Literacy Now

As I was walking on the beach one day, I found a Slinky toy sitting on the sand. I smiled because I remembered playing with one as a kid. The interesting thing about this toy is that it can’t properly move in or out, up or down, or side to side if any part of its coil is dysfunctional. It can’t operate freely if there are any kinks in its design. As I played with the Slinky, I reflected on how similar it is to the reading–writing process.

Let’s examine a few kinks that prevent kids from flexibly moving in and out, up and down, and side to side, independently:

Not enough practice

As kids learn to read, they must read and write constantly to become better at reading and writing. Without practice, they lack proficiency, confidence, and independence with a variety of genres. Without practice, they struggle to read on or above grade level. Kids need to practice with a Slinky!

Not enough text levels

Kids who are learning to read must be taught to read using increasingly difficult text levels. Without the right books, they begin to develop inappropriate behaviors for coping with—and avoiding—texts that are too hard, frustrating, and complex. Without the right books, an incremental staircase on which to learn, practice, reinforce, and master internal strategies, they will not be able to read independently. Kids use a staircase to operate a Slinky!

Not enough sight words

Readers must have a strong base of sight words that serve as lifelines while learning to read. Without enough sight words under their belts, kids’ brains have to figure out every word, which slows down the process. What’s the best way to teach kids how to read sight words quickly and accurately? Have kids write them, fast. Kids learn swiftly to manipulate a Slinky, automatically!

Not enough phonemic awareness and phonics instruction

The code must be cemented into the brains of young readers in order to decode accurately and read fluently. Without phonemic awareness and phonics instruction, kids lack proficiency with the code needed to read and write. They must know how the code works, which takes knowledge, practice, application, and mastery. There’s no way around it. Kids can’t make the Slinky perform without the coils!

Not enough background knowledge

Talk to kids. Read to kids. Write to kids. Ask good questions that encourage kids to think, share, learn, and express themselves. Without enough background knowledge, readers may be able to decode words, but they have difficulty comprehending what they mean. Kids can’t make the Slinky work in different ways if they don’t watch, learn, and interact and experiment with a slinky!

Not enough daily reading and writing instruction

Teachers are essential. They are not optional. Kids must be taught by teachers who know how to teach reading and writing. Without daily reading and writing instruction, the process of learning to read and write is difficult, delayed, frustrating, tedious, and self-defeating. A Slinky can’t be easy and fun for kids to play with if it doesn’t come out of the box often!

In order to read and write with proficiency, accuracy, independence, and confidence, kids must receive the following:

• Practice
• Text levels
• Sight words
• Phonemic awareness and phonics instruction
• Background knowledge
• Daily reading and writing instruction

So what exactly is The Slinky Factor? If there are any kinks in the coils that make up the system for reading within the brain, kids won’t learn to read properly. How do we identify the kinks? We do this by observing kids read and write, by assessing what they can do and what they need, by using formal and informal assessment data to drive instructional decisions, and by fixing the kink immediately.

If a kid is not getting enough practice, we should increase the amount of time he or she actually is reading independently, daily. If a kid isn’t being taught using increasingly difficult quality texts, we need to buy more books and use them for instruction. If a kid can’t read common sight words with ease and accuracy, we should increase the amount of time kids read and write until sight words become automatic. If a kid has had limited exposure to letters, sounds, onsets and rhymes, common chunks, oral and written language, and working with words, we should use every resource to teach him or her the code. If a kid has been isolated from books, travel, life experiences, environmental print, and role models, we should plan as many vocabulary activities, book handling opportunities, questioning strategies, literature experiences, and storytelling moments as we possibly can. If a kid is not receiving daily reading and writing instruction, we should ask why not, and fix that—fast.

When was the last time you played with a Slinky? Maybe it’s time to get one as a reminder of what happens when there are no kinks in the Slinky…and what happens when there are.

Connie Hebert is an international literacy consultant and the author of Catch a Falling Reader, Catch a Falling Writer, and The Teachable Minute. She can be contacted at www.conniehebert.com.

1995 is a dual landmark in the history of literacy studies. First, because the International Literacy Association (ILA), formerly the International Reading Association, published the pioneering book The Literacy Dictionary. Second, because the word literacy is used in the book’s title.

Inspired by the extensive changes in education theory and practice, The Literary Dictionary both defines terms and delves into the social components of language. Intended as a resource for educators, the book is a reference tool that serves to update and expand upon information introduced in its predecessor, published more than a decade earlier.

