June 20, 2025 • 51 mins
Episode 229
In this episode, Katie Pace Miles and Molly Ness define and explain orthographic mapping as a crucial cognitive process for reading fluency and comprehension. They discuss the importance of mapping words in long-term memory, the difference between memorization and mapping, and the trifecta of phonology, orthography, and meaning that supports effective word learning.
They share a four-step protocol from their new book, Making Words, Stick, for supporting orthographic mapping. They provide insights into effective teaching strategies and resources available for educators.
Resources
- Making Words Stick - Molly & Katie’s book!
- Making Words Stick One Pager - Preview the Big Ideas in the book!
- Katie’s Non-Profit - Readinginstitutenyc.org
- Rosenthal & Ehri 2008 Study
- The Science of Learning to Read Words - Ehri
- Grapheme-Phoneme Knowledge - Ehri
- Laura Steacy’s research
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.
Grab free resources and episode alerts! Sign up for our email list at literacypodcast.com.
Join our community on Facebook, and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, & Twitter.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Lori (00:01):
Ever notice how some students are still sounding out
every word, while others arebreezing through text?
If you're wondering how to helpstudents move from slow,
effortful decoding to automaticword reading, this episode is
for you.
Melissa (00:16):
In this episode you'll hear from Katie Pace-Miles and
Molly Ness.
They are researchers andauthors of the new book Making
Words Stick.
They share a simple four-steproutine that supports
orthographic mapping to helpyour students read words
automatically.
Lori (00:34):
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 worked 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 (00:54):
Lori, and I can't wait to keep learning with you today.
Hi, katie and Molly, we are soexcited to have both of you back
again on the podcast togetherthis time.
Thanks for having us, and we'resuper excited about your new
book, making Words Stick.
It's in our Science of Readingand Practice series from
(01:16):
Scholastic and we know it'sgoing to be super popular.
Lori (01:21):
We know it's going to be a big hit.
Yeah, we can't wait, so I'mgoing to kick us off.
Just jump right in.
In your book you say the goalfor students is for all words to
become sight words, and the wayto make this happen is through
orthographic mapping.
So we thought the best way tostart this would be for you to
share what orthographic mappingis, for you just to tell us all
(01:44):
about it so I can see Molly onmy left.
I'm going to pass it to Mollyand then, molly, you can send it
off to Katie.
Molly Ness (01:50):
Well, I'm going to let Katie define orthographic
mapping, but I'll set the stagea little bit.
Why do we care aboutorthographic mapping?
We care about it because it'sreally the on-ramp to fluency
and comprehension.
If you were to think about allof the words that you encounter
in your everyday life as anadult reader street signs,
(02:13):
newspaper articles, anythingthat you read you rarely decode
anything.
Every word that you likely read, with the exception of a couple
proper nouns, know proper nounsor sort of oddball words
they've already beenorthographically mapped.
You instantly recognize them,and because you instantly
recognize them, you have morecognitive energy to get to
(02:37):
comprehension, which is ofcourse, the ultimate goal for
for reading.
We know that proficient adultreaders have about 50,000 words
that have been orthographicallymapped, and so I'm sort of
dancing around the definition.
So I'll let Katie handle theactual definition of
orthographic mapping.
She had the pleasure ofliterally learning from the
researcher who wrote aboutorthographic mapping, so this is
(02:59):
definitely in Katie'swheelhouse.
Katie Pace Miles (03:01):
Thanks, molly.
Yes, the definition oforthographic mapping.
It's a theory of Dr LinneaAries and she was my mentor for
my PhD work, and the theory isbased on decades of research
that Linnea and her colleaguesconducted on how students store
(03:22):
words in memory.
So the simplest way to putforth the definition is that
it's a cognitive process ofmapping the spelling,
pronunciation and meaning of aword into long-term memory.
And so that does speak to thisgoal that all words the goal
would be that all words arestored in long-term memory so
(03:45):
that when you see the wordyou're able to say it
automatically.
There's a lot that goes behindthe scenes of getting that word
into long-term memory.
It's not instantaneous that theword is stored.
You have to go through thiscognitive process over time and
it may take multiple exposuresto the words or different uses
(04:07):
of the words or activities thatyou do with the words in order
to get it into long-term memory.
Molly Ness (04:13):
And what we mean by cognitive process is we want to
be really clear that it's sortof this behind the scenes thing
that happens within the brain.
It's not something that youknow.
You would say to a classroom ofkids pull out your orthographic
mapping workbooks or it's thisyou know process that you teach.
It's this sort of invisible,cognitive, behind the scenes
(04:38):
thing that we all do as readers.
And I think one of themisconceptions also about
orthographic mapping is that itonly is relevant to beginning
readers, and certainly beginningreaders are living in the world
of orthographic mapping waymore than proficient readers are
.
But just this past summer I wasreading a murder mystery book,
(05:02):
not a familiar word to me.
I could decode it.
There was enough of the contextof the word to know it, but I
didn't know its pronunciation,and so I went on to the
dictionary an online dictionaryits meaning, how it looked, or
its visual representation, andthen its phonology, its sound
(05:28):
structure.
That word was thenorthographically mapped for me
so that anytime I came to thatword in that same murder mystery
book, it was instantlyrecognized.
So I'm a proficient reader.
It took one iteration of thatword to be mapped, but we know
that many children need multipleexposures to words before
they're orthographically mapped.
(05:49):
And it's not just the quantityof exposures, it's also the
quality of exposures thatmatters to help kids map words.
Lori (05:56):
That's so interesting.
I love that idea of quality andquantity, and I'm hearing you
say it's different for everyone.
Right?
Everyone has a differentexperience with orthographic
mapping.
I'm curious if you might beable to share with our listeners
why it's not memorizing words,right, if every adult has a lot
of words orthographically mapped, how's it different than
(06:18):
memorizing words?
Katie Pace Miles (06:21):
Memorizing often becomes a thing in
education where it's a quick fix.
Memorization becomes somethingthat we do as students, in some
sort of format where we don'tdraw attention to the
orthographic representation ofthe word.
And I can't speak for allteachers, but how I have seen it
(06:44):
, how I used to do it before Iactually learned about
orthographic mapping, is you canthink of it with word list
reading or flashcard reading andwe would ask students to
memorize this whole word as aunit.
And what's difficult forteachers to understand is that
(07:06):
that is what it looks like whenyou become a proficient reader.
When you are proficient, youare able to look at a word and
say the word, but in order toget to that point, you have to
do something with the word.
Or I can even temper that andsay, overwhelmingly, students
need to do something with thatword.
Or I can even temper that andsay overwhelmingly, students
need to do something with thatword.
(07:26):
There are students for whomthey can look at a word and it
becomes mapped in long termmemory.
Those students are theexception to the rest.
Molly Ness (07:40):
And I'll just add that, as we can speak from our
own classroom experience,memorization doesn't necessarily
lead to transfer.
So I had this experience when Iwas a classroom teacher.
I would teach spelling or Iwould teach sight words through
flashcards and kids would get iton the flashcard and then they
(08:01):
would see it in the text andyou'd be like come on, you just
got how does it not make, howdoes it not stick?
And that we know is thatmemorization doesn't necessarily
lead to transfer.
Katie Pace Miles (08:11):
And one other thing, too is I work
overwhelmingly with strivingreaders, and we know from
research striving readers needmore exposures to the words, and
anyone who works with strivingreaders knows that intuitively.
But what research has shown isno.
In fact, even when you look atpopulations of first grade
striving readers, they canactually be stratified into
(08:34):
students who are at more or lessrisk within that striver
reading range, and the studentsmost at risk need even more
exposures, and so, also, youhave to consider for these
students level of engagement.
That's something Molly and Itake very seriously in our work
too is where's the fun in this?
How do we get striving readersto want to do word work, word
(08:56):
analysis, routines that helpthem get these words into
long-term memory, because theyneed so many more exposures?
Melissa (09:04):
Yeah, I think you all said in the book that we have
like 50,000 words approximately.
Obviously we don't know thatfor everybody, but approximately
50,000 words that we haveorthographically mapped as
adults, and I mean I can't evenimagine trying to memorize
50,000 words.
That seems crazy.
So that's why this process isdifferent.
Katie Pace Miles (09:26):
That's right, absolutely.
This process is different.
The protocol that we propose inthis process also is not
intended for this to have to beused with every single word that
a student encounters, but it'sabout being able to put forth
routines and a protocol thathelps students attend to the
(09:50):
different aspects of a word thatneed to be a part of a mapping
process, to go into long-termmemory, so that this becomes
automatic or internal for thestudent, that when they're
looking at words independently,they are turning on these parts.
Right, they're looking at theorthographic representation,
(10:11):
breaking it apart, mapping it toits phonology and then
considering its meaning.
There has to be, as DavidSherwood would say, there is a
self-teaching process that comesinto play.
Melissa (10:24):
Yeah, and I'm really glad, molly, I'm glad you
brought up that.
I see it all the time wherepeople are asking like how do
you orthographically map thisword?
And you can't do it Like that'snot a thing, right?
And I think sometimes there'ssome confusion with phoneme
graphing, mapping of a word.
But I'm also just wondering,like I see people have this goal
(10:44):
in mind, right.
Teachers are like I'm hearinghow important orthographic
mapping is.
I want students to get there.
We're going to get reallydetailed in the like how to do
it, but just in the sense ofthings like how should teachers
approach this idea oforthographic mapping instead of
trying to say how do Iorthographically map this word?
Molly Ness (11:05):
trying to say how do I orthographically map this
word?
Sure, so I always think of itas it's.
For students toorthographically map a word, or
for teachers to facilitate thisprocess, we need to have this
trifecta.
And the trifecta around a wordbeing orthographically mapped is
the phonology, so it's soundstructure, or it's phonographic
correspondence.
It's orthography, so how it isspelled structure, or it's
phonographic correspondence.
(11:25):
It's orthography, so how it isspelled, how it looks on the
page, how it's visuallyrepresented, and then how it's
meaning, what its meaning is.
And that meaning isn't just,you know, a definition, it's
also the semantics and thesyntax of the word, what it's
related to, how it's applied incontext.
And so when you think of thatas a trifecta or kind of a
three-legged stool, if you kickout one of the legs of those
(11:47):
stools, you can't really get towords orthographically mapped.
And I thought about this a lotwith.
Probably my most prominentmemory of my first year of
teaching was my spellinginstruction, because
orthographically mapping is notjust for decoding words or sort
of lifting them off the page,it's also the process by which
we can spell words.
