Literacy Now

"What are your recommendations for independent reading?"

Every child needs a chance to read independently in school. In the frenzy to prepare students for large-scale assessments, some schools are limiting independent reading (IR) time. Yet the Common Core State Standards themselves advocate student independent reading from a multiplicity of genre. In fact, some argue that Common Core materials should “increase regular independent reading of texts that appeal to students' interests while developing both their knowledge base and joy in reading” (Coleman & Pimental, 2012, p. 4).

Now more than ever, research studies provide guidance for creating IR programs that contribute to achievement. The teacher is a central player in these programs, setting the stage and directing the action that makes IR work. Today's IR programs should differ significantly from SSR, DEAR, and earlier iterations of IR.

IR involves the full participation of the teacher. This means the teacher is instructing, scaffolding, and conferring with students (Reutzel, Fawson, & Smith, 2008) during IR time. For example, the teacher educates students in how to select appropriate books, scaffolds student understanding of specific text types, and confers with students to assess their understanding of what they have read.

IR requires an investment of time. Children need time to read—a lot of time. Time spent reading contributes to reading achievement in ways that simply doing worksheets or other activities does not (Allington, 2002; Foorman et al., 2006). Time is not a one-size-fits-all proposition, however. Less proficient readers may benefit from shorter time frames until they build more reading stamina, whereas better readers may read successfully for longer periods of time.

IR requires a broad range of leveled texts. Not too long ago, most classroom libraries were composed of mainly fictional texts—stories, myths, legends, fantasies, and more. Today, however, we know students need to read from many different genres including informational trade books, newspapers, magazines, online resources, primary source documents, plays, poems, graphical texts, and biographies. Most experts recommend that classroom libraries include 50% literary texts and 50% informational texts. Some texts should be leveled so that all students have access to books appropriate to their reading levels. This does not mean that every IR book a student selects must be easy; when students pick harder books that can stretch them, they may need additional teacher scaffolding to ensure success. In addition to access, students need their teachers to teach them to select books. Teachers need to model strategies students can use to carefully select a rich variety of texts for IR.

Talk around texts is an essential component of IR. Earlier forms of IR placed little emphasis upon talk around texts. Today we know that even 10 minutes of talk around texts can enhance achievement (Nystrand, 2006). Both small-group and large-group conversations can contribute to critical thinking, metacognition, and argument construction. Strategies like Instructional Conversations and Questioning the Author let students share what they have learned from texts.

IR requires differentiated instruction. This is especially true for English learners and struggling readers, as IR experiences are even more important for these students than for others. These students need help selecting books, more support during reading, and more strategy instruction. Most important, they need more IR time than other students. Poor readers typically spend less time reading both in and out of school. Their progress depends on reading practice, which they lack. Making IR contingent on work completion is a perfect example of why these students don't get the reading practice they need. Struggling readers seldom complete work early, and miss the reading opportunities they need so much.

Effective IR programs have the potential to not only increase student achievement but also motivate children to discover the love of reading that can last a lifetime.

Barbara Moss, PhD, is a professor of literacy education at San Diego State University, where she teaches classes at the credential, masters, and doctoral levels. She also taught English language arts or reading at every grade level from 3–12 and is the author of numerous journal articles and books about many aspects of literacy learning including close reading, informational texts, and disciplinary literacy. She co-authored (with Debbie Miller) Not This, But That: No More Independent Reading Without Support, published by Heinemann.

The ILA Literacy Research Panel uses this blog to connect ILA members around the world with research relevant to policy and practice. Reader response is welcomed via e-mail.

Question:

What should be the focus of instruction for older students with low reading achievement?

Response from Gay Ivey:

For older students (grades 4–12), it might seem a logical first course of action to make sure that certain fundamental skills were not “missed” by returning to concerns associated with early reading (e.g., phonemic awareness, phonics, literal-level comprehension). However, this is not always necessary and, in any case, is rarely sufficient.

