On Levels: A Candid Conversation with Dr. Matt Burns

On Levels: A Candid Conversation with Guest Dr. Matt Burns

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

In this engaging episode of Literacy Talks, hosted by Stacy Hurst and featuring co-hosts Lindsay Kemy and Donell Pons, the discussion centers around literacy education and reading assessments. The special guest, Dr. Matt Burns, a respected literacy and special education researcher, provides valuable insights on reevaluating student reading levels and the implications of traditional assessment methods. Dr. Burns advocates for more individualized assessment approaches and highlights the importance of teaching reading fluency, especially in struggling readers. This episode is a treasure trove of information for educators seeking to enhance their teaching strategies and student engagement in literacy.

Highlights

Dr. Burns discusses why traditional reading levels may be inadequate and advocates for direct assessments of text readability by students. 🧐
He shares a successful reading intervention that boosts reading fluency significantly in a short time. 📊
Teachers express a shift in focus from assessments to active teaching, transforming classroom dynamics positively. 🎉
Phonemic awareness, when taught with letters, shows marked improvements in reading outcomes, countering new contrary hypotheses. 🎯
Dr. Burns shares insights on educational reforms and the importance of evidence-based practices in literacy education. 📜

Key Takeaways

Dr. Matt Burns emphasizes the need for personalized reading assessments over traditional level-based methods. 📚
There's a significant benefit in having students read texts where they achieve 93-97% accuracy for effective learning. 🔍
Fluency is foundational; without it, comprehension issues are hard to tackle. 📈
Teachers are encouraged to integrate more direct reading sessions with students instead of overly relying on assessments. 🎓
The episode highlights a classwide reading intervention program that significantly boosts students' reading fluency. 🚀

Overview

This episode of Literacy Talks dives into the world of literacy assessments and the revolution needed in traditional methods. Dr. Matt Burns, a leading figure in literacy research, joins hosts Stacy Hurst, Lindsay Kemy, and Donell Pons, to discuss how reading levels, as currently understood, might be failing students. Burns argues for the use of direct reading measures to better gauge student abilities instead of relying on potentially inaccurate level-based assessments.

Listeners will be intrigued by the discussion of a fluency intervention that proves effective across various grade levels. Dr. Burns explains how this method not only improves reading speed but also enhances comprehension by focusing on reading fluency. The podcast illuminates how small, strategic changes in teaching practices can lead to substantial improvements in student literacy outcomes, moving away from broad assessments to more targeted teaching and fluency practice.

The conversation broadens to include a debate on phonemic awareness instruction, with Dr. Burns advocating for the inclusion of letters in early reading instruction to maximize effectiveness. This counters some recent educational trends and highlights the importance of sticking to evidence-based strategies. The episode wraps up with a forward-thinking perspective on educational reform, emphasizing a science-backed approach to teaching reading and the role of ongoing research in shaping classroom practices.

Chapters

00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Welcome The chapter introduces the podcast series 'Literacy Talks,' which focuses on improving professional practice, knowledge, and confidence in teaching reading. Hosted by Stacy Hurst, a professor and chief academic adviser at Reading Horizons, the podcast will explore various ideas, trends, insights, and practical issues in the field of literacy education.
00:30 - 01:30: Guest Introduction: Dr. Matt Burns In this chapter, Stacy is joined by two prominent educators, Donell Pon and Lindy Kemy. Together, they introduce Dr. Matt Burns, a distinguished researcher in literacy and special education. The discussion focuses on innovative approaches to student screening and progress monitoring, emphasizing the importance of objective and effective techniques in these areas. The episode promises valuable insights for educators looking to enhance their methods in assessing and tracking student progress.
01:30 - 15:30: Discussion on Reading Levels The chapter titled 'Discussion on Reading Levels' features a conversation between reading teacher and coach, Stacy Hurst, alongside co-hosts Lindsay Kemy and Donell Ponds. They introduce their second guest on the podcast, setting the stage for an insightful discussion pertinent to classroom literacy.
15:30 - 20:00: Classroom Applications and Teacher Insights The chapter opens with a humorous introduction by the host, welcoming Matt Burns to the discussion, who jokingly mentions his delight at being second to the renowned educator Anita Archer. The arrangement of speakers in alphabetical order is pointed out amusingly, and there is a light-hearted anticipation regarding who might follow with a last name starting with 'C.'
20:00 - 34:00: Fluency and Its Importance The chapter delves into the significance of fluency in literacy. Set in an informal conversational format, the speakers, including Matt, Donell, and Lindsay, are gathered to discuss various topics related to literacy. While the excerpt provided doesn't give specific details on their conversation, it sets the stage for an in-depth exploration of fluency and its role in literacy discussions.
34:00 - 41:00: Phonics and Phonemic Awareness The chapter begins with an inquiry into Matt's background, particularly focusing on his academic and teaching journey. Matt shares that he is a professor of special education at the University of Missouri and is transitioning to a new role with the Youth Life team at the University of Florida. Previously, he spent 10 years at the University of Minnesota and 5 years at Central Michigan University.
41:00 - 47:00: Dyslexia and Screening Measures In the chapter titled 'Dyslexia and Screening Measures,' the speaker discusses their background and experience in education, primarily as a school psychologist and a special education administrator. They briefly mention their stint as a special education supervisor, concluding it was not a role they enjoyed. The speaker's expertise in literacy and learning disabilities emerged early in their career, becoming the go-to person for challenging cases in this domain.
47:00 - 52:00: Closing Remarks and Gratitude The chapter, 'Closing Remarks and Gratitude,' reflects on the speaker's past work with children, acknowledging a deep love and connection for the kids they worked with, who remain close to their heart. The text discusses the shift in focus from helping individual children to addressing broader systemic issues, due to a rising need and personal realization about the growing number of children needing help. It concludes with gratitude and appreciation for the shared discussion on an important topic.

