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Elementary Principals’ Resource Network SST 8’s Elementary Administrative Community May 12, 2023 Give us 60 minutes, we’ll give you news, information and evidence-based strategies to create your own instructional and administrative playbook. 1 Attendance 9/22/22 https://forms.gle/rMjBesHHkVrn7c2B9

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Learn about the requirements in the updated Phonics Rule and listen to guidance on the practices linked to the language in the law.

LM Clinton: Ohio Department of Education Policy Lead

Tricia Merenda: Ohio Department of Education Literacy and ELA Specialist

EVENT DATE & TIME

Tuesday, May 23, 2023 @ 9:30 am

LOCATION

If a confirmation email is not received
after registration, please call the OAESA office
at (614) 547-8087 or email Nancy Abrams.

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Events & Registration | OAESA - Ohio Association of Elementary School Administrators

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Learn about the requirements in the updated Phonics Rule and listen to guidance on the practices linked to the language in the law.

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Teachers in every content area can build partnerships with the school librarian to support students' academic literacy across the curriculum.

Raising literacy levels has always been a priority for schools, and even more so since the pandemic. Literacy is a fundamental skill that can be applied across all academic subjects. As we know, students who are literate are more able to engage with and understand the information they are being given or find for themselves and, in turn, are able to gain a deeper understanding of each subject. It's widely recognized that a student who is literate is more likely to become a confident, self-motivated independent learner.

School librarians have always had a role to play in promoting literacy-especially through reading for pleasure-and because of this, it's often linked to the English department. This is not something that should be dismissed. As we know, students who read widely do better academically, as it introduces them to lots more vocabulary and also supports and engages their imagination.

The Librarian's Role Can Support Policy Development

However, the conversation around literacy seems to have changed over the last few months. There's far more talk about literacy across the curriculum and the need to create cross-school literacy policies. I feel that this is a massive opportunity for the school librarian to demonstrate their role in the wider context.

School librarians have always been a cross-curricula resource. They provide physical and online resources to meet the needs of the teachers and students, but they are also able to teach information literacy skills (including academic reading) through inquiry across all subjects. School libraries and librarians should be included in these policies in order to help teachers understand their wealth of expertise and remind them that the school librarian is there for everyone.

Harness Librarians' Expertise in Academic Reading

There are three aspects to raising literacy levels: first, teaching children how to read; second, supporting those students who need extra help through interventions; and finally, helping students to read academically-the skill that school librarians have the expertise to support.

Academic reading comprises three tiers of vocabulary:

Tier 1: This level includes everyday words that children come across regularly through reading; conversations with their peers; listening to the world around them; watching TV, YouTube, TikTok, etc., such as happy, baby, table, and cloth.

Tier 2: This level relates to academic vocabulary that appears frequently across content areas, such as analyze and evaluate.

To gain access to vocabulary in Tiers 2 and 3, it's important for students to read nonfiction from either physical books or online resources, as fiction doesn't often include these types of words. Because Tier 3 vocabulary is subject specific, our specialist teachers will make sure that students know and understand the keywords for their subject. Tier 2 vocabulary can be found across the curriculum, so it's often the vocabulary that everyone presumes someone else will be teaching.

Inquiry-Based Resources Support Vocabulary Through Reading

School librarians not only can provide the resources that each subject needs but also can ensure, by working alongside teachers, that the topic keywords and Tier 2 vocabulary are accessible (at the right age level or appropriate for students with special needs) within those resources. Because they have an overview of the whole school, they are likely to be aware of what is being taught in various grade levels.

School librarians have a wealth of resources through the IFLA School Library Guidelines and FOSIL (Framework of Skills for Inquiry Learning) that allow them to support teachers across the curriculum. FOSIL is a free framework that can be used worldwide and supports students from prekindergarten to 12th grade. It uses inquiry as the building block of skills that can be taught across all subjects.

School librarians can use inquiry skills to not only teach teachers and students how to find quality resources but also support reading with purpose and understanding and so much more. Inquiry is about helping our students become high-level critical thinkers. Through supporting reading skills, we're helping our students go beyond the list of facts to gain understanding and meaning.

This is best done by a strong library program linked to the whole school curriculum policy, which will help teachers understand the expertise and role of the librarian within their own subject. Alongside research skills, academic reading needs to be embedded at all levels of inquiry, which means that the resources that the school librarian provides are hugely important.

Collaboration Between Teachers and Librarians is Key

Teachers and the school librarian need to work together to ensure that the resources needed are not only available but also age appropriate. This is only possible through collaboration. It's important that the school librarian not be an afterthought in this process. If teachers need time to plan a lesson, school librarians also need planning time, and ideally this should be done together.

Some school libraries might stock only a small number of resources. However, if given time, it's possible to provide online and physical resources for specific lessons. Planning together will also provide the opportunity to create lessons that include the skills and appropriate keywords to engage students in academic reading with purpose.

If teachers are unsure how to get started, they can use an initial inquiry planning form that is available via the FOSIL website and which helps teachers understand the information that school librarians need in order to be able to help them and their students. This type of planning tool can lead to some great collaboration.

If you want to raise literacy levels at your school, include your school library and librarian. Why struggle to do this on your own if you have an expert in your school who can help? Maybe it's time to have a conversation with your school librarian and find out how they can support academic reading across the curriculum. Finally, check to see if your school library and librarian are mentioned in your literacy policy; if not, that is also a good place to start.

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Boosting Students' Literacy Skills With Help From the School Librarian

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Teachers in every content area can build partnerships with the school librarian to support students' academic literacy across the curriculum. Raising literacy levels has always been a priority for schools, and even more so since the pandemic. Literacy is a fundamental skill that can be applied across all academic subjects.

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Ohio Principal Leadership Supports | Ohio Department of Education

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Finish the Year Strong and Build for Next Year 

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Finish the Year Strong and Build for Next Year 

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Around this time of year, most school and district leaders are eyeing spring break. It's the time of year that many balls are still up in the air and fatigue is beginning to set in from all the juggling. Sadly, we know spring break will inevitably fly by and those balls will still be there waiting to be picked back up when school resumes. So, how will you proceed? Will you continue the juggling act or develop a different approach?

Continuing to juggle often leads to burn out and lack of planning for the next school year, and no one wants that. So, to finish the school year strong and lay the foundation for next school year, we recommend picking a strategy that focuses on time management and actively listening to your school community.

Prioritize your time and activities to finish strong

In the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, author Stephen Covey offers a time management matrix that can be helpful for school and district leaders. For those that are familiar, let this be a refresher. There is no better time to be reminded of this timeless tool. For those that are not familiar, Covey breaks down activities in his time management matrix into 4 categories of activities.

©Stephen Covey

Do any of these activities look familiar, and can you relate to the corresponding categories? For example, are you starting the day checking emails that will deter you from getting into classrooms to advance instructional excellence? Or are you handling things like managing building substitutes which other members of your team are better suited for?

According to Covey, the goal is to do away with the activities that are truly not important for your role, though they may seem urgent. You want to shrink the amount of activities in category 3 and really focus on the activities in category 2 that are not urgent, but are important. For example, optimal time management for the remainder of the school year could look like having step-back meetings with your leadership team, looking at your goals and plans for the year, and deciding to focus on two high-leverage priorities and actions between now and the summer.

And, remember, you can say no

Experts across all industries also encourage leaders to learn to say no because it helps to create more time for what matters most. Every day so many situations present themselves as urgent and you must learn to push back against them or they will distract you from the important leadership activities. In not saying no, you are modeling for your team that they can come to you with matters that they feel are pressing and you will drop everything to address them. In all of your interactions, you want to remind your team that they need to focus on what is of most importance. Saying no is important too.

Actively listen to your community to build for next year

All year long you have been building and sustaining relationships, and this time of year it is critical to continue listening to your community so you can end the year strong. And, you can lay the groundwork for the key action steps, school improvement or strategic plan, and professional development opportunities that will propel student achievement forward in the next school year. Here are three strategies to consider.

Engage with your teachers

With teacher shortages and a workforce climate of high turnover, it is more important than ever to meet teachers and staff where they are and be open to listening to their honest feedback. Teachers often will only speak freely if they feel psychologically safe in an inclusive environment created by a leader who has practiced self-reflection.

"Today's teachers want to be heard. They want to know that beyond the cursory open-door practices, that you see and hear them."

Brandy Reeves, Chief of Staff & School Leadership, Chapel Hill Carrboro City Schools

One of the ways school and district leaders are soliciting feedback from their staff is to hold stay interviews, which are informal conversations that managers use to retain strong employees. District leader and New Leaders alum Brandy Reeves has used the technique at Chapel Hill Carrboro City Schools and says, "Today's teachers want to be heard. They want to know that beyond the cursory open-door practices, that you see and hear them. They want to be invited to conversations where you engage them around the work and who they are as a person. They want to be valued."

Add opportunities for student voice

Students who have a voice in how their school is run feel more invested in their education. Unfortunately, the opposite is also true. This spring, you want to create proactive space for students to share their experiences. Many school and district leaders are using empathy interviews to uncover needs that may have gone unnoticed or unspoken. Using open-ended questions, these one-on-one conversations with an individual student or group of students provide leaders with a deeper understanding of student needs and how best to support them. All of which is valuable insight as you plan for the next school year.

Listen to your families

Spring is also the time to gather and evaluate data from families and community members about the quality of your engagement. What specific bits of feedback have emerged as a theme or trend? How do you plan on operationalizing around it for the next school year? Empathy interviews work well with families too. They yield key insights into what families value and prioritize in the school and district. From those trends, you can identify two or three strategies to support and enhance family and community engagement next year as well.

If you don't have a family engagement or community partnership plan, now is the time to think about creating a plan based on an analysis of your community's needs.

Putting it all together

By developing a time management strategy that allows you to be productive and lead most effectively and being mindful of staff input, student voice, and community feedback, you will position yourself to not only end this school year from a place of strength, but begin next school year the same.

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How School Leaders Can Finish the Year Strong and Build for Next Year | New Leaders Blog

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Around this time of year, most school and district leaders are eyeing spring break. It's the time of year that many balls are still up in the air and fatigue is beginning to set in from all the juggling.

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Hello, Anna Geiger here from The Measured Mom, and today we're continuing our expert interview series!

Today I'm speaking with Dr. Katie Pace Miles, associate professor at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. Her research interests include orthographic mapping, high frequency word learning, reading interventions, and literacy instruction that is grounded in the science of reading. I know you'll enjoy learning how she got into education, about how she did work with Dr. Linnea Ehri, then our conversation about how word-learning works, including how to teach those tricky high frequency words, and finally some programs that she's developed. Let's get started!

Anna Geiger: Hello and welcome to the podcast! Today we have the privilege of speaking with Dr. Katie Pace Miles, who is associate professor at Brooklyn College. If you've seen any of her presentations, she's done a lot of talking and presenting about the concept of sight words, what we have been traditionally getting wrong, and how we can change how we teach sight words. So welcome, Dr. Miles!

Katie Pace Miles: Thank you for having me.

Anna Geiger: Can you tell us a little bit about how you got into education, how balanced literacy was introduced to you, and then how you switched gears very quickly and the education that you got?

Katie Pace Miles: Sure. So I started teaching right after college. I was an elementary major. The school I was at was balanced literacy, and the crazy thing when I look back on it is that there was no curriculum. I was at one of those schools where every teacher made their own literacy curriculum, and so you were pulling from all different resources and things were being handed down and each classroom was doing it in a slightly different way.

For my master's, I went into educational psychology, but it had a really strong teacher training track to it. What was interesting is I came upon this dichotomy where I was learning about cognitive science and educational psychology, but the teacher training part of my master's was training me in balanced literacy.

We had to read The Art of Teaching Reading, and it just never sat well with me. I just rejected it. I remember scanning the book and I didn't know that this was what I would be doing now happen years later. Just in the moment, it just never sat well with me.

I felt like my students really needed more what we now call explicit systematic instruction. I became a reading specialist thereafter. I think I was always drawn to the striving readers and because of that, I just knew for those students, this was not going to work for them.

Anna Geiger: I'm going to insert a little bit there. For those of you not familiar with that book, The Art of Teaching Reading is by Lucy Calkins. It is very fat. It's probably about six hundred pages, and I'll just have to be honest and say that back in the day, I loved that book. I highlighted it up and down. I thought it was so inspirational. I just pictured this perfect class and how I was going to apply everything. I think I was sitting on the beach once reading that book and I loved it.

It's great to hear that you saw through it right away. Looking at the book now, I don't know if I still kept it, sometimes I keep those old books for reference, but I believe out of six hundred pages, there's about six pages that even mention phonics and there's no discussion about explicit teaching. I should go back and see what she talks about for the rest of the book.

But you could see right away there was something wrong with that. Can you talk a little bit more about this disconnect between your master's work and what you were learning in college?

Katie Pace Miles: Sure. So in my undergrad, I had gone to a really strong education program for my undergrad, but the thing that always, always bothered me is these moments of what EXACTLY do I do? What am I exactly supposed to do? I think that might be who I am just as a pragmatic person in these delicious courses.

At the end every time, I'd be like, "What does that mean when you go into the classroom tomorrow?" So that urgency that teachers feel when they hear me talk or anyone else talk, that's exactly who I was sitting in classes.

So I actually decided I wasn't going to do an education master's. I don't want to be extreme, but it just didn't sit well. I kind of wanted to reject a little bit of this, "Let's just talk about theory in education."

Now I was going to college in the early 2000s, and so there was none of this, "Let's do explicit, systematic, and all of that." The science of reading was not a part of my undergrad training in elementary education, and I just felt like I couldn't take it anymore.

I sought out this educational psychology program, and I fell in love with it because it was explaining what happens developmentally, what is happening cognitively when students are learning all different sorts of things. It was not specifically for reading, but I had this passion for teaching reading, so I was able to apply what I was learning in that master's to the children that I was teaching, and it just made so much more sense.

You have very basic things like previewing, reviewing, and then this whole idea of being systematic. This whole idea of developmental windows. That got me right away. Oh, yes, that makes perfect sense.

