Word Recognition and Reading Fluency:

Understanding the Stages of Development

Jan Norris, Ph.D.

This program will help you understand word recognition and how to intervene at each stage of development

The RTI (Response to Intervention) series Everything you need to know about

The Goal: Fluent Word RecognitionTo achieve rapid, fluent word recognition, each child

must construct a mental network of interconnections between:

meaningaffixes/morphologyvocabularyphrasesgrammarcohesiondiscourse structuresprior knowledge

Norris, J.A. (1998).

featuresphonemes/sounds graphemes/letters orthographic

patternsirregular words sight wordsrimes/word family

Word Recognition Network

1. A word is viewed during an eye fixation

2. Spaces are as important as letters, so in the first layer of “hidden units” chunks such as “space letter” “letter letter” “letter space” are processed

_d do og g_

1. At higher levels, patterns that occur with high frequency form units (re- oi ea ph ing)

2. At even higher levels, larger units are found (indight ence ord tion oint ube oung)

3. The units are organized into syllable patterns

4. The syllable patterns are organized into words

Rayner, K. (1998)Seidenberg, M. S., & McClelland, J. L. (1989).

Word Recognition Network

works worms worse warms candidatesWord candidates:

Norris, J. (2005). Graphic interpretation of a word recognition network – fluent word recognition level.

Traveling Activation

• When a word is seen during a fixation, the input sends activation traveling through the network toward potential words (candidates)

• The more internal connections that are present in the network, the more easily the input travels to the correct “solution” and the word is accurately read

• The fewer or weaker the internal connections, the more likely that the input will travel down the wrong path, resulting in a “miscue” or error

Seidenberg, M. S., & McClelland, J. L. (1989).

Traveling Activation Word Recognition

works worms worse warms candidatesWord candidates:

Norris, J. (2005). Graphic interpretation of a word recognition network – fluent word recognition level.

Ehri’s Phases of Word Recognition

• Ehri (1995, 2005) proposed developmental phases of word recognition

• Represent flexible overlapping phases, rather than clearly defined stages

• Alphabet processing is fundamental to all phases

• There is continuity between the phases

• The resulting model of word recognition has undergone refinement but has basically remained the same in the past two decades since Ehri first proposed these phases.

I. Pre-Alphabetic Phase• Occurs prior to knowledge of the alphabet• Does not rely on an understanding of the sound-symbol

relationship of the alphabet• Instead, associations are made between the most salient

visual features of words and their meaning• For example, young children “read” logos from familiar

brand names or labels (Mason, 1980). • These words are not recognized from their letters, but

rather from the context in which the letters are embedded. • Because the letters lack an alphabetic

connection, there may be no relationship between the letters and the word read (i.e., read “juicy fruit” as “gum.”)

“This says ‘gum’”

Pre-Alphabetic continued

• If the letters of the word were rearranged, a child in the pre-alphabetic phase would not recognize any difference (Masonheimer, Drum, & Ehri, 1984)

• Children who do know the alphabet are more likely to notice the change in letters gum umg mug

• Importance of Pre-alphabetic Phase: Attending to meaning cues such as logos and brand names enables children to first become aware of words Mason (1980)

• However, these words cannot be recognizedwithout the distinct print size, picture, or other context cues

• Ehri argues this phase does not representtrue word recognition

PImmature Strategy:You read the picture

wormsx

PPre-Alphabetic Network:

Simple connections between pictures and words

candidatesWord candidates: caterpillars

Actual letter-sounds ignored

Instead, the child “reads” word based on picture cues

Norris, J. (2005). Graphic interpretation of a word recognition network – fluent word recognition level.

Intervention for Pre-Alphabetic Phase

MorphoPhonic Faces (Elementory.com) provide the picture cues used by pre-alphabetic readers but also teach the alphabetic principle

The letter drawn in the Phonic Face(Elementory.com)provides production cues: in this case, move the lips up and down in a wave-like motion to produce the /w/ sound

The remaining letters are drawn as into the picture to overlap the letters and the meaning

Orthographic patterns such as “or” are grouped in the picture so they can be processed as a unit

MorphoPhonic Faces teach sight words in a manner consistent with the learning stage of pre-alphabetic readers while simultaneously laying the foundational skills for higher level alphabetic phases

Intervention for Pre-Alphabetic Phase

Use Phonic Faces (elementory.com) to teach the alphabetic principle

The shape of the letter is drawn in the mouth to represent what sound the letter makes your mouth produce. The circular shape of letter “a” looks like the open mouth of a crying baby (ahhh!); the curve of letter “p” looks like the top lip popping the /p/ sound; the top of letter “m” looks like the cupid’s bow of the top lip, which says /mmmm/ as the boy eats candy; the straight like of the “t” looks like the tongue tapping behind the teeth (represented by the horizontal line). Kids just have to copy the faces to make the correct letter-sound association (no prior phonemic awareness required).

