Maryanne Wolf Knows Her Proust and Her P.O.S.S.U.M.

Multicomponent instruction means making room for ALL the components of literacy--taught at the right time in the best way. It provides the bridge between Balanced Literacy and Structured Literacy.

“Possum“ by Yarra Plenty Regional Library Local History

I have lived my life in the service of words: finding where they hide in the convoluted recesses of the brain, studying their layers of meaning and form, and teaching their secrets to the young.

Maryanne Wolf, Proust and the Squid

That Was Then: The Big Five

I discovered Maryanne Wolf’s book Proust and the Squid through a recommendation from one of the professors in my reading specialist credential program. It confirmed the importance of code-based beginning reading instruction emphasized in the books by cognitive psychologist Diane McGuinness, which I had discovered shortly before entering my credential program. Wolf reminds us:

Three concepts are critical and emerge over this early period:

(1) that words represent things and thoughts

(2) that words are made up of individual sounds

(3) that these sounds are represented by letters, which when written together make words

But it also explained how we develop this code knowledge as a necessary precursor to knowing what Proust knew:

Reading is that fertile miracle of a communication in the midst of solitude.

In a recently published paper, Elbow Room: How the Reading Brain Informs the Teaching of Reading, Wolf takes her keen understanding of the reading process and connects research to practice, the translation we desperately need that is so often missing from our preservice programs and PD sessions. First, she describes the reading circuit:

I’ll begin as Emily Dickinson might have responded, had she been a neuroscientist instead of a poet: “Tell all the truth, but tell it slant; Success in Circuit lies.” In this paper, the circuit refers to the brain’s circuit for reading . . . The ‘slanted truth’ is that, unlike oral language, there is no genetic program for written language to unfold naturally in the child. Reading is not natural at all. Rather, it is an invention that the brain learns due to a wonderful design principle, which allows the developing brain to form new connections among its original, genetically programmed processes like language, cognition, and vision. In other words, when a child learns to read, the brain learns how to connect the multiple processes that contribute to a new circuit for written language.

It is one of the too little-sung miracles that young human beings can build a brand new circuit for reading that will elaborate itself over time with everything the readers read.

What is notable in this paper is how methodically and meticulously Wolf connects literacy components in order to rise above the war-ravaged reading camps which we have been entrenched in over several decades. She reveals how each camp can bring its particular strength to the discussion, allowing multicomponent instruction to prevail. From the Albert Shaker Institute’s introduction to the report:

Elbow Room is an invitation to move beyond false binaries in literacy debates and to see reading development as dynamic, requiring multiple emphases and areas of expertise in our teachers. The key for educators is knowing what to prioritize — when, and for how long — based on each learner’s strengths and needs . . . Wolf honors what educators already know, while inviting them to keep expanding that knowledge.

Therefore, please don’t read Wolf’s paper looking to find your particular thing that you prioritize in reading instruction, whether it be meaning-making at the expense of establishing foundational skills, or extensive phonics instruction without application to text, or knowledge-building that crowds out literature. Wolf states:

The key for a teacher’s ability to teach the majority of our nation’s children is a systematic expansion of knowledge about all the processes involved in decoding and comprehension, while never cherry-picking a few of the processes based on the teacher’s original method of teaching.

In my own 127-page instructional guide to reading, I use some version of the word integrate over a 100 times, which reflects my devotion to multicomponent instruction. However, once we democratize these literacy components, we also need to recognize that there is a time and place for promotion and practice of certain skills independently, instruction that evolves as children move through the grades. But like a close-knit family, the other literacy members are never far away and continue to act in supporting roles.

This point is central to the elegant elbow metaphor Wolf uses where she illustrates how the foundational skills forearm initially rests on the comprehension processes forearm to emphasize how the former has an active role in beginning reading instruction while relying on comprehension for support. Then, as the foundation is laid, this forearm slowly rises, allowing the supporting role of comprehension to switch places and assume an active role while the foundational skills arm acts as support. Wolf explains:

This is the visual depiction of the changing dynamic between the early emphases on the expanded foundational skills and fluency (left arm) and the gradually increasing emphases on more sophisticated comprehension processes (right arm). It is a visual mnemonic for the way the skills and processes change their emphases over time while always leaving room for the other to develop with the increasing demands of text content.

Moreover, rather than emphasize the National Reading Panel’s Big 5 (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension), both Wolf’s paper and my instructional guide reflect more elemental factors. My six chapter titles—Making Sense of Words We Hear, Say, See, Understand, Remember, Analyze—incorporate the components Wolf discusses under her acronym POSSUM (phonology, orthography, semantics, syntax, understanding, morphology). She writes:

Our understanding of foundational skills has changed over time from the more traditional view that was articulated by the National Reading Panel two decades ago . . . In a more expanded view, each of these areas is broadened, deepened, made more specific and more inclusive of spoken language processes.