Having worked with kindergartners through third grade, there are certainly these developmental windows and you can see the bands. Not everyone's at the same point. They're not supposed to be.

I went on to do my PhD in educational psychology as well with Dr. Linnea Ehri. That was the best because obviously Ehri combines educational psychology and cognitive psychology with, very specifically, the development of reading.

Anna Geiger: And just for my listeners, Dr. Linnea Ehri is a huge name in the science of reading community and has contributed some major things including phases of reading and also the concept of orthographic mapping.

So it was a huge and amazing opportunity you had. Can you tell us more about how that worked?

Katie Pace Miles: Oh, it was like a dream come true. So while I was finishing up my master's in educational psychology, I was serving as a learning specialist actually for students in grades 3-5. I was dealing with a lot of students who it seemed to me they weren't getting the instruction they needed in K, 1, 2. Whereas you would hope there wouldn't be as many students needing reading support in 3-5, my caseload was huge. It was overwhelming.

Because I was in an educational psychology program, I came upon Dr. Ehri's research and just glommed onto it right away. It was experimental psychology work. She was manipulating variables with young students in determining whether it worked better this way or that way. Right away I was like, "That's what I need. That is what I've been waiting for."

I was able to translate it. The translation piece I felt was right there. It was like, "Okay, I'm going to try this tomorrow in my classroom." So I started communicating with her and applied and was very honored to receive a fellowship to work with her for five years.

Anna Geiger: Wow. Wow.

Katie Pace Miles: It's amazing.

Anna Geiger: So what did you do during that work?

Katie Pace Miles: So I served as her research assistant, and then I was also her student taking all of her classes. In this fellowship role, they set me up to start teaching at one of the City University of New York campuses. I wound up at Brooklyn College teaching developmental literacy. So as I was learning about all of the research from Dr. Ehri, I was then going to teach in an undergrad situation where these were all pre-service teachers. So it was my duty to translate what I was learning from Ehri to these students. It was just my job simply.

It's not what it is today, like, "Oh, we have to figure out the translation and whatnot." I was just forced to do it. There was no way that I could turn a blind eye to what I was learning in Ehri's classes and then show up on Wednesday to teach and talk about something other than what she was demonstrating that so clearly had mounds, years, piles of evidence behind it.

Anna Geiger: Amazing. Amazing.

I know one of the big things you like to talk about these days, one of the many things, is about sight words and what those really are and how we should approach them. Could you start us off with a proper definition of sight words? I know many people consider those words you can't sound out; you just have to memorize them. There's plenty of websites that still define them that way. How would you define it?

Katie Pace Miles: Well, I don't even use the term sight words. As you learn about the theory of orthographic mapping, you'll understand that the goal is that all words are going to be able to be read by sight because you would've mapped the letter-sound correspondences over time. You would've mapped that and stored that in memory.

That term, sight words, it came from a good place to use it with this subset of words, but it actually is inaccurate. So the words that I think we're all referring to when we say sight words are actually high frequency words.

Then I often like to say those are just words that are used a lot, and this idea that they're all irregular is inaccurate, but you have to look at your list. You have to scrutinize. You have to consider what phonics concepts you've taught so far and then look back at your list and say, "Actually, yeah, this word is now decodable."

So to go back to it, I would say high frequency words are words that are used most often in print, in text.

Anna Geiger: I've had an episode, quite some time ago, about orthographic mapping, but can you again define that for us and tell us how that relates to establishing a sight word vocabulary?

Katie Pace Miles: Ehri's theory of orthographic mapping proposes that there is a glue that is formed between the spelling of a word and its pronunciation, and also the meaning supports that. So it's the spelling, the pronunciation, and the meaning of a word that comes together to be mapped in memory.

Now the glue, as I mentioned at the beginning, and I always go like this because her diagram literally goes like this, this part of orthographic mapping is what most securely stores it in memory. The meaning supports that, but it is critical that when you are learning to read a new word, especially as an emergent reader, you are having a moment where you're analyzing what does the spelling of this word look like? And how does that spelling break out into the phonemes that I need to produce and then blend back together to say the word? Then over time, that glue will be strengthened.

It's not that you're going to do this where you analyze the spelling, map it to the pronunciation, and the next thing you know... Well, for some students that does happen. It's stored. For other students, the students that I'm working with, striving readers, it takes numerous exposures to that word to map it and securely store it in memory so that it can be read automatically by sight. Right? That's the goal.

So all words are going to go through this process and all words, again, the goal would be that you can read it automatically by sight at some point. Maybe it's after the first exposure, maybe it's after the fourth. Maybe for some students it's after the tenth or more exposure.

Anna Geiger: So let's say a teacher is doing the right things, they're teaching phonemic awareness and phonics, they've analyzed the high frequency word, but maybe the two words are "what" and "when" or "what" and "why." And they have a student who just cannot remember them. What tips would you have?

Katie Pace Miles: Definitely taking, as everyone who's listening to this knows, a multimodal approach to this. Sometimes we have the instructional approaches that we do consistently in our classrooms, and we know that for some students, we're going to have to really shake it up.

You can go through different protocols for high frequency words. I would crack out those magnetic letters. I would be counting the phonemes. I would be mapping those letters to those phonemes. You could do that without magnetic letters. You do it with magnetic letters. You bring other resources that you have around the classroom to do that.

Then it would be also your spelling brain. Can you work with students to say, "Hmm, I am seeing that this word is spelled W-H-A-T. How do you think that would be pronounced? /w/-/ă/-/t/. Oh, well actually, we have to adjust our brain and say /w/-/ŭ/-/t/ and why does it do that?" And then you would compare, are there other words where the A is making that sound? Just to give it more of a network around that letter making that different sound too. It's very likely that that will help that student to be like, "Oh yeah, it's like in the word..." whatever it is, and then they are creating those connections.

Anna Geiger: So you talked earlier about how meaning is so important to help those glue, and just as a reference to everybody who's not watching this, but listening, Dr. Miles had her fingers laced together when she was talking about gluing the pronunciation onto the letters.

How would you recommend approaching that when it comes to those abstract function words like "of" and "was"?

Katie Pace Miles: Anna, I actually have a research study that I conducted with Ehri a few years ago where we focus solely on function words. Well, I guess not solely. We had one where we were doing function and content words, and what we found really focuses on multilingual students. In the study it was non-native speakers of English, and what we found was that they needed examples of how to use those function words in sentences. They needed multiple examples over time in order to then be able to use that word appropriately.

Then we know from the theory of orthographic mapping that that's just part of the amalgam, as Ehri says. So if you know how to spell it and pronounce it or decode it, and you have that meeting, you're just going to have more clarity. You're going to have a clearer representation of that word in memory.

While we did focus on multilingual learners, I think there's also a lot of students for whom having opportunities to use the function words "of, the, what, why." All of those ones that are all over those high frequency word lists. Having opportunities to use them both verbally and in sentence writing, it's only going to strengthen the representation in memory.

Anna Geiger: So multiple exposures, sentence work, and maybe oral language work with those words.

Katie Pace Miles: Oral language work. Yep.

Anna Geiger: Now there's a lot of kindergarten teachers, maybe first grade teachers, who have a long list of sight words they're expected to teach. Then there's also the idea, which I used to espouse of, starting preschoolers with sight words because it felt easier, right? Because it kind of was to a point. You could memorize twenty words, whereas they might not quite be ready to sound out because they don't have the phonemic awareness skills or whatever.

And yet, this is really counterproductive. Can you talk a little bit about why it's really not a good use of time to memorize these long lists of words?

Katie Pace Miles: It really takes me back to these developmental psychology classes too. It's like time is limited in early childhood. There's only so much instructional time that you have. If we know through the research that the best way to securely store words in memory is through this decoding process, it doesn't make sense to spend so much time on memorization.

That time would be much better spent on letter-sound knowledge in preschool to make sure that you really have strong letter-sound knowledge going into kindergarten. Or there are many preschoolers who are ready for CVC word reading and it's completely appropriate. People are always like, "Oh, it's inappropriate." No, no, totally appropriate to go there.

Once they have that letter's sound, you start, in a really fun way, putting those words together. You can do it actually just with VC words at first, right? At, it. I just think it's really about time and the long-term outcome.

One of the things that I'll add on to that too is about habits. So if children start learning the habit of memorizing words in preschool, and then that's the focus of kindergarten, then all of a sudden we start telling them, "Oh no. Now you need to decode this word." And decoding is effortful. It's hard.

Anna Geiger: Yep. It's hard.

Katie Pace Miles: It's hard work. So it's best to start with that, get that on the ground, and then that's just the way you read words.

Anna Geiger: I was just reading something the other day, and I can't remember what it was, but it was something about how with a class they had teaching "sight words," but once the kids got to a certain number, they were forgetting the first ones.

Katie Pace Miles: Of course.

Anna Geiger: Which makes perfect sense, because if you're just learning it by memorizing it, your brain can only hold so much. Whereas actually, if you've mapped it into your brain by sounding it out, that makes more sense.

What could you say to teachers who are using a decodable book and naturally, of course, there's going to be a word or two sometimes that is not yet decodable for the child or maybe never will be technically fully decodable. How would you recommend they approach that word so the children can actually read the decodable?

Katie Pace Miles: I would hope that the decodable books you're using have limited high frequency words that you haven't taught yet. If that's the case, it's totally fine, right? I think it's okay when you come upon that word to say, "This is the word 'is,' or 'you'."

Anna Geiger: Or "have" or "does." Maybe "does" would be good one. Yeah.

Katie Pace Miles: There you go. And then it's up to the teacher. Does she want to take the teachable moment and break down the word into the sounds and map the letters real quick? Totally, that would be great. You could do it at the end. You could do it before. You could do it before the reading, after the reading. I think that it's a teachable moment where you don't need to require the child to then memorize the word.

Anna Geiger: Yeah. Right. That makes sense.

Katie Pace Miles: So I think there's this concept that if it's a high frequency word, then it has to be memorized, and then we have to make sure that that word has been memorized before we go on to the next. I don't look at it at all, especially if there are forty CVC decodable words in that book. That's your focus! If students can do that, that is such a victory! That's such excellent teaching. The teachers should feel so accomplished with that. Then just do as much mapping for those high frequency words as you can and move on.

Anna Geiger: Exactly, and not stress about it. Because the focus of the book is practicing those sound-spelling patterns that you've taught.

Katie Pace Miles: Absolutely.

Anna Geiger: You have done a lot of other things, including a program called Reading Ready. Can you talk to us about some of the projects that you have and the things that you share with people? I think a lot of them for free?

Katie Pace Miles: Yes, sure! I could talk to you about CUNY Reading Corps and I could talk to you about Reading Ready. Maybe I'll start with Reading Ready.

So I have two children, and my older child was an emergent reader in the midst of the pandemic, and I could not get over the fact that schools were closed and there's this developmental window for children to learn how to read, and my child was entering into it and I just couldn't get over it.

I was thinking about all these caregivers at home and what were they going to do? Also with young children, the remote instruction was not landing with them. They're young children and they're not going to learn how to read in a Zoom room of twenty five other students.

I had been a part of an intervention program called Reading Rescue. It's first and second grade reading intervention. At the same time that this was happening with my own child in the midst of the pandemic, I also saw that more and more students were entering into this. It's supposed to be an emergent intervention, but students were entering it without the prerequisite skills that they needed, and it made a lot of sense.

So I wrote Reading Ready based on what I was doing with my own daughter at home. Reading Ready is a simple to execute program. It has ten lessons. Each lesson has its own explicit systematic phonics instruction. Each lesson, though, so it's not that you just have ten sessions, those ten lessons break out into thirty to sixty sessions. It's a controlled, I call it an intervention, but it's also preventative. You could use this with young children before they need intervention just to make sure they're getting good word analysis work. Or if you have a first or second grader who didn't get this in kindergarten, you may want to use this program.

Each session starts with letter-sound review, and then you do phonemic awareness work using those sounds. There's a few compound words in there that don't relate to those, but I keep it really controlled. Those sounds then are used in the word analysis part of the lesson, and you're doing sound-letter mapping using words, and the words only have those combinations. Then you go into sentence reading. The sentences overwhelmingly only have those words. In fact, over the thirty to sixty sessions, the students are only ever going to see six irregular high frequency words and up to lesson five, which would be a minimum of fifteen sessions, if not more, they're only ever going to see, I think it's three high frequency words.

Anna Geiger: Okay. Wow.

Katie Pace Miles: I'm really obsessed with keeping those high frequency words at bay for these emergent word readers, because it's all about, as I mentioned before, this habit forming of we have to do the hard work to read these words. It is difficult, but the students catch on very swiftly when they're in this environment where they can be successful.

Anna Geiger: I'd like to talk a little bit about what you said, the hard work. So this is kind of funny, but when I first learned about the science of reading three or four years ago, I was starting to read all these books that people recommended, and I put comments on the side, and I was very resistant, so I was kind of writing snarky comments on the side. When people would say, "Learning to read is hard." I'm like, "Oh, well that doesn't sound like fun," because I was used to the leveled books and it just seemed so magical and to think that you'd have to struggle through these words sounded awful to me. How would you convince a five-year-old that this hard work is worth it?

I have a different perspective now, but I'd like to hear from you how you would address someone who felt that way.

Katie Pace Miles: I think that's so honest. I really appreciate your honesty. I've worked with young children, and I've only ever really done it this way where I've been doing the letter sounds. While I do see it being hard, when they get it, they are so rewarded by having figured it out. It's like when they solve a puzzle, or they build something with their Tinker Toys, or Legos, or something like that, they feel so accomplished. I think they have this security, it's maybe subconscious, but they know what to do.

They have skills that they bring to the table the next time they're presented with words. They don't have this insecurity of like, "Either I have it or I don't. Either it's been memorized or it hasn't. So good luck to me."

