Literacy Now

by Kelly N. Tracy, PhD
Western Carolina University
October 21, 2013

Graham, S., and Hebert, M. A. (2010). Writing to read: Evidence for how writing can improve reading. A Carnegie Corporation Time to Act Report. Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education.

“The evidence is clear: writing can be a vehicle for improving reading” (p. 6). 

Ten years ago The National Commission on Writing in America’s Schools and Colleges deemed writing the “neglected ‘R’” and called for a “writing revolution” that included doubling the amount of time students spend writing. In the years following, extensive reports such as Reading Next (Biancarosa & Snow, 2006) and Writing Next (Graham & Perin, 2007) supported the idea that writing is a powerful tool for improving reading, thinking, and learning.  Now as much of the country implements the Common Core State Standards, there is a renewed push for more and better writing. As educators try to determine how to improve student learning and include more writing within the same time limits, it is important to revisit Steve Graham and Michael Hebert’s (2010) Writing to Read, which gives strong evidence that writing, an essential skill itself, also improves reading comprehension. 

For decades researchers have emphasized the strong connection between reading and writing, both in theory and in practice. Multiple studies have demonstrated that writing can improve comprehension. What has been less clear is what particular writing practices research supports as being effective at improving students’ reading. To determine those practices, Graham and Hebert (2010) undertook an in-depth meta-analysis of experimental and quasi-experimental studies that examined the effectiveness of writing practices on improving students’ reading in grades 1 -12. They acknowledge the limitations of excluding other forms of research and recognize the significant contributions of that research; at the same time, they share that completing this sort of meta-analysis allowed them to focus on studies where cause-and-effect could be inferred and effect sizes calculated.  Their meta-analysis generated three recommendations:

1. Have students write about the texts they read. “Writing about a text proved to be better than just reading it, reading and rereading it, reading and studying it, reading and discussing it, and receiving reading instruction” (p. 14). Specific types of writing about reading that had statistically significant effect sizes included responding to a text through writing personal reactions or analyses/interpretations of the text, writing summaries of a text, taking notes on a text, and creating and/or answering questions about a text in writing. The benefits of these types of writing were stronger, particularly for lower-achieving students, when they were tied with explicit instruction on how to write.
2. Teach students the writing skills and processes that go into creating texts. Teaching students about writing process, text structures, paragraph or sentence construction, and other writing skills improves reading comprehension; teaching spelling and sentence construction skills improve fluency; and teaching spelling skills improves word reading skills.
3. Increase how much students write. An increase in how often students write improves students’ reading comprehension. Graham and Hebert recommend more writing across the curriculum, as well as at home to achieve more time spent writing.

What may be most important in all of Graham and Hebert’s findings is that infrequent writing and lack of explicit writing instruction minimize any sort of effect on reading from the writing practices they recommend. Their report also supports earlier calls for emphasizing writing in the classroom and across content areas. Writing is a critical skill, important in its own right; given the evidence that consistent writing time and instruction not only improves writing but also reading, gives us an even more compelling case for finding time in our school day for more writing.

Reader response is welcomed. Email your comments to LRP@/

by Mastin Prinsloo and Carolyn McKinney
University of Cape Town
October 14, 2013

An alarming aspect of South African schooling is the huge gap between the small number of schools where students from middle-class homes are doing well, going on to university study, on the one hand, and the large majority of schools, on the other, where pass rates and school completions rates are very low indeed. Comparative analyses of national test results in reading and maths for Grades 1 to 6 show around 20% of students excelling and 80% doing very badly, as if there were two separate schooling systems operating within the public schooling system, one for the children of the elite and the other for the large majority of students. This situation is of great concern, particularly in a country that is dealing with the legacies of racialised inequalities as well as various kinds of skills shortages.

A number of studies have addressed questions about racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps in South African schools, and we focus here on the beginnings of a debate that starts with an analysis by Jan Blommaert, prominent sociolinguist. Blommaert brings the interesting idea of ‘scale’ to the study of literacy across diverse settings. He suggests that language and literacy practices are subject to social processes of hierarchical ordering. Societies marked by deep inequality, he says, characteristically produce different layers and niches in which very different ways of life are developed on the basis of rules, norms and opportunities not valid elsewhere. One consequence thereof is that one can be a ‘‘good’’ user of language or literacy in the neighbourhood network, but a ‘‘bad’’ one in the schooling system and the labour market.

