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.

Timothy Rasinski, Ph.D.

In my previous blog posting for The Robb Review, I focused on what should be the real goal of phonics instruction – to get kids to the point where they don’t have to use phonics much in their reading.  We want students to be so proficient and efficient at word recognition that minimal attention is given to word decoding and maximum attention can be directed toward comprehension.   Staying with this theme of reading instruction goals, I’d like to focus on reading fluency and state right off the bat that the goal of fluency instruction should not be to make kids read fast. It has been this incessant focus on increasing reading speed, I think, that has unfortunately given reading fluency a bad rep.

What is Reading Fluency?

Fluency has been called the neglected goal of the reading program (and it is) (Allington, 1983); it has also been called the bridge from word recognition to comprehension.     I like that bridge metaphor a lot. Fluency is the critical link to making meaning while reading. There are two components to fluency. The first is automaticity in word recognition – the ability to recognize words so effortlessly that most of a reader’s attention can be devoted to comprehension.   Automaticity is the part of the bridge that links to word recognition.

The other part of the fluency bridge is called prosody or reading with expression.  This is the link to comprehension. When a reader reads with appropriate expression that reflects the meaning of the text, she is striving to comprehend that text.    This is the part of fluency that is often neglected in instruction; yet it is critical for comprehension to occur, even when reading silently.

How Should We Teach Fluency?

As with anything we want to become fluent at (e.g., speaking, driving, golf, cooking), fluency is developed through practice.   In reading, we have several forms of practice that can and should be employed. These forms of practice include wide reading, assisted reading where a reader reads while simultaneously hearing a fluent reading of the same text by a partner or recording, and repeated reading where a reader reads a text several times until she achieves fluency on that text (Rasinski, 2010).    In all these forms of practice the goal should be reading for meaning, and if reading orally, to read with appropriate expression that conveys meaning to anyone who may be listening.

How Does Reading Speed Fit into the Fluency Equation?

Reading speed (words read correctly per minute) is an indicator of word recognition automaticity and is often called the oral reading fluency (ORF) score.   The more automatic or effortless you are in recognizing words in text, the faster your reading becomes, AND the more attention you can devote to comprehending the text as opposed to analyzing the words in the text.    Reading speed is an indicator or consequence of the fluency component of automaticity, BUT it is not fluency. Our reading speed increases as our fluency improves, not the other way around. I often say that I want our children to become fast readers just the way I am and all of you reading this blog are reasonably fast readers;  but I want them to become fast the same way we all became fast readers – through lots and lots of authentic practice in reading.

So go ahead and use DIBELS and AimsWeb ORF scores, or Hasbrouck and Tindal’s norms (Words Correct per Minute) cautiously and sparingly as indicators of students’ growth in automaticity, but please please please do not let children think that you are trying to get them to read faster.   The increase in reading speed (as well as improvements in reading with expression) will happen with authentic reading practice, not with overt instruction or implied emphasis on reading fast.

Fluency is More than Automaticity

A few years ago I came across recordings of arguably two of the most fluently read speeches in American  history – Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech” and John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address “Ask Not What Your Country…”  I subjected the oral readings of both of these speeches to an ORF (reading speed) assessment. In both cases, Dr. King and President Kennedy’s readings of their speeches may have landed them in a remedial reading class based on their very low ORF scores.  I am sure they were both automatic in their word recognition, and they could have read those speeches quickly. But doing so would have taken away from the meaning they were trying to convey. Because they were automatic in their recognition of the words in their speeches they were able to devote their attention to making and elaborating on the meaning they wished to share orally. They raised and lowered their voices, had dramatic pauses, changed volume and tone in order to more effectively deliver their intended meanings to their audiences.   What truly made those speeches fluent was not the speed, but the expression (prosody) that they embedded in their readings.

For fluency instruction to truly work we need to see the goal of fluency as expressive oral (and silent) reading that reflects the meaning of the text.    When we make expressive and meaningful reading of texts the true goal of fluency (and avoid putting emphasis on fast reading) we will see significant improvements in reading comprehension (as well as reading speed).

