Literacy Now

Listening to students read aloud is an essential practice for any primary-grade teacher. It is no less essential than a swimming coach watching children swim or a piano teacher listening to a child play. Listening to students read aloud provides an important opportunity for the teacher to coach or prompt students when they are stuck on a word or when they encounter other problems when reading. (For a discussion of research-informed practices for prompting students during reading, see Nell’s piece in the upcoming November issue of ASCD’s Educational Leadership).

Listening to students read aloud is also a potential tool for formative assessment. That is, it can provide information to inform next steps in instruction. For example, we might ascertain from listening to students read aloud that they are successfully decoding most consonant-vowel-consonant words (e.g., rip) but not consonant-vowel-consonant-e words (e.g., ripe), or that they don’t attend to the captions when reading an informational text. Scope and sequences for instruction are important, but we must also be responsive to students’ strengths and needs as there will always be cases in which individuals, small groups, or even the whole class may need review of past instructional targets, reinforcement of current instructional targets, and accelerated attention to instructional targets to come.

Running records

Traditionally, many educators have used running records to derive information from listening to students read aloud. An advantage of running records is that they can be taken anytime that a student is reading aloud using only a scrap of paper.

A challenge with running records is that the data they yield are so open ended that the data can lead to misinterpretation. For example, some people have interpreted the misreading of words in a running record to be positive as long as the words make sense in context (e.g., being satisfied when students read glass for cup). Although it is certainly important that readers engage in sense-making when they read, for word identification, attending to the letters and groups of letters in words is the critical skill of successful readers. In addition, running records explicitly signal only a few aspects of reading to attend to. There are many aspects of the complex act of reading that are worthy of educators’ attention when listening to a student read.

LTR-WWWP

To address these challenges, we have developed a tool to guide the process of listening to students read aloud and observing them write: The Listening to Reading-Watching While Writing Protocol (LTR-WWWP). Like running records, the LTR-WWWP can be applied any time a student is reading or writing anything in the classroom—a truly curriculum-based assessment—but unlike running records, the tool provides much more guidance about what to listen for in the student’s reading.

For example, the tool lists specific word identification strategies that research suggests are good for students to use—such as chunking a word or trying an alternate vowel sound. It does not list strategies that are not desirable). In fact, everything on the LTR-WWWP is a potential instructional target: something specific that you can teach or work on. The tool doesn’t yield a “level” or a “score” but rather points to specific foci for instruction—a graphophonemic relationship to teach (e.g., sh = /sh/), a strategy to teach (e.g., rereading), a skill to teach (e.g., attending to specific punctuation marks to support fluent reading), a text feature to teach, and so on. 

Although we provide considerable guidance in the form regarding what to look for in a student’s reading (and writing, as discussed below), it is an informal tool. You can tailor its use to what would be most helpful to inform instruction. This means you can pause at any point during the reading to ask students questions (e.g., Is that a new word for you? Do you know what it means? How did you figure that out?), encourage students to share their thinking at any time, and even provide needed instruction.

Dr. Ashelin Currie of Oakland Schools, who was among the educators who piloted the tool, commented on “the humanity of the tool.” She wrote, “Especially during this time, we need to connect with our students as human beings. I'm doing this assessment to learn about you/the child. I'm interested in learning about you as a reader.”

Reading and writing

Reading and writing are deeply related. Students’ knowledge and skills in one area are typically closely related to their knowledge and skills in the other (think knowledge of informational text features and skill in decoding and spelling). Therefore, we designed the LTR-WWWP so that it could be used for writing as well as for reading.

As with reading, there is great potential value in watching the process of students writing, even for just a short portion of the time during which they are doing so. Depending on the phase(s) of writing you observe, you can address questions such as these:

• Did the student plan the writing?
• Did the student stretch words to spell them?
• Was the student gripping the writing utensil properly?
• Did the student use any resources to support vocabulary/word choice in the writing?
• Did the student use any strategies while editing the writing?

Information from these observations can be complemented by analysis of the writing sample itself (e.g., the spelling, text structure, ideas, voice). As with listening to reading, the purpose of these observations and analyses is to inform next steps for instruction.

