The question being posed is, "how many minutes of literacy instruction is  recommended for early childhood, ages such as preschool and kindergarten?"

The amount recommended in our district for grades 1-8 is 120 minutes, so we obviously need to rethink our message to the early childhood program. I'm not sure if you are familiar with or if this is relevant, but the early childhood program (preschool - kindergarten) uses Creative Curriculum, which incorporates center choices with whole group reading and writing instruction. 

Thank you in advance for your advice!

My response:

There are no data that I am aware of on that issue, so anything I can tell you will be conjecture.

When I answer this question (and I do with some regularity), my first response to is ask a question back: “how long are the preschoolers and kindergartners there?” The answer to that usually varies from half day to full day. Because literacy and language aren’t the only issues that need to be addressed in instruction, it is important that literacy be a good curricular neighbor (not crowding everyone else unnecessarily). 

If it is a whole day situation, then I would argue for the full 2 hours that you are spending in grades 1-8, and if it is half day, then about 1 hour will have to do it.

What should go into that 1-2 hours? Your curriculum does a good job of supporting teachers in some of these categories, and you might consider supplementing where it does not. We don’t provide children with much oral language stimulation in grades 1-8 (except incidentally across the day), but with young children some direct attention to oral language instruction and stimulation is appropriate as part of the literacy time. 

In 2 hours, I would expect some code work (with letters and sounds), some fluency work (like pretend reading, choral reading, fingerpoint reading), some listening comprehension (or reading comprehension if the kids have started reading), some language work (including vocabulary), and some writing time. For a smaller amount of time, I would teach the same things (just not as much of them, but I wouldn’t leave any of them out). 

Your curriculum presents letters and sounds whole group, and that is iffy. While juggling times with small groups can be tricky, the studies of code instruction have only been done with small groups at these age levels. This means it will take more than two hours to deliver two real hours of instruction and experience. 

Finally, 2 hours does not necessarily mean a block of time. This does not have to be done from 9-11AM; with young kids, short time spans for activities is necessary and these various activities can be interspersed through the day. A little harder to keep track of whether you have hit the time goal, but a lot more sensible to deliver.

I wrote this blog entry largely based on the conclusions that Isabel Beck and I had drawn on behalf of the National Literacy Panel for Language Minority Children and Youth. There were very few experimental studies that looked at the particulars of teaching reading to English Learners, but what was there was consistent: instruction that had been effective with native language populations generally was effective with second language learners, too. There were only three studies of explicit teaching of phonics to ELs at the time and they agreed that such teaching was beneficial. With so few data to go on, I think it is fair to say that I was guessing to some extent.

However, since that blog posted, evidence has continued to accumulate, something I noted when this blog entry first re-posted. Since then evidence has continued to build, and it is no longer a guess: Indeed, explicit phonics instruction is beneficial to English Learners. Another conclusion of that Shanahan & Beck review was that the effect sizes for teaching phonics to ELs were lower than for teaching native speakers. That is because decoding can only get one so far in reading; being able to decode words that you have no idea as to the meanings of is not particularly efficacious. That's why explicit teaching of vocabulary and other language skills is so essential for anyone learning a new language. What English Learners need is like what native speakers need when it comes to learning reading -- but these students' lack of knowledge of the English language will remain the biggest barrier to their success, long after English decoding has been mastered. Not only has the research made me a big fan of explicit decoding instruction for English Learners, but I am a big fan of Claude Goldenberg's notion that these students need a daily period devoted to English language instruction as well (rather than just hoping they'll pick it up socially).   

Back in the 1990s, there were lots of arguments in reading education between those who believed that explicit phonics was helpful in teaching reading and those who advocated whole language (whose views ranged from no phonics to occasional mini-lesson phonics as needed).

These days, those arguments don’t happen quite as often. The National Reading Panel reviewed data on phonics studies; the National Early Literacy Panel reviewed data on phonics; and phonics studies continue to accumulate. It seems clear that phonics instruction is helpful in getting reading started quickly and appropriately and so most teachers in the primary grades usually try to deliver such teaching.

But there still are arguments about that from the second-language community. The thought among some experts on English language learning is that such teaching may help native speakers, but it isn’t beneficial to those who don’t already know English.

Are they crazy?

No, they are not, but it appears that they are wrong; or partly wrong. They fear that teaching students to focus on sounds instead of meaning will derail things for kids who need to be intensely focused on meaning. They also, again quite rightly, point out that those phonics studies reviewed by the various panels did not include English Learners; therefore, we can’t use that evidence to determine what is best for such kids (seems like a fair argument to me).

However, phonics research on English Learners has been accumulating for the past decade (I’m in the middle of meta-analyzing that), and it seems evident now that such teaching is beneficial to those kids, too. Phonics not only appears to improve the decoding of English Learners, but this decoding advantage carries over to comprehension as well.

But I said that those English Language Learner experts weren’t entirely wrong.

How does that work given those findings?

One of the main reasons that those experts bridle at phonics for second language learners is because schools often only have one plan for helping students who are low readers. That means the English learners are always stuck into the phonics group, no matter what assessments would show about them.

I just read some terrific studies by Sharon Vaughn and her colleagues. They came up with an intervention that explicitly taught phonics, but also explicitly worked on English Learners’ vocabularies and comprehension. And that makes sense. Even if these kids struggle with decoding, they still will need help with oral language and comprehension. None of the studies that have shown the benefits of phonics to English learners has done this in a vacuum; these kids were getting language and comprehension support too.

Teach phonics to English learners who are beginning readers or who are struggling with decoding, but teach that phonics along with substantial high-quality instruction in meaning as well.

References 

Adesope, O. O., Lavin, T., Thompson, T., Ungerleider, C. (2011). Pedagogical strategies for teaching literacy to ESL immigrant students: A meta-analysis. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 81, 629-53. doi: 10.1111/j.2044-8279.2010.02015.x. 

Baker, D. L., Burns, D., Kame'enui, E. J., Smolkowski, K., & Baker, S. K. (2016). Does supplemental instruction support the transition from Spanish to English reading instruction for first-grade English learners at risk of reading difficulties? Learning Disability Quarterly, 39(4), 226-239. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/0731948715616757

Cárdenas-Hagan, E., Carlson, C. D., & Pollard-Durodola, S. D. (2007). The cross-linguistic transfer of early literacy skills: the role of initial L1 and L2 skills and language of instruction. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 38(3), 249-259. doi: 10.1044/0161-1461(2007/026).

Connor, C. M., May, H., Sparapani, N., Hwang, J. K., Adams, A., Wood, T. S., Siegal, S., Wolfe, C., & Day, S. (2022). Bringing Assessment-to-Instruction (A2i) technology to scale: Exploring the process from development to implementation. Journal of Educational Psychology, 114(7), 1495–1532. doi.org/10.1037/edu0000758

Dussling, T. M. (2020). The impact of an early reading intervention with English language learners and native-English-speaking children. Reading Psychology, 41(4), 241-263. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/02702711.2020.1768977

Gonzales, W., & Tejero Hughes, M. (2021). Leveraging a Spanish literacy intervention to support outcomes of English learners. Reading Psychology, 42(4), 411-434. doi.org/10.1080/02702711.2021.1888352

Hall, C., Steinle, P. K., & Vaughn, S. (2019). Reading instruction for English learners with learning disabilities: What do we already know, and what do we still need to learn? New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 166, 145-189. doi:https://doi.org/10.1002/cad.20302

Ludwig, C., Guo, K., & Georgiou, G. K. (2019). Are reading interventions for English language learners effective? A meta-analysis. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 52(3), 220–231. doi.org/10.1177/0022219419825855

Mancilla-Martinez, J., & Lesaux, N. K. (2017). Early indicators of later English reading comprehension outcomes among children from Spanish-speaking homes. Scientific Studies of Reading, 21(5), 428-448.  doi:10.1080/10888438.2017.1320402.

Mathes, P. G., Pollard-Durodola, S. D., Cárdenas-Hagan, E., Linan-Thompson, S., & Vaughn, S. (2007). Teaching struggling readers who are native Spanish speakers: what do we know? Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 38(3), 260-71. doi: 10.1044/0161-1461(2007/027).

Parker, D. C., Klingbeil, D. A., Hanrahan, A. R., Schramm, A. L., Copek, R. A., & Willenbrink, J. B. (2022). Effects of a multi-component decoding intervention for at-risk first graders. Journal of Behavioral Education, 31(2), 326–349. doi.org/10.1007/s10864-020-09400-7

Share, D. L. (2021). Is the science of reading just the science of reading English? Reading Research Quarterly, 56, S391-S402. doi:https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.401

Shanahan, T., & Beck, I. L. (2006). Effective literacy teaching for English-language learners. In D. August & T. Shanahan (Eds.), Developing literacy in second-language learners: Report of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth (pp. 415-488). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.  

Sprenger-Charolles, L., & Colé, P. (2013). What are the most effective methods of learning how to read? Studies with children who have learned to read in their mother tongue or second language. Approche Neuropsychologique des Apprentissages chez l’Enfant, 25(123), 127-134.

Vadasy, P. F., & Sanders, E. A. (2012). Two-year follow-up of a kindergarten phonics intervention for English learners and native English speakers: Contextualizing treatment impacts by classroom literacy instruction. Journal of Educational Psychology, 104(4), 987–1005. doi.org/10.1037/a0028163

LISTEN TO MORE: Shanahan On Literacy Podcast

Teacher letter:

 Dr. Shanahan,

I’m writing you out of sheer frustration in doing my own research on the topic of Kindergarten Sight words – perhaps it’s because the answer I’m looking for just isn’t there??

I’m on the hunt for some solid research and have not been successful in finding it (I’m usually pretty good in doing so!) My K teachers are in disagreement about the teaching of sight vocabulary – and it’s a driving force for some angst right now in their team. I just printed the executive summary of the report of the natl early literacy panel…yet as I skim through I see nothing regarding sight word acquisition.

At this point, we have some that believe it’s NOT developmentally appropriate to teach sight words…..others are very skills=based and driven to do so, especially with the 1st grade goal of mastery of 100 high frequency words by Oct 1 of first grade. There are currently 60 high frequency words being measured/hopefully mastered by the end of K in our data books for that level. 

Could you provide some insight about this? Specific research for me to back it - - How many? Which ones? 

Shanahan's response:

Dear Coach:

Thanks for your letter. Research and experience tell me that sight word instruction is helpful to young children who are learning to read. However, the research is not terribly specific as to how many words should be taught or when so anything I say on that will have to come entirely from experience and the wisdom of others.

I have no qualms in saying that it IS developmentally appropriate to teach sight words to kindergarteners (or even preschoolers). If it weren't developmentally appropriate, then young children simply would not learn the words (but they do). I’ve watched hundreds of Kindergarten teachers teaching words and have reviewed lots of research on the teaching of print to young children, and see no evidence that this cannot be done profitably and well.

