By Sara Finegan

         In a demanding classroom, student work isn’t just the work they produce themselves, but also their  thinking and talking about other people’s work.  If our students aren’t able to evaluate the job that others are doing, they won’t be able to discern the quality of their own work, and make the appropriate adjustements.

         In my classroom, students know what constitutes a Proficient Level job on any given assignment.  (In California, achievement is based on the following levels:  Proficient, which indicates mastery, Advanced, which indicates that the work is too easy for the student, Basic, which is the minimal standard of competence, Below Basic, and Far Below Basic.) 

         My students are always aiming for Proficiency Level in their work and that is the standard upon which we base evaluations of our work.

         When my students engage in reading, writing, social studies, science, or math activities, they become quickly involved in helping to create a checklist or rubric for each type of work.

          We all know, for example, that a Proficient Level math assignment involving word problems has the following components:  the student has underlined the key vocabulary that tells us what type of operation to use; the student has drawn a diagram or picture of the problem; the student has created and solved a numerical equation, and the student has written the answer in a complete sentence.

         When assignments are completed, other students go over the work using the checklist we’ve created and determines which of the components are present and which are missing.  It’s a quick and easy way for both the worker and the evaluator to get a picture of how close to Proficient Level the work is.  If the work has been done in class, the student has the opportunity to immediately add in missing components.  If the work was done at home, it is sent back to be done as additional homework.

This practice can be done with almost any grade and competency level.  In younger kids, perhaps the checklist has clip art and just a few words for each item to be evaluated.  I’ve also seen instances where the teacher prepares a model assignment and highlights the required features, so that student graders can easily see and compare student work to the standard. 

         I usually type up the checklist on three columns of paper and cut them in strips.  My Peer Checkers staple the checklist to assignments as they are turned in.  We aim for a one-day turnaround. 

         Evaluation activities done by Peer Checkers takes several different forms.  When we are learning a new skill, my preferred method for going over work is have all students exchange work with someone else.  We each get a copy of the checklist and staple it to the work we are evaluating.

         Then, using the document camera, I will take a blank worksheet or one student’s work and we will go through the checklist together.  Students have the opportunity to ask me and the other students questions.

          This is particularly important in writing, science, or social studies worksheets where students use their own words to answer questions.  There are, of course, many ways of stating the answer, and the kids need to see that proficiency can look like several different ways.  They also need help sometimes to see that even though an answer may appear to be content-correct, if our standard for Proficiency is that the answer be written as a complete sentence, a one or two word answer, or one without a pronoun, will not match the expected level for work.  

Proficient, Basic, or Below Basic

         Once we’ve gone through the checklist, Peer Checkers will determine whether the answer is Proficient, Basic, or Below Basic (P, B, or BB) and mark it at the top of the paper before returning it to the original student for review. 

         At this point, we take a quick survey of the class to see how many achieved Proficiency for that assignment, and talk briefly about what the next steps might be to improve.  It’s important that each student be able to verbalize what he or she will be focusing on the next time around.

Later in the unit, as the kids are more competent and confident about the concepts or skills they are using, I will assign small groups of 2 or 3 students per day to evaluate assignments.  This is a classroom privilege, as it indicates our trust in them to objectively review the work, be supportive of others rather than tearing down, and notify us all when a celebration is in order.

          And celebrations are important.  Because we are all evaluating one another’s work, students are very aware of who is struggling and needs support, and who has surmounted an obstacle and needs recognition.  Our class Celebrations Committee keeps track of those sorts of things and provides peer mentoring and extra help as well as notifying me that it’s time to bake cupcakes or dig out the dance cds.

         The benefits of these systems are many.  Kids see numerous examples of the type of work they and others are doing, and have ownership of their work product.  They have a yardstick by which to measure their progress and immediate feedback, quite often, about their product.  Grading in this way helps the kids see what things they need to do to improve in a safe and inspiring way.

         When our grading process is a mystery to students, they become dependent on our feedback for their work.  The longer they remain dependent on our valuation of what they do, the more difficult it is for them to develop an objective internal measure of themselves. 

         If we involve them in the standards-setting, support them in the evaluation process, and keep challenging them to do better, they will take on more responsibility for their own work and learning.  They also will develop the confidence that they can achieve high things.

         This process also helps me as a teacher.  When we are all looking at student work and measuring progress in this fashion against a pre-determined standard, I can easily see when it is time to design a new or better intervention to boost skills that aren’t moving up the ladder towards Proficiency.

