One UK school inspector’s report from 1991
For the PHAB+CSS compared with Math+ CSS comparison, Table 1 shows effect sizes that are consistently positive, with the largest for word attack skills ( g =0.32), word identification ( g = 0.22), spelling (g = .25), and text reading fluency ( g = 0.24) and comprehension (g = 0.25). These effect sizes meet conventional levels for practical significance, but the confidence intervals include 0 and would not meet conventional standards for statistical significance. Although these are not robust differences in a single study for a single component of reading instruction, the study is underpowered to detect significant effect sizes in this range, especially in older poor readers. Bowers would interpret these findings as consistent with his argument that there is no advantage of systematic phonics. However, the effect sizes are consistent with the meta-analytic evidence of a positive effect size for systematic phonics and large enough to be practically significant, cautioning against acceptance of the null hypothesis. These effect sizes should not be construed as effect sizes for Direct Instruction, which is a more complex reading program with good evidence of efficacy in general education and as a remedial intervention ( Stockard & Wood 2017 ).
When comparing PHAST (+PHAB) and PHAB+CSS, Table 2 shows much larger effect size advantages for PHAST (+ PHAB) across multiple outcomes involving decoding, fluency, and comprehension, with confidence intervals that do not include 0. The effect for text-based comprehension are negligible, although the effect size for a cloze-based comprehension measure was larger. Note that comparisons of PHAST (+ PHAB) to MATH+CSS would be even larger.
Effect Sizes and Confidence Intervals for Comparisons of Interventions for Poor Readers that Taught Multiple Reading Strategies and Systematic Phonics (PHAST+PHAB) Versus Systematic Phonics and Classroom Survival Skills (PHAB+ CSS)
Measure | PHAST ( = 73) | PHAB+CSS ( = 69) | Variance of | SE | 95% CI (lower) | 95% CI (upper) | z | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Mean | SD | Mean | SD | |||||||
WRMT-R Word Attack | 11.68 | 6.67 | 7.49 | 5.36 | 0.69 | 0.03 | 0.17 | 0.35 | 1.02 | 3.99 |
WRMT-Word Identification | 38.51 | 12.41 | 32.21 | 13.24 | 0.49 | 0.03 | 0.17 | 0.16 | 0.82 | 2.88 |
TOWRE Word Reading Fluency | 25.80 | 12.31 | 20.72 | 12.44 | 0.41 | 0.03 | 0.17 | 0.08 | 0.74 | 2.42 |
WRMT-R Passage Comprehension | 19.68 | 8.12 | 15.87 | 8.44 | 0.46 | 0.03 | 0.17 | 0.13 | 0.79 | 2.71 |
WRMT-R Spelling | 20.33 | 2.64 | 19.1 | 2.85 | 0.45 | 0.03 | 0.17 | 0.11 | 0.78 | 2.64 |
GORT-3 Accuracy | 3.88 | 4.68 | 2.54 | 3.94 | 0.31 | 0.03 | 0.17 | −0.02 | 0.64 | 1.83 |
GORT-3 Fluency | 2.37 | 3.03 | 1.33 | 2.01 | 0.40 | 0.03 | 0.17 | 0.07 | 0.73 | 2.37 |
GORT-3 Comprehension | 9.77 | 6.58 | 9.66 | 6.38 | 0.02 | 0.03 | 0.17 | −0.31 | 0.34 | 0.10 |
These results show the benefits of more in-depth instruction in word work for poor readers compared to systematic phonics instruction. However, both PHAST (+PHAB) and RAVEO (+ PHAB) programs spent half the lesson time on systematic phonics (PHAB), controlling the amount of phoneme-grapheme training in the three groups. Despite major differences in PHAST and RAVE-O, the latter providing much more explicit instruction in morphology and vocabulary, outcomes were generally similar for the two programs, with both clearly superior to PHAB+CSS. In evaluating the conditions, would Bowers characterize all three interventions as examples of systematic phonics? How would he deal with the fact that the extended activities occur simultaneously and are interactive, in contrast with the phonics-first idea? Is it plausible to conclude that poor readers selected for inadequate word reading do not benefit from explicit instruction in phonics? This study is an example of the complexity of coding the next generation intervention approaches that recognize the importance of more complex approaches to sublexical instruction that incorporate meaning based instruction with explicit phonics instruction.
Morris et al. (2012) blended systematic phonics instruction with other approaches to accessing the sublexical structure of the word and its meaning. These activities are combined in many reading programs. For example, Savage et al. (2018) taught at-risk readers both ‘direct mapping’ of grapheme-phoneme rules to authentic texts and a meaning-based “set for variability” strategy for inconsistent rules. However, Bowers argues that proponents of systematic phonics assert that phonics instruction should (and indeed, must) occur before any focus on larger units of words (e.g., morphology) or on meaning. Bowers argues:
There is no disagreement that reading instruction needs to ultimately incorporate both meaning and phonology, but the widespread consensus in the research community is that instruction needs to systematically teach children the grapheme-phoneme correspondences before meaning-based strategies are emphasized. Accordingly, almost all researchers today claim that systematic phonics is better than whole language, balanced literacy, and all forms of instruction that consider morphology from the beginning.
We agree that grapheme-phoneme correspondence as a mechanism for learning about the form of a word is valuable and that knowing word meaning while learning to read words is valuable. We also recognize that the units in which phonics approaches are used vary. For example, many instructional practices use the “rime” as the building block for phonics applying consonants, blends, and digraphs to extend decoding and generalize phonics rules, e.g., /at/extended through /c/ to cat or /b/ to bat or /ch/ to chat. Co-teaching mechanisms for better capitalizing on word meaning and at the same time teaching students to acquire word reading practices are valuable. However, we do not agree that the phonics first approach Bowers alludes to represents the widespread view of reading scholars – even those who recognize the impact of phonics instruction. If Bowers is questioning the idea that phonics instruction is limited without attention to other forms of sublexical instruction and word meaning, including morphology, we agree. If he is questioning the idea that all phoneme-grapheme correspondence rules must be learned before exposure to spellings and meanings of words, we agree. If he is arguing that initial reading instruction can proceed based solely on morphology, we disagree. Spellings can only be learned initially through phonological recoding because the child needs to link written word forms with spoken language ( Seidenberg, 2017 ). Shortly after initial instruction, explicit teaching of morphology can be part of a comprehensive reading program and does not need to emphasize phonics before morphological training or exposure to word meanings ( Morris et al., 2012 ). After all, youngsters come to school with an abundance of knowledge of word meanings that serve as valuable capital for teaching words and understanding text.
The role of morphology may be somewhat different and involves how and when exposure to increasingly large units of words should occur. Both the PHAST (+ PHAB) and RAVE-O (+PHAB) programs included morphological (and other strategy) instruction simultaneously with systematic phonics, varying the emphases as the child proceeded through instruction. This issue may also have to do with the transparency of the language, its orthographic representation in the written word, and the size of the sublexical unit. In more transparent languages, access to larger sublexical units may occur more quickly in beginning reading because there are fewer exceptions to letter-sound correspondence rules compared to a less transparent language, such as English. Even in English, and even if phonics is emphasized, children are taught and exposed to vocabulary; they engage with grammatical forms including inflectional morphology routinely; they learn new things about the world, improving their background knowledge as they increase their word knowledge. This symbiotic relation between word knowledge building and world knowledge building is an essential feature of schooling and a necessary foundation for enriching text comprehension. If children are exposed to “real books,” they will necessarily engage with both morphology and phonology. Inspection of the children’s printed word database ( Masterson et al. 2008 ) shows that some 32% of words in texts written for children in kindergarten are bi-syllables (including common morphemic inflections: “–ing,” “-ed,” and “-s”), 5% are trisyllables, and 0.7% have four or five syllables.
