Thinking Reading: The Road Goes Ever On.
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Presentation at ResearchEdEng, Swindon, November 2015. How research has informed the development of the Thinking Reading programme
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Thinking Reading: The Road Goes Ever On.
- 1. ResearchED English and Literacy 7 November 2015
- 3. Greymouth Christchurch Southern Alps • 258 kilometres • 160 miles • 3 hours
- 14. “You will always have students who will fail.”
- 15. “Why are some children not making progress?”
- 16. “Why are some children not making progress?” Learner deficit versus instructional deficit Designing Instructional Strategies: the prevention of academic learning problems (Kame’enui, E. J. and Simmons, D.C. 1990) 20% arrive at secondary school reading well behind their peers (Read On, Get On report 2015) 2-3% have a true disability (Lyon, G.R: “95% of those struggling are instructional casualties.”)
- 17. “Why are some children not making progress?” Learner deficit versus instructional deficit Further reading: www.thinkingreading.net Professional Reading > Misconceptions > Labelling “If the learner fails, the failure must be framed in terms of the instruction which the teacher controls.” What are we doing with the 17–18% who are instructional casualties? Are they being identified?
- 18. “Why are some children not making progress?” Learner deficit versus instructional deficit What beliefs need to change in order for failing students to succeed? In children? In teachers? Further reading: www.thinkingreading.net Blog > Two for company – three for learning Blog > 7 Misconceptions About Teaching Adolescents to Read
- 19. “Why are some children not making progress?” Phonics versus Whole Language Code-Teaching or Code-Breaking? Whole Language High Jinks – How to Tell When ‘Scientifically- Based Reading Instruction’ Isn’t (Moats, L. 2007) The Whole Language – Phonics Controversy: A Historical Perspective (Hempenstall, K. 1997)
- 20. “Why are some children not making progress?” Phonics versus Whole Language Intuit the code? Or teach explicitly? Further reading: www.thinkingreading.net Blog > Code-Teaching or Code-Breaking? Further reading: www.thinkingreading.net Professional Reading > Misconceptions > Ineffective Practice > Thank you Whole Language
- 21. “Why are some children not making progress?” Phonics versus Whole Language Further reading: www.thinkingreading.net Professional Reading > Methodolgy > Effective Practice Why is the evidence not changing practice? Why Educators Resist Effective Practices (Carnine, D 2000)
- 22. “Why are some children not making progress?” Phonics versus Whole Language Further reading: www.thinkingreading.net Professional Reading > The Reading Debate Is failure inevitable? Recommended websites: www.literacyblog.blogspot.co.uk www.dyslexics.org.uk www.spelfabet.com.au Twitter: @SWLiteracy @SusanGodsland @spelfabet
- 23. “Where can I find out the best ways to ensure progress?”
- 24. “How can I use research to find out the best ways to ensure progress?” The Snow Report - Sorting the wheat from the (research) chaff: a rough guide. (Snow, P. 2014) @PamelaSnow2 Rating System for the Hierarchy of Evidence: Level 1 – evidence from a systematic review of all relevant RCTs or evidence- based clinical practice guidelines based on systematic reviews of RCTs Level 2 – evidence from at least one well-designed RCT Level 3 – evidence from well-designed controlled trials without randomisation, quasi-experimental Level 4 – evidence from well-designed case-control and cohort studies Level 5 - evidence from systematic reviews of descriptive and qualitative studies Level 6 – evidence from a single descriptive or qualitative study Level 7 – evidence from the opinions of authorities and /or reports of expert committees (Ebling Library, University of Wisconsin)
- 25. “How can I use research to find out the best ways to ensure progress?” What should and should not be considered ‘evidence’ when using research to inform practice? What Does Evidence-Based Practice in Education Mean? (Hempenstall, K. 2006) Curriculum conflict: we need to be informed so that we can teach more in less time!
- 26. “How can I use research to find out the best ways to ensure progress?” Single-subject designs • Multiple baselines (level 3) • Reversal designs (level 3) • Case studies (level 4) These designs expose the impact of intervention and allow for many cheap, rapid replications. Further reading: www.thinkingreading.net Professional Reading > Research > Types of Research
- 27. “How can I use research to find out the best ways to ensure progress?” Hasazi, J.E. & Hasazi S.E. (1968) Effects of teacher attention on digit reversals. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis: 1972, 5, 157-162.
