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 LITERACY
REFR AMED
How a Focus on

Decoding, Vocabulary, and

Background Knowledge

Improves Reading Comprehension

ROBIN J. FOGART Y GENE M. KERNS BRIAN M. PETE

With Jan Br yan & Cher yl Ballou
Copyright © 2021 by Solution Tree Press
Materials appearing here are copyrighted. With one exception, all rights are reserved. Readers may
reproduce only those pages marked “Reproducible.” Otherwise, no part of this book may be repro-
duced or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise)
without prior written permission of the publisher.
555 North Morton Street
Bloomington, IN 47404
800.733.6786 (toll free) / 812.336.7700
FAX: 812.336.7790
email: info@SolutionTree.com
SolutionTree.com
Visit go.SolutionTree.com/literacy to download the free reproducibles in this book.
Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Fogarty, Robin, author. | Kerns, Gene M., author. | Pete, Brian M.,
author.
Title: Literacy reframed : how a focus on decoding, vocabulary, and
background knowledge improves reading comprehension / Robin J. Fogarty,
Gene M. Kerns, Brian M. Pete ; contributors: Jan Bryan, Cheryl Ballou.
Description: Bloomington, IN : Solution Tree Press, 2021. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020017028 (print) | LCCN 2020017029 (ebook) | ISBN
9781951075132 (paperback) | ISBN 9781951075149 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Language arts. | Reading--Phonetic method. |
Vocabulary--Study and teaching. | Reading comprehension.
Classification: LCC LB1576 .R623 2021 (print) | LCC LB1576 (ebook) | DDC
372.6--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020017028
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020017029

Solution Tree
Jeffrey C. Jones, CEO
Edmund M. Ackerman, President
Solution Tree Press
President and Publisher: Douglas M. Rife
Associate Publisher: Sarah Payne-Mills
Art Director: Rian Anderson
Managing Production Editor: Kendra Slayton
Production Editor: Miranda Addonizio
Content Development Specialist: Amy Rubenstein
Copy Editor: Jessi Finn
Proofreader: Elisabeth Abrams
Text and Cover Designer: Laura Cox
Editorial Assistants: Sarah Ludwig and Elijah Oates
 To Mortimer J. Adler, author extraordinaire of How to
Read a Book and founder of the Great Books Foundation.

To humorist Mark Twain, who said,

“A classic is something that everybody wants to have read
and nobody wants to read.”

To our print- and digital-savvy readers; we hope you will

remember these words of Mortimer J. Adler’s:

“The goods of the mind are information,

knowledge, understanding and wisdom.”

“In the case of good books, the point is not to

see how many of them you can get through, but rather
how many can get through to you.”
 Acknowledgments

W
e want to acknowledge Mike Schmoker; E. D. Hirsch Jr.; Doug Lemov,
Colleen Driggs, and Erica Woolway; and Daniel T. Willingham. These
voices combined to become the spark of inspiration for this project.
As well, the influence of professional mentors who believed in us lingers. Here, we
wish to share our gratitude for several of these voices from the past. Robin salutes two
reading gurus: (1) Chris Rauscher, her mentor, who challenged her with the simple
question, “What is reading?” and (2) Sylvia Ashton-Warner (1963), for her seminal
teaching as author of Teacher. Both greatly influenced her teaching philosophy.
Gene addresses the topic of literacy with remembrance of and respect for the passion
his friend and mentor, Terry Paul, had for the topic. He also gives thanks for his dear
Aunt Bess, who spent hours reading and rereading him his favorite Little Golden
Books, with him on her lap, at the beginning of his literacy journey.
We also want to thank friends and colleagues who are part of an ongoing dialogue
and provide their honest, timely, and brilliant suggestions as they chat about, read,
edit, contribute to, critique, and generally support our obsession du jour. Robin likes
to try things out on Julie Constanza and Kathleen Mazurowski, soul-sister educators
immersed in reading matters.
“Gene’s team” of expert academic colleagues Jan Bryan, Cheryl Ballou, and Carol
Johnson have been standby writing team members. In fact, Jan and Cheryl have
become official contributors to this work, focusing primarily on the informative and
sorely needed discussion of digital reading. Their names appear prominently on the
cover for their timely contributions.
Brian acknowledges his oldest brother, Michael, who, when home from his fresh-
man year of college, taught him not how to read but how to read a book—how and

v
vi L I T E R AC Y R E F R A M E D

why to peruse the table of contents, scan the headings, interpret the introduction, and
have a clear objective of why he was reading the book and what he expected to learn.
Lastly, publishers, editors, proofreaders, and graphic artists put their blood, sweat,
and tears into the nitty-gritty mechanics of making a book. Indebted to the many
brilliant craftspeople who influenced some aspect of the acquisition and production
of this book, we are thankful to our favorite publisher, Douglas Rife; our go-to editor,
Kendra Slayton; and the many graphic designers, editors, proofreaders, marketing
wizards, and, last but not least, salespeople who all worked together to get this book
into the hands of teachers.
Solution Tree Press would like to thank the following reviewers:
Sandy Jameson Melissa Kaasa
English Teacher Kindergarten Teacher
Nazareth Area High School Roy Elementary School
Nazareth, Pennsylvania Yelm, Washington

Visit go.SolutionTree.com/literacy to
download the free reproducibles in this book.
 Table of Contents
About the Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
The Massive Literacy Challenge Nobody’s Talking About . . . . . . . . .1
A Distillation of Reading Comprehension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
The Overskillification of Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
The Journey Ahead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

1 The Sound of Reading—Decoding and Phonics . . 23

Phonics: How to Teach It Effectively . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Best Practice: Reading to Students—Crucial, but Often Neglected . . 32
Classroom Applications for Teachers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
PLC Discussion Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Resources for Learning More . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

2 The Look of Reading—Vocabulary . . . . . . . . 53

Reading: The Brain’s Letterbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Methods: How Students Can Do All This Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Vocabulary: The Building Blocks of Conceptual Knowledge . . . . . . . 67
Classroom Applications for Teachers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
PLC Discussion Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Resources for Learning More . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

3 The Knowingness of Reading—Background

Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Knowledge: A Million Miles Wide, Inches Deep . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

vii
viii L I T E R AC Y R E F R A M E D

Baseball and Background Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

The Motivation of Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
What Baffles Teachers About Curriculum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Writing: The Litmus Paper of Thought . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Knowledge: A Quick Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
Classroom Applications for Teachers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
PLC Discussion Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Resources for Learning More . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

4 Digital Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .131

Digital Is Decided . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Digital Is Different . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Digital Is Demanding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Classroom Applications for Teachers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
PLC Discussion Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
Resources for Learning More . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

Conclusion: The Promise of Literacy Reframed . . . . 157

The Many Gifts of Literacy Reframed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
One More Glimpse Into a Literacy Reframed Classroom . . . . . . . . 158

References and Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .161

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
 About the Authors

Robin J. Fogarty, PhD, is president of Robin Fogarty &

Associates as a leading educational consultant. She works with
educators throughout the world in curriculum, instruction,
and assessment strategies. Working as an author and consul-
tant, she works with students at all levels, from kindergarten
to college. Her roles include school administrator, and consul-
tant with state departments and ministries of education in the
United States, Puerto Rico, Russia, Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, Germany, Great Britain, Singapore, South Korea, and the Netherlands.
Robin has written articles for Educational Leadership, Phi Delta Kappan, and the
Journal of Staff Development. She is author of Brain-Compatible Classrooms, 10 Things
New Teachers Need to Succeed, and Literacy Matters: Strategies Every Teacher Can Use.
She is coauthor of How to Integrate the Curricula, The Adult Learner: Some Things
We Know, A Look at Transfer: Seven Strategies That Work, Close the Achievement Gap:
Simple Strategies That Work, Twelve Brain Principles That Make the Difference, Nine Best
Practices That Make the Difference, Informative Assessment: When It’s Not About a Grade,
Supporting Differentiated Instruction: A Professional Learning Communities Approach,
Invite! Excite! Ignite! 13 Principles for Teaching, Learning, and Leading, K–12, and The
Right to Be Literate: 6 Essential Literacy Skills. Her work also includes a leadership
series titled From Staff Room to Classroom: The One-Minute Professional Development
Planner and School Leader’s Guide to the Common Core. Her most recent works include
Unlocking Student Talent: The New Science of Developing Expertise and the second
edition of How to Teach Thinking Skills.
Robin earned a doctorate in curriculum and human resource development from
Loyola University Chicago, a master’s in instructional strategies from National Louis

ix
x L I T E R AC Y R E F R A M E D

University, and a bachelor’s in early childhood education from the State University
of New York at Potsdam.
To learn more about Robin’s work, visit www.robinfogarty.com or follow @robin-
fogarty or @RFATeachPD on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.

Gene M. Kerns, EdD, is a third-generation educator with

teaching experience from elementary through the university level
and K–12 administrative experience. He currently serves as vice
president and chief academic officer of Renaissance Learning.
With nearly twenty years of experience of leading staff devel-
opment and speaking at national and international conferences,
Gene has helped clients that include administrators’ associations
across the country, the Ministry of Education of Singapore,
London’s Westminster Education Forum, and the Global Education Technology
Forum of China.
Gene received his bachelor’s degree and master’s degree from Longwood University
in Virginia, and also holds a doctorate of education from the University of Delaware
with an emphasis in education leadership.
To learn more about Gene’s work, follow him on Twitter @GeneKerns.

Brian M. Pete is cofounder and CEO of Robin Fogarty &

Associates. He has followed a long line of educators—college
professors, school superintendents, teachers, and teachers of
teachers—into a career in education. He has a rich background
in professional development and has worked with adult learn-
ers in districts and educational agencies throughout the United
States, Europe, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand.
Brian has an eye for the teachable moment and the words to
describe skillful teaching. He delivers dynamic, humor-filled sessions that energize
the audiences of school leaders, teachers, and teacher leaders with engaging strategies
that transfer into immediate and practical on-site applications.
Brian is coauthor of How to Teach Thinking Skills Within the Common Core, From
Staff Room to Classroom: A Guide for Planning and Coaching Professional Development,
From Staff Room to Classroom II: The One-Minute Professional Development Planner,
Twelve Brain Principles That Make the Difference, Supporting Differentiated Instruction:
A Professional Learning Communities Approach, The Adult Learner: Some Things
We Know, A Look at Transfer: Seven Strategies That Work, School Leader’s Guide
to the Common Core, Everyday Problem-Based Learning: Quick Projects to Build
 About the Author s xi

Problem-Solving Fluency, Unlocking Student Talent, and The Right to Be Literate: 6

Essential Literacy Skills.
Brian earned a bachelor of science from DePaul University in Chicago and is
pursuing his master’s degree in fiction writing from Columbia College in Chicago.
To learn more about Brian’s work, visit www.robinfogarty.com, or follow @brian
pete or @RFATeachPD on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook.
To book Robin J. Fogarty or Brian M. Pete for professional development, contact
pd@SolutionTree.com.
 Preface

O
ur journey with this book started the moment Gene called Robin and Brian
and asked, “Do you have a few minutes? Well, maybe more?” He piqued
their curiosity as he began his pitch: “This is about the reading challenges
that almost nobody’s talking about.” He was talking about supporting and advocating
for a revolutionary shake-up in traditional reading protocols based on re-emerging
and newly emerging research evidence. That phone call and exciting news set the
journey in motion.
K–12 students in 21st century classrooms face reading challenges that few on
the modern school scene are talking about yet. These challenges have only become
visible as a consensus of ideas from four voices in education. First, the wisdom of
school-improvement expert Mike Schmoker’s (2018) Focus: Elevating the Essentials to
Radically Improve Student Learning and his plea to prioritize the essentials of teach-
ing and optimize the power of student learning both struck the right chord with
the three of us. Second, American educator E. D. Hirsch Jr.’s (2018) tome Why
Knowledge Matters: Rescuing Our Children From Failed Educational Theories broke
new ground and fanned the flame of knowledge as the quintessential ingredient for
reclaiming students’ literacy legacy. Third, Doug Lemov, Colleen Driggs, and Erica
Woolway (2016) advanced a phenomenal approach to instruction in their book
Reading Reconsidered: A Practical Guide to Rigorous Literacy Instruction, boosted by,
finally, psychologist Daniel T. Willingham’s (2017) The Reading Mind: A Cognitive
Approach to Understanding How the Mind Reads.
These last two books made us clearly and urgently decide to combine their ideas
in ways that matter to teachers. We discovered how their ideas coincide with our
aim to revisit common reading instructional practices (which have always included
instruction on phonics, or decoding, and vocabulary development) and the critical
role of content knowledge. This mingling of ideas contains the essence of a newly

xiii
xiv L I T E R AC Y R E F R A M E D

formed truth: massive amounts of time for authentic reading are necessary across all
subjects in order for teachers to willingly release students to read successfully as a
lifetime pursuit.

