Using Speech-to-Print to Boost Students’ Reading Skills

As educators, we’re tasked with not just teaching students, but also making sure that they learn. As an interventionist, I support a wide range of students of varying abilities. Some students have specific skill deficits, while others have rather large gaps in their knowledge and understanding. When I first shifted to structured literacy practices, I implemented a print-to-speech approach simply because that’s what was introduced to me, but as I worked through many structured literacy lessons, I’ve encountered a wide array of student deficits.

One in particular that stands out is the size of grade-level gaps that older struggling readers (in grades three through 12) have. I began researching to find out if there were other approaches that could potentially close the gap at a quicker rate for these students. That was when I learned about a speech-to-print approach.

How Cognitive Science Underpins the Speech-to-Print Approach

A speech-to-print approach begins by connecting spoken sounds (phonemes) to their corresponding letters (graphemes), building from sound to written representations of that sound, and a print-to-speech approach starts with the written letters and follows with what sounds those letters make. While both approaches have research to support their success, I’ve found that learning a speech-to-print approach such as Evidence-Based Literacy Instruction (EBLI), founded by Nora Chahbazi, has allowed me to help all students accelerate their growth. I believe that the acceleration happens, in part, because this approach complements the principles of learning from cognitive science.

The speech-to-print approach capitalizes on the idea that speech is biologically primary to us. Students come to us with oral language. One of the essential strategies of speech-to-print is to “say as you write.” Students say a word they are trying to spell and listen to what they are saying. They learn to pull from a number of grapheme representations of that sound in order to spell the word. Students may have been introduced to five or more ways to spell a sound or pronounce a grapheme.

In a more traditional print-to-speech scope and sequence, a student would move through phonics patterns at a much slower pace. In a speech-to-print approach, because students are introduced to patterns earlier and are asked to practice those patterns in authentic texts, they’re interleaving their phonics knowledge. Students aren’t necessarily learning toward mastery in that specific moment but are using authentic texts to build up their learning over time. This is another principle that supports cognitive science because it allows students to continuously interleave their skills.

Students are provided explicit corrective and immediate feedback every time they produce an incorrect sound both orally and in writing. This type of feedback at the moment is highly supportive and effective. Students are asked to use their learning to blend or encode words and then are corrected when needed. This type of productive struggle leads to consistent and high success rates for students.

The Speech-to-Print Approach Supports Reading Fluency

Another reason that speech-to-print accelerates growth is in the way that multisyllabic words and fluency are handled. Multisyllabic words from a reading are initially introduced by having students read pre-split words based on how each syllable is said orally. Students read each sound within a syllable, then thread those sounds together to read each part, and eventually put those parts together to read the word in its entirety.

All of this is done within three to four seconds so that students don’t have to hold more in their working memory than they are able to. This scaffold is a powerful tool in making sure that students aren’t guessing at words—they’re seeing how syllables all have vowels and can be broken up, and they’re being challenged even within early reading to read multisyllabic words (that may have been intimidating at first glance). Not only does this practice address working memory constraints, but also it gives students another way to read multisyllabic words without overwhelming them with syllable rules. When students have to trade out sounds, they’re learning to be flexible in their reading.

Yet another speech-to-print strategy that supports accelerated growth as well as cognitive learning principles is immediate modeling of fluent sentence reading. Students are asked to read one to three sentences of a text, making sure that accuracy is the focus. The teacher then reads the text back fluently with an increased rate and demonstrates appropriate prosody while the student tracks the text. Lastly, the student is asked to reread the text with accuracy, a fluent rate, and prosody. This back-and-forth exchange between student and teacher provides a supportive model, a chance for guided practice, and an opportunity for students to make meaning from the text.

The Speech-to-Print Approach Helps Students Make Meaning

One essential component of a speech-to-print approach is that right from the beginning, both sides of Scarborough’s Reading Rope are addressed through integration of phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, morphology, language structures, comprehension, and writing. Every text that students read incorporates these aspects of reading. Ultimately, students see the signals that reading isn’t just word calling, but also about making meaning.

With this approach, students are taught strategies to decode and encode words, as well as to summarize for understanding. Every scaffold that you put in place is slowly released as students become more proficient in their reading and writing. Students don’t need to transition to grade-level texts because they have been utilizing their grade-level texts from the beginning. Students increase their independence over time and learn how to apply strategies across their entire day of instruction.

As an interventionist, I’m not afforded a lot of time. Acceleration is key. I need to incorporate principles of learning like Rosenshine’s principles as well as utilize any approach that doesn’t just demonstrate successful outcomes, but also accelerates success for every student. I think I’ve found that in a speech-to-print approach such as EBLI. My hope is that more educators will become interested in a speech-to-print approach and bring these practices back into their classrooms. Imagine the possibilities if gaps were closed at an even faster pace.