How Do You Make a Good Reader? Just the Basics

  • afterschool programs oral language
  • 21 May, 2017
  • 8 Comments

Teacher question:

            What makes good readers? What are kids lacking making them not so good readers?

 Shanahan response:

            I love this question because it cuts to the heart of everything we do. If teachers don’t have clear purchase on what it takes to become a good reader, and what some kids might be missing, then their instructional successes will be fortunate accidents. The same can be said for the professors who prepare teachers and for the principals and coaches who supervise them.

            So what is the answer?

            Let’s start with something pretty self-evident, but that is worth mentioning… the only thing that matters in kids’ learning—in anybody’s learning—is their own experience. What I mean by that is that no one can learn something for you; and what adults do when the kids aren’t around—adopting textbooks, talking about teaching, participating in professional development, and so on—can’t either lead to or interfere with learning.

            To learn anything you have to put your mind on something. You might use your eyes or ears or hands to explore that thing that you want to learn or to collect information about it, but ultimately it is the mind that has to do the work with that information. Nothing is learned without thinking about it, and we only think about things that are in our own experience. (My point isn’t that if you want kids to learn about the Serengeti Plain that you have to take them to Tanzania so they can experience it themselves—though there would obviously be some value in that; however, vicarious experience counts too including books, films, audiotapes, teacher descriptions, and so on.) 

            I think that is a pretty simple premise to accept, but it leads to another question… if a child learns to read through his or her experience, then how does one describe or define experience in a useful way?           

Again, let’s stay to simple conceptions and straightforward principles: There are three fundamental components of academic experience that we as teachers can influence in any powerful way.

First, there is the amount of experience, second, there is the content or skill that is the focus of the experience; and, third, there is the quality of the experience.    

            Amount of experience. Children differ greatly in how much experience they get with literacy and language. Studies show, for instance, significant differences in vocabulary knowledge by the time kids are two—differences that are not surprising to those who have read studies on the differences in the amounts that babies are spoken to by parents.

            We are usually pretty blithe about the amounts of literacy instruction that we provide to kids in school. I think that is because most teachers assume the amounts of time are the same from class to class. Observational studies—and my own experience in visiting classrooms--reveal that not to be the case. Studies often find as much as a 100% difference in the amount of potentially productive reading instruction that is offered to kids, even in different classrooms within a school.

            If two teachers schedule the same 90 minutes of reading instruction each day, and one manages to actually use all that time for teaching and the other only can manage about 45 minutes of teaching (the rest of the time lost to management problems, poor planning, replacing potentially effective instruction with things that we know don’t work, etc.)… Guess which class does best on the end of year reading test?             Of course, kids have relevant experiences beyond the school day. That’s why—even if a teacher fails to provide sufficient literacy learning time to kids—it might not matter much if the home is managing to replace this time. Some kids get lots of literacy experience at home and school and they tend to outshine the rest. And, some are almost totally dependent on the school for literacy learning, and so, for those kids, getting a teacher who is cavalier about learning time can be a deathblow to their reading progress.

            Teachers lose a lot of time. Kids spend too much time just waiting for things to happen.

            One reason why some kids struggle with reading is that they have so little opportunity to learn and to practice their literacy ability.  

            Content of experience. What I wrote above about time is kind of a trick. I believe all of my claims to be true, but there is something important that I didn’t explain.

            In science, time alone never can be a variable. It can only be a measure of something.

            An example: it takes time for iron to rust, but iron does not rust because of time. Iron rusts because of exposure to moisture; moisture combines with the iron molecules to form rust. Time can be a measure of the amount of moisture the iron will be exposed to, but it is the moisture that causes the change—not the amount of time.

            I failed to mention it, but it is true with learning as well. Time is important because it is a measure of how much exposure to the literacy curriculum children receive. Ultimately, it is the engagement with particular aspects of literacy and text that lead to learning—and time just tells us how much opportunity to engage with these components.

            If we were talking about content subjects— science, social studies, literature, health, and so on—then we would need to engage in a consideration of what content we wanted to expose kids to. Is it more important that they learn U.S. history or world history? Do we prefer greater knowledge about physical science or life science? Do we want kids to study the classics (Huckleberry Finn) or contemporary literature (Hunger Games)? In each of these examples, our choices as educators will determine what kids can learn about—what will be the focus of their learning experience—but these are all values choices. They come down to what do we want kids to know.

