Over the last two years I have become increasingly discontent with the way I have taught reading. As many of you will know, we made the move to structured literacy about six years ago. This has been massive for me, it meant a lot of change and a lot of learning, each year I have gotten better as I have learned more.
Last year, I moved into a single cell classroom with Year 2 and 3 children, rather than my new entrant, year one mix. This meant I wasn't able to do individual sessions and needed to group. During the year I made tweaks and changes to these groups, as they became literacy groups, rather than reading groups, after all this isn't called structured reading. But I had five groups, which meant I only really had time to see three a day if I was lucky. Within even those five groups, the needs were quite diverse. I also had tier two individual children that I was reading with at least twice a week, but preferably three and was trying to catch everyone once a fortnight to check in with where they were at and set new goals for home and school.
Each group would take me about fifteen minutes and as the year went on I really questioned the effectiveness of these groups. There was little movement between groups, and while children made progress, they generally moved together as I was narrowly focusing on what stage they were 'at'.
I also didn't think I was working hard enough on sentence level comprehension, or growing their automaticity or prosody as I needed to, in order to enable fluency.
Because I was so strapped for time, the need to deliberately work on growing background knowledge and vocabulary which we know are so important for comprehension, didn't happen as often as I would have liked.
The more I listened to fabulous podcasts (my main mode of learning) the more I questioned and wondered.
I saw the year out, but really didn't feel I was doing all I could for my children.
Over the holidays I did a massive amount of learning about fluency, comprehension and the importance of repeated reading. I started to find out more about a whole class approach for literacy and it really peaked my interest. I have shared all my holiday learning in a previous post.
This whole class approach was based on pitching the reading at the mid to top end, and the whole idea was to differentiate the support, not the text.
I had several goals moving into this:
*Create engaging texts that children enjoyed, that stretched them just enough, but that they could read in parts, each day offering a new part and every day comprehending at a sentence level what was happening and representing this visually. I didn't want these texts to be long, so the idea of presenting it in parts over three days really appealed to me. I also wanted them to have a say in the characters we encountered in the stories, this ownership and connection with the stories feels really important to me and it is something I try to weave into everything I do. I largely wanted these texts to be decodable based on the code that all children had secure, but these texts would include some patterns or words I would need to tell children.
*Combine everything I had been doing into one session (split into two parts over the day). phonemic awareness, encoding, decoding, dictated sentence, weekly poem or nursery rhyme to learn, heart word learning, focus sound each day and focus on formation of letters/handwriting (spelling of sounds.). Really pinpoint the needs and deliberately and explicitly teach them.
*Ensure children had several decodable books at one stage below their working level that they could work towards reading with automaticity and prosody, engage in repeated reading of these texts. I also wanted to help families understand the importance of this practice and understand the importance of automaticity.
*Ensure children have daily access to the books they can read and that they also have an idea of what automatic reading and fluency are.
*Provide tier two individual support at least twice a week for those that need it. I do have a few who have entered from other schools and need that individual support to get them going.
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So as I come to the end of the term, I thought it was a useful time to reflect on how it is all going.
We've had time with all the disruptions for five weeks of good structured whole class sessions. To start with, it took a bit for me to find my rhythm and to find a perky pace, it also took a few sessions for children to get used to the routine. I quickly established 'reading buddies' for them, so they could support each other, this really helped. They really enjoy this time, which once again debunks so many of the arguments against this type of teaching. What I have come to understand is that it is hard to love something you are not good at, being successful is a massive motivator.
I still have to have my plan sitting on my lap, but the sessions themselves flow really well. We end up doing two 15 minute blocks, which is still a long time to keep them sitting, so we have two sections within the session where we get up and move. My plans are certainly not perfect and I am still working on them to find the right balance. I am learning in this process and so give myself the grace and space to make mistakes and evolve. I think that is the most important thing for everyone to remember, take it slow, pick one small step at a time and be kind to yourself, this is transformative in terms of our practice and certainly not an easy journey.
So far there are absolutely no negatives. Children are getting a lot more quality time within these structured sessions and it is showing. We started around mid stage two and have moved through to the end of stage four with our focus sounds. This means that children are not narrowly kept in the 'window' of a focus stage, but developing understandings and knowledge I wouldn't have usually presented to them if they were in my 'stage two' group for example. This also means they are getting lots of repeated practice and review, this is helping me to see just how often you have to touch on something to make it stick. Learning about the forgetting curve helped my practice in this area. I was also conscious of not causing cognitive overload, so wanted to be building fluency through automaticity and the building of knowledge schema to allow much of the learning to be 'easy.'
