Presentation (Transcript)

	The Development of Literacy: As Reading Instruction Begins

		What is reading? In order to be able to teach people how to read, you first need to understand what reading is and how people learn to read. So, what is reading? One theory, called the Simple View of Reading, describes reading as the product of decoding, which is translating sequences of letters into words, and comprehension, which is understanding what is read (see Gough & Tumner, 1986). While being able to decode words automatically will not ensure comprehension, without automatic decoding, comprehension is extremely difficult.

		Take a moment to read the passage on your screen. "Proteins and Phospholipid Measurements To normalize for variations in the number of cells extracted, the data from scintillation counting densitometry may be normalized to protein or phospholipid content" (Bilderback, Hoffman, & Debrowsky, 1999, p. 239). While you may have been able to recognize most of the words automatically, you probably had to slow down to figure out a few words and even then may have been unsure how to pronounce them. There are 28 words in that passage. You may not be familiar with the meanings of three of the words, one of which was used twice. Even though you understand 24 of the 28 words, or 86 percent of the words, do you understand what the sentence means after one reading? Can you explain it to someone else? Unless you're going to be measuring the lipid molecule ceramide, it's not really important that you understand what that sentence means. However, the sentence can help you understand that reading is more than just saying the words. It's not really reading unless there is comprehension.

		You should have learned two other things from reading that sentence. The first is that slowing down to decode or sound out words makes it harder to remember the rest of the sentence. Also, not having the necessary vocabulary and background knowledge makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to understand what you are reading even if you recognize most of the words and can sound out the rest. Good reading comprehension requires automatic word recognition as well as the relevant vocabulary and background knowledge, which includes understanding language usage. Comprehension also requires having and using a repertoire of strategies to interpret and understand what you read. You use reading comprehension strategies all the time. After determining your purpose for reading, you use different sets of strategies for different types of reading. A strategy for pleasure reading would be different from one for studying for a test or for gaining information. You monitor your understanding of what you are reading; if you don't understand something, you probably go back and re-read it. You ask yourself questions. You make predictions. You think about what you are reading in relation to what you already know. And, you summarize what you've learned. So, we can say that good reading comprehension requires recognizing words at a nearly automatic rate, having relevant vocabulary and background knowledge, and using comprehension strategies to interpret and understand what is read. In order to teach students to read, you need to offer a rich, balanced literacy program that addresses both the decoding and the reading comprehension processes (see Pressley, 1998 for a discussion). The focus of this lesson is on how to develop these types of beginning reading programs. To teach students to read and write, you need to begin by understanding what they already know about these processes. Beginning readers come to school with a wide range of experiences and knowledge about the reading and writing processes so you will need to provide a program that is sensitive to the types of experiences and challenges your students have had. You will need to provide your students with many different types of opportunities to listen, discuss, read, and write while simultaneously providing the types of explicit, systematic instruction to enable them to begin to read and spell words.

		In this lesson you will learn about factors that can influence early literacy development before formal reading instruction begins and how you can take these factors into consideration as you conceptualize and develop a balanced literacy program. We will discuss how to create classrooms that foster literacy development for children who come to school with limited preschool literacy and how to supplement basal reading programs for children with learning disabilities. We will also discuss the characteristics of effective reading intervention programs. Finally, we will provide a brief review of this lesson and a preview of the next lesson.

		At the end of this lesson you should be able to: Explain emergent literacy. Explain how early childhood experiences can influence literacy development. Describe what you would hear and see in a rich, balanced literacy program and how you would create one. Describe the overlapping word recognition phases (logographic, transitional-alphabetic, alphabetic, and orthographic). Identify how basal reading programs might be supplemented to help students with reading disabilities, and Describe the key characteristics of effective intervention programs.

		Let's talk about how people become literate.

		Literacy Development How did you become a literate person? You may recall experiences from your first years of schooling, or maybe you remember favorite books or rhyming songs, but you probably don't remember most of the important experiences that led up to the development of your ability to read and write. The experiences that enabled you to learn to read started years before you knew what school was, while you were still an infant. As an infant and toddler, you began to learn about language as you watched and listened to your parents, siblings, and other adults. You learned from watching them and listening to them speak to you and to others. Your first attempts at communicating with others were probably quite effective as you cried, babbled, and gestured to make your thoughts and needs known. Over time, your babbling became more word-like as you began to imitate the words you heard. Your parents probably were delighted and encouraged your efforts.