There should be a focus on both language development and strategies for understanding what is heard and read in any evidenced and truly “balanced” model of reading, such as in the Simple View of Reading (e.g., Gough & Tunmer 1986 ) and its expression in reading instruction ( Savage 2020 ). Similarly, children learn to read print by accessing sublexical parts of words, linking what words sound and look like. This is true in a beginning reader and in an illiterate adult ( Seidenberg, 2017 ). From a theoretical view, the Simple View is a theory of reading comprehension that shows that children must learn about the form and meaning of the word. These occur in parallel, although children vary in their capacity for learning decoding and language comprehension and the developmental process of dealing with print emphasizes word learning more in early grades and comprehension in later grades. The Simple View is consistent with Perfetti’s (2007) lexical quality hypothesis, where acquiring and integrating information about both word form and meaning are necessary for on-line reading comprehension. In computational models of reading (See Seidenberg, Borkenhagen, & Kearns 2020 ), the well-known triangle model specifies pathways involving orthography, phonology, and semantics to compute word meanings. These pathways are trained using computational modeling and statistical learning theory. The models show that in order to deal with a written input (spelling of words in an alphabetic language), the models initially use an orthographic to phonologic to semantic pathway. With training, the direct pathway from orthography to semantics becomes more prominent, but the orthographic to phonology pathway continues to contribute. Models that train the orthography to semantics pathway take much longer than models that involve phonology. At some point, as the brain begins to pick up on the statistical regularities of the spellings, learning becomes more implicit than explicit, consistent with Share’s (1995) self-teaching hypothesis. According to Share, orthographic representations are acquired by self-teaching through phonological recoding of new letter strings that becomes increasingly implicit. In all these theoretical perspectives, orthography and phonology serve to access meaning and are interactive.
Empirical evidence on the relative role of morphological, phonetic, and other teaching strategies comes from a recent systematic review ( Galuschka et al. 2020 ). The authors directly investigated what we know about the “phonics first” question in spelling interventions for children with dyslexia, where similar arguments have been made. Galuschka et al. report an exploratory analysis of the limited number of available studies. This analysis suggested no significant advantage for early phonics over other programs, where RCTs exist. Interestingly, non-significant trends towards declining effectiveness of phonics and rising effectiveness of morphological training were evident with both age and severity of disability. Galuschka et al. concluded that we need more studies to resolve this question definitively. It is important to recognize that Galuschka et al. also reported robust main effects of spelling approaches based on phonics on both reading ( g = .62) and spelling ( g = .68), with morphological and orthographic approaches having moderate effects on spelling, but much smaller effects on reading. This work both further confirms but also contextualizes the role of phonics instruction in struggling readers.
Bowers is correct if he equates “phonology first” with a requirement to learn the entire corpus of phoneme-grapheme correspondence rules before dealing with morphology or meaning, but wrong in denying that phonics is an effective way of facilitating the implicit learning that must occur for the child to become an efficient reader ( Seidenberg et al. 2020 ). It is also not obvious how children would learn spelling-sound correspondence rules initially through “morphology first,” which is likely why Bowers indicates in different places that learning phoneme-grapheme correspondence rules is important. We encourage Bowers to design and conduct the studies needed to address his hypotheses but not to advance his hypotheses as facts until his findings support this view. Phonological awareness is likely necessary in early reading, but not sufficient, alongside morphological and orthographic awareness, but the phonological component made explicit by phonics is likely to be essential for children with poor initial phonological awareness to adequately progress in reading ( Berninger et al. 2010 ).
Although the term systematic phonics is widely used, it is instructive to think about what systematic really means and whether the NRP question of systematic phonics versus less systematic phonics is outmoded. In general, systematic refers to an organized structure – in this case, the organized structure for teaching the grapheme-phoneme correspondence rules. It is presumed that these rules are prescribed and often taught in an accepted sequence. However, the necessary sequence is not well established through research but rather derived from practices that provide ready access to reading words. Consonants such as /m/ and /s/ are taught early as they make sounds that sound like their letter names, are readily learned by young readers, and provide ready access to word reading- as do short vowels such as /a/ and /e/. These approaches are epitomized by the different methods under the umbrella of structured literacy ( Moats, 2019 ).
We agree with Bowers’ recognition of the limited evidence in support of a specific scope and sequence in which the child has to learn grapheme-phoneme rules as a prerequisite for decoding. As Morris et al. (2012) demonstrated, there are many ways to teach decoding, and the level of systematicity is related to the needs of the learner. Some students inferentially learn the pattern and rules through exposure to common word types; other students need more explicit instruction that is facilitated by an organized set of lessons. However, this organized sequence of lessons does not require that particular sound units be taught in any particular order as long as they are taught in ways that readily allow children to access print, words, and text.
We also agree with Bowers (2020) that phonics instruction can be effectively accomplished with approaches that would not meet the definition of systematic phonics that he provided, but not with the idea that any approach to phonics instruction will be effective. There is research that shows little difference in reading outcomes for methods based on a rigid scope and sequence versus methods in which the phonics instruction is explicit and mandatory, but embedded in reading and writing ( Mathes et al. 2005 ; Torgesen et al. 2001 ), at least for many learners. Effective methods share explicit instruction in phonics, other sublexical approaches, and language-rich activities, that through differentiated instruction responds to students’ needs ( Stuebing et al. 2008 ). Effective approaches to phonics instruction provide word work that is explicitly lead, intentional, and demonstrated by the teacher using a lesson that can be scripted or embedded, but which is explicit. It provides opportunities for students to respond, teacher feedback, and examples that both extend the principle as well as challenge it. It differs from what is undertaken for word work in many balanced literacy programs because of the amount of time spent on word work and the intentional nature. Instruction is likely to vary across individual children. The seven randomized trials by Carol Connor and colleagues (summarized in Connor & Morrison 2016 ) clearly demonstrate the value of differentiating the relative emphasis of code-based and meaning-based instruction for the individual child using materials in place in the school as opposed to a specific curriculum. In these studies, the amount of time devoted to each broad component was leveraged in the general education classroom such that less capable decoders spend more time on teacher directed code-related activity and more capable decoders spend more time on student directed meaning-related activity). As Stuebing et al. (2008 , p. 132) stated,
…the explicitness of instruction may be more important than systematic, scripted lessons in accounting for the effect of systematic phonics. Creating a scope and sequence, using decodable text, and engaging in other ways of systematizing instruction make instruction explicit, but explicitness can be achieved in other ways. Where a teacher operates on the instructional continuum may depend on factors like preparation, experience, the base rate of struggling readers, the school context, and related factors. However, teachers need to be intentionally clear about how the alphabet relates conventionally to sound segments in speech. The supporting materials that are used may vary depending on teacher and student knowledge and skills.
Rather than minimizing the effects of phonics instruction, we should be thinking more about how individual learners are responding to the methods that are used and be prepared to change instructional approaches based on their response to instruction ( Connor & Morrison, 2016 ).
At the heart of Bowers’ analysis is his critique of the evidence from 12 meta-analyses of reading interventions. We argue that the Bowers analysis of these meta-analyses does not accurately represent the findings. We treat each of the 12 analyses in the order Bowers considers them describing his substantive analysis and with reasoned responses to each of his points.
