TRT Podcast#39: What’s wrong with three-cueing?
I never thought I’d be sharing an episode about what’s wrong with three-cueing. After all, I’ve spent decades prompting kids to think about what makes sense, sounds right, and looks right when solving words! Listen to find why I (finally) changed my approach.
Listen to the episode here
Full episode transcript
Link to original Facebook Live presentation
Recommended reads
- Emily Hanford’s article: At a Loss for Words
- Right to Read Project blog
- Literacy for All, Chapter 4: The Three Cueing System, by Marilyn Adams
- Shifting the Balance (amazing book!), by Jan Burkins & Kari Yates
Check out the full science of reading bootcamp
- Introduction to the series
- Episode 1: What are the reading wars?
- Episode 2: My reaction to the article that reignited the reading wars
- Episode 3: How the brain learns to read
- Episode 4: What the science of reading is based on
- Episode 5: What’s wrong with three-cueing?
- Episode 6: Should you use leveled or decodable books?
YOU’LL LOVE THIS PRACTICAL BOOK!
Looking for an easy-to-read guide to help you reach all readers? If you teach kindergarten through third grade, this is the book for you. Get practical ideas and lesson plan templates that you can implement tomorrow!
Love Freebies?
Subscribing to our email newsletter is completely free. And when you do, you'll get access to our library of subscriber freebies! Sign up below to get access to a wonderful variety of math and literacy resources.
Tom
I am a teacher with 25 years of experience with certification in reading and special education. The biggest problem with the whole language approach is that children are taught to use the strategies that poor readers use: looking at the picture, guessing at the word, etc. These strategies fall apart when books become more difficult and picture clues are less supportive or non-existent.
In the whole language approach, using MSV to analyze student errors is a pointless waste of time. Having done running records on hundreds of students, I can say with certainty that when students make errors with reading, the reason is almost always that they looked at some of the letters and guessed the rest of the word, or their phonics skills are not strong enough to decode the word in question. There is also a strong likelihood that they were tripped up by the picture, the classic example involves looking at the word “horse” and saying “pony.” Certainly, students should always monitor for meaning and self-correct errors when the word they say does not make sense.
I look to see if there is a pattern to errors. A common problem with beginning readers practicing CVC words is that they misread the middle vowel, saying “bet” when the word is “bat” as an example. This shows me that students need additional teaching and practice with identifying and correctly saying the short vowel sounds.
As shown in studies involving eye tracking, good readers read every word, but do so quickly and fluently. Instruction should support this strategy by teaching students phonics in a sequential manner with lots of practice in applying these skills using decodable text. A related strategy is having students memorize key sight words, such as the 220 words on the Dolch sight lists.
As for the debate of decodeable versus predictable books, there are good and bad examples of both. I have used interesting decodeable books with students and seen some dull ones as well. I certainly see little interest in predicable books that use the same sentence over and over: “I see the dog.” “I see the cat,” etc. When reading these types of books, after they get the pattern, students rush through the book, repeating the pattern they have memorized, and look at the picture so they can say the “new” word.
One final comment on teaching phonics. Give a student a whiteboard and a dry erase marker and they are engaged and interested, as one might do when writing out sight words or words from a word family.
Anna Geiger
Thanks so much for this thorough response, Tom! It appears that not only do you have extensive experience, but you’ve also read the research. I appreciate you sharing this!
Amanda Stepp
My daughter is in second grade, struggling to read and I graduated in 1999. I learned to sound out words so this is huge! I struggled learning to read as well. I’ve noticed since she started school she has tried to identify the picture rather than sound out the words! She is easily frustrated and it breaks my heart so im thankful for stumbling across this podcast I’m going to listen to more as well as the book you recommended. Both myself and my daughter went through traumatic events at a very young age and I can see the difference that makes in learning ability so thank you for this!
Anna Geiger
My heart goes out to your daughter, Amanda! If you’d like more guidance for helping her, feel free to reach out to me: hello(at)themeasuredmom(dot)com.
carol
Thank you so much for your open mind. My five children were blessed to all have the same grade one teacher. She retired after my youngest son had her as his teacher. Whole Language (Canada) was all the rage and was what I had been instructed in at University (but I was not sold on it). I was so grateful that their teacher integrated phonics into her reading program. I also unconsciously helped my children as I encouraged them to sound out words as they practiced reading their books that they brought home from school.
I am now teaching a grandson who is 8 to read. He was totally baffled in grade one by the reading program. I am using the All About Reading program and he is gaining confidence and making progress.
I enjoy your podcasts and your educational material. I spent all of my hip surgery recovery time reading and listening to you. You have been a blessing to me and to my grandchildren.
Thank you so much
Carol Singleton
Anna Geiger
This is wonderful to hear, Carol! I’m glad that you followed your instinct and are now teaching your grandson with a more structured approach. I look forward to sharing more resources that will help you and others teach in an explicit, systematic way!
Rene
Do pre-reading strategies have a place in SL? I was taught to have students read the title/author, activate background knowledge about the topic/author, look at pictures and predict what the text might be about (for F)/look at pictures and read captions and scan for highlighted words/section headings (for NF) all before starting the actual text. On the one hand, it seems good to have students think about what they know already so they can connect it to new information, but on the other hand, I know we want students to attack the text instead of relying on other cues. What kinds of pre-reading activities would fit within SL, if any?
Anna Geiger
I definitely think pre-reading strategies are still important! I can’t think of any that you mentioned that would be ill-advised, but I’ll keep this topic in mind for a future podcast!