		As you explored your world by crawling and then walking, your family encouraged your attempts at learning the language by naming and describing objects you encountered in your environment. Your parents probably talked to you about your daily routines such as bath time, meal times, and of course, bedtime. Maybe you had some favorite bedtime stories or books that you wanted your parents to read to you again and again. As your language abilities increased and you interacted with your family and your playmates, you discovered that you could express your ideas, needs, and wants in a lot of different ways. It was probably during this time that you learned that some methods of communication are more socially acceptable than others.

		As you entered school, you began to think about language differently. You learned that the sounds in words can be represented by letters, and letters can be combined to form written words. Written words, your own and others, became powerful! You learned about the richness of language as your reading swept you off to faraway places and times. Some stories moved you, while others tickled your imagination or aroused your curiosity. You found that you could learn things from books that you couldn't learn elsewhere. Your horizons were expanded because you could read. You also learned that you could communicate your own ideas through writing and discussion. It was all of these experiences with different forms of spoken and written language that enabled you to become the literate person you are today. Your literacy continues to develop as you learn new vocabulary and new forms of communication such as those being developed as a result of the World Wide Web.

		So what is literacy? Literacy is defined many different ways. The definition we will use here is that literacy is the ability to read and write in ways that enable communication, enhance understanding of ideas, and enrich lives.

		So how does one develop literacy? The process of developing literacy is very different for every person. Literacy development is the result of the combination of an individual's developmental processes, and life experiences. Individuals with little exposure to language-rich experiences, who have developmental delays, or a disability that affects their ability to learn, have greater challenges learning to read and write.

		Emergent Literacy The earliest stage of literacy development is called emergent literacy (Sulzby, 1991). Emergent literacy is the developmental process of literacy acquisition generally lasting from birth until children begin to use letter-sound associations to sound out words. During the emergent literacy stage, children learn two major things. They learn to understand and use oral language, which is the foundation for understanding written language (Snow, 1991), and they learn about the functions of print. Let's take a look at those two different areas of learning.

		A child's oral language development is influenced by many factors. It can be influenced by the child' s own innate cognitive abilities as well as the rate of a child's development. It can also be influenced by the presence of sensory impairments, such as blindness or hearing loss, and a child's health, including prenatal care, the frequency of ear infections, and any major illnesses or allergies. While many of these factors cannot be controlled, the one factor that can be controlled is the type and quality of experiences that a child has with language.

		Good language development occurs when children have multiple opportunities to hear and use language in safe supportive contexts (Bates, O'Connell, & Shore, 1987). Children's experiences with language are a result of cultural traditions and values, community support, and family characteristics (see Gunn, Simmons, & Kameenui, 1995). For example, on the global level, in some cultures in the world, literacy is valued more highly in males than it is in females. In fact, in some countries, girls aren't even allowed to go to school. At a more local level, the community expectations and the level of support for preschoolers and their parents also influence children's emergent literacy. Some communities support children's literacy by providing story hours at the public library; others have programs in which parents are coached on how to help their children develop strong language skills. At the family level, it's the family characteristics that most influence children's literacy development. Regardless of family income, children are well prepared for reading instruction when they enter school if they have grown up in homes in which literacy is nurtured and education is valued. In these homes, children are engaged in conversations with their parents, are frequently read to, and are exposed to cultural events. (See Gunn, Simmons, & Kameenui, 1995.) Although there certainly are families with low incomes in which literacy is nurtured, poverty is often associated with low levels of literacy.

		In a recent study, it was found that children from families with middle-to-high incomes experienced 4 million verbal utterances per year. In contrast, children in families with low incomes were exposed to only two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand utterances in a year (Hart & Risley, 1995). The differences can be vast. In homes with low incomes, children at the age of five will have experienced approximately one-and-a quarter-million utterances; five-year-old children from higher income homes will have experienced approximately 20 million utterances. While exposure to television and movies can also influence a child's language development, it is the interactive nature of conversations that provides the types of language development that lead to good oral language comprehension and usage. The richer the language and vocabulary that children are exposed to, the richer their own language usage becomes and, once they begin decoding words, the better they will be at comprehending what they read.

