Beginning Readers

Building Compreiiension
Do teachers in your school:

v Create a print-rich environment where children have
access to a variety of reading and writing materials?
e “Big books”
e Predictable books in which the text follows a pattern
e Rebus books in which words the child does not yet know
are replaced by a picture

v Ask students to read aloud to adults and to each other in
pairs and groups?

¥ Teach sight recognition of frequently used words?
v Teach vocabulary and background knowledge?

Expand students’ vocabulary?
@ Gradually increasing the difficulty of books they read
« Reading aloud more complex books they can’t read alone
¢ Discussing word meanings explicitly

v Adjust grouping and the level of instruction to meet the
needs of individual students?

v Measure word recognition accuracy and reading fluency
as children read?

v Work with students on strategies for comprehension?
e Summarizing the main idea and drawing inferences
¢ Predicting what will happen next
e Using reading to check if ideas make sense

v Promote independent reading outside of school?
e Daily at-home reading assignments
e Summer reading lists
¢Tips for parents and the community

16



Additional Resources

Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children, National Research Council;
Washington, D.C., 1998. Hardcover copies are available from the National
Academy Press by calling (800) 624-6242. Each book costs $35.95 plus ship-
ping and handling.

Starting Out Right: A Guide to Promoting Children’s Reading Success,
National Research Council; Washington, D.C., 1999. Copies are available from
the National Academy Press by calling (800) 624-6242. Each book costs
$14.95 plus shipping and handling.

Every Child a Reader: Applying Reading Research in the Classroom, Center for
the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement; Ann Arbor, Mich., 1998.
Available for $10.00 per set. Order by calling CIERA (Center for the
Improvement of Early Reading Achievement) at (734) 647-6940, or email
ciera@umich.edu.

Start Early, Finish Strong: How to Help Every Child Become a Reader, U.S.
Department of Education America Reads Challenge; Washington, D.C., 1999.
Available at the Department of Education’s website, www.ed.gov.

Teaching Reading is Rocket Science, American Federation of Teachers;
Washington, D.C., 1999. Available at the American Federation of Teachers’
website, www.aft.org.

Ideas at Work: How to Help Every Child Become a Reader, U.S. Department of
Education America Reads Challenge; Washington, D.C., 1999. Single copies
are available for free by calling (877) 4ED-PUBS.

The Compact for Reading, U.S. Department of Education and the Los Angeles
Times; Washington, D.C., 1999. Available at the Department of Education’s
website, www.ed.gov.

Teaching Children to Read, Nationa) Reading Panel; Washington, D.C., 2000.

Available on the Internet at www.nationalreadingpanel.org or at
www.nichd.nih.gov.

37

41



2nd Grade Accomplishments

The Letter-Sound Relationship

v Accurately decodes orthographically regular, multisylla-
ble words and nonsense words (e.g., capital, Kalamazoo).

¥ Uses knowledge of print-sound mappings to sound out
unknown words.

¥ Accurately reads many irregularly spelled words and

such spelling patterns as diphthongs, special vowel
spellings, and common word endings.

Vocabulary

¥ Shows evidence of expanding language repertory, includ-
ing increasing use of more formal language registers.

¥ Correctly spells previously studied words and spelling
patterns in own writing.

Comprehension and Fluency

v Reads and comprehends both fiction and nonfiction.
wv Rereads sentences when meaning is not clear.
v Recalls facts and details of texts.

v Discusses similarities in characters and events across
stories.

wv Connects and compares information across nonfiction
selections.

v Poses possible answers to how, why, and what-if
questions.



Important Reading Skills

Comprehension

Reading comprehension is the construction of meaning of a written text. It
involves an interaction between the text and the reader, and is influenced by
the reader's prior knowledge and experiences. A primary and overarching
finding of the National Reading Panel report is that comprehension can be
improved by teaching students.

Building Comprehension:
Do teachers in your school:

¥ Help children monitor their comprehension by making
them aware of their understanding of the material?

v Encourage children to interact with others to understand
information from a text?

V Use visual organizers such as story maps as graphic rep-
resentations to assist comprehension?

V Help children create mental images to understand what
they are reading?

v Encourage children to generate their own questions while
they read?

v Teach children how to integrate ideas and generalize
from the text by summarizing the information?

v Examine literature by asking and answering who, what,
where, when and why questions about the plot and by map-

ping the timeline, characters and events in stories?

v Use a variety of comprehension techniques?

10

i4



Intermediate Readers

Expanding Comprehension Skills
Do teachers in your school:

Develop students’ comprehension and word recognition
skills?
e Expose students to a variety of materials that challenge
them to think about the text
e Encourage children to read more in school and out

w Teach strategies students can use to check their own
reading?

