By Laura Robb

“I didn’t guess!” Sofia tells me.  I got it [says the word.]– incredible.”

“Tell me what you did,“ I reply.

“I looked through [the word]. And then I saw I could say in and ible and the e was short—cred. I put it all together.“

“You used the strategy of looking through a long word to find parts like prefixes and suffixes that you could say! Well done. All the practicing you did really helped!”

“Yeah!.”

        Sofia, a fifth grader, has difficulty decoding multi-syllable words.  Her recall of text details is good, even when she misreads several words or when she listens to her teacher read aloud.  The above conversation reveals progress, but never feel discouraged if students return to the old guessing habit.  Progress is never neatly linear.  It’s a messy back and forth.

Sofia entered fifth grade reading at a mid-first grade instructional level.  She could not distinguish short from long vowels, nor could she say the vowel sound when confronted with a word she couldn’t pronounce.  She had little knowledge of consonant blends and digraphs.  Her decoding skills were tentative, and Sofia’s main strategy was guessing.  Sofia isn’t alone.  Large numbers of students throughout our country live in the shadows, always on the periphery of learning in their classes.

 

Perhaps, students like Sofia fall through cracks in a school system because teachers, feeling the pressure of high stakes tests, focus their attention and interventions on students who, with support, can pass the state test in reading.  In the shadows they lose confidence, don’t know how to choose books they can read.  Sadly, they continue to slide backwards because they don’t read enough to improve nor do they receive appropriate interventions. Researchers agree that low reading volume combined with weak word knowledge results in minimal annual progress.  Often, the small voice in these students’ heads is, I can’t do this, and gradually, as years pass, the drive to work hard to succeed diminishes, self-efficacy vanishes, and students mark time until they can drop out.

What Sofia Can Teach Us

Sofia’s decoding tank of tools was almost on empty.  What frustrated her was the huge gap between her ability to think with text and her ability to read text.  To build her knowledge of how our language works, she completed word sorts from Words Their Way letter-name book.  Working first with short vowels and moving to long-vowel patterns, I discovered that each sort made sense to Sofia, and she was able to complete a sort with automaticity by the end of the week.  However, two things became apparent:

 

•      recalling different word patterns in text remained difficult because Sofia would forget the patterns and short and long vowel sounds still confused her; and
•      applying word knowledge to continuous text wasn’t happening during the first three months of learning with her and others in the group, as there was no transfer from word sorts to text.

Sofia and others like her have had diverse phonics experiences in elementary school.  However, they never absorbed the presented information to a level enabling them to apply it automatically to continuous text.  The mantra of, “Well, they were taught it last year and they should know it,” is unproductive and blames the students.

When students don’t get a lesson, it’s teachers’ responsibility to find ways to re-teach and build lasting understanding.  That’s what being a teacher means.  Marie Clay so wisely explained that students receive and understand lessons differently.  Knowing this, interventions should be an integral part of every core curriculum class.  Undoing poor habits and building students’ self-confidence is more difficult the longer they stay in the shadows.

Solving Decoding Challenges

Sofia and others in her group continue to grapple with developing analogous thinking—the ability to transfer knowledge of a word pattern to an unfamiliar word with the same pattern.  Students often complete sorts that I create based on what I observe when they read aloud to me.  Hearing students read aloud one-on-one is an opportunity to learn about their process and to support them with questions that prevent them from guessing or skipping words.  The goal is for them to use their knowledge of word patterns and the text’s meaning automatically.  Here are some prompts/questions to try:

•      If the word has a prefix, say it.  If the word has a suffix say it. Look at the word that’s left and say it.  Now put it together.
•      Can you figure out if the vowel is long or short?  It’s interesting that students could parrot the long vowels: a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y.  But confronted with a word like stripes, they couldn’t say the long i and substituted other vowel sounds.  No internalization of these sounds had occurred.
•      Sometimes, skipping the word and reading to the end of the sentence, then going back, rereading the entire sentence and trying to say the word helped.  For example, one student stumbled and stopped on the word diapers.  She quickly figured it out using this strategy because the end of the sentence noted that they were often wet and dirty.

