The earlier, the better

Jennuine Captures Photography | Flickr

The latest National Assessment for Educational Progress scores were released in October, and 4th grade English language learners (ELL) remained more than twice as likely as non-ELL students to score below Basic in reading.

Eighth grade results were similar, but 4th grade represents a critical juncture for ELLs because students who enter kindergarten as ELLs and have not been re-classified by the upper elementary grades become less likely ever to make the transition. This, from a study published recently in Educational Policy that also sheds light on the relevance of primary language in English language acquisition.1 Karen Thompson, an assistant professor at Oregon State University, found that entering kindergarten, proficiency with academic language in the primary language was positively related to the likelihood of reclassification by the end of elementary school.

Of course, experience with academic language in English matters as well. Using nine years of longitudinal data, Thompson found that students with high levels of proficiency in both their primary language and English entering kindergarten were 24% more likely to be reclassified by the end of elementary school as students with low levels in both languages. However, students with similar proficiency in either English or their primary language had "statistically indistinguishable likelihoods of reclassification" by the end of elementary school.

Early academic language proficiency in English facilitated quicker reclassification, but it was having a basic grasp of academic vocabulary itself, not the language, that mattered most in reaching reclassification before the elementary window closes.

This is an important finding because it informs how schools and communities might look at school readiness strategies for families with ELL students. Parents not proficient in English can still be very helpful in preparing their children for the English language acquisition process once school starts.

And the work parents do or don’t do with their children before they enter schools matters a great deal.

Academic language is “school language” and language used in the workplace; the language used in textbooks, essays, assignments, class presentations, and assessments. It's a meta-language that helps learners acquire the 50,000 words they are expected to have internalized by the end of high school. And, it develops with deliberate, diligent, exposure to diverse language experiences…

...early in life...

...like from the very beginning!

While formal education moves this process along, prohibitive gaps among students exist before children ever get to school age. Toddlers living in poverty hear less than a third of the words heard by children from higher-income families. By the age of four, this extrapolates to a 30-million word difference between low and high income children… a prohibitive gap.2

And the economic problem may be getting worse.

By Robert D. Putnam, 2015

In Texas, 60.2% of public school students are economically disadvantaged, 14% higher than 20 years ago. The same is true nationally. In 2007, the south became the first region in which the majority of students were economically disadvantaged and that extended to the nation as a whole by 2015. Furthermore, the achievement gap between children from high and low income families is 30-40% larger among children born in 2001 than 25 years earlier.3  While the achievement gap has been growing within racial groups and actually narrowing somewhat between them, ELL students - a growing percentage of Texas public school students - are more likely to come from low-income homes. Of the 23.7 million people in Texas who are five years of age or older, more than a third speak a language other than English at home. A large majority of those — almost 85 percent — speak Spanish.

Thompson's findings, as she suggests, have implications for the design of instructional interventions for ELL students, how and when ELL students are assessed (including how primary language assessments are used), and the need to expand access to high quality preschool programs (ELL students attend pre-school at a much lower percentage than non-ELLs, nationally).

However, Thompson's study should also be used to look backward from the school starting line.

Parents are the first and most important teachers in a child’s life. They are responsible for virtually all language development before children reach school age. Parent involvement is essential to a successful comprehensive school program, and a comprehensive educational program begins before children reach school age.

Research sheds some light on how to think about this as well. Ultimately, it’s an engagement issue.

Solutions to the challenges facing Hispanic families with potential ELL students lie within the communities themselves, according to researchers who evaluated a comprehensive educational program for Hispanic parents with young children.

A random-assignment study of Abriendo Puertas/Opening Doors, implemented by the Los Angeles Unified School District, published last year by Child Trends found statistically significant positive impacts on reading with children, storytelling and discussion, studying letters, and real-world interaction with language; all important in helping children acquire language.4

Abriendo Puertas/Opening Doors was launched in 2007 as a parenting program dedicated to getting young children ready for school. Today, it reaches 70,000 families in 35 states. Ten interactive sessions draw from real-life experiences, incorporate data about local schools and communities, and focus on helping parents understand their role in their children’s learning life. Also, the program is available to parents in Spanish; important in light of Thompson's findings about the relevance of a family's primary language in English language acquisition.

