Cultivating the Literacy Landscape - Bridging research to practice in reading instruction and support

2023 is the first year of our Structured Literacy journey.  It comes after many, many years of not quite feeling like we had a good grasp on what quality teaching of reading really looked like. We dabbled and we played. A little bit of this with a little bit of that. The 'and + and' approach whereby we wanted to do everything. 'Let's not throw the baby away with the bath water' kinda thinking. We believed that quality reading was a whole language approach, sprinkled with a little of that ever-controversial phonics teaching. 

Today's symposium addressed why this approach is far from ideal. It was an absolutely invaluable session to attend. The day comprised of 3 wonderfully articulate wāhine who led us through some thought provoking stuff as follows. 

My takings from these wāhine...

Keynotes speaker 1 - Emily Hanford

• Sold a Story blog
• Reading is a rich man's game. How many families can afford the interventions?
• Phonics skills are a critical starting point for reading.
• Reading for meaning (and the reading cues that came with this approach) was a theory that came far before science. Old school reading strategies are from the 1960s. Scientific studies are more recent - 1990s.  Code is science based! 
• A wondering of mine - Does inability to read contribute to a lagging skill, or that a lagging skill in itself?
• Reading to children in the younger years is not enough - immersing a young child in books is not enough.
• The Ladder of Reading and Writing by Nancy Young - see below.

• The Simple View of Reading by Gough and Tunmer - see below It is the product, not the sum! Anything multiplied by 0 equals 0. So if one side is lacking, it's all wasted.

• Language comprehension can be strengthened with aural processing - reading to tamariki. vocabulary exposure around the akomanga. Lots of exposure means when they're able to decode, they'll already have some meaning behind the kupu.
• Written English is one of the trickiest reo to learn.
• Memorising words is not a good strategy - I'm cringing thinking of all the years we'd recite sight words each day!
• We need to be consciously aware of what needs to go.
• Equity education = begins with good phonics teaching, but does not end there.
•  Skilled readers do not use the cues that poor readers do! Reading recovery teachers the skills poor readers use! Skilled readers process the word faster than the picture. 
• Orthographic Mapping - Links phonemic awareness, 

• Teachers are good at employing the 'and + and' strategy. We want to do this AND that.
• Balanced literacy teaches the strategies of struggling readers. It is slow and taxing. The brain is busy guessing and therefore does not have the ability to focus on comprehension.  

Keynote speaker 2 - Pamela Snow

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• What is reading? A biological secondary skill. It does not come naturally, it needs to be taught. It draws heavily on oral language.
• To people who say children learn to read in many different ways - rubbish! There is only one form of reading, but many forms of literacy. Because of this we have created confusions - reading, writing, viewing, presenting - too much.
• Our brains are not evolved to read/write automatically - humans have only been reading/writing for 3000-5000 years. Whereas spoken language has been around for 100,000s+ years.
• English language has appropriated kupu from so many other reo.
• Pronunciation is the problem, not spelling.
• Reading =  cognitive and linguistic. Meaning = morphemes.
• Structured literacy is a complete 180 from Balanced Literacy. BL = eclecticism. SL = systematic approaches. 
• Instruction needs to be informed by neuroscience.
• There is no robust evidence that says BL is worthwhile.
• Teachers don't need to begin with motivating children to read. It's not our job to make kids love reading. Skills proceed enjoyment. It's our job to develop proficient readers.
• For the people who think we ONLY want phonics - phonics is necessary but not sufficient.
• Conveyor belt towards reading comprehension = word identification, word meaning, sentence level, text level, background knowledge. 
• Teachers need to be help to a very high level of accountability - pilot analogy - imagine if the pilot on your flight said, "I'm just going to try out something new here..." They don't get to try new things.

• Teacher autonomy is a crock of s#@t!
• Teaching reading is a public health imperative.
• Pseudoscience/fads/fashions tend to get the red carpet in education
• Reading needs to be taught, not caught.
• Reading is like launching a rocket, if you're a few mm out at take off, you'll be miles off out there in space.
• It's time to respectfully bury Balanced Literacy.
• Knowledge is like velcro, it sticks to other knowledge.            

Keynote speaker 3 - Dr Lorraine Hammond 

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• Kids do not learn to read in different ways, there are different methodologies. 
• Low curriculum variance - a deliberate effort by schools to create a scope and sequence (a highly detailed plan of what will be taught and when) for the subject areas and to work extremely hard to ensure that kids are being taught the same content, to the same expected standards at the same year level.
• Teach simultaneously not sequentially.
• Examples of teaching in the Kimberly - 20minute session, must be done at pace! Don't allow a void to exist. Lots of physical movement, eg, clapping phonemes, standing up to do so. That becomes the break.
• Teach more in less time with a sense of urgency. Rapid fire. Short and sharp.
• Set the norms.
• High fidelity = high quality.
• Kids need to be busy, they need to respond a lot.
• Explicit Direct Instruction - need more information on this!
• Spelling mastery - the goal is to break down any word (possible) into phonemes.
• See slides shared for notes to explain following - Kids repeat back in full sentences, "malevolent means ..."  "Track with me, read with me." Little writing often, long writing seldom. Revisit key vocab at the end of the session/day - we could do this with DMIC vocab. 
• The Valley of Despair - things will go down before they go up!

• Learning is not a spectator sport.

Key points from the Panel of Speakers towards the end of the day

•  Ask the nay-sayers "How open would you be..." "Are you happy with our/your data?"
• Some of the panel discussed only focusing on Structured Literacy pld for a number of years - no other pld was put on the table. A sustained approach. The principal was there every step of the way.
• Use the same language across the school.
• If in doubt, come back to the 'why?' The research! The science!
• We need a scripted approach for staff. Like Heggerty!
• Consistent practice is key. We need literacy coaches - a small team to drive us forward.
• You shouldn't be focusing on vocab if a child can't decode.
• Structured Literacy is a pedagogy - it's the how and what.
• Tier 1 kids - the normal teaching range. Tier 2 kids - need the normal range plus 1-2 more teaching exposures. Tier 3 kids - need tier 1 and 2, plus 3+ more exposures. 
• Don't get too comfortable!