his or her illustrations enhance the textual meanings, revision strategies, attention span, and so forth.

Records of children’s oral reading, such as running records (Clay, 2000) and associated miscue analysis (Wilde, 2000), even abbreviated forms (Vellutino & Scanlon, 2002), provide similarly productive information about children’s strategic processing of print. For example, we can tell whether children are monitoring and self-correcting when their reading doesn’t make sense or when it makes sense but doesn’t match the print. We can tell what strategies students use to figure out unknown words with and without support. This information can substantively inform our instruction.

Checklists, too, particularly ones that require supporting evidence, can be useful (Scanlon, Vellutino, Small, Fanuele, & Sweeney, 2005). Instructional book levels such as those used by Reading Recovery or Fountas and Pinnell (1996) also can indicate progress. We are not advocating assigning children books to read by level. Instead, we suggest that teachers keep track of the estimated difficulty of the children’s book choices, the actual difficulty for the particular child, and a record of the strategies the child uses in reading the book. This would indicate whether the level of difficulty is appropriate, a necessary condition for children to be in control of their learning and for building persistence (Gersten, Fuchs, Williams, & Baker, 2001). Indeed, appropriate task difficulty is a core feature of successful interventions in learning disabilities (Swanson & Hoskyn, 1998) but commonly not the fate of less accomplished readers (Allington, 1983).

Screening by testing all children is unnecessary because teachers who use formative assessments readily identify children making more and less adequate progress. Indeed, teachers unable to do so are poorly prepared to teach any of the children, let alone those experiencing difficulty. The small group of children teachers identify as not progressing well might be given a more detailed, instructionally informative assessment, such as the Observation Survey (Clay, 2004), which provides highly reliable and valid screening information while documenting in detail children’s knowledge of print and strategic sense making (Denton, Ciancio, & Fletcher, 2006). This level of precision, however, is mostly necessary for high-resource decisions, such as additional 1:1 instruction. For older children, assessments like the QRI-V also examine the child’s reading strategies.

Keeping individual student folders containing multiple data sources (writing, running records, details about word/letter recognition and representation, reading and writing conference notes, records of children’s book discussions, etc.) allows routine, collaborative stocktaking and analysis of children’s development (e.g., McGill-Franzen, Payne, & Dennis, 2010).

Overall, teachers need support for engaging in assessment practices that help them understand students’ approaches to reading and writing—the attitudes, skills, and strategies students actually use. Assessment results that compare students with normative expectations for reading rate, or that reflect the number of questions answered correctly on a comprehension test, fail to provide the kind of specific information on students’ literacy processes that teachers need. 

In the end, though, we also need formative assessment of our own teaching practices through analysis of recordings (e.g., of book discussions and 1:1 interactions) and collaborative, data-based observations. Obviously, when children are not successful in our classrooms, our teaching must come under as much scrutiny as the child’s literate development so that we can be responsive to the child’s needs. This is work best done collaboratively with peers because it is equally important that we learn alternatives from those teachers who are meeting with greater success (Bryk, 2015). 

Peter Johnston, PhD, is Professor Emeritus at the University of Albany-SUNY. He is a member of the ILA Literacy Research Panel. Deborah Rowe is associate professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning in the Peabody College of Education and Human Development at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN.

The ILA Literacy Research Panel uses this blog to connect educators around the world with research relevant to policy and practice. Reader response is welcomed via e-mail.

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Do you often look at the short, complex text you’ve chosen for students to closely read and wonder what questions would best support their comprehension? As you examine the text, do you remind yourself that you need to ask questions that invite analysis of what the text says, how it works, and what it means? (Adler & Van Doren, 1940/1972). Clearly a consideration of the reader, the task, and the sociocultural context of the text is necessary, but the text should also inform the type of questions you need to generate for students to achieve critical analysis. Not all questions provide equal support, so you must be very intentional in your analysis of the text and in your crafting of questions.

