A Blog by Dr. Gary G. Brannigan and Dr. Howard Margolis

Parents, teachers, administrators, and politicians often demand the best reading method. Nothing less will do. So, of the hundreds of reading methods, which is best?

Sorry for the answer, but here it is: It’s not Wilson, Orton-Gillingham, Reading Recovery, Read180, whole language, phonics-phonics-phonics, or the newest basal reader system. It’s the one that works for your child. It’s the one that effectively teaches word recognition, decoding, fluency, comprehension, writing, spelling, study skills, independent work abilities, and an enduring love of reading. It’s the one that teachers believe in, understand, and use skillfully. It’s the one they can easily adapt, modify, or abandon if it’s not working for your child. It’s the one that all the school’s teachers and administrators supplement, support, reinforce, and extend throughout the day. Bottom line: It’s not a package, it can’t be named. It’s different for different children. Its belief, commitment, knowledge, skill, adaptability, innovation, and support.

• There is no single method or single combination of methods that can successfully teach all children to read. Therefore, teachers must have a strong knowledge of multiple methods for teaching reading and a strong knowledge of the children in their care so they can create the appropriate balance of methods needed for the children they teach. (International reading Association, 1999)
• In the end, enhanced reading proficiency rests largely on the capacity of classroom teachers to provide expert, exemplary reading instruction…. Such teaching cannot be packaged. Exemplary teaching is not regurgitation of a common script but is responsive to children’s needs. In the end it will become clearer that there are no ‘proven programs,’ just schools in which we find more expert teachers—teachers who need no script to tell them what to do. (Allington, 2002, p. 747)
• For too long the quest has been focused on discovering the one best way to teach reading and writing. We believe that there can be no such approach. Learning to read and write is a complex activity. Children differ, teachers differ, and communities differ, and each work to preclude the discovery of any single best way to develop literacy. Different children, at different stages of development, at different times, in different schools, taught by different teachers, prosper and develop their literacy. Shift any one of these variables and the same children may flounder. (Allington, & Cunningham, 1996, p. 62)

If you’re the parent of a struggling reader, we suggest that you not seek the best method or “magic bullet,” but make sure that whatever your child’s teachers are doing is working for him: he’s a successful reader who loves to read.

To do this, frequently listen to your child read, monitor his homework progress, and observe his willingness to read on his own. If he’s eligible for special education, make sure his Individualized Education Program (IEP) has realistic, relevant, measurable goals (and in some states, objectives) that the school measures frequently and accurately. Chapter 7 of Reading Disabilities: Beating the Odds (www.reading2008.com, www.amazon.com) offers many ideas on how to monitor your child’s progress. Chapters 8 through 13 explain how to resolve conflicts and effectively advocate for children.

References

Allington, R. L. (June 2002). What I’ve learned about effective reading instruction. Phi Delta Kappan, 740, 742-747.

Allington, R. L., & Cunningham, P. M. (1996). Schools that work: Where all children read and write. NY: HarperCollins.

International Reading Association (1999). IRA Position Statement. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Howard Margolis © Reading2008 & Beyond

howard@reading2008.com

www.reading2008.com

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The Special Needs Talk Radio Network: It’s On The Air

The new Special Needs Talk Radio network (http://specialneedstalkradio.com/) is on the air. Each of its six shows is dedicated to improving the lives of children and youth with special needs and their families.

Dr. Gary G. Brannigan and I host Maximizing Your Child’s Potential (Mondays, 9 PM – 9:30 PM EST, http://specialneedstalkradio.com/maximizing-your-childs-potential).

On Monday, October 10^th, our guest will be Dr. J. Richard Gentry, Educational Consultant. He’ll discuss Raising Confident Readers: Birth and Beyond.

Dr. Gentry earned his Elementary Education degree from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and a Ph.D. in Reading Education from the University of Virginia in 1977. For sixteen years he taught Reading Education at Western Carolina University where he directed the Reading Center. He is well known for his research and writing in literacy education and is currently an independent researcher, author, and educational consultant.

