How To Raise Reading Achievement

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How To Raise Reading Achievement

• Cynthia Shanahan
• Professor, Literacy, Language, Culture
• Director of Teacher Education
• University of Illinois at Chicago
• chynd_at_uic.edu

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How To Raise Reading Achievement

• You are the boss.
• You are responsible for making the moves that
  will improve reading achievement
• You not only must raise the scores this year, but
  you need a plan to keep raising the scores into
  the future

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Its important because.

• Reading achievement has risen for 4th graders
  since 1992, while 8th and 12th grade achievement
  has been stagnant
• Even at 4th grade, there are large disparities in
  achievement based upon race and class.
• It takes a high degree of literacy to be
  contributing members of the work force and
  society.
• More American 8th graders are on track for
  college than is true of either 10th or 12th
  graders

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So what will you do?
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Some Solutions are Unlikely to Work

• Maybe you could just buy a reading program but
  if that worked, then wouldnt everybody have high
  scores?

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Some Solutions are Unlikely to Work

• You could go to see the Wizard to find out if he
  could help.
• But hed probably just tell you to muster up the
  heart and brain and courage to get the job done.

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Some Solutions are Unlikely to Work

• Maybe you could pray harder? Of course, prayer
  doesnt work that way
• And everybody knows you cant pray in the public
  schools

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Some Solutions are Unlikely to Work

• Maybe we could get the majority of people to vote
  to not have the test
• But that might not work after all

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Some Solutions are Unlikely to Work

• Maybe youll get lucky and new housing project
  for rich kids will move into your district then
  the scores could rise without doing anything!

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Some Solutions are Unlikely to Work

• Or, the teachers could help the kids take the
  tests.uh, well, no, thats been tried before.
• And it would be wrong!

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Some Solutions are Unlikely to Work

• Maybe we could just hire statisticians who would
  make the scores look good, even if the kids
  couldnt read
• No, thats been tried, too.

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Some Solutions are Unlikely to Work

• Maybe your lowest readers will be absent, so they
  wont even be at school when the test is given.

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Clearly none of those ideas are going to work!!!
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So what can you really do to improve reading
achievement?

• Eureka!!!
• Ill use the Pyramid to solve my problem.

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Literacy Improvement Pyramid
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__________________
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Literacy Improvement Pyramid
__________________________________________________
__________________
Leadership
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Leadership

• Many correlational studies show the importance of
  leadership in school improvement
• Improving reading school- or district- wide
  requires a coherent response
• Leadership can improve things, but it also can
  make things worse
• Principals and other leaders have been found to
  only have an indirect outcome on student
  achievement outcomes

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Literacy Improvement Pyramid
__________________________________________________
__________________
Amount of Instruction
Leadership
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Amount of Instruction

• Amount of instruction is the biggest alterable
  factor in student learning
• Large amount of correlational and experimental
  research evidence
• 2-3 hours per day of reading and writing
  instruction, K-12 is a good place to start
• Increase time within and across the school day
• Fastest gains can be achieved by increasing
  amount of teaching

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Literacy Improvement Pyramid
__________________________________________________
__________________
Amount of Instruction
Curriculum
Leadership
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Curriculum Framework

• Second biggest impact on learning is from what is
  taught
• Explicit curriculum is important in ensuring that
  teaching occurs
• Explicit curriculum prevents excessive overlaps
  across grade levels
• Curriculum needs to be organized
• Importance of phonemic awareness, phonics, sight
  vocabulary, comprehension, fluency, writing,
  vocabulary

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Literacy Improvement Pyramid
__________________________________________________
__________________
Professional Development
Amount of Instruction
Curriculum
Leadership
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Professional Development

• Evidence shows that professional development for
  teachers improves student achievement
• This professional development has to focus on how
  to teach/assess
• Should be ongoing, multifaceted, and allow for
  practice and experimentation
• This is one of the quality levers

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Literacy Improvement Pyramid
__________________________________________________
__________________
Professional Development
Assessment Monitoring
Amount of Instruction
Curriculum
Leadership
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Assessment and Monitoring

• Need to assess student learning frequently in
  order to make needed adjustments
• Assessment must be kept to a minimum so as not to
  reduce amount of instruction
• Assessment is often key in inclusion or exclusion
  of teaching
• Monitoring of amount and quality of teaching
  matters as well

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Literacy Improvement Pyramid
__________________________________________________
__________________
Professional Development
Assessment Monitoring
Teaching Materials
Amount of Instruction
Curriculum
Leadership
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Teaching Materials

• Instructional materials include core programs,
  supplementary materials, and intervention
  materials
• Instructional materials should be consistent with
  research
• Instructional materials are needed but they wont
  improve reading achievement alone
• Materials can be a quality lever
• Review of materials needs to consider not just
  inclusion, but likelihood of success

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Literacy Improvement Pyramid
__________________________________________________
__________________
Differentiation
Professional Development
Assessment Monitoring
Teaching Materials
Amount of Instruction
Curriiculum
Leadership
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Special Kids, Special Programs

