by Kathleen A. Brown

Three words come to mind as I think about my experiences and the experiences of my colleagues during this extraordinary time: Resilience, Reflection, and Resetting.

Resilience
Resilience defined by Merriam Webster is an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change. The Reading Recovery teachers in my district went from conducting lessons in a school setting to virtual lessons in a matter of a week. Overnight, they had to re-imagine how to provide literacy support to their students in a virtual world. Feet first and with big hearts they jumped into the work. Although there was a steep learning curve with using technology to provide literacy support, collaboratively they worked around the clock to reach the most needy and vulnerable, our Reading Recovery students and their families. While we understood that these were literacy support not traditional one on one lessons, we worked collaboratively with our University Training Center at Saint Mary’s College of California for direction and guidance.

Fortunately, our district provided laptops to all students to participate in online learning opportunities. The Reading Recovery teachers went above and beyond to ensure families had access to the internet and provided countless hours of support in getting families set up for distance learning.  In addition, literacy materials were picked up at school sites, mailed home, or delivered directly to the students’ homes. We fondly called the delivery to a home a “Teacher Dash.” Students and their families were so grateful and appreciative of the efforts being made to keep literacy learning going. Teachers were also thrilled to connect with students again, even if it had to be done virtually.

The sudden school closures lead to a range of emotions for our students, their families, and our teachers. Teachers often felt uncomfortable, stressed, and unsure about teaching using technology. There were days of frustration and tears. There were also days of gratitude and celebration as things were coming together and lessons were running much smoother.

Through the ups and downs, high and lows, laughter and tears, we have become stronger and more resilient as teachers and as a collective group. Like our students, we have learned to push the boundaries of our own knowledge and learning to provide literacy support in a virtual world. As one Reading Recovery student said during a literacy support lesson, “I am happy you are still helping me with my reading. When I see you for real, I am going to give you a giant hug.”

Reflection
Reflection is a common practice in Reading Recovery. Therefore, it was not out of the ordinary when my teachers and I started reflecting on our teaching and student engagement during online learning. As defined by Merriam Webster, reflection is a thought, idea, or opinion formed or a remark made as a result of meditation. We continued to meet as a group of Reading Recovery educators to refine our theory and practice related to early literacy teaching and learning. In our virtual on-going professional development sessions, many AHA moments surfaced, which caused us to step back and rethink our interactions with students, our expectations, and preconceived notions about student learning.

We discovered our students are more resilient and independent than we thought. To start with, students adjusted to being at home and away from their teachers and friends, and that was hard. Next, students quickly learned how to use technology, the language of technology, and be prepared to be on time and online for daily literacy support lessons. It is amazing to think we are talking about first graders.

Our relationships with students and their families have changed for the better. Parents have become true partners in this new method of teaching and learning. Beyond the academics, parents opened up about their worries and struggles. As teachers we became a conduit of information, support, and comfort. Having a virtual window into our students and their lives opened our eyes to see them differently and to appreciate those differences.

Reading
Collectively we noticed that students were able to orient themselves to new texts with minimal teacher support. Students were not afraid to pick up a new book or try one out digitally. This is what Marie Clay meant when she stated, “Acceleration is achieved as the child takes over the learning process and works independently, discovering new things for himself inside and outside the lessons.” Literacy Lessons Designed for Individuals, page 20. Students were also demonstrating a variety of ways to figure out unknown words on their own, without teacher prompting or demonstration. “The aim is to have him know about how words work and be able to use this awareness while reading and while writing.” Literacy Lessons Designed for Individuals, page 155.  We were astonished by our student’s independence and risk taking while reading novel texts.

Writing
Another discovery is how much more independent students are in writing in a virtual setting. Due to the mere fact there is a screen between the teacher and student, we were not able to physically get in their way, over-scaffold, or be overly involved in the construction of the story. Students were taking more risks in solving new words, not waiting for the teacher to tell them how to solve the words, and writing in longer phrases. These observations mirror what Marie Clay said about students when they become more independent in writing. “Towards the end of the lesson series children will usually be composing on the run, probably writing one sentence, then composing another and writing it, and so on, much the way they would work in the classroom.”  Literacy Lessons Designed for Individuals, page 82

Listening and Speaking
Children are naturally social, and learning is a social experience. During daily literacy support lessons, students were overflowing with things to say and share with us. We were a captive audience peering at the screen and listening to language spill out.

