Image shows little girl with frustrated expression with an open book in front of her and stacks of books around her.

What SOR Advocates Tell Us Good Readers Do That’s Completely Wrong

I’m a balanced literacy teacher.  I have been for my entire 20+ years in the field.  But I’m also a constant learner, so I’ve been sitting up to  listen to the Science of Reading (SOR) arguments for several years now, and I whole-heartedly agree with a good portion of what they say good readers do.  We absolutely  SHOULD be teaching kids to look at the print and not the pictures to decode words.  All of the print; not just the beginning letter or two. 

Of course.   

But there’s more to being a good reader than just decoding.  In fact, there’s much more to the true definition of “Science of Reading” altogether than popular social media will have us believe.

A recent article published in the prestigious journal Reading Research Quarterly talks about this, and I encourage you to read it. Among the many years of studies discussed in the article, the authors share 25 years of interesting findings by researchers Scanlon and Anderson. They found that “using  both  phonics-  and  context-based  information  facilitates  the  ability  to  build  sight  vocabulary, which in turn enables readers to turn their attention to the most important goal of literacy learning: meaning construction.”

What this means for us:

What this means is that to teach our kids to be good readers, we also have to teach them how to monitor as they decode so that it always makes sense.  And that’s where that M, from MSV, comes into play.  It’s a cross-checking tool for meaning.  A critical one.  Right there along with it is that other shunned cue, the S (syntax).  If something isn’t grammatically in agreement with what was just read, readers need to be thinking, “hmmm, that doesn’t sound right.”  (I’m talking about English speakers here.  Non-English speakers, of course, would not be able to rely on M or S–they need V more than anything else).  

Hopefully, upon confusion, a reader would be prompted to reread to try the word with a different pronunciation (especially true with homophones), or reread to confirm that it makes sense.  Or, realize they’ve just learned a new word, and they’ve already attached meaning to it.  I’m an extremely proficient reader, and I do all three of these things all the time.  We all do. 

While decoding words is of course critical, no reader can rely on visual cues alone.

Children will inevitably come across new words that they can decode but don’t know the meaning of, because a good deal of meaning is in fact based on context.  Or they’ll come across words that are just tricky and can’t yet decode, but know the meaning of (as in: A stop sign is red). 

The goal of all reading is to make sense of the text–something SOR advocates also fundamentally believe in. And this means that readers must be taught that “self-extending system” that Marie Clay, Reading Recovery creator, pushed for.  In other words, readers need to be able to cross-check for sense on their own.  We want them to read for meaning, independently.  We want them to do what good readers do: cross-check that it sounds right and make sense.

But SOR advocates are telling us that MSV is wrong.  

In fact, this is a very recent direct quote from a member of a popular SOR Facebook group:  “reading science is clear that POOR readers use MSV cues. Good readers don’t rely on meaning or semantics to read.

They say that the three cues have been “proven by science to be ineffective.”  

Again, I must point out the extensive research explained in Reading Research Quarterly.    And ask these advocates to think for a minute about what they themselves do as readers.

And this is where I have to shake my head.  MSV is not synonymous with the misguided and ineffective prompts “check the picture” or “think what makes sense” in order to guess an unknown word.  It’s also not even remotely the definition of “balanced literacy,” which I’m hearing again and again from SOR folks.  Just like the very confused teacher in that Facebook group, I hear all the time that “three cueing is balanced literacy.”  

Ummmm.  No.  “Three cueing” is not the definition of balanced literacy. Not even close.

Meaning, structure, and visual cues are cues that all readers must use in order to read for accuracy and for sense. 

By analyzing a running record, which is actually a very important tool for helping us understand control of phonics principles as well as fluency, we get a good sense of what a reader is over-using and what they’re underusing.  That’s the point of it, and it always was.  It’s a teacher tool, used to help developing readers use all three cues…visual, meaning, and syntax.  

Did you know that the order of those letters, M, S, and then V, is merely an alphabetical listing?  Food for thought, right?

None of the three cues was ever meant to supersede another. 

They are 3 legs on a stool.  Take one away, and it falls.  Here’s an example.  Let’s say a child comes to this sentence:

The winding path was covered with leaves from the wind.

If the child uses only phonics, they might say “winding” with a short /i/ sound.  If we ban the use of MSV, as many SOR advocates are telling us to do, then the child would just go on, never checking for sense.  