The NRP phonics chapter considered RCT, matched control trials of typical and atypical development, and interventions for word reading, fluency and comprehension outcomes. Ehri et al. (2001) published the chapter as a peer-reviewed paper. We will refer to both as NRP hereafter. Bowers makes four points in his criticism:
In making sense of this critique, the first thing to note is that a non-zero effect size was still evident even in students with demonstrated multiple risk factors and who struggle with any learning. The effect size of d = .15 is for a minority of children with lower IQ scores and low reading from grades 2 to 6, not for the effect of phonics instruction overall or even for older poor readers as a whole. One also has to contextualize this effect to make sense of it. This effect size may be large for these children in relative terms if they made modest or no progress before then and sets the bar for contrasts with alternative pedagogies for this distinct multi-need group. A key issue in evaluating any intervention against a counterfactual is: What might the expected progress be for this sample? Even without such considerations, an effect size of d = .15 places about 6% more of the intervention group clearly above the control group mean at post-test. Thus, even a small effect size of .15 can still be very practically important if played out at national scale, as Bowers himself acknowledges elsewhere in his article. The authors of the NRP noted (Part II, p. 117) that among a range of plausible explanations, many of the studies contributing to this effect involved regular whole class teaching. This delivery method may simply have not been sufficient to meet the literacy needs of this multiply at-risk group ( Connor & Morrison, 2016 ). Finally, it is also important to recognize that later reviews (including meta-analysis of responsiveness to intervention studies) show that IQ is not a strong predictor of the responsiveness of poor readers to reading intervention, including experimental studies that explicitly controlled for IQ (e.g., Morris et al. 2012 ) and in a meta-analysis ( Stuebing et al. 2009 ). As is expected in all professions (e.g., medicine), we cannot minimize visible, consistent effects of any size in education, particularly for those students with multiple learning needs.
Bowers re-describes the views from Camilli et al. (2006) about the contrasts within the NRP and the possible role of other features of pedagogy such as wider language and tutoring in driving reported effects. It is not clear to us that Bowers adds any new substantive points to the discussion. Bowers uses Camilli et al. (2006) and Hammill and Swanson (2006) to rebut the NRP conclusions about phonics (though it is here in the context of the Hammill and Swanson (2006) study that he correctly notes that small effect sizes can be practically important if played out across whole populations). Bowers cites Stuebing et al. (2008) as a replication of Camilli et al. (2006) , but does not report that Stuebing et al. raised questions about the Camilli et al. (2006) analysis of their recoded NRP database and that the purpose of the paper was to empirically defend and contextualize the NRP report – not to agree with Camilli et al. Stuebing et al. concluded that the effect size for systematic and unsystematic phonics ( d = .123) could not be compared to the NRP d = .41 for systematic phonics versus unsystematic/no phonics instruction because of Camilli’s use of moderator variables. As Bowers noted, Stuebing interpreted comparisons of no phonics, unsystematic phonics, and systematic phonics as a dosage effect, supporting this conclusion in their Table 2 where the effects of systematic phonics ( d =.49) is larger than the effect of some phonics ( d =.31) when the moderators coded by Camilli et al. are excluded from the comparisons.
Stuebing et al. (2008) showed that the Camilli et al. (2006) dataset of NRP findings actually yielded effect sizes similar to the NRP depending on the question that was asked of the data. In the re-analysis, the effect size for reading interventions that included systematic phonics interventions versus programs that include unsystematic or no phonics was d = .39, close to the NRP report ( d = .41). Although Camilli et al. (2008) raised questions about the re-analyses, any interpretation depends on how the NRP studies are recoded and whether moderators are used. Stuebing et al. (2008 , p. 131) concluded,
The comparisons by Camilli et al. (2006) ask questions that are different from the primary question asked by the NRP, but the results of the two sets of analyses can be reconstructed to yield comparable effect sizes for the effects of systematic phonics versus either unsystematic phonics or no phonics controls when the same study parameters are estimated.
Importantly, Stuebing et al. concurred with Camilli et al. (2006) on the value-added effects of additional literacy-related activities as well as tutoring. The largest effect sizes in Camilli et al. (2006) recoding of the NRP database occurred when systematic phonics is combined with additional language and literacy activities and delivered through tutoring ( d = 1.35, see Table 2 of Stuebing et al. 2008 ). Again, none of this shows that phonics does not in and of itself make a distinct and important contribution to early literacy. Nor does it suggest that students only need phonics instruction. To reiterate, Stuebing et al. showed in their Table 2 (line 14) that if one only considers the relatively pure cases of interventions involving what the NRP defined as systematic phonics and compares these against conditions where Camilli et al. had coded the absence of both tutoring and wider language activities (85 contrasts in 17 studies), the effect size is d =.49.
In response to Hammill and Swanson (2006) , Stuebing et al. (2008) also emphasized the contextual nature of effect sizes, showing that even smaller effect sizes were practically significant and could improve reading outcomes for many children depending on the base rate of reading failure, a point on which Bowers seems to agree. Yet throughout his paper, Bowers presents conventions for the interpretation of effect sizes, sometimes drawing attention to their statistical significance as crucial and sometimes not, but never to the confidence intervals that surrounds effect sizes. Bowers does not consistently acknowledge that these conventions are arbitrary and must be contextualized. The real issue is their replicability, their practical significance given an estimated counterfactual, and their precise role in reading instruction. We do not understand the motivation for discounting the consistently positive effects in favor of “systematic” phonics approaches. Arguing about whether the effects are small, medium, or large is not the relevant issue when making educational decisions about whether some level of explicit phonics instruction is beneficial to learning to read. Encouraging educators to discount positive effects of explicit phonics instruction is simply not helpful, but is potentially harmful to many children struggling to access appropriate reading instruction ( Seidenberg et al., 2020 ).
Reflecting their wider finding of the combinatorial effect of phonics with language and tutoring, Stuebing et al. (2008 , p. 133) thus concluded,
Although it seems difficult to move beyond the historic dichotomy of reading instructional approaches, it is time to embrace comprehensive approaches to reading instruction and work toward determining how to integrate different components of reading instruction into classroom practice so that the diversity of students and their individual needs can be addressed.
As the NRP ( NICHD 2000 , p. 2–97) stated, “Phonics instruction is never a total reading program,” and it “should be integrated with other reading instruction.” The monolithic view of phonics versus meaning-based instruction current when the NRP report was published is not a contemporary platform for discussing reading instruction.
Torgerson et al. considered only RCTs on phonics and explicitly considered a range of other indictors of methodological quality in the phonics literature. Bowers’ primary concern is his issue with the contrasts of systematic versus a combined unsystematic or no phonics control, which we have discussed. Beyond this, he simply draws attention only to the limitations in the research base identified by the authors themselves (possible effects of outlier study removal, publication bias, lack of detail on randomization processes for example). After assessing the evidence contextualized against rigorous inclusion criteria including randomization, Torgerson et al. (2006 , p. 42) argue, “ none of the findings of the current review were based on strong evidence because there simply were not enough trials (regardless of quality or size)” before drawing extremely cautious conclusions. The precise wording of the primary conclusion was that there was “ No warrant for NOT using phonics ” (p. 43). The authors also observed that the effect sizes from the selected RCTs were generally small and that the evidence quality for all phonics related questions was “moderate” (e.g., for the overall effects of phonics on typical and atypical learner’s word reading) or “weak” (e.g., the effects of analytic or synthetic phonics on outcomes). It is not clear what Bowers adds in the absence of these nuances.
These authors sought to explore the effects of phonics on outcomes for struggling readers. In particular, they sought RCTs and matched control studies that allowed an analysis of the unique effects of phonics independent of content often taught with phonics such as sight words. Bowers criticizes this review based on his observation that the overall effects reported may have been driven by the impact of two atypical interventions ( Levy & Lysynchuk 1997 ; Levy et al. 1999 ). There are several points to be noted. First, Bowers reports from the 2012 McArthur et al. review rather than the most recent McArthur et al. (2019) updated review that adds further studies to the analysis from the most recent 6 years of studies. The two papers by Levy and colleagues are included among the 14 studies. The rubric of the McArthur et al. (2012) review makes it clear that reading was assessed through “various outcomes.” The outcomes used in the Levy studies included measures of both novel word and pseudoword reading, so they do provide measures of generalizable phonic skills. Indeed, they assess exactly the mechanism of transfer expected from an analytic phonics approach. The Levy and colleagues studies are certainly not alone amongst the studies in this review in using bespoke researcher-developed outcome measures of grapheme-phoneme knowledge, so these two studies should not be excluded based on outcome measure used.
