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The Road Trip

The Road Trip

Blog Author2023-02-08T18:10:09-05:00March 17th, 2020|Reading Recovery Teaching, Reflections and Commentary|

by Lynn Newmyer

Every summer my husband and I look forward to choosing a destination, packing up the car and heading into a wonderful week of both wandering and purpose. We choose to have a plan but allow for the discovery of new places along the way.

Each school year, I challenge myself to learn something new to improve my practice. Much like my summer road trip, I choose an area to explore, gather my resources and ready myself to build on what I know while being open to discovering new things.

During the summer as I was doing some professional reading, I came upon a very intriguing quote. “If you want to truly understand something, try to change it.” (Bryk, Gomez, Grunnow, LeMahieu 2015) I am by no means an expert on the disciplined work put forth in the professional book in my hands, however, I felt that I could study what I wanted to improve and then consider what I could change that might have a positive impact on my students’ learning.

Dr. Mary Lose, our trainer at Oakland University, had been working with the Teacher Leader group on how we could increase teachers’ understandings of what it means for a child to know a word before putting it on the Weekly Writing Vocabulary Chart. I started wondering if what I was recording as known, was really known by my students. The following are reflections of what I learned while working with two of my students.

Clay states that “A child’s writing vocabulary consists of the words he or she knows in every detail and produces easily without help plus any new word he or she can construct correctly using existing strategies and knowledge.” (Clay 2001)

A key understanding is that ‘known’ is not as simple as ‘known’ and ‘not known’. Being more aware in order for a letter or a word to be known, there are two journeys that words and letters may take from new to known with degrees of known and from slow to fast production. (Clay 2001, Clay 2016)

Now it was time to change my practice. What if I paid closer attention at the beginning of the series of lessons for each of my students and noticed not just if they knew a word but how well they knew a word?

I decided to do a writing spree at designated points and notice if words were prompted or unprompted, fast or slow, correct or partially correct.

In addition, I planned to intentionally provide opportunities across the lesson for students to learn how to learn a word.
Discoveries using planned writing sprees were insightful. My students were engaged in the challenge of being able to visibly see what they could write and how many words were coming under their control. More words were written unprompted and were correct or nearly correct. If a prompt was given, the students started generating more of their own words.

Another surprise was the intensity of the students’ concern to get the words just right during the second writing spree.

Each student was beginning to monitor and self-correct their words. They crossed out some of their words and tried again. They were paying close attention to the details of print especially their letter formation and students used what was practiced to self -correct their attempts.

Changes in my learning, deeper understandings, and my teaching caused me to notice the following:
• Increase in known and easily produced words seemed to link to an increase in text level, but not always.
• Teaching for a writing vocabulary consistently resulted in an increased writing vocabulary. Intentionality and persistence was critical.
• Frequent writing sprees seemed to send a message to the students that this was important so more words were learned early on.
• Knowing what each student knew such as quick letter formation or partially known words or word parts contributed to ease of learning new words.

Every journey is an important one as the students I teach and their needs dictate which road trip is next.

Clay reminds us, “Every interaction in the daily writing segment is a teaching move – not a memory task, nor a practice attempt, nor an analysis of sounds, but carefully determined and astutely delivered teaching with a target that involves learning how to do something, do it better, do it faster, link it up to something, and prepare it for future independent use.” (Clay 2001)

References
Bryk, A.S., Gomez, L.M., Grunow, A., LeMahieu (2015) Learning to Improve How America’s Schools Can Get Better at Getting Better, Cambridge, MA: Harvard Press
Clay, M. (2001) Change Over Time in Children’s Literacy Development Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Clay, M. (2016) Literacy Lessons Designed for Individuals Second Edition, The Marie Clay Literacy Trust Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann

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

It’s All About Expertise

It’s All About Expertise

Carissa Hershey2023-02-08T18:10:10-05:00January 30th, 2020|Reading Recovery Teaching, Reflections and Commentary, Teaching|

by Debra Zarling

Where do you go for help when you have a serious medical issue? Or when your car has a major breakdown? Or a pipe bursts in your home? Like many people, you might first try fixing things yourself but if the issue is significant you will likely need to consult an expert. We are currently embroiled in an era of renewed attacks on teachers and their expertise. Recent headlines have questioned the ability of teachers to teach children to read. Across the country, legislators are becoming more apt to pass legislation about the teaching of reading that does not reflect what the weight of research says and fails to honor the expertise of teachers.

The current attacks primarily appear to be focused on the role of phonics in learning to read but they also question the knowledge and expertise of teachers and in turn, may sometimes cause us to question our own judgment and capabilities. Nowhere is this truer than when working with students at risk of not being successful readers and writers.

