Words that are spelled the same but are pronounced differently depending on their context can be perplexing for readers of all ages. What can you do? The answer comes from helping young readers build the skill known as set for variability. This episode of Literacy Talks unpacks this essential literacy skill and distinguishes it from the notion of guessing at the right pronunciation. It requires students to build cognitive flexibility and is a valuable predictor of a student’s word reading ability. Once students recognize that letters can have more than one sound and begin to address the mismatch between the sound of a decoded word and the words they recognize and know, they’re building the critical skill of set for variability.
💬 Want more insights like this?
Subscribe to the Literacy Talks Podcast Digest for episode recaps, resources, and teaching takeaways delivered straight to your inbox!
Do you teach Structured Literacy in a K–3 setting?
Sign up for a free license of Reading Horizons Discovery® LIVE and start teaching right away—no setup, no hassle. Sign-up Now.
Coming Soon: Reading Horizons Ascend™
From Pre-K readiness to advanced fluency, Ascend™ offers a consistent, needs-based reading experience across every grade, tier, and model—so every student can build mastery, one skill at a time. Learn More.
View Transcript
Narrator:
Hello literacy leaders and champions. Welcome to Literacy Talks, the podcast series from Reading Horizons dedicated to exploring the ideas, trends, insights and practical issues that will help us create literacy momentum. Our series host is Stacy Hurst, professor at Southern Utah University and Chief Academic Advisor at Reading Horizons, were reading momentum begins. Joining Stacy are Donell Pons, a recognized expert in literacy and special education and Lindsay Kemeny, a Utah based elementary classroom teacher. Today's episode takes a helpful practical look at the skill known as set for variability, the skill of flexibly applying different pronunciations to individual phonemes based on word context and meaning. It's critical for fluency and automaticity. And it's an important indicator of a student's work reading ability. Ready, set. Let's get started.
Stacy Hurst:
Welcome to this episode of literacy talks, I'm Stacy Hurst. I am the host and I am joined by my co hosts Donell Pons and Lindsay Kemeny. Hello, you two. Hi. Today we are going to talk about a topic that I think has relevance to teaching reading something that I didn't know a ton about until I read. Actually, I think I was introduced to it by Dr. Kilpatrick in his book essentials of assessing preventing and overcoming reading difficulties. Anyway, it's no surprise to you to so I'll just tell the listeners, we're going to talk about the set for variability and what that means for our readers and for instruction. So Danelle, I know, You've been familiar with this term for a while. And I will read the definition out of the glossary from Dr. Kilpatrick's book. It the definition is this, the ability to correctly determine a word based upon an incorrect pronunciation of that word. Also, I thought it might be helpful to start with an example. And I do this is probably one of the only times I remember struggling when I was learning to read, and I encountered the word huge. And it was in a very odd sentence, because it didn't make sense to me because I decoded it incorrectly. I decoded a hug. I was in first grade. And I do not know what story or book I was reading. When you guys hear this sentence, you will think the same thing. If I remember correctly, the sentence was the rabbits were sitting at the huge table. Of course, I decoded it. The rabbits were sitting at the hug table. And it presented to me enough cognitive dissonance for me to go what it's trying to picture what a hug table was, I'd never heard of that before. And then in my brain, I connected Oh, that must be huge, right? I hadn't learned G spelling rule yet. Probably not even Phonetic Skill 4 I mean, the Silent E rule, consonant Valley at the end. So I just connected it based on my speaking vocabulary. So that was me applying the set for variability. And Donell, like I mentioned, I know you've been familiar with this for a while, what would you add to that definition? Or help to clarify some of it to our readers? I'm so used to using the word leaders.
