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DOCUMENT RESUME

ED 435 969 CS 013 746

TITLE The Best of "The Running Record." Revised Edition.INSTITUTION Reading Recovery Council of North America, Columbus, OH.PUB DATE 1998-00-00NOTE 109p.

AVAILABLE FROM Reading Recovery Council of North America, Inc., Suite 100,1929 Kenny Road, Columbus, OH 43210-1069. Tel: 614-292-7111;Web site: <http://www.readingrecovery.org>.

PUB TYPE Collected Works General (020)

EDRS PRICE MF01/PC05 Plus Postage.DESCRIPTORS Classroom Techniques; Early Intervention; Elementary

Education; Instructional Effectiveness; Literacy; *ReadingDifficulties; *Reading Instruction; *Reading Research;*Student Needs; *Teacher Role

IDENTIFIERS *Reading Recovery Projects

ABSTRACTThis revised edition of the first volume of the "Best of the

Running Record Newsletter" contains 23 articles published between March 1989and Spring 1998--some selections are from the now out-of-print first edition.Articles are arranged by subject matter to assist the reader in findingarticles which address a particular point of interest. Section 1, HistoricalPerspective, contains the following articles: "Why Reading Recovery Works,May 1989" (Barbara Watson); "An Early Intervention To Prevent LiteracyLearning Difficulties: What Is Possible? Spring 1994" (Marie M. Clay); and"Welcome Speech, Fall 1995" (William D. Lynch). Section 2, Research andRationales, contains the following articles: "Reading Recovery Swift,Effective in Reversing Reading Failure, MacArthur Study Find, Winter 1992"(Gay Su Pinnell); "The Role of the University in Reading Recovery in NorthAmerica, Spring 1993" (Janet S. Gaffney and Gay Su Pinnell); and "Rationalefor Teaching At Least Four Reading Recovery Children, Spring 1997" (NoelJones). Section 3, Reading Recovery Training, contains these articles:"Reading Recovery Teachers as Lifelong Learners: Teachers in Transition,Autumn 1991" (Diane DeFord) and "Interpreting Teacher/Student Interactions inReading Recovery from a Vygotskian Perspective, Winter 1993" (Carol A.Lyons). Section 4, Teaching for Diversity, contains the following articles:"Descubriendo La Lectura: A Reconstruction of Reading Recovery in Spanish,Winter 1994" (Kathleen McDonough); "Helping All Students Learn, Winter 1994"(Raquel C. Mireles); "Responding to Changing Demographics: Selecting ReadingRecovery Books, Winter 1994" (Linda Garrett); "Text Selection for LimitedEnglish Proficient Students in Reading Recovery, Winter 1994" (DianaGeisler); and "'We Goed to Readin': Understanding How Children LearnLanguage, Fall 1995" (Nancy Anderson). Section 5, Teaching and Learning inReading Recovery, contains the following articles: "A Closer Look at theWriting Component in the Reading Recovery Program, Autumn 1990" (Mary D.Fried); "Learning To Look at Print, Autumn 1992" (Steve Hansell); "OrganizingReading Recovery Lessons for Efficiency and Effectiveness, Autumn 1993"(Steve Hansell); "Dual Processing in Reading: Don't 'Get Your Mouth Ready'Yet, Autumn 1994" (Noel Jones); "Reading Recovery and Phonics: A Response forParents, Autumn 1994" (Steve Hansell); "What Does Teaching at the Word LevelReally Mean? Winter 1994" (Rose Mary Estice); "Doing It by the Book...or,Using the Language of the Guidebook in Our Teaching, Winter 1995" (JudithNeal); "Using Patterns of Responding to 'Follow the Child,' Spring 1997"

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

(Rose Mary Estice); "Helping the Hard-To-Accelerate Child: Problem-Solvingthe More Difficult Cases, Fall 1997" (Noel Jones); and "Teaching forStrategies in Writing: Maintaining the Balance between Composing andTranscribing, Spring 1998" (Lee Skandalaris). (Each article containsreferences.) (NKA)

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

Teshe

RunningBt'T°he Rgaarvilr

Revised Edition

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATIONOffice of Educational Research and Improvement

EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATIONCENTER (ERIC)

C This document has been reproduced asreceived from the person or organizationoriginating it.Minor changes have been made toimprove reproduction quality.

° Points of view or opinions stated in thisdocument do not necessarily representofficial OERI position or policy.

HistoricalPerspective

Research and Rationales

Reading Recovery Training

Teaching for -Diversity

Teaching and Learning inReading Recovery

OCID

C.)

1

Published by Reading Recovery® Council. of North America, Inc.

PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE ANDDISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS

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riREADINGRECOVERY'COUNCILOF NORTH AMERICA

°Record Revised Edition

TheRunning,The first volume of the Best of the Running Record Newsletter was produced in response to repeated

requests for articles from past issues of The Running Record newsletter. The first volume has been out ofprint for some time. This revised edition includes selections from March 1989 through Spring 1998. Somearticles from the first volume are repeated here because they continue to reflect our practice of ReadingRecovery. Other articles from the first volume are not included in this volume because of changes in ourpractice or because they contain a substantial portion of references which no longer are available. TheReading Recovery Council of North America thanks the members of the Council's Training AdvisoryCommittee who served as reviewers of these articles. Their assistance in determining the appropriatenessof inclusion of all articles was invaluable.

The Council also thanks the authors whose articles appear in this Revised Edition. Their work contin-ues to contribute to the success of Reading Recovery teachers who work everyday to ensure that childrenwill be competent readers and writers by the end of first grade.

The articles in this revised edition are arranged by subject matter to assist the reader in finding articleswhich address a particular point of interest. Articles dated August 1994 and earlier appeared in the firstvolume of the Best of the Running Record Newsletter. These articles are copyrighted by The Ohio StateUniversity. Articles dated Winter 1995 to Spring 1998 are copyrighted by The Reading Recovery Councilof North America.*

Please note:The authors' titles and/or affiliations as shown are those held at the time of original publicationand in many cases may have changed.

Reference is made in several articles to ED. The full title of the book is The Early Detection ofReading Difficulties, by Marie M. Clay, Third Edition, Heinemann Publishers, Portsmouth, NewHampshire, 1985. Reading Recovery: A Guidebook for Training Teachers, by Marie Clay, has replacedED.

We hope these articles will prove useful to you and will add to your store of knowledge about ReadingRecovery.

Reading Recovery Council of North AmericaSuite 100

1929 Kenny RoadColumbus, Ohio 43210

614/292-7111 614/292-4404 FAXwww.readingrecovery.org

* © Copyright 1998, Reading Recovery Council of North America.All rights reserved. Not to be reprinted for other use without written permission.

3 ;EST COPY AVAILABLE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Section 1: Historical Perspective

Why Reading Recovery WorksMay 1989by Barbara Watson

An Early Intervention to Prevent LiteracyLemming Difficulties: What Is Possible?Spring 1994by Marie M. Clay

Welcome SpeechFall 1995by William D. Lynch

Section 2: Research and Rationales

Section 3: Reading Recovery Training

7 Reading Recovery Teachers as Lifelong Learners:Teachers in TransitionAutumn 1991by Diane DeFord

9 Interpreting Teacher/Studentin Reading Recovery from aVygotskian PerspectiveWinter 1993

12 by Carol A. Lyons

Reading Recovery Swift, Effective in ReversingReading Failure, MacArthur Study Finds - - - 16Winter 1992by Gay Su Pinnell

The Role of the University inReading Recovery in North AmericaSpring 1993by Janet S. Gaffney and Gay Su Pinnell

Rationale for Teaching at leastFour Reading Recovery ChildrenSpring 1997by Noel Jones

21

26

Interactions

Section 4: Teaching for Diversity

31

36

Descubriendo La Lectura: A Reconstruction ofReading Recovery in Spanish 43Winter 1994by Kathleen McDonough

Helping All Students LearnWinter 1994by Raquel C. Mireles

Responding to Changing Demographics:Selecting Reading Recovery BooksWinter 1994by Linda Garrett

Text Selection for Limited English ProficientStudents in Reading RecoveryWinter 1994by Diana Geisler

"We Goed to Readin" : Understanding HowChildren Learn LanguageFall 1995by Nancy Anderson

46

50

53

55

TABLE OF CONTENTS Continued

Section 5:Teaching and Learning inReading Recovery

A Closer Look at the Writing Componentin the Reading Recovery ProgramAutumn 1990by Mary D. Fried

Learning to Look at PrintAutumn 1992by Steve Hansell

Organizing Reading Recovery Lessons forEfficiency and EffectivenessAutumn 1993by Steve Hansell

Dual Processing in Reading: Don't"Get Your Mouth Ready" YetAutumn 1994by Noel Jones

Reading Recovery and Phonics:A Response for ParentsAutumn 1994by Steve Hansell

What Does Teaching at the61 Word Level Really Mean?

Winter 1994by Rose Mary Estice

79

65 Doing It by the Book . . . or, Using the Languageof the Guidebook in Our Teaching 82Winter 1995by Judith Neal

68 Using Patterns of Responding to"Follow the Child"Spring 1997by Rose Mary Estice

73 Helping the Hard-to-accelerate Child:Problem-solving the More Difficult CasesFall 1997by Noel Jones

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- - - 94

77 Teaching for Strategies in Writing:Maintaining the Balance between Composingand TranscribingSpring 1998by Lee Skandalaris

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[READINGRECOVERY'COUNCILOF NORTH AMERICA

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Why Reading Recovery WorksMay 1989by Barbara Watson

An Early Intervention to Prevent Literacy LearningDifficulties: What Is Possible? 9

Spring 1994by Marie M. Clay

Welcome Speech 12Fall 1995By William D. Lynch


Why Reading Recovery WorksMay 1989

by Barbara WatsonNational Director of Reading Recovery

New Zealand

The following is a summary of Watson'skeynote address at the 1989 ReadingRecovery Conference in Columbus, Ohio.

Reading Recovery has spread around theworld. It is currently operating in four

countries: New Zealand, Australia, the UnitedStates and Canada. Expansion continues inmany educational settings with thousands ofchildren being reached each year.

To help understand why Reading Recoveryworks, Watson quoted from a soon-to-be pub-lished paper by Dr. Marie Clay. In essence,Clay states that Reading Recovery is a programof strategic instruction. Instruction is not onitems (i.e., letters, words, letter sounds) but onlearning HOW to use information.

Watson elaborated on this statement byexplaining that children learn HOW to useinformation from written text, HOW to drawfrom their oral experience, and HOW to moni-tor and correct their own performances.Keeping meaning as the central focus, theteacher shares, facilitates and teaches the prob-lem solving needed for any new or difficultaspects of the tasks.

As the child reads and writes text everyday, the teacher helps the child make links andbuild understandings through these two recip-rocal processes. Working on whole text readingand writing provides both enrichment and aneconomy of learning that makes ReadingRecovery work. Teachers are constantly help-ing children develop their own ability to teachthemselves how to learn more.

While there are many published detailsabout Reading Recovery, they are neither pre-scriptive nor sufficient for implementing the

program. Extensive teacher training is anotherkey element that makes Reading Recoverywork. Through training, teachers gain theknowledge necessary to observe the child, pro-vide the instructional focus, and select fromthe "menu" of procedures outlined in EarlyDetection. Although a Reading Recovery lessonmay seem informal and natural, the teachermakes independent decisions and designs aneffective program for each child which mayvary in content, pacing and amount of time inthe program.

Teachers must understand what they aredoing and why they are doing it as theyobserve and follow the child. Teachers cannotpredetermine the lesson. Decisions are momentby moment and the teaching must be formulat-ed during the lesson.

Choosing the appropriate book at the righttime is one of the Reading Recovery teacher'smost important decisions. Each teacher needs awide variety of many different types of books torespond to the child's needs. Choosing thesame sequence of books or books from thesame series is not appropriate for ReadingRecovery instruction. Sufficient money mustbe provided to purchase a suitable quantity andquality of little story books.

The first reading of the new book is impor-tant. It is a critical teaching time. The teachersupports, questions and teaches the child sothat problems are solved and most of the storyis read independently. Searching and checkingare encouraged so that the child can be asindependent as possible. Detailed records arekept and behaviors are analyzed in order toselect the best texts and to help the child makegiant leaps instead of step-by-step progress.

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Section 1: Historical PerspectiveWhy Reading Recovery Works

Quality decisions must be made based on evi-dence of the child's behavior gathered duringthe teaching session.

Teaching decisions in the writing portionof the lesson must also focus on strategic learn-ing. Reading Recovery teachers must take carenot to focus on learning words or writing wordscorrectly but on HOW to learn to write words,HOW to analyze the sound sequence in wordsand to use letters to record sounds, and HOWto go from words that can be written to get tonew words. Again, as in reading, the emphasisis on teaching independent problem solving.

Reading Recovery teachers must constantlyask themselves, "What is this child learning?"To answer this question teachers must observethe child as he/she reads and writes text.Teachers must sensitively follow, support,prompt, help and teach the child to movetoward independent processing. Teachers must

reinforce HOW the child got the response, notthe correct response. Teachers must stimulate,foster, support, and reinforce the notion of

work."It is important to understand that Reading

Recovery works because of the quality of theteacher's decisions and the ongoing programdemand for quality decisions. Program andteacher quality are fostered through continuingcontact sessions. To promote accelerativeteaching, teachers must continue to criticallyevaluate their own teaching and have opportu-nities for peer evaluation through live teachingsessions.

Reading Recovery is an educational systemintervention program which needs many levelsof support that allow for the continued refine-ment of the program in order to deliver a sec-ond chance for young children to learn to readand write. 444

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An Early Intervention to Prevent Literacy Learning Difficulties:What Is Possible?

Spring 1994

by Marie M. Clay, Professor EmeritaUniversity of Auckland, Auckland

New Zealand

Marie Clay received her Ph.D. from theUniversity of Auckland in 1966 and was onthe faculty there from 1960-1991.

There are many theories about what causesdifficulty in reading and writing, and there

is scant research evidence of successful treat-ment. There have been debates and disagree-ments, recommended treatments that provideminimal improvements, few acknowledgmentsthat different problems need different treat-ments, and thousands of stories about childrenwho became adult illiterates.

I, however, did not ask questions aboutcauses nor seek to compare one treatment withanother; I sought a workable solution to beused by an education system. I wonderedwhether there was an optimum time in achild's education when some extra help couldreduce the risk of literacy difficulties. Whatwould be possible, and what would the some-thing extra have to be?

About 1974, an accusation was directed atme by New Zealand teachers. Using myObservation Survey to monitor children's earlyprogress, they watched some children becom-ing confused and failing to progress. Disturbedby what they saw, and unable to think how toovercome the difficulties they were identifying,they held me responsible for their plight andrecommended that I search for a solution.About this time, overworked educational psy-chologists in New Zealand estimated that 60percent of the children on their waiting listshad some literacy learning problems. If wecould reduce the literacy problems, they couldreduce those lists.

I began a two-year research and develop-ment project in 1976. Six teachers with specialinterests in literacy issues formed a researchteam, and each week one taught a child behinda one-way screen while the rest of the teamtalked about what was occurring. They dis-cussed the child's difficulties and how theteacher responded, relating this to their pooledknowledge of theory and practical experience.The one-way screen was so useful that itbecame a technological requirement for train-ing Reading Recovery teachers.

As a developmental and clinical psycholo-gist, I was startled with the early results of theReading Recovery program that we developedbased on our observation and analysis. In 1978,some of the first teachers successfully broughtthe lowest achieving children in their schoolto average levels of performance in reading andwriting in only 12 to 15 weeks! Most childrencontinued effectively in their classroom pro-grams after Reading Recovery was withdrawn;only a few needed to be referred for long-termhelp.

Then the snowball began to roll. One hun-dred teachers were trained in Auckland in1979-1980, and the program spread slowlythroughout New Zealand. New Zealand beganthe move to national coverage in 1983, reach-ing 21 percent of eligible children in 1988 and24.5 percent in 1992. Teacher leaders were alsotrained in Auckland, some of them forAustralia. Canberra, a federal territory ofAustralia, now has at least one ReadingRecovery teacher in every school. A visit toNew Zealand by three professors from TheOhio State University resulted in the first

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Section 1: Historical PerspectiveAn Early Intervention to Prevent Literacy Learning Difficulties: What is Possible?

course for the United States in 1984-85. Theprogram has spread in the United States underthe guidance of The Ohio State University. ACanadian training institute was formallyopened in October, 1993. England's program isin its second pilot year.

Now the cutting edge of our growth is thedelivery of the program in Spanish in theUnited States. Interest in adaptations to otherlanguages has also been shown by literacy edu-cators in Europe. It will take several years ofdevelopment before we can work in other lan-guages, as this involves much more than meretranslation; the program must be redesigned tosuit the characteristics of the new language.

Critics accuse us of "just good teaching,"but there is no instant magic to be seen. Thereare three interlocking aspects of ReadingRecovery. The public searches for a magic fea-ture in what is done with the children; educa-tors probe the model of teacher training for itssecrets; but I am sure that dissemination andwell-planned implementation are the realarbiters of success. In order to assure the high-est level of quality for the program at large,well-trained teachers are guided by a networkof teacher leaders, and in the United States aconsortium of training programs allows thesharing of everything from research data tonew policies. Reading Recovery professionalswork very hard to develop clear communica-tion about literacy learning, the wide range ofindividual differences faced by teachers, thedynamic changes needed as new knowledgebecomes available, and the research needed todo justice to the complex questions posedabout literacy.

Education is a product of society, and itsvalues and practices are not amenable to iden-tical replication in every country. Yet ReadingRecovery has been able to adapt to differentsettings and populations, look fundamentallythe same, and produce similar outcomes, if it issupported by a recognized training course.International exchanges are also becoming an

important source of inservice training, and ameans of escaping from the particulars of onecountry's education to discover what is generaland what is necessarily specific for a givencountry.

Critics still question the possibility of get-ting rid of a high proportion of learning diffi-culties. What I would like to point out is this:Reading Recovery does not base its claims onan average score, which evens out wrinkles andhides the fact that some children are good andothers are poor. There are stringent criteria tomeasure the outcome for every individual.When parents and teachers see individual chil-dren who appear highly unlikely to succeed butwho achieve the desired outcome, their enthu-siasm cannot be called hype, fashion, or blindbelief. It is based on watching children becomeactive participants in their education.

Children enter the program with almost nouseful responses to literacy; they cannot be dis-continued until they are independent readersand writers, able to then push the boundariesof their knowledge with a regular teacher.

Children are taken into the program with-out excluding anyone for any reason; the solecriterion is low literacy achievement. The pro-gram must adapt to the specific needs of a par-ticular child.

Children come into the program from verydifferent school curricula, since all methodshave their failing readers. They are discontin-ued back into their classroom program able tobe competent in that program, because theyhave been given control over their literacy andknow how to problem-solve, whatever kind ofinstruction is given to them.

The program is introduced early, beforethere is a big gap to bridge. Slow-learning chil-dren learn at accelerated rates so that they cancatch up with their classmates.

Reading Recovery is an approach to diffi-culty in reading and writing that not only leadsto improved performance but does away withmost of the problem. Furthermore, full imple-

10 Best of The Running Record 4 4 41.0

Section 1: Historical PerspectiveAn Early Intervention to Prevent Literacy Learning Difficulties: What is Possible?

mentation in a local, state, or national educa-tion system carries advantages over and abovethe progress of children and the professionalgrowth of teachers. When high numbers of lowachievers complete the program early in theirschooling, and build on their previous gainswithout slipping back, then schools will havefewer children with literacy difficulties andtherefore a reduced demand for services of spe-cialists. A good quality program, backed bytraining, carefully implemented, and with ade-quate resources, can leave less than one per-cent of children of a given age with the needfor continuing help. The projected savings onspecial education and individual failure canfund expansion. Society can even consider thepossibility of reducing adult illiteracy to smallnumbers. 44-4

This article is reprinted from the EighthAnnual Charles A. Dana Awards 1993Yearbook.

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Welcome SpeechFall 1995

by William D. Lynch

William Lynch is the founder of the WilliamD. Lynch Foundation for Children. TheFoundation underwrites research and fundingfor children's causes. Current major projectsin San Diego County include a ReadingRecovery Fund and an Even Start FamilyLiteracy Project. Following are excerpts fromLynch's welcome speech to the SecondInternational Reading Recovery Conference.

Itis a great pleasure to welcome all of you

Indian Wells, California and to this SecondInternational Reading Recovery Institute withrepresentatives from all over the world. And,of course, a special welcome to Marie Clay andBarbara Watson.

It is therapeutic to be in such a large gath-ering of Marie Clay's disciples. This is especial-ly true for me because I have been spending agreat deal of time with politicians attemptingto educate them about Reading Recovery .

Educating politicians is definitely a chal-lenging task. In the beginning, with politicians,one must take a good deal of time "roamingaround the known." One must "build on thesmallest knowledge." Their "attention span isshort" and "they fidget and squirm in theirchairs." What keeps you going is "knowinghow important it is that they must learn."

I have been asked to give my perspectiveon Reading Recovery and the challengesReading Recovery faces today. Let me start byenumerating the beliefs of our foundation andhow this has led to our support of ReadingRecovery.

Six years ago we said in our mission state-ment that it is our unshakable conviction thatthe fulfillment of human potential is funda-mentally dependent on the care and education

of children. Every child saved becomes a posi-tive force in the world and capable of caringfor his or her own children. Every child lost be-comes a negative force affecting future genera-tions.

As we focused on how and why childrenfail, it became obvious that a good education isessential in the modern world and that readingis the foundation upon which all academiclearning is built. It also became clear to us thatan increasing number of children were failingas beginning readers.

Moreover, we discovered that $12 billion isbeing spent each year in the United Statesalone on remedial programs that are ineffec-tive. Less than 3 percent of the students inthese remedial programs ever reach the classaverage. Mostly what they learn is low self-esteem. We know that these students are theones most likely to end up on welfare, or injail, and that they perpetuate the cycle of fail-ure.

It is against this bleak background that wemeasure the enormous value of ReadingRecovery.

We believe we cannot overstate the valueof an early intervention program that targetsthe lowest 20 percent of first graders and ele-vates 80 percent of them to the class average orabove in 15 weeks of 30 minute daily sessions.

The value of Reading Recovery is evenclearer when you discover that the program iscost effective. Full implementation of ReadingRecovery in our public school systems wouldcost less than 30 percent of what we now spendon ineffective remedial programs. It is true that$2,500 per Reading Recovery student may be a50 percent increase in cost for that particularstudent; however, full implementation of

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Section 1: Historical PerspectiveWelcome Speech

Reading Recovery would cost only 2 percent ofan elementary school budgeta budget thatprobably has 6 percent or more devoted tounsuccessful remediation.

This is how we see the importance ofReading Recovery. But what of its implemen-tation? What is the strategic picture today forReading Recovery?

The first thing to take note of is thatReading Recovery has expanded very rapidly.We believe it has now reached a critical stage.In the United States alone, there are now10,000 Reading Recovery teachers. In Cali-fornia the program has grown from no ReadingRecovery teachers five years ago to 1,600today. Not unlike Patton marching acrossWestern Europe, the forces of ReadingRecovery have advanced very swiftly in theircampaign to liberate the potential of children.One of the things Reading Recovery must doin the near future is consolidate its gains.Supply lines of information and support mustbe strengthened. Pontoon bridges must bereplaced with permanent bridges. The prioritymust be to shore up existing sites.

Reading Recovery is now subject to morecriticism than in the past. We might as well getused to it, because it will continue. And for anobvious reason: because Reading Recovery isnow number 1. Reading Recovery is the teamto beat. The bottom line is this: if a programcan sell itself as better than Reading Recovery,it can get at the funding.

It is clear that we must improve our systemof responding to critics. We must improve ourcommunication with each other. We mustimprove our mutual support. We must expandour research. As you know, these are some ofthe reasons why the Reading Recovery Councilof North America (RRCNA) was formed earli-er this year.

I believe the RRCNA has come into exis-tence at precisely the right time to help orga-nize the responses to the various assaults onReading Recovery and to help broaden and

coordinate the necessary research base fromwhich the program can be successfully defend-ed.

Membership cost in the RRCNA is a veryreasonable $40 per year. There are already4,500 members. If you have not done so, pleaseconsider joining.

I would like to close my remarks today bytelling you a story from my childhood aboutthe Declaration of Independence and the manwho wrote it. First, I should say that I had iteasy in learning to read. My earliest memoriesare of being read to by my mother, my father,and my grandmother.

But my most vivid memories regardingreading are of my grandfather, WilliamJefferson Lynch. He would read only one thingto me, but he read it often. It was theDeclaration of Independence which he loved.Before he would read the Declaration ofIndependence, my grandfather would alwaystell the same story. The story was a story hisgrandfather, Thomas Jefferson Lynch, had toldhim many times.

The story is about a day in 1824, when atage 6, my grandfather's grandfather actuallymet the man for whom he was named, the8lyear -old Thomas Jefferson. My grandfatherwould end the story with the dramatic momentwhen Jefferson bent down and took the boy'shandwhen the boy actually touched thehand that had penned the sacred words.

Then, after slowly reading the Declarationof Independence, my grandfather would finishby holding my hand in his and saying, "You aretouching the hand that touched the hand thattouched Thomas Jefferson."

I think it is fair to say my grandfather was a"whole language" sort of a guy.

I do know, he inspired in me an awe of thepower of the written worda visceral under-standing that carefully chosen words of wisdomwere the true power behind the GreatAmerican Revolution.

Today let those of us in this room look far

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Section 1: Historical PerspectiveWelcome Speech

into the future where our grandchildren aretelling their grandchildren the story of anotherrevolution that took place two centuries afterthe American Revolutiona revolutionfounded on carefully chosen words of wisdomwritten by a woman in New Zealand, a revolu-tion in how children are taught to read.

In my mind's eye, when this story is beingtold by our grandchildren to their grandchil-dren, it will end with these heartfelt words:"You are touching the hand that touched thehand that touched Marie Clay." 444

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Reading Recovery Swift, Effective in Reversing Reading Failure,MacArthur Study Finds

Winter 1992by Gay Su Pinnell

The Role of the University inReading Recovery in North America

Spring 1993by Janet S. Gaffney and Gay Su Pinnell

Rationale for Teaching at leastFour Reading Recovery Children

Spring 1997By Noel Jones

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Reading RecoverySwift, Effective in Reversing Reading Failure, MacArthur Study Finds

Winter 1992

by Gay Su PinnellAssociate Professor of Education and a Reading Recovery Trainer

The Ohio State University

Pinnell co-authored the study summarized inthis article.

Reading Recovery can make a swift and dra-matic difference for children who risk illit-

eracy, reports a major new study completed inJune, 1991, at The Ohio State University byPinnell, Lyons, De Ford, Bryk, and Seltzer,1991. Studies of Reading Recovery represent16 years of research, beginning with Clay's sixprojects between 1976 and 1981 (see Clay,1985, 1987), and also including Australianstudies (Wheeler, 1984); the Ohio State stud-ies beginning in 1984 (see Lyons, et al., 1990;De Ford, Lyons, & Pinnell, 1991; Pinnell,1989); and program evaluation data, compiledfrom every site implementation of ReadingRecovery, now in five countries. All of thisresearch supports the program's effectiveness,but the latest study, sponsored by the John D.and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation, wasdesigned to answer some specific questions thateducators were asking about Reading Recovery.

The investigation was commissioned by theChicago-based John D. and Catherine T.MacArthur Foundation, a private philanthropyworking in education reform. ResearchersCarol Lyons, Diane De Ford, and Gay SuPinnell undertook the investigation to addressthese practical questions:

Wouldn't any one-to-one program work aswell, especially one more consistent with theskills taught in classroom programs?

Is the yearlong training program really nec-essary, or wouldn't a summer workshop do aswell?

Can you do Reading Recovery in groups

and achieve the same results?To address these questions, the study tested

the relative effectiveness of Reading Recovery'sdifferent techniques when used together andseparately.

ProceduresFrom 33 schools in ten Ohio school dis-

tricts, a total of 324 first-graders, all of whomhad tested as low readers, were randomlyassigned to one of four intervention programsor a control group that represented traditionalpractice. The first intervention program wastraditional Reading Recovery with a fullytrained teacher. The second method, called"Reading Success," mimicked most aspects ofReading Recovery but used teachers trained inan abbreviated program. In the third group,which followed a plan called DISP, or "DirectInstructional Skills Plan," children were indi-vidually tutored by experienced teachers usinga skills model. In the fourth, called "Reading-Writing Group," trained Reading Recoveryteachers led group sessions instead of individ-ual lessons. The fifth, the control group, reliedon the skill drills and worksheets typical of fed-erally-funded group remediation classes com-mon in U.S. public schools (see table).

Each of the four interventions was com-pared with its own control group in one of theproject schools. The lowest achieving first-grade students were randomly assigned eitherto a treatment or a control group. In this waythe study controlled for the variation in stu-dents that exists across schools and school dis-tricts.

Remedial instruction lasted 70 days foreach of the first four groups and throughout

16 Best of The Running Record 4 4 4 16

Section 2: Research and RationalesReading Recovery Swift, Effective in Reversing Reading Failure

Reading Recovery Reading Success Direct Introduction Reading/Writing Control GroupSkills Plan Group

*Number of 18

Lessons Analyzed18 18 13 12

Setting Individual Individual Individual Small Group Small Group(4-6) (4-6)

Allotted Time 30 min. 30 min. 30 min. 30-45 min. 45 min.

Average ActualTime 33 min. 21 sec. 27 min. 23 sec. 26 min. 49 sec. 31 min. 43 sec. 26 min. 34 sec.

Average % ofTime ReadingText

60.2% 60.2% 29.9% 25.8% 21.0%

Average % ofTime WritingText

25.3% 28.8% .3% 23.4% 3.1%

Average % ofTime: Other 14.5% 8.9% 69.85 49.8%

Books Readby Children 94 84 4 31

Avg. no. Booksper Lesson 5.22 4.60 .22 2.38

75.9%

16

1.33

MaterialsUsed

little books,blank writingbooksmarkers & pencilsmagnetic letterscounters

little books, little booksblank writing books, children'smarkers & pencilsmagnetic letterscounters

literaturewriting tabletsword cardspicture cardsletter cardsworksheets &workbooks

little booksblank paperblank writingcardsindividualchalkboards

games, magicslates,books-basals,worksheets& workbooks,word cards;letter picturecards, magneticletters, wallcharts withwords, scissors,crayons

*Number of lessons analyzed. Each child in each treatment received approximately 70 lessons.

the entire school year for the control classes.At the end of their special classes, studentstook five tests to gauge their mastery of a widerange of literacy skills. To measure the lastingpowers of the different forms of instruction, thestudents repeated some of the tests at the endof their first-grade year and again at the begin-ning of second grade.

The Results"Reading Recovery was the only group for

which the mean treatment effect was signifi-cant on all four measures at the conclusion ofthe experiment," the study's final report con-cludes, "and was also the only treatment indi-cating lasting effects."

Specifically, the analysis showed thatReading Recovery children performed signifi-

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cantly better than an equivalent control groupand three other special treatments. ReadingRecovery was the only group that was better onall tests, showing long-term effects in reading.At the end of 70 days of instruction when thetreatment groups were disbanded and regularschool services continued, Reading Recoverychildren were reading five levels ahead of chil-dren who received regular remedial readinglessons. Even though the control group contin-ued to receive lessons for the rest of the year,Reading Recovery children were still threereading levels above the remedial group aver-age when all children were tested the followingAutumn. Two of the three special treatments,Reading Success and DISP, were four and fivelevels below the Reading Recovery group aver-age after the 70-day treatment period and only1.5 or less above their respective controlgroups. The third treatment, Reading-Writinggroup, which was taught by trained ReadingRecovery teachers, was three levels below theReading Recovery group. In the autumn, thesespecial treatments were achieving about thesame as the remedial reading group.

Students traditionally read three preprimerbooks and a primer-level book before tacklingtheir "first-grade reader." The top readinggroup may read half of, or finish, the first read-er; but the average reading group would morelikely just be beginning this final book at theend of the first-grade reading program. Thelowest reading group, on average, might still bein one of the preprimers. Reading Recoverychildren were reading the equivalent of theprimer in February and were independentlyand comfortably reading the first-grade readerat the beginning of second grade. All othertreatments and the remedial reading groupwere reading no higher than the thirdpreprimer in February and were still reading,on an average, in the primer-level reader at thebeginning of second grade. In the readinggroup scenario, Reading Recovery childrenwould be considered to be achieving within

average range, while the other children werestill reading in the low group range. An inter-esting follow-up to this research project wasfound in the children who received ReadingRecovery services after the experiment wasover (in February, March, or April). Thesechildren were three reading levels ahead ofchildren who received regular remedial readingwhen they were tested in the autumn. So they,too, were reading within the average as begin-ning second graders.

