Category Archives: Reading

It’s Not a Race to Z…

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Right now, teachers across the country are assessing students using the Fountas & Pinnell Reading Benchmark Assessment System (F&P). If you are not familiar, it is an assessment system which levels different books from A to Z with A being an early Kindergarten level and Z being upper middle school. The assessment gathers a lot of information because the teacher  sits down and listens to the child read, marks their reading accuracy/errors, and then asks  questions about the text. Questions vary from literal, directly stated in the text to inferential to  beyond the text. Teachers can find out lots of information about a child as a reader from this assessment—their ability to track text, use pictures for cues, decode, to read fluently, and to comprehend, and sometimes more.

The window is quickly closing, and a new one will open: parents wanting to know what their child’s reading level is. I am always reluctant to share the letter that indicates the reading levels with parents. Of course, we share the information when requested, but I still worry that it is just one little sliver of information and can often be misinterpreted.

What are my concerns with sharing F&P with parents?

First, this assessment system was created by Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell to benchmark readers in their guided reading instruction. It is essentially a guide to help teachers know when to move students along in the continuum of guided reading books that they use in small group instruction. Each letter-level represents a set of skills that readers have and need to work on.  The materials come with very explicit descriptions of what readers should know and be able to do at each level and what strategies and skills are appropriate for them to learn. In short, the benchmarks were intended to be used to guide instruction, not as a method to report to parents.

One Single Measure

Even though this is a thorough and intense measure that may take a teacher 30 or more minutes to complete, it is still only one measure. On one day. With one book (or maybe a few books). because the F&P is administered individually, it can cause students to become nervous. Students can also get tripped up by the topic of the book; if they don’t know anything or don’t have any interest in a particular topic, it can affect their performance.  There are very few things in life that rely on a single measure to determine excellence, pass, fail, etc. Even though the Superbowl is one game, previous performance is what drives the teams to get there.  We cannot use one performance to be the deciding factor in how we perceive a student’s reading performance.

Reading Growth is a Meandering Path

Reading is complex, and often students do not make steady, incremental progress up the levels in F&P.  The benchmarking system indicates a recommended level for students beginning and ending each grade and benchmarks in between. These are approximate levels, and we have found that all students do not go through the levels at the same rate. In early grades, students typically go through the levels/letters more quickly. In first grade, for example, students typically can jump several levels in the school year. By fifth grade, they typically only go up about two letters. While the continuum suggests a typical amount of growth, many students do not follow this normal path. Sometimes students jump several levels in a short time and then slow down.

Some students take a slower path to firmly own the skills in a particular level. Sometimes students struggle with one aspect of reading (for example, decoding multisyllabic words) and that “stalls” them at a particular level. Often students who are early readers “level off” on or near grade level and don’t continue to make the large gains they had in early grades.  Sometimes students are growing in skills that are not measured on F&P.  Sometimes the particular book or topic of a level is difficult for a student, or sometimes students make gains in other skills that are not monitored by F&P, such as basic comprehension and retelling or their writing skills.

Competitive Reading

I am particularly disturbed by a recent trend we have observed in elementary schools. When a teacher passes out books for a small guided reading group, many immediately flip the book  over to see what the letter is on the sticker on the back of the book. Parents quiz their children on what that letter is. We have turned reading into another competitive sport; students want to outdo their competitors and have the highest-level books. We have, in effect, created a Race to Z–a competition among children to get to the highest F&P level possible. This race is causing anxiety and frustration and taking the joy out of reading. 

Elephant in the Room: Test Giver Variance

This is the one factor of F&P (or any other individually administered assessment) we don’t like to talk about: different test administrators also can cause some differences in scoring and interpretation. Although we do everything we can to minimize that, the mere fact that each classroom teacher sees things in slightly different ways can impact how they score students’ responses, especially students’ responses to the comprehension portion. So, if one teacher scores particularly “easy” and another is looking for more details and information in responses, it can alter the final “letter.”

The Letter Does Not Say It All

While the letter leveling system takes many factors into account, it is not perfect and definitive system. Relying on a single letter to define a student as a reader is misleading because reading is so much more than that. Just as we as adults read books that are easy for us and hard for us, it is appropriate for students to read books the same way. Literature is rich and wonderful, and teachers are masterful at using terrific books to teach students to comprehend and think. We need to expose students to a wide range of books, and not be limited by the letter on the back.

Inquiring Minds Still Want to Know

So, despite all this, many parents still want to know how their children are doing in reading. Many parents know that schools use F&P, and are going to want to know the level.  What should teachers share?  First, I am not advocating withholding information requested by parents.  I do think it is important to share specific information that will help parents.  Instead of just stating the instructional level/letter, describe for parents what that letter or level represents.  Here are some questions parents could ask and teachers could answer about students’ reading performance.

Does the student:
  • struggle, meet, or exceed grade level standards and skills?
  • answer questions in writing or on worksheets at the same level as they answer questions verbally?
  • demonstrate any particular strengths?
  • prefer fiction or nonfiction or some particular genre or series of books?
  • have any skills that will be targeted in guided reading?

