Helping Every Reader Move Past the Decoding Threshold with Rebecca Kockler

Episode 257

Why do so many students appear to thrive in early literacy, only to stall by middle school?

In this episode, we talk with Rebecca Kockler to unpack what literacy data from Louisiana revealed about a common but often misunderstood pattern: strong early reading results followed by flat or declining comprehension growth in later grades.

At the center of the conversation is the concept of the Decoding Threshold: the point at which students can read words accurately and automatically enough to access grade-level text and grow in comprehension.

Rebecca explains:

• What happens when students never fully cross that threshold
• Why decoding instruction must continue through middle school
• How multisyllabic decoding becomes a critical turning point around fourth grade
• The powerful connection between morphology, vocabulary, and spelling
• Why fluency is the first true step of application
• How reader identity influences students’ willingness to grapple with challenging text
• What effective assessment actually looks like for older readers

You’ll walk away with practical strategies to support multisyllabic decoding, vocabulary and spelling development, integrated fluency practice, & tier 1 instruction that adapts to increasing language complexity.

If you’ve ever wondered why students who “learned to read” struggle later — this conversation will reshape how you think about literacy instruction in elementary and middle school.

Resources

• Resources for Educators 
• Why "Learn to Read, Read to Learn" Fails Older Readers - And How To Fix It
• Action Guide for Educators 
• ROAR
• Standards & Instructional Practices 
• We Never Stop Learning to Read by Chase Young (blog) 

Looking for more literacy support and resources? Explore all of our podcast episodes, free listening guides, and classroom tools at literacypodcast.com.

Interested in bringing Melissa & Lori Love Literacy to your school or event? Email us at literacypodcast@greatminds.org.

Transcript

The Upper Grade Reading Slide

Lori 0:01

Have you ever noticed how some students who start strong in reading begin to struggle by fourth or fifth grade? If so, you're not alone.

Melissa 0:09

Today's guest is Rebecca Kochler, the former assistant superintendent of academics in Louisiana. She saw the same pattern. Early reading scores were strong, but progress stalled as students started reading more complex texts in later grades.

Lori 0:24

In this conversation, we'll learn how multisyllabic decoding, vocabulary, spelling, and fluency can help every reader, especially older students. Hi, teacher friends. I'm Lori and I'm Melissa. We are two educators who want the best for all kids, and we know you do too.

Melissa 0:44

We worked together in Baltimore when the district adopted a new literacy curriculum.

Lori 0:49

We realized there was so much more to learn about how to teach reading and writing. Lori and I can't wait to keep learning with you today.

Melissa 1:00

Hi, Rebecca. Welcome to the podcast. Hi, thank you so much for having me. We can't wait to talk with you about, I mean, so many things, but we're actually going to start with your work in Louisiana. So we know that when you were there, you looked really closely at the literacy data, and you noticed that like the early literacy results were really strong, but then something was happening and not as strong when they got to middle school. And I was a sixth grade teacher, and I can totally relate to this, and I'm sure many other people can too, which is like, you know, I saw in my students they had the basics down. They could read words, but they were still so far behind. And I couldn't, it was hard for me to like pinpoint what was actually happening there. So I'm just wondering if you can talk us through a little bit about what you saw in that data in Louisiana and what what what was revealed from that data?

Rebecca Kockler 1:51

Yeah.

Louisiana Data And A Middle School Wall

Rebecca Kockler 1:52

I also taught sixth grade uh reading and history and felt a similar thing. Um and in Louisiana, we did a lot of work on high-quality instructional curriculum, um, new assessments, new standards, new teacher training at scale. And we were seeing improvement in fourth grade reading results. And, you know, now I know folks have talked a lot, Louisiana after Mississippi, who's done amazing work in fourth grade reading as well. Um, you know, is the second most improved in the country over the last 10 years. And so a lot of those efforts were having an impact. And actually in math, we were seeing an impact on a number of those fronts as well. But our eighth grade, in particular, middle school reading results just were not budging. And we were doing the things, knowledge-rich curriculum, vocabulary building, signs of reading work in younger grades. Um, and not only was the middle school stuff not budging, but when we saw fourth grade cohorts who had seen growth get up into middle school, we were seeing that growth backslide. So we weren't even like maintaining the growth from fourth grade up into middle school, which was like the most frustrating of all. Like, how can kids be showing a regression, especially when we feel like at the very least, you know, we sort of talked a lot about the you learn to read and then read to learn. And so at least they've learned to read, you know, we would think by fourth grade. And so they should at least maintain some success as they go into middle school. And we just weren't seeing that consistently. Um, and that was very frustrating, especially when it felt like we were doing all of the things people and researchers and curriculum folks and trainers were telling us to do.

Melissa 3:33

Yeah, that definitely resonates. I know I can, I can totally relate to that and feel like I was felt like I was a good teacher, but they wouldn't, you know, my students just didn't make the growth I was hoping for. And that brings us to this idea of

The Decoding Threshold Explained

Melissa 3:45

the decoding threshold. And you're now the executive director of Reading Reimagined, and you all have done a bunch of research on this concept of the decoding threshold. So can you tell us a bit about what is that for people who have never heard it before and what's happening? How does that connect to those students who are backsliding or not making progress in the older grades?

