Mrs. Rita M. Wirtz, MA

There’s so much going on right now in the world, in particular, I’m extremely concerned about the resurfacing of the “reading wars.” I have no control and can’t fix much, but I can help with re-conceptualizing why educators are so quick to “throw the baby out with the bathwater.” To tell you my truth, I think it’s ridiculous, so I’m taking a deep dive into why this is happening as well as offering some suggestions.

I’ve taught reading for over fifty years, incredible to say that. Besides Pre-k to sixth grade School Principal, Curriculum Consultant for Sacramento County Office of Education, Keynote Speaker, Seminar Leader, etc, I had an interesting experience for many years that grew out of my masters’ thesis about delinquency and poor reading connection. At that time I was a Title 1 Program Evaluator for correctional education programs, first in Arizona, then California. 

I ‘walked the line’ at DVI (Duel Vocational Institution), helped teachers working with inmates in prison classrooms, even in cell study at San Quentin, where basically our teachers slid packets under doors and taught through those doors. In fact, I visited all the prisons except for Folsom which didn’t have under twenty-one-year-old inmates and therefore, no ESEA program. When President Johnson initiated Great Society programs, the best of the bunch in my opinion was Title I, designed to bridge the learning and reading gap, but I doubt you knew it also included juvenile offenders, hoping to stop recidivism in its tracks.

Being unable to read well is a detriment to success or basic functioning in society. We all agree to that, but how to get there has been a great, big, continual mess. I say that because I’ve never used any program (scripted) that I thought was perfect in itself to teach reading. In my opinion, it remains up to teachers to know how to teach the requisite skills. Programs come and go; the skills remain the same. Yet, I doubt many or most teachers, Pre-k to grade 12 have had much in the way of reading instruction courses during their Credentialing program.

I was fortunate to be mentored by Dr. Jeanette Veatch at Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, and I interned at their Reading Clinic. Veatch was indeed a whole language and language experience guru. And “yes,” I was and still am a believer in Balanced Literacy as well as Reading Recovery and the work of Marie Clay. I also taught with Words in Color, ITA (Initial Teaching Alphabet), Sir James Pitman, England, (1960s); Laubach Literacy, Distar, and Reading Mastery, so I know the differences between following a program with fidelity and developing a curriculum that responds to and meets all children’s needs.

Know Your Students’ Reading Levels

Independent Reading Level: This is the highest level that students read fluently, without help, and have recall and comprehension. Ensure that word recognition errors (miscues) don’t exceed more than one per hundred words of running text so that comprehension is 90% or better.

Instructional Reading Level: With assistance, students can read at their instructional level with errors not exceeding more than five per one hundred words of text and comprehension of 75% or above. 

Frustration Reading Level: This is thought to be less than seventy percent comprehension, but it’s more obvious than that. You just know when the student feels frustrated.

Select readable books–easy selections for beginning and striving readers, including picture books that feature short sentences and simple words. Obviously, more challenging selections have longer and more abstract words. Type size counts; smaller type is harder to read.

Easy Hack: Quickly Find Books at Students’ Reading Levels

My favorite way to see whether a book is at your student’s independent or instructional level is to do the “five finger technique.” Select a book page with at least one hundred words, ask your student to put down a finger each time there is an unknown word. If there are more than five fingers per page, the book is probably too hard. If the child wants to read it anyway, think Dewey and the importance of interests. Let the child read the book, just provide backup assistance and scaffolding so they experience success.

Cueing: This Is What It Means. 

I have taught these strategies and still do, on occasion. It helps some children. I caution, what if the student doesn’t know how it’s supposed to look? Or sound like? So I agree cueing isn’t the best way to teach children new words. But completely throw it out? Again, no way.

Graphophonic: “Does it look right?” What letter or sound does it begin with? Point to the letter or word. Ask: does this look familiar? Take another look at this. What does this letter (or word) look like? Look for a smaller word inside the word. Check this with a word you already know.”

Syntactic: “Does it sound right? Can you say it another way? What other word or phrase might fit here?

