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[Listen Again] Helping Students Read Multisyllabic Words with Devin Kearns

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If you’ve ever wondered how to help your students decode longer words, this episode is for you! We’re joined by literacy researcher and professor Devin Kearns to talk all about teaching multisyllabic words.

Many phonics programs focus on single-syllable words, but what happens when students hit big words and get stuck? Devin unpacks the research behind why that happens and what we can do instead. We talk about:

  • flexible decoding strategies,
  • when and how to teach syllables and morphemes,
  • and what “set for variability” really looks like in the classroom (spoiler: it’s not guessing!).

You’ll walk away with practical, research-backed ideas to help your students read longer words with confidence.

Devin M. Kearns, Ph.D., is the Goodnight Distinguished Professor in Early Literacy at NC State, where he studies early reading and collaborates with experts in psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience to explore the brain basis of reading.


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

Connect with us! Email us at literacypodcast@greatminds.org.

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.

The Multisyllabic Word Challenge

Lori

We've heard this from many of you. Your students are doing well reading single syllable words, but now they're moving to more difficult texts with multisyllabic words, and they're getting stuck. Especially when the patterns aren't predictable.

Melissa

If that sounds familiar, you are going to love this episode. Researcher and professor Devin Kearns is here to break down what the research really says about teaching students to read longer words and how to help your students tackle them. Hi, teacher friends.

Lori

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

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

Lori

We realized there was so much more to learn about how to teach reading and writing.

Melissa

Lori and I can't wait to keep learning with you today.

Lori

Hi, Devin. Welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you for having me. So excited to be with you.

Lori

Yeah, we've been waiting for a long time to have you on. So thank you for being here.

Melissa

That is true. That is true. All right. So we're going to jump right in with some tough questions for you. But we really wanted to think about we know we always hear that students around like third grade, it's always third grade, that students start to hit, you know, they move from single syllable words and reading those to reading these multisyllabic words. And sometimes they like hit this wall. And so we want to hear from you. Like you're an expert on reading multisyllabic words or polysyllabic words. Um why why is it that students often hit this wall?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So why do they hit this wall? Well, a lot changes about the long words. One thing that changes is that they are almost all polysyllabic words have a schwa sound, right? So that is without that's not true for like compound words, but most words in English are um complex, they have more than one morpheme. And in any word that has more than one syllable, you're going to have a like a schwa sounds, like an about, right? It's not about, it's not about, it's about. And that's something we have to do on every single word. So if you aren't sure what to do, then with these schwa sounds, you don't really recognize that that's important. It becomes really challenging.

Melissa

And we've just taught students all the short vowel sounds, long vowel sounds, and then we're throwing this whole other sound in there.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, right, exactly. And there this thing happens where the single letter vowels like A and razor now have a long sound. And that's not something that they learn before typically, right? So now you have to deal with the fact that, like, oh, these single letter vowels have multiple pronunciations. And that combination of factors makes reading these long words really challenging. And after first grade, the number of words with more than one syllable increases really dramatically through middle school. So it's a problem that happens because the words get harder and get longer and students have to deal with them.

Melissa

I think I heard you say the majority of words in texts are multisyllabic, like once we get past those early grade levels. Is that right?

SPEAKER_00

After first grade, more than 50% of the new words we encounter have more than one syllable. Yep.

Lori

And I imagine there's just a lot of opportunity for uh things to go wrong as you're sounding out those multisyllabic words because there's lots of different parts of them that could have different sounds. And so as you're trying to put it together, you really have to have some sort of idea of what the word is in your brain, right? You've had to have heard the word before so you can put it together. And then that brings in a whole bunch of other things that we could talk about probably for hours, um, right, in terms of knowing the words and and having some sort of knowledge of those words.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, absolutely. So that's kind of the key idea is that like we're always looking for like a reference in our, you know, the in our the term I always found really counting, our mental lexicon, right? Our personal dictionary of words. So one of the things that people do when they're reading a word is uh they're scanning their brain as they're pronouncing it to see like, is there a word in my mental dictionary that works this way or that's similar to this? And this is really important when you get to a word like a bow and you say a bout, you search your kind of mental ex personal dictionary and say, Do I know a word like this? And you are like, oh, one that's really close is about, right? And so we have to we make that adjustment because um it's going to, it's a slightly different pronunciation, but it's close enough that when we have those skills of reading long words, it actually isn't that difficult for you. And that's also why phonological awareness is really essential, is because with phonological awareness, what we're doing is that allows us to make the wrong thing into the right thing, right? And the examples I like to give are things like the word cotton, right? So if you say the syllables in cotton, cotton, like the t sound is not in the word cotton. The d sound isn't the word cotton. It's a glottal stop, right? It's this other really random, like little sound. And so you need to make this mental manipulation to turn, you know, the t sounds into that. And that's what you know, some readers find really easy and other readers find really hard.

