Putting on One's Underwear First: Why Sequence is Not Always So Important
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Beginning Reading 
14 March, 2016
5 Comments
Teacher Question: Is there a particular order in which teachers should teach the letter sounds?
Shanahan responds:
It makes sense to put your underwear on before you put on a skirt, shirt, blouse, or pant.
Unless you’re Madonna.
Then the usual ordering of things doesn’t necessarily get the job done. She changed the sequence from bra/blouse to blouse/bra and became a star. (It helped that she was wildly talented)
Many teachers, principals, parents, and policymakers expect the proper ordering of letters and letter sounds in a curriculum to be more than a matter of convention or style, however. This question comes up often.
It is hard explaining to them that there is no research-proven best sequence for teaching the ABCs or phonics. But that actually is the case.
Back when the National Reading Panel report came out (2000), there was a similar hubbub in Congress. The Panel had found that phonics programs that had a clear sequence of instruction (‘systematic phonics”) were most successful. Consequently, officials wanted to require that everyone teach that sequence.
The problem was that the Panel wasn’t touting a specific curricular ordering, just a planned curriculum. About 18 different phonics programs were examined in those studies, and they each had their own sequence of introducing letters and sounds. And they all worked.
When it comes to teaching something like phonics, it makes sense to have a clear sequential system to follow. That way all the important patterns and elements get taught. As a classroom teacher, I tried to teach phonics in a more individual, diagnostic matter, keeping track of what I had covered with each child. It was an unholy nightmare; too much managing and less learning for the kids.
That doesn’t mean the letter/sound orderings are completely arbitrary.
For example, it makes good sense to offer earlier teaching of the letters and sounds that are used most often. Children seem to learn such letters—including the ones in their names—more quickly than the letters they don’t see much (Dunn-Rankin, 1978). That means one would be wise to teach letters like t, h, s, n, and the vowels, before taking on z, x, or k. One could learn these letters in any sequence, of course, but by teaching the most frequent ones early in the process, the teacher enables kids to read more words sooner—not a bad deal for them.
When I was a becoming a teacher there was a controversy over whether to teach consonants or vowels first. Lots of argument, but not much data: Professors showed us that if you took all the vowels out of a message you could still read the text, so consonants were most useful; their argument for consonants. And others would argue back that no words are without vowels, so vowels clearly have higher frequencies.
Common sense eventually won out. Instead of making it an all or none proposition, we figured out that by teaching a combination of consonants and vowels kids could read and write words earlier.
Still another general guideline has to do with ambiguity. We should try to minimize confusion to make early reading easier. Whatever sequence is used should separate very similar letters. At one time, psychologists flirted with the idea of teaching highly similar letters together, so teachers could point out the differences, but studies found that it was better to go the separate route (Fang & Invernizzi, 2014). Don’t teach b and d together, or m and n. Letters that are visually or phonemically similar just need to be kept apart.
Teach one of the confusables very well before introducing its partners. A student who already has strong purchase on either the /p/ or /b/ sounds, will have less trouble mastering the other. (Ws are confusing, not because of their great similarities with other letters, but because of the pronunciation of their names: I wish I had a nickel for every time I have told a young writer to sound out a w and he has said, “ Doooubbbblle-uuu…/d/”.)
A related question has to do with capitals and lower case letters. Which of those do we teach first? Basically, lower case letters have greater value in reading. You simply see more of them, so the knowledge of such letters is more predictive of eventual reading achievement (Busch, 1980).
Nevertheless, kids are more likely to come to school knowing their capitals (they are somewhat easier to teach because they are more distinctive, and so many preschool alphabet toys include capitals rather than lower case). And teaching them together is not a big deal (especially for the many that are miniature versions of the capital letters: c, k, m, o, p, s, v, w, x, y, z, for example).
I guess what I’m saying is that the sequences of instruction for these elements are pretty arbitrary and you have a wide range of choices in how you do it. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t commonsense guidelines that should shape these choices a bit. I definitely would not send my daughters to school with their underclothes on the outside, but then they aren’t Madonna.
We were just discussing this at a workshop I attended last week. Can you expand on whether this holds true as we move into other phonetic teaching, such as long vowel teams, variant vowels, etc.?
I know that the more closely we can match our sequence to the text that we have it helps our readers, and that is what we try to do.
