Dr. Sam is on the Road this Week. I will be presenting at LitCon.
I am on the Road this week. I will be presenting at LitCon. This is the first of four conference presentations I will be doing. So, I’ll be busy over the next few weeks presenting my ideas at various conferences, including LIT CON 2024, The WSRA Conference, The MHRC Mid-Hudson Reading Conference and the Write to Learn Conference. Each of these conferences has a wide range of speakers with many worthwhile ideas to consider. I hope to see you at one or more of these conferences. I hope many of you consider the centrist call to use common sense to seek common ground as we continue exploring the best way to teach reading and writing. The blog will resume next week. In the meantime-
Happy Reading and Writing.
Dr. Sam Bommarito (aka, the guy in the middle taking flak from all sides)
Copyright 2024 by Dr. Sam Bommarito. Views/interpretations expressed here are solely this author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of any other person or organization.
Jeremy Spartzand and two of his teachers talk about how the Lyrics2Learn program fuses music with research-based strategies to improve fluency, comprehension, and background knowledge. An interview conducted by Dr. Sam Bommarito
“The three R’s- Rhythm, Rhyme and Repetition”
Jeremy Spartz
I’ve written before about reading programs based on the work of Dr. Tim Rasinski, who is widely known for his research on the efficacy of repeated readings and the value of teaching fluency to bridge the gap between decoding and comprehension LINK. A number of successful programs have their roots in those ideas LINK, LINK, LINK. Teachers in these programs are artfully teaching the science of reading. Among these programs is Jeremy Spartz’s Lyrics2Learn program. Lyrics2Learn fuses music with research-based strategies to improve fluency, comprehension, and background knowledge. Here is what Jeremy wrote when I asked him to describe his program:
Lyrics2Learn description: Lyrics2Learn is a K-5th grade online reading supplement. It hosts hundreds of leveled educational texts set to rhythm and rhyme, featuring an animated reading guide named Lefty Lyric. Lefty guides them through individualized lessons aligned to each student’s needs. By fusing music with research-based strategies to improve fluency, comprehension, and background knowledge, kids have fun fluently mastering stories as they work through repeated, choral and modeled reading practice. Additionally, the repetition, rhythm, and rhyme enable significant retention of information from the text. This enables more effective comprehension strategy instruction. As students become more familiar with weekly stories through repeated reading, comprehension questioning becomes more complex to push levels of understanding. The more kids know, the more they can show! Read to the rhythm! Before listening to what he and his teachers had to say about the program and their implementation of it, let’s find out a little bit about their background.
BIOGRAPHIES
Jeremy Spartz: Jeremy is the teacher and founder of Lyrics2Learn, a music-based online reading fluency and comprehension program. He grew up in Minnesota (SKOL!), graduated from Concordia College, and moved to Colorado, where he was a classroom teacher at an elementary school. For 15 years, he taught multiple grade levels, tutored, and coached. While teaching, he became interested in reader’s theaters, student-led poetry slams, phonics songs, and writing-level educational stories in iambic pentameter to aid reading fluency instruction. This method soon evolved to include rhythm, rhyme, repeated reading, modeled, and choral reading. This music-based reading strategy improved fluency, comprehension, vocabulary, and background knowledge while significantly increasing his students’ engagement. Soon, the fluency program was combined with targeted foundational skill instruction during tutoring sessions with tier 2 and 3 students. Their success in closing the gap, combined with the enjoyment students expressed, the confidence they gained, and his principal’s support, led Jeremy to evolve the program into what is now Lyrics2Learn.
Katie Ackerman: Katie is a Teaching and Learning Coach, assessment coordinator, and runs the intervention programs at a Title I school in Colorado Springs, CO. She also taught K-2nd grades for 12 years. Katie has a bachelor’s degree in literature, a Master’s degree in Elementary Education, and a Master’s Degree in Reading Assessment and Curriculum.
Mary Gregory-Jones Mary (MJ) Gregory, has been an educator for 31 years. She has a BA in English, Secondary Education, grades 6-12 and a Master’s in Reading for K-12. She has taught high school, middle school, and elementary. For the last 16 years served as a district-level Literacy Specialist and a K-8 school Curriculum Coach/Reading Specialist in North Carolina.
Lyrics2Learn has proven itself to be a highly successful supplemental program. Have a look at the results posted by the Marisco Institute for Early Learning and Literacy (N=986):
I visited the website and found that it was very user-friendly. Setting up for the students I tutor was a breeze. Help on the site was done using pop-up videos. It was like you had your own personal tour guide during the setup. During the interview, Jeremy, Kate and Mary described all the resources. I think your students will find the songs/readings engaging. The heart of the program is that it provides repeated readings. It does so in the spirit of reading to perform. Each entry is read three different times. The comprehension checks are gauged to fit the reading, becoming progressively more demanding as the students read the text for additional times. The management system for tracking student progress is outstanding. The program is designed to be a supplement. It is currently being used by over 2,000 teachers who are helping 20,000 students nationwide. So as we already discussed, it is a very successful program.
