Episode Transcript

Announcer:

This podcast is produced by Benchmark Education.

Kevin Carlson:

In this episode, the Science of Reading and how it fits with Small Group Instruction.

I’m Kevin Carlson, and this is Teachers Talk Shop.

Dr. Adria Klein:

I don't want small groups to last a certain amount of time. I don't want them to be a certain type. I want them to meet needs.

Kevin Carlson:

That is Dr. Adria Klein. She is the director of the St Mary's College of California Comprehensive Literacy Center and the author of many books, articles, and texts that influence reading instruction.

Author and educator Patty McGee spoke with Adria recently about small group instruction and the Sciences of Reading.

Patty McGee:

So one of the most important touchstones for us as educators is the ubiquitous Scarborough's Rope. And I know this has a great influence on the choices we make in reading instruction, and specifically in small groups. So maybe what we can do is begin with just describing Scarborough's rope for people who are here and listening, and just unpacking some of the important things to know.

Dr. Adria Klein:

You know, hot topics are not always new topics. They ebb and flow. And this has been periodically a key point. So when Hollis Scarborough created the rope design in 2001, around the time of the National Reading Panel early work, she was basically helping us understand important things to remember about all aspects of reading. And I think the rope being intertwined means it's called a rope because it has many strands. We have to keep that in mind to be strong. The rope meets all the strands. And so there are eight strands she described in her research. And her model is really a theoretical model of reading, and in general, thinking about that, five of them are what we call part of language comprehension, and the other three are labeled word recognition. So they aren't four and four for or anything like that. Five in language comprehension. Three in word recognition. I want to start with word recognition because that's essential. And when I think of word recognition, the three components should be very familiar terms to everybody. One of them is phonological awareness, and we have to consider syllables, she says, phonemes, et cetera. Then decoding. And then the idea of site recognition. Now this is not site words necessarily, but quick recognition, automatic recognition of familiar words. It doesn't exclude sight words, but it doesn't mean sight words. It means sight recognition. And the language comprehension strand, very quickly, has five components, and they're probably more familiar terms for most people. One, of course, is background knowledge, and that means what you bring to the task, but also what you learned from the task. It's broadly defined. But a key one to keep in mind is vocabulary, both oral reading and written. All three of those. So thinking about vocabulary in the language strand, language comprehension part of the rope, It has many aspects as well.

Dr. Adria Klein:

Then she details language structures, and when I think about structure, she's talking about syntax, word order, word agreement, subject-verb agreement, all the grammar aspects and the sentence structure, as well as semantics, the meaning. Those are deliberately listed and clear as part of language comprehension. And verbal reasoning. We've always understood the role of verbal reasoning with young children in particular and their ability to speak to and understand verbally a lot of information they cannot yet read that they're now learning to map onto the printed page. And the fifth one is literacy knowledge, and being in the comprehension strand, this is still visually important. Print Concepts is the first one listed: how many letters you know, how many words you know, understanding how reading moves from left to right rather than right to left. In fact, why everyone's getting excited about the palindrome today that we're recording this Tuesday the 22nd is the fact that it can be read both directions. Well, young children need to learn that, and it's very difficult to work with phonics in the word recognition if we haven't understood directionality within word and across lines in the language comprehension. That's why I say they're so intertwined. So together they're skilled reading. And we can talk a bit about how she defined in the model, the skilled reading. And I really think the short definition she includes is key. Fluent executive and coordination of word recognition and text comprehension. She didn't say one or the other. She said both. And so importantly, she adds, if any part of the complex rope is not present or insufficiently developed, reading will be impaired. This isn't a two-step process; this is a weaving.

Patty McGee:

Yes, that is so important. And I just want to say it out loud again. I want to echo what you're saying here is that when looking at Scarborough's Rope, if any part of this complex rope is not present or insufficiently developed, reading will be impaired. Exactly. Crucial to this conversation today and for all readers in the classroom.

Dr. Adria Klein:

And so we want them to be strategic and we want them to be automatic. And they both develop. And strategic is not strategies; its ways of attacking a problem. And thinking about that, I mentioned vocabulary being part of the language comprehension components. Children attach meaning to first letters. And consequently, not always is the letter they know in the first position. So, I have a very quick story about a child named Max. And we were walking together. He was about two and a half. He knew the first letter of his name, but he didn't understand first. And he looked up at the restaurant in front of us and said giving it away, “Grandma, there's my name.” Oh, and I said, “Yes, Max.” The restaurant name wasn't Max. It was the M in the second position, but a little glimmer of recognition of that M needs to be encouraged, even if it's not initially showing directionality. Then we move to knowing more letters, knowing directionality, attaching the phonological awareness to the decoding. So I remember he knows them. He just needs to learn where it goes and how it sounds. But that visual recognition showed me a glimmer of what was to come.