Formative assessment

In sum, the LTR-WWWP is an informal formative assessment tool designed to help guide attention to particular aspects of the student’s reading or writing in order to inform next steps in instruction. In particular, the tool directs attention to the following:

• Reading and spelling of single-syllable or multisyllabic words
• Word identification or spelling strategies
• Letter formation/handwriting
• Comprehension monitoring
• Vocabulary strategies or word choice
• Fluency
• Comprehension (including general comprehension, reactions and responses, genre, strategies, text structure/organization, and features)
• Compreaction (i.e., processing the meaning of the text in relation to one’s purpose for reading—what one “does” with comprehension)
• Composition (including reactions and responses, genre, strategies, text structure/organization, text features, attention to purpose and audience, voice, content/ideas, sentence construction)

It is certainly not expected that all these aspects of literacy development would be addressed in every instance of using the LTR-WWWP. Rather, its use supports attention to these constructs over time, with the purpose of helping us make daily decisions to support the literacy growth of our students.

Accessing the LTR-WWWP 

A video presenting key points about the tool, detailed directions for using the tool, completed examples of the tool, a blank copy of the tool in printable and fillable PDF form, and videos of the use of the LTR-WWWP in action are available. Some of the videos were conducted in a remote/videoconference format.

Of course, there is much to say about what to do instructionally with the information the LTR-WWWP provides, but that is beyond the scope of this post. Also, it is important to note that the LTR-WWWP does not obviate the need for other assessment tools, such as systematic assessments of reading comprehension and letter–sound knowledge. Still, the focus of the tool on the actual acts of reading and writing, the fact that it can be used whenever a student is reading (aloud, at least) or writing, and the added level of guidance it provides over running records, make it a potentially valuable tool in our formative assessment portfolio.

ILA member Alessandra E. Wardis a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Michigan. Her work focuses on the literacy engagement of young learners. She is a member of ILA.You can follow her on Twitter @wardalessandrae.

ILA member Nell K. Duke is a professor in literacy, language, and culture and also in the combined program in education and psychology at the University of Michigan. She is the recipient of ILA’s William S. Gray Citation of Merit for outstanding contributions to literacy research, theory, policy, and practice. You can follow her on Twitter @nellkduke.

ILA member Rachel Klingelhofer is a lecturer in the University of Michigan’s teacher education programs. Much of her teaching work is field instruction, where she helps interns apply what they are learning in real classrooms with real students.

Literature introduces people to worlds they have never set foot in, which is why it is so important for classroom libraries to be full of diverse stories that reflect students’ backgrounds and cultures. Students seeing themselves in the stories they read to foster a sense of belonging, recognition, and most of all, validation, is crucial—representation matters.

Students also need to read stories that show experiences other than their own to expand their worldview. Teacher Natalya Gibbs believes that early exposure to diverse literature forms understanding students who can relate to people of all walks of life. Even as learning has shifted online, the ethos of a diverse library can be carried over and adapted to the virtual classroom.

An introduction to different worlds

It is in this time of disruption and uncertainty that educators should encourage independent reading, says elementary literacy specialist Marie Havran. Having students take turns sharing their favorite books and current reads not only introduces the entire class to different authors, genres, and books but also gives you insight into where students are and what they like to read. You can then craft reading plans based on what students have shared, including related readings or books that could help fill in the gaps. Considering possible issues around book access, educators can use numerous resources that allow students access to diverse books: audiobooks, the International Children’s Digital Library, or even conducting read-alouds of books.

Proactive engagements with the text

Learning does not stop with the act of completing a book. Lively discussions and activities around their reading can help students process and absorb the lessons taught by the books they encounter. This is especially true in the current global situation, because many students learning remotely will have less access to books. Reading should be proactive and, as such, HP’s tips for communicating in a virtual classroom includes engagement through creative classwork. This can be done by reading books to students over a video stream and asking them to discuss the books (also reducing the need for students to have physical copies of the books).

Using literature helps to spark students’ interest when it is made personal and when it has a correlation to current events. Educators can create guiding questions that tie characters’ actions or story plots to what is happening in the world today.

A lesson in empathy

In addition, educators should involve students by connecting stories with their own lives. Ask students how they felt reading the stories or inquire what they would do if they were in a certain character’s shoes. An article on the BBC Future website about reading fiction describes how these questions help readers to identify with characters and evaluate their actions, desires, and goals instead of their own. This may facilitate deeper connections with the books read and train students on critical thinking and empathy early on.