Semantic: “Does it make sense? Look at the picture again. Reread the sentence.”

Say: Does it look right to you? What sound or letter does it begin with? Point to the letter (words). What other sound might fit here? Does this make sense? etc.”

Context Clues: Know and Do or Don’t

Yes, I still teach context cues or clues, as I said earlier, but not as a primary strategy.

Practice looking at words surrounding new words, to gain meaning. Often by simply looking at initial consonants and other sentence parts, the child infers the unknown word.

1. Read aloud a sentence in which an unknown word is omitted. Ask what a possible word might be.

2. Provide sample sentences that show that context clues may come before or after a word.

3. Provide sample sentences with contextual clues in form of a phrase, sentence, or paragraph.

Recognizing Sight Words. Start with Real Words, Concrete Objects:

I don’t recommend teaching sight words as the primary focus. But yes, I teach sight words. Use experience, environmental print, and sometimes word lists to practice sight words. Start with the easiest words first, especially those things concrete and real, such as objects around the house or in the natural environment.

The problem with graded sight word lists is they include such abstract words. For example, what is a “the?” It’s always better to start with real things, concrete objects, called “actuals” or “realia”. Word walls are way better than data walls.

Structural Analysis Helps Students Figure Out Unknown words:

Besides sounding out words, another way to decode or recognize new words is by taking them apart. This process is called structural analysis.

Teach word parts, including roots, prefixes, suffixes, compound words, syllables, word families and contractions.

About Phonics, the Alphabetic Code Approach. Common Ground.

While there are certainly inconsistencies in our language, phonics works about 80-85% of the time, so I think it’s a really useful tool to teach kids, at all levels. Beginning Reading Champions are word detectives learning letters and combinations of letters. But all students encounter unknown words and it’s okay to review basic decoding strategies. It’s not baby; it’s smart. Teach consistencies of our language.

Finding Common Ground Right Now

We are all reading teachers, schoolhouse, and home. It’s important we have some idea of the reading process, and how to teach skills not just programs, to best meet kids’ needs. I hope this helps you, by validating what you know and maybe an idea or two to explore.

The big news right now is a shift in the meaning of Balanced Literacy, or as Calkins says a “re-balancing”. I am intentionally not discussing fluency here and comprehension building, which of course are super important, but another day.

I have many articles already written in my blogs about how to build fluency and comprehension. By the way, I’m not a fan of the fluency testing that equates reading speed or rate with fluency.

Grouping and regrouping should be continual, based on skills known and unknown. So that’s it for now, I hope I have offered validation for your belief in self-selection of books, teacher read-aloud, and helping children find joy in reading all kinds of books– whether for pleasure reading or info-text, or books online.

Hearts filled with hope and love…. never give up, never. We stand strong, together. Leaving footprints on your reading hearts, Rita

I’d love to hear from you! Contact me:

Twitter: @RitaWirtz

FB: Rita’s Facebook

Website: RitaWirtz.com

Instagram: @ritamwirtz

Books: Reading Champions! Teaching Reading Made Easy, Stories From a Teacher’s

Heart, Reading Champs

By: Harvey Smokey Daniels

The greatest source of tears and heartbreak in our family, over all of our child-raising years, was homework. Like by far. Like 90%. Those unbidden, meaningless assignments, the mechanical worksheets, and odd-numbered math problems constantly led to friction, battles, resistance, weeping, and regret. It felt like the school was sending little hand grenades home with our kids, timed to explode just before a peaceful, playful, or relaxing evening could break out. That relentless assault on our family life still feels fresh, even though our kids are now 39 and 33.

        During this time, Elaine and I were both teaching, researching, and writing about progressive classroom practices – one of which was not worksheets. Nick and Marny knew very well what our professional principles were, so they could have called out our hypocrisy whenever we tried to enforce the evening’s dosage of drivel. But they didn’t often use that leverage; they knew we would marinate in our complicity. And we pretty much quit supporting school homework when they reached high school.

