Chapter 4. Reducing the Need for Intervention

Kathy's story is a cautionary tale as she is Hispanic, a second-language learner, and once qualified for free and reduced lunch. A disproportionate number of our students who "need" intervention come from low-income, minority, and immigrant cultures. The sobering fact is that once a language- minority child is referred for testing, that same child is placed in special education about 85 percent of the time. And "once a child is placed in special education, despite a mistaken assessment, it takes them an average of six years to get out."3 Additionally, special education and Title I programs rarely help struggling readers make sufficient gains so they "catch up" to their higher-achieving peers.4 A critical point here is that Kathy, rather than becoming a drain on society's resources, is already making a significant contribution. As a high school student, she volunteered in a local public school, tutoring students like herself who had fallen behind and were afraid to speak up in class. Her chosen career path as a lawyer will influence many who have also encountered unequal and inadequate educational opportunities.

I have long been puzzled and disheartened as to why society at large fails to grasp that if we educate all students well, everyone benefits. It is in our collective self-interest to ensure that every child becomes literate. Kathy's life was drastically changed by one in-depth reading conference that captured her strengths, pinpointed her needs, and led to short-term, intensive tutoring. Instead of becoming a dropout, pregnant, or a drug user—all of which she confirmed would have been real possibilities and would have cost society untold thousands of dollars—she is on a path to a career that will contribute not only to improving her own life but many others as well. We need to keep in mind that preventing even one high school dropout provides society a net benefit of more than $200,000, according to some estimates.5 Tragically and foolishly, we still spend more money incarcerating people—and these are mostly people of poverty and color—in large part because we have failed to educate them as literate citizens who can envision and realize a productive future for themselves.

Focus Teaching at the Universal Level

One of the most underreported yet most significant outcomes of excellent first instruction accompanied by raised expectations for all students is the fewer numbers of students who need intervention. With excellent first instruction to all, or what is called universal teaching, general education, or sometimes UDL (Universal Design for Learning), all students receive the same challenging concepts, and instruction is differentiated and targeted to ensure all receive and understand the high-level content. Not only is information presented through multiple approaches intended to accommodate and engage all students, but students are encouraged to demonstrate their understanding in various ways to show what they have learned. Effective first teaching at the universal level is a democratic right for all students and is a foundational belief of the Common Core State Standards. The standards emphasize that all students deserve and must have the opportunity to receive the same high-quality instruction before other interventions are considered. Unfortunately, all too often students are referred for extra support before we have done everything possible to provide effective first teaching; the end result is a vast number of students receiving special support services.

A story illustrates this latter point. In a recent teaching residency in a high-needs school, the number of interventionists in the school stunned me. It was typical to have two to four "educational assistants" in a classroom, each assigned to a different student for a whole host of reasons, most of them related to the student's designated label. I'll never forget the conversation I had with the principal in a planning call before the residency. She spent a lot of time preparing me for the "behavior issues of many of our children." As I always do, I requested not to know who those children were and to insist that they all be present. And, as usual, by the end of the week, an observer could not pick out the labeled children. Because of engagement in meaningful work, teaching with a sense of agency and urgency, focusing on students' strengths, being flexible in planning and teaching, and providing students many opportunities for talk and interaction, every child experienced success. The assistant superintendent of schools, who was observing on the last day of the residency, told me he was unaware that this classroom had a number of students who were receiving intervention services.

Increase Teacher Effectiveness

Many research studies conclusively show that teacher effectiveness is the most critical factor for improving student achievement, but questions arise over the most productive ways to improve teacher quality. My lifetime of teaching in diverse schools has taught me that to improve and sustain teacher effectiveness, long-term professional development that is school-based, of the highest quality, and focused around literacy is a necessity. Throughout this book we hear the voices of teachers, coaches, and leaders who have dramatically increased their effectiveness, and in every case it has been excellent, ongoing, intentional professional learning that has been the catalyst for becoming more thoughtful, skillful, and successful. By "successful," I mean that student engagement, learning, and achievement are greatly enhanced and improved—all as a result of higher teacher effectiveness, which is often coupled with strong leadership at the school.

Successful teaching at the universal level—and all excellent teaching—is tied to indispensable qualities and actions, and chief among them are the following:

• A high expectations mindset for all learners
• Ongoing professional learning that leads to teacher expertise and increased student learning
• Deep knowledge of literacy, curriculum, instruction, and assessment
• Excellent management techniques—pacing, urgency, relevant instruction and assignments, grouping, student self-management
• Strong leadership that empowers teachers and learners
• Knowledge of all students' strengths, needs, interests, and cultures, and using those to differentiate instruction and accelerate learning
• Daily formative assessment to improve teaching and learning, including giving useful feedback

Possessing a seamless combination of these essential factors and appropriately putting them into daily instructional and assessment practices requires years of thoughtful preparation, coaching, and practice. For our most vulnerable learners, who typically receive our least qualified teachers, these qualities are even more vital.

Apply the Common Core Standards Wisely

The good news about the Common Core standards is that they focus attention on "what" students need to learn and set a high bar for all students, including struggling learners. During my residencies, I have observed over and over again that when the work is meaningful, engaging, relevant, and challenging—and all students are given the opportunity to participate fully—some students with labels perform similarly to their peers. Many schools have not been challenging large percentages of students for years, with many students reporting that the work is "too easy."6

The vision and goals of the standards are commendable and are where we need to keep our focus. In their excellent article "CCSS in ELA: Suggestions and Cautions for Implementing the Reading Standards," esteemed scholars and researchers Sheila Valencia and Karen Wixson provide expert guidance on implementation and where we need to direct our attention. One important caution they offer is that some of the grade-level standards are unsupported by research and are inappropriate. Also, "Sometimes the grade-level standards include so much specificity that it is difficult to identify alignment with a single Anchor Standard."7 This is vital information because the less knowledgeable we are, the more likely we are to focus on the bits and pieces and continue low-level instruction.

One important suggestion the authors offer is to rely on the anchor standards in reading to guide instruction and to pay attention to the three main areas for comprehension: key ideas and details, craft and structure, and integration of knowledge and ideas. Notice how those three key areas also apply to writing. Just keeping those brief but comprehensive anchor standards in mind for both reading and writing can elevate our planning and instruction and make it more relevant, challenging, and intentional.

Standards can be used as an invaluable guide for what we do as effective teachers if we are knowledgeable. For example, the emphasis on close reading, informational reading and writing, and writing across the curriculum denotes important instructional shifts that schools are taking seriously. However, the troublesome news is that many teachers, coaches, and leaders lack the expertise as teachers of reading and writing across the curriculum to know how to effectively implement challenging standards and to question the ones that are off-base. Lacking that know-how makes it difficult to know where to focus attention and leaves educators vulnerable to relying on prescriptive programs for "answers." Without expertise, we will not succeed in increasing achievement and engagement for most students.

In too many schools, the main emphasis and pressure remain on rapid implementation of the standards rather than thoughtful focus on teaching individual students, meeting them where they are, and considering their unique strengths, needs, and interests. We need to be able to interpret the standards wisely while maintaining our integrity and courage to do what's best for our students. For example, rather than focusing first on teaching complex texts, be thinking, "What supports does this student or group of students need to read this text with understanding?" and "How can I reveal to my students how I engage with and comprehend complex texts?"

Historically, standards come and go rather quickly, so we need to be careful not to make standards the end-all of teaching. At best, standards will raise expectations and possibilities so more students achieve. More likely, using research and history as a guide, the latest standards will have little effect on achievement overall. From 2003 to 2009, states with weak contents standards improved their national math and reading scores at the same rate as states with high standards.8 As the public and we educators bear witness to a drastic decline in test scores tied to the latest standards and accompanying accountability measures, there will be an outcry, once again, for change. Our best investment remains long-term professional learning that makes us more thoughtful, accomplished literacy teachers and leaders regardless of the programs and standards in place at the moment. What we know for certain is that students learn more when they have expert teachers.

Emphasize Prevention

Valuing prevention is in our best interests in professions such as medicine, law, architecture, and education; yet undervaluing prevention seems to be a way of life. From the crumbling infrastructure of deteriorating roads, bridges, and schools to inadequate funding and energy directed to improving major public facilities, we often seem to wait until disaster strikes to fix fundamental problems. In education we have yet to nationally embrace the notion that it's a critically worthwhile investment to put our talents, energies, and dollars into preventing reading and learning problems rather than into the costly cleanup we typically do after allowing millions of our students to fail at literacy.

