how to successfully address struggling literacy learners? · how to successfully address struggling...

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Workshop, chaired by Gerry Shiel & Renate ValtinELINET conferenceAmsterdam, January 22, 2016

How to successfully address struggling literacy learners?

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OVERVIEW

Introduction: Definition and Framework Renate Valtin

Perspectives from PIRLS and PISA Gerry Shiel

Good and Promising PracticeNeuvolaWhole-School-Safety NetGraphogamesReading Recovery / Reciproal Teaching

Renate ValtinAnn-Sofie SelinHeikki Lyytinen

Henrietta Dombey

Discussion




Renate Valtin Introduction

ELINET ENGAGING WITH THE EUROPEAN LITERACY POLICY NETWORK

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ELINET´s Main Task:To build a strong network that brings together European policy actors committed to reducing the number of children, young people and adults with poor literacy skills in Europe.

ELINET´s Deliverables:

• Country reports with a section on struggling readers (f.i. support)

• Framework of Good Practice in Literacy Policies

• Good practice examples

• Declaration of European Citizens’ Right to Literacy

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Definition of struggling literacy learners: not yet satisfactory

• according to norms in standardized tests (like percentage rates, below one standard deviation)

• criterion oriented test: defined with regard to reading competency levels or international benchmarks (f.i. PIRLS): Struggling readers are students whose performance at the end of grade 4 is at or below the low international benchmark.

• We still need reliable and valid tests.

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Dyslexia as a special type of reading difficulty? Why we do not use the concept of dyslexia• Unclear definitions and operationalizations leading to

arbitrariness of diagnosis. Dyslexia is not a distinct category, and there are no clear cut-off points.

• Rejection of the IQ–achievement discrepancy

• Not helpful for therapy: dyslexic children and other poor readers benefit from the same remedial training approaches. Successful remediation is not correlated with IQ.

• Solution: “to carefully identify individual learners’ needs and make provisions for those needs, rather than categorize needs based on definitions” (European Agency for Development in Special Needs Education).

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Ecological frameworkReading difficulties are seen as a result of a cumulative process of the interaction between many factors

�individual characteristics of the child ( sensory, cognitive, language factors, motivation and self concepts, knowledge of reading strategies),

�home factors (literacy resources, parents as role models, migrant status, socio-economic status of the family literate environment, language of the home) and

�school factors (instructional methods, support..)

�Prevention and intervention must relate to different aspects and include several system levels.




Gerry ShielSome perspectives from PIRLS and PISA


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Identifying Struggling Readers in PIRLS & PISA

• In PIRLS, students with low achievement (defined as scoring at or below the Low PIRLS benchmark)

• In PISA, students scoring below proficiency Level 2 are deemed to be poor readers

• The reading tasks that students at each benchmark/proficiency are likely to succeed on are described. . . Except for the below Level 1 category.

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What PIRLS and PISA Don’t Tell Us. . .

• Status in reading of students who did not participate in testing (e.g., exempted students)

• Nature of reading difficulties experienced by non-participating students (e.g., students with specific learning difficulties/dyslexia).

• However, we can identify language status of students who did take the test, and, in the case of PISA, immigrant status as well.

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How useful is a criterion-referenced interpretation?

• In PIRLS, students at the Low Benchmark can. . .• Literary texts: Locate and retrieve an explicitly-

stated detail

• Informational texts: Locate and reproduce explicitly-stated information that is at the beginning of a text

• Students at the Intermediate Benchmark can. . .• Literary: Make straightforward inferences about the

attributes, feelings and motivations of main characters

• Informational: Use subheadings, text boxes and illustrations to locate parts of the text

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Percentages of Students at or below Low PIRLS Benchmark

4,6 4,4 4,7

14,4 14,7 14,7

0

5

10

15

20

25

2001 2006 2011

EU Averages PIRLS 2001 - 2011

Below Level 1 Level 1

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PIRLS Struggling Readers –Variation by Country

14,1

6,2 5,23,5 4,7 3,3

0,8

20,7

23,423,9

16,6 14,7

11,6

7,1

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Romania Belgium

(Fr)

Norway Lithuania EU-Avg Ireland Finland

Below Level 1

Level 1

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Percentages of Students below Proficiency Level 2 on PISA

2,5 1,0 2,3 1,6 1,7 0,7 0,3

10,3

4,65,1 4,8 3,7

2,4 1,9

24,4

15,6 11,8 12,810,8

8,2 7,5

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Romania Lithuania Belgium

(Fr)

EU-Avg Norway Finland Ireland

Below Level 1b Level 1b Level 1a

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Boys Are Over-represented Among Struggling Readers

46,8

31,924,1 26,6

22,517,7

30,0

28,1

10,4

14,2 12,7

9,6

4,6

6,1

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

Romania Lithuania Belgium (Fr) EU-Avg Norway Finland Ireland

Boys Girls

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Struggling Readers in the Country Reports

• Nature of support provided to struggling readers at primary and post-primary levels (National policy)

• Numbers of struggling readers receiving remedial reading instruction

• Support for struggling readers – a legal right?