Rebecca Kockler 4:07

Yeah, I'm gonna get into it, but just want to note again, as your like former sixth grade teacher self, um, just the number of middle school teachers I talk to who say the same thing. It's just like so profound. One of my very good friends is a middle school teacher. She's been a middle school teacher in the South for a long time. She's an incredible teacher. Um, she actually teaches wit and wisdom and has taught it for a long time and like really believes in knowledge-rich curriculums. But I would hear the same thing over and over and I hear it from her, and I felt it myself in the classroom. I'm doing the things, I'm doing a ton of background knowledge building, I'm doing lots of vocabulary. And it in and of itself is not seeming to get my kids over this hump. Like, what is going on? I'm really trying to do the things that you guys are really pushing me to do. I'm trying to stay strict to the curriculum in a meaningful way. And so when I left Louisiana, um, I just was kind of obsessed with like why this was happening. Like, what is going on? And I started by reading tons of research, and um, that list, unfortunately, is actually quite short. Like, there's not a ton of research on what happens with readers as they get older. And it there is a lot of good evidence that vocabulary and background knowledge matter. So please do not take this to suggest they don't. In fact, they matter a ton, and the evidence base is obviously very clear for those things. But beyond that, there's not a lot of good research. There hasn't been a lot of good research in what happens with readers as they get older in English, learning English in particular, although frankly not a lot in other languages as well. And one of the things we were so struck by early on was there was this like fascinating study that came out in 2019, um, which was pretty new research. Sometimes in reading education, I think we feel like the research is done. We just have to scale the research, and like that's you know what needs to happen. Uh, like it's all known. And so for a big study to come out in 2019, it was huge, had um studied lots and lots of kids, like tens of thousands of kids, very diverse student population, and followed kids for four years. Lots of really interesting attributes about this study that are very unique. The study called the decoding threshold basically found that there was it it studied third graders through tenth graders. Again, really interesting group of kids to be studying, unique. Um, and what it found was that when students fell below a certain decoding ability, they called it a decoding threshold. Students never ever showed growth in reading comprehension, ever, no matter the intervention attempted. Basically, no intervention ever had an effect on students' ability to improve in reading comprehension. That was like really, I think, profound to me. And there were two interesting things about this study. One was the size and just the complete lack of growth. Like, again, this idea that like no intervention had any effect on any student. And that threshold was identical for a third grader as it was for a tenth grader, did not shift at all depending on age, which was like fascinating to me. The second thing that was really interesting is when you got above that threshold, there was a direct connection between decoding and improved decoding and improved comprehension. So once you got above the threshold, you were able to access comprehension, but the better you got at decoding, the better you got at comprehension, which is really interesting. That's not something we think about, especially in this sort of like you learn to read, flip the light on, now you read to learn. Uh, we don't think about an ongoing interdependence between decoding and comprehension, especially for older readers. That also was like particularly interesting to us. Uh, so that's where a lot of our focus started. I thought I was starting a research project focused on background knowledge and vocabulary building. And that study really shifted us into saying, whoa, there's something happening here with older students and decoding that's really unknown and unclear. Let's kind of dig in more and really understand what's happening here.

Melissa 8:02

Rebecca, I'm curious about real quick, the interventions that you're mentioning here. What kind of interventions? I'm just wondering, like, would that include a decoding intervention? Yeah, it did in lots of ways.

Rebecca Kockler 8:14

I mean, it was mostly focused on reading comprehension interventions. So skills-based interventions, vocabulary work, that sort of thing. Like those would have no impact. Um, and you know, we'll talk a little bit about what kind of decoding we're talking about, but um a lot of decoding interventions don't have much of an impact, actually. Uh, and I can talk more about that once we get into like what is happening with decoding in older kids. Um, but I'll talk more about why so many of our decoding alone interventions actually don't tend to show impact as well. There's something very unique about decoding with older kids that we've got to like better understand.

Melissa 8:53

Interesting. And one more thing to follow up about that, because you know, as a again, as a middle school teacher, a lot of times what would happen for me or what I was kind of taught to do as a teacher was more around the standards, you know, like we we were very standards focused, and I still think this is probably true in a lot of places. And it was like, well, if they can't do this standard, I would almost intervene, try to intervene on that specific standard. Um, and can you just talk? I I know you're gonna say that doesn't work, but can you talk a little bit about why that's not the case, especially with what you're talking about with the decoding threshold?

Rebecca Kockler 9:30

Yeah. Um I'm gonna is it worth just kind of sharing a little bit about the kind of decoding we're talking about? And that will get us to a conversation. So that led us to this question of like a little bit of the science of reading research certainly suggests, like, yeah, of course, like if students can't decode, you know, they can't access comprehension. That's the whole push of the science of reading work before third grade. And again, like we've really you we hear all the time, like you teach a student to read and then they read to learn, and that flip switches around third and fourth grade. Um, and essentially what our research over the last four years has found is that that belief you learn to read and read to learn is incredibly problematic. Um, it's not only not true, actually, it's just fundamentally not true. Uh, it actually does a lot of harm when we approach learning to read that way or teaching students to read through middle school. Um, we were at the same time kind of starting to do a bunch of work with Stanford. They had created this kind of like quick assessment, actually, mostly because of COVID. They needed to get better information into their neuroscience lab on reading. And so they had created this quick um complex decoding screener essentially called Roar now. And what was interesting in our work with them early on was the percentage of kids that we were seeing struggling with decoding in middle school. So if you had asked me when I first started this, I would have said, yeah, probably 15%, 10%, 15% of kids in middle school are below the decoding threshold. Can that decode at a level that allows them no access to comprehension? But really, what we think that number is is more like 40 to 50% of middle schoolers in America who fall below that decoding threshold. And that's below the threshold, like not able to really access comprehension without improvement.