Across all socio-economic and racial groups, students with more engaged parents do better in school. They are more engaged, have higher grades and test scores, earn more course credits, participate in more advanced academic programs, and are more likely to graduate high school and pursue college.5

Student engagement begins with parent engagement, family engagement, and community engagement. But the engagement has to begin before school does.

1 Thompson, K. (2015). English learners' time to reclassification: An analysis, Educational Policy, published online Aug. 2015, 1-34.
2 Hart, B. & Risley, T. (Spring 2003). The early catastrophe: The 30 million word gap by age 3, American Educator, 4-9.
3 Putnam, R. (2015). Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, New York: Simon & Schuster
4 Moore, K., Caal, S., Rojas, A., Lawner, E., & Walker, K. (2014). Abriendo Puertas/Opening Doors Parenting Program: Summary Report of Program Implementation and Impacts, retrieved online.
5 Tarasawa, B. & Waggoner, J. (2015). Increasing parental involvement of English language learner families: What the research says, Journal of Children and Poverty, 21(1), 129-134. 

In a galaxy not so far away

Phil Ostroff | Flickr

Look it up on Wikipedia (Google entry number one) and you learn that a galaxy is a "massive, gravitationally bound system consisting of stars, stellar remnants, an interstellar medium of gas and dust, and dark matter." French computer scientist Owen Cornec has applied this concept to browsing the World's most famous Internet encyclopedia. Cornec's WikiGalaxy visually transforms Wikipedia, mapping every entry to a star in a virtual, searchable galaxy. It also illustrates the breadth of information published on Wikipedia since its launch 14 years ago. There are currently more than 4.6 million articles in the English language Wikipedia alone.

The social practices combined with the technology that make Wikipedia, and other platforms, possible represent new literacies for which understanding is emerging among researchers. Some argue literacy is context dependent, continually changing as new technologies appear while most recognize the social practices that guide work and learning are changing and evolving with technology. If one considers how rapidly technology is developing (see Moore's Law), literacy is becoming quite a fluid concept.

Professors Michele Knobel and Colin Lankshear summarize new-literacy research findings in the Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy. They frame the research as focused on "ways in which meaning-making practices are evolving under contemporary conditions" along with, and perhaps due to, the expansion and refinement of digital electronics and communications technologies (read Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations).

Knobel and Lankshear distinguish between new and conventional literacies by what they call a different ethos that is emerging through the more integrated social practices made possible by digitization. New literacy practices are more participatory, collaborative, and distributed. Wikipedia has grown into one of the largest reference sites with hundreds of millions of visitors monthly and tens of thousands of contributors working on more than 31 million articles in 285 languages. It's success depends on aggregating knowledge on a massive scale; on the abilities of people to research, evaluate, synthesize, coordinate, disseminate information, and communicate across diverse communities. Examples of platforms where new literacies are emerging include social media sites, like Facebook and Twitter, affinity spaces like the fan fiction site, Kindle Worlds, blogging and micro-blogging platforms, photo curating and sharing sites, mobile applications, digital storytelling and pod-casting media, and online gaming. There are economic implications as well. Peer production platforms are emerging in a variety of sectors, giving rise to new modes of labor, providing new services, and disrupting older services. Online marketplaces like Fiverr and Amazon's Mechanical Turk allow people to hire others to do simple jobs. eBay is a market place for selling almost any type of merchandise. Etsy creates a massive international market for crafts. The computer operating system, Linux, is an open-source software developed by a peer production network, and peer production has also been utilized in producing Open Educational Resources. Knobel and Lankshear say participation in these platforms involves "deep interactivity, openness to feedback, sharing of resources and expertise, and a will to collaborate and provide support that is writ large into myriad contemporary everyday practices."

