The Reading Instruction Show

Fidelity is a term often misused by the designers of commercially-prepared reading interventions and by decision-makers outside the classroom. Teachers are told they must implement an evidence-based program with “fidelity”. This term has been misinterpreted in an educational setting to mean following the instructional recipe exactly as written. In other words, fidelity means that teachers are required to follow the directions and do exactly what the program designers tell them to do without question or variation when implementing a reading intervention.

Rosalie Fink (Fink, 1996; Fink, 1998) Interviewed successful men and women with dyslexia to see why they were able to be so successful despite their profound “disability”. She discovered that all these successful adults were all allowed to immerse themselves and read in areas of interest as children. Here, they developed expertise, built conceptual and vocabulary knowledge and became familiar with the schemes and structures of the types of texts found in their field. This background knowledge was more important for facilitating reading accuracy and comprehension than letter clues. That is, marginal decoders used context to create meaning with print. Low-level skill mastery was not a prerequisite for higher-level thinking and skill construction.https://www.rosaliefink.com/successfulcareers

Intervention sessions for students with dyslexia should occur no less than four days a week and should include variations of seven elements: (1) word work, (2) word identification, (3) maze and cloze work, (4) comprehension, (5) reading practice, (6) fluency work, and (7) writing.Classroom resources and supports for students who dyslexia should include variation of nine elements: (1) emotional support, (2) audio books, (3) speech-to-text programs, (4) instruction in smaller parts, (5) pause and process time, (6) simplify homework assignments, (7) guided notes or outlines for lectures and reading assignments, (8) assistive technology, (9) peer mediated learning activities

As you read sentences on a page your eyeballs do not move from left to right, letter-to-letter, word-to-word in a straight, steady line. If you were able to attach little lasers to your eyeballs you would see that your eyes are actually hovering and jumping about like a hummingbird. They move unevenly, go back occasionally, skip some words, and fixate on others. These small, rapid, jerky movements that your eyes make are called saccades. It only appears that you are moving them from left to right in a straight line because your brain is doing what human brains naturally do: they create order out of chaos.Your brain tricks you into thinking that you process every word when in fact you do not. Instead your eyeballs fixate on only about 60% of the words you read. With unfamiliar material you fixate on more words; with more familiar material you fixate on fewer words. This means your eyes dance right over 40% of the words without stopping. That’s what you do when you read. It only appears as if you are reading every word because your brain is filling in the blanks.

This is my 3rd podcast related to dyslexia. It addresses the International Dyslexia Association and Orton-Gillingham reading "instruction" and state laws requiring a certain type of reading instruction for struggling readers.

Language experience activities are an effective strategy to use with beginning level readers. Here students dictate an experience or story to the teacher. The teacher then records what students say. I strongly recommended that you use this activity with each intervention session for two reasons: First on an interpersonal level, language experience activities enable you to make personal connections with your students. You can find out what is going on in their lives as well as what they find interesting or significant. It also creates conversation around these events. This enhances your ability to relate to your students. Relationships are important in any kind of teaching, but especially so when dealing with struggling readers, as self-efficacy and motivation are often low with.Second on an instructional level, language experience activities enable students to practice reading using words that are in their lexicon as well as their experiences and ideas. This make learning to read easier. Analytic phonics (modeled below) can then be used to develop letter-sound relationships with these familiar words and experiences.Language experience activities can be used with large groups, small groups, pairs, or individual students.

Reading practice is incredibly important. Extensive reading has been linked to improvement in general knowledge, vocabulary, spelling, verbal fluency, and reading comprehension. Also, the amount of reading students do is positively correlated with word identification skills, academic achievement, comprehension, reading fluency, and writing. Finally, increasing the time spent reading independently has been shown to be an effective way to reduce the gap between high and low achieving readers.

Students with dyslexia need more intense versions of the types of reading instruction that occurs within a general education setting. Intensity here refers to (a) more time, (b) more time-on-task, (c) more time engaged in authentic literacy activities [reading and writing], and (d) smaller instructional groups (3 to 7 students). It should include variations of the following seven elements:1. Word work.2. Word identification.3. Maze and cloze work.4. Comprehension.5. Reading practice.6. Fluency work.7. Writing

Depending on what study is cited and what definition of reading and reading deficiency is used, anywhere from 6% to 20% of students are what might be called “struggling readers”. Also depending on studies and definitions, anywhere from 3% to 5% of students are severely struggling readers. Terms like “reading disability”, “severe reading disability” and even “dyslexia: have been used with this group. This is the focus of this podcast

When assessment looks different from instruction and practice, you will often get results that under-represent students’ actual ability. Removing a reading event from its meaningful context during assessment creates an artificial, non-reading event. A valid assessment for reading should look, to the greatest extent possible, like real reading

This is an insightful podcast looking at teacher preparation programs.

