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Published: 06 November 2013

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Dr Kerry Hempenstall, Senior Industry Fellow, School of Education, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia.

First published Nov 28 2012, updated 29/10/2017

 All my blogs can be viewed on-line or downloaded as a Word file or PDF at https://www.dropbox.com/sh/olxpifutwcgvg8j/AABU8YNr4ZxiXPXzvHrrirR8a?dl=0

There have been some new report reviews of the 3-cueing issue. All the items collected will fall between years 2020 and 2025.

Is This the End of ‘Three Cueing’? (2020).

Cueing has, for decades now, been a staple of early reading instruction. The strategy—which is also known as three-cueing, or MSV—involves prompting students to draw on context and sentence structure, along with letters, to identify words. But it isn’t the most effective way for beginning readers to learn how to decode printed text.

Research has shown that encouraging kids to check the picture when they come to a tricky word, or to hypothesize what word would work in the sentence, can take their focus away from the word itself—lowering the chances that they’ll use their understanding of letter sounds to read through the word part-by-part, and be able to recognize it more quickly the next time they see it.

Still, three-cueing is everywhere: in curriculum materials that instruct teachers to prompt students with “think what kind of word would fit;” in classroom anchor charts that encourage making a guess after looking at the first letter of the word and the illustration on the page; in popular assessment tools.

Reporting over the last few years, from American Public Media, Education Week, and others, has demonstrated the extent to which these strategies pervade early literacy instruction, and explained why the research suggests they aren’t effective tools for instructing young readers in cracking the alphabetic code.

questions about whether other publishers will follow suit, and whether changes to written materials will lead to shifts in classroom practice.

‘Cautiously Optimistic’

In a document that circulated this fall, the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, which develops the popular Units of Study for Teaching Reading curriculum, lays out a series of changes to its philosophy of early reading instruction.

Lucy Calkins, the founding director of TCRWP, is one of the biggest players in the early reading market: Her Units of Study curriculum, commonly known as “reading workshop,” is used by 16 percent of K-2 and elementary special education teachers, according to the 2019 EdWeek Research Center survey. The recent document covers a range of issues, from phonics instruction to text types to addressing dyslexia. And it

outlines a new approach to word-solving for the organization that steps away from cueing.

“The TCRWP has always recommended that teachers coach kids who encounter unfamiliar words to be active word solvers, but until recently, we have encouraged kids to draw on all their resources to word solve, which meant both asking, ‘What word would make sense there?’ and also asking, ‘What do the letters say?’” Calkins wrote in an emailed statement to Education Week in late October. (Calkins declined an on-the-record phone interview with Education Week.)

“We are now recommending that for readers in the early stages of reading development, there are times for prompting for meaning and times for prompting for word solving.” When a student is “stuck on an unfamiliar word,” she wrote, “it is important that teachers prompt kids to draw on their phonics knowledge.”

What Is ‘Cueing’? A Key to the Terms

Cueing is a commonly used strategy in early reading instruction, in which teachers prompt students to draw on multiple sources of information to identify words. It’s based on the now disproven theory that reading is a series of strategic guesses, informed by context clues.
The strategy is also referred to as “three-cueing,” for the three different sources of information that teachers tell students to use: 1) meaning drawn from context or pictures, 2) syntax, and 3) visual information, meaning letters or parts of words.
Many teachers also refer to cueing as MSV, an acronym that stands for each of the three sources of information: meaning, structure/syntax, and visual.

This does represent a shift in approach, said P. David Pearson, an emeritus professor and the former dean of the University of California, Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education. But he argues that it’s more of a “tweak” than a radical overhaul.

“She’s saying, go for the code first, and then add in the meaning,” Pearson said. “But I think she would say that it’s still a balanced approach, and you’re still using all the resources available to you.”

Laura Stewart, national director of The Reading League, an organization that advocates for science-based reading instruction, said she is “cautiously optimistic” that the changes could bring a significant shift in how teachers think about cueing. Still, she said of Calkins, “it feels like her evolution has a lot to do with defending her turf.”