 

If students don’t “get it” quickly, tell them the pronunciation in order to prevent guessing and a long a pause in the reading.  Make note of the word and work on challenges you observed by creating individualized word sorts that give additional practice opportunities.  It’s important to remember that when five to six years have gone by, it’s not possible to have a quick reversal, even with an extra daily class that includes daily interactive read alouds, choosing and practicing reading a poem a week for fluency, and guided and self-selected independent reading.

Time and Place Matter

When you work with a student one-on-one in order to provide reading feedback and support, find a separate place where your conversation and the student’s reading aloud are private. Self-confidence and self-efficacy are huge issues for students with reading challenges like Sofia’s.  It’s crucial to continually point out every increment of progress and build the YET mindset of “I think I can with hard work and support.”  Help them feel safe and provide beautifully written and illustrated books for reading.

Some Closing Thoughts

Believe me, it’s tough to be patient when you’re working thoughtfully, carefully, diligently, and progress, at times, seems minimal at best.  Avoid blaming yourself, other teachers, and the children. Instead, DON’T GIVE UP. There’s no recipe or program to fix things.  Your vigilance, observations, questions, and dogged determination to find ways to intervene—ways that move the children forward—will eventually bring about the changes you hope and pray for.

 

Know, too, that it’s difficult to engage and motivate the Sofia’s in our classrooms.  They come with greatly diminished self-confidence, a lack of automaticity with reading, a lack of fluency, a lack of word knowledge, and little practice reading real books.  However, as you support and help them read wonderful books, discuss them, plan interventions to increase reading skill, and provide books for self-selected independent reading, progress will surely come.  It might not happen the year you learn with them, but with the kind of support that monitors reading behaviors and uses what’s observed to plan interventions, I have to believe it will come.

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By Laura Robb

Students enjoy reading partnerships. The comments that follow were part of reflections they wrote after experiencing this relationship:

•      “I love talking about my book to a partner.”
•      “My reading partner helps when I’m confused.”
•      “My partner helps me find books to read.”
•      “I can ask my partner for help.”

Students’ reflections point to the benefits partnerships have for teachers and students. What these comments teach us is the sharing and supporting between partners results in learning, independence, and the development of self-confidence and efficacy.

•      Provides more time for teachers. When students learn to support one another and respond to partners’ needs, the teacher experiences fewer disruptions. This translates into extra time to confer, coach, or scaffold students. It also permits teachers to pull groups for guided reading or to discuss diverse texts of the same genre.
•      Taps into the social aspect of reading. Students love to talk to their peers. Moreover, in middle grades and middle school, students value peer opinions on a range of topics, including books they liked and disliked. Focusing discussions on favorite books and/or suggesting titles to each other can deepen students’ interest in reading.  
•      Develops independence for students. Partners can help each other unpack meaning from a confusing section of text, understand tough words, share background knowledge, and clarify a journaling task. Students have opportunities to get to know how a peer approaches reading and writing about reading. All this practice enables students to solve problems independently.

Organizing Partnerships

        Sometimes students choose a reading partner and other times, the teacher might organize reading partners for a unit of study that runs five to six weeks. Help students understand that if their partner is deep into reading or working on a project, they should feel free to ask another student for assistance.

What follows are suggestions for using partnerships to boost students’ comprehension, fluency, and enlarge their vocabulary.

Pair-Shares: The turn-and-talk strategy invites students to share, with a partner, their thoughts about a book the teacher reads aloud, a strategy such as making inferences, or a video clip, etc.

Poetry Partners.  Each pair selects a poem to practice reading aloud to a partner for four days, and on the fifth day, students perform the poem. Dr. Timothy Rasinski, an expert on fluency, favors this strategy. On the first day, students read their poem to themselves, then out loud to each other, and discuss its meaning. Then, they practice reading the poem out loud each day prior to performance day to develop fluency, expression, and comprehension—and enlarge their vocabulary.

Written Conversations About Reading. Partners can have written conversations on paper or on a computer about teacher read alouds, guided reading books, a lesson, a theme such as stereotypes, and genres such as science fiction. Students set up their written conversation with both names at the top of the paper and jot the book’s title or topic under their names. Students write their name followed by a colon each time they respond. Partners take turns commenting on each other’s ideas, asking an open-ended question, adding information, or offering a different interpretation. Teachers can read these to gain insights into students’ thinking.

