The Art and Science of Teaching
Many of us have a love/hate relationship with Robert J. Marzano‘s work. His research and others like John Hattie, have impacted the way we teach each and every day.
The topics his research cover include instruction, assessment, writing and implementing standards, cognition, effective leadership and school intervention. These ten design questions by Marzano will improve your teaching and make you a more reflective teacher.
What I like best about him is his advice that teachers need to use their own experiences when implementing his teachings and know that not everything will work for everyone. This certainly is true of all students In The Art and Science of Teaching: A Comprehensive Framework for Effective Instruction, author Robert J. Marzano presents a model for ensuring quality teaching that balances the necessity of research-based data with the equally vital need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of individual students.
The Science
1. What will I do to establish and communicate learning goals, track student progress, and celebrate success?
2. What will I do to help students effectively interact with new knowledge?
3. What will I do to help students practice and deepen their understanding of new knowledge?
4. What will I do to help students generate and test hypotheses about new knowledge?
5. What will I do to engage students?
6. What will I do to establish or maintain classroom rules and procedures?
7. What will I do to recognize and acknowledge adherence and lack of adherence to classroom rules and procedures?
8. What will I do to establish and maintain effective relationships with students?
9. What will I do to communicate high expectations for all students?
10. What will I do to develop effective lessons organized into a cohesive unit?
Think about this set of questions. How can they help you with your own teaching? How can they help foster individual connections with your students?
Chat Soon,
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Have to Teach Phonics? How???
Phonics.
Ask a teacher about teaching phonics and a look of dread washes over them. For many of us--we never learned to teach phonics while in our teacher education programs. For others, it was a literacy coach who brought over "the box" and said teach it.
What's the big deal?!
Phonics has become the cornerstone for young readers. Phonics instruction has become the most controversial of all areas of reading education over the last ten years. Once the only aspect of reading instruction, it has now become one of five important components of reading education (with phonemic awareness, reading comprehension, vocabulary instruction and fluency building making up the other four areas). {thinking decoding strategies such as "Lips" and "Stretchy the Snake.} Grab my FREE Decoding Strategies posters here.
The goal of reading is making meaning from text. So, how is phonics related to comprehension?
Phonics instruction plays a vital rule in helping students understand what they are reading. Phonics instruction helps the child to map sounds onto spellings. Decoding words aids in the development and improvement in word recognition. The stronger a student's decoding skills mean they are reading more and have a great word recognition bucket to pull from. In turn, increasing their vocabulary skills and reading fluency.
To learn words by sight, it's critical that students have many opportunities to decode words in a text. The more times a reader encounters a word in a text, the more likely they are to recognize it by sight and to avoid making a reading error.
Reading fluency improves reading comprehension. When students are no longer struggling with decoding words, they can devote their full attention to making meaning from text. As the vocabulary and concept demands increase in a text, students need to be able to devote more and more attention to making meaning from text, and increasingly less attention to decoding. If students have to devote too much time to decoding words, their reading will be slow and labored. This will result in comprehension difficulties.
What order should phonics be taught?
I teach phonics based on the 7 syllable types. I also make a point to teach spelling at the same time. I don't move on to the next skill until students demonstrate mastery in BOTH reading the words fluently and spelling with at least 90% accuracy.
Start with Closed Syllables--Consonants and a Vowel {CVC} plus at least 50 sight words
Still working with Closed Syllables--add digraphs and continuing to add sight words
After digraphs move to Doubles, then Consonant Blends, and ng and nk patterns
As students master 3 letters move them on to other Closed Syllable Patterns: CCVC, CVCC, CCVCC, and don't forget about compound and multi-syllable closed {sunset or napkin}
Once students have mastered Closed Syllables move on to Vowel Consonant Silent E. Work through this syllable type on vowel at a time--make sure students have masted one before moving on to the next. Make sure to work through mixing the vowels up before moving onto multi-syllables {fireman or pothole}
Then moving into Open Syllables such as flu, my, sky
Vowel Teams, I find are the tricky ones. I brake them into small pieces and teach like sounds together and then mix them together as students master the pairs.
R-Controlled and Diphthongs, I teach the same way I do Vowel Teams--in very small chunks.
The last syllable type of C+le, I don't always get to (since I only have them for a couple of years), I start small with words they know and grow their list from there.
I teach phonics much like to teach guided reading. I do, we do, and you do.
What about my students who struggle with reading? What can I do?
