Unit 2
Learning To Read and Spell:
A National Problem and Recommended
Solutions
•Scope of the Problem
•What Skilled Readers/Spellers Do
•Causes of Severe Reading Difficulty
•Overview of Evidence Based Practices
Scope Of The Problem: Activity
Thinking
About
Reading
2
NAEP Reporting
Basic
Proficient
Advanced
NAEP website, 2009
National Assessment of Educational Progress
(NAEP)
4th Grade Reading (2009)
• 33% below basic level
• 67% below proficient level
2
NAEP website, 2009
Reading
achievement for
Latino and African
American fourth
graders, 56
percent and 60
percent,
respectively, of
whom read at
those below-basic
levels that do not
even provide
sufficient support
to allow the
completion of
schoolwork
2
(Lee, Grigg, &
Donahue, 2007).
Thirty-three percent of poor
readers come from homes
with college-educated
parents
2
2
(Greene & Winters, 2005)
Reading researchers have shown that 95%
of students can learn to read with high
levels of fluency and comprehension. 2
2
Approximately 40 percent
of high school graduates
lack the literacy skills
employers seek.
2
2
60% of America's prison inmates are
illiterate and 85% of all juvenile
offenders have reading problems.
2
US dropouts’ literacy
skills are lower than
most industrialized nations, performing
comparably only to Chile, Poland,
Portugal, and Slovenia (OECD, 2000).
Approximately 32 percent of high school graduates are
not ready for college level English composition courses
(ACT, 2005).
Unit 2
Learning To Read and Spell:
A National Problem and Recommended
Solutions
•Scope of the Problem
•What Skilled Readers/Spellers Do
•Causes of Severe Reading Difficulty
• Overview of Evidence Based Practices
What Skilled Readers Do
Eye-movement Research
fixation: stop, on
nearly every (1/4
second)
saccade:
sweeping motion
(1/70 second)
Keith Rayner and Monica Castelhano (2007) Eye movements.
Scholarpedia, 2(10):3649, revision #54795
Fixation Points
How Do We Know That Readers Process
Every Letter And Word?
The girl ran excitadly down the hill.
“Good readers focus their eyes on
each word in the text, skipping
function words such as be, in, or to,
if they need to or whatever.”
(Marilyn Adams, February 26, 2004 Children of the Code interview)
How Many “F’s”?
Franklin Featherstone is sometimes
referred to as the Father of
Refrigerated Freight, because of his
efforts in publicizing the benefits of
this form of transport.
How Many “F’s”?
Franklin Featherstone is sometimes
referred to as the Father of
Refrigerated Freight, because of his
efforts in publicizing the benefits of
this form of transport.
Eye Movement Research
• “What it basically looks like is that the eyes’
job seems to be to collect the words and get
them ready for the mind.”
3
Marilyn Adams (2004)
The Many Strands that are Woven into Skilled Reading
(Scarborough, 2001)
LANGUAGE COMPREHENSION
BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE
VOCABULARY KNOWLEDGE
LANGUAGE STRUCTURES
VERBAL REASONING
Skilled Readingfluent coordination of
word
reading
and
SKILLED
READING:
fluent execution and
comprehension
coordination of word
recognition
and text
processes
comprehension.
LITERACY KNOWLEDGE
WORD RECOGNITION
PHON. AWARENESS
DECODING (and SPELLING)
SIGHT RECOGNITION
Reading is a multifaceted skill, gradually acquired over years of instruction and practice.
Skilled Reading: Principles of Brain Design
Underpinning Cultural Inventions
• Ability to form new
connections
Parietal
Lobe
Frontal
Lobe
• Capacity for
automatization
Temporal
Lobe
Occipital
Lobe
The design of the brain allows it to go
beyond itself.
Maryanne Wolf, 2007
Skilled Reading: How the Brain
Works
Frontal
Lobe
Front
Parietal
Lobe
Temporal
Lobe
word
meaning
word
analysissound
symbol
connection
Occipital
Lobe
Back
letter/word
recognition
Richards, Aylward, Raskind, et. al, 2006
Skilled Reading Process: Word
Identification
CONTEXT
PROCESSOR
• Selects appropriate meaning
based on context
MEANING
PROCESSOR
• Activates all possible
meanings of a word
PHONOLOGICAL
PROCESSOR
ORTHOGRAPHIC
PROCESSOR
• Receives visual
information from print
• Recognizes familiar
patterns of letters
• Processes every letter
• Activates phonological
image of word
“hearing the word in your
head”
(Adams, 1990)
4
(Seidenburg and McClelland, 1989)
(Berninger & Richards, 2002;Eden & Moats, 2002; Shaywitz, 2003)
Skilled Reading Process: Word
Identification
CONTEXT
PROCESSOR
Previous sentence:
“I felt something small
brush against my foot.”