Anna Geiger: Yeah. I really appreciate hearing that. Just as a quick aside, I learned about structured literacy and all that with my youngest, and I taught all my kids to read before they went to school because I thought I should get to be the one to do that. He was almost five. He wasn't in school yet. I started teaching with decodables, which was very unlike all my other kids.

The very first day I pulled out a decodable and a leveled book, and I thought I just didn't want to get rid of the leveled books. That very first day I saw how confusing it was. First I did the decodable, but then I pulled out the leveled book and said, "Oh, you can't sound out those words." It just made no sense, and I thought, "Okay, I get it now. I won't use them."

But at the very, very beginning, it was very slow. My husband who had heard me teach all the other kids to read with leveled books said to me later, "I felt kind of sad listening to him read like that. It sounded so hard." He caught on very fast, but it was just very interesting.

I remember with some of my other boys, we have six kids and four are boys, and with a couple of them, the learning to read thing with the leveled books was very annoying. I remember I just thought, "We just have to push through it." It wasn't like that was perfect either.

But he would take these decodables and he would just go sit on the couch and just read them all by himself without me telling him to. Because like you said, like Anita Archer says too, success breeds motivation. I just want to reiterate that for people who might be feeling a little bit like I used to feel.

Katie Pace Miles: I'm so glad you're really emphasizing the decodables here. That contrast, Anna, that you just mentioned is, again, so honest and really important for people to hear. The contrast of starting young children with leveled books. They have to rely on the pictures because these big words are in there and they're full of irregular high frequency words. So you're guessing at those, and you started that bad habit. You're looking at the picture. You're using partial decoding skills all the way through it versus you put in a little bit of that hard work and you get up and going, and then it really starts building upon itself.

One of the things with Reading Ready is that I intentionally wrote these sentences that are disconnected from pictures. So the students, they just have a sentence to read, and you can write it on a whiteboard. In the book, it's not that big, but you can write it on a whiteboard. If you have a student who's starting in level one or lesson one, they really struggle to read one sentence, whereas they might have whipped through a leveled book. But when they actually have to attend to those letter sounds, everything is brought cognitively to that activity.

I remember with my daughter, it was just getting that one sentence and then a few less sessions later, she was able to read two sentences and it was still laborious, but I knew what we were working towards. And then just like your son, then she was off.

Anna Geiger: Yeah.

Katie Pace Miles: I didn't even have to finish Reading Ready with her. I was like, "Okay, you don't need this anymore."

Anna Geiger: It's interesting how that works out a lot sometimes.

I was reading, I think it was Margaret Goldberg, and she said something about how it feels like they're not going to get there, like they're not going to be able to do it, but then they do. And that's the "magic" of orthographic mapping, once they map those CVC words, all of a sudden they're automatic and then they can just breeze through books and it's very exciting. There's a quote from, I think, John Shefelbine, that's something about how you have to just struggle through and grunt through it at first, and then the reward is going to come.

But just as a reminder for people too, I think I read this in another Facebook group, you've got to start slow to grow. With the decodable words, it is going to feel like you're not making as much progress as the teacher in the next classroom who's using leveled books because their kids seem like they're reading much more fluently than yours. But we could go off on a whole tangent about the simple view of reading and all that.

Katie Pace Miles: It's so hard. When I give talks on high frequency words, I always bring it back to orthographic mapping. I have these airplanes that'll be going up, and I'm like, you have to go through this nail-biter when the plane is taking off. I'm a nervous flyer. And it's like, are we going to get there? Every word is a nail-biter.

Anna Geiger: Yep. Interesting.

Katie Pace Miles: It's so worth it. It's so worth it, and if you know the theory of orthographic mapping, you're just thinking, "Okay, one of those glue strands just connected." "Oh, maybe I got two glue strands this time." That's great. And you're like, "Okay, I can keep coming back to this."

Anna Geiger: And also, I think it was in the Proust and the Squid, I was reading that one yesterday, and she was talking about how all the work you're doing is just rewiring the brain. You can know that every session you're doing is doing important work. I think that's good for teachers to remember that it might feel like we're not making any progress, but we're building those pathways. For some kids it takes a lot more practice, but all that practice is going to get you somewhere. You've just got to keep at it.

Katie Pace Miles: That's right. That's right. It really goes back to what you had said before that the bottom is going to fall out of the memorization at some point. The fourth grade reading slump is emblematic of this. Students all along in K, 1, 2, they were strong, they were a strong reader. Then they get to the end of second or third, and then all of a sudden it's like, what happened? What happened?

Anna Geiger: Yeah. Can you talk to us a little bit about the other program you mentioned?

Katie Pace Miles: Oh, sure. So CUNY Reading Corps I started in the midst of the pandemic. It's now called CUNY Reading Corps, it wasn't called that when I started it. What I did in the midst of the pandemic, this is fall of 2020, and I was going back to teach at the university. Everything was online, and my literacy courses have thirty hours of field work. My students could not observe in Zoom rooms of the DOE, and my students, because I'm a part of a general early childhood program, which my focus is K-2nd grade, my students only get one literacy course. I'm like, "Oh my gosh!"

I'm so entwined with the New York City Department of Education. I'm such a supporter of them. I'm like, "I have to make sure that this fleet of students every year knows how to teach a child how to read."

So what I did in fall of 2020 was I wrote a grant and received funding to train all of the students that were either in the undergrad or grad version of my course, and they were trained in Reading Rescue, and we trained them up and then sent them via Zoom into the homes of young children who were from underserved communities.

These were the children who were on my mind so much of like, "Oh my gosh, this is the moment when they have to learn how to read and there may not be the support, the resources at home, and there may not be the ability to hire private tutors like what was happening with other privileged families."

I did this in fall of 2020 and continued into the spring. Eventually, this turns into CUNY Reading Corps. What we've turned this into is now the classes at Brooklyn College still are trained in Reading Rescue, and now we hire pre-service teachers from all over CUNY to be trained in either Reading Ready or Reading Rescue, and we deploy them out into the New York City Department of Education and partner with seventy schools across New York to provide this type of tutoring.

The tutoring is either done remotely or now it's in-person, and it has just brought such needed capacity and support to schools, and these pre-service teachers need the experience. They need to be trained in a program that prioritizes systematic and explicit phonics. They need to execute on this over multiple sessions. Our tutors do twenty to forty sessions with the same student. What an experience that is!

We were also able to demonstrate... I'm a researcher, so I'm constantly looking at the students' progression, their growth, and we're seeing that we're making an impact, which is wonderful. So I'm really, really proud of that work.

I'll just give one more plug. Professors from around CUNY, more professors now are going to embed this in their courses. So I have my courses at Brooklyn College. It's now up to three courses at Brooklyn College. And then I believe at four or five other City University of New York campuses, we have professors who are going to embed this in their courses, and now there are universities across the country.

Anna Geiger: That's amazing!

Katie Pace Miles: I've worked with one of the foundations that has supported this, and they are also going to do Reading Ready in their coursework. I'm so just delighted with it. It seems to be really meeting the moment of what schools need, what children need, and what pre-service teachers need going out into the field.

Anna Geiger: That is amazing and really great to hear. I will for sure link to your Reading Ready program, which I've seen it. It's excellent. It's very easy to use.

Katie Pace Miles: Very easy to use.

Anna Geiger: You said you're a researcher. What are you working on now?

Katie Pace-Miles: I'm still working on high frequency words. There's a paper I actually just submitted yesterday with two colleagues, and we were, again, analyzing the Dolch high frequency word list.

It's been a little difficult to run experiments in... Well, it was impossible for me to run experiments during covid in New York. Now we're coming into the post-pandemic, and so I have some research with children on the docket, but in the meantime, I worked with two colleagues to analyze the Dolch list and to really look at what percentage of those words are irregular, have exceptions? And it's very low.

Anna Geiger: It's so interesting.

Katie Pace Miles: Very low. Like 1%.

Teachers should know that these words collectively are not even remotely overwhelmingly irregular. To have that in your mind really guides your instruction, and it helps you think about, okay, what phonetic elements am I teaching, let's say in kindergarten. That's what I'm going to tackle.

But maybe with short A, I should also mention that at times, yes, there's the long A, yes, there's the short A, but there's also this other sound that A makes, /ŭ/. Maybe I should just go there because it unlocks a whole trove of words from these high frequency word lists.

Or maybe that's up to the first grade teacher to do. I also respect that completely, but at some point in instruction, who's going to hit that part of this more advanced phonetic element knowledge?

Anna Geiger: Well, it is a lot to think about. I think it's really nice to hear from you, especially because I think personally, in my experience back in the day, not that many years ago, I would've thought of researchers as just very disconnected from classroom work, and it's just really helpful to hear that. I know that we've talked to others as well, but it's good to know that many researchers are in classrooms, even former teachers themselves.

Thanks for all the work that you're doing, especially to translate it. I know I've really enjoyed the webinars and things you've given, which I'll be sure to link to in the show notes because they're really easy to learn from.

Katie Pace Miles: Thank you so much! I really appreciate the opportunity to be a part of your podcast.

Anna Geiger: Thank you so much for joining us!

You can find the show notes for today's episode at themeasuredmom.com/episode120. Talk to you next time!

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Teaching word recognition with Dr. Katie Pace Miles

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Hello, Anna Geiger here from The Measured Mom, and today we're continuing our expert interview series! Today I'm speaking with Dr. Katie Pace Miles, associate professor at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. Her research interests include orthographic mapping, high frequency word learning, reading interventions, and literacy instruction that is grounded in the science of reading.

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5 Steps to Improving Literacy Instruction in Your Classrooms

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Flipsnack is a digital catalog maker that makes it easy to create, publish and share html5 flipbooks. Upload a PDF or design from scratch flyers, magazines, books and more.

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Teachers in every content area can build partnerships with the school librarian to support students' academic literacy across the curriculum.

Raising literacy levels has always been a priority for schools, and even more so since the pandemic. Literacy is a fundamental skill that can be applied across all academic subjects. As we know, students who are literate are more able to engage with and understand the information they are being given or find for themselves and, in turn, are able to gain a deeper understanding of each subject. It's widely recognized that a student who is literate is more likely to become a confident, self-motivated independent learner.

School librarians have always had a role to play in promoting literacy-especially through reading for pleasure-and because of this, it's often linked to the English department. This is not something that should be dismissed. As we know, students who read widely do better academically, as it introduces them to lots more vocabulary and also supports and engages their imagination.

The Librarian's Role Can Support Policy Development

However, the conversation around literacy seems to have changed over the last few months. There's far more talk about literacy across the curriculum and the need to create cross-school literacy policies. I feel that this is a massive opportunity for the school librarian to demonstrate their role in the wider context.

School librarians have always been a cross-curricula resource. They provide physical and online resources to meet the needs of the teachers and students, but they are also able to teach information literacy skills (including academic reading) through inquiry across all subjects. School libraries and librarians should be included in these policies in order to help teachers understand their wealth of expertise and remind them that the school librarian is there for everyone.

Harness Librarians' Expertise in Academic Reading

There are three aspects to raising literacy levels: first, teaching children how to read; second, supporting those students who need extra help through interventions; and finally, helping students to read academically-the skill that school librarians have the expertise to support.

Academic reading comprises three tiers of vocabulary:

Tier 1: This level includes everyday words that children come across regularly through reading; conversations with their peers; listening to the world around them; watching TV, YouTube, TikTok, etc., such as happy, baby, table, and cloth.

Tier 2: This level relates to academic vocabulary that appears frequently across content areas, such as analyze and evaluate.

To gain access to vocabulary in Tiers 2 and 3, it's important for students to read nonfiction from either physical books or online resources, as fiction doesn't often include these types of words. Because Tier 3 vocabulary is subject specific, our specialist teachers will make sure that students know and understand the keywords for their subject. Tier 2 vocabulary can be found across the curriculum, so it's often the vocabulary that everyone presumes someone else will be teaching.

Inquiry-Based Resources Support Vocabulary Through Reading

School librarians not only can provide the resources that each subject needs but also can ensure, by working alongside teachers, that the topic keywords and Tier 2 vocabulary are accessible (at the right age level or appropriate for students with special needs) within those resources. Because they have an overview of the whole school, they are likely to be aware of what is being taught in various grade levels.

School librarians have a wealth of resources through the IFLA School Library Guidelines and FOSIL (Framework of Skills for Inquiry Learning) that allow them to support teachers across the curriculum. FOSIL is a free framework that can be used worldwide and supports students from prekindergarten to 12th grade. It uses inquiry as the building block of skills that can be taught across all subjects.

School librarians can use inquiry skills to not only teach teachers and students how to find quality resources but also support reading with purpose and understanding and so much more. Inquiry is about helping our students become high-level critical thinkers. Through supporting reading skills, we're helping our students go beyond the list of facts to gain understanding and meaning.

This is best done by a strong library program linked to the whole school curriculum policy, which will help teachers understand the expertise and role of the librarian within their own subject. Alongside research skills, academic reading needs to be embedded at all levels of inquiry, which means that the resources that the school librarian provides are hugely important.

Collaboration Between Teachers and Librarians is Key

Teachers and the school librarian need to work together to ensure that the resources needed are not only available but also age appropriate. This is only possible through collaboration. It's important that the school librarian not be an afterthought in this process. If teachers need time to plan a lesson, school librarians also need planning time, and ideally this should be done together.

Some school libraries might stock only a small number of resources. However, if given time, it's possible to provide online and physical resources for specific lessons. Planning together will also provide the opportunity to create lessons that include the skills and appropriate keywords to engage students in academic reading with purpose.

If teachers are unsure how to get started, they can use an initial inquiry planning form that is available via the FOSIL website and which helps teachers understand the information that school librarians need in order to be able to help them and their students. This type of planning tool can lead to some great collaboration.

If you want to raise literacy levels at your school, include your school library and librarian. Why struggle to do this on your own if you have an expert in your school who can help? Maybe it's time to have a conversation with your school librarian and find out how they can support academic reading across the curriculum. Finally, check to see if your school library and librarian are mentioned in your literacy policy; if not, that is also a good place to start.

