1. “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

2. Discussion on Readings:
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

3. Diagnostic Testing
Yopp-Singer Test of Phoneme Segmentation, discussion, insights
Subtests from Comprehensive Reading Inventory

4. Appropriateness of Reading Materials: Readability Formulas
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!!!)

5. Readability Formulas: Estimates
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!)

6. Leveling Books
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!

7. How to Level a Book
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

8. Better Estimate of Appropriateness of Text for a Child Than Readability Formulas?
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”

9. Word Recognition in Isolation
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

10. Word Lists 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?

11. Administering Word List
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

12. Administering Word List
Find independent, instructional and frustration levels
90% and above, 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!

13. Word Recognition in Context
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

14. Word Recognition in Context, continued
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

15. Counting Oral Errors 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

16. Scoring: Accuracy Word Recognition in Context
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

17. Beginning Readers 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

18. Fluency
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

19. Fluency 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

20. Fluency, continued
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

21. Fluency Studies, continued
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

22. More on Fluency
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

23. Fluency, continued
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

24. Final Notes
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