Recent advances in understanding reading development and reading difficulty. Which interventions are highly successful?

1. David A. Kilpatrick, PhD
State University of New York,
College at Cortland
East Syracuse-Minoa Central Schools kilpatrickd@cortland.edu
The Reading League
January 14, 2016

2. 1 Understand sight vocabulary development & fluency
2 Learn the “elusive” research based reading
interventions
 My real goal is to “whet your appetite” to embark on a
course of self-study so you can become a “conduit” of
empirical reading research to your schools.
◦ The Reading League will provide follow up resources

3.  Huge field
◦ Hundreds of new empirical studies appear every year
 I have 480 such articles on my hard drive from 2012 alone!
 Flies under the radar of education-related fields
◦ General education, special education, literacy education,
ELL education – even school psychology
 I was introduced to this “field” in the summer of
1997 via a former NYASP president (Phil McInnis)

4.  Annals of Dyslexia
 Dyslexia
 Journal of Research in Reading
 Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal
 Scientific Studies of Reading
 Written Language and Literacy

5.  Journal of Literacy Research
 Literacy Research and Instruction
 Reading Psychology
 Reading Research Quarterly

6.  American Educational Research Journal
 Applied Psycholinguistics
 Assessment for Effective Intervention
 Australian Journal of Learning
Difficulties
 Brain and Language
 British Journal of Educational
Psychology
 Cognition
 Cognitive Psychology
 Cortex
 Journal of Child Psychology and
Psychiatry
 Journal of Educational Psychology
 Journal of Experimental Child
Psychology
 Journal of Experimental Psychology:
Human Perception and Performance
 Journal of Experimental Psychology:
Learning, Memory, and Cognition
 Journal of Learning Disabilities
 Journal of Memory and Language
 Journal of Research on Educational
Effectiveness
 Language, Speech, and Hearing Services
in Schools
 Learning and Instruction
 Learning Disabilities: A Contemporary
Journal
 Learning Disabilities: A Multidisciplinary
Journal
 Learning Disabilities Quarterly
 Learning Disabilities: Research and
Practice Memory and Cognition
 Psychonomic Bulletin and Review
 Quarterly Journal of Experimental
Psychology

7.  Australian Journal of Language and Literacy
 Australian Journal of Psychology
 Behavior and Brain Function
 Behavior Research Methods, Instruments & Computers
 Biological Psychiatry
 Biological Psychology
 Brain
 Brain Research
 British Educational Research Journal
 British Journal of Developmental Psychology
 British Journal of Psychology
 Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology
 Child Development
 Cognitive Brain Research
 Cognitive Neuropsychology
 Cognitive Science
 Contemporary Educational Psychology
 Developmental Neuropsychology
 Developmental Psychology
 Developmental Science
 Early Childhood Research Quarterly
 Educational and Child Psychology
 Educational Psychology Review
 European Journal of Cognitive Psychology
 Exceptional Children
 Exceptionality
 International Journal of Disability, Development and Education
 International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders
 Journal of Behavioral Education
 Journal of Child Neurology
 Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
 Journal of Communication Disorders
 Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education
 Journal of Educational and Developmental Psychology
 Journal of Educational Research
 Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment
 Journal of Research in Childhood Education
 Journal of School Psychology
 Journal of Special Education
 Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research
 Journal of Vision
 Language and Cognitive Processes
 Learning and Individual Differences
 NeuroImage
 Neurology
 Neuron
 NeuroReport
 Neuropsychologia
 Neuropsychology
 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
 Psychological Bulletin
 Psychological Review
 Psychological Science
 Psychology in the Schools
 Remedial and Special Education
 Review of Educational Research
 Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research
 Scandinavian Journal of Psychology
 School Psychology Quarterly
 School Psychology Review
 Trends in Cognitive Science
 Vision Research

8. LANGUAGES
Arabic French Japanese Serbo-Croatian
Chinese German Korean Spanish
Dutch Greek Norwegian Turkish
English Hebrew Portuguese
Finnish Italian Russian
COUNTRIES
Australia Finland Italy Spain
Belgium France Japan Sweden
Brazil Germany Korea United Kingdom
Canada Greece The Netherlands United States
China Israel Norway

