5 Opportunities to Make Learning to Read & Write Easier for Your Students This Year
By Jan Burkins, Kari Yates & Katie Cunningham: Authors of Shifting the Balance, Grades K-2 and Shifting the Balance, Grades 3-5
One of the best things about being an educator is that each fall offers a fresh start – new students, new thinking, and new ideas! Whether the leaves have already begun to turn and the air is getting crisp (like it has in Minnesota, where Kari is), or it’s still hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk (like it is in Georgia, where Jan is), or somewhere in between (like it is in Connecticut, where Katie is), back-to-school carries the same anticipation, excitement, and sometimes, overwhelm, regardless of what “fall” looks like out your window.
The bustle of back-to-school involves a mix of remembering, rethinking, and reinventing our previous practices. But, as districts and states consider the weight of terms like “science of reading,” “knowledge building”, “explicit phonics,” and “language development,” there’s even more to consider.
Perhaps you feel excited about the coming year. However, there may be some unknowns this year that make you feel nervous. You may even find yourself grappling with feelings of grief or anger about some of the current conversations in the field of literacy. We’ve felt all those ways, too.
As the authors of two books about bringing the science of reading into the elementary classroom in practical ways and without overcorrecting (Burkins and Yates 2021; Cunningham, Burkins, and Yates 2024), we understand the unique challenges and joys of teaching elementary readers, especially in a time of intense scrutiny of classroom practices.
In this blog post, we share five opportunities that may help you hold on to the signal through the noise of any back-to-school hubbub or curricular change. So grab a cup of coffee, get cozy, and let’s dive in!
1. Focus on creating the conditions for comprehension rather than relying almost exclusively on comprehension strategies.
Over the last decade or so, comprehension instruction has become synonymous with strategy instruction. For most of us, our reading lessons haven’t felt complete without modeling, naming, or explaining a comprehension strategy followed by asking students to practice it.
However, research on the reading brain supports just a handful of comprehension strategies – we refer to these as the Strategic Six Thinking Moves – that proficient readers use regularly (Peng, Wang, et al 2024). By the time children reach the upper elementary grades, chances are they’ve had a lot of instruction and practice with these strategies. Still, many students continue to struggle to make meaning of the texts they read. But this is often due to limitations with spoken language, not a lack of comprehension strategies.
The truth is, when it comes to supporting comprehension, strategy instruction is just not enough. Creating the conditions for comprehension is equally important, if not more so because comprehension is an outcome, not a skill (Catts 2021-2022). But, when conditions are right, students can actually apply those comprehension strategies they’ve learned.
So, what can we do to create conditions that make deep comprehension possible? Some of the most important conditions include:
Starting with a worthwhile text – one that’s well-written, relevant, and engaging.
Considering the background knowledge, students will need to gain a foothold in understanding the text from the start (more about this in tip two).
Making sure students have the vocabulary to comprehend 95% of the words in the text
Engaging students in active comprehension across the text – building a strong mental model word-by-word, sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph.
Focusing heavily on creating conditions for comprehension doesn’t mean that you won’t ever teach a comprehension strategy explicitly (Duke, Ward, and Pearson, 2021). Remember the core set of strategies we mentioned earlier – The Strategic Six Thinking Moves? While these select six shouldn’t be the star of our comprehension instruction, they should play an essential supporting role in the service of deeply understanding a text’s ideas.
A shift from strategy-centric to meaning-centric instruction is not only brain-friendly but also student-friendly. Children enjoy thinking deeply about thought-provoking, beautiful, and relevant texts. This shift positions them to talk about, learn from, and write about a text – not to mention more likely to articulate that elusive big idea.
To learn more about effective comprehension strategy instruction, see Shift 2 in Shifting the Balance for 3-5 Classrooms. To download a free student version of the Strategic Six Thinking Moves, visit TheSixShifts.com and click on the “Downloads” button.
2. Bring knowledge-building into the literacy block.
If comprehension instruction doesn’t revolve primarily around strategies, what should we do instead? Background knowledge may be the missing comprehension link for many children. They may know a lot about strategies.
They may even know a lot about different things – from fishing to soccer to cooking. But quite often, students lack the particular background knowledge they need to actually apply the strategies we’ve taught them (Alexander, Kulikoch, and Schulze 1994; Kosmoski, Gay, and Vockell 1990; Shapiro, 2004).
A problem occurs when we expect the knowledge they bring with them to be enough to comprehend academic texts. But, without intentional knowledge building, the comprehension playing field is anything but level.
So, how do we now find time to build more knowledge?