Why Read To Learn Breaks Down

Rebecca Kockler 11:16

And then there's the above-the-thresh that like you still need to get better at decoding as you get better at comprehension. We think about, you know, 70% of kids basically need that kind of ongoing decoding work uh in middle schools, which is not at all how we think about teaching. So what's happening? Essentially, what we found is it's more complex decoding, multisyllabic decoding. So we use the same example a lot because it's very illustrative, but most kids learn to read the word cat, C A T by the time they're in third grade. That's so much of the science of reading work, basic decoding, um, you know, integrating skills, you know, all that kind of work. CAT shows up as you get older, fourth, fifth, sixth grade, in the middle of words, those same three letters. Those same three letters go from making the sound cat to making the sound cache in the middle of like education or vacation, right? The same three letters. If you take ION off of those words and you put an E there, now those same three letters make the sound Kate. So those same three letters cat, cache, kate, is very confusing. And we actually don't do a good job of teaching students what the heck is happening. Uh, in that case, you have a lot of morphology happening and a lot of other sort of complex changes to write the word structure. And so essentially what we find is happening is kids who can show decoding abilities on cat, as they get older, they're not transferring those simple decoding abilities into complex decoding as word structures get more complex. The skills change. And we actually think that should be tier one instruction. We're actually working with a number of states right now. We've created a draft of state standards that include complex decoding through middle school through eighth grade for tier one. And we really, really believe that um a sort of ongoing progression of learning to read is essential in uh sort of key multisyllabic decoding uh competencies. So it's essentially that transition from single-syllable decoding to multisyllabic decoding that's really critical for students. And sometimes we'll hear from people like, well, we teach morphology in second grade. One, that's great. We really believe more morphology should exist. But um, you cannot learn the complexity of those skills until the complexity of that vocabulary shows up. So if you think you have taught morphology in second grade and you stop, you are doing a major disservice to kids who haven't yet experienced the complex word structures that are necessary for the complex parts of the morphology skills that show up around, you know, sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade. This is why we really believe this learning to read progression happens through middle school. So that's kind of what we think is happening. I think Melissa, to your question about the standards, well, one, a lot of these skills don't sit in standards, so that's a major problem. And so no people aren't oriented to them for good reason. And two, the other thing we know is that these skills interact with comprehension and that the standards lead us sometimes to this isolated approach of teaching a skill. But the older you get, the more these skills have to integrate. And so essentially what we find morphology is a great example. Morphology and vocabulary need to coexist together, actually. It's very hard to get better at vocabulary without a handful of multisyllabic decoding skills. It's very hard to get better at those multisyllabic decoding skills without vocabulary. So putting the right combinations of skills together is also really essential. And this sometimes an overobsession about the standards or assessment data, looking at the standards leads us to pull skills apart in a way that the research shows the older you get, the less helpful that becomes in improvement over time.

Lori 15:05

Okay, so I'm gonna back us up for just a moment because Rebecca, I really want to stamp what you said about that learning to read and reading to learn and debunking them. I just, I just want our listeners to hear that loud and clear. I think that's a really important point that perhaps we could think through like why that is, right? If we put learning to read in one bucket and we don't touch reading to learn, and that might look like that teacher read alouds, right? Knowledge and vocabulary, building knowledge and vocabulary. If we're not doing any of those things at the same time, students are learning to read, and that includes morphology too, I heard you say, right? Second graders are learning morphology, first graders can learn morphology, kindergartners can learn it. Um, that it's so important to do those things in tandem. And, you know, that's something that Melissa and I have talked about a lot that debunking this idea is really important because it is so ingrained in the threads of teaching. Um, so I'm so glad that you brought that up. Is there anything else you want to say about that before I kind of scooch us on a bit?

Rebecca Kockler 16:05

The only thing I would add is um I completely agree is everything we read and research, all the ongoing research we've funded, all suggests that the connection of learning to read and reading to learn are essential, starting from the moment you start to learn to read in pre-kindergarten or whenever you start. And so I think there's been some conversation of making sure we see the reading to learn portion showing up in elementary, early elementary as well. And that is absolutely essential. I think we're just pushing on the second half of that then, which is to say this idea that you stop learning to read, that there's these sort of foundational decoding skills necessary and they stop around third and fourth grade is just completely false. And so that leads to a couple of problems. One, we're just not teaching those skills in tier one instruction. And we know about 70 to 80% of kids need it systematically and explicitly taught, just like we do with younger kids, because it's a new set of skills that needs a new set of neuropathway development and practice to build. But two, we see kids who have decoding issues as struggling readers. And that's a major problem for a couple of reasons. And Melissa, this gets to the point about, you know, do decoding interventions work for older kids? We put too many kids on foundational decoding interventions. It is probably, and it doesn't work because it's actually not the skill they have a problem with. Also, we tend to do those separate from vocabulary and comprehension, which also we know doesn't actually work either. And so, you know, you you probably do have about 10 to 15% of middle schoolers in America who cannot decode CAT. They need some more foundational decoding skill building. But actually, we're finding even with that group of kids, one, we should still connect it to rich vocabulary and background knowledge. And two, you can more quickly get into multisyllabic decoding complexity than you would with like a first grader who's learning it. So the pathway is not just perfectly linear. Go back and teach that whole K2 progression and then get that. It's just not how it works. But two, for a big bulk of kids who are not showing proficiency on the reading reading state assessments, but can decode cat, we are giving them the wrong set of interventions. And be and we also see them as a struggling readers, which is a major problem. The state assessments are just not tuning in to the right set of skills. And they may be a little bit struggling, but they're not as profoundly struggling as we tend to think. And that's a major problem because we look at those students a certain way, we respond a certain way, we think about them as interventions, we slow down their reading, we stop giving them access to grade level vocabulary and sentences, and that is actively doing harm, right? Like that is the actual opposite of what we should be doing with that group of kids. And so that's where the belief of you read to learn and learn to read is so problematic and harmful because we look at a much bigger bulk of kids as struggling readers than actually are, and then we provide interventions and instruction to them in the wrong way and again pull out again that grade level vocabulary in meaningful ways. So I just want to note like what's what I see happening when we hold on to that belief sort of past third and fourth grade as well.