		Children come to school with very different life experiences. Some children will have had a great deal of exposure to rich vocabulary and language usage through exposure to books, stories, songs, nursery rhymes and conversations. Other children may not have had experiences with stories and books. Some children will come to school with greater world knowledge and are familiar with different cities, museums, zoos, forests, or farms. A few children, even those who live short distances from a zoo, an ocean, or the mountains, may never have been to these places. Still other children may experience the world through disabilities that shape how their language develops and their literacy emerges. Children come to school with different vocabularies and world knowledge, both of which will affect their reading comprehension. When these individuals become your students, you must be able to develop a reading program that is sensitive to their unique vocabularies and types of life experiences. You must provide the types of literacy experiences they may have missed, provide opportunities for them to develop their vocabularies and background knowledge, and provide the types of activities that will help students begin to decode words and understand what they read.

		For individuals with disabilities, or for those who are not or have not been exposed to print, emergent literacy can take place at any age, even through adulthood. In fact, for many individuals, the activities that are typically associated with emergent literacy development, such as being read aloud to, continue to be important well beyond the preschool years. Being read to can nurture background knowledge and vocabulary development, and sets an example for reading processes, including phrasing and expression. Activities that promote emerging literacy should continue until the individual makes the transition from learning to read to reading to learn. The curriculum in elementary school usually demands that students make this transition by fourth grade when mastery of specific core content areas becomes important.

		During the emergent literacy phase, children are also learning about the functions of print. They are watching and learning about all of the different ways that adults use their reading skills. They see how to handle books, magazines and newspapers. They learn how to hold books and how to turn the pages. And, they begin to understand that symbols can be used to represent spoken words and ideas. The Logographic Phase of Development The recognition of the purpose of symbols happens during the logographic phase of development, which usually begins about the age of two (Dickinson & Snow, 1987). During this phase, associations between printed symbols and words are based on visual cues. For instance, a child might begin to associate the golden arches with McDonald's(TM) and Happy Meals (TM). Or a child might recognize the word 'Pizza' when it's in large red letters on a pizza box. Children in the logographic phase would not be able to recognize these same words when typed on a page. Even though children may be learning the names and shapes of letters during this phase, they do not understand that the letters represent the sounds in words. While they may remember a few words by their distinctive shapes, individuals in the logographic phase don't have a method for sounding out unknown words.

		Young children in this stage, who have had experience with books, might pick up a favorite story book and pretend that they can read. As they carefully turn each page, they scrutinize the pictures to remember the sequence of events. Then they provide their own version of the story using the same excited or scary expressions they have come to love seeing and hearing their parents use. To a child in the emergent literacy stage, this is reading. Children in this phase may practice writing as well. They may string together a combination of letters and numbers or make up their own personal scribble writing. Because individual letters have little meaning during this phase, some people don't consider this to be a part of decoding development. During this phase, children from literacy-rich homes also begin to be able to think about words as sequences of sounds as they notice the similarities and differences between the sounds in words. They often play with words and take time to think of lots of words that start with the same sounds or that rhyme. Songs and nursery rhymes are memorized and joyfully repeated over and over.

		The Transitional-alphabetic Phase of Reading Development Some reading experts believe that the first phase of decoding development is the transitional-alphabetic phase or the phonetic cue reading stage. (See Ehri, 1991 for a discussion.) This phase often begins around the age of three or four when children begin to recognize letters and use letter names and some letter sounds for recognizing words. Often only the first and last letters in a word are considered, so this is not yet true reading. For instance, a child could see the word 'jail' and, by simply saying the names of the first and last letters, she would end up saying the word ' jail' (Ehri, 1991). This isn't a very effective way of reading words. Too many words share the same beginning and ending letters to enable accurate word recognition. A child in this stage would probably have a difficult time telling the difference between the words 'cat', 'cot' and 'cut'. You might see a little girl in this phase opening a picture book, pointing to the words, and trying to figure out what the picture labels say based on the first letters of the words. Those actions would show us that she already knows a lot about the reading process. She just hasn't figured out a way to approach unknown words.