• Effective programmes to address the needs of struggling readers (not necessarily part of national policy/funding streams)

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PIRLS – Percentages of Students in Need & In Receipt of Remedial Teaching – Literacy

21,420,1

18,117,4 17,4

12,3

7,12

16,0

13,3

15,8

12,1

10,3

0

5

10

15

20

25

Belgium (Fr) Ireland EU-Avg Romania Norway Finland

In Need In Receipt

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Support for Struggling Readers – A Legal Right?

• Lithuania – Articles 19-22 of the Education Act grant a right to receive psychological, special-pedagogical, special and social-pedagogical assistance as well as healthcare in schools.

• Romania –The law of national education (2011) in Romania states that all people with disabilities or with special educational needs have an equal right to education (Art. 12-6).

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• Finland – Students have a right to adequate support for learning within the school. Support may involve remedial teaching, part-time special education, enhanced support according to an individual learning plan, or full-time special education.

• Norway – Section 1-3 of the Education Act states that the tuition and training must be adapted to the individual pupil’s abilities and capacities and that the school must put measures in place as soon as possible.

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• Denmark: Municipalities are responsible for ensuring that children in Denmark are tested in kindergarten, using a language screening test, and providing any necessary interventions, before formal schooling begins.

• Ireland: Children who score at or below the 12th percentile on a nationally-standardised test of reading are entitled to access learning support, in addition to their regular classroom instruction in reading. But this is not enshrined in law.

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Interventions for Students Who Fall Behind in Reading (PIRLS)

68,374,0

55,2

23,3

55,5

96,7

55,7

36,6 36,6

26,2 24,1

56,3

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

Belgium (Fr) Ireland EU-Avg Romania Norway Finland

Seek help of reading specialist

Wait to see if performance improves with maturation




Renate ValtinGood Practice Examples: Neuvola


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Neuvola (Support Centres):Monitoring of children’s healthy growth and developmentA Finnish law obliges all Finnish municipalities to arrange maternity and child health care services that cover individual and population needs in accordance to state-wide health care plans.

AIM: In monitoring children’s physical and cognitive development, and in supporting family welfare, the idea is in prevention (before problems accumulate and become persistent), and in early diagnosis and early, multiprofessional intervention.

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Neuvola/Care Centres : Monitoring of children’s healthy growth and developmentThe child health care services provided in Neuvola include:

• at least 15 medical checkups before school age, concerning: height, weight, posture (at school age), and most importantly for the literacy development, vision, hearing, neurological-cognitive development and psychosocial development and health.

• Advancing health behaviors of the family in the home environment, and other surroundings affecting the child

• Assessing and diagnosing a need for special support services or further investigations, supporting and giving guidance to the child and family in possible treatment.

• Interviews are also an essential part of diagnosing. Treatments usually include various multiprofessional interventions, planned in cooperation with medical staff and the family.

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Neuvola: Monitoring of children’s healthy growth and development

• Although Neuvola services are voluntary, they are global and reach approximately 99,5 % of the children in each age cohort (and 99,7 % of pregnant mothers). (probably at least partly because some of the maternity benefits are tied into medical examination in Neuvola.)

• For example in 2013, 58 134 children were born in Finland, and the total number of yearly visits in children’s Neuvola was nearly 500 000 for children under 1 year (average 8,3 visit per child), and more than 900 000 for 1 - 6-year-olds (average 2,3 visits).




Ann-Sofie SelinPhD, Sec.ed.teacher

Whole School Safety Net in Cygnaeus Elementary School


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Whole School Safety Net ‒ Cygnaeus Elementary School 6‒12 years old; ~400 pupils Turku/Åbo Finland

• screening and assessment by spec.ed.teachers

• results in database, analyzed, and shared with the teachers to build on in classroom work

• information at whole-school, grade, classroom and individual pupil levels.

• not for grading or ranking, but for improving the quality of teaching

• support of the school leadership is crucial

[email protected]

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Whole School Safety Net‒ Cygnaeus Elementary School 6‒12 years old; ~400 pupils Turku/Åbo Finland

• since 1997 developed and implemented in CygnaeusSchool; the systematic screening includes all pupils, and is based on the theories of Lundberg et al (2003) and Hoover and Gough (1990); assessed and translated into classroom practice

all pupils in grades 1 and 2

all pupils in grades 2‒6

[email protected]

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• Provides support for each individual learner.

