Assessing and Addressing Literacy Needs

Cases and Instructional Strategies

Barbara E. Combs

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781483342139
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Elementary Education

Designed to help preservice and inservice teachers use assessments to identify problems and employ appropriate strategies to help their students become better readers, this text includes 12 case studies that detail children's literacy struggles. The cases are embedded within a framework of research-based instructional interventions related to best practices in literacy instruction. The core chapters of the book are organized around six essential elements in learning to read—emergent literacy, word identification, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and engagement—and include a review of the literature, assessment strategies, instructional interventions, a section on Intervening With Technology, and two detailed case reports.

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION TO LITERACY
ASSESSMENT AND INSTRUCTION

Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop.

—Lewis Carroll

Guiding Questions

Section I of this chapter provides introductory information that will help to frame your thinking about the reading process and general assessment and instructional guidelines. Section II provides information about case-method instruction as a tool to promote your learning. Both sections will prepare you to read subsequent chapters. As you read, consider the following questions:

• Why learn to read?
• What do we do when we read?
• What factors influence literacy development?
• What are the elements of effective literacy assessment?
• What are the elements of effective literacy instruction?
• Why use case-based instruction?
• How might you use the cases in this text?

OVERVIEW

For more than 10 years, I taught courses in reading assessment and instruction on two different college campuses. For several years, I directed a summer reading program where I worked with graduate and undergraduate students as they assessed and provided targeted instruction for 50 or more students annually. Children with whom we worked varied in age, cultural background, and socioeconomic status and came from different educational settings, but they had one thing in common: They all struggled with reading or writing. As we worked together, our collective goal was to help each child grow as a reader and writer. For us, nothing was more important.

As you move through the chapters in this text, you will meet 12 of the children with whom we worked. Each chapter, with the exception of the one you are reading now, focuses on one of six elements of reading described in the literature: emergent literacy, word identification, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and engagement. In the first section of each chapter, you will read a review of the literature to help build or extend your prior knowledge and inform your reading of the cases. The next two sections detail common assessments and instructional interventions related to the focus element to prepare you to better understand the cases and think about what you might do to help each child.

The case reports of struggling readers are presented next, and they form the heart of the chapter. Each case fully details the assessment of a child who attended tutoring sessions or the summer reading program. Guiding questions and stopping points are provided to help you think about the learners’ literacy strengths and needs as well as what you might do to help them become proficient readers and writers.

This first chapter is designed to set the stage for what you will explore in the remainder of the text. It presents general information about literacy processes as well as elements related to assessment and instruction. Finally, it provides important information about case-study methodology and outlines a framework for reading about and responding to the case reports.

SECTION I: READING PROCESS, ASSESSMENT, AND INSTRUCTION

Why Learn to Read?

Consider the case of John Laurel:

John Laurel was a 16-year-old eighth grader reading at approximately the third grade level. At the age of 15, he was placed in a residential facility for boys after his family filed a petition in the courts citing that he had become ungovernable. He was ashamed that he read so poorly and actively avoided any situation that required him to read aloud. During a social studies class, his teacher asked him to read from the course text. He began, but his pace was so slow and his reading so labored that his peers heckled him. John stood up and shouted at the teacher, “I told you I can’t read this!” threw the book, and walked out.

John was one of our students. His difficulties in learning to read and write were long-standing, and at age 16, he faced a bleak future. He had already learned that reading was a basic requirement for success in academic subjects, and his failure to read had exacerbated other problems, emotional and psychological, so much so that they severely limited his ability to complete high school. He had yet to learn that his reading disability would likely decrease his ability for gainful, steady employment (Morris, 2008); result in his living at the poverty level; and increase the chance that he would be imprisoned at least once over the course of his life (WriteExpress Corporation, 2009).

As noted by Richek, Caldwell, Jennings, and Lerner (2002), “society suffers when citizens cannot read adequately. People with low reading levels comprise many of the unemployed, high school dropouts, the poor and those convicted of crimes” (p. 3). Being able to read is no less than a survival skill in today’s world. Given this, working with children like John to help them acquire the skills and strategies that effective readers employ takes on huge importance.

What Do We Do When We Read?

Children are not born reading. There is no genetic predisposition toward reading; everyone must be taught (Wolfe, 2007). As depicted in Figure 1.1, reading is a complex, interactive, developmental process that requires readers to use print-processing skills, prior knowledge and experiences, and a variety of comprehension strategies to make meaning of texts (Barr, Blachowicz, Bates, Katz, & Kaufman, 2007; Braunger & Lewis, 2001; Morris, 2008).