We know that children of poverty often remain in poverty and that a solid education, right from the start, is the best way to remove class barriers and make a brighter future possible. Yet, nationally only 28 percent of 4-year-olds are enrolled in state-financed preschools.9 Where early childhood programs adhere to high standards and provide a rich and relevant literacy curriculum taught by highly trained teachers, evidence suggests that these programs do lead to incremental literacy improvements and better lives for students.10 Moreover, research concludes that such programs—when they are excellent—yield a dollar-value return to society of $7 to $12 for every $1 invested.11 The fact that nationally we have provided such meager and often substandard literacy support for our most needy preschool learners speaks volumes for how we create a guaranteed crisis that could be averted.

The successful approach to flood control in the Netherlands—as opposed to what happened in New York and other locations struck by Hurricane Sandy in 2012—is a good metaphor for how we might better deal with major educational crises in the United States. They understand in the Netherlands that if things go awry, the invested cost in dollars and energy to "fix" the problem is enormous and goes on for many years, so they focus on prevention of disaster. What we do in education is continuously tread water at best, and at worst completely regroup every time test scores drop. Instead of prevention, we embrace intervention. We are inept as a nation at avoiding those large numbers of students who wind up "under water" (my words). Commenting on Hurricane Sandy, Wim Kuijken, the government official responsible for overall water control policy in the Netherlands, says, "The U.S. is excellent at disaster management, but working to avoid disaster is completely different from working after a disaster."12

Sometimes we educators inadvertently "create" the need for intervention through our failure to believe we can take actions that will develop successful learners from the day they enter our schools. Highly skillful teachers who hold a positive-expectations mindset can often prevent intervention for students labeled "at risk," especially in the earliest grades.

Ensure Excellent Literacy Instruction in Kindergarten

In 15 years of reading and writing residencies in the United States and Canada, a key and consistent finding has been that when kindergartners are guided to do meaningful, appropriately challenging, and enjoyable reading and writing all day long, they soar as readers and writers. That is, even in high-challenge schools where students have typically been low performing, almost all students leave kindergarten as readers and writers, and only a small number require intervention. Highly knowledgeable and skillful kindergarten teachers can resolve the reading problems of at-risk students as well as expert tutorial programs; yet most of our schools do not have a plan to provide the classroom instruction that these kindergartners require.13 Because a kindergarten student's experience with an exemplary teacher can be transformational for that student's later achievement, self-efficacy, and even future earnings, the topic of literacy instruction in kindergarten merits much attention.

Instructional expertise in kindergarten can lead to outstanding results. What follows are the insights, beliefs, and practices of three remarkable kindergarten teachers, expressed in their own voices. Jamie Newman taught full-day kindergarten for many years in an urban Colorado school where more than 90 percent of the students qualify for free and reduced lunch (she now teaches grade 1 in that same school); Lindsay Jacksha teaches two half-day kindergartens—each with a class size above 30—in a small rural school in Oregon where 65 percent of the students qualify for free and reduced lunch; Andrea Lockhart has been teaching for 12 years in Winnipeg, Canada, mainly in full-day kindergarten in a school where 65 percent of the children are from low-income families.

All three schools have sizable minority populations, large numbers of English language learners, and high student transiency rates. All three teachers have a strong sense of urgency and agency, participate in ongoing and school-based Professional Literacy Communities, advocate for their students, continually strive to do better, and get superior results with their kindergartners. All of them meet the curriculum requirements of their schools and districts and apply the latest standards to their instruction and assessment. All of them are joyful, effective, and efficient teachers; the kindergartners of all three teachers enter 1st grade as confident readers and writers. It's not just that the students know their letters, sounds, and "sight words." These are students who think and solve problems, see themselves as readers and writers, and use reading and writing to live their lives more fully, in and out of school.

I came to know each of these teachers well through our weeklong collaboration in their classrooms in reading/writing residencies and through follow-up residencies in other classrooms at their schools. Each of these three individuals was already a very good teacher; each one became a remarkable teacher. Their raised expectations and higher results in the earliest elementary grade paved the way for increased expectations and higher results across the grades. Teachers and principals began to ask, "If this is what students can do in kindergarten, what does this mean for 3rd grade and 5th grade and beyond?" Because success in kindergarten is foundational to what's possible in all grades, it's essential we do everything possible to ensure we have excellent kindergarten teachers in all our schools.14 Also, the story of how each one of these extraordinary teachers has grown can provide instructive learning insights for us all. In the accounts that follow, they express their changes in beliefs and practices in their own confident voices.

Notice how what these thoughtful teachers have to say applies to all grade levels and all content areas: enriching language and literacy experiences, raising expectations for what's possible, embedding needed skills and strategies into meaningful and authentic texts, explicitly demonstrating what we expect students to be able to do, accelerating learning, increasing engagement, making students more accountable for self-checking their work, and—not to be minimized—increasing enthusiasm and joy in learning. Also, these teachers are intensely focused on high-level instruction and learning almost every moment. If we can accomplish these goals in kindergarten in high-challenge schools, surely these are realistic aims for every one of us, no matter where we teach or what we teach.

Jamie's insights

I'm always trying to think bigger. I look beyond the grade level I'm teaching in order to seek perspective into how the content ties into that of other grade levels. Undoubtedly, what happens in kindergarten is foundational for later grades, which means I am not responsible for merely teaching kindergarten curriculum. I am laying the beginning of a foundation of lifelong learners. For example, we use excellent literature to notice and talk about structure, story patterns, author's purpose, and character motivation. By posing questions like "Did [the character] change?" and "Is there really a solution to his problem?" we go from what was merely a noticing task to a thoughtful and meaningful conversation rooted in bigger concepts that strong readers and thinkers use for the rest of their lives.

I'm constantly questioning what I'm teaching and why I'm doing it. I always need to know where I'm headed, and so must my students. My teaching is purposeful. I'm not teaching a bulleted list or a program. By thinking of the big ideas and how the standards fit in with them rather than a set of activities to fit the skills and standards, I am able to better serve my students.

I look at instruction more globally now and do not let myself be bound by a rigid schedule. For example, in my two-hour literacy block, we do lots of instruction in a whole group, small groups, and individually. We are "doing" all that is reading and writing ALL the time. I have found that by eliminating the division between content areas, especially between reading and writing, which has never felt natural to me as a learner or teacher, our conversations, work, thinking, and learning in the classroom can go much deeper. It is so joyous to see a class of 5-year-olds become totally engaged and truly excited about learning.

I tap into kids' curiosity and interests and follow their leads using shared experiences and their own lives as writing topics. I have deviated from a set structure for guided reading that locks teachers into having to see a certain number of groups every day. Instead, we do more independent reading, I have more independent and public conferences, have a longer writing block, and always stop to celebrate all the great thinking that is happening every day in the classroom. When I do put kids in a small group, it's because I've determined that these particular kids need certain skills, and I tailor my instruction to meet that specific need.

Most of our hard work with students happens in school, so I find I have much less work to take home now. I put the work on them, in the classroom, and don't have to spend hours at home planning because I truly use what happened in my classroom today to guide what instruction will look like tomorrow. I take my cues from the kids. It is this kind of responsive teaching and student-centered learning that has enabled us to create such a joyful and productive classroom.15

Lindsay's insights

We still have almost two more months of school and the majority of my students have already met the end-of-the-year benchmarks in both reading and writing. I have never had students writing and reading like this before. Their reading scores are higher than I have ever had this time of the year. Almost all are meeting if not exceeding the standards. They are completing at least one full page of their writing, sometimes two or three pages.

I can cover more ground because students are learning at a faster rate because our reading skills and writing skills are embedded in everything we do. My students are making connections from the books we read to their writing. I noticed a huge change when we began using word work from our own writing and texts we created together. The way they are able to play with words and manipulate text is incredible.

In terms of engagement, they take their writing very seriously. People walk in and they are shocked that all my students are engaged in different writing activities—and not just busywork, but authentic writing practices that are important to them! It is incredible to see the difference when a new student walks into the culture of our class. They lack the understanding of why reading and writing are important, and it takes them so much longer to catch up. It is then that I realize just how far we have come and how much more is possible.

The biggest change I have seen in myself is what I believe they are capable of and what I hold them accountable for. I make the kids do all the work now and let them own it. When we are writing, if there is a word we don't have up on our word wall, my kids want me to stop and make a chart for the room! I now look at sharing differently. Most of the time, the public conferences or the celebrations are where most of the teachable moments happen. Real-life examples from their peers! I can't look at a children's book in a store now without thinking of a handful of writing projects we can do with it!