         I often think I’ve done a terrific job teaching a lesson and go home celebrating the fact that ‘everyone seems to be getting it’, only to discover over the course of the next few days that actually, they did not get it, or if they did, it didn’t stick.  At that point I can step back and rethink how I teach that skill, and try again. 

We never lower the bar, we re-teach

         It’s important to remember that we are never going to compromise the standard of Proficiency.  When kids aren’t meeting the mark, it’s cause for more practice and re-teaching, not lowering the bar.  We’re pushing each other up, not pulling the standard down.

          To begin to incorporate student evaluation of the work of others and their own work, you need to make sure everyone in the classroom knows what the standards are for each type of assignment.

         This happens naturally if you spend just a little time working with the kids to go over the components of a good example of any type of assignment.  I do a lot of charting in my class, with step-by-step procedures for most new skills and types of assignments.  We use those charts to create a new chart called “What does a Proficient Level ______ look like?”  The kids participate in making a list of the features or components of the assignment, and we keep it visible in the room as we work.

         I also will type up a copy of the chart to paste into student journals or folders.  There’s no point in assigning kids home practice if they can’t remember when they get there what their practice is supposed to look like. 

          So what happens with all of this involvement in one another’s work?  Well, in a demanding classroom, students are engaged in one another’s work in a positive way, they internalize expectations and quality standards, and they know what they need to do to improve.  There is less focus on what they can’t do and far more on what the next steps are along the road to mastery. 

         And that makes all the difference in the struggle to learn.

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By Sara Finegan

          My colleague Colleen hates word walls and recently told our principal that she refuses to have one anymore.  What bothers her about word walls is the discrepency between the amount of time and energy she devotes to creating one and the amount of time and energy used by students when they are there. 

          As Colleen points out, there’s something incredibly irritating about a kid in June, who’s known about the existence of the word wall since October and still asks the teacher how to spell one of the words that is RIGHT THERE, not 10 feet away!

         I agree.  If the purpose of a word wall is to create a visible list of words to use for spelling, I want nothing to do with it.  In my classroom, we post several different kinds of words, for several different uses.

Sight Words 

         One of the first lists of words you will find in my classroom are the month’s expected sight words.  The words are some years written individually on index cards and some years typed onto colored paper, taped (blue painters tape, sticks well, won’t leave residue when removed) on our cupboard doors. 

          The kids keep each month’s list of sight words in a notebook as well, but we like a big list to be visible in the classroom for partners to go read during free or unstructured time. 

Tip:  I create a list of approximately 80 words per month for the kids to learn.  They are multi-syllabic words, and usually all fit into a phonological pattern – October’s words this year, for example, all use the “e” sounds, both long and short.  Every student tries to learn 20 of the words per week, so that by the end of the month, any kid in my classroom can walk up to the word wall and quickly read off every single one.

          Several years ago, I became frustrated by the fact that although I was teaching powerful vocabulary, my students weren’t using it, or if they were, they were  using it awkwardly.  After about a  month of gnashing my teeth and lecturing my kids about their lack of attention to my teaching, I stepped back and began to observe how they did use language in both written and oral expression.

         Turned out, although they knew the words if they saw them in text, they didn’t know how to use them on their own.   It’s  one thing to recognize a word; it’s quite another to retrieve it and  apply it in speech.

          In order for a student with special needs to be able to  use the vocabulary I teach, they need to be able to have a context.  And that is what led to the second kind of word wall you might find in my classroom.

Words in Context

         When I create a context-based word wall, I am setting up a system for kids to be able to see and practice the use of the words.  This kind of word wall will group words by category or topic, rather than in alphabetical order or by grammatical form.  Thus, you might find the following word groupings:

 Synonyms and Precise Choices 

We all know how difficult it can be to direct kids away from what I call “cotton ball words,” by which I mean the soft, fluffy, and really imprecise vocabulary they so willingly employ in speech and writing:  words like “stuff”, “things”, “had”, “was”, “can”, “went”. 

         When we teach students that the use of precise language to convey ideas demonstrates intelligence and proficiency, we cannot expect them to be immediately able to retrieve the more powerful nouns and verbs we’d like them to be using.   We have to show them their choices.

          Thus, another type of word wall is one which is developed over time in the classroom, and customized based on the needs you see in your students.  This wall of words will contain a topic heading and a list of words that can be  used.  For example, “Say”:

          Or, we might have an entire section about “getting from one place to another quickly,” that has words such as:  gallop,  slide, run, trot,  jog, race, fly, canter, zip, skate, roll.  Or perhaps we need to use words that are more interesting than “good”, so we have a list that contains these words:  excellent, fabulous, wonderful, terrific, lovely, magnificent, beautiful, fresh, tasty, sweet.