Young people learn and engage with new literacies in ways that are often not accommodated in schools' instructional methods, according to Knobel and Lankshear. They point to key findings from new-literacy research for educators to consider: Collaboration and peer dialogue are important. Authenticity matters. Learners should be active. Young people value customization. Creativity requires opportunities to make connections across disciplines. Communication, deliberation, and reflection matter. Meta-cognitive awareness, regulation, and experiences are necessary for learning. And exploration is engaging. Student achievement research reflects such findings as well.

However, another line of research might be of equal importance when considering new-literacy practices. As most teachers have experienced, and most of us are intuitively aware, communications technologies can be distracting. Cognitive scientists are studying technology as it relates to executive function, which refers to one's ability to manage and control one's own cognitive processes. While there is no evidence yet to suggest a negative impact on long term executive function, there are studies that show these technologies can have an immediate negative impact on one's cognitive ability to exert self-control and concentrate, both necessary for deep learning. The challenge, then, is to figure out how to leverage the new-literacy platforms for the better. No matter where the research on executive function leads, negative effects on executive function have more to do with how these technologies are used, not simply that we are using them.

What can schools do?

First, don't ignore the problem. Embrace it. Technology isn't exactly rolling back these days. Moore's Law is still playing out. Furthermore, collaboration is the bedrock of innovation. Or so says Walter Isaacson in The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution. In a biographical study of individuals working at the intersection of computing and networking, Isaacon makes the case that innovation most often happens collaboratively, when individuals work together to synthesize disparate insights that had not previously been connected. Isaacson has written about many of America's geniuses, people individually credited with extraordinary accomplishments. People like Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, and Steve Jobs. But all of these people, while perhaps gifted, were collaborators. They were connectors, working across disciplines and invoking the expertise, perspectives, and talents of others to create something that could not have otherwise come about. New literacies and new technologies make this kind of work more possible than ever.

Second, follow the research. In addition to the findings above, Knobel and Lankshear point to something educationists already know: frequent formative assessment and feedback are critical for deep learning. They provide structure and accountability around learning objectives and can also be useful in helping students navigate new platforms for learning and new literacy practices. Video games are well known to integrate frequent assessment and feedback to provide scaffolding for game-players to improve.

Finally, educators themselves must experience and understand what it means to participate in new literacy practices. Only by internalizing the ethos of some of these practices can educators effectively navigate the nuances that distinguish them from conventional literacy practices and facilitate real meaning-making around learning standards, goals, and objectives.

Where to start?

In this post alone I have incorporated Blogger, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, and Google Search. Or how about a Wikipedia entry? Anyone can do it. And... you would have your very own star in the WikiGalaxy!

• Knobel, M., & Lankshear, C. (2014). Studying New Literacies. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 58(2), 97–101. 
• Ossola, A. (2014). Why Kids Won't Quit Technology. The Atlantic. Retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/12/why-kids-wont-quit-tech/383575/

Finding your voice

Recording artist Usher Raymond IV spent last spring helping aspiring singers reach for success on NBC's reality television singing competition, The Voice. In fact, Usher and his protege, Josh Kaufman, won the competition, which for Josh included a large cash prize and a record deal with Universal Music Group. It's a terrific show if you like good singing, and it can be touching to watch people, through mentorship and hard work, realize a dream. This fall Usher has partnered with Scholastic Corporation, a leading publisher of educational materials, to launch an initiative to elevate the importance and joy of reading for all children. Through its Open a World of Possible initiative, Scholastic, and its partners like Usher, are working to "encourage conversations in classrooms, at home, and online so teachers, parents, and children can share ideas and advice about simple ways to incorporate reading into busy classroom days and family time."₁ It's about helping children learn to consume, comprehend, process, internalize, and create quality written information... that's what literacy is. It's also about helping children find a voice and realize dreams... that's what literacy does.