Lori

Okay. You're saying something, Devin, that when I was teaching second grade and at the end, you know, when you're starting to get into those multisyllabic words or polysyllabic words in second grade or at the end of the year, that I would have a word like that and I would not want to be teaching it wrong, right? So there'd be a like a word like cotton, and I'm like, oh, I don't, I don't know where to even if I could take a good guess about where to break it syllable-wise, I still wasn't quite sure how to say it because it didn't have those sounds. And so it was always really tricky as a teacher to try to figure this out.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah. So I even give the example of like the word fan, right? Like I there was a time when I started to worry, like, should I even teach a word like fan? Because f uh doesn't make fan. Like fan has a nasalized vowel, right? The ass is actually and sorry, it sounds bad, but uh, so that sound of the A has been shifted, right? Because it's next to a nasal sound, like the N sound. And so, so I for a time was like, maybe I shouldn't teach these words for the same reason. I was like worried that I was like almost doing harm by being it's cot tan, we have to turn it into cotton. And then what I realized later was actually that's exactly what I need kids to learn. And that's exactly what I need to teach them because they need to do this mental manipulation, right? There's always gonna be this need to change the wrong thing into the right thing. And and that's, I mean, that's how we have to do it because we're trying to find that, you know, entry in our mental dictionary. And this is what we do when we sort of encounter something like cot ton. We've got to get kids to do that. And that's gonna happen through a lot of practice.

Lori

That's really helpful. I it actually feels great as a teacher to know that that's what we want them to do. We want them to see it, have a recognition, and then be like, oh, cot ton is not a word that I'm familiar with. Oh, it's cotton. Oh, okay. Now that sound can be whatever. I don't even know what you said it was. Okay, so I want to talk a little bit more about, you know, something that I think might be considered controversial. We've we've you know heard you talk about it before. Um, but I think it's really important because it's something I've always been a little bit skeptical about. Um, when I uh was in Baltimore City, we had to get trained um for a program that had students identify syllable division rules, right? So closed syllables, open syllables, and they had to like mark up these words a whole lot. And again, I I maybe I'm like sounding very type A on this podcast today, but I was very uh nervous that I was going to teach them incorrectly because I had not learned these rules. So it was all new to me. I was learning them. Um, and they were requiring the position that I was in in the city to become a trainer. So I'm like, oh my God. Now not only do I have to teach students and like teach these lessons and practice, but I also have to teach teachers. Um, but the thing that I struggled with was I I wasn't sure if these, you know, these um division rules were actually helpful for students to be able to read. It felt like a lot of mental load, like cognitive load to be able to unlike do all this stuff to the word rather than just like actually attack it and read it. Um but I know like you shared that in the research that you've done, the rules aren't consistent and there are a lot of exceptions. And so I think that also added to, you know, the the apprehension that I was feeling. So I'm wondering if you can share about what your research found about like the consistency or inconsistency of the syllable division rules.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, definitely. So so the study that I did was actually an analysis of words

Understanding Syllable Division Rules

SPEAKER_00

and not of kids. And so what I did was to look at like over 10,000 English words that were common in grades one through five. And I found words that had either the V C C V pattern or the V C V pattern. And for those who don't know what I'm talking about, I mean, so um, you know, everyone here is a literacy person, but I'll just say it for people who are less literacy, you know, is familiar, maybe don't know about these. So anyway, so the V C C V means vowel, concent constant vowel, a word like rabbit, A B B I. And a vowel concent vowel word is a word like tiger, I G E. And you can also have V V like lion, I o, right? So, but let's not focus on that one for now. Um, we'll focus on the other ones. Yeah. So, and like you, like being really like wanting to do it the right way. Um, and also like when someone explained to me that there's a pattern here, I was like super excited because like I didn't think there was a pattern, right? So someone explained to me when you have a VCV pattern, if you break the word into parts and you end the first uh vowel or the first syllable with a vowel, that vowel says the long sound, right? It says I. And so then students can know that's tie and then gur, and you can put it together and make tiger. And I was like so excited because I felt like before that I didn't have like a way to give kids access to that kind of thing. And so I felt like this immediate sort of like excitement about it. But like you, I was worried that I started to like wonder like, does this work all the time? Because you think about words like, you know, linen or something and dragon. And it's like those don't work, right? Like you got the VCV pattern, but in linen it that I says the short sound and dragon, the A says the short sound. I started to wonder, like, how good is this? And so when I did the analysis, basically what I found is that for two-syllable words, right? Just words with two syllables, just often when we teach kids with these. Um, it works um about half the time with E. So in other words, half the words that have the E sound um have the long sound when they have the V C V pattern, and half the words have the short sound when they have the V C V pattern, right? And that's not accounting for the schwa sound, which for E is actually the majority. Okay. So we're just talking about the long and the short, forgetting about that. And so for the other vowels, it's better. Like A is pretty good, um, and I is pretty good. O is very good, O is the best one. Um, and then you know, U and Y are okay. And so, but they're not very frequent. Um, and so so basically what I concluded is, and so that was two syllable words, right? When you get past that, it's really bad, right? So these are things are like working like less than a third of the time. Uh, because uh when you account for the schwa sound, because there are so many of those. And that made me think if we're gonna teach kids something about how to break words into parts, maybe this is not exactly the best use of time for the reason you also said, which is it's a lot of there's a lot of cognitive effort that goes into pronouncing, like, you know, doing this work, right? Because we will teach kids like this pattern is VCV, you divide it after the V, you need a way to remember that. So you mark it up, you mark the Vs, you draw the line, and then we teach kids like the Macron, right? The little line across the top that says it's a long sound or the bread, which looks like the smiley face. And, you know, and you teach kids like those, you might not say the names, but like you teach them that like those are associated with those sounds, so kids will remember it. And so that, you know, so I just started to realize, like, in addition to the fact that these aren't that consistent, that's a lot of yes, cognitive load for kids. And that's even when they're just reading one word. What do you do when you're like in print, right? You're you know, it's hard to be like, let me stop, let me go over here on a little worksheet and like write it out and then come back, right? And you could do that, but that's not necessarily gonna get you where you need to go. At least that is uh the theory. I will say that the V C C V rule is much more consistent. So, and that one does work a little better, even for longer words. We don't have as many of those as longer words, right? We start to get rid of those, those doubles a lot of times in the longer words, but when you have that, you can rely on that first one, usually say the short sound or the schwa sound. Um, but it does say the short sound a lot. But you know, a lot of, you know, we would teach kids is we're teaching them the VCV because we need them to realize when that single letter vowel makes the long sound because that's not what they expect.

