S1 Ep3 Getting to Know Your Readers

How do you get to know your readers? Shannon and Mary share some of their experience using basic assessment tools to check the foundational skills of their students: oral reading fluency, sight words, phonemic awareness, decoding skills, spelling

Transcript:

1.3 reading teachers lounge podcast episode 3 final

Mary Saghafi: [00:00:00] Hey Shannon, it's the beginning of the year. How do you get to your, get to know your readers? Can you share some of your basic assessments? Okay, this is the Reading Teacher's Lounge where listeners can eavesdrop on professional conversations between elementary reading. Teachers we're passionate about literacy and strive to find strategies to reach all learners.

Shannon and Mary are neighbors who realized that they were literacy soul sisters at a dinner in their Atlanta neighborhood. Once they started chatting about reading, they haven't really stopped. Come join the conversation.

Hi, I'm Mary sfi. I'm a reading tutor. I have taught in all elementary grades. I have Orton-Gillingham training and have been helping students with reading issues and dyslexia for 10 years. I love talking all things teaching, and I believe that humor goes a long way when asking students and teachers to do hard things.

I'm excited to share with Shannon and learn along with all [00:01:00] of you.

Shannon Betts: Hello, I'm Shannon Bets and I've been teaching for over 16 years. My specialty is locating the missing pieces and students reading development and choosing just right activities to fill those gaps. You can find me online@readingdevelopment.com and at R DNG development on Twitter and Instagram.

Hey Mary. How

Mary Saghafi: you

Shannon Betts: doing?

Mary Saghafi: I'm good. Doing well. It's the beginning of the year. Happy school year.

Shannon Betts: Thank you. It's the middle of that craziness time,

Mary Saghafi: just in time to get to know your students.

Shannon Betts: Yes.

Mary Saghafi: I know over the years that both of us have used a mixture of different basic assessments to kind of get to know your students and.

In our, on the webpage, we could link to some of those specific tests that we've used. But in today's episode, let's focus on what is the key pieces that you wanna look for when you're trying to find what is, what is happening in your student's [00:02:00] brain? What is. What is the root of the problem? Why is it not connecting?

Shannon Betts: Exactly. So some of our episodes we're gonna talk and use more teacher specific language and some of the buzzwords, but today it's gonna be very casual where we're just gonna be talking about exactly what we look for to know what to teach our students. So we're gonna be trying to find the weaknesses in our struggling readers and then so that we can begin an instructional plan for them.

Mary Saghafi: Right. And that's really what the beginning of the school year is all about. And we know that no one wants to waste time. So hopefully we can help you find some of those just key, quick assessments that will help you indicate, you know, I've got a struggling reader, but what is it that this reader is actually struggling with?

So my first go-to is oral reading fluency. I, when I was classroom teacher and when I was teaching in my special education classroom I loved the dibels. I like using DIBELS [00:03:00] one. It's available online, and that was a good resource for me to use. We did invest in the booklets and so the booklets are great to use, and oral reading fluency passage is a passage that.

You will time your students to use for about a minute and see how many words per minute they're reading accurately. And if there are any consistent words that they're missing or small words, whether it's sight words, what are the types of words that they're missing, and also what does their fluency sound like and what does it look like on paper if it's really choppy reading and they're missing lots of.

Words on the passage, then it's probably at a frustrational level, and you would want to move to an easier passage to figure out what types of words your student could actually read. And once they're reading with fluency, that means that they are able to read the passage. Without missing too many words and actually making that [00:04:00] picture movie in their brain and really understanding what they're reading when they're reading it.

Shannon Betts: Yes. So I'm gonna date myself, and I don't only think you knew this, but when we adopted DIBELS in the early two thousands, we had Palm Pilot. Really our district bought us and we gave it holding a little palm pilot. It was such a old technology tool at this point. That's when we're saying this in 2018. I didn't

Mary Saghafi: even get to do that kind of style.

