Phonics Instruction Research Articles

A Meta-Analysis of the Relationship Between Phonics Instruction and Minority Elementary School Student Academic Achievement

This meta-analysis of 22 studies examines the relationship between phonics and the academic achievement of urban minority elementary school children. Further analyses distinguish between those studies that are of higher quality than the others and those studies that examine all minority students and mostly minority students. Results indicate a significant relationship between phonics instruction and higher academic achievement. Phonics instruction, as a whole, is associated with academic variables by about .23 to .33 of a standard deviation unit. This relationship holds for studies that examine all minority students and those that include mostly minority students. The results also hold for higher quality studies. The significance of these results is discussed.

Visual and orthographic information in learning to read and the influence of phonics instruction

In the Jackson and Coltheart theory of acquisition of word reading it is claimed that, near the beginning of the partial alphabetic phase of development, children have full use of abstract letter units (ALUs). This claim and less exclusive alternatives were examined. In Experiment 1, normal progress children with on average 9 months of school reading instruction, either with or without explicit phonics, read with moderate accuracy (orthographically) familiar words in upper-case letters (e.g., AND) that are visually dissimilar from their lower-case forms. Lower-case forms were read with greater accuracy but only for familiar words, there being no letter-case effect for less familiar words. Children with explicit phonics showed less impairment in reading accuracy when words were presented in upper-case form than children without such phonics. Children with on average 22 months of instruction, in Experiment 2, read relatively unfamiliar words that required some phonological mediation. Those without explicit phonics instruction read words with digraphs in unfamiliar upper case less accurately than in lower case, while those with explicit phonics showed no such letter-case difference. The results supported the view that children do not have full use of ALUs in early alphabetic reading, both children with and without explicit phonics to some extent using letter identities specific to lower case for representation of familiar words.

Literacy and Visual Impairment

Research supporting specific instructional approaches for young children with visual impairments and blindness is limited. There is, however, a growing body of evidence to support the belief that the critical components of emergent and early conventional literacy for children with visual impairments do not differ markedly from those of their sighted peers. Specifically, infants and toddlers with visual impairments and blindness require interactions that support their oral language development, awareness of print or braille, and opportunities to explore writing. Although these very young children are often delayed in developing emergent literacy understandings, the path of their development is consistent with emergent literacy development of sighted children. The research regarding older children with visual impairments and blindness suggests that they too benefit from instruction that emphasizes the critical elements of early literacy instruction for all children. Research also suggests that specific strategies, such as repeated readings, direct instruction in phonics, and big word decoding that emphasizes morphemes, can benefit school-aged children with visual impairments and blindness. Further research is needed if we are to understand fully the most effective approaches to emergent and early literacy instruction for children with visual impairments and blindness, but there is a solid base from which we can begin.

Monitoring Children with Reading Disabilities' Response to Phonics Intervention: Are There Differences between Intervention Aligned and General Skill Progress Monitoring Assessments?

This study investigated whether 2 different progress monitoring assessments differentially predicted growth in reading skills associated with systematic phonics instruction. Oral reading fluency (ORF) was compared with an intervention aligned word list (IAWL) as predictors of growth in untimed and timed decoding and word identification and text reading accuracy, fluency, and comprehension. Results from 40 children with reading disabilities, Grades 2–5, indicated that the IAWL accounted for unique variance in change on measures of decoding and word identification, whereas the ORF measure accounted for unique variance on passage reading fluency gains. Evaluation of the IAWL psychometric properties revealed adequate reliability and construct validity; however, additional analysis indicated that the hierarchical coding scheme used to determine each word's rank difficulty ordering was not as effective.

The National Reading Panel’s Meta‐Analysis of Phonics Instruction: Another Point of View

The purpose of this article is to provide an alternative interpretation of the National Reading Panel’s meta‐analysis on phonics instruction. The NRP based its conclusion that phonics instruction was superior to other approaches on the interpretation of mean effect d statistics reported in its meta‐analysis. In addition to looking at these d’s, we computed and interpreted the mean effect correlations (r’s) and r‐squares that corresponded to the reported d’s. Our conclusions were different from those reported by the NRP. Instead of phonics approaches being superior to nonphonics approaches (as indicated when statistically significant d’s are the only criterion considered), we argue that the advantages of phonics instruction relative to nonphonics instruction have not been demonstrated clearly (as indicated when practical significance r’s and r‐squares are considered).

