“When Older Students Can’t
Read” by Louisa Moats
Predict/Question/Infer strategy from Oczkus
(during reading, good readers look for
answers to our questions
Some questions could be answered in the
text/others are answered by inferring (I
think/I wonder)
Discussion (and we’ll continue application to
our student cases from the Yopp-Singer
Discussion on Readings:
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Santa/Hoien article: “An Assessment of Early
Steps: A Program for Early Intervention of
Reading Problems”
Questions about word study implementation?
Components covered?
Stahl article
Rasinski, listing for components of good phonics
intervention with reading programming
Diagnostic Testing
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Yopp-Singer Test of Phoneme
Segmentation, discussion, insights
Subtests from Comprehensive Reading
Inventory
Appropriateness of Reading
Materials: Readability Formulas
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Two components to estimate difficulty
**Word Difficulty (by estimating the frequency
of use or word length)
**Sentence Complexity (most often measured
by sentence length)
Allington: both these have same complexity:
“John went to the store. He bought some
candy.” & “Candy some bough he. Sotre the to
went John”. (doesn’t account for whether text is
well written or even makes sense!!!)
Readability Formulas: Estimates
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Account for picture support, child’s interest,
student’s prior knowledge
Accelerated Reader & Reading Counts- large
supply of books rated for difficulty
Text books are produced using readability
formulas; based on sentence length, so:
Authors may omit conjunctions! (Then
relationships between ideas have to be inferred
and it’s really more difficult!)
Leveling Books
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Marie Clay (Reading Recovery) made us
aware of book leveling in first grade
Fountas & Pinnell have Matching Books
with Readers (Heinemann) with 7,500
titles
Many types of book leveling-misleading to
parents!
How to Level a Book
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Use a bench mark text –texts representing different grade levels or
segments of a grade level – beginning second, etc.
Skim through book (page format, type size, sentence length, topic
familiarity, vocabulary familiarity, story predictability
Find a benchmark book that closely approximates the difficulty of
the book to be leveled
Have book leveling “parties” with teachers – teachers become more
expert at leveling & they could monitor book difficulty across the
year—enhanced sensitivity to book-kid matching problem; can do it
with class libraries
Once child is reading, you can see if book is a good “fit”;
Indications that book is too hard: subvocalizing can be indication
that book is too challenging; book too close to face; brow furrowed,
mentally or physically ‘wandering’ –all indications the book’s too
hard
Better Estimate of Appropriateness
of Text for a Child Than Readability
Formulas?
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Modification of running records to determine accuracy of word
recognition in context
Note fluency– good, fair, poor
Put check mark for words correct & ‘x’ for incorrect words; every
time a child begins a new line, drop down & begin a new row of
checks & ‘x’es.
Then calculate the overall accuracy (number of words read correctly
divided by total words in passage.
**Regular monitoring of difficulty, or lack of it, that students
experience is a component of effective instruction.
Class libraries should be stocked—10-15 books per child; reflecting
cultural genres in the school
Jim Trelease – Read Aloud Handbook has seen rain gutters used to
display outside of books//// Our basket, “You just GOT to read it”
Word Recognition in Isolation
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Word Lists on QRI – quick way to determine
starting point for reading passages
Word Lists measure accuracy of word
identification
Speed & automaticity of recognition
Determine starting point for reading passages
Start at Pre primer – some say start two grade
levels below actual students’ grade level
Word Lists
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How accurate are they at identifying
words?
How automatic when identifying words?
What decoding strategies are used by the
student?
Is there a difference between their
performance on words in isolation & words
in context?
Administering Word List
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Read directions for word lists to students
Scoring: identified automatically (with a
second) OR identified by delayed
(sounded out or delayed)
Self correction: write SC & count as
correct
Administering Word List
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Find independent, instructional and frustration
levels
90% and above, 18-20 words
70-89%, instructional
Less than 70%, frustration
Determining basal & ceiling – move onto next
grade level word list until frustration level is
reached; back up one grde level word list until
independent level is reached.
WORD LISTS: Give it a try!
