For the first time in years, the Foundation for Struggling Readers will hold an annual appeal to raise $50,000 to support educators, students, and communities through transformative advocacy, development, and engagement. From now through December, donations up to $25,000 are matched by the generosity of the Billie Askew Memorial Bequest.

The Foundation for Struggling Readers supports the little learners most in need by building the expertise of educators who serve them. Last year alone, the Foundation funded the training of three new Teacher Leaders and provided dozens of professional development awards to attend LitCon. The Foundation for Struggling Readers also works to protect this valuable one-on-one intervention by spreading the good news about how Reading Recovery works through our partnership with Kivvit and by investing in research and advocacy at the state and federal levels.

“Thank you so much for the LitCon 22 Professional Development Award! After a year of online teaching and joining a new district, the opportunity to be immersed with Reading Recovery enthusiasts and literacy experts was amazing. The energy and passion for helping students get untangled is contagious.”
– 2022 Award Winner

The Reading Recovery Community has always done #WhateverItTakes to help kids learn to read! Every gift makes a difference in bringing one of the most successful international reading and writing interventions to struggling readers across North America. You can support the Foundation by making a one-time donation, setting up recurring donations, or exploring ways to leave a legacy of literacy through planned giving.

Dr. Jennifer Scoggin and Hannah Schneewind

This is part II of the blog series  Teaching Children, not just Teaching Reading. Read part I of the series here.

“When we depend on any single measure to make decisions about our students, those decisions are likely to be faulty. From standardized tests to classroom grades, we cannot expect one score to reflect a child.”

Dr. Mary Howard 

This fall, we are co-teaching a graduate course on early literacy. The students are all classroom teachers, working in different schools at a range of grade levels. Recently, we explored the concept of reading growth. We started the conversation with the question: “How do your schools currently define and measure growth in reading?” 

Their comments included:

•  “When students go up in reading levels, we see that as growth.”
• “The students can read more fluently according to the computer-based assessment.”
• “Students score higher on our standards-based report card.”
• “Students can read more words on a word list.”

The general theme of their answers was that reading growth is defined by a mastery of standards or skills and, as a result, is bound by what can be readily measured and quantified.  

Of course, these observations are indications of reading growth. We celebrate when a student moves up a level. Students should be applying a wider repertoire of skills and strategies. But what is missing? What about meaning making? What about joy? What about book talk? 

 We then asked the graduate students to contemplate what reading growth can or should encompass, prompting them to reflect on the growth they observe daily in their classrooms.  

Their comments included:

• “Some students go from reading because they have to to reading because they want to.”
• “My third graders are able to sustain engaged reading for longer stretches of time.”
• “My students are falling in love with new authors and series. They scramble to take books home.”
• “I had a student who rarely spoke, and she is beginning to share her thoughts about her reading with a partner.”
• “For the first time, I was able to confer with a number of students, because the other students were so involved in their reading.”
• “I had a student from last year come to my classroom to show me what she is reading in her new classroom.”

We all have students who do not show growth according to the data. These students may not have scored higher on a state test or improved their ability to write a concise summary; however, we can see that they have grown in so many other ways that frequently go unmeasured. When we expand reading growth to encompass the strengths of readers and their reading, we acknowledge students who:

• Reflect on who they are as readers
• Can and want to read for longer periods of time
• Have favorite books and know their preferences, and also try new genres
• Use a variety of strategies independently
• Respond to texts in a variety of ways, including giggling, sharing favorite parts with a partner, and recommending books to classmates
• Want to keep reading so that they can find out what happens next 
• Collect books on the same topic so that they can learn more
• Do something at the end of a book
• Declare: “I am a reader.”

The list of all the ways in which readers can grow goes on and on. While school systems control how reading growth is defined and measured, we can act agentively and broaden our understanding of reading growth. We can share that information with the students and their caregivers. By noticing and naming children’s strengths in reading and as readers, we can bolster their confidence, grow their self-efficacy, and support readers who read for meaning in and beyond the classroom. 