          Now, Colleen’s complaint can still be repeated with these kinds of word walls.   A list of words in and of itself is not going to lead to use or knowledge.  But if we use the word wall regularly, so will the kids. 

We Model How to Use the Wall

           Kids are not as likely to look to a list of words for spelling help when they can just as easily ask someone.  But they are likely to look to a list of words for vocabulary choices if we model how it’s done and get them in the habit. 

           When we are talking or writing, I will frequently pause as though I can’t think of a word.  I use my “teacher is puzzled” face, and tell the kids I’m having trouble thinking of the right way to say something.  They are always willing to help. 

            If I can describe to my students the kind of word I need, they will almost invariably go to the word wall in context and help me find one.  Thus, for example: 

• If I say “well, I want a word that shows how the Egyptian farmers made canals,” more than one student will glance at the wall and yell out “dug!” or “excavated!”
• If I indicate that I’m looking for a precise way to describe the kind of person Draco Malfoy is, I’ll get plenty of offers of “evil”, “nasty”, “cruel”, and “viscious”.
• And if I say I don’t want to repeat the word “important” in a paragraph, someone will help me find “essential” or “crucial”.

         Once we get kids in the habit of looking to word walls for choices, they are far more likely to use them in their partner and independent work.

          Of course, you just KNOW they will still ask you how to spell them!

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By Sara Finegan

         One of my ongoing beefs with our math textbooks is that they don’t provide enough problems for the kids to practice with. 

          For years, I’ve been writing my own math worksheets and developing my own list of math problems for the kids to attack each day.  It’s time-consuming, but it also is a valuable part of my instruction, because, now that I’ve developed fluency in the task, it’s easy for me to create a set of practice problems that addresses exactly what task the kids are struggling with at any given time.

         And that is what “rinse and repeat” is all about for me.  

          My students do more math problems, more writing activities, and more different kinds of reading tasks per day than most kids do at our school.  They have to, because they know, and I know, that for them, mastery of new skills requires 20 times more practice than other kids. 

Pacing of instruction 

           Although I promote the idea of aiming high and moving the kids upwards from wherever they are, I refuse to move too quickly, because that will defeat the entire purpose of instruction in a demanding classroom.  Likewise, I don’t want to go too slowly, because I don’t want the kids to become too comfortable and complacent about learning.  We teachers have to find exactly the right balance for our group of kids – and that will change from year to year and also from subject area to subject area.

         Thus, when we learn a new math skill, I am not going to rely on the 25 problems in the math book.  My kids will use the skill 50 times in the classroom, and probably have another 20 problems for homework. 

         The more they repeat an action, whether it be identifying the setting in a story or decomposing a number in order to multiply it more easily, the more fluent they become, the more the concept is embedded in their minds, the more easily they will be able to retrieve it in the future a the need arises.

         Now, this doesn’t mean that my students are all going to stay at their desks and do worksheets all of the class period.    I want them to be active learners, and that means I can’t let them get stuck in a dull routine where everything becomes by rote.

Practice in a variety of ways

           Opportunities for practice need to be varied in nature, size, and extent.  Identifying the setting in a story can be done with a partner in a book talk, in a guided group, in a multiple choice worksheet, with a matching game, and in writing journals. 

         Solving math problems can be done on the class white board, in individual white board activities, worksheets, using manipulatives at a table, and by teaching someone else.  All of those can be done during the day, or separated out over the course of several days. 

         This year, I’ve been working with my students on writing daily responses to independent reading in journals every night at home.  Each part of a reading response needs to be taught separately, and practiced repeatedly until the student is able to perform the task independently.  

Guided writing of a paragraph describing a character

          On Friday, I taught the kids in a guided writing activity how to write a paragraph describing a character.  Their weekend homework calls for them to do at least one more before Monday:  I have no expectations that the results will be exemplary, but they will tell me what I need to emphasize in subsequent lesson and practices. 

            We will probably do at least two more guided writing activities on this very topic, followed by some partner writes, and, by Friday, the kids will be able to work on independent writing of character descriptions with a minimal level of  intervention from me and our aide.  Even then, the kids will need to practice this type of writing activity for at least a month before it becomes automatic.  