One day, a student I was teaching came with an object to show me and tell me about. This soon became a daily routine. He especially liked showing me and talking about his Lego creations. He was particularly fond of his pirate ship, “The Black Pearl.” From our conversations, he used words like cannons, mast, swords, curse, battle, captain, sailors, etc. Our elaborate conversations turned into descriptive and complex stories. Although I was the teacher (captain), I let my student (pirate) take me on a journey that led to grand conversations and complex written stories, which in turn became his favorite stories to read. I noticed once I loosened up on the wheel, put my own agenda aside, and followed the child, it was smooth sailing. 

“Just as a listener tunes in to a speaker, so a teacher must observe, listen to and tune in to a learner. Being sensitive to the child’s thinking allows the teacher to draw his attention to many things. Create opportunities for him to talk and to talk more. Any child with limited language skills needs more opportunities to talk.” Literacy Lessons Designed for Individuals, page 31.

As we all eagerly await the day when we can sit next to our students again, we have learned many lessons along the way:

• Children are more independent than we think they are.
• Children easily adapt to new situations and learning settings.
• Children are pushing the boundaries of their learning in a virtual world
• As teachers, we have a better understanding and appreciation for students, their families, and their life outside of school.
• As teachers, we have learned to find a way to reach our students, no matter what the path or method.
• As teachers we have learned to rely on each other and build upon each other’s strengths.
• As teachers, we have learned to step back, observe more, and wait an extra second or two before intervening or providing scaffolding.

These lessons learned will inform our teaching just as the lessons we had taught previously informed our virtual instruction.

Resetting
Moving forward, we are trying to envision what teaching will be like in the Fall. Will we be sitting next to our students or looking at them through the computer screen? Putting that aside, how will we take the lessons learned during this unprecedented time of teaching and learning and fold them into our daily practice.

Merriam Webster defines resetting as to set again or anew. We must not forget what we have learned about our students, their families, and ourselves as teachers. How do we harness this new learning when we return to our school buildings? The Aha moments are significant. They serve as a catalyst in changing our mindset about student learning and how we teach our students.

Marie Clay asks us to think about change over time in our work with students. On page 44 of Literacy Lessons Designed for Individuals, she states, “To encourage teachers to think about the changes they need to make in their teaching – adjusting expectations and interactions over time according to the progress of each learner.”

As we reset or renew our commitment to teaching our readers and writers, who struggle the most, let us not forget what the children have taught us during this unusual time in our careers and education. Reading Recovery teachers are uniquely positioned to think through what we are learning while learning from this virtual world of teaching. Let us continue to be resilient, reflective, and reset when necessary for our most precious gift: our children, our future.

Kathleen A. Brown has worked in the field of education for 35 years as a teacher, literacy specialist, and Reading Recovery teacher; serving as the Reading Recovery teacher leader in Long Beach Unified School District for the last 20 years. She provides early literacy training for the district and serves on a variety of early intervention / early literacy committees.

by Kim Reynolds

Every time I walk into my colleague’s classroom, I look up to one of my favorite signs: “I teach, what is your superpower?”

As I started roaming with my second-round student, Emily, in February, I looked to Marie Clay to guide me. She reminds us, this is when the “Child and teacher have an opportunity to get to know each other and to develop useful ways of interacting.” When Emily shared that she loved Wonder Woman, I asked her to tell me more. Emily said Wonder Woman can fly. She can save people. I look like Wonder Woman. It was ironic because right after we wrote this together, the whole world came crashing down around us. The Pandemic was here and we were all feeling weak, vulnerable, and apprehensive of what was yet to come. Our superpowers were being drained.

During the next few weeks, we started to navigate our way through the unknown. As we began this new, very rocky journey, we had the support of our amazing districts and our university training center, The Ohio State University. It was extremely overwhelming, but it was so helpful to find comfort in our administrators, trainers, and colleagues.

Using our technology, we were able to connect and collaborate with one another locally and nationally. On one of our Zoom calls, Dr. Lisa Pinkerton shared her analogy of the Pandemic to chapter 6 in Literacy Lessons Designed for Individuals: Adjusting teaching for particular difficulties. I thought that this was a brilliant way to relate what we know to this new and unknown time. Clay still comforts us during these challenging times: “You are likely to have some blind spots in these areas, and the opinions of colleagues could be most useful for adjusting your teaching. It has been one of the values of the professional development sessions that teachers have been able to pool their wisdom on their most puzzling students.” This can also be used when thinking about our current and upcoming challenges.