Based on its seminal research review (Prevention of Reading Difficulties) the National Research Council issued an implementation guide for schools, a marvelous little book, Starting Our Right: A Guide to Promoting Children’s Reading Success that I used when I was director of reading in Chicago. It suggests that by the end of kindergarten, children should recognize some words by sight including a few very common ones (the, I, my, you, is, are). Unfortunately, it isn't specific as to how many, but this authoritative guide makes it absolutely clear that sight word teaching is appropriate in kindergarten.

However, 60 words sounds high to me (as does the idea that everyone will know the most frequent 100 words by Oct 1 of grade 1). That sounds ambitious (which is good), but I suspect that there will be a lot of failure with it. I’ve always told my teachers that by the end of grade 1 the students should know all of the 100 most frequent words — and a 300-500 other easy-to-decode words as well. Typically, the first 100 high frequency aren’t mastered by most kids until Thanksgiving or so (and that is with considerable effort).

I would suggest a much more modest goal for the end of kindergarten (perhaps 20 words or so, with at least 10 of those being high frequency words). I think your teachers are frustrated not because they are teaching the wrong stuff, but because the standard is set too high to be practical.

They also may be struggling with this teaching if they aren’t well-versed in how to do that. Too often sight word teaching becomes a drill-sequence that is unnecessarily tedious. Try things like having the children dictate language experience stories, and do lots of reading and rereading (including choral reading) with these. Then start pulling words out of these stories and help the children to examine these outside of the context of the story. That kind of teaching goes much faster and will be less stressful for everybody.

Thanks.

  Many anti-accountability types, like the teachers’ unions, for instance, have been touting Finland as a model of what should be happening in the U.S. And who can blame them? For the past couple of decades, the Finns have been tearing it up. Their kids are doing great at all levels in reading, math, and science, and they are learning multiple languages. Very impressive and anyone against aspiring to that kind of success is a real Grinch!

  But, of course, there are some pretty big social differences that have an influence on learning, so just trying to adopt practices from someplace else is likely to fail. For example, Finland has a very small population (it’s about the size of Ireland or the Chicago area), and it is very homogeneous: almost no differences in race, religion, language, or income levels, and no adults are illiterate (though Finland is beginning to experience immigration and the success of their second-language students is in question). I know of classrooms of 20 children in Chicago that have higher levels of diversity than the entire nation of Finland.

  How do you sort that out so that you are not drawing specious conclusions from such data, as the Finns’ great success could be due to their terrific schools, but it could also simply be because of their lack of diversity, the nature of their language (their writing matches Finnish phonology very closely, unlike the complexities evident in English spelling), or their history (reading has long been a major pastime at all levels of income)?

  The right way to do that is to not pay so much attention to the experiences of individual countries, but to identify patterns across countries. That means instead of focusing attention on Finland or Japan, you look at the entire group of countries that are ahead of you and then try to find correlations that have some consistency across different cultures and histories.

  That hasn’t stopped the rhetoricians from spinning their webs, however. For example, I often hear that the reason Finland outperforms U.S. schools is because they don’t have high stakes testing. I’m not a high stakes testing guy, but I’m skeptical about this kind of shallow analysis.

  Recently, the Finnish government published a booklet that crossed my desk (The Finnish Education System and PISA; http://www.pisa2006.helsinki.fi/files/The_Finnish_education_system_and_PISA.pdf), a kind of primer for those who want to see how the Finn’s are doing their magic. Unfortunately, the differences with U.S. schools are so profound that I don’t think anyone here would gladly embrace such “reforms.”

  For example, the teachers’ unions would certainly rally around the idea of dropping high-stakes tests, but they haven’t exactly championed the adoption of common core standards in reading and math. The Finns long ago adopted common core standards in all instructional areas, and all local curricula have to match with these centrally-imposed curriculum frameworks.

  The unions would even be more loathe to adopt a system that only provides 9 years of compensatory education, even though it is clear that if we ditched preschool and kindergarten and the final two years of high school as the Finns do, we could save enough money to pay for many other reforms. Teachers there generally earn about as much as U.S. teachers do, but the typical Finnish teacher has a master’s degree (we pay such teachers more) and they teach about 10 more days per year than U.S. teachers. I’m not sure how they make it all work, but even though they spend just as much on teachers, they spend about 14% less per child on education, so I assume that means class sizes are either bigger or there must be other economies (fewer principals, counselors, computers, etc.).

  I was curious about their teacher education system and it certainly looks better on paper, but that doesn’t mean we’d get many buyers here. For example, they only have 8 institutions that can prepare teachers (compared to our 1,354 teachers’ colleges); to bring our system into sync with the Finn’s on a per capita basis, we’d close more than 2 out of every 3 schools that now prepares teachers. What would that buy us? With that kind of stranglehold, we would be able to be highly selective in who could become teachers (the Finns turn away 90% of applicants, a figure that we are nowhere close to matching).

  When students have completed two-years of secondary school in Finland they apply to continue with their academic studies or they are shunted into vocational education, a system that makes some sense, but which doesn’t match well with American social aspirations and ideology. Finally, the Finns apparently don’t spend a lot of time worrying about whether their kids like school; in the various surveys their children reveal a strong dislike of school (whether this is due to something unlikeable about Finnish school practices or just the depression that goes along with living in a place like Finland with its astronomical suicide and alcoholism rates is unknown).

  So, it does matter that places like Finland are outperforming us in literacy as it represents a threat to our economic position in the world. And, we definitely can learn from the successes of other countries such as Finland. But the way to think about this is not to look to see what Finland is doing specifically because those practices are going to be a reflection of their history, geography, and cultural situation, but to seek patterns across the entire set of nations that is currently kicking our educational butts.

  But are earmarks good or not? I admit the earmark idea bothers me as it seems to run against fiscal discipline (I bear Scottish blood on my mother’s side). I wonder why all programs don’t run through the same budget process, and, yet, yesterday when Congress could have turned off the earmark spigot, I found myself rooting for the defense. (The country has been deeply divided and now I am.)

  The National Writing Project, an effort to provide high quality professional development for teachers is an earmark. Reach Out and Read, which gives books to children through their pediatricians, is another one (full disclosure: I serve as an unpaid member of the board of directors of ROR). Reading is Fundamental makes books available to school-age kids in low income areas, and it, too, is an earmark. I support all of those earmarked programs as I think they are good for the nation.

  Presidents usually are not big fans of earmarks. Presidents Clinton and Obama, for instance, both tried to wipe out several of these earmarked literacy programs. It isn’t that they don’t want poor kids to get books, but earmarks ultimately reduce their power. You see, earmarks are not necessarily the budget busters that the press has made them out to be.

  For example, if Congress and the Obama Administration agree on funding the Department of Education at $5 billion, and then someone adds an earmark, let’s say for a $10 million for book distribution program, that doesn’t increase the budget by $10 million, but the President does lose control of $10 million of the $5 billion that he was going to spend anyway. The more such earmarks the less power for the President.

  Presidents recognize that if they can rid themselves of enough of these earmarked responsibilities they will end up with $50 or $100 million to spend on something that they want.

  Think about the bridge to nowhere and about the bridge that collapsed in Minnesota. If transportation funds were not being nibbled away by earmarks, there would be more money to fix existing bridges. But what if the Department of Education is betting its budget on expensive accountability systems not likely to improve reading achievement? Then, earmarks for books or professional development, might be a darn good alternative investment.

  It just comes down to whether you want all those spending decisions in the hands of the presidents or whether you want Congress to have any specific say so about spending priorities. Some earmarks are stupid (the easy ones to be against), and some are pretty local: For example, Arne Duncan once had me draft a request for an earmark for reading programs in the Chicago Public Schools. We didn’t get it, but the millions that would have come to Chicago wouldn’t have benefited New York or Los Angeles or anyone else. However, literacy earmarks, like RIF and ROR, provide book distribution nationwide to any community that wants to participate. If making books available to children is a priority—and I think it should be— then earmarks for organizations like RIF or ROR are a good way to go in terms of cost, quality, and local control.

  So I give a resounding cheer for literacy earmarks… sort of.

  As much as I want parents to guide their children’s early reading, this is a program I would not recommend; in fact, I would even discourage its use. It is just not the right way to go. Parents could do better things with their money and their time, including actually helping their kids in ways that could get them reading before they start school.

  The National Early Literacy Panel conducted a thorough review of research on early interventions (implemented any time between birth and kindergarten). We found no research on this program, and I did a quick check for newer studies recently, and that came up zilch as well. In other words, there is no evidence that this program works.

  But isn’t the creator a scholar in this field? Well, it appears that Dr. Robert Titzer does have a Ph.D., though he apparently has never done any work on literacy at any level (the four papers he has published in his career seem to not have much to do with any aspect of teaching babies or anyone else to read).

  What troubles me more than the lack of research (most programs lack research) and the lack of credentials (you don’t need good credentials to come up with a good idea), is the lack of correspondence with what we know about teaching children to read.

  We know that decoding-based programs give kids a clear learning advantage, and that such teaching can profitably begin as early as age 3 (perhaps earlier, but let’s get some studies on that before plunging ahead). Memorizing words does have a role to play in kids’ learning, but it is a relatively small one. Nevertheless, Teach Your Baby to Read instead of helping kids to understand the alphabetic system and to develop phonological awareness and decoding skills, puts its major initial focus on word memorizing. It’s not harmful to teach words like that, but that isn’t the most effective way to go.

  We know that children need to develop a lot of language ability during these early years. The National Early Literacy Panel found that early language development was particularly important in later reading comprehension development. Focusing children’s attention on such a narrow aspect of learning so early on shows a real lack of priorities.

  I started working with my own daughters on reading on the days that they were born. I read a lot to my children during those early years, as did my wife. We sang to them to, and told stories to them, and played language games. By the time they were 3-years-old we were writing down their “stories” and reading those back, and we were teaching them letters and sounds (and, yes, some words, too). We got them writing their own names and trying to write stories, and so on. Both girls were able to read before they entered kindergarten.

  Parents if you are willing to spend $200 on your children’s literacy development then buy some books (and supplement these with what you can get from the library), magazines, writing materials, letter blocks , etc. But invest more than your money. Instead of locking your child up in a play pen and turning on a DVD (yeah, they really do that), read to them, talk to them, sing with them, carry them around the house explaining everything to them.

  When they are toddlers and can talk so much that you are going a little out of your mind, try teaching them some letter names. By the time they are three you can spend a little time each day ( more if their attention allows) working on letters and sounds and words, but just a little (when they wander away, time is up).

  Reading is more than just memorizing words; it requires decoding—and that is, decoding words you do not already know how to read. Reading is more than just decoding, it requires decoding text towards comprehending the message. The babies in the commercials are cute, but they are not reading by any definition that I know.

