Choosing the Right Dyslexia Intervention, Part 5: How sight words are taught

In part five of a series on choosing dyslexia interventions, Michelle reviews differences between meaning-first (to avoid), letters-first programs (e.g., Orton-Gillingham, Barton, Wilson),  and sounds-first instruction, then focuses on teaching high-frequency/sight words. Letters-first approaches often have students memorize “red” or irregular word letter strings by repeating letter names, while sounds-first instruction maps sounds to letters and incorporates sounds, letters, and meaning for every word. She describes a comparison across three second-grade classrooms in which students were taught the same 10 words: the sounds-first system produced higher accuracy and “smarter errors” than Orton-Gillingham methods, with skills that generalized beyond the target words. She argues that sounds-first structured literacy feels more natural and reduces frustration. 

00:00 Series Recap Setup

00:25 Letters First vs Sounds First

01:36 Sight Words Memorization

02:47 Sounds First Mapping

03:34 Classroom Comparison Study

07:20 Why Smarter Errors Matter

10:00 Progress Stories Evidence

12:14 Choosing Support Options

12:33 Programs Offered Overview

14:56 VIP Advocacy Membership

17:42 Final Wrap Up

Transcript

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Hi and welcome back to Days with Dyslexia. We are doing part five of how to choose the right intervention for your child with dyslexia without wasting their time or your money. So if you've listened to the other four parts, great. We're gonna do a quick review. If not, make sure you go back and listen to each part because there's so much good information. So we are working through the big differences between a letters first and a sounds first instruction. If you're just joining us, we're working through the different types of intervention that are available. We've got intervention that is meaning first, which we definitely want to stay away from. And then we've got interventions that are letters first. Those are gonna be programs that are like Orton Gillingham-based, Spartan, Wilson, things like that, that start their instruction with our printed system, and then we're gonna compare that to a sounds first instruction where all of the concepts taught are based on the sounds in our language. And the benefit of using sounds first instruction is that children are biologically wired for sounds. So the first big difference that we covered in part one was the scope and sequence for a letters first versus sounds first instruction. Part two was about the differences in how syllables are taught and used. Part three was about the job of the letters, and part four was about what kids say and do while writing words. Today we are going to be talking about high frequency or sight words, which I touched on just a little bit last time. We're gonna get more into that today. So in a letters first approach, children learn to memorize letter strings. They are told that these are words that don't follow the rules, that are too irregular to teach phonics patterns for, and so kids are just told they have to memorize the letter strings. They're sometimes called red words, sometimes called heart words, although the heart words do a better job of identifying the irregular part, but there's lots of different names for these words. In an Orton Gillingham type approach, kids will say the letter name over and over again. So let's say they're working on the word said. Sometimes there is arm tapping for each letter name, like S-A-I-D said. S-A-I-D said. They will write the letter while saying the letter name, and then sometimes they're even writing over a bumpy surface, but they're always saying the letter name, not the sound that it corresponds to. In a sounds first approach, even with high-frequency words that don't use the typical phonics pattern or the most common sound letter connection, you can still figure out the job of letters in the word, just like we talked about last week. So for every single word, we can map the sounds in the word to the letters. And there is a much more efficient way to teach high-frequency words to kids. We still need to incorporate sounds, letters, and meaning when teaching these words. In fact, I have a whole other podcast on this just for the sight words, but I'm going to talk about it a little bit here because it's so, so, so important. In the county where I live, there is a teacher that works with me, and she is trained to use a sounds first teaching approach. And specifically, she uses my head-to-hand sight word system. She's a second-grade teacher, and in her school, there are three second-grade classrooms. Two of those classrooms taught kids to read and spell a set of words using the Orton Gillingham Red Word approach. The teacher that used my head-to-hand approach used the sounds first system. So all the kids learned the same set of ten words over several months. And what we were able to do was compare these outcomes. The kids all got Orton Gillingham in first grade, and so they were coming into second grade with the same level of exposure to literacy instruction. And at the end of the grading period, we looked at accuracy for all 10 words, and we also looked at types of errors. So what this means is that if a child spells the word because and they put B C Z, they don't have any vowels represented. They've got a letter to represent the constant sounds. They're not all correct representations of those constant sounds, but