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“I didn’t believe him” – How one mom learned that her son’s school wasn’t teaching him to read – with Dr. Irene Daria

��TRT Podcast #183: “I didn’t believe him” – How one mom learned that her son’s school wasn’t teaching him to read – with Dr. Irene Daria

Irene’s kindergarten son was attending a prestigious Manhattan public school. When he told her that the school wasn’t teaching him to read, she didn’t believe him. When she finally realized he was right, she set out on a challenging journey to save his academic life. You won’t want to miss this one!

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Hello, my name is Anna Geiger. I'm the creator of the Measured Mom website, and also the author of the recently published book "Reach All Readers." I would love for you to check it out. It currently has 84 five-star reviews on Amazon. I'm going to read one of those really quick before we get into our interview today.

B. Romero wrote, "This book should be required reading for every elementary school teacher. It thoroughly explains the theory in understandable terms, gives examples of what structured literacy looks like in the classroom, and gives ideas for lesson formats and activities that you can print and use today. Anna has created one of the most practical resources on the science of reading that I have seen so far." You can learn more at reachallreaders.com.

In today's episode, I'm interviewing Dr. Irene Daria, who is the author of a wonderful book called "I Didn't Believe Him." It's all about how her son years ago was not being taught how to read, and when he told his mom, she didn't believe him. In this episode, we talk about her experience with that, and then we go into a little bit of detail about the book. I highly recommend it. You can learn more about the book in the show notes. Here we go!

Anna Geiger: Welcome, Irene.

Irene Daria: Thank you, Anna! Thank you for having me!

Anna Geiger: We're here to talk about your book, "I Didn't Believe Him," which, as I've said, it reads like a novel. It's fascinating, horrifying, and entertaining at the same time. We're going to talk about that in a minute.

Before we do that, could you talk to us a little bit about your life story? What led up to you writing this book and what you're doing now?

Irene Daria: What led me up to writing this book is the fact that my son's school didn't teach him how to read. We'll talk about that in a minute. What I am doing now is directly related to the fact that his school did not teach him how to read.

I had been working as a journalist, and I went back before this happened with Eric's school to get my degree in psychology. I thought I was going to be doing clinical psych. Then when Eric's school failed to teach him how to read, I dove into the research and realized how many kids were being labeled learning disabled, not because there was anything neurologically wrong with them, but just because their schools were not teaching them how to read.

I thought that was a terrible tragedy. The library was giving a presentation on how children learn to read. This was back in 2007. The librarian said, "Your kids will be learning phonics in school."

After the presentation, I very politely raised my hand and said, "Not necessarily. They may not be learning phonics in a systematic explicit way in any event."

If kids don't learn phonics, often... Kids are not like adults. When we don't understand something, we'll raise our hand, and we'll say, "I don't understand." Kids don't do that. Kids move to the back of the room and become silent, or they become behavior problems.

Almost inevitably, the school begins thinking something's wrong with the child. The school, especially at that time, never thought that maybe its teaching methods were wrong, and the child was struggling.

I gave the parents tips again in a very non-alarming way. If your child isn't getting phonics in school, this is what you can do to help them.

A mother came up to me afterwards and said, "What you described is exactly what's happening to my daughter. Her school, as far as I can see, isn't teaching her how to read. They send home what we know are patterned books. They send home books full of big words that she can't possibly read, like peanut bar."

I remember she said, "What's a peanut bar anyway? Who eats peanut bars?!"

She said, "Would you teach my daughter how to read?" She was my first client.

School thought her daughter had ADHD, and they wanted to evaluate her. The mother said, "I'm sure my daughter does not have ADHD. If she did, I would do everything in the world to help her, but I really don't think that's the problem. I think she just needs to be taught how to read."

I taught her, and I really felt like I had saved this little girl's academic life. It was the most rewarding feeling.

I was at a school where you go for a master's first and then you apply to the PhD program, and I was on track for clinical psych. I was doing a book with the head of the department, and everything was great. I went to them and I said, "I want to switch to cognitive developmental psychology. I want to research reading. I want to learn about reading. This is what I want to do."

That's what I decided to do. My goal was to help prevent problems from happening as opposed to fixing them after they had already happened.

It was an immediate success. I passed out flyers at my local school. Parents came. Their kids learned to read beautifully.

The parents said, "You taught them how to read so well. Just keep them and do whatever you want." Now we're a K through 12 tutoring company, but my heart still lies in beginning reading. My heart still lies in helping kids learn how to read. That's a very long answer to your question.

Anna Geiger: All right, so let's go back in time. Your son, Eric, is now in his mid-20s, but back when he was in kindergarten, that's when he told you that the school wasn't teaching him to read. Take us back and explain what he was telling you and why you didn't believe him.

Irene Daria: So, actually, Anna, before I answer your question, which I'm going to answer, I have a pressing question that is nagging me that I have to ask you. You said the book is horrifying and inspiring, and you know so much about reading and how kids learn to read. I've followed your work for years. What was horrifying to you?

Anna Geiger: Well, first of all, a lot of it for me was horrifying because I was seeing myself in those teachers, because that's the way that I taught reading, balanced literacy. To get it all in place and to see that this is really happening, that teachers are actually telling parents that we don't explicitly need to teach phonics, and labeling children as having a problem because they're teaching them incorrectly. It made me look back, and I would say that the school he went to was what I would call an extreme form of balanced literacy.

As you know, balanced literacy has a million definitions, and everybody applies it differently, but I definitely saw myself in there in terms of dismissing a parent's concerns and assuming I had it all right. For someone who taught balanced literacy previously and to see the effect that would have in a child's life who's not successful is very sad. You guys overcame it, but it was hard going. Then to see how much effort it took for you to get things to change, that's just wrong. This shouldn't have to happen.

It's horrifying that this has existed in schools. Now, this was a long time ago, but we know that this is still happening. That to me is horrifying. The inspiration, of course, is that you got your way through it, through a lot of effort on your part and your son's part, and then it's also an entertaining story. There's a lot of humor in there too, so people can feel like this is a book they're going to sit on the beach and enjoy.

Irene Daria: And enjoy! I'm glad to hear you say that!

So, to answer your question, Eric came home at the beginning of kindergarten, a five-year-old boy, and the exact words that he said were, "Mommy, my school isn't teaching me how to read. They tell us to look at the pictures and guess what the words are, and that's not reading, Mommy. How do you read?"

He was going to a school named Lower Lab, but I didn't name the school in the book because it was too emotionally painful for me to use the school's name. It wasn't that I was trying to keep it a secret. I gave the geographical location of it. Anyone in New York would know what school it is, but it was so painful for me to revisit and write that that just took it to a different...

I changed the teacher's name, so it wasn't as if I was really... Because when you write, it's like you're in that moment again. The teachers' names were different, but I literally could not emotionally bring myself to use the school's name. It's a school for gifted kids in New York City with a stellar reputation. Test scores are off the charts. You have to apply to get into it. It's a school on the Upper East Side.

We live in Greenwich Village, which at the time was much more low key than the Upper East Side, which is the wealthiest zip code in New York, full of very high achieving, driven families who work with their children at home. We didn't. Eric showed up and tested. We just brought him. We didn't do any prep or anything like that.

He got in, and I was so in awe of this school that when he told me they were doing something wrong, I didn't believe him. How could this amazing school do something wrong? My son just doesn't understand yet what they're doing, I figured.

Before he said those words, I attended a presentation where his school explained how they taught reading, and it made zero sense to me as a parent, just zero. They explained about how they used post-it notes to cover the words, to encourage the kids to guess what the words are from the pictures. They used context. They made a poster for the presentation and the strategies included ask your neighbor what the word is. Sounding out was at the very bottom.

His teacher WAS teaching letter sounds. They were teaching the letter sounds so the kids could use it in their invented spelling and writing. I thought they were doing it in reading. I did not realize that they were not sounding out words at all.

Anna Geiger: What finally got you to realize, "Hang on a second, something's wrong. I need to do something."

Irene Daria: So just to fill in, I don't want to give away too much of the story because like you said, it does read like a novel. But to make a long story short, Eric's kindergarten year was absolutely horrible for the poor little kid. He had been happy and extroverted in preschool, and he still was socially extroverted and happy on the playground. But in school, sitting in the back of the room, silent, just hanging his head in shame because he was in a classroom. What made this curriculum look effective was that the parents taught their kids how to read before they started school. The vast majority of the parents had worked with these kids at home. He was in a classroom of gifted children who knew how to read. One boy was reading Harry Potter in kindergarten. This is extreme.

Anna Geiger: Oh my goodness.

Irene Daria: My kid didn't know how to read a word. He started having nightmares, screaming, screaming, screaming, screaming during the night dreaming that he was drowning. He was drowning because he didn't know how to read. This was coming out like that. He was saying, "I don't want to go to school. I hate school." It still brings tears to my eyes. It was terrible.

I asked his teacher, "Do you know what's going on?" No, she had no idea.

I remember she sent an email saying, "I read with him today, and he figured out the pattern in the book and went with it."

How I wish I had asked questions, "What's a pattern in a book?" I didn't know what that meant. How I wish I had questioned things, but I trusted.

So what finally happened was in the summer, I realized he couldn't read a word. I tried to teach him myself. I did not yet know how to.

First grade came, and what he did... Now imagine the thought that went into this for a six-year-old child. I don't think he even knew what the word memorize meant. He could not tell me. He had memorized the books in his classroom and therefore appeared to be reading them. That's why he was bringing home great grades in reading.

He came home, and with a really angry expression on his face and anger in his voice said, "Mommy, you want to see how I read? I'll show you how I read."

I said, "Okay, yeah."

He put the book behind his back and "read" it, and he turned the pages really loud, and he on purpose made this kind of rustling sound so that I would recognize he was turning the page, and he "read" the entire book behind his back. That's when I realized he had memorized every little patterned book and was reciting them from memory. That's why his teacher thought he was reading, and why I thought he was reading, and why he wasn't reading.

Anna Geiger: That's so interesting to me how astute he was. You talk about that in the book, how this little guy knew that what he was doing was not really reading, but none of the adults around him were picking that up.

I think as a balanced literacy teacher and learning about the structured approach a number of years ago, a hang-up for me was, "I think they're not going to like reading if they have to read these decodable books."

I talked to a principal who called me up to talk about this, and he said, "At our school, these kids, at first, they can't read, so giving them these patterned books, making it seem like they're reading... They know they're not reading, but when you give them a book and they can pull the words off because they have the tools to sound it out, that's where the pride and the joy comes in."

Did you see that with your son?

Irene Daria: Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. I remember when he... He used to be afraid of books. When I first had him try to read a Bob book, he just was scared of it. Then he began to feel empowered. The more phonics he learned, the better he felt, and the more excited he was about reading.

I have to tell you, there's a scene in the book. I don't know if you remember, but I praised him when finally... I remember the shining moment was when he could read "Little Bear." That was when it all clicked, the frequently used important sight words and the phonics rules. He read a "Little Bear" story so perfectly, and it's how I finally got through to his school.

We need to talk about that too, why they thought he was not reading, and he was at home.

I said to him, "You know you're going to be the talk of your school because yesterday they thought you couldn't read, and now they realize that you can read 'Little Bear.'"

Instead of looking proud, he looked so guilty. I said, "Eric, what's the matter?"

He said, "Mommy, the only reason I could that read book was because I knew the words in it."

Anna Geiger: That is so-

Irene Daria: Can you imagine?

Anna Geiger: I remember that. Yeah, that is amazing. I mean, I don't even know what a word for that is, but just that he thought there was something wrong with that because that wasn't being communicated to him. That reading is reading every individual word.

There are a lot of moments like that in the book that just hit you in the face. As someone like me who was teaching kids to read with patterned books, there are a lot of moments where I was like, "Oh my goodness." I mean, I already have come to terms with what I was doing, and I feel really bad about that. I'm working to educate teachers about what was wrong with that.

