# Presentation: 109289

## Archived Information

- The information in this presentation is archived for historical and reference purposes only.

## Balanced Literacy:Making it work in a real school

- Sharon Walpole
- Instructional Coordinator,
- Johnson School
- Research Associate,
- CIERA/UVA

## Preview

- 1.   Reading Excellence Act
- 2.  Background of my school
- 2.  Role of assessment
- 3.  Reading Program:
- 		Time, Team, Text, Tasks, Talk
- 4.  Role of interventions
- 5.  Readings to start

## Reading Excellence Act

- Awareness

- Systematic
- Phonics

- Fluency

- Vocabulary &
- Knowledge

- Comprehension

- Motivation

- Reading Program

**Notes:**
Here are the dimensions of reading that define a good proposal and a good program.  I think this is a critical time in the history of reading instruction:  We have convergent evidence, across settings and across methodologies that we need to attend to these things if we are going to bring diverse sets of children to academic literacy.  

I am presenting the dimensions as facets of a unified shape, because we have to attend to them in an integrated, thoughtful way.  We need to develop phonemic awareness, that awareness of the sound structure of oral language which allows us to segment speech into individual sounds.  We need to develop phonics knowledge, that mapping of those speech sounds to the letters which represent them in our alphabetic language.  And we need to develop that phonics knowledge systematically rather than incidentally.  We need to specifically target fluency, the automatic and accurate access to literacy information in memory which successful readers have.  We need to consciously and relentlessly develop children’s vocabulary and background knowledge so that they will be successful with more and more challenging texts.  We need to relentlessly develop children’s comprehension so that they know how to do the cognitive work that text understanding involves.  And we have to do all of this in a setting which is motivating to children, so that they will want to do what we want them to do to become successful readers.  

## Understanding the Setting

- _State Level_
- Prescriptive Curriculum
- High stakes testing, beginning in third grade

**Notes:**
Johnson School is in the commonwealth of Virginia.  That setting has an enormous effect on the reading program that we create.  In 1995  the commonwealth’s general assembly adopted a prescriptive curriculum for each of the content areas K-12.  The curriculum mandates teaching of specific skills, strategies and knowledge by grade level.  For example, in Virginia students in second grade will be learning to reading AND solving problems using data from charts and graphs during math, studying ancient Egypt during social studies, and comparing the life processes of frogs and butterflies during science.  Beginning in 1996, the Commonwealth began a testing program to monitor implementation of the curriculum.  Students are tested in grades 3, 5, 8 and after core courses in high school.  The test is group-administered, and silent, even at third grade.  The testing is high stakes both at the building level and for individual students.  For schools, the commonwealth has set a minimum percentage of students passing for each subtest by 2007.  Buildings who fail face loss of curricular control.  For individuals who fail the high school tests risk their diplomas.

In response to this curriculum and to this test, Johnson Elementary is renewing its commitment to sound reading instruction.  

## More Setting

- _District Level_
- Building-level choice
- Per pupil expenditure ($8900)
- Commitment to low class size (18)
- (even before Class Size Reduction Act)

**Notes:**
Characteristics of the district of Charlottesville City are also part of the setting of this reading program.  Charlottesville City has 5 elementary schools, three of which are school-wide Title 1 projects.  The superintendent of Charlottesville City is committed to building level choice:  of curriculum, of materials, of staff development.  He supports a variety of initiatives and allows for experimentation.  

The City Schools have been fairly generous about pupil support.  Last year, Cville City spent $8900 per pupil.

Part of the mission of the school system is to protect small class size.  The average class size across the elementary schools is 18.  Generally, kindergartens and first grades have about 16 children and second through fourth grades have about 20.   This commitment to very small class sizes predates the Class Size Reduction Act, but with that act more districts will be able to reduce class size.  

## More Setting

- _Building Level_
- Instructional focus on reading achievement
- Principal with reading endorsement
- Instructional Coordinator

**Notes:**
Within the Commonwealth of Virginia and the Charlottesville City Schools there are many special characteristics of Johnson at the building level.  First is maintenance of instructional focus on reading achievement.  Many schools in the Commonwealth have chosen to focus more attention on building of specific knowledge and on test taking skills.  This has not happened at Johnson.  