  Cross-grade and cross-age grouping has a mixed history. The so-called “Joplin plan” generated positive research results in the 1970s. The idea of the Joplin plan is to have multiple teachers sharing their children for grouping purposes. And, more recently, programs like Success for All have used this approach with success (albeit with a tweak or two), and there are school districts, like Montgomery Co., MD, that have their own version of this kind of arrangement (with all of the adults in the school helping to teach kids).

  The basic idea is this: It is difficult to meet students’ needs given the great diversity of proficiency evident in a single classroom, so grouping students for reading ACROSS classes increases the possibility of teaching students at their level. Thus, if the three third-grade teachers each have two or three students reading at Grade 1 level, those can be grouped together across the classes, and then only one teacher has to focus on finding appropriate materials for such low readers. On the face of it, that’s a great idea.

  But as I told you, there can be drawbacks to these schemes, too. For instance, many teachers don’t make levels adjustments once this kind of arrangement is in place, which can be problematic both because it reduces the amount of interaction, and because there are still likely to be substantial learning and proficiency differences in these re-arranged groups. In my previous example, I suggested that a teacher might get 9 students at a grade 1 level, but what if the three teachers are sharing 90 children? That 9 group will likely be supplemented by others (perhaps the low second-grade readers). That teacher still needs to group within class, though the differences won’t be as big as they would be if these three teachers were not working together.

  I never liked to share my students for reading, as I was never as connected to those children as I was to the ones whom I taught. Teachers often follow up with their kids on reading throughout the day, but this is hard to do if the students are taught reading by someone else. This means that teachers have to work much more closely together to ensure that teachers are able to dynamically respond to student needs.

  Cross-class grouping makes more sense in schools where it is easy and quick to swap kids. The more stairs there are to climb and the farther apart the similar classrooms, the more instructional time that will be wasted.

  So, by all means group students across classrooms if the amount of within classroom diversity is too great for one teacher to address. But, understand that such schemes rarely do away with the need for within class grouping (either to adjust student-text matches further or to increase interaction of teacher and students), and they require greater connection among teachers and management capable of moving students with a minimum of kerfluffle.

  It is a terrific idea to read to your children, too. That is a great way to get them beyond their experience and to help them develop language for what they are learning. Similarly, watching (some) television shows together and talking about it as you would personal experience can increase what children know.

  Now there is a new resource that my friends at the National Center for Family Literacy have been engaged in. It is a website called Wonderopolis, and every day there is a new short video aimed at preschoolers and early schoolers that exposes them to information about the world in cute and engaging ways. If you've every had to explain to a 4-year-old why jello wiggles or why grandpa has old hair, you'll appreciate these child-friendly explorations and explanations. Check it out at:

  http://wonderopolis.org/

  Nevertheless, I'm not against encouraging kids to read. Actually, I'm for it. The thoughts below might help you to think about why we want kids to read.

  I know a lot more about how to make someone a reader than about the consequences of reading. Part of this is a problem of not being able to do experiments on this subject (one couldn't very well constrain people from reading in a control group), so for the most part we are left to correlational studies that show a higher likelihood of certain outcomes for certain kinds of people (in this case, any differences between readers and non-readers would show a correlation) or we draw from more incidental insights, such as anecdotes or reviews of people's diaries.

  Some studies have shown that there is a lot more mental activity going on when someone is reading than when they are watching television. Research isn't very clear on the effects of brain exercise, but there is wide belief in the field that mental activity is a good thing, and reading certainly gets the synapses going. I just heard a physician explaining how reading (and other good mental activity) can help delay the symptoms of dementia; of course, with kids we don't think about dementia (though it is rare that someone who didn’t like reading as a child becomes a big reader later, so the earlier you start, the healthier your brain is likely to be in the long run).

  There is a lot of correlational research suggesting that people who read have much bigger vocabularies and know more information about their world, and both of those can have payoffs in later life (better academic success, more income, etc.), and, again, people who know more, read more, go to school more end up with healthier lives (whether this is due to those activities themselves or to what proficiency in those activities means to incomes is unknown). Boys often like to read about real stuff (not stories), and there are clear knowledge benefits to reading science, sports, history, etc.

  A lot of reading, especially for older children, is aspirational. Kids start to wonder what kinds of people they are going to want to be, and being able to closely read about the accomplishments and interior life of others can be a real boon. (For instance, I grew up in a family in which no one had more than a high school education. I decided while reading books that I was going to college). Kids often select role models and careers based on what they read. So biographies, autobiographies, and fiction with strong positive characters are great reading choices for 'tweens.

  Many people use reading as a form of escape, particularly when their emotional worlds are closing in on them. I know many women who are overwhelmed by the demands of their jobs, their husband, their kids, etc. They don't read for intellectual stimulation (if anything they feel over stimulated), but they read to get away from all of the demands. Children like this kind of escape as well (getting to someplace different, with different people). Reading can have a tranquilizing effect. I usually read before going to sleep at night. It allows me to stop my mind from racing and to get away from myself for a few moments which allows me to relax and sleep well. Any kind of text that is of topical interest to the reader is great for this.

  While some people use literacy as a way of shutting down external chaos and to get away from it all, others use it to connect socially. The most immediate examples of that are when individuals share a book and discuss it. Books can become the links among people (in book clubs, for instance). Many people enjoy baseball because it connects them to certain people who they associate with baseball; so if your father took you to games as a girl, you would be more likely to go to games now (even if you really don't care that much about baseball itself). Families that read and write together and who make books the center of some of their connections and conversations will love reading because it seems responsible for the relationships. So, reading books together is a great idea -- or reading texts that have strong author voices, another kind of interpersonal connection.

  Reading is a great opportunity to imagine. This might refer to reading a Stephen King novel (in which case people are reading to scare themselves, which apparently fosters a sense of how bad things could be and how much in control we really are) or to imagining places far away or the kinds of lives that we would want to have (like wanting a happy family life when none is evident).

  Reading is inspirational. It can put us in touch with God, beauty, truth, wisdom, or joy. It can give us hope and can empower us to change ourselves, to change our world, or to simply wonder.

  There is a book out there for everyone.

  The new common core standards present several new emphases, none more important than the shift towards a multiple text perspective. However, this new educational perspective has NOTHING to do with the evolution described above.

  The basic idea of the new standards is that it is important that students learn to read across text boundaries: comparing and contrasting themes, characters, styles, perspectives, and so on. It means reading bigger chunks of text, remembering text longer (can’t just read something and forget about it right away), and considering multiple views and perspectives. Students not only need to know how to analyze text from multiple sources, but they need to know how to synthesize information across texts and other sources of information.

  That could mean that schools will need to buy multiple books (or perhaps multiple links to some web sources), but it could also be multiple selections housed within a single textbook or anthology. The idea of multiple texts isn’t that kids necessarily need to get their hands on more books (though that isn’t a bad idea). The real idea is that kids need to learn to read and write across the boundaries of different stories and articles.

  This shift is a good one… but it won’t necessarily cost any more in terms of books than current approaches for teaching reading. It will likely cost more in professional development expenses, since generally teachers have not been prepared to help children to think across multiple texts and to weigh author's perspectives and the like. This kind of content can be pursued through some exciting lessons, but such lessons will only occur if teachers understand the depth of what is expected. I'll write more about this in a later blog.

  However, when the economy melted down in 2007, I stood down. It wasn’t that I didn’t think that I had been correct about the role of literacy in the economy, but it looked like with the Great Recession that, perhaps, what had been true would no longer be true in the future. Let’s face it, the kinds of jobs the media reports were focusing on were the jobs of the highly educated: brokers and bankers and mortgage lenders, etc.

  But we’re three years past when credit markets started to freeze, and money market accounts struggled to maintain value, and foreclosures were on the increase. So, where are we on the relationship of literacy and the economy?

  It seems clear to me now that this terrible set of events has not altered the course that we were on, but it has apparently accelerated it.

  Essentially, what you'll see is that adults in the U.S. with less than a high school diploma have an unemployment rate that is 13.8 right now (and during the past year it has ranged between 13% and 15.3%). Fifteen percent unemployment isn’t exactly depression levels, but it’s the worst unemployment in my lifetime (and I’m old).

  For folks with a college degree (in anything), the current unemployment rate is 4.5%, while for just a high school diploma it is about 10%. That means that if you drop out of high school you have about a 1 in 7 chance of being out of work; if you complete only high school you have a 1 in 10 chance of no job, and if you complete a BA you have a 1 in 20 chance. (The length of unemployment varies by group, too--the low education people are more likely to get laid off and when they do get laid off it takes longer to find a new job). And these statistics are WORSE for BOYS.

  What all this is likely to mean is that unemployment levels are likely to continue this shift, and that we will carry a greater number of people who are structurally out work (meaning that it isn’t just a demand problem, but that even when demand comes back, these individuals will still struggle to work). Companies continue to rotate lower paying, lower education jobs to other economies (China is booming, for example), and they will continue to find technological ways to perform complex work for good pay.

  Education is the only economic protection that our kids. Last week, I was talking about this with educators in Superior, Wisconsin. A school psychologist followed up on my statistics. My first reaction was, “uh oh, he has caught me in a mistake” which forced me to re-examine the numbers. However, he wasn’t disagreeing with me, he just wanted to get the facts straight as he wants to share those numbers with high school kids. What a good idea.

  These days, those arguments don’t happen quite as often. The National Reading Panel reviewed data on phonics studies; the National Early Literacy Panel reviewed data on phonics; and phonics studies continue to accumulate. It seems pretty clear that phonics instruction is helpful in getting reading started quickly and appropriately and so most teachers in the primary grades usually try to deliver such teaching.

  But there still are arguments about that from the second-language community. The thought among some experts on English language learning is that such teaching may help native speakers, but it isn’t beneficial to those who don’t already know English.

  Are they crazy? No, they are not crazy, but it appears that they are wrong; or at least partially wrong. Their fear is that teaching students to focus on sounds instead of meaning will derail things for kids who need to be intensely focused on meaning. They also, again quite rightly, point out that those phonics studies reviewed by the various panels did not include English learners; therefore, we can’t use that evidence to determine what is best for such kids (seems like a fair argument to me).

  However, phonics research on English learners has been accumulating for the past decade (I’m in the middle of meta-analyzing that), and it seems evident now that such teaching is beneficial to those kids, too. Phonics not only appears to improve their decoding, but this decoding advantage carries over to comprehension as well.

  But I said that those English Language Learner experts weren’t entirely wrong. How does that work given those findings? One of the main reasons that those experts bridle at phonics for second language learners is because schools often only have one plan for helping students who are low readers. That means the English learners are always stuck into the phonics group, no matter what assessments would show about them.

  I just read some terrific studies by Sharon Vaughn and her colleagues. They came up with an intervention that explicitly taught phonics, but also explicitly worked on English learners’ vocabularies and comprehension. And that makes sense. Even if these kids struggle with decoding, they still will need help with oral language and comprehension. None of the studies that have shown the benefits of phonics to English learners has done this in a vacuum; these kids were getting language and comprehension support too.