		Alphabetic Decoding and Orthographic Knowledge for Word Recognition Once readers recognize that the letters in written words represent the sounds in spoken words, they have come to understand the alphabetic principle. Understanding the alphabetic principle gives the reader a relatively effective way of being able to approach unknown words and is the beginning of true reading. There is some disagreement about how this stage should be described, so let's talk about what the reader actually does. When readers encounter a new word, whether they are beginning readers or mature readers, they slow down, look for familiar letter patterns, and translate the written word into its spoken equivalent. Beginning readers, who are not familiar with very many letter patterns, most often use a sequential decoding strategy in which they look at each letter from left to right as they translate the letters into their spoken equivalents and sound out the word. Each time readers encounter a word they have already decoded, the process of recognizing the word becomes faster until the word is recognized at an automatic rate. For instance, a beginning reader may see the letters 's' 'a' 't' and sound them out, \|ssss\|aaaa\|t\|, to arrive at the word 'sat'. After seeing this word a few more times, the reader may begin to recognize the word 'sat' as soon as he sees it, without having to sound it out.

		You probably experienced a similar process at the beginning of this lesson when you read the word 'phospholipid'. When you read this word for the first time, you looked for the largest recognizable parts. You probably recognized the 'phos' as one chunk 'pho' as another chunk, and 'lipid' as the final chunk of the word. You then linked them together to make the word 'phospholipid'. If you were to see this word another three or four times, you might come to recognize the whole word automatically. Recognizing specific sequences of letters as whole words, without having to sound them out, is called orthographic knowledge.

		The word "orthographic" refers to the correct sequence of letters within words. When readers use their orthographic knowledge to automatically recognize specific sequences of letters, they can read words much faster because they don't have to sound them out letter by letter. As teachers of reading, our goal is to have students use orthographic knowledge for reading. However, students first need to learn the regularity of how letters represent sounds in words and to sound out words sequentially. With sufficient practice, students will actually begin to teach themselves to automatically recognize larger word parts and whole words (Share, 1995; Share & Stanovich, 1995). This process is called developing automaticity which is the ability to read words with no noticeable effort. When people are able to read words automatically, they can then devote their attention to understanding what they are reading. Automaticity can be likened to a skilled driver who does not have to think about each action like shifting gears or operating turn signals, but does each action with a fluid motion, allowing conscious thought to be focused on the more immediate problems of navigating the roadways. In the case of reading, automatic recognition of letter patterns in words allows the reader to focus conscious effort on the more complex task of comprehension.

		While the ultimate goal is for readers to be able to use orthographic knowledge to decode most words, beginning readers first need to understand the relationship between printed letters and the sounds in words. They then need to learn to decode words sequentially by sounding them out before they can develop the speed of recognition that will enable good reading comprehension (Ehri & Robbins, 1992). You will be learning how to teach these two aspects of reading development in the following lessons in this module.

		Now that you have a basic understanding of the phases that people go through to learn to recognize words, let's talk about what teachers can do to foster literacy development in beginning readers.

		Preventing Reading Difficulties Before Kindergarten Begins Teachers can make a great deal of difference in students' successes in learning to read by promoting early literacy experiences both within and outside the school environment. While teachers can shape such experiences within their classroom, they can also support effective literacy programs within their communities. Parents and community members will look to teachers for advice about programs and activities that have been shown to promote emerging literacy. Through community literacy programs, parents can develop their own knowledge about how literacy develops, and they can learn how to expand upon their children's language development using a variety of pre-reading activities including reading frequently to their children. As is often the case in communities today, early childhood education and adult education are integrated through family literacy efforts. Programs like the federally-funded Even Start Program offer parents the opportunity to further develop their basic skills or to earn a high school equivalency diploma while their young children are cared for in a nursery school environment. Parents also participate in parent education programs and receive home visits to help them develop good parenting skills and promote literacy. These and other community programs need to be sensitive to the family's primary language and culture. In addition, prenatal, perinatal, and postnatal services, developed by hospitals, clinics and community centers, should be included in community programs to ensure the healthy development of the child.

