phonics – Reflect

You may have been hearing the term set for variability being used lately. It is a term often talked about within the science of reading movement. Research discussing Set for variability has been out for a while.

Set for variability refers to the ability to take an approximation error of a word and fix it into the correct word. Some are now labeling it as a strategy to help solve irregular words. It is more of a process readers must be able to perform. For Set for variability to be successful, a child must have phonemic awareness, and letter-sound knowledge, be able to decode and blend, and have a representation of the target word in her oral vocabulary (see Elbro, de Jong, Houter, D., & Nielsen, 2012).

It also requires self-monitoring skills. Readers must be willing to do some self-teaching and take a leap, trying out the word in a slightly different way.

It involves the manipulation of sounds, adjusting the mispronunciation into a word they have heard that makes sense of the sentence. Notice how making meaning never goes away. Our brains naturally try to find meaning.

Be aware that too much phonics and exposure to 100% decodable books will not allow students to use the process of Set for variability. Readers have to be exposed to words they cannot sound out early on. Not just High-Frequency words either. They must learn to play around with sounds in words and change mispronunciations into meaningful words.

Here are a few helpful ideas to set your students up to learn this process.

As teachers, we have to coach kids into listening and switching the sound they say to something that gives the word meaning and sounds like a word they know and have heard

We can use phrases like “What else could it be” (Marnie Ginsberg)
Try it again

In their book Shifting the Balance, Burkins & Yates created a charge to help us teach kids to be flexible. I have provided a snapshot of it.

Help students use it with irregularly spelled High-Frequency words.

Words like: what, saw, was

I see 1st-grade readers try sounding out the word “what” all the time and then self-correcting after a brief pause, an example of students using Set for variability.

I recently worked with a struggling 3rd grader who got stuck on the word “tube.” First, he decoded it perfectly, but with a short u sound. I asked him to try again and pointed to the e. He perfectly sounded it out again with the u saying its name. The long u sound is tricky, however, and it often does not perfectly say its name. I had to help him work through this. He was frustrated because he was following the rules he had been taught, and it was not working. I helped him use meaning and structure to make a leap to the correctly pronounced word.

A short a sound is often tricky for kids first learning short vowels. Think about the words am, ran, etc. The short a sound is not always pure.

So, teach students to first read with their eyes and say all the sounds in the word. If incorrect and their decoding attempt was phonetically accurate, have them use the sense-making processes we are more familiar with. They can cross-check the approximation they said with known words and for meaning.

Troy

Many of us are being challenged with the idea to reembrace the words “sound it out” If you have been teaching reading for a while, you might have been taught to redirect kids to the print last, to use other cues first. Somehow it got misrepresented and turned into you should never say sound it out. Many of you probably found unique ways to say it instead.

Look at the first letter. Now say the next sound.

Say it sound by sound.

Say each letter’s sounds.

In my training, I was asked to avoid only relying on the phrase but never to eliminate it. If you have taught reading, you know that focusing on other cues: meaning, syntax, and visual cues, does help readers solve words. We are finding out, however, that beginning readers need to make sounding out the word the first thing they try. Some of you might have been taught to use MSV or meaning, syntax, and visual cues in the order presented.

Therefore, direct students to use meaning first and visual cues (print) last. I was taught to use the cueing systems interchangeably. I present students with different strategies that use specific skills, and then when they are stuck on a word, I ask them what they can try. They would use MSV in varying orders. If they guess a word based on meaning or just the first letter, I would say things like:

Let’s check it and see if it matches or make it match.
Put your finger under the word and say the sounds
Check it with your eyes. You must make what your brain suggests match what your eyes see.

I may have been a step ahead of some, but not ultimately where I needed to be. Students need to practice attending to the print first and then checking the words using meaning. Using the cueing systems of MSV is not wrong. We just have to prioritize. Beginning readers must attend to print and then bring in other information to check the word. I will still be using my prompts, but I will be starting with something like

What word did you say that didn’t sound right? Go back and find it and sound it out.
Go back to the word had. (the word is really (has). Say had, how many sounds are in had? (3) What is the third sound in had? Check the word and see if it matches.
We have to make what our brain suggests match the letters in the word we see. Check to see if the letters match up with the sounds in had.

I had a student confusing the words on and no. They hesitated after saying “on” as “no”, and actually went back and read the sentence again incorrectly.

Here are the two sentences on the page from the book:

Is the cap on a mat?

No! It is not on the mat.

I said to the student say no.

What is the first sound in no?

Now put your finger under that word.

Say the sounds. Can that word be no?

We do not want readers overly reliant on picture cues and unable to stretch out CVCC words or multiple-syllable words when they reach level D and up.

We want students to be able to stretch whole words out. They need to be able to do this with words they will encounter when there is no picture support available. When we teach them to rely too much on the picture, their attention is more on the picture than the word. They need to attend to the print first.

So do, continue to use the cueing systems. Beginning readers must first look at the print, say the sounds of the letters represented, and then think about meaning and syntax. So do not stop using MSV but make adjustments using what we are learning about how we learn to read. When kids have strong oral language skills, have heard the word, and attempt to match the spelling to the sounds, they are more likely to figure it out using MSV. On the other hand, beginning readers often have a more limited vocabulary and have heard and seen fewer words. Therefore they need to rely more on the print(V) and pull in the M&S to help support. Maybe we should start thinking of it is VMS.

You might also have to adjust the text you use to help make this adjustment. I will take a look at some different texts in my next post.

Tag: phonics

Set For Variability

Make It Match!

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