Calkins, for her part, says that the changes were prompted by a close reading of research, work with teachers and students, and a partnership with the Child Mind Institute, an organization that supports children with mental health and learning disorders. She claims that EdWeek articles regarding the program have “fueled controversies.”

“We do children and teachers a disservice when we divide ourselves into camps, demonizing and misrepresenting each other,” she wrote, in the statement. “I’ve tried, instead, to listen and learn from proponents of the science of reading, and to encourage other balanced literacy educators to do so as well.”

Change on the Horizon?

Research on the importance of explicit, systematic phonics—and the comparative ineffectiveness of using contextual and syntactic cues to identify words—has existed for decades. For now, though, other major literacy players that employ cueing in their instructional methods haven’t announced similar shifts.

Education Week also asked Fountas and Pinnell, one of the most popular early reading programs, whether it planned to make any changes to how its materials prompted children to identify words. Current versions of the materials for early readers instruct teachers to prompt students with the questions, “What would make sense?” and “Does it look right?” Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell, authors of the program, declined comment through their publisher, Heinemann.

Reading Recovery, a popular reading intervention approach that also uses cueing, did not note any specific upcoming changes to the method. However, Billy Molasso, the executive director of the Reading Recovery Council of North America, said that the organization does not view reading instruction as “static.”

“[A]s we learn more about literacy processing and our students and teachers change over time, we have to continue to refine our strategies, enhance our instructional dexterity, and integrate better ways to meet the specific struggles of our emerging readers,” he wrote in a statement to Education Week. “We look forward to continued robust conversations about how to strengthen early literacy education.”

Still, addressing the persistence of cueing is a challenge that goes beyond curricula, said Emily Solari, a professor of reading education at the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education and Human Development.

“We have generations of teachers who haven’t been provided adequate training on how to teach reading, through no fault of their own,” she said. “There are multiple things you have to push on—and just changing one curriculum, even a widely purchased and used curriculum, it’s not a silver bullet.”
Some reading teachers agree.

“If teachers aren’t strong in their knowledge about how kids read and how kids write, changes in the curricula are not, in my personal opinion, going to make a big shift,” said Jeanne Schopf, a middle school reading specialist, interventionist, and coach in Sturgeon Bay, Wis. “They’re going to go back to what they’re comfortable doing.”

Schopf, who has taught both elementary and middle school in her 31 years as an educator, said she’d like to see institutional shifts at teachers’ colleges and universities. If teachers don’t learn about evidence-based practices there, it can be hard to introduce them later, she said.

For David Pelc, the process of instructional change is deeply interpersonal and gradual. When Pelc, an elementary reading interventionist in Romulus, Mich., started learning more about explicit, systematic early reading instruction, he introduced it to teachers “little by little,” he said.

He had conversations with teachers who he knew trusted his perspective; he worked alongside others in their classrooms, demonstrating phonemic awareness activities they could do with their students. “I didn’t say, ‘Hey, this is what we need to do; it makes more sense.’ I would say, ‘Hey, check this out, it’s so cool,’” he said.

Now, of course, there’s an additional layer of challenge involved in any change process: Teachers are overwhelmed with the demands of distance learning, and school and district leaders are stretched thin.
But Pelc also wonders whether teachers’ willingness to try out new strategies during this time might open a door. He’s put together screencasts demonstrating evidence-based instruction, and a few teachers have mentioned to him that they’ve watched them.

“Both teachers and students are getting more resourceful,” Pelc said. “They’re looking for information and getting it faster.”

Origins of Cueing

TCRWP doesn’t generally use the phrase “cueing” to describe its approach to reading and writing instruction. Even so, the strategies and philosophies that underlie this approach have been a part of the instruction in the program, and in other widely used early reading curricula.

The idea that children use “cueing systems” to read was popularized by several influential reading researchers in the 1960s and ‘70s.