For students who struggle with decoding, often too much is taught too fast. Work at a pace that allows students to achieve mastery. Remember, the goal is teaching to mastery rather than just exposure. And provide loads of decodable text reading practice. Students can never get enough opportunities reading easy texts that contain many words with newly taught sound-spellings. Repeated readings of these texts will also be helpful.
Other things I do to help students achieve mastery is playing games. I provide students with syllable specific word games. Check these out. My students beg for more time to play and they are designed to be extra practice and can easily be added to literacy centers for students to play on their own!! You can find them in Teachers pay Teachers Store.
Chat Soon,
How I Increased Reading Fluency Scores
She is a second-grade student who has struggled with her self-confidence when reading and just learning how to read for the last year.
She represents the students I teach reading to every day.
- No self-confidence
- Beginning reader
- No strategies
- No sight word knowledge
Oh, but unlike others, they have increased their sight word knowledge by 50% in 15 weeks. They have self-confidence and strategies when approaching an unknown text. And classroom teachers, are seeing these changes when they are in guided reading.
How did I do this?
Most of the students I see during my day are beginning readers. Technically this means students reading Levels A-E. For students to read the book more than twice and NOT have the whole thing memorized, is a whole different problem. (If you have looked, just like I have, then you know it doesn’t exist.)
Passage Reading with Sight Words to the RESCUE
These passages pick up where guided reading leaves off. My students love the fact they can read 90% of the words so they can focus on their reading fluency.
Each passage starts with a one-minute cold read. Students graph their score.
When you come back the next day, I help them practice the passage as many times they want before timing it again.
Students keep the same passage until reaching mastery. [Chick here to get yours.]
REASONS WHY IT WORKS
It works because students are placed in reading passages at their independent reading level. This means they are not struggling with every word like they would in most reading fluency passages.
I have written about Repeated Readings in the past as I create interventions--using John Hattie. My students love them and see each reading as a challenge to beat their score from the previous day. Tieing repeated reading with students doing their own data tracking has doubled their sight word scores and their grade level reading fluency scores.Student’s get tripped up on the sight words and can practice them without having to worry about the remaining text.
The Sight Word Cards are a way to quickly practice 5, 10, or 20 sight words. Each card is just for five days. [grab your here]
Max does his card as soon as he comes in. He started with reviews his personalized sight word deck of 10 cards and then moves right into his Sight Word Fluency Card.
He has struggled with learning his sight words since first grade. He never thought he would learn to read; let alone learn to love it!
I love that students graph their own data. This creates ownership and by-in. It builds self-confidence. It builds a love of reading.
I do all this fluency practice at the end of my lessons because it only takes 10 minutes. In those 10 minutes, I get daily progress monitoring of IEP goals, plan reading instruction, and build fluency.
By providing students with daily sight word fluency practice where students track their own data so that their instructional reading levels increase. Hattie's data adds evidence to what has become my go-to addition to their core intervention program.
In my district carry over back to grade level curriculum is HUGE! If it doesn't close gaps or classroom teacher don't see progress--you can forget about holding the course.
For those last ten minutes of group I spend focusing on reading fluency and sight words, I have seen a growth in sight words, self-confidence to attack more difficult text, and growth on grade level reading assessments.
My Classroom teachers are reporting student spending less time in their guided reading text because students are demonstrating solid decoding accuracy that has improved reading comprehension.
Chat Soon,
How I use WHY to Find Root Cause
This year as my building redoes their RTI process, they put WHY at the forefront of the process.
The Root Cause is so much more than just the test scores or the informal assessment scores you get. Getting to the bottom or root cause of why a student struggles takes a team, an open mind, and time. It's hard finding the one or two things that if you provide interventions or strategies for the student takes off.
My team most works on IEP goals. With the way building schedules have come together, it is all the time we have to work on. We work as a team to find the root cause behind their struggles. This is the process we use to find a student's Root Cause. When we work through a Root Cause Analysis we follow the same steps--make sure you bring an open mind and your data.
Scenario
Problem Statement: The student struggles with decoding.
Formal Reading Assessment
Based on formal testing the student doesn’t have any decoding concerns but his Reading Comprehension score is significantly below the 12th%ile.
WHY?
I need more information.
DIBLES Scores for a 2nd grader
DIBELS shows the student knows their sounds and letters but there is something up with the oral reading fluency. There is a significant gap greater than 2.0.
WHY?
Complete:
Oral Reading Fluency error analysis shows 68% accuracy with 16 words read.
Assessing sight words show they know 41 of the first 100.
The decision was made based on what looks like a decoding weakness Phonological Processing was assessed--scores were in the average range.
What do I know now?
