Being a Reading Leader: How to Support Effective Literacy Instruction in the Elementary Classroom

1. Being a Reading Leader: How to Support Effective Literacy Instruction in the Elementary Classroom David J. Chard Quality Quinn University of Oregon Quality Quinn, Inc. California Reading Association Annual Meeting Sacramento, CA November 8, 2002

2. “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat. “I don’t much care where --” said Alice. “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat. “--so long as I get somewhere,” Alice added as an explanation. Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1976)

3. More than half of California 9th Graders Flunk Exit Exam, Education Week, June 2001 “It will take at least ten years to reach proficiency for all learners” Sec. of Ed., PA “adequate yearly progress” Pres. Bush Still Leaving Children Behind Krista Kafta, Heritage Bush Seems to Ease Stance on School Accountability, New York Times, July 2001 Reading is the New Requisite for Math; EducationWeek, January 2002 Recent Headlines and Quotes

4. What it means to Leave No Child Behind 1. States must establish AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) for ALL students within 12 years (2013-2014). 2. AYP must be based on state assessments and must also include one additional academic indicator. 3. Schools that have failed to meet their AYP objective for 2 consecutive years will be identified for improvement. 4. Data must be disaggregated for all subgroups. 5. States may aggregate up to 3 years of data in making AYP decisions.

7. Major Challenges to Impacting Student Achievement • Sustaining a schoolwide improvement initiative • Professional development • Setting and maintaining instructional priorities • Impacting the achievement of ALL learners by meeting the needs of EACH learner

8. What does sustained improvement require? • Contextual fit between effective practices, the school vision, and the classroom environment, • Creative decision-making, long-term planning and investment, • A method for monitoring performance data at the classroom- and student-level, and • Sufficient conceptual and procedural understanding on the part of administrators, teachers, and parents.

9. Mandatory summer school Same thing, but LOUDER Expensive intervention programs with uneven results Teacher training institutions changing reading requirements What is being done?

10. Dedicated developmental reading testing- preparedness program 5th through 8th Continued professional development for ALL teachers in reading intervention 5-12 Initiate on-going professional development in science, social studies, and math reading & writing Integrate a “testwiseness” curriculum for state testing programs with strong emphasis on the content areas What should be done?

11. AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz Teacher Knowledge and Perceptions about Reading

12. “...lower level language mastery is as essential for the literacy teacher as anatomy is for the physician” (Moats, 1994, p.99). Moats, L. (1994). The missing foundation in teacher education: Knowledge of the structure of spoken and written language. Annals of Dyslexia, 44, 81-102.

13. High Road Core-of-Teaching User Commitment and Practice Mastery Low Road Administrative Fiat Innovation Preparing Teachers to Teach Reading Effectively

14. Low Road Administrative Fiat • Advantages: • Faster • Problems/Potential Problems: • Administrators leave • Administrators adapt to shifts in state or national policies • No institutional memory • Administrative support wanes over time • Assumption: • Linear model--teacher receives information and acts accordingly

15. High Road User Commitment and Practice Mastery • Advantage: • Teachers who reach mastery on a particular innovation are • likely to sustain its use • Problems/Potential Problems: • Time consuming • Resource intensive • May lose investment if teachers leave or retire • Assumption: • Recursive model--teacher change requires practice and reflection

16. Conceptual Practice Teacher Understanding Better Teaching

17. Scientifically-Based Reading Research Beginning to Read (1990) Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children (1998) National Reading Panel Report (2000) Handbook of Reading Research (2001)

18. Three Muscles: • Early Language Experience • Phonemic awareness and concept development • Vocabulary, academic language and alphabetic principle • Decoding muscle • Three ways of getting meaning off the page • (1) phonics…primary decoding strategy • (2) semantics and vocabulary • (3) syntax and structure • Fluency muscle • Reads a lot of words fast w/ comprehension* • Class libraries of leveled or decodable text • Every day, every reader reading at a level of success of self-selected quality literature

19. Oral vocabulary in grade 1 predicts about 30% of grade 11 comprehension. (Stanovich & Cunningham, 1997) If readers understand less than 95% of the words in a text, they lose the meaning of the text. (Biemiller, 2001) Vocabulary differences in K-2 prevent children from ‘catching up’ in comprehension in the later grades. (Biemiller, 2001; Biemiller & Slonim, in press) Increased Emphasis on Vocabulary

20. Phonemic Awareness More Complex Activities Less Complex Activities Blending & segmenting individual phonemes Onset-rime, blending, & segmentation Syllable segmentation & blending Sentence segmentation Rhyming songs

21. Alphabetic Understanding and Phonics Words in the spoken language can be represented by printed symbols. Printed symbols are arranged from left to right when written. Each sound in a word is represented by a symbol or symbols.