Kenneth Goodman, the late education researcher who was considered the founding father of whole language, theorized that good readers make predictions about what the words on the page say by drawing on multiple sources of information. This theory was largely based on Goodman’s analysis of students’ errors, or “miscues,” while reading.

He saw that students might use graphic information i.e., the letters—to phonetically decode the word, or part of it. But they also use their understanding of syntax, suggesting incorrect words that nonetheless conform to the structure of written language, and their grasp on the meaning of the story, predicting words that would complete a coherent thought.

Within this framework, the goal of the reading teacher is not to make sure that beginning readers attend to every part of every word, but to “help them to select the most productive cues,” Goodman wrote.

At the same time, New Zealand researcher Marie Clay was developing running records—a system of analyzing students’ oral reading errors with a similar philosophical underpinning to Goodman’s work. Teachers listen to students read a book or passage, and for every miscue, note which source of information students are drawing on that caused them to make the error: meaning, syntax, or visual information (letters).

Running records are a cornerstone of Reading Recovery, the intervention program Clay developed. But they’re also widely used as an assessment tool outside of Reading Recovery, and a key piece of many packaged reading programs.

Over the past few decades, research has disproved the theory that fluent word reading is the result of a highly sophisticated predicting process. Instead, studies have shown that strong readers attend to the letters in words.

After sounding out a new word a few times, that word becomes recognizable on sight through a process called orthographic mapping. Proficient readers don’t need to rely on context or syntax to identify what words say.

Still, listening to students’ errors while reading can be “very useful,” said Nell Duke, a professor of literacy, language, and culture at the University of Michigan School of Education. With the right tools, teachers can discern which sounds students are struggling with, or whether students are monitoring their comprehension.

“But the MSV approach to doing so I think has led to a lot of misconceptions,” Duke said.
The running record is “such an open-ended tool that it’s not really clear what to do with what you find,” she said. For example, if a student uses context to guess at a word, and gets it wrong, how should a teacher respond?

Some teachers, Duke said, will praise a miscue as long as it makes sense in context—for instance reading the word bunny in place of rabbit. “It’s definitely true that it’s better that it make sense than not make sense, but it’s very important that it not just make sense, but be the actual word,” she said.

Not a ‘Zero-Sum Game’

Calkins said that TCWRP has made revisions to the Units of Study in Phonics and K-2 Units of Study in Reading curricula to reflect a change in its prompting approach.

The revisions affect, on average, about six pages in each of the 20 phonics books and each of the 20 reading books, and they will be in the next reprint. This new approach was also discussed at a recent free online TCRWP teacher conference, with about 7,000 participants in attendance, Calkins said.

Simply telling teachers to prompt students in a different order may not uproot the more entrenched issues with cueing, Solari, the University of Virginia professor, cautioned. Importantly, she said, students need explicit instruction in phonics before the prompt “look at the letters” can yield any results.

Calkins’ materials include a dedicated phonics component, though it wasn’t introduced until 2018. Still, Calkins said she has always supported foundational skills instruction, including assisting schools in implementing other phonics curricula, like Fundations and Words Their Way, together with the Units of Study in Reading.

“I have always held the position that every single child is entitled to systematic, explicit phonics instruction, and that every school must adopt a planned, sequential phonics curriculum,” she wrote to Education Week.

Without a foundation in letter-sound correspondences, students may pronounce words incorrectly, which could lead to their teachers trying a different cue, Solari said.

“Is it the most awful thing in the world if a kid reaches an unknown word and they’re trying to sound it out, and then they move forward and figure it out by the context? It’s not,” Solari said. But, she stressed, it’s better if they can decode it.

“If they’re having a hard time figuring out one word, they’re probably having trouble figuring out the other words. So using the context is not even on the table,” she added.

Of course, researchers emphasize, this doesn’t mean that students shouldn’t pay attention to the meaning and structure of the text that they’re reading.

