Module 5 Section 2

Summary

This transcript discusses the importance of solid Tier 1 reading instruction for students, emphasizing the Ohio Learning Standards and Essential Early Literacy Skills. It outlines four key shifts in ELA standards, including complex text practice, evidence-based reading and writing, knowledge building through nonfiction, and systematic foundational skills instruction. The script also highlights the Simple View of Reading and evidence-based recommendations for literacy instruction, focusing on vocabulary, comprehension strategies, and fluency. It concludes by stressing the need for direct and explicit instruction to support adolescent literacy development.

Takeaways

• 📚 Tier 1 reading instruction should provide a solid grounding in basic subjects to enhance children's reading comprehension.
• 🌟 Dr. Melinda Hirschman emphasizes the importance of structured literacy curriculum and instruction in the core setting.
• 📈 The Ohio Learning Standards, adopted in 2017, integrate literacy components like reading, writing, speaking, and listening, with a focus on evidence-based learning.
• 📖 The standards highlight four key shifts in ELA: complex text practice, evidence-based literacy, knowledge building through nonfiction, and systematic foundational skills instruction.
• 📚 Text complexity is determined by qualitative, quantitative, and reader/task characteristics, influencing the choice of texts for classroom instruction.
• 🔍 Text-dependent questions are crucial for grounding reading, writing, speaking, and listening in evidence from the text, fostering critical analysis.
• 🏆 The 'Baseball Study' shows the significance of background knowledge in comprehension, but it doesn't replace the need for automatic word recognition.
• 📈 Systematic and explicit instruction in foundational skills like phonics, word recognition, and fluency is essential for reading proficiency.
• 📊 The Simple View of Reading and the component view highlight the necessity of word recognition and language comprehension for reading comprehension.
• 📘 The IES Practice Guide recommends evidence-based literacy instruction focusing on academic language, phonological awareness, word decoding, and fluent reading.
• 📚 Adolescent literacy practices should include explicit vocabulary instruction, comprehension strategies, extended discussions, motivation strategies, and individualized intervention times.

Q & A

What is the main focus of tier 1 reading instruction according to the transcript?

The main focus of tier 1 reading instruction is to provide a solid grounding in basic subjects to enhance children's reading comprehension.

What are the two components of the core literacy curriculum and instruction mentioned in the transcript?

The two components are the Ohio Learning Standards adopted in 2017 and the Essential Early Literacy Skills.

How do the Ohio Learning Standards define literacy?

The Ohio Learning Standards define literacy as an integrated model that includes reading, writing, speaking, and listening.

What are the four key shifts in ELA standards mentioned in the transcript?

The four key shifts are: 1) Regular practice with complex text and its academic language, 2) Reading, writing, speaking, and listening grounded in evidence from the text, 3) Building knowledge through content-rich nonfiction, and 4) Explicit and systematic foundational skills instruction.

How does the text complexity model categorize the complexity of a text?

The text complexity model categorizes complexity into qualitative, quantitative, and reader and task characteristics.

What is the purpose of text-dependent questions in classroom instruction?

Text-dependent questions require students to return to the text for answers, ensuring that reading, writing, speaking, and listening are grounded in evidence from the text.

What did the Baseball Study conducted by Recht and Leslie in 1988 reveal about reading comprehension?

The Baseball Study revealed that students with high reading ability and high knowledge performed better in reading comprehension, but surprisingly, low reading ability students with high knowledge of the subject also scored high.

How does the transcript suggest that background knowledge impacts reading proficiency?

While background knowledge is important, it is not sufficient for reading proficiency, and automatic word recognition remains crucial.

What does the reading foundation strand in the Ohio Learning Standards address?

The reading foundation strand addresses foundational skills such as print concepts, phonological awareness, phonics and word recognition, and fluency.

What are the five areas of reading that the National Reading Panel found to be most effective for teaching children to read?

The five areas are phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

What are the four evidence-based recommendations for literacy instruction given by the IES Practice Guide for Foundational Skills Instruction?

The recommendations are: 1) Teach academic language skills, 2) Develop awareness of speech sounds and their mapping onto letters, 3) Teach decoding words and analyzing word parts, and 4) Provide opportunities to read connected text daily.

