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Reading or Memorizing? The Difference Matters
179 Plays1 day ago
Episode 91: This week Miss Beth dives into her viral video that sparked thousands of comments and a lot of strong opinions. After sharing that children who can read familiar words but struggle with nonsense words may be relying on memorization rather than decoding, the internet had questions: is memorization bad, do skilled readers really sound out every word, and are adults just "fake reading"? Beth unpacks what she actually meant, explores the research behind decoding and orthographic mapping, and explains why nonsense words reveal so much about whether a child truly understands the alphabetic code.
WHAT YOU'LL LEARN
• Why the term "fake reading" struck such a nerve online
• The real difference between memorization and decoding
• What nonsense words actually reveal about a child's reading ability
• Why skilled readers don't decode every single word forever
• The truth about automaticity and orthographic mapping
• Why words like invited and invaded can expose hidden gaps
• Common myths about how our brains read words (shape, context, first and last letters)
• Why explicit reading instruction is an equity issue, not just a preference
• How to support children without shame, blame, or guilt
READING REWIND: 1991
This week's literacy time capsule takes us back to 1991, when the Reading Wars were heating up and educators were debating many of the same questions parents and teachers are still asking today.
TOPICS
science of reading · decoding · orthographic mapping · nonsense words · automaticity · phonics · reading wars · structured literacy · literacy equity · fourth grade reading proficiency · reading instruction · memorization vs decoding
CONNECT WITH MISS BETH
If this episode resonated with you, share it with a teacher, grandparent, or friend who's ever wondered: "How do I know if my child is really reading?" And if you enjoyed today's conversation, be sure to follow Play on Words so you never miss an episode.
ABOUT THE HOST
Beth Gaskill (Miss Beth) is a reading specialist, early childhood educator, and founder of Big City Readers. She helps parents support their children's literacy development through research-backed, science of reading strategies.
Join Big City Summer right here!
Follow Miss Beth on Instagram @BigCityReaders
Browse Big City Readers resources at BigCityReaders.com
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Transcript
Understanding Reading Codes
00:00:00
Speaker
The reason we practice with nonsense words is that proves that whether or not they've seen the word before, they know what to do with the reading code. Play On
Podcast Introduction
00:00:09
Speaker
Words! This is Play On Words from Big City Readers. And this Beth.
00:00:15
Speaker
Hello, hello, and welcome back to the Play On Words podcast. It's Miss Beth, and this is episode 91.
Historical Literacy Tradition
00:00:24
Speaker
And i think that we're going to start a new tradition around here. For every episode number, we're going to hop in the literacy time machine and look at what was happening in reading instruction that
1991 Literacy Context
00:00:36
Speaker
same year. So today we're heading back all the way to 1991, which if you also live with some teenagers who love to troll you they'll say, wow, you are so old. You were born in the nineteen hundreds And this does feel old to talk about 1991 as a year that I was already alive and not be able to be like, wow, i was so
The Reading Wars
00:01:00
Speaker
young. I don't even know that year. But here we are. So it's 1991.
00:01:05
Speaker
Kids are carrying trapper keepers. Parents are renting movies from Blockbuster. And in school, the reading wars are well underway.
00:01:15
Speaker
So whole language is gaining momentum across the country. The whole language, simply put, is when we're talking about kids memorizing instead of being taught how to sound things out and decode.
00:01:29
Speaker
Many teachers are being encouraged to immerse children in rich literature, surround them with print, and encourage inventive spelling and trust that this would make reading skills develop and that they develop naturally. through meaningful reading and writing experiences. Which doesn't mean that those things don't help, but that's not true. We know at this point that learning to read does not develop naturally.
00:01:57
Speaker
So at the very same time, Researchers are studying reading acquisition and continuing to publish evidence that most children need explicit instruction in how our alphabetic system works, how sounds connect to letters, and those letters form words, and how words can be decoded and that those skills become automatic over time.
Decoding vs Memorization Debate
00:02:21
Speaker
So of course,
00:02:22
Speaker
we don't just decode every word we see. It becomes automatic. And this is actually a great topic to be talking about because this is what we're talking about today on the podcast about a viral video I had about not memorizing words and helping kids learn to decode because there's a lot of misunderstanding around this. So I want to clear that up. But Interestingly enough, around this time is when researchers are beginning to better understand what happens in the brains of skilled readers. So we know now that expert readers don't memorize thousands of words as pictures. So we don't like memorize the word as a shape and just know it. Instead,
00:03:05
Speaker
they build secure connections among pronunciation, meaning, and spelling patterns, allowing words to become instantly recognizable after successful decoding experiences.
00:03:17
Speaker
So in other words, in 1991, educators were debating Many of the same things that we're still debating in the Instagram comments today on the Big City Readers Instagram account. So if you feel like you've heard people arguing about phonics versus memorization for forever, you're right. We have. We've been having different versions of this conversation for decades. And it's exhausting.
