Literacy Talks

New Perspectives on the Orton-Gillingham Approach

• Reading Horizons • Season 5 • Episode 4

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The Orton-Gillingham approach to teaching literacy is growing in popularity for students with dyslexia, and now it is often included in state-level education policy. In this episode of Literacy Talks, our hosts talk in-depth about the research supporting key components of the “OG” approach and explore where additional research is needed. The spark for this conversation is an important article published in October of 2023 in The Reading League Journal. Tune in and learn more about what’s known and what’s yet to be studied. It will reaffirm some things you know and open the door to new learning. As educators, we know there’s always more to learn about reading instruction. Let’s get started.

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Narrator:

Welcome to Literacy Talks, the podcast for literacy leaders and champions everywhere. Brought to you by Reading Horizons, Literacy Talks is the place to discover new ideas, trends, insights and practical strategies that will help all learners retreating proficiency. Our series host is Stacy Hurst, a professor at Southern Utah University and Chief Academic Advisor for Reading Horizons. Joining Stacy are Donell Pons, a recognized expert in literacy and special education. And Lindsay Kemeny, an elementary classroom teacher, author and speaker. Today's episode takes an updated look at the Orton-Gillingham approach to teaching literacy, what the current research tells us and where additional research is needed. It's a topic literacy educators will find important, enlightening, and helpful. Let's get started.

Stacy Hurst:

Welcome to this episode of Literacy Talks. My name is Stacy Hurst. I'm the host and I'm joined by Donell Pons and Lindsay Kemeny. And this week, we have a really fun topic. As you know, we take turns choosing and Donell, you did an excellent job with this choice. So I'll just turn the time right over to you and have you introduce it for us. Nice,

Donell Pons:

okay, always want to stir up a little controversy. So this one, interestingly enough, it's a conversation that's been going on for a little while. And to just let the listeners know, this is a fresh conversation. We haven't sat around and talked about this at length, because we did want to keep this fresh. And this is kind of the magic of the podcast for us, we think and for others, is the fact that this is an opportunity to really discuss as you would in real time. So this is a practiced. We have written down a bunch of questions and and it's really going to evolve just like you wouldn't a conversation where I have read this thing that's really interesting. Maybe I'm really passionate, I have some thoughts right off the bat. Maybe if I discuss with you, I might get a deeper sense of how I really feel about something. And I hope that is conveyed in our conversation today. Because this is a topic that I think can be one of those buttons for people where they think Wait a minute, what are you saying, in a world where it's been very difficult to talk about the science of reading. So the article that we're going to discuss just for those folks listening is called Orton-Gillingham: Which Aspects are Supported by Research and Which Require Additional Research? And this can be downloaded on the internet. It's free. The authors are Christi, Austin Stevens dem check and Solari. And so you'll be able to find it will have the links for you as well. And it was really good because we've had these conversations before about Okay, so what do we really know? And what are we still trying to find out? And what is still hanging out there with? Could we do more research, and this is this article gets into that in a really approachable way. So first off, I just want to remind folks that we are not saying that this is not a good thing that Orton Gillingham was not good. That's not what we're saying here. And that's not what the authors are saying either. But the authors are simply pointing out, let's look at what we do know when we support an OG approach. And what we still have yet to find out. And could there be refinement and we're all saying that we're open minded about refinement. So this is where we're at we're, we're open minded. Let's remember that the Orton Gillingham approach is a direct, explicit multi sensory, structured, sequential, diagnostic and prescriptive, that's a lot of descriptions, way to teach literacy when reading, writing and spelling do not come easily to individuals, such as those with dyslexia. And that's a quote right from the Orton-Gillingham Academy. So that kind of lets you know, as a listener, okay, what exactly is that definition of oh, gee, that's where we're starting with. And then it gets right into it, we jump right into the rest of the article where it says, despite this growing increase of understanding that this OG method could be useful is useful, and is used with students who have dyslexia. It's also being included in state level literacy policy. In many states, you'll even hear OG terminology being used within their policy that they're making. So the reason that the author is that gives us a really good chance to understand the reason the author's want us to be clear about what is it what is it we're supporting is because policies even being formed around what we call an OG approach. So it is important to have a good understanding. And what we jump into right away is that there's mixed findings about it right away, right? And that's kind of interesting for folks, because I think we just take it on face value and say, Oh, it's fantastic, because I've heard so many good things about oh, gee, what do we really know, though? And it's saying that they've even done some meta analyses to find out what other research where does it converge? Remember that has limitations too, because you're looking through a different lens when you do that, but even then, that has shown that there's some questions that we have some things that we should look at. And so I'm going to ask Stacy and Lindsey for the two of you to jump into this conversation, when we get into kind of talking about their setup or premise about the research that they've looked into. How did you to feel about just generally, the topic? And then their approach, how they how they went about examining this topic? What do you think? Well, I'll

