May 3, 2025 • 25 mins
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jocelyn (00:00):
Hi there, welcome to this episode of the Structured
Literacy Podcast.
It's Jocelyn here, coming toyou from Tasmania, the home of
the Palawa people.
At Jocelyn Seamer Education, webelieve that every child has
the right to be taught withevidence-informed instruction
and that every teacher has theright to be supported to make
that happen.
Today, I want to tackle aquestion that comes up
(00:23):
frequently in professionallearning sessions and in various
online places (00:27):
Should phonics instruction be delivered to the
whole class in your ownclassroom or in targeted
groupings?
This is a topic where we oftenhold strong views and where we
are currently receiving verymixed messages, so let's explore
(00:47):
this issue together.
Proponents of whole classphonics instruction often cite
equity as their primary reasonfor the recommendation.
The argument goes that allstudents deserve access to the
same high quality instructionand that separating students
into groups risks creating orreinforcing inequities, where
(01:08):
some students receive lesscomprehensive instruction than
others.
And I would say, if we weretalking about science or HASS or
our text-based unit, that Iwould agree completely, but
we're not.
We are talking about an area ofliteracy learning that is
constrained, that needs to betaught cumulative, with mastery
(01:30):
developed of one thing before wemove on to another.
There's also the view that ifwe don't expose struggling
students to the content theirpeers are learning, they'll fall
further behind and never catchup.
Many teachers worry that byplacing students in what might
be seen as lower groups, we'relimiting their exposure to
(01:52):
essential content andpotentially creating a
self-fulfilling prophecy wherewe don't expect enough from them
.
I'll get to this issue ofexposure in a little bit.
Now these are importantconsiderations, and when we have
concerns like this andquestions that come up, I want
to encourage everyone to askthem.
(02:13):
If we keep them to ourselves,it's likely that we never
develop deeper understanding ofhow human brain architecture
operates, and we are running onworries rather than on empirical
evidence.
So we want to be empirical inthis discussion and not
emotional.
Every teacher wants to givetheir students the best possible
(02:36):
chance to succeed, and weabsolutely should be concerned
about equity in our classrooms.
However, when we examine thisparticular argument through the
lens of cognitive science, andwhat we understand about how
human brain architecture works,a bit of a different picture may
(02:57):
emerge, and I think it does.
The primary reason for teachingphonics in targeted grouping
centres on cognitive load andthe need to support working
memory.
Research tells us that workingmemory is extremely limited.
I, along with 450 other people,had the privilege of hearing
(03:18):
John Sweller talk aboutcognitive load theory live at
the Science of Learningconference on the Sunshine Coast
last week.
He reminded the audience thathumans can really only process
two to three novel or new bitsof information at any one time,
and he was hesitant about thethree.
(03:38):
He questioned himself on thatin the moment and said actually,
let's call it two.
So keep the number two in mind,because we're going to do a
little exercise here on thepodcast in a moment.
In order to complete complextasks, we need to draw on
information held in long-termmemory.
When information has beenlearned, as in it sits in
(03:59):
long-term memory, we canintroduce many, many elements
into a task, and it's fine.
The constraining effects ofworking memory no longer apply.
But if we don't haveinformation in long-term memory,
our working memory is veryeasily overwhelmed.
So let's do an exercise.
I want you to imagine a YearOne student or a Year Five
(04:23):
student or a Year Eight studentwho does not have the basics of
phonics, including handwriting,stable in their long-term memory
.
And if you're thinking well,Jocelyn, how often would we
encounter a Year Five or a YearEight student, I would say, more
often than we're comfortabletalking about.
I've met them, not all of them,obviously.
(04:43):
Some of them I've encounteredalong my journey.
Each time students write lettersthey are likely to do it
different ways if they have thislearning profile.
And when they do write thingsyou can see them actively
processing the letter formation.
They aren't sure of shortvowels and that's a very common
situation for older studentswith reading difficulty and they
(05:07):
often mix up consonants like chand sh, reading them
interchangeably.
They can't tell the differencebetween long and short vowels to
listen to, as in they can'ttell you that man has a short
vowel and main has a long vowel,and there are a few letters in
the basic code that they areslow to retrieve and often get
(05:28):
mixed up, like G and J, notknowing whether it's J or G.
In the name of equity, let's saywe are teaching a Year One
phonics lesson, whole class.
So a student with this learningprofile is sitting in the
lesson for the vowel digraphdouble e, as in the word sheep,
we introduce the double e, allis well.
(05:50):
We ask the students to writethe double e and this is where
the first hurdle comes becausethis student does not know how
to write the e automatically.