In Ms. Davis’ eighth grade science class, students are preparing to work in teams to construct minivehicles that are powered by their own energy source and exhibit an understanding of Newton’s Laws of motion. Their work will be documented in a Wiki they will build that includes a written synopsis of the project, photographs of various iterations of design, and video of the car trials. In order to prepare students for this exciting engineering challenge, Ms. Davis has selected a close reading of the following subsection about Newton’s Third Law of Motion. As you read this passage, consider which questions might promote deep analysis given the hallmark characteristics of this paragraph.

Newton’s Third Law of Motion is based on the understanding that forces come in pairs. They are the result of interactions between two forces. If you pull a wagon by its handle, the wagon pulls back on you. Newton’s Third Law is commonly stated as follows: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Another way of putting this is to say, if object 1 exerts a force on object 2, then object 2 also exerts a force on object 1.  The concept of Newton’s Third Law has helped to solve problems and explain phenomena we observe in the real world. Engineers in the past considered ways for humans to send measuring instruments—and later, peopleinto space. To accomplish this, they drew on Newton’s Third Law. Consider this:  When a rocket is launched, the engine generates hot gases that flow out of the back of the engine. In turn, an opposite reaction force, called thrust, is produced. This force pushes the rocket upward, away from earth. There are other advancements that directly result from an understanding of Newton’s Third Law. Because swimming in ocean water is difficult and slow with bare feet, a device worn on the feet, called a swim fin, was developed. When the large blade of the swim fin pushes back on the water, the water exerts an opposite force that propels the swimmer forward. Next time you kick a soccer ball, notice how you can feel the push of the ball back against your foot. Next time you lift a book off a desk, remember both you and the book are exerting forces on each other. Newton’s Third Law of Motion describes these interactions, which you see and experience every day.

You only need to ask one general understanding question such as, “What’s this text about?” or “What‘s the purpose of this text?” because the author explicitly answers each of these questions in the first three sentences. The author also uses context to define the technical words, so you may not need to ask more than one question like, “How does the author help us understand the meaning of interactions in the first five sentences?”(e.g., Kuhn & Stahl, 1998).The vocabulary demands for Ms. Davis’ students are not too difficult because they have had previous experience with the concept of forces.

Where the complexity lays in this text is in its structure, a valuable area for instruction (e.g., Taylor & Beach, 1984). Analyzing it indicates there is more than one organizational structure and that the signal words that usually alert the reader to this are obvious in some cases, but not in others. Because of this, more than one question about structure may need to be asked. In preparation you might craft questions such as the follwing:

• Cause and effect text structure is often indicated by signal words such as if/then or when. “What do the cause/effect signal words in this text tell you about Newton’s Third Law?”
• Problem/solution text structure is also noted in this text. “What examples does the author provide to clarify how problems are solved in the real world?”

So this text requires more questions about how the text works because our analysis of the text identified the area (structural organization) that would be complex for most eighth grade readers. By crafting these two intentionally layered questions, we have prepared the scaffolds needed to support students getting to the deepest meaning of this text. Our focus of questioning was on how the text works. Using rubrics that support a deep analysis of a text results in developing intentionally focused questions that are supportive of deep textual analysis by students during close reading.

Maria C. Grant is a professor in secondary education at California State University, Fullerton (CSUF). Grant teaches courses in the credential program there and works to support collaborations among educators in both formal and informal science education institutions. She conducts professional development workshops, institutes, and webinars for educators across the country on various topics, including the Next Generation Science Standards,Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts, formative assessment, and disciplinary literacy. Diane Lapp, EdD, Distinguished Professor of Education at San Diego State University (SDSU), is currently an English/literacy teacher and instructional coach at Health Sciences High and Middle School in San Diego, CA.  Also a member of both the California and the International Reading Halls of Fame, Diane can also be found on Twitter.

The ILA Literacy Research Panel uses this blog to connect ILA members around the world with research relevant to policy and practice. Reader response is welcomed via e-mail.