In an often-cited 1998 article on cueing, reading researcher Marilyn Jager Adams wrote that semantic and syntactic knowledge are essential to reading. They, in addition to the ability to read printed words, are all equally necessary for understanding the meaning of a text.

“If the original premise of the three-cueing system was that the reason for reading the words is to understand the text, it has since been oddly converted such that, in effect, the reason for understanding the text is in order to figure out the words,” Adams wrote.

In her statement to Education Week, Calkins indicated that teachers can prompt students to think about meaning—but in moments when they’re trying to comprehend text they’ve already read, not when they’re still working on decoding it.

It’s a subtle, but very important, distinction, said Duke, who created a chart to support teachers in deciding when to use prompts related to meaning. “Before they identify the word, they really need to be looking at letters and groups of letters in the word to figure out what that word is,” she said. After the child has correctly read a sentence, she said, then they can use context to figure out the meaning of any word they don’t understand.

“What I’d like to see is not the perpetuation that it’s an either or, that it’s a zero-sum game. That somehow if you focus on the foundational skills, that somehow you’re detracting from meaning,” said Stewart, of The Reading League. “Phonics, having kids sound out words, is the runway to meaning.”

Schwartz, S. (2020). Is This the End of ‘Three Cueing’?. Staff Writer, Education Week.

https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/is-this-the-end-of-three-cueing/2020/12#:~:text=The%20strategy%20is%20also%20referred,letters%20or%20parts%20of%20words.

Since 2021, 11 states have banned the use of 3-cueing in reading instruction, considering it an ineffective approach to early reading proficiency because it uses the behaviors of struggling readers to teach reading. Shanahan pointed out in 2022: “Studies have shown that students who recognize words by looking at the pictures or trying to use context to guess the word tend to be the poorest readers” (Stanovich, West, & Freeman, 1981; Shanahan, 2021).

To date, the states that have banned 3-cueing include:

• Arkansas, 2021
• Louisiana, 2022
• Florida, 2023
• Indiana, 2023
• North Carolina, 2023
• Ohio, 2023
• South Carolina, 2023
• Texas, 2023
• West Virginia, 2023
• Wisconsin, 2023
• Alabama, 2024

Can These Early Reading Strategies Co-Exist?

While states may continue to ban 3-cueing from early reading instruction, there are still successful programs like Reading Recovery that use the 3-cueing system. Even Tim Shanahan (2021) begrudgingly writes, “There are successful instructional schemes that use 3-cueing systems (think Reading Recovery), though the value of that part of their approach has never been tested independently so we can’t tell if it contributes anything to learning.” 

From Dr. Billy Molasso, the Executive Director of Reading Recovery: “It is important to note that three-cueing is not a method of literacy instruction at all, but rather an acknowledgment of some of the sources of information the brain uses to solve unknown words by using phonics in addition to context and syntax” (Reading Recovery, 2023).

A proponent of Reading Recovery points out, “3-cueing can still be seen as a complementary strategy rather than a primary method of reading instruction” (Schwartz, 2019).  However, Science of Reading advocates argue that in practice, complementary can easily become primary; then, this approach, which is not aligned with best practices, can end up being implemented to the detriment of student outcomes. To ensure national reading proficiency levels, they point to the primacy of phonemic awareness and phonics as the most effective strategies for early and struggling readers.

Conclusion

In states where 3-cueing is banned or no longer considered an effective approach to early reading, approaches recommended by Science of Reading advocates will impact schools of education, professional development, and reading program selection. Proponents of the Science of Reading view the movement not as a one-size-fits-all strategy but as a wealth of approaches backed by decades-long evidence of best practices in reading instruction.

Capone, R. (2024). Understanding the Science of Reading and the Conflict with the 3-Cueing System. Letsgolearn. https://www.letsgolearn.com/reading-curriculum/three-cueing-system/

“Everyone is buzzing about the Science of Reading as the evidence to support effective reading instruction becomes widespread news and is no longer an area of debate.

