I had the good fortune to work with Benita Blachman and Maria Murray on their creation of a fabulous document that provides a broad (but very accessible) overview about how to teach important aspects of early reading. Why do I say that their document is “fabulous?” Well, because any one who’s interested in effective early reading instruction should read—and employ—it.

• It’s very clear. There’s virtually no academic obfuscation (meaning no “gobbleygook”);

• It’s operational—readers get explicit directions about how to teach decoding.

• It’s brief, but also comprehensive. Reading the document doesn’t take long (it’s not a book), but what readers learn are very important fundamentals.

• It describes the basic procedures used in some quite famous studies about how instruction changed children’s brains.

Hunh? Well, Professor Blachman was not only a researcher but also the instructional developer who created decoding procedures that were used in brain-imaging studies about children learning to read. In a nutshell, those studies showed that children whose brains had the charateristic blood-flow patterns of “dyslexia,” later showed the charateristic blood-flow patterns of their non-dyslexic peers. That is, pre: dyslexia; Post: normal readers. Said another way, instruction changed their brains. I am not making this up (Blachman et al., 2004; Shaywitz et al., 2004)!

Although the turtorial has been located at many urls over the years, it is currently (August 2022) avilable at https://www.teachingld.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/original_TT7_Decoding.pdf. If you need help in finding it, write to Exdir@TeachingLD.org. (And I encourage readers to look for other Teaching Tutorials produced by DLD.)

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Sources

Blachman, B. A., Schatschneider, C., Fletcher, J. M., Francis, D. J., Clonan, S. M., Shaywitz, B. A., & Shaywitz, S. E. (2004). Effects of intensive reading remediation for second and third graders and a 1-year follow-up. Journal of Educational Psychology, 96(3), 444-461. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.96.3.444

Shaywitz, B. A., Shaywitz, S. E., Blachman, B. A., Pugh, K. R., Fulbright, R. K., Skudlarski, P., Menci, W. E., Constable, R. T., Holohan, J. M., Marchione, K. E, Fletcher, J. M. Lyon, G. R., & Gore, J. C. (2004). Development of left occipitotemporal systems for skilled reading in children after a phonologically-based intervention. Biological Ppsychiatry, 55(9), 926-933. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2003.12.019

Disclosure: DLD paid me as its executive director and Web master when I helped create this and other Teaching Tutorials. I do not receive any additional remuniration for people viewing, downloading, or sharing the documents. I receive no current benefits from the Division for Learning Disabilities.