Academic Success Through Late Intervention

            As a Reading Recovery teacher, I work with first graders who are struggling with learning to read and write.  I often wonder if lower achieving students in the upper grades would also benefit from this one-to-one intervention.  Next year our K-2 school will combine with the 3-6 school across town, and the teachers and principal at the new site will be looking to our Reading Recovery teachers for help with their struggling readers.   I chose to read this journal article, Delivering the Promise of Academic Success Through Late Intervention by Judith Neal and Patricia Kelly to learn more about late intervention.  Neal and Kelly cite Rousing Minds to Life by Roland Tharp and Ronald Gallimore in their article, and I will also include relevant information from their book in my summary.

            Early intervention programs help struggling readers in the primary grades, but many students continue to struggle with reading and writing in the upper grades.  Why do schools have so many struggling students in the upper grades?  Neal and Kelly suggest that students who move frequently have holes in their education, and students from lower socio-economic groups tend to be at risk throughout their school years.  Many schools do not provide early intervention for struggling learners, and some children “cannot benefit from the classroom literacy program because their understandings are too limited for where literacy instruction begins” (Neal & Kelly, p. 102).   If a student does not receive early intervention, schools are obligated to provide struggling students with late intervention to help them accelerate their learning and catch up to their classmates.

            Typically schools offer struggling learners remediation, which in reality is often a slow progress, skills-based approach to instruction taught by paraprofessionals.  In contrast, the authors define intervention as “taking a proactive, catch-up stance toward the specific learning needs of students” (p. 103). What really differentiates intervention from remediation is the concept of accelerative teaching.  Before each lesson, teachers must ask themselves, “Will this activity serve the larger purpose of enabling students to move forward in their understanding and capabilities, and how will it serve that end?” (p. 104).  The rest of the article outlines six essential elements of school programs that promote accelerative learning for late readers.

1.     Consider Individual Student Needs

Up to 40% of students could be making better progress in the upper grades.  These “reluctant learners” often have motivation issues, but they can become more engaged given a positive, constructive classroom environment.  About 15-20% of struggling students have learning confusions, and avoid reading.  These students benefit from individualized tutoring or small group intervention to accelerate learning. Their teachers should have “special expertise in literacy development” (p. 105). Teachers must assess students frequently (with running records, writing tasks and retellings), and use these assessments to learn what their students’ strengths are and build upon what is known.  Daily lessons optimize acceleration.

2.     Implement an Apprenticeship Model of Teaching and Learning

Neal and Ryan cite Tharp and Gallimore’s theory of assisted performance as a teaching approach that benefits older students.  When Tharp and Gallimore wrote Rousing Minds to Life back in 1988, they called for a redefinition of teaching and learning in our schools.  “The attitude that individuals must learn from their textbooks on their own, without teaching, will not be altered easily” (Tharp & Gallimore, p. 5).  Their theory of assisted performance is based on Vygotsky’s work (1978), and the concept that teaching occurs when a child is operating in his Zone of Proximal Development, receiving assistance from a “more capable other.”

  Tharp and Gallimore define assisted performance as “what a child can do with help, with the support of the environment, of others and of the self” (p. 30).  When we assess children, we want to know what they can do without any assistance.  Our ultimate goal is to lead students from performance with assistance to completing tasks independently with self-regulation.  This theory applies to adults as well as children.  Parents, teachers and peers can take on the role of the “more capable other”

Tharp and Gallimore present a four stage model of the Zone of Proximal Development in Chapter 2.   In Stage I, the child needs a “more capable other” to help regulate the task.  For example, when stuck on a multisyllabic word, the adult might scaffold the child’s learning by modeling how to break the word into parts to solve it.  In Stage II, the child takes on the task independently, but that does not mean that it is automatic or fully developed.  The child may begin using the strategy of breaking words to read familiar words, but not new words.  Children also begin to develop self-directed speech at this stage, and may use this self-speech to guide their thinking.  In Stage III, learning is internalized and assistance from others is no longer needed.  Continuing the above example, the child smoothly solves familiar and new multisyllabic words.  In State IV, the child may forget something previously known.  Sometimes the child will remember by talking himself through the problem, but the child may also need help from the teacher to proceed.  Learning is a recursive process, and in Stage IV something that was automatic may now need assistance.  The teacher’s goal is to scaffold the learning or repeat the lesson, and help the child move back towards self-regulation.

In Chapter 3, Tharp and Gallimore provide more detail on how assisted performance occurs.  Musicians and coaches appreciate the value of modeling in learning.  Struggling learners also benefit when teachers model reading strategies through a Think Aloud or when their peers model how to solve an algebraic equation.  Contingency management could be praising a student or sending him to take a time out.  Teachers assist performance by rewarding or punishing certain behaviors.  Although praise has limits, teachers use it correctly to reinforce certain behaviors and create a positive classroom climate. Tests and grades are a form of feedback.  Students need feedback to monitor their performance. Schools must set standards in order to give students feedback on their performance. 

Instructing calls for specific action, and it occurs when teachers take on the responsibility for assisted performance.  The learner gradually internalizes the teacher’s voice of instruction.  Teachers use questions to hear what the child is thinking.  Assistance questions help children connect information that they are learning.  Finally, cognitive structuring “provides a structure for organizing elements in relation to one another” (p. 56).  If a teacher asks her class, “What is a hero?” and they create a graphic organizer on heroes, students begin to build a cognitive structure for that idea.  Teachers can use each of these methods to scaffold student learning and guide them through their Zone of Proximal Development.

3.     Select Appropriate Materials

Selection of appropriate reading materials can be tricky with older readers.  When students read at an instructional level, their accuracy can fall in the 90-94% range.  Books read independently should be at 95% accuracy or above.  Textbooks are especially difficult for struggling readers, and teachers should use easier books with the same content whenever possible.  Students need the opportunity to choose their own books, and teachers must show students how to choose books that are just right.  Older students are motivated to read easier books when they are paired up with K/1^st grade “reading buddies.”  These practices help reluctant students become more motivated to read and willing to take risks.