This lexicographic resource is significant, as it provides readers with a comprehensive list of 38 representative types of literacy, a full-page essay on literacy by Richard L. Venezky, a two-page entry on literacy, and five entries on specific terms: literacy event, literacy fallacy, literacy gap, literacy involvement, and literacy laboratory.

If I were asked to update the list of literacy types with an example of a relevant concept, I would make a case for “Global Peace Literacy.” This compound term combines globalization and peace, two challenging, life-changing, life-supporting, life-sustaining forces that characterize humankind’s current educational efforts toward deeper knowledgeability.

How can Global Peace Literacy be implemented? By engaging literacy educators in initiatives including:

1. Helping readers/viewers (of all ages) access and make the most of peace-inspiring publications, print or online, in as many languages as possible. In short, creating a world of peace-loving and peace-promoting readers/viewers.

2. Advocating the inclusion of Global Peace Literacy in K–12 curriculum, along with Global Human Rights Literacy and Global Dignity Literacy.

3. Supporting the establishment and operation of Global Peace Literacy centers in a variety of public spaces, including schools, places of worship, and other gathering places.

4. Providing financial support to intraeducational/cultural/intereducational research on Global Peace Literacy as a sustainable commitment to cultivating what I would call LIF PLUS: the life-improving force of peaceful language use.

5. Recognizing the need for Global Literacy to take a peaceful dimension, given the increasing threat and destruction brought about by terrorism, especially of a cultural nature. In such spirit, a Global Peace Literacy educator would help prepare today’s and tomorrow’s citizens to cope with culturally/communicatively harmful practices and to learn to prevent and overcome violence .

6. Encouraging education leaders to take part in a sustained campaign for a world in which Global Peace Literacy thrives through communication including reading, writing, speaking, and listening.

In the revised, expanded edition of ILA’s The Literacy Dictionary, perhaps a prominent place will be reserved for Global Peace Literacy.

Francisco Gomes de Matos is a peace linguist in Recife, Brazil and a word list reviewer for The Literacy Dictionary. He welcomes feedback on his suggested addition.

Think about the students you have who you think are not fluent readers. Chances are these are students who, when reading orally, read in an excessively slow word-by-word manner. Fluency certainly is a concern with these students. However, it is not the only problem that these students exhibit. Reading comprehension is likely to suffer as well. In fact, research has demonstrated a strong association between oral fluency and silent reading comprehension.

It just makes sense. When students read in that word-by-word manner, they are compromising the meaning of the text. Prepositions such as of and if as well as noun markers such as the and an have limited meaning by themselves. The purpose of such words is to enhance the meaning of the other words in the phrase in which they are placed. We think that phrasing is so important that we feel that the phrase, not the individual word, is the essential unit of meaning when reading.

Take for example the following phrases:

• In the ocean
• Under the ocean
• Upon the ocean
• Near an ocean
• In an ocean

Each of these phrases have distinctly different meanings even though the meaning of the key word, ocean, is constant. Good readers make meaning by reading in phrases; struggling readers limit meaning by reading word by word.

Much of what we do instructionally—while well-intended and in many ways quite powerful—may tend to over-emphasize reading in a word-by-word manner. While we acknowledge  activities such as reading word walls, spelling and vocabulary lists, and word games have a legitimate place in our literacy curricula, we wonder about the extent to which such activities give students the unintended notion that reading words as individual units is the appropriate way to read.

Research and scholarly thought suggest  helping students learn to read in phrases (as opposed to word by word) is an effective way to improve reading fluency as well as comprehension and overall reading proficiency. Yet, interestingly, most instructional programs for teaching reading provide very little support or suggestions to teachers for helping students read more fluently and meaningfully through good phrasing. We hope to remedy this situation by offering a couple simple instructional suggestions for helping students become phrase-proficient in their reading.

Making phrase boundaries visible—The Phrased Text Lesson

One of the problems with a focus on phrasing is that, in many cases, phrase boundaries are not physically marked in the texts  our students read. Certainly punctuation such as periods and commas provide some indication of where sentence or phrase units end, however there are many places where phrase boundaries are unmarked.

One way to help students is to physically take a text and mark the phrase boundaries for students. Below is a common rhyme in which we have marked (usually with a pencil) phrase boundaries. Note that we marked within-sentence phrase boundaries with a single slash and sentence boundaries with a double slash to indicate shorter and longer pause.

Put the marked rhyme on display for all students to see and read and provide each student with an individual copy that will go into their poetry folder. Remind students that the slash marks indicate where they should break the text in the oral reading. Then over the course of a school day, read the text to students while they follow along silently (emphasizing the phrases in your oral reading), read it chorally as a class, and ask individuals and small groups of students to read it at various times, regularly reminding students to attend to the phrase breaks marked in the text. Hope students see  the essential ideas of the text are contained within the phrases.

