Supporting Upper Elementary Readers

I’ll never forget what a colleague of mine told me in my early days of teaching: “Once the kids get to third grade, there isn’t a way to help them figure out a word. You just have to tell them what it is, and then they’ll memorize it.” 🙄

I know, I know. 

This didn’t sit well with me, but I had no authority and little experience with this grade level at the time. What I did, however, was my own detective work to uncover the truth, and to help those students out.

You cannot tell me that once a child is in third grade reading instruction ends, and that there is no way to support these readers to read the longer, multisyllabic words in their chapter books and content texts across curricula.

So what did I do? I watched and listened. I observed the types of words that were stumping these readers. 

Here is what I discovered about most of them:

• With some of the words, students could have used knowledge of advanced phoneme-grapheme relationships to blend and sound out words. They could have tried different sounds made by the same letter. For example, EA and CH each make three different and unique sounds. 

•  If students had been provided explicit instruction on syllable types, they could have identified where the division occurs in each word and divide the word into manageable syllables. 

• They could have isolated the root, base, and affixes, thereby also making the word more manageable to decode. 

10+ years later and I still cringe when I think about that comment, and at the thought of this idea (or rather, lie) being perpetuated — that reading instruction at the intermediate and upper elementary level comes to a halt because the words “can’t be sounded out” like readers are taught to do in K-2.

As students get older and have more advanced texts in their hands, we must move with them and guide them and give them more advanced strategies. It’s no coincidence that this is also the age when students, who once liked to read, avoid it. There is an absence of explicit strategies to support them. It’s now hard. It’s frustrating. It’s no longer enjoyable. 

Decoding text is just one component of the ability to be a proficient reader. We need comprehension as well. However, if students cannot master decoding fluently, they will not be able to work on comprehending efficiently. With explicit instruction in advanced phonemic and phonological awareness, syllable division, and morphology, we can help bridge that instructional gap and provide students with what they need to guide them towards becoming competent and confident readers who actually want to read once they cross the bridge from the lower elementary grades to the upper elementary grades. One best practice at a time, and we CAN appropriately support and motivate these transitional readers.

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Bye-Bye 3 Cueing System

Studies show that 40% of kids (and that is being generous) will learn to read regardless of the method used. They are intuitive and will pick it up. Not bad, right? Until you begin to consider that means 60% of our children are vulnerable, at risk readers, setting them up for a lifelong struggle with reading.

There are many reasons why students fall behind in reading. What I see with upper elementary students is that many seem to be making headway (mostly through memorization and trained guessing) until about 2nd or 3rd grade when they fall behind and can’t catch up. The culprit is often a weak phonemic and phonological awareness foundation. (While there may be other factors at play, this is a very common one.) While we as educators cannot control all the factors that set up our kids to be successful readers, there are some things we CAN do (or avoid doing) when it comes to teaching them to become strong and confident independent readers, and it starts early on.

One of these steps is eliminating the The 3 Cueing System — the popular (albeit unfortunate) set of strategies that has long been used for emergent readers where the young reader is encouraged to figure out unknown words in a text by employing one or more of these strategies:

1. Looking at the picture

2. Looking at the first letter of the word

3. Skipping the word and deciding what word would make sense

Here's the big problem: While these strategies might help some students arrive at the word, it's a guessing game. But the student got the word, so what's the big deal, right? The student is reading. No, they’re not reading. They are using guessing strategies to navigate the text. But this reader is so proud of herself. Won't she just begin to pick up the patterns? Maybe... for those 40%, there's a good chance. However, the other 60% percent are treading in turbulent waters. Let's look at this from a few different angles and break down the big problem of this cueing system into smaller ones.

1. Sometimes, all three strategies, including the pictures flat out fail and put the student at risk for poor comprehension.

Pictures can be a vital tool for the reading experience, but pictures DO NOT help with decoding unfamiliar words. (For more on this, read my post on the power of pictures.)

Scenario: Student Carla is presented with the text: "The bug is on the twig." Carla gets to twig sees that the first letter starts with a t and sees a tree in the picture. Not surprisingly, she says tree. But, the word isn't tree. It's twig. It makes sense to Carla so she keeps reading. While both those words may make sense in context, they are different words with different meanings that will impact comprehension of the story. Carla is not truly grasping the meaning of the text.

2. One day, the pictures will go away and the body of the text on each page will be longer.

Pictures are abundant in texts for early readers, but they start to fade out as the pages fill up with larger bodies of text.