		Early identification programs to screen children for sensory impairments, language impairments, and developmental delays are also extremely important. For children who are identified as being at risk for reading problems, literacy-based early childhood experiences and interventions should be readily available. Professionals who are involved with the early identification and screening programs should provide parents with comprehensive lists of the resources within the community that will address the needs of children identified as being at risk. Oftentimes, children who have been identified as having sensory impairments, language or developmental delays will be referred to the local school district for early intervention services. Any intervention services should be continuously evaluated to ensure that the child's needs are being met as they change (Committee on the Prevention of Reading Difficulties in Young Children, 1998). All these efforts enable children to do their best once they enter kindergarten.

		One would hope that every child entering school would have good health care, a fine literacy background, and would come to school ready to develop formal reading skills. As a teacher, you may be asked what children should be able to do to be considered "ready" for school and what literacy skills a child should have upon entering school for the first time. The developmental accomplishments list that you printed out with the handouts from the preview section of this lesson identifies some of the milestones of normal literacy development. This list may also help you provide guidance to preschool literacy programs and may alert you to the types of literacy experiences that you may need to provide in your classroom.

		Kindergarten: The First Formal Literacy Experience Entering kindergarten is a major step in a young child's life. It should continue the expansion of a child's literacy horizons. Kindergarten should be an exciting bridge between early literacy experiences and more formal schooling. Marlene and Robert McCracken (1982) give us a wonderful description of the context in which instructional activities should be provided: Kindergarten children need to be filled with language, the totality of language. They need to hear the fine language of good literature, they need to hear standard speech patterns and begin to use those patterns to describe their understanding of the world. They need to be filled with the various story patterns of the English language, to retell these stories in their own words, to dramatize their understanding of these stories and to illustrate them in many different ways. Kindergarten children need to sing and chant every day. They need to HEAR language, SEE language, and USE language. We believe that a child comes to the act of reading with much more joy, ease, and success when the teacher has spent his kindergarten time filling him with language and allowing or encouraging him to use that language in as many ways as possible (p. 9). From this description, we get a vivid, but general, picture of a lively and language-filled kindergarten. If we were to be able to zoom into this picture, what would we see on the walls and in the nooks and crannies?

		Seeing Language Used in the Kindergarten The teacher has created a classroom environment that celebrates literacy. In one corner, filled with comfortable cushions, we see a class library with a variety of books and materials - big books, chart poems, patterned and predictable books. Large letters of the alphabet are stretched across one wall. Colored yarn connects each letter with pictures of animals and everyday items that begin with that letter. Large labels show the written names of the objects in the room. A colorful display shows off her students' illustrations, stories, and poems. In a corner we see a box of costumes for plays. There is a well-used puppet stage made out of painted cardboard boxes and decorated with favorite storybook characters. Puppets are being made on a project table nearby and will be part of a presentation for parents about the different stories the children are reading in class. This is what a literacy-rich kindergarten environment looks like. What would this classroom sound like? What would we hear?

		Hearing Language Used in the Kindergarten During a week-long visit to this same classroom we would hear the teacher helping her students develop an awareness of language and an appreciation for the written word. She does this by reading frequently to and with her students. She reads from a rich variety of genres, storybooks, poems, newspapers, and informational material. She helps her students reflect on language by defining new words and concepts (Dickinson and Snow, 1987) and talking about the different ways that language is used. As she reads the big books, she points to each word, as another way to help her students understand what printed words are and that they represent spoken words. Students are encouraged to "read" to themselves. Although they can't yet read very many words, her students pretend they are reading by turning the pages and retelling the stories in their own words. In this classroom, they play with the sounds in words, the syllables and the phonemes. The teacher emphasizes these components by reading nursery rhymes and poetry. Rhyming and alliteration games lead to discussions about the sound structures of words (Griffith & Olson, 1992). We might hear children singing the alphabet song as the teacher points to the letters. They will talk about the associated sounds, the relationship of the letters to the pictures below them, and the words the pictures represent. During a practice for the program for parents, we will hear students express themselves through stories they have read and written.