Melissa

So interesting. And you made me think when you were talking about the VCV specifically, what like if it works, you know, majority of the time for a lot of the vowels, but not so much for E, but for a lot of them it kind of works. But then when you get past the two syllable words, it's almost like it works for them for a little bit when they are just moving up from one syllable to two syllable, but then it kind of probably all falls apart after that.

SPEAKER_00

It falls apart, right? Yeah, and I think that's the tricky thing about it, right? Is like, so if you have this sort of face space where they don't work that well and you know, for the longer words and there's this massive cognitive load, like you start to worry, like, you know, what's what are we doing to the kids? I started to worry, this is like heresy to say this, but like I started to worry it's as bad as like the guessing strategy in terms of time, right? So, like with the like, you know, when I didn't know about how to teach reading, like I'd have kids like for 25 seconds try to figure it out and use their strategies, right? And like the kids would sometimes be silent because they don't know what to do. And so, and they're they're trying to work through this like a list of nine strategies or whatever, if they're using, you know, the little animals kind of strategies or whatever, right? Um, and so they, you know, they're they're in that same kind of cognitive space of like taking themselves entirely out of the word, doing something, you know, that's like this extra cognitive exercise and then coming back to the word. And that's the worry we all had about like the context-based strategies and the guessing, you know, and using these strategies was that we were not focusing enough on, you know, actual reading. We were we're taking them out of that. And I worried a little bit, this is gonna be a problem here too.

Lori

Yeah, and I there's so much um like energy that goes into breaking it all apart, or or you I I don't even know what to call it, like dividing the syllables and thinking about the rules and then doing all the things that by the time you actually get to the part where you sound out the word, I feel like you've done so much at that point that I I just don't I wonder about the efficacy of using those strategies to do that. And that's where you know I kind of broke down. So I appreciate you explaining, like, oh, you know, that there are, you know, some hesitancies around that for good reason with the word. So I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah. You know, um, and it makes me think too that when I was when we did a paper on this for the Reading League Journal, my uh colleagues and I, we were looking at even for the V C C V rule, there were like one of these programs has like six backup strategies because sometimes you have like a CK, right? You have like it's like, well, now you can't divide it between the C and the K because that's a digraph. And they had all these kind of like backup things. So it's like you have that cognitive load on top of everything else, and it just it feels like a lot, and maybe it's not a good use of time. But but you know, but the so all that, like this is the worst thing that I have to talk about or like talk about because like people hate when I say that so much. And you know, and so I want if you don't mind, I want to say a couple things about that for people who are like already, like this is the worst podcast episode.

Lori

Um, I mean, I think it's important to talk about it and also then kind of be like, hey, like we are talking about this because it's important, right? Because research is kind of showing it. So I appreciate you extending your uh your thoughts here.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, okay, well, good. Well, I appreciate that you appreciate it. So, so I think then, you know, there are programs that include syllable division that have evidence of efficacy, meaning that if you look at studies of those programs, they have positive effects. And I'm certain that many teachers have used those strategies with kids, and kids have profited from those strategies, and um, it has helped their literacy, right? I have no doubt that

Problems with Traditional Syllable Division

SPEAKER_00

that's true. Um, because it's something that does work sometimes. Um what I also say is that there are other programs that don't do that that also have positive evidence, right? And so the question I always always ask is like, you know, if you did sort of a different type of strategy or taught about syllables in a different way, because I'm not saying don't teach about syllables, let's be really clear. I'm not saying we should just guess. But if I taught this in a different way, could I get at least the same results or maybe better ones, right? So it's not about saying that this is terrible, but that's not my endeavor here is to say that like we shouldn't do anything or anything like that. I believe in evidence. And, you know, and when we think about actual studies of student behavior, student performance, what we find is that programs that use them have positive effects and programs that don't have positive effects, right? And so it's not possible to say this is a totally bad idea, but it's not supported by the idea that when you look at words, kids are going to encounter that it's gonna work, and then there's this cognitive overhead piece. And there's never been a study that showed that like specifically doing syllable division has like really positive effects compared to using a different strategy.

Melissa

Yeah, I'm really glad you said that. That's exactly what I was going to ask you next because I, you know, that programs have it have syllable types and syllable division, but also, I mean, standards do, curriculum evaluation tools do, right? It it is really embedded within our literacy world. Um, so it'd be really it would be really tough for people to hear you say, stop teaching syllables altogether.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So, you know, when we're talking about reading the polysyllabic or multisyllabic words, I want to be really clear that you can use good strategies for doing that. And there are a couple of things that are effective that acknowledge the importance of patterns inside syllables. That, for example, it's true that a single letter vowel make the long sound or the short sound and sometimes a schwa, but it's useful to teach students about that idea because they'll encounter a lot of words like that. You know, the majority of words have one or those two sounds, right? And so it is really important to teach something about that. It's just that question like, how much do we teach about the actual division of the word using these particular rules? And so, yeah, so it's I'm not saying don't teach anything about syllables. It's also true that like, you know, it is in standards because though a lot of those like came along at the time that I still use them and like taught them and like included them in programs because you know, that was new to me and also seemed really logical. Like, you know, I saw words for the first time, and there were, you know, programs that had evidence effectiveness that, you know, like people thought, like, we should put this into these standards, right? And so, so I like I acknowledge that. And, you know, I think it would be good if it were saying something about like a syllable-based strategy and not necessarily like syllable division. Um, but you know, I like it, it is what it is.