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Boosting Students' Literacy Skills With Help From the School Librarian

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Teachers in every content area can build partnerships with the school librarian to support students' academic literacy across the curriculum. Raising literacy levels has always been a priority for schools, and even more so since the pandemic. Literacy is a fundamental skill that can be applied across all academic subjects.

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These two videos below are what prompted me to begin learning more about the science of reading. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lxx7hs0qdKQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2pRi_B_Oj8

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Dyslexia Awareness Month: Using the Science of Reading to Support Students with Dyslexia

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Dyslexia Awareness Month: Using the Science of Reading to Support Students with Dyslexia

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Dyslexia Awareness—Using the Science of Reading to Support Students with Dyslexia in K–6 | Amplify

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Elementary Principals’ Resource Network SST 8’s Elementary Administrative Community February 3, 2023 Give us 60 minutes, we’ll give you news, information and evidence-based strategies to create your own instructional and administrative playbook. 1 Attendance 9/22/22 https://forms.gle/rMjBesHHkVrn...

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Explicit Phonics Lesson Model: West Virginia Phonics

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Home — Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library of Ohio

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The Ohio Governor’s Imagination Library wants to ensure every child has access to books from the moment they are born so that kids are entering kindergarten prepared to succeed inside the classroom and beyond.

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﻿ Phonics-based decodable readers give students opportunities to practice decoding. Books in these series progress according to specific phonics skill levels, and can be used for guided instruction or independent reading.

NOTICE ABOUT DECODABLES:
Due to high demand for decodables, processing and shipping times may extend over 4-6 weeks or longer. Please keep this timeline in mind when ordering from High Noon Books. When you order decodables from us, you are getting the best possible material for your beginning readers and your older struggling readers.

﻿Select a category to see the full selection of titles.

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High Noon Books: Phonics-Based Chapter Books

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﻿ Phonics-based decodable readers give students opportunities to practice decoding. Books in these series progress according to specific phonics skill levels, and can be used for guided instruction or independent reading. NOTICE ABOUT DECODABLES: Due to high demand for decodables, processing and shipping times may extend over 4-6 weeks or longer.

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Lesson Resources

The UFLI Foundations Toolbox contains all the lesson resources to accompany the lesson plans provided in the UFLI Foundations manual. (Don't have a manual yet? Click here to order one) Every lesson has companion resources that will help you implement the lessons efficiently, effectively, and consistently.

Some of the companion lesson resources you will find below include:

Lesson slide decks (in PowerPoint and Google Slide formats)

Decodable passages

Homework sheets

Games and activities for additional practice

We have grouped the lessons into smaller units so you can access these resources more easily. Scroll down to use the buttons below to find the resources for each lesson or groups of lessons.

Please note that we are still building out these free resources, and we will be editing this page over the next few weeks. We wanted you to be able to access some materials as soon as possible, but be sure to come back later to see the rest!
New to UFLI Foundations? Learn about its development, check out a sample lesson plan, view the scope and sequence, and more.

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The UFLI Foundations Toolbox contains all the lesson resources to accompany the lesson plans provided in the UFLI Foundations manual. (Don't have a manual yet? Click here to order one) Every lesson has companion resources that will help you implement the lessons efficiently, effectively, and consistently.

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This portal is offered as a free resource through the 2022–2023 school year.

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Flyleaf Publishing - Online Materials Portal

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This portal is offered as a free resource through the 2023-2024 school year.

There are two areas of the site, one for Students and one for Instructors. Materials are organized by our Foundational Skills Scope & Sequence, and can be quickly navigated using the Menu at the top of the page.

If you would like more information about Flyleaf products, please visit flyleafpublishing.com.

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Home - Flyleaf Publishing - Online Materials Portal

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Online Materials PortalThis portal is offered as a free resource through the 2023-2024 school year. There are two areas of the site, one for Students and one for Instructors. Materials are organized by our Foundational Skills Scope & Sequence, and can be quickly navigated using the Menu at the top of the page.

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Copy of Phonological Awareness Lesson Look Fors

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I teach kindergarten. We are trying to follow the science of reading. We believe that is the best way to go. However, my colleague and I are disagreeing over one aspect of our program. Should we teach the letters first, the sounds first, or should we teach them together?
Shanahan response:

This is such a practical question and often research fails to answer such questions. That shouldn't be too surprising since researchers approach reading a bit differently than the classroom teacher. A good deal of psychological study of letters and words over the past century hasn't been so much about how best to teach reading as much as an effort to understand how the human mind works.

In this case, there is a research record that at least provides some important clues as to what the best approach may be.

There has been some disagreement over whether it is a good idea to teach letter names at all. Back in the 1970s, S.J. Samuels conducted some small studies with an artificial orthography and found that the "letter" names were neither necessary nor useful for college students learning to read this new spelling system. Later, Diane McGuiness (2004) in her popular book argued against teaching letter names because they can be a hindrance in some situations. An example of this were my first graders who figured that "what" must begin with the /d/ sound (using the name of the letter "w" as a clue to its sound, an approach that works often but not always).

Nevertheless, newer and more relevant research has shown that letter names may play an important role in early literacy learning. Those confusions do occur, but more often the letter names facilitate the learning of letter sounds - because the names and sounds are usually in better agreement than in the confusing instances (Treiman, et al., 2008; Venezky, 1975) and letter names seem to be more effective than sounds in supporting learning early in the progression (Share, 2004; Treiman, 2001). One instructional study with preschoolers found that teaching letter names together with letter sounds led to improved letter sound learning when compared to just teaching the sounds alone (Piasta, Purpura, & Wagner, 2010) - and this benefit was clearly due to the combination and not to any differences in print exposure, instructional time or intensity. Another study (Kim, Petscher, Foorman, & Zhou, 2010) found that letter name knowledge had a larger impact on letter-sound acquisition than the reverse, and that phonological awareness had a larger impact on letter sound learning when letter names were already known.

That learning advantage may be something specifically American, however. In the U.S., children tend to learn letter names quite early - look at the number of toys that emphasize this knowledge (type "letter name toys for infants" into Google and you get more than 8 million hits) or the Head Start curriculum. Old fashioned toys like wooden blocks emphasize letter naming, as do the latest technological gadgets. That means that many kids start school knowing at least some of the letter names and that knowledge may be the reason why letters do more to help sound learning, rather than the opposite.

One cool natural experiment compared children in the U.S. with those in England, where letter names are introduced later than letter sounds. There, the kids use their knowledge of sounds to help in the mastery of the letter names (Ellefson, Treiman, & Kessler, 2009). Essentially, the researchers figured that learning that first list of letters or sounds is just arbitrary memorization. Then, when the kids try to learn the second list, they use what they already know to make the task go easier. If I know my letter names, and they give me a clue that will help me learn the sounds, then I do that. On the other hand, if I already have mastered the sounds, then they may be used to facilitate my learning of the letter names.

If English was more like Finnish, with everyone pronouncing the language pretty consistently, and a written symbol for every phoneme in the language, I would conclude from all of this that we only need to teach letter sounds. English is more complicated than that both in terms of the range of dialects and the conditionality of the spellings - particular sounds are often represented by multiple letters (think of the letter "s" in sick, sure, ship, and use). Having a name for the letter separate from the mélange of sounds that it will represent is helpful - it provides some stability to work with. Even in England, by the time kids are taking on English spelling in its full complexity, letter names will usually have been learned. (It should also be pointed out that consistent letter names also provide a useful consistent anchor for the visual forms of the letters as well:

In the U.S., given that many children come to school knowing at least some letter names, it makes the greatest sense to start right there. The studies show that letters are a better base for sound learning in American schools, but they don't reveal whether this sequence is superior to a combined approach, teaching letters and sounds simultaneously. None of the studies compared this.

My sense of this as a teacher? If kids come to school knowing a bunch of letter names - at whatever age, I would turn my focus to the letter sounds - that available letter name knowledge will be a boon. On the other hand, if they know few letters when we start, I might vary my approach a bit... with the preschoolers I'd focus more on the letter names for a while, and not sweat the sounds. While in kindergarten and grade 1, I'd try to teach names and sounds together. I think there'd be less chance that I'd confuse those kids with a combined approach - their attention spans are a bit longer. I expect that I'll hear from preschool teachers telling of their success in teaching letters and sounds in combination, and K-1 teachers of their one skill at a time triumphs... but that just means it probably won't matter much, one way or the other, if you can make your approach work efficiently.

I definitely wouldn't start with the sounds first, though that doesn't seem to be a problem in the U.K. I think of the unifying value of letter names as being foundational knowledge, so I feel more comfortable starting there. That approach, however, is an opinion rather than a data-based, science of reading claim. That opinion is drawn from my experiences in teaching children and in my estimation of my own pedagogical skills (those with greater skills may be able to succeed with less likely bets).

Finally, I'd add something you didn't ask about. When teaching the letter names or sounds I'd teach students to print the letters. There is no reason to leave printing out of this equation - this added demand requires students to look at the letters more thoroughly, gaining purchase on their distinguishing features and it may increase the chances of the letters and sounds ending up in long term memory. Kids are hands on... they like to stack blocks, fingerpaint, decorate Christmas cookies, sit in water (don't ask), and put their hands in stuff I don't even want to think about... they like to mark on paper too, and getting them physically involved in literacy is not a bad thing. Letters then sounds, or letters and sounds together, but writing included with either approach. To me, that's the winning hand.
References
Ellefson, M. R., Treiman, R., & Kessler, B. (2009). Learning to label letters by sounds or names: A comparison of england and the united states. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 102(3), 323-341. doi:http://dx.doi.org.proxy.cc.uic.edu/10.1016/j.jecp.2008.05.008

Piasta, S. B., Purpura, D. J., & Wagner, R. K. (2010). Fostering alphabet knowledge development: A comparison of two instructional approaches. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 23( 6), 607-626. doi:http://dx.doi.org.proxy.cc.uic.edu/10.1007/s11145-009-9174-x

Share, D. L. (2004). Knowing letter names and learning letter sounds: A causal connection. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 88( 3), 213-233. doi:http://dx.doi.org.proxy.cc.uic.edu/10.1016/j.jecp.2004.03.005

Treiman, R., Pennington, B. F., Shriberg, L. D., & Boada, R. (2008). Which children benefit from letter names in learning letter sounds? Cognition, 106(3), 1322-1338. doi:http://dx.doi.org.proxy.cc.uic.edu/10.1016/j.cognition.2007.06.006

Treiman, R., Sotak, L., & Bowman, M. (2001). The roles of letter names and letter sounds in connecting print and speech. Memory & Cognition, 29(6), 860-873. doi:http://dx.doi.org.proxy.cc.uic.edu/10.3758/BF03196415

Venezky, R.L. (1975). The curious role of letter names in reading instruction. Visible Language, 9, 7-23.

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Letter Names or Sounds First? | Shanahan on Literacy

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I teach kindergarten. We are trying to follow the science of reading. We believe that is the best way to go. However, my colleague and I are disagreeing over one aspect of our program. Should we teach the letters first, the sounds first, or should we teach them together?

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Gov. Mike DeWine focuses on education, mental health in State of the State address

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Gov. Mike DeWine’s budget proposal to focus on education and how to improve the well-being of children and families.

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How effective phonics instruction provides access to meaning

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How effective phonics instruction provides access to meaning

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In recent times, social commentator and writer Jane Caro has weighed in again on Twitter about reading instruction. This provides an opportunity to address a common misconception illustrated by one of her most recent (Jan 6, 2023) tweets, as it offers a valuable teachable moment for those keen to understand the role of high-quality phonics instruction for beginning readers:

Jane's reference to the "obsession with phonics" is unfortunate in my opinion, but seems representative of a tone she adopts when engaging on Twitter with teachers and other professionals who advocate for explicit and systematic teaching of how the English writing system works. It seems that if people advocate consistently and from a position of evidence and experience, they are "obsessed", but I have not seen Jane using such language in relation to advocates for more equitable school funding or for climate change action. This is important, because it reflects an underlying cognitive bias that may be more obvious to others than it is to Jane herself.

Jane is impressed that her grandson is "sounding out words he did not know". Wow indeed! That means her grandson has been taught the transferable skill of decoding - of lifting a previously unseen word off the page - and importantly "words he did not know". This could either mean he had not seen them written down before, did not have them in his oral language vocabulary, or perhaps both - Jane did not specify and that's fine, tweets have limited character lengths.

We can turn to two well-established theoretical frameworks and one more recent publication here to understand what is going on for Jane's grandson, and for ten of thousands of other beginning readers.

The Simple View of Reading reminds us that reading comprehension (RC) is the product (not sum) of two connected processes: word identification/ decoding (D) and language comprehension (LC). It can be represented thus:

Because the operator in this formula is a multiplication sign, we are reminded that if the value on either side is zero, then the product will be zero. So, if Jane's grandson had strong oral language skills but no decoding skills for those unfamiliar words, his reading comprehension score would be at or close to zero. (Children sometimes recognise a few key words from environmental print exposure in the pre-school years but cannot necessarily decode them if they see them in isolation or in a another context).

Let's try inserting some numbers into the formula to make this clearer. Imagine we assessed a 6-year old's decoding skills and her oral language skills, and the scores were as follows: decoding: 4/10; language comprehension: 10/10. This gives our 6-year-old an overall reading score of 40/100 which I think most would agree is not sufficient for reading to be a motivating, let alone a meaning-based activity. The same outcome would occur, but for different reasons, if the scores were inverted; we would have a child who could get text off the page but lacked the oral language skills to make sense of what has been decoded. This is a less common phenomenon for beginning readers, but is how I function several decades on after learning French at school. I can still decode words written in French because I remember most of what I learnt about how the French writing system works, but I have forgotten much of my vocabulary and grammar, so it is much harder for me to extract meaning from the text.

