The next few weeks are going to be interesting. This week my blogging partner Dr. William Kerns gives his views on an important issue in literacy. Sometime in the next few weeks, I will be blogging about the topic- The Reading Wars: A New View from the Radical Middle. Radical Middle is a term first used by P.D. Pearson, the creator of the gradual release model. So, stay tuned, lots of good things coming! Dr. Sam

In this blog, I take a stance that as teachers, it is imperative to engage in ongoing self-reflection and exploration about race. This is a crucial step in order to engage in teaching that is actively anti-racist. The topic is imperative to consider considering the news of this week, but I would not wish to view a discussion of critical literacy (Kuby, 2013; Luke, 2018; Wallowitz, 2008) and transgressive pedagogy (hooks, 1994) as limited to only times when discussions of the role of race in politics and society make headlines. Instead, I argue in favor of foregrounding anti-racist pedagogy and critical literacy in an ongoing manner as a teacher.

This is a challenging task. Thankfully, there are a wealth of recent books that explore strategies for being an anti-racist teacher who helps students to explore difficult discussions and texts on the topic (Ahmed, 2018; Brookfield, 2018; Kay, 2018; Minor, 2018; Okun, 2010; Tatum, 2017). In taking on the challenge, it would also be wise to explore literature related to racism in the United States (Kendi, 2017; Ortiz, 2018) and literature that can provide guidance in reflecting about the difficult topic of race (DiAngelo & Dyson, 2018).

I believe in the importance of teachers openly and honestly investigating our beliefs in relation to teaching practices. This includes, for white educators, such as me, openly confronting issues of white privilege and interrogating whether white fragility or even the white gaze might come into play. It also means listening – always being open to learning.  Key questions we might ask include: What are my fundamental beliefs about education including reading education and language arts? How do these beliefs shape my teaching? Underlying these questions are also questions about stances on diversity, race, ethnicity, and whether you view it as important to activity be anti-racist as an educator. Why or why not.  There are possible tensions and challenges that arise as you consider ways to be anti-racist while helping students gain knowledge and skill that they will need.  In addressing these questions, follow-up questions to address can include: What assumptions do we make about people around us – the adults and the children? It is imperative to be anti-racist, rather than merely making a claim to be non-racist. Otherwise, activities can wind up supporting racist narritives without questioning the narratives. The educational choices we make in the classroom are not neutral. The very claim to be neutral itself is an act of privilege, exercising the power to claim neutrality while making underlying choices about what texts to use, whose voices will be heard.

I believe in the need to raise the question of voice by asking who is considered legitimate to speak on a certain issue and who is silenced within a curriculum as an aspect of being an anti-racist teacher. Is it possible that a curriculum might condone or support racist structures or racist assumptions? I also believe that it is important for teachers and students alike (and together!) to develop the skills to examine language used about issues such as race and racial identities in various texts and contexts. Race is a socio-cultural construct grounded in Colonialism and in systems of oppression. An anti-racist approach which includes ongoing self-reflection as a teacher will aid teachers as they respond to the diverse ways that children are impacted by life-conditions.

In order to be anti-racist as a teacher, I believe that it is important to examine discursive practices, or episodes in action and rules – made explicit or implicit – related to who has a voice and who does not, as well as things that are deemed acceptable to be said or that are deemed unacceptable (Young & Ortega, 2009). This can help teachers to explore underlying beliefs regarding race that shape educational practices.  The discourses about children and parents who are of varied racial and ethnic backgrounds provide a framework for further communication about aspects of the reality of lives of students, and the reality of teaching.  Discourses on race are shaped by social structures, and in turn discourse can either support or change those social structures (Fairclough, 2013). So, in practice, this means listening and engaging in dialogue with students while engaging with diverse texts. It also means providing the context within the learning environment for students to be empowered and to be heard.

