In this presentation, reading specialist Lois Letchford explains why teaching decoding alone is insufficient for struggling readers and advocates a balanced approach based on the Simple View of Reading (decoding + comprehension). Drawing on her 25‑year career—sparked by her own son’s reading difficulties—she illustrates how the dynamic nature of language (words shifting between nouns, verbs, adjectives) creates a disconnect between oral and written language for many students. Through concrete classroom examples—such as the word “block,” short poems, and action‑based activities—she shows how to teach students to infer meaning, visualize text, and move beyond literal decoding. Letchford emphasizes the need for a supportive, joyful classroom atmosphere, shares a success story of a 16‑year‑old who progressed from a first‑grade to a third‑grade reading level in four months, and invites viewers to explore her book, “Reverse to Memoir and Literacy Problem Solver.”
Chapters
Hello, I am Lois Letchford, author of the book Reverse to Memoir and Literacy Problem Solver. Last week I looked at the connections between the oral language and the written language when we have the Simple View of Reading by Gough and Tunmer that was published in 1986. And Tim Shanahan brought this out in a blog About looking at what is the Simple Viewing— View of Reading. One component is decoding. The second component is comprehension. We need both to become a skilled reader. A lot of emphasis has been put on decoding. I teach children who failed all reading programs. Children aged 7, to age 16. Students come to me having spent years learning decoding, doing exercises in phonemic awareness, in breaking down the syllables, and they come to me still as non-readers. So my task, or I see my task, as then looking at what have they got What haven't they got? What do I have to do to help them connect the dots so that they can become independent readers? That's my goal. My story in becoming a teacher is it came through a personal experience when my son, my second son, failed first grade. In fact, they called him the worst child I've seen in 20 years of teaching. And it was an extraordinary set of circumstances. that taught him to read and pushed me to become a reading specialist. Because to teach him, I had to do more than simply teach him how to decode. And I know if I had just taught him decoding, what else would have been missing. And so it pushed me to become a reading specialist, and I've been doing this now for 25 years. My latest student is a 16-year-old boy who came to me reading on a first-grade reading level. He has spent years in school, in specialist dyslexia schools, and he was non-reading. And within 4 months, he is now reading on a third-grade reading level. So what do I do? What do I promote? I do promote the Simple View of Reading, teach decoding, and teach comprehension. So what does this mean? Last week I talked about the connection between the oral language and the written language and how that is a critical connection that we must make. Yet it sounds simple, but how different the oral language is from the written language, which causes a disconnect for many of our students. Today I'm going to be talking about dynamicness of language. Language is dynamic. What does that mean? To help me comprehend and talk about language, dynamic language, I go back to my childhood and my reading because I clearly recall reading words without comprehension. And this language is dynamic came to me when I was first studying in the late 1990s. And I'm reading every article and every book I can get my hands on. And in the library, the library was full of texts. And I was reading this book from COVID to cover. And I got to a part and it said, language is dynamic. And I jumped up from the couch and said, that's the problem I had. Because if you only see every word as a noun or a verb, the reader is in trouble. It's not about seeing words as one isolated object. It's about seeing how they connect to other words. And it's that changing piece of language that causes children many problems. I'm going to give you a number of examples as to how that works. The first I'm going to show you is the word block. Simple word to decode. /b/-/l/, consonant blend, short vowel /o/, /o/, and then we've got the combination <ck> at the end. But it's a simple word. But is block just a noun? And I have a lesson, an OCH lesson on my website that shows you how I use the word block. And I bring it to your attention today because I use that lesson with my most vulnerable students. And I say, find the block. Well, that's easy to do because block then is a noun. And then you put a lock on top of the block. So that's easy because you're doing all of these things with block. And the next question I ask is, block the hole in the box with the sock. That causes problems because now block has moved from being an object to a verb. That's the first one. And eventually they get it. And then later on in that lesson, I say that they have to read and do, block the doorway. That sentence throws my students. And if I say to them, or if I'd said to them, block the doorway, they would know exactly what to do. But because it's written in front of them and they have a block on the table to really confuse them, they have to do the thinking and retrieve the knowledge from their brain. What does it mean to say block the doorway? What do I have to do as a reader? That's a simple example that shows the problems that my students have in language. And it is because language is dynamic. That's what throws my students. That's the first one. The movement of language from nouns to verbs to adjectives. And when you teach children that, they take a big breath, life becomes much easier. So I want my students to comprehend language on the sentence level. So if they read a sentence, my question is always, what does it mean? What are you expected to do? What's the picture in your mind? They're the questions I actually ask. From there, I have my students, or I read to my students poetry and jokes, and I'm always looking for that other meaning. This week I've read the poem Snowball. I made myself a snowball as perfect as could be. I thought I could keep it as a pet and let it sleep with me. I made it some pyjamas and a pillow for its head. Then last night it ran away, but first it wet the bed. So one of the questions to my students will be, what does wet the bed mean? You're looking for that multiple meaning all the time. Language is dynamic. Teach it to our children, teach them to search for meaning, and it changes the outcome. So that's the first one I do. Then I have a simple little poem that I have my students read, and it's the cat on a mat in a hat with a rat and a bat. And the next line is, well, fancy that. Then the next line is, but that is just not possible. There might be one scratch cat, no rat or bat, and one messy mat. And my students, as you can hear, the language is very simple. It's decodable text, but it's not the decoding that is causing my students problems. Decodable text, what's happening? Act it out. Now the students have gone from a face that's blank, because when I read that poem or they read the poem, they sit there and they look at me. Act it out. You become a rat, you become a cat, or what would you like to become is what I often say. Which animal would you choose? The moment they get up out of their seats and make the connection, we're putting the hat on the ground, on the mat, and then the cat and the rat and the bat are joining together. What would happen? Every student knows. They would fight. Then their light, the light goes on, it goes poof. Ah! What happens? What is the next line? There's what? A rat. There's no rat, so what's happened to the rat? The rat is dead. No bat, what's happened to the bat? And what's happened to the cat? Now my students have the comprehension. They now know what to do to make sense of reading. That's why I use poetry with my students so that they can see how language works. And in this one, it's an inference that's causing my students to problem. The inability to connect all of those pieces to come up with the inference that they need to say, this is the poem, this makes sense to me. So that's the nuts and bolts of dynamic language, the movement of language from nouns to verbs and the making of inference that is needed to help students connect with the decoding. And once they do that, life becomes a whole lot easier. And it's the braid of literacy again. You need both. You need the comprehension and the decoding to come together, to work together. Because as I was reading through all of the textbooks, what struck me most is the disconnect was between the oral language and the written language. And how I'm exploring that now, What does that connection mean and look like? Skilled readers do it and get it. Unskilled readers struggle. But once we teach them, once we teach them how— this is what happens in oral language, this is what happens in written language, this is what you as a reader have to do— we change the outcomes for those students. So that is what I do. Again and again and again, you'll hear me say, are we creating an environment in our classroom where our students feel happy and they're laughing and they're content? Because they need to be in an emotional state where they are happy to learn to read. That's when the brain is open to learning to read. And so all of what we do, is critically important if we are to engage all of our students to read. So be sure to grab a copy of my book and comment on it, and I will next week read about a review of my book. So thank you. Share it. Teach children to read and connect with me anytime.