With the state of the world today, reading diverse literature can help us push for changes that go beyond the classroom. Multicultural literature and a diverse classroom library, even at an elementary level, reflects the stories and narratives of those whose voices have not traditionally been heard.

Most of all, creating a diverse classroom library for students’ growth can make readers of today the leaders of tomorrow.

Jerie Blintt is an avid reader who is passionate about bringing technology and literature to the forefront of every classroom. When she's not writing about the latest innovations, you'll likely find her meditating in her local park.

If there’s anything we’ve learned this year about remote instruction, it’s that learning opportunities designed with intention—particularly with equity and empathy in mind—are more critical now than ever before.

As Nancy Frey said during her ILA Next Main Stage Session with Douglas Fisher: “It’s not the platform itself, but rather it’s what we do within that platform.”

This idea has been a common thread among presenters throughout ILA Next, a monthlong learning event designed to meet the needs of educators and students in our virtual and hybrid environments.

Building upon this theme, several speakers have also pointed to the need to reimagine education as a whole. Like the book title of Main Stage Session speaker Yong Zhao states: An Education Crisis Is a Terrible Thing to Waste.

The following are just some of the messages shared during Week 2 about how we can rethink our teaching, maximize our impact, and maybe even change the concept of schooling altogether.

Embrace mistakes

An inevitable teacher moment in distance learning is making a mistake on a recorded video. Resist the temptation to rerecord, urged Fisher.

“I would like to argue for three reasons not to do that,” he said. “No. 1:You don’t have time…No. 2: I think it sets up this false expectation that we have to be perfect every time. And No. 3: We rob the students modeling opportunities for self-correction. We need to normalize mistakes.”

If we can show that, he said, students might just take a risk.

Prioritize self-care

Social-emotional learning and trauma-informed pedagogy are at the forefront of our practices—but don’t forget about caring for your own needs. Main Stage speaker Cornelius Minor referred to it as rationing.

Educators strive to give 100% each day, but now is the time to give yourself a mental break and understand that it’s OK to give 100% on one day and then maybe 70% or 80% on the other days.

“I want to acknowledge that this is not irresponsible or lazy. Rather, rationing…is what responsible people do in extreme situations,” Minor said. “I am choosing how I invest my energy and my time across my week, understanding that I cannot do everything. Giving 100% is going to fatigue me. And no kid, no community, needs a fatigued educator.”

Fisher compared it to the phrase about putting your own oxygen mask on first.

“You cannot fill the cup of another person if yours is already empty,” he continued. “You’re worth it. We need you. Don’t burn out. Please take care of yourself.”

Intermediate Pathway Workshop presenter Lori Oczkus also took time to touch on self-care, quoting aphorist Mason Cooley: “Reading gives us a place to go when we have to stay where we are.”

“That’s a great quote right now since we can’t go many places,” Oczkus mused, adding that the mental and physical benefits of reading are plentiful—for teachers and students alike.

Connect with students

Several presenters have focused on the importance of students taking the lead, even in distance learning. In Kenneth Kunz and Kia Brown-Dudley’s Primary Pathway Workshop, they discussed the power in storytelling and classroom conversations as both a window into the teacher’s world and a window into the students’ world.

Brown-Dudley used the analogy of a volleyball game to illustrate how to practice classroom conversations. “I like to think of conversations as being more like a volleyball match than a tennis match,” she said. “When you play tennis, you hit the ball over the net, the person hits it back to you…But with volleyball, you hit the ball over the net and that ball or idea is passed around to other members on the team before it goes back over the net.”

She added: “It’s really important that we’re hearing all voices, that we’re encouraging all of our students to speak.”

“This storytelling for me, it just provides such a powerful way of connecting with students and building relationships, even in the virtual environment,” Kunz said.

Return to better

Minor declared that the path forward must be defined by individual teachers, school cultures, and pedagogies that grapple with the question: What if we didn’t return to normal? What if we returned to better?

“This current pandemic and the shift to remote or hybrid or socially distanced learning has revealed what so many educators representing historically marginalized groups have been articulating for years, and that is the reality that there are profound inequities in schooling,” he said.