That’s the story of Literacy Reframed: How a Focus on Decoding, Vocabulary, and
Background Knowledge Improves Reading Comprehension.
 Introduction

It is impossible to overstate the importance of literacy. Yet nothing

so begs for clarity in K–12 education.
—Mike Schmoker

I
magine, in a year devoid of major financial market disruption, you dutifully
invested twice the amount you did the previous year into your retirement account
only to see that your account balance remained the same at year’s end. You dou-
bled down on your investment strategy, and it made no difference. How long would
you continue that same approach?
Or imagine working overtime hours only to find the bottom line of your paycheck
remained flat. Would you question the extra time you put in? Of course you would.
Would you work overtime the next week? Likely not.
We want to know that our investments of time and energy pay reasonable divi-
dends. Well, it’s time for us to be honest and admit that we have a major literacy
problem in U.S. education; we have expended vast amounts of resources and have
little to show for it. It appears that our current approach to literacy is flawed, yet we
continue to make huge investments that pay little to no returns.

The Massive Literacy Challenge Nobody’s Talking About

As we track the evolution of reading instruction, we can think of it as a journey,
a long and arduous experience for those educators who have witnessed its iterations
since the 1960s. Teachers have earnestly instructed students in the customs of the
day, from the earliest days of the one-room schoolhouse and the McGuffey’s Readers
taught by rote reading and writing; to reading instruction that relied heavily on sight
words and the look-say method of published pre-primers and primers on the Sally,

1
2 L I T E R AC Y R E F R A M E D

Dick, and Jane sagas; to the upper-level basal texts, often themed for grade-level
interests; to the 21st century’s newest approach, the science of reading. Yet, in all
this time, reading performance has barely improved and at times educators have seen
catastrophic results (Joyce, Calhoun, & Hopkins, 1999).
Policymakers and educators alike acknowledge that literacy is the key to all learning,
and we know that raising a student’s literacy abilities increases scores across the con-
tent areas (Cromley, 2009; Martin & Mullis, 2013). This is intuitive and, in addition,
English language arts (ELA) and literacy scores have been part of nearly every high-
stakes accountability initiative; funding for literacy matches that priority. We educa-
tors focus on and fund literacy efforts. But the power of the academic dialogue does
not match our results. Why? Perhaps, as Schmoker (2011) suggests, literacy is one of
those essential things that we talk a lot about “but we have never fully clarified” or
“obsessed over [its] implementation” (p. 9).
The perceived remedy was to focus on accountability for poor performance that
began in earnest with President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB,
2002) initiative, which reauthorized the Elementary and
Schmoker (2011) suggests Secondary Education Act of 1965. In turn, schools have
become increasingly focused on an assessment-driven thrust
literacy is one of those
toward reading achievement. In fact, the focus on skill-based
essential things that we approaches—referenced in our work as overskillified models—
talk a lot about “but we has had a monopoly in literacy instruction. Generous blocks
have never fully clarified” of time for literacy were intentionally scheduled soon after No
or “obsessed over [its] Child Left Behind to increase reading proficiencies across the
grades. Unfortunately, in practice, teachers used these blocks
implementation” (p. 9).
for skill-and-drill workbooks and worksheets, as well as strat-
egy lessons, devouring precious time set aside for improving
the complex act of students authentically reading with fluency and comprehension.
The detrimental effects of this focus on overskillification, unfortunately, have been
wide reaching. In the following sections, we’ll discuss how overskillification has caused
literacy development to flatline and how research evidence has revealed a startling
solution. People in schools, not just in ivory towers, are beginning to reassess and
reframe how they will approach reading in the future.

A Flatlining Pattern
So, what do data say is the worst effect of existing unproductive literacy practices?
Succinctly stated, it’s stunted reading growth after the late elementary years. One
of the most commonly used measures of text complexity, used to evaluate both the
difficulty of books and the reading abilities of students on the same scale, is the
 Introduction 3

Typical Midyear Lexile Reader Measures

1800L

1600L

1400L

1200L
Lexile

1000L

800L

600L

400L

200L

0 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Grade

Source: MetaMetrics, n.d.

Figure I.1: Typical midyear Lexile reader measures.

Lexile Framework created by MetaMetrics. Figure I.1 depicts typical midyear Lexile
measures across grades 2–12 for U.S. students ranging in performance from the 25th
percentile to the 75th percentile (MetaMetrics, n.d.). In other words, this figure
illustrates how a vast number of our students grow in terms of literacy.
What we see is consistent growth in the early grades that levels off quite substantially
in the later grades. To some degree, this is a normal pattern for cognitive development
and not necessarily a cause for immediate concern. Students often see very large
reading gains in the early years; the difference between a student’s reading skills in
first grade and his or her reading skills in second grade will always be greater than
the difference in the student’s reading skills between tenth and eleventh grades. That
said, it is a sad state of affairs when the difference in ability between seventh grade
and twelfth grade is negligible. These five additional years of schooling typically do
not increase most students’ abilities to engage with more difficult texts.
Other data sets reflect this flatlining pattern. For example, the National Center
for Education Statistics (NCES) stores the results of the National Assessment of
Educational Progress (NAEP) online where anyone can search (www.nationsreport
card.gov). Figure I.2 (page 4) uses a selection of these data to show stagnant reading
proficiency rates across decades according to the years the test was administered
(NCES, n.d.a, n.d.b, n.d.c).
 4

National Assessment of Educational Progress Longitudinal Data—Reading

350

300 292 291 288 288

287 287 286 287
260 260 264 263 264 263 262 263 264 265 268 265 267 263
250
217 217 217 219 218 219 221 221 221 222 223 222 220
214
200

150

Scale Score
100

50
L I T E R AC Y R E F R A M E D

(Level of Performance on the Assessment)

1992 1994 1998 2000 2002 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 2015 2017 2019
Year

Grade 4 Grade 8 Grade 12

Source: NCES, n.d.a, n.d.b, n.d.c.

Figure I.2: National Assessment of Educational Progress reading score chart.

 Introduction 5

In our years of observing these data, we have seen that in most states, the highest
rates of proficiency occur on third-grade reading tests, and then fewer students are
proficient by the end of fifth grade, and still fewer in eighth grade and tenth grade.
Over the years of school, proficiency rates drop considerably, and the gap between the
highest- and lowest-performing readers gets wider. On some level, many educators
have recognized this pattern, and sadly—whether consciously or unconsciously—they
have, in essence, accepted it.
Understanding the predictive implications of whether a student can read on grade
level by the end of third grade, more than thirty-five states have enacted programs
designed to ensure just that—third-grade students read on grade level before the
school year ends, according to Renaissance Learning (n.d.). Some of these programs
include significant accountability measures such as retention. For example, Florida
is one state that follows this protocol and in fact, does retain third graders who do
not meet the ELA standards by the end of the year. If students achieve proficiency in
reading in third grade, that’s wonderful. But if they then fall behind by fifth, eighth,
or tenth grade, the race is clearly not won—that is, they leave our schools noticeably
unprepared and lacking the essential literacy skills of reading, writing, speaking, and
listening. As Hirsch (2006) notes:
It’s in later grades, 6–12, that the reading scores really count because,
after all, gains in the early grades are not very useful if, subsequently,
those same students, when they get to middle school and then high
school, and are about to become workers and citizens, are not able to
read and learn proficiently.

We need to frankly discuss the fact that we cannot determine college and career
readiness solely with third-grade scores. The illiteracy problem is endemic and
demands our undivided attention.
There is another piece of this flatlining story that we must acknowledge. When
NCLB was enacted in 2001, many schools reacted by cutting time devoted to science
and social studies to increase time for the assessed areas of ELA and mathematics.
Researcher Jennifer McMurrer (2007) notes there was a “47 percent reduction in
class time devoted to subjects beyond math and reading” (as cited in Hirsch, 2018,
p. 61). By increasing our efforts in the name of literacy, did we see any substantive
changes in proficiency? No. And this reality should cause us to re-examine everything.
Continually stagnant rates of proficiency when many schools substantially increased
time devoted to ELA clearly tell us that the way we are currently addressing literacy
simply is not paying adequate dividends. Hirsch (2018) suggests that our current
6 L I T E R AC Y R E F R A M E D

approach must be a “misconceived scheme,” as “the ‘accountability’ principles based

on [it] have not induced real progress in higher-level reading competence” (p. 28).
This brings to mind the familiar definition of insanity often attributed to Albert
Einstein but actually written by novelist Rita Mae Brown (1983)—doing the same
thing over and over and expecting different results. Since the 1960s, education com-
munities have been acting insanely. The “reading wars” debate about the best way
to teach reading (whole language versus phonics) did not help, nor did the billions
of dollars in spending authorized through NCLB’s literacy program Reading First,
nor did the major reallocation of our most precious resource, time. We desperately
need some new insights and actions around literacy. As professor of education David
Steiner (2017) asserts:
Stagnant student performance that leaves some 60 percent of high-
school graduates unprepared for postsecondary training or schooling,
the persistence of racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps, and
the seeming futility of reform efforts all suggest that American public
education is badly in need of a new path forward. (p. 11)

Stagnant rates of literacy stifle schools’ ability to meet their modern mission. As
assessment expert Rick Stiggins (2017) notes, schools could historically function
as a mechanism for “sorting students into the various levels of our social and eco-
nomic system” (p. 19). But that was the old mission. Today, schools are charged with
“mak[ing] sure ‘every student succeeds’ at mastering fundamental reading, writing,
mathematics, problem solving, and other proficiencies that they will need in this
increasingly complex and fast-changing world” (Stiggins, 2017, p. 21). Schools cannot
fulfill this mission with current approaches.
In a nutshell, the time has come for us to forthrightly address the prevailing literacy
failure rate in our schools. Many school practitioners involved with aspects of reading
and literacy across their curriculum probably know in their hearts that we have been
nursing a failing mission. Administrators, principals, teachers, parents, and certainly
the students themselves are aware of the predicament students are in when they can’t,
don’t, or won’t read. Too many of our students find themselves in this situation. Yet
the same inadequate literacy instruction prevails, year after year.
We talk about the problem of failed reading scores all the time, we think about it,
and we try to accommodate it, but to positively address it requires a massive shift.
No one has taken this disaster in hand by moving the multiple, necessary working
parts from the community, district, school, and home. We can’t afford to be naïve
about how radical the necessary changes are. We compare the shift to the children’s
game Fruit Basket Upset; in the game when a player calls out the words of the game’s
name, everyone must move to a different seat. We’re talking about changes that impact
existing schedules, curriculum, instruction, and assessment structures throughout
 Introduction 7

the schooling community. A credible revamping of the literacy conundrum will take
a village. There are already pockets of success in literacy achievement that are often
attributed to superintendents with the right goals for their students, principals who
champion literacy goals, extraordinary reading directors leading with common sense,
and naturally, dedicated teachers who live by Rick DuFour’s mantra, “Whatever
it takes” (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, & Karhanek, 2004). Like them, we believe in
a fail-proof school, a safe haven to nurture literate young people and ready them
for the ever-changing, ever-challenging world that awaits them. We strive to create
schools where everyone can read fast, write well, speak clearly, and listen attentively,
a backpack they can then take along on their life journeys.
Researchers Jared Myracle, Brian Kingsley, and Robin McClellan (2019) conclude,
“Alarm bells are ringing—as they should be—because we’ve gotten some big things
wrong: Research has documented what works to get kids to read, yet those evidence-
based reading practices appear to be missing from most classrooms.” How do we bring
real change to an enormous, powerful, and deeply entrenched institution like K–12
education in the United States? This book presents the solution.