Fluency is amazing, the repeated reading and the focus on automaticity is really paying off. Children decode with skill when they come to unknown words, but they are reading most texts with a high level of fluency. Because I introduce a part of the story each day, they are being scaffolded really well in this process. I try to keep the decodable texts about 90% decodable within stage 1-4, but also like to start introducing spelling patterns that they have not be taught yet, while these are not a focus, I am finding children are picking up on these really quickly and when we come to specifically teaching these patterns, they will have this previous exposure to connect the new understanding to.
I am unsure which podcast it was, but this sentence really resonates with me, differentiate the support, not the text. That is what I am doing and it is really paying off. For children to be able to sit and read a text that the child next to me is reading (who used to be in a higher group) is really empowering for the children. The smiles on their faces when they realise they have read the whole thing with very little support is just infectious.
It is the progress that is of most note, it has been much more rapid in this term and along with most moving 2-3 stages within the term, children are also nailing spelling and formation. Not only that, their comprehension at sentence level has been delightful to see. They look forward to seeing what is happening next and talk avidly about what they have noticed. For example in the text we read this week, the fox was standing on a slippery log, it was implied that perhaps he could fall in the pond. Today's sentence made it clear that he had indeed slipped into the pond. I heard giggles coming from the children when they realised and loved listening to them excitedly sharing that he had fallen in the pond. These are their characters and they are 'in' the story.
It is important to note that when I talk about stages, I am not just talking about reading, I closely monitor a child's progress within that stage in terms of spelling, formation, letter naming, heart word spelling and reading etc. I acknowledge that their reading abilities will often track slightly higher than their formation and spelling, but I want to ensure this gap does not get too wide, we are noticing for our older children, that didn't start with such good foundations, is that their reading is going really well, but many struggle with spelling, the gap is wide and now harder to bridge.
Children are also so proud of being able to read these texts, with no colour to fixate on (the old I am red, stage two) they are just enjoying reading and feel like the texts are more complicated (even though I know they are not.) Success is breeding success and the stories are glued into their home and school books, which means lots of repeated reading can happen. Next term I will create some browsing books with these texts, so they can revisit them in class.
This approach has made it possible to ensure distributed review and repeated practice and it is making such a difference. I know that my children are getting a much better deal this year!
Something I have started to tweak over the last few weeks is the use of our handwriting books instead of whiteboards. Writing their name daily and our focus sounds on the lines, along with our dictated sense, in the book makes much more sense. It also allows me to put small scaffolds in place (writing the name or letter correctly for them to see.). I am also noticing big improvements in this area.
When it comes to writing, that is captured largely through these structured sessions. Where to start, spacing, formation and the skill of remembering a sentence to then write about. The sentences connect to our stories. Something that works really well for remembering the sentences, is punching the words. We find a space in the class. I punch as I say each word, they copy, we do it together and then they do. By the time we have done this several times, the sentence is stuck in their head.
To complement this we use storytelling. I like to pick a text and use it in a similar way to T4W. We have a puppet called Pearl who loves to come in and share fantastic stories with us and we love to make up our own stories and share them.
Our nursery rhymes and poems also link into this, with lots of talk.
This is an example of a plan for Term 1. This will change this term as I have more idea of what to tweak, so I am concentrating on the stuff and not the fluff.
Things I plan to work in Term 2:
*I am going to refine down the plan, the slideshows of our review sounds and blending, while they will still be done, can be done in the moments of time we have in the day, rather than taking up time in our formal lesson. Instead in the review section I can focus on the prior days sound, or something they have been struggling with.
*I want to build in more space of 'independent writing.' While we are focusing on the nuts and bolts of a sentence and building ability to form letters and spell, I don't feel I have gifted them enough time to write. So I will change the cycle a little. Three days of structured sessions, one day of a focus on independent writing and so on. I also want to start doing the 'word web' that I was doing last year, where we have a central word and generate vocab that links to this word in the form of a web.
*Really think about phonemic awareness and be deliberate about how I am presenting this and why.
So that is it for now, I have learned a massive amount in a short time and while it is certainly a long way from perfect, I can see how this approach can really impact children and their progress. As always time is such a factor and for me, and you do need to accept that you can not achieve everything perfectly every day.
Give yourself grace, space and time, what we are learning is massive, but even greater than that, is what we are unlearning.
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