I have been reading Dr. Kilpatrick’s book, Equipped for Reading Success (2016), which was very enthusiastically recommended to me by two colleagues. This book is about teaching reading through developing phonological awareness in students. Phonological awareness is the understanding that spoken language is composed of smaller units such as phrases, words, syllables, and phonemes (sounds).“Children need to be able to distinguish sounds so that they can attach them to letters” when learning to read and spell (Fountas & Pinnell, 2009, p. 174).
Kilpatrick explains that each of the traditional approaches (from phonics, to whole words to whole language) is appropriate at specific stages in the process of learning to read (p. 48). At the very beginning stages of reading instruction, he asserts that a more phonological approach is appropriate, and as students develop along the reading continuum, whole language or other approaches become suitable.
In fact, the National Early Literacy Panel (NELP) Report (2008) states that “children’s early Phonological Awareness –that is, their ability to distinguish among sounds within auditory language–[is] an important predictor of later literacy achievement” (Lonigan & Shanahan, p. viii).
Many of the songs that you remember from your childhood likely targeted various phonological awareness skills. My favorite one was The A – Z Name Game by Sharon Lois and Bram. I learned rhyming through singing, “Lori-Anne, Lori-Anne, banana, fanna, fo – Fori-Anne, Me, mi, mo, Mori-Anne, Lori-Anne!” Rhyming and word play in poems, books and songs, train students to distinguish the sounds in words. Some of these silly songs actually teach children complex phonemic awareness skills.
Developing phonological awareness comes before phonics instruction. Being able to hear the individual sounds in words is the first step in learning to read and spell. Next, students are taught to connect those sounds to letters. When letters become part of the instruction, it is no long phonological awareness that is being taught, but phonics. When kindergarten teachers and day care educators read books that have rhyming phrases in them, or sing songs in which different sounds are substituted in words, they are actually working on important skills that support literacy development.
Being a child in Canada in the 80s, I was raised on songs by Fred Penner and Raffi. You can’t imagine how star struck I was when one day, about five years ago, I actually saw Fred Penner in real life, having lunch in a restaurant in Winnipeg, at the table next to mine. I had seen him at a concert when I was really young, but this was different! He was ten feet away! I could barely keep myself from starting at him! He had to have been pretty amazing for me to still recognize his greatness over 30 years later!
In kindergarten and Grade 1, phonological awareness can be directly taught, as a stepping stone toward reading and spelling. It is important to teach these skills, because children “do not automatically identify sounds just because they can speak and understand language” (Fountas & Pinnell, 2009, p. 178). In fact, “[S]peakers focus their attention on the meaning of utterances, not sounds. Unless they are trying to learn an alphabetic code, there is no reason to notice and ponder the phonemic level of language” (National Reading Panel Report, as cited in Fountas & Pinnell, 2009, p. 175).
Some children transition from nursery rhymes and songs right into the next level, in which they associate sounds with specific letters. Not all children need phonological awareness training, and it may be beneficial only for those who struggle with reading problems (Bus & van IJzendoorn, 1999, p. 404). Some students, however, need to be specifically taught to hear the distinct sounds within words, and to “map” those sounds to letters, which is called “orthographic mapping” (Kilpatrick, 2016, p. 45). “Orthography” has to do with writing letters and words.
Students need to be able to connect “what is heard in the mind (phoneme awareness) with what is seen on the page (letter-sound skills)” (Kilpatrick, 2016, p. 45). Phonemic awareness and connecting letters with their most common sounds (phonics) are “prerequisites” to learning to read. In fact, early literacy teachers will not be able to move their students along in literacy, until the students are “proficient” with these two skills (Kilpatrick, 2016, p. 49). Letters and their sounds need to be connected easily and automatically for the child, before they can benefit from “formal reading instruction”, according to Dr. Kilpatrick (p. 49).
Formal reading instruction in Grade 1 usually includes “word study”, or phonics instruction. However, Dr. Kilpatrick recommends that prior to teaching students the beginning, middle, and ending sounds in words, which is part of the phonics instruction that usually happens at the start of Grade 1, it is a better idea to teach them word families. (Word families, I am sure you will recall, are sets of words that follow the same spelling pattern, like rat, cat, fat, mat, pat, sat). This would allow the children to apply their developing skills at letter-sound association with the first sound, in each of the word family words, and then use the rhyme to help them along, so that they can read full words.