Register today for LitCon 2023 to hear Jennifer and Hannah in their presentation Trusting Feedback: Promoting Growth, Agency and Identity on Monday, January 30. Hannah Schneewind and Jennifer Scoggin are the co-creator of Trusting Readers, a group dedicated to collaborating with teachers to design literacy opportunities that invite all students to be engaged and to thrive as readers and writers. Together, they published Trusting Readers: Powerful Practices for Independent Reading with Heinemann in the spring of 2021.

Dr. Jennifer Scoggin has been a teacher, author, speaker, curriculum writer, and literacy consultant. Jen is an advocate for both teachers and students and is most happy when she is working alongside children in classrooms. Jen is also the mother of two book lovers; nothing makes her more proud than that. Jen began her career teaching first and second grades in Harlem, New York. In her current role as a literacy consultant, Jennifer collaborates with teachers to create engaging literacy opportunities for children. She holds a doctorate in curriculum and instruction from Teachers College, Columbia University and has previously published two books about literacy instruction and life in the classroom.

Hannah Schneewind has been a teacher, staff developer, curriculum writer, keynote speaker, and national literacy consultant. She brings with her over 25 years of experience to the education world. Hannah’s interest in student and teacher agency and her belief in the power of books informs her work with schools.

Dr. Jennifer Scoggin and Hannah Schneewind

Join us on Thursday for Part II of Teaching Children, not just Teaching Reading: Growing Readers, Growing Reading

“The teaching should not start where the teacher is but where the child is.”
Marie Clay

Marie Clay’s (2005) words urge us to start from a place of strength when preparing to teach students.

We often begin this work by thinking about the teaching of reading. Where is a child in their knowledge and use of the skills and strategies required to unlock all that a particular text has to offer? What do they do to help themselves when they are problem-solving? What strengths can we observe? Listening and kidwatching as students engage with text are powerful drivers of instructional decision-making.

At the same time, how can we expand the idea of starting where a child is to also include what we know about the teaching of readers? Research (and probably countless classroom observations) teaches us that skills and strategies instruction alone does not lead to maximal reading growth. To foster the transfer of those skills to independence, students need multiple opportunities to read books that they picked and their own purposes for reading. Students’ engagement and motivation enhance their participation, attention, and effort (Afflerbach, 2022) while also creating space for students to meaningfully apply and own their learning.

So what can it mean to start where a child is as a reader? How can we roam around and learn what a child knows about themselves as a reader?

Consider incorporating the following practices:

• In small groups, facilitate an inquiry into students’ reading identities. A student’s reading identity includes five aspects: self-efficacy, attitude, habits, book choice, and process (Scoggin and Schneewind, 2022). Start with a gentle prompt, such as “Tell me about yourselves as a reader.” Then move to ask further questions that invite students to share about each aspect of their identity as readers.
• Confer with students one-on-one as they are reading. Probe into their reading process by asking, “What do you think about when you read? What do you do when you get to a word you don’t know?” 
• Kidwatch during independent reading. Take note of: What books do students choose? Do they prefer to read alone or with a partner? What are the visible signs of engagement?

In honoring the information we glean from these practices, we broaden our understanding of student strength by including what we know about the teaching of reading and readers. When we combine our expertise in the teaching of reading with our understanding of a student’s reading identity, we can create strengths-based instructional pathways that lead to lasting reading growth both in and out of the classroom.

Register today for LitCon 2023 to hear Jennifer and Hannah in their presentation Trusting Feedback: Promoting Growth, Agency and Identity on Monday, January 30. Hannah Schneewind and Jennifer Scoggin are the co-creator of Trusting Readers, a group dedicated to collaborating with teachers to design literacy opportunities that invite all students to be engaged and to thrive as readers and writers. Together, they published Trusting Readers: Powerful Practices for Independent Reading with Heinemann in the spring of 2021.

Dr. Jennifer Scoggin has been a teacher, author, speaker, curriculum writer, and literacy consultant. Jen is an advocate for both teachers and students and is most happy when she is working alongside children in classrooms. Jen is also the mother of two book lovers; nothing makes her more proud than that. Jen began her career teaching first and second grades in Harlem, New York. In her current role as a literacy consultant, Jennifer collaborates with teachers to create engaging literacy opportunities for children. She holds a doctorate in curriculum and instruction from Teachers College, Columbia University and has previously published two books about literacy instruction and life in the classroom.

