Decoding or Fluency Instruction in Middle School?

phonics text reading fluency
12 March, 2022
30 Comments

Teacher question

At our middle school, two-thirds of our students are not proficient readers (55% of them read below the 30^th percentile). Our staff decided that to help address this problem all our students would engage in repeated reading in each core content class once a week. This would be done with grade-level text. Teachers read the passage, students choral read with teacher, and then students read with a partner. That's it. We have been told that this way of repeated reading will help our students improve their phonics and fluency. I'm not in full agreement with this, but we have been told it is a required whole school intervention. Could you shed some light on this for me and the others who think this is not the best bang for our buck? What about explicit phonics instruction?

Shanahan response:

This is really two questions: one about the best way to meet secondary students’ reading needs and one specifically about the value of teaching fluency. I’ll try to answer both.

As for your middle school’s unfortunate reading levels, fluency instruction may be part of the solution, but it will probably be insufficient, especially if implemented in the way that you describe.

That 55% of your students are below the 30^th percentile on some reading test, tells me that you have a serious problem, and such problems deserve a serious response from serious people.

But those test data don’t reveal what the problem is.

There are many reasons students in grades 6-8 may not read well. Decoding problems, perhaps. Or difficulties with fluency. Poor vocabulary and weak morphological skills? Maybe the students lack reading stamina, knowledge of written language, or adequate reasoning ability. Maybe, they can read, but don’t want to. And, of course, the problem could be some mix of all those possibilities.

Years ago, I would have said, “avoid phonics instruction.” Studies then had concluded that phonics at those grade levels didn’t pay off.

Then, I was on the National Reading Panel, and we found studies that showed phonics instruction could improve the decoding abilities of older students but without positive impacts on reading comprehension or spelling. I took that to mean that it was reasonable to address the phonics needs of older students in pull out interventions, but that phonics alone would be pointless (these kids would need vocabulary and comprehension – a conclusion consistent, I thought, with the work of Charles Perfetti who claimed that there was more to reading words than decoding). Accordingly, I invited Don Deshler to provide advice in this space about high school phonics instruction, and Marilyn Adams chimed in on the success of her program for doing just that (you can look it up).

More recent studies have reshaped my thinking again. One study has been especially influential in that regard (Wang, Sabatini, O’Reilly, & Weeks, 2019). They administered reading tests to tens of thousands of students in Grades 5-10. Not a nationally representative sample and not a widely used battery of tests either (Reading Inventory and Scholastic Evaluation – RISE). Nevertheless, the findings are provocative.

This study reported that a significant percentage of the middle and high school students had very low levels of decoding ability – 30% of the students in their sample, though it should be remembered that this was an especially low reading population.

The cut point or threshold they used to identify this 30% was interesting. They found that especially low decoding ability didn’t correlate with reading comprehension. When students got above a certain point in decoding, there was a correlation.

They divided their sample of students at that inflection point and that’s where things got interesting.

The students who scored below that point made essentially no learning progress in reading across the school year, no matter the students’ grade level.

The percentage of students in need of explicit decoding instruction in your school may be lower than in that study. Nevertheless, I’d worry a lot about those kids who perform below that decoding threshold. I would be surprised if they got much from the fluency training that you describe.

The original theory of oral reading fluency instruction (which I attribute to Carol Chomsky) was that some students who had adequate knowledge of the orthographic-phonemic system couldn’t implement it during reading. Fluency instruction was for those children who tested high in phonics but low in reading.

The Wang et al. study suggests to me that Chomsky may have been on to something. Students below the decoding threshold would gain little or nothing from fluency work, while those above it could benefit. The National Reading Panel found that fluency practice had a positive impact on reading comprehension, but even a bigger payoff for word reading, including decoding. That is, the kind of fluency practice you describe can improve decoding ability (perhaps because it helps students to develop automaticity with those phonics skills).

The pattern identified in the Wang study seems to fit with a lot of other facts. For instance, it might explain why it has been so difficult to obtain positive results from secondary school reading interventions. Those studies usually lump all kinds of low readers together. The presence of the below threshold readers could exert a misleading drag on the effects of vocabulary, language, or strategy interventions – since the low decoders wouldn’t be able to benefit yet from such teaching.