Much of that focus is due directly to the leadership of the principal.  Jim Henderson, now in his 24th year in the City Schools, taught in a classroom, got endorsed as a reading specialist, served as an instructional coordinator, and is now in his 10th year as Principal at Johnson.   If we could both be out of the building at the same time, he would be here with me.  He is very proud of Johnson School, and he should be.   

Another building level factor which is very important to understanding the reading program is Mr. Henderson’s choice to hire an instructional coordinator rather than an assistant principal.  That’s me.  My job is to run the reading program, from kindergarten through grade four.  I work with teachers in their classrooms and I conduct staff development after school.  Knowing that Johnson School is able to hire someone to work with teachers at the building level is important to understanding the program.

## Families and Children

- 325 students
- 		66% free or reduced lunch
- 		73% African American
- 		60% from single parent families

**Notes:**
Johnson School is a cheerful place.  The building is spacious and well maintained.  Classrooms are large and generally very well equipped.  Student work is displayed everywhere.  The atmosphere among staff is quite collegial, and families are constantly encouraged to visit and to participate.  

But the look and feel of Johnson masks some of its greatest challenges.  Albemarle County, Virginia, is a large and very affluent county surrounding the tiny and very needy city of Charlottesville.  The children who come to Johnson are mostly poor, minority children, children who have traditionally been at risk for reading failure.  66% of them qualify for federal lunch subsidies and 73% are African American.  Sixty percent live in single parent families, and almost all of those parents work.  Few of those single parents make enough money to provide adequate after-school care for their children.  One of our school buses takes a double run to a drop-in Boys and Girls club which is horribly overcrowded and understaffed.

## Instructional Staff

**Notes:**
The instructional staff at Johnson consists of a group of adults who want to work with this population of children.  They are proud to do it and they don’t make any excuses about it.  Again, because the district is committed to reduced class size, we have a wonderful opportunity to provide instruction.  There are 4 kindergartens and four first grades, each with full-time instructional assistants, four second grades with half-time instructional assistants, and three third and fourth grades.  We have three full-time, certified reading specialists, 2 LD self contained teachers, and one LD resource teacher who is also a certified reading specialist.

## More Instructional Staff

- Specialists		3 Reading
- 					1 Gifted Education
- Special Education	2 LD
- 					1 LD Resource
- Specials			PE, Music, Art
- Library			1 Librarian
- 					1 Assistant

**Notes:**
Other instructional staff are also essential to the reading program.  The full-time PE teacher,  the part-time art teacher and the full-time music teacher arrange their schedules so that teachers can have extended blocks of planning. The gifted specialist teaches reading along with a fourth grade teacher to the highest achieving children, and also leads a program to design units of content area instruction which allow for both mastery and differentiation.  The librarian and her assistant take each reading group once a week and teach lessons in genre and then help students to check out independent-level reading materials to build fluency.  During this library time, teachers meet together and with me to address concerns.    

## Support Staff

- Counselor						1
- Book Buddies Coordinators		2
- Adult Educators				2
- Nurse						1/2

**Notes:**
There are other people at Johnson whose roles are essential to the smooth running of the reading program.  The counselor runs classroom groups, lunch time small groups, and also does individual counseling.  She provides support to families in distress, often helping them to get the things they need to be ready to learn:  food can clothing, supplies and support.  Johnson’s nurse is also instrumental in helping families to get support that they need through local agencies.

Because people are working hard to make school work for Johnson’s families, the instructional staff can do what they do best:  teach.  Two half time Book Buddies coordinators (both Reading Specialists) supervise intervention for children in the first grade.  Two full-time adult educators provide intervention for families.  

## The Problem

- Teachers committed to teaching reading at instructional level
- Huge range of instructional levels by grade level
- Tension between regular and special education

**Notes:**
Now that you see the setting in terms of state, district and building, you will be able to see how our reading program runs. 

The reading program that Johnson School has crafted over time is an answer to their own questions and a service to their own professional growth.  Teachers at Johnson knew that in order to increase reading achievement, they had to provide reading instruction with instructional level texts.  They came to Johnson committed to doing that.  They learned to assess reading levels and to group children.  Once they did that though, they had so many groups of children in their classrooms that they could not spend enough time in instruction for any one group.  And that was frustrating to them.  They were also frustrated as they tried to serve special education students, most of whom had reading problems. Scheduling time for LD resource services fragmented the school day and diffused responsibility for the instruction of specific children.  

