Using the Data You Already Have to Help Students with Dyslexia

Narrator:                     

Welcome to EDVIEW360.

Matthew Burns:           

So, more schools have measures of comprehension, fluency, decoding, or at least a proxy for decoding, all right at their fingertips. All they have to do is learn how to really understand how to use those data to help drive intervention decisions and we can see a lot more success with kids.

Narrator:                     

You've just heard from Dr. Matthew Burns, professor at the University of Missouri, a dyslexia and assessment expert. Dr. Burns is our guest today on EDVIEW360.

Pam Austin:                 

This is Pam Austin. Welcome back to the EDVIEW360 Podcast series. We are so excited to have our listeners here with us today, and we appreciate your commitment to literacy for all students. I'm conducting today's podcast from my native New Orleans, LA. Today, we are excited to welcome Dr. Matthew Burns from the University of Missouri. Matthew is the Herbert W. Schooling Professor of Special Education there and he serves as the director of the Center for Collaborative Solutions for Kids, Practice, and Policy, otherwise known as SKiPP. Dr. Burns is a prolific researcher and has published 15 books, over 200 articles, and numerous book chapters.

He is also dedicated to positively influencing practice in K–12 schools and mentoring the next generation of thought leaders in education. As one of the leading researchers regarding use of assessment data to determine individual or small-group instruction interventions, Dr. Burns works closely with schools to study and implement Response to Intervention models, intensive reading and math interventions, school-based teams, and generally support students with and without disabilities whose needs are not being met. Such a wealth of information you provide, Dr. Burns.

We're so glad to have you with us today. We're excited to discuss how schools can help shape K–12 practice and improve literacy using existing data. So, let's get started.

MB:                             

Great, thank you.

PA:                              

We've heard you say that many schools possess data that could inform decision-making, yet they either don't realize what they have or know how to use it. Tell us how the data districts already have can provide invaluable insight to help tailor instruction and ensure all students, now especially those with dyslexia and other reading challenges, receive the appropriate and timely intervention they need to succeed.

MB:                             

The old expression, schools are very data rich and decision-making poor. We spend a lot of time collecting data, but we oftentimes don't actually use the data. Amanda VanDerHeyden, Wes Bonifay, and myself just finished a study a few years ago that came out, I think it was, in School Psychology Review. We found schools were screening kids in reading, just in reading alone, three or four different measures three times a year, every benchmark assessment. But then we dove in the data and see they didn't really use the data. So, schools, if they're already doing reading screeners. So, if they're already using commonly administered group reading screeners like the STAR Readers or MAP or those others like that, measures of academic progress, and they're also doing curriculum-based measurement, things like Acadience®, well, that's a lot of data right there that can really help you dive in to see which kids need help and what help they need.

When you consider most group measures of reading are very comprehension oriented, and then you look at Acadience and their Oral Reading Fluency measure, well, that's a direct measure of reading fluency. I then convert the accuracy, so look at the percentage of words kids read correctly. If a kid in just, say, first through fifth grade, certainly first through fourth, is not reading at least 93 percent of the words correctly, they're probably struggling to break the code. So, when they look at that Acadience measure, or whatever measure you use for your Oral Reading Fluency, your curriculum-based measure, and you look at a grade-level measure and the kids in third grade, reading a third grade, a passage and they can't read 93 percent of the words correctly, they're probably struggling to break the code.

So, more schools have measures of comprehension, fluency, decoding, or at least a proxy for decoding, all right at their fingertips. And all they have to do is learn how to really understand how to use those data to help drive intervention decisions and we can see a lot more success with kids.

PA:                              

That would be great. So, really honing in on how to dive into the data is what you're saying, Dr. Burns?

MB:                             

Right? Correct. I tell schools to find the most fundamental skill in which the kid struggles. So, I recognize it's not as easy as a hierarchy in reading development. But basically, if the child struggles with comprehension fluency but has good decoding, then we know fluency is a target skill. So, find the most fundamental skill in which they're struggling and really hit that intervention hard. So, the data can help you really identify what the most fundamental skill is that the kid still needs. And most schools have those data, if not sitting around, very easy to get.

PA:                              

Right. Thank you. Earlier we mentioned the idea of students with dyslexia, and speaking of dyslexia in kids who struggle, and how they learn to read. Do kids with dyslexia learn differently and how can we use that data to impact their learning? Because they seem to have more specific needs?