Every time they write itthey're almost starting in a
different starting spot, they'reretracing over their letters,
they're missing bits, they'regetting it backwards, so just
the act of letter writing iseffortful.
(06:13):
Now we have two elements thatneed to be processed in working
memory and we are approachingthe limits of the student's
working memory capacity.
But they're hanging in therebecause they want to please and
they are being largely compliant.
Then it's time to read somewords and the first word is
sheet.
So we now have our thirdelement that has to be processed
(06:36):
through working memory, thedigraph sh, and the student
knows t, so that's okay.
But we've already reached thelimit of working memory for any
human because the student isn'tautomatically writing e, the
vowel diagraph double e is newand they aren't automatic on sh.
So your attention is now drawnto this student because you, as
(06:59):
a teacher, know they need extrascaffolding.
But you're also conscious thatyour fast lane learners have
already finished writing sheetand they're now getting restless
.
You, as the teacher, are nowtorn between helping this
student or group of students,which is not uncommon, who fit
this profile, and stretching themore capable students, you
(07:20):
cannot do both.
The next word is is cheek.
And here these students are inreal trouble, because not only
is double e new, the handwritingis not automatic and the
student's still wobbly on ch,but the k, that's not automatic
either, so this student'scapacity to attend is now
completely blown out of thewater.
(07:42):
I find it very hard to see theequity in this situation for
either the student who needsmore support or the student who
needs stretch, because neitherstudent is getting what they
need.
And at the Science of LearningConference on the Sunshine Coast
, I had the opportunity to talkfor about half an hour with a
(08:04):
neuroscientist named JaredCooney Horvath, and I posed this
exact question to him and askedhim whether I was on the right
track here, because I'm not ascientist, but he is.
So I asked him, am I right inmy thinking about what this
student needs to learn?
And he said resoundingly yes.
(08:24):
But let's come back to the ideaof equity and catching up
students who are behind theirpeers.
One of the suggestions made in awhole class teaching situation
is that the student needingextra support then goes off to
intervention to fill the gapsthat exist in their code
knowledge.
Ok, that might seem to makesense, except that we're now
(08:47):
asking the student with theleakiest memory, now that's my
term, not an official cognitivescience one, to learn twice as
much content as their peers, andthat?
That doesn't make any sense.
The student who needs thehighest intensity instruction,
who requires the mostopportunity for repetition to
(09:09):
encode learning into long-termmemory, has to learn twice as
much.
This poor kid is being draggedthrough phonics content,
achieving either no success orsuch a small amount of success
that the adults around areasking, is it worth investing
all of this time in studentswhose growth is so painfully
(09:29):
slow and, at this rate, willnever learn to read?
Let's come back now to thisidea of exposure.
There is nothing in cognitiveload theory that says we will
learn phonics by exposure.
Yes, we learn tier one language, everyday language, through
exposure, because we arehardwired to learn that.
We are not hardwired to learnto read or to spell.
(09:52):
We do not learn throughexposure.
We learn through activeengagement, with repetition
after repetition, includingcontext such as words, that's
why they're in the phonicslesson.
But just showing us somethingand us being compliant in
copying it is not the same asactive engagement.
(10:15):
Exposure doesn't lead tolearning, but engagement does.
For students who require ahigher intensity of instruction
to move knowledge from workingmemory to long-term memory,
being taught content they're notready for, because phonics is
taught cumulatively, doesn'tlead to catching up.
(10:35):
It often just leads toconfusion, disengagement and
poor behaviour.
The decision about whole classversus targeting groupings isn't
one driven by ideology.
At the start of the episode Isaid we're going to be empirical
here, not emotional, so we haveto have our decisions be driven
(10:57):
by assessment data and ourunderstanding of the student's
learning profiles.
Now there's no test that tellsyou precisely how many
repetitions a student willrequire to encode new learning
into long-term memory, so weneed to use some teacher
judgement, based on what we knowof the student, to make
(11:18):
decisions on their behalf.
Then we examine the data to seehas this worked for them?
If it hasn't, we need to givesomething else a go.
And I don't mean something elseas in a different style of
teaching phonics.
I simply mean we need a higherintensity here and we keep going
until we find the level ofintensity required.
(11:39):
Now when I say level ofintensity, I don't mean just
conduct a faster phonics lesson.
I mean smaller chunks ofinformation with lots more
consolidation time between theintroduction of new bits of
information so that the studentdoesn't just have a trail of
(12:00):
gaps in the learning wake.
In my book Reading Success inthe Early Primary Years, I
discuss how we could approachdifferentiation in phonics
instruction, and here's a quote.
