CoL Teacher Inquiry: Structured Literacy- An Introductory Guide by the International Dyslexia Association

The article 'Structured Literacy: A Introductory Guide' shared that 'structured literacy' has fixed characteristics  BUT it is the teachers knowledge of new scientific and their learners (the successes and their gaps) that is required to adjust this approach on an ongoing basis to best meet the needs of their learners. 

The Characteristics of Structured Literacy 

I found the way that this article defined 'Structured Literacy' really helpful especially the way that is describes the "instructional principles" so have included this definition as part of this blog post as a reminder to myself as I begin to generate ideas for my intervention. 

Structured Literacy is characterized by the provision of systematic, explicit instruction that integrates listening, speaking, reading, and writing and emphasizes the structure of language across the speech sound system (phonology), the writing system (orthography), the structure of sentences (syntax), the meaningful parts of words (morphology), the relationships among words (semantics), and the organization of spoken and written discourse.

The following instructional principles are hallmark features of a Structured Literacy approach to reading:

1. Instructional tasks are modeled and clearly explained, especially when first introduced or when a child is having difficulty.

2. Highly explicit instruction is provided, not only in important foundational skills such as decoding and spelling, but also in higher-level aspects of literacy such as syntax, reading comprehension, and text composition.

3. Important prerequisite skills are taught before students are expected to learn more advanced skills.

4. Meaningful interactions with language occur during the lesson.

5. Multiple opportunities are provided to practice instructional tasks.

6. Well targeted corrective feedback is provided after initial student responses.

7. Student effort is encouraged.

8. Lesson engagement during teacher-led instruction is
monitored and scaffolded.

9. Lesson engagement during independent work is monitored and facilitated.

10. Students successfully complete activities at a high criterion level of performance before moving on to more advanced skills. 

Monitoring progress and making adjustments 

The following is a direct quote from the article that I found interesting as it placed a different perspective on 'structured literacy' and how it can be implemented effectively. 

"After implementing a Structured Literacy approach that is most appropriate for them, schools should use progress monitoring assessments to track student progress and gauge the overall success of instruction and intervention programs. They should make necessary adjustments in instruction and intervention on an ongoing basis. And they should follow emerging scientific evidence on literacy for new findings that may impact educational decision-making.

In addition to paying close attention to scientific research on reading and evidence-based practices, educators sometimes need to exercise judgement in making educational decisions, especially where evidence is lacking. For instance, an intervention with a relatively greater emphasis on phonemic awareness, or multisyllabic word decoding, or fluency, may be more effective for a student with greater needs in one of those respective areas. However, these kinds of judgments will differ across students and even for the same student over time, as a student’s needs shift with progress in intervention."

I think that this is point worth holding onto as I head into the intervention stage of my teacher inquiry as it really places an emphasis on firstly the profiling stage of teacher inquiry, but also the ongoing formative assessments and observations that we make as teachers. It also highlights the importance of teachers being equipped with the knowledge need to make these judgements. I know that for myself, this is a constant journey, especially with literacy as I dive deeper into the literature and learn more about the science of reading. 

The article 'Structured Literacy: An Introductory Guide by the Dyslexia Association can be found here. 

CoL Teacher Inquiry: GEM Literacy - An Introduction to Explicit Teaching of Vocabulary - The Bridge to Language Comprehension

I attended GEM Literacy's webinar "An Introduction to the Explicit Teaching of Vocabulary". Gemma clearly explained the "why" and the "how" of explicit vocabulary instruction. It was both informative and empowering. I was excited to take my new learning and try in out with the tamariki in my year 1 class. I've begun by using the vocabulary strips during our small group reading sessions. I've noticed the children are engaged by the use of a picture on the vocabulary strip (especially my ELL learners). The vocabulary strip has helped to spark up a conversation and is supporting their understanding of the new vocabulary. I look forward to seeing the impact my new learning, thanks to Gemma, has on the tamariki in my class!

 

Check out the photos below of the learning that has been happening thanks to taking part in this webinar.