4.     Establish a Focus of Accelerative Instruction

If students are to accelerate their learning, teachers must choose their teaching examples carefully.  According to Marie Clay, who created Reading Recovery, teachers must design lessons based on students’ strengths.  Teachers choose “the clearest, easiest, most memorable examples with which to establish a new response, skill, principle or procedure.  For example, the child trying to recall how to use the verb ending ‘ing’ may be helped by the first example of an ‘ing’ word that he learned” (Clay, p. 23).  Teachers must also provide students with “strategic scaffolds” to help them problem solve text, as well as opportunities to problem solve new and familiar text.  Gradually, students take over more and more of the task as learning is internalized. 

5.     Consider the Role of Fluent Responding

Students must sound fast and fluent when they read and intervention teachers should keep in mind that fast responding plays a key role in acceleration.  Sight words need instant recognition.  Students develop fluency by rereading easy books and practicing their reading strategies.  Clay states that “performing with success on familiar material strengthens the decision-making processes of the reader” (Clay, p. 23).  Neal and Kelly recommend paired readings, predictable books, choral reading, and readers’ theater to improve older students’ fluency in reading.  Students may need instruction and modeling on how to read in phrases as well as specific feedback on their reading.  Teachers instruct students on how to practice sight words until they are known quickly and build a bank of known words that they can write fluently.

6.     Provide Affirmation of Success

Once students begin to experience success, teachers must recognize their accomplishments with specific praise to build a bridge toward future success.  This is especially useful when students are in Stage II of Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development, and learning is not yet automatic.  Neal and Kelly stress that teachers need to make success overt to the learner.  They give this example of a teacher affirming success.  “Statements such as, ‘I notice that when you read this time, you went back to reread the first paragraph to check the information there,’ alerts the student to a productive behavior and signals that the teacher noticed and attended to it – that must make it important!” (Neal and Kelly, p. 113).  Students can document what they are learning in learning logs, or by creating posters or anchor charts of useful strategies.

In summary, Neal and Kelly maintain that late intervention, with at focus on accelerated learning, should be an option for all struggling older readers.  This could be in the form of one-to-one or small group instruction.  Preventative early intervention is preferable because “early intervention efforts catch reading difficulties at a time when the least distance has to be made between children and their peers, that is, before years of reading failure have fossilized and habituated students’ ways of responding to print” (Neal and Kelly, p. 114).  School leaders must convince stakeholders that students benefit from both early and late intervention.  Every child deserves the opportunity to succeed in school, and future academic success depends on all students developing competence in reading and writing.

References:

Clay, M. M. (2005). Literacy lessons designed for individuals part one: Why? When? And How? Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Neal, J.C. & Kelly, P.R. (2002). Delivering the promise of academic success through late intervention. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 18: 101-117.

Tharp, R. G., & Gallimore, R. (1988). Rousing minds to life: Teaching, learning and schooling in social context. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Motivating Readers

This section of my blog  is based on  “Motivation in the School Reading Curriculum,” by Linda Gambell.  I highly recommend that you check out her research on motivating students.  I posted this section on my Wiki, but I felt the concept of motivating students needed to be included in my blog.  Teaching children how to read and write is not enough.  We must also foster in them a love for literacy and learning.

 

“It is not enough to teach children to become readers and writers; we want children to leave our school with the continuing desire to read, write, and learn. Our task is to pursue this vision so that it becomes a reality.”
                                                -Carol Minnick Santa

Teachers and parents strive to understand how to motivate children to improve their reading progress. Readers improve their reading skills by reading (Cunningham and Stanovich,1997; Gambrell, 2009). According to Gambrell, “…it is clear that if our students are not motivated to read, they will never reach their full literary potential” (p. 5).

Students who read because they find it enjoyable are intrinsically motivated to read. The desire to read comes from within the student. When teachers give students incentives or rewards (such as grades or prizes) to encourage reading, the motivation is extrinsic. Experience and disposition are both components of intrinsic motivation (Deci, 1992). When children experience curiosity and enjoyment as a result of reading they are more likely to be intrinsically motivated. Disposition is the desire to read (Gambrell, p. 7).

Gambrell cites the findings of Wigfield, Guthrie, Tonks, & Perencevich (2004) when she states, “Research suggests that instructional intervention supporting intrinsic motivation for reading increases students’ curiosity, involvement, and preferences for challenge” (Gambrell, p. 7). In 1997, Wigfield and Guthrie also found that students who are intrinsically motivated to read have higher reading comprehension scores on standardized tests.

Gambrell cites seven best practices from research that “nurture and enhance reading motivation and achievement.” These include:

1. Provide students with a wide variety of reading materials including many genres of books, magazines, and access to the Internet (Allington & McGill-Franzen, 1993; Guthrie et al., 2007: Morrow, 1992).
2. Allow students opportunities to make choices about their reading materials to increase intrinsic motivation (Deci et al., 1991; Skinner & Belmont, 1993).
3. Increase the amount of time students spend reading texts, both at home and in school (Hiebert, 2009: Foorman et al., 2006).
4. Provide students with moderately challenging texts because success on these tasks results in improved self-concept (Schunk, 1989; Schunk & Zimmerman, 1997).
5. Plan opportunities for social interaction to increase intrinsic motivation (Guthrie et. al. 2007; Turner & Paris,1995).
6. Engage students in authentic reading tasks. Students should read for a purpose and use the information they acquire. (Ames & Archer, 1988; Guthrie et al, 2007). Purcell-Gates, Duke, and Martineau, found instruction to be most effective when teachers combined student choice, engaging texts, and reading for a purpose (2007).
7. Consider reading incentives carefully. To increase intrinsic motivation, rewards should be linked to desired behavior (Gambrell, 1996). Examples of appropriate tangible incentives include giving children books or allowing them to earn extra teacher read-aloud time. Nontangible incentives such as honest feedback and positive statements about student performance also increase motivation.