Stacy Hurst:

just be really general to start with, because my experience, and we've all used OG based approaches. The thing I want to really be calling out in this article, they are specifically focused on students with dyslexia, and who struggled to learn how to read however, there are approaches that are used, and what we would refer to in the MTSS model is tier one instruction that are Orton Gillingham based as well. So I think that's important to keep this in mind. Because when they are talking about policies, sometimes that those recommendations are for tier one programs. And I think it is important to note that I was navigating this whole article on two levels, so to speak, it really confirmed a lot of thoughts that I've had in my practice with Orton Gillingham based approaches. So there was that I was looking at as a researcher, and then while I'm not a researcher, but like as somebody who reads and consumes research, and then also as a practitioner. And so I think there's some important distinctions there. But I really appreciated them calling out the research about it. Because this has been around for a long time, I think I've even talked about on this podcast, I attended an IDA conference where one of the researchers who done previous study on this said, I know this is not going to be a popular topic. And so it was right away. To your point. Now very controversial in that room. I was sitting next to Barbara Wilson, even in that session, we were really curious as to what this person had to say. So this has been around for a long time. What I appreciate about these authors, is their meta analysis. And they're they're very formally calling out we need some more research on this. And so I really appreciated their references.

Donell Pons:

And Lindsay how about you?

Lindsay Kemeny:

Yeah, so I'm really grateful for the Orton-Gillingham approach. When I learned about that, I mean, that was my first introduction to systematic and explicit phonics instruction. And I think Samuel Orton and Anna Gillingham were doing this before, a lot of other people, they were doing some really excellent things. The thing is, is that we don't have good research right now on Orton Gillingham. So even the kind of I guess, the bigger meta analysis that came out a couple years ago, that was Stephens and others. Those authors, they said one of the limitations of that study that, that a lot of people refer to, they'll refer to the study to say, see, Orton Gillingham isn't helpful. But they say in the limitations of that, that they didn't have a lot of good quality studies, they didn't have very many, and the ones they had weren't very rigorous in their methodology. Right? So we still need good research and this specific article we're talking about today, I love because it's going to tell us in clear, succinct language, which parts of the Orton Gillingham approach have a lot of research behind them, because guess what, there are parts that have a lot of good solid evidence and which parts do not. And so it's very helpful, I

Stacy Hurst:

think, that would be applicable in any setting, right, which is, to your point, I love that it's gonna it's such a useful article. The other thing they called out as a limitation. And all of those studies was the one we have in a lot of studies when we're talking about efficacy of an approach, and that is fidelity of implementation. So I think that's important to note, too, is we have this conversation. Yeah,

Donell Pons:

that's in my notes as well to bring out is that fidelity. I also to your point, Stacy, in talking about where we see, oh, gee, are the OG approach being used and we talk about with students with dyslexia, they point that out. And I read that in the beginning quote, When I pointed out the different parts, and we'll get to those parts, Lindsay, you alluded to those as well. But what I find interesting is, most students that I know who have dyslexia, never get identified, so they don't even know they have dyslexia. So I think that that is that part where you're, you see a lot of OG pieces showing up in a tier one, because we have a lot of students who are struggling in a tier one setting and they're never gonna get identified. They don't struggle enough to end up in receiving additional resource versus in perhaps other areas. So I think this is an area to that we need to keep front of mind is a hell, that is still not a great terrain. For the student who has dyslexia who goes to public school, it isn't straightforward as to what kind of services that that student will end up receiving, right? How they're going to interface with the system. So this is all really interesting and should be at play as we talk about it, too. Okay, fantastic. Let's keep moving, we're gonna go straight along through the article. So if you've got a copy, and the time that we've been talking, setting it up, you downloaded one, or you've got it up on your computer, and you're taking a look, this will be fun for you, because we're just going to move right through it straight through. And so that first page is kind of the introduction, we talk a little bit about the background of how they they're deriving the information they have. And then Page Six is just that next page over. They also get into the fact that they have critically analyzed the the approach and practices that were embedded within a program that were supported by scientific research. And the purpose of articles that have come out in the past is to describe which instructional techniques included within the Orton Gillingham approach are evidence based. And I think that's getting to what Lindsay was talking about, there's some really good pieces, and we're not tossing those aside. But rather, this is a good opportunity to clarify, what do we really know works really well? And what do we still have questions about. So that's where we jump right into which aspects of the Orton Gillingham approach are evidence based. And that is at the bottom of the page on six. And it says many of the defining features of the OG approach are supported by extensive scientific research, including direct and explicit instruction with scaffolding, structured and sequential instruction, and diagnostic and prescriptive instruction. So those are three pieces they named right away, that are supported with evidence. And let's get to that first one direct and explicit instruction with scaffolding. What do you guys think about this? First of all, what do you think about the fact they call it right out of the beginning? And that's where we start? Yeah, I

