Program Analysis

Project Part B

The Reading Recovery ProgramLearning to write words and

messages

Rational for Selection

Rational for Selection

• This year, in our Reading Recovery training class, our trainer decided to focus on the writing component of the lessons because there is such good learning that comes out of this part of the lesson, that it was crucial that we look deeply at what we were observing when it comes to the writing process and how we facilitate and analyze this all important skill.

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Rational for Selection

• In the fall, we began by reading various articles about the impact of the writing component on our student’s reading abilities and we watched videos showing Reading Recovery trained teachers who were able to really use this learning to enhance the overall program. We watched our fellow classmates when they went “behind the glass” with the critical eye on the writing portion of the lesson. With all of this focus on the writing, I decided to use this opportunity to dig even deeper into this important learning process that is embedded in the Reading Recovery program.

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How Learning to Write fits into the Reading Recovery Program

How the Writing Fits

• The overall purpose of the Reading Recovery program is to ultimately help struggling readers build their self-extending system to be able to read on the same level as the average student in his class and maintain that level of success. One of the most powerful ways to get a reader to really build an understanding of text is through writing. Through the writing component of Reading Recovery, “the student practices the operations needed in early reading. It helps them build a known body of words and construct new words from their parts. They shift from simple sentences to more complex sentences and they learn a variety of ways to structure sentences (Clay, 2006).

• The writing portion of the lesson is organized into three ten minutes chunks. The first is the Familiar Reads and the Running Record assessment, then there is the second chunk is the writing component and then the third part is the introduction of the new book and the reading of the new book.

Objectives, Activities and Time Frames

Objectives

• The objectives of the writing component of the Reading Recovery program are not spelled out like course objectives in a Basel text or found in our Common Core state standards. These objectives are more specific to the needs of the individual child and depend on the reading and writing understanding that the child has. There are, however some expected outcomes of the writing component that are explained in Marie Clay’s book.

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Objectives cont.

She lists the following:

• Writing fosters a slow analysis of print from left to right.

• Writing highlights letter forms.

• Writing left to right coaches the eyes to scan letters in a word from left to right.

• Writing focuses the learner to attend to different levels of analysis (features and letters) and to the importance of letter sequence.

• Writing requires the eye and hand to coordinate awareness and actions.

• Writing puts the learner under pressure to group letters so they can get the message down quickly.

• Writing consistently but subtly seduces the learner to switch between the different levels of letters, clusters, words, phrases and messages.

• Reference: Clay, M. M. (2006). Literacy Lessons Designed for Individuals Part Two: Teaching Procedures. Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann, a division of Reed Publishing (USA) Inc.

Activities

• Below is a list of the activities in the order that they occur in the lesson along with a description of each activity.

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• Eliciting a story – In this portion of the lesson, the teacher must coax the student into providing the message that they intend to write. The teacher has this part of the lesson in mind when they first receive the student from the regular classroom each day. The story must come from genuine, casual and friendly conversation that the teacher and the student have had. It is important that the student is writing about something that they feel is important and interesting.

Activities cont.• Composing the story – During

this portion of the writing there are lots of important learning that takes place. The student writes the story on a message page, a piece of blank white paper turned side-ways. They also have a practice page just like it above the message page. The child writes the message on the message page but the practice page is important because this is where the child is able to try out words that are unknown or partially known. They use this space to write words that they should take to fluency. These are words that the child should know how to spell because they are words frequently used in our vocabulary (sight words).

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Activities Cont.

• The practice page is also used for hearing sounds in words using sound or letterboxes. The sound boxes are a group of squares that the teacher writes on the page indicating the amount of sounds or letters in an unknown word. The student must then think about, say, stretch the unknown word and decide where the letters that make the sounds that the child hears should go in the boxes. The child uses his finger to touch the boxes as they say the word indicating where the letters must go based on the sounds that they hear. This allows the child to really think and internalize the letter sounds and letter patterns that happen in words.

Picture: www.fsd1.org

Activities Cont.

