How to make reading instruction much much more efficient

How to make reading instruction much much more efficient

Edweek - By Mike Schmoker — November 19, 2019

Synopsis

Data shows that our students are still not performing according to their year level. Many factors are recognised to have an impact on this, including lack of foundational skills, attendance, and minimal or no input from home. This is an ongoing battle but I want to change my practice to ensure the gap does get smaller.

According to literacy researcher Richard Allington, studies show that “virtually every student could be reading on grade level by the end of 1st grade.” Although this is based on American data I strongly feel that I have similar issues.Learning to read and speak well requires focused phonics lessons and plenty of practice in reading, talking, and writing across different subjects. The typical way we teach reading, including many commercial programs, often falls short. This is because they rely too much on small groups based on kids' abilities.

The real problem lies in how we structure reading time and the exaggerated promises of commercial reading programs. Teachers often feel disappointed because they use these ability-based groups too often. Instead, they should focus more on teaching the whole class together using methods that have been proven to work. These methods ensure that all students are paying attention, continuously assess the class's progress, and adjust teaching as needed.

According to an article in Education Week, teaching the whole class together is usually more effective than using small ability-based groups.

Motivation

With more whole class well executed instruction with approximately 20min, literacy time will be doubled. This would allow for huge infusions of instructional time into the essential components of literacy. I could use this additional time to incorporate more:

• "Intensive, sustained, systematic phonics. We could substantially accelerate students’ mastery of the phonetic code and still have time for kids to read and listen to far more fiction and nonfiction texts.
• Reading/general knowledge. If most students have mastered decoding, they could spend more amounts of time in higher years reading literature, history, and science texts to build their knowledge base and vocabulary, which are critical to effective comprehension.
• Vocabulary instruction. Most of a rich vocabulary is acquired through abundant reading. But research also shows that we can reliably supplement this with targeted, embedded vocabulary instruction.
• Discussion. To become confident, articulate speakers, students must engage in frequent, purposeful discussions about what they read. We could multiply the length and frequency of such discussions, which animate an appreciation of reading and are excellent preparation for writing.
• Writing and writing instruction. Writing has an unsurpassed capacity to help us think logically, express ourselves clearly, and understand, analyse, and retain content. It often promotes dramatic, measurable improvements across the curriculum and is crucial to success in innumerable careers."

How will it help me?

With our new plan to incorporate more explicit explore play learning time with provocations, it is the teacher's responsibility to ensure that learning continues to happen and is not solely characterised by free roaming and unstructured choice activities. Specifically in mathematics and literacy, essential activities must be carefully planned and effectively executed within this environment, while other teachers lead smaller groups. By teaching mathematics, reading, and writing with well-planned provocations and direct instruction, students will experience significantly more instructional learning time. We already included more Reading to opportunities, Shared Big Book reading and Poems. We are exposing our learners to a variety of literature.

So What?

With this new approach, our team wants to ensure that all students will have the opportunity to meet their needs through a variety of learning activities.