Over the next few months, our guests will include:

• October 17^th —Dr. Tim Rasinski, Kent State University, Overcoming Problems of Reading Fluency
• October 24^th —Susan Orloff, OTR/L, Occupational Therapist, Learning Re-Enabled
• October 31^st —Dr. Nancy Padak, Kent State University, Helping Your Children Overcome Reading Problems
• Dr. Richard Boon, University of Georgia, Helping Teenagers Improve Their Reading
• Dr. Erica Lembke, University of Missouri, Monitoring Your Child’s Progress
• Dr. Patrick McCabe, Mercy College, Developing the Confidence of Struggling Learners
• Staci Greenwald, Special Education Attorney, The Pro’s and Con’s of Public and Private School Programs
• Dr. Annmarie Urso, State University of New York at Geneseo, How Response-To-Intervention ( RTI) Can Unlock Your Child’s Potential

If possible, look at the Special Needs Talk Radio’s website (http://specialneedstalkradio.com/). See how its many experts can help you help the children and youth you care about.

A Blog by Dr. Gary G. Brannigan and Dr. Howard Margolis

Are Lexiles flawed? Limited, but not flawed. The problem is not Lexiles, but how some schools use them.

What Are Lexiles?

Lexiles are scores produced by a readability formula that analyzes text (e.g., passages, articles, books) for the length of sentences and the frequency with which words generally occur. Longer sentences, with rarer words, words readers rarely see, are considered more difficult to understand than shorter sentences with words readers often see.

Limitations

As far as this goes, Lexiles are fine. They can help librarians and teachers get a rough idea about the difficulty of materials for hypothetical groups of children. But they cannot tell anyone if a particular article or book is appropriate for a particular child, especially a struggling reader.

The reason is simple: Lexiles do not know the struggling reader. They don’t know his likes and dislikes, his background, his oral language abilities, his decoding and sight word abilities, his reading fluency, his anxiety levels, his independent work habits, his energy level, and, and, and….

Here’s what some recent literature says about Lexiles:

• Estimating readability is not an exact process. Lexile … reading levels are merely guidelines for making good choices. Unfortunately, they give us the impression of being more precise than they actually are. Moreover, they do not account for the needs of a particular small group. (Walpole & Mckenna, 2009, p. 101)
• Results indicated that none of the readability estimates [including Lexiles] were significantly related to [words read correctly per minute] …. These findings replicate and extend previous research suggesting that estimates of passage difficulty based on readability estimates are not related to students’ oral reading performance, and students’ readings of passages are a better gauge of passage difficulty than are readability estimates. (Ardoin et al., 2010, p. 282)

The Bottom Line

Consider Lexiles one piece of information that can help identify appropriate reading materials, but by themselves cannot. Do not accept, as correct or absolute, statements that your child’s Lexile score shows he should read books at Lexile level 451 (roughly mid-2^nd grade).

If your child struggles with reading, and his school says he needs to read books at Lexile level 451, ask for impartial, corroborating information, such as his independent, instructional, and frustration levels on an informal reading inventory, samples of his orally reading books at the 451 Lexile level, and the enjoyment he gets from reading these books.

References

Ardoin, S. P., Williams, J.C., Christ, T. J., Klubnik, C., Wellborn, C.. Examining readability estimates’ predictions of students’ oral reading rate: Spache, Lexile, and Forcas. School Psychology Review, 2010, Vol. 39 Issue 2, p277-285.

Walpole, S., & Mckenna, M. C. (2009). How to plan differentiated reading instruction. New York: The Guilford Press.

Howard Margolis © Reading2008 & Beyond

www.reading2008.com

howard@reading2008.com

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Special Needs Talk Radio Network: It’s On The Air

The new Special Needs Talk Radio network (http://specialneedstalkradio.com/ ) is on the air. Each of its six shows is dedicated to improving the lives of children and youth with special needs and their families.