- 28. “How can I use research to find out the best ways to ensure progress?” 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 AgeinYears Emmanuel 10JM & 11DH Thinking Reading Chronological Age Reading Age Tested unseen text 13.1.11 Thinking Reading 7.3.11 - 19.4.12 Tested unseen text 25.4.12 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 AgeinYears Lewis 9JC & 10JC Thinking Reading Chronological Age Reading Age Tested unseen text 6.1.11 Thinking Reading 14.2.11 - 28.6.11 Tested unseen text 26.5.11 & 29.6.12 Further reading: www.thinkingreading.net Stories > Case Studies
- 29. “How do I know if they ‘can’t’, or if it’s motivation?”
- 30. “How do I know if they ‘can’t’, or if it’s motivation?” Applied Behavior Analysis for Teachers (Alberto, P. and Troutman A. 1986) Chronic errors versus non-chronic errors Exceptional Children (White, O.R. and Haring, N.G. 1980)
- 31. “How will I know that they have made progress?”
- 32. “How will I know that they have made progress?” Further reading: www.thinkingreading.net Professional Reading > Methodology > Direct Instruction + Precision Teaching Precision of learning objectives • Mode of presentation / mode of response eg see / say • Clearly defined target knowledge • Mastery criterion
- 33. “How will I know that they have made progress?” Engelmann, S. and Carnine, D. (1992) Theory of Instruction Data and assessment • Teaching tasks are designed to make achievement of the learning objectives immediately evident. • Where progress slows, immediate analysis of student data ensures that the programme can be adjusted to the individual.
- 34. “How can we manage behaviour to accelerate learning?”
- 35. “How can we manage behaviour to accelerate learning?” Further reading: www.thinkingreading.net Blog > Can’t Read, Won’t Read (4-part series) How we respond to behaviour can have unintended consequences. Applied Behavior Analysis for Teachers (Alberto, P. and Troutman A. 1986)
- 36. “How can we manage behaviour to accelerate learning?” Further reading: www.thinkingreading.net Professional Reading > Changing Behaviour > ABA
- 37. “How can I be sure that what I have communicated is what they have learned?”
- 38. “How can I be sure that what I have communicated is what they have learned?” Engelmann, S. and Carnine, D. (1992) Theory of Instruction Direct Instruction = faultless communication Further reading: www.thinkingreading.net Professional Reading > Methodology > Direct Instruction
- 39. Taxonomy of Knowledge Forms Verbal chains: Days of the week Simple Facts: ‘igh’ is a spelling for /ai/ Discriminations: Same sound, different spelling Concepts: The class of nouns Rule Relationships: The topic tells what the paragraph is mainly about. Cognitive Strategies: Locating specific information from text
- 40. Direct Instruction Example Sequence
- 41. This is a vehicle
- 42. This is a vehicle
- 43. This is a vehicle
- 44. This is a vehicle
- 45. This is not a vehicle
- 46. This is not a vehicle
- 47. Direct Instruction Testing Sequence
- 48. Is this a vehicle?
- 49. Is this a vehicle?
- 50. Is this a vehicle?
- 51. Is this a vehicle?
- 52. Is this a vehicle?
- 53. Direct Instruction Example Sequence In another language!
- 54. wahine
- 55. wahine
- 56. wahine
- 57. wahine
- 58. Not wahine
- 59. Not wahine
- 60. Not wahine
- 61. Direct Instruction Testing Sequence
- 62. wahine?
- 63. wahine?
- 64. wahine?
- 65. wahine?
- 66. wahine?
- 67. wahine?
- 68. wahine?
- 69. “How do I design practice so that students remember?”
- 70. “How do I design practice so that students remember?” Engelmann, S. and Carnine, D. (1992) Theory of Instruction Direct Instruction – cumulative review
- 71. “How do I design practice so that students remember?” Fluency: Achieving True Mastery in the Learning Process (Binder, C., Houghton, E. and Bateman, B. 2002) Precision Teaching - Stages of Learning: • Acquisition • Accuracy • Fluency • Retention • Generalisation • Adaptation
- 72. “How do I design practice so that students remember?” Further reading: www.thinkingreading.net Professional Reading > Methodology > Precision Teaching
- 73. “How can I design a programme that can be delivered consistently by others?”
- 74. “How can I design a programme that can be delivered consistently by others?” Further reading: www.thinkingreading.net Professional Reading > Methodology > Direct Instruction Direct Instruction scripts Engelmann, S. and Carnine, D. (1992) Theory of Instruction
- 75. “How can I design a programme that can be delivered consistently by others?” Further reading: www.thinkingreading.net Blog > Capturing the Magic Carefully-crafted lesson plan with built-in assessment to guide planning
- 76. “How can I design a programme that can be delivered consistently by others?” Further reading: www.thinkingreading.net Blog > Capturing the Magic Clear mastery criteria Further reading: www.thinkingreading.net Professional Reading > Methodology > Precision Teaching
- 80. Find out more … Website: www.thinkingreading.net Blog: https://thinkingreadingwritings.wordpress.com @ThinkReadTweet Thank you!