Melissa

And I wonder too, if it's more like I you got me thinking about this idea of just the the language shifting slightly to like this idea of a rule that when I say a rule, that makes me feel like it can't be broken, right? Like it's something that will always happen. So when you're talking about the, you know, the the long vows and the short vows and in the long the the different syllables, like it's always the same. Well, but it's not always the same. So maybe it's just a shift in like I think you use the word pattern, right? Like maybe it's less of a rule, more of a pattern, something that you see. And you you're what did you you refer to the English language as quasi-regular? Is that right? Is that the right word?

SPEAKER_00

It is a word, yes. Yeah, Mark Seidenberg likes that word too. Um, yeah. Yeah, so right. I mean, that's the thing. So English, listen, you've got English has um one of our colleagues, Charles Perfetti says, like, exemplary regularities is the term that he uses. Like a lot of things do work, okay? But English does make it a little harder than other languages. Like, I don't know if other folks have talked about this on the podcast, but you know, they've done studies to show like by the end of first grade what percentage of words in a language kids in English versus other languages can read in Europe. Did you guys has anyone talk about that?

Melissa

No, please do.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, so so they did this analysis. They to 13 European languages, and they like said, like, how what percentage of words in the language can the kids read? They're in the first grade level, right? So like Greek and Turkish are like. The highest like 93% or something of real words and but the same nonsense words. You want to guess where English was on the list of 13?

Lori

Oh my gosh. Um at the bottom. I'm gonna say 30.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, so yes. Yes. So correct and correct, right?

Lori

Okay. Well, oh, you wanted me to guess in a thing. I was thinking I was already 13th.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. You already made the assumption, of course. Yeah. So it was 30%.

Lori

Was that really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I guessed right. Wow.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, isn't that crazy?

Lori

So I promise I didn't Google it. Yeah. I promise. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_00

It's crazy, right? So, you know, so English does make it a little harder than other languages because the, for a lot of historical reasons, we borrowed spellings and all this kind of thing. So, you know, that makes your the work a little bit harder for students. But there are still these exemplary regularities in the system that we can help students use to, you know, build their understanding when they don't have something to, you know, hang there, you know, sort of to get them started. And that's actually the reason that like if you're going to use syllable division, I like get it in the sense that it gives you some hooks to hang on, right? So it's like, I've got something. It might give me the wrong answer. I might say Tigger or whatever, I might say Dra gon or something, but it gives me something that I can use because otherwise, particularly poor readers, like kids with reading difficulty, they don't know anything. So they the only thing they know how to do is guess. And if you give them some tool, that tool might turn on the right thing. So that's why like I get the instinct to do civil division. It's why I did it. And I did see kids improve because they did have some hooks, you know, like to help them. So um, so I think, you know, that's why um it's you know, there is some value, but you know, again, like the data don't always support the things that we like. And so we have to follow the research and do the things that are good.

Lori

Okay, so we're on board. We're here with you in patterns over rules, Melissa and I are are in. Um, and I'm sure a lot of listeners are wondering too, then like what should what should we do then to teach multisyllabic polysyllabic words? And I I'd love to give you like a quick uh something to react to that happened in my own house in the last couple days. Awesome. Can't wait. Okay. So I have now this is like semi-embarrassing because I feel I feel like she should know this word, and I don't know what happened, but so I'll just say that. Um the word, so this this word came up, and I and she said, um Alexa told us that we had a notification. And I said, a notification? Uh what okay, so that doesn't sound right to me. Does it sound right to you? She's like, no, not totally. I'm like, what

Effective Strategies for Teaching Long Words

Lori

part? She's she's like, the the not part. I'm like, okay, so what in that part? She's like, she's like, the oh. I'm like, oh, okay, can you say it differently? And we finally got to notification very quickly. But um it it I mean, first of all, I was stunned. I use that word all the time. You know, I mean, just in everyday life, we use that word now. Um, but when she she said it, I kind of laughed. I thought she was kidding. Um, but I mean, quickly, we kind of like drilled down into the to the quote part that was, and I didn't think it was a particularly tricky part. Um, so maybe we could talk through that and then you could use that as like a springboard for some other strategies to do because then I can put them in my toolbox for the next time something comes up.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, fabulous. So all right, so notification is a good one. It's hard because it's long, but let's just we're gonna do it.

Lori

So I figured you're you're in the the polymultisyllabic part here.

