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Staff development is crucial in a balanced approach to readingRESULTS - May 1998 After years of debating how young
children should learn to read, a new national report suggests a balanced
approach Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children, which was sponsored by the National Research Council, says reading instruction must address phonemic awareness, reading fluency, and comprehension throughout early childhood. (See page 6 for more details.) Now staff developers face the challenge of taking the ideas in that report and translating them into practice. University of Michigan professor Virginia Richardson, who is cited in the report because of her extensive work with both teacher training and literacy, said any efforts focused on improving early reading should include several elements. 1) Embrace a schoolwide focus on literacy. "You won't see improvement if you just say you're doing this. Making the commitment is real important. So is the follow-through,'' Richardson said. Richardson said every teacher needs to understand the school's emphasis on reading and every teacher needs to embrace the same materials and instructional strategies. Doing so will create the coherence needed to provide a consistent program, she said. "This ensures that, when they move from grade to grade, that there's an understanding of what they know and what they've been involved with,'' she said. The Success for All reading program (Developer, April 1997) is one example of a program that provides this sort of emphasis. Richardson said either importing existing successful programs (like Success for All) or a home-grown version can be effective. "If teachers work together in a school to develop a way of thinking about their reading program, then you will have this coherence. It's the old principle that, instead of giving someone a fish, you teach them how to fish,'' she said. 2) Improve teachers' diagnostic skills. To move toward this, teachers must know how children learn to read, Richardson said. For inservice teachers, that means introducing them to recent research. Many excellent sources are cited in the NRC's report. But Richardson is not an advocate of just setting teachers loose to read research on their own. "By and large, most research is presented in a way that doesn't make much sense for teachers. They're not prepared to read and understand it. If it's teacher-friendly research, then, yes, they should read it,'' she said. 3) Provide external experts. Instead of insisting the teachers tackle research on their own, Richardson recommends enlisting the help of an external expert - perhaps someone from a nearby university - or "growing'' their own expert in-house. The in-house expert could be on the district staff or a teacher who becomes very knowledgeable about reading. This expert would translate research into what teachers need to know and train teachers as well as be available for consultations. Richardson said this expert also needs to observe a teacher and his or her students in order to help the teacher diagnose a child's difficulty. Then, once a proper diagnosis is made, the expert can work with the teacher in developing a remedy. "I've seen classrooms that have gone too individualistic.
That doesn't work either. But there has to be a way for teachers to diagnose
where individual kids are in order to work with them,'' she said. HOW TUCSON IS ADAPTING Long before the NRC's report, the Tucson Unified School District had moved to what it calls a "balanced literacy'' approach. Many of the ideas outlined by Richardson already are in place in Tucson, said Vicki Balentine, director of curriculum and instruction. While Tucson can't claim results, Balentine said improving the reading of all children is at the core of the district's work. A key part of Tucson's strategy to improve teaching of reading has been to target what principals know about literacy. For the first time, Tucson provided a full-day workshop for principals focused on balanced literacy. The session explained the background and instructed principals on what they should expect to see in a classroom using the approach appropriately. The district also has prepared a written guide for principals to use when they observe classrooms. (Teachers can use the same checklist as a self-assessment, Balentine said.) This year, principals are observing and offering feedback to teachers. Next year, the district's goal is to have every teacher observed during a guided reading lesson as part of their formal evaluation. "We've always expected administrators to guide teachers and to be staff developers in their buildings. But we haven't been deliberate about building their knowledge base,'' Balentine said. To ensure that all teachers become familiar quickly with the new balanced literacy approach, Tucson offered four or five half-day reading workshops this year. "In this first year, we're trying to sprinkle fairy dust over everybody. In some respects, it's Reading 101. We do an overview of the reading process. We discuss strategies that are effective no matter who you're teaching,'' she said. Next year, these half-day sessions will focus on classroom management, assessment, and guided reading. Tucson also has identified 104 persons in the district who became expert consultants for principals and teachers. One person was assigned to each of the district's 73 elementary schools Like the experts Richardson describes, Tucson's experts are knowledgeable about research. But they also are the liaisons between the district plan and the teachers who must execute it. Where the half-day workshops provide background information on the big ideas of balanced literacy, these consultants take the ideas and help teachers understand how they should work in practice. They go back at least once a month to the same school, each time focusing on a different strategy, either with the entire staff or at a department or grade-level meeting. In addition, Tucson tapped a number of retired master teachers who consult with schools to provide in-depth help with implementation. Balentine believes Tucson's program will deliver results because it focuses on increasing what teachers know about how children learn to read as well as providing them with strategies to use with different children. "We have a whole generation of teachers who don't have that knowledge and those skills,'' she said. "We have to help teachers understand that they must be much more deliberate in their instruction. It is not just a matter of 'if you build it, they will come,' " she said. For a copy of the report, call the National Academy
Press at (800) 624-6242 or (202) 334-3313. A single copy of the report
is $48 plus shipping and handling. READING EDUCATION'S CRITICAL COMPONENTS
Source: Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children,
1998.
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