What is set for variability?

Summary

In this enlightening video, Stephanie from Reading Science Academy breaks down the term "set for variability," a concept in education that describes encouraging students to use their understanding of letter-sound relationships to approximate pronunciations of unfamiliar words. This skill also involves adjusting pronunciations based on context to find a word that fits the sentence they're reading. She highlights the crucial balance between phonemic awareness, decoding skills, and vocabulary in developing this flexibility over time. While direct teaching of variability may not improve reading outcomes, enhancing underlying skills such as phonemic awareness and vocabulary does. This playful guide offers insights into simplifying a term that initially seems more complex than it is.

Highlights

• The concept of set for variability simplifies how students approach unfamiliar words 🤔.
• It relies heavily on phonemic awareness and strong letter-sound relationships 📚.
• Developing flexibility in reading involves expanding beyond rigid phonetic rules 🔄.
• Enhancing vocabulary and text reading experience is key to skill advancement 🚀.
• Direct teaching of this concept is less impactful than foundational skill enhancement 🧠.

Key Takeaways

• Set for variability helps students approximate pronunciations of unknown words 🤔.
• Phonemic awareness and decoding skills are essential for flexibility in reading 📚.
• Building a strong vocabulary aids in applying set for variability 🗣️.
• Practice in text reading is crucial for developing this skill 🕮.
• Direct teaching of variability isn't as effective as improving phonemic awareness 🎯.

Overview

Set for variability is an education jargon that might sound complicated, but it's about flexibility in reading. It encourages students to use their phonemic knowledge and vocabulary to pronounce unfamiliar words and adjust as needed. This skill becomes vital when children encounter names or terms they've never heard, like experiencing character names from books like Harry Potter for the first time.

The development of this skill is not just about direct instruction. Instead, it flourishes with practice and experience in reading. Expanding on phonemic awareness, understanding letter-sound structures, and building vocabulary are essential foundations. As students' experience in text grows, so does their ability to flexibly pronounce new words, escaping from the rigid rules they initially learn.

While research in directly teaching variability doesn't show strong outcomes, boosting foundational skills does. Students who are well-versed in phonemic awareness and vocabulary naturally become better at applying set for variability. This underscores the importance of reading practice and vocabulary expansion, which connects sounds, printed letters, and meanings, effectively enhancing early reading instruction.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction The chapter introduces the term 'set for variability,' which might sound complex but relates to a straightforward concept in education. The speaker, Stephanie, acknowledges the tendency in education to create complicated language for simple ideas and questions whether 'set for variability' is one of those terms. The chapter sets the stage for discussing this concept further, including its relevance and implications for student learning.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Understanding Set for Variability In this chapter titled 'Understanding Set for Variability', the focus is on utilizing knowledge of letter-sound relationships to pronounce unfamiliar words. Readers are encouraged to leverage their oral vocabulary to make more informed guesses about word pronunciation, aiming for words that make sense in context.
• 01:00 - 01:30: Building the Reading Network The chapter 'Building the Reading Network' discusses the foundational concept of the reading network, which is crucial for effective beginning reading instruction. It focuses on the three-way connection between the sounds in spoken words, the printed letters representing those sounds, and the meaning of the words. The text emphasizes the importance of this interconnected relationship in fostering reading skills.
• 01:30 - 02:00: Importance of Decoding Skills The chapter discusses the importance of building a 'bank' or lexicon of sight words in students' brains. This involves creating a collection of words that students can recognize and understand instantly and effortlessly, upon seeing them. The development of this network relies heavily on having strong phonemic awareness.
• 02:00 - 02:30: Practicing in Text The chapter 'Practicing in Text' discusses the development of decoding skills, which begin with understanding simple letter-sound relationships. It highlights that beginners start with single letter-sound relationships and may initially apply these rigidly. The chapter progresses by explaining how these skills evolve as their understanding of English orthography improves, leading to more flexible application and increased proficiency.
• 02:30 - 03:30: Applying Set for Variability The chapter discusses the importance of practice and exposure to text in developing flexibility in decoding skills. It emphasizes that as readers gain more experience, they expand their initial rigidity and become more adept at applying those skills in varied situations. The concept of 'set for variability' is introduced, highlighting it as a crucial component of early reading instruction.
• 03:30 - 04:00: Phonemic Awareness and Text Reading The chapter 'Phonemic Awareness and Text Reading' focuses on helping students translate unfamiliar sequences of letters into words they recognize and understand. It involves exercises where students work on pronouncing words like 'mother' correctly by practicing and correcting their pronunciation based on their spoken vocabulary. The emphasis is on flexibility and listening to improve their reading skills.
• 04:00 - 05:30: Conclusion The chapter explores the concept of interpreting written language by connecting it to known words in oral language. It discusses how individuals might encounter a letter string, such as 'w-a-s-p,' and use their existing knowledge of spoken words to identify and pronounce it as 'wasp.' This process involves the recognition of familiar sounds and words, emphasizing the idea that people rely on their oral language foundation to interpret written text. The chapter also touches on the experience of reading names or words in books, like those in the Harry Potter series, prior to hearing their official pronunciations in films, illustrating how reading can be influenced by personal interpretations of linguistic sounds.

