The Complexity of the Reading Brain

Oral language skills are a foundation of reading and writing including expressive and receptive language and phonological awareness.  The next step in reading and writing is attaching the sounds of a language to representative shapes, known as letters. Then, the letters are strung together to form words. Groups of words form sentences. Groups of sentences form paragraphs. As the eyes see the words, the brain is processing the shapes, sounds, and meanings of the words while making meaning of the paragraphs of words to understand the whole idea of the text. This is a highly complex process and uses the entire brain.  There are several models that help teachers visualize the process of reading and guide instruction for literacy.

Here is a very short overview of how the whole brain is involved in reading.

The Four-part processing model for word recognition

Based on Seidenberg and McClelland’s (1989) work, the Four-Part Processing Model for Word Recognition represents the various processing systems in the reading brain that need to work together for a reader to recognize a word.

The phonological processing system in the brain enables the reader to perceive, remember, interpret, and produce the sounds of a language.  The orthographic processing system enables the reader to recognize and recall written language symbols (letters). It allows the reading brain to recognize that an A is an A no matter what font is used. It also recognized the typical patterns in a language. For example, the long /a/ can be spelled a, ay, ai, a_e, ei, eigh, or ey. The meaning or semantic processing system interprets the meaning of words once the word is recognized.  This is like the reader’s mental dictionary and thesaurus where the word is associated with its definition and with other words and relationships (synonyms and antonyms). The reader can recall multiple meanings for a single word like bat.  This processing system also is aware of the relationship between root words and affixes (prefixes and suffixes). The context processing system recognizes meaning in the context of sentences or situations. For example, it helps the reader understand the difference between ran  in the sentences “She ran a fast race” and “She ran a great campaign.”

The simple view of reading

Proficient reading is a combination of recognizing the words on the page or screen and then making meaning of those words.  One model of skilled reading is called The Simple View of Reading (Gough & Tummer, 1986; Hoover & Gough, 1990). The Simple View of Reading (SVR) includes two components of reading comprehension: 1) word recognition and 2) language comprehension.  It is often illustrated like this:

Scarborough (2001) further developed this model as a reading rope with detailed strands in each component.

Word Recognition:

• Phonological Awareness
• Decoding
• Sigh Recognition

Language Comprehension:

• Background Knowledge
• Vocabulary
• Language Structures
• Verbal Reasoning
• Literacy Knowledge

The video below provides an overview of Scarborough’s Reading Rope:

What is Phonics?

Phonics deals with the phonological, or sound component of language, and it can be defined as the set of relationships between letters and sounds (or graphemes and phonemes).  The English language has 26 alphabet letters that can be used to represent about 44 phonemes that make up all words.  There are definite rules, or patterns, that govern how letters are put together to make words, and those generalizations are called phonics (rules for spelling words).  The English alphabet is divided between the vowels, a – e – i – o – u, and the consonants (all the rest).

Ken Goodman offers this definition, “It (phonics) refers to the set of complex relationships between phonology (the sound system of an oral language) and orthography (the system of spellings and punctuation of written language).” (1993, pg. 8)

There are many ways to teach and practice phonics skills and it is agreed upon that teachers need to provide multiple and varied opportunities for children to obtain the information and skills they need to successfully decode and spell words (Cunningham, 2009).  Phonics is an essential foundation for reading, as the reader needs to decode and recognize the words on the page or screen. 

There are two ways to teach phonics – synthetic and analytic.  With analytic phonics, children learn parts of words or chunks, like word families, to then decode other words with the same chunks.  So, if a child knows the word bat, they would also know cat, fat, rat, hat, etc.  With synthetic phonics, children focus on each letter in the word and blend them together. So, a child sounds out /c/ /a/ /t/ to make cat.

Which way is better?  Different commercial phonics programs will teach through one of the ways.  But typically, most children need synthetic phonics, but some children benefit from work with analytic phonics.  Each child is unique and the process that works with them is the best one to use.

Phonics Begins with Alphabet Instruction

To learn to read and write, a child must first learn the 26 lower and upper-case letters, which are actually 52 different symbols.  So, phonics instruction starts with learning the name, sound, and formation of the 26 alphabet letters A-Z.  What does it mean to know a letter?  Well, first the child needs to recognize the letter.  Teachers can show a child the letter “A” and ask, “What letter is this?”, or the teacher can show a child several letters at once and ask the child to point to the letter “A”.  Either way will demonstrate their recognition of the letter “A”.  Next, the child needs to be able to say the sound that each letter makes.  Vowels are tricky because each has two or more sounds they make depending on the word.  Listen to the sounds that “A” can make in the words, ape, at, and about.  Finally, the child needs to be able to write each letter with relative speed and ease.  Learning the ABCs is much more complicated than just being able to sing the alphabet song!