they don't have anything for the vowels. If they spell the word B E C U Z, well it's still not correct, but they're making smarter errors. Now they've at least written down a letter for every sound in the word. And so we were able to compare types of errors. In looking at these three classrooms and comparing the sounds first instruction using my head-to-hand sight word system versus the other two classrooms that were using an Orton Gillingham approach, the sounds first system with the head-to-hand sight word system, the overall accuracy was better. And they made smarter errors on every single word. So every single word was a smarter spelling on average throughout the class when the kids were taught using the head-to-hand sight word system, which is a sounds first approach. Now, if you are a professional listening to this and you're saying, oh, well, what kinds of kids were in the three classrooms? Well, they all had English as second learner students. They all had kids with academic IEPs. The teacher with the head-to-hand sight word system also had several kids that were in speech therapy for sound errors, which puts kids at higher risk for spelling errors. So the academic level of the kids were spread out among all classes. So think about that for a second and think about the impact that that could have on your child if they learned to write these sight words using a sounds first approach that continued to connect sounds, letters, and meaning so that their writing accuracy was better. If we can write the word, we can almost certainly read it. But even when they weren't spelling words, they were making smarter errors. And if they're able to do that, that probably means that they're generalizing the connection that they're learning between sounds and letters to other words. That's one of the big problems with just memorizing letter strings. Is if I memorize S A I D said, S A I D said is spell said, that only helps me with the word said. If I'm learning a word like because, and I'm learning that, well, there's two beats in this word because or because, however you say it, I need to make sure that each of my beats has a vowel sound. The first one is B. I hear b and then long vowel E, so I need a letter for each of those. Cuz is in the second syllable. What's my vowel sound there? Oh, I'm hearing in this uh sound. Um, I need to put a letter for that. So even if they don't know the correct letters to use, they are thinking about the word using their problem-solving skills, which can generalize to words other than these 10 that they were focused on. So not only did the kids learning the head-to-hand sight word program have better accuracy and smarter errors on those 10 words that were targeted, but they were also learning skills that could generalize outside of those 10 words. Whereas the kids that were just taught letter strings for those 10 words only learned letter strings for those 10 words. So when you're teaching sounds, letters, and meaning in a way that uses this sounds first approach for all words, you're teaching skills that can generalize, and it has this exponential effect on reading, where they need very explicit instruction at first. And after many exposures, and kids with dyslexia do need significantly more exposures to learn a word than a child who is a typical learner. For example, my daughter who has dyslexia, I mean, she required sometimes over 50 exposures to a word before she knew it. Whereas my other child who learned to read after her, she would see a word one or two times and she wouldn't just know it because she was a typical learner. And so they don't need as many meaningful exposures to know a word really well. But the skills that those kids were learning with the sounds first approach using the head-to-handwriting program, they learned things that could generalize to other words. And the more that we can generalize problem-solving skills for literacy, that impact is going to snowball into other words. And so the self-teaching principle can kick in faster than if we're just learning letter strings. So structured literacy can look different, right? Remember, a letters first approach and a sounds-first approach are different types of structured literacy. It is more than just working on spelling or just teaching sounds and then working on spelling. It is how every concept is taught. And so when you compare the two like this, a sounds first approach feels more natural and is significantly less frustrating for kids. And when I say that, I'm talking to you as a parent who had a child go through both types of approaches. We started with Orton Gillingham, which is letters first, and then we moved into a sounds first approach. And the rate of her progress was phenomenally faster when we went to a sounds first approach. And I'm talking to you as a professional who has been trained in both types of approaches, a letters first and a sounds first approach, and I've used them both in my clinic as a professional. Now I no longer teach Orton Gillingham or a letters first approach because I don't think it's as good and it's often not enough for kids with dyslexia. I use a sounds first approach with all my kids, and their progress is wonderful. There is a misconception that because sounds first approaches tend to focus on spelling, that it's for older kids, but that is not the case. I start with a sounds first approach for kids that have almost no idea that we have these letters and we have these sounds and they work together to do something in a word. Because