¢ Self-questioning

¢Summarizing the main idea

¢ Predicting events and outcomes of activities in the story

¢ Drawing inferences

¢ Determining the author's intent

e Analyzing the purpose of word choice

¢ Monitoring for coherence and misunderstanding

¥ Define new vocabulary words as they come up, giving
both information about each word's definition and examples
of how the word is used?

¥ Instruct students in the different writing conventions
used to for different purposes, for example humor or irony?

¥ Assess student reading fluency and word recognition
accuracy frequently and provide immediate additional
instruction if a child has difficulties?

Y Assess student’s knowledge and use of strategies for
reading and understanding?

v Monitor student comprehension and correct. misunder-
standings?



38



Research Behind This Guide

This guide is based on two important reports released since 1998 exploring
research on reading. The first is Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young
Children, the report of the Committee on the Prevention of Reading
Difficulties in Young Children published in 1998. This committee of literacy
and child development experts was organized by the National Research
Council of the National Academy of Sciences at the request of the U.S.
Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services. The National Academy of Sciences was organized more than a cen-
tury ago to advise the federal government on issues of science and technology.

The second is Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of
the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading
Instruction, the report of the National Reading Panel. In 1997, Congress
asked the director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human
Development, in consultation with the Secretary of Education, to convene a
panel to assess research-based knowledge about teaching children to read,
including the effectiveness of various approaches to instruction. The panel of
leading scientists in reading research, representatives of colleges of education,
reading teachers, school administrators and parents issued its report in 2000.

These reports offer some important conclusions about reading:
© Reading is the process of getting meaning from print.

e Reading requires using knowledge of the written alphabet.

e Reading assumes knowledge of how sounds are used
in spoken language to achieve understanding.

¢ Reading instruction should include direct teaching of the
sound-symbol relationships to children who do not know
about them.

e Reading instruction must maintain a focus on the purpose
of reading for communication and the personal value of
reading.



1st Grade Accomplishments

Reading Skilis

V Makes a transition from emergent to “real” reading.
V Monitors own reading and self-corrects when an incor-

rectly identified word does not fit with cues provided by the
letters in the word or the context surrounding the word.

Comprehension and Fluency

v Reads and comprehends both fiction and nonfiction that
is appropriately designed for the grade level.

V Notices when difficulties are encountered in understand-
ing text.

v Reads and understands simple written instructions.
Y Predicts and justifies what will happen next in stories.
V Discusses prior knowledge of topics in expository texts.

v Uses how, why, and what-if questions to discuss nonfic-
tion texts.

¥ Describes new information gained from texts in own
words.

v Distinguishes whether simple sentences are incomplete
or fail to make sense; notices when simple texts fail to make
sense.

v Engages in a variety of literacy activities voluntarily
(e.g., choosing books and stories to read, writing a note to
a friend),

——



Beginning Readers

Building Reading through Writing

Do teachers in your school:

v Establish a regular writing time?

v Have children dictate a paragraph, then help students
read their own words back?

v Allow students to write using invented spelling and gradu-
ally teach the spelling-sound relationships and conventional
spellings of basic words?

V Use this invented spelling to monitor children’s under-
standing of the relationship of words and sounds?

v Recognize when a child’s invented spelling does not show
a consistent use of symbols for specific sounds — a sign that

the child is at risk for reading problems?

wv Expect children to spell previously studied words and
spelling patterns correctly in their final drafts?

v Encourage students to write stories, reports, letters, and
other genres?

17

rate)
BS



Children With Special Needs

The National Research Council’s report recognized that children without much
exposure to words and books may not learn to read as easily as children with
large vocabularies and rich literacy experiences.

Children are more likely to fali behind if they:

e Live in disadvantaged neighborhoods;

e Have limited proficiency in spoken English;

e Have hearing or language impairments or cognitive
deficiencies; and

e Have parents who had difficulty learning to read

Four common stumbling blocks to learning to read are:

¢ Difficulty understanding and putting into practice

the idea that written spellings systematically represent
spoken words;

¢ Failure to transfer the ability to understand spoken
language to understanding reading;

e Failure to acquire new strategies specifically needed for
reading; and

@ Absence or loss of motivation to read or failure to develop
an appreciation of the importance of reading and its
rewards

Children who are having difficulty learning to read do not, as a rule, require
completely different instruction from children who are “getting it.”

Instead, they benefit from individual attention and more expert individual
application of the teaching methods.



Intermediate Reader

In the 224 and 3d grades, the focus of reading instruction shifts from teach-
ing decoding and taking meaning from words to using reading to learn con-
tent. Phonemic awareness and explicit teaching of phonics should no longer
be necessary for most. students (although they are still vital for those with
reading difficulties), Instead, teachers need to show students how to analyze,
critique, abstract, and reflect on text.