If we consider the reports that indicate that only one-third of American children can read proficiently, we can all agree that it is time to come together to make widespread changes in the way reading is taught.

The Science of Reading (SoR) provides the information that educators need to secure phonics as the primary approach to reading and prepare students to become fluent and independent readers for life.

Teachers who are looking to transition from a balanced literacy approach will be pleased to find a lot of information and resources available to guide instructional practices that are based on evidence. Many teachers have been accustomed to using the three-cueing system to drive reading.

The goal of the three-cueing system is for students to access information sources including meaning, structure, and visual. In this approach, students are encouraged to make informed guesses at a word, use context or other knowledge and experience to plug-in unfamiliar words, and engage in independent reading of high-interest books.

In most cases, teachers use the three-cueing system as a primary approach and could choose to mix in some phonics instruction when deemed appropriate. However, the research within the Science of Reading confirms that adding in some phonics instruction intermittently is not effective. Although students are exposed to reading and provided with a wealth of opportunities, they will not develop the deep knowledge and skills that good readers possess.

In fact, there have been multiple references to reveal the ways in which the three-cueing system mimics the same strategies that are used by poor readers. In addition, this type of cueing system leaves many children ill-prepared to tackle more advanced concepts in later years. Thankfully, the Science of Reading proves that we do not learn to read differently and with instruction in explicit, systematic phonics, every student can access the same knowledge and skills to become a good reader. 

If you are new to the Science of Reading or just beginning to dive into the instructional practices that are heavily supported by research, here are just a few areas that you will want to become very familiar with to get you moving in the right direction:

Gain insight regarding the Science of Reading (SOR) 

This is a compilation of many years of research that explains what scientists have confirmed about how children learn to break the code of the English language. The contributions of experts in the fields of developmental psychology, educational psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience represent decades of studies demonstrating the essential foundational reading skills that must be mastered by all students to develop effective decoding and orthographic mapping skills. This research has important implications on how reading skills are developed and how students should be taught. The SOR dispels misconceptions about the three-cueing systems and other commonly used practices that are not supported by evidence and provides a clear direction. It further explains how we learn to read. Good readers do not struggle to guess and sound out words. They immediately recognize them. Word reading is fluent and allows them to focus on meaning-comprehension. 

Do the “Math”

Get to know the Simple View of Reading

Gough & Tunmer’s (1986) Simple View of Reading demonstrates comprehension as the product of two basic components-Word recognition (decoding) x Language comprehension = Reading Comprehension

Understanding the formula will help educators with assessing reading weaknesses and providing appropriate instruction. The Simple View formula indicates that strong comprehension cannot occur unless both decoding and language comprehension skills are strong.

Word recognition is best taught through a phonics-based approach, wherein students develop knowledge and skills about how the alphabet works to become expert decoders. At each grade level, we must ensure that students have sufficient content knowledge and higher order thinking skills to understand what they read. Reading instruction must prepare them to become strong decoders to allow students to apply knowledge of the subject and synthesize the information to establish solid comprehension. 

Learn the Alphabetic Principle

In an effort to be a highly effective teacher of reading, one must develop a solid understanding of the alphabetic principle. This is the systematic relationship between sounds (phonemes) and the letters that spell them (graphemes). Good readers recognize patterns in words because they know that words are made up of sounds and that each sound is represented by one or more letters.

This ability to identify patterns allows students to differentiate between words that look similar, like bent, bet, and bend or imported, imparted, and impaired. This skill cannot be attained through the use of cues like guessing, access to illustrations, or a search for context. 

Understand Orthographic Mapping

A major discovery in reading research in past years has given us a solid understanding of how words are stored in our memory. The mental process that is activated to engage instant, effortless word retrieval is called “orthographic mapping”. Dr. David Kilpatrick reminds us that “Efficient orthographic mapping will only occur if the student has adequate skill in phonemic awareness and analysis”, (Essentials, p.100).