9. –Deaf Education –Psychology—Behavioral
–Education –Psychology—Cognitive
–Linguistics –Psychology—Developmental/Child
–Literacy/Reading Education –Psychology—Educational
–Medicine—Neurology –Psychology—Experimental
–Medicine—Pediatrics –Psychology—Neuropsychology
–Medicine—Ophthalmology –Psychology—Psycholinguistics
–Optometry –Psychology—School
–Special Education
–Speech/Language Pathology

10. WORD-LEVEL READING SKILL DEVELOPMENT
AND WORD-LEVEL READING DIFFICULTIES

11. • Reading problems
• NAEP - current reading difficulties – 30%-34% in 4th grade
(NAEP)
• Related to behavior, self-esteem, graduation, college &
career
• General & Special educational remediation
• Weak readers generally remain weak readers
• The gap between research and practice
• Documented for general & special ed teachers, teacher
trainers, and even (gulp!) school psychologists
• Lack of awareness of the research is the biggest factor

12. QUESTION: Show of hands . . .how many of you are in an elementary
school that has a FORMALIZED (self developed or commercially
developed) systematic phoneme awareness training for K or 1?
• Study after study after study shows such training at Tier 1 should
reduce reading problems 50%-75%
• i.e., 50% to 80% of at-risk kids in the bottom 15% no longer in the bottom 30%
• Tier 2 should reduce reading difficulties even further
• Research shows roughly the same magnitude of benefit as Tier 1
• Tier 3 can get nearly half of students in the bottom 5% above the
30th %ile (or higher) and 99.5% out of the the bottom 5%
• Tier 3 could then be 1:1 or 1:2 to maximize results, even if not
“normalized”
• For those whose reading is not normalized: Graduating at a 6th grade reading
level is better preparation for adulthood than graduating at a 2nd or 3rd grade
reading level (our current bottom 1%-2% of readers)

13. Doesn’t this all sound too good to be true?
The sad story: RTI was designed to “capture” the amazing results that
researchers have repeatedly found. Yet it’s not happening in the
schools!
• Focus seems to have shifted to the “framework” and “process” of RTI
• The actual instructional approaches were lost in translation
• Everyone has to find these elusive “research-based” approaches on their own
• A federal report from Fall 2015 says RTI Tier 2 is not working
• Those highly successful intervention approaches will be covered later

14. The key to understanding word-
reading difficulties

15.  Understand how written words are learned
 Understand why some students struggle
◦ 1) sounding out words and 2) remembering the words they read
 Determine what needs to happen for them to learn
 Determine if research shows this can happen

16.  Auditory (anything you can hear like a knock on the table) vs.
phonological (sounds of speech)
 Phonological (sounds of speech including whole words, syllables,
phonemes) vs. phonemic (the individual, smallest sounds in spoken
words the phonemes – such as /s/ /u/ /n/)
 Orthography and orthographic (the proper way to spell sounds in a
particular language – a speech sound in English is spelled differently
than that same sound in other languages)
 Phonological awareness (oral – can do it with eyes closed) vs. phonics
(visual - instruction teaching how the sounds in our words are
represented by the letters in print)
 Phonic decoding – sounding out a word
 Sight word and sight word vocabulary (or orthographic lexicon) – see
next slide.

17. • Three definitions used in educational contexts
• A term for the classic Whole Word approach to reading (i.e., “The
Sight Word Approach” from the Dick and Jane days)
• An irregular word that can’t be phonically decoded (e.g., of, could)
• Any instantly familiar word that is recognized “on sight”
• Words that you already know and don’t have to sound out
• It doesn’t matter if it is phonically regular or irregular
• This last term is the only way I will be using the term
• The average adult person has 50,000-90,000 sight words in their sight
vocabulary!
• Thus, a sight word is a familiar, instantly accessible,
known word. A sight word is a word that, upon
looking at it, you can’t avoid reading it. It is THAT
instantaneously!

18.  Alphabetic Writing – the squiggles that are the letters of the
alphabet represent our speech at the phoneme level
 It was invented by an anonymous ancient Phoenician
 Alphabetic writing requires good phonological skills vs. syllabic
or logographic (like Chinese)
 The alphabetic principle – is an insight that the sounds of
spoken language are represented by the letters of the alphabet.
Kids usually get this insight by first grade.
 Without appreciating the nature of alphabetic writing, the
following emphasis on phonology will not make sense
 The next slide will show how important (indeed central!)
phonology is to acquiring proficiency in an alphabetic writing
system (“alphabetic orthography”)

19.  In an alphabetic languages, it’s all about the
relationship between the sounds we’re
making and how they’re represented on the
page.