Kevin Carlson:

After the break, Adria and Patty dig into small group instruction. Stay with us.

Announcer:

The small-group setting helps students take ownership of their own learning and helps teachers provide responsive instruction.In their book Small-Group Reading Instruction,reading experts Adria F. Klein, Barbara Andrews, and Peter Afflerbach detail the best practices for reading instruction in a small-group setting:Guided Reading, Strategy Groups, andClose Reading.Using these instructional techniques, teachers can help students grow into successfulindependent readers.This book shows teachers how.Learn more at PDEssentials.com. Go teach brilliantly!

Patty McGee:

Let's keep that Scarborough's rope image in our mind as we move on to the next question that I have for you, because these are really connected. So, I mean, I feel like you are the ultimate guru in small-group reading in this world. I know that there's a lot of people that you would turn to. But in my mind you, you, as reading in small groups, I just want to constantly come back to and learn more from you. So let's just remember some of the key elements about small groups as we will connect it back to Scarborough's rope. But just for now, let's just dig into some really important things to remember about using small groups in the classroom. Can you share?

Dr. Adria Klein:

I appreciate that because I learn from everybody else. We are all learning together. And so I was a secondary intervention teacher, and as a secondary intervention teacher, I saw 10th and 11th graders who were reading about the second grade reading level. They were not strategic, and they were not automatic. And so reading was slow, writing was even slower. And we did less writing at the time. And I draw from that experience to talk about small groups, because I pulled small groups within a 35-student 10th grade classroom as an interventionist. “Why?,” you ask yourself, would I even think small-group? I'm not thinking only about small groups. I'm thinking about meeting and differentiating student needs. If we kept barreling along without some extra support and scaffolds for that group of older students. I found we would leave them even further behind. So for me, the small groups helps us differentiate the student needs and keep them all moving forward. It isn't about the design as much as it is about meeting the needs and personalizing the needs. I don't want small groups to last a certain amount of time. I don't want him to be a certain type. I want them to meet needs. So, I might have a group that meets three times. It might have a group that meets for eight weeks. That flexibility is not really well understood about small-group. Pacing needs to change. Vocabulary needs to be increased, as I mentioned earlier. Often that's a big gap. And when I think about that, how do we move to the next skill or sound or letter or the like without doing small-group? To keep everybody moving forward.

Dr. Adria Klein:

To me, it's that kind of at your own pace, but as fast as we can go. And we must catch up, but you don't catch up by referring people or leaving them behind. You catch up while it's happening. And that, to me, is part of the power of small groups. They sometimes help kids move ahead. I don't want to think of them only as an intervention for kids with needs at one end. Sometimes the kids are going so fast and they're so strong, they don't pay attention to detail and make unforced errors, which count equally negatively in scoring as an unknown error. We forget this. So I think we need to do both. But I want to consider the small group helps us meet all needs. But they aren't uniform in size, length, purpose. But they're necessary at all times. We need to plan a little more, and this is certainly a hard time to plan. We have to be flexible about it. But the outcomes are so much stronger. We must keep them short. We must adjust to needs. And we have to, I think we'll call it, frequent regrouping. I was a math teacher originally, just to understand that. And so the idea of regrouping was an early math concept. I had to mention that. And to me, it takes ongoing formative assessment. It's observational and responsive and learner centered. That helps us.

Patty McGee:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's just so important in any grade level. I think you've illustrated that small groups that are flexible, that are ongoing, that are meeting the needs that we are seeing in observation in the classroom, really support that learning progress for every student. So thank you for bringing us back to this. Reminding us of really the essentials and the importance of small groups.

Kevin Carlson:

After the break, assessment, observation, and Yogi Berra. Stay with us.

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Patty McGee:

Ok, so now let's connect the two big concepts that we've talked about. So, we talked about Scarborough's Rope, and just how important it is that any part of this complex rope, if it's insufficiently developed or it's missing, then reading will be impaired. So, we know that. And then we know that small groups can help accelerate learning. So, I'm just wondering, what do you think are the most relevant and justified parts of Scarborough's Rope to use in small groups?

Dr. Adria Klein:

You know, I think with word recognition, three key aspects, need to be considered as small group scaffolds. And part of that responsiveness that Peter Afflerbach and I talk about in Meaningful Reading Assessment is to understand the ongoing. We don't just assess at the beginning and assess at the end, but we recognized needs. So, I might have a student with only 12 letters, and we're fairly far into our understanding of letter recognition and sound association, phonological, and decoding. But they have serious print knowledge gaps. I may need a short-term small group that focuses on increasing letter knowledge. Production, yes, but recognition fast and fluent and automatic first. I may need to help kids understand what a word is. Surprisingly, word-space-word, another print concept from language comprehension, isn't automatic. We see it. But then when we get to young children, it looks like head scratching. You know, the idea when a young child is trying to write a letter to grandma, they'll have a series of scribbles, and they'll bring it over. “I wrote a letter to Grandma.” They're not reading yet, but they're seeing themselves as writers, but we don't see any writing. So then again, a grandma would say, “Read it to me,” and the child knows their message.