Lindsay Kemeny:

think this is the majority of a lesson is this, you know, so it's kind of the biggest chunk of the lesson right away, we see, hey, there is evidence to support this, we hear explicit over and over, don't we? Explicit instruction, explicit instruction, if these children would have discovered it, they would have like, if they could discover it on their own, they would have. So that's why we don't want to leave things to chance, we want to say things as clearly succinctly as we can for these students. And

Stacy Hurst:

they use the term direct and explicit instruction, which is highly research based, with a lot of evidence towards this approach. But there is a plethora of evidence for direct instruction with the capital D capital I, as a very specific approach and teaching reading. I think one other thing not to put too fine a point on this, but a lot of the aspects they're calling out as evidence based and effective, are indeed, been proven effective over time, in multiple settings. So again, the focus of this article, they keep calling out intervention and students with dyslexia. But the aspects of the Orton Gillingham approach that are so powerful and have been proven effective, have been proven effective in many different settings. So I think that's important to note,

Donell Pons:

too. And as you said, Stacy, best practice to and a lot of teaching settings, right is direct instruction. I thought it was interesting to the example they gave of a direct instruction model. So I would continue reading if you're the reader, don't just look at the header and say, okay, yeah, I know about direct and explicit instruction, but look at the example they give because they feature just a little dialogue with the teacher, that also has a piece of scaffolding in it. And you see how easily once you understand what direct instruction looks like how easily this transfers into a classroom setting, right? And how effective it could be in a classroom, a busy classroom. That's the other piece that comes across really well. Okay, let's keep moving. So we did direct and explicit instruction and then they move on to diagnostic, oh wait the scope and sequence there we go structured and sequential instruction that's at the top of page eight. And they talk about the structured and sequential instruction refers to the overall organization of instruction. A systematic structure will support student learning by ensuring that skills are sequenced logically, so that students possess the prerequisite skills and background knowledge needed for the mastery of new learning. Okay, so what is your feeling about this aspect of it as well? And what have you seen in your different settings as to help people understand or interpret this?

Lindsay Kemeny:

Honestly, when I taught phonics before I learned about all this, you know, I didn't. I mean, I've said this before, I wasn't really teaching phonics. I thought I was but I was facilitating these activities and I didn't have a scope and sequence to follow. It was just what word is hard and coming up in this book, so Okay, I'll do that. I'll teach that phonics whatever that word chunk or something, you know, and so that was new learning for me to say, Okay, I'm gonna take all these phonics skills look, there's can be an order, there's not one perfect order. But we want to go from, you know, less complex to more complex, more frequent spellings to less frequent spellings. And I love what it said in this part of the article where it said new skills are layered onto previously learned concepts, allowing students to make those connections between what they already know. And then the new concepts. And so we have that, you know, review piece built in, and we're just adding to their information, you know, to their knowledge base. So, really important, so we don't have holes in their knowledge that we are following a scope and sequence. I

