March 15, 2024 • 50 mins
Denise Eide, author of Uncovering the Logic of English, helps us understand the logic of English! It actually makes a lot of sense... and can help your students learn to read and spell.
Takeaways
- English spelling and decoding can be logical and systematic when taught with complete phonics rules.
- All words in English are decodable when the rules are understood.
- Incomplete knowledge of rules can lead to misconceptions and difficulties in reading and spelling.
- Teaching phonics rules explicitly and fostering curiosity can empower students and improve their reading skills.
- Be open about not having all the answers and learn alongside your students.
Resources
- Phinder.org
- Uncovering the Logic of English book
- LogicofEnglish.com Free Resources!
- Sold a Story podcast
We answer your questions about teaching reading in The Literacy 50-A Q&A Handbook for Teachers: Real-World Answers to Questions About Reading That Keep You Up at Night.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Melissa (00:01):
You are listening to Melissa and Lori Love.
Literacy Students are reallygood at pointing out when the
English language breaks therules, and we teachers often say
things like English is justfull of exceptions.
Well, after reading the book oncovering the logic of English,
we realize that English actuallymakes a lot of sense.
(00:21):
Today's guest is author DeniseIde, and she will share her
knowledge about the Englishlanguage and how knowing the
logic behind our language canhelp you teach your students to
read and spell.
Lori (00:35):
Hi teacher friends.
I'm Lori and I'm Melissa.
We are two educators who wantthe best for all kids, and we
know you do too.
Melissa (00:44):
We work together in Baltimore when the district
adopted a new literacycurriculum.
Lori (00:49):
We realized there was so much more to learn about how to
teach reading and writing.
Melissa (00:55):
Lori, and I can't wait to keep learning with you today.
Lori (01:00):
Hi everyone.
Welcome to Melissa and LoriLove Literacy Today.
We can't wait to talk with ourguests because we are going to
learn all about how the Englishlanguage actually is very
logical and we have a greatguest for that.
Melissa (01:13):
Today we're here with Denise Ide, who is the author of
Uncovering the Logic of EnglishFor those watching the video
this is the book right here.
Lori (01:21):
Mine's in the kitchen.
I don't even have mine to holdup, Melissa.
Melissa (01:25):
And she's also the founder and CEO of Logic of
English, which we'll talk allabout today.
So welcome, denise.
Thank you for having me.
And we want to jump in withjust.
You know, lori and I actuallygot to see you present last week
at the Plain Talk Conferenceand you know Lori asked a
question Like how does someonelearn so much about the English
(01:47):
language, like how does she knowall of this?
So we wanted to ask you just tostart us off with like how did,
how did you get to this pointof learning so much and wanting
to share with others about theactual English language?
Denise Eide (01:59):
Well, sure.
So, like so many people in theliteracy space, it all began
with my own children whostruggled with reading and I can
read curriculum like it's anovel.
So I had twin boys who werestruggling with reading for
several years and I began justbuying books about reading,
buying curriculum, trying thingswith them.
And I found a book in the OGkind of family of curriculum and
(02:23):
as I'm turning the pages I'mlike what C says two sounds I
didn't know that that would havehelped all my adult literacy
students that I had taught in aprior career.
What G says two sounds, whatthis happens before in the EI
and why what.
There's more than these tworeasons for a silent E English
words not N and V.
And right then, and there Ibegan to make connections to my
(02:45):
adult literacy students that Ihad had, and then I began to use
this information to teach mysons and it was amazing.
They went from non-readers toreaders in the matter of months
as they learned to decodebecause they had strong language
comprehension skills.
And then I put together thispresentation that I called the
logic of English, because to meit was all my favorite rules
(03:08):
from this kind of curriculum andfast forward.
Here we are today because thatreally caught on, that
presentation Resonated withpeople and that led to the
formation of the company and allthat you've seen today.
Lori (03:22):
So Well, I mean, I hate to say that I'm glad that that
happened, because I never wantchildren to struggle, but I am
glad that it brought you to thispoint and that you were able to
help them, and just sofascinating to hear your story.
Thank you for sharing that.
One thing that stood out to meis that it was a plain talk last
(03:44):
week and in your book oncovering the logic of English,
like, my big takeaway is allwords are decodable, and I'm
hoping that you can say a littlebit about that, just so that we
can help everyone understandour language a bit better.
Denise Eide (03:57):
Yes, so that was really the awakening Maybe I had
as I was reading thiscurriculum was that there was a.
There were a lot of conceptsand rules that I didn't know and
that made English spelling forme very difficult, english or
decoding for my son's verydifficult, and since that time
(04:18):
I've been able to dig into someof the other research.
So in the talk you heard Ireferenced that as saying as an
is is often marked as anexception.
So is has in the high frequencywords and it would be one thing
if isn't has were the onlywords.
But really, if you look closelyit actually says more often in
(04:41):
the high frequency words than itsays.
And even more astounding is itactually says over 20,000 times
in this database called Finder,of a number of where they're
able to match the sounds to theletter sound correspondence and
look that up.
And so there's thismisconception in our culture
about what the letter soundcorrespondences are and what a
complete set of them are.
And then as kids learn to read,we're saying that's an
(05:10):
exception, not realizing we'redismissing.
Actually, like 46% of the wordswith an S in it, which is a
pretty huge percentage.
It's a pretty huge percentage.
It's clearly not an exception.
Lori (05:18):
But it's no one's fault.
Denise Eide (05:19):
I think we don't take the time to to realize.
Wait, I was told this is anexception.
Every book teaches this as asight word.
What is the sight word?
Instead, it's generated all ofthis misunderstanding about the
language.
Yeah, Can we go back tosomething that you said?
You said that it it taught usthat it's a mistake.
Lori (05:42):
You didn't know, like you didn't know those that sound.
Well, what about if youinaccurately know it or your
knowledge is partial?
I'm thinking about my knowledgethere In certain quote rules
was not whole or was inaccurate,because, as you pointed out at
the conference, for one of therules that you taught, I only
learned the first part of therule, so I had learned the
(06:05):
complete rule.
So I'm just wondering if youhave anything to say about that
or to add to that.
Denise Eide (06:15):
Well, I think that's really where the
discussion about reading isright now is right.
Everyone reads alphabet booksto their kids.
Everyone understands thatlearning the S is helpful.
We just don't realize thatculturally we're missing that it
says the sound 46% of the timeand you don't know what you
(06:35):
don't know.
Instead, we just dismiss thesethings.
I remember English words don'tend in V.
That was such a big eye openerfor me.
Every time you hear at the endat an E as in have give
comprehensive.
I just thought they were allexceptions to the vowel saying
it's long sound.
(06:56):
But when we start to understandthe complete picture of English
, it opens up spelling, it opensup decoding and I think
something that I've beenthinking a lot about is it
sparks curiosity and the joy oflearning in students, because
then they begin to go oh, I seesomething, what is that?
What's happening there?
(07:16):
But if we just say, oh, englishis crazy, it's riddled with
exceptions, we can't get curious, it's just discouraging.
Melissa (07:25):
Yeah, that's really exciting and I've taken some of
what you taught us and alreadyI'm using it with my five year
old son.
So his letter from last week atpreschool was C and so of
course they learned it was C, asin cat, and I was just like
isn't it cool that it actuallyhas two sounds?
I've found all the circle andcan't think of any off the top
(07:46):
of my head now City.
Yeah, we found other words.
I was like, isn't that cool.
It has two sounds, so I'mreally trying to amp it up at
home.
Denise Eide (07:55):
It's everywhere.
Once you see it, it's like, ohmy goodness, it's everywhere.
Yeah, and eventually we'll getto the when it says which sound
and with emerging readers that'sfine, just knowing it says two
sounds.
And I'm a big advocate ofteaching these sounds right from
the beginning because, likeyou're saying with your son, if
(08:16):
you learn it says isn't cat, butthen you see the word city or
you see the word bicycle, itdoesn't make sense to go oh,
you'll learn that sound in acouple of years.
Really, they're encounteringthat sound in the books and in
the texts and in the wordsaround them, so empowering them
with that information.
Melissa (08:35):
And I think you said something in your presentation
Some kids can kind of go withthe flow and be like oh sure,
yeah, see, he has a differentsound there.
But for other kids that logicallike wait a second, you told me
it was this Can really throwthem off.
Denise Eide (08:51):
Yeah, I've done a lot of thinking about what is it
that helps some students learnit so quickly?
And I think, from my ownobservations and I want to be
very careful that these areDenise, ida observations these
aren't signs of reading, they'renot evidence based, known as
put together a study.
But my observations are kidsneed a different amount of the
(09:12):
code.
So what we'll see is we'reteaching what, laurie, you
described as a more complete andaccurate code.
Someone will have 2550% andsuddenly they're already reading
books.
Someone else needs 60, 75% andthey have enough to be able to
read books.
And also, I think there'sapproximations that we teach.
(09:35):
I've had this discussion Do wereally need to teach the SS?
And even though it's 46% of thetime in the language?
But what I observed is mydaughter, who's very intuitive.
My guess is, when I said shemisread it as is, and I said, no
, that's is because in the areformed in the same part of the
mouth and their voice andunvoiced pair, my guess is she
(09:59):
was very intuitive and was like,ah, close enough, I've got it.
But my sons, their littleengineers, little science, they
were, you know, scientificallyminded and they were going to
apply that over and over.
And I think what's reallyheartbreaking is that when kids
are doing that, they're kind ofdoing the scientific method,
they're testing something out,but they don't realize that it's
(10:22):
really the information thatthey were taught that was
mistaken.
They usually began tointernalize that it's them, and
so I think this is where that'salso very empowering.
And then, likewise, I think,other students right, they still
misspell is as IZ, but whenthey realize actually the most
common spelling of SS is the S,that's also very empowering.
Melissa (10:45):
I'm wondering if you could actually give us some more
examples of that I'm thinkingof.
You know there are teachers outthere who might not even though
you know we see it all the time.
Right, we as adults, we see isand we see has and was.
We see all those words but wedon't think about that spelling
rule, right, we don't thinkabout the different ways to say
(11:07):
it.
I'm wondering if you have anyother examples, like because
often we see it as that's anexception, or, you know, the
English language is just crazyis how we kind of explain it to
kids.
Do you have more examples youcan share with us of like of the
English language and some rulesthat explain it?
Denise Eide (11:25):
Absolutely so on the phonetic side.