Freire and Macedo (1987) argue that an emancipatory approach to literacy does not merely focus on the mechanical skills of reading and writing, the classical traits of what it means to be a well-educated person, or even the joy and comprehension of reading a text. These approaches to literacy are insufficient for education to have an emancipatory rather than an oppressive impact. Instead, in an emancipatory pedagogy, an emphasis is placed on a critical analysis the text and of social structures in order to “read the word and read the world”. I would argue that to be anti-racist as an educator of literacy and English Language Arts, an emancipatory approach is needed. Crucially, Giroux (1992) argues that this voice is best enabled when the student engages in communication in his or her own primary language (or dialect).

The journey of self-discovery and reflection never ends. Each of us has our own story. Let’s take the anti-racist journey together. Let’s stand together. Our students deserve it.

References

Ahmed, S.K. (2018). Being the Change: Lessons and Strategies to Teach Social Comprehension. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Brookfield, S.D. (2018). Teaching Race: How to Help Students Unmask and Challenge Racism. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

DiAngelo, R., & Dyson, M.E. (2018). White Fragility Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Race. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

Fairclough, Norman (2013) (Second Edition). Analyzing Discourse: Textual analysis for social research, London: Routledge.

Freire, P., & Macedo, D. (1987). Literacy: Reading the Word and the World. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey.

Giroux, H. A., & McLaren, P. (1991). Radical pedagogy as cultural politics: Beyond the discourse of critique and anti-utopianism. In D. Morton & M. Zavarzadeh (Eds.), Theory/pedagogy/politics (pp. 152-186). Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York, NY: Routledge.

Kay, M.R. (2018). Not Light, But Fire: How to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations in the Classroom. Portland, ME: Stenhouse.

Kendi, I.X. (2017). Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. Bay City, MI: Bold Type Books.

Kuby, C.R., (2013). Critical Literacy in the Early Childhood Classroom: Unpacking Histories, Unlearning Privilege. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Kurashige, L. (2016). Two Faces of Exclusion: The Untold History of Anti-Asian Racism in the United States. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.

Luke, A. (2018). Critical Literacy, Schooling, and Social Justice: The Selected Works of Allan Luke. New York, NY: Routledge.

Minor, C. (2018). We Got This: Equity, Access, and the Quest to BE Who Our Students Need Us to Be. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Okun, T. (2010). The Emperor Has No Clothes: Teaching About Race and Racism to People Who Don’t Want to Know. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

Ortiz, P. (2018). An African American and Latinx History of the United States. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

Tatum, B.D. (2017). Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Young, R.F., & Ortega, L. (Eds.) (2009). Discursive Practice in Language Learning and Teaching. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

Wallowitz, L. (2008). Critical Literacy as Resistance: Teaching for Social Justice Across the Secondary Curriculum. New York, NY: Peter Lang.

Copyright 2019 by Dr. Sam Bommarito. Views/interpretations expressed here are solely the views of this author & his guest bloggers.  They do not necessarily reflect the views of any other person or organization.

P.S. If you found the blog through Facebook or Twitter, please consider following the blog to make sure you won’t miss it.  Use the “follow” entry on the sidebar of the blog.

The wonderful ILA chat this week inspired my blogging partner, Dr. William Kerns, to write the following entry. In order to get it out to everyone in a timely manner, we’re doing this extra blog post this weekend. ENJOY

Dr. Sam

Working Together: Addressing Challenges in Literacy through Teamwork

William Kerns

The debate over phonics represents one of numerous challenges that threatens to narrow the curriculum in P-12 schools and in higher education. In early childhood, teachers face pressure to conform to a narrow view of reading instruction that is based on a Simple View of Reading, which takes decoding and language comprehension into account but, in this author’s opinion, fails to adequately account for the many ways that social-cultural experiences shape and reshape the way that a child reads. This pressure is combined with pressures to “teach to the test” in order to achieve certain scores on high stakes examinations.

I do not intend to offer a panacea for this situation in this short blog. In fact, any attempt at offering a panacea would run counter to my belief that one-size-fits-all solutions are themselves potentially harmful to students. I situate myself in the social-constructivist school for reading and language arts. This blog’s proposed plan of action is also situated within a social constructivist understanding of reading and the overall language arts.