SPEAKER_00

So I know I went all in on that. So like you get to deal with the the hard words, right? So, okay. So um, so first, so the strategy that I recommend is a combination of like a morpheme strategy and a syllable strategy. So the morpheme part of it is um where you find meaning parts in the words that are typically two, three, four letters, and you use that to get you started. And you find those affixes and you circle them. And um one of my colleagues, Maureen Lovett, she you know, termed the strategy peeling off. So you peel those off of the base word, right? Or if even if it's not a word, you take them off of what's left. And that's great because it reduces the size of the problem. And for a lot of students, and morphology, teaching kids about morphemes has awesome effects for both reading words and for uh understanding the meaning of words. It's a really a great thing to do. So once you peel off the affix, then you're left with the rest of the deal. So notification, we've got the shun. Now, as uh you know and I know, shun is not the actual morpheme. I o I want to be clear for listeners, I-O-N is the morpheme, but shun is the common way that we use it. The T, you know, says shh, or whatever, the T I says sh. So, you know, so I get this not exactly, but that pattern is so common. So you give kids these larger patterns like shun. We give the kid the, you know, you've your daughter the shun. And now we have notification, right? This is the hard part is like it's got a lot of pieces, right? So uh, but let's let's let's do it. Okay, so the first thing is, so the next thing is now that we have that part off, we're going to break it into parts. And the way that we do that is we find the vowels and we mark them. So you can mark them. We can put a little check mark under them. Okay. And this is kind of the learning strategy. Eventually, you get rid of that. But what that does is it tells you how many parts you're going to have, because every syllable has at least one vowel, right? And that's a strategy developed by this researcher, Rolanda O'Connor, where she basically studied this and found that this strategy was really effective. And the first thing you do is just to find every syllable has at least one vowel, meaning that like EA, those are two vowels that go together, even the vowel consonant e, two vowels and a syllable. So you find the parts that you're going to use, right? So a notification, notify, k. So we're going to be four vowels that we're going to work with. And then we're going to figure out what each of the parts says, breaking it so that every part only has one vowel. Okay. So, and this is where like what we would do for syllable division might differ compared to what I'm going to suggest. So the next thing then is to figure out like, what do we do to break the word into parts? And this is where your daughter's, you know, her mental way of doing this is a little bit different than the way that we want, you know, kid, we don't, we want kids to do, right? But all they love that example because it's just, it's so great. Um, so uh it's a great example of kids do all the time. So when you do this, we're gonna break it into parts. And this, when I do this, I'm like actually, I'm showing you a little card in my brain, like think of a little index card, and you're covering like the um, you know, the first part, right? And for listeners, I'm just holding up my hand in the air without a piece of paper. Anyway, so uh so you hold you you put the you set it up so that the index card covers part of the word so that the first part only has one bell. And so there are two ways that that could work. It could be NOT, right, which is what your daughter was thinking, you know, sort of in theory, right? And there's no. So it could be either one of those, right? And this is the teaching part, not the part where she was just kind of figuring it out. But so for the teaching part, we say it could be either one. And at this point, we don't need to have a rule. So it doesn't actually matter in a way which one we use. It could be no, it could be not. What students do need to understand is that when you have a vowel at the end of a syllable, it says the long sound. If it's not at the end of the syllables, it's the beginning or middle, it says the short sound. That idea is essential. So that's where we talk about like open and closed syllables, right? That idea is really critical. I don't call them open and closed syllables. I typically call them long vowel syllables and short vowel syllables. This is like also heresy, people write. This is like the worst thing ever. Um, but I what I realized is that like, well, open and close doesn't mean anything to anybody, right? And then, and then this is important, like it causes people to do things like the syllable house. You guys know the syllable house?

Lori

I've seen it. I was gonna ask you about it. So bring it up, yes.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, so the syllable house is this idea, like what you do is you make a little house, right? And what you do is you can put a word like hen in it, right? H-E-N, right? And you go H E, and then there's a door, and the N is on the door, okay? So when the door is closed, okay, the N is at the end, the door is closed, okay. So the vowel can't go outside and say its name, okay? It's closed, the door is closed, it's closed in. When the door is closed, it says the short sound. So hen doors closed, it says uh the the sound, the short sound. Then you open the door, because the n was on the door, and now the e is at the end of the syllable, okay? And now because the door is open, you can it says he.

Lori

Okay, and that doesn't work all the time though.

SPEAKER_00

It doesn't.

Lori

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

But the the thing about it is it's not so much whether it works, it's that it the only purpose of that is to get kids to remember that that pattern is called open or closed. That's what the door is for. Because the kids are trying to try and get kids to understand that like when it's open, it says the long sound, when it's closed, it says the short sound. So what that means is like the syllable houses like this one level removed from what we're trying to teach kids, which is that like, you know, the long, there's a long sound and a short sound. But because teachers are like, well, I need kids to know what an open and closed syllable is, let me do this other thing to understand what open and closed syllables is. Is so now we're like two steps away from what we want kids to know, which is that like at the end it says the long sound in the middle, it says the sh says the short sound.

Melissa

And it's asking them to remember another thing that they don't really necessarily need to remember.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, like the term open and closed is like our, I mean, it has a linguistic base. Like there's a whole thing about the linguistics of that, but like, you know, kids don't need to be linguists, right? So I started calling them long vowel syllables and short vowel syllables, which has its own challenges because like you could say, like, well, EA like is a long vowel, right? But I thought, well, it's a you know, it's a useful way to think of it. And so I just thought this is easier. And I I don't have data on this except that like teachers tell me this works and have sent me emails saying, like, I had a student that this really um helped them. So so anyway, so we call them long vowel syllables and short vowel syllables. People call them open closed syllables. I don't really have a quarrel with that as long as you don't teach the syllable house. Okay, so um, so I don't think it's necessary, but just don't try to get the kids to remember that by doing a separate thing. So then once we have that idea, the vowels at the end says the long sound in notification, if we cover it so that the T is covered, NO says no, and we know that because of vowels at the end. Okay. And so that goes along with it's very similar to the syllable division strategy in that we're breaking words into parts and we're using our knowledge that vowels in different locations make different sounds. The difference is we don't have a rule because this, you know, a student could just as easily put the card after the T and say not. Okay. And so that's where like you don't have to have a rule to do it. Um, so and this is this is actually great. Notification is a great example too, because you have no, okay. Um, and then you have TIF. Now, technically, because it has one F, it should be tie. It's not no tie, it's no to or no to, it's actually schwa. But notification, right? Some of them have the long sound, some of them have the short sound. So if you're gonna divide up this really long word, which I would not for teaching purposes, probably, um, it's fine for our example. Like it's going to have places where the long sound is the right one and the short sound is the right one. But if we don't have a rule, if we just say we're gonna break it so every syllable has one vowel, we can figure out what those vowels are and put it together. And the last piece is exactly what you very quickly held your daughter understand, which is like, hmm, you don't know a word that's quote, what like that's not a word that you know. And that's really cool that she figured out like where it was. Like, what's a word like that that you know? And she was like, oh, notification. Because yeah, like you said, like this is in the ether now. Like, you know, we're getting notifications like all the time.