Readers vary in terms of what they have experienced and what they need (Dressman, Wilder & Conner, 2005; Ivey, 1999), and standardized tests alone provide insufficient information about these complexities. For instance, Marsha Riddle Buly and Sheila Valencia (2002) took a closer look at fourth-grade students who scored below proficiency levels on a state-mandated reading test. They demonstrated, by using other assessment tools, that high stakes test scores mask the complexity of individuals as readers, and thus, provide little guidance for the instruction they need. Some students, for example, were still learning to read words, and for others, word identification was not a problem at all, but they struggled to make sense of the texts they were asked to read. Some readers experienced multiple challenges with the assessments. Questions about motivation and engagement were not addressed in their assessments, but also might have been a factor. In any case, a singular focus on concerns associated with early reading would have failed to serve the needs of students.

It is also not the case that simply pinpointing a student’s “weakness” is the best, or only, approach to improving performance. Reading is a vastly more complex process than being able to read more fluently or use comprehension strategies, even though we have amassed a large body of research on improving those areas separately. If you offered instruction that aims to improve fluency, for instance, you might get a student who reads more fluently, but not one who is necessarily a better or more purposeful overall reader.

Complicating matters is that year-after-year of unpleasant school reading experiences leads to counter-productive narratives about who students are as readers (Hall, 2009), and many research-based interventions focused on reading skills and strategies don’t demonstrate a shift in this problem or in students’ sense of agency and purpose in their reading.

What should we consider when planning instruction for older inexperienced readers? Our first order of business is to realize we are dealing with individuals who have rich and complicated lives and to whom relationships and social worlds matter greatly.  They will read more, read more proficiently, and more purposefully when we center our efforts on the social and motivational reality of their lives. Peter Johnston and I (Ivey & Johnston, 2013) found that low-scoring, previously inexperienced eighth-grade readers, when given access to compelling young adult literature dealing with issues that mattered to them, not only read enthusiastically, but also demonstrated many of the strategic reading behaviors we try to teach students explicitly. They even created their own strategies for getting through really interesting, but really complicated texts. We concluded that although you can teach reading strategies, students are more likely to use strategic practices when they are engaged in what they read and, in the process, with each other.

We want older students to read and make sense of text beyond a literal level, to use reading as a way to consider multiple perspectives on big issues, to solve problems (including their own personal and social problems), and dig deeper into complex issues. Engagement, and thus more meaningful and productive reading, is most likely when readers feel a sense of autonomy (i.e., to choose what they read; to not be interrogated about their reading or monitored) and experience a sense of relevance in their reading (Guthrie, Wigfield & You, 2012). In contrast, we have yet to see research-based examples of how an exclusive focus on “the basics” gets all students to that point.

Gay Ivey holds a PhD and Masters in reading education. She is a professor in the department of curriculum and instruction at the University of Wisconsin.
The ILA Literacy Research Panel uses this blog to connect ILA members around the world with research relevant to policy and practice. Reader response is welcomed via e-mail.

Question:

Should we be teaching 100 sight words to kindergartners?

Response from Marcia Invernizzi:

Drilling kindergartners with high frequency words on flashcards is unlikely to support the development of their sight word vocabulary. In fact, it’s likely to do more harm than good.

A better approach would be to engage children in the kinds of purposeful activities that lead to a concept of word in text, a prerequisite for learning and retaining sight words. A concept of word in text is the ability to finger point accurately to multiple lines of text in a memorized rhyme or highly familiar/predictable text without getting off-track on two syllable words, without lumping together the article before the noun, and without pointing to a different word than is being pronounced. Research has shown that until children have a firm concept of word in text, they will be unable to remember words when seen in isolation (Flanigan, 2007).

Question:

How is it that spending instructional time on cultivating a concept of word in text results in learning sight words?

Response from Marcia Invernizzi:

When teachers spend time teaching children the skills needed to read and also provide the time children need to practice applying those skills, children will start to remember words they have seen before in context. To finger-point accurately to words of more than one syllable in a memorized rhyme, children must have the ability to isolate the beginning sound of each word and match it to the first letter of each word in running text. Using their memory for how the rhyme goes, children coordinate their pronunciation of each word from memory with the initial sound of each word they see in print. To do this, they must have automatic alphabet and letter sound recognition, the ability to isolate beginning sounds, and, of course, print concepts.  When teachers teach these skills (alphabet recognition, letter sound, print concepts, initial phoneme isolation) and provide children daily opportunities to finger-point read to known ditties, rhymes, songs, and/or predictable texts, they are teaching them the prerequisite skills for learning sight words. We need to help teachers realize that sight words are not learned in isolation, but rather, are the outcome of coordinating alphabet knowledge with beginning sounds in real text.