Donell Pons:
Yes. What a great task. So one thing I want to say is, if this is something new for you, and you're going set for what and you know, you're one of those folks, do not worry, do not feel badly, you are in good company. This is a safe space to be able to say hey, look, I'm totally unfamiliar with that. Or if you're on the other hand, you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, I've been thinking about this for a long time. This is a great conversation for you, too. So there's something for everyone I want to say in this conversation, because I think each one of us at different points has been on this journey and is still on this journey. I mean, I came back from the it's the reading conference, the scientific study of reading conference that I attended a new port and this came up in one of the sessions. So that was all we talked about was set for variability. It was one of the sessions that I remember quickly texting, at least you Stacy to say Don Compton for the Florida Center for reading research. And Don Compton is fantastic been around a long time. And he said made a statement there where he said for years I did not put enough stock in set for variability and go on Dr. I'm going back on that. I'm going to say set variability is huge. And that's my eyes got bigger like I need to pay attention to this. So that for me brought my attention back to it. I have kind of filed it away as you say it is in Dr. Kilpatrick's essentials of assessing preventing and overcoming reading difficulties, which I think is a fantastic book. Overall for the Some information. And he has several references to it in the book. So I suggest if you have that copy, or get your hands on a copy and spend some time looking at the ways in which Kilpatrick refers to because it's helpful, he does it several times throughout the book, and what it might look like Stacy, you mentioned one way of yourself and your ability to remember your learning stones me, because I don't think I would be able to do that. But one of the interesting things about this, that I went back and did because of this conversation we're going to have is, I pulled out a list of words had been used in a research study. So I got on the internet to see how much research is really being conducted around this when was the last research study and there was a really good study. And I believe it was just 2022. And I've pulled some words that had been used because they were on the internet. And then My poor husband and son who have dyslexia, whip them into the room, they have kind of doing a few activities. And it was very interesting some of the thoughts we all had on it. Because as Stacey said, set for variability, readers do not need to pronounce words completely or correctly, to accurately identify them as long as they are close enough, phonetically. And that's that little bit that Stacey was talking about. And so the oral vocabulary is very important here, and even be able to hear the words out loud, just like Stacey probably had an internal voice if she wasn't actually articulating the words out loud that everybody else could hear. But enough of of a out loud voice was going on that when you made that sentence. And you said, Well, that doesn't make any sense to me. He got that far with it that even this can stop you want to work where you're going to mispronounce, you can even get partially there. And then it'll fill in make up the difference or that gap is kind of interesting. But it was interesting in the conversation between my husband and my son, my son who's had a lot more exposure to oral language, we read to him 30 minutes a day since he was a little guy, my son, my husband never had that experience as a person with dyslexia. He did not have those years of oral language and being exposed to literature and text. But my young son who has he did really well on some of those set for variability tasks compared to my husband, who did well. But it was slow, and not nearly as automatic. But my son who had years of that did, and even my son said, I think I've really benefited from hearing language a lot when I was young. It's like you guys bathed me in it because you were so worried about the fact that I couldn't read for myself.
Stacy Hurst:
And I look, I think we want to talk more about that little activity that you did later to let you bring up something really important. Phonemic, or phonological awareness is in play here, as well as obviously, the ability to orthographically map, the thing that happens in our brain and our vocabulary really key to apply this set for variability. Lindsay, what would you add to the definition? Or what is your experience with this term? Yeah,
Lindsay Kemeny:
so I think it's important to realize that we're not saying, Oh, they just need to get close. And then they can like, guess at the word this is different, right? And like you're saying, Stacy, they need strong phonemic awareness for this. And they also need orthographic knowledge, right, and learning that spelling. So originally, our students are very rigid in what they know where there's, they start off with a one to one letter sound knowledge, right? And then that bank kind of grows as we expose them to more orthography. And in our phonics lessons, then they need to they learn that they need to, like approximate a sound for that grapheme that they see. And so, I love this definition of set for variability that I learned from Stephanie Stoller, who said, it's the set of letter sound correspondences increases over time, right, that set that they know at first, it's one to one, and then they learn more spellings for the phonemes. And then it supports more variability for self teaching. So set for variability. And that just kind of helped it click for me what set for variability is?
Stacy Hurst:
Yeah, that's really good way to put it. I don't know.
