# Presentation: 025564

## Professional Development for Teachers of Reading

- Louisa Moats, University of Texas – Houston (Team Leader)
-  	Anne Cunningham, University of California ,  Berkeley
- 	Judy Wurtzel, Learning First Alliance
- 	Jerry Silbert, NCITE – University of Oregon
- 	Alice Furry, Sacramento County Office of Education

## What are our goals?

- Improve student achievement
- Implement research-based comprehensive reading programs
- Cultivate future coaches, mentors, and experts in each school
- Leave no teacher behind

**Notes:**
Notes:
No part of the the movement toward scientifically-based reading instruction is more important than professional development for the teacher. Programs do not teach; teachers do. Effective professional development  will improve student achievement, support consistent implementation of a comprehensive reading program, build school capacity, and increase faculty morale, collaboration, and commitment.  Professional development must be for all educators who share responsibility for groups of children.

## What Do We Know About Professional Development?

- Consensus of many organizations:
- 	“...Effective professional development requires extended time for initial training that includes discussions of research on how children learn to read as well as specific instructional strategies. In addition, it requires extensive in-class follow-up...”
- 		(Every Child Reading, Learning First Alliance, pp. 21-22)

**Notes:**
Notes:
The characteristics of high quality professional development are already known and described by the Learning First Alliance (2000), the National Staff Development Council (1995), and the National Partnership for Excellence and Accountability in Teaching (1999).
These characteristics can be summarized as follows:
“...Effective  requires extended time for initial training that includes discussions of research on how children learn to read as well as specific instructional strategies. In addition, it requires extensive in-class follow-up.  PD needs to be seen as a never-ending process that involves the entire school staff, not a one-time event.” 
	-Every Child Reading, Learning First Alliance, pp. 21-22.

## Why is Professional Development Necessary?

- Consistency of reading program implementation requires commitment from every teacher.
- Preservice preparation has often been insufficient.
- Teachers have heard conflicting (and often misinformed) ideas about reading instruction that should be aired, confronted, and resolved.
- Teaching reading *is* rocket science!

**Notes:**
Notes:
A consistent program between and across grade levels is impossible without everyone’s involvement, including regular class teachers, specialists, and administrators. Novices may have different goals and needs from veterans, but everyone must share a common set of goals, working concepts, and tools.  

Policy makers may be puzzled that teachers need on-going support after they are licensed. Even our best pre-service programs, however, cannot prepare new teachers to implement a comprehensive program without additional instruction and coaching. We do not expect instant expertise of other newly certified professionals, such as psychologists; we require supervised internships.  Teaching is no less complex.  As the American Federation of Teachers declared, Teaching Reading is Rocket Science!

## Our most common mistakes:

- “...spray and pray...”
- “...if it’s new, it must be better...”
- “...you do your thing, I’ll do mine...”
- Looking OK – doing the wrong thing.

**Notes:**
Notes:
Common counterproductive habits in professional development programs include:

-teaching a little of everything and nothing in depth

-embracing novelty for novelty’s sake, so that proven programs are replaced by newer, but not better ones

-avoiding confrontation of ineffective practices or ideas and allowing teachers to do whatever they want to do regardless of the results

-focusing on superficial indicators of teaching quality instead of student outcomes to determine if change is needed

## Professional Development Has Three Major Dimensions

- A supportive **context** with strong leadership
- Strong **content**, grounded in research, that includes all components of reading instruction
- An effective **process** of implementation

**Notes:**
Notes:
The National Staff Development Council has led the field of education in conceptualizing what must be done by dividing the characteristics of good professional development into the categories of context, content, and process. We will discuss each of these categories.

## The Context of Professional Development

**Notes:**
Notes:

## Everyone Is Involved

- Together and separately –
- Classroom teachers, by grade level
- Administrators, by responsibility
- Special service providers
- English Language specialists
- Paraprofessionals and tutors
- Parents and board members

**Notes:**
Notes:
Educating classroom teachers about reading instruction is largely ineffective unless all other school personnel who support reading instruction are involved. Best practices should be defined for all in curriculum frameworks and research syntheses.  All groups may participate in some learning experiences together, but each group also needs its own professional development program.  Each group’s responsibilities differ. For example, first grade teachers must ensure that all students learn to decode with proficiency. Second grade teachers must focus on advanced word recognition, reading fluency, and vocabulary development.  Third grade teachers are more concerned with teaching text organization and writing skills.
Specialists should understand the classroom program so that their supplementary services will complement what the child experiences the rest of the day. Parents and board members must be informed and involved in supporting the classroom program.

## Expectations Are Consistent

- Professional development courses and coaching must aim to:
- support the adopted, comprehensive reading program;
- implement state standards and frameworks;
- present the consensus findings of reading research.