"The aim of any phonicsinstruction is to keep the
largest number of studentspossible together in the main
group of learners.
It is much easier to teach agroup of students who are all
(12:22):
within a similar range becauseyou can target content and pace
of instruction to meet thestudent's needs.
How close you get to this idealwill depend on your school
context, the type of instructionthat has occurred in the past
and the opportunities youprovide within your lessons for
review and consolidation.
I have never, even in schoolswhere students come from very
(12:46):
privileged backgrounds, found agroup of students where there
weren't students with the needsI've described in this episode.
I'm not saying we have to goback to group rotations.
In fact, I think it would be amistake and a colossal waste of
instructional time to do so.
And I'm aware that there areprograms that are structured in
(13:07):
this way, one whole class lessonfor everyone and then a good 40
to 50 minutes of group rotation.
I'm not an advocate for that,unless it's 100% necessary in
terms of the group rotation.
I wouldn't be advocating forwhole class phonics teaching,
regardless of what we're seeingin student learning profile.
What I'm advocating for isinstruction that is targeted at
(13:31):
student need and conducted in away that responds best to our
context and the students.
Now some educators worry thatstudents will feel less than if
they end up in the lower group,and this is an understandable
concern, I know where it comesfrom.
But we're not calling thegroups the wombats and the
eagles.
We're just saying it's time foryou to go for your reading
(13:53):
lesson now.
Off you go with Mrs Smith.
The alternative is students whoare constantly presented with
material they cannot access,students who experience repeated
failure because the content isbeyond their capabilities and
they're always just getting afinger hold on new things before
(14:16):
the class moves on.
Students like to feelsuccessful.
Targeted instruction helps themexperience success because
we're actively supporting theirworking memory and managing
their cognitive load.
Success breeds confidence, andconfidence leads to greater
effort and engagement.
One of the things that schoolsconsistently tell me is that
(14:38):
when they adopt a targetedapproach to phonics instruction,
text-based unit work is donewhole class back with your own
teacher in your own classroom.
But when they adopt a targetedapproach for phonics instruction
, the instances of negativebehaviours drop dramatically.
And that's because students caneither be on task and learning
(15:01):
or off task, because either theyalready know it or they can't
access it.
Where's the grown-ups haveresponsibilities here to
engineer a learning environmentthat helps everybody be engaged
in active learning for as manyminutes as humanly possible.
At the other end of the spectrumfrom the student with the leaky
(15:23):
memory are the students whoalready have the code knowledge
being taught, lessons for themare essentially a waste of time.
If they can recognise graphemes, recall them without effort and
write them down, if they canread them in words, if they can
write them in words, if they canread them in text and can use
them, where's the learning forthem?
(15:46):
So it's about asking, what arestudents getting out of this
lesson and how much of thelesson is actually providing
desirable difficulty for thosestudents?
If it's four minutes of a40-minute lesson, well, I don't
think that's quite good enough.
Managing cognitive load isn'tjust about preventing it from
(16:07):
being too high.
We're looking to optimiseintrinsic load, which means that
it's also not too low.
If there's nothing here for usto learn, we will disengage.
Advanced students needappropriate challenge just as
much as struggling students needappropriate support, and there
(16:30):
are nuances in this and you canat times provide that stretch
within the main lesson.
So I'm not saying you can't,but we have to be realistic
about where the students are.
One of the ways you can usedata to determine whether we're
in the zone here is to have alook at how many new graphemes
they are learning toautomaticity per term.
(16:56):
If we take the whole of theearly years as one progression
and students are activelylearning to automaticity to
recognise eight to ten graphemesa term, then they're learning.
If they're not, something needsto happen.
Another little quote fromReading Success in the Early
Primary Years: "Different children will come to (17:11):
undefined
this understanding withdiffering levels of ease and
speed", and that's fromStanislas Dehaene's book How We
Learn.
"Some children, such as thosewith dyslexia, are more
vulnerable to cognitive overloadthan others.
So in this way, while the coremethodology is the same, the
(17:35):
pedagogy is consistent, thestarting point and the pace of
instruction is not one size fitsall.
So how do we move forward inwhat feels like a really messy
area?
Well, the answer is, it depends, and I'm sorry that I don't
have one consistent answer thatcan be applied to every setting,
(17:57):
because the answers here dependon your students, your context
and what your assessment datatells you about student need.
So some questions to considerwhen making this decision are:
what does my assessment datatell me about the range of
phonics knowledge in my class?
That's the first thing.