Donell Pons:
Again, I just want to add, Lindsay, you're really good point about the fact that we're not promoting guessing this is not guessing at all. And so I hope that no one thinks that's what we're saying, because that's not at all what we're saying. I don't think anybody has said that here at all. But the skill sets because all we're talking about here, remember, at key points, none of us have said there's any guessing at all their skill sets that we're talking about, there are tasks and ability that's going on. So all of those things are so far removed from guessing they're not in the same place at all. So I hope that folks are picking up on those key critical words and things that are that we're talking about, as we're discussing this, that those are present, that's anything but guessing, right, so as to declare,
Lindsay Kemeny:
and they have to like in that definition that we shared at the beginning. I mean, it says after decoding the word, so they decode that word. You know, one of those sounds wasn't correct. And then they can switch it so that again, that's how it's like different than just guessing, because they did have to decode all those sounds all the way. And then they need to change that.
Stacy Hurst:
That's really important. Thank you for pointing that out. I also think it's a window. It's an insight for us as an instructor to because on some level, we employ this set for variability early on probably, really, as soon as we start learning those phoneme grapheme correspondences, right, we do see that in students who will look at the first letter and connect it correctly with the sound. But then they guess, right, and this is not that, like you said, Lindsey, this is them sounding out the word, and then having the cognitive flexibility, the vocabulary, the phonemic awareness, to be able to approximate, and then finally, decide on what the word is, that is important. Because as they have more practice doing that, then they're going to need less instruction and practice with it right before it becomes part of their lexicon automatically. So that's a really important thing to distinguish. So I guess that question would be why is it important to know about this set for variability? Is it? Maybe it's not important for teachers to know, Lindsay? What do you think? Well,
Lindsay Kemeny:
that kind of leads into that study by Stacy or Stacey, I don't know how to pronounce it. The reason why this is important, because it's turns out that research is showing it's a very strong predictor of word reading a future word reading. And so it's really kind of interesting, because you think, Okay, what do we know already about strong predictors for word reading? Well, we know letter naming is a predictor. We know phonemic awareness is a predictor. Well, this research study, they studied 489 students, so it was a large sample size. And they found that set for variability was the strongest predictor for word reading. So in the study, it showed that it was stronger than letter naming phonemic awareness. I think they also did attention and vocabulary. And it was stronger than all those, which is a pretty big deal.
Stacy Hurst:
Yeah. And do you know, did you realize that you just employ that scent for variability with the last name of that research are sometimes different in donations, but that's beside the point. But you just did that right? Is it? Yeah.
Lindsay Kemeny:
Yeah.
Stacy Hurst:
And I have, I definitely looked that up at one point. I'm pretty confidence, dc, dc. Yes. So the question is this, because I haven't heard I'd like I said, I went, I was had been in the business of teaching reading for a long time before I heard that term. And so to some degree, I've witnessed it in my own first graders, I actually described it like two magnets coming really close, you know, when they have the opposite sides, and they get close enough to snap together. In my first graders. That's what it seemed like when they were trying to work through a word, and then they sounded it out. Maybe the word usually happened with the word live and live in some context. And then they realize, oh, this in this context is live. It was like that magnet finally snapping together, right? Yeah, there probably something similar is happening in the brain. So how, yeah, I don't know. Go ahead.
Donell Pons:
I just wanted to happen. You said, Is it important for us to know and just a little, I think, for me, yes. In the sense that, like, we've referred to already here, this is a skill, right? So again, it's not guessing we actually call it a skill, right, the set variability skill, I think it's important because it's, it really does explain, perhaps, and help an educator understand and even you know, a parent watching their young one, taking the reading as well, the importance of the components, right, because we've talked about what needs to be present in order to have really good set for variability to have that skill emerging in order to be useful to us. And so it really does help the teacher be more cognizant and aware, I think of the importance of the skills that go into supporting set for variability in a student's ability to deploy set for variability in order to help with getting towards. The other thing is, I think that it also has helped me to spend more time allowing students to work out and work with the words to because you have an appreciation for that effort, right? Because all of that effort and spending that time, that all has application for that student, so I think that's also it helps you have a better appreciation for that time spent most activities.
Stacy Hurst:
Okay, so now, here's my next question. And you can answer this with a yes or no, and we will elaborate. Does it need to be taught explicitly Eat Wednesday?