Reading Recovery has not been immune to these assaults and recent posts on this blog have taken on some of those attacks about the research on which Reading Recovery is based (see recent posts by Williams and Schwartz). These ongoing challenges to teachers and their expertise have led some to question themselves, not in a way that encourages them to collaborate with colleagues and problem-solve the situation but in a way that causes them to question themselves and their ability to meet student needs. While it is good to regularly evaluate our instruction to determine whether what we are doing is working best for this student at this time, we need to rely on our expertise and the expertise of our colleagues to help us find the answers when the learning is not progressing. Others expect us to look to programs or products as holding the answers. Programs can provide content, perhaps a suggested scope and sequence but they can’t provide the expert knowledge of how to teach or how to be responsive to the individual needs of a child. As Scanlon illustrates, many programs are based on research, at least to some degree, but relatively few have any actual research supporting the actual effectiveness of the program. Her research and that of many others (Allington, 2002; Bryk, Hanushek, 2015; May 2016) confirms that the teacher matters more than programs.

Expertise doesn’t come from training in a particular program. A common criticism of programmed materials is that the more dependent teachers become on them, the less able those teachers are in differentiating and responding to student needs. At times, teachers themselves exacerbate the problem by downplaying their own expertise. When asked about the needs of a student, especially one who comes with a ‘label,’ they may downplay their own expertise, forgetting that a label doesn’t eliminate the need for expert, diagnostic teaching.

In an era where we see increasing recommendations for the use of scripted materials and computer programs for teaching and intervention, Reading Recovery stands out for its reliance on teacher expertise. There is no program, kit, or script that can be purchased, and no one profits financially from the intervention. Rather, the focus is on the initial and ongoing development of teacher expertise.

The online Cambridge dictionary defines expertise as “a high level of skill or knowledge.” For teachers of reading, that expertise comes from a deep understanding of the knowledge and skills needed to learn to read and experience in using that knowledge and skill to teach students.

The importance of this expertise was validated in the Reading Recovery i3 study. In addition to looking at student outcomes, May and colleagues looked for evidence of what made the difference between schools with higher outcomes and schools with lower outcomes. They found two characteristics that differentiated. In those schools that had the highest outcomes, the teachers demonstrated deliberateness and instructional dexterity to a higher degree than was found in schools with more typical outcomes.

In the study, deliberateness is defined as “an encompassing commitment to thoughtful practice.”

“Deliberate teachers engage in a particular set of behaviors, including:

purposeful analysis of students’ progress that is guided by close, carefully documented observation;
ongoing reflection on their own instruction; and
active engagement with their own continual learning, both individually and through participation in a community of practice.” (pg 92)

Instructional dexterity was defined as the flexible application of deep skill.

“The expressions of instructional dexterity we identify take place within the lesson itself and include:

supportive rapport that continually pushes the student toward maximal growth;
in-the-moment decision-making that draws on both prior understandings and real-time observations;
judicious use of language; and
a sense of urgency that is evident in the pace of the lesson and the efficiency of instructional moves.” (pg 95)

As teachers, we can’t be totally prepared for every eventuality, every variation students show. We need to hold on to our knowledge and expertise and apply it to each new situation that arises. Rather than backing away when faced with a new issue regarding student learning, expert teachers, such as those trained in Reading Recovery, are more likely to face it head-on using their own expertise as well as collaboration with colleagues to address those issues. As Clay repeatedly reminded us,

“If a child is a struggling reader or writer the conclusion must be that we have not yet discovered a way to help him learn.” (LL 2nd Ed., pg 165)

In a report on professional development, Darling-Hammond and her colleagues highlight how Reading Recovery exemplifies the seven characteristics necessary for effective professional development (pg. 5). In Reading Recovery not only has years of strong research to show how and why it works, but it also has substantial evidence to show that it does work. We all need to heed Scharer’s advice and advocate for the importance of teacher expertise.

Debra Zarling is a PK-5 Literacy Coordinator in the Oshkosh Area School District, Oshkosh, WI, and a Reading Recovery Site Coordinator with the Valley Area Reading Recovery Consortium.

What’s the Story?

What’s the Story?

Carissa Hershey2023-02-08T18:10:10-05:00October 23rd, 2019|Classroom Teaching, General Education, Latest News, Reading Recovery Teaching, Reflections and Commentary, Teaching|

by Amy Smith

At the center of all advocacy work is a story. Reading Recovery has a rich tapestry of stories with compelling themes like renewal, transformation, and hope. Our data tells one piece of the story, but it obfuscates the human story. In the end, that’s the true story of Reading Recovery. As a teacher leader, I understand the importance of advocacy. This year, my goal is to give teachers a more organized (and doable) way to collect the richest stories possible about their children.