The term “sight words” is often confused with “high-frequency words,” which are the most commonly occurring words in print (i.e. was, the, can, these). It is important to understand that though a reader’s store of sight words will include many high-frequency words, it is not limited to them. Any word can be a sight word, that is, a word that is recognized “at first sight.”

Another common misunderstanding about sight words is that they are phonetically irregular words children cannot sound out and therefore must be learned in a different way, as unanalyzed wholes or “by sight.” Although there are some high-frequency words that lack dependable letter–sound correspondences (of = /uv/ and was = /wuz/), most words are more regular than not, especially in the consonant features that are most likely to be partially understood. For example, the high-frequency word from is 75 percent regular; only the o in the middle is irregular. There is no evidence that readers learn these words in a different way but, like all word learning at this stage, repetition in and out of context, along with word study, helps (Johnston, Invernizzi, Helman, Bear, & Templeton, 2015).

by Catherine M. Bohn-Gettler
College of Saint Benedict-Saint John's University
Sept. 18, 2014

Question:

What is your advice for getting the school year off to a good start?

Response from Catherine M. Bohn-Gettler:

The beginning of the school year is an exciting time filled with meeting students, reconnecting with colleagues and former students, and starting important academic work.  However, the first few days of school involve more than just fun icebreakers and syllabi creation. They are crucial for having a successful school year in terms of academic performance, developing thinking skills, establishing a positive social environment, and enacting a positive classroom management plan (Flaxman, 2000; Israel, 2001; Kronowitz, 2003; Novelli & Shafer, 1999; Wong & Wong, 2009).  Seasoned teachers know a lot of work goes into getting the year started off well!  

In my research studying effective teaching practices, I followed the progress of many teachers and students throughout the school year, especially teachers who foster high academic engagement and motivation (e.g., Bohn, Roehrig, & Pressley, 2004).  From this work, I learned that the principles of effective teaching apply throughout the entire year, but are amplified at the beginning of the year. Below are several suggestions to help you start off the year on the right foot.

Establish Meaningful Rules, Routines, and Procedures

Effective and motivating teachers spend a significant amount of time at the beginning of the year explaining rules and routines. Teachers model and ask students to practice carrying out procedures so students know how to behave. More than that, it is important to elaborate on why such procedures are important for the learning, social, and physical environment of the classroom.  At mid-year, this translates to improved achievement, a more orderly classroom, and prevented discipline issues (Bohn et al., 2004; Emmer, Evertson, & Anderson, 1980; Evertson & Emmer, 1982; Leinhardt, Weidman, & Hammond, 1987; Pressley, Dolezal, et al., 2003).

Promote a Positive Environment

Excellent classrooms have a consistent and salient positive environment in which students feel safe to learn and do not receive threats (Morrow, Tracey, Woo, & Pressley, 1999; Pressley, Roehrig, et al., 2003).  To accomplish this, effective teachers use a variety of techniques at the beginning of the year. This includes emphasizing respect and community values, helping students feel important by learning their names, listening carefully to students’ thoughts and concerns, and responding compassionately to help students feel at ease (Bohn et al., 2004; Day, Woodside-Jiron, & Johnston, 1999).

Enthusiastically Introduce Content and Offer Engaging Activities

Highly effective teachers describe their classrooms, and the academic content, as exciting and meaningful for students’ lives (Day et al., 1999; Pressley, Roehrig, et al., 2003).  They offer engaging activities and vary instruction between individual, small group, and whole group tasks.  Starting the year with engaging activities, and modeling how you will be an active teacher, will help set the tone for the class (Bohn et al., 2004).

Communicate High Expectations and Praise Specific Accomplishments

Research consistently shows that students live up, or down, to the expectations teachers set for them (Hinnant, O'Brien, & Ghazarian, 2009; Jussim & Harber, 2005; Rubie-Davies, 2008). Start off the year by communicating high expectations, but go beyond generally telling them they can succeed. Instead, tell students why they can succeed, emphasizing their efforts when they face challenging tasks (Bohn et al., 2004; Dweck, 1999).  In addition, praise students by “catching students being good” (Brophy, 1981), and provide specific praise so students understand exactly what they are doing well.