Expanding Reading Skills
Do teachers in your school:

v Encourage students to recognize unfamiliar words?
e Sounding out according to letter/sound relationships
@ Sounding out according to common spelling conventions

v Check that students recognize words through letter-
| sound relationships and not simply through context and

pictures? I

v Have students read aloud to improve their sight recogni-
tion of words?

| ¥ Build fluency by asking student to read a complex text
over and over again? |

¥ Link spelling with the sound of words as needed?

V Provide spelling instruction that teaches spelling
patterns and word analysis strategies?

v Teach syntax and structure of written language?



ist Grade Accomplishments

Writing

v Creates own written texts for others to read.

v Composes fairly readable first drafts using appropriate
parts of the writing process (some attention to planning,
drafting, rereading for meaning, and some self-correction).

V Spells correctly three- and four-letter short vowel words.

Vv Uses invented spelling or phonics-based knowledge to
spell independently, when necessary.

v Shows spelling consciousness or sensitivity to convention-
al spelling.

V Uses basic punctuation and capitalization.
V Produces a variety of types uf compositions (e.g., stories,
descriptions, journal entries) showing appropriate

relationships between printed text, illustrations, and
other graphics.

32

&
a)



Reading Readiness

The Classroom for Reading Readiness
In classrooms in your schoc!, do you see:

¥ Children handling books properly, looking at pictures,
and pretending to read them?

v Teaching of the alphabet, its connection to writing words,
and the link between spelling and sounds?

Y Stories read aloud followed by questions about the story,
links to real-life experience, and opportunities for children
to ask questions?

¥ Students exploring new words and their meanings?

V Use of rhymes and playing with sound?

Time for children to scribble and engage in creative play?

W No flash cards, trace-the-alphabet dittos, or forced literacy-
related activities as the primary means of reading instruction?



Understanding Reading Instruction

Reading instruction matters.

e Reading instruction should integrate grasping sound-
symbol relationships with learning words in context.

e Reading instruction should include direct teaching of
information about these sound-symbol relationships.

e Fluency should be promoted through a wide variety of
well-written and engaging books that a student can master,
and guidance from the teacher about which ones a child
should be reading.

Writing is part of reading.

e Beginning readers should have the opportunity to write
using their own spellings of words.

e This “invented spelling” does not conflict with teaching
traditional spellings, but represents children’s first attempt
at linking the sounds they hear with the letters they see.

When children write using phonetically based invented
spelling, they reveal what they know about letters, sounds,
words, and spelling. By looking at how a child spells a word,
a teacher can see what the child hears and how well that
child understands the relationships of sounds to letters.



Kindergarten Accomplishments

Comprehension and Fluency

wv Notices when simple sentences fail to make sense.

v Connects information and events in texts to life and life
experiences to text.

v Retells, reenacts, or dramatizes stories or parts of stories.
v Listens attentively to books the teacher reads to class.
¥ Correctly answers questions about stories read aloud.

v Makes predictions based on illustrations or portions of
stories.

Writing

v Uses phonemic awareness and letter knowledge to spell
independently (invented or creative spelling).

¥ Writes (unconventionally) to express own meaning.
v Builds a repertoire of some conventionally spelled words.

v Shows awareness of distinction between “kid writing” and
conventional orthography.

v Writes own name (first and last) and the first names of
some friends or classmates.



Children With Special Needs

The Classroom for Children with Special Needs

in classrooms in your school, do you see:
¥ Materials in the students’ native languages?

# An adult who speaks the children’s language and who is
trained in the second language acquisition process?

# A manageable class size and student-teacher ratio?
v Extra time in reading and writing?

v Time for re-reading of text?

v Structured writing activities?

¥ Trained reading instructors or specialists?

¥ Volunteer tutors for practice and motivational support
only?

¥Y Students prepared to discuss, learn about, and write
about the ideas and information encountered in texts?

26



How To Use This Guide

This guide does not describe a single way to teach children to read. There is
no single right way for all children. In fact, the wrong way to teach children
to read is to insist that they all learn the same way. There is, however, a body
of knowledge about effective reading instruction that educators should know
and use. The Committee on Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young
Children wrote, “Effective teachers are able to craft a special mix of instruc-
tional ingredients for every child they work with.”

Knowing more about current research into how children
learn to read can help you in this task. It cannot tell
you exactly what to do, but it can:

eInform you of a larger range of methods that work;

© Help you match the right method with the student’s needs
and learning style;

Steer you away from methods that do not work;

e Describe under what conditions and for what types of
students these methods are effective; and

e Give examples of reasonable expectations for what children
should know and be able to do as they learn to read.