And so when I think back to myspelling instruction, I now
(12:11):
understand why it was Fridaytest and Monday miss meaning.
My kids would spell the wordright on Friday at the test and
then Monday they would miss itbecause I was not doing the word
analysis, I was not getting atthe meaning of the word.
Even if you looked at what myspelling instruction looked like
, it was quiet and I remember atthe time being like, oh,
students are working so hard asa quiet classroom.
(12:32):
But quiet classroom, what arethey not getting?
They're not getting the soundstructure of the word, they're
not making a phonologicalrepresentation to get to the
part of the brain that needsthat phoneme, grapheme
representation.
So it's also a process by whichwe put words on the page or we
spell words.
Lori (12:50):
I'm assuming some routines are going to be helpful here
for making words quote stick.
We'll use your title of yourbook in this question, katie.
Would you mind telling us alittle bit about like?
What are the?
What are the steps, what arethe things that make words stick
?
How do we orthographically mapthese words for our students, or
help them orthographically mapthem, I should say?
Katie Pace Miles (13:10):
Thank you for that.
So we have put together afour-step protocol based on
what's been shown to supportstudents in getting words into
long-term memory, and it hits onthe three aspects of
orthographic mapping right.
So you've got your phonology,your orthography and your
meaning.
So the four steps are see andsay.
Step one, that's your phonologyYou're seeing the word, you're
(13:33):
saying the pronunciation of theword.
The next step is segment andspell.
So there you're getting intothe orthographic representation
of the word.
The third step is study andsuss out.
So that's your meaning piece.
And then the last step, thefourth step, is search and stick
and that's where you get intothe multiple exposures, so
(13:54):
making sure that you're gettingmore opportunities, more hits at
bat with that word or withsimilarly spelled words, or
maybe I should say, and withsimilarly spelled words.
Lori (14:06):
I love that.
I want to talk about each onein a little bit more detail.
Is now the time to dive in?
Are you both good with that?
Sure, okay, all right, so canyou kind of walk us through?
I know, katie, you just gavethe high level overview, but
like if we wanted to dive intoeach part a little bit more, and
then I do want to linger inthat search and stick a little
bit with those repeatedexposures.
(14:26):
I think there's so much richconversation that we can have
there, but I'll start by backingus up to step one.
See and say what actuallyhappens in that step.
How do we help students buildthat phonology?
Molly Ness (14:39):
Sure, so this one is probably the most obvious.
You literally show students theword and that may mean showing
the word in different typographyso that they understand that a
lowercase G in one font looksdifferent than a lowercase G but
it still represents the samesound.
So kids are literally seeingthe word and they are saying the
(15:02):
word aloud.
They're hearing their teachersay the word, they are chorally
saying the word or echo usingsome of that great fluency work
to echo the word, but they areliterally getting that process
of getting to the phonologicalrepresentation of the word.
So that's see and say, which isprobably the most familiar and
the most obvious.
The next portion is segment andspell and this is where you
(15:25):
take the word and you do thatrich instruction in
phoneme-grapheme correspondence.
So you point out whateverlinguistic features that
students are familiar with.
So this is where you might drawattention to a digraph and
remind students that the twoletters in the digraph actually
make one sound.
(15:46):
We might call attention to kindof anomalies in words, so a
silent letter or a vowel teamthat doesn't represent the sound
that it traditionallyrepresents.
So you're doing some of thatheart word meaning, that
protocol that so many people arefamiliar with.
You're really doing thatphoneme grapheme correspondence.
(16:07):
I will pass it to Katie forstudy and suss out, but I will
say the origin of suss out.
Study and suss out, but I willsay the origin of suss out.
Suss is a British term.
I am a little bit of a theaterbuff and I went to see the who's
Tommy on Broadway and there'sthis great line where you're
going to have the charactersthat have to suss everything out
and suss means to figuresomething out.
(16:28):
So when we're talking about themeaning and the usage of the
word, we're sussing it out,we're studying it and figuring
out how to use it, what it means, what it's related to.
So Katie will cover study andsuss out as well as search and
stick.
Katie Pace Miles (16:43):
And Molly.
I just wanted to go back onesecond and let our listeners
know that each one of thosesteps, there's research on this
that it seems so obvious whenyou're saying see and say Okay,
so see the word and say the wordNot profound, right?
But there's this incrediblearticle from Rosenthal and Airy,
and I think the year is 2008,where they had this breakthrough
(17:07):
study in vocabulary learning.
They were looking at classroomswhere, when vocabulary
instruction was happening, theword was not displayed.
So the spelling of the word wasnot displayed.
And Julie Rosenthal conductedthis study with Dr Erie and they
found that when you show thespelling of the word while
(17:29):
you're doing this vocabularyinstruction, the words were
better retained in long-termmemory.
It's one of my.
It's a very complicated studythat puts forth this very
obvious thing in literacyinstruction.
But teachers up to that point,when they were working on
vocabulary, had not been showingthe spellings of the vocabulary
(17:52):
words.
Molly Ness (17:59):
And they also.
We also and I say this beingguilty of this I wasn't having
my students say words, so Iwould teach the word, but we
never went through that.
Here's what the word soundslike.
Say it with me.
You turn to a partner and sayit, and obviously, how can you
use a word if you don't know howit's pronounced or how it
sounds?
And so that oral componentreally needs to be a part of
that word study instruction.
Melissa (18:20):
I was just going to say I, so I have a.
My son is just finishing upkindergarten right now.
So you know, we're right in thethick of it of learning how to
read, and I have the joy ofseeing him starting to decode
words, which is amazing.
But what you said, molly, aboutthe different typography and
showing the different ones, thatis so important and I didn't
(18:42):
even think about it.
But I mean, he sees all thetime.
You know these.
A new book that we're readinghas the letter I written, just
the line going down right,without the lines at the top and
bottom, so he's reading it asan L, you know, and so and I
just have to say to him well, inthis case this is an uppercase
(19:02):
I and it's just so funny, likelittle things like that.
Or the G, when the G is that,that weird looking G, but yeah,
it's so important, little thingsthat just make such a big
difference, especially at thevery beginning.
Katie Pace Miles (19:15):
Absolutely Listen.
My younger kid was inkindergarten and I asked him to
write a G the other day and hedid the squiggly the one.
What do we?
Lori (19:24):
call that Like an old English G, like the very fancy
one, the very fancy G.
Katie Pace Miles (19:29):
He wrote the very fancy G.
I mean I think he was giving mea hard time, I don't know,
right, yeah, so Well, I mean, itjust shows that you're doing a
great job exposing him tovarious funks.
Absolutely.
Thank you, kudos to you.
Molly Ness (19:44):
I'll take that mom credit Right, they're hard to
come by, yeah.
Katie Pace Miles (19:48):
That's right.
I was going to give just onemore example of research of
which it abounds when it comesto this protocol, like what
substantiates why we pick thesesteps when Molly mentioned
segment and spell and Molly andI are always disclosing what we
(20:13):
used to do in our teaching thatdoesn't align to what we
recommend.
Now there are two articlesrecommend.
Now there's a great.
There are two articles and it'sAri Satlow, gaskins or Ari
Gaskin Satlow, and I'll findthese.
They have this keywordsprotocol.
It was one of my favoritestudies when I was working with
Linnea.
They have this very simpleprotocol of and this was at
Benchmark School, which was aschool for students with
dyslexia, and the protocol of.
(20:33):
And this was at BenchmarkSchool, which was a school for
students with dyslexia, and theprotocol was you see the word,
you say the word, you count thesounds in the word and then you
match how many sounds were inthe word with how many letters
you see in the word and from thesecond I read that article way
back in the day I thought, well,isn't that exactly what I was
(20:56):
missing in my instruction?
I never stopped and I was earlyelementary and then a reading
specialist in upper elementary.
I never really stopped andworked with striving readers on.
I know this must be so confusing.
There's three sounds in whale,but you're seeing five letters.
So how do we reconcile that?
It would just constantly beW-H-S-Y, you know, and B-C-E and
(21:20):
moving on, but it's givingstudents that space to say wow.
This happens a lot where I'mhearing fewer sounds than there
are letters and I'm going tohave to figure out what's going
on here.
Melissa (21:34):
All right.
So let's go back to the steps.
We talked about.
Number one, see and say numbertwo, segment and spell.
And let's jump into numberthree study and suss out.
And Katie, I think you'retaking this one, yes.
Katie Pace Miles (21:47):
Sure.
So study and suss out is whereyou're activating the meaning of
the word.
So we want students tounderstand the definition, but
also the multiple meaningsbehind each one of those
definitions, and to use it, touse the word in context.
So we have a lot of activitiesthat we are recommending at
(22:08):
different grade levels.
So one of the things, too, is,for each grade level band, we're
recommending that you dodifferent sorts of activities,
such as word webs or expert wordcards that you can use to
activate meaning.
We have paint swatch activities,which some of you may have used
before in your classrooms.
(22:29):
We have word part organizersthat get to the morphology of
the word and so on.
So that is study and suss out.
And then we have search andstick.
So search and stick has to do.
For me, this is all aboutgetting more exposures to the
word and ensuring that you'reable to use the word across
(22:51):
multiple contexts, that you'reable to find the words in text,
to embed it in text, to makesure that, again, you just are
able to activate that what hasbeen stored thus far, that you
can activate it and bring itforth at the end of the lesson.
So what we're recommending isthat you move through one
(23:14):
activity for each part of thatprotocol and what we give are
multiple options for each partof the protocol, so you can kind
of think of it like a menu.
So you have this framework.
You're going to do four stepsin your framework or four steps
in your protocol.
You pick one activity and youchange it up to keep things fun
(23:35):
and engaging for the students.
Molly Ness (23:37):
I will also add that there's a category of words
that one of the steps is alittle bit different for when we
talk about function words, Ialways refer to function words
as these little words that arethe semantic glue of sentences.
If you have ever playedcharades and you you know
(23:58):
pantomime.
Little word or small word.
Function words are those smallwords that hold meaning in the
sentence but can't really bedefined.
They are the words like were andthere, and from and of, and all
of those words that we see overand over again but you can't
define.
How do I define of, Draw apicture of from, what does that
(24:20):
look like?
And so when we think aboutthose function words they're a
little bit different.
So the study and suss out isgoing to look more at the
application of those functionwords than actually defining
them, drawing a picture of them,that sort of thing.
