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The 7 Deadly Errors of Teaching Reading


There’s a wrong way to teach reading and, unfortunately, it’s also the most popular way.  So, if you’ve ever committed these teaching errors, don’t worry, you’re not alone.  I’ve been there, too.  I was shocked when I realized that many teacher prep courses and even professional development classes are teaching reading methods not supported by science.  If you’re reading this blog and find yourself surprised or even defensive at these “errors,” please take a moment to step back, take a deep breath, and use it as a springboard to start your journey into learning more about the science of reading.  Instead of feeling denial, guilt, or anger…I encourage you to simply learn more and do better.

Deadly Error #1:  3-Cueing Strategies (aka the Beanie Baby Reading Strategies)


              I know they’re cute and cuddly. I know everyone uses them. I know you’ve scoured dozens of thrift stores to finally complete your set.  But there is actually no research to support these “Beanie Baby Strategies.”  You heard that right. No research to support them.  In fact, what the research does tell us, is that these are strategies that poor readers use, NOT good readers.  So, if you’d like to teach your students to read like a struggling reader, by all means...use these reading cues.  Otherwise, I’d steer clear.

Deadly Error #2: Using Predictable Texts


I’m not talking about beautiful, authentic books like The Napping House.  I’m talking about those contrived, early readers with repetitive patterns such as, “We cleaned the garage.  We cleaned the house. We cleaned the school, etc.”  The ONLY way for brand new readers to get through these texts is by memorizing the patterns and using the 3-cueing strategies I warned about above. This is not reading!  This is guessing and memorizing. It creates damaging habits that are extremely tough to break. 

Deadly Error #3: Heavy Emphasis on Sight Words


I visited another kindergarten classroom the very first week of school.  The teacher was attempting to teach the sight word “from.”  After quite a bit of labored instruction and activities, she excitedly exclaimed, “So what’s our sight word of the day?”  The bewildered students simply stared at her, until one excitedly shouted, “F!”  Young students are still learning the difference between a letter and word, and yet, many insist on teaching them a certain number of “high-frequency words.” I am disheartened when I see the pressures some districts place on their kindergarten students (and teachers!), demanding 50, 75, even over 100 sight words memorized.  Instead of focusing our efforts on getting these students to memorize words, we need to intensify our focus on phonemes and the graphemes that represent them.  There is a limit to how many sight words a child can memorize.  But if they learn to “orthographically map” these words, the number is endless.  

Deadly Error #4: Not Teaching Phonemic Awareness to Mastery


Many educators think of phonemic awareness as a “kindergarten skill,” but it goes much beyond that.  David Kilpatrick states that phonemic awareness should be explicitly taught to ALL students until at least the second grade, and then beyond for those who haven’t mastered it yet.  Older, struggling readers almost always have weaknesses in this area that were never addressed.  And because the most common source of reading difficulties is phonemic awareness, every teacher needs to make this a priority.  Teach it to the whole class through 2nd grade, and in small groups for those who need it in all other grades.  A student is never too old to learn this skill and studies show that as phonemic awareness improves, reading ability improves as well.

Deadly Error #5: Incidental Phonics


              The National Reading Panel does not only advocate for phonics, but for systematic phonics. Some reading approaches encourage the teacher to teach phonics incidentally, only when an opportunity presents itself. For example, a child stumbles upon a word he/she doesn’t know in a text, and then the teacher decides to teach that particular grapheme.  In contrast, systematic phonics is much more explicit.  The teacher follows a planned sequence of phonics skills. This ensures students will have a strong foundation, without holes or the need to rely on guessing strategies.

Deadly Error #6: Phonics in Isolation



Teaching systematic and explicit phonics is very effective, as long as it is not taught in isolation. Most of the instruction time should be spent applying the phonics skill you are teaching in authentic reading and writing experiences.

Deadly Error #7: Neglecting Vocabulary and Background Knowledge


              Sometimes we work so hard teaching our students basic decoding skills, that it can be easy to neglect vocabulary and background knowledge. But it’s important not to forget the other side of Scarborough’s Reading Rope.  Many curriculum programs neglect these areas by focusing too much on “skills” and not enough on actual content.  Cognitive scientists have known for years that the most important factor in good reading comprehension, is how much vocabulary and content knowledge you have of the subject. We need to make sure we build their vocabulary and background knowledge as well as some comprehension strategy instruction.

Conclusion        

Using the science of reading to provide students with the most effective reading instruction is the greatest gift we can give them.  There is a right and wrong way to teach reading and the sooner we can come to grips with that fact, the sooner our nation’s reading proficiency rates will improve.  We, as educators, have a moral obligation to teach our students to read. The ability to read will open up countless opportunities for them. I feel strongly that teachers do the very best with the knowledge they have.  It is unfortunate that most of us have not had access to this knowledge.  And worse, have been taught ways that are not in line with what cognitive scientists have learned about reading and the brain.  If some of these things are surprising or new to you, I beg you to dig deeper and begin your learning journey today.  Our students deserve it.

Comments

  1. I love this...it actually mirrors more how we teach literacy in Spanish. My question because you know there are those who don't buy this..is what expert research supports this that we could pass on? Would love some articles or resources to share WITH your great post.