You can find resources on teaching accurate and automatic word recognition and expressive prosodic reading (i.e. fluency) at Tim’s own website – www.timrasinski.com

Please check out Tim’s book on reading fluency (written with Melissa Cheesman Smith) – The Megabook of Fluency published by Scholastic.

Follow Tim on Twitter! @TimRasinski1

References

Allington, R.L. (1983).  Fluency: The neglected reading goal.  The Reading Teacher, 36, 556-561.

Hasbrouck, J., & Tindal, G. A. (2006) Oral reading fluency norms: A valuable assessment tool for reading teachers. The Reading Teacher, 59(7), 636-644.

Rasinski, T. V. (2010).  The fluent reader:  Oral and silent reading strategies for building word recognition, fluency, and comprehension (2nd edition).  New York: Scholastic.

By Timothy Rasinski, Ph.D

Anyone who has followed my work in the past knows that I am a huge advocate for the use of poetry (and song) in the literacy classroom for all students, but especially for younger readers and older readers who struggle.  I’d like to share reasons why I think poetry should be an essential part of any literacy program.     

Poetry is Joyous

            Perhaps the most important reason for the use of poetry is that it is pure joy to read and perform.  So many of today’s children’s poets write with such great humor that children are certain to find great delight.   Poetry is fun reading!

Poetry is Profound     

Beyond its ability to tickle a funny bone or two, poetry can be deeply profound and help build students’ knowledge of the world they live in. Whether it is David L. Harrison’s Rhymes for the Times that tell the story of America through poetry, Catherine Clinton’s I, Too, Sing America: Three Centuries of African American Poetry,  Glen Alberto Salazar’s A Little Book of Persian Poetry, or Brod Bagert’s heart of science poetry, poetry can expand children’s world and stretch their imaginations.

Poetry Builds the Foundation for Reading

            Research tells us that many children struggle in reading because of they are not fully proficient in the foundational aspects of reading.  Poetry is immensely suited to improve many foundational reading competencies.

Phonemic Awareness

            Poetry is filled with texts that play with sounds.  Think of all the nursery rhymes children should learn before starting school.   Diddle Diddle Dumpling, Dickery Dickery Dare, Peter Piper, picked a peck, or Betty Botter Bought some Butter are sure to help children develop an awareness of the phonemes /d/, /p/, and /b/.  I can’t help but wonder if nursery rhymes were first created to help children develop their awareness of speech sounds that is crucial to their language and literacy development.

Phonics

            Most poems for children rhyme.  Rhyming words are words usually (not always) have similar rimes (e.g. the -ake in bake, cake, rake, take…).    Helping children detect and decode rimes are a great way to develop their phonics or word decoding ability (as well as their spelling or encoding).   Dr. Edward Fry, for example, found that knowledge of just 38 common rimes could help children decode over 600 words simply by adding beginning consonant, consonant blend, or digraph.  Little Bo Peep is a perfect text to explore the -eep rime, and Maya Angelou’s Life Doesn’t Frighten Me at All is certain to help children learn about the -all rime (and much more!).

Vocabulary

            Poetry is filled with rich words that poets use to weave their magic.     Back to the Maya Angelou poem we can find wonderful words and phrases such as frighten, frogs and snakes, dragons, counterpane, tough guys, and much much more.  Our job as teachers is simply to help children notice these great words that poets make such great use of.  

Fluency

            Fluency is developed largely through repeated readings of texts.      Another name for repeated reading is rehearsal.  Poetry is meant to be performed, so in order to get the point where students are able to perform, they will need to rehearse, hopefully under the guidance and support of a teacher.  Moreover, the aim of the repeated reading is to read with good expression (prosody), which is at the heart of fluency, instead of reading fast which is the goal of too many repeated reading lessons.