What does it tell us about theneeds of students and where
(18:20):
they're going next in learning,remembering that at the start of
your journey into structuredliteracy, your data, hopefully,
will look very different than itdoes three years in.
Question two can I reasonablymeet the needs of all of my
students within a whole classsetting through differentiation?
And the answer here is allwrapped up in how many pieces of
(18:42):
novel information will mystudents have to process to
participate in this lesson?
If it's more than two, it's toomany.
If it's none, there's notenough.
Now let's think about thestudent who there's more than
two bits of novel informationand some of the circumstances
(19:03):
where we may be able to makeadjustments to support students
to participate rather thangrouping them out.
So, for example, if a studenthas dysgraphia, they can use
magnetic letters or letter tilesto participate in the word
building part of the lesson.
We know from our data with thatstudent that they can recognise
(19:24):
graphemes.
They just really struggle towrite them.
If we give them five lettertiles and we say a phoneme, they
can automatically point to thecorrect grapheme.
So we know they've got theknowledge, just the writing
that's really hard.
So the adjustment here is whatthey can do instead of writing
by hand.
You may also have students whofind speaking almost impossible
(19:47):
for a whole variety of reasons,but they can actually recall and
write graphemes when we say thephonemes automatically.
They can write words when wesay a word and we give them four
or five words, they can withease find the correct word.
So there are ways that we canprovide adjustment within the
lesson for them to demonstratetheir knowledge.
(20:08):
These are true adjustments.
These are equitable.
This is what we need.
Third question what resources asin time, staff and materials do
I have available to supportdifferentiation?
Am I working in a two-teacherschool where I have three or
four grades in the one classroom?
I've done that.
In that case, rotations of somesort are unavoidable.
(20:33):
Or do we have four Year Oneclassrooms and four reasonably
experienced classroom assistants?
In this case, we have eightadults who can take a phonics
lesson, so we can provideincredibly targeted instruction
at the point of need for thestudents.
I'm not saying it will alwaysbe guaranteed that all students
(20:55):
have to move.
Maybe a learning supportteacher takes the students
needing the highest intensity ofinstruction, because everybody
else is in the ballpark and canbe supported in the main lesson.
This thinking about studentneed and how we best use the
resources we have to meet thatneed, as we consider cognitive
(21:16):
load, is a much more equitableway to go about solving this
issue.
Because these students won'tthen be getting 40 minutes a
week of targeted instruction,they'll be getting 40 minutes at
least of targeted instructionper day.
Ultimately, the most importantfactor isn't whether we're
(21:40):
ticking a box on teaching wholeclass or in targeted groupings.
It's whether our instruction isresponsive to student needs and
based on assessment data.
And how do we know we've gotthe formula right for our
students?
When every single student isgrowing at the optimal rate for
(22:02):
most students, as in those whodo not have cognitive disability
or other significant processingchallenges.
The at least that we're lookingfor is eight to ten graphemes
per term, learned toautomaticity, to recognise and
to write the grapheme, so yousay, write the A and they can
write the A, not necessarily touse within their own independent
(22:24):
writing accurately all the time.
It's your data that gives youthe feedback.
Now your DIBELS data won't giveyou that.
It's not what it's designed for.
You need to be doing phonicsfocused check-ins to determine
whether the learning that wehave aimed for has stuck.
(22:44):
The debate around whole classversus targeted phonics
instruction has become a littlepolarised, but like most things
in education, the reality isnuanced.
What works in one context maynot work exactly the same way in
another.
The core of phonics instruction, however, is context
independent.
(23:05):
It is not that in some placeswe're teaching explicitly and in
other places we're makingplay-doh letters.
Everyone deserves the same corestrong, robust teaching, just
targeted at the point of needand done in a way that responds
to what we know about theirprocessing.
Instead of adopting a rigidstance, I encourage teachers,
(23:29):
schools and leaders to beflexible and responsive, to use
assessment data to guide theirdecisions and to focus on the
ultimate goal, which is helpingevery student develop the skills
they need to become confidentand proficient readers and
spellers.
And will we get it right allthe time?
(23:49):
Of course not.
One of the other things Ilearned at the Science of
Learning Conference is thatcreativity and problem solving
requires three things itrequires knowledge, it requires
time and it requires theopportunity to fail.
But just remember, we don'twant to fail big for our
(24:10):
students.
Let's just fail little so wecan make adjustments along the
way.
And there's a fourth elementhere that Jared Cooney Horvath
suggested really should be inthat criteria for problem
solving and creativity, and thatis structure.
So we need to know whatstructures we're using to help
everybody get the learning weknow they deserve.