Here is the outline of the webinar:

• “The Why” of vocabulary instruction
• The relationship between vocabulary and background knowledge and how these underpin oral language and reading comprehension
• Practical and systematic classroom application from Year 1-8 + FREE access to resources (Editable EARLY Reading Vocabulary Strips and our ADVANCED Vocabulary Building Scaffold)

Nga mihi nui!! 

CoL Teacher Inquiry: Teaching Phonemic Awareness in 2022 - A Guide for Educators

I found this guide an interesting read, especially as it focus on teaching phonemic awareness, rather than on a specific programme or approach to teaching phonemic awareness. 

I have highlighted a few points for myself below that will inform the design of my intervention in the coming weeks:

• Small daily doses (a few minutes at a time) in effective phonemic awareness instruction improves a child's ability to read and spell unfamiliar words independently. Most children will make progress with just a few minutes of daily instruction at the start of the literacy lesson.

• Emergent and struggling readers will benefit from phonological awareness instruction. Struggling readers have phonological weakness. Most children who struggle with learning to read have an underdeveloped phonemic awareness when they enter school.  At-risk and struggling readers enter school with poor phonological awareness, which indicates that their phonological processing is less developed than it is in children who are on track for typical reading development. 

• Comparison of present research indicate larger reading gains for students with lessons that include both phonemic awareness and phonics. 

• Each phonological awareness session should begin with a review of the previously taught concept first, then focus on the teaching the next sound position in the sequence (e.g. the final sound). 

• Many students learn new phonemic awareness tasks more quickly, and are more accurate, when
  they use manipulatives. For example, a child might use two small blocks or chips for first sound
  segmentation of the word “map.” First, he repeats the word “map,” pushing one square up under the picture of a map when he says /m/ and pushing another up when he says /ap/. In later lessons when he is able to fully segment words into phonemes, he would push up three chips as he segments each sound /m/ /a/ /p/, and then blends those sounds to say “map". Practice with manipulative  tasks further strengthens phonological processing, which facilitates mapping sounds to letters and, thus, supports memory for written words and instant word recognition.

• Most children pick up syllable awareness quite easily. We do not know if it is necessary to teach syllable-level and onset-level phonological awareness after preschool. BUT the point of phonological awareness activities with syllables is to prepare students for success with phonemic awareness tasks that focus on perceiving individual speech sounds.

• Teaching phonemic awareness separately from phonics and spelling seems to provide the best environment for focusing student attention on the sounds in spoken words.

The following is an example of a phonemics awareness lesson - I will refer back to this as an example of best practice when designing my intervention: 

In the graphic below it shows how manipulatives (like blocks or counters) are used to teach phonemic awareness. I was particularly interested by the way that the 'first sound' example uses only two blocks to segment off the 'first sound' in the words 'sat'. I would have previously used three counters for the three sounds in the words 'sat' and had the learners indicate that the first sound was /s/ by pointing to the first counter. I am curious to find out the 'why?' behind the two counters when segmenting off the first sound.

I found this statement interesting as it highlight where I am at in my journey with teaching phonological awareness. 

"Scripted programmes are great at the beginning BUT children who are at risk of reading problems will need an approach that is systematic and multimodal approach where each concept is taught for accuracy first and then practiced for automaticity."

For the past year, I have implemented the scripted phonological awareness programme 'Heggerty" with my learners. It has been great. It was so needed. I have seen growth in my learners phonological awareness. When I began using this programme, I didn't have the knowledge yet to teach phonological awareness without a scripted programme. It has supported me as a teacher to build my learners phonological awareness and build up my knowledge of teaching phonological awareness. BUT it makes total sense that our learners also need an approach to teaching phonological awareness that is is responsive to where they are at in their learning, that teaches until the learners can accurately achieve a phonological skill and then for automaticity. Unlike, within a scripted programme where the teacher works through the script without pacing the learning to the learners needs. I will be continuing on with 'Heggerty' as I believe it is a great tool for quick daily practice and for getting regularly coverage of all the phonological awareness skills. But I will be taking on board the recommendation to move away from just using a scripted programme when designing my intervention. 

I will definitely be going back and rereading this resource as I plan for my intervention as it is a wealth of knowledge!

