I sit down to write this blog post right in the middle of the holidays. I have been weighing up the benefits of making this one post, or maybe taking each area and posting about each one separately.
While there are probably benefits to you, the poor person trying to wade through what I already know will be a mammoth post, my brain just needs to combine all of the things I have experimented with and worked on this term.
Not only that, I think a post like this shows clearly how many aspects there may be to what I like to call Science Informed Literacy (hopefully that is not a phrase that has been coined so far.).
When I say Science Informed Literacy I do so for two reasons, one being that Structured literacy is a term 'owned' by the IDA and the term 'Science of Reading' implies to me that this is all about reading. If I am to be honest, I am also really sick and tired hearing the terms being used incorrectly.
Hence, the term Science Informed Literacy is one I am more comfortable with, in essence, the way literacy comes to life in the classroom informed by the Science of how literacy is acquired and the most up to date research. When it comes down to it, this should be about how the science can be practically applied in the classroom. This is what teachers need.
Now, I am very aware that my anecdotes are not research, so as usual, take my blog posts for what they are, the efforts of a well meaning teaching principal committed to enacting evidence based practice, who is obsessed with doing the best for children and addicted to literacy podcasts. For those that don't know, I teacher Year 1 and 2 children this year and my children operate in a largely play-based space as their social and emotional skill development should never be overlooked for the academic.
Now, the title of this blog post is a nod to the knowledge that I am developing, but also the role that understanding the importance of background knowledge, has had on my day to day practice in the classroom. I want this post to be a bit of a summary of my term, my journey so far this term and some practical examples that others can get their teeth into. I am aware I can be long winded...so please bare with me.
If you have not read this post There is still a problem with Structured Literacy it might be worth going back and doing so. It outlines the majority of work that my classroom practice has been based on this year, with some very inspiring links to podcasts.
You may also want to read this blog on my journey into whole class teaching (discarding groups) as this has shaped a LOT of my year. I am also not going to go into great detail about writing (however this has been a huge area of development) as I have just posted about this, so feel free to go back and read.
I do however want to share a bit about the link between writing, reading and knowledge building in this post.
Very simply, as I have worked through my self-led PLD I have come to like the models below the most, the active view of reading, Nell Duke and Kelly Cartwright and the pillars of literacy, with my little touch along the bottom (oral language, the foundation of it all.). In my opinion it is oral language that we need to be focusing on the most in the earliest years.
My journey this year can be summed up by working on ways I enact both of these models.
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My belief is that oral language underpins all of these ares, so it is along the bottom.
This diagram sums up how I am trying to shape my approaches to literacy in the classroom.
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So, down to the nitty gritty, what practical changes can I talk about that I feel have really worked well this year so far.
1. Whole Class Literacy Sessions (15-20 min tops) (Phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary) Decoding and Encoding.
This year I started working whole class for tier one, previously I still had reading groups and I was spread way to thin.
In Term 1 and 2, I was writing my own sessions. These were based on the LLLL scope and sequence, blended with Liz Kane's code. As a school we base our ongoing formative assessments on these and I monitor individual progress based on
these sheets. A disclaimer here to say that these sheets are not perfect, but help us as a school to sit within the same scope and sequence, moving from these into fully using the Code. Each sheet has a flip book for assessment that goes with it.
As a staff we want to ensure that spelling and writing are seen as important as reading, while we acknowledge that often children will be able to read words that they can not spell, and will need constant reviewing of spelling rules etc, we do not want to create a massive gap between reading and writing, as we are seeing for some children that enter our school in later year levels. A trend we are noticing is that children are coming from other schools, perhaps able to read, but not able to form letters, spell or write. This is just creating another hurdle to high for them to jump over without increased support.
After writing my own whole class sessions, I stumbled upon
UFLI. I watched some of the youtube videos of others teaching using these sessions and liked what I saw. I ordered the manual and decided to have a go using these sessions in Term 3, starting from where we were up to in the scope and sequence.
I did modify parts of it, which is easily done as the slideshows are all there online, I did this to fit with the fact that my children didn't need access to letters to make words, but could spell them and because I wanted to keep using the class based decodable stories I had been writing, as I was seeing massive growth with these. I also modified the heart words being learned, to fit with our scope and sequence.
To begin with I was clunky. Getting used to anything new is always hard, but once I found my stride with the sessions, my children and I absolutely loved them. They became accustomed to the rhythm and the interleaved practice had a positive impact on progress. Of course I am only in the class three days a week, so am only able to fit one session in per week, taught in two parts as it is supposed to be taught. This works well for me.
