The Big 5 of Reading in your Classroom By Professor Rob Savage From the Faculty of Education McGill University Presented at BJEC on Wed. April 17 th, 2013

Why the Big 5? : ‘Levels of Evidence’ about what Works for Reading  Randomized Control Trials (RCT)  Only design that adequately controls for all unmeasured variables that can affect outcome  Systematic Reviews o Form of review with explicit criteria for the inclusion/exclusion of studies collated through exhaustive searches of the databases o “Gold standard” for building evidence-based practice and government policy  Meta-Analyses  Statistics applied to explore whether effects reported in individual studies are consistent across all studies

Phonological Awareness  Clear evidence from systematic meta-analytic reviews concerning role of phonological awareness (PA)  (blending, segmenting, etc. Ehri et al., 2001)  BUT….  PA is a consequence as well as a cause in reading… Consider: PITCH versus RICH; illiterate poets  PA is a multi-component ability  PA plus other skills are crucial (see e.g. Byrne 1998)  The degree to which PA is understood varies! (e.g. Joshi et al., 2012)

Phonics and Phonological Awareness  Combining phonics and phonological awareness is effective when combined with letter sound knowledge (Bus and Van IJzendoorn, 1999 )  But joint book sharing with preschool children produces an effect size at least as large as early phonic interventions  Explicitly teaching 1-2 phonological operations over hours is more effective than incidental teaching (Ehri et al., 2001)  Must be linked explicitly to strategies for reading: ‘real’ books

Phonics continued  Torgerson et al., (2006) concluded:  Evidence base for inclusion of phonics programs in early reading instruction is moderately strong  Evidence base available on synthetic over analytic phonics techniques is currently weak  Not sufficient evidence to draw policy conclusions  No clear evidence at all that any form of phonics should be used for the teaching of spelling  No strong evidence on phonics beyond Kindergarten/Grades 1-2

The most Recent Review  Recent meta-analysis by McArthur et al. (2012) for the Cochrane Collaboration Review found…  11 RCTs of phonics-solely for English-speakers can only say it improved word and non-word reading accuracy (short term)  Evidence base is weak so we cannot say yet if phonics has an impact on fluency comprehension, spelling

So, what do we really know about effective phonics instruction?  Reasonably strong evidence basis to support inclusion of phonics in early literacy to aid word reading from at least 6 systematic meta-analytic reviews  Some (less reliable) evidence to support systematic teaching of synthetic phonics over other approaches to phonics  Inconsistent evidence of the role of phonics in spelling  Little reliable evidence of the optimal amount of phonics instruction  Phonic approaches help typically developing and delayed reader groups

English Spelling is Complicated.. I take it you already know Of tough and bough and cough and dough? Others may stumble, but not you, On hiccough, thorough, tough and through? Well done! And now you wish, perhaps, To learn of less familiar traps? Beware of heard, a dreadful word That looks like beard and sounds like bird, And dead: it's said like bed, not bead - For goodness sake don't call it deed! Watch out for meat and great and threat (They rhyme with suite and straight and debt). A moth is not a moth in mother, Nor both in bother, broth in brother, And here is not a match for there Nor dear and fear for bear and pear, And then there's dose and rose and lose - Just look them up - and goose and choose, And cork and work and card and ward, And font and front and word and sword, And do and go and thwart and cart - Come, come, I've hardly made a start! A dreadful language? Man alive! I'd mastered it when I was five!

Many Words occur very Rarely

A Funny Kids Song with Examples of Bad Letter-sound Matches Crazy ABC’s By: Barenaked Ladies (

After the ABCs……  Target Word Grapheme-PhonemeTarget Word Grapheme-Phoneme Says s as z soundShe sh Sees ee Came a_eEach ch Stopped ppGoing ing Back ckPlease ea All llAcross ss Yelled ed as d soundDecide i_e This thThoseo_e Waited aiSaw aw First irWatch tch Off ffStarted ar Right igh Coat oa Bridge dgeAround ou What whJumped ed as t sound Stayed ayFor or SchoolooNowow Quietqu Noiseoi KnowowTurnedur Knowkn

Evidence-based Practice  Some evidence suggests that preventative early intervention is better than remedial for delayed or at-risk readers  Reliable evidence from a meta-analytic review says that language rich home and school environments significantly impact early literacy  E.g., shared book reading, meaningful language, active learning, naturalistic play  Suggests school and preschool initiatives should be linked!  ‘Word-level’ work needs to continue through elementary school years

Reading Comprehension  Evidence base for reading comprehension is substantially weaker  Studies report modest to no effect sizes  NRP suggests use of 8 meta-cognitive strategies for reading comprehension is most effective  Group work-mixed ability contexts appear most effective  Need for further high quality research in this area

What ‘Works’ for Comprehension? Comprehension monitoring Co-operative learning Graphic and semantic organizers Question generation (i.e. by child) Question answering (teacher use of questions) Story structure Mental imagery / ‘guided’ imagery 14

Some newer Ideas  Vocabulary plays a central role  BUT teaching explicit words one concept at a time is very time consuming and difficult  Morphology: teaching of structural relationships  Sign–design–signal-resign-signature-signatory  Quest-request-question-questionnaire-bequest

Fluency  What is fluency?  Modest (and disputed) evidence for guided- reading suggests caution towards this method  Children should read widely and enjoy reading for multiple purposes  Include re-reading  Teach for fluency early on?  USSR  Text fluency builds on word reading fluency and comprehension

In Summary  We know a lot more about effective literacy practice than years ago but it is still a work in progress!  There is also the notion of ‘multiple literacies’  Technology, emotional literacy seem implicated  It will all link very closely into the art of teaching  Atmosphere, management, relationships, pedagogy (including differentiation), school (board) ethos & community literacy