Encourage Self-Regulation

Effective teachers emphasize that students be self-regulated in daily routines as well as in academics. They allocate time to explain and practice routines, emphasize students’ responsibilities in carrying out routines, encourage students to do things on their own and without reminders, and encourage students to use learning strategies independently. Such self-regulation pays strong dividends later in the school year (Bohn et al., 2004; Day et al., 1999). 

Emphasize a Democratic Environment

Finally, effective teachers create a democratic environment in which students have choice and ownership in the classroom. For example, allowing students to play a role in setting up rules, giving students choices in their work, and allowing students to have a say in the classroom environment promotes self-regulation and a positive environment (Deci & Ryan, 2000).

Of course, this list is not exhaustive: A number of other resources provide suggestions for how to start the year off well, including National Education Association, Scholastic, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and the New Jersey Education Association. The reference list below also contains a variety of resources.  Best wishes for a wonderful school year!

Catherine M. Bohn-Gettler, PhD, is an associate professor of Educational Psychology at the College of Saint Benedict-Saint John's University. Her research focuses on the cognitive and social/emotional processes that underlie comprehension and effective teaching strategies for improving comprehension.

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I’ve been asked this question about Round Robin Reading many times and in multiple forms. It is usually accompanied by statements such as: “But my students really like it” or “It helps me cover material that is just too hard for them to read” or “I don’t go in any particular order, so they never know when they are going to have their turn.” In fact, these comments come up so often, that Gwynne Ash, Sharon Walpole, and I asked teachers why they chose to use Round Robin Reading or its variants such as Popcorn, Popsicle, or Combat Reading (2009; Ash & Kuhn, 2006). Our goal was to better understand the perceived pluses of these approaches and identify alternatives that could better meet educators’ instructional goals.

Key here is the fact that each student is responsible for reading only a very brief portion of the text—as little as a few sentences and, at a maximum, a few paragraphs. As a result, they have minimal opportunity to improve either their fluency or their word recognition. This difficulty is further compounded given the fact that other students often jump in when the reader encounters a difficult or unknown word; as a result, the reader never has the chance to figure it out for him or herself.

It is also the case that breaking up a text into smaller passages actually works against developing fluency; instead of building up students’ reading stamina, it actually limits it. Further, these interruptions discourage comprehension of the material. Rather than looking at the connections that occur across the selection, readers end up focusing their attention on brief passages. And whether or not students know when their turn is coming up, they often read ahead so that they can sound more proficient when their turn comes up—or volunteer “just to get their turn over with”—and then shut down for the rest of the lesson. Clearly, none of these actions contributes to either engagement or improved comprehension.

On the upside, there are alternative procedures that are far more likely to help you meet the above goals. For example, partner reading is a highly effective choice for learners at virtually every grade level (Meisinger, Schwanenflugel, Bradley & Stahl, 2004; Shanahan, 2012). And if you are concerned about engagement or comprehension, you can read aloud with one or two of your students on a rotating basis during your literacy block to make sure they are getting the most out of the experience. Echo and choral reading (Kuhn, 2009) also provide appropriate choices for younger readers, although it is important that the texts they are reading are substantive in terms of both length and challenge. Echo reading involves reading a few paragraphs to the students followed by their “echoing” the text back as a group while choral reading consists of you and the students reading the selection simultaneously.

And well-known procedures such as Reciprocal Teaching (Oczkus, 2003; Palincsar & Brown, 1986), Directed Reading and Thinking Activity (DRTA; Smyers, 1993; Stauffer & Harrell, 1975) and Reciprocal Teaching Plus (Ash, 2002) can assist students in their comprehension of challenging content.

Given the increasing demands on student reading as a result of the Common Core, I believe that these approaches can help you develop effective and easy-to-implement alternatives that truly engage your students while supporting their reading development. I hope you agree.

Melanie R. Kuhn is an associate professor of Language and Literacy Education at Boston University. This article is from the International Reading Association’s Literacy Research Panel. Reader response is welcomed. E-mail your comments to the LRP.