Although there is no “one best way” forward, essential components include self-work, systemic awareness, active changemaking, and powerful teaching.

Rethink schooling

Main Stage speaker Zhao said COVID-19 presents the time to rethink the “what, how, and where of learning” in profound ways.

Reforms of the past have focused on policy and pedagogy, he said, but not on the actual learning environment in ways that will encourage students to become owners of their learning.

“We need to have students be responsible for their own learning and you, we all, [must] work to create that space,” he said. “Let’s not think about the curriculum. Let’s think about the child…Let’s not think about how to teach. Let’s think about how to support learning.”

To accomplish this, this time of crisis can be “smartly used to invite innovations and big changes.”

Chief among them—learning pathways for students, which should be created with them, not for them.

“Children are the creators of the future,” Zhao said. “I don’t like it when schools and systems say, ‘We will get our children ready for the future.’ There is no future. The future is made by our children. We prepare them to participate, to create a better future for all of us.”

Colleen Patrice Clark is the managing editor of Literacy Today, ILA’s member magazine.

Tomorrow marks the start of the second week of ILA Next, the International Literacy Association’s new, monthlong professional learning event. Three of the four Main Stage Sessions scheduled for October 10, 9:00 a.m.–10:30 a.m. ET, speak directly to the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic has had on education—everything from effective, evidence-based instructional strategies for virtual and hybrid learning to why we should leverage the disruption to reimagine the schooling system overall.

COVID wove a common thread through Week 1’s Main Stage keynotes, sessions, and workshops as well—everything from the practical implications of young learners wearing masks (“How do I support children in helping them figure out what facial expressions and feels are like when half of our face or most of our face is covered?” mused Kass Minor, in a Learning Lab she copresented with partner Cornelius Minor) to the long-term significance of the increased screen time that comes with distance and hybrid learning models.

“How can we as educators move forward in a productive way to reframe our own stance toward the use of digital devices?” asked Troy Hicks, in his Secondary Pathway Workshop, citing the need for educators to work toward what he calls “digital diligence.” Teaching students to be intentional in their use of technology and alert to “how knowledge gets made” is crucial, he says,

Here are some additional themes that emerged throughout the week.

Poetry is a powerful means of expression…

Anthony John Wiles, Jr., the 2020 National Student Poet for the Northeast region, read from his award-winning “American Dreaming,” in which he envisions a land where “the color of my skin would not jeopardize my right to breathe.” Later, Jasmyn Wright, a classroom teacher and founder of the Push Through Organization, debuted her “two-minute philosophy of education” in spoken word form:

You’re can’ts will become I cans
‘I am not’ transforms to ‘I ams’ and <
‘I am not good enough’ replaced with
I was birthed with a purpose and
my purpose has a purpose so Imma push through

…as well a valuable instructional tool.

In the Primary Pathway Workshop, Tim Rasinski talked about how poems and songs make ideal decodable texts, demonstrating how their rhymes can be used to teach word families, fluency, and even writing. Over in the Middle Pathway Workshop. Kylene Beers and Bob Probst led participants through a writing prompt modeled after the poem “Where I’m From” by George Ella Lyons, after which Beers reminded participants that writing is more than a way to show what we’ve learned: “Sometimes, like in the midst of a worldwide pandemic, we should probably use writing as a way through what we’re feeling.”

Speaking of feelings…

Debra Crouch, whose special presentation with Brian Cambourne closed out Saturday’s Main Stage Session, teared up as she shared Maya Angelou’s famous quote, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

“More than anything, today, especially now, children need us to take these wise and kind words to heart,” Crouch said, “so that we are providing the kind of environment kids need to be able to be who they are.”

Wright notes the “human-to-human connection” between educators and students. “We have to be able to take academics and infuse it here,” she says, pressing her fist to her heart.  “We’re literally responsible for the future.”

We need reframe our thinking…about a lot of things.

Hicks cited the media narrative around the use (often characterized as overuse) of screen time, which he says invokes fear-based responses instead of inviting deeper conversation around the tools students are using and the ways in which they’re using them.  