  By all means, teach phonics to English learners who are beginning readers or who are struggling with decoding, but teach that phonics along with substantial high quality instruction in meaning as well.

This week lots of school openings and students returning to the university. I always look at this time of the year with lots of anticipation (and some foreboding); teaching is both something to be looked forward to and to dread. The part I love is the chance to share what I know with students who want to learn it; the chance to make a difference, to help others know something that they haven’t yet figured out. What a joy!

The dread? That arises from the inexorability of it all. The demands of teaching go on and on. In the schools, teachers have to bring it all alive every day; at the university, I only have to climb that mountain weekly, but it just never stops until the term is over. No matter how good I am this week, I know I have to somehow get ready to do it again the following week, with all the preparation that means. And whether you are prepared or not, the students will be back ready to go again.

 The best teachers, and I’m obviously not counting myself among them, have a way of surrendering to the constancy of teaching. They appear serene (God only knows what they are feeling within), and seem to neither hurry nor loiter. This is the patience of teaching that is so remarked upon, this unwillingness to give in or give up. To remain tranquil -- even as you explain the same concept for the 30th time. It is the Zen tranquility of the mountain climber who takes one well-paced step at a time and who is so totally focused on placing his crampons in the best possible place while maintaining his vision of the summit (trees and forest, it is all one to the great teacher).

Of course, more limited teachers try to go too fast and they undermine their own success. They are so enamored by the summit that they lose sight of where to put their feet. So, such teachers look at the state standards and have the kids do those tasks, without breaking them down and teaching kids how. The standards say kids should be able to summarize, so such a teacher assigns summary writing. That the kids don't yet know how to write a summary apparently doesn't occur to them, nor does the idea that learning to summarize can be broken down into a series of steps each of which could be mastered over time so that by the end the kids can successfully summarize. 

Educational standards presuppose lots of underlying skills, insights, and knowledge--all of which need instructional attention. The standard might only say that students need to summarize, but the teacher needs to think of all the different kinds of texts that students would need to learn about. Summarizing a short text is different than summarzing a longer one. Summarizing stories is different than summarizing arguments. Summarizing a video or a speech requires the development of additional skills. And so on. Teaching summarization requires modeling, explicit explanation, and guided and individual practice that varies in critical ways. By the end of that kind of sequence kids should have developed pretty sophisticated summarization skills and an abilty to summarize lots of diffefrent types of material and for different purposes. (Of course, when the teacher just assigns a task that sounds like the standard itself, many kids never get there.) 

I'd suggest the following beginning of the school year resolution: I am going to assign less and teach more. 

Let me wish you all a happy climb: with an enjoyable arrival at base camp in coming days, followed by the long, patient, steady trudge up the face, and finally the exquisite excitement when you reach the peak.

May you and your students have a successful literacy year!

  With prompting and support, compare and contrast the adventures and experiences of characters in familiar stories. (K)

  With prompting and support, identify basic similarities in and differences between two texts on the same topic. (K)

  Compare and contrast the adventures and experiences of characters in stories. (1)

  Identify basic similarities in and differences between two texts on the same topic. (1)

  Compare and contrast tow or more versions of the same story (e.g., Cinderella stories) by different authors or from different cultures. (2)

  Compare and contrast the two most important points presented by two texts on the same topic. (2 and 3)

  Compare and contrast the themes, settings, and plots of stories written by the same author about the same or similar characters (e.g., in books from a series). (3)

  Compare and contrast the treatment of similar themes and topics and patterns of events in stories, myths, and traditional literature from different cultures. (4)

  Integrate information from two texts on the same topic to write/speak abuot the subject knowledgeably. (4-5)

  Compare and contrast stories in the same genre on their approaches to similar themes and topics. (5)

  Compare and contrast texts in different forms or genres in terms of their approaches to similar themes and topics. (6)

  Integrate information presented in different media or fromats as well as in words to develop a coherent understanding of a topic or issue. (6)

  Compare and contrast a fictional portrayal of a time, place, or character and a historical account of the same period as a means of understanding how authors of fiction use or alter history. (7)

  Analyze how two or more authors writing about the same topic shape their presentations of key information by emphasizing different evidence or advancing different interpretations of facts. (7)

  Analyze a case in which two or more texts provide conflicting information on the same topic and identify where the texts disagree on matters of fact or interpretation. (8)

  Integrate visual information with other information in print and digital texts. (6-8)

  Integrate quantitative or technical information expressed in words in a text with a version of that information expressed visually. (6-8)

  Compare and contrast the information gained from experiments, simulations, video, or multimedia sources with that gained from reading a text on the same topic. (6-8)

  Analyze the representation of a subject or a key scene in two different artistic mediums, including what is emphasized or absent in each treatment. (9-10)

  Integrate quantitative or technical analysis with qualitative analysis in print or digital text. (9-10)

  Analyze various accounts of a subject told in different mediums determining which details are emphasized in each account. (9-10)

  Analyze multiple interpretations of a story, drama, or poem, evaluating how each version interprets the source text. (11-12)

  Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in different media or formats as well as in words to address a question or solve a problem. (11-12)

  Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in diverse formats and media to address a question or solve a problem. (11-12)

 That really is not all of them, but it is enough that you get the point: Multiple Text instruction is going to be at a premium in coming years (days?)... here are five guidelines to help you to think about that instruction:

  1. Reading single texts is no longer sufficient in teaching reading.

2. Multiple texts need to be introduced in Kindergarten and then are to be used throughout a students' schooling.

3. Multi-text instruction is not aimed at a single type of cognitive processing, it really must require that students analyze more than one text (in terms of content, genre, accuracy, effectiveness, etc.), compare and contrast particular features of texts, synthesize the information from different texts, and to engage in comparative evaluation or judgment.

4. Multi-text instruction involves many types of texts sets: multiple texts by the same author, multiple texts on the same topic, multiple texts that can contribute different but overlapping information on the same subject, and multiple texts that differ in quality or effectiveness or perspective.

5. Multi-text instruction requires different responses by the readers, quite often this includes their own writing or oral presentation of ideas.

  However, what do you do with a school that doesn't improve? There are schools in Chicago (and elsewhere) that have received a lot of resources and that have had a lot of time, and they still haven't fixed the problems. One can blame the kids and the neighborhoods, but often there are similar schools right in those neighborhoods that are doing much better. Under such circumstances, districts need to be able to reconfigure enrollments (to reduce the concentration of poverty) and to fire recalcitrant or ineffective teachers and principals, so reluctantly I end up accepting that some schools simply have to be closed.

  Last week, I was asked to speak to a group of high school teachers and principals from the "turnaround schools" in Kentucky. Apparently, these are low performing schools that have been given a year to fix themselves. The mood was not good, though despite that, I'd say the vast majority of these men and women were polite (most seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say about what needs to be done to raise reading achievement).

  However, there was a question that I failed to understand and that I ended up giving a stupid answer to (I apparently didn't get the point of the inquiry). After we finished up, I went back to the questioner and tried again. I thought his concern was about using assessments to guide practice at the high school level. But his question was really about justice.

  He wanted to know if I thought it was fair to make decisions based on large scale standardized reading tests, when the major tests of that type are not calibrated. One test might say students are reading at a 4.5, while another might claim the same kids are at the 5.2 level.

  He is not wrong that those kinds of outcome numbers do differ, because all of the various tests are normed on different groups. However, there are a couple of other points that need to be considered: First, the correlations among such tests are usually very high (indicating that if we tested a bunch of schools, we would find that they stacked up in very similar orders no matter what the numbers). In other words, these tests are valid for this purpose and most such reading tests do a pretty good job of placing schools in ordered lists (and they are pretty reliable too).

  Second, the states and cities that are "turning school around" in this way are not choosing schools that are far from the bottom. This procedure catches some low performing schools, but allows many, perhaps most, to continue on. It might be frustrating to be identified as being a school in trouble, but it definitely is not a justice issue (these schools are very low; just because some other low schools aren't being caught in this net is not the problem).

  Once I understood the question was and why it was being asked, I was very sad. Instead of focusing like a laser on addressing the very real problems of these schools, some of these folks were still griping that they had been caught when others had not been (it reminded me of the BP executive who wanted his life back).

  Our lowest performing schools are clearly in trouble, despite any weaknesses that might exist in the identification tests. Teachers and principals can make things better for kids and they should be doing so without the threat of school closings. That they have not been doing so is the reason that the turnaround process exitss at all.

http://http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/

  Although I serve as a reading content expert for WWC, I had nothing to do with this report. They only involve me in those aspects of their work when they have a substantive question about reading instruction or assessment, and on this report, I guess there were no such questions for me.

  In any event, I strongly support WWC, though at times it has made choices that I have disagreed with. In my experience, it is rigorously, carefully, and fairly adjudicated and its reviewers make a serious effort to find the research and to evaluate it in a reliable manner.

  I know that it is upsetting to not get good news, but what does it actually mean that WWC says there is no evidence supporting these programs? First, and most important, it does not mean that those programs do not work or cannot work or that you should not use them. “No evidence” means no evidence and nothing more. “No evidence,” one way or the other. You may be able to make such a program work, or you might not, but no one has yet studied it rigorously. (There are many more programs that lack such evidence than there are ones that have it, and let’s face it, plenty of kids learn to read from such programs.) Don’t read too much into a lack of evidence. That is more about the standards we have as a field and how much we are currently willing to invest in programs.

  But what about when the programs that WWC says something does work? I think too often teachers and principals think that is the end of the story. But it is not. When WWC says something works, you have some other questions to answer.

 What does it mean to “work”?

So, when WWC says that there is evidence that a program worked it means that someone conducted at least one well-designed rigorous study showing that a program worked better than… well, better than something – or nothing. There is not a convention dictating what the control group is to be doing in such studies, so it is well worth taking a look at what they were up to so that you can know what the program was better than. (In some phonics studies, for example, control group children are in a conventional reading program without phonics. In other cases, the control group kids are receiving no reading teaching at all. The effects are generally larger when the comparison gets no treatment than when it is some other version of reading instruction.)

  If WWC says the program worked and indicates an effect size, you might figure that the programs with the biggest effect sizes are the ones to buy. That would generally be true if the control conditions were standardized in some way, but that is not the case. Bigger effects are likely to be noted when the comparison is with nothing, than when it is put up against some other effective way of teaching reading.

  To know what it means to have worked, it is also important to know what the outcomes were. WWC is very good about laying out what the specific measures of reading were that the students actually improved upon in the studies, and that is something that you want to know. If you are trying to improve kids’ reading comprehension, buying a program proven to improve only decoding may not be a wise choice, despite the WWC imprimatur.

Who did it work for?