22. 26 letters and 44 sounds 17 reliable letters, (letters that always sound the same) q, w, r, t, p, d, f, h, j, k, l, z, x, v, n, m, b 4 that are switch hitters... s, g, c, r 3 that are pests ...a, o, u 3 that will make you CRAZY!!!!…i,e,y Double vowels: oa, oo, ee, ea, oi, ou, au Blends: ch, sh, wh, pl, sl, fl, gl, cl, bl, kl,cr,scr News Flash!!!!!

23. Reading Speed Fluency Accuracy Prosody Understanding and Promoting Fluency

25. Comprehension is defined as: “intentional thinking during which meaning is constructed through interactions between the text and the reader” (Harris & Hodges,1995) Definition of Comprehension

26. Research Validated Comprehension Strategies National Reading Panel (2000) recommends: • Question answering, • Comprehension monitoring, • Cooperative learning, • Graphic/semantic organizers/story maps, • Question generation, and • Summarization.

27. On-going, sustained test readiness and rehearsal, i.e. testwiseness Phonics instruction for those who received “hit-or-miss” decoding during whole language approach Build fluency with an “every day, every child reads at a level of success” approach Use regular non-fiction writing events to teach science & social studies syntax Testwiseness: An Important Piece of a Comprehensive Intervention Strategy

28. Project Optimize (Simmons & Kame’enui, 2001) Objective: To identify the features of a kindergarten intervention in literacy that would alter the learning trajectory for each struggling reader.

29. Participants 1. 441 Kindergarten children from 7 schools in Oregon screened on: a. Onset Recognition Fluency (m = <7) b. Letter Naming Fluency (m = <3) 2. Bottom 25% on both criterion measures invited to an “extended-day” kindergarten intervention (112 participated)

33. Observed Growth in PSF by Intervention

34. Observed Growth in Phonics

35. General Findings • Implementing a systematic program of instruction with fidelity is • more effective that incidental teaching. • Not all instructional elements are of equal importance to struggling • readers. 3. • Providing scaffolded instruction as a supplement to the core • instructional program is crucial for all children to succeed.

36. Vertical team study of K-8 reading curriculum with evidence of student work Phonics training for 3rd through 8th grade teachers Vocabulary instruction training geared more toward “word harvest” Ready availability of compelling leveled text with conditional assessment Classroom management strategies that provide intensity and focus for below level readers Five Steps to Two Years’ Growth for One Year of Instruction

38. Useful References

39. Adams, M.J. (2000). Beginning to Read: thinking and learning about print. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Alexander, K. & Entwisle, D. (1996). Schools and children at risk. In A. Booth & J. Dunn (Eds.). Family-school links: How do they affect educational outcomes? Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Baker, L. (1994). Contexts of emergent literacy: Everyday home experiences of urban pre-kindergarten children. College Park, MD: National Reading Research Center. Baker, L., D. Scher, and K. Mackler. (1997). Home and family influences on motivations for reading. Educational Psychologist 32(2): 69:82. Burns, M.S., Griffin, P., & Snow, C.E. (1999). Starting out right: A guide to promoting children’s reading success. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Baker, L., Allen. J., Schockley, B, Pelligrini, A.D., Galda, L. & Stahl, S. (1996). Connecting school and home: Constructing partnerships to foster reading development in L. Baker, P. Afflerbach & D. Reinking (Eds.), Developing engaged readers in home and school communities, Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 21-41.

40. Burns, M.S., Griffin, P., & Snow, C.E. (1999). Starting out right: A Guide to promoting children’s reading success. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. • Bus. A.G., M.H. van Ijzendoorn, and A.D. Pellegrini. (1995). Joint book reading makes for success in learning to read: A meta-analysis on intergenerational transmission of literacy. Review of Educational Research: 65(1): 1-21. • Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement. (2001). Put reading first: The research building blocks for teaching children to read. Jessup, MD: Partnership for Reading. Available: www.nifl.gov. • Edwards, P.A. (1995). Empowering low income mothers and fathers to share books with young children. The reading teacher 48: 4888-564. • Epstein, J.L., Coates, L., Salinas, K.C., Sanders, M.G., & Simmons, B.S. (1997). School, family and community partnerships: Your handbook for action. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. • Gallimore, R., & Goldenberg, C. (1993). Activity settings of early literacy: Home and school factors in children’s emergent literacy. In E. Forman, N. Minick, & A. Stone (Eds.), Contexts for learning: Sociocultural dynamics in children’s development (pp. 315-335). New York: Oxford University Press.