Lori 19:26

Yeah, I'm so glad that you mentioned that. And you actually went right where I was hoping you were gonna go so that we could dive into this next piece, which is, you know, you were really looking at why students didn't cross that threshold. And one key component was multisyllabic decoding. There, and you also shared a couple others, right? Vocabulary and spelling and fluency. So if we think about those in buckets, right? So I'll just name them again so people listening can kind of hear, take notes if you're in your car, you know, pull over, get your notepad, write it down. We've got three ways kind of that, you know, you shared what like is not meeting the needs of students, and we kind of are dancing around what is, but I want to be really clear. So we can help students with their multisyllabic decoding decoding, their vocabulary and spelling, and their fluency. So, Rebecca, if it's okay, I'd like to dig into each one. I know we've been talking a lot about multisyllabic decoding, but it's so important. So I think it deserves some airtime. Now, I know you shared about what makes it challenging, right? Like you shared that cat to education. And I'm sure we could dive in a bit more, but I think where I'd like to go with that, if it's okay, is talking about perhaps set for variability, which is I think what we're speaking of, right? That flexibility that readers use when they need to adjust to a mispronounced word to make sense of it. Because if we're really thinking about this idea of like learning to read, reading to learn, I still quote, learn to read every time I come to a big word that I don't know, right? And I I did that over the weekend, reading a book, came to a word I didn't know. I had to use my phonics to sound it out. And then I had to flex it or use my set for variability to try different pronunciations to be like, oh, okay. And thankfully it was a word that I had, quote, heard before but never seen in print. So I'm hoping that you can talk about this idea a little bit more. Like, how do we adjust as readers? How do we support students? And how does that connect to multisyllabic decoding for older readers?

Rebecca Kockler 21:26

Yeah, great question. And really appreciate this point that we're all continuing to learn to read all of the time.

Multisyllabic Decoding And Set For Variability

Rebecca Kockler 21:33

And sometimes that's just because we're missing the vocabulary and background knowledge. And but again, I would argue components of multisyllabic decoding connect to vocabulary and background. Well, particularly to vocabulary, I'll say, but also to background knowledge a bit because you have then identified it. Um so I think that the there's a couple of things happening that we see show up in research. One thing is actually this identity. As a reader. And I just want to talk a little bit about that. And again, this goes into like why I believe it's so harmful to tell kids they're struggling readers when they're continuing to improve these skills. But part of helping students see that there's a comfort in coming to words we don't understand. There's it and it's an expectation. It doesn't mean you don't, you're not a good reader. And in fact, that's part of being a great reader is having a comfort with words you don't know, words you can't pronounce, words you don't understand, and figuring out how to pronounce them and pulling on the skills that you have and then kind of moving through more fluently. And so one is just a belief and an identity that that's part of being a good reader, actually, and not being a struggling reader. And I actually think sometimes the way we approach this in schools leads kids to really shift their identity value and understanding of what it means to be a great reader, feeling like great readers are only the kids who show up and read everything perfectly and understand it right out of the gate. And that's just not, you know, the identity we want kids understanding of being a great reader. And so that's what a lot of morphology is teaching. And if you look at, we've again written kind of a progression of morphology development from we started in about second grade, but you actually can really start it in first grade up through eighth grade, you see an ongoing and more sophisticated set of skills that match the sophistication of the vocabulary that kids are experiencing at those grade bands. And so, one, you want students able to kind of pull on their previous experiences and skills and apply them, as you're saying, Lori, into new word structures. But it's not just that. There are actually new and more sophisticated skills that show up as new word structures show up in the progression of reading. And we want to be really transparent with that too, so that we teach that new set of skills to students as those new complex word structures show up. But this is where it's very difficult to separate morphology from vocabulary and why you can think you've sort of checked the box on morphology. And again, like we'll get this criticism a lot, like um from people who read our, you know, they'll read our stuff and they'll say, we already do morphology in second grade. Like you don't, like we're done. Like kids are good, like we see kids doing it. The thing that's fascinating about the decoding threshold is you can get above it and fall back below it. It's not a permanent thing you just stay above because you have to stay above it for the words you're experiencing at that grade level or reading sophistication, right? And so you might be above it in second grade and third grade and fourth grade, but in eighth grade, you're no longer above the decoding threshold because the decoding skills needed are actually different. It's not just an application and ability to transfer it into creative and new new settings, it's also a new set of skills. So I totally agree with you, you know, on set variability and what's happening and kids' comfort with that. And we know that is one of the sort of executive functioning skills and reading that has a big impact. But it's not only that. There are also a new set of sophisticated skills that show up at different grade bands. And we have to accept and know that we need to teach those things explicitly and practice them with kids too.

Lori 25:19

Oh, I love that. I didn't realize that. That's really I think that's so helpful to frame, you know, as a teacher, like thinking about the students in front of me as they come in. There's a new decoding threshold for for every text, truly, right? Like that we're reading. That's very cool to think about and how I can help students meet that decoding threshold. So, Rebecca, I'm hoping that you might be able to share some kind of practical ways we can help our students and support them with their multisyllabic decoding and make sure that they're reaching and and pressing over that decode, stepping over, I should say, that decoding threshold.

