Multi-cueing

[Susan Godsland]

A collection of articles on the subject of using Multi-Cueing for decoding: also known as Searchlights (NLS), a mixture of methods, a balance of strategies, the three-cueing system and a variety of approaches......

''The definition of what reading actually is, was hijacked by the whole language movement to fit in with their world view. Reading was to be reading for meaning, comprehension came from making meaning from the text. Quite how you were supposed to do this without being able to actually decode the letters on the page is how we arrived at the Searchlights model — by guessing, and by memorising, also known as ‘a range of strategies'.’'(Shadwell)

Early reading instruction in the old National Literacy Strategy (NLS.1998) was based on multi-cueing strategies (Searchlights); the NLS directors suggested that, ''More extreme recommendations from phonics evangelists to teach children not to use other reading strategies alongside phonics, should be treated with great caution'' (Stannard/Huxford p189). In their Civitas paper 'Ready to Read', Anastasia de Waal and Nicholas Cowen wrote: ''(I)n order to accommodate the more established academic orthodoxy (i.e. child centred rather than anything resembling didactic or mechanistic teaching), a medley of reading strategies was included in searchlights. This attempt to keep everyone happy, while also attempting to address reading standards, led to a rather chaotic model which would frequently prove ineffective. Searchlights encouraged children to learn to read using four distinctive methods simultaneously''(p10)

Here is an example of the rigmarole that a child taught to use a range of decoding strategies is expected to go through on encountering any word they don't immediately recognise: ''(I)f a child met the word ‘nightingale’ he would use a combination of initial sound (n), segmentation (night-ing-(g)ale), letter clusters (ight, ing), sight vocabulary (gale) and context (it’s a bird)’' (Fisher. Practical answers to teachers' questions about reading. UKLA p8)

http://www.rrf.org.uk/archive.php?n_ID= ... eNumber=45
The NLS Searchlight Reading Strategies

The three cueing system in reading: will it ever go away?
http://nifdi.org/news-latest-2/blog-hem ... er-go-away

Clear evidence that the majority (90%) of teachers are still using a mixture of methods for decoding came in NFER's 2014 report on the phonics screening check http://goo.gl/MpNsl1 p28 ''However, 90 per cent also ‘agreed’ or ‘agreed somewhat’ with the statement that a variety of different methods should be used to teach children to decode words. These percentages mirror almost exactly last year’s findings, and indicate that most teachers do not see a commitment to systematic synthetic phonics as incompatible with the teaching of other decoding strategies''

http://www.spelfabet.com.au/2015/06/att ... g-learning
Attention during learning: teaching children to use both phonics and multi-cueing for decoding confuses them.

http://ssphonix.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/ ... ilure.html
A litany for failure. Reading practices that set up children to struggle:
''It is a dangerous fallacy to think that guessing at words from context helps developing readers to make meaning from text.''

http://www.societyforqualityeducation.o ... itudes.pdf
Marilyn Jager Adams: ''In the world of practice, the widespread subscription to the belief system that the three-cueing diagram has come to represent has wreaked disaster on students and hardship on teachers''

The Use of Context Cues in Reading by Prof. Louise Spear-Swerling
http://www.education.com/reference/arti ... text_Cues/

[Debbie_Hepplewhite]

See the wealth of information via Susan Godslands' own website at www.dyslexics.org.uk :

http://www.dyslexics.org.uk/main_method_2.htm