There are two basic approaches to early literacy instruction: A skills-based approach and a child-centered approach. The podcast describes each.

There are four basic word identification strategies: (a) morphemic analysis, (b) context clues, (c) analogy, and (d) phonics. Direct and explicit instruction related to all four strategies should be included as part of all students’ classroom reading instruction. This podcast describes morphemic analysis

This short podcast describes what sight words are, and how they should be assessed.

This podcast describes and explains theories in the context of education and education research, human learning, and four types of knowledge necessary to become and expert teacher.

As you read this page your eyes do not move from left to right, letter-to-letter, word-to-word in a straight, steady line. Your brain simply gives the impression that they do. Eye movement research shows that your eyes move unevenly across the page, going back occasionally, skipping some words, and fixating on others. The small, rapid, jerky movements that your eyes make are called saccades. Where your eyes stop is called a fixation. A regression is when your eye goes back to check on a word.

While this concept of fidelity may be appropriate for experimental research where control and treatment groups need to follow strict parameters in order to isolate a variable; it is neither effective nor appropriate when educating real students in the uncontrolled confines of the real world. , it would be a form of educational malpractice to insist that teachers follow a recipe with “fidelity”. In fact, this would prevent them from being able to adequately meet the needs of their students.

Parents are wondering how to handle reading at home during the COVID-19 or during the summer months. This podcast offers some simple tips.

Large unit phonics is based on the brain’s natural inclination to notice patterns and complete configurations based on partial data. When we look at words on the page, we tend to notice letter patterns much more so than individual letters. This podcast describes two activities: shared reading for large unit phonics and word sorts.

There are three types of phonics instruction: synthetic phonics, analytic phonics, and large unit phonics. In a meaning-based approach to word work, they should all be included.

This podcast described scaffolded oral reading (ScORe) and provided some tips for using the language experience approach.

The language experience approach, or language experience activity, is a powerful strategy to use with struggling or beginning readers. Here readers practice reading using words and concepts within their experience.

This podcast describes a strategy to develop reading fluency for severely struggling readers, or any other readers reading at RL 1 or RL 2. The materials for this strategy can be found at www.Readocity.com

WPM (words-per-minute) scores should be used to document reading fluency program NOT WCPM (words-correct-per-minute). This podcast explains why and describes two fluency strategies.

Round robin reading is when a teacher goes around the reading table or class and asks students to read parts of a text out loud. This should never be used. This podcast describes 7 alternatives to round robin reading.

This video podcast explains two terms related to reading fluency: expression and prosody. Reading with expression is not at all important. Reading prosody is.

This podcast provides a brief overview of reading fluency and describes why standardized, norm-references words-per-minute (WPM) rates should be given limited attention.

This podcast describes eight essential terms related to reading instruction that commonly misunderstood: 1. Reading, 2.word recognition, 3. word identification, 4. decoding, 5. a strategy, 6. a skill, 7. systematic phonics instruction, and 8. a balanced approach.

This podcast describes the three big ideas related to effective reading interventions: 1. They should be more intense versions of good classroom reading instruction, 2 they should contain a balanced approach to reading instruction, and 3. They should be taught be expert reading teachers.

This podcast describes the seven elements necessary for effective daily reading instruction: 1. Daily reading practice, 2. social interaction and conversation around good books, 3. authentic writing experiences, 4. activities and instruction to develop all three cueing systems used for word recognition, 5. activities and instruction for word identification strategies, 6. comprehension instruction, and 7. activities to develop word knowledge (vocabulary).

What do you do when you have a student who refuses to write. This short podcast provides some tips.

Educational research is used to create the theories upon which we design educational policies and practices. Theories help to organize relevant empirical facts (empirical means they can be observed or measured), in order to create a context for understanding phenomena. This podcast describes two theoretical models of reading.