Literacy Blogs

29 November, 2009

On Sequences of Instruction

Blast from the Past: This entry first posted on November 29, 2009, and was reposted on May 30, 2020. These days there is a great deal of interest in the science of reading. That science certainly makes it clear that students need to learn to perceive sounds, decode words, and connect those orthographic-phonemic units with word meanings. While that might reassure teachers about what to teach, many are still uncertain as to the sequence of instruction recommended by a science of reading. Though this entry was published more than a decade ago, it is still up-to-date with regard to the ...

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28 November, 2009

Putting Students into Books for Instruction

This weekend, there was a flurry of discussion on the National Reading Conference listserv about how to place students in books for reading instruction. This idea goes back to Emmet Betts in 1946. Despite a long history, there hasn’t been a great deal of research into the issue, so there are lots of opinions and insights. I tend to lurk on these listservs rather than participating, but this one really intrigued me as it explored a lot of important ideas. Here are a few. Which ways of indicating book difficulty work best? This question came up because the inquirer wondered if it ...

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17 November, 2009

Time and Teaching

  I received two recent letters asking similar questions. Both correspondents noticed that I make a big deal about amount of instruction and they wanted to see the research that I rely on when I encourage schools to maximize time. Although there are lots of studies of time and its role in student learning — not just in reading, but in education generally — these studies aren’t always easy to find. If you look up time or amount of instruction in ERIC, there are studies, but you’ll miss out on some of the best examples. You probably won’t find the research on full-day kindergarten there, but are such studies ...

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11 November, 2009

Why Reading Coaches Often Emphasize the Wrong Stuff

If you type “reading comprehension observation” into Google, you get 462,000 hits. Not all of those pages will be instruments for observing how teachers and classrooms support reading comprehension development. But a lot of them are. Some of these instruments are famous, like the CIERA one that Barbara Taylor and P. David Pearson made up awhile back. Others are the brainchildren of small companies or school districts. And t0hey all are supposed to be useful checklists for determining whether a classroom has what it takes. Studies on such instruments suggest that they work—too some extent. What I mean is that many of the checklists ...

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31 October, 2009

Response to Instruction and Too Much Testing

This week I was honored to speak at the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Oregon. I was asked to talk about evaluation, which is a big issue in the great northwest because of RtI (response to instruction). They are testing the heck out of kids towards ensuring that no one falls behind. It's a grand sentiment, but a poor practice. Teachers there told me they were testing some kids weekly or biweekly. That is too much. How do I know it is too much? The answer depends on two variables: the standard error of measurement of the test you are using and the student growth rate. The ...

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26 October, 2009

Why Remediation Alone Won't Work

Much is made of the idea that 25% of American kids read at below basic on the National Assessment (NAEP). These kids can't do their schoolwork, aren't going on to higher education, and are going to have difficulty taking care of themselves and their own children someday.   There is a growing sense that if we adopt the right intervention program for them we'll catch them up, close the gap, solve the problem. High schools and middle schools just need to start programming special classes for these kids.   This is a pipe dream.   While I certainly support extra programming for older poor readers, my ...

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18 October, 2009

Critical Reading, Teacher Involvement in Standards, and the Illinois Dylsexia Association

As some of you know, I've been working with the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association on the common standards project. I've been listed as a participant in newspaper articles: a participant, not a leader. What that means is that, like the other people who's names you've seen, I answer queries and react to drafts, and even contribute potential standards... but ultimately, I'm not in charge. I don't set the timelines, or decide who participates, or any of the dozens of other things that those in charge have to do.   This week I got an angry ...

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09 October, 2009

Adolescent Literacy: The Youth Culture Myth

Why aren’t we doing more for adolescent literacy?   The federal government invests a whole lot more in “kid literacy” than in teen literacy (we invest nearly $20 billion per year on Head Start, Reading First, and Title I reading programs, and about $30 million on Striving Readers). The same pattern is true in the states as well, and if you look at school standards, accountability monitoring, and the professional development of teachers, you see a definite tilt towards younger kids when it comes to reading.   It’s not just the inputs that differ either. National Assessment data show that kids are improving more ...

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29 September, 2009

FAQ on Oral Reading Fluency Instruction

Here is an FAQ on teaching oral reading fluency. Do all students need work with fluency? No, not all students need work with fluency, but most elementary students do. Some students are so good with fluency that they apparently can read almost any book so well that it sounds like they can understand it. As a population of students goes through school, an increasingly large proportion of them will be fluent at the highest levels. This means that fewer students will need fluency work as time goes on. Our students are getting low scores in reading comprehension. Why aren’t we focusing on that ...

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10 August, 2009

Testing English Learners in English? Good Idea or Not.

Last week, the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco upheld the right of California to administer achievement tests and high school exit exams in English to all students, no matter what their language background. Various education groups had challenged the practice of using English-only testing since federal law requires that second-language students “be assessed in a valid and reliable manner.” As reported in the San Francisco Chronicle, Marc Coleman, a lawyer for the plaintiffs complained that, “The court dodges the essential issue in the lawsuit, which is: What is the testing supposed to measure?” Mr. Coleman gets an A from ...

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