So beginning readers need to develop skills on both sides of the Simple View of Reading formula, and they need to (i) understand that writing is a code, (ii) know how to crack the code, (iii) store representations of how speech and print map to each other in their longterm memories, and (iv) be able to make sense of what they are reading by drawing on prior knowledge and oral language skills (which, by the way, have a giant head-start on reading, as these have been developing since birth, because they are biologically primary skills). Reading is a biologically secondary skill and so requires formal instruction, in the same way that learning algebra and learning to play a musical instrument do. I'll unpack these terms further below.

A second well-established framework that helps us here is the Scarborough Reading Rope. This info-graphic teases out the elements of the Simple View of Reading in more detail, so teachers, parents, and other professionals can focus on the sub-skills that need to be developed over time (Scarborough herself later commented that the graphic should have had a right-pointing arrow underneath it, representing time).

The Reading Rope shows us that Jane's grandson was demonstrating emergent skills in the lower half of the rope - those skills that are biologically secondary or unnatural. As readers who are familiar with the Reading Rope will know, these skills are not well-integrated with the upper half of the rope for being readers; we need to isolate and teach these skills so that over time, they become more automatic and require less conscious effort. Conscious effort taxes working memory and creates cognitive load. It is completely understandable, therefore, that in the early stages of learning to read, children read in a way that is slow and faltering, with visible effort going into getting the words off the page. Systematic and explicit teaching of how the writing code works focuses on automaticity so that children's cognitive capacity can be directed as soon as possible to the meaning of the text.

If we assume we are talking about a typically-developing 6-year-old then his oral language skills allow him to formulate and understand complex messages as a result of biologically primary (natural) skills that have been developing since birth, as represented in the top half of the rope. Let's take these terms biologically primary and biologically secondary and consider them separately.

When we say (a la David Geary) that a skill is biologically primary, we mean that at a population level, it is going to emerge as a result of human evolution and typical experience. So here we are thinking of skills such as oral language, walking, turn-taking, and recognition of facial expressions. Biologically secondary skills are those that our brains have not evolved to sort out of their own accord but can be taught to do. Here we are dealing with skills that have social, cultural and academic capital, such as learning a musical instrument and playing chess, but are not going to be seamlessly learnt in the absence of formal instruction; instruction that in some cases needs to occur over many years, which is part of the reason that formal schooling begins around age 5 and continues to around age 17.

Finally, we can look to the 2021 publication by Nancy Lewis Hennessy, The reading comprehension blueprint. In this text, Hennessy addresses the fact that comprehension is a process, not a unitary event. She uses the analogy of a factory assembly line to remind us of the individual components ( word identification, knowing word meanings, sentence-level comprehension, text-level comprehension, and background knowledge) that must be in place for reading comprehension to occur, particularly once text complexity increases from the middle years of primary school onwards. Addressing decoding/word identification is a necessary but not sufficient part of ensuring that reading comprehension occurs.

You can see below, an info-graphic that I have created to represent Hennessy's analogy. What we can see in relation to Jane's grandson is that he has made promising progress on the biologically secondary skill of decoding the text (hat-tip to him and his teachers), but some of the words he is reading may be beyond his oral language vocabulary (Jane hinted at this in her tweet), and/or he may not have the background knowledge to make sense of the messages that people write on cards that they send with parcels (and at age 6 we would not assume such life experience).

When people seek to diminish the role of effective phonics instruction, they (unwittingly perhaps) sweep aside the richness and importance of what is happening below the level of the written word in English. Word parts in English encode both meaning (via morphemes) and sound (via phonemes) and teachers who adopt a structured, explicit approach to reading instruction (as opposed to using so-called "balanced literacy" - see here for more detail about this distinction) introduce these elements with a scope and sequence to support the learning and academic success of all students. High-quality phonics instruction then, provides a gateway to meaning and turns closed doors into corridors of power (to channel my almost namesake, C.P. Snow).

So, what's the bottom line here? Once again, it is simply that reading is a complex, biologically secondary skill that draws on a range of equally complex sub-skills. Some of these sub-skills are biologically primary (like the development of oral language) and others are not (like learning to master the writing code that a child must operate in). I should stress that while oral language skills are biologically primary, they are not "set and forget", and much focus is required in the school years on the ongoing development of vocabulary, and mastery of syntactic conventions as ways of representing meaning.

Let's celebrate the visible wins of our 6-year-olds as they embark on one of the most important, life-changing, and often challenging journeys of their lives: becoming a proficient reader. In so doing, we need to remember that the road from novice to expert is a long, winding one, just as it is when a child is learning a musical instrument, or later on when they are learning to drive.
We don't expect overnight proficiency in other complex life skills, so why would we treat reading any differently?
Personal experience is a powerful, but not always reliable influence on how we think about complex topics like reading proficiency. I also have a grandson who has just completed Grade 1, and I engage with his reading (and other) progress with much interest, both as a grandmother and as a reading researcher. However, I do not base my publicly-facing comments about reading instruction on one-off observations of his reading performance. That's probably a good thing.

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Closed doors or corridors of power? How effective phonics instruction provides access to meaning

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In recent times, social commentator and writer Jane Caro has weighed in again on Twitter about reading instruction.

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The Ladder of Reading & Writing

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Synopsis of the 2023 Ladder of Reading & Writing Update

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Books, Articles & Videos Referencing "The Ladder of Reading" (2020)

Books, Articles & Videos Referencing "The Ladder of Reading" (2020)

Nancy's earlier Ladder of Reading was featured in numerous article and books, on many websites, and in countless presentations. If you previously obtained permission from Nancy to use her earlier work, please continue to follow her guidelines and use the 2021 update doing forward.

Nancy's Ladder of Reading (2020) is now featured in the following books:
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Secret Code Actions - Ladder of Reading And Writing

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The Ladder of Reading & Writing. Created by "Secret Code Actions" Author, Nancy Young.

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Elementary Principals’ Resource Network SST 8’s Elementary Administrative Community January 6, 2023 1 Attendance 9/22/22 https://bit.ly/3DxrbuQ

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From Balanced to Structured Literacy: The Measured Mom

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If you told me five years ago I’d be writing this blog post about why I embraced the science of reading–after twenty years in balanced literacy–I’d have looked at you cross-eyed.
Balanced literacy was my world
As a classroom teacher, I used a reading workshop approach assessing students’ reading le…

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Community Version
At Attendance Works, one of our top priorities is building public awareness about the importance of school attendance. Our infographic spelling out the facts about chronic absence in the early grades.

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Community Version At Attendance Works, one of our top priorities is building public awareness about the importance of school attendance. Our infographic spelling out the facts about chronic absence in the early grades.

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FCRR:  Florida Center for Reading Research 

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FCRR:  Florida Center for Reading Research 

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Information on and resources for advancing reading through science.

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Parents and children visiting the LeRoy Collins Leon County Public Library System will find new resources awaiting them thanks to Book Nook Bundles provided by the Florida Center for Reading Research.

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"We teach teachers how to teach reading."

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Welcome to the University of Florida Literacy Institute (UFLI, pronounced "you fly"). UFLI is an ongoing effort by UF faculty, students, and staff to improve literacy outcomes for children learning to read.

The work of UFLI focuses on two main areas: teacher development and reader development. The place where those two overlap ... that is where the work of UFLI lives. Our programs and resources are designed to help teachers become more confident and more successful in their capacity to help kids learn to read. We do this through:

Academic programs for both pre-service and practicing educators to develop the skills and knowledge necessary to be effective reading teachers

Professional learning opportunities to help classroom reading teachers, instructional coaches, and school leaders expand their knowledge, enhance their teaching practices, and build capacity in their schools

Resources for teachers, parents, and teacher educators to use in their reading instruction

Much, much more!

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UF Literacy Institute | Where teacher development and reader development overlap

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Welcome to the University of Florida Literacy Institute (UFLI, pronounced "you fly"). UFLI is an ongoing effort by UF faculty, students, and staff to improve literacy outcomes for children learning to read. The work of UFLI focuses on two main areas: teacher development and reader development. The place where those two overlap ...

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PAST: Phonological Awareness Screening Test 

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PAST: Phonological Awareness Screening Test 

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Information can also be found in the manual “Equipped for Reading Success” by David A. Kilpatrick, Ph.D in chapter 11 on how to effectively use the test. Make sure to also practice using the test before using it with students.

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The PAST can be downloaded above. Please also download and carefully read the instructions before using. Information can also be found in the manual “Equipped for Reading Success” by David A. Kilpatrick, Ph.D in chapter 11 on how to effectively use the test. Make sure to also practice using the test before using it with […]

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Wiley Blevins - Choosing and Using Decodable Text

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Science of Reading: Your guide to making the shift

The Science of Reading refers to the pedagogy and practices proven by extensive research to effectively teach children how to read. To easily understand the complex combination of skills that result in reading fluency, there are two main frameworks: The Simple View of Reading and Scarborough's Rope.

We've disseminated all the research into practical pedagogical strategies you can implement in your classroom today.

Your middle schoolers need to build strong foundational skills and an academic knowledge base that will prepare them for success in high school and beyond. Find out how the Science of Reading can help.

Insights

Hear, watch, and read expert insights that will help you transform your district with the Science of Reading.

1. Subscribe to Science of Reading: The Podcast.

2. Follow our Science of Reading blog.

3. Join our Facebook community.

4. Watch our Science of Reading webinars.

5. Sample our programs based on the Science of Reading.

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Science of Reading - Foundational Reading Skills

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Science of Reading: Your guide to making the shift The Science of Reading refers to the pedagogy and practices proven by extensive research to effectively teach children how to read. To easily understand the complex combination of skills that result in reading fluency, there are two main frameworks: The Simple View of Reading and Scarborough's Rope.

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Amplify:  What to look for in classrooms...

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Amplify:  What to look for in classrooms...

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The Early Childhood Module Learning Series is here!

Two of the first modules in the Early Childhood Series have been added to the ALL Ohio Literacy Library. The two modules will introduce participants to the why, what, and how of print knowledge. Enroll in the modules today to learn how to best support our youngest learners.
Click Here to View the Early Childhood Series

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ALL Ohio - Advancing Literacy Learning for Ohio

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The Early Childhood Module Learning Series is here! Two of the first modules in the Early Childhood Series have been added to the ALL Ohio Literacy Library. The two modules will introduce participants to the why, what, and how of print knowledge. Enroll in the modules today to learn how to best support our youngest learners.

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Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

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Literacy Block: Oral Language - Evidence Based Early Literacy

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The goal of the Massachusetts public K-12 education system is to prepare all students for success after high school. Massachusetts public school students are leading the nation in reading and math and are at the top internationally in reading, science, and math according to the national NAEP and international PISA assessments.

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Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

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Components of the Core Literacy Block - Evidence Based Early Literacy

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The goal of the Massachusetts public K-12 education system is to prepare all students for success after high school. Massachusetts public school students are leading the nation in reading and math and are at the top internationally in reading, science, and math according to the national NAEP and international PISA assessments.

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Legislative Updates / Tony Podojil - The Alliance for High Quality Education 

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Legislative Updates / Tony Podojil - The Alliance for High Quality Education 

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220901 updates Podijil Summit ESC Curriculum Network 90122

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What are best practices for isolating the source of an English learner student's academic difficulties? How do educators know if a student's issue is related to second-language acquisition, a learning disability, or some other factor?

In this webinar, presented by the Regional Educational Laboratory West (REL West) at WestEd, Julie Esparza Brown (Portland State University) illustrates how a deep knowledge of the lives of English language learners can help educators assess students' English language acquisition progress and inform decisions about when - or if - to seek additional supports.
Who Will Benefit

General education, English learner, and special education teachers

Coordinators, school psychologists, principals, and district leaders

What You Will Learn

What is important to know about English learner students: their language development/profile, cultural background, life experiences, education experiences, and personal characteristics

The second-language acquisition process and the differences between typical and atypical language development

Appropriate supports and screening tools

A video segment and case studies will demonstrate the strategies discussed, and an interactive segment will allow participants to ask questions and walk through the ideas presented.

Webinar Presenter(s):

Julie Esparza Brown Portland State University

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When an English Learner Struggles Academically: Telling the Difference Between Second Language Acquisition and a Possible Learning Disability

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What are best practices for isolating the source of an English learner student's academic difficulties? How do educators know if a student's issue is related to second-language acquisition, a learning disability, or some other factor?

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Etymonline - Online Etymology Dictionary

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The online etymology dictionary (etymonline) is the internet’s go-to source for quick and reliable accounts of the origin and history of English words, phrases, and idioms. It is professional enough to satisfy academic standards, but accessible enough to be used by anyone.

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An early skill in learning to read has as much to do with hearing how words sound as it does with seeing how words are written. Phonological awareness involves being able to recognize and manipulate the sounds within words. An example of phonological awareness is hearing in your mind the word created by replacing the first sound in "fish" with the first sound in "day," to make the word, "dish".
Phonological awareness is a foundation for understanding the alphabetic principle and reading success.
It is not a coincidence that the individual sounds in words map onto the letters of the alphabet. This mapping is a key part of the role phonological awareness plays in learning to read. However, being able to identify the sounds in words is not as easy as it seems. Many students enter kindergarten already knowing a lot about how the sounds in words map onto letters, but some students do not. For example, students with dyslexia often have more difficulty hearing the sounds in words and mapping them onto letters than other students. For students with dyslexia high-quality instruction and intervention to develop phonological awareness skills is critical.

Learning to identify the sounds in words through instruction happens best when the sounds are explicitly connected to the letters they represent. This mapping is the essence of the alphabetic principle. When this mapping is well developed, it allows readers to accurately read, or decode, about 70% of the single-syllable words they will encounter in text. In addition, when readers encounter a word in print for the first time, and understand the alphabetic principle, the odds are very good they will read the word correctly.

There are several ways to effectively teach phonological awareness to prepare early readers:

TEACH STUDENTS TO RECOGNIZE AND MANIPULATE THE SOUNDS OF SPEECH

Teachers should show and teach students how to break down units of speech into smaller units. For example, an excellent instructional sequence that helps students learn to hear the sounds of speech involves progressing from easier activities to those that are more difficult. Teachers can show students how to identify

words within sentences,

syllables within words,

the first and last sounds within words (onset and rime, respectively),

and finally, all of the individual sounds in a word (phonemes).