Editor's Notes
- Good afternoon. Today I am going to try to chart quite a complex journey for you as I have worked with research to develop an effective reading programme for secondary students who have long-standing reading problems. I am going to try to frame the talk in terms of questions I have asked of the research, and how those answers have contributed to students succeeding beyond expectations. And so to start, it seems appropriate to show the physical journey that I undertook when I began training to teach.
- So this is one of the places we used to take our children walking in the South Island of New Zealand. Before we had children I was a secretary and a nurse. Both our girls loved books and stories and they learned to read before they went to school. When they were a little older I made the decision to train as a teacher. Given where we were living
- Each week I would make this 260 km journey across the South Island.
- I started on the West Coast in Greymouth …
- Drove through old mining country …
- …through the Otira Gorge at the foothills of the Southern Alps ….
- … over what was called the ‘Zig Zag’ which became too dangerous to use …
- … and has now been replaced by this viaduct, which is not nearly as much fun ….
- … then through Arthur’s Pass to the eastern side of the Southern Alps …
- … and began the descent to the plains …
- … past mountain lakes …
- … and finally across the Canterbury Plains …
- … to Christchurch (home of the Crusaders for any rugby fans). And then home the same way on Friday!
- I often heard about how a learner is a fire to be lit, not a pail to be filled. I was already on fire – I just needed fuel! However, these words from my tutor teacher were intended to dampen my enthusiasm. This is a statement that I could not, and still will not, accept. After teaching for two years, I had some major questions, and I was fortunate enough to win a one-year scholarship to study about teaching children with special learning needs. It was a robust, research-based programme that helped me to find the answers I needed – and gave me many more questions. The focus of the rest of this talk is about how those answers have shaped the Thinking Reading programme.
- It was clear to me that there were some children who were good at learning many things, but when it came to reading, they weren’t making progress.
- The first answer was a fundamental challenge to the idea that we should expect some children to fail. You might be surprised to learn that this idea of acceptable failure in reading is widespread. Researchers across the English-speaking world report that about 20% of students fail to learn to read well at primary school.
- Some students have genuine learning needs. The rest are what can be termed ‘instructional casualties’. This is not ‘teacher bashing’! My focus is the teaching not the teacher. Their failure to learn is a consequence of the ways we teach. Kame’enui and Simmons put it this way: ‘if the learner fails, the failure must be framed in terms of the instruction which the teacher controls.’ I didn’t find this statement a blame statement. I found it liberating. I can change the way I teach, therefore they can learn. They might be slower, but they can learn.
- The question then becomes: what sort of teaching do they need? What do I need to change? One of the key challenges is for us to adjust our beliefs. Students often carry these ideas around: I’m stupid. I can’t learn this stuff. If I avoid / act up it will go away. I have … (dyslexia) etc. For teachers there are beliefs that also need to change, for example: the child is a poor reader therefore they lack intelligence. The student suffers from an innate disability which means they can never master these skills. The student is SEN and therefore someone else’s problem.
- There are two approaches to teaching reading. One is systematic, focuses on teaching students that the written code represents the spoken code, and looks to develop comprehension once students can work out exactly what the words are on the page. (Bottom-up approach) The other approach, which has been dominant in the English-speaking world for the 2nd half of the last century is WL, which regards learning to read as a natural process like learning to understand and produce speech. It’s a top-down, meaning first approach which results in children using ineffective guessing strategies.
- Unfortunately, the Whole Language approach has regularly been found to leave 20 – 40% of students struggling because they need a more explicit system of teaching. In contrast, SSP programmes, delivered with fidelity, have very few if any children who cannot read. You can read summaries of the research in the Hempenstall and Moats papers on the slides, and you can also compare an overview of research on the two approaches in John Hattie’s Visible Learning (2009). Do read the blogpost written by the husband of a woman who didn’t intuit the code. If it wasn’t so sad, it would be hilarious: Thank you Whole Language
- So then the next question is, why isn’t this changing practice given that we have the evidence? This turns out to be a much bigger question than just what your preferred style of teaching is. It goes down to teachers’ beliefs about themselves, about their students, and about the purpose of teaching. There is an interesting paper on this called “Why Educators Resist Effective Practice” by Douglas Carnine. In short, we need to address these issues in ITT.