What is set for variability? Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 hi there Stephanie here you know in education we seem to be really good at coming up with very complicated terminology to talk about things that are somewhat simple and I don't know if uh set for variability falls into the simple concept category but it is a term that maybe is more um opaque than it needs to be so set for variability is a phrase that's used to describe the idea that we want students
• 00:30 - 01:00 to be able to use their knowledge of letter sound relationships to approximate the pronunciation of unfamiliar strings of letters that they encounter when they're reading and to use their knowledge of word meanings that are in their spoken in oral vocabulary to flex the way that they might initially pronounce a word to come up with a word that makes sense
• 01:00 - 01:30 in the context of the sentence or the paragraph that they're reading so let me back up a little bit and remind everybody that the reading Network relies on this connection between the Sounds in the spoken word the printed letters that represent those sounds and the meaning of the word and this three-way relationship is what should drive beginning reading instruction because what we're trying to do is build
• 01:30 - 02:00 this bank or or lexicon of sight words uh in a student's brain we're building this this collection of words that students can look at and recognize instantly effortlessly on site at seeing them and go instantly to the meaning of the word that's the network that we're trying to develop so that depends on having very good phonemic awareness and
• 02:00 - 02:30 having very good decoding skills which is going to start obviously with some simple letter sound relationships when students are first starting out with their decoding skills they might just have single letter sound relationships they might know a little bit about how English orthography works and they tend at that beginning stage to be fairly rigid in their application of those letter sound relationships and as their skills increase and more importantly as
• 02:30 - 03:00 their experience in text increases over time they start to expand that rigidity and become more flexible in the application of those decoding skills so this is one of the reasons why time and text practicing in text is such an important and essential element of beginning reading instruction because that's where this this set for variability uh develops or comes into
• 03:00 - 03:30 practice so um what this is about is students getting to a pronunciation of an unfamiliar string of letters that approximates a word that's in their spoken vocabulary that they know the meaning of so it might be something like looking at m-o-t-h-e-r and pronouncing it as moth ER and then hearing that that doesn't really sound quite right in this sentence and being able to flex it
• 03:30 - 04:00 variably into mother or looking at the letter string w-a-s-p and reading it like wasp and then realizing oh they're talking about a wasp there's a word that I know in my oral language that's similar to that it must be pronounced wasp and anybody who's read a Harry Potter book uh and read it before the movies came out uh might have experienced this in the pronunciation of
• 04:00 - 04:30 one of the characters names Hermione and and you all can um disclose if you want to how in your own mind you were pronouncing that name if it was a name you'd never heard before as you were reading and then that got corrected when you uh eventually probably saw the movie so this is a skill that depends on phonemic awareness set for variability depends on phonemic awareness depends on very accurate and effortless letter sound relationships depends on a good
• 04:30 - 05:00 vocabulary and it depends on lots and lots of text reading and it seems to be that those are the ways to improve a student's set for variability there doesn't seem to be a very um reliable way to directly teach in the research that I'm familiar with when they have taught students this this flexibility or this set for variability it doesn't translate into General
• 05:00 - 05:30 improved reading outcomes but what does happen is when you increase phonemic awareness when you increase decoding and you increase vocabulary you also increase a student's ability to apply this set for me variability so I hope that helps give a little introduction to a term that sounds more complicated perhaps than it needs to