Continuing ResearchIn addition to gaining quantitative infor-

mation about student achievement, this largeresearch project made it possible to look deeperinto the processes involved in teaching andlearning. Teachers in the study volunteered tobe videotaped at intervals teaching the samestudent. These videotapes have been a richsource of qualitative data for continuing inves-tigations of how teachers interact with chil-dren to support the development of readingand writing strategies. Lessons have been ana-lyzed for content and time allocations, andteachers' own reflections on teaching havebeen probed to explore relationships betweenthe teacher's knowledge base, teacher actions,and the development of students' understand-ings.

Time and content. A total of 79 videotapedlessons were analyzed for time and content.The results, presented in the table, provideinteresting comparisons for the three individ-ual programs and two group programs. ReadingRecovery and Reading Success had the highestproportions of time spent directly on readingand writing. Time spent in the "other" categorywas largely talk about books, working on letterrecognition, and writing for fluency. For DISP,the majority of time was spent not on readingor writing but on "other" activities, mostlyexercises on listening, word recognition, andphonics worksheets, although reading to thechild was included. The two group treatments,

18 Best of The Running Record 4 4 418


Reading-Writing group (with a trainedReading Recovery teacher) and Control, pro-vided another interesting contrast, with theformer spending more time on reading andwriting.

Teacher-student interactions. In-depth explo-rations of teacher-student interactions suggestthat the most successful teachers tend toprompt the use of a balance of cueing systems,with the predominant focus on meaning (seeLyons, 1991; Lyons & White, 1990; De Ford,Tancock, & White, 1990). Instead of focusingmostly on one kind of cue (for example, sound-ing out) their prompting and reinforcing state-ments seem to support the child's use of the fullrange of information needed for reading: mean-ing, language syntax, and visual information(see Pinnell, Fried, Estice, & Powell, 1991).The most successful teachers were more likelyto teach intensively and to make decisions andengage in the behaviors directed toward strate-gy use. Reading Recovery teachers were distin-guished from partially trained teachers by sub-tle differences in the instructional programsthey provided. Differences were not in the con-tent or form of instruction, but in the opportu-nities provided the student to negotiate mean-ing through talk (Lyons, 1990).

The Larger MeaningReading Recovery owes its success to the

combination of four techniques that strengtheneach other. A student and teacher meet pri-vately for a daily half-hour of intense work.Children spend most of their lesson readingreal booksnot snippets from reading texts orworksheetsand writing sentences that theycompose themselves. Teachers custom-tailoreach student's lessons to build on the child'sindividual strengths, no matter how meager,showing them how to broaden those skills anduse them to master others. Finally, ReadingRecovery teachers learn the program's tech-niques not in a quick workshop but through ayearlong course of study. The course includes

extensive practice-teaching, which is analyzedby experienced Reading Recovery teachers.Back in the schools, "teacher leaders" assistworking Reading Recovery teachers to catchand correct weaknesses in their work and findnew ways to be even more effective.

The results of this study make it clear thatthe success of Reading Recovery goes beyondthe individual factor and the instructionalemphasis factor. The time allocations forReading Recovery and Reading Success werequite similar and they used the same frame-work for instruction; but as a group, theReading Recovery teachers had higher studentoutcomes. It is clear that another factor madethe difference: the intensity and effectivenessof the teaching within the Reading Recoveryframework. The use of time, materials, and theone-to-one factor are necessary; however, theteacher's ability to (1) make spontaneous,effective decisions, (2) provide sustaining feed-back, and (3) provide prompts that simplify thedemands of the task are even more important.More research is needed to uncover the natureof the learning/teaching relationship, but theReading Recovery training model and continu-ing contact among teachers may be critical fac-tors in assuring student success. ReadingRecovery emphasizes the role of the teacher asan informed, autonomous decision maker whois responsible for and controls both curriculumand instruction for each student. In order toprovide opportunities for students to develop asindependent readers and writers, the teachermust follow the student's thinking, recognize"teachable moments," and attend to the mostmemorable and powerful examples that willhelp learning to occur. The ability to under-stand and conceptualize learning and instruc-tion at the cognitive and sociolinguistic levelstake reflection, practice, and time. Reflectiveopportunities, over time, with knowledgeablepeers are inherent in the Reading Recoverytraining program and the system of supportthat surrounds teachers who participate.

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This study is a major step in confirming theprevious findingsthat, as an integrated sys-tem, Reading Recovery works. Individualinstruction, instructional emphasis, and train-ing all are factors in the success of the program;but information is needed beyond these surfacefactors. Solving the problems related to readingfailure in the United States may ultimatelydepend on our willingness to look at programsin a way that uncovers the multiple, interact-ing factors that may mean success for high-riskstudents. 444

ReferencesClay, M.M. (1985). The early detection of read-

ing difficulties. Portsmouth, NH:Heinemann.

Clay, M.M., (1987). Implementing educationalReading Recovery: systematic adaptationsto an educational innovation. New ZealandJournal of Educational Studies. 22, 351-358.

De Ford, D.E., Lyons, C.A., & Pinnell, G.S.(Eds.) (1991). Bridges to literacy: Learningfrom Reading Recovery. Portsmouth, NH:Heinemann.

De Ford, D.E., Tancock, S., & White, N.(1990). Teachers' models of the readingprocess and their evaluations of an individualreader; Relationship to success in teachingreading and judged quality of instruction.Columbus, OH: The Ohio StateUniversity.

Lyons, C.A. (1991). A comparative study ofthe teaching effectiveness of teachers par-ticipating in a yearlong or two-week inser-vice program. Fortieth Yearbook of theNational Reading Conference. Chicago, IL:National Reading Conference.

Lyons, C.A., & White, N. (1989). Belief sys-tems and instructional decisions: Comparisonsbetween more and less effective ReadingRecovery teachers. Paper presented at the1989 National Reading Conference,Austin, TX.

Lyons, C.A., Pinnell, G.S., DeFord, D.E.,

Place, A.W., & White, N. (1990). TheReading Recovery Program, Technical Report,Vol, Mil. The Ohio State University,Columbus, OH.

Lyons, C.A. (1990). The relationship of studentoutcomes to quality of teacher trainingprogram. Paper presented at the 1990National Reading Conference, Miami, FL.

Pinnell, G.S., Fried, M.D., Estice, R.M., &Powell, D. (1991). Teaching for problemsolving in reading. Paper presented at the1991 National Reading Conference. PalmSprings, CA.

Pinnell, G.S., Lyons, C.A., DeFord, D.E. Bryk,A.S., & Seltzer, M. (1991). Studying theeffectiveness of early intervention approachesfor first grade children having difficulty in read-ing. Technical Report. Martha L. KingLanguage and Literacy Center, The OhioState University, Columbus, OH.

Wheeler, H.G. (1984). Reading Recovery;Central Victorian field trials. Victoria,Australia: Bendigo College of AdvancedEducation.

20



The Role of the University in Reading Recovery in North AmericaSpring 1993

by Janet S. Gaffney, Assistant Professor of Special Education,University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign

Director of the Illinois Reading Recovery Projectand Gay Su Pinnell, Professor of Education, Reading Recovery Trainer

The Ohio State University

Reading Recovery is a school based teachereducation program that expands teachers'

expertise in helping young readers who arehaving difficulty in taking on literacy. Classesfor teachers take place in local districts; discus-sions focus on the issues and concerns thatarise from their daily teaching of children intheir schools. What, then, is the role of theuniversity in Reading Recovery?

When Reading Recovery was started inOhio, it began as a collaborative venture byThe Ohio State University, the OhioDepartment of Education, and the ColumbusPublic Schools. The next year, the project wasbroadened to include many other school dis-tricts in the state as well as three other univer-sities. Universities were instrumental in initiat-ing Reading Recovery. Marie Clay conceptual-ized the university as having a central role indeveloping, sustaining, and constantly renew-ing Reading Recovery. Clay's own research,from which Reading Recovery was developed,was nurtured at the University of Auckland inNew Zealand. Reflecting on the framework fortraining, Clay and Watson claimed that "with-out an effective training structure, most of theachievements of the program will not occurand it is the hardest to teach children who willlose out again" (Clay & Watson, 1990, p. 275).

It has been ten years since the beginning ofReading Recovery in North America, and uni-versities have continued to play an importantrole. Now, over 50 universities are involved;some (18 of them) act as regional training sitesfor the preparation of teacher leaders. Otherssupport teacher leaders by offering the ReadingRecovery teacher course for graduate credit.

In this article we reexamine the role of theuniversity in the Reading Recovery program.As two university professors involved inReading Recovery, we will reflect on our ownexperiences, describe the preparation programsfor teacher leaders and university trainers, talkabout the multifaceted role played by universi-ties, and discuss the university's responsibilitiesin Reading Recovery's future.

The Goal of a University BasedPreparation Program for ReadingRecovery Personnel

The district based teacher leader is the keyperson in implementation of ReadingRecovery. Clay has described the teacherleader's role as a "redirecting system" andemphasized its importance in ReadingRecovery. Teacher leaders need a wide range ofskills and a solid knowledge base that encom-passes both research and practice. The univer-sity provides an essential base for preparingthese key personnel.

Teacher leaders participate in a yearlongprogram of study that includes a clinical class,a theoretical course, and a practicum eachsemester. The teacher leader program of studyis more than a "course." Their training year isconsidered a full-time job. They work dailywith four children and participate in an arrayof field experiences which include leading inteacher classes and conducting school visits, inaddition to their academic course work andclinical seminars that include the behind-the-glass experiences. In all of these experiences,they learn to puzzle out their own work withchildren but, just as important, think about

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Section 2: Research and RationalesThe Role of the University in Reading Recovery in North America

how they can work with and help teacherswork more effectively with their children. Asuniversity trainers, our job is to design andimplement the program of professional devel-opment for teacher leaders and to create andmaintain the system that supports their work.

The preparation program for teacher lead-ers is not designed simply to pass on a technol-ogy; teacher leaders are decision makers whoact from their own internalized theories. Thegoal of their professional development experi-ence at a university is to help them develop aknowledge base for designing preparation pro-grams for the teachers in their areas. Theyknow how to make decisions about what theydo and when to be flexible in responding tothe individuals in their classes and to localneeds without compromising the quality of theprogram. They need a system that allows themto continue to learn from their practice andrespond to new challenges and issues that arisein local districts. Teacher leaders' decisions arecritical to maintaining the quality of ReadingRecovery. According to Clay, the role ofteacher leaders is to "act as advocates for what-ever cannot be compromised in the interests ofeffective results" (Clay, 1987, p. 47)

At each site, teacher leaders are the localimplementation experts who guide school per-sonnel in important decisions such as planningfacilities; selecting teachers; and arrangingschedules for assessment training, weekly class-es, and continuing contact sessions. Teacherleaders use their understandings of the underly-ing rationales for every aspect of the training tonegotiate these decisions within their localcontext.

The Preparation of Teacher Leaders andUniversity Trainers

From the beginning of their trainingteacher leaders must think at two levels abouttheir teaching of children and also their teach-ing of adults. In our own preparation as univer-sity trainers, we found that we had to keep

three different kinds of preparation in mind:the teaching of children, how teachers are pre-pared, and the course of study for ReadingRecovery teacher leaders.

Teaching children. University professorsbegin teaching children during their trainingyear and continue their practice as long as theyare involved in Reading Recovery. Teachingchildren is pivotal to everything else the uni-versity professor does. Our goal is to becomeexpert in our teaching of children and to learnto use this teaching to inform our work inhelping teachers and teacher leaders. Teachingchildren challenges our theoretical assumptionsand helps to keep us fresh and flexible inexamining new paradigms. Our teaching gener-ates questions that spark inquiry in the teacherleader class. As teachers of children, we recog-nize that our own studentsteachers andteacher leadersmay surpass us. Teaching chil-dren makes a profound difference in the qualityof teaching we offer to teacher leaders; it keepsthe teacher leader course from becomingmechanical practice or an academic exercise.Sometimes, university professors read researchand then advise teachers without groundingthemselves in practice. Teaching children is alaboratory that provides that grounding andmakes the difference between the typical uni-versity professor role and the ReadingRecovery trainer's role and experience.

Clinical course and practicum. The clini-cal course helps prospective teacher leadersand trainers learn to teach children usingReading Recovery procedures. We also con-struct theoretical explanations concerning thereading and writing behaviors of children. Asuniversity teacher educators, we find the clini-cal class has a powerful impact on our under-standing of how adults learn. We begin tothink differently about teacher education cur-ricula as we analyze what is going on in theteacher leader class and teacher classes. Thepracticum extends participants' knowledge ofthe practical aspects of the program. In addi-



tion to working with experienced teacher lead-ers in teacher classes, university trainers travelto several different sites within and outside ofthe state in which they are being trained, andthey attend meetings for administrators, stateagency personnel, and site coordinators as wellas professional development meetings for

teacher leaders.Theoretical seminar. The purpose of the

theoretical seminar is to enable the partici-pants to understand the theoretical base forReading Recovery and to extend their under-standings by examining current research andapplications and putting them into practice.Issues across several strands of content areexplored; for example, cognition and learning,language systems and language learning, socialand cultural influences on literacy learning, thedevelopment of literacy connections betweenreading and writing, comprehension, assess-ment, and reading difficulties. All participantstake oral and written exams in order toincrease their facility and flexibility in express-ing concepts. University trainers participatefully in the theoretical class, assist in planningand evaluation, and act as resources for thegroup. Trainers use their research skillsthroughout the course, and they take an addi-tional seminar with the professor for their pro-ject.

Responsibilities of the University Site[Editor's Note: In 1998, university training pro-grams for teachers leaders are designated as univer-sity training centers. The term "site" now refers toteacher training sites at the school district or con-sortium level.]

Communication and coordination. Beyondproviding training programs, universities sup-port Reading Recovery in several importantways. Communication and coordination takeplace within a region or state as well as amongsites throughout North America and the world.University personnel take on the responsibilityfor these communication efforts. Typically, the

university training site where teacher leaderswere originally prepared serves as a home basefor their continuing contact; however, the sitealso includes teacher leaders who move intothe area. The university establishes new sites, aprocess that involves considerable communica-tion prior to the training of a teacher leader aswell as during the training year. Universitiesmake contracts with new sites that outline therequirements for a quality program in ReadingRecovery. Reading Recovery is a universitycredit course taught by a teacher leader who isaffiliated with the university site. The academ-ic course helps to ensure the quality of thetraining and serves to reinforce theuniversity/school district relationships.

University personnel advocate for the pro-gram within the university system. In fact,Reading Recovery represents an anomaly inthe typical university system. Trainers commu-nicate with other faculty members and withthe university administration. For example, intypical university classes, students complete thecourse and then go out to apply their work topractice. University professors do not usuallyknow how that transition occurs or the out-comes for the children taught by teacher edu-cation students. University trainers in ReadingRecovery observe and support these transitionsthrough site visits; annual site reports; andsuch ongoing Reading Recovery professionaldevelopment activities as state and regionalmeetings, an annual conference and theteacher leader institute. In Reading Recovery,we remain connected to our students and weassess the results of what we do in light of whatthey do. So, each university trainer is in con-tact with an ever increasing number of teacherleaders, all of whom are in contact with anever increasing number of teachers and chil-dren.

New structures for teacher education arebeing developed to accommodate and nurtureReading Recovery within higher education. Forexample, Reading Recovery offers challenges to

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improve teacher education. It also offers a richarena for research on early literacy learningand on teacher education. Locating ReadingRecovery within the university may make itpossible to influence the academic communityand be part of the ongoing creation of newknowledge. It gives it visibility within thiscommunity and has an impact on the largerfield. For example, at the University of Illinois,the Year Long Project, an alternative field-based program for elementary pre-serviceteachers, was influenced by observation ofReading Recovery. At Ohio State, teacherstudy groups have extended their learning bymeeting with faculty members over the periodof one or two years to enhance their observa-tional skills and develop new ways of workingwith young children in classroom settings.Reading Recovery appears frequently in theprofessional literature and is sometimes used asa comparative standard for the new programsdeveloped for at-risk children.

Research. One of the roles of the universi-ty trainer is to collect and analyze data fromsites within the region and to enable individualsites to contribute to, and benefit from, thenational data base, located at The Ohio StateUniversity. Trainers are also expected to pursuetheir own strands of research. For many of us,Reading Recovery has become the focus of ourefforts. All of these efforts contribute to ourknowledge about learning and ultimately helpus in refining our work in Reading Recovery.For example, Billie Askew and Dianne Frasier(Texas Woman's University) have exploredcomprehension processes among ReadingRecovery children. Jan Gaffney has investigat-ed family systems and conducted studies ofteacher education. Carol Lyons (The OhioState University) has investigated the progressof children designated as learning disabled andhas also looked at teacher cognition. DianeDe Ford (The Ohio State University) hasexamined the reciprocity between reading andwriting early on in the child's program.

Ongoing professional development ofteacher leaders. The university trainer isresponsible for maintaining a connection withthe teacher training sites in his/her area.Teacher leaders are linked with one anotherand take in new members yearly. This requiresan organizing body to convene the group. Anumbrella entity, such as a university, can per-form this convening role. School districts typi-cally concentrate on their local affairs and usu-ally do not have the mechanisms in place tosupport the efforts needed to work across sites.Regional connections help to strengthen theprogram as a whole because teacher leaderslearn to know and support each other and tocreate their own learning culture as they meettogether.

Reading Recovery personnel are preparedto respond to an ever-evolving base of theoreti-cal information. They examine and helpresearch to see how it contributes to our theo-retical understandings or challenges our cur-rent assumptions and practices. The universitycan help by disseminating new information,both from the research conducted withinReading Recovery and from the generalresearch community. Typically, university train-ers and teacher leaders share new and impor-tant articles with each other. Teacher leadersand teachers often conduct their own researchusing the university as a resource. Sometimes,teacher leaders meet with the trainer. Theschool/university connection makes it possiblefor the teacher leaders to access the resourcesthey need. This school/university connectionhelps to keep Reading Recovery fresh and self-renewing. The university trainer's role is tosupport the teacher leader in every aspect ofthe job; while teacher leaders are independentprofessionals, they still need a support system.The university professor's job is either to pro-vide this support personally or to create anarena that stimulates and fosters it.

University trainers make site visits duringthe field year (i.e., the second year of training).



The activities that comprise a visit range fromobservation of the teacher leader teaching chil-dren to conducting school visits, to working inteacher classes, to meetings with administra-tors. Even after the field year, such visits typi-cally take place as teacher leaders work to meetnew challenges.

Part of the networking role of the universi-ty trainer is to foster an exchange of informa-tion among site coordinators. University train-ers listen to site coordinators' concerns fromthe perspective of activity in the region and inthe United States This information is criticalin making decisions for the further develop-ment and expansion of Reading Recoverynationally.

Networking Across University SitesReading Recovery does not exist as an iso-

lated program in a district, state or region.Each Reading Recovery site is connected tothe whole. University trainers help to maintainconnections across sites, both in the UnitedStates and internationally.

Meetings and communication. Trainersmeet with each other at least three times peryear to discuss issues related to the preparationof teacher leaders and to program develop-ment. They also structure sessions for theirown professional development. They maintainfrequent contact with each other by telephoneand other means in order to assure quality andconsistency across teacher leader training sites.University trainers make the commitment tomake at least one colleague visit every year toincrease their skills and their knowledge ofhow other programs operate.

Yearly Teacher Leader Institute. Based oninput from teacher leaders, a committee oftrainers plans, organizes and provides a pro-gram for the annual teacher leader institute. Inthis institute, teacher leaders and trainers havea chance to meet with each other in ways thatextend their understandings of theoretical andpractical matters.

ReflectionsIt is an interesting exercise to think about

one's role; and with that, of course, comes anawareness of responsibilities. We believe thatour work as directors of university sites is animportant one; what makes it important is theway it supports the work of teacher leaders atfield sites. We do what they would find tootime-consuming and distracting to do as theyare concerned with the critical decisions relat-ed to making Reading Recovery successful inlocal areas. After all, that is where ReadingRecovery must succeed again and again andagain if we are to have an impact on the litera-cy education of the children that concern us.We perform convening and communicationfunctions that local teacher leaders would finddifficult or distracting.

We have gained from this examination ofour own work. In future issues of the RunningRecord, we would like to hear from teachers,site coordinators, and teacher leaders abouttheir perceptions of their roles. And, we inviteletters regarding how we, as university trainers,can do our job better. \i\hi

ReferencesClay, M.M. & Watson, B. (1990). Training for

Reading Recovery teachers. The ReadingTeacher, 44, 272-275.

Clay, M.M. (1987). Implementing ReadingRecovery: Systemic adaptations to an edu-cational innovation. New Zealand Journal ofEducational Studies, 22(1), 47.

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Rationale for Teaching at Least Four Reading Recovery ChildrenSpring 1997

by Noel JonesTrainer of Teacher Leaders

University of North Carolina at Wilmington

The Guidelines and Standards of theReading Recovery Council of North

America (RRCNA) require that a ReadingRecovery teacher "teach at least four childrenindividually for 30 minutes daily in a schoolsetting" (RRCNA, 1993, pg. 3-4). The inten-tion is that four children per day will be taughtby each teacher in training and that a mini-mum of four children per day will be taught byeach experienced teacher. Most teachers workwith four children during a period of two totwo and a half hours and spend the rest of theirday in other education-related assignments.When a greater block of time is dedicated toReading Recovery (e.g., three hours), theexpectation is that teachers teach more thanthe minimum of four children.

This guideline requiring teachers to teach aminimum of four children daily may be per-ceived as constrictive or arbitrary. Therefore itis important to communicate the rationale forthis guideline to administrators and other edu-cators so that they can better serve the intend-ed goals of Reading Recovery, and so theymight understand when exemptions to theguideline are appropriate.

The requirement to teach a minimum offour children was established because of itsimportance to (a) Reading Recovery teachertraining and professional development, and (b)the purposes of Reading Recovery as a systemintervention to reduce reading failure and tothe maintenance of program integrity. Thesefactors will be discussed in that order.

Training and Professional DevelopmentMarie Clay has stated in the Canadian

Reading Recovery Newsletter the importanceto teacher professional development of main-taining a case load of at least four students dur-kag the training year. I quote from her state-ment:

For teachers in training it is unsatisfactory and unac-ceptable to teach fewer than four children daily.Teachers need to reach a variety of children with avariety of different problems in their first year whilein training. When they take four at a time, they willprobably take eight children into the programmeduring the year. This is a minimum to ensure thatthey are facing problems of very challenging and dif-ferent kinds. They need this varied experience atthe time their understandings of the programme arein formation.

Teachers also need to experience the way in whichchildren can take different routes to the commonoutcome and how different in type and length theirprogrammes must be. With only two children it ishighly likely that the teacher will assume she candeliver a standard programme to Reading Recoverychildren, and not develop the repertoire of alterna-tive teaching approaches that she needs, for trainingis a critical time when the teacher is putting asideher old teaching pattern and taking aboard newones. Because this is such an important issue, it hasbeen discussed in several reports to districts in con-nection with implementing a quality programme.

The Guidelines and Principles for Reading Recoveryin Canada [and in North America] require that ateacher in training must teach 'four children individ-ually for 30 minutes daily in a school setting.' Thisexpresses in a shorthand form the accepted practiceacross the world but assumes that these children willbe discontinued and that four others will be takeninto the programme in that same training year(Canadian Reading Recovery Newsletter, 1995).


Section 2: Research and RationalesRationale for Teaching at Least Four Reading Recovery Children

System Implementation and ProgramIntegrity

The rationale for maintaining a minimumcase load of at least four children beyond thetraining year involves issues of implementationand program integrity.

According to Clay (1994), "The purpose ofReading Recovery is to significantly reducereading failure within a school system." Putanother way, the purpose of the program is toreduce dramatically the lowest-achieving endof the distribution of abilities so that very fewchildren advance to the next grade readingbelow-grade level expectations. The theoryand teaching procedures developed by Clayand other Reading Recovery personnel (Clay1991, 1993a, 1993b) make it possible for thelowest achieving first grade children to acceler-ate their learning. However, in order to realizethe possibility of significantly reducing thenumber of problem readers in a school system,the district should provide sufficient ReadingRecovery service so that the program is avail-able to most of the lowest-achieving childrenin the cohort which passes through the firstgrade during any single year.

What constitutes 'sufficient service' within aschool will vary according to the school popu-lation and the quality of educational experi-ences available both before and after schoolentrance. Most frequently it is suggested thatReading Recovery intervention is needed bythe lowest 15 to 20 percent of the first gradepopulation. A rule-of-thumb for calculating 15to 20 percent coverage is to provide one personteaching Reading Recovery for half a day forevery two first grade classrooms (or one full-time Reading Recovery position for every fourclassrooms or 90 to 100 first grade children).In many schools, the percentage of children atrisk of failure is higher than 20%. In suchschools, Reading Recovery coverage may needto be higher, but there will also be a need tostrengthen educational support for children'slearning at all levels, including classroom,

kindergarten and pre-school programs, and thefamily.

Administrators are urged to work towardsthe goal of full implementation within theirsystems; for example, the expectation that theywill continue to offer training and expand theprogram is mentioned in the assurances thatare part of the site application. However, theactual percentage of all school children helpedby an early intervention such as ReadingRecovery will depend upon the resources avail-able.

Less than full implementation seriously jeop-ardizes the intent of the program. Without fullimplementation, a significant number of chil-dren who need intervention will pass to thenext grade. Teachers in the upper grade levelswill find they still have a significant number ofchildren who cannot read well enough to profitfrom classroom instruction. Thus there will bea continued demand to commit additionalresources for remediation services.

Sometimes administrators find it hard toresist pressure from teachers at higher gradeswho find it difficult to cope with reduced sup-port for their low-achieving students. Even ifReading Recovery were fully implemented in asystem within a single year, problem readerswill still be present in the upper grades duringthe early years of implementation. There is atemptation to reduce the case load of ReadingRecovery teachers to two or three childrendaily in individual lessons so that their timemight be spent remediating upper-level prob-lem readers. However, this approach is short-sighted. If it results in insufficient coverage forat-risk children in the first grade cohort, thecycle of a significant number of non-readerswill continue to progress through the system.Granting exemptions to the guideline for aminimum case load of four children will tendto defeat the aim of the program, which is toreduce reading failure within the system.

However, it is important to recognize thatReading Recovery children should be continu-



ally monitored, and sometimes it may be neces-sary to provide some support to children whosuccessfully discontinued from ReadingRecovery in Grade One as well as some whodo not discontinue. Clay (1993b) reminds usthat, "Although Reading Recovery childrenperform well in their classes some of themremain at-risk children, easily thrown by lifecircumstances or poor learning experiences. Arefresher course of individual instruction for ashort period should be most helpful for a`recovered' child who has begun to slip behindhis classmates" (p. 59). Thus it will be impor-tant to continue to devote some time to thesupport of children falling into difficulty inupper grades because of "life circumstances."Achieving a proper balance between the earlyintervention program provided by ReadingRecovery, support and strengthening of kinder-garten and primary grade classrooms, and limit-ed-time support for readers as they progressthrough the grades requires local problem-solv-ing with thoughtful input from the ReadingRecovery teacher(s), teacher leader(s), anduniversity trainer in conjunction with theschool staff and administrator.

In cases where a school has reached fullimplementation, it becomes possible to use aReading Recovery teacher in more flexibleways provided the needs of the first gradecohort are fully met. Therefore, exemptionshave been granted for requests that clearlyindicate the school is fully implemented andthe program is addressing the avowed aim ofReading Recovery to reduce reading failurewithin the system.

The position of the Guidelines andStandards Committee [of the ReadingRecovery Council of North America] is togrant exemptions in cases where the schoolsystem has made clear they are serving theintent of the program by providing ReadingRecovery intervention to all at-risk first graderswho need this service, and where a reducedcase load for one or more teachers does not

jeopardize this intent, and where the teacher(s)in question have the confidence of the teacherleader that their teaching reflects a clearunderstanding of the need to accommodate toeach child's pattern of strengths and needs. Incases that are not clear, the applicant may beasked to submit further clarifying information.

Some requests may come from districts thatseek to use Reading Recovery to serve differentor additional purposes; for example, some dis-tricts wish to have teachers trained in ReadingRecovery just so their new understanding willmake them better classroom teachers. Thesealternative purposes may be well intended;however, if they jeopardize the stated aim ofsignificantly reducing reading failure withinthe system, these districts will most likely notachieve results consistent with ReadingRecovery's claims and continuing record ofsuccess. Reading Recovery results are beingcarefully scrutinized by educators andresearchers around the world who wish toknow whether districts can realize the poten-tial of this intervention and at what cost.Using the name Reading Recovery to servealternative purposes tends to obscure the aimsand diminish the quality and effectiveness ofthe program. III

28

28 Best of The Running Record 4 .Ni Ai


ReferencesCanadian Reading Recovery Newsletter,

Volume 1, Number 2, 1995Clay, M.M. (1993a). An observation survey of

early literacy achievement. Portsmouth, NH:Heinemann.

Clay, M.M. (1993b). Reading Recovery: Aguidebook for teachers in training.Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Clay, M.M. (1991). Becoming literate: The con-struction of inner control. Portsmouth, NH:Heinemann.

Clay, M.M. (1994). Report on implementationin North Carolina. Unpublished document.

Guidelines and Standards for the NorthAmerican Reading Recovery Council,Second Edition (1993). Columbus, OH:The Ohio State University.

29Best of The Running Record 4 4 4 29

READINGRECOVERY°COUNCILOF NORTH AMERICA

rBB eisRunning q-Ni-Niq

TITe Record Revised Edition

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Reading Recovery Teachers as Lifelong Learners:Teachers in Transition

Autumn 1991by Diane DeFord

Interpreting Teacher/Student Interactions inReading Recovery from a Vygotskian Perspective

Winter 1993by Carol A. Lyons

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31

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Reading Recovery Teachers as Lifelong Learners:Teachers in Transition

Autumn 1991

by Diane De FordAssociate Professor of Reading, Language Arts and Literature and

Reading Recovery TrainerThe Ohio State University

Some time ago, I heard Marie Clay present apaper for the Eminent Scholar Program at

The Ohio State University. In her discussion ofteachers and teaching Clay said she felt that ateacher must hold an incomplete theory. Thisidea puzzled me as I felt a teacher needed tohold a well-defined theory. This thoughtprompted me to explore the role of the teacheras a professional learner and to look at ReadingRecovery training as a teacher-educationmodel.

Teaching is complex in that the what, how,and who we are teaching are ever shifting.Because teaching is complex and requires anever-shifting stance relative to what we observeand how we teach, we must be reflective in ourteaching and become life-long learners."Holding an incomplete theory" might beanother way of stating this concept.

When I first read Clay's book Reading: ThePatterning of Complex Behavior (1979), I wassomewhat put off by the emphasis on cognitivepsychology and terms like "confusion." My the-oretical background differed from Clay's; conse-quently, in 1981, I put her book away on myshelf. In 1985, I was asked to observe aReading Recovery lesson. I was fascinated as Iobserved the lesson, but I was still brought upshort by a few things I didn't like. My curiosityovercame my disagreement with aspects of theprogram, and I became actively involved inlearning about Reading Recovery. From thebeginning, I found it easy to use the proceduresI agreed with, and I tried to find ways aroundusing those I disagreed with. I began to put mydisagreements on hold to try to see the sense

and effects of particular practices with particu-lar children.

Six years of teaching in Reading Recoveryhave lead me to reconsider my beliefs in lightof what I see children and teachers (myselfincluded) doing. I have filled out my belief sys-tem so that my knowledge base, although it isstill incomplete, is stronger for many aspects ofearly literacy learning. I had to take off my"theoretical high heels," so to speak, andreplace them with walking shoes that are morecomfortable for a long journey.

I use this personal example as a way toillustrate changes teachers may need to take onas they begin their rigorous and sometimesfrustrating journey through their first year ofReading Recovery training. This excerpt froma study group paper from the 1991 TeacherLeader Institute (Smith-Burke, Jones, Baird,DeCou-Johnson, et al., 1991) also helps illus-trate the concept of teachers in transition asthey enter Reading Recovery training:

Many teachers enter the program with a "transmis-sion" model of learning. In other words, these teach-ers assume that they will learn if they are told whatto do. Knowledge is treated as absolute and justifiedon the basis of the authority of its source; it is notreasoned through based on evidence in a particularsituation.

