Multisyllabic Word Instruction

One of the closing lines of a recent Melissa and Lori Love Literacy Podcast addresses some angst that I have been carrying around supporting struggling middle and high school students.  In episode # 237, phenom Jessica Toste says, “So if we do assessments [and] their fluency is not where we want it to be and a lot of times we keep those students in foundational skills interventions without recognizing that sometimes they know most of those skills.”

She summarized the exact worry I have about recommendations that I have been giving to middle and high school special education teachers.  I have been unsure about the best direction to go for SDI (specially designed instruction) for our transitional readers – those readers who have some or most foundational reading skills in place but are disfluent.

By in large, my recommendations have been to use the phenomenal UFLI (University of Florida Literacy Institute) foundational reading program.  We use the UFLI Foundations Intervention Placement Test to identify gaps and have teachers begin instruction at the corresponding levels for each of these students.  My continued angst has been around the appropriateness of these recommendations and the urgency we have to move these older struggling readers quickly.  Time is of the essence.

Hearing this episode, which in the words of host Lori “…is pure gold,” (I agree!), makes me think that we need to reexamine the skills of our transitional readers and reconsider the instruction that they receive for SDI.  I’m not worried that we have harmed these students by having them receive UFLI instruction, but I am worried that we aren’t entirely meeting their needs.

A few weeks ago, I was able to attend a webinar hosted by the The Reading League Minnesota and HELP (Higher Education Literacy Partnership of Minnesota) featuring Jessica Toste as she explained how her Word Connections program works.  I quickly downloaded the materials and began to think through teachers and students who would most benefit from the program.  I stalled for a variety of reasons.  This podcast episode was the exact motivation I needed to get back to Word Connections and start using it with some of our transitional readers.

In the episode, Toste and fellow guest Brennan Chandler describe four “research-based routines that make multisyllabic word reading easier, more automatic, and more effective.”  First, though, they describe why reading multisyllabic words is so difficult.  Reasons include:

• Multisyllabic words are longer and more complex
• “Serial decoding approaches” don’t necessarily work:  the letter-sound correspondences in multisyllabic words are less predictable
• Stressed and unstressed syllables change the pronunciation of vowels:  we might think of these as “sound shifts”
• Morphological constancy:  spelling of morphemes stays the same while pronunciation changes (think “magic” and “magician”); again, we might think of these as “sound shifts”

The research around foundational skills instruction is robust, but less so around multisyllabic word reading.  As a result, we have had a tendency to move away from intentional multisyllabic word instruction in fourth grade and beyond.  As Jessica Toste reminds listeners, “And then, for students who have reading difficulties or language difficulties, they really require more targeted explicit instruction in order to access multisyllabic words.”

Toste and Chandler underscore the importance of flexibility as they describe four routines for reading multisyllabic words.

They explain that there is less emphasis on flexibility in foundational reading skills instruction, but flexibility is essential for reading longer words for all of the reasons outlined above.  The four routines are as follows:

1. The essential skills routine is a brief warm-up which reviews vowel types and how to read them.  This routine is, in fact, essential because vowels are such a tricky part of our language:  the same vowel spelling can have multiple pronunciations (Ex:  ea in “each” versus ea in “bread’).
2. The syllabication routine is “an attack strategy instead of guessing or skipping.”  It begins by reviewing the five vowels + y and the sounds they spell.  It then moves into a six-part routine known as “Eshlov” – every syllable has at least one vowel:
   1. Underline the vowels in the word
   2. Join vowel teams
   3. Circle the known parts of the word, such as prefixes
   4. Count the parts, or the syllables
   5. Read the word parts, or word chunks
   6. Read the whole word and check it – does it sound right?  This helps us make sense of our “quasi-regular” English language:  when one pronunciation doesn’t sound right, we try another.
3. The morphology routine supports understanding the meanings of parts of words ( prefixes, suffixes, and base words) to gain access to meanings of whole words.  This routine supports readers in recognizing the meanings of word parts to extract the pronunciation and meaning of the entire word.  It also requires flexibility.  The morphology routine has 3 parts:
   1. Teach high frequency affixes
   2. “Peel off” word parts, such as affixes
   3. Read the entire word by putting the word parts together
4. The oral reading fluency routine places emphasis on reading connected text that contains multisyllabic words.  It is important that this is done with the teacher so that students receive immediate corrective feedback and support in applying multisyllabic word-reading strategies.  It is also important that students read the text, sentences and/or passages, multiple times to get the essential needed practice.

Toste and Chandler go on to remind listeners that these routines keep instruction “snappy, structured, and predictable. Students know what to expect, we know what to expect as teachers, and we can really stay focused on the learning.”  Additionally, they remind us that the routines described above can be stacked:  they often work in tandem, so we may not necessarily need to choose one routine over another.  The routines chosen depend on the words and the students we are working with.

Ultimately, we want to remember that our goal is for students to derive knowledge and meaning from text.  It might be tempting to over-explain as we jump into multisyllabic word reading.  Avoid the temptation and the overwhelm to be expert linguists by leaning into the routines, refrain from over-explanation, and demonstrate the importance of being flexible.