Orthographic Mapping is NOT an activity. So what is it?
As the science of reading (SOR) becomes more popular, so do the terms and vocabulary surrounding SOR. One key term I want to explore today is orthographic mapping.
Orthographic mapping is often misunderstood. It is not an activity but a critical mental process that happens in your brain. Let’s learn what this process is, why it’s important, and how we can promote it through a variety of activities.
What is orthographic Mapping?
Orthographic mapping is a process that occurs in your brain and enables you to store words efficiently for automatic retrieval, leading to fluent reading. It’s how the brain connects the phonemes (sounds) and the graphemes (spellings) of a word to its visual representation and meaning, making this word a “sight word” (Ehri, 2014). Orthographic mapping is what helps our brain transform unfamiliar words into familiar ones that we can read effortlessly. If you can read all of these words without sounding them out, your brain has stored them as sight words.
Here’s the catch: This process is not something we can teach directly. It’s not the name of an activity we can have our students do. It is a cognitive process that we can help to promote when specific skills are in place:
Phonemic awareness: The ability to identify and manipulate individual sounds in spoken words.
Phoneme-Grapheme Correspondences: Knowledge of the relationships between spellings and sounds.
Decoding skills: The ability to read unfamiliar words by applying letter-sound knowledge systematically (phonics!).
Dr. Linnea Ehri is the leading voice when it comes to researching and understanding orthographic mapping, explaining that these skills are prerequisites for forming connections between a word’s spelling, pronunciation, and meaning in memory (Ehri, 2014). Without these skills, the process of storing words breaks down, leaving readers reliant on rote memorization or guessing that sets them up for failure as text gets more complex.
Promoting Orthographic Mapping
Now that we know orthographic mapping isn’t an activity, how can we help the brain complete this process and get better at storing words? We can promote it through intentional, evidence-based practices that focus on phonemic awareness, decoding, and spelling.
- Teach Phonics Explicitly: Follow a scope & sequence to introduce sound/spelling correspondences from basic to more complex. Rainbow Phonics has one available for free on their website. Also, grab my FREE Phonics guide from the Home Page (find the yellow section).
- Incorporate Phonemic Awareness Tasks: Include blending and segmenting words orally and in print as often as possible. Work on identifying initial sounds in words, too! “What sound do you hear at the beginning of /d/ /d/ dog?”
- Use Sound Boxes for Word Mapping: Segment words into individual sounds. Then, place the spellings into sounds boxes. One sound equals one box. Blend to read the word at the end. Always move back and forth between segmenting and blending. Grab free sound boxes by clicking the button below.
- Teach Morphology and Vocabulary: Morphemes are meaningful units that are put together to form words (cat + s = cats). The more words you know and understand, the easier it is for your brain to build connections. My friend, Michelle: The Colorful Classroom, shares a lot of fantastic information about morphology on her page. Watch the video below to see an example of working with morphemes in multisyllabic words.
Activities to Avoid
Now that we know a few ways to promote orthographic mapping, are there activities we should avoid? YES! Stop using activities that focus on rote memorization of whole words without connecting back to the individual sounds and spellings within words.
🛑 Flashing word cards for whole word memorization.
🛑 Writing words repeatedly such as 3 times each or rainbow writing.
🛑 Guessing words based on the picture or context.
🛑 Teaching 100 high-frequency words outside of a scope & sequence.
Why does orthographic Mapping matter?
Orthographic mapping is essential to skilled and fluent reading. The brain can put all its effort into understanding the meaning of the words (Kilpatrick, 2015).
Understanding this process is central to really understanding the movement behind the science of reading, which emphasizes that reading is not a natural process. It requires explicit instruction in foundational reading skills. By focusing on activities that promote orthographic mapping, we help to ensure all students have the tools they need to become successful readers.
Final Takeaways
Here are the key takeaways I want you to remember:
- Teaching foundational skills is essential. Find a program with a solid phonics scope & sequence. Make sure you are blending and segmenting daily!
- Choose activities that promote orthographic mapping and avoid those that don’t!
- Teachers make the difference. Be smarter than the program. Keep building your knowledge base so you can decide which parts of the program are useful and which ones aren’t.
If you want to keep word mapping activities exciting, try switching up your themes and templates. I have a growing bundle of word building mats that you can switch out to meet student interests or match to a specific theme. If you have ideas for more themes, just send me an email and I can create it for you!
You may be interested in:
Rainbow Phonics FREE Lesson Slide Shows
Basics: Sight Words and Orthographic Mapping
Small Group Instruction Instruction Series Part 1: Not Guided Reading
Michelle and The Colorful Classroom
References:
Ehri, L. C. (2014). Orthographic mapping in the acquisition of sight word reading, spelling memory, and vocabulary learning. Scientific Studies of Reading, 18(1), 5-21.
Kilpatrick, D. A. (2015). Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties.
How to start teaching kindergarten their first reading skills?
Great question! For kindergarten, you want to start with alphabet knowledge, phonological awareness, and oral language. I can do a blog post on this topic soon!