In contrast, the goal of Reading Recovery training ...is the development of teachers who are independentlearners and have a constructive or a transactivemodel of learning. They reflect on their practice andproblem solve. They each see themselves as con-structors of their own knowledge and learningthrough self-initiated inquiry, hypothesis formation,planned and systematic practice, observation, dia-

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31

Section 3: Reading Recovery TrainingReading Recovery Training As Lifelong Learners: Teachers in Transition

logue and interaction with others, and articulationand re-formulation of ideas. Teachers who are inde-pendent learners view knowledge as incomplete andtentative, draw on conceptual frameworks from abroad range of disciplines, question, and strive forconsistency in the interpretation and application ofideas.

Accomplishing the Goal of ReadingRecovery Training

The goal of Reading Recovery training isnot easily accomplished. Is there even oneteacher among all of us who didn't want to cryout during the early class session, "Just tell mewhat to do! Don't ask me what I think!"?Shelli Morgenstern has expressed her frustra-tion about learning and making transitions: "Ihave learned that it is much easier to changeone's attitudes as a teacher than it is to elimi-nate habituated behaviors" (Morgenstern,1991).

Current research on teacher change sug-gests that collaboration is an important aspectof the change process. In particular, it is the"talking to learn" that helps teacher learningto occur (Smith-Burke, et al.). Talking openlyabout your teaching to your colleagues helpsyou to understand more about what you do andthink. Traditionally, one side of teaching hasremained closed to teachers as professionals,and that is peer feedback. Too often we teachbehind closed doors, in the absence of talk orreflection.

As we know, this is not the case, either inthe Reading Recovery training year or in sub-sequent years of colleague visits and continuingcontact sessions. Schon talks about "reflection-in-action," or thinking about what you aredoing while you are doing it. He states, "Mostoften this occurs in situations of uncertainty,uniqueness and conflict" (Schon, 1987). Allwho have taught behind the glass for the firsttime would agree that the situation is uniqueand causes strong feelings of uncertainty. Somemight even say that the experience leads to aninner conflict whether to run out of the door

or stay and tough it out. It does not take manysessions for the teachers in Reading Recoverytraining to meld together as a group that iscomfortable with this formerly unique situa-tion. Teachers in training are able to provideeach other with a high level of reflection-in-action.

Training ActivitiesIn Reading Recovery, a teacher and a child

work together on one side of a one-way mirrorwhile teacher colleagues, guided by an experi-enced teacher leader, observe and discuss thelesson on the other side. The discussion centerson the responses of the child, on the interac-tion between teacher and child, and on thetheoretical bases of Reading Recovery as theyrelate to the lesson in action.

Immediately after two such lessons, theteachers who taught them meet with the col-league group, again with the guidance of theteacher leader, to discuss both lessons. Thepurpose of these discussions both during andafter the lessons is sometimes misunderstood.The primary function of the discussions is notto evaluate the teacher or to critique the les-son. The purpose is for the group to learn bytalking about their expectations and beliefs inrelation to their observations and analysis ofthe common lessons they have watchedtogether. This discussion of the act of teachingis challenging and theoretical while also practi-cal and supportive. Coaching and feedback tothe two teachers occurs more as a byproduct ofthe group-level discussion. Reflecting and talk-ing about one's practices and ideas is importantto learning and teaching. In his research onlearning Carol Rogers comments on his ownlearning: "I find that another way of learningfor me is to state my own uncertainties, to tryto clarify my puzzlement, and thus get close tothe meaning that my experience actually seemsto have" (Rogers, 1969, p. 277).

As with Rogers, it is basic to ReadingRecovery that theory and knowledge are

32 Best of The Running Record -NI -4 Al32


grounded in experience. Clay insists thatReading Recovery training at all levelsincludes ongoing work with children. Thisprinciple implies that teachers, from elemen-tary school through the university level, mustlearn to be attentive, accurate observers ofchildren. And they must also learn to compareand/or challenge existing perceptions, ideas, orbeliefs on the basis of what they or others areobserving as they teach children (Smith-Burke,et al.). I offer again this important summary ofthe Reading Recovery training model from adocument written by the teacher-leader studygroup:

Meanings of events and of utterances can be con-structed, enhanced and/or discovered through articu-lation, sharing and negotiating with others. Asteachers share their perceptions and impressions ofwhat they see with others, their ability to observeimproves. As they share inferences about children'sand/or teacher's intentions, responses and strategiesin lessons behind the glass and interpretations of pas-sages they have read in the text, they discover or cre-ate meaning that might have escaped them individu-ally.

In order for this to occur some teachers need tochange prior attitudes and habits that inhibit collab-orative learning. Both as contributors and as respon-ders they need to leave behind old notions that anycomment or observation is right or wrong. Theyneed to understand that ideas can by offered notonly as contradictions but also as qualifications,expansions or clarifications of meaning. EachReading Recovery teacher must be an active partici-pant and an active learner in the process (Smith-Burke et aL).

Learning from the ChildrenReflecting about the children we are teach-

ing is another way to extend our understandingof teaching as well as learning. Duckworthdescribes learning as messy (1987) and suggeststhat a planned program of observing and work-ing one-on-one with children is critical to ateacher's understanding of learning. ReadingRecovery fulfills this critical requirement. Inthe training year teachers immediately begin toput their new learning into action by teaching

four different students in one-on-one lessons.Early in their training many teachers have

difficulty letting go of their previous conceptsand proceeding to a theory of learning andteaching that will enable them to "build on thechild's strengths, observe, and follow thechild." However, the practical aspects of work-ing one-to-one with four different childrensoon put new understandings into action. AsDuckworth (1987, p. 69) again recommends,"We must come to accept surprise, puzzlement,excitement, patience, caution, honest attemptsand wrong outcomes as legitimate and impor-tant elements of learning." Following the childinstead of a preset program also establishes thevirtue, on our part, of not knowing. This con-cept forces us to suspend our beliefs and estab-lishes the expectation to learn from carefulobservation of our children.

The group summary report compares howReading Recovery children and teachers learn.Smith-Burke et al. write:

Just as the young children who are learning to readmake errors, receive feedback from the text or theirteachers, and revise their reading strategies, so teach-ers learn through a process of approximation inReading Recovery. They receive feedback from thechildren they teach and also from the discussions infront of the glass, after the lessons, and during fieldvisits from colleagues and the teacher leader.Teachers need to be allowed to approximate andmake errors, then reflect on their teaching, and mod-ify what they find unsuccessful (Smith-Burke, et al.,1991).

During the course of the training the focusand the role of the teacher leader changes asthe teachers grow in their experience andunderstandings. In the beginning the teacherleader may often need to present, clarify anddemonstrate procedures using examples fromtheir background of experience and theoreticalunderstandings. As the teachers begin to takeon the theory and understandings, the teacherleader works with the teachers in a collabora-tive manner, using questions to stimulate alter-native ideas, independent problem solving, and

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discoveries.

The Revolution of ChangeFinally, we should understand that the

observing, analyzing, reflecting and "talking-to-learn" processes are not easy to incorporateinto our beliefs. In his discussion of learning,Schon suggests that as practical innovationbegins to bring about shifts in basic belief sys-tems, reflection and articulation bring to thesurface beliefs and evidence, so that morereflection creates a kind of revolution ofchange (Schon, 1991).

In three studies currently underway(Pinnell & Mc Carrier, 1989; Lyons, 1991;Button in progress), teachers and researchersworking together have documented that thisprocess takes a minimum of two years, and pos-sibly more. When the required shifts in learn-ing are based upon a different theoretical posi-tion, a complex array of support systems mustexist, including time, reflective teaching, open-ended feedback and coaching.

The support systems needed for change arenot often viable in today's notion of schooling.Three-day inservices, motivational speakers,the purchase of hardware and softwareallfeed into society's expectation for quick fixes.

Reading Recovery is one exception. Theprogram provides both formal and informalsupport for change and ongoing learning. Afterteachers finish their training year, continuingcontact sessions are scheduled periodically dur-ing the school year. The teachers come togeth-er to discuss behind-the-glass lessons and par-ticipate in in-depth problem solving. Trainedteachers continue to increase their levels ofexpertise but still encounter a wide variety ofstudents who are difficult to teach. The role ofthe teacher leader now includes more consulta-tion as the teachers work together on challeng-ing problems.

Trained teachers also collaborate with eachother through colleague visits as teachers takeresponsibility for their own learning and on-

going theory building. Many teachers haveestablished self and group study collaborations.Teachers often audiotape or videotape a lessonfor thorough self-analysis. Before- or after-school study groups have been organized byteachers. We reported in a previous editionabout the "Get Your Mouth Ready" group,which meets once a week for breakfast, supportand Reading Recovery problem solving.

The long-term support and the "talking tolearn" process are critical factors in successfultransitions, but the bottom line is learningwithin the individual. As Rogers states, "I havecome to feel that the only learning which sig-nificantly influences behavior is self-directed,self-appropriated learning" (Rogers, 1969, p.277). It is a policy of Reading Recovery thatthe teachers who receive the training are vol-unteers. During the training the teachers areguided and encouraged to try on behaviors of anew theory and to observe the results withchildren (Dobbins, 1991). Changes in beliefsare not easy to achieve. Operating with a theo-ry that is incomplete puts continued demandson the teacher to be an expert observer of chil-dren and a willing participant in critical analy-sis of self and others. A final quote written by ateacher in the spring of her training year cap-tures the feelings of those who are successful inmaking the transition (Zimmaro, 1991): "I stillfeel on unsteady ground much of the time,though not for such long stretches or asunsteady as I felt the first few months. I hopethe learning will never end."

I hope, too, the learning will never end.There is excitement in never quite knowingwhat is around the corner to be discovered onanother day. -N144

ReferencesButton, Kathryn (1991). A longitudinal case

study examination of the theoretical and practi-cal changes made by urban kindergarten teach-ers during the process of implementing a litera-ture-based curriculum. Unpublished doctoral



dissertation, The Ohio State University.Clay, Marie (1979) The patterning of complex

reading behavior. Auckland: HeinemannEducational Books.

Clay, Marie (1991). Becoming literate: Thedevelopment of inner control. Portsmouth,N.H.: Heinemann Educational Books.

Dobbins, Jeanine (June 1991). Reflections onlearning: Teacher leader institute.(Unpublished.)

Duckworth, Eleanor (1987). "The having ofwonderful ideas " and other essays on teachingand learning. New York: Teachers CollegePress.

Lyons, Carol (April 1991). An exploration ofteacher awareness of the conceptual base forinstructional decision making: A case study ofan effective Reading Recovery teacher.Symposium, American EducationalResearch Association Annual Meeting,Chicago, IL.

Morgenstern, Shelli (1991). Reflections onchanges. (Unpublished paper).

Pinnell, G.S. & McCarrier, A. (1989).Teacher's applications of theoretical concepts tonew instructional settings. Paper presented atthe National Reading Conference, Austin,Texas.

Rogers, C.R. (1969). "Personal thoughts onteaching and learning." In C.R. Rogers,Freedom to learn: A view of what educationmight be. Columbus, Ohio: Merrill.

Schon, Donald A. (1987). Educating the reflec-tive practitioner. San Francisco: Jossey-BassPublishers.

Schon, Donald A. (1991). The reflective turn:Case studies in and on educational practice.New York: Teachers College Press.

Smith-Burke, M. Trika; Jones, Noel; Baird,Barbara; DeCou-Johnson, Nancy; et al.(June 1991). In front of the glass: Groupreport from the teacher leader institute.

Zimmaro, Launa (April 1991). The ReadingProcess: changes in perspective.(Unpublished.)

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Interpreting Teacher/Student Interactions in Reading Recoveryfrom a Vygotskian Perspective

Winter 1993

by Carol A. LyonsReading Recovery TrainerThe Ohio State University

Lev Vygotsky, a Russian educator and psy-chologist who lived from 1896 to 1934,

developed a theory of learning that is exertinga profound influence on psychology and educa-tion today. One reason for this renewed inter-est in Vygotsky's ideas may be that he has pro-vided an analytical way of thinking aboutlearning, a complex phenomenon that is oftenhard to understand and describe. A second rea-son may be that his theories have helped edu-cators think about the importance of theteacher's role in the process.

In a recent article, Marie Clay andCourtney Cazden (1990) described ReadingRecovery lessons from a Vygotskian perspec-tive.

The metaphorical term "scaffold," thoughnever used by Vygotsky, has come to be usedfor interactional support, often in the form ofadult-child dialogue, that is structured by theadult to maximize the growth of the child'sintra-psychological functioning. In their sharedactivity, the teacher is interacting with unseenprocesses the in-the-head strategies used bythe child to produce the overt responses ofwriting and oral reading. For one child, theReading Recovery Program as a whole is such ascaffold. On a micro level, we have seen manyexamples of the child functioning indepen-dently, in both reading and writing, where ear-lier collaboration between teacher and childwas necessary (p. 219).

Some of you may be asking yourself, "Whatdo they mean by intra-psychological function-ing?" "How can I structure a conversation dur-ing the lesson to maximize the growth of my

student's intra-psychological functioning?" Inorder to answer these important questions, it isnecessary to explore two Vygotskian theoreti-cal principles of learning and teaching: thetheory of cognitive development and the zoneof proximal development.

The Theory of Cognitive DevelopmentVygotsky (1978) proposed that cognitive

development is a transformation of basic bio-logically determined generic processes intomore complex mental functions such as selec-tive attention and problem solving thefunctions that define the human species. Thusevery child is endowed by nature with thecapacity to perceive, attend and remember.These basic processes, however, are substantial-ly transformed to more complex cognitiveprocesses as the child begins to control andregulate his or her own behaviors. This capaci-ty to regulate behavior is a social process medi-ated by language.

Vygotsky's view of how children developcomplex thinking and reasoning ability is sup-ported in language research which suggests thatchildren understand more than they can pro-duce and through interaction with a parent,build systems of understanding and strategiesfor generating further learning (Cazden, 1988;Lindfors, 1987). The Reading Recovery lessonis a shared activity throughout which theteacher and child converse. Through thisencounter, inherent in the lesson, the childlearns strategies for independent problem solv-ing to extend his or her knowledge (in press,Lyons, Pinnell & DeFord).


36

Section 3: Historical PerspectiveInterpreting Teacher/Student Interactions

The conditions for learning to talk are not,of course, the same as learning to read andwrite, but the principles that they exemplifyare similar. In each instance, a shared activityand conversation with a more knowledgeableother provide the supportive context throughwhich children develop new understandings.

Bruner described Vygotsky's theory of cog-nitive development as a theory of instructionbecause of the "unique form of cooperationbetween the child and adult that is the centralelement of the educational process" (Bruner,1987, p. 169). This theory of instruction maybe useful to describe children's progressthroughout Reading Recovery. Teacher andstudent collaboration, supported by languagearound a specific learning activity, allows thechild to "construct some inner generating sys-tem, which will initiate and manage learningof this kind independently on future occasions"(Clay, 1991, p.42).

Zone of Proximal DevelopmentA key concept in Vygotsky's theory of

instruction is the zone of proximal develop-ment. The zone of proximal development(ZPD) is defined as "the distance between theactual developmental level as determined byindependent problem solving and the level ofpotential development as determined throughproblem solving under adult guidance or incollaboration with more capable peers"(Vygotsky, 1978, p. 86). In other words, wecould think of the ZPD as the distancebetween the child's individual capacitywhat he or she can do without help (zone ofactual development) and the capacity toperform with support of a teacher. Vygotskyproposed that an individual's ability to learnhow to regulate his or her own behavior is forthe most part a language process that developsfrom social interaction within the ZPD. Heargued that the essential feature of learning isthat it creates the ZPD and thereby awakens avariety of internal cognitive processes when

the individual is interacting with people in hisor her environment or in cooperation withpeers. These higher mental functions firstappear on the social level, between people(intercognitive) and later on the individuallevel, inside the learner (intracognitive). Oncethe processes are internalized, they becomepart of the learner's independent developmen-tal achievement.

Thus Vygotsky viewed thinking and thedevelopment of problem-solving skills as acharacteristic not of the child only but of thechild in social activities and conversationswith others. He also emphasized the relation-ship between learning and the social organiza-tion of instruction and the important role theteacher plays in this organization. An adapta-tion of Tharp and Gallimore's (1988) model ofprogression through the zone of proximaldevelopment and beyond will be used todescribe teacher/student interactions through-out the Reading Recovery Program.

The model depicts the developmental pro-gression of a student's ability to regulate his orher own performance as a continuum of phaseswithin and beyond the zone of proximal devel-opment: (1) assistance provided by more capa-ble others; (2) a transition from other-assis-tance to self-assistance; (3) assistance providedby the self; (4) internalization, automatization,fossilization; and (5) deautomatization andrecursiveness through prior phases. These phas-es of development from other-assistance toself-assistance recur over and over again inthe lifetime of an individual as new cognitivecapacities are developed. Furthermore, at anypoint in time, the performance of an individualwill reflect a mix of other-regulation, self-regu-lation, and automatized processes (Tharp &Gallimore, 1988).

Assistance provided by more capable oth-ers. Many "at-risk" children have not had theliteracy experiences needed to provide a frame-work for beginning reading and writing instruc-tion (Heath, 1983; Wells, 1985). Therefore,


37

Section 3: Historical PerspectiveInterpreting Teacher/Student Interactions ...

early on in the Reading Recovery Program,teachers have a major responsibility for creat-ing learning situations that actively involvechildren in successful acts of reading and writ-ing. Through careful observation and analysisof the child's behaviors, teachers try to under-stand what the child understands. They deter-mine what the child knows, as well as what heor she needs to learn how to do. For example,the teacher noticing that the child reads formeaning but often his or her language over-rides the written text may say, "Read it withyour finger" or ask, "Did that match?" Theteacher has inferred that the child has a direc-tional problem of coordinating the motor pat-tern of his hand with the word-finding activi-ties of his ears and eyes and therefore needs toteach the child how to coordinate what he seeswith what he points to and says (Clay, 1991).However, over time, through conversationwith the teacher, the child develops strategiesfor independent problem solving when he orshe notices when there is no 'match' betweenhis or her language and the printed text.

In the preceding example, the child's goalmay have been to read quickly, "like a goodreader," and in order to accomplish this goal,he or she invented text. Because the child can-not conceptualize the goal of the activity (inte-grating directional movement and visual atten-tion to print), the teacher provides this assis-tance. The teacher's demonstrations, promptsand/or questions allow the student to partici-pate in a reading activity that would be impos-sible for him or her to do alone. Thus languagebetween the teacher and child (intercognitive)provides a powerful tool for both thinking andcommunicating around verbal and nonverbalbehaviors. Without the teacher's guidance, the"at-risk" child may not have been able todevelop these problem-solving skills. Underadult guidance, the child's ZPD is extended.

Transition from other-assistance to self-assistance. As the weeks progress, the teacher'sresponsibility and direction steadily decline,

and there is a corresponding increase in thechild's proportion of responsibility. The child isprompting himself, often using the teacher'swords. I will never forget when one of myReading Recovery children told me I was hisJiminy Cricket. iminy Cricket is Pinocchio'ssubconscious in the classic story Pinocchio byCollodi.) When I asked him what he meant hesaid, "You're my unconscious. You ask me thesame questions I ask myself." Even though hedidn't choose the appropriate word for hisexplanation, David was making sense of whatwe were doing.

Through careful observation of children'sbehaviors, Reading Recovery teachers becomesensitive to these transitions. For example, achild may be able to assist himself by voicepointing, rather than finger pointing, whilereading two lines of text. But when presentedmultiple lines of text, he or she hesitates,resorts to inventing the rest of the text, andthen comments, "No, that's not right." Thechild cannot solve the problem although heknows that something is wrong.

The noticing teacher understands theimportance of the child's partially right moni-toring behavior and attempts to assist him orher in developing strategies for resolving theconflict. Therefore, thinking that the child canresolve the problem with help, the teachersays, "I liked how you stopped. What did younotice?" Or, "Were there too many words?" Or,"Try that again and read it with your finger."Students in transition from other-assistance toself-assistance are beginning to learn how tofunction as their own consultants.

Assistance provided by self. The latterphases of the ZPD are self-assisted. This phaseof development requires the lessening of assis-tance provided by the teacher (intercognitiveinfluence) and the development of self-regula-tion (intracognitive influence). It is notuncommon to hear Reading Recovery studentscomment on their own processing. "No, thatdidn't make sense." "That doesn't look like the

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word ." But such explicit comments arenot always heard nor are they essential.Children will often reread a line or page of textif what they said doesn't sound right. Self-instruction, self-questioning and self-praiseindicate the development of cognitive process-ing inside the learner (intracognitive). Thesetransformations in students' thinking and abili-ty to resolve their own conflicts are observablewhen children self-correct. Marie Clay (1991)states:

In correcting the error, the child practiced monitor-ing, searching, generating, checking, and choosingprocesses and they were all reinforced because suc-cess was contingent upon them. In addition, the sig-nals of error and the new bits of information previ-ously neglected, also contributed to success. Duringthis cognitive activity the reader is sensorially opento new possibilities (Bruner, 1957) and the eventseems to have high tutorial potential, but the tutor-ing is entirely self-tutoring (p. 303).

Self-assistance occurs in the final stages ofthe ZPD and signals that full, automatic corn-

petence is approaching.Internalization, automatization, fossiliza-

tion. As children progress through the ReadingRecovery Program, observable behaviors seemto signal they have constructed strategic con-trol. "They attend to their processing strategiesif need be although many times they may beemployed without conscious attention" (Clay,1991, p. 341). They read for meaning andwhen an error is made, it is noticed and someaction occurs. They "cast around all their expe-rience to find cues, strategies and solutions."They ask themselves questions: "What do Iknow that might help?" "How do I know this?""What can link up with this?" "Is the messagestill clear?" (Clay, 1991, p. 341).

Tharp and Gallimore (1988) describe thisphase of the learning process in the followingway:

In theoretical terms, once self-directed assistance dis-appears, we may presume that the individual hasemerged from the ZPD for the task at hand. Task

Interpreting Teacher/Student Interactions in Reading Recovery from aVygotskian Perspective

Zone of ActualDevelopment

What thechild cando unassisted

I

Recursive Loop

Zone of Proximal Development

Assistance providedby More Capable

Others

Parents Teachers

Experts Peers

Coaches

Phase 1

Capacity

Developed

Internalization,Transition from AssistanceOther Assistance Provided Automatization, Automatization:

to by the Fossilization RecursivenessSelf-Assistance Self through prior

stages)

Phase 2 Phase 3 i Phase 4 i Phase 5

Adapted from Tharp, R. & Gallimore, R. (1988) Rousing minds to life. Cambridge Univ. Press: New York, NY


39


execution is smooth and integrated, and its regula-tion has been internalized and automatized.Assistance, from others or the self, is no longer need-ed and would now be disruptive. Even self-conscious-ness itself can interfere with the smooth integrationof all task components. Self-control and social con-trol are no longer required. The performance capaci-ty is now developed: Vygotsky used a vivid metaphor

"fossilized" to describe its fixity and removalfrom the social and mental forces of change. Thisfixity, however, is not permanent (p. 257).

Deautomatization and Recursion.Deautomatization and recursion occur so regu-larly during the learning process that they con-stitute a fifth phase of the normal developmen-tal process.

It often happens that self-regulation is notsufficient to restore performance capacity, anda further recursion the restitution or otherregulation is required. Whatever the level ofrecursion, the goal is to reproceed throughassisted performance to self-regulation and toexit the zone of proximal development anewinto automatization (Tharp & Gallimore,1988, p. 187).

Although a Reading Recovery child auto-matically searches, predicts, generates, moni-tors, cross-checks and orchestrates the strate-gies, there is no guarantee that his or her com-petence is permanent. When the child is notsuccessful in applying these established strate-gies to understand more complex text, deau-tomatization and recursion through his or herzone of proximal development takes place.

Vygotsky's theory suggests that learning is alifelong process and is always recursive. Themore we know, the more we don't know. It isthrough assistance by more knowledgeable oth-ers that we are challenged to stretch ourboundaries and learn more. The substance andstructure of the teaching activity withinReading Recovery takes place in an enormous-ly complex interactional setting that powerful-ly shapes the teacher's learning and, in turn,the student's learning as well.

ConclusionDuring the Reading Recovery year-long

course, teachers learn how to assist students bydiscussion with colleagues and thus begin tounderstand the complex processing of individu-als. There is no sequence through which everychild will or should pass. The nature of theprogram and the teacher/student interaction(conversation and nonverbal action) is differ-ent for each child.

It is the knowledge in the heads of teacherswhich guides their moment-to-moment deci-sions and enables children to develop a self-extending system. Teachers need to understandthe theoretical principles and underlying theo-ries of learning and cognition and be able torelate them to the complex processing occur-ring when individuals read and write. Theyneed to think about the theoretical base fortheir decisions, the "why" behind their actionsand be tentative and reflective in their prac-tice. They need to think in terms of conceptsto be learned, see and understand the 'big pic-ture' and not be stuck at the procedural level.In order to maximize the growth of their stu-dents' intra-psychological functioning, theyneed to understand how the theories, princi-ples and concepts discussed in BecomingLiterate: The Construction of Inner Control relateto the practice described in The Early Detectionof Reading Difficulties. 4\14

ReferencesBruner, J.S. (1957). On perceptual readiness.

Psychological Review, 64, 123-152.Bruner, J.S. (1987). Prologue to the English

edition. In R. Rieber & A. Carton (Eds.)L.S. Vygotsky collected works Vol. 1 (pp. 1-16). NY: Plenum.

Cazden, C.B. (1988). Classroom discourse: Thelanguage of reaching and learning.Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Clay, M.M. (1991). Becoming literate: The con-struction of inner control. Portsmouth, NH:Heinemann.

40 Best of The Running Record 4 4 4 4 0

Section 3: Historical PerspectiveInterpreting Teacher/Student Interactions ....

Clay, M.M. & Cazden, C.B. (1990). AVygotskian interpretation of ReadingRecovery. In L.C. Moll (Ed.). Vygotsky andeducation: Instructional implications and appli-cations of sociohistorical psychology (pp. 206-222). NY: Cambridge University Press.

Heath, S.B. (1983). Ways with words:Language, life and work in communities andclassrooms. NY: Cambridge UniversityPress.

Lindfors, J.W. (1987). Children's language andlearning (2nd ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ:Prentice Hall.

Lyons, C.A., Pinnell, G.S., De Ford, D. (1993).Partners in learning: Teachers and children inReading Recovery. NY: Teachers CollegePress.

Tharp, R.G. & Gallimore, R. (1988). Rousingminds to life. Teaching, learning, and schoolingin social context. NY: Cambridge UniversityPress.

Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in society: Thedevelopment of higher psychological processes.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Wells, G. (1986). The meaning makers: Childrenlearning language and using language to learn.Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

41

/


[READINGRECOVERY°COUNCILOF NORTH AMERICA

zRunning 44T1°1: Record Revised Edition

i


Descubriendo La Lectura:A Reconstruction of Reading Recovery in Spanish

Winter 1994by Kathleen McDonough and Olivia Ruiz

Helping All Students LearnWinter 1994by Raquel C. Mireles

43

46

Responding to Changing Demographics:Selecting Reading Recovery Books 50

Winter 1994by Linda Garrett

Text Selection for Limited English ProficientStudents in Reading Recovery 53

Winter 1994by Diana Geisler

"We Coed to Readin' ":Understanding How Children Learn Language

Fall 1995by Nancy Anderson

/

42

55


Descubriendo La Lectura:A Reconstruction of Reading Recovery in Spanish

Winter 1994

by Kathleen McDonough, Trainer of Teacher Leadersand Olivia Ruiz, Teacher Leader, Tucson, Arizona

Descubriendo La Lectura, a reconstruction ofReading Recovery in Spanish, was created forstudents who are in bilingual education pro-grams, receiving initial literacy instruction inSpanish, and experiencing difficulties inlearning to read. These children need whatDr. Clay calls a second chance at learning toread, and their success or failure in native-language literacy will have an impact on howwell they learn to read in English as well.

The Collaborative for Reading Recovery inSpanish/Descubriendo La Lectura is com-

posed of Reading Recovery/Descubriendo LaLectura teachers and teacher leaders who arebilingual educators and site coordinators. Thegroup encompasses school district and universi-ty personnel from Arizona, California, Illinois,Massachusetts, and Texas. The goals of theCollaborative include the following:

further refining and researching thereconstruction of Reading Recovery inSpanish,better observing and serving all develop-ing bilingual children in ReadingRecovery/Descubriendo La Lectura, andincorporating into the ReadingRecovery/Descubriendo La Lectura train-ing program more specific cultural, lin-guistic, and instructional theory andknowledge to better meet the needs ofdiverse language populations.

In order to reconstruct the program andmonitor its impact on both Spanish speakingstudents and bilingual education teachers,

extensive local and national research has beenand continues to be conducted. To date,research results indicate that Descubriendo LaLectura is a viable early intervention programfor first grade students receiving initial literacyinstruction in Spanish (Escamilla, 1992; Ruiz,1992). The strategies English-speaking studentsare observed to use while participating inReading Recovery lessons are the same strate-gies Spanish speaking students use as theymake accelerated progress in Descubriendo LaLectura lessons (McDonough & Brena, 1993).

National Descubriendo La LecturaSummary Statistics: 1992-1993

In 1992-1993 Descubriendo La Lecturateachers worked with 202 children in five sitesin the United States (Table 1). Each site main-tains local data collection procedures and pre-pares an annual report to administrators andschool boards. However, because of the impor-tance of gathering data on larger numbers ofchildren across diverse populations, nationaldata is also being compiled.

Not only did Descubriendo La Lecturachildren for whom lessons were discontinuedraise their scores to well within the averageband of their classrooms, but they continued tomake progress after lessons were discontinued,with no further interventions.

The tables summarize the progress fromFall to Spring of the mean scores on all threeof the Diagnostic measures: 1) WritingVocabulary, 2) Dictation, and 3) Text ReadingLevel. Table One lists both total DiscontinuedChildren and Program Children.

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4S

Section 4: Teaching for DiversityeDescubriendo La Lectura: A Reconstruction of Reading Recovery in Spanish

From Fall to Spring, mean scores for thediscontinued children increased from 3.42 to52.19 on Writing Vocabulary, from 5.38 to37.48 for Dictation, and from 0.32 to 18.19 forText Reading. During the same period, meanscores for all program children increased from3.21 to 48.95 for Writing Vocabulary, from5.15 to 36.16 for Dictation, and from 0.31 to16.27 for Text Reading.

Table 3 profiles the progress of childrenwho discontinued from the Program prior toApril 1. Children for whom lessons are discon-tinued have developed a self-extending systemand will continue to improve their reading andwriting achievement without further intensiveone-to-one instruction. The following compar-isons involve children who were discontinuedat least six weeks prior to the final testing peri-od.

Students for whom lessons were discontin-ued prior to April 1 evidenced self-extendingsystems. Entry, exit, and end-of-year scores forthree Observational Survey tasks are presentedin Table 3. These Descubriendo La Lectura stu-dents continued to make progress by indepen-dent reading and writing and classroominstruction. Children for whom lessons werediscontinued had, for example, an averagereading level of 13 upon exiting the program.When tested for Text Reading in the Spring,their average score increased to level 21. Thesedata point to the value of the Program's focuson accelerated progress and the developmentof each student's self-extending system.

SummaryThe future of Descubriendo La Lectura

appears to be extremely promising in theUnited States. Clearly, the program has pro-

44

duced success for teachers and acceleratedprogress for those bilingual first grade studentswho were receiving initial literacy instructionin Spanish and were most at risk. The goal ofthe Descubriendo La Lectura Program, howev-er, is to reach every first grade student in thelowest twenty percent in reading achievement.The Collaborative for Reading Recovery inSpanish/ Descubriendo La Lectura is commit-ted to making this goal a reality and is seekingsupport from such sources as foundations,states, and national funding sources. Schooldistricts that are interested in joining theCollaborative to initiate Descubriendo LaLectura may request additional informationfrom the Reading Recovery Council of NorthAmerica. 444

ReferencesBrena, B. (1992). Validity of the Spanish

Observation Survey regarding language varia-tions and dialectical awareness across theHispanic population. Unpublished paper,University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona.

Escamilla, K. (1992). Descubriendo La Lectura:An Application of Reading Recovery inSpanish. Response prepared for the Office ofEducation, Research, and Improvement(OERI) from the OERI Fellows Program.