MEANING
PROCESSOR
ORTHOGRAPHIC
PROCESSOR
cat
cat
PHONOLOGICAL
PROCESSOR
“cat” or
|c|-|a|-|t|
(Adams, 1990) (Seidenburg and McClelland, 1989)
(Berninger & Richards, 2002;Eden & Moats, 2002; Shaywitz, 2003)
Skilled Reading Process:
Word Identification
CONTEXT
PROCESSOR
World knowledge
Syntax
Selects appropriate meaning
based on context
Vocabulary
Knowledge
MEANING
PROCESSOR
Activates all possible meanings
of a word
ORTHOGRAPHIC
PROCESSOR
Letter
knowledge
Spelling
Patterns
Receives visual information
from print
Recognizes familiar patterns of
letters
Processes every letter
PHONOLOGICAL
PROCESSOR
Activates phonological image of
word
“hearing the word in your
head”
Phonological
Awareness
With Your Partner:
Discuss:
• Is one processing system more
important to educate than the others
at a given stage of reading
development?
• Is it possible to be a good reader if
one system is not functioning well?
dad read as “bad”
phonological processor
orthographic processor
meaning processor
context processor
T
R
G
p
.
5
6
cat read as “kitty”
phonological processor
orthographic processor
meaning processor
context processor
TRG
p. 56
cap read as “sap”
phonological processor
orthographic processor
meaning processor
context processor
6
Student reads, “the lip of the bowl” and says,
“bowls don’t have lips.”
phonological processor
orthographic processor
meaning processor
context processor
6
Stages of Reading and Spelling
LOGOGRAPHIC
PRE-K
PARTIAL or EARLY
ALPHABETIC
• bat, job, pig
LATE K~ EARLY GRADE 1
FULL or LATE
ALPHABETIC
LATE1~EARLY GRADE 2
CONSOLIDATED
ALPHABETIC or
ORTHOGRAPHIC
LATE 2~ GRADE 3+
• free, take, joking,
shopping
• un-de-ni-a-ble
• un-deni-able
Ehri 1995, Moats 2000
Logographic or Preconventional
Johnston County School System
Partial or Early Alphabetic
JCSS
Full or Later Alphabetic
JCSS
Consolidated Alphabetic or Orthographic
JCSS
How the
Population
Learns to
Read
Intensive
Targeted
Few
20% -Reading is
One of the Most
Difficult Tasks to
Be Mastered
Some
40% -Reading is A
Formidable
Challenge
35% -Reading is
Relatively Easy
Universal
All
5% -Reading is
Easy
5
*Estimates and recommendations are based on the work of Lyon and other NICHD researchers
Differences in Learning to Read
Type of
Learner
# of
Necessary
Repetitions
Most Able
2
Average
5
Least Able
100
Unit 2
Learning To Read and Spell:
A National Problem and Recommended
Solutions
•Scope of the Problem
•What Skilled Readers/Spellers Do
•Causes of Severe Reading Difficulty
• Overview of Evidence Based Practices
Brainstorming Activity
What are some
common causes of
reading and spelling
problems?
Causes of Persistent Reading
Difficulties
Reading difficulty
is related to
inherited brain
differences
90% of poor
readers have
problems with
word reading
accuracy
A child of a
person with
dyslexia is 8
times more likely
to have dyslexia
Causes of Reading Difficulties:
Phonological Processing
• Phonological
Awareness
Context
Processor
• Word Retrieval
• Working
Memory
Meaning
Processor
Orthographic
Processor
Phonological
Processor
6
Students With
Phonological
Awareness
Problems...
Have difficulty
decoding and
encoding words
May try to
memorize
words or over
rely on
context
Have difficulty
segmenting
and blending
sounds
6
Students With
Retrieval
Problems...
Difficulty
quickly naming
even familiar
concepts such
as colors,
numbers,
letters
Difficulty
learning
names
Recall
information in
context but
not in
isolation
6
Students With
Retrieval
Problems...
Describe
items rather
than giving
specific name
Confuse names
of items within
categories: bluegreen; herethere
Appear to learn
names but then
“forget”
6
Students With
Working Memory
Problems...
May have difficulty
holding words in
memory to get the
meaning of a
sentence
Have difficulty
holding
sounds in
memory as
they sound out
a word
6
Working Memory and Comprehension
TEXT
When word decoding is slow and laborious the whole
system can break down.
Students With
Double Deficits
Double and
triple deficit
students are the
most difficult to
remediate
May have a
combination
of 2 or all 3 of
these
problems:
Phonological
awareness
Word
retrieval
Working
memory
Dyslexia is…..
Dyslexia is our best, most visible evidence
that the brain was never wired to read.