Lindsay Kemeny:
Well, so far, there's no research that shows that it transfers to the reading. So it's still kind of early days, right? So we know it's really important, it's important predictor. But so far the states are a little bit limited on if we teach it, and if it will transfer to other words. That being said, I do know, in the rewards program, I know that program has research to support it. And in rewards, they do a little like one of the little drills is you say a multisyllabic word incorrectly, and the student has to figure out what the word was like you, you change one of the vowel sounds and they have to do that they have to employ this set for variability. Right. So I think it's like, it's early days, I
Stacy Hurst:
guess. Yeah. And I think there are some studies, in fact, they're mentioned in Kilpatrick's book that kind of are early in telling us that addressing it is beneficial. And it looks like there might be some evidence for transfer, it's probably not set in stone yet, right? But dunno, yes or no, isn't to teach explicitly?
Donell Pons:
You know, I'm leaning
Stacy Hurst:
towards so far, neither of you have answered yes or no, by the way, it's just not going to happen. So what do you think?
Donell Pons:
I think that the the apprehension say, to do a firm yes or no, is that we know that we're in this this, you know, era of really paying attention to the science, right? The science of reading the you want to be cautious and careful about what you're saying. So having an understanding of the importance of set for variability, the role that it plays is different from saying, now I'm going to do this activity with my students, because I think that it's going to so So again, let's be clear to about this conversation we're having, there's real value to the understanding, and we've been doing a lot of let's understand what set for variability means, what it looks like, among our students, that kind of thing, what research is now kind of leaning into and telling us that's different from now research says, do these things, and you'll see an improvement in your students. So Right. And so that piece, I'm not going to say yes, because I just don't have enough to say, right. But it does reinforce, if you've been paying attention to conversation about what set for variability is it does reinforce a lot of the components that are already in good instruction, right? So that's another piece to pay attention to.
Stacy Hurst:
And you can make a lot of really good and informed decisions. If you understand these concepts really well. I think of what we call the heart word approach, right? We've had that conversation on this podcast before, that there's no research specific to that, you know, drawing a heart above the part that is not consistent with the spelling with the pronunciation. However, it does align with what we know about orthographic mapping, phoneme graphing, mapping, and what needs to happen in the brain. Right. So there's evidence that it might facilitate that. But to your point, it doesn't say, well, we absolutely need to be doing this all the time.
Narrator:
Get all the resources discussed during literacy talks, podcast episodes, and stay up to date about webinars and other special events from Reading Horizons, go to reading horizons.com/literacy talks and subscribe to our podcast digest. So you're always in the know about everything literacy.
Lindsay Kemeny:
I think there's some things we do in the classroom that maybe can support this without like, directly being like, we're gonna learn separate variables. If you think about, like, we're changing, I think this maps them for that, right? Because we're changing one and that's changing one phoneme is exactly, you know, in a word is exactly what they do when they do this. And same with just teaching the code and teaching multiple spellings for a sound. Now they're learning to be a little less rigid in their thinking, and they're learning oh my gosh, there's multiple ways to represent that sound, or there's multiple sounds for that, grapheme. One of my little students, just last week was so cute because we were learning about y. And of course, they've learned the consonant sound for y as yet, but we're learning that it's, you know, it can also spell the sound eye and he was so funny because he's like, we learned about this letter in kindergarten, but I guess she taught us wrong. No, no. Wrong. That's right. But now we're learning more there's more sounds that that letter can spell.
