Revisiting the Concerns With Reading Workshop Units of Study

November 11, 2021

Hosted by Curriculum Matters

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Meet Our Speakers

David Paige

Professor, Northern Illinois University

Carissa Berliner

Universal Literacy Reading Coach - NYCDOE

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@MsBerlinerRCD28

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Margaret Goldberg

David Liben

Student Achievement Partners Consultant

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Literacy Coach in West Contra Costa Unified

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co-founder of the Right to Read Project

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@right2readproj

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Matt Warford

Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning Aldine ISD

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@WarfordMatt

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A Bit of Housekeeping

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Looking Back on the SAP Review

The review by seven literacy experts found issues in four areas:

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• Foundational Skills
• Knowledge-Building and Vocabulary
• Text Complexity
• ELL Supports

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“One of the consistent findings of the expert reviewers, however, is that following the course of Units of Study would be unlikely to lead to literacy success for all of America’s public schoolchildren, given the research. The impact is most severe for children who do not come to school already possessing what they need to know to make sense of written and academic English.”

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Breaking: New EdReports Review

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Relative to the key concerns from the review – what is changing?

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First, Some Caveats...

Units of Study by Heinemann

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(teacher guides & materials)

PD in TCRWP Institutes

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(guidance, supplemental materials)

Experience as a Partner School

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(on-site staff developer, guidance, supplemental materials)

Experience in the TCRWP community

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(free guidance via Facebook group, PD via Reunions, etc)

Changes Appear to Vary Across TCRWP Ecosystem

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Lucy Calkins Has Sent Mixed Messages

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“Going to remain the same for a very long time"

– Calkins at October Reunion Preview

On Grades K–2 Reading:

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“Lots and lots of changes; pretty much they are new and yet we kept the things that I think everybody loves most about the previous units."

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"We've been teaching the units of study for almost a decade and there's lots of things that we've learned. Everything that we've learned, we've put into the new units."

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"There were times in the old units when we were sort of bullshitting. To first graders we were saying, 'You want to get to know your characters so well that you know what she or he has in their pocket. Bring your character to life in that sort of way.' And the truth is, none of us expected 1st graders to be able to do that work. It was above them...We've talked internally about, 'Let's not have the pretend curriculum.' We try to actually have the units be something that the kids can be doing."

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– Calkins at October Reunion

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Big Picture...

• Changes are coming to the Units of Study in Fall, 2022. Schools will need to purchase new materials or PD to get the updates.
• Changes were previewed at the TCRWP Reunions (March & October). Calkins is messaging significant changes available via the Institutes; Heinemann is messaging limited changes.
• Lack of urgency in getting new info to Partner Schools.
• Even some TC staff seem unclear on what’s coming, and unable or unwilling to communicate the exact shifts to Partner Schools.

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Relative to the key concerns from the review – what is changing?

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Review Findings: Foundational Skills

These findings apply to instruction for native and English language learners::

1. Scope & Sequence not explicit across lessons: Leaves teachers in the dark regarding what came before, what is right now, and what’s next; no guidance on how to determine when a skill is mastered.
2. Uses whole group instruction with partner work: 20 minute lessons with a suggestion to extend if necessary; small-group for 7-10 minutes. Significant counter pressures to move quickly into workshop activities. “Every minute you spend teaching phonics (or preparing phonics materials to use in your lessons) is less time spent teaching other things.” (p. 4, A Guide to the Phonics Unit of Study).
3. Three-cueing system strategy for unlocking words (1. meaning/semantic; 2. structure/syntax; 3. visual/graphophonic cues)
4. Assessment: included on a stand-alone basis; not integral to informing instruction (this coherent with a whole-class approach)
5. Lack of phonics activities with explicit instruction: There is no “talk back” between workshop and phonics activities.
6. Phonics sequence is very fast - will leave many children behind
7. Very little opportunity for independent practice: again the rush to workshop activities; program presents the rationale that children differ in their developmental rate providing a “loophole” for those who are behind because of inadequate instruction.
8. Differentiation: Students differ in their rate of reading acquisition. This means th3 almost exclusive use of whole-class instruction by Units of Study becomes increasingly less productive, thus leaving many students behind. There is little guidance on how to differentiate students and deliver efficacious instruction.

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What We Know: Foundational Skills

• Not Changing
• Units of Study: Phonics is, according to Lucy, “nearly perfect”
• Changing
• Units of Study: Reading (K–2)

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Not Changing...

Changes to Units of Study, Reading (K–2)

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• Changing: Mini-lessons will be shorter: more focused and the lesson plans themselves will also have fewer words.

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• Changing: They are writing what Lucy called, "grab and go curriculum" including what is being called a "blueprint method" that includes instructional routines used over and over in the unit.

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• Small group - "We realize people don't use conferring and small group guides" - people go to Serravallo - so they are making lessons more 'grab and go.’