## The Solution:  RISE

- 		Reading
-  			Initiative for
- 		 		Student
- 					Excellence

**Notes:**
The Solution that the Johnson Staff crafted is called RISE:  Reading Initiative for Student Excellence.  Beginning in 1995, with the leadership of Jim Henderson and my predecessor as Instructional Coordinator Mary Ann Mulaney, the staff at Johnson designed their own reading program.  They didn’t buy a set of materials and they didn’t buy school-wide reform.  They read the research and they asked for advice and they build their own program.  

The program relies on collaboration among the staff, assessment of the children, independent and instructional level reading, direct instruction in both decoding and comprehension, and creative and relentless intervention.  It is supported through staff development and in constant modification as we learn more about reading instruction and more about our children.  

## Program Philosophy

- Oral Language

- Sound Awareness

- Letter Sounds

- Decoding

- Fluency

- Comprehension

- Expert Support

- Structured Experiences

**Notes:**
I present a hexagon to represent the philosophy of RISE, just as I did for reading excellence.  You will see that they are almost identical, just using some different words.  That’s because the two philosophies were drafted at the same time and relied on the same body of information.  That’s what’s powerful about this time.  We really do know what we need to do.  If you building is not in line with these general principals, you need to get it in line immediately.  

The basic philosophy about reading development that undergirds the RISE program is this:  With experience and instruction, children move from understanding the meaning of oral language, to discriminating sounds in oral language, to matching those individual sounds to their alphabetic representations, to understanding and consciously using orthographic patterns in decoding and spelling, to fluent decoding, to strategic comprehension across text type.  At the same time, children must continue to develop their vocabulary and concept knowledge, their implicit knowledge of grammar, and their ability to remember both stories and information through listening and speaking activities.  The RISE program is designed to support and accelerate that development for all of the children at Johnson School by providing structured experiences and expert support.

## Assessments

- K/1:  PALS, PPVT, Ganske DSI, Reading Inventories
- 2/4:  QRI-II, Ganske DSI
- State Level:  	3rd grade SOL test,				4th grade Stanford 9

**Notes:**
RISE includes grouping by achievement for reading instruction, so assessment is critical.  We need to know quickly when students are able to benefit from more difficult text and instruction, and we need to know quickly when students need extra support.  Beginning in kindergarten, we monitor achievement carefully and systematically through a combination of measurement tools.

For kindergartners and first graders, the PALS in fall and spring gives us a criterion referenced look at emergent literacy skills and also provides us a comparison with other schools in Virginia.  The PPVT gives us a normed look at vocabulary growth.  The Ganske Developmental Spelling Inventory gives us a look at word knowledge organized by spelling feature so that we can group for and provide spelling instruction.  And a homemade reading inventory helps us to know which texts at the preprimer and primer level would be best for instruction.  

Once children are first grade readers, we use Leslie and Calwell’s QRI-II to monitor word recognition in isolation and context, reading comprehension, and reading rate.  We continue the Ganske spelling feature assessment.  We are currently planning a pilot use of Scholastic Reading Inventory, which is a new group administered comprehension test.  
We also use classroom and curriculum-based assessments to monitor growth.  Beginning in second grade, children’s reading rate and reading comprehension are assessed every two weeks.  These assessments help teachers track growth and identify children who need more support.
In our state, third graders take the SOL assessment in the spring and fourth graders the Stanford 9 Achievement Test in the fall.

## Motivation

- Internal:  Provide tasks and experiences that are just right		(assess and instruct)
-  External:  Let them show off and let it pay off
- 		timed readings
- 		library program
- 		reading logs

**Notes:**
I think that motivation is part of the RISE program at two levels:  internal and external.  The most important internal motivation to children is success and challenge.  Because we assess children systematically and use that assessment to inform instruction, we are able to keep children learning at their instructional level:  that set of tasks which are just too hard for the child to complete alone but easy enough for him to complete with some expert assistance.  That keeps children from getting either frustrated by tasks which are too hard or bored by tasks which are too easy.  