Stacy Hurst:
sounds cute. Yeah. Which is a good example of when a student would need to apply set for variability even after they've had phonics instruction, right? And I think that is important because like with anything else, if a student is demonstrating that they don't have this ability, then I think that's an easy answer that explicit instruction is required. Do we want to overdo that instruction? No, just like with any explicit instruction, the value is in the intentional and purposeful application of it, right? So I think about the second we introduce a grapheme in phonics instruction, typically, that represents more than one phoneme initially, like early on in any sequence is probably probably the digraphs th, right, the digraph th, representing two sounds. Now a good phonics program will already help reduce that cognitive load, when a student encounters a word like, let's say, path, or bath, and they see that th at the end, they could try bad, right, and I'm thinking back to the power of those sound spelling walls and these moments, but if you're teaching, if your phonics program has explicit instruction on this level, and I think the term is grafico tactic, but where that grapheme is located, it is important to know about the pronunciation of it. So you can reduce the cognitive load to apply that set for variability. If you know that when th is at the end of a single syllable word, it will be pronounced with the voiceless sound, which explains the difference between bath and bave. Right. So we can do that. But then a student who may not know that could try both. And that that's one instance that they would need to apply that done out,
Donell Pons:
you know, and I've got to get back to text. So I think this even for me, reinforced text, text text and having opportunities for students. And we've had we've done podcasts on this before the it all of it, yes, all of it and to be reading to students as well. And I think this also reinforces for me, the, the parents and guardians who come to me and say, when they have a struggling reader, they Is it okay, if they listen to books, because I've been told it's not a really valuable thing for them to be doing? And it's yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, it's very valuable. Not instead of right, the opportunities to be taught correctly and receive the support, they need to then be able to learn to decode words themselves within text. But in addition to absolutely and text at whatever level the student is capable of taking in, right is also Yes, yes, yes to all of it. And I think that this, again, revisiting this really did push that again, for me, the Empower important it is to keep promoting because really, that's what we want to get to right. Dr. Kilpatrick is famous always for saying, what are we doing all this for not to do the things but to get to reading, right, and having experiences with reading? And so it just reinforced that for me to that important part?
Stacy Hurst:
Yeah. And I think there are really explicit places in our instruction that we can support and model that to, I am thinking of words, like, with an O sound. And we know that has the EU or the and, you know, we could put a word like foot in front of our students and say, Let's sound this out. Is it foot? Or is it foods, you know, we could do that that could help them out. I think, when we get to words, like prove and drove that have the same spelling pattern, it's another opportunity when that's exactly what you're saying? Dunno, and we're talking about vocabulary. So we can build vocabulary. We can point these things out that some graphemes some spelling's represent more than one sound. If you don't know what that sound is based on where it is in the word, then try the other. Right? And I think that's going to be really helpful. You see this a lot to multisyllabic words, I get this question probably more than any other. How do you explain the difference between rabbit and habit? Right? Because they have different spelling patterns, but they rhyme. And so it would look like habit would be pronounced habit. But if a student said I have a bad habit of biting my nails, if their vocabulary is built up accurately, they're going to very quickly say That's habit. Right. And we can teach that on that syllable level as well. Yeah, Lindsay Yeah,
Lindsay Kemeny:
that's just another thing I was gonna say here is that, you know, teach the vocabulary. That's an important part here because they need to have the word in their oral vocabulary in order to apply that set for variability and change it so make sure you know that vocabulary instruction is an important part of your day, especially going to be helpful for our English learners. In order to do this,
Stacy Hurst:
and on any level, right, and then word level one sentence level multisyllabic words or single syllable words. I don't know. It looks like you have something to say.
Donell Pons:
Yeah, there are folks who still don't know exactly what it is we're talking about. To hear, you know, a set for variability activity, I found some books. I don't know if you guys are familiar with them this is Milly goes to Philly. It's the Mrs. Millie. And they are books where they are written using set for variability pattern with the words and they're kind of fun. I mean, I've used it with my older students for fun. But they're the this is merely a series. And it's fun to just kind of see if you have if you don't know what we're talking about. But the text has opportunities for you to, you know, experience the set for durability that we're talking about. So for one example, it says our teacher Mrs. Millie is really silly. Everyday she says something funny, such as cower you today. We're fine, Mrs. Millie, but we say back. How are you? Instead of cow? Are you? So there's just some opportunities to kind of play around with that.