		In addition, teachers should emphasize "story understanding" (Dickinson, Temple, Hirschler, & Smith, 1992). So, over the weeks and months, as the children in this kindergarten mature, the teacher makes sure they understand that using language helps them learn new words, new language patterns, and new thoughts. The children are encouraged to think about how reading helps them learn. They talk about stories and retell them to each other. They sometimes act out favorite stories or dramatize favorite parts with puppets. They are immersed in gaining "story understanding," learning about the typical components of a story and developing a set of expectations about how stories unfold. Teaching Story Understanding How do you teach story understanding? Try to visualize the kindergarten class we have been talking about and watch as the teacher and the children interact. The teacher always makes certain that each child can see the book being read whether she is reading to all of the children or just a small group. She reads with expression and encourages active involvement in understanding the story. As she reads the stories she models her own thinking as she asks herself questions about the story and tries to find the answers. She encourages the children to reflect on the story, to analyze and speculate. She challenges her students to think deeply about the stories. She asks them to make predictions about the story and to explain the reasons for their predictions. She helps them confirm or make new predictions. She also helps her students link different stories with each other and also to their own experiences.

		She incorporates books into the different subject areas, thereby providing continuous exposure to and discussion about new vocabulary words and concepts. She makes sure that she varies the type and challenge level of the books. She discusses story structures and includes stories with complex plot lines. She facilitates group discussions by listening to children's comments and questions and encourages them to listen to and respond to each other's comments. She has students practice re-telling stories. She encourages parental reinforcement at home and has parents reread books read in class. She provides models and ideas for parent-child discussions about books and gives parents a handout that explains some of the characteristics of good story reading.

		Basal Reading Programs in Kindergarten Surrounding kindergartners with literacy is not enough; they also need systematic instruction to be able to learn to read. A well-designed basal reading program can be a valuable tool for helping teachers develop an overall reading program. It can provide a developmental structure to guide instruction and monitor progress. However, because many basal reading series fail to promote reading success for all learners, teachers must supplement with additional literacy-rich experiences like the ones we just talked about. To meet the needs of students at risk for or who have reading disabilities, most basal series also need to be supplemented with much stronger and systematic instruction in phonological awareness (Simmons & Kameenui, 1995). You will be learning how to provide that type of instruction from the other lessons in this module.

		Creating Readers: The First Grade Reading Experience Students who have had the types of kindergarten experiences that were just described should be well prepared for first grade. And, by the end of first grade, students should be reading. Based on an extensive review of the research on reading development, The Committee on the Prevention of Reading Difficulties in Young Children (1998) has identified activities that should characterize strong first grade reading programs. First-grade reading programs should build on kindergarten activities by emphasizing more challenging levels of phonological awareness activities and language games. Students should be encouraged to use invented spelling in their writing. Teachers should continue to read a variety of genres aloud to students and provide explicit instruction in reading comprehension strategies to monitor comprehension, summarize main ideas, predict events, and draw inferences.

		In addition, students should have daily opportunities to receive explicit instruction in word reading and spelling. Once students learn to read and spell specific words, they should receive support in reading these words in meaningful sentences and stories that are written at the students' instructional reading level. Students should have frequent opportunities to write for a variety of purposes. By encouraging students to use a combination of standard spelling and invented spelling, students are more willing to express their ideas more freely rather than be constrained by having to spell each word correctly. Invented spelling also helps students learn to pay more attention to the sounds in words and the letter patterns in the words they learn to read.

