What’s Missing from K–2 Reading Instruction?

Narrator:

Welcome to EDVIEW360.

Dr. Barbara Foorman:

Well, and early prevention, right? People used to think, “Oh, don't intervene early, they'll catch up. Just let them go.” But we now know that actually intervention as early as kindergarten can really help a student so they don't fall behind. Because once they fall behind, they feel terrible about it and they end up hating reading and not being happy with themselves. So, prevention, early intervention, is critically important.

Narrator:

You just heard from Dr. Barbara Foorman, internationally known researcher and expert in reading. Dr. Foorman is our guest today on EDVIEW360.

Pam Austin:

Hello, this is Pam Austin. Welcome back to the EDVIEW360 podcast series. We are so excited to have you with us today. I'm conducting today's podcast from my native New Orleans, LA. Today, we are excited to welcome an internationally known expert in reading, with over 160 publications stemming from many multisite federal research grants and contracts.

Dr. Barbara Foorman's research focuses on reading and language development, instruction and assessment. She is emeritus professor of education, director emeritus of the Florida Center for Reading Research, and past director of the Regional Educational Laboratory Southeast at Florida State University. Dr. Foorman was the first commissioner of the National Center for Education Research at the Institute of Education Scientists, IES. Dr. Foorman serves on several editorial boards and has served on national consensus panels in reading and chaired the IES Practice Guide Panel on Foundational Reading Skills in Support of Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten through Third Grade. Also, she developed literacy assessments for Texas and Florida and developed curricula in spelling, phonemic awareness, and vocabulary.

Welcome, Dr. Foorman, we're so happy to have you with us today. 

BF:

Thank you, Pam. Glad to be here. 

PA:

We are going to dive right into it. We've got lots of questions that we want answered. I want to start with your background. So, your background and achievements. They cause me to think that you most likely have stayed involved in literacy efforts in recent years, since your retirement from Florida State University and Florida Center for Reading Research, what has your involvement been in reading education?

BF:

Well, since retiring from Florida State University at the end of December 2019 and moving to New York City area just in time for the pandemic, I've been consulting on several states' literacy frameworks and reviewing research documents. In 2003, I published a chapter in the new edition of the Science of Early Literacy, and the chapter is on the alphabetic code. I presented to the Council of Chief State School Officers on early assessment, and I testified to the New York City Council on the science of reading. But, most importantly, I've been teaching my 5-year-old granddaughter to read. I helped her older sister during the pandemic and now she's an avid third grade reader.

PA:

Oh, that sounds like exciting work. You have a full retirement, Dr. Foorman.

BF:

Yeah.

PA:

So, thinking about all the research that you've done and what you are still doing right now within the world of literacy, in your opinion, and based on that research that you know so well, what is missing from K–2 reading instruction?

BF:

Yes, that is the key question. So, I think what's missing in K–2 instruction is quality teaching that focuses on a curriculum with an evidence-based Scope and Sequence of letter, sound patterns, which, of course, is phonics, and the word-building practice that needs to go with it. Also, the emphasis on decoding, encoding, which is spelling, to ensure that word identification is accurate. Differentiation of instruction, daily practice in text to support what the teacher's teaching, handwriting fluency, vocabulary, and writing to support reading.

PA:

Oh, wow you gave us the what and even the how. When I think about what you've just said, the words explicit and systematic came to mind. When I think about the how and the content itself is very diverse but very necessary. You mentioned differentiation just now. Tell us more about that and how teachers can and should use those flexible groupings that we've talked about. Right? To create those reading groups and reading centers that are going to be effective and include all of these things you've just named.

BF:

Right. Yeah, differentiation really is the key to success in the classroom for all children, and so teachers need to know where each child's reading ability is and how well they're learning what she's teaching.

Therefore, screening, informative assessment, provide the teacher with the information that she can use to group children accordingly and match text to their ability. But teachers are often reluctant to group because what do they do with the rest of the classroom while they're working with a group? And somehow grouping equates with round-robin reading. So, let me address both of those concerns. So, the answer to what to do with the rest of the students is to provide meaningful activities in centers, like using the FCRR student center activities, implement peer-assisted learning strategies, and/or have students read independently. The answer to the second concern is make sure that the reading groups are flexible, meaning that students are regrouped as their reading progresses, provide feedback to ensure that word identification is accurate, and in my 40 years of observing K–2 reading instruction as part of my research studies, I've been surprised at how little time beginning readers actually read to the teacher and receive feedback. Also, to ensure that reading groups are small, multiple groups can be run simultaneously if support staff is used.

PA:

Oh, that sounds great. It sounds like a lot. I think about classroom management and think about maybe that new teacher for the first time. “Oh, I have to have groups and I have to be flexible with those groups and my other kids. I really need to manage them.” So, it's actually looking at classroom management. It is a skill that's developed, right?