Hannah Schneewind has been a teacher, staff developer, curriculum writer, keynote speaker, and national literacy consultant. She brings with her over 25 years of experience to the education world. Hannah’s interest in student and teacher agency and her belief in the power of books informs her work with schools.

By Nancy Rogers-Zegarra

A new school year is always an exciting time, and as educators, we look forward to teaching and learning from new students. The silver lining of the pandemic was that we had multiple opportunities to reflect and rethink how we interacted and followed our students and families. We had to lean in, look, and listen to students and families more carefully because it was more challenging on Zoom to pick up cues from body language and/or hear the students’ voices. What I loved about teaching on Zoom was that I got to learn more about the child’s home, family, language, pets, and interests. This year I want to carry forward what I learned and ensure inclusive and equitable learning for all my Reading Recovery students.

Start with a Child’s Name in Roaming

Begin by embracing students’ identity as a significant first step. Every child brings a lifetime of experiences, equipped with their unique lens on the world. Each child has a name, an important representation of their life, family, language, and culture. A name is a common denominator and a powerful link to identity.  Ralph Ellison notes, “It is through our names that we first place ourselves in the world.”  Unfortunately, names are often mispronounced, misspelled, shortened, changed, or mocked inadvertently by teachers and students.  This may seem nuanced, but language is very personal and reflects who we are as individuals. As Reading Recovery teachers, honor the child’s name by learning it well and consider capitalizing on the power of a child’s name for building trust, showing respect, for firming up learning to look at print, concepts about print, and letter knowledge in reading and writing.

The key concepts in Roaming Around the Known (RATK) are building confidence, ensuring success, focusing on flexibility, and celebrating discovery. Last year, I had a child that could write and read one word: his name. My challenge was to meet the child where he was. I have found most children can write and read their names. Their name is a known, an island of certainty in the sea of print. In early lessons, I begin with a child’s name if it is known, for both social-emotional and academic reasons. I use the child’s name in reading and writing books to make it simple, grab his or her attention, and use this island of certainty to learn to monitor. Below are some of the suggestions for you to try:

By using a child’s name, we have the opportunity to strengthen all that the child is able to do independently and the child is able to use what he or she knows in different ways. The name is a good access point to begin firming up what a child knows.

Clay reminds us to use our ingenuity to go over what the child knows in different ways to help build fluency and flexibility so provide lots of opportunities for the child to write his name with chalk and marker, and use magnetic letters to build his or her name.

Reading lots of books in RATK is important. We share different kinds of books.

To grow trust and respect with the child, we share stories together about building confidence. Four of my favorites are: A Is for All the Things You Are: A Joyful ABC Book by Anna Ferguson Hindley; You Matter by Christian Robinson, Our Class is a Family by Shannon Olsen, and The Magical Yet by Angela DiTerlizzi.                           

After reading the story together… we compose simple texts with the child, sharing the pen.

We also read pattern books about what children like and can do and then write stories using the pattern but with the child’s name.

Through text, real words are expressed in writing and speaking, honoring name and place. Student ideas and voices will be strengthened through conversations and writing about identity and language. At the end of RATK, the child’s confidence grows from his or her reading, writing, speaking about, and listening to numerous books.

Make RATK fun and joyful! Capitalize on the child’s strengths by using his or her known information about his or her name in teaching, learning to look at print, CAP concepts, in reading and writing. Kids love to know they are capable and valued and when you observe carefully, use what the child knows, and place the child at the center of the lesson then you can expertly tailor their literacy learning journey.

As you reimagine instructional planning, this fall, focus on the power of a name. Remember Clay’s words “At the end of the two weeks the child will feel comfortable with a small body of knowledge and confidence to use this as a springboard for trying new things when instruction starts.” Clay 2016, pg. 30.

Nancy Rogers-Zegarra, Ph.D.’s professional experience spans 38 years and includes classroom teaching, serving as a literacy coach, interventionist, reading specialist, Reading Recovery Teacher Leader, Principal, District Director for English Learners and Assessment, and as a County Office English Language Arts Coordinator. She is currently a Clinical Coach and Teacher Leader for Saint Mary’s College, CA. Her passion is sharing the joy of reading and writing with multilingual learners.