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00:00:01
3 Cueing and Reading Struggles: Why Your Child Might Be Falling Behind
657 Plays1 month ago
In today’s episode from Big City Readers, I’m diving deep into one of the most debated topics in early literacy: the 3 cueing strategy and how it may be affecting your child’s ability to learn to read. If your child is struggling with blending sounds or progressing in reading, it’s essential to know whether they’ve been taught using the right strategies—and if those strategies are being used consistently.
We’ll explore key reasons why your child might be having a hard time, including:
- Are they using effective, research-backed reading methods?
- How does working memory play a role in learning to read?
- Why following directions is an important step in the process.
I’ll also explain why the 3 cueing system has been banned in many places and how its reliance on context and guessing can cause issues for children learning to read.
Plus, I’ll share more about my upcoming workshop for parents, where I’ll provide tips, activities, and support to ensure your child is learning to read the right way. And stay tuned as I talk about what I’ve been reading lately and how it ties into the science of reading.
What You'll Learn in This Episode:
- What is 3 Cueing: An explanation of the 3 cueing system (meaning, structure, and visual cues) and why it’s no longer recommended by many experts.
- Why It’s Problematic: The drawbacks of 3 cueing and how it can lead to children guessing words rather than truly decoding them.
- Working Memory & Reading: How your child’s working memory impacts their ability to blend sounds, retain information, and follow directions while reading.
- Following Directions & Reading: Why learning to follow multi-step directions helps build the skills your child needs to read independently.
- Signs Your Child is Struggling: Common red flags that your child may not be using the right strategies to learn to read.
- Upcoming Parent Workshop: Details on my next workshop for parents, where I’ll break down how to support your child in learning to read using proven techniques.
- What I’m Reading: A quick update on the latest books I’m diving into that center on the science of reading and early literacy education.
Resources Mentioned in the Episode:
- upcoming workshop
- Articles and research on 3 cueing and why it’s being phased out
- Books I’m reading on literacy and early childhood development
Connect with Me:
- Follow me on Instagram [@BigCityReaders]
- Visit my website [bigcityreaders.com]
- Sign up for my newsletter to stay updated on workshops, tips, and resources
This episode is a must-listen for any parent who feels their child is struggling with reading or who wants to understand how best to support their literacy journey. Tune in for practical insights, expert advice, and a chance to get involved in my upcoming workshop where we’ll dive even deeper into helping your child succeed in reading!
Recommended
Transcript
Announcement & Episode Plans
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome back to the Play On Words podcast from Big City Readers. It's me, Ms. Beth. And today it's a solo episode. We are going to catch up, chit chat, and I am going to kick my butt into gear and get back to posting on Wednesdays, the podcast, because I've been kind of inconsistent. At the the first year, I was like doing two episodes a week, going strong. And then, you know, this year got a little crazy.
00:00:34
Speaker
um in a lot of ways. So I kind of got inconsistent. So my goal is going to be now bringing back Word Wednesdays. OG Big City Readers fans remember Word Wednesday, right?
Word Wednesday & Live Podcast
00:00:49
Speaker
ah Where we used to always wear words on our shirts to show kids all about environmental print and that letters have meaning meaning and they're all around them. So Anyway, Word Wednesday is going to be podcast day now, and this one's coming to you live Wednesday, October 16th. This is your daily news. Just kidding.
Decoding vs. Guessing Words
00:01:11
Speaker
um But I am going to answer a question about ah blending, a good question that a parent wrote in asking about, what do I do if my child goes c-a-t, mat, mom, mop?
00:01:30
Speaker
And they just kind of start guessing and throwing out a whole bunch of words. As you know, I love to talk about guessing. So I'm going to answer that question today in this solo episode. Hopefully get back to sharing more quick short answer questions that you write in. So please keep sending them to me, even though I have a document of a thousand of them, um, keep reminding me. So I'll keep trying to get the shorter episodes and answering these questions.
