Episode Transcript

Announcer: This podcast is produced by Benchmark Education.

Kevin Carlson: On this episode: Empowering Multilingual Learners through Reading Fluency. I'm Kevin Carlson and this is Teachers Talk Shop.

Dr. Lynne Kulich: Yes, teaching reading can and should be fun—not only for students but for the teacher.

Kevin Carlson: That is Doctor Lynne Kulich. Lynne works for Renaissance Learning. She is an author and researcher who presents nationally and internationally about early literacy. Lynne is the co-author, with Dr. Timothy Rasinski and the poet David L Harrison, of the book, The Fluency Development Lesson:Closing the Reading Gap, which is published by Benchmark Education in its PD Essentials line. 

Benchmark Education’s Dr. Jennifer Nigh sat down with Lynne recently to discuss two topics near to Lynne's heart: Multilingual learners and fluency.

Jennifer Nigh: Lynne, I am so pleased that you are here today to talk to us about all things multilingual learners and fluency, and I know we have had the opportunity to get to know each other prior to our chat today. You are a fellow Ohioan, so always excited to have you joining us and to share your expertise and really your passion for this. 

So take a few minutes and tell us your story.

Dr. Lynne Kulich: Yeah, absolutely. I guess, Jen, I should say “O, H,” right?

Jennifer Nigh: “I, O!” 

Dr. Lynne Kulich: There we go.Yeah, yeah. So really, I have been in education now, oh my goodness, it's hard to believe but it's true—over 30 years. [I] actually graduated from Ohio State and I was a French major and had the best job in the world working with the Georgia Department of Education FLES program, and I helped write curriculum, promote their FLES program. But the best part was I also got to teach first-and third-grade French in Georgia. And that really was the impetus for discovering my real passion, which was elementary school. 

From there I got a master's degree in elementary education, decided to leave my French instruction piece a little bit by the wayside, and just taught elementary school. And then, oh gosh, decided to get a Ph.D. in early literacy and curricular instruction and taught at the university level for a little bit, but missed the schools. So I wanted to go back, but I went back in as a lit coach, and then I became a director of curriculum instruction. And in 2016, I made a huge jump and I went to the edtech world and—which now I'm at my current position, as Senior Director Solutions Engineer for Renaissance Learning. 

So I still get to feed my passion. I still get to talk all day about early literacy, multilingual learners, all those things I love. But I think in this role I have the opportunity to reach a broader audience, which is great because I want to impact learning for all students everywhere.

Jennifer Nigh: That's great. Well, I want to touch on the beginning of your career as being a French teacher. So I suspect that being a French teacher came from a love of languages, which I'm sure then translates into all the subsequent roles you've had, but also really supporting multilingual learners. So tell me a little bit about that personal interest with language and how that really supported your then later role of supporting multilingual learners.

Dr. Lynne Kulich: I knew I wanted to be an educator and I loved French in high school, so it was just this natural transition. I was going to teach French and spent time of course abroad and really just love languages. And ironically, that background and my experiences teaching French in the elementary schools really helped me as I welcomed multilingual learners into my classroom. In fact, [in] one of the school districts I taught in, I was kind of that magnet teacher, if you will, for multilingual learners who came into our building for first grade. 

Sometimes I had up to five multilingual learners in my classroom, and I didn't work in a district that had a particularly significantly large number of multilingual learners. But it just so happened while I was there that we did. So I just absolutely love working with them. 

You may have heard me say before and it'll probably come out in conversation—I think they are superheroes and they have some incredible superpowers just waiting for educators to leverage. So I think that really began my journey.

When I did my doctoral research, I knew I wanted to focus on early literacy, fluency in particular, and how it impacted multilingual learners. So I actually did my research with Karen Burmese refugee children who came to this country, landed in Akron, Ohio, and I worked with them for about a year and a half and saw great progress with some of the evidence-based practices, including—and I know we'll talk about [it] today—the Fluency Development Lesson.

Kevin Carlson: After the break: Lynne Kulich talks fluency. Stay with us.

Mid-roll announcer: Application and practice. These are the cornerstones of a new foundational literacy series from Benchmark Education: Decodable Fluency Builders. Your students will be immersed in a collection of carefully crafted fiction and nonfiction texts that combine phonics, high frequency words, and language comprehension work. You'll see your young readers accelerate from mastery to transfer in reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Two-sided teacher cards accompany each text to help you plan lessons, and you'll have on-demand professional development available 24/7 at Benchmark Academy. 

Guide your young readers towards comprehension with Decodable Fluency Builders. Learn more at Benchmark Education dot com.