---

“If we want our students to value reading and academics, we have to be clever enough to create classrooms where the message is clear that reading and learning are the best reward” (Gambrell, p. 11).

References:

Allington, R. L. & McGill-Franzen, A. (1993). What are they to read? Not all children, Mr. Riley, have easy access to books. Education Week, 13(6), 26.

Ames, C., & Archer, J. (1988). Achievement goals in the classroom: Students’ learning strategies and motivational processes. Journal of Educational Psychology, 80(3), 260-267.

Cunningham, A .E. & Stanovich, K. E. (1997). Early reading acquisition and its relation to reading experience and ability ten years later. Developmental Psychology, 33(6), 934-945.

Deci, E. L. (1992).  The relation of interest to the motivation of behavior: A self-determination theory perspective. In A. Renninger, S. Hidi & A. Krapp (Eds.), The role of interest in learning and  development (p. 43-70). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Deci, E. L., Vallerand, R. M., Pelletier, L. G., & Ryan, R. M. (1991). Motivation and education: The self-determination perspective. Educational Psychologist, 26, 325-346.

Foorman B. R., Schatschneider, C., Eakin, M. N. Fletcher, J. M., Moats, L. C. et al. (2006). the impact of instructional practices in grades 1 and 2 on reading and spelling achievement in high poverty schools. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 31(1), 1-29.

Gambrell, L. (2011). Motivation in the School Reading Curriculum. Journal of Reading Education, 37.1:5-14.

Guthrie, J. T., Hoa, A .L. W., Wingfield, A., Tonks, S. M., Humenick, N. M., & Littles, F. (2007). Reading motivation and reading comprehension growth in the later elementary years. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 32(3), 282-313.

Hiebert, 2009: Skinner, E. A., & Belmont, M. J. (1993). Motivation in the classroom: Reciprocal effects of teacher behavior and student engagement across the school year. Jornal of Educational Psychology, 85(4), 571-581.

Morrow, L. M. (1992). The impact of literature-based program on literacy achievement, use of literature, and attitudes of children from minority backgrounds. Reading Research Quarterly, 27(3), 250-275.

Purcell-Gates, V., Duke, N., & Martineau, J. (2007). Learning to read and write genre-specific text: Roles of authentic experience and explicit teaching. Reading Research Quarterly, 42, 8-46.

Santa, C .M. (1997). School change and literacy engagement: Preparing teaching and learning environments. In J. T. Guthrie & A. Wigfield (Eds.), Reading engagement: Motivating readers through integrated instruction (p. 218-233).  Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Schunk, D. H., (1989) Social cognitive theory and self-regulated learning.  In B. J. Zimmerman & D. H. Schunk (Eds.), Self-regulated learning and academic achievement: Theory, research and practice (p. 983-110). New York: Springer-Verlag.

Schunk, D. H. &  Zimmerman, B. J., (1997). Developing self-efficious readers and writers: The role of social and self-regulatory processes. In J. T. Guthrie & A. Wigfield (Eds.), Reading engagement: Motivating readers through integrated instruction (p. 34-50). Newark, DE:International Reading Association.

Turner, J., & Paris, S. G., (1995). How literacy tasks influence children’s motivation for literacy. The Reading Teacher, 48(8), 662-673.

Wigfield, A., & Guthrie, J. T. (1997). Relations of children’s motivation for reading to the amount and breadth of their reading. Journal of Educational Psychology, 89(3), 420-432.

Wigfield, A., Guthrie, J. T., Tonks, S., & Perencevich, K. C. (2004). Children’s motivation for reading: Domain specificity and instructional influences. Journal of Educational Research, 97(6), 299-309.

For more information about this article and Linda Gambrell, check out my wiki: http://earlyliteracyteacher.wikispaces.com/

Gee’s Sociolinguistic Theory in Action

Today one of my Reading Recovery students gushed, “I love to read so much!  I want to read all of the time!” She is nearing the end of her program, and has developed a self-extending system.  Once this occurs, students independently problem-solve texts, and they teach themselves whenever they read and write.  It is an amazing phenomenon to observe.  I asked her, “Do you read to your little sister?”  She nodded vigorously, and replied, “And to all of the daycare kids, too.  They love it when I read to them.”

Since I spent most of the weekend reading Social Linguistics and Literacies, her second comment caused me to stop and think about Gee’s concept of Discourses (with a capital ‘D’).  Social groups communicate through language, but Gee explains that a Discourse is more than the language people use with each other.

“We have to get our minds and deeds ‘right’ as well…Being in a Discourse is being able to engage in a particular sort of ‘dance’ with words, deeds, values, feelings, other people, objects, tools, technologies, places, and times so as to get recognized as a distinctive sort of who doing a distinctive sort of what.  Being able to understand a Discourse is being able to recognize such ‘dances’” (Gee, p. 152).

We all have a primary Discourse which helps us develop our self-concept, our self-language, and our sense of how “normal” people behave (Freeman and Freeman, p. 65).  According to Gee, “…nearly all human beings, except under extraordinary conditions, acquire an initial Discourse within whatever constitutes their primary socializing unit early in life.  Early in life, we all learn a culturally distinctive way of being an ‘everyday person’” (p. 153). 

As a child grows, her family might take her to church, daycare or play groups.  People act a bit differently in each setting, and these become the child’s secondary Discourses.  Schools are secondary Discourses, and Freeman and Freeman suggest that students’ may be labeled “gifted and talented” or “struggling readers” based on how they speak, read, write and behave (p. 65).  If a child’s family values a secondary Discourse, such a school, her parents are likely to read to her, play school, build words with magnetic letters, and tell stories in expository ways.  Gee calls this practice “early borrowing” (p. 155).