00:01:59
Speaker
Um, and a little update, I'll share a little update about life. So, um, let's, except for, I really don't have that, that much to share except for I finished reading a couple of books. One, the women so excellent that you should read it if you haven't. And two, um, Oh gosh, something, one of Emily Henry or Abby Jimenez books. It's the sequel to one that I loved. Oh, wow. That's.
00:02:26
Speaker
So not helpful. I'll find the title by the end of this episode. um But let's dive into the real reason you're here. ah To know what I painted my nails today. I'm just kidding, but they are red. And that is the second most asked question in my DMs.
Live Workshop Promotion
00:02:44
Speaker
So anyway, let's talk about blending, shall we?
00:02:49
Speaker
and This actually comes at a great time because next week is my live blending workshop, the last one of the year. I think it's my signature workshop. I have taught it to dozens of school districts. I've taught it to thousands of parents, um library, entire like branches of libraries, volunteer organizations, um teachers, administrators.
00:03:17
Speaker
it's the all the research backed nitty gritty, um, learning to read tricks and easy to understand step by step outline that I've broken down into a one hour workshop. So that's coming up next week. If you're interested in that, um, sending a message on Instagram, or I'm sure it's just on our website, or if you're on my newsletter, you'll get it in Thursday's newsletter. Um, but the last one of the year, and it's a really good one, but I'm going to give you some quick tips for blending right now. So.
00:03:49
Speaker
If your child is doing something like cat sit, and some of the sounds are sometimes right, and sometimes they're not, and you just don't know, there's there's a couple of things going
Critique of Three Queuing Strategy
00:04:04
Speaker
on. One, I would be curious if your child is also being taught to sometimes memorize words or the dated and banned in many states strategy.
00:04:17
Speaker
of 3Qing, which is to look at the picture and the first letter of the word and take a guess um to see which of the things is happening. Are they struggling with decoding or are they struggling with the strategy? They don't know which strategy to use. This is why we don't want to teach kids that they memorize some words and then some they don't because we're doing a whole lot of code switching in our brain and it is not really helpful.
00:04:46
Speaker
um In fact, it's it's very dangerous. Sorry. I said that so lightheartedly. It is very dangerous. So number one, I'm going to talk about that three queuing strategy we were just talking about. So the three queuing strategy is something that has been banned, as I mentioned, in many states. You can look up if your state is one of them, but also it like, unfortunately doesn't mean much because nothing, like there's nothing Not nothing, but there are few things that are less regulated than the American education system.
Educational Strategy Consistency
00:05:20
Speaker
And it's really unfortunate, but I'll even be doing a professional development where I go into a school and do some training. And I have one kindergarten teacher ask me a question and she say she says, we use this curriculum in our classroom and I still have kids that struggle with XYZ. And the other kindergarten teacher goes, you use that?
00:05:37
Speaker
and it's just There's different kinds of education that teachers get depending on what school they go to. There's not a lot of regulation. Some teachers get different training and they pick out a professional development and they might get trained in science-backed reading strategies, but another teacher might not and be just across the hall. So some people will say, okay, what what reading curriculum is CPS using? And I'm like, that is way, I love, I love,
00:06:09
Speaker
the delusion, the rose colored glasses thinking that thinking that it's all aligned. Hopefully one day, wouldn't that be amazing for kids to not have to win the lottery to get effective research back reading instruction? We're working on it. So the three queuing is, um in it refers to three cues that we teach kids.
Explaining the Three Queuing Strategy
00:06:35
Speaker
And in the easiest way to break it down,
00:06:40
Speaker
um One of the cues is about semantics, which means the word meeting and sentence content. So for this cue, you that might look like in practice, um a teacher asking a child, let's look at this picture. What's happening here? The child might say, there's a boy and there's a dog. The boy is walking his dog. And the teacher might say, great. So if you see a word that you don't know, think about what would make sense here in this story. What word might fit in what's happening in the pictures or on the pages?