**Notes:**
Notes:
Professional development should cover the performance standards, curricular frameworks, and assessments, as well as the comprehensive reading program that teachers are expected to deliver.  Of course, these should be aligned with one another.  Teachers are more likely to use effective practices if they are embedded in the adopted comprehensive reading program.

## Time and Resources Are Sufficient to Get Results

- Time for teachers to learn each concept and teaching routine necessary to implement the comprehensive program.
- Time and resources for development of expertise in each component of reading instruction.

**Notes:**
Notes:
Professional development for a novice teacher could easily average several hours per week.  Implementation of a new comprehensive reading program, or induction of a teacher new to the adopted comprehensive reading program, typically requires a week-long summer institute.
Additional experiences during the school year could include grade level team meetings, independent study, and in-school staff development workshops.  Mentoring and demonstration lessons from a qualified reading coach would involve still more hours. Expertise in each component of reading instruction will take more than one year for most teachers to develop.

A novice teacher can get good results in one year of mentoring and coaching, but deeper understanding of all the pieces of the reading puzzle takes longer, usually two to three years.

## Teachers Learn From Each Other and From Outside Experts

- To build expertise in each school, the knowledge of peers, coaches, and mentors should be engaged as often as necessary.
- Teachers prefer to learn in a context of sharing and mutual support – just as most of us do.
- Outside expertise can be accessed through courses, conferences, and consultation.

**Notes:**
Notes:
Each school  must develop experts among its own teaching staff who can become the leaders of others.  These are the teachers who know their content, can teach the comprehensive reading program effectively, and can teach demonstration lessons for peers. Teachers usually enjoy learning together and learning from one another.

Outside expertise can be accessed through videotapes, on-line courses, visiting program consultants, and visiting lecturers.  Outside expertise is most valuable for renewing commitment to research-based practice and resolving philosophical or procedural conflicts among staff members.

## The Content of Professional Development

**Notes:**
Notes:

## The Foundation Concepts for Understanding Reading 

- Foundation concepts are learned gradually in interaction with practical skills and include four important ideas:
- How the essential components of reading are related
- How children learn to read
- Why some children fail to learn to read well
- How written English is structured

**Notes:**
Notes:
Foundation concepts about reading provide a common frame of reference for everyone.   These concepts should be revisited often in professional development institutes and courses.  

## Fostering Oral Language Development in the Classroom

- Reading skill depends on oral language skill.
- Teachers need to know how to stimulate development of children’s oral language through classroom dialogue, reading aloud, asking questions that promote discussion, and modeling how ideas can be expressed.

**Notes:**
Notes:
Oral language is the basis for learning to read.  Many children come to school without the language foundations that will enable them to be good readers.  Teachers can enrich and stimulate children’s spoken language in many ways.
Teachers can learn to be mindful of their language and the language children use.  Teachers can learn habits of verbal communication that support and develop children’s language knowledge and use. At least a dozen studies have shown that teachers can improve children’s vocabulary, expressive language, and social use of language if they know how to talk with children and model language for them (Snow, Burns, and Griffin, 1998).

## Prepare Teachers in Essential Components of Instruction

- Phoneme awareness, letter knowledge
- Phonics, word study and spelling
- Fluency
- Vocabulary
- Comprehension and written expression

**Notes:**
Notes:
Not only must teachers know the strategies and techniques for increasing student achievement in all of these essential components of reading instruction, but also they must learn how to assess student progress in each.

## Phoneme Awareness

- Teachers are not born knowing how to identify the separate sounds in spoken language; they need learn about the phonemes so that they can teach explicit phonemic awareness lessons.
- Many adults confuse speech sounds with letters, mispronounce the sounds, or are not sure how to segment words into phonemes.  They need instruction and practice, sometimes over an extended period.

**Notes:**
Notes:
Many adults need help with phonological skill, including phoneme awareness, before they can teach it directly to children. Professional development must include time for teachers to learn and practice skills such as matching phonemes, pronouncing phonemes in isolation, and blending them .

For example, how many speech sounds are in:

	ring
	show
	clamp
	fox

## Phonics and Word Study

- Many teaching routines are included in direct, explicit, systematic programs of phonics instruction and word study. Teachers need to practice them before taking on a class of children.
- Challenging aspects of instruction include introducing new sound-symbol correspondences, sound blending, using decodable text, and giving students corrective feedback when they are confused.

**Notes:**
Notes:
Teachers are often faced with a number of new teaching routines in a program of effective phonics instruction.  These include special techniques for moving children from slow, sound-by-sound blending to more rapid blending of all the sounds in a word.  These routines include methods for memorizing irregular words, using decodable text effectively, and getting children to rely on knowledge of sounds instead of guessing from context.  Teachers may need as many as 20 opportunities to practice each routine before they are comfortable with it (Joyce and Showers, 1985).