Scholastic, the World's largest publisher and distributor of children's books, asserts that its mission to help "children learn to read and love to read" is based on the belief that independent reading is a critical part of children's learning and growth. Scholastic's research compendium, The Joy and Power of Reading: A Summary of Research and Expert Opinion, summarizes the literature around independent reading.₂ While recognizing that the scholarship around language acquisition and literacy is "vast, varied, and vital", Scholastic's compendium highlights the importance of reading volume, access and exposure to print materials and books, reader choice and variety, and reading aloud to learning readers.

It should come as no surprise that the more students read, the better their comprehension, fluency, and vocabulary. What might be surprising is how little time students actually spend reading. About 10 minutes per day on average at home for kids up to age 12. That drops off among older students. Also, the older the students, the smaller the percentage who report reading for pleasure at all.₃ That doesn't bode well for reaching higher levels of literacy; levels at which students begin to internalize what they read and develop sophisticated communication and writing ability.

Time to read is key. Two experimental studies, meeting the research standards put forth by the National Reading Panel, published this year show independent reading programs in schools can facilitate increased involvement in reading as well as significant gains in total reading ability, reading comprehension, and scores on state-mandated high-stakes end-of-course exams.

In one study, conducted in a high-poverty school in the southeastern United States, third graders given time to read, along with guided choices about what they read, showed increased involvement in reading as measured by attention to text, affective responses to their reading material, their physical interaction with text, and their interaction with others about what they were reading.₄ Another study conducted in a large public high school in the southeastern United States with a majority of students qualifying for free-or-reduced lunch showed that independent reading, with simple accountability measures, could facilitate improved student achievement even after only a few interventions (14 hour long sessions over 5 months). While the control groups gained the equivalent of one grade level for one year in both total reading ability and reading comprehension, the experimental group made gains that were more than twice that of the control group.₅

I don't think it's a question of whether independent reading is superior to skill-building with respect to reading instruction. Both are important. Direct instruction, appropriately differentiated, is important for readers who enter school with deficiencies in alphabet knowledge and phonological awareness. But I also think it's important to engage students in reading; to help them recognize and participate in the joys of reading at the same time. Also, considering the little time students spend reading outside of school, it just makes sense that reading in school can both help improve academic achievement and, potentially, help foster a love of reading that extends beyond school; that helps students find their voices and, maybe, realize their dreams.

Post by Scholastic Reading Club.

1. Scholastic Media Room (2014). Usher Joins Scholastic to Launch Open a World of Possible Initiative and Celebrate the Power and Joy of Reading. Retrieved from http://mediaroom.scholastic.com/press-release/usher-joins-scholastic-launch-open-world-possible-initiative
2. Bridge, L. (2014). The Joy and Power of Reading: A Summary of Research and Expert Opinion. New York: Scholastic
3. Rideout, V. (2014). Children, Teens, and Reading: A Common Sense Media Research Brief. Common Sense Media. Retrieved from https://www.commonsensemedia.org/research/children-teens-and-reading
4. Hall, K. Hedrick, W. & Williams, L. (2014). Every Day We're Shufflin': Empowering Students During In-School Independent Reading. Childhood Education, 90(2), 91-98.
5. Cuevas, J., Irving, M., & Russell, L. (2014). Applied Cognition: Testing the Effects of Independent Silent Reading on Secondary Students' Achievement and Attribution. Reading Psychology, 35(2), 127-159

Why I love to read

September, 2014 - Monday is International Literacy Day. I know, it seems like everyday is International Something-or-Other Day. But this one is different.

Worldwide, more than 770 million adults and 120 million youth cannot read or write.₁ According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 36 million "adult Americans are living with the consequences of low literacy skills."₂ The consequences include poor health outcomes and less access to health care, fewer job opportunities and lower paying jobs, increased criminality and exposure to violence, and political disenfranchisement. UNESCO, with some success, has sought to shed light on this issue each September 8 since 1965 by celebrating International Literacy Day.