We need to work together. This collaboration should include work among P-12 teachers and university professors within a school and within a district. This tends to already be emphasized in schools, especially among teachers who instruct the same grade level. The collaboration I call for is not only local, but also statewide and national.

Dialogue through social media is a powerful tool.  By virtue of reading this blog online, I am presuming that most if not all readers of this blog are active in online communications with fellow educators. This can be the start of a type of professional learning community in which strategies and resources are actively shared. It can also be the start of an inquiry community, in which research efforts are performed in collaboration together even among people at a geographic distance from one another. Along with this collaboration comes increased voice.

Mutual support is vital. This can take the form of basic friendships, even among those of us who have not actually met in person. We all get tired and discouraged at times. We need one another as a support base.

Finally, comes perhaps the hardest part. Public advocacy of literacy education even among those with whom we might strongly disagree. An important aspect of fighting for the active, engaging, constructivist approaches to education that readers of this blog are likely to favor is through dialogue and through example. The thing with dialogue is that it works best when both sides of a dialogue feel mutually respected. The collaboration that I advocate is, in many ways, already occurring. However, I advocate that the collaboration should become increasingly systematic and strategic. Teamwork will help produce increased research. Increased dialogue. Increased awareness. In a sense, we each are ambassadors of literacy education. We each have a role to play. And who knows, we might even enjoy this process along the way. We need to come together. We cannot adequately address the challenges we face if we are working in isolation.

This call for action is not easy. However, below I will outline some areas where I believe there can be agreement and collaboration.

Children need to develop skills in phoneme awareness and phonics, decoding, accurate and automatic word recognition, reading at an appropriate rate, vocabulary and word attack strategies, text comprehension and strategies for comprehension of difficult texts. Misunderstandings and lack of agreements abound. For example, proponents of approaches to reading instruction that privilege taking social and cultural experiences of a child into account are often accused of being “anti-phonics” when in fact a social constructivist approach does recognize the importance of decoding, phonemic awareness and phonics skills. Greater emphasis tends to be placed on inquiry, games, songs, rhymes than in programs that are based on synthetic phonics. Proponents of whole language prefer to work on these skills in the context of real/authentic texts being read.

Complicating matters, there is a great deal of linkage between the reading process and the writing process. Writing is both a way of learning and a way of communicating. In fact, I argue for an approach to reading instruction that is inclusive of areas often discussed within English Language arts, including but not limited to the study of grammar and syntax, the study of literature, the study of writing and composition, the study of linguistics, and the study of rhetoric.

Skills generally associated with language arts include reading, writing, speaking, listening, viewing, and visually representing. I view reading instruction as insufficient without strong language arts instruction, and likewise, I view language arts instruction as insufficient without strong instruction in reading. This means that reading teachers and reading specialists need to work in alliance with language arts teachers. It also means that language arts teachers need to team up with reading teachers. The success of the two fields are linked.

A misimpression that exists about the social-constructivist approaches to instruction which I support is that they are opposed to explicit and direct instruction. This is not true. However, it’s important to draw on a child’s background knowledge and to consider the social-cultural influences on meaning-making. That’s why dialogue matters. It’s important for the teacher to learn from the child as the child is also learning from the teacher. Leaving a child bored and disconnected from material is something to be avoided. Intensive, personalized instruction for students using other educational staff members. As appropriate, seek additional reading and varied forms of texts (video/digital, visual art) and instruction for students.

A wide variety of diverse literary options need to be available for students to read. These options should include representations of characters and settings from diverse cultures. It should also include multiple genres and multiple types of texts. Wide reading experiences with diverse texts is also critical. The end goal of instructional intervention is for the student to gain increased independence as a reader, to be able to gain purposeful comprehension skills and strategies that can be applied with diverse texts and in diverse contexts.

