BLOG

Back to Blog

Input to Application: Isolated and Integrated Letter and Word Instruction

Published On: January 3rd, 2023 | Categories: Latest News |

The moment of truth is the moment of input,

  • How much you attend
  • How much you care
  • How you encode
  • What you do it, and

  • How you organise it.

How well you access it depends on how well you stored it in the first place…..

This quote by Dr. Larry Squire opens the text, Literacy Lessons Designed for Individuals (2016), as pertinent to understanding the book and the recommendations within.  I reflect on this quote frequently, especially through the lens of specific teaching of phonics, phonemic awareness, letter-sound correspondence, and word work throughout the Reading Recovery lesson.  Perhaps the biggest take-away I have found is the justification for both the initial explicit, isolated letter and word work paired with the ongoing, repeated practice to bridge isolated item knowledge to active application through daily opportunities to read and write continuous texts.

The moment of input for new learning of letters and words often begins with a clear space, free of distraction, where the teacher can explicitly teach the child how letters and words work such as on a whiteboard. Building from their individual strengths, this multi-sensory approach supports the child in establishing the neural networks their brains need to make connections to this new learning.  All of the isolated letter and word procedures are designed to be taught in a comprehensive, logical order that increases in difficulty depending on the individual child’s strengths and needs.  This is both a systematic AND differentiated approach to the letter and word learning.  Word work in isolation “depends for its success on how thoughtfully the teacher matches the tasks to the child’s growing competencies” (Clay, 2016, p.157).  Linking again to the Squire quote, word and letter work in isolation supports the child during these initial exposures to attend, care, encode, organize, and store the new learning and easily retrieve it to build further learning.  These moments of truth are critical teaching and learning opportunities happening within each Reading Recovery lesson.

But accessing this new learning requires practice and instruction that moves beyond the isolated experiences of input.  Just as we know that letters are more easily identified in isolation and more challenging to identify when embedded in words or text, we also understand that simply reading words in isolation won’t create a skilled reader (Clay, 2016). And because reading is not simply an additive process (Example: knowing 26 letters+ 44 sounds+ 15 words ≠ a reader), the daily opportunities to read and write support students to apply their quickly building repertoire of item knowledge into an active processing system equipped for literacy learning. It is the work of the skilled teacher to support the child to understand how their isolated item knowledge applies to the world of reading and writing continuous text.   The writing component of the Reading Recovery lesson allows the child to both learn about and build upon what is known about how letters, sounds, and words work while constructing their personal messages.  Similarly, each time a child successfully problem-solves a word in reading, they are mapping that experience in their brains.  This integrated instruction creates the links children need for transfer and application of isolated skills to reading continuous texts, building further connections, and supporting literacy processing.  

For these reasons, it is neither the isolated nor the integrated letter and word work that is to credit for acceleration in literacy learning, but the combination of these two critically important areas of teaching combined with numerous other equally important components of the daily Reading Recovery lesson.  Clay (2015) reminds us, “If literacy teaching only brings a simple theory to a set of complex activities, then the learner has to bridge the gaps created by a theoretical simplification.  The lowest literacy achievers will have extreme difficulty bridging any gaps in teaching programme and linking together things that have been taught separately (p.105). 

The skilled teacher and the active child are the bridge from input to application.


 

Please consider joining Jamie to continue building thinking around isolated and integrated letter and word work at her pre-conference session at LitCon 2023 on Saturday, January 28th from 1-4 pm. 

 

 


References:

Clay, M. M. (2015). Change over time in children’s literacy development. Global Education Systems (GES) Ltd.

Clay, M. M. (2016). Literacy lessons designed for individuals (2nd ed). Global Education Systems (GES) Ltd.

 

RRCNA Blog: A Year in Review
Feedback about Readers: Supporting Student Identity
Search Journal Archive

THE JOURNAL OF READING RECOVERY

Fall 2023