The Solution
While the broad K–12 education community is just truly beginning to acknowledge
the reality of long-term flatlining reading performance, the research community has
been waiting for educators to wake up. According to Myracle et al. (2019), “Literacy
experts have been recommending the same research-based approaches since the 2000
National Reading Panel report, yet there still aren’t systemic mechanisms for ensuring
this information reaches the educators who set instructional directions,” with “sys-
temic failures having left educators overwhelmingly unaware of the research on how
kids learn to read.” Education journalist and author Natalie Wexler (2018) claims
that much of our current approach is based on assumptions about how students learn
that research has disproven, such as the need to teach lists of vocabulary words. We
will delve into research throughout this book. The education world, however, hasn’t
yet paid much attention to these findings (Wexler, 2018).
The good news is that there is a substantial body of evidence, which we will share
more fully throughout these pages, suggesting that we can address this phenome-
non in knowledgeable ways. But it will require reframing our approach to literacy
acquisition in terms of both policy and practice. Reading and writing success, as we
will show, is fueled by the very performances we desire—that is, lots of reading and
writing. But teachers must orchestrate reading and writing throughout the K–12
instructional day. This is no easy task. Our mission is big. Are we ready to finally end
the reading wars, truly rely on evidence, and transition to ways of advancing literacy
that actually pay dividends? If we are to have any chance of taking more students
to a higher level of performance, substantive changes in our approach are required.
8 L I T E R AC Y R E F R A M E D

Source: © Mark Anderson, www.andertoons.com. Used with permission.

A Distillation of Reading Comprehension

We clearly want students to continue to grow in their ability to comprehend suc-
cessively more difficult texts. Yet before we go further, let’s nail down exactly what
reading comprehension is. For something so central to all academic success, remark-
ably, many of us, as educators, struggle to define it or explain it in any detail greater
than saying, “It’s when you understand what you read.” How students learn to read
may well be the most thoroughly researched area in education, yet our explanations
of reading comprehension are tragically simplistic. In fact, at times, comprehension
has been known as a phantom skill (Fogarty, 2007), meaning that we talk about it,
reference it, write about it, and even test, retest, and score students on it, yet we sel-
dom, if ever, define it succinctly. In short, comprehension is the ability to make sense
of text by processing the code of language, understand its meaning, and integrate it
with prior knowledge.
Nebulous definitions of comprehension hint at a fundamental problem that we
must resolve if we are to ever have a highly literate populace. If we have a limited
ability to describe reading comprehension, then it is highly unlikely that we will effec-
tively guide students to master the ability to decipher meaning from coded language
with consistency and precision. How do we arrive at the appropriate destination if
we do not know precisely where it is?
 Introduction 9

As we discuss the true aspects of comprehension and how to foster them, you will
likely find that you are doing a lot of good things that this book suggests you do
in the classroom (such as read-alouds, voice and choice books selected by readers,
buddy reading, vocabulary spotting, and accountable independent reading). You
may also find that some things you are doing may in fact hinder the process of com-
prehension (for example, too much focus on worksheets, workbooks, isolated skill
development, teacher talk, and sustained silent reading without sufficient checking
for understanding).
Also, it’s important to remember that some students are so profoundly advantaged
by outside factors, such as having the opportunity to read voraciously on their own
time, that they acquire advanced reading comprehension despite what teachers do
or don’t do. And other students, less advantaged, have little chance of success unless
we significantly advance our ability to describe reading comprehension—the des-
tination—in detail and learn how to effectively guide all students there. For these
students, we must create multiple, quality opportunities to read with a partner for
the needed support, use digital tools so they will use auditory stories, and even take
time to do more oral reading with them so they hear the sound of language.
While we are suggesting that educators need to shift their focus from skill-based
reading routines to meaning- or knowledge-based efforts, we want to make it very
clear that we are not blaming educators for their choice of where to focus. Reform and
regulatory requirements are certainly impactful. Author and cognitive neuroscientist
Stanislas Dehaene (2009) places a good portion of the blame on policymakers and
decision makers who “swing back and forth with the changing winds of pedagogical
reform, often blatantly ignoring how the brain actually learns to read” (p. 2). Hirsch
(2018) remarks that it is unfair that “teachers are being blamed for the poor results
of this system” because “teachers have been misinformed about the actual nature of
reading comprehension” (p. 75). In addition, leaders sometimes seem to imply that
teachers must use all of the elements of the reading program supplied by the publisher.
This may not be the case, but teachers will do whatever they think is expected of them.
When we consider the professional literature about reading comprehension as a
whole, we find the usual suspects that are featured in this text, but with fundamental
perspectives that make all the difference. We see phonics as a necessary first step to
decoding written language; vocabulary, word choice, phrasing, sentence structure,
and graphics as the visual input to help readers interpret meaning; and perhaps most
important, background experiences, prior knowledge, emerging knowledge, and of
course, the new knowledge revealed as understanding, meaning, and making sense are
achieved. A survey of the professional literature reveals a common refrain: multiple
authors discuss the same elements as critical and sometimes-overlooked factors con-
tributing to reading comprehension (Hirsch, 2003; Lemov et al., 2016; Willingham,
2017). We present the elements here as the big three.
10 L I T E R AC Y R E F R A M E D

1. Decoding: Can you decipher the text? Can you use phonics to sound out
unknown words? If so, how fluently?
2. Vocabulary: Do you know all the words in the text? If not, what
percentage is unknown to you? Can you use context clues to help?
3. Knowledge: Do you have the necessary background knowledge to
understand the context of and references in the text? Do these things
make sense to you?
Let’s explore each of these elements individually, and then see how they work together.

Decoding First
Although we associate phonics with the early years of reading, even adult learners
use these skills when they encounter unknown words. Consider the word ОДеЯЛО.
Can you decipher it? This is the Russian word for “blanket.” Imagine you were a
Russian preschool student; you would certainly know the word verbally, but if you
had no phonetic knowledge of how to interpret the letters reflected in the word—no
way to convert them to sound and meaning—you would be no closer to reading
comprehension with this word than any of us with no knowledge of Russian.
Some of this word’s characters have familiar elements, but overall, most of us
English speakers will look at this word and have absolutely no idea how to pronounce
it. We might assume that the word ends with a “-row” sound, but we are also a little
unsure of several of the ending characters. Is an inverted R pronounced differently
than a regular R? And we have likely never seen anything like the second letter of this
word unless we have taken Russian.
Clearly, readers need to be able to efficiently convert the symbols of reading into
sounds and meanings, but we would be remiss if we associated phonics and decoding
with direct access to comprehension. For phonics to instantly aid us in comprehen-
sion, we must already know the word. If we sound out a word and have never heard
it before, we are no closer to comprehension. This brings us to the next element,
vocabulary.

Vocabulary Forever
Conversations about the importance of vocabulary are endless. Teachers in every
subject area or discipline value the vocabulary of their content and often issue student
lists of discipline-specific, academic vocabulary. Indeed, vocabulary plays a critical
role in understanding. Hirsch (2018) asserts that “vocabulary size is the single most
reliable correlate to reading ability” (p. 48). From this, we can conclude that the words
we know profoundly affect and accurately predict what we will be able to read and
comprehend.
 Introduction 11

Vocabulary is so critical when seeking understanding that

Every standards
readers “have a pretty low tolerance for reading unknown
words. . . . Just how much unknown stuff can a text have document that we know
in it before a reader will declare mental overload and call it of includes some ELA
quits?” (Willingham, 2017, p. 90). It turns out that, while standard that requires
estimates vary among researchers, and comprehension
students to use context
depends on the reader’s attitude and motivation, the con-
clues to guess the meaning
sensus is that readers need to know nearly all the words—98
percent—in order to comfortably comprehend what they’re of unknown words,
reading (Willingham, 2017). Every standards document that but without sufficient
we know of includes some ELA standard that requires stu- context (more than 98
dents to use context clues to guess the meaning of unknown
percent known words),
words, but without sufficient context (more than 98 percent
determining the meaning
known words), determining the meaning of unknown words
is virtually impossible. of unknown words is

So, with decoding ability and vocabulary, we are getting virtually impossible.
much closer to comprehension. However, these are only
two of the big three. Without knowledge—the last element of the big three—it is
possible for students to know how to decode all the words in a text and know what
they mean, and still not comprehend what the author is trying to convey.

Knowledge Foremost
Let’s turn to “the most recently understood principle” of literacy: knowledge
(Hirsch, 2003, p. 12). To understand why knowledge may be necessary even when
you know all the words in a text, take a look at the following list of words.
• belonging • manifold • self-consciousness
• call • means • synthesis
• category • mine • understanding
• contained • necessary • unity
• intuition • represented
You should be able to easily decode and define all these vocabulary words. You have
two of the big three literacy elements covered. Armed with your decoding and vocab-
ulary abilities, read the following short passage from Immanuel Kant’s (1781/1998)
Critique of Pure Reason, and try to correctly answer the low-level question asking for
basic recall on the passage’s main idea:
12 L I T E R AC Y R E F R A M E D

A manifold, contained in an intuition which I call mine, is represented,

by means of the synthesis of the understanding, as belonging to the
necessary unity of self-consciousness; and this is effected by means
of the category.
The main idea of this passage is:
a. Without a manifold, one cannot call an intuition “mine.”
b. Intuition must precede understanding.
c. Intuition must occur through a category.
d. Self-consciousness is necessary to understanding.
(Hirsch, 2006)

While some philosophy majors with adequate exposure to Kant’s work might have
easily read the passage and correctly answered the corresponding question, many
of us probably floundered, because we lack this background knowledge on Kant.
Perhaps, in reading the passage, you felt like the elderly lady from a commonly told
anecdote about Einstein. She attended a lecture on relativity given by the famous
scientist, and afterward, she approached him and remarked, “I understood all the
words. It was just how they were put together that baffled me” (Hirsch, 2003, p. 17).
Hirsch (2006) critiques teachers’ tendency to try to teach reading comprehension
skills by simply giving struggling readers more time to summarize, classify, and find
the main idea, which he says these readers cannot possibly do without the necessary
background knowledge.
To fully comprehend the provided passage, we need to know that Kant was deeply
interested in how people perceive the world (intuition) through organizing mind-
sets, paradigms, or manifolds that they build over time based on their experiences.
Combining this knowledge with our decoding and vocabulary abilities gets us much
closer to the correct answer: C.
Willingham (2017) advances that background knowledge is a primary cause of
flatlining reading scores: “Students from disadvantaged backgrounds show a char-
acteristic pattern of reading achievement in school; they make good progress until
around fourth grade, and then suddenly fall behind. The importance of background
knowledge to comprehension gives us insight into this phenomenon” (p. 128).
We could summarize our entire discussion so far with the following statement,
which reflects the big three: after one has learned the mechanics of reading, “growth
depends, more than anything, on our ability to build up students’ knowledge base
and vocabulary” (Schmoker, 2018, p. 27). And so now we turn our attention to how
the three elements interact.
 Introduction 13

The Synergy Required for Comprehension

While it is helpful to analyze the elements of decoding, vocabulary, and knowledge
separately to fully understand each of them, we must also realize that they interact like
factors in an equation, the result of which is comprehension. In fact, missing elements
in literacy cause the same kind of imbalance that comes with
a missing element in an equation. Remember what happens “Students from
when you multiply by zero. You could have all the knowledge
disadvantaged
needed to comprehend a text you are reading, and you could
know all the text’s words verbally, but if you don’t know the backgrounds show a
phonics of the text, you’ll multiply by zero, and the result characteristic pattern of
is zero comprehension. Similarly, you could know how to reading achievement in
decode the words of the text and know all their meanings, school; they make good
but without sufficient background knowledge, you will again
progress until around
multiply by zero, and the result is zero comprehension.
fourth grade, and then
In contrast with a reader who struggles to decode words,
advanced readers recognize them in milliseconds. For truly suddenly fall behind.
literate individuals, the elements of the big three blend seam- The importance of
lessly. Nearly instantaneous recognition is accompanied by background knowledge
equally instant association with meaning, and advanced read- to comprehension
ers have the knowledge to fully understand the context. The
gives us insight into
result is comprehension.
this phenomenon”
The Overskillification of Reading (Willingham, 2017,

Willingham claims that “the mistaken idea that read- p. 128).

ing is a skill—learn to crack the code, practice com-
prehension strategies—may be the single biggest factor holding back read-
ing achievement in the country” (as cited in Schmoker, 2011, p. 102).
He and Schmoker (2011) note that “once students begin to read, they learn to read
better by reading—just reading—not by being forced to endure more reading skill
drills” (p. 103). And Lemov et al. (2016) point out simply, “Excellence in almost any
academic subject requires strong reading” (p. 1).
Consider the construct of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for ELA
(National Governors Association Center for Best Practices [NGA] & Council of Chief
State School Officers [CCSSO], 2010), which devotes countless pages to listing the
various skills within the standards, while a mere four pages, scattered throughout,
address specific content. The standards leave the ultimate decisions of what knowl-
edge to impart up to the schools. This makeup is in no way unique to the CCSS.
14 L I T E R AC Y R E F R A M E D