Stacy Hurst:

appreciate that comment for so many reasons. And I think I've mentioned this. Also, before, I was doing the same thing, I had a very regular activity that I did with my students every day, I would have called it phonics instruction beforehand. But I was also part of an extensive year long training for how to teach literacy in the classroom, it was a balanced literacy approach, that the author of this activity that I was teaching was the one giving the professional development for us. So I felt lucky that we're hearing directly from the author. But I do remember, and this is in my first year of teaching, I do remember her stating, now if you have the older version of this manual, don't worry about buying a new one. It's just exactly the same. We just had to rearrange the lessons based on the National Reading Panel Report, which had been published the year before, because they were calling out sequential instruction. And I think this highlights two things as first year and beginning teachers, the amount of maybe cognitive dissonance that we experience is limited by our own education up to that point, right? Because I had noticed things like, oh, this seems like a really tough skill. A lot of my students aren't getting it today. I don't know why. Right. But as soon as that sequential aspect was called out, I was like, oh, because this is a little too sophisticated for what they know. Right? So I appreciate again, it it speaks to the nature of explicit instruction for teachers and for students, I guess. But yeah, that sequence is powerful. And I especially like the show that Lindsay because we've been teaching for a long time. And I think I've come to accept that as is common knowledge. But it wasn't for me either. So it's important that we continue to highlight it. Thanks for doing that. Donell.

Donell Pons:

thanks to the authors. What's really interesting to me, too, is for adults, just as Lindsey, you've you've mentioned how important it is to make sure your students, we do find a sort of even though there is an acceptable one that says this is the way you teach the thing. We have sort of these ideas about teaching simpler to more complex, that kind of a thing. And it really does help with older students as well, because they have those holes you're talking about, make sure you're not making holes, but I'm going back and trying to fill in holes working with adult students. And so knowing what is a typical trajectory, what would be an acceptable way of layering this information is one of those ways in which you help the older student to be able to fill in those gaps, which is great. So again, really important. And then it moves on to a really important aspect, diagnostic and prescriptive instruction. There's evidence for this piece. And what they mean by that is it involves a continuous monitoring of student responses and progress to identify areas of strength and difficulty to guide instruction. This may sound logical, right? But think about a busy classroom, think about different levels of your students. And in what ways teachers are gathering information about what their students are doing with the skills they're being taught. And then how to help those students becomes really interesting and important, right? So what do you guys think about this section,

Lindsay Kemeny:

I use your data, right? So you have to use your data to make you know, these informed decisions in your classroom. And that data can come from a lot of different places. This could be our more formal progress monitoring that we do, but also very informal things. As I'm walking around during the dictation portion of my phonics lessons, I'm watching to see who's struggling who forgot -ing is i n g, you know, who needs extra help with this concept? And who doesn't. And then the same thing when we're reading, and especially when I'm doing reading in small group is where I can really tune in to each child and see what they need more help with. And I'm like, Uh huh, I need to review this more with them. And in the whole group, you know, I might already have an idea, okay, I just taught this concept. I already know that probably these students are going to need more practice with that. But who else is and you Just always kind of monitoring. I mean, the teachers make, like 1000 decisions every day, right? So it's just making sure that we are doing something with those things we notice and with our progress monitoring data, because there's no point to do the assessment if you're not going to do anything about it.

Stacy Hurst:

And to that point, I was thinking, as I read this section, that two things are really required. And just to be so pithy about it, it comes down to knowledge and practice, because you can have all the data in the world unless you know how to analyze it, unless you know, reading development, which is why we need to continue to hone our practice and add to our knowledge base, then you limit yourself and your students as a result of that. And one example I'm thinking of, because I'm teaching pre service teachers, and they're just so new and practicing all of this, one of my reading classes, we give a few, three assessments, maybe four, to our students to see where they are in phonemic awareness. In their phonics development, we give the core phonics survey. And then we also administer a high frequency word assessment. And I know that my students are applying their knowledge of reading development when they start analyzing that data with interpretations like this indicates the student isn't in the full alphabetic phase areas you know, full alphabetic phase or this indicate the fact that the student did so well on the high frequency word list, but did not do so well, on the core phonics survey. They're memorizing words as a whole, that's important as a teacher know, because you need to know how to address it. So I don't think enough can be said about diagnostic and prescriptive instruction. It there's a lot that goes into being able to do that well. And I think as teachers, we get better and better at that the more we increase our knowledge, and continue to to apply and practice.

