Importance and Innovation in Reading Materials

1. Importance and Innovation in Reading Materials All Children Reading by 2015: From Assessment to Action Mary W. Spor, PhD mwspor@aol.com April 12-14, 2010 Washington, DC

2. Grade 1 – Awasa, Ethiopia

3. The Effect… School success in ALL subject areas can be defined by one’s ability to read and comprehend.

4. Ingredients for success… • A formal assessment to determine strengths and needs in terms of necessary early grades reading skills • Benchmarks based on the assessment results in terms of necessary early grades reading skills • Strategic instruction • Progress Monitoring to ensure success

5. Strategic instruction… • Strategic instruction is a systematic approach to building the necessary skills for reading development. It involves using strategies or methods before, during, and after reading to enable students internalize the skills being taught. It provides an avenue to skill development through active and communicative learning.

6. Strategic instruction examples… • Turn and talk • Prediction and verification • Reading aloud • Repeated Readings • Language Experience Approach • Paired and group work • Quick Writes

7. Progress monitoring…Key to success… • Also referred to as Curriculum Based Measurement (CBM) and Response to Intervention (RTI) • Progress monitoring, like strategic instruction, is a process. It is a process that teachers use to make informed instructional decisions by measuring academic progress on a regular basis in relation to established benchmarks.

8. What progress monitoring is and is not… • Mastery measurement “tells teachers whether the student has learned particular skills covered in a unit.” • Progress monitoring tells teachers “whether a student is learning at a pace that will allow him or her to meet annuallearning goals.” (Safer and Fleischman, 2005, p. 81)

9. Fluency… Fluency most commonly is defined as the ability to read aloud with expression, automaticity, and understanding.

10. Progress monitoring measures in Reading…pre-reading • Phoneme segmentation fluency: teacher says a word, students respond by giving the sounds that make up the word. • Letter sound fluency: lower case letters presented in random order; student names the letter and says the sound for each letter.

11. Phoneme segmentation fluency… c/a/t h/a/t sh/o/p m/a/n sk/i/n

12. Letter sound fluency… t a e o n r i s h c d l f g m u y p w b v k x j q z

13. Progress monitoring measures in Reading…reading • Word identification fluency: present a list of high frequency words; student reads the words aloud for one minute. • Passage reading fluency: present a passage for grade at end of year reading level; student reads aloud for one minute. Score is number of words read correctly.

14. Word identification fluency…Dolch Second Grade Sight Vocabulary

15. Passage reading fluency… The Lost Butterfly Today is the beginning of the new school week. During lunch Tilahun is sitting near the window and eating bread. He sees Solomon, his new friend. Solomon is sitting on a bench playing with a stick and looking very sad. Tilahun walks over to Solomon and says, “Hello, how are you?” Solomon answers, “I’m sad because I’ve lost my butterfly.”

16. “The Lost Butterfly” continued… Tilahun points to a bag on the floor and asks, “Is it in the bag?” Solomon shakes his head and says, “No.” Tilahun points to the door and asks, “Is it outside the door?” Solomon shakes his head and says, “No.” The school bell rings. All the students come inside the classroom. Rahel shouts, “There is a butterfly on the window!” All the boys and girls gather around to see the butterfly. Solomon smiles.

17. Suggested reading rates… Forman and Saunders (1998) and Hasbrouck and Tindal (1992)

18. Comprehension and Writing… • Maze fluency: present a passage of year end difficuly for 2.5 minutes with every 7th word deleted and replaced with three possible choices. Score is number of correct replacements. • Writing: student writes for 3-10 minutes based on a story starter. Score is number of correct word sequences.

19. Connecting writing to reading in textbooks…

20. Making a difference…

21. All Children Reading by 2015 READING PASSAGE READING FLUENCY WORD IDENTIFICATION FLUENCY PHONEME SEGMENTATION FLUENCY LETTER NAMING AND LETTERSOUND FLUENCY

22. References Fuchs, L.S. & Fuchs, D. (2002). What is scientifically based research on progress monitoring? (Technical report). Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University. Hasbrouck, J.E. & Tindal, G. (1992). Curriculum-based oral reading fluency norms for students in grades 2-5. Teaching Exceptional Children, 24, 3, 41-44. Hosp, M.K. & Fuchs, L.S. (2005). Using CBM as an indicator of decoding, word reading, and comprehension: Do relations change with grade? School Psychology Review, 34, 9-36. O’Neal, M. R. & Spor M.W. (2007). Results of the evaluation of the USAID/Alabama A&M University 2007 Textbooks and Learning Materials Program Pilot Study. (Technical report). Huntsville and Birmingham, AL: Alabama A&M University and University of Alabama in Birmingham. Safer, N & Fleischman, S. (2005). Research matters/How student progress monitoring improves instruction. Educational Leadership, 62, 5, 81-83. Stecker, P.M. & Fuchs, L.S., (2000). Effecting superior achievement using curriculum-based measurement: The importance of individual progress monitoring. Learning Disabilities Research and Pracitice, 15, 128-134.

23. Working Group Questions based on Presentation by Mary Spor • Discuss the relationship between early grades reading assessment results and curriculum requirements. Focus specifically on the ways for assessment results to drive teaching and learning through curriculum development. • How can benchmarks be established from early reading assessment results. Who should be involved in determining the benchmarks? • What would it take to develop and implement progress monitoring in the early grades in your country? How would progress monitoring affect teaching and learning? What would you expect in terms of results? How can accountability be achieved?