One example I like sharing withadults is that most of us
learned that T I O N says Sean,but then we see a word like
partial, or confession orconfusion, even where you have
something else is going on right, and confession and confusion,
(11:46):
you have an S I O N and reallywhat's happening here is there's
three Latin spellings of.
They're spelled T I as inpartial, so the word part, it
ends in a T and then they'readding a suffix and it reforms
partial.
So you can look back to thatroot Confess ends in an S.
(12:08):
It's going to be spelled with aLatinS I, s, s, I, s, s, s, I,
s, S, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s,s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s
, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s,s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s,
s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s,
(12:33):
s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s,s.
And so understanding this morecomplete picture it explains, I
think one of the problems isthis we think of phonics, when
we teach incomplete phonics asjust for decodable readers, but
actually a completeunderstanding of phonics is what
(12:53):
you are referencing at thebeginning and it's how we
understand how to decode andencode any word in English.
Lori (13:00):
That's so great.
I love that example.
It's really helpful.
So just to kind of recap, thefirst is the just my
understanding, the T, I made thesound right, the shun and then
the SI, but it was voiced andunvoiced, yes, so that actually
made two sounds, same spelling.
Yes, okay, and that's.
(13:20):
I loved it when, um, you sharedthat at the conference.
You shared something similar,but that voice and unvoiced is
really really helpful because itdoes make two different sounds
and that's something that Ialways struggled with when I was
teaching phonics, like kidswould ask me questions about,
like, for example, the wordlittle, and the word little has
(13:41):
the two T's in the middle butmakes a almost like a sound
right, little.
So it's really about thinkingwhere your placement is of your
tongue in your mouth and what'shappening with voiced and
unvoiced.
Do you want to add anything tothat?
I think that I'd love to hearwhat you think about that.
Denise Eide (13:58):
Yes, and then also sounds are like colors.
I like to talk about that Likedo you know how, when you think
of blue, there can be light blueand dark blue and medium shades
of blue and ocean blue and skyblue, but we think of them all
as blue, and even children seethat.
So there's something calledaliphones in English, but really
(14:19):
what they are, they're shadesof sound, and so that's what you
hear in little, and one of thethings that I got very
interested in was being able tohear Dr Linnea Airee at the
Plain Talk conference that wewere just at, and she's heard a
number of research studies abouthow kids, when they feel what
their mouth is doing as they saywords, they're able to then
(14:42):
orthographically map or connectthat to the spelling more
quickly and to the sound morequickly.
And so I think, just aseducators, I call that a
kinesthetic awareness of soundsfeeling what your mouth is doing
, seeing how it's spelled,drawing the connection, and Duh
and T are very close in themouth.
So, yes, sometimes there'slittle like changes to the
(15:05):
sounds right as we speak in theflow of speech, but there's a
reason for those spellings too.
Lori (15:13):
So what I'm hearing you say is there's rules and then
there's also reasons, so likerules and reasons for why we do
what we do, and I guess there'snot a rule for, for example,
little Two T's.
Does it always say D?
No, definitely not.
So I think that that'simportant to think about too.
There's rules and then there'sreasons for why things are the
(15:35):
way they are, and that's what Ithink you helped us to uncover
as we read your book, and so I'mjust kind of thinking of how to
transition us into this ideathat some people are against
teaching rules, right?
Sometimes people are like dokids really need to know the
rules?
I don't necessarily think ofthat as these rules that we're
talking about here.
I think of that more in termsof, I don't know, being able to
(15:58):
identify that something is adigraph or something.
But if we're thinking aboutthese rules in particular and
we're always open to branchingoff to the other ones, but I
just want to be clear, likethese rules, that we're talking
about the rules of the Englishlanguage the English language is
what should be taught,explicitly versus implicitly.
Denise Eide (16:20):
Yes, and I think what I'm trying to do, I'm going
to set this answer up.
I think what I'm trying to dois two things to how people
understand English isn't justriddled with exceptions, it's a
complex code and there areactually quite a lot of letter,
sound correspondences, but Ithink where we're at in the
(16:41):
discussion of science, readingis what should be taught
explicitly.
What should we teach to masteryto students who are emerging
readers, and what can be learnedimplicitly.
What can you just learn byreading?
And I think that's where thedialogue is right now and that's
what the talk you heard wasabout.
(17:02):
I listened to Soul to Story byEmily Hanford and at the end of
Soul to Story, she says that weshould eliminate three queuing
and I thought to myself I'mgoing to think through how would
we do that?
And it's like we have tounderstand why we queue.
We have to ask why do we guess?
We guess because we don't knowhow to teach kids how to decode
(17:26):
those words.
So when we think about whichphonics rules should we teach,
we need to look at highfrequency words, because
students read them frequently,and we need to look at their
frequency in the language.
So, just going back to thebeginning of this presentation
as saying is an is an, as an has.
(17:47):
It's in a lot of high frequencywords, but it's also 20,000
times in this data set andfinder.
It is very frequent in thelanguage.
To me that creates thethreshold.
We should teach SS and Zexplicitly Now.
In contrast, the phonogram P Nin pneumonia and pneumatic and
pneumothorax, that's only in anadvanced vocabulary.
(18:10):
So students who understand thisis a phonogram, this makes a
sound or multiple sounds whenthey come across the word
pneumonia are going to be ableto go Woo, it's a new phonogram.
I wonder what language that'sfrom.
That said, we shouldn't tellstudents when they encounter the
word pneumonia that's anexception, it's actually not,
(18:33):
and that word in particularhelps us to also understand.
English is morpho phonemic.
It's a balance of sound andmeaning.
Sometimes even our phonogramscarry meaning and in that word,
p N carries the meaning of air.
So anytime you see it pneumonia, pneumothorax it has something
to do with air and it's sayingmm.
So I hope that helps tounderstand and I think this is
(18:55):
where the actual discussion is.
We all need to be talking.
I think a good question to askcurriculum companies and to ask
ourselves is is the set ofphonograms I'm teaching going to
help read high frequency wordsand read enough of the words on
the page that it's not leavingemerging readers just guessing.
Lori (19:17):
Yeah, that they can read most of the words on the page.
Yes, it shouldn't be that theycan read, I don't know, five out
of 10 words, and then the otherones are words that they're
memorizing, or oh, these are notregular, because what I'm
hearing you say is they're allregular.
They all can be in some way,shape or form.
Right, if you wanted to thinkabout it that way, they all can
(19:39):
be decoded.
Denise Eide (19:40):
They almost all can be thought of as regular.
So this is where my ownthinking has been changing this
year.
I used to say all the time 98%of English words follow the
rules, which was leaving 2%, andso we run a teacher training
(20:02):
and over those three and a halfdays we teach teachers the
phonograms, the rules, how toapply them through spelling
analysis.
They're teaching each other,and where I'm going with this is
during that training, on thethird day, we give the small
groups of teachers all of thedolch words and we dump them out
on tables in small groups andwe ask them to now categorize
(20:24):
them as exceptions or do theyfollow the rules, and then I
lead a discussion where thesmall groups put them up on a
board and in the past that roomalways came up with there were
three or 4% of exceptions, whichis fine because the high
frequency words are the oldestwords, so there's the most
(20:45):
exceptions.
But in 2023, something differenthappened.
So I always have talked abouthow English is morphofinemic a
balance of sound and meaning.
But I also began to integratein for the first time our
training that our goal asteachers, our goal as educators,
is to help studentsorthographically map words, to
(21:06):
bond the spelling, the sound,the pronunciation and meaning of
the word.
And we reiterated that theme aswe talked about morphology and
phonetics.
And what happened was that roomof almost 90 educators decided
that there was really just oneexception and it was the word I,
as in my eyeball E-Y-E.
(21:30):
And when I asked them I was likewell, what about the number two
?
And they're like oh, the Wmeans in, two is in twin and
twice in 12, it means two.
And even though the W is silent, it's not an exception because
we know how to teach studentshow to orthographically map it
using morphology.
And I stood back and I watchedthis discussion and I'm still
(21:55):
thinking about that because Ithink that is the real goal to
understand language.
Well, enough to go.
I understand something aboutdialect, I understand morphology
, I understand phonetics, I knowhow to teach every word in
English.
Now.
Lori (22:10):
Can you explain why I is not?
Denise Eide (22:13):
No, well, there's that silent E at the beginning.
That's weird.
Maybe the silent E at the endis fine, the Y saying I is fine,
but I don't know what to dowith that first E either.
Yeah, I don't know.
I've looked at the etymology, Iknow how to great answer.
But imagine there's 220 dolchwords and 95 nouns and out of
(22:33):
all the what 310 words they said, there was one word.
They didn't know how to teach,how to orthographically map.
And again, I think that's thegoal.
That, to me, is redefining thegoal.
Lori (22:46):
I can do a new mnemonic for it.
Denise Eide (22:48):
E E Y, yes, yes there you go, and if they are
for the graphically map it,that's fantastic.
Lori (22:57):
Yes, there we go.
We have a cool mnemonic for it.
If you were listening and notwatching, I pointed to each of
my eyes and said E, e, and thenpointed to my nose and said Y,
so by the way, mnemonic with anM, n, m.
N.
Melissa (23:12):
So there's another one.
I just wanted to back up tosomething.
Laurie, you were talking aboutthe rules and I just keep
thinking about you know, theteachers that I think are saying
we should not teach these rulesis because the rules don't the
rules that they know don'talways work right.
That's what.
That's what I'm hearing is,like the rules, like what's the
(23:34):
vowel one?
When you put the E at the end,the vowel says its name, is that
?
So did I get that right?
Like hive, right, right, isthat what you mean?
But then there's all theseexceptions right, have?
Lori (23:45):
use.
So I think I think that's why.
Melissa (23:47):
Because they haven't had this, all the rules, they've
just had these ones that don'talways work.
And well then you're stuck withlike, oh well, this is not a
very good rule if there's somany exceptions to it, but I
know that that's where we get towith uncovering.
The logic of English is likeyou would never give a rule like
that, denise.
Your rules always have a.
(24:08):
You know if it you might dothat sometimes, but it also does
this and this and this.
Denise Eide (24:15):
Well, it'll be.
There's nine reasons for asilent E.
And then we help kids identifywhy is the E needed.
And also, I didn't come up withthese.
These, as far as I can tell,came from Dr Orton and Anna
Gillingham.
Dr Anna Gillingham and thelittle bit of research I've been
able to look into, what didAnna Gillingham use to identify
(24:38):
something as a phonogram orshould be a rule?