When the National Reading Panel (2000) highlighted the need for more nonfiction texts, it was a step in the right direction. However, the “topic randomness” in many literacy classrooms interferes with knowledge accumulation. In a given week, as texts are selected for strategy application rather than knowledge connections, children might read nonfiction articles about anything from living in space to voting rights to glaciers melting.
The solution?
Use texts that connect and extend knowledge around a concept or topic – migration, adaptation, natural disasters – rather than a specific strategy. This accumulated content knowledge helps students grow their reading, writing, and discourse skills alongside the topic. The more they know, the better positioned they are to comprehend, write, and talk about it (Filderman, Boucher, et al 2022). For example, if you are studying extreme weather in science, you can expand their knowledge through related texts in the language arts block.
Here are some other ways to build knowledge during literacy instruction:
Create a cohesive text set about a concept or topic using texts that build from quite simple to much more complex.
Use multimedia experiences (photos, videos, audio) in social studies to prepare students for related historical fiction during reading.
Use a page or a paragraph from a science or social studies text as fluency practice during independent literacy practice.
Build a vocabulary wall of the terms related to a particular content area topic so that students can draw from the displayed words when they read, write, or talk about the topic across the day.
Design writing tasks during language arts that leverage content area knowledge to inform or persuade.
Of course, we are not suggesting that literacy instruction replace content area instruction or vice versa. Instead, simply that we can maximize the relationship between the two.
To learn more about the role of knowledge in comprehension as well as practical ideas for leveraging knowledge-building in the language arts classroom. See Shift 1 in Shifting the Balance, 3-5.
3. Keep vocabulary instruction front and center.
As educators, we all respect the connection between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension. In fact, the connection is even stronger than some of us may have realized, accounting for up to 80% of students’ scores on reading comprehension assessments (Reutzel & Cooter, 2015).
However, if you have avoided explicitly teaching vocabulary because the work can seem so out-of-context and dull – you are not alone! and it’s no surprise, given the memories you might have of your own school days! This common aversion to explicit vocabulary learning results from classroom conversation, read-aloud, and independent reading.
But the research is clear. Both explicit and implicit approaches to vocabulary instruction play an important role in building vocabulary (McKeown 2019: National Reading Panel 2000). And, while there are actually four important ways to approach vocabulary instruction (not just explicit and implicit instruction), explicit instruction is one approach that gets undervalued. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to look like the tedious vocabulary drudgery of bygone days.
As you position yourself for explicit vocabulary instruction this year, here are some important things to consider:
Select high-utility academic words that children can use across contexts – conclusion, instrumental, potential, etc.
Define the word in kid-friendly language that connects to concepts they already know.
Teach students how to pronounce the word and let them practice saying it while pointing to each sound-spelling.
Analyze the word’s structure, providing opportunities for students to think about phonology (sounds), orthology (spelling), and how the two align.
Clarify the word’s context by using it in a sentence or two.
Connect to word networks by considering the word’s relatives (conclude, concluding, concluded, conclusion) and pointing out meaningful work chunks (morphology).
Actively engage students across each part of the lesson as they blend, read, spell, write, use, and discuss the word.
Of course, with this depth of analysis, you can only teach a small number of words, so you will have to carefully choose words for explicit instruction. You can download a free template for explicit vocabulary lessons at our website, TheSixShifts.com/downloads.
4. Stop asking students to learn words by memorizing their spellings.
The importance of students knowing high-frequency words instantly and automatically is hard to overstate. Yet, most of us have experienced the frustration of teaching (and having students practice) the spellings of these words one day, only to have them completely forget the words the next. The problem, though, isn’t with the children. It’s that much of our instruction has been based on the idea that children remember words by looking at them, studying their spellings, and memorizing them visually.
But it’s just not true.
The brain doesn’t learn to recognize words like it learns to recognize a bird, a bat, or a ball. In order to learn to read words, the brain has to do some work it is not hard-wired to do. It has to align each of the sounds (phonemes) in the word to each of the spellings (graphemes). The human brain learns ALL words this way – no matter how regular or irregular the spelling.
This in-the-head process of aligning sounds and spellings across a word in order is called orthographic mapping. We can’t actually see orthographic mapping going on in children’s brains, and we can’t “do” this abstract process for them, but scaffolding that includes making this abstract work more concrete, such as using tools like Elkonin boxes (1973), can help students notice the precise ways that each spelling (S-AI-D) represents each sound (/s/ /ĕ/ /d/) in matching order.
Scaffolding orthographic mapping is helpful for learning to read and write troublesome words correctly – whether high-frequency words (want or their) or content-specific works (photosynthesize or revolutionary).
The good news is that you won’t have to do this kind of scaffolding for every word children need to learn. Once they come to understand the relationship between sounds and spellings as the gateway to remembering how to read and spell words, they will be positioned to learn new words on their own (Jorm and Share, 1983; Share, 1995) without forgetting them.