On the following day, provide students with the same text without the phrase boundaries.

Repeat the rereadings of the rhyme throughout the day. Help students note they should be pausing when they read, even when the markings are not present. In this way, students will be able to transition from using the visible phrase boundaries to inferring phrases that may not  actually be marked. Regular use of the Phrased Text Lesson will lead students to more fluent and more meaningful reading when reading independently.

High frequency word phrases

A common and important instructional goal in the primary grades is to develop students’ sight vocabulary, especially with common or high frequency words such as the, it, and dog. As we noted earlier, high frequency words are often practiced using a word wall in which 10-20 words each week are added to the wall and practiced regularly. In addition to a high frequency word wall, why not also have a high frequency word phrase wall which can also be read and practiced regularly?

Here are some phrases and short sentences that are made up of words from Edward B. Fry’s first 100 Instant Words:    

by the water
Who will make it?
you and I
What will they do?
He called me.
no way
one or two
all day long
into the water
It’s about time.

By practicing phrases that contain high frequency words, your students will be getting important practice on these common words, but at the same time will also be practicing reading these words in phrases and sentences which actually convey meaning. Start with this list of the first 600 instant phrases.

Certainly, reading fluently with good phrasing is not the only competency we need to help students develop. However, it is an important competency that is often overlooked in instructional programs for reading. Just a small focus on phrased reading in the elementary grades has the potential to pay significant dividends in our students’ development into proficient readers.

The ideas shared in this article are from the newly released Literacy Strong All Year Long: Powerful Lessons for K-2 by Valerie Ellery, Lori Oczkus, and Timothy Rasinski. The text features 40 lessons explicitly demonstrating a dynamic gradual release of responsibility format. These lessons spiral across the seasons of the year, building literacy essentials that include engaging lessons for phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and motivation.

Timothy Rasinski, a literacy education professor at Kent State University, is a prolific researcher who has authored more than 150 articles. He is a former co-editor of The Reading Teacher and the Journal of Literacy Research. He is coauthor, with Maureen McLaughlin, of Struggling Readers: Engaging and Teaching in Grades 3–8. Valerie Ellery is as an international literacy consultant, best-selling author, and motivational speaker. Her book, Creating Strategic Readers: Techniques for Supporting Rigorous Literacy Instruction, is currently in its third edition. Lori D. Oczkus is a literacy coach, best-selling author, and popular speaker. She is also the author of Just the Facts! Close Reading and Comprehension of Informational Text.

We’re baaaack. Back to school and meeting our students, but what precedes getting your students in their seats can be even more intense.

That time of year when we gather our courage, take one last look at our backyard in the daylight, and head back to school for Teacher Workshop Week. Veteran teachers come prepared, steeling themselves for the onslaught, but new teachers may have a vastly different experience—one that’s both unsettling and panic inducing.

For a new teacher, Workshop Week is a little like a sorority or fraternity rush: overwhelming, intimidating, and thrilling all at the same time. You’ve heard a great deal about what to expect, but actually being there is much different. You’ll be exhausted, but have difficulty sleeping. You’ll know both too much and not enough.

Likely, most new teachers have a similar rush of emotions as they begin their first classroom teaching role. They’re finally getting to be the teacher—something they’ve wanted and dreamed about for four years of college (or longer). Plus, these people are going to pay you! With benefits! For doing what you love!

And with excitement, anticipation, and a little fanfare, you are thrust into the actual world of teaching.

Maybe you’ve been able to get into your classroom already, hang a few posters, create a bulletin board, arrange your desk, make seating charts. You’re thinking about the 26 (or 35, or 142) students you’ll have an opportunity to guide, teach, and inspire.

When Workshop Week begins, your delight of being a teacher deflates a bit under the actual reality of the work ahead.

In addition to lesson planning and teaching, you’ll be told you need to be perform required assessments (common assessments, progress monitoring assessments, formative assessments, summative assessments, standardized tests) and complete an analysis of the resulting data.

You’ll need to be on top of culturally responsive teaching practices, differentiation for all learners, intervention practices, extension practices, due process, special education requirements, 504 requirements, brain research, technology, data analysis, data privacy, copyright law, mandatory reporting, mental health screening, lunch duty, playground duty, hall duty, fire drill procedures, tornado procedures, school lockdown procedures, school evacuation procedures, media center procedures, lunchroom procedures, and professional development requirements.
You’ll need to be trained in technology designed to streamline your work and make communicating easier. The technology requires you to remember passwords for your e-mail, voicemail, classroom website, attendance technology, curriculum tool technology, data storage technology, behavior tracking technology, and of course those detailed online curriculum documents. All these will have different Web addresses, login processes, and passwords.