We also build in all sort of external motivators.  They serve to remind everyone in the Johnson community that reading is what we do.  Children at Johnson are consistently motivated to read more and more.  Teachers keep track of books read by their reading classes in all sorts of creative ways in the halls.  The library staff helps children to use the Accelerated Reader program to motivate silent reading at home.  We host literacy nights to describe our reading program to parents, and we give books to children who come with their families.  

## Time

- Kindergarten:  Parallel block scheduling
- First grade:  Traditional reading groups
- 2nd, 3rd, 4th grade:  Joplin-Plan regrouping to form 11 homogeneous groups for 90 minutes

**Notes:**
Now that you have an overview of the role of assessment and motivation in the program, I can introduce you to the Ts:  Time, team, text, task and talk.  This is the heart of the program, and this is what makes it special.  

Once we have a handle on current achievement of our children, we can organize time to provide instruction for them.  Our kindergartens on average have had very few school experiences and very few literacy experiences when they come to us.  Kindergarten teachers and their assistants provide literacy instruction to 1/2 of their class at a time for 30 minutes four days a week.  They use a parallel block system to send half of the class to music and PE while half remain for instruction, and then the groups switch.  This bring the adult/child ratio to about 2 to 8.  

First grade simply extends the total time for reading instruction to allow achievement groups.  The teacher and her instructional assistant each work with one group while the third group practices reading and writing independently.  All three groups get time with the teacher, the assistant and for practice each day.

The most creative manipulation of reading time comes in the 2-4 program.  There, regular and special education students are regrouped by achievement into 11 groups.  Those groups meet for 90 uninterrupted minutes every day for reading instruction.  Because there are two adults and only one or two reading levels, those 90 minutes include intensive and extended instruction and almost no transition.  

## K/1 Team

- Classroom teachers and instructional assistants keeping group size low
- Flexible grouping by ability

**Notes:**
The instructional team in Kindergarten and first grade relies on classroom teacher and their fulltime instructional assistants working together in their classrooms to provide more instruction, more practice, and smaller group sizes.

Instructional assistants at Johnson attend faculty meetings and staff development sessions so that they can constantly develop their skills at supporting children.

Children at Johnson are grouped for reading instruction to provide the kind of motivating, instructional level work that will keep them learning.  Because we assess and adjust, those reading groups are flexible.  Children can move groups when they need to.

## 2/4 Team  

- 11 teams of 2 adults
- 		2nd, 3rd, 4th grade teachers (10)
- 		Special Ed teachers 		  (3)
- 		Reading Specialists 		  (3)
- 		Instructional Assistants         (5)
- 		Gifted specialist          		  (1)
- ____________________________
- 		Total Adults				  22

**Notes:**
The team is a bit more complex at second through fourth grade in RISE.  
Regular ed and special ed students learn to read together, and regular ed teachers and special ed teachers, along with reading and gifted specialists, teach them to read together.  Special education and second grade instructional assistants also are part of the RISE team.  This collaboration is a cornerstone of the RISE program.  It allows teachers to share insights and information about instruction and about children, and it shares responsibility for student achievement among the staff.  At Johnson, all children are our children, and we work together to support that.  

## Texts

- K-4:  stories and information books for 	teacher read-aloud
- K:  	predictable, decodable
- 1:  	decodable, controlled vocab, basals
- 2-4:	controlled vocab, chapter books,
- 		basals, novels, information books

**Notes:**
We are very conscious of the role of text in reading instruction.  We provide texts that place just the right demands on readers as they develop their expertise.  We use predictable texts to help children develop the ability to track, and once they learn some letter sounds, we use decodable texts to allow them to use them right away to read.  When children know all of their letter sounds and have some sight words, we use controlled vocabulary texts.  
We have to organize our texts so that students get what they need.  Teachers can choose to use basals or tradebooks at every level.  Individual copes and class sets of tradebooks are kept in a bookroom, organized by level and by genre.  Beginning last year, we have worked to expand our collection of information trade books.  RISE instruction, then, includes both narrative and nonfiction.  And it includes both independent level reading of individual trade books and group reading of class sets of books at instructional level.    
Our library staff are important partners in the RISE program.  Once each week, RISE groups spend 45 minutes of RISE time in the library.  During that time, they exchange two books at their independent reading level.  These books are used for sustained silent reading and for reading at home.  The library staff also read aloud to children and provide instruction, especially in genre.
Since we work on development of vocabulary and background knowledge, we are careful about the texts that we select for read aloud.  They support the content area instruction that children are getting and we are trying to make sure that include more and more nonfiction selections, with richer vocabulary and more opportunities to develop comprehension strategies.

