Science, Language, and Imagination in Teaching Kids to Read

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Science, Language, and Imagination in Teaching
Kids to Read

• Louisa Moats, Ed.D.
• New York Branch IDA
• March, 2009

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Who Are We Concerned About?

• 11-17 of children are dyslexic
• 38 are below basic in reading nationally
  (NAEP) at 4th grade
• 70-80 of high poverty kids

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Reading Trajectories Are Established Early
(Torgesen Foorman Vellutino Malfese)
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Children Rarely Catch Up On Their Own
(Fletcher Foorman Juel Mehta Good)
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Reading is Distributed on the Bell Curve
40th ile is benchmark
Good readers, at grade level
Below 20th ile is at risk for long-term reading
failure
Distribution of reading skill
50
2
98
Percentile Rank
16
84
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Can We Defy These Odds?

• We can narrow the gap if
• Instruction is comprehensive, systematic, and
  intensive
• Validated programs and methods are used
• Instruction is guided by assessment
• Instruction is supported by coaching and
  professional development

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Defying the Odds
Typical distribution of results (national, state,
local)
Outstanding classroom, school, or district
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Percent of 1st Grade Students Below 30th ile
After Research-based Instruction

• Foorman et al., 1998 5
• Mathes et al., 2001 6
• Allor at al., 2002 6
• Mathes, Denton et al., 2006 5
• Felton, 1993 3.8
• Vellutino et al., 1996 4.5
• Torgesen et al., 1999 4
• Torgesen et al., 2002 .7

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Hartsfield Elementary SchoolProgress Over Five
Years
30
Proportion falling below the 25th percentile in
word reading ability at the end of first grade
20
10
1995 1996 1997 1998 1999
Average Percentile 48.9 55.2 61.4
73.5 81.7 for entire grade (n105)
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Success in Washington, DC

• In Washington, DC, 650 children in 9
  low-performing schools moved from the 20thile to
  the national average (50th to 60th iles)
  between grades K-4 when ALL components were
  taught well
• Phoneme awareness
• Phonics, word study, and spelling
• Vocabulary and language enrichment
• Fluency
• Reading comprehension and written expression

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Results, End of Grade 2

• Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Achievement

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Success Begins with Early Identification of
Children At Risk

• Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills
  (DIBELS)
• Texas Primary Reading Inventory (TPRI)
• AIMSweb
• Predictive Assessment of Reading (PAR)
• Childrens Progress Academic Assessment
• efficient
• inexpensive
• powerful predictors of later reading

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Oral Reading Fluency Benchmarks
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Screeners Predict End-of Year (Outcome) Test
Results
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The Many Strands that are Woven into Skilled
Reading (Scarborough, 2001)
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meaning (semantics)
discourse structure
morphology
language
pragmatics
sentences (syntax)
writing system (orthography)
phonology
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The Relationship Between Decoding and
Comprehension Changes Over Time (Fletcher,
Foorman, Shaywitz et al.)
p. 43
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• Tests of phonological coding and word recognition
  are much better predictors of reading
  comprehension in novice readers
• Tests of language comprehension are much better
  predictors in advanced readers
• - Vellutino, Tunmer, Jaccard, and Chen (2007),
  
  Scientific Studies of Reading

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Relationships Among the Essential Components
Change Over Time
Proportion of variance in FCAT explained by oral
reading fluency and verbal comprehension.
(Schatschneider et al., 2004)
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Comprehensive Instruction For ALL, 120 to 150
minutes/day

• Comprehension
• Written Expression
• Reading Fluency
• Vocabulary Knowledge
• Phonics, Word Study, and Spelling
• Phoneme Awareness
• (oral language foundations)
• -Put Reading First, 2001

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Components of Instruction by Grade
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Changing Emphasis, Each Grade

• Percent instructional time in 1st grade

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Percent Instructional Time, 2nd Grade
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Effective Differentiation Is Theory-Driven

• Who needs help?
• What kind of help do they need?
• Is the help helping?

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The Various Jobs of Our Brain
Who can I blame for my latest mistake?
On the lookout for more chocolate.
Where did I leave the keys?
Did I turn off the stove?
Is my zipper zipped?
v
Do I have mascara running down my cheek?
Can I really afford to do this?
Is my hair in place?
Is there a run in my nylons?
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The Reading Brain
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Seidenberg McClelland, 1989 Rayner et al., 2001
Language Comprehension
Fluency
Vocabulary
Phonemic Awareness
Phonics
spelling
speech output
visual input
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Neurobiological Basis of Reading and Reading
Disability (G. Eden, Neurology, 2004)
Typical Readers
Dyslexic Readers
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Neurobiological Basis of Dyslexia Brain regions
that are under-activated in a group of dyslexic
versus a group of typical readers
left right
Eden et al., Neuron, 2004
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Wrong Theories Lead to Poor Practice
Graphophonic
Syntactic
Semantic
The Three Cueing Systems
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For Example
shape
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Word Recognition Depends On Phoneme-Grapheme
Mapping
shape
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The alphabetic word wall.

• O
• one
• once
• only
• out
• open
• on
• off

• E
• eye
• eat
• end
• every
• even

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Phoneme-grapheme Correspondence
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The Role of Phonology

• Word perception, memory, and retrieval depend on
  phonological processing
• /f/ /l/ /u/ /sh/
• /f/ /l/ /e/ /sh/
• /f/ /r/ /e/ /sh/
• assess, access
• secede, succeed

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Consonant Phonemes, Place and Manner of
Articulation
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Context Does Not Drive Word Recognition

• .Dont know that word? Well just keep reading
  and see what might make sense here

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Word Consciousness..

• Defuse or diffuse?
• Advice or advise?
• Allusion or illusion?
• Antidote or anecdote?

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Syntactic Awareness

• Sentences do the work of the text.
• Syntax is a core problem in language learning
  difficulties.
• We focus on text, yet sentences, one by one,
  communicate the propositions that eventually add
  up to the gist.
• Scott, 2004

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Good readers

• Read like a detective. Students rely solely on
  evidence within the text to determine what the
  text says. Students also draw conclusions about
  what is unstated but must be true given the text.
• Observe details and make connections. Students
  attend to details and describe the contribution
  specific details make to the whole. Once
  students pay careful attention to the text, they
  compare and contrast details and themes in the
  text to their experience and to other texts.
• David Coleman, New Standards for Comprehension,
  Grades 6-12

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Skills Must Be Applied

• Scaffolded oral text reading practice produced
  significantly higher fluency than word study
  only.
• Explicit teaching of a decoding strategy
• Prompts to use a decoding strategy
• Routine use with decodable text
• Vadasy, Sanders, and Peyton, JLD (2005)

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Why Do We Read?

• Reading makes us full, ready, and exact.
• Sir Francis Bacon
• We read to learn or to find pleasure.
• Rex Murphy, reviewing Harold Bloom
• The better to enjoy life, or the better to endure
  it.
• Samuel Johnson

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What Are the Children Reading?

• Is there thematic depth?
• Are major genres well sampled?
• Are there provocative, engaging ideas?
• Is there substantive content?
• Do we trigger the imagination?

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An Achievable Goal

• We have the science to prevent and ameliorate
  reading problems.
• We can use science and excite the imagination.
• You can make a critical difference!
• Thank you.

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• Its a great life if you dont weaken.