Duz Ackurit SPELLING Matir?

Four Meny Thee Ansor Iz NO! Butt R Thay Rite?

by Marion Blank

Back in the days of George Washington, as had been true for millennia, doctors had one overarching "treatment" in their arsenals. Leeches! A good bleeding was the answer to almost any illness-- fever, bad coughs, seizures, heart disease, obesity, even mental illness. Poor George, who was reported to have laryngitis, was said to have lost over three quarts of blood in his final days–an amount that helped speed his departure to the afterlife.

Washington's treatment was by no means special. Patients around the world endured similar fates as they were—with the best of intentions--administered the prescribed treatment of the time. Bleeding was THE way to help balance a patient's body fluids, or "humors." Doctors believed in their logic more than in the evidence. That was enough to keep them using the wrong solution.

Ironically, the problem was not in the use of leeches per se, but in the indiscriminate use of these blood suckers. In recent years, leeches have actually proven to be of value in treating selected conditions such as skin grafts and reconstructive surgery.

The parallels to reading may not be immediately apparent since the two conditions seem so different. But if we delve a bit, the commonalities begin to stand out. Of course, we do not know the precise failure rate of leech therapy, but all indications are that it was astronomical. We do know far more about the failure rate in teaching reading and it IS astronomical. As government figures from the National Center for Education Statistics tell us, approximately 40 percent of bright, capable children have trouble learning to read. (See http://nces.ed.gov/) The figure is so incredible that most people cannot wrap their minds around it. The feeling is "This can't be true." But it is.

And like the physicians of yore, the failure in reading is due to the use of inappropriate techniques. In the words of Chester Finn, a distinguished leader in education and public policy, "...the educational inadequacies of millions of (our nation's) daughters and sons (should be viewed) not in terms of organic problems inherent in the children but rather as the fallout from unsound, inept or ill-conceived instruction by adults."

That instruction Invariably is one of the two systems that dominate reading. The most powerful one is phonics--which teaches the sounds of words; the second, less influential but still prevalent, method is whole language—which emphasizes books and the stories they tell. The battles between the two systems have been fierce--bitter enough to be referred to as "the reading wars." As with leeches, the defense of each is based more on belief than on facts. Still of the two, phonics does yield somewhat better results. Even at its best, however, it does not make a significant dent in the reading failure rate.

The problem is not that sounds of phonics or the books of whole language are unimportant. They are vital. The problem is that they are not enough. Even when combined, they overlook a range of skills that are essential to effective reading and writing.

One such skill is visual sequencing. To understand its role, look at the pictures below and name them. If you're like most people, you are likely to use the same word for the three pictures across each row—with something like "sneakers" for the first, "birds" for the second, and "kids" for the third.

The names stay the same –because the elements stay the same. Admittedly in all cases, there is a change in order of those elements, but that change is deemed to be insignificant. From early in life, we learn that left to right sequencing doesn't matter.

It is only when we start reading that the premise no longer holds. Even though the letters may be identical, if they are in a different order, they represent totally different words. As examples, consider

art-rat   top-pot  item-time  live-evil
era-ear  two-tow  nest-sent  own-now

Remarkably, left to right sequencing is significant only in reading (including the reading of numbers). Since children have spent the first five years of their lives ignoring this dimension, they are not prepared for it when they start reading. It is only reasonable to expect to teach it to them.

But sequencing is not on the agenda of either the two dominant teaching systems. So it is not taught—despite widespread evidence that it should be. You see some of that evidence when you spot children using their fingers to track the words they are reading. If questions are raised about the problematic nature of this behavior, the answer is "to not be concerned" because, with maturation, the children will somehow get past it. Some do, but many do not. The failure of instruction translates into the failure of the students.

Another quite different but equally overlooked area can be found in a group of "little words" in our language that cannot be sounded out through the available rules --words like was, who, he, they, of, what, were, do. If they played by the phonic rules, was might be spelled as wuz, who as hoo, he as hee, they as thay, of as uv and so on. As a result, children are taught to regard these words as "exceptions" and minimal teaching time is spent on them. After all, with English estimated to have about 1 million words, why spend much time teaching a tiny group of "exceptions?"

But if we change our metric from the number of words in our language to the number of words on a page, the exceptions are no longer exceptions. In fact, they are the "rule" since about 100 of these little words make up 50% or more of any page of print-- regardless of whether the book is for a first grader or a college student. This small, seemingly insignificant set of words actually forms the connective tissue of our language. Without them, we simply cannot create meaningful sentences. That's why they represent practically every other word we read-- or write.

That, of course, is not the message children receive. Instead they are given the rather bizarre message that the majority of words they see on any page are "exceptions." It simply makes no sense and it leaves them unprepared to handle literally every other word on a page. The primary effect of the teaching is to create major obstacles to effective reading.

At this point, you may be shaking your head in bewilderment, thinking, "It can't be this bad." That is why the government figures are so important. They force us to go beyond the "logic" that the two major reading camps would want us to believe and consider the facts. The facts are that forty percent of our children are failing and their failure is the inevitable outcome of the limited teaching they are offered. Hopefully, the situation will not have to get even worse before we finally acknowledge its catastrophic nature.

Recognition of problem is a key step in moving on to productive change. Where might the change come from? In some cases, it will come from innovative schools. For example, Miami-Dade Schools recently announced that they are experimenting with new visually-based technology that allows "struggling students" to develop the scanning skills that they see are lacking in their students. As might have been expected, officials at the school attribute the need for this technology to the students' failure to practice reading—and not to their own failure to have offered any instruction in this skill. Still it is a step in the right direction.