All good meta-analyses statistically test for the homogeneity of effects within the included studies. McArthur et al. (2012) show that there was statistically significant heterogeneity in the reported studies. However, McArthur et al. also noted that this heterogeneity could equally have been due to another study with an untypically low score on primary outcomes. The study could possibly have been, but was not, excluded. We note that the purpose of meta-analysis as an empirical synthesis is potentially undermined if studies are included or excluded post hoc. As a further insurance against effects of heterogeneity, random effects and fixed effects models were both run within the meta-analysis and both gave very similar results, suggesting the findings are robust.
Finally, given the weight Bowers (2020) attaches to the influence of studies by Levy and colleagues, it is important to understand that the overall effect sizes for outcomes involving word and pseudoword reading accuracy were not the largest effects reported. McArthur et al. (2012) concluded the evidence base on these two specific outcomes across all studies was weak. Because the outcomes used by Levy and colleagues were specific to word and pseudoword accuracy, these two studies did not feature at all in the five other outcome analyses reported by McArthur et al. (2012) : exception word reading, where the largest effect size of the entire study was .84 standard deviation (SD) for phonics treatment over controls; regular and exception word reading fluency (the second and third largest effect sizes), spelling; and reading comprehension. The strongest of the modest claims made by McArthur et al. (2012) are thus of the “moderate-quality” evidence of impact of phonics on exception word reading accuracy and word and pseudoword reading fluency. The Levy studies cannot explain these effects.
Bowers (2020) goes on to state that his most important point here is that the McArthur meta-analysis compared systematic phonics to no extra training at all, or to training on nonreading tasks, such that it is not appropriate to attribute any benefits to systematic phonics. He argues that any form of extra instruction may have “mediated” the gains observed. In making sense of this analysis, it might first be noted that Bowers appears to have moved from his purported original question about systematics versus less systematic or no phonics instruction to a more general critique of all aspects of phonics interventions. We should also note that the stated purpose of the McArthur et al. (2012) review was not to compare phonics against other interventions but to establish the role of phonics as it stands alone, and independent of other possible intervention teaching. Levy and colleagues featured tutoring in both treatment and control conditions and thus allow an analysis of the unique effect of phonics. Of course, the interventions did not occur in a vacuum in that all of the children were in school receiving business as usual teaching. In general, business as usual comparisons are not as intensive or structured as the interventions in most research studies and is heterogeneous across schools and classrooms, making it hard to code, but controlled in a randomized trial.
Finally, just doing something in an RCT rarely works in and of itself. Lortie-Forgues and Inglis (2019) recently reviewed 144 principled, well-executed, large-scale RCT trials funded by the Education Endowment Foundation in England and the National Center for Educational Evaluation and Regional Assistance in the United States. An average effect size of 0.06 SD was found across all trials. The trials involved a much broader performance range of children, not the lowest performing tail of the distribution addressed by McArthur et al. (2012) . The smallest effect reported in McArthur on reading comprehension is 0.28 SD, and all six other effects reported are above 0.45 of an SD. The critical issue here is that effect sizes such as 0.28 SD for comprehension are not common in well-conducted interventions and they are meaningful.
Galuschka et al. explored the widest base of evidence of RCT interventions of any kind that impact reading in poor readers. Bowers (2020) contention with this study is that the reported effect size for phonics interventions ( g = 0.32) was no bigger than for other intervention components such as reading fluency training ( g = 0.30), auditory training ( g = 0.39), and colour overlays ( g = 0.32). Bowers summarizes, “ The reason significant results were only obtained for phonics is that there were many more phonics interventions. ” This is a genuinely startling conclusion. The combined evidence from a meta-analysis of 29 RCTs on phonics reported by Galuschka et al. is of a qualitatively different kind to the evidence from other trials (e.g., two on medical treatments, three on colored overlays, auditory training, and comprehension). Bowers conflates the gross size of an effect with the security (likely replicability) of the findings they represent. This security of the findings for phonics across multiple trials is the reason why it is the only treatment that is statistically significant for reading outcomes. Bowers also notes that the estimated effect size for phonics adjusting for possible publication bias ( g = 0.198) was smaller than the overall estimate. Again, this effect is both positive in favour of phonics intervention (as coded) and remains statistically significant and practically important. Finally, Bowers repeats his earlier views, criticizing Galuschka et al. for not exploring direct contrasts of interventions as rivals and of not exploring contrasts of systematic versus unsystematic phonics. This critique is made despite the difficulties of such comparisons given the limited number of trials of other approaches beyond phonics that Bowers has already noted. Further, neither of these goals was the purpose of the Galuschka et al. review.
In the spirit of the Stuebing et al. (2008) analysis discussed above and based on well-established theory (e.g., the Simple View of Reading; Gough & Tunmer 1986 ), it seems likely that phonics interventions will both have a discernible unique effect and interact with fluency and comprehension interventions to support reading comprehension. Again, it is troubling to consider why Bowers discounts the consistently positive effects in favour of explicit phonics-type approaches. When treatments in any domain (medicine, counselling, and education) are associated with consistently significant effects, it is wise for professionals in those fields to consider ways to integrate these treatments into their protocols. We are not suggesting that asking empirical questions and further investigating these treatments is unwarranted. However, empirical investigations and naysaying are two completely different pathways. The question that Bowers would be required to answer is whether the bulk of the evidence on the impact of systematic or explicit phonics instruction (not first or solely) is associated with greater impact on student’s learning to read. According to the evidence the answer is yes.
Bowers (2020) considers two reviews by Suggate. The 2010 study explored the effects of student grade severity of impairment and intervention modality on outcomes for at-risk and disabled readers. Suggate (2010) provides evidence of an interaction between modality of intervention and student grade of students, concluding that there is (a) an appreciable effect of phonics in the early elementary years only and (b) that a comprehension focus yields large effects in later elementary years. Bowers contests even this finding about the potential limits of phonics by arguing that the effect size difference between phonics and other approaches is modest in size in kindergarten and grade 1. Bowers focuses on a minority of studies (10%) as being carried out in non-English language contexts as problematic, emphasizes “near-significant” contrasts of English ( d = .48) and non-English language learning context outcomes ( d = .61), and identifies a single study amongst these with potential outlier effects.
Contextualising this analysis again, it is important to look at the effects of phonics across languages to avoid pervasive Anglocentrism in our theorizing ( Share, 2008 ). The differences across languages ( Suggate, 2010 ) are not great in magnitude. Indeed, an “outlier,” if accepted as such, further reduces this difference (note there were 85 studies in this meta-analysis). Bowers draws attention to the modest differences between preliminary effect sizes for overall contrasts of comprehension and phonics in Suggate’s Table 1 . Bowers does not mention that the absolute effect of phonics or comprehension interventions was mediated by an interaction – the final model in Suggate’s Table 2 and Figure 1, with no significant main effect of phonics. While emphasizing the early role of phonics, Suggate (2010 , p. 1596) is careful to conclude that: “ This does not suggest that other interventions, such as language interventions or dialogic book reading, are superseded in importance by phonics interventions in kindergarten or earlier.” There is no obvious reason to set up the “alternative methods” as rivals.
Suggate (2016) examined longer-term outcomes of the impact of 71 phonics and other reading interventions. Overall, the analysis revealed an overall short-term effect ( d = 0.37) that decreased in a follow-up test around a year later ( d = 0.22) with phonics producing the weakest overall effects (phonics, d = 0.07; fluency, d = 0.28; comprehension d = 46; and phonemic awareness, d = 0.36). Suggate also noted design features and treatment dosage affect outcomes.
A number of important points need to be born in mind here. First, the absolute number of contrasts, and participants available in each case varied widely. For phonics, compare the n = 4045 and k = 22 contrasts with fluency, which has an n = 736 and k = 2 contrasts. The “weighted d ” reported by Suggate (2016) and re-reported by Bowers adjusted for these large differences in sample size and thus reduces the observed effect sizes asymmetrically. The unadjusted observed effect for phonics at the just under one-year follow-up from Suggate’s Table 3 is d = 0.30 on word reading ( k = 20 studies, n = 3895 students) and d = 0.25 over all measures ( k = 22 studies, n = 4045 students). Ultimately, we simply have much more data on phonics interventions and word reading outcomes at delayed post-test in the studies within the meta-analysis than we have on pretty much anything else in reading intervention research: It is a highly replicated pattern.