Definitions of reading routinely list the following elements as essential in learning to read proficiently: phonemic awareness, decoding skill, word recognition, vocabulary knowledge, fluency, comprehension, and metacognition (Manzo, Manzo, & Albee, 2004; National Assessment Governing Board, 2008; National Reading Panel, 2000). Many children learn each of these elements with little difficulty and negotiate the reading process smoothly. As mature and proficient readers, they engage the following behaviors:

Figure 1.1 The Reading Process

• They begin by forming an overview of text and then search for information to which they must pay particular attention.
• They progress through text with different levels of interaction, including interpreting and evaluating what they read.
• Based on previous reading experiences and prior knowledge, they form hypotheses about what the text will communicate and revise their initial ideas and their knowledge base as their reading continues.
• As they read, they continuously acquire new understandings and integrate these into their ongoing process of building comprehension.
• They monitor their understanding of text, recognize when text is not making sense, and employ a range of strategies to enhance their comprehension.
• They evaluate the qualities of the text.
• They use the ideas and information they acquire from text to expand their thinking about a topic, perform a specific task, draw conclusions, or make generalizations about what they have read (National Assessment Governing Board, 2008, p. 20).

About 25% of students will experience some difficulty learning to read (Morris, 2008). These children, and those described in the case reports within each chapter, need the help of knowledgeable teachers and specialists to build the skill and confidence necessary to become thoughtful, proficient readers.

What Factors Influence Literacy Development?

The development of a child’s ability to read effectively and take pleasure in the act of reading is influenced by multiple factors. Manzo et al. (2004) noted three broad factors: environmental (language and sociocultural differences such as gender, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and dialect), psychological (cognitive, attitudinal, and emotional functioning), and physiological (vision, hearing, and neurological functioning). Lipson and Wixson (2003) provided detailed information related to Manzo et al.’s (2004) broad categories in a discussion of factors that influence reading performance. These factors, summarized in Table 1.1, include elements essential for skilled reading, factors related to the learning context, factors related to the learner, and factors that are closely associated with literacy performance (correlates). As you read and discuss the assessment details of each case in the chapters ahead, you may wish to revisit the table to guide your thinking and your decision-making process.

Table 1.1 Factors That Influence Reading Performance

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Source: Adapted from Assessment & Instruction of Reading and Writing Difficulty: An Interactive Approach (3rd ed., pp. 23–49), by M. Lipson and K. Wixson, 2003, Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

What Are the Elements of Effective Literacy Assessment?

Effective literacy assessment should address all of the factors summarized in Table 1.1. In addition, effective assessment of struggling learners should explore how students approach reading tasks and texts that are part of their grade-level instruction (Manzo et al., 2004). The student who is able to negotiate instructional-level materials successfully and willingly reads classroom materials and recreational texts is not considered to have a reading problem.

Kibby (as cited in Gunning, 2006, p. 67) identified the six essential steps (see Figure 1.2) in the assessment process that incorporate the factors outlined by Lipson and Wixson (2003).

The assessments used with the learners reported in the cases in this book were selected to reveal a solid understanding of the students’ reading skills, strategies, and abilities. In addition, examiners gathered information related to the students’ home and community, the classroom environment, their attitudes about reading and writing, and their levels of motivation and engagement. More detailed descriptions of each of the assessment methods and tools can be found in the chapters that follow; however, a brief description of the key assessments that were used repeatedly is provided here:

Figure 1.2 Steps in the Assessment Process

• Analytical Reading Inventory (Woods & Moe, 1999). This is one of several informal reading inventories available today. It contains a series of graded word lists. Students’ responses to the word lists guide the teacher in determining which narrative and expository passages to use for further assessment. For each passage selected, the student is asked to make a prediction based on the title and first two sentences, read the passage aloud, retell as much as she or he can remember, and answer several comprehension questions. The inventory is used to help examiners determine students’ independent, instructional, and frustration reading levels and to identify strengths and weaknesses in word recognition, fluency, and comprehension. Additional information about the Analytical Reading Inventory can be found in Analytical Reading Inventory: Comprehensive Standards-Based Assessment for All Students Including Gifted and Remedial (Woods & Moe, 2006).

• Developmental Reading Assessment Kit (Beaver, 2006...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Brief Contents
• Detailed Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Introduction to Literacy Assessment and Instruction
• Chapter 2: Focus on Emergent Literacy
• Chapter 3: Focus on Word Identification
• Chapter 4: Focus on Fluency
• Chapter 5: Focus on Vocabulary
• Chapter 6: Focus on Comprehension
• Chapter 7: Focus on Engagement
• Glossary
• Index
• About the Author