Staring September 12, Dr. Gary G. Brannigan and I will host Maximizing Your Child’s Potential (Mondays, 9 PM – 9:30 PM EST, http://specialneedstalkradio.com/maximizing-your-childs-potential).

Over the next few months, our guests will include:

• Dr. Steven Lange, Child and Adolescent Psychologist, Helping Children Overcome Sleep Problems
• Dr. Richard Selznick, Cooper University Hospital, Helping the Shut-Down Learner
• Dr. John Pellitteri, City University of New York, Strengthening Your Child’s Emotional Intelligence
• Dr. Tim Rasinski, Kent State University, Overcoming Problems of Reading Fluency
• Dr. Nancy Padak, Kent State University, Helping Your Children Overcome Reading Problems
• Dr. Richard Boon, University of Georgia, Helping Teenagers Improve Their Reading
• Dr. Erica Lembke, University of Missouri, Monitoring Your Child’s Progress
• Dr. Patrick McCabe, Mercy College, Developing the Confidence of Struggling Learners
• Staci Greenwald, Special Education Attorney, The Pro’s and Con’s of Public and Private School Programs
• Dr. J. Richard Gentry, Educational Consultant, Raising Confident Readers: Birth and Beyond

If possible, look at the Special Needs Talk Radio’s website (http://specialneedstalkradio.com/). See how its lineup of experts can help you help the children and youth you care about

A Blog by Dr. Gary G. Brannigan and Dr. Howard Margolis

To motivate children to read, schools need well-stocked libraries with great librarians who never stop motivating children to read. They need a wealth of books, videos, computers, internet subscriptions, and electronic media for struggling readers and advanced ones. They need budgets to keep the libraries open and thriving, motivating children, all year. “All year” includes summers.

Here’s one reason: Children who read more than five books a summer maintain and often strengthen their reading abilities. Children who don’t often regress. And over the summers, the regression accumulates. This, as Mark Twain inferred, disadvantages them: “A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read.”

Here’s another: Knowledgeable librarians, skilled in listening, enhance education far beyond the walls of schools. Paradoxically, they can suggest books that quench children’s thirst for knowledge while creating even greater thirst. They can suggest books that spur children to read even more, to seek even more joy, even more answers. This, as the Irish poet and dramatist William Butler Yeats wrote, is education’s mission: “Education is not the filling a bucket but the lighting of a fire.”

So, in this time of ideological domination by greedy politicians dedicated to destroying and privatizing rather than improving America’s public sector, support publicly-funded schools and libraries. Make sure politicians hear and advocate persistently for your views. As hackneyed, hollow, and cynical as my next comment sounds, it’s true: “America’s future (and maybe your child’s) depends on it.”

HM © Reading2008 & Beyond   www.reading2008.com

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A Note on Reading Disabilities: Beating the Odds (www.reading2008.com)

Psychology Today.com recently wrote that Reading Disabilities: Beating the Odds was one of the three “best books about education published in 2010. Recommend [it] to your friends.” On our blog, an English teacher and author wrote that Beating the Odds “is one of the best books, if not the best book on education published this year.”  A Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism called it “a great book.” A parent wrote, “Your Reading Disabilities book is by far the best resource I have found regarding the IEP and IDEA and providing understandable and concrete suggestions and implementation strategies.” Another wrote, your book is “fascinating and effective.” On Amazon, a professor of special education called it “a fantastic resource… well-written, practical… an essential guide.” The Kansas City Examiner.com cited our blog as one of the ten best special needs blogs of 2010. We thank these and many other reviewers for their kind words.

And we hope that our book and blog helps lots of children, parents, teachers, IEP Team members, and schools. It’s why we keep plugging away. – HM & GB

A Blog by Dr. Gary G. Brannigan and Dr. Howard Margolis

Pronouncing words is important, but insufficient for success in reading. To read successfully requires the reader to understand the words he sees and how they relate to one another. Here are eight reasons your child may have trouble understanding or comprehending what he reads.