McDonough, K. & Brena, D. (1993).Observations of Strategies English and Spanishspeaking emergent readers use. Unpublishedpaper, University of Arizona, Tucson,Arizona.

Ruiz, Olivia ( 1992). Descubnendo La Lectura:Promising practices in literacy for languageminority students. Arizona Reading Journal,20(2), 7576.

4 4Best of The Running Record 4 4 4

Section 4: Teaching for DiversityeDescubriendo La Lectura: A Reconstruction of Reading Recovery in Spanish

Summary Statistics:Descubriendo La Lectura1992-93

Table 1Children Served by the Descubriendo La Lectura Project 1992-93

Total Program Discontinued Percent of ProgramServed Children Children Discontinued

202 137 117 85

Table 2Observation Scores for Descubriendo La Lectura RR children

Measure Month ofTesting

Disc. DLLChildren '(Mean)

Disc. DLLChildren(1%1=)

DLLProgramChildren(Mean)

DLL ProgramChildren(P4°)

Writing Fall 3.42 102 3.21 120

Vocabulary Spring 52.19 DLL115 48.95 135

Dictation Fall 5.38 102 5.15 120

Spring 37.48 115 36.16 135

Text Reading Fa 11 0.32 102 0.31 120

Level Spring 18.19 115 16.27 135

Table 3Progress of Descubriendo La Lectura Children

Discontinued Prior to April 1

Measure Fall 1 Exit 1 End-of-Year

Writing Vocabulary 3.20 46.00 53.33

(Max: 10 Min.)

Dictation 5.63 37.27 37.63(Max=39)

Text Reading 0.43 13.08 21.21

(Max=30)

(N=40) (N=39) (N=39)


45


Helping All Students LearnWinter 1984

Raquel C. Mire les, Teacher Leader, Reading Recovery /Descubriendo La LecturaLos Angeles, California

My concern as a bilingual teacher is to pro-vide conditions of learning that will

allow all my students to acquire literacy intheir primary language. Success in reading andwriting in the primary language establishes afirm foundation for bi-literacy and future acad-emic success. To accomplish this goal, I searchfor sound language and learning theory toexpand my knowledge and support my teach-ing.

Brian Cambourne's (1988) theory andapplications, particularly the Conditions ofLearning, inspired me to examine my teachingpractices both as a teacher in the classroomand as a teacher in the Reading Recovery/Descubriendo La Lectura Program.Descubriendo La Lectura serves children whoare receiving initial literacy instruction inSpanish. At present I am working with stu-dents reading in English and also with studentsreading in Spanish. This has allowed me tomake comparisons across two languages, and Ihave found a great number of similaritiesbetween Reading Recovery/Descubriendo LaLectura and Cambourne's Conditions ofLearning.

According to Cambourne (1989), learningto use and control the language of a culture is atremendous intellectual accomplishment andchildren do it successfully throughout theworld. Infants acquire their maternal languageunder the care and guidance of their parents orother caretakers in a very natural fashion. Fromhis research, Cambourne concluded that thereare certain conditions under which children,beginning at birth, acquire a language. Theseconditions include the following:

ImmersionDemonstrationExpectationsResponsibilityUseApproximationResponseEngagement.

Based on the conditions of learning a lan-guage, Cambourne (1988) concluded that"while the conditions for learning to talk can-not be precisely replicated for the writtenmode of language, the principles which theyexemplify can" (p. 45). He goes on to say that,when teachers understand the principles, theywill try to "simulate for the written word" (p.45) the conditions that made it possible fororal language to emerge.

In reflecting on my teaching, I recognizethe principles of learning identified byCambourne as they apply to literacy learningin Reading Recovery/Descubriendo La Lecturalessons.

Immersion. In Reading Recovery/Descubriendo La Lectura a student experiencesimmersion and learns to read by reading wholetexts.

There are teaching points throughout thelesson but they follow the lead of the student'sstrengths and are within the context of whatthe child is reading or writing. Through theentire lesson children are immersed in mean-ing-making of complete whole texts.

Demonstration. From the very first lessona Reading Recovery/Descubriendo La Lecturastudent receives demonstrations of language"wholes" every day. A teacher introduces a new

46 Best of The Running Record 4 \I .NI

4 6

Section 4: Teaching f r DiversityHelping All Students Learn

book, giving an orientation to the meaningand modeling the structure of the text lan-guage. Then the student reads the whole bookindependently but always with the "scaffold" ofthe teacher when needed, encouraging the stu-dent to utilize her own meaning-making strate-gies. In the beginning lessons the teacher mayact as a scribe for students, demonstrating thewriting of the student's personal message. Aschildren gain more experience in writing, theteacher only "scaffolds" the process.

Expectations. Just as parents have expecta-tions that their child will learn to speak, theReading Recovery/ Descubriendo La Lecturateacher expects students to continue to devel-op literacy. All children come to school withsome information about the printed word.Ferreiro and Teberosky (1982) claim that "nochild starts from zero when he or she comes toschool" (p. 280). From their research ofSpanish speaking children they concluded thatchildren have their own ideas about the func-tion of print, and continually attach meaningto written text. Similarly, Goodman (1989) hasfound that environmental literacy has atremendous impact on preschool students'awareness of print and the function it serves.

Based on the Observation Survey andRoaming Around the Known sessions, theteacher is conscious of the students' strengthsand interests. Clay (1979) reminds us that "themost important reason for Roaming Aroundthe Known is that it requires the teacher tostop teaching from her preconceived ideas. Shehas to work from the child's responses. Thiswill be the teacher's focus throughout the pro-gramme" (p. 55).

As lessons begin, the teacher has highexpectations that the student will learn to readand write, and, what is more important, basedon Roaming Around the Known, the child alsohas high expectations because she already seesherself as a reader and a writer.

Responsibility. Within ReadingRecovery/Descubriendo La Lectura lessons the

student takes responsibility for reading andwriting and is encouraged to use meaning-mak-ing strategies, such as predicting, approximat-ing, self-monitoring, self-correcting, and con-firming. "The important thing about the self-corrections is that the child initiates thembecause she sees that something is wrong andcalls upon her own resource for working on asolution" (Clay, 1979, p. 58).

Use/Approximation. ReadingRecovery/Descubriendo La Lectura studentshave the opportunity to use, employ, and prac-tice their developing control in functional,realistic, and non-artificial ways. Students startreading whole texts from the very beginning.There is no need to wait until a child knows allthe letters and their sounds. The main objec-tive is for the child "to have a go" at construct-ing the meaning of the story. The student isengaged in "reading work" and is encouragedto read; approximations are accepted and val-ued and the student is encouraged to makemeaningful predictions and to cross-check toconfirm. Errors are seen as miscues and ana-lyzed for the purpose of finding out how thestudent orchestrates cue sources of informationand uses reading strategies to construct mean-ing.

During the writing portion of the lessonthe responsibility is on the student to generatea message. Her language or structure is alwaysaccepted as she begins to write, and as a writershe feels free to approximate.

From the beginning the student is encour-aged to contribute as much as possible. She lis-tens to herself saying the words, focuses onsounds heard, and predicts letters associatedwith those sounds. By using sound and letterboxes, the child learns to focus on the detailsof print. The visual framework allows the childto contribute in any order the sounds heard.

The writing section is a critical part of thelesson. The purpose of writing is to bridge thelink between reading and writing. Reading andwriting support and extend each other. While

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47

Section 4: Teaching for DiversityHelping All Students Learn

the student is attending to the writing, she isacquiring writing and reading strategiesthrough the language of a message that sheowns. Through the use of strategies studentsbecome more independent in their reading andwriting each time they participate in literacyactivities. The teacher is there to accept thestudent's approximations, and to provide a"scaffold" when needed, temporarily supportingthe student to prepare her to work indepen-dently.

The theoretical support for the role ofteacher in the writing section, as well as anyother section of the lesson, is provided byVygotsky (1978). He identified a "Zone ofProximal Development" as the "distancebetween the actual development level as deter-mined by independent problem solving and thelevel of potential development as determinedthrough problem solving under adult guidanceor in collaboration with more capable peers."He recognized that learning is social and thatinteraction between a child and a teacher iscritical. Vygotsky thought that mediation wascritical for a child to go beyond what can bedone independently and make a shift in thepresent level of understanding and learning.

Response. There are responses that supportand inform when a teacher models or demon-strates for the child. Other times, the teacherobserves and takes advantage of the discoveriesa child makes. Constructing meaning is rein-forcing for the child.

The Reading Recovery/Descubriendo LaLectura teacher recognizes and reinforcesstrategies used to construct meaning. Responsesare explicit. For example, when the studentstops to solve a reading problem, she is encour-aged when she considers a strategy: "Good job!You stopped and looked at the picture!" "iMuybien! Te paraste y to fijaste en el dibujo!" "I likethe way you solved the problem by yourself;good readers do that." "Me gusta como solu-cionaste el problema to sola; los Buenos lectoreshacen eso." "How did you know that?" "Como

supiste eso?" One child responded, "I remem-bered the story, I looked at the picture, and Isaw the first letter." "Me acorde del cuento, mefife en el dibujo y vi las primeras tetras."

Engagement. According to Cambourne(1988), engagement occurs when a learner isconvinced that:

1. She is a potential "doer" or "performer" ofthese demonstrations she is observing.

2. Engaging with these demonstrations willfurther the purposes of her life.

3. She can engage and try to emulate withoutfear of physical or psychological hurt if her attemptis not fully "correct."

The Reading Recovery/Descubriendo LaLectura teacher tries to maximize learning in ashort time. Within thirty minutes the condi-tions of literacy learning are manifestedthroughout the lesson every day. The studentconstructs and the teacher facilitates the devel-opment of a "self-extending system."According to Clay's studies (1991), this self-extending system contributes to continued suc-cess in succeeding years in school.

The theory and research of Clay and otherinternationally known literacy authorities haveinfluenced my way of thinking about teachingand learning. The application of theory inReading Recovery/Descubriendo La Lecturalessons has provided me with new insights, sup-port, and hope. I want all my bilingual studentsto become participants and to profit fully in aninquiry-based whole language classroom. I wantto make sure all my students acquire the strate-gies needed to become bi-literate. Most chil-dren will, but for those few who need a special,temporary, early intervention, I don't want toleave anything to chance. I want them to seethemselves as readers and writers, to be proudand feel good about themselves from the begin-ning of first grade.

Providing the best conditions for literacylearning in the classroom, and in a temporaryReading Recovery/Descubriendo La Lecturaprogram, insures that all my students will take


Section 4: Teaching for DiversityHelping All Students Learn

control of their own learning. Personal control,independence in problem solving, and partici-pation in meaningful reading and writing expe-riences will help them to become bi-literateand experience academic success. \1 +i

ReferencesCambourne, B. (1988). The whole story.

Auckland, NZ: Ashton Scholastic.Clay, M.M. (1991). Becoming literate: The con-

struction of inner control. Portsmouth, NH:Heinemann Educational Books.

Clay, M.M. (1979). The early detection of read-ing difficulties. Portsmouth, NH: HeinemannEducational Books.

De Ford, D. (1992). Teaching for problem solvingin writing. Reading Recovery Conference,Denton, TX.

Escamilla, K. (1992). Descubriendo La Lectura:An application of Reading Recovery inSpanish. Report prepared for the Office ofEducational Research and Improvementfrom the OERI Fellows Program.

Ferreiro, E. & Teberosky, A. (1989). Literacybefore schooling. Portsmouth, NH:Heinemann Educational Books.

Goodman, D. & Curry, T. (1992). Constructinga curriculum to support language and learning.Seminar presented at the University ofArizona.

Goodman, Y. & Goodman, K. (1992).Vygotsky in a Whole Language Perspectivein L.C. Moll (Ed.), Vygotsky and education:instructional implications and applications ofsociohistorical psychology (pp. 206222).Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UniversityPress.

Goodman, Y. & Atwerger, B. (1989). Printawareness in preschool children. OccasionalPaper #4. Tucson, AZ: Program inLanguage and Literacy, University ofArizona.

Holdaway, D. (1992). Reading Recovery in aContext of Whole Language. The whole lan-guage teachers association newsletter. Fall1992, Volume 7, No. 2.

Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

49



Responding to Changing Demographics:Selecting Reading Recovery Books

Winter 1994

by Linda Garrett, Site Coordinator, St. Paul Public SchoolsSt. Paul, Minnesota

Linda Garrett, Chapter 1 CurriculumCoordinator and Reading Recovery SiteCoordinator of St. Paul, Minnesota, PublicSchools, has spent 26 years in education. Shehas a B.A. and an M.A. from MichiganState University and has completed postgrad-uate work in Curriculum Systems at theUniversity of Minnesota. Linda is also anEducational Consultant specializing inCurriculum Development and MulticulturalEducation with school districts in Minnesota,Wisconsin, and Michigan.

While the books used by ReadingRecovery teachers must satisfy the

instructional needs of the learner, it is essentialthat they also reflect the reality of our nation'scultural diversity. These requirements are com-patible.

The demographic pattern of the UnitedStates is changing. In earlier years most immi-gration was from Europe. Currently most immi-gration is from Asia and Latin America. By theyear 2000, one-third of the U.S. populationand more than half the populations ofCalifornia, Texas, New York, Florida andIllinois will be people of color. The schoolpopulation is changing faster than the generalpopulation. Right now, the twenty-five largestschool districts in the nation have more chil-dren of color than European American chil-dren. As the school population changes, theschools must change. One important change isimplementing a multicultural, gender and dis-ability fair curriculum with multicultural, gen-der and disability fair materials.

St. Paul's Inclusive CurriculumThe Minnesota State Board of Education

had the foresight in 1988 to require all of thestate's public school districts, regardless ofracial or cultural makeup, to develop plans foran inclusive curriculum, or one that is multi-cultural, gender and disability fair. The boardalso mandated a review process to ensure thatcurriculum and instructional materials wouldinclude all racial and cultural groups, both gen-ders and people with disabilities.

The plan adopted by the St. Paul PublicSchool's Board of Education requires that allinstructional materials purchased by the dis-trict be inclusive. The Board's position is basedon the belief that all children, female andmale, with or without disabilities, AfricanAmerican, American Indian, Asian American,European American, and Hispanic American,have the right to see themselves reflected posi-tively in the instructional materials used in theclassroom.

Inclusive Reading Recovery MaterialsThe selection of inclusive Reading

Recovery materials is important for two rea-sons. First, as more urban areas and states withdiverse populations adopt Reading Recovery,the population served becomes more diverse.Unfortunately, due to poverty and languagebarriers, most of the children eligible forReading Recovery (the lowest 20% of the firstgrade) will be children of color. Second, as thenation becomes more diverse, EuropeanAmerican children in mono-cultural communi-ties desperately need to see the diversity of the


50

Section 4: Teaching for DiversityResponding to Changing Demographics: Selecting Reading Recovery Books

nation reflected positively in their instruction-al materials. For some children this will betheir first exposure to positive images of peopleof color. These children may live today in amono-cultural community, but they will notlive their whole lives in mono-cultural settings.They will go on to more diverse settings (col-lege, the military or employment in anotherregion) and they must be familiar with diversi-ty. Introducing positive images of diverse peo-ple in primary instructional materials begins anessential foundation on which to build.

Some may think that the books used inReading Recovery are too short to have inclu-sive components or that the story lines are uni-versal and there is no need for concern. Bothviews are shortsighted. Reading Recovery chil-dren are affected at least as much by the booksthey read as students in other programs orgrades. I have developed a short list of stan-dards for previewing instructional materials forinclusiveness:

1. All people are portrayed in an unbiasedway. This includes gender, culture, race,ethnicity, language, age, economic sta-tus, disability, family structure and reli-gion.

2. There are no stereotypes in the illustra-tions or text.

3. The content is factual and balanced.4. Overall, the book includes rather than

excludes.In selecting Reading Recovery books I also

look for balance within the "sets" of books, andI check the country where the book was origi-nally published.

Moving Towards an Inclusive ReadingRecovery Book Set

In the spring of 1992 I found myself in theunique situation of ordering materials for a newsite without a teacher leader. Our newly hiredteacher leader was working several states awayand would not arrive until early August.

I began with the order list provided by The

Ohio State University and called local publish-ers' representatives to request titles for review.

I was disappointed as I previewed the rec-ommended books for inclusiveness. The illus-trations in many reflected only one culturalbackground, European. Every now and then abrown face appeared, but in many cases it wasdifficult to tell what cultural/racial backgroundwas being represented. There were even a fewbooks that contained stereotypes of people ofcolor. I was surprised to find that the recom-mended Reading Recovery books in 1992seemed so oblivious to cultural diversity.

The ordering process became complex as Icharted my review of each publisher andplaced orders. I did not order every book onthe list. I made sure that within each "set" ofbooks there was balance among thecultural/racial groups and genders represented.I did not order books with stereotypes, and Iordered a lot of animal books.

I continued to preview every book recom-mended by our teacher leaders before it wasordered in quantity. I began to talk to everyonewho would listen publishers' representatives,other site coordinators, Ohio State faculty andthe teacher leaders at our site. I am pleased toreport some promising changes. Several pub-lishers' representatives have told me that theircompanies are aware of these concerns andthey are trying to make changes. Many sitecoordinators share my concern and are beingmore selective about their orders. The ReadingRecovery Book Selection Committee and TheOhio State University Staff are also exploringways to make the book list more inclusive.

I urge all sites to join in becoming moreselective in their ordering to ensure thatReading Recovery materials reflect our nation'sdiversity. Together we can make a differencefor all the children we serve. 4\N

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Section 4: Teaching for DiversityResponding to Changing Demographics: Selecting Reading Recovery Books

Ten Quick Ways to Analyze Children'sBooks for Sexism and Racism

Check the illustrations.Check the story line.Look at the lifestyles.Weigh the relationships between peo-ple.Note the heroes.Consider the effects on a child's self-image.Consider the author's or illustrator'sbackground.Check out the author's perspective.Watch for loaded words.Look at the copyright date.

Source: The Council on InterracialBooks for Children

Standards to use when previewinginstructional materials

4 All people are portrayed in an unbi-ased way. This includes gender, cul-ture, race, ethnicity, language, age,economic status, disability, familystructure, and religion.

4 There are no stereotypes in the illus-trations or text.

4 The content is factual and balanced.Overall, the book includes rather thanexcludes.



Text Selection for Limited EnglishProficient Students in Reading Recovery

Winter 1994

Diana Geis ler, Teacher Leader, Carollton-Farmers Branch, TexasYvonne Rodriguez, Teacher Leader, Texas Woman's University

As our society becomes more diverse, thelikelihood of having second language

learners or limited English proficient students(LEP) in Reading Recovery programs increases.Reading Recovery teachers often feel illequipped in providing linguistically diversepopulations with the assistance needed tobecome strategic readers. Reading Recoveryteachers must therefore become cognizant ofsome instructional considerations when work-ing with second language learners.

Appropriate text selection is critical to thesuccess of students learning to read in English.The child who is learning English must be ableto comprehend what is read or risks becoming"semilingual" (Schoenfeldt, 1987). Schoenfeldtfound that if these students were instructed inreading text beyond their comprehension, theybecame "word callers" who did not read formeaning. It is important for LEP students toread English that is within their control. Clay(1991, p. 335) states that "text to which chil-dren can bring interpretations, and texts whichare close to children's oral language use, givethem power over the learning tasks."

Since the Reading Recovery program useshundreds of little story books, ReadingRecovery teachers should be able to select textsthat are within their rangetexts which con-tain vocabulary, language structures, and mean-ings within the student's control. When select-ing a book, a Reading Recovery teacher needsto maintain a balance between the student'scompetencies and the features of the text. It isessential that the Reading Recovery teacherconsider the student's interests and experiences

along with the number of new vocabularyitems, the narrative style, level of predictabili-ty, and supportive illustrations of a book. Quiteoften, teachers will select caption books duringearly lessons in an effort to build vocabulary.LEP students tend to have more difficulty withthis type of text. (For example, "flowers andflags" or "teeter-totters and tadpoles" in Lots ofThings, Dominie Press.) Students do much bet-ter with text that is patterned, supportive, andwritten in complete sentences, as in I LikeBalloons (Dominic Press): "I like red balloons. Ilike blue balloons."

Text that is written in rhyme is problemat-ic for the second language learner. This narra-tive style is cognitively more demanding forstudents; they must attend to both the con-cepts being covered and the rhyme: Breakfast inBed (Rigby): "Peanut butter on my nose.Runny honey between my toes. Marmaladedrips on my vest. Gritty crumbs tickle mychest."

This type of text can be too demandingeven for students whose only language isEnglish. What the child controls can shiftquickly and often. At first, a teacher may needto temporarily support a certain language struc-ture that is particularly difficult for the child.Usually, the child's control over that particularstructure increases each time he reads thebook. In order to see the developing controlover a new language structure, it is helpful totake multiple running records on the samebook as it moves from first reading into famil-iar reading. Quite often the child has learnedthe new structure by the fourth reading. For

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Section 4: Teaching for DiversityText Selection for Limited English Proficient Students in Reading Recovery

example, during the book introduction, theteacher may have to strongly support a specificlanguage structure by emphasizing it and hav-ing the child say it with her. Because it is diffi-cult to predict all the structures which mayprove to be hurdles for an LEP student, theteacher may need to provide support for prob-lem structures during the first reading also.

It is usually easier to learn a larger unit oflanguage than a smaller one. Running recordsmay be used to inform the teacher of languagestructures that are still challenging to thechild. For example, if the child is strugglingwith the phrase "all day long" it is more mean-ingful to emphasize the phrase than to focus on"all" or to break the phrase apart. The teachingpoint that follows a running record could be afocus on language structure. The teachershould continue taking a running record onthat book for the next few days during familiarreading in order to see the developing controlover the language. Once the running recordreveals fairly good control the teacher couldstop taking running records on that book.

Writing is perhaps even more important forthe child in learning to read in English than itis for the mono-lingual child. Writing eventssupport oral language development (Freeman,1992). Reading Recovery teachers should beencouraged to study the sentences that thechildren generate in writing. These samples oflanguage could serve as guides for selectingbooks that reflect the syntactical structures

within the child's control. The reading miscuesand writing events exhibit:

1. the children's active processing of thesimilarities and differences between thetwo languages, and

2. the children's expanding acquisition ofincreasing varieties of English structuresand rules. (Nathenson-Mejia, 1987).

Like all Reading Recovery teachers, theteacher of LEP students in Reading Recoveryshould observe the child carefully, analyze hisor her responses, and in turn respond to thechild in order to help her or him learn how toprocess while reading for meaning and becomeproficient at the next level of difficulty. 4-44

ReferencesClay, M. (1991). Becoming Literate. Auckland,

New Zealand: Heinemann EducationalBooks, Inc.

Freeman, Y. & Freeman, D. (1992). WholeLanguage for Second Language Learners.Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann EducationalBooks.

Nathenson-Mejia, S. "Learning a SecondLanguage through Reading and Writing:Case Studies of First Graders in a BilingualSchool."

Schoenfeldt, B. "Teaching the Bilingual Childto Read with Understanding: The GroupLanguage Experience Chart." ReadingEducation in Texas, Vol. 3, (1987): 4145.


54


"We Goed to Readin' ":Understanding How Children Learn Language

Fall 1995

by Nancy Anderson, Doctoral StudentThe Oho State University

Oh, how tempting it is to correct ourReading Recovery students' obvious mis-

uses of language conventions as they dictatesomething like, "We goed to readin'," for thewriting portion of their lessons. Why is itimportant that we honor their approximations?Through my investigations I found that thespoken phrase, "We goed to readin' " holdsstrong evidence that the child was constructingan hypothesis about how to communicate anexperience. In some cases, it might be mistak-en as an error, confusion or sign of weakness.Instead, it is evidence of the problem-solvingprocess a child goes through as he/she strugglesto communicate the meaning within his/herworld.

We are challenged by Marie Clay to learnto comprehend children's understanding(1991.) Understanding how children acquirelanguage will enhance our insights as to howReading Recovery children may be supportedthroughout their program and allow us toacknowledge, value and honor the oral lan-guage skills they bring to school. These skills

are a rich resource upon which to base instruc-tion (Cambourne, 1988.) Therefore, the pur-pose of this article is to highlight the processchildren engage in when they learn to talk,and then examine how we might tap into thisvaluable resource in our teaching.

Oral Language AcquisitionThe process of becoming literate is quite

complex. However, the children we are work-ing with have already mastered an amazinglycomplex task. They have learned the languageof their community, regardless of the economic,intellectual, social or physical state of their

environment. Children are born with a natur-al biological disposition and drive to makesense of their experiences and strategies fordoing so. They possess an inherent sociabilityfrom birth (Wells, 1986.) Children have the"hardware" or neurons in their brains at birthto learn language. The environment they areborn into acts as a sort of "software" programthat kicks the hardware into action.

As caregivers interact with a developingyoung child on a daily basis, a problem-solvingprocess of learning language takes place. Thechild attempts to communicate intendedmeaning and makes an hypothesis on how todo so. For example, a child who wants juicemight say, "drink." The caregiver gives waterto the child who realizes the intended messagewas not understood and rejects the water,pointing to the juice in the refrigerator. Thecaregiver responds by saying, "Oh, you wantjuice." Thus, the child reformulates or modi-fies her knowledge of how to communicate theneed for juice. The next time the child desiresjuice, she may utter, "juice."

This oral process is recursive as a childactively builds or constructs a language system.Clay characterizes this process as one of theearly self-extending systems. Each interactionwith a child's physical and social worldimproves her ability to communicate meanings(1991.) Through this self-generating processchildren learn how to learn language.

This amazing accomplishment takes placewithout direct instruction or a planned,sequenced curriculum. Caregivers respond tochildren and in essence learn how to guidethem to their intended meanings. Adultsaccept where the children are and do not

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Section 4: Teaching for Diversity"We Goed to Readin' ": Understanding How Children Learn Language

impose rules or conventions as they mediatetoward intended messages. Positive reinforce-ment permeates this relationship as caregiversencourage children to speak.

Children as Active Meaning MakersEvidence of the self-extending system's

development lies within the creative construc-tions (Lindfors, 1991) spoken by children asthey attempt to communicate their intentionsthrough phrases such as, "We goed to reading"or "I don't want no milk." Children are notsimply imitating adult speech, but rather usingtheir existing knowledge about the way lan-guage works and applying it to new situations.These types of errors can be characterized ascompelling evidence that children activelyconstruct their own hypotheses about language(Clay, 1991.)

As children enter school it is highly impor-tant that we recognize they come with the abil-ity to use language in their homes that isreflective of their cultural and social back-grounds. They communicate with family andfriends in ways that may be different fromthose they experience in school. We must becareful not to see these different ways of usinglanguage as "wrong" or label children as "slow"because they aren't familiar with the newdemands that schools place on them. It is ourjob to help children expand their ways of usinglanguage by familiarizing them with the meansof using language in a school setting.

Some students we encounter in ReadingRecovery have difficulty making the transitionfrom using language at home to using languagein an academic setting. These children enterschool with an existing set of problem-solvingstrategies used to communicate in their homesettings. Indeed, as Don Holdaway put it, allchildren who have learned to talk are "active,hypothesizing, generating language users"(Holdaway, 1979). However these problem-solving strategies may begin to shut down aschildren experience frustration with the transi-

tion. As a result children are unable to tapinto the powerful strategies brought with themto school when they attempt to learn to readand write. These children need to be givencredit for what they can do with language andsupported as they expand their ways of usinglanguage to include how to communicate inschool.

Reading Recovery and LanguageLearning

Roaming Around the Known. The one-on-one setting of Reading Recovery lends itselfto the nurturing and encouraging interactionsthat help support oral language development.Reading Recovery teachers accomplish this byengaging the child in meaningful interactionsfrom the first day of Roaming Around theKnown. During a two-week period we act asco-constructors of meaning by interacting withthe children and immersing them in language,both written and spoken. This parallels thesupport parents or caregivers provide as theycoax young toddlers to speak. ReadingRecovery teachers support children as theyanticipate and predict how the children canincorporate meaning with print in the reper-toire of knowledge.

Within the supportive atmosphere ofRoaming Around the Known, the problem-solving processes once used by the childrenbecome activated as they begin to gain theconfidence to take risks. A Reading Recoveryteacher's purpose is to engage the children andchange them from passive to active partici-pants in the academic setting.

Book Selection. Once lessons begin wesupport the children through careful selectionof books just as adults control toddlers' lan-guage when speaking to them. Books areselected according to the strategies andstrengths the children control. Language inReading Recovery books is similar to spokenlanguage. This helps the children's transitionto the more difficult literacy language of books.

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Writing. Home language is honored as wewrite "stories" that are about the children'slives or experiences. As Reading Recoveryteachers we don't impose our structure uponthe children's attempts to make meaning withprint. We use their already-existing hypothesesabout the way language communicates mean-ing and guide them toward conventions con-ducive to success in an academic setting and ina literate society. Therefore we record thechildren's approximations which over time willdocument growth.

Children are invited to use their own lan-guage to tell a story. The procedures suggest avariety of topics, and Clay (Guidebook, p. 29)recommends that teachers vary the invitationso that a set, or even dreaded, routine is notestablished. A routine might produce onlysafe, familiar patterns or abbreviated messagesthat may not present new problem-solvingopportunities. One student quickly generatedher sentence, "I went to my Grandpa's house,"but then added, "unless you want me to makeit shorter."

Clay (1993) outlines ways to interact withthe children that support, extend and valuetheir language (Guidebook, p. 28.) Before thenew story is composed children can be invitedto reread one or more of their previous stories.Clay (Guidebook, p. 29) states that this "indi-cates the value placed on writing and the mes-sages in writing" the children have recreatedwith the teacher's help.

One child, Chantell, generated a personalstory that was quickly recorded and repeated asgiven: "My mom having a boy and she going toget a crib." This was definitely Chantell's per-sonal story and her own language. As sheworked on writing her wonderful story, severaltimes in the rereading she slipped in the 's andwas actually saying, "My mom's having a boy... ." Teachers need to be careful observers andlisteners. Chantell was making some importantrevisions as she worked through her story. Shewas shifting to "book language" form and pro-

viding an important teaching point for theteacher to use. Inexperienced teachers aresometimes so concerned with capturing andusing the child's own message and languagethat they forget to listen for the natural editsthat good writers might make as they committheir stories to a written form. Although werecord the child's story as given, we should beflexible enough to allow for the self-edits thatcarry the child up the pathway that high-progress readers and writers seem to travel soeasily.

As you listen to Reading Recovery teachersinteract with their children you can hear thempraising the children for their attempts orhypotheses about the way print matches ourspoken language. "That was a good try" is aphrase I hear often as a student tries, for exam-ple, water /lake, or tooken /taken.

ConclusionMeeting the challenge of understanding

children's understandings (Clay, 1991) requiresus to acknowledge and give credit to childrenfor the language learning that has alreadytaken place before they enter school. Theteacher's task is to help children make linksbetween what they can already do with lan-guage and the new challenges of school (Clay,1991, p. 27.) Even if our first impulse might beto correct obvious errors we must resist thisimpulse. Through engaging children in mean-ingful interactions we help them act and takecontrol of their own literacy. It is our job toopen the reservoir and tap into the problem-solving capabilities children already possess.444

ReferencesCambourne, B. 1988. The whole story. New

Zealand: Ashton Scholastic.Clay, M.M. 1991. Becoming literate: The con-

struction of inner control. Portsmouth, NH:Heinemann.

Clay, M.M. 1991. "Developmental learningpuzzles me." The Australian Journal of

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5r7


Reading. Vol. 14, No. 4.Cazden, D.B. 1983. Adult assistance to lan-

guage development: Scaffolds, models, anddirect instruction. In R.P. Parker & F.A.Davis (Eds.) Developing literacy: young chil-dren's use of language (pp. 3-18). Newark,DE: International Reading Association.

Holdaway, D. 1979. The foundations of literacy.Sydney, Australia: Ashton Scholastic.