So what you might do is youmight take, like, if you think
about sort of Mad Libs, wherestudents have a word bank and
(24:43):
you have a passage where you'veomitted some of the function
words in that passage, they haveto apply the correct function
word at the correct space sothat their application of the
word is based more on usage andapplication than the literal
meaning, which doesn't reallypertain to those function words.
And we know with all thisevidence that function words are
(25:06):
particularly problematic forstriving readers.
They're particularlyproblematic for our multilingual
learners as well.
So we really want to addressthem as a part of the
instructional protocol, with oneslight twist.
Katie Pace Miles (25:19):
One of the things I'll add to that is an
activity that we do withfunction words is we have a cut
up sentence and then you'rearranging, you're creating a
proper sentence and we have somefoils in there, so some extra
words, and students need tofigure out where those function
words go.
And that comes out of a studyArian Wills, I think it was 1983
(25:41):
or 5.
And again I will send thatwhere that was actually part of
their assessment, where theywere moving the cards into place
, checking to see if studentswere able to use function words
properly.
And I had the great fortune ofrunning some studies with Dr
Airy where we investigatedkindergartners' ability to read
(26:04):
and use function words insentences and they were high
frequency function words and wehad some very interesting
findings about students' abilityto read the function words, but
they were not able to use thefunction words properly.
And we were working with bothmultilingual learners and native
(26:27):
English speakers.
Melissa (26:29):
Katie.
Now I don't want to hear moreabout that, so I'm just going to
ask a follow-up question.
Just what was like?
Why, why, why were studentsable to read the words but not
use the words?
Katie Pace Miles (26:42):
I the why is a mystery.
Right, it's the most importantquestion.
I think it was their lack ofexposure to the words in the
English language.
So we could teach them how toanalyze the representation of
the word.
We could give themopportunities to quote, unquote,
memorize the word.
We could give themopportunities to spell the word.
(27:04):
But if they hadn't heard thatword in context enough, they
didn't have the use case forthat word, so the word gave
comes to mind where I asked oneof the students to use gave in a
sentence.
This was a multilingual learnerand she said gave went to the
store.
(27:24):
Oh, my goodness.
Okay, and that was happeningroutinely where students were
attempting to use function wordsas nouns.
Lori (27:34):
Yeah, oh my gosh, I mean it's like funny almost, but like
it's makes so much sense, right, because you're just, you're
just making that replacement inyour brain, yeah that's right,
and if you've never heard itused, then yeah, a noun is like
the easiest thing, like you wantit to be a noun.
Katie Pace Miles (27:49):
That's right.
I have two studies I could sendyou on that where we analyzed
data two different ways.
Melissa (27:57):
So I'm happy to share that.
All right, let's jump back intothe steps.
Let's go, let's get back to thesteps, and you mentioned I
think Katie, you mentioned thatyou know really.
I mean, the majority of thebook is just like here are
things that you can do as ateacher, which, my goodness,
they're gonna love that.
But you mentioned that you allkind of broke it up into
different grade bands and I'mwondering if you could just talk
(28:17):
you don't have to go into superdetail but just give some ideas
of how are those the thingsthat you give teachers to try in
their classrooms?
How are they different at thedifferent grade levels?
I mean, I can imagine in K-1,they're just learning basic
words, whereas, you know, itgets into some trickier words as
they get older, it gets intothe multisyllabic words.
(28:39):
So what kinds of things aredifferent throughout the
different grade bands?
Molly Ness (28:43):
Yeah, and I'll back up with the context about this a
little bit, because this issomething that Katie and I
actually, in the writing, reallystruggled with.
We were not sure.
Well, how do you makerecommendations for K and one
and two and three and four andfive which are sort of these
arbitrary, like we've alldecided that based on whatever
the norms are, that you know ifyou're eight years old you're
(29:03):
going to be an X grade.
But really, when you start tounderstand Aries phases of
reading, you start to understandwhy your instruction needs to
be tailored for the readingbehaviors of reading.
You start to understand whyyour instruction needs to be
tailored for the readingbehaviors of children, so that
it's the Aries phases that guidewhat sort of approach you take,
rather than grade level or sortof those constraints.
(29:27):
So Katie obviously learned fromthe legend herself about Aries
phases and can explain, like,why do we even talk about Ares
phases in this book?
So that as the sort of theframework for here's how to
tailor your instruction based onthat work.
Katie Pace Miles (29:44):
This is really complicated.
I want to acknowledge that too.
It's really complicated becauseAres is very, very clear that
she uses the term phases, notstages, and so phases refers to
the predominant phase that thestudent is in with regards to
how they are storing words inmemory with regards to their
(30:07):
ability to read and spell thewords.
So these phases can beoverlapping, and you know, I'm
thinking of my kindergartner athome, right, who is able to read
many words and spell many words, but that does not mean that he
is in the consolidated phase,right.
(30:27):
He has a few words that he isin that phase with.
He has a few where he's in thefull alphabetic phase
Overwhelmingly.
He's in the partial alphabeticphase though, and so that is the
phase where my kindergartnerexists Overwhelmingly.
That is how he is engaging withwords, okay, so I just want to
(30:50):
make sure that I specify thatand also that in each chapter,
when we break the activities upinto these bands, as Molly said,
there's K1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
We do say, you know, studentstypically in these grades are in
this phase, right, but I wantto acknowledge there are many
(31:13):
teachers out there that areworking with fourth and fifth
graders who are in the partialalphabetic phase.
A lot of my work is working witholder students that are in the
partial or full alphabetic phase, and Ari makes this point that
so many older striving readersare actually stuck in the
(31:33):
partial alphabetic phase.
We think of them stuck at thefull because that's one below
consolidated, but it's reallythe partial because they have
incomplete phonics knowledge.
So what we did is we thoughtabout students for whom they
would need extra practice withtheir word work skills in these
(31:53):
grade bands.
We thought about what type arethey working with one syllable
words, even within one syllablewords?
What type of phonetic elementswould they experience in
kindergarten and first grade?
And we do talk about that inthe chapter as well.
We kind of give this profile ofwhat's happening in that grade
band with regards to phase andphonetic element knowledge,
(32:16):
based on those two things.
Developmentally, what wouldstudents be interested in doing
with words?
And then we put forth the menuof options.
Molly Ness (32:26):
And to make it even more complicated, we talked
about this sort of 50,000 numberat the beginning of our time
together, where most adultreaders have about 50,000 words
orthographically mapped.
Well, wouldn't it be awesome ifthere were grade level
benchmarks for what should myyou know, what number of words
should my kids have, mapped by Xperiod?
(32:46):
And there just is not thatresearch yet that research.
Yet we know that lots ofstudents are sort of below this
decoding threshold, where theyhave fewer than typically about
10,000 words by eighth grade.
And what happens with thosekids is we see issues with
comprehension.
(33:06):
Well, if you back up to what isthat comprehension really?
Sort of, how do we see itmanifest?
Well, it's actually really theydon't have enough words
orthographically mapped so thatthey are always having
compromised fluency becausethey're decoding all these words
.
And so what suffers?
Well, it's the comprehension.
And so, just to make the pointthat we don't really have this
(33:29):
benchmark of by third gradestudents should have X number of
words mapped of.
By third grade students shouldhave X number of words mapped.
Or by, you know, fifth grade,it should be this number.
Really, the research says about10,000 words by the end of
eighth grade, and then there'sthis big gap again until 50,000
as adult readers, but we justare not yet there in terms of
more concrete findings aroundnumbers themselves.
Lori (33:51):
Okay.
So when we're thinking about,like all of these ideas here,
how did you take these phasesand put them into grades, like
for the sake of this book?
Katie Pace Miles (34:02):
We talked with I mean, we, we put it forth,
and other people have done thisas well.
Where they have, they haveworked either, yeah, with Dr
Aries' consultation, or theyknow a lot about the theory of
orthographic mapping.
That goes into phase theory aswell.
So you really need tounderstand the theory of
(34:24):
orthographic mapping and youneed to understand Aries' theory
of word reading and spelling,and that's phase theory.
Phase theory is exactly that.
So phase theory is where andI'm sorry I was saying those
terms as if every reader orevery listener knows them, but
Aries phase theory goes frompre-alphabetic, partial
(34:48):
alphabetic, full alphabetic andconsolidated alphabetic phase.
Those phases are based on whatI had mentioned before, which is
, what are they able to use withregards to their phonetic
knowledge, to store words inmemory so that they can both
read and spell the wordsenvironmental, print and whatnot
(35:17):
, and then I won't walk youthrough all the phases, but we
can definitely link to anarticle.
Ari has many wonderful articlesfor teachers on that.
So when you've taught, though,and you've worked with, when
you've worked with, students,you read these phases and you
think, okay, it is reasonable tosay that kindergartners and
first graders are existing inthis partial alphabetic, moving
(35:38):
into the full alphabetic phase.
It's reasonable that second andthird graders are in full,
moving towards consolidated andso on and so forth, and fourth
and fifth graders are hopefully.
I mean, with what we expect offourth and fifth graders.
They really need to be in theconsolidated phase.
They need to have an enormouscorpus of words stored in
long-term memory that they'reable to automatically read and
(36:01):
spell.
That's what's accurately right.
That's what's going on whenyou're in the consolidated phase
.
So and again, caveats all overthe place here, which is that
you may be working with studentswho are at a different phase
but are in those grade bands,and that's that's okay.
So long as you understand thetheory of orthographic mapping
(36:21):
and you understand phase theory,then you can move through the.
You can actually pick whatactivities would work best for
you in your protocol.
Lori (36:30):
Thank you.
Okay, that's really helpful.
I I'm really excited toactually I mean, I know I have a
PDF of your book, but I'm veryexcited to get a hard copy.
So, as I'm re-listening to thispodcast again, I can flip it
open and look at exactly whatyou're talking about.
So can't wait for that.
I do want to go back, though,to this idea of the exposures
that we talked about.
(36:50):
Like is there a magic number ofexposures?
Okay, if I'm like all thestudent is struggling, if I just
give them 100 exposures,they'll get it.
I don't think that that you'regoing to say yes to this, but
you know there's always hopethat there's an easy answer here
.
So I'd love to hear a littlebit about this exposure, or I
(37:14):
guess another way we could frameit as the number of repetitions
.
Molly Ness (37:23):
I don't know who wants to kick us off.
Well, I'll set the stage andsay you're correct, there is no
magic number, and that it is allabout not just the quantity but
also the quality Meaning.
