Project Wordy

Project Wordy: Reading Interventions for Students with Dyslexia

By George Kantelis

Skilled readers may not give a second thought to the way that certain words are pronounced. Even though the word “breakfast” would be sounded out as “breek” and “fast,” proficient readers read “breakfast” as “brekfuhst” instead of “breekfast.” Multisyllabic words that have these inconsistencies in how they are spelled versus how they are pronounced can be referred to as “complex words,” and, according to Laura Steacy, an assistant professor of special education and researcher at the Florida Center for Reading Research, they can be especially important for students with dyslexia.

Steacy specializes in early reading development, which focuses on early predictors of achievement in reading and interventions for students at risk of reading challenges. Through a project called Project Wordy, she is working to provide resources to students and teachers to make complex words more accessible. She is particularly interested in students with dyslexia because they experience significant difficulties developing ageappropriate word recognition and spelling abilities. Without adequate instruction by well-trained teachers, many students with dyslexia will struggle with literacy activities thoughout life.

FINDING THE ROOT WORD

Project Wordy, which began in 2019 and will run through 2023, compares two different instructional methods for teaching complex words. “One method focuses on helping children understand how morphology— or the construction of word parts based on meaning—is represented in our spelling,” explained Steacy. “The other is focused on something called ‘set for variability,’ which is the ability to problem solve when there is a mismatch between what a child generates during the process of sounding out a new word and its actual pronunciation (think back to breakfast).”

Having taught children to learn to read, Steacy understands that these words can be particularly challenging. “When I was teaching, I noticed that there were some children who were having significant difficulties learning to read and weren’t responding to the instruction that they were receiving. That’s what inspired me to do this work to figure out ways to help those students.” Steacy’s background in teaching and research blend together seamlessly to work towards Wordy’s ultimate goal: “To explore different instructional techniques that can be used to support students with dyslexia when they encounter complex words in texts and to find the best instructional supports for teachers to help support these students.”

INVENTIVE INTERVENTIONS

While we understand that English can be a frustrating language at times, many speakers don’t necessarily consider why that’s the case. According to Steacy, the writing system is the culprit: “In English, we have what’s sometimes called a quasi-regular writing system, which means that the letters and sounds don’t map perfectly onto each other.” As she explains, complex words (again, think back to “breakfast”) require a bit of flexibility on the reader’s end. Of course, being flexible when encountering new and complex words doesn’t often come naturally to young learners with dyslexia. Being unable to arrive at the correct pronunciation of a word by applying typical sounding out strategies makes complex words a frequent area of frustration. That said, complex words are so ubiquitous across English that they can’t be easily ignored. These complex words—and what kinds of interventions and instruction are best used when confronting them in the classroom—are central to Project Wordy’s ongoing research.

There are two sides to every classroom, though. Steacy and her team aren’t only concerned with providing reading and decoding strategies to students: they’re also interested in supporting teachers. “Often times I hear teachers express frustration that when students get to longer multisyllabic words, they don’t have as many tools in their toolkit. This is especially true for students who have dyslexia and other reading difficulties.”

SUPPORTING TEACHERS

Project Wordy needs to work closely with classroom teachers in order to effectively offer them resources and strategies. Over the course of the last several years, Steacy’s team has been carefully collecting data in local schools and in schools that are part of “The Dyslexia Foundation” network of schools. This data collection is essential to create conclusions that have a widened scope about reading difficulty, which pulls more details that help develop credible interventions. Steacy emphasized her satisfaction working with teachers from different schools to develop the projects. “Being able to come together with teachers in the field and work on things together has been a real highlight.”

Steacy and her team are beginning to spread their researchfindings into classrooms and develop teaching tools out of them.They aim to give teachers across Leon County—and eventuallyacross Florida—the teaching resources that she saw a need foras a classroom teacher herself. “I think the results from this studywill inform our understanding of whether including theseinstructional supports helps students to read complex words,which could then potentially inform whether something like thisshould be part of a larger instructional program.”

If the research from Project Wordy is successfully implementedinto classrooms, it could create a permanent, positive shift inthe way that young learners with dyslexia are taught whenlearning to read complex words. This would alleviate the typicalgrowing pains that these students suffer from through systematic,curated learning and teaching strategies supported by Steacy’sresearch.

To learn more and keep up with Project Wordy’s work, visit fcrr.org/projects/project-wordy-0.