The Missouri Senate Education Committee has passed a bill out of committee that would ban the use of “three-cueing,” a reading technique used in elementary schools across Missouri. Three-cueing encourages students to use context clues —such as sentence structure or pictures — to figure out unfamiliar words. Critics have accused this method of teaching students to guess words rather than fully decode them.
But University of Missouri–St. Louis literacy professor Shea Kerkhoff said the method already includes many of the skills the bill is trying to promote.
“We have to teach syntax, and we have to teach meaning,” Kerkhoff said. “What's the point of reading if we're not making meaning from what we're reading?”
Kerkhoff said the bill is really talking about MSV—which stands for meaning, structure and visual—and is what three-cueing is aiming to do. To Kerkhoff, the goal of banning three-cueing is to focus more on the meaning and structure behind a word rather than how it is visually connected words around it.
But some educators think it would be more beneficial for the bill to simply prioritize the “meaning” and “structures” parts of MSV, while still preserving the opportunity for students to use visuals to learn, if needed.
Columbia Missouri National Education Association President Noelle Gilzow said banning a single teaching method is short-sighted.
“If three-cueing works for one kid and not another, then it should be available for the kids that it does help,” Gilzow said.
Gilzow said educators should have a diverse toolbox of teaching methods, so it is still important to allow for the use of visual learning because it could be the only way one student can learn to read.
Gilzow also expressed worry about legislators who have never had to teach in a classroom making decisions for how educators can teach.
“I am vigorously opposed to the banning of educational techniques,” Gilzow said.
Both Kerkhoff and Gilzow think legislators should strongly consider the actual benefit of banning three-cueing from classrooms. The Missouri Senate can now discuss the bill.