Teachers as Storytellers: The Sign Project
The teachers I work with are diligent, creative storytellers. In 2014, one of them, Alicia Kelley, came up with a brilliant idea based upon a Facebook campaign that shared personal stories of cancer survivors. Our teachers located over 200 current and former Reading Recovery students (from 1st grade to college senior) and asked them to describe something about their Reading Recovery experience. These messages were transcribed onto 8.5 x 11 signs and we photographed the children holding these. The Sign Project told their stories and helped us understand how profound our impact had been. We compiled all 200 stories into a book and used many in a video we shared with our school board, legislators, and community groups. This summer, I happened upon the book and stopped on the page with a beautiful, smiling child whose sign said “I can read, now.” Although I had seen that picture dozens of times, this time I realized part of this child’s story is missing. My mother (who is obsessed with renovation shows on HGTV) deserves the credit for my epiphany. Watching these shows with her helped me understand the most compelling part is the change, not the outcome. Think about it. Without seeing the house before the renovation, you miss the transformation. We need a way to tell the story of change, from the child’s perspective.

As I thought about how to accomplish this, I looked for guidance from one of my trainers, Dr. Lindy Harmon. Her dissertation focused on the potential of Reading Recovery to shape children’s literate identities; a facet of our story we haven’t told well. Dr. Harmon and I adapted some of the data collection protocols from her study in order to capture children’s perceptions of themselves before, during, and after Reading Recovery. We’re calling this effort, the Identity Project.

2019-2020 Advocacy Work: The Identity Project
This year, teachers affiliated with Madison and Fayette County Reading Recovery sites in Kentucky will ask each child to draw a picture of themselves illustrating how they feel when they engage in reading in their classrooms. Then, using the adapted interview protocol, they will have a conversation with the child and record the responses. Although this is a work in progress, we plan to repeat this process in weeks 1, 5, 10 and at the end of the program. We are very aware that our children have unique paths, but selected these intervals to give teachers an organized process. I asked my teacher, Alicia, for her feedback on our plan. She suggested we also video our students reading at the same intervals to capture parallel changes in reading strength and feelings about the task. She said, “We have the artifacts that show their writing development and can show change with texts, but showing a child reading is much more compelling than the book itself.” Alicia is right!

To organize this data, our teachers will upload scans of the children’s drawings, their interview responses and video clips to our Team Drive. Although analyzing qualitative data is complex (and we are grateful to OSU trainer, Lisa Patrick, for offering to support our analysis) I am excited to learn from the themes our teachers find!

This is a single, tentative example of an effort to communicate the transformational potential of Reading Recovery. If you are reading this blog, I am certain you have additional ideas and examples to enrich this project or innovative ways we might share our story with stakeholders. Afterall, stories only resonate when they reach an audience. As an example, I was inspired by Michigan teacher leader, Maeghan McCormick, who shared that Michigan teacher leaders displayed posters with student stories in a gallery format during their regional conference. This Literacy Walk, arguably a much more poetic name than Sign Project, immersed conference attendees in the stories of their children. While I originally envisioned compiling another book of student stories, I’m suddenly thinking bigger about the eventual display! Maeghan’s willingness to share Michigan’s work led me to realize that even though the topic of this post is advocacy, the subtext is the importance of collaboration. Without colleagues like Maeghan, Dr. Harmon, Dr. Patrick, the Fayette County Teacher Leaders (Beth Magsig and Amy Emmons), and my always-thinking teacher, Alicia, our idea would be much less rich and exciting.

Telling OUR Collective Story
As Reading Recovery professionals, we must be more intentional about sharing our ideas with one another. Imagine the tapestry of stories we can create with our collective voice. I encourage you to share your ideas by writing your own blog post. You can find more information about submitting a blog at Reading Recovery Connections. You can also share your ideas on advocacy with RRCNA Advocacy Committee Chair, Kelly McDermott. And, if you decide to replicate the (still tentative) process described in this post, please share your findings with us.

Dr. Amy Smith is a Reading Recovery teacher leader in Richmond, KY. She has served as Chair of RRCNA’s Advocacy Committee and currently serves as RRCNA’s President Elect.

The Stories We Tell Ourselves: Reading Recovery and the MSV Myth

The Stories We Tell Ourselves: Reading Recovery and the MSV Myth

Carissa Hershey2023-02-08T18:10:10-05:00August 21st, 2019|Classroom Teaching, Latest News, Reading Recovery Teaching, Reflections and Commentary, Teaching|

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:

Foorman Recommendations	Foorman Citations	Clay Citations
Using Elkonin boxes in writing to develop phonemic awareness	pp. 24, 26, 27	pp. 98, 100, 107
Procedures for learning letter-sound relationships through segmentation	p. 19	pp. 58, 98, 100, 106, 107, 173
Procedures for using manipulatives such as magnetic letters for learning how words work	pp. 19, 24	pp. 40, 58, 63, 68, 72, 91, 149, 151, 175
Teaching breaking words by syllables	pp. 15, 16	pp. 95, 107, 149, 173
Teaching onset/rimes	pp. 15, 16, 19	pp. 58, 107, 150, 153, 156, 160, 173
Teaching meaningful parts	pp. 27	pp. 73, 107, 152
Teaching how to isolate and blend word parts smoothly	p. 24	p. 96
Using writing to help with analogies with spelling patterns	p. 26	pp. 90, 105
Within text blending by chunking or in smaller units within text	p. 23	pp. 96, 144, 175
Avoiding guessing strategies	p. 34	pp. 48, 101, 118
Reading connected text daily	pp. 1-3, 22, 28, 32	pp. 20, 110-165

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.