           In the meantime, I’m not going to lower my expectations or require less than excellent work from my kids.  Each day, we’ll go over some examples of their work, and together, as a group, determine what could be improved, what is missing, or what the student forgot to do.  (example:  Jay forgot to number his list of facts in the order that makes most sense; Roberto didn’t combine two facts in each sentence to form complex sentences; Darren’s paragraph reads like a list rather than a thoughtful description – he needs to use more powerful vocabulary, and a better voice). 

         There’s no shame in not meeting the standards; there is always an emphasis on doing better the next time.

 Lather, rinse,  repeat.  And repeat.  Again.

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By Sara Finegan 

         One of the hardest things I have  had to learn how to do as a teacher is to dissect skills that I do automatically or very well.  It’s crucial to be able to do it, because that is the primary way in which we investigate how to provide instruction. 

          Only if I know exactly how I make meaning in text when it is difficult to comprehend will I be able to teach my kids how to understand what they read. 

           This act of teasing out the different skills and concepts I use in academic and intellectual activities is much easier when it involves subjects I have myself struggled with.

           Figuring out how to teach math skills is a relative piece of cake for me, because math has never come easily to me and I do not work as fluently with numbers as I do with words.  Piecing out the individual strategies I use when I read was one of the most difficult activities I’ve worked on over a period of years, and I’m still making discoveries.  And we will not even begin to talk about the writing process, which for me is a natural one and oh, so difficult to break down.

         But it must be done. 

         That which is automatic to us is usually a struggle for our students.  They can get to the point of ease with many tasks, but we have to teach each skill  separately from beginning to end, and give them multiple, repeated, ongoing opportunities to practice.  Again and again. <grin>  Only then can we start putting the skills back together to form a whole action. 

          Be aware that this is very different from the dumming down process, where we make the mistake of lowering our expectations for the final project and do half of the work for our students instead of prompting them to take intellectual risks.   

         The fact that a student cannot write a paragraph using complete sentences, or cannot yet make inferences as she reads, or is not able, just yet, to use the order of operations to solve a math problem doesn’t mean that we should not expect them to be able, at the end of the year, to write a three-paragraph essay, or understand text close to grade level, or solve this expression:  3(6 x 9) – (2 +4) – 16. 

          And it’s certainly not cause to keep the student doing simple addition and subtraction problems , or having the kids work on fill-in-the-blank worksheets, or letting them deal only with the literal meaning of text.

            No, what a demanding classroom does is provide intensive instruction and opportunities for practice with gradual release of responsibility back to the student in ever-increasing levels of work.   

• You may be starting out with sentence practice, but you will be moving quickly from simple sentences to more complex ones, and adding powerful vocabulary quite soon. 

• You might just have the kids practice solving the parts of the problem in parenthesis first, ignoring the rest of the problem for days on end, but the time will come soon when they’ll be using more and more of the order of ops.

           It’s our job to tear the skill set apart, teach it, and paste it back together.  The kids will do the rest of the sewing, if we let them, push them, challenge them, demand it of them.

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 By Sara Finegan

          I cannot stress enough the importance of teaching kids how to talk and listen about meaningful things.  The practice of explicitly teaching vocabulary, modeling proper use of words and word choices, and helping kids learn how to phrase their thoughts must be embedded in our instruction and included in all of our planning.  This applies to every single subject area.

         When I think about what I want the kids in my class to be able to DO in their oral and written communication, I come up with the following skills: 

• To summarize, in their own words, what they are doing, reading, and learning, or what someone else told them.

• To describe with powerful and explicit vocabulary events, ideas, and feelings.

• To use complex sentences and grammatical concepts to convey ideas.

•  To describe their thinking process as they approach a problem or a task.

•  To understand and be able to present or identify an idea with supporting details.

•  To organize and share their thinking in an organized fashion.

•  To be able to engage in interactive discussions about meaningful topics using responsive listening and accountable talk.

         I’m sure there’s more, but that’s what I come up with right now.  Daunting, no?  Especially if you take a look at what the kids can do, language-wise, when they walk into your classroom for the first time.   

         If your students are anything like mine, the first months of talk sound something like this:

• “The guy went, well, let’s go get some stuff to eat, so they did.”

• <shrug>  (one of my favorite answers to any question)

• “She wanted to go to that one place, so they did.”

• “The Ancient Mesopotamia people had canals for to water the ground where they grew stuff.”  (this from a child who was asked to use the word “canals” in relation to Mesopotamian farming) 

          And how many of us have prepared social studies or science worksheets and received them back with one-word answers?

          I send them back.