• Another variation of reading using visually salient cues

• word is recognized because something in the shape of the letters reminds

them of the word’s meaning

• the word “look” suggests its meaning because it is easy to imagine the two “o”s as eyes.

• Other words recognized by 4-year-olds include “monkey“and “dog“ because the “y” and “g” look like tails, or “camel” because the “m” looks like humps (Gates & Bocker, 1923; Gough, Juel, & Griffith, 1992).

Pre-Alphabetic continued

look

Attend to Idiosyncratic Visual Cue(“w” looks like the worms)

No alphabetic principles

wormscandidatesWord candidates:

Norris, J. (2005). Graphic interpretation of a word recognition network – fluent word recognition level.

Child may say the correct word but is attending to irrelevant cues (the w in “worm” looks like a worm) but that cue will not lead to higher alphabetic reading stages

• Researchers created this type of word and found preschool-age children and older low-readers were able to name sight words taught using this method better than a printed word alone condition (Blischak & McDaniel, 1995; Miller & Miller, 1968, 1971)

• It was proposed that the pictures called attention to orthography that is used in discriminating and later recognizing letter sequences

• However, these words did not lead to alphabet skills or better decoding later in development

Visually salient cued words are effective for teaching sight words …

but they do not lead to higher level alphabetic reading phases

MorphoPhonic Faces provide the salient visual cues but also teach the alphabet principle and chunk patterns such as “ck” and indicate syllable breaks (lit tle)

II. Partial Alphabetic Phase

• Child is beginning to form connections between written words and pronunciations based on the alphabet

• Matches between graphemes (letters) and phonemes (sounds)• However, connections are only made for some letters and sounds,

often first and last letters of a word (easiest to detect) (Ehri, 1995)• Results in confusion with similarly spelled words, so that a child

might recognize “spoon” as “skin” (Savage, Stuart, & Hill, 2001)• According to Ehri, children are limited to partial connections at this

stage because of incomplete phonemic awareness (ability to segment the word into all of its respective phonemes or sounds)

• Also lack full knowledge of the alphabetic system, especially the complex vowel system and digraphs such as “ch” or “sh.”

• Thus, children use letters they can detect to recall a word, or “phonetic cue reading.”

• These characteristics are seen for both word recognition and for invented spelling

Child may read “works” “worms” “words” “warms” as “worms”

Partial AlphabeticBegin to build connections

Ignore word middles, so miscues

candidatesWord candidates: works worms words warms

Norris, J. (2005). Graphic interpretation of a word recognition network – fluent word recognition level.

Intervention for Partial-Alphabetic Phase

Use Phonic Faces Train (elementory.com) to increase awareness of sounds in beginning-middle-ends of words. Relate the faces to what your mouth does.

“Watch my mouth. Which sound am I making when I say “dog?” Does my mouth make an /i/ sound or an /o/ sound? Which letter makes the /o/ sound? “

Show rhyme by changing the first letter-sound

Show sound manipulation by changing letter-sounds in different word positions

Each digraph has its own face representing its unique sound

III. Full Alphabetic Phase• complete connections between letters in spellings and phonemes in

pronunciations are formed• Once words can be segmented, children assign letters to the sounds

they hear in the order in which they are pronounced• While there may not be a one-to-one match between letters and

sounds, sufficient connections can be made to result in rapid word recognition, especially for regularly spelled words

• These grapheme-phoneme connections bond letters in written words to their pronunciations, along with their meanings, in memory

• Children now have a powerful system for rapidly learning any word as a sight word and retrieving them from memory

• Since sight words are represented completely in memory, reading words becomes much more accurate

• Confusions between similarly spelled words are minimized• The same structure provides a means for new words to be decoded

and read by blending the pronunciations.

Full Alphabeticletter-sounds, simple morphemes, common

orthographic patterns

candidatesWord candidates: works worms words warms

Norris, J. (2005). Graphic interpretation of a word recognition network – fluent word recognition level.

Intervention for Full-Alphabetic Phase

Different faces for short and long vowels SHOW children the relationship between the unique sounds

Easily show phonic rules such as double vowels. “When 2 babies try to go walking, the grown up does the talking.”

Unique faces for vowel and consonant digraphs and diphthongs

Strategies for showing different syllable patterns

IV. Consolidated Alphabetic Phase

• Learning a greater number of sight words results in increasingly more words in memory

• The same spelling patterns begin to recur within the same and different words as the number of known words increases

• As this occurs, the grapheme-phoneme connections within these words become consolidated into larger units

• These units include rimes (d-og), syllables (-ble), morphemes (-ing), and whole words

• Thus, the child begins to actually read sight words as a unit• for example, the word, “sweet” might be processed as two units,

“sw” and “eet.” *Full Alphabetic Phase = four units (s, w, ee, t)]• Recognizing units also enables multisyllabic words to be read more

easily• Connections can be made in units or chunks for syllables,

morphemes, rimes, and/or root words, so fewer connections are required to enter the words in memory.