On Levels: A Candid Conversation with Guest Dr. Matt Burns Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 [Music] hello literacy leaders and champions welcome to literacy talks a podcast series from Reading Horizons dedicated to exploring the ideas Trends insights and practical issues that will help us all improve our professional practice knowledge and confidence in teaching reading our host is Stacy Hurst professor at Southern Utah University and chief academic adviser at reading Horizons we're reading moment pH begins
00:30 - 01:00 joining Stacy are Donell Pon a recognized expert in literacy and special education and Lindy kemy an author and a Utah based Elementary classroom teacher in today's episode we welcome a special guest Dr Matt Burns a noted literacy and special education researcher University faculty member and one of the profession's leading voices from rethinking students screening level to effective objective progress monitor monitoring this episode will give every
01:00 - 01:30 reading teacher and Coach important ideas and insights that matter in every classroom let's get [Music] started welcome to this episode of literacy talks I'm Stacy Hurst the host and I'm joined by my awesome co-hosts Lindsay kemy and Donell ponds and today we have a really exciting guest with us and I need to preface this by saying he's only our second guest um we've we
01:30 - 02:00 had Anita Archer those of you know and now we get to have Matt Burns join us so thank you for joining us today Matt I can't believe I'm second to Anita Archer that's pretty fantastic anytime mention that same sentence I'm pretty happy with that well we have you right up there and then we also realized the happy accident that it's alphabetical order so we're going with archer then Burns I don't know who who are we going to have next who starts with C we'll have to we'll
02:00 - 02:30 have to think hard about that anyway so um we are going to just have a conversation as you know our format is we basically show up and talk about literacy so I was able to email Matt some topics that we would love to hear what he has to say about and Donell and Lindsay I know you have lots to say about these things too so this will be just really as informal as we are and um we'll just start I think we'll just dive
02:30 - 03:00 right in first I do want to ask Matt and just a little bit about your background could I don't know that I don't that I know this that I've heard this where are you from how did you get into teaching where did you go to school all those fun things yeah so I'm a professor of special education here at the University of Missouri about the transition to join the Youth Life team at the University of Florida which I'm extremely excited about um I was at the University of Minnesota for 10 years I was at Central Michigan University for five years and
03:00 - 03:30 were practicing school psychologist before them and a special ed administrator I was a special ed supervisor for one year and after one year that was enough time to conclude that's a terrible job I don't want to do that anymore did something else um uh I I I got into literacy really because my area of expertise was was learning disabilities early on in my career I was I was sort of the person that you called when you didn't know what else to do I still I used to say that as my sort of
03:30 - 04:00 that was my job and I loved it and I still love it I still love those kids those are still the ones that are closest to my heart but then when I was working with kids and realized that that number was going up and up and up and thought we we we've got to make a change something there's a systems issue here going on and that's why I changed my focus from how to help this individual kid to how to help more than one oh that is great thank you for sharing that this is a topic that's
04:00 - 04:30 impacted all of us on some level that's a pun because we're going to talk about reading levels but um and I I know I've been accused of being overly dramatic about this but as a young teacher I was brand new probably year one year two and if you've listened to the podcast Lindsay and I have totally owned that we fully Embrace balance literacy that was what we did back in the day and I was really enamored with the idea of reading levels specifically foundas panel and I'd
04:30 - 05:00 learned a little something of readability formulas in my undergrad education so I really was trusting and relying on the fact that there was a solid formula to those levels I used them before I had the thought to look into what they were but I remember the moment that I realized that there really isn't a very solid psychometric formula that went into those s and I do describe it like
05:00 - 05:30 this my heart dropped that's the dramatic part but then I thought about the implications of that I had been communicating those levels to my the parents of my students I had been um you know all of my instruction was focused around that Lindsay I'm sure you can relate and to realize it was basically a myth was really impactful so I know you've done some really awesome research and about this could you share with us what you found
05:30 - 06:00 yeah so I am enamored with levels as well but a slightly different take probably uh early on in my career still I still do research in this area we took a bunch of kids who are identified as emotional emotional behavioral disorder or ADHD non-medicated you know just really pretty highly off task kids and all we would do is one or two things either give them a book or passage I tend to use passages because that is more tightly controlled and that they
06:00 - 06:30 could actually read or take whatever they're supposed to read in class and do some create teaching so so they could actually read it and their time on task goes way up every single time and we just finished the meta analysis out a couple years ago now we found there's a moderate effect on behavior for almost any academic intervention we do among kids with behavior problems so based on that we know go back to to GLE and Armstrong before that even even um uh all the way back to haras and um bats
06:30 - 07:00 bats in 1946 don't quote me on the exact date said you know what kids can learn better if they can read about 95% of the words correctly and that anecdotal observation went two ways Betts became the father of the informal reading inventory uh it was entire industry of of you know levels leveling assessments well harus and his group eventually at ging started developing a measurement system where we could have the kids read what they being asked to read and see