## K-4 Tasks

- 		1.  Vocabulary Building
- 			Semantic Feature Analysis
- 			Super Sentences
- 		2.  Word Study
- 			Synthetic phonics and then
- 			Analogy-based strategies
- 		3.  Comprehension
- 			Strategies instruction

**Notes:**
Once we set up time and texts, we can think about instructional tasks.  RISE works when RISE time is filled with appropriate academic work.  Much of my job involves helping teachers select and support academic work which will increase achievement.  We have three thrusts which are common K-4.  The first is vocabulary building.  We know that building student vocabulary is essential to improving reading comprehension, and we know that we can teach relatively few words directly.  However, we are using two vocabulary strategies to focus our vocabulary instruction both during RISE and during content area instruction. Super sentences is a strategy where children use the question words to help scaffold their writing of sentences which really illustrate word meanings.  Semantic feature analysis is a strategy in which students and teachers work together to compare and contrast words on a series of shared features. 
For word study, we are committed K-4 to synthetic and then analogy-based phonics instruction.  We first develop children’s ability to segment to the phoneme level.  Then we map the phonemes to letters.  Once letter sound knowledge is in place, we use developmental spelling theory to provide systematic spelling instruction in tiers of sound, pattern, and meaning.  
In comprehension, we are committed K-4 to direct instruction of comprehension during real reading.  We have chosen 6 strategies which can be modeled and practiced as teachers read aloud to children, read along with children, and as children read alone.  Those strategies are predicting, making a picture in your mind, asking yourself questions, using what you know, and reviewing the important parts.  Posters of those strategies are displayed in every classroom at Johnson.  

## Kindergarten Tasks 

- Sound Success program for developing
- 	phonemic awareness and letter sounds
- Read alouds of information books for developing vocabulary and concept knowledge

**Notes:**
Other tasks in the RISE program are specific to ages and stages.  For our kindergarteners, most of whom come to school with very few literacy experiences, no phonological awareness, and no letter knowledge, our work is cut out for us.  Reading specialists at Johnson have developed a kindergarten literacy program called Sound Success which systematically develops phonological awareness through stages from rhyme and beginning sounds all the way through full segmentation.  Sound success lessons always include some real text, whether read aloud or along or alone, and they get children writing to represent sounds.  

Vocabulary and background knowledge development is also crucial at this age and stage.  Beginning this year, we have purchased sets of predictable information trade books, so that children can be learning new vocabulary even as they are learning to track print.  We have also launched a concerted effort to plan interactive read alouds of  information books, reading the same book more than once so that the children can have more exposure to the vocabulary.

## First Grade Tasks

- Learning letter sounds
- 	Systematic Phonics:  Explode the Code
- Using letter sounds to decode and spell
- Rereading to develop fluency

**Notes:**
In first grade, we emphasize automatizing letter sounds and applying them to decode words.  Children are grouped for instruction, and groups use a phonics workbook to be sure that they master their letter sounds.  Teachers used decodable texts right away to encourage children to use the sounds that they know in order to decode words.  

The structure of the first grade classroom, with a teacher and an instructional assistant, allows three groups.  One group works with the teacher at the reading table.  She teaches a word study lesson, and then coaches children as they read a new text.  Another group works with the instructional assistant, doing their phonics lesson.  The final group reads from their reading baskets which contain old texts which they have already used in instruction.  During that rereading time, they start to build fluency.

## 2/4 Tasks

**Notes:**
During the regrouped reading time in RISE, we are committed to a before, during and after structure for providing instruction.  Teachers draw from a menu of options of instructional strategies which are modeled during staff development or try out other strategies.  Before reading, they may do a text structure lesson, a formal preview, or a prior knowledge discussion.  During reading, they may stop to Question the Author, engage in Reciprocal Teaching, conduct a think aloud, or explore Question and Answer Relationships.  After reading, they may use retellings or summaries, or ask children to complete reading guides.  