Lori

Every second of every day, right? I mean, yeah. I was I honestly, that was, I feel like that's um a good example because I was shocked to add all

Real-World Example: "Notification"

Lori

those other things into it. I was like, you have heard this word so often. I've said it like I don't, I don't, I guess she hadn't said it before, but we've said it. We've we've talked, it just felt like so crazy to me, you know, as like a uh mom and a teacher, like, oh my gosh, this word that I've been using, we didn't know. Like maybe I need to do better.

SPEAKER_00

You do not need to be better. I am certain that like she is getting the the best winners y environment ever. No, but I think it's a really cool example because also she knew what it was, right?

Lori

Totally. Yeah. She could explain what. Well, and so okay, so here's another thought. So after that, I said, so what other words are similar to it? Just to kind of throw some something else out there. Cause you know, because you're a teacher. When you're a teacher, you like to do that. Yeah. And she's like, oh, okay, so notebook, notorious. But she was giving me all, you know, all those kinds of ones with the different, and none of them held any, like none of them were super similar to notification, other than maybe like notify, right? Like I because I wrote down the ones that she gave me. Um, but they did all have that O sound.

Melissa

So once she was able to identify, then we went on and kind of That's funny, Lori, because I was wondering if um she was almost kind of doing that peeling off that you mentioned, Devin, with with the word not at the beginning. Like if because she just saw this big word and she was like, Well, I know not, right? Because now that you're saying that, I'm wondering if her brain's stuck on, okay, what other words are N-O-T, but say note, you know?

Lori

Right. Right. Well, I mean, well, not no, because we lost uh interest in that. I'm sure she quickly you didn't. I didn't. I'm still thinking about it. Yeah, but it's pretty cool though.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. I so I'll just people might find this amusing for themselves. And um, it's like, you know, this happens all the time as adults because we read words in our brains, we don't read them out loud. And so you end up with like this like mental like representation of the pronunciation of a word, and you know exactly what it means, but it turns out it's not right. Okay, and so then you have this moment when you're like in like 10th grade and you like say it out loud, and people are like, What are you saying? Uh do you guys know? Do you have an example of this for yourself? Like the word that you said out loud, and you like totally got it wrong.

Melissa

Well, we always give our Hermione example, which is a name, it's a name, so it's different than a word. We always say we always we both said Hermione in our heads until we heard it out loud and we're like, Whoa.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's perfect, right? So it's like, but you knew exactly who she was, you knew everything about her. You just like didn't know the right pronunciation.

Lori

Yeah. I feel like Devin, an example might be like I remember as a maybe like a teenager or saying the word debris out loud, but saying debris, debris. Right, right. Who knows why?

SPEAKER_00

Because there's no reason for it not to be, right? Because you knew what it was, you'd read about it in some like textbook or whatever, and like it might as well be, right? It just isn't, right? And so, you know, and so I think that's you know, I mean, that's still part of that same thing of like we need to figure it out. But I love that kind of thinking because it is true that the two things we do. So we said that the one thing you do is you're always looking for an entry in your mental dictionary to link the word to. But if it's an unknown word, you need to come up with a pronunciation for it, right? And you're gonna use some combination of your strategies, and maybe you know, you just kind of you break it up however, and you just and you end up thinking it's Debris because I mean it might as well be, right? Because there's no reason for it not to be. And what's cool is you actually developed like a mental anchor for what that meant, right? It just, you know, is it's not what people actually say in the real word. Like, you know, you I thought like Yosemite, I thought Yosemite was the correct pronunciation. Like, yeah, right. You hear about Yosemite and then you read Yosemite, you don't realize they're even the same thing, right? It's like two different national parks.

Lori

Which is making me think so much about the power of teachers and why it's so important to develop that oral language, right? I mean, just like even I mean, and also show the words as we're developing that language. Like, for example, debris or Yosemite, like just showing that word is gonna make that connection for our students or notification.

Melissa

Yes. Yes. And we always think about the oral language in terms of meaning and vocabulary and, you know, oh, that's on the language comprehension side of things. But, you know, to bring it over here into even when they're decoding the word, you know, they can it can really help them if they've heard the word before.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. I actually recommend to that point that like teachers actually tell students like out loud the words that they're going to be practicing in the lesson so they hear them out loud, right? So especially if they're words that are less familiar to the kids, right? And I really want to be clear if it's a really rare word, it's not really a word. It might as well be a nonsense word. I had a program I taught one time where they had hobnob um uh on the list, like of real real words. And they also had pipkin. And if you know what a pipkin is, I'll be really impressed.

