Shannon, Lara, and I met to discuss Dr. Allington's article What I've Leaned About Effective Reading Instruction. He states that good effective teachers are key to exemplary reading instruction, not more materials or "proven programs." We talked about the six T's that he observed in exemplary elementary classrooms.
1. Time- Exemplary teachers routinely had children actually reading and writing for as much as half of the school day (around a 50/50 ration of reading and writing to stuff. It was really bothersome to read in his research that in a typical classroom it is not unusual to find children only reading and writing 10% of the day! Students did more guided reading and independent reading, social studies, and science than students in less effective classrooms. The teachers' instructional planning involved much more than simply allocating lots of time for reading and writing.
2. Texts- Exemplary teachers rejected the "one size fits all" approach to teaching reading. Our group discussed how our school is doing this through guided reading. Through our grant our school was able to purchase a rich supply of books leveled for all kids. Allington stated that it was the lowest achievers who benefited the most. They could spend their days reaching books on their level successfully. Shannon brought out the point that now when she sends her students to read-to-self, she knows they have a book box on their level and they are actually reading. In the past they would just "pretend" to read.
3. Teaching- Exemplary teachers uses active teaching instead of the assign-and-assess. We agreed with Allington talks about the missing-vowel worksheet assessment. It really is an assessment of who already knows the vowel patterns, not an instructional activity that will teach a vowel pattern. They need someone who can actually model and demonstrate strategies.
4. Talk-Exemplary teachers foster much more student talk. The talk is purposeful, problem-posing, problem -solving talk.They pose more "open"questions. We how this went along with the book Choice Words we read last semester. He states that "thoughtful" classroom talk leads to improve reading comprehension, especially in high-poverty schools. This really hits home because we are 70% free/reduced at our school. We talked about how this is a challenge that we must put on the forefront.
5. Tasks- Longer assignments and less emphasis on filling the day with multiple, shorter tasks. Students seemed more often engaged and less often off-task.
6. Testing-Exemplary teachers awarded grades based more on effort and improvement than simply achievement. With this grading, teachers must truly know each of their students well in order to assign grades. They have to be able to recognize growth and to track the student effort involved. We agree with Allington in that the effort-and-improvement grading scheme does require careful explanation to parents. We went through this with our standards based report card. Many parents still wanted to see a "grade." What really is a 90 in reading for a first grader anyway?
In Allington's conclusion, he again stresses to enhance reading proficiency rests largely on the teacher to provide expert, exemplary reading instruction.
In Behind Test Scores: What Struggling Readers Really Need by Valencia and Buly, we discussed how the in-depth study on 108 randomly selected students who scored below standard on the state test supported the notion that one-size instruction will not fit all children. The six prototypical children that were examined had different needs and the article stresses that teachers shouldn't overgeneralize their needs. They also recommend that we go beneath the scores on state tests by conducting additional diagnostic assessments that will help identify students' needs. Lara, Shannon, and I agree that time to do these assessments can be limited. The article suggests a kind of layered approach to assessment in which teachers first work diagnostically with students who have demonstrated difficulty on broad measures of reading. Then work with other students as the need arises. We were all happy to see that they used the Woodcock-Johnson Revised (WJ-R) because Dr. Allington trained us on this assessment a few months ago so we were familiar with it.
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