If we're just giving kids thehere's what the word looks like,
but not connecting it to itsmeaning and its semantics and
syntax and all those otherthings, then that's not a
particularly rich encounter.
So you know, less likely, ofcourse, to see transfer.
(37:47):
The research around the actualnumbers themselves is a little
bit varied.
It started in 1983, I believeWe've got a lovely 2020 article
that looked at the number ofexposures for students at risk
of reading difficulties versusthe number of students not at
risk, and that article providesthe numbers of like five to six
(38:13):
exposures.
Other researchers, like ourIsraeli colleague David Scher,
says it's more like two to four.
Of course, the literacy legendherself, linnea Airy, says that
it can be on the spectrum or therange of four exposures for
readers that are higher level,all the way to nine exposures
(38:35):
for readers who are at lowerlevels of development.
So you know pretty big rangehere.
Katie Pace Miles (38:42):
And the one thing I'll jump in and say what
Molly is referring to arefindings from certain studies,
and the important thing to noteis that those findings are based
on the methodological designthat went into that study and
that matters with regards towhat was the research question,
what were the words being usedand what were the measures being
(39:04):
used and how much time wasthere to conduct the study.
Was this a two-week interventionstudy where students were
working for 20 minutes every day?
I could go through a wholething on the methodology, but
those findings are constrainedto the methodological design and
so that should not be taken, asit takes four exposures for a
(39:30):
word to be stored.
That's not what it says.
You should think of it as inthat in this study where they
did this thing and measured itin this way, it took four
exposures, and in this otherstudy where they were looking at
the population of first gradestriving readers using that
(39:50):
design, the certain group ofstriving readers needed five
exposures versus nine exposures,and so on, a certain group of
striving readers needed fiveexposures versus nine exposures,
and so on.
And so to say that strivingreaders need over 20 exposures
or over 40 is I just?
I don't think we have.
I don't.
I don't have the citation forthat at this point.
Lori (40:10):
Yeah, I mean, it makes a lot of sense to me and that was
the answer I was thinking youboth were going to share,
because, you know, when youthink I know, molly, you you
referenced, going back to all ofthose components, right, and
you know, if we just like takeone of those, like, for example,
you know the meaning component,we can't say what meaning, what
spider webs I have in my brainthat are connecting all of these
(40:33):
, you know, stems of knowledgeand vocabulary versus your brain
, right and so for.
And also, it really depends onthe word too, right?
I mean, we didn't say that butlet's lift that up but it
depends on the reader, the word,or you know words that they
have in their semantic map, thatthey already have semantically
mapped.
So there's so many factors.
(40:54):
I think it's really difficult tosay like there's a one size
fits all approach to this, and Iappreciate you both, kind of
like giving us the big picturedefinition and reasoning there.
I think it really helps as wethink about it.
We all want that easy answer.
We want to say it's five timesif you're, you know, whatever,
and it's just not not that wayand nothing is that way in
(41:15):
teaching Right.
Molly Ness (41:16):
So yeah, and wouldn't that way in teaching
right?
So no, and wouldn't it be greatif it were that way.
But we just want to be reallyclear so that no listener is
saying like I did, the five,this study said five, I gave
five exposures and it's nottransferring or it's not
sticking.
What gives, it's not that cutand dry.
It never really is inclassrooms and working with kids
(41:38):
.
Katie Pace Miles (41:55):
Laura Stacy has great research on this too.
Where, to your point, laurie,where she was looking at the
reader's skills that theybrought to the table, and then
the length of the word and thesaliency of the word whether it
was a salient noun or not andthose factors also played into
how many exposures it requiredfor the word to be stored.
So you know, in research theseare all about interactions, the
student interacting with all ofthese other variables that come
into play.
Lori (42:12):
Such a good point.
Totally, we'll link all of thisstuff in the show notes.
As you're talking, katie, I'mGoogling frantically to grab as
many things as I can, so it'sgreat.
Melissa (42:22):
I've been really curious, as we've been talking
about that, I'm going to keepgoing back to that 50,000 words,
which just blows my mind, andI'm thinking like this is such a
simple.
You know these four steps aresimple.
You guys give tons of ways thatpeople can do it in different
ways, but I'm also thinking youprobably don't do that with
every single word that ends upbeing mapped.
So, like, how does that work?
(42:43):
Does it like if I, if I gothrough these steps with one
word, does some of that kind ofoverlap into other words?
Like I'm thinking of spellingmight be similar for another
word that I might take it overthere, or the meaning of, you
know, parts of the word might besimilar to another word?
Does it?
Does it kind of translate likethat?
Like can I orthographically mapa word in a different way that
(43:03):
doesn't go through these foursteps?
Molly Ness (43:06):
Yeah, that's such a good question because obviously
teachers are pressed for time.
And how do you do this protocolthat has four steps with 50,000
words.
Yeah, it's just.
(43:30):
It's just not possible With50,000 words or the word that
follows the linguistic pattern.
Katie Pace Miles (43:35):
We were pushed to clarify this point in the
book that it is not expectedthat a four-step protocol would
be used to get 50,000 words inmemory.
That's not at all the case.
What we are aware of is thatfor many students, they need
explicit, systematic instructionto get words into memory.
(44:00):
And then this, as we hadmentioned before from David's
chair, this process can beinternalized right, and so when
you get into the habit of makingsure you are putting your eyes
on the word and you're sayingthe word, or you're asking an
adult to say the word for you,when you're reconciling the
spelling to the pronunciationand that becomes part of your
(44:24):
word analysis routine, whetheryou're a third grader who's just
doing this independently now,like my daughter's in third
grade, and she knows, like, slowdown and figure out, how am I
going to work with this wordthat is unknown to me, and I
shouldn't be satisfied readingthe word and not knowing what it
means.
That is just an explicit.
(44:45):
That's something we're tryingto build awareness of is you
should know.
If a teacher is asking you toread and spell a word, you
should ask what it means if youdon't know it and let's help you
with that.
So again, this isn't, we're not.
Let's help you with that.
So again, this isn't, we're notgoing to be able to do this
with 50,000, but it's helpingstudents.
But let's even go so far as tosay empowering students to build
(45:11):
up their skills that they canuse when an adult isn't around
and or when they need to go seekan adult support to learn a
word.
And by learn again, we'resaying the whole right.
The trifecta Learn the word isboth its spelling, meaning and
pronunciation Spelling,pronunciation and meaning.
Let's put it that way.
Melissa (45:28):
Yeah, that makes so much sense, that internalization
.
You know they go through thesesteps so many times in different
ways.
Then they can start to do thaton their own, Like I mean,
that's, it has to happen thatway.
There's no way that we can dothat for every word, for every
student.
Molly Ness (45:49):
And I would, actually I would even.
We're living a lot in the worldof K through five right now in
our conversation.
I'm doing a lot of work inmiddle schools with content area
teachers who are introducingcontent specificspecific
vocabulary.
And when we think aboutintroducing vocabulary, it's
still the trifecta.
You're a seventh-grade biologyteacher and you're teaching the
word mitosis.
You still have to have kidsknow its meaning, know how it
(46:14):
looks and maps onto the sound.
So you still have to have thatsort of trifecta of things.
Even if you're sort of thinkingI'm actually teaching word
meanings To map that word, youstill got to get to that
trifecta.
Lori (46:28):
So important.
Yeah, I see that a lot at homewith my own child.
I'll think that she has wordsmapped and I'll be like write
this word down for me.
If I like I'll have her makelists for me or whatever, and
I'll notice, oh, she missed that.
You know that's actually twoletters that make that one sound
and I'm like, okay, you'remissing something here.
What do you think it is?
But that like quick encodingactivity is like a great window
(46:53):
into what students or what kidsknow and what they might be
missing, where there might begaps.
So you're right, it takes allthree.
Katie Pace Miles (47:03):
And coding really is right.
The vehicle through which youcan assess a student's storage
of the word in memory.
Lori (47:10):
Yeah, it's like that, peeking in, like literally
peeking under the hood, yep, yep.
Well, we are just so gratefulthat you both took so much time
to talk with us about your newbook Making Words Stick.
Is there anything else you wantto leave our listeners with?
Molly Ness (47:27):
Well, the only thing I would add is we situate this
whole conversation in a basicunderstanding of what do we mean
by the reading brain, thiswhole conversation in a basic
understanding of what do we meanby the reading brain, because
we really believe that teachers,who have the enormous
responsibility of changingstudents' brains every day which
is so powerful that you got tohave the user's manual to that
(47:50):
you wouldn't want to go to achiropractor who doesn't know
how the spine works we asteachers have to have real
concrete understanding of howthe reading brain works, and so
we get to talk a little bitabout that and once you really
understand what this whole thingof the reading brain is, you
start to understand why in somecases words stick and in other
cases they don't.
(48:10):
So I hope readers will alsowalk away with some of the basic
fascination that we have aboutthe reading brain.
Katie Pace Miles (48:18):
I'll put a plug in for more resources for
teachers that I can offer, whichis through my nonprofit called
the Reading Institute.
I have two reading interventionprograms that we distribute for
free to teachers who need anintervention program free to
(48:39):
teachers who need anintervention program.
That is, it's an structuredliteracy intervention programs
that has research and evidencebehind it, and so you can go to
the reading institute, nycorg,and you can sign up for
trainings for reading ready orreading go.
And the joy of this nonprofitis that we have grant funding
that we can leverage to inviteteachers to trainings and mail
(48:59):
them a kit with these twostructured literacy programs to
use.
Molly knows I have this bigthing where I can't believe that
teachers who want and needintervention programs sometimes
are not able to sign up for thetrainings of the programs being
offered in their districts, orthe trainings are too expensive
or whatnot.
(49:20):
So this is a great mission ofmine to ensure the teachers have
what they need to work withstriving readers.
Melissa (49:26):
Yeah, that's a great resource.
Thank you for sharing.
Lori (49:28):
Yeah, and if you're listening, it's
readinginstitutenycorg.
Just a quick make sure you haveit and we'll link it in the
show notes.
We're linking it in the shownotes.
Melissa (49:39):
Well, thank you both for being here today.
We're so, so grateful for youto be here, but also to write
this amazing book, and we can'twait to get it.
Molly Ness (49:48):
Well, thanks for having us, and thanks not only
for having us, but also for thework that you guys do in
empowering teachers in aneveryday context and making
knowledge so practical andconsumable for teachers.
Katie Pace Miles (50:03):
I echo that.
Thank you both.
