S9 E10: Phonology as a settled science, with Jane Ashby, Ph.D.

Episode Transcript
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Jane Ashby (00:00):
If there's a problem with the phonological
system, it's gonna percolateall the way up through learning
how to read, learning how tospell, learning how to write.

Susan Lambert (00:13):
This is Susan Lambert, and welcome to Science

of Reading (00:15):
The Podcast from Amplify . Today we have another
episode in our season-longreading reboot, reexamining and
building on foundationalliteracy concepts. This time
we're focusing on phonologicalawareness. I'm joined by Dr.
Jane Ashby, professor in theReading Science doctoral

(00:37):
program at Mount St . JosephUniversity and co-author of the
2012 book, "Psychology ofReading." Dr. Ashby is among
the co-authors of "TeachingPhonemic Awareness in 2024, A
Guide for Educators." And onthis episode, she discusses why
phonology is so critical inreading, and how it impacts all

(00:58):
aspects of the Simple View ofReading. She also takes on
another great question from ourlistener mailbag, and discusses
the concept of settled science.
I'm now thrilled to welcome Dr.
Jane Ashby. Dr. Jane Ashby,thank you so much for joining

(01:19):
us on today's episode.

Jane Ashby (01:21):
Thanks for the invite, Susan. I've been
looking forward to this.

I've been looking forward to this as
well. And we've sort of pushedthis recording off a while,
because, full disclosure, youhave been one of my professors
at Mount St . Joseph Universityand you are currently my
dissertation chair. So, thankyou for the work that you're
helping me do.

Jane Ashby (01:44):
It's been a wonderful journey .

And it's still in process . And
definitely we've had some greatconversations about my
interests versus yourinterests. And sort of your
story about how you gotinterested in what you're
interested in. And I think ourlisteners are going to love
hearing your journey. So beforewe do that, how about you just

(02:10):
introduce yourself a littlebit, and tell us who you are,
what you do, how you got intothis world of literacy.

Jane Ashby (02:16):
Just stop me if I yammer on . It's been a
long journey, right? I've beendoing this work for about 35
years.

Wow.

Jane Ashby (02:25):
I came to it early, and it just kind of captivated
me and never let me go. Soright now I'm a professor in
the Reading Science Program atMount St . Joseph University.
That has been wonderful, andrewarding. I've been doing that
for a few years. Before that, Iwas a professor in psychology

(02:50):
at Central Michigan University,where I had an eye movement
laboratory. I conducted a bunchof research where we use eye
movements to measure how peopleare processing words. How
they're getting words off thepage when they're reading
sentences silently. That's beenmy research career, and that
was the past 20 years or so.

(03:13):
Before that, I was working inColumbus at a school for
children who have readingdisabilities, and working with
their faculty and ColumbusPublic Schools interventionists
to teach them how to helpdyslexic children learn to
read. Before that, where Ireally got my start, where I

(03:33):
really got bit by the readingbug hard, was in an adult
literacy program where I wasworking with inner city
students in Boston, 18 to 22years old. And typically, in
these adult literacy classes,all students are just grouped
together. There isn't anyassessment to figure out where

(03:54):
their reading is. And they'reall trying to pass the GRE.
But, of course, they come to itfrom different places. And what
we decided to do was to assessour students, shockingly, and
see what their reading levelis. What we found from that is
that about half of our studentswere reading in the fourth to
sixth grade level. Well, theGRE is written at the eighth or

(04:16):
ninth grade level. And I taughtthe students reading at the
fourth or sixth grade level. Idid that for three years. I
taught them content area. Wedid science, we did earth
science, we did history. Taughtthem about the reconstruction.
All designing curriculum attheir reading level using

(04:36):
primary source materials. Andso, it was very fun, and I
learned, kind of, how to boosttheir reading while I was doing
that, by pre-teaching newvocabulary, by teaching them
how to sound out multi-syllabicwords, by pointing out the
meanings of prefixes andsuffixes. But it was kind of