		A student's instructional reading level is the level at which the material is written so that the student is able to read 95% of the words accurately and understand at least 75% of the material. When a student is trying to read material written at his instructional reading level, he will still need the help of the teacher or para-professional to be able to understand almost all of what he reads. A student can be expected to independently read and learn from materials that are written at his independent reading level. The student's independent reading level is the level at which he is able to read 99% of the words accurately. That means that the student should make no more than one mistake in a hundred-word passage and should understand almost all of what is read. Students should have lots of different opportunities to practice reading, such as choral reading, reading with a partner, and reading with a trained peer-tutor, or volunteers. The more students practice reading, the better they become. Frequent practice opportunities enable students to develop their orthographic knowledge, become faster at word recognition, and become more fluent readers as they learn to read passages smoothly. Students should never be expected to read at their frustration level which is the level at which they have less than 95% accuracy in word identification, or less than 75% understanding of the passage. If a student is missing more than one word out of 20, the material probably requires her to use skills that she has not yet mastered. At the beginning of this lesson you were asked to read a couple of sentences that were probably at your frustration reading level. Even if you could identify all of the words in the passage you probably wouldn't be able to learn how to measure proteins and phospholipids from reading the rest of the passage because you probably don't have the relevant vocabulary and background knowledge. You would need help from someone who is more knowledgeable about the subject. If you were asked to independently read an entire chapter that was written at your frustration level, most likely you would quickly decide that the effort was not worth the gain. The same is true for beginning readers. To ask beginning reading students to read texts written at their frustration reading level will quickly teach them that reading is difficult and unrewarding. Therefore, teachers need to be very careful in selecting the appropriate reading material for their beginning reading students. In recent years, much greater efforts have been made to develop interesting and fun early reading books with controlled vocabularies so even beginning readers can be successful in reading them.

		First Grade and Basal Reading Programs For teaching reading at the first grade level, well-developed and research-informed basal reading programs can provide a valuable developmental structure to guide instructional decisions, just as they can for kindergarten. However, in a 1993 study that examined fifty different basal reading programs, most were found to lack sufficient emphasis on the very reading and writing skills that are the most difficult for students with disabilities (Stein et al., 1993). Most basal programs need to be supplemented with more systematic instruction in phonological awareness and in applying the alphabetic principle to reading and spelling words. You will be learning how to provide this type of instruction in the remaining lessons in this module. First grade and beginning reading teachers also need to provide more opportunities for students to develop accurate and fluent oral reading skills. In recent years, several publishers have tried to incorporate these types of activities in their basal series. Several research-informed reading curriculum guides and basal series that emphasize these areas are listed in the handout in Lesson 4.

		The Second and Third Grade Reading Experience During the second and third grades, students should continue to be surrounded by rich literature as well as other types of reading materials. They should continue to have frequent writing opportunities and begin to use more standardized spellings and writing patterns. Students entering second grade should have a firm understanding of the alphabetic principle, that is, understanding how the sounds in words relate to various letter combinations in printed words. Explicit instruction in reading and spelling increasingly complex word types should continue. Students should be introduced to root words, and learn how prefixes and suffixes can change word meanings. There should be more emphasis on reading continuous texts as students work to increase their accuracy in reading words, and their fluency in reading phrases, sentences, paragraphs, and stories. To accommodate students' skills and interests, reading materials written at various levels of difficulty should be made available. Teachers should continue to be sensitive to students' reading levels by providing support for students when they are reading texts at their instructional levels and by providing alternate means for them to gain information if texts are written at their frustration levels. Reading that is related to the topics and units being studied in the classroom should be provided at a student's instructional reading level. Exploratory and fun reading should be promoted by providing reading material at a student's independent level. With these different levels of support, students can learn to read increasingly sophisticated texts with more complex wording and story structures. So, if students are actively involved in studying the ocean, a variety of books on oceans, written at different levels of reading difficulty, should be available so that each student can find a book that is just right.

		During second and third grade, teachers must build another bridge between the beginning word reading introduced in first grade and the complex reading skills needed for the more demanding reading comprehension expected in fourth grade. Beginning in fourth grade, students will have to begin reading unfamiliar words and terms that are not in their speaking vocabularies. Reading will become centered on content area subjects such as science and social studies. Students will be tested, graded, and given feedback on how much they learned from what they read rather than how well they read it. Students will be given tasks that begin to resemble the types of tasks that they will be given in secondary school such as answering chapter questions and writing reports. Therefore, it is during second and third grade that students must learn the comprehension skills necessary to make a crucial transition, the transition from "learning to read" to "reading to learn."

		In addition to regular reading instruction, students who make slow progress in learning to read within the general education classroom will require interventions that can provide a higher level of support for reading development. Let's spend a few minutes and talk about the characteristics of effective reading interventions.