He has difficulty recognizing words. If your child struggles to recognize too many words, he’ll have little attention or mental energy left to consider the meaning of what he’s reading. Usually, children who struggle to quickly recognize more than 5% of words get frustrated with what they’re reading and pay little or no attention to the meaning of their reading materials.

He reads slowly and laboriously. Children who correctly recognize words but do so slowly and laboriously, are so focused on recognizing the words that they have little mental energy left for understanding the content. Moreover, by the time they get to the end of a sentence or paragraph, they’ve forgotten much of what they’ve read. In other words, reading slowly and laboriously exhausts their working memory. Try this experiment. Slowly read 34 numbers. Then, without looking at them, repeat all of them. Chances are you’ll remember only the last few numbers read; the earlier numbers will have vanished from your working memory.

He doesn’t understand the meaning of many of the words. If your child’s knowledge of a topic is sparse and he doesn’t know the meaning of many of the words he encounters, he’s unlikely to understand the meaning of the passage and is likely to get frustrated and confused. For example, if he doesn’t know the meaning of the words “triangle” and “rectangle,” he won’t understand this question: “How does a triangle differ from a rectangle?” And even if he quickly pronounces the words “triangle” and “rectangle,” the question will still confuse him.

He has difficulty with sentences and paragraphs. Your child may have a good vocabulary, but has difficulty understanding how words relate to one another when they’re in modestly lengthy or complex sentences and paragraphs. A large number of words, in modestly lengthy or complex sentences or paragraphs, confuse him.

He’s not interested. It takes energy to comprehend what you read. If you don’t invest the energy in the effort to understand what you’re reading, and what you’re reading is slightly complicated, you’re unlikely to understand or remember much. Motivation is the engine of energy and effort. Giving children materials they don’t like, or tasks they find disagreeable, destroys motivation and with it, energy and effort. I, for example, hate to read tax manuals and forms. And so I don’t. But doing my taxes correctly and honestly is important. And so I use a conscientious, well-organized CPA who explains everything to me and shows me those few portions of the code I need to understand. This helps me avoid what I dislike.

The work is too long. Your child may do quite well on shorter tasks, but not have the patience or focus or attention span to handle longer ones.

The room is too busy and too noisy. Your child may succeed in quiet, well-organized places, but not in busy, noisy places.

The school’s curriculum emphasizes word recognition, at the expense of comprehension. Most children need to learn how to comprehend what they read; they need to understand that the purpose of reading is comprehension. Unfortunately, some reading programs emphasize word recognition at the cost of comprehension. Successful programs emphasize both, as well as motivate children throughout the day.

If your child has problems understanding what he reads, there’s good news. Many readers can learn to improve their reading comprehension.

It begins with a high quality reading evaluation from a reading specialist. The evaluation should identify your child’s problem(s) and the current or maintaining causes. It should look at your child, his instructional environment, the daily amount of direct comprehension instruction and guided practice he gets, and the instructional strategies his teachers use. Once the problem(s) and its current causes are known, the reading specialist and teaching staff should use this knowledge to design comprehension instruction. This requires reading materials and tasks that interest your child, and, with moderate effort on his part, produces success and satisfaction. It requires that his teachers have the knowledge, skill, time, materials, and flexibility to teach comprehension.  It requires ongoing monitoring of his progress and, if it starts to wilt, quick modification of his program. Finally, it often requires that his teachers get frequent consultation and coaching from a state certified reading specialist with a minimum of a master’s degree in reading disabilities.

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A Note on Reading Disabilities: Beating the Odds (www.reading2008.com)

Psychology Today.com recently wrote that Reading Disabilities: Beating the Odds was one of the three “best books about education published in 2010. Recommend [it] to your friends.” On our blog, an English teacher wrote that Beating the Odds “is one of the best books, if not the best book on education published this year.”  A Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism called it “a great book.” A parent wrote, “Your Reading Disabilities book is by far the best resource I have found regarding the IEP and IDEA and providing understandable and concrete suggestions and implementation strategies.” Another wrote, your book is “fascinating and effective.” On Amazon, a professor of special education called it “a fantastic resource… well-written, practical… an essential guide.” The Kansas City Examiner.com cited our blog as one of the ten best special needs blogs of 2010.