Scenario: Student Danny heavily relies on pictures for helping him to guess the word that he begins to use them as a crutch. He begins to shy away from reading anything without significant picture support. When he is put into a reading group with books with fewer pictures and heavier text, he tries to use the other cueing strategies, but it slows him down. He is frustrated. He hates reading.

3. This system will not help students with or those at risk for language-based learning disabilities.

Students with language-based learning disabilities need explicit instruction, not guessing strategies.

Scenario: Student Evie starts school with a language-based learning disability that has not yet been detected. She may initially stay under the radar long enough to be moved to the next grade and not be identified until she is so far behind she needs intervention. It is true that Evie, like most students with a learning disability, will likely need supplemental or differentiated instruction from her peers, but she might have been identified earlier or struggled less had she received explicit instruction within a structured literacy model that emphasizes phonics instruction, not guessing.

4. This system is discriminatory.

Take into consideration the English learners, or the student whose socio-economic background does not allow for the same cultural experiences to identify certain pictures. They are quickly put at a disadvantage.

Scenario: Student Teddy is trying to guess a word by looking at the picture. He can't get it. Then he looks at the first letter in the word. It's an f. He doesn't know it. Finally, he tries to figure out the word in context. He still can't get it. The word is ferry. Teddy may not live in a literacy-rich household; his parents may not be native-English speakers; he may not have had the same experiences as another child who has either taken a ride on a ferry or may have read another book with a parent who told them about ferries.

5. This system impacts fluency.

When students spend time analyzing the pictures to guess words, or think about what the word could be based on context, readers are taking too long of a pause from the text. As a result, their fluency is impacted. When fluency is impacted, so is comprehension.

Scenario: Student Hailey is reading and doesn't know a word. She looks at the picture, but she isn't really sure if the picture is giving the right answer. She takes more time to see if she can figure out the word in context. Still no luck. By the time she figures out this word she has no memory of what she read before those words and has to start the sentence again. But when she starts the sentence again and gets to that same stumper of a word, she can't remember what it is.

These are a few of the problems associated with this 3 Cueing System. Again, there are students who WILL persevere regardless of the teaching method. But many will struggle, and the bottom line is that the research not only doesn’t support this method, but advises against it. Why use a system that neglects the needs of 60% of students, especially when you might not know who these students are until it's is too late? So what's the answer? How do we move away from this system and implement a system that benefits 100% of students?

What do we do about it?

Unfortunately, for those of whom the 3 cueing system is deeply ingrained in their teaching philosophy or training, it can be hard to move away from it. The good news, is that there are small steps to be taken to integrate a more structured literacy approach to reading instruction. Right now, I'm going to focus on the vital practice of explicit phonics instruction. While it may be more time consuming, yielding slower results, these results -- I promise you -- will be longer lasting, more efficient, and will empower young readers to become stronger, more resilient, and more confident lifelong readers. THIS is the end goal.

Remember Teddy who couldn't read the word "ferry"? He used the strategies he was given. He looked at the picture, skipped reading and then tried to decide what might fit, and then looked at the first letter. He exhausted his strategies. Still, he just couldn't figure out the word. Teddy had never seen or heard of a ferry before. He also wasn't given explicit phonics instruction on r-controlled vowels or the y that makes the long e sound at the end of a multi-syllable word.

Now, let's put Teddy in a structured literacy classroom with an approach that follows the science where his teacher focuses on explicit, systematic phonics instruction before giving students books with words he is unable to decode. With targeted instruction with books that match the skills taught using controlled text, students practice their phonics skills, build fluency and stamina, and ultimately, yield more proficient comprehension outcomes. When Teddy’s teacher did give him a book with the word “ferry”, he still didn't know what this word was, but he could decode it. Teddy could then use the picture to make meaning of the word he decoded using phonics.

A systematic and explicit phonics instruction as a foundation gives students lasting tools that will support and guide them even when the cueing system does not. It hurts no one, and helps everyone.

It isn’t always easy to make the switch to a structured literacy model, especially if you come from an educational background in which this was not a supported approach. But that’s OK. When we know better, we can do better. No student should have to struggle because they are not being provided with the skills that research shows will best support them. And teachers, we don’t need to struggle if this is a newer concept. If you are new to the science of reading or looking for more information that puts an emphasis on explicit phonics instruction over the 3 Cueing System, here are some of my most recommended go-to (game-changing) reads that will help you help set your students up to become better readers and spellers:

• Speech to Print by Louisa Moats

• Reading for Life by Lyn Stone

• The Logic of English by Denise Eide

• Know Better, Do Better by David Liben and Meredith Liben

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