        And then there was the perennial pinch of being teacher-parents. You want to be a loyal employee of the district. You don’t want to accuse your colleagues of doing dumb or harmful things to children. And you recognize (or you should) that teachers get even fewer opportunities than normal parents to complain about things at school. When you are an educator, you simply can’t afford to be labeled, “One of Those Crank Parents.”

        If you resonate with these concerns, you may be fondly recalling Alfie Kohn’s entirely excellent book The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing (2006). Kohn likens homework for kids to the Second Shift for workers at the factory. You come home after eight hard hours and surprise – you have to go back to work! Kohn skillfully deconstructs every official rationale for homework. Decades of careful research studies have shown only negative outcomes for elementary kids and glancing, temporary ones for certain high schoolers. Then he runs through the more likely reasons that homework has been sustained against all evidence: upholding tradition, fostering obedience, providing ritual hazing (we had to go through it, now it’s your turn), developing a tolerance for toxic tasks, keeping kids off the streets, and finally, the redoubt of all scoundrels, the notion that homework “builds character.”

      For all the good work our friend Alfie did a decade ago, unexamined homework is still with us, in arguably more toxic forms. It’s bad enough when homework is menial, meaningless, and repetitive–a mere compliance ritual. But the content of homework sheets can be even more corrupting than the process. We have just lived through another “Black History Month,” during which millions of kids came home with worksheets, mostly focused on Martin Luther King, (apparently the only African American leader of whom worksheet makers are aware.) This year’s assortment included MLK word-finds, matching exercises, fill in the blanks, word searches, and many more. Among the tasks:

1. Crossword puzzle clue for #7 Across:

Martin Luther King was assassinated during the month of __________.

2. A short historical text about MLK, followed by these instructions:

“Circle ten proper nouns and underline ten verbs.”

3. Freedom, peace, march, speech, Atlanta, minister, equal, dream, boycott, leader.
4. “Read these words and place them in alphabetical order.”
5. True-False: “Martin Luther King was a farmer.”
6. For those ready to further explore black heroes, another worksheet confides that Rosa Parks was “a tired seamstress who politely declined to give up her seat on the bus” because of her fatigue. Needless to say, the profile doesn’t mention that Parks had been an activist and leader of the NAACP for two decades and that she was tired of racism, not sewing.

Just in case you’re wondering, I am not making this up. These and hundreds more worksheets are available on the web for teachers to use, reuse, and reuse. And these are not just time-wasters: they are desecrations of history and a pretty good example of how ignorance is engineered.

Just last week, a suburban Chicago teacher whom I follow on Twitter bravely began tweeting out photographs of her own young children suffering over the daily load of second-shift misery.

This is the face of my five-year-old doing useless homework when she would rather be playing. Five-year-olds don’t need homework. #ditchthehw

Tonight’s useless homework: track how many words you can read in 1-minute #ditchthehw

Things my kids could be doing right now instead of useless homework:

-reading

-playing with each other

-drawing

-talking to me about their day

-playing with their toys

-relaxing after 8 hours in school

#ditchthehw

So let’s get real. Let’s say you may work in a district where there is a serious Homework Policy dictating how many after-school minutes or hours kids are supposed to labor after school. So, let’s start by changing the categories of what counts as homework. Then, let’s design a time that’s stress-free, that invites kids’ curiosity and choice, and that doesn’t start battles between parents and kids, ruin whole evenings, and sell more Kleenex. Possible ideas for kids:

–Spend some time reading a book or magazine you have chosen.

–Go online to investigate a question that popped up in your life today.

–Interview family members about their work, interests, family history.

–If you are in a literature circle at school, e-connect with classmates to discuss the book.

–Work on an ongoing “passion project,” something you have decided to look into long-term (animal extinction, volcanoes, the Cold War).

–Watch TV shows with family and talk about them.

–Free write in your personal journal (or work on your novel/poems).

–Pick an adult in the community you want to learn from and apprentice yourself.