Outlines

00:00

📚 Tier 1 Reading Instruction Essentials

This paragraph discusses the importance of solid tier 1 reading instruction, emphasizing the necessity of a structured literacy curriculum and instruction in the core setting. It reviews the Ohio Learning Standards and the Essential Early Literacy Skills as the foundation of literacy curriculum. The standards include reading, writing, speaking, and listening, with a focus on complex texts and academic language. The paragraph also covers four key shifts in ELA standards: regular practice with complex texts, grounding literacy in evidence, building knowledge through nonfiction, and explicit foundational skills instruction. The importance of academic vocabulary and text complexity, as well as the types of text-dependent questions, are also highlighted.

05:03

🧠 The Impact of Background Knowledge on Reading Comprehension

Paragraph 2 delves into the role of background knowledge in reading comprehension, referencing the Baseball Study by Recht and Leslie. It discusses how students with high reading ability and high knowledge outperformed others, but surprisingly, students with low reading ability but high knowledge also scored high in comprehension. This suggests that background knowledge can aid understanding, but it is not a substitute for reading proficiency. The paragraph stresses the need for automatic word recognition and the importance of foundational skills instruction, as outlined in the Ohio Learning Standards.

10:04

📈 Enhancing Adolescent Literacy Through Structured Instruction

The final paragraph focuses on adolescent literacy, providing recommendations from the IES Practice Guide for improving literacy in classrooms and interventions. It emphasizes the need for explicit vocabulary instruction, comprehension strategy training, extended discussions, motivation strategies, and individualized intervention times. The guide also suggests building decoding skills, fluency activities, comprehension-building practices, and exposing students to challenging texts. The paragraph concludes by connecting these recommendations to the Ohio English Language Arts standards and the Dyslexia Guidebook, reinforcing the importance of structured literacy instruction for adolescent readers.

Keywords

💡Structured Literacy Curriculum

Structured literacy curriculum refers to a systematic and sequential approach to teaching reading and writing. It is grounded in the understanding that literacy skills are built upon a foundation of phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. In the video, this concept is central to tier 1 instruction, emphasizing the importance of a core literacy curriculum that is based on the Ohio Learning Standards and Essential Early Literacy Skills.

💡Ohio Learning Standards

The Ohio Learning Standards are a set of educational benchmarks that define what students should know and be able to do in various subjects, including English Language Arts. They provide a framework for literacy instruction, emphasizing an integrated model of literacy that includes reading, writing, speaking, and listening. The video mentions that these standards guide the progression of learning from kindergarten through 12th grade.

💡Text Complexity

Text complexity refers to the difficulty level of a text due to qualitative, quantitative, and reader/task characteristics. In the script, it is discussed as a key shift in ELA standards, indicating that as students progress, they should be exposed to increasingly complex texts that challenge their reading abilities and require a focus on academic vocabulary.

💡Academic Vocabulary

Academic vocabulary consists of specialized words and phrases used in academic contexts. The video script highlights the importance of regular practice with complex texts and their academic language, suggesting that students should be familiar with the vocabulary to fully comprehend and engage with academic material.

💡Text Dependent Questions

Text dependent questions are inquiries that require students to refer back to a text for answers, ensuring that their responses are grounded in evidence from the material. The video explains that classroom instruction should include these questions to promote a deeper understanding of the text and to develop critical thinking skills.

💡Content-Rich Nonfiction

Content-rich nonfiction refers to nonfiction texts that are dense with information and ideas. The video discusses the importance of building knowledge through such texts, as they provide students with factual information that can enhance their understanding of various subjects.

💡Background Knowledge

Background knowledge is the information and understanding that a reader already possesses about a topic before reading a text. The video references a study that suggests background knowledge can compensate for a lack of reading ability to some extent, but it also emphasizes that it is not a substitute for the need to develop automatic word recognition skills.

💡Foundational Skills

Foundational skills in reading include phonemic awareness, phonics, word recognition, and fluency. The video script explains that explicit and systematic instruction in these skills is crucial for students to become proficient readers. It also mentions the Ohio Learning Standards' reading foundation strand, which addresses these skills.

💡Simple View of Reading

The Simple View of Reading is a model that posits reading comprehension is the product of two interacting components: word recognition and language comprehension. The video uses this framework to explain the essential early literacy skills that must be learned and integrated to support reading comprehension.