		Characteristics of Effective Interventions for Students with Reading Disabilities Some interventions for students with reading disabilities are targeted to specific areas and can be used with a student who is having difficulty in one particular area of reading. Others are broader, more comprehensive, and can be used for all students in grades one through three. Regardless of the type of intervention, there are factors which seem to make them more effective than traditional forms of instruction for students with reading disabilities. The Committee for the Prevention of Reading Difficulties in Young Children has identified key factors in, or characteristics of, effective intervention programs (1998). The first characteristic is the integration of the intervention program. All educators who are involved with the students who are receiving the intervention services need to coordinate their efforts to build a solid foundation for reading development. Simply sending a student to another classroom for reading instruction with no regular communication between teachers can confuse the student even more. The most effective reading programs involve teachers at all grade levels working together to implement cohesive, research-based programs to provide the necessary levels of reading support for all their students. Schools with high numbers of students who are at risk for reading difficulties have been shown to be able to halt, and even reverse, the trend by adopting or adapting school-wide programs that have been shown to be effective with students from similar communities (The Committee on Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children, 1998). The second factor is professional development. The school staff needs to be well trained and should receive ongoing support to be able to implement effective programs and utilize materials that are known to benefit students with difficulties in learning to read. The third factor is the allocation of sufficient time for implementation. Sound interventions will take longer to implement. Programs that make a difference with at-risk readers require more time for the teachers to carefully match the interventions to the needs of the students and coordinate the intervention with other literacy activities. The fourth factor is an increase in the amount of time that students are engaged in reading activities. Students who are having difficulty learning to read and write will need more time to master the skills. A common practice has been for teachers to move on to teaching new things when most students have learned a particular skill. Struggling readers were assumed to be able to learn the skills later. That time never comes. These students need to be given the time to learn the skills as they are introduced so they too have the opportunity to build their reading knowledge on a solid foundation.

		The fifth factor is explicit, systematic instruction in reading skills. Students having difficulty learning to read need to be taught specific decoding and comprehension strategies. They need frequent opportunities to practice these skills in reading and rereading connected text. They also need to receive immediate corrective feedback and encouragement. The sixth factor is explicit, systematic instruction in spelling. Spelling and reading are complementary processes. As students learn to pay attention to letter sequences in words for spelling, they also learn to recognize the words more easily for reading. The seventh factor is the use of high quality materials. The choice of student materials can make a great difference. The decision about which materials work best with which students should be based on each student's needs and interests. Students should be working with materials that they can be successful with - materials that are neither too easy nor too difficult. The eighth factor is continuous assessment. Students' progress should be monitored on a daily and weekly basis. In addition to helping guide instructional decisions about what the student needs to work on next, continuous assessment enables teachers to evaluate their own instruction and make changes as necessary. With highly trained teachers of reading, cohesive research-based reading programs, and high quality materials, the number of students who become successful readers will increase.

		Let's do a quick review and a preview of the next lesson.

		The goals for this lesson were for you to be able to explain emergent literacy and how early childhood experiences can influence children's literacy development. You now know that literacy development is affected by each child's own development as well as his or her experiences with language and literacy. You should also be able to describe the overlapping phases of word recognition development including the logographic, transitional-alphabetic, alphabetic, and orthographic phases. You should also be able to describe what you would hear and see in a rich, balanced literacy program, tell how you could create such a program and be able to explain how basal reading programs might be supplemented to help students with reading disabilities. Finally, you should be able to describe the key characteristics of effective intervention programs. In the next lesson, you will be learning about the characteristics of phonemes. This will help you to learn about and be able to provide the type of intensive, explicit instruction in phonological awareness and beginning word reading and spelling that struggling readers require.

Glaeser, B. J., Lenz, B. K., Gildroy, P.G., & McKnight, M. (1999). The development of literacy: As reading instruction begins (Module 1, Lesson 1). In Beginning word reading [Online]. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas, Center for Research on Learning. Available: Onlineacademy.org

Meyen, E. L. The Online Academy: Linking teacher education to advances in research. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning. (Contract No. H029K973002; 1997 -- 2000, U. S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs).

Beginning Word Reading