Lori (50:05):
Thank you.
We couldn't do it withoutamazing guests like yourselves,
so thank you.
Melissa (50:12):
To stay connected with us, sign up for our email list
at literacypodcastcom, join ourFacebook group and follow us on
Instagram and Twitter.
Lori (50:22):
If this episode resonated with you, take a moment to share
with a teacher friend or leaveus a five-star rating and review
on Apple Podcasts.
Melissa (50:32):
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.
Lori (50:44):
We appreciate you so much and we're so glad you're here to
learn with us.
Ever notice how some students are still sounding out
every word, while others arebreezing through text?
If you're wondering how to helpstudents move from slow,
effortful decoding to automaticword reading, this episode is
for you.
Melissa (00:16):
In this episode you'll hear from Katie Pace-Miles and
Molly Ness.
They are researchers andauthors of the new book Making
Words Stick.
They share a simple four-steproutine that supports
orthographic mapping to helpyour students read words
automatically.
Lori (00:34):
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 worked 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 (00:54):
Lori, and I can't wait to keep learning with you today.
Hi, katie and Molly, we are soexcited to have both of you back
again on the podcast togetherthis time.
Thanks for having us, and we'resuper excited about your new
book, making Words Stick.
It's in our Science of Readingand Practice series from
(01:16):
Scholastic and we know it'sgoing to be super popular.
Lori (01:21):
We know it's going to be a big hit.
Yeah, we can't wait, so I'mgoing to kick us off.
Just jump right in.
In your book you say the goalfor students is for all words to
become sight words, and the wayto make this happen is through
orthographic mapping.
So we thought the best way tostart this would be for you to
share what orthographic mappingis, for you just to tell us all
(01:44):
about it so I can see Molly onmy left.
I'm going to pass it to Mollyand then, molly, you can send it
off to Katie.
Molly Ness (01:50):
Well, I'm going to let Katie define orthographic
mapping, but I'll set the stagea little bit.
Why do we care aboutorthographic mapping?
We care about it because it'sreally the on-ramp to fluency
and comprehension.
If you were to think about allof the words that you encounter
in your everyday life as anadult reader street signs,
(02:13):
newspaper articles, anythingthat you read you rarely decode
anything.
Every word that you likely read, with the exception of a couple
proper nouns, know proper nounsor sort of oddball words
they've already beenorthographically mapped.
You instantly recognize them,and because you instantly
recognize them, you have morecognitive energy to get to
(02:37):
comprehension, which is ofcourse, the ultimate goal for
for reading.
We know that proficient adultreaders have about 50,000 words
that have been orthographicallymapped, and so I'm sort of
dancing around the definition.
So I'll let Katie handle theactual definition of
orthographic mapping.
She had the pleasure ofliterally learning from the
researcher who wrote aboutorthographic mapping, so this is
(02:59):
definitely in Katie'swheelhouse.
Katie Pace Miles (03:01):
Thanks, molly.
Yes, the definition oforthographic mapping.
It's a theory of Dr LinneaAries and she was my mentor for
my PhD work, and the theory isbased on decades of research
that Linnea and her colleaguesconducted on how students store
(03:22):
words in memory.
So the simplest way to putforth the definition is that
it's a cognitive process ofmapping the spelling,
pronunciation and meaning of aword into long-term memory.
And so that does speak to thisgoal that all words the goal
would be that all words arestored in long-term memory so
(03:45):
that when you see the wordyou're able to say it
automatically.
There's a lot that goes behindthe scenes of getting that word
into long-term memory.
It's not instantaneous that theword is stored.
You have to go through thiscognitive process over time and
it may take multiple exposuresto the words or different uses
(04:07):
of the words or activities thatyou do with the words in order
to get it into long-term memory.
Molly Ness (04:13):
And what we mean by cognitive process is we want to
be really clear that it's sortof this behind the scenes thing
that happens within the brain.
It's not something that youknow.
You would say to a classroom ofkids pull out your orthographic
mapping workbooks or it's thisyou know process that you teach.
It's this sort of invisible,cognitive, behind the scenes
(04:38):
thing that we all do as readers.
And I think one of themisconceptions also about
orthographic mapping is that itonly is relevant to beginning
readers, and certainly beginningreaders are living in the world
of orthographic mapping waymore than proficient readers are
.
But just this past summer I wasreading a murder mystery book,
(05:02):
not a familiar word to me.
I could decode it.
There was enough of the contextof the word to know it, but I
didn't know its pronunciation,and so I went on to the
dictionary an online dictionaryits meaning, how it looked, or
its visual representation, andthen its phonology, its sound
(05:28):
structure.
That word was thenorthographically mapped for me
so that anytime I came to thatword in that same murder mystery
book, it was instantlyrecognized.
So I'm a proficient reader.
It took one iteration of thatword to be mapped, but we know
that many children need multipleexposures to words before
they're orthographically mapped.
(05:49):
And it's not just the quantityof exposures, it's also the
quality of exposures thatmatters to help kids map words.
Lori (05:56):
That's so interesting.
I love that idea of quality andquantity, and I'm hearing you
say it's different for everyone.
Right?
Everyone has a differentexperience with orthographic
mapping.
I'm curious if you might beable to share with our listeners
why it's not memorizing words,right, if every adult has a lot
of words orthographically mapped, how's it different than
(06:18):
memorizing words?
Katie Pace Miles (06:21):
Memorizing often becomes a thing in
education where it's a quick fix.
Memorization becomes somethingthat we do as students, in some
sort of format where we don'tdraw attention to the
orthographic representation ofthe word.
And I can't speak for allteachers, but how I have seen it
(06:44):
, how I used to do it before Iactually learned about
orthographic mapping, is you canthink of it with word list
reading or flashcard reading andwe would ask students to
memorize this whole word as aunit.
And what's difficult forteachers to understand is that
(07:06):
that is what it looks like whenyou become a proficient reader.
When you are proficient, youare able to look at a word and
say the word, but in order toget to that point, you have to
do something with the word.
Or I can even temper that andsay, overwhelmingly, students
need to do something with thatword.
Or I can even temper that andsay overwhelmingly, students
need to do something with thatword.
(07:26):
There are students for whomthey can look at a word and it
becomes mapped in long termmemory.
Those students are theexception to the rest.
Molly Ness (07:40):
And I'll just add that, as we can speak from our
own classroom experience,memorization doesn't necessarily
lead to transfer.
So I had this experience when Iwas a classroom teacher.
I would teach spelling or Iwould teach sight words through
flashcards and kids would get iton the flashcard and then they
(08:01):
would see it in the text andyou'd be like come on, you just
got how does it not make, howdoes it not stick?
And that we know is thatmemorization doesn't necessarily
lead to transfer.
Katie Pace Miles (08:11):
And one other thing, too is I work
overwhelmingly with strivingreaders, and we know from
research striving readers needmore exposures to the words, and
anyone who works with strivingreaders knows that intuitively.
But what research has shown isno.
In fact, even when you look atpopulations of first grade
striving readers, they canactually be stratified into
(08:34):
students who are at more or lessrisk within that striver
reading range, and the studentsmost at risk need even more
exposures, and so, also, youhave to consider for these
students level of engagement.
That's something Molly and Itake very seriously in our work
too is where's the fun in this?
How do we get striving readersto want to do word work, word
(08:56):
analysis, routines that helpthem get these words into
long-term memory, because theyneed so many more exposures?
Melissa (09:04):
Yeah, I think you all said in the book that we have
like 50,000 words approximately.
Obviously we don't know thatfor everybody, but approximately
50,000 words that we haveorthographically mapped as
adults, and I mean I can't evenimagine trying to memorize
50,000 words.
That seems crazy.
So that's why this process isdifferent.
Katie Pace Miles (09:26):
That's right, absolutely.
This process is different.
The protocol that we propose inthis process also is not
intended for this to have to beused with every single word that
a student encounters, but it'sabout being able to put forth
routines and a protocol thathelps students attend to the
(09:50):
different aspects of a word thatneed to be a part of a mapping
process, to go into long-termmemory, so that this becomes
automatic or internal for thestudent, that when they're
looking at words independently,they are turning on these parts.
Right, they're looking at theorthographic representation,
(10:11):
breaking it apart, mapping it toits phonology and then
considering its meaning.
There has to be, as DavidSherwood would say, there is a
self-teaching process that comesinto play.
Melissa (10:24):
Yeah, and I'm really glad, molly, I'm glad you
brought up that.
I see it all the time wherepeople are asking like how do
you orthographically map thisword?
And you can't do it Like that'snot a thing, right?
And I think sometimes there'ssome confusion with phoneme
graphing, mapping of a word.
But I'm also just wondering,like I see people have this goal
(10:44):
in mind, right.
Teachers are like I'm hearinghow important orthographic
mapping is.
I want students to get there.
We're going to get reallydetailed in the like how to do
it, but just in the sense ofthings like how should teachers
approach this idea oforthographic mapping instead of
trying to say how do Iorthographically map this word?
Molly Ness (11:05):
trying to say how do I orthographically map this
word?
Sure, so I always think of itas it's.
For students toorthographically map a word, or
for teachers to facilitate thisprocess, we need to have this
trifecta.
And the trifecta around a wordbeing orthographically mapped is
the phonology, so it's soundstructure, or it's phonographic
correspondence.
It's orthography, so how it isspelled structure, or it's
phonographic correspondence.
(11:25):
It's orthography, so how it isspelled, how it looks on the
page, how it's visuallyrepresented, and then how it's
meaning, what its meaning is.
And that meaning isn't just,you know, a definition, it's
also the semantics and thesyntax of the word, what it's
related to, how it's applied incontext.
And so when you think of thatas a trifecta or kind of a
three-legged stool, if you kickout one of the legs of those
(11:47):
stools, you can't really get towords orthographically mapped.
And I thought about this a lotwith.
Probably my most prominentmemory of my first year of
teaching was my spellinginstruction, because
orthographically mapping is notjust for decoding words or sort
of lifting them off the page,it's also the process by which
we can spell words.
And so when I think back to myspelling instruction, I now
(12:11):
understand why it was Fridaytest and Monday miss meaning.
My kids would spell the wordright on Friday at the test and
then Monday they would miss itbecause I was not doing the word
analysis, I was not getting atthe meaning of the word.
Even if you looked at what myspelling instruction looked like
, it was quiet and I remember atthe time being like, oh,
students are working so hard asa quiet classroom.
(12:32):
But quiet classroom, what arethey not getting?
