Targeting Unfinished Learning to Increase Effectiveness of Literacy Instruction in the Upper Grades

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Sara Jones

Title 1 Reading Interventionist

Twitter: @mrsjones3rdgrad

https://bit.ly/3NfXTUm

Learning Targets

• We will identify what unfinished learning looks like with reading in the upper grades.
• We will learn how to diagnose unfinished learning with each of our students.
• We will become familiar with the evidence based practices surrounding the science of reading.
• We will be able to implement instructional strategies supporting foundational literacy skills for older students, including phonology, orthography, semantics, syntax, and morphology to help support fluency and comprehension.

Welcome!

About Me!

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Experience:

Preschool - 5 years

Kindergarten - 2 years

3rd Grade - 3 years

Intervention- 3 years (K-12 Reading / Math)

Elementary Education

Reading Endorsement

Masters in Special Education

Instructional Strategist II LD/BD

Reading Intervention Basics

The Big 5

Reading has 5 BIG IDEAS of instruction

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1. Phonemic Awareness
2. Phonics
3. Fluency
4. Vocabulary
5. Comprehension

Scope of reading skills

Causes of Poor Reading

Child - Based

• Dyslexia
• Apraxia
• Poor working memory
• Attention issues
• Orthographic deficits

Environmental

• English not first language
• Literacy exposure birth to 5
• Immigrated after 3rd grade
• High transient rates
• Poor attendance
• Lack of parental involvement

Instructional

• Foundational skills not explicitly taught and measured
• Skills too early , before students are developmentally ready
• Lack of consistency grade to grade
• Insufficient professional development
• Decoding instruction not available too cumbersome or not sued

MTSS

Tier 1 - All Students

Core Curricula / Classroom Teaching

Tier 2 - Some Students

Targeted interventions, frequent progress monitoring

Tier 3 - Few Students

Customized interventions instruction is data based and progress monitored

Science Of Reading Overview

What is it??

• “Research that reading experts; especially cognitive scientists, have conducted on how we learn to read” (Sedita, 2021).
• There are two main frameworks (Amplify Education, 2022)
• The Simple View of Reading
• Scarborough’s Rope

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Simple View of Reading

• A formula introduced by Gough and Tumbner in 1986
• Originally referred to comprehension as the product of decoding and language comprehension
• Meaning BOTH Decoding and Language Comprehension are necessary for reading comprehension.

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Simple View of Reading

• Decoding Skills - FLUENCY!
• Phonological awareness
• Phonics and decoding skills
• Advanced Phonics
• Automatic Word Recognition
• Oral language comprehension
• Vocabulary and Morphology
• Knowledge
• Syntax and Grammar
• Higher-Level Language Skills

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Scarborough’s Rope

Practice Guide

Providing Reading Interventions for Students in Grades 4-9

• Evidence-based recommendations teachers can use to deliver interventions
• Recommendation 1 and Recommendation 2 focus on practices to improve students’ ability to read words accurately and automatically
• Recommendation 3 and Recommendation 4 focus on practices for helping students to understand the text they read.

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Recommendations

4 Main Recommendations

Strong Evidence to support:

1. Build students’ decoding skills so they can read complex multisyllabic words.
2. Provide purposeful fluency-building activities to help students read effortlessly
3. Routinely use a set of comprehension building practices to help students make sense of the text.

Moderate Evidence to support

1. Provide students with opportunities to practice making sense of stretch text (challenging) that will expose them to complex ideas and information.

Recommendation 1

Build students’ decoding skills so they can read complex multisyllabic words.

• Identify the level of students’ word-reading skills and teach vowel and consonant letter sounds and combinations as necessary
• Teach students a routine they can use to decode multisyllabic words
• Prefixes, suffixes, and vowel combinations
• Embed spelling instruction in the lesson
• Engage students in a wide array of activities that allow them to practice reading multisyllabic words accurately and with increasing automaticity

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Syllable Pattern Activity

Syllable Frequency

Recommendation 2

Provide purposeful fluency-building activities to help students read effortlessly

• Provide a purpose for each repeated reading
• Focus some instructional time on reading with prosody
• Regularly provide opportunities for students to read a wide range of texts

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Recommendation 3

Routinely use a set of comprehension building practices to help students make sense of the text.

Part A: Build students’ world and word knowledge so they can make sense of the text

• Develop world knowledge that is relevant for making sense of the passage
• Teach the meaning of new words that are essential for understanding the passage
• Teach students how to derive meanings of unknown words using context
• Teach prefixes and suffixes to help students derive meaning of words
• Teach the meaning of Latin and Greek roots

Recommendation 3

Part B: Consistently provide students with opportunities to ask and answer questions to better understand the text they read.

