Missouri has joined more than a dozen states in improving reading instruction by passing legislation—Senate Bill (SB) 68—that restricts the use of three-cueing when teaching students to read. This policy change is just one part of a huge education omnibus bill. While this restriction is a welcome change, the policy sadly falls short of eliminating three-cueing in Missouri’s early literacy curriculum.
What is the Three-Cueing System?
Three-cueing is an approach to teaching reading that relies on text (the letters on the page) as little as possible and instead uses language cues. ExcelinEd describes it like this:
Instructional strategies that employ the three-cueing systems model of reading include visual memory as the basis for teaching word recognition or three-cueing systems model of reading based on meaning, structure and syntax, and visual – which is also known as MSV.
Reading is not a natural skill—it is a learned one. Consider learning to shoot a basketball. There is a preferred form, and players who learn it early tend to become more accurate and consistent. But if a child is left to figure it out on their own (or learns bad habits) they may end up with a jump shot that “works” to some degree, but is hard to fix later. In the same way, poor reading strategies such as three-cueing can become ingrained if not corrected early. Reading instruction should be grounded in the skills that lead to fluent reading from the beginning.
Research consistently shows that the best way for students to become fluent readers is to:
- Decode: connecting letters and letter patterns to spoken sounds.
- Encode: connecting spoken sounds to written letters when spelling.
Over time, skilled readers come to read every letter rapidly and fluently as they connect the letters’ sounds with their oral vocabulary, out loud or silently. In contrast, the three-cueing system encourages students to rely more on memorization, contextual clues, or how the “whole word” looks.
What Missouri Can Do in the Future
SB 68 makes phonics instruction the primary strategy for teaching reading in Missouri. At one point during the legislative process, the bill included a ban on three-cueing, but the final language only bars three-cueing from being a “primary instructional method.” This vague language could allow for the continued usage of three-cueing in Missouri classrooms. As ExcelinEd notes, an ideal policy would “prohibit the use of curricula that employ the three-cueing systems model of teaching students to read.” Research shows that states committed to phonics have improved reading outcomes. In the future, Missouri should fully prohibit three-cueing.