The central focus of instruction is on teaching the brain to recognize patterns. Good instruction will empower the student to use linguistic vocabulary (compound word, digraph, closed syllable, blend, syllable) and identify the substructures (syllable types, spelling rules, patterns) within words. This application of skills and knowledge will allow the student to decode new words. The bank of words that can be instantly retrieved and read effortlessly is referred to as the “orthographic lexicon”. 

Embrace Phonics Instruction

Some teachers have been influenced by the notion that phonics instruction is rote, mundane, or boring. Teachers who have been professionally trained in Orton-Gillingham will likely sing a different tune. Why? The answer is simple.

When students are taught through an explicit, systematic, multisensory approach, they quickly master skills that promote word recognition and build confidence. Activation of these skills ignites excitation in the brain, allowing for fluent reading to occur and paving the way for the student to gain a deeper comprehension of text. Skilled teachers will embed practice through review and repetition cycles that are designed to enhance orthographic mapping skills. Teachers can familiarize themselves with the levels of phonological awareness development and Ehri’s Phases of Sight Word Development to establish a developmentally appropriate reading program.

Opportunities to engage in nonsense word reading, word structure analysis, word study, and phoneme awareness activities will all promote mapping. In addition, the selection of appropriate reading materials (decodable and controlled text) is important and will provide opportunities for the student to apply decoding strategies to mastery and gain confidence. 

Build Fluency

When students are able to recognize words accurately and automatically, they can focus on other aspects of the text to generate meaning. This requires repeated exposure and multiple opportunities to apply learned decoding strategies, recognize irregular words, and activate orthographic mapping skills.  

It can be challenging to shift gears from one instructional approach to another. There is no dispute about the value of contextual cues in assisting students to generate meaning from text. We continue to promote the student’s attention to the construction (syntax) and meaning (semantics) of the text to enhance imagery and comprehension.

These cues are perfectly appropriate when used to supplement the phonetic process (rather than replace it). But what happens when the pictures are gone and the fourth-grade student is no longer provided with visual cues? Thankfully, an inherent goal of teaching is to ignite a student’s love for learning and to promote the success of every student. Good teachers are constantly searching for effective teaching practices and building their knowledge upon the research that supports learning. By embracing the Simple View of Reading, teachers will be able to shift the instructional focus to evidence-based practices which will build a foundation that will empower students and ultimately allow them to read at more advanced levels. 

As Louisa Moats said, “Reading failure can be prevented in all but a small percentage of children.” In recent years, scientists have made great strides in understanding how students learn to read and also how to prevent and correct reading problems. These findings are exciting and provide information that will foster reading development in good readers and in those who encounter problems with reading.

Having access to this information warrants an interdisciplinary call to action, wherein teachers, parents, and policymakers begin to collectively embrace the Science of Reading to bring about better outcomes for the future of reading instruction and student performance. IMSE’s professional, comprehensive training empowers teachers with the knowledge of the Science of Reading, instructional strategies, and resources to feel confident in delivering evidence-based reading practices to all students.”

Ordetx, K. (2020). Embracing the Science of Reading: Making the Transition from the Three Cueing System. Journey IMSE.

https://journal.imse.com/embracing-the-science-of-reading-making-the-transition-from-the-three-cueing-system/

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Some extra articles for you!

Reading & LiteracyStates to Schools: Teach Reading the Right Way

Catherine Gewertz, February 20, 2020

Reading & Literacy'Decodable' Books: Boring, Useful, or Both?

Sarah Schwartz, March 13, 2020

Reading & Literacy OpinionTeaching Media Literacy in an Era Awash With Misinformation Conversations reveal how different student interpretations are from teachers' and can guide instruction.

Larry Ferlazzo

Recruitment & RetentionTeacher Shortages Are Improving—With Two Big Exceptions

Sarah D. Sparks, March 17, 2025

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This next segment is a broader document, and includes earlier periods.