          In separate posts, I’ll describe what I work on with my students to raise the level, depth, and bredth of their use of language. 

          In a demanding classroom.

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 By Sara Finegan 

         Last year I started a program I called “Nimble with Numbers.”  Before each math lesson, and sometimes before we started reading and writing instruction, we’d do math problems.  But we never used paper.  We used language and our heads, and worked through them out loud. 

         It became one of my students’ favorite activities, and we continue it to this day.

          Nimble with Numbers involves what I think of as math fluency – the ability to work with numbers in creative ways to get to an answer.  Here’s an example of what we do:.

         Using the document camera, I will write a couple of numbers – with no operation expressions.  And I will ask out loud for an answer.  This is what it looks like:

 Me:   (writing the numbers 36 and 72).  What’s the difference between 36 and 72?

Students:  Oh!  Oh!  Let me!

Me:  Ok……..Brandon.  Give it a whack.

Brandon:  Well, 36 to 46 is ten.  And 46 to 56 is another ten.  56 to 66 is ten.

 Me:  Ok, so how many do we have so far.

 Brandon:   Thirty.  Ten and ten and ten.

Me:    Ok.

 Brandon:    And 66 to 70 is …67, 68. 69….four.

Me:     Four.  Ok.  So what do we have now?

 Brandon:  Thirty-four. 

Me:    Ok.

Brandon:    And 70 to 72 is two more.  So thirty six. 

Me:    So what is the answer?

 Brandon:   The difference between 36 and 72 is thirty six.

         We do this with multiplication, addition, and subtraction, always using the proper vocabulary (difference, sum, product). 

          What I have discovered is that TALKING our way through math problems embeds the skills and opens up the synapses for math reasoning in a way that nothing else has in my classroom.    The ability to explain our reasoning is an added benefit:  the real gift for my kids has been the development of fluency in their approach to math problem-solving by moving to friendly numbers and taking things step by step.

Another example:

Me:    Ok.  How many legs do 456 elephants have?  (Writing 456.)

 Kids:   Me!  Oh me!  Me! Me! Me!

 Me:     Hmmm.  Mariana.

 Mariana:   Well, 456 is really four hundred plus fifty plus six.

Me:   Uhuh. 

 Mariana:   And an elephant has four legs.

 Me:    Yep.

 Mariana:   Four legs times 400 elephants is……….four times four is 16.  So since it’s four times 400, we’re going to add two zeros to that number in the ones and tens places.  So that’s 1600.

 Me:     Uhuh.

 Mariana:   Then, four times 50 is……well, four times five is 20.  But 50 is five tens, not five ones.  So it’s 200.  

Me:     Uhuh.  What do we have so far? 

 Mariana:  Sixteen hundred and two hundred is eighteen hundred.

 Me:    Ok.

 Mariana:  So four times six elephants is 24 elephants.  So four hundred and twenty six elephants have eighteen hundred and twenty-four legs.

 Me:     Applause. 

         In a demanding classroom, the kids do the work.  The teacher calls on people and facilitates.

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By Sara Finegan 

           Some students are so far behind that they cannot keep up with a general education class.  Some students process in a way that requires more time, more space, more opportunities for practice, and a slower pace in order to master new concepts. 

           Some students need a small group – less noise, less activity, less chaos – in order to learn.   Some need instruction provided in ways that aren’t commonly found in a general education room – more visuals, more guided work, more modeling, more incremental. 

          All students with learning disabilities need at least one, if not most of these things in order to learn how to learn.  Notice that I didn’t say they  need them in order to learn everything.  Only to learn how to learn. 

 Full inclusion after rigorous preparation

         I favor inclusion of students with special needs in the general education classroom – after they have been given the appropriate, rigorous instruction and practice in the basics that will allow them to function on a par with everyone else.  I do not favor inclusion where the child enters too far behind to ever catch up and spends the rest of his or her school career vainly trying to do what the other students do.   

Our goal as special educators is to help our students bridge the gap between where they are and where they need to be in order to be able to follow along in a general ed classroom, at a general ed pace and in that kind of environment.

         In order to push our kids up to that level, we may have to enfold them in a Special Day Class or separate classroom environment for some or all subjects for a period of time.  In the best of all possible worlds, this would take place in the elementary school level, and by middle school, the vast majority of  kids with IEPs  who had spent time in a Special Day Class would be out in the general school population for most classes. 

