Reading Above the Fray
-Julia B. Lindsey
Reading Above the Fray: Reliable, Research-Based Routines for Developing Decoding Skills
To be “above the fray” means that you are “not directly involved in an angry or difficult struggle or disagreement.”
With all of the disagreement about reading instruction, this book goes above that with a focus on WHAT WORKS. PERIOD.
As with other books focused on foundational reading skills, each chapter is broken into the various foundational skills with information describing each one, its importance, and ideas for instruction in the classroom.
Oral Language and Vocabulary
Print Concepts
Phonemic Awareness
Alphabetic Knowledge
Sound-Spelling Knowledge
Decoding
Chunking to read Multisyllabic Words
Fluency
SOME OF MY TAKEAWAYS...
FOUNDATIONAL SKILLS
Based on research, there are skills that are able to predict later outcomes in reading.
Phonemic Awareness and Letter-Sound Knowledge predict decoding skills, which can then predict fluency and reading comprehension.
Children who are not proficient readers in later years are likely to have had gaps in their foundational skills when they were younger.
3rd graders who had solid foundational skills were about 7x more likely to pass the state’s ELA test than their peers with weak foundational skills. Many children are not receiving the instruction in foundational skills they need to become strong word readers.
Based on research, children’s reading abilities improve when they receive instruction in foundational skills.
Systematic and explicit phonics instruction is an efficient and effective way to teach word reading. Phonics knowledge is also critical for children as they learn to read.
Understanding our written language and word recognition can directly explain the utility of each foundational skill.
A child first needs to know that print matters and how to navigate a text.
Children need print concepts. They also need to know oral language and be able to figure out what written words represent using sounds and letters.
In English, we have a deep orthography. Children need to know sound-spelling relationships and how to use these to read and spell. An orthography is the spelling system for a language. English, unlike other languages, does not have a one-to-one letter sound correspondence. Letters can make more than one sound.
Students build skills from year to year, with children achieving more fluency and more comprehension as they move up the grades. Instruction in foundational reading skills in the early grades is important, ensuring children develop fluency without the need for later intervention.
THE MATTHEW EFFECT
Children who experience success in reading build more and more skills as they read more and more text, while those who do not experience early success tend to have more and more difficulties compared to their peers.
DECODING
When readers decode a word, they use knowledge of the connections between graphemes (letters) and phonemes (sounds) in that word. The most common decoding strategy is sound-by-sound decoding. Chunking words into parts using syllables or morphemes is also a decoding strategy.
Beginning readers must have the chance to decode many words over and over to move toward automatic word recognition. After several successful attempts at decoding a word, a reader will memorize the word’s spelling, pronunciation, and meaning.
The process of applying sound-spelling knowledge to analyze a word is a critical step in creating an orthographic map, which allows a reader to commit words to long-term memory.
Decoding is the bridge between phonics knowledge and proficient word reading.
ORTHOGRAPHIC MAPPING
Current research using eye-tracking technology and brain imaging provides consensus that to recognize a word even proficient readers use its letters and the position of those letters in relation to all the other letters.
SO, it is essential that we teach children how to recognize words that way, letter by letter.
Oral reading fluency and decoding accuracy relate to comprehension.
To read an individual word, a child needs to create an orthographic map by linking the word’s spelling to its phonology (pronunciation) and semantic information (meaning). When a reader creates an orthographic map of a word, they retrieve the word’s meaning and pronunciation automatically from memory.
Decoding is the best short term strategy AND long term strategy.
When we give students the opportunity to decode a word several times (1-8 times), they can store the orthographic map they create in memory.
MEMORIZING - It is possible to memorize words. Research estimates that young readers learn several thousand words a year, but it is impossible to memorize that many words.
Decoding is the product of phonemic awareness and knowledge of sound-spelling correspondences.
To read a word students need the following skills…
Print Concepts: They need to know what print is and use it to read a word.
Alphabetic Knowledge: They need to know the letters of the alphabet and that each letter makes a sound.
Phonemic Awareness: They need to know the sounds that go with each letter.
Sound-Spelling Knowledge: They need to know letter and sound combinations.
Oral Language Vocabulary: They need to know lots and lots of words and their meaning.
CHUNKING WORDS
Once students can decode one syllable words, they can decode multisyllabic words too. The problem is that if they attempt to decode a long word like stegosaurus by sounding out and blending each individual sound, the working memory will be stretched to its limit.
Many multisyllabic words have complex sound spelling patterns lending themselves to morphology. Multisyllabic words are often created by complex combinations of syllables, affixes, and root words from Latin and Greek, making them challenging for readers to segment and decode.
Students need to learn how to segment words using syllables and/or morphemes.
Chunking means to divide a word into parts that can be decoded. A reader needs to know where the helpful divisions are in multisyllabic words, using syllabication and morphology. A reader needs to know what to do with those chunks. The best way to decode the individual chunks is by using sound-spelling knowledge.
Syllables are units of pronunciation. They contain one vowel sound that has a consonant before it OR before and after it.
In the primary grades, build awareness that syllables exist and are useful. Teach the useful syllables. Compound words and VC/CV words like number.
MORPHOLOGY
Morphemes are units of meaning. Morphemes can be whole words. Dog. happy.
Unhappiness has 3 morphemes. Each of the 3 morphemes are meaningful all by themselves. But not all morphemes can stand on their own.
Happy is a FREE morpheme.
Un and ness are BOUND morphemes.
It is key for students to have knowledge of syllables and morphemes to accurately read multisyllabic words.
OVERALL...
In between DECODING and CHUNKING, Reading Above the Fray is a quick, easy read filled with useful information about foundational reading skills. It includes lots of visuals and the reading doesn’t feel dense like many other professional publications.
I recommend Reading Above the Fray if you are looking to add to your knowledge or confirm your knowledge about foundational reading skills.