Most other standards sets have the same dynamics: lots of discrete skills listed, with
only passing references to specific knowledge. Is it any wonder, then, that teachers
view literacy as a collection of various skills? Cognitive scientists and psychologists,
however, take a very different view.
This reliance on skills is a very common theme emerging in the professional litera-
ture, which we will refer to as the overskillification of reading.
“Excellence in almost This results in two dynamics, neither of which is helpful. First,
overskillification encourages teaching reading skill by skill,
any academic subject
rather than understanding that students achieve comprehen-
requires strong reading” sion through many interdependent skills and abilities. Second,
(Lemov et al., 2016, p. 1). requiring students to learn lengthy lists of skills often pre-
cipitates numerous skills-based lessons that, sadly, take more
and more time away from students actually reading. It’s like
a football practice where you spend all your time doing worksheets and watching
videos about specific skills, at the cost of actually taking to the field and integrating
the skills in a scrimmage or actual game situation.
Reading comprehension strategies are an excellent example of overskillification. As
Schmoker (2018) asserts, “Symbolism, figurative language, setting, mood, or structure
have their place but are absurdly overemphasized in state standards” (p. 125) at the
cost of truly authentic literacy. Daniel T. Willingham and Gail Lovette (2014) note
that direct instruction on reading comprehension strategies does make a statistically
significant difference in general reading performance, but they also note these skills
“are quickly learned and don’t require a lot of practice.” They expressly state that
there are “plenty of data showing that extended practice of [reading comprehension
strategy] instruction yields no benefit compared to briefer review.” Hirsch (2006)
notes that “six lessons in comprehension strategies yield as much or as little benefit as
25 lessons,” meaning that educators must be aware of the beneficial but “very limited
efficacy of strategy-practicing.” As a result, Willingham and Lovette (2014) call for
educators to “curtail English language arts activities that offer the smallest payout,”
noting that “strategy instruction may have an upper limit, yet building background
knowledge does not.” We can conclude, then, that spending too much time on these
strategies simply takes time away from just letting students read and develop their
personal schema of background knowledge to build on.
We are not saying that instruction on specific skills or strategies has no impact. It
does; it’s just that your return on time investment diminishes quickly. According to
reading researchers Anne Castles, Kathleen Rastle, and Kate Nation (2018), “The ben-
efits of strategy instruction appear to emerge after relatively little instruction: There
is little evidence that longer or more intensive strategy interventions lead to greater
improvements in reading comprehension” (p. 35). That’s where the time becomes
available for significantly more student reading. Similarly, Hirsch (2018) notes:
 Introduction 15

Source: © Mark Anderson, www.andertoons.com. Used with permission.

Students do show an initial positive effect from practicing finding the

main idea. But their progress quickly reaches a limit and then halts.
We know this from various meta-studies as well as from the stagnant
NAEP data. Drills in formal comprehension skills have not raised mature
reading scores; rather, they have taken up a lot of class time that could
have been devoted to knowledge building. (p. 20)

The ability to find a main idea or make an inference is a manifestation or byprod-

uct of comprehension. Students do not read well because we have taught them the
hundreds of skills reflected in the standards. They are able to perform those skills
because we have taught them to read well by focusing on the big three.
Now armed with the big three elements as a distillation of comprehension, we
teachers best know where to focus. Decoding, vocabulary, and knowledge are truly
the essence of comprehension, not all the individual reading comprehension skills
and strategies that occupy so much of our time.
16 L I T E R AC Y R E F R A M E D

The Journey Ahead

Now that we have a better understanding of what comprehension is, we can begin
to fully explore how to develop it. We need to consider how teachers can best pro-
mote the process of literacy acquisition, but our findings will not merely be about
what teachers must do. If we are going to make substantive changes in student per-
formance, we must also come to understand how students not only can but must
become self-teachers in the process. There is work they must do, and we must create
the conditions for that to happen.

First of all, let’s mention why we’ve chosen to title the book Literacy Reframed. Our
ambition with Literacy Reframed is to reframe K–12 teachers’ approach to literacy,
moving from a skill-based frame to a more holistic and knowledge-centric one. A
knowledge-centric approach to reading values the actual knowledge one receives from
reading. Knowledge learned is the ultimate takeaway from the literacy experience.
We intentionally use the word reframe because we are putting a brand-new frame on
the existing picture of literacy. It is about changing perspectives, or educators’ view
of the endgame of reading. Teachers can then use this reframed vision of literacy to
craft enduring learning for aspiring readers.
In visual arts, particularly cinematography, framing is the presentation of visual ele-
ments in an image, especially the placement of the subject in relation to other objects.
When we frame a scene in a different way, the new frame doesn’t change the contents
of the picture, but it changes the focus of the person viewing the picture. Framing can
make an image more aesthetically pleasing and keep the viewer’s focus on the framed
scene. One example from the visual arts is the framing technique repoussoir, or the
use of an object near the edge of a composition that directs attention into the scene.
In French, repoussoir means “pushing back” (“Repoussoir,” n.d.); this book pushes
teachers’ attention away from the distractions that have plagued them and back to
what matters. Basically, our aim is to give teachers a sense of the value of knowl-
edge and meaning instead of letting them rely so heavily on students’ skillfulness as
readers. The painting “The Art of Painting” (https://bit.ly/3ddHped) by Johannes
Vermeer (1666–1668) demonstrates repoussoir; a curtain in the foreground gives the
audience only a partial view into an artist’s studio, but frames that view so that viewers
see the studio in a certain way.
By the way, if you stumbled upon the word repoussoir and did not know what it
means, you would probably try to figure it out by sounding it out in your head,
relying on what you learned about phonics in the first grade. You would also probably
try to define it considering the context of how it was used. If you were completely
unfamiliar with the word, you would naturally look up the definition in the dictionary
 Introduction 17

(or simply google it). Regardless, the point is that you would use techniques you
learned in elementary school to help you develop your vocabulary. You would consider
the context in which the word was used, look up the word, and consider synonyms
you might know, using the lifelong skill of vocabulary building while continually
expanding your personal word bank. And finally, you would look for examples of the
word in the real world to build a deeper understanding or knowledge base about the
visual arts. It seems pertinent to mention that the ability to conduct this kind of search
for context clues develops over time when one has spent a lot of time just reading.
Rich, relevant reading pays dividends with advancing literacy. This idea exemplifies
not the overskillification of reading but the totality of reading comprehension, literacy
acquisition, and the big three elements under scrutiny.
In illuminating a dynamic new path forward that reframes our perspective on liter-
acy, Literacy Reframed devotes a chapter to each of the big three elements of reading
comprehension. Chapter 1 covers decoding and discusses the sound of literacy and
phonics. The sound of language awakens students’ sensitivities from an early age. In
chapter 2, we move on to vocabulary, concentrating on the look of literacy. The look
of language includes the images of letters, of words with tall letters and letters that
hang down, of a string of words called a phrase, sentence, or question, and even of
the graphic configurations of paragraphs, dialogue, and poetry on the page or screen.
Words seem like mere squiggles to students at first but ultimately become familiar and
identifiable to the youngest readers. The element of knowledge appears in chapter 3,
which focuses on the knowingness of literacy—that is, background knowledge. The
knowingness of language involves students’ brains making sense of the sound and
sight of language to continually build their mental map of background knowledge.
Finally, we have devoted chapter 4 to digital reading. In this age of technological
innovation, digital reading takes its rightful place in the Literacy Reframed landscape.
We felt it was important to include a chapter on this important topic because the
model of paper-and-pencil reading and writing is now juxtaposed with digital devices
of every size and shape in our learning environments. We aim to distill the essence
of digital reading concerns within the frame of the school, classroom, and students.
Digital literacy combines the sound, look, and knowingness of literacy in unique
ways, and we feel it’s essential for teachers to acknowledge and use these similarities
and differences as they work toward the overall goal of educating literate young peo-
ple and making them ready to enter the wide, wide world of known and unknown
challenges.
In each chapter, we begin with a brief introduction and an overview of the essential
research. Then we transition to ideas for school implementation and classroom appli-
cations of a knowledge-centric curriculum in a variety of grade levels and subjects.
18 L I T E R AC Y R E F R A M E D

We close each chapter with a list of team discussion questions and essential resources
that readers can use to extend their learning. For schools that function as professional
learning communities (PLCs), these questions are perfect for collaborative team meet-
ings to help build trust, establish cohesive goals, and learn from one another (DuFour,
DuFour, Eaker, Many, & Mattos, 2016). Our goal is to steer teachers toward some
new ways to use our ideas throughout their literacy curriculum work, regardless of
the subjects they teach.

Chapters 1–4 at a Glance

As educators, we must aim to change the frame on our old, static, failed picture
of reading growth. We need a new perspective on literacy learning, with massive
amounts of reading and writing for success. The evidence is clear that much more
reading and writing inspire student confidence and ensure their success. We must
rally students to the call for literacy learning every day, in every way. The following
hypothetical classroom vignettes illustrate how teachers could go about teaching
reading with a reframed perspective on literacy.

Chapter 1: The Sound of Reading—Decoding and Phonics

Marilyn Ferguson (1980) writes, “Language releases the unknown from limbo,
expressing it in a way that the whole brain can know it” (p. 80). In the following
vignette, note the inextricable connection between the words people say and
the words they write. It highlights the connectedness of our models of language.
Mrs. Lathers asked her eleventh graders, “How do you know what you think
until you see what you say?” This question helped students think about the
revelations that naturally occurred as they began to write. The oral language
they heard in their heads came out a bit differently when they wrote their ideas
on paper. In fact, they found that the words they wrote came out more formal
than the words they said to themselves, but because it was their own writing
in their own words, they found it easy to read. This is part of the differences
we often encounter in the verbal voice and written voice. It’s what Ferguson
(1980) is describing when she talks about releasing the unknown from limbo.
We know that experience with spoken and written language radically restruc-
tures the brain, especially for the very young (Boroditsky, 2019). In fact, it is
how the brain learns, literally, by changing its chemistry and its structure to
capture the concept through the natural neurological activity of learning.
The multimodal learning process in the brain is alerted with the neurological-
impress method, a technique pioneered by clinical psychologist R. G. Heckelman
(1969) that involves a student and a partner reading aloud simultaneously from the
same book. This method allows students to see, say, and hear fluent language,
and this combination of senses helps them decode unknown words. To impact
 Introduction 19

students’ reading levels, teachers should foster plenty of opportunities for stu-
dents to speak, listen to, and write vocabulary.

Chapter 2: The Look of Reading—Vocabulary

The look of reading is intriguing. The different ways that readers can perceive
the look of what they’re reading means they make distinctions and choices.
Marilyn Ferguson (1980) writes, “The mind aware of itself is a pilot” (p. 69). Readers
can use their self-awareness of the look of reading to note the choices they make
and how they react to what they notice about what they read. In the following
story, see how students’ journey of choosing a book to read independently can
embody this idea.
Ms. Sutton wanted her fourth graders to pick out a book to read on their own
during silent reading time in class. During a trip to the school library, she asked
them to make their choices based on what the books look like. The look of read-
ing can cause students to prejudge many aspects of reading choices. A student
might think, “l love the cover,” “It looks like a big-kid book ’cause it’s so thick,”
and “The pages are completely covered with words; no places to stop and start.
No pictures. It bet it’s going to be hard; definitely a long slog, so here goes.”
The look of reading is in the mechanics and the aesthetics. If a word doesn’t
look right, it could be a spelling error. If a text has shorter paragraphs, with open-
ings of white space or a graphic or callout to interrupt the text, it’s more inviting
to the reader. The look of a poem, a passage, or even a run of dialogue offers
a break in text for the weary reader. Knowing this to be true, talk about reading
choices with your students. Get them thinking about how they think about the
look of a reading.

Chapter 3: The Knowingness of Reading—Background Knowledge

Eric Hoffer (1973) points out, “In times of drastic change it is the learners who
inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world
that no longer exists” (p. 22). We see this quote as a comment on the rapid
changes that occur in all sectors of the world, including education, and the need
for swiftness when moving on to the newest methods. Those not able to make
the shift will be left behind. But without background knowledge, there is nowhere
to shift from. The brain builds on background knowledge that’s already present
and makes neurological adjustments to fit the incoming messages into existing
patterns. This is the story of learning: building on existing knowledge in a dynamic
way and chunking information to make sense of it and store it for logical recovery
when needed. The following vignette concerns the essence of what knowing is all
about. It’s that metacognitive moment when we call on our brain to work deeper.
When Mr. Ellington repeated, “You know more than you think you know. Your
brain is smarter than you,” these sixth-grade students knew to think again, to

continued 
20 L I T E R AC Y R E F R A M E D

search for connections that made sense of the content they were reading. In fact,
Mr. Ellington actually heard students saying under their breath, “I know; I know
more than I know I know.” This behavior was more obvious when they deciphered
an optical illusion or discerned the patterns in a tessellation or laughed aloud at
a cartoon image that seemed hilarious the instant it registered on the brain. It
was clear when they finally had that break, that rare aha moment, that they knew
he was right.
A truth to take away: It’s important and intelligent to know what we know and
what we don’t know.