Finally, Suggate (2016) excluded both designs with nested analyses and very long-term follow up studies from his review, the latter on the somewhat surprising grounds that they were unrepresentative. However, such studies are highly informative. Suggate specifically excluded Blachman et al. (2014) as an outlier because it was a 10-year follow up of their RCT intervention trial ( Blachman et al. 2004 ) for struggling 2 nd and 3 rd grade readers. The children had received a 1:1 tutoring intervention for 50 minutes daily each day for 8 months, focusing on unscripted, organized lesson plans for phonics, phoneme blending, fluency, oral reading practice, and spelling. In comparison with a business as usual condition, the intervention yielded large effect sizes at immediate and 1-year post-test on measures of reading accuracy, speed and comprehension. Fully10 years later, Blachman et al. (2014) located 33 treatment and 25 comparison participants from the original sample of 37 treatment and 32 comparison children. Blachman et al. found that of 12 measures of reading the intervention children significantly outperformed the controls on two: Word identification ( d = .53) and a basic skills cluster scores made up of the word identification and a word attack measure ( d = .62). Across seven reading and spelling measures, the mean effect size was d = .24, which is positive and practically significant. We know of no other paper reporting long-term effects of an RCT in English (although see Kjeldsen et al. (2014) , a kindergarten intervention to Grade 9 in Swedish learners).
It is not strictly necessary to prove such long-term effects to show that phonics is useful. A medical metaphor has sometimes been used here (e.g. Coyne et al. 2004 ). Do we construe phonics (or indeed, any intervention) as akin to “insulin” or “inoculation” models? We would not say insulin ‘does not work’ for diabetic patients. For some children though, phonics might be akin to inoculation or at least sustained ‘symptom’ improvement. While we have limited evidence of long-term effects beyond fairly good evidence at the one-year post-test, there is no need to accept that somehow phonics is not efficacious.
Bowers (2020) clusters five other studies, so we will consider these as he does, as a group, excluding. Hammill and Swanson (2006) , which we discussed above. Bowers reports the overall effect sizes from two theses ( Han 2010 ; Sherman 2007 ), and a published paper ( Adesope et al. 2011 ). Sherman reports an effect size of d = 0.53 for word reading in older struggling readers. Han and Adesope et al. both looked at phonics among non-English speakers. In both cases these analyses showed positive effects of phonics ( d = 0.41 and d = 0.40 respectively), but Bowers notes that there were other interventions such as structured writing interventions with slightly larger overall effects ( d = 0.48). We are not sure what the point is here, unless it is to suggest that other practices such as structured writing are also associated with improved outcomes. We fully agree that there is no evidence to suggest “phonics-only” is optimal. We recognize that other practices such as “structure writing” might well be integrated within a reading approach to yield significant reading and writing outcomes. We do not think the issue is which one approach should be used but rather how do we integrate and leverage evidence-based practices (e.g., phonics, fluency) to meet the range of learning needs in the classroom.
In Adesope et al. (2011) the “phonics” interventions included guided reading so are not a pure comparison. As in his consideration of some previous reviews, Bowers (2020) does not report that there are many more studies in the case of phonics ( k = 14 studies, n = 1647 students) versus all other interventions ( k = 2 – 5, largest n = 648). Unlike Bowers, Adesope et al. (2011 , p. 648) do not place these different interventions in opposition to each other, concluding quite reasonably that “The evidence presented in this meta-analysis suggests that cooperative reading, systematic phonics instruction, and diary and structured writing interventions have the potential to enhance the teaching of English literacy to ESL immigrant students.” Finally, Adesope et al. also wisely conclude that contextual factors such as school contexts as well as minority language learner characteristics may influence the effectiveness of any of these strategies. Again, Bowers ignores this entire important authorial nuance.
The final section of Bowers (2020) is devoted to a critique of Torgerson et al. (2018) , a tertiary review that concludes cautiously that phonics has received support, but that more work is still needed to be certain about its effects. Here Bowers repeats his arguments about the absolute size of non-phonic effects, the inclusion of non-English studies, and the purported effects of studies such as those of Levy et al. (1999) on outcomes that we have already considered.
Measured in conventional terms, there is consistent evidence of positive effects for explicit phonics-based intervention on reading outcomes. These positive effects are persuasive because of the large sample size across studies and the range of investigators, settings, and participants. Bowers (2020) perceives that this effect has been exaggerated and we agree there are examples of this being the case. We are also aware of professionals who deny that phonics has a role in improving learning to read ( Smith 2004 ). While we appreciate many of the significant points that Bowers makes, we are aware of the potential dangers of denying the impact of phonics as well as the dangers of overemphasizing its effect. We do not agree that the impact of systematic or explicit phonics instruction is modest and unimportant. This advantage is consistently reported, spanning the 14 meta-analyses reviewed above executed across many countries worldwide over at least eight decades (e.g., Scammacca et al. 2016 ). Effects are reliably still present up to, on average, one year after the interventions have ended ( Suggate, 2016 ). We even have some evidence of the very long-term impacts of reading programs that include phonics on word reading up to 10 years after interventions in children with word-level reading disabilities ( Blachman et al. 2014 ). The effect of phonics is evident for typical and atypical readers and across alphabetic languages in the 14 meta-analyses; for second language learners ( Vaughn et al. 2006 ) and for immigrant children ( Adesope et al. 2011 ), and across RCT trials and other controlled studies. There is evidence that instruction that includes explicit phonics affects fluency and comprehension, even in the most struggling readers, but the latter are more inconsistent ( Morris et al., 2012 ). At a certain level, however, we must ask how comprehension proceeds in struggling readers if they cannot access the print. Table 1 shows a modest effect of PHAB on reading comprehension, which is even larger for comparisons involving RAVE-O. In Torgesen et al. (2001) , one of the interventions was an intense 80-hour sublexical tutoring program with children severely impaired in word reading. It was associated with major gains in decoding and text-based comprehension, but little gains in fluency because these upper elementary children had little access to print before the intervention because of their severe decoding problems.
While sometimes presented otherwise by Bowers (2020) , the reality of the research base is a serious effort from international scientists who, mindful of the strengths and limitations of the outcomes evident in their own data, cautiously explain and contextualize their findings. At best, they know that effect sizes are estimates of effects. Despite the 14 meta-analytic studies supporting explicit phonics, like many of the other researchers involved in this work, we recognize that the relative effects of phonics require conditioned application including such terms such as “may” and “probably” to any causal claims about the role of phonics. On the other hand, when Bowers suggests in the concluding paragraph of his review that the effects of systematic phonics instruction versus alternative reading methods including whole language are a “draw,” we think this conclusion is tantamount to acceptance of the null hypothesis and is not helpful to educators or their students. Not only is this statement not supported by the evidence from which Bowers claims to derive his judgements, it unnecessarily arouses controversy in a field that needs to focus on the best practices available.
