Three-Cueing, Searchlights and Self-Teaching

Was three-cueing really the problem, or was the problem what happened next?

In England, the Searchlights model was introduced through the National Literacy Strategy in 1998. It encouraged teachers to draw on four sources of information when supporting children to read: phonics, word recognition and graphic knowledge, grammatical knowledge, and knowledge of context.

Three-cueing, often described as MSV (Meaning, Structure and Visual), similarly draws attention to different sources of information children may use when working out unfamiliar words.

Both approaches have been criticised for encouraging children to predict words using context rather than attending closely to the letters and their corresponding sounds.

That criticism matters. Predicting a word from context is not the same as learning to read it.

But there's another question worth asking.

What happens when a child uses context to work out an unfamiliar word and then maps its phonemes to its graphemes?

Children don't all approach unfamiliar words in the same way

Some children develop strong phonemic awareness, vocabulary knowledge and sensitivity to sentence structure before they have been explicitly taught many grapheme–phoneme correspondences.

When reading an interesting text, they may use their knowledge of language, the letters they recognise and the context of the sentence to work out an unfamiliar word.

But identifying a plausible word isn't enough.

The child needs to connect the phonemes in that word with the graphemes in its spelling.

When those connections are established, the child has an opportunity to store the word in their orthographic lexicon, making it available for increasingly automatic recognition.

This is part of the process of orthographic learning and self-teaching.

It helps explain why some children become independent readers relatively quickly, even though they've received explicit instruction in only a limited proportion of the correspondences found in English words.

It doesn't mean that three-cueing itself teaches word recognition, or that children will necessarily learn those connections without support.

The goal of phonics instruction is self-teaching

Explicit phonics instruction should help children understand how the alphabetic code works, so that they can increasingly work out unfamiliar words independently.

Children cannot reasonably be expected to receive explicit instruction in every grapheme–phoneme correspondence they will encounter.

English has an opaque orthography. The same phoneme can be represented by several different graphemes, and the same grapheme can represent different phonemes in different words.

This means children need more than the ability to recall a limited set of taught correspondences.

They need to understand how to map words bidirectionally:

Print to speech (reading): Identifying the graphemes in a written word, connecting them to their phonemes and blending to identify the spoken word.

Speech to print (spelling): Identifying the phonemes in a spoken word and connecting them to the graphemes that represent those sounds in its spelling.

These connections support orthographic learning and the development of independent reading and spelling.

Why do some children become independent readers so quickly?

Children who already have good phonemic awareness, vocabulary knowledge and language comprehension may be particularly well placed to use partial decoding and context to identify unfamiliar words.

Once they've identified the word, they may be able to work out correspondences they haven't been explicitly taught.

They begin making discoveries about the alphabetic code through authentic reading and writing.

These children don't necessarily need to work through every grapheme–phoneme correspondence in a prescribed teaching sequence before accessing books they genuinely want to read.

The purpose of explicit instruction is to kick-start self-teaching, not to keep children dependent on explicit instruction.

However, children who struggle to distinguish phonemes, connect speech sounds with graphemes or retain word-specific spelling information may need more targeted support.

The challenge is to identify those children early and provide as much explicit instruction as they need, and no more.

Structured Linguistic Phonics: a different way forward

The Speech Sound Pics (SSP) Approach uses self-paced Structured Linguistic Phonics (SLP), with an initial emphasis on speech to print.

Children begin by paying attention to spoken words and the phonemes within them. Phonemies® (Speech Sound Monsters®) make those phonemes visible, helping learners distinguish sounds and connect them to the graphemes that represent them.

Following the Ten Day Speech Sound Play Plan, children explore the Core Code through self-paced activities in Reception.

The mapping is bidirectional from the outset. Children learn to connect print with speech when reading and speech with print when spelling.

The aim is to provide the initial knowledge and understanding needed to start self-teaching, while allowing children to progress at different rates.

Children who quickly develop the ability to work out unfamiliar words can move on to authentic texts without being held back by the pace of a whole-class phonics programme.

Children who need more support can receive targeted instruction and additional opportunities to establish the connections between phonemes and graphemes.

Show the Code, rather than expecting children to guess

There is an important difference between allowing children to use their existing language knowledge to help identify unfamiliar words and teaching them to rely on contextual guessing instead of examining the spelling.

When a child encounters a word they cannot decode, we can show them the code.

MyWordz® technology identifies which letters form the graphemes in a word and shows the phoneme represented by each grapheme, using Phonemies® or International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbols.

This allows children and educators to explore unfamiliar correspondences at the point of need, rather than waiting for them to appear in a prescribed phonics sequence.

The child can then connect the spoken word with its written form, supporting orthographic learning.

If they don't know it, SHOW IT!

What should phonics reform in England focus on?

The debate shouldn't be reduced to a choice between phonics and context.

Children need phonemic awareness, knowledge of the alphabetic code, vocabulary and language comprehension. These contribute in different ways to successful reading.

But identifying a word from contextual clues must not be confused with learning its spelling, and recognising a familiar word must not be confused with decoding an unfamiliar one.

We should be asking:

• Are children developing the ability to map unfamiliar words independently?

• Can teachers identify graphemes and their corresponding phonemes in words containing correspondences they haven't explicitly taught?

• Are children who can already self-teach being allowed to move beyond restricted decodable texts?

• Are children who struggle receiving targeted support before difficulties become entrenched?

• Are we measuring the development of independent reading and spelling, rather than only children's recall of taught correspondences?

The goal isn't to teach more phonics for longer. It's to enable more children to become independent readers and spellers sooner.

Less explicit instruction. More self-teaching.

Learn more about Bidirectional Word Mapping at WordMappingFormula.com.

Buy the technology at MyWordz.tech.

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