I am excited and exhausted all at the same time. It has been an incredible year!16

Andrea's insights

I've made dramatic changes in the past two to three years. I'm much more effective and efficient, which is a very big thing. My planning at home has gone down. I used to spend hours planning ahead for days and months. I would overplan the entire day. The focus was more on the lesson than on the students. Now I'm tuned into the students. I have more routines that develop naturally, day by day.

My whole teaching process has changed, the way I scaffold for students. I have internalized the Optimal Learning Model, which perfectly fits the teaching style of kindergarten. I show kids what to do; we do it together; they try it out with my support. Another huge change and an "A-ha" moment for me has been moving to make all my teaching cohesive. It used to be all broken up throughout the day. Now we do shared writing, read-aloud, rhyming words, skills, and everything is connected to an experience, and I'm much more explicit in my teaching. All the skills are embedded in the texts we write and read. I teach more and enjoy it more. I am teaching every moment! I'm exhausted at the end of the day, but when I look back, the day was filled with valuable learning experiences, and I didn't take two hours the night before to plan it all. I plan more week by week, and the reading and writing are more organic and based on where the kids are.

My word work used to be surface, superficial, and taught in isolation. The kids didn't understand the "why." It wasn't until we talked as a staff about what we believe and why we believe it that my thinking started to shift. That shift was huge, and included the way I view kids. I no longer see them as having deficits. I view students as inexperienced rather than struggling, delayed, or unready. They may have had limited literacy experiences, so I immerse them in read-alouds, rich language, and literacy experiences all day long.

The biggest difference is that kids are not reluctant readers and writers. Starting writing on the first day of school is a non-issue. "You're all writers," I tell them. Five years ago I had kids lined up waiting for me to help them. Now they sound out words, apply the OLM, use room resources, and help each other. One of my biggest changes is in how I model. Now, I model what I expect them to be able to do. Before I was just writing without thinking what they would be able to do. A lot of my writing was beyond them. I also emphasize the reading/writing connection a lot more. They read their writing over and over again, and I say, "You're a reader." Reading their own texts and our class books is huge! I don't have a single behavior problem in my room. Kids know they are capable and are not afraid to take a risk. They are happy in their environment and see themselves as capable. Also, very important, in 1st grade very few need intervention. The kids that are behind are the ones who have not been in our kindergarten.17

Intervene Early

The earlier we intervene, the greater chance we have to effectively reduce and eliminate the achievement gap in the long run.18 One reason it is critical to intervene early is because early reading problems often continue through the grades, and beyond the elementary grades many teachers do not teach reading.19 Also, it's much easier to build on early success than to remediate later failure.

When considering intervention, it's important to distinguish between early-intervention programs that ensure later literacy success and the misplaced intervention that is a first resort, before universal teaching has been given a full effort. Early-intervention programs with proven success records such as Reading Recovery, high-quality preschools, early tutoring, and superior kindergartens focus on excellent first teaching in an intensive and targeted manner so that future literacy problems will be forestalled. In an interview, researcher Richard Allington notes, "We have studies involving multiple school districts and hundreds or thousands of kids demonstrating that, with quality instruction and intervention, 98 percent of all kids can be reading at grade level by the end of 1st or 2nd grade."20 Early prevention makes it more likely that students "at risk" will benefit from regular classroom instruction and gain content knowledge from reading.21

Our continuing residency work focusing on writing and the reading/writing connection in diverse, low-income, high-challenge schools confirms that we can ensure early literacy success. In Winnipeg, Manitoba, where Reading Recovery is firmly in place, kindergartners—even in the lowest-performing schools—who enter 1st grade with a writing vocabulary of at least 12 words have a 100 percent chance of being discontinued from Reading Recovery. "It is the daily authentic writing that has made the biggest difference."22

Before these residencies with my colleagues Nancy McLean and Sandra Figueroa, comparable students were exiting kindergarten with a writing vocabulary of fewer than six words and had only a 50 percent chance of being taken out of Reading Recovery. Definitive data from three large school divisions in Canada conclusively show that, in combination with Reading Recovery, focusing on writing early on increases the chances of reading success.23 An assistant superintendent in Winnipeg had this to say:

The fact that we could put a number on it challenges kindergarten teachers' expectations to teach writing in kindergarten. Our teachers who are the most successful spend more time with writing with young children.24

And again, in a school where the majority of students come from low-income families and where I have been conducting residencies focused on the reading/writing connection with an emphasis on writing, the literacy coach and hard data confirm that since writing has become a daily emphasis in kindergarten, 90 to 93 percent of students are exiting kindergarten as writers and readers.25 It is the early writing emphasis that has contributed to the accelerated and increased literacy success. The literacy coach says, "We're a year ahead of where we used to be. Kids are getting to exit early intervention in reading because they're writing so well."26

If intervention does not occur until later grades—in middle or high school—identifying students for intervention must be done with careful scrutiny. Most often, students have experienced years of failure, and achievement and ability levels can vary widely; variations among students of one to four grade levels are not unusual. With extra personnel at a premium, what often happens is that students who have farthest to go are clumped together and are not always placed with the strongest instructor. Or support is confined to test prep or a narrow focus on a specific standard or set of standards, and gains are very limited. Another common scenario is that students who are deemed to be "close to passing the test" are given priority for support over needier students considered "too low" to make sufficient test gains.

When a school has a high-functioning Professional Literacy Community, common formative assessments—not just high-stakes tests—are often used to determine where intervention efforts are most needed, how to form the instructional groups for intervention, who will be providing the intervention, and what the intervention will be. In other words, integrity rules and students' learning needs come first. In those cases, a subset of low performers can reach unanticipated growth through PLC-selected strategies and a strong instructor. "High-level, professional conversations among the PLC members, including an administrator and curriculum specialist/coach, are the tipping point for effecting positive achievement gains."27

Avoid Summer Reading Loss

We've all seen it happen. We teach our hearts out to ensure all students make significant reading gains during the school year, but when these same students return to school after summer vacation, we discover many have lost some of those important gains. Students from families and neighborhoods with limited access to books over the summer months may lose a month or more of reading growth. One 1st grade teacher noted that despite the fact that most exiting kindergartners in her high-needs school were reading at the end of kindergarten, a lack of reading practice over the summer meant that it took two full months for the students to return to a similar reading level in grade 1. More sobering is the fact that approximately 80 percent of the reading achievement gap between poor and nonpoor students at age 14 can be explained by summer reading setback.28

Although researchers have been drawing public attention to the deleterious effects of summer reading loss on low-income students for many years, little has been done overall to provide easy access to interesting books that lead to an increase in summer reading. Yet it is well documented that providing books to primary-grade students in high-poverty schools increases students' reading achievement.29 We all need to create and implement solutions that put books into students' hands. When students read six or more books over the summer, they maintain their reading skills and do not slide.30

Workable solutions that can help to reverse the disturbing trend of summer reading loss include but are not limited to the following recommendations, almost all of which focus on access to books—with student choice:

• Send hand-picked, appropriate books home with students at the end of the school year and set goals for summer reading.
• Mail books to students over the summer months with a note encouraging them to read.
• Keep school libraries open on designated days for book check-out.
• Enlist community businesses to donate funds earmarked for book purchases for summer reading (books students can keep).
• Use school book fairs to have students choose books specifically for summer reading; set the selected books aside until the end of school.
• During the school year, reach out to the school community and neighboring communities with a summer reading request for donations of new and used books. (A school committee sorts the books.)
• As a staff, brainstorm ways to ensure students have self-selected books on hand for summer reading.
• If possible, pair neighborhood children—an older student with a younger one—and encourage partner reading.31

From firsthand experience and discussion with principals and teachers in other schools, I have concluded that summer library participation, whether it be the school or public library, and asking students to keep a reading log do not work particularly well. What seems to work best in getting students to read is ensuring they leave school for the summer with a bunch of books in their hands and that these books are ones they have chosen, want to read, and can read with understanding. The expense related to providing these books is minimal, and some publishers offer books at very low cost. (For example, Scholastic periodically offers bundles of popular fiction and nonfiction books for $1 to $2 a book.)