TEACH STUDENTS LETTER-SOUND RELATIONS

Teachers should demonstrate and teach students letter-sound relations they will first encounter in print, such as consonants and short vowels.

Teach these letter-sounds in the context of words where letters represent their most common sound (e.g., teaching "a" in "bat" vs. "was").

More complex letter-sound relations should be taught next, such as consonant blends , consonant digraphs , and other predictable but more complex patterns (e.g., vowel digraphs such as "oa" in "boat"; words with long vowels and a silent e, such as in the word, "like").

A STRONG INSTRUCTIONAL SEQUENCE MIGHT LOOK SOMETHING LIKE THIS:

The teacher says the name of the letter and introduces the symbol for the letter (show the letter "b").

Then, the teacher gives students a picture that represents the sound (e.g., a "bat") with a brief backstory as an anchor or memory aid.

Finally, students can practice demonstrating their letter-sound understanding by identifying the sound and writing the letter in various contexts.

Good early literacy instruction also provides opportunities for students to review recently taught letter-sound relations over time, so that students can better remember and more fluently identify and produce them.

TEACH STUDENTS TO MANIPULATE LETTER-SOUNDS IN PRINT USING WORD-BUILDING ACTIVITIES

Teachers should also encourage students to connect their knowledge of how to manipulate sounds in spoken language with their knowledge of letter-sound relations.

Students can be taught to apply their knowledge of sounds to form words in print through an activity that uses letters on tiles or magnets that are easily manipulated to build or change words.

After practicing with the teacher, students can work and practice on their own or with a partner, adding and substituting sounds and building harder words, such as those with a silent e.

This type of activity helps students understand how to spell and read words using their awareness of the sounds in language and the letter-sound relations they have been taught.

Infographic

Enlarge Infographic

Suggested Citation

Baker, S.K., Beattie, T., Nelson, N.J., & Turtura, J. (2018). How We Learn to Read: The Critical Role of Phonological Awareness. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, Office of Special Education Programs, National Center on Improving Literacy. Retrieved from http://improvingliteracy.org.

References

Foorman, B., Beyler, N., Borradaile, K., Coyne, M., Denton, C. A., Dimino, J., Furgeson, J., Hayes, L., Henke, J., Justice, L., Keating, B., Lewis, W., Sattar, S., Streke, A., Wagner, R., & Wissel, S. (2016). Foundational skills to support reading for understanding in kindergarten through 3rd grade (NCEE 2016-4008). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE), Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved from the NCEE website: http://whatworks.ed.gov.

Smith, S.B., Simmons, D.C., & Kame'enui, E.J. (1998). Phonological awareness: Instructional and curricular basics and implications. In E.J. Kame'enui & D.C. Simmons (Eds.), What reading research tells us about children with diverse learning needs: Bases and basics (pp. 129-140). Mahway, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Abstract

Phonological awareness involves being able to recognize and manipulate the sounds within words. This skill is a foundation for understanding the alphabetic principle and reading success. There are several ways to effectively teach phonological awareness to prepare early readers, including: 1) teaching students to recognize and manipulate the sounds of speech, 2) teaching students letter-sound relations, and 3) teaching students to manipulate letter-sounds in print using word-building activities.

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How We Learn to Read: The Critical Role of Phonological Awareness

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An early skill in learning to read has as much to do with hearing how words sound as it does with seeing how words are written. Phonological awareness involves being able to recognize and manipulate the sounds within words.

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Classroom Environment Checklist for Student Engagement

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Classroom Environment Checklist for Student Engagement

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It's no secret that a healthy and intentional classroom environment can increase student engagement. But how do you create it? Master teacher and education consultant Patricia Vitale-Reilly has a deep understanding of what some of these engagement strategies can look like and how to integrate them into classroom practice. In her newest book, Engaging Every Learner, Patricia applies the research on motivation and engagement to strategies and tools that cultivate and sustain student engagement across the school year. In today's post adapted from the book, Patricia offers a classroom environment checklist.

Take a moment. Does your classroom meet these guidelines to increase engagement? How many can you answer "Yes" to?

by Patricia Vitale-Reilly

The Physical Classroom Environment

► Arrange Classroom Furniture

Is your classroom organized in a way that allows for flow, collaboration, and active learning?

► Manage Materials

Are your materials stored in an easily organized and accessible way?

► Use Wall Space

Are your walls painted a color that will engage yet not distract students?

Are anchor charts and decorations accessible to learners but not visually overstimulating?

The Emotional Classroom Environment

► Develop Classroom Tone

Are voices balanced between teacher and student and student and student?

Is the noise level in the room conducive to learning?

Is risk taking valued and cultivated in all learners?

Is there a system for nonverbal communication in collaborative settings?

► Establish Classroom Rituals

Are there classroom rituals, such as daily greetings or weekly meetings, that build the emotional environment?

Are positive affirmations used to acknowledge students?

► Reinforce Student Self-Efficacy

Is there a system to acknowledge growth and celebrate successes?

The Cognitive Classroom Environment

► Set High Expectations and Communicate Them Orally and in Writing

Are there high expectations for each learner?

Are expectations communicated in anchor charts?

Are expectations communicated in student checklists?

► Establish Consequences

Are consequences fair, explicit, and used appropriately?

► Make Learning an Active Process

Are daily learning statements-"I will" statements-used to clarify and guide learning?

Do lessons include student involvement?

Are checklists used to manage students and keep learning active?

► Cultivate Creativity

Do students have time to explore?

Do you facilitate and nourish creative thinking?

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Patricia Vitale-Reilly is a consultant, teacher, author and lifelong reader, writer, and learner with 25 years of experience in education. As a national consultant, Patty is dedicated to guiding schools and districts to set and realize goals that matter most in their learning communities. Check out her blog exploring important and essential ideas about teaching and learning.

Engaging Every Learner: Classroom Principles, Strategies, and Tools will publish in May.

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Your Classroom Environment Checklist for Student Engagement

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It's no secret that a healthy and intentional classroom environment can increase student engagement. But how do you create it? Master teacher and education consultant Patricia Vitale-Reilly has a deep understanding of what some of these engagement strategies can look like and how to integrate them into classroom practice.

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Indiana will spend $111 million to revamp its method of teaching reading to young students by prioritizing phonics, state leaders announced Thursday.

The lion's share of the funds will go to training teachers in the "science of reading" - a vast body of research on optimal early literacy techniques.

The fund represents the state's largest-ever investment in literacy, according to the Indiana Department of Education. It comes just a week after the state announced its most recent reading scores for third graders, which remained mostly unchanged from last year, except for drops among English-language learners. Concerns about the pandemic's impact on literacy in general motivated the state to act.

"This couldn't be a more timely response to the last couple of years," said Gov. Eric Holcomb in a press conference about the fund.

The bulk of the total money - $85 million - comes from the Lilly Endowment, an Indianapolis-based philanthropic foundation, and will go toward training current and future teachers on phonics-focused literacy instruction.

Another $26 million in federal COVID relief funds for Indiana will support literacy instruction through the University of Indianapolis' Center of Excellence in Leadership of Learning (CELL) and the Hunt Institute.

"Although we understand that many factors affect reading achievement, we are compelled by the research showing that Science of Reading strategies can help all students learn to read better and address equity gaps in reading," said Lilly Chairman and CEO N. Clay Robbins in a statement. "Knowing the important contributions teachers make every day in their classrooms, we want to make sure they are fully supported in this important work to help students learn to read well."

Money for coaching, teacher prep, and oversight

Up to $60 million from Lilly is for the state education department to increase the number of instructional coaches who specialize in phonics-based literacy in elementary schools.

This school year, 54 elementary schools across the state opted into the instructional coach model, a number that will now grow to around 600 - or 60 percent of elementary schools - by the end of the 2025-26 school year.

This money will also help pay for stipends of up to $1,200 for teachers who participate in professional development focused on the "science of reading."

Another $25 million from Lilly is earmarked for colleges and universities to incorporate phonics-based reading instruction into their undergraduate elementary teacher preparation programs.

Similar instructional approaches relying on phonics have been rolled out in New York City and states like Colorado, which is in the midst of revamping reading instruction in its at the state's teacher preparation programs.

In Indiana, no student groups have recovered to their pre-pandemic literacy rates, according to recent state data, which showed just under 82% of all students passed the statewide third grade reading test, the IREAD.

The goal of the new initiative is to have 95% of students pass the IREAD by 2027.

On the other statewide assessment given in grades 3-8 - the ILEARN - around 41% of all students scored proficient or better on the English/language arts section, with wide disparities among student groups.

The new reading initiative will further provide "targeted support for students who need the most help improving their reading skills," according to the education department, as well as fund an oversight center.

Secretary of Education Katie Jenner said reading instruction currently varies not just from school to school but classroom to classroom, where some teachers may already be using components of phonics instruction, while others aren't.

Schools nationwide have used other approaches to reading instruction - like "balanced literacy" - which has recently drawn criticism for practices like separating reading and writing, and asking students to look for context clues to understand a word.

Jenner said the shift in reading instruction statewide will continue to be on an opt-in basis for the time being. If there is overwhelming interest in the program, Jenner said the department could earmark more federal funding to expand it to more schools or upper grades, or bring a funding request to the state legislature.

Jenner told an assembly of elementary schoolers and teachers at Eastside Elementary School in Anderson that reading would allow them not only to learn other subjects, but to realize their dreams.

She flipped through her favorite book from school - a book about oceans - to show students an image of the anglerfish, which fascinated her as a child.

Eastside Elementary is one of the schools participating in the state's instructional coaching pilot this year.

Karen Griner, a literacy instructional coach at Eastside, said coaching helps teachers who may not have had the opportunity to study phonics-based instruction during their teacher preparation programs.

In the earliest grades, it begins with a focus on phonics, and later turns to fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension, Griner said.

She said she hopes the investment from the state will expand the practice to more students affected by COVID.

"The last few years have been a struggle," Griner said. "The masking has been a real delay for some of our students because they haven't been watching the mouth and the articulation of sounds and words. So we're hoping now we can really move to that piece and help students learn to articulate."
Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

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Indiana announces $111 million for phonics-focused reading instruction

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Indiana will spend $111 million to revamp its method of teaching reading to young students by prioritizing phonics, state leaders announced Thursday. The lion's share of the funds will go to training teachers in the "science of reading" - a vast body of research on optimal early literacy techniques.

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Dr. Louisa Moats on Reading Instruction 

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Dr. Louisa Moats on Reading Instruction 

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https://www.readingrockets.org/blogs/right-read/can-we-please-stop-talking-about-phonics

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Here are all 31 new episodes.

Just click on a link to get to the show notes and listen!

​

​What is the science of reading?​

​What was the National Reading Panel?​

​What did the National Reading Panel say about phonemic awareness?​

​What did the National Reading Panel tell us about teaching phonics?​

​What do we learn about fluency from the National Reading Panel?​

​Vocabulary and the National Reading Panel​

​What can we learn about comprehension from the National Reading Panel?​

​4 things you can do to get started with the science of reading​

​Easy books to get you started learning about the science of reading​

​More books about the science of reading​

​Should we teach sight words to preschoolers?​

​Can the Daily 5 and the science of reading coexist?​

​Science of reading aligned literacy centers​

​What makes a high quality decodable book?​

​The best decodable book series for a tight budget​

​More great decodable book series​

​How to organize a K-2 classroom library​

​Phonological awareness quick win​

​Phonics quick win​

​Fluency quick win​

​Vocabulary quick win​

​Comprehension quick win​

​What's a sound wall, and do you really need one?​

​5 things to remember when getting started with the science of reading​

​How to use a sound wall to teach new phonemes and graphemes​

​Common misconceptions about dyslexia​

​What every teacher should know about dyslexia​

​Must-watch science of reading YouTube channels​

​Answers to decodable book FAQ's​

​Best books about teaching phonics​

​Favorite science of reading authors​

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TRT Podcast #130: 7 Mighty Moves with Lindsay Kemeny Today I'm talking with Lindsay Kemeny, author of the brand new book, 7 Mighty Moves. This book is a must-read for any teacher interested in applying the science of reading in K-3! Listen to today's episode to get 7 practical tips you can apply right away.

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From Balanced Literacy to Structured Literacy 

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From Balanced Literacy to Structured Literacy 

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Way back in 2020, when I was first diving deep into the research surrounding how we teach reading. I learned that there was a new book coming called, "Shifting the Balance: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Balanced Literacy Classroom," and you can bet that I pre-ordered that thing as quickly as I could. I couldn't wait to get my hands on it. By the time it came out in 2021, I really had come to a good understanding of the science of reading and what it meant for how I promote the teaching of reading, but I love the book and I continue to recommend it to people who are getting started in their science of reading journey. Today, we are honored to speak with the authors of "Shifting the Balance," Jan Burkins and Kari Yates, and we'll get right into it after the intro.

Intro: Welcome to Triple R Teaching, where we encourage you to think differently about education by helping you reflect, refine, and recharge. This isn't just about trying something new as you educate those entrusted to your care. We'll equip you with simple strategies and practical tips that will fill your toolbox and reignite your passion for teaching. It's time to reflect, refine, and recharge with your host, Anna Geiger.

Anna: Hello everybody, and welcome! We're so excited to have Jan Burkins and Kari Yates, who are authors of "Shifting the Balance: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Balanced Literacy Classroom." Jan and Kari have a huge amount of experience between them, from classroom teachers to reading interventionists and literacy coaches, as well as principal. It's exciting to hear from them to learn what led them to embrace the science of reading and to support teachers as they make shifts in their teaching. Welcome Jan and Kari!

Jan: Thank you so much, Anna.

Kari: Thank you. We're really excited to be here!

Anna: I'm really glad to have you. Can one of you maybe start speaking to what it was that got your attention when it comes to the current research and led you to reevaluate some things you had been promoting in education.