It's frequency and the highfrequency words, and it's
frequency in the language, andlogic of English has tweaked a
few of them because we havecomputers that can pull
databases.
But that's the heart of allthat exists right in the Orton,
gillingham's originalinformation.
(24:58):
So and I think that's two wordsreally important that we all
work together, like logic ofEnglish teaches AUGH is in laugh
and daughter saying ah.
And I did that because theoriginal sources didn't
represent women.
Well, and so sons were in thosehigh frequency words list but
(25:19):
not daughters, and I thought ourdaughters have to be
represented in these phonogramsthat we're teaching explicitly.
And then the word laugh isfrequent in children's books too
.
But if that difference existsin a curriculum and someone
wants to teach that differently,that's fine, but the heart and
core of this should be the samebecause of if you use the data
(25:43):
to drive those determinations.
Lori (25:44):
Yeah, and I'm actually thinking maybe I misspoke
earlier in terms of like thethat digraph example I gave.
I'm trying to think about howto say it differently.
I'm thinking like, for example,when students are being taught
explicit phonics and certainprograms have students memorize
the parts of words or map likeunderline or map them and
(26:08):
explain them, I'm just wonderingif we could kind of unpack that
a little bit for like a momentand just think about is that
something that is helpful and isthat related to what we're
talking about?
Denise Eide (26:19):
Yeah.
So we don't ask kids tomemorize this as a digraph or a
trigraph or any of those sortsof language.
We instead learn IGH says I andit's spelled with three letters
.
But then when we're soundingout words we would say I and I
might hold up three fingers toshow it spelled with three
(26:40):
letter I, and then when theywrite it we might underline it
to show they're working togetherand take a moment to analyze
the word.
And one of my goals is toempower students to be able to
look at any word and understandphonetically what's happening in
it.
So word analysis, I think, isreally helpful, but you can't
(27:01):
teach every word in the language.
I mean, a five year old knows10,000 words when they come to
school.
We don't teach them to decodean end code all 10,000.
I think it's much moreefficient to teach students how
the language works so they canapply that to every word in
their vocabulary and then usethat to build their vocabularies
(27:21):
.
Lori (27:22):
OK, that's so helpful and teaching them how the language
works and analyzing for a.
I feel like it's a highermeaning versus just memorizing
that this combination of lettersdoes this.
So I love that idea of reallyasking students to think a
little bit more and to analyzewhat they have in front of them
in terms of the words thatthey're seeing.
Denise Eide (27:45):
And I used to memorize words.
Right, they're spelling L, a, n, g, you know, whatever it was
the letter names.
Now, every word I look at I seethose units of sound.
I literally can see what'shappening in every word and I
think that's what we want forour students right To be able to
understand it, not to rotallymemorize it.
Melissa (28:07):
Can I ask you one that I actually saw on the Facebook
group this morning, because Idon't know if you've ever I
don't know if you're on thatFacebook group, Denise, but
every day it's like why doesthis word do this?
Why is this word spelled thisway?
You would have a field day onthere.
Lori (28:21):
Well, I think I just tagged Denise in so many
comments in the last few daysbecause Everyone's answer is
always like uncovering the logicof English.
Melissa (28:28):
check it out.
But one.
I don't know the answer becauseI didn't have time to look it
up and see if it was in yourbook or not.
But they're asking about wordsthat end in to TCH, like catch
or hitch, and there were a fewthat end in just CH, but I guess
there's only I haven't thoughtthrough it, but I guess there's
(28:48):
only a few like much rich, andsuch were the ones that they
said.
Denise Eide (28:53):
I don't know how many there are, but it's true
that there's the spelling of TCH, which is three letter TCH, and
then there's the two letter TCH.
That's at the end as well, andwe don't have a rule about that
specifically.
Maybe we'll discover one.
We sometimes actually hadstudents send us rules and
patterns that they've observed,and then we're able to use word
(29:16):
databases to look it up and seeif it actually is regular or not
.
Melissa (29:19):
Yeah, the one thing someone said was that rich comes
from French, so then they keptthe CH from French.
I don't know if that's true ornot.
Much.
Denise Eide (29:30):
I would think is a high frequency word in a native
English word.
So I don't necessarily try toexplain every single little
thing.
The important thing is that astudent could read or it rich,
or much much.
It gets a little trickier forspelling, right?
Because but here's the thing Ifyou can spell a word, you know
(29:52):
how to read it, but if you knowhow to read it, you don't
necessarily know how to spell it.
So there's a level of masterythere.
And then trying to develop thatmastery by going oh, it's three
letter TCH in that word andcatch and pointing that out.
We create spelling journalsthis way, so it's organized by
sound.
So, for example, with CH, therewould be CH and TCH and they
(30:16):
would collect words with thosespellings.
Well, we know TCH is never atthe beginning, that's only at
the end.
So there's some rules like thatthat we can put in there.
But at the same time, that'sthe trickiest part is learning
to spell when there's multipleoptions for spelling.
Melissa (30:35):
That's really helpful.
So teachers don't get caught upin all of the trying to explain
every single word in theEnglish language to a student.
Denise Eide (30:43):
Exactly yes.
Lori (30:45):
It's like you were in the session that Pam Kassner did at
Plain Talk.
I loved it.
She said exactly that that ifyou can spell a word, you can
read a word, but that if you canread a word, you can't
necessarily spell a word.
And she brought that to ourattention by at the very
beginning, before she said anyof that, having us raise our
hands if we thought we weregreat spellers, great readers
(31:06):
everybody's raising their hand.
And then she flashed on thescreen just like OK, let's read
some words Accommodate fuchsia,narcissistic Atomatopoeia.
And she took them all off thescreen just like OK, now let's
spell those words.
I was like I thought I was agreat speller until that word
fuchsia really knocked me out.
Denise Eide (31:27):
Very good.
Well, you needed one of theLatin spellings for that word.
But here's something elsethat's interesting They've also
done studies with collegestudents and they've shown that
college students who strugglewith spelling are not as fluent
of readers as those who havethose words mastered for
spelling, and that when theyteach those students how to
(31:50):
spell the words, they improvetheir reading fluency.
Makes sense, it makes a lot ofsense, but so often our idea of
spelling is separated from ouridea of reading.
But really they're the sameskills and a deeper level of
mastery of the same skills.
Lori (32:08):
Yeah, it was interesting with going back to that example
that I gave with Atomatopoeiawhen Lynn Stone was on, we
talked about that word and theP-O-E at the end, yeah, poem,
right Like Atomatopoeia, and Iwas like I never even noticed
that.
I remember that moment in theconversation and but it's just
one of those things where ittook one time for somebody to
(32:30):
point it out and now I willnever forget it.
I mean, it's that I don't wantto say that simple because it's
not simple, but it's beingintentional, about drawing
attention to it and thenpracticing it.
And I already had that word.
I already knew what it meant.
I've used it for 41 years, so Ihad a leg up there.
Denise Eide (32:49):
But I think what you're pointing out is how I now
think about orthographicmapping bonding the spelling,
the pronunciation and themeaning.
You had the pronunciation andthe meaning.
Now you've bonded that spellingand I think, too, like I've
been really realizing that again, that's our goal.
Oftentimes, as educators, wewant to get distracted and argue
(33:11):
about the details, but anexample from our training.
So in our training, one of thethings we do is we analyze
frequently misspelled words andone of those words is guarantee.
We use different research fromGoogle and dictionary sites to
choose these and you'll noticeguarantee has a GU, two-letter
(33:32):
guh.
It's guh, guh and it's also inthe word guard.
So guard is spelled that way.
And if you look up theetymology of these words, some
of the etymology sites, guardand guarantee are related and
that's why they're spelled thisway.
Others say no, they're notrelated, and at first, when I
(33:53):
was choosing this word, I waslike, oh goodness, we're gonna
erupt in an argument.
But I realized this we are notluxographers.
It's not our job to decidehistorically are these words
related?
Instead, we are orthographicmappers.
If guarding and a guarantee inthat relationship helps you to
(34:15):
remember that they both usetwo-letter guh, then you're
golden.
If it doesn't help you, that'sokay, move on.
But it's like onomatopoeia,right, like what helps us bond
those together.
That's the key.
Lori (34:31):
Yeah, that's really helpful, and I think that kind
of takes us into a practicalexample.
I wanna think about decodablebooks and what this means for.
Denise Eide (34:43):
This is gonna be my new presentation, I mean.
So I'm excited we can talkabout this.
Lori (34:50):
Okay.
So I don't even know reallywhat question to ask, other than
if we think about decodablebooks and we think making every
book decodable.
If every word is decodable,then every book should be
decodable.
But we do have these thingscalled decodable books.
Now we have authentic texts ortrade books, whatever you like
to say.
So I guess what's the purposeof each and what else would you
(35:12):
say about that?
This?
Denise Eide (35:14):
is fantastic.
Yes, at Plain Talk our team hada great discussion about this,
because you see decodablereaders popping up everywhere
and I had this realization thatwhen we use the word decodable
reader, we're giving amisrepresentation of what is the
(35:35):
purpose of these books.
Really, we should be callingthem controlled readers because
they should be fitting withinthe scope and sequence of a
curriculum, and so we should becontrolling the phonics in those
books to what those studentshave been taught, because
otherwise those words aredecodable, but they're
(35:58):
temporarily not decodable forthose students because they
don't know the rules yet.
So we should be controlling ourreaders based on the scope and
sequence.
But I think themisinterpretation is some people
now have the idea right thatthere's decodable books and then
there's just real books anddecodable books are somehow one
(36:18):
of the steps to reading realbooks.
But in reality it's like yousaid all books are decodable,
Every word's decodable when weknow the rules.
Decodable readers should becalled controlled readers and
part of our scope and sequences.
That's where they have meaning.
Lori (36:35):
I like controlled books too.
Denise Eide (36:38):
We're probably gonna change all of our language
around this as well, justbecause of realizing this
misunderstanding as we werechatting with people.
Lori (36:48):
It's funny because I feel like now you've brought that to
to light and it's something thatI think Melissa and I have
talked about in the past, likethis I mean, we didn't read with
decodable books and yet here weare still able to read, right,
but because we had mapped thecode and we Were able to read.
But decodable books do have aplace right, but they are with
(37:09):
this, and I think it's it's sohelpful that we're doing this
for kids, it's important, but,um, I like that idea of
reframing and I struggle tosometimes with alright, this is
a better way to say it, but thegeneral public still calls it
that.