Donell Pons:

I love this whole discussion. And I love Lindsey, you pointing out the many ways in which we can gather that data that information. And then as you said, it's don't even bother if we're not going to do anything about it. Right. And with the information with adult students and working generally one on one, what I find really interesting is that there are many opportunities within the lesson to pivot. So that's that piece Stacy you've talked about is knowing what to do next. And being able to do that, when it needs when it needs to happen. Not saying later, maybe I'll think about what I could do. But we're making decisions and Lindsay you said 1000 of them at least in an hour's time, right? When you're a teacher, that you need to be able to have those right ready to go. And I think oftentimes when I hear that toolkit, teachers have these giant toolkits, put it in your toolkit, I have a picture toolkit, and I see somebody searching around for that thing they can't find in a disorganized mess. Now what I see teachers doing is strapping on a tool belt, and they've got the precise tools that they need for that activity on the belt. That's what I often think of when I think of teachers. We're not digging around in a box, I haven't got time for that. But I have on my belt, the things that I know are most useful and important. And I'm I'm moving I'm using all of those things, right? You don't see somebody carton around a tool belt with a bunch of tools, they don't use everything on that belt is vital and important. And I see that for teachers too, is that they have a lot of skills that are vitally important that they bring to that teaching experience every time they're doing it, which is really important. But you only do that if you know what you're looking for. And you know what to do with it. So that's really good. Love that. Okay, so we get to the nitty gritty at the bottom of page eight, where it says which aspects of the Orton Gillingham approach require additional research. I love the way that they said this, guys, they were very diplomatic. So we can be to when we accept the information we can say, all right. Okay, there could be some things that maybe need some additional research, what could those be? And so they're there, they put a little good little background on it and say, you know, it's important for us as educators and policymakers to understand which aspects of anything particularly a programmer approach are empirically supported or not. Lots of decisions are being made at schools, right, and buildings about what do I use? What's the best thing to do? And this is a really great way to do this, as well as following this this little outline. And so it says, Finally, we have to remember that the absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence. And that is really important here, right? More than anywhere, it's important here. And so it says In other words, a practice might be effective for students, but there is a lack of research to definitively know one way or another. And until we know if a specific practice works, we should remain open to adjusting instructional practices to align with current research, and rely on those practices rooted in evidence. I think this goes along with a lot of what Steve Steve Dykstra does when he does a presentation about a bull's eye, where there's the bull's eyes, the middle of the thing where we know a lot about it, we may have to step outside the comfort zone a little bit in order to work with students that maybe need more or something different. That being said, what's the first thing they bring up? multi sensory instruction and this should be a good conversation, because there's been a lot of chitchat around the multi sensory instruction. What do we mean by that? So let's just quickly give the definition multi sensory instruction assist students with linking input from eye, ear, voice and hand to support memory and learning And these strategies frequently occur in OG based instruction. What do you guys think about this this section and that was the first one to come up multi sensory instruction, we need more research. So

Stacy Hurst:

a lot of body parts your voice and but at the same time, they are separate aspects, right. And as I was reading this, their very first line of questioning about this is that there's no common understanding of what that really means. Or do we parse out? Each one of those is their research to parse it out to state, what is effective and what isn't.

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Lindsay Kemeny:

Okay, so I so I like to me it makes so much sense this, like they talked about Orton Gillingham talks about the language triangle and you hear it, you say it, and you do it and see it, whatever. At the same time. I see so much value in that. And then the question really comes, what about that tactile piece, because you do those things like, oh, write the letter in sand. And there isn't research that says that's a great way to do it? Well, but there's not research that says it's ineffective, right. So I did when I teach the letters of the alphabet, when I'm teaching letter formation, I do like to use the sand and have little sand trays. And I use them in my small group table. But I know, there's things I know, I know, we don't have researched for it yet. But I know that for a lot of my students, they love it. And it makes them focus and like get excited to practice letter formation. So to me, I see some value in it holds their attention. But I'm very careful with it because I don't want it to be a waste of time. And this could be something where if it takes a long time, now it's ineffective practice, because you're wasting time and not getting to other things in your class. Right. So for me, I'm kind of it's a little on the line. So I do it in my small group. And we well I do it when we're learning our letters. And at this time now in first grade. I don't do it anymore. At the beginning of the year, when we were working on letter formation, I would and again, it was really fast. So sometimes I hesitate to share it because like I'm like boom, boom, boom, Tracer out, I say add or like F A spells, and they put it in the like, and they're like F spells. And they're doing it and it's quick. And I don't feel like it's a waste of time. But where I think I think the management of it could definitely cause an issue and then you're wasting too much time doing something that doesn't have research behind it yet.