Embrace the Reading/Writing Connection

Most of my work in diverse schools centers on raising reading and writing achievement for all learners, and I depend on the connection between the two to jumpstart engagement, enjoyment, and improvement for both reading and writing. Along with my instructional and assessment plans, I always enter the classroom in a literacy residency armed with one or more excellent nonfiction or fiction texts. I concur with a wise colleague who said, "The best intervention is a good book."32 Carefully selected, outstanding texts can guide, support, and raise the quality of the work that is possible for all students.

The reading/writing connection has been underused in our schools for decades.33 In fact, separating reading and writing limits and slows down student achievement, which is especially detrimental for our underperforming, struggling learners. Writing to Read: Evidence for How Writing Can Improve Reading is the most comprehensive review and summary report of a large body of research that examines the effects of different writing practices on students' reading performance.34 The report confirms the significance of applying the reading/writing connection to teaching and learning. Its three main recommendations are the following:

1. Have students write about the texts they read. Students' comprehension of science, social studies, and language arts texts is improved when they write about what they read, specifically when they
   
   • Respond to a text in writing (writing personal reactions, analyzing and interpreting the text).
   • Write summaries of a text.
   • Write notes about a text.
   • Answer questions about a text in writing, or create and answer written questions about a text.
2. Teach students the writing skills and processes that go into creating text. Students' reading skills and comprehension are improved by learning the skills and processes that go into creating text, specifically when teachers
   
   • Teach the process of writing, text structures for writing, paragraph or sentence construction skills (improves readingcomprehension) [emphasis added].
   • Teach spelling and sentence construction skills (improves reading fluency).
   • Teach spelling skills (improves word reading skills).
3. Increase how much students write. Students' reading comprehension is improved by having them increase how often they produce their own texts.35

Notice that more writing improves reading comprehension. Yet in schools where writing is not tested, it is often devalued and is barely taught, which negatively affects both writing and reading abilities of students.

We need to begin early and to emphasize more nonfiction writing in classrooms, along with narrative and poetry writing. More informational writing, especially in the primary grades, leads to better readers and writers and higher reading achievement.36

In my residency work in schools, I almost always start with a terrific nonfiction book that I read aloud to the class. We use the book not only to do a shared writing, often a summary, but also as a catalyst for getting students excited about nonfiction texts. Most of the schools I work in are high-challenge schools with large populations of English language learners; in such settings we need to teach and expose students to challenging content with regular and academic vocabulary right from the start if they are ever to catch up to their higher-achieving peers.

In Lesley Vermaas's 1st grade classroom, the results of beginning the year emphasizing nonfiction and maintaining that emphasis all year were stunning for her students, many of whom qualified for free and reduced lunch and who entered kindergarten with limited literacy skills. Reading challenging informational texts enhanced their writing, their vocabulary, and their knowledge acquisition, all of which had the effect of decreasing or erasing the typical knowledge gap that ensues when students are fed a diet of "low-level texts of questionable value."37 In the photos on page 154, see the side-by-side writing samples from an average student at the beginning of the school year and in the spring of the school year, and note the enormous progress in fluency, content, depth, vocabulary, conventions and so on; as well, see the joy on the students' faces from their excitement of wanting to share their published, nonfiction books.

Noticing and celebrating a typical 1st grader's writing growth from fall to spring.

Joy and pride in being accomplished nonfiction writers.

Lesley comments on the remarkable progress that resulted from the daily reading/writing connection and the emphasis on nonfiction:

The biggest change I made was raising the expectations bar for all learners and adding in the "I do it" piece of the OLM model to my teaching. My students learned so much from my demonstrations. We talked a lot about what good authors do so that the reader feels they are right there with the writer. It was amazing how much better and more descriptive their writing became. Also, adding public conferencing was very important. When someone tried something new in their writing, we discussed it, and I would invite others to try it.

Celebration in public conferencing is huge! They all want to be celebrated. I have thirty-four students, but I don't worry about teaching writing. Planning is much easier. Kids are in charge of their own writing and have mostly free choice about 85 percent of the time. We have directed writing about once a month.

While they may not always write a lot, their writing is clear, to the point, and has mostly accurate punctuation and spelling; it's all way beyond what I ever expected from 1st graders. I figured if they used a period at the end of their story, that was great. Now they use periods, exclamation and question marks, commas when listing, and can do quotation marks by the end of the year, and they experiment so much more. They are doing a lot of revising and editing, noticing what's confusing for the reader and fixing it up, lassoing and moving things around.

In terms of nonfiction, kids are always attracted to nonfiction. The key is to find out what they are interested in. "I like planets" leads to getting books, going to the Internet and other sources. Having one or two students publish a book with nonfiction pictures that go with their writing piques other kids' interest, and then they are thinking, "I want to write something too." And they are specific. They say, "I want to write a book about alligators. I want to write something that will wow the reader. Will you help me find books so I can do some research?" Writing for a reader is new. They used to just write for me.

Reading results near the end of the year are much higher because of all the reading they are doing in relation to the authentic writing, all our shared reading, reading their own work over and over again, and reading each other's books. As CCSS goals were rolled out in our district I realized I needed to raise my expectations in reading and writing in order to meet those goals. I was very nervous about the challenge.

By the end of the year the majority of my first grade students not only met, but many exceeded, the CCSS goals. According to a standardized reading assessment, most students are reading at or above a mid–2nd grade level. They are not afraid to pick things up and read them; they are confident!38

Embracing and applying the reading/writing connection also makes it less likely that students will need intervention. Gloria Heflin has taught an extended-day literacy program for kindergarten students for many years; that is, "at-risk" students receive six additional hours of kindergarten each week beyond their regular half-day kindergarten. Gloria also models for parents the strategies and activities they can incorporate at home to support their children's literacy development. Gloria found that when she shifted her teaching from a phonics-first and skills approach to a balanced literacy approach that focused on the reading/writing connection, her students' literacy learning accelerated. In particular, she credits adding meaningful daily writing to her reading component as the single most important factor for many of her students exiting the program months earlier than in previous years. In addition, students' end-of-year reading scores were much higher and, very significant, her students were more successful as readers and writers in grade 1. Very few required additional intervention.39 Gloria also notes the enjoyment and pride in learning that resulted:

Remember the boy who wrote the thank you card to his sister for making his bed? Today at parent/teacher conferences, I told his parents what he did. You should have seen their faces beam with joy. And you should have seen him and his twin sister relive the moment. Adorable! Yep! That's what it's all about! They already see themselves as capable and confident, even though they qualified for my intervention class.40

Jamie Newman, an outstanding kindergarten teacher in a school where more than 90 percent of the students qualify for free and reduced lunch (and whose experiences are presented in her own voice earlier in this chapter) found that when she looped with her students, that is, took almost all of her kindergartners on to 1st grade and continued her balanced approach focused on authenticity, relevancy, close ties with families, and the reading/writing connection, none of her students—all of whom were limited English proficient (LEPs)—needed intervention in grade 1. "At the end of grade 1, all students left ready for 2nd grade work and above."41

Also important, be sure not to neglect online reading and writing that are so interrelated that we cannot separate them.42 Online communications are highly motivating for students and may include blogs, videos, podcasts, texts, social media, and selected websites that invite interaction, to name several. Important to note and contrary to what many believe, writing online has not been found to contribute to poor spelling and grammar; in fact, the increased writing makes students better and more flexible communicators because the audience and purpose are immediately relevant, unlike in many school settings.44 At the same time, acknowledging the advantages of online literacy does not diminish the critical need for reading full-length books so that students acquire the stamina they will need to complete the massive amount of required reading in high school and, especially, college.

Finally, as much as possible, we need to focus our reading and writing where our students' interests are. If we can reach them, we can teach them. Engagement and relevancy are especially critical for our reluctant readers and writers. Smartly applying the reading/writing connection along with whole-part-whole teaching increases engagement, efficiency, and joy in learning. Engaged readers and writers enjoy reading and writing more, actively participate in discussions about books, are more willing to revise and reread, and are constantly reading and writing for pleasure and information. If we can make that happen for our struggling students, we decrease the need for intervention.

Published nonfiction books are featured in a classroom library where they are favorite selections.

Employ Principles of Response to Intervention

Response to Intervention (RTI) is a "comprehensive, systematic approach to teaching and learning designed to address language and literacy problems for all students through increasingly differentiated and intensified language and literacy assessment and instruction."45 RTI came about as a federal mandate with the goal of decreasing the number of students being placed in special education—many of whom then experienced poor long-term outcomes—by providing struggling readers with early intervention to meet their specific needs and accelerate their progress.