(04:58):
anecdotal, and incidental,right, as we went along. And
their reading skills, even withthat little bit of instruction,
grew substantially. It wasreally exciting to see how they
could take off with just alittle bit of instruction. But
of course, these students werenot reading disabled. And, at
that time, I wanted to take aposition in Columbus at this

(05:21):
school. And the headmaster saidthat he would be happy to hire
me if I went to MassachusettsGeneral Hospital and took this
training, specifically to teachchildren who have dyslexia. And
so it was a year-long training.
So I did that. And that's whereI got my Orton-Gillingham
training, the start of it. AndI've done a lot of it since
then. But that's how I havethis joint expertise, both in

(05:42):
reading research and inteaching children and adults
who are struggling to read.

What I'd like to do is make a quick turn. But, I
think it's really important,and I think you have a point of
view about this, and have seenresearch develop over time. We
hear people say the termsettled science. I'm not sure
how I feel about the term,because I think it's another
one of those things that we canuse in helpful ways and ways

(06:14):
that maybe aren't helpful. Butwhen you think about the term
settled science, in the broadercontext of the Science of
Reading movement, why do youthink it's important that we
use that term? And how we usethat term? And how would you
define it? That's a lot ofquestions.

Jane Ashby (06:33):
But important questions. When I think of
settled science, I tend to goalong with the great Keith
Stanovich and his definition ofsettled science. He talks about
science, the scientific processbeing like a mosaic. That we
have a set of questions, thatwe answer. And once those

(06:55):
questions have been answered byseveral experiments, then we
set that piece of tile in themosaic. And we move to the next
tile, and then we investigatethat set of questions. And so,
settled science is all thetiles that have been laid down
already. Settled science hastwo criteria, at least. One is

(07:17):
that there's replication. So,similar findings have been
found again and again. And theother thing is convergence,
meaning that the findings fittogether. Whether you're
measuring brainwaves, orlooking at eye movements, or
measuring reaction times. Or,you can also have convergence
between different labs. So,sometimes for a long time

(07:39):
you'll see a research strandthat is just looked at by one
group of people, right. Andthat's OK, but it's not really
settled science until you haveconvergence from other labs
also finding the same thing.
And this is the self-checkingnature of scientific inquiry.
And that is surprisingly slow.

(08:04):
It is so slow. I mean, the timefrom asking a research question
to answering it in apublication is often two to
four years.

And that's just one study.

Jane Ashby (08:17):
And that's just one study. But the reason why this
is important is because wedon't want to make decisions
based on faulty assumptions.
That's how we got to this pointin the field. With a lot of
children not being taught howto read appropriately based on

(08:40):
faulty assumptions, not becauseanyone had ill will or
anything. Everybody wanted todo the right thing, but it was
based on faulty assumptionsthat existed because not enough
research had been done. So wehave a tension here between the
practitioner and theresearcher. Researchers get

(09:04):
money, attention, and promotionfor coming up with the next new
thing.

The next new question, yeah.

Jane Ashby (09:11):
The next new question. The next new area.
They are always trying toinnovate. Alright, and that's
very exciting. That's whatpulls us forward. However,
practitioners, you might have astudy that shows one thing, and
then you have another study thenext year that shows the

(09:32):
opposite. And that's theself-correcting nature of
science. And it isn't until youhave enough studies accumulated
that you can really see whatyou have and draw conclusions.
So the practitioner doesn'tnecessarily want to follow the
latest research, because youdon't know if the latest
research is going to replicateor not. Is it going to hold up

(09:55):
over time or not? If you'vealways followed the latest
research, you can find yourselfzigzagging a lot in your
practice, OK. Meanwhile, wehave a whole beautiful
sandcastle of 30 years ofgrains of sand in the Science

(10:16):
of Reading, very solidresearch, about the things that
we need to be doing. Both forTier 1 readers and for children
who are really going tostruggle, even if they get good
systematic instruction.

That's a really helpful explanation, because I
know we had this conversation.
Social media is a great thing.
It's brought practitioners andresearchers closer together.
However, it's really temptingfor a practitioner to grab the
latest and greatest, try toimplement that in their

(10:53):
classroom, and it may or maynot be the right direction in
which to go.