Donell Pons:

Yeah. I love those thoughts, Lindsey. And you know, it's interesting, too, because I think it was Lucy Hart Paulson I was sitting in on on listening in on a conversation about handwriting, and skywriting came up, because that's another one comes up. Yeah. And I remember she said something really interesting. And she had had many conversation with some well researched researchers in the field who said that, you know, what, why are we spending time doing a thing that isn't the thing that's in between the thing and the thing you want the student to do? As often as you can get the student doing the thing, that's what they ought to be doing. And I thought, I really need to take that to heart because that is very, very interesting. Oftentimes, we can do a thing thinking, well, this is fun. It's interesting to me, the kids seem to like like you already acknowledged, Lindsay, I think they're engaged with it. That's the piece I value from it. And then but you take it a step further, which is a good thing to do. And you question yourself, you interrogate how much time am I taking to do it? Does it still have an add value? And do I as the educator think that it does, and those are good, those big decisions 1000 a day or within an hour that is teacher makes right in instruction? So I thought that was really interesting. I appreciate that thought,

Lindsay Kemeny:

because we don't have a lot of research that isolates the the multi sensory component or the tactile component, because those can be kind of different. Do they need to be feeling something because there's that other whole thing with OG is like they're feeling you're putting the tacky thing on your iPad and they're feeling the bumps as they trace the letter, or you're putting the little cross stitch plastic thing over the alphabet. As they trace and say the letter name and sound. I would love to see a study done where someone is teaching a group of students the alphabet names and sounds and they haven't or they just show it and they just say the name and sound when they see the letter. They have another one where they trace the name and sound. And then a third group where they have something tactile, like that plastic cross stitch thing on top of the letter. And now they're tracing and saying, I would love a study with those three things. I've always been like, I want to do this somehow. And let's see, let's see if the tactile made a difference or not. I would be so curious.

Stacy Hurst:

Yeah, in fact, I underlined in this document that it said, finger tapping skywriting, and using sand trace letters may support engagement, but there is no empirical evidence to our knowledge, that support that suggests the simultaneous use of one's senses significantly improves reading outcomes. Going back to the way we define each of those aspects you have tactile, but then the kinesthetic aspect for me is where it gets a little gray. Because when we're focusing on things like phoneme production, that is kinesthetic, right? You're using your lips, tongue and teeth to to produce the sound. But we're How effective is that compared to, you know, kinesthetic cues with your hands? I don't know. And, and as you were talking about Donell doing the thing, right, those kinesthetic can cues are scaffold, you're not ever going to use those every time you produce that sound. Yeah, you want to be able to produce it without those. But as far as phoneme production goes, you always want to produce those phonemes clearly articulate them in a way that people can understand. And so I think there's a lot of distinction to be made. And even those definitions, you can pare them down into different parts and aspects, too. So if you're

Lindsay Kemeny:

getting your masters or your PhD, and you're listening, there's some ideas for you for some research studies.

Donell Pons:

That is a rich area right there, right? Uh huh. Okay, here comes on our next one, which I think is really interesting syllable types and syllable division rules for reading multisyllabic words, boy, is this a big one. And this is where people will swear that theirs is the winter. But as we see here with the information, so far, that's something we haven't determined yet. So reading multisyllabic words can be challenging due to the vowels, which often have ambiguous pronunciations. And they, you know, show you some examples there. And so students are often taught some sort of system for taking the words apart. And again, many methods have their way of doing it, and they religiously follow these. And they're very rigid. In fact, a lot of them will say that's the secret sauce sometimes that they'll say that. Some will believe it, argue over the number of syllable types, right? And what goes what is really a syllable type. And so there's, there's rich discussion in this area, because this is a big part of teaching reading. What do you guys think overall, in reading the section,

Lindsay Kemeny:

this is a hard one, um, when I was first teaching my son, the one with severe dyslexia, this was just so amazing to me, once we learned the syllable types. And I was using this, you know, Orton Gillingham method where he would find the vowels and split. And then he would label the parts and then read the Word. And oh, my goodness, I was so grateful for it. Because it just gave him this. Like, it gave him so much confidence, because he was like, and I took this little video of him doing it and explaining it, he's like, look, I divide it right here. And now I know this is open. And now I know this is closed. And now the word is this. And that gave him just these clear steps, a strategy to follow. He knew what exactly what he could do when he came to a huge word. And so that was pretty, like, I guess, rigid, it was a little bit of a rigid, you know, and then since then I kind of learned Oh, there's more research to support a more flexible method. Right. And I kind of saw the value I and I can still see the value of that being very flexible and not teaching it so rigidly with all these rules. And so I'm kind of I'm kind of on the fence. I mean, I think we do need to be flexible. But I'm like for some students and even asks this for some students. Is it very helpful? Like, what about students with severe disabilities? What about the ones that don't? You know, there's probably a difference between them? I don't know. Lots of questions. Yeah.