Jennifer Nigh: You're the co-author of a soon-to-be released book about fluency, so let's talk a little bit more about fluency. What is it? Why is it important, and really, what got you so interested in that topic?

Dr. Lynne Kulich: I always like to start by defining what fluency is, so it's so much more than rate, right? It's about reading accurately with automaticity and appropriate prosody—that's [a] fancy word for intonation, expression. But I think there's a problem with that, that I know educators can solve. One, sometimes educators don't realize there are three components to fluency, but rarely do we ever teach students that. Perfect example: I was a literacy coach. One of my roles was to assess all six, seventh, and eighth-grade students on oral reading fluency three times a year, right? Benchmark them. I will never forget, never, a seventh-grade boy who came out in the hallway because it was his turn to be assessed, he sat down beside me and he looked at me and he said, “How fast do I got to read?” You know, it was one of those, like, hand-to-forehead moments.

Jennifer Nigh: That's so funny. I had the same thing with one of my first graders. She looked up at me, she goes, “Was I fast enough?”

Dr. Lynne Kulich: Right, right. And really, you know, why do they ask that? Because that's how we've communicated the definition of fluency. But, you know, really, research suggests—and this might be shocking for some people—20 to 70% of any variance in reading comprehension scores, on, like, high-stakes tests, can really be explained by these bridging processes, such as fluency. So fluency, it’s a pretty big deal, and I actually discovered the importance of fluency while I was completing my master's degree in elementary education. And that is actually when I stumbled upon the Fluency Development Lesson, which of course, our book is about. 

So what I did was I thought, hmm, this seems like a really excellent evidence-based strategy, right? Identified by National Reading Panel. So I started implementing it not only in my first-grade classroom, but second and third as well. And not only were my students engaged, but I had a blast. And, you know, if we're being honest, if there's any time where we're having fun as the educator, then chances are, students are having fun, and it closed all kinds of reading gaps. So it was just amazing.

Jennifer Nigh: You just mentioned as something cited in the National Reading Panel as an evidence-based practice, the Fluency Development Lesson. Tell me more about what that is. How is that actualized in a classroom?

Dr. Lynne Kulich: Yeah, absolutely. The Fluency Development Lesson was developed by my colleague and co-author of the book, Tim Rasinski, and then his colleagues, Padak, Linek, and Sturtevant. Essentially they designed it for a single text, kind of a single activity, maybe [a] 15, 20-minute activity. And what I did, and what we have highlighted in our book is, I've adapted it with Tim's blessing. And so what I did is, I took a grade-level text—preferably poetry, but you can use any text—and I created activities that all are aligned to, for example, Scarborough's rope. So phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. And I built those activities into this 15, 20-minute daily lesson where students were reading the same text every day, but doing all sorts of activities with evidence-based practices like choral reading, echo, partner, repeated, phrase reading, some reader's theater, all of those great things— audio-assisted reading—and by reading the same text each day, engaging in different activities, performing the text for different audiences. Even embedding a writing component, because we know that that reading and writing are synergistic. There was nothing else I did when I was a classroom teacher that closed reading gaps like that. I mean, it was phenomenal.

Jennifer Nigh: That's incredible. Something that strikes me—two things that you said. One is, 15 to 20 minutes. I'm confident one of the challenges that teachers continuously face, I faced it, I would suspect you faced it too, is how do I get it all in. Right? Like, how do I add another thing to my day? And something that is 15 minutes is a lot more accessible to a teacher when they're adding something to their day. 

But the other thing that strikes me is, like you said, the integration of all of these things. Learning to read and learning to write Is not done in a silo of skills, right?

Dr. Lynne Kulich: Or it shouldn't be.

Jennifer Nigh: It shouldn't be. Exactly. It's all woven together into this—I love the word you use, “synerginistic.” Did I say that right? 

Dr. Lynne Kulich: Synergistic.

Jennifer Nigh: (Laughter)Um, you know, into that type of process. So it's exciting to hear that something you found that is backed by evidence works in a way that is inclusive of all these practices, but also can be done in 15 minutes, which is huge.

Dr. Lynne Kulich: Absolutely.

Jennifer Nigh: Well, let's break that down a little bit more. We've talked about fluency, we've talked about the Fluency Development Lesson, which is a really successful routine that you use with your students. But let's talk about fluency and multilingual learners. What role does that help those students as they're learning English?

Dr. Lynne Kulich: Yeah. Well, you know, not surprising, right? Fluency, which is really, if we break down Scarborough's rope, it's part of Scarborough's rope. And it plays a very important role in developing all readers, not just multilingual learners, in part because it acts as this bridge, right? It connects—so I'm going to nerd out here, right? If you think about Scarborough's rope and you think about, say, the Simple View of Reading, it connects the word recognition or decoding domain with the language comprehension domain. And so when students can decode fluently, or effortlessly, then they can focus their attention to comprehending the text and—

Jennifer Nigh: They’re freeing up that cognitive load there.