We hope you will find this guide to be a practical and useful resource that you
can draw upon in your daily work. You may find it helpful to have this guide
flipped open on your desk as you work with students, as you create lesson
plans or instructional units, or as you observe reading instruction in your
school. The guide may provide you with important reminders or new informa-
tion about how children learn to read that will help you succeed in the class-
room or may provide you with ideas to shape professional development activi-
ties in your school.

The reports of the Committee on Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young
Children and the Nationa} Reading Panel are organized differently, but their

3

a = —

‘



Research Behind This Guide

Preventing Reading Difficulties noted that "there is a common menu of materi-
als, strategies, and environments from which effective teachers make choices.
This in turn means that, as a society, our most important challenge is to make
sure that our teachers have access to those tools and the knowledge required
to use them well." This guide, drawn from these two reports, gives you that
menu from which to choose.



Beginning Readers

Children need to understand that print conveys meaning, that print and
speech are linked, and that the printed letters code the sound of words. Even
at an early age, children need formal instruction in reading that focuses on
the development and mastery of comprehension skills (meaning) as well as
word recognition skills (mechanics). For most students, this happens in

- kindergarten and yst grade.

Building Letter-Sound Awareness
Do teachers in your school:

v Teach awareness of the specific sounds that make up words?
e Reading rhymes and singing sound-play songs
@ Finding objects in the classroom whose names begin or
end with the same sound
¢ Doing clapping exercises to count syllables
@ Making charts about letter/sound discoveries

v Teach sound-to-letter links directly?

¥ Instruct students in simple rules to decode words?

V Practice breaking down a word into its specific sounds?
v Help to identify the links between sounds and spelling?

v Teach the way sounds are commonly spelled and how to
use these spellings to identify printed words?

v Show students how to connect letters and spellings of
words to the sounds and speech units they represent?

Vv Let students put their developing skills to use by having
them read and write independently or in a group?



Understanding Reading Instruction

The National Research Council amassed the body of research on reading. Its
report established a consensus view of how children learn to read.

Learning to read depends on:
e@ An understanding of how the alphabet represents sounds;
e Practice to achieve fluency with different kinds of texts;

@ Enough vocabulary and background information to make
texts meaningful and interesting;

¢An ability to self-monitor for comprehension and to recognize
misunderstandings independently; and

e The interest and imativation to read for a variety of purposes.

Reading is the process of getting meaning from print.

eA child must understand that language is made up of
words, words are made up of individual sounds, and that
these sounds are represented in the printed word by specif-
ie combinations of letters.

e Most children develop this awareness gradually over the
preschool years as they play with sounds, learn to rhyme
words, and recognize words that start with the same sound.

¢ Young children who have this “phonemic awareness” are
very likely to encounter success in reading since it is the
foundation on which reading is built. A child who lacks this
awareness will] not recognize that words are formed of dif-
ferent sounds and so will not be able to link printed letters
to the sounds of words.

wn



Intermediate Readers

Expanding Reading Skills Through Writing

Do teachers in your school:

v Use writing as a means of word study to improve
reading?

V Require students to write with more complex sentences
and new vocabulary words?

¥ Teach spellings and meaning of prefixes, suffixes, and
word roots?

{ V Move students away from invented spelling to the
conventions of print?
¢ Spelling
¢ Punctuation
eGrammar |
¥ Require students to spell previously studied words and
spelling patterns correctly? ]

a

~
oT



DOCUMENT RESUME

ED 448 435 CS 014 235

TITLE Reading: Know What Works. A Practical Guide for Educators.
National Reading Panel Update.

INSTITUTION National Inst. for Literacy, Washington, DC.

SPONS AGENCY Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (ED),
Washington, DC.

PUB DATE 2001-01-00

NOTE 43p.; For the previous July 2000 report, see CS 014 234.

AVAILABLE FROM National Institute for Literacy, 1775 I St., NW, Ste. 730,
Washington, DC 20006. Tel: 202-233-2025; Fax: 202-233-2051;
Web site: http://www.nifl.gov.

PUB TYPE Guides - Non-Classroom (055)
EDRS PRICE MFO1/PCO2 Plus Postage.
DESCRIPTORS *Beginning Reading; Primary Education; Reading Achievement;

*Reading Instruction; Reading Programs; *Reading Readiness;
*Special Needs Students

ABSTRACT

Based directly on the reports of the National Reading Panel
("Teaching Children To Read") and the National Research Council ("Preventing
Reading Difficulties in Young Children"), this guide is designed to be an
accessible and practical document that delivers research findings about
effective reading instruction that may serve as guidelines for reading
teachers in Title I schools. The guide amounts to a "checklist" to help
teachers and principals to recognize the key characteristics of quality
reading programs at a glance and to match instruction in their classrooms to
the best practices described in the research. The guide does not describe any
single way to teach a child to read. It is divided into seven parts:
Understanding Reading Instruction; Important Reading Skills (Phonemic
Awareness, Phonics, Fluency, Comprehension, and Vocabulary); Reading
Readiness; Beginning Readers; Intermediate Readers; Children with Special
Needs; and Grade-by-Grade Accomplishments. The first six sections are not
broken down by grade level: in the early grades, all children learn to read
at different speeds and how to deal with different challenges. The
“accomplishments" listed in the last section are based on grade levels to
give teachers and parents a sense of what they can reasonably expect children
to do as they become more skillful readers. (RS)

Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made
from the original document.