Okay, so now, you know this program worked and you know what it means to have worked, so the issue is, with whom did it work? Many programs are sold on the basis of studies that didn’t treat students like the ones who you teach. Were the kids rich or poor, black or white, English learners or native English speakers, preschool or primary, disabled or abled? If a program works with one group, it might not work as well with another.

When did it work?

Finally, under what conditions did it work? Was this instruction given during the school day or afterschool? Was it supplementary to regular classroom instruction or did it take the place of such instruction? How much of it was needed to make a difference? Who delivered the teaching—regular teachers or the program creators? All of these questions get at whether or not you will be able to make the program work in your school, under the circumstances when you will be using the program. I always think of the district that purchased Read 180 on the basis of its evaluation studies; the program, as studied, delivers 90 minutes a day of instruction. The district purchasing it planned to use it for 45 minutes per day instead. I bet it doesn’t work!

  By all means look at the research evidence on programs in which you are interested. If there is no evidence, it is definitely a strike against the program, but it should not be a fatal strike given that so few programs have such evidence at this point in history. And if there is positive evidence, then you need to look further to be sure it works at what you are trying to do, with the kinds of kids you are teaching, and under circumstances that could be replicated in your school.

  I remember the first time I was asked to testify before Congress. I was so full of myself. Wow, what a big shot, getting to speak truth to power. But then, once I had done it, it was clear to me that there was nothing impressive about it. The Senator who had invited me asked me to be there because I had done some research that supported a bill he was proposing. I wasn’t really invited to help Congress to understand the issue, but to secure support for his bill (which of course had many provisions with no basis in any research). If my research results were different, he would have gone forward with his bill, but without my testimony.

  Over the years that has gnawed at me every time I get calls from policymakers and media, not asking me for information on a particular topic, but for information with a particular slant. Do you know of any research against Reading Recovery? Do you know of any research the supports Reading Recovery?

  Using evidence in that way might be the way to win an argument (and to get your way), but it is not the approach that we should be taking if we want policies and practices that are really likely to work. Some policy people and reporters do understand that and they are getting wiser in their use of education studies.

  But, just this week, on an educational research listserv that I lurk on, there was a question, not from the public, but from a researcher, looking for the research that supported a particular practice. A teacher had come to her because the principal was changing some school literacy policies. The teacher liked things the way they were and so came looking for help. The researcher apparently thought the current policies were great, so she was seeking evidence that she was right (she sent out for calls supporting particular practices in literacy education). That is bizarre. No wonder people get skeptical about how we operate.

  We should be looking at the evidence and trying to make a determination of what it means rather than seeking data that support what we already want to do. And, when such evidence does not exist, we should be very honest about our inability to provide data on a particular question (no matter what our point of view). This idea of cherry-picking evidence to support a position is a misuse of evidence and it is ethically shaky. It certainly does not move us forward as a community that is trying to achieve higher literacy levels in our society.

  Reach Out and Read developed the Summer of a Million Books in conjunction with the United We Serve: Let’s Read. Let’s Move. initiative, which aims to promote community service and combat illiteracy and childhood obesity. Reach Out and Read is a national partner of Let’s Read. Let’s Move., an Administration-wide effort led by First Lady Michelle Obama, the Corporation for National and Community Service, and five federal agencies.

  Reach Out and Read targets children who are at greatest risk for school failure and illiteracy, and provides them with high quality children’s books and their parents with reading tips and guidance on the importance of reading aloud. Fourteen research studies confirm that Reach Out and Read works – families served by the program read together more often, and their children enter kindergarten better prepared to succeed, with larger vocabularies, stronger language skills, and a six-month developmental age over their peers.

  The key to Reach Out and Read’s success is the messenger: pediatricians and family physicians. Participating doctors and nurse practitioners incorporate the Reach Out and Read model into every regular checkup for children between 6 months of age and the time they enter kindergarten. Because 96% of U.S. children see their doctor at least once a year and because of the trust that parents have in their child’s doctor, the pediatric checkup is the ideal opportunity to promote early literacy and school readiness.

  Last year, Reach Out and Read’s 26,500 participating medical providers served 3.9 million children and families at 4,500 hospitals, clinics, and pediatric practices nationwide.

  If it succeeds, the Summer of a Million Books campaign will provide one million families with the tools and the guidance they need to prepare their children to succeed in school. In order to accomplish that goal, Reach Out and Read’s doctors and nurse practitioners must distribute more than 18,500 books every day between Monday, June 21 (First Day of Summer), and Monday, September 6 (Labor Day).

  Reach Out and Read is asking for all Americans to join the campaign and help ensure that every child arrives at kindergarten ready to read and prepared to excel.

  How can you help?

1. Donate a book or sponsor a child online through Reach Out and Read's Virtual Book Drive.

2. Organize a book drive for the Reach Out and Read Program in your community.

3. Most importantly, read to the children in your life every day.

  The most basic reason these educators oppose science textbooks is their philosophical opposition to textbooks and commercial instructional programs. But that position makes no sense in a science class.

  A big part of science instruction is to get kids on board with normal science—to bring them to terms with what is already known. Thomas Kuhn once wrote that science textbooks were not a good resource for learning science history, but that they played an important role in normalizing science (in unifying the conceptions drawn from research).

  This is so important that when we interview scientists they indicate that we should not be stressing critical reading much in science books. Instead, they tell us that it is important that kids approach science books as truthful, if not always accurate, descriptions of the natural world as conceptualized by science. So, science being science, textbooks play a critical role in the teaching of science.

  This is very different from the situations in history and literature. In history, it is evident from talking to historians that history books are the enemy. Historians see history books as anti-history as they suggest that these books convey the idea of a single correct story—rather than of an argument based on perspective. They would be willing to accept multiple textbooks (with varied positions), but not single text perspectives; that's just the opposite of history.

  And, what of literature? For the most part literature textbooks are irrelevant as long as they are faithful anthologies. You could teach literature with tradebooks or with those same tradebooks combined in a literature anthology. Textbooks are neither integral to nor antithetical to the teaching of literature.

  We shouldn’t be allowing educator’s philosophies and biases to determine whether students are taught from textbooks. That should be determined by the nature of what is being taught. Science must have textbooks, history needs multiple books, and with literature you can do it either way without fault. Disciplinary literacy, indeed.

  Traditionally, “content area reading” proponents said the right things about respecting the disciplines, but for the most part their agenda was about teaching reading skills using texts from math, science, and social studies. Their idea was more about how teachers could use K-W-L (or three-level guides or SQ3R) with a science book, than how science books differed from other books and what would it take for someone to learn science from reading and writing.

  There was a recent exchange of this type on a listserv on which I lurk. The progressive educator made all the obligatory bows to “disciplinary literacy” but then attacked the idea of textbooks in science. Being anti-textbook is cool in academia, and this person was with it.

  However, there is a problem with such a silly position and that is that science textbooks are an important aspect of the scientific enterprise. Unlike history textbooks (which tend to contradict the idea of history) or literature textbooks (that are sort of irrelevant to literature), science textbooks actually play an important role in establishing scientific thought (something that Thomas Kuhn wrote about in the first edition of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions many years ago in a wonderful appendix on the role of textbooks in the history of science).

  Because of the nature of science books, it is critical that they not be replaced by literary treatments of science.

  Of course, science educators have long championed “hands on science” over the use of textbooks, but that has been science educators rather than scientists (any bench scientist will tell you that they spend most of their work time reading, writing, and talking about science, not repeating experiments that have already been done). My point isn’t that hands on science should have no place in science teaching (that would be silly, too), but that text, including textbooks needs to play a big role in such teaching. This is one where the scientific community and literacy educators have been closer than have the science educators.

  But if we are going to teach students to do things like translate among the tables, graphics, and prose explanations of a science textbook, a good deal of the methods of content area reading will have to be dropped (they simply don’t fit the purposes, the language, the rhetorical strategies, or the nature of the content of science).

  By the way, the April 23, 2010 issue of Science is great. It is all about learning the literacy of science and has a number of terrific articles showing why this matters and how different (and sometimes similar) science text is to other texts.

  http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol328/issue5977/index.dtl

  A must read in a burgeoning area!

I love Malcolm Gladwell. He is a regular New Yorker contributor and authored The Tipping Point and Blink. Recently, he wrote about how new drugs are discovered, and as usual, his ideas got me thinking.

  A century ago, microbe hunters looked for silver bullet remedies; that is, what is the one chemical that will kill off a disease? Drugs like penicillin fit that category. But that began to change in the 1960s when a couple of smart scientists figured out that for diseases like leukemia and tuberculosis, combinations of drugs were needed. The problem is that some diseases are pretty smart. If you introduce a chemical that messes them up in some way, they often reconstitute and continue to ravage the patient. But when you hit them in multiple ways, it is harder for them to respond and the patient gets better.

  Multiple solutions to a single complex problem... hmmm, sounds like the right ticket for school failure. Back in the 1940s, Helen Robinson did a pretty interesting doctoral dissertation on reading disability. She identified a small group of struggling readers in Chicago, and tested the heck out of those kids. She collected all kinds of psychological, educational, and pediatric data on them, trying to make sense of why they couldn't read.

  What she found out was pretty interesting. There were almost no problems that consistently "caused" learning problems. If a youngster was weak in vision he might struggle or he might not. If a student had a low IQ, that might interfere, and then again, not always. What really put kids in a hole, however, was multiple problems. If a school wasn't doing a good job, and there was a chemical imbalance, and dad lost his job, then there was a struggle. Kids are resilient until too many problems undermine their success: put kids in a high poverty family, they can still succeed. Put kids in a high poverty family and don't send them to school regularly or put them in a poor school, and you might tip them over.

  I wonder if it's the same thing with solving our literacy problems in poverty neighborhoods. Improve the schools and literacy improves some, but so far, only a little bit in most places. But what if you intervened with good schools, safe neighborhoods, better housing, better healthcare, more jobs... maybe the disease of poverty wouldn't be able to reconstitute and kids would do much better--they'd have a permanent remission when it came to learning problems.

  Now, that isn't really a new idea. I hear it expressed often when I visit inner city schools or talk to colleagues at the university. They aren't impressed with my efforts to increase the amount of teaching offered to poor kids or to make sure that teaching emphasizes those things that have been proven to matter in learning to read. They point out that such ideas are meaningless unless those other changes take place.

  And yet, as much as I support the idea of renewed efforts to improve the lives of children living in poverty, the school piece of the puzzle is likely to be essential no matter what the other changes. Teachers can't wait until other conditions improve. They have to teach their hearts out now--you can't just turn such teaching on and off like a water faucet; teachers who are waiting to teach until other conditions improve are not likely to be able to teach when conditions eventually do get better. I think multiple high quality inputs are the way to go, but our responsibility is the teaching part and we need to improve that now. (I have friends who work in housing and health care and law enforcement, and they are all working hard at their part of the problem; they aren't waiting for the schools to get better to do so).

