Orthographic Mapping - Explained!

what is orthographic mapping why does it matter and what are a lot of people getting wrong [Music] hello my name is Anna Geiger I'm a former teacher and I've been serving Educators through my website the measured Mom since 2013. it's my mission to help teachers understand and apply the science of reading today we're looking at orthographic mapping this is an important concept to understand because understanding it helps us make important instructional decisions today I'm going to explain what orthographic mapping is what we can do to promote orthographic mapping how this helps us choose the books our students read and what some people are getting wrong so orthographic mapping if this phrase is new to you and sounds a little confusing I understand because when I first started learning about the science of reading a few years ago it took me a while to really grasp it I can thank David Kilpatrick and his webinars and his book equipped for reading success for helping me understand this Theory which was proposed by Linnea Erie thankfully the definition is much simpler than the name seems to imply orthographic mapping is simply a mental process by which readers remember words for the future so they don't have to sound them out it answers this question how could our students go from seeing this word and saying at cat to just seeing it and instantly knowing the word is cat how does that work how do we turn words that we have to sound out into sight words or words that we recognize automatically is it because we memorize the shape of the word the answer is no as an adult fluent reader you recognize thirty thousand to seventy thousand words instantly and it's not because you memorize the shape your brain can't do that now to beginning readers memorize the shape of some words when they're getting started yes but we don't want to encourage this as a way to learn to read because it's simply not sustainable before I explain more about how orthographic mapping works we need to talk about the three forms of each word and a quick shout out here to Joan sadita of keys to literacy who helped me understand this there are three forms to a word each word has its sounds letters and meaning so with the word cat the sounds are k at the letters are cat and the meaning a cat is a small furry animal with a tail whiskers and sharp claws often kept as a pet when we orthographically map words we are taking the known as in the meaning and the sounds of the word and mapping it to the letters that represent those individual sounds the sounds are called phonemes the letter or letters that represent the sounds are called graphemes in the word cat we're connecting the sounds to the letters c-a-t this works even when more than one letter represents a sound so for example with the word Beach we're connecting but to be e to EA and CH to ch through orthographic mapping students use the oral language processing part of the brain to map or connect sounds and letters so they're bound together as instantly recognizable words students have mapped a word when they can read it instantly without needing to sound it out when students are first learning to read it can take many exposures for them to map a word if you've ever worked with a student and they sounded out a word and then three lines later had to sound out the same word again that's assigned to you they haven't mapped the word yet they need more exposures more experiences sounding Out the word when we get to be more proficient readers around second or third grade most students only need one to four exposures to orthographically map a word okay so so far we understand orthographic mapping is a mental process we know it has to do with connecting the sounds to the letters so they're bound together and we can recognize a word instantly but how does that happen do we need to have orthographic mapping lessons well orthographic mapping is not a skill it's a mental process so we can't do activities called orthographic mapping what we can do is teach the skills that enable orthographic mapping those skills are phonemic awareness letter sound knowledge and phonic decoding phonemic awareness is the understanding that words have individual sounds it's the ability to identify and manipulate individual sounds in words letter sound knowledge is knowing the letter that represents each sound it's knowing that b represents CH represents CH or as in Chicago even as in choir that oo represents and that e i g h represents a phonic decoding is applying phonemic awareness and letter sound knowledge it's knowing the sounds that each of those letters represent and blending them together to make words students need proficiency with all three of these things to be able to orthographically map words when a word has been orthographically mapped it's a sight word for that reader it's a word they recognize instantly we need to let go of the idea that sight words are words that can't be sounded out the researcher's definition of sight words is words that we know instantly and don't need to sound out or guess as I mentioned earlier you know up to 70 000 words instantly that's the size of your site vocabulary if you encounter a new difficult word such as one in a medical journal you'll have to stop to sound it out but if you read it one or two times it's going to be orthographically mapped into your brain with all the other words that you know instantly when we understand that the way students learn to remember words for the future is to start by sounding them out so that the sounds and the letters can be bound together that we want to avoid early reading material that requires students to use context or picture Clues to solve the words if that's what you're doing I understand I did it for years I used leveled books with my beginning readers because I thought I was teaching them to be strategic but what I didn't understand was that by teaching them to use context or pictures to solve the words I was actually bypassing orthographic mapping it's so important that we choose quality decodable texts for our early readers so they actually apply the phonics knowledge that we're teaching them here's an example of a set of quality decodable books the stories are very simple and not exactly riveting but we've got some great pictures to spice up the books and there's many many quality decodables out there you just have to look I want to talk about one quick thing that a lot of people are getting wrong about orthographic mapping and that is sometimes on Instagram or in TPT I see people talking about doing orthographic mapping activities or orthographic mapping centers or time for orthographic mapping but as I said before orthographic mapping is a mental process it is not an activity that we do we don't schedule it into our school day what they may be doing is confusing phoneme graphene mapping with orthographic mapping and phoneme graphing mapping is an activity in which students use phonemic awareness and their letter sound knowledge to spell words but that's a topic for another video If you're looking for free quality decodable books that will help your students orthographically map words check out my website themeasuredmom.com forward slash free decodable if this video was helpful please hit like And subscribe thank you [Music]

Channel: The Measured Mom - The Science of Reading

Views: 19,841

Keywords: science of reading, structured literacy, teaching reading, kindergarten, first grade, second grade, dyslexia

Id: vA05Oasiy4k

Length: 7min 8sec (428 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 30 2022