Intermediate Pathway Workshop leader Molly Ness, for example, shared a strategy for fluency instruction that called for students to use iPads to record and reflect on their own oral reading, while in his Learning Lab, Ernest Morrell offered ways to engage students by critically analyzing and even creating their own video games.

Kass Minor raised questions about school-mandated homework (“What does it mean to do homework when home is school?”) and standardized tests.

“Aside from agility, stamina, and resource acquisition, what valuable information are we assessing?” she demanded, advocating instead for “kid-watching,” which she believes is “one of the strongest forms of assessment.”

Several presenters took aim at deficit language and mindsets. Morrell, for instance, challenged the notion of cultural responsiveness as a negative topic. He sees it as an empowering one, pointing to opportunities for inclusiveness and dialogue in literacy instruction, adding, “I think of engagement and joy as the real outcomes.”

On a similar note, Cornelius Minor guided his Learning Lab participants to push back on the idea that kids are somehow falling behind as a result of remote, hybrid, or socially distanced learning.

Instead, he said, “I want to frame this as a conversation about the new literate opportunities that we can seize as a result of being forced into this new paradigm shift.”

Expect to hear more of Minor’s thoughts on the COVID paradigm shift in his Main Stage Session this Saturday.

All registrants have on-demand access to over 36 hours of recorded sessions, workshops, discussion groups, and more through January 31, 2021. Registration is just $99 for ILA members. Learn more and register at ilanext.org.

Lara Deloza is the Director of Communications at the International Literacy Association.

ILA Next—ILA’s professional learning event tailored to the unique needs of educators in today’s digital and hybrid environments—kicks off on Saturday with the first of four weeks of Main Stage Sessions. Your registration gives you front-row access to these 90-minute presentations and keynotes; watch one live each week and access another nine on demand (13 in all).

ILA Next includes access to one Pathway Workshop series and accompanying Office Hours discussion groups, personalized according to the age of your students. When you register for the monthlong event ($99 for members; $249 for nonmembers), you’ll select from four pathway options: Primary (ages 5–8), Intermediate (ages 9–11), Middle (ages 12–14), or Secondary (ages 15+). These are organized by age of learner, ensuring that the PD in each series is relevant to the students with whom you work.

Unlike Main Stage Sessions, Learning Labs, and the Exhibitor Showcase, which are open to all attendees, the workshops and discussion groups are exclusive to those registered in each particular pathway.

These workshops and informal gatherings bring together two of the most valued components of an in-person conference: powerhouse speakers and face-to-face learning opportunities. There’s no need to arrive early, no seat savers to compete with, and no “Session Full” signs. You are guaranteed a front-row seat.

Workshops will focus on what’s critical for literacy educators in our evolving COVID landscape. Because the ILA Next program was designed to be relevant and responsive to teachers’ needs, speakers will address distance and hybrid learning, equity and access, social-emotional development, and/or trauma responsiveness.

Timely topics include exploring identity and the world through reading and writing, cultural and linguistic diversity, and teaching with digital diligence, while more timeless topics include reading fluency and why it matters, optimizing classroom time (in both digital and in-person contexts), and increasing disciplinary literacy.

These 90-minute workshops are held every Tuesday (6:30 p.m.–8:00 p.m. ET) during the month of  October—and don’t forget that if you can’t access them live, every single event of ILA Next included in your registration will be available to view on demand, as many times as you want, through January 31, 2021. A benefit of joining live, however, is the opportunity to interact with attendees and discuss and share resources through the event platform’s chat feature.

Office Hours are held Thursdays (6:30 p.m.–8:00 p.m. ET). They give you a chance to get valuable face-to-face time with other ILA Next participants to discuss what you’ve learned that week or throughout the event, ask questions, and network. Each week’s Office Hours will have facilitators, but don’t be surprised to see workshop leaders there as well!

There’s no doubt that face-to-face conferences aren’t the same as virtual events. That’s why ILA opted not to move its annual meeting to an online setting; too much gets lost in translation. Designing ILA Next specifically for a digital platform allowed the organization to marry some of the best of an in-person conference experience with the best of online learning. Pathway Workshops and Office Hours create a more intimate, cohort-like setting that allows you to engage with the same group of participants week to week—and all from the convenience of your home, at your own pace, and on your own time.

Visit ilanext.org for more information about ILA Next and how to register.