00:03:42
Speaker
Okay, before we get into today's episode, I do want to let you know that you can still jump into the Summer Reading Program. The Summer Reading Program is Big City Readers' best option for families that are on the go and care about their child's reading and writing development. So here's what it is. It is an eight-week program. You follow on your own timeline. So... We've created a calendar of what you do for eight weeks, a couple of lessons a week, some trips to the library, some fun family reading games. And over that eight weeks, if you follow this calendar and this program, you will see success in your child's reading and writing. I promise you. This is for incoming kindergartners, first, second, and third graders. We have a program for each of those grades.
00:04:25
Speaker
And in that program, you get to watch on-demand lessons. So they're about 15 to 20 minutes each. You can pause it if you only have time for half. um You can do it on your own time. You have these lessons on demand. And this right now, this eight-week program is coming with a guided calendar. So you have just eight weeks to finish. But of course, if you don't, you can continue watching them. The lessons don't get taken away.
00:04:49
Speaker
But It's not only going to help your child not have the summer slide, which is what research shows us 20% of learning loss throughout the year gets lost over the summer. Not only will that not happen, I promise that you will see so much reading growth if you can follow this plan for eight weeks. So please check the show notes for the summer reading program and get started today because I do not want to see anyone struggling this fall. You can do it in just a couple minutes a day. You do not have to be the bad guy i Just press play and walk away and your child will grow so much in their reading and writing skills. So check that out in the show notes. Message me on Instagram if you have any questions. I would be happy to help you find the right class for your
Viral Video Controversy
00:05:29
Speaker
child. Okay, let's dive in.
00:05:32
Speaker
So last week or maybe two weeks ago on Instagram, I posted a video of, first of all, it's me in the kitchen cutting an apple. And I said, if your child can read these words, and I showed words like said because of when, where, but not these words, and I showed nonsense words, then they might be fake readers. And This caused a huge uproar, not from parents. No, I've looked at the people who are really angry. It's like teenagers. And it's really interesting that people are so mad about this. But here is the thing. You know, there's other people that will come to defend you in the comments. they're like, she's saying not that you that you have to read fake words, but that you have to show that you understand these phonics patterns and can read a word whether or not you've seen it before. so
00:06:26
Speaker
Let's talk about my accidental viral explosion. After I posted this video, I got comments that said, well, babies pretend to sleep before they sleep, so kids should pretend to read before they can read. Or memorization is part of reading. Or are you telling me that I actually don't know how to read? I just memorized a bunch of words.
00:06:45
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Or nobody sounds every word out forever. Or our brains don't really read every letter anyway. And honestly, I think this reaction highlights one of the biggest misunderstandings that we have around learning to read. So let's unpack that because this conversation is very important. And I really can't keep up with responding to the DMs and the comments because it seems like people are more mad. Like these comments were the nice ones. Some people said some really...
00:07:13
Speaker
wild things. I had to have my team take over and keeping up with the comments because I did want to make sure that people that really had questions got the answers, but it was way too complicated. And they were like, wow, I have to take a step back. I can't believe how angry and rude people are being. So let's talk about this.
00:07:31
Speaker
Why did I even make this video? Well, you've probably heard me say this before, but nearly 70% of fourth graders in the United States are not reading proficiently. Let me say that again.
00:07:42
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Almost 70% of fourth graders in the United States are not reading proficiently. This is according to our national report card. That means that millions of children that are entering upper elementary school are entering without secure reading skills, and that is going to affect every single subject. going to affect their confidence, their ability to read in their math problems. There will not be any area that they feel good in in their academic world.
00:08:12
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We know a tremendous amount of how humans learn to read is from instruction they get in school. Some people have the luxury of getting support at home, but not every child does.
00:08:25
Speaker
Reading is not a natural process. Humans evolved to speak, but we did not evolve to read. Reading requires building new neural pathways in the brain.
00:08:36
Speaker
Most children learn to read when they are explicitly taught, but not every child gets that instruction. And that is what's so upsetting. That's what we're advocating for here, is that it shouldn't be a lottery of this great teacher that got reading training versus a teacher across the hall didn't get that. This training is not happening in schools to become a teacher. It's not even happening in most reading specialist programs, which is crazy.
00:09:03
Speaker
Some children are encouraged to memorize hundreds of words. Some are encouraged to look at pictures and some are encouraged to guess based on the context. Some kids figure out reading despite all of this.
00:09:15
Speaker
Many do not. About 10% do figure this all out on their own. But don't we think that all kids deserve a fair shot at learning to read?