Dr. Lynne Kulich: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, there was a really great article that came out a couple of years ago—Burns, Cartwright, and Duke—and they did some research on the effectiveness of these bridging processes like fluency, and that when teachers provided explicit instruction, for example, in fluency or interventions, they wanted to know how well it predicts reading comprehension outcomes for students. And it had an effect size of 0.70, which is significant. So what we know is that it works for all students, including multilingual learners. 

But if you think about multilingual learners in particular, we can teach them how to decode all day long. But they need lots and lots of practice, so that they can become fluent and they can focus their attention on comprehending. So let's teach them how to decode and certainly what those words mean, but let's give them multiple opportunities to really practice becoming fluent readers. So it's a really big deal for them. 

In fact, one of the effective strategies with fluency is audio-assisted practices, or audio-assisted reading. And one year I had a little boy from Vietnam in my classroom. And that year in particular—of course I'm dating myself—but I would tape record with a cassette tape—

Jennifer Nigh: What’s that? (Laughter)

Dr. Lynne Kulich: Yeah! I would tape record myself reading the story of the week from our first-grade reading anthology. So I would send the cassette tape home with the recorder so he could listen to it, and he'd take his reading anthology home. And each night he would listen and hear me reading that story over and over again. And he could read along with the recording. And not only him. He had a younger sibling and his parents were learning English, as well. So it was that fluency practice that I wanted him to continue practicing at home in the evenings, if he could, and I wanted him to have that fluent model. So I sent home that cassette tape.

Jennifer Nigh: You also created that safe space for that practice too, right? 

Dr. Lynne Kulich: Yes.

Jennifer Nigh: I think a lot of times, whether it's a multilingual or a striving reader or really even a fluent reader doesn't necessarily have that confidence when they're practicing fluency out loud. So that's a nice way to give them that opportunity to get that practice, but also in a safe space. So I like that. 

Dr. Lynne Kulich: It's that scaffolding they need.

Jennifer Nigh: Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. [At] the beginning of our conversation, we talked a little bit about—you had a student, I had a student, I would suspect most educators that are listening to us probably had a similar one, where the student said, “Did I read fast enough? Was that fast enough?” And a lot of that, I think, stems also [from] not only what we've taught our kids, but assessment too, because that's typically what we're doing to assess students. So you mentioned prosody is such a key component to fluency. How do you assess that in a classroom?

Dr. Lynne Kulich: Yeah, it's a great question because unlike other constructs—for example, rate, which we can calculate, we can get out our iPhones and time students and calculate their miscues—but with prosody it's much more subjective. And actually, my colleague Tim Rasinski has a prosody rubric that you can certainly Google and use where it—and it's a great rubric because it looks at multiple components of prosody. Their intonation, their phrasing, whether or not they were monotone, are they cued into punctuation, right? The syntax, all of those things. And so it's a really nice, succinct rubric that guides you through so that you can rate your students on how well their prosody is. Because we know that prosody is a key component, and oftentimes it does go unassessed. And so typically, though, you can do it subjectively. And our ears hear that. We know when a student is monotone. We know when they're not phrasing a sentence correctly. Maybe they're not paying attention to the syntax and the sentence, they've skipped over the comma or the dash, etc., and when they do that, it can impede comprehension. So it is very important.

Jennifer Nigh: Absolutely, absolutely. Another thing that I'm thinking about is the relationship between fluency and reading engagement, or reading motivation. And let me let me tell you why I set this question up. My daughter, who is now 20 years old in university and doing exceedingly well, but when she was in second grade, she had already learned to decode, but she didn't have the stamina to get through the longer things that were at grade level in second grade, and her fluency was broken and it wasn't where it needed to be. And that experience—fast forward, we found out something was going on with her eyes, so the longer text and taxing was breaking her fluency. But what it really also did—we were able to fix that, but what it really did was create a lot of frustration. It created a lot of disinterest in reading. She didn't want to do it. So, you know, fluency has this great—what you're sharing with us today, it has this incredible relationship, this bridge between coding and comprehension. 

But I think that there's also something there for when you're a fluent reader, when you're able to cross that bridge, what that can do for your interest and your motivation to actually read and be a lifelong reader. What are your thoughts about that?