The three-cueing system is well-known to most teachers. What is less well known is that it arose not as a result of advances in knowledge concerning reading development, but rather in response to an unfounded but passionately held belief. Despite its largely uncritical acceptance by many within the education field, it has never been shown to have utility, and in fact, it is predicated upon notions of reading development that have been demonstrated to be false. Thus, as a basis for decisions about reading instruction, it is likely to mislead teachers and hinder students’ progress.

“The 3-cueing approach is a microcosm of the culture of education. It didn’t develop because teachers lack integrity, commitment, motivation or intelligence. It developed because they were poorly trained and advised. They didn’t know the relevant science or had been convinced it was irrelevant. Lacking this foundation, no such group could have discovered how reading works and how children learn.” (Seidenberg, 2017, p.304)

In the Primary National Strategy (2006a), the three cueing model (known in England as the Searchlight model) was finally and explicitly discredited. Instead, the Strategy acknowledged the value of addressing decoding and comprehension separately in the initial stage of reading instruction. 

“ … attention should be focused on decoding words rather than the use of unreliable strategies such as looking at the illustrations, rereading the sentence, saying the first sound or guessing what might ‘fit’. Although these strategies might result in intelligent guesses, none of them is sufficiently reliable and they can hinder the acquisition and application of phonic knowledge and skills, prolonging the word recognition process and lessening children’s overall understanding. Children who routinely adopt alternative cues for reading unknown words, instead of learning to decode them, later find themselves stranded when texts become more demanding and meanings less predictable. The best route for children to become fluent and independent readers lies in securing phonics as the prime approach to decoding unfamiliar words" (Primary National Strategy, 2006b, p.9).

Primary National Strategy (2006b). Phonics and early reading: An overview for headteachers, literacy leaders and teachers in schools, and managers and practitioners in Early Years settings. UK: Department of Education and Skills. Retrieved from http://studylib.net/doc/8836766/phonics-and-early-reading--an-overview 

“Phonic work is best understood as a body of knowledge and skills about how the alphabet works, rather than one of a range of optional 'methods' or 'strategies' for teaching children how to read. For example, phonic programmes should not encourage children to guess words from non-phonic clues such as pictures before applying phonic knowledge and skills.” (p.2)

Department for Education (2010). Phonics teaching materials: Core criteria and the self-assessment process. Retrieved from https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/298420/phonics_core_criteria_and_the_self-assessment_process.pdf

“As recommended by the Rose review, all teachers in England are now expected to teach synthetic phonics as the first and main strategy for reading. The approach replaces the searchlights multi-cueing model advocated by the 1998 National Literacy Strategy. … The review found much convincing evidence to show that 'synthetic' phonics was the form of systematic phonic work that offered the vast majority of beginners the best route to becoming skilled readers and made a convincing case for the inadequacy of the existing 'searchlights' model for beginner readers.” (p.2)

The General Teaching Council for England. (2007). Research for teachers: Teaching phonics effectively.  Retrieved from http://www.ntrp.org.uk/sites/all/documents/Teaching%20phonics%20effectively.pdf

 Ridding the system of this blight may not be as easy as the edict above implies. The three-cueing system is an established element in most preservice and inservice teacher training courses that include a literacy focus (Adams, 1998). It proffers an explanation (however misguided) of how skilled readers comprehend written language, and also provides a strong direction concerning the role of teachers in literacy education. It is one of those belief systems the origin of which is difficult to establish, and the wide-scale and uncritical acceptance of which is surprising to those anticipating an empirical foundation. There is a dearth of research support to justify a central role for the three-cueing system in determining what should be included in a reading program. In fact, in a despairing letter some years ago, 40 respected linguists (Eagle Forum, 1996) lamented that the underpinnings of the three-cueing system represented “ … an erroneous view of how human language works, a view that runs counter to most of the major scientific results of more than 100 years of linguistics and psycholinguistics” (Eagle Forum, 1996, p.8).

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