The Death of the Dinosaurs
By Maryann Manning

Sounditoutosaurus is no longer around to give kids a hard time when they can't figure out an unfamiliar word.

Three reading dinosaurs that should be extinct, but that occasionally still peek around corners, are Sounditoutosaurus, Anticontextophus and Sightwordodon. If your definition of reading is like mine, you're meaning-centered and have already conducted a funeral for these three dinosaurs. You want your students to use strategies that support the construction of the ideas of the author. All of these dinosaurs were alive and well until we learned that we use three cueing systems when we read. Before this knowledge, we only thought about using phonics (also called graphophonics, because it's about more than just letter-sound correspondence) and didn't think about syntax (word order) and semantics (meaning of the language). However, our new understanding of the way we read is to the old way we conceptualized the reading process like the Ice Age was to the dinosaurs.

Sounditoutosaurus
There was an era when teachers walked around the room uttering one of two sets of three little words to every student who was having difficulty figuring out an unknown word. The three words were either, "Sound it out" or "Use the dictionary." As the teacher was talking, the student was thinking, "If I could sound it out, I would have already done so." Or, "With all those little marks around the word in the dictionary, I can't figure out how to say the word if I look it up."

How do we know when a student is only using the graphophonic cueing system? The easiest way to know is to conduct a Burke Reading Interview. One question is, "What do you do when you see a word you don't know?" If the student answers, "Sound it out," you think to yourself that there are only two reasons for this response. The first is that sounding it out is the student's only strategy for decoding words, and the second is that he or she has only heard teachers and others say, "Sound it out." You also know if graphophonics is the only cueing system used when you observe a student's miscues – for example, if there's a lot of groaning on unknown words, if all the miscues are graphically similar (begin with the same letter and have other letters that are the same), and if there are no self-corrections.

I now say, "What word will make sense?" When a child makes a miscue that changes meaning, I inquire, "Did that sentence sound like language?" If the word is not a word that the student will encounter often when reading or is inconsequential to the overall meaning of the text, I may simply ignore the miscue. There will be other opportunities for the student to learn the word when it will make more sense.

It may surprise you to hear me say that there's a time in the school day when students should hear the words, "Sound it out." That time is when you are helping a student spell. All words cannot be spelled conventionally with phonics, so some words must be memorized. We want our students to know that the English language is blessed with consonants that are generally regular but cursed with vowels that just can't be trusted to be regular.

Anticontextophus
This dinosaur was dead for a long time but has had an emergence in the last few years in some classrooms. Many years ago there were reading books without pictures because some educators considered it wrong to allow readers to use information found in pictures. Skipping words was not encouraged because that would help the reader use other words in the sentence to construct meaning.

Discovering the power of context is a reader's inalienable right. As readers we use the knowledge we have about the subject of the text and written language and use this information plus the letter-sound correspondences we make. Additionally, we know how texts work because we have experience with many different genres (pragmatics). You can conduct an experiment with a five-year-old child by appearing to be reading aloud from a newspaper but be saying the words from a children's book. Most children will know there's something wrong with the words you are reading from the newspaper because they recognize the language that is usually found in children's books.

To help children discover their power of context, we can use strategies such as shared and guided reading. These practices encourage the use of accessing prior knowledge of the topic of the text, the use of home-rooted oral language, letter-sound relationships and experiences with other texts. Engaging in independent writing also furthers the use of context because you continually reread what you have written as you write.

Sightwordodon
Oh, how I wish I had understood the harm I did to my students' reading development early in my teaching career when I was so concerned about the practice of knowing all the sight words. I know now that learning words in isolation doesn't foster the reading of connected text. I didn't know then that readers learn sight words when reading meaningful text during shared and guided reading, interactive writing like daily news and independent writing and reading.

I now think of the words as high-frequency words because they are words that appear often in the texts students read. I emphasize high-frequency words by using them often in interactive writing and placing them on word walls. Because I think the practice of each child having a personal dictionary is important, I include high-frequency words in them so they can easily refer to the words when writing. The students continually add words to the lists in their dictionaries.

Communicating to parents
It's important that we communicate to parents our practices concerning these three dinosaurs. Many parents were taught that all words should be sounded out, that a reader shouldn't look at pictures for help in knowing a word and that practicing sight words in isolation was a good practice. Instead of telling them to "Sound it out," parents can easily support their children by asking, "What word makes sense?" or "Did that word make sense?"

I hope remembering the demise of these dinosaurs has you smiling or laughing at old Sounditoutosaurus, Anticontextophus and Sightwordodon, because they are dead and gone. I will continue to say, "Sound it out" in spelling, help my students discover their power of context and make sure I've thrown away all my very old packs of sight words.

Maryann Manning is on the faculty of the School of Education, the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

January, 2007, Vol.37, No.4