You Can't Read With Your Eyes Closed: How to Help our Most Challenging Readers Right From the Start - This is Daniel's Story -

You Can’t Read With

Your Eyes Closed

How to help our most challenging readers right from the start

~ This is Daniel’s story ~

Jennifer Watson

Illustrations by Taylor Kemp

Contents

Daniel’s Story

Preface

Chapter 1. The Complex Nature of Reading

Chapter 2. Guided Reading

Chapter 3. Assessment

Chapter 4. The Running Record

Chapter 5. The Pre-Emergent Reader (Text Levels 1, 2 -Junior Kindergarten)

Chapter 6. The Emergent Reader (Text Levels 3-5, Senior Kindergarten)

Chapter 7. The Early Reader (Text Levels 3-14, Grade One)

Chapter 8. The Fluent Reader (Text Levels 15-22, Grade Two)

References

Copyright

The essential aspects of reading will not develop if the child does not understand where to look when reading.

Daniel’s Story

It was a cold, dark, blustery January day on the school playground. Daniel had his hood on his head, with the rest of his coat twirling out behind him like a cape. He whirled around 3 times, crouched and bounced up and down in time to the song he was humming, we got to move it, move it before dancing away, flicking his scarf over his shoulder and nodding his head up and down in time to the music. His wide grin charmed me immediately. I was meeting the ten children who had been assigned to me for reading support. Six-year-old Daniel, in grade one and not able to decode print (in reading assessment terms, he was at level 0), despite being obviously articulate and intelligent, was desperate to learn how to read, and as delighted to meet me as I was to meet him.

16 weeks later, Daniel could read a grade one book with understanding and relish. Granted, he read the accompanying grade one word list in between yoga-like poses, (sometimes from under the desk) but he could hold himself still long enough to distinguish between house/horse and came/come. He loved talking about books.

Initially, his eyes went everywhere except on the page when he read. A lot of practice on easy books prepared him for the higher level books.

Daniel first had to learn to read in a left to right direction,

looking at one word at a time,

and sometimes one letter at a time.

He had to learn how to remember the appearance of words and

letters and their sounds.

He had to learn to trust the author to say what he/she meant to say, and

he had to learn that it was his job as the reader to try to understand the author’s message.

What made the difference for him? His teacher paid attention to what he knew and needed to learn next about print at any one time. He learned only the words that he needed to learn in order to read the books he wanted to read and he learned the exact letters he needed to make the words he wanted to write and he had lots and lots of practice reading the same (favourite), easy books over and over again and writing his responses to them until he felt like a reader and a writer. He learned something new about print daily, in small increments, until he was reading at grade level.

Preface

Daniel was one of 10 children referred to me for extra reading support in January of their grade one year. He was in an ordinary grade one class of 20 children in an ordinary school, with 49 other grade one children. He had attended 2 years of Full Day Kindergarten and half a year of grade one and still could not read, or even write his own name correctly. He is not learning disabled or unintelligent. His Board and Ministry of Education have poured literally millions of dollars into his school and have emphasized literacy as a priority for over a decade. His teachers and principal are among the best in the world. They have had the resources and attention of the best supervisors and literacy coaches available. The material resources in his school seem almost unlimited. What went wrong?

In one sense, nothing went wrong; 80% (40 out of 50) of Daniel`s grade one peers have achieved the average level in Reading, and that is above the province’s official standard. But what about the other 20%? Their parents and teachers want them to do well too. Statistics show that children who are achieving below grade level in grade 3 will remain in the lowest achieving group throughout their entire school careers and are less likely to graduate from high school than their peers. Despite the amount of time, effort and money being put into education in recent years in Canada`s large urban settings, there is still a group of children (larger than anyone is comfortable with) for whom beginning reading instruction remains difficult. These are the children in Senior Kindergarten and grade one whose scores fall below the expected level in Reading Achievement. These are the children who go into SERT and HSP and even Learning Disabilities (Special Education) programs without having any discernible disability, other than not being able to read at grade level. These are the children who are less likely to graduate.