-Maryanne Wolf
Proust and the Squid,
2007
6
Decoding Dyslexia
Neural Response to Intervention
Does the pattern of brain activation change in
response to intervention?
8 children with severe dyslexia (7 to 17)
8 week intense phonologically- based intervention
(2 hours a day= up to 80 hours of instruction)
Very large improvements in reading ability
Simos et al., Neurology, 2002
Strong activation
pattern
Weak activation
pattern
“Brain Surgery” Through Instruction
Decreased activity
in right hemisphere
Increased activity in
left hemisphere
“You have the power to
alter certain parts of
your students’ brains by
giving them multiple
opportunities during a
lesson to actively
engage those brains.”
Thernstrom, 2006
Most people think
dyslexia is a reading
disorder but it is also a
spelling and writing
problem.”
Berninger, 2006
Why Is Spelling More
Difficult Than Reading?
• Reading requires recognition of words.
• Spelling requires complete and accurate
recall of letter patterns.
Moats, 1996
Dyslexia
Is a language based reading
disability
Synonymous with specific
learning disability in reading
Is not seeing words backwards
or seeing shaking letters
Additional Factors In Poor Literacy
Skills
The Gift of Dyslexia
“…the dyslexic brain seems linked …to unparalleled
creativity in their professions, which often involve
design, spatial skills, and the recognition of
patterns…”
Wolf, 2007
Over 50% of NASA
employees are
dyslexic. They are
deliberately sought
after because they
have superb
problem solving
skills and excellent
3D and spatial
awareness.
Dyslexia occurs
four times more
often among selfmade millionaires
than in the normal
population.
Both Charles
Schwab and
Richard Branson
attribute their
success to their
dyslexia.
Unit 2
Learning To Read and Spell:
A National Problem and Recommended
Solutions
•Scope of the Problem
•What Skilled Readers/Spellers Do
•Causes of Severe Reading Difficulty
• Overview of Evidence Based Practices
It took the species 2000 years
of insights to develop an
alphabetic system. A child is
given 2000 days to gain the
same insights.
Maryanne Wolf
“Students with dyslexia needed
Proust and
more than 20 times the amount
ofthe Squid, 2007
practice that students without
dyslexia need to learn letter
sequences.”
Berninger, 2000
Catching Up?
How fast could a 3rd
grader, reading 2 years
behind, catch up to
grade level?
7
6
5
4
4
3
2
2
1
Progress
per year
6 mo.
7
2
6
5
4
4
3
2
2
1
Progress
per year
6 mo.
12 mo.
7
2
6
5
4
4
3
2
2
2
12 mo.
18 mo.
1
Progress
per year
6 mo.
Catch Up Growth
All students need to make a year of
academic growth each year.
Students who are 1 to 3 years behind in
reading need to make an additional year
of growth until they catch-up.
Lynn Fielding, March 2011
Achievement
The Expanding Achievement Gap
K
1
2
Grade in School
3
4
What Happens Early, Matters…
“…the level of academic achievement
that students attain by eighth grade
has a larger impact on their college
and career readiness than anything
that happens academically in high
school.”
ACT, Inc: The Forgotten Middle (2009)
Principles of Reading Instruction
Principles of Reading Instruction
Your
turn:
Create
twocolumn
notes for
defining
terms
McEwan-Adkins, 2010
 Explicit
 Systematic
 Multisensory
Plain in language;
distinctly expressed;
clearly stated; not
merely implied
Characterized by the
use of a method or
plan
Combines three learning
senses--auditory (hearing
and speaking), visual (seeing
and perceiving), and
kinesthetic (touch and
movement) while teaching
students
7
Principles of Reading Instruction
“Creative and spontaneous lessons
may be entertaining, but they are not
educational for students at risk. These
students need predictable routines that
have been practiced past perfection.”
-
-
McEwan-Adkins, 2010
Principles of Reading Instruction
Reduce the Cognitive Load
Cognitive load refers to the total amount of
mental activity imposed on working
memory at a specific time
What students remember depends more
on what they already know than on
what you tell them.
McEwan-Adkins, 2010
Working Memory and Automaticity
Processing
Task
Working Memory
Less Skilled Reader
Processing
Task
Skilled Reader
Principles of Reading Instruction
Increase Cognitive Processing
Activity: Think – Pair – Share Handout
McEwan-Adkins, 2010
7 &8
Teaching All Children to Read
Group 1: Report Your
Findings
Teaching At-Risk Children To
Read
Group 2: Report Your
Findings
Teaching Students with Persistent
Reading Problems to Read
Group 3: Report Your
Findings
Teaching Students With Double
Deficits to Read
Group 4: Report Your
Findings
Congratulations Reading
Teachers!
You have completed Unit 2