Melissa

Um I do because you used it in your article.

SPEAKER_00

Yes.

Melissa

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I don't even remember what it is still.

SPEAKER_00

It's a it's an earthenware cooking vessel, I think for the Middle Ages. Yeah. Um, yeah, so you know, don't teach the real words, but if they're less familiar to students, there's nothing wrong with saying, listen to this word, say it out loud with me, because it's critical kids have the correct pronunciation of the words. And, you know, a lot of students with reading difficulty, if you ask them to say the words, they won't even say them correctly. And so there it's impossible actually to get the right answer if you think crocodile is pronounced docacryle, right? So we need to get students to pronounce the words first when we're teaching a lesson. So I recommend that a lot of times if you're teaching words that might be less familiar to students, or just to confirm, like it's crocodile. Let's all say it together, crocodile. Say, you know, say it slowly and so on. Yeah.

Melissa

So I wanted to check, you've talked a little bit about this. We we've talked to other people on the podcast about set for variability. Um you didn't use those words, but you've kind of talked about it, um, which is that idea of the being flexible and trying out different pronunciations, especially with the vowels sounds. Um, what what does that from your lens, what does that actually look like in a classroom? Like what can a teacher do to help students with that?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So the answer is I don't know. So um, so this is like this is also what happens when you're like a science person. It's like a lot of times, like, I cannot tell you. I can tell you what I think, but I don't know if there's data on that, right? So, yeah, we don't, there's not, there have been a couple of studies where people have taught students like a strategy where they're like, they'll say a word out loud, right? Um and they'll say it incorrectly, and they ask students to tell them what the word actually is. So they'll say like shoulder rather than shoulder, and they'll have students like tell them what the right word is, right? And I did that in a, you know, in a program that we developed, and we didn't, we found that like the program we developed like had okay effects, but I did not think that the effects were true could be attributed specifically to that activity. Um, and so so the data are pretty like unclear whether that actually works. And the study that I'm describing was with kindergarten students, and they got small effects for that, but it was on a very small set of words. And so I'm not convinced that that necessarily is the right thing to do. So I'm so let's be clear teaching students like mispronounced words and having them correct those is a really is a good idea. So because the idea set for variability is that one we talked about, which is like we make the wrong thing the right thing, right? And the set is basically the idea of like I'm set up mentally for the idea that it's gonna be variable, right? So I recognize ahead of time it's going, I always found that confusing. Like, what is the what is why is it called this? I still don't all I tried to call it something else on the paper one time, but didn't catch on. Um, so so set for variability, it's like it's not, you know, it's anyway. So the term set for variability basically means I'm ready for it not to be the correct thing. And so the thing that I think we should do, because I don't think we should teach kids like mispronounced words, is literally to do what we already talked about, which is to teach kids to be flexible so that when they sound something out, they know the correct answer. And it gets to that point of using words deliberately where it might not quite work, right? Not early on, right? So, you know, when you do a word that has like the, you don't use cotton right at the beginning, maybe, right? Not in the first lesson, but like, but you want to quickly and strategically build in words where it's not perfect, right? Where it does sound a little bit different because we want

Morphology and Flexibility in Word Reading

SPEAKER_00

students to get used to that idea of being flexible. So, really, the idea of being flexible is the best way to teach kids separate variability. So, you know, some of my colleagues at Florida State have like talked about, they've been studying how to do that and they don't have results. I don't know what the results are from those studies. They just finished them like last year. But uh, do that, you know. And I think it's also good to remember phonological awareness is literally that's this is why phonological awareness is important because it's not about sounds and isolation, it's about locating that mental entry in your brain that is you associate the pronunciation you associate with the written pattern. That's why phonological awareness is so critical. So, you know, even early on when you're teaching kids. Like phonologic awareness and you're segmenting and blending, that's helpful because it gets students to like put those sounds together, take them apart, so that they understand, you know, like they when they're putting them together, particularly, they are getting this idea that they come together and they might sound a little off, and then you turn them into the right thing. So if you do f uh, it's fan, not fan, it's not fan, right? But that's really useful to get kids to do that. So that's that's key.

Melissa

Yeah, that's really helpful. And I know we've heard a few times where people say that that sounds like we're just asking kids to guess at what the word is. But I, you know, what I just heard you say is like, you know, a word can, or or even, you know, a letter or groups of letters can have, you know, a few different ways to pronounce it. So let them be flexible within those. So it's not just take a stab at what you think this word is altogether, but like, okay, like just, you know, be open to trying different sounds out that are all sounds that these letters can make.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and that's the key part where we get out of guessing. So it's like we're it's not that we're not telling you the thing. We're telling you it could be the long sound, it could be the short sound, right? So it's not like there's this huge universe of things that it can be, and that alone is really helpful for students. So it's not like kids see EA and we've never taught them that EA says eh, right? Like we teach them that EA sometimes says eh, and then we use that flexibility um to get us the rest of the way there.

Lori

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that's what we do as adults. That's what we do when we read bigger words. I think if we try to pigeonhole kids into like, quote, the rules, the rules, as we said, the rules just, you know, don't always work. And it those those pattern-seeking, our brains are pattern-seeking machines. So we want to try to see, like, oh, okay, if it's is there another way to say this that also makes sense, perhaps in other contexts, kind of freeing, liberation, you know?

