Language Arts Framer’s Meeting

1. Language Arts Framer’s Meeting State of the State in Reading November 12, 2008 Evan Lefsky, Ph.D.

11. Reading K-3 vs. 4-12 Reading K-3 Acquire strategies for “decoding” unfamiliar words Build “sight word vocabulary” of many thousands of words Learn to coordinate skills for fluent reading of text Begin extension of vocabulary beyond oral language limits Acquire variety of strategies for enhancing comprehension, or repairing it when it breaks down Develop or maintain a positive attitude about reading and view it as an important skill for learning and for pleasure

12. Reading K-3 vs. 4-12 Reading 4-12 Extend “sight vocabulary” to unfamiliar words in increasingly challenging text Learning meanings of thousands of new words – vocabulary expansion Increasingly detailed knowledge of text structures and genres Expansion of content knowledge in many domains Thinking and reasoning skills increase Reading specific comprehension strategies become more complex

13. Why Oral language experience is not enough • Frequency of Word Use in Major Sources of Oral and Written Language (Hayes & Ahrens, 1988) • Rare Words per 1,000 • Printed texts II. Television texts • Newspapers 68.3 Adult shows 22.7 • Popular magazines 65.7 Children’s shows 20.2 • Adult books 52.7 • Children’s books 30.9 III. Adult speech • Preschool books 16.3 College graduates 17.3 • talk with friends/ • spouses

14. “Ensuring adequate ongoing literacy development for all students in the middle and high school years is a more challenging task than ensuring excellent reading education in the primary grades, for two reasons: first, secondary school literacy skills are more complex, more embedded in subject matters, and more multiply determined; second, adolescents are not as universally motivated to read better or as interested in school-based reading as kindergartners.” Biancarosa & Snow, (2005)

15. Each year skills and knowledge required to meet standards increases Must be able to draw upon more extensive background knowledge Must learn to deal with longer sentences and more complex ideas Must acquire many new vocabulary words Must learn to recognize many new words automatically 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th 10th 11th 12th

16. Teaching Reading is Urgent A student at the 10th percentile reads about 60,000 words a year in 5th grade A student at the 50th percentile reads about 900,000 words a year in 5th grade Average students receive about 15 times as much practice in a year (Anderson, Wilson, & Fielding, 1988)

17. The consequences of early and continuing reading difficulties Lack of reading practice-affects fluency Lack of wide reading-affects growth of vocabulary and knowledge of the world Lack of wide reading- affects growth of strategic reading skills Limited reading of classroom assignments- affects growth of essential knowledge Loss of interest in reading and learning

18. Primary Characteristics of Struggling Readers in Elementary, Middle and High School They are almost always less fluent readers—sight word vocabularies many thousands of words smaller than average readers Usually know the meanings of fewer words Usually have less conceptual knowledge Are almost always less skilled in using strategies to enhance comprehension or repair it when it breaks down Will typically not enjoy reading or choose to read for pleasure

19. Why Kids Struggle with Reading • Inadequate understanding of the words used in text • Inadequate background knowledge about the domains represented in text • Lack of familiarity with the semantic and syntactic structures that can help predict the relationships between words • Lack of knowledge about different writing conventions that are used to achieve different purposes via text • Verbal reasoning ability which enables the reader to “read between the lines” • Ability to remember verbal information (Lyon, 2002)

20. What Will It Take? • Strong assessment system • Content area reading (will not get the job done for some students) • Reading intervention classes (will never get the job done alone) • Differentiated intensity based on need • “Adequate” progress is different with a struggling reader

21. Reading, Writing, and Discussion as the Norm Every day, every classroom Reading to kids every day Kids asking the questions, not the teachers Kids reading leveled content texts everyday to practice skills and build domain knowledge Strong core instructional principles in every classroom first Integration across content areas

22. This is what we want in terms of instruction! (Deschler, 2008)

23. 1. Lecture/read 2. Give directions 3. Listening 4. Ask questions 5. Monitor 6. Model 7. Verbal rehearsal 8. Simple enhancer 9. Advance organizer 10. Role Play 11. Content Enhancement (complex) 12. Elaborated Feedback 13. Write on board 14. Describe skill/strategy 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Observation of Teacher Practice Study

25. 1. Lecture/read 2. Give directions 3. Listening 4. Ask question 5. Monitor 6. Model 7. Verbal rehearsal 8. Simple enhancer 9. Advance organizer 10. Role Play 11. Content Enhancement (complex) 12. Elaborated Feedback 13. Write on board 14. Describe skill/strategy 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 1. Lecture/read 2. Give directions 3. Listening 4. Ask question 5. Monitor 6. Model 7. Verbal rehearsal 8. Simple enhancer 9. Advance organizer 10. Role Play 11. Content Enhancement (complex) 12. Elaborated Feedback 13. Write on board 14. Describe skill/strategy

26. Engagement/Motivation • Students need one of the following to attach to: • A topic • An adult • A reason to keep them going • Engaging curriculum=kids keep going when text gets tough • Amount of engaged reading correlates higher with reading achievement than gender, family income, or parental education (Guthrie)

27. Classroom Practices that Build Engagement • Relevance • Microchoice • Lack of Success-Single biggest source of disengagement • Relationships • Thematic Units

28. Challenges of FCAT • Endurance • Reading and writing for 160 minutes • Text Length average=900 words • No connection to text • MOTIVATION!