Which would be utterly ridiculous.  

Imagine how often a scenario like this will come up for a child.  A LOT.  

However…

Somewhere along the way, that M has become the holy grail.  Somewhere along the way, teachers have learned to prompt children to FIRST (somehow) make meaning, and use visual cues last.  I know teachers today who believe that if a child says “home” for “house,” as in: The house across the street is old,” that it’s totally ok, and would not go on to prompt for more visual cues. These teachers say that it ok because “they’re making meaning.”  I’ve heard this refrain many, many times, and it, too, makes me shake my head.

This thinking does not follow logic, and will not lead to helping our students become good readers, yet I know teachers steadfastly believe this to be true.  They call it “using meaning to feed forward” what the word is.  In other words….guess.   

Which is also utterly ridiculous, and, in large part, has led us to the issues the reading fight we’re seeing again today is centered on.   

The letters on the page are the most reliable cue the child has. 

Why would we not teach them to use their phonics skills to decode?  So yes, “check the picture” is a terrible decoding strategy.  It’s in fact not a decoding strategy at all.  It’s a meaning-making and meaning-checking tool.  

I realize this leads us right to needing to discuss leveled vs decodable texts, but that’s a post for another day.  

So where do we go with MSV?

If you have not yet read Shifting the Balance  by Jan Burkins and Kari Yates or taken their online course, I urge you to do so.  My favorite chapter  is chapter 5, where they discuss exactly this.  They encourage teachers to shift their thinking from what so many are currently using:  Msv, to shift the model to:  V→ms.  See how visual cues are first, rather than last?  And most important, rather than minor?  And see how the others are lesser, and that they come after V?  They occur as a result of V?  That’s because they are cross-checking cues.  Still very important, but they do not trump using the letters in the word, which is where so many teachers went wrong with the model.  

Why did so many go so wrong?  And why do so many continue it? 

I’m not sure.  Many teachers never had a strong phonics background in their college prep courses.  I’m beyond grateful that I was one of the lucky ones who had extensive phonics instruction, so it was always a big part of my practice (thank you, University of Wisconsin!).  I also know that well-respected experts in the field, like Irene Fountas, Gay Su Pinnell, and Marie Clay actually drove home the practice that M comes first, and “V” comes last.  I know this because I have had a ton of training from Fountas and Pinnell’s work, and their it stands on the shoulders of Marie Clay.

But with everything that comes along, we have to synthesize it.  We have to filter it through our own understanding, knowledge, and experience and bring our own expertise to the table.  We cannot ever “throw the baby out with the bathwater.”  So while yes, I did learn from Fountas and Pinnell that “M” comes first, I didn’t buy it.  (Just like I also don’t love what they teach about picture walks or book introductions, and I never have).  As someone who has studied literacy for more than 25 years and taught it for almost the same amount of time, I can say that I’ve learned a thing or two about literacy instruction. So I can accept some things full-on, and some with a grain of salt.

Logic says that “V” must come first, closely followed by “M” and “S.” Otherwise, yeah…you’re just guessing.  

How do we fix it? 

Let’s take what Burkins and Yates are helping us all to understand.  Let’s take those three very critical cues, M, S, and V, and shift them.  Instead, let’s think of it–and teach them–as V→ms.  

But for goodness sake.  Let’s not throw the three cues out entirely.  We cannot let the  pendulum swing so far the other way that we’re teaching readers to NOT cross-check for sense.  Good readers always cross-check for sense. So let’s recenter the pendulum so that we are teaching readers what’s right….to use the visual cues first, and constantly and quickly cross-check for sense, both in meaning and grammar.  Let’s help our students learn to to this on the run, independently.

M, S, and V are all still very critical reading cues.  Let’s not teach our readers that ONLY visual information matters.  Meaning matters.  And it’s derived from the print.  That’s what good readers do.


Want some help understanding whether your students are using the three cues effectively?  Or guidance on how you can better use the three-cueing system to strategically help your readers?  Contact me to set up a coaching call, so we can think it through together!   And,  join my private FB group for immediate support from like-minded educators!


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Related posts:  MSV Explained and Why It’s So Misunderstood, Getting to Know Your Readers and Writers to Save Time Later, To Level or Not to Level?, Getting the Most From Reading Assessments, Kids are Readers, Not Letters 

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