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Changing: The order of the Units and the content of the lessons are being rewritten

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Picture Power is still included, but it appears later in the program (after Slider Power) and is intended to have students "confirm their decoding" and "make greater inferences"

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Changing: Decodables

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• Targeting 40% decodable, 60% leveled in K–1. Lucy has also said that some students should not be given leveled books at all, but has not provided guidance on how to know which students except for if they have a dyslexia diagnosis
• Recommending that teachers remove leveled books that poorly reflect the sounds previously studied by students – but that is being left to teacher’s discretion.

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TCRWP authoring decodables, which will be multi-criterion, like Freddy Hiebert's.

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Free decodables available now...

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Grade K–2 Assessments

• Recently Changed: Early grades decoding assessment: the Phonic Blending Assessment – currently on the Heinemann website – is going to be revised and included. Lucy has said that the Phonic Blending assessment gives teachers more useful information than reading records at the lower levels.

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• Not Changing: Running records (rewritten versions, as released at the beginning of the year to those with TCRWP login)

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• Changing: Messaging about use of running records

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Review Findings: Content Knowledge & Vocabulary

• Fails to build knowledge systematically, partly due to choice texts.
• “Little specific guidance to teachers” on how to build vocabulary and word acumen.
• “Insufficient support of core meanings, similarities and differences in the meanings of near-synonyms, of spelling, and or morphology.”
• Weight toward independent reading, and students are often left without the teacher supports and scaffolding that are often required to help them build their knowledge of unfamiliar words and knowledge.”

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What We Know: Content Knowledge & Vocabulary

• No indication that materials will address issues in review.
• Changing: They are embedding PD for teachers into the UOS materials, to help teachers expand their knowledge of reading research. Yet they leave it to teachers to implement knowledge-building within the curriculum.

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Knowledge from Units of Study

“Chances are good that, left alone, many of your students would have read narrative nonfiction texts as a fact-collecting enterprise, recording every passing detail in the text and proceeding at a snail’s pace.

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One can also read a nonfiction narrative hoping to learn facts about a person’s life or a time period. We’re not emphasizing that sort of reading now because we’re convinced that students do that work often

Read aloud a narrative nonfiction book (in this case, a biography) and recruit students to join you in listening for the familiar elements of story”

“Continue reading aloud the narrative nonfiction text, this time asking children to tell each other what they notice about the character and his traits and struggles”.----

When I pulled my chair up next to Kadija, she was reading a book about Sacagawea. She told me she was working on envisioning

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Vocabulary

• A Solution to Plato's Problem: The Latent Semantic Analysis Theory of Acquisition, Induction, and Representation of Knowledge

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• Conceptual coherence, comprehension, and vocabulary acquisition: A knowledge effect? Cervetti, Wright and Hwang 2016

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The Achievement Gap At Work

• Below Level: Shelter, splattered, fixed, rescue, careless, dependable, hermit,

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•On Level: Journal, tremors, traction, interval, volunteered, retrieve, support

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•Above level: Generation, abandoned, languished, terrified, warble, galvanized, debris, hoisted, shuddered

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Comprehension Strategies Have Diminishing Returns

• Dan Willingham’s work shows diminishing returns on strategies work

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• Text-dependent and -specific questions enhance comprehension more than strategies work: Rethinking Reading Comprehension Instruction: A Comparison of Instruction for Strategies and Content Approach. Beck and McKeown

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• K-12 ELA is heavy on ‘reading strategies’ – and it’s core to TCRWP

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Review Findings: Text Complexity

• “Program’s approach to complex text and language development to be too unsystematic to ensure that all students would encounter adequate challenge or receive sufficient supports for successful progress, particularly in grades K–2.”

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• “Students spend the majority of each lesson in K–5 reading books at their ‘instructional or independent reading level,’ books that they can already, for the most part, read with ease.

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• Overemphasis on read-alouds of texts at or below grade level in grades 3-5

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What We Know: Text Complexity

• We are unaware of changes to ensure grade level text work for all students in Reading Workshop. Text choices are still left to teachers.
• New mentor texts are being introduced for Writers Workshop, to ensure texts are more culturally responsive – and perhaps more complex. These are exemplar lessons; implementation is left to teachers.

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Leveled Reading

• Education lore not law
• Effect of Difficulty Levels on Second-Grade Delayed Readers Using Dyad Reading and The effects of dyad reading and text difficulty on third-graders’ reading achievement
• Annotating to Support Learning in the Content Areas: Teaching and Learning Science. Gomez and Gomez
• A Knowledge-Based Framework for Unifying Content-Area Reading Comprehension and Reading Comprehension Strategies. Vitale and Romance

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Review Findings: ELL Support

What We Know: No known changes.

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Beyond the Review: Other Changes

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• Writers Workshop (K-8) is getting a significant rewrite.

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• Goals: making program more "fun and lively,” "play and joy," trying to clarify the narrative that goes across the bends.

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• More sensitivity to gender: "Reader Man" will become "Mighty Reader"

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• Attempts to be more inclusive re: class and cultural diversity

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What We Know About Timing and Pricing

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Our Reflections

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Which concerns are applicable to F&P?

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Q&A

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