 Gee writes, “Early borrowing is used as a way to facilitate children’s later success in valued secondary Discourses” (p. 155).  He makes it clear that the skills children learn through these interactions are not as important as the “values, attitudes, motivations, ways of interacting, and perspectives” that they learn at the same time.  These are essential for students to experience future success in acquiring secondary Discourses (Gee, p. 155).  The process is even more complicated because children need to be accepted by others in the group, and nurtured by them until they become fully functioning members of that Discourse.

When I think back on this student’s enthusiasm and excitement for reading, I see Gee’s sociolinguistic theory in action.  As one of her teachers, I served as an apprentice in the secondary Discourse of school.  Now that she is a strategic reader and writer, I am confident that she will be able to keep up with her classmates and maintain her gains.  She clearly values the practice of reading and the Discourse of school.  She is even sharing her motivation and positive attitude towards reading with her sister and the children at her daycare.  Considering the fact that she is only seven years old, and her sister is three, that is early borrowing!

Gee, J. P. (2012). Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in Discourses. Fourth Edition. New York: Routledge.

Freeman, Y., and Freeman, D. 2009. Academic Language for English Language Learners and Struggling Readers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

How can teachers help students improve academic language proficiency?

According to Freeman and Freeman, “…academic language is the specific language needed to understand and contribute to classroom talk and to read and write texts for school” (p. 29).  They cite Cummins’ research in Canada (1984) to explain why ELLs need academic language instruction.  Cummins found many students could orally converse in English, but did not have the content-specific language needed to successfully read and write.  Short and Fitzsimmons (2007) remind us that ELLs must learn twice as much as native English speakers in the same amount of time. How can teachers help English language learners develop academic language and succeed in school?

First, teachers must use language that is context embedded and cognitively demanding (Cummins, 1981).  For example, when ELLs point to unknown objects to communicate and learn words, they are using context-embedded language.  Contextual support makes communication easier (Freeman and Freeman, p. 35).  Instruction must be cognitively demanding or our students will not acquire academic language.  Teachers must do their best to present challenging academic content in ways that are more comprehensible.  When students work in groups, they extend their academic language proficiency.  ELLs also benefit from using graphic organizers and art to express their ideas.

“The best methods are therefore those that supply ‘comprehensible input’ in low anxiety situations, containing messages that students really want to hear. These methods do not force early production in the second language, but allow students to produce when they are ‘ready’, recognizing that improvement comes from supplying communicative and comprehensible input, and not from forcing and correcting production” (Krashen, 1982).

Second, ELLs need to understand that school language differs from home language. A register is “…the way language is used in a particular context of situation within a particular culture” (Freeman and Freeman, p. 49).  Students need to learn how to use both conversational and academic school language.  Teachers can encourage students to extend their conversations using academic language by asking open-ended questions.  Teachers can also expand on their students’ partially correct answers.  Marie Clay calls this “rewarding the approximation.”  Teachers do this by modeling correct academic language that builds on their students’ partially correct responses.  Teachers can also ask probing questions to draw out their students’ knowledge and academic language. If our students are to develop academic language proficiency, they must be able to “control the oral and written registers of schooling” (Cummins, 2000).

Third, teachers must model for their ELL students how writers use academic language to communicate.  Students need explicit instruction at the word, sentence, paragraph, and text level.  To succeed in school, ELLs must be able to understand their textbooks and write in an authoritative tone.  When students are exposed to informational texts at a young age, they gain knowledge of how to read expository text as well as content knowledge on that subject (citing Duke, 2003). 

Fourth, children must read more informational text, beginning in the primary grades. According to Freeman and Freeman, most of what students read from fourth grade on is informational text (p. 78).  Some children find non-fiction more engaging, and informational texts provide students with knowledge of text features and specific vocabulary that they can apply when they read their textbooks in class.  The authors describe how teachers can use Read and Retell, a procedure developed by Brown and Cambourne (1987).  The researchers concluded that students using this procedure understood genres better, and improved their reading and writing skills. Students also need direct strategy instruction at the word, sentence, paragraph, and text level. Teachers need to provide their students with models of well-written academic texts, and show students how to connect their sentences to form cohesive paragraphs.

Finally, teachers must learn which instructional practices are most effective for helping ELLs gain academic language. Freeman and Freeman cite Short and Fitzsimmons research (2007) on effective instructional practices for adolescent ELLs.  They recommend nine effective practices:

• integrate reading, writing, speaking and listening into instruction from the beginning
• teach students the processes of reading and writing (preview, make predictions, brainstorming, editing…)
• teach reading comprehension strategies
• focus on vocabulary development
• build and activate background knowledge
• teach language through content and themes
• use native language strategically
• pair technology with existing interventions, and
• motivate ELL’s through choice   (Freeman and Freeman, p. 173-174). 

The authors state that teaching around thematic units of study is essential because students learn academic language at the same time that they gain content knowledge.  Time is of the essence for ELLs, and this helps them to accelerate their learning in both areas. 

Brown, H. and B. Cambourne. 1987. Read and Retell. Pourtsmouth, NH: Heinemann Educational Books.

Cummins, J. 1981. “The Role of Primary Language Development in Promoting Educational Success for Language Minority Students.” In Schooling and Language Minority Students: A Theoretical Framework, 3-49.  Los Angeles: Evaluation, Dissemination and Assessment Center, California State University, Los Angeles.

Cummins, J. 1984. Bilingualism and Special Education: Issues in Assessment and Pedagogy. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.

Cummins, J. 2000. Language, Power and Pedagogy: Billingual Children in the Crossfire. Tonawanda, NY: Multilingual Matters.

Duke, N. 2003. “Informational Text? The Research Says, ‘Yes!'” In Exploring Informational Texts: From Theory to Practice, ed. L. Hoyt, M. Mooney, and B. Parkes, 2-7. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Freeman, Y., and Freeman, D. 2009.  Academic Language for English Language Learners and Struggling Readers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Krashen, S. 1982. Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Pergamon Press, pp 10-32. In Quinn, T.J. and McNamara, T.F. (eds) (1988): Issues in Second Language Learning – General and Particular. Deakin University Press, pp 65-82.