'Fake Reading' as Social Justice Issue
00:09:26
Speaker
Okay, so what did I mean by saying fake reading? Well, i actually stole that phrase from my friend Naomi O'Brien. She's read like a rock star teaching. She's been on the podcast a few times. She's an awesome advocate and creator and content and curriculum developer. So you should definitely check her out. And I think also Amelia Capitosa, she's on Instagram too. She's been on the podcast, but she also says that and they work together a lot. So I love that. I feel like it gets to the point faster. And maybe it was a little provocative. Maybe I could have said the appearance of reading or memorized word recognition. But here's the thing. Like we talked about, 1991, this was happening. It's 2026. How are we still failing kids when we have the research and evidence? So maybe I did want to strike a chord because I am so sick of people not understanding how serious this is. And that if you are fine, that's great. But not every child is going to be fine. So what can we do to make this problem disappear? Because we have that opportunity. We have the research. We have the evidence.
00:10:33
Speaker
We have what it takes. This is a solvable social justice issue. So obviously, if your child says a word correctly, they did read that word.
00:10:44
Speaker
But how did they get here? If they see the word shop and they think shop shop, That's great. They decoded it. Or do they simply recognize the visual image because they've seen it 50 times? These are two completely different processes. One is generative. One is limited.
00:11:05
Speaker
If I can decode, so each sound, the word shop, I can also decode the words chop, mop, slop, flop, thop, zop, even nonsense words. The last ones were nonsense words because I understand the code. Reading is a code. Phonics is a code.
00:11:22
Speaker
But if I just memorize shop as a picture, I only know that one word. I only know shop. So the reason we want kids to be able to do the code is because if they know each of the sounds, they can read a word whether or not they've seen it before.
00:11:36
Speaker
But everyone will say, memorization is important. That's how we get there. Yes and no. Memorization absolutely has a place. But not as the primary way children learn to read.
00:11:50
Speaker
Skilled readers eventually recognize tens of thousands of words instantly. That's why this was so interesting in the comments of people saying, so I'm a fake reader. No, you eventually got here where you memorized words instantly. You probably don't remember learning how to sound these words out. But now we have more information, now we have more practice, now we have more evidence.
Orthographic Mapping Explained
00:12:11
Speaker
Those words that we recall instantly likely weren't stored like flashcards. So researchers call this orthographic mapping.
00:12:23
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The brain stores words permanently by connecting pronunciation, meaning, letter patterns, and the pathway to connect all of those letter patterns to the sounds.
00:12:37
Speaker
Not around them. We have to do all of these things. Pronunciation, meaning, and letter patterns. This is orthographic mapping. It's something that is happening in the brain, and we can teach it.
00:12:48
Speaker
We can store the words and build on that orthographic mapping by teaching kids to read words the right way rather than memorize them. This is why kids who can decode unfamiliar words tend to become stronger readers. I always tell parents, if your child is struggling, that's actually great because they're going to learn the skills on how to work through something tricky. If they just learned to read naturally, you might hit some problems later on because they haven't learned spelling patterns, they're struggling with writing. There's a lot of gaps that happen from that.
00:13:18
Speaker
But children who rely heavily on memorization often hit a wall, especially around second, third, and fourth grade. Because nobody can memorize every word in English. Well, maybe someone can, but not a lot of people.
00:13:32
Speaker
So it looks like it's not that big of a deal. When I taught kindergarten and first grade, I did teach memorizing sight words. I did teach this because it did seem faster and easier. But it just made kids look like they were passing reading levels in kindergarten and first grade and second grade.
00:13:50
Speaker
because they were able to read the text that I was putting in front of them. I taught them to memorize the text that I was going to test them on. We were literally memorizing words as literally teaching kids to the test.
00:14:00
Speaker
But the reason we practice with nonsense words is that proves that whether or not they've seen the word before, they know what to do with the reading code. Okay, so let's talk about another comment. Well, adults don't sound out every word. Correct. I don't sound out the word because or friend or vacation.
00:14:18
Speaker
And here's the important distinction. We can read those words automatically because we once had the ability to decode them. Reading becomes automatic. We want every word to be automatic. We want every word to be a sight word. I've seen a meme that says every word wants to be a sight word. And that's what we're doing when we teach proper word recognition.
00:14:39
Speaker
Reading becomes automatic. That's the goal. We want effortless reading. We don't just skip the decoding stage to get there, though.
From Decoding to Automatic Reading
00:14:49
Speaker
That would be like saying, well, adults don't use training wheels.
00:14:53
Speaker
So you want me to use training wheels right now when I'm riding a bike? True, you had to learn to ride the bike, but that doesn't mean that we remove the training wheels before five-year-old is ready. Automaticity is the destination and decoding is the journey.
00:15:12
Speaker
Okay, this is a good one. So our brains don't read every letter. And this is probably my favorite misconception because people will say, your brain only looks at the beginning and ending of the word, or we read shapes of the words. And actually, skilled readers process nearly all letters incredibly rapidly.