Chapter 4: Digital Reading

What could be better, in a world of information amid misinformation, than a
digital reader in your back pocket?
This story is our ode to the technology advancement that allows us to revisit and
refresh the background knowledge stored in our brain. It’s called the computer;
whether a tiny handheld device, a tablet, or a desktop processor, it’s a ready, fast
backup like an ever-ready battery.
Mr. Hass’s seventh-grade students were digital-savvy readers, each with a smart-
phone near at hand. Rather than having to go to the dictionary in the corner or yell
out, “What’s a thesaurus?” these students had a background knowledge center
with them at all times. He coached, “When you’re stumped, think in your head
first to see if you can recover any ideas. If not, then ask your partner, and finally,
dig out the digital wizard and search with Siri or google it to find the answer on
your own.”
One’s body of knowledge is enhanced by background experiences and prior
understanding. When a chunk of knowledge is missing, the brain searches for a
connection. Teachers who understand the power of knowledge-driven reading
understandably value the use of a digital device.

Along the way, we will explore some closely related ideas such as the emerging
requirements around assisting dyslexic students sooner, the impact of transitioning
to digital texts, and the potential for literacy acquisition to support the acquisition
of social-emotional skills.
The topic of literacy is highly charged, with skirmishes from the so-called reading
wars somehow still persisting. We have tried to fully substantiate each claim herein
with solid research, rather than any particular philosophy or preference. In doing
this, we respectfully interpret the work of Mike Schmoker, Daniel T. Willingham,
Stanislas Dehaene, E. D. Hirsch Jr., and other respected voices in the field of literacy
instruction, including Isabel Beck, Rick Stiggins, Doug Lemov, and more. They have
powerful insights to share, and based on long-term performance metrics, we are eager
 Introduction 21

for some new thinking about how to best teach literacy, and even more eager to put
the innovations into practice.
As the famous lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II suggests, “Let’s start at the very begin-
ning / A very good place to start” (Rodgers & Hammerstein, 1965). His lyrical start
was for learning to sing in The Sound of Music. Let us begin with the sound of literacy.
 CHAPTER 1

The Sound of Reading—

Decoding and Phonics

Reading to students from the math book has a demystifying impact

on the miracles and mysteries of math.
—Anonymous

W
hen twins Mike and Mitch hear their mom yell out, “Oh no!” the boys
instantly start guessing what’s happened. Mike thinks the “Oh no!” is
an exclamation of surprise: “Maybe she is pleasantly surprised about our
new arrangement of the garage, since she’s using that high-pitched, sing-song voice.”
“No way!” Mitch says. “That was not her high-pitched, pleasant-surprise voice; that
was her very loud, ‘Oh no, I’m mad, and I can’t wait to tell you how furious I am’
voice. She’s not at all happy about the garage. I don’t think she wanted all the bikes,
rackets, and camping gear hung up on all three walls.
Mike says, “Let’s find out.”
Mitch replies, “You first.”
This story emphasizes the inherent power of voiced words. This situation should
sound familiar because it illustrates how sensitive we humans are to sounds. A child’s
earliest recognitions are the many nuanced sounds of the human voice. Children hear
sounds and register the volume, tone, and tenor in their attempts to make sense of the
world. Slowly, they begin to understand the sounds as words and associate meanings
with them (Diamond & Hopson, 1999). All of this happens naturally with spoken
language, but there is nothing natural about learning to interpret the symbols of
written language. This is where decoding and phonics come in.

23
24 L I T E R AC Y R E F R A M E D

Playful Phonics and the Sound of Literacy

Much like you might open a lesson with a playful, thought-provoking exercise
to allow students to warm up before the real work begins, we deliberately begin
each chapter of this book by referencing something fun about the key elements
of literacy.
This chapter about the many sounds of literacy starts off with some tongue
twisters and other word fun to ignite mindful thinking (searching for connections)
and creative mental meanderings (seeking words that have specific sounds). In
turn, you can share these passages with your students. For each of these exam-
ples, you might display one or two lines at a time and let your students take their
cues from you as you and they say the words.

The Sound of Letters

Say the letter sounds emphasized in the alliteration of tongue twisters:
Peter Piper pick’d a peck of pickled peppers. . . .
Where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper pick’d? (Harris, 1836,
pp. 51–52)

The Sound of Words

While reading a poem, say the emphasized word sounds:
Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout
Would not take the garbage out! (Silverstein, 1974, p. 71; see https://bit
.ly/3hOIk7A for full poem text)

The Sound of Phrases

Working in pairs, complete the stem phrases in the following list:
“Have you ever . . .? What if . . .? Why not . . .? Coming . . . ”

The Sound of Sentences

Say the stem and complete the famous literary opening (Mumford, 2015) with
your own thoughts:
“It was a dark and stormy night . . .”

The Sound of Narrative

We all remember stories; that’s one reason nursery rhymes so readily remain
in memory.
Jack and Jill went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water;
Jack fell down and broke his crown,
And Jill came tumbling after. (Wright, 1916, p. 49)
 The Sound of Reading—Decoding and Phonics 25

The Sound of Nonfiction

Read aloud Newton’s (1846) three laws of motion, one at a time.
1. Every object persists in a state of rest or in a state of movement forward
as compelled by its state of force impressed.
2. The alteration of motion is ever proportional to the motive force
impressed in the direction of the right line in which force is impressed.
3. Every action has an opposite and equal reaction, and objects remain
at rest or continue to move at a constant velocity unless acted upon by
a force.

Phonics: How to Teach It Effectively

Let’s look a little closer. When we talk about decoding, what we’re getting at is
phonics. Teachers of older students may dismiss that term at first glance, but as we’ll
discuss, phonics has a place throughout grades K–12.
What exactly is phonics? In a nutshell, phonics involves specific and discrete ele-
ments that include phonemes, or units of sound, and the letters of the English alpha-
bet, including vowels and consonants as well as blends (such as sk- or cl-) and digraphs
(such as ch- or ph-). In short, phonics centers on the early literacy skills of associating
the sounds and symbols of language (Watson, 2019).

What Phonics Curriculum Encompasses

Curriculum should encompass the following six aspects of phonics.

1. Forty-four phonemes (the smallest part of spoken language) and two
hundred eighty-four graphemes (the smallest part of written language)
2. Sequence for introducing letter-sound correspondences—a, m, t, s, i, f,
d, r, o, g, l, h, u, c, b, n, k, v, e, w, j, p, y, T, L, M, F, D, I, N, A, R, H, G, B, x,
q, z, J, E, Q (Carnine, Silbert, Kame’enui, Slocum, & Travers, 2017)
3. The twenty-six letters of the English alphabet—a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k,
l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, and z
4. The five or six vowels—a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y
5. The twenty or twenty-one consonants—b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, q, r,
s, t, v, w, x, z, and sometimes y
6. Blends and digraphs
26 L I T E R AC Y R E F R A M E D

While phonics instruction dominates early reading lessons, when teachers nec-
essarily break down oral language and the sound of reading into the letter-sound
relationships, it does continue throughout the learning years. As students learn to
decipher the sounds of language, phonics directly follows the analytical parts of
literacy learning through the elementary grades as an important element of reading,
writing, and spelling.
Phonics is still definitely present in the intermediate- and secondary-grades curric-
ulum in some form, with a focus on root words, prefixes, suffixes, derivatives, and,
in more sophisticated measures, the actual sounds of words and strings of words and
the tone, tenor, and nuances of the music-like sounds of language. At these more
sophisticated levels, students learn to appreciate word choice, dialogue, and dialect
in scripts; writing style; and the emotional tension in well-written pieces.
Teachers can nurture students’ reading lives by making sure they have a solid pho-
nics foundation. In the following sections, we’ll explain that teachers must make sure
phonics programs have structure and sequence, use phonics as a bridge to successful
reading, be aware of the limitations of phonics instruction, and move beyond mechan-
ics to the next phase of literacy acquisition.

Create Phonics Programs With Structure and Sequence

Foundationally, instruction on the phonics used to decode words is about the
relationships between the letters of written language and the sounds of spoken lan-
guage. Teaching students about these relationships is important because it leads to an
understanding of the alphabetic principle: the systematic and predictable relationships
between written letters and spoken sounds.
Programs of phonics instruction are effective when they are systematic. The plan
of instruction includes a carefully selected set of letter-sound relationships that are
explicitly organized into a logical sequence. The programs provide teachers with precise
directions for teaching these relationships. Effective phonics programs provide ample
opportunities for students to apply what they are learning about letters and sounds,
and use them to read words, sentences, and stories. Systematic and explicit phonics
instruction that significantly improves students’ word recognition, spelling, and reading
comprehension is most effective when it begins in kindergarten or first grade.
Elementary level students must learn phonics with brief bursts and then apply their
learning immediately, with coaching feedback, to reach a level where decoding words
is automatic and habitual. Of course, how teachers conduct this instruction matters.
The emerging approach of deliberate practice is distinguished by its hallmark features
of short, frequent, and intense sessions in which students read the same passage
multiple times and take frequent breaks to recover; this is what is known as reach
and repeat. Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool (2017) stress these elements in their
evidence-based work on deliberate practice. It is the best way to foster best practices
 The Sound of Reading—Decoding and Phonics 27

in place of the skill-and-drill regimen of the past (Ericsson & Pool, 2017). Teaching
phonics in an effective sequence will significantly influence the rate at which students
successfully acquire phonics knowledge and skills.
As stated earlier, the sound of literacy is where language begins. Human beings are
prewired to learn language by hearing it spoken. Dehaene (2009) notes, “At the age of
five or six, when children are exposed to their first reading lessons, they already have
an expert knowledge of phonology. They also possess a vocabulary of several thousand
words and have mastered the basic grammatical structures of their languages” (p. 198).
All of this has occurred with little or no formal instruction.
In most cases, any “reading” that students do prior to formal instruction is actually
what German psychologist Uta Frith (1985) refers to as the pictorial phase of literacy
acquisition (as cited in Dehaene, 2009). During this phase, children look at words
exactly as they do objects or faces, perceiving words exactly as they perceive pictures.
Words are merely entire images with which they have become familiar. They know
some very familiar words purely through repeated exposure (for example, their name
or a famous brand, such as the Coca-Cola scripted text logo). This concept is critical,
and we will more fully discuss it in subsequent sections.

Suggestions for Ideally Structured Phonics Instruction

At the phonological level, preschoolers benefit from playing with words and
their component sounds (syllables, rhymes, and finally phonemes).
At the visual level . . . the Montessori method, which requires tracing sandpaper
letters with a fingertip, is often of considerable assistance . . . [in] figuring out
each letter’s orientation, and makes it clear that b, p, d, and q are different letters.
Children must be taught, without fear or repetition, how each letter or group
of letters corresponds to a phoneme (sound).
Because English spelling is complex, introductions of graphemes (visuals) must
occur in logical order.
Children’s attention must be drawn to the presence of these individual elements
within familiar words. This can be done by assigning each grapheme a distinctive
color, or by moving them around to create new words.
The ability to attend to the various subcomponents of words is so essential
that this must be taught explicitly, for instance, by covering words with a sliding
window that reveals only a few letters at a time.
Going too fast can also be a handicap. At each step, the words and sentences
introduced in class must only include graphemes and phonemes that have already
been explicitly taught.

Source: Dehaene, 2009, pp. 228–229.