Important Reading Skills

Phonics

Children must learn how letters are linked to sounds to form letter-sound cor-
respondences and how to apply this knowledge to reading. One of the critical
tasks for beginning readers is learning how to read the words of written lan-
guage. The National Reading Panel report indicates that phonics instruction
contributes substantially to students’ development of reading comprehension.
Children who are taught phonics systematically benefit significantly more
than those who do not receive phonics instruction. They are able to decode
regularly spelled words and remember how to read irregularly spelled words.

The National Reading Panel identified several approaches to phonics instruc-
tion: analogy phonics, which teaches new words by making analogies to famil-
iar ones; analytic phonics, which teaches analysis of letter-sound relationships
in learned words to avoid isolating sounds in pronunciation; embedded
phonics, which teaches phonics skills by embedding them in text; phonics
through spelling, which teaches students to segment words into sounds and
select letters for those sounds; and synthetic phonics, which teaches conversion
of letters into sounds and the blending of those sounds into words.

Building Phonics Skills

Do teachers in your school:

¥ Teach phonics intentionally in carefully designed instruc-
tion for the purposes of learning to decode words?

¥ Teach children explicitly to convert letters into sounds
and help them blend sounds to form recognizable words?

¥ Incorporate systematic phonics instruction with other
strategies to create a complete reading program?

¥ Help them to apply their phonics skills accurately and
fluently in their daily reading and writing?

v Assess the needs of individual students and tailor phon-
ics instruction to meet students! specific needs.

8

i2



Important Reading Skills

Phonemic Awareness

“Phonemic awareness" refers to the ability to focus on and manipulate the
sounds or "phonemes" in spoken words. It is not "phonics", which refers to the
relationship between letters and sounds. Phonemic awareness involves help-
ing children think about words in terms of sounds composing them, and is
known to contribute to children's ability to read and spell.

Building Phonemic Awareness
Do teachers in your school:

} v Assess children's phonemic awareness before beginning
instruction?

¥ Help children learn to manipulate phonemes in words?
e Recognizing the same sound in different words such as bike,
boy, and bat
Identifying a single sound in a word, usually the first. or last.
sound
e Saying the individual phonemes in a word and asking
students to blend them to form the whole word
e Segmenting words into the smallest units by stretching each
sound so that all sounds can be heard.
¢ Recognizing what word is left when a phoneme is removed

v Emphasize phoneme manipulation with the letters in a word?

v Practice the letters of the alphabet so that children can
access them quickly and automatically?

¥ Provide explicit instruction on no more than two skills at
a time?

v Keep instructional sessions brief and well-focused?

Y Work with children on phonemic awareness skills in
small groups rather than in large groups or with one child?

i 7

————

ii



Kindergarten Accomplishments

Vocabulary

v Recognizes some words by sight, including a few very

common ones (“the,” “I,” “my,” “you,” “is,” “are”).

Knowledge of Books

V Knows the parts of a book and their functions.
v Can name some book titles and authors.
Vv Demonstrates familiarity with a number of types or gen-

res of text (e.g., storybooks, expository texts, poems, newspa-
pers, and everyday print such as signs, notices, and labels).

Reading Skills

v Begins to track print when listening to a familiar text
being read or when rereading own writing.

v “Reads” familiar texts emergently, i.e., not necessarily
verbatim from the print alone.

v Uses new vocabulary and grammatical constructions in
own speech.

V Makes appropriate switches from oral to written lan-
guage styles.

28

SP



Kindergarten Accomplishments

Letters

v Recognizes and can name all uppercase and lowercase
letters.

¥ Can write most letters and some words when they are
dictated.

v Independently writes many uppercase and lowercase
letters.

ihe Sound-Symbol Relationship

v Understands that the sequence of letters in a written
word represents the sequence of sounds (phonemes) in a |
spoken word (alphabetic principle).

v Learns many, though not all, one-to-one letter-sound cor-
respondenices.

v Demonstrates understanding that spoken words consist
of sequences of phoremes.

v Given spoken sets like “dan, dan, den,” can identify the
first two as the same and the third as different.

v Given spoken sets like “dak, pat, zen,” can identify the
first two as sharing one same sound.

v Given spoken segments, can merge them into a meaning-
ful target word.