Sight Vocabulary

            The rhythm, rhyme (and melody) in poetry, and songs makes them easily memorized. How many of us can remember a poem that we first learned and last read in our school days?  Sight words are essentially words that are memorized by sight and sound.   Poetry is excellent text for helping students expand their corpus of memorized words – sight vocabulary, especially when after reading (and performing) an entire poem we work with students to analyze individual words and word patterns in the poem itself.  

Writing

            Because poetry often has a specific and transparent structure, it is an excellent mentor text for students’ writing.  It is not difficult for students to write their own versions (or parodies) of favorite poems or songs, whether it is their own versions of Yankee Doodle, Judith Viorst’s If I were in Charge of the World, or Langston Hughes’ Mother to Son the structure of the poetic text gives students a head start on creating their own poetry.  A favorite for many students in our university reading clinic:

Diddle Diddle Dumpling my son John,

Went to bed with his stockings on.

One shoe off, one shoe on.

Diddle Diddle Dumpling, my son John.

That rhyme is also a favorite for students writing their own.      Taylor, for example, wrote (rehearsed and performed) his own version of the rhyme:

Diddle Diddle Dumpling my son Fred,

Slept all day on his bed.

Woke up at midnight and screamed “there’s a monster under my bed.”

Diddle Diddle Dumpling, my son Fred.

Success – A Sense of Accomplishment

            Children who struggle in reading do not often experience success in their reading, especially when they compare themselves with their more proficient classmates.  Poems are relatively short, and the rhythm and rhyme embedded in poetry for children make them easy to learn to read and perform.  Imagine the feeling of accomplishment children can feel when they are able to fluently and expressively read a poem aloud, just as well as any more proficient reader, to classmates, teacher, family members, and others. That success is empowering.  In our reading clinic, our goal is for children to leave every single day with the ability to read something well and to read and perform it for their parents and other family members.  

Make Poetry Part of your Reading Curriculum

            In our educational world where stories and informational texts are the dominant forms of reading, we need to make a concerted effort to allow poetry a foothold.   Just 10-20 minutes of poetry reading a day can have a profound effect on children’s literacy development.  Poetry is particularly well suited for remote and virtual instruction. Poems can easily be sent electronically to students and printed at home.  Then, via zoom or other distance technology, teachers and children can easily practice, master, and perform a daily poem in that 10-20 time span.  Let’s make it a goal for poetry to be read, rehearsed, and performed every day of the school year! 

BrodBagert            https://www.brodbagertsheartofscience.com/

Margarita Engle         http://margaritaengle.com/

David L. Harrison       https://www.davidlharrison.com/

Sara Holbrook              https://www.saraholbrook.com/resources/poems/

Kenn Nesbitt                https://www.poetry4kids.com/

Robert Pottle               http://robertpottle.com/poetry-index.php

Jack Prelutsky           http://jackprelutsky.com/

You can find resources for teaching accurate and automatic word recognition (i.e. fluency) at Tim’s own website – www.timrasinski.com

Daily Word Ladders by Timothy Rasinski

Follow Tim on Twitter @TimRasinski1

 

Timothy Rasinski, Ph.D.

 

In my previous blog posting for The Robb Review, I focused on what should be the real goal of phonics instruction – to get kids to the point where they don’t have to use phonics much in their reading.  We want students to be so proficient and efficient at word recognition that minimal attention is given to word decoding and maximum attention can be directed toward comprehension.   Staying with this theme of reading instruction goals, I’d like to focus on reading fluency and state right off the bat that the goal of fluency instruction should not be to make kids read fast.    It has been this incessant focus on increasing reading speed, I think, that has unfortunately given reading fluency a bad rep.

 

What is Reading Fluency?

Fluency has been called the neglected goal of the reading program (and it is) (Allington, 1983); it has also been called the bridge from word recognition to comprehension.     I like that bridge metaphor a lot. Fluency is the critical link to making meaning while reading. There are two components to fluency. The first is automaticity in word recognition – the ability to recognize words so effortlessly that most of a reader’s attention can be devoted to comprehension.   Automaticity is the part of the bridge that links to word recognition.