This Is Now: Make Room for the Marsupial

It is this new understanding of foundational skills that Wolf emphasizes, illuminating the interconnectedness of reading and its implications for instruction. It reminds me of the seven blind mice in Ed Young’s book—how we’ve been touching different parts of the elephant, siloing reading skills without recognizing their contribution to the whole literacy animal. Here is her goal:

I hope to illumine how the developing circuit includes the major emphases in the seemingly divergent approaches: specifically, the critical role of foundational skills (as seen in systematic, structured literacy approaches) and the critical role of word- and text-level knowledge (as seen in balanced-literacy and whole-language approaches).

P.O.S.S.U.M.

P. Phonology, Phoneme Awareness, Prosody, Pragmatics

O. Orthographic Patterns

S. Semantics

S. Syntax

U. Understanding the alphabetic principle and meanings within text

M. Morphology

Wolf explains how an outsized emphasis on either code-based or meaning-based instruction can diminish the development of skilled reading by crowding out important literacy components. The balance emphasized in the National Reading Panel (NRP) report never quite saw the light of our classrooms where insufficient training—or in some cases, sheer intractability—kept us off-balance. From the NRP:

Teachers must understand that systematic phonics instruction is only one component—albeit a necessary component—of a total reading program; systematic phonics instruction should be integrated with other reading instruction in phonemic awareness, fluency, and comprehension strategies to create a complete reading program . . . It will also be critical to determine objectively the ways in which systematic phonics instruction can be optimally incorporated and integrated in complete and balanced programs of reading instruction.

Wolf expands upon this concern:

Most phonics instruction does not give sufficiently explicit attention to connecting decoding processes to the various semantic, syntactic, and morphological aspects of word knowledge, all of which contribute to fluency at both the word and connected text levels. Further, there is often insufficient attention to immediately applying fluent decoding skills to stories and connected text – an area where balanced literacy and whole-language trained teachers excel. The skills of these teachers should never go unutilized.

From Word to World: The Code and the Context

In the recent webinar, The Science of Reading in Real Life, Sharon Vaughn (Executive Director of The Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk at The University of Texas at Austin) explains the interconnectedness of literacy components as spanning word to world. Like Maryanne Wolf, Sharon Vaughn is rejecting the dichotomy that has polarized our discussion related to the reading wars, which—like so many other aspects of life—cannot be conveniently colored black or white. Can we let the Goldilocks Effect guide our teaching instead of being bound by binary thinking or bullied into stating our support for one reading camp or another? Here is Wolf’s rationale for multicomponent instruction:

Why we teach the code:

As demonstrated in decades of research, this developmental process is jump-started through approaches that emphasize the direct teaching of the connections between the visual representations of letters and the phoneme-based representations of the sounds of their language. Phonics-based approaches revolve around building up these connections.

Why we teach the context:

The upshot, therefore, is the need to connect explicit knowledge about decoding principles to explicit knowledge about the meanings of words (and their multiple meanings in different contexts—polysemy); how they are used grammatically; how morphemes change their meaning and use; and how they all work together in connected text and literature.

The decodable books—many in mint condition—that I send home for my students to read to a print partner are from the Reading First era two decades ago that followed the NRP recommendations. These books contain high-interest stories with varying degrees of decodability, so I’m very glad I salvaged them when we shifted to a new ELA program ten years later. Then—when we shifted yet again, I asked the district’s warehouse to send me all their boxes of unused books. This means I have access to three different series to give my students plenty of opportunities to interact with both fiction and nonfiction text.

One series in particular has excellent informational pieces, which supports knowledge-building in my second-grade intervention sessions so that my phonics instruction targets decoding impediments related to reading multisyllabic words within the context of disciplinary content. The decodable books my district adopted ten years ago to align with the Common Core State Standards have made this possible with accessible (albeit challenging) informational text interspersed with more easily decoded stories. Here are the topics I can choose from—disconnected, sadly—but supporting knowledge-building nevertheless.

Native Americans, U.S. geography, natural resources, Civil War, laws, U.S. landmarks, money, fossils, planets, gravity, rocks and minerals, inventions, communication, sound, farm tools, extreme weather, energy, matter, penguins, animal habitats, germs, libraries

I mention this resource because my lessons revolve around books of various types to meet my instructional goals. I am convinced that this context is crucial for my students’ engagement as well as their reading development. Depending on my grade-level goals and the skill levels of my students, my routines look like this:

• Dictation of word chains (shifting by just one phoneme to reflect minimal contrast) formed from the words in the decodable story to be read, thus integrating phonemic awareness with orthographic patterns as well as semantics.