Plus, let’s not forget, we want the student to also have a lifelong love for learning and passion for reading. It is so important to provide opportunities for students to become independent readers. A wide selection of texts can be a critical aspect of intervention. Interest in a text can help a student to be increasing engaged and motivated while working on skills in an authentic context. Guided repeated reading can help a student to build fluency skills. A classroom teacher should work with a team of well-trained professionals who specialize in intervention assessment and techniques when a student fails to make adequate progress.

Appropriate assessments guide instructional choices. After all, it would not be possible to accurately determine a student’s current ability to independently engage in a task without assessment. Likewise, it also is not possible to determine a student’s upper range of ability to successfully complete a reading task with guidance and assistance unless there is assessment tied to goals. These assessments should determine both strengths and areas of weakness to address in an ongoing way that tracks progress. The strengths can be used toward addressing weaknesses, but key to this is that the teacher needs to be working in partnership with the student.

The tracking of student growth and the development of literacy abilities requires strong assessment.  Students will at times struggle in reading for a variety of reasons, including skill development but also potentially including lack of mastery of appropriate reading strategies. Too often, students whose primary language is not English may be misidentified as having a learning disability. A student might need to work on decoding, phonemic awareness and phonics, or other skills such as fluency or word identification strategies in order to enhance purposeful vocabulary development. The nature of intervention should be determined through assessment. The type of reading structure appropriate for the child depends on needs and interests. Options might include whole class, small flexible groups, or guided reading with systematic and explicate instructional strategies.

Care should also be taken when the tutoring is pulling a student out of regular classroom instruction. Students can feel embarrassed, and they can miss out on valuable instructional time with the regular class. If the tutoring is unengaging, fails to be beneficial, or it is simply boring to the student, then the effort at tutoring could backfire and contribute to the student becoming disengaged.

Finally, I believe in the importance of a positive learning environment. To be more specific, this learning environment should include welcoming students into a community of readers and writers. Such a community should welcome the exploration of new and imaginative concepts while drawing on prior knowledge. The classroom community should be welcoming to diverse students of varied backgrounds. One way of promoting such a positive classroom community is to make sure that students have a sense of belonging and acceptance. Teachers need to honor the human dignity of students and promote the ability of fellow students to honor one another’s dignity. An important aspect of honoring the dignity of individual students is to honor their sense of identity and their cultural identities.

Copyright 2019 by Dr. Sam Bommarito. Views/interpretations expressed here are solely the views of this author and his blogging partner. They do not necessarily reflect the views of any other person or organization.

P.S. If you found the blog through Facebook or Twitter, please consider following the blog to make sure you won’t miss it.  Use the “follow” entry on the sidebar of the blog.

Taking the day off. Celebrating the 4^th of July with my family.

Let me use this occasion to give you a tip on where to find some good reading about literacy issues. Visit the Missouri Literacy Association’s Facebook page (@mscira).  They have good readings on a daily basis (including today). You’ll find this page a great resource with a wide variety of posts relevant to improving literacy. The screen capture below shows a recent posting. Go to the MLA Facebook page (@mscira) to see the live feed.

Thanks,

Dr Sam

As promised the newest issue of the Missouri Reader is ready. It can be reached at this link.

https://joom.ag/VMta

We e-mail a link out to all our members (Missouri Literacy Association- an affiliate of the ILA) using our membership list. We also blog and tweet out the link.  Please share the link with all educators you think may be interested in the topics presented. By doing that you help us carry out our own form of “word of mouth”, essentially word of mouth in the cyber world. The journal is free.

Glenda Nugent (my co-editor) and I are quite proud that we can carry out the forty plus year traditions of the journal. It started off as a “hard copy” journal and has now shifted to a cyber journal. We publish many well-known authors and literacy researchers. We also publish articles from many teachers, including teachers doing their first action research projects/first journal articles. It gives teachers a chance to share with their fellow teachers and also a chance to find out about publishing in a peer-edited journal. They get to publish right alongside more experienced writers and researchers. A look at our editorial board will show our board is well credentialed. We are grateful for their ongoing contributions to the journal.