Also, even if phonics interventions for older students targeted those below-threshold kids specifically, the results would likely be disappointing. Remember, students didn’t benefit from other instruction until they exceeded the threshold. That would mean that reading gains would not be likely until sometime after the intervention was completed, long after typical post-testing in research studies (or intervention programs).

In any event, those results suggest that some of your students will probably require explicit decoding instruction. Further testing would be needed to determine who they were. Fluency practice can have positive impacts on decoding but perhaps mainly for students who are at a high enough level of decoding ability.

Other students might need greater attention to vocabulary, morphology, written language analysis, comprehension strategy work, and/or world/domain knowledge development. Fluency practice won’t help with any of those deficiencies either.

Fluency instruction has been found to improve reading achievement, so providing some fluency support should have some value (though what you describe isn’t encouraging).

Modeling can be helpful (a teacher reading the text prior to the students’ attempt to read it) but reading a whole passage doesn’t provide much memory support. I’d suggest limiting that modeling, making it briefer and more targeted. If the students have trouble with a sentence, read that to them, and then have them give it a try.

Paired reading can be helpful, too, if the other students provide feedback. Teachers need to involve themselves in this process, since not all students are well-equipped for it. I recommend pairing students strategically to make sure that those struggling get the needed support or that no student always gets stuck with the partners who won’t or can’t help.

I would encourage all the teachers to use these practices in class but give them control over when they do this. Perhaps everyone should sign onto a certain number of minutes of fluency each week (and make it enough minutes that the students will get several such experiences weekly).

Finally, motivation is important. Explaining the point of fluency work to the students matters. Tim Rasinski strongly encourages activities like Radio Reading and Readers’ Theatre as engaging versions of fluency. Such motivation can be overdone in my opinion (because it can take too much time), but goosing things up occasionally makes sense.

The simple answer is that fluency practice can be beneficial for your students. It will help those who have fluency problems. But what’s going to be done with the kids with other reading needs?

References

Chomsky, C. (1976). After decoding: What? Language Arts, 53 (3), 288-296, 314.

Wang, Z., Sabatini, J., O’Reilly, T., & Weeks, J. (2019). Decoding and reading comprehension: A test of the decoding threshold hypothesis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 111(3), 387-401.

Comments

See what others have to say about this topic.

GM Mar 12, 2022 06:08 PM

I'm a little troubled by this answer because the reading together and engaging in text no matter what would seem more valuable than a lot of what students do now, like watch a video or draw. I would posit many of these kids got to this place because they were doing much lower value activities in class and I don't see the harm in the shared reading??

Jacqueline Leigh Mar 12, 2022 06:10 PM

I don't see it mentioned here that some of the students in any of the situations you were describing would be at some stage of learning English as an additional language.

Jean Mar 12, 2022 06:17 PM

This makes so much sense to me. How might we assess the other areas (vocabulary, morphology, written language analysis, comprehension strategy work, and/or world/domain knowledge development) to determine their exact needs? Intervention often just target all of those areas and I sometimes wonder about how efficient we really are. The assessments for phonics and phonemic awareness are so concrete and get a lot of coverage. How do we assess these other areas?

Mark Anderson Mar 12, 2022 06:38 PM

This is excellent! One thing I paused on, though: "Other students might need greater attention to vocabulary, morphology, written language analysis, comprehension strategy work, and/or world/domain knowledge development. Fluency practice won’t help with any of those deficiencies either."

It seems like methods that combine multiple texts aligned by topic show promise for tying in word/domain knowledge developing alongside the fluency practice -- methods like "Wide FORI" and "Varied Practice." By reading multiple texts that build conceptual knowledge and vocabulary, and tucking in fluency practices like repeated echo and choral readings after a 1st modeled read, it seems like fluency practice can do some good work to build knowledge and vocabulary -- and even potential morphology and comprehension strategy work, if close reading for language and meaning is conducted alongside of the fluency practice. More research along these lines needed, of course.

