District

Good Things are Happening at APS!

Come See the Reading Mastery Program

by Rita Moravek

February 21, 2008

The National Reading Panel Report, 2000, summarized several decades of scientific research that clearly shows effective reading instruction addresses five critical areas: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. These five areas were incorporated into the No Child Left Behind Act and the Reading First initiative as essential components of effective reading instruction.

There are many approaches to teaching these five essential components. Systematic instruction reflects several important characteristics. Skills and concepts are taught in a planned, logically progressive sequence. For example, certain sounds are taught before other sounds much like a baby learning to talk can make certain sounds before others.

Explicit instruction means the teacher states clearly what is being taught and models effectively how it is used by a skilled reader. Explicit instruction ensures students’ attention is drawn to important features of an example or demonstration.

The use of instructional strategies and programs, that reflect scientifically based reading research is a guiding principle of the No Child Left Behind Act and the Reading First initiative. Relying on rigorously tested instructional practices and materials provides a sound basis for instructional decisions. The Reading First initiative provides guidance on several key elements, which can be thought of as four “corner stones” of an effective reading program. The four corner stones are as follows: valid and reliable assessments, instructional programs and aligned materials, aligned professional development, and dynamic instructional leadership.

These four corner stones were used four years ago at Alliance Public Schools to assess and determine which of the five reading programs approved by the Reading First Initiative would be the best fit for our school and best serve our students. At that time, Reading Mastery was chosen by the staff for implementation the next year, 2005-06, by the K-3 teachers. Following years continued implementation in additional grades. Intensive and direct staff development has been ongoing to provide knowledge, skills and support for appropriate program implementation. Students’ progress is assessed on a daily and/or weekly basis to provide immediate feedback for decision making as to how much progress the students have made.

In addition to the Reading Mastery Program, the National Institute for Direct Instruction (NIFDI), was contracted to provide support for correct and appropriate implementation of Direct Instruction. Direct Instruction programs are designed to control all the variables that make a difference in how students learn - the rate at which new material is introduced, the amount of practice provided on applying concepts, the feedback teachers provide students, and the sequence of skills that are taught. The goal of Direct Instruction is to teach students everything they need to master a particular subject or skills, and to teach it efficiently. Up to this point, Alliance Public Schools, had little to offer our students who did not master any educational concept.

Direct Instruction lessons do not focus on a single topic. Instead, only about 10% of what occurs on a lesson involves new concepts. The rest of the material involves reviewing and applying concepts that have been introduced on preceding lessons. This small-step design and constant review guarantees that all children will learn everything the program presents. In addition, Direct Instruction is scripted to assure that teachers give adequate explanations, quickly and efficiently which will ensure that the program will communicate one and only one possible interpretation of the skill being taught. If the teacher follows the program carefully, no children (with the exception of the severely mentally retarded and the perennially absent) will fail to learn to read. This prediction could not have been made for Alliance Public Schools prior to the implementation of Reading Mastery.

In addition to the data that is collected regularly in the Reading Mastery Program, Alliance Public Schools has contracted with Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) to provide additional, independent data with which to measure our students’ progress. DIBELS are a set of standardized, individually administered measures of early literacy development. They are designed to be short fluency measures used to regularly monitor the development of pre-reading and early reading skills.

The measures were developed upon the essential early literacy domains discussed in both the National Reading Panel (2000) and National Research Council (1998) reports to assess student development of phonological awareness, alphabetic understanding, and automaticity and fluency with the code. Each measure has been thoroughly researched and demonstrated to be reliable and valid indicators of early literacy development and predictive of later reading proficiency to aid in the early identification of students who are not progressing as expected. Data can be aggregated and disaggregated to display entire grade, class and individual results.

One of the DIBELS measures is Oral Reading Fluency (ORF). A comparison of midwinter ORF scores for APS first grade students for four years gives us the following data for students who are at low risk for not achieving the end of the year benchmark goal: 2004-05 - 54%, 2005-06 - 62%, 2006-07 - 61%, 2007-08 - 73%. If the program that we have implemented is working correctly to improve our students reading scores we would anticipate an upward trend in these scores, which is what our DIBELS percentages represent. Similar scores for fourth grade are as follows: 2005-06 - 43%, 2006-07 - 51%, and 2007-08 - 64%. This is definite cause for celebration that our students are doing so well at Alliance Public Schools.

In Kindergarten, 2 hours and 15 minutes is spent on the language arts program. In first through fourth grades, 2 hours and 45 minutes is dedicated to language arts. These blocks of time for K-4 is chunked into 20-30 minute portions of time. 5-6 grades offer the program in a 90 minute block of time. In some cases, this time is equivalent to the time that had been dedicated to the language arts program prior to the adoption of the Reading Mastery program. In other classes, this time is longer. Reading Mastery has assisted our District in providing consistency of time for every student to have equal opportunity and exposure. K-4 includes the following activities: Language & Extensions (additional writing practice in a variety of formats), Reading, Spelling, Sentence Copying, Paired/Partner Reading, and Seat Work . The five critical areas mentioned by the National Reading Panel Report: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension are efficiently and thoroughly covered at each appropriate level.

Alliance Public School’s teachers and administration are proud of the hard work and dedication the students and staff have displayed in the Reading Mastery Program. We are excited about the positive results we are experiencing and would like to extend the invitation to come and see us in action.

Good things are happening at APS!