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What’s the Power of Knowing a Word in a ‘Snap’?

2018-09-05T12:49:26-05:00July 3rd, 2018|Classroom Teaching, Teaching|

by Michal Taylor

Moving a sight word from new to fluent retrieval is a crucial part of learning to read. Then immediately having the opportunity to use these words in the cycle of continuous text provides for consolidation. This can be in a small group guided reading setting where the first read is a ‘private read’, then these texts are reread as familiar text over subsequent days. This may be alone or in pairs.

Spending 1-2 minutes writing these words at the beginning of any guided reading lesson can work wonders. (No more than 1-2 minutes, it’s quick)!  Select 2-3 high frequency words from the text to be read. Write each word quickly 2-3 times on a whiteboard, with good letter formation (so it looks like that word). Cover the word before writing it successive times to help build a visual memory of that word. The student checks on themselves as they write with teacher monitoring production, providing scaffolding (written model) if needed. This is a written task not flash cards. Writing really seems to help those having difficulty accumulating a cadre of easily known words by forging another neural pathway.

Consolidation of known words needs to continue up into 2nd grade and beyond. As I work with older readers struggling with becoming fluent processors, a common theme I notice is that they have a low core of ‘known’ high frequency words that ‘glue’ our language together. Far too much cognitive energy is going to working these words out resulting in slow reading with low or no understanding of what is being read. Starting this in Kindergarten, we are really noticing a big difference in the automaticity in reading and writing of emergent and early readers with attention freed up to work on other challenging parts of the book reading or writing of texts. Keep doing this as students read increasingly difficult text until they have ‘learned how to learn words’ and easily learn words with fewer exposures. The concept of analogy is predicated on having a core of known words from which to be generative. Very often I see children being asked to word-solve using an analogy and the ‘known’ is not known so the child has a shaky foundation from which to build.

 

Some additional resources on teaching high frequency words:

From RRCNA’s Members-only Resources:  He Knew it Yesterday – recorded conference session by Pam Grayson

From Clemson University’s Teacher Resources:  High Frequency Words Module

Nell Duke’s 2016 post: Teach Sight Words as You Would Other Words

 

Michal Taylor is a Reading Recovery teacher leader at South Lyon Reading Recovery Site, South Lyon, Michigan.

 

 

 

Any views or claims expressed in The Reading Recovery Connections Blog are those of individual authors, not RRCNA.

Reading Recovery Works: Spread the Word

2018-11-16T15:49:22-05:00June 15th, 2018|Latest News, Teaching|

by Rhonda Precourt and Gen Arcovio

We seem to be going through a time where heavy phonics instruction and skill and drill teaching practices are taking over. The importance of making all interactions with books meaningful and enjoyable and using research-proven interventions appears to be going by the wayside. We need to make the power of Reading Recovery and its complex theory of reading more visible than ever. We need to share loud and proud about our completely individualized lessons that meet the needs of each child we work with. We need to know our reading theory well and be ready to answer questions about Reading Recovery in a clear and concise way. We must be sure that we can explain the reasoning behind anything that we do during a Reading Recovery lesson. We have experienced the downsizing of Reading Recovery teachers in our own school district and we have noticed the number of Reading Recovery teachers decrease in school districts around us. With the threat of not being a Reading Recovery teacher, we often hear from others, “Don’t worry, you’ll never lose it.”

While we know that we will always be Reading Recovery teachers at heart we feel that there are definitely some things that we will lose if we are no longer practicing Reading Recovery teachers. We would no longer attend continuing contact sessions, which we consider to be the best on-going professional development that we have ever been fortunate enough to experience. We would no longer be able to participate in behind the glass sessions which have always helped us to think deeper about the students we work with. We would longer have regular contact with our teacher leader who always keeps us grounded in our theory. The thought of missing out on these experiences has made us reflect on the importance of doing our part in sharing the power of Reading Recovery as well as sharing our knowledge about how children learn to read.

Share with parents
Call parents when you first know that you will be working with their child. Explain to them what Reading Recovery is, ask if they have any questions, and invite them in for a lesson. Update parents frequently on their child’s progress.

Here are a few ways that we stay in touch with parents:
• write a quick note on sticky notes attached to a book that the child is taking home. “Johnny sounds so smooth when reading this story.”
• write a note on the reading log. “Sara is working on pointing to each word as she reads.”
• write a note thanking parents for their support with having their child read each night.
• send home a copy of the child’s writing with a quick note about what the child can do all on their own. ” Johnny wrote the, to, go quickly all by himself!”
• Call at the end of the program to share their child’s progress and answer any questions that the parents may have.