• Regular program will not be sufficient for all
  kids
• The importance of special programs to your
  success depends upon the size of this population
• Responding to these needs is often more of an
  ethical concern than one of improving school or
  district achievement
• Children need to balancenot programs

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We can differentiate in four ways

• There are at least 4 kinds of adjustment that can
  be made
• --Content coverage
• --Amount of teaching
• --Level of instruction
• --Intensity of instruction

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1. Content Coverage

• Reading is an integrated cognitive activity
• Proper integration requires accomplishments of
  the basic parts
• These components include phonemic awareness,
  phonics, oral reading fluency, vocabulary,
  comprehension (and each part has parts)
• These components have a rough sequence of
  development

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Content Coverage

• These components all correlate well with each
  other
• However, they can operate independently
• Two kinds of poor readers some are low in
  everything, while others have uneven patterns of
  performance

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Content Coverage

• Differentiation may involve creating special
  opportunities for students to engage more deeply
  with a particular component
• Tends to work to the extent that the extra
  attention is appropriate

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2. Amount of instruction

• Overall low performance may indicate the need for
  more instructional time
• Carroll model explains teaching in terms of
  timeand it defines aptitude in terms of the
  amount of time it takes to learn something
• Why provide equal learning time given the
  individual differences?

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Amount of instruction

• Low performing schools should include greater
  amount of literacy learning opportunity
• Within classroom opportunities (re-teaching)
• Pull out opportunities
• After school opportunities
• Other

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3. Level of instruction

• Language is unique among academic subjects in
  that level of attainment is not defined by
  content
• In math multiplication follows addition
• In reading the components do not depend on each
  other to the same extentyou can learn PA from
  phonics and you can improve decoding from fluency
  
• We use the concept of reading level which is
  related to text difficulty rather than to
  specific skills

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4. Intensity of instruction

• It is possible to intensify instruction within
  the same time amounts and levels
• Learners are willing to allow instruction to
  lightly wash over themselvesteachers dont have
  to allow that
• Teachers often dont target core/whole classroom
  instructionbut they can
• We can vary intensity in teaching for particular
  kids

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Intensity of instruction

• Attention varies during instruction
• Some solutions
• (a) vary numbers of kids
• (b) seating placement
• (c) amount of personal interaction

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Intensity of instruction

• Engagement varies during instruction
• Some solutions
• (a) Fish-bowl
• (b) Multiple-response cards
• (c) Directive modeling
• (d) Partnering

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Intensity of instruction

• Grasp varies during instruction
• Some solutions
• (a) Increased scaffolding
• (b) Greater amounts of modeling
• (c) More responses

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Literacy Improvement Pyramid
__________________________________________________
__________________
Differentiation
Parents
Professional Development
Assessment Monitoring
Teaching Materials
Amount of Instruction
Curriculum
Leadership
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Parents

• Parent involvement can improve reading
  achievement
• Parents often need guidance to support learning
• Parents can provide opportunities to use text and
  models of literacy use
• Parents can also teach in helpful ways
• Parents can make the school credible
• If parents cannot help, you can still succeed

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Literacy Improvement Pyramid
__________________________________________________
__________________
Motivation and context
Differentiation
Parents
Professional Development
Assessment Monitoring
Teaching Materials
Amount of Instruction
Curriculum
Leadership
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Motivation and context

• Kind of a miscellaneous category
• Capitalize on students strengths
• Create environments that encourage/support
  learning
• Develop instruction that provides students with
  challenge, choice, control, collaboaration,
  consequences

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Literacy Improvement Pyramid
__________________________________________________
__________________
Differentiation
Parents
Motivation and context
Public Relations
Professional Development
Assessment Monitoring
Teaching Materials
Amount of Instruction
Curriculum
Leadership
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Public Relations

• Little research here
• Need to provide coherent information to the
  community
• Need to build motivation into your programs at
  all levelsto keep everyone moving towards the
  goal
• Need to build partnerships to gain resources

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How do you implement a K-12 initiative?
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Reading instruction changes as students go
through school

• Disciplinary
• Literacy
• Intermediate Literacy
• B a s i c L I t e r a c y

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Time constraints change

• Big blocks of time with one teacher
• 45-50 minute periods with multiple teachers

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Assessment changes

• Progress monitoring can occur in regular
  intervals of short duration and document regular
  gains
• Measurable gains take longer to produce and are
  less discrete, so.

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One size doesnt fit all
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But, you can make a difference if you

• Require basic principles to be applied ACROSS
  K-12 (Implement the pyramid).
• Allow schools to choose elements of instruction
  for which there is no solid research evidence.
• Require changes in the structure of reading
  instruction as students progress.
• Provide programs to students who need extra help.

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How to Raise Reading Achievement

• Cynthia Shanahan
• University of Illinois at Chicago
• Chynd_at_uic.edu