Lindfors, J. 1991. An overview of dimensionsof language. Children's language andlearning, Second Edition. NeedhamHeights, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Wells, G. 1986. The meaning makers.Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

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[ READINGRECOVERY'COUNCILOF NORTH AMERICA

rBBeisRunning q 4rizRecord Revised Edition

I

Section 5: Teaching and Learning in Reading Recovery

A Closer Look at the Writing Component in theReading Recovery Program

Autumn 1990by Mary D. Fried

Learning to Look at PrintAutumn 1992by Steve Hansell

61

65

Organizing Reading Recovery Lessons for Efficiency and Effectiveness - 68Autumn 1993Steve Hansell

Dual Processing in Reading: Don't "Get Your Mouth Ready" Yet - - - - 73Autumn 1994by Noel Jones

Reading Recovery and Phonics: A Response for Parents 77Autumn 1994, by Steve Hansell

What Does Teaching at the Word Level Really Mean?Winter 1994by Rose Mary Estice

59

79

,rl'eisetRunning 4-\144READING

OfREADINGRECOVERY Revised EditionCOUNCILOF NORTH AMERICA

Doing It by the Book ... or,Using the Language of the Guidebook in Our Teaching

Winter 1995by Judith Neal

Using Patterns of Responding to "Follow the Child"Spring 1997by Rose Mary Estice

Helping the Hard-to-accelerate Child:Problem-solving the More Difficult Cases

Fall 1997by Noel Jones

82

87

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Teaching for Strategies in Writing:Maintaining the Balance between Composing and Transcribing - - 102

Spring 1998by Lee Skandalaris

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A Closer Look at the Writing Component in theReading Recovery Program

Autumn 1990

by Mary FriedReading Recovery Trainer

The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

"I see writing as a means of slowing up thecomplex activity so that all the pieces can beinterwoven." (Clay, 1982, p. 211.)rrhink of yourself as an adult learner learn-

1 ing a new skill. Have you ever tried tolearn to play the piano or any musical instru-ment, learned to sing a new song, or learned toknit or crochet? What is the process for thelearner? The learner, even the adult learner,slows it down, learns the basic steps, practicesthe necessary movements to gain motor skillsand then practices until becoming accustomedto the task. Eventually the task can be com-pleted with the little or no analysis. The writ-ing component of the Reading Recovery lessonprovides the young learner with the opportuni-ty to slow down the process, to learn the basicsof how letters are formed and how print oper-ates. Writing provides practice for the neces-sary movements to gain motor control for writ-ing.

The importance of the writing componentgoes far beyond gaining motor control skills.Through writing, young children are also pro-vided with the opportunity to slow down thereading process. "Auditory, visual, and motorsystems are all at work when the child writesand all contribute to greater skill in reading."(Clay, 1982, p. 217.) When a child composesand writes his/her own story the child:

Uses background experience, knowledgeof the worldUses knowledge of languageUses motor skills for creating specificletter formsOrganizes behavior into an appropriate

sequence of actionAttends to the details of lettersAttends to correct letter orderUses sound segmentation strategiesAssociates sounds of oral language withspecific phonemesUses reading knowledge to check onhis/her own written message that hasbeen created (Clay, 1982, p. 209).

Clay's years of observation of young chil-dren as they learn to read and write, herresearch, and her writings provide powerfulinsights into the interrelationships of the read-ing process and the writing process. Theseinsights have been incorporated into theReading Recovery lesson. This article focuseson the writing component of the lesson andthe reassembling of the cutup story.

Writing serves to organize the visualanalysis of print and the oral analysis oflanguage.

Through writing, children employ theirvisual and motor skills to attend to details ofletter forms. For many of the children inReading Recovery the teacher must provide amodel and guide the children manually andverbally in learning to form letters. As quicklyas possible, the child is responsible for this taskat an independent level. Left-to-right letterorder within words, the use of space to signalthe end of one word and the beginning ofanother, and the left-to-right, return sweepdirectionality can be established or reinforcedduring writing.

The quality of the letter forms and the

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Section 5: Teaching and Learning in Reading RecoveryA Closer Look at the Writing Component in the Reading Recovery Program

observation of children as they write provideevidence of how the motor and visual systemsare operating. Using large movements in theair or on the chalkboard to learn the basicmovements needed to form letters seems tohelp children establish the movement patternsthat are required to produce legible writing.Students use big movement practice in thebeginning; teachers work to shift them to con-ventional size print as soon as possible. Slow,oversized writing may be acceptable whenlearning the task; however, if the child remainsat this stage, he/she may not be a successfulwriter and will be viewed as a low progress stu-dent in the classroom. Reading Recoveryteachers must work to get fast, fluent, propor-tional-sized writing.

Along with visual and motor processing,the child as a writer is also using his/her audi-tory system to learn about the sound-symbolrelationships of our language. In ReadingRecovery there is a minimum of stress on letterforms but a maximum focus on learning to hearand record the sounds of words. High progressreaders appear to go from sounds to letters andletters to sounds quite easily. However, this rec-iprocal analysis should not be assumed for chil-dren who are having a difficult time learningto read. Reading Recovery students may have adifficult time hearing the components of whatthey are saying (Clay, 1982).

Here are some confusions you may havenoted:

Cannot distinguish one word from awhole sentenceCannot hear components of a wordCan identify only the last sound or dom-inant consonantCannot hear beginning sounds or vowelsCannot say a word in a fashion to hearsound components but depends on theteacher model.

The specific Reading Recovery proceduresused for sound analysis and hearing the soundsin words are outlined in detail in Clay (1985)

on pages 64, 65, 66 and are not discussed inthis article.

The goal of sound analysis is for the childto learn how to write words and to be indepen-dent in getting to new words he/she wants towrite in stories. Reading Recovery teachersmust provide many opportunities with themost productive words to bring this learningabout. Be careful! Do not use boxes for wordsthat are irregular; selected words should con-tribute to a clear understanding of the process,as shown in this example.

one w n

Also, be cautious in asking for an extensiveletter-by-letter analysis of words on the writingpage that are too difficult to work out in boxeson the practice page.

Writing their own messages ensuresthat the intent of print is meaningdriven.

When a child realizes that the messages wespeak can be written down, he/she has acquiredthe central concept required for reading andwriting progress. This realization is usuallyaccomplished before children enter school.How many of you have had a young child handyou a scribble-covered paper and ask, "Whatdoes this say?" or have been commanded "Readthis," or simply told, "This says, 'Mommy lovesme.' " Unfortunately, entry to school for somechildren means an end to writing messages.Instead, writing becomes an artistic activityinvolving neatly copying letter forms with lit-tle concern for meaning.

Clay (1982) observes that children quicklytire of the required copying task. Writing thatfocuses on the message allows for the explo-ration of letters and sounds while reinforcingthe important concepts that letters form wordsand print carries meaning. In the classroom,journal writing that focuses on reading and

62 Best of The Running Record Ai Ai 6 2


writing messages is an excellent way for a stu-dent to be introduced or to continue his/herinterest in using print to write personal mes-sages.

Writing a message is a vital part of thedaily Reading Recovery lesson. It is importantthat the child generates his/her own message.The message can be based upon a book he/sheworks through during the actual writingprocess with the support of the teacher. Thewritten message now becomes the text forrereading. The meaning of the self-composedmessage is clearly in focus for the author-readerand provides a rich source of cues for selfchecking.

Reading Recovery teachers may need tosupport the child or even shift the child inorder to "hatch out" a meaning rich sentence.Early in their Reading Recovery program,many students are comfortable with a safe pat-tern for writing, such as "I like to , I lovemy , I can see a ." Although this is anacceptable starting point, the teacher mustquickly and expertly shift the child to less safebut more productive writing. Talking a bitabout the wonderful story that has just beenread for the running record before pulling outthe writing book often provides a beautiful sen-tence. Reading Recovery teachers should alsomonitor their own behavior so that the child'smessage is not built on the teacher's pattern inorder to provide an opportunity to work onspecific words. Do not sacrifice the power ofthe child's composing a message for the sake ofitem teaching. One section of the proceduresoffers an exception to the child's control ofgenerating the sentence. "When It Is Hard toRemember" (Clay, 1985) offers procedures forthe few children who have difficulty withrecall on most occasions and are having diffi-culty with the basic links of oral language withprinted text. Even in this special case, note onpage 80, the procedure is stated to "encouragethe child to include the word in his writtenstory." The Reading Recovery teacher should

not say "write a story with 'can' in it today" butrather, should value and recognize the power ofworking with the child's own message.

Writing their own message ensures afamiliar structure that reflects the chil-dren's own oral language.

The structure of the written messageshould reflect the child's language. Why areself-composed messages important for ReadingRecovery? Why should we as ReadingRecovery teachers accept grammatically incor-rect constructions?

An example is a message like "He goed tothe store." The intent of the writing is not toproduce grammatically correct sentences butfor the child to discover the relationshipbetween oral language and symbolic print. Inthe beginnings of learning to read and write,learning the systematic way that printed text isused to record messages overrides our concernfor "correct" grammar. Sentence structures thatmirror the language structures of the childincrease the child's opportunities to use strate-gies that enable him/her to predict text, moni-tor for accuracy, detect errors, and self-correct(Clay, 1985). Familiar text structure is guaran-teed through rereading of the child's own writ-ing. The child's familiar written stories mayform the core of familiar rereading material atthe early stages of the child's program inRoaming Around the Known.

As children build an understanding of howprinted language operates through their writingand as they move along in their lessons, thestructure of their stories may be influenced bythe book language they hear and read daily.The quantities and qualities of the little booksin Reading Recovery provide a rich source ofinteresting and fun stories and book languagepatterns. Some examples are: "I'll fim-fam-fight'em", "Grandpa, Grandpa come with me."Many Reading Recovery students easily incor-porate book language into their stories.Through discussing the stories read and/or talk-

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ing about important personal events, a sen-tence or story that has elements of a more for-mal written language structure naturallyemerges. However, the teacher is cautioned onchanging the child's sentence during the stagewhen the child is trying to establish a linkbetween oral and written language. To changeor not to change, depends, as always, on thechild's stage of progress. For a further discussionof this aspect of writing, please read "Thoughtsin writing," found in Clay (1979, pages 89-90).

Using the child's written text for reread-ing and reassembling strengthensimportant reading strategies.

As the child works to write his/her sen-tence, rereading should be encouraged or evendemanded. Rereading the sentence may pro-mote self-monitoring and independence (Clay,1982). During rereading the child may alsobecome aware of the purpose of standard letterforms, layout, and spacing. Writing standardsnow have a functional value. Many teachers inthe classroom and some Reading Recoveryteachers encourage their students to use "fingerspacing" when writing their sentence.

I view finger spacing as a prop. Many timesit is an awkward prop. Clay states (1985, page63) "props should be used only for the periodfor which they are essential." Students need tolearn to visually sort out the spacing of lettersand words in lines of print. The teacher'sreminders and the child's dependence on thephysical use of "finger spacing" do not promotethe visual analysis of placement. They are orshould be only a temporary device for check-ing. Because of the awkward coordination offinger spacing and writing, Reading Recoveryteachers may want to consider the temporaryuse of a small piece of sentence strip paper todemonstrate the spacing concept and to use asa checking device. But even this prop shouldbe hurriedly dismissed as the child develops theconcepts of word boundary spaces.

Reassembling the cutup sentence is a basic

component of the Reading Recovery lesson.What is the child learning as he/she reassem-bles the cutup sentence? Clay (1982) liststhese examples:

One-to-one correspondence of printedand spoken wordsDirectional movementSequencingMonitoring/checking strategiesSearching for visual cuesHolding meaning and structure in mem-ory to use as cuesBreaking oral language into segmentsWord studySelf-correcting.

The mutual benefits of reading and writingare so strong in the Reading Recovery programthat it has been suggested that the true nameof the program should be Reading and WritingRecovery! As a Reading Recovery teacher, youhave the evidence presented to you daily asyou work with students. You experience thepower of building on the child's writingstrengths to get accelerated progress in reading.You see the gains the children make in bothreading and writing as they are discontinuedfrom the program and continue to learn andmake progress as successful students in theclassroom. "Writing plays a significant part inthe early reading process." (Clay, 1982, p. 208.)444

BibliographyClay, Marie (1985). The early detection of reading

difficulties. Auckland, NZ, and Portsmouth,NH: Heinemann.

. (1982). Observing young readers.Auckland, NZ, and Portsmouth, NH:Heinemann.

. (1979). Reading: The patterning of complexbehavior. Auckland, NZ, and Portsmouth,NH: Heinemann.

Fried, Mary (1989). What do you want to writetoday? The Running Record, A Newsletter forReading Recovery Teachers. 1 (4), p.3.



Learning to Look at PrintAutumn 1992

by Steve HansellTeacher Leader

Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio

r arty strategies of reading (left-to-right ori-Lientation, one-to-one matching, and findingwords) can be directly related to learning tolook at print. As adults, it is easy to forget thatwe have to learn how to look at things. Ourfamily recently spent a week on Great AbacoIsland in the Bahamas. Since the roads thereare few and deeply rutted, we got around by aboat we had rented. The waters in the area arerelatively calm and contain all of the beautifulcolors you see in travel brochures and paint-ings. In addition, the water is clear enough tosee giant starfish on the bottom where it is 25feet deep.

The problem for a boat renter is how toknow what the colors of water mean in rela-tion to depth. To learn where it was safe tocruise full-throttle and where it was necessaryto go slowly, we had to learn to look at thewater. This meant going slowly at first andthen gradually testing new hypotheses as wegained experience. By the end of the week, weknew a few familiar channels that were safe atany tide; we knew a few channels that weresafe at high tide only; and we had a workingsystem for speeding up or slowing down whenwe were in unfamiliar water. In short we werelearning how to look at the water to achieveour purposes.

Most children who have been read to forfour years before they enter first grade do notneed to learn how to look at print. This factmakes it easy for teachers to think that a childwho has not learned to look at print has littlehope of learning to read. A common myth isthat a child who reverses letters after a monthin first grade has some incurable condition.

While it is true that this child has more tolearn, it is not true that he cannot learn.Instruction in looking at print is instructionaimed at helping a child learn the early strate-gies of reading.

Helping a Child Learn to LookInstruction in looking at print can take

place at the levels of text, word, and letterwithin a single lesson. At the text level, wehelp a child point to words in a left-to-rightdirection. As necessary, the child may need touse a long pointer to slow down rapid, approxi-mate pointing and develop slower, more precisepointing. To point accurately while reading,the student must develop a wide range ofunderstanding, including knowing what a wordis in both spoken and written language.

The whole task of composing and writingsentences requires attention to print. As wesupport the child's writing, we often digressbriefly to pay attention to a particular word orletter. Instruction and supported practice inmaking spaces between words gives a child theopportunity to develop the concept that aword is a group of letters surrounded by spaces.The teacher also has opportunities to help thestudent look carefully at words that are easyand productive to learn. We ask the student totake to fluency a word that can almost be writ-ten by having him or her look at print andwrite that word several times until he or shecan do so quickly, without looking at a model.For a student who has difficulty with this task,we digress further to attend to letter formation.Alternatively, we may ask the student to matcha model of the word with magnetic letters. As


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Section 5: Teaching and Learning in Reading RecoveryLearning to Look at Print

necessary, we model, guide hands, and ask thechild to trace letters and words. It may seem tous that we are teaching words, but we are usingthese words and the letters that they are madeup of to teach a child to look at print as a partof learning early strategies.

Follow up instruction in reconstructing thetext from a cut-up teacher-written sentencestrip also requires the child's attention to wordsand sentences. We deliberately cut these sen-tences into chunks that provide manageablechallenges to the child's understanding ofprint. At these early stages, we cut sentencesinto phrases and/or words so that the child willhave to examine the print in order to recon-struct the sentence. If needed, we leave themodel in plain view and ask the child to placethe cut up words or phrases with the samewords or phrases in the writing book. As quick-ly as possible for the individual, we move toasking the child to reassemble the sentence onthe table top and to reconstruct the sentencewith the writing book closed. By the time achild can regularly reconstruct the sentencewithout looking back and forth at the modelseveral times for each word, he has probablylearned to see print as words made up of letters.Still, we must be careful not to assume that hesees words as we do. He may recognize a wordjust by the first letter or the last letter, thelength, or some other feature we do not use.This whole process will vary according to thestrengths and needs of individuals.

A first grade teacher expressed concernthat one of her students who is in ReadingRecovery could read a word on one page, butcouldn't read the same word on another page.This comment may be analyzed to suggest thatthe teacher thinks the child sees what theteacher sees when she looks at the word.Again, this may be true for children who havelearned to look at print, but it may not be truefor those who have not. The child who doesnot know how to look at print may focus onone aspect of a word (the "1" in look, for

example) on one page and another aspect ofthe same word (perhaps the "k") at anothertime. Even after repeated formations of mag-netic letters or writing, when a child who doesnot know how to look at print sees the sameword in context or in contrast to another word,he may not be able to distinguish it as beingthe same. Alternatively, he may recognize it asbeing "that word" but not be able to label it.We will be less frustrated as teachers if we rec-ognize this situation as being representative ofthe child's lack of knowledge of how to look atprint. Once we recognize this state, we canteach for strategies by asking the child to com-pare the word to a model once more, to make amatch.

A child's knowledge about print takes yearsto develop. He learns to look at print in differ-ent ways as he engages himself in the task ofmaking sense of marks on paper. The teacher'srole is to observe the child's behavior, hypothe-size what the child may be thinking to producethat behavior, and respond to the behavior insuch a way as to allow the child to reach fur-ther than he could on his own. To do this, theteacher must have his or her own theory ofreading, try to make sense of the child'sattempts, and have the ability to present thechild with experiences that may provide evi-dence of a need to look at print in a new way.

We would not presume that we could navi-gate a boat throughout a small region after oneweek of practice in looking at the water there.We know we simply do not have enough expe-rience to create correct hypotheses with thesame speed as a native of the area. Similarly,because we learned to navigate the waters ofAbaco Sound, we would not expect to see thesame features in the Chesapeake Bay, or inLake Erie, or the Mississippi River. A masternavigator, like a good reader, never stops learn-ing to look at the medium within which heworks. Learning to look at print is a progres-sion. We discover that we process print fromleft to right (in English) and that the alphabet-

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Section 5: Teaching and Learning in Reading RecoveryLearning to Look at Print

is nature of our print forgoes simple phoneticmatching. Our print allows for similar spellingof meaningful units even when they have dif-ferent pronunciation (nation, national) and forvariants of spelling patterns from other lan-guages (ballet, racquet, beautiful, science).Specific relationships among spelling patternsmay be used by readers at many levels, but thereaders may not be consciously aware of thepatte. s. Once a child engages in looking atprint, he has the opportunity to learn wordsand learn about words as he develops thestrategies of monitoring, self-correcting, andsearching for visual cues. While meaning is thegoal of reading and meaning cues, good readersorchestrate their search for meaning with theirknowledge of language and their knowledge ofprint.

Comprehension precedes knowledge ofprint at these early stages, but without develop-ing a thorough knowledge of print, a child islimited to dependence on a strong introductionto the text and strongly supported reading. Achild who engages in reading discovers newinformation about print as he reads just as fre-quently as he discovers new information aboutthe ways authors organize text. It is this grow-ing knowledge of the world, language, text andprint that allows a child to rapidly recognizewords. The speed and fluency of a good firstgrade reader belies the fact that he may beusing his knowledge of print to figure out newwords on the run. But this fluency begins whenwe help a child learn to look at print. -\1-1-4

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Organizing Reading Recovery Lessons for Efficiency and EffectivenessAutumn 1993



Completing a whole Reading Recovery les-son in 30 minutes is a challenge for both

teachers and students. Yet the rationale behindthe time limit for lessons is firmly grounded inthe early field-trial research for ReadingRecovery and in the learning theory thatinforms the program. Good teaching withinthe time limit requires teachers to respondquickly and flexibly to students, but this kindof efficiency is not sufficient; teachers mustalso be effective decision makers at each step ofthe lesson. This article outlines some of thecommonalties among efficient teachers whoare also effective decision makers.

Why a lesson time limit?The early field trial research in New

Zealand was a critical factor in establishing 30-minute lessons. In the 1978 field trials averagelesson time varied across the five teachersinvolved from a low of 26.7 minutes to a highof 40.5 minutes. Clay found that the benefitsof the lesson generally decreased after a periodof 30 minutes, perhaps because the child'sattention tended to wane or simply becauseenough had been accomplished for one day.

By the 1979 replication of the field trialstudy with 48 teachers, lesson time was estab-lished at 30 minutes (Clay, Early Detection, pp.88-95). This period offered sufficient ReadingRecovery teaching for the maximum number ofstudents. This decision contributed to the effi-ciency of the program. Clay states: "Decisionsnot to do certain things in recovery pro-grammes may be very important. This is asomewhat novel concept in the area of readingdifficulties. It relates to economical use of the

child's learning time" (Early Detection, p. 84).Clay discusses error rate and teaching effi-

ciency in Becoming Literate: "A higher errorrate blurs the matrix of cues. The childbecomes confused and instead of a progressivegain in skill the activity becomes non-progres-sive" (p. 307). Perhaps this paraphrase wouldapply: A higher rate of teaching blurs theopportunity for learning.

Lessons that are too long may provide theteacher with too many opportunities for teach-ing and confuse the child, making the lessonsnon-progressive. The 30-minute limit requiresselectivity, intensity, and teacher decision mak-ing that involves efficient choices on the run.Clay states: "Acceleration depends uponteacher selection of the clearest, easiest, mostmemorable examples with which to establish anew response, skill, principle, or procedure"(Early Detection, p. 53)

Commonalities Among Effective,Efficient Teachers

With all of this reasoning and research,teachers still find it difficult to include allaspects of a lesson within 30 minutes. Moreexperienced teachers often develop their owntechniques for efficiently completing the les-son. Fast pacing is facilitated by constructing ahigh level of knowledge of the procedures forresponding to students. Knowledge and prac-tice allow teachers to respond more quicklyand flexibly, and lessons become more efficient.But lessons must also be effective, and the crit-ical element in effective teaching is teacherdecision making. Observations of effectiveteachers suggest there are important decisions


Section 5: Teaching and Learning in Reading RecoveryOrganizing Reading Recovery Lessons for Efficiency and Effectiveness

to be made at each step of the lesson. Whileeach of these decisions is based on a specificinteraction at a specific time, there are com-monalities among efficient teachers who arealso quite effective.

Overarching DecisionsEfficient teachers decide in advance on a

probable focus for a lesson based on carefulobservations of the child and an understandingof what the child needs to learn how to do.They concentrate on supporting the student inthe general direction of this focus throughoutthe lesson. Perhaps more importantly, efficientteachers ignore many aspects of reading behav-ior that would distract the student from thefocus of the lesson. Concentrating to get achange in student learning and ignoringbehavior that is unrelated to the focus of thelesson is the essence of efficient decision mak-ing. Decisions that support the lesson focus canbe seen in every part of the lesson. However, itis important to note that the focus is not rigid-ly adhered to; effective teachers remain tenta-tive and flexible. They seem to recognize unex-pected opportunities for teaching based on thechild's responses. It is as if they have a clearpicture of the destination the child needs toreach and they have thought out a route forthe trip, but they are quick to recognize a newroad or short cut and they self-correct anywrong turns.

Another overarching factor in efficientteaching is organization. Materials are conve-niently located for immediate use. Books arepre-selected and ready for each child.Instructional records are complete and wellorganized. One hallmark of the teacher who isnot only efficient but also quite effective is thequality of observational notes and the depth ofanalysis reflected in these notes.

Rereading Familiar BooksSeveral enabling decisions are made during

rereading. The first is to provide the studentwith a choice of books. Students will almost

always choose books that are appropriate todevelop fluency and will allow new discoverieswhile reading. Teachers must be careful, espe-cially as students are accelerating, to provideeasy books among the choices. Rereading is atime to develop fluency, not a time to strugglethrough a book that was difficult on yesterday'srunning record. Teaching points are selectiveand at least one easy book is read fluently dur-ing this time.

It is also vitally important that students getto reread many short books rather than parts ofone longer book. Allington's research showsthat successful first grade readers read about1,600 words per week. We must insure at leastthat much practice for readers who need toaccelerate. Clay states: "A child who is on theway to independence needs as many books as pos-sible at his level. Allow the child to learn to read byreading" (Italics by Clay, Early Detection, p. 68).

One way to provide time for rereading sev-eral books is to be quiet while students arereading fluently. Effective teachers may providepositive comments as a student turns the pagerather than interrupting the reading. Effectiveteachers remember that the goal is NOT wordperfect reading, so they do not interrupt fluentreading to correct minor errors. Instead, theycelebrate the fluency and construction ofmeaning during rereading. The exception tothe general guideline of not interrupting fluentreading occurs early in the program if a studentinvents the text. This supported situation isideal for helping the child begin to checkapproximations with the print; and for manychildren who are freely inventing, matchingwords and text is a priority in early lessons.But, as children acquire basic concepts aboutprint, fluent strategic reading with occasionalminor errors must be supported and valued.

Running RecordEffective teachers use running record time

to observe, record, and analyze student behav-ior. They do not try to teach the student at this


69


time or influence his behavior. If the studentdoes not try to figure out a word and oftenappeals to the teacher, the teacher's role is tourge "You try it" but to provide the word ifthere is no response. These decisions (such ashow long to wait or when to tell) are hard tomake. We want to provide time for a studentto do reading work, but all of this must be donerapidly. The teacher who waited a full 65 sec-onds before telling the student a word, notonce, but three times within the same lessonwas not operating efficiently. In addition, thechild lost some of the meaning of the story.Think of all the learning that could have goneon in those three minutes!

Through observing, recording, and analyz-ing, effective teachers decide while the studentis still reading what they will come back toafter the running record. Many star, or mark insome other way, the points to which they willattend and make sure the page number isnoted. Then, after a brief interaction about thestory, they return to tell the student howpleased they were with a specific performance(such as rereading and trying a word with theappropriate first sound). Efficient teachersknow they can get caught in a swamp of dis-traction with too much talk at this time.Asking a student how he/she arrived at ananswer is often much less productive than sim-ply telling the student what he or she did andasking for confirmation.

Effective teachers also choose points forstrategy instruction to fit the overall focus ofthe lesson. They ignore some errors and selectthe most productive examples to teach at theprocessing/problem solving level. I havewatched inefficient teachers take as long asfive minutes after a running record to reviewevery error a student made. A scattered reviewof every error wastes time and weakens psychicenergy needed to learn. Remember that toomuch teaching may blur the learning. I sawone effective teacher ignore a loss of 1:1matching and even skip a line of text when the

student was obviously beyond that point. Thestudent was clearly reading for meaning; theloss of match was only a careless error. Theteacher used the time to address a more power-ful example that helped to move the child for-ward in his learning. This teaching reflectedefficient and effective decision making on therun.

Letter/Word WorkEffective teachers know what students

know and do not know; they ask for responseson the leading edge of the student's knowledge,yet they are ready to support as much as need-ed. Effective teachers know when to demon-strate, when to prompt specifically, when toprompt more generally, and when to wait. Forearly learning gains, effective teachers providetime for slower processing with the first lettersand words that the student learns. Effectiveteachers know it is necessary to take the timefor students to learn how to learn letters andwords through models and oral repetition andby tracing, writing on various surfaces, andmanipulating magnetic letters during the les-son. They do not accept the first correctresponse as representing learning. They insiston over learning and returning to text as partof learning how to differentiate one word fromanother. Often they come back to check onlearning the following day. As learning pro-gresses, effective teachers seem to sense it istime to shift gears; and they insist on the mostrapid response the child can make. Learninghow to learn letters and words shifts up to flu-ency practice and automatic responding.

Effective teachers know when to move onfrom initial consonant substitution to finalconsonant substitution and to the examinationof patterns in words. They celebrate the dis-coveries that students make on their own andquickly share other examples of the same con-cept. When students do not examine print,effective teachers provide the tasks of makingand dismembering words with magnetic letters

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to draw attention to the detail that these stu-dents overlook. However, effective teachersalways look for ways to promote leaps inknowledge rather than small steps or a setsequence of learning. They seem to be expertson reacting to the child's responses or insights.

WritingEfficient teachers get sentences from their

students quickly - often with a direct promptabout the running record book. Compare theprompts "What would you do with a cat likeGreedy Cat?" and "What do you want to writeabout today?" The latter prompt may be effec-tive for verbal students, but many ReadingRecovery students need a suggestion for com-posing a sentence quickly. A guaranteed way toslow the composition of a sentence is toprompt, "Tell me a sentence with the word`and'," a procedure which is discouraged inReading Recovery. I observed a teacher leaderturn this ineffective prompt into a highly effi-cient and productive prompt. She said, "Doyou like ice cream?" "Yes!" replied the student.The teacher leader responded, "Tell me twokinds of ice cream you like." A personal sen-tence was easily generated which containedthe word 'and.'

As soon as effective teachers hear the com-posed sentence, they begin to decide how theywill deal with each part. They think aboutwhich words are known, which would beappropriate for sound analysis, which wordsmight be taken to fluency, and which wordscould be compared to other known words.They decide what will be the most productiveuse of time based on what the child needs tolearn how to do. Effective teachers don't workon every word, but they do work very efficient-ly and productively on the practice page. DianeDe Ford's research on the writing component ofReading Recovery produced revealing evidenceon the effective use of the practice page. Oneteacher who had high student outcomes had244 entries on the practice page over 60

lessons while a teacher with low student out-comes had only 34 entries on the practice pageover 60 lessons. Entries were defined as eachword put in boxes for hearing sounds in words,words practiced for fluency, any endings or let-ters practiced for fluency or formation, or sepa-rate words written to compare to other words(De Ford, D., in press 1993). It is clear thateffective teachers take the time to teach whattheir students need to learn how to do on theirown, but this teaching must be decisive inorder to fit it into the lesson efficiently.

New Book IntroductionNew book introduction begins with the

selection of an appropriate book. Ideally, thebook will be interesting to the individual stu-dent and have mostly familiar concepts. Theformat of the book, number of lines per page,length of sentences, placement of words, etc.,will be appropriate. The effective teacher mustknow the book and the student well enough toprovide an introduction that bridges the majorpitfalls but leaves enough work to challengethe student to apply the strategies which arethe focus of the learning.

Having introduced the book, the teachermust allow the student to do the reading work.When necessary, the teacher prompts forstrategies, using questions suggested by EarlyDetection. The effective teacher knows how tosupport attention to meaning and prompt orquestion at a level appropriate for the child'scurrent way of responding while also promot-ing new learning. Effective teachers are flexiblein using different levels of questioning basedupon the child's needs. Consider the level ofsupport provided by the following questionsfrom Early Detection (pp. 72-74):

Low Support:"You made a mistake on that page. Can you

find it?""Try that again. ""Were you right?"


P7.


Higher Support:"Does that look right?""Can we say it that way?""It could be but look at"Would fit here?""Do you think it looks like r)

We have all seen a lesson in which ateacher provides a prompt that has no connec-tion with the text. An extreme exampleinvolved a teacher who used the followingquestion to prompt a student who had madethe first sound of "cat" but had not said theword: "What do you have at home that goes`meow'?" This prompting outside of the textualcues is known as inducing the word. It is aninefficient, teacher-dependent, non-progressiveand perhaps even desperate form of prompting.One effective teacher gave herself this guide-line for prompts: "Am I asking a question thechild could ask himself at another time, atanother difficulty and get good results for figur-ing it out?" The prompts "Do you know aword like that?" and "Do you know somethingthat ends with those letters?" fit this teacher'scriteria. "What do you have at home that goesmeow?" has major limitations.

Effective teachers think deeply about whatthe student knows and what cues are availableto produce the most effective prompt. They askthe student to respond with the highest levelof independence possible by adjusting the levelof support provided by their prompts as thechild's skills change over time.

ConclusionsEffective teachers are not only efficient in

the pace of the lesson but they also understandthe child's strengths and what the child needsto learn how to do; this knowledge brings focusto the learning in each lesson. Effective teach-ers also have a commitment to helping the stu-dent search for and use meaning as a primarysource of cues and as the outcome of all read-ing and writing. They have keen observational

and analytical skills which enable them tomake intuitive decisions to help the studentdiscover new learning, applying their strategicproblem solving and develop a self-extendingsystem. 444

ReferencesClay, Marie M. (1985). The early detection of

reading difficulties. Auckland NZ:Heinemann.

Clay, Marie M. (1991). Becoming literate: Theconstruction of inner control. Portsmouth,NH: Heinemann.

Lyons, Carol A., Pinnell, G.S., and DeFord,Diane E. (1993). Partners in learning:Teachers and children in Reading Recovery.NY: Teachers College Press.

7 2



Dual Processing in Reading: Don't "Get Your Mouth Ready" YetAutumn 1994

by Noel JonesTrainer of Teacher Leaders

University of North Carolina, Wilmington

On a recent visit I observed a ReadingRecovery teacher, "Nelda," working with

"Johnnie" (fictitious names) on the new bookLook for Me (Wright Group, Level 5). Johnniepaused at the word 'him' and Nelda prompted,"Reread that line and get your mouth ready forthe first letter." This episode was repeatedthree times on different words during the firstreading of the book. However, I saw no evi-dence that this prompt was helpful to Johnnie.He continued to stop when he came to a hardword, and he really didn't seem to know whatto do.