• Application of phoneme-grapheme connections through invented spelling during independent writing.

• Integration of phonology, orthography, morphology, and semantics in all word-learning activities to promote orthographic mapping and facilitate automatic word recognition, beginning with monomorphemic words for emergent readers and progressing as quickly as possible to multimorphemic words.

• Coordination of semantic maps to integrate vocabulary with knowledge-building in order to facilitate a deep understanding of text.

• Implementation of partner reading of both decodable and grade-level text to practice orthographic patterns taught and promote fluency with complex vocabulary and syntax in order to facilitate comprehension.

• Utilization of paragraph shrinking for multi-paragraph text, which involves being able to decode the words, understand the words, and analyze the syntax of individual sentences—as well as the relationship between sentences—to unlock the structure and meaning of the paragraphs.

The best part of multicomponent instruction for the time-strapped teacher is that it is not only effective but also efficient, and this efficiency allows students more time to engage in wide reading. I have seen silent phonics lessons (an oxymoron) involving filling in worksheets with various spelling patterns where the words were not voiced; and I have also seen vocabulary taught with reference only to orthography and semantics —ignoring the phonology of the words— which is necessary for orthographic mapping. Integrating phonology with phonics—and both with vocabulary instruction—facilitates automatic word recognition and frees up time for reading connected text.

Maryanne Wolf asks us to think of these processes that underlie comprehension like an orchestra playing a symphony. She notes that the various processes are like different instruments coming in and out to interact with each other to contribute to the whole.

I appreciate a similarly evocative description of multicomponent instruction from Jan Wasowicz (The Language Literacy Network), who also compares reading instruction to conducting an orchestra. In a recent post on the SPELLTalk listserv, she writes:

Multicomponent literacy instruction and instructional simultaneity does not mean ‘everything, everywhere all at once.’ It’s more like preparing an orchestra: at first, instruction works with a smaller section of instruments (e.g., phonology, orthography, and meaning to read and spell words), while other sections (e.g., morphology, syntax, and higher-order language skills) are being tuned separately. As students gain proficiency, more instruments are added until eventually the full ensemble is ready to perform together in harmony.

And to complete this analogy to an orchestra, the image is also reflected in the introduction to the paper:

At different points in development, one emphasis may carry the melody while the other plays harmony, yet neither is ever absent from instruction.

The Peaceniks Forge a Path Forward

For over half a century a divisive, Hydra-headed type of debate over the teaching of reading continues to divide our nation’s educators.

Maryanne Wolf

Jan Wasowicz and Maryanne Wolf are members of a group called The Peaceniks. In an article about speech-to-print vs. print to speech, they are described as a group of researchers and practitioners who are looking to end the divisiveness of the ‘reading wars’ — and help children learn to read and write with competence and pleasure.

Maryanne Wolf’s paper is the closest thing to a peace treaty I’ve come across to end these wars. At the very least, she provides a convincing rationale for declaring a ceasefire and putting all of our energy toward a truce. We now have enough evidence supporting the importance of laying a solid foundation in code-knowledge in order for our students to unlock the meaning of text, so an emphasis on the importance of phonics instruction has not been displaced by her proposal, merely given its proper place within the entire spectrum of the reading experience.

We know that we must not give foundational skill development any more time than it requires (get in, get out—move on—as Mark Seidenberg advises), and we must never sideline the importance of any literacy component. The foundational skills and comprehension processes inherent in reading instruction exhibit active coordination, not competition.

The teacher, like a good coach, understands the synergistic roles of reading components and sends the right unit out at the right time to achieve the team’s ultimate goal: helping students finish in the win column.

Can we put down our old reading glasses and pick up a new pair that is neither rose-colored nor reductionist? As Esther Quintero from the Albert Shanker Institute—who shared this impactful paper with me along with her own valuable insights (for which I am very grateful)—summarizes:

I think understanding Elbow Room requires easing some of the mindsets and language we usually bring to conversations about reading. It’s not about throwing out what’s established, but about freeing that knowledge from the straitjackets that have formed around it. The paper feels like an invitation to think with more flexibility — to let connections, rather than divisions, come into view. It feels like a fresh start.

Here’s to a fresh start to teaching reading!

Phonemes need letters. Phonics needs semantics, syntax, and morpheme knowledge. Words need stories. The reading brain connects all of these processes, and so should our teaching.

Maryanne Wolf

Always striving to make sense—please let me know when I fail.