Word Recognition in Context
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Difference between running records & record of oral
reading
Miscue chart (for total accuracy) p.72, QRI-4
Omission – circle the word
Insertion – mark carot and write the word inserted
Self correction – write miscue and mark with SC
Reversal – show transposition of two words with
squiggly symbol
Total accuracy – count all miscues as errors – insertions,
omissions, substitutions, reversals, and self-corrections
Word Recognition in Context,
continued
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Total Accuracy
Total Acceptability – some errors are
acceptable if they do not change the
meaning or distort passage meaning
(Meaning changes – best predictor) –
another way to score
Counting Oral Errors
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Total Accuracy – count all errors
Do not count: repetitions, hesitations, or
omission of punctuation (for total accuracy)
Proper names: one error if consistently the
same
Same miscue on the same word with no
meaning change = one error
Articulation/dialect error: no error
Scoring: Accuracy Word
Recognition in Context
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Subtract the number of errors from the
total number of words listed at the end of
the story
Divide
Independent 98% accuracy or above
Instructional 90-97% accuracy (I would
say more like 95-97% on most IRIs)
Frustration – less than 90% accuracy
Beginning Readers
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From concept of word through first grade
reading
Still importance of fluency for those readers
Silent reading begins at the end of first grade;
then transitional reader
Fluency should be 40% of the time for beginning
readers---really critical in first grade
Fluency
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Means accurate & fast reading at word level,
with good prosody (expression)
Demonstrated links between fluency &
comprehension
Fluency can be developed by rereading of texts;
has positive effects on comprehension
Fluency should be a goal for struggling readers –
could do more higher order literacy tasks when
material is read accurately, fluently and with
reasonable recall of text content
Fluency
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Famous J.Samuels article – have the graph
Talks about the only way a word can be comprehended, given time
limitation and attentional capacity was that some parts had to be
automatic; Less mature readers expend more capacity---LaBerge &
Samuels said: distributed practice better than mass practice!
Strange piece of article reading it today: lots of attention on
VISUAL analysis & perceptual learning of letters (the psychology of
the day back in 1974)
Velluntino (1979) summarized the evidence that reading disabilities
represented more about verbal impairments—not visual –especially
at the word level –the verbal is very key to understanding reading—
both disabled reading and skilled reading
Fluency, continued
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For really troubled beginning readers, phonics is not going to be
enough to assure fluent reading; NICHD concluded that more
phonics is required for fluency to develop – from brain imagery work
Systematic phonics: helpful in promoting fluency in some at risk
readers; not panacea for all struggling readers
Shayowitz, 2002: for mature readers, activate a set of three sites
on the left side of the brain more reliably than readers with dyslexia
& that dyslexic show impairment in these areas
Message from brain research: probably some individuals with brain
differences that preclude them from becoming fluent readers –
unfamiliar words disrupt reading, even if memorize many words
General intelligence should be considered: Shayowitz observed that
as a group, those who learned to compensate were slightly above
average in intelligence ; the compensating readers did about as well
as nonimpaired adults on comprehension measures
Fluency Studies, continued
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Studies on phonologically based interventions: better
word recognition & slightly faster reading as well as very
slightly better comprehension after 1 year intervention
Slow verbal processing speed can impair fluency for
some readers; process impairs the speed of decoding,
even though it is not rooted in phonological ability;
processing speed biologically based difference between
children; implications for whether fluency can develop
with practice
Univ. of Kansas Study: individual differences with
reading disabled: generally process verbal information
more slowly than other children
More on Fluency
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Can be developed in the classroom with repeated
readings and teacher feedback;
Kuhn & Stahl (2003) said that adult assistance was quite
important with respect to increasing fluency; simple
repeated readings by a child would not get as good
results as repeated readings with adult assistance
Evidence that readers should confront more challenging
rather than easy texts as they experience fluency
instruction
Biemiller & Slonim (2001) – have analysis to identify
words understood by 80% of children at each grade
level; by 2nd grade, children should know 5000 root
words; After that they gain 1000 words/year
Fluency, continued
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Rapid automatic decoding improved
comprehension; probably by freeing up
short term capacity for comprehension
Prosody – little attention played in fluent
reading; rereading tends to increase
prosody – other approaches like modeling
by teacher seems to not have as much
impact
Final Notes
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DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) – has
been deployed widely at primary and now upper levels to measure
the speed of accurate reading; children can read with great speed &
accuracy and yet not recall many ideas in the text---raises real
issues (some think reason to reexamine the validity of the
instrument in regard to skilled reading
Kids learn to be better readers by utilizing comprehension strategies
– huge gains in achievement; many kids in studies were far from
being fluent readers, but using comprehension strategies more than
made up for lack of fluency
Encourage extensive reading
Books on Tape – special services or Recordings for the Blind &
Dyslexic in Princeton, New Jersey