• Provides each teacher with in-depth knowledge of their pupils.

• Shows parents the strengths of their child and give suggestions for support.

• Supports the professional development of the teachers and support staff.

• the Safety Net adds to the knowledge & and catches at-risk learners that might be unidentified for years.

[email protected]

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Whole School Safety Net

every pupil and student has the right to educational support (special needs education) generally provided in conjunction with mainstream education

Basic Education Act 1998,2010

[email protected]

regular classroom teaching

enhanced support

special-needssupport

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• The Cygnaeus Whole School Safety Net provides

knowledge and awareness of

• strengths to build on, and

• challenges to be aware of

• for the teachers, the pupil and the parents


[email protected]




Heikki Lyytinen

GraphoGames – early identificationand preventive help of children atrisk for struggling in the acquisitionof literacy


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The basic principles of reading acquisition• Reading requires that one has to learn to know how written

language units relate to spoken language

• In transparent writing systems (e.g. Finnish, German, Italian) this means learning the sounds of the letters and then inventing how to pronounce such sounds in the order they appear in words

• Sufficient automatization (fluency) of the reading skills is necessary for comprehension of long written sentences and thus this needs training

• A necessary protective factor: maintenance of interest in reading/written language: starting of avoidance means losing the opportunity to learn

• This is why a game-like training is the best protection

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The basic principles of how theGraphoGames work for all learners• The connections between spoken and written language

is the core focus of GG-training, starting from easy tolearn small units, to whole words and sentences.

• The task of the learner is always to choose fromalternative written items the one corresponding to thespoken item given via headphones at the time thewritten items become visible.

• All stages from the first steps of phonics to the fluentcomprehension of sentences can be trained this way in an enjoayble play context in all the time updating visualworlds – but keeping the items to be learned in focus.

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The stages of GG-instruction in transparent writing systems

• 1. learning easy-to-differentiate units (no clear acoustic overlap; e.g. /a/ and /i/)

• 2. moving from easy to store single phoneme-grapheme pairs to syllables which help inventing the assembly

• 3. introducing the difficult to differentiate sounds suchas /m/, /n/ and /l/ as the initial sounds of syllables

• 4. increasing the number of alternatives (80% correctrequirement) and speed of presentation in the real timeadaptation to the actual learning stage of the individual

• 5. moving to larger units (syllables, words..)

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The stages of GG-instruction in nontransparent writing

• Different unit size –versions have been tried

• In general the large (rime) units tend to win; better because canbe chosen from those which consistently represent the samesounds in all contexts of written English

• Otherwise the principles of stage-wise adaptation to individual learning rate are like those for transparent orthographies

• The 80% correct rule means that learned items are collectedfrom the individual’s earlier history to be used after facingseveral items shown to be too challenging

• The 20% of free choices of items are chosen according to individual needs to open the still existing bottlenecks

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• Short playing sessions (10-15 minutes/day)

• Total active playing time on average between 3 to 10 hours within 3-10 weeks

• Repetitive (a tireless training companion) and an intensive, focused training environment

• Short training levels (ca 1 min)

• Motivation: fun, encourages learning, positive & immediate feedback, performance rewards




Henrietta DombeyReading Recovery


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Reading Recovery

Reading Recovery is a school based early literacy intervention designed for the lowest attaining 5-6 year olds in mainstream education.

Sensitive screening identifies the lowest attaining 5-6 year olds who are prioritised for intervention. Children receive daily individual lessons with the specially trained teacher for up to 20 weeks.

The aim is to accelerate learning to between three and five times normal progress so that children reach age appropriate levels of reading and writing within 20 weeks.

They develop the mental facility and attitudes to continue learning thereafter at normal rates of progress from normal classroom

teaching.

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Reading Recovery in action

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Reading RecoveryThe programme supports both reading and writing as reciprocal pools of knowledge and understanding available to the learner and teacher.

In each lesson children:

• read several short texts

• engage in focused letter and word analysis

• compose and write a short message.

Two kinds of learning are kept in balance:

• performing with success on the familiar in order to strengthen the decision making processes of the learner, developing fluent and efficient processing

• strengthening independent problem solving processes on the new and unfamiliar, enabling the child to push the boundaries of his own learning.

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Reading Recovery . . . Accelerated progress is achieved because the child learns how to learn.

The intervention builds upon intensive teacher professional learning.