If you are interested in submitting an article for the Fall journal, go to the last page of the current journal for details. I’ve included a screen capture of the front cover and the table of contents in this blog entry. These show you what’s in the journal. Once you get to the journal online, there are easy links to follow for all the articles. There is quite a variety (see below), so I think you will find something of interest to you.

Happy Reading and Writing, and I hope you enjoy the Missouri Reader and find it provides you with valuable resources and information. As I said before, please do share with anyone you think might be interested in the topics covered.

Dr. Sam Bommarito

Co-Editor of the Missouri Reader

LOOK OVER THE VARIOUS TITLES- FIND SOMETHING YOU LIKE AND CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW TO GO TO THE ONLINE JOURNAL AND READ IT! THERE ARE ARTICLES ABOUT GETTING STARTED IN THE FALL, SOCIAL JUSTICE, WRITING (WITH TONS OF LINKS TO RESOURCES) AND MANY OTHER THINGS.

https://joom.ag/VMta

One recent post on twitter indicated that the only real criteria for judging the worth of instructional methods are that they pass the test of randomized controlled trials. This randomized control statement is one important way of looking at things. However, like all things in educational research, there are limits and limitations to the use of “pure” science. This is especially true when looking at the instrumentation often used in conducting educational research.  Let me give two examples that demonstrate this point.

The first is the use of the Lexile system for measuring readability.  I have long maintained that measures of readability are really measures of decodability. They should really be called decodability formulas. For instance, a 4th-grade decodability means that a student performing at a 4th-grade reading level can decode it. In no way does it guarantee that the material in the book itself is actually 4th-grade material, more on that thought in a minute.

The components that go into Lexile measurements are fairly straightforward. See this link for an explanation of how they are determined: https://lexile.com/educators/measuring-growth-with-lexile/lexile-measures-grade-equivalents/ .

Key components include sentence complexity and vocabulary.  Overall the system does a fairly decent job of doing what it is supposed to do. It does give us a sense of what grade level a child’s reading ability needs to be to decode it.

There are critics of the Lexile system. I’m providing a link to this anti-Lexile post not because I agree with its conclusion (I don’t) but because it contains good examples of times when Lexile really gets it wrong. http://www.unleashingreaders.com/?p=8891.

TIMES WHEN LEXILES GET IT WRONG

I’ve seen the Grapes of Wrath example in many places. The content of Grapes of Wrath clearly does not fit the typical content for a 4th-grade classroom.  This particular example seems to be a favorite of the critics of Lexile measurements.

What to do, what to do?

Here is what to do. Do exactly what systems like Fountas and Pinnell do when they assign readabilities to books. In addition to the usual things (sentence complexity/vocab load) they look at the actual content of the book, how the book is structured, specific characteristics of the book and the degree to which the book that is measured matches the usual characteristics of books at that reading level. F & P’s system adds qualitative information that makes their product far more useful to classroom teachers.  When talking to teachers about which system to use when choosing a leveled text, I always recommend systems like F & P.  Fewer “surprises” like saying the Grapes of Wrath or the Color Purple are appropriate books for 4^th graders.  The overall point here is that adding the qualitative element to the decodability measure makes It much more useful for educators. Quantitative measures can benefit from the addition of qualitative supplements.

Another example is the whole idea around measuring fluency. As I mentioned last week, Tim Rasinski just did an excellent post about that. The post was from the Robb Review.

https://therobbreviewblog.com/uncategorized/making-kids-read-fast-is-not-the-goal-of-fluency-instruction-making-meaning-is/

Last week’s post is germane to this week’s topic because unlike measures like the Dibels which measures fluency solely as speed, Tim’s measurement is much more complete since it includes the use of a rubric based on the acronym E.A.R.S. (Expression, Automatic Word Recognition, Rhythm and Phrasing, and Smoothness). Dibels focuses only on speed.  Teachers using Dibels for instruction use a shallow view of the oral reading process that too often results in the creation of Robot Readers. These readers read in a monotone, lifeless manner. Such readers are not likely to use oral reading as a window to comprehension.