Prior to recent teacher union demands (which were granted) Daniel`s school board had collected reading assessments centrally on all children in grades SK to grade 3 three times a year, using the DRA (Developmental Reading Assessment). In addition, the province’s Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) assessed children in grades 3, 6, 9, 10 and 12 every year. Schools and the province therefore had clear data which told them whether or not children were progressing. Many children are falling behind.

What might impede reading achievement? A lot of important and influential people have spent a lot of time thinking about this question. Poverty is a huge factor in the lack of school progress. Other factors might be the quality of the teaching, the availability of resources, and the lack of political will. In my opinion, that last factor (political will) seems to be all that is holding back the use of good instructional strategies in Daniel’s school and in its neighbours.

Yes, poverty is an issue in Daniel’s school, as it is in many urban schools. However, according to the Learning Opportunity Index (LOI), which ranks all of the schools in Daniel`s Board (about 500 schools) in order of disadvantages, this is not the neediest of schools in the Board. Despite this, the findings of a recent parent census revealed that over 80% of the students in this school live below the poverty line. Poverty brings with it many problems of course, many of which the school and board have attempted to address. For example, a morning meal is available to all children for $7 a month (not having the money does not keep anyone from getting the meal), a hot lunch is available for $2 a day, (again, not all receiving students pay), a number of quality after-school programs and daycare facilities are available to parents at no cost to them and public agencies are directed to provide whatever supports the school and community identify as being needed, including vision and hearing screening clinics and free glasses. Speech and Hearing Therapists, Social Workers, Occupational Therapists, Language Interpreters and Psychoeducational Consultants are available for those children and their parents who need them. School Settlement Workers help newcomers to Canada settle in, and a Parenting and Family Literacy Centre operates within the school, to prepare children from birth to 6 years of age, and their parents, for school. The school is a thriving, community-based hub. As far as it is possible, the school has been able to address many of the pervasive issues of poverty.

The Ontario Ministry of Education produced a very comprehensive document in 2003 (A Guide to Effective Instruction in Reading, Kindergarten to Grade Three) and released large funds to promote Professional Development in Ontario schools (Ontario Focused Intervention Partnership-OFIP). Unfortunately, the PD seldom referenced the guide. It focused instead on whole class approaches such as Shared Reading and Read-Alouds and co-teaching and the 3-part lesson in math and a Japanese strategy (bansho) and Hubs and Critical Learning Pathways and the big idea and many other initiatives, many of which were helpful and some of which were confusing. Hopefully, these initiatives have since been incorporated into the curricula of teacher training colleges. As the principal of a school at the time, I was responsible for implementing the changes and wondered where these ideas had come from all of a sudden, and why anyone thought so much could be implemented so quickly; teachers had to learn these new approaches while still teaching students under their old plans. The old "readin’, ‘ritin’ and ‘rithmetic" emphases were downplayed. Teaching basic math facts and skills was frowned upon. Beginning reading and writing instruction was virtually ignored.

There was extreme pressure on principals and teachers to follow the new directives blindly, sometimes to the detriment of focused, useful strategies. Effective reading instruction at the Early Primary level, key to getting children started on the right track, is quite different from reading instruction at higher levels and this fact was ignored. At the emergent level of instruction, teachers must be more intentional, work with smaller groups, focus on the individual child’s needs, and include daily work on words and letters while children read real books and write real stories. Prior to entering school, letters and words in print may have had little importance in a child’s life, but they are obviously essential for reading and writing. And yet, instruction in handwriting has been removed from the curriculum! This shows how political will triumphs over educational expertise every time. Handwriting Without Tears virtually guarantees accurate letter knowledge for all children by the end of kindergarten and it takes only 15 minutes a day to implement. It was designed by an occupational therapist and it would help many more children get started writing (and reading) correctly, if allowed.