Literacy is the basis for academic success and lifelong learning. It empowers individuals, families, and communities and improves the quality of life. Economic security, access to health care, and the ability to actively participate in civic life all depend on the ability to read. Literacy is freedom; freedom to learn, grow, and develop; freedom to maximize one's potential; freedom to have and make choices; freedom to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It's also personal... and fun... and rewarding. As kids head back to school this month, where they are learning to read and reading to learn, think about what reading means to you, what it means to those you love, and what it means for us collectively. Think about why you love to read. 

Here's why I love to read:

• Inspiration - Good books are like good music. They elicit emotion. They enable reflection. They can be a call to action. 
• Independence - You can learn about almost anything by reading, or at least you can get a good start. And if there's not a book about it, you just found your idea. Write one!
• Always something to do - I won't go anywhere without something to read; the doctor, the car-wash, birthday parties, gymnastics (my 2-year-old son began last week), the ballpark (seen the Astros play lately?), the grocery store (haven't read there yet, but I'm ready if it ever gets slow enough), weddings (not my own), graduations (including my own), planes, trains, and automobiles (audio books)! In the information age, it's easier than ever to get in a few minutes of reading anytime, anywhere!
• Comfort - Everyone struggles at times. Books can be friends. They can offer advice. They can provide guidance. They can help you get away for a little while, and they can bring you back. 
• Endless entertainment - I won't ever exhaust resources for reading. Approximately 130,000,000 books have been published in modern history! (let me Google that for you).
• Context - I always try to read about a new place I am about to visit. It doesn't matter if I'm going to another country or just down the road. The more context you have, the richer the experience!
• Awareness - New worlds, old worlds, real worlds, and out-of- this-world. Reading expands your peripheral vision to 360 degrees. The more you read, the better feel you get for where you are and where you need to go. 
• It's good for you - Reading can help reduce stress, enhance memory, and improve concentration. It can help keep the brain stimulated which has been shown to slow the progress of Alzheimer's and Dementia. A recent study has also shown that reading can improve the connectivity between the various brain circuits that are essential to understanding the written word, and that simply reading a novel can keep that enhanced connectivity working long after the novel has been completed.₃  
• Knowledge - Learning begets learning. Wide reading helps build background knowledge, and background knowledge contributes to and shapes new learning. 
• Participation - Ever been in a group conversation only to wonder what others were talking about? Reading makes this less likely!
• Flow - I'm sorry, did you say something? I was reading! (Check out Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi) 
• Receiving gifts - I got the gift of reading from my Dad. Ever the busy-body, reading has always been one of his passions. 
• Giving gifts - Ever the busy-body, reading has always been one of my passions. I am trying hard to pass this on to my son! As a father and an educator, the knowledge that reading proficiency by

  

  From our most recent trip 

  to the bookstore.

  third grade is the most significant predictor of high school graduation and career success is motivating. Two-thirds of U.S. third-graders lack competent reading skills. Furthermore, 60 percent of vocabulary differences in children between 8 and 9 can be explained by differences in exposure to language before age 3, and 80 percent of children who live in poverty will fail to achieve reading proficiency by the end of third grade. If children are not well on their way to reading by the time they begin school, they are already behind. Read aloud to young people in your life. Reading aloud to young children is fun, easy, and associated with more rapid development of vocabulary, phonemic awareness, and the ability to comprehend text. The American Academy of Pediatrics is now recommending that pediatricians advise parents that "reading aloud and talking about pictures and words in age-appropriate books can strengthen language skills, literacy development and parent-child relationships."₄ It's truly the gift that keeps on giving! 
• The decision - Figuring out what book to read next is as much fun as reading it. You can learn a lot before you even get to the first page.  
• The first page - It's kind of like the first day of vacation, or summer, or football season (Aggies 52, South Carolina 28 to start the 2014 season). I can't wait to find out how the story ends! 
• The last page - Aggies win their first national championship since 1939! OK, so probably not. But still, it always feels like an accomplishment to finish a good book.
• Reflection - Reading makes me think and, sometimes, rethink. 
• It can be mindless - Reading lets me stop thinking and escape for a while when I want to. 
• I love saying the word "genre" - Some of my favorites are Biography (Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson), Historical Fiction (Killer Angels by Michael Shaara), Children's Books (Goodnight Aggieland by Mark and Cimbrey Brannan), Faith & Spirituality (Generous Justice: How God's Grace Makes Us Just by Timothy Keller), True Crime (The Innocent Man by John Grisham), Thriller (11/22/63  by Stephen King), and Education (The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller).