00:07:17
Speaker
the teacher will encourage the child to use the context of the story or the pictures to predict the meaning of unknown words. Like if the word is leash, the teacher might say, what does the boy hold when he walks the dog? Look at the picture. Now, listening to this, probably you're thinking, well, one of two things, correct me if I'm wrong, but one, some people say, yeah, that's how we figure things out in life.
00:07:46
Speaker
You're right, that's how we use context clues. And that's a different thing. When I'm talking about teaching kids reading strategies, I'm talking about teaching them how to attack words that they've never seen before. So yeah, if that's like a vocabulary strategy to kind of figure out context clues. In fact, it's something that I teach, you know, I'll say, okay, if you are walking by a big building and a bell rings,
00:08:14
Speaker
at three o'clock and a whole bunch of kids run outside. What do you think the building is? You would probably say a school. I never told you it was a school, but you could use context clues to figure that out. You know that kids go to school, you know it's a building, you know that the bell rings at three o'clock-ish.
00:08:34
Speaker
So that is a context that's that's that's great for using context clues for life, but that's not a decoding strategy. And don't get me wrong. I'm not blaming teachers. I was a teacher who was sold the story that this is how you teach kids how to read. I used these strategies and until you know better. When we know better, we do better.
Impact of Ineffective Strategies & Dysteachia
00:08:53
Speaker
So that's that's the semantics.
00:08:56
Speaker
um Then we have structure or syntax cue, and that might look like and focusing more on the grammar.
00:09:07
Speaker
um So we might say, let's read this sentence. The boy is walking his... What kind of word do you think would go in the blank? The child might say, dog. The teacher would say, yes, you're right. A noun makes sense here because we're talking about something the boy is walking.
00:09:27
Speaker
um And then the last one is visual. So we the focus in this one is to use letters and sounds in the word to figure out how to read it. The teacher might say, if you're not sure about this word, look at the first letter. What letter is it? And they might say D. What sound does D make? The child might say d. And the teacher would say great. So what could the word be if it starts with d?
00:09:55
Speaker
And then again, looking at the picture. So really you cross check all of these cues. Um, in, and and honestly, I don't even know if people that are using the three queuing system know that's what they're doing. But anyway, this is not an effective strategy. It's ineffective. Um, and it is not what we should be using. So that's the first thing. So if a child is stretching out a word and then guessing,
00:10:21
Speaker
The first thing I would ask is, are they being taught ineffective strategies? Because if they're being taught ineffective strategies, it's really um that's what we need to focus on, making sure that they have consistent strategies. There's ah something called dysteachia. So many people think that their child has dyslexia, but we need to see first if they have dysteachia. Were they taught effectively and consistently for a extended period of time, how to read the right way? Or has it been inconsistent? In kindergarten, was it memorizing sight words and using the three queuing system? In first grade, was it a science of reading instructor who knew what they were doing? In second grade, then was it more focused on memorizing again? Have they had that consistency? um And don't worry, because if your child hasn't had consistency in school, you can absolutely give them the consistency they need at home.
Consistent Reading Strategies at Home
00:11:16
Speaker
That's why I built big city readers. So, um, I have a course for preschool, kindergarten, first and second and third graders. So you don't, if like, you don't have to go to battle about this, you can actually just take it and take matters into your own hands and make sure that your child is learning the right way at home. So all of those courses have over 20, um, 15 minute video lessons. So you can do a couple a week, you can repeat them. They're really effective in,
00:11:45
Speaker
making sure your child is not only learning the right way, but is feeling confident. And I, I can't tell you how many messages I get daily about people saying that their confidence has changed in 20 minutes. So, um, so you don't have to worry if this is happening at school. I'm just kind of giving you the information. You can always overcorrect at home. Um, but also if it is in you to go to battle,
00:12:14
Speaker
Of course, check the podcast and blog about how to do that. I share scripts and stuff and about how to stay curious and all that jazz. But anyway, this episode. So it's the first place I would look if a child was doing that kind of like guessing. Ask ask yourself, have they been taught to guess at words? Have they been taught these strategies? And then the next place to go from there,
00:12:39
Speaker
is if if the answer is yes to that, then the next place is, OK, so I'm going to take matters into my own hands. I'm going to make sure that they are being taught effective reading strategies. And I'm going to go consistently with this for the next six weeks. And I'm going to do two big city readers lessons a week for six weeks. And I'm going to see if I notice any changes. That's how you really can like get to the core of what is going on with your child's reading struggle.