When you talk back to the teachers having the workshop about how they taught reading, I wasn't there, so I don't know exactly what they said, but I'm guessing if it were me giving it back then, it would've been something about three-queuing and how reading is all about meaning, and we identify words in different ways, and phonics is only one way. Here are the other things that we do, and that's why these patterned books are so useful because then kids can read fluently.

It seems like they're fluent, because once they know the pattern, they just go through it really quickly. They're getting to meaning right away because they're not slowly sounding out words. It really just represents a complete misunderstanding of how reading works, right?

In the book, there's a lot of tension for you, which I completely understand, in terms of, "Well, I don't want to undermine the teachers. I don't want to teach him that teachers are wrong, but at the same time, I want to teach him to read. I don't want the school to label him." Can you talk a little bit about the tension between wanting to be supportive of the school, but at the same time, right some wrongs?

Irene Daria: I was terrified of the school. I think you need to live in a place like New York City. I'm not sure if San Francisco is still like this, but at the time, admission to public school, good public middle schools and high schools, was done on a competitive basis. You don't just go to your local neighborhood school. The principal carries so much weight and power. A word from her to another school and your child is kaput basically. So, that put a different layer on it.

For me and for my son, I wanted him to respect his school, and selfishly, I didn't want him to come to rely on me as his teacher.

In a perfect world, how amazing it would've been to homeschool him, but I couldn't! I had to work. I had to earn a living. I was in school.

I don't know if you remember, but I was in charge of giving him his spelling words. Not only was I teaching him to read, but the school let me give him his spelling words, which another school, like my older son's public school, would've said, "Get lost. We know what we're doing. Go away."

So I never came right out and said, "You're doing things all wrong."

I'm going to share this with you, Anna, and with your listeners. I haven't shared it yet. Like I mentioned, I've not been on any podcasts aimed at teachers yet, but I've been on podcasts talking about the book that are aimed at parents. I don't want to give away too much of the book, because it does read like a novel. I want people to turn the pages and say, "Oh, what happened? What happened? What happens next?"

But, I really do need to share with your audience that Eric's school labeled him learning disabled. Even though their evaluation found nothing wrong with him, even though he was high average or superior in every category, they were telling me, "Oh, he has a problem with phonemic awareness," as if that was a disorder. I didn't know what phonemic awareness was.

Anna Geiger: It means you need to teach it.

Irene Daria: It means you need to teach it! But I thought it was something wrong. "Oh, no, my son does not have phonemic awareness, and maybe he needs help."

But then my husband said, "The only way we're going to get through to them, the only way we're going to show them that nothing is wrong with him, is by letting them evaluate him." Indeed, an evaluation found nothing wrong, and then they labeled him learning disabled because his reading level did not match his high IQ. I mean, could you just die? Could you die?

Anna Geiger: That was a stunning moment in the book. Oh my goodness, I wasn't expecting that.

Irene Daria: I share this because I'm getting... I've sent out some advance readers copies, and I don't know if this book will sell. I don't know how it will do. I don't know who it will reach, or if it will have any impact, but already, I can sleep well at night because I've gotten one text and one phone call from people who had an advanced readers copy.

The text came from a teacher at a public school in Harlem that I worked with years ago in her classroom. I actually taught her students reading. She had me come in, and I volunteered in her classroom. She works in a K-8 school, and she said, "Your book has made me question every kid in my school who's been labeled learning disabled and has an IEP," because they were using balanced literacy. They were not teaching phonics. It made her stop and think, "Huh, is there really something wrong with these children, or is it just that we didn't teach them reading correctly?"

Another one came from a school psychologist. The phone call came from the school psychologist who said, "I've got to tell you, I could not put this book down." She said, "I was horrified." That's why I wondered what you were horrified by. She said, "I realized I was evaluating children, and seeing they have these problems with decoding, and I never realized they had never been taught to decode."

Anna Geiger: Yeah, exactly.

Irene Daria: That is criminal. I hate to say the word criminal, I'm sorry, because teachers were as much victims as the parents and students were, right? I mean, I didn't know. You didn't know. All the teachers out there didn't know. No one certainly wanted to cause harm, but wow.

I think one of the reasons I wrote this book, because, as you know, writing a book is a lot of work, and there could have been a lot of other things I was doing. It was to get the word out about that, and to prevent it from happening to other children, and a little bit of survivor's guilt because if my little boy had not come to me, and held that book behind his back...

Now remember, I ignored him the first time. If he hadn't finally figured out how to get through to me, my child would've been a struggling reader possibly for the rest of his life. My child would've been labeled learning disabled, probably would've had low phonemic awareness, which I would've thought was a disorder, and would have been on such a completely different academic track that I feel like we narrowly, narrowly missed a train wreck.

Anna Geiger: I would agree with you because especially, I mean, it's a blessing that you got this early. I know first grade... It would've been better to do it sooner even than that. But for many parents, this doesn't really come up until third grade, because that's when it really shows when those patterned books are gone. Then by then, you've got so many more issues to compound it. Your son was already dealing with a lot of feeling really bad about himself and feeling defeated by school, and that just compounds by the time you're in third grade. Then it makes it even harder.

What would you say made the most difference in helping him?

Irene Daria: Systematic, explicit phonics, without a doubt, and going step by step and celebrating each step. There's such joy. Phonics has gotten such a bad rap. Like you were saying, this is really fun and empowering and wonderful for kids. They go from not being able to... I'm not sure you know this, but I've written a series of workbooks that parents and teachers can use.

Anna Geiger: I'm familiar with those.

Irene Daria: They follow the order that I did with him. I taught him the word family "at" first. I taught him words that end in A-T, and then we celebrated him being able to read those words. Then we moved on to A-N. Every step that he took, there was a feeling of completion and accomplishment, and it was that continued feeling of accomplishment and awareness, and then giving him decodable readers. That was so difficult. For me to find decodable readers back then, it was impossible.

Anna Geiger: Oh yes.

Irene Daria: Now there are so many being written and being published, but even now if I go into a bookstore, they're really hard to find.

Anna Geiger: Definitely. That's true, but you found Bob Books, which is what we had back then, right?

Irene Daria: Right.

Anna Geiger: That was pretty much it.

Irene Daria: Right.

Anna Geiger: Eventually then, he was able to just read, like you would say, regular books. You talked about "Little Bear." I don't remember what other ones you talked about, because some of the ones that I would put in that category are probably more being published now, but that's the classic I Can Read book that was written for kids who are just starting to read. Nowadays, books at that same level would be like "Henry and Mudge" or "Poppleton." There are so many.

Irene Daria: We read those two.

Anna Geiger: That's where you want to go, right? It's when they've learned enough of the code that they can figure out some of those words they don't know, but still benefit from continued instruction. Would you agree?

Irene Daria: Yes.

Anna Geiger: Tell us now what you're doing in your tutoring. This is so fascinating, but you've actually worked with some famous people, so tell us about how that came about.

Irene Daria: Kate Winslet was my first famous client, and that happened because her kids went to the same preschool that Eric went to.

Anna Geiger: Interesting.

Irene Daria: I've been told I'm allowed to talk about this. I'm not going to talk too much about her kids, but the way she realized her daughter was having trouble reading. This is... I think US has that column called Celebrities are Just Like Us. Celebrities are just like us when it comes to reading, and their kids in school, and knowing, and not knowing.

Anna Geiger: Interesting.

Irene Daria: Her daughter was attending a private school in New York. At the time, Kate and her family were living in New York. They're now in London, but they had a house in Connecticut. They were in Connecticut at the time. This is a little similar to Eric's story. Her daughter picked up a book to read, and began reciting the words that were in a different book that looked similar that was in their apartment in New York City. So she was "reading" words from that other book thinking that it was the book that was in her hands.

Anna Geiger: Interesting.

Irene Daria: That's when Kate realized there was a problem, and she came and she brought her daughter. Then she brought her son. She's just the loveliest person. She is so down to earth. She is such a dedicated mother. She rolled up her sleeves and worked with her kids. She was right there doing everything that she could to support them.

Anna Geiger: Super neat. Anyone else that you're able to share, someone famous we might know?

Irene Daria: I've worked with Kate Blanchett's kids. I worked with Philip Seymour Hoffman's son on reading comprehension. I worked with Tom Brady and Bridget Moynihan's son on beginning reading. Lots of really interesting people.

Anna Geiger: That's amazing. So, tell us... Well, maybe we should wait and let people read the book to know what your son is up to now, but spoiler alert, he's doing very well.

I would highly recommend your book for anyone, especially obviously, of course, primary teachers, but also parents with kids in school.

Would you say... Like I mentioned earlier, I would say this was extreme balanced literacy at your son's school. It was more extreme than I was as a balanced literacy teacher, but I definitely saw things that I had done that were incorrect.

Would you say that things have improved in your area in general? Are you seeing improvements overall? I know the conversation has shifted more to the science of reading, but what has been your observation as a teacher especially?

Irene Daria: So, Eric's school introduced Fundations the year after his first grade year. They never said anything to me. I mean, his teacher told me, but they never said, "Oh, we learned a lot from your experience," but I was glad that that change happened at his school.

Lucy Calkins' work is based in New York City at Columbia, and her curriculum was throughout New York City public schools. She actually said in her letter in response to Margaret Goldberg's open letter, I don't know if you remember. She said, "The proof is in how well New York City children are doing with my curriculum." Well, New York City threw it out.

Anna Geiger: We also know from your book that the dirty little secret of the school was that so many parents were teaching their kids to read.

Irene Daria: Exactly.

Anna Geiger: If they struggled, they taught them. They were filling in the gaps left by what was supposedly a good program.

Irene Daria: That's the elephant in the room. That's actually how that curriculum got into the public schools in the first place, because the school's chancellor wanted every school in New York to have what schools in the well off Upper East Side and Upper West Side schools had. They were using this curriculum, but the parents were tutoring.

Anna Geiger: Oh my goodness, that's so interesting.

Irene Daria: No one thought to look at that confounding variable.

Anna Geiger: Oh, that's so interesting. I never thought about that, but I often talk about how in the schools that I taught in, they were small parochial schools, that it made sense, and balanced literacy was working for most of the kids, because most of the kids came from average middle class homes with experiences.

If you have anyone who doesn't have the experiences that maybe middle class or upper class kids have, they can't get through those leveled books because they don't know the vocabulary. To use that as an example and then think that was what everyone else needed to choose is horrifying right there. Super interesting.

Irene Daria: Anna, did you see balanced literacy working in your classroom? Were your students learning to read?

Anna Geiger: See, I think a lot of my... The kindergarten teacher did a lot of sounding out with them, so they were mostly coming to me able to sound out words. But when I had kids who struggled, just a basic sounding out, just a basic sound...

Irene Daria: You were first grade?

Anna Geiger: I taught first and second, but the first year was just first grade. It was a combination classroom, but the first year, it was just first grade.

I did have a student that year who didn't know her letters and sounds. She'd been in kindergarten for two years. Looking back, I would guess she had dyslexia. I'm almost sure of it, and probably severe dyslexia. I didn't have a systematic way of helping her, so I knew some sounding out was good, but I was trying to get her to memorize "the." It took three months before she could remember it. So obviously, what I was doing wasn't working.

I didn't have a plan for what to do for the kids who were struggling. I just had them do more leveled books.

To your point, at the very beginning stages, they didn't know your son was having a problem because he could memorize these patterns. I think that's what I was seeing with some of the kids.

Then the other kids, we know from Nancy Young's work that 40-50% of kids are going to learn to read with balanced literacy because they're built that way. They're going to figure it out. I think that most of my kids fit in that percentage.

