Comprehension: Closing the Decoding Crack is NOT enough! GET to the Meaning!

In Indiana, all Third Graders have to take the IREAD-3 Test. It is an assessment that measures foundational reading standards to Grade 3 students each spring. It is a summative assessment developed in accordance with House Enrolled Act 1367(also know as Public Law 109 in 2010). The test covers three categories:

• Reading Foundations.
• Reading Vocabulary
• Reading:Nonfiction
• Reading: Literature

As the Instructional Leader/Literacy Coach at my school, the Data showed that 79% of my students did not show proficiency in the foundations of Reading. I cringed watching them struggle with decoding when attempting to get meaning from the Nonfiction and Literature passages. Why? Because they could not get past the decoding. At the third grade level, they should have been able to identifying the words first, based on the patterns, and then identify the meaning. Comprehension is the heart of reading. My heart hurts for my students because I know that good readers develop automaticity, the ability to read words as wholes with little conscious effort, and then have the mental attention and thinking capacity to focus on comprehension (Share & Stanovich, 1995).

With all the research on the brain, it is important for us to know and understanding how the brain works in decoding and comprehension. The brain-based research informs us that the brain is designed to talk, not read. To read well, different areas of the brain must decode text by translating letters into the speech sounds. Only then can the brain identify the word the letters represent and draw on the brain's general cognitive processes to find its meaning(NICHD). Knowing this information has the potential to clarify and change the way we teach reading. After we have clarity, it is important to make sure that our students have a clear understanding of how the reading brain works. Our students need to have a clear understanding that when they are reading for meaning, decoding has to be done immediately and automatically. This life long skill will ensure that they are familiar with the language of text and have better vocabularies. Proficient readers already know that context accelerates word recognition.

Most literacy authors and researchers agree that when students exert too much energy in the act of decoding (word recognition), little, if any, remains for the process of comprehension. Beck and Juel (1995) stressed the importance of "learning the code in first grade because early decoding reliably predict reading comprehension in subsequent grades. This is the path that I am taking my teachers in the future.

Poor comprehension occurs because students take far too long to read the words, taxing their memory and learning little energy for remembering and understanding what they have read. there is no way to bypass this decoding and word recognition stage of reading. According to Lyon(1997), a deficiency in these skills cannot be appreciably offset by using context to figure out the pronunciation of unknown words, although context can be employed to confirm the accuracy of word decoding and initial understanding of what has been read.

Distribution of Reading Difficulties

Cole, a third grader, told me he didn't like reading because of the "words." That could be the sentiment of the 79% that did not reach proficiency. They have been taught so many isolated phonics skills that they actually do not know what needs to happen when they comprehend. This leads to a lot of guessing when they are asked questions about what they have read.

1. Decoding: Approximately 75% of struggling readers have poorly developed skills in word recognition and fluency.
2. Comprehension: Approximately 25% of struggling reading have adequate skills in fluent decoding and yet have difficulty accessing the meaning. (Stahl,1999)

Slow and inaccurate decoding are the best predictors of deficits in reading comprehension. A skillful reader's capacity for word recognition is so over learned and effortless that it process almost subattentionally, feeding rather than competing with comprehension processes(Adams,1997)

Start Decoding and Comprehension Together

Decoding and Comprehension should go hand in hand. Students shouldn't have to wait until they get to the upper grades to focus on meaning. Brady and Moats(1997) agree with this statement by saying,"both sound analysis and attention to meaning should be included from the outset," and that teachers should "be able to foster comprehension using validated techniques such as semantic webbing, reciprocal teaching, and analysis of genre. Stimulation of a child's comprehension abilities should be part of literacy instruction from the beginning." There should be a balance between decoding and comprehension from the beginning.

The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development(1997) stated that "although the ability to sound out words is essential for learning to read, it is not enough. Written language is not just speech written down. Instead, text brings new vocabulary, new language patterns, new thoughts, and new modes of thinking. To enjoy and profit from reading, children must also learn to take the time to reflect on these aspects of the text.

Activities to Strengthen Decoding

1. Help the students recognize the connecting link between sounds and symbols by;

• Seeing their own words in print
• Hearing language and then seeing it in print
• Hearing language while seeing it in print
• Building a sight vocabulary of names, signs, labels, and other significant words in their experiences.

2. Help students make generalizations about sound/symbol relationships by:

• Finding phonics/structural patterns
• Practicing in decodable and connected text
• Playing word games
• Building group and personal word lists (word families, rhyming words, words that start the same
• Reading and writing alphabet books
• Providing activities that focus on auditory and visual discrimination

Activities to Strengthen Comprehension

• Activating Relevant Background Knowledge
• Retelling (Summarizing, Paraphrasing, Clarifying
• Critical Thinking Strategies(Predicting, Questioning, Confirming, Documenting)
• Visualization (Making pictures in your mind)
• Metacognition (Thinking about your Thinking)
• Using the Structural Elements of Text
• Making the Process Visible (Graphic Organizers)
• Using Syntactic Knowledge
• Knowing What Words Mean

Get to the Meaning! Now!

The single most valuable activity for developing children's comprehension is reading itself. The amount of reading that children do is shown to predict the growth in reading comprehension. This is why we can't let decoding get in the way. Through reading, students encounter new words, new language, and new facts. Beyond that, however, they encounter thought and modes of thinking that might never arise in their face-to-face world. In order to move students to high intellectual performance in literacy, all students should be given the skills that they need to to read frequently, broadly, and thoughtfully. We must help them quickly get to meaning when they are reading. This will give them pure joy!

Resources:

Struggling Readers,Day 1(Closing the Decoding Crack)&2(Mastering the Meaning), Wright Group Publishing, Bothell, WA;2000.