            However, reading—like cooking, cycling, and dancing--is a skill. To gain skills there are things that one has to know and know how to do. These aren’t values choices as in the previous examples. Do I prefer that kids be able to recognize what an author has written explicitly or that they make inferences based on a text? It should be pretty obvious that both of these actions need to be part of a reader’s repertoire.

            Which is more important decoding or knowing word meanings? Again, not really a choice—good readers will excel in both or they won’t be good readers.

            What all that means is that what we teach to make kids literate is not arbitrary. The content of experience in literacy learning should not be a choice!

            Research has identified particular skills that students need to know to be readers. Studies have done this many ways: they have shown that teaching a particular things improves not just that skill, but overall reading ability (like the impact of teaching fluency on reading comprehension); they have shown that poor readers are relatively weak in particular skills but not in others when compared to better readers (poor readers struggle with decoding tasks, but they tend to guess from context as well as better readers); and there are studies of kids who are particularly good with particular skills (like studies that identify kids who can write well, but who don’t read well).

            These kinds of studies indicate that kids need to learn particular things:

(1)    They need to learn to hear the sounds within words (phonemic awareness)

(2)    They need to know their letters (recognition, letter names, letter sounds)

(3)    They need to know how to decode words quickly and easily (sound-symbol relationships, spelling patterns and how to use these pronounce and spell words)

(4)    They need to be able to read text accurately (reading the authors’ words), quickly (not speed reading, but reading fast enough that it approaches oral language production), and prosodically (it has to sound like language—none of that “read as fast as you can, Henry”)

(5)    They need to know about language: the meaning of words and parts of words, how sentences convey meaning, how ideas cohere across language (e.g., “My sister Mary and I like to go to the movies. We eat popcorn”, readers have to connect “sister” with “Mary”, and “Mary and I” with “we” to get the meaning)

(6)    They need to be able to comprehend text (that means, both being able to read a text and to retell it or answer questions about it or use the information to do something, but it also means having some tools available that can be applied when one isn’t understanding—like summarizing as one reads, or making mental images of what is being described—to improve attention or memory); to be able to evaluate the information that the yead—to determine quality or value.

(7)    They need to be able to compose their own texts—using all of those elements noted above to convey meaning to others through their writing.

            Time devoted to those aspects of literacy has been found repeatedly, across a wide range of studies, to lead to literacy learning. If teachers teach those things, then kids have a greater opportunity to become readers. If kids fail to learn any of those—with or without instruction—then they tend not to be very good at literacy.     

            Quality of experience. The final aspect of what is essential has to do with quality. Unfortunately, I only have a negative definition of that, but I think you’ll get the point of why this is pretty quickly.

            Imagine a situation in which two teachers are trying to teach identical skills or information to two equivalent groups of kids. They are given a set amount of time to deliver this teaching, and student learning is evaluated at the end of the lessons. One group learns more than the other.

            These learning differences obviously cannot be due to amount of instruction—both groups received the same amount of teaching; nor can the differences be due to the coverage of different skills, since they were both taught the same skills; and the differences can’t be due to one group being smarter or more motivated or better supported at home (because we made sure the groups were equivalent). 

            Hmmmm…

            What could have led to the learning difference here?

            The only possibility is the quality of instruction or quality of experience.

            Studies show that some teachers explain ideas better than others (and that it is possible to train teachers to provide better explanations), and some manage to motivate better. Some teachers present lessons in which one student gets to answer a question and others make sure all of the kids are answering all of the questions (such as using writing). Some teachers are better able to make on-the-fly adjustments to student responses: this group needs an extra example, this one can skip the next exercise, and so on. Some teachers find ways to evaluate what their kids know—without a lot of formal testing (since that takes instructional time).

 

            You asked what it takes for kids to become literate? It takes large amounts of time devoted to learning key things about reading and writing, and that the instructional support given for this experience be of high quality; allowing more kids to learn what is essential more quickly and surely so that time can either be devoted to scaling more challenging aspects of literacy or to building extensive bodies of knowledge about the social and natural world through their literacy.

Comments

See what others have to say about this topic.

Lori Ulewicz May 22, 2017 12:15 AM

This might be one of the best articles you have written!

Judyann May 22, 2017 12:50 PM

This article relates well to Richard Allington's work and how intentional our interactions in teaching must be to promote literacy growth.

Deborah Hollimon May 25, 2017 01:39 PM

Yes! Volume is key. And reading instruction must be a two-edged sword: content knowledge and critical reading skills learned through nonfiction (that is interesting to the students!) and time to "just read" for pleasure, so our kids come to enjoy reading enough to keep at it for life. Too often we teach them how to read, but after 4th grade or so they choose not to read. They may even be actively resistant to independent reading, so they don't read enough to get really good at it. We lose them to technology.