Let’s grow this list together. Meet me at #DitchTheHW.

Learn more about Smokey!

Timothy Rasinski, Ph.D.

A few years ago, my four adult children were home for the holidays.   Every evening after the dinner table was cleared and the dishes were done, we’d get out a board game and play for at least an hour.  This was a great time to be together, to talk, to just have some shared fun.  Once the kids had left and my wife and I were putting the games back into the closet, she remarked, “Tim, do you realize every game we played last week was a word game?!”   We had played Scrabble, Boggle, Balderdash, Wheel of Fortune, and a few others.  

As a person who works on helping children learn words, I was stunned!  We had thoroughly enjoyed ourselves as a family as we were examining, manipulating, and talking about words.  If adults enjoy playing games that involve words, why wouldn’t students?   Indeed, children love games and word games may be a wonderful approach for helping children learn words and develop a fascination with words.  Oh, and here’s one more thing about word games — have you ever noticed that if you play a game regularly you tend to get better at it?   We have a special name for it when you become better at something – it’s called learning!  Let’s make at least part of our phonics and vocabulary instruction game-like for students. 

What Games?

            I’d like to share two of my favorite word games with you – Wordo and Word Ladders.   Both are simple and easy to do with students of all ages.  Moreover, students of all ages seem to love playing both of these games.

            Wordo

            Wordo is simply a word study version of Bingo.  It is a great way for students to practice and deepen their understanding of words they may be learning.   In Wordo, every student is given a blank Wordo sheet or grid.   The sheet can consist of 3×3 boxes for younger children, 4×4 or 5×5 for older students, and can easily be made using the “insert table” feature on any word processing program.  See examples below

Of course, each Wordo sheet/grid should cover an entire 8 1/2 x 9 page of paper (Blank Wordo sheets are available at www.timrasinski.com > Resources).  Then, put on display words that you want students to learn or review.    Be sure to put 3-5 more words on display than there are boxes on the Wordo sheet.  Otherwise, multiple students are likely to win at the same time, especially with the 3×3 sheet.  Students choose words from the display to enter onto their Wordo sheet.  

Once all students’ Wordo sheets are filled with words, it’s time to play.   As the teacher you randomly call out words from the display, definitions of the words, or other clues to the words (e.g., “a two-syllable word that begins with a consonant blend”).   If students have the word on their sheet they place a mark or marker on the box containing the word.  Once a student has a row, column, diagonal, or four corners filled with marks they call out “Wordo.”  The student’s sheet is checked for accuracy and the sheets are then cleared for another game. Simple prizes can be awarded to students who win.   

Wordo is a great way to review words from different content areas.   It is also a good way to motivate students to analyze the internal structure of words as well as their meaning.   

            Word Ladders

            Word Ladders are a word-building game in which students are guided to build a series of words where each new word requires some manipulation of the previously made word.  What makes it a game-like activity is that the first word and last word of the ladder are somehow connected.  Here’s an example of a word ladder that starts with the word “Storm” and words down.  Students can either write the words or slide letter tiles around as they move down the ladder.  As the teacher, you guide students in going from one word to the next by providing them with clues for each new word.

1.  Storm          Change 1 letter in “Storm” to make a place to shop.

2.  Store            Change 1 letter in “Store” to make a word that means to look intently at someone or something. 

3.  Stare            Change 1 letter in “Stare” to make a word that means ‘to frighten.”

4.  Scare           Change 1 letter in “Scare” to make a word that is the total number of points in a game. 

5.  Score           Change 1 letter in “Score” to make the land beside an ocean, sea, or lake.

6.  Shore           Take away 1 letter from “Shore” to make something you wear on your foot.

7.  Shoe            Change 1 letter in “Shoe” to make a word that means to display, expose, or uncover.

8.  Show           Change 1 letter in “Show” to make a word that when combined with the first word describes a winter weather event.