Nelda's lesson set me to thinking aboutmany lessons I have observed recently. In myopinion the prompt, "Get your mouth ready"has become too common and is often used tooearly in a child's program. I wonder whetherteachers might need to think more deeplyabout what they are asking children to do.

This procedure is introduced in ReadingRecovery: A Guidebook for Teachers in Training(Clay, 1993), Section 10, "Linking SoundSequences." Here Clay points out that childrenwho would become efficient readers must learnhow to: a) analyze spoken words into compo-nent sound elements when writing, and b)visually analyze printed words by using letters,letter clusters, and/or word parts while reading.

In addition, they must learn how to linkthese two capabilities in the process of readingfor meaning on authentic or continuous text.One of the suggestions Clay makes under theheading, "If the child finds it hard to go fromletters to sounds," is the following:

When the child comes to a problem word in thetext, sound the initial letter for him to help him to

predict what the right word might be. Then transferthis sounding task to him by getting him to attend tothe initial letter or letters and to get his mouth readyto say it. The aim is to make him more conscious ofa strategy that will help him to eliminate the wordsthat would fit the context but not the first lettercues.

This notion becomes very alluring to manyteachers in training because they realize theimportance for young readers of using lettersound cues as well as meaning and languagestructure while reading. Perhaps also their pre-vious experience has given them a strong biastoward the use of letter sound cues.

Far too often the prompt, "Get your mouthready," proves unsuccessful, and the teacherends up telling the child the word or givingtext-specific hints to induce the word. Often Iobserve that these same children pause andwait for help when they come to a problemword. My advice to these teachers is, "Don't`Get your mouth ready' yet." Be careful not tooveruse this prompt or use it prematurely. Youmay be asking children to do something hardbefore they've learned to do something easierthat they need to bring under control first.This prompt suggests that children can predicta word based upon at least two considerations:the meaning of the story and the sound repre-sented by an initial letter. Let's think abouthow the ability to do this might develop.

At the beginning of their program, chil-dren read patterned texts with supportive illus-trations and they hear the teacher say the lan-guage pattern of the text during the bookintroduction. This combination of story mean-ing, recency in hearing the language, and sup-portive pictures guides the child towards cor-

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Section 5: Teaching and Learning in Reading RecoveryDual Processing in Reading: Don't "Get Your Mouth Ready" Yet

rect responding. In a rather simple way, theyare engaged in dual processing, based uponmemory for language and direct picture sup-port. It is a much more complex task for achild to try to use the first letter of a word plusthe general meaning of the story and perhapsan illustration to generate a response that fitsboth the sound cues and the meaning cues.This requires finding a solution to a problemthat simultaneously fits two different require-ments.

How does a child develop the ability to dothis? I suspect that there are at least two, prob-ably overlapping, stages.

First, the child has to develop some confi-dence and control over generating a responsethat fits the meaning of the story or sentence.Teachers may think that this is easy, since theysee many children who are quick to inventwhat they think the text might say. However,the task quickly becomes more difficult as thepictures become less supportive. The child isalso learning how to monitor his/her readingbased upon one-to-one matching and usingknown words. As the child learns to look atand use the print, he/she is more conscious ofcoming up with an appropriate word to fit aspecific word-form in the text. Coming up witha meaningful substitution is an accomplish-ment that should not be overlooked or trivial-ized. Children need to know that this is whatwe want them to do; they need freedom torespond this way and they need supportiveresponse: "I like the way you tried that." It isimportant that teachers value the child's prob-lem solving attempts when they do not resultin a correct response. It is the processing whichis valued, not the accuracy.

Second, the child must learn how to cross-check a meaningful response against what isseen in the text. Cross-checking is a moresophisticated way of monitoring or checkingon one's reading. To cross-check a meaningfulresponse against its visual form, the child mustcheck what he sees against what he might

expect to see. There are probably several waysthis could be done. The child might analyzethe sound of the word he has just said, predictthe letters he might see, and then comparethem to the letters in the word he is lookingat. Alternatively, he might remember some-thing about the appearance of the word he hasjust said, and see that it does not look like theword in print. Other processing may havetaken place. We cannot be sure what the childis thinking as they read text; we can onlyobserve the behavior or response. In additionto the ability to judge whether the word theysaid fits the meaning of the text, cross-check-ing requires an attitude of checking on oneselfwhile reading. Cross-checking meaningful pre-dictions with visual information also requiressome ability to hear sounds in words and asso-ciate them in letters.

Learning to cross-check one source ofinformation against another takes time, and ittakes even more practice to bring this opera-tion under control so that focused, consciousattention is not needed. Teachers should becareful not to introduce cross-checking demon-strations or prompts in ways that discourageconfident, meaningful substitutions.

I have grown to value the impulsive, rapidreading of young children as they respond tothe full meaning of the text, still keeping someattention on monitoring based upon earlystrategies. These children can then be taughtto cross-check on one or two carefully selectedexamples. After explicit demonstration andinstruction, prompting for cross-checking canbegin, but it should be limited to a few produc-tive examples in each lesson. This means thatsome substitutions may go unchallenged. Asthe child develops control over this process,he/she begins to cross-check responses inde-pendently and rapidly, almost before they areout of the mouth. When this happens, he/sheis on the way toward the more complicatedproblem-solving that we are looking forcoming up with just the right word that fits

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both the meaning and the letters.To help this capability develop and become

part of a child's processing takes careful timingbased upon close observation. There is animportant procedure which is part of the earlystrategy prompts for helping children establishthe basic concept of using the first letter alongwith other cue sources while they are reading.This is found under the heading "Locating oneor two known words" on page 40 of theGuidebook. "Reread the page or sentence up tothe known word-read-wrongly with fluentphrasing and stop, or, if you need to give morehelp, articulate the first sound of the problemword."

It is important to note that the problemword is a known word which has been readwrongly. Also note how much teacher supportor demonstration is being provided at this earlylevel. It is up to the teacher who is rereadingthe sentence to pull together the meaning andlanguage structure to help the child predict theword. And, it is the teacher who sounds thefirst letter of the child's known but problematicword. This is a good example of two basictenets of Reading Recovery instruction: beginwith what the child knows before venturingout into new territory and teach by demonstra-tion. Is this early, supportive strategy work lay-ing the foundation for linking sound sequencewith the letter sequence while reading text? Ithink the answer to this question is yes. Alsostated on page 40 is an important caution totake into consideration: "Be careful not toestablish a pattern where the child waits forthe teacher to do the work ... the child mustlearn that he must work at a difficulty, takesome initiative, make some links."

I suspect that many children who are beingprompted to "Get their mouth ready" too soondo not understand the task and/or are quitewilling to wait for the teacher to do the work.They end up sitting and trying nothing or try-ing nothing successful as they work with prob-lem words. This raises the question of when

the teacher should begin to prompt children touse meaning and visual cues simultaneouslywhile reading. Of course, there is never a clearanswer to this question, but there are certainthings to begin to take into account. I havesuggested above the importance of generatingmeaningful responses fluently, making progressin hearing sounds in words and predicting let-ters one would expect to see, and learning tocross-check meaning and/or language cuesagainst visual cues. These abilities probablydevelop simultaneously, but the teacher mustwatch to see that all are coming into play.

Another key consideration is what thechild appears to be noticing. I don't mean tosuggest that teaching should be dependentupon what the child wants to attend to. Wemust remember that our teaching movesshould play a role in what the child noticesand what he/she tries. But it is when we recog-nize what the child is trying to do or trying tofigure out and we build our teaching movesupon these things that we are probably mosteffective. Mary Fried (Trainer, The Ohio StateUniversity) once advised me not to introducethe prompt: "Try that again and get yourmouth ready to say that word." She suggestedthat it might be more powerful to see the childbeginning to do that and say, "Oh, I liked theway you started to get your mouth ready to saythat word." To me, that's an example of teach-ing to the child's notice.

A final point to keep in mind is part ofClay's admonition to give predominance tomeaning. If the child is reading with somemomentum and fluency and making meaning-ful substitutions, we say she is "reading at thetext level." If she is stopping and puzzling overwords and losing the meaning, we often say sheis reading at the word level. If our prompts areto be effective, we must keep children readingat the text level, and while they do so, we musthelp them become better and better about tak-ing visual cues into account as they read.

What I'm suggesting here is that we need

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to be careful in our prompting for use of visualinformation. We can easily lead children to tryto work at the word level. We also need toremember that children don't learn to read byconsciously applying the rules that we givethem, like "Get your mouth ready for the firstletter," any more than they read by applyingphonics rules. Attending to the visual form ofthe word while thinking of the meaning is animportant part of the searching strategy thatpromotes the development of a child's self-extending system. It is something that thechild must use and control almost at an uncon-scious level. We need to direct our promptsand demonstrations to what the child seems tobe noticing and help him/her make connec-tions between knowledge we think he/she hasin one area such as writing or reading to prob-lem solving in other areas. If we teach in thisway, which Clay calls "'following the child,"then we are promoting strategies which workin a generative way for children and whichenable them to learn more about print, aboutlanguage, and about reading every time theyread. -\144

ReferenceClay, M. M. (1993). Reading Recovery: A guide-

book for teachers in training. Portsmouth,NH: Heinemann Educational Books.

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Reading Recovery and Phonics: A Response for ParentsAutumn 1994



Editor's Note: In our work as ReadingRecovery teachers, we have many contactswith parents who are concerned about theirchild's progress in learning to read and arewilling to do what they can to help. Manyparents who have been saturated with mediaadvertisements on how easy it is to learn toread through "phonics" ask questions aboutReading Recovery and phonics instruction.At the Wright State University site, teacherleaders have taken a proactive stance bysending out information to parents before thequestions are even asked. The followingWright State information sheet for parentsmay help you to respond to the "phonics"questions. An article titled " The Profits ofReading: Is Hooked on Phonics really worththe cost?" was featured in the education sec-tion of Newsweek magazine on May 20,1991. This article would also be useful forteachers and teacher leaders who are oftenasked "phonics" questions.

Information letter for parents:Newspapers and magazines love arguments.

In education, a favorite argument is how toteach children to learn to read. Many peopleand now advertisers who are making millionsof dollarsthink that "phonics" is the best wayto teach students to read. This argument isvery logical. The difference between speakingand reading is print. When print can be relatedto sounds in words, people can read.

However, helping a child who has difficultyreading to relate print and sounds is not easy.Furthermore, even the strongest proponents ofphonics instruction, Jean Chall of Harvard

University, and Benita Blachman of SyracuseUniversity, agree that "no one has suggestedthat these activities provide a complete diet orencompass the child's entire day. Ideally, onewould want [phonics] activities to be incorpo-rated into a classroom where storybook readingwas commonplace, oral language experienceswere valued, basic concepts about print (e.g.,how to hold a book) and the function of read-ing and writing were developed, and childrenhad opportunities both to talk and to writeabout their experiences ... ." (Blachman,Topics in Language Disorders, 1991.)

Blachman also says: "In planning a pro-gram for young children ... it makes sense tostart with language games that do not involvewritten symbols." In other words, there is astep with oral language that comes beforebeing able to match a letter with a sound.

In Reading Recovery, we test what yourchild knows about letters and how they areused to represent sounds before we beginteaching. We work with your child to learn thenames of letters and to ensure he/she under-stands letters are used. Each day as we write,we ask your child to say words slowly that he orshe doesn't know. We ask him/her to push amarker for each sound in the word. As soon ashe/she knows some letter sounds, we askhim/her to name the letter or write the letterthat makes that sound. We create alphabetbooks to represent known letters and picturesthat have the same beginning sound. We cre-ate letter books with many pictures and wordsthat begin with the same letter. We use mag-netic letters to help draw your child's attentionto letter patterns in words (such as cat/mat,


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Section 5: Teaching and Learning in Reading RecoveryReading Recovery and Phonics: A Response for Parents

got/get). Finally, we ask your child to use whatwe know he or she knows about words to figureout unfamiliar words in books.

However, we do not require your child tosound out every word letter by letter. Based onthe research of Marie Clay, we ask your childto read many simple books and use all the cuesthat are available to him or her. We know thatthe flow of the sentence and the first soundoften let your child figure out phoneticallyirregular words such as have, was, and were.We know that pictures help your child figureout long words such as elephant, crocodile, andbanana.

We know that when we select books care-fully, your child enjoys the challenge of figur-ing out words by:

1. Checking the pictures.2. Rereading the sentence.3. Using the beginning letter /sound.4. Using the spelling pattern of the word, and5. Checking the attempt by saying the word

slowly and looking at the letters to see ifthey match.

We also have test scores to show that 90percent or more of the students we haveworked with over the past 8 years in ReadingRecovery have learned to read as well as theaverage of the class.

So, we ask your support. Instead of saying((sound it out" each time your child stops ormispronounces a word as he or she reads,please ask questions such as:

Does that (or what would) make sense?Does that sound right? (Does the sentenceflow smoothly?)Does that look right?

If the questions don't produce the expectedresults, tell your child the word and continueto enjoy the book together.

If you want to help your child with phon-ics, too, that's fine. Some enjoyable ways to dothis include:

1. Searching the room or pictures in a maga-zine or catalog. Name all the things thatbegin with a specific sound. Take turnsfinding and naming the objects.

2. Reading books that appeal to your child.Talk about the-letters; how are they thesame? How are they different?

3. Playing games in the car to give words thatrhyme or have the same beginning sound.

4. Encouraging your child to write notes tofriends and family. Rather than insisting oncorrect spelling, encourage him /her to saythe word slowly and write down any lettersfor sounds he/she can hear.

5. Reading and enjoying books together.

We thank you for your concern and help.-\144

78 Best of The Running Record \I \I \I

78


What Does Teaching at the Word Level Really Mean?Winter 1994

Rose Mary Estice, TrainerThe Ohio State University

Columbus, Ohio

When you discuss Reading Recoverylessons behind the glass or during school

visits, do you talk about whether the teachingwas at the word level or the strategy level? Ihave heard teacher leaders pose this question,and it is a critical issue. We certainly want ourteaching to facilitate the use of strategies andnot be focused on the learning of individualitems or words. As a teacher leader you mightbe talking about how word level teaching isineffective and does not promote accelerativelearning based on reading strategically. As ateacher you are trying hard not to teach at theword level and I couldn't agree more. But whatdoes teaching at the word level really mean?

I recently asked a group of ReadingRecovery teachers to provide examples ofteaching at the word level. Their responsesincluded asking the child to find a word, call-ing the child's attention to a word (maybe byasking what letter s/he would expect to see atthe beginning), and pointing out the visual dis-crepancies between two words. These examplesinvolve words, but they are not necessarilyexamples of teaching at the word level.Understanding why this is so requires anunderstanding of what is and what is notteaching for strategies.

Teaching for StrategiesTeaching for strategies facilitates the child's

use of strategies on another day or on anotherbook. The in-the-head problem solving thatthe child learns to do is generative to anothersituation. S/he can ask self-regulatory questionsto aid in the use of strategies. If you thinkabout some of the strategy prompts recom-

mended, it is easy to see how they are genera-tive to another situation and how they canbecome the child's own language. "Look at thepicture" or "Would that make sense?" are sim-ple illustrations of strategy level prompts thatcan become self-regulatory language for thechild in time. You would probably agree that"Did you run out of words?" or "Did thatmatch?" are strategy level prompts that thechild could eventually ask her/himself. Thehigher level prompts "Try that again and thinkabout what makes sense ... sounds right ...looks right" are also clear examples of strategyprompts that are generative to another day oranother book and are prompts the child caneventually ask her/himself. We must rememberthat teaching for strategies involves teachingthe child to read, not teaching the child toread a specific book. Empowering the childwith the use of these strategies on other daysand on other books is what makes the processso effective.

Word Level TeachingWord level teaching, in contrast to strategy

level teaching, is not generative to another dayor another book. It is directed to the learningof a specific word to read a particular book. Itdoes not foster the use of problem-solvingoperations or strategies while reading. The goalseems to be to "get the word right." The prod-uct rather than the process appears to drive theteaching.

One example of word level teaching isinducing the word, as in the prompt, "Whatcolor is your shirt? That's the word in yourstory!" This prompt will not help the child on


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Section 5: Teaching and Learning in Reading RecoveryWhat Does Teaching at the Word Level Really Mean?

another book and is not a question she couldeventually ask herself (unless she already knewthe word). The prompt does not foster inde-pendent problem solving and does not help thechild learn new strategies to use in reading.Other examples of word level teaching includeattention to particular words without any con-cern for the process or how that informationcould be used to problem solve at anothertime. Using magnetic letters to teach the word"along" so the child can read Along Comes Jakeand knocking on the table as Sam gets ready toknock on the door in Sam's Mask to elicit theword "knocked" are specific examples of a con-cern for the word and for accuracy, rather thanfor the in-the-head problem solving that couldeventually become self-regulatory.

Using Prompts to Search for VisualInformation

Keeping in mind our distinction betweenword and strategy level teaching, we can returnto the teacher examples listed in paragraphtwo. While it is true the teacher is callingattention to a specific word when asking thechild to locate a word, the prompt is strategicin that it encourages the child to look at theprint and use the visual information to helpherself.

Children will not learn to read if theydon't understand they have to use the visualinformation on the page. Helping them learnthis important understanding is part of theteaching we do early on ("Locating one or twoknown words"). Note what Clay says on page40 of Reading Recovery: A Guidebook forTeachers in Training under "Locating one or twoknown words":

On the earliest reading books begin to encourage thechild's attention to particular words in continuoustext by focusing on the words which he knows in anycontext home, community, classroom or ReadingRecovery.

She then provides us with specific promptsto use which foster the child's attention to the

print. Remember that these prompts are in the"Teaching for Strategies" section of the ReadingRecovery Guidebook and are at the strategylevel, not the word level, because the under-standing of the importance of looking at theprint is what is to be learned, not necessarilythe specific word. However, knowledge of a fewwords gives the child a way to check onher/himself at this very early stage, and, ofcourse, checking or monitoring is a criticalstrategy to be used in reading at any level ofcompetence. Clay states on page 40 of theGuidebook under "Checking on oneself or self-monitoring,"

The successful reader who is making no errors ismonitoring his reading at all times. Effective moni-toring is a highly skilled process constructed overmany years of reading. It begins early but must becontinually adapted to encompass new challenges intexts.

Locating one or two known words is alsogenerative because the child can begin tonotice words s/he knows in other books and onother days. The purpose is to help the childunderstand that the print on the page plays animportant role in reading books and that thewords can be a way of checking.

If we look in the Guidebook for the prompt"What do you expect to see at the beginning?",we would also find it in the "Teaching forStrategies" section. That's the first indicationthat it is not a word level prompt. You'll find iton page 41 under "Checking on oneself or self-monitoring." Using it will help the child learnto check on her/his reading in a very specificway: by checking what the word looks like.Yes, the child is attending to a particular wordin order to do this checking, but the checkingis what is important. The word is importantonly in providing a clear example. This kind ofprompting teaches the child to monitor in par-ticular ways; it does not teach the word and sois not a word level prompt.

The last teacher example of a word levelprompt was pointing out the visual discrepan-


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Section 5: Teaching and Learning in Reading RecoveryWhat Does Teaching at the Word Level Really Mean?

cies between words. Once again, the men-tioned prompt can be found in the "Teachingfor Strategies" section of the Guidebook. Thistime it is under "Cross-checking information"on page 41:

When the child can monitor his own reading andcan search for and use structure or message or soundcues or visual cues, begin to encourage him to checkone kind of cue against another. The teacher canpoint up discrepancies 'It could be ... but look at

The teacher is drawing the child's atten-tion to the visual discrepancies between her/hissubstitution and the word on the page, butonly as a way to teach the child to check onekind of cue against another. The purpose is notto teach the word, but to teach for the strategyof cross-checking information.

While reflecting on these responses to myquestions about word level teaching, I realizedthat prompts for the child to use visual cues orinformation were being confused with wordlevel teaching. As shown by the previous refer-ences to the Reading Recovery Guidebook, theseprompts are clearly suggested and intended tofoster the use of strategies. Are these beingidentified behind the glass and during schoolvisits as word level prompts and consequentlybeing given a bad rap? I would ask thatReading Recovery teachers and teacher leadersalike reflect on this possibility, as I haveobserved it on a number of occasions whenworking with Reading Recovery colleagues.

On page 287 of Becoming Literate, Claywrites,

Visual perception of textual features is certainly partof the inner processing system from which the readergenerates reading behaviors. The beginning readerhas to give attention to visual information as well asthe language and messages but gradually becomesable to use visual information without much con-scious attention, freeing more attention for the sys-tem.

Reading Recovery teachers need to under-stand how to teach for strategies and to use theprompts in the Guidebook to facilitate problem

solving on the child's part. It is critical that thechildren take the initiative to problem solveand that the teacher foster that process and notget in the way of it. It is critical that theReading Recovery teacher understand the rela-tionship between items and strategies, as thereis a place for both in learning to read. Clayexpresses this clearly on page 331 in BecomingLiterate:

Knowledge of a few items plus a usable strategy willhelp one go beyond the information that is alreadystored in the head and allow one to respond correct-ly to another novel item. A few items and a powerfulstrategy might make it very easy to learn a great dealmore.

I would like to suggest that you try to thinkabout a few items and a powerful strategyinstead of word level or strategy level teachingas you discuss Reading Recovery lessons and asyou reflect upon your own teaching. Thisstance may be less confusing and representsbetter how emerging readers take on theprocess of reading. .Nig\I

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81


Doing It by the Book ... or, Using the Language of theGuidebook in Our Teaching

Winter 1995

by Judith Neal, Trainer of Teacher LeadersCalifornia State University

We know the power of language when wemeet fellow Reading Recovery profes-

sionals for the first time, perhaps at a confer-ence, and immediately discover a commonalityin the ideas and observations we share. Wetalk about strategies, cueing sources, accelera-tion, discontinuing, "going to visual," and soon, and we develop an immediate kinship onthe basis of our shared experience in ReadingRecovery. Literally, we are "speaking the samelanguage!" That bond is established throughthe powerful medium of language, and it is thatsame powerful medium that characterizes ourinteraction with the children we teach inReading Recovery.

Reading Recovery lessons represent anintense level of interaction with individualchildren, and our language during lessonsserves different purposes. For instance, onepurpose, especially with English languagelearners, is to create opportunities for childrento produce language in order to extend theiroral language competence. The natural con-versational style that invites participation bythe child supports and offers opportunities forlanguage use. Similarly, language that we usein other parts of the lesson, such as the intro-duction to the new book, may be fairly open-ended in terms of sharing the ideas of the storyand allowing the children's responses to guideour further conversations with them.

In training both Reading Recovery teachersand teacher leaders, I have given considerablethought to the various roles that language playsin Reading Recovery lessons. One of thoseroles, the subject of this article, is directing

children's attention to specific problem-solvingsituations which they encounter while readingcontinuous text. It is in the context of prob-lem-solving at points of difficulty that childrendevelop strategies that they can later initiatefor themselves. Our language interaction withchildren at these points of problem-solving iscrucial to children's development of indepen-dent processing.

In Reading Recovery: A Guidebook forTeachers in Training, Clay provides exact word-ing for verbal prompts which tend to strength-en children's independent problem solving.Most of these prompts are located in Section 9,"Teaching for strategies," Section 10, "Linkingsound sequence with letter sequence," andSection 11, "Taking words apart in reading."The following examples of prompts from thesevarious sections all call for independentresponding on the part of the child: "Were youright?", "Check to see if what you read looksright and sounds right to you," and "Do youknow a word like that?" These examples canbe called "prompts for problem solving."

Clarity, careful wording, and a call for inde-pendent action by the child characterize thelanguage of the Guidebook. The verbalprompts provided for our use in the Guidebookneed to become a natural, albeit learned, partof our interaction with children. In this arti-cle, I will present a "case" for incorporating thespecific language of the Guidebook into our ver-bal interactions with children at those pointsin lessons when we are selecting a teachingpoint for a particular child (e.g., after the run-ning record) or when we are prompting chil-

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62

Section 5: Teaching and Learning in Reading RecoveryDoing It by the Book ... or, Using the Language of the Guidebook in Our Teaching

dren for strategy use at a point of difficulty dur-ing text reading. I propose a four-point ratio-nale for incorporating "prompts for problem-solving," as provided in the Guidebook, intoour teaching as a critical element ofeffectiveand powerful lessons for children. After con-sidering these various points, I turn to a shortdescription of how teachers work to incorpo-rate the language of the Guidebook into theirteaching.

1. The Guidebook prompts direct atten-tion in a way that is strategy-oriented. Thisfirst point of the rationale is significant for tworeasons. First, Clay has defined a self-extend-ing system for literacy as "... a set of behav-iours which lead the child to control more dif-ficult texts merely because he reads them. Theimportant components of a self-improving sys-tem are the in-the-head strategies which thechild initiates ..." (Clay, 1993, p. 61). InReading Recovery, it is incumbent upon theteacher to "... deliberately focus the child'sattention on such processing strategies" (Clay,1993, p. 61). Clay has described somethingthat Reading Recovery teachers try to do inevery lesson, that is teaching for the strategiesthat create a self-extending system. Opportun-ities to teach for strategies occur as childrenencounter situations for problem-solving asthey read text on just the right level of difficul-ty.

The deliberate effort to focus children'sattention on strategies for problem-solving isbest accomplished through language thatrequires children to respond strategically, i.e.,to take an action to initiate problem-solving.The prompts in the Guidebook provide oppor-tunities for growth toward self-extending sys-tems of the children. A close reading of theGuidebook reveals that many prompts are inquestion form ("Did that match?"), some arestatements ("Try that again."), and some arenon-verbal ("The teacher divides the word inprint with finger or masking card.")

A second point about the Guidebook

prompts being strategy-oriented relates to thebackground of teaching experience that all ofus bring to Reading Recovery training. If, forexample, we have learned to focus on students'deficits or have spent most of our instructionaltime working on items, the shifts demanded byReading Recovery are difficult. It is easy torevert to old language and old ways whenlearning a complex new way of thinking aboutchildren and about teaching. By setting a goalof using language that directs children's atten-tion to problem-solving opportunities, teachersare assisting themselves to make the shifts intheir thinking that effective Reading Recoveryteaching requires.

New thinking is reflected in new language;new language facilitates new thinking.

2. Using the language of the Guidebookhas potential for revealing to children ways ofthinking about reading. The teacher's speechis a model for potential self-talk that childrencan use in self-regulating ways. All languagewith children has that potential to the extentthat children construct the meanings of mes-sages for themselves (Tharpe & Gallimore,1989). In Reading Recovery, the use of clear,strategy-oriented prompts can enable childrento take action to construct meaning, and, ulti-mately, to remind themselves of potentialaction, incorporating self-regulating speechinto their thinking related to literacy.

Internalization of a repertoire of strategicaction does not occur as a direct transfer ofexact language into their minds but as a resultof being given opportunities to understand andapply problem-solving language in new situa-tions for themselves during text reading. Thegoal for children is "guided reinvention"(Tharpe & Gallimore, 1989) of a new principleor generalization (such as how to apply a strat-egy) which was initially introduced in a socialsetting. Our interactions with ReadingRecovery children during tutorial lessons repre-sent a powerful context in which to model newthinking, and provide opportunities for apply-


83


ing it, so that they can eventually internalize itas their own.

Clay talks about selecting the "...clearest,easiest, most memorable examples with whichto establish a new response..." (1993, p. 8). Ifwe conceive of children's development ofthought about literacy as a new response, thenthe clearest, most memorable examples toenable its development may be the particularprompts of the guidebook, used consistentlyand appropriately when selecting teachingpoints.

The self-talk I am describing here is onethat we must infer is occurring as we observeshifts in the child's responding. Clay cautionsnot to demand that the child verbalize self-reg-ulatory talk: "It seems legitimate to encouragea child to verbalize a strategy or a principle or arule-like consistency because these have...gen-erative value...It is a tactic that could be over-worked and could interfere with the automaticresponding that goes with fluency" (Clay, 1993, p.43). The value of using the specific languageof the Guidebook for developing children's self-talk is not that children can talk to us aboutwhat they are doing, but that they hear, under-stand, and acquire language that will becomeself-regulatory as one aspect of their developinginner control of literacy.

It is difficult to overestimate the influenceof what we say to children and its possibleinfluence upon their thinking, especially whenwe are working with them in a tutorial setting.The power of teacher talk is evident in thisReading Recovery teacher's experience. Thelesson was over; the child had selected severalbooks to take home and had put them in herbook bag. Before the teacher left the room towalk the child back to her classroom, the tele-phone rang and the teacher answered it.During the telephone conversation, the childtook her books out of the bag and started read-ing them out loud. The teacher could hear thechild audibly saying, "Does that sound right?"and then, "Good. You went back and fixed it

up."This was a banner day for that child,

because she had learned a little more aboutregulating her own reading by taking on thelanguage that the teacher had used during thelesson. In this situation, the child was sponta-neously verbalizing her inner speech, eventhough during the lesson the teacher had notasked her to talk about her strategies. Thechild was extending her inner control of litera-cy through new self-talk which was observablein this unusual, impromptu situation.

3. The prompts of the Guidebook repre-sent one of the outcomes of several years ofprogram development. In the research studiesreported by Clay (1979, 1993), she describesfour years of field testing that resulted in thefinal form of procedures as first used in theReading Recovery program in New Zealand.As part of that description she states, "A largenumber of techniques were piloted, observed,discussed, argued over, related to theory, ana-lyzed, written up, modified and tried out invarious ways, and, most important, many werediscarded... Thus the procedures were derivedfrom the responses of experienced teachers tochildren as they tried to read and write. Theprocess of refinement continued over the nextthree years, as several drafts of the teachingprocedures were written, discussed and editedby the teachers..." (Clay, 1993, p. 61.)

This description of the process of field-test-ing emphasizes the high level of teacherinvolvement in the development of ReadingRecovery procedures. Those proceduresbecame the basis of the Reading Recovery pro-gram that yielded the outstanding results of thefirst research studies in New Zealand.Although the prompts of the Guidebook werenot a focus of those research studies, from theseveral years of development and refinement ofReading Recovery, Clay selected prompts thatwere efficient and worked well on the basis ofcareful observation and analysis of interactionsbetween teachers and children. Clay and her

84 Best of The Running Record 4 .4

84


research team critically examined each suggest-ed prompt to be sure it had maximum potentialfor communicating clearly, suggesting strategyaction, and not proliferating teacher talk.Since the original years of development,Reading Recovery procedures have been updat-ed (Clay, 1993), and their effectiveness contin-ues to be available to us through the Guidebooklanguage as we implement the procedures inour lessons.

4. Using the language of the Guidebookwill help minimize extraneous teacher talk.Because the wording of the Guidebook is suc-cinct and concise, using the prompts helps tocontrol a tendency toward wordiness whenteaching. Consider the simple, "Did it match?"or "Does it look right?" in terms of efficiencyand economy of words. Left to our own way ofdirecting the child's attention, it is easy to usetoo many words for the intended message,thereby creating an unnecessary barrage of ver-bal information for the child. Monitoring andminimizing our level of verbiage also can con-tribute to the goal of increasing children'sactivity levels during lessons.

Teachers can gain a great deal of insightinto their use of language by audio taping oneor more of their lessons. By listening to andrecording what they are saying to children andhow they are saying it, teachers can comparethe level of teacher talk to student talk, theappropriateness of their prompting to thebehavior of the child, as well as check on howmuch of the language of the Guidebook they areactually using in their teaching.

How does taking on this new language toprompt effectively for problem-solving happen?Taking on new understandings and new lan-guage is a gradual process as we acquire experi-ence in teaching Reading Recovery children.Early in training, teachers may use props (suchas cards with the prompts written on them) orteach with the Guidebook open so that theycan "try on" the language. This will provide afeeling for the full power of the Guidebook lan-

guage. Even though at first, new ReadingRecovery teachers may not use the promptsappropriately at times, continued effort to usethem will result in instances of powerful teach-ing which will become more frequent as thelanguage becomes internalized and available"on demand" for individual children.

A guiding principle is that the Guidebookneeds to be used with a particular child inmind. This principle extends to using the lan-guage of the verbal prompts for problem-solv-ing that the Guidebook provides. To get a shiftin a child's processing, a teacher might havethe Guidebook handy, ready to refer to rightbefore the lesson or in thinking about the nextlesson. Some teachers take this a step fartherduring the lesson-planning process. They con-sider their strategy-level instructional focus foran individual child, and as they prepare thelesson, they write some of the specific promptsfrom the Guidebook that relate to their instruc-tional focus on their lesson record form.Perhaps just the writing-out process helps themto become more aware of the possible promptsto use with the child and helps to acquire more"ease" with the language of the Guidebook.