RTI is a multitiered intervention and support system, with Tier 1 being the universal classroom level deemed to meet the needs of approximately 80 percent of our students. That is, if we focus on excellent instruction for all students in regular education as a first resort, that instruction can serve to avoid additional intervention for most students, who will make good progress. As I have previously noted, such expert instruction requires highly skilled teachers and principals who know what to look for, how to assess, how to differentiate instruction, how to provide flexible grouping, how to give productive feedback, and how to move learners forward. "By intervening and supporting struggling students early, we can get most kids to read at grade level within the regular classroom, tier 1."46 Tier 2 in RTI refers to additional expert instruction the student receives, usually offered daily in a small group by the classroom teacher or support specialist. Tier 3 involves one-on-one tutoring.47

Focus on Meaning

As in all federal programs, RTI implementation efforts have varied depending on interpretation of the mandate, choice and use of resources, and, especially, how much expertise the classroom teacher has—in this case, expertise in how to effectively teach reading. Where teachers are highly knowledgeable about literacy—like the kindergarten teachers described earlier in this chapter who constantly adapt and modify their teaching as needed—instruction is meaningful, authentic, and connected to students' lives and cultures as well as the district curriculum and standards. However, continuing pressures to raise test scores tend to have a reductionist effect on teaching and learning; that is, as schools and districts scramble to find and implement the "right" program or resource, meaningful instruction and learning suffer, and many children are not well served.

Response to Intervention works well in principle but less well in practice. Some schools have embraced rigid commercial and scripted programs as RTI solutions and used paraprofessionals to administer these programs. Sadly, fidelity to the program often supersedes fidelity to the child. Many teachers and administrators are unprepared to provide the thoughtful, targeted instruction to students that RTI requires. In too many schools, Tier 1, or the first level of intervention—the universal supports level—is bypassed for Tiers 2 and 3. In making more time for RTI, some of those same schools have actually reduced their instructional time for reading and writing. If we think of RTI as Response to Instruction,48 then RTI becomes every educator's ongoing mandate to respond to all students in a manner that supports and accelerates early literacy acquisition.

Choose Programs and Resources Carefully: Pay Attention to Research

Proceed with caution. Too many programs being used in the name of research are too costly, are time-consuming, and have only limited or no benefit for increasing literacy. The reading curriculum goals of RTI, like those of No Child Left Behind, continue to focus mostly on skills in phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary, with an overemphasis on lower-order reading skills and a heavy reliance on published reading materials.49

The diagnostic assessment and progress monitoring are also restrictive and narrow—relying too much on DIBELS, where, for example, "fluency" means accuracy and rate only.50 Although I don't have an anti-DIBELS agenda, according to widespread research and data, none of the DIBELS tests are related to improved reading achievement. My best conclusion as to why so many of us continue to ignore that definitive research and persist with DIBELS is that learned helplessness has set in, we don't have enough knowledge to know what else to do, we may be fearful of reprisals, and the numerical data DIBELS provides give us a false sense that we are receiving accurate information when, at best, what we are getting is pseudo-science. DIBELS is just one of many diagnostic assessments that are overly focused on oral reading and low-level skills. A major problem with such assessments is the misuse of valuable time for teachers and students—time that could go toward actually teaching reading and having students read meaningful texts.51

The excessive time, energy, and funds that have been squandered on phonics-first programs stagger the imagination. Although, of course, phonics is essential to reading, the highly respected National Reading Panel Report found no positive effects for any phonics program beyond 1st grade.52 Yet that research, too, continues to be ignored. Research has also confirmed that structured phonics programs work and produce good word readers and decoders but not readers who comprehend, as we painfully learned after investing five years and $6 billion in Reading First.53

Finally, as noted in Chapter 3, it's vital to know the research on core reading programs or any program we are thinking of adopting before we change our practices. Most important for our low-performing students, none of the most widely used reading programs teach comprehension in a manner that supports struggling readers. Typically, instructional recommendations include

• Too many skills and strategies.
• Too little explicit instruction.
• Too little time for practice of skills and strategies.
• Too little time for comprehension instruction.

Also, the programs rarely follow the gradual-release-of-responsibility model that research recommends for effective teaching and learning.54 That model, comparable to the Optimal Learning Model, is especially important for our students who need more time and support to learn.

Work with Reading Texts That Lead to Early Success

Although I have already discussed many reading practices in Chapter 3, "Reading and Writing Priorities," here I want to summarize key text practices that are vital for decreasing the need for intervention, especially in reading. Often, we give our lowest-performing students texts that make it difficult for them to accelerate. The "right" text is crucial for ensuring optimal reading progress and success. This statement is true for reading aloud, shared reading, guided reading, and independent reading.

Rely on first-rate texts

I have previously discussed the importance of classroom libraries and easy access to excellent nonfiction and fiction texts that interest students as key to improving students' engagement, motivation, and comprehension. Many students, like Kathy, whose story is told at the beginning of this chapter, become lifelong readers through extensive, self-selected reading of texts that they can read and interest them.

In the book Transitions: From Literature to Literacy, I wrote about how we flooded a 1st grade classroom with a multitude of wonderful children's literature and transformed students' dismal reading achievement in a high-poverty school where failing to successfully learn to read from commercial basal texts had been the norm. Based on the research of Warwick Elley on "book floods" in New Zealand, as well as that of notable educators Don Holdaway, Don Graves, and Brian Cambourne, we set up the conditions for successful literacy learning.55 We established a well-stocked classroom library; introduced enlarged texts (Big Books) for shared reading; taught almost all skills in the context of the texts we read and wrote together; used predictable, rhythmic, and natural language texts for teaching beginning reading; used daily journal writing by children to capture and celebrate their lives and their stories, teach phonemic awareness, and publish their writing for readers; and incorporated the arts into literacy with songs, illustrations, and drama. The results of moving children from stilted, boring, and too-hard texts to engaging texts that they wanted to read were astounding. Instead of the typical 50 percent of students needing remediation after grade 1, now only 5 percent did, and this turnaround was accomplished in one school year! That transformation was the start of a movement that led the school district to move away from commercial reading programs to teaching reading and writing with the best of children's literature.

We can't teach reading with second-rate texts. If we are to engage our students in content and context that matter to them, the mainstay of any reading program must be excellent fiction and nonfiction texts along with our explicit instruction and guidance and, especially, extended time spent reading self-selected texts. For students who struggle and who are turned off to reading, the "right" text is crucial.

Match students with texts they can and want to read

It's well known that too many of our students who struggle are reading books that are too hard for them. Like Kathy, they regress or stay stagnant rather than progress as readers. Showing students of all ages how to select books they can read and then guiding them to do so is necessary before releasing students to choose books on their own. Even most students who struggle can be taught to self-select appropriate books if an interesting, accessible collection is organized—with students—and we have taken the time to walk them through and practice the selection process.

Take care not to make this self-selection process superficial. In my residency work, it has been common to see impressive-looking classroom charts with criteria for book selection. Students easily recite a mantra of actions for choosing books, but when we check to see if they actually do these things, many do not. Additionally, young readers and struggling readers often rely solely on a stated book level or on a five-finger test or other check focused on word reading. Students don't yet realize that all reading is for understanding and that they also need to read a few pages to be sure they can tell what the text is about. It is rare for students to choose books with comprehension in mind and often that is because teachers have not emphasized that crucial factor.

My experience indicates that explicitly demonstrating, scaffolding, and practicing how to choose books to read—with a focus on understanding—is a necessity, especially for our students who struggle and who come from low-income families. Whereas parents of middle- and upper-class families routinely guide their children to select appropriate books to read from the public library, children from poor neighborhoods are rarely assisted by an adult in a public library.56 Taking time to slow down and cement the self-selection process early on ensures possibilities for greater understanding and achievement.

In addition to matching texts with readers, choice and interest play a major role in engagement with texts and whether or not students accelerate and read with accuracy and understanding. In fact, many students will make a herculean effort to read a book just beyond their level if their interest in the text or topic is great enough. That is, they will reread, ask for needed help, and stay with the book, all of which is exactly what I do as a curious reader.

Read for understanding from the start

Having students acquire phonemic awareness, decoding, word analysis skills, vocabulary, and fluency skills must always be for the end purpose of making sense of text. Too often readers who struggle are sounding out words without realizing that the skills are a means to an end and the end goal is reading with understanding. I believe we are always reading to learn; very young children automatically try to make sense of their world through "reading" the signals, the people around them, and what events mean.