• As the student composes the story on the message page. The teacher makes sure that the student is paying attention to basic sentence structure. She prompts the student for use of capital letters, punctuation, spacing and letter formation. These things then quickly become automatic processes within the writing. The student then reads the completed story.

Activities Cont.

• Assembling the cut-up story -After the child composes the story the teacher writes it on a thin sentence strip and cuts the words apart. Then the pieces are mixed up and the student must reconstruct the story in the proper order and reread the story to check for accuracy. This is important because it helps with directionality, one-to-one correspondence and monitoring and self-correcting behaviors. They will soon learn to do this to their own writing and fix errors on their own.

Picture: www.lismoresth-p.schools.nsw.edu.au

Activities Cont.

• Taking home the story – Lastly the cut up story is placed in an envelop with the sentence correctly written on the front and sent home with the child to practice for homework. Some teachers encourage the student to paste the words on the envelope or in a notebook, others keep the envelops in the reading/homework bag so that the student can practice putting the sentences together over and over again. Picture:

curriculum.alpineschools.org

Time Frames

• Amazingly, the entire written portion of the Reading Recovery lesson only lasts for ten minutes. This is approximately one-third of the whole daily lesson. Most teachers utilize the “middle ten” for their writing instruction. It comes after the familiar reads and the running record “the first ten”, but before the new book introduction and the reading of the new book, “the final ten”. The teacher and student must work at a rapid pace to be able to incorporate all of the activities in that small amount of time. But, even though there is not much time to get in all of the activities, it is very worth the effort and the pace of the lesson keeps the child engaged will no down time to spend.

Curriculum Unit

Evaluation

The Unit: Evidence: Recommendations:

Reflects a coherent design– big ideas clearly guide the design of, and are aligned with, assessments and teaching and learning activities

Yes, the writing portion of the Reading Recovery Program does reflect a coherent design. This part of the lesson was designed to maximize student learning and increase the students self-extending system. The teaching and learning that happens in this portion is able to translate right back to the assessments that are given in the program as well as over all classroom performance. For instance, using sound and letter boxes will help the child hear the sounds in words and thus, give them the tools to be able to write and read more fluently. With these skills the student will increase his scores on the Hearing Sounds in Words Assessment as well as the Oral Reading Fluency and Nonsense Word Fluency.

As long as the teacher follows the intended design of the program, the writing portion of the Reading Recovery Program clearly matches the focus of the overall program and directly aligns with assessments that are used within the program as well as those that the students will use in the regular classroom.

The Unit: Evidence: Recommendations:

Uses multiple forms of assessment to let students demonstrate their understanding in various ways.

Embedded within the writing lesson there are multiple opportunities for formative assessment.• Using sound and

letter boxes and analyzing that information.

• Weekly record of know writing vocabulary

• Change over time in known writing vocabulary

• Utilizing the practice page to guide what the child knows and needs to learn.

There are lots of opportunities within the lessons that lend themselves to allowing the student to demonstrate his understanding. The whole format of the writing portion of the lesson provides numerous formative assessment opportunities. As long as the teacher analyses this data, I recommend that the program includes more than a sufficient amount assessment opportunities.

The Unit: Evidence: Recommendations:

Anchors assessment of understanding with authentic tasks calling for students to demonstrate their understanding and apply knowledge and skills.

Prior to the first meeting that the teacher has with the student, a number of assessments are given to first of all, rank the student as eligible to be served in this program, and second of all, give the instructor a guide as to what the student knows and is able to do and what he does not know. The teacher then uses this data to complete the Observation Survey, and Predictions of Progress, when guide the teacher as to the level of understanding that the student has. Then the teacher is able to gear the lessons to help the student build on what he knows and is comfortable with.

This process grantees that the student will be engaged in authentic learning situations that allow them to demonstrate understandings.