So I'm sure you're thinkingabout that too, denise.
Denise Eide (37:27):
This is a brand new thought from this last week Are
us to change our language, andyou're right to reframe that.
We need controlled readers, orTo lead up to being able to read
anything to help Practice theskills that we're learning.
And so, yeah, I think it'sgonna be a challenge to reframe
our language as well, and we andit's not just children who need
(37:50):
it adults who are learning toread or high school students who
are learning to read Need to begiven texts that are controlled
for the phonetic concepts thatthey've been taught, so that
they build their fluency andtheir confidence.
And then I'm not a fan ofleveled readers, because once
students have enough of the code, they're gonna be able to read
at the same level they canlisten and comprehend.
(38:12):
We should let them go explorethat world and, yes, to keep
building their levels, but weshouldn't ever be like, ah, you
can't read that yet.
Lori (38:22):
If they want to and they're capable of it, we agree
with that, we totally do I can'ttell you how many, year after
year, I kept sending Emails tomy daughter's school.
Please, no leveled readers forher.
Just let her read whatever shewould like to read, cuz she can
read.
Denise Eide (38:41):
Instead, like a program that has a scope in
sequence and a student who's notreading yet, you could take
other decodable readers and go.
What phonetic concepts are inhere and where does it fit in
the scope and sequence as aControlled reader?
That's, I think, where theybelong and once the students,
like I, can read anything, gofor it.
That's the goal.
We've opened the world of booksto you.
Melissa (39:04):
I'm wondering about you're thinking of teachers
right now in their classrooms,and many who have a curriculum
that they have to teach,especially for foundational
skills what?
What are some practical waysyou think teachers might be able
to apply what we've talkedabout today If, for instance,
their curriculum does notnecessarily get into everything
(39:25):
that we all the rules that wetalked about?
Denise Eide (39:27):
Yeah, well, hopefully, what we've sparked is
a little curiosity, curiosity.
So one of the things I say toteachers if, if you can just
change the habit of sayingthat's an exception when a
student asks a question aboutwords, we would never do that
with science, right?
We'd never be like, well, Idon't know, but that is an
exception to the laws of physics.
(39:48):
No, we'd go, I don't know.
So if you are listening today,I think just one takeaway is to,
when a kid asks a question, oras soon as a question about a
word, just say I don't know andThen go ahead and look it up.
On the logic of English websitethere's a free resources section
.
We publish all the spellingrules for free.
(40:09):
We have a chart of all thephonograms and their sounds.
You can listen to them.
And then another step you cantake is, for example, if your
program is teaching, the letterC says C, go look at our website
, find out if it says a secondor a third sound and Incorporate
all the sounds right there inyour scope and sequence.
(40:31):
Or if you're teaching silenese,go ahead and look at the
spelling rules, discover thatthere's nine and Teach a few
more of them at least, becauseyou're going to discover they're
very, very helpful and theyexplain tons of thousands of
words, and so, using that scopeand sequence you have as the
base, but just doing your bestto fill in some of the holes,
(40:53):
and Usually people find thatthat's sparking their own
curiosity about the language.
The other thing I'd say is beokay with your students that you
don't really know the answersand that you're looking it up
and learning it with them.
Students love when we learnalongside of them.
That's, it's okay.
This is a huge culturalmisunderstanding about language
(41:16):
and I think the way that we getout of the literacy crisis is we
all learn more about Englishtogether.
Lori (41:24):
Yeah, it also de-shames for our students who are maybe
not wanting to ask a question,embarrassed to ask a question,
learning the language, maybe ata different pace than others.
So I think it does bring that.
It normalizes the learningexperience.
Yeah, is there anything weshould think about when we're
working with students who mightlearn differently, like such as
(41:48):
they might have dyslexia, ormaybe our English learners?
Denise Eide (41:53):
Yeah, I think students can vary in the amount
of practice they need and so weoften get questions like is
learning at a awe for the lettera too hard for kids or too hard
for students with disabilities?
And what I like to talk topeople about is this first of
(42:13):
all, young students don'trealize that the lane.
If we tell them that this is ata all right from the beginning,
then they have that information.
So like I like to introduce itto young students by saying
something like this how manysounds does a cat make?
And they can meow and hiss andyou know imitate.
Or how many sounds does a dogmake?
Dogs make lots of sounds, one.
(42:34):
The same way, in English, someof our phonograms make more than
one sound.
So just normalizing them tothat idea and then Introducing
them all from the beginningbecause if you think about ball
water, coal, fall, want, I meanthat awe sound is Frequent, it's
an, I think over two thousandwords, it's in high frequency
(42:56):
words.
So really stepping back as anadult, realizing unlearning is
hard.
So we are unlearning some ideasthat we were taught, but
Learning it from the beginning,that opens up the world of
language and then practicing,that's the thing some students
are gonna need a little bit ofpractice.
Some are gonna need a lot ofpractice, but make the practice
(43:18):
fun.
You know, lay the phonogramsout on the floor with young kids
and jump from phonogram tophonogram saying the sounds, do
scavenger hunts.
You know, play card games.
But it internalized thatinformation by playing games and
making it fun and once you havethat, you have that for life.
It really is the informationyou need to spell a word and to
(43:42):
actually use spellcheckerefficiently.
So, that said, I don't thinkwith disabilities.
Even IDA says this is theinformation.
Structured literacy, right, butthe amount of practice that's
on us with the art of teachingto make that enjoyable and fun.
Lori (44:02):
Can you say more about the use of spellchecker?
Because I'm just envisioningmeet myself trying to spell the
word simultaneously and Notremembering there's a you or
there should be a you, and thenit's a whole different word, and
I just imagine that'd be veryconfusing, especially if I were
someone learning English or aFrustrated and trying to write
something.
You know, I just think it.
(44:24):
It takes it to a level offrustration really quickly.
Denise Eide (44:30):
Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, I think one of the things
I've discovered is pretty mucheveryone who Reads and writes in
English has had a moment whereyou can't get spellchecker to
recognize the word you want, andit's frustrating.
And I didn't kind of I thoughtthis was, by the way, I thought
this was just me until I startedspeaking in rooms of hundreds
(44:50):
of people and one day I gotreally brave and asked how many
people have had this experienceand everybody raises their hands
and I'm like, oh, oh, this is auniversal English problem.
But I don't have that problemanymore because I know the
phonograms and so it's acombination of segmenting words
or phonemic awareness skills,being able to segment words and
(45:13):
then also knowing oh, that's theother spelling of off, nope,
not that one, no, that, oh, gotit and we're good.
But if we don't know how to dothose basic segmenting skills,
we don't know the options forour spelling, or most of them.
We're in a struggle withspelling, especially
multi-syllabic words.
(45:34):
But this information and againI think that's the misnomer
right phonics is for decodablereaders like Matt Sat, really
Accurate.
Phonics is for the wholelanguage, every word in English.
Melissa (45:48):
I love that story you told of your presentation about
the man that Didn't know how toread and watch one of your
presentations and then calledyou up To talk about it.
I was like I just wish someonewould have told me this for all
from the beginning.
Denise Eide (46:02):
I've had that experience over and over and
over and over with people whostruggle with reading and I had
someone who had his master'sdegree and had accommodations
and sat in on a similarpresentation and came up to me
afterwards and he was like,denise, what you were saying I
could actually start tounderstand some of the words on
the screen in just that hour.
(46:24):
Imagine the pain right oftrying to figure out how do I
navigate education in lifewithout literacy, thinking
there's something wrong with me.
But really we were taught avery incomplete code into guess.
Lori (46:39):
Is this a good time to bring up the exception?
What is exception?
Denise Eide (46:45):
Sure, I think I referenced that earlier that
what I'm really defining now,since English is morphophonemic,
it's a balance of sound andmeaning.
By the way, every spellingsystem is.
This is not unique to English.
I think what's unique toEnglish speakers is we all think
our language is unique andextra hard or extra special or
(47:06):
something, but really it's thisbalance of sound and meaning.
You get a number I gave theexample of two with the silent w
and it's in twin.
There's two of them twice.
You do it two times.
You start to see theserelationships in meaning that
either explain the spellingthat's an exception or give you
(47:28):
more insight into the words.
All of these help us toorthographically map the words.
I'm starting to think thatthere's sure exceptions to the
phonics rules, but that doesn'tmake them exceptions to the
actual written structure ofEnglish, which is balancing
sound and meaning.
Then, when we have that biggerpicture, we're able to just
(47:50):
understand how English works.
That's the goal, right.
Lori (47:55):
Yeah, I want to make sure we hit that home right at the
end here.
Denise, is there anything youwould like to share with our
listeners that you haven'tshared yet?
Denise Eide (48:04):
No, that's about it , although we do have a lot of
free resources on our website.
If you're curious, check it out, logicofenglishcom, and there's
even some free activities thereto help you with instruction
some word lists, some practiceactivities.
We just hope it makes adifference in people's lives and
that we can shift culturetogether, shift the culture of
(48:26):
how we understand our language.
I think this will truly make adifference in literacy levels in
our nation.
Melissa (48:35):
We've already mentioned your book several times, but
just in case, if you got to thispoint, it's uncovering.
The logic of English isDenise's book.
Then also, you have anin-person training coming up.
Do you want to share about thattoo?
Denise Eide (48:50):
We do.
We have an in-person teachertraining in Rochester, minnesota
, june 25th through the 28th.
We offer this once a year.
It's a four-day workshop, Ithink last year.
One of the things that gave meso much delight is someone from
one of the departments ofeducation came up to me at the
(49:11):
break and she said to me shesaid, denise, I just called my
daughter and I told her I nowknow how to teach any word in
English.
I was like you could ask me andI could teach you how to spell
or read that word.
I love that.
That made me so happy.
I've been thinking about thatever since, hopefully.
But we go through how Englishworks.
(49:33):
We integrate that informationwith the science of reading, the
major studies, helping tounderstand how these all connect
together the five strands ofreading.
Lori (49:44):
All right, we'll link it all on the show notes, and
literacypodcastcom is where youcan find Show notes.
You can find it where youlisten to podcasts.
Just scroll down and click onthose notes on your phone.
We are happy to share thisinformation with you and thank
you so much, denise, for beinghere with us.
Denise Eide (50:00):
Melissa and Lori.
Thank you so much.
It's been a pleasure, Thank you.
Melissa (50:08):
To stay connected with us, sign up for our email list
at literacypodcastcom, join ourFacebook group and follow us on
Instagram and Twitter.