The most sophisticated effort I haveobserved of a teacher's attempt to take on theGuidebook language was a teacher who had asmall three-ring notebook, tabbed and dividedinto various categories by strategy. In each sec-tion were cards on which she had type-writtenthe prompts from the Guidebook. As shetaught her lesson, she tabbed to the sectionneeded for prompting an individual child atany given point and easily retrieved the appro-priate language to use.

Learning the language of the Guidebookprompts is an important goal for teachers, as Ihave outlined above. However, other refine-ments to the use of prompts are equally impor-tant as teachers develop greater teachingexpertise. As they work with learning the lan-guage, teachers also will need to considerwhich of the prompts for a given strategy are


85


appropriate for a particular child in relation-ship to their progress in the program. TheGuidebook prompts range from very supportiveprompting, such as, "Did you run out ofwords?" for attending to one-to-one correspon-dence, to "Try that again." The latter promptrequires a higher level of self-monitoring fromthe child than the first prompt. Selecting thelevel of prompt for the level of support eachchild requires is a critically important goal asteachers take on the language of theGuidebook.

Another important refinement is attendingto how the child is responding to our prompts.The child may be unable to take the actioncalled for if our prompt is too broad, or, as wesometimes say "high level", as in the exampleof, "Try that again." In that situation, we needto change to a more supportive and specificprompt. Additionally, prompting children isonly the beginning of a process by which they"reinvent" the meaning of prompts for them-selves. As Reading Recovery teachers, ourcareful observation of children's behavior mustalso be focused on the extent to which theyunderstand our prompts in terms of elicitingnew behavior as they perform literacy tasks.

All of the ideas above with respect to usingthe language of the Guidebook implies a processof moving from initial unfamiliarity and awk-wardness, to a working knowledge of possibleresponses to children's behavior, to a finalinternalization of the range of prompts that areavailable as we teach. Experienced teacherswill have internalized the Guidebook prompts;they will be able to access the appropriate levelof prompt for individual children; and, theywill monitor the extent to which the promptsthey are using are enabling shifts in children'sbehavior. But these abilities only accrue overtime as the total number of children teachershave taught increases and as they continue towork to develop their expertise. Clay cautionsin the preface of Reading Recovery: A Guide-book for Teachers in Training (1993), "Reading

Recovery teachers need special training tomake superbly sensitive decisions about how tointeract with the responses of the hard-to-teach child. This book provides the conceptu-alisation of how and why the programme is theway it is, and it puts the main procedures intoa text to be read. But how the teacher makesthese procedures work for the individual learn-er with unusual patterns of responding or withlimited expertise in necessary aspects of thetask is something that defies recording in a lin-ear script of words."

All of the new language we learn inReading Recovery reflects a new understandingof the reading process and how childrenacquire independence in reading and writing.The specific prompts for problem-solving pro-vided for our use in the Guidebook represent apowerful means of enabling children to achievethe acceleration that is the goal of ReadingRecovery intervention. Setting a priority ofusing these Guidebook prompts at appropriateproblem-solving points in our lessons; thinkingabout the prompts in relationship to individualchildren while teaching; carefully observinghow children are responding to promptsthese are aspects of developing our expertise inteaching for strategies in Reading Recoverylessons. The beginning point for this complex,but exciting, process is setting ourselves thegoal of doing it by the book. 444

ReferencesClay, M. (1993). Reading Recovery: A guide-

book for teachers in training. Portsmouth,NH: Heinemann.

Tharpe, R.G., & Gallimore, R. (1988).Rousing minds to life: Teaching, learning andschooling in social context. Cambridge,England: Cambridge University Press.


66


Using Patterns of Responding to "Follow the Child"Spring 1997

by Rose Mary Estice, Trainer of Teacher LeadersThe Ohio State University

"With problem readers it is not enough forthe teacher to have rapport, to generate inter-esting tasks and generally to be a goodteacher. The teacher must be able to design asuperbly sequenced programme determined bythe child's performance, and to make highlyskilled decisions moment by moment duringthe lesson" (Clay, 1993b, p. 9).

Reading Recovery teachers can determine"the child's literacy performance" by using

patterns of responding, that is, what the childmostly does in reading and writing. The child'sperformance informs the teaching, and closeobservation is the key to being able to "followthe child."

In Reading Recovery training classes, con-tinuing contact sessions, and other professionaldevelopment opportunities, teachers often talkof "following the child." Certainly that conceptis appropriate in Reading Recovery, an individ-ualized program which builds on the child'sspecific strengths. However, teachers need tohave a clear understanding of what "followingthe child" means.

For example, "following the child" is notfollowing the child to ineffective responses. Ifthe child's only attempt at unknown words isto sound them out or to skip them, the teacherwould not ignore these ineffective behaviors;rather, she would provide the child with alter-native behaviors. "Following the child" doesnot mean following him/her to a dead end. Ifthe child generates only short, safe stories,learning opportunities are very limited.Instead, the teacher would assist in extendingthe original story or engaging the child in gen-uine conversations that results in more inter-esting and complex stories.

Similarly, "following the child" does notmean allowing unlimited free choice in select-ing familiar books to read. If the child contin-ues to choose books that are so easy he/shedoesn't have to look at the print, or those thatare not familiar enough to provide opportuni-ties to read fluently with phrasing, the teacherwould remove those books from the ones to beselected. The teacher would provide choices bycarefully pre-selecting those books that bestprovide practice for orchestrating the range ofstrategies the child controls and then allow thechild to choose from those.

In "following the child," the ReadingRecovery teacher thinks beyond the word orbook to be read or the story to be written. Theteacher will make decisions based on thechild's current ways of responding and provideopportunities for this child to learn.

The Role of ObservationObservation is central to the idea of "fol-

lowing the child." One of the assumptionsupon which Clay founded Reading Recovery is,{I. that a programme for a child having diffi-culty learning to read should be based on adetailed observation of that child as a readerand a writer, with particular attention to whatthat child can do. The programme will workout of these strengths and not waste timeteaching anything already known" (Clay,1993b, p. 7). In other words, "following thechild" means observing what the child can do,determining what the child needs to learn todo, and providing appropriate learning oppor-tunities.

Clearly, recording observations on instruc-tional records is critical. If the teacher does not

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Section 5: Teaching and Learning in Reading RecoveryUsing Patterns of Responding to "Follow the Child"

have good records of her observations, it willbe difficult to "follow the child." Additionally,thorough analysis of the records is important.Careful thinking about what the child is most-ly doing, and neglecting to do, will enable theteacher to make good decisions for teaching onthe run and for subsequent teaching. An on-going analysis of records is necessary as shifts inlearning are recorded; this leads to shifts inteaching, since the teacher must always askherself, "What next does this child need tolearn?" The on-going process that leads toshifts in both teaching and learning over timemight be viewed as the teacher observing,recording, and teaching, and the child learn-ing, and independently problem-solving (seefigure on the below).

Observing (T)

indepPro(C)

Lear(C)

T = Teacher C = Child

The teacher observes the child reading andwriting, and she records the child's behavior onthe lesson records. From these recorded obser-vations, the teacher determines her teachingpriorities and teaches for strategies. The childresponds to the teaching and at first mayinconsistently apply the new learning but,given more opportunities, the new problem-solving behavior becomes independent; that is,the child uses strategies to problem-solve with-out prompts from the teacher.

Behaviors related to this shift in learning

are observed and recorded and the teacheragain considers what the child can do andwhat he/she needs to learn to do next in orderto determine subsequent teaching priorities.This diagram illustrates the essential processbut is not intended to over-simplify what hap-pens over time. The process is not necessarilyalways in one direction; however, the diagrammay be useful in supporting conversationsabout shifts in teaching and learning.

According to Clay, "What the teacher willdo is set some priorities as to which kinds ofnew learning she will attend to--just one ortwo things--and let the other behaviours thatwere incorrect go unattended at this time"(Clay, 1993b, p.15). How does the teacher useall of her observations to come up with just afew priorities? The answer to that question maybe found in the title, "Using Patterns ofResponding to 'Follow the Child.'"

Observing and using patterns ofresponding

Patterns of responding are simply what thechild mostly does. Priorities in teaching needto impact the child's current way of respond-ing, what he/she usually does at difficulty or aterror. It is not helpful to teach to what happensonly occasionally or to what is under controlwith an occasional lapse. It is not helpful totalk only about self-corrections. To really makea difference in a child's problem-solving, theteacher will attend to the major patterns ofresponding, not to the exceptions. In addition,the teacher will attend to the child's processingand not just to helping the child get the wordright.

The teacher will look for patterns ofresponding across the lesson to inform herteaching. Here, I will use running records toexplore the concept in some depth, since it isin the running records that patterns ofresponding are most easily seen. Clay statesthat we can infer from the child's errors, self-corrections and comments much of what



he/she is attending to. The learning work iscaptured in a running record (Clay, 1993).

In order to see a pattern of responding,every error and self-correction must be ana-lyzed. A true picture of the child as a reader isnot possible without a complete analysis. Afterall the errors are analyzed, patterns of how thecues are used and neglected can be determined.Additionally, the teacher may notice patternssuch as re-reading to problem-solve, appealingfor help, checking to confirm, and the monitor-ing of errors without actually solving them.Such patterns of behavior, too, can inform theteaching.

Clay suggests that the running record bechecked to detect processing problems andother potential learning points (Clay 1993b).The running records below provide examplesof patterns of responses that inform the teach-ing priorities, in particular the child's process-ing problems.

What the child can doNicholas, the reader of One Sock, Two

Socks (Running Record #1) can sometimesmake all the cues match and sometimes searchfor further visual information to self-correctafter using some visual information in the firstattempt. He can monitor many of his errorsand often attempts an unknown word bysounding the initial letter. (Nicholas also cross-checked on cues once and corrected both aninsertion and an omission. These behaviorsindicate low-level kinds of processing that areessentially under control, infrequent, and self-reinforcing for the child; there is no need toattend to them or even to note them.)

What the child needs to learn to doNicholas needs to initiate problem-solving

beyond sounding the first letter when he comesto difficulty rather than waiting for a told.Specifically, he needs to learn to think aboutthe story and re-read in order to search formeaning and structure cues. (Nicholas alsoneeds to use more than the initial letter to

problem-solve increasingly complex text; how-ever, the passive mode of waiting for tolds is socritical that full attention is needed to get ashift there first.)

Analysis of errors and self-correctionsThe summary at the top of this running

record contains the following information:Mostly uses visual information, often justthe first letterSome making the cues match (msv)Some searching further visual informationto self correctNeglecting meaning and structure at diffi-culty.

Pattern of RespondingNicholas consistently articulated the first

sound of unknown words and waited for tolds:seven/nine errors were tolds.

Learning OpportunitiesThe processing problem here is of great

concern because Nicholas is not often initiat-ing problem-solving beyond articulating thesound of the first letter of the unknown word.The roles of the teacher and the child areclear. "I'll just try the first letter and then theteacher will help me." When writing aboutearly reading behaviors, Clay stresses that thechild must initiate reading work: "Be carefulnot to establish a pattern where the child waitsfor the teacher to do the work. This is thepoint at which the child must learn that hemust work at difficulty, take some initiative,make some links. It is the general principlethat needs to be established at this time and itdoes not matter which types of cues the childuses" (Clay, 1993b, p. 40).

The initiating of reading work should havebeen long established, but it is apparent fromNicholas' reading behavior that this patternneeds to be established or re-established now.The teacher will need to select the clearest,easiest, most memorable examples with whichto establish the new response (Clay, 1993b). In


89


Running Record #1 One Sock, Two Socks Level 12Nicholas 93% sc 1:3

One Sock, Two Socks Level 12

Pg 2 j_ J going r- ifTim was getting ready T for school

Pg 3 Accurate Reading

Pg 4 J J started J -1

Then he stopped to play with his toy car


sc 4Pg 6 J didTim didn't like to hurry

4 4 - SC

He put on his blue pants

4 L 4 4He played with his car

Pg 7Tick - tock

J

said

4his

A

the clock

mom

4

scHurry said mother

. .

p-.

4


Pg 9 Accurate Readingplayed

He pulled - T and pulled

Pg 10 4 J t- A t-It made him tired - T

A 4He pushed T his car on the bed

Pg 11

Accurate Reading .. .

s-Soon

to school

4 J 4 J ifT it will be time to go


Pg 12 4 J_ underIt wasn't there

sc the

a-He looked all around

A u-He looked unde -

1

No sock


*A- 1sc R

Al ifT No sock

T his bed

90

this case, the new response is thinkingabout the story and re-reading at point ofdifficulty. Nicholas must initiate searchingfor cues and use more than a single sourceof information. "Children who fail tosearch also fail to learn how to use cueseffectively and do not develop error-cor-rection techniques" (Clay, 1991, p. 299).

After the running record, Nicholas'teacher can focus on searching for cues atpoint of difficulty in order to address thischild's processing problem; it will beimportant to select powerful examples.Page 12 seems to be a good place to returnto because the picture supports the mean-ing and the child achieved a stretch ofaccurate reading up to the errors. Whilethe unknown words were told during therunning record (the most neutral responseon the teacher's part), the point to bemade after the running record is what todo the next time there is a tricky part."What word did I help you with on thispage? Try it again and if you get stuck,think about what is happening in the storyand start over."

Prompting consistently for initiation ofproblem-solving on both the runningrecord books and the new books for thenext few days will help Nicholas movetoward independent problem-solving."Every time you get stuck, don't just sitand wait. Think about the story andquickly go back to the beginning."

Teachers may be tempted to return togoing /getting, started /stopped, or played/pulledto try for self-correction. These examplesrepresent good attempts up to the errorand demonstrate that Nicholas can usemore than the visual information. The pri-ority, however, must be on the bigger pat-tern of not initiating problem-solvingbeyond sounding the first letter and notincorporating re-reading as a way to searchfor meaning and structure, ways of process-ing that may hinder the child's progress.

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The self-corrections were easy ones forNicholas and illustrate the kinds of process-ing that are independent and thus self-rein-forcing:

The child reading to himself knows when he ismore or less correct because 'one of the beautifuladvantages of reading sense is that it provides itsown feedback' (Smith, 1978). One way todescribe this independence is that the child haslearned how to work out new parts of messagesfor himself. He finds this activity rewarding.Once the child learns to search for cues to aword the reinforcement lies within the readingprocess, in the agreement he can achievebetween all those signals and messages in thecode. He no longer needs as much outside helpto confirm whether his response is right orwrong. The activity of making all the cues fit,which is the challenge of the task, and eliminat-ing any misfit, is rewarding to the child who suc-ceeds. (Clay, 1991, p. 254).

What the child can doBrittany can use all three cueing sources

and mostly makes them match. She re-reads to self-correct, to confirm, and after atold. She can make multiple attempts atdifficulty.

What the child needs to learn to doBrittany needs to learn to monitor

errors in which there are visual mismatchesof final or medial letters. In order to self-correct errors, she needs to learn to searchfor further visual information (final ormedial letters) after making all the cuesmatch in the initial attempt.

Analysis of errors and self-correc-tions

The summary at the top of this runningrecord contains the following information:

Using all three cues and mostly makingthem matchNeglecting final letters as visual cues.

Pattern of RespondingConsistently Brittany used all three

Running Record #2 Rosie At The Zoo Level 13Brittany 93% sc 1:5

Rosie At the Zoo Level 13

Pg 2 Accurate Reading ...

4 4 4 4 4 monkeyLet's go and see the monkeys

Accurate Reading ...

Pg 3 * 4 4We lifted Rosie up.

V see J 4 Ai

I like monkeys said Rosie

4 J_ 4 4 lionLets go and see the lions

Accurate Reading . . .

Pg 4 4 4 4We lifted Rosie up

4 4 4 4 4She looked at the lion

And R scIt

4 V

walked up and down

Accurate Reading .

Pg 5 Accurate Reading .

,

N did dude R criedI don't T like lions she said

Pg 6 Accurate Reading . . .

she R sc 4 4 4 4and said me too me too

Pg 7 Accurate Reading .. .

Pg 8 Accurate Reading . . .

4 4 4 this thingIt lifted up its trunk

WOOOOSH


4 4 4 4 4But you did get a

sorry washshower

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9191


cues in an integrated way to read this text. Shedid not notice errors that fit all cues but were amismatch visually in terms of the final letters.

Learning OpportunitiesTo read increasingly complex text, Brittany

must learn to first monitor and then search forfurther visual information when errors fit allthree cues. The processing problem here is notthe errors, but neglecting to monitor the errors.The teacher will think again about what wouldbe the clearest, easiest, most memorable exam-ple with which to establish this new responseof monitoring. "Effective monitoring is a highlyskilled process constructed over many years ofreading. It begins early but must be continuallyadapted to encompass new challenges in texts"(Clay, 1993b, p. 41).

Brittany needs to adapt her monitoring toincorporate more visual information than justthe beginnings of words. The clearest examplesto return to probably would not bemonkey/monkeys and lion/lions. The only differ-ence between the word in the text and thechild's substitution is the very last letter. It islikely that this child knows about s as a wordending. She may read it accurately the nexttime without even realizing she had ever madean error. Since the goal is independent prob-lem-solving on increasingly difficult text, theteacher will think about learning opportunitiesto help Brittany reach that goal. Returning tomonkey and lion would not help Brittany learnmore about reading complex text.

If, on the other hand, the teacher returnedto thing/trunk or sorry wash/shower by asking thechild to, "Try this page (or part of a page)again," and then prompted for monitoring at ahigh level, Brittany would be learning moreabout adapting her monitoring strategies."Were you right? Try that again and thinkwhat would look right." The child would slowdown a bit and check the words in terms ofhow they looked. Even if Brittany could notcorrect the error, it is important to reinforce

and encourage noticing it. Self-corrections willnot occur if there is no monitoring first. Claystates, "Children must be given the responsibil-ity to monitor their own text behaviour, guidedby meaning. This mainly involves pausing onthe part of the teacher or parent as if expectingthe child to solve the problem or promptingthem to check" (Clay, 1991, p. 336).

In addition, it may be helpful if the teacherreturned to the reading work of did dude/don't.Here Brittany did monitor her reading whenher first attempt fit all three cues, but didn'tlook completely right. (She probably noticeddo.) It would be important to praise the notic-ing as well as the multiple attempts eventhough the error was not self-corrected. In thisway, the processing is being supported. "Theteacher is more concerned to reinforce how thechild worked to get to the response thanwhether the child arrived at the precise correctresponse" (Clay, 1991, p. 343).

Returning to the error see/like probablywould not help Brittany learn more aboutproblem-solving. This substitution is an exam-ple of an occasional lapse whereby cues werenot cross-checked one against another.Brittany has a strong pattern of making allthree cues match so cross-checking on cues ingeneral has been superseded by better qualitysubstitutions (Clay, 1993b). Brittany self-cor-rected her reading a few times and thus rein-forced her own processing. As mentionedbefore, it is usually not necessary for theteacher to attend to such examples.

Analysis of processing for teacher deci-sion-making

The detailed analysis of the above two run-ning records is intended to illustrate the processthe teacher may go through to

determine what the child can do and needsto learn to do;summarize the running record;look for patterns of responding;provide learning opportunities that will

92 Best of The Running Record Ai 'I

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move the child forward in the readingprocess.A few notes of clarification seem to be in

order. The sections "What the child can do,"and, "What the child needs to learn to do," areexamples of what the teacher may be thinkingas she completes her analysis of cues used andcues neglected and prepares to write the"Analysis of Errors and Self-Corrections" at thetop of the running record. The "Analysis ofErrors and Self-Corrections" sections are pro-vided as examples of the summaries at the topof the running records for these children.Notice that patterns are emerging here. It isnot helpful to note every kind of error, self-cor-rection, or cross-checking on cues (if applica-ble). Instead look for what the child mostly usesand mostly neglects--the patterns of responding.

The "Patterns of Responding" sections alsoillustrate patterns of behavior that may supportor hinder processing. When analyzing runningrecords note the presence or absence of:

monitoringappeals/toldsre-reading before appeals/toldsre-reading after toldsre-reading to search and self-correctre-reading to search, no self-correctionre-reading, no searching (repeating originalerror after re-reading)re-reading to confirmno re-reading to problem-solveno re-reading needed to problem-solvetaking words apartcomments about processing.

Finally, the "Learning Opportunities" sec-tions were included to illustrate the possiblerationale for selecting (and not selecting)teaching points for these particular runningrecords. The teaching points are in the wrongorder here, as they would have been selectedbefore any detailed analysis was done.

However, with hard work and experience,it is amazing how quickly teachers can select

teaching points which reflect the processingproblems. When analyzing the running recordafter the lesson, it is helpful to also think aboutthe teaching points and the prompts used toreturn to them. In this way, rationales and thelevel of prompts can be considered and select-ing future teaching points will become easier.

"The teacher has a general theory in herhead about children's responding. This is a the-ory she should check against what she is ableto observe and infer from the individual child'sresponding, and which she should be preparedto change if the two are in conflict. Soalthough reading behaviours are only signals ofthe inner control over reading that a child isdeveloping, they are important signals whichteachers should notice and think about" (Clay,1991, p. 233). -444

ReferencesClay, M. M. (1991). Becoming Literate: The con-


Clay, M. M. (1993). An observation survey ofearly literacy achievement. Portsmouth, NH:Heinemann.

Clay, M. M. (1993). Reading Recovery: A guide-book for teachers in training. Portsmouth,NH: Heinemann.

Cowley, J. (1984). Rosie at the Zoo. Wellington,New Zealand: P.D. Hasselberg,Government Printer, Department ofEducation Wellington.

Owens J. (1987). One Sock, Two Socks.Toronto, Canada: Gage EducationalPublishing.

Smith, F (1978). Understanding Reading. 2ndEdition. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehartand Winston.


fl


Helping the Hard-to-accelerate Child:Problem-solving the More Difficult Cases

Fall 1997

by Noel Jones, Trainer of Teacher LeadersUniversity of North Carolina, Wilmington

Anyone who works with literacy educationis aware of children who have difficulty

learning to read and write. Reading Recovery,of course, is designed for children who havethe least early learning success and who arehard-to-teach. However, even from ReadingRecovery teachers, we hear comments andappeals for help about a few children who donot respond easily even to skilled one-to-oneinstruction.

Clay includes a special section in her textfor Reading Recovery practitioners (Clay,1993, p. 56-57) entitled, "Children who arehard to accelerate." Her position is clear:"There is only one position to take in this case.The programme is not, or has not been, appro-priately adapted to the child's needs" (p. 56).

Lack of Acceleration as anImplementation Issue

One of the first questions Clay asks thereader is, "Are you operating the programme asrequired ?" (p. 56). This question is addressed asmuch to administrators as to Reading Recoveryteachers. Many factors are associated with theestablishment of the program at the schoolthat can keep it from operating as intended.The expectation for consistent, daily deliveryof lessons is a particularly important factor.

In this paper, however, I shall focus on con-ditions that are under the control or influenceof teachers and teacher leaders, and I shallleave aside the possibility that the school pro-gram or district implementation may be flawedin ways that may hinder children's learning.An assumption here, then, is that children arereceiving consistent daily lessons and that

other quality implementation conditions are ineffect.

Lack of Acceleration as a TeachingIssue

No simple answer can be given to the ques-tion of how to get a "hard-to-accelerate" childstarted on successful learning. Clay makes itclear that the individual teacher must assumeresponsibility to puzzle out what might beholding the child back. She advises, "First,check up on yourself as a teacher" (Clay, 1993,p. 56). Whether the school is, ". . . operatingthe programme as required," or not, this ques-tion is still highly relevant to the teaching ofeach individual child and should be the start-ing point for the teacher's analysis. The teacherneeds to ask herself, for example, whether sheis teaching daily 30-minute lessons containingall the lesson componentsor whether she isperhaps changing the program in some way.

Clay goes on to advise: "In general, whenthe child is hard to accelerate he is findingsome part or parts of the reading process diffi-cult. Often he has learned to do somethingwhich is interfering with his progress, and hemay have learned it from the way you havebeen teaching" (Clay, 1993, p. 56-57). Inchecking on themselves, teachers are advisedto check their records carefully and observe thechild's literacy behavior very closely to try tofigure out what has been happening and whatmight need to change. However, she alsoadvises the teacher, after a careful analysis onher own, to seek assistance from a colleague."You are likely to have some blind spots ...and the opinions of colleagues could be most

94 Best of The Running Record 4 4 -4

Section 5: Teaching and Learning in Reading RecoveryHelping the Hard-to-accelerate Child: Problem-solving the More Difficult Cases

useful for the readjustment of your programme.It has been one of the values of the InserviceTraining sessions that teachers have been ableto pool their collective wisdom on their mostpuzzling pupils" (Clay, 1993, p. 57).

Hard-to-accelerate children are challengingbut also interesting. A teacher can learn agreat deal through in-depth analysis of a child'sprocessing and of her interactions with thechild. Working with colleagues is also interest-ing and instructive and many times productivefor teachers' learning as well as children's. Inthe following paragraphs, I will share some per-ceptions of working with hard-to-acceleratechildren based upon my own teaching andconsulting experiences. I do not presume tocover this topic, as Clay's entire text, ReadingRecovery: A Guidebook for Teachers in Training(1993), is devoted to the topic of working withchildren who have difficulty acquiring literacy.Nor do I presume to offer solutions for childrenwhom others are teaching. The discussionbelow is offered in the hope that it may be ofsome use to others in posing questions aboutthe children they teach and in thinking aboutpotential areas of difficulty and different typesof learning problems.

Beginning the analysis:Checking on yourself

Although difficult for many teachers toaccept, the possibility exists that the fault maylie in the teaching rather than in the child. Atfirst, as they see children respond to the lessonframework and activities and to the individualattention they receive, teachers may focuson the procedures offered in Clay's text(1993) as the answer to learning problems.When one or more children do not respondsatisfactorily to their use of procedures, teach-ers find a comforting explanation in the factthat all Reading Recovery children do not suc-ceed in catching up with their peers. The real-ization may develop slowly that, for some chil-dren, intense analysis and problem-solving are

necessary and that through these efforts somechildren making slow progress may begin toaccelerate their learning.

Sometimes teachers hold, "...assumptionsabout the child that could be wrong" (Clay,1993, p. 56). Teachers may assume, for exam-ple, that a particular child is not capable oflearning. The culture of American schools hastended to foster low expectations for childrenwho have great difficulty beginning the processof becoming literate (Allington & Walmsley,1995). Teachers may easily develop misconcep-tions concerning the children they teach.According to Clay, "... children's respondingcan be very controlling of the way teachersrespond, and teacher demands can be very con-trolling of how children will be allowed torespond" (Clay, 1991, p. 302). That is, a child'sbehavior may be leading the teacher torespond to the child in non-productive ways.On the other hand, the teacher's behavior maybe leading the child to respond to learningtasks in ways that do not develop strategicproblem-solving. For example, a child's learnedhelplessness or a teacher's tendency to offersupport may lead to a dependence that hinderslearning. Because it is so difficult to observeourselves objectively, Clay urges teachers toproblem-solve with a peer after beginning ananalysis on one's own.

Another way that teaching can be respon-sible for a child's learning limitations has to dowith level of difficulty. "Instruction can manip-ulate the balance of challenge and familiarityto make the child's task easy or hard" (Clay,1991, p. 288). Instruction that is too easy ortoo hard can lead to inappropriate learningresponses, ineffective strategies, and poor moti-vation. If teachers err, probably they should erron the side of too easy. However, given thepressures on teachers to produce learning gains,teachers find it easy to push too hard for newlearning before a child has sorted out confu-sions or become fluent and flexible with cur-rent knowledge.

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Even though great variability exists, allchildrenbefore they enter schoollearn agreat deal about the world and about languageand how it is used. This ability and propensityto learn may be stifled, encouraged or rekin-dled by the ways we respond to students in theindividual tutoring sessions of ReadingRecovery. Finding the key that will renew achild's enthusiasm and initiative for learning isone of the challenges the teacher must meetfor each child. The earlier a solution is found,the greater the chance for accelerated learning.Thus, Roaming Around the Known is a criticaltime. We must not wait long before we analyzeourselves and seek to make changes in ourinteractions if we sense that a child is notshowing signs of initiative and independencein learning.

In the next sections, particular areas oflearning will be discussed in which problemsoften arise in teaching Reading Recovery chil-dren. These discussions will not provide theanswers for particular learning needs. The onlysufficient buttress against learning failure willbe a corps of Reading Recovery teachers whotake Clay's advice seriously and who becomeskilled analyzers of children's learning and oftheir own teaching decisions. ReadingRecovery is difficult because it raises the levelof expectation for teachers. They must becomeobservers, learners, researchers, experimenters,and problem-solvers in the truest sense, inaddition to becoming experts in communicat-ing and interacting with children. But theresult is highly rewarding, not only in terms ofchildren's progress but in terms of teacher learn-ing and empowerment as well.

Scenario: The child does not take onthe task of learning

Some children do not easily develop aninterest in reading and learning to read. Aprime reason for that has been mentionedabovetask difficulty. However, interest andmotivation can be influenced by other factors.

Vygotsky and others (Vygotsky, 1978; Rogoff,1990; Tharp & Gallimore, 1988; Wertsch,1991; Wells, 1985) have pointed out the socialnature of learning. Literacy is a learning goal inour modern culture; however, a particular 6-year -old child who lacks adult and peer modelsmay see no reason to enjoy books or learn toread. In addition, other inhibiting factors, suchas abuse of many kinds, may have taught thechild that learning or trying something new isfar too risky.

Also, a child may be playing a game of con-trol. Active or passive resistance may be theonly weapon against pressures at home orschool that threaten to overwhelm. ReadingRecovery teachers can work against these ten-dencies by trying to influence the child's envi-ronment in positive directions. If possible, elic-it positive support from parents and teachers. Iftheir support may result in pressure and/or rep-rimand, seek to develop relationships for thechild with other positive models. Become astronger, more positive personal force in thechild's life yourself. Increase your praise, giveclearer models, check your expectations for thischild, and continue to invite participation andresponse. Overcoming resistance to learning isone of the most difficult things teachers do.The longer a child remains in home or schoolconditions that reinforce fear and/or apathy,the more difficult it becomes to turn thisaround. This is one of the arguments for select-ing the lowest children firstso that negativeattitudes and patterns of responding can bebroken before they become habituated andresistant to change.

Scenario: Processing problems withtext reading

The most significant processing problem thatmight arise is the inability to produce coherent,fairly fluent, meaningful responses in text read-ing. Some would say that the task for the begin-ning reader is to read for the author's precisemessage, but that is an endpoint of learning to

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read. If we let this be the beginning point, manychildren will find the journey so difficult thatthey may develop all of the symptoms of reading"disability," including a lack of healthy confi-dence and a dislike of books and stories.

Children can begin to read for fluency andmeaning even when their knowledge of print isstill extremely limited. Through careful scaf-folding, teachers can help the child generatethe meaning and language structures that allowreading processing to begin. (By "reading pro-cessing," I mean keeping one's mind upon themeaning and language of a story while payingsome attention to what is on the page. What isattended to on the page grows increasinglymore sophisticated as reading ability grows, butso does the child's ability to utilize more com-plex meaning and language structures, a pointtoo frequently under-emphasized.)

A teacher can help a child establish themeaning of a story by creating a readable textbased upon the child's experiences or by engag-ing the child in conversation about the pic-tures of a book. Through the same means, thechild can be helped to anticipate the flow oflanguage that tells the story. Then, as the child"reads" this text independently, mis-matcheswhich the child begins to notice becomeopportunities for learning. A sensitive, obser-vant teacher selectively uses these mis-matchesas teaching examples to help children discovermore about how print represents language.

Teachers tend to undervalue children'searly reading attempts that approximate text.Total invention with no reference to printguideposts is, of course, non-productive for theschool-age child (although this is a positivestep for the pre-school child). Many childrenenter Reading Recovery without the conceptor the ability to match oral language to printon a one-to-one basis and will need to learnhow to attend to print. Yet, I suggest that hold-ing the child accountable for perfect one-to-one matching from the beginning may be pre-mature. Not only do-beginners lack under-

standing of print concepts, but they may notunderstand how oral language can be separatedinto words and smaller elements. Experiencesin reading and writing are educative not onlyin teaching children how print works, but alsoin causing them to reflect on oral language andthink about its units (Olson, 1995).