- There is also a systemic acceptance that some failure is inevitable and it is the teacher’s role to support people to adapt to not being able to do things. I understand this impulse, and there are obvious cases where this is appropriate, but if changing teaching ensures that students can learn, why wouldn’t we do that?
- Probably the most important skill I learned in the scholarship programme I undertook was the power of research if we know how to evaluate it and apply it. There is an excellent blog post by Pam Snow with her top 10 questions to keep in mind when reading about new research.
- We often hear that RCTs are the ‘gold standard’ but it can be difficult to have one implemented in education. They are costly, relatively slow to yield results and don’t always allow us to isolate variables as tightly as we might wish eg AR (EEF) some students received individual support from teachers during the trial. Yes, well run RCTs are useful and important, but let’s not discount level 3 trials.
- I found that it is essential to use well-evidenced teaching methods in order to ensure that students who have been struggling are able to catch up quickly. This leads to the question, what sorts of evidence are most relevant and useful in designing teaching programmes?
- This approach has been instrumental to the design of individual programmes in Thinking Reading, where each student has a progress graph. This not only provides the teacher with accurate information, but just as importantly it also shows the student how much progress they are making. You can read more about the different types on the website.
- This is a classic example of a reversal design. This study was intended to find out whether a pupil’s errors were linked to his teacher’s focus on his errors. You can see that in the baseline condition the student’s errors were very high. In the experimental condition they dropped sharply. The experimenters then returned to the baseline condition (the teacher attended to errors) and errors quickly returned to their former level. They then went back to the experimental condition and once more saw a sharp fall in errors. This kind of replication is very powerful evidence of the effectiveness of an intervention.
- Thinking Reading students are tested pre and post intervention with unseen graded prose. They are also tested yearly to ensure that gains have been maintained. This is all part of being accountable and transparent.
- The answer to this question proved surprisingly simple.
- Chronic errors: need to be taught and /or given enough practice to become accurate. If a student makes an error inconsistently (only sometimes) we can infer one of two conclusions: 1. Either the student is not fluent, so that they make mistakes when they try to hurry. (Timed practice to develop fluency) 2. Or they are not paying enough attention and making careless errors. (Motivation)
- The key to this proved to be ensuring that the learning objectives are defined precisely. This allows to then design the teaching task to be sensitive enough to detect changes in performance. This is particularly important for students where initial progress may be very slow.
- Defining objectives: modes of presenting and responding should be identified. The exact behaviour to be learned or practised should be identified. “Read the following words accurately” The mastery criterion should be clear. “8 out of 10 times.” (Accuracy) 80 known words per minute.” (Fluency)
- This means that I can design lesson activities around these principles to ensure that each one tells us immediately whether the student is making progress eg 10-trial – decoding new words accurately 80% or re-taught at next lesson.
- There are many skills required to motivate and focus students with a history of failure. These skills apply not just to reading lessons but in many other contexts as well.
- For example, some students learn to avoid reading by chatting and being friendly. If we engage with this beyond the minimum, we allow the student to waste learning time, they make less progress, and they continue to feel that they are ‘bad’ at reading. Other students learn to escape learning situations they find frustrating or embarrassing by being obnoxious or aggressive. Allowing students to escalate such behaviour to the point that they have to be removed from the lesson means that they do not spend time learning, and so don’t make progress. As we saw with the reversal design example, teacher attention to behaviours that we don’t want can actually increase them. A reason to be analytical!
- We need to know when to ignore, when and how to challenge so as not to escalate negative behaviour and know what acts as a reinforcer for particular students (Marmite) Behaviour is increased through reinforcing consequences Behaviour is decreased through aversive consequences The test is not what you meant to achieve, but whether you get more or less of the behaviour!
- This is a critical question. It is often the reason that students have gone through school without learning. We have assumed that they learned something because we taught it. But actually there is plenty of evidence that student can often learn something quite different from what we intended – including errors.
- The key to efficient, unambiguous communication has been most clearly defined in Zig Engelmann’s Direct Instruction (by DI we don’t mean explicit teaching, we mean the complex set of principles developed in Carnine and Engelmann’s Direct Instruction. There are many principles in their work that ensure that the material to be learned can be presented in such a way that only one conclusion can be formed by the learner. Engelmann and Carnine demonstrated through many field trials that students can learn “faultlessly:” by inducing rules and concepts from carefully sequenced sets of examples. These are different depending on the knowledge form.
