Cueing was promoted in England until 2006, but no longer is. Two memories from when it was:
1. 30-odd years ago, I went to a presentation by a teacher trainer who advocated the ‘Does it look right?’ strategy in exactly those words. I couldn’t understand at first what this meant, as the word which the child was looking at on the page presumably WAS right – i.e. correctly spelled and meaningful in the context. It turned out that what was meant was that the child would start by guessing the word, then check the printed word to see if it looked right for that guess. What he should do if it did NOT look right was not explained, and in any case, as Claude has said, a struggling reader is unlikely to have a clear idea of what the word SHOULD look like. The speaker was also in favour of accepting misreadings if they made sense, however, so I wondered what the child was supposed to do if the guessed word made sense but did not look right.
2. In 2002, England’s official Department for Education produced materials called ‘Early Literacy Support’ for children who were struggling with reading. The materials included a video in which a child was trying to read the word ‘soft’. Her lip movements showed that she was trying to sound it out under her breath and would probably have got it that way, but the adult interrupted her and said ‘What would make sense?’ In fact the context was not helpful from that point of view, but the adult’s intervention was presented as good practice.
Okay, Doc...you've piqued my interest. I have thoughts and questions:
1. Balanced Literacy (as you said last time) really needs to be defined. I feel like Inigo Montoya...
2. "Clue" probably is better than "cue." But how many teachers/classrooms/schools were actually teaching 3-cueing as a reading process? I don't know of any, and I can say it wasn't in widespread use in the LAUSD from '94 till now, but it still gets the blame for disappointing test results. I wonder if there is any data on this.
3. Would it be possible in your opinion to privilege the V (grapho-phonic) while still asking students to attend to the M and S? I have found that kids don't attend to meaning when they have a steady diet of decodables (often times not much sense or meaning to be had). Especially for EB students...I want them thinking about their reading and self-monitoring.
Re Q#3. First, as long as the V does in fact include grapho-phonic and not just grapho-, the answer to your question is yes. In fact when teaching children to decode, and certainly when reading decodables, you don't want to stray too far from the fact that they are reading words and text that have *MEANING*. So even the much-maligned decodables--essential, but only until kids get sufficient traction in letter-sounds, phonics, decoding, and orthographic mapping (which does not mean know every phonics rule in the books, and it will vary by individual) you want to emphasize that meaningful text is being read. My favorite aspect of Reading Recovery (also much-maligned, but from the other side 😩) was the prompt tutors used once a child had read a phrase or sentence accurately: "Read it like your talking." One of my criticisms of too many implementations of "structured literacy" is it's all about decoding the words correctly. Oral reading is robotic and lifeless. Meaning is, literally, nowhere to be found in the instruction. Occasionally I'll get into one of those classrooms and the teacher will at least comment when someone reads with expression, or maybe even model it him/herself, which of course happens, but it's pretty random. That needs to be as systematically attended to as letter-sounds and decoding. But it has to be nuanced and well-orchestrated with children's growing understanding of the alphabetic principle, grapheme-phoneme associations, etc. etc.
Does this answer your question? Sorry if it's a bit long-winded.
Cueing was promoted in England until 2006, but no longer is. Two memories from when it was:
1. 30-odd years ago, I went to a presentation by a teacher trainer who advocated the ‘Does it look right?’ strategy in exactly those words. I couldn’t understand at first what this meant, as the word which the child was looking at on the page presumably WAS right – i.e. correctly spelled and meaningful in the context. It turned out that what was meant was that the child would start by guessing the word, then check the printed word to see if it looked right for that guess. What he should do if it did NOT look right was not explained, and in any case, as Claude has said, a struggling reader is unlikely to have a clear idea of what the word SHOULD look like. The speaker was also in favour of accepting misreadings if they made sense, however, so I wondered what the child was supposed to do if the guessed word made sense but did not look right.
2. In 2002, England’s official Department for Education produced materials called ‘Early Literacy Support’ for children who were struggling with reading. The materials included a video in which a child was trying to read the word ‘soft’. Her lip movements showed that she was trying to sound it out under her breath and would probably have got it that way, but the adult interrupted her and said ‘What would make sense?’ In fact the context was not helpful from that point of view, but the adult’s intervention was presented as good practice.
Jenny.
Okay, Doc...you've piqued my interest. I have thoughts and questions:
1. Balanced Literacy (as you said last time) really needs to be defined. I feel like Inigo Montoya...
2. "Clue" probably is better than "cue." But how many teachers/classrooms/schools were actually teaching 3-cueing as a reading process? I don't know of any, and I can say it wasn't in widespread use in the LAUSD from '94 till now, but it still gets the blame for disappointing test results. I wonder if there is any data on this.
3. Would it be possible in your opinion to privilege the V (grapho-phonic) while still asking students to attend to the M and S? I have found that kids don't attend to meaning when they have a steady diet of decodables (often times not much sense or meaning to be had). Especially for EB students...I want them thinking about their reading and self-monitoring.
As always, thank you for your insight.
Gina
Re Q#3. First, as long as the V does in fact include grapho-phonic and not just grapho-, the answer to your question is yes. In fact when teaching children to decode, and certainly when reading decodables, you don't want to stray too far from the fact that they are reading words and text that have *MEANING*. So even the much-maligned decodables--essential, but only until kids get sufficient traction in letter-sounds, phonics, decoding, and orthographic mapping (which does not mean know every phonics rule in the books, and it will vary by individual) you want to emphasize that meaningful text is being read. My favorite aspect of Reading Recovery (also much-maligned, but from the other side 😩) was the prompt tutors used once a child had read a phrase or sentence accurately: "Read it like your talking." One of my criticisms of too many implementations of "structured literacy" is it's all about decoding the words correctly. Oral reading is robotic and lifeless. Meaning is, literally, nowhere to be found in the instruction. Occasionally I'll get into one of those classrooms and the teacher will at least comment when someone reads with expression, or maybe even model it him/herself, which of course happens, but it's pretty random. That needs to be as systematically attended to as letter-sounds and decoding. But it has to be nuanced and well-orchestrated with children's growing understanding of the alphabetic principle, grapheme-phoneme associations, etc. etc.
Does this answer your question? Sorry if it's a bit long-winded.
Yes, and I appreciate the 💨.
Is that a thought or a big wind?🤣
¿Por qué no los dos? 😇😇😇
Touché!
Guess I’m lucky, as we were never taught to use cueing in L.A..
Thank you for the article! I’m going to dive into that right now. I love the idea of repurposing predictable books like this.
See you on SPELLTalk! 🙂
Gina