Jane Ashby (10:59):
Absolutely. And there is really no way to tell
until more research comes in.
And when I'm talking aboutresearch, I'm talking about
primary source, collectingdata. I'm not talking about
re-analyzing old studies indifferent ways. I mean, that's
its own contribution. But, toestablish something new, that

(11:22):
is promising. Just because itmakes sense doesn't mean that
it is necessarily correct. Sofor example, here's one, back
in the sixties, people saw abunch of kids who had all these
reading problems, and they alsohad all these other social
emotional issues. And theythought that reading problems

(11:44):
were caused by social emotionalissues. And it took a lot of
research, about 20 years ofresearch, into that core
phonological deficit toestablish that, guess what,
even though those two thingsconnected, that is not the
cause of the reading problem.
It is actually the result ofthe reading problem. So the

(12:05):
core phonological deficit isthe cause of many reading
problems. And the result ofthat a re the social e motional
difficulties.

That's a great example. And an example in your
world of phonology. So, youwould say that phonology, in
particular, is a really goodexample of a topic with solid
scientific basis that we couldcall settled science? Yes?

Jane Ashby (12:32):
Yes, I would. Not that there still isn't more
work to be done, in terms ofimplementing that settled
science, to create effectiveinstruction. Especially at the
classroom level. There is muchmore work to be done. But, in
terms of the concepts, what iscausing what, what types of

(12:55):
instruction are going to beeffective, all of this has been
established for decades now.

So to introduce this big picture, what is
phonology and how important isit in reading?

Jane Ashby (13:10):
Oh, I'm so glad you asked that ! Because a
lot of times people don't ask,what is phonology? It's a
little tricky. You're gonnahear me say that phonology is
the system, it's a sound systemof a language. That's what the
technical definition is. It'show all of the sounds, meaning
the single sounds, we say thephonemes, like in cat there are

(13:32):
three, but also the syllables,in syllable there are three
syllables, how the whole soundsystem in the language and how
it fits together and how thatis processed in the brain. So,
we go back to the fact thatlearning to read is acquired,

(13:54):
it is not natural. Children areborn with spoken language. And
spoken language is thatphonological and semantic,
those two systems, together. Sothose are the bedrock
linguistic processing systemsin the brain. If there's a
problem with the phonologicalsystem, it's gonna percolate

(14:19):
all the way up through learninghow to read, learning how to
spell, learning how to write,and even subtle problems that
aren't detected when a child isspeaking. Known words that are
familiar to them, for example.
Those will create problems.
Those problems can createissues as they learn how to

(14:39):
read. I think there was asecond part to that question,
but I've lost track of it now.

I maybe did too.
Oh, so what is phonology, andthen how is it important in
reading? I think you sort ofanswered both of them.

Jane Ashby (14:54):
I'd like to take one more pass, if I could.

Please do.

Jane Ashby (14:57):
So, phonology is the sound system. That's the
linguistics of the language. Itis important in reading for two
key reasons. One is that ithelps skilled readers get the
word off the page when they'rereading silently. Phonology and

(15:18):
orthography work together atthe front end of word
recognition, to get the word upoff the page.

Say that again.
Phonology and orthography ...

Jane Ashby (15:27):
Work together.
Those two systems work togetherto get the word up off the
page, and uploaded into themind of the reader THROUGH
working memory.

OK, ohh. Wow!

Jane Ashby (15:40):
So the way the word goes from the page into our
language systems is throughworking memory and,
specifically, THROUGH thephonological loop.

OK.

Jane Ashby (15:53):
So it means that the doorway to the linguistic
processing of text happensthrough phonology. So words,
even if they're recognized veryquickly, and it appears to be
instantaneous, skilled readersare processing both the sound

(16:14):
and the letters of the word.

So when we talk about ... I think I have a
misconception that's beingrevealed here. When we talk
about automatic wordrecognition, we're still
processing that through thephonological mechanism, we're
just doing it really, reallyfast?