Meta‐Analysis and Reading Policy: Perspectives on Teaching Children to Read

In this article we briefly examine the meta‐analysis of systematic phonics instruction published in Teaching Children to Read, the influential 2000 report by the National Reading Panel. A brief review of this study, and the ensuing reanalysis by Camlli, Vargas, and Yurecko, is given. Following this, we report new analyses that substantially alter previous interpretations of the effect of systematic phonics instruction. In the second part of the article, we examine how “knowledge” created through meta‐analysis has entered the domain of public discussion. We conclude by considering how research studies consistent with the intent of the No Child Left Behind law can be designed to engender more effective reading instruction.

Need for systematic synthetic phonics teaching within the early reading curriculum

Both the New Zealand Ministry of Education's Literacy Experts Group and the Australian National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy have recently acknowledged the centrality of systematic instruction in synthetic phonics to early reading instruction, but this conclusion remains contentious in some circles. This paper briefly summarises empirical research in basic psychology and evidence-based evaluation studies supporting the inclusion of systematic synthetic phonics instruction within the early reading curriculum, allowing practising psychologists to develop an informed opinion on this issue.

50 years ago in the journal of pediatrics: Why Johnny can’t read: Fact or fallacy

50 years ago in the journal of pediatrics: Why Johnny can’t read: Fact or fallacy

The National Reading Curriculum's Oobleck

PUBLIC elementary school teachers are in the fourth year of a mandated national reading A group of federally appointed experimental research scientists, known as the National Reading Panel (NRP), created a report, which is now the cornerstone for the Reading First document and a crucial underpinning of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). All of these federal actions have placed undue pressure on schools by channeling them into a reading curriculum based on systematic and explicit phonics instruction. These mandates have resulted in the creation of commercial commercial programs that claim to use evidence-based reading methodologies that will close the achievement gap and end America's reading problems. Confident of their findings, many of those involved in the NRP believe they have put an end to the 30-year debate over how best to instruct children. In school districts across the country, however, the reading battle rages on, and most teachers are not buying the findings of the NRP. As I read Dr. Seuss' Bartholomew and the Oobleck to a group of third-graders on Read Across America Day, I was struck by the parallels between the magicians in the book and the research scientists responsible for the federal intrusion into the reading curriculum. In the book, King Derwin of Didd is not satisfied with the fog, the snow, the rain, and the sunshine. He orders his magicians to create something new to come from the sky. The magicians happily comply, ignoring the warnings of pageboy Bartholomew Cubbins. Green, gooey oobleck then falls from the sky, wreaking havoc upon the kingdom. The bells cannot ring, the trumpets will not blow, the Captain of the Guards cannot speak, and the farmers cannot do their chores. The king, now stuck to his royal throne by oobleck and realizing the error of his ways, summons Bartholomew and calls for the return of his magicians to end the crisis. But, I can't fetch them, Your Majesty. Their cave on Mountain Neeka-tave is buried deep in oobleck, Bartholomew reports. The magicians are totally un-JAMES W. VENABLE is a reading teacher at Washington Elementary School, Alameda, Calif. aware of the disaster they have inadvertently created. After warnings from numerous Bartholomews, the NRP's oobleck continues to fall from the sky, preventing classroom teachers from making wise instructional decisions. Perhaps because I am a classroom teacher and have experienced firsthand the effect that experimental scientists who adhere to a discrete-skills model of reading have on classrooms, I look upon the results of the NRP with disdain. Safely ensconced in their cave, these magicians fail to see how their generalized findings from studies of atypical children in specialized settings do not transfer to average children. The NRP scientists fail to understand that reading words in isolation is not reading. They are totally unaware that their research, transferred into the hands of policy makers, can be disastrous for children. Their oobleck permeates every aspect of our role as teachers. Many of us see this oobleck as stemming from misinterpretation and misuse, if not outright misinformation. That is, the entire premise of Reading First rests upon a crumbling foundation because the initial analysis was flawed. We know that studies were omitted and misreported. We know that the panel came to faulty conclusions. We are aware of the NRP minority report submitted by panel member Joanne Yatvin. We have read the countervailing research of dissenting scientists in the field of reading and language acquisition. Nevertheless, the oobleck keeps falling upon us and has a huge impact on our professional development and on the ways in which we are mandated to teach and assess language learners. The NRP report did not answer the critical question of how teachers can be educated to teach reading effectively, but the policy makers assume that it did. One state-approved professional developer provides hours of indoctrination on the five major components of reading, taught as if they should be delivered to students as isolated skills that will come together as reading--around fifth grade. …

Teaching phonics in the context of children's literature or spelling: Influences on first-grade reading, spelling, and writing and fifth-grade comprehension.