If you're interested the Guide for Educators can be read here - Teaching Phonemic Awareness in 2022: A Guide for Educators - by Jane Ashby, Marion McBride, Shira Naftel, Lucy Hart Paulson, David Kilpatrick, Louisa Cook Moats

CoL Teacher Inquiry - A summary of my inquiry so far!

I have spent the last term looking widley at literacy abilities and the gaps of the tamariki in my classroom (and more widely at our junior school and the Maniakalani Kahui Ako). I thought, being the start of the term, it was a good time to pause and summarise my CoL teacher inquiry so far! 

Identifying valued learning outcomes:

I have chosen to focus my inquiry on Achievement Challenge Number 3 - Lift the achievement in reading for all students, with a particular focus on boys and Māori students (both genders) years 1- 13.

Here is the inquiry question I have chosen is:

What strategies and methods can I utilize, based on the science of reading, to lift my students achievement in literacy? 

I have chosen to explore the topic of literacy, rather  exploring reading or writing separately, is this is a reflection of how these two areas are taught together in my classroom. 

Profiling:

I have completed literacy assessments, spoken with my school leadership, our SLT, looked at the Maniakalani Kahui Ako data and explored research and professional development in the area of 'the science of reading'. I have explored this profiling in depth in my previous blog posts. 

Hypothesis generation: Developing a Hunch

• If children have a strong foundation of phonological awareness, then they will be able to identify and manipulate the sounds in words leading to improved literacy achievements. 

• If children are taught the alphabetic code in a systematic way, then they will be able to decode unfamiliar words more effectively, leading to an increase in reading fluency.  

• If children are taught vocabulary through explicit instruction and exposure to rich language, then they will be able to comprehend texts and draw more meaning from what they are reading (or is being read to them). 

• If children experience success in their early literacy learning, then they will be set-up to succeed as readers and writers in the future. 

Academic readings/professional development that have supported my hypothesis generation:

• GEM literacy webinar: An Introduction to the Explicit Teaching of Vocabulary - The Bridge to Language Comprehension
• Teaching Phonemic Awareness in 2022: A Guide for Educators
• Structured Literacy: An Introductory Guide by the International Dyslexia Association
• How the Brain Learns to Read: by Prof. Stanislas Dehaene

Testing the hypothesis:

I have written blog posts over the past term as I have collected data about my tamariki's success' and gaps in the area of literacy. 

I will be completing their second 'Phonological Assessment' and their 10 week BSLA assessment in the coming week and this will provide more detail to inform my intervention. 

I'd also like to take the time to gather some student voice. These will all provide a baseline of data that will be repeated to monitor and assess the success of my intervention. 

Here is the list of the assessments I will/have been using:

• Liz Kanes: Phonological Awareness Assessment: Beginning of each term (as recommended by Liz Kane)
• Better Start Literacy Approach Assessment: Baseline assessment at school entry, 10 week assessment, 20 week assessment (for Tier 2 children only) and end of year assessment for all children. 
• E-Asttle writing: Termly (as part of our in school assessment schedule)
• Student voice (repeated using the same prompts)

As it is the King's Coronation today this quote from Queen Elizabeth seemed appropriate. Seeing change in my own teaching practice and in the achievement of my tamariki takes time. It's often the little steps in the right direction, rather than giant leaps that bring about the most change for our tamariki. 

Thankfully, over the past term, I've had the opportunity to make a few of these small steps in my classroom practice. I have explicitly taught phonological awareness strategies (like syllables) and began using a strategy called connected phoenation. I look forward to diving deep into the academic readings and professional development (mentioned above) and beginning to dream up innovative ways to lift my tamariki's achievement in literacy! 

Nga mihi nui!! 

CoL Teacher Inquiry - Profiling: Vocabulary and Oral Narrative

A key component of structured literacy (the science of reading) is vocabulary. 

Over the years, oral language as mentioned again and again as an area of gap for the children in our Kahui Ako for a variety of reason such as many children learning English as a second language and hearing less words in the home before beginning school. I can vividly remember Dorothy Burt (Manaiakalani Programme Lead) talking about the million word gap at a Manaiakalani orientation day when I first began teaching back in 2014.  I have over the years received professional development from experts in this field such as Dr Yannie Van Hees. 