Yeah. I was still even You were paper

Shannon Betts: pencil

Mary Saghafi: 2011. I was still paper pencil 'cause I'm kind of old school that way. I found that the students really liked it and they also really enjoyed seeing what, how much progress. Yeah. They

Shannon Betts: could graph their progress and I had a good number. I did DIBELS missing in third grade, and I knew I was looking for about a hundred words a minute.

That was just sort of my go-to number. That would kind of give me a range of, okay, are they kind of close or they a, a, you know, a fluent reader are not. And then the ones that really, really [00:05:00] haltingly. You know, could barely get through the first one or two lines in that minute. We would go down to maybe a second grade passage or a first grade passage or lower, and then if they were still frustration, then we would test other things.

You can also find oral reading passages for free on easy cbm.com. Easy

Mary Saghafi: CBM is another one that I also used when I would work with more of the general ed population. So I definitely recommend that. When I am working with kids with dyslexia, when I'm tutoring I also find that it's really important for me to still monitor their fluency.

And when I'm working with a kid I am working on one specific phonics pattern, but I still wanna see how they're reading. So I will put that specific phonics pattern in. The passage that I'm reading and then still see how their fluency continues with that, because you can

Shannon Betts: measure the application and the automaticity with that.

And, and that's really sound you're working on is,

Mary Saghafi: is that the, are they actually reading the, the passage [00:06:00] with fluency as I had described before. So that's another quick assessment that you can also do on a fairly regular basis. And that's great for tracking data.

Shannon Betts: And I called it the cat in the hat test in a previous episode, but really every single teacher just about has cat in the hat on their shelf.

Parents have cat in the hat in their, in their library at home. That's a great book to use to just open up to a random page because cat in the hat is made up of mostly short bowel words with some blends and diagraphs and the basic sight words. And so you can start to see are they at that? You know, beginning, first grade level where they've got some sound knowledge or not.

Mary Saghafi: And, and this this was information that's told, was told to me when I was teaching kindergarten, so very early on in my teaching career. But I believe that the cat in the hat uses the first 100 dolch sight words.

Shannon Betts: That is no, it's, it's the Sam. I am

Mary Saghafi: Oh, in, in the. [00:07:00] Okay. Green eggs and ham. Green eggs

Shannon Betts: and ham.

They think they challenged him to make a book with only sight words.

Mary Saghafi: Yeah, I think that that's accurate. Yeah, that, that sounds about right. Which is a good segue into another really good quick assessment, which is checking on your kids' sight words. Can they, can they read their sight words with fluency and automaticity?

Because we know that sight words are a building block and they make up a grand majority of English words. Being able to quickly decode those words and. Have that automaticity is really essential in in having reading skills.

Shannon Betts: And parents, if you're listening, I know that when you meet the teachers open house and back to school nights, almost the first words out of most teachers' mouths are work on the sight words for homework.

And sometimes they call them high frequency words. You will hear fry list or list, but all that means is some of the words that are the most common in English writing that the students are gonna encounter. Some of them follow this. Sound rules. Some [00:08:00] of them don't. But the students are gonna encounter them so much that they really need to learn them by sight and not always just decoding them.

Mary Saghafi: Right. We're definitely going to elaborate more on sight words on another podcast. So

Shannon Betts: yes, we're doing research, we're learning. There was a Mr. Dolch and a Mr. Fry.

Mary Saghafi: Yeah, there's, there's lots of specific information that's involved in both. I think that either one, I've used the Dolch list, I've used the Fry word list.

I also use high frequency words and in Orton-Gillingham we call them red words. So they're still all words that people will encounter. And they all fall under the sight word umbrella. But I think the key is making sure that you practice those with a lot of frequency and it's another great way for kids to track their data.

When I taught kindergarten with the sight words, we used to put 10 on a ring and we'd see how quickly the kids could get through the first 100 and, and that was always a good activity too.

Shannon Betts: I usually test if the students can spell them as [00:09:00] well. Right. I like to see especially the irregular words, how they're trying to spell them.