How quickly depends on the child and on us

         How quickly we can bring kids up to the appropriate skill levels depends on each child’s areas of need and strength, and the level of rigor we infuse into our classrooms.  A demanding classroom will firmly and lovingly raise students who use their brains like a muscle in a gym, stretching, pressing, and moving from strength to strength.

I’ve had students arrive from other schools or lower grade Special Day Classes who lack the ability to do independent work, who have become so dependent on the assistance of aides and teachers that they are unable to problem-solve and try out new skills.

I’ve seen special education classrooms which rely on endless series of packets and worksheets, done quietly at student desks, where no questioning takes place and compliance with behavioral rules takes precedence over learning. 

And I’ve worked with many colleagues who become so frustrated with their students’ challenges that they lose sight of what we’re working toward and begin to teach so far below grade level that nobody will ever catch up. 

         None of this is going to move our kids from our classrooms into the general education population with any success.  All of this will perpetuate the deficits our kids arrive with. 

Keep in mind what we want for our students

         If we want kids with in our special education classrooms to move from deficit to ability to competence, we must be relentless in our rigor of instruction, and stand firm in our expectations of learning. 

          We must keep our eye on the ultimate goal, which is that we will shoo our students from our learning nest into the big wide world and watch them fly, fly into their lives as learners.

             Rigor is not the equivalent of harshness.  A demanding classroom is a nurturing environment where students are not expected to learn and function on their own, but where scaffolds and supports are in place and are gradually removed or reduced as mastery takes place. 

          A demanding classroom is one whose staff is attentive to the small signs of growth and need, and adjusts instruction accordingly. 

          A demanding classroom is one where students themselves, at all ages,  work with staff to set reasonable, achievable goal and celebrate success. 

          A demanding classroom is one where the teacher’s motto is “yes, you can, let’s work to find out how…” and where failure is seen as an opportunity to try again. 

          A demanding classroom is one where a student who doesn’t get it just hasn’t been taught it the right way yet – and where the staff is committed to finding the right way for that child. 

           A demanding classroom is one where laughter, curiosity, and determination are reflected in the faces and work of the children, and where academic behavior is as important as social behavior.

When we demand of our students…

           When we demand excellence of our students and fail to show them how to achieve it, we are not providing rigorous instruction.

           When we demand competency from our students and don’t support them in their learning, we are not providing rigorous instruction.

          When we require compliance from our students without understanding and ownership, we are not providing rigorous instruction.

           And when we reduce expectations to accommodate learning deficits, we are certainly not exhibiting any rigor at all in our own work.

 If we want our students to be able to do general education work in a general education classroom, we have to teach general education skills, not special education habits.

          We must demand of our own instruction and planning the same thing our colleagues in the general education classroom demand of themselves and their students.  To do less is to abdicate from the position as teacher.

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 By Sara Finegan

          By far the most common deficits we see in the special ed classroom are problems with reading.  The vast majority of our students do not read close to grade level, and this impairs their ability to make progress in the general education curriculum independently. 

           Reading skills have very little to do with intelligence and everything to do with the way the brain perceives the task.  I have had more than one student classified as GATE (Gifted and Talented)  in the fifth or sixth grade, who reads at the first grade level. 

          The problem with reading deficits is not only how they pervade all aspects of the curriculum but that they discourage most kids from doing the work that will improve the skills:  reading.    Most of the kids who don’t read well also don’t read.  At least, not until they get to a demanding classroom.

          And why should they?  It’s exhausting, halting, stuttering, discouraging, boring, and one never ceases to be reminded that one doesn’t do it well. 

          There are a gazillion programs out there which purport to (and often do!) improve students’ ability to read.  There are books and books, articles and more articles about interventions and strategies that work.   I particularly enjoy attending workshops and other professional development opportunities dealing with reading instruction.  I collect as much information and as many ideas as I can, and use them in a myriad of ways to support reading in the classroom. 

Types of reading skill

          Reading skills can be boiled to several types, and it’s important that we address all of them, with rigor, in the demanding classroom.  They are as follows:

1.   Decoding 

         Obviously, phonemic awareness and the understanding of the sounds the letters make and how they become words is important.  Our students need to be aware of the long and short vowel sounds, blends, and other aspects of the decoding process.  It’s the cornerstone of the mechanics of reading, after all.   

           Or is it?  I’m not so sure.  Certainly, it’s an important skill to have.  But how often do good readers decode words, really?  I paid attention to my own reading for a week, and I only decoded once – and it was a latin word.  What I mostly did was…

             …recognize words.  Which brings me to the next type of reading mechanics:

2.   Sight words.

         Turns out that in my reading, I mostly scan over the text and recognize each of the words.  I don’t sound them out, even the big words, because I know them already as soon as I see them.  Most people I know who are good readers do the same thing. 