- One of the key steps in developing these principles is in identifying that there are different knowledge forms. Different types of knowledge need to be taught in different ways. Simple Facts: Model, Lead and Test Verbal Chains: individual facts in sequence. Linking old and new chunks. Discriminations: teach similar items separately eg ‘thought’ and ‘though’ Concepts: Positional concepts, polar concepts (big/little), colour concepts, action concepts, superlative concepts (widest, brightest). Noun concepts – general (food, plants), specific (meat, oranges) proper (German shepherd, Toyota) Rule relationships: Component skills are discrimination of important vs less important information and discrimination of sentence, paragraph, and passage. Cognitive Strategies: Component skills are identification of key words, knowledge of subheadings concept, facility in answering literal comprehension questions, scanning strategy
- I’m going to show you an example of how we teach a “noun concept” – rather than giving an explanation, we provide examples which show the limits of the term’s definition, and where it does not apply. Listen: I’m going to teach you what a vehicle is. (I’ve framed the task – I’ve told you what I’m going to do.) What am I going to do? Good. Look and listen. (I’ve now ‘set’ the task, told you what you’re going to do.)
- This is a vehicle.
- This is a vehicle.
- This is a vehicle.
- This is a vehicle.
- This is not a vehicle.
- This is not a vehicle.
- Let’s see if you’ve got it. Because I don’t want the quickest people calling out the answer and I want to allow thinking time for the slower students, I’m going to signal when to respond by a finger click. Your response is ‘vehicle’ for a positive example or ‘not a vehicle’ for a negative example. Respond when I click.
- Is this a vehicle? (Vehicle)
- Is this a vehicle? (Vehicle)
- Is this a vehicle? (Not a vehicle)
- Is this a vehicle? (Not a vehicle)
- Is this a vehicle? (Vehicle)
- Now I’m going to teach you a noun concept in another language. Listen: ”I’m going to teach you “wahine”. What am I going to teach you? Wahine.
- Wahine
- Wahine
- Wahine
- Wahine
- Not wahine
- Not wahine
- Not wahine
- Testing sequence Now let’s see how good you are! Or, rather if my sequence was effective or not! This might end up being a good example of poor instruction. Your response is ‘wahine’ for a positive example or ‘not wahine’ for a negative example. Respond when I click.
- Wahine? (Wahine)
- Wahine? (Wahine)
- Wahine? (Not wahine)
- Wahine? (Wahine)
- Wahine? (Not wahine)
- Wahine? (Not wahine)
- Wahine? (Wahine)
- We’ve covered teaching in such a way that the students understand what is being taught (faultless communication) but we need to ensure that they remember what they have been taught.
- Engelmann worked out a number of principles for cumulative review. We don’t have time to do them all, but there should be regular review of learned items and these should be combined with new items to improve not only memory but generalisation.
- We can use this review to check students’ accuracy, but we can also use them to build students’ fluency. The Precision Teaching movement identified some key principles that can help to ensure that students learn to perform skills at a socially useful level (not just get a percentage on a test) First of all, they identified that learning happens in several different dimensions, or stages. There are different conceptions of this, but I work with these six ….. Acquisition – the stage of learning when you are ‘picking up’ the skill / knowledge. There will be errors and approximations. For ‘normal’ students with a well-designed programme, this step is often small and fast. Accuracy - performing the skill or recalling the knowledge accurately to a mastery criterion (e.g. 8/10, 10/10). Fluency – performing with accuracy and speed to a criterion of functional effectiveness (CAP) Retention – maintaining the knowledge or skill over time with minimal loss of speed / accuracy Generalisation- knowing when to apply the knowledge or skill across different settings Adaptation – finding new ways to apply the skill or knowledge
- The second major contribution of Precision Teaching developers was to establish, through thousands of case studies, the criteria needed to ensure success in not only retaining knowledge but integrating it with other knowledge. Here are some examples of what they call CAPS (Criterion of Applied Proficiency) Fluency is an excellent predictor of achievement and a very sensitive measure of progress
- So, pulling together all these nuggets of research … No labelling – decisions made through assessment. No ‘gut feeling’ either.
- Scripted elements enable faultless (unambiguous) communication. Students receive immediate feedback on their performance. The use of an error correction procedure means that any errors are correctly immediately and effortlessly. Using DI scripts allow us to teach more in less time.
- Nothing is left to chance. No element is missed. Everything is taught in the correct sequence. Learning time is maximised. There is systematic review of previously-learned material. Data is collected in every lesson and this forms the basis to plan for the next lesson.
- There is no guesswork. There is no subjectivity. Students are only moved on to the next stage of learning once they have achieved the CAP. For instance, we don’t start developing fluency until they are accurate – it would be pointless to do otherwise. Building to fluency ensures retention. We don’t create artificial ceilings – we catch them up completely and then follow up to ensure that the gains have been maintained.