You’ll be given district goals, building goals, grade-level or department goals, and be asked to write goals for yourself and your students. There will be new district initiatives, building initiatives, and grade-level and department initiatives.

You’ll be reintroduced to your principal, the school counselor, your department or grade-level leader, your instructional coach, your paraprofessional, and your collaborative team members. All of these people will have roles you basically understand, however you’ll have little idea what they actually do. You will invariably go to the wrong person with your question.

You’ll meet the secretary when you get your key, your schedule, and your emergency contact information sheet. You’ll meet the custodian when you find your classroom doesn’t have enough desks, the shelves on your bookshelf are tilted, and the clock doesn’t keep correct time. These people will eventually be your best friends.

My advice as a veteran?

Close your eyes and take a deep breath. There are people to help you.

Write things down. You can’t possibly remember every detail.

Be kind to yourself. Sleep. Eat. Turn off your computer and take time with loved ones.

Remember why you are here. To guide. To teach. To inspire.

All your anxious anticipation, your hard work, and your hopes of making a difference are finally coming true. New teachers, be proud! You’ve made it. You’re here. This is your classroom. This is your new world. Make it the brilliant and confident beginning of your dazzling teaching career.

Julie Scullen is a former president of the Minnesota Reading Association and Minnesota Secondary Reading Interest Council and is a current member of the International Literacy Association Board of Directors. She taught most of her career in secondary reading intervention classrooms and now serves as teaching and learning specialist for secondary reading in Anoka-Hennepin schools in Minnesota, working with teachers of all content areas to foster literacy achievement. She teaches graduate courses at Hamline University in St. Paul in literacy leadership and coaching, as well as reading assessment and evaluation.

The start of every school year means a crop of fresh faces staring back at us from the carpet—faces anxiously waiting for their teachers to share their favorite stories, new strategies, exciting authors, and a love of reading.

We carefully observe these little faces those first few days of school. We try to determine what they know, who to watch. We look to identify dangerous partnerships that could lead to disruptions galore. We generalize because we have to in those first frenetic days. Who is going to be a helper? Who is going to test your patience? Who is going to need intervention? Who needs an extra hug?

Despite the excitement, the first days are long and filled with “getting-to-know-you” type activities, explanations of routines and a desire to just really get on with it and get to the good stuff. There is no tired like teacher tired in the first weeks of the school year. It is epic stuff.

No matter how tired we are or how little voice we have left, those faces return to us each and every morning, their wide eyes begging us to dig deeper, to identify them beyond the label of “helpful” or “smart” or “disruptive.” 

Behind those faces, our students have a million stories of their own—stories of their families, their lives as readers, their previous experiences with books and exposure to text, and more. Some will love to read, some will hate reading, some will read beautifully, and some will struggle with text far below their grade level.

One year, I had a student who came to me with a rap sheet a mile long and a reputation even longer. Hates to read, unfocused, disruptive—did I mention he was in first grade?! His name was that name on my class list; you know, the name that gave me a bit of a pit in my stomach and required me to take an extra deep breath before pasting on my omnipresent professional smile.

“No problem,” I said, my mind already swirling with assumptions of who this little boy was and why he had become this way. Of course, this was before I met him and saw that little face.

After a few days, I could definitely understand how my new friend had earned all those negative labels. I mean, boyfriend kind of earned them with an attitude bigger than his years. What really bothered me as I looked at that little face, though, were all the assumptions about how he had come to act that way—as if that was all there was to this little friend.

I found extra time to spend with him. I got him to talk to me about his interests, his friends, what he did after school, and, after some time, his family. Not only did I shake off some major assumptions that this little friend was simply “disruptive and unwilling to learn,” I got to the root of some of his struggles with reading and was able to better match him to books  he found engaging.

So let the fall be about wrapping your head around this new group of little ones sitting in front of you. Make a few snap decisions, a couple of quick judgments, and just survive the first few weeks. Then, question your own assumptions and dig deeper. I promise it will not only transform the way you look at that group of faces, but it will transform your practice.

Mrs. Mimi, aka Jennifer Scoggin, is a teacher who taught both first and second grades at a public elementary school in New York City. She's the author of Be Fabulous: The Reading Teacher's Guide to Reclaiming Your Happiness in the Classroom and It's Not All Flowers and Sausages: My Adventures in Second Grade, which sprung from her popular blog of the same name. Mimi also has her doctorate in education from Teachers College, Columbia University.