Thank you! 3/14/16
Yes, this is also true of those more advanced or complex phonics patterns or rules. There is no research-based sequence, so teaching the ones that are going to be used most often in your texts makes the greatest sense.
3/14/16
Your article gives excellent advice, which was confirmed when I taught kindergarten last year. We do differ in one area, however, because I never taught or referred to letter names so never had the experience you describe: I wish I had a nickel for every time I have told a young writer to sound out a w and he has said, “ Doooubbbblle-uuu…/d/”. Just focusing on the sounds saved me oodles of time in my half-day kindergarten class and helped prevent code confusion. In this quarter's Reading Research Quarterly there is a very interesting article about preschool predictors of early literacy acquisition, and the authors confirm the importance of letter knowledge. However--and this is important--they accepted as correct EITHER letter names or letter sounds when assessing the preschoolers, so there's no reason to teach names before sounds--and lots of reasons not to. I followed Linnea Ehri's recommendation to use letter-embedded picture mnemonics and used Zoophonics as a fast, fun way to practice all the sounds every day while focusing on a few in depth for blending and segmenting as you describe. Thank you for a very important discussion.
3/15/16
Letter–sound correspondences are most easily learned when the sound of the letter is in the onset of the letter’s name, such as /k/(ka) or /v/ (v e). It’s more difficult when the sound of the letter is in the final position of the letter’s name, such as l (el) or f (ef ). Letter sounds with no connection with their name, such as the sound for h, are the most difficult (McBride-Chang, 1999 ).
In our book on teaching reading to at risk students, we compared the sequence of letter-sound instruction for Lindamood LiPS & Reading Mastery Direct Instruction. When students have difficulty learning to read (50% or more of students in poverty schools) the order in which they are introduced can have a big impact on how easily they are learned.
1. Direct Instruction Letter-Sound Introduction:
Reduce confusion teaching letters with similar sounds or appearance. Letters with similar sounds or similar iappearance should not be introduced to students at the same time. Introduce at least 3 letters between them. Letters with both a similar sound & similar appearance should be separated by at least 6 letters. When introducing vowels, teachers should separate them by at least 3 letters and short i and e separated by 6 letters.
Kids move into story reading earlier by teaching high-frequency lsounds so teach more-useful letter sounds (consonant sounds /m/ /n//s//t/ & all of the vowel sounds) before less-useful sounds (/x//z//q/).
Teach lowercase letters before uppercase letters. Most uppercase letters are not identical to their lowercase ones & learning both at the same time places an undue burden on students who are at risk. Because beginning reading passages contain mostly lowercase letters, teach them first.
The program sequence relies on the following information:
Letters with Similar Sounds: b and d; b and p; m and n; short i and short e; k and g; t and d; short o and short u Letters with Similar Appearance: b and d; b and p; m and n; q and p; h and n; v and w; n and r Letters with Similar Sounds and Appearance: b and d; m and n: b and p
2. Lindamood: LiPS Letter –Sound Introduction Rationale
Depending on the needs of the students, teachers choose Path 1 or Path 2. In Path 1 all consonant sounds are taught before vowel sounds. These sounds are then used to manipulate phonemes, spell, and read. Path 1 is used for older students. In Path 2, three consonant pairs (6 sounds) and three vowel sounds are taught & then used to manipulate phonemes, spell & read. When students are at mastery with those sounds in reading&spelling, then the next set are taught. Path 2 is more appropriate for younger students&remedial students who have experienced consistent failure. The program also considers the following in their sequence: Teach the “Brothers” Teach consonant pairs called brothers. Each consonant pair consists of a voiced and an unvoiced consonant formed with the same mouth movements. Examples of consonant pairs are: /p/ and /b/ ; /t/ and /d/; /k/ and /g/ Teach the “Cousins” After students know the brothers, teach the groups of consonants called the cousins. Nose sounds (/m/, /n/, /ng/), wind sounds (/w/, /wh/, /h/), and lifters (/l/, /r/) fall in this category. Teach the “Borrowers” Next, teach the borrowers because they borrow the sounds of other letters (/c/, /x/, /qu/, /y/). Teach the “Vowel Circle” 15 long & short vowels are divided into four groups according to the way they are formed by the mouth and tongue. Students learn where the vowel sounds are articulated, using sensory information to organize them into the following categories: round, smile, sliders, and open. Students learn to organize the vowels into the linguistic vowel circle (you can Google to find one) organized by tongue placement and shape of the mouth for each vowel.
3/18/16
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