¥ Given a spoken word, can produce another word that
rhymes with it.



How To Use This Guide

findings reinforce each other. This guide presents the most important infor-
mation from both. It provides an overview of reading instruction, skills impor-
tant to reading achievement, and information about the different stages chil-
dren pass through when learning to read. It also addresses children with spe-
cial needs.

We have not broken down this guide by grade levels. In the early grades, all
children learn to read at different speeds and to deal with different challenges.
A teacher may find that a technique from the Beginning Reader section works
well with one student while another student in the same class benefits more
from information in the Intermediate Reader section.

At the end of this guide, we have included lists of "accomplishments" that
young readers may achieve developed by the National Research Council.
These lists are based on grade levels to give educators and parents a sense of
what they can reasonably expect children to do as they improve as readers.
This guide is organized in seven catagories:
Understanding Reading Instruction
e Important Reading Skills
e Phonemic Awareness
e Phonics
e Fluency
e Comprehension
e Vocabulary
e Reading Readiness
e Beginning Readers
e Intermediate Readers
e Children with Special Needs
e Grade-by-Grade Accomplishments

4

——



Beginning Readers

The Classroom for Beginning Readers
In classrooms in your school, do you see:

Y Both direct instruction in sound-symbol relationships and
exposure to motivating, interesting reading materials?

WA focus on the relationships between letters and sounds
and the process of obtaining meaning from print?

¥ Instruction that makes clear connections to children’s
daily experiences and needs?

W Rich language and literacy environments?
v High-quality instructiona! materials, including materials
that students can read to themselves easily and more diffi-

cult texts that a child can learn to read with the teacher?

v Students familiar with basic purposes and methods of
reading and writing?

v Frequent and intensive opportunities for students to read
both aloud and to themselves?

v Students talking about books and stories in ways that
enrich their vocabularies?

Y Practice recognizing and producing letters?

v Practice emphasizing the sound structure of words?

v Volunteer tutors used only for practice and motivational support?
e Helping read to children
© Supervising oral readings

«Talking with students about what they read

Y Additional instruction through supplementary reading pro-
grams for students who are slightly behind expected levels?

18



ard Grade Accomplishments

The Letter-Sound Raiationship

Y Uses letter-sound correspondence knowledge and struc-
tural analysis to decode words.

Vocabulary

/ Correctly spells previously studied words and spelling
patterns in own writing

Can point to or clearly identify specific words or wordings
that are causing comprehension difficulties.

Comprehension and Fluency

¥ Reads aloud with fluency and comprehension any text
(both fiction and nonfiction) that is appropriately designed
for grade level.

V Reads longer fictional selections and chapter books inde-
pendently.

v Summarizes major points from fiction and nonfiction
texts.

v In interpreting fiction, discusses underlying theme or
message.

v Asks how, why, and what-if questions in interpreting non-
fiction texts.

v In interpreting nonfiction, distinguishes cause and effect,
fact and opinion, main idea and supporting details.

y Uses information and reasoning to examine bases of
hypotheses and opinions.

35

39



drd Grade Accomplishments

w Infers word meaning from taught roots, prefixes, and
suffices,

¥ Takes part in creative responses to texts such as dramati-
zations, oral presentations, fantasy play, ete.

Writing

Y Begins to incorporate literacy words and language pat-
terns in own writing (c.g., elaborates descriptions; uses figu-
rative wording),

v With some guidance, uses all aspects of the writing
process in producing own compositions and reports.

ev Combines information from multiple sources in writing
reports,

¥ With assistance, suggests and implements editing and
revision to clarify and refine own writing.

Y Presents and discusses own writing with other students
and responds helpfully to other students’ compositions.

v Independently reviews work for spelling, mechanics, and
presentation,

¥ Produces a variety of written work (e.g., literature

response, reports, “published” books, semantic maps) in a
variety of formats including multimedia forms.

36



Children With Special Needs

Children with limited proficiency in English

ein order for students to learn to read in English, they first
must know English.

elf children do not know English but can use a different
language, the school should teach them to read in that
language, assuming expertise in that language exists in the
district or can be found.

«Teachers should help children learn enough English so
that they obtain the vocabulary needed to extend reading
skills in English.

«{f the school lacks personnel and materials in the native
language, the instructional priority should be to develop the
children’s proficiency in spoken English before requiring
them to read.

While print materials may be used to develop understand-
ing of English speech sounds, vocabulary, and syntax, the
school should not try to instruct children in reading who
have not achieved an adequate level of proficiency in
spoken English.

Students who speak non-standard dialects of English may

have difficulty learning to read until they are first taught
how “school English” differs from “home English.”