What I look back and am really sad about is the kids that weren't in that, and even though they had good oral language and good background knowledge, they couldn't crack the code. Instead of giving them explicit phonics instruction using a diagnostic to finding out where they were at, I just said, "Well, we just need more practice."

That was something else you talked about too in the book, how you were showing that he was reading "Little Bear," which is in Fountas and Pinnell, it's like level J, but he was still stuck in the lower levels at school because those lower levels have so many words they can't sound out.

Irene Daria: Exactly.

Anna Geiger: If they can't figure out the pattern or the pattern's hard... I should say they shouldn't figure out the pattern, but they can't figure out that final word on the page, then that's where they get stuck.

I remember working with some kids, and the book was called "Amazing Machines," and it was like Level B or C, but you're supposed to tell them the title. Because I believed in this so much, I thought, "Well, I just need... If they can't do this, then we can't move on." It doesn't make any sense once you understand but...

Yeah, so I thought it was working. I mean, this is what I had learned, especially in graduate school, I would say. We didn't talk about this too much in my college, because that was late '90s, but in graduate school, early 2000s, it was very, very heavy balanced literacy. I didn't have any reason not to believe them.

I've talked about this before too, but I was swimming in that world. I wasn't reading anything else. I was reading Fountas and Pinnell, Lucy Calkins, Regie Routman, Sharon Taberski. They were all on that same page, and their books were so much fun to read and inspiring.

So, I thought... I don't know. I could go about that for a long time, but yes, I thought it was working.

Looking back, I can absolutely see the problems, and I think I would've seen them more if I'd have taught them in third grade, but I wasn't. I was teaching them still with those patterned books. I think maybe some of the gaps were being filled at home too, which I maybe just wasn't aware of.

I think it's exciting to see the tides changing. I think there's still a lot of work to be done, as we know.

I'm not sure if this is still true, but not long ago, Fountas and Pinnell was still the most widely used program in American schools. I think that people are becoming wise to that, and there are so many things, but the first step is getting the foundational skills piece, which is what you were aware of and were able to attack.

Irene Daria: Anna, do we still have time for a little bit, for one more thing?

Anna Geiger: Oh yeah, absolutely.

Irene Daria: You asked something else about what am I seeing as a tutor? So, New York is getting rid of Units of Study in two phases. Last September, it got rid of it in some schools. This September, it's getting rid of it in District 2, which is where Eric's school is located and other districts as well.

What I am seeing as a tutor... I tutor kids, a lot of kids, from a school that is still using Units of Study, but it's using the one that has the phonics element in it, and they also use Fundations. The kids are getting that phonics base, but I'm getting a lot of kids from the school anyway, because what they do, they teach Fundations, but they zip their way through it. The kids come to me, and they can recite their phonics rules. A little boy says, "I've learned short vowels, digraphs, r-controlled vowels".

I'm like, "R-controlled vowels? You're six years old! How can you know that phrase?" But they learned them. They know what they are.

If they're reading the decodable books, they are applying and reading, but the school is still sending home patterned books for them to read for homework.

Anna Geiger: Yes, exactly.

Irene Daria: I am seeing kids struggling. I'm seeing... I have a video that I actually... When I have time, I must put it on my website. It's of this little boy reading a patterned book saying, "How am I supposed to know that word? How am I supposed to know that word?" He knows his phonics rules; he knows what he's been taught. He knows what he can read. I mean, kids are a lot sharper than we give them credit for. They know what's up.

Another girl who is maybe a little less confident than this boy is, she's bringing home the patterned books, and she hates reading now. Even when a school thinks it's doing everything right, we have to get rid of those patterned books.

Anna Geiger: No, I 100% agree. That is something I hammer all the time, because you can't teach how to sound out words over here, and then give them practice material that doesn't let them do that.

I've told this story before, so people who listen to my podcast know this, but when my youngest... We have six kids, and our youngest is going to be in third grade. When he was in preschool, I taught him to read because I wanted to teach all my kids to read even though I don't homeschool them.

By that time, I understood about... I was learning about structured literacy and the science of reading, and I realized, "Okay, it's really important that I do structured phonics with him. I'm going to do that, and we're going to use these decodable books, which I had sparingly used with my other kids, very little, but I don't want to get rid of these leveled books. I really like them, so we're going to do both."

The very first day of teaching him to read after I knew he had good phonemic awareness, he had letters and sounds, we used the decodable book first. It was a Flyleaf book. It was like, "Sam. I am Sam. Sam." It was about a snake. Then I got the leveled book, and he started to read it very, very slowly. He was getting to those words at the end of the pattern, and he was trying to sound it out with what little knowledge he had. I said, "Oh, well, you actually can't do that. Let's use the picture."

That's when the light bulb finally went off. I'm like, "What am I doing? I'm completely confusing him. What is the point of this?"

So then I put them away, and we didn't get them back out again until he was just reading any old book. But those early patterned books aren't all that entertaining, so I don't think he ever picked those to read by himself.

But yes, that is the thing. I think Fundations is a very structured program, although people may have different opinions about its pacing and everything, but I think the problem is it doesn't actually come with decodable text. You have to buy those separately, and the Geodes, I think, go with them. I may not be right about that, but that's important.

If people get a structured phonics program, they need to make sure the reading material comes with it, because otherwise, teachers will have to say, "Well, what do we have? We're going to do this." That's very interesting.

Hopefully more schools will see that those are not useful for beginning readers. They might be something for teaching concepts of print with preschoolers, but when we're teaching kids to read, that's not what we should be using.

Any final words for people who are listening? I'll make sure to link to your website and your workbooks and your book, of course. Anything else you'd want to share?

Irene Daria: My hat really goes off to teachers. I think there's this massive change that's happening across the country. I lived through the previous change, or am aware of, in the year 2000 when the National Reading Panel first released its findings, it seemed like everything was going to change, and it didn't.

Now, it seems like... There have been other times where it seems like everything is going to change, and it didn't. I really think the reason change will happen now, why I really believe in it, is because of teachers. Being a teacher to me is the hardest and most important job that there is, I think. I think teachers are so underappreciated.

I especially think first grade teachers are so important because that year, if they learn to read or they don't, it makes or breaks a child's confidence.

Those are my parting words. You go, ladies and gentlemen, you teachers!

I think the reason things didn't change when whole language turned to balanced literacy... Ken Goodman wrote a book, and in the dedication to it, he dedicated it to teachers who... This is a loose quote, but something like they politely nodded when they were told what to do, and then closed their classroom doors, and continued doing what was not working.

But now, those doors are open, and teachers are on board, and that's going to make a world of difference for children.

Anna Geiger: Wonderful parting words. I can't say enough for teachers, and I love the work that I get to do. I'm not in the classroom now, but supporting teachers who I agree have the hardest, most exhausting job. When it goes well, when they have the right support and the right tools, it is so incredibly rewarding. We're so thankful for all those people, like you said, with their boots on the ground, doing the hard work.

I think teachers will enjoy this book, and I'm excited that hopefully we'll get it in more hands. Thanks so much for talking with me today.

Irene Daria: Thanks, Anna! It was great.

Anna Geiger: If you've ever seen my science of reading book list, it is very, very long. I've read all those books cover to cover. It's not often that I have one sitting on my desk, and I just pick it up to read while I'm having a snack or just sitting outside, but this was one of those books. I hope you will check it out. You can find links to Irene's book and her workbooks and her website in the show notes, which you can find at themeasuredmom.com/episode183. Talk to you next time!

Closing: That's all for this episode of Triple R Teaching. For more educational resources, visit Anna at her home base, themeasuredmom.com, and join our teaching community. We look forward to helping you reflect, refine, and recharge on the next episode of Triple R Teaching.

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I Didn’t Believe Him, by Irene Daria

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The post “I didn’t believe him” – How one mom learned that her son’s school wasn’t teaching him to read – with Dr. Irene Daria appeared first on The Measured Mom.

Which literacy assessments are worth you and your students’ time? – with Sean Morrisey

��TRT Podcast #180: Which literacy assessments are worth you and your students’ time? – with Sean Morrisey

Sean Morrisey, former school psychologist turned fifth grade teacher, walks us through the many different literacy assessments teachers administer. Which are useful, and which are a waste of time? You’ll love this practical episode!

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Hello, this is Anna Geiger from The Measured Mom, and in today's episode I'm interviewing Sean Morrisey, a former school psychologist, now a fifth grade teacher. We're going to talk about the problems with over-testing, particularly over-testing literacy in schools. We're going to talk about what types of assessments there are, what's their purpose, which ones are not very useful, and why it's important to choose just a few assessments for specific purposes, rather than go completely overboard. I hope you'll get a lot out of this episode. Let's get started!

Anna Geiger: Welcome, Sean!

Sean Morrisey: Hi, Anna!

Anna Geiger: I'm so glad you're here. I enjoy seeing all your comments on X, as we call it now, and especially about vocabulary. Then I just got the book "Know Better, Do Better" by David and Meredith Liben, and I see that you have made your way into that book quite a bit. They talk to you a lot about some of the things they were sharing about building knowledge and vocabulary.

I know you know many things as a teacher, but today we're going to narrow in on assessments and the problem with over-testing.

Before we do that though, can you talk to us about your history as an educator and what got you to the classroom?

Sean Morrisey: Yeah, so with my history, my path is a little bit different. I went to graduate school for school psychology, and I became a certified school psychologist. I worked as a school psychologist for about eight years. Probably five years in I realized, "Ooh, I really want to go in the classroom and just teach." I have a lovely wife who took care of the three kids for about a year when I was kind of trying to do both, so I could go back to school. I became a certified teacher and I've been teaching for, I think this is my 17th year as a teacher.

Anna Geiger: Okay, so for people who might wonder, what is the big difference between being a school psychologist and a classroom teacher in terms of responsibilities? A lot, I know.

Sean Morrisey: Yeah, I mean there are kind of silly things, like the silly things I didn't realize when I became a teacher like, oh, your bathroom times, you've got to really space that out!

Anna Geiger: Yeah, no more drinking water!

Sean Morrisey: No. As a school psych, you can plan that easier.

As a school psychologist, a big part of my job was kind of assessing kids for learning disabilities who were kind of brought to child study teams and things like that, even as early as first grade. I think early on I realized, wow, reading is so key with academic success and it's just a major component of schooling. With all that time spent we're just kind of assessing for, "Does this child have a reading disability or not?" And then, "Do they qualify for special education services?" That was hard to do.

In the changeover, I just wanted to get in the classroom and actually teach and just have 20 to 25 kids where I could focus on their instruction. It was hard because you just had a lot of talking with teachers, trying to consult, and I don't think that was my forte. I think my forte is more teaching kids. Yeah, for sure.

Anna Geiger: So you come to this from a different angle than a traditional classroom teacher because assessment was a major part of your study to be a school psychologist. Whereas for teachers, I think it's just kind of shoved in there when there's time.

Maybe we can start by just talking about what's out there in terms of literacy assessments, and then we can start breaking down what's actually useful.

Sean Morrisey: In my district, and in my school, I think of about five different assessments that are out there.

You have curriculum based measures, and I still refer to them as that because of my school psych background, like Acadience or DIBELS or AIMSweb. My district early on uses AIMSweb for kindergarten and first grade.

You have those measures kind of screening for early literacy skills, and as the kids grow up we're talking about oral reading, what is their rate, their accuracy, and even some prosody as well. You have those measures that schools use, and they're pretty widely used now, for sure.

You have other measures that have come from the balanced literacy realm, informal reading inventories like the Benchmark Assessment System. My district still calls it Fountas and Pinnell, or even in my school, up until recently, we used Teachers College running records.

Anna Geiger: Okay.

Sean Morrisey: Yeah, so with those inventories, it's basically, like your viewers probably know, kids read a leveled text, answer questions, and then depending on how well they do, they're given a letter like A through Z where they fall on that.