Tim had this to say in a Twitter post this week:

Tim’s post clearly indicates that when most of the literacy instructional time is used on phonics instruction with little or no time spent on meaning making the result can be the creation of word callers. This dove tales completely with my own experiences working with children placed in a basal that focused too much of its time on phonics and not enough of its time on things like Tim’s style of fluency (shall we call it prosody?), writing, and comprehension.  This isn’t to say there should be no time spent on decoding. This is simply saying that there should also be SIGNIFICANT amounts of time spent on the other components of the reading process.

Overall, Tim’s way adds a definite qualitative aspect to the mix.  Instead of just doing simple speed measures, teachers must carry out a somewhat more complex measure using his rubric. Does that make it less scientific?  For those who have taken courses in qualitative analysis, you know that if one takes the time and follows the procedures, one can get interrater reliability. It is completely scientific. Qualitative measures and qualitative statistics are perfectly capable of answering the question of whether or not the results of a study are simply the result of chance or the result of the experimental treatment.

This leads me to my big question. Is there a reason to also include qualitative studies when evaluating the efficacy of reading approaches?  I think there is. Qualitative methods pick up on things pure quantitative methods simply can’t.  Is this a case of advocating my science against your science? Not really. It’s a case of advocating my science (qualitative studies) IN ADDITION TO your science. It’s an acknowledgment that empirical approaches have limits and limitation. Qualitative approaches can make important value-added contributions to the study of literacy approaches. In sum, I’m not saying to replace purely empirical studies. I am saying that we should consider supplementing their findings with qualitative studies as we determine the efficacy of various approaches in the teaching of literacy. Tim has said in the past that the teaching of reading is both science and art. I’ve given the link to my post about his views around this previously. Here it is again.

https://doctorsam7.blog/2018/05/04/the-teaching-of-reading-as-both-science-and-art-a-report-evaluation-of-rasinkis-recent-presentation-in-st-louis-by-dr-sam-bommarito/

I wholeheartedly concur with Tim. The teaching of reading really is both art and science. I think the study of the efficacy of literacy approaches would benefit from the inclusion of qualitative studies. What do you think?

Til next time, Happy Reading and Writing

Dr. Sam Bommarito (a.k.a. the quantitative PLUS qualitative guy)

Copyright 2019 by Dr. Sam Bommarito. Views/interpretations expressed here are solely the view of this author and do not necessarily reflect the views of any other person or organization.

P.S. If you found the blog through Facebook or Twitter, please consider following the blog to make sure you won’t miss it.  Use the “follow” entry on the sidebar of the blog.

Oral Reading Fluency: Exploring fluency practices suggested by the work of Dr. Tim Rasinski (Part Two) by Dr. Sam Bommarito

While I was away on vacation, Dr. Tim Rasinski made a post in the Robb review that is quite relevant to our topic of reading fluency (I follow the Robb review- lots of good stuff there!). Here is a link to his post:

https://therobbreviewblog.com/uncategorized/making-kids-read-fast-is-not-the-goal-of-fluency-instruction-making-meaning-is/

==============================================================

Key ideas included:

• The real goal of phonics instruction should be to “get kids to the point where they don’t have to use phonics.”
• Fluency is not about reading fast; fluency is about reading in a manner that promotes meaning-making. He did an ORF score (speed test score) on recordings of arguably two of the most fluently read speeches in American history – Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech” and John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address “Ask Not What Your Country…”. He found that “in both cases, Dr. King and President Kennedy’s readings of their speeches may have landed them in a remedial reading class based on their very low ORF scores.”
• He urged caution in using the scores, e.g., DIBELS and AimsWeb ORF scores, or Hasbrouck and Tindal’s norms (Words Correct per Minute).
• He also said that “For fluency instruction to truly work, we need to see the goal of fluency as expressive oral (and silent) reading that reflects the meaning of the text.

