By Lois Letchford

Living in Brisbane, Australia, my six-year-old son, Nicholas, failed first grade. The effects of going to school showed themselves through his quietness, his bitten fingernails, and the daily wetting of his pants. His teacher shouted at him for his slowness, his withdrawal, and his inability to follow the “simplest instructions.” Testing revealed he could read ten words, displayed no strengths, and above all, had a low IQ. The prognosis was dire.

An opportunity arose for our family when my husband was offered a 6 month study leave in Oxford, UK.  For our family this was a bit like déjà vu as my husband had completed his PhD there and where our eldest son was born.  This trip allowed him to investigate the flow over the roofs of model buildings in the Oxford Large Wind Tunnel to better understand the mechanisms that lead to failure.

Planning to use this time to work with Nicholas in a one-to-one setting, I set myself up with a series of books entitled, “Success for All.” With a new environment and time on our side, what could go wrong.  Well…isolated words on every page and no pictures did nothing to assist me in my teaching or Nicholas’s learning to read.  It was an abject failure, and I was no better than his first-grade teacher.

Faced with a blank slate, and no excuses, I thought about Nicholas’ strengths. I knew he could rhyme words and see patterns in words and his environment. With only these known skills, I thought about writing simple poems based around consonant-vowel-consonant letter patterns and rimes. I chose words which rhyme with bug, such as mug, lug, tug, and rug. 

 Moreover, most poems for children are structured around a rhythmic pattern that Nicholas could easily detect.   And, of course, poetry is a joy to read and easy enough that Nicholas could meet immediate success.                       

What a mug of a bug

 he is to lug his rug along the kitchen floor.

Doesn’t he know his rug will tug

           his good things out the door?

Together we talked about the meaning of the poem, found the rhyming words, and finally made illustrations for each poem read. The illustrations for the Mug of a bug poem began using different colored paper to create the bug and its rug, as our enjoyment for learning intensified.

The transformation in our little classroom was instant- no longer did I expect Nicholas to read anything. I read to him. One success led to another. And another. Everyday Nicholas was excited to read and play with yet another rhyme.

“I have a fun poem for you today, Nicholas,” I said.

“The cat in a hat sat on a mat with a rat and a bat.

Well, fancy that!
That is just not possible.

There might be one scratched cat, no rat or bat and one messy mat!” I read.

Nicholas sat, silently; his eyes fixed on the paper.

When Nicholas failed to comprehend, his immediate response was withdrawal.

My mind spun. “What do I have to do?”

“Nicholas, let’s act out this poem. What animal would you like to be?” I questioned. “The cat, the rat or the bat?”

“I think I’ll be,” decisions take Nicholas a long time, “I’ll be the cat!”  he says with a slight grin.

“Okay, I’ll be the rat,” I continued.

“And I’ll get a stuffed toy for the bat,” he says as he ran off to find an appropriate animal.

He returned proclaiming “I’ve got a hat and a mat and a bat!”

Well this showed he was thinking.

“Now we can act the poem out,” I suggested. “What happens if a cat, a rat and a bat were in a hat together?” I asked standing beside Nicholas.

“They would fight!” he replied instantly, laughing. The lesson provided loads of chuckles and giggles.

I was learning about teaching as Nicholas was learning to read. It’s now an enjoyable experience for both of us.

Although the words are easily decodable, inference occurs at all levels of reading. Readers must make inferences in order to comprehend.  We continued to recite our poems from memory as we walked his brothers to and from school. Later in the day we read them from the printed page. 

Each day we worked to retrieve and read those rhymes. His brain was being lined with language and making connections between words and pictures. Using poetry, which at the early stage is short, repetitive, and focuses on rhyming, there is often the clear purpose of creating an overarching image.  This allows the reader to feel they can grasp the image or message, however “silly”, quickly and enjoy the experience through the rhyming sounds they make in speaking the poem. In effect this image or message “cocoons” the reading experience and with repetition strengthens the understanding of the “whole” while building out the letter and word components.