Share with Administration & Board of Education
Invite administrators into your classroom to see lessons in action. Also, invite administrators to behind the glass sessions to see the way we observe, analyze and talk about next steps. Having administrators observe lessons and attend behind the glass sessions also helps to broaden their knowledge about how children learn to read. Share the progress your students are making with your building principal on a regular basis.

Meet with classroom teachers frequently
Work closely with your students’ classroom teachers. Listen carefully to what they are noticing about their student’s strategic activities in reading and writing. Discuss the child’s progress but make sure to provide the classroom teacher time to communicate any support that they might need. Think about how you can help support the transfer of knowledge between what happens in your room and the child’s classroom. Invite classroom teachers in for lessons and behind the glass sessions to observe how you interact with the student and the language you use to teach and prompt.

Participate in professional learning communities & Problem-solving teams
Regularly take part in school meetings and collaborate with your colleagues. Share relevant research and the theory behind reading as a complex process. Advocate for time spent together learning and not just talking data.

Professional development
Be a literacy leader by helping to provide job-embedded professional development. Pick literacy topics that are relevant to your classroom teachers’ everyday work life and stick with those topics for a period of time. In the recently released Spring 2018 edition of The Journal of Reading Recovery, RRCNA Executive Director Jady Johnson provides some guidance with explaining Reading Recovery to an “influential school decision maker in just one minute” in her article titled, It Only Takes a Minute. There are many resources available to members on the RRCNA website that can be used when communicating with families and administrators about Reading Recovery. We would also recommend reading Billie J. Askew’s article: What’s So Important About Theory? We have to stay on top of our game to keep Reading Recovery alive.

Rhonda Precourt and Gen Arcovio are Reading RecoveryTeachers/Literacy Specialists in the Newark Central School District, Newark, New York. Follow them on their blog literacypages.wordpress.com and on Twitter @LiteracyPages.

Any views or claims expressed in The Reading Recovery Connections Blog are those of individual authors, not RRCNA.

A Seat at the Table

2018-09-05T12:49:56-05:00May 29th, 2018|Classroom Teaching, General Education, Reading Recovery Teaching, Reflections and Commentary, Teaching|

by Hollyanna Bates

A Seat at the Table
As a school district literacy coordinator, I worry about literacy. I worry about students learning how to read. I worry about those who find reading difficult. I worry that we aren’t spending enough time creating readers who choose to read.

I have found that I can fend off a little worry when I leverage the worry into powerful actions.  These actions have developed from small steps to well-developed projects. The projects are implemented across our schools in order to impact both reading achievement and a love of reading.  The projects are possible because teachers, administrators, and volunteers work together with the belief that we have to do whatever it takes. We stand firm in the belief that students need access to the behaviors of literate cultures and we aim to provide this access in a variety of ways. We offer our students a seat at the literate table.

 

Summer Books
A few years ago, we read Allington and McGill-Franzen’s research on summer reading and were persuaded to make a change.  We hadn’t seen much success from our traditional summer school model and limited funds reduced the number of students we were able to impact. Since we had surveyed students using Donalyn Miller’s tool in the Book Whisperer, we knew that many students would not read during the summer if we didn’t provide books; many reported having 0-2 books at home.

With district funds and a heck-of-a-lot of grant funding from our local Rotary Club, we have replicated the work of Allington and McGill.  Each student in K-4 gets to choose summer books from a large library we created just for this purpose. Our team researched the newest, most popular titles and cultivated a collection for each school.  Each May we roll out the bins, add some new titles, and invite students to select books to take home for the summer.

 

Author Visits
Our local education foundation has partnered with the school district to provide author visits to all K-8 students each year. Because literate citizens know the names of authors, have books inscribed by authors, and have read several books by a favorite author, we implemented the visits as a way to provide this access. Last year, 100% of surveyed teachers reported that they found the visits effective for these reasons: they built excitement around reading, writing, and art; inspired students to read books; provided access to literate cultures; and built understanding around the writing process. Before the author visit each year, students write letters persuading a committee to select them to eat lunch with the author.  This year, Carlos (pseudonym), a student who is living in poverty and learning English as a second language, wrote, “I want to be picked to eat lunch with the author because it will change my life.” Today, he ate breakfast with Colorado author Todd Mitchell and I think both of them will be forever changed after their time together!

 

Home Libraries
When our district leaders looked at the research related to the number of books children have at home, the number of students who choose to read, and the correlation with achievement, we couldn’t help but take action.  The pilot project was funded by our education foundation and has grown to be funded by every community resource available. Now implemented in our three schools most impacted by poverty, students in grades 3-5 are well on their way to having authentic home libraries. Each month students select two books from the Scholastic order. These books belong to the students and become their home libraries.  In a recent survey, 93% of participating students reported they had read all the books ordered through the project, with 76% of students reporting that they read some books twice.