## A Typical RISE Lesson

- 1.Students enter room, and get their RISE baskets, with independent level books and read silently for 10 minutes

**Notes:**
Here’s what it looks like.   The transition from morning work in the graded classrooms to RISE time is very smooth.  All students have a red RISE folder which they carry with them, but all of their other supplies (including books, notebooks and pencils) are in baskets in their RISE room.  They move quietly to their RISE classroom and get right to work reading silently.   During SSR time, the two RISE teachers have a chance to listen to individual children read and to take measures of rate and comprehension.

## A Typical RISE Lesson

- 2.Students break into two groups, each led by an adult, and plan two super sentences

**Notes:**
Super sentences has been very popular with teachers and students.  As many of you know, elementary school vocabulary sentences are quite easy to spot.  They consist of a few general types:  For nouns -- I like ____.  For verbs -- I can ____.  And for adjectives -- My teacher is very ____.  But now at Johnson there are examples of super sentences displayed everywhere, and they are not your ordinary sentences.  One RISE group, reading Roald Dahl’s The BFG has worked with synonyms for the word big.  On a huge poster of the giant himself, displayed outside the room, are these sentences:
The giant is so mighty that when he stomps his feet he causes an earthquake
When I went to Africa I saw a cheetah running across a vast plain.
Teachers are helping Johnson’s children get excited about words.

## Typical RISE Lesson, Cont.

- 3.The RISE teacher previews a new book
- 4.  Students alternate silent reading and group discussions about this new instructional text for 45 minutes.

**Notes:**
After the vocabulary lesson, there are other kinds of prereading activities.  Some are presentations of text structure, and some are meant to develop concept knowledge necessary to a particular text.  Once that is over, Students and teachers get on about the business of reading.  And it’s not round robin reading.  As soon as children are reading at second grade level, almost all of their reading is done silently, so that all of the children are reading at the same time.  Teachers ask them to read segments of the text and then they stop to talk about it, focusing attention when possible on the strategies good readers use.     

## Typical RISE Lesson

- 5.  RISE class reforms as one group.  Students reread the day’s text, and work individually on a comprehension activity in writing.  Students also work on a word study activity.  Teachers provide individual help, and ask children to read orally.

**Notes:**
After grouped reading instruction, there is time for individual work.  There are three tasks during this time:  rereading of the instructional text to increase comprehension and rate, a writing for comprehension activity, which gives teachers information about the comprehension of each child, and then a word study activity.

Word study for children in the 2/4 RISE program follows a weekly progression of activities.  Students get lists of words which highlight particular orthographic features.  They compare and contrast these words by sounds and by pattern, and look for other words with the same features in books which they are reading.  They usually have a spelling test at the end of the week which test the week’s list plus some new words with the same pattern.  The goal of word study is to develop knowledge of the spelling system which children can use to decode and spell new words.  

As children reread, write for comprehension, and work on their word study, the two RISE teachers circulate, listening to individual children read.  During this time, they coach word recognition and model and assess comprehension strategies for individual children.

## Talk

- Teachers’ talk, K-4, involves modeling and direct instruction in decoding, in understanding word meanings, and in comprehension

**Notes:**
We have been increasingly interested in making sure that our instruction counts.  Teachers have become committed to more accountable talk and more direct instruction.  They are building their skills at think alouds and at direct explanations of word meanings and decoding and comprehension strategies.

This is how we have manipulated those things at Johnson School which can be manipulated to support reading achievement:  time, team, text, tasks and talk.  

Even those programmatic elements, though, are not a failsafe way to bring every one of Johnson’s students to independent reading on grade level.  We also provide a focus on literacy in the content areas and a variety of safety nets.  

## Interventions

- K:  Phonological Awareness
- 1:  Title 1 plus Book Buddies
- 2: Title 1
- 3:  After School Reading, Writing, Math
- 4:  After School Reading Group
- Families Learning Together

**Notes:**
We are proud to offer a variety of interventions at different grade levels.  We can offer these interventions because we are able to take advantage of funding at the federal, state and district level.  
For kindergarteners, we have a small-group intervention which develops phonological awareness in the context of work with words and stories.  This intervention is paid for at the state level.
For first graders, the Book Buddies program supports about half of our children with two 45 minute, one on one sessions each week.  These lessons are taught by community volunteers but planned and supervised by reading specialists.  This intervention is paid for at the district level.  One of our full-time reading specialists also works solely in first grade with small groups.  Her time is paid for with federal funds.
Second graders have small group pull out with a reading specialist paid for with federal Title 1 funds.  
Third graders will have an extended school day on Tuesdays and Thursdays to work on reading, writing, or math thanks to state-level remediation funding.  
A small group of fourth graders will also stay after school thanks to creative use of our building level budget.
And last but not least, we offer an adult literacy program, families learning together, which provides GRE lessons and parenting support to 10 families.  This program is funded by a combination of federal, state, district and private grants.  

