Julie Armstrong, a long-time teacher/educator, talks about her creation of decodable texts & her use of music to help teach fluency- An Interview by Dr. Sam Bommarito
I’m always happy to spread the good news about what effective practicing teachers are up to. Julie’s 28 years of teaching includes a wide range of experience. Among other things, she was a successful Reading Recovery teacher. During her time as a RR teacher, she did not fit the “us/them” picture that some of the more extreme SOR advocates try to paint when talking about RR. She learned a variety of methods and was adept at finding methods that fit the child. Currently, she is a reading specialist and continues to find ways to help her students become better readers.
When Julia first learned about decodable books, she didn’t reject their use out of hand because they were being promoted by the “other side.” Instead, she chose to take the path outlined by P.D. Pearson- take positions, not sides. She took the position that decodables could be a useful tool, but she thought the decodables of her day lacked meaning and the motivation that comes from books having authentic storylines and natural language. What did she do? She wrote her own decodables and began sharing them with fellow teachers. She also created other resources. She and her husband created engaging videos using puppet skits to help her students learn new words and sounds. She made music a part of her overall teaching scheme. So, let’s learn more about Julia and see what she has to say about the materials she has created.
BIOGRAPHY
Julia (Julie) Armstrong has 28 years of experience teaching in Title 1 public schools in Howard County, Maryland. She has a wide range of experience as a Pre-K, K/1 classroom teacher, a Reading Recovery teacher, and a Reading Specialist for grades K – 5. Mrs. Armstrong has a master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction with additional certifications as a Reading Recovery teacher and a Reading Specialist. Julia integrates her love of music and knowledge of curriculum to design puppet skits and create sight word songs, and she has created fiction and non-fiction stories and passages that reinforce foundational skills.
Here are the timed stamped talking points for the interview (so you can go to the sections that interest you the most first)
Here is a link to the U-Tube Interview:
Julia’s Resources:
Julia and her husband create puppet skits incorporating songs or raps to reinforce phonics skills. If you like these skits, be sure to subscribe to their channel. Julia demonstrated one of the skits during the interview.
https://www.youtube.com/@wordworkwonders4814
The puppet skits also align with decodable texts. These texts are located on Amazon; links for each book are provided:
Julia also created passages for the “Words Their Way” series, and she created multisyllabic passages that align with the SIPPS Challenge program. These stories are located at:
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Word-Work-Wonders
Final Thoughts
Engaging and meaningful decodable texts like those Julia has written help teachers help students make meaning. Even the shortest/easiest of them contain meaningful content. That content includes both fiction and nonfiction passages in the same book. The books encourage students to use their decoding skills on running text, text with a message to be found. These books can (and should) be used to help students cross the bridge between decoding and comprehension that Dr. Rasinski talks about in his extensive work around fluency LINK, LINK, LINK.
Julia advocates using music to promote fluency. I’ve written about my own ideas about that LINK, about Eric Litwin and his work LINK, LINK, about Ann Kay’s work LINK, Nina Kraus’s brain research LINK, LINK. Geoff Barnes works around music therapy with preschool children LINK and, of course, Rasinski’s ideas LINK, including the idea of artfully teaching the science of reading. There’s lots of room in all that for using common sense to help find some common ground LINK. Julia is definitely on track for talking about including music in teaching literacy skills and does a masterful job of doing that LINK. Using music to promote fluency will become the topic of a webinar that I hope to put together by this fall, so please be on the lookout for that.
Julia also expressed concerns about whether Dibels scores accurately track her students’ progress. Students who made good progress in comprehension were reported as making well below average in their overall reading score. When she examined why, she found that the overall score on the Dibels was composed of a number of different sub-scores. Speed was given the heaviest weight; comprehension was hardly given any weight at all. That means the way the test is scored results in students being penalized for self-correcting and rereading phrases even though both these reading behaviors result in better reading and reading comprehension. Yet this test, which focuses mainly on reading speed, is being presented to parents as an overall test of reading. In point of fact, because of the way the subscores are being weighted it is really mainly a test of reading speed. Long-time critics of Dibels, like Dr. Andy Johnson, have pointed out the many weaknesses of this testing instrument LINK. In my opinion, at the very least, if Dibels is to be used as a reading test, a test that determines both how well students decode AND how well they make meaning, the subtest weights for comprehension and other components of reading should be given more weight. The overall goal of reading is not to read fast but rather to read with prosody, i.e., to read in a way that promotes understanding. Frankly, there are other instruments that do a much better job of that than the Dibels.
I hope you find the materials and ideas from this interview useful. Please do visit her free YouTube site. I think there are things from Julia that you can “use on Monday.” So, until next week
Happy Reading and Writing,
Dr. Sam Bommarito (aka, the guy in the center taking flak from all sides)
Copyright 2024 by Dr. Sam Bommarito. Views/interpretations expressed here are solely this author’s views and do not necessarily reflect the views of any other person or organization.
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