I still recall meeting with a guided reading group that included the lowest-performing readers in a 1st grade classroom. Accustomed to a steady diet of decodable texts, phonics drills, and words and skills taught in isolation, they could mostly figure out the words in very simple texts, including the meaningful one I had selected for them, but they had no idea those words were supposed to make sense and that reading was about understanding. When I asked questions such as "What is the problem in the story?" "Where does it say that?" and "How does the story end?" they had no idea what I was talking about. Our reading focus, teaching emphasis, and the questions we ask students can encourage or, inadvertently, deflect thoughtful comprehension. For example, computerized reading programs assess students on literal-level questions almost exclusively; students move through levels with superficial understanding at best.57

Depend on partner reading

In the early grades in particular, partner reading is a terrific way to accelerate important aspects of reading progress—fluency, word recognition, comprehension, and enjoyment. Once clear guidelines have been established, understood, and practiced with teacher guidance, partner reading allows for more active participation, excellent practice time, and a cooperative and collaborative learning benefit for all students.

In my experience and that of many teachers I have worked with, partner reading can be the single most powerful factor for accelerating reading progress for early-grades learners who struggle. Students are often more successful with their writing when they can talk with a partner first.

Incorporate Daily Practices That Deter Failure

After decades of working as a classroom teacher, reading specialist, Reading Recovery teacher, learning disabilities teacher, literacy coach, and mentor teacher, I have found several daily practices that carry especially significant weight for all learners but particularly for our learners who struggle. Let's look at each of these practices more closely.

Make the Work More Authentic

Although it's not possible for everything we teach to have a real-world context, it is feasible for much of it. Continually asking ourselves "Does this activity or lesson have a real-world application?" helps keep an honest focus on what's most important and gives us "permission" to eliminate practices that don't lead anywhere—for example, isolated vocabulary exercises. Most of our students do well when they find the work relevant and meaningful to their lives—inclusive of their culture, background, interests, and identities; and when we provide lots of time and space for demonstration, practice, discussion, and interaction. Not only that, students—even those who struggle most—develop a sense of agency and possibility for their own lives.

More authenticity in tasks and content and in how we apply required curriculum and standards leads to more engagement and enjoyment, more motivated students, and higher comprehension. In teaching writing, it's the first and most important thing we do—figuring out how to make the writing purposeful for the students. In fact, it's the only way students willingly apply their best efforts to their initial drafts and subsequent revision and editing, and this is especially crucial for our low-performing students. For severely struggling readers, their own writing often becomes their first successful reading, so authenticity is not to be minimized. We can also teach, practice, and apply almost all the word work students need to learn and practice through these authentic texts.

For high school students who are labeled at risk, using authenticity, teaching to their strengths, and acknowledging their successes are key.59 In particular, when students can see how the work is relevant to their lives, they are more likely to invest full effort and sustain interest. Middle school students assigned "fake writing"—for example, writing to a made-up person to persuade them to do something—invested little energy into the work, which held no relevance or interest for them. Not only did they dislike such assignments, a steady diet of inauthentic work led them to dislike writing altogether.60

Making the work more authentic and relevant also applies to intervention efforts. When elementary principal Matt Renwick looked at the data from before and after implementation of his school reading intervention programs, he found that participating students who spent their time reading and talking about self-selected texts made greater reading progress than those who participated in a highly structured computer-based reading program.61 These findings are consistent with those from literacy researchers who have found that more choice and time to read benefit K–12 students by leading them to deeper engagement, giving them a sense of greater agency, resulting in higher test scores, and supporting efforts in their becoming more strategic readers.62

Provide More Student Choice

As already discussed in Chapter 2, choice within structure is an essential principle for engaging all students. Here the discussion is more specific and concerns providing more choice to students in selecting books to read. "It may be that what turns too many struggling readers off to reading is the dominant practice of having them read aloud from books someone has selected for them."63 Allowing students to self-select texts, which in turn relies on their having access to texts they find interesting, is a powerful factor in improving reading comprehension and motivation.64 When we start with students' preferences and familiar books and authors, we can scaffold for them and guide them find "books that will move them painlessly from where they are to where we would like them to be."65

Briefly, choice in writing is also crucial for student engagement and effort—especially for our learners who struggle. Prompts, worksheets, story starters, and test prep do not turn students into writers, although these activities may temporarily and artificially raise scores and give us a false sense that what we are doing is worthwhile.

Make Learning Intentions Clear

The goal of making a learning intention or a learning target public is to accelerate instruction and learning. For that to happen, we need to give directions succinctly and clearly, do sufficient frontloading, and check to be sure students understand and value the intended learning outcome before we have them attempt it on their own.

It's especially important to clearly explain the purpose of the instruction or activity and make the criteria for success transparent with specific and useful language. Here are steps to follow:

• Decide on a worthwhile learning intention.
• Make criteria for achievement visible.
• Explicitly demonstrate.
• Check for understanding.
• Demonstrate and explain further, as needed.
• Provide support and guidance through shared and guided practice.
• Tie everything together with closure.66

Being transparent and explicit about the learning target is especially vital for the success of our low-performing students. We cannot assume students understand the learning target and its intention just because we have done what we believe to be an excellent demonstration or explanation and posted the expected target. Be sure to discuss in full with students what the learning objectives mean, how students will use what they are learning, and why it all matters. Then, be certain students understand what they are to do by checking for understanding and reteaching and refining as needed.

The importance of assessing for understanding and making needed adjustments brings to mind an experience during a residency in an intermediate-grades classroom where over 90 percent of the students were from low-income families. Students were working in small heterogeneous groups on report writing. We already had a carefully constructed chart (a rubric) of everything students were expected to do in writing a short, collaborative research report. However, we had to go back and reteach when it was clear from observing the groups doing their draft writing-in-process that we had not sufficiently checked for understanding of the task beyond "Raise your hand if you understand what your group needs to do." Students raised their hands because they thought they understood. It was only after they started writing that it became clear to us and to them how confused they were.

It wasn't so much that we needed to provide more demonstrations and guided practice. We had devoted enough time and practice to demonstrating and thinking aloud on reading and note taking, organizing notes into a paragraph, and showing how to use our notes to craft an engaging introductory paragraph. Writing a research report is complex, so we had also done a whole-class shared writing before expecting students to write similar reports on related topics they had researched and taken notes on within their small groups of four.

Learning outcomes that were initially designed to give students guidance for research writing.

Revised and more precise guidelines for research writing.

What we neglected to do was to break down the whole writing task into small, manageable, and clearly sequenced steps so all could be successful. Because our expectations were high and the work was new, students needed a more detailed framework than what we had provided. Had we done a thorough assessment of their understanding of the task before we released responsibility to the students, we would have saved a lot of time and frustration for all involved. See the photos on the previous page of the first shared writing chart of learning outcomes and of the more detailed revised chart, which led to far better results.

The chart below presents some of the ways to assess and check that students understand the learning intention/target before attempting the related task. (Note that this is just a sample of possible options.)

Many students who end up in intervention have only rarely understood the tasks they were expected to do. When we make the learning targets clear, provide exemplary demonstrations and shared experiences, check for understanding before students attempt the task, and then provide the needed supports so they can succeed, we eliminate early failure for many.

Celebrate Students' Strengths

As I have said elsewhere, "Celebration is at the heart of my best teaching."67 By celebration I mean noticing and naming students' strengths and using those strengths to move learning forward. Celebration is not vacuous praise. It is specific to the learner and the task. It is positive and honest feedback that states what the learner has done well and is attempting to do. A prerequisite for celebration requires teachers and leaders to be able to see potential and possibilities for the learner, recognize each learner's talents and build upon them, value what the learner is attempting to do, and personally connect with learners while working with them. In celebration of a learner's efforts, we show kindness and acceptance through our words, actions, tone, and stance. Most important, we use carefully chosen language to boost the learner's competence. Honest celebration promotes confidence, risk taking, stamina, and repetition of a desired action and, very important, puts the learner in the mindset to consider improvements and revisions. Celebration inspires all of us—students, teachers, and leaders.