Since most students are not able to map full words yet, in the first month of Grade 1, using word families is like providing “training wheels” for the students at this earlier stage in reading (Kilpatrick, 2016, p. 50). Many students at this stage can map the first sound in a word only, and so this approach could be used first, prior to phonics. The word family approach is called the “Linguistic Approach”, and Dr. Kilpatrick recommends that Grade 1 teachers use “a ‘linguistics first, phonics second approach, while systematically training phonological awareness” (p. 50).
Dr. Kilpatrick (2016) asserts that if Grade 1 teachers were to follow his advice on this, they would “reduce the number of struggling readers to a fraction of what any traditional method (including phonics alone) would produce” (p. 50). Currently there is a portion of students in every school who read far below grade level. If we apply the research that tells us about how reading progresses, we can dramatically lessen the number of students who struggle (p. 45).
It is at this point that I have some questions, and am curious to learn more about the best way Grade 1 teachers might spend their first months with their students. The idea that there is an absolute best way to spend this time, and that doing so will eliminate the likelihood that any students will struggle to read is very appealing! I have always been very interested in teaching reading, and I am constantly learning and growing as a teacher of reading. The reason why the first few months of Grade 1 is especially interesting to me now, however, is that I will be transitioning to a new position in my school division next September. My first task in this new role is to provide support to Grade 1 teachers, as our division moves away from Reading Recovery and toward a new approach.
I am questioning the use of word families, despite Dr. Kilpatrick’s very convincing argument, because I have recently been taking part in Orton-Gillingham training. My instructor explained the other day that she is opposed to using word families, because she believes it can lead students down the road to guessing, or to not attending to each letter and sound in words (V. Bjornson, presentation, May 30, 2020). Once students begin to guess, they are moving away from word mapping, and are not learning the core skills they will need to become strong readers. It is better, instead, to have the students attend to each letter in a word, one at a time. To me, this makes more sense, as I have spent lots of time working with students who think that reading is about guessing.
Dr. Kilpatrick seems to concur with some aspects of Bjornson’s argument when he says the following: “For beginning reading instruction we need to make use of reading materials that are appropriate to the level at which the student can phonologically and orthographically deal with words” (2016, p. 49). If students are asked to read texts that are above the level that they can decode, or if they are taught to memorize full words before they learn the letter-sound connections, they can sometimes develop unhealthy coping behaviors that can lead them down the wrong path (p. 49). Would word family words not be considered inappropriate for students who are not yet able to deal with three letter words, in the first month of Grade 1, I wonder?
However, I can also see benefits to word families, as they would help to build confidence in struggling readers. If time is spent on word families for a brief period while students solidify their letter-sound skills, and phonemic awareness, it can give them the satisfying feeling of reading words, even if they are actually reading just the first letter, and recalling the rhyme, when solving the rest of the word.
I am curious what your perspective is on this question. Have you used word families in the past? Have you noticed a tendency toward guessing words after having used it, or is it a helpful transition that segues into reading CVC words? What are your thoughts on phonological awareness training and phonics instruction?
References:
Bus, A. G., van Ijzendoorn, M. H. (1999). Phonological Awareness and Early Reading: A meta-analysis of experimental training studies. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91 (3), 403-414.
Lonigan, C. J., & Shanigan, T. (2008). Executive Summary of the Report of the National Early Literacy Panel. Developing Early Literacy: Report of the National Early Literacy Panel. National Centre for Family Literacy.
Kilpatrick, D. (2016). Equipped for Reading Success: A comprehensive, step by step program for developing phoneme awareness and fluent word recognition. Casey & Kirsch Publishers.
National Institute for Literacy (2008). Developing Early Literacy: Report of the National Early Literacy Panel. National Centre for Family Literacy.
Pinnell, G. S. & Fountas, I. C. (2009). When Readers Struggle: Teaching that works. Heinemann.
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