The Five Strands of Reading - 2015 Master Teacher Training, Part 1

Many teachers and parents feel confused about how to teach phonemic awareness, systematic phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension skills. Do we begin with fluency? Or phonics? What is phonemic awareness? This video provides insight into the organic process of learning to read! Discover how the five strands of reading work together in this training by Logic of English author, curriculum designer and trainer Denise Eide.

In this video, filmed at a Logic of English Master Teacher Training Course in 2015, Denise guides you to a deeper understanding of the important relationships between these five strands of reading and how effective instruction must incorporate all of them to foster the development of strong reading skills.

The Logic of English is committed to fighting the literacy crisis through phonics, reading, and spelling. We create multi-sensory, phonics-intensive literacy curriculum that explains the rules behind English spelling. When they learn the phonograms that make up the English language and the spelling rules that explain 98% of English words, all students of English have the opportunity to become fluent, confident readers and writers.

Our curriculum includes Foundations, for young first-time readers; Essentials, a differentiated reading, spelling, grammar, and vocabulary program for ages 8 to adult; and the Rhythm of Handwriting. In addition, Logic of English provides much of our material free through online instructional videos about English phonograms, English spelling rules, and effective methods of literacy instruction.

Next video: Intro to Logic of English Foundations, https://youtu.be/kdThN5RppO8

To learn more about the Logic of English, visit us at www.LogicOfEnglish.com, view our YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/LogicofEnglish, or read Denise Eide’s award-winning book "Uncovering the Logic of English: A Common-Sense Approach to Reading, Spelling, and Literacy."

If you are interested in participating in a Logic of English training course, check for any upcoming trainings and learn more at https://www.logicofenglish.com/loe-training.

The five strands of reading
comes from the research done by

the National Reading Panel.

So in 1997, Congress appointed the
National Reading Panel to review reading

research and determine the most
effective methods for teaching.

The National Reading Panel
reviewed 100,000 studies.

So the reason I want you to understand
this number is this, you can go and

Google reading studies and
pull up a study that says anything.

And you are going to encounter
people who have a particular study

that they love,
because it proves their points.

But science doesn't work like that.

Science has a hypothesis
that is put forward and

then proved over time, and
over numerous replicatable studies.

So the National Reading Panel's goal
was to review the major body of reading

research and literature, which is
impossible for an individual to do,

because there are so many studies
about how to teach reading, okay?

And so they reviewed 100,000 studies, and

in the year 2000 they
submitted their final report.

If anyone wants to look at it,
it's right here.

I printed it off for you, okay?

So this is available for you.

You can take it to your hotel room.

You can, [LAUGH],
read it if you would like.

But I'm going to tell you
the summary of the reports and

many of you will have seen this.

It is all over our curriculum today.

Their summary is that there are 5
essential components to teaching reading.

Those are phonemic awareness,
systematic phonics,

fluency, vocabulary development,
and reading comprehension.

So after a literature review of all these
studies, they found these are the 5

necessary pieces to teach
students to develop reading.

But this leaves a lot of questions,
doesn't it?

Because, which one goes first?

Fluency?

The study doesn't tell us this.

Phonemic awareness, comprehension?

I have sat in on reading trainings
where fluency was the first skill.

I've also sat in on reading trainings
where comprehension was the first skill.

So we still have questions.

So which order should they be introduced?

And how should each skill be taught?

I want to give you some
analogies to think about

reading instructions because reading
is a huge topic as we were discovering.

And the first first one is this,

teaching a student to read
is like building a building.

And the very first thing you need
to do is to lay a foundation.

Because if you don't lay the foundation,
what happens?

The building is unstable,
and it falls down.

And that foundation is phonemic awareness.

Now, we are going to go through each
of these topics with brief definitions.

And as the training goes on we are going
to dig in to each topic in depth.

So this is the inch deep.

We are going to go a mile
deep with each topic as well.

So phonemic awareness is very
simply the understanding that words

are comprised of individual sounds.

On top of this we have fluency.

And fluency, in this context,

is the mastery of the skill of phonemic
awareness to the point of automaticity.

And once again we will go deep with this.

So if that doesn't make sense to you,

very shortly I will help you understand
this and you will experience it.