Jane Ashby (16:35):
We are doing it really fast. Orthography and
phonology are working together,at the front end of word
recognition, in automatic wordrecognition. That's exactly
right. That's why I try to sayinstant words rather than sight
words.

Yeah. I love that.

Jane Ashby (16:53):
Because, for decades and decades, we've
talked about reading as beingvisual, and relying on visual
memorization, and all of this .
And it turns out, again,logically you would think it
works that way, but it doesnot. Because the doorway to the
language system is throughphonology. It's through the

(17:13):
abstract representations of thesounds that people have in
their head.

And I like using the word instant recognition,
or instant words, rather thansight words, because I don't
know if there's a flashcard,like the memories of
flashcards, to get to sightwords. Or there's the
misconception I think that I'vealways had, which is know the
more that you practice thesewords, they actually just

(17:40):
become sight words similar toif we would memorize 'em . And
that's not quite right. That'sa tiny bit of a misconception.
So, I think I'm gonna grab thatidea of instant words and start
using that instead of sightwords.

Jane Ashby (17:54):
Well, I would love that. Now, the other problem
with thinking that those turninto sight words is that it
does feed the thought that weleave decoding and phonics and
phonology behind, as we becomeskilled readers. And although
we are not decoding words,because decoding is

(18:15):
intentional, right? That's whenyou sound it out, sound by
sound . You are what we callrecoding words into their sound
form, all right, as a skilledreader. And then, the other
piece of it is, if you don'thave the ability to decode, you
can't expand your vocabularywith new words that you

(18:37):
encounter during silentreading. So, it's just so
important to understand howphonology affects decoding and
recoding. And really affectsreading all the way up through
the grades. Even at thepost-graduate level.

And I'm just going to reframe, slightly,
because I know about decoding,and I know about recoding, I've
heard those terms used. But,the way that you just explained
that makes so much more sense.
About what happens when we areinstantly recognizing words.

(19:14):
That recoding is a phonologicalprocess. And this just ... wow!
It's a big aha for me today.

Jane Ashby (19:25):
Excellent.

And here I am working on my dissertation in
reading science, and I just hada big aha about how word
recognition works.

Jane Ashby (19:34):
Isn't reading science such a huge area?

It's big, yeah.

Jane Ashby (19:37):
It is vast.

Yeah. There is a lot to learn. And so you said
something about decoding orrecoding This word recognition
is so critical. And it has animpact on how we grow our
vocabulary, or grow ourunderstanding of text. Can you
talk a little bit about that?
This is really how phonologyimpacts, then, the other side

(20:04):
of the rope, if we wanna callit that.

Jane Ashby (20:07):
Oh, yeah. I love that. That's such an exciting
topic. So, I like to approachthis from the perspective of
the self-teaching hypothesis. Iremember Share, Jorm and Share,
the self-teaching hypothesis.
And the idea there is asreaders encounter unfamiliar
words, and they sound them outaccurately, and they store

(20:30):
them, then they can connectthat sound form to the meaning.
And the next time theyencounter that word, it's
processed faster, and then thenext time they encounter that
word, until that word isprocessed instantly. So what is

(20:51):
exciting and unusual about thatis we often think about
familiar words being soimportant. The main words you
need to know in kindergarten.
The main words kids need toknow in first grade It turns
out, that's a symptom of beingable to read well. The key to
developing your reading mind isbeing able to feed it

(21:12):
unfamiliar words. Figure outthe pronunciation. Store that
unique pronunciation along withthe meaning. And then carry on
making meaning of what you'rereading. And so, it's just that
phonology is that first step.

(21:32):
So to store a vocabulary word,it's not enough to have the
meaning. You have to have theentry for it. And the entry for
it is the sound form of theword. You need the sound form
and you need the meaning. Andoftentimes people teach
vocabulary, and they focus alot on the meaning, and not so
much on the sound form. And,really, that's the initial

(21:55):
exposure. Because the firstpart to learning a new word is
just noticing it, right? Younotice it in print, or you
notice it in conversation, andthen you figure out the
meaning. So if a student has acore phonological processing
problem, and therefore theydon't decode well, they might

(22:16):
read the words consistent,content, and confident all as
the same word. And you see thisa lot in middle school. The
result of that is that they'renot detecting new vocabulary
words as they're reading. Andthat misreading is also

(22:40):
interfering with theircomprehension. It's actually
the mis-decoding of the wordthat is interfering with their
comprehension of the text thatthey're reading. So having
strong phonological processingis not only affecting
vocabulary, it's also having astrong impact on comprehension.
Because the root tocomprehension is paved with

(23:03):
words.