  

  One of my latest 

  favorites.

• Authors become like friends - Some of my friends are David McCullough, Walter Isaacson, Ernest Hemingway, Dr. Seuss, David Shannon, Ken Follett, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Stephen King, Timothy Keller, Michael Shaara, Jeff Shaara, David Brooks, Toni Morrison, H.W. Brands, Khaled Hosseini, John Grisham, Daniel Pink, Laura Hillenbrand, David Halberstam, Mark Twain, Maya Angelou, Malcolm Gladwell, Nathaniel Philbrick, Joseph Ellis, Shel Silverstein, Thomas Friedman, Rob Bell, Ronald Takaki, C.S. Lewis, Susan Cain, Clay Shirky, Mohsin Hamid, Frank McCourt, James McPherson, Stephen Ambrose, and on and on!

Why do you love to read?

• 1-UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2013). International Literacy Data. Retrieved from http://www.uis.unesco.org/literacy/Pages/data-release-map-2013.aspx
• 2-OECD (2013), Time for the U.S. to Reskill?: What the Survey of Adult Skills Says, OECD Skills Studies, OECD Publishing. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264204904-en
• 3-Berns G., Blaine K., Prietula M., and Pye B. (2013) Short and long-term effects of a novel on connectivity in the brain. Brain Connectivity, 3(6): 590-600. 
• 4-American Academy of Pediatrics (2014). Literacy Promotion: An Essential Component of Primary Care Pediatric Practice. Retrieved from http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/134/2/404

Am I going to read or do something else?

That is the question.

Students whose reading instruction at school relates to their daily lives and appeals to their personal interests are making the choice to read and are performing better than less engaged students, according to the latest Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS). PIRLS is an international assessment of fourth grade reading comprehension that is conducted every four years. The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) published the results for the most recent administration in December. The latest PIRLS collected information regarding the construct of student engagement for the first time. The report's authors indicate that student engagement focuses on the importance of the learning activity that brings the student and the content together (Mullis, Martin, Foy, & Drucker, 2012).

While reading is required for many school related activities, it is also something students can choose to do or not, according to the authors of a research review on students' engagement in reading and how classroom instructional practices influence reading engagement. In building a model that describes how instruction, motivation, engagement, and achievement are related, the authors assert that the effects of instructional practices on student reading outcomes are mediated by engagement. (Guthrie, Wigfield, You, 2012). 

That is, classroom contexts only affect student reading outcomes to the extent that they produce high levels of student engagement for reading.

The authors make the distinction between engagement and motivation. They assert that engagement is a multidimensional construct that includes behavioral, cognitive, and emotional attributes associated with being deeply involved in an activity. Motivation, which they assert relates to and informs engagement but is more specific, is what energizes and directs behavior and is often defined with respect to the beliefs, values, and goals individuals have for different activities. Motivation, the authors assert, is important for the "maintenance of behavior" with respect to cognitively demanding activities like reading in which a variety of skills are involved from processing individual words to generating meaning from complex texts.

Basically, it boils down to student choice and, once students arrive at school, how their instructional environments influence their choices.

The authors outline some instructional practices and their connections to student reading outcomes, both directly and indirectly through their influence on engagement and motivation. The authors' goal was to describe how instruction, motivation, behavioral engagement, and achievement are related. They attempted to identify and document the engagement processes that serve as links between the practices of teachers and the reading outcomes of students.