BF:

It is. And the first couple weeks of the school year are critical to getting that classroom into a system where the students know what they're supposed to be doing and therefore everything can run smoothly after you get that management system in place.

PA:

All right, wouldn't you say that would take a lot of model and practice there?

BF:

Yeah, it does.

PA:

One thing that you said was meaningful activities. I think that is so important to know. So, students aren’t just doing busy work, are doing research, love the idea of teaching students to do some peer readings, some independent reading, and the idea of having students read more. Here at VSL, we say miles on a tongue is what's important, and the feedback. We don't just let it go.

BF:

That's right, because it sticks in their head. The error will just become permanent if you don't look out for it.

PA:

Oh, thank you so much for sharing these ideas. You know we talk so much about reading instruction and we now know the importance of writing instruction. You mentioned that handwriting fluency earlier and how this will be so supportive for reading instruction. You know, go hand in hand. Readers are writers and writers are readers. How do handwriting and reading go hand in hand?

BF:

Yeah, it's interesting there's actually been quite a bit of research on this that Ginger Berninger and Rick Wagner and others have shown that fluent writing of alphabetic letters in first grade predicts the quality of writing compositions in fourth grade. And why should that be? Well, it's because the skill in handwriting must become automatic if students are to focus memory and attention on the skills of written composition, which are at the macro level in terms of how many complex sentences you produce, your spelling and punctuation. All that needs to be a focus of attention. So, if your handwriting is not fluent, then you can't get to that higher level for composition. And similarly, word reading needs to become fluent if students are to focus their memory and attention on comprehending with their reading.

PA:

So, automaticity in reading and writing. They both support each other. Am I correct in saying that?

BF:

They do. I've actually done research studies that show the reciprocity between the two, how they're really part of the same dimension and feed into each other just at the word level the decoding and encoding, encoding, spelling. They're flipped sides of the same coin. Think of it that way, so they really mutually enforce each other.

PA:

All right. That's a great image you just created. I think it's one that's memorable. I have to toss in here. Computers are there, technology is there. Would typing give the same type of imprint and support?

BF:

It takes a while to become a fluent typer. You know that if you ask kindergarten and first-graders to type their fingers are up and down on the keys it's too much for them to focus on just to figure out the quirky keyboard. So, the other thing about handwriting is that it's a separate skill. Kids need to learn to form the shape of the letters and that motor control, that visual motor control, is crucial and it's giving them feedback into what the difference between a b and a d is, a p. All of that, by actually the motoric movement, helps to build an image in their brain. So, they're better readers and writers as a consequence of that handwriting work.

PA:

So, that visual motor control is impactful for helping to remember not only letter formation but patterns in reading as well?

BF:

That's right. Absolutely.

PA:

Awesome. Can you share some ways teachers can integrate writing instruction into reading instruction? We know that writing is important. We know it's going to help support reading, but what do we do? How do we make it happen, Dr. Foorman?

BF:

Right. So, beginning readers can write words from stories that they're reading. Sometimes these little books have the words listed at the back. You can actually have them write the words too, and beginners can write the vocabulary words from stories that are read to them. And teachers can even put those vocabulary words up on the wall. And as kindergarten through second grade students advance in reading, they can write in response to what they've read. So, for example, a teacher might prompt students to write about a person in a historical passage they read.

So, my third grade granddaughter was reading about Amelia Earhart and she had to write in response to what she was reading and she was really struck by the newspapers of the time. In this book she's reading, Still Missing. This woman, who was the first sole woman to fly a plane across the Atlantic, was missing in the South Pacific. So, she wrote that in her response to what you read about nonfiction. Alternatively, students might write about a problem, that a character they've encountered in a fictional story, what the problem is and how the character solves the problem. So, they read it, and if they write in response to what they've read, it really helps them to think about the gist of the story and all the supporting details and maybe even the arguments in the story. So, it's an important aid to comprehension to actually write about what you read. 

PA:

All right. So, building the background, learning about something new and responding to actually display how much you comprehend what you've read. I absolutely love it so you're not doing something new. You're doing something to help support reading comprehension, which is the end goal. Would you say that, Dr. Foorman?

BF:

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you got it.

PA:

Let's talk a little bit about curriculum in the early grades here and the Scope and Sequence. You mentioned how important it is to have the Scope and Sequence, something that's sequential. Tell our listeners what's ideal and what's not during this time. We're looking at our early learners K–2.

BF:

Right. So, I understand that teachers may not like curriculum mandates and may feel empowered when they create their own curricular materials. But it takes a lot of time and expertise to create a sound curriculum and my research has shown that student reading success is linked to the interaction of a good curriculum where students are in their reading and quality teaching. So, in other words, teachers need to know where their students’ reading ability is at the beginning of the year and that correlates really highly with where they are at the end of the year. But what can disrupt that high correlation is good teaching and a good curriculum. So, we've actually shown that in our research.