28 L I T E R AC Y R E F R A M E D

Phonics Is the Logical Bridge Into Reading

When everything young students know about language is based on sounds and they
must transition to a world of print, phonics serves as the most logical bridge. It takes
them from the words they already know verbally to the ability to read them visually.
Literacy scholar David L. Share (1995) notes that phonics instruction represents “the
logical point of entry since it offers a minimum number of rules with the maximum
generative power” (p. 156). As a result, “any plausible model of reading acquisition
must assign phonology a leading role” (Share, 1999, p. 95). Phonology comprises all
the sounds of a word that students are trained to hear and to reproduce. It’s important
throughout the continuum of phonics instruction as the human ear becomes highly
sensitive to barely audible variations in sounds.
Research on the effectiveness of phonics instruction is clear as exemplified in this
sense: “Phonics approaches have been consistently found to be effective in supporting
younger readers to master the basics of reading” and are “more effective on average
than other approaches to early reading” (Pimentel, 2018). Similarly, a research sum-
mary from Britain’s Education Endowment Foundation (n.d.) notes the research base
for phonics as having “very extensive evidence,” and its highest rating. Language arts
standards expert Susan Pimentel (2018) suggests that “it is not an overstatement to
say that a school that doesn’t have a phonics program is doing its students a huge
disservice.” It is one of the key elements in the foundation of phonics instruction.
Highly critical of many other 21st century education policies, multiple authors
view the increased emphasis on explicit and systematic phonics instruction driven
by changes to standards and accountability since 2010 as an improvement in U.S.
schools’ literacy efforts. Hirsch (2018), for example, remarks, “The testing regimens
have clearly helped improve the mechanics of early reading,” which he views as “an
important gain” (p. 11). With so much emphasis on reading in the early grades and
having students reading on grade level by the end of grade 3, schools have thought-
fully reviewed their curricula and attempted to ensure that their programs are research
based. As a result, more students are now receiving the explicit and systematic phonics
instruction that research validates.
Though a strong proponent of phonics instruction, Dehaene (2009) does address
the concerns of whole-language advocates by stating, “Learning the mechanics of
reading is not an end in itself—in the long run, it only makes sense if it leads to
meaning” (p. 229). In summary, he remarks:
As a scientist and a professor myself, I expect the teachers and edu-
cators to whom I entrust my children to invest as much obsessive care
in the design of lessons as my colleagues and I do when we prepare a
psychological experiment. (Dehaene, 2009, p. 230)
 The Sound of Reading—Decoding and Phonics 29

The groundwork for further development of reading excellence is carefully laid out
with the stepping stones of phonics instruction. Dehaene’s (2009) words capture
the idea of an approach to phonics instruction that is direct (explicit) and carefully
crafted (systematic).
The phrase the science of reading has begun to appear in the professional litera-
ture with increased frequency. This basically means ensuring that the instructional
approaches that teachers use are based on the very best research-validated methods.
Phonics is one such element that has run the gamut of scientific studies with levels of
positive findings that qualify as proof of its effectiveness. We suggest, however, that
some may be limiting the science of reading solely to phonics.
Borrowing from a perspective Willingham (2017) offers in The Reading Mind, we
assert that there are multiple sciences of reading. We find his presentation of the cog-
nitive approach, one based on detailed studies of the brain’s organization, operations,
and reactions to various stimuli, highly useful but, as he notes, “That’s not the only
scientific perspective on reading” (Willingham, 2017, p. 9). For example, yet “another
scientific literature employs the sociocultural view, which emphasizes the role of the
social environment in reading” and “the cognitive approach is not in opposition to
this view; it’s just different” (Willingham, 2017, p. 9).
Strong proponents of phonics have, rightly so, gravitated to the science of reading,
seeing it as a reflection of the broad, extensive research base supporting an appropriate
phonological approach. Any author or publication, however, that presents phonics as
the totality of the science of reading is portraying an incomplete picture. The extensive
research base for literacy goes well beyond phonics.

Understand How Far Phonics Can Take Readers

Despite a powerful research base for phonics, many don’t fully accept the primacy
of its role in early reading. As Castles et al. (2018) note, “Despite extensive scientific
evidence, accumulated over decades, for the centrality of alphabetic decoding skills as
a foundation of learning to read, there remains resistance to using phonics instruction
methods in the classroom” (p. 38). And, even though phonics provides most students
with the optimum start in terms of literacy, we must acknowledge that phonics has
limitations, and we must consider the wider landscape of literacy. As previously noted,
phonics instruction represents “a minimum number of rules with the maximum
generative power,” but it has some appreciable limitations that we must acknowledge
(Share, 1995, p. 156). Relying solely on phonics to read has appreciable drawbacks.
First, relying fully on phonics or decoding to read is exhausting. Having to decode
too many unknown words saps so much cognitive-processing power that compre-
hension becomes impossible. Nearly every educator has observed a student expend
30 L I T E R AC Y R E F R A M E D

so much energy on sounding out the words of a text that, at the end of the process,
the student has read the words aloud but is unable to answer the most basic ques-
tion about the reading. When this happens, the fluency of the reading process has
been halted beyond repair or synthesis. Readers have finite processing power, and
if decoding the words takes most of this power, then they have nothing left over to
think about or even take in what they read. As “overtrained readers, [teachers] no
longer have much perspective on how difficult reading really is,” but for developing
readers, the difficulty is quite real (Dehaene, 2009, p. 218).
Next, for phonics to be instantly helpful in terms of comprehension, readers must
already know the meaning of the word they are sounding out. If you sound out a
word and have never heard it before, you may be no closer to understanding it. Over
time, readers do develop the capacity for self-teaching, eventually gaining the ability
to “decipher the pronunciation of a novel string and associate it with a familiar
meaning,” but this capacity takes time to build (Dehaene, 2009, p. 226). This is why
reading to students daily and exposing them to language and text are critical factors.
Finally, relying on phonics is certainly not what advanced readers generally are
doing. To be clear, when they encounter a completely unknown word, advanced
readers do revert to phonics, but the vast majority of the time they are recognizing
words instantly by sight or through using their knowledge of known words to figure
out at least parts of unknown ones. That said, we do explore more of what advanced
readers do in subsequent sections.

Reading Is More Than Something Mechanical

At the heart of some concerns about phonics is a nagging feeling or core belief that
reading is not purely mechanical, that it is more than a collection of phonetical abil-
ities. But teachers struggle to clarify exactly what the more is, outside of catchphrases
like the joy of reading or getting lost in a story. According to Castles et al. (2018),
educators know that literacy is more than just skills, but there hasn’t been much
discussion of the actual evidence that this is so. As a result, “calls for a greater focus
on phonics instruction can seem unbalanced” when they are not coupled with the
larger considerations of the beauty and facility of language (Castles et al., 2018, p. 36).
In the end, any helpful conversation about phonics must clearly acknowledge that
“the acquisition of phonics knowledge is by no means all there is to learning to read”
(Castles et al., 2018, p. 16). It is quite possible to overemphasize phonics; more of
a good thing isn’t always better. A theme has emerged across the work of multiple
authors that, while literacy instruction should begin with phonics, advanced liter-
acy skills go far beyond this humble beginning. Researchers Philip B. Gough and
Michael L. Hillinger (1980) and Rod Maclean (1988) note that “the spelling-sound
 The Sound of Reading—Decoding and Phonics 31

correspondence rules to which a child is first introduced are very different from those
he or she will eventually acquire as a skilled reader” (as cited in Share, 1995, p. 156).

Proponents of a whole-language approach will take solace in the Education

Endowment Foundation’s (n.d.) cautionary remark couched within its highly favor-
able review of phonics research:
Teaching phonics is more effective on average than other approaches to
early reading (such as whole language or alphabetic approaches), though
it should be emphasized that effective phonics techniques are usually
embedded in a rich literacy environment for early readers and are only
one part of a successful literacy strategy.

Similarly, as Myracle et al. (2019) note, “Some express fears that phonics instruction
comes at the expense of students engaging with rich texts, yet every good curriculum
we know incorporates strong foundational skills and daily work with high-quality
texts.” It’s about balance. “The National Reading Panel got it right: Literacy work is
both/and, not either/or” (Myracle et al., 2019).
Becoming fully literate is analogous to taking a journey to a new, faraway land.
Assume that getting there requires a flight and that the first step in getting to the
airport requires exiting your driveway and turning right. Phonics instruction is that
first right turn. That first turn is the correct, most efficient first step, but there’s much
more to the journey.

Go Beyond the Mechanics of Reading

Once again, when students in the early reader phase, at whatever grade, have learned
the mechanics of reading, literacy acquisition naturally transitions to another, more
sophisticated phase in which the primary drivers of growth are reading, being read
to, and reading with others in small groups or with reading buddies. This would
also include complementary writing exercises. Solid phonics instruction begins the
process, but there is much more to becoming an advanced, avid, self-propelled reader.
While phonics begins students’ literacy acquisition journey with a phase in which
teachers directly instruct students on specific skills (such as letter-sound pairings and
consonant blends), the next phase of literacy acquisition is one in which the teach-
er’s role becomes secondary. In order for their literacy abilities to continue to grow
and flourish, students must become capable of self-teaching, which we are about to
explore in detail.

An acknowledgement of this second phase of literacy acquisition—the self-teaching

phase—gives us a way to understand why reading growth flatlines. If we can come to
32 L I T E R AC Y R E F R A M E D

better understand the elements of this phase, we can create conditions in which far
more students can teach themselves much of what they need to advance their reading
competencies. And it’s critical that we do that because many of our struggling students
should not be struggling. Many of them have all the skills and abilities necessary for
success, but they fail to flourish because we do not know how to create the conditions
for them to do so.
Share (1995) asserts that, when late elementary school students struggle, they usu-
ally fall into one of two categories: (1) students who have specific reading disabilities
or (2) students who are “garden-variety struggling readers” (p. 186). The sad reality is
that we produce a lot of garden-variety struggling readers. They represent the major-
ity of readers who struggle. These students have challenges that “are not primarily
attributable to . . . general intelligence, semantic or visual processes” (Share, 1995, p.
186). They have the ability; they just have not had the necessary experiences.
As we press forward, we will explore how to help these students flourish. And this
begins by tapping into their innate ability to learn language by hearing it spoken and
read to them.

Best Practice: Reading to Students—Crucial, but

Often Neglected
Given the human propensity to take in language by hearing it spoken and the fact
that having heard a word before facilitates decoding it, let us now explore the other
aspect of the sound of reading: the critical need to read to students daily at all levels.
When parents, older siblings, and teachers read to very young children—toddlers,
preschoolers, and primary-grade students—they can nourish the process of preliteracy,
or the development of early behaviors and skills that lead to successful reading. At
this point, learning takes place through a favorite bedtime story (The Cat in the Hat
[Seuss, 1957], “The Song of Hiawatha” [Longfellow, 1909], “Jack and the Beanstalk”
[Ottolenghi, 2002]), or often-repeated nursery rhymes. It should be fun and not feel
like a chore. Heed the wisdom of children’s book author and literacy expert Mem
Fox: “When I say to a parent, ‘read to a child,’ I don’t want it to sound like medicine.
I want it to sound like chocolate” (Fox, 2008, p. 56).
As students enter their years of schooling, the importance of being read to does
not diminish. Consider the following statements about the importance of reading
aloud to students.
• In Becoming a Nation of Readers, Richard C. Anderson, Elfrieda H.
Hiebert, Judith A. Scott, and Ian A. G. Wilkinson (1985) state, “The
 The Sound of Reading—Decoding and Phonics 33

single most important activity for building the knowledge required for
eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children” (p. 23).
• Literacy professor Steven L. Layne (2015) advances, “Those who know
the research are aware of the consistent findings in regard to the benefits
of reading aloud to children and young adults. It is best practice. It is
sound practice” (p. 7).
• Former International Literacy Association president and Clemson
University distinguished professor of education Linda B. Gambrell
(personal communication, as cited in Layne, 2015) proclaims, “Reading
aloud deserves to be a high priority in the literacy curriculum” (p. 46).
• Former International Literacy Association board member and professor
at the University of Illinois at Chicago William H. Teale (personal
communication, as cited in Layne, 2015) recommends, “The classroom
practice of reading aloud should be a guiding principle for teachers at any
level of our educational system” (p. 72).
• In Invitations: Changing as Teachers and Learners K–12, educator and
author Regie Routman (1991) remarks, “Reading aloud should take place
daily at all grade levels, including junior high and high school” (as cited
in Layne, 2015, p. 8).
• Lemov, Driggs, and Woolway (2016) herald reading to students as “an
integral part of any successful reading program in order to expose students
to texts (and ideas!) significantly above their reading level, model fluent
reading for students, and instill a love of reading and a love of literature in
our students” (p. 239).
• Hirsch (2018) contends, “In the earliest grades learning by being read
aloud to and through talking and listening is fundamental to language
progress and needs to receive great emphasis” (p. 168).
Despite these experts’ admonitions that teachers should regularly read aloud to
students, we question how often they actually do so, particularly as students prog-
ress through the grades. Some question why, once students can read independently,
teachers still need to read to them. There are many reasons, which we unpack in the
following section.