  And with this terrible economy many districts are laying off teachers (the worst I've seen in my whole career). All the more reason to kick back and take it easy.

  But you are a professional teacher. And what is summer vacation for your kids, should really be a summer learning opportunity for you. Everyone knows teacher quality is the key to educational success and this is the time of the year when you can build quality. Even if you have been downsized(knowing more will prepare you for the next job); even if you are in a district that is laying everyone else off (if you are going to have 37 kids in your class next school year, the extra preparation should increase your success).

  So, given the importance of summer learning, here are twelve ways to tone up and turn those flabby teaching abilities into muscle.

  1. Take a class. If you live near a college or university that has courses in the teaching of reading, see what you can find out (this is especially useful if it has been awhile since you have taken a class—get the cobwebs out and upgrade your knowledge.

  2. Read a book on how you can improve your literacy teaching (I have several book recommendations on the widget in the right-hand column).

  3. Read some children’s books that are appropriate for your grade level. Children’s books won’t teach kids to read, but knowing the literature that is available can improve your chances of making things better for some kids (I am partial to the Children’s Choices lists on the International Reading Assocation website for a good source).

  4. Tutor a student. I know you have been teaching all year long and you’re ready for a break, but really focusing on the needs of one student and trying to figure out how to best accelerate his or her learning is a great way to hone your skills. You’d be surprised how much of that you can take back to the classroom.

  5. Travel to parts of the world that have school in session now and visit some very different classrooms from your own. North American and European schools will soon be off for the summer, but in the rest of the world, school is in session. If you haven’t spent time in classrooms abroad it can be eye-opening.

  6. Attend an educational meeting or conference. Many organizations have lecture series and workshops during the summer. I know I will be speaking at a couple of those (one at Teachers College in New York, and another at the University of Kansas). These don’t require as much commitment as a summer class, but give you opportunities to connect with other educators and to dig in on some worthwhile learning.

  7. Start a book club. I suggested reading a book, but maybe you should read more than one—with your friends. Get a group of likeminded teachers together, select some books, get some wine, and help each other to get smarter about teaching reading.

  8. Critique yourself. Every time I finish teaching a class at the university, I go through and revise the course (what worked, and what didn’t, what should I have done, and what will I do differently). I don’t even let myself put it all away until I have taken myself through that exercise. It is amazing how many things you notice about your teaching that are really pretty improvable if you take it on when you don’t have the pressure of daily teaching.

  9. Explore a topic on the web. I have been adding lists of websites to this site (over on the right hand side). Right now I have some of my favorite sites with a focus on reading comprehension and on literacy instruction for English Language Learners. Use those resources or build your own, but start to figure out what you could do better and how to do it.

  10. Celebrate, but think hard about, your successes. In some ways it is easier to critique yourself than to analyze what is working for you. Which students made great progress this year and why? What did you do that worked? How can you capitalize on that kind of quality next year? When teaching works the teacher owes him/herself a big pat on the back, but what made for this success so that it can be replicated and expanded upon?

  11. Read the books your students are going to read next year (e.g., textbooks, basals, anthologies, book sets). No, really read them. Read each story or selection asking yourself, “what are my kids going to find hard to understand? What will confuse them?). Make notes. If you do this, your comprehension instruction will improve.

  12. Learn something… really, become a student again. But learn something that will be hard for you. Over the past few years, I have been learning ballroom dancing and how to read French. Both have been very difficult, but the experience reminds you (and sensitizes you) to what is difficult about learning, and to how embarrassing learning can be. So, if you’ve ever wanted to learn how to cook Chinese food, read Sanskrit, or ride motorcycles, it is time to become learners again and to remember what it is that teachers do that really helps.

  Have a happy summer. I'll keep posting blogs all summer long. If you want to add to my list of 12 post a response to this blog.

  http://voices.washingtonpost.com/class-struggle/2010/04/should_high_schoolers_read_alo.html?referrer=emaillink"

  Mr. Mathews explains that he noticed oral reading taking place during a high school classroom observation and he wondered whether this was a waste of time or a good idea. Various teachers chimed in, on both sides, with valuable insights. The column is worth a read—in fact, it would make a great kickoff to teacher discussions.

  I’ve been in the field of reading education for a long time (I started tutoring inner city kids in reading 40 years ago). For that entire time, the professoriate has been anti-oral reading (or “round robin reading” as it is usually pejoratively referred to). Why not oral reading? A lot of the complaints about it seem to be personal, based on childhood memories; these complaints focus on how nervous it made them, or how they only focused on their part and ignored the text.

  However, some of the criticism has been based on research. When I first started, the claim was that listening to a poor reader and trying to follow along in text was disruptive to the reading of the better readers. This important finding was based on a single study of about 6 kids doing a single reading. Not very convincing evidence. Later, another study was done that found kids answered questions better when the reading lesson focused on the text meaning rather than on oral reading practice. But, again, one study, one small group, one lesson.

  Despite expert complaints about the practice of oral reading, teachers have persisted. Every large scale observational or survey study of teaching finds it to be a common teaching practice. Of course, the professors were upset when Jane Stallings and her colleagues found amount of oral reading practice in class to be related to learning gains in reading—even in high school.

  The mindless each kid take a brief turn kind of oral reading is a bad idea, but not for the reasons given. Kids can learn a lot from oral reading practice, but some practices are just inefficient or poorly tuned. Tim Rasinski has shown the large numbers of disfluent high school students; paired reading, echo reading, and similar practices have been found to improve fluency—which in turn improves comprehension.

  Many of the teachers whose opinions were recorded by Mathews focus on more direct comprehension benefits, such as when the oral reading targets particularly complex aspects of the text—so the teacher can guide student translation (which makes a lot of sense, but which I don’t see much of when I visit schools). And, I always remember Eudora Welty talking about how important oral reading is to writers (I concur with this, and truth be told, I engage in quite a bit of oral reading myself—some material is just meant to be read aloud).

  No, don’t just have students taking turns reading paragraphs through your chapter; that’s a real time waster. But the practices noted above are well worth it, if your concern is student learning.

  In any event, I am happy to be back to share what I have learned. On my first day in Belfast, I was asked to talk about improving literacy. I know a lot about that, but most of my knowledge is like my immunities: strictly American!). It is presumptuous to go to anyone else's country, no matter how connected ancestrally one might be, and to start spouting off about what they ought to do. Imagine how you'd feel if a distant cousin you'd never met showed up at your house to tell you how to manage your marriage or raise your kids?

  To avoid being that cousin, I read and listened carefully (despite jet lag). In many regards, looking at literacy in Northern Ireland is like looking in the mirror for an American. Their adult literacy data are derived from an instrument based on our own National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS), and their NALS data are surprisingly similar to our own. Our adults read ever so slightly better than do the adults in Northern Ireland (the difference is probably not statistically significant).

  Then I compared the PISA data on school literacy. Those data showed a similar, but opposite pattern. That is, the kids in Northern Ireland are reading better than the kids in the U.S., but by such a small amount that there is no real difference. One thing that the Northern Irish are concerned about is the degree of heterogeneity in those results. Their kids differ greatly in outcomes; more than is typical of other European countries. It is enough of an issue there that their policy experts were surprised that the U.S. had even more heterogeneous results (slightly more, but, again, very similar).

  Of course, there are many other similarities. They are dealing with second language learners (e.g., Irish, Polish, Lithuanian) in bigger numbers than in the past, and they are particularly concerned about the literacy levels of their boys. Of course, we are both trying to teach literacy in our alphabetic English language, and we are doing so while trying to transition from an industrial national economy to an information-based global one (we are ahead of them there--thirty years of sectarian violence has slowed their modernization--I often felt like I was looking at the U.S. in about 1970).

  Given all of that, I felt pretty comfortable talking about how to improve literacy levels. And yet, there are important differences that need to be attended to as well; differences that we can learn something from.

  The Northern Irish education system seems more a prisoner of its sectarian history than is true of our system. Sectarianism and racism are similarly ugly problems, but our country reaches its own uneasy truce over race in the 1970s (the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, and tons of social legislation and court-ordered desegregation were largely digested by 1980). On the other hand, the Good Friday Agreement is only 12-years-old; the cuts and abrasions have barely scabbed over.

  However, a process akin to desegregation is beginning in Northern Ireland, but they have a long way to go and they are unlikely to take this problem head on. Of course, they've got a lot to do given their five separate systems of education (Protestant boys; Protestant girls; Catholic boys; Catholic girls; Irish Language schools). It will be difficult to reach equal learning outcomes with a "separate but equal system," though combining things certainly won't ensure equality (look at Chicago). I suspect dealing with these separation problems is probably a generation away.

  Another striking difference, and one I am puzzling over, is the peculiar patterns of failure evident in their system. In the U.S., a heritage of slavery, racism, and Jim Crow segregation has left American blacks in the back of the bus when it comes to learning to read (fewer than 10% of black eighth-grade boys read at the proficient or advanced levels on NAEP). I assumed the put-upon Catholics were faring like U.S. blacks. Man, was I wrong.

  Protestant boys, whose employment was always assured in factories and shipyards, never worried much about reading, writing, and arithmetic. Those frills just weren't economically necessary. The Catholics who were unlikely to land such lucrative positions had a history of literacy learning that allowed them into the lower tier clerkships and that satisfied certain ideological cravings. Now, the factory jobs are drying up (as in the U.S.), but the Protestant boys still have their eyes fixed on the lives their fathers and grandfathers lived. So they lag in literacy. (Being shut out of 21st century jobs makes them angry--and guess who they want to blame for their plight?)

The reading problems or Northern Irish Protestant boys and African American boys are horribly tangled social problems that need to be addressed, despite how intractable they seem. Perhaps we should be heartened by the fact that the Catholic boys in Belfast did relatively well despite the histories they have experienced. Perhaps making reading an issue of identity and pride in those now-struggling communities would work. It has before.

  Here are 7 reasons you should be happy, too.

  1. They are common!

Unlike any reading/writing/language standards that we have had in the past, these are truly going to be widely adhered to. In the past, we never could have common tests or common curricula because everyone had different standards. Now there will be the United States and Texas (and these are such good standards, at some point I think Texas might even decide to sign on in spite of their rugged independence.

  2. They include both reading and writing.

For all kinds of reasons, schools have traditionally emphasized reading and ignored writing, even though writing instruction and activity can be powerful enhancements to reading (and they are valuable on their own, too). Because the National Reading Panel did not look at writing, reading has elbowed it aside.

  3. They are consistent with the research findings.

For those who thought that when the Bush administration was kaput there would be no need to teach decoding skills to young children, that should not be the case. These standards are pretty clear on the enabling skills or foundational skills are important because they help students to meet the standards.

  4. They are rigorous.

These standards are really standards--pennants held high! These are not minimal competency standards or standards that describe the performance of kids at the 20th percentile. These really do take students to high levels of literacy. If these are really taught to, we could see more kids hitting the advance level on NAEP-like assessments. Thank goodness.