Dr. Lynne Kulich: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. We are all alike in so many regards, because we're human beings. And if we struggle to do something, number one, we're less likely to continue to do it. And this happens all the time. Think about kids who try out certain sports or try out an instrument. “Ehhh, not really my thing,” right? My youngest son, who is a junior in college, I remember when he was in first grade, tried out hockey and he did well, but after that, that was it, right? But when we talk about things like reading, it's a civil right. It's not an option. You can learn to read or not, right? Play hockey or play baseball, I don't care. It's a civil right, and every child has the right to learn to read. And we need to be able to provide the scaffolding to make sure one: It's accessible to them and that it becomes joyful and it's a pleasurable experience. And there's multiple ways to do that. But providing the right scaffolding and providing explicit fluency instruction gives students the practice they need. 

Because if you practice, you increase your stamina. And there was an interesting study out recently, I just read online maybe a week or two ago, where since the pandemic, educators are reporting that students’ reading stamina has decreased by over 80%.

Jennifer Nigh: Oh, wow.

Dr. Lynne Kulich: Which is probably not surprising. I think we can tie a lot of things back to the pandemic, but that that's a huge problem.

Jennifer Nigh: Yes,80% is a big number.

Dr. Lynne Kulich: Yes.We've got to address that. Because students need to develop reading stamina. How do they do that? With lots of fluency practice, and the opportunity to read things they love with the right supports there for them.

Kevin Carlson: After the break: Joy. Stay with us.

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Jennifer Nigh: One of the words I want to bring back that you just mentioned was joyful. We talk a lot about, as we need to, the science and the evidence and the best practices and what is going to make kids read. But the fact that you can do it in a way that is joyful, to create that engagement and that sustained interest in reading, I think is really powerful. And I think your Fluency Development Lesson that is represented in your forthcoming book really tries to merge those two things together, the science and the art of teaching, and making it an enjoyable experience while we meet grade-level outcomes.

Dr. Lynne Kulich: Yeah. Absolutely. And I think too, fluency development, as you said, it's this juxtaposition of the science, which Science of Reading is a big hot topic, for very good reason, and art. And the joy and the pleasure and the fun, yes. Teaching reading can and should be fun not only for students, but for the teacher. 

Jennifer Nigh: Absolutely. Great. Thinking still, to your experience with multilingual learners, what are some other strategies or maybe recommendations that you would give other educators that are supporting those students? English language development—what are some of the strategies and the things that you would recommend those teachers really tune into as it relates to fluency, but also just in general, as they're becoming fluent in English language and literacy?

Dr. Lynne Kulich: Yeah, yeah. So I think I would be remiss, you know, Jen, if I didn't talk about really who multilingual learners are. And I mentioned it earlier—I think they're superheroes. They have incredible superpowers.

What do I mean by that? Well, you know, their native language is a superpower. It is not a hindrance. So they don't have deficiencies. Sometimes I think we look at them and think, “Oh, well, they can't speak English.” But they have all sorts of assets. And that's our job—to build on that. So I like to think of what I call “virtual backpacks.” Like, kids literally have backpacks, and then they've got this figurative backpack and it's teachers’ jobs to unzip that backpack, figure out what culture, what language, what educational experiences these students have, because they are not blank slates. They have all that. So how can we take that out of the backpack? How can we leverage it? And how can we encourage those students to leverage it?

One year I had two students from China in my classroom. So you better believe we celebrated Chinese New Year. We read Chinese poems about China, we read stories, we did artwork. And the parents brought in traditional Chinese food for us to sample. So not only were these students learning our English language and our American culture, but they had so much to share with us. So I just want to encourage educators to remember [that] they have so many assets and just, really, so many superpowers. And if we leverage that, then we allow them the scaffolding to succeed. 

And one way you might be familiar, and I don't know if listeners out there are familiar with this term, but it's called “cross linguistic transfer.”

Jennifer Nigh: Yes. Tell us a little bit about that.

Dr. Lynne Kulich: Yeah. In my mind this is the ultimate superpower. Think of cross linguistic transfer as, like, an umbrella. If you're familiar with phonological awareness, it's like an umbrella. And within phonological awareness you have rhyming and you have phoneme segmentation and syllabication and all these components. Well, that's kind of what cross linguistic transfer is like. But it really is about students leveraging their skills that they've already acquired, say, maybe in their native language or the current language, to help them learn new language. So instead of saying to them, “Hey, forget about your Chinese, we're not speaking Chinese in this class,” instead you encourage them to use that as part of their scaffolding resources. 

Think about, for example, like even Spanish, we know there are a lot of cognates, similar syntax, similar social context. That should be what students are allowed to leverage. And that's really kind of what cross linguistic transfer is. Take what you already know about your language and apply it as you're learning English.