24

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a
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to use the guide with other resource materials and to pursue professional
development activities that strengthen the skills and knowledge reflected in
these pages.

We hope that you find this publication useful in teaching our nation's children
how to read. Your work is invaluable to us and to our nation's future. We
thank you for your commitment to some of our nation's most disadvantaged
children.

Sincerely,

Mary Jean LeTendre Andrew Hartman, Ph.D

Director Director

Compensatory Education Programs National Institute for Literacy
— a a



wor «

Important Reading Skills

Vocabuiary

Vocabulary is the understanding of word meaning. Prior to the time children
read, they learn vocabulary from the words they hear. As children learn to
read, they move to reading vocabulary, understanding the meanings of words
they read in text. As students read, the words they encounter in print are
mapped to their repertoire of oral vocabulary. Vocabulary instruction leads to
comprehension gains and is crucial to developing skilled readers.

The National Reading Panel identified several ways of teaching vocabulary:
explicit instruction, in which students are given definitions of words to be
learned; implicit instruction, in which students are given opportunities to do a
great deal of reading and learn words through context; multimedia methods,
in which students are taught by using media such as hypertext or American
Sign Language; capacity methods, in which students practice words until their
use is automatic so that additional capacity is available to concentrate on
meaning; and association methods, in which students are encouraged to use
imagery or to make semantic associations between words they already know
and words they are likely to encounter.

Building Vocabulary

Bo teachers in your school:

Vv Provide direct instruction of vocabulary before students
read a text?

V Provide multiple exposures to vocabulary words?

v Teach high-frequency vocabulary words that are likely to
appear in many different texts?

Engage students in tasks that enable them to use vocabu-
lary in different ways?

uv Teach students new words in subject matter textbooks? *
v Practice vocabulary using computer technology?

11

BR.
oT



Reading Readiness

Preparing for Understanding
Do teachers in your school:

V Have children name objects?

V Hold conversations with children that introduce new
vocabulary?

& Explain difficult words when reading aloud with
students?

wv Teach children that the same word may have different
meanings and how to tell which meaning is being used?

v Show that reading is fun and that books contain interest-
ing stories?

v Provide a range of rich experiences that build large
vocabularies and foster reading skills such as field trips and
special musical and theatrical presentations at school?

¥ Read aloud to children, then ask simple questions about
the story to develop listening comprehension skills?

V Encourage children to ask their own questions about
what they heard as a way of checking how much they

understood?

v Teach the difference between concrete and abstract
terms?

v Provide time for imaginative play where children invent
their own stories?

v Encourage students to “pretend read,” “pretend write,”
and handle books properly on their own?

13



Dear Title f Educator:

Reading is the foundation of learning. When children first begin to read and
really understand the magic of reading, their excitement and energy is conta-
gious. It is no overstatement to say that reading unlocks the world to
children.

Teachers hold the vital keys to unlocking the mysteries of the written word for
their students. Their dedication and work can make all the difference in a
child's academic future. Principals create the school environment in which
that dedication can take root and that work can flourish.

We have come to a time — finally —- when the questions about how best to teach
children to read have been answered. Two recent reports have put an end to
the "reading wars" that have been waged by adults for much of the 20th cen-
tury, without yielding much benefit for children. The National Reading
Panel's report, Teaching Children to Read, and the National Research
Council's report, Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children, both
brought together experts to determine what we know from the research on
reading. These experts stated categorically that effective reading instruction
is marked by a balance between decoding letters and sounds and deriving
meaning from context.

The U.S. Department of Education and the National Institute for Literacy
have produced this guide to inform educators about eftective reading instruc-
tion. The Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement provided
support in writing it. This guide is based directly on the reports of the
National Reading Panel and the National Research Council. Our hope is that
the description of high-quality, research-based reading instruction will allow
educators to model their own practice after the reports' findings.

We designed this guide to be an accessible and practical document that deliv-
ers research findings about effective reading instruction; we expect that these
findings will be used as guidelines for reading teachers in Title I schools. The
guide amounts to a "checklist" to help teachers and principals to recognize the
key characteristics of quality reading programs at a glance and to match
instruction in their classrooms to the best practices described in the research.

The guide also includes specific reading "accomplishments" found in the
National Research Council's report that describe what sorts of reading chil-
dren should be able to do grade-by-grade. To be most effective, educators need



2nd Grade Accomplishments

v Interprets information from diagrams, charts, and
graphs.

v Takes part in creative responses to texts such as dramati-
zations, oral presentations, fantasy play, etc.

¥ Reads voluntarily for interest and own purposes.

¥ Reads nonfiction materials for answers to specific ques-
tions or for specific purposes.

Writing

v Makes reasonable judgments about what to include in
written products.