Blommaert identifies what he calls "grassroots literacy" as a characteristic form of writing across poor communities in Africa. He describes it as a non-elite form characterised by the use of graphic symbols in ways that defy orthographic norms: words spelled in different ways, often reflecting the way they are pronounced in spoken vernacular varieties rather than following conventional orthographic norms or prestige language forms. He finds an uncertainty about linguistic and stylistic rules, as well as a common use of drawing as well as writing. Such texts, he says, have localvalue, but examined from beyond the local, they appear as inferior examples of writing, pointing to the low status of these persons on a larger stage.  In a study carried out with students and colleagues from the University of the Western Cape at a Cape Town township school, he identified students’ writing as featuring grammatical, spelling and other deviations that characterise ‘grassroots literacy’ and found the same features in teachers’ writing, evidence of new, but low status, norms that are being developed.

Suresh Canagarajah has since carried out a study of his own in a similarly poorly resourced Western Cape township school setting to that of Blommaert and colleagues and he has disagreed with aspects of Blommaert’s analysis.  He disagrees with Blommaert’s treatment of literacy regimes as somewhat autonomous and separate, with their own logic, cut off from others. He argues that while particular communities might display characteristic writing forms, they are not necessarily ‘stuck’ or ‘locked’ into using only these forms in the way Blommaert suggests.

Canagarajah’s own study finds in the texts of the students a recognition of different norms carrying more or less status in different social contexts. In their writings on a school Facebook site, students’ use of non-standard spelling and orthography is evident in their mixing of English and isiXhosa, abbreviations and icons. He identifies their writing here as a hybrid form of literacy activity, combining oral and literate resources and diverse languages. In their classroom written work, however, students don’t mix codes in the same way and Canagarajah suggests they have shifted to a translocal norm, approximating to Standard Written English and with an emerging sense of the genre requirements of school essay writing. While student writing displays the types of grammatical problems that Blommaert identified, Canagarajah sees teachers as selectively correcting these as they move students to the developing of their translocal English-language writing resources, from a constrained starting point. He argues that it might be more productive to see social spaces as contact zones than as separated ones, with diverse language and literacy resources in the same social space. Much depends, he says, on how people negotiate these mobile resources.

The issue of the unequal status of different kinds of language and literacy resources and of what to do about students’ ‘non-standard’ language resources is a thorny one in education. The debate reviewed here suggests that it is important for us as teachers not only to be aware of diverse language and literacy resources but to develop students’ sociolinguistic awareness so that they have the opportunity to interrogate why different resources carry different status as well as to use the full range of their resources.

Reader response is welcomed. Email your comments to LRP@/

by Robert Slavin
Johns Hopkins School of Education
September 12, 2013

Question:

What is the research related to the practice of grouping kids for reading based on test results of some sort and then sending them to classrooms for reading instruction based on this grouping? What are the pros and cons of this practice? I believe it is a current practice similar to the Joplin plan. I can find the research about the Joplin plan but is there any more recent research?

Response from Robert Slavin:

There is remarkably little research on grouping children for reading instruction, but I'll tell you what I know about.

As you note, there is a good bit of evidence supporting use of the Joplin Plan, and for this reason we use Joplin Plan in our Success for All program. In Joplin Plan, students are grouped based on their reading levels regardless of their age, so you might have a 3-1 (third grade, first semester) reading class composed of second, third, and fourth graders. In Joplin Plan, there has to be a common reading time across the school, so kids all go from their homerooms to their reading classes at the same time.

A key aspect of the Joplin Plan is that children are assessed in reading (on curriculum-specific assessments, ideally) every 6-8 weeks, so that as children make exceptional progress, their groupings can change. If children are not keeping up with their group we recommend tutoring or small-group assistance, not moving children to a lower group.

As you note, the research on the Joplin Plan (Gutierrez & Slavin, 1992) is supportive but quite old. I wrote a review with Roberto Gutierrez that included Joplin Plan, but I’m not aware of any additional studies in the 20 years after that.