we start with sounds, which they're already using in their language. And so we start with sounds that are in their language, and then we connect the letters to it. And so it feels very natural for them. And you get kids who, you know, didn't want to sit at the table, they didn't even want to pick up a pencil, and when you teach it to them this way, using a sounds first approach, it makes more sense, and they begin to want to learn and want to read and want to spell because it finally makes sense to their brain. So these are all things to consider when you are looking for a provider for your child. And so some people use a one-on-one setting, there are small group options at some places, and then there are some services where you can learn to do things at home. There's lots of options out there. What I'm gonna do is take a few minutes and talk about what days with dyslexia offers for your child, and you can decide if it is right for you. So don't forget that this parent guide can be printed off and accessed later. I know I'm giving you a lot of information, and this information on where to start and how you can work on these things is also in the parent guide. So there's different levels of support that Days with Dyslexia offers. If you want instructional support where you are able to work directly with your child at home, we have the head-to-hand writing program. It teaches not only handwriting, but it teaches the foundations of early literacy. It helps kids with sound awareness, letter awareness, and then how to connect them for early word writing. We have that available in both print or cursive, or you can do a bundle and get the print and cursive system. If kids are ready to move beyond handwriting and then beyond the basics of reading and spelling, beyond the most common sound letter connections, you have two options. You can use the head-to-hand sight word system, and that is gonna teach you how to connect sounds, letters, and meaning using the 300 most common fry sight words. Now, I give you the answer key for those first 300 sight words, but the skills that you are gonna use for how to teach words and that your child is going to learn for how to understand words can be used beyond those sight words. Remember that generalization that I just talked about applies to the sight word system. You can take what you learn there and apply it to other words in terms of how to break down the connection between sounds, letters, and meaning. That system now includes our tiny sound cards. I love using the tiny sound cards because it takes these sounds that we use in our language that are fairly abstract and it gives them a way if the kids can work with them and manipulate them, and it makes them more tangible as we're learning to talk about sounds in our language. If you're looking for something that's more individualized and you're saying, well, you know, I just I want to know exactly what my child needs because I don't want to spend time working on things that my child doesn't need, then you are probably going to be interested in our spelling solutions VIP program. Now the spelling solutions VIP program includes the site word system. It includes it. What it does in addition is you submit recordings of your child reading and you submit a picture of some words that your child has spelled. So you dictated the words, your child has spelled them, then you're submitting an image with how they spelled the word. That data is then analyzed, and you are given very specific recommendations for what your child needs to work on at home, the types of errors they're making, how to correct those, whether your child is still making a lot of sound errors and how to work on that. Maybe they don't have a lot of sound type errors, but they have a lot of spelling errors. You know, there's a different way that we would go about addressing those. And so the Spelling Solutions VIP program gives you very specific feedback on your child's individual progress and then how you can support them at home. This is not them working on the computer directly with me or someone from my clinic, but it's teaching you how to work with your child at home with professional support. If you're looking for non-instructional support and help with advocacy or school support, then we have the dyslexia advocacy toolkit, and there is so much stuff in there that you can use to help get your child the right services at school. Regardless of whether you're looking for instructional support or non-instructional support, we also offer ongoing membership support because I don't just want to give you these materials and then you struggle with how to use them at home. I want to be able to help you work through any issues that come up while you're using them at home. And so the way that we do that is an ongoing membership program that can be yearly or monthly, where you can hop on, talk to a professional, and we will help you work through exactly what you can do with your child using whatever support you have, whether it's instructional, non-instructional, whether you're working on the handwriting program or the sight word program or even the spelling solutions program. We have a lot of options to work you through that. If you want more information on what these are, then make sure you're downloading the parent guide. You can always email me if you have questions. So, great job on finishing all five parts of this podcast how to choose the right intervention for your child with dyslexia. And I will talk to you next time.