Saturday, February 10, 2024
Friday, June 9, 2023
The BIG SIX: Comprehension & Oral Language
Comprehension
At the end of Scarborough’s tightly woven reading rope, we see skilled reading. The “fluent execution and coordination of word recognition and text comprehension.” Foundational word-reading and bridging skills alone are not sufficient for building skilled readers. We have encountered students who have poor reading comprehension despite strong decoding and reading fluency. So what is comprehension and how do we teach it?
According to Scarborough’s Reading Rope language comprehension consists of multiple sub-skills including background knowledge, vocabulary, language structures, verbal reasoning, and literacy knowledge.
Just as Scarborough’s Reading Rope symbolizes, language comprehension should not be taught in isolation or after students are fluent readers. Rather it should be taught concurrently with word recognition and language comprehension instruction should begin early. Research supports a simultaneous, rather than sequential, model of reading instruction. Along with the development of phonological awareness, print concepts, and alphabet knowledge, young learners begin to develop their oral language comprehension. Through connected text readings, classroom discussions, and storytelling activities learners can begin to build many language comprehension sub-skills.
As readers become more proficient, comprehension skills become more complex. Moreover, we read fiction and non fiction texts differently. Research has examined the impact of text structure instruction and understanding genre. For instance, with regard to understanding fiction stories, studies show that learners benefit from instruction in story elements and common structures. Whereas, teaching text structures and features has foster reading comprehension development for informational text.
Oral Language
In this series of blog posts on The Big Six, I have purposely saved Oral Language for last. Each of these key elements are important to build proficient readers. Scarborough’s Reading Rope helps us to visualize the process of teaching these skills concurrently, they are all entangled and dependent on one another. Oral language lays the foundation for students to develop reading and writing skills and its presence in reading instruction supports the learner as reading tasks become more complex. In other words, oral language is a key part of all instruction, whether the focus is phonics, semantics, or sight recognition.
The first way to focus on oral language is to engage in frequent meaningful discussions with your class. However, not only should oral language be part of daily instruction. It should be directly taught using a gradual release of responsibility. Initially, younger students may practice the skills of speaking to be understood and listening to understand. Educators can help students develop these skills by setting shared expectations for discussions, helping to restate or clarify what students are saying, or asking follow up questions.
Thursday, June 8, 2023
The BIG SIX: Fluency & Vocabulary
Fluency
Fluency is the ability to read with reasonable accuracy, appropriate rate, and suitable prosody (expression). Reasonable accuracy should be at least 95% for most independent reading, 97-98% for emerging readers, and 100% at the instructional level. It is important that beginning readers are provided texts with phonics patterns that have been pre-taught and the learner has had time to practice, rather than texts that are too difficult for them. On the instructional level, studies show that it is beneficial to correct errors as they occur, therefore reasonable accuracy at this level should be 100%. Fluent reading should sound like speech. Achieving an appropriate rate helps learners to understand what they are reading. A good guide for an appropriate rate of fluency is the 50 percentile of the Fluency Norms created by Dr. Hasbrouck and Dr. Tindal (Florida B.E.S.T. Standards ELA, p. 209). Suitable expression includes pitch, tone, volume, emphasis, and rhythm. It typically mirrors spoken language and conveys meaning.
Reading fluency is important because it provides a bridge between word recognition and comprehension (Reading Rockets). Let’s compare learning to read to learning to play the piano. Think about a child who is first learning about finger placement and the notes on the piano. Initially, the piano playing may sound very clunky and the player is focused on finding the correct key. Through practice, the pianist builds automaticity and eventually the notes are less clunky, have a nice rhythm, and sounds like music!
On Scarborough’s Reading Rope, word recognition could be compared to learning the notes and finger placement on a piano. Phonological awareness and phonics teaches the reader the skills necessary for reading words. Beginning readers are focused on applying this knowledge to read words correctly. These skills build reading accuracy. Once those skills become automatic and the reader has an appropriate reading rate, the reader can focus on making meaning from what they are reading. Additionally, since fluent readers are able to focus more on meaning and less on decoding, they tend to read more and remember more of what they read (How Reading Fluency affects Comprehension).