(24:31):
Until next time, everybody,happy teaching, bye.
Hi there, welcome to this episode of the Structured
Literacy Podcast.
It's Jocelyn here, coming toyou from Tasmania, the home of
the Palawa people.
At Jocelyn Seamer Education, webelieve that every child has
the right to be taught withevidence-informed instruction
and that every teacher has theright to be supported to make
that happen.
Today, I want to tackle aquestion that comes up
(00:23):
frequently in professionallearning sessions and in various
online places (00:27):
Should phonics instruction be delivered to the
whole class in your ownclassroom or in targeted
groupings?
This is a topic where we oftenhold strong views and where we
are currently receiving verymixed messages, so let's explore
(00:47):
this issue together.
Proponents of whole classphonics instruction often cite
equity as their primary reasonfor the recommendation.
The argument goes that allstudents deserve access to the
same high quality instructionand that separating students
into groups risks creating orreinforcing inequities, where
(01:08):
some students receive lesscomprehensive instruction than
others.
And I would say, if we weretalking about science or HASS or
our text-based unit, that Iwould agree completely, but
we're not.
We are talking about an area ofliteracy learning that is
constrained, that needs to betaught cumulative, with mastery
(01:30):
developed of one thing before wemove on to another.
There's also the view that ifwe don't expose struggling
students to the content theirpeers are learning, they'll fall
further behind and never catchup.
Many teachers worry that byplacing students in what might
be seen as lower groups, we'relimiting their exposure to
(01:52):
essential content andpotentially creating a
self-fulfilling prophecy wherewe don't expect enough from them
.
I'll get to this issue ofexposure in a little bit.
Now these are importantconsiderations, and when we have
concerns like this andquestions that come up, I want
to encourage everyone to askthem.
(02:13):
If we keep them to ourselves,it's likely that we never
develop deeper understanding ofhow human brain architecture
operates, and we are running onworries rather than on empirical
evidence.
So we want to be empirical inthis discussion and not
emotional.
Every teacher wants to givetheir students the best possible
(02:36):
chance to succeed, and weabsolutely should be concerned
about equity in our classrooms.
However, when we examine thisparticular argument through the
lens of cognitive science, andwhat we understand about how
human brain architecture works,a bit of a different picture may
(02:57):
emerge, and I think it does.
The primary reason for teachingphonics in targeted grouping
centres on cognitive load andthe need to support working
memory.
Research tells us that workingmemory is extremely limited.
I, along with 450 other people,had the privilege of hearing
(03:18):
John Sweller talk aboutcognitive load theory live at
the Science of Learningconference on the Sunshine Coast
last week.
He reminded the audience thathumans can really only process
two to three novel or new bitsof information at any one time,
and he was hesitant about thethree.
(03:38):
He questioned himself on thatin the moment and said actually,
let's call it two.
So keep the number two in mind,because we're going to do a
little exercise here on thepodcast in a moment.
In order to complete complextasks, we need to draw on
information held in long-termmemory.
When information has beenlearned, as in it sits in
(03:59):
long-term memory, we canintroduce many, many elements
into a task, and it's fine.
The constraining effects ofworking memory no longer apply.
But if we don't haveinformation in long-term memory,
our working memory is veryeasily overwhelmed.
So let's do an exercise.
I want you to imagine a YearOne student or a Year Five
(04:23):
student or a Year Eight studentwho does not have the basics of
phonics, including handwriting,stable in their long-term memory
.
And if you're thinking well,Jocelyn, how often would we
encounter a Year Five or a YearEight student, I would say, more
often than we're comfortabletalking about.
I've met them, not all of them,obviously.
(04:43):
Some of them I've encounteredalong my journey.
Each time students write lettersthey are likely to do it
different ways if they have thislearning profile.
And when they do write thingsyou can see them actively
processing the letter formation.
They aren't sure of shortvowels and that's a very common
situation for older studentswith reading difficulty and they
(05:07):
often mix up consonants like chand sh, reading them
interchangeably.
They can't tell the differencebetween long and short vowels to
listen to, as in they can'ttell you that man has a short
vowel and main has a long vowel,and there are a few letters in
the basic code that they areslow to retrieve and often get
(05:28):
mixed up, like G and J, notknowing whether it's J or G.
In the name of equity, let's saywe are teaching a Year One
phonics lesson, whole class.
So a student with this learningprofile is sitting in the
lesson for the vowel digraphdouble e, as in the word sheep,
we introduce the double e, allis well.
(05:50):
We ask the students to writethe double e and this is where
the first hurdle comes becausethis student does not know how
to write the e automatically.