We thank these and many other reviewers for their kind words. And we hope that our book and blog helps lots of children, parents, teachers, IEP Team members, and schools. It’s why we keep plugging away.

Howard Margolis (c) Reading2008 & Beyond          www.reading2008.com

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FREE CONFERENCE CALL ON

GETTING AND KEEPING SPECIAL EDUCATION SERVICES IN TOUGH ECONOMIC TIMES

STACI GREENWALD, ESQ., SPECIAL EDUCATION ATTORNEY

When: March 24, 2011 @ 9 pm EST
Phone number: Call (661) 673-8600
Use Access Code: 899615# (remember the #)
Length: Approximately 50 minutes

To submit questions in advance, please e-mail them to howard@reading2008.com.

The teacher should not encourage laborious sounding out. Simple enough tasks should be used in learning so that recognition is always quick. As learning progresses, the difficulty of the task can be increased until, even in difficult words, the association of sound responses to the word parts is relatively quick and automatic …. Typically, dyslexia cases cannot deal at anyone time with many discriminations or associations that are not automatic, and this is probably a major reason for failure of remediation with these cases. Even three-letter words often cause confusion. (Bryant, 1965, p. 569, italics added)

The remedial teacher should plan the learning experience and modify the presentation of the task and material on the basis of the child’s performance so that the child is correct in nearly all of his responses…. Incorrect responses can produce negative learning and confusion, as well as damage the confidence and motivation of the student. Every teacher has seen a child make an error and then have other errors snowball, even for tasks the child was previously able to do. This is particularly characteristic of dyslexia cases. They seem unusually vulnerable to confusion, perhaps because they have less depth and stability in their previous learning. Learning is based primarily on increments of correct response with immediate knowledge that the response is correct. Any remedial session in which the child is allowed to make predominantly incorrect responses, particularly when he thinks even for a minute that they may be correct, is damaging to the child. He may lose what he has gained, and may handicap future learning. Any time a child, who is trying, makes several errors in a row, it is likely that the teacher has made an incorrect judgment is selecting materials or tasks. Long delay in a response that should be automatic is in itself an error. (Bryant, 1965, p. 569, italics added)

Bryant’s quotes represent the views of just about all literacy scholars. For example, in 1989 Eldon Ekwall and James Shanker summarized the literature. They noted that:

Students placed in easier materials make greater progress than students placed in more difficult materials. Students placed in easier materials also tend to exhibit better behavior in the classroom. Thus, the teacher who is in doubt should place pupils in easier books; certainly students are often placed in basal readers that are too difficult. (p. 39)

Today, children with reading disabilities still need to read easy materials. They should not be asked to read materials at their frustration level: the level to avoid. In 2001, Dick Allington, former President of the International Reading Association, summarized the literature:

When students were given tasks that were difficult, achievement gains were hard to come by…. The key point here is that the research has well demonstrated the need for students to have instructional texts that they can read accurately, fluently, and with good comprehension if we hope to foster academic achievement. The evidence also suggests that for large numbers of students this recommendation has been routinely ignored. (pp. 46-47, italics added)

The bottom line is straightforward: Reject goals and objectives that aim for 80% success in word recognition. They will frustrate your child. They will hurt his motivation. They will impede, perhaps halt, his progress. Request goals and objectives that conform to the widely accepted figures for instructional level (95-98%) and independent level (99%).

For more information on reading levels, see chapter 5 of Reading Disabilities: Beating the Odds. For information on goals and objectives, see chapters 7 and 11.

A Note on Reading Disabilities: Beating the Odds (www.reading2008.com)

Psychology Today recently wrote that Reading Disabilities: Beating the Odds was one of the three “best books about education published in 2010. Recommend [it] to your friends.” A Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism called it “a great book.” A parent wrote, “Your Reading Disabilities book is by far the best resource I have found regarding the IEP and IDEA and providing understandable and concrete suggestions and implementation strategies.”