00:13:04
Speaker
um But also, keep in mind that there should be a productive struggle. A productive struggle would look like a child going, and ah the boy sat with his cat. The the boy sat with his cat. Now, we don't want kids to struggle for too long, but we also don't want them to rely on us.
00:13:35
Speaker
for the answers. You can get silly with it. You don't have to make your child feel ashamed about asking. I always will say like, what? Oh my gosh, the letters got onto my face? Oh no. It usually reminds kids to look at the letters on the page. I usually say, you know what to do here. You already practiced these words in letters. So you know how to sound these words out. And then they look at it and they go and they use their strategies to read the word. um So productive struggle, make sure that your child has been taught the right way,
00:14:04
Speaker
And then I'm going to tell you about two more blending strategies and one more game that
Sound Blending Before Decoding
00:14:12
Speaker
you can play. So a lot of times people just say, sound it out. And if you've been here for a while, you know, I don't really love saying sound it out unless I know that I've taught kids how to play with sounds. So go back and listen to the episode called phonics versus phonemic awareness. And I talk all about sounds, but making sure that kids understand sounds by playing games from the very beginning. I'm talking like games I play with my nephew who is three. He is read learning to read. He just turned four. He's learning to read. He's and incredibly talented at these. And my sister goes, how does he know these? I'm like, we've been playing them since he was a baby. um Singing, talking, all the things they add up. So then as soon as you start
00:14:55
Speaker
entering that toddler stage, um, you can start playing with syllables. Like that looks like just like clapping people's names or jumping around to a rhythm in a song. All of these things are great early literacy skills. Then when they start to be interested in sounds and words, I might say things like, Ooh, what's the first sound you hear in stop? And I'm really looking for the child to say this sound, not S.
00:15:24
Speaker
That's not the sound, that's the letter. But to tell you they hear S, kids should be able to do this before um they know the letter S stands for S. So I would have them practice these sounds and um help them to name and count sounds in short words. So making sure your child that is trying to blend words is able to then do things like, OK, let's say that same word, stop. We're going to say, can you count how many sounds you hear in stop? And we want them to go st, op, four sounds. We don't want them to be able to just say how to spell the word. We want them to say how many sounds they hear.
00:16:12
Speaker
um The word shoe would look different. We would say, how many sounds do you hear in the word shoe? Sh, oo, two sounds. So we want to do this all with our ears before we then put words in front of kids to to decode. So the next place, if I know that they're being taught the right way and they're still going at top mop, you know, all the things, then I'm going to take a step back.
00:16:38
Speaker
You don't have to feel bad about taking a step back. Your child might just need a refresher on showing them the sounds that they know. So you're going to show them, um, about, you're going to show them, oh my gosh, I just got a text from somebody that said, sorry distraction. Are you watching? Nobody wants this. And am I the 80th person to ask you that?
00:16:59
Speaker
Um, because it was a very, very personal, if you watch, nobody wants this, I, it was, it felt very similar to a relationship I went through. Um, so anyway, sorry for that distraction. Okay. So we're going to go back.
00:17:15
Speaker
Take a deep breath for that one. um So we're going to look at the letters and sounds and have your child practice each of the sounds in front of them before we put the whole word in front of them.