The debate between many reading theorists and practitioners (phonics proponents versus whole language proponents) has muddied the waters when it comes to what actually works in classrooms. The 2003 Ministry document combines the best of both approaches; it allows teachers to follow an interactive theory of reading, which recognizes that a complex system like reading requires a number of different strategies, some print-based and some thinking-based. Building on the work of Marie Clay, Vygotsky and others, interactive theory recognizes that readers navigate the world of print using different sources of information, and the best readers are proficient at using all sources. The best teachers, then, must determine how to help the individual learner access these sources. Accurate assessment is absolutely vital and it will show that not all children can be taught in the same way. Add to the mix the very physically active nature of many of today’s children, whether because of an overexposure to TV, food additives or environmental toxins, the overreliance on babysitters and/or just the stress of modern life, it appears that there is a group of children in our schools who find it difficult to learn to read. Many of them also find it difficult to sit still. Other, just as vulnerable, children, are less physically active, but still do not take an active role when reading and need a deliberate, risk-free, measured approach to beginning reading instruction. Some of these children are afraid to take risks, some have well-developed language skills which they prefer to use rather than pay attention to print, and some have difficulty retaining visual information. Each beginning reader starts from a different place and follows a different path, and many require individual or small group support from a well-trained teacher. Because of the current emphasis on teaching children to read by reading to them, and the de-emphasis on print knowledge, a significant number of children confuse reading with memorizing and think that they can read with their eyes closed. They may even declare it to all around them as they demonstrate reading a memorized book with their eyes closed.

A related, current trend that makes me uneasy is that the very effective grade one reading intervention program called Reading Recovery™, which is a research based, successful, individualized, balanced and diagnostic program, has been cut significantly in many Ontario boards, including Daniel`s board. In contrast, a neighbouring board has placed Reading Recovery™ in every one of its elementary schools, with amazing results. Intensive one on one support for students very early in their school careers has been shown to be very effective. Luckily, in Daniel’s school, the lowest achieving grade one students were still able to receive Reading Recovery™ support. As the next neediest group, it was thought that Daniel and his peers would be successful working in small groups with a teacher using Guided Reading strategies.

Chapter 1. The Complex Nature of Reading

There are three main sources of information that all readers, even the youngest, use; structure, meaning and visual information are all required in order to process print accurately. All 3 areas need to have instructional attention paid to them and visual information is not currently getting the attention it requires.

What do Successful Readers Do?

Reading is a strategic activity which requires actively searching for and using information from a variety of sources. The interactive nature of reading requires the reader to bring ideas to the text as well as to derive meaning from it.

Children learn the shapes and sounds of the letters and individual words (Visual Information). They speak a language which has rules of syntax and they expect that what they read will follow those rules. They predict words based on what has come before (Structure). Readers talk to themselves- they ask and answer questions as they read, so that what they read makes sense (Meaning). Young readers can learn to ask themselves: Does it look right? (Using Visual Information), Does it sound right? (Using Structure or Syntax) and Does it make sense? (Using Meaning).

Some children with a particular learning style or bias find it difficult to search for all 3 kinds of information equally well. In order to determine whether or not children are using all 3 sources of information, and how well they are using them, teachers need to be able to assess how the child approaches print before starting instruction, and then continue to do so on an ongoing basis, particularly if the child seems to be falling behind. Chapters 3 and 4 provide a set of assessment tools that work well with young children. Primary teachers are encouraged to use these tools, or similar tasks, to assess their young readers on an on-going basis.

The importance of Visual Information:

Although children come to school with a store of experiences (Meaning) and speaking a language (Structure), visual information is not hugely important in their lives. McDonald’s golden arches are easily recognizable and some other environmental print becomes known through frequent viewings and pleasant associations (such as the Fruit Loops label) but Primary grade teachers have the responsibility, for the most part, of teaching children the visual information they will need in order to become life-long readers. For some children this can turn out to be quite a challenge, especially with the current educational de-emphasis on print. Sometimes, we expert users of print forget how difficult it can be for beginners.

Handwritten print, bolded words, computer-generated print,