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Which brings us round to the story I was telling you before I left for vacation.  I volunteer one day a week doing literacy work at an elementary school. I had been using the idea of teaching kids to read like a storyteller in the after-school group all year.  About 20 1^st and second graders participated.  We used one of the several techniques Rasinski reported on when he spoke to us in St. Louis. We paired off readers and had them read/reread poems and passages from favorite books.  We used several Eric Litwin’s books since they were at the right readability, were engaging and predictable.  When the after-school program ended, I asked one of the first-grade teachers if she would be interested in trying the reading practice with the whole class for a couple of weeks. She agreed.

We paired readers with somewhat higher scores with readers with somewhat lower reading scores. We allowed the children to self-select from poems that they were familiar with. This included some from trade books and some from the basal program. Partners could select the same poem OR they could each select a poem of their own.  Students practiced reading to each other daily. The teacher circulated in the room as the oral reading went on. The entire process took 10 minutes or so each day. I was present for this activity each Tuesday.

Students knew there would be a performance event at the end of the week. The classroom was using SeeSaw. The kids made audio recordings. The purpose of this little trial was to see if the primary teachers would be interested in trying this out during the school year next year. I’m happy to report that the results were such that both the 1^st and 2^nd grade is going to do this next year.

Here are some of the highlights:

The classroom teacher was surprised to see how quickly some of the “average” students improved in prosody. The stronger of the two partners were showing improvement as well.  The kids coached each other in how to sound more like storytellers.   One interesting anecdote came when I gave my usual talk about reading like a storyteller NOT like a robot. “Never read like a robot!” I said. One of the 1^st graders raised his hand and said, “But Dr. B., what if the character is a robot? Then what?”  Hmmm. Guess you know how I answered.  You know, sometimes the kids learn more than you teach them!

I have parent permission to listen to the recordings, and over the summer I’ll be using the rubrics from Rasinski and Smith’s The Megabook of Fluency to assess those recordings.  I’ve talked about that rubric before. It uses the acronym E.A.R.S. Expression, Automatic Word Recognition, Rhythm and Phrasing, and Smoothness.  By the fall I expect to be able to use the rubric with some degree of reliability.

All four of the classes (2 first grades and 2-second grades) use the Raz Kids computer program.  I already have used the message feature of that program to talk to the after-school kids and give them advice about reading. The program allows both written and recorded messages. I think feedback on oral reading might prove useful.  Stay tuned- by the end of next year, I may have an action research project to report on!

Next time I want to take up the topic of the advantages of supplementing quantitative research with qualitative research.  I’ll explain how the startup I just described does exactly that.  I’ll also explore some of the limits and limitations of using only quantitative information.

Until next time, this is Dr. Sam signing off.

Dr. Sam Bommarito

Copyright 2019 by Dr. Sam Bommarito. Views/interpretations expressed here are solely the view of this author and do not necessarily reflect the views of any other person or organization.

P.S. If you found the blog through Facebook or Twitter, please consider following the blog to make sure you won’t miss it.  Use the “follow” entry on the sidebar of the blog.

Back from vacation- Some thoughts about the “Bookends” of WWII found at Pearl Harbor

Pearl Harbor “Bookends”                                                Plaque Marking Surrender Spot

Just back from vacation. Letting everyone know my regular posts will resume next Friday morning. My last day in Hawaii was spent touring the bookends of WWII. The bookends include the Arizona Memorial (the beginning) and the Battleship Missouri (the end). Our guide for the Battleship Missouri tour told the moving story of how General MacArthur handled the speech he gave at the end of the war.  He spoke at the surrender ceremony that took place on the deck of the Battleship Missouri. The guide noted MacArthur could have talked about all the horrors and injustices of the war. Instead here is the heart of what he said:

“It is my earnest hope, and indeed the hope of all mankind, that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past — a world founded upon faith and understanding, a world dedicated to the dignity of man and the fulfillment of his most cherished wish for freedom, tolerance, and justice.”

So, he chose to offer a message of hope at the end of the war. A message of healing for all sides. Perhaps this is a message worth pondering.  See you next Friday morning.