After a week of trying our best to collaborate, navigate, problem-solve and basically survive within our own districts, our Reading Recovery Teacher Leader colleagues were able to come together for our online “therapy”. We needed a forum to share our worries, concerns, and challenges. Our biggest concerns were for our students. The minute we met, we were already brainstorming and problem-solving how to emotionally support, thoughtfully collaborate and carefully facilitate reading and writing opportunities for our students. We left the session with a tentative plan, a network of amazing contacts and friends, and the faith that together we would make it through this. Hoda Kotbe’s book, I Really Needed This Today, is a favorite read before I go to sleep. She quoted Mandy Hale, “Trust the wait. Embrace the uncertainty. Enjoy the beauty of becoming. When nothing is certain, anything is possible.” Together…anything is possible.

I think back to my limited, but precious time that I initially had with Emily, which likely will no longer be in person. In that short time, she taught me some amazing life skills. During this challenging and uncertain time, we all need to embrace our superpowers… bravery, strength, and the ability to make a difference on a daily basis, no matter how small. Collaboratively, we teach, what is your superpower?

Kim Reynolds is a Reading Recovery Teacher Leader with Dublin City Schools in Dublin, Ohio.

by Jeffery Williams

Every culture across time has developed a set of stories, tales, and myths that were designed to help explain the complexities of the world.  Such lore is handed down across generations to explore how human strive for love, what happens when jealousy takes over, or to try to make sense of natural disasters or phenomena.  These stories, usually orally presented and often borrowed from others, evolve and change over time, helping to bring the wisdom of the ages to those who have had less time to ponder or less experience to gather from to understand the complexity around us.

We, as a Reading Recovery community, have one such tale in the oft cited myth that there are three cues readers use, meaning, structure, and visual, or that Marie Clay herself created this theory and the corresponding three-circle depiction that is familiar to most teachers.  Perhaps it originally was used to water down the complexity of the reading process for new teachers, in classrooms and in Reading Recovery, to make it easier to understand.  The purpose of this blog is to explore what Clay actually said and to remind us that such myths, though they may have been purposefully utilized at one time, also need to be checked against reality and not just adhered to because it is a story we have heard before that must be true.

“Three Cueing Systems”
Though other researchers have pondered the proliferation of the three cueing systems model, the most notable and thorough pondering came from Marilyn Adams’ 1998 chapter called, The Three-Cueing System.  In this piece, Adams examines the origins of the theory (finding that idea did not originate with Clay) and also discusses the pervasive misunderstanding that the three cues are not equal or that the visual system is somehow less important than meaning or structure. I agree that the view presented with the “three cueing systems” is limited for several reasons. Firstly, Clay did not advocate the idea that there are only three sources of information:

“According to the theory of reading behind these recovery procedures there are many sources of information in texts” (Clay, 2016).  Furthermore, she did not advocate the use of any one source as the sole basis of reading or making a word attempt, stating: “Different kinds of information may be checked, one against another, to confirm a response or as a first step towards further searching.” A careful reading of this statement uncovers that one source may be a first step towards further searching and that searching would always involve a close look at letters and sounds.

According to Adams (1998), the notion that the reader constructs the meaning of the text as jointly determined by lexical, semantic, and syntactic constraints had been a theme of the reading literature since the late 1970s.  She found that the problem was not with the three cueing systems schematic but with some interpretations that had become attached to it. For example, a common misinterpretation is that the position of graphophonic information in the Venn diagram with 3 circles as below the other two somehow diminishes the value and use of such information while reading. From a Reading Recovery perspective, we disagree with this interpretation and Clay spends an entire chapter on learning to look at print and states vociferously in the opening that:

Reading begins with looking and ends when you stop looking. Reading begins with passing information through the eyes to the brain. But the eyes do not just take a snapshot of the detail of print and transfer it to the brain,

• The child must learn to attend to some features of print,
• the child must learn to follow rules about direction,
• the child must attend to words in a line in a sequence, and
• the child must attend to letters in a word in left-to-right sequence.
  