20. Phonological
Development
Reading Development
1. Early Phonological
Awareness
Rhyming, Alliteration, Syllable
Segmentation, First Sound
Awareness
2. Basic Phonemic
Awareness
Segmentation & Blending
3. Advanced Phonemic
Awareness
Best assessed via phonemic
manipulation (and timed)
1. Letter Name & Letter
Sound Knowledge
2. Phonic Decoding &
Basic Spelling Skills
3. Orthographic Mapping
(i.e., efficient sight word
acquisition - a rudimentary
version of #3 overlaps with
#2)

21.  All three phases in the development of learning to read
words require phonological skills
◦ This is virtually unavoidable in an alphabet based writing system
because the “characters” (i.e., letters) represent sounds, not words
 E.g., in Chinese, the characters represent words and in one of the two Japanese
scripts the characters represent syllables
 Poor phonological skills can disrupt any or all of these phases
PHONOLOGICAL SKILLS ARE CRITICAL! Let’s try a couple
demonstrations…

22. blue yellow green white
brown black purple yellow
blue gray red gray
red green brown pink
white orange brown red
Taken from Stroop, 1935

23. From Ehri & Wilce, 1987, Journal of Reading Behavior.
You had to put a lot of effort into NOT reading the words.
THIS DEMONSTRATES SIGHT VOCABULARY!
You had to suppress saying those printed words. PRECOGNITIVE means it’s
already there and already available before you have a chance to think about it!

24. • Sight words are effortless & pre-cognitive—words “pop out”
• The elusive key to reading fluency is:
SIGHT VOCABULARY SIZE
• With a large sight vocabulary:
Most (or all) words “pop out”; reading will be fast and accurate
• With a limited sight vocabulary:
• Reading is effortful and often inaccurate because too many
unfamiliar words require attention and strategic decoding.
• You’re stopping, hesitating, trying to figure things out.
FLUENCY IS THE RESULT OF HAVING A LARGE NUMBER OF
WORDS YOU CAN READ BY SIGHT – effortlessly.

25. • Sight vocabulary development is compromised in
students with reading difficulties/disabilities
• In most weak readers, lack of fluency is not due to
inadequate practice
• Very little “practice” is needed to add words to one’s sight
vocabulary for typically developing readers
• Reading practice (e.g., reading and rereading of the same text) is
effective for typically developing students because they read a lot,
have a lot of exposure to words, and the words become
orthographically mapped (become sight words) in just 1 to 4
exposures!
• Just 1 to 4 exposure is all that is needed for permanent storage!
(You’ll never forget that word and have to sound it out again!)
• Struggling readers may need dozens of exposures to a word for it to
become a sight word.

26. • Skilled readers exclusively rely on sight vocabularies
while they read unless they encounter new/unfamiliar
words
• Readers who are not good orthographic mappers have
to sound out the same word over and over again,
sometimes even though they may have just seen that
word in the previous sentence.
• Understanding sight vocabulary development and how
it develops as a result of good orthographic mapping is
central to understanding and addressing most word-
level reading problems

27. An Introduction to Orthographic Mapping

28. • Our intuitions fail us here – research has debunked the visual
connection.
• Input (visually seeing words with our eyes) and storage (retaining
their pronunciations for later use) are not the same thing
• Input is visual, storage is orthographic, phonological, & semantic
• Cattell’s in 1886 – timed flashed words on screens and reaction
times. Found that a drawing of a tree (visual memory) and the word
“tree” – the printed word was responded to more quickly than the
picture!

29. • Findings from the 1970s
• Correlation between word reading & visual memory: zero to weak
• RD (only) kids have equivalent visual memory to non-RD
• 1960s to 1980s miXeD cAsE sTuDiEs
• Words were presented with both upper and lower case letters
• About 200 words in mixed case presented as practice. Then presented
different words in mixed case and there was no difference in time it took
to read them in mixed case vs. same case
• Adams’ comment about debating with students – several students were
angrily insisting that all the words were in the same case
• If a first grader learns “bear” he can instantly identify “BEAR” – putting
words in capitals doesn’t slow down kids
• Consider all the fonts and personal handwriting we read (e.g., wedding
invitations)
• IT’S THE ORDER OF THE LETTERS! We remember letter order, not visual
memory of the word!