In my view, based on decades of working with families, the greatest likelihood for change rests with parents. No one is more committed to children's success than are their parents. And they have shown what they can do once they are knowledgeable and mobilized. In the field of learning disabilities, for example, parents have been prime movers in getting the educational system to significantly modify instructional practices. Home schooling parents have been an equally powerful force in the educational scene.

I believe parents can have comparable effects in reading. Part of the reason they have not done so is that, like the rest of the population, the widespread nature of reading failure has effectively been hidden from them. That leads parents of children in difficulty to think that theirs is an isolated situation. Not knowing the extent of the problem, they believe that they –rather than the system—are the ones who have somehow failed their child.

The good news is that once we allow ourselves to see the full complement of
skills that reading instruction requires, effective solutions naturally follow. We can
see how this might work by revisiting the issue of visual sequencing.

The activity that follows is useful if you have a child who is (i) about to start
reading (ii) in the early stages of the process or (iii) having difficulty learning to
read. It allows you to determine if he or she remembers letters presented in
left–to-right order. The sequences of letters actually spell out words, but your child
does not have to read the words to complete the items. To carry out the activity,

  • first, prepare the following materials:
    • using 26 cards about 1" square, write one lower case letter of the alphabet on each card.
    • on a sheet of 8" x 11" paper, draw two rows of 5 boxes; each box should be about 1" square so that it is large enough to hold one of the letters you have made
    • on another 8" x 11" paper, make up a record sheet by drawing 5 columns.
  • next, sit next to your child at a desk or table
    • take the sheet with the two rows of boxes; in the top row, place, one at a time and in order, the letters p- l- a- n- t; under the bottom row, place the letters h- g- l- t- a- p- r so that the page looks as follows:

      p
      l
      a
      n
      t
               

      h      g    l    t     a    p    r    n

    • point to the top row and say, "Look carefully at these letters." Cover those letters; point to the bottom row and say, "I am going to use these letters to make the sequence we just saw." Then one at a time, enter, from left to right, the letters, p-l-a-n-t. Remove the cover from the top letters; point to the 2 rows and say, "Now they are the same."
    • remove the letters from the sheet so that the sheet is empty
  • From this point, your child will be recreating the sequences. The letters sequences and the choices are:

    Letter Sequences Choices
    truck
    b k o r c u t y
    start
    a t e s t o r m
    candy
    y w i a c u n d
    thing
    t j g u h n v i
    heart
    l w e h t i a r

    • Say, "Now it's your turn." For each sequence, put the letters out –one at a time--in left to right order and say, "look carefully at the letters." Then cover the letters and put the choices under the bottom row of boxes. Say, "Use these letters to make the same sequence you just saw."
    • accept whatever placements your child makes; be sure NOT to offer any cues (such as saying "try to remember what the letters are called" or "pay attention to the order")
    • use the record sheet to keep track of what your child does. For each word, note where each letter is placed and the order of its placement. For example, for t-r-u-c-k, if your child starts by placing ‘u' in the 2nd box, on the record sheet, you would enter
       

      u

      1

      		     

      Then if he or she places ‘t' in the 1st box, your sheet would
      look as follows:

      t

      2

      u

      1

      		     

      Continue in this manner until the 5 columns are filled in.

    • for a word to be counted as correct, your child has to have (i) placed each letter in the appropriate box and (ii) started from the left and moved systematically to the right. For example, for t-r-u-c-k to be considered correct, the record should appear as follows:

t

1

r

2

u

3

c

4

k

5

Any other result is not counted as correct, even if the letters, in the end, spell out the correct word. For example, the following would not be correct:

t

2

r

4

u

1

c

5

k

3

When all five sequences have been completed, count up the total number of correct responses. If you find that two or more words are not correct, it is likely that your child's sequencing skills are problematic. Should this be the case, do not feel overly concerned because you have just identified an area where you can offer help and enable your child to move ahead.

By using materials like the ones just outlined, within six to eight weeks, your child can make significant progress. The key is to start, not with five letter words, but with two- and three-letter ones—completing about ten words a day. If your child has trouble matching the word when it is hidden, you can allow him or her to match the word while it is in view. Then you repeat the process, this time with the word covered.

Once your child is handling two- to three-letter words comfortably, you can advance to four- and then five-letter words. Generally, when sequences of this length have been mastered, children have developed the necessary visual base needed for smooth reading.

Sequencing serves as an example of the way in which reading instruction can and should be remodeled. It is not an area that is difficult to conquer; rather it is an area that traditional instruction has ignored. So --distressing as they might be--the national figures on reading can serve as beacons for reform. They allow us to see that reading failure is not a failure of the children, but a problem of the system. Once this realization takes hold and we allow ourselves to be open to new possibilities, the chances for a brighter future are enormous.

 

About the author

Dr. Marion Blank, Ph.D. is the Director of the A Light on Literacy program at Columbia University. Dr. Blank has spent over 40 years studying how children learn to read. She has lectured extensively around the world, served as a consultant to government bureaus abroad, authored the widely used Preschool Language Assessment Instrument, developed an award-winning computer program that teaches reading, and written over sixty articles and six books on language and literacy. Her alternative method has helped thousands of children learn to read, and her latest book, The Reading Remedy, and her new reading system, Phonics Plus Five, makes the ideas behind her comprehensive program available to every parent. More information is available at http://www.phonicsplusfive.com.

You may contact Professor Blank through her PR firm at megan@rosengrouppr.com.