They're not getting the soundstructure of the word, they're
not making a phonologicalrepresentation to get to the
part of the brain that needsthat phoneme, grapheme
representation.
So it's also a process by whichwe put words on the page or we
spell words.
Lori (12:50):
I'm assuming some routines are going to be helpful here
for making words quote stick.
We'll use your title of yourbook in this question, katie.
Would you mind telling us alittle bit about like?
What are the?
What are the steps, what arethe things that make words stick
?
How do we orthographically mapthese words for our students, or
help them orthographically mapthem, I should say?
Katie Pace Miles (13:10):
Thank you for that.
So we have put together afour-step protocol based on
what's been shown to supportstudents in getting words into
long-term memory, and it hits onthe three aspects of
orthographic mapping right.
So you've got your phonology,your orthography and your
meaning.
So the four steps are see andsay.
Step one, that's your phonologyYou're seeing the word, you're
(13:33):
saying the pronunciation of theword.
The next step is segment andspell.
So there you're getting intothe orthographic representation
of the word.
The third step is study andsuss out.
So that's your meaning piece.
And then the last step, thefourth step, is search and stick
and that's where you get intothe multiple exposures, so
(13:54):
making sure that you're gettingmore opportunities, more hits at
bat with that word or withsimilarly spelled words, or
maybe I should say, and withsimilarly spelled words.
Lori (14:06):
I love that.
I want to talk about each onein a little bit more detail.
Is now the time to dive in?
Are you both good with that?
Sure, okay, all right, so canyou kind of walk us through?
I know, katie, you just gavethe high level overview, but
like if we wanted to dive intoeach part a little bit more, and
then I do want to linger inthat search and stick a little
bit with those repeatedexposures.
(14:26):
I think there's so much richconversation that we can have
there, but I'll start by backingus up to step one.
See and say what actuallyhappens in that step.
How do we help students buildthat phonology?
Molly Ness (14:39):
Sure, so this one is probably the most obvious.
You literally show students theword and that may mean showing
the word in different typographyso that they understand that a
lowercase G in one font looksdifferent than a lowercase G but
it still represents the samesound.
So kids are literally seeingthe word and they are saying the
(15:02):
word aloud.
They're hearing their teachersay the word, they are chorally
saying the word or echo usingsome of that great fluency work
to echo the word, but they areliterally getting that process
of getting to the phonologicalrepresentation of the word.
So that's see and say, which isprobably the most familiar and
the most obvious.
The next portion is segment andspell and this is where you
(15:25):
take the word and you do thatrich instruction in
phoneme-grapheme correspondence.
So you point out whateverlinguistic features that
students are familiar with.
So this is where you might drawattention to a digraph and
remind students that the twoletters in the digraph actually
make one sound.
(15:46):
We might call attention to kindof anomalies in words, so a
silent letter or a vowel teamthat doesn't represent the sound
that it traditionallyrepresents.
So you're doing some of thatheart word meaning, that
protocol that so many people arefamiliar with.
You're really doing thatphoneme grapheme correspondence.
(16:07):
I will pass it to Katie forstudy and suss out, but I will
say the origin of suss out.
Study and suss out, but I willsay the origin of suss out.
Suss is a British term.
I am a little bit of a theaterbuff and I went to see the who's
Tommy on Broadway and there'sthis great line where you're
going to have the charactersthat have to suss everything out
and suss means to figuresomething out.
(16:28):
So when we're talking about themeaning and the usage of the
word, we're sussing it out,we're studying it and figuring
out how to use it, what it means, what it's related to.
So Katie will cover study andsuss out as well as search and
stick.
Katie Pace Miles (16:43):
And Molly.
I just wanted to go back onesecond and let our listeners
know that each one of thosesteps, there's research on this
that it seems so obvious whenyou're saying see and say Okay,
so see the word and say the wordNot profound, right?
But there's this incrediblearticle from Rosenthal and Airy,
and I think the year is 2008,where they had this breakthrough
(17:07):
study in vocabulary learning.
They were looking at classroomswhere, when vocabulary
instruction was happening, theword was not displayed.
So the spelling of the word wasnot displayed.
And Julie Rosenthal conductedthis study with Dr Erie and they
found that when you show thespelling of the word while
(17:29):
you're doing this vocabularyinstruction, the words were
better retained in long-termmemory.
It's one of my.
It's a very complicated studythat puts forth this very
obvious thing in literacyinstruction.
But teachers up to that point,when they were working on
vocabulary, had not been showingthe spellings of the vocabulary
(17:52):
words.
Molly Ness (17:59):
And they also.
We also and I say this beingguilty of this I wasn't having
my students say words, so Iwould teach the word, but we
never went through that.
Here's what the word soundslike.
Say it with me.
You turn to a partner and sayit, and obviously, how can you
use a word if you don't know howit's pronounced or how it
sounds?
And so that oral componentreally needs to be a part of
that word study instruction.
Melissa (18:20):
I was just going to say I, so I have a.
My son is just finishing upkindergarten right now.
So you know, we're right in thethick of it of learning how to
read, and I have the joy ofseeing him starting to decode
words, which is amazing.
But what you said, molly, aboutthe different typography and
showing the different ones, thatis so important and I didn't
(18:42):
even think about it.
But I mean, he sees all thetime.
You know these.
A new book that we're readinghas the letter I written, just
the line going down right,without the lines at the top and
bottom, so he's reading it asan L, you know, and so and I
just have to say to him well, inthis case this is an uppercase
(19:02):
I and it's just so funny, likelittle things like that.
Or the G, when the G is that,that weird looking G, but yeah,
it's so important, little thingsthat just make such a big
difference, especially at thevery beginning.
Katie Pace Miles (19:15):
Absolutely Listen.
My younger kid was inkindergarten and I asked him to
write a G the other day and hedid the squiggly the one.
What do we?
Lori (19:24):
call that Like an old English G, like the very fancy
one, the very fancy G.
Katie Pace Miles (19:29):
He wrote the very fancy G.
I mean I think he was giving mea hard time, I don't know,
right, yeah, so Well, I mean, itjust shows that you're doing a
great job exposing him tovarious funks.
Absolutely.
Thank you, kudos to you.
Molly Ness (19:44):
I'll take that mom credit Right, they're hard to
come by, yeah.
Katie Pace Miles (19:48):
That's right.
I was going to give just onemore example of research of
which it abounds when it comesto this protocol, like what
substantiates why we pick thesesteps when Molly mentioned
segment and spell and Molly andI are always disclosing what we
(20:13):
used to do in our teaching thatdoesn't align to what we
recommend.
Now there are two articlesrecommend.
Now there's a great.
There are two articles and it'sAri Satlow, gaskins or Ari
Gaskin Satlow, and I'll findthese.
They have this keywordsprotocol.
It was one of my favoritestudies when I was working with
Linnea.
They have this very simpleprotocol of and this was at
Benchmark School, which was aschool for students with
dyslexia, and the protocol of.
(20:33):
And this was at BenchmarkSchool, which was a school for
students with dyslexia, and theprotocol was you see the word,
you say the word, you count thesounds in the word and then you
match how many sounds were inthe word with how many letters
you see in the word and from thesecond I read that article way
back in the day I thought, well,isn't that exactly what I was
(20:56):
missing in my instruction?
I never stopped and I was earlyelementary and then a reading
specialist in upper elementary.
I never really stopped andworked with striving readers on.
I know this must be so confusing.
There's three sounds in whale,but you're seeing five letters.
So how do we reconcile that?
It would just constantly beW-H-S-Y, you know, and B-C-E and
(21:20):
moving on, but it's givingstudents that space to say wow.
This happens a lot where I'mhearing fewer sounds than there
are letters and I'm going tohave to figure out what's going
on here.
Melissa (21:34):
All right.
So let's go back to the steps.
We talked about.
Number one, see and say numbertwo, segment and spell.
And let's jump into numberthree study and suss out.
And Katie, I think you'retaking this one, yes.
Katie Pace Miles (21:47):
Sure.
So study and suss out is whereyou're activating the meaning of
the word.
So we want students tounderstand the definition, but
also the multiple meaningsbehind each one of those
definitions, and to use it, touse the word in context.
So we have a lot of activitiesthat we are recommending at
(22:08):
different grade levels.
So one of the things, too, is,for each grade level band, we're
recommending that you dodifferent sorts of activities,
such as word webs or expert wordcards that you can use to
activate meaning.
We have paint swatch activities,which some of you may have used
before in your classrooms.
(22:29):
We have word part organizersthat get to the morphology of
the word and so on.
So that is study and suss out.
And then we have search andstick.
So search and stick has to do.
For me, this is all aboutgetting more exposures to the
word and ensuring that you'reable to use the word across
(22:51):
multiple contexts, that you'reable to find the words in text,
to embed it in text, to makesure that, again, you just are
able to activate that what hasbeen stored thus far, that you
can activate it and bring itforth at the end of the lesson.
So what we're recommending isthat you move through one
(23:14):
activity for each part of thatprotocol and what we give are
multiple options for each partof the protocol, so you can kind
of think of it like a menu.
So you have this framework.
You're going to do four stepsin your framework or four steps
in your protocol.
You pick one activity and youchange it up to keep things fun
(23:35):
and engaging for the students.
Molly Ness (23:37):
I will also add that there's a category of words
that one of the steps is alittle bit different for when we
talk about function words, Ialways refer to function words
as these little words that arethe semantic glue of sentences.
If you have ever playedcharades and you you know
(23:58):
pantomime.
Little word or small word.
Function words are those smallwords that hold meaning in the
sentence but can't really bedefined.
They are the words like were andthere, and from and of, and all
of those words that we see overand over again but you can't
define.
How do I define of, Draw apicture of from, what does that
(24:20):
look like?
And so when we think aboutthose function words they're a
little bit different.
So the study and suss out isgoing to look more at the
application of those functionwords than actually defining
them, drawing a picture of them,that sort of thing.
So what you might do is youmight take, like, if you think
about sort of Mad Libs, wherestudents have a word bank and
(24:43):
you have a passage where you'veomitted some of the function
words in that passage, they haveto apply the correct function
word at the correct space sothat their application of the
word is based more on usage andapplication than the literal
meaning, which doesn't reallypertain to those function words.
And we know with all thisevidence that function words are
(25:06):
particularly problematic forstriving readers.
They're particularlyproblematic for our multilingual
learners as well.
So we really want to addressthem as a part of the
instructional protocol, with oneslight twist.