The next step of finding rhyming words, allowed Nicholas to see and hear the pattern and actively encouraged him to recognize and manipulate the spoken parts of words. Finally, poetry allows for easy segmenting of words into their individual sounds. Each interaction with letters and sounds provided opportunities for strong foundational letter-sound associations, and helped Nicholas with many aspects of learning to read, thus the sounds “cocooned” within the whole, the rhyming pattern, and the individual word.

Every day a new poem helped Nicholas make tiny, but significant, steps forward learning to read.

After completing many poems using short vowel sounds, we moved on to more complex sounds — the oo sounds, as in cook, look, and book, captured my imagination. My focus turned to Captain Cook, the last of the great explorers. As an Englishman, he completed the mapping of Australia thereby presuming the founding of yet another British Colony. The words were simple, the ideas complex.

Captain Cook had a notion,

There was a gap in the map in the great big ocean.

He took a look, without the help of any book

Hoping to find a quiet little nook.

Captain Cook had a notion,

There was a gap in the map in the great big ocean.

He took a look and filled a whole book

That caused the world to look.

Living in Oxford and visiting museums, we encountered maps from the 1550s – ones that did not include our homeland – Australia

“Look, Nicholas,” I said, “there’s a gap in the map. There is no Australia.”

Our learning took a turn from writing simple word poems to writing poetry as an inquiry project.

I read books, all kinds of books, and turned my learning into poems for Nicholas. I found this was the best way for him to access information, and poetry made for easy repetition, for questioning and further tapping into his curiosity. Together we began to question – what knowledge did Captain Cook have when he left England for his explorations in the Pacific Ocean?

“Who came before Captain Cook?” Nicholas asked one day.

“That’s easy,” I replied. “That was Christopher Columbus.”

“And who came before Columbus?” he questioned.

I stopped. I was stunned.

Such a question had never entered my imagination, and for the first time, I knew my son did not have a “low IQ.” His questions told me he was assembling and processing information.  He was “thinking.”

Being in Oxford, with the world of libraries and maps at our fingertips, we searched for answers. Viewing maps in the local antique map shops aided our search. Discovering that Columbus’s travels were based on the maps of Ptolemy, led us to visit the Bodleian Library of Oxford University, hunting for more answers.

Our investigation began in the gift shop, where a lady eagerly awaited our questions.

“Do you know where we could find a Ptolemy map?” I questioned, with an anxious Nicholas by my side.

The lady turned away from us, leaned against the counter, and scratched her head. Her eyes scanned the bookshelf. Finally, she bent down and retrieved a large, blue-covered book.

“This is a new book in our collection,” she said as she carefully placed it on the counter. “It’s a book of Ptolemy’s maps and is only recently printed. Does this work for you?”

Nicholas and I gasped.

“Yes,” I replied as Nicholas grinned and nodded.

Adding positive, enriching experiences to our learning enhanced Nicholas’s curiosity.

Our time in Oxford was completed with a memorable visit to the British Museum to see Captain Cook’s original maps which capped our epic inquiry project.

Returning to our home in Australia, Nicholas once again attended our local school. I was feeling on edge when I met with the school counselor.

“Nicholas learned so much! I wrote poetry and he was so excited by our learning,” I gushed.

“Well,” she replied, “he’s still the worst child I’ve seen in twenty years of teaching!”

Shocked, I left the room with my tail between my legs.

This was not the end of the story, just the beginning of a new chapter.

But what I found from this work with Nicholas was that poetry can be a wonderful entry point to literacy for children, especially the ones who find reading difficult.    Poetry is fun to read.  Poetry is easy to learn to read.  Poetry contains word patterns that lays the foundation for phonics.  Poetry is meant to be performed fluently and expressively, so it must be rehearsed (repeated reading).  Poetry for children is easy to find, it is easy for parents and teachers to write, and it can be a great way to get children themselves into writing.    In addition, poetry can lead to much deeper readings, explorations, and discoveries as it did with Nicholas’s study of Captain Cook.   

