Fountas and Pinell Leveled Reading Passages With Mutliple Choice Questions

A few people have asked me what I recollect of Fountas and Pinnell'southward Leveled Literacy Intervention, equally this program seems to now exist widely used in my local schools.

I haven't used information technology myself, but had a brief browse through some of its readers for absolute beginners the other solar day, and hither'due south what I found:

Reading by memorising and picture-guessing

Book 1 from Level A of Leveled Literacy Intervention is called "Waking up".

This blog mail service originally included photos of some of the pages in this book, but the publisher wrote to me on 2 April 2015 asking me to take both text and pictures down for copyright reasons. Without them, information technology will be a petty harder to make sense of this blog post, but I volition paraphrase the text and you can imagine the pictures:

The (male hen) wakes up. (Rooster noise)

The phoneme-grapheme correspondences (PGCs) on this page are every bit follows:

• One-letter-equals-one-sound: e, r, south, t, w, k, u, p, c, o, a, d.
• 2 letters equal ane sound: th, oo, er, a…e, ck, le.

So simply on page i of book 1, level A, there are eighteen phoneme-graphic symbol correspondences! Far, far too many for beginners and strugglers.

Not only are at that place likewise many PGCs, merely in that location is some serious spelling complication in this book:

• the letter "t" is a stand-alone spelling in "rooster" and part of the digraph "th" in "the",
• the letter "a" as part of the "long" vowel spelling "a…due east" in "wakes", simply represents a unlike sound in "a-doodle",
• The letter of the alphabet "east" is typically (unfortunately for children) pronounced "uh" in the word "the", and it's too part of the "er" spelling in "rooster", the "a…e" spelling in "wakes" and the "le" spelling in "doodle",
• the alphabetic character "o" is used as a ane-letter spelling in "cock" just also part of a digraph in "rooster" and "doodle-doo".

The next page goes like this:

The (female person cattle) wakes upward. (Moo-cow noise).

The third page goes:

The (swine) wakes up. (pig noise).

By now nosotros are upward to 24 PGCs:

• One-letter-equals-1-sound: e, r, s, t, w, yard, u, p, c, o, a, d, m, i, thousand, n.
• 2 messages equal one audio: thursday, oo, er, a…e, ck, le, ow, oi.

Beginners can only realistically "read" this volume by memorising the format, and substituting words to match the pictures. There is far too much spelling complexity for them to be expected to sound words out.

The next pages contain pictures of a equus caballus, a turkey, a sheep, a duck and a chick. No prizes for guessing the text, you can probably "read" the rest of this volume even if yous've never seen information technology.

There are a total of 42 phoneme-grapheme correspondences in this book. Why that doesn't brand teachers deem it quite unsuitable for beginners is beyond me.

Many of these PGCs are extremely complex/difficult, such as the four-letter spelling "eigh" in "neigh", dissimilar pronunciations of "a" in "waking" and "quack", and unusual spellings like the "aa" in "baa". There are too consonant blends and two-syllable words.

OK, perchance the first book is a bad instance. Let's have a look at the next few books.

Title: Frog food. Repetitive text: I like bugs on pancakes. I like bugs on popcorn… soup…breadstuff…pizza…salad…cake…I like bugs.

This book adds 11 PGCs not seen in the previous book, bringing us upwardly to 53 PGCs simply in the first two books in the series.

Title: The new puppy. Repetitive text: I got a fiddling dish…blanket…collar….bed…toy…brush…os…puppy.

Another 8 PGCs, and then nosotros're at present upwards to 61.

Title: Friends. Repetitive text: Orson is a big canis familiaris. Taco is a little domestic dog. Orson has a large collar. Taco has a piffling collar….bone…ball…bark…bowl…bed…friend.

An boosted 5 PGCs, so the absolute beginner has now been exposed to 66 in full. If they haven't learnt a single i of them properly, nobody should be surprised.

Title: Sam and Papa. Repetitive text: I like to read books with my Papa…eat lunch…play ball…draw pictures…go shopping…watch TV…brand cookies…I dearest my Papa! And my Papa loves me!

This volume adds a farther 13 PGCs, giving a tally of 79 PGCs just in the first five books in the Fountas and Pinnell Leveled Literacy Intervention box.