To learn all about the nuts and bolts of orthographic mapping, you can read Shift 4 in the K-2 Shifting the Balance book or take our two-hour online class, Sight Word Success. The class walks you through a complete step-by-step process for teaching students how to lock in the pronunciation and spelling of words in memory.
5. Stretch your thinking about independent reading.
We’ve all heard about the 10,000 hours of practice it takes to get really good at something (Simon & Chase 1973; Gladwell 2008). It’s common sense, isn’t it?
Reading is no exception.
Research on the importance of high-volume practice and the positive effects of student choice on motivation and engagement has undoubtedly contributed to the widespread decision to allocate large blocks of time each day for silent, self-selected independent reading in elementary classrooms (Castles, Rastle, and Nation 2018; Stanovich and West 1989). Independent reading time also frees teachers up to provide small-group instruction.
But many students aren’t getting as much from these large blocks of silent reading as others. Some are lost in distraction; others are simply holding a book; others have been reading the same books over and over, and still others are just skimming the meaning’s surface rather than really thinking as they read the words.
So, what do we do?
By stretching the way we think of independent reading – moving beyond the idea of one child with a book that they’ve selected for themselves to read alone and silently – we can make space for more meaningful independent reading practice. For example:
Rather than always leaving self-selection completely open-ended, you can sometimes narrow the choices for students, such as choosing from a text set related to a current science or social studies topic or choosing between three passages for fluency practice.
Rather than always reading alone, independent reading can sometimes take place in a partnership or small group, drawing students into discussion and collaboration.
Rather than only reading texts they can access on their own, some students might use an assist – such as technology or a classroom volunteer – to stretch into more complex text.
Rather than independent reading always being silent, students can engage in oral reading practice – such as preparing for a readers’ theater or poetry performance – and conversation.
Rather than primarily focusing on reading, writing in response to a text, making book recommendations, or logging interesting vocabulary words in a vocabulary notebook can all contribute to increased reading proficiency.
Of course, we aren’t suggesting that you completely abandon independent reading. Still, as near-and-dear as independent reading may be, expanding our definition of how this practice looks and sounds is a shift worth considering.
If you’re reading to explore ways to revise independent reading time for students, stretching it in ways that benefit more students, you can read Shift 6 in the 3-5 Shifting the Balance book and/or participate in the 3-5 Shifting the Balance online class.
In this post, we’ve highlighted five opportunities for making learning to read and write easier – not harder – for your students this year: creating meaningful conditions for comprehension, fostering knowledge-building across subjects, teaching vocabulary with purpose, supporting word-learning in brain-friendly ways, and reimagining independent reading practice.
As you look through this list of possible shifts and consider the implications for your classroom, we encourage you to notice how each one makes you feel. Perhaps you feel affirmed because you’re already working to implement some of these shifts. Perhaps you feel energized, seeing new possibilities for practices that could use some refreshing. Or, maybe you feel overwhelmed in a literacy landscape that seems to have ever-shifting priorities. Wherever you are on this journey and whatever you’re feeling, remember changing practices involves heart work as well as head work. Fortunately, you are used to ongoing reflection and change, which is central to being a lifelong learner.
If you’re looking for fresh ways to embrace the inevitable heart work that accompanies shifts to practice, you may find it helpful to consider this collection of promises – which we refer to as The Six Commitments – we wrote to help ourselves hold fast to an ongoing cycle of reflection and growth.
Whatever shifts you decide to embrace, be kind to yourself along the way.
About the Authors
Dr. Katie Egan Cunningham is committed to supporting teachers in making learning, joyful, and evidence-based. She is Associate Professor of Teacher Education at Sacred Heart University where she teaches literacy methods and children’s literature courses. Her other work includes Start with Joy: Designing Literacy Learning for Student Happiness and Story: Still the Heart of Literacy Learning.
Dr. Jan Burkins is a full-time writer and literacy consultant dedicated to helping teachers and those who lead them negotiate the competing tensions in our field. Her favorite work is conducting literacy audits with schools and districts. Her other books include Shifting the Balance: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Balanced Literacy Classroom (K-2), co-authored with Kari Yates, and Who’s Doing the Work: How to Say Less So Readers Can Do More, co-authored with Kim Yaris.
Kari Yates is an author, speaker, and consultant with a passion for helping busy literacy educators thrive. Her other works include Shifting the Balance: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Balanced Literacy Classroom (K-2) co-authored with Jan Burkins, To Know and Nurture a Reader Conferring with Confidence and Joy, co-authored with Christina Nosek, and Simple Starts: Making the Move to a Reader-Centered Classroom.
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