There is an important nuance to how Rasinski’s ideas are being implemented in programs like this. Fluency is being taught (not just practiced). In one of my upcoming blogs, I will explore the importance of that idea and talk more about some programs that are already implementing that approach. In my opinion, this turns the whole concept of how we think about fluency/prosody on its head. Fluency is not just the result of comprehension. Fluency can be taught so that it becomes the cause of improved comprehension. Rasinski has said on many occasions that fluency is the bridge to comprehension. Upcoming blogs will closely examine how some teachers are helping to build that bridge for students to cross over.
After looking at the issue of fluency, I will then continue to explore what other teachers say about the best ways to teach reading. Most importantly, I’ll explore Bruce Howlett’s and Jan Wasowicz’s attempts to find common ground. Instead of looking at what we disagree on, Bruce and Jan focus on what we can agree on LINK, LINK. No one will benefit if the current situation “devolves” into another pendulum swing. Let’s use the new year to find common ground by exploring both the art and science of reading instruction, using research-based ideas from all sides. Doing that may create a time when there are no sides.
In addition, I’ll be busy over the next few weeks presenting my ideas at various conferences, including LIT CON 2024, The WSRA Conference, The MHRC Mid-Hudson Reading Conference and the Write to Learn Conference. Each of these conferences has a wide range of speakers with many worthwhile ideas to consider. I hope to see you at one or more of these conferences. I hope many of you consider the centrist call to use common sense to seek common ground as we continue exploring the best way to teach reading and writing. In the meantime-
Happy Reading and Writing.
Dr. Sam Bommarito (aka, the guy in the middle taking flak from all sides)
Copyright 2024 by Dr. Sam Bommarito. Views/interpretations expressed here are solely this author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of any other person or organization.
Joy Allcock, a well-known literacy expert from New Zealand, explains her Code-Ed program: An interview conducted by Dr. Sam Bommarito
For some time, I’ve been searching for researchers and teachers who have developed successful programs in literacy instruction. The gold standard for such programs is that the program gives sufficient weight to both the decoding and the comprehension parts of teaching reading. They must be carried out in a way that decoding and comprehension strategies taught are internalized. They must also be engaging. My search has expanded to a worldwide quest. I found a promising program in New Zealand. Its creator, Joy Allcock, hopes to expand it into the United States as well. In my opinion her program includes both worthwhile decoding and comprehension instruction. To help you understand how I reached that conclusion be sure to look at free downloads of two graphic organizers: Growing Readers and Writers – Children need to know… and, Growing Readers and Writers- Teachers need to teach… Those are available on her website, which will be featured later in this blog post. Let’s now learn a little more about Joy and her work.
Go to the Code Ed home page for free download of two graphic organizers Growing Readers and Writers – Children need to know…and, Growing Readers and Writers- Teachers need to teach... Also, 3/4 of the way down is the free downloadable research by Prof James Chapman from Massey University. LINK to the homepage.
Final Thoughts About This Interview. As Joy talked about the problems she observed in classrooms (5:52 in the interview), one of those problems was that children were trying to sound out words one letter at a time. That approach marks the very earliest stage of a synthetic phonics program, yet too often, as Joy observed, some educators use that approach in later stages, where it is usually ineffective. Remember that I advocate for teachers to know about all the different forms of phonics and to use that knowledge to scaffold children into internalizing strategies that fit the child LINK. When I teach about how to decode words, I point out that after the very earliest stages of teaching using synthetic phonics, one must shift to teaching about chunks. Joy’s program does that in a way that helps students learn the letter-sound relations. As part of learning how words work, students need to learn how to spell chunks like “at,” “an,” “ing,” “ar,” etc and to utilize that information in the decoding process. In addition, she teaches comprehension, and her graphic chart clearly shows she understands the complexities of the reading process. That’s why I’ve added her to the list of programs for teachers and administrators to consider as they search for programs that best fit their children. For the youngest children, she turns the instruction into play (18:51 in the video). That is critical. In my last blog, I said there are MANY viable ways to teach decoding and comprehension. Here are ideas from SOME of the teachers/researchers I’ve interviewed on best practices in reading LINK, LINK, LINK, LINK, LINK. I remain steadfast in my belief that decisions about adopting programs/practices belong to local school districts. Mandating specific programs to the exclusion of all others is problematic at best.