Closing Thoughts

Sharing ideas, supporting and helping one another, developing friendships, valuing diverse interpretations combine to make reading partnerships valuable and memorable learning experiences. Always reserve time every few weeks to invite students to reflect on and write about their peer partnership experiences, then discuss these with their partner. What happens is both students read about how they impacted their partner’s learning, and in those moments, students strengthen their self-confidence and resolve to continue to work hard and learn.

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Several years ago I was working in a school district in southern Virginia and one experience still replays in my mind.  I collaborated with a special education teacher engaging seven students in guided reading.  Her materials were eight or sixteen-page books she downloaded and put together—poorly written and illustrated texts that bored students.  The district had put all their money into a basal program with downloadable texts for guided and independent reading; there was no extra money for real books—beautifully written and illustrated books.

Here’s the question to ponder: Why do school districts spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for basal reading programs?  When scores on state tests are low, it’s tempting for districts to turn to programs making seductive promises such as: faithfully implement all parts of this program and test scores will rise.  Grade level programs can’t help children reading three or more years below a specific grade.  Moreover, they also don’t support students reading above grade level improve because in the program these students read at their independent level.  Unfortunately, when students’ reading performance on annual high stakes tests define a school district’s and a state’s success, the quest for the magic bullet begins.

Charlotte Huck, a champion of using the finest children’s literature for reading said: ”We don’t achieve literacy and then give children literature; we achieve literacy through literature.”  Not only do children learn to read with outstanding books, but such books are often their first introduction to art and visual literacy—incredible illustrations and photographs.  Children deserve books that help them make sense of their world, that show them how others have struggled as they struggle now, that use stories to transmit diverse heritages and cultures from one generation to the next, that invite children to reread beloved parts and share these with friends.

Fifteen Reasons Why Children Deserve the Best Books     

By offering students outstanding literature, you can:

1. Nurture their hearts and minds and bond them to books that compel them to reread and share with others.
2. Change their thinking on a topic a culture, and different lifestyles by using story to construct understanding.
3. Boost imagination and creativity using beautifully written books that enable readers to visualize.
4. Expand experiences and knowledge about the world providing books on a wide-range of topics.
5. Take us into the past, present, and future so we can better understand past and present worlds and imagine the future.
6. Build visual literacy so students can make meaning from an illustration, photograph, or diagram.
7. Stir meaningful student-led discussions encouraging readers to raise their own questions and move beyond literal to inferred meanings.
8. Tell the stories of diverse cultures and enable students to develop tolerance and compassion.
9. Enlarge vocabulary, for the more students read, the more they see and understand words used in diverse contexts. Vocabulary is comprehension!
10. Introduce and develop a knowledge of literary language so students can understand complex sentences and appreciate figurative language.
11. Improve stamina and concentration through sustained silent reading of self-selected books.
12. Develop emotional intelligence and empathy through the ability to walk in a character’s shoes and understand life as he or she lives it.
13. Offer readers hope because even the darkest books hold out hope and stimulate a desire to solve challenging problems in the world.
14. Develop literary tastes because students, not programs or teachers, choose books.
15. Show students books are excellent entertainment by reading aloud adding entertaining books to class libraries.

Reminders

Remember, letting students self-select books invests them in the reading.  Remember, volume of reading matters, and enlarging classroom libraries means students have, as one of my eighth  graders stated, “books at their fingertips.”  Remember, your responsibility is to teach every child to read well and cultivate each child’s personal reading life.  You can engage and motivate students to read, read, read when you provide the opportunity and the finest books!

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Educators and departments of education often believe that’s what’s new in learning will bring about significant change. I remember when filmstrip and film loop devices, as well as cassette players, were going to change education. In learning centers, my fifth-grade students watched filmstrips about history, science, or math; they listened to tapes of authors discussing their books.  For several years, classrooms had a television monitor, and part of the curriculum was students watching science experiments and listening to current events. In those moments, we believed this was cutting edge learning! WRONG!