Throughout the paper we have highlighted areas of agreement with Bowers (2002). We agree that design and content aspects of many studies is inconsistent and hard to code in meta-analysis. This is an issue across intervention studies and not specific to phonics interventions. We agree that publication bias may be evident: Torgerson et al. (2018) show that of 12 meta-analyses of phonics, six explore publication bias and three report evidence consistent with there being some bias (see also Galuschka et al. 2020 ). While we agree that there remain some significant weaknesses in the empirical data, we note some of these issues span the social and natural sciences broadly – not specifically to this topic. These issues also apply to candidate “alternative treatments.” Furthermore, the bar is set high here for any credible intervention: RCTs, with clear contrast with alternatives, clear (replicable) contrasts of content, clear impacts on comprehension, no publication bias (we assume to this end, widespread trial registration and CONSORT-quality reporting of all trials), then later, clear evidence from meta-analysis of all such RCTs, possibly even 10 year follow ups! We eagerly await such platinum standard data more generally in reading intervention: There is much work to be done! Finally, we also suspect we would share common cause with Bowers against overly strong uses of evidence by some advocates of phonics and some policy makers, and wherever this leads to denuded and impoverished curricula. We prefer a focus on “explicit” instruction and agree with Bowers that word work does not necessarily require a particular scope and sequence or that any particular method for delivering phonics is strongly supported, although we think effective phonics instruction is facilitated by an organized lesson plan that is intentional and not incidental.
What we do not have is a sufficiently strong science of teaching children to read ( Seidenberg 2017 ). Although it would be nice to be able to break down the teaching of reading into a very precise package outlining the role of each component and the best way to teach it, unpacking these components is difficult to do and would potentially yield small effects, as in the PHAB condition in Morris et al. (2012) . In the teaching world, there are many factors affecting children and learning to read. What is clear is that the questions posed by Bowers (2020) , as well as extreme proponents of phonics, is an artificial one that does not support progress in the science of teaching children to read. In the US and UK, legislation is passed mandating certain approaches to reading instruction, and even worse, prescribing specific commercial programs for children identified with dyslexia ( Petscher et al. 2019 ). However, we would do well to ask the right questions about how to teach effectively the range of learners in our classrooms to read. This requires embracing the complexity and multiple competency view of reading. Even in the area of phonics, there are many ways to help children access sublexical components of words and one approach does not work with all children, even those identified with dyslexia. We also recognize that while phonics instruction is associated with improved reading outcomes, the amount of phonics instruction required, the level of explicitness, and how phonics instruction is integrated into other important elements of reading instruction requires further investigation.
We agree with Bowers (2020) that alternative approaches to teaching reading need to be studied and suggest that the current research base will be enhanced by comprehensive approaches that integrate- not balance- different components of reading instruction with ample consideration of the range of learners and their instructional needs. For many children, these components need to be taught explicitly. In particular, children who have trouble accessing words because of problems with phonological processing need explicit code-based instruction. They also need to practice to build automaticity. Children learning to read English will need to learn how to navigate both the morphemic and phonemic aspect of the spelling system of English. Comprehension instruction recognizing the critical roles of word meaning and world knowledge also requires a more explicit approach because many children do not develop vocabulary, background knowledge, and comprehension strategies through passive reading.
Focusing on the integration of these activities in a comprehensive approach to reading instruction would be beneficial. Reading instruction should not occur in the absence of opportunities to read and write and oral language development. These opportunities are usually present in reading instruction, making it hard to isolate the effects of systematic phonics instruction. However, these successful integrated approaches rely on facilitating students’ access to word reading and meaning through effective instructional practices that demonstrate the ways in which phonemes map to print in regular and irregular ways providing many opportunities to read words so that the structure of language is acquired both explicitly and implicitly. How to integrate comprehensive programs and use them to differentiate and customize instruction for individual children is a much better question. Programs should package components with known efficacy and evaluate intervention outcomes when the package permits differentiation (e.g., Connor & Morrison, 2016 ).
The dichotomy of systematic phonics versus less systematic/no phonics instruction is artificial because these activities exist on a continuum, representing an outmoded question that is hard to address from the available studies ( Stuebing et al. 2008 ). The issue is how to consider the reading development of the learner and to integrate these components into a comprehensive reading program that permits differentiation for the individual learner. As Seidenberg (2017) pointed out, many children come to school primed to learn to read. However, because of environmental factors as well as biological factors that make it harder for the brain to mediate reading, many children struggle to learn to decode and therefore are less able to access print. Much of what Bowers (2020) calls exaggeration is a reaction to the need of these children for explicit phonics instruction. Many children do not get the word work they need, partly because it is not intentional, explicit, and well organized.
In the spirit of seeking clarity and maximal consensus, we map out seven major claims made by Bowers underpinning his original review and the roughly equal number of points of agreement and disagreement in Table 3 along with relevant evidence. Table 3 acts only as a summary overview of the multiple issues discussed here to aid a reader in mapping the broad arguments, and should only be interpreted in light of the nuances we elaborate in the main text throughout this article. We finish with three claims in points 8–10 that are not explicitly made by Bowers (2020) but which might potentially serve as unifying statements and underpin the most productive future work on reading interventions to meet the needs of all learners.
The 21st century challenge is to meet the distinct needs of students who are “primed” for reading as well as those requiring much more explicit access to the alphabetic principle, while also engaging all children with the complexity of their language and their literature. To this end, a suitably nuanced and evidenced science of teaching reading is a work in progress. This ambitious enterprise may involve healthy friendly professional disagreement, but it will also need a mindset among all research leaders that acknowledges this complexity over old binary modes of the 20th century, the importance of this goal to the wide community, and also the importance of communicating it accurately and effectively to all of the users of our science. To stimulate this type of discussion was the goal of this paper.
We would like to thank Professor Genevieve McArthur for discussion of ideas in this paper and Dr. Yusra Ahmed for assistance with the computation of effect sizes.
Funding: Grant P50 HD052117, Texas Center for Learning Disabilities, from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development, supported Fletcher and Vaughn. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development or the National Institutes of Health.
Conflicts of Interest: None
Declarations
Ethics approval, consent to participate, availability of data, code availability: Not applicable
Publisher's Disclaimer: This Author Accepted Manuscript is a PDF file of a an unedited peer-reviewed manuscript that has been accepted for publication but has not been copyedited or corrected. The official version of record that is published in the journal is kept up to date and so may therefore differ from this version.
Jack M. Fletcher, Department of Psychology, University of Houston.
Robert Savage, Department of Psychology and Human Development, Institute for Education, University College- London.
Sharon Vaughn, Department of Special Education, University of Texas-Austin.
Home Blog Teaching Trends How Explain Everything helps you teach phonics to beginner readers
September 4th, 2024 by Ashlee Taylor
Table of Contents
Phonics is a popular way of teaching introductory reading and writing skills. It involves educating beginning readers about how individual letters and certain groups of letters sound in the English language. In many schools, phonics is key to teaching children how to read.
Phonics can be considered a code – with the squiggles and lines that make up letters representing a sound. And teaching phonics is key to helping learners crack it.
The best way to teach phonics involves breaking things down systematically. A popular phonics methodology that takes things step by step is called Letters and Sounds . This was developed by the United Kingdom’s Department of Education in 2007 but serves as a good basis for teaching English phonics anywhere.
The six phases of Letters and Sounds phonics teaching are as follows:
Phase 1 lays the foundation for using phonics for reading.
This first phase involves encouraging young children to become more aware of sounds. This content is appropriate from preschool onwards. Phonics lessons for kindergarten should begin here, even if some children have already been exposed to this understanding from parents or preschool educators.
Phase 1 focuses on:
Teachers can use Explain Everything’s online whiteboard to create relevant, multimedia learning resources. For example, teachers can upload images, audio, and video files of objects and instruments via Explain Everything and share these with their classes via a connected device. By doing this, children can hear phonetic sounds alongside visual representations which can help them remember what they’ve learned.
If using Explain Everything on an interactive display, such as a Promethean ActivPanel 9 , teachers can take this a step further. On displays like this, children can use their fingers or whiteboard pens to write out the related phonetic sounds. Once pupils become more familiar with these sounds, teachers can utilize the drag-and-drop features of an interactive display to encourage class participation. For an engaging activity, teachers can upload images of objects and their corresponding phonemes and ask their pupils to match the sounds to the pictures.
Phase 2 focuses heavily on phonemes and helps children learn the most common ones.
Following the Letters and Sounds framework, educators will teach 23 phonic sounds of letters by breaking this down into five distinct sets. This helps pace the learning and enables teachers to identify when their pupils are ready to move on.