Lori (50:18):
If this episode resonated with you, take a moment to share
with a teacher friend or leaveus a five-star rating and a
review on Apple Podcasts.
Melissa (50:28):
Just a quick reminder that the views and opinions
expressed by the hosts andguests of the Melissa and Lori
Love Literacy Podcast are notnecessarily the opinions of
Great Minds PBC or its employees, we appreciate you so much and
we're so glad you're here tolearn with us.
You are listening to Melissa and Lori Love.
Literacy Students are reallygood at pointing out when the
English language breaks therules, and we teachers often say
things like English is justfull of exceptions.
Well, after reading the book oncovering the logic of English,
we realize that English actuallymakes a lot of sense.
(00:21):
Today's guest is author DeniseIde, and she will share her
knowledge about the Englishlanguage and how knowing the
logic behind our language canhelp you teach your students to
read and spell.
Lori (00:35):
Hi teacher friends.
I'm Lori and I'm Melissa.
We are two educators who wantthe best for all kids, and we
know you do too.
Melissa (00:44):
We work together in Baltimore when the district
adopted a new literacycurriculum.
Lori (00:49):
We realized there was so much more to learn about how to
teach reading and writing.
Melissa (00:55):
Lori, and I can't wait to keep learning with you today.
Lori (01:00):
Hi everyone.
Welcome to Melissa and LoriLove Literacy Today.
We can't wait to talk with ourguests because we are going to
learn all about how the Englishlanguage actually is very
logical and we have a greatguest for that.
Melissa (01:13):
Today we're here with Denise Ide, who is the author of
Uncovering the Logic of EnglishFor those watching the video
this is the book right here.
Lori (01:21):
Mine's in the kitchen.
I don't even have mine to holdup, Melissa.
Melissa (01:25):
And she's also the founder and CEO of Logic of
English, which we'll talk allabout today.
So welcome, denise.
Thank you for having me.
And we want to jump in withjust.
You know, lori and I actuallygot to see you present last week
at the Plain Talk Conferenceand you know Lori asked a
question Like how does someonelearn so much about the English
(01:47):
language, like how does she knowall of this?
So we wanted to ask you just tostart us off with like how did,
how did you get to this pointof learning so much and wanting
to share with others about theactual English language?
Denise Eide (01:59):
Well, sure.
So, like so many people in theliteracy space, it all began
with my own children whostruggled with reading and I can
read curriculum like it's anovel.
So I had twin boys who werestruggling with reading for
several years and I began justbuying books about reading,
buying curriculum, trying thingswith them.
And I found a book in the OGkind of family of curriculum and
(02:23):
as I'm turning the pages I'mlike what C says two sounds I
didn't know that that would havehelped all my adult literacy
students that I had taught in aprior career.
What G says two sounds, whatthis happens before in the EI
and why what.
There's more than these tworeasons for a silent E English
words not N and V.
And right then, and there Ibegan to make connections to my
(02:45):
adult literacy students that Ihad had, and then I began to use
this information to teach mysons and it was amazing.
They went from non-readers toreaders in the matter of months
as they learned to decodebecause they had strong language
comprehension skills.
And then I put together thispresentation that I called the
logic of English, because to meit was all my favorite rules
(03:08):
from this kind of curriculum andfast forward.
Here we are today because thatreally caught on, that
presentation Resonated withpeople and that led to the
formation of the company and allthat you've seen today.
Lori (03:22):
So Well, I mean, I hate to say that I'm glad that that
happened, because I never wantchildren to struggle, but I am
glad that it brought you to thispoint and that you were able to
help them, and just sofascinating to hear your story.
Thank you for sharing that.
One thing that stood out to meis that it was a plain talk last
(03:44):
week and in your book oncovering the logic of English,
like, my big takeaway is allwords are decodable, and I'm
hoping that you can say a littlebit about that, just so that we
can help everyone understandour language a bit better.
Denise Eide (03:57):
Yes, so that was really the awakening Maybe I had
as I was reading thiscurriculum was that there was a.
There were a lot of conceptsand rules that I didn't know and
that made English spelling forme very difficult, english or
decoding for my son's verydifficult, and since that time
(04:18):
I've been able to dig into someof the other research.
So in the talk you heard Ireferenced that as saying as an
is is often marked as anexception.
So is has in the high frequencywords and it would be one thing
if isn't has were the onlywords.
But really, if you look closelyit actually says more often in
(04:41):
the high frequency words than itsays.
And even more astounding is itactually says over 20,000 times
in this database called Finder,of a number of where they're
able to match the sounds to theletter sound correspondence and
look that up.
And so there's thismisconception in our culture
about what the letter soundcorrespondences are and what a
complete set of them are.
And then as kids learn to read,we're saying that's an
(05:10):
exception, not realizing we'redismissing.
Actually, like 46% of the wordswith an S in it, which is a
pretty huge percentage.
It's a pretty huge percentage.
It's clearly not an exception.
Lori (05:18):
But it's no one's fault.
Denise Eide (05:19):
I think we don't take the time to to realize.
Wait, I was told this is anexception.
Every book teaches this as asight word.
What is the sight word?
Instead, it's generated all ofthis misunderstanding about the
language.
Yeah, Can we go back tosomething that you said?
You said that it it taught usthat it's a mistake.
Lori (05:42):
You didn't know, like you didn't know those that sound.
Well, what about if youinaccurately know it or your
knowledge is partial?
I'm thinking about my knowledgethere In certain quote rules
was not whole or was inaccurate,because, as you pointed out at
the conference, for one of therules that you taught, I only
learned the first part of therule, so I had learned the
(06:05):
complete rule.
So I'm just wondering if youhave anything to say about that
or to add to that.
Denise Eide (06:15):
Well, I think that's really where the
discussion about reading isright now is right.
Everyone reads alphabet booksto their kids.
Everyone understands thatlearning the S is helpful.
We just don't realize thatculturally we're missing that it
says the sound 46% of the timeand you don't know what you
(06:35):
don't know.
Instead, we just dismiss thesethings.
I remember English words don'tend in V.
That was such a big eye openerfor me.
Every time you hear at the endat an E as in have give
comprehensive.
I just thought they were allexceptions to the vowel saying
it's long sound.
(06:56):
But when we start to understandthe complete picture of English
, it opens up spelling, it opensup decoding and I think
something that I've beenthinking a lot about is it
sparks curiosity and the joy oflearning in students, because
then they begin to go oh, I seesomething, what is that?
What's happening there?
(07:16):
But if we just say, oh, englishis crazy, it's riddled with
exceptions, we can't get curious, it's just discouraging.
Melissa (07:25):
Yeah, that's really exciting and I've taken some of
what you taught us and alreadyI'm using it with my five year
old son.
So his letter from last week atpreschool was C and so of
course they learned it was C, asin cat, and I was just like
isn't it cool that it actuallyhas two sounds?
I've found all the circle andcan't think of any off the top
(07:46):
of my head now City.
Yeah, we found other words.
I was like, isn't that cool.
It has two sounds, so I'mreally trying to amp it up at
home.
Denise Eide (07:55):
It's everywhere.
Once you see it, it's like, ohmy goodness, it's everywhere.
Yeah, and eventually we'll getto the when it says which sound
and with emerging readers that'sfine, just knowing it says two
sounds.
And I'm a big advocate ofteaching these sounds right from
the beginning because, likeyou're saying with your son, if
(08:16):
you learn it says isn't cat, butthen you see the word city or
you see the word bicycle, itdoesn't make sense to go oh,
you'll learn that sound in acouple of years.
Really, they're encounteringthat sound in the books and in
the texts and in the wordsaround them, so empowering them
with that information.
Melissa (08:35):
And I think you said something in your presentation
Some kids can kind of go withthe flow and be like oh sure,
yeah, see, he has a differentsound there.
But for other kids that logicallike wait a second, you told me
it was this Can really throwthem off.
Denise Eide (08:51):
Yeah, I've done a lot of thinking about what is it
that helps some students learnit so quickly?
And I think, from my ownobservations and I want to be
very careful that these areDenise, ida observations these
aren't signs of reading, they'renot evidence based, known as
put together a study.
But my observations are kidsneed a different amount of the
(09:12):
code.
So what we'll see is we'reteaching what, laurie, you
described as a more complete andaccurate code.
Someone will have 2550% andsuddenly they're already reading
books.
Someone else needs 60, 75% andthey have enough to be able to
read books.
And also, I think there'sapproximations that we teach.
(09:35):
I've had this discussion Do wereally need to teach the SS?
And even though it's 46% of thetime in the language?
But what I observed is mydaughter, who's very intuitive.
My guess is, when I said shemisread it as is, and I said, no
, that's is because in the areformed in the same part of the
mouth and their voice andunvoiced pair, my guess is she
(09:59):
was very intuitive and was like,ah, close enough, I've got it.
But my sons, their littleengineers, little science, they
were, you know, scientificallyminded and they were going to
apply that over and over.
And I think what's reallyheartbreaking is that when kids
are doing that, they're kind ofdoing the scientific method,
they're testing something out,but they don't realize that it's
(10:22):
really the information thatthey were taught that was
mistaken.
They usually began tointernalize that it's them, and
so I think this is where that'salso very empowering.
And then, likewise, I think,other students right, they still
misspell is as IZ, but whenthey realize actually the most
common spelling of SS is the S,that's also very empowering.
Melissa (10:45):
I'm wondering if you could actually give us some more
examples of that I'm thinkingof.
You know there are teachers outthere who might not even though
you know we see it all the time.
Right, we as adults, we see isand we see has and was.
We see all those words but wedon't think about that spelling
rule, right, we don't thinkabout the different ways to say
(11:07):
it.
I'm wondering if you have anyother examples, like because
often we see it as that's anexception, or, you know, the
English language is just crazyis how we kind of explain it to
kids.
Do you have more examples youcan share with us of like of the
English language and some rulesthat explain it?
Denise Eide (11:25):
Absolutely so on the phonetic side.
One example I like sharing withadults is that most of us
learned that T I O N says Sean,but then we see a word like
partial, or confession orconfusion, even where you have
something else is going on right, and confession and confusion,
(11:46):
you have an S I O N and reallywhat's happening here is there's
three Latin spellings of.
They're spelled T I as inpartial, so the word part, it
ends in a T and then they'readding a suffix and it reforms
partial.
So you can look back to thatroot Confess ends in an S.