Advice for parents whose children are like Nicholas:

Write for your children – write about their everyday experiences – what they see, hear, eat, or watch.

Write where you are with what you have.

Create books about their life.

Place the child as the central character of their story.

Take pictures to complement your writing.

Write in short sentences or poetry format.

Read and re-read to and with your child.

Recite the sentences or poems.

Record their reciting and send it to relatives – if possible, ask relatives to respond.

If a child has a challenge recalling a particular sound, find words and objects which include it.

Write and read every day.

Remember:

Learning is emotional, as well as cognitive.

When learning is painful, sadly, that’s what children learn.

When children are laughing, learning happens with ease.

Once the process begins, one never knows where it ends…

Postscript

Nicholas Letchford learned to read, thanks to his mother Lois and many fine teachers. Indeed, learning to read was only the beginning of his journey. In 2018, Nicholas earned a doctorate inApplied Mathematics from Oxford University in the UK. Lois became a readingspecialist in 1997, teaching children who had been left behind. She has also written about her and Nicholas’s journey to literacy in her inspiring book “Reversed: A Memoir,” which can be ordered through any bookseller.

Grab a copy of Reversed: A Memoir to read the full story at https://amzn.to/3d2cNg5

Reversed: A Memoir is her first book. In this story, she details the journey of her son’s dramatic failure in first grade. She tells of the twist and turns that promoted her passion and her son’s dramatic academic turn-a-round from “dyslexic” to PhD from Oxford University!

By Laura Robb

Most schools had twenty-four hours to close down. There wasn’t time to consider checking out books for students or ensuring each child had a computer or handheld device before leaving the building. During the sheltering-in period, no one could enter a school. Closed. For. Safety.  The first goal: provide breakfasts and lunches for the children. Within a week, school leaders figure out how to make meals available to students from preparing and bagging them to notifying parents of pick up times and places.

Second goal: Teachers and school leaders collaborate to figure out how to use technology in ways most never envisioned—to develop and deliver meaningful and engaging lessons to students at home. Daily, these educators tap into their creativity and innovative thinking to create engaging teaching and learning experiences for students.  School leaders offer support to their staff and repeatedly acknowledge the effort and dedication of teachers. Meeting change with courage, determination, grit, and thoughtful reflection is what educators do every day, but during this pandemic, they triple their efforts and work tirelessly to support children’s learning at home.

            Often, articles in newspapers express worries over students losing the gains made in reading if they’re not learning in schools.  There is one way to ensure that all students hold onto their gains in reading skill and achievement: twenty minutes of reading self-selected books every day. Yes! The research on daily independent reading indicates that if students continue independent reading at home, they can improve their reading skills.

 In April 2000 the National Reading Panel publishes a report stating that they couldn’t endorse independent reading because the studies they review don’t meet scientific research standards. What a blow to classroom teachers who year after year observe that students with rich independent reading lives at school and home also develop large vocabularies, more background knowledge, and outperform peers who don’t’ read independently.

The good news is that Dr. S. J. Samuels and Dr. Yi-chen Wu respond to the National Reading Panel by completing a scientific study on independent reading in 2004. Both conclude that the more time students spend reading, the higher their achievement compared to a control group.  Samuel’s and Wu’s scientific research corroborate the conclusions in Anderson’s, Wilson’s, and Fielding’s 1988 study (not considered scientific):  a strong correlation exists between the amount of daily reading students complete and their reading achievement. Reading volume matters!

Perhaps, the best advice teachers can offer students and parents during remote learning is this: read 20-minutes every day and choose books that provide pleasure and enjoyment. By increasing reading mileage, learners not only improve reading skills, but they also develop a lifelong habit that benefits them in the fifteen ways that follow. Share this list with parents, so they understand why setting aside time at home for their children to read gives each child a lifelong gift.

