“When Older Students Can’t Read” by Louisa Moats

1. “When Older Students Can’t Read” by Louisa Moats Predict/Question/Infer strategy from Oczkus (during reading, good readers look for answers to our questions Some questions could be answered in the text/others are answered by inferring (I think/I wonder) Discussion (and we’ll continue application to our student cases from the Yopp-Singer

2. Discussion on Readings: • Santa/Hoien article: “An Assessment of Early Steps: A Program for Early Intervention of Reading Problems” • Questions about word study implementation? Components covered? • Stahl article • Rasinski, listing for components of good phonics intervention with reading programming

3. Diagnostic Testing • Yopp-Singer Test of Phoneme Segmentation, discussion, insights • Subtests from Comprehensive Reading Inventory

4. Appropriateness of Reading Materials: Readability Formulas • Two components to estimate difficulty • **Word Difficulty (by estimating the frequency of use or word length) • **Sentence Complexity (most often measured by sentence length) • Allington: both these have same complexity: “John went to the store. He bought some candy.” & “Candy some bough he. Sotre the to went John”. (doesn’t account for whether text is well written or even makes sense!!!)

5. Readability Formulas: Estimates • Account for picture support, child’s interest, student’s prior knowledge • Accelerated Reader & Reading Counts- large supply of books rated for difficulty • Text books are produced using readability formulas; based on sentence length, so: • Authors may omit conjunctions! (Then relationships between ideas have to be inferred and it’s really more difficult!)

6. Leveling Books • Marie Clay (Reading Recovery) made us aware of book leveling in first grade • Fountas & Pinnell have Matching Books with Readers (Heinemann) with 7,500 titles • Many types of book leveling-misleading to parents!

7. How to Level a Book • Use a bench mark text –texts representing different grade levels or segments of a grade level – beginning second, etc. • Skim through book (page format, type size, sentence length, topic familiarity, vocabulary familiarity, story predictability • Find a benchmark book that closely approximates the difficulty of the book to be leveled • Have book leveling “parties” with teachers – teachers become more expert at leveling & they could monitor book difficulty across the year—enhanced sensitivity to book-kid matching problem; can do it with class libraries • Once child is reading, you can see if book is a good “fit”; • Indications that book is too hard: subvocalizing can be indication that book is too challenging; book too close to face; brow furrowed, mentally or physically ‘wandering’ –all indications the book’s too hard

8. Better Estimate of Appropriateness of Text for a Child Than Readability Formulas? • Modification of running records to determine accuracy of word recognition in context • Note fluency– good, fair, poor • Put check mark for words correct & ‘x’ for incorrect words; every time a child begins a new line, drop down & begin a new row of checks & ‘x’es. • Then calculate the overall accuracy (number of words read correctly divided by total words in passage. • **Regular monitoring of difficulty, or lack of it, that students experience is a component of effective instruction. • Class libraries should be stocked—10-15 books per child; reflecting cultural genres in the school • Jim Trelease – Read Aloud Handbook has seen rain gutters used to display outside of books//// Our basket, “You just GOT to read it”

9. Word Recognition in Isolation • Word Lists on QRI – quick way to determine starting point for reading passages • Word Lists measure accuracy of word identification • Speed & automaticity of recognition • Determine starting point for reading passages • Start at Pre primer – some say start two grade levels below actual students’ grade level

10. Word Lists • How accurate are they at identifying words? • How automatic when identifying words? • What decoding strategies are used by the student? • Is there a difference between their performance on words in isolation & words in context?

11. Administering Word List • Read directions for word lists to students • Scoring: identified automatically (with a second) OR identified by delayed (sounded out or delayed) • Self correction: write SC & count as correct

12. Administering Word List • Find independent, instructional and frustration levels • 90% and above, 18-20 words • 70-89%, instructional • Less than 70%, frustration • Determining basal & ceiling – move onto next grade level word list until frustration level is reached; back up one grde level word list until independent level is reached. • WORD LISTS: Give it a try!