Anna Geiger: Is the DRA like that? I haven't used it, but I've heard of it. Is that similar to the Benchmark Assessment System?

Sean Morrisey: Yeah, I think the DRA is. That's not one that I'm super familiar with, but I think they have a similar leveling system as well.

Anna Geiger: Okay.

Sean Morrisey: Yeah, yeah. So you've got the curriculum based measures like Acadience, you've got running records, and now I think it's gaining market share, I would call it the computer adaptive tests, that's like i-Ready and STAR. My district uses i-Ready kindergarten through I think eighth grade now.

Anna Geiger: Oh, wow.

Sean Morrisey: Yeah, these are tests where it's all on the computer, even for kindergartners, which we'll talk about in a little bit, which yeah, I shake my head at that as well. They're adaptive where based on the previous five answers, they'll change the level of difficulty.

Anna Geiger: So it kind of decides for you where you're going to fall pretty early on if you make some mistakes.

Sean Morrisey: Yeah, pretty early on if you make mistakes, and I think a guess here or there can dramatically change where you're headed.

For i-Ready in fifth grade, kids will spend probably about two sessions an hour each, so two hours taking that test on the computer, and it kind of gives you an overall norm reference score. It'll say like, "Oh, you're at the 50th percentile, so you've done better than 50 out of a 100 kids in fifth grade." They also have kind of a cut point of are you at a fifth grade level?

Anna Geiger: Okay.

Sean Morrisey: That's how they do that. Usually the cut points, from what I've read, are based on your state assessments. It's interesting, the cut point for i-Ready is the 66th percentile, so if you're at the 66th percentile or better, you're on grade level. If you're below that, you're not on grade level-

Anna Geiger: Interesting.

Sean Morrisey: ... which is kind of an interesting point.

Anna Geiger: Yeah.

Sean Morrisey: Yeah, yeah. We also have the typical state tests that kind of test general reading comprehension and a little bit of general writing to prompts. They're not really diagnostic in nature, but you get the info of are you proficient as the state says at a fifth grade level?

Anna Geiger: Are those multiple times a year or just the end of the year?

Sean Morrisey: For New York, it's just once a year.

Anna Geiger: Like the outcome assessment?

Sean Morrisey: Yeah, so it's a difference from when we talked about the CBMs, the running records, and the computer adaptive tests, most districts give those three times a year. The state test is once a year, and then you may have multiple ones, depending on the state. Our state has two days for ELA, two days for math, and now fifth grade has one day for science.

That was new for us this year.

For science, it was basically kind of like a warm reading test, so it was a reading test, but based on scientific topics they covered in grades three through five. For fifth grade, it was long. The average student took about two hours and forty minutes to complete it. Think about that.

Anna Geiger: Wow, wow. So maybe before we get into which ones are... Did you list all the ones you wanted to talk about?

Sean Morrisey: Yeah, just one other thing because I think there's a lot of talk about K-2 because we talk about early literacy a lot, but when you get into upper elementary and middle school, districts are doing a lot of standards-based assessments. They'll have those three times a year where basically it's a passage and there might be main idea questions and they try to mirror it like the state assessment because they want to know, "How are the kids going to do on this?" It should be like the state assessment. That's just an additional test that some kids take.

Anna Geiger: So before we talk about the ones that are a problem, why so many tests? Where does that come from?

Sean Morrisey: I am kind of flummoxed. That's the word. I just don't...

I think district administrators think we need all of these tests, we need to test the kids on all these things, and we need to have tests on the computer. We definitely need early literacy CBMs, but I am still kind of baffled as to why we need four or five different tests throughout the year.

One thing that I don't think is talked about enough is time. At the start of the year, do we ever think about how much instructional time we want to set aside for testing?

I've never heard anyone in any district ever say, "Ooh, we're going to only spend 5% of our instructional time testing," because if we really looked at the time, I think teachers see it, but I think administrators, their eyes would be wide open if they saw how much instructional time we're losing.

Yeah, I just don't know where it came from historically. It seems like a lot.

I mean, in some regards, I guess in one case, like, I think i-Ready. Teachers in New York state get rated and we get a HEDI score. Years ago i-Ready put in how you can use i-Ready for the HEDI score, so-

Anna Geiger: What's HEDI score?

Sean Morrisey: I don't know what it stands for, but-

Anna Geiger: How do you spell that?

Sean Morrisey: H-E-D-I. It's basically how effective we are as teachers.

Anna Geiger: Okay.

Sean Morrisey: In grades three through five, up until recently, our effectiveness was based on how the kids improved on i-Ready, which that's another whole podcast.

Anna Geiger: Ooh. Yes, it is.

Sean Morrisey: Maybe for administrators, that was was easy. It was like, "Oh, this is easy. We don't have to think about creating anything. It's there." Yeah, yeah.

Anna Geiger: So I guess when we think about the point of the testing, so we know CBMs... I usually just call them universal screeners because I still don't understand the phrase curriculum-based measurement. I don't get that, even though I've read the definition a million times.

Universal screeners we know are to find out who's at risk so we can give the proper instruction, so that's supposed to be very directly connected to instruction.

Then we would say for things like running records and Fountas and Pinnell's Benchmark Assessment System, those are supposed to be connected to instruction too, it's just that they don't do what they say they do.

Sean Morrisey: Right.

Anna Geiger: So they're not... Well now we're getting into something else, but that's what they're supposed to be. I'll wait until we talk about what's problematic, but-

Sean Morrisey: Yeah, yeah.

Anna Geiger: And then what about i-Ready, is that supposed to be a screener?

Sean Morrisey: Yeah, so i-Ready, well, that one's interesting because they call it a diagnostic assessment, but as we talk about that, it's like they use it as a screener and a diagnostic assessment. I would say it's definitely, for fifth grade, more of a screener and not a diagnostic assessment. And we'll talk about why, yeah.

Anna Geiger: Oh boy. So then the state tests are more like the outcome-based assessment to see if they learned what they were supposed to learn in school. But it seems like we're sometimes doing the same thing twice. Is that what you see happening?

Sean Morrisey: That's perfect. Why have multiple comprehension measures? Basically, your computer adaptive tests like i-Ready are really, for fifth grade, a comprehension assessment. There are basically three domains: comprehending literature, comprehending information, and then they have a vocabulary part. The early phonics and decoding, by fifth grade, those measures are so easy, the kids have basically tested out, so you're not really diagnosing anything there.

So if you have an outcome measure, like a state test, and you can see at the end of third grade how those kids do, then with i-Ready in fourth grade, you're basically testing the same thing.

But then schools say, "Oh, but we can look at the i-Ready scores, and they'll sort of predict what the kids will do on the state test." They do an okay job of predicting, but it's just another measure that's the same. We already know with the state assessment how they're going to do on a measure like that.

Anna Geiger: What's the point of knowing how they're going to do? If it seems like they're not going to do well, then you're supposed to do something about it? Or you're just supposed to know, "Okay, this is how they're going to do." Is it supposed to affect instruction?

Sean Morrisey: Well, I mean, I think in some regards schools will look at how kids will do. But with i-Ready, and I think this is the big issue, it's labeled as a diagnostic assessment, so all the teachers think it's a diagnostic assessment.

It has a vocabulary sub-tests, so it kind of teases out vocabulary a little bit, but you don't know really if a student is scoring far below grade level based on decoding. Maybe they're only reading 50 words a minute. Or is it based on vocabulary or things like that? It's hard to tease out with that.

Anna Geiger: Just as a review for anyone listening, because I wouldn't have known this five years ago, the difference between a universal screener and a diagnostic is a screener tells you who's at risk and the diagnostic is supposed to help you dial in and figure out what exactly the problem is. But not all kids need a diagnostic assessment.

Sean Morrisey: Correct.

Anna Geiger: Teachers are dialing in to figure out what the problem is to know what they need to do to fix it. So yeah, those tests that have these broad things that they're testing aren't useful in that way.

Which ones would you say are just problematic all around?

Sean Morrisey: I think the most problematic are running records, like the Benchmark Assessment System or Teachers College running records. I think they're really problematic because of a few things.

Number one, even if they were really good assessments, it takes so long to administer.

Anna Geiger: It just takes so long, so long. I know.

Sean Morrisey: Coming from the school psych realm, I was always big into data. I'm still very much a data guy.

I actually figured out, I estimated, how much instructional time that takes to complete running records three times a year for a typical fifth grade class, in our district that's like 24. I mean, if you're doing them like you're supposed to, that's like 30 minutes a kid three times a year, so you're talking 36 hours just completing an assessment to get a "level", which really doesn't mean very much at all.

Anna Geiger: Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Sean Morrisey: When you talk about instructional time... I kind of break up my day into literacy, and I group science and social into that. Science, social, and ELA to me are all literacy and math is kind of separate. I figured out doing running records takes about 9% of our instructional minutes for the year.

Anna Geiger: Ooh. Well, that's a really good way to look at it. The percentage of your time really makes you think.

Sean Morrisey: 9%.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, and sometimes they can take more than 30 minutes, especially as they get older and they're reading longer texts.

I was a big running records person. I taught teachers how to give running records because I thought that information was valuable. I thought, "Well, this is what I need to know because I need to find their level and move them up, and this is the best way to figure that out."

Also, and this is the thing that people will still say about running records, which I understand, that you get so much out of listening to them read.

I agree that it is very valuable to listen to kids read. The problem of course with running records is you're trying to figure out what queuing system they're using, which is not what we're trying to figure out.

You can listen to them read when you're doing ORF with your universal screener, you get a lot out of that. Then there are places there to make notes about particular reading behaviors that they have. There are ways to listen to them read that actually give you useful information, and we want to listen to them read often anyway.

Sean Morrisey: Yeah, this has been brought up probably in the last month or two by others about if we're moving away from running records, are we listening kids read enough?

I think you could easily... I don't even think you need to administer an oral reading fluency measure. For instance, today, we were reading One Crazy Summer in my class, that's our novel for the next month, and students were chorally reading a few pages. Sometimes I'll sort of be like the leader where I'll lead the choral reading and I'll pace it out. Sometimes I have students do that.

Anna Geiger: Okay.

Sean Morrisey: So today one student was being the pacer, and I was just walking around listening during choral reading time, listening to kids read right there.

Or if we're reading, like today, we were reading an article and students were repeatedly reading that article, like alternating paragraphs. Well, I'm walking around and listening to kids read there as well. I think you can easily do that in your school day. Yeah, for sure.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, thanks for pointing that out because many teachers are thinking about how to do reading instruction that's not primarily small group. Guided reading was primarily small group; there wasn't much whole class instruction at all. It's helpful to think about how you can listen to kids read. I know that choral reading is really valuable, and everybody's got to be reading, and you can check and see who needs support too.

What about computer adaptive tests?

Sean Morrisey: Yeah, so I would call computer adaptive tests the "meh." That's kind of how I phrase it. I wouldn't say they're terrible. I think they're better than maybe spending so much time on running records because they don't take nearly as much time.

Anna Geiger: You said i-Ready is one of them. Are there any other ones you can list from here?

Sean Morrisey: I think the big ones are i-Ready and STAR. I think those are used a lot in our country. i-Ready is used in our district at K-8, and it takes, I would say throughout the whole year, probably about six hours. So it doesn't take the 36 hours of running records, but six hours is still six hours.

And what are you gaining from them? What information are you gaining? It's a screener. Is it predicting how well they'll do on a proficiency measure like the state test? Yeah, I think it does an okay job with that. I think the research shows it does a decent job, but how is it helping you with instruction?

For me, it doesn't really help me too much with instruction, and that's why I'm not the biggest fan. When you look at kindergarten and first grade, I don't think there's one teacher out there using computer adaptive tests that say they like it for their kids. I mean, they're kindergarteners. You're spending time trying to teach them how to manipulate the mouse or click on things. I think that's kind of silly.