And speaking of irregular words, this year I tried something new. I just tested my students on reading the irregular words. Really, I didn't even bother to see if they could read not and get, this isn't my second grade class. I just wanted, I just wanted a quick assessment to see. I'm just trying something out.

I like to use my students sometimes as a laboratory and so I'm just seeing if, based on what level of the Dolch words they are at mastery yet or not, and I'm looking for 80% mastery based on just their regular words, if that will actually give me an accurate. Reading level or not just testing the irregular words and not the whole list.

Mary Saghafi: Ooh, that's really, I find that so to be

Shannon Betts: continued.

Mary Saghafi: Yeah. That's really interesting. With my kids who are in the more moderate to severe range of dyslexia, getting them to spell those irregular words is really challenging. And that [00:10:00] is actually a goal that I have for one of my fifth graders right now is to work on.

His spelling list is irregular high frequency words. He's working on that in his regular education classroom and he still has to use all these sight word activities to ensure that he's learning those. But like we said, we'll elaborate on this another day. So, okay. I am gonna jump to our next big field and the, the next field is phonics.

Phonics is a huge umbrella term, and we're gonna go from pre-reading and emergent level skills through phonemic awareness, which is really talking about can a child manipulate the sounds at the word level?

Shannon Betts: And what I look for with that blending, can they put the sounds together and segmenting? Can they take the sounds apart both orally and visually when looking at words?

Mary Saghafi: Right? The next piece too is also, the, the real phonics piece of it. And that is can they [00:11:00] count the sounds? Can they, can they manipulate sounds within words? So I'm gonna name some kind of teacher jargony things right now. If you are a teacher and you are looking to. Really hone in on what your students may be struggling with.

These quick assessment activities might might be exactly what you're looking for. So the first thing that I test is really letter knowledge. Can the child identify the letter? Can they state the name of the letter? Next, can they write the letter? Which is a little bit different than this reading assessment, but I also find that it's a pretty good, quick assessment for what children are able to do.

Shannon Betts: So do you say write the letter s Write the letter T,

Mary Saghafi: yes.

Shannon Betts: With the name. Okay.

Mary Saghafi: With the name. This particular test that I have, it's a basic phonics test, and that's what the instructions say. In previous working with other students, I've actually done it. Where I say the letter sound and they write the letter, and that's more like data collection.

Okay. That I was working on. But that's a good [00:12:00] distinction. The next is can they read rhyming words? So you give them a list of maybe four or five words and see if they pick up and can read the rhyme rather quickly. And word families are great for that. I

Shannon Betts: do some with pictures too, so I'll show them pictures of words that rhyme.

So I'll show them log and dog, and I'll make sure they understand what the meaning of the word rhyme means, that it has the same middle and end. And then I'll show them a picture of dog and log, and I'll say, do these rhyme yes or no. And then I'll show them two words that don't rhyme. Like log and run or maybe even log and lamb.

So they have the first same first sound, but not the same middle and end. And I'll see, do these pictures rhyme yes or no? And seeing if they can see the examples of the non-examples.

Mary Saghafi: I think that's great. Sometimes too, you can, well, I guess this is gonna fall underset. I might be working, jumping a little bit ahead.

Another great way is to figure out if you have if [00:13:00] your children can segment compound words. So if your word is baseball do they understand that base and ball are the two separate words? And then when I was just speaking about onset and rhyme is really, you know, can you. Segment the words I have, the sound and ot, can they put those words together to make the word bottle?

Shannon Betts: Yes. I try to make it a game with students, especially if I've done those oral reading fluency and those other tests, and I really see I have a non-reader sitting in front of me. Then I want to go to the. Basic, easiest skills and help them find where they are comfortable and then what they need. So I'll say I'm holding a picture in my hand.

Can you guess what picture it is? And at first I'll just say first sound and the rest of the word. So the rhyme. So f. Ish, and then I might do all three sounds FA ish, or sometimes I'll do larger syllable words, like I'll say, come pew tur. And again, I'm [00:14:00] not showing them any letters or anything. I'm just showing 'em a picture or hiding the picture and seeing if they can do it out loud.