Katie Pace Miles (25:19):
One of the things I'll add to that is an
activity that we do withfunction words is we have a cut
up sentence and then you'rearranging, you're creating a
proper sentence and we have somefoils in there, so some extra
words, and students need tofigure out where those function
words go.
And that comes out of a studyArian Wills, I think it was 1983
(25:41):
or 5.
And again I will send thatwhere that was actually part of
their assessment, where theywere moving the cards into place
, checking to see if studentswere able to use function words
properly.
And I had the great fortune ofrunning some studies with Dr
Airy where we investigatedkindergartners' ability to read
(26:04):
and use function words insentences and they were high
frequency function words and wehad some very interesting
findings about students' abilityto read the function words, but
they were not able to use thefunction words properly.
And we were working with bothmultilingual learners and native
(26:27):
English speakers.
Melissa (26:29):
Katie.
Now I don't want to hear moreabout that, so I'm just going to
ask a follow-up question.
Just what was like?
Why, why, why were studentsable to read the words but not
use the words?
Katie Pace Miles (26:42):
I the why is a mystery.
Right, it's the most importantquestion.
I think it was their lack ofexposure to the words in the
English language.
So we could teach them how toanalyze the representation of
the word.
We could give themopportunities to quote, unquote,
memorize the word.
We could give themopportunities to spell the word.
(27:04):
But if they hadn't heard thatword in context enough, they
didn't have the use case forthat word, so the word gave
comes to mind where I asked oneof the students to use gave in a
sentence.
This was a multilingual learnerand she said gave went to the
store.
(27:24):
Oh, my goodness.
Okay, and that was happeningroutinely where students were
attempting to use function wordsas nouns.
Lori (27:34):
Yeah, oh my gosh, I mean it's like funny almost, but like
it's makes so much sense, right, because you're just, you're
just making that replacement inyour brain, yeah that's right,
and if you've never heard itused, then yeah, a noun is like
the easiest thing, like you wantit to be a noun.
Katie Pace Miles (27:49):
That's right.
I have two studies I could sendyou on that where we analyzed
data two different ways.
Melissa (27:57):
So I'm happy to share that.
All right, let's jump back intothe steps.
Let's go, let's get back to thesteps, and you mentioned I
think Katie, you mentioned thatyou know really.
I mean, the majority of thebook is just like here are
things that you can do as ateacher, which, my goodness,
they're gonna love that.
But you mentioned that you allkind of broke it up into
different grade bands and I'mwondering if you could just talk
(28:17):
you don't have to go into superdetail but just give some ideas
of how are those the thingsthat you give teachers to try in
their classrooms?
How are they different at thedifferent grade levels?
I mean, I can imagine in K-1,they're just learning basic
words, whereas, you know, itgets into some trickier words as
they get older, it gets intothe multisyllabic words.
(28:39):
So what kinds of things aredifferent throughout the
different grade bands?
Molly Ness (28:43):
Yeah, and I'll back up with the context about this a
little bit, because this issomething that Katie and I
actually, in the writing, reallystruggled with.
We were not sure.
Well, how do you makerecommendations for K and one
and two and three and four andfive which are sort of these
arbitrary, like we've alldecided that based on whatever
the norms are, that you know ifyou're eight years old you're
(29:03):
going to be an X grade.
But really, when you start tounderstand Aries phases of
reading, you start to understandwhy your instruction needs to
be tailored for the readingbehaviors of reading.
You start to understand whyyour instruction needs to be
tailored for the readingbehaviors of children, so that
it's the Aries phases that guidewhat sort of approach you take,
rather than grade level or sortof those constraints.
(29:27):
So Katie obviously learned fromthe legend herself about Aries
phases and can explain, like,why do we even talk about Ares
phases in this book?
So that as the sort of theframework for here's how to
tailor your instruction based onthat work.
Katie Pace Miles (29:44):
This is really complicated.
I want to acknowledge that too.
It's really complicated becauseAres is very, very clear that
she uses the term phases, notstages, and so phases refers to
the predominant phase that thestudent is in with regards to
how they are storing words inmemory with regards to their
(30:07):
ability to read and spell thewords.
So these phases can beoverlapping, and you know, I'm
thinking of my kindergartner athome, right, who is able to read
many words and spell many words, but that does not mean that he
is in the consolidated phase,right.
(30:27):
He has a few words that he isin that phase with.
He has a few where he's in thefull alphabetic phase
Overwhelmingly.
He's in the partial alphabeticphase though, and so that is the
phase where my kindergartnerexists Overwhelmingly.
That is how he is engaging withwords, okay, so I just want to
(30:50):
make sure that I specify thatand also that in each chapter,
when we break the activities upinto these bands, as Molly said,
there's K1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
We do say, you know, studentstypically in these grades are in
this phase, right, but I wantto acknowledge there are many
(31:13):
teachers out there that areworking with fourth and fifth
graders who are in the partialalphabetic phase.
A lot of my work is working witholder students that are in the
partial or full alphabetic phase, and Ari makes this point that
so many older striving readersare actually stuck in the
(31:33):
partial alphabetic phase.
We think of them stuck at thefull because that's one below
consolidated, but it's reallythe partial because they have
incomplete phonics knowledge.
So what we did is we thoughtabout students for whom they
would need extra practice withtheir word work skills in these
(31:53):
grade bands.
We thought about what type arethey working with one syllable
words, even within one syllablewords?
What type of phonetic elementswould they experience in
kindergarten and first grade?
And we do talk about that inthe chapter as well.
We kind of give this profile ofwhat's happening in that grade
band with regards to phase andphonetic element knowledge,
(32:16):
based on those two things.
Developmentally, what wouldstudents be interested in doing
with words?
And then we put forth the menuof options.
Molly Ness (32:26):
And to make it even more complicated, we talked
about this sort of 50,000 numberat the beginning of our time
together, where most adultreaders have about 50,000 words
orthographically mapped.
Well, wouldn't it be awesome ifthere were grade level
benchmarks for what should myyou know, what number of words
should my kids have, mapped by Xperiod?
(32:46):
And there just is not thatresearch yet that research.
Yet we know that lots ofstudents are sort of below this
decoding threshold, where theyhave fewer than typically about
10,000 words by eighth grade.
And what happens with thosekids is we see issues with
comprehension.
(33:06):
Well, if you back up to what isthat comprehension really?
Sort of, how do we see itmanifest?
Well, it's actually really theydon't have enough words
orthographically mapped so thatthey are always having
compromised fluency becausethey're decoding all these words
.
And so what suffers?
Well, it's the comprehension.
And so, just to make the pointthat we don't really have this
(33:29):
benchmark of by third gradestudents should have X number of
words mapped of.
By third grade students shouldhave X number of words mapped.
Or by, you know, fifth grade,it should be this number.
Really, the research says about10,000 words by the end of
eighth grade, and then there'sthis big gap again until 50,000
as adult readers, but we justare not yet there in terms of
more concrete findings aroundnumbers themselves.
Lori (33:51):
Okay.
So when we're thinking about,like all of these ideas here,
how did you take these phasesand put them into grades, like
for the sake of this book?
Katie Pace Miles (34:02):
We talked with I mean, we, we put it forth,
and other people have done thisas well.
Where they have, they haveworked either, yeah, with Dr
Aries' consultation, or theyknow a lot about the theory of
orthographic mapping.
That goes into phase theory aswell.
So you really need tounderstand the theory of
(34:24):
orthographic mapping and youneed to understand Aries' theory
of word reading and spelling,and that's phase theory.
Phase theory is exactly that.
So phase theory is where andI'm sorry I was saying those
terms as if every reader orevery listener knows them, but
Aries phase theory goes frompre-alphabetic, partial
(34:48):
alphabetic, full alphabetic andconsolidated alphabetic phase.
Those phases are based on whatI had mentioned before, which is
, what are they able to use withregards to their phonetic
knowledge, to store words inmemory so that they can both
read and spell the wordsenvironmental, print and whatnot
(35:17):
, and then I won't walk youthrough all the phases, but we
can definitely link to anarticle.
Ari has many wonderful articlesfor teachers on that.
So when you've taught, though,and you've worked with, when
you've worked with, students,you read these phases and you
think, okay, it is reasonable tosay that kindergartners and
first graders are existing inthis partial alphabetic, moving
(35:38):
into the full alphabetic phase.
It's reasonable that second andthird graders are in full,
moving towards consolidated andso on and so forth, and fourth
and fifth graders are hopefully.
I mean, with what we expect offourth and fifth graders.
They really need to be in theconsolidated phase.
They need to have an enormouscorpus of words stored in
long-term memory that they'reable to automatically read and
(36:01):
spell.
That's what's accurately right.
That's what's going on whenyou're in the consolidated phase
.
So and again, caveats all overthe place here, which is that
you may be working with studentswho are at a different phase
but are in those grade bands,and that's that's okay.
So long as you understand thetheory of orthographic mapping
(36:21):
and you understand phase theory,then you can move through the.
You can actually pick whatactivities would work best for
you in your protocol.
Lori (36:30):
Thank you.
Okay, that's really helpful.
I I'm really excited toactually I mean, I know I have a
PDF of your book, but I'm veryexcited to get a hard copy.
So, as I'm re-listening to thispodcast again, I can flip it
open and look at exactly whatyou're talking about.
So can't wait for that.
I do want to go back, though,to this idea of the exposures
that we talked about.
(36:50):
Like is there a magic number ofexposures?
Okay, if I'm like all thestudent is struggling, if I just
give them 100 exposures,they'll get it.
I don't think that that you'regoing to say yes to this, but
you know there's always hopethat there's an easy answer here
.
So I'd love to hear a littlebit about this exposure, or I
(37:14):
guess another way we could frameit as the number of repetitions
.
Molly Ness (37:23):
I don't know who wants to kick us off.
Well, I'll set the stage andsay you're correct, there is no
magic number, and that it is allabout not just the quantity but
also the quality Meaning.
If we're just giving kids thehere's what the word looks like,
but not connecting it to itsmeaning and its semantics and
syntax and all those otherthings, then that's not a
particularly rich encounter.
So you know, less likely, ofcourse, to see transfer.
(37:47):
The research around the actualnumbers themselves is a little
bit varied.
It started in 1983, I believeWe've got a lovely 2020 article
that looked at the number ofexposures for students at risk
of reading difficulties versusthe number of students not at
risk, and that article providesthe numbers of like five to six
(38:13):
exposures.
