Article #3 Teaching Tips 10 Rules for Teaching

Litt, D.G. (2007, March). 10 Rules for Reading. The Reading Teacher, 60(6), 570–574. doi: 10.1598/RT.60.6.7.

In the author's experience, a significant source of reading difficulty for many beginning and struggling readers are misconceptions about print concepts so basic teachers assume their students are aware of them. Many children fail to grasp implicit principles of print such as the following: the reader cannot make up the words, the order of letters within a word makes a difference, and each letter in a word must be considered.

Using brief vignettes from her work with beginning and struggling readers, the author draws attention to these often-overlooked misconceptions. The author explains how she helped students overcome their faulty understandings by providing “rules” about reading, which enabled them to regulate their own reading.


Deborah Litt, was a former elementary level Reading Recovery Teacher and Reading Specialist.
The 10 rules are: (1) Read only what's on the page, don't make it up. (2) Reading always makes sense. (3) When reading doesn't make sense, find out what is wrong and correct it. (4) If the words and the pictures are different , go by the words. (5) Say the words as they are written. (6) Say the part of the word you know. (7) Always read form left to right. (8) You can't change the order of the letters. (9) Only make sounds for letters that you see in the word. (10) You're not allowed to ignore any letters in a word. The strength of the article is it shows strategies that students can use to correct 10 misconceptions of reading. If students continue using ineffective reading behaviors they will be stunted and he or she may have problems with comprehension. The rules are not entirely what is paramount in the discussion, the early intervention with the students before negative habits are formed is the most critical. Each teacher can develop a strategy that works in their classroom and assess students' comprehension of the 10 principles for the struggling readers helps them to learn the positive strategies when reading. A weakness of the article is that although the author used studies from Marie Clay (1993) and Linnea Ehri (1997 & 1998), she only studied her school experience of the studies. Implications of the findings are that many teachers assume certain text information is common knowledge and each teacher should assess struggling readers to assure he or she has full comprehension of the 10 rules for reading. Each classroom teacher should develop a plan to work with students on the rules he or she does not understand to produce effective reading skills.

Article #4 Helping Students Become Accurate, Expressive Readers:Fluency Instruction for Small Groups

Abstract from Kuhn, M. (2004, December). Helping Students Become Accurate, Expressive Readers: Fluency Instruction for Small Groups. The Reading Teacher, 58(4), 338–344. doi: 10.1598/RT.58.4.3

Effective approaches to fluency instruction should facilitate automatic and accurate word recognition as well as the ability to read with expression. The study reported in this article focused on instructional approaches that can be used with small groups of learners within a broader literacy curriculum, one that is suitable for flexible grouping. It also explored the relationship between fluent reading and comprehension. Twenty-four struggling second-grade readers were selected to take part in the interventions. The research evaluated two approaches for assisting learners who were making the transition to fluent reading: a modified repeated reading approach, and a scaffolded wide-reading approach in which learners read equivalent amounts of text without the use of repetition. A listening-only group, designed to serve as a Hawthorne control, and a control group were also included. Results indicate that the students in the wide-reading and repeated reading groups demonstrated growth in terms of word recognition in isolation, prosody, and correct words per minute, and that the wide-reading group also demonstrated growth in terms of comprehension. Suggestions for integrating these approaches with the literacy curriculum are discussed.

The problem is ensuring that students are affluent readers. One reason this is important is that affluent readers no longer have to decode every word he or she is reading in the text. It has been a wrong assumption that increased amounts of decoding instruction would automatically lead to improved fluency or relying on round robin type group reading as a main approach for oral reading. The above students listed in the study were assessed by using pre and post testing. The student comprehension, accurate automatic word recognition in the text (QRI and QRI - II), informed reading inventories like standardized tests of Test of Word Recognition Efficiency (TOWRE), and National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP).

One of the strengths is the research found out that the fluency oriented oral reading (FOOR) where students read an equivalent amount of non repetitive text , on the fluency development of struggling readers within a flexible group. This approaches works best with students who are working on the mechanics of the reading. The wide-reading approach works best with students who need to work on improving word recognition, expression, and comprehension. A weakness could be that in one of the groups, the FOOR group the students only read six books and had 18 read to them.So although they scored higher in comprehension they weren't technically doing all the work themselves.

This an implication for the classroom in that both groups of FOOR and wide-reading approaches used inflexible grouping formats, which provided effective fluency-oriented instruction. They both ensure that students have increased opportunities to read connected text. The strategies help create high expectations of student accountability for the materials used. This provides a model of expressive reading that is easy to implement, can be used in several ways, and have a variety of texts from basal readers to more challenging trade books.