Mary Saghafi: I think all of those are really essential skills because that will hone in on what pieces. Students are missing. And in my background, if students are missing those really essential building block pieces that is a foundational skill that's extremely important to teach. And just because they're in second grade doesn't mean that they're going to develop that skill automatically.

Right?

Shannon Betts: So if they can't blend while looking at a picture or listening to the sounds in a picture, then they're not gonna be able to blend when they're looking at the letters DOG and saying, dog, dog, they have to do that. Blending orally first.

Mary Saghafi: So that kind of brings us back to what the next skill would be.

And those are the CVC phonics blending, and CVC is consonant vowel consonant. Always a short vowel sound. And that's the beginning phonics blend soak at. Together [00:15:00] makes Cat. Also we want to assess whether or not students can count the sounds in words. If you say that the word is wish wish has three sounds.

It has four letters. So w sh is a, I call it an H brother informally, but it's a die graph. It's a consonant die graph. A die graph is when two letters. Together make a new sound. So there's consonant digraphs, there's also vowel digraphs. And then. The next thing that you would want them to do is see if they can read real words and if they can also read nonsense words.

And for me, the nonsense words are an excellent assessment to see if they can actually do those same blending sounds that we were just talking about. So especially for first, second, third grade readers if nonsense words are really difficult for them, then that kind of tells you that. Just then you need to back up and you need to, yeah, because

Shannon Betts: they might have memorized a lot of words, so they might have memorized the word families.

And things like [00:16:00] that, or the shape of words and the rhyming words. But if they can't read a nonsense words, then they, they actually don't have the decoding and the blending skills. I wanna go back real quick to what you said about the counting sounds. Yes. When you said whish, or if I say the word wish, can you tell me what sounds are in the word wish?

And get them to tell you the whish. And that is huge for spelling. That is, that took me years to realize the connection between that. But when you, I've tried to analyze my own brain when I spell words, and that really is what our brain does when we spell words. We take apart the sounds, we put them in order, and then we choose a letter to represent each sound.

And so you as listeners could try it. So if I say a nonsense word like. Diviv, you need to be thinking, duh, eh, okay, I am gonna choose a D because that says the duh sound. And then I'm gonna choose, eh, because that sounds like igloo. [00:17:00] So that's the letter I, and then I'm gonna choose. The V, and then when you write it and you look at it again, duh, if, and then you're blending it again.

And so that's how the blending and segmenting just, they keep layering on each other and fluent readers do those at the same time. Fluent writers do those at the same time, but students who struggle with reading, there's a breakdown somewhere, and they have to be explicitly taught those in isolation and then showing them how to do it in real reading for them to finally break through the barriers.

That are keeping them from becoming readers.

Mary Saghafi: I'm gonna give a more complicated nonsense word. And let's do let's do, th tripp. The word is th tripp.

Shannon Betts: That sounds like a word that like rod doll would have in the BFG or something. It really does, doesn't it?

Mary Saghafi: I love, I love nonsense made up words. So when you think of the word thry, you should think of the, the beginning blend, THR.

[00:18:00] Thp, the short vowel is I. Then there's A-P-T-I-O-N thp. So how many sounds are in the word thp?

Shun. So that's a five sound word. So Sean has counted as one instead of. Sh un it is actually because the TION is its own phon name. Okay. And so when, at least this is how I teach it to my students, the TION is important because if you're sounding out shun, like two different sounds, then you're gonna think SHUN.

Yes. Or SH, it's actually three sounds. SHUN. So if you know that the Shun is automatically this phone name, TION. Then you'll be able to spell that word, but that's an advanced that shows advanced knowledge of phone names.

Shannon Betts: Yes. And that's a way you can do nonsense words even with. [00:19:00] More advanced readers to see if they're decoders or not.