Jennifer Nigh: Yeah. And what you're describing, we may be talking about English language development today, but what you're really describing is valuing biliteracy. In your example, you may not be teaching that student whose first language is Chinese or Mandarin, and you're not furthering necessarily in that particular classroom the reading and writing in that language. But you're valuing that language because that student is going to be bilingual, multilingual, whatever the case might be. And that asset-based approach, like you said, is critical.

Dr. Lynne Kulich: I think you're right. You know, for teachers who are teaching and part of a dual language program, this seems natural, right? Well, of course now we're speaking Spanish and we're doing instruction in Spanish and now it's English. But for emergent bilinguals who may only be getting instruction in school in English, we can't forget that they've got this whole other language that they can leverage.

Jennifer Nigh: Yeah. So important. I think in sum, as we close out this conversation— and tell me if you agree—I would say fluency matters. Whether you speak English as your first language or you are an English learner, fluency matters. We have—as an example, the Fluency Development Lesson—lots of tools in our toolbox to help you teach fluency so it serves as that bridge to comprehension. But most importantly, it's remembering that students—all students, multilingual learners, emerging bilinguals, English speaking students—they all have assets that they're bringing to what we do in the classroom, and really leveraging those assets are going to be the secret sauce to helping make sure that these students are proficient readers at the end of the day.

Dr. Lynne Kulich: Absolutely. Yeah.

Jennifer Nigh: Great. Well, any last words of advice or any last closing remarks that you would like our listeners to hear?

Dr. Lynne Kulich: Yeah. We didn't talk much today about assessment, but I just think it's important, as a wrap-up, to remind educators that with so many state initiatives, especially around Science of Reading and assessments, screenings, diagnostic assessments, remember that unless you are assessing that emergent bilingual also in their native language, you don't have a complete picture of their reading skills. And so oftentimes when you administer a dyslexia screener, they might be the student flagged. But press pause. And we know we don't want to over-assess students, but in cases like this, you need to triangulate data. And unless you have an assessment in Spanish, for example, if that's their native language, you need to make sure you have multiple data points before you say, “Yes, this child has some risk for potential dyslexia.” We don't know that by administering a dyslexia screener in English because we're not capturing all of their skills and abilities. And so, in essence, it's not their fault that we don't have a dyslexia screener in their native language. So we have to be very, very careful and continue to monitor students, but use multiple data sets before we make decisions in that type of arena.

Jennifer Nigh: Yeah, absolutely. I like that you mentioned the triangulation of data. Like those three pieces, do they consistently tell me the same thing? If they do, I'm going to have a much better understanding of what that child knows. But also, I was talking with some dual language educators this past week and talking about assessment, and they said, “Imagine if you assess a child in”—let's just say vocabulary, for example—"and they know ten words in Spanish and ten words in English, but you only assess them in English. You're only going to get half of what they know.” And what is that? That's a deficit model. It's not taking to your really good advice about the assets that they're actually bringing and looking at the whole child. So I think your point is very well taken and something that absolutely should be more part of the conversation and something we need to really consider.

Dr. Lynne Kulich: Yeah, absolutely.

Jennifer Nigh: All right. Well, Lynne, thank you so much. It has been absolutely as always wonderful to chat with you. Your passion for multilingual learners, your passion for fluency, and your expertise is so evident and I'm so appreciative of the work you do and your message. And fluency matters. So we'll keep having that conversation and I thank you again so much for your willingness to share that with us today.

Dr. Lynne Kulich: Yes. Thank you, Jen, and thank you to Benchmark for allowing our dream to publish the book come to fruition. I think it's going to help a lot of teachers and students.

Jennifer Nigh: I agree I agree. Thank you so much.

Kevin Carlson: Thank you, Lynne Kulich. Thank you, Jen Nigh. And thank you for listening to Teachers Talk Shop. The book is The Fluency Development Lesson: Closing the Reading Gap, and Lynne's co-authors are Dr. Timothy Rasinski and the poet David L. Harrison. It explores the relationship between the science and art of instruction. A fluency development lesson is a direct, intentional, and science-backed instructional practice that helps scaffold students toward grade-level text, promote equity, and develop fluent readers who want to read. The book includes 140 lessons. Post-reading activities provide meaningful practice through word ladders, graphic organizers, cloze activities, writing prompts, and more. 

Move your students toward more fluent, proficient reading and joyful learning with The Fluency Development Lesson: Closing the Reading Gap. The book is available now at Benchmark Education dot com. Go to the Professional Learning dropdown and select “PD Essentials” to learn more and purchase this one-of-a-kind resource. 

Thanks for listening to Teachers Talk Shop. For Benchmark Education, I'm Kevin Carlson.