  5. They do not neglect reading in the content areas.

Reading in history and science become increasingly specialized as students move up through the grades, but our standards have rarely reflected this. These standards require some special responses to reading materials that are drawn from well beyond the outer borders of the English class.

  6. They are up-to-date.

These standards address technological literacy demands. The new literacies are really included -- something that is not true of most current state standards. Welcome to the 21st century.

  7. They emphasize the importance of text difficulty.

Usually standards specify tasks students should be able to but they neglect that those tasks are going to vary a great deal depending on the difficulty of the text. If you ask students to execute that task with an easy text, everyone meets the standard; with a hard text, and few do. These standards don't give that kind of wiggle room, which means parents will get a clearer idea of how their kids are doing relative to everyone else.

  There are plenty of other things to like about these standards, but those are my top seven. But take a look yourself and let them know what you think.

I am struck by how different literacy instruction for preschoolers is by your description here than it was ten years ago. Back then, we also included teaching literacy by encouraging pretend writing in the different areas of the room. In the dramatic play area, children might pretend to write out a grocery list. In the block area, they might make a sign. Does literacy during play time count any more? Or is the focus more teacher directed now?

  Her question as to "what counts as literacy instruction?" is a fair one. It is easy enough to block out time for activities like writing, but what can be in that space and what can't?

  Teaching includes teacher telling and teacher explanation. Indeed, when a teacher stands before a group and shows the children a letter and tells them the letter name is an "R" that is obviously teaching. However, it is also teaching when a teacher leads students in some kind of guided doing (such as when the teacher and students do choral reading with a chart while the teacher points at the words). And so are more independent practice activities, such as the idea of students trying to write grocery lists in the dramatic play area.

  However, practice requires that something taught is being explored. Ten years ago a preschool teacher may have had writing opportunities arranged across the classroom, but there would be little direct teaching (the kids would practice writing based on what they learned elsewhere). Now the teacher introduces letters, sounds, words, and shows students how to write. The knowledge from such lessons is secured as children try to use that input within their play.

  Practice is part of teaching. Practice needs to be articulated in ways that it leads to more learning, including providing kids with guidance from a more knowledgeable person (some of the time), collaborative practice opportunities, and eventually independent practice). It should include opportunities for feedback and review, too.

  Many activities themselves don't differentiate teaching now from teaching 10 years ago: pretend reading, pretend writing, dramatic play, teacher book sharing were all part of the landscape then and they can be now. How connected these practice opportunities are to intended learning outcomes has changed, however.

  Ten years ago, many preschool and kindergarten teachers were afraid to tell students stuff or to show them how to do things. Now, perhaps, the fear has shifted, and teachers may be afraid to have kids play with what has been presented. Good teaching includes both didactic lessons and opportunities to practice and play.

  As you might know, I’m a big supporter of the idea of increasing the amount of teaching that we provide kids: longer school days, longer school years, and, yes, even more school years. So, what of this plan to give more teaching to third-grade laggards?

  Well, you also know that I believe in following the research, and here is a time that research rejects the idea of flunking. The best reviews of research that we have say that if you take a group of kids who aren’t doing well in school, and promote some of them while retaining the others…

  That the kids who get promoted do best!

  That’s right…. Retaining kids does not help them in the short run. During the year of retention, the kids who were held back learn more slowly than the kids who were sent ahead.

  Okay, but maybe the payoff of retention doesn’t come all at once, maybe it doesn’t kick in until later, when the kids actually get their extra year of teaching. Again, the research is not supportive of retention.

  It turns out that there are two factors that can make a big difference in high school graduation: one is reading level (and, this “reform” is aimed at improving reading levels), and student age. Kids who are retained once during the early years are more likely to drop out of high school. Kids who are retained twice are almost certain to drop out.

  Retention may look like an extra year of teaching, but frankly it is so painful to kids that they ultimately reject the offer. If you want to help kids succeed, get mom and dad helping so that the student is doing academics away from school; put the youngster in a high quality after school and/or summer program; increase the numbers of minutes devoted to literacy teaching during the day; use textbooks, programs, professional development and any other lever that you can think of to improve reading instruction… but DO NOT fail these kids. (I believe that not because I am soft hearted, but because I am hard headed. Don’t retain because it is expensive and does not work!)

  Mark Lundholm is a comedian. Like most funnymen he can make an audience uncomfortable. When he takes the stage, he notes the diversity of perspectives in the crowd. And then he says something wise. “If I offend you, don’t walk out. Just understand that it isn’t your turn.”

  What a wonderful insight. Since everybody has different views, it would be impossible for any writer, speaker, comic, or president to speak for all of us with any statement. In other words, we should expect differences of opinion, and shouldn't be offended just because it isn't our opinion that is being expressed now. (Our turn will come, or maybe it has passed). In a learned profession, as in a democratic society, we have to be open to hearing lots of opinions—even those we disagree with. And we need to engage those opinions forthrightly and respectfully.

  I have taken positions in this column that have admittedly made some readers uncomfortable. I did that by challenging conventional wisdom that has been allowed to dominate our thinking without question. Sadly, some readers have been so upset that any useful discussion becomes impossible (a professor wrote recently to tell me that she couldn’t possibly discuss these issues civilly). And there have been those who exhibited what Bill Maher calls “false outrage.” These plaintiffs haven’t refuted my assertions as much as they have tried to censor my expression of them—usually by claiming to be offended or, even better, claiming to defend someone else that I must have offended.

  That is not likely to change soon, since today’s column is also about conventional wisdom, and it seems sure to anger somebody. Conventional wisdom refers to widely held beliefs that may or may not be true, and as such, it tends to be the enemy of useful new theories, explanations, and practices.

  If a field is to advance, it has to at least consider whether deeply cherished ideas are correct or not. It might be upsetting to find out that we don’t know how to encourage kids to read successfully or that good teachers often rely on programs, but it would be even worse to proceed with the misconception that the conventional wisdom on such subjects is based on anything more than gut feeling. If we want to succeed in improving children’s reading, we can’t continue to accept “truthiness” over truth.

Teaching expertise may be overrated

Here’s some conventional wisdom that most of us, me included, have accepted as genuine fact: teaching expertise is the key to learning. There is certainly some evidence on this one, though I suspect it wouldn’t be very convincing if we didn’t already believe in it. Maybe we’ve made teaching expertise a fetish and it’s holding us back!

  What made me wonder about this was a New Yorker article on obstetrics (“The Score,” October 9, 2006, pp. 59-67). I know, I know. That is not a blue-ribbon panel report or a scholarly article from a refereed journal. But Atul Gawande’s article caught my eye because it claimed that to improve effectiveness it may be necessary to rein in or limit expert practice.

  I know that sounds nuts, but Gawande makes a pretty good case that the transformation of obstetrics from a field that stressed skilled craftmanship to one based more on an industrial factory model has led to better outcomes for patients.

  It’s easy to reject medical analogies since they so often depend on biological processes which are so different from what we face in teaching. But let’s not reject this one too quickly since delivering babies is more like teaching than most medical specialties. A successful delivery requires extended involvement and engagement, and depends on the physician’s ability to carry out complex behavioral procedures, often under challenging circumstances.

  According to Gawande, “If medicine is a craft, then you focus on teaching obstetricians to acquire a set of artisanal skills… You do research to find new techniques. You accept that things will not always work out in everyone’s hands.”

  “But if medicine is an industry, responsible for the safest possible delivery of millions of babies each year, then the focus shifts. You seek reliability. You begin to wonder whether forty-two thousand obstetricians in the U.S. really could master all these techniques.”

  Gawande goes on to describe the ingenuity of the various delivery procedures (such as the use of forceps) that were invented along the way, and how medical schools emphasized these procedures for difficult births. These approaches were hard to master and few obstetricians ever really learned to use them well (which didn’t stop them—when the use of complex procedures becomes a hallmark of professionalism, then all professionals want to use those procedures no matter what the outcome).

  But things changed. Obstetricians adopted rules more like those of the factory floor than of a learned profession or a skilled craft. To discourage the use of complex procedures by the inexpert, even the skilled physicians who could use them well set them aside. The result of the standardized use of “good enough” practices has led to big improvements in the health and safety of babies.

  I wonder if we define teachers too much by the procedures they use. I wonder if, due to our zeal to protect educator autonomy, we have championed complex and subtle practice at the expense of overall success. Can 3.8 million teachers really do what many professional development programs push?

  The old system of obstetrics created pockets of excellence; some pretty amazing doctors at times pulled off some pretty amazing deliveries. The cost of that, of course, was high: lots of botched deliveries by doctors unable to manage the challenging procedures. Obstetrics eventually surrendered this “heroic physician” model to stress standardization—and the result has been more live births and fewer damaged children. I wonder if we are clinging too tightly to our own traditional “heroic teacher” model and our excellent, but perhaps too ambitious, instructional schemes. We, too, can point to our pockets of excellence, but then think about the very real cost this might represent to the great numbers of children for whom we are responsible.

Two More Provocative Ideas

Two more provocative reading-relevant ideas that might disturb us came up in the same article: Gawande writes that “evidence-based medicine,” the use of randomized experiments to figure out what works (sound familiar?) has played a very limited role in obstetrics! Unlike other medical specialties, there are few of these kinds of studies in obstetrics and those that have been carried out are often ignored in practice. Obstetrics comes in last in the use of hard evidence among medical specialties, and yet it has done more to extend life than any of the others.

  There are, to be sure, differences between medicine and education, but it’s interesting to see this successful use of a very different model of research than the one that I use and that is fast becoming the new conventional wisdom of much of our field.

  How do obstetricians improve practice without experimental study? That question gives rise to one more compelling idea: it may be due mainly to something else that should sound familiar. Gawande attributes the improvements to the use of informal-but-objective assessment results that are reviewed by both the doctor and principal (okay, chief of obstetrics).

  The Apgar score allows doctors and nurses to quickly and objectively evaluate a baby’s condition at 1 minute and 5 minutes after birth. That simple assessment has led obstetricians to try things out—not waiting for research—to see if they can improve their scores. Because they always know the baby’s score, the doctors can easily see the relationship between their actions and the outcomes.

  It is hard not to think about DIBELS (or PALS, TPRI, ISEL, and so on). These tests all provide quick information so that adjustments to practice can be made. But the analogy breaks down, too, since those tests give multiple scores, and don’t involve much in the way of professional judgment. In other words, DIBLERS may be onto something that could allow for more successful practice, but maybe it’s not quite the right something, since trying to keep track of 2 to 4 scores for each of 30 kids simultaneously is overwhelming and would not foster the kind of intense focus that the Apgar score seems to provide.

  Oh well. Questioning conventional wisdom is not for the feint of heart. Deflating overblown claims risks the anger of one’s friends, but it also threatens the comfort of one’s own beliefs. However, that’s the way it should be in a field that is seriously trying to improve measurable outcomes for students.