There are several attributes of Joplin Plan that would make me cautious about using “very similar” grouping schemes. First, many teachers test and assign children to reading groups within the same grade (producing high, middle, and low fourth grade reading classes, for example). This can create several problems. First, it sets up reading classes for which teachers may have low expectations (e.g., low fourth grades). Second, it may not reduce heterogeneity enough to allow teachers to avoid ability grouping within classes. The major gain from Joplin Plan is the opportunity to teach all children together, without having to assign a lot of seatwork while the teacher is teaching one reading group. This greatly expands time for teaching. Grouping within grades but maintaining reading groups within each class would not provide this benefit.

Another key factor in Joplin Plan is the use of regular reassessments and regrouping. This ensures that students are at just the right level and enables teachers to correct any errors in initial grouping, which can be considerable. If grouping is done only within grades, it may be hard to find another appropriate group if children are doing very well.

In addition to grouping by reading level, it is commonplace for educators to recommend to teachers that they group by skill need (all the students who need work on drawing inferences) or by interest (all the students interested in butterflies).  Sadly, there is even less research available to guide us on the effectiveness of these plans for grouping than there is for the Joplin Plan.  About the best we can say is that in a good implementation of the Joplin Plan, individual differences can be accommodated by supplementary tutoring or small group work.

I wish I had more evidence or wisdom to share on this important question. You’d think there would be a lot more research on such a question that every elementary teacher has to face!

Reader response is welcomed. Email your comments to LRP@/

Why is it that some students don't understand what they reads even if they can read it aloud beautifully? It's as though they aren't processing the meaning of the text at all!

If you have ever found yourself thinking such things when student struggles with reading comprehension, the findings in García-Madruga and colleagues' article "Reading Comprehension and Working Memory's Executive Processes: An Intervention Study in Primary School Students" may be of particular interest to you.

We all know that reading comprehension is a tremendously complex task that requires the coordination of many kinds of information, such as our world knowledge, various ideas gleaned from text, the sounds and meanings of individual words and more. And, just as important, successful reading comprehension also requires that we focus on constructing a text interpretation that squares with the resources at hand—the text as it has been uncovered at any point in the comprehension process and the knowledge base that readers conjure up to render the text sensible.

In this article from Reading Research Quarterly, García-Madruga and his colleagues hypothesized that if students were taught explicitly how to engage the executive skills important for reading comprehension, then students’ reading comprehension might improve. The researchers designed 10 text-related tasks that tapped five executive skills—focusing, switching (between elements of a complex task), connecting with prior knowledge, semantic updating in working memory (such as updating your interpretation of a text as you read and hold that text’s meaning in mind), and inhibition (or ignoring distractions)—and used the tasks to teach third-grade students in Spain how to deploy their executive skills while reading, yielding promising results in two studies.

Their training program preserved four instructional elements we know to be effective for reading comprehension: (1) explicit or direct explanation of executive skills, (2) teacher (or researcher, in this case) modeling of the tasks, (3) guided practice, and (4) independent practice. Training tasks included the following:

• putting story elements in order
• interpreting instructions for and performing complex action sequences
• solving multiple anaphora (pronoun referent) problems and remembering the solutions in order
• detecting inconsistencies in texts
• making inferences
• keeping track of changing information in stories, and
• integrating knowledge from various sources.

Students were tested on reading comprehension, nonverbal intelligence, and working memory before and after the training. As expected, García-Madruga and his colleagues observed improvements in reading comprehension and working memory for trained students. Moreover, students’ nonverbal intelligence also improved (a surprising finding)!

On closer analysis, the researchers discovered improvements in reading comprehension were driven primarily by improvements for those students with initially low reading comprehension. In contrast, improvements in intelligence were driven primarily by improvements for those students with initially high reading comprehension. García-Madruga and colleagues suggested their executive skills training improved reading comprehension for students who previously struggled with reading comprehension due to poor executive skills; however, for students who already had adequate reading comprehension, the training benefited them more broadly, resulting in improvements in nonverbal processing.

Furthermore, although some people believe executive skills and intelligence (which is closely related to executive skills) cannot be changed, García-Madruga and colleagues demonstrated that executive skills can be taught, resulting in improvements in executive processing and in nonverbal intelligence. This finding is particularly important for students, parents, and teachers who believe students’ cognitive abilities (or lack of abilities) cannot be changed; understanding that processing can be improved with instruction and practice promotes educational success for all students.