30. ◦ Word reading correlates strongly with phonology not visual skills
 PA & Word-Level Reading: r = .30 to .85;
 Usually .5 to .7 depending on which PA test (more on this later)
 Visual Memory & Word Reading: r = .1 to .2 (usually not statistically
significant)
◦ Note how we sometimes “block” on names of people and things
(visual memory of an old friend’s face won’t provide us her
name), but never written words

31. ◦ Neuroimaging studies since 2000 show us where in the brain
various functions occur:
 1) phonic decoding (left temporal);
 2) instant word recognition (left fusiform gyrus);
 3) memory for faces (right fusiform gyrus); and
 4) object naming (right parietal occipital)
These are processed in four different areas/sub-systems of the brain!
(Cattell’s findings in 1886 that we can read the printed word “tree” more quickly
than we can say the word “tree” after seeing a picture of a tree, now make sense!)

32. Printed words are read
instantly and effortlessly based
on orthographic memory,
not visual memory
Hmm.
What’s Orthographic memory?

33. • Orthographic Mapping
• The mental process we use to store words for instant
retrieval
• How we efficiently turn unfamiliar words into familiar
words
• The mechanism for building one’s sight vocabulary
• Weak readers are very inefficient orthographic
mappers!
• Orthographic mapping requires
phonological/phonemic proficiency……

34. • Phonological Awareness vs. Phonological Proficiency
• Phonological Awareness (PA)
• Tied to performance on specific tasks (rhyming, alliteration, segmentation,
blending, isolation, identification/categorization, manipulation)
• All PA tasks correlate with reading development
• Everyone agrees it is important
• Hazy relationship with reading development - most intuitively assume it
simply relates to phonic decoding and spelling
• Phonemic Proficiency
• Has a very clear, detailed relationship with reading development
• Ties in with our theories of word reading development
• Explains sight word acquisition (obviously not an intuitive conclusion)
• Appears to be the Holy Grail of understanding orthographic mapping (i.e.,
sight word learning) and the intervention studies that have featured
working on phonemic proficiency are those with the most effective
outcomes!

35. • Broadly:
• Phonemic proficiency represents how much phonological/phonemic
skill you need to be a efficient word-level reader
• Phonological proficiency vs. phonemic proficiency depends on level of
development – kids will become more proficient at the phonological
(e.g., syllable) level before the phonemic (e.g., individual sounds) level.
• Narrowly:
• Phonemic is the ability to instantly and automatically (i.e., without
conscious attention) to the phonemic segments of spoken words
• Phonological proficiency is not captured on K-1
segmentation screening assessments
• PA develops until 3rd-6th grade; it doesn’t stop at 1st
• This further development is critical for sight-word development
• Only one current test directly tests phonemic proficiency
and it is free to all of you via the supplemental materials for
this presentation

36. By late 2nd grade
◦ Read never-seen-before single syllable nonsense words
virtually instantly! (e.g., “blat” – they see it and just read
it). They need to fetch /b/, then /l/, then /a/, then /t/,
then blend them all together in less than a second!
◦ After asking them to: “Say ‘fly.’ Now say ‘fly’ and
instead of /l/ say /r/.” Good readers will instantly say
“FRY.” They have to take apart “fly” then identify where
the /l/ is, omit it and replace it with /l/ then blend it
together. They do it in under a second! No conscious
effort! PROFICIENCY!

37. • More difficult tasks and timing/automaticity are better
estimates than simple segmentation tasks given on DIBELS
and AIMSweb.
• Deletion and substitution PA tasks are better assessments
of phonemic proficiency
• They capture automaticity and implicit access to the phonemic
segments
• Phonemic segmentation tasks do not necessarily assess automaticity
and proficiency
• Basketball analogy – it’s great if I can make 98/100 free throw shots in
basketball in my own driveway. It’s not good enough for me to become an
NBA player because the proficiency needed for me to do this in my driveway
is much different than the proficiency needed to do it in a game with tall
defenders in my way.
• Segmentation assessment is not enough
The importance of phonemic awareness for reading is actually
UNDERRATED!