Stacy Hurst:
Yeah, which that that is actually the word cow is a good opportunity, right? When you said that I thought at the ows spelling, which we wouldn't typically see in the middle of a word. So those are ways we can support in our phonics instruction, we can reduce guessing, but at the same time, there are other sounds for oh, you in the middle of a word than out, right, we have should we have count. And so just helping students to make those connections also, in multisyllabic words, the schwa becomes important to this conversation. And teachers, I would say as teachers, we need to have that set for variability with the schwa and teaching about the schwa. But I think of stress syllables, like in the words contract and contract, right? A student could pronounce it one way, when it really should be the other in a sentence so that again, vocabulary, but if they get close to that pronunciation, then we're going to reduce the ability to guess and really help them to build the neural networks, they need to recognize that word in the future.
Lindsay Kemeny:
And I think the set for availability really comes into play as you're transitioning students into authentic text, right, because the Decodable texts, a lot of those Decodables are just guess we've taught you exactly, you know, we're practicing exactly what we just learned in our phonics lesson today. But now we're like, going into authentic texts, and now is just this open, you know, here you go, here's a huge array. And that's where you really see it come into play. And so that's fun. And then if you see that they're, they're not doing very good with set for variability, and then they start resorting to just guessing all those words. That's when I'm like, Oh, they're not ready for these texts yet, we got to or, or I need to be right there with them, giving them lots of support, you know, and so I'm just in the thick of that right now in first grade.
Donell Pons:
And Lindsey, I would say pay attention to the older students too, because you have those moments where you up the text, right? And so then you start moving into multisyllabic text. And it's again, another opportunity for the student to start exercising that muscle again, because maybe they got to a level where it was comfortable. They're pretty much familiar with all the text, and then you bump the text of it. And that happens all along the way as a reader, right. So should we paying attention?
Stacy Hurst:
Yeah, and I think we can create or look for text that supports that, too. So it's just another level of scaffolding may not be as high in decode ability, as we would in the early stages of phonics instruction. But I'm thinking about a lesson specifically in the Reading Horizons sequence. And it does talk about it gives the example of having maybe pants that are long, and then you cut them short, it's kind of hard to make them long again, but you can always take something long and make it short and they're talking about that with the words like habit, or Robin that look like they would be decoded Robin with that open syllable at the beginning. But then if that doesn't make sense, then we shorten that we make the short vowel sound right? And then the Decodable text that goes with that lesson supports that. So you really are giving them an opportunity, purposeful practice with that short and long vowel sound in that particular pattern, which does happen frequently. So I agree we need to have them reading, reading, reading, right? And then I would also say that I think it's important always to build vocabulary. And Danelle, you mentioned this earlier as well like with your son, that we do it as early as we can we talk to kids, we talk with kids, we demonstrate vocabulary, we introduce it informally and formally and we read aloud to them but then when we start teaching them those phoneme grapheme correspondences connecting the spelling's with the sounds, they should be pretty consistent initially right till they get that idea. We call that the alphabetic principle right and then just helping to create that flexibility that they need with that set for variability I think in most cases will witness it. But dunno, I wanted to ask you about this specifically because if students are once they start with that phonics instruction and they start Getting that foundation of faux letters, spell sounds and these are really consistent, struggling readers this can add to their frustration, if they encounter a word that doesn't appear to be like they would think it is right doesn't make sense to them based on the way they've sounded. How do you approach that with your learner's
Donell Pons:
like, yeah, you know, I think that's one of the greatest difficulties. And there's no one really great answer for that, because students come with such different backgrounds. And they also come and within those backgrounds, some students are a little easier on themselves, you know, when it comes to this is not something I'm familiar with, but that's okay. You know, it's all right, I'll probably pick this up where other learners are like, I don't know this, and I don't know that I ever will. And they're, you know, it's, it's the approach of the learners to and they're all very different that way. And when you've spent years struggling, it's also how many years have you spent struggling and not having real answers as to whether or not you've got the patience when someone says, oh, here, I'm going to teach you this great thing it's going to apply, but here, it won't, you know, eventually you have to do what is called an exception, right? Something there will be some exception somewhere. And I think structured literacy, obviously, the best way for all of the different students that I've just described, is to have a good structured literacy program, because you are teaching students the things that they can know real stability first, and laying that down to mastery and those stable parts. And then we move on to teaching, you know, what an exception, an exception may look like. But I think that and Lindsey, you brought up an excellent point, too, you're still applying those same sorts of techniques and understanding that a teacher does in the early grade space, because I get asked this a lot. And I hear it in conferences, too. What do you do with older learners, just Kilpatrick's always saying the same and a lot of what you do? Learners. But Lindsey made the really good point, when you see that they're not quite ready for something, what do you do, you bring them back to base reteach, make sure we're solid, just like Lindsey would do an excellent job of in her classroom. The same is being done for your older learner, let's Okay, let's dial back. Let's get a base, let's get our feet under us feel good. And then we'll move on into the space, the text that you select and choose to help support the older learners becomes even more important, because that's an opportunity to reinforce and so you do spend a good deal of time finding good appropriate text for students in the older space. That can be difficult to find at times, it's the lazier now than it used to be. But that's really, really important because it offers opportunities for them to, as you say, practice those skills that they have learned, but also have opportunities to explore texts that requires a little bit more. And that flexibility comes into play in that text, but you're always supporting so those are the key between the instruction in the text is really important.