ILA member Kelly Branam Cartwrightis a Professor of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Teacher Preparation at Christopher Newport University, where she directs the Reading, Executive function, And Development Lab (READLab), and is a Research Scholar for the Center for Education Research and Policy.

by Ryan Rutherford and Jo Worthy
University of Texas, Austin
September 12, 2013

In this article, Gay Ivey and Peter Johnston take us into the classrooms of four middle school English teachers whose primary goal was to help all their students become engaged readers. They allowed their eighth-grade students to choose among a wide range of personally meaningful books, and gave them time each class session to read and discuss their reading with their peers. They also read aloud a young adult book each class session and devoted time to student writing. The result was academically, socially, and emotionally healthier students (including better test scores, as detailed later).

The focus of the article, motivation and engagement in reading, is dear to both of our hearts. We have both taught many students who were resistant to reading, and we both have seen the effectiveness of providing students with books they want to read and time to read them. Yet, we also know from our personal experiences and from talking to colleagues, that most high school and middle school classrooms, and even many elementary classrooms, do little to develop engaged readers—those strategic, active, interactive meaning makers who are excited about books and learning. Instead, students are often required to read the same classic (and often uninteresting, non relevant, and inappropriately challenging) books, read “popcorn” or round-robin style, complete comprehension quizzes, and practice for achievement tests. Further, in most schools and classrooms, students are grouped by so-called ability, across and/or within classes.

The teachers worked together to revamp their reading instruction. Instead of whole class reading in assigned “classics,” the teachers built their instruction around the reading of student-selected young adult fiction with “edgy, contemporary” themes relevant to students’ lives (p. 258). They did this in all their classes—from inclusion to honors classes. No one was singled out as a “struggling reader;” every student had the same opportunities to choose books based on their interest, not difficulty. Each classroom contained 150 to 200 different titles, and the teachers rotated their libraries at regular intervals. Students learned about the books through teacher book talks at the beginning of the year and at regular times throughout the year.

Ivey and Johnston wanted to know what students thought about their experience, so they asked them. Students reported that their book knowledge and world knowledge were expanding, and their test scores showed it¹. The other outcomes mentioned most by students were:

• Engaged reading. Students reported (and the researchers and teachers noted) deep engagement with books and book characters not only during class, but also outside of class—students said they were getting in trouble for reading during other classes and after bedtime. Others even reported reading instead of watching television and playing video games.
• Talk through and about books. Students said they talked more about books, both in spontaneous conversations with their classmates, and with friends and family outside of school.
• Relationships. Students described changes in their personal relationships that they attributed to their engagement with reading. They often used the books they read as a way to make new friends, deepen existing friendships, and grow stronger and more complex relationships with teachers and parents.
• Identities/selves. Many students saw themselves in a new light as a result of engaging deeply with reading. For example, one student identified herself as a bookworm; another student commented that his reading had improved to the point that he no longer considered himself a “slow” reader.  Other students’ comments reflected a similar shift from a fixed performance mindset to a dynamic view of learning.
• Agency. Many students in the study reported an increase in agency—the sense that they have the power to make positive changes in their social relationships, academic and personal lives, and in their communities.

The case study of Jeremy, a student with a history of serious behavior challenges, illustrates the powerful effects of engaged reading. Jeremy’s previous experiences with school and literacy had been very negative, and his life outside of school was heartbreaking. At the beginning of eighth grade, he was being considered for a repeat placement in an alternative school because of his disruptive behavior. Jeremy told the researchers that before the year of the study, he “didn’t like books at all.” After a rocky start, Jeremy discovered a book that spoke to him (Homeboyz); after reading it, he was in his own words, “on a roll,” reading book after book, boosting his reading stamina, his willingness to persist with difficult text, and his achievement (including test scores). Becoming a reader also positively influenced Jeremy’s relationships and his behavior. Instead of “getting into trouble,” he said, he now “just turn[s] to the next page.”

Ivey and Johnston’s research speaks to us because it demonstrates the power of reading, not just for learning and achievement, but also for developing social skills, student agency, and strong communities. These are things that can’t be measured by a test or written into a curriculum, but we think they are essential for productive and emotionally healthy human beings and for a just society.

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¹ Students scored higher on the state reading assessment than they had the previous year, with an effect size of .27 and economically disadvantaged students' passing rate going from 69 percent to 81 percent.

Reader response is welcomed. Email your comments to LRP@/