💡National Reading Panel

The National Reading Panel conducted research that identified five critical areas of reading instruction: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. The video script refers to the panel's findings to support the structured literacy approach, emphasizing that specific instruction in these areas is essential for teaching children to read.

💡Adolescent Literacy

Adolescent literacy focuses on the language and literacy skills needed for older students to become proficient readers and writers. The video discusses various recommendations for supporting adolescent readers, including direct and explicit instruction in vocabulary and comprehension strategies, as well as the need for extended discussions and interventions for struggling readers.

Highlights

The importance of providing a solid foundation in basic subjects for reading comprehension.

Dr. Melinda Hirschman's explanation of what should be included in solid tier 1 instruction.

The core literacy curriculum and instruction based on Ohio Learning Standards and Essential Early Literacy Skills.

The Ohio Learning Standards' integrated model of literacy including reading, writing, speaking, and listening.

The four key shifts in ELA standards: complex text practice, evidence-based reading and writing, content-rich nonfiction, and systematic foundational skills instruction.

The qualitative, quantitative, and reader/task characteristics that make text complex.

The necessity of grounding reading, writing, speaking, and listening in evidence from the text.

The six categories of text-dependent questions that require students to analyze the text.

The significance of building knowledge through content-rich nonfiction texts.

The Baseball Study's findings on the impact of background knowledge on reading comprehension.

Mark Seidenberg's perspective on the necessity of automatic word recognition for reading proficiency.

The explicit and systematic instruction in foundational skills as outlined in the Ohio Learning Standards.

The changing emphasis on specific skill progressions as students move through elementary grades.

The Simple View of Reading framework emphasizing word recognition and language comprehension.

The National Reading Panel's findings on the effectiveness of specific reading instruction areas.

IES Practice Guide recommendations for foundational skills instruction in Kindergarten through 3rd grade.

The importance of teaching academic language skills, including vocabulary and text structures.

Recommendations for word reading instruction, including phonological awareness and decoding.

The role of fluent reading practices like guided oral reading and repeated reading in building reading fluency.

Comprehension monitoring strategies to enhance students' understanding of what they read.

IES Practice Guide recommendations for adolescent literacy instruction and interventions.

The alignment of instructional components in the Dyslexia Guidebook with the practice guide.

The alignment of recommendations with the Ohio English Language Arts Vertical Alignment documents.

The conclusion of Module 5, Section 2, summarizing the importance of tier 1 instruction based on standards and early literacy skills.

Transcripts

In this section, we will explore the question, what should go into

solid tier 1 reading instruction?

Daniel Willingham reminds us that, by failing to provide solid

grounding in basic subjects, we inadvertently hobble children's

ability in reading comprehension.

In this next section, Dr.

Melinda Hirschman provides further explanation for what should go

into solid tier 1 instruction.

In the last section, we explored the characteristics of tier 1 instruction.

In this part, we'll focus on one characteristic, structured

literacy curriculum and instruction in the core setting.

The core literacy curriculum and Instruction is based on two components the

Ohio Learning Standards adopted in 2017 and the Essential Early Literacy Skills.

Let's review the learning standards.

The Ohio Learning Standards present an integrated model of

literacy, which includes reading, writing, speaking, and listening.

These standards define what students should know and be able to do.

They don't tell teachers how to teach.

The standards show a cumulative progression of learning for kindergarten

through 12th grade, and they encompass learning for all students,

including English language learners and students with special needs.

The Ohio Learning Standards included four key shifts in ELA standards.

First, regular practice with complex text and its academic language.

Second, reading, writing, speaking, and listening needs to be grounded in evidence

for both literary and informational texts.

Third, building knowledge through content-rich nonfiction.

And finally, explicit and systematic foundational skills instruction.

Let's take a minute to dive deeper into each of the key shifts.

The first key shift is regular practice with complex texts

and their academic language.

As students progress through the grades, the text should become

increasingly more complex.

This shift also requires a focus on academic vocabulary.

According to the three part model of text complexity, text can be complex

due to qualitative, quantitative, or reader and task characteristics.

Examples of the qualitative characteristics of text include the

many levels of meaning a text may hold, the structure of the text itself, and

the knowledge demands of the text.

