Streamline Effective Reading, Writing, and Spelling Instruction: Work Smarter, Not Harder
Let’s Marie Kondo literacy instruction!
Or, follow the advice from the dynamic, amazing teacher and trainer Anita Archer:
“Cut the fluff and teach the stuff.”
Have you ever noticed that we all want things easier (and better) but often don’t know how to do it or find ourselves sabotaging our progress or resisting choosing to take the steps to get there? I think of getting healthy and dropping weight. I tried a variety of things based on what I knew about calories and exercise (which was quite a bit – I was a RN for a decade!). However, I experienced little to no results. Then, a few years ago, I began a plan that was a tremendous amount of work but I did shed over 20lbs in about 18 months. A back injury, no exercise, and reckless eating resulted in gaining half of that back. As 2021 rolled around in the midst of the Covid pandemic, I had a new resolve and started a plan I learned about that was quite simple to follow. I lost 20lbs in 7 weeks…and that was without exercising. Bingo! It was simple…though not necessarily easy to do. It took diligence and work and self-control for sure, but following the ‘recipe’ of the program as it was intended quickly resulted in the results I wanted.
STREAMLINE EFFECTIVE READING, WRITING, & SPELLING INSTRUCTION
I find strong parallels with my ‘getting healthy, shedding weight’ experience and teaching reading, writing, and spelling. Every one of us who teach literacy have tried a variety of practices, some effective, others resulting in minimal or no student gains, and some that result in student regression instead of moving in a positive direction. Then we may find something to follow that is tedious and challenging to do but it does result in student gains. Ideally, we find instructional practices that are simple, effective, and immediately result in obvious, atypical student gains.
What leads us down the path to the effective, efficient outcome? For me with dropping weight, it was a friend who lost 100lbs in less than a year. I decided I want that and realized if she can do it then I can too! Often educators learn about effective literacy practices from fellow teachers in their school, on social media, or at conferences. We think, if that is possible for them then it is possible for me! More often it happens gradually, a result of searching, reading, questioning, and evolving our thinking.
I’ve found that the factor that is consistent for both tremendously effective, efficient weight loss or literacy instruction is simplicity. Simple is not the same as easy to do but it sure is less complicated. I like to think of it as ‘more is not necessarily better, better is better’! With literacy instruction, there is a tendency to pursue ‘more’ as opposed to ‘different’ or ‘better’. More instructional materials, more instructional approaches to teach a particular skill or concept, more reading programs, more centers, more worksheets. As Steve Dykstra so aptly said about teaching reading, writing, and spelling, “We don’t need more cookie cutters, we need a better cookie cutter.” Yes!
How do we find a better cookie cutter? First and foremost, look to simplify and remove things instead of complicate and add more in. Teachers are moaning under the ‘add more of this and that on top of those’. It results in overwhelm for both teachers and students, without the improved outcomes everyone is hoping for. Think of it as cutting the fat off the sirloin so that all you have is a high quality cut of beef! Cut the fat off instruction and serve more of the good stuff. Knowing what is ‘fat’ and what is ‘good stuff’ with literacy instruction can be tricky. This is how I do it: I ask myself “Why am I doing what I’m doing?” If the answer is “My students make greater gains at a faster speed” then I stick with it. However, if the answer is “Because this is what I’ve always done” or “This is what I like doing” then I take steps to either get rid of that practice or figure out if it is worth modifying or, more commonly, search for a practice that is more effective and efficient.
A great example of this is portrayed in this podcast (episode #62) I recently listened to. It is an interview of a Kindergarten teacher who loved the Reader’s and Writer’s Workshop model and had used it for years. Her school’s reading specialist told her about different reading practices that were based on solid research. The teacher shares that she was annoyed with this information and actually set out to prove the workshop model right. However, things didn’t turn out quite as she planned and she continued along the path that proved more beneficial for her students.
What does this look like in practice? This can apply to both materials and instructional practices. For example, if we teach emerging readers how to segment sounds and blend them together with the letters that represent them and do it in the context of words, they move quite quickly to reading. The reading is done first in decodable books and then advancing to simple, then more complex trade books. If we then, at a different time of the day or in independent practice, teach blends and word families (or onset/rime) then we would be taking up additional instructional time and diluting the progress students had made with learning the code and blending words from the sound or phoneme level.
If we teach these same emerging students at the phoneme level and send them off to read books that are not decodable but instead require them to look at the picture or guess the word to try to figure out the text, we are again negating the hard work both we and the students put into the explicit instruction opportunity. When the lesson can be reinforced and practiced in the text to be read or the writing that is expected, learning is accelerated.
For older students, ideally the vocabulary taught will then be applied by being included in both what they read and what they write about that reading. Teaching isolated skills or strategies without the opportunity to apply them does not allow for what was learned to be fully integrated. Isolated teaching (see my Island Teaching blog) of skills, concepts, or information tends to decrease both student engagement and progress.
Sometimes we may find a very effective practice, such as phoneme blending, segmenting, deletion, and substitution, that we know accelerates student proficiency. We realize it is tremendously effective so we look for more programs or activities or opportunities. However, if our initial instruction results in students being able to effectively and efficiently perform all these tasks to proficiency, what is the purpose in looking for even more instruction? When we teach a child to ride a bike, we don’t continue to teach them how to ride a bike once they’ve learned how to do it. We move on to applying what they’ve learned (more balance practice on bumpy terrain, longer rides). The same with phonemic awareness and phonics instruction. Once the students learn it, do more applying or a higher level of instruction. If we learn of a more efficient way to teach this skill, that results in the need for less instructional time and resources rather than more! If you are able to get the same results with your students in 7 weeks as opposed to 18 months (like the difference between my two weight loss journeys), of course you would choose the quicker path!
It is tempting to be attracted to fun, bright, enticing materials too. We benefit from critically analyzing the instructional materials we put in front of children. Don’t spend your valuable time cutting and laminating materials that don’t accelerate the progress of your students, even if they are fun and cute! There is a place for fun and cute, to be sure, but with literacy instruction the goal is effective instruction, practice, and application with minimizing materials, using only those that boost all students progress to higher levels of reading, writing, and spelling.
Children need instruction that will get them to high level literacy as quickly as possible. Some will need more repetition and more error correction and more practice than others but that doesn’t mean different instruction. Having 3 or 5 different programs to teach reading and spelling is more but almost never is it better. Search for instruction that works, and works well and quickly. If a ‘cookie cutter’ isn’t moving all your students to proficiency, don’t add a different one on top of the current one. Instead find the best cookie cutter you can, use it with fidelity, and continuously refine your delivery of it. Use that cookie cutter to teach Tier 1, provide more supported instruction with the same cookie cutter in Tier 2 as needed, and provide your children who need it very targeted instruction with the same cookie cutter in Tier 3. Choose and use materials that reinforce or expand upon the effective, efficient instruction you are using and resist the temptation to consistently use ‘filler’ activities that don’t enrich or support learning. Track data and follow results. If all students are not making obvious and consistent progress, the problem is the cookie cutter so you’ll be best served finding a better one!
Ask yourself the question “Why am I doing what I’m doing and why am I using what I’m using?” Also remember, more is not always better. Better is better!
To further help you along the way, check out our ‘Do More of This and Less of That’ webinar to get specific examples on how to streamline literacy instruction.