As a present to the administrators in our district we were given access to a publication called the "Marshall Memo, A Weekly Round-up of Important Ideas and Research in K-12 Education." In their January 2nd edition they summarized the research behind assisting struggling readers from various sources. I was pleased to see how well it correlates to strategies we currently use inside the classroom during the "Northeast Reading Academy" as well as techniques we employ utilizing support staff. Please read below and feel free to comment on a best practice!
Marshall Memo Item - The Writing Road to Reading Proficiency
In
this Harvard Educational Review
article, Steve Graham and Michael Hebert of Vanderbilt University note that
major initiatives over the last ten years to improve reading achievement (No
Child Left Behind, Reading First, the National Reading Panel) have produced
disappointing results: while NAEP math scores improved significantly, reading
scores have flatlined and large numbers of students are far from being
proficient readers.
Why?
Graham and Hebert believe it’s because the instructional practices identified
by the National Reading Panel in 2000 and pursued with gusto across the nation
were “too narrow and not complete.” In this article, they report on a
meta-analysis of research on one of the underemphasized factors: the impact of effective
teaching of writing on students’
achievement in reading. Here are
their three research questions and what they found:
•
First, when students write about material
they have read, does their comprehension improve? Graham and Hebert found there
is significant positive impact in grades 2-12 when students are asked to write
about literature and material in science, social studies, and other expository
texts. Students did extended writing, summary writing, note-taking, and
answering and generating questions. The positive impact of this type of writing
was greatest in middle school and with students who were weakest in reading and
writing. Why is writing about reading so helpful?
-
It
fosters explicitness, as students must select which information in the text is
most important.
-
It
encourages the writer to organize ideas from the text into a coherent whole and
establish explicit relationships among the ideas.
-
It
fosters reflection because it’s easier to review, reexamine, connect, critique,
and construct new understandings from written text.
-
It gets
students personally involved by requiring them to engage in active
decision-making about what they will write and how they will treat it.
-
Students
must transform or manipulate the text’s language to put it into their own
words, which makes them think about what the ideas mean.
•
Second, does explicit teaching of writing
skills strengthen students’ reading skills? Again, Graham and Hebert found
positive results in this research, which covered grades 4-12 language arts
classes.
•
Third, does increasing the quantity of
student writing improve how well they read? Yes, say Graham and Hebert,
reporting on studies of students in grades 1-6 language-arts classes.
The
authors end on a cautionary note: “Just because a writing intervention was
effective in improving students’ reading in the studies included in this review
does not guarantee that it will be effective in all other situations,” they say.
“As a result, the safest course of action for teachers implementing
research-based practices is to directly monitor the effects of such treatments
to gauge whether they are effective under these new conditions.” They suggest
these key components:
-
Frequent
student writing;
-
Explicit
skill instruction;
-
Starting
small and measuring the impact of each initiative before embarking on others.
Marshall Memo Item - A Non-Pullout Approach for
Struggling Readers
“Teaching Struggling
Readers in the Classroom” by Lynne Vernon-Feagans and Marnie Ginsberg in Better: Evidence-Based Education, Fall
2011 (Vol. 4, #1, p. 6-7), http://www.bestevidence.org/better
Marshall Memo Item - What Works Best in Elementary Reading
Instruction
“Children
who do not read well in the early elementary grades are likely to have problems
in all areas of schooling, are unlikely to graduate, and may develop serious
behavioral or emotional problems,” says Robert Slavin (University of York and
Johns Hopkins University) in this Better:
Evidence-Based Education article. But which reading approaches work best
with readers who are falling behind? Here are the results of a rigorous
analysis of 96 studies done by Slavin and his colleagues, listing programs starting
with the most effective:
•
One-to-one tutoring by specially trained teachers with an emphasis on phonics
(for example, Reading Recovery, Early Steps, Targeted Reading Intervention, and
Reading Rescue);
•
Improved whole-classroom approaches, including cooperative learning and
teaching metacognitive “learning to learn” strategies (for example, Cooperative
Integrated Reading and Composition, Peer Assisted Learning Strategies, and
Direct Instruction/Corrective Reading); this approach was most effective in the
upper elementary grades.
•
Comprehensive school reform programs, combining cooperative learning, phonics,
teaching of metacognitive skills, and one-to-one or small-group tutoring (for
example, Success for All);
•
One-on-one tutoring by paraprofessionals – This is less effective than tutoring
by teachers, but paraprofessionals using programs such as Sound Partners can be
cost-effective.
• Small-group tutoring (2-6
students) using phonetic programs (for example, Quick Reads, Corrective
Reading, and Voyager Passport);
•
One-to-one tutoring by volunteers – This is more variable than paraprofessional
tutoring, but well-trained volunteers using programs such as Book Buddies and
SMART can have very good outcomes;
•
Computer-assisted instruction – “Of all the approaches included in the review,”
says Slavin, “technology was found to have the smallest effect on the
attainment of struggling readers.”