(12:08):
It's going to be spelled with aLatinS I, s, s, I, s, s, s, I,
s, S, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s,s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s
, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s,s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s,
s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s,
(12:33):
s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s, s,s.
And so understanding this morecomplete picture it explains, I
think one of the problems isthis we think of phonics, when
we teach incomplete phonics asjust for decodable readers, but
actually a completeunderstanding of phonics is what
(12:53):
you are referencing at thebeginning and it's how we
understand how to decode andencode any word in English.
Lori (13:00):
That's so great.
I love that example.
It's really helpful.
So just to kind of recap, thefirst is the just my
understanding, the T, I made thesound right, the shun and then
the SI, but it was voiced andunvoiced, yes, so that actually
made two sounds, same spelling.
Yes, okay, and that's.
(13:20):
I loved it when, um, you sharedthat at the conference.
You shared something similar,but that voice and unvoiced is
really really helpful because itdoes make two different sounds
and that's something that Ialways struggled with when I was
teaching phonics, like kidswould ask me questions about,
like, for example, the wordlittle, and the word little has
(13:41):
the two T's in the middle butmakes a almost like a sound
right, little.
So it's really about thinkingwhere your placement is of your
tongue in your mouth and what'shappening with voiced and
unvoiced.
Do you want to add anything tothat?
I think that I'd love to hearwhat you think about that.
Denise Eide (13:58):
Yes, and then also sounds are like colors.
I like to talk about that Likedo you know how, when you think
of blue, there can be light blueand dark blue and medium shades
of blue and ocean blue and skyblue, but we think of them all
as blue, and even children seethat.
So there's something calledaliphones in English, but really
(14:19):
what they are, they're shadesof sound, and so that's what you
hear in little, and one of thethings that I got very
interested in was being able tohear Dr Linnea Airee at the
Plain Talk conference that wewere just at, and she's heard a
number of research studies abouthow kids, when they feel what
their mouth is doing as they saywords, they're able to then
(14:42):
orthographically map or connectthat to the spelling more
quickly and to the sound morequickly.
And so I think, just aseducators, I call that a
kinesthetic awareness of soundsfeeling what your mouth is doing
, seeing how it's spelled,drawing the connection, and Duh
and T are very close in themouth.
So, yes, sometimes there'slittle like changes to the
(15:05):
sounds right as we speak in theflow of speech, but there's a
reason for those spellings too.
Lori (15:13):
So what I'm hearing you say is there's rules and then
there's also reasons, so likerules and reasons for why we do
what we do, and I guess there'snot a rule for, for example,
little Two T's.
Does it always say D?
No, definitely not.
So I think that that'simportant to think about too.
There's rules and then there'sreasons for why things are the
(15:35):
way they are, and that's what Ithink you helped us to uncover
as we read your book, and so I'mjust kind of thinking of how to
transition us into this ideathat some people are against
teaching rules, right?
Sometimes people are like dokids really need to know the
rules?
I don't necessarily think ofthat as these rules that we're
talking about here.
I think of that more in termsof, I don't know, being able to
(15:58):
identify that something is adigraph or something.
But if we're thinking aboutthese rules in particular and
we're always open to branchingoff to the other ones, but I
just want to be clear, likethese rules, that we're talking
about the rules of the Englishlanguage the English language is
what should be taught,explicitly versus implicitly.
Denise Eide (16:20):
Yes, and I think what I'm trying to do, I'm going
to set this answer up.
I think what I'm trying to dois two things to how people
understand English isn't justriddled with exceptions, it's a
complex code and there areactually quite a lot of letter,
sound correspondences, but Ithink where we're at in the
(16:41):
discussion of science, readingis what should be taught
explicitly.
What should we teach to masteryto students who are emerging
readers, and what can be learnedimplicitly.
What can you just learn byreading?
And I think that's where thedialogue is right now and that's
what the talk you heard wasabout.
(17:02):
I listened to Soul to Story byEmily Hanford and at the end of
Soul to Story, she says that weshould eliminate three queuing
and I thought to myself I'mgoing to think through how would
we do that?
And it's like we have tounderstand why we queue.
We have to ask why do we guess?
We guess because we don't knowhow to teach kids how to decode
(17:26):
those words.
So when we think about whichphonics rules should we teach,
we need to look at highfrequency words, because
students read them frequently,and we need to look at their
frequency in the language.
So, just going back to thebeginning of this presentation
as saying is an is an, as an has.
(17:47):
It's in a lot of high frequencywords, but it's also 20,000
times in this data set andfinder.
It is very frequent in thelanguage.
To me that creates thethreshold.
We should teach SS and Zexplicitly Now.
In contrast, the phonogram P Nin pneumonia and pneumatic and
pneumothorax, that's only in anadvanced vocabulary.
(18:10):
So students who understand thisis a phonogram, this makes a
sound or multiple sounds whenthey come across the word
pneumonia are going to be ableto go Woo, it's a new phonogram.
I wonder what language that'sfrom.
That said, we shouldn't tellstudents when they encounter the
word pneumonia that's anexception, it's actually not,
(18:33):
and that word in particularhelps us to also understand.
English is morpho phonemic.
It's a balance of sound andmeaning.
Sometimes even our phonogramscarry meaning and in that word,
p N carries the meaning of air.
So anytime you see it pneumonia, pneumothorax it has something
to do with air and it's sayingmm.
So I hope that helps tounderstand and I think this is
(18:55):
where the actual discussion is.
We all need to be talking.
I think a good question to askcurriculum companies and to ask
ourselves is is the set ofphonograms I'm teaching going to
help read high frequency wordsand read enough of the words on
the page that it's not leavingemerging readers just guessing.
Lori (19:17):
Yeah, that they can read most of the words on the page.
Yes, it shouldn't be that theycan read, I don't know, five out
of 10 words, and then the otherones are words that they're
memorizing, or oh, these are notregular, because what I'm
hearing you say is they're allregular.
They all can be in some way,shape or form.
Right, if you wanted to thinkabout it that way, they all can
(19:39):
be decoded.
Denise Eide (19:40):
They almost all can be thought of as regular.
So this is where my ownthinking has been changing this
year.
I used to say all the time 98%of English words follow the
rules, which was leaving 2%, andso we run a teacher training
(20:02):
and over those three and a halfdays we teach teachers the
phonograms, the rules, how toapply them through spelling
analysis.
They're teaching each other,and where I'm going with this is
during that training, on thethird day, we give the small
groups of teachers all of thedolch words and we dump them out
on tables in small groups andwe ask them to now categorize
(20:24):
them as exceptions or do theyfollow the rules, and then I
lead a discussion where thesmall groups put them up on a
board and in the past that roomalways came up with there were
three or 4% of exceptions, whichis fine because the high
frequency words are the oldestwords, so there's the most
(20:45):
exceptions.
But in 2023, something differenthappened.
So I always have talked abouthow English is morphofinemic a
balance of sound and meaning.
But I also began to integratein for the first time our
training that our goal asteachers, our goal as educators,
is to help studentsorthographically map words, to
(21:06):
bond the spelling, the sound,the pronunciation and meaning of
the word.
And we reiterated that theme aswe talked about morphology and
phonetics.
And what happened was that roomof almost 90 educators decided
that there was really just oneexception and it was the word I,
as in my eyeball E-Y-E.
(21:30):
And when I asked them I was likewell, what about the number two
?
And they're like oh, the Wmeans in, two is in twin and
twice in 12, it means two.
And even though the W is silent, it's not an exception because
we know how to teach studentshow to orthographically map it
using morphology.
And I stood back and I watchedthis discussion and I'm still
(21:55):
thinking about that because Ithink that is the real goal to
understand language.
Well, enough to go.
I understand something aboutdialect, I understand morphology
, I understand phonetics, I knowhow to teach every word in
English.
Now.
Lori (22:10):
Can you explain why I is not?
Denise Eide (22:13):
No, well, there's that silent E at the beginning.
That's weird.
Maybe the silent E at the endis fine, the Y saying I is fine,
but I don't know what to dowith that first E either.
Yeah, I don't know.
I've looked at the etymology, Iknow how to great answer.
But imagine there's 220 dolchwords and 95 nouns and out of
(22:33):
all the what 310 words they said, there was one word.
They didn't know how to teach,how to orthographically map.
And again, I think that's thegoal.
That, to me, is redefining thegoal.
Lori (22:46):
I can do a new mnemonic for it.
Denise Eide (22:48):
E E Y, yes, yes there you go, and if they are
for the graphically map it,that's fantastic.
Lori (22:57):
Yes, there we go.
We have a cool mnemonic for it.
If you were listening and notwatching, I pointed to each of
my eyes and said E, e, and thenpointed to my nose and said Y,
so by the way, mnemonic with anM, n, m.
N.
Melissa (23:12):
So there's another one.
I just wanted to back up tosomething.
Laurie, you were talking aboutthe rules and I just keep
thinking about you know, theteachers that I think are saying
we should not teach these rulesis because the rules don't the
rules that they know don'talways work right.
That's what.
That's what I'm hearing is,like the rules, like what's the
(23:34):
vowel one?
When you put the E at the end,the vowel says its name, is that
?
So did I get that right?
Like hive, right, right, isthat what you mean?
But then there's all theseexceptions right, have?
Lori (23:45):
use.
So I think I think that's why.
Melissa (23:47):
Because they haven't had this, all the rules, they've
just had these ones that don'talways work.
And well then you're stuck withlike, oh well, this is not a
very good rule if there's somany exceptions to it, but I
know that that's where we get towith uncovering.
The logic of English is likeyou would never give a rule like
that, denise.
Your rules always have a.
(24:08):
You know if it you might dothat sometimes, but it also does
this and this and this.
Denise Eide (24:15):
Well, it'll be.
There's nine reasons for asilent E.
And then we help kids identifywhy is the E needed.
And also, I didn't come up withthese.
These, as far as I can tell,came from Dr Orton and Anna
Gillingham.
Dr Anna Gillingham and thelittle bit of research I've been
able to look into, what didAnna Gillingham use to identify
(24:38):
something as a phonogram orshould be a rule?
It's frequency and the highfrequency words, and it's
frequency in the language, andlogic of English has tweaked a
few of them because we havecomputers that can pull
databases.
But that's the heart of allthat exists right in the Orton,
gillingham's originalinformation.
(24:58):
So and I think that's two wordsreally important that we all
work together, like logic ofEnglish teaches AUGH is in laugh
and daughter saying ah.
And I did that because theoriginal sources didn't
represent women.