When I came to the end of term and did my big catch up based on our assessment sheets (linked above) most children leapt through two, if not three stages and the majority of the class are solid on their spelling stage five and six, with half of the 21 children reading texts into stage seven. When I talk of stages, I am referring to everything within that stage, sound, formation, heart words read and spell, spelling, automatic word reading. We only mark children off for reading of words, if they are automatic, and make notes of those that are blending out loud.
The only tweak I had made to my tier one deliberate, explicit teaching was the UFLI, so this is what I anecdotally put it down to. When we completed our second 'dictated' text assessment as a class, the majority of the class had little difficulty writing these sentences that included spelling patterns up to stage six. As a class this was massive progress for a term. Again, these are anecdotes, but I have never seen such positive growth as a 'whole class.'
I love UFLI and will keep using this as my whole class approach. It is easy enough to align it with the scope and sequence that we use.
2. Whole Class Decodable Stories - 10 min mat time (Fluency, Vocabulary, Comprehension)
Although UFLI does have its own decodable stories, I have had such success with my little stories and they way they are unfolded to the class, that I wanted to keep up with these. The children had already given me ideas for characters and adventures they could have and I wanted to stay true to their interest in this area. Ideally these stories should link in with the sounds we are working on whole class and I aim to merge this more over Term 4.
To be clear, I am not a purist when it comes to writing my own decodables. I have several aims when using our class stories. I do aim for them to be 80% decodable for the majority of the class. I also aim for there to be new parts of the code that they have not yet encountered, I will given them these words if needed, but I am finding most of my children, because of their level of fluency and comprehension are able to work these words out based on the code they do know and the context, the look of joy on their face when they realise they can read, what seems to be quite a complicated text is priceless.
My other aim is fluency both in terms of automatic word reading, but also expression, so the stories are separated into three parts, we read a part each day, by the time we get to our third reading, they have read the first part three times at the very least.
Comprehension at a sentence level is also a big point of this approach, and children are involved in discussing what is happening in each part and then drawing what they understand. I have posted about these stories before, so don't want to go into to much detail. What I have noticed though is how much these stories have benefitted their progress (again an anecdote.) Because there are certain words that are repeated over and over, I am noticing their automatic word reading really developing. Another thing I have noticed is that there is a fair degree of self- teaching going on as children become more and more efficient with the code.
As a rule, one story would take us about two weeks to get through, as I am only in class three days a week and we don't read in this way, every day.
Of note is how much these stories and the characters in them have assisted children with writing. This year I noticed most of the children using these known stories and characters as the foundation of their own writing and as they became more confident with writing, these characters and storylines started to disappear.
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| This is an example of one of our stories, we read a new part each day. For some children this might only be 50% decodable (my tier two children) but for most of mine now, this is 70-80% decodable. Those words or spelling rules that are completely new, are told and we read each part at least three times in the one session. Children glue it in, then will start trying to read it themselves and work it out with their buddy. I then read it (they track) we then read it, then they read it independently and to their buddy. Each section has a box to illustrate, this is the final story. |
3. Knowledge Building (oral language, vocabulary, comprehension)You are probably all very aware of the importance of background knowledge and knowledge building. In Term 3 I really wanted to work on how I could use this to weave reading and writing together. In particular the writing of factual sentences and the repeated reading of shared texts that were outside of children's independent reading capabilities.
I have already posted about writing, so won't go into the other aspects of what I was doing, but will just focus on this one thing we tried this term.
In Term 2, we did a lot of repeated, shared reading about turtles and we did a little bit of writing. For Term 3 I wanted to amplify this and see just what we could achieve. A lot of my talk for writing understandings came into play here, but I didn't explicitly use this approach as I have done in the past.
I chose dinosaurs as our topic. Not exactly child-led, but we do a lot of that every day, so in this instance, I chose the topic because I had lots of things I could use for knowledge building at my fingertips. Awesome books, videos and a plethora of knowledge that I knew many of the children already had.
We started off watching videos and reading books. Discussing what we had learned and talking about the Science behind what are considered facts. I took extracts from books and we used them for shared reading. I would read and children would follow along. Children took these extracts home to share with their family. This task was accessible for all, with children able to read most of the extract and for those parts they couldn't they had me there to read it for them. Interestingly many of the class had very little difficultly reading most of the text (which I considered quite hard) and as their knowledge built up over time, this process became even easier.
The discussions around these texts were gorgeous, lots of back and forth, real conversations and many questions about the spelling patterns they were seeing. One serve and return conversation I remember quite vividly, one child asked why the 'o' in dinosaur was making it's long sound, they looked to me to answer, but from behind them one of my boys piped up, because it is an open syllable. Conversations like this fill me with joy. Knowledge truly is power, in may ways.