Three Moves Teachers Can Start

Rebecca Kockler 25:56

Yeah. So three things we really think all teachers can do right away. Um, one is this identity work, you know, helping kids really believe and see that this does not make them a struggling reader. This is a part of being a great reader, um, and sort of the comfort and confidence we can build in students to experience new and complex words, try to apply skills, or try to see if they need new skills. The second major thing is we have to assess our students differently. So most assessments that are out there will not show you, they're not built to look for multisyllabic decoding. And so you get these false positives. We're using assessments built for kids through fifth grade for older kids to check and see if they're decoding appropriately. And we'll see that they can decode CAT and think like, okay, now we have reading comprehension issues, we have vocabulary issues. When in fact, you know, 40% of the kids in that grade level can't decode education appropriately, but we didn't have a good measure to actually tell us that education is the problem, morphology is the problem, or other, you know, complex decoding things are happening. So the second thing is you have to use an assessment appropriately looking for this set of skills. Right now, there are two assessments on the market that do this and have been validated to do this. There's CAPDE from ETS, who actually published the decoding threshold study. They did it as a part of the first round of assessment they were creating, which is really interesting. And then the second is the Stanford Roar assessment. Um, and so we, and that's actually there's a free version on Stanford's website. Any teacher can go and use the free version with kids in their classroom and get more up-to-date data on, you know, who seems to be showing some of these more complex decoding needs in the classroom.

Lori 27:43

Okay. And I just want to jump in, Rebecca, and say that we will link all of these in the show notes because um our listeners are very hungry and love resources. And we receive so many emails after episodes if we perhaps don't provide a link. So we will link all of these in the show notes for all of the teachers out there listening. Just go to the show notes um at the podcast and you'll find them there. So thank you. Keep going.

Rebecca Kockler 28:05

Yeah. And then the third thing is um I think you mentioned these buckets, right? Morphology or complex decoding skills, vocabulary and spelling applied spelling work, um, which is really critical as kids get older, and fluency work. We really see vocabulary applied spelling and morphology as two sides of the same coin. And so we call it word work. And the more that teachers can focus on word work in their classroom using grade level vocabulary and text, but pulling in the morphology skills that show up appropriately is really important. We've um funded some researchers um at some of our university partners, University of SUNY in Albany, University of Tennessee, um, some folks in Southern California, uh, University of Ohio, you know, a handful of partners. They've created some amazing word work resources. They're free. Um, we'll they're on our website at Reading Reimagined. They're amazing. Uh, they're research-based, you know, they have validity results behind them. And so we'll link those um as well in some of the teacher training materials that go with them. The one thing I will note about those is they're not connected to necessarily the vocabulary you're teaching in the books in front of you. And so I think it's still great to do that word work, those progressions, and they pull really rich, good vocabulary in. But in best case scenario, you're kind of doing it in the context of the books you're reading in class. And so I think we have to push on curriculum companies to start to build in these skills in a more connected way to the actual books and vocabulary in their lessons. So it's just a side note for things we should start demanding from our instructional, you know, curriculum companies. Um, but the other thing is for fluency protocols. We do know fluency protocols have a big impact. Student achievement partners have some. We funded NWEA. They created a really great one. And fluency protocols are simple, they're efficient, and they have a great research base behind them. And it's a great way for kids to start to practice and build some of that confidence. Again, we have a bunch of free open source ones that we will make sure you guys have the links to. But if nothing else, it says differently to understand who needs what. So you're differentiating the kids who can't decode cat from those who can't decode uh education and do word work that connects complex decoding to vocabulary and applied spelling, and do some simple fluency protocols. Those are the things we most recommend that we think right now the research shows us, you know, has the biggest impact.

Word Work Through Applied Spelling

Melissa 30:40

Well, let's dig into a couple more of those. I want to ask you a few questions about the vocabulary and applied spelling. Um, we've talked a bit about vocabulary, but let's we'll circle back to vocabulary. But I really wanted to talk about this applied spelling, and I know they kind of go together, so maybe we'll just talk about both. Um, but the spelling stood out to me when we talked about it because it really does not get a lot of attention in upper grades at all. Um, and I know there was one time I had a principal who came to me, my like one of my first years teaching, and said I should be focusing more on spelling. And I was like, okay, but I don't see that anywhere in these lists of things I'm supposed to be teaching. And I don't have that much time with my kids. So how am I gonna fit that in here? Not to mention the way I learned how to do spelling was memorizing word lists, and I just didn't feel like is that really gonna help my students in any way? So the answer is no. No. So let's talk about what you mean when we're talking about this applied spelling and what would actually be helpful for those students.

Rebecca Kockler 31:39

So applied spelling, I think of as the application of the morphology skills or the multi-the-complex decoding skills, right? It's when you have to spell it, it's you're um actually doing the application work of having to move the letters around and show you that you understand how the letters change the structure of the word, change the sounds of the word, and therefore change the definition of the word. So applied spelling is simply like the application between morphology or sort of that complex decoding work coming into vocabulary work. And so the reason we we really push on, I use the word applied only to suggest and signal that it's different than spelling lists and stuff like that, right? Because when you say spelling, people think spelling list, because that's what so many of us did when we were younger. And that's not what we're talking about. Memorizing spelling lists is not the thing. Although sometimes I remember my spelling list having a bit of a theme. But, you know, that's really not the thing. And the thing we're talking about is spelling that orients around a set of um complex decoding skills you're practicing and understanding how that shows up and changes word structure and then connects to vocabulary that you care about in that text as well. So in an ideal world, you understand the decoding or morphological principles you're focused on. You're pulling some of the vocabulary that those principles play out on, you know, on in the in the text that you're reading. And then you're doing some additional spelling practice around that same morphological principle. So kids are actually having to really understand how that principle changes word structure and word meaning. So that's what we think of as applied spelling. Again, it's just pushing the student to apply it and show it and show how it changes word structure. It's really beneficial and we see a pretty strong link in research, uh, but it needs to, that's where these things don't cannot be taught in isolation, right? The combination of skills come together around vocabulary applied spelling and morphology or sort of other complex decoding skills.

Lori 33:44

Yeah.

Melissa 33:44

So thinking back to you know, that example I gave of me not wanting to teach spelling, um, the thing I was missing, right, was those complex decoding skills. They were nowhere, I was not being told to teach that anywhere. And that's what would be helpful. I'm wondering, Rebecca, if you could give some examples of what those might look like. I I'm I'm just guessing some teachers, especially in middle school, might not even know like what kind of skills is she talking about here.