00:15:32
Speaker
The reason we think we're not reading every letter is because our brains have become highly efficient. So, okay, think about these two words, invited and invaded. They're basically the same amount of letters.
00:15:45
Speaker
They start with INV and end with ED. So if you think that those two words are interchangeable, well, that's pretty crazy because invited means someone wants you there. Invaded means you came in without permission. So those words are opposites.
00:16:01
Speaker
And if we were to just say it's efficient to just look at the beginning and end and guess the middle, that is inaccurate. Form and from, basically the same word.
00:16:13
Speaker
Different meaning. Trail and trial. Horse and house, same shape, almost the same word. If our brains truly only cared about the first and last letters, shape and length, we'd constantly make serious mistakes. And struggling readers often do this. We only see it when the kids that aren't fake reading can't hide it any longer.
00:16:37
Speaker
Kids who are struggling substitute words that look very similar or they guess at a word. I've seen this so many times. Kids guess at these words that they don't know. Like someone was reading a sentence that said, I like to go to the farm. And they read, I like to go to the park. Same amount of letters. They were just totally guessing because they don't have the reading skills they need to actually decode. And Actually decoding words helps kids feel so much more confident. If they have the skills, they don't feel like they have to be insecure and take a guess.
00:17:12
Speaker
Reading research calls this attempt um attending to the letters. So when kids don't have secure connections between sounds and spelling, they substitute words that look similar. And this is attending to all the letters. Good readers do this quickly. Struggling readers don't.
00:17:32
Speaker
Okay, now last comment genre I want to address is the pretend sleep analogy. One commenter said, we all pretend to be asleep before we really sleep. And I i think I understand what you're trying to say.
00:17:45
Speaker
Practice matters. Approximation matters. Development matters. But sleeping isn't learned. reading is. If a child memorizes 50 words, that's not harmful. The concern is when adults assume memorizing 50 words means that the child understands how our alphabetic system works.
00:18:08
Speaker
Because eventually they'll encounter word 51 that they've never seen before, and word 500, and word 5000. And that's where we want their decoding skills to come in.
00:18:21
Speaker
So this conversation isn't about making parents or teachers feel guilty. Listen, I was the teacher that taught memorization as well. Teachers are often teaching exactly what they were trained to teach. I was trained to teach this way.
00:18:35
Speaker
Many highly intelligent children become experts at compensating.
Equitable Reading Instruction
00:18:41
Speaker
And that's great. This isn't about saying children who memorize words aren't smart.
00:18:46
Speaker
This is about equity. A child shouldn't need extraordinary memory skills to become a reader. that's not That's not becoming a reader. A child shouldn't have to guess. A child shouldn't have to compensate. a child or parent shouldn't have to hope that they get the teacher who had the proper training.
00:19:04
Speaker
Every child deserves instruction that gives them access to the code that is reading that unlocks every part of school and their entire world. Reading changes lives.
00:19:15
Speaker
It changes health outcomes, employment, income, confidence, and opportunity. And when we know better, we have an obligation to do better. So my goal is not for people to feel badly if they have taught their child to memorize, but to understand the reason that we aren't doing that.
00:19:33
Speaker
So I'd love to know your thoughts and to know if you remember if you learned to read from decoding or were you taught to memorize. If you have a child who looked like they could read for a few years and then suddenly hit a wall, come tell me about it. I i love to hear these stories um and to know how successful your kids are now. So if you found this episode helpful, please send it to a teacher or grandparent or a friend in your DMs who thinks nonsense words are nonsense because they're actually one of the best windows to see whether a child is really understanding how to use the code or not.
Podcast Engagement & Next Episode Teaser
00:20:12
Speaker
And that matters, especially in those first couple of grades, kindergarten first and second grade. So I hope this was helpful. If you also have seen nonsense words come home, that might be why.
00:20:23
Speaker
a lot of people have said, like, I've never understood why these nonsense words come home until you explained it. So I hope this made things a little bit clearer. And if you have any questions about this topic, please send me a message on Instagram, Big City Readers. And if you found this episode helpful, like, rate, and review it. We love to get our podcast in front of more parents and teachers. I love hearing from teachers that say they listen to this podcast on the way to school and they feel like more empowered to teach that day. They feel like it's their mini professional development. and So I love to be able to share these resources with all of you. And when you share it, with more people that really helps us keep growing the podcast. So thank you so much for being here. i am checking out now in the Northwoods, uh, gonna take the dogs out for a walk, maybe do a little kayaking and paddle boarding. And I will be back, I think next week.
00:21:18
Speaker
Oh yes, definitely next week because this is about to be our 10 year anniversary at Big City Readers. And I have a very, very exciting announcement for you. So make sure you tune in next week and I will see you on the other side.