Some of what the authors' literature review found includes:

• Engagement positively influences reading competence for elementary and secondary students when potentially confounding cognitive and motivational variables were statistically controlled, including past achievement, socioeconomic status, and self-efficacy.
• Motivations such as self-efficacy, intrinsic motivation, and valuing are related to an increase in student engagement and reading behaviors including effort, attention, time spent reading, concentration, and long-term persistence in reading. Motivation not only influences the amount of engagement but the quality as well by activating "cognitive strategies that are productive for full comprehension of complex texts."
• Intrinsic motivation, measured as enjoying reading, was associated with reading engagement for elementary and secondary students over and above students' prior knowledge, past achievement, and self-efficacy.
• Classroom practices are "a sword that cuts in two directions." Practices most associated with high levels of student motivation and engagement for reading include: 
• providing autonomy support (choice and self-direction in reading context and reading related activities) 
• relating reading activities to students' personal interests and goals, and providing students opportunities for collaboration and interaction with the teacher and other students regarding what they are reading
• avoiding practices that are not student-centered. Negative feedback, a lack of protection from adverse consequences, or requiring students to use materials outside of their zone of proximal development can have deleterious effects on students' motivation for reading.  

• Guthrie, J., Wigfield A., & You W. (2012). Instructional Contexts for Engagement and Achievement in Reading. In S.J. Christensen, A.L. Reschly, & C. Wylie (Eds.) Handbook of Research on Student Engagement, 601-634.
• Mullis, I., Martin, M., Foy, P., & Drucker, K. (2012). Chestnut Hill, MA: TIMSS & PIRLS International Study Center, Boston College.

What if I didn't know that I didn't know?

I sometimes find while reading that I need to stop and look something up to better understand the content of an informational text or the context of a complex narrative. Of course, like most experienced readers, I can often fill in the gaps that writers leave by relying on my own background knowledge or by making inferences.

But what if, like many students just learning to read, I didn’t know that I didn’t know something? Or I didn’t know it was my responsibility to fill in the gaps that writers leave? How hard would it be to understand what I was reading or to even learn to read at all? Knowledge is essential to reading comprehension, and this includes both factual knowledge and knowledge that is based on reasoning, or inferential knowledge.

A recent study published in the journal, Reading and Writing, regarding the relationship between inference making and reading comprehension among pre-school students potentially provides educators, and parents, some additional insight into the process of how pre-readers develop comprehension skills and could inform the development of pedagogy that more efficiently addresses the various skills that are required for children to develop literacy. While this study, as many others before it, found that children’s ability to make inferences was significantly related to story comprehension (some previous studies have found causal relationships), it extended this understanding to pre-school, pre-reading children for the first time. Furthermore, the authors believe they have identified specific inference types that “make a unique contribution to story comprehension above and beyond basic language skill and age.”

While children in this study tended to more frequently make inferences related to the concrete activities of a story’s characters, it was the more abstract inference categories—goal inferences and character state inferences—along with one concrete category, action inferences, that significantly related to children’s story comprehension. Other types included character activity inferences, object inferences, causal inferences (antecedent and consequence), character emotion inferences, and place inferences.

The authors examined the inferences pre-school children made when narrating a story using a wordless picture book and whether these inferences were related to story comprehension in a separate narrative task in which they were asked to answer questions designed to elicit both literal and inferential understanding of an aurally administered narrative. Also, both the story generation and narrative comprehension tasks were conducted using an on-line process in which students were asked to think and share aloud while narrating a story and listening to a narrative read aloud to them.

Citing a relationship between working memory and reading comprehension, the authors assert that while the on-line story generation task is perhaps more demanding than measuring inferences using narrative recall, it is also less demanding of young students’ attentional resources and allows them to move at their own pace. Furthermore, they note that while previous authors had linked inference making to narrative comprehension within a single narrative, they were seeking to determine whether inference making would generalize to comprehension of an unfamiliar story.

One implication for educators is that teaching comprehension skills, perhaps specifically including making inferences related to goals, character state, and action, can and should begin with pre-reading, pre-school students. Also, for teachers trying to determine how students acquire comprehension skills or why certain students may be struggling, the on-line approach allows them to formatively determine which inference types students are struggling with and to make the necessary instructional adjustments.