Better Start Literacy Approach: Oral Narrative Assessment

As a part of the BSLA assessment, all of the children complete a task called "Oral Narrative" essentially they are read a story and are asked to retell the story in their own words (while looking at the pictures as a prompt) and then are asked to answer some comprehension questions about they story that they have just heard. Thanks to technology, all of the children's responses are recorded and analysed first by the computer and then checked by a teacher. The analysis of the "oral narrative" gives a run down of, the number of words used, the number of different words, the types of words used (nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs). Here is a link to the academic study of the "Oral narrative assessment" and here is an example of how the task is scored. 

Number of words: 61
Number of different words: 35
Number of nouns: 13
Number of verbs: 14
Number of adjectives: 0
Number of adverbs: 6

Percentage of intelligible utterances: 100%

Follow the link here to listen to a few examples of the Oral Narrative Task that were collected from the children in my class at the beginning of the year. 

Overall, I found that the qualitative information from this assessment was highly valuable. It is great to have a recorded version of the child's retell available to listen back on and later in the year to be able to see the development of language. I've also found it really handy when writing a referral for a child for a SLT - I was able to attach a recording of this child's speech to the application. It will be interesting to look back on these scores and the audio recording at the end of the year and see what kind of shift is achieved for these learners.

Oral narrative and vocabulary are taught through the BSLA using a quality  children's book, this is the first building block of BSLA teaching.  As part of my BSLA lesson each day, I  focus on one quality story book per week. As the taumata (stages/levels) progress, I will use this book to teach story recall and retell skills, elaborate on interesting words, teach story structure elements and build children’s language in oral narratives using adjectives, adverbs and complex noun phrases. This will carry over into writing instruction in later taumata.

Discussion with our SLT:

Within Glen Innes School, we have many ELL tamariki and a number of children working with our SLT.  

I have discussed the language abilities of my learners with our SLT (as she is working with a few children in my classroom this year). In our discussion, we both recognised that many of the children in my class at gaps in their speech sounds (some were typical of a five year old and those that she is working with as a SLT had some gaps). She recorded the gaps she observed and encouraged me to take note of any speech sounds the children were missing or found difficult. We also discussed the best practice when it comes to growing children's language abilities in the classroom.  Most of these were not new, but a fresh reminder is always good. 

• Providing explicit instruction
• Modelling 
• Using visual aids 
• Engaging in conversations
• Providing feedback 
• Reading books together
• Play-based activities 

Professional Development: 

I am also interested in completing the webinar by GEM Literacy, "An Introduction to the Explicit Teaching of Vocabulary" and learning some different strategies to explicitly teach vocabulary to my learners. 

Until next time! 

End of term attendance celebration!

Thanks to a term of high attendance in our classroom we were treated to fish and chips for and a visit from our local community constable. This celebration was made possible thanks to the support of Mr Steve and his charity Breakfast Club kids! 

The children were so excited and proud of themselves but the biggest thanks has to go to their families for supporting them to come to school everyday and become the best they can be! 

COL Teacher Inquiry: Connected Phonation: Sliding sounds!

I have a child in my class this term who has been struggling to blend sounds together to make words. She can quickly say the sounds from the first set of our scope and sequence (m, d, p, t, a, i, n ,s) but when it came to blending these sounds together to make words she was getting stuck. 

I discovered a video online shared by another New Zealand teacher, Marianne Brown, that showed a strategy to scaffold children towards being able to blend sounds together.  This approach is called "Connected Phonation". Look up "Marianne Brown Literacy Resources" on Youtube as she shares an excellent explanation of this approach and an example of what it looks like in practice.

I have begun using this approach during our small group reading sessions this week. Here is a short video of this learner blending together a word with two sounds. I am so proud of this learner as she has been really struggling to make this connection BUT she loved the concept of the slide and by the end of the lesson she was happily sliding the sounds down the slide to make words - all with a huge smile on her face! 

Nga mihi nui!