Rebecca Kockler 34:08

We are publishing these standards progressions. We worked on these with um a set of researchers um and practitioners, and we're gonna be publishing this draft of um standards progressions, I think in the next two weeks, actually. So these will be available very soon. So you can actually see how these kind of progressions go up. But essentially, what we talk about are um orthographic and morphological knowledge and spelling. We actually put that as one bucket. We put multisyllabic word reading as one bucket, and then we put vocabulary as one bucket. And so the way we think about those, we've broken them into kind of grade bands, fourth and fifth grade, sixth and seventh grade, and then eighth grade. And so what we've done for as an example on the orthographic and morphological knowledge and spelling, that strand going from fourth grade up into eighth grade, when you see the kind of affixes or prefixes and the roots start to change. That's partly because of the complexity of those roots and the way those prefixes and affixes show up in again, different kinds of complex words. So as an example, in the fourth and fifth grade band, you're going to see prefixes like re, un, dis, dis, uni, you know, buy, try, sort of more simple things, things that show up uh more in words like relief or chaos or scissors, you know, sort of some complexity there. Um, roots that's have things like auto or crone or graph in them, polygraph, you know, which is a great example, you know, understanding kind of what that root is and how different prefixes and affixes are going to change that route. When you get up into sixth grade, you see the prefixes start to move into pro and ante and benny and the suffixes any s s or I st roots like polis, fiv, and di seed. Those things lead to things like etiquette, slight, benevolent, right? Those are kind of more complex words that have a more complex set of prefixes and affixes and roots that change. And then you get up into the eighth grade example and they change again, right? So affixes focused more on like OB or circum roots that are more like press or perk or P-N, S-I-S T, Astra, and then irregular kind of words and spelling like uh silhouette or um omniscient, things like that. So again, it's not like the skill of understanding what an apix or prefix is is that different, but the complexity of those word structures really start to change and therefore understanding where did that root come from? How does it function? How does that prefix function? Where did that prefix come from? Uh, kind of understanding that complexity through the progression. That's an example of kind of what the progressions might start to look like. And again, we're gonna publish these in a couple of weeks so people can actually grab a hold of them and we give really concrete examples of them. We cite all of the research base around why we think these show up at this age band. Um, and so all of that will be it's like a 20-page document to really make sure it's like rich and full of the research. But we're working with a handful of states now who are already starting to think about adding these into tier one standards. It's not like a ton more standards, but it's important, you know, and I think again, signals that this is a normal developing thing that really most kids need to explicitly be taught and then practice um as a part of just normal reading development.

Melissa 37:48

Yeah. And that made me think of when you talked about that teacher who said, like, well, we taught morphology in second grade. Um, but then you have Lori who says, like, I just saw a word that I didn't know because of the morphology. And I was when she was telling that story, I was thinking about, you know, if someone goes to nursing school or medical school, they probably have a whole new set of morphology that they need to learn just to learn this, like basically a new language. You know, so yeah, it really depends on where you are and what grade you're at and what you're learning. And um, it's not necessarily just done at a certain point.

Rebecca Kockler 38:21

Yeah, and there's this sort of belief sometimes with morphology that it's just a wayward structure and that's what you're teaching. But if you think about letter sounds, for example, in first and second grade, it's not like we're like letter sounds correspond to each other. That's the general idea, and you've learned the idea, and then you'll just like transfer your letter sound understanding of m mm into a different one, like v, v, you know? But no, we explicitly teach every single letter sound and we explicitly have a student practice it. The reason for it is because it built a neuropathway. And in learning to read, you have to build that neuropathway. Some students will build that neuropathway for mm and v and five practices. And some normal human brains with no developmental delays will take 200 practices to build the neuropathway of m or v. The same thing is true for that complexity of affixes and prefixes, actually. And so you can't just say, well, we taught some the idea of prefixes and affixes, and we taught a handful of them and we practice the handful of them. Yes, you build the neuropathway for the handful you taught. You now have to, just like you taught explicitly, m and v, you now have to do the same thing for another set of affixes and prefixes, and then another set of affixes and prefixes. You're building neuropathways. Some students will take five practices, some students will take 200 practices to understand that apix and prefix, and that will prepare them better to apply it consistently in different word structure. And so we have to see it as the same sort of like explicitness practice, sort of neuropathway development that we understand happening in first, second, and third grade.

Melissa 40:00

Yeah. And I just want to like touch on vocabulary one more time, even though we've, again, we've talked about it in many different ways. But and when you're talking about those building the neural pathways, I'm imagining like if these words are already a part of your vocabulary in the terms of like my spoken vocabulary, you know, then when I'm learning how to spell them or to decode them, it's probably really helping that neural pathway to be built. Um, is that how you all think about vocabulary as well? Or is there anything else that you wanted to say about vocabulary?