Knowing the below groups is key for how to teach letter sounds:
At the same time as teaching these sounds, teachers should also support children to learn how to spell words. This should start with the most straightforward words, described as VC (vowel-consonant), i.e. two letter words like ‘no’ and ‘be’, and CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant), i.e. three letter words like ‘bit’ and ‘hug’. Although only learning small words at this stage, there will still be some tricky words. For example, ‘no’ and ‘go’ do not rhyme with ‘do’. Because of this, children need to learn some words by recognition.
Teachers can use Explain Everything to create sound mats. These are visual learning devices that show each grapheme (the letter or letters that represent how we write a phoneme) with a corresponding image. For Phase 2 phonics, teachers can create a sound mat for each set (e.g., Set 1 – s, a, t, p) and use Explain Everything’s built-in Clipart Library to quickly add in relevant images (e.g., snake, apple, tea, pan).
Phase 3 explores less common phonemes and the sounds of letters not covered in Phase 2.
The new Phase, 3 phonics sounds, are:
Teachers should introduce these individually because these are more difficult than those introduced in Phase 2. By gradually incorporating these phonemes into reading lessons, teachers give their pupils time to familiarize themselves with the harder material.
By the end of Phase 3, children should be able to recite the alphabet and identify all 26 letters.
Once again, teachers may choose to use Explain Everything to create a sound mat. In addition to Clipart resources, Explain Everything Advanced has integrations with Unsplash and GIPHY. Teachers can create more variety in their sound mats by sourcing photographs from Unsplash or GIFs from GIPHY.
As Phase 3 also focuses on learning all the letters of the alphabet, teachers could also create an alphabet mat. An alphabet mat is like a sound mat but lists the letters of the alphabet rather than a collection of phonemes.
Phase 4 is about learning to use phonemes.
Part of this involves educators teaching their pupils how to recognize consonant clusters (which are sets of adjacent consonants). At this stage, children should be able to write and say words without having to sound out each phoneme. It’s here where children begin to understand ‘cat’ as ‘cat’ rather than ‘c-a-t’ for example.
This phase is also when teachers introduce more tricky words that do not fit phoneme patterns. The Letters and Sounds teaching list consists of:
For this phase, teachers can continue to use Explain Everything to create sound mats. However, as students progress throughout their phonics lessons, they may want their teachers to challenge them more. Creating interactive activities can keep pupils engaged and encourage independent learning. One way of doing this is to insert Clipart and have a related word partially spelled out below, e.g. a picture of a hand and then ‘h _ _ _’. The teacher can then ask students to fill in the gaps.
For Phase 5, educators should return to teaching new phonemes and graphemes.
As children are becoming more confident at this stage, it’s time for teachers to introduce alternate spellings and vowel combinations. These phonemes sound different to what children may expect, based on some of the ‘rules’ they’ve learned earlier.
The Phase 5 phonics sounds are:
Teachers can use Explain Everything to create another sound mat for the new phonemes. They can also use Explain Everything to create picture activities. By using Clipart or uploading images, teachers can create a scene that shows pictures relating to newly learned words (e.g., a girl with her toys in a playground next to a slide). Teachers can annotate these images with their relevant phonemes (e.g., ir, oy, ay, i-e) by using the writing and highlighting tools built into the Explain Everything toolbar. Teachers can then ask their pupils to identify the words.
At this point, children should have already learned most graphemes and phonemes. Children should now be able to sight-read a lot of words, including some tricky ones. They should also be confident enough in phonics skills (such as sounding out and blending) to attempt pronouncing new words.
The focus for teachers here is how to go from phonics to reading. Educators will now want to steer their lessons towards the acts of reading and spelling at a beginner’s level rather than the method of phonics. Children should now have the skills to start reading independently and gradually progress to higher-level reading activities.
At this stage, teachers may want to use Explain Everything to facilitate feedback. The 3-2-1 Reflection template invites students to think about three things they’ve learned, two questions they still have, and one thing they found particularly challenging. Teachers can adjust this template to ask their pupils different questions and focus on phonics. While children in their early years may struggle to fill this in independently, teachers can still use this template to encourage their pupils to reflect. By asking pupils to think about this and listening to their unique answers, teachers can address any common areas of concern. Educators can also use feedback to identify students who may need more support.
Explain Everything offers a variety of free ready-made templates to help teachers deliver interactive lessons.
Teachers can use these templates for all subjects, including phonics.
One Explain Everything template that teachers can use to teach phonics is:
A crucial part of understanding phonics is recognizing graphemes.
This letter tracing template helps young learners practice writing out different letters. This allows children to become familiar with the shapes of graphemes while improving their handwriting. The template includes a word example for each letter, reminding pupils of the related phoneme.
Students can use this interactive template on their devices, such as iPads or Chromebooks. This enables pupils to practice at their own pace.
View the Letter Tracing interactive template
Explain Everything’s free online whiteboard software can help you create resources for teaching phonics, including sound and alphabet mats. Plus, you can encourage interactivity with tasks that your pupils can get involved with.
To begin your journey, sign up for your free Explain Everything account today . Ready for more? Upgrade to Explain Everything Advanced and benefit from unlimited projects and the latest features.
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Innovation clinic—significant achievements for 2023-24.
The Innovation Clinic continued its track record of success during the 2023-2024 school year, facing unprecedented demand for our pro bono services as our reputation for providing high caliber transactional and regulatory representation spread. The overwhelming number of assistance requests we received from the University of Chicago, City of Chicago, and even national startup and venture capital communities enabled our students to cherry-pick the most interesting, pedagogically valuable assignments offered to them. Our focus on serving startups, rather than all small- to medium-sized businesses, and our specialization in the needs and considerations that these companies have, which differ substantially from the needs of more traditional small businesses, has proven to be a strong differentiator for the program both in terms of business development and prospective and current student interest, as has our further focus on tackling idiosyncratic, complex regulatory challenges for first-of-their kind startups. We are also beginning to enjoy more long-term relationships with clients who repeatedly engage us for multiple projects over the course of a year or more as their legal needs develop.
This year’s twelve students completed over twenty projects and represented clients in a very broad range of industries: mental health and wellbeing, content creation, medical education, biotech and drug discovery, chemistry, food and beverage, art, personal finance, renewable energy, fintech, consumer products and services, artificial intelligence (“AI”), and others. The matters that the students handled gave them an unparalleled view into the emerging companies and venture capital space, at a level of complexity and agency that most junior lawyers will not experience until several years into their careers.
While the Innovation Clinic’s engagements are highly confidential and cannot be described in detail, a high-level description of a representative sample of projects undertaken by the Innovation Clinic this year includes:
More information regarding other types of transactional projects that we typically take on can be found here .
Thanks to another generous gift from Douglas Clark, ’89, and managing partner of Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, we were able to operationalize the second Innovation Trek over Spring Break 2024. The Innovation Trek provides University of Chicago Law School students with a rare opportunity to explore the innovation and venture capital ecosystem in its epicenter, Silicon Valley. The program enables participating students to learn from business and legal experts in a variety of different industries and roles within the ecosystem to see how the law and economics principles that students learn about in the classroom play out in the real world, and facilitates meaningful connections between alumni, students, and other speakers who are leaders in their fields. This year, we took twenty-three students (as opposed to twelve during the first Trek) and expanded the offering to include not just Innovation Clinic students but also interested students from our JD/MBA Program and Doctoroff Business Leadership Program. We also enjoyed four jam-packed days in Silicon Valley, expanding the trip from the two and a half days that we spent in the Bay Area during our 2022 Trek.