First-grade children's reading, writing, and spelling competencies in 2 different instructional contexts for teaching phonics were examined. Reading, writing, and spelling abilities were measured at the beginning, middle, and end of 1st grade. Children were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 treatments designed to teach grapheme-phoneme correspondences, blending, and segmenting. In 1 treatment, children generated spellings for words, and in the other treatment, phonics instruction was embedded in literature. The spelling treatment was significantly better for spelling phonetically regular real and pseudowords, reading phonetically regular pseudowords, and written story length. It was also more beneficial for low-ability children's reading of connected text. There were no treatment effects on reading uncontrolled words in text. At the end of 5th grade, spelling-context children had significantly higher comprehension than did literature-context children. Discussion focuses on phonological processing while spelling and the effects of the instructional press of context-embedded and context-reduced instructional approaches in 1st grade.

Learning to read in Australia

Reading scientists have learned a good deal over the past 40 years about how children learn to read, why some find this so hard, and how such children can be helped. But this science has not reached many classrooms. National governments in the USA, UK and Australia have all recently been so concerned about the incidence of poor reading ability amongst their children that they have commissioned national surveys of reading and the teaching of reading. The Australian review committee issued its report and recommendations in December 2005. The report found that in most teacher training courses around Australia very little time was devoted to material on how children learn to read and how best to teach them, and that a majority of senior staff in schools consider that beginning teachers are not adequately prepared to teach children to read. The report recommended various ways in which this problem might be solved; and it also recommended, on the basis of a review of relevant research, that the teaching of reading in Australian schools should always include in the early years extensive systematic explicit instruction in synthetic phonics. We await implementation of these recommendations.

Everybody's Selling It-But Just What Is Explicit, Systematic Phonics Instruction?

The authors define phonics as a system for encoding speech sounds into written symbols and for teaching learners to use the relationship between letters and sounds to recognize words. The origin of the term explicit, systematic phonics is traced historically through studies and reviews of phonics instruction and policy documents. Results from a teacher survey highlighted the multifaceted nature of systematic and explicit instruction and led the authors to propose the following definition: Explicit, systematic phonics instruction is instruction matched to students' developmental levels. It incorporates a scope and sequence for content delivery and a variety of word-study activities. Such instruction promotes student engagement and accountability through direct teaching.

Instructional Leadership at the Crossroads: Unintended Outcomes of Current Reading Policies

Today's instructional leaders face disparate accountabilities. On the one hand, they are accountable for use of research on literacy education that has evolved to be understood as holistic literacy instruction based on an integrated use of semantic, syntactic, and phonemic strategies. On the other hand, leaders must meet requirements of current reading policies that appear to support more traditional ideology, such as direct systematic phonics instruction. This article draws on empirical research findings from a qualitative study of U.S. instructional leaders that examines the impact of current reading policies on instructional leaders’ beliefs and practices of effective literacy instruction. Findings from the study reveal several unintended outcomes of current reading policies, including diminished services for low-achieving students.

Accountability for Reading and Readers: What the Numbers Don't Tell

The authors share what they learned when they assessed second graders' acts of reading. The children were in three different reading programs: Two were commercially produced and emphasized systematic, explicit phonics instruction (Reading Mastery, Open Court); the other was a literature-based program using an adaptation of guided reading. The authors address what it means to be accountable to children involved in the complex act of reading and argue that by such measures of accountability we learn much about readers that simple numbers from tests cannot tell.

Teaching Reading to Children Who Are Deaf: Do the Conclusions of the National Reading Panel Apply?

The authors conducted a synthetic review of the research literature on the reading development and reading instruction of deaf students and compared their findings to the review of research literature conducted by the National Reading Panel (NRP) on four topic areas: (a) alphabetics (phonemic awareness instruction and phonics instruction); (b) fluency; (c) comprehension (vocabulary instruction and text comprehension instruction); and (d) computer technology and reading instruction. In their discussion of the areas of overlap in the two bodies of research and of the implications for future research, the authors note the lack of research with deaf readers on instructional interventions that have been found to be effective with hearing readers and on the implications for isolation from mainstream reading research.