  (Clay, 2016, p. 46)

Although Reading Recovery teachers analyze daily running records using meaning, structure, and visual, our analyses go well beyond MSV as we closely examine the records to better understand students’ strengths, to identify teaching goals, and plan the next lesson. To learn how to do this, as Reading Recovery teachers, we take weekly graduate coursework for an entire year during initial training and continue our learning through ongoing annual professional development six times per year. The depth of this training and the ongoing nature of a university support system enables us to identify the complexity of student behaviors and plan precise teaching to support increasingly complex reading and writing that goes well beyond just MSV.

Teaching Phonemic Awareness and Phonics
Perhaps because of the myth of the three-cueing system, critics have often supposed that visual information is not emphasized or taught in Reading Recovery lessons. This is quite untrue and is supported by nearly four decades of empirical research which show Reading Recovery’s strong effects across all domains, including phonics, phonemic awareness, and comprehension. For more information on some of these studies, please see the What Works Clearinghouse website. Also, on the What Works website is a recent 2016 publication from IES, Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3^rd Grade, with Barbara Foorman as the chief author. It was commissioned to present recommendations “…that educators can use to improve literacy skills in the early grades…based on the best available research, as well as the experience and expertise of the panel members” (Foorman et al., 2016, p. 1). Research from Reading Recovery is cited 117 times by the authors in support of the panel’s four recommendations.  To demonstrate the alignment of some of Foorman’s key recommendations with typical Reading Recovery lessons, citations from Foorman (2016) and Clay (2016) are shown below:                                       

Interestingly, the Foorman document states, “When students encounter words that they find difficult to read, remind them to apply the decoding and word-recognition skills and strategies they have learned and to then reread the word in context … using prompts such as: ‘Look for parts you know.’ ‘Sound it out.’ ‘Check it! Does it make sense?’” (p. 34). These prompts are almost verbatim to Reading Recovery prompts (Clay, 2016) and seem to suggest that research favors using multiple sources of information to cross-check one against another and does not favor the use of any one source solely. 

A recent document for parents from RRCNA (2019), outlines how phonemic awareness and letter/sound relationships are taught in Reading Recovery:

• Phonemic awareness is initially established with structured instruction during the writing component of the lesson.
• Letter identification is taught using multisensory approaches and reinforced throughout the series of lessons to ensure fast, accurate recognition and discrimination.
• Applying known letter sound associations and linking sound sequences to letter sequences is addressed in both reading and writing.
• All new learning is applied and observed/analyzed in reading and writing every day.
• Fast visual processing is supported as the child analyzes unknown words in stories by taking them apart on the run.
• Your child will develop the advanced analysis skills needed for decoding multisyllabic words and will profit from classroom word work and study.
• The teacher monitors your child’s daily progress in word analysis and re-teaches as needed. Many opportunities for applying new skills are provided daily across multiple reading and writing activities. (p. 3)

These references might clear up misunderstandings about Reading Recovery, particularly for those who think that Reading Recovery students are not taught phonics or phonemic awareness.

Value of Reading Connected Text
Reading Recovery’s daily use of connected, continuous text, where children cannot afford to rely on any one source of information entirely, is clearly an advantage  and is supported by Foorman’s report on the research: “Having students read connected text daily, both with and without constructive feedback, facilitates the development of reading accuracy, fluency, and comprehension and should begin as soon as students can identify a few words” (p. 32).  Two other recent publications—one from the International Literacy Association (ILA) and another from the International Dyslexia Association (IDA)—also offer suggestions that are supportive of the idea that reading continuous text daily, again because it demands that the reader not be able to rely solely on any one source of information, may be advantageous:

Students progress at a much faster rate in phonics when the bulk of instructional time is spent on applying the skills to authentic reading and writing experiences, rather than isolated skill-and-drill work. At least half of a phonics lesson should be devoted to application exercises. For students who are below level, the amount of reading during phonics instruction must be even greater. (Blevins, et al., p. 6)

And, in discussing the problem of “treatment resistant literacy difficulties” for students who have had a structured literacy approach and not shown evidence of success, IDA offers the following recommendation:

Another way to address this problem could involve placing a greater emphasis on text reading in intervention, which scientific investigators widely agree is an important aspect of intervention (e.g. Brady, 2011; Foorman et al., 2016; Kilpatrick, 2015), to help increase children’s exposure to real words.  This last idea might be effective if done early, before decoders have accumulated the enormous gap in reading practice characteristic of older poor readers in the upper elementary grades and adolescence (Cunningham & Stanovich, 1998; Torgesen, 2004).” (International Dyslexia Association, 2019, p. 13)