Dr. Sam

Oral Reading Fluency: Exploring fluency practices suggested by the work of Dr. Tim Rasinski by Dr. Sam Bommarito

I spent a great deal of time in the past few weeks talking about phonics and the current iteration of the reading wars. My position remains that teachers be allowed to use a full range of approaches to teaching phonics matching the child to the type of decoding instruction that best fits the child.  But I believe decoding instruction should never be the total sum of the child’s beginning reading instruction. I find the guidelines for time allotment proposed by Shanahan quite sensible.

To see his full post around the topic of time allotment, go to https://shanahanonliteracy.com/blog/how-much-time-should-we-spend-on-comprehension-and-phonics

Here are some highlights from that post:

“The biggest decisions teachers make, have to do with how much time to spend on literacy and language and how to divide this time up among the components of literacy. I have long emphasized 2-3 hours of literacy instruction per day in grades K-5 (if you are teaching in a half-day kindergarten, then 60-90 minutes per day).”

“I would argue for dividing the total amount of literacy and language time equally across those five components (or four, if the students aren’t yet reading). Before they are reading, I would devote about a quarter of the instructional time to oral language development (including listening comprehension), a quarter to decoding, a quarter to oral reading fluency, and a quarter to writing. Once children are reading, then the time shifts so that each component gets 20% of the time.”

So, let’s turn our attention to one of the components Shanahan has outlined.  What to do during the 20% of the instructional time allocated to oral reading fluency?  I would recommend that all teachers take a hard look at Dr. Tim Rasinski’s ideas and methods in this area

I first heard him speak at one of our local ILA’s meeting. I wrote a blog about what he said in that presentation:

https://doctorsam7.blog/2018/05/04/the-teaching-of-reading-as-both-science-and-art-a-report-evaluation-of-rasinkis-recent-presentation-in-st-louis-by-dr-sam-bommarito/

As you can see from the title of the blog post above, Rasinski sees the teaching of reading as both science and art. He made some compelling arguments to that end. The thing he talked about that REALLY got my attention was his story of a 1st-grade teacher who tried a very simple technique for building fluency for her readers. She had them practice reading poems aloud on a daily basis. They knew that at the end of the week they would get a chance to perform their poem. This practice/perform sequence did not take up an inordinate amount of time since the daily practice sessions were short (5-10 minutes). The teacher got major pushback from her administrator about wasting classroom time. But she was allowed to continue her program all year. Her building was a high needs building. Her class outperformed all the other classes in the building on the end of the year reading achievement test. She went on to become the teacher of the year. You can see why this story caught my attention.

Though retired, I donate one day a week to a private elementary school in my area. My grandchildren attend that school. Just this quarter I found a 1st-grade teacher willing to try this practice/perform method. The week after next, I will give you a full report on how it went (hint- it went VERY well).

WAIT A MINUTE DR. SAM. You said week after next. What’s going on?

Dr. Sam is off on a family vacation next week. My wife and I are going with my son and his family. So- no blog next week. But I thought I would leave you with a little preview of things to come.  I wrote a little parody sung to the tune of Yankee Doodle Dandy. I used that as my introduction to the whole topic of reading like a storyteller. Below is an audio of the song and a picture. The first graders joined me in singing the song. I’ve given a link to a folder where you can download both the audio and the pdf. The song is copyrighted, but permission is given for its non-commercial use at the class, building or even district level.  If you want to use it as part of a program that is sold- contact me.  Otherwise- feel free to use it. There is a very real lesson in prosody contained in the song. The week after next, I’ll tell you all about how things went with the prosody lessons. Until then, Aloha! (hmmmmm, wonder where Dr. Sam is going next week? hmmmmm).

Here are the song and links to a downloadable PDF and audio file.

TO DOWNLOAD THE PDF AND AUDIO FILE CLICK HERE

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/13W2d9hPo_eHycQjLtIt5mec5zC44J3qc?usp=sharing

Happy Reading, Writing, AND Singing

Dr. Sam Bommarito (aka the wanna-be songwriter)

Copyright 2019 by Dr. Sam Bommarito. Views/interpretations expressed here are solely the view of this author and do not necessarily reflect the views of any other person or organization.

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