13. Word Recognition in Context • Difference between running records & record of oral reading • Miscue chart (for total accuracy) p.72, QRI-4 • Omission – circle the word • Insertion – mark carot and write the word inserted • Self correction – write miscue and mark with SC • Reversal – show transposition of two words with squiggly symbol • Total accuracy – count all miscues as errors – insertions, omissions, substitutions, reversals, and self-corrections

14. Word Recognition in Context, continued • Total Accuracy • Total Acceptability – some errors are acceptable if they do not change the meaning or distort passage meaning (Meaning changes – best predictor) – another way to score

15. Counting Oral Errors • Total Accuracy – count all errors • Do not count: repetitions, hesitations, or omission of punctuation (for total accuracy) • Proper names: one error if consistently the same • Same miscue on the same word with no meaning change = one error • Articulation/dialect error: no error

16. Scoring: Accuracy Word Recognition in Context • Subtract the number of errors from the total number of words listed at the end of the story • Divide • Independent 98% accuracy or above • Instructional 90-97% accuracy (I would say more like 95-97% on most IRIs) • Frustration – less than 90% accuracy

17. Beginning Readers • From concept of word through first grade reading • Still importance of fluency for those readers • Silent reading begins at the end of first grade; then transitional reader • Fluency should be 40% of the time for beginning readers---really critical in first grade

18. Fluency • Means accurate & fast reading at word level, with good prosody (expression) • Demonstrated links between fluency & comprehension • Fluency can be developed by rereading of texts; has positive effects on comprehension • Fluency should be a goal for struggling readers – could do more higher order literacy tasks when material is read accurately, fluently and with reasonable recall of text content

19. Fluency • Famous J.Samuels article – have the graph • Talks about the only way a word can be comprehended, given time limitation and attentional capacity was that some parts had to be automatic; Less mature readers expend more capacity---LaBerge & Samuels said: distributed practice better than mass practice! • Strange piece of article reading it today: lots of attention on VISUAL analysis & perceptual learning of letters (the psychology of the day back in 1974) • Velluntino (1979) summarized the evidence that reading disabilities represented more about verbal impairments—not visual –especially at the word level –the verbal is very key to understanding reading—both disabled reading and skilled reading

20. Fluency, continued • For really troubled beginning readers, phonics is not going to be enough to assure fluent reading; NICHD concluded that more phonics is required for fluency to develop – from brain imagery work • Systematic phonics: helpful in promoting fluency in some at risk readers; not panacea for all struggling readers • Shayowitz, 2002: for mature readers, activate a set of three sites on the left side of the brain more reliably than readers with dyslexia & that dyslexic show impairment in these areas • Message from brain research: probably some individuals with brain differences that preclude them from becoming fluent readers – unfamiliar words disrupt reading, even if memorize many words • General intelligence should be considered: Shayowitz observed that as a group, those who learned to compensate were slightly above average in intelligence ; the compensating readers did about as well as nonimpaired adults on comprehension measures

21. Fluency Studies, continued • Studies on phonologically based interventions: better word recognition & slightly faster reading as well as very slightly better comprehension after 1 year intervention • Slow verbal processing speed can impair fluency for some readers; process impairs the speed of decoding, even though it is not rooted in phonological ability; processing speed biologically based difference between children; implications for whether fluency can develop with practice • Univ. of Kansas Study: individual differences with reading disabled: generally process verbal information more slowly than other children

22. More on Fluency • Can be developed in the classroom with repeated readings and teacher feedback; • Kuhn & Stahl (2003) said that adult assistance was quite important with respect to increasing fluency; simple repeated readings by a child would not get as good results as repeated readings with adult assistance • Evidence that readers should confront more challenging rather than easy texts as they experience fluency instruction • Biemiller & Slonim (2001) – have analysis to identify words understood by 80% of children at each grade level; by 2nd grade, children should know 5000 root words; After that they gain 1000 words/year

23. Fluency, continued • Rapid automatic decoding improved comprehension; probably by freeing up short term capacity for comprehension • Prosody – little attention played in fluent reading; rereading tends to increase prosody – other approaches like modeling by teacher seems to not have as much impact

24. Final Notes • DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) – has been deployed widely at primary and now upper levels to measure the speed of accurate reading; children can read with great speed & accuracy and yet not recall many ideas in the text---raises real issues (some think reason to reexamine the validity of the instrument in regard to skilled reading • Kids learn to be better readers by utilizing comprehension strategies – huge gains in achievement; many kids in studies were far from being fluent readers, but using comprehension strategies more than made up for lack of fluency • Encourage extensive reading • Books on Tape – special services or Recordings for the Blind & Dyslexic in Princeton, New Jersey