Dead Facts and Reading Instruction

Here is a fact: Journalist Emily Hanford helped popularize the term “Science of Reading,” Some would call that fact a dead fact. Here’s another fact: It takes some children hundreds of repetitions to associate a sound with a letter. I call that fact a live fact. Okay, here’s another dead fact: The term dyslexia is made from two Greek roots, dys, meaning “difficult or inadequate,” and lexis, meaning “word.” Now, another live fact: Teaching students the six syllable types can increase their chance of mastering encoding and decoding. 
 
Are you starting to see how dead and live facts differ?

What is a dead fact?
In his thought-provoking book If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal: What Animal Intelligence Reveals About Human Stupidity, author Justin Gregg explores how unique human cognitive abilities, such as mental time travel and creating moral systems, are double-edged swords, each as likely to lead to individual suffering and world catastrophe as to personal contentment and a livable future. In one chapter, Gregg introduces the term dead facts. 
 
Coined by philosopher Ruth Garrett Millikan, dead facts have to do with the human brain’s tendency to elaborate and expound upon (to think thoughts about) incoming sensory information. To understand just what a dead fact is, let’s first consider a nonhuman brain and its reaction to sensory input. For example, if I were a rabbit and I heard a loud rustling behind a nearby tree, I would bolt in the opposite direction. Why? As a rabbit I know this fact: rustling equals danger. And so I run! 
 
Most animals that hear rustling probably don’t think anything more than rustling equals danger. Humans, however, are different. My human brain might quickly move from “rustling equals danger” to thoughts about why the rustling is happening. It's a fox, I think, or a falling branch. Or maybe it's a coyote. Could it be a wolf? Just as quickly, my brain might fabricate more improbable thoughts. For example, I might remember the time I played hide and seek with my sister, who was hiding behind a tree. Then I might think, “Wouldn’t it be crazy if my sister is making that rustling sound?” Cooler still, I might wonder “What if the rustling is caused by a lost extraterrestrial or a sasquatch, hiding to avoid detection?”
 
For humans, these recollections and imaginings are simply how we roll – one event occurring in our environment can trigger the remembering of countless bits of trivia and the dreaming of endless stories of fiction. Ruth Millikan called these kinds of thoughts dead facts because they have nothing to do with our acting on incoming sensory data in ways that boost our chances of immediate survival.
 
This is not to say that our wishful thinking and imaginative musings don’t have a place in the world. I enjoy thinking weird and whimsical thoughts. And ever-evolving thoughts and connections often lead to innovations, solutions, art, and religions. But when it comes to the efficient solving of an immediate problem, fabrications, ruminations, and the random recall of trivia can distract us. Which leads me to reading instruction.

Live Facts for Reading Instruction
Yes, facts like “journalist Emily Hanford helped popularize the term science of reading” and “the term dyslexia is made up of two Greek roots” are fun to know. But they are of no use to me when comes time to teach kindergarten students sound-letter associations or help a dyslexic adult become a more fluent reader. Thus, I want to stay focused on live facts, the ones most useful in my day-to-day instruction and capable of lifting my teaching to the most effective level. Here are some live facts I strive to keep in mind:

• Sounds Come First. There are 44 sounds in English. To become a reader, a student must connect each sound (phoneme) to specific letters or letter combinations. Therefore, I want to teach sound-letter associations to mastery and support students with materials and activities like sound walls and sound-spelling grids
• Letter Patterns and Whole Words Must Be Automatically Recognized. The human brain is a pattern-recognition machine. Also, the automatic recognition of correct letter sequences (patterns) is a fundamental component of reading. Therefore, I want to teach spelling and phonic patterns to mastery and use supportive materials and activities such as word ladders, building and making word routines, and decodable text.
• Practice Time is Important. Students who have a difficult time breaking the alphabetic code require more practice in spelling and phonics, as well as direct and explicit instruction. Thus, I want to give many opportunities to practice spelling and reading, enabling basic encoding and decoding to become perfect and permanent.
• Classroom Libraries Are Necessary. A well-stocked classroom library consisting of hundreds of diverse books on a variety of levels helps teach students to read through engagement and motivation. Therefore, I want to build a kick-butt classroom library!
• Strategic Reading Leads to Comprehension. Teaching children how to think strategically while reading helps them to gain a deeper understanding of text. Therefore, I want to consistently teach metacognition, especially how to monitor reading, solve reading roadblocks, and use strategies such as summarizing to more deeply understand text.
• Repeated Guided Reading Builds Fluency. Re-reading text helps build word constructs in the brains of developing readers. Thus, I want to use repeated reading practices like choral and echo reading, paintbrush reading and Reader’s Theater, as well as programs like Read Naturally.
• Choice is Motivating and Integration is Powerful. Writing on a topic of your choice is highly motivating and writing instruction that incorporates vocabulary, grammar, genre, spelling, and phonics is especially powerful. Therefore, I want to give students many opportunities to choose topics and write about them for extended amounts of time. And before they write, I want to directly and explicitly teach them writing skills in a way that is integrated, repeated, and distributed over time.  
• Background Knowledge Leads to Comprehension. Using background knowledge is the number one way to increase comprehension of text. But many students lack background information, including specific knowledge about topics and vocabulary. Therefore, I want to use activities like interactive read alouds, vocabulary routines, and See Think Wonder to build background knowledge before engaging in any reading.

 
In conclusion, when it comes to reading instruction, consider the facts and decide which ones are dead and which ones are live. Then give the live facts priority! Review them on a regular basis and keep them in a brain space that is easily accessible. Finally, use them as the foundation of your reading, writing, and spelling instruction. When instruction is built upon a firm foundation of live facts - facts that enable efficient and effective teaching - students more easily become thriving readers, writers, and spellers.