The student has a decoding weakness. He would benefit from a phonics highly structured phonics program.
Why??
This time I only needed three WHYS to figure out what the true problem is for the student. Sometimes you need more. On average it tends to run closer to five.
This process was completed with my team not during RTI. The decision to target phonics could have been reached without the formal testing and just with DIBELS and Sight Words.
My team uses this approach to help each other when we get stuck and need to take a step back and need more voices to look at the data.
As a special education team, we target only IEP goals and scaffold the student's skills up to access the grade-level curriculum. So the more specific we can be the better--we don’t want to waste time messing around with large messy goals that don’t end up helping the student close achievement gaps.
Go back to RTI.
How could this process be used during an RTI meeting?
Questions and dialogue are key concepts here. Talk about what the numbers tell you. Start with strengths and needs. Just the facts! Don’t interpret anything. Work through the data dialogue process as I outlined in the E-workbook: RTI Data Clarity freebie. I also included several worksheets to help teams work towards finding a student’s root cause.
Working to find the root cause of why a student is struggling is hard work. The dialogue with your team is a great way to bring in more voices. This in turns brings in more ideas that may help the student. Make sure you bring the Data Clarity e-workbook to help.
Do you similar to help your team find a student’s root cause? Feel free to brag about your success in the comments!
Are you wondering how you can use this idea with your team? Check out my free E-Workbook: RTI Data Clarity.
Chat soon,
Why?
How else are you going to figure out what the student’s needs really are!The Root Cause is so much more than just the test scores or the informal assessment scores you get. Getting to the bottom or root cause of why a student struggles takes a team, an open mind, and time. It's hard finding the one or two things that if you provide interventions or strategies for the student takes off.
My team most works on IEP goals. With the way building schedules have come together, it is all the time we have to work on. We work as a team to find the root cause behind their struggles. This is the process we use to find a student's Root Cause. When we work through a Root Cause Analysis we follow the same steps--make sure you bring an open mind and your data.
Scenario
Problem Statement: The student struggles with decoding.
Formal Reading Assessment
- Alphabet: 63%ile
- Meaning: 2nd%ile
- Reading Quotient: 16th%ile
Based on formal testing the student doesn’t have any decoding concerns but his Reading Comprehension score is significantly below the 12th%ile.
WHY?
I need more information.
DIBLES Scores for a 2nd grader
- Nonsense Word Fluency: 32 sounds; Benchmark 54 sounds in a minute; Gap 1.68
- Phoneme Segmentation Fluency: 47 sounds; Benchmark 40 sounds in a minute; Gap .85
- Oral Reading Fluency: 11 words; Benchmark 52 words in a minute; Gap 4.7
DIBELS shows the student knows their sounds and letters but there is something up with the oral reading fluency. There is a significant gap greater than 2.0.
WHY?
Complete:
- Error Analysis of ORF passage
- Assess sight words
- Does Phonological Processing need to be assessed?
Oral Reading Fluency error analysis shows 68% accuracy with 16 words read.
Assessing sight words show they know 41 of the first 100.
The decision was made based on what looks like a decoding weakness Phonological Processing was assessed--scores were in the average range.
What do I know now?
The student has a decoding weakness. He would benefit from a phonics highly structured phonics program.
Why??
This time I only needed three WHYS to figure out what the true problem is for the student. Sometimes you need more. On average it tends to run closer to five.
This process was completed with my team not during RTI. The decision to target phonics could have been reached without the formal testing and just with DIBELS and Sight Words.
My team uses this approach to help each other when we get stuck and need to take a step back and need more voices to look at the data.
As a special education team, we target only IEP goals and scaffold the student's skills up to access the grade-level curriculum. So the more specific we can be the better--we don’t want to waste time messing around with large messy goals that don’t end up helping the student close achievement gaps.
Go back to RTI.
How could this process be used during an RTI meeting?
Questions and dialogue are key concepts here. Talk about what the numbers tell you. Start with strengths and needs. Just the facts! Don’t interpret anything. Work through the data dialogue process as I outlined in the E-workbook: RTI Data Clarity freebie. I also included several worksheets to help teams work towards finding a student’s root cause.
Working to find the root cause of why a student is struggling is hard work. The dialogue with your team is a great way to bring in more voices. This in turns brings in more ideas that may help the student. Make sure you bring the Data Clarity e-workbook to help.
Do you similar to help your team find a student’s root cause? Feel free to brag about your success in the comments!
Are you wondering how you can use this idea with your team? Check out my free E-Workbook: RTI Data Clarity.
Chat soon,
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