How Do I Navigate the Roundabout in Reading Recovery?

How Do I Navigate the Roundabout in Reading Recovery?

Blog Author2023-02-08T18:10:10-05:00April 10th, 2019|Reading Recovery Teaching|

by Kim Reynolds

You know that feeling that you get in the pit of your stomach when things are uncomfortable or unpredictable? It is not a feeling that I get very often, but it happens as soon as I’m trying to enter one of those crazy roundabouts. Wikipedia defines a roundabout as “a type of circular intersection or junction in which road traffic is permitted to flow in one direction around a central island, and priority is typically given to traffic already in the junction.” As soon as I’m ready to enter the roundabout, I start to panic and feel pressure to move quickly. Hysterically, this is the same uneasiness that I experience when I teach behind the glass.

Last year, I was given the opportunity to bring a challenging student behind the glass to provide a learning experience for my peers at our teacher leader ongoing professional development at The Ohio State University. I reluctantly accepted the invitation, remembering during my Reading Recovery training that I will always need to be tentative, flexible, and willing to problem-solve and collaborate. So there I was — ready to enter the roundabout and starting to panic. Surprisingly, the results of the lesson led to an invitation to participate with Mary Fried in one of the 2019 preconference sessions at the National Reading Recovery and K-6 Literacy Conference. At the time, I wasn’t sure if it was a ‘what not to do’ or ‘try this, not that’ session. I pictured myself as the poster child. Fortunately, Mary didn’t agree with that mugshot image of myself. She wanted to focus on the problem-solving process that we use when we are working with a student who is challenging us. Her process included identifying the problem, issues, and weaknesses, and then seeking collaboration and more analysis. This is exactly what I needed. One of the quotes she referenced for this amazing process was from Charles Kettering: “A problem well stated is a problem half solved.”

The Reading Recovery student who I taught in that behind-the-glass lesson was an English learner who had made accelerated gains but had plateaued. The lesson was pleasant, but I knew that I needed to make a shift in my teaching to lift her learning. I had entered the roundabout and was circling, knowing that my teaching and my student were the priority. I needed to listen carefully to my peers’ feedback as we problem solved together and remember that I had accepted their invitation for my learning and teaching. Their recommendations led to the biggest shifts in my teaching during the following two days. I was able to tentatively exit the roundabout with a plan of action. My videos over those next few days, which Mary insisted that I do, were powerful and revealing! I had actually not stunted my student’s literacy growth but was ready and empowered to support her next steps.

Those next steps also lead to my participation in the 2019 Reading Recovery preconference session entitled “Problem Solving Together: Learning from Children Who Challenge Our Teaching.” I was thrilled to work with my Ohio State University trainers, Mary Fried and Dr. Lisa Pinkerton, and teacher leader Jennifer Layne from Marion. Apparently, Mary wanted to highlight my roundabout journey and those of my colleagues. We didn’t realize it, but we were headed into the largest roundabout that we had ever encountered. It wasn’t just a single lane, but multiple lanes, and Mary was going to guide us through it. We would be able to navigate those lanes together through our collaboration and problem solving.

My school’s conference room became our think tank. As I sat in that room, I remember asking myself “What the hell am I doing?” and “What on earth can I contribute?” Mary had a vision and she wasn’t going to let anything get in our way, even my own insecurities. As we began to discuss the students who challenged us, Mary patiently, eloquently, and brilliantly tied it all together into an amazing learning opportunity. She methodically led us to utilize Clay’s work and helped us—through her questions and guidance—to better understand our students’ challenges, often redirecting us in a charmingly negative way. Mary’s notetaking, time management, and eye and ear for detail is astounding and focused us on our endless learning, questioning, and revising of our own teaching.

At the end of each of our sessions, I was exhausted and exhilarated! I realized that I will always be a learner and should not be afraid of the challenges — those roundabouts. Nothing is impossible when we work collaboratively and tentatively. My great uncle’s college roommate, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, said “Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.” Mary helped me to better understand this quote. I’m not afraid of those roundabouts anymore, not even the big ones.

Kim Reynolds is a Reading Recovery teacher leader in Dublin/Southwestern Schools, Dublin, Ohio.

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