## Collaboration Model

- Retooling our content area lessons
- Emphasis on vocabulary and concept building
- Use of vocabulary and comprehension strategies from the reading program

**Notes:**
A great structure for reading instruction and a flexible series of safety nets are not enough to build the knowledge that we need to build in our curriculum.  During the rest of the instructional day, when students are not grouped by ability, we still need to be reaching all of them.  Developing vocabulary and background knowledge and developing comprehension strategies is essential to really bringing our children to independent academic literacy.

This year we have begun a collaboration model for designing content area lessons that meet our state curriculum.  The gifted education specialist and I meet with grade level teams for 90 minutes every two weeks to collaborate.  The result so far is units which allow for both mastery and differentiation, and which meet a fact driven curriculum in a conceptually rich way.  Because I am a member of the collaboration team, I can make sure that we bring texts into the units, both for students to read and for teachers to read to them, and that we use some of the same instructional strategies that make up the RISE menu.

## Staff Development

- District-sponsored graduate work
- Staff meetings each month
- 		Whole staff
- 		K/1 team
- 		2/4 team
- 		Faculty meetings
- RISE team meetings

**Notes:**
None of this is easy.  And it did not emerge full grown as a program.  Ongoing, meaningful staff development is essential to making it work.  In our school district, teachers can take two graduate-level courses in reading education.  The first one, Early Reading Development, is taught by one of our own Book Buddies Coordinators through the University of Virginia.  8 Johnson teachers are taking that course.  I will teach the second one, Reading Across the Curriculum, in the spring, again through UVA.   15 Johnson teachers have signed up for that course.  That sort of support at the district level, to fund these courses, is crucial.  And  I think it leads to the kind of dedication among teachers which inspires them to commit to 5 hours of extra work each week building their craft.
Because of my job, I have opportunities to work with the teachers outside of these graduate courses too.  Every Wednesday we have a staff development hour after school.  During the course of a month, one hour is for the whole staff, one for the K/1 team and one for the 2/4 team.  During that hour I teach, I share assessment data and teach one of the instructional strategies that inform the RISE program.  Teachers try out new strategies and I video tape them and use the tape for staff development.  School business is conducted on the fourth Wednesday so that my staff development time is protected.
I also meet with each RISE team of two twice a month while their students are at the library to answer questions and offer support.  
This continuous staff development piece is essential to the reading program at Johnson, and it has allowed the program to grow and change.  

## New Directions

- Streamlining our assessments
- Focusing on informational texts
- Increasing literacy time in kindergarten
- Increasing reading rate
- Building vocabulary more systematically
- Teaching reading comprehension

**Notes:**
I am proud of this program.  My Principal is proud of this program.  Teachers are proud of this program.  Families are proud of this program.  But it isn’t easy, and it isn’t perfect.  Here are some things that we are still working on.
First, we are trying to streamline our assessments.  We are currently analyzing last year’s data to eliminate any assessments which cost instructional time and don’t yield instructional information.  
We are working to build a collection of information trade books which our children can actually read and which support our curriculum in the content areas.  This is difficult and very expensive.
We are concerned about extending literacy time in our kindergarten.  We will need to consider some grouping structures that allow us to have another small-group block of literacy time each day.
We are worried about vocabulary and comprehension.  The two vocabulary strategies that I mentioned are being used for the first time this year, so far successfully. We are working to increase our menu of strategies for teaching vocabulary.  Teachers are really working to learn to think aloud to teach the strategies that good comprehenders use, but it will take time for them to master it and for the children to catch on to it.  