As we gathered our knowledge, I started to sort what we had learned into a mind map. We then used these to write factual sentences. Over time, children were able to write three or four sentences, because the knowledge was there, the ideas flowed easily.
After a couple of weeks we focused in on the T-Rex...following the same process as detailed above. Along with these, we started to read shared books that followed a 'report format.' Looking at how these were set out. Together in class discussions we compiled our understandings about the T-Rex. To finish we wrote a shared report, which I then published so they could each have their own copy. We read this text again and again and children illustrated it to take home and share.
During this time, we had a couple of sessions of 'other' writing, but largely this was our focus. The reality is you can not fit everything in, so for one thing to be done really well, other things have to be set to the side. Obviously our class literacy sessions still involved writing and on the days that I was not in the class children were continuing with the focus of writing complete sentences, moving into adding some description, closely guided by the Syntax project.
This process of knowledge building was so rewarding, orally it had a massive impact, children had things to talk about, they had things to bring to the table and we were all on a very even playing field. Vocab wise, I noticed their language was elevated, we spent a lot of time talking about the meanings of words and children started to make links between the knowledge they were developing in this topic, to other areas of learning. Scientists became like rock stars, with many children speaking of want to be palaeontologists, archaeologists, biologists, conservation workers etc. Children started writing reports during their play based time
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A report worked on over several play-based times. This is her drawing book, hence it is blank,
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Children started classifying our plastic dinosaurs, they started using our reference books to look up the names of our plastic dinosaurs and these dinosaurs made their way into all other areas of play.
One of my boys said to me that when we started learning about dinosaurs he really didn't want to, he wasn't a dinosaur person, but now, he LOVES dinosaurs. I have to say, this knowledge building time had the same impact on me, they loved seeing my enthusiasm when I learned something new, this shared status as learners, really was invigorating. As we went along they had many requests of what we could learn next, prehistoric sea creatures is one of those areas of particular interest, along with flying reptiles (because we now know that dinosaurs did not fly or swim.)
My husband has had enough of my over sharing about dinosaurs!
We really could have gone on forever, but unfortunately there is only so much time in a term.
4. Buddy Reading (fluency, comprehension)
Fluency was something I wanted to really focus in on this term. I had read and listened to a lot of information on the value of repeated reading and the benefits of buddy reading. So at the beginning of this term I set this up, with the aim of doing it for at least 6 minutes a day, three days a week. We were to use the same text and children were buddied up with children one-three stages either ahead of or below them. Initially I set a time and children took turns reading for one minute each, swapping when the time was up. This worked well from my perspective, but the feedback from the children was that they wanted to read a full page each, not have to stop. So we changed the format. While children were reading, I was roaming, there if help was needed. They were told the focus was to read as fluently as possible and to help each other when needed. If they finished the text, they started again. At the end of the week, or after at least three reads, the text went home and I popped new ones in their buddy bags. This was something I could throw into the end of a day, once we had tidied up and packed up, it worked well.
I was actually shocked by how much children loved this, and how they requested to do it again and again.
I noticed those children with non-fiction texts really talking about what they were reading and talking about the spelling patterns they were noticing. In reality the process took much longer than six minutes.
The texts used were not always books, it could be a poem, an article, really anything I knew children would be able to attack with a fair degree of fluency.
This is something I will continue next term. One thing I did notice is that the focus of the reading has to be pointed out at the beginning of each read, and children need to stay in the classroom to do this. Roaming is also important, because children need reminding about tracking with their fingers etc and occasionally need help to decode a word.
My children also get to pick a book at a stage that is just right for them to take home for practice. Reading confidence was also a big outcome of this process.
5. Approximation Paper (phonics, vocabulary)
This is specifically writing related and something I did try towards the end of last year. This year I have some very keen writers, but they also hate having to cross things out in their book when they want to correct something. I am sure you have those children too, they will write within the known, just so they feel like what they have written is right and it looks neat and tidy. This is not something I encourage, and we spend a lot of time focusing on learning and the power of mistakes, they just don't want to make them in their books.
This little technique has been the most powerful tool for increasing the amount and quality of what is written. It has also been amazing for just in time teaching.
Each child (if they want one) has a piece of approximation paper. Not all the children want this and that is ok. When they come to a word they are unsure of, the agreement is that they will do their best to approximate the spelling, based on the code they know. They will then bring it to me and I will either tell them that their approximation or estimate is correct, or will show them how it is spelled, if appropriate we may have a very quick chat about why...if not, I will just write the word. They can then write the correct spelling in their book, without the worry that it is wrong and it appeals to their need to be tidy in their writing.