Today, most classrooms have several computers and tablets and soon all students will have a laptop and/or a tablet.  Beware of using technology to continue practices that need to go: completing worksheets, answering questions at the end of each chapter of a book, or looking up a list of words on an online dictionary. Technology, used well can enhance learning and the digital natives you teach will appreciate Padlet, which allows them to respond to a discussion or story in real time, Storybird for digital storytelling, and an app to create digital portfolios.

Changes in education are abundant and continually happen. However, if we look back, we can see some of these past needs—must-haves—have faded away.  I’d be hard-pressed to find a filmstrip, film loop viewer, television, or a cassette tape player in any classroom today.  So now, it’s time to state one truth: needs and wants in education change, but there’s one exception: books.

        Too many educators in administrative positions in school districts and in state departments of education believe books are a want and not a need.  Instead of investing in books and teachers, too many schools purchase expensive reading programs on computers, believing that technology will transform students reading far below grade level into readers. Reading short selections on a computer, working on skills in isolation, and answering a set of multiple-choice questions doesn’t improve students’ reading skill. Looking for technology to make a quick fix can’t work as interacting with a computer doesn’t develop students’ ability to read long, complex texts, discuss texts, become active listeners, develop stamina, and analyze details. I’m in favor of using technology to enhance learning, not to replace interactions between students and a highly skilled teacher. All readers, especially those in grades 4 to 8 reading at a primary level need a skilled teacher and books.  And here are ten reasons why.  #booksandteachersmatter

Ten Reasons Why Books and Skilled Teachers Are Needs     

1. Skilled teachers love to learn. To become a skilled reading teacher means keeping abreast of the newest research and best practices. Skilled teachers read professional books and articles and join Twitter to develop a PLN (Personal Learning Network) so they can make a difference in the reading lives of children.
2. Reading is social. In addition to students interacting with the book’s author, they benefit from interacting with peers during guided reading, student-led literature circles, and book clubs. A need to share emotions, fears, and predictions are part of reading. Conversations bond readers to books because talk can affect their hearts and minds. To share ideas with others—to talk about books in a group or conference—not only improves recall and understanding but also invites readers to organize their ideas so listeners understand them.
3. Teachers provide face-to-face positive feedback. Working with small groups enables teachers to notice and spotlight interactions that work. Building on positive behaviors—“I notice how you found evidence to support your inference.” or “I noticed how well you used picture clues to figure out that word’s meaning,”–develops the self-confidence students need to continue to work hard.
4. Teachers form relationships that motivate students.  It’s impossible to form a meaningful relationship with a computer. But when teachers and students interact with books, opportunities abound to develop trust and experience humor in a nurturing environment.
5. Teachers make decisions to support readers.  Computers can grade multiple choice tests and cite the number right and the type of questions a student missed such as factual, main idea, inferring. A skilled teacher offers helpful feedback in the moment and then uses what students say and do to make decisions about interventions and next steps.
6. Teachers cultivate critical thinking and inferring. Whether working with a small group or one-on-one, teachers can model the process of inferring or using context clues to determine a word’s meaning.  By thinking aloud and modeling, teachers build students’ mental model of how a process works.
7. Books by the finest writers should be read.  When students read beautifully written, engaging books, they also learn about excellent writing and how specific genres work.
8. Volume matters. The number of books students read with the guidance of a teacher and the amount of independent reading they complete matters.  The more students read and practice, the more they improve and move forward.
9. Picture books develop visual literacy. Instead of reproducible books, learning to “read and interpret” outstanding photos or illustrations is frequently students’ introduction to art and critical thinking.  
10. Poetry cultivates fluency and comprehension. Follow Tim Rasinski’s advice and research and have students select a poem a week, practice saying the poem to a partner, and performing the poems to develop fluency and improve vocabulary and comprehension in an authentic way.         

Closing Thoughts

Remember, no replacement exists for a highly skilled teacher, and every child deserves one. Immersing students in books, giving them choice, and allowing them the time to learn how to self-select a book they can read for independent reading can make a huge difference in their progress and desire to read at home and school.

Books and skilled teachers make a difference in learning to read and developing a rich, personal reading life. Malala Yousafzai understood the power of the book, the pen, and an educated child when she said: “One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world. Education is the only solution. Education first.” Malala Yousafzai  #booksandteachersmatter

Differentiating Reading Instruction By Laura Robb