38. When you’re reading along in context and come to a
word for the first time…
fly
…you sound it out…/f//l//y/.
Then, if you have instantaneous access to the sound
properties…you can connect the pronunciation to the
printed form on the page. You already have ‘fly’ in
your long term memory…that’s the anchor for THE
LETTER SEQUENCE of those letters/sounds. You’ve
matched that printed F to the sound /f/, the printed L
to the sound /l/, and the printed Y to the sound /i/.

39. These two elements have been missing in a lot
of our assessments and interventions.

40. • What skilled readers can do that struggling readers
cannot do:
• TOWRE/TOWRE-2 and instant reading of single syllable
nonsense words
• PAST and the instant manipulation of phonemes
• Identifying letter sounds and segmenting words is so
proficient it is PRE-COGNITIVE, i.e., implicit and
unconscious
• But not for struggling readers, which is why they are poor
orthographic mappers

41. • Of the 40,000 to 90,000 words in our sight vocabulary,
only a tiny fraction were taught to us directly
• Most were learned “in real time” while reading – we taught
them to ourselves.
• What was needed for us to do this?
• Phonic decoding skills
• Phonemic proficiency

42. • Orthographic mapping requires proficient letter-sound
skills and phonemic proficiency
• Advanced phoneme proficiency is essential for storing words but is
not needed for phonic decoding
• Phonic decoding is based on letter-sound skills and phonological blending

43. Many incorrectly assume PA loses its importance for
reading after first grade
• Based on the declining correlations between PA & reading with
age (in typical learners, by the way!). This decline is misleading
• Similar to how letter-name knowledge loses its correlation to reading
• 3rd to 6th Grade level of PA ≈ an adult level of PA skill, so
• We function as if any PA development beyond Gr. 1 is of no
consequence for reading development
• The most popular PA test is segmentation = the least sensitive to
reading!
• When PA tasks level out: Segmentation – late Gr 1; Untimed
manipulation – late 2nd to late 3rd; Timed manipulation (best test of
proficiency) – 5th grade

44. • Phonological long-term memory (LTM) is the
foundation for orthographic memory
• Phonological LTM refers to all the words (and word parts) orally
familiar to us, regardless of whether we know their meaning
Phonological LTM
(Phonological Lexicon)
Vocabuary
(Semantic Lexicon)
Vocabuary
(Semantic Lexicon)
Phonological LTM
(Phonological Lexicon)

45. • Phonological long term memory is the anchoring
point for remembering printed letter strings
• Phonological proficiency is the means by which
orthographic sequences attach to phonemic
sequences in phonological LTM; making those
strings familiar
• Without phonological proficiency, there’s no
efficient way to make use of spoken words stored
in Phonological LTM as the “anchoring” point

46. r e d
h a s
“Transparent” Words
(i.e. words with one-to-one correspondence between letter and sound)
Oral First: A mind
prepared to store words
Print First: Mapping while reading
w i n
/w/ /ĭ/ /n/
Phoneme
Awareness/
Analysis
/r/ /ĕ/ /d/
/h/ /ă/ /z/
PLTM
/red/ /haz/
Phoneme
Blending
Phoneme
Awareness/
Analysis
Orthographic
Mapping
Self-Teaching
Hypothesis
/win/
Phonological LTM Activation
Letter-Sound
Knowledge

47. m a k e r e a d
Words that are “Opaque”
(i.e. words without a one-to-one correspondence between the printed
letters and the sounds)
c o m b
/m/ /ā/ /k/ /r/ /ē/ /d/ /c/ /ō/ /m/
If we have the pronunciation in our memory, it can serve as the anchor for the
sequence of letters in the word. We will not confuse make for made or mike.
Make will become a part of our sight word vocabulary.

