Watching the eyes

Having just completed a miscue analysis of a first grade student I've been working with, I found myself reading an article about a miscue analysis. The article, What a teachers hears, what a student sees: Eye movements from a phonics-taught second grader (Brown, Kim, O'Brien Ramirez), really resonated with me given my just completed analysis.

The article starts out critiquing some pre-service and in-service teachers shallow understanding of the reading process, which include the idea that reading is the sequential decoding of symbols. This understanding, which is also based on research they say claims to be 'scientific', reduces reading to a mechanical process. It doesn't appreciate the techniques readers actually use.

The means by which this is addressed is a second grader's eye-movement and miscue analysis (EMMA.) Though, my miscue didn't include eye-movement detection - and few could - it did make for an interesting result. The passage the student, Ali, read said, "Once upon a time there was a woodman who thought that no one worked as hard as he did. One evening when he came home from work, he said to his wife, "what do you do all day while I'm away cutting wood?" On the second sentence, she made the miscues "on every, one - every, when e-, one every-t-, e(h)ery-(th)ing, every-(h)in," followed by 9 seconds of silence.

In total, she spent 22 seconds on this section of text. Based upon the miscue, one could (and many teachers who were shown the video do) imagine that she is not attended closely enough to the letters and that is why she persists in pronouncing a "r." However, the authors analysis shows that during the first 13 seconds, she was looking at the area of "One evening," but for the 9 seconds of silence her eyes were scanning "when he came home from work." Ultimately, she corrected herself based upon meaning and context. The authors go on to say that the girl seemed to anticipate, "on every" as making sense with the story thus far, whereas "one evening" is more akin to another story start. Thus, Ali, was not struggling with the phonics but rather with the meaning and her anticipation for what should come next. The authors suggest she may be making a miscue due to the inadequacies of the text.

Another miscue occurred in the dialogue of the woodman, with Ali saying, "What does - what do", self correcting quite quickly this time. One could imagine that Ali noticed that she did not look enough, and then self corrected based upon visual cues. In fact, Ali's eyes were on the next word "you" when she corrected - indicating that she self corrected according to structure and meaning. She understood "what does you" didn't sound correct.

There's more to this article and I think it's worth reading. They go on to suggest that teachers have more appreciation for comprehension in reading. A focus on phonics, or any singular system isn't the answer. Additionally, DIBELS makes another appearance, criticized for the test featuring non-sense words. A test that indicates to children that reading is decoding and making meaning and understanding is not the goal - clearly not the message we want to send. Even without the eye movement detection, from my own recent miscue analysis, much can be learned from them, and I appreciate learning more about them to further my understanding of the reading process.

Brown, J., Kim, K., & O'Brien Ramirez, K., (2012). What a teacher hears, what a reader
                sees: Eye movements from a phonics-taught second grader. Journal of Early
                Childhood Literacy. vol. 12 (2) 202-222.

Overcoming bias/appreciating home and community literacies

I just read an article by a teacher-research study group in which they set out "to read, engage, and discuss how the group might identify, value, and utilize the multiple literacies of diverse students, especially in regard to classroom practice." (Hamel, Shaw, & Taylor, 2013) For the duration of nearly a year, this group including a kindergarten teacher, a first grade teacher, and a doctoral student met every other week toward that end. Though their goal was to develop classroom practices centered around home and community literacies, they found that much of their time was focused inward. Through readings, discussions, and self-reflection they confronted and addressed their own biases in the classroom. They felt like their real accomplishment was developing a new lens for viewing families, communities, and literacy while developing a "new mindfulness."

Citing Brown and Langer (1990), the authors "describe mindful teaching as: a) seeing the world through multiple perspectives, b) honor the process of learning over outcomes, c) recognizing the evolving nature of learning, and d) valuing the fluidity of knowledge." With this in mind, the group sought to appreciate diversity rather than view it as a deficit."

One of the revelations of the group also struck me, though given my recent study, perhaps it shouldn't have. They felt they needed to broaden their definition of literacy to include "storytelling, talking, environmental print, looking up a phone number, reading a book, making a list, looking at pictures." It is easy to fall back into the school-centric view of literacy, so even when one has learned that literacy includes much more, it is useful to be reminded of that fact.