A touching story that speaks to the power of honoring all learners' thinking took place in a grade 1 classroom the second month of school. Travis was a student who called out and had his hand in the air a lot, but whose responses were often unrelated to the topic at hand. I quickly found that out during a whole-class shared writing activity that was part of a writing residency, with all the school's teachers observing. After several "off task" oral contributions, I said to Travis, "How about if we put what you just said on this chart right here?" The classroom teacher put a sheet of blank chart paper on the wall and wrote down Travis's exact words. We did that twice in the midst of the lesson, and then Travis raised his hand again: "Would you write my name next to my words?" I believe everyone's heart in the room skipped a beat when that happened. What Travis wanted was what we all want—recognition for who we are and what we are trying to do. We never did anything with that chart; it remained on the wall all week. Once Travis's voice and thinking were honored, his "disruptive" behaviors during shared writing disappeared, and he began to contribute in more appropriate ways.

Finally, we teach children to be disabled when we design our lessons or conduct our groups and conferences based on a deficit model. My Reading Recovery training, based on the work of Marie Clay, taught me that a student's strengths must be used and celebrated, and they serve as the basis for where we begin our instruction.

Have Students Do More Silent Reading

Another crucial factor for reducing the need for intervention is to reexamine and alter our overemphasis on oral reading. A poor oral reading of a text does not benefit struggling readers. Yet it is still commonplace to see a whole class of students, even in the upper grades and high school, taking turns reading out loud from a common text. The practice of oral reading as a dominant strategy is especially routine and egregious for poor readers. They are interrupted more, are more likely to have the teacher figure out the word for them, and get to read fewer words each day than better readers who do more silent reading.68 All of this is counterproductive when the goal is to become a proficient reader.

Shared reading, guided reading, and independent reading all have the same end goal—that is, for students to silently read and comprehend a large variety of texts for pleasure and information. Once students know how to choose books they can read, students need to spend almost all of their time actually reading, and most of that should be silent reading. In the schools where I have worked, extended time devoted to silent reading is still rare, even where there are well-organized classroom libraries. Let's reconsider Kathy, the severely struggling reader described earlier who had a steady diet of "too hard" books and who became an avid, successful reader. Her tutoring and targeted instruction made it possible for her to read texts for understanding. But it was the massive amount of silent reading on self-selected texts that improved her fluency, motivation, comprehension, vocabulary, and background knowledge, turning her into a lifelong, self-determining reader.

It's important here to note the role of guided reading in promoting more silent reading. If we have matched students with texts they can actually read and understand, during guided reading we are mostly asking them to read silently, and we are observing where they need explicit instruction, scaffolding, or encouragement. I expect readers, even 1st graders by the second semester, to read silently almost all the time. I use oral reading mostly as a check that the book is at the right level; that is, students can read 95 percent of the words so they can focus on meaning. Keep in mind that for most of their time in school, students will be reading independently and that reading will be silent. That's how it is in the world, and that's how it needs to be in school. In fact, if we are to avoid summer reading loss by having students read profusely over the summer months, we need to ensure they already know how to read silently with understanding.

For our youngest readers, along with general classroom instruction, guided reading that is done well can be key for getting students to the point where they can make progress on their own through sustained, self-selected reading, which is mostly silent. This statement is as true for second language learners as it is for readers who struggle. That is, through selecting culturally relevant and interesting books with just a little bit of a challenge, doing a sufficient book introduction, providing necessary background information, explaining and practicing words students might not be able to figure out on their own, and teaching and practicing the skills and strategies students need to read with understanding, students gain the skills and confidence necessary to read on their own.

A vital factor that holds students back from becoming more independent is that we sometimes assume that they need more support than they do. For example, we spend so much time on prereading activities such as explaining vocabulary, previewing every page in the text, and reading pages together that we rob students of the necessary sustained time to read and the opportunity to solve problems and figure out what's happening in the text. While prereading strategies and a text with just the right amount of challenge are necessities for the struggling reader, we have to be careful not to give away the whole story and to be more of the guide-on-the-side. When we assume responsibility for doing all the reading work and thinking, especially when we have done a good job frontloading and they can do "the work," we keep students too dependent on us. That dependency can ultimately limit their confidence and their ability to read and self-monitor.

Confer with Students Daily

As noted in Chapter 3, I depend on one-on-one reading conferences for in-depth assessment and instruction for every reader. Most of these conferences take place during independent reading time, so they are not hard to fit in. For example, our independent reading time usually lasts anywhere from 20 to 50 minutes—depending on the grade level and the students' needs—and while a typical reading conference lasts from 15 to 20 minutes, most students need to be seen only occasionally to ensure they are comprehending. For readers who struggle, consistent reading conferences can change their reading trajectory.

Research confirms that the interactions around text that take place in a reading conference are especially important for readers who struggle and that individual reading conferences can increase independent reading effectiveness.69 The celebration of the reader's strengths, assessment of comprehension, effective feedback, review, and teaching targeted to the learner's most important needs for moving forward all contribute to the reader's continuing progress and growing confidence.

Perhaps most important of all, we are providing the targeted reading guidance that is especially crucial for our struggling readers. This last statement also holds true for writing. My many years of conducting writing conferences, especially public writing conferences, confirm that these conferences have the power to turn students into writers and, also, readers.70

Embrace Whole-Part-Whole Teaching

Teaching and learning are easier and more efficient for us and for our students when we begin with a whole text in reading and writing. The brain is a pattern finder, and when students can't see how or why the pieces fit together in a meaningful whole, they shut down. Moving from a part-to-whole teaching approach to a whole-part-whole teaching emphasis is one of the biggest and most important shifts teachers make on their way to becoming more effective, efficient, and joyful. Essentially, this shift to a more holistic teaching approach results from a shift in beliefs about teaching and learning. Starting with a whole text, even in kindergarten, makes meaning and purpose more apparent.

The underlying premise of whole-part-whole teaching seems counterintuitive. We often think that our most struggling students need and benefit from a part-to-whole approach, which teaches skills in isolation and assumes that all the parts will eventually add up to a complete whole. In fact, just the opposite is true. Students never do see the big picture and have difficulty making meaning. A 1st grade teacher described it this way:

My students came to me this year with all the skills, but they are not good readers and writers. Most of them came knowing about 75 sight words, but they couldn't read them in context and there was no transfer to their writing. They know all the letter sounds and combinations. When asked what they do when they encounter a tricky word, they can rattle off strategies, but they are still not able to apply these. They have the hammers, nails, and bricks but don't know how to build a house because they haven't yet had enough exposure to the big and meaningful picture of literacy. Saddest of all, the desire to read, think, and learn is not there. It's been killed with all that skills work.71

In fact, skills-in-isolation teaching is one of several factors that low-performing schools have in common.72 Moving all teachers and administrators to a whole-part-whole approach requires the staff to meet in vertical teams and discuss their beliefs about teaching and learning as part of an ongoing, thoughtful, and intentional Professional Literacy Community. The results can be profound. Two teachers' shifts through such professional development changed instruction for their students learning English as a second language and greatly accelerated students' literacy progress, engagement, and enjoyment. Their stories follow.

Put Second Language Learners on a Fast Track to Achievement

Too many second language learners remain stuck at low proficiency, do not acquire the academic language necessary to succeed in school, and become disengaged from school.73 Once students are teetering on the edge of failure, it's difficult to intervene in a way that accelerates their progress so they catch up with higher-achieving peers. Prevention, truly, is the best intervention.

Sharlline Markwardt, the experienced English language development (ELD) teacher introduced in Chapter 1, had always taught part-to-whole. "As a specialist, I felt I was just supposed to teach the 'parts' and that the classroom teacher was responsible for the 'whole.'"74 Moving to a whole-part-whole instructional model was a huge shift for her, requiring two years of PLC involvement that led to much rethinking. Not only did Sharlline change how and where she delivered her instruction, her students' achievement in English language proficiency improved so much that she successfully lobbied to have all ELD teachers in her district move to a push-in model. Sharlline reports with excitement:

You should see our assessment scores! Ever since we implemented the "push-in model" of ELD and we shifted our thinking towards whole-part-whole, our ELD kids have been ROCKING on their ELPA [English Language Proficiency Assessment]. We met ALL of our ELD goals for this year, yes, even the ones required by the state, and now other schools are coming to observe how we run the program.75

Perhaps more important than the high scores is that English language development students now see themselves as an accepted part of the school culture, and all students are benefiting from the push-in model.

It used to be that the ELD kids felt "different"; they were taken out of the classroom and other kids questioned them about where they were going. Before push-in, one student actually said to me, "Mrs. M., I know why we go with you! It's because I'm Mexican, he's Mexican, and he's Mexican" (he pointed to the other students getting ready to come with us). I could see the look of embarrassment on their faces, the "Oh no, we have to go … again."