## Spelling

- Systematic teaching of spelling requires an understanding of the system itself.  English is predictable but complex.
- Layers of English comprise Anglo-Saxon, French, Latin, and Greek word origins, spelling patterns, and word structures.
- Many teachers must learn more about the spelling system before they feel comfortable teaching it!

**Notes:**
Notes:
Good preparation of teachers will help them understand the organization of our writing system and the historical influences that shaped it.  English appears much more systematic when we take into account the language each word came from and what it means.  For example, “give” and “have” are regular: no word in English ends in a plain “v” letter.  When English words end in the sound /v/, the spelling is always –ve.  Many facts such as this are not widely known, but they can take much of the mystery out of English spelling that sometimes overwhelms students and teachers alike.

## Fluency

- Fluency can be understood as a stage of normal reading development and an outcome of effective instruction.
- Dysfluency (slow reading, either accurate or inaccurate) is a characteristic of poor readers.  It predicts poor comprehension.
- With practice, most children can improve their reading fluency.

**Notes:**
Notes: 
Understanding the importance of accurate and fluent performance in basic reading skill is essential for teachers. Proficient reading is fluent; fluency is gained with sufficient skill development and practice. Comprehension depends on it.  With an understanding of this goal of effective teaching, teachers are more likely to provide sufficient practice and in addition to encourage their students to read independently.  

## Vocabulary

- Teaching new vocabulary well involves much more than giving definitions for new words.
- Teachers must develop verbal habits, such as using new words often in classroom discussion.
- Teachers need strategies to get students to read as much as possible.

**Notes:**
Notes:
Giving definitions is one way to teach vocabulary, but much more than that is involved in learning new words.  Teaching vocabulary well means giving students repeated exposure to new words in many contexts, spoken and written.  

The language the teacher uses day in and day out is instrumental in building students’ vocabularies.  Professional development experiences can help teachers be conscious of their own verbal behavior and its effect on children.

## Text Comprehension

- Teaching comprehension is complex and teachers need as much help with this as with teaching phonics, spelling, or vocabulary.
- Teachers need to help students to focus discussion on the meanings in the text.
- Teachers can learn to ask probing questions and to model comprehension strategies.
- Different comprehension strategies are useful before, during, and after reading.

**Notes:**
Notes:
Teachers need as much help with comprehension instruction as they need with other components of reading.   Often, too much time is spent on literal questions that test literal comprehension, and too little time is spent on queries that focus discussion and engage students in thinking hard about what they read.  Questioning strategies, however, can be learned with instruction, modeling, practice, and feedback – and such learning, again, takes time.

In addition, the strategies that work best before children read, while they are reading, and after they have read a text are important for teachers to understand and practice.

## Assessment

- Teachers, principals, and coaches must learn how to administer and interpret classroom and program-based instructional assessments of student progress.
- Learning how to assess each essential component of reading is part of learning to teach each component.

**Notes:**
Notes:
Teachers, principals and reading coaches must be familiar enough with classroom-based instructional assessments to administer and interpret them.  

## Promoting Reading Itself

- Motivation to read, opportunities to read, availability of reading material – the ways a teacher can create a “literate environment”- are essential topics in a professional development program.

**Notes:**
Notes:
It is easy for teachers who are juggling the technical challenges of program organization and delivery to lose sight of the fact that purposeful reading and writing is the goal of instruction.  

Teachers usually welcome information on the importance of daily reading aloud, the selection of reading material, the organization of the classroom library, and incentives to increase student reading.

## Management, Organization

- Teachers with good management and organizational skills use instructional time well.
- Managing a reading program for diverse learners is demanding.  Many teachers need help from coaches and mentors to identify and implement grouping strategies, positive behavior management, daily routines and schedules, progress monitoring, and the spatial organization of the room.

**Notes:**
Notes:
Teachers who get the best results with students are able to manage the class groupings, schedules, and routines to differentiate instruction and maximize time on task for everyone. 

 Novice teachers often benefit from a great deal of help with this complex challenge.

## Processes of Professional Development

**Notes:**
Notes:

## Adults Learn in Stages

- Understand the concept or build an image of what is wanted
- Practice one step at a time, with guidance and support
- Practice in a safe context with feedback
- Apply independently
- Evaluate and adjust, refine, or relearn

**Notes:**
Notes:
Adult learners, like children, need to inquire, reflect, experiment with, and evaluate the results of new ideas and practices.  Steps in learning involve a) understanding the concept or routine, b) observing a model in action, c) practicing in a safe context, d) trying out the behavior with support from an experienced expert, and e) assessing the effectiveness of the instruction once it is attempted.  