• Explicitly teach students how to find and justify answers to different types of questions
• Provide ample opportunities for students to collaboratively answer questions
• Teach students to ask questions about the text while reading
• Types of questions
• Right There Questions
• Think and Search Questions
• Author and Me Question

Recommendation 3

Part C: Teach students a routine for determining the gist of a short section of text

• Model how to use a routine to generate gist statements
• Teach students how to use text structures to generate gist statements
• Work collaboratively with students to generate gist statements
• Identify and mark the most important person, placem or thing in a section of a text
• Mark and then list the important information to formulate a gist statement
• Write the gist statement in your own words
• Check that the gist statement includes all the important information

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Recommendation 3

Part D: Teach students to monitor their comprehension as they read

• Help students determine when they do not understand the text
• Teach students to ask themselves questions as they read to check their understanding and figure out what the text is about
• Provide opportunities for students to reflect on what they have learned

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Recommendation 4

Provide students with opportunities to practice making sense of stretch text (challenging) that will expose them to complex ideas and information.

• Prepare for the lesson by carefully selecting appropriate stretch texts, choosing points to stop for discussion and clarification, and identifying words to teach
• Provide significant support as they group works through a stretch text together
• After students demonstrate comfort with reading stretch texts with the group, provide students with electronic supports to use when independently reading stretch text to assist with pronunciation of difficult words and word meanings.

What to teach??

And when to teach it??

Unfinished Learning

• Concepts or skills in any subject that students were in the process of learning but unable to master, or never had the opportunity to learn (Council of the Great City Schools , 2020).

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• Standards are created to build upon one another.
• Matriculation (how they relate) of standards is important to know for grade levels above and below.
• Identify learning that should have already happened and what is expected for the future.

Identify Unfinished Learning

• Purposeful Assessments
• Diagnostics / Screeners
• STAR Reading, STAR Math, FastBridge
• DRA, Phonics Inventory, Phonological Awareness Check, etc.
• Formative Assessments
• Unit Assessments
• Progress Monitoring
• Fluency, Accuracy, Comprehension

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Now What?!?

• Intensify Instruction

Addressing Unfinished Learning

The Big 6

1. Stick to grade-level content and instructional rigor
2. Focus on the depth of instruction, rather than the pace
3. Prioritize content and learning
4. Maintain the inclusion of each and every learner
5. Identify and address gaps in learning through instruction
6. Focus on the commonalities that students

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MTSS

Tier 1 - All Students

Core Curricula / Classroom Teaching

Tier 2 - Some Students

Targeted interventions, frequent progress monitoring

Tier 3 - Few Students

Customized interventions instruction is data based and progress monitored

Target Unfinished Learning

• Target unfinished learning with just in time supports
• Just in time support provides students with the opportunity to learn what they need… when they need it!!

What Do I Use?

Continuum of Supports

Florida Center for Reading Research Activities

AEA Practice Card Activities

What Works Practice Guides

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Example “Joe”

Student 1: “Joe”

• Can you identify what area of reading the teacher should target to ensure the greatest success?

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Impacts

The SCEP program has seen a large impact surrounding student growth since the Targeted Title Intervention program has been implemented.

Impacts

Before Intervention

Implementation Year 1

Implementation Year 2

Impacts

Average Growth: 160 Lexile Points

Students Served Long Term: 11

Average Growth: 100 Lexile Points

Students Served Long Term: 56

Want to Learn More?

Achieve the Core:

Improving Reading for Older Students

Foundational Skills

Really Great Reading

Workshops

Amplify:

What is the Science of Reading

The Science of Reading: The Podcast

Unlocking the Middle School Mind

Want to Learn More?

AEA Learning Online

Search for available courses

Keys to Literacy Training

Comprehension, Vocabulary, Writing, Phonics and Literacy Planning workshops and presentations.

References

• Amplify Education. (2022, April 11). Science of reading – foundational reading skills. Amplify Science of Reading. Retrieved May 23, 2022, from https://scienceofreading.amplify.com/
• Council of the Great City Schools . (2020, June). Addressing unfinished learning after covid-19 school closuresCoun. Retrieved November 2020, from https://www.cgcs.org/cms/lib/DC00001581/Centricity/Domain/313/CGCS_Unfinished%20Learning.pdf
• Sedita, J. (2021, October 1). The Science of Reading Comprehension [web log]. Retrieved 2021, from https://keystoliteracy.com/blog/the-science-of-reading-comprehension/.

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