As Reading Recovery teachers, we need todivest ourselves of the notion that all of thelearning about print-language correspondenceneeds to occur, or will occur, by text levelthree. Of course, we must be sure that childrencontinue to sort out their understandings bothof print and of language elements, and thatthey continue to grow towards accuracy inreading. And it is appropriate to expect precisepointing as the child works at matching speechto print. But pushing too hard can make thetask difficult and laborious, thereby defeatingthe acceleration we seek to foster. On theother hand, for some children, inventing textmay become a strong skill that blocks learning.The task of the Reading Recovery teacher is todecide when the child has sufficient knowledgeof both print and oral language units to insiston a precise reading of text, when the stan-dards of accountability for self monitoring mustbe raised, and when attention to fluency andmeaning might carry priority over accuracy andcross checking.

Children who make slow progress in read-ing often reach a sticking point in problem-solving new words "on the run" (during thetask of reading with attention on meaning).They may easily guess a meaningful word, and,sometimes, they even may guess a word thatlooks like the word on the page. But supplyinga word that fits both meaning and letter-corre-spondences seems beyond their reach. Is theproblem one of inability to respond to twoconditions simultaneously? Or, have they notyet learned how to do this in reading? I suspectthe latter is the case. If we watch these chil-dren during the day, I think we would observethem responding to multiple conditions simul-

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taneouslyfor example, they seem to be ableto look both ways for cars while calling to theirfriend across the street (perhaps better thanadults can do!).

As they encounter new words in reading,these children tend to guess on the basis ofmeaning only (usually) or on letter informa-tion only. I have suggested previously (Jones,1994) that teaching children to cross-checkresponses should precede, "getting your mouthready," since the latter prompt asks the child toproduce a response that fits both the meaningand the letter cues at the same time. As chil-dren learn how to cross-check, they are learn-ing much more than letter-sound correspon-dences. They are learning how to becomeaware of the sounds of the word they first try(linguistic and phonemic awareness). Also,they may be learning how to search their ownmental lexicon for words to match visual letterpatterns. As they gain control of these process-es, they gain the flexibility and fluency neces-sary to search quickly; soon, they are able torespond to both sources of information almostsimultaneously.

For children having trouble trying wordsthat fit both the meaning and the visual pat-terns at the same time, teachers need toobserve carefully, throughout the lesson, chil-dren's ability to deal with phonological analy-sis. A teacher should observe whether the childis able to hear and write any sounds in words;identify and write some initial sounds withoutteacher assistance and intervention; analyze anoral word and predict what letter it mightbegin with; and, learn and retain knowledge ofprinted words.

Teachers also need to observe carefullywhat children are able to notice visually (usingactivities described in the section, "When It IsHard to Remember," Clay, 1993), and whatthey habitually attend to visually while reading(using close observation and running records).Determining what part of the reading processthe child finds difficult can suggest ways to fill

in gaps that may enable a new level of respond-ing.

Scenario: The child has difficultyremembering

A complaint commonly heard fromReading Recovery teachers concerning hard-to-teach children is that they have difficultylearning and retaining new items of knowledge,such as letters and words. The child seems tohave learned a word one day, but the next days/he cannot remember how to write it or howto read it. The teacher may report that she hasused the recommendations in Clay's text (Clay,1993), particularly sections 4, 13, 14, 15; yet,the child still does not seem to retain the infor-mation. After unsuccessful efforts over time,the teacher may conclude that this child has alearning disability.

An important caution here refers back tothe previous section. Too many children havenot experienced and do not understand the on-going process of fluent reading while they focuson the meaning of the story (using, initially,whatever help or scaffolding they might needfrom the teacher). For a number of reasons,many children find it difficult to learn specificitems of knowledge (word and letters) whenthese become the emphasis of learning. Inother words, the difficulty of learning items ofknowledge may be real, but the issue may beexacerbated by the teaching emphasis to whichthe child is being exposed. Learning to attendand remember is not easy for young children,and the belief that memory difficulties indicatelimited capacity is hard to resist.

David Wood (Wood, 1988) tells us that therush to judgement about ability to learn is actu-ally a judgement about what the child has notyet succeeded in learning how to do:

Deliberate attempts to commit information to memoryare not the product of a "natural ability," but involvelearned activity. In fact they involve a series of activi-ties. The skill in undertaking each of these increaseswith age throughout the early years of school and

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beyond (Wood, 1988, p. 56).

Wood goes on to give examples showinghow young children rather easily learn andremember things that arise as a naturalandoften incidentalconsequence of their activi-ties. But they have very limited strategies forlearning and remembering things that otherpeople ask them to learn. Even if they aretaught and reminded to rehearse verbal infor-mation (like a letter name), they will not oftenuse this skill unless they are continuallyreminded. Similarly, they will not work to cre-ate and retain a visual image of somethingwithout adult intervention. Useful interveningactivities include tracing, manipulating, andcomparing, and teacher prompting to form amental image of the object or sign.

One child I taught had the usual difficultieswith recall that Reading Recovery childrenhave. He would come to a word that he hadwritten and read several times and fail toremember what it was. However, he had anamazing ability to remember which book hehad read that word in previously. Before Icould stop him, he would pull another bookout of his book box, flip to a page that wordwas on, find it, read it, then return to the firstbook and go on reading. Since this wasn't anefficient strategy, I did not encourage it; also, Idid not know what to make of his ability.

Looking back, his behavior seems consis-tent with Wood's observation about "incidentalconsequence of activities." It also demonstrateshow strong this child was at carrying meaningin his head as he read and in using meaningassociations as an aid to recall.

I have observed children who try "remem-bering" items in response to teachers' requestswhen they really do not know what to do torecall the item. Once they have produced theletter or word that the teacher wants (oftenwith considerable teacher input and assis-tance), they forget about it and seem to carryforward no more memory trace than before.Just telling a child to, "Look at it," or, "Study

it," does little good. Teachers need to be morehelpful, more aggressive, as well as morepatient, in helping children learn how to learn.Wood continues:

If we want children to learn and rememberthings, we must often scaffold the process forthem by setting tasks, arranging materials,reminding and prompting them. Eventually theywill come to do such things for themselves (atleast on occasion) and will discover how torehearse and so on (Wood, 1988, p. 61).

Teachers need to reflect about how hard itis to remember the name of a person that wasjust introduced, or to remember where theyparked their car at the mall. These tasksrequire sophisticated strategies and the persis-tent attention to remember that comes fromawareness of how important it is not to forget.Young children not only lack strategies forremembering, they do not understand the pur-pose and they have not accepted the impor-tance of remembering items teachers wantthem to learn.

Sections in Clay's text (1993), "Learning tolook at print," and, "When it is hard toremember," are intended to help children whohave difficulty learning letters and words. Yetteachers must still work thoughtfully to makethe activities fit each child's needs. Often ateacher attempting to use procedures fromClay's text may, inadvertently, be telling orshowing the answer so that the child does nothave to remember it. One example comes fromuse of the individually-tailored alphabet book(Clay, 1993, pp. 26-27). If practice on the let-ter is always done with pages of the alphabetbook in view, the child may simply be depend-ing upon the model which he always seesbefore him. To change this, teachers may needto arrange other and varied situations forrecall. For example, they might look for oppor-tunities to present the picture alone (or the let-ter name alone) and ask the child to write(produce) the letter form from memory. Clay'stext (1993) as well as Wood's explanations


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(1988) reminds us how important it is, also, topractice this recall throughout the lesson in allreading and writing activities.

The point here is that teachers need toanalyze the tasks they are setting for children.What is presented to the child? Is it the lettername ("dee"), the letter form (d), the pictureassociated with the letter (dog), or some com-bination of these? Next, analyze how the childis asked to respond. Is the child asked to trace,match, identify among choices, or reproducefrom memory? Often, the learning activitiesinvolve only matching or identification amongchoices, when the teacher's concern is that thechild cannot reproduce the form independent-ly. Clay's text has activities for each of theselevels of presentation and response. With care-ful analysis and a studied re-reading of thesesections, teachers can find patterns and rou-tines that should help the child learn how toattend and remember and begin to build arepertoire of knowledge.

Teachers working with children who find ithard to remember may not recognize the needfor frequent practice and review of items thatare only partially known or known and accessi-ble only through one cuing system (such aswriting the word). There is a tendency tomove away from partially known items andintroduce too many new learnings too quickly.At the same time, teachers may fail to hold thechild accountable for using what s/he knows.Teachers can refer to page 40 in Clay's text(1993), "Locating one or two known (orunknown) words," to find excellent suggestionsfor getting the child to call up and use hisdeveloping item knowledge in the process ofreading.

Scenario: Processing problems in hear-ing sounds in words

If a child finds some part of the readingprocess difficult, the teacher must work active-ly and efficiently to find a solution. It is notsatisfactory to say, "Johnny can hear final

sounds but he can never identify initial soundsin words." Some way must be found to sur-mount this hurdle; otherwise, the child willfind himself unable to respond to more andmore of the teacher's questions and prompts.The more questions a child hears that he can-not answer, the more remote the possibility ofaccelerated learning becomes.

A pattern observed in teachers-in-trainingis to continue to be too helpful when a childfinds phonological processing difficult. It is for-givable once or twice to give the answer whena child cannot respond to a question orprompt. But once the teacher is aware of thedifficulty, what is called for is a careful demon-stration that makes sense to the child.Identification of initial sounds in words pro-vides a good example. Using the Elkoninboxes, children may be asked to complete theanalysis task independently: push the token,identify and become aware of the sound, recalla word or letter associated with that sound, andwrite the correct form.

But if the child is unable to do this, thetask may need to be broken down so that helpcan be given with the particular aspect thechild finds difficult: awareness, or matching toa known word, or letter-sound association, orrecall of the letter form. Clay suggests variousactivities to help the child develop: (1) atten-tion to the sound features of language and ofwords (Clay, 1993, "Early learning," and Step I,p. 32); (2) awareness of specific sounds orsounds in specific positions (such as using amirror to see how the sound is formed in themouth, p. 32); (3) letter-sound associationsusing letter books and alphabet books; and, (4)writing the form ("Learning to look at print,"p. 23-26).

ConclusionThis discussion treats rather briefly only a

few of the areas of difficulty that may underlie"hard-to-accelerate" cases. Although sugges-tions have been made about possible difficul-

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Section 5: Teaching and Learning in Reading RecoveryTeaching for Strategies in Writing:Maintaining the Balance between Composing and

ties, teachers must consider each child individ-ually and realize that their analysis is only ahypothesis until they put it into action andobserve effects. Relevant topics not discussedinclude: strong skills that block learning, moni-toring, one-to-one correspondence, a numberof language issues, and, the possibility that"writing may not be receiving enough empha-sis" (Clay, 1993, p. 57).

In closing, three points bear repeating:1. All children can learn; if they appear not

to be learning, the program "... is not, orhas not been, appropriately adapted to thechild's needs" (Clay, 1993, p. 56).

2. The responsibility for puzzling out whatmight be inadequate in the child's programrests squarely with the Reading Recoveryteacher. Working with a colleague and/orthe teacher leader is encouraged; however,the teacher must, "First check up on [her-self] as a teacher" (p. 56).

3. The aim of the program is to significantlyreduce the number of reading failures with-in a system.

Good things happen when a ReadingRecovery teacher figures out a way to enable alagging learner to accelerate. There are positiveoutcomes in terms of the child's learning, interms of the teacher's learning, and in terms ofprogram acceptance by stakeholders. The workis hard, but the pay-off has far-reaching impli-cations. 1+J

ReferencesAllington, R., & Walmsley, S. (1995.) No

quick fix. NY: Teachers College Press.Clay, M. M. (1993.) Reading Recovery: A guide-

book for teachers in training. Portsmouth,NH: Heinemann.

Clay, M. M. (1991.) Becoming literate: The con-struction of inner control. Portsmouth, NH:Heinemann.

Jones, N. (1994) Dual Processing in Reading:"Don't Get Your Mouth Ready Yet!" TheRunning Record Vol. 7, No.l.

Olson, D. (1995.) Writing and the mind. InWertsch, J., del Rio, P., & Alvarez, A.(eds.). Sociocultural studies of mind.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Rogoff, B. 1990. Apprenticeship in thinking:Cognitive development in social context. NY:Oxford University Press.

Tharp, R., & Gallimore, R. (1988.) Rousingminds to life: Teaching, learning and schoolingin social context. NY: Cambridge UniversityPress.

Vygotsky, L. (1978.) Mind in society: The devel-opment of higher psychological processes.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Wertsch, J. (1991.) Voices of the mind: A socio-cultural approach to mediated action.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Wertsch, J., del Rio, P., & Alvarez, A. (1995.)Sociocultural studies of mind. Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press.

Wells, C. G. (1985.) Language and learning: Aninteractional perspective. Philadelphia:Falmer Press.

Wood, D. (1988.) How children think and learn.Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell.

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Teaching for Strategies in Writing:Maintaining the Balance between Composing and Transcribing

Spring 1998

by Lee Skandalaris, Trainer of Teacher LeadersOakland University

Rochester, Michigan

Reading and writing share common ele-ments. Both forms of expression are driven

by meaning and both use the same conven-tions. However, readers use their own knowl-edge and experience to construct meaning fromtext, whereas writers construct meaning in text.In the second edition of Writing and the Writer(1994), Frank Smith explains that the act ofwriting is a building process that is more drivenby our intentions of what we wish to commu-nicate to the reader. In writing this article, Iattempt to communicate to you, the reader,insights gained from my reading of Clay andSmith that have contributed to my betterunderstanding of the writing portions ofReading Recovery lessons. I emphasize theimportance of helping the young writer moni-tor for meaning while composing and recodingthe message.

As you read this piece, you are trying toextract meaning from this text. The task issomewhat limited by the lack of face-to-facedialogue. As a competent reader, you are high-ly successful at this task. The constructiveprocess is what we are trying to help ReadingRecovery students learn. Clay (1993) states:

... during the course of a recovery programme a lowachiever learns to bring together:

the ideasthe composing of the message (which must be hisown)the search for ways to record it (p. 28).

In writing, we can think of two functions:composing and transcribing (Smith, 1994).Composing is described by Smith (1994) as,

.... the idea the writer intends to communicate to

the audience of readers, along with the words andgrammar chosen by the writer as suitable to convey-ing those ideas for the reader (p. 120).

Clay (1993) suggests that the novice writerlearns to compose messages (ideas) in his ownwords and language structures, then engages ina "search for ways to record it" (p. 28). Clay'sexplanation may be compared to Smith'sdescription of transcribing. He explains tran-scribing the message as the physical effort inwriting within the constraints of conventionsof print: spelling, capitalization, punctuation,and legibility. Whereas composing occurs "inthe head," as the writer gets ideas and shapesthem into language, transcribing starts whenthe message becomes visible text.

The similarities between the two theorists,Clay and Smith, can be represented as follows:

Composing:the ideascomposing the message (which must bedone by the writer)

Transcribing:searching for ways to record it

Smith (1994) explains that,... these two broad aspects of writing, composing andtranscribing, compete for the writer's attention. Thebeginning writer needs to pay undue attention to theconventions of transcribing (p. 120).

Compared to the other language processes,writing is hard work requiring the most physi-cal effort, and it is the slowest languageprocess. Speech (speaking) can be delivered at200-300 words per minute and still be compre-


Section 5: Teaching and Learning in Reading RecoveryTeaching for Strategies in Writing: ...

hended by the listener. The listener canprocess up to 250 words per minute (listening)which explains why the rapid fire auctioneer(delivered at a speed of more than 300 wordsper minute) is incomprehensible to the lessexpert listener. Reading can range between 200-300 words per minute, but writing legibly israrely more than 25 words per minute (Smith,1994). The task of writing is formidable for thebeginning writer who needs to pay attention toall of the conventions of transcribing: letterformation, directionality, spacing, spelling,matching symbols to sounds, etc.

As the novice writer is working hard tocoordinate all aspects of composing and tran-scribing, we as teachers offer valuable assis-tance in helping the child maintain a balancebetween these two tensions in the writingprocess. We can help the young writer byteaching the child how to:

express his ideas in meaningful units;shape his oral language structures intocomprehensible sentences;learn how to develop a vocabulary of highfrequency words for writing;hear sounds of words in sequence;use analogous thinking to construct newwords.

While engaging in the physical effort ofwriting, the young writer is also facing the for-midable challenge of writing for an audiencethat may be known or unseen. It is essential tocompose text with an audience in mind. As wework with children in Reading Recoverylessons, we need to think about who the audi-ence is for the children's writing and how wecan help children develop a sense of writing fora prospective reader.

As I write this piece to you, I know myaudience. I am motivated

to communicate with aspecial group of profes-sionals. I know thenature of ReadingRecovery teachers as anaudience interested inproviding powerfullessons for children; wehave common languageand a shared mission.But for the child, wecannot assume he knowsthe relationship betweenwriting and the fact thatsomeone else will readwhat he writes.

The Figure containsa few examples of teach-ers helping set purposesfor writing and deter-mining possible audi-ences through their con-versations with children.

FigurePurpose Audience

Writes to record an experience SelfLet's write about what happened last night so we can read it later.(The teacher is sharing the permanence of writing versus the fleeting nature of talk.)

Writes to explainWhat a great story about how you got your gray cat!Let's make a copy so you can tell your friends.

Writes to share(The daily re-assembly of the cut-up story summarizes a bookjust read.)Let's send the book home with your story so your Mom(Dad, etc.) can see how well you understood what happened.

Writes to inform(The child and teacher compose a piece about anewly-acquired strategy:)Let's write a letter to your Mom (Dad, etc.) about how you arelearning to say words slowly to write hard words.

Class

Home

Home

Rejoices in new skill All(The child has made a shift in legibility. Copies are distributed widely.)Let's make copies of this wonderful story. It is so easy to read with the spaces youput between words. Give this one to the principal ... this one to your teacher ...


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As Reading Recovery teachers you canthink of many more (and better) remarks todevelop a sense of audience in the youngwriter. The important point is that the remarksneed to be woven into the fabric of the writingevent almost like the subliminal messages pre-sented by the media to sell a product. Thehighest ". . . praise for his efforts. . ." (Clay,1993, p. 39) for a child is the reading of hisstory by an appreciative audience. Becausewriting differs from reading in that it is moredriven by our intentions of what we wish tocommunicate to readers, developing a sense ofaudience lifts this exercise from a purelymechanical act to a true act of personal com-munication.

For purposes of clarification, I will examinecomposing and transcribing further as twoaspects of the writing process. Even though thefollowing discussion deals with the topics sepa-rately, they are integrated throughout the writ-ing process.

Composing Ideas to WriteFirst, I have a confession to make. Recently

I brought a Predictions of Progress up-to-dateon one of my Reading Recovery children. I wassurprised (or is appalled the better word?) onhow skewed the predictions for progress inwriting were. All of the goal statements I hadwritten were about recording language; forexample, "The child will know how to write atleast 40 high frequency words quickly and flu-ently." None of the goal statements was aboutmonitoring for meaning or about composing.My goal statements for this child needed to bebrought into balance. Since confessionsdemand repentance, I reread several sources inmy search for a better balance of goals in writ-ing.

Dancing with the Pen (1996) provided a pos-sible new goal statement for the tentative revi-sion of my predictions of progress. This booksuggests the child will know how to select top-ics for writing through several means: valuing

first-hand experiences and their personalknowledge of that experience; making use oftheir surroundings in and out of school; dis-cussing their ideas freely; adapting and makinguse of their own and others' suggestions; and,showing initiative in selecting their own topicsfor writing at the end of the program.

James Briton (1970) said, "Writing floatson a sea of talk" (p. 164), and Clay reminds us,"First, talk with the child" (1993, p. 29) in thesection on composing the story. But how doestalk contribute to the composing of a story bythe young child? Smith (1994) helps clarify therelationship:

Composition is learned through reading and writing;it can also be fostered by conversation and discus.sion. Talking with other people in one sense is justlike writing, in that it provides opportunity for theexamination of ideas one already holds and for thegeneration of new ones. It is important to understandall the advantages of discussion. One can test one'sown ideas on others, one can hear, borrow, and stealthe ideas of others; but beyond that, new ideas canbe generated that did not exist in any of the partici-pants' heads before (p. 207).

The idea for the story needs to float to thetop of the sea of talk, not drown. The teacherremains open to the ideas and converses withthe child in order to focus in on one thoughtto be expressed in writing. This processrequires careful listening and gentle shaping,always holding the meaning of the messageforemost.

The novice writer has a multitude of ideaswhizzing around in his mind. Furthermore,talking about these ideas is generated at amuch greater speed than can be written. Thelistening teacher seizes an idea during the con-versation that is full of possibilities for growthbut also has some words the child knows howto write or can get to using his present strate-gies. A conversation may play-out as follows:

Teacher: How did you get your lovely cat?Child: He was in the middle of the road and

my Dad put on the brakes (amplifica-

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Teacher:Child:Teacher:

Child:

Teacher:

Child:Teacher:Child:Teacher:Child:Teacher:

Child:Teacher:Child:Teacher:

tion of screeching brakes, reactionsin the car) and ...Did your Dad stop the car?We were going up north.So what happened after your Dadstopped the car?My Mom picked him up. He chews onthe chair and eats spaghetti my babysister feeds him ...(focusing) Tell me what happenedwhen your Dad stopped the car.He ...Who?My Dad stopped the car.And then what?My Mom picked him up.Let's tell people that it was a cat thatwas picked up.My Dad ...My Dad stopped the car.And...My Mom picked up the cat.Now everyone will know how you gotyour cat. Let's go for it!

The teacher above prevented what profes-sional writers reveal as the primary causes ofprocedural writer's block: having nothing ofsubstance to say or being confronted with toomany possibilities. In this short interactionbefore the story, the teacher opened the con-versation with a question about the child's pet.The question was not so broad that he couldnot sort through his mental schema about hispet cat. When the chair-chewing, spaghetti-eating cat facts were presented there waspotential for confusion, but the teacher refo-cused the conversation on how the cat wasfound. Maybe the next day, her prompt will be,"What happens when your cat chews on thechairs?" Or, even more titillating, "How doesyour cat's face look after eating a plate ofspaghetti?" The talk is interactive but keptfocused by the teacher who is genuinely inter-ested in the child's ideas (Clay, 1993).

Lucy Calkins (1986) points out that teach-ers often appear to listen to a learner, butinstead of giving a natural reaction, such aslaughing, sighing, smiling, or reflecting, theytend to look for questions in an effort to"improve" the writing. The talk before story-writing needs to be genuine, not interrogatoryin tone. Clay (1991) observes that if the childcan carry on a conversation with the teacher,"then each is using a flexibility of languagethat is suitable for good communication to takeplace" (p. 73). During such conversations, chil-dren's ideas can surface and be polished toenhance writing stories.

Roaming Around the Known is the time toestablish a conversational tempo geared to thelinguistic style of the individual child as well asa time to explore interests that can becometopics for authentic expression in writing. Asstated so well in Dancing with a Pen (1996),"Learners write best on topics they own. Thisdoes not mean that they have always selectedtheir topics without help or stimulus; it doesmean that they have something to say in theirown voice about their subject and, therefore,the best purpose of all of writing" (p. 27).

As the teacher and child face the unusualtask (to novice learners) of writing messages intext, the teacher needs to focus on the impor-tance of. communicating the young learner'sideas. The blank page is a challenge for theteacher and the child: the teacher reminds thechild of the intended message as the childstruggles with the perplexities of learning howto transcribe his ideas. For the novice writer,the teacher guards the balance between com-posing the message and the challenges of tran-scribing it.

Transcribing Written LanguageWriting and reading text are two processes

that entail similar challenges in using printconventions. One of these challenges is direc-tionality. The novice writer must sort out spa-tially on the blank page where to start, which


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way to go,, where the second line startsallwhile moving from the top to the bottom ofthe page. Another challenge is learning thatoral language needs to be segmented intowords that are represented in print with whitespaces between them. Additionally, letter for-mation, letter size, and use of capital and lowercase letters all present hard physical work foryoung writers. And then the child must learnhow to spell which can be equally puzzling.The supportive, co-constructing-of-text teacherhelps the child maintain the importance andwording of his message during the tough physi-cal labor.

The young writer learns how to use a vari-ety of strategies to record his message in print.In Clay's (1993) words:

Sometimes you can analyze words youwant to write.

Sometimes you have to know how tospell a particular word.

Sometimes you have to 'make it likeanother word you know' which means getit by analogy with a common spellingpattern in English (p. 35).

In the very first lessons the ReadingRecovery teacher uses procedures to foster eachof these strategies the child can use in ReadingRecovery lessons and in classroom writing.

For closer examination of their purpose, Ishall explore each strategy used to write text.

Sometimes you can analyze new words youwant to write. In Section 6: Hearing andRecording Sound in Words, Clay (1993) expli-cates the activities designed to help the childthink about the order of the sounds in spokenwords and to analyze words he needs to writeinto the correct sequence of sounds. The childis encouraged to say the word slowly, listeningand recording. "Say it slowly" is a promptwhich will empower the child to approximatethe correct spelling of words in classroom writ-ing activities. Therefore, it is imperative for

the child to know why he must say the wordslowly and listen: to record the sounds he hearsin oral language as letters in written language.

In the introduction to this section, Clayencourages us as teachers to choose from thechild's orally composed story two or threewords they can profitably work on together.Why two or three? The frequency and consis-tency of using this strategy (analyzing a wordyou want to write) on the practice page willhelp the child internalize its power.

Teachers need to take seriously the word"profitably." Early in lessons, the teacher needsto select words that will allow the child to feelthe power of this strategy. If the 2 or 3 wordschosen to place in Elkonin boxes are pre-dictable in sound-to-letter (e. g., bone, bake),then the child will understand the value ofapplying this behavior to other situations. Itworks! If the teacher chooses words that aredifficult to hear requiring a great deal of theteacher's knowledge of spelling (e. g., saw,night), then the child will not feel in control.As the child acquires orthographic awarenessfrom constant exposure to print, he begins tosense the position of letters in less predictablewords.

However, saying the word too slowly maywork against the child who records every singlesound heard much like the phonetician record-ing an unfamiliar dialect or language. Inoverextending words, children will hear toomany sounds, e. g., the schwa sound after anoverextended "b" sound; this confuses thechild's work in Elkonin boxes. Frank Smith(1994) explains the adult's problem:

We (adults) know something about spelling, we per-suade ourselves that we can hear the spelling in somespoken words. For example we may claim to hear the`t' in the usual pronunciation of the word 'writer.'Children do not share the adult inability to perceivethe actual sound of the speech; this is the secondproblem. They will attempt to reproduce the soundslike a professional phonetician (p. 198).

Clay (1993) reminds us as teachers to, "lethim hear the sounds separated but in a natural

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way" (p. 32). But she informs us in BecomingLiterate (1991) that, "sound-to-letter analysisdoes not reign supreme in the hierarchy ofskills to be acquired for very long. The childwho has learned only a small reading or writingvocabulary begins to generalize about letter-sound relationships quite early" (p. 88). Thisleads us to explore the next strategy in learninghow to record stories fluently and efficiently.

Sometimes you have to know how to spella particular word. The high frequency words inthe English language are needed often in writ-ing text. The child needs to know why he iswriting that word over and over again on thepractice page, on the whiteboard, in the sand,and so forth. In Roaming Around the Known,the concept of what a high frequency word isin his language should be developed. Huntingacross books, newspapers, or magazines for aparticular word (e. g., 'is') gives the child asense of its frequency. As a novice to text read-ing, how could he know that the word 'is' isused lots of times! During the hunt, perhaps acomment might accompany the activity: This isa little word that you will see in books and write instories the rest of your life.

As the child writes a new high frequencyword on the practice page during the writingportion of the lesson, he may need to bereminded why it needs to be learned and whyit needs to be fluent. Praise the child when ahigh frequency word is quickly written in astory. "The child develops a sense of masterywhen he writes a word which is quickly recog-nized by an adult" (Clay, 1975, p. 70).Recently a little girl's face lit up when she wastold by the teacher: Now I can read that word,anyone can read what you just wrote. It's like thefuss made over the first word uttered by theinfant that is understood by the adult!

The section on the procedure to help theyoung writer develop a "little movement pro-gramme" to produce these high frequencywords (Clay, 1993, p. 30) is entitled: "To getfluent writing." The operative word for the

teacher is `get;' not, 'try to,' but 'get.' The useof this choice of word strongly suggests that theteacher must be insistent, persistent, and con-sistent in obtaining mastery of these littlewords. With a cadre of known words undercontrol (not semi-control) the child will beable to get to more words and use the words inthe classroom. As with all word work, however,fluency work on the practice page is a tempo-rary detour and the teacher needs to bring themeaning of the child's story back into focus.

Clay (1991) informs the teacher that, "Asthe core of known words builds in writing, andthe high frequency words become known,, theseprovide a series from which other words can becomposed taking familiar bits from knownwords by analogy" (p. 244). The child's abilityto make analogies, "relating something heknows to something new, and classing the twothings as similar" (Clay, 1993, p. 50) hinges onthe known being under control and secured.This knowledge leads the child to another wayof knowing how to record ideas efficiently.

Sometimes you have to 'make it like anoth-er word you know' which means get it by anal-ogy with a common spelling pattern used inEnglish. Initially, the teacher needs to modelhow this is done. For example, when Andrewneeded the word 'new' for writing his story inLesson 6, the teacher asked Andrew to clapAnd-rew, wrote it on the practice page, andbrought the child to the second syllable soundsimilarity to 'new.' In order to assist the childwith analogous thinking the teacher mustknow what the child knows and capture everyopportunity to foster this linking from knownto new words. As the core of known words andspelling generalizations increase, the use ofanalogies to get to new words should increaseproportionally.

The teacher's role changes as the childbecomes more adept at writing stories. Havingfostered the powerful strategies discussed abovefor children's recording of their ideas, theteacher must encourage children to write


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longer and more complex sentences to expressideas with clarity. Also, children will have lessneed to work on the practice page. A shiftfrom demonstration to occasional verbal guid-ance of the child through text writing mustoccur to foster independence and practiceorchestration of the strategies he has acquired;furthermore, the composing and transcribing ofthe story should flow from the pen with lessphysical effort from the child.

The joy of this fusion of composition andtranscription is exemplified by the storiesAndrew wrote late in his program. In Lesson47, Andrew's story was: We went to a concert. Itwas loud and some people were danci,tg. Theunderlined words or word parts were doneindependently. The choice of topic had beenselected without prompting by the teacher whowas genuinely intrigued by the story. The sen-tences at this point in the program were stilltold to the teacher aloud so that composingwas not quite integrated with the transcribing.The role of the teacher was to model thepower of analogy to get to known word bits:"The 'er' in 'concert' is like 'her.' " " 'Ou' in`loud' is like 'out.' " " 'Some' sounds like`come.' "

By lesson 69, a teacher leader was called toassess Andrew for discontinuing when hewrote: It is Christmas in (6) six days and Santa iscomeing to town to bring Andrew some presents.The teacher's prompt for the story had been:What wonderful news do you have to share today?Andrew did not rehearse before be began writ-ing. He picked up the pen and composed andtranscribed simultaneously. The role of theteacher was anticipatory in terms of trying topredict the traps in the English language forAndrew at this stage of his development. Insynchrony while he was writing his message,the teacher whispered, There's a 't' next youcan't hear (for Christmas); Write the word for

six, it's what grownups do; Say the word present soyou can hear the last sound. The teacher did notwork immediately for standard spelling ofcomeing during the writing because the childwas processing on the run; instead, she optedfor a short mini-lesson when Andrew complet-ed writing his story.

Andrew has a self-extending system inwriting. He chose the topic to share, selectedhis wording as he wrote in his voice, using thethird person to convey the message. The strate-gies for recording were so integrated that onlyby watching his lips did the teacher sensewhen he was using analysis; analogous thinkingcould no longer be overtly observed. Mostimportantly, he expressed joy at being able toshare his news in writing. Andrew and histeacher had met the challenge of maintaininga balance between composing the message (hisideas and language) and transcribing the mes-sage for his intended audience: his parents ...or (perhaps) Santa Claus? 444

ReferencesBritton, J. (1970). Language and learning.

Baltimore, Maryland: Penguin.Calkins, L. (1986). The art of teaching writing.

Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.Clay, M. M. (1991). Becoming literate: The con-


Clay, M. M. (1993). Reading Recovery: A guide-book fdr teachers in training. Portsmouth,NH: Heinemann.

Clay, M. M. (1975). What did I write? Auk land,New Zealand: Heinemann.

Dancing with the pen. (1996). Wellington, NewZealand: Department of Education.

Smith, F. (1994). Writing and the writer. 2nd ed.Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence ErlbaumAssociates.


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