          It also turns out that our students, the ones with profound reading deficits, don’t recognize most words.  Sometimes it’s because of visual processing slowness, or because of visual memory issues.  Sometimes it’s because they don’t see a lot of words very often.  After all, if you  never read, dreaded reading, you wouldn’t know many words. 

         Whatever the reason for a low bank of sight words in ones brain, this must be addressed, intensively, consistently, and with the student involved in setting measurable goals. 

           This year, each of my 5th and 6th grade students has decided that they want to increase their sight word vocabulary by 15 words a week, which translates to about 60 words per month, or 600 for the whole school year. 

           I get to pick the words.  And I don’t pick easy ones – the one-syllable, simple words that occur most frequently will be picked up automatically as we increase our reading stamina and practice fluency.  I pick the two and three-syllable words that trip kids up.  I’ll post October’s list somewhere in here, I promise. 

           Every child gets sight words flashcards to carry around from home to school and back, and they are assiduous in practicing with each other daily while I’m taking roll or collecting papers.  They got their parents involved by asking them to sign a “reading helper” contract – so now, parents or siblings work with them at home.  This is not as easy as it sounds:  some of my students come from families where English is not spoken in the home or where the parents aren’t literate.  This is where older and younger siblings, cousins, and neighbors help out.  Somehow or another, every one of my students mastered 80 words between September 8 and October 1.  EIGHTY!  

          Confidence increases exponentially when kids can recognize words, especially the hard words that always made them stumble, crash and burn in previous reading projects.  You can bet that the kids are more eager to read independently now.

3.   Reading fluency.

          Fluency is the ability to read quickly and smoothly, with inflection, not stumbling over too many words (we all do when we read out loud, at least occasionally), infusing drama into the voice. 

          Most kids with reading deficits don’t have the voice in their heads telling them the story as they read.  They read like robots, one word at a time, staccato.  There’s no feeling, no expression, and certainly not a lot of attention to what’s going on in the text – the kids are too busy just dealing with the mechanics of reading.

         Until and unless we work with them on reading fluency, they aren’t going to hear that voice in their heads (the healthy kind!).  They aren’t going to enjoy reading, and they aren’t going to have the strength and stamina to figure out much of what is going on in the story.

         My favorite reading fluency program is Read Naturally, which I think has been around forever, or at least a long time.  And no, I don’t get paid to write about it.  Read Naturally is a series of stories on tape and on paper, which kids listen to and read out loud over and over and over again, practicing speed and inflection.  There’s a timed component to it that many teachers use to help kids build their speed of reading, but I never have managed to do much with it, and I don’t actually use the tapes very much either.  It’s the one-page human interest stories that  we focus on.

          Read Naturally text goes from primer to the higher-grade levels of reading, moving up by half-grade levels.   The stories start out with a larger font, shorter text, and move into smaller font, more complex sentences, and longer paragraphs gradually through the levels.  It seems to progress at just the right measure for kids.

          This year, my kids all set a fluency goal as well, which is related to their ability to decode and recognize words, of course.  They aimed high – they all want to be reading at grade level by the end of the year.  This is certainly doable if we are talking about decoding and fluency –if the kids do the work consistently. 

          So far, they’re all on track with their goals to increase by a half-grade level in fluency every six weeks.  I  have advised them that the higher the level, the more difficult each text will be to practice and master fluently, and that we may need to tweak how often we work at it – but I have not said anything about adjusting their goals or expectations.

           This is the first year we have all tackled fluency with such rigor, and it’s because last year, one of my students jumped from a first grade reading level to the fifth grade in a matter of months by using Read Naturally every day at home and school.  This inspired his friends, and now they’re all gung-ho.  They eagerly ask to read to me every morning, and are mastering between two and three stories per week so far.    The amount of work they are putting in at school and at home means they are increasing something else, which leads me to the fourth leg on the stool we call reading technique…

 4.   Reading stamina.

         Reading stamina is the ability to read for long periods of time with focus and purpose.  Avid readers like me can read all day, even taking our books to the bathroom or holding them while we cook dinner.  Students with reading deficits are often lucky to be able to read for five minutes at a time.  Last year, my student David, who has both ADHD and autism, lasted 11 SECONDS at a time with text at the primer level.  I still dream about that.

