[PD] — “Unpacking the Science of Reading” (Block2)

Key take­aways from my Pro­fes­sion­al Devel­op­ment for Devel­op­ing Literacy

　　I attend­ed the Jan­u­ary 25th, 2022 sem­i­nar with Dr. Stephanie Stol­lar — “Unpack­ing the Sci­ence of Read­ing: Defin­ing Guide.” This sem­i­nar pri­mar­i­ly dis­cussed the impor­tance of using sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence-based research to deter­mine the teach­ing method­olo­gies and edu­ca­tion­al poli­cies for help­ing stu­dents achieve lit­er­a­cy. Much of the sem­i­nar, I had pre­vi­ous­ly learned from Block One of my UNBC pro­gram, but it was help­ful to review and receive their 40-page guide, Sci­ence of Read­ing: Defin­ing Guide. In the guide, it empha­sizes that read­ing com­pre­hen­sion is the prod­uct of word recog­ni­tion and lan­guage com­pre­hen­sion and that being skilled in either com­po­nent can­not com­pen­sate for a weak­ness in the oth­er (The Read­ing League [TRL], 2022, p.17). I have seen the visu­al metaphor of Scarborough’s Read­ing Rope, but it was inter­est­ing to see how word recog­ni­tion is bro­ken down into phono­log­i­cal aware­ness, decod­ing, and sight recog­ni­tion (TRL, 2022, p.19). In the doc­u­ment, it lat­er men­tions that “implic­it and inci­den­tal instruc­tion in word read­ing, visu­al mem­o­riza­tion of whole words, guess­ing from con­text, and pic­ture cues” is not sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly backed as an effec­tive instruc­tion­al prac­tice.
　　At first I felt there was con­tra­dic­tion here, as sight recog­ni­tion was rec­og­niz­ing an ortho­graph­i­cal­ly mapped word. What I mis­un­der­stood was teach­ing words implic­it­ly by mem­o­riz­ing a sight word is not the same as ortho­graph­i­cal­ly map­ping a word after explic­it­ly teach­ing a word through phono­log­i­cal decod­ing. In Parker’s “Sight Words, Ortho­graph­ic Map­ping, Phone­mic Aware­ness” blog post, he elab­o­rates as to the nature of ortho­graph­ic map­ping through the decod­ing of a word: When grapheme-phoneme (let­ter-sound) con­nec­tions are explic­it­ly made for a giv­en word (CHEAP), its exact orthog­ra­phy (spelling), C‑H-E-A‑P, is direct­ly “mapped” into the brain’s lan­guage cen­ter and linked to the brain’s sound lex­i­con and mean­ing lex­i­con. (2020)

　　Park­er fur­ther explains that when a child makes the con­nec­tion between graphemes and the spelling of a word explic­it, it will auto­mat­i­cal­ly become a sight word after only 2–5 expo­sures of its writ­ten form. Phono­log­i­cal decod­ing requires learn­ing about let­ter-sound cor­re­spon­dences and blend­ing. A third skill, seg­ment­ing, helps to rein­force the con­nec­tions between graphemes and phonemes used in ortho­graph­ic map­ping but does so from an encod­ing direc­tion, where learn­ers prac­tice spelling rather than read­ing. As a par­ent of a non-native Eng­lish speak­er and as a future ele­men­tary teacher, I am com­mit­ted to learn­ing more on this top­ic and hope to dis­cuss with my men­tor teach­ers how best to effec­tive­ly teach lit­er­a­cy.

　　My book list for the read­ing break is begin­ning to grow, but to help to teach phon­ics effec­tive­ly I will first read Parker’s Read­ing Instruc­tion and Phon­ics. The sec­ond edi­tion is cur­rent­ly avail­able from his web­site for free here: https://www.parkerphonics.com/_files/ugd/fd6834_e358dbf025914268ab81c7cfdf0cfd6c.pdf

Ref­er­ences
Park­er, S. (August, 2020). Sight words, ortho­graph­ic map­ping, phone­mic aware­ness.
　　https://www.parkerphonics.com/post/sight-words-orthographic-mapping-and-self-teaching
The Read­ing League. (2022). Sci­ence of Read­ing: Defin­ing Guide.

The Sci­ence of Read­ing PDF includ­ed with my Pro­fes­sion­al Devel­op­ment Seminar:

Science_of_Reading_Defining_Guide_eBook