Sigh. At that indicate I gave up, and figured I had amend things to do with my time than look at books that I would never in a one thousand thousand years utilise or recommend. They don't even effort an interesting narrative, the pictures are nice merely the repetitive text seems deadening to me.

Giving these books to beginners and strugglers might be a style of teaching reading-like behaviour, but is non teaching bodily reading.

Discussion among professionals

I'm a member of the Us-based listserve Spell-Talk, where I learn a lot of interesting things virtually spelling and literacy generally, from all kinds of experts including people with relevant PhDs, professorships and decades of experience.

A few months ago there was some discussion on this listserve of Fountas and Pinnell's Leveled Literacy Intervention, and here's my summary of what was said, which probably doesn't authorize as much more than professional gossip, but is withal interesting, and permitted in the blogosphere:

Leveled Literacy Intervention is based on the aforementioned 1970s theory of reading as Reading Recovery. In that location are now many more effective programs that are consequent with electric current models of reading. The logic/scientific discipline behind LLI'south reading levels is non obvious.

Claims that Leveled Literacy Intervention is effective are based on research washed by its publisher, but the information are non peculiarly impressive or robust. Everything teachers practise has an effect. What'due south interesting from a research signal of view is how large the effect of an intervention is. Improvements attributed to Leveled Literacy Intervention identified in Running Records (subjective and open to bias) were not identified past more objective assessment.

Leveled Literacy Intervention sessions include some work on decoding and encoding words, perchance 5-10 minutes per one-half-hour session, which makes teachers who are unused to phonics think information technology includes a lot of phonics. This may exist considering they've never seen or used a really excellent constructed phonics program.

Phonics skills learnt in word report activities in Leveled Literacy Intervention are not then practiced/reinforced in reading activities. Instead, when reading, children are given books containing few/none of the patterns that have simply been learnt, and encouraged to apply multiple cues and guessing, as per traditional Whole Language practice.

US Psychologist Dr Steve Dykstra summarised this arroyo thus: "Information technology'due south like teaching children a little chip about a salubrious diet, so serving twinkies and french fries for dejeuner.  It is true you taught them something about a salubrious diet. It is truthful."

After teachers employ Leveled Literacy Intervention for a while, they reportedly start to independently query why the skills taught in the phonics part of the plan seem to be in isolation from the remainder of the plan, and aren't reinforced in the reading function of the program.

Better books for beginners

The first book of the Little Learners Love Literacy series (also available as apps) contains only vi PGCs: southward, a, g, p, i, t, with no digraphs, no spelling overlaps and no words longer than iii sounds. This is quite hard enough for absolute beginners.

If you don't believe me, learn this code:

At present ringlet the higher up decoder off the screen and read the text from the first Picayune Learners book written in this code:

Easy, huh? Want to add another dozen PGCs, including 2, three or four-letter spellings and spellings that are used for more than one sound, into the mix? I thought non.

The offset Sounds~Write books contain five PGCs: a, i, m, due south, t. The first Flyleaf book  contains vi PGCs: I, a, thou, s, y, e. The first Beginning Reading Instruction reader (on the iPad called "Reading for all learners") has v: I, south, ee, a, m. The start Dandelion Launchers book (too bachelor as iBooks) has v: s, a, t, i, m.

These are my idea of suitable books for iv and 5-year-olds having their first go at reading a book for themselves. Their schemes gradually and systematically introduce more PGCs until children have enough discussion attack to start to be able to successfully decode other books and printed information, and build solid mental images of printed words.

Also every bit reading such little books, very young children should work at tracing and copying letters and words, filling gaps in words, and reading, building and writing picayune, two and 3-sound words in a diversity of activities, then gradually making the words longer and the spellings more than complex. Reading and spelling should be taught every bit the opposite of each other.

While children are learning to encode and decode in this mode, and until they can read quality children's literature themselves, adults should read information technology to them.

There'southward no need to give beginners books that are far too difficult for them, and which encourage them to think that reading is achieved past memorising and guessing.

2018 update:  Approaches to reading instruction supported past Learning Difficulties Australia can be found hither.

2019 update: Please watch this video from infinitesimal 52.33 for an analysis of the "gilded standard" research on Leveled Literacy Intervention: https://youtu.be/zS7ice-_mwE

Fountas and Pinell Leveled Reading Passages With Mutliple Choice Questions

Source: https://www.spelfabet.com.au/2014/12/fountas-and-pinnell-leveled-literacy-intervention/

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