MB:                             

Yes, they do. And I'm so glad you ended with those few words. Dyslexia is a group of difficulties that seems to have one thing in common and that is they struggle with the phonological aspects of reading. So, that is that they struggle with decoding, phonemic awareness, phonological awareness, those are the hallmarks of dyslexia. But within that group there's all kinds of different difficulties, so to say, "Do kids who have dyslexia learn differently?" Well, I would argue, no. And most attempts to identify what that difference is, going all the way back to visual differences, the idea that dyslexia was a visual problem in the 1880s, we believed that.

And going back to all the way back to then, we've attempted to find that one thing in common that kids with dyslexia have and they respond better to instruction based on it. Well, all we've really found is that they need intervention in the phonological aspects of reading. The group work, yeah, differences in working memory, the group work, looking at differences in visual processing and auditory processing. None of those have really ever panned out to have anything meaningful for instruction. So, really just got to really hit instruction hard in the phonological aspects of reading, like phonemic awareness, fluency, decoding. But then within that you're going to have to individualize because they all have unique learning needs.

PA:                              

Something you said Dr. Burns, meaningful instruction, and also the idea of the unique learning that each student needs. So, individualizing that learning and based on, diving into the data. Correct?

MB:                             

Correct. Yes, exactly. These are all children that are unique and that's a fabulous thing about kids. Kids with dyslexia are unique and that's a fabulous thing about them. So, once we find out what those unique needs and strengths are, that's how we can really individualize instruction and see better results.

PA:                              

So, individualizing this instruction means we have to have targeted instruction. In what ways can educators use the data specifically to target reading interventions themselves for students with dyslexia, other reading challenges beyond some of the examples that you made? Maybe you can expound upon it a little more?

MB:                             

Yeah, I will. That's great. So, I use the framework of The National Reading Panel to start with. Now, we'll talk about intensifying interventions, I'm sure, in a few minutes, but I'll start with the framework of The National Reading Panel. And I think of it as four big buckets. The first bucket's comprehension and vocabulary. I recognize those are two separate things, but when you talk about instruction, intervention, assessments, really tough to tease those two apart. So, my first big bucket is comprehension vocabulary. My second big bucket is reading fluency. The third is phonics and decoding. And the fourth is phonemic awareness. And I treat them in that order, and I want to find, again, the most fundamental skill.

So, if I've got a kid who scores low on STAR Reading, for example, and that's a measure of comprehension, and then I look at their Acadience Reading Fluency and that score’s low, and then I look at their accuracy on Acadience, the percentage of words read correctly, and if that's low, then I might do a quick phonemic awareness screener with those kids if they're not already doing them. Acadience has its first sound fluency and phonemic segmentation fluency. And those are both measures of phonemic awareness. So, if a kid's low in comprehension, low in fluency, low in decoding, but good phonemic awareness, we know decoding is the place to start.

Now, when I say to start, I don't mean you only focus on that. Of course, if I'm doing a decoding intervention, I'll probably do a quick phonemic awareness warmup, at the end of the intervention of course I'm going to have kids read connected text. But if the kid needs phonics, needs to have stronger decoding skills, then the intervention needs to address that. I've seen a lot of times schools will do repeated reading with kids if repeated reading is a fine intervention, it's a well-researched intervention, but repeated reading is effective for kids who have low fluency. If a kid has low fluency but also has low decoding, you won't see as much growth with just repeated reading, than if you focused on decoding. So, we have to identify what the kid needs and target the intervention there.

PA:                              

So, reviewing the scores from those four buckets, comprehension vocabulary, the reading fluency, we're looking at decoding and phonemic awareness, and then really actually drilling down, taking a look at the highest expectation, and drilling down to those foundational skills, what's appropriate and what's going to be most effective.

MB:                             

Yeah, correct. Absolutely.

PA:                              

I absolutely love it. Well, let's talk about ways to improve students' reading skills through schoolwide, Multi-Tiered Systems of Support, such as Response to Intervention and school-based teams, like problem solving teams or professional learning communities. What can you tell us about that?

MB:                             

Yeah, that's the system in which we deliver these interventions. So, a teacher by his or herself working really hard in doing this great database decision-making can have an effect on some kids of course, but we'll see a broader effect if it's done within the system and it's more likely to actually be implemented if it occurs within a system. One teacher working really, really hard is not a sustainable system. I'd rather it be systems. So, I say that Tier I, Tier II, Tier III, a good professional learning community really drives Tier I and Tier II. And that problem-solving team is what takes it for Tier III. When I go work with schools and they say they want to start MTSS and reading, I ask a couple questions. I say: ”No. 1, tell me about your core reading curriculum. No. 2, tell me about your screeners, what do you use? And No. 3, tell me about your PLCs or whatever model it is you use.”