We thank everyone for their kind words. And we hope that our book and blog helps lots of children, parents, teachers, IEP Team members, and schools. That’s why we keep plugging away.

References

Allington, R. L. (2001). What really matters for struggling readers: Designing research-based programs. NY: Longman.

Bryant, N. D. (1965). Some principles of remedial instruction for dyslexia. The Reading Teacher, 18, 567-572.

Ekwall, E. E., & Shanker, J. L. (1989). Teaching Reading in the Elementary School (2^nd ed.). Columbus, OH: Merrill.

Howard Margolis, Ed.D. © Reading2008 & Beyond                        www.reading2008.com

A Blog by Dr. Gary G. Brannigan and Dr. Howard Margolis

Often, children with reading disabilities spend so much time and mental energy trying to decode words that they pay little attention to the meaning of what they’re reading. This is a strong indication that for them the material is too difficult. If teachers regularly give children with reading disabilities such frustrating materials, these children may learn that reading has only two purposes: to sound out words and to hurry and finish. Reading is not about meaning, understanding, or enjoyment.

If this is happening to your child, it’s important to discuss the difficulty of his reading materials with his teachers, so they always give him materials on which he can succeed if he makes a moderate effort. He needs instructional level materials when teachers are teaching him how to succeed on the materials and easier materials, called independent level materials, when he’s working independently. It’s also important that his teachers begin to stress how he can make sense out of what he’s reading. One strategy that teachers and parents can use is Caldwell and Leslie’s Cross-Checking (2005, p. 67). Here’s how they describe it:

• Say the first sound or sounds of the word.
• Finish reading the sentence.
• Go back and think of a word that has the same first sound or sounds.
• See if the word has a spelling pattern that you know. If it does, use the compare-contrast strategy to figure out the word. [A previously taught strategy. The child might say, “If d-o-w-n is down, then t-o-w-n must be town.”]
• When you think you know the word, say it and finish the sentence.
• Reread the sentence with the word to make sure it makes sense.

Reference

Caldwell, J. S., & Leslie, L. (2005). Intervention strategies to follow informal reading inventory assessment. Boston: Pearson Allyn & Bacon.

Howard Margolis, Ed.D. (c) Reading2008 & Beyond           www.reading2008.com

A Blog by Dr. Gary G. Brannigan & Dr. Howard Margolis

How to Reach Your Young Child Through 4 Sense Keys

A Guest Post by Nancy Cloyd

President, Literacy for Tykes

http://LiteracyForTykes.blogspot.com

Who is your child?  You can know your child better than anyone else.  You have a special place in his heart. He wants your attention.  Can you reach him?

There are Sense Keys you can use to open up his response: Sight, Sound, Touch, and Doing. After his basic needs of food and rest are met, He discovers everything through these senses.

Let’s think about those basic needs first. Does he get 10 hours of rest?  Does he eat simple healthy foods?  Does he have known food allergies?  Do you limit his sugar intake?  Do you give him water—instead of juice or sodas—to drink regularly?

After his hunger and tiredness have been satisfied, let’s look at his other senses. Have you had his eyesight checked? Does he need glasses, or eye exercises to strengthen his eye muscles?  Does he need visual helps to focus on one part of a page at a time?

How about his hearing? Have you had his hearing level checked? Can he hear you when you speak to him from close by, and from across the room?  Does he have an ear blockage that his doctor might help?  Can he hear his teacher at school?

You want to know these things about your child because he learns about his world through his sight and hearing.  Once you know these senses are okay, or how to help him with challenges to his sight and hearing, then you can look at how you are reaching him through theses senses.

To see if you like them, most children look at your facial expressions. They also look to see if you are smiling when you ask them to read with you.  They listen to your tone of voice to find out if reading with you will be fun, or not.  Are you smiling and using a pleasant sound in your voice when you invite him to read with you? (By the way, have you turned off the TV, music and cell phones in the room before you invite him to read with you?)