Article #2: The Importance of Effective Early Interventoin

Strickland, D.S. (2002). The Importance of Effective Early Intervention. In A.E. Farstrup, & S. Samuels (Eds.), What Research Has to Say About Reading Instruction (pp. 69-86). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

For a variety of reasons, some young children may struggle to learn to read. Research indicates that difficulty with initial literacy acquisition may lead to less practice and motivation and, hence, to continuing academic struggles. It is therefore important that these children be identified early so that they can be provided with appropriate support. In this chapter, the author describes numerous approaches to early intervention and outlines components of successful programs.

Learning is one of the most important accomplishments a young child accomplishes in early elementary. The children who are successful in learning to read have these attributes: (1) they have normal to above average language skills, (2) they come from homes that incorporate books and literacy with an investment to the importance of acquisition of skills pertaining to them. (3) The schools reinforce that reading and print are interconnected, offering several daily opportunities to read and write. The children with challenges to reading acquisition have these common factors: (1) history of preschool language impairment, (2) limited English proficiency, (3) when their parents had difficulty learning to read, (4) children with symptoms of ADHD, (5) students who lack motivation to read, and (6) children with a low SES. All these factors shown in Longitudinal studies tell us that there is "90% chance that a child who is a poor reader by the end of the first grade will be a poor reader by the end of fourth grade"(Juel, 1988). The strengths are they found several strategies that work,like using multilevel activities, specific instruction in self-monitoring , scaffolding instruction that makes use of modeling and demonstrations, and linking reading and writing instruction. A weakness is that most interventions require more than one intervention to help the students and one strategy to help one child may do nothing for another. In order for the them to work teachers need to have professional development in merging instruction with assessment in beginning reading programs. More needed research could be to deal with the issue of keeping the programs successful, how to solve the debate of pull-outs versus in-class instruction, and articulation between the specialist and classroom teachers.

Article #1 Issues in Urban Literacy Beginning Reading Instruction in Urban Schools: The Curriculum Gap Ensures a Continuing Achievement Gap

Teale, W.H., Paciga, K.A., & Hoffman, J.L. (2007, December). Beginning Reading Instruction in Urban Schools: The Curriculum Gap Ensures a Continuing Achievement Gap. The Reading Teacher, 61(4), 344–348. doi: 10.1598/RT.61.4.8

Addressing beginning reading instruction in urban schools, this article proposes that a curriculum gap exists in many K–3 classrooms that operate under the guidelines of the No Child Left Behind Act and Reading First. The authors make a case for the inclusion of systematic and sustained instruction in comprehension, content knowledge, and writing in the early grades as well as attention to the Reading First emphases on phonological awareness, decoding, word recognition, and reading fluency.

The problem researchers studied is that although programs like NCLB and Reading First have been put into place there are still literacy components missing from the daily instruction that will show up in later grades. These areas that also need to be addressed are instructional lessons in comprehension, content knowledge, and writing in early grades. It is not enough to address only the literacy component with these children, such as giving them 45 minutes extra literature per day. To do so will leave children lacking in other core subjects. One study was the Chicago Public Schools since 2000 were using Reading First. The problem is in 2006-2007 the school district scored so poorly in instructional writing. The study was conducted with 100 Reading First classrooms in Chicago Public Schools. The researchers found that a good ending is more likely to happen if there is a good beginning. Somewhere the teachers had lost the connection between reading and writing. The program needed to focus on all aspects of word knowledge, fluency, comprehension, and writing at all grade levels. They also found out that writing can help with phonological skills.Another study was by the Center on Education Policy (CEP, 2007) this one surveyed 349 school districts found schools canceling gore curriculum like Science for an average of 90 minutes each week extra literacy development. A strength of the article is that it shows that an existing program can be improved upon and doesn't have to be totally changed. The studies were able to successfully identify the problems and make constructive strategies for improvement. A weakness of this article is their should be more linear studies done. There were a few urban districts identified in the article, but id doesn't have enough of a representation across the United States. The implications of this article is there needs to be a connection between reading and writing to have a successful literacy program. Just because we are teaching word recognition doesn't mean the students are comprehending the reading.

Research Review Blog - Preventing Early Reading Failure

I would like to research timely, intensive interventions for struggling readers. In the past research has shown us that it is more effective and cost conscious to use early intervention than trying to catch readers up after years of failure. I would like to learn appropriate, intensive intervention strategies, based on research, for those students who need it in early elementary settings.

Hello!

I am currently working toward a degree in LD. This is a fun way to exchange ideas with each other.