The first year we did the push-in model we asked the ELD students, "What did you like about staying in your classrooms?" The answers were consistent and eye-opening: "We don't have to leave our friends." "It's not embarrassing to be ELD" and similar comments. But now? ALL students in the classroom are benefiting from language development strategies, cooperative teaching, and just good old teamwork. Our school culture has changed from one of exclusion to inclusion. All of our students see themselves as language learners for life! It's part of the culture; it's who we are.76

Heather Woodroof is a middle school teacher with 15 years of teaching experience who had always relied on daily oral language (DOL) exercises in isolation to teach grammar concepts to all her students, including her large number of English language learners.

My rationale was that by spending ten minutes editing two sentences each day, my students would have covered up to twenty-five concepts by the end of a week. It just seemed impossible to replicate that in an authentic way.77

Heather began to question her beliefs after reading, viewing, and thinking about a whole-part-whole approach to teaching. She took a risk when she and her students created a book for newcomers to the classroom and embedded all the components students typically struggled with into the authentic writing. Heather notes the experience was rewarding for everyone.

I was amazed! Students were so engaged and willing to write. They were so critical of their first draft, revising and editing using so many concepts and skills. The icing on the cake came when on the second day we received a new student! HA! My class thought I had some inside information but I didn't. Now the audience and purpose were real. The new student would actually need to know how to complete reading folder homework and all the things we'd written about. The whole experience was great and also a lot of fun. The risk was worth it! We're now learning grammar concepts very differently.78

Heather also notes that her students applied what they'd learned to all writing. Her use of DOL became infrequent and limited to supplemental practice of embedded minilessons for her beginner students.

Finally, another important factor for accelerating second language learners is that based on assumptions or assessments that may be incorrect or incomplete, we may not fully know what second language learners can do—or cannot do—on their own. As with guided reading, too much support when students may be ready to do more on their own or with minimal guidance prevents students from assuming learning responsibilities they can handle and gives students the message that they are not capable.

Write Whole, Meaningful Texts as a Catalyst to Acceleration

Embracing whole-part-whole teaching accelerates learning in unexpected ways and can change the learning projection for a struggling student. Owen was a low-performing student who was failing to learn to read and write successfully despite his well-intentioned and caring teachers. When I met him in the fall of 2nd grade, he was subsisting on a diet of skills-in-isolation, worksheets, and story starters. Not much was expected of Owen, and he was fulfilling those low expectations. So when Owen raised his hand and volunteered to have a public, scaffolded conversation as part of our frontloading before students went off to write, the observing teachers let out an audible gasp. One of them later told me they were all thinking, "What's she going to do with Owen? Everyone knows he can't do much." Owen had struggled mightily since kindergarten, but I knew nothing of what he could and couldn't do.

I asked Owen to tell me his "Secrets of 2nd Graders" story, the whole of it. As he told his story, I asked genuine questions—not to interrupt him or make the story longer or to have him add more details—but because I was interested in what this student was trying to say and wanted to help him say it in a way that would do his story justice and appeal to his readers.

Celebration feedback to Owen

In a public conference with the whole class looking on, Owen read his story aloud. Unknown to me at the time, it was the first complete story Owen had ever written in school. But he was prepared. He had witnessed my oral storytelling and demonstration writing on a mischievous secret I had when I was his age; he had had a public scaffolded conversation with me about his story, and he had listened in on two other public scaffolded conversations. I did a second oral reading of his story all the way through so students and I could get a sense of the whole piece.

In a third reading, I went line by line and commented on everything Owen had done well. Notice that the comments (on the next page) focus in on the specific language Owen used. The purpose of this feedback here was twofold.

• If the writer has done something well, celebrate it so he is encouraged to "do it" again. He must know what the "it" is, so feedback such as "good beginning" or "I like your ending" are not helpful in that regard, as the listener doesn't know what to replicate.
• Give language specifics—the writer's exact words and techniques—so other writers can "try and apply" what a peer or other author has successfully done well or attempted to do well.

My Feedback to Owen

On the title: "Watching TV." What a great title. In just two words, you've let the reader know what your story is about. And what is really clever, Owen, is that it was not just about you watching TV; it's also about your mom watching TV. Kids, when you go back and reread your story, check to see that you have a title as good as the one Owen has.

First line, content and rhythm, setting: [Reread opening line aloud.] "One night when I was 5, I was watching TV in bed with the lights off." What a great opening, Owen. In this one sentence we know that you were 5, you were watching TV; we know where you are, that it's nighttime and that you're in bed. I love the way that opening sounds. And you put us right there in the setting. So, when all of you go back to your seats and reread your stories, make sure you have an opening as good as Owen's.

Connecting opening line with second line: [Reread first two lines aloud.] "It was past my bed time." I love the way that sounds with your opening. I love the rhythm of the first two lines.

Slowing down the writing: "I heard Mom's footsteps in the kitchen." I can picture that. I love the way you've slowed the writing down and put us in that moment. You're listening for your mom. I can feel suspense building. "I jumped out of bed." I can picture you doing that, and I know what's coming next. "I turned the TV off." And look, kids, [showing paper to class] how Owen put in a caret to add in "I turned the TV off." That also shows you were rereading your story. That's what good writers do to be sure the writing makes sense and to see if they want to change anything or add something.

Elaborating on the moment: "She was checking on me. I pretended to be asleep." I love the way those words sound together [read it aloud again], and I can visualize the scene.

Use of conversation to move story forward: Owen, I think you're one of the first people to use conversation. You wrote, "Owen, were you watching TV?" I can hear your mom's voice right there, and I feel the suspense building.

Effective repetition of wording: "I kept pretending to be asleep." I love the way you've almost repeated an earlier line. Good writers sometimes use repetition to emphasize an action.

Strong sense of effective closure; use of humor: And, then, Owen, your ending was amazing. The reader just knows your story is over. You can just feel that sense of closure. "Mom went back to the kitchen. Then when I got out of bed, I caught Mom watching TV." And you made the audience laugh. It was funny when you wrote, "Then when I got out of bed, I caught Mom watching TV." We call that humor. Good writers deliberately try to do that. Kids, when you reread your stories, check to see your story has a sense of closure and that you've also done some of the good things Owen has done as a writer.

The fascinating part of this celebration feedback to Owen is that it changed his life in and out of school. He stood up taller, became more engaged in his work, grew as a writer and a reader, and behaved with increasing confidence as a learner. He also began to be treated as the capable student he potentially could be. His kind and caring teachers began to expect much more from him and gave him the expert teaching, support, and encouragement he needed to do more meaningful and challenging work.

A troublesome part of this story is that I have shared Owen's draft with thousands of educators. I give the audience Owen's background and ask them what feedback they would give to Owen on his writing—that is, what are the words they would speak to him if they were having a public conference or one-on-one conference with him. Almost without exception, whether the educator is a teacher, a literacy coach, a specialist, an administrator, or a college professor, those that volunteer to give feedback focus on the skills and parts of the writing and on what else Owen needs to do to make his writing better. I have only once had an educator say—and it was a high school teacher—that the writing was good enough because "he has a captivating lead; the piece is sequenced and well organized; he is aware of his audience; the rhythm and length of his sentences are varied and interesting; he used humor; the ending makes the reader feel closure." That secondary school teacher added, "I wish all my high school students could do that."

Acceleration leads to sustainable success: Owen has the last word

I have kept in touch with Owen for more than a decade through letters and e-mail messages. As of this writing, he is an average, happy student in his final year of high school. He still mentions his success in writing as a 2nd grader as a turning point. In an e-mail message written as an 11th grader, he says, "I have been doing good since second grade. Growing up through puberty was a pain though. My grades are good right now. It seems physics is my strong suit at the moment."79 Owen's most recent e-mail message (February 2014) indicates his intention to attend college.

Owen's story is ultimately a story of how probable intervention for a student who struggled mightily was eventually averted due to raised expectations, meaningful work, the excellent efforts of his teachers supported by a dedicated principal, and whole-part-whole teaching. Not to be minimized, it was ultimately the power of celebration that changed Owen's standing in the classroom and caused his peers, teachers, and Owen himself to see unimagined possibilities. When Owen was a 4th grader, he was asked what had ultimately changed for him and he reflected: "'I can do it' rised up. 'I can't do it' went to its grave."80