29. What Teachers Can Do Ensure students: • Read extensively “in all classes” to build text knowledge and fluency • Read for longer periods of time • Read longer texts • Read texts that are linked to the curriculum • Build background knowledge and vocabulary • Have access to self-selected texts related to the content unit being studied

30. Test preparation • Test preparation versus test practice • Teach deeply to the standards • Stay away from test practice books • Good teaching doesn’t mean lower scores • Avoid FCAT Explorer abuse

31. Research-Based Reading Classroom (Guthrie, 2002) • Which factors effect FCAT reading scores?

32. Research-Based Reading Classroom • Which components should we focus on?

33. What We Know from Research The scientific research on vocabulary instruction reveals that most vocabulary is learned indirectly and that some vocabulary must be taught directly. (National Reading Panel, 2001)

34. Indirect Vocabulary Learning Students learn vocabulary indirectly when they hear and see words used in many different contexts – for example, through conversations with adults, through being read to, and through reading extensively on their own.

35. Direct Vocabulary Learning Students learn vocabulary directly when they are explicitly taught both individual words and word-learning strategies. Direct vocabulary instruction aids reading comprehension.

36. Vocabulary Big, LargeLittle, Small Huge Tiny Enormous Miniscule Gigantic Minute Colossal Petite

37. Vocabulary Pretty, BeautifulHappy, Glad Gorgeous Ecstatic Lovely Blissful Exquisite Joyous Attractive Content Fair Pleased

38. Reading, Writing, Oral Language Connection • Require complete sentences and academic language, both orally and in writing • Show and discuss with students models of good writing • Forcing support for ideas and identification before writing or discussion

39. Why is fluency important? • Fluency affects comprehension. When one must concentrate on decoding the text there is less memory available for constructing meaning. • Fluency affects flexibility. Good readers change their reading rates according to the difficulty of the text, the importance of the material, and the task at hand. Disfluent readers cannot be flexible.

40. Text difficulty increases Text difficulty increases 18 WPM 23 WPM 22 WPM Correct Words per Minute on Grade Level Text 160 150 140 Correct Words per Minute 130 120 Tindal, Hasbrouck, & Jones, 2005 110 100 F W S F W S F W S 6th Grade 7th Grade 8th Grade

41. Factors Facilitating the Development of Fluency • Management of text difficulty – the text must be matched to the reading ability of the student • Time exposed, time on task, and time engaged in reading • Vocabulary (listening or reading) • Memory – visual, verbal, short- and long-term • Motivation (individualization and ownership) • Confidence (self-efficacy and resilience) • Support (modeling, prompting, and scaffolding) Keith Topping - What Research Has to Say About Fluency Instruction

42. What does it mean to understand? “… in our discussions, in our assignments, in our ‘learning’ materials, we ask students to do little more than answer questions; restate, retell, or summarize text in some way; and learn content-related vocabulary. And when they can do those three things, we conclude that they understand.” Ellin Oliver Keene, 2007, p. 32 The Essence of Understanding in Adolescent Literacy: Turning Promise into Practice

43. Classroom Connection If we want our students to move beyond basic knowledge and summary learning . . . What do students need to be able to do differently? What needs to change in our instructional practices? How do our assessments need to change?

44. Characteristics of Proficient Readers • Search for connections between what they know and new information • Ask questions of themselves, the authors, and the texts they read • Draw inferences during and after reading • Distinguish important from less important ideas • Synthesize information • Repair faulty comprehension • Monitor their comprehension • Visualize and create mental images

45. Richard Allington, 2006, p. 135 What Really Matters for Struggling Readers “Thoughtful literacy is more than remembering what the text said. It is engaging the ideas in texts, challenging those ideas, reflecting on them, and so on.”

46. Marion Brady, 2008, p. 66 Cover the material – or teach students to think? Educational Leadership, 65(5) “For centuries, the central question directed at the young has been, How much do you remember? The proper questions for this era are, What’s going on here? Why? Where is it likely to take us and what should we be doing?”

47. Reading Standards: Critical Areas • Are they clear and measurable • Explicit and systematic instruction in decoding skills in the primary grades • Use of various comprehension strategies • Use of meaningful reading materials • Expectation for daily independent reading in grades K-12 (in and out of school) • Guidance on minimum quantity (differentiated) • Guidance about quality • Progressive development of reading vocabulary • Word study • Broad reading • Listening

48. Reading Standards: Critical Areas • Balance of literary and non-literary texts should be achieved in the upper grades through varying content areas • Categorized by bodies of research in reading • Focus on how to participate in group discussions of varying purposes and in different roles • Address reading to understand and use information (K-12) • Progressive development of reading skills • Phonemic awareness • Phonics instruction • Fluency • Comprehension and study strategies (skimming, questioning, summarizing, note-taking, and paraphrasing)

49. Reading Standards: Critical Areas • Knowledge and use of text features, genres, and reading strategies for academic, occupational, and civic purposes • Customary features of informational text (purpose, organization, table of contents, index) • Different types of informational text are represented (newspapers, instruction manuals) • Research process (developing questions and locating, evaluating, and synthesizing information) • Clear expectations about the reading levels of texts required at a particular grade level through examples (both literary and academic)

50. Fluency is the key! Read, Write, and Discuss Everyday!