While I still worry about literacy development of our students, I am proud of the projects we have in place, the opportunities we provide, and the improvements we make each year to help all children fall in love with reading.

RESOURCES
Summer Reading: Closing the Rich/Poor Achievement Gap by Richard Allington and Anne McGill-Franzen
Scholastic Research Compendium on Access to Books

Hollyanna Bates is a past president of the Colorado Council of the International Reading Association (CCIRA) and a Reading Recovery teacher leader/literacy coordinator in Summit School District, Frisco, Colorado. Follow her on Twitter @hollyannabates.

 

 

Any views or claims expressed in The Reading Recovery Connections Blog are those of individual authors, not RRCNA.

 

Access + Choice + Expert Teacher = Equity

2018-09-05T12:50:15-05:00April 20th, 2018|Reflections and Commentary, Teaching|

by Lynn Newmyer

Last week a few of my former students were peering into my partially open classroom door. They watched as I unloaded a box of new books onto already overstocked shelves and excitedly talked over each other.

“I remember that one – it’s so funny!” “Do you still have those other books that we used to read?” “Wait – that’s a new one! What’s that one about?”  Their eyes were sparkling with anticipation waiting to see if I would ask them to come in and read with me, again. They used to be students who struggled with literacy. Now they viewed themselves as readers. Fortunately, an expert teacher was available just when they needed one.

 

Never Underestimate the Power of Books

In order to become a reader, students need and deserve access to books.

Andrew had just successfully finished his Reading Recovery intervention with me; he had read more than 100 little books. Many had become favorites that he often took home and shared with his family. Two days ago, Andrew’s sister came to his classroom teacher with a note from his mother with a simple request: “Andrew doesn’t have any books at home. Could we please have some?” Immediately the classroom teacher and I found books for Andrew to take home and keep. They would be the start of his own little library.

In their study of four communities, Neumann & Celano (2001) noted the disparity of opportunities between low-income and middle-income neighborhoods in regards to access to print. Two were middle class and two were lower income. No surprise that children in lower income homes had fewer books in their homes than the middle-class children. Fewer opportunities result in the beginnings of inequity.

“Ensuring that books are available to any child at any time of the year will be a good first step in enhancing the reading achievement of low-income students and is an absolutely necessary step in closing the reading achievement gap.”  Allington & McGill- Franzen. (2008)

 

The Motivation and Engagement with Choice and Independent Reading

If students have greater access to interesting books it is more likely that they will want to read and they will probably read more. Chris, another one of my students, read a story about a boy who wanted a large pet spider, much to his indulgent mother’s dismay.

First Chris wanted to read all the other stories in the series. That led him to ask questions and to seek answers about real life spiders. Later he asked me,” Are there more books that are stories with true facts?” Of course there were, and we read them in our lessons. At independent reading time in his classroom, he had an ever-evolving bag of books from his classroom and from my room that he was avidly reading, and during indoor recess he was writing his own book about spiders.

As Donalyn Miller (2009) states in The Book Whisperer, “We teachers have more than enough anecdotal evidence that the students who read the most are best spellers, writers, and thinkers. No exercise gives more instructional bang for the buck than reading.” Being literate requires wide reading with access and choice of many different types of texts.

 

It Takes an Expert

Access and choice are critical, but even if those are part of a child’s environment both at home and at school, are they enough to ensure that a child will become a reader? Probably not, as all my students were not readers…yet. They needed an expert reading teacher.

Richard Allington (2013) states, “We have too much evidence that expertise in reading matters for any child who is struggling while learning to be literate.”  What defines teacher expertise for a reading teacher? The International Literacy Association created standards for evaluating teacher preparation programs for reading specialists. However, not all professionals who work with students that struggle with literacy have those qualifications.

Investing in teacher expertise is a critical piece of equity. Investing in what works for students based upon valid research such as those reviewed programs listed on the What Works Clearinghouse site is just as critical.

Brittany, my new student, was skipping down the hall holding my hand, as we were moving towards my room. She beckoned me to bend over so I could hear her.

” Finally,” she said. “I wondered when anyone was ever going to come and help me I’ve been waiting!”

 

 

Lynn Newmyer is a Reading Recovery teacher leader from Walled Lake, MI.

 

 

Any views or claims expressed in The Reading Recovery  Connections Blog are those of individual authors, not RRCNA.