Morphology Progressions Across Grade Bands

Rebecca Kockler 40:31

I might take just like one quick second on dialect patterns. So we have loads of dialect patterns in this country. I taught, I live in Minnesota, where we have unique dialect patterns. I taught in Louisiana, where there's like incredibly different dialect patterns. I lived in Charleston for a long time, very different dialect patterns. In what we know about dialect patterns is that I'm gonna just give this just so people understand some of the research behind it, but it you don't really need to worry about all of this in your classroom, mostly just to make the point that you have to teach this explicitly. What we know is that when you speak a certain pattern, you automatically have built a neuropathway for speaking. You do that from the time you're born. Your body just brain does it naturally, just start to build those neuropathways. When you're starting to learn to read to build your reading neuropathways, when you speak the same patterns that you're learning to read, it's easier and faster to build those neuropathways. The reason dialect starts to matter is because in different dialects, you have different neuropathways built for different sound patterns. And so when you learn to read in a different dialect than you speak, you need more practice with the sound patterns that do not match your neuropathway development and how you speak. This is normal. It's not like a delayed human brain thing, et cetera. Uh, it's just a normal basic thing. The reason this matters so much in multisyllabic decoding is because most dialect patterns in the English language in America in particular change word structures in complex words. They don't do it in single-syllable words that much. And so because they do it so much in complex words, multisyllabic words, and they tend to do it in the second half of words, they tend to do it when words conjugate. Um, for example, I lived in Charleston, Gala dialect is very prominent. They mostly conjugate in the future tense. General English mostly conjugates in the past tense. Well, if you're conjugating a bunch of words differently, even though you're going to mean the same thing by that word, and that word already has a complex word structure, when you conjugate it, it completely changes the decoding of it. Uh, like I educated you and I well, educate is different, but um, like can think of a good one probably that changes structure when you decode it, you know, conjugate it. Anyway, the point is that's where you struggle the most. And so it's so fascinating because we see kids with dialect patterns who learned to read just fine in single-syllable decoding because their dialect patterns didn't change the structure that much. And they dramatically struggle when they show up to multisyllabic decoding patterns because their dialect patterns change it. What that basically tells you is it's almost even more important to be doing the explicit instruction of those patterns, uh, like those suffixes and apixes and morphological principles as kids get older. And so they have the vocabulary. Actually, most kids know the vocabulary of education or educate. Um, there's plenty of places where they know the vocabulary, but their their spoken patterns are so different from complex word structures that they need it even more practice, even more times for those affixes, prefixes, you know, brutes, et cetera. So, one, I just want to highlight kind of what's happening and why we see even more of a need for the explicitness and the practice of building those neuropathways. The reason that connects into vocabulary is because vocabulary, it's the signal or the trigger that you know. With a word, right? So Lori, you were saying in the example you gave, you're like, oh, actually, when I started to, I realized I did actually know that word. I did actually like it triggered for you that you had heard it. It's just like when you were saying it out loud, you didn't know you had said you it was the word you actually knew. Correct. Yeah. And so that happens a lot with kids where especially when you have a dialect pattern difference, it's not really going to trigger for a really long time that you know that word until somebody puts it in your dialect pattern, actually. So a lot of kids with dialect pattern differences tend to know a lot more vocabulary than we think. It just doesn't get triggered because it never shows up for them in the way they hear that word structure. So they tend to do double work, double duty, thinking that the same word with the same meaning has all of these different words or different, you know, patterns altogether. So I think that it mostly just makes the point about needing to connect vocabulary and decoding work together again as kids get older. Not to necessarily say there's anything different in vocabulary. It's necessary all the time. And there's lots of great research and strategies on how to teach vocabulary, but that it must start to connect into these multisyllabic decoding skills as kids get older. And that shows up even more prominently for kids with dialect pattern differences as they get older.

Lori 45:17

Yeah, that's such a great point. And I I want to close us out here with really making that explicit connection between like the word work and the decoding through fluency, right? We know that fluency is that first step of application. Um, and so I was thinking we could talk a little bit about like the progression from word level fluency to decodable passages to connected text, and then think about what all of this means for older readers too. Can we start there?

Rebecca Kockler 45:46

Yeah, we're actually researching this, uh, just full transparency. There's not a ton of great research on this for older readers. Um, and there's a big question on like, are decodables the right thing for older readers? And um, or are they not the right thing? We're actually testing a set of strategies right now that connect even earlier stage decoding work right away into grade level text, but pulling sentences from it, pulling short passages from it to kind of do the quote unquote decodable work in that context so that they more quickly stay in that grade level text, partly because, again, we find this connection between these skills and vocabulary being so profound. And if you pull it too much into an older level decodable, you start to lose the vocabulary, you start to lose some of that complexity. And they, that skill transfer practice doesn't tend to happen. We have some hypotheses that there's still a role for some sort of focused uh decodables potentially. But even in early grades, we see this. You don't want to stay there for a long time, right? You want to get right into application into grade level text, like as fast as possible, because it's the transfer practice that is where things tend to break down for kids. And you want them to practice and understand that transfer immediately. And so even in we've we're building some tools to help kids do all of these things, K8. Even in our K2 tool,

Dialect Patterns And Vocabulary Triggers

Rebecca Kockler 47:11

we do this sort of like isolated skill practice, integrated skill practice, decodable applied text very fast. Um, and we don't still stay in any one of those stages for too long. And we don't demand quote unquote mastery in any of those stages before you move to the next stage. Because we just find that mastery can show up in any one of those four stages. And sometimes for different kids, it's the actual integration of skills where mastery starts to make sense. It's actually the application in the decodable that makes sense. It's the application back into text where it sense that makes sense. And if you stop them and you don't allow them to move to the next phase, we actually sometimes interrupt the learning that's actually happening because so much of reading is the integration of skills and the application into text. So the biggest thing I would say, even in elementary grades, is we know definitively staying in ICE any one of those stages for a long time is not a good idea. You don't have to see mastery necessarily immediately in any one of those stages before you start to test the next stage. You want to kind of do a little bit of back and forth for kids, and that seems to work much better for students. And I think for older students, we're trying to better understand like, is there a role for decodables or not? Or does it really just kind of disconnect readers from the like richness of the vocabulary because it's that application that's necessary? And so that's kind of a set of research we're doing, honestly, right now. But mostly I would say as much as you can anchor in the grade level vocabulary and sentences that kids are reading, we do know that is so much better for kids. If you're gonna do isolated skill practice again, integrate it, and then but use vocabulary and sentences from the books that they're reading, has a huge impact on kids' transferability over time.