Dr. Adria Klein:

So oftentimes we encounter young children who know the message but are missing vital parts, like letter recognition, fast and rapid and automatic. They may have not a sense of word or the vocabulary because they haven't been talked with enough, and oral language is a limited or truncated. So one of my little ones in first grade, the book said, “television.” The child said, “TV.” How much of an error is that? What kind of error? Or is it a legitimate approximation from the oral language? Yes, it's not decoded. Yes, it's not looked at left to right. Yes, it's a much longer multi-syllabic word. But they had the concept. Now I have to help them visually map. But that isn't the same kind of error as not even attempting something. We have to give credit to what's there versus what's not yet developed, and small groups target that: more time to talk, more time to strategically support, more time to get automatic and fluent in these particular aspects of knowns. Yeah. Going from the known. Critical! And small groups help us with establishing and deepening the knowns.

Patty McGee:

Yes. And you referred to the book that you wrote with Peter Aflerbach around meaningful reading assessment, and just something that's coming into my mind right now as I'm listening to you is these small groups are to help build from the build knowledge from the known. And also, these small groups give us so much more opportunity for assessment as well. So, it's not just for instruction, but it's also for learning about what students are able to do, almost do, and not yet do. So, it has just so much power.

Dr. Adria Klein:

Including observations of, “They made the ‘h’ with a short stick.” And we need to learn to extend it to so that they recognize an h from an n, from an r, from a u, from a w, from an m. Just getting a couple of those solid helps us anchor learning to learn a great deal more. And that's what small groups can do.

Patty McGee:

Yes, and that just observing, as you were saying. It's funny. I was at the Yogi Berra Museum this weekend and one of his quotes was, “You observe a lot when you watch.” And it's so true! Like, when we are when we are watching, we learn so much about what our students are able to do, and we can help make those tiny steps just like you described, right?

Dr. Adria Klein:

And take notes. I think one of the things that's hardest for me is to take notes while I'm teaching. And if we sit back and observe, even allow some partner talking in small groups so we can make an observational note, it will help us adjust and fine tune instruction. That fine tuning is what the rope is about. And those strands come together. They don't wait. They start coming together.

Patty McGee:

Yeah, you just brought it full circle. Thank you. So anything else, then, to keep in mind with small groups and Science of Reading?

Dr. Adria Klein:

Well, you alluded to it: effective PD isn't about only information, it's about observation. So oftentimes the chance to watch a lesson, watch a video, interact with each other to fine tune our own teaching and thinking, we aren't just supporting the child, we're supporting the teacher. In that professional development, observation is critical, too. We can learn a great deal by reading and by going through information. We need that. But there must be an observational component in some way brought into professional development to strengthen the teacher. We all observed a lesson. I was teaching small-group, I wasn't mentored modeling, and they gave me feedback. It wasn't like, “Oh, great job, Adria!” You know, “I noticed you could have…” “I recognized you might have…” That helps them think. Teachers’ most critical delivery system is supporting the teacher in their learning, and that takes many facets, too. So I almost want to see how those strands interplay with professional development. I'm not going to build that model, but I think of that model when I think of all the strands of professional development.

Patty McGee:

I was thinking the same thing. We're really on the same page. Well, thank you for taking the time today to share your wisdom around small groups and the Science of Reading and Scarborough's Rope and how they all intersect and how we can be really practical and responsive to our students by looking at the tiniest things that they're able to do and thinking about the next steps for them and how small groups play such a big role in that.

Dr. Adria Klein:

Thank you, Patty. There's so much for us to learn together.

Kevin Carlson:

Thank you, Dr. Adria Klein. Thank you, Patty McGee. And thank you for listening to Teachers Talk Shop. If you want to learn more about the science of reading, go to TeachersTalkShop.com and visit our archive. Episode 26 is “A Practical Approach to the Sciences of Reading,” with Dr. C.C. Bates. Episode 25 is called The Sciences of Reading and the Whole Child, featuring Peter Afflerbach and Rachael Gabriel. Episode 20, "Expanding the Science of Reading," features Peter Afflerbach. And Episode 4 features Wiley Blevins and is called “The Science of Reading: What Brain Research Says About How We Learn to Read.” While you're on the site, please register to receive updates about the show.

For Benchmark Education, I'm Kevin Carlson.