Sense of touch is an important key to open up your child’s ability to pay attention.  Most children want to feel you hug them and want to sit either on your lap or cuddled up close with them when you read together.  This touch really helps them focus on what you are showing them in the book.

Sense of doing is a way to help your child keep his focus on what you are showing them.  Make a game out of it. You can use the “Find, Point, Say” game with beginning sounds of words:  Start by saying “Let’s find all the words on this page that start with ‘B’, the ‘bah’ sound”.  Then you help him find every word beginning with “B,” point to it, and say together the word like “bear,” stressing the sound of “B.” Go through the page finding each “B” word. If  he’s still attending, go on to the “Hard C,” looking for words like “Cat”; then to “D,” for words like “dog,” and so on.  You can use this “Find, Point and Say” Game with any reading sound on which he needs to work.

With any luck, the book you using has words and picture that illustrates them.  Point and help your child point to any words and then to the part of the picture it describes.  If a color name is written, first Find, Point, Say the color name in print, then Find, Point, Say that color on the picture.  If an animal is name is written,  Find, Point, Say the animal’s name in print, then Find, Point, Say the animal in the picture.

These “doing” actions are a good way to bring meaning to the words and fun to reading. By engaging your child in fun activities like these for 20 minutes a day, you can help him find joy in an area that may have frustrated him.

By the way, children learn what they see you do.  Does your child frequently see you read a book?  Can you read from a book, even for a few minutes, so he sees that reading books is something you really do?  Do you get books from the library for yourself and children’s books for him  Do you let him choose subjects that are interesting to him? Do you guide him to books that are easy enough for him to read?

Your caring use of these Four Sense Keys: Sight, Sound, Touch, and Doing can reach your child.  Your love, shared with him through reading, can open him up to the fun offered by books and reading.

© Nancy Cloyd

Literacy for Tykes. Literacy for Tykes, a 501 C3 Public Charity that equips, encourages, and empowers parents to bring literacy to their early child’s development. It raises funds to provide the high quality book Teddy Bear’s Favorite Pictures with step-by-step parent guidelines to share learning points with their children.  It emphasizes “Quiet Together Time” home reading of parent and child. It distributes books and complimentary materials through human service and educational groups, such as Infant & Toddler Connection, Healthy Families, Early Child Special Education, and Headstart.  You can find more information about Literacy for Tykes at http://LiteracyForTykes.blogspot.com.

Edited by Howard Margolis, Ed.D.,  www.reading2008.com

A Blog by Dr. Gary G. Brannigan & Dr. Howard Margolis

Reading Fluency: Part II – Helping Daniel

A Guest Post by

Lorraine Griffith, M.A.Ed

www.singreadlearn.com

West Buncombe Elementary School, Asheville NC

I have been thinking about reading fluency since 1999 when I heard Dr. Tim Rasinski from Kent State University speak at a small, summer workshop in Asheville NC. Having taught for about 9 years in kindergarten and fourth grade, I was seeing firsthand how reading was more than simply having children decode words. When I taught kindergarten, decoding was my goal. When I arrived in fourth grade, comprehending was my goal and my decoders were simply not cutting it with any depth of understanding. Fluency was the missing link between the phonics and the comprehension. This was made clear to me by a the three year study Tim and I did with my fourth graders; in this study, my at-risk readers made average yearly gains of 2.83 years (Griffith & Rasinski (2004).

As this school year began, I assessed my students as usual and was very surprised to find one of my academically gifted students, Daniel, hovering around the “2 year below” range in reading. I immediately held a conference with his parents. I told them what I found. Daniel had some serious speech issues and was not able to decode many of the words at a fifth grade level. This contradicted what they had been told for years—that he was simply “a lazy reader.” They quickly jumped on the issue and took him to a private speech therapist.