Consolidated Alphabetroot words, morphemes, phonic rules, etc

candidatesWord candidates: works worms words warms

Norris, J. (2005). Graphic interpretation of a word recognition network – fluent word recognition level.

Intervention for Consolidated-Alphabetic Phase

MorphoPhonic Suffixes (elementory.com) show how adding inflectional morphemes (plural, verb tense, possessives etc.) can change the tense, number or state of a word. Derivational morphemes show how a suffix can change the grammatical class of a word (change verbs to nouns or adjectives; change adjectives to adverbs etc.)

Phonic Faces Set Up Internal Units

R-vowels (er, ir, ur, or, ar) have their own faces

The mouth of each Phonic Faces consonant and vowel is the letter shown making the relevant sound

Plurals and other morphemes are depicted on MorphoPhonicMorphemes which picture their meaning

Phonic Faces and MorphoPhonic Morphemes are available at www.elementOry.com

Norris, J. (2005). Graphic interpretation of a word recognition network – fluent word recognition level.

Do Phonic Faces Work?• 20 month olds learn letters and corresponding sounds

(Terrell, 2007)• 20-24 month olds learn sight words and the alphabetic

principle, generalizing to new words (Doyle, 2008)• Head Start children increase phonemic awareness,

rhyme, and vocabulary (Brazier-Carter, 2008)• MorphoPhonic Faces “bootstrap” sight word learning

(Powell, 2007)• Nonverbal children begin to talk within a few sessions

(Banajee, 2007; Bourque, 2008); and gain reading skills (Banajee, 2007).

• First grade classrooms make greater gains than control classrooms (Norris & Hoffman, 2008)

• Middle school students with severe reading delays improve decoding skills (Brinkley, 2010)

Research-BasedDinkins, Erica (2005). Examining Middle School Students Learning Language Arts Skills in Context. Louisiana State University.

Banajee, Meher (2007). Effect of Adapted Phonic Faces Story Books on Phonological Skills of Children With Severe Expressive Language Disorders. Louisiana State University.

Terrell, Pamela (2007). Alphabetic and Phonemic Awareness in Toddlers. Louisiana State University.

Doyle, Alicia (2008). Sight Word Learning Using MorphoPhonic Faces in Toddlers. Louisiana State University.

Brazier-Carter, Patricia (2008). Effects of Alphabet Storybooks on Eliciting Print and Meaning Behaviors in Head Start. Louisiana State University.

Bourque, Ashley (2008). Comparison of Pictures with Words versus Pictured Words (MorphoPhonic Faces) in PECS Communication. Louisiana State University.

Brinkley, Shara (2010). Comparison of Learning Phonic Rules with and without Phonic Faces. Louisiana State University.

ReferencesBlishchak, D. M. & McDaniel, M. A. (1995). Effects of picture size and placement on memory for written words. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 38, 1356-1362.

Ehri, L.C. (1995). Phases of development in learning to read by sight. Journal of Research in Reading, 18,116–125.

Ehri, L. C. (2005). Learning to read words: Theory, findings, issues. Scientific Studies of Reading, 9, 167–188.

Gates, A. & Bocker, E. (1923). A study of initial stages in reading by preschool students. Teacher’s College Record, 24, 469-688.

Gough, P.B., Juel, C., and Griffith, P.L. (1992). Reading, spelling, and the orthographic cipher. In P.B. Gough, L.C. Ehri, and R. Treiman(Eds.), Reading Acquisition, (pp. 35-48). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Rayner, K. (1998) Eye movements in reading and information processing: 20 years of research. Psychological Bulletin, 124, 372–422.

Mason, J. M. (1980). When do children begin to read: An exploration of four year old children’s letter and word reading competencies. Reading Research Quarterly, 15, 203–227.

Masonheimer, P., Drum, P., & Ehri, L. (1984). Does environmental print identification lead children into word reading? Journal of Reading Behavior, I, 257-271.

Miller , A. & Miller, E.E. (1968). Symbol accentuation: The perceptual transfer of meaning from spoken to printed words, American Journal of Mental Deficiency 76, pp. 110–117.

Miller , A. & Miller, E.E. (1971). Symbol accentuation, single-track functioning, and early reading, American Journal of Mental Deficiency 76, pp. 110–117.

Norris, J.A. (1998). I could read if I just had a little help: Facilitating reading in whole language contexts. In C. Weaver (Ed.) Practicing what we know: informed reading instruction (pp. 513-553). Urbana, Illinois: NCTE Press.

Savage,R., Stuart, M., &Hill, V. (2001) The role of scaffolding errors in reading development: Evidence from a longitudinal and a correlational study. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 71, 1-13.

Seidenberg, M. S., & McClelland, J. L. (1989). A distributed, developmental model of word recognition and naming.Psychological Review, 96, 523-568.