Yep , yep .

Jane Ashby (23:05):
And those words need to be translated into
sound.

Oh, that makes so much sense. What a great
explanation. And I thinksomewhere in there, for those
folks that are in the Scienceof Reading world just learning,
you were talking about theprocessing model, right? So the
Four-Part Processing Model, wasthat a little bit in your
explanation?

Jane Ashby (23:28):
Oh, let's connect it to the Four-Part Processing
Model. I understand why peopletalk about the Four-Part
Processing Model. The originalpart of that model was a
three-part model. The trianglemodel. That's the original
Seidenberg and McClellan model,and that's the one that I use.
So context does play a role.

(23:50):
But at the core of wordrecognition, we have
orthography, phonology, andmeaning. And all of those
processors are cooperating,They are working together, when
you look at any letter string,in order to get to that unique

(24:12):
word, the unique lexical entrythat you're seeing in front of
you. So it's the cooperation.
And if one of those pieces ismissing, the others are going
to jump in. Like theorthographic processor, with
the examples I gave you, issaying, "Well, it matches the
first syllable. It matches thelast syllable in terms of the

(24:32):
letters. So that's probablyit." And it isn't until you get
all the processors workingtogether that you're able to
process and store thoseunfamiliar words, so they can
be recognized more quickly inthe future.

That makes sense. So, I wanna make another
connection. This is likedefining literacy lingo with
Dr. Ashby . That's whatthis is turning into .
But, another thing this makesme think of. If phonology is
the entry point, and it's superimportant that we get this

(25:08):
right, that we're encounteringunique words, unfamiliar words,
to sort of develop our readingchops, if you will, there's a
connection here to MatthewEffects, right?

Jane Ashby (25:22):
There is a connection there to Matthew
Effects.

Can you help us understand that connection to
the Matthew Effects, which,very broadly, is the idea that
advantaged readers will improveat a faster rate. So the gap
between slower-developingreaders and faster-developing
readers actually grows overtime.

Jane Ashby (25:43):
OK, and you have like four hours, right?

Um, we do , but you can do it in
two to three minutes .

Jane Ashby (25:50):
I could do it in two to three minutes < laugh>.
OK. Matthew Effects . That'shuge, because Matthew Effects
are a large set of things. Butlet's just talk about some ways
that having problems processingphonology could lead to Matthew
Effects. One way is if youcontinue ... most students at

(26:14):
some point are slow and laboredat decoding. And reading takes
a lot of effort for them. Andit's agonizing to listen to.
And it's important to rememberthis is part of their process.
And they need to go throughthat. And accuracy matters at
that point, more than speed.
But then, eventually, you seethem transition out of that.

(26:36):
Where their reading becomesmore prosodic. And you get the
sense that they'reunderstanding more of what they
read, because they're notspending as much time and
energy recognizing the words.
And when that happens, thenthey're reading faster. Reading
faster is the end point, it isthe result of being able to
decode more smoothly andrecognize more words instantly.

(26:59):
So when they're reading faster,if they read for 15 minutes,
they're gonna read more textthan a child who is continuing
to struggle with decoding,who's reading slower. They're
just not going to encounter asmany words. The child who's
reading slower. So that's oneway that Matthew Effects play
out, which is a huge differencein text exposure. Over time.