So, what is a good curriculum? Well, it has a Scope and Sequence of alphabetic instruction, letter sound patterns, or phonics, that systematically and explicitly move students from consonant and foul consonant, in other words CVC to CCVC and CVCC, which are your digraphs and your blends, to your final E, magic E words. And this is in practicing text every day. So, the students are learning their phonics but they're practicing it in their text. So, there's a high correlation between what they're being taught in the phonics program and what they're reading. And then frequent irregular words can be sprinkled into the lessons and learned along the way.

And then the tricky part of English is there are these inconsistent vowel patterns, like the word vein, V-E-I-N. Who would have thought that's a long A sound? 

Well, it is, and eventually you need to get to that depth of the English writing system. So, it's important to teach spelling so that the segmentation of sounds in speech, which is called phonemic awareness, becomes accurately mapped to letters and their meaning in a process called orthographic mapping, the term that Linnea Ehri came up with. And that orthographic mapping allows students to read words by sight. So, sight word reading is not just memorizing words, it's actually bringing together the phonemic awareness and the word meaning and the orthographic or spelling of the word all in one package. And by second and third grade, the teacher then introduces syllable patterns and morpheme elements like prefixes and suffixes. So, that's basically the reading curriculum, and you just need to have a good curriculum that lays it all out explicitly and systematically. So, students are building on learning something, they move on to the next part of the sequence and it's a nice spiral kind of curriculum that builds on prior knowledge of what they've been taught.

PA:

So, stage by stage, step by step. So, in summary, you should focus on having a sound implementation of a curriculum with all the features you just named, right? And also delivering it, implementing it with quality teaching. 

BF:

That's right. 

PA: 

Yeah, awesome. That's it in a nutshell. I love it.

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PA:

So, with young learners, we know that decoding and the use of decodable text is definitely critical and we've seen an uptick in teachers seeking decodable text. What will work to help them as they begin to build that skill for their students? Can you talk about decoding and encoding? You mentioned that encoding is spelling and how an emphasis on this helps students build those foundational skills such as word identification. You talked about this a little bit more. Can you just expound on them? And why is it so important? I want you to reiterate, because I think this is just an aspect of teaching our very own students that is very important.

BF:

Right. You want to be able to match text to students' ability and you don't want them to make too many errors. So, people use this term instructional text. That means they don't make more than 10 percent errors. And, so, when you're teaching letter, sound patterns, phonics, use decodable text to ensure that students master the patterns and don't make too many errors. So, they practice on what they've been taught. And then, as I said earlier, you can sprinkle in a few highly frequent irregular words like of, said, where, and it's OK to sprinkle in a few high-value, non-decodable words like dinosaur or elephant. Believe me, they'll remember that easily and research shows it may take up to five repetitions of a pattern for a student to automatically recognize, meaning orthographically map, that pattern in future encounters of the word. So, decodable text is an essential part of building accurate word-identification strategies. Now, what's really happening? Too often beginning readers are given texts with grammatical patterns and what they call sight words, such as and I'm now reading one of the so-called leveled texts sent home for parents to read to my 5-year-old kindergarten granddaughter. So, here's the text, a little bit of it: “Where is Rosie? Rosie sits on the chair. Where is Charlie? Charlie sits on the chair, too. Where is Rosie? Rosie sits on the couch. Where is Charlie? Charlie sits on the couch, too.” OK, very cute pictures of these little dogs.

In this kind of sight word or leveled text, picture cues help the student with the difficult words chair and couch. However, a highly frequent irregular word like where, which is a true sight word, can be taught in isolation or incorporated into a decodable text. It's fine if you don't have too many of those highly frequent irregular words in a decodable text, that's fine.

So, the danger of basing beginning reading instruction on these syntactically patterned books with picture cues, ie. leveled text, is that the primary strategy for identifying words, which is sounding words out according to taught phonic patterns, becomes lost among the syntactic and picture cues of the three-cueing system. Pictures can confirm meaning but should not replace word identification as the key strategy. So, I see, with leveled text used all the time in these guided reading programs going on, that students they'll look at the pictures, they'll maybe look at the first sound in the word and then they'll guess based on the picture and the pattern, and that's a terrible strategy to get away from. You’ve got to teach word identification. Work through the word, say it fast, attach it to meaning. Yeah, I mean that's the whole point of a good phonics program.

PA:

Right. So, when you're using the pictures to confirm what the word is, you're not necessarily focusing on meaning there and students don't learn the skill. They don't have the opportunity to have success in applying a skill and they're not building the confidence to be able to read those words independently. And that's what we want. We want success and confidence.

BF:

That's right. Absolutely.