The other part of the fluency bridge is called prosody or reading with expression.  This is the link to comprehension. When a reader reads with appropriate expression that reflects the meaning of the text, she is striving to comprehend that text.    This is the part of fluency that is often neglected in instruction; yet it is critical for comprehension to occur, even when reading silently.

 

How Should We Teach Fluency?

As with anything we want to become fluent at (e.g., speaking, driving, golf, cooking), fluency is developed through practice.   In reading we have several forms of practice that can and should be employed. These forms of practice include wide reading, assisted reading where a reader reads while simultaneously hearing a fluent reading of the same text by a partner or recording, and repeated reading where a reader reads a text several times until she achieves fluency on that text (Rasinski, 2010).    In all these forms of practice the goal should be reading for meaning, and if reading orally, to read with appropriate expression that conveys meaning to anyone who may be listening.

 

How Does Reading Speed Fit into the Fluency Equation?

Reading speed (words read correctly per minute) is an indicator of word recognition automaticity and is often called the oral reading fluency (ORF) score.   The more automatic or effortless you are in recognizing words in text, the faster your reading becomes, AND the more attention you can devote to comprehending the text as opposed to analyzing the words in the text.    Reading speed is an indicator or consequence of the fluency component of automaticity, BUT it is not fluency. Our reading speed increases as our fluency improves, not the other way around. I often say that I want our children to become fast readers just the way I am and all of you reading this blog are reasonably fast readers;  but I want them to become fast the same way we all became fast readers – through lots and lots of authentic practice in reading.

So go ahead and use DIBELS and AimsWeb ORF scores, or Hasbrouck and Tindal’s norms (Words Correct per Minute) cautiously and sparingly as indicators of students’ growth in automaticity, but please please please do not let children think that you are trying to get them to read faster.   The increase in reading speed (as well as improvements in reading with expression) will happen with authentic reading practice, not with overt instruction or implied emphasis on reading fast.

  

Fluency is More than Automaticity

A few years ago I came across recordings of arguably two of the most fluently read speeches in American  history – Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech” and John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address “Ask Not What Your Country…”     I subjected the oral readings of both of these speeches to an ORF (reading speed) assessment. In both cases, Dr. King and President Kennedy’s readings of their speeches may have landed them in a remedial reading class based on their very low ORF scores.     I am sure they were both automatic in their word recognition, and they could have read those speeches quickly. But doing so would have taken away from the meaning they were trying to convey. Because they were automatic in their recognition of the words in their speeches they were able to devote their attention to making and elaborating on the meaning they wished to share orally. They raised and lowered their voices, had dramatic pauses, changed volume and tone in order to more effectively to deliver their intended meanings to their audiences.   What truly made those speeches fluent was not the speed, but the expression (prosody) that they embedded in their readings.

For fluency instruction to truly work we need to see the goal of fluency as expressive oral (and silent) reading that reflects the meaning of the text.    When we make expressive and meaningful reading of texts the true goal of fluency (and avoid putting emphasis on fast reading) we will see significant improvements in reading comprehension (as well as reading speed).

 

You can find resources on teaching accurate and automatic word recognition and expressive prosodic reading (i.e. fluency) at Tim’s own website – www.timrasinski.com

 

Please see also my new book on reading fluency (written with Melissa Cheesman Smith) – The Megabook of Fluency published by Scholastic.

 

References

Allington, R.L. (1983).  Fluency: The neglected reading goal.  The Reading Teacher, 36, 556-561.

Hasbrouck, J., & Tindal, G. A. (2006) Oral reading fluency norms: A valuable assessment tool for reading teachers. The Reading Teacher, 59(7), 636-644.

Rasinski, T. V. (2010).  The fluent reader:  Oral and silent reading strategies for building word recognition, fluency, and comprehension (2nd edition).  New York: Scholastic.