In upcoming blogs, I’ll continue to explore what other teachers say about the best ways to teach reading. Most importantly, I’ll explore Bruce Howlett’s and Jan Wasowicz’s attempts to find common ground. Instead of looking at what we disagree on, Bruce and Jan focus on what we can agree on: LINK, LINK. No one will benefit if the current situation “devolves” into another pendulum swing. Let’s use the new year to find common ground by exploring both the art and science of reading instruction, using research-based ideas from all sides. Doing that may create a time when there are no sides.
In addition, I’ll be busy over the next few weeks presenting my ideas at various conferences, including LIT CON 2024, The WSRA Conference, The MHRC Mid-Hudson Reading Conference and the Write to Learn Conference. Each of these conferences has a wide range of speakers with many worthwhile ideas to consider. I hope to see you at one or more of these conferences. I hope many of you consider the centrist call to use common sense to seek common ground as we continue exploring the best way to teach reading and writing. In the meantime-
Happy Reading and Writing.
Dr. Sam Bommarito (aka, the guy in the middle taking flak from all sides)
Copyright 2024 by Dr. Sam Bommarito. Views/interpretations expressed here are solely this author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of any other person or organization.
The question about phonics is not whether to teach phonics but rather what kind of phonics and how much phonics: Musings of a centrist by Dr. Sam Bommarito
The question about Phonics is not whether to teach phonics but rather what kind of phonics, how much phonics and whether to use direct or discovery teaching when teaching phonics. BTW, both sides (all sides) in the current debate about phonics seem to be getting the answer to that question wrong.
There’s always a danger to taking the middle ground in things. The fact is you run the risk of getting everyone mad. That’s a risk I’m willing to take as I talk about the issue of phonics. Here are my key points:
What works with one kid doesn’t always work with another. I make that a prior assumption/observation based on 50-plus years of teaching experience. During that time, I’ve taught every grade from kindergarten through graduate school.
There is more than one way to teach phonics. I’ve written about that point many times. The ILA and PD Pearson have both taken that position LINK, LINK, LINK. There are MANY viable ways to teach phonics. Here are ideas from SOME of the teachers/researchers I’ve interviewed on that point LINK, LINK, LINK, LINK, LINK. In the coming weeks, I’ll be interviewing more folks about their programs and how they handle the issues of teaching decoding and comprehension. I try to include folks from both the Balanced Literacy and Science of Reading umbrellas in those interviews.
Some students NEED a synthetic phonics approach. This is especially true for dyslexic students. The key place where folks working under the balanced literacy umbrella went off the tracks was their failure to ensure dyslexic students got the synthetic phonics they needed. In some instances, that involved giving them little or no phonics. In other cases, that involved giving them the wrong kind of phonics. The wrong kind of phonics for them is phonics taught using inquiry methods- analytic phonics being the best example of that kind of approach.
Other students thrive on an analytic approach or a problem-solving approach. While some critics of analytic phonics have claimed that it doesn’t work, folks like Timothy Shanahan do see that approach as viable, provided it is done systematically LINK. A large body of research indicates that problem-solving models of teaching reading can and do work. The person who is best known for that body of research is Donna Scanlon LINK. By the way, she makes a strong, research-based case for including context as part of the word-solving process LINK. That is a giant no-no for many folks from the Science of Reading umbrella. Many of the folks under that umbrella have gone off the tracks by their assumption that most students with reading problems have dyslexia. They don’t LINK, LINK . They minimize the impact of things like SES and routinely accuse folks who bring up that point as “making excuses.”
Folks like Bruce Howett report that there have been at least four swings between code emphasis (synthetic) and meaning emphasis (analytic) approaches. We seem to be in the midst of another swing to the code emphasis side again. The same promises that were made the last go around are being made again. The promise is that this swing will be the one that solves all our reading problems. For an entertaining and informative video that counters those promises, please view George Hruby’s titled What the Phonics is the Science of Reading?
The sad fact is that the current swing to a mainly code-based approach is being powered by a misinformed, misguided public relations campaign that has been carried out in social media LINK. That is a topic all to itself. The main point I want to make again today is that it is time to try something we’ve never tried in the whole history of the reading wars. That is to adopt a centrist position, using ideas from all sides. Let the art of teaching reading guide us as we allow districts to select programs and practices that best fit their particular population. Let’s do what P.D. Pearson has suggested and adopt positions instead of taking sides. Let’s support Bruce Howett and Dr. Jan Wasowicz in their quest to find some common ground that we can all agree on LINK. Let’s take the steps we need to take in order to finally have a Reading Evolution LINK.
Dare to Dream!
IN THE COMING WEEKS: I’ll be interviewing Joy Allcock and Jeremy Spartz about their innovative approaches to teaching reading. I’ll also speak at several conferences, including LIT CON 2024, The WSRA Conference, The MHRC Mid-Hudson Reading Conference and the Write to Learn Conference. Each of these conferences has a wide range of speakers with many worthwhile ideas to consider. I hope to see you at one or more of these conferences.