Anna Geiger: I remember when I was a first grade teacher, I don't know if this was a new thing, but they decided to do the fill in the bubbles for my first grade for the first time. It was maddening, maddening because I think all of it was so overwhelming to them. They were marking things wrong that I knew they knew. I knew they knew the answer, but they were just, I don't know. But I couldn't say anything. It was maddening. I thought, "This is just too much for them." It was just too much. And that wasn't with a computer screen.

Yeah, and the universal screening with the little kids is really fun to do actually. I get to volunteer to do that at my kids' school. It's amazing to me how much you get from a little kid in 10 minutes about seeing what they can do, and what they're struggling with, and comparing them to the people in their group. I can say, "Oh, I can see that a lot of kids are struggling with this," or, "This kid is an outlier," either in the higher or low direction. You can get a lot out of 10 minutes, so it's really great when teachers can do that.

But for teachers to do it, it's got to be quick, right? It's got to be really efficient.

Sean Morrisey: Yeah, and I think some of the issues with the computer adaptive tests too is what they do with the data. You have to be sort of an expert in data analysis to understand where the weaknesses are. Teachers, they don't go through test construction methods class.

There's a term called standard error of measurement, so basically any test that kids take in reading, it's not an exact score. There's a range. On an i-Ready in fifth grade if you score at the 50th percentile, so you're doing better than 50 out of a 100 kids, really the range is you're doing better than 40-60% of the kids.

And that's not 100%. There's only a 68% chance that you're falling between the 40th and 60th percentile. So just based on error, there's a third chance that you're below the 40th percentile or above the 60th percentile. We're not talking about a specific exact reading score. I mean the range is huge.

I even heard a story where students were getting ice cream parties for improving on i-Ready from their start score to their end score. Some kids who are really, really strong readers, they didn't "go up enough" so they didn't get the party, but they were grade levels above in reading.

Anna Geiger: Oh my goodness. Oh, that's very sad.

Sean Morrisey: Yeah.

Anna Geiger: Wow.

Sean Morrisey: You just shake your head on decision making like that when you just know...

Coming into fifth grade when the kids take i-Ready in the fall, I know the four or five kids who are going to make the least amount of growth on i-Ready because they scored a certain score in fourth grade, and on fifth grade they did markedly better. But that was error, that's by chance. You know they're not going to do that well in the future or vice versa.

I'll have kids who scored maybe in the 80th percentile in fourth grade in the fall, winter, and spring. They were consistently above grade level, and then they scored in the 40th percentile in the fall of fifth grade. Well, I know I don't even have to teach them that year and they're going to do better by the end of the year. There's error there. No one ever talks about that kind of stuff.

Anna Geiger: So what would the school leadership say in terms of why you're doing i-Ready?

Sean Morrisey: I think to collect data and to see which kids are struggling, so we could use that data point to put kids into different reading groups and things like that.

My thought to that is I think we could use other measures that do a better job, that will group kids even better than i-Ready.

That's kind of my thing, that it's not the best assessment for that. Even these tests, they'll group the kids based on how they answered the questions, but when veteran teachers look at the groups they are like, "I would never put that student with that student." They have different needs, and i-Ready is not picking that up.

Anna Geiger: So does i-Ready try to do the grouping for you?

Sean Morrisey: Yeah, they'll do the grouping for you. They'll say this is this group. They'll give you some general things like, "Oh, these kids generally need this." And then...

Well, they have their intervention part as well where they say, "Now it's adaptive so wherever they fell on this test, here are computer lessons that the kids could use that are basically tailored to that student."

Anna Geiger: Ooh, I don't like that at all. I think computers can only do so many things and no, I don't like that idea of the computer giving them their intervention either, but that's a whole different story I guess.

Sean Morrisey: Yeah.

Anna Geiger: So we've talked about how it's a problem to do too many because it's a terrible time drain. You said in your district some teachers are spending over 15% of instructional time completing assessments, and that's crazy because teachers are always saying we need more time, right? We always do, every day.

Sean Morrisey: Right, right.

Anna Geiger: And you're saying that more is not better when you have that opportunity cost, especially if teachers don't know what to do with it or it's giving you data or guidance that maybe isn't good.

Sean Morrisey: Right.

Anna Geiger: Anything else that you can share that might be a problem with giving too many?

Sean Morrisey: Yeah, I think just even additional ones. For instance, sometimes districts will try to create standards based assessments where we're like... The state test scores will come back and you get all these kind of piles and piles of data. For instance, "Your kids did bad on this question, it was main idea." Well, when you get down to it...

For instance, one year we realized where it might've been coded as main idea, but the question asked, "What was the benefit?" Well, the kids didn't know what "benefit" meant.

Anna Geiger: Right, right.

Sean Morrisey: It must've been like seven or eight years ago, and that kind of spurred my big learning about vocabulary because I realized, "Oh, I'm assuming that kids in fifth grade know some of these words and they really don't."

It was coded as find the main idea, but it was really that the kids didn't know what benefit meant. So the districts will say, "Oh, we need to teach kids how to find the main idea better. We need to come up with more lessons on all these different passages for main idea," which is just the total opposite of what you really want to do.

I mean, it's hard because even Tim Shanahan has blogged about this. I think he probably has five blogs about these standards based assessments and every one he starts off with, "Dear Administrators, you're not going to like this." That's how he starts it. But still, it feels like many, many districts still want to do this, and it's just not probably the best practice.

Anna Geiger: Is that similar to, let's say with a universal screener, if someone does poorly on the nonsense word fluency assessment and the teacher says, "Oh, so now we've got to do lots of nonsense word reading as the solution." Is it similar to that where they score badly?

Sean Morrisey: Yeah, that's a great analogy.

Anna Geiger: So you're not getting at the root of the issue. Okay. Yeah. Just because you score badly on a main idea assessment, there are many other things that go into that is what you're saying, like vocabulary and all kinds of things.

We've talked about a lot of problems with assessments, but of course we know assessments are important and useful. If teachers had a choice, what should they do?

Sean Morrisey: Yeah, so I think this is key. I'm a big fan of screeners like Acadience. Early on, in kindergarten and first grade, assessing early literacy skills with phoneme segmentation fluency or even nonsense words is important to see if they're picking up the decoding skill.

Then as you move along, oral reading fluencies are so predictive of how kids are going to comprehend what they read.

I've actually had some data where in my classroom over a span of about four years, kids who are below the 60th percentile on oral reading fluency, like Acadience or AIMSweb, I haven't had one student proficient on the ELA assessment if they're below that. That's a pretty high correlation. So even if you're at the 50th percentile of fluency, I still haven't had one student proficient on the state ELA assessment, and our ELA assessment is pretty hard, so boy is that a big indicator.

I really like oral reading fluency measures. They're brief, they're standardized, all the kids are getting the same one, and you can progress monitor. They're more sensitive to improvement compared to the other measures that we talked about.

But it's hard because with the other measures, they know "progress monitoring" is a key word in academics now, so they'll put in, "Oh, aside from these three benchmarks, you can do progress monitoring." But on computer adaptive tests, I've done progress monitoring to see how close it would be, and the variability was crazy. It wasn't even... It's not like on Acadience where you're reading 100 words today, two weeks from now you might be at 108, then you go down to maybe 105, then up to 116. This is like you were at the 25th percentile, then you're at the 80th percentile, not even in the same geographical area.

Anna Geiger: So they haven't clearly tested these to make sure...

Just for teachers to know, because again, this is not something I would've understood five years ago, but the point of the screener is to figure out who's at risk and then you can dig deeper. So if someone is, like you said, below 60% on ORF, well then we have to figure out why. Is it a word reading problem? Is it a comprehension problem? If it's an accuracy issue, it's probably a word reading problem.

Now we give them the diagnostic phonics assessment so we know what to teach. Then that progress monitoring that we do every week or every two weeks, which is very, very fast, like a minute or two, that measures if what we're doing is working.

If it's a word reading issue and we're doing some multisyllable word intervention for 20 minutes a day, and we find out in two weeks that there's still no growth and we keep testing, but after six weeks there's still no growth, then we need to be doing something different. That's the point of progress monitoring to see if it's working.

But we have to start with something, and the nice thing is not everybody needs the diagnostic unless you're using it to form groups that might be useful. Do I have that right?

Sean Morrisey: Right. Yeah, I would say you're exactly right. I mean, if students are in first grade and they're reading 80 words a minute, they're breaking the phonics code. You don't have to do a phonics survey with them. They're on the path to strong reading, for sure.

Anna Geiger: I know a lot of people ask about comprehension assessments, and the ORF does correlate very well with comprehension. If kids are reading accurately at an appropriate rate, then most likely they understand what they're reading. But we do have kids who might be reading and not being able to answer any questions about it or talk about it.

Have you found any comprehension diagnostic assessments that you like?

Sean Morrisey: Yeah, so I'm going to throw this one out there. I think of it more with vocabulary.

I'll give you a little bit of data from my classroom. When I go back to what I said where if you're below the 60th percentile on oral reading fluency, zero students were proficient in the state assessment. If you're above that, it's between 70 and 80%, so there's still 20 or 30% of those kids not proficient on the state assessment. So what's the reason?

For me, and this is a little bit anecdotal, but there's some research to back this up. I think vocabulary is a main piece. I think quick measures of vocabulary where it's still in the field, there's not much out there, as kind of a screener.

I think it's very, very important, so I do vocabulary measures that I've created, or I've used a couple of others. I give them to students, and they do very, very well predicting what students will be proficient on comprehension measures. I think they actually predict better how kids will do on comprehension measures versus two comprehension measures correlating with one another, if that kind of makes sense.

I'll give you a couple of examples. Here's an example of a multiple choice question looking at more academic vocabulary. "In subsequent weeks, we learned how to protect earth's resources," and the word subsequent is underlined. The four choices on what does subsequent mean are "earlier, later, superior, main." Do they know what that academic word is?

Here's another example, "The group comprises ten individuals." Comprises would be underlined. Does that mean "include, nominate, exclude, co-opt"?

Questions like that you could very quickly administer as a class. I found personally in my classroom that as a screener, they work really, really well.

Another one I do that's such a good screener is when there are four words, and I call it Odd One Out. One word is different than the other three.

I'll give you an example, "assemble, congregate, convene, disband." Obviously in that one, disband is breaking apart and convene, congregate, and assemble are groups or something being put together.

I have found that those kinds of questions really will put my kids into groups. Kids who do really well on that, they always are proficient. Kids who struggle on those types of vocabulary, well that's one reason they're not meeting these proficiency levels on comprehension tests.

I've been able to predict up until about 95% accuracy which kids will be proficient on the state assessment by using ORF and a quick vocabulary measure, which I don't think you can really ever get better than that. That's pretty high.

Anna Geiger: Okay, so if they do poorly on your vocabulary assessment, then what? How do you help those kids?

Sean Morrisey: In my classroom, vocabulary is kind of embedded throughout the day. I think with vocabulary compared to decoding, it's more whole group instruction, really teaching words, using words, and trying to embed even morphology all day long because kids just need just many, many language experiences throughout the school day.

Anna Geiger: Do you do anything different for those kids who you noticed were doing poorly on vocabulary?

Sean Morrisey: I think the big thing is multiple exposures. I have a really great relationship with my reading specialist in my building.

Anna Geiger: Okay.

Sean Morrisey: She knows exactly what topics in science and social and primary vocabulary words I'm using. She in many cases is giving kids many more exposures in a small group, so they have just more opportunities. That's one way that's been working out really nicely this year.

Anna Geiger: That makes a lot of sense. She's not just trying to build a vocabulary by picking more words, but she's taking the words you're already teaching and teaching them, like you said, and giving more exposures, which is what those kids probably need.

That's very helpful to think about what you do with that particular information. Anything else to share about what teachers can do with assessment results?