15 Benefits of Independent Reading

1. Refines students’ understanding of applying strategies, for during independent reading, students have multiple opportunities to practice what they learn during instructional reading.
2. Develops an understanding of how diverse genres work as readers figure out the likenesses and differences among realistic, historical, and science fiction, fantasy, mystery, thrillers, biography, memoir, informational texts, etc.
3. Enlarges background knowledge and deepens readers’ understanding of people as they get to know different characters.
4. Builds vocabulary as students meet and understand words in diverse contexts.  Independent reading, not vocabulary workbooks, is the best way to enlarge vocabulary because students meet words in the context of their reading.
5. Teaches students how to self-select “good fit” books they can and want to read.
6. Develops students’ agency and literary tastes. Choice builds agency and as students choose and dip into diverse genres and topics, they discover the types of books they enjoy.
7.  Strengthens reading stamina, their ability to focus on reading for 20-minutes to one hour.
8.  Improves silent reading. Through daily practice, students develop their in-the-head reading voice and learn to read in meaningful phrases.
9. Develops reading fluency because of the practice that voluminous reading offers.
10. Supports recall of information learners need as they read long texts that ask them to hold details presented in early chapters in their memory so they can access these later in the book.
11. Improves reading rate through the practice that volume provides.
12. Develops students’ imagination as they visualize settings, what characters and people look like, conflicts, decisions, problems, interactions, etc.
13. Fosters the enjoyment of visual literacy when students read picture books and graphic texts.
14.  Creates empathy for others as students learn to step into the skin of characters and experience their lives.
15.  Transfers a passion for reading to students’ outside-of-school lives and develops the volume in reading students need to become proficient and advanced readers.

 Make Access to the Finest Books Available During Remote Learning

At first, it can feel impossible to cultivate daily independent reading during remote learning, especially when families don’t have access to books from school’s media centers and classroom and community libraries. Some families have lots of books in their homes and enough money to purchase books online for their children. But there are large groups of children all over the country who don’t have access to books at home and whose parents don’t have extra dollars to purchase them. What follows are four suggestions for coping with this challenge, especially if remote learning continues when the 2020-2021 school year starts.

• Schools all over this country need funding for e-book libraries from federal state departments of education. It’s likely that students won’t return to school until there is a vaccine or medication that can cure COVID-19.  Now is the time for schools to consider purchasing at least two e-book platforms so students can self-select books.
• Broadband needs to be up to speed so that all children can use the Internet and participate in remote learning.
• Every child who attends public school needs a computer or hand-held device because every child deserves equity and access to materials and teaching.
• School media specialists and teachers can create lists of stories, myths, poems, folk and fairy tales, and books that are in the public domain and offer students and parents age-appropriate choices. 

Be a Change Maker

Now is the time for school leaders, teachers, and staff to collaborate to solve challenges for the upcoming school year.  My hope is that this will be a nation-wide effort with a goal of ensuring that every child in this country has access to books and opportunities to self-select books, so they can develop a rich, independent reading life! 

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By Evan Robb

America and the world are experiencing a time of significant change, a time of great challenges. Educators, with little to no warning, have had to transition learning and instruction to an online environment for millions of children. In tandem with shifting learning and teaching to the online world, we also face the challenge of moving our schools’ cultures to teaching and learning online. This shift creates an opportunity resulting in a challenge to you and myself: If the culture of our schools and divisions will need to exist online, then we have a collective responsibility to sustain our schools’ cultures and keep them alive and maintain their vitality. This will require leadership.

When things run smoothly in schools, we often take leadership for granted. However, during these times of the changes and challenges caused by the spread of COVID-19, we start to define leaders and their leadership by their words and actions. To maintain the positive elements of a school’s culture in this climate will require collaborative leadership that includes administrators, teachers, and support staff. 