          I have not, I confess, spent a lot of time working on stamina as an isolated skill.  I get caught up in some of the more engaging aspects of reading instruction – and by that I mean activities in which I get to engage with my students.  Stamina is something that one develops solo.  And I find that it increases exponentially as students develop the technical and cognitive skills to read and understand. 

          These days, David reads for about 12 minutes at a time.   With a third grade text.  He will be moving up to level 3.5 next week.

Turn that rickety stool into an armchair.

          Reading is a skill that we all rely on in life.  For some, it’s an unwieldy and rickety stool that’s missing a leg and whose seat comes unscrewed every few days.  For others, it’s a cushy, comfy armchair in whose depths we can sink and disappear into worlds and characters without limit.  The one thing we all have in common is that we need something to rest our butts on, and legs to hold us up. 

         In a demanding classroom, reading instruction is precisely-customized to individual student needs, and most of the time is devoted to practicing.  In a demanding classroom, students participate in setting goals and measuring progress.

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         Much of the work I do in helping my students to read can be found at http://www.readerswithautism.com/.  Don’t let the title of the blog mislead you:  the comprehension interventions I’ve designed and discovered work with almost all students with mild-moderate learning disabilities, and can be customized to accommodate all sorts of learning needs.  

            Our Readers with Autism blog focuses primarily on the work we do in my classroom to support comprehension in reading fiction. 

            But that, of course, is not the sum total of reading instruction required to bring our kids to grade level.  From time to time, I will share ideas and instructional units and strategies that can be found in the most demanding classrooms.  I invite you to share your ideas and practices too, so that we can all become better at what we do.

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By Sara Finegan

           When I first started teaching, I thought that the school’s Speech /Language Pathologist was pulling kids out of the classroom once or twice a week to work on things like stuttering, lisps, and other impediments.  It was several years before I caught on to the fact that more and more kids these days, both in and out of special education, have expressive and receptive language deficits, which is quite different from my initial perceptions.

            That was back when I had no idea what the different types of learning disabilities were.  (Isn’t it odd that in the entire body of coursework we follow to get certificated in special education, most of us are never explicitly taught what each of the disabilities are?  When was the last time you discussed the nature of “Specific Learning Disability” or “Non-verbal Learning Disorder,” or “auditory memory weaknesses”?  It’s the weirdest thing, and one that if we’re smart, we’ll address on our own by doing simple research and talking to our Speech/Language and Psychology experts.) 

Language deficits defined 

            Expressive language deficits mean that a child experiences difficulty retrieving and using the words and grammar necessary to convey ideas.  Receptive language deficits means that a child struggles to understand language, the meaning of words, and the intent of the speaker.

            I have a theory about these deficits; that they involve both biological and sociological factors.   Hear me out.

             Think about the generation we’re working with.  Both parents generally work at least one job, sometimes two.  In-depth conversations, where adults model interactive communication and their thinking processes as they address world and family issues, conflict, and decision-making, tend to be less frequent and often non-existent when the family schedule is filled with activities, work, and time constraints.  What passes for conversation in many of our homes is really just direction-giving and reporting-out:

• “Put the eggs in the fridge and watch your brother.”
• “Get dressed.  You don’t want to be late for school.  I don’t have time to drive you.”
•  “You pick up Timmy today, right?  I have to work late.”

            For kids who already have difficulty with language, this is not a scenario designed to support improvement.  Kids don’t have much opportunity to talk and be engaged in discussions.  Parents don’t have time to think aloud or model how they think about what they do, read, or see on TV.    As a result, an area of need quickly becomes and remains a weakness which impairs not just communication, but learning.

             These deficits are rather unobtrusive and you won’t notice them right away, often not until it’s time for a child to talk or write about what s/he is learning.  Even then, if you accept language like “he got some stuff at the store” instead of “while he was at the store, he bought three oranges and a can of tomato sauce”, you’re not going to be pay much attention to it.

            And there’s the key:  Too many of us accept vague language and do not demand specificity and the use of powerful vocabulary, because we either don’t realize what’s going on, or don’t have time to figure out how to change things, or figure that expressive and/or receptive language deficits are something the Speech Pathologist is going to handle. 

Demand specific and powerful vocabulary 

            In a demanding classroom, specific vocabulary is taught and used, word choice is emphasized, and instruction provides daily opportunities to talk meaningfully and practice expressing and understanding one another in every subject area. 

            I’ll be writing about some things that have worked in my classroom.  I want to hear what you do as well.  It’s good to have a library of terrific ideas to pull out and select from each year.

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