Short, D., and S. Fitzsimmons. 2007. Double the Work: Challenges and Solutions to Acquiring Language and Academic Literacy for Adolescent English Language Learners – A Report to Carnegie Corporation of New York. Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education.

Academic Language for English Language Learners and Struggling Readers

Have you ever picked up a new textbook and thought, “How am I going to learn anything useful from this book?”  As a teacher who works primarily with emergent, English-only readers, I was guilty of judging a book by its cover when I first glanced at Academic Language for English Language Learners and Struggling Readers by Freeman and Freeman (2009).  As soon as I read, “Teaching secondary students in the content areas is hard enough under the best of circumstances…” (Marzano, back cover), I made an assumption that I would have to struggle through this book myself because the ideas would be geared towards junior high/high school teachers.  I could not have been more wrong!  A few days later, I finished the book and noticed that I had highlighted many sections and scribbled notes throughout the margins of Academic Language for ELLs. The Freemans practice what they preach.  They took a tough subject, teaching academic language to English Language Learners, lightened the cognitive load with many examples, and created a useful and memorable book for teachers of all grade levels.

Years ago, I took a class on differentiating instruction for English Language Learners, and I learned about what Cummins (1981) called BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills) and CALP (Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency).  I remember discussing the need to help ELLs move beyond basic conversational skills in English to acquiring the academic language needed to read and write well in English.  I learned about using teaching techniques such as introducing vocabulary words in meaningful ways (making the input “comprehensible”) and scaffolding learning.  While these can be useful strategies, our ELLs need expert teachers to provide long-term support in learning both language and content.    According to Cummins (1984, 2008), English Language Learners need four to nine years of speaking, reading, and writing English to acquire the academic language needed for school success (Freeman and Freeman, p. 19).   They have an extremely difficult cognitive load because they must learn a new language and academic concepts at the same time!  According to Freeman and Freeman, “Students who have developed BICS but not CALP do not lack higher-order thinking ability.  They simply lack the language needed to succeed in school” (p. 29).

Sadly, Cummins found that some schools placed ELLs in special education classes because they did not understand that their students needed time to develop both conversational and academic language.  In the United States, many schools transition their English Learners out of bilingual programs too soon, before they have a chance to develop academic language proficiency (Freeman and Freeman, p. 40).  California and other states passed “English only” legislation because many people believe that “more English equals more English.”  Instead, Cummins’ research (2000) and his model of a Common Underlying Proficiency (CUP) indicate that the opposite is true (Freeman and Freeman, p. 41).  According to Cummins’ CUP, when students have the opportunity to learn academic language in their primary language, that knowledge transfers to their secondary language. 

Students who are categorized as English learners with adequate formal schooling provide an excellent example of this model in action.  These students often find it easier to adapt to formal schooling and they are quite successful because they have developed both conversational and academic language in their primary language.  According to Cummins’ CUP, this knowledge transfers to academic subjects studied in English.  When I did my student teaching at UC Davis many years ago, I remember that the kindergarten students I worked with at North Davis Elementary spoke a dozen different languages.  My master teacher enjoyed reading nonfiction texts with these children, and brainstorming vocabulary words.  The five-year-olds easily learned content specific language such as “brown recluse spiders,” and “black widow spiders.”  Three other groups of English Language Learners include:  long-term English learners, newly arrived English learners with limited formal schooling, and standard English learners (Freeman and Freeman, p. 8-13).  Each group of students has specific needs, and all benefit from explicit teaching of both language and content.   How can teachers help their students improve their academic language proficiency?  Stay tuned! That will be the subject of my next post.

Cummins, J. 1981. “The Role of Primary Language Development in Promoting Educational Success for Language Minority Students.” In Schooling and Language Minority Students: A Theoretical Framework, 3-49.  Los Angeles: Evaluation, Dissemination and Assessment Center, California State University, Los Angeles.

Cummins, J. 1984. Bilingualism and Special Education: Issues in Assessment and Pedagogy. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.

Cummins, J. 2000. Language, Power and Pedagogy: Billingual Children in the Crossfire. Tonawanda, NY: Multilingual Matters.

Cummins, J. 2008. “BICS and CALP: Empirical and Theoretical Status of the Distinction.” In Encyclopedia of Language and Education, vol. 2, ed. N. Hornberger, 71-84.  New York: Springer Science and Business Media.

Freeman, Y.,  and Freeman, D. 2009.  Academic Language for English Language Learners and Struggling Readers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Anderson’s Schema Theory

How Do I Promote Schema Development in Daily Lessons?

As a Reading Recovery teacher, my job is to help children link new learning to their schemata of known information.  I spend the first ten sessions of Reading Recovery learning what my students know about reading and writing letters, words, and concepts of print. Once lessons begin, I strive to activate my students’ prior knowledge in multiple ways during a 30 minute lesson.  First, I choose a new book carefully.  It should be at the “just right” level that provides a bit of challenge, but the child must experience success with some scaffolding.  I have noticed if I match books to topics the children enjoy (non-fiction stories, animals, dinosaurs…) they are motivated to read, and they read at a higher level.  Children also like reading stories about families that are culturally similar to their own families.

Before reading, one Reading Recovery procedure is to introduce the new book in a way that “activates prior knowledge.”  As Anderson states, “Children do not spontaneously integrate what they are reading with what they already know” (citing Paris and Lindauer, 1976, p. 604). If the story is about a birthday party, I ask my students to tell me about a favorite birthday and I try to link their experience to the story in the new book. I frequently encourage my students to predict what will happen at the end of the story. The problem becomes one of not getting too far off topic, because most children love to tell their stories!

Sometimes I use the think-aloud technique to help the children make links to a previous book or prior learning. Each day the children compose and dictate a story, and I help them by scaffolding the tricky parts. Since the story is in their own language, using their personal experiences, my goal is again to connect new learning to the schemata they have in place.