Initial training spreads across one year, interweaving practice in school with regular professional development, which supports close observation and analysis of teaching and learning interactions, alongside theory development.

Core texts articulate theory for teachers, building theory into practice and vice versa. Practitioners develop a deep understanding of learning processes, early literacy and literacy difficulties.

Teachers become self aware, analytical and challenging of practice. They engage in regular professional development after training for as long as they work in Reading Recovery.

The ‘one way window’ is a key feature of training.

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Reading Recovery teachers in training

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Since its conception in the 1970s, by Marie Clay, a noted psychologist and literacy researcher in New Zealand, Reading Recovery has been the subject of extensive research, including in recent years random control and matched control group studies.

Monitoring evidence in the UK shows consistently high outcomes sustained for more than 20 years.

Children who completed the intervention at age six have been followed through to national assessments at age 11, at which point four out of five were still operating within or above national expectations in reading.

Given that the Reading Recovery cohort is skewed towards children facing multiple disadvantages, this is exceptional.

A major government-funded project in 2009 – 2012 achieved a tenfold increase in children receiving the intervention and in personnel trained to deliver the programme, without loss of efficacy.

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Overwhelmingly the research supports the significant impact of the intervention on very low attaining children, especially for those who have made the least progress in literacy in their first year at school, and for children in poverty.

For research studies of effectiveness :

http://ilc.ioe.ac.uk/rr/636.html

For studies of long term impact:

http://ilc.ioe.ac.uk/rr/637.html

For cost effectiveness research:

http://ilc.ioe.ac.uk/rr/documents/The_long_term_costs_of_literacy_difficulties_2nd_edition.pdf http://ilc.ioe.ac.uk/rr/642.html

Leadership and contact details:

Julia Douetil [email protected]




Henrietta DombeyReciprocal Reading


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Reciprocal Reading

Reciprocal Reading is a whole-class comprehension intervention that uses a dialogic teaching approach and has had a positive impact on children’s reading progress.

Target groups:

• teachers in 16 primary schools in one East London borough.

• students aged 6-11 years.

Objectives: • to develop teachers' subject knowledge of the reading

comprehension process• to develop teachers’ pedagogical use of the Reciprocal Teaching

approach• to develop the practice and knowledge of current ‘Reading

Champions’ to ensure effective dissemination• to locate new ‘Reading Champions’ to ensure sustainability.

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Reciprocal Reading

Rationale:

To make more sense of what they read, readers need to be given the opportunity to verbalise their understanding, which emphasises the importance of classroom talk.

Reciprocal Reading promotes dialogic practices and explicitly teaches children strategies to support reading comprehension. Readers are also required to engage with the meaning of the text.

Supporting institution:The University of East London

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Reciprocal Reading

Way of working

Teachers

receive initial training in:

• The pedagogy of Reciprocal Teaching

• Developing subjective knowledge

• Developing classroom talk practices

They also engage in Collaborative observations

Students

• work in groups of around five on the same text

• engage in prediction, questioning, seeking clarification and summarising.

Although teachers are involved initially, they later hand over responsibility to the group of students, allowing them to develop a dialogue around their understanding of the text.

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Reciprocal Reading

Project Progress

This project began in January 2014 in six schools (cohort 1) with the intention that these schools would share their practice with other schools as designated “Reading Champions’.

The ‘Reading Champions’ structure has been particularly supportive and empowering and provided an important opportunity for teachers to share practice, ideas and dilemmas as well as observations.

Student progress

Evidence of impact on children’s reading comprehension is being gathered termly using the school-based measure of average point scores (APS) used by all schools in England until recently.

Final data are yet to be collected but the table on the next slide presents interim data. The table shows the average point score (APS) data for the Cohort 1 schools for the first two terms.

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Reciprocal Reading

Average point scores of Cohort 1 schools over the first two terms

Jul-13 Feb-14 Feb-14 Jul-14 Jul-14

Control Study Control Study

Y2 13.18 14.7 15.9 16.7 16.9

Y3 17.44 18.9 19.4 20.4 20.3

Y4 20.2 21.7 22.1 23.1 23.5

Y5 23.82 25.8 26.4 26.7 27.4

Y6 27.48 29.4 29 29.5 29.8

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Reciprocal Reading

The Reading Champions from the GHPTA schools have suggested that it takes about two years for practices to become properly embedded so these initial findings are promising.

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Reciprocal Reading

Leadership and contact details:

Wayne Tennent

[email protected]

Coordinator of the ELINET project:University of CologneProf. Dr. Christine Garbe Institut für Deutsche Sprache und Literatur IIRichard-Strauss-Str. 250931 Cologne - GERMANY

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Thank you.IM

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