Because without an effective teaming process, your chances of systematic success will go down substantially. So, I work with the professional learning communities to make Tier I and Tier II decisions. Tier I is, is there a class wide need? Is there a systems issue? Tier II is, who needs support and what support do they need? Getting back to that conversation we talked about earlier, I train teachers how to look at the data of those four big buckets and figure out what the kids need. And then it's down to Tier III where we really have to dive in and do in-depth analysis, which is where the problem-solving team comes in. A lot of schools, in which I work, their first step in starting an MTSS is to start a problem-solving team.

If your first step in implementing MTSS is to start a problem-solving team, I can almost promise you your model is doomed to failure. If you've got a building of 500 kids, let's say 40 percent of them need support, which by the way is not an accurate estimate, and it might even be low, but let's say 40 percent need support, well 40 percent of 500 is 200. So, if you're trying to do in-depth problem analysis to the level of which you need to do an effective problem-solving team with 200 kids, you just don't have the resources to do it. Your system will crumble under its own weight. You can't have an effective Tier III without an effective Tier II, got to have a good PLC. And without a good PLC and a good Tier I, you won't have a good Tier II. So, it all comes back to that good professional learning community making decisions for kids. And then we get the problem-solving team involved at Tier III.

PA:                              

OK. So, it's not relying on any one person but a sustainable system. I love that phrase. A sustainable system where everyone's involved and really working toward the good of all students within that building.

MB:                             

Yeah, right. In fact, most of the time I see successful MTSS implementation, there's a group of teachers within one grade or across a couple grades who look at the data together and share kids. So, my classroom, you might have three kids who are low in decoding. In your classroom you have two kids that are low I fluency, and three that are low in decoding, I'll take your decoding kids, you take my fluency kids during the intervention period. It's that type of conversation. Anytime I've seen successful MTSS happen in reading and math, that conversation happens.

PA:                              

And so, part of it is drilling down to specific measures, right? And you've mentioned the idea of drilling down to measures to identify where those breakdowns come within that learning process. Because the whole goal is to increase reading skills, right? So, what can be used to target reading interventions? What do you recommend?

MB:                             

Well, I'm going to talk about two things. I'm probably going to take your question a little deeper than what's intended. So, I've already mentioned any group measure of reading, the FastBridge, the MAP, Measures of Academic Progress, STAR Reading, those are all pretty much comprehension oriented. And by the way, they're all fine screeners. Most screening measures are fine screeners, but they tend to have limited diagnostic utility. So, then once I dive in and if I identify the kids as needing help, we'd have to dive in to see what help do they need. And most screeners have limited diagnostic utility. So, that's why something like Acadience is great, Oral Reading Fluency measures reading fluency. You've got Nonsense Word Fluency, which is a direct measure of decoding. You've got the First Sound Fluency and Phonemic Segmentation Fluency, which measure phonemic awareness. So, within that one suite you've got pretty much all the measures that you need.

And by the way, there's dozens of good decoding tools for free online, you can just Google it and almost...Decoding is a pretty straightforward thing to measure. There's lots of them that are free online. So, there's not much secret in finding measures, just making sure it measures what you want it to measure. So, Nonsense Word Fluency is a measure of decoding, for example. But if you want to measure reading fluency, I would use something else.

But your question though, the second part of it was looking at the learning process. Now, I'm going to take that in a little bit different direction. So, if the learning process, I tend to think of it’s from reading theory, that the instructional hierarchy as three steps: learning it in the first place, remembering it, or generalizing it. And kids with dyslexia and reading problems, there's a breakdown in that learning process often. If they're not learning it in the first place, then at the end of the lesson you could sit down with a kid and teach them the diagraph CH, for example. And then at the end of the lesson you hold up CH and they don't know what it says. That's not learning it in the first place.

Then, some kids learn it in the first place, but then tomorrow they've forgotten it. And then some kids, man, at the end of the lesson they can do it, the next day they remember it, but they just can't apply it. And so, I tell teachers to look to see where's that breakdown occurring? Ask these questions, at the end of the lesson can the kid do it? And if the answer is yes, everything else is a no. Sometimes, that's a no. It depends, that's a no. It's either yes or no. So, at the end of the lesson, can the kid do it? If not, then they're not learning it in the first place. At the end of the lesson the kid can do it, the next day do they remember it? If not, then they're not remembering it, they're not retaining it.