Reference:

Anderson, R. (1994). Role of the reader’s schema in comprehension, learning, and memory. In R.B. Ruddell, & N.J. Unrau (Eds.), Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading (pp. 594-606). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Rosenblatt’s Transactional Theory

Originally Posted by Nancy Sipe on Sunday, November 6, 2011 (LEE 298)

 

Efferent reading = scientific or public.  The purpose of the reading is focused on learning through reading.

Aeshetic reading = artistic or private. The purpose of the reading is experiencing the text and the literary world created by the author.

 

“No two readings, even by the same person are identical. Still, someone else can read a text differently and paraphrase it for us in such a way as to satisfy our efferent purpose.  But no one else can read aesthetically- that is, experience the evocation of – a literary work of art for us” (Rosenblatt, p. 1375).

 

This quote made me think of a friend of mine who loves to read and belongs to a book group that meets weekly.  These dedicated readers choose books that explore many different genres and styles.  I find myself more inclined to grab a bestseller and curl up for a few hours of uninterrupted bliss. I do enjoy listening to my friend when she reviews a book that she read recently. Her enthusiasm for an author’s writing style or use of symbolic language helps me to understand it in an efferent way.  She often loans books to me, and I have read several.  Sometimes when I read aesthetically I feel the same enthusiasm for the book that she felt.  Other times I do not experience that evocation. The very existence of book groups supports Rosenblatt’s statement that no two readings are identical.

“ Basal readers have in the past offered especially clear examples of questions and exercises tacitly calling for an efferent stance towards texts labeled stories and poems. There has been little to help students assimilate and make automatic the aesthetic mode of relating to a text.  Here, preparations for reading, the teacher’s questions both before and after reading, and the mode of assessment, which powerfully influences teaching, should be scrutinized” (Rosenblatt, p. 1395).

I have 25 years of teaching experience in grades K-5.  When I read this quote, I suddenly realized that most of my early knowledge of how to teach stories and poems came from teaching procedures in the basal series. My teaching definitely took on an efferent stance when we analyzed poetry and stories.  Early in my career, I recognized that much of the “literature” in the anthologies was either abridged or not the high quality literature that I wanted my students to read. I always supplemented the basal with excellent read-aloud chapter books and picture books.

Rosenblatt states, “Students need to be helped to have unimpeded aesthetic experiences” (p. 1391), and she explains that when teachers take quality literature and emphasize the efferent analysis of “literary” work, this teaching takes on a remedial quality. I remember the “ literature-based reading” movement (back in the late 80s? early 90s?) and suddenly understand some of the theoretical basis for that movement.  During those years, our district allowed us to purchase sets of literature to read with our students in “literature circles” instead of basal readers. I like to think that my teaching took on a more aesthetic stance with these literature selections, but teachers need instruction in these methods, or we are likely to fall back into old habits.  Rosenblatt further explains that efferent, analytical discussions can enhance literary studies, but they should not take the place of aesthetic reading experiences.

Muddiest Point: Your discussion question is an excellent one, and I am not sure that I really understand how transactional theorists think these ideas can be implemented in all schools. We could learn a lot from our high school English teachers about how to teach students to read a piece of literature aesthetically. I got pretty lost near the end of this reading when Rosenblatt wrote about “Validity of Interpretation” and “Warranted Assertibility.”

Reference:

Rosenblatt, L.M. (2004). The Transactional Theory of Reading and Writing. In R.B. Ruddell, & N.J. Unrau (Eds.), Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading (pp. 1363-1398). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

How Do Readers Make Sense of Print?

The Cueing Systems and Strategic Thinking:

When I trained in Reading Recovery, I learned that the brain makes sense out of print using three main cueing systems. Readers get context clues from pictures and use prior knowledge to gain meaning (or semantics).  We also use the grammatical structure of the language (or syntax), and visual cues (graphophonemic clues) when we look closely at words or letters.  According to Elaine Garan, author of Smart Answers to Tough Questions, the best readers “triangulate,” using all three of these cueing systems to check their reading. When they realize something doesn’t look right, sound right, or make sense, they stop and try a strategy to figure out what went wrong in the reading process.

Marie Clay researched these “strategic activities” and she used them to describe “fast brain work.”  Clay wrote in Literacy Lessons Designed for Individuals, Part 2, “The goal of teaching is to assist the child to construct effective networks in his brain for linking up all the strategic activity that will be needed to work on texts” (117).  When children read strategically they are building and linking the neural networks in their brains.  Some of the strategies successful readers use include rereading, cross-checking other information (picture and first letter of the word, for example), self-monitoring print, searching, self-correcting, solving and discovering information. These strategies help readers to understand the mismatch between the words spoken and the words in print.

According to Garan, “Good readers know that not just any old word will do, and all the evidence in a sentence must triangulate and reach the right conclusion.  Struggling readers do not have an awareness of how language works to help them when they miscue.  Often they think reading is all about the letters or all about saying the words.  They are lost when they make a mistake because there is no cue – no clue, no red flag – to jolt them into getting that word right” (91).

In Reading Recovery, I work one-on-one with the lowest first grade readers. I teach them to integrate these three cueing systems and think strategically.  Most of my children begin using these strategies and their learning quickly accelerates.  The majority of my students work with me for 12-20 weeks, and their reading is boosted to the average reading level of the class.  My goal is to help them develop a self-extending system, so that every time they read and write they become better readers and writers.

Reading Recovery doesn’t work for every child, and some children are referred to special education if the intervention is not successful (Marie Clay called this another “positive outcome” because children who need extra help are identified early). Most of the children that I work with do learn to read, and I am continually amazed at how effective Reading Recovery is for struggling emergent readers.

Clay, Marie M. (2005). Literacy Lessons Designed For Individuals, Part Two. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Garan, Elaine (2007). Smart Answers to Tough Questions. New York, NY: Scholastic.

Why Should Emergent Readers Write Every Day?

Nancy Anderson describes teaching reading and writing together as a “two-for-one deal” (p. 546).  In Reading Recovery, reading and writing are treated as equally important components of the lesson.  I see teaching strategic processing and making the links between reading and writing as the key to accelerated learning.