Finally, this study addresses comprehension using narrative forms of writing which, while valuable in helping students to develop specific skills with respect to narratives, does not address the need for students to be able to comprehend and use expository text, particularly as they move into the upper elementary and secondary grades in which their ability to comprehend text of any kind is, for better or worse, often assumed.  While narrative comprehension is important, early childhood educators should not assume that it facilitates comprehension of expository text. Furthermore, it also perhaps suggests, given that stories tend to be more interesting and more challenging in that they require more inference making, according to Daniel Willingham in  Why Don't Students Like School: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What it Means for the Classroom, upper elementary and secondary educators might consider ways to provide opportunities for students to learn the material they traditionally cover with expository writing in ways that are appealing and connected to their students.

• Tompkins, V., Guo, Y., & Justice, L. M. (2012). Inference generation, story comprehension, and language skills in the preschool years. Reading and Writing. doi:10.1007/s11145-012-9374-7

Rhyme, rhythm, repetition... and referencing

I have been reading aloud to my infant son since before he was born but recently we began a more focused effort in our reading – a trek to 1,000 stories, documented each time with a Tweet to the world about our accomplishment. The idea is to have fun with books (something that I am finding is critical when one attempts to read with very young children) and connect with him in a way that will give him some tools with which to use in his own learning as he grows.

Am I doing the right thing? Intuition, experience, and research say yes. Am I doing it the right way? Well, teaching a person to read is both easier and more complex than I thought.

My son is participating in a music program for young children, and we came home last week with a one-page informational from his teachers extolling the virtues of rhyme, rhythm, and repetition. I bought the book that was referenced in the take-home information which was written by former literacy education professor Mem Fox entitled “Reading Magic: Why Reading Aloud to Our Children Will Change Their Lives Forever.” Fox’s stories-first approach to literacy development, in which children first learn to make sense out of print rather than sound, resonated with me.

To read, children must experience print as much as possible; they must experience language as much as possible; and they must experience the world as much as possible. In short, says Fox, direct their attention to print, talk to them incessantly, and take them anywhere and everywhere you can.

But it’s the exposure to print, which occurs in many ways, that most interests me as an educator because while I can facilitate interaction and cultural experience with my own child, we cannot do this as easily for students who attend our schools.

One recent study published in the journal, Child Development, suggests that there may be causal links between print referencing while reading to pre-school aged children and long-term literacy achievement. Print referencing refers to helping children make sense out of print by using verbal and non-verbal techniques while participating in shared-reading experiences. Techniques include discussing book and print organization with children, asking questions or making observations about specific letters or words, and conveying the meaning of print by verbally referencing the context in which the print occurs. Tracking print with one’s finger would be a non-verbal print reference technique.

This study found that students who participated in four shared reading experiences with a teacher per week for 30 weeks in which at least four print references were employed by the teacher during each session resulted in long-term increases of approximately 1–3 standard score points in reading, spelling, and comprehension as compared with children whose teachers used their typical shared reading approach. The authors were building on earlier research (some of it their own) that found children experience significant short-term gains on print knowledge measures when shared reading experiences include adult references to print.

The students who participated in the study were predominately from socioeconomically disadvantaged households and were considered students at-risk for future reading difficulties. The authors note that by fourth grade, the literacy achievement gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students is .76 of a standard deviation. With more students from disadvantaged backgrounds than ever before entering public schools (more than 60% of students in Texas qualify for free/reduced price lunch) and achievement gaps—which can often be traced to early literacy gaps—remaining wide between those who have and those who do not, this perhaps represents, one the one hand, a low-cost strategy for cutting into those gaps (.26 to .31 SD boost), and on the other, a process for facilitating early literacy for all children. 

• Piasta, S. B., Justice, L. M., McGinty, A. S., & Kaderavek, J. N. (2012). Increasing Young Children’s Contact With Print During Shared Reading: Longitudinal Effects on Literacy Achievement. Child Development, 83(3), 810-820. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2012.01754.x