Every time they write itthey're almost starting in a
different starting spot, they'reretracing over their letters,
they're missing bits, they'regetting it backwards, so just
the act of letter writing iseffortful.
(06:13):
Now we have two elements thatneed to be processed in working
memory and we are approachingthe limits of the student's
working memory capacity.
But they're hanging in therebecause they want to please and
they are being largely compliant.
Then it's time to read somewords and the first word is
sheet.
So we now have our thirdelement that has to be processed
(06:36):
through working memory, thedigraph sh, and the student
knows t, so that's okay.
But we've already reached thelimit of working memory for any
human because the student isn'tautomatically writing e, the
vowel diagraph double e is newand they aren't automatic on sh.
So your attention is now drawnto this student because you, as
(06:59):
a teacher, know they need extrascaffolding.
But you're also conscious thatyour fast lane learners have
already finished writing sheetand they're now getting restless
.
You, as the teacher, are nowtorn between helping this
student or group of students,which is not uncommon, who fit
this profile, and stretching themore capable students, you
(07:20):
cannot do both.
The next word is is cheek.
And here these students are inreal trouble, because not only
is double e new, the handwritingis not automatic and the
student's still wobbly on ch,but the k, that's not automatic
either, so this student'scapacity to attend is now
completely blown out of thewater.
(07:42):
I find it very hard to see theequity in this situation for
either the student who needsmore support or the student who
needs stretch, because neitherstudent is getting what they
need.
And at the Science of LearningConference on the Sunshine Coast
, I had the opportunity to talkfor about half an hour with a
(08:04):
neuroscientist named JaredCooney Horvath, and I posed this
exact question to him and askedhim whether I was on the right
track here, because I'm not ascientist, but he is.
So I asked him, am I right inmy thinking about what this
student needs to learn?
And he said resoundingly yes.
(08:24):
But let's come back to the ideaof equity and catching up
students who are behind theirpeers.
One of the suggestions made in awhole class teaching situation
is that the student needingextra support then goes off to
intervention to fill the gapsthat exist in their code
knowledge.
Ok, that might seem to makesense, except that we're now
(08:47):
asking the student with theleakiest memory, now that's my
term, not an official cognitivescience one, to learn twice as
much content as their peers, andthat?
That doesn't make any sense.
The student who needs thehighest intensity instruction,
who requires the mostopportunity for repetition to
(09:09):
encode learning into long-termmemory, has to learn twice as
much.
This poor kid is being draggedthrough phonics content,
achieving either no success orsuch a small amount of success
that the adults around areasking, is it worth investing
all of this time in studentswhose growth is so painfully
(09:29):
slow and, at this rate, willnever learn to read?
Let's come back now to thisidea of exposure.
There is nothing in cognitiveload theory that says we will
learn phonics by exposure.
Yes, we learn tier one language, everyday language, through
exposure, because we arehardwired to learn that.
We are not hardwired to learnto read or to spell.
(09:52):
We do not learn throughexposure.
We learn through activeengagement, with repetition
after repetition, includingcontext such as words, that's
why they're in the phonicslesson.
But just showing us somethingand us being compliant in
copying it is not the same asactive engagement.
(10:15):
Exposure doesn't lead tolearning, but engagement does.
For students who require ahigher intensity of instruction
to move knowledge from workingmemory to long-term memory,
being taught content they're notready for, because phonics is
taught cumulatively, doesn'tlead to catching up.
(10:35):
It often just leads toconfusion, disengagement and
poor behaviour.
The decision about whole classversus targeting groupings isn't
one driven by ideology.
At the start of the episode Isaid we're going to be empirical
here, not emotional, so we haveto have our decisions be driven
(10:57):
by assessment data and ourunderstanding of the student's
learning profiles.
Now there's no test that tellsyou precisely how many
repetitions a student willrequire to encode new learning
into long-term memory, so weneed to use some teacher
judgement, based on what we knowof the student, to make
(11:18):
decisions on their behalf.
Then we examine the data to seehas this worked for them?
If it hasn't, we need to givesomething else a go.
And I don't mean something elseas in a different style of
teaching phonics.
I simply mean we need a higherintensity here and we keep going
until we find the level ofintensity required.
(11:39):
Now when I say level ofintensity, I don't mean just
conduct a faster phonics lesson.
I mean smaller chunks ofinformation with lots more
consolidation time between theintroduction of new bits of
information so that the studentdoesn't just have a trail of
(12:00):
gaps in the learning wake.
In my book Reading Success inthe Early Primary Years, I
discuss how we could approachdifferentiation in phonics
instruction, and here's a quote.
