![]() Instead, research shows that instruction can best be done through 1) helping children to examine the spellings of words, thinking about how the spellings symbolize sounds, and then blending the sounds, and 2) engaging them in reading texts in which they have opportunities to reinforce their developing sight vocabulary and apply word recognition strategies to unfamiliar words, which become part of their sight vocabularies." That does not seem to suggest that "brute force" memorization is the right approach.ĥ. ![]() It says, "It is critical that the important goal of developing a large fund of sight words not be confused with the outdated, discredited sight approach to teaching words in which beginning readers were instructed to learn words as "wholes" without reference to letter-sound associations and spelling patterns. I can't find the research by Chard, and I did read an article by him on. I'd agree they should memorize "of." But only after they know that this symbol "f" almost always makes the unvoiced "fff" sound.Ĥ. A few years later, less than 20% of those students are proficient oral readers.ģ. We used to have our K students memorize up to 200 sight words along with some basic phonics lessons. I'd say that I've anecdotally seen the negative consequences of "brute-force" memorization. "No one has ever found any negative consequences." Has anyone looked? If so, where's the research? I'd imagine it'd be hard to conduct a controlled study on that topic. I read this blog primarily because you're so interactive with your readers.Ģ. Thus, giving students both the patterns and a base of words in memory increases their chances of getting it.ġ. Finally, no one has ever been able to figure out whether readers decode words through the knowledge of an abstract set of rules or patterns or whether they work from memories of the structures of known words. You are correct that some kids will get enough repetition in their reading alone to secure that information, but most will not early on because they don't have the tools to learn the words. Kids also usually enjoy it (it gives them a sense of accomplishment), and research reviews of such procedures (I'm thinking of one by David Chard) support the explicit teaching of sight vocabulary. By teaching some words early through memorization, you make it possible for kids to read while they are learning to read. You can wait a full year until that system is fully in place before kids can read (as the older phonics programs used to recommend), but there is absolutely no research support for that. What kids are learning when they are taught phonics is how to recognize all words as if they are sight vocabulary. You could teach that as a pattern, of course, some old programs used to, but I guarantee it will take 5-year-olds longer to learn that "rule" (in a two-letter word if the first letter is "o" and the second letter is "f" the "f" makes a /v/ sound). There is only one word in the English language ("of") in which the "f" is associated with the /v/ sound. No one has ever found any negative consequences to teaching students to read particular words, and everyone agrees that you have to teach those words that do not follow letter-sound correspondence conventions. I'd worry that putting the memorization before the fundamental understanding would lead to unintended consequences. ![]() Maybe even memorize those "irregular" words. Repeated practice with that should lead to automaticity, no? Then, once they establish a sound understanding of the regular phonics rules, I'd teach the exceptions. Translated to reading: I'd spend more time teaching students the fundamentals of how sounds blend together to form words. Repeated practice with numbers, in a variety of ways, leads to automaticity, when students recognize that 2x2=4 without thinking. And it seems the new approach to doing that is to move away from endless "mad minutes," and focus on developing the fundamental understanding of why 2x2=4. Most agree that we eventually need to have math facts memorized-quick calculations and number fluency depend on it. I wonder how similar it is to the idea of memorizing math facts. Certainly students eventually need to have those lists memorized, and I think the idea of "brute-force" memorization may be the wrong approach. I'm not so sure I agree with having novice readers memorize word lists.
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