Reading between the Lines: Observations on the Report of the National Reading Panel and its Critics

Mr. Cooper steps back and tries to see the whole picture that might emerge from the different pieces of research on reading instruction. I COULD NOT read the preceding exchange between Elaine Garan, Stephen Krashen, Timothy Shanahan, and Peggy McCardle and Vinita Chhabra from the perspective of a reading expert.1 I'm not a reading expert. In fact, I can't say I've read much about reading instruction beyond parts of the original Report of the National Panel (NRP) and the articles that are principal to this debate.2 Rather, I examined these articles as someone who knows a bit about the methodology of research synthesis,3 as a former two-term school board member who lived through the Reading Wars side by side with our superintendents and principals who needed to make decisions about reading instruction,4 as the spouse of a first- grade teacher with over 25 years' teaching experience, and as the dad of two kids who successfully learned to be avid readers in America's public schools. So I apologize for my loose technical language, which I know will drive reading experts crazy. Phonics Instruction What did I learn from my reading on phonics instruction? Let me start with the bottom line. I found it very informative to read the article by Gregory Camilli, Sakako Vargas, and Michele Yurecko, but not to take from it the lessons that the authors offered. They chose to focus on how their results differed from those of the NRP. Just as easily, and perhaps more usefully, they might have framed their findings to highlight the consistency between the two sets of results. I was impressed with the fact that Camilli, Vargas, and Yurecko and the NRP approached the evidence differently -- most notably by focusing on different comparison groups to test the effect of phonics and by using different effect size weighting schemes -- but came to similar conclusions. In particular, I think both sets of research synthesists would agree with the following findings of the research: * the advantage of instructional approaches that include systematic phonics over instructional approaches that include some or no phonics is statistically significant; * however, instructional approaches that include systemic phonics instruction show their greatest advantage in the early primary grades; and * instruction in systematic phonics should be integrated with other types of reading instruction to create a balanced reading program, for phonics instruction is never a complete reading program. The research literature examined by Camilli, Vargas, and Yurecko has been disassembled and reassembled, trashed and praised, pushed to the left, and tugged to the right. Yet it seems to me that neither side has been able to make these three findings go away. What do these results mean to school superintendents and principals? If I were the superintendent of a school district using a reading approach that did not include teaching systematic phonics in early grades or if my district's approach used phonics only, I would find out how much money I could get for our teaching materials on eBay. Then again, maybe I would just hold onto our stuff and purchase the appropriate complementary materials. Why did Camilli, Vargas, and Yurecko seem so focused on their differences with the NRP rather than their agreements? Although they labeled themselves agnostic in the Wars, we know that there are no agnostics (or atheists) in a foxhole. Making such a claim challenges readers to search for where the authors' hidden theory creeps in. Rather than claim neutrality, it is most helpful to users of research syntheses -- indeed of any research -- when the authors try to interpret the results from multiple points of view. Imagine the familiar eight- ounce water glass. As a researcher, I may be able to estimate that the glass contains four ounces of water. I may use multiple techniques to arrive at this conclusion, and the conclusion might even be the average of several estimation procedures. …

Text Decodability and the First-grade Reader

This study investigated the effects of highly decodable text and coordinated phonics instruction on first graders' word recognition strategies. The quantitative study sought to examine the validity of a major claim about highly decodable text—that it enables readers to apply phonics instruction to a greater extent than less decodable text. All participants received the same fourteen-day phonics instruction. However, participants read either highly decodable or less decodable text following the instruction. Treatment participants reading highly decodable text were found to apply letter/sound knowledge to a greater extent than control participants. They also were more accurate and relied on examiners less for assistance. Treatment and control participants did not differ in self-correction rates. As a replication of an earlier study, this work suggested that readers with knowledge of the alphabetic principle, given the same phonics instruction, will apply it more in a highly decodable context.