The Balancing Act: Integrating sources of information in text reading

2018-09-05T12:50:43-05:00December 4th, 2017|Reading Recovery Teaching, Teaching|

by Maryann McBride

On a recent teacher visit, the teacher introduced “Billy Can Count.”  It was a very well-chosen book, but as often happens in Reading Recovery, the teacher got a surprise on the first page of the text.  Unfortunately, the surprise continued throughout the entire book.  Here’s how the first page went:

So, the child stops at bowls.  The concept had not been discussed in the book introduction as the child easily talked about helping his mom set the table and named a variety of utensils and items to be placed on the table.  And one of the teacher’s goals was for the child to use visual information, especially the first part of words with meaning and structure to monitor and search in his reading.

The teacher prompted the child to check the picture (which the child did consistently throughout the lesson) and think what mom might want Jack to put on the table. Without turning back to the print, the child said “bowls” and the teacher praised the child.  The teacher was happy with the correct response, but should we be?

My view is probably not.  It is critical as Reading Recovery professionals that we know not only that the child got it correct but how this was done.  This attempt was solely based on the picture with little, if any, evidence that visual information was attended to.

Thinking About Multiple Sources of Information

Clay reminds us often in the 2016 Literacy Lessons Designed for Individuals Second Edition that “Early intervention teachers observe children’s reading behaviours very closely” (p. 110).   Without close observation, we might miss what the child did and didn’t do.

Also, Clay’s theory of literacy processing which guides the Reading Recovery procedures is based on the integration of multiple sources of information in text.  Our role in the Reading Recovery lesson is to guide the child “to pay particular attention to four kinds of information the young readers must become aware of and learn to work with.  Different kinds of information may be checked, one against another, to confirm a response or as a first step towards further searching” (p. 129).

While Clay says the above diagram is a simplistic representation of what readers need to do, the diagram is meant to help the teacher think about what sources of information the reader might have used.

Clay reminds us that “if the child has a bias towards the use of language information, the teacher’s prompts will need to direct him to print detail and to using what he knows.  She may get him to confirm an attempt by attending to initial, final and later, medial letters, first in the spoken and then in the written word” (p.  140).

This advice is critical to children beginning to integrate the sources of information, and the sooner this happens, the quicker acceleration will be.  What would that look like had the teacher in this example taken a different course of action?

Using Questions and Prompts

Clay provides many options for handling this situation.  Here are a few that might help you if you find yourself in this situation.

You might begin the action by asking the child, “Why did you stop?  What did you notice?”  Keep in mind that teaching here might not be a good idea if the letter b is unknown or easily confused.  But in the above case, that confusion doesn’t exist.  It’s best to teach on items that are not confusions or contain confusions.

Sometimes the child will response with, “I don’t know that.”  So, you might go to the most support on the scale of help and make the grand gesture.  “The teacher might construct part of the word making it larger in some grand manner. (Use gestures, a whiteboard or magnetic letters)” (p. 152).   I would put the b down and say, “Think about your story and what might begin with this letter that you know.”

If bowls falls out of his mouth, then make him check it or ask him, “What sounds can you see in that word?”   That question is used if the child already knows some of the letter-sound relationship in the word, for example, /b/ /l/ and /s/.   In this way, you are balancing the use of the sources of information.  Then tie it up with, “Would that make sense and sound right, and look like that?”

The goal is if the child used meaning and/or structure, then the teacher should call for the use of visual information to predict or to check a prediction.

Suppose you find yourself in the situation of the teacher in the example, where she prompted for checking the picture and without any attention to print the child says “bowls.” Then instead of praise, yet, you might say, “Are you right?  How do you know?”

If the child continues to refer to the picture then ask, “Does it look right?”  followed by, “What letter would you expect to see at the beginning of bowls?”  Then have the child check it and say, “Now it looks right and make sense.”

Another possibility is to move further up the scale of help: “The teacher articulates the part clearly (a hearing prompt) and the child locates the part” (p. 152).  Make sure you have the child locate the part you have sounded, even if the word just rolls out of his mouth.  This task has to be turned over to him.  And again, tie it up emphasizing that you have to make it make sense and look right.

Additional prompts and suggestions can be found on pages 136-152. Our work in Reading Recovery is to get our students to use all sources of information.  This will ensure continued progress as readers and writers.  As Clay reminds us at the conclusion of the text on page 195 …

“And in the end
it is the individual adaptation
made by the expert teacher
to that child’s idiosyncratic competencies
and history of past experience
that starts him on the upward climb
to effective literacy performances.”

 

Maryann McBride is a Reading Recovery teacher leader at Clemson University and a 2018 National Reading Recovery and K-6 Literacy Conference presenter. Follow her on Twitter @Maryann081153.

Maryann McBride will be a speaker at the 2019 National Reading Recovery & K-6 Literacy Conference, February 9-12, in Columbus, OH. Her session is titled, “Fluent, Flexible, and Fast with Higher Level Text”.

 

Any views or claims expressed in The Reading Recovery Connections Blog are those of individual authors, not RRCNA.

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