48. b a k eh a t
Regular vs Irregular & Transparent vs Opaque
s o n
/b/ /ā/ /k//h/ /ă/ /t/ /s/ /ŭ/ /n/
s a i d
/s/ /ĕ/ /d/

49. • Irregular and opaque words take longer to learn
• Only 1-2 extra exposures for typical readers; many more for RD
• Most irregular words are off by only one element
• (said, put, comb, island; multiple violations are rare: one, iron)
• Many regular words are not transparent but are mapped
with little difficulty – a minor adjustment is needed
• Silent e words (bike, make)
• Word with vowel digraphs (seen, boat)
• Words with consonant digraphs (that, she)
• Multi-syllabic regular words change the vowel (“vowel
reduction”), just like irregular words
• Holiday, market

50. • Thus, irregular words require similar “adjustments” as
those needed for many regular words
• Irregular words do not cause reading problems in English
• Even very regular orthographies (e.g., Italian, Spanish) have RD
• English phonic decoding harder to learn, but these irregularities
are not the cause of poor sight word reading
• Conclusion: Irregular words are not a challenge for
skilled orthographic mappers
• “Exception words are only exceptional when someone tries to read
them by applying a [phonic] decoding strategy. When they are
learned as sight words, they are secured in memory by the same
connections as regularly spelled words . . .” (Ehri, 2005 p. 171-
172)

51. The “actual” best practices nobody has
noticed yet . . .

52.  My 90/10 “Insight” Spring 2013
◦ Refined in 2014 and being further reviewed

53. About 80%-90% of intervention studies show 0 to 9 SS
point improvements in word reading
Only 10%-20% of intervention studies show 12.5 to 25 SS
point improvements in word reading
 Results maintained at 1, 2, 3 & 4 year follow ups (depending on the study)
 Results from the 0-8 studies often lost gains in follow up studies

54. The 80%-90% were subdivided into two groups:
0 to 5 SS points and 6 to 9 SS points
Thus a “tripartite” division exists within the intervention research!
Minimal results group: 0 to 5 standard score improvements
Mostly 2-4 points
Moderate results group: 6 to 9 standard score improvements
Mostly 6-7 points (one study had 9)
Highly successful group: 12.5 to 25 standard score point improvements
Mostly 14-17 points
NOTES: A standard score is the number of standard deviations above the mean.
A standard deviation (SD) of improvement means a student who gets an 85 on a word
reading test will move up to 100. Another who has a 75 will get a 90.
The students in the intervention research studies were getting normalized performance
and maintaining their gains! These are the studies that prompted RTI! The students
became orthographic mappers!

55.  Studies in all three categories cut across what studies
normally look at:
◦ 1) age/grade
◦ 2) SES,
◦ 3) group size (e.g., 1:1 vs. 1:3)
◦ 4) severity level of reading difficulty
◦ 5) length of intervention
 These factors cannot explain the disparity in outcomes
◦ 6 to 8 recent meta-analyses of intervention focused on these and missed
the glaring tripartite division
 (The big W in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World)
 All three categories (0-25) used explicit, systematic phonics
◦ Thus, phonics is not “the answer” BUT
◦ It’s an important part of the answer: All studies NOT using explicit,
systematic phonics were in the 0-5 minimal outcome group

56. The 3 categories based on outcomes align with three different
intervention approaches relative to orthographic mapping!
 Minimal Group (0 – 5 SS improvements)
◦ None formally trained phonological awareness/analysis
◦ Most did explicit, systematic phonics
◦ All provided reading practice with connected text
 Moderate Group (6-9 SS improvements)
◦ All did explicit, systematic phonics
◦ All provided reading practice
◦ All but one trained phonological segmentation and/or blending
 This is “basic phonological awareness” (mastered by most at end of 1st grade)
like segmenting and blending

57.  Highly Successful Group (12-25 improvements)
◦ Aggressively addressed and “fixed” PA issues using advanced PA training
(e.g., “Say ‘bent’…now say ‘bent’ and change the /n/ to /s/”)
◦ All did explicit, systematic phonics
◦ All provided reading practice with connected text
 These interventions gave students the foundational tools
for orthographic mapping
 They now became efficient at adding words to their sight
vocabulary
◦ Apparently, none of the other interventions did this
 There was a fluency lag, however
◦ Fluency improved, but not to same degree as isolated word reading
◦ Capacity to add to the sight vocabulary vs. actual sight vocabulary
based on reading experience

58.  Conclusions consistent with orthographic mapping
 Unless their problem with advanced phonemic awareness
is fixed, poor word-level readers don’t catch up
 Advanced phonemic awareness is essential for sight word
development and if they don’t have it, they cannot
efficiently add to their sight vocabulary