The Unit: Evidence: Recommendations:

Enables students to revisit and rethink important ideas to deepen their understanding

Children who are learning to read are able to build upon this learning by writing. According to Marie Clay, “writing, like reading, involves paying close attention to the learning of letter features and symbols and to clusters of letters that are likely to occur together” (Clay, 2006). Therefore, this daily writing allows the child to continue to revisit and rethink his understanding and solidify his learning.

I recommend that the use of the daily writing embedded in the program will work to enhance and deepen the child’s understanding.

The Unit: Evidence: Recommendations:

Incorporates a variety of resources. The textbook is only one resource among many.

The entire Reading Recovery Program is based on the principles of Marie Clay, a world renowned psychologist and educator. The majority of resources for teaching the program come from the books that she wrote called Literacy Lessons Designed for Individuals part one and part two and The Observation Survey. The teacher also continues to utilize the expertize of the Reading Recovery Trainer and the Monthly Staff Development that includes the “Behind the Glass” experiences to help guide their instructional practices. They also read relevant articles and attend the yearly conference to gain more insight.

My recommendation is that the program, in the way it is structured, does not need anymore resources because they would confuse and dilute the teacher’s understanding of the process and they would take away from the consistent routine of the lessons for the child.

The Unit: Evidence: Recommendations:

Uses clear criteria for teacher, peer, and self-evaluations of student products and performances.

The criteria used for evaluation of student products and performances is based on the Observation Survey Assessments and the child’s own understandings. Students are evaluated before participating in the program and then again after bing exited. The growth is then tracked for with the classroom teacher for the remainder of the school year.

Because the program is one on one with the teacher there is no evidence of peer or self-evaluation. I don’t recommend any changes to this because of the age of the students and the short time span of the lessons.

The Unit: Evidence: Recommendations:

Incorporates instruction and assessment– the design provides opportunities for students to explain, interpret, apply, shift perspective, empathize, and self-assess.

Yes, this program is geared toward the conversation of the teacher and student as well as the observations that the teacher constantly conducts of the student’s progress. Evidence of these opportunities are in the lessons ability to be intuitive and address the needs of the student. In this way, the student is able to explain, interpret, apply shift perspective, empathize and self-assess his own understandings.

The differentiated nature of the Reading Recovery program allows for instruction and assessment to provide multiple opportunities for the students to interact and I think that because of the programs ability to be one on one, this is one of the programs assets.

Evaluation of

Differentiation

Procedures

Evaluation of Differentiation

• Reading Recovery is the epitome of differentiated instruction. Each teacher works with one single student one on one. They use the thirty-minute block of time to devote to only that particular student and provide instruction that is geared especially to what that individual student needs. Teachers must create and maintain special individualized documents that help them to truly understand the needs of the student. They write an Observation Survey, which is based on the initial assessments that the child must participate in, in order to be chosen for the program. This document is the teacher’s analysis of the student’s tests. She looks at the tests and thinks about what the student can do and needs to improve on. From there the teacher write a Predictions of Progress document where the teacher decides on what strategies the child needs to develop in order to progress on to the next level of independence. All of this planning is done with the needs of that particular student in mind.

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Evaluation of Differentiation Cont.

• From there, the program specifies that the teacher spend the first ten days of instruction just getting to know the student, making observations and only working on things that the student already knows and can do well. This helps the student and teacher build a strong relationship that in turn helps the child feel more comfortable with the teacher and helps them to take more risks as a learner. From there the teacher is able to create daily lesson plans that build upon what that child already knows. Reading Recovery provides the almost impossible. It give students a program that is completely and utterly designed to be differentiated to exactly what that individual student needs.

Evaluation of Formative

and Summative Assessment

Evaluation of Formative and Summative

AssessmentFormative

Assessment - Practice Page

• - Sound/Letter Boxes

• - Weekly Record of Known Writing Vocabulary

• - Change Over Time in Known Writing Vocabulary

• - Analysis of the cut up sentence

Summative Assessment

• Hearing Sounds in Words Assessment

• Writing Vocabulary Assessment

Explicit, Hidden and

Absent Curriculum

Explicit Curriculum

• The explicit curriculum in the writing process allows the child to be able to build a reading and writing vocabulary and learn strategies that could be used on their own when they are exited and back in the regular classroom. On the next slide are a list of explicit curricular goals for each child during the writing portion of the program.