## Challenges

- Student Mobility
- Preschool experiences
- Supporting families

**Notes:**
We also have some worries, and they are big ones.  First, student mobility is an enormous challenge for us.  While we have crafted a program which builds from K through 4, very few of our students are with us for that entire time.  Students who move frequently during elementary school get fragmented instruction, and they come to us with significant reading problems.  Recently our district released statistics on mobility.  20 of our children last year attending more than one elementary school in our district, and 20 came to use from other districts.  
We are also worried about our children before they come to us.  Few of them have rich preschool experiences, and many do not come to us with well developed oral language.  We are worried about the research on language development in the preschool years, and its effect on later reading achievement.
That inspires our worry about supporting families.  We want to find new ways to reach out to families who are struggling to support their children.  We are seeking funding to expand our family literacy program and to have our nurse work full time and do home visits.  
You can be sure that the Johnson Team will be considering these issues carefully, and will be anxious to collaborate with other schools with similar concerns.  

## Johnson School and Reading Excellence

- + 	Phonemic Awareness
- +   Systematic Phonics
-      Fluency
-      Vocabulary and Knowledge
- -	Comprehension
- +   Motivation

**Notes:**
I want to return to the Reading Excellence dimensions and to be honest with you on how successful Johnson School is right now on each of them.  For phonemic awareness, we are ahead of the game.  Our kindergarten and first grade teachers are bringing children all the way to full segmentation and to an understanding of letter sounds.  We are good too in providing systematic phonics instruction, especially in first grade.  We only get a check for fluency.  Fluency is built in to the program, but our children are still reading too slowly.  We are now monitoring fluency more often and providing fluency interventions.  I think I will be able to report progress soon.  Vocabulary and background knowledge also need work, but we are trying new things this year.  In comprehension instruction we are still lagging.  I am hoping that the extra time that I have with teachers in my course next spring will bring us much closer to a model of actual instruction in comprehension.  We are providing our children with opportunities, but not with enough support.  Actually, I think that is a common instructional problem.  Finally in motivation, we get good marks.  
It is not a coincidence that the dimensions of reading that are part of the Reading Excellence Act are also part of the RISE program at Johnson.  It’s because we’re reading the same stuff.  We have converging evidence that this is what it takes. 

## Readings to Start

- Reading Expert
- 	Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children (Snow et al., 1998)
- Reading Team
- 	Reading Instruction that Works
- 	(Pressley, 1998)
- 	The Reading Teacher (IRA)
- 	CIERA web site (www.ciera.org)

**Notes:**
You need to be a wise consumer in the educational market, and you need to know what you want your teachers to know and do.  I want to give just a few book recommendations.  These are all texts that have influenced my thinking or that I have used with teachers.

I think you should attack the literature in teams.  Pick a point person, who is going to be the one to read the really heavy stuff.  That person should read Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children.  It’s not an easy read, but it gives a thorough review of the research base on which an effective reading program rests.  

At the next level are your reading team.  They might be the reading specialists and a representative of each grade level.  Those people should read Pressley’s book.  It is a much easier read, but gives a very thoughtful and integrated review of what we know about reading now.  An especially good thing about this book is that it reviews both experimental and observational research, so it gives a picture of what good instruction looks like.  Your reading team should also read the Reading Teacher every month.  They can sort through the articles and pull those that would be good for other teachers to read.  And they should monitor the CIERA web site, where research findings and all sorts of summaries are available to download.  

## Classroom Teachers

- Every Child a Reader (www.ciera.org)
- Articles from The Reading Teacher
- Observational Research
- Visits to other teachers, schools

**Notes:**
All teachers need to do some professional reading.  If you can help them to select things which will be both helpful and supportive of the big picture of reading instruction that you are after, you will be much more likely to be successful.  

I would suggest that you get teachers the set of readings that CIERA has organized called Every Child a Reader.  All of the dimensions of reading except motivation are reviewed in brief form, with benchmarks by grade level.  There is also a companion set of readings from the reading teacher which support each topic.  

When possible, you should get observation research into the hands of your classroom teachers.  Everyone needs models.  Recently there have been studies of effective teachers and effective classrooms that make the integration of the dimensions of the reading program very real.  This kind of research has the potential to really change teacher behaviors.  
And I am going to end with a plea.  Let your teachers out of their classrooms once in a while to watch other teachers and visit other schools.  That’s another way to break cycles of ineffective practice:  end isolation.  You have my phone number now if you want to come and visit Johnson School.