The BIG SIX: Comprehension & Oral Language

Comprehension 

At the end of Scarborough’s tightly woven reading rope, we see skilled reading. The “fluent execution and coordination of word recognition and text comprehension.”  Foundational word-reading and bridging skills alone are not sufficient for building skilled readers. We have encountered students who have poor reading comprehension despite strong decoding and reading fluency. So what is comprehension and how do we teach it?

According to Scarborough’s Reading Rope language comprehension consists of multiple sub-skills including background knowledge, vocabulary, language structures, verbal reasoning, and literacy knowledge. 

Just as Scarborough’s Reading Rope symbolizes, language comprehension should not be taught in isolation or after students are fluent readers. Rather it should be taught concurrently with word recognition and language comprehension instruction should begin early. Research supports a simultaneous, rather than sequential, model of reading instruction. Along with the development of phonological awareness, print concepts, and alphabet knowledge, young learners begin to develop their oral language comprehension. Through connected text readings, classroom discussions, and storytelling activities learners can begin to build many language comprehension sub-skills. 

As readers become more proficient, comprehension skills become more complex. Moreover, we read fiction and non fiction texts differently. Research has examined the impact of text structure instruction and understanding genre. For instance, with regard to understanding fiction stories, studies show that learners benefit from instruction in story elements and common structures.  Whereas, teaching text structures and features has foster reading comprehension development for informational text.

Oral Language

In this series of blog posts on The Big Six, I have purposely saved Oral Language for last. Each of these key elements are important to build proficient readers. Scarborough’s Reading Rope helps us to visualize the process of teaching these skills concurrently, they are all entangled and dependent on one another. Oral language lays the foundation for students to develop reading and writing skills and its presence in reading instruction supports the learner as reading tasks become more complex. In other words, oral language is a key part of all instruction, whether the focus is phonics, semantics, or sight recognition. 

The first way to focus on oral language is to engage in frequent meaningful discussions with your class. However, not only should oral language be part of daily instruction. It should be directly taught using a gradual release of responsibility. Initially, younger students may practice the skills of speaking to be understood and listening to understand. Educators can help students develop these skills by setting shared expectations for discussions, helping to restate or clarify what students are saying, or asking follow up questions.

The BIG SIX: Phonics - What to teach? When to teach?

Phonics is a process and just like our phonological awareness skills it is taught from less complex patterns to more complex patterns. See below for two examples of a phonics continuum for teaching. 

If you’ve been involved with vertical planning in a Florida elementary school, you may have noticed a connection between these continuums and the Phonics Progression of Foundations Benchmarks from Florida's B.E.S.T. Standards. 

Notice how the skills on our Phonics Progression of Foundations Benchmarks from Florida's B.E.S.T. Standards builds to more and more complexity. Another factor to note on the B.E.S.T. Standards is that phonics is taught through the upper grades.

Research shows that foundational skills are critical for K-5 students, yet we often see that explicit and systematic phonics instruction stops in 2nd grade. How are our upper grade levels learning to decode and encode multisyllabic words? 

As the texts students encounter increase in complexity, returning to the core skills of phonics and word recognition helps students feel confident when they come to a challenging word or phrase because they have strategies to work through it. Moreover, if you have been teaching long enough, you have probably met a student who was a fluent reader, but could not spell. Or the student who can read some multisyllabic words like, “observation” but cannot decode words like, “vigil”. More often than not, these students struggle with key phonics skills that help them to read and write words accurately. Strengthening phonics skills helps our students become stronger readers and writers. 

As students enter third grade, they should be equipped with basic decoding skills for single-syllable words. In third grade, the focus shifts to decoding multisyllabic words and morphology (the process of understanding how to break a word into its prefix, suffix, and root). Let’s take a closer look at phonics instruction on syllables and morphemes which may be beneficial for students in our upper grades. If the goal of phonics instruction is developing automaticity in reading and writing using sounds and letters then teaching the six syllable types, syllable division, and morphemes are key phonics skills. Learning the rules of syllable division and morphemes provides our students with an effective strategy for chunking up those bigger words into more manageable parts. Consider the example below:

Decoding the word “unreachable” by…
Single graphemes (letters)	u-n-r-e-a-c-h-a-b-l-e
Graphemes/Phonograms	u-n-r-ea-ch-a-b-le
Syllables	un-reach-a-ble
Morphemes	un-reach-able

Students who receive direct instruction on syllables and morphemes are going to be able to read and write quickly and more accurately than students who do not receive this instruction. 

Moreover, there are six syllable types in our language. These syllable types have pronunciation rules that help readers to break apart multisyllabic words accurately. 

(https://sarahsnippets.com/syllable-types/)

While it is my belief that phonics should be taught well into upper elementary, from my experience phonics instruction should be differentiated and taught in small group settings. Duke and Mesmer stated that,

 “Whole-class phonics is an “instructional misstep” [that] means that fewer children will develop strong word-reading skills. In addition, ineffective phonics instruction is likely to require more class time and/or later compensatory interventions, taking time away from the growth of other important contributors to literacy development.” (Duke and Mesmer, Phonics Faux Pas: Avoiding Instructional Missteps in Teaching Letter-Sound Relationships American Educators 2019). 

Effective phonics instruction should be targeted; include short teacher directed lessons; time for student practice; and teacher/student feedback. Two of my favorite resources for teaching phonics in primary and upper grades include SIPPS (Systematic Instruction in Phonological Awareness, Phonics, and Sight Words) and Words Their Way. Both of these programs encourage differentiated phonics instruction and provide age appropriate activities for primary and upper grade level students.