Well, and so sons were in thosehigh frequency words list but
(25:19):
not daughters, and I thought ourdaughters have to be
represented in these phonogramsthat we're teaching explicitly.
And then the word laugh isfrequent in children's books too
.
But if that difference existsin a curriculum and someone
wants to teach that differently,that's fine, but the heart and
core of this should be the samebecause of if you use the data
(25:43):
to drive those determinations.
Lori (25:44):
Yeah, and I'm actually thinking maybe I misspoke
earlier in terms of like thethat digraph example I gave.
I'm trying to think about howto say it differently.
I'm thinking like, for example,when students are being taught
explicit phonics and certainprograms have students memorize
the parts of words or map likeunderline or map them and
(26:08):
explain them, I'm just wonderingif we could kind of unpack that
a little bit for like a momentand just think about is that
something that is helpful and isthat related to what we're
talking about?
Denise Eide (26:19):
Yeah.
So we don't ask kids tomemorize this as a digraph or a
trigraph or any of those sortsof language.
We instead learn IGH says I andit's spelled with three letters
.
But then when we're soundingout words we would say I and I
might hold up three fingers toshow it spelled with three
(26:40):
letter I, and then when theywrite it we might underline it
to show they're working togetherand take a moment to analyze
the word.
And one of my goals is toempower students to be able to
look at any word and understandphonetically what's happening in
it.
So word analysis, I think, isreally helpful, but you can't
(27:01):
teach every word in the language.
I mean, a five year old knows10,000 words when they come to
school.
We don't teach them to decodean end code all 10,000.
I think it's much moreefficient to teach students how
the language works so they canapply that to every word in
their vocabulary and then usethat to build their vocabularies
(27:21):
.
Lori (27:22):
OK, that's so helpful and teaching them how the language
works and analyzing for a.
I feel like it's a highermeaning versus just memorizing
that this combination of lettersdoes this.
So I love that idea of reallyasking students to think a
little bit more and to analyzewhat they have in front of them
in terms of the words thatthey're seeing.
Denise Eide (27:45):
And I used to memorize words.
Right, they're spelling L, a, n, g, you know, whatever it was
the letter names.
Now, every word I look at I seethose units of sound.
I literally can see what'shappening in every word and I
think that's what we want forour students right To be able to
understand it, not to rotallymemorize it.
Melissa (28:07):
Can I ask you one that I actually saw on the Facebook
group this morning, because Idon't know if you've ever I
don't know if you're on thatFacebook group, Denise, but
every day it's like why doesthis word do this?
Why is this word spelled thisway?
You would have a field day onthere.
Lori (28:21):
Well, I think I just tagged Denise in so many
comments in the last few daysbecause Everyone's answer is
always like uncovering the logicof English.
Melissa (28:28):
check it out.
But one.
I don't know the answer becauseI didn't have time to look it
up and see if it was in yourbook or not.
But they're asking about wordsthat end in to TCH, like catch
or hitch, and there were a fewthat end in just CH, but I guess
there's only I haven't thoughtthrough it, but I guess there's
(28:48):
only a few like much rich, andsuch were the ones that they
said.
Denise Eide (28:53):
I don't know how many there are, but it's true
that there's the spelling of TCH, which is three letter TCH, and
then there's the two letter TCH.
That's at the end as well, andwe don't have a rule about that
specifically.
Maybe we'll discover one.
We sometimes actually hadstudents send us rules and
patterns that they've observed,and then we're able to use word
(29:16):
databases to look it up and seeif it actually is regular or not
.
Melissa (29:19):
Yeah, the one thing someone said was that rich comes
from French, so then they keptthe CH from French.
I don't know if that's true ornot.
Much.
Denise Eide (29:30):
I would think is a high frequency word in a native
English word.
So I don't necessarily try toexplain every single little
thing.
The important thing is that astudent could read or it rich,
or much much.
It gets a little trickier forspelling, right?
Because but here's the thing Ifyou can spell a word, you know
(29:52):
how to read it, but if you knowhow to read it, you don't
necessarily know how to spell it.
So there's a level of masterythere.
And then trying to develop thatmastery by going oh, it's three
letter TCH in that word andcatch and pointing that out.
We create spelling journalsthis way, so it's organized by
sound.
So, for example, with CH, therewould be CH and TCH and they
(30:16):
would collect words with thosespellings.
Well, we know TCH is never atthe beginning, that's only at
the end.
So there's some rules like thatthat we can put in there.
But at the same time, that'sthe trickiest part is learning
to spell when there's multipleoptions for spelling.
Melissa (30:35):
That's really helpful.
So teachers don't get caught upin all of the trying to explain
every single word in theEnglish language to a student.
Denise Eide (30:43):
Exactly yes.
Lori (30:45):
It's like you were in the session that Pam Kassner did at
Plain Talk.
I loved it.
She said exactly that that ifyou can spell a word, you can
read a word, but that if you canread a word, you can't
necessarily spell a word.
And she brought that to ourattention by at the very
beginning, before she said anyof that, having us raise our
hands if we thought we weregreat spellers, great readers
(31:06):
everybody's raising their hand.
And then she flashed on thescreen just like OK, let's read
some words Accommodate fuchsia,narcissistic Atomatopoeia.
And she took them all off thescreen just like OK, now let's
spell those words.
I was like I thought I was agreat speller until that word
fuchsia really knocked me out.
Denise Eide (31:27):
Very good.
Well, you needed one of theLatin spellings for that word.
But here's something elsethat's interesting They've also
done studies with collegestudents and they've shown that
college students who strugglewith spelling are not as fluent
of readers as those who havethose words mastered for
spelling, and that when theyteach those students how to
(31:50):
spell the words, they improvetheir reading fluency.
Makes sense, it makes a lot ofsense, but so often our idea of
spelling is separated from ouridea of reading.
But really they're the sameskills and a deeper level of
mastery of the same skills.
Lori (32:08):
Yeah, it was interesting with going back to that example
that I gave with Atomatopoeiawhen Lynn Stone was on, we
talked about that word and theP-O-E at the end, yeah, poem,
right Like Atomatopoeia, and Iwas like I never even noticed
that.
I remember that moment in theconversation and but it's just
one of those things where ittook one time for somebody to
(32:30):
point it out and now I willnever forget it.
I mean, it's that I don't wantto say that simple because it's
not simple, but it's beingintentional, about drawing
attention to it and thenpracticing it.
And I already had that word.
I already knew what it meant.
I've used it for 41 years, so Ihad a leg up there.
Denise Eide (32:49):
But I think what you're pointing out is how I now
think about orthographicmapping bonding the spelling,
the pronunciation and themeaning.
You had the pronunciation andthe meaning.
Now you've bonded that spellingand I think, too, like I've
been really realizing that again, that's our goal.
Oftentimes, as educators, wewant to get distracted and argue
(33:11):
about the details, but anexample from our training.
So in our training, one of thethings we do is we analyze
frequently misspelled words andone of those words is guarantee.
We use different research fromGoogle and dictionary sites to
choose these and you'll noticeguarantee has a GU, two-letter
(33:32):
guh.
It's guh, guh and it's also inthe word guard.
So guard is spelled that way.
And if you look up theetymology of these words, some
of the etymology sites, guardand guarantee are related and
that's why they're spelled thisway.
Others say no, they're notrelated, and at first, when I
(33:53):
was choosing this word, I waslike, oh goodness, we're gonna
erupt in an argument.
But I realized this we are notluxographers.
It's not our job to decidehistorically are these words
related?
Instead, we are orthographicmappers.
If guarding and a guarantee inthat relationship helps you to
(34:15):
remember that they both usetwo-letter guh, then you're
golden.
If it doesn't help you, that'sokay, move on.
But it's like onomatopoeia,right, like what helps us bond
those together.
That's the key.
Lori (34:31):
Yeah, that's really helpful, and I think that kind
of takes us into a practicalexample.
I wanna think about decodablebooks and what this means for.
Denise Eide (34:43):
This is gonna be my new presentation, I mean.
So I'm excited we can talkabout this.
Lori (34:50):
Okay.
So I don't even know reallywhat question to ask, other than
if we think about decodablebooks and we think making every
book decodable.
If every word is decodable,then every book should be
decodable.
But we do have these thingscalled decodable books.
Now we have authentic texts ortrade books, whatever you like
to say.
So I guess what's the purposeof each and what else would you
(35:12):
say about that?
This?
Denise Eide (35:14):
is fantastic.
Yes, at Plain Talk our team hada great discussion about this,
because you see decodablereaders popping up everywhere
and I had this realization thatwhen we use the word decodable
reader, we're giving amisrepresentation of what is the
(35:35):
purpose of these books.
Really, we should be callingthem controlled readers because
they should be fitting withinthe scope and sequence of a
curriculum, and so we should becontrolling the phonics in those
books to what those studentshave been taught, because
otherwise those words aredecodable, but they're
(35:58):
temporarily not decodable forthose students because they
don't know the rules yet.
So we should be controlling ourreaders based on the scope and
sequence.
But I think themisinterpretation is some people
now have the idea right thatthere's decodable books and then
there's just real books anddecodable books are somehow one
(36:18):
of the steps to reading realbooks.
But in reality it's like yousaid all books are decodable,
Every word's decodable when weknow the rules.
Decodable readers should becalled controlled readers and
part of our scope and sequences.
That's where they have meaning.
Lori (36:35):
I like controlled books too.
Denise Eide (36:38):
We're probably gonna change all of our language
around this as well, justbecause of realizing this
misunderstanding as we werechatting with people.
Lori (36:48):
It's funny because I feel like now you've brought that to
to light and it's something thatI think Melissa and I have
talked about in the past, likethis I mean, we didn't read with
decodable books and yet here weare still able to read, right,
but because we had mapped thecode and we Were able to read.
But decodable books do have aplace right, but they are with
(37:09):
this, and I think it's it's sohelpful that we're doing this
for kids, it's important, but,um, I like that idea of
reframing and I struggle tosometimes with alright, this is
a better way to say it, but thegeneral public still calls it
that.
So I'm sure you're thinkingabout that too, denise.
Denise Eide (37:27):
This is a brand new thought from this last week Are
us to change our language, andyou're right to reframe that.
We need controlled readers, orTo lead up to being able to read
anything to help Practice theskills that we're learning.
And so, yeah, I think it'sgonna be a challenge to reframe
our language as well, and we andit's not just children who need
(37:50):
it adults who are learning toread or high school students who
are learning to read Need to begiven texts that are controlled
for the phonetic concepts thatthey've been taught, so that
they build their fluency andtheir confidence.