9.  Snow

            Students find word ladders fun to engage in as they try to determine what the final word in the ladder will be.   Equally important, as students move down the ladder from one word to the next they must coordinate the structural clues (Change 1 letter) with the meaning clue to write each new word.  In essence, the activity requires students to engage in orthographic analyses or mapping as they make their words.  Yet, because students are only asked to manipulate one or a few letters at a time, the activity is one that allows them to experience success.   Research has demonstrated that this sort of guided word building can lead to significant improvements in students’ phonemic awareness among younger students, word decoding, AND comprehension (McCandliss., Beck, Sandak, & Perfetti, 2003).  If students are able to decode the words they encounter in their reading they are more likely to understand what it is they are reading.  

Word study and wordplay can take a variety of forms.  My hope in this blog is not to suggest to you that any one word study game is the answer to students’ word learning challenges, but to suggest to all of you creative and artful teachers that when we make word study feel like a game we are much more likely to engage students in word learning and analysis and much more likely to develop in students a love for the study of words.  Isn’t that what teaching and learning are all about – not just teaching a set of literacy skills but encouraging students to love our language to be willing and able to engage in the study of our language. 

Sources

Rasinski, T. (2005). Daily Word Ladders-Grades 2-4.  New York:  Scholastic.

Rasinski, T. (2005). Daily Word Ladders- Grades 4-6   New York:  Scholastic.

Rasinski, T. (2008). Daily Word Ladders- Grades 1-2.  New York:  Scholastic.

Rasinski, T. (2012). Daily Word Ladders – Phonics- Grades K-1   New York:  Scholastic.

Rasinski, T. & Cheesman-Smith, M.  (2019). Daily Word Ladders- Content Areas, Grades 2-4   New York:  Scholastic.

Rasinski, T. & Cheesman-Smith, M.  (2019). Daily Word Ladders- Content Areas, Grades 4-6.   New York:  Scholastic.

Rasinski, T. & Cheesman-Smith, M.  (2020). Daily Word Ladders- Idioms. Grades 4+.   New York:  Scholastic.

Reference

McCandliss, B., Beck, I., Sandak, R., & Perfetti, C. (2003).  Focusing attention on decoding for children with poor reading skills: Design and preliminary tests of the word building intervention.  Scientific Studies in Reading, 7, 75-104. 

Young Literacy Learners Take Center Stage

By Mary Jo Fresch

            I began my teaching career as a third-grade teacher in 1974. The district reading program was a synthetic phonics series. I regularly had students required to repeat the second-grade reader because they had failed to keep pace with their peers. These students needed constant support to progress and hopefully “graduate” to the third-grade reader. By the end of my first year, I knew the series was not creating successful readers. The focus seemed to be exposure instead of mastery.

I faced an equity issue for my students. I needed to hone my ability to recognize proficiency differences and address individual “bottlenecks” in literacy learning. And I needed to bring the joy of reading to my students.

Unlocking what students can and cannot yet do

My undergraduate program included one course in teaching reading, just enough to skim the surface of what a primary teacher needed to know.  I realized a reading specialist master’s degree would benefit my students and me. That coursework turned the tables…instead of focusing on materials, flashcards, and games, I focused on students. I discovered ways to peek into the head of a learner struggling to read words, read fluently, comprehend, and build vocabulary. Years later, a Ph.D. in Language, Literacy, and Culture solidified my belief that teachers must focus on what the student can successfully do and plan engaging, joyful activities to nudge new learning along. While teachers need to address the scope and sequence of reading skills, they must “keep an eye on the child” to strike a balance between teaching and assessing. What are students telling us they almost understand but not yet? The answer to that question is the sweet spot for planning lessons that challenge but do not frustrate them.

From: Fresch, M.J. & Wheaton, A. (2002). Teaching and Assessing Spelling: Striking the Balance Between Whole-class and Individualized Spelling.