Stacy Hurst:
I think this would also be an instance where nonsense words could actually be beneficial in instruction. Not they never are, of course they are. But I think of compensators that I've worked with before. And they are the number one example of that what we call fly by guessing right fly by reading, right? That first sound and then guessing, guessing, guessing, and they'll spit out three or four possible words before they actually look at the letters in the word if we're not careful. But if we take that meaning aspect out of it just temporarily, and we have them, you know, decode words that maybe have that double O in the middle, that's not a real word, F O M, you know, how do we pronounce this? Well, it could be Foom. Or it could be phone, it could be either one, this isn't a real word. So it doesn't have meaning, right, but we probably wouldn't stay in that space very long. Just giving them that activity. And then again, I keep going back to the power of a sound spelling wall and how you could really use that throughout those elementary years and beyond. Because that would always be an anchor for them to return to for those phonemes and different spellings for the same sound, right? They can always say, Yeah, we need to have this amount of flexibility. If we don't know what a graphing or spelling, how to pronounce it based on where it is in the word, then we can try a few things and always build our vocabulary in the process.
Donell Pons:
And Stacy said some critical things because their skill to the set for variability that makes it flexibility. Not guessing that to me is real critical. key takeaway is remember that it's that skill piece behind it. Lindsay, you've mentioned it many times, Stacy, and you've described that skill piece behind the flexibility. That's not there when you're guessing. They have to
Lindsay Kemeny:
decode the word first. Yeah. And then they recognize they don't recognize that word in the oral vocabulary, then they change a sound and then they recognize it. So that's very different than like how Stacey was saying. They see the first letter and they like give you like three different options that's not doing set for availability because they never actually decoded that word all the way through first.
Stacy Hurst:
Exact Glu. So I'm glad we've had this conversation. Thanks, guys. I think it's really interesting. And I bet there's a lot more to learn and to learn how we can apply this. Like you mentioned, Lindsey, this is still a growing body of research focused on this and Danelle, based on your experience. It the es es es are, then I think we're gonna see more about this, right. So I'm going to really look to watch and read again, stay tuned. Yeah, if you really want to get ahead of things right. Start now to read everything that's been written about it. Resource wise, I think Dr. Kilpatrick's research is a book is a really great place to reference those research studies. You mentioned this DC research and that was more recent, right? We can leave a list of research that has been done on this so far, in our show notes, but we'd love to hear from you as well if you have any experience with this or knowledge that you can add to help us do better and know better. So thank you again for joining us for this conversation. And we hope to have you join us in the future for another episode of literacy talks.
Narrator:
Thanks for listening to literacy talks, the podcast series for literacy leaders and champions everywhere. Literacy talks comes to you and your colleagues from Reading Horizons were reading momentum begins. Visit reading horizons.com/literacy talks often for resources, ideas and great literacy learning conversations. Subscribe to Our Podcast digest and you'll always be up to date on all things literacy. See you next time.