Research suggests that the most effective alphabet instruction is multi-sensory and immersive.   Letters should be presented and practiced in ways that emphasize visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile modalities, and engage the five senses.  Some children learn their letters quickly and already know them before Kindergarten, while others will need many repetitions and exposure to the letters before they have full alphabet knowledge.  Generally, more consonants are taught before vowels because they are more predictable in their pronunciation.  Additionally, teachers should capitalize on children’s own interests and recognition of their names when teaching letters.

“…teaching consonants and vowels in combination is the best way to begin instead of marching through the alphabet in order or teaching the easier consonants first before the vowels as some programs do” (Blevins, 2016, pg.

Some widely used alphabet and early phonics instructional programs include Zoo Phonics http://zoo-phonics.com/about-us/ and Animated Literacy http://www.animated-literacy.com/About_Animated_Literacy.html.  Each of these instructional programs features explicit, systematic letter instruction where a letter is introduced and practiced through stories, songs, rhymes, actions, gestures, and writing.  For example, in Animated Literacy the letter “i” with the long /i/ sound is introduced through the character, Ike who rides a bike in a short story.  The letter is accompanied by a gesture of spinning hand over hand in a circle to represent pedaling as Ike rides his bike.  Further practice of the letter “i” can take place in learning centers where students match pictures to letters, use magnetic letters, draw or trace letters in sand or shaving cream, or listen to recorded books and songs that feature the letter of the day.

The Role of Phonics in Beginning Reading

As young children develop from emergent to beginning readers, they expand their word recognition and apply strategies to decode, or figure out, unknown words.  To decode words, children rely on their use of the phonological nature of the alphabetic language.  They have developed phonemic awareness and learned the sounds for each letter of the alphabet, so now they are able to use their knowledge of sound-symbol correspondences, or phonics, to decode words when reading and encode words when writing.

Word Families

In a beginning reading program, children are introduced to rhyming word families. Syllables divide into two primary parts: onsets and rimes (rimes are related to, but distinct from rhymes.) The rime is the part of the syllable that consists of the vowel and any consonant sounds that come after it. The onset consists of any consonant sounds that precede the vowel (e.g., in the word “stand,” the onset is st- and the rime is -and). Instruction with onsets and rimes helps readers acquire word recognition skills as well as develop vowel generalizations. Nearly 500 primary words may be derived from a set of only 37 rimes: -ack -ail -ain -ake -ale -ame -an -ank -ap -ash -at -ate -aw -ay -eat -ell -est -ice -ick -ide -ight -ill -in -ine -ing -ink -ip -ir -ock -oke -op -ore -or -uck -up -ump -unk (Adams, 1996). Practice may include substituting either onsets or rimes to make new words. (Making nonsense words is fine too if the purpose of the lesson is decoding).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4qBbcLFygA

Phonics Patterns

Another component of early phonics instruction is spelling patterns.  To apply spelling patterns, children need to learn the long and short vowel sounds for a, e, i, o, and u.  Next, teachers should begin helping students to understand several common patterns like C-V-C (consonant-vowel-consonant), C-V-C-e (consonant-vowel-consonant-silent e), and C-V-V-C (consonant-vowel-vowel-consonant).  C-V-C words like cat, mop, man, and rug are just one syllable and always have a short vowel sound.  This regularity in short one-syllable words makes them very predictable and easy to decode.  In C-V-C-e pattern words, oftentimes the vowel is long and the e is silent like in cake, date, hope, and mice.  Words that have a C-V-V-C pattern often have the first vowel make a long sound while the second vowel is silent like in the words boat, sail, and meat. 

Burkins and Yates (2021) provide an example of systematic phonics progression with grade level approximations in their book Shifting the Balance, pages 68-69.

Important Phonics Generalizations and Definitions

It is suggested that phonics programs follow a general sequence for teaching phonics (Chall, 1996) that begins with short one syllable words that can be represented in various consonant and vowel patterns.

Single Syllable Words with Short Vowels:

VC: am

CVC: bat, kid, get

CCVC: ship

CVCC: fist, luck

CCVCC: stick, blush

Single Syllable Words with Long Vowels:

CV: be, we, me

CVCe:   like, time, cake, rope

CVVC:  rain, meat, boat

Teachers should help students to see that there are certain generalizations (or rules that may have exceptions) that are true about the sound symbol relationships (Clymer, 1996).  For instance, in a CVC pattern word, the vowel (V) will always make its short sound.  Short vowel rule: When a short word (or syllable) with one vowel letter ends in a consonant, the vowel sound is usually short.  Word patterns that follow this rule are:

VC  (am)

CVC (ham)

CVCC (damp)

CCVC (stem)

The above patterns are also called “closed syllables”. 

Vowel sounds can be short or long.  They are more difficult to learn than consonants because each letter is represented by more than one distinct sound; the vowel sounds are also harder to discriminate. When a word or a syllable has only one vowel and it comes at the end of the word or syllable, it usually stands for the long sound. 