And then I'm not a fan ofleveled readers, because once
students have enough of the code, they're gonna be able to read
at the same level they canlisten and comprehend.
(38:12):
We should let them go explorethat world and, yes, to keep
building their levels, but weshouldn't ever be like, ah, you
can't read that yet.
Lori (38:22):
If they want to and they're capable of it, we agree
with that, we totally do I can'ttell you how many, year after
year, I kept sending Emails tomy daughter's school.
Please, no leveled readers forher.
Just let her read whatever shewould like to read, cuz she can
read.
Denise Eide (38:41):
Instead, like a program that has a scope in
sequence and a student who's notreading yet, you could take
other decodable readers and go.
What phonetic concepts are inhere and where does it fit in
the scope and sequence as aControlled reader?
That's, I think, where theybelong and once the students,
like I, can read anything, gofor it.
That's the goal.
We've opened the world of booksto you.
Melissa (39:04):
I'm wondering about you're thinking of teachers
right now in their classrooms,and many who have a curriculum
that they have to teach,especially for foundational
skills what?
What are some practical waysyou think teachers might be able
to apply what we've talkedabout today If, for instance,
their curriculum does notnecessarily get into everything
(39:25):
that we all the rules that wetalked about?
Denise Eide (39:27):
Yeah, well, hopefully, what we've sparked is
a little curiosity, curiosity.
So one of the things I say toteachers if, if you can just
change the habit of sayingthat's an exception when a
student asks a question aboutwords, we would never do that
with science, right?
We'd never be like, well, Idon't know, but that is an
exception to the laws of physics.
(39:48):
No, we'd go, I don't know.
So if you are listening today,I think just one takeaway is to,
when a kid asks a question, oras soon as a question about a
word, just say I don't know andThen go ahead and look it up.
On the logic of English websitethere's a free resources section
.
We publish all the spellingrules for free.
(40:09):
We have a chart of all thephonograms and their sounds.
You can listen to them.
And then another step you cantake is, for example, if your
program is teaching, the letterC says C, go look at our website
, find out if it says a secondor a third sound and Incorporate
all the sounds right there inyour scope and sequence.
(40:31):
Or if you're teaching silenese,go ahead and look at the
spelling rules, discover thatthere's nine and Teach a few
more of them at least, becauseyou're going to discover they're
very, very helpful and theyexplain tons of thousands of
words, and so, using that scopeand sequence you have as the
base, but just doing your bestto fill in some of the holes,
(40:53):
and Usually people find thatthat's sparking their own
curiosity about the language.
The other thing I'd say is beokay with your students that you
don't really know the answersand that you're looking it up
and learning it with them.
Students love when we learnalongside of them.
That's, it's okay.
This is a huge culturalmisunderstanding about language
(41:16):
and I think the way that we getout of the literacy crisis is we
all learn more about Englishtogether.
Lori (41:24):
Yeah, it also de-shames for our students who are maybe
not wanting to ask a question,embarrassed to ask a question,
learning the language, maybe ata different pace than others.
So I think it does bring that.
It normalizes the learningexperience.
Yeah, is there anything weshould think about when we're
working with students who mightlearn differently, like such as
(41:48):
they might have dyslexia, ormaybe our English learners?
Denise Eide (41:53):
Yeah, I think students can vary in the amount
of practice they need and so weoften get questions like is
learning at a awe for the lettera too hard for kids or too hard
for students with disabilities?
And what I like to talk topeople about is this first of
(42:13):
all, young students don'trealize that the lane.
If we tell them that this is ata all right from the beginning,
then they have that information.
So like I like to introduce itto young students by saying
something like this how manysounds does a cat make?
And they can meow and hiss andyou know imitate.
Or how many sounds does a dogmake?
Dogs make lots of sounds, one.
(42:34):
The same way, in English, someof our phonograms make more than
one sound.
So just normalizing them tothat idea and then Introducing
them all from the beginningbecause if you think about ball
water, coal, fall, want, I meanthat awe sound is Frequent, it's
an, I think over two thousandwords, it's in high frequency
(42:56):
words.
So really stepping back as anadult, realizing unlearning is
hard.
So we are unlearning some ideasthat we were taught, but
Learning it from the beginning,that opens up the world of
language and then practicing,that's the thing some students
are gonna need a little bit ofpractice.
Some are gonna need a lot ofpractice, but make the practice
(43:18):
fun.
You know, lay the phonogramsout on the floor with young kids
and jump from phonogram tophonogram saying the sounds, do
scavenger hunts.
You know, play card games.
But it internalized thatinformation by playing games and
making it fun and once you havethat, you have that for life.
It really is the informationyou need to spell a word and to
(43:42):
actually use spellcheckerefficiently.
So, that said, I don't thinkwith disabilities.
Even IDA says this is theinformation.
Structured literacy, right, butthe amount of practice that's
on us with the art of teachingto make that enjoyable and fun.
Lori (44:02):
Can you say more about the use of spellchecker?
Because I'm just envisioningmeet myself trying to spell the
word simultaneously and Notremembering there's a you or
there should be a you, and thenit's a whole different word, and
I just imagine that'd be veryconfusing, especially if I were
someone learning English or aFrustrated and trying to write
something.
You know, I just think it.
(44:24):
It takes it to a level offrustration really quickly.
Denise Eide (44:30):
Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, I think one of the things
I've discovered is pretty mucheveryone who Reads and writes in
English has had a moment whereyou can't get spellchecker to
recognize the word you want, andit's frustrating.
And I didn't kind of I thoughtthis was, by the way, I thought
this was just me until I startedspeaking in rooms of hundreds
(44:50):
of people and one day I gotreally brave and asked how many
people have had this experienceand everybody raises their hands
and I'm like, oh, oh, this is auniversal English problem.
But I don't have that problemanymore because I know the
phonograms and so it's acombination of segmenting words
or phonemic awareness skills,being able to segment words and
(45:13):
then also knowing oh, that's theother spelling of off, nope,
not that one, no, that, oh, gotit and we're good.
But if we don't know how to dothose basic segmenting skills,
we don't know the options forour spelling, or most of them.
We're in a struggle withspelling, especially
multi-syllabic words.
(45:34):
But this information and againI think that's the misnomer
right phonics is for decodablereaders like Matt Sat, really
Accurate.
Phonics is for the wholelanguage, every word in English.
Melissa (45:48):
I love that story you told of your presentation about
the man that Didn't know how toread and watch one of your
presentations and then calledyou up To talk about it.
I was like I just wish someonewould have told me this for all
from the beginning.
Denise Eide (46:02):
I've had that experience over and over and
over and over with people whostruggle with reading and I had
someone who had his master'sdegree and had accommodations
and sat in on a similarpresentation and came up to me
afterwards and he was like,denise, what you were saying I
could actually start tounderstand some of the words on
the screen in just that hour.
(46:24):
Imagine the pain right oftrying to figure out how do I
navigate education in lifewithout literacy, thinking
there's something wrong with me.
But really we were taught avery incomplete code into guess.
Lori (46:39):
Is this a good time to bring up the exception?
What is exception?
Denise Eide (46:45):
Sure, I think I referenced that earlier that
what I'm really defining now,since English is morphophonemic,
it's a balance of sound andmeaning.
By the way, every spellingsystem is.
This is not unique to English.
I think what's unique toEnglish speakers is we all think
our language is unique andextra hard or extra special or
(47:06):
something, but really it's thisbalance of sound and meaning.
You get a number I gave theexample of two with the silent w
and it's in twin.
There's two of them twice.
You do it two times.
You start to see theserelationships in meaning that
either explain the spellingthat's an exception or give you
(47:28):
more insight into the words.
All of these help us toorthographically map the words.
I'm starting to think thatthere's sure exceptions to the
phonics rules, but that doesn'tmake them exceptions to the
actual written structure ofEnglish, which is balancing
sound and meaning.
Then, when we have that biggerpicture, we're able to just
(47:50):
understand how English works.
That's the goal, right.
Lori (47:55):
Yeah, I want to make sure we hit that home right at the
end here.
Denise, is there anything youwould like to share with our
listeners that you haven'tshared yet?
Denise Eide (48:04):
No, that's about it , although we do have a lot of
free resources on our website.
If you're curious, check it out, logicofenglishcom, and there's
even some free activities thereto help you with instruction
some word lists, some practiceactivities.
We just hope it makes adifference in people's lives and
that we can shift culturetogether, shift the culture of
(48:26):
how we understand our language.
I think this will truly make adifference in literacy levels in
our nation.
Melissa (48:35):
We've already mentioned your book several times, but
just in case, if you got to thispoint, it's uncovering.
The logic of English isDenise's book.
Then also, you have anin-person training coming up.
Do you want to share about thattoo?
Denise Eide (48:50):
We do.
We have an in-person teachertraining in Rochester, minnesota
, june 25th through the 28th.
We offer this once a year.
It's a four-day workshop, Ithink last year.
One of the things that gave meso much delight is someone from
one of the departments ofeducation came up to me at the
(49:11):
break and she said to me shesaid, denise, I just called my
daughter and I told her I nowknow how to teach any word in
English.
I was like you could ask me andI could teach you how to spell
or read that word.
I love that.
That made me so happy.
I've been thinking about thatever since, hopefully.
But we go through how Englishworks.
(49:33):
We integrate that informationwith the science of reading, the
major studies, helping tounderstand how these all connect
together the five strands ofreading.
Lori (49:44):
All right, we'll link it all on the show notes, and
literacypodcastcom is where youcan find Show notes.
You can find it where youlisten to podcasts.
Just scroll down and click onthose notes on your phone.
We are happy to share thisinformation with you and thank
you so much, denise, for beinghere with us.
Denise Eide (50:00):
Melissa and Lori.
Thank you so much.
It's been a pleasure, Thank you.
Melissa (50:08):
To stay connected with us, sign up for our email list
at literacypodcastcom, join ourFacebook group and follow us on
Instagram and Twitter.
Lori (50:18):
If this episode resonated with you, take a moment to share
with a teacher friend or leaveus a five-star rating and a
review on Apple Podcasts.
Melissa (50:28):
Just a quick reminder that the views and opinions
expressed by the hosts andguests of the Melissa and Lori
Love Literacy Podcast are notnecessarily the opinions of
Great Minds PBC or its employees, we appreciate you so much and
we're so glad you're here tolearn with us.
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