Kari: I can start. For me, when the Emily Hanford article first came out, I was in a district leadership position. I can actually remember when the first teacher forwarded that to my boss, who then forwarded it to me and said, "What do you make of this?" I think I wrote a multi-page, fairly irritated response to what I thought of it, but it got some things playing in the back of my mind, I think, and that article was followed by a whole myriad of others.

There was an EdWeek series that came out when I was working with a school in the south, I think maybe about a year later. I can remember that principal basically was really thinking about this EdWeek piece and said to me something like, "Kari, it's really tough out here. My superintendent is pushing me on the practices that we and the teachers are really promoting in our school, and what will people like you do to help educators in the field?" By "people like you," I think she meant people who are doing professional development and writing and blogging and so forth. That really felt like a real call to accountability, and to dig in more deeply.

I think I actually connected with Jan at a conference, not too long after that conversation.

Jan: Yes, I was having my own kind of journey. We were close friends and I had just been watching the tension, I guess tension is almost a euphemism, it's bigger than tension, in the field.

Kari: Polarization.

Jan: Polarization, just animosity even, anger, attacks, I guess. Like Kari, I originally dismissed some things, but I had been struggling with the use of predictable text and had issues with it. I can remember being in a workshop thinking, can we even do this? Is this working, really? That was simultaneous or almost around the same time, so I don't know if I was kind of ripe for opening up to that idea.

I think at that conference that Kari mentioned, there was a session on the science of reading and what it might mean. The audience at that conference was balanced literacy educators, and so we went to that session and were just really struck by the whole tone that was about how to rebut, how to shut down, what these criticisms were.

There was some point in that meeting where I just thought, wait a minute. I mean, maybe we should take a minute and just listen and look closely. Could this many people be absolutely wrong about something before we shut it all down? I don't know why, I don't know why there was that moment.

Anytime we think about something, since we have an audience, we're always thinking about supporting them and it didn't take long to feel like, "Wow, we've got to think this through for our readership. We have some responsibility here."

You don't have to follow that chain of reaction long to feel pretty sick to your stomach, actually sick to your stomach might be euphemism too. It's like, oh gosh, and so then we started talking about writing a book.

Kari: Well, I think the first thing that happened, Jan, is you invited me to dig into the research with you to sort of be a thought partner with you. If I'm honest, I have to really admit that when you did and when I said yes, I was probably equal parts interested in strengthening my own ability to rebut a lot of what was being said. I was interested in being able to forward a strong argument in ways that I didn't feel equipped to do.

But I think what happened along the way was, I mean, we joke about this, but I think what kept happening for us, we were sort of saying in a variety of ways, "Oh, wow. There's something here to think about that we've got to look at." There are some things that really affected practices that we both embraced, used ourselves, and promoted with other educators.

Anna: That is very interesting because I know exactly what you mean. When I read that article, I would go on my walks and I would start to like think, "What can I say? I'm going to write a blog post, and I'm going to refute this article." It just kept going over and over in my head and I never got there, because I really didn't have the answers.

So then I went to a Facebook group of other people like me that have blogs or are selling resources, and I asked, "I know a lot of you are on the same page, you do three-cueing with leveled books and everything. What do you think of this article?" I was only putting that there to get people to help me know how to respond to it, to refute it. I was just so surprised that a whole bunch of people wrote there that they used to teach that way, but now they use decodable books and everything else and it just opened my eyes. I had no idea it was that big right now. They put in a whole bunch of professional books, and I bought them all and started reading.

I joined that big science of reading Facebook group at the time, and I literally did feel sick. I could only be in for ten minutes a day, because I felt a visceral reaction to all this stuff.It was so hard because it felt like it was turning everything I believed upside down.

Then you just have to work through it for a while, and then you start to realize that not everything you did was wrong, but like you said, there are some shifts you have to make.

Do you remember some of the books or resources that you were studying that really helped you see things a little differently?

Jan: Yeah, I'm sure they're the ones you studied too. Marilyn Adams book was a favorite, I think it's "Beginning to Read: Learning and Thinking About Print."

Anna: Which is not a new book, interestingly.

Jan: No, it's not a new book, and I had read it before! I read it in my doctoral program, and at the time I zoomed in around different parts of it, but for some reason, it just did not resonate with me the way it did this time around.

Kari: We did a really deep dive into books and articles, and it's interesting, because I was thinking about this idea of favorite resources, and a resource that we learned about only later, we didn't know it at the time we were writing the book, but boy, this is a beauty and it's "Making Speech Visible: Constructing Words Can Help Children Organize," by Jeannine Herron.

Jan: It's a beautiful book.

Kari: Beauty that I wish we'd have had! That's the kind of a book we found ourselves longing for in all of the reading we were doing. We kept asking ourselves, how do you bridge the research and the practice in really practical ways for teachers? I love that book.

The David Kilpatrick, "Equipped for Reading Success," which it's this spiral-bound book that has a lot of exercises for building phonemic proficiency, but boy, the front matter of that text I found to be so helpful. We're always looking for resources that are sort of helpful in synthesizing the bits and pieces. That was one that really stood out to me too.

Jan: "Know Better, Do Better" by David and Meredith Liben, and they were actually very kind to us in the writing of our book. They were very gracious and supportive in sending us resources. We really tried to find meta-analysis and work from meta-analysis as much as possible. I don't know, we were bordering on manic, I think, with just kind of immersing ourselves for fifteen hours a day for a year.

Kari: Yeah. The other experience that was happening for me kind of at the beginning of this was, I was participating in LETRS training in my home district. We wouldn't want to leave out Louisa Moats and her influence in a variety of ways.

Jan: Her book is "Speech to Print."

Kari: Quite frankly, first run through that LETRS text is also... There's a few pages that are just... I kind of almost giggle now, when I look at my angry scribblings all over them, because I was a little triggered on day one especially, as I remember.

Jan: I can remember she called me and she was like, "Oh my gosh, you won't believe what they're saying!"

Anna: This is so funny, because I actually, when I bought all those books that they recommended in that Facebook group, the first time through, I had a lot of comments on the side like, "Well, so HE says, or blah, blah, blah." Because I didn't... And I would always look and see, what do they say about three-cueing, because I was still holding onto that.

But now I read them differently and I understand, but it just takes a lot of reading the same thing over and over for it to all start to come together and start to make sense.

Kari: It's so true. There's this Willingham article that is about comprehension, and we read that article early on, but we've come back to it recently, because it has become a favorite resource to share with other educators and is such a great example for me of background knowledge and how background knowledge really affects what you take out of a text.

Jan: One of the things we were thinking about, in addition to the fact that some of the texts are pretty dense, or maybe inaccessible if you're just getting into this, was that in many, there's a lot of language that we had to really read past that was really triggering. There's some references to things that just really could make someone really, really triggered.

It began to confirm for us one of the reasons, perhaps, that balanced literacy educators were more hesitant about this, is because if they went and picked up one of these books, they might feel attacked. So it was just confirmation that there might be something we could do that would be of service to balanced literacy educators.

Kari: We've tried to approach this under the umbrella idea that, yes, this is "head" work, but this is also "heart" work. We're really calling on people to, in some cases, make smaller shifts to their practice, but in some cases make some really substantial shifts that require letting go. I mean, it's no small thing to think about what's being said about three-cueing systems, so "head" work and "heart" work.

Initially when Jan said we should write about this, it is not a lie when I say my answer was,"Absolutely not! You think I'm going to just throw myself headlong into THIS? No, not going to do that," but she's persistent in ways that if you don't know Jan, you maybe don't yet know the definition of the word persistent.

I mean, I think for me, what became appealing, what really drew me into this, was wanting to find a way to share information in such a way that supports the "heart" work side of this.

Honestly, we've been called out on this idea that we sort of mollycoddle teachers, or we act like teachers can't handle the truth. Of course, that's NOT what we think. We know teachers can handle the truth, but I think we want to do it with respect.

We challenged ourselves to really think about not just the science of learning to read, but also what's the science of human and organizational change, and what do we need to do in order to support this really important change work within organizations, because the change can only happen through adults. If adults are feeling attacked, or threatened, or defensive, they're never going to be their best with children.

We just, I think, came to believe that maybe that was a place where we could situate some work. Not that we're the experts on the science of reading, we try to be super clear that what we've written is just an entry point, maybe it starts to help you build some background knowledge that is supportive to you as you decide what else you're going to read or do to grow yourself.

Anna: Yeah, I think that's great. When I look at your book, I think of it as a bridge, as a starters guide, a beginner's guide. And I know I've read that criticism too, that this idea... I can think of someone who said, "Teachers are fine. They're not that sensitive. You can just say it like it is."

Well, if that's really what's been done for the last forty years, it hasn't worked. Teachers love what they do and they're passionate about what they do, but they're also passionate about how they do it. For someone to come in and accuse them by saying, "What you're doing is damaging kids," that's harsh language.

I tried this in that Facebook group. I said, "Can we have a gentle discussion about the difference between balanced and structured literacy?" We had a really good discussion going, because I know a lot of people leave that group when they first join, because they ask a question and someone jumps on them and it was going really well. But then someone jumped in with all caps, "I'M SO SICK OF THIS GENTLE STUFF, IT'S TIME TO..." And then she just started "yelling" at people. "Yelling," I say in quotes, but that's what it feels like when you're using all caps. And I just shut the post down, because it was not helpful, just yelling at people to change doesn't work.

Kari: Yeah, and we understand the argument that children can't wait and they've got a limited window and there is real urgency, and making one tiny little shift won't do it. But also we're real believers in the domino effect, and if you can get some momentum going, then big things can potentially follow, but taking care of ourselves and each other is an important part of the work as well.

Anna: I think some people in the balanced literacy community are very concerned about switching to, "the science of reading." I know you don't really switch to the science of reading, but what that's been called, because it's sounds very clinical, very boring, and that's not why they became teachers. They became teachers because they love literacy and reading and they want to communicate that, and they're afraid that by making this shift, that's not going to happen.

What would you say to teachers who are hesitant, because you do speak a lot to balanced literacy teachers? I guess a better question is, what have you found has been a big point of resistance for them?

Kari: I'm a believer that resistance is how fear presents itself. Information is helpful. One of the ways we decided to write the book that I think really works is to select misunderstandings and to sort of untangle misunderstandings, and I think that has worked.

I just want to say that I think at the heart of the matter is, every educator knows and thinks about students they haven't been able to help to learn to read and write in the ways that they wanted to. That's what we lean on when we need courage for this work. We all know what we've done in the past hasn't worked for ALL children, and so the good news is that there is evidence, and there are other ways of doing this that will be more effective for many of the children who have not succeeded in our current systems.

Jan: When you asked what are the points that get kind of pushback, I don't feel like we get a ton of pushback from balanced literacy educators. It's interesting, but I hadn't thought about it until you just said it. I think the way that we wrote the book was that it starts with comprehension, which is a point of agreement, and then the science builds gradually, so that by the time you get to chapter five, which is the biggest moment where you're rethinking MSV, and then chapter six decodable text, by then you understand a bit of the why. So something about building that case logically and gradually.

The other thing I think too, if we meet with hesitation or resistance, I don't know if it's from raising teenagers, or what it is, but we've learned a little bit about not just pushing back harder and taking a deep breath. Being dogmatic and categorical and absolute is the last thing that is persuasive to people. We've done some reading about how resistance manifests and in embracing curiosity and vulnerability and finding entry points as ways to go about this work.

Kari: We were really listening also for the grain of truth, because usually with resistance, there's some truth to whatever the pushback is and people need to feel heard. They need to feel honored in their concerns.

Jan: The reason we did the online class was because the book could only do so much, and the online class, it follows the same structure, but it just goes a lot deeper. It's a lot more methodical of that building, there is a landscape of those chapters, like you don't just dip into chapter three or chapter four or chapter five, the book is meant to be building and cumulative.

Kari: And every shift, whether in the book or in the online class, starts with the why. We start with clearing up those misunderstandings and then we move to really practical shifts for the classroom. We want for every educator to read our book and come away thinking, "Wow, some of my current practices were really affirmed, I can do even more of certain things. I'm really on track with what's going to make learning to read easier. And there are also certain practices that maybe I have that I need to strengthen or that I used to use that I should bring back."

We hear from people all the time, "I used to do that, but I quit doing it. I'm going to bring that back."

And then of course, some practices that we need to say, we thought it was right at the time, but now we know better. We're going to let go of that one and move on or do it differently.

Anna: So you have your book, "Shifting the Balance," which of course we'll link to that in the show notes, as well as your online course. How often does the course open?

Jan: We run it six times a year.

Anna: Okay, so it's very accessible. You have a website I know with resources for the book. Can you talk a little bit about those?

Kari: Yeah, we have lots of free downloads on the site. If you have the book, you know that the book is laced with references to more resources to support that, but those resources are free and downloadable to anybody, whether you're reading the book or not. There's something there to support the shift in every chapter, and we do add to those downloadables all the time.

When our book came out, we had the chance to learn from many other people who read our book and who had ideas for us. It gives us a chance to, again, practice that managing of our defenses and really trying to listen for the truth in what's being said to us, even though some days, it's not that fun to open your email or look at your Facebook and see what someone has to offer you.

But we really took to heart some of the feedback we got about shifts five and six, because some of the feedback was that maybe we didn't go far enough and maybe we left it murky or unclear to teachers, in terms of what was intended there. We have a part of our website that's dedicated to really answering some questions about that for people who might have questions about it. In our online class, we took extra care to really be explicit and clear about our intentions with five and six, and we've been really careful to have that work vetted by some people who are deeply embedded in the science of reading communities.

Jan: Chapter four, which is about sight words, seems to be one of the most accessible entry points, because balanced literacy educators don't feel like they're nailing sight word instruction, for the most part. They don't love flashcards, but that's what a lot of folks are doing. So we have some resources, a mini course and some classroom materials, coming out to support high frequency word instruction.

Anna: Great. All right, well thank you so much! And thank you for all that you guys are doing to bridge the gap, because that's just so important and hard to find people who understand both sides and are open and honest about what they're learning. It was a treat to have you here and I'll definitely link to all those things in the show notes.