If you are an administrator, consider these six reflections so you can set the tone in your online school. If you are a teacher, apply these same reflections to your online classroom. All staff has a responsibility to create the school they want during this time of remote learning.

As you review my six points and my culture-building questions, consider where you are right now, what you are doing well, and what changes you can make. 

Six Points and Questions for Reflections

Set the Example: Educators must set an example of what behaviors define the school during remote learning. Collectively, we set examples through modeling, consistent response, and repetition. Consider the professional examples set in lesson creation, expectations, personal efficacy, taking risks, being innovative, or the example set in maintaining communication and feedback to students and families—inconsistency results in confusion.  

Culture Builder: Are your actions setting an example and inspiring others to do more and be more?

Enhance Connections:  Take time to make connections with students, families, colleagues, and friends.  Everyone will handle the time of remote learning differently, but most people in education enjoy making connections.  

Culture Builder: Are you initiating connections? How are you making connections? Are you sharing successes and challenges with colleagues? 

Cultivate Relationships: Positive administrative-teacher-student relationships are always part of an effective classroom and school.  Relationships don’t happen by accident; they require effort and a commitment, a mutual understanding that they are important. 

Culture Builder: How are you creating positive relationships remotely to get students motivated and interested in engaging in learning?

Do Maslow Before Bloom: Grace before grades. We cannot fully understand the challenges faced by all families and students. This is a time to be flexible, more caring, and more empathetic. Schools can exist without grades, but they can’t without feedback. 

Culture Builder: Are your lessons and communications demonstrating flexibility, empathy, feedback, and grace over traditional assessment?

Choose Optimism:  Appearing down or frazzled can have a negative impact on those around you. Effective principals and teachers create and model a definable tone for communicating optimism and positivity. Staff who model optimism impact other staff, students, and the culture of a school.  Optimism is the ability to focus on where we are going, leaders own their optimism, and everyone can be a leader.

Culture Builder: It can be hard to be positive during difficult times, but each day we can choose to be optimistic about the future, better days will come. Are you choosing optimism through words and actions?

Engage in Self-Care: Educators give to others. But to be our best, we also need to give to ourselves. When we do, we are better. Better at instruction, collaboration, communication, reflecting, learning, and perpetuating the culture of our classrooms and schools 

Culture Builder: How will you take care of yourself knowing this will make you more effective at what you do?

Reflect on these six points and culture-building questions as you lead remote learning and hone your school’s culture in a remote learning environment. To nurture your school’s culture during remote learning, offer supportive feedback, help with finding appropriate materials, meet frequently to answer questions, and live growth mindset every day, knowing that with time and hard work, school leaders, teachers, staff, and students can move forward in a positive environment. Make a commitment for yourself, students, parents, and schools to enhance your school’s culture every day!

Audere est Facere

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By Laura Robb

Teachers, school leaders, parents, and children are facing many challenges after states shut down schools to keep everyone safe during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The saying, “Necessity is the mother of invention,” has transformed educators, parents, and students into the pioneers of remote learning for primary, intermediate, middle, and high school students. We’re figuring out how to help different age groups learn and what kinds of materials teachers and students need. Time and schedules are issues.  Materials are issues.  Figuring out the WHY, WHAT, and the HOW of presenting lessons remotely are challenges we’re just starting to understand. Moreover, all of these are stress-makers that affect the emotional well being of teachers, school leaders, children, and parents. Here are some tips for maintaining balance and wellness.

• Stay connected to family, friends, colleagues, and students through social media, email, texting, and telephone calls and you’ll be able to hold onto that physical sense of community you had to give up.
• Get exercise. Walk, work out with a video, ride your bike, and try to get fresh air every day.
• Set aside time to do something for yourself: read, watch a movie, listen to music, play an instrument, paint, keep a journal.
• Try to establish a teaching schedule and know that you will have to refine and adjust ideas. Remember, you are a modern-day explorer trying to develop remote learning that works and redefining what community means!