The Language of Books

One of the most important reasons to read aloud to students is that “the everyday
language that students hear does not prepare them to enter into the world of books,
because both narrative and informational books represent book language that is very
34 L I T E R AC Y R E F R A M E D

different from spoken language” (L. B. Gambrell, personal communication, as cited

in Layne, 2015, p. 44). Why do authors use such drastically different language in
written work? They need to do so because of the following:

Speech usually takes place in a communicative context, meaning that

some cues that are present in speech (e.g., prosody, gesture, tone of
voice, facial expression) are absent in writing. To compensate, written
language draws on a much larger vocabulary and more complex gram-
mar: Noun phrases and clauses are longer and more embedded, and
the passive voice, more formal voice is much more common. (Castles
et al., 2018, p. 31)

With this understanding of how drastically different the typical written word is from
the generally spoken word, teachers will either take the time to expose students to
the advanced language of texts by reading to them, or fail to take this step and hope,
against all odds, that students will somehow be successful when they encounter this
unfamiliar world of advanced language on their own—an unlikely occurrence.
Another specific reason to read to students is that it facilitates other aspects of lit-
eracy acquisition. Educator and author Jim Trelease (2013) uses a metaphor of water
flowing through various levees, as reflected in figure 1.1, to help us understand the
critical need to read to students.

Listening
vocabulary
Speaking
Reading Writing

How can you speak, read, or write the word if you’ve never heard the word?

Source: Adapted from Trelease, 2013.

Figure 1.1: Speaking vocabulary, reading vocabulary, and writing vocabulary.

Trelease (2013) explains:

The first levee would be the Speaking Vocabulary. You pour enough
words into the child’s Listening Vocabulary [by reading to him], and it
will overflow and fill the Speaking Vocabulary pool—thus the child starts
speaking the words he has heard. It’s highly unlikely that you’ll ever say
 The Sound of Reading—Decoding and Phonics 35

a word if you’ve never heard that word. . . . The next levee is the Reading
Vocabulary. It’s nearly impossible to understand a word in print if you’ve
never said the word. And finally, there’s the Writing Vocabulary. If you’ve
never said the word or read the word, how in the world will you be able to
write it? All language arts flow from the Listening Vocabulary—and that has
to be filled by someone besides the child. Simple. (p. 14, emphasis added)

Additionally, reading to students not only fosters their reading abilities but also pro-
motes their writing abilities. In The Reader in the Writer, authors Myra Barrs and
Valerie Cork (2001) state, “Children who are read to in class write with more assur-
ance, using a wider range of vocabulary, sentence structures and larger text structures
than those denied this experience” (as cited in Layne, 2015, p. 47).
Beyond the logical case for reading to students, there’s an
equally powerful emotional one, particularly for students Reading to students not
who were seldom, if ever, read to at home. Reading to stu- only fosters their reading
dents can create powerful positive associations with books.
abilities but also promotes
As Willingham (2017) notes, “Research shows that positive
childhood experiences with books are associated with later their writing abilities.
reading” (p. 140). Furthermore, “Your reading attitude is In The Reader in the
mostly emotional. It’s based on whether reading seems reward- Writer, authors Myra
ing, excites you, or interests you. . . . Because reading attitudes Barrs and Valerie Cork
are mostly emotional, logical appeals about the value of read-
(2001) state, “Children
ing won’t do much” (Willingham, 2017, pp. 138, 140).
who are read to in
Trelease (2013) positions reading to students as a commer-
class write with more
cial for reading that “conditions the child to associate books
and print with pleasure” (p. 6). This is absolutely critical and assurance, using a wider
irreplaceable, particularly for struggling students, because, as range of vocabulary,
Trelease (2013) states: sentence structures and
The learning experience can often be tedious or bor- larger text structures
ing, threatening, and often without meaning—endless than those denied this
hours of work sheets, intensive phonics instruction, and experience” (as cited in
unconnected test questions. If a child seldom experi-
Layne, 2015, p. 47).
ences the pleasures of reading but increasingly meets its
displeasures, then the natural reaction will be withdrawal.
(p. 6)

And, yes, being read to is not just for early elementary students. It’s for students at
every level. Henrietta Dombey (personal communication, as cited in Layne, 2015),
former president of the United Kingdom Literacy Association and professor emeritus
at the University of Brighton, asserts, “Reading aloud gives older children a relaxation
36 L I T E R AC Y R E F R A M E D

from the tension of competing school tasks and a shared experience of enjoyment”
(pp. 46–47). Trelease (2013) bemoans the fact that:
by middle school, almost no one is reading aloud to students. If each
read-aloud is a commercial for reading, then a decline in advertising
would naturally be reflected in a decline in students’ recreational read-
ing. . . . Unlike McDonald’s, we often cut our advertising each year
instead of increasing it. (Trelease, 2013, pp. 5–6, 38)

Finally, reading aloud to students creates incredibly fertile ground for phonics to
work optimally. As Trelease (2013) notes, “As you read to a child, you’re pouring
into the child’s ears (and brain) all the sounds, syllables, endings, and blendings that
she will someday be asked to read and understand” (p. 14). This creates a dynamic
where “students know words before they read them for the first time, and are then
able to decode them more effectively” (Lemov et al., 2016, p. 242, emphasis added).
By reading to students, teachers fill their listening vocabulary and prepare them to
be effective as they enter the language of a book.

Read-Alouds in the Classroom

Reading aloud in the classroom is an opportunity to expose students to more
challenging texts than they might otherwise encounter, but for this to be optimally
effective, teachers must make informed choices about what to read. According to
Lemov et al. (2016):
On the too-infrequent occasions that teachers do read aloud to stu-
dents, the text is often too simplistic. Read-aloud is a unique opportunity
to breathe life into texts that students are unable to read independently
[and it] exposes students to complex sentence structures and vocabu-
lary and builds background knowledge. (p. 240)

Layne (2015) positions reading aloud as helping students in “listening up” (p. 55). He
refers to the highly researched dynamic that “the listening level of a child (the level at
which he hears and comprehends text) is significantly higher than his silent reading
level” until the two converge around grade 8. This makes reading aloud “the medium
for exposing those students to more mature vocabulary, more complex literary devices,
and more sophisticated sentence structures than they would be finding in the grade-
level texts they could navigate on their own” (Layne, 2015, p. 55). In consideration
of all of this, Layne’s (2015) general guidance is that teachers “consider selecting the
majority of [their] read-alouds from texts written one to two grade levels above the
grade level [they] are teaching” (p. 55).
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 FOOTNOTES:
[309:A] Aved piedad desta hija que en fuerte punto de vos fue
engendrada.
 CHAPTER 18.

The day was now come whereon King Lisuarte had promised to
deliver his daughter to the Romans; he having in vain again
attempted to win her consent, left her in great anger, and went to
the Queen whom he bade go and soothe her daughter's distress.
Brisena had often attempted in vain to change the King's resolution;
she now made no reply but obeyed him, but when Oriana saw her
mother and sister approach her, she went to her sobbing aloud and
kissed her hand and said, this parting will be for ever! for my death
is at hand, and with that she swooned away. The King then had her,
senseless as she was, carried on board, and he made Olinda go with
her, though that Princess on her knees besought him to send her
home to her father, he in his rage would not listen, but had her
forced on board, and Mabilia and the Damsel of Denmark he made
embark also. All having thus embarked he mounted and rode to the
port, and then he consoled his child with a father's pity, yet gave he
her no hope that his intention was changed, but he himself was
moved nevertheless, and wept after he had left her, and besought
Salustanquidio and Brondajel and the Arch-bishop of Talancia to
protect her and serve her well, then he returned to his palace
leaving in the ship the greatest grief and lamentation that heart can
think.
Salustanquidio thus having the Princesses in his power, put Oriana
and Mabilia into a cabin which had been richly fitted up for her and
fastened them in with strong bars and bolts, and he left Queen
Sardamira and her company, and many of Oriana's Damsels in the
ship. But Olinda of whom he was so passionately enamoured he
resolved to carry to his own ship, though she struggled and
besought him not to separate her from Oriana, and clung to the door
of Oriana's cabin, making such piteous moan that Oriana at hearing
it, swooned away in Mabilia's arms. Thus having disposed of the
Damsels they spread their sails, and departed, being full joyful that
they had accomplished their Master's desire, and they hoisted the
great flag of the Emperor, upon the mast of the vessel wherein
Oriana was, and all the other ships kept round about that to protect
it. Thus merrily were they sailing on, when looking to the right they
beheld the fleet of Amadis, coming on full speed, to cut them off
from the land toward which they went. Agrayes and Don
Quadragante, and Dragonis and Listoran of the White Tower had
agreed to attack the Romans and attempt the rescue of Oriana
before Amadis could come up, and for this purpose they and their
ship got between the Romans and the shore. But Florestan and
Gavarte of the Perilous Valley, and Orlandin and Ymosil of Burgundy
had the same wish, and they sailed up between Agrayes and the
enemy. And Amadis came on full sail straight after them, that he
might be the first in Oriana's succour.
Now I tell you that when first the Romans beheld this fleet, they
thought they were crossing the sea in peace; but seeing how they
divided into three squadrons, that two cut off their landing, and that
the third made right toward them in pursuit, they cried out, to arms!
—to arms! for strangers are coming against us! presently they ran to
arms: the cross-bowmen were placed in their station, the others
with Brondajel of the Rock, were in the vessel with Oriana, which
carried the Emperor's flag. At this season the fleets encountered.
Agrayes and Don Quadragante hailed the ship of Salustanquidio,
who had with him the fair Olinda, and then began a brave battle;
and Florestan and Gavarte sailing through the middle of the fleet,
attacked the ships of the Duke of Ancona, and of the Arch-bishop of
Talancia who had a great force on board, so that the battle between
them was obstinate. But Amadis steered right for the ship that bore
the imperial standard: and he laid his hand on Angriote's shoulder,
and said, Sir Angriote, my good friend, remember now the loyalty
you have ever manifested toward your friends, and help me manfully
in this enterprize. If it please God that I succeed, well now shall I
here fulfil my honour, and my good fortune! Angriote replied, Sir, I
am ready to die for you! your honour shall be maintained, and God
will be with you. The Ships were now near each other, and such a
discharge was there, of arrows and stones and lances, that they fell
as fast as though they were rained down. Amadis aimed at nothing
but to grapple with the other vessel; but they who were therein,
though far more in number, durst not adventure that, seeing how
fiercely they were attacked, and defended themselves with iron
hooks, and sundry other weapons. Now when Tantiles of Sobradisa,
who was the Queen of Sobradisa's high-steward, and was now in the
Castle, saw that Amadis could not bring this to effect, he ordered a
great anchor to be brought, fastened to a long chain; and from the
Castle, they threw it into the Enemy's ship, and then pulling at the
chain with all their might, they brought the ships together, and held
them so, that they could by no means separate, unless the chain
should break.
Then Amadis made way through his own people who were
somewhat dismayed, and setting foot on the edge of his own ship,
leaped into the other; it was a great leap, so that he fell upon his
knee, and they laid on him many blows before he could rise.
Howbeit maugre their efforts he rose and laid hand to his good
sword. Angriote and Don Bruneo had followed him, and they all laid
on manfully and shouted Gaul, Gaul, for Amadis is here! Mabilia
heard that cry, and exclaimed to Oriana—comfort! comfort! you are
succoured by the blessed Knight, your true servant and constant
friend! but Oriana more dead than alive, recovered only enough to
ask what she said, for she had heard nothing, and her sight was
almost gone. When Amadis beheld the wonders which his two
comrades were performing, and how his men were now fighting
beside him, he made at Brondajel, whom by his rich arms, he knew
to be the chief, and with one blow felled him: then seeing that the
rest terrified at that, had ceased to resist, he tore off Brondajel's
helmet, and striking at his face with the pummel of his sword,
demanded where Oriana was; the Roman pointed to the chamber
that was fastened. Amadis called upon Angriote and Don Bruneo;
they joined all their strength, and burst the door, and saw Oriana
and Mabilia within; he fell on his knees before his Lady to kiss her
hand, but she embraced him, and then caught him by the sleeve of
his mail which was all bloody,—Ah Amadis! light of the oppressed!
you have saved me! Mabilia was on her knees before him, holding
by his skirts, for he had not seen her, but then he raised her and
embraced her, and called her his dear cousin. Then would he have
left the cabin, but Oriana took his hand—for God's sake do not leave
me! fear not, he replied; for Angriote, and Don Bruneo, and
Gandales are in the ship, with thirty of our Knights, and I must go
elsewhere, for we are engaged in a great battle.
Then Amadis went out of the cabin, and seeing that Ladadin of
Fajarque had made them in the castle cry for mercy, he commanded
them to cease from farther slaughter. He then got into the galley
where Enil and Gandalin were with forty Knights, and bade them
steer towards where they heard the cry of Agrayes; when they came
up, they found that he, and Quadragante had boarded
Salustanquidio's ship; and when Amadis got on board, the Romans
began to leap over, some perishing in the water, others escaping to
the other vessels. He went on, seeking his cousin, whom he found,
with Salustanquidio wounded at his feet, and begging for mercy.
Agrayes knew his love for Olinda, and would shew him none: do not
slay him, said Quadragante, he is a good prize: Sir Quadragante,
said Amadis with a smile, let Agrayes do his will, for else this Roman
will not leave one of us alive; and while they thus spake, the head of
Salustanquidio was smitten off. Now the ship was their own, and the
banner of Agrayes and Don Quadragante hoisted on her castle.
Agrayes forthwith went into the chamber where Olinda was
confined; but Amadis, and Don Quadragante, and Ladadin, and
Listoran of the White Tower, went in Enil's galley, to see how
Florestan fared. On the way they met Ysanes, a kinsman of Florestan
by the mother's side, who told them how he had won all the ships,
and taken the Duke of Ancona and the Arch-bishop; they then
looked round, and saw that the Romans were every where put to the
worst, so that not one ship or boat escaped to carry tidings of their
defeat.
 With that they went on board the vessel of Oriana, and there
disarmed their heads and hands, and washed off the blood. Amadis
asked where Florestan was, and was told, that Sardamira had cried
out to him to save her, and that she lay fallen at the feet of Oriana,
beseeching her to save her from death or dishonour. Amadis went
into the cabin, and saw that the Queen was embracing Oriana, and
that Florestan held her by the hand, he went before her courteously,
and would have kissed her hand, but she withdrew it: fear nothing,
Lady, said he, Don Florestan is at your service, and we shall all obey
him, even though it were not our will to honour all womankind.
Good Sir, said Sardamira to Florestan, who is this Knight so
courteous, and so much your friend? Lady, said he, it is my Lord and
brother Amadis, with whom we are all come to succour Oriana. She
then rose and said, Good Sir Amadis, blame me not, if I have not
received you as I ought, for I knew you not. God be praised, that in
such a calamity, I am placed under your courtesy, and the protection
of Don Florestan. So Amadis seated her beside Oriana; now all this
while, Queen Sardamira knew not the death of Salustanquidio,
whom she greatly loved. Queen, said Oriana, if I have hitherto heard
your words with pain and dislike, now shall I ever honour and love
you as you deserve, for what you did to my injury, was not your own
will, but in whatever was your own will, you were ever courteous
and gentle. While they were thus communing, Agrayes and Olinda
came in, and affectionately did Oriana embrace them, and thank the
other Knights as she knew them. Ah, friend Gavarte, said she, to him
of the Perilous Valley, well have you fulfilled your promise, God
knows how truly I thank you, and how I wish to reward you! Lady,
he replied, I have done my duty, for you are my natural Lady.
Whenever time shall be, remember me as one who will be ever at
your service.
At this time were all the chief Knights assembled on board this
vessel, to take counsel how they should proceed. Then Oriana took
Amadis aside and said. Dear friend I beseech and command you
now more than ever to conceal our love! order it so, now that they
may resolve to carry me to the Firm Island, that being safe there,
God may dispose of me as he knows best and as ought to be.
Amadis replied, do you then send Mabilia to propose this, that it may
appear to proceed from your will and not from mine. Accordingly he
went among the Knights, and they were of divers opinions, for some
proposed to take Oriana to the Firm Island, others that she should
go to Gaul, others that she should go to Scotland, the country of
Agrayes. But presently Mabilia came to them with four other
Damsels, and said, Sirs, Oriana beseeches ye to carry her to the
Firm Island, till she be reconciled to her parents, and she implores
ye as ye have begun so well, that ye would bring this enterprize with
the same good courage to good end, and do for her what ye have
ever done for other Damsels. Quadragante answered, good Lady,
the good and brave Amadis and we who are with him in her rescue,
are of one will to serve her till death, and we will protect her against
her father and against the Emperor of Rome, if they will not be
brought to reason and justice. That answer all the Knights approved,
and declared that they should not hold themselves acquitted of that
promise till Oriana was restored to her own free will, and made sure
of her inheritance.
With this accord they departed each to his ship, to give order
respecting the prisoners. Don Bruneo, and Ladadin, and the brother
of Angriote and Sarquiles, and Orlandin were left in the vessel with
Oriana and Queen Sardamira, and Enil the good Knight who had
received three wounds, but had concealed them like a brave man,
and one who could endure all difficulty. These Knights were left to
guard Oriana till they should arrive at the Firm Island.