If they can do it in the first place and they remember it, then ask yourself, "Well can they apply it? Can they use it?" And then the intervention should be modified based on that. So, they're not learning in the first place, a lot more modeling, a lot more explicit instruction. Make sure you're addressing what the kid needs. If they're not remembering it, doses, doses, doses, doses, practice, repetition. If they learn in the first place but they don't remember it, you got to build in more repetition. And lastly, application. They can't apply it. You build in opportunities to practice it as they would use it in the real world.

PA:                              

So, it starts with understanding the need. So, for instance, if there's a fever, you know that there's a fever, but what's causing the fever right?

MB:                             

Exactly.

PA:                              

And applying the correct dosage and repetition. Quite often we think one and done, I taught it, they should know it. But I love the way you break that down from learning to remembering and generalizing. If they get to the point of generalizing, then they can transfer what they learned in any space in which words are available, where they're expected to either apply these skills from phonemic awareness, decoding, fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary. Thank you for making that very clear, Dr. Burns.

MB:                             

Great, thank you.

PA:                              

Tell us a bit more about the best measures educators should rely on. What are you looking for in selecting progress monitoring for kids in K–6?

MB:                             

So, progress monitoring has to be quick, reliable, and tied to the skill that you’re intervening. So, I progress monitor two ways. I use a General Outcome Measure, which is just: Is the kid getting better at reading? For example. And there's lots of them out there. I mentioned Acadience a few times, DIBELS® is a solid GOM, General Outcome Measure. They're all quick, reliable, and they're directly tied to reading and they're a General Outcome Measure. Or Reading Fluency, CBMR, Curriculum-Based Measurement for Reading, or reading fluency is an outstanding General Outcome Measure. All that's designed to do is it'll tell you, is the kid getting better at reading and you can measure the kid once a week. Awesome.

However, I also monitor progress another way, I monitor progress in the skill in which I'm intervening. So, if I've drilled down, see this kid really needs decoding and my only tool I use to progress monitor is that grade-level, Oral Reading Fluency, well, they might be doing really well in learning the decoding skills, but it's not showing up in this Reading Fluency measure yet. So, I'll also monitor the progress with something like a Nonsense Word Fluency, like a decoding measure.

So, Fluency, Oral Reading Fluency is a great skill measure to progress monitor in addition to the General Outcome Measure, Decoding Nonsense Word Fluency and for phonemic awareness, First Sound and Phonemic Segmentation Fluency. Those are the ways that I monitor progress. I monitor the progress with every kid two ways, each one takes a minute per week, so two minutes per week. And it's a much better system than other approaches that aren't reliable, aren't sensitive to growth, or you can't administer them frequently enough.

PA:                              

All right. So, I'm going to say this quickly, just to recap, quick, reliable, tied to skill, and is the student getting better?

MB:                             

Yep. Perfect.

PA:                              

So, let's talk about ways to use existing data to help individual students. We've been talking about individualizing for students based on students' needs. What do you do if the data suggests that a prerequisite skill is already mastered, let's say, the phonemic awareness when working on phonics?

MB:                             

Yeah, I'm going to continue to review that skill, of course, but I move on. There are some programs out there that spend time teaching skills that most kids come to school with. And if 80 percent of the classroom already has that skill, there's no reason to spend the entire class time on it. Having said that though, I might do a quick one-minute review of it, something like that. So, we'll do a review, but otherwise if they've mastered the prerequisite skill, we move on. If they haven't, we move backward, right? So, if I'm working with kids on decoding, I determine that they don't have phonemic awareness yet, then we go back and work on phonemic awareness. So, we assess that, so we know where they are. Don't teach skills the kids already have, just review it. But if they don't have it, back up.

PA:                              

All right, and speaking of skill building. Introducing new skills for any students should be approach with care, right? But with students with dyslexia, what's the best process? For instance, how do you know when it's time to focus on practicing the new skill? When are they ready for that new skill? And how much practice do kids need to learn the skill? And how many new items should you practice at one time? Now I know there are a lot of questions, so I hope you got all of them, Dr. Burns.