00:17:29
Speaker
So we want to make sure that they feel confident. So you're going to show them the letter B, they're going to say B, you're going to show them the letter A, they're going to say A. You're going to show them the letter T, they're going to say T. Then you're going to put two letters in front of them, maybe just B and A, and you're going to go B, A. You might push those letters together, B, A, B, A, and then have them say it together, Baa. And once they can do that, then you might add a third sound. This is called successive blending. So if you have Baa, then you go,
00:17:57
Speaker
You stick B and A together and then T is separate. You go bat, bat, and have them blend those words like that. That's successive blending. Another thing you can practice is sound-by-sound blending. um So you can go, yeah at um I have about a million more tricks about blending, but I'm going to save them for the workshop next week so I don't spoil it. um But those are some of the things that I practice when kids are struggling with blending.
00:18:29
Speaker
The last one is a game. So this is also something that could be going on. Your child could be struggling with their working memory. So if you've never heard of working memory before, working memory is kind of like, um okay, if you live in a house that has two stories, maybe you have bedrooms upstairs and This is not my house, but I'm imagining my sister's house. And every time like, Oh, I forgot the shoes. Okay. i gotta to go Well, I'm up there. I'm going to get the baby's pacifier, hairbrush and Hugo's shoes. And you don't need to write those things down. Your brain just kind of holds that you need those three things. That's working memory when you don't really need to write it down.
Working Memory in Reading Development
00:19:11
Speaker
Um, but we can remember.
00:19:15
Speaker
um information for short periods of time. It's part of our cognitive system um and mental workspace where we can store that information to solve problems or perform quick tasks. um and It's really important for most learning, but particularly for um reading.
00:19:37
Speaker
so Sometimes kids don't have very strong working memory yet. So um in decoding words, what we were just talking about, when kids are learning to break down words into individual phonemes or like the sounds, again, like sh, ooh, that's two phonemes, and then blend it together, working memory helps us to remember the sounds that we've already processed while figuring out the rest of the work.
00:20:08
Speaker
So let's use the word cat. If we're sounding out cat, the child can hold the sound in there were in their working memory ah while figuring out the rest of the word at. We also need working memory for comprehension and writing.
00:20:26
Speaker
and following directions and spelling. um there's There's a whole lot of reasons that working memory matters. um And I'm going to tell you a game to play, an easy game to do to practice building
Games for Improving Working Memory
00:20:42
Speaker
working memory. But um as kids start to read bigger stories or sentences, they need to be able to hold on to the words and ideas that they just read in order to understand the meaning of the text. So working memory helps us here.
00:20:55
Speaker
um keep track of the flow of information we're reading. um It helps us retain details from earlier parts of a story, um helping us make ah connections and build on that comprehension.
00:21:09
Speaker
um And this is also part of the reason i I say, if you only told your kid, get your shoes on and get out the door and that's it. You're still helping their reading skills because um and and build their working memory. So we're in following directions. We often have to follow multi-step directions, um whether it's like in a lesson in the classroom or doing homework or following directions in the classroom, if kids don't have strong working memory, you might notice, and it might seem like they're not following directions, but their working memory might need a little a little bit more support. um And then in spelling and writing too, um kids need their working memory to be able to remember how um the spelling patterns flow and how to make a coherent sentence.
00:21:59
Speaker
So um this is why it's important to follow a systematic structured approach to when we introduce each letter and sound. um When kids have mastered this letter and sound, are they ready for this one? Are they ready to learn this spelling rule or this spelling pattern? um And again, actually, I teach you the order. I teach long vowels, digraphs, and spelling rules in the upcoming workshop. so If you're interested in that, message me if you can't find it on the website, but it's on October 22nd at 8 p.m. live, and then you can also get the replay. But anyway, we'll talk much more about this, but here's what to do if your child might be struggling with their working memory. um There is a little game you can play. It's really easy. Just find some stuff around your house.
00:22:49
Speaker
And you're going to need two of each object so maybe it's two hair brushes two shoes two socks and you each you and your child are going to have one of each of the pairs and you're going to.