(27:25):
And that's why there's thisemphasis on fluency. Developing
accuracy first and thengradually becoming faster as
you learn how to process text,and decode words, and recognize
words instantly. And all thosesystems come together. Another
way that it happens, and thisis important, especially for

(27:46):
students who seem to be readingwell early on, lots of students
in kindergarten and first gradeand even second grade seem to
have a huge instant wordvocabulary, But if you put a
three letter non-word in frontof them, they don't know what
it is. Those are students whoare orthographically very

(28:07):
strong. So if you tell themwhat a word is, how to
pronounce it, they willremember what it looks like and
how it's spelled. And they justmemorize it. But they don't
have any skills to read newwords that they encounter. And
this is really the foundationof what it means to be a

(28:30):
reader, is to be able to pickup any book, not a book you've
read before, any book, and readthe text confidently and
understand its meaning. Inorder to do that, you have to
be able to read unfamiliarwords. So if you don't have
those decoding skills, and youread confident, consistent, and

(28:54):
content all as the same word,your vocabulary is not
expanding as you read. And I'msure teachers have heard this
before, seen this before, thisis going to be familiar to
them, that students who read atthat fifth or sixth or seventh
grade level, and they read sortof performatively, like their

(29:15):
voice is kind of dead, andthey're kind of like getting
the words out, but there's nophrasing. There's no
intonation. They've kind oflost the purpose of it. It
isn't meaningful to them as anactivity anymore. And part of
that is all the effort that isinvolved. And the other part of
it is, if you're misreadingwords, it doesn't make any

(29:36):
sense. They're just a bunch ofwords in a string. Because they
don't fit together. And thinkhow frustrating that must be
for students. So, those are acouple of ways that problems
with phonological processingcan lead to problems with
decoding, can lead to MatthewEffects.

OK. Well, we've come all the way through this
sort of development cycle withthis phonology. I wanna pause
for just a minute, because wehave a question from a
listener, our listener mailbag,that I would love to read to
you. And this one comes fromGail S. She is a coach and

(30:18):
specialist in Oregon who hasnoticed that working on
phonemic awareness inisolation, some students aren't
transferring their skills to areading and writing task. And
she mentions having toexplicitly teach a student how
to use segmenting skills tospell words. And so, that's the

(30:38):
context. Here's the question.
How do you suggest teachersteach students to transfer oral
segmenting and blending toreading and writing tasks?

Jane Ashby (30:47):
Oh, I love this question. It's so well thought
out.

It's big too, isn't it?

Jane Ashby (30:51):
It's huge. It's huge, and timely, right? Very
timely. This is somethingthat's on people's minds. And
so, now I am speaking from mypractitioner view. From my
experience working with kids,and I'll have to answer the
question in two ways, One ifthe child is younger, like a

(31:12):
four- or five-year-old, andanother one if they're older
and still struggling with this,like if they're eight or nine,
OK. So let's say with the four-or five-year-old ... so she
doesn't specify how she'steaching segmenting. Some
teachers use fingers to teachsegmenting. And others use
chips or tokens. All right . Iwould say if you're using

(31:38):
fingers, and you're trying toconnect the sounds to the
letters, ultimately, is whatyou want to teach the kid, this
is all part of the same system,then transfer to tokens first.
Blanks. So that they have avisual representation. So when
they're marking out the wordfrog, they have four tokens

(31:59):
that are down. All right . Andthen, you could have them do
another word, let's say theword is clap, and they repeat
it, they segment it, and thenthey blend it back together.
And now they're just looking atthe blank tokens, right? And
then you say, "Oh, look, I'vegot ..." start with an easy

(32:20):
one, "I've got an A." And thatcould go right here. You move
the token out of the way. Youput the A in there, and then
you say, "So what is the word?"And they're like, "Clap." And
you have them go through andgive the sounds again. So
that's one way that you coulddo it for a little kid. And I

(32:41):
would do it with just oneletter per item. So this is how
Benita Blachman did it in herresearch. I call it using a
sprinkling of letters. Sprinklesome letters in . So here's a
P. Where would that go? That'sthe next step is have the
student identify where wouldthat go? Which token would that

(33:01):
stand in for? You're keeping itreally low level. And you're
continuing to give them oralactivities. That's what all the
research did. And you'reoccasionally doing some where
they put in a letter. So that'sfor a younger student. I'll
just finish that up with onemore level. And then now you

(33:24):
have three letters off to theside, and the word is spot. And
the letters you have off to theside, you have an S, you have
an R, and you have an N. Sothey mark out the word spot,
they give you the four sounds,and then you say, "So here are
some letters. Which of theseletters would go in that word?"