MB:                             

Yeah, I did. And this is such a fun question. So, I think it's at the crux of some of the problems that with kids with dyslexia experience. And if there's some misunderstandings out there around them. So, first question is, how do you know when it's time to focus on practicing? Well, if they can do the skill with at least 90 percent accuracy on their own, that's when they're ready to practice it. Don't let a kid practice something unless they can do it 90 percent accurately. In special ed, we talked a lot about 80 percent. Eighty percent is the goal, 80 percent is way too low. I did a meta-analysis. Now, keep in mind, this is 2004, so I need to update it. But we found that once kids got the 90 percent, that's when we saw the most growth. So, I want to see 90 percent accuracy. Once you can see they can do it on their own with at least 90 percent accuracy, that's when they're ready to practice it.

How much practice do they need to learn the skill? Well, that varies a little bit depending on different factors. But for the most part, we've seen that you need about 15 to 25 repetitions for it to become ingrained in long-term memory. Now, once you go beyond 25 repetitions, you don't see much benefit. So, if a kid sees it 25 times or 50 times, you don't see much increase in retention. But if you go from 10 to 25, you see a nice big jump in retention. So, it depends a little bit on the kid, but I tell people 15 to 25 times practicing the new skill.

And how many new items should you practice? That's a wonderful question. It's one on which I've done some research. And that's actually a limited and small number. And what'll happen is once we exceed that number, how much a kid can learn at one time and practice at one time, we start to see, first of all, they won't remember it. They won't remember the new skill. And trying to teach it once you've exceeded their limit will cause them to forget the one they're learning right now, but they might forget the one they just learned as well. They'll forget the ones they already learned. And we also see more off-task behavior.

So, when you're working with a kid, watch them and watch for two things. Watch for more off-task behavior and more wrong answers. We've actually systemized it more than that, it's much more systematic if you see three errors. But generally speaking, once you see kids start making mistakes and they'll make mistakes on easy things, on things they already knew, when you see them start to make mistakes or they start to increase their off-task behavior, stop, they're done.

PA:                              

So, off-task behavior can guide you to understanding how much practice you need to continue with a student and when it's just a review based on what skills they've actually obtained.

MB:                             

Yeah, right, exactly. And once they start making mistakes, even on the review items, that's when you know they're done.

PA:                              

All right, Thank you Dr. Burns. Speaking of new skills, what are some ways educators can help ensure application of the skill during instruction? Not to just gain the skill, but to practice that?

MB:                             

Yeah, that's so important. We have to teach the skill in the way you want them to use it. Now, I would argue, anytime you teach something, you have to have application built in. So, you have to give them a chance to go take what they just learned. They just learned the diagraph CH. OK, go read some words that contain that diagraph and then read some sentences with that diagraph. They have to see it in practice, just as part of routine instruction.

But if that's the part that the kid's really struggling with, I suggest we teach it that way completely. So, I no longer teach the diagraph CH, for example, I'll teach words that have the diagraph CH in it, and at the end of it have them read 10 sentences that contain that word, and then have them write the word and then have them write sentences that contain the words. Anything like that. So, anything that takes what they've just learned and makes it look like how they're supposed to use it, that's how you have them practiced it to build generalization. And that's how you can intervene for kids who struggle with generalization.

PA:                              

So, progressively building that skill. I just love the idea of first looking at the sound, using it within context, within sentences, within text itself. That's building that skill within. Thank you for sharing that. I'm sure you have so many more ideas. There's many ways to support teachers. I want to thank you for joining us today, Dr. Burns. It's been a pleasure speaking with you. Please tell our listeners how they can learn more about you and how they can follow you on social media.

MB:                             

Well, I'm active on Twitter. My Twitter account is burnsmk1. I'm quite active on that. We have the SKiPP website. If you just Google, University of Missouri, SKiPP, it's S-K-I-P-P. We've got a great website. And lastly, my YouTube channel. My YouTube channel has videos on there demonstrating interventions. Sometimes a cool article will come out, a research article, and I want it to be easily understood and applicable to practitioners. So, I'll call that person, the author, and interview them informally, a quick 15-minute interview to summarize what they found in terms that is easily consumable by practitioners. So, there’s videos like that. So, there's lots of videos on there. So, if you go to YouTube and just search Matthew Burns, I come up pretty quickly.

PA:                              

Thank you, Dr. Burns. This is Pam Austin, bringing the best thought leaders in education directly to you.

Narrator:                     

This has been an EDVIEW360 podcast. For additional thought-provoking discussions, sign up for our blog, webinar, and podcast series at voyagersopris.com/EDVIEW360. If you enjoyed the show, we'd love a five-star review wherever you listen to podcasts and to help other people like you find our show. Thank you.