Reading Recovery Research
While no single approach works for every child, Reading Recovery has the strongest evidence base of any of the 228 beginning reading programs reviewed by the U.S. Department of Education’s What Works Clearinghouse. Because of Reading Recovery’s impressive research base spanning decades, in 2010 the Department of Education provided $46 million to fund a 5-year scale up of Reading Recovery in schools across the U.S. In 2016, an independent research study of this scale-up was published by the Center for Policy Research in Education. The study was the largest randomized controlled trial “and one of the most ambitious and well-documented expansions of an instructional program in U.S. history” (May et al., 2016).

The results demonstrated Reading Recovery’s impressive effect sizes on comprehension and overall reading achievement. These effect sizes were replicated four years in a row and authors noted that “these are large relative to typical effect sizes found in educational evaluations. This benchmark suggests that the total standardized effect sizes…for Reading Recovery of 0.37, was 4.6 times greater than average for studies that use comparable outcome measures” (May et al., p. 42). This has been proven in both urban and rural settings, as well as with English learners. School districts invest in Reading Recovery training for teachers because of these documented successes for the past 35 years.

Myth or Reality?
The myth that Marie Clay was the origin of the three-cueing system model is certainly false as the readings of Clay demonstrate and as Adams confirmed.  And, the myth that Reading Recovery does not teach phonics or phonemic awareness, because the visual system is somehow less important, is also false.  So why then are these stories so closely linked to Reading Recovery?  I know that I saw a diagram of the three-cuing systems in my training nearly two decades ago.  I know that I have used a similar diagram when introducing running record analysis with classroom teachers.  I never intended it to supplant the idea of complexity, but perhaps had forgotten the essence of Clay’s warning when she wrote, “If literacy teaching only brings a simple theory to a set of complex activities, then the learner has to bridge the gaps created by the theoretical simplification” (2015, p. 105).  She was not only talking about children’s learning but our learning as well.  When diagrams or explanations water-down the complexity, we run the risk of learners ‘bridging the gaps’ on their own—filling in what is unclear with their own thinking or ideas that were never intended and that may or may not be helpful.  Clay believed that teachers wanted and needed exposure to the complexity of theory and research and once said, “…the challenge for me is to write those theoretical ideas for the academics and researchers but also for the teachers. I think they have a right to be able to read those in terms that they understand.  This has been one of my particular challenges…”  We must likewise refrain from over-simplifying the complexity of becoming literate with myths and stories for our explanations.

References
Adams, M. J. (1998). The three-cueing system. In J. Osborn & F. Lehr (Eds.), Literacy for all: Issues in teaching and learning (pp.73-99). New York: Guilford Press.

Clay, M. M. (2016). Literacy lessons designed for individuals (2^nd ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Clay, M. M. (2015). Change Over Time in Children’s Literacy Development. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Foorman, B., Beyler, N., Borradaile, K., Coyne, M., Denton, C. A., Dimino, J., Furgeson, J., Hayes, L., Henke, J., Justice, L., Keating, B., Lewis, W., Sattar, S., Streke, A., Wagner, R., & Wissel, S. (2016). Foundational skills to support reading for understanding in kindergarten through 3rd grade (NCEE 2016-4008). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE), Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved from the NCEE website: http://whatworks.ed.gov.

International Dyslexia Association (2019). Structured literacy: An introductory guide.  Retrieved from the International Dyslexia Association website: https://dyslexiaida.org/structured-literacy-works-but-what-is-it-introducing-idas-new-structured-literacy-brief/

International Literacy Association. (2019). Meeting the challenges of early literacy phonics instruction [Literacy leadership brief]. Newark, DE: Blevins, et al. Retrieved from the International Literacy Association website: https://www.literacyworldwide.org/get-resources/position-statements

Reading Recovery Council of North America (2019). How Reading Recovery helps your child learn. Retrieved from the RRCNA website: https://readingrecovery.org/supporting-struggling-readers/

Jeffery Williams is a Reading Recovery Teacher Leader and K-12 Literacy Teacher Leader from Solon City Schools, Solon, OH.