Oh, OK. Got it.

Jane Ashby (33:49):
And then they put it in there. So that's for the
younger student. And then whenthey can do that confidently,
and they know the lettersounds, then you can increase
the number of letters that arethere that you're using. Now,

(34:11):
for an older student, this isvery tricky, because for older
students, one of the reasonswhy you're teaching phonemic
awareness is because they'renot learning. They've stopped
learning phonics, or learningphonics is really, really hard
for them. It's really hard tolearn the letter-sound
correspondences. And so forthat student, I find that using

(34:32):
letters is just a roadblock inphonemic awareness, because
they don't know the lettersounds . So, literally, for
every item you have to makesure that they know the letters
and their sounds that are inevery one of those words that
you use. Makes it verycomplicated to teach that way.
So what I would do is I'd tryto make the connection through
spelling. So, if I had themusing tokens during the

(34:57):
phonemic awareness task, Iwould have them use the same
tokens during spelling. Wedictate the word. They mark it
out. Get the sounds. And thenthey write the letters. And
that's how they know that eachone of those tokens stands for
not only a sound, but also aletter.

Interesting.
Now, I know that you havewritten, along with some
others, a guide for educatorscalled "Teaching Phonemic
Awareness." You have a new one,"Teaching Phonemic Awareness in
2024," an updated version withsome of this kind of guidance
in that guide for educators.

Jane Ashby (35:37):
It is indeed. So this guide for educators we
made as a supplement. Whateverphonemic awareness program
you're using, there's things inthere to provide guidance. For
teaching phonemic awareness tomultilingual students. There's
a whole section in there aboutconnecting sounds and letters.

(35:58):
There's a lot of nice tips inthere. And what we did in this
version was we took theteaching routines and we
brought them up front . Sothey're in the second part of
the guide. So the guide is like20+ pages, but it's not really
designed to be read from frontto back. You just look at the
table of contents, figure outwhat your question is, go to

(36:20):
that section, and get theinformation that you want.

Well, the nice thing is that if you did wanna
read it front to back , I havethe PDF open right now, it's 31
pages, but I'm sure thatincludes the cover page, the
end page, and all that.

Jane Ashby (36:34):
The references.

Yeah. It's a nice short guide. Thank you for
putting it together, and to thecolleagues that helped you with
it, because I think right now,this is just my sense, my sense
is there's a lot ofmisconceptions when we are
talking about phonemicawareness, and the foundational
elements, the phonology system.

(36:58):
I think this is just reallyhelpful for educators, to give
them a better sense andgrounding in what we really
mean.

Jane Ashby (37:05):
That is a really good point. And that was the
intent of the guide. And toachieve that, we had several
educators read each version ofthe guide and provide us with
feedback. So we tried to keepout the jargon. Tried to keep
things very clear. You know howsometimes, as researchers, we
can get all tangled up in thefancy terms? So we tried not to

(37:28):
do that .

I won't make the side note that my favorite Jane
Ashby comment is, in mydissertation proposal was, can
you use any more jargon?

Jane Ashby (37:40):
Right?!

It's true though.

Jane Ashby (37:44):
How do you think I know that ?

Oh man. Well, thank you Gail , for the
question. It was a great one.
It made some connections. Ithink as we start to close out,
what is your big picturethoughts on the kind of
research that should influenceteacher practice? Focusing on
the settled science versus arecent study. How can we be

(38:12):
sure, as practitioners, thatwhat we're doing is basing our
decisions on the right kind ofresearch?