Stacy Hurst:

And I think either way, one thing they the author's call out kind of three different approaches when it comes to multisyllabic instruction. And I think either way, probably the thing that makes them all effective to some degree, is that they're causing the student to look within the word, right, which they're breaking it down and applying the skills that they know. And I think I've been watching this research closely, and I particularly Devin Kearns research on this topic, and I think there are other theories that come into play here as well, not only the ability to phoneme grapheme map, but that set for variability that you talked about Lindsay without calling it that. And then just really morphology morphemic awareness too. So there really is a lot of things that we can learn, but a lot of things that we probably already know when it comes to multisyllabic word instruction,

Lindsay Kemeny:

isn't it? Like, correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Devin Kearns used to be very much on the camp of syllable types, you teach this and these ways to break syllables. And then he did a bunch of research and learned and kind of switch positions after what he learned. Oh, nope. It's, you know, a lot of words don't follow these, quote unquote, rules. Yeah,

Stacy Hurst:

that or he was saying there's a more efficient way to get to the word, which goes back to how many steps do we add to getting, you know, to the thing to get to the thing? And I think, what I've, what I've understood from his research is that there is a better way, probably to do it, where we don't have to spend so much time instructing on all of those syllable types in the same way that some of us have been doing. So it

Lindsay Kemeny:

seems helpful maybe to get them started. You start with something, okay, look, there's sort of two consonants we can split. If there's one, it's gonna go either way. And then you just, you know, it, like they kind of take off from there. Right?

Donell Pons:

You know, Lindsay, it's interesting, you should bring this up, because this is more where I'm falling these days, working with. Like I say, most of the students I have are older, they've struggled for years, many of them have dyslexia, never diagnosed, that's the population. And I'm leaning more towards that part, because there's a really rough transition from here's some really great rules. And then But then I unleash you on text where it's not controlled for these things that I've taught you. And so it looks really great when I am controlled. But then I leash unleashed this text and you're going, Well, wait a minute, what do I do with and what about and, and it's almost I liken it to somebody learning how to leap a hurdle. And they haven't quite learned how to get over the hurdle get they know all the steps to get there, I take these five steps on the last push, I jump off on the right foot. And yet, they just can't seem to get over the hurdle. And that's what I find a lot of students doing, when they're really stuck on I have these rules, we do it this way. And then when you try to get them to go into texts that, hey, we may see some things. And it's that transition from one to the other. And that's where I think, because like I say, with both of you, I agree entirely, there's got to be a place to start build confidence, give me something because obviously, if I knew how to do it, I'd have been doing it right, the whole conversation we've been having. So yes, I see the value. And clearly there is some, but then it's this, this mix that we've got to figure out. So again, great research could be done here to say, okay, so how much of this? And then when do we and how quickly do we add? Because that's even a question I got, how quickly do we add that something might be different, right? It's gonna

Lindsay Kemeny:

be different for all the kids too. And this, this kind of seems like around this time when they're starting to read multisyllabic words is when that self teaching hypothesis kicks in, right? So you don't have to teach them every single little thing. And so you think that maybe just giving them enough and teaching them to be flexible? And then

Stacy Hurst:

the question is, how much is enough for which student is different for

Lindsay Kemeny:

all of them? And some of them are more of that, right? And

Donell Pons:

what's going to help facilitate, right, so that student is still struggling and not able to get into enough text to then have that rich feedback of the self teaching hypothesis. Right? Whoa, that whole thing is, yeah,

Lindsay Kemeny:

yeah. So you can see why this is this area. And like that whole with all these questions. And that whole last section, I think it's is it chapter? Is it page 11? Versus all like, all these questions? Still?

Stacy Hurst:

I was hoping we get to talk about that, because there are nine questions and I'd love to get to them. I haven't started my doctoral work yet. And I'm like, narrowing it down now because of these, but yeah, great questions.

Donell Pons:

Lindsay just told us it's a page 11 If those are following along, it's those last few wills. Last paragraph, we get into those questions, and they're fantastic. Stacy, why don't you start leading us into some questions because you have some good ones.