Other researchers, like ourIsraeli colleague David Scher,
says it's more like two to four.
Of course, the literacy legendherself, linnea Airy, says that
it can be on the spectrum or therange of four exposures for
readers that are higher level,all the way to nine exposures
(38:35):
for readers who are at lowerlevels of development.
So you know pretty big rangehere.
Katie Pace Miles (38:42):
And the one thing I'll jump in and say what
Molly is referring to arefindings from certain studies,
and the important thing to noteis that those findings are based
on the methodological designthat went into that study and
that matters with regards towhat was the research question,
what were the words being usedand what were the measures being
(39:04):
used and how much time wasthere to conduct the study.
Was this a two-week interventionstudy where students were
working for 20 minutes every day?
I could go through a wholething on the methodology, but
those findings are constrainedto the methodological design and
so that should not be taken, asit takes four exposures for a
(39:30):
word to be stored.
That's not what it says.
You should think of it as inthat in this study where they
did this thing and measured itin this way, it took four
exposures, and in this otherstudy where they were looking at
the population of first gradestriving readers using that
(39:50):
design, the certain group ofstriving readers needed five
exposures versus nine exposures,and so on, a certain group of
striving readers needed fiveexposures versus nine exposures,
and so on.
And so to say that strivingreaders need over 20 exposures
or over 40 is I just?
I don't think we have.
I don't.
I don't have the citation forthat at this point.
Lori (40:10):
Yeah, I mean, it makes a lot of sense to me and that was
the answer I was thinking youboth were going to share,
because, you know, when youthink I know, molly, you you
referenced, going back to all ofthose components, right, and
you know, if we just like takeone of those, like, for example,
you know the meaning component,we can't say what meaning, what
spider webs I have in my brainthat are connecting all of these
(40:33):
, you know, stems of knowledgeand vocabulary versus your brain
, right and so for.
And also, it really depends onthe word too, right?
I mean, we didn't say that butlet's lift that up but it
depends on the reader, the word,or you know words that they
have in their semantic map, thatthey already have semantically
mapped.
So there's so many factors.
(40:54):
I think it's really difficult tosay like there's a one size
fits all approach to this, and Iappreciate you both, kind of
like giving us the big picturedefinition and reasoning there.
I think it really helps as wethink about it.
We all want that easy answer.
We want to say it's five timesif you're, you know, whatever,
and it's just not not that wayand nothing is that way in
(41:15):
teaching Right.
Molly Ness (41:16):
So yeah, and wouldn't that way in teaching
right?
So no, and wouldn't it be greatif it were that way.
But we just want to be reallyclear so that no listener is
saying like I did, the five,this study said five, I gave
five exposures and it's nottransferring or it's not
sticking.
What gives, it's not that cutand dry.
It never really is inclassrooms and working with kids
(41:38):
.
Katie Pace Miles (41:55):
Laura Stacy has great research on this too.
Where, to your point, laurie,where she was looking at the
reader's skills that theybrought to the table, and then
the length of the word and thesaliency of the word whether it
was a salient noun or not andthose factors also played into
how many exposures it requiredfor the word to be stored.
So you know, in research theseare all about interactions, the
student interacting with all ofthese other variables that come
into play.
Lori (42:12):
Such a good point.
Totally, we'll link all of thisstuff in the show notes.
As you're talking, katie, I'mGoogling frantically to grab as
many things as I can, so it'sgreat.
Melissa (42:22):
I've been really curious, as we've been talking
about that, I'm going to keepgoing back to that 50,000 words,
which just blows my mind, andI'm thinking like this is such a
simple.
You know these four steps aresimple.
You guys give tons of ways thatpeople can do it in different
ways, but I'm also thinking youprobably don't do that with
every single word that ends upbeing mapped.
So, like, how does that work?
(42:43):
Does it like if I, if I gothrough these steps with one
word, does some of that kind ofoverlap into other words?
Like I'm thinking of spellingmight be similar for another
word that I might take it overthere, or the meaning of, you
know, parts of the word might besimilar to another word?
Does it?
Does it kind of translate likethat?
Like can I orthographically mapa word in a different way that
(43:03):
doesn't go through these foursteps?
Molly Ness (43:06):
Yeah, that's such a good question because obviously
teachers are pressed for time.
And how do you do this protocolthat has four steps with 50,000
words.
Yeah, it's just.
(43:30):
It's just not possible With50,000 words or the word that
follows the linguistic pattern.
Katie Pace Miles (43:35):
We were pushed to clarify this point in the
book that it is not expectedthat a four-step protocol would
be used to get 50,000 words inmemory.
That's not at all the case.
What we are aware of is thatfor many students, they need
explicit, systematic instructionto get words into memory.
(44:00):
And then this, as we hadmentioned before from David's
chair, this process can beinternalized right, and so when
you get into the habit of makingsure you are putting your eyes
on the word and you're sayingthe word, or you're asking an
adult to say the word for you,when you're reconciling the
spelling to the pronunciationand that becomes part of your
(44:24):
word analysis routine, whetheryou're a third grader who's just
doing this independently now,like my daughter's in third
grade, and she knows, like, slowdown and figure out, how am I
going to work with this wordthat is unknown to me, and I
shouldn't be satisfied readingthe word and not knowing what it
means.
That is just an explicit.
(44:45):
That's something we're tryingto build awareness of is you
should know.
If a teacher is asking you toread and spell a word, you
should ask what it means if youdon't know it and let's help you
with that.
So again, this isn't, we're not.
Let's help you with that.
So again, this isn't, we're notgoing to be able to do this
with 50,000, but it's helpingstudents.
But let's even go so far as tosay empowering students to build
(45:11):
up their skills that they canuse when an adult isn't around
and or when they need to go seekan adult support to learn a
word.
And by learn again, we'resaying the whole right.
The trifecta Learn the word isboth its spelling, meaning and
pronunciation Spelling,pronunciation and meaning.
Let's put it that way.
Melissa (45:28):
Yeah, that makes so much sense, that internalization
.
You know they go through thesesteps so many times in different
ways.
Then they can start to do thaton their own, Like I mean,
that's, it has to happen thatway.
There's no way that we can dothat for every word, for every
student.
Molly Ness (45:49):
And I would, actually I would even.
We're living a lot in the worldof K through five right now in
our conversation.
I'm doing a lot of work inmiddle schools with content area
teachers who are introducingcontent specificspecific
vocabulary.
And when we think aboutintroducing vocabulary, it's
still the trifecta.
You're a seventh-grade biologyteacher and you're teaching the
word mitosis.
You still have to have kidsknow its meaning, know how it
(46:14):
looks and maps onto the sound.
So you still have to have thatsort of trifecta of things.
Even if you're sort of thinkingI'm actually teaching word
meanings To map that word, youstill got to get to that
trifecta.
Lori (46:28):
So important.
Yeah, I see that a lot at homewith my own child.
I'll think that she has wordsmapped and I'll be like write
this word down for me.
If I like I'll have her makelists for me or whatever, and
I'll notice, oh, she missed that.
You know that's actually twoletters that make that one sound
and I'm like, okay, you'remissing something here.
What do you think it is?
But that like quick encodingactivity is like a great window
(46:53):
into what students or what kidsknow and what they might be
missing, where there might begaps.
So you're right, it takes allthree.
Katie Pace Miles (47:03):
And coding really is right.
The vehicle through which youcan assess a student's storage
of the word in memory.
Lori (47:10):
Yeah, it's like that, peeking in, like literally
peeking under the hood, yep, yep.
Well, we are just so gratefulthat you both took so much time
to talk with us about your newbook Making Words Stick.
Is there anything else you wantto leave our listeners with?
Molly Ness (47:27):
Well, the only thing I would add is we situate this
whole conversation in a basicunderstanding of what do we mean
by the reading brain, thiswhole conversation in a basic
understanding of what do we meanby the reading brain, because
we really believe that teachers,who have the enormous
responsibility of changingstudents' brains every day which
is so powerful that you got tohave the user's manual to that
(47:50):
you wouldn't want to go to achiropractor who doesn't know
how the spine works we asteachers have to have real
concrete understanding of howthe reading brain works, and so
we get to talk a little bitabout that and once you really
understand what this whole thingof the reading brain is, you
start to understand why in somecases words stick and in other
cases they don't.
(48:10):
So I hope readers will alsowalk away with some of the basic
fascination that we have aboutthe reading brain.
Katie Pace Miles (48:18):
I'll put a plug in for more resources for
teachers that I can offer, whichis through my nonprofit called
the Reading Institute.
I have two reading interventionprograms that we distribute for
free to teachers who need anintervention program free to
(48:39):
teachers who need anintervention program.
That is, it's an structuredliteracy intervention programs
that has research and evidencebehind it, and so you can go to
the reading institute, nycorg,and you can sign up for
trainings for reading ready orreading go.
And the joy of this nonprofitis that we have grant funding
that we can leverage to inviteteachers to trainings and mail
(48:59):
them a kit with these twostructured literacy programs to
use.
Molly knows I have this bigthing where I can't believe that
teachers who want and needintervention programs sometimes
are not able to sign up for thetrainings of the programs being
offered in their districts, orthe trainings are too expensive
or whatnot.
(49:20):
So this is a great mission ofmine to ensure the teachers have
what they need to work withstriving readers.
Melissa (49:26):
Yeah, that's a great resource.
Thank you for sharing.
Lori (49:28):
Yeah, and if you're listening, it's
readinginstitutenycorg.
Just a quick make sure you haveit and we'll link it in the
show notes.
We're linking it in the shownotes.
Melissa (49:39):
Well, thank you both for being here today.
We're so, so grateful for youto be here, but also to write
this amazing book, and we can'twait to get it.
Molly Ness (49:48):
Well, thanks for having us, and thanks not only
for having us, but also for thework that you guys do in
empowering teachers in aneveryday context and making
knowledge so practical andconsumable for teachers.
Katie Pace Miles (50:03):
I echo that.
Thank you both.
Lori (50:05):
Thank you.
We couldn't do it withoutamazing guests like yourselves,
so thank you.
Melissa (50:12):
To stay connected with us, sign up for our email list
at literacypodcastcom, join ourFacebook group and follow us on
Instagram and Twitter.
Lori (50:22):
If this episode resonated with you, take a moment to share
with a teacher friend or leaveus a five-star rating and review
on Apple Podcasts.
Melissa (50:32):
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.
Lori (50:44):
We appreciate you so much and we're so glad you're here to
learn with us.
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