¥ Shows sensitivity to using formal language patterns in

place of oral language patterns at appropriate spots in own
writing (e.g., de-contextualizing sentences, conventions for
quoted speech, literary language forms, proper verb forms).

Y Productively discusses ways to clarify and refine own
writing and that of others.

¥ With assistance, adds use of conferencing, revision, and
editing processes to clarify and refine own writing to the

steps of the expected parts of writing process.

v Given organizational help, writes informative, well-struc-
tured reports.

wv Attends to spelling, mechanics, and presentation for final
products.

wv Produces a variety of types of compositions (e.g., stories,
reports, correspondence).

34

t
Q)



Intermediate Readers

The Classroom For Intermediate Readers

in classrooms in your school, do you sea:

¥ Assessment of students’ reading ability (both fluency and
word recognition) and strategies to help struggling students
catch up?

Modeling of reading and comprehension strategies for
students?

Opportunities for students to build fluency through
frequent practice reading with different types of texts such

as stories, reports, letters, newspapers, and magazines?

¥ Siude

reading in pairs and groups?

¥ Activities that reauire students to obtain meaning from
print?

¥ Use of words and language to accomplish projects and
learn about specific topics?

¥ Access to good libraries?

22



6
Know What Works

BEST COPY AVAILABLE

th



ist Grade Accomplishments

The Letter-Sound Relationship

V Reads aloud with accuracy and comprehension any text

that is appropriately designed for the first half of grade one.

v Accurately decodes orthographically regular, one-syllable
words and nonsense words (e.g., “sig,” “zot”), using print-
sound mappings to sound out unknown words.

v Uses letter-sound correspondence knowledge to sound out
unknown words when reading text.

v Can answer simple written comprehension questions
based on the material read.

v¥ Can count the number of syllables in a word.

Vv Can blend or segment the phonemes of most one-syllable
words.

Vocabulary

v Recognizes common, irregularly spelled words by sight
(“have,” “said,” “where,” “two”).

V Has a reading vocabulary of 300 to 500 sight words and
easily sounded-out words.

wv Shows evidence of expanding language repertoire, includ-

ing increasing appropriate use of standard, more formal
language.

30



fit s

Wg

Office of Elementary and Secondary Education
Title 1 Programs Gffica
400 Maryland Avenue, SW
Washington, DC 20202
Phone: (202) 260-0828 fax: (202) 260-7764
http://www.ed.gov/offices/OESE/CEP/

=NIFL

National Institute for Literacy

1775 | Street, NW, Sulte 730
Washington, DC 20006
Phone (202) 233-2025 Fex (202) 233-2051
http://www.nifl.gov

43



Children With Special Needs

Teaching Children. with Special Needs
Do teachers in your school:

W Identify children at risk as early as possible?

v Involve pediatricians, social workers, speech and
language therapists, and preschool practitioners?

v Use videos and other materials to inform parents about
the skills and knowledge children should acquire?

V Help parents learn what they can do to help their child
read and where they can go if a child’s development is
lagging?

v Encourage parents to become involved in a family literacy
program that can improve their own skills and their
children’s literacy opportunities in an integrated fashion?

v Build two-way communication between specialists and
classroom teachers to coordinate instruction and avoid
confusing children with two different reading methods or
contradictory instruction?



Important Reading Skills

Fluency

Fluency is the ability to read words accurately, rapidly and efficiently.
Fluency is important in its own right. It is also important because of the
strong relationship between accurate, fluent reading and comprehension.
Though accurate word recognition is fundamental, reading fluency represents
a higher level of expertise. Word recognition instruction and practice is a pre-
requisite to, but not sufficient for, reading fluency. Despite its importance to
overall reading proficiency, instruction to improve reading fluency is often
neglected in practice.

Buiiding Fluency

Do teachers in your school: 1

V Promote repeated reading?

v Guide children's oral reading and provide explicit
feedback?

¥ Monitor reading speed, ora] accuracy and comprehension |
regularly?

v Encourage students to read passages orally more than
once giving guidance and continuous feedback?



Reading Readiness

Teachers must prepare students for reading by helping them become aware
that words are made up of sounds in sequence (which is called phonemic
awareness). Young children need language and literacy experiences that allow
them to play in ways that build literacy skills.

Preparing for Reading and Writing
Do teachers in your school:

v Help children discover that spoken words can be analyzed
into sounds?

v Practice sensitivity to sounds of language?

v Help students learn to identify letters and the sounds
they represent?

v Encourage children to write letters and words, even if
they are just scribbles without much resemblance to the
actual printed word?

v Teach the link between letters and sounds?

v Explore the sounds of language using rhymes, poems,
songs, and by categorizing different sounds? *

¥ Play with words by linking words that sound the same?
v Teach concepts of space and direction?

* vw Involve children in activities that develop fine motor skills?