Sean Morrisey: Yeah, I think we're trying to get into the weeds too much with all of these different assessments.

I think we should just kind of take more of a simple view of reading. Obviously there are more factors, like sometimes kids aren't strategic readers or they're struggling with text features. But when we're thinking about the basics, is it a decoding problem, is it a language problem, or is it both?

If it's a decoding problem, you need to get to a certain threshold with decoding to improve your comprehension, so more time has to be spent there either in intervention or in Tier 1 in the classroom.

If it's a vocabulary problem, well, we need more intervention in vocabulary.

The issue is when kids struggle in both and we have a lot of work on our hands. Those students may need more instructional time throughout the day, maybe after school experiences or before school experiences, things like that.

Anna Geiger: That's why, like you said, teamwork is so important.

And that's why we want our Tier 1 to be strong, so we don't need them to be doing something necessarily completely different in intervention if our Tier 1 is strong. Then it can be more intense, more supported, and more small group.

In general, just to sum up, we talked about how there are lots of literacy assessments, but what we really want to figure out is who's at risk? Then we need to figure out what to do to help them, and maybe this might be something to share with an administrator who is over-testing.

I know you know a lot about this, and you haven't seen a lot of change in your district, or have you? Any advice for teachers who want to know what to do?

Sean Morrisey: Yeah, I think there is change. Even in my school, I have a wonderful principal, and she made running records optional.

Anna Geiger: Okay.

Sean Morrisey: She didn't want to just mandate it because some teachers are still transitioning in that, but now they're not mandated. Now as a fifth grade teacher, I don't have to spend loads and loads of time doing that.

But it's having these discussions with administrators, and I think for administrators to kind of just... I think the big thing is to think about how many minutes of instruction you have and how much time do you want to set aside for assessment. If it's 15% of your instructional time, I think using common sense, that's just too much. It should be probably down to about 5% at most.

Anna Geiger: So really the big question to ask is, what are we getting out of this assessment and is it worth the time we're putting into it?

Sean Morrisey: Yeah.

Anna Geiger: Is it informing our instruction?

Well, thank you. Is there anything else you'd like to share about assessment or anything else?

Sean Morrisey: I've been a big fan of your website and podcast, so I just very much appreciate you having me on.

I think teachers will be nodding their heads, like, "Yep, that makes sense. That makes sense." It's just a matter of how do we get everyone in the educational world, including administrators, sort of on the same page, and how are we using this?

Maybe one more point is sometimes when you test too much, then we take a lot of time analyzing the results. I know in lots of districts, especially when we're giving tons of fall assessments, they don't want to make groups until after those assessments are done and after analysis. Then students aren't getting intervention for four to five weeks after the start of the school year.

Anna Geiger: Oof, yeah, yeah.

Sean Morrisey: My recommendation would be to ask how many of these assessments do we need to do in the fall since we have spring scores, and let's right away on the second day of school get these kids into groups. Then we can do quick brief screening assessments after the fact. Do we need to wait five weeks before intervening?

Anna Geiger: Yeah, no. The answer would be no.

Well, thank you so much. I think for teachers a good start is just to understand all the vocabulary around all this so they can have intelligent conversations about it, because I think it can be really overwhelming. For teachers who maybe don't have your background, they may not be aware of all the types of assessment and why they're useful. I'll probably put some links in the show notes that can help people that are still figuring that out. Stephanie Stollar does a great job explaining assessments.

Then for anyone who's interested in vocabulary, I'll link to your podcast episode with Melissa and Lori because that was a really great one about how to teach vocabulary and that can be applied across the grades too.

Sean Morrisey: Yeah, I would agree with you about Stephanie Stollar with MTSS, she just does a nice job explaining it in very understandable terms.

It's interesting that you mention her because I just put an email out to my principal and a couple other individuals suggesting maybe we can get together and listen to her, she was recently on a podcast. I think we do a pretty good job at our school, but after listening to that, maybe we could even do a little bit better. She just hits everything perfectly on how to intervene and use time efficiently and that sort of thing.

Anna Geiger: Yeah, for sure, for sure. Well, thank you so much! I really appreciate your time.

Sean Morrisey: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Anna Geiger: You can find the show notes for this episode at themeasuredmom.com/episode180. Talk to you next time!

Closing: That's all for this episode of Triple R Teaching. For more educational resources visit Anna at her home base, themeasuredmom.com, and join our teaching community. We look forward to helping you reflect, refine, and recharge on the next episode of Triple R Teaching.

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Resources to learn moreStephanie Stollar’s podcast episode on using MTSS Sean Morrisey’s podcast episode on vocabulary instruction with Melissa & Lori Love Literacy

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What I wish I’d known about dyslexia

��TRT Podcast 178: What I wish I’d known about dyslexia

As a classroom teacher, I had heard of dyslexia – and that’s about it. In this episode I share what I wish I’d known about this common learning disability.��

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Hello, Anna Geiger here, and my book is almost out! I'm so excited to be here with you and talk to you about dyslexia.

Before I do that, I want to share a quick endorsement for the book from the wonderful Virginia Quinn-Mooney. She's a moderator for What I Should Have Learned in College, she's the host of The Science of Reading Happy Hour, and she's an amazing teacher. She very generously read an advanced copy of the book, and she had this to say.

"My own science of reading journey is a lot like Anna's. I put a lot of hours into self-education. I wish this book was available when I started. It's established that students learn to read best when their teachers follow a strong scope and sequence and provide direct systematic instruction. Teachers learning about the science of reading need the same. Every page and chapter of 'Reach All Readers' equips teachers to best serve all students. As a SOR geek, I couldn't put it down. As a dedicated practitioner, I will return to it often."

Thank you so much, Gin, for reading the book and for sharing your feedback.

Let's talk today a little bit about dyslexia. When I was a classroom teacher, dyslexia was one of those words I'd heard of, but really didn't know anything about. I probably thought that kids with dyslexia see words backwards, which is a pervasive myth that just won't go away. I thought that dyslexia was rare, that it was something too complicated for me to understand and something I couldn't do anything about. I've learned a lot since then.

It's very interesting that many parents of kids with dyslexia have actually brought the science of reading into the mainstream in terms of people talking about it now, and people want to know what their schools are doing with explicit, systematic instruction. It's because many kids with dyslexia were not served by balanced literacy. Balanced literacy is not explicit and systematic enough for kids who are struggling with word recognition, specifically kids with dyslexia.

Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that leads to difficulties with accurate or fluent word recognition. Kids with dyslexia struggle with spelling and decoding, and they may struggle in spite of strong instruction.

Dyslexia occurs on a spectrum, so for some kids on the low end of the spectrum, they could get really good systematic instruction and you may not even know that they have dyslexia. Whereas on the other hand, we may have some students who receive very good instruction, but they still need extra support because they need a lot more repetitions and a lot more scaffolding and breaking things down.

There are different estimates for how prevalent it is. Dr. Sally Shaywitz, I think she goes up to 20%, and that's the highest one I've seen. I typically see more around 10%. It really depends on how you define it and where you put the cutoff points. But in general, let's say about 10% of our student population has dyslexia. Even 10% is a lot of kids. If you have a class of 20, then probability-wise, two of your students could have dyslexia.

As classroom teachers, we all have a responsibility to understand what dyslexia is. To be clear, dyslexia is neurobiological, so it's a brain-based learning disability. It is hereditary, so a lot of families where the parents had trouble reading, the kids have trouble reading, and maybe because they both have dyslexia.

Dyslexia is often called a surprising disability because we often see it in people who don't seem like they would have a reading problem. Their oral language may be very good. Their comprehension of what's read to them may be very good, but they struggle with getting words off the page.

When I look back to my teaching experience, I can definitely think of students like that. Unfortunately, I didn't know what dyslexia was and I didn't know how to help them, so instead I just had them read more. But these kids need a lot more than just reading more. They need explicit instruction in the code.

Something else I assumed as a teacher was that, well, if my students have dyslexia, that's not even something I can handle. There's nothing I could do about that. But when a teacher understands the science of reading - what we know from research about how we learn to read and what best practices are for the different key areas like phonemic awareness and phonics, and when a teacher understands the science of learning - how to break things down, how to avoid cognitive overload, how to provide scaffolding and feedback, then they are equipped to teach students with dyslexia.

Now, that does not mean that your regular classroom instruction will be enough. If they have more severe dyslexia, then they may need additional instruction in Tier 2 or Tier 3. They need more and better instruction. By better I just mean more repetitions, more explicit teaching, more breaking it down.

As a teacher, the more you understand about the science of reading and the science of learning, the better able you are to teach all the students in your classroom, including those who may have dyslexia.

My book "Reach All Readers" will equip you to reach all the readers in your classroom. I break down the research in all the key areas, provide practical ways to apply it, and then in the final chapter, chapter 11, I talk about MTSS. This is a system that you can use to determine what your students need to learn and when, and how you can support students, including those with dyslexia, who need extra help using school-wide systems for providing intervention.

I'm really excited that this book is almost out! If you haven't pre-ordered yet, you can do that through Amazon, Thriftbooks, Barnes & Noble, any other place that you can buy books online. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you next time!

That's all for this episode of Triple R Teaching. For more educational resources, visit Anna at her home base, themeasuredmom.com. And join our teaching community. We look forward to helping you reflect, refine, and recharge on the next episode of Triple R Teaching.

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A simple way to improve comprehension through writing

��TRT Podcast 177: A simple way to improve comprehension through writing

Research tells us that students comprehend text better when they write about it. Here’s how to use a simple sentence expansion activity to improve comprehension.��

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Hello, this is Anna Geiger from the Measured Mom, and this is almost the end of my short, to-the-point podcast episode series counting down to the release of my book "Reach All Readers" coming on July 23rd, 2024. Today I'm sharing a simple activity that you can do with your students to help them improve comprehension of a text through writing.

Before I get into it, I want to share a quick endorsement for the book from my friend, Lindsay Kemeny, whom you know as the author of "Seven Mighty Moves," an excellent, excellent book for teachers learning about the science of reading. She wrote, "Anna's clear and concise writing makes complex topics easy to understand. Packed with valuable info, her book is a go-to resource for elementary teachers and deserves a spot on your bookshelf." Thank you so much, Lindsay.

Now I'd like to go into this very quick, simple way that you can help your students understand the texts they read better.

Research tells us that writing about content material increases student learning in social studies, science, math, and language arts, and students comprehend text better when they write about it. But I want to be clear that you can start off by doing the writing yourself as long as your students are active participants in the process - they tell you what to write, they answer questions, they talk to a partner and then you call on someone.

When this is a process that you're all sharing, you can absolutely have them "write about the text" by helping you write about the text. It's all about the I Do, We Do, You Do model. Don't initially think you have to dive into having students do their own writing. Start by modeling it with them.

I did this activity recently with a group of third graders. We did a sentence expansion activity. First we choral read a passage about a particular topic. One was about the wolverine, another one was about mother pigs that live in the wild. After each passage, I presented a very short sentence related to the text, and then we expanded that sentence using what we knew from the text.

For example, with wolverines, my sentence was, "Wolverines hunt." Then I said, what kind of wolverines? They used information from the text to describe the wolverines, mostly by their color. Then I said, what do wolverines hunt? They looked at the text and they listed all the things that wolverines hunt. Then I said, how do they hunt? Again they referred to the text and we talked about how they hunt with their claws. Then we put all that information together into a single sentence. "Brown wolverines hunt mammals and other small animals using their claws." And that was it; it was just a very simple activity.

I was doing all the writing in front of them on a dry erase board, and every time I added new information, we would read the new sentence. First we read, "Brown wolverines hunt." Then we read "Brown wolverines hunt small mammals and birds." Then we read "Brown wolverines hunt small mammals and birds by using their sharp claws."