The substantive sessions of the Trek were varied and impactful, and enabled in no small part thanks to substantial contributions from numerous alumni of the Law School. Students were fortunate to visit Coinbase’s Mountain View headquarters to learn from legal leaders at the company on all things Coinbase, crypto, and in-house, Plug & Play Tech Center’s Sunnyvale location to learn more about its investment thesis and accelerator programming, and Google’s Moonshot Factory, X, where we heard from lawyers at a number of different Alphabet companies about their lives as in-house counsel and the varied roles that in-house lawyers can have. We were also hosted by Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati and Fenwick & West LLP where we held sessions featuring lawyers from those firms, alumni from within and outside of those firms, and non-lawyer industry experts on topics such as artificial intelligence, climate tech and renewables, intellectual property, biotech, investing in Silicon Valley, and growth stage companies, and general advice on career trajectories and strategies. We further held a young alumni roundtable, where our students got to speak with alumni who graduated in the past five years for intimate, candid discussions about life as junior associates. In total, our students heard from more than forty speakers, including over twenty University of Chicago alumni from various divisions.
The Trek didn’t stop with education, though. Throughout the week students also had the opportunity to network with speakers to learn more from them outside the confines of panel presentations and to grow their networks. We had a networking dinner with Kirkland & Ellis, a closing dinner with all Trek participants, and for the first time hosted an event for admitted students, Trek participants, and alumni to come together to share experiences and recruit the next generation of Law School students. Several speakers and students stayed in touch following the Trek, and this resulted not just in meaningful relationships but also in employment for some students who attended.
More information on the purposes of the Trek is available here , the full itinerary is available here , and one student participant’s story describing her reflections on and descriptions of her experience on the Trek is available here .
The Innovation Clinic is grateful to all of its clients for continuing to provide its students with challenging, high-quality legal work, and to the many alumni who engage with us for providing an irreplaceable client pipeline and for sharing their time and energy with our students. Our clients are breaking the mold and bringing innovations to market that will improve the lives of people around the world in numerous ways. We are glad to aid in their success in any way that we can. We look forward to another productive year in 2024-2025!
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Dissertations, Theses, and Projects Graduate Studies Spring 5-12-2023 The Effectiveness of Using Phonics Instruction and Interventions in Elementary Classrooms Brittany Kasprick [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://red.mnstate.edu/thesis Part of the Curriculum and Instruction Commons
teachers‟ perceptions of the Jolly Phonics program implemented to improve students‟ literacy in Grades 1-3. Guided by Engestrom‟s activity theory, the effectiveness of the Jolly Phonics approach was examined based on the sociocultural learning theories of Vygotsky, Dewey, and Piaget. The research questions focused on teachers ...
All Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2021 Reading Instructional Methods: The Effectiveness of Phonetic-Based, Whole Language, and Balanced Approaches to Teaching ... Systematic phonics is the explicit teaching of letter-sound correspondences before focus on the meanings of words (Bowers, 2020). To best teach sounds in speech, phonics-based
the example, when students come to disagreement in discussing things, they actually are going ... A Dissertation. USA: Louisiana State University. Adams, M. J. 1990. ... as phonics relies on ...
came from 132 K-1 students who received systematic and explicit phonics instruction during the 2016-2017 school year and 132 K-1 students who received multisensory phonics as a component of systematic and explicit multisensory phonics instruction during the 2017-2018 school year. Data were analyzed with Mann-Whitney . U. test, an ...
Understanding the importance of integrating phonics into reading instruction is. important because it can increase the students' reading ability at early ages. Also, students who. are able to use phonics skills to help decode unknown words will be stronger readers. Through.
For example, additional research can provide us with a more fine-grained understanding of the interaction between learners' personal characteristics (e.g., age, L1 reading ability etc.) and instructional techniques and approaches to which they are exposed. ... structured, phonics-based program [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Arizona ...
Phonics Phonics has been called one among many cues used in reading (e.g., Dahl, Sharer, Lawson, & Grogran, 1999). It refers to instructional practices that emphasize how spellings are related to speech sounds in systematic ways (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). By this definition, phonics instruction is found in many different
This investigation was directed towards identifying the relationship between different teaching methods and children's progress in word reading, spelling and reading comprehension. Initially, such progress was monitored from 1993-1995 in 12 Primary classes. Analyses of the data collected indicated that (a) accelerated letter-sound knowledge and ...
Explicit, systematic phonics instruction—especially instruction that is accompanied by other methods (i.e., constant time delay; small group supplemental instruction) or instruments (i.e., an iPad)—may be effective for certain populations of students, including struggling ... For example, phonics instruction could be embedded into ...
The findings showed that the. teacher had successfully implement the 5 skills in Jolly Phonics, namely. (1) learning the letter sounds, (2) learning letter formation, (3) blending -. for reading ...
This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by St. John's Scholar. It has been accepted for ... Research indicates that visual phonic interventions such as Visual Phonics used alongside a phonics program enhances grapheme-phoneme correspondence. That practice in turn improves overall literacy achievement. However, as rates deaf ...
the whole of this sample, but mainly on two sub-samples: normally developing children (n = 273), and children at risk of reading failure (n = 137). The latter sub-sample was defined as
For example, some English teachers took phonics instruction as an easy way out, because they were not confident in conversing in English themselves (Zhou and Mcgride-Chang, 2009). ... ERIC, web of science, and ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global were searched for studies of interest published in English from 2000 to 2016, including a large ...
This dissertation examines the impact of synthetic phonics on teaching learners with English as an Additional language (EAL) to read. Synthetic phonics involves children learning phoneme-grapheme correspondences and then blending phonemes to decode words when reading.
Phonics has attracted debate for years, as a means of trying to increase reading attainment (Conrad and Serlin, 2005). This chapter will discuss the research and literature surrounding the topic of phonics, and Read Write Inc (RWI). It will dissect the studies that have shaped the way in which phonics is taught - specifically
There is a widespread consensus in the research community that reading instruction in English should first focus on teaching letter (grapheme) to sound (phoneme) correspondences rather than adopt meaning-based reading approaches such as whole language instruction. That is, initial reading instruction should emphasize systematic phonics. In this systematic review, I show that this conclusion is ...
Definition Issues. We interpret Bowers (2020) statement about phonics approaches to reading instruction as being driven by phonology first and meaning second - whereas, whole language and balanced literacy approaches are meaning first - as being an inaccurate portrayal of reading instruction research in the last several decades. Most approaches to reading instruction that include explicit ...
Teaching children to read is one of the most important goals of early years and primary education worldwide. Given the importance of learning to read and write for children's life chances (The Government Office for Science, 2008) it is also an emotive topic for many people.The emotion that the topic can generate has even resulted in the phrase 'the reading wars' being used to describe the ...
ege of Education, Tamale, Ghana.AbstractThis study examines the use of phonics as a method of teaching reading in basic schools within the framework of generative phonology proposed by Chomsky and Halle (1968) in the Sound Pattern of Eng. ish (SPE) as discussed in Hawkins (1992). The study aims at describing the patterns of phonic sounds w.
the relationship between phonics instruction and L2 literacy development. One early meta-analysis of L2 studies that was based on a rather small sample of only five studies lead to the cautious conclusion that explicit PA and phonics instruction benefits L2 learners (August & Shanahan, 2007). However,
1.8 In this report we present the findings of a 7 year study in which we examined the effects of teaching synthetic phonics on literacy attainment. In an earlier study we had found that 5 year old children getting a supplementary synthetic phonics programme had better word reading, spelling and phonemic awareness skills than children getting a ...
How to teach phonics step by step. The best way to teach phonics involves breaking things down systematically. A popular phonics methodology that takes things step by step is called Letters and Sounds. This was developed by the United Kingdom's Department of Education in 2007 but serves as a good basis for teaching English phonics anywhere.
In Phonics approach the students learn about letters and sounds to reconstruct the words by. blending the letters. Because, teaching students to understand the alphabetic principle is important ...
General The Innovation Clinic continued its track record of success during the 2023-2024 school year, facing unprecedented demand for our pro bono services as our reputation for providing high caliber transactional and regulatory representation spread. The overwhelming number of assistance requests we received from the University of Chicago, City of Chicago, and even national startup and ...