Reading and writing begin with oral language.  When we write, we communicate oral messages using symbols.  In reading, we interpret the written symbols to understand the message the writer chose to communicate.  Our brains try to make sense of these symbols as we read and write. “When we write, we read; when we read, we compose meaning” (Anderson, p. 546).  We learn more when  reading or writing meaningful texts.  Children learn to write their own  names, especially the first letter of their own name, because parents teach them that certain symbols communicate a meaningful message (Both-de Vries and Bus, 2008). Similarly, they can read their own name and use the letters from their name to begin understanding print. 

Elaine Garan agrees that emergent readers learn about reading through writing.  In Smart Answers to Tough Questions she writes, “At first students actually feel sounds in their mouths as they apply them.  As they segment and blend these sounds, they are applying what’s known as phonemic awareness. As soon as they translate these sounds into letters on their papers, phonemic awareness becomes phonics – the relationship between sounds and letters. Those skills they are practicing through invented spelling – blending, segmenting, and applying sounds to letters – are all essential not just to writing, but to reading as well” (p. 112).

Marie Clay studied the relationship between reading and writing, and wrote, “Most literacy instruction theories pay little attention to the fact that the child is learning to write words, messages and stories at the same time he is learning to read.  The reciprocity of early reading and early writing is grossly undervalued (p. 48).”  When chldren write, they have to think very hard about sounds and letters.  According to Clay, it also “fosters a slow anaylsis to print, left to right,” and “coaches the eyes to scan letters in a word from left to right” (p. 49).  The ultimate goal is to get children composing their own stories, first verbally, and then in written form.  In one part of a Reading Recovery lesson, the child composes a  sentence and the teacher “scaffolds” the tricky parts of the message. The reading-writing link is complete when the child rereads what he has written and reconstructs a “cut-up sentence.”

The best readers use strategies such as rereading, searching, self-correcting, and monitoring, to integrate the cueing systems and make sense of what they are reading. According to Clay, children use these same processing systems when they write. Anderson builds on Clay’s theory, providing specific examples of how to teach for reciprocity in reading and writing. “Explicit teaching to help students understand the reciprocal nature of reading and writing is a powerful tool for accelerating learning” (p. 547). Both Clay and Anderson believe teachers create powerful learning opportunities for children when they scaffold strategic processing in emergent readers and writers, and make links to reading and writing.  When a child is searching for visual information while reading a word, the teacher can prompt, “Think about writing. What do you know about that word? What would the letters say if you were writing?” In writing, the teacher gives a prompt that links to searching in reading. “Say the word slowly, and think about what would look right and sound right” (p. 548).

The reading-writing connection is not usually recognized in classrooms.   Regie Routman concurs in her book Writing Essentials.  She believes the reading-writing connection is critical at all grade levels, not just for emergent readers and writers.  “Research has clearly shown that reading and writing are interactive, closely connected processes that support each other and that participation in strong writing programs clearly benefits both reading and writing development.  In classrooms – including those in high-poverty schools – where student achievement  is high, reading and writing are routinely linked, and students have a great many writing opportunities across the curriculum” (p. 119-120).  Routman recommends that teachers use familiar texts such as poems and stories that the class has written together as reading material in shared, guided, and independent reading. 

She also recommends that teachers frequently require students to write written responses to texts they have read.  “What we are after is a written response that deepens comprehension, causes the writer to reflect on the content, and/or fosters appreciation for the text. When children have to think about their response, meaning is likely to be extended” (Routman, p. 125).  I believe this is exactly why our professor has asked us to write a blog about what we are learning in LEE 213.   Writing about what I have read in the different textbooks and journal articles deepens my understanding of how important the reading-writing connection is to all learning.

Anderson, N. & Briggs, C. (2011). Reciprocity Between Reading and Writing: Strategic Processing as Common Ground. The Reading Teacher, 64(7), 546-549.

Both-de Bries, A. & Bus, A. (2008). Name Writing: A First Step to Phonetic Writing? Literacy Teaching and Learning, 12(2)37-55.

Clay, Marie M. (2005). Literacy Lessons Designed for Individuals: Part Two, Teaching Procedures. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Garan, Elaine. (2007). Smart Answers to Tough Questions. New York, NY: Scholastic.

Routman, Regie. (2005). Writing Essentials. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Closing the “Vocabulary Gap”

Reading, writing and speaking skills are all essential for literacy development.  Already at age three, children from professional families have developed a vocabulary that is twice that of children raised in poverty (1,100 words vs. 520 words). Children from working class families have a vocabulary between these two extremes (750 words).  Hart and Risley (2003) conducted this research, and they also estimated the number of words that each group heard.  Again, the poorest children heard the fewest words (616 per hour), working class children heard an average number of words (1,251 per hour), and children of professionals heard the most words (2,153 per hour). Sadly, the poorest children heard fewer descriptive phrases and more declarative statements, like the word “no” (Akhavan, p. 7).

Akhavan states that vocabulary knowledge, “…is the foundation of success in school” (p. 4).  For some reason, I always thought of vocabulary as a less essential skill in literacy development.  Reading Akhavan’s book, Accelerated Vocabulary Instruction and the journal article by Blachowicz et al. helped me to see that vocabulary isn’t just a list of words to be learned.  Akhaven wrote:

“Our vocabularies include the number of words we know, information about many topics, and ideas and words within these topics. These aspects of word knowing directly affect our ability to read well, discuss ideas, write well, and understand academic conversations” (p. 6).

 

I know that when I work with children who have low levels of English language development, they stuggle with reading the academic language in books.  It makes sense that as children get older this gap widens.  I did not know that the gap exists when children are only three years old!  These children may not be hearing the rich language of a bedtime story, either.  Heath (1982) studied how adults interact with children as they read to them, and if they read to them. They found that in the community where children tended to do poorly in school, their parents may have valued school, but they did not provide their children with books or read interactively with them.