It was interesting. I was at a parent event for my own children's school the other night and the principal was explaining what they use, some of the money that they raise from parents on, and she was talking about sex and phonics, and she said to the parents, I know you see some of these. Worksheets coming home with your kindergartner first grader, and they look so easy and you're wondering why we're spending money on this and why the students are doing it.

She said, but when they get to fourth and fifth grade and they have to all of a sudden do the multi-syllable words and they have to become more advanced spellers, you're gonna be so appreciative of the foundation we're setting.

Mary Saghafi: That's really interesting. Yes. That's great. I have not taught. Sex in myself.

Shannon Betts: Me neither. I've only seen it third hand.

Mary Saghafi: Yeah. I, I often see the only and I could, I can be skeptical about this because I have not taught it, but I often see, okay. I often see that [00:20:00] teachers have students who have behaviors where they're trying to avoid work and so they don't think that they need to do that.

Yes. It's, it's an interesting thing. We all know this, avoiding behavior. Okay. So the last piece that's critical in, in making sure that your students are learning those decoding skills is making sure that they can read real words, the nonsense words, and then also reading sentences to check their fluency.

Shannon Betts: Yes. And you can even find sight word phrases that'll show the sight, words and context, which is sometimes a different way to assess their sight Word reading.

Mary Saghafi: Yep. And then Shannon and I are excited to share our favorite way of checking students' fluency, not, excuse me, not their fluency, but really their spelling ability.

And that is with the words their way, primary spelling inventory.

Shannon Betts: And it's only like 20 words. You can even do less if they're at the frustration level and it's a magic list. I like to use it first off because you can usually find it free. You online, and I have the book as well. But it's quick. So you can give the spelling test [00:21:00] to the whole class at the same time.

Yep. And then I do spend time analyzing the scores and things, but I usually give it usually a month into school sometimes when I've already made my reading groups. Based on map data or the double scores or whatever we might be doing as a school. But inevitably, 100% of the time after I make my reading groups and then I look at the words their way inventory, they match up exactly the same the way that they have set up that spelling, test it, it.

It really does show you the level that the student is at, if they're at emergent level, if they're at the within word stage or if they're at the more advanced stage. It's pretty remarkable how connected spelling and reading are.

Mary Saghafi: Yeah, absolutely. It, it's a big key identifier to the developmental stages of reading.

So these are our foundational recommendations to, for teachers.

Shannon Betts: To get to know their readers, and we're not trying to overwhelm you and say, you have to test for all of these [00:22:00] things. We know that you give universal screeners at your school and you're busy giving those tests, and that is absolutely what you should do.

But if there's a student who you know can't read Cat in that, or that you really, maybe they're a very good test taker, but for some reason they're falling through the cracks and. You know, they, they fool you with their test score, but you know they can't read. Or someone who is low and you're not quite sure why we're giving you some things to search for to go ahead and start trying to test.

So look for their sight words. Look for their phonemic awareness. Look at their blending and segmenting ability. Give the words their way spelling test really quickly and see how they're doing on it. You don't have to spend a ton of time. We're not saying. That you have to spend 20 minutes with each kid one-on-one listening to them read.

Mary was showing me some examples of tests that she did give early in her career. Where, what did you say? You didn't see your kids for the first six weeks?

Mary Saghafi: Yeah, the first six weeks I spent assisting other [00:23:00] regular ed teachers giving we use the AB ced, I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that right, which is an excellent test and it really hones in on so many of the skills that we had just talked about.

But, we also need to be realistic about the quality teaching time that we're spending with our students. And if you are able to hone in on what are those skills that your student needs to work on, then absolutely go ahead and, and do that and search. Some kids are going to fall into the typical reader category and we'll be just fine with regular instruction.

What we're talking about is those kids that are your not yet readers that you really want to make progress. Swift this year. So thank you so much for listening tonight.

Shannon Betts: We hope that this gave you some helpful takeaway tools and we look forward to getting to know you and your readers throughout the year.

Mary Saghafi: Goodnight, take care.