"The aim of any phonicsinstruction is to keep the
largest number of studentspossible together in the main
group of learners.
It is much easier to teach agroup of students who are all
(12:22):
within a similar range becauseyou can target content and pace
of instruction to meet thestudent's needs.
How close you get to this idealwill depend on your school
context, the type of instructionthat has occurred in the past
and the opportunities youprovide within your lessons for
review and consolidation.
I have never, even in schoolswhere students come from very
(12:46):
privileged backgrounds, found agroup of students where there
weren't students with the needsI've described in this episode.
I'm not saying we have to goback to group rotations.
In fact, I think it would be amistake and a colossal waste of
instructional time to do so.
And I'm aware that there areprograms that are structured in
(13:07):
this way, one whole class lessonfor everyone and then a good 40
to 50 minutes of group rotation.
I'm not an advocate for that,unless it's 100% necessary in
terms of the group rotation.
I wouldn't be advocating forwhole class phonics teaching,
regardless of what we're seeingin student learning profile.
What I'm advocating for isinstruction that is targeted at
(13:31):
student need and conducted in away that responds best to our
context and the students.
Now some educators worry thatstudents will feel less than if
they end up in the lower group,and this is an understandable
concern, I know where it comesfrom.
But we're not calling thegroups the wombats and the
eagles.
We're just saying it's time foryou to go for your reading
(13:53):
lesson now.
Off you go with Mrs Smith.
The alternative is students whoare constantly presented with
material they cannot access,students who experience repeated
failure because the content isbeyond their capabilities and
they're always just getting afinger hold on new things before
(14:16):
the class moves on.
Students like to feelsuccessful.
Targeted instruction helps themexperience success because
we're actively supporting theirworking memory and managing
their cognitive load.
Success breeds confidence, andconfidence leads to greater
effort and engagement.
One of the things that schoolsconsistently tell me is that
(14:38):
when they adopt a targetedapproach to phonics instruction,
text-based unit work is donewhole class back with your own
teacher in your own classroom.
But when they adopt a targetedapproach for phonics instruction
, the instances of negativebehaviours drop dramatically.
And that's because students caneither be on task and learning
(15:01):
or off task, because either theyalready know it or they can't
access it.
Where's the grown-ups haveresponsibilities here to
engineer a learning environmentthat helps everybody be engaged
in active learning for as manyminutes as humanly possible.
At the other end of the spectrumfrom the student with the leaky
(15:23):
memory are the students whoalready have the code knowledge
being taught, lessons for themare essentially a waste of time.
If they can recognise graphemes, recall them without effort and
write them down, if they canread them in words, if they can
write them in words, if they canread them in text and can use
them, where's the learning forthem?
(15:46):
So it's about asking, what arestudents getting out of this
lesson and how much of thelesson is actually providing
desirable difficulty for thosestudents?
If it's four minutes of a40-minute lesson, well, I don't
think that's quite good enough.
Managing cognitive load isn'tjust about preventing it from
(16:07):
being too high.
We're looking to optimiseintrinsic load, which means that
it's also not too low.
If there's nothing here for usto learn, we will disengage.
Advanced students needappropriate challenge just as
much as struggling students needappropriate support, and there
(16:30):
are nuances in this and you canat times provide that stretch
within the main lesson.
So I'm not saying you can't,but we have to be realistic
about where the students are.
One of the ways you can usedata to determine whether we're
in the zone here is to have alook at how many new graphemes
they are learning toautomaticity per term.
(16:56):
If we take the whole of theearly years as one progression
and students are activelylearning to automaticity to
recognise eight to ten graphemesa term, then they're learning.
If they're not, something needsto happen.
Another little quote fromReading Success in the Early
Primary Years: "Different children will come to (17:11):
undefined
this understanding withdiffering levels of ease and
speed", and that's fromStanislas Dehaene's book How We
Learn.
"Some children, such as thosewith dyslexia, are more
vulnerable to cognitive overloadthan others.
So in this way, while the coremethodology is the same, the
(17:35):
pedagogy is consistent, thestarting point and the pace of
instruction is not one size fitsall.
So how do we move forward inwhat feels like a really messy
area?
Well, the answer is, it depends, and I'm sorry that I don't
have one consistent answer thatcan be applied to every setting,
(17:57):
because the answers here dependon your students, your context
and what your assessment datatells you about student need.
So some questions to considerwhen making this decision are:
what does my assessment datatell me about the range of
phonics knowledge in my class?
That's the first thing.
What does it tell us about theneeds of students and where
(18:20):
they're going next in learning,remembering that at the start of
your journey into structuredliteracy, your data, hopefully,
will look very different than itdoes three years in.