Jane Ashby (38:19):
The short answer is if you're basing your decisions
on the right kind of research,you will see growth in your
students that is measurable. Isit working? And I don't think
educators are encouraged to putenough emphasis on that. You
need to see measurable growth.
And that's how you knowsomething is working for a

(38:42):
student. Sometimes that can behard, because sometimes we
think we see change, but then,when we go to measure it, it's
not there. So that's one piece.
I think one of the reasons whyI left my research career
behind when I made this recenttransition to Mount St . Joseph

(39:02):
University is because I feellike there's a good 10-20 years
of solid work that needs to bedone just implementing what we
already know from research.
What is already the settledscience. Teaching phonics is
not difficult, but it is alsonot obvious, and it is also not

(39:25):
easy. Learning how to do thateffectively in fun and
meaningful ways for kids, withhigh enough response rates, and
high enough engagement to makethem excited about these new
skills that they're acquiring.
We still need to develop that.
I strongly feel that teacherscould focus their attention on

(39:51):
the settled science of the fivepillars, and really focusing on
that. Other things arecertainly important. And one
thing that comes to mind, ofcourse, is morphology. That is
certainly important. But wedon't quite yet know how, when,
for whom, how often. And sofocusing on those five pillars,

(40:17):
focusing on developing thatability to be a confident
reader of any word early on, inthe early grades, that's like
the second greatest gift youcan give a kid. The greatest
gift you can give a kid isletting them know that you see
that they're special, and thatthey have something unique that
they bring to the world. Butthe second piece is really can

(40:41):
you help them become aconfident independent reader ?

That's great.
Great advice. What about anyfinal thoughts?

Jane Ashby (40:50):
Well, just to follow up on that, I think that
teachers who have come into theScience of Reading, and maybe
are just getting started,oftentimes there are feelings
of guilt for things that youdid not know, and you didn't
do, and kids that you didn'thelp in terms of reading. And I

(41:15):
think it's always important toremember that that educator's
role is really twofold. It'salso to psychologically care
for our children, and be kind,and to be encouraging. So maybe
you didn't do 100% for thosekids, but you did the best that
you could, and you played areally, really important role

(41:37):
in their lives, which isencouraging them to achieve and
explore what they want. Andthat's just so important.

Well, Dr. Jane Ashby, thank you for your
wisdom and all the greatdefinitions you provided us
with. We are certainly happythat you were willing to be a
guest on today's episode. Thankyou so much.

Jane Ashby (42:01):
Thank you, Susan. I really enjoyed talking with
you.

That was Dr.
Jane Ashby, professor in theReading Science Program at
Mount St . Joseph University.
For so much more on phonemicawareness, do yourself a favor
and check out the guide foreducators that she co-authored,
Teaching Phonemic Awareness in2024." We'll have a link to
that and other resources in theshow notes. Also, we did

(42:30):
something a little differentthis time. We recorded some
bonus content with Dr. Ashby.
If you'd like to hear more fromDr. Ashby on Orton-Gillingham
eye tracking research and more,you can find a link to this
special bonus content right inthe show notes. Next up in our
reading reboot, I have thegreat honor of speaking with

(42:52):
Dr. Judith Hochman, founder ofthe nonprofit, The Writing
Revolution.

Judith Hochman (42:57):
This is not learned by osmosis, and it's
not learned by vague feedback,like make it better or add more
details. You've got to be verygranular. This is not a
naturally occurring skill inhuman development.

That's coming up next time. And on the latest
episode of the Beyond My Yearspodcast, host Ana Torres goes
deep with Kareem Weaver abouthis life as a literacy
champion. And he'll explain whyearly career teachers should
prioritize being ready to teachreading.

Kareem Weaver (43:32):
You have to make that your number one priority,
because when you do, yourexperience as a teacher changes
fundamentally. Your peace ofmind, how you show up as a
teacher, your level of stress,your enjoyment of your
day-to-day, and youreffectiveness.

That's available now in the Beyond My Years
podcast feed. Remember tosubscribe to Science of

Reading (43:54):
The Podcast on the podcast app of your choice, and
share it with your friends andcolleagues. Science of Reading:
The Podcast is brought to youby Amplify. I'm Susan Lambert.
Thank you so much forlistening.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}S9 E10: Phonology as a settled science, with Jane Ashby, Ph.D.