Writing is the most difficult cognitive task we ask children to do, this one little trick seems to 'lighten' their load, while in reality they are still doing all the work of spelling.
6. Tier Two (phonics, fluency, vocab, oral language)
There is a bit of an old chestnut going around that goes something like this "children all learn differently."
Well this is not correct, the way our brain learns to read and acquires literacy is the same, it may just appear different and happen at different rates, with some appearing to need next to no teaching at all. However we do need to have a kete full of different approaches and we need to deeply understand the specific need of each child we help in order to deliver an approach that hits the mark for them. To be able to do this, we need to have a deep understanding of evidence based practice...but that is another post entirely.
So tier 2 is more of the same, but in addition to tier one, and may look slightly different for each child. This term, this is what I have been doing with my five tier two children, it is different from Term two as we have been largely working on automatic word reading and fluency.
I allow myself about eight minutes per child and I want it to be done at a perky pace. I see each of my tier two children three times a week, with added practice on the other two days if needed. This term, the need has not been high, with only two of my tier two children really needing the extra intervention time, for the others, it has been nice to have.
1. We revisit sounds we have been working on and any new ones we have been learning in our whole class sessions. We decode some words with those sounds, and may encode one or two.
2. Children each have a table of words they are working on reading automatically, we go through this table, the child reading the words and timed if they request to be timed.
3. Each child has a fluency passage they are reading. I type out the words from our decodable books and each day they read a new sentence, with the aim to be automatic and starting to work on expression. We also look at punctuation, reading to the punctuation, I will model what this sounds like. We will also talk about the who and the do in the sentence. The next day, they read the sentences we've already read and the new one, until they are reading the whole text fluently. They then can choose if they take home the actual book as well.
If there is a need, we will unpack any unknown vocab. This passage is in their home and school book, so they can follow up by reading the sentence and the words at home too.
4. If we have time, we will go over our class decodable story.
This sounds a lot, but it is really quick. This strategy has worked really well this term and I will only be continuing with two of my children for tier two, with the others supported with fortnightly check ins, using the sheets I linked to before. End of term assessments showed excellent progress for all of these children, I was blown away by how fluently they read, several stages up from where they were last time.
I have two tier two children whom I suspect have DLD. I do not know enough about this to be sure, but their need remains in saying each sound out loud and then blending the sounds. They need to hear the sounds, so this will be a focus next term. Both have a need in receptive language.
7. What about the others?
A pretty common argument is that those 'able' children are not extended within a Science Informed Literacy approach. I think it is pretty clear through the strategies that I have explored within this blog, that these children are well provided for and that they do flourish. BUT I am also conscious that our decodable stories are now quite easy for them and I do want to give them that little bit extra. I had not been using the UFLI texts with the class, but decided this would be a nice extra for my job share partner to do on the days she is in there. So now on the days she is in there, just over half the class engage in reading the UFLI decodable text that goes with the sessions I am teaching and the roll and read that goes with it for practice too.
I find that the amount of text for some of my readers is just too much, but for these independent children, the amount of text is just right.
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| An example of the text practicing the /ch/ sound. |
8. You can not fit it all in!
One of my biggest areas of learning, is to know when to let things go and to use assessments to inform exactly what I am doing. We need to be kind to ourselves, we can not do everything, it is just simply impossible.
In Term 1 and 2 I had been checking in with all of my children once a fortnight, on the stage sheets I linked above. I would then share a next step goal on seesaw. I have 21 children, with five receiving individual tier two support from me, I was struggling to get everything done.
I sat down and had a hard word to myself...what difference was I making with the check in's...what was it achieving, that I didn't already know? Was it necessary for everyone?
So, trusting that I had a good handle on where children were at, and knowing that I was sharing really useful goals with my parents daily, based on our class sessions, I knocked the fortnightly check ins on the head, in favour of two a term, one in the middle, and one at the end.
The sky did not fall, children still made fabulous progress (far more than expected in a term) and I learned to really trust the formative stuff I was doing.
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Little formative assessments like this, helped me to see progress and make choices on the next step focus.
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Next term, I have children I want to check in with once a fortnight. There are only a handful. The others, I trust that the processes for noticing progress and responding to need are robust.
If you have got this far, well done! This journey into evidence based practice is ongoing. I am not perfect, I make mistakes, some days go better than others. We are human after all.
I am learning to trust myself.
All the best for Term Four!
Leslee
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