CV (he, me)

CV-CVC (ti-ger, na-tion, hu-man)

These are called “open syllables”.

BLENDS

bl, sm, scr, gr, sl, etc.

Blends are consonant “pairs.” 

With consonant blends, you still  hear each individual sound. 

DIGRAPHS

Consonant Digraphs:

ch, ph, sh, th, wh, tch, gh (final position only), ng (final position only)

Two consonant letters that together make a new sound. 

Vowel Digraphs:

ai, ay, oa, ee, ea

Generalization: “When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking and says its name”.

These combinations of vowels together make one new sound.

DIPHTHONGS

A blended vowel sound, where each sound is still heard. 

The two most agreed upon vowel combinations are “oi”  and “oy” in boil and boy, and “ou” and “ow” in mouth and cow. 

SCHWA

An unstressed vowel sound, such as the first sound in “around” and the last vowel sound in “custom”.

The vowel sound is almost “swallowed”. 

R CONTROLLED VOWELS

or “Vowels followed by R”

When a vowel letter is followed by “r”, the vowel sound is neither long nor short (it is different!).

Examples: “ar” in car, “or” in for, “ir” in bird, “er” in fern

Assessing Phonics Knowledge

Teachers need to assess students at the very beginning of the school year to see what phonics knowledge children already possess.  Generally, a first-grade assessment will include letter recognition and decoding of one-syllable short and long vowel words.  Once teachers determine which skills children already have, they can plan short and engaging phonics lessons to introduce new skills.

Here is a free comprehensive phonics assessment instrument for grades K-2:

https://esu11.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2010/11/Phonics_Survey.pdf 

Phonics Activities and Mini-Lessons

After a strong foundation of phonemic awareness activities in Kindergarten and First grade, students will benefit from a variety of phonics lessons to help them decode and spell words.

Shared reading of predictable big books, daily opportunities to write, using alphabet books, and making words are fun and highly interactive activities that help children build a strong set of phonological skills.  A good phonics lesson should be brief, fast-paced, and highly engaging.  Games and centers make teaching and learning phonics an enjoyable and productive part of the daily routine.

Making Words is an activity where children are given a set of letters and asked to use them to spell short words using a given pattern.  For example, with the letters t-e-a-c-h-e-r, a student can make the words: at, cat, eat, car, hear, heat, each, reach, teach, cheat, and there.  Kids love making words and soon discover the “mystery” word they can make by using all of the letters.

Another reliable and researched place to find dozens of free phonics activities and printables is at the Florida Center for Reading Research across the grade levels:

https://fcrr.org/student-center-activities 

Structured Literacy

According to Louisa Moats (2019), structured literacy instruction is:

the most effective approach for students who experience unusual difficulty in learning to read. The term refers to both the content and the methods or principles of instruction (pg. 9).

Structured literacy encourages schools to provide instruction in the foundations of literacy including: phonemic awareness, phonics, spelling, morphology, syntax, and semantics; while recognizing the Simple View of Reading and Scarborough’s Reading Rope.  The principles and methods of instruction would be:

• Explicit: Directly taught skills and strategies
• Systematic: Logically ordered skills; simple to complex
• Cumulative: New learning building on prior learning
• Diagnostic/Responsive: Progress is monitored; instruction is adjusted

Some teachers may use Sound Walls in their classrooms that focus on the sounds-letter correspondence.  Here is an example of a sound wall:

Review and Questions to Ponder

Questions to Ponder

1. What should students be taught at each grade level?
2. What does a good phonics lesson look like?
3. What about my students who struggle with reading? What can I do?

References

Adams, M. (1990). Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Blevins, W. (2016). A fresh look at phonics, grades K-2: Common causes of failure and 7 ingredients for success. Corwin Press.

Burkins, J. & Yates, K. (2021). Shifting the balance: 6 ways to bring the science of reading into the balanced literacy classroom. Stenhouse.

Chall, J. (1996). Learning to read: The great debate. New York: McGraw Hill.

Clymer, T. (1996). The utility of phonic generalizations in the primary grades. The Reading Teacher, 50(3), 182-187.

Cunningham, P.M. (2009). Phonics they use: Words for reading and writing. Boston: Pearson.

Goodman, K. (1993). Phonics phacts: A common-sense look at the most controversial issue affecting today’s classrooms. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Moats, L. (2019). Structured Literacy: Effective instruction for students with dyslexia and related reading difficulties. Perspectives on Language and Literacy, 45(2), 9-11.

Wuori, D. (1999). Beyond letter of the week: Authentic literacy comes to kindergarten. Young Children, 54, (6), 24-26.

Wylie, R.E., & Durrell, D.D. (1970). Teaching vowels through phonograms, Elementary English, 47(6), 696-703.