Keep records of what you tried: save teaching videos, keep notes on lessons that worked and those that need improvement, collect student feedback, debrief with your school team, department, and/or colleagues you usually converse with.  Know how much students, parents, and your community appreciate what you are doing! Then, it’s important to prepare for the possibility that school might close again and discuss and reflect on re-envisioning teaching and learning.

Re-Envisioning Teaching: Remote Learning

It might seem odd for me to ask you to think about what might happen in the future now.  Unfortunately, due to the rapid advance of COVID-19, we were all caught with little preparation time.  Once things return to normal, it’s human nature to forget the difficulties faced by many. However, by keeping good records from your remote learning experiences, you will be ready to work with your school’s leaders and staff to help them plan for the future.  What follows are fifteen areas that will most likely need rethinking.  Read them. Choose those that apply to you and jot some notes that you can share so when your district is ready to discuss these, you will have much to contribute.

Fifteen Aspects of Remote Learning to Explore

1. Preservice Education. Colleges and universities need to have remote learning classes for different subjects and age groups in order to prepare teachers to teach and support students online.
2. Remote Professional Learning for School Leaders and Staff. It’s beneficial for staff to meet, and pool what they’ve learned from their remote teaching experiences. Equally important is for school districts to develop remote learning online classes teachers can take as well as lead.
3. Create a School Pandemic & Epidemic Playbook. Develop “to do’s” for school leaders, teachers, staff, students, and parents so if you only have a short window prior to closing your school, everyone leaves with the materials they’ll need.
4. Broadband for All. Ensure that all of rural America and urban families living in poverty have access to the Internet.
5. Access and Equity. All students need to have access to computers and the Internet for equity and access to lessons to exist with remote learning.  District and school leaders need to explore ways to connect all school children to online learning.
6. Attendance Issues. Districts need to determine ways to require attendance to online lessons.  Some teachers tell me that only 1/3 to 1/2 of their students are joining lessons even though they have computers.
7. School E-Library. Consider having a part of the library’s books and magazines in e-book format, too. This can enable students to access books for independent reading and for research projects. Try forging a partnership with your community public library to gain access for students and teachers to their e-books.
8. Independent Reading. You’ll want to maintain students’ volume and interest in reading.  Teachers can send books home with children before schools close, but schools can also explore websites that have e-picture books and e-chapter books for all subjects.  With students’ help, teachers can find ways for students to share one to two books a month online with classmates.
9. Instructional Learning in All Subjects. Departments can collaborate to pool ideas and develop remote learning techniques that work when a teacher is not present.  Sharing what you find works with colleagues is important.
10. Conferring.  Discuss whether this can occur for middle and high school where teachers can have 70 or more students. What accommodations should be made? What will it look like for grades K to 5?
11. Interventions. These are important for all students who require assistance and some re-teaching. Will there be a daily time in the schedule? Will interventions be scheduled as needed?
12.  Teaching & Learning Schedules. Make these reasonable and consider that most parents are working remotely or on a job. How can flexibility be integrated into schedules?
13.  Television Classes. Look into state or county-run television stations to explore how these can be used for remote learning and reach larger audiences.
14.  Teachers Meet & Dialogue. Finding time each week to have a virtual meeting to discuss teaching techniques and students’ progress.
15.  School Leaders Provide Support. School leaders can explore ways to support teachers, students, and parents so all maintain a positive outlook.

Closing Thought

As you embark on this unchartered journey, let me share a reminder–care for your emotional wellbeing and your health, so you can support your students and colleagues, and also have time to connect with family and friends.  This is your new frontier! By collaborating and reflecting on your teaching and students’ learning, you will make a huge difference in their lives and construct the foundations of remote learning for future generations!

Laura has written many excellent books! Check out The Reading Intervention Toolkit

Follow Laura on Twitter @LRobbTeacher

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