59.  The three part “formula” used in the studies with highly
successful outcomes
1 Aggressively train phonological awareness to the advanced level
2 Teach and/or reinforce letter-sound knowledge & skills (phonics)
3 Extensive opportunities to read connected text
 Do these sound familiar . . . ? What are we missing?
◦ Phonological awareness assessment training is typically segmentation
 Only takes a child to an ending 1st grade level
 Not enough PA for orthographic mapping
◦ PA continues to grow past 1st grade – this is treated as inconsequential!
◦ PA training assumed not to be helpful with older students
◦ Phonological awareness assessments only take us to the basic level – we
do not assess the advanced level on our current tests (I’ll provide you
with the one exception)

60.  The following interventions have been studied in the
empirical reading literature and have been shown to yield
2 to 5 standard score point improvements:
◦ Repeated Readings, READ180, Reading Recovery (all independent
studies), Fast ForWord, Read Naturally, Failure Free Reading, and
Great Leaps
◦ These are commonly recommend these not knowing they have
already been studied and shown to have limited results
 Rarely do students “catch up” with these approaches
 Many of these have studies with “statistically significant” results so they
can all themselves “research based”!

61.  “Gold Standard” phonic programs
(i.e., Wilson, Orton-Gillingham, DISTAR/Reading Mastery)
◦ Often yield huge improvements in phonic decoding (15-25 SS points), but
limited improvements in general word identification (e.g., 3-5 SS points)
◦ They typically do not develop phonological proficiency, which is needed for
orthographic mapping/sight word development
◦ Research shows that poor response to these programs is based on poor
phonological awareness
 Reading comprehension interventions in the presence of
significant word reading difficulties are minimally helpful
 Also, any suggestion that some students simply cannot learn
phonic skills is not based on research and guarantees a student
will not catch up
◦ Again, phonics “treatment resistors” have poor phonemic awareness

63.  Tier 1 instruction – What is effective K-1?
◦ KEY COMPONENTS
◦ Phonological Awareness
◦ Letter-Sound Knowledge
◦ Connecting phonological awareness to word-level reading
◦ Good teaching techniques based on general learning principles
 Seems to be the focus of RTI efforts
 Early, rigorous development of PA and LS skills in K-1
dramatically reduces the number of struggling readers
 Quick Survey:
◦ Adjustment to earlier question . . .

64.  Programs used in studies with highly successful outcomes
◦ Experimenter designed – not commercially available 
◦ Florida Center for Reading Research (pieces of these experimenter
designed approaches) – all free! www.fcrr.org
◦ Road to the Code (Benita Blachman et al.)
◦ Phonemic Awareness in Young Children (Adams et al.)
◦ Ladders to Literacy (O’Connor et al.)
◦ Interactive Strategies Approach (Scanlon, et al.)
◦ Other programs:
 Rosner program – long track record of success in schools
 Equipped for Reading Success (studies underway; based on Rosner)
 These are effective for K-1 prevention & early intervention,
but not for Gr. 2-12 remediation
◦ They do not train to the level of advanced phonemic awareness
◦ Other programs are more well suited for intervention…see next slide

65.  Programs used in studies with highly successful outcomes
◦ Experimenter designed – not commercially available 
◦ Lindamood (ADD now LiPS)
 Be cautious about the Seeing Stars they are promoting now (in the 0-9 group)
◦ Interactive Skills Program (now in book form)
◦ PhonoGraphix
◦ Read, Write, Type (only one study so far)
◦ Discover Reading (Reading Foundation, Alberta, Canada)
◦ Other programs using advanced PA training not in these studies:
 Rosner program – long track record of success in schools
 Equipped for Reading Success (studies underway) is the only program based
upon Orthographic Mapping–should have equivalent results to the others but is
easier to implement (based on the Rosner program)
◦ All studies with highly successful outcomes (12-25 group) did
“advanced” phonological awareness training!

66.  There is a singular developmental path of typical word-
level reading from letter name knowledge to fluent reading
of multisyllabic words in connected text
 This singular path involves development of phonological
proficiency and letter-sound/phonic proficiency
 The goal is to get students to develop orthographic
mapping skills – phonic decoding is a very important step
along the way
◦ Also a lifelong skill for encountering unfamiliar written words
 Fluency does not appear to be an additional reading skill,
independent of this singular path/process
◦ Fluency appears to be a by-product of the efficiency of reading
development (more on this later)

67.  kilpatrickd@cortland.edu