In the meantime, to fill the gaps, we began working on decoding carefully and reading phrases. We used a program that focused on precision with phonics. After a few months, Daniel was able to read the passage at grade level. As I listened to him read, I was struck by how monotone he was reading. His focus was still on EACH word. Consequently he still could not pass the comprehension section of the leveled reading testing.

Daniel is symbolic of the reading stages I have seen in my 21 years of teaching. The students must have the decoding skills to read on grade level. But they DO NOT comprehend the passages until they can interpret the text with appropriate phrasing and expressive voicing. This seems to be especially true for children who missed steps in their phonemic awareness and phonics development. These children desperately need coaching for their fluency development to bridge the gap between phonics and comprehension.

So what will I now do to improve Daniel’s fluency? We will read together and I will model the phrasing of a passage. I will teach him what to do between commas and how to “arc” a phrase as he reads. He will have plenty of opportunities to perform reader’s theater in class and to eventually perform poetry as a “soloist.” I will use Building Fluency with Practice and Performance, a series of traditional poems, songs, reader’s theater, and monologues for different grades. And when Daniel leaves my class, he will be on grade level. He will be reading books because he chooses to read them. He might even read them quickly. But his speed will come from a love of reading, not because he thinks fluent reading is reading fast.

Resources

Griffith L.W. and T. Rasinski (2004), A Focus on Fluency: How one teacher incorporated fluency with her reading curriculum, The Reading Teacher, 58 (2), 126-137.

Rasinski, T., & L. Griffith (2008) Building fluency through practice and performance: Grades 1 – 6. Huntington Beach: Shell Educational Publishing. Available at http://www.teachercreatedmaterials.com/reading/buildingFluency.

Rasinski, T., & Griffith, L. (Coming May 2010). Building Fluency with Practice and Performance.

Edited by Howard Margolis, Ed.D.  www.reading2008.com

Help Launch The National “Read To Kids” Campaign: Vote On the Web

In the U.S. today, a stark disparity exists between the reading abilities of low-income and higher-income children. Only 50% of low-income 4th graders read at or above the basic level according to the Department of Education’s 2007 Nation’s Report Card. The implications of the growing literacy gap extend beyond the walls of our homes and our classrooms. According to Dr. G. Reid Lyon, Chief of Child Development and Behavior at the National Institute of Health, “surveys of adolescents and young adults with criminal records indicate that at least half have reading difficulties, and in some states the size of prisons a decade in the future is predicted by fourth grade reading failure rates.”

According to the National Commission on Reading report, Becoming a Nation of Readers, “the single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children.”  However, The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study found that only 36% of kindergarten students of a low socioeconomic status were being read to every day by their parents.  In total, low-income children hear only half to one-third as many spoken words as children in more affluent households.

By reading aloud with low-income children, we can help bridge the literacy gap. To accomplish this, we need a national campaign that emphasizes the importance of parents, teachers and community volunteers reading aloud to children at least 20 minutes a day from birth through high school. Similar to the national physical activity campaign that encourages kids to get their 60 minutes of physical activity every day, we need a similar campaign aimed at encouraging kids to get their 20 minutes of reading aloud every day.

By reading aloud with children, we can improve their interest in and attitudes toward reading and improve children’s fundamental literacy skills, including reading comprehension, vocabulary, reading ability, listening comprehension, attention span and ability to articulate thoughts. Being read to by an adult also helps build a child’s self-esteem and confidence.

A national “Read to Kids” campaign could engage national and local literacy organizations, schools, teachers, parents, authors, publishers and nearly every sector of business and society that understands that our nation’s future depends on our children’s literacy skills.

EVERYBODY WINS! USA Inc Jan 26 @ 03:55PM PST

www.reading2008.com

Once on the site, click Paired Reading . You’ll also see valuable resources about Writing, Spelling, and Thinking. You can download most of these resources.

Visiting the site and studying the materials will give you information that may help you make better decisions for children who struggle with reading.

Howard Margolis © Reading2008 & Beyond  www.reading2008.com