Examples the teachers experienced included letting a student use a large portion of the school day to share the stories and literacies he used while he visited family in India. Another teacher was able to make a connection with a student and his family when he was invited to share his race-car knowledge with the class. His parents brought a race-car in to show to the class, thus sharing some of their lives and becoming more engaged with the class and teacher. That teacher felt there were positive impacts on that family subsequent to that visit. It reminds me of a statement made by one of the teachers. Sally Shaw said, "I am trying to think about or trying to listen for things that [the children] enjoy, to things that they're good at."

The above example also illustrated overcoming a bias. That family had previously seemed unengaged with the class/teacher. It is not hard for a teacher to judge a family and think they don't care. Instead, what may be needed is a connection to build upon. Similar to finding things children enjoy and are good at, we can look for the similar things for our families to be able to share. That may help us to adjust our lens and appreciate home/community literacies.

Hamel, E. C., Shaw, S., & Taylor, T. S. (2013). Toward a new mindfulness: Explorations
             of home and community literacies. Lanuage Arts, 90 (6), 428-439.

Brown, J., & Langer, E. (1990). Mindfulness and intelligence: A comparison. Educational

             Psychologists, 25, 305–336. doi:10.1080/00461520.1990.9653116

Misusing scientifically-based research

I recently read an article, though really it was a conversation between Dick Allington and P. David Pearson, called The Casualties of Policy on Early Literacy Development. Their conversation is very much a continuation of the podcast I listened to last week, also featuring P. David Pearson, which focused on Reading First. In this conversation, Allington and Pearson discuss policy like No Child Left Behind and Reading First, and their effects on instruction and learning literacy.

The section that jumped out at me was the critique of DIBELS, something I mentioned last week. Allington says the What Works Clearinghouse has stated that there are no studies that show DIBELS to improve reading achievement. Pearson, then adds that DIBELS website states that it is not a diagnostic tool, but meant only for progress monitoring.He goes on to point out that since these are the metrics people are monitoring, then that becomes the skills teachers assume ought to be taught. Thus, students will improve at the DIBELS test and progress. However, that is not the way the creators of DIBELS ever intended for it to be used.

I am reminded of a reading I did a few weeks ago, that spoke of the problems associated around leveling books. In that case, a good idea, was often implemented poorly. Here, there is debate whether DIBELS is a good idea to begin with, so implementing it poorly can only be worse. It places the focus on skills and consequently instruction that don't show evidence for improving reading. Time spent there is time taken away from students reading for meaning, something Allington and Pearson say that we know from research to be important for young readers. I suspect that the more time students spend with books, making meaning, and enjoying them, the better they will do at the skills DIBELS tests. However, designing a curriculum to address those skills isn't shown to work, isn't what DIBELS was designed for, and won't engage students in learning.

On a Voice of Literacy podcast Dr. David Pearson talks about the efficacy of Reading First. Reading First was a part of No Child Left Behind, signed into law in 2002, and it included mandates about the type of curriculum should be adopted in regards to elementary reading and how that curriculum should be implemented -the assessments, pedagogy, etc. "It was also supposedly based upon scientifically-based reading research," says Pearson. The idea of basing reading instruction on the results of reading research certainly doesn't sound like a bad one.

However, the research into the results of this change in reading instruction has been split. If one looks at the data coming from individual states, the impression in positive. Students are showing gains and teachers are appreciating the development they've received. Literacy coaches have been hired to help teachers and share the updates in reading research. However, when there was a national review of Reading First, the result were not so encouraging. Why is that?

Pearson suggests that it is due to the fact that NCLB and Reading First are not implemented in one way across the country, but rather in as many ways as there are states implementing the changes. So, while in one state, there may have been an influx of energy to the educational system regarding reading instruction, and that renewed focus had positive outcomes for the students - in other states, the implementation may have been poorer. The national results thus display the averaging out of those disparate responses to Reading First.

I can certainly see where a reinvigorated and freshly developed staff would have a positive impact on the reading instruction of their students. Pearson talks of this a little more in his article, for which he was then interviewed on the podcast. The idea being that the change is important - the new hope and motivation to succeed by latching onto a new "research-based" system caused the improvement. While staff development is good, and refocusing on student reading is positive, I'm less certain about the various mandates. However, that is the path our education has been on. Thinking that we can judge everybody on the same criteria and mandates will get us to the benchmark levels of achievement so desired.