Before reading remediation can be undertaken, reading specialist are first faced with the task of determining which skill set in a particular students is weak. Generally, remedial work can be divided into two areas: reading comprehension and decoding. Sometimes, children have weaknesses in implicit comprehension; they lack the sophisticated knowledge base and analytical skills to comprehend text on deeper level (beyond the obvious, or explicit). For another, large group of students, reading is not fluent, and working memory is overtaxed, resulting in weak comprehension. This second group of learners includes both weak decoders, those that have been found to lack the automaticity of the fluent reader, as well as those whose deficits are deeper, specifically the dyslexic student. Remediation techniques for this special group, as well as an interesting finding regarding the benefit of word-families, are the focus of this weblog.
Generally accepted as a weakness in the ability to internalize the grapheme (letter) and corresponding phoneme (sound) within a language, (often labeled as auditory/visual processing deficit), weak decoders and more severe dyslexics struggle with automaticity in reading. Specialists, whose work focuses on this area of weakness, are basically dealing with those individuals for whom the sounds and symbols of a language have not “gelled” in a strong, permanent way, within the brain. For this group, that needs intensive practice with the sounds and letters within a language, the first step in remediation is the introduction of individual letters and sounds and the manipulation of the smallest, individual sounds in words. Work at this level generally involves letter recognition, sound production, and simple exercises in decoding and encoding CVC (consonant/vowel/consonant) words, like “cat” and “sip”.
Following this rudimentary springboard, practitioners generally go on to gradually introduce larger “chunks” of sounds, constructs common to a language that include groups of letters that often appear together (like “ing”, “onk”, “atch”, “ic”, “orm”)- chunks of frequently appearing letters that are often referred to as word-families. It is most often the practice of reading teachers to wait in introducing these letter groups, and favoring mastery of individual letter/sound correspondences first.
Interestingly, I can recall several students with whom I worked as a beginning reading specialist, who actually began to markedly “take off” in their reading fluency, when the word-families were introduced. While initial sound/letter correspondence is vital, it has been my experience that many students actually begin to recognize groups of letters that often appear together in English in almost the same way that they would recognize a face. Mastering word-families involves much the same concept as learning “sight words”, which due to their irregular spelling, are not taught through decoding, but through instant recognition.
I fell upon this phenomenon of the recognition of groups of letters with even the earliest readers, specifically, with a student whose reading was not progressing at the pace at which I would have expected, given the intensity of remediation that we were practicing. Discouraged with the slow pace at which he was advancing, it was by sheer accident, that I noticed him one day subvocalizing when he saw some words on a poster in the reading clinic where we were working. He seemed to be “reading” the ending sound of a word, and then mumbling on to himself with rhyming real and nonsense words that had the same ending sound. The moment was nothing short of a revelation, as I realized that what he likely needed were word- families to facilitate his integration of the letters and sounds of English.
To this end, I began to focus more on these common groups of letters to facilitate his fluent reading. I was not entirely certain that he had mastered the entire alphabet of sounds, nor the digraphs (two letters, one sound, like “th” and “sh”). And I recall running the idea of bringing on word-families at that juncture to my professor, whose response was simply, “Give it a shot!” I soon realized that allowing him to see word-families right at the start could very well be beneficial, as the visual impact of the groups of common groups of letters was very powerful. The speed with which his progress advanced was nothing short of remarkable. I remember berating myself for having focused for so long on specific letter/sound correspondences, and not having moved sooner toward utilizing word-families in my instruction.
This fascinating finding moved my reading practice forward, providing me with the knowledge that many struggling decoders actually do better, sooner, by focusing on groups of commonly connected phonemes, or word-families. To that end, although I will initially focus on alphabet and sounds with my earliest emergent readers, I have begun, with considerable success, to introduce word-families to even those youngest students, often at the same time at which I attempt to reinforce individual letter/sound correspondences and digraphs. The process seems to facilitate the recognition of groups of common letters within English, which for many students seems to be a key to cracking the code of fluent reading.
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