Here endeth the Third Book of the noble and virtuous Knight Amadis
of Gaul.
END OF THE THIRD VOLUME.
 INDEX.
VOL. III.

Page
Here beginneth the third Book of Amadis of Gaul, wherein
are related the great discords and jealousies which were
occasioned in the Household and Court of King Lisuarte, by
the evil counsel which Gandandel gave the King, for the sake
of injuring Amadis and his kinsmen and friends. Wherefore
the King sent to Angriote and his Nephew, commanding
them to leave his court and his kingdom, and how he sent to
defy them, and they returned the defiance 1
CHAPTER 2.
How Amadis asked of his fosterer Don Gandales the news of
the court, and how he and his companions departed for
Gaul, and of the adventures which befell them in an Island
where they delivered Don Galaor and King Cildadan from the
peril of death 25
CHAPTER 3.
How King Cildadan and Don Galaor going their way toward
the court of King Lisuarte, met a Dame, who had in her
company a fair Child accompanied by twelve Knights, and
how the Dame asked them to ask the King to make him a
Knight, the which was done, and afterward the King knew
him to be his son 43
CHAPTER 4.
In which is recounted the cruel battle between King Lisuarte
and Don Galvanes and their people. And of the liberality and
greatness which the King showed after his victory giving the
land to Don Galvanes and Madasima, they remaining his
vassals as long as they should dwell therein 60
CHAPTER 5.
How Amadis and Don Bruneo abode in Gaul where Don
Bruneo was well content and Amadis sorrowful, and how
Don Bruneo resolved to leave Amadis and go seek
adventures; and how Amadis and King Perion and Florestan
agreed to succour King Lisuarte 76
CHAPTER 6.
How the Knights of the Serpents embarked for Gaul, and
fortune led them where they were placed in great peril of
their lives by treachery, in the power of Arcalaus the
Enchanter and how being delivered they embarked and
continued their voyage; and also how Don Galaor and
Norandel came by chance that way seeking adventures, and
of what befell them 107
CHAPTER 7.
Showing how Esplandian was brought up by Nasciano the
Hermit, and how his father Amadis went to seek adventures
having changed his name to the Knight of the Green Sword,
and of the great adventures which he found 134
CHAPTER 8.
How King Lisuarte going to the chace with the Queen and his
daughters came to the mountain where the hermit Nasciano
dwelt, and by what strange adventure he met a fair Child,
who was the son of Amadis and Oriana, and how he took the
child, not knowing him 157
CHAPTER 9.
How the Knight of the Green Sword after he had left King
Tafinor of Bohemia, to go to the Islands of Romania, met a
great company with the Lady Grasinda, and how one of her
Knights called Brandasidel would have made him come
before her by force 170
CHAPTER 10.
How the noble Knight of the Green Sword going to
Constantinople was driven upon the Island of the Devil,
where he found a fierce monster called Endriago 182
CHAPTER 11.
How the Knight of the Green Sword wrote to the Emperor of
Constantinople to whom the Island belonged, telling him that
he had slain the monster, and also of what things he was in
need; the which the Emperor diligently procured for him and
repaid him with much honour and love for the service he had
done him in recovering that Island which had been so long
time lost 203
CHAPTER 12.
How the Knight of the Green Sword departed from
Constantinople to perform his promise made to the fair
Grasinda, and how being about to go with her to Great
Britain to fulfil her will, he chanced to find Don Bruneo of
Bonamar badly wounded; and also of the adventure whereby
Angriote of Estravaus found them, and they went together to
the house of the fair Grasinda 223
CHAPTER 13.
How Queen Sardamira arrived in Great Britain with the other
Embassadors whom the Emperor of Rome had sent to bring
Oriana, and of what happened to them in a forest with a
Knight Errant whom they treated with rude words, and the
payment which he gave them for their discourtesy 241
 CHAPTER 14.
How Queen Sardamira sent to Don Florestan requesting that,
since he had left her Knights in such plight, he would be her
guard to Miraflores whither she was going to speak with
Oriana, and of what passed there 257
CHAPTER 15.
How the Knight of the Green Sword who was now called the
Greek Knight, and Don Bruneo of Bonamar and Angriote of
Estravaus came with the fair Grasinda to the Court of King
Lisuarte, who had resolved to send his daughter Oriana to
the Emperor of Rome to be his wife, and of what happened
when they made their demand 270
CHAPTER 16.
How the Greek Knight and his companions led Grasinda and
her company to the place of battle, where her Knight was to
fulfill her command 288
CHAPTER 17.
How King Lisuarte sent for his daughter Oriana to deliver her
up to the Romans, and of what happened with a Knight of
the Firm Island, and of the battle which Don Grumedan and
the companions of the Greek Knight fought against the three
Roman Challengers, and how after the Romans were
conquered the companions of the Greek Knight went to the
Firm Island, and of what they did there 303
CHAPTER 18.
How King Lisuarte gave up his daughter greatly against her
own will, and of the succour which Amadis with all the other
Knights of the Firm Island brought to the fair Oriana 327

Biggs, Printer, Crane-court, Fleet-street.

 TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
Variations in spelling and hyphenation remain
as in the original.
The following corrections have been made to
the original text:
Page 1: the niece[original has "neice"]
of Brocadan
Page 6: now speak your[original has
"yonr"] embassy
Page 9: you are bound, in[original has
"In"] the service
Page 14: they saw a great[original has
"gaeat"] force
Page 19: and Madansil[original has
"Madancil"] of the Silver Bridge
Page 21: part of the Castle-
tower[original has "Caftle-tower"]
Page 23: found Count Latine
and[original has "end"] Galdar
Page 25: the[original has "teh"] turmoil
had been so great
Page 25: sometimes fair,[comma
missing in original] at other times foul
Page 56: Damsel had no command
over hers[original has "her's"]
 Page 77: giant-like Devil ran[original
has "run"] too fast
Page 77: Andandona the
giantess[original has "giantness"] of the
dolorous isle
Page 94: and Florestan[original has
"Floreston"] were badly wounded
Page 96: one was called Brontaxar
Danfania[original has "Domfania"]
Page 103: being right joyful[original
has "loyful"] for the victory
Page 116: she would have
kissed[original has "kisssed"] his feet
Page 132: forthwith[original has
"forthwth"] they all went
Page 134: the hermit[original has
"theher mit"] sent his sister
Page 136: he then gave him to eat
what[original has "what what"] was
proper
Page 137: that you[original has "yon"]
need the service
Page 137: hath its courage doubled
thereby.[period missing in original]
Page 150: and how well
caparisoned[original has "aparisoned"]
Page 165: rose into his cheek.[original
has a comma]
Page 167: delight of their hearts was so
great[original has "greats"]
 Page 181: with him Brondajel[original
has "Broncadel"] of the Rock
Page 183: wherefore they were so
terrified.[original has a comma]
Page 185: unhappy daughter
determined[original has "dedermined"] to
bring
Page 209: On[original has "on"] the
morrow the Knight and Master
Page 211: What can this mean? said
Gastiles.[original has a comma]
Page 227: their talk was at an end.
[period missing in original]
Page 243: quoth Florestan, will I,
[original has "will, I"] if I can
Page 248: he shook his lance[original
has "ance"] threateningly
Page 251: bid him empty[original has
"empt"] out the ink
Page 254: discourtesy and
falsehood[original has "falshood"] would
not find
Page 274: and Madansil[original has
"Mandacil"] of the silver bridge
Page 275: here are a Squire[original
has "8quire"] and Dwarf
Page 279: Ambor de Gandel,[comma
missing in original] Angriote's son
Page 292: said to the King,[comma
missing in original] I will let
 Page 300: And Don Grumedan[original
has "Grudeman"] cried out
Page 305: he humbly saluting her, said,
[comma missing in original] Lady
Page 313: I can only pray[original has
"pra"] to God
Page 315: when you have tried them.
[period missing in original]
Page 315: and[original has "aud"] that
it bore no mark
Page 316: Don Grumedan being
between[original has "beween"] the other
twain
The following errata page is found at the end
of Vol. IV. The corrections listed for Vol. II. have
been made to this text.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMADIS OF GAUL,
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