  If what I have written here about teacher expertise is unsettling to you, don’t get angry, just remember, it may not be your turn.

  Things began to change again in the 1960s: the idea that we could guide students to think about text more effectively, not just by rehearsing after reading (e.g., answering questions), but by predicting or asking your own questions. Literally hundreds of studies showed that we could teach readers to do these kinds of things in ways that would improve reading comprehension.

  Obviously many kids in the 1800s understood what they read, without much, if any, teacher guidance. And it is just as obvious that plenty of kids learned to comprehend when their teachers were doing nothing more than asking questions.

  Recently, Moddie McKeown and Isabel Beck published a study that examined the effectiveness of a kind of enhanced discussion plan and the preliminary results showed improved children’s understanding of what they were reading (sort of like Thorndike’s original results on asking questions). They stripped the typical core program guided reading lesson down to its essentials: (1) they had the students doing the reading of the story or article; (2) they had the students stop at predetermined points that they thought to be potentially confusing or particularly challenging; (4) they limited the questioning and discussion to make sure the kids were understanding the text (no side talk about word recognition, vocabulary meaning, etc.). The idea of this approach is to help students to develop clearer, more coherent mental representations of the text.

  It is clear that this approach does a better job of helping kids understand the story they are reading, but its long term benefits, if any, are yet to be determined. We do know that strategy teaching has good long term benefits because studies show that kids taught in this way do a better job of reading other texts. However, as useful as strategies are, teachers do not spend every guided reading lesson teaching them, and so it seems pretty clear that the McKeown/Beck style lesson makes a great deal of sense. When we guide students to read a story or chapter, we should help them to develop a clear and coherent and complete understanding of the text.

  A policymaker recently pointed out to me that increases in time don't always work. Specifically, studies of the NCLB-required after school programs show few learning gains. Or, the Reading First evaluation: RF teachers increased literacy teaching by about 10 minutes per day, but their kids did no better in comprehension. Studies of reading interventions for middle school and high school, that provided a reading class, didn't really work either, or not very much anyway.

  Have I been wrong about time? I don't think so. From the very beginning of such research, it has been apparent that the students have to be engaged in learning during the time that is allotted. I visited a school recently where the children were ignoring the teachers (running around, throwing things, etc.). Extending the day with those teachers wouldn't raise reading achievement, because there would likely be no additional teaching added. Time increases tend to work because most teachers aren't struggling as much as those two. Mark Dynarski's work on after school programs suggests that those NCLB programs didn't do well, because they have not necessarily added much teaching.

  Trading time isn't so effective either. What I mean by that is that, all things being equal, you'll be better off having students attend an extra reading class, rather than a reading class that substitutes for another academic class. Some of those intervention programs that are conferring a small advantage when they are taking the place of other academic experience, but they likely would confer a somewhat larger benefit if they were adding time rather than just replacing it.

  How many more minutes does it take to give a learning advantage? In the Reading First study 10 minutes a day didn't have an impact. Now maybe these teachers weren't really teaching, but what if they were? My own personal reading of research says that fewer than 30 additional hours of teaching sometimes helps and sometimes does not (more often the latter); more than 30 hours and the burden shifts (it's still a mixed bag, but more advantages are seen; and when the numbers climb into the 50-100 extra hours, it is pretty rare that gains aren't seen).

  One last thought: the reason those interventions may not look like they are working could be that the tests used in the studies aren't sufficiently sensitive to pick up the gains. Imagine a 9th grader in a special reading program. He is reading at a third grade level at the beginning of the year and a fifth grade level by the end. That means he is still 5 years behind, and it is quite possible that he is still testing at the bottom of the scale on the high school test (he learned, but not enough to be noticed by the test). Perhaps interventions with older students need to use multiple evaluation instruments, including out-of-level tests, to be sure that we are really identifying gains.).

  (I've come to believe that those middle school and high school interventions may have boosted achievement more than the studies could show, because if you move an older student from a 3rd to a 4th grade reading level that will not necessarily be captured by a high school reading assessment).

  However, today, I was pleased to accept the entry of someone who I deeply admire, so I wanted to highlight it a bit. Marilyn Jager Adams weighed in on my high school phonics blog and argues for why technology might get us out of the unfortunate quandry that I described. As I say, normally, I do not tout the responses and that is especially true if I feel like the responder has something to sell. I usually don't push such products here (even the ones that I have developed--and I have received some complaints about that, believe it or not), but I think Marilyn raises an important point and one I want to highlight.

  I really doubt that our system has the resolve to invest very heavily in the education of kids who are 7-8 years behind, so technology could be a real hope. But, my experience is that most people don't have the resolve to hang in there with a computer. They love the privacy, they love the individualization, but they get lonely. Products like the one Marilyn describes need to be studied, but even if they work, what does it take to make them work well enough?

  My first introduction to Read 180 wasn't a good one. It involved a dispute between parents and school district. The district had taken a learning disabled child and stuck him into Read 180 for two years. At the end of that time, he had regressed. The school didn't feel obligated to invest as heavily as they probably needed to in that student's learning, so technology was a good out. The boy actually liked Read 180, but only for the first few months, and then he felt detached, alone, rejected. That isn't the fault of technology (I don't think, in that case, a better program would have made a difference, though if the Read 180 curriculum had been followed-- not just the tech part, it might have gone better for everyone.

  So by all means, Marilyn, continue to try to improve such programs over time, that will likely help. But for teachers and parents, as good a piece of software may be, remember that learning is social. Sometimes we want to be protected from others and sometime we want to be connected with them (counter or drive thru window today?). Good software can both teach and protect the fragile ego of a neglected learner who is so far behind it is embarrassing. Good software usually does not make a student feel more connected and accepted by others (and being low in literacy can be an isolating event).

  If you want to read Marilyn's fine input, please click on the title of my High School Phonics blog and it will be there. Happy reading, and thanks for the contribution Marilyn. I was proud to accept it.

  Recently, Mark Roth published the article (linked below) about how brains change as they learn to read. Researchers have been finding how learning to read changes the brain.

  So why did I want to write this? Because policymakers and many parents love this kind of research, and the like nothing more than interventions that will somehow "teach the brain." As interested as they are in such research, they rarely ask what does it mean?

  And you know what the answer is? It means nothing--not yet anyway. What brain research on reading has told us so far that will help us teach reading is... nothing. These studies are important, I suspect, and someday if I live long enough I'll probably know how this work mattered, but right now what we know from brain studies that is helping us to design or deliver reading instruction better is nothing.

  Brain research is kind of like going to a fortune teller. If you think about it, people pay fortune tellers to tell them things what they already know about themselves. She might begin by telling you that you are unhappy because of your relationships. "You have a son," or a daughter or a husband and "you're concerned about what they are going through." If what the fortune teller says isn't true, no one would ever go to one, so they figure out true things about their customers, things the customers already know, and they tell it back to you. It's a scam, of course.

  Brain research, so far, is just showing internal correlates for what we already know about someone's reading. If it didn't match, of course, it wouldn't be interesting. Like with the fortune teller, if it doesn't fit you won't submit.

  We get excited because brain researchers can tell us what we already know. Maybe someday, brain research will go beyond that and we'll end up with better reading assessments or even better ways of teaching. I hope they'll keep plugging at it. But so far--as fascinating as brain research may be, it can't help a single child learn to read. So let's keep our attention on what works in teaching kids to read, and let's worry less about how amazing it is that this fortune teller can tell us what we already know.

  http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09344/1019898-115.stm

I don't have a lot of experience with high school phonics, but what do you do if a student is 7-9 years behind in their reading skills. Ignoring the decoding problems does not make much sense, but what works?

So, when confronted with a question that I know not the answer of, I went to some one with greater expertise on that issue, in this case, Don Deshler of the University of Kansas. To my surprise, he punted, too.

But soon he got back with an answer from the members of his team who deal the most with those kinds of readers. Their response was that overall, the best choice for that situation is Wilson Reading or something like it (they've had "outstanding results with the kinds of kids you are describing").

However, Don pointed out that to be successful it has to be taught 1 on 1 or in very small groups, for about two years.

They also indicated good results with Corrective Reading (SRA), which can be delivered to larger groups, and which is easier to learn and faster to implement than Wilson.

My question is, how many high schools are willing to provide multiple years of remedial instruction, even to moderate sized groups? And how much progress are these kids likely to make? I could imagine a wildly successful program moving kids two years for 1 year instruction, and if you maintained that over a two-year period you would have moved these students to a... fifth grade reading level... Ethically, that is exactly what we should be doing, but tactically, it is a losing proposition for the school (too few kids getting too many resources to make gains that aren't sufficient for needs).

The point of this blog entry is two-fold: first, there are some high schoolers who are going to need very basic, phonics oriented interventions and there are programs like Wilson and Corrective Reading that make sense for such populations; second, the odds against that delivering the outcomes we need are virtually insurmountable--we simply cannot allow kids to reach high school that far behind. Much more needs to be done in upper elementary schools and middle schools.

Some other important points: Don stressed the importance of keeping this kind of instruction upbeat and fast-paced (which makes great sense). He also stressed the inadequacy of computer-based approaches with this kind of instruction (which also registers with me). And, I would add, that while the decoding problems are being addressed, a lot of listening comprehension and vocabulary work needs to be done (so these students don't stagnate intellectually).

  First, teaching summarization is a great idea. Of all the reading strategies that we can teach, that is a real winner. All of the repertoires of strategies that are taught include summarization, and that makes sense since summarization gives the biggest payoff of any single strategies.

  I can even go farther than that. Story mapping itself has been found to confer an advantage, at least with primary grades.

  A story map is simply a structural summary of story. Typical story map templates require that students remember and identify the setting, main character, problem, attempt, and outcome of a story. However, while that is probably okay with young kids when they are starting out, stories are more complicated than that and students could be guided to developing better summaries.

  The original story maps included more psychological information, including the character’s internal response to the problem and reaction to the outcome. Young kids have trouble thinking about the psychological aspects of characters so a lot of story templates just dropped such information. Big mistake; once kids are comfortable summarizing the plot actions, start guiding them to think about what the characters want and how they feel about the events.

  Even more important, we want students to understand stories as more than a bunch of structural blocks. Stories are really about conflict, and story maps don’t get at this idea very well. Several years ago, I developed a technique, character perspective charting, that helps kids to summarize the conflicts among characters. Essentially, you add a structure, requiring students to be explicit about what the character’s want (so add a “character’s goal” box).

  Then you have the kids complete multiple maps for the story—one for each character. With really good stories, you will often end up with different themes for different characters. For more information on this approach, see Shanahan, T., & Shanahan, S. (1997). Character perspective charting: Helping children to develop a more complete conception of story. The Reading Teacher, 50, 668–677.