Readers, Instruction, and the NRP

Are programs that emphasize systematic phonics instruction truly superior to other types of programs for young readers, as the National Reading Panel claims? The authors conducted a study of three different programs to see what kinds of readers are actually emerging from them. JESSICA, a second-grader in an urban school with a low socioeconomic profile, reads: But the nighttime tried to stand back down the stairs. So I caused it.1 Like her classmates, Jessica has learned to read words through systematic and explicit phonics instruction. She comes up with words that look and sound similar to the words on the page, but they do not always make sense in the sentence. She accepts this, seemingly unaware that the text is supposed to make sense. Jessica's repertoire of reading strategies is limited, and her comprehension is poor. Is this the kind of reading that we wish to promote? The pressure on schools to use programs of systematic and explicit phonics instruction is tremendous. The report of the National Reading Panel (NRP), a keystone resource for the Reading First program of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, used 38 studies to determine that explicit and systematic phonics instruction in the early grades is necessary.2 Though it is not clear how long lessons should run, how many letter/sound relationships should be learned, how much phonics should be covered, or the type of instruction needed, phonics is deemed necessary. The federal government severely restricts the range of reading programs that it will fund through NCLB to those that demonstrate a systematic and predominant emphasis on phonics. Only programs that are considered to be research-based, using a narrow medical model, are acceptable. Those who use other kinds of instruction that are based on other kinds of research risk forgoing federal funds. A case in point is New York City's run-in with federal agencies in which the phonics program the city tested in its schools was not considered research-based.3 In order to ensure funding, school districts are adopting or mandating single commercial programs, such as Direct Instruction or Open Court, which, at the core of instruction, impose extensive systematic and explicit skill approaches on all children. Studying Readers Much of the research used by the NRP and approved by NCLB measures reading achievement by means of word lists, short passages with blanks, and lists of non-words. Such research does not study the actual process of students reading real texts, which would make it possible to determine the impact of phonics instruction on the strategies young readers use, on how they comprehend, or on how they perceive the reading process. We developed a study to do just that. We examined the impact of three different reading programs used in our metropolitan area on the reading processes of second-graders who had been instructed with these programs since at least first grade. Two were commercial programs that used explicit and systematic phonics instruction as a central piece in early reading learning: Direct Instruction (DI)4 and Open Court (OC).5 The third was a literature-based program, labeled Guided Reading (GR), wherein students were taught to use multiple strategies to focus on the meaning of what they read. This program was an adaptation of work by Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell.6 The 84 students in our study live in urban settings and are of low socioeconomic status, but they are not coded for special education or for receiving ESL (English as a Second Language) services. To study the reading processes of these students, we asked the second-graders to read books to us aloud. We studied their reading using miscue analysis, an established research tool that analyzes oral reading miscues or divergences from the text to reveal a reader's use of phonics cues, language structure cues, and meaning-based cues.7 Thus we learned about the students' reading strategies, as well as their skill in comprehending as they read. …

Evaluating the Impact of a Prevention-Based Model of Reading on Children Who Are At Risk

Large numbers of students are not benefiting from current reading curricula and practices. However, despite the presence of a scientifically validated basis for teaching reading, the nuances of exactly how to translate beginning reading research into day-to-day classroom practice remain to be validated. In this article, beginning literacy outcomes for the instructional practices employed in Project PRIDE are presented. Project PRIDE is a model for preventing reading failure that employs a combination of systematic, explicit instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics with a total classroom reading program; a multitiered teaching approach; data-based decision making; and professional development that includes ongoing, on-site coaching. The effects of 2 years of PRIDE implementation in three inner-city schools in a medium-sized midwestern city are presented, and the implications of these findings for current practice and future research are discussed.

Coordination of reading and spelling in early literacy development: An examination of the discrepancy hypothesis

The Discrepancy Hypothesis posits that childrenearly in the acquisition process read visually(holistically) and spell phonologically. Thisclaim was examined and rejected. Weinvestigated reading and spelling in Grade 1and Grade 2 children using controlled nonwordand word materials with a variety oforthographic patterns. While reading andspelling were strongly correlated even amongthe younger readers, discrepancies betweenperformance levels occurred in both directions. Children's responses were affected by wordcharacteristics and whether or not theyreceived school phonics instruction. Phonologically complex words, such as thosecontaining consonant clusters, wereparticularly difficult for Grade 1 children toread, while words that were difficult to spellcorrectly but not to read tended to havemultivalent mappings from sound to spelling.The generation of reading responses tospecially selected nonwords was affected byboth implicit and explicit phonological sourcesof knowledge. Orthographic knowledge gained inspelling did not always transfer to reading,and vice versa.