Knowing that vocabulary is one of the most significant predictors of reading comprehension, I plan to make a greater effort to help my students learn new vocabulary words. They learn some vocabulary words in context as they read.  According to Stahl and Nagy (2006), “…wide reading is the single most powerful factor in vocabulary growth” (p. 49). 

Akhaven explains, “Reading and being read to often is important because when we are exposed to words in a meaningful context, we acquire an understanding of those words. The most meaningful context is writing, because everything is explained or can be explored in reference materials. The words connect to ideas and information we already know” (p. 55).  This again emphasizes the importance of the reading/writing connection.  In Reading Recovery, when a child struggles with reading a vocabulary word, we often have him write the word. We always bring the word back to the meaning by having the child reread the word in context after he has written it.

Blachowicz et al. (2006) make recommendations on how to put the theories of vocabulary instruction into practice.  They make the following recommendations:

• The environment should be language and word-rich. “Incidental word learning, through listening or reading, is important to students’ general vocabulary development” (p. 527). The authors also refer to the term “flood of words” as an important concept in vocabulary development because students should be exposed to many and varied opportunities to read words (Scott et al., 1997).
• Some words should be intentionally taught, and students should have repeated exposures to new words. Important considerations to keep in mind are: the students must be active learners, teachers should relate new information to prior knowledge, and students need contextual information as well as definitions when learning a new word. They should also make semantic connections (and verbalize how the words are related).
• To insure that students will become more independent, teachers should give their students word-learning strategies, and generative elements of words. The instruction is most powerful when the teacher teaches the strategy explicitly (Duke and Pearson, 2002), in a systematic way (Graves and Hammond, 1980), and in context (Baumann et al., 2002, 2003).

References:

Akhavan, N. (2007). Accelerated Vocabulary Instruction: Strategies for Closing the Achievement Gap for All Students. New York, NY: Scholastic.

Blachowicz, C., Fisher, P., Ogle, D. (2006). Vocabulary: Questions from the classroom. Reading Research Quarterly, 41(4), p. 524-539).

Heath, S.B. (1982). What no bedtime story means: narrative skills at home and school. Language in Society, II, 49-76.

Stahl, S. A., & Nagy, W. E. (2006). Teaching Word Meanings. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

How can we help students understand what they read?

I find it refreshing that comprehension research lacks controversy, and researchers studied effective readers to learn about the process of reading comprehension.  According to Nell Duke and David Pearson, authors of Effective Practices for Developing Reading Comprehension,  good readers: actively read,  question meanings, have clear goals in mind, make predictions, monitor their understanding, read different kinds of text differently, think about the authors, construct and revise summaries in their heads, look over text before they read, reread when needed, read selectively, determine meanings of unknown words in context, integrate their prior knowledge, and evaluate the text’s quality and value.  No wonder this can be a difficult skill to teach!  These skills can be taught, though, and even our youngest readers and writers benefit from comprehension instruction.

The authors describe the type of classroom environment that supports comprehension instruction.  They explain good instruction is not enough, and other features must be present, “Otherwise, the comprehension instruction will not take hold and flourish” (p.108).  This classroom includes loads of actual reading experience, experience with the range of genres that we want kids to understand, “facility in the accurate and automatic decoding of words” (p.108), lots of time spent writing, an environment rich in vocabulary, high-quality talk about text, and discussions of words and their meanings. I always try to provide my students with an environment in which every child can flourish, and when everyone tries their best to behave and cooperate I love the feeling of productive happiness that pulses through my classroom.  I am not quite sure that I ever met these high standards, though!

Duke and Pearson’s instructional model of comprehension instruction is based on a gradual release of resonsibility theory. My husband and I are attempting to use this same model as we teach our sixteen-year-old how to drive.  Her first driving experiences involved a great deal of modeling and direct instruction.  She signed up for “Behind the Wheel” lessons and we took her out driving frequently to give her guided practice.  As she began to demonstrate confidence and skill, we occasionally scaffolded her learning (reminders to pull over when the lights on a bus are flashing).  Eventually she took over more and more of the tasks associated with driving, and now she is ready to get her license.  In the end, our daughter learned confidence and  skills that enable her to drive independently.  Similarly, we want to produce readers who can independently decode words, but they must also be able to think critically about what they read.

The teacher explictly describes the strategy being taught, and explains when this strategy might be useful in Duke and Pearson’s model of comprehension instruction. The teacher models the use of the strategy in action. Then, the teacher involves the group in collaborating and using the strategy.  Next she guides her students as they practice using the strategy.  Finally, at the end of the gradual release of responsibility, the teacher expects students to use the strategy independently, and calls this to action.   According to Peter Dewitz, it is not enough to expect that these skills will be covered if we follow the core (or basal) reading program provided by the district.  His team analyzed five basal programs, and found that “comprehension strategy instruction does not meet the guidelines of explicit instruction as recommended in a number of research programs” (P. 102).

The six comprehension strategies that Duke and Pearson report being beneficial to teach developing readers are: “prediction/prior knowledge, think-aloud, text structure, visual representations, summarization, and questions/questioning” (p. 114).  Each of these strategies should be taught using the model of comprehension instruction above.  For maximum benefit, the students  should use multiple strategies constantly.  I feel like I am still processing all of the research on comprehension, and I am not yet sure how to apply this knowledge to Reading Recovery.  I most definitely use questioning, think-alouds, text structure, prediction and prior knowledge strategies with my students. I have to think more about using visual representations.

Dewitz, P., Jones, J. & Leahy, S. (2009). Comprehension Strategy Instruction in Core Reading Programs, Reading Research Quarterly. 44(2), 102-126.

Duke, N. K. & Pearson, D. (2002). Effective Practices for Developing Reading Comprehension. In A.E.Farstrup & S.J. Samuels (Eds.).What Research Has to Say about Reading Instruction. (3rd ed.,  p. 205-242). Newark, DE:International Reading Association.