There are a variety of strategies to help student’s practice fluency including repeated readings, partner reading, multiple exposure to challenging words (think: photosynthesis), reader’s theater, or poetry. I do think it's important to note that phonemic awareness and phonics is part of fluency instruction since it helps reader to read accurately.
Vocabulary
Reading to learn requires the ability to make meaning from the words. This is where vocabulary comes into play. Vocabulary is a students’ knowledge of words and word meanings. Studies have shown that students with a strong oral language vocabulary in primary grades had stronger reading comprehension scores in later years (AIM Pathways to Proficient Reading).
Every learner will have varying levels of word knowledge based on their individual experiences and background knowledge. Literacy experts have described the levels of word knowledge by breadth, depth, and fluency. Breadth refers to how many words a learner recognizes or knows at a certain level; depth refers to how well a learner knows a word; and fluency refers to the rate in which a learner can access meaning of a word. With this knowledge in mind, effective teaching strategies of vocabulary go beyond memorization of definitions. Effective vocabulary instruction requires repeated exposure to a wide range of words and many opportunities to connect those words to a variety of experiences and other word meanings. Additionally, studies have shown that direct instruction in morphology or, analyzing meaningful word parts, is beneficial in developing vocabulary knowledge.
Wednesday, June 7, 2023
The BIG SIX: Phonics - What to teach? When to teach?
Phonics is a process and just like our phonological awareness skills it is taught from less complex patterns to more complex patterns. See below for two examples of a phonics continuum for teaching.
If you’ve been involved with vertical planning in a Florida elementary school, you may have noticed a connection between these continuums and the Phonics Progression of Foundations Benchmarks from Florida's B.E.S.T. Standards.
Notice how the skills on our Phonics Progression of Foundations Benchmarks from Florida's B.E.S.T. Standards builds to more and more complexity. Another factor to note on the B.E.S.T. Standards is that phonics is taught through the upper grades.
Research shows that foundational skills are critical for K-5 students, yet we often see that explicit and systematic phonics instruction stops in 2nd grade. How are our upper grade levels learning to decode and encode multisyllabic words?
As the texts students encounter increase in complexity, returning to the core skills of phonics and word recognition helps students feel confident when they come to a challenging word or phrase because they have strategies to work through it. Moreover, if you have been teaching long enough, you have probably met a student who was a fluent reader, but could not spell. Or the student who can read some multisyllabic words like, “observation” but cannot decode words like, “vigil”. More often than not, these students struggle with key phonics skills that help them to read and write words accurately. Strengthening phonics skills helps our students become stronger readers and writers.
As students enter third grade, they should be equipped with basic decoding skills for single-syllable words. In third grade, the focus shifts to decoding multisyllabic words and morphology (the process of understanding how to break a word into its prefix, suffix, and root). Let’s take a closer look at phonics instruction on syllables and morphemes which may be beneficial for students in our upper grades. If the goal of phonics instruction is developing automaticity in reading and writing using sounds and letters then teaching the six syllable types, syllable division, and morphemes are key phonics skills. Learning the rules of syllable division and morphemes provides our students with an effective strategy for chunking up those bigger words into more manageable parts. Consider the example below:
Students who receive direct instruction on syllables and morphemes are going to be able to read and write quickly and more accurately than students who do not receive this instruction.
Moreover, there are six syllable types in our language. These syllable types have pronunciation rules that help readers to break apart multisyllabic words accurately.
(https://sarahsnippets.com/syllable-types/)
While it is my belief that phonics should be taught well into upper elementary, from my experience phonics instruction should be differentiated and taught in small group settings. Duke and Mesmer stated that,
“Whole-class phonics is an “instructional misstep” [that] means that fewer children will develop strong word-reading skills. In addition, ineffective phonics instruction is likely to require more class time and/or later compensatory interventions, taking time away from the growth of other important contributors to literacy development.” (Duke and Mesmer, Phonics Faux Pas: Avoiding Instructional Missteps in Teaching Letter-Sound Relationships American Educators 2019).
Effective phonics instruction should be targeted; include short teacher directed lessons; time for student practice; and teacher/student feedback. Two of my favorite resources for teaching phonics in primary and upper grades include SIPPS (Systematic Instruction in Phonological Awareness, Phonics, and Sight Words) and Words Their Way. Both of these programs encourage differentiated phonics instruction and provide age appropriate activities for primary and upper grade level students.
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