Explicit Curriculum Cont.

• * being able to hear the sounds in words to spell them correctly

• * building a wealth of written vocabulary

• * understanding sentence structure

• * capitalization and punctuation

• * spacing

• * letter formation

• * creating a message that can be read by others

Hidden Curriculum

• It is expected that a student in the Reading Recovery program work quickly and become independent problem solvers. There is little time to waste in the Reading Recovery lesson and so the teachers much set a timer and move the lesson at a rigorous pace. In the writing portion of the program, the child is encouraged to take chances and risks in spelling and writing. They are praised to get started writing quickly and to use strategies for solving problems automatically. These things help the teacher see what the student does and thinks when pressured to make split second discussions.

Absent Curriculum

• The Reading Recovery writing program does not include explicitly teaching phonics skills or word sorts to spell words. The philosophy of the program discourages having children use sight word lists to learn words in isolation. It encourages students and teachers to work on spelling words that the child is using in that moment. It does not spend time practicing those words and taking spelling tests on the words that are important. Instead, the child takes important sight words to fluency by practicing noticing these words in there reading, writing that word on the practice page if the child is using it in the message that they are composing and encouraging the child to know the word correctly and always write it correctly every time they use it.

Strengths and

Opportunities for

Improvements

Strengths and Opportunities

for Improvement

Strengths• Children are able to transfer

their knowledge of sentence structure to the classroom. They learn how to write complete sentences that increase in difficulty and they are able to use this to help with their classroom writings.

• They become more confident in their ability to sound out words for writing. They learn how to listen for the sounds of the letters in the words and eventually connect sounds to vowel pairs, blends, diagraphs and endings.

Opportunities for Improvement

• One of the major weaknesses of the writing program is the fact that our children have to write multiple sentences across pages in the first grade according to the Lucy Calkins writing program that we use school wide. The program does not provide the time for the writing to mimic the writing done in the class.

Strengths and Opportunities

for Improvement Cont.

Strengths• They are able to use the strategies

that they learn to spell and write words in the regular classroom. They use the sound boxes and letter boxes to help them hear the sounds in the words. Then as the lessons come to a close the children begin to know when they need to use these boxes on their own and in many cases, they write the boxes and solve the spelling of the words themselves.

• They are able to get one on one support to help them learn new things and fix any misconceptions that they have about writing.

• Another weakness is that according to our M-Class assessment criteria, our students must complete written response questions that are based on comprehension techniques. The writing process, as outlined by the Reading Recovery program, does not include teaching children how to answer these type of questions in the lesson.

Opportunities for Improvement

Unit Reflection

Unit ReflectionThe writing component of the

Reading Recovery program is a very well developed and

systematic differentiated way to help teach struggling readers. It

involves all of the important processes needed to build on the

strategies that young readers require. Marie Clay says, “When

the child is at the end of a series of early intervention lessons he will

have fluent control of these practical aspects of story

production and will be ready to blossom into producing stories of greater length and quality back in

his classroom activities” (Clay, 2006). When a child is able to firm

up his understandings of the written word and build on his own

understandings, he is able to finally gain the self-extending system that

all students need in order to be good readers and writers.

Reference:Clay, M. M. (2006). Literacy Lessons Designed for Individuals Part Two: Teaching Procedures. Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann, a division of Reed Publishing (USA) Inc.

Picture: www.southgateschools.com

References

• Clay, M. M. (2006). Literacy Lessons Designed for Individuals Part Two: Teaching Procedures. Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann, a division of Reed Publishing (USA) Inc.

• Clay, M. M. (2006). Literacy Lessons Designed for Individuals Part One: Why? When? And How?. Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann, a division of Reed Publishing (USA) Inc.

• Ornstein, A. C. & Hunkins, F. P. (2013). Curriculum Foundations, Principles, and Issues. Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc.