So we’re sold on it: intensive reading pedagogy in adult literacy

So we’re sold on it:intensive reading pedagogy in adult literacy Helen de Silva Joyce QCAL Conference 2007

NCVER research project 2007 ORGANISATIONS AND RESEARCHERS • Directorate of Community and Migrant Education NSW DET Helen de Silva Joyce • University of Technology Sydney Dr Sue Hood • Learning to read Dr David Rose

ORGANISATIONS, TEACHERS AND STUDENTS • 6 teachers of ESL and ABE classes • Students ranging from beginner to intermediate levels • Students from NESB and ESB backgrounds • St George and Sutherland Community College • The Parramatta College • Padstow TAFE

Impetus for the research • Concern about limited time available to adult students to achieve skills • Concern that critiques of progressive pedagogies had not been systematically debated in adult ABE and ESL contexts • The marked success of the Read-to-Learn methodology in a range of other educational settings and sectors indicated its potential for success in adult literacy programs • Concern for African learners in the AMEP

Methodology Combination of teacher development, action research and data analysis Strategies included: • Teacher feedback though discussion and teaching practice records • Classroom observation • Videotaping and audiotaping of classrooms • Miscue analysis of random selection of students reading • Analysis of classroom discourse • Individual interviews and focus groups • Whole-class writing task at beginning of project • Whole-class writing task at end of project • Analysis of overall data

Teacher development within the project Teachers attended four 2-day sessions: Session 1 Introduced the intensive scaffolding approach to reading and writing, using video recordings of demonstration lessons and prepared lesson plans Session 2 Reviewed initial implementation of the approach and introduced lesson planning strategies

Session 3 Reviewed implementation using teacher lesson plans and introduced text analysis techniques for ESOL and ABE contexts Session 4 Teachers and researchers reviewed feedback and observation data to consider the relevance of the approach to ESOL and ABE contexts As the project was drawing to a close the teachers requested an additional workshop to review the project overall and to focus in more detail on assessment.

The pedagogy The pedagogy in brief involves episodes of carefully structured and scaffolded intensive reading of carefully chosen passages of key texts. The chosen texts are relevant to the student in terms of their educational goals and pitched slightly above their current reading ability. Students then write texts that are closely patterned on the reading text.

1 Prepare before reading 2 Detailed reading 6 Independent rewriting 3 Prepare for writing 5 Individual rewriting 4 Joint rewriting The curriculum cycle The principle of the cycle is to systematically support students to succeed with each component of the reading and writing tasks, one step at a time, from the top down. This approach can be applied across the curriculum, at all levels of education. The program gives all students support in a six-stage teaching cycle.

The curriculum stages 1 Preparing before reading: orients students to the genre and field of the text 2 Detailed reading: the teacher supports all students to read each sentence in a short passage 3 Preparing for writing: students plan exactly what they are going to write, based closely on the passage they have studied in Detailed reading

4 Joint rewriting: the teacher supports the class to write a new text patterned on the reading text 5 Individual rewriting: students practise writing a new text using the same patterns as the reading and joint rewriting texts 6 Independent writing: students use what they have learnt from the preceding stages to write an independent text

General findings • The programming and teaching contexts of adult literacy have a number of characteristics which make the implementation of explicit carefully planned methodologies crucial if students are to develop reading and writing skills sufficient to enable them to participate in social and work contexts during the time they have available to study. • Teachers are very accustomed to adapting and making on-the-go decisions about what to do next in classrooms. However, the Reading to Learn pedagogy relies on very careful attention to wording and meaning relations within texts, and requires teachers to unlearn some common practices that amount more to testing than teaching.

The reading abilities of students are frequently underestimated. Initial reading assessments often begin with unchallenging texts which do not challenge students sufficiently to indicate directions for development. Initial assessments therefore do not provide adequate data for indicating progress. • There is also some reluctance to draw on challenging texts in teaching reading. This appears to result from the dominance of reading tasks that essentially test and do not teach reading, and to a lack of confidence in teaching reading.

Initially reading tasks were dominated by various kinds of read-and-answer-question activities. Activities did not build the relationships of language to meanings, either in terms of the way meanings unfolded in phases of texts or at the microlevel of wordings within texts. • A more broadly based introduction of the Reading-to-Learn pedagogy will require professional development workshops for teachers interwoven with periods of implementation, reflection and classroom observation.

1 What differences in learning outcomes eventuate from a more intensive and scaffolded approach to the teaching of reading? Teachers reported improved reading and writing performances on the part of their students. T6 reported, for example, spontaneous applause erupting from her group as one of her intellectually disabled students read a text aloud by himself in class, for the first time. The gains were clearly evident in this case to all other students in the group.

Teachers reported a number of unexpected outcomes for students that show evidence of improved reading and writing skills. There was agreement that students gained a much improved grasp of grammatical structures and an interest in observing and talking about language.

Teacher 3: My students have learnt, have really appreciated unpacking nominal groupsbut alsowedid some work repacking which wasn’t what we did here but I wrote the sentences up four sentences and we repacked them into one sentence. A lot of work. Researcher: That’s a really good skill for writing. Teacher 1: Oh yeah.

Teachers commented that where students would initially want to translate wordings into their own languages, or look up all unfamiliar words in an electronic dictionary, this was greatly reduced over the duration of the semester in which the Reading-to-Learn pedagogy was trialled. In some cases students were prepared to give this up entirely as they were introduced and supported into more effective means for understanding texts.

2 Does a more intensive and scaffolded approach to the teaching of reading affect learner responses to reading? Teacher feedback suggests that student responses were generally positive. The teachers reported that as students became familiar with the pedagogy and experienced success in reading in successive cycles of Reading to Learn, they became more confident in approaching reading tasks.

Teacher 4: And actually, I applied this strategy in my class and it really worked well. My students appreciated it and now they’re quite comfortable with reading. In fact, last week I asked Ng and Sakanda, they were in the class, two of my students and without any help, they really read comfortably. Researcher: And those people are really low level, aren’t they? Teacher 4: Yes, yes. In fact ... their spoken English is quite okay but reading and writing is extremely poor. But after this, I can see the difference in their work a bit and I’m happy with that. Researcher: That’s fantastic. Teacher 4: Then I said okay, you want me to read this one again? They said no, this time we want to have a go. I said that’s called ‘confidence’. Let’s do it. And they did it. And when someone was reading, other students were helping. That’s real nice … That’s something I want to see. So when they did it, I just stopped and I looked at them … They managed to read the whole passage. So I mean they were quite comfortable with that one … Now they can read much better than before, all three of them. Researcher: And they’re feeling better about that? Teacher 4: Yes, that’s right, yeah. And they accepted this method. Now they are quite comfortable with that one.

Teacher 5 Yeah, I’ve been doing ... I teach a few mornings a week and I’ve been doing the program with the same class. We’ve done about five or six cycles. They’re from beginners and intermediate but they have really good [unclear – mumbling]. So we don’t do it every week, maybe every second or every third week and at first, they resisted a little bit because it often went all day because I’d see them once a week for four hours. And yeah I remember the first week, one of them said are we going to do normal reading too?[chuckle] But yeah, just the one I did last week they really like it now because the main comment they had is they’re trying out new words which they wouldn’t have thought of writing before or wouldn’t dare use, so get from using new language.

Another indicator of student approval was in the significant improvement in attendance patterns as the teachers implemented the pedagogy. Students were expecting classes to offer them rewards for the effort of attendance. They were unwilling to miss out. In some classes teachers also reported increased levels of students supporting their peers.

Teacher 1: My students and I are both sold on it [methodology], so we’re sold. It’s been very successful. In fact it’s kept my students coming to class. You know um in that particular level in our TAFE college, it’s only a small TAFE college, we have had historically a problem keeping people coming to class because of our population. We have older students who usually have family or work pressures, and increasingly work pressures in the government climate these days. Um so, starting off with say a small class of around 12, you’re getting 12 enrolments and it gets whittled back and whittled back. But they’ve kept coming, primarily because they’re enjoying the reading classes ... But they have gotten so much out of the reading because quite often, you know we've been focusing on media, they get stuck on the vocabulary or with the reference from outside, exophoric reference. So they’ve appreciated very much the classes and as I said they’ve kept coming …

3 Does a more intensive and scaffolded approach to the teaching of reading affect other educational outcomes for adult literacy students eg: writing skills? While the pedagogy focuses on reading, this is seen as foundational to also learning to write. Development of spoken language skills also develop from reading and interacting within the pedagogy. One of the problematic aspects of developing writing has always been access to content and to the language needed to compose texts. Teachers reported widespread improvement in writing outcomes. They attributed this to developing awareness of text structure, expanded vocabulary and a growing sense of grammatical structuring on the part of the students, gained through the detailed reading and the joint rewriting stages of the pedagogy.

Teacher 3 And the third cycle I’ve done letter writing, I’ve used a really complex government written letter as a model and I’ve got some really good results in their writing and can see a really big improvement in the complex sentences and the grammar that they, even what I was really amazed with is that they’ve picked up articles, prepositions, um all those little things that normally we wouldn’t expect them to pick up. So the third cycle I’m really pleased, I’ve got some good results. I’ve been through, I did everything, sentence-maker and note-taking. Researcher: Why do you think they pick up the articles and prepositions? Is it that focus on the chunking? Teacher 3: Yeah chunking and phrases big time … In the beginning, especially with the letter, the complex letter, when they first got it they looked at it and they go ‘Are you kidding? Like are you gonna teach us this?’ They were a little bit frustrated and it was the second lesson that I had with them. And they go ‘No we can’t do this. This is too hard.’ And then by the end of it, they said ‘Oh that was really good, we can see we’ve improved our writing and understanding. Um so overall I think it’s a good project

Teacher 3: I think it was good because it engaged them. After your lesson, I got them the next day to do the independent writing and they did really well the next day, even though that was the next day, so most of them did well in that. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, I guess I’d like to know a bit more about it but they were good lessons because it kept them interested the whole time. Teacher 5: Yeah, but they really like the joint construction on the board [chuckle]. They really enjoy that part, yeah. So yeah, it's been going quite well. I find they do have problems with they’re using the right words but the little bits in-between like the ‘have been’ and ‘was’ and the grammar side of it but still improvement.

4 What changes in teacher attitudes and practices are necessary to implement a more intensive and scaffolded approach to the teaching of reading? In general terms, the implementation of the Reading-to-Learn approach requires teachers to embrace a new focus on reading in their programs, to undertake training in identifying the ways meanings and wordings pattern and relate in texts, and how to guide and scaffold all their students to full comprehension of texts. At a more microlevel, the pedagogy requires changes in the ways teachers engage with students in their classes. It requires teachers to learn new protocols that ensure that ALL students are able to participate successfully, and to build in constant and meaningful praise in response to the successes that students continually achieve in reading and understanding.

5 What is the best means to train practising adult ESOL and ABE teachers to implement a more intensive and scaffolded approach to the teaching of reading? • Overall teachers have limited time with students, compared to schools, and often courses are less intensive. • The teaching force is increasingly casualised with teachers having to work across a diverse range of programs and providers to earn a living. • Student attendance patterns are often erratic and completion rates are low. • The teaching contexts in community settings, in many instances, are poorly resourced. • Participants need to commit to the full range of training activities.

To introduce Reading to Learn to the adult literacy sector requires commitment of time and funds. • It is important to target centres or locations that already have in place strong literacy strategies and strongly supportive senior staff and program managers. • To introduce the Reading-to-Learn approach into the sector it is important to initially work with full-time teachers who volunteer and undertake to commit to the period of training, implementation and evaluation. • The detailed training resources need to be revised for adult contexts and the materials need to make links to specific adult literacy and language curricula outcomes. • Reading-to-Learn training in adult contexts needs to give greater emphasis to criteria for text selection and assessment processes.

Recently, Darren has been using a new teaching method to help us learn English in our class. It’s a brand new experience for everybody. Darren chooses one piece of a little bit harder essay to let us read. He asks us to speak aloud one by one even if we don’t know some of words in the essay and he records each of our reading with a recorder. The second part of his teaching is that he explains the whole essay word by word, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph. He emphasizes on new words pronunciation and asks us to practise as well so that he can correct us gradually. He also analyses the structure of the sentences with grammar. He demands us to highlight every main word, phrase and clause when he explains it to us. And then, he asks us to read aloud again sentence by sentence and follow his reading. The third part of his teaching is that he asks two of us to write a list of main words, phrases and clauses on blackboard we have highlighted in each paragraph and we help them to do the job. Then we work together with his help to make up the paragraph on the board without looking at the essay he gave us. It doesn’t matter whether the paragraph is the same as the essay’s one. After we make our own paragraph up correctly he erases it and suggests us to re-write it on our own paper by using the same method .He corrects our works later on when we have finished it. He might ask someone to write his /her paragraph on the board and we can examine it again together. What a fantastic teaching method it is! It involves reading, reading aloud, pronunciation, vocabulary, spelling, comprehension, discussion, grammar as well as writing. I think it is very creative and every member of class gets involved in this procedure. Students can get the biggest benefit from this teaching method even if it is run a little bit more slowly than usual lessons. 16th May 2007

So we’re sold on it: intensive reading pedagogy in adult literacy