Gradually, you can have your students do the writing in pairs as you move around the room and support them, and eventually they can do this on their own. You would provide that simple sentence, then provide all those other sentences that they're going to have to answer to add more information, and then they can put it into a final complete sentence.

That's just one way that kids can respond to their reading in writing. There are so many other ways, and I share quite a few in chapter nine of my book, Linking Reading and Writing. You can pre-order the book "Reach All Readers" anywhere books are sold online, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, B-A-M, or Thriftbooks. Thanks so much for considering, and I'll talk to you next time!

That's all for this episode of Triple R Teaching. For more educational resources, visit Anna at her home base, themeasuredmom.com, and join our teaching community. We look forward to helping you reflect, refine, and recharge on the next episode of Triple R Teaching.

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A simple routine for teaching expository text structure

��TRT Podcast 176: A simple routine for teaching expository text structure

Use this simple routine to teach any of the expository text structures: sequence, description, cause and effect, compare and contrast, or problem and solution.

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Hello, this is Anna Geiger from The Measured Mom, and this is the seventh in a series of short, to-the-point podcast episodes counting down to the release of my book, "Reach All Readers," coming soon on July 23rd, 2024. Today I'm sharing an excerpt from chapter eight, the comprehension chapter. I'm going to share a powerful routine for teaching text structure.

Before I do that, I want to share a quick endorsement from Brent Conway, Assistant Superintendent of Pentucket Regional School District. He generously read the book and offered this endorsement,

"Anna has been able to capture the complexities of implementing the science of reading and make it seem simple and tangible to any educator who wants to make a difference in the lives of their students. This will make a perfect book study text for schools and teachers across the country."

Thank you so much, Brent, for that very kind endorsement.

Now we'll get into text structure. We know there's narrative text structure, which has to do with understanding story elements, and then there's expository text structure where kids understand how informational text is organized.

When we think about expository text structure, there are five main kinds that we want to teach our students. These are description, sequence, cause and effect, compare and/or contrast, and then problem and solution.

In the book, I have a detailed table that lists all of those, describes them, includes possible signal words, gives you prompts that you can ask as you help students understand those structures, and also provides some graphic organizers.

Right now we're going to go into a routine that you can use to teach any of these text structures. I'm going to walk you through a text structure lesson that I recently gave to a group of second graders.

The teacher told me that one of the topics they'd been studying in science was animal habitats, so I wrote a passage about beavers and how they build their dams and lodges. This was organized with the sequence text structure because we went in order from first to last, including all the steps that they followed to build their lodges. I brought that to the class and we did multiple things with it.

First, I took it and I introduced it to them. I said, "Today you're going to learn a certain way that authors might organize their text, and this text structure is called sequence. You're going to read about the steps that beavers take to build their lodges from first to last."

Then we did a choral read of the text. We all read it together. You could also have students read it in pairs or choral read it in pairs.

After we were done reading the text, I had them identify the signal words. We walked through it and we found things like first, next, then, finally, and then they highlighted those in their passage.

The next thing we did was build comprehension, so I asked questions about the text. I actually was able to incorporate another strategy here, the QAR method, question-answer relationship, where you think about where the answers came from. So the answer could be right there in the text, or the answer could be something where you have to think and search and put pieces of information together. An answer could be author and me, where you think about what the author has shared and combine that with your own thoughts. Then finally, an answer could be on my own, where you're not even using the text to answer the question.

So I asked questions like, what's the first step when a beaver builds their home? What are other animals that put a lot of effort into building their homes? That would be an on my own, for example. I asked a question, what problem do you think that beavers' lodges can create for people who live in the area? That would be an author and me. They had to use the text, but they had to add to that what they already know.

As they answered those questions, we identified what types of questions they were. We didn't have time for this in our lesson, but if you're doing this with your students and you have more time, you could have them form questions about the passage to ask a partner, and then the partner could form a question to ask them.

The last thing we did was complete a graphic organizer together. I put a very simple sequence graphic organizer up on the screen, and they had a copy at their own desk. We walked through all the steps and we wrote those in the graphic organizer.

After we'd written each of the steps, we went back and added those signal words, and then we read it all as a whole paragraph.

That's a routine you can use to teach text structure. There's SO much more in my chapter on comprehension, including a great deal about sentence comprehension. I talk about the importance of building knowledge, but I also talk about the comprehension strategies that we know make the most difference.

If you'd like to pre-order the book, you can get it wherever books are sold, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, Bookshop, BAM!, or Thriftbooks. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you next time!

That's all for this episode of Triple R Teaching. For more educational resources, visit Anna at her home base, themeasuredmom.com, and join our teaching community. We look forward to helping you reflect, refine, and recharge on the next episode of Triple R Teaching.

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Pre-order my new book and get a FREE bonus!

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The post A simple routine for teaching expository text structure appeared first on The Measured Mom.

How to choose words for vocabulary instruction

��TRT Podcast #175: How to choose words for vocabulary instruction

We know it’s important to teach particular vocabulary words in depth – but how do we choose from the many thousands of words that students might encounter? These six questions will help you choose words for vocabulary instruction.

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Hello! This is Anna Geiger from the Measured Mom, coming to you with a very short, to-the-point podcast episode that's part of a series that serves as a countdown to the release of my new book, "Reach All Readers," coming on July 23rd, 2024.

Before we get into it, here's an endorsement from the wonderful Margaret Goldberg, who is not only a brilliant teacher, but also an amazing writer and presenter, and she's the co-founder of the Right to Read project. She shared, "We've long needed 'Reach All Readers,' a book on effective reading instruction written for teachers by a teacher. Anna presents what she's learned about the science of reading and instruction in an accessible and useful text. You'll want to read it cover to cover, discuss chapters with colleagues, and hang on to it as a reference book." Thank you so much to Margaret Goldberg for that very kind endorsement. I have an incredible amount of respect for her and all the work that she does.

Today we're going to look very briefly at how to choose vocabulary words for instruction.

Vocabulary, of course, is the knowledge of words and their meanings, and meaningful vocabulary instruction involves discussions of words, using words in a variety of contexts, and teaching students to learn words on their own. I get into all of that in chapter seven, but for right now, we're just going to briefly look at how to choose words for in-depth instruction.

You may have heard of Beck and McKeown's three tiers of vocabulary words.

Tier 1 words are words that most kids know when they come to school, unless they're learning English. It's words like "ball, chair, play," and things like that.

The Tier 2 words are the words that are useful for in-depth instruction because they're words that kids are unlikely to learn on their own but are likely to encounter in text that they listen to or read.

Tier 3 words are also good for instruction, but maybe not as in-depth as in Tier 2 because they have limited use. They are for specific content areas. If you're teaching a unit on whales, Tier 3 words might include "baleen" or "plankton." They're good to know, but we tend to spend more time on those Tier 2 words.

So how do you choose Tier 2 words for instruction? There are different ways to do this. I had a podcast episode with Dr. Lorraine Hammond, and she has helped schools develop a whole-school vocabulary routine. They actually have lists of words that they have on a particular theme, and they just change them per grade. During a particular week, everybody's learning words from a particular theme. This is a really neat, effective way to build kids' vocabulary because you're building on what's been taught in previous grades.

If you do not have a whole-school approach to vocabulary instruction, you may want to choose your vocabulary words from the books that you read to your students or that they read. If the books that you're reading aloud do not have strong vocabulary words, you can add vocabulary words. Even if they're not in the text, you can teach a word that has to do with the topic of the text.

Let's say we're looking in the text and we're trying to choose some words to teach in depth. What types of questions should we ask ourselves?

Well, number one, is this a word that many of my students probably don't know? I know this is a really tricky one, and it really changes from class to class, so you really need to think about the groups of students in front of you.

Then you want to ask yourself, is this a word they're unlikely to learn on their own? In other words, it's probably not something they're going to hear in everyday conversation.

Next, is this a word that they're likely to encounter in text, whether I read it to them or they read it themselves? If you find a word that you didn't know the meaning of, it's probably not a word that you need to give explicit instruction on, because if you're an adult and you've never heard the word before, it's probably not one they're going to encounter very often.

Ask yourself, is this a word for which they understand the general concept? For example, the word "euphoric" means really, really excited. They know what really, really excited means. The word "melancholy" means a feeling of sadness. They know what sadness means. Choose words that they can understand as long as you give them a kid-friendly definition.

Is this a word that can be applied in many contexts? If it is, then you've multiplied the usability of this word.

Finally, can you teach other words in the same family? I used to think of word families as just "pat, mat, rat," the rhyming word families, but actually I've learned that there's so much more to that. If you had the word "adhere," for example, which means to stick to something, you could do "adhere, adherence, adhesive, adhered, adhering." So think about if there are other words you can also teach to get more bang for your buck.

Those were some questions to ask when choosing vocabulary words to teach in depth. There's much, much more to the vocabulary chapter, including lots of specific ways that you can help kids remember words for the future. You're invited to pre-order my book, "Reach All Readers," which you can get wherever books are sold. You can buy it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, Bookshop, BAM!, or ThriftBooks. Thanks so much for considering, and I'll talk to you next time!

That's all for this episode of Triple R Teaching. For more educational resources, visit Anna at her home base, themeasuredmom.com, and join our teaching community. We look forward to helping you reflect, refine, and recharge on the next episode of Triple R Teaching.

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3 Powerful ways to build fluency with the whole class

��TRT Podcast #174: 3 Powerful ways to build fluency with the whole class

These are simple and powerful fluency routines that you can use throughout the day!

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Hello, this is Anna Geiger from The Measured Mom, and this is the fifth in a series of short, to-the-point episodes that are counting down to the release of my book, "Reach All Readers," on July 23rd, 2024. Today I'm sharing three powerful whole class fluency interventions.

Before I do that, I'd like to share a quick endorsement for the book from Faith Borkowsky. She's the founder of High Five Literacy and co-host of The Literacy View podcast. She wrote, "Anna Geiger doesn't just present the science, she equips educators with practical strategies and resources, translating them into actionable knowledge that can be readily applied in the classroom. Whether you're a seasoned teacher or just starting out, this book empowers you to become a more informed and effective practitioner. Aptly named, 'Reach All Readers' illustrates Geiger's knack for making the science of reading less science-y."

A big thank you to Faith for endorsing the book, and now we'll get into fluency which, according to Deb Glaser and Jan Hasbrouck, is "reasonably accurate reading at an appropriate rate with suitable expression that leads to accurate and deep comprehension and motivation to read."

Fluency is very important because it's the bridge between phonics and comprehension. But we can't fast-forward our way to fluency. It's very important to start with fluency at the letter sound and word level. By the middle of first grade or so when kids are reading connected text with reasonable accuracy, it's time to focus on text-level fluency.

In this episode, I'm going to look at three whole-class ways to build text-level fluency.

Probably the easiest is choral reading, when students read text together with you. This can be done so many times throughout the day. Whether it's choral reading vocabulary words, or choral reading a text that you're going to be analyzing the text structure of, or choral reading a math problem, you can do this all throughout your day.

Another great way to build fluency with the whole class is doing partner reading with paragraph shrinking. You want to pair students up, stronger readers with less strong readers. You could number your students, let's say from 1 to 24. The number 1 would be perhaps the lowest words correct per minute, and then the 24 would be the highest. Split your numbers in half and then line kids up, so student 1 would be with student 13 and so on. Of course, you would never reveal your numbering system to your students. You would just have each of them be a pair of a one and a two.

Get yourself some free passages from ReadWorks or kids could be practicing using decodable texts that they've had in their lesson. You can have the stronger reader begin by reading the text for about one to five minutes, and then the weaker reader reads the same text, even though it may take longer. Then you go back to the stronger reader, and again they can read for a certain period of time. After each paragraph, they're going to stop and summarize, and they can do that together where they name the most important who or what of the paragraph and the most important thing about the who or what. Then they use their fingers to help them put together a summary, an oral summary, that's ten words or less.

