How NOT to Teach Reading: "Does it make sense?"

Written by Jennifer Salisbury

Published on April 4th, 2015

I Guess Not!

Part Four of a 12-part video series showing the flaws of common word reading strategies taught in schools-- Moral: Do not teach struggling readers to guess!

Does it make sense? - Elephant Ears Strategy:

The strategy “Elephant Ears” asks children to guess at unknown words based off of the context of the sentence. If a child reads a sentence and the word doesn’t seem to fit, they should ask themselves “Did that make sense?” It then prompts the child to think about what other word would fit, that starts with the same letter as the word that doesn’t seem to make sense. The problem with this strategy is that it encourages guessing and, ultimately, can result in more dysfluent, difficult reading.

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Sandie Barrie Blackley, MA/CCC

Sandie Barrie Blackley, MA/CCC

This is where the the author title goes.

Sandie is a Fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, a former university graduate school faculty member, and a co-founder of Lexercise. Sandie has been past president of the North Carolina Speech, Hearing & Language Association and has received two clinical awards, the Public Service Award and the Clinical Services Award. She served two terms on the North Carolina Board of Examiners for Speech-Language Pathologists & Audiologists.

As a faculty member at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, Sandie developed and taught structured literacy courses, supervised practicum for speech-language pathology graduate students, and coordinated a federally funded personnel preparation grant. In 2009, Sandie and her business partner, Chad Myers co-founded Mind InFormation, Inc./ Lexercise to provide accessible and scalable structured literacy services for students across the English-speaking world.