Juel and Roper/Schneider. Reading Research Quarterly 18:
IFERI committee member Gordon Askew:'The selection of text used very early in first grade may, at least in part, determine the strategies and cues children learn to use, and persist in using, in subsequent word identification.... In particular, emphasis on a phonics method seems to make little sense if children are given initial texts to read where the words do not follow regular letter-sound correspondence generalizations. Results of the current study suggest that the types of words which appear in beginning reading texts may well exert a more powerful influence in shaping children’s word identification strategies than the method of reading instruction'’
http://www.spelfabet.com.au/2015/08/pre ... ive-texts/Predictable text is another way of saying 'easy to guess'. Such books obviously do provide early success and resultant confidence. Unfortunately for some children (and perhaps especially for their teachers) it is a false confidence. There will quickly come a stage when guessing is far less easy and far less reliable. If they haven't by that stage established a better strategy...
Video: Alison Clarke illustrates why predictable or repetitive texts are harmful for beginning readers.
Here’s Jenny Chew on the RRF message board. She helps with one-to-one reading at her local primary school.
Decodable Words Versus Predictable Text''The trouble is that ‘sound it out’ often doesn’t work, given the mismatch between the books RR [Reading Recovery] children are given to read and the state of their phonic knowledge. I’ve helped voluntarily in an infant school which doesn’t have RR but uses Book Bands, and weak Y1 readers have often been issued with books full of words that they can’t possibly read. I’ve always taken along my own stock of decodable books, and I get the children to try these once I’ve dutifully helped them through their non-decodables. At first they tend to resort to their usual strategies, but when they realise that these are books where sounding out really works, they often get the bit between their teeth. It’s not all plain sailing, however – I can move them on to the next level of decodables when I see them the following week, but in the meantime they will have been issued with several more non-decodables which will have made them revert to their non-decoding mindset''.
by Dr. Patrick Groff
http://www.nrrf.org/old/decodable_vs_predictable.html
Phonics and Book Bands: article from the RRF newsletter. 2002.This method's foremost presumption is that the time it takes for novice readers to recognize written words via phonics instruction could be shortened significantly. It was held that if nonreaders were repetitively shown whole written words, until they were recognized as "sight" words, this would speed up their overall acquisition of reading ability. Sight words are ones children recognize rapidly, without sounding-out their letters.
It now is well-established experimentally that the look-say methodology has fatal flaws. Children taught in this manner somehow are able to remember the identities of a relatively small number of words. However, they soon suffer an overload on their memory systems, and begin guessing wildly at the names of words in sentences. Consequently, pupils' ability to accurately comprehend what they have read is badly affected.
http://www.rrf.org.uk/archive.php?n_ID= ... eNumber=48
Prof. Daniel Willingham discusses readabilty formulas for leveling books.
http://www.realcleareducation.com/artic ... p8.twitter
Rose Report 2006. para 82.
Ted Hirsch.(A)s they learn to master the alphabetic code, children should be given reading material that is well within their reach in the form of 'decodable books'... Using such books as part of the phonic programme does not preclude other reading. Indeed it can be shown that such books help children develop confidence and an appetite for reading more widely.
Controlled text for independent reading makes a tremendous difference. We should only ask children to decode what we have already taught them. Introducing complexity at an early stage can lead to faulty reading strategies that take a concerted effort to correct.
