Putting the “Structure” into Structured Literacy: Part 4
Before you read this piece, please read part 1, part 2, and part 3 of the series.
Editor’s Note: In this piece, Casey lists many the practices he has dropped from his ELA block over the years. You won’t be surprised by some of them. But read on for his rationale for moving away from more popular tools and practices like rhyme instruction and teaching blends.
Some of the things I have dropped over the years include:
Guided Reading
Shifted to focus on skills-based groupings rather than by level and focusing on grade level text instruction for comprehension and writing during the content literacy block
Running Records
Shifted to focus more on oral reading fluency and accuracy in grade level text rather than than using MSV cueing and leveled texts (such as LLI)
The Measured Mom Episode 78 - Should We Use Running Records?
Round Robin Reading
Shifted to focus more on choral and cloze reading to engage, scaffold, and include all readers
Leveled Classroom Library
Shifted to focus on organizing the library by topic instead of level
Small groups for the sake of small groups (more on that later in Blog #2)
Shifted to focus on solid whole group instruction first followed by small group(s) as needed that target a specific skill
Melissa & Lori Love Literacy Episode 142 (featuring me)
Mike Schmoker - How to Make Reading Instruction Efficient (EdWeek)
Worksheet activities such as:
Word Coffins
Word Sorts with little application
Many students figure out quickly that they don’t have to read the words to sort words from the -at and -ap families into two piles. This is mostly a waste of time.
Cut and Paste Activities
I would rather students use these important motor activities to work on an art project rather than spending precious literacy instruction time to cut out cards and pictures. Don’t worry–my students go through plenty of glue!
Rainbow Writing
Center activities that provide little application for reading and writing
Many center activities take a lot of time for teachers to prepare but don’t allow for students to actually read or write. This was a hard shift for me–I still have tubs full of these activities I no longer use but can’t get myself to throw away because of the time and money I put into them. I realize they are ineffective
Center activities with too many manipulatives
Shifted to having students work on one task at a time while the teacher works with a small group instead of rotations. This allows for better management, organization, and lessens the cognitive load for students.
Auditory-only phonemic awareness instruction
Shifted to focus on phonemic awareness instruction utilizing graphemes and focusing on phoneme-grapheme correspondences. This can be done with whiteboards, blending boards, magnetic letters, etc. Some oral-only practice is okay but it should be brief and align with your previous and current skills.
Rhyme Instruction
Some focus on rhyme is important but it is not a precursor to being able to read and spell. The majority of your time should be spent on blending and segmenting. A lot of programs have rhymes as a precursor to reading and writing which can be very challenging for many young learners. Incorporating nursery rhymes or poems into your language block can help students understand the concept of rhyme within a text based approach. When students are writing a word chain you could have them do words from a family such as cat, bat, sat, rat, and mat. Then explain how and why these words rhyme.
Independent Reading (just because you are supposed to)
This time has now shifted to emphasize more practice with decodable text. Students are still able to utilize the classroom library and read/explore books on different topics as well. The shift has moved away from conferring. Many students (k-1) prefer to read their decodable books and explore books on our current topics of instruction (birds, sunlight, weather, etc.)
Daily 5
The Daily 5 was heavily part of balanced literacy as it promotes a lot of time spent and building students’ independence. The components of this structure are reading to self, reading with a partner, listening to reading, word work, and working on writing. The idea is that if students do these tasks each day during the literacy block they will become proficient readers and writers and build independence. Each of the components is not necessarily bad in itself but how they are implemented is a problem. The first problem is that students could be spending 60-75 minutes working on their own (and potentially doing nothing).
Technology
Shifted away from using technology as an intervention tool and mandating a certain amount of minutes or levels be met each week. We even used to place students in intervention groups based on how they were doing on the technology app. These apps should be a way to support your instruction and ideally would be used sparingly.
Letter of the Week
Students can learn the alphabet much quicker and more efficiently than previously done. We also know that students are able to learn letter names and sounds concurrently rather than needing to learn all letter names before learning letter sounds. Students can also begin to encode and decode words after learning just a few sounds rather than waiting to learn the entire alphabet before doing any reading or spelling. My kindergarten class is explicitly taught all letter names and sounds by the eighth week of school.
Measured Mom - Should we teach letter names or sounds first?
Sight Word memorization instruction
Shifted away from disjointed and haphazard sight word instruction. I now focus my time and energy on decoding regularly spelled words, mapping irregularly spelled words (such as using the heart word method) that align to our phonics sequence. Students can then practice these words in their controlled texts while still learning phonics basics (grades k-2).
Memorized Spelling Tests
I never actually did this but it was definitely something we did when I was in school. I have shifted to giving quick (5-10 words) assessments based on our current skill to help plan for whole and small group instruction.
Word Walls
Shifted away from word walls to teach high frequency words to a sound wall approach. Sound walls are beneficial to aid students in writing. We are still learning more about sound walls
Teaching Consonant Blends
In many phonics programs (including my Orton Gillingham training) a lot of time is spent on teaching consonant blends (r-blends, s-blends, etc..) and having students showing mastery of words such as swim, trip, and frog. In reality if we teach students how to blend words (blend is a verb) with the sounds they know we can have students reading longer (4-5 phoneme words) much faster. I used to spend 7-8 weeks of instruction in first grade teaching blends. Since switching to the UFLI program, words with 4-phonemes are introduced early on and then built over time with the phoneme-grapheme correspondences students have been taught. For example if you have taught /t/ /r/ /a/ /p/ then the word “trap” is now accessible.