On top of that,
we place systematic phonics.

Which is an accurate written code which
translates sounds into a visual image.

And phonics also has
a component of fluency.

Mastery of the skills of systematic
phonics to the point of automaticity.

On top of this we put on vocabulary
development which is learning the meaning

of new words and morphemes through
direct and indirect instruction and

developing tools to discover
the meaning of an unknown word.

We will then add comprehension skills.

And comprehension skills are strategies
a reader may employ to better

comprehend a text.

What you're going to discover is that this
is the foundation, not just of reading,

this is the foundation of our entire
education, because every subject

is really dependent upon
if you can read or not.

And our mastery of these subjects depends

on us developing a strong foundation
in literacy skills at the beginning.

So if I build a foundation like this,
what sort of building can I build on this?

>> Two or three storeys.

>> Two- or three-storey house.

But if I build a foundation like this,
what could I build on it?

>> A skyscraper?

>> A skyscraper.

And it's wonderful that we're here
in Rochester, Minnesota today,

because all around us at the Kahler
here is the Mayo Clinic.

And one of the buildings I think it's
the building that they built this

way where they built the foundation
much deeper than they needed to

because they planned to
add storeys in the future.

Now, thinking about building
reading as building a house and

laying the bricks of a foundation
is actually oversimplified.

I think it is helpful, because your
going to see and experience throughout

this training how those skills
really do build upon each other.

But it's not quite as simple
as building one at a time.

I think it is much more helpful to think
about this as if it's an organic process.

So it's like planting a seed and
growing a tree.

And when this tree grows, it is much
more complicated than brick laying.

But what I also wanna point
out about our tree is this.

When we think about reading,
we often think, look at those books,

I can't wait for my students to go and
open those books to read them,

to enjoy them, to comprehend them,
but we forget something, don't we?

We forget that down here in the ground
are roots supplying the whole tree.

And you'll notice these roots
have words and skills on them.

And then there's the paths within the tree
that carry the nutrients from the soil up

into those branches.

So this picture from the University of
Minnesota agricultural site I think is

really helpful because it reminds
us that a healthy tree has roots

that are much bigger than what
we see on the top of the tree.

And in the same way, those foundational
skills for reading need to be dug deep.

They need to be grown broadly.

They need to be fostered so
that tree is healthy.

If you restrict the growth of the roots,

you restrict the health and
growth of the tree.

So here's another way to look at it.

Here are how some of these skills
are organized into foundational or

root skills.

And you'll notice I put fluency in the
trunk because fluency is really conveying

those skills so that you get up to
these other skills that we see.

We see these parts more visibly
when we think of students reading.

Now, I want you to watch this
little video of a seed growing.

And I want you to tell me,
what do you notice?

>> [INAUDIBLE]
>> The roots grow first,

but then what else is growing?

>> The stem.

>> The stem.

But do the roots stop?

>> No.

>> No, and
that is something really key for

us to understand about
reading instruction.

We do need to lay some root skills first.

But we don't stop just because
the same start growing.

We keep fastening the growth of those
groups because they need to keep

growing in depth so that the tree
can growth up large and strong.

Now sadly a lot of
schools are building and

a lot of people are building
people like this.

Really really ad hoc, right?

And then they build their entire education
and they wonder why does it crumble.

The students start crumble because
they have this chaotic foundation.

It wasn't laid in any
way that makes sense.

And it was unstable.

So the five strands of reading

are this foundation that lead
to reading and comprehension.

And like I said,
we're going to dig into each of them.

Now I like to talk about
these five strands of reading

as the critical thinking skills for
language learning.

These are not rote skills.

This is not about rote memorization.

This is about critical thinking
tools that students can learn

to develop strong language
skills in their first language.

And when they have these skills,
they can apply them to learning second and

third and fourth languages.

Because this is how to think and
learn about language.

Now, I would suggest for

your homework tonight that you check
out the white paper on our website.

And I put the URL in your homework.

And this will give you a very,
very brief research introduction

to the five strands of reading and how
they fit together with logic of English.

Because understanding that research and
understanding those components is

vital to being able to teach this well,
I think, in an academic context.