Laura Johnson Mar 13, 2022 04:17 PM

I am so glad I read this blog today! This information has been so reaffirming for what we are starting at my high school.

I am seeing the same struggles with students. In my second year as a literacy specialist at the high school level, I have been able to help to revamp the RTI process for literacy. We now use the NWEA Map Assessment as a universal screener for our Freshmen and Sophomores. I review the data, and then decide where to begin administering diagnostic assessments. This year I have been able to assess students who fell below the 35%. I use a grade level ORF and the San Diego Quick Assessment of Reading. These results then lead me to decide if I should go further with an advanced and beginning decoding survey. The data from these diagnostic assessments drives how I form my intervention groups. At this time my Freshmen and Sophomore groups are getting advanced phonics instruction and morphology in an intervention.

Intervention occurs in a few ways, in two Tier II support classes for Freshmen and Sophomores and during lunch periods. Attendance for lunch groups has been a challenge, but those who are attending are seeing gains.

This semester I had the opportunity to present the Map reading data to a Freshmen team of teachers (across all content areas), and we explored trends in the reading data. From this in-house PD, we have begun to create a Tier I “Freshmen Focus” on vocabulary instruction. So far, it looks like teachers identifying “must know” Tier II and Tier III words for their current units of study. Some PLCs have gotten as far as including explicit instruction and multiple encounters with vocabulary within their subject matter. I feel this is a pretty good start—especially with the challenges of pandemic teaching and learning.

Thanks for writing this blog and sharing your literacy knowledge with all of us! If you come across other high school models of literacy intervention, please share :)

Miss Emma Mar 14, 2022 11:59 AM

As you know, of course, word processes that are inefficient hinder text understanding by reducing the cognitive resources available for comprehension. Slow, non-automatic word recognition processes in alphabetic orthographies typically occur when children are faced with trying to ‘sound out’ most of the words, or by laboriously using sentence context cues to guess the unknown word. They haven’t moved into the ‘sight word' reading phase (Ehri 2014)

The problem with ‘teaching phonics’ as a solution is that ‘phonics’ is viewed so narrowly, and as if only learned with explicit instruction. They generally only cover 100 or so phoneme to grapheme correspondences, and even ignore the Schwa to grapheme mapping eg caterpillar would be ‘sounded out’ using the correspondences taught, and they ‘translate’ this if they know the word. They don’t then explore the actual speech sounds to grapheme mapping Ie the phonics program ignores the issue of English not having a transparent orthography. They teach some common correspondence, usually ‘sight words’ as whole words (ignoring the mapping) and think if the kids then repeat reading they’ll somehow decode with fluency and comprehension.

As you said, no point working on ‘fluency’ if decoding skills are weak. Like a baker working on piping skills to decorate the cake when every cake they bake sinks.

I’ve developed techniques that our teachers use in upper primary and with high school kids still stuck on that single word decoding/ reading phase. They work hard to understand what the kids need, and so the learning experiences centre on the kids. The focus is on what they’re learning - more than what the teacher should ‘plan’ for a group or class. It’s all differentiated.
And that’s what’s hard - many teachers following programs aren’t really sure about even the phoneme to grapheme mapping that underlies orthographic mapping. It might be why they stick to basic phonics programs. They stink to activities and texts that are ‘decodable’ using a limit set of correspondences.
A lot of kids will learn with that ‘kick start’ but many won’t. That group being discussed here, for example.

Those basic ‘kick start’ programs also tend to ignore accents, and often even a failure to address phonemic awareness deficits and weak oral language skills.
We need to give teachers more knowledge rather than keep churning out programs. We need teachers to understand the cognitive processes so that they look at each individual to find out why they’re stuck someone along the learning to read (and spell) continuum. The ‘kick start’ has to also offer opportunities for implicit learning and awareness of phoneme to grapheme mapping (speech to print can help) and allow kids to learn what they need, when they need it. That takes a skilful teacher. We know what kids are likely to need - at different points - but at least 65% of kids need a teacher who offers that, as it won’t happen for them without that support.