Jan: Yeah, we appreciate you.

Kari: We so appreciate you, and we really are appreciative of this opportunity.

Jan: We do appreciate you as a bridge builder and it seems like your work is particularly addressing the ongoing question of, among other things, what are the children doing while teachers are working with small groups? We've been impressed by the materials that you put out there! We first heard of you when we were with Marnie Ginsberg, and she was referring to bridge builders, I think she mentioned you and Margaret Goldberg. We're grateful for being able to connect with you.

Anna: Well, thank you very much. I'm always excited when someone has heard of me, and to be in the same sentence as Margaret Goldberg is a big compliment. I really have a lot of respect for her. Thank you so much.

Kari: Thank you.

Jan: Take care, Anna.

Anna: Thank you so much for listening today, and you can check out the show notes for this episode at themeasuredmom.com/episode88.

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From balanced to structured literacy: A conversation with Jan Burkins and Kari Yates

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Way back in 2020, when I was first diving deep into the research surrounding how we teach reading. I learned that there was a new book coming called, "Shifting the Balance: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Balanced Literacy Classroom," and you can bet that I pre-ordered that thing as quickly as I could.

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Reading assessment is essential for supporting effective reading instruction. Reading assessment data provides teachers important information to guide instructional decisions. It also helps guide school leadership as they make reading curriculum decisions. The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) practice guide Using Student Achievement Data to Support Instructional Decision Making (Hamilton et al., 2009) highlights the value of assessment data:

"Using data systematically to ask questions and obtain insight about student progress is a logical way to monitor continuous improvement and tailor instruction to the needs of each student. Armed with data and the means to harness the information data can provide, educators can make instructional changes aimed at improving student achievement, such as:

prioritizing instructional time;

targeting additional individual instruction for students who are struggling with particular topics;

more easily identifying individual students' strengths and instructional interventions that can help students continue to progress;

gauging the instructional effectiveness of classroom lessons;

refining instructional methods; and

examining schoolwide data to consider whether and how to adapt the curriculum based on information about students' strengths and weaknesses." (p. 5)

This goal of this blog post is to share basic explanations of key terms related to reading assessments. The text and graphics are from from Module 11 of the Keys to Beginning Reading professional development online course (Sedita, 2019).
Assessment Reliability and Validity Reliability
Reliability refers to how consistently a test provides dependable, consistent measurement of a skill or ability. If a test is reliable, the same result should be achieved regardless of who administers the test. Personal judgment to determine a score should not be part of the process. Related Essential question: Are the test scores reliable between test administrators? Testing contexts? Test forms?
Validity
A test is valid if it measures the skill or ability it says it is measuring. The results from a valid test are used to make useful, accurate and beneficial decisions. A test is only valid if it is being used for the purposes for which it was designed. Related Essential question: Are we using the test for the right purpose?
Types of Reading Assessments
There are four main types of reading assessments that are used in schools: Screening, Diagnostic, Progress Monitoring, Summative.
Screening and Benchmark
Screening assessments are typically administered to all students at the beginning, middle and end of the year to identify students who might be at risk for reading difficulty. They provide an initial indication of which students might need extra instruction or intensive interventions if they are to reach grade-level reading standards by the end of the school year. The goal of these assessments is to identify students early before start to fail. Sometimes information from the previous year's summative assessments can be used as part of the screening process. Screening assessments are not diagnostic - they do not provide detailed information about why a student is struggling.
Progress Monitoring
Progress monitoring assessments are sometimes called formative assessments and are given periodically to determine whether students are making adequate progress. The primary goal of these assessments is to determine if the instructional practices being used are enabling students to make sufficient progress related to the development of reading skills. The focus is on developing student learning. Progress monitoring is especially helpful to make sure that students at risk for reading difficulty are making adequate progress and to identify any students who may be falling behind.

There are two types of progress monitoring tests. Curriculum-embedded tests assess the extent to which students have learned the material taught in the current unit of a reading program. They help the teacher identify which students have mastered the material and whether the class is ready to move on to the next unit in the program. There may not be information about the reliability or validity of these tests, but they are useful because they provide information related to which students have learned what has just been taught (Torgesen, 2006).

The second type of progress monitoring tests measure reading skills (e.g., phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension) but are not tied to a reading program. These assessments, based on developmental research, establish benchmarks (performance targets) for the beginning, middle, and end of a school year that predict success at meeting grade-level reading standards (Torgesen, 2006).

General progress monitoring assessments should be given at least three times a year for grades K-3. However, at risk students who are receiving intervention instruction should be progress monitored more frequently to determine if the interventions are successful. They can be given as often as weekly (Torgesen, 2006).
Diagnostic
Diagnostic assessments are used to provide information about individual students who may be having reading difficulty. The results of these assessments help determine the cause of that difficulty, and help teachers plan appropriate supplemental instruction or intensive interventions based on individual student needs. There are many kinds of diagnostic assessments that range from informal reading tasks to formal assessments used for psycho-educational testing. They tend to be lengthy, but provide in-depth, reliable assessment of essential reading skills.

Torgesen (2006) notes that it is important to distinguish between diagnostic tests and diagnostic information. "Diagnostic information is any knowledge about a child's skills and abilities that is useful in planning instruction. It can come from student work, teacher observations, or other tests, as well as diagnostic tests. Diagnostic tests are one important way to obtain diagnostic information that can help guide interventions for students who are experiencing difficulty learning to read. However, reliable and valid diagnostic information can come from sources other than formal diagnostic tests." (p. 6)

Diagnostic assessments should be administered only for students who are having difficulty learning to read.
Summative
Summative assessments are sometimes called outcome assessments. The most common are standardized tests that are group administered and used to give school leaders and teachers feedback about the overall effectiveness of their reading curriculum and program. They are typically given at the end of the school year. The focus is on measuring student learning at a given point in time. The results from these assessments help determine if the instruction provided by all the educators in the school is sufficient to help all students achieve grade-level reading standards by the end of each year.
More Assessment Terms Norm-Referenced
These are formal, standardized assessments that compare a student's reading skills and ability to other students at the same grade or age level. They are usually not administered more than once in a year.
Criterion-Referenced
These can be formal or informal assessments that compare a student's reading skills to a set of skills, or criterion, that are identified as needed for mastery. They are often administered before and after instruction to measure growth in a particular skill. They can be administered more than once in year.
Curriculum Based Measurement (CBM)
A Curriculum Based Measurement, often referred to as a CBM, is a criterion-referenced assessment of targeted reading skills. The reading skill measures are tied to skills taught as part of the reading curriculum. CBM assessments can be used for screening and benchmarking purposes, and also for progress monitoring.

CBM assessments are typically given to all students three times during the school year: beginning, middle, and end to determine if students are learning specific reading skills at a growth rate expected for their grade level. When used for this purpose, grade-level assessments are used and student scores are compared to norms based on scores of students at the same grade or age level. Two common examples of CBM subtests for grades K-3 reading foundation skills include the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Litearcy Skills (DIBELS) and Acadience Reading. They measure skills such as letter naming fluency, letter-sound fluency, phoneme segmentation fluency, nonsense and whole word reading fluency, and oral reading fluency.

However, CBM assessments can be given more often as a progress monitoring tool to determine if struggling readers are making sufficient gains from intervention instruction. When used for this purpose, sub-tests from earlier grade levels might be used if a student's skills are below-grade level. If this is the case, the student scores can be compared to previous scores to determine if progress is being made, but the scores should not be compared to the typical grade-level norms.
Using Assessment to Identify Student Needs
Assessment tools are vehicles we use to gather data, while the assessment process refers to the decisions we make and actions we take as we administer tools, and interpret and communicate data. Review the stages in the assessment process below.

Adapted from MA DESE: Adolescent Literacy Professional Development

Assessment Across the School Year

For students who are making grade-appropriate gains in their reading skills, the assessment plan shown in the graphic above should be followed. At the beginning of the year, screening assessments that provide data about the major components of reading are given to all students to identify students who might be at risk. Progress monitoring of gains in reading skills are given at intervals throughout the school year to determine if all students are making adequate progress. A summative assessment is given at the end of the year to determine if the students have reached grade-level proficiency.
Modifying the Plan for Students with Below-Grade Level Skills
The assessment plan needs to be modified for students who appear to be at risk for not achieving grade-level proficiency. If the screening assessment at the beginning of the year indicates that a student may be at risk, diagnostic assessments should be administered to determine the areas for which supplemental or intervention should be given. The progress monitoring assessments will need to be given on a more frequent basis to monitor if that instruction is sufficient or if a different instructional plan should be made. The graphic below represents this modified plan.

Additional Resources

Watch a 5 minute video about the role of progress monitoring from the Institute of Education Sciences.

Access a helpful infographic that summarizes assessment terms offered by the Institute of Education Sciences.

Learn more about early reading assessments a the Reading Rockets website.

References

Hamilton, L., Halverson, R. Jackson, Ss, Mandinach, E., Supovitz, J., & Wayman, J. (2009). Using student achievement data to support instructional decision making (NCEE 2009-4067). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education.

Sedita, J (2019). Keys to Beginning Reading. Rowley, MA: Keys to Literacy.

Torgesen, J. K. (2006) A comprehensive K-3 reading assessment plan: Guidance for school leaders. Portsmouth, NH. RMC Research Corporation, Center on Instruction https://www.fcrr.org/assessment/pdf/K-3%20Reading%20assessment.pdf

Joan Sedita

Joan Sedita is the founder of Keys to Literacy and author of the Keys to Literacy professional development programs. She is an experienced educator, nationally recognized speaker and teacher trainer. She has worked for over 35 years in the literacy education field and has presented to thousands of teachers and related professionals at schools, colleges, clinics, and professional conferences.

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Reading Assessment Basics - Keys to Literacy

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Reading assessment is essential for supporting effective reading instruction. Reading assessment data provides teachers important information to guide instructional decisions. It also helps guide school leadership as they make reading curriculum decisions. This goal of this blog post is to share basic explanations of key terms related to reading assessments.

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Science of Reading: Where Rhetoric Meets Reality

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Science of Reading: Where Rhetoric Meets Reality

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A national movement seeks to change how reading is taught. Will it work?

More than half the states have passed laws or policies mandating a "science of reading" approach to early literacy.

In a sense, these mandates mark the end of one story-that of the activists and educators who have pushed forcefully for an evidence-backed approach to reading. But they're only the beginning of another story-the monumental challenge of shifting teaching practices on the ground, classroom by classroom.

Are states providing enough coaching for teachers to feel comfortable with an approach still unfamiliar to many of them? Have they provided curriculum and teaching models in time? Are they selecting trainings and materials backed by science? Where is teaching truly changing, and where are old habits still holding on?

This incisive project, the brainchild of reporter Sarah Schwartz, aims to tell that story through the lens of North Carolina, whose challenges mirror those of many states. With reading scores in the middle of the pack, the Tar Heel state passed reading legislation in 2021-alongside nearly a dozen other states. Now it's wrestling with dueling goals: wanting to move quickly, but also wanting the changes to stick.

We hope the series will give you new insights about the challenge of shaping teaching at scale-and how these educators' experience can inform your own journey, whether as a teacher, administrator, or policymaker.

-Stephen Sawchuk, Assistant Managing Editor, Education Week

Why Putting the 'Science of Reading' Into Practice Is So Challenging

Philosophical disagreements, a rushed rollout, and a lack of ready-to-use materials have complicated one state's journey.

Lead image: The state of North Carolina is taking measures to improve reading rates in elementary schools, including in this first grade classroom at Eastern Elementary in Washington, N.C.
-Kate Medley for Education Week

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# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Science of Reading: Where Rhetoric Meets Reality

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A national movement seeks to change how reading is taught. Will it work? More than half the states have passed laws or policies mandating a "science of reading" approach to early literacy. In a sense, these mandates mark the end of one story-that of the activists and educators who have pushed forcefully for an evidence-backed approach to reading.

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Why Putting the ‘Science of Reading’ Into Practice Is So Challenging

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Philosophical disagreements, a rushed rollout, and a lack of ready-to-use materials have complicated one state’s journey.

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Cut the fluff, keep the stuff. Anita Archer

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Effective and Efficient Teaching

By Anita L. Archer and Charles A. Hughes

Explicit instruction is systematic, direct, engaging, and success oriented-and has been shown to promote achievement for all students. This highly practical and accessible resource gives special and general education teachers the tools to implement explicit instruction in any grade level or content area. The authors are leading experts who provide clear guidelines for identifying key concepts, strategies, skills, and routines to teach; designing and delivering effective lessons; and giving students opportunities to practice and master new material. Sample lesson plans, lively examples, and reproducible checklists and teacher worksheets enhance the utility of the volume.

This title is part of the What Works for Special-Needs Learners Series, edited by Karen R. Harris and Steve Graham.

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Explicit Instructions | Effective and Efficient Teaching

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By Anita L. Archer and Charles A. Hughes Explicit instruction is systematic, direct, engaging, and success oriented-and has been shown to promote achievement for all students. This highly practical and accessible resource gives special and general education teachers the tools to implement explicit instruction in any grade level or content area.

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Cheryl Byrne, SST 6

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Cheryl Byrne, SST 6

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Flowchart for Choosing Words to Teach Cheryl 

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The version of the browser you are using is no longer supported. Please upgrade to a supported browser. Dismiss

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Dr. Anita Archer - Vocabulary Instruction

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Make a copy and share with team to build vocabulary instruction 

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Step by step guide for teaching vocabulary so that students will LEARN, not just memorize the words.

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Video on teaching high frequency words

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Heart Word Magic - Read and Spell High Frequency Words | Really Great Reading

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Heart Word Magic - Help Students Learn to Read and Spell High-Frequency and Sight WordsHeart Word Magic is a complimentary teaching tool designed to help students learn to read and spell high-frequency words and sight words, particularly those that aren’t very decodable. Show your students the animations, then try these fun, hands-on free Student Practice

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When you need to explain the WHY for teaching high frequency words