I recently did this with a group of second graders and it was amazing how quickly they caught on to this. I had printed a whole bunch of interesting passages from ReadWorks about different animals that were appropriate for a second grade group, and then after modeling it and showing them how to get started, they were on their own and I was walking around the room and supporting them. It's an excellent way to build fluency.

Finally, we have a fluency development lesson. I recently was able to do this with a third grade group. I chose a rather advanced poem that one of my team members wrote for our membership, it was about Katherine Johnson, and I put it up on a screen. We looked at some of the longer words and worked at decoding those. Then I read it a couple of times, the kids read it with me, and then they worked in pairs. One student read it to the other, and then the second student read it to the first student. Then we all did it together for an audience of other adults that were in the room. It was really neat to see how much their fluency improved from the first to the last reading.

Those are three whole-class ways to build text level fluency. You'll get a lot more about fluency in chapter six of my book, "Reach All Readers," which you can get wherever books are sold, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, Bookshop, BAM!, and ThriftBooks. I hope you'll consider pre-ordering. The book is coming out on July 23rd, 2024. I'll talk to you next time!

That's all for this episode of Triple R Teaching. For more educational resources, visit Anna at her home base, themeasuredmom.com, and join our teaching community. We look forward to helping you reflect, refine, and recharge on the next episode of Triple R Teaching.

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Here’s what we do and don’t know about using decodable text

 TRT Podcast #173: Here’s what we do and don’t know about decodable text

We know that it’s important to practice applying the phonics skills they’ve been taught, but what does research really say about using decodable text? What are questions do we still have? 

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Hello, this is Anna Geiger from The Measured Mom, and this is the fourth in a series of short, to-the-point episodes that are counting down to the release of my book, "Reach All Readers," on July 23, 2024. Today I'm sharing what we do and don't know about decodable text.

Decodable text can be sentences, a passage, or a book in which a majority of the words can be sounded out based on sound-spellings the reader has been taught. Decodable text may also be called phonetically-controlled text or accountable text.

Text is decodable from the point of view of the reader. For you and me, almost every text we encounter is decodable. For a child who is just learning to read, a decodable text will contain mostly CVC words.

The reason we use decodable text is because this kind of text allows students to apply their phonics knowledge by decoding words from left to right with attention to every letter. The more times students decode a word, the closer they get to recognizing it instantly as a sight word. In other words, the closer they get to orthographically mapping the word.

The reason that decodable text is getting so much attention in circles where people are attuned to the science of reading is because with balanced literacy, there was a heavy emphasis on using predictable leveled books with beginning readers. Those are the books that I used with my beginning readers, and I used to give these types of books away on my website.

What they did was require students to use the pictures or context to identify the words because they didn't have the phonics knowledge to read these longer words. The book might say, "I see a hippopotamus. I see a lion. I see an octopus," and the picture and the first letter would help them identify those words.

The big problem with those books is that they bypassed orthographic mapping. It's hard to map the sounds, letters, and meaning of a word if you're not even looking at all the letters of the word.

Another problem is that for some kids, it taught them to guess at words.

While the idea was that the more phonics knowledge you have, the more you apply, that doesn't always work for kids, and so many kids hit a wall as they get into second or third grade and have to read these longer books.

I think I'm speaking for a lot of people when I say I wish we had more research on decodable text. Let me give you a quick summary of what we know.

In 1985, Juel and Roper-Schneider conducted a study with first graders, and after receiving identical phonics instruction, one group read from a basal with more decodable text and the other read from a basal with a focus on high frequency words. The kids who read the more decodable texts were more likely to sound out words when reading. In other words, the text they were given to practice with led to a particular behavior when doing their reading.

A 2004 study found that average readers were more successful at reading decodable texts than text that was less decodable. Interestingly, in this study, the students with weaker reading abilities did not do as well with decodable text, but in discussing the study, it was thought that this was because they were not necessarily matched with texts that were decodable for them based on what they had learned.

There was a 2004 study in which at-risk first graders were tutored in either highly decodable or less decodable texts, and both of them received the same phonics instruction. The control group did not get tutoring. Both tutored groups showed improvement in their reading, but the decodability of the text did not seem to make a difference.

Some people use this study to question the benefits of decodable text, but I know Wiley Blevins has said that the decodable texts in this study were not very good.

We know that decodable texts should sound like we talk. They should be interesting. They should have a high level of words that have been taught. If the texts are strange or stilted, they're not going to serve their purpose as well.

A 2005 study gave phonics instruction to two groups of first graders. One group was given highly decodable text to read after instruction, and the other was given less decodable text. The students who read the highly decodable test applied their letter sound knowledge to a greater extent than the control group, and they were also more accurate in their reading. Again, the type of text you give students to practice affects their reading behaviors.

In 2005, Wiley Blevins conducted a study in which one group of first graders used decodable text for practice, and the other group read patterned and predictable text. The students who read the decodable text achieved higher scores on a word identification test, a phonemic awareness assessment, and a decoding assessment. They were also less likely to say that they didn't like reading.

There are a few more studies we have about decodable text. I've summarized them in my chapter on phonics, Chapter 5, but I also address that there are some questions we would like to have answered that are not answered.

We would like to know what is the ideal percentage of decodability of decodable text. Some people would say the text should be one hundred percent decodable as long as you have taught those high frequency words, but research doesn't say that. It doesn't give us a recommended percentage, nor does research say when is the appropriate time to help kids transition out of decodable text, whether that's for instruction or for independent practice.

We still have questions, but there's a lot we do know, so I think you're really going to enjoy the chapter about phonics. Not only do I go into quite a bit of detail about using decodable text, but I also include a very systematic, explicit phonics lesson, lots of charts, including a chart that shows the graphemes that we use in English from most common to least common, and a whole lot more. I hope you'll consider pre-ordering "Read All Readers."

Kate Winn, the brilliant teacher and host of IDA Ontario's Reading Road Trip Podcast, endorsed the book. She wrote this, "'Reach All Readers' is a gift for elementary teachers and their students. Anna Geiger deftly packs the what, why, and how of the science of reading into one user-friendly, empowering book that you'll want to keep coming back to again and again."

You can pre-order "Reach All Readers" wherever books are sold, on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, Bookshop, BAM!, or ThriftBooks. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you next time!

That's all for this episode of Triple R Teaching. For more educational resources, visit Anna at her home base, themeasuredmom.com, and join our teaching community. We look forward to helping you reflect, refine, and recharge on the next episode of Triple R Teaching.

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The post Here’s what we do and don’t know about using decodable text appeared first on The Measured Mom.

The most important things to remember when teaching phonemic awareness

��TRT Podcast #171: The most important things to remember when teaching phonemic awareness

Phonemic awareness can feel like an overwhelming topic … but you’ll find the most important things to remember in this 3-minute episode.��

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Hello! This is Anna Geiger from The Measured Mom, and this is the third in a series of short, to-the-point episodes that are counting down to the release of my book, "Reach All Readers" on July 23rd, 2024. Today I'm sharing the most important things to remember when teaching phonemic awareness.

Phonemic awareness is the conscious awareness of individual units of sound in spoken words, and these units of sound are called phonemes. A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound within a spoken word that can distinguish one word from another.

The first important thing to remember is that of all the phonological awareness skills, phonemic awareness is by far the most important. While you may choose to teach other skills like rhyming, syllable counting, and onset-rime, there's no reason to delay the teaching of phonemic awareness. You don't need to teach those other skills before phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness should be taught beginning in preschool.

The next thing to remember is that when doing phonemic awareness tasks, start with phoneme isolation, that's helping kids hear the initial, final, and medial sounds in words, in that order. Then move on to blending phonemes into words and segmenting words into phonemes. Blending is important for decoding and segmenting is important for spelling.

The third thing to remember is that you should incorporate letters into your phonemic awareness instruction as soon as you are able. Oral activities are useful before students know letter-sound correspondences, and they continue to be useful as transition activities and as quick phonics lesson warm-ups, but phonemic awareness instruction is most effective when letters are incorporated because it helps students learn the alphabetic principle that symbols represent units of sound.

Finally, phonemic awareness instruction is a means rather than an end. Phonemic awareness is not meaningful in and of itself; it only matters in the context of reading instruction, and that's why it's so important to incorporate letters into phonemic awareness instruction whenever possible. That's not turning phonemic awareness into phonics; it's adding phonics.

Phonemic awareness is chapter four in my book, "Reach All Readers," and within that chapter, I give specific lesson routines that will help you make the most of your phonemic awareness instruction. You can get Reach All Readers wherever books are sold, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, Bookshop, BAM! or ThriftBooks. Thanks so much for considering, and I'll talk to you next time!

That's all for this episode of Triple R Teaching. For more educational resources, visit Anna at her home base, themeasuredmom.com, and join our teaching community. We look forward to helping you reflect, refine and recharge on the next episode of Triple R Teaching.

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What does research say about oral language?

��TRT Podcast #170: What does research say about oral language?

The Big 5 (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension) get a lot of attention – but what about oral language? Oral language deserves attention because it is the foundation of both word recognition and language comprehension. In this episode I share a short summary of what research tells us about oral language and reading.

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Hello! This is Anna Geiger from The Measured Mom, and this is the second in a series of short, to-the-point episodes that are counting down to the release of my new book, "Reach All Readers," on July 23rd, 2024. Today I'm sharing a research summary from chapter three, Oral Language.

We're all familiar with The Big 5: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension, but what about oral language? It doesn't always get the attention it deserves.

Oral language is a complex system that is important for teachers to understand because oral language skills are the foundation for both word reading and language comprehension.

One thing I think you'll love about the book is that I have short research summaries in all the key areas, and in today's episode I'm going to share the research summary for oral language. When you receive the book, you'll get, of course, a list of references for all the points I'm about to share.

Number one, as I stated already, children's oral language skills are the foundation for both word reading and language comprehension, and that makes sense when you think about it, right? Obviously, when kids are trying to comprehend text, it's really important that they understand the language. But it's also important for word reading because if you're trying to decode a multisyllable word and you need to use set for variability to land on the correct pronunciation, you won't know if you're correct or not if you don't have that word in your oral language vocabulary.

We also know from research that children with reading problems often have accompanying oral language deficits.

We know that early oral language abilities help us predict later skills. In one study, poor comprehenders in fifth grade had deficits in oral language throughout early childhood. Kindergarten scores of oral language are highly predictive of their scores on reading comprehension and vocabulary in fourth and seventh grades.

Composite measures of oral language are the strongest predictors of word reading and language comprehension compared to studies that focus on a single predictor like vocabulary or grammar.

The good news is we can improve oral language skills. A focus on a range of oral language skills in preschool leads to improvements in oral language and spoken narrative skills.

Explicitly teaching word meanings through interactive read-alouds may help narrow the vocabulary gap among students.

A focus on building vocabulary alone may not be sufficient for improving oral language and reading outcomes, so it's important, but not enough.

Dialogic reading, in which the adult actively involves the child in discussions about the read-aloud, powerfully affects language development.

Finally, interventions that focus on a broad range of oral language skills like grammar, syntax, narrative skills, and inferring, are most likely to help children develop reading comprehension skills.

Oral language is the third of eleven chapters in my book. If you'd like to pre-order the book, you can pre-order where books are sold, Amazon, ThriftBooks, Target, Books-A-Million (BAM!), or Bookshop. Thanks so much for considering, and I'll talk to you next time!

That's all for this episode of Triple R Teaching. For more educational resources, visit Anna at her home base, themeasuredmom.com and join our teaching community. We look forward to helping you reflect, refine, and recharge on the next episode of Triple R Teaching.

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The post What does research say about oral language? appeared first on The Measured Mom.