Question two can I reasonablymeet the needs of all of my
students within a whole classsetting through differentiation?
And the answer here is allwrapped up in how many pieces of
(18:42):
novel information will mystudents have to process to
participate in this lesson?
If it's more than two, it's toomany.
If it's none, there's notenough.
Now let's think about thestudent who there's more than
two bits of novel informationand some of the circumstances
(19:03):
where we may be able to makeadjustments to support students
to participate rather thangrouping them out.
So, for example, if a studenthas dysgraphia, they can use
magnetic letters or letter tilesto participate in the word
building part of the lesson.
We know from our data with thatstudent that they can recognise
(19:24):
graphemes.
They just really struggle towrite them.
If we give them five lettertiles and we say a phoneme, they
can automatically point to thecorrect grapheme.
So we know they've got theknowledge, just the writing
that's really hard.
So the adjustment here is whatthey can do instead of writing
by hand.
You may also have students whofind speaking almost impossible
(19:47):
for a whole variety of reasons,but they can actually recall and
write graphemes when we say thephonemes automatically.
They can write words when wesay a word and we give them four
or five words, they can withease find the correct word.
So there are ways that we canprovide adjustment within the
lesson for them to demonstratetheir knowledge.
(20:08):
These are true adjustments.
These are equitable.
This is what we need.
Third question what resources asin time, staff and materials do
I have available to supportdifferentiation?
Am I working in a two-teacherschool where I have three or
four grades in the one classroom?
I've done that.
In that case, rotations of somesort are unavoidable.
(20:33):
Or do we have four Year Oneclassrooms and four reasonably
experienced classroom assistants?
In this case, we have eightadults who can take a phonics
lesson, so we can provideincredibly targeted instruction
at the point of need for thestudents.
I'm not saying it will alwaysbe guaranteed that all students
(20:55):
have to move.
Maybe a learning supportteacher takes the students
needing the highest intensity ofinstruction, because everybody
else is in the ballpark and canbe supported in the main lesson.
This thinking about studentneed and how we best use the
resources we have to meet thatneed, as we consider cognitive
(21:16):
load, is a much more equitableway to go about solving this
issue.
Because these students won'tthen be getting 40 minutes a
week of targeted instruction,they'll be getting 40 minutes at
least of targeted instructionper day.
Ultimately, the most importantfactor isn't whether we're
(21:40):
ticking a box on teaching wholeclass or in targeted groupings.
It's whether our instruction isresponsive to student needs and
based on assessment data.
And how do we know we've gotthe formula right for our
students?
When every single student isgrowing at the optimal rate for
(22:02):
most students, as in those whodo not have cognitive disability
or other significant processingchallenges.
The at least that we're lookingfor is eight to ten graphemes
per term, learned toautomaticity, to recognise and
to write the grapheme, so yousay, write the A and they can
write the A, not necessarily touse within their own independent
(22:24):
writing accurately all the time.
It's your data that gives youthe feedback.
Now your DIBELS data won't giveyou that.
It's not what it's designed for.
You need to be doing phonicsfocused check-ins to determine
whether the learning that wehave aimed for has stuck.
(22:44):
The debate around whole classversus targeted phonics
instruction has become a littlepolarised, but like most things
in education, the reality isnuanced.
What works in one context maynot work exactly the same way in
another.
The core of phonics instruction, however, is context
independent.
(23:05):
It is not that in some placeswe're teaching explicitly and in
other places we're makingplay-doh letters.
Everyone deserves the same corestrong, robust teaching, just
targeted at the point of needand done in a way that responds
to what we know about theirprocessing.
Instead of adopting a rigidstance, I encourage teachers,
(23:29):
schools and leaders to beflexible and responsive, to use
assessment data to guide theirdecisions and to focus on the
ultimate goal, which is helpingevery student develop the skills
they need to become confidentand proficient readers and
spellers.
And will we get it right allthe time?
(23:49):
Of course not.
One of the other things Ilearned at the Science of
Learning Conference is thatcreativity and problem solving
requires three things itrequires knowledge, it requires
time and it requires theopportunity to fail.
But just remember, we don'twant to fail big for our
(24:10):
students.
Let's just fail little so wecan make adjustments along the
way.
And there's a fourth elementhere that Jared Cooney Horvath
suggested really should be inthat criteria for problem
solving and creativity, and thatis structure.
So we need to know whatstructures we're using to help
everybody get the learning weknow they deserve.
(24:31):
Until next time, everybody,happy teaching, bye.
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