If youngsters do not discover the joy of reading in the early grades they will likely never become lifelong readers. What a loss :(

Carol May 28, 2017 12:45 PM

Hi my name is carol
I had read your your blog, I am adult with learning disability. I am 57 years old , I am still struggling with it.
Do you have any advice for me.

Timothy Shanahan Jul 12, 2017 03:29 AM

Carol

What it takes to make a reader of English doesn't really vary by grade level. We use this same scheme when teaching older readers too.

Luqman Michel Jul 20, 2017 11:08 AM

" These learning differences obviously cannot be due to amount of instruction—both groups received the same amount of teaching; nor can the differences be due to the coverage of different skills, since they were both taught the same skills; and the differences can’t be due to one group being smarter or more motivated or better supported at home (because we made sure the groups were equivalent).

What could have led to the learning difference here?

The only possibility is the quality of instruction or quality of experience."

Dr. Shanahan,
I do hope to have a discussion with you.
I believe the answer is quality of instruction. But you will say that it was the same teacher and the students were from the same class. Then, why is it that some can read while others cannot?

The answer is that about 20% of kids are wired differently and they have to be taught explicitly. They shut down and refuse to continue to listen to teachers when they are confused.

Malcolm Gladwell, in the book on Tipping Point on page 102 had said that kids watching Sesame Street discontinue watching the show when they are confused. If this can happen to a kid who is watching Sesame Street what more to a kid who is confused because the teacher is teaching the wrong sounds of letters as is happening all over the world.

James Wendorf: “Most struggling children are struggling because what they learned in the past is inadequately resourcing or maladaptively directing their current learning.

The most important step toward improving the health of our children’s learning is recognizing, understanding, and minimizing, unhealthy learning.”

Nancy Hennessy: ".....We still don’t have the capacity nor the will to change what it is that we are doing with reading early on and so consequently unless we make those significant changes we are not only going to lose the dyslexics but I am also concerned about these other children; these other struggling readers....”

Reid Lyon: Dr. Reid Lyon
“….95% of those kids are instructional casualties. These are what we call as NBT – never been taught.

I hope to have a fruitful open discussion with you for the benefit of future generation.

Luqman Michel Jul 20, 2017 11:16 AM

" These learning differences obviously cannot be due to amount of instruction—both groups received the same amount of teaching; nor can the differences be due to the coverage of different skills, since they were both taught the same skills; and the differences can’t be due to one group being smarter or more motivated or better supported at home (because we made sure the groups were equivalent).

What could have led to the learning difference here?

The only possibility is the quality of instruction or quality of experience."

Dr. Shanahan,
I do hope to have a discussion with you.
I believe the answer is quality of instruction. But you will say that it was the same teacher and the students were from the same class. Then, why is it that some can read while others cannot?

The answer is that about 20% of kids are wired differently and they have to be taught explicitly. They shut down and refuse to continue to listen to teachers when they are confused.

Malcolm Gladwell, in the book on Tipping Point on page 102 had said that kids watching Sesame Street discontinue watching the show when they are confused. If this can happen to a kid who is watching Sesame Street what more to a kid who is confused because the teacher is teaching the wrong sounds of letters as is happening all over the world.

James Wendorf: “Most struggling children are struggling because what they learned in the past is inadequately resourcing or maladaptively directing their current learning.

The most important step toward improving the health of our children’s learning is recognizing, understanding, and minimizing, unhealthy learning.”

Nancy Hennessy: ".....We still don’t have the capacity nor the will to change what it is that we are doing with reading early on and so consequently unless we make those significant changes we are not only going to lose the dyslexics but I am also concerned about these other children; these other struggling readers....”

Reid Lyon: Dr. Reid Lyon
“….95% of those kids are instructional casualties. These are what we call as NBT – never been taught.

I hope to have a fruitful open discussion with you for the benefit of future generation.

Linda May 26, 2019 04:17 AM

I teach kindergarten students who are on the autism spectrum. I realize the importance of exposing them to books and reading to them aloud. It has been a struggle this year to have them sit and listen to a story and to increase exposure to different genres. it has been most successful when I chose stores that are related to animals.

What Are your thoughts?

Leave me a comment and I would like to have a discussion with you!

Comment *
Name*
Email*
Website
Comments

How Do You Make a Good Reader? Just the Basics

8 comments

One of the world’s premier literacy educators.

He studies reading and writing across all ages and abilities. Feel free to contact him.