SPEAKER_00

Like your daughter, that's another great example of that. Like, we and what you asked her to do is a really great idea because you asked her to find other examples to sort of like reinforce that idea that like when you see this, it says that, right? Because that's what we're trying to get kids to do is get their brains to pick up on the patterns in the language, right? The it's never, you know, it's quasi-regular, but there are things like you know, notification and yeah, I can't remember the other words that you had her say she said, but yep, exactly that.

Melissa

Well, you mentioned morphology, but I just wanted to like circle back to make sure we touched on how important morphology is in reading multisyllabic words. Is there anything else you wanted to say about morphology?

SPEAKER_00

No, I the only thing I would add is that you need to give students like a bank of affixes. So, you know, you can't just be like find the parts, right? You need to tell them what the parts are, right? And I have I actually watched a lesson recently, like that I was surprised. Like, they actually did have the kids kind of like figure it out. Like it's like, here are words with ION and like what do you think it says? I'm not a big fan of like what do you think it says? I'm a big fan of like T-I-O-N says shun, what does it say, shun, right? I I do mention a little bit about what it means, like you know, say like the act of or whatever means when you're doing something is the way I usually explain it, right? Um, and so, but that's that's I just do that and I focus on T I O T-I-O-N says shun. Let's read words with T-I-O-N. So students need a bank of affixes that you teach them ahead of time. So when they go to peel off, they they know, you know, those. And there's no like perfect bank of them, just find a you know decent list of them.

Melissa

And that can start pretty early in like kindergarten, first grade.

SPEAKER_00

Yes. So yeah, teaching kids like inflections, like as, you know, teaching them like inflections meaning like ing, ed, teaching them those things like really early on, great data on that. And then like by end of first grade, second grade, bringing in more of the other affixes. Um, so you know, third, fourth, fifth grade, they're gonna do a lot more with that stuff and they're gonna start using them a lot more for meaning and you know, getting into like bicycle, you know, the buy and the you know, cycle and so on.

Lori

Really quickly, just since we just talked about set for variability um or being flexible, you say affixes. In my head, I say affixes. Is it right? Wrong? What's going on?

SPEAKER_00

There's no correct no difference.

Lori

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

No, I mean, listen, if we want to be all like technical about it, it's a short vowel because it's you know, it's it's V C C V, so affixes is possibly correct. But I don't know. Can I also just say this is my favorite thing? Do you know, like, do you know that basil is not pronounced basil in like the UK?

Lori

Basil. I just went last summer and they were saying basil, and I felt like I was in a movie. It was great.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's a great, it's a perfect example of this exact thing, right? Where like we just we did it one way, they did it another way. We basically just divided it in a different like place, essentially, right? Do you know what they say for like process in Canada? Like process.

Lori

It's process, but we all still understand each other.

SPEAKER_00

They do, they do, and we understand them too, because it's said for variability, because it's so close, right? Yeah. And so, but I just love those examples because it's just like different linguistic kinds. We basically chose a different way to divide up the word, essentially, right? And so, you know, so I think it's a good example why flexibility is really important.

Lori

Yes, so fun to think about too. You know, you're like nerdy when you're sitting here, like, and what other words are there, right?

SPEAKER_00

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Lori

All right. So, Devin, I feel like we're coming to a close here, but I'm wondering if there's anything else you'd like to say to a teacher listening who might feel stuck or unsure how to start, or like, oh my gosh, this is new information. I've been, you know, doing this one way and I want to try to shift, or uh, I'm just wanted to learn how to think about it differently. So I'll leave it to you.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So I did uh so I wrote an article, a couple of articles about this that people can email me for. One of them is like totally, you know, I can I can post online. I'm working on fixing my website, but and I can send it to you all, the two of you too, because you guys can, you know, share things.

Lori

Yeah, we we can share things publicly. We yeah, and we can put all of this in the show notes if we have the links. Okay.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so I'll send you the the one. So there's I think you can look at that article to get to give you some ideas about this because I am pretty specific about some of these, uh, some of these things. That's one thing you can do. There are like, you know, videos online of you know people explaining these kinds of things. Um, I've done a couple of them, so you could look for those as an example of what to do. So, you know, if you're not sure, like, you know, you do want to learn about how these things work, right? And I, you know, and people asked me recently, like, if you have a program that does this, like, should I just like change it? And my answer is absolutely not. Like, so

Closing Thoughts and Resources

SPEAKER_00

um, see if like everybody else in the school is doing that. I think the kids are better off if you don't try to change it. Okay. So like I don't want to say stay the course exactly if you're using syllable division, but I don't want to say change it tomorrow unless you have that flexibility. And if the kids haven't learned it already, don't change the game on them like you know, right now. But I think, you know, um think about for next year, right? Like, is there a way I could do this differently and uh and you know, consider a different option? And um, but you know, if you're doing something with the long words, you're on the right track and uh focus on more themes if I was gonna say anything specifically.

Lori

This was so fun to talk with you. I feel you did not disappoint. Thank you for being awesome. This is great. Like we could talk all day, but we're we're so grateful that you took some time to talk with us is and uh and just chatted out about these really important things that teachers are grappling with like every single day. And we're you know, we're struggling with too. So thank you.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you guys. I mean, you guys do so much great stuff for the field. Like, I think we're all better for the work that you do. So I don't know how many podcasts people say like, thank you, not just for today, but in general for what you do. But let me, if they do, let me add to that, you know, um, thank you guys for the work that you do. It's really awesome that um you help all of us.

Melissa

Thank you. Thank you. To stay connected with us, sign up for our email list at literacypodcast.com, join our Facebook group, and follow us on Instagram and Twitter.

Lori

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Melissa

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

Lori

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