PA:

So, then we know that some of our students struggle. You talked about sometimes five repetitions will do it for students and they're able to recognize that pattern. But we know we have some kids who five is not enough, sometimes 20, 25 repetitions. I'm working with a student right now who needs at least that much. So, when young students struggle, intervention that seems like that's in order, right? How would an educator plan for that? And you gave us some ideas at the very beginning when we talked about putting students in small groups. But how do we plan for the intervention instruction, how do we support that struggling child?

BF:

Yeah, it's a critical question these days. So, when young students struggle to read, reading intervention is in order. But we have to remember that no school can afford to pull out all students to Tier 2 reading intervention. So, classroom reading instruction must be improved so that fewer than 5 percent of students need more intensive intervention. So, I talked about differentiation earlier, differentiating classroom instruction with flexible reading groups and maybe a double dose of in-class intervention through small groups, the number of struggling readers can be dramatically reduced. And, then, you may need some students to go into Tier 2, but it's a manageable number. So, universal screening can help the teacher to form flexible groups to progress monitor these students and use formative assessment to help the teachers regroup and initiate a double dose of intervention. And people always say we can't have groups, but actually in my research I've worked in Title I schools where funds have been used to hire retired teachers, for example, to help staff multiple reading groups in Tier 2 pull-out intervention. So, it can be done.

PA:

So, just listening to how you explain when intervention is needed, it brings to mind the idea of an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. If the core, if we've got quality core instruction, then we're reducing the amount of students who need intervention and then it's more manageable. And, manageable, I'm sure teachers love that word. Classroom management is what we're going back to high-quality teaching.

BF:

Well, and early prevention, right? People used to think, “Oh, don't intervene early, they'll catch up. Just let them go.” But we now know that actually intervention as early as kindergarten can really help a student so they don't fall behind. Because once they fall behind, they feel terrible about it and they end up hating reading and not being happy with themselves. So, prevention, early intervention, is critically important.

PA:

All right. Again, having that success and building that confidence. School is the first place you go to where you're successful, and we want them to be successful. 

BF:

Yep, awesome. 

PA:

Tell us how you feel about the teaching of reading going forward. Are we on the right path right now? How can we implement change to ensure reading and literacy success for all children?

BF:

Yeah, I'm worried about the teaching of reading going forward unless we imbue pre-service teacher professional development and in-service professional development with evidence-based teaching strategies. So, there's seven IES literacy practice guides, reading and writing practice guides, and they're excellent and they're free, freely available resources for these evidence-based recommendations are available. So, for example, I chaired the panel for the Foundational Reading Skills Practice Guide, and we worked with teachers to create videos of the recommended strategies being used with students. We also translated the recommendations to grade-specific professional development learning communities. In other words, PLC, guides and a guide used by a major teacher preparation college when teaching the basic reading course. So, we know how to teach reading. We have the scientific evidence, we have freely available resources through IES and actually a lot of the regional labs. So, I told you I've been working with states to help revise their literacy frameworks and I've directed them to all these free resources for professional development.

So, I think the science of reading has become an acronym, SOR, and that's always worrisome when you have something reduced to an acronym which is worth 40 years of research.

But nonetheless, some of that is seeping into teacher preparation. But I tell you what I'm really encouraged about is the City University of New York, CUNY system, is implementing a required tutoring practicum into their teacher-prep program, and in this semester-long practicum teacher candidates are supervised. They are supervised while they tutor struggling K–2 students on a one-to-one basis with an evidence-based program. All of their teacher candidates throughout the CUNY system. In fact, they're being so successful schools have the option of doing this after school or during school. So, they work closely with the New York City Public Schools on this. But it's so successful that the whole state of Pennsylvania wants to implement it. So, things like that are really reassuring to me when I hear the kind of grassroots science of reading getting into the teacher-prep programs, because when a teacher is trained well initially, they're moving into the classroom, they understand struggling readers. They're more likely to be able to then appreciate how to differentiate instruction and do all the things I've been talking about in the classroom.

PA:

That is so exciting to hear, and at the same time, they're also supporting students who are struggling. So, we're killing two birds with one stone. Well, reviving, right? A better way of saying that. Oh, thank you so much for everything that you shared with us today, Dr. Foorman, it's been a pleasure speaking with you. Please tell our listeners how they can learn more about you, your research, and you've already shared some pieces that you've authored. Can you tell us again how to access them?

BF:

Well, if you Google my name, Barbara Foorman, you'll come to my curriculum vitae at the Florida Center for Reading Research website, which is fcrr.org, and you can see all my publications and, hopefully, when you Google them, you'll have access to them for free. Some of them are behind a journal paywall, but often you'll at least get the abstract and maybe you can get access to the actual article.

PA:

Thank you so much. This is Pam Austin, bringing the best thought leaders in education directly to you. Please join us next month for another great EDVIEW360 podcast.

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.