Effective Decoding Instruction for Diverse
Learners
A Study Group Series
Skillful Word Recognition: Informed Instruction
Key to making effective instructional decisions is knowledge about
how children learn to read and the difficulties that they may encounter.
Instructional strategies should be aligned to sound scientific research.
The following resources provide information on connecting research and
practice in order to support an informed approach to reading instruction.
- Informed Instruction for Reading Success: Foundations
for Teacher Preparation.
- Learning to Read...Reading to Learn: Tips for
Teachers
- Teachers: The Key to Helping America to Read
- Report on Learning Disabilities Research.
- 30 Years
of Research: What we Know About How Children Learn
to Read (especially, Research on Treatment of
Reading Difficulties
and Major Implications for Early Reading Instruction).
- Preventing
Reading Difficulties in Young Children.
- The National Right to Read
Foundation. See Topical
Essays,
Context Cues.
- The following information is excerpted from
Straight Talk About Reading, Hall & Moats, 1998, p219, 220.
Experts explain that an overemphasis on guessing new words, either
from context or pictures, doesn't help in learning to read
independently. First, guessing instead of reading through the word
doesn't help the child learn the letter patterns. Furthermore,
even if the child guesses correctly, [the word will be no easier
to recognize later because the letter patterns weren't studied].
In addition to diverting attention from the details of the word,
guessing does not produce the correct word often enough to be an
effective strategy. Based on research by Dr. David Share and
Dr. Keith E. Stanovich, guessing an unrecognized word from context
clues is successful only 10 percent of the time.
- Substantial research through
NICHD and non-NICHD organizations does not support the claim that the
use of context is a proxy for applying decoding strategies to unknown or
unfamiliar words. (See: Evidence & Findings).
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saeb
Last modified: Mon Jun 28 17:57:43 EDT 1999