Stacy Hurst:

I numbered them that you did. The first one relates to what we just talked about what syllable types and syllable division patterns need to be explicitly taught? And in what order? Do students benefit from being exposed to multisyllabic words that are carefully controlled to fit specific rules and patterns? Or does exposing students to words that do not fit the rules and patterns that have been explicitly taught? Help them acquire additional knowledge implicitly, which is everything we just talked about, right. And then they did talk about to what extent are the various approaches for breaking apart multisyllabic words into parts or syllables promote effortless and efficient word recognition, which is the thing we keep referring to? And then then so we have we have discussed all of those. Maybe the fourth question is a little bit newer to this conversation, does memorizing rules and patterns tax some students working memory, interfering with accurate and or efficient word recognition?

Donell Pons:

Particularly among the older students? One thing I've been toying with and thinking a lot about is having them rely more on the text rather than word by word. Because see, what we're really teaching in many ways is a word by word analysis, not a whole, well, you know, we can get into that too, but a whole meaning of the sentence of the paragraph of the page. And that's oftentimes you'll see students really falling down is it never grows into that space, it never grows into really understanding because we're not reading just to take the words apart, we're reading for understanding, right want to know something when learn something?

Stacy Hurst:

And the other question you ask related to that is processing speed. Yeah, and

Lindsay Kemeny:

I had the same question about that on the working memory for morphology, because that's an area where we also need a lot of resources kind of talks about that in here, too. But just is that going to be too much for the working memory to be like, remains this, you know, this, this suffix means this and then but then you put it all together in Word. And sometimes it doesn't exactly mean what, you know, you were thinking when you memorize those. So it's the same kind of thing to me, like, lots of questions.

Stacy Hurst:

Yeah. And you know, that made me think of the lexical quality hypothesis to the question they specifically asked about that. Lindsay was, how familiar does the student need to be with the vocabulary, or what level of vocabulary knowledge is needed for a student to recognize the correct pronunciation of a word?

Donell Pons:

Many, many excellent questions to be answered. And then page 12, a whole list of additional resources for learning underneath the feature of instruction. And then on the other side, it gives you the resource, which is fan tastic. Again, this is an article that wants to bring us in as learners and show us here's what we're thinking about. Here's what we're discussing. Here's some further information if you'd like it. So I've just really liked the setup of the article, then it just has a summary. At the end, we pretty much talked about the whole article. But I thought it was a really excellent piece to have a discussion. And I hope to see more of these they help spur on some research, wouldn't that be fantastic?

Lindsay Kemeny:

If you don't subscribe to the reading league journal, just a plug for that, because that's where this, there is a free version, right that we're going to share this, but it's just like this, there's so many good topics, good clear articles that have been peer reviewed in this journal, which is really great if you want to continue to further your learning, and

Stacy Hurst:

applicable to research and practice, which I love and the relationship between the two. One thing I'd like to see in this resources for further reading and learning it and I could take a deep dive into each of these resources. But I would like to see a list titled, research on approaches we know don't work, and I swear I've read something about maybe that's our next.

Donell Pons:

Next. You lead it. Okay, great.

Stacy Hurst:

I've got some reading to do. But I swear I saw some research on skywriting and how it's not impactful. And so I think there are some articles or research studies out there. I don't know how rigorous they are. But I think that would be helpful to guide our practice to. Yeah, great conversation. As always, thank you Donell for bringing this to our attention and giving us the opportunity to review this article because it is a great one. Thank you to the authors who provided us with this information and further direction for learning and for our teaching. Right. Okay, well, that will conclude because of time constraints, this episode of literacy talks that will not conclude our learning and hopefully we'll have some continued conversations with you our listeners as well about topics like this. Thank you so much for joining us, and we'll hope to have you for the next episode of Literacy Talks.

Narrator:

Thanks for joining us today for Literacy Talks, the podcast series for literacy leaders and champions everywhere. We invite you to join the science of reading collective, our free community and resource hub so you can stay current with new ideas, free webinars, resources and more. And be sure to visit literacy talks online for resources, access to every season's episodes and more at readinghorizons.com/literacytalks. It's an exciting time to teach reading and ensure your students reach grade level proficiency this school year. Literacy Talks comes to you from Reading Horizons where reading momentum begins. Join us next time.