Language learning for young readers

            Literacy development in reading, writing, and word knowledge occurs in sync – that is, they are parallel processes. Each informs the other and addressing all of them as students learn is critical. When you think about it, writing is easier than reading. Let’s say a student is trying to write elephant. Knowledge of letter/sound relationships will help students predict the spelling. (My personal campaign is for teachers to not refer to students’ unconventional spellings as invented – rather they are predicting the spelling based on their current operating knowledge of the language. These predictions will change as students experience more print.). So, the student may write lefan or elufint – allowing us to observe current understandings and plan instruction. But, if that same student comes across elephant in text, the work is much harder to lift the print from the page. They need to know something about short vowels, the ph sound, the nasal nt, and multi-syllabic words – and which of these might be the stumbling block is up to the teacher to assess.

Giving students strategies to decode is essential to make them independent readers. They need knowledge in letter/sound relationships and how to consider what might make sense both contextually and semantically. Thus, my work over the years has turned to helping students understand how English works. Power over the language provides independence in reading and writing. “Immediate” word identification aids in fluent reading and allows the reader to focus on comprehension. The need to “mediate,” or pause and consider what a word might be, distracts the reader from understanding the text. Accurate and automatic decoding are fundamental to comprehension. When we assess (by the way, the Latin origin of assess means “to sit by” – exactly what we do when we are “keeping an eye on the child”), we can observe the strategies students can rely on and which they need scaffolded.

Recently David L. Harrison, Tim Rasinski, and I partnered (in press) to write a two-book series for Scholastic. By combining Edward Fry’s list of 38 common, high-frequency phonograms with Wylie and Durrell’s list of 37 we created a powerful list of 52 rime families. David wrote poems, Tim created word ladders (one focused on phonics; one on vocabulary), and I wrote a wide range of language arts lessons. Students can learn hundreds of words through examination of word families and have a powerful strategy to decode words. David and I also partnered (2020) to create a book that focused on fun and engaging aspects of the English language (six types of “nyms” such as acronyms, eponyms, synonyms, retronyms; similes; metaphors; idioms; shades of meaning; and word origins). In all of this, the heart of my work is to make language memorable, rather than memorized.

We pique students’ interest in language when we are curious about words. That interest will have them looking at words in new and memorable ways. This also means they will take what they know into writing. When students ask why the “silent/magic e” doesn’t make the vowel long in words such as love, I often hear teachers say, “that’s an exception.” But there really is a rule…English words do not end in “v.” Over time, the “e” was added to those words, but the pronunciation did not change. Once you tell your students that story they will not only remember to add the “e” but will be digging through print to see if they can prove you are wrong. What a fun way to solidify the “rule” and get them engaged in self-selected print to build confidence!

In sum, you can be assured that I say, systematically follow a scope and sequence, but do it in fun and engaging ways that take the individual learner into consideration.  Give students independence in unlocking the language. We can never memorize every word, so let’s find ways to make language memorable. Texts that play with words and make students want to read and reread builds skills and confidence. Writing self-initiated texts puts their operating knowledge to work (and on display for your formative assessment). Discussing about what we read makes students understand we are about “word recalling” and not “word calling.” And all of these put our young learners at center stage…exactly where they should be in our classrooms.

https://maryjofresch.com

fresch.1@osu.edu

References

Fresch, M.J. & Harrison, D.L. (2020). Empowering Students’ Knowledge of Vocabulary: Learning How Language Works (Grades 3-5). Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

Fresch, M.J. & Wheaton, A. (2002). Teaching and Assessing Spelling: Striking the Balance Between Whole-class and Individualized Spelling. New York: Scholastic.

Harrison, D.L., Rasinski, T. & Fresch, M.J. (in press) Partner Poems & Word Ladders for Building Foundational Literacy Skills: Fluency, Phonics, Phonograms, Spelling, Vocabulary, Writing, and More (Book 1 – Grades K-2). New York: Scholastic.

Harrison, D.L., Rasinski, T. & Fresch, M.J. (in press) Partner Poems & Word Ladders for Building Foundational Literacy Skills: Fluency, Phonics, Phonograms, Spelling, Vocabulary, Writing, and More (Book 2 – Grades1-32). New York: Scholastic.