00:23:05
Speaker
say I'm going to put these in an order and then I'm going to cover it up and I want to see if you can put yours in the same order. um it does They don't have to be the exact same, but like pencil, pencil, marker, marker, sock, sock. and so Start with three and three and practice your turn, their turn, your turn, their turn. turn and then um go up to four, or five, six. These are all great ways um to just keep building that working memory. Also, you could play memory, you could play match, you can do all these things, but working memory is super crucial in your child's reading development. So if they are struggling with some of those things, like um and some of those blending activities, it might be their working memory. It might be they were taught the wrong way.
00:23:53
Speaker
It might be inconsistency and it might be that they need to practice sound by sound blending or successive blending.
Personalized Reading Sessions
00:24:01
Speaker
Those are a couple of strategies that I would try. um Keep in mind, test out your child. Of course, if you're like, I don't even know, this actually made me more confused. You can book a one-on-one session with me. I added a few more for November um before we break for the holiday and um which is crazy.
00:24:21
Speaker
We're already here. But anyway, if you want to do a one-on-one session, I can work with your child virtually and kind of tell you, I do a really quick assessment in every area. And I'm like, here's here's what I noticed. Here's what you can do. Here's your plan for the next eight weeks.
00:24:38
Speaker
um So anyway, that's a great place to start. You can message me at Big City Readers on Instagram if you want. um It's also on my website, bigcityreaders dot.com. But I really think that the best place to start, if any of this interests you or if you have a yeah a child and or work with children, this I was going to say is my
Book Recommendations & Reading Habits
00:25:01
Speaker
favorite workshop. I love all the workshops I do, but I think this workshop is life changing, I would say.
00:25:08
Speaker
So anyway, you have a couple of days left to join in. It's um live next week, but you'll get the replay and we will talk all about all of the things mentioned here and so much more. So that's all I have for you today.
00:25:25
Speaker
Oh, I promised that I was going to tell you the name of that book I was reading. It's called... So I got to be honest, I read this book and I was absolutely obsessed with it this summer. It was Abby Jimenez. Oh my gosh, what was the name of it? I'm opening my Kindle.
00:25:43
Speaker
um
00:25:45
Speaker
Do you guys think that Abby Jimenez and Emily Henry are so similar? And do you think that they hate that? um I don't think they do. Because, yeah, they're different, but very similar. So anyway, the book I read this summer that I actually sobbed through was The Friend Zone. And then somebody on my podcast actually told me to read the sequel, and it's called the Happy Ever After playlist. And it is so hard for me to read nonfiction and just like let myself be like, lighthearted and
00:26:26
Speaker
It feels sometimes like a waste of time to me. So I know that that means that I need to do it and that I need to like relax and let myself just not work and get lost in a silly little easy to read story. Um, so I really liked those two. If you need to get into something, I liked the friend zone better.
00:26:48
Speaker
I don't know why it, it was such a silly little story, but I like read it in a day. And then the happy ever playlist is also a good one too. So loved both of those, the women I listened to, I feel like I have to have one that I'm reading with my eyes and one that I'm reading with my ears.
00:27:07
Speaker
Um, but send me your book recs because now I need something new and check back in for next week's podcast that will
Podcasting Passion & Listener Engagement
00:27:19
Speaker
be on Wednesdays. If you liked this podcast or if you learned something, please do not judge me on my podcasting skills because I'm literally doing this podcast.
00:27:29
Speaker
like I'm learning as I go, I'm doing this not to be like the best podcast, but to share information. So if you learned something, please tell your friends, write and review. It helps us stay on the map. And um this is really just a passion project. I don't have the budget to hire producers. um And I invest in it by hiring an editor. And um yeah, so anyway,
00:27:57
Speaker
I know that it's worth it because I want to make sure that every parent, teacher, and child has access to high quality educational resources. So this is my way of sharing that and hopefully making your life a little bit easier and more fun. So until next time, see you on Instagram. Send me a DM if you need anything and I will talk to you soon.