Lori 48:54

Yeah, that's a great teacher tip for anyone listening. If you're thinking about how to make something more manageable for your students, take it into a smaller chunk, make sure you're pulling out the vocabulary, you're pulling out sentences with complex syntax, and then you're helping work them through it through some fluency repeated reading practices. Rebecca, would that be a good starter move? Okay.

Rebecca Kockler 49:14

Yeah, exactly. So let's say you're working on a set of prefixes and that you're going deep on that set of prefixes. You would pick those set of prefixes partly because the book you're reading has a bunch of the vocabulary that demands that, right? So it's it in that way it's sort of similar to the way the standards can work. The text can drive the standards you prioritize. The same thing is true with a lot of the morphological principles or multi-syllabic decoding. The text should drive some of that, actually. Um, and so you are picking at some of those things and preferencing them because the text you're reading is gonna demand it and leverage it. So already there's a natural fit there. And then you can prioritize practicing those skills in isolation a bit, and then you're immediately getting into that text because that text is going to demand it. So kids see the application and the need for it right away and then apply it within the sentence first, and then within a couple of sentences, you know, and then they're starting to get into the text itself.

Lori 50:06

Yeah, that's great. I love that. That's I'm and pretty fairly easy to integrate, you know, to kind of add to our teacher toolkit.

Melissa 50:14

I'm just reflecting back on a few things you said. I mean, you talked about, you know, having these new standards out, which sounds a little intimidating, but what you said right after it was like, it's not a lot. And I'm hearing that over and over again is like there's a lot of these little things, little changes, little like things that we can add to what we're teaching in with students fourth grade and above, um, easy routines that the that teachers can be doing that would make such a huge difference for our students. Um, can you just wrap us up, Rebecca, with like a summary, a recap of like what those things are and what it would do for these students?

Rebecca Kockler 50:54

Yeah, I appreciate that point. And it's so important. Um, essentially, we know uh kids need to keep building skills of decoding as they get older. And those skills change as they get older. And so, but the great news is they connect into vocabulary and into fluency in really meaningful ways, which we already know our middle school teachers are obsessed with. Um, and we know vocabulary matters a ton and it connects to background knowledge in such meaningful ways. And so the real ticket is to understand what which of my students need very early stage decoding support. It's probably a small percentage, and which of my students need more complex decoding support. First, just identify the difference. And that's probably a lot of your students, actually. And then connect in that complex decoding to the vocabulary work and the reading comprehension work you're already doing. There's a handful of skills. There's a handful of open resources that you can pull on that we'll link to to see them. You can find the skills in those standard progressions that we're building. And uh so you can see the difference between the grade bands and where you might sit to understand what that might look like. And um, and that is really the sort of heart of it is just seeing that as a connected part to vocabulary. So

Fluency Practice And Final Takeaways

Rebecca Kockler 52:14

figure out who needs early stage decoding and who needs late stage decoding, uh, and then connect that late stage to those late stage decoding skills into vocabulary work and fluency work. That's primarily the major thing teachers can be focusing on to start to help see more access into comprehension.

Melissa 52:34

Well, thank you so much for yeah, sharing all of this with us. I feel like you really pushed my thinking today, Lori. I don't know if you agree, but I feel like you definitely pushed it. So I'm I'm really just grateful that you all are doing this research that hopefully will push the thinking across our whole country. So thank you so much.

Rebecca Kockler 52:51

Thank you so much for having me. And again, just a huge shout out to all of those late elementary and middle school teachers who are like saying, like, we're doing all of this stuff. We promise, we promise we're teaching vocabulary, we promise we're teaching background knowledge, and we're not seeing all of the growth, what's happening, and just your instincts are right. Like there is something else happening here. Um, and our kids need something else to go in partner with all of that amazing teaching and work you're doing. And so I just want to note that I feel like I talk to so many middle school teachers who have so much relief when I say, like, yeah, there is something else happening with a big chunk of your kids and it hasn't been well researched and you don't have resources for it. They're like, oh, okay, okay, that's hopeful. Yeah, and it feels hopeful because it actually suggests that when we know something new and new resources exist, we can do something different with it. It's actually doesn't have to be overwhelming because it's already overwhelming to teach middle school and feel like you're not making the progress you want, which is what I felt in my classroom and I felt in Louisiana when I was, you know, trying to support teachers all across the state. So um mostly I find it really hopeful to know more things about what's happening with our kiddos as they learn to read when they grow. Um, and definitely believe our mission is to eradicate illiteracy in our lifetime. I believe it's possible. And the more we know, the better we do. And um, you know, I just think um it's good for us as a field to say, like, maybe there's something else going on here. Um, and we should keep investigating this and make sure we know all the things. Um, and I would still say we're not at a place where we know all the things about how kids learn to read, and we should keep pushing ourselves to say there's probably more to learn here. So thank you so much for having me and getting a chance to get this out. And I hope folks find the resources um useful.

Lori 54:34

Yeah, we'll link them all. Thank you so much for being here. Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

Rebecca Kockler 54:39

It was such a pleasure. And I listen to all of your podcasts, and uh, you're probably the most sent podcast that I get. So I love it, and it's such an honor. People are gonna be like, oh my gosh, you're a Melissa and Lori, that's so great. So I just appreciate you having me and and letting me share a bunch of the work that so many of our amazing research partners have been have been doing and leading.

Melissa 55:00

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Lori 55:10

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Melissa 55:20

Just a quick reminder that the views and opinions expressed by the hosts and guests of the Melissa and Laurie Love Literacy Podcast are not necessarily the opinions of Great Minds PBC or its employees.

Lori 55:32

We appreciate you so much, and we're so glad you're here to learn with us.