Quantitative measures include word length and frequency, sentence

length, and text cohesion.

These measures are quantifiable, meaning we can measure the average length of a

word or the frequency of words in a text.

Finally, reader characteristics include the reader's motivation for reading the

text, his or her knowledge of the content of the text, and their reading experience.

Text characteristics include the purpose for their reading and the complexity

of the task associated with the text.

A text can be complex in one or more of these areas, and it's important

to consider each when choosing text for classroom instruction in tier 1.

The next key shift in the ELA standards is that reading, writing,

speaking, and listening are grounded in evidence from the text.

This shift is also the basis for student production of argumentative

and informative writing.

To ensure that reading, writing, speaking, and listening are grounded in evidence

from the text, classroom instruction should include text dependent questions.

Text dependent questions require students to return to the text for answers.

There are six main categories, general understanding, key details, vocabulary

and text structure, questions about author's purpose, inferences, and

questions asking opinions, arguments, or making connections to other texts.

The different categories of text dependent questions require students

to analyze increasingly larger parts of the text, starting with the word

level and progressing to the entire text, until students are able to

make connections across other texts.

Another way to think of the different categories of text dependent

questions is to think of the first two types as answering the

question, what does the text say?

Vocabulary, text structure, and author's purpose give

evidence for how the text works.

And finally, the highest level of text dependent questions

answer, what does the text mean?

Regardless of the level of text dependent questions being asked, the answers

require students to return to the text for that evidence to support their answers.

The third key shift is building knowledge through content-rich nonfiction text.

In 1988, Recht and Leslie conducted a study that's become

known as the Baseball Study.

In this study, a group of 7th and 8th grade students were asked to read

a passage about baseball and then took a test of their comprehension.

Students were then classified into one of four categories.

Those with high reading ability and high knowledge of baseball; high

reading ability and low knowledge; low reading ability, high knowledge

of baseball; and low reading ability, low knowledge of baseball.

High reading ability was defined as scoring at the 70th percentile or higher

on a standardized test of reading.

Low reading ability was defined as scoring at the 30th percentile

or lower on the same measure.

High knowledge was defined as scoring at the 70th percentile or higher on

a test of baseball knowledge, while low knowledge was defined as scoring

at or below the 30th percentile.

The researchers found that students with high reading ability and high

knowledge perform better than the other three groups, which would be expected.

What was surprising was that the low reading ability, but high knowledge of

baseball groups scored the second highest on the measure of reading comprehension.

This led many to conclude that background knowledge was able to

compensate for a lack of reading ability.

However, the findings from this study should not be overgeneralized.

According to Mark Seidenberg and colleague, background

knowledge is important.

However, it's not sufficient for reading proficiency.

As he states, it does not do away with the need to attend

closely to the words in the text.

The goal of instruction is to get children to the point where they recognize words

quickly, accurately, and automatically.

Reading then allows the child to expand their knowledge of language and the

world, gaining additional practice reading words and comprehending text.

In other words, background knowledge is important, but we can't forget the

importance of automatic word recognition.

Being able to read the words enables the student's ability to learn from the text.

The fourth and final key shift in the ELA standards is the explicit and systematic

instruction in foundational skills.

The Ohio Learning Standards include a reading foundation strand which

addresses foundational skills.

The reading foundation strand includes standards for print concepts in

kindergarten and first grade, phonological awareness in grades K-2, phonics and

word recognition for grades K-5, and fluency standards for grades 1-5.

These standards are part of a comprehensive reading curriculum.

It's important to note that from kindergarten through 5th grade,

the emphasis on instruction shifts through the grade levels as

students progress towards mastery.

This table shows the general skills, highlighted in orange, in each of the five

components that are emphasized as learners move through the elementary grades.

Notice that this is not about balance or even the amount of time spent on each

component, but rather a changing emphasis on the specific skill progressions.

Educators should be aware of students who are not progressing in a typical

manner and who may need additional support to target earlier subskills.

Mastering these components leads to greater success in

a learner's adolescent years.

The second component of core literacy curriculum and instruction is the

essential early literacy skills.

You may recall this formula from Module 1, known as the Simple View of Reading.

It's a widely accepted framework that shows that reading has two

basic components, word recognition and language comprehension.

Both of these components are required for reading comprehension.