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    1. The "Knowledge Base" section of The Reading League's website is a great place to start! https://www.thereadingleague.org/knowledge-base/

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  2. When you have a completely phonic language you can go through phonics more quickly and kids get it more quickly, as long as they have phonemic awareness. You'll need explicit instruction on noun gender conjugations, tenses.

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  3. Thank you! This is the most comprehensive yet brief and understandable article I have seen on this topic, that is also challenging yet empathetic. From an SLP working in state education.

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  4. Thank-you! What do you do when colleagues are provided with the evidence and still continue to use predictable texts, PM Benchmark and teach students the 3-cueing strategies in Kindergarten?

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  5. Excellent observations and blog posts. Kudos to you!! I, too, am an exercise enthusiast--and also a dyslexia specialist. Loved reading your stories.

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  6. I have used phonics as my primary teaching tool for 23 years. If children don't know a word, they try to sound it out. If they still can't figure it out, why not let them look at the picture or skip it and try again using the context of the sentence? I have used Beanie Baby strategies to teach phonics as well as skills for words that children can not sound out phonetically. Beanie Baby strategies should not be demonized; they should be taught with a phonics emphasis.

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    1. Because when we have students look at pictures and guess, taking their eyes away from the word, it prevents the "orthographic mapping" process necessary for that student to store the word in memory. The Beanie Baby strategies create horrible habits and are based on a faulty, disproven method of reading.

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    2. As I have seen said repeatedly, how many adults figure out a new word by looking at a picture. Looking at a picture and guessing is a real activity, and one can do it, but it's a mile and a half away from reading.

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    3. I'm not the author, but I think it really depends on the stage of learning they are in. When you are first teaching reading I think it's important to avoid those strategies as the child hasn't come to automatically depend on using those phonics skills yet, and many children, when provided a mix of "guessing skills" and "phonics skills" may start to rely primarily on the guessing skills. Kids really need to practice the phonics and get used to actually reading the words not guessing.

      But does that mean there's never a place for using context to guess? Later, when kids are mostly reading well, they will need to know how to figure out truely unknown words from context. These unknown words may include infrequently used irregular words, such as foreign words that English phonics can't help people pronounce correctly (such as sherbet). They may also include words that the child has never heard (totally new vocabulary that they may not recognize). AFTER reading phonetically has become generally automatic for a child (when they have phonics skills firmly in place), it's ok to teach them to monitor (Does this make sense? Did you understand that?), and even how to make educated guesses in some cases ("What do you think this word means from context?" "Hmm...maybe this is a rule-breaker. What word do you think would fit there?).

      But these techniques aren't generally introduced once a child is already reading decodable texts well. They are usually used to help children read texts and words they aren't ready for before they are well set in good reading practices. Once good phonetic reading habits have been firmly established, these "Beanie Baby" strategies won't hurt, but if they are introduced before that stage they can be very harmful.

      I saw this exampled in my own kids. My older sons who were already reading by Kindergarten did fine in a "three cueing/sight word heavy" school...they are avid readers today. My youngest who hadn't even learned all his letters yet by kindergarten integrated these guessing and sight word memorizing techniques and it took me a long time to break him at guessing at any word he didn't automatically know. When he came across a word he didn't automatically know by sight, his first instinct was never to sound it out, but always to read the first letter and guess. Sometimes he guessed by the pictures without even trying the first letter.

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    4. I totally have changed my way those strategies are wrong and don't to decode they teach to guess - now that I am learning about SOR I see why some kids never made progress they should have .. . . . .

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  7. Do you have any suggestions regarding the best way(in steps) to teach reading to small kids? I was just about to try the beanie strategies when I saw this post....

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    1. I'm not the author, but here are some good resources:

      This talks about pre-reading skills you want to make sure your child has before you teach them to sound out words (I will note that some programs teach the letters in stages and start kids sounding out words before they know all the letter sounds, and that's ok to. And I know some kids learn to read before they can consistently rhyme, but in general, it's a good idea to have these pre-reading skills firmly in place before starting).
      https://www.themeasuredmom.com/reading-skills-kids-need-theyre-ready-sound-out-words/

      Next, I suggest looking up videos on techniques on teaching kids how to sound-out short words (or blending techniques). That can be a hard step for many kids, and one of the more challenging things to teach.

      Once your child can sound out short three letter, short vowel sound words like map and sat, I suggest starting with a program like ProgressivePhonics.com (which is free).

      Or you could buy a curriculum like All About Reading which includes pre-reading skills and later phonics instruction and readers to guide you (but I always like to point out the free stuff first, because I know not all parents can afford to pay for curriculum).

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  8. Wondering what your thought are on the Read Well program?

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  9. This provides so insightful information. Unfortunately, some of the information is different from what we've been taught in the past.

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  10. All of these methods were taught to 2nd grade dyslexic son, and now I have one in Kindergarten learning the same things and struggling. They have IEP's at school but what programs can I do at home?

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  11. so what DO you do then!?!?! That is all we have access to in public schools...decodables and such.

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    1. This is a great question...and is what my book: 7 Mighty Moves is all about. You can pre-order on Amazon. :) https://amzn.to/3zCWhQ9

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