It is our job to work with parents as partners in our children’s education. Providing information that parents can use is the key to working together.

Guided Reading or Close Reading

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I have observed a lot of confusion about close reading and guided reading. I’ve even heard some educators using those terms interchangeably.  Nothing could be further from the truth! These two terms reflect reading practices that both have their place in elementary classrooms, but teachers have to carefully consider the reasons for selecting either.

GR CR graphicGuided reading is a specific teaching technique– a method that a teacher uses to guide students to learn to master specific strategies for unlocking text.  It was perfected by Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell in the 1990’s.  Students begin at very basic level texts that are highly supportive for readers—excellent picture clues and mostly decodable text. The teacher selects a “just right” text for a group of 4-6 students. The teacher models and guides students through activating prior knowledge and pre-reading activities, such as a picture walk. Students are guided in applying strategies before, during, and after reading. The text is often chunked into small pieces (a page or two). During and after reading, the teacher asks questions that relate to the story. Often, the teacher takes a running record of a student as he/she reads. Students may reread a text more than once to build fluency and practice decoding skills. Students may do a variety of follow-up activities, such as “copy cat” books, word sorts, or some writing.

What makes close reading different? First of all, it is not a teaching method.  Close reading is a goal for proficient readers. Close reading has been around much longer than Guided Reading—it originates back in the 1920’s, and was really popular in the 40’s and 50’s. Close reading focuses on gleaning meaning from the text itself—what the author is trying to say. To facilitate a close reading, the teacher does just enough pre-reading activities to get students ready to understand the text. Students dive in, reading the text in chunks.  The text isn’t selected based on readability, but rather on the complexity of the ideas to explore.  You don’t read an entire book or article closely—you select smaller portions that you want to dig into more deeply. After reading, students discuss the text, asking and answering text dependent questions that require the reader to revisit the text. Students reread the text several times, digging deeper into the complexity of the message each time.

So…what should you be doing with your students: guided or close reading? The answer is both, or either.  Each time you meet with a small group, you need to make decisions, including how to best approach the text in order to meet the needs of this group of students.  Guide readers who are just learning to read. Facilitate close reading when students need to read to learn and deeply comprehend text.

Download the infographic here.

 

Quality Questioning & Common Core

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Text Dependent Questions are a critical component in the Common Core State Standards. Students must be able to answer Text Dependent Questions—that is, questions which require students to use evidence from the text in order to answer them. They require students to dig deeply into the text to support an answer. In fact, a text dependent question cannot be answered without using the text; background knowledge and prior experiences should not be included or considered. Questions like “You just read about hurricanes. Have you ever experienced really bad weather?” are not dependent on the text—that is, they don’t require any words, phrases or other ideas from the text itself in order to answer them.

Text-dependent questions may be used for instruction or for assessment purposes.  They expect students to understand what the text explicitly states as well as make logical inferences that match that text evidence.  They do not require any information, connection, or ideas that the reader may draw from outside the text.

When crafting questions to meet the Common Core State Standards, we begin with Standard 1 in both Reading Literature (RL) and Reading Informational Text (RI). Standard 1 expects students to ask and answer questions as well as to be able to use text evidence to support their thinking about a text. Text Dependent Questions go beyond Standard 1 and address at least one other Standard. So, no matter what standard a question addresses, the question is also addressing standard 1 as well.  Questions should be text dependent, so all require students to revisit the text to find specific information to prove their answer.

In addition to guiding students to demonstrate understanding of the Common Core State Standards, text dependent questions should also promote higher level thinking. A question may be text dependent but still may not require a lot of inferencing or higher level thinking. A question such as, “What is the setting?” is text dependent because it requires students to go back and find a specific sentence or part of the text to identify the setting.  Perhaps students may have to infer the setting from clues, but this is still a lower level of cognitive demand.Often, text dependent questions are about a specific portion of a text; they require students to linger over a particular paragraph or section to gain meaning. Text Dependent Questions are purposeful; they are carefully crafted to guide students to closely read and deeply understand the text. Text Dependent Questions may have more than one correct answer as long as each answer can be well-supported by evidence in the text.

Questions may be text dependent, but not necessarily high level, rigorous questions.  A great model for selecting text dependent questions that require high level thinking is Bloom’s Taxonomy. Benjamin Bloom developed a Taxonomy of Thinking in 1956 that is still quite relevant today.  Bloom’s Taxonomy is a hierarchy that categorizes levels of thinking. In 2001, Anderson revised Bloom’s Taxonomy to focus on the kinds of thinking needed at each of the levels. Bloom’s Taxonomy begins with simple knowledge level of remembering and increases in difficulty all the way to synthesizing ideas and creating new projects.  Questions can be developed to foster thinking at each of these levels. The goal is to ask questions that are both text dependent and get student to think at higher cognitive levels.

Check out the online resource on Text Dependent Questions & Bloom’s Taxonomy from my April 2015 article in LibrarySparks magazine!