## A Full Range of Varied Experiences 

- A professional development program can offer a rich menu:
- Intensive summer institutes
- Grade-level team meetings every month
- On-line courses during the year
- Whole day or 1⁄2 day in-service
- Traditional courses taken for credit
- In-class coaching
- Team teaching

**Notes:**
Notes:
For teachers new to a program, it is important that they practice the components and routines needed to teach the first few weeks of that program.  Summer institutes are ideal for such concentrated practice.  As teachers learn the procedures and components of their program, then study groups, collaborative teams, individual projects, observation and feedback, co-teaching, demonstrations, classroom research projects, and distance learning may all be appropriate. These options should be used to help teachers meet the needs of their students, as reflected in continuous classroom assessment of their progress.

## Focus on Student Achievement

- Teachers should meet at least every four weeks, with team-mates, coaches and the principal, to interpret in-class assessment results and to plan instruction.
- Professional development programs should be based in large part on student achievement patterns.

**Notes:**
Notes:
Objective assessment of students for the purpose of improving student performance should  be conducted routinely using efficient measures of critical skills.  A moderate gain in student achievement results can be obtained by focusing teachers on the students’ strengths and weaknesses as reflected in classroom-based measures of what has been taught and what must be learned.

## In-class Coaching

- Especially for novice or low-implementing teachers, in-class follow-up from a qualified reading coach is essential.
- A qualified coach is an employee of a district who has proven his or her ability to effectively teach the adopted comprehensive reading program.
- Coaches need weekly professional development meetings for themselves.

**Notes:**
Notes:
Ideally, a school system will have one full-time coach for no more than thirty teachers.  The coach is an experienced teacher with proven ability to implement the adopted comprehensive reading program effectively.  Coaches visit each classroom at least once every two weeks and spend more time with teachers who need support.  Coaches should meet every week as a group to learn consultation skills and hone their expertise.

## A Model Program - LAUSD

- Students improved dramatically in one year of implementation.
- Teachers met regularly  for the purpose of evaluating classroom assessments and adjusting instructional strategies.
- Continuous, varied professional development occurred at many levels.

**Notes:**
Notes:
In Los Angeles Unified School District (2000-2001), the first grade students’ achievement progressed 18 %ile points in spelling and 14 points in reading, putting them at the 56th %ile nationally.  ELL students made extraordinary gains, from the 33rd %ile the year before to 48th %ile at the end of the academic year. Teachers met every 8 weeks to focus on sharing classroom-based assessments.  Those meetings were facilitated by a full-time coach, the principal, or program consultant, and resulted in action plans. Teachers were paid stipends if they voluntarily attended the summer week-long institute or the district’s mandatory 3-day institutes; grade level institutes based on instruction in the adopted reading program; or follow-through activities for all teachers during the year (80 hours with stipend for completion). University extension courses, with readings on research and self-study, were voluntary for teachers who chose to attend the summer institute and complete 80 more hours of follow-through activities. Experts in reading (former coaches) provided professional development for the newer coaches at a ratio of 1:18.  Coaches were assigned to teachers at a ratio of 1:30.  Principals on special assignment were literacy coach coordinators for each of the eleven local districts and met weekly with those coaches. 

## Helping Districts Get Started

- Write a blueprint for a reading initiative. Circulate it widely. Obtain and circulate key research summaries. Stay on message.
- Hold a series of seminars for superintendents, principals and leaders in reading to deepen understanding of the research findings.
- Support a summer institute for all teachers at kindergarten level. Then plan one for first grade.  Proceed gradually, grade by grade.

**Notes:**
Notes:

## Getting Started (2)

- Encourage the adoption of scientific, research-based, comprehensive reading programs.
- Support the hiring, training, and evaluation of reading coaches at the district level.
- Help districts access outstanding resources.
- Recognize and reward improvement!

**Notes:**
Notes:

## Professional Development: The Cornerstone of Change

- Districts must avoid wasting resources on professional development programs that may be popular but that are unproven or not aligned with research findings.
- Professional development can be highly instrumental in helping teachers reach all students, and ultimately, derive the satisfaction from teaching for which they entered their profession.

**Notes:**
Notes:
Popular and widespread professional development enterprises in the United States include such unproven interventions as Multiple Intelligences, Learning Styles, Brain-based Learning, Guided Reading, and Four Blocks.  Districts must move away from superficial workshops of the past and instead adopt a focus on continuous improvement in the practical skills of research-based instruction that is tied to validated programs, methods, and approaches.  

Well-prepared teachers who are confident of their instruction are indispensable for children’s reading success.