Another way to conceptualize the Simple View of Reading is to look

deeper into each of the components.

The component view of reading clearly shows the essential literacy

skills that must be learned and integrated to support the ultimate

goal of reading comprehension.

You may also recall that the National Reading Panel found that specific

instruction in these five areas of reading, phonemic awareness, phonics,

fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension was the best approach to teaching

the majority of children to read.

Let's revisit the IES Practice Guide for Foundational Skills Instruction

in Kindergarten through 3rd grade.

It gives four evidence based recommendations for literacy

instruction, which are complementary with our structured literacy approach.

First, students need to be taught academic language skills, including

the use of inferential and narrative language and vocabulary knowledge.

Second, students should develop an awareness of speech sounds and

how they're mapped onto letters.

Third, students should be taught to decode words and analyze word parts

in order to read and write words.

Finally, students should have opportunities to read connected text

every day to support word reading accuracy, fluency, and comprehension.

To teach academic language skills, students should be directly

taught academic vocabulary for texts read aloud to them and for

texts they read independently.

The grammatical structure of sentences and text structures for

both narrative and informational text should also be directly taught.

Students should also have opportunities to predict and problem-solve while

linking information to their background knowledge in oral comprehension and

reading comprehension activities.

Recommendations two and three center on the importance of word reading.

We need to provide direct instruction in: phonological awareness; letter names

and their formations; and the sounds mapped onto them; parts of words; high

frequency words, including teaching a few irregularly spelled words as whole

words, such as the word of, o-f, that are essential to reading connected

text with meaning; and we should teach students to spell the words with the

patterns they're learning to read.

The final evidence-based recommendation is focused on fluent reading.

Guided oral reading may include choral reading, echo reading,

and simultaneous reading.

Repeated reading is another evidence-based way to grow reading fluency.

Wide reading offers an opportunity for students to read from a variety of texts

to gain knowledge and reading fluency.

The teacher scaffolds and supports the application of decoding skills to

read decodable words in those texts.

Comprehension monitoring involves students thinking about what they're reading.

Teaching students to stop at predetermined points in the text to ask themselves

what they just read, or to stop and jot about what they read, is one way to

build comprehension monitoring skills.

The First Adolescent Literacy Practice Guide focuses on general classroom

practices to support the language and literacy skills of all adolescent readers.

The IES Practice Guide for Improving Adolescent Literacy, Effective Classroom

and Intervention Practices gives us five recommendations for literacy instruction.

First, students need to be taught vocabulary of the content

through explicit instruction.

Second, students should have direct instruction and explicit instruction

in comprehension strategies.

These are the routines and procedures that readers use to

help them make sense of text.

These strategies include, but are not limited to, summarizing,

asking and answering questions, paraphrasing, and finding the main idea.

Third, all classrooms should provide opportunities for extended discussion

of text meaning and interpretation.

Recommendation four focuses on using strategies to enhance student

motivation, such as building student confidence, providing a supportive

environment, and making literacy experiences relevant to students lives.

Finally, a school schedule needs to be designed so intensive and

individualized intervention times are available for struggling readers.

The IES Practice Guide, Providing Reading Interventions for Students in Grades

4-9, gives us four recommendations for adolescent literacy interventions.

Keep in mind, this guide aligns with recommendation five in the prior guide.

There must be a dedicated block of time, in addition to core

classes, for interventions.

The guide recommends first, building students decoding skills so they can

read complex, multisyllabic words.

Second, providing purposeful fluency building activities to

help students read effortlessly.

Third, using a set of comprehension-building practices to

help students make sense of text.

And finally, providing students with opportunities to practice

making sense of stretch text, or challenging text, that will expose

them to complex ideas and information.

Look back at page 42 in the Dyslexia Guidebook.

Note where the table of instructional components used in intervention and

remediation for adolescent students aligns with the practice guide.

Take a moment to look back at the Ohio English Language Arts

Vertical Alignment documents.

Note where the recommendations match the standards.

This concludes Module 5, Section 2.

In this section, you learned that tier 1 instruction should

be based on the Ohio Learning Standards and early literacy skills.

You also learned that early literacy skills support students in becoming

proficient readers and writers.

And that adolescent readers need direct and explicit instruction in vocabulary

and comprehension to support their development as readers and writers.