07:00 - 07:30 can they actually interact with the text and so the research I did focus on that lab and so we if we have a kid who's reading 8% the words correctly a simple pre-teaching get him up to 93 95 97% and we see time on task task operation task completion going up the problem is the other side of that of that bridge went the other direction the informal reading inventory if I could you know wave a magic wand in education probably the first thing I would do would be to get rid in
07:30 - 08:00 inventories so Stacy already mentioned that there's no real uh reliable formula but that's true so research I've done with the front spel others with the Dr and Jerry John's basic GRE the inventory we see that those levels are remarkably inaccurate about as accurate as as flipping a coin and the worst part is is the kids who were struggling readers we found in a Artic article we published in a journal of SP psychology we found that the kids who low readers couldn't read
08:00 - 08:30 the books that were at their levels so the kids that need the most are the ones that have the most trouble reading a book that's supposedly at their level and the issue is not the construct of instructional level it's with the measurement ofev data never generalized to or from an individual and so if if I do so that means if I do a study with 5,000 kids and I find X to be true that doesn't mean X to be true for this individual kid
08:30 - 09:00 the flip side of that is if I collect data from one kid that doesn't generalize anything else so even if I have a good measure it's all these measures tend to have poor reliability but even if I had a good measure and I assessed the kid and the kid was an m and the M was a meaningful term I don't think it is but let's say it is we still don't know that they'll be able to read an m book they just can't get that level of generalizability any measure in history of psychological testing so that's why I say abandon the measures and abandon levels I'd love to see a
09:00 - 09:30 world where we no longer said kids read at second grade level what I'd rather see is you here's a kid can they read that particular text that's really all the best we can do oh that's great I was G that was in my next question how does that look in application there should be a general rule where we can see that this book is a higher level than this one okay I can accept that and I think Lexile does that pretty well I can live with lexiles as a Bas point and the good readers don't
09:30 - 10:00 worry about it among the good readers let them pick the books they want to read the materials they want to read let them go great if occasionally need some support fine chances are they won but the striving readers the low readers those are the ones we're going to take them back whatever they want to read get assigned or something they pick have them redo it for a minute and just simply see can they read 93 to 97% of the words that one little assessment we've done I don't know how many studies on it now but we find that those are reliable data we found that modifying it
10:00 - 10:30 to match that increased comprehension completion in time on task and we've replicated that a number of times so among the struggling readers just take a book that roughly approximates their lecti and just make sure they can read it just take one minute see can they read roughly 95% of the words 93 to 97% the exam that will give you a better estimate of the child's ability to successfully interact with the text that any reading measure that takes 20 to 30 minutes to do yeah as you were talking I was thinking about all the time time we've spent on those informal reading
10:30 - 11:00 inventory all the time we've spent on I did a I was working with a district not long ago who was a font pel District I showed him the 54% accuracy I show be to be more clear the font pel Benchmark assessment system the accuracy of that data was about 54% so pretty inaccurate when you look at the skills of the kids all the same level be let's say a g for example and I actually don't make that up I I I was in debating a teacher not
11:00 - 11:30 long ago about the importance of bontis panel and she was arguing was important so I asked her to pull up her data and I literally just grabbed a bunch of G's and did no manipulating just just grabbed a bunch of G's and one kid was at the 70 they had a bunch of data all at a g for The Benchmark assessment system one was at a map test 73r percentile and one was a map test first percentile one was reading 80 words a minute on Dibbles and one was reading 20 but according to the Benchmark assessment system those kidss have the
11:30 - 12:00 same read needs no so I was I was showing the data to a school many a few years ago and um they actually said okay we'll we'll try it without it and the two of the teachers on the decision-making bodies was maybe 10 teachers there two of the teachers actually started to cry they didn't know what to do they were upset you know and they said no no no we we spend the first two weeks of school giving this assessment I can now spend the first two weeks of school teaching they were so happy they literally broke down in into
12:00 - 12:30 tears so Matt you've said something really important that I don't want to pass by here you've said something about knowing where the student is at and that takes time listening to the student do the thing you're asking to do and that is read so let's talk a little bit about because you talked about those first two weeks where teachers are taking data and are we actually sitting next to a student and listening to them read because I can't tell you how many times I've walked into a classroom and asked a teacher where some students are at what what do think they could read this
12:30 - 13:00 passage and there's the look of blank like geez I don't know and we're mid year because I've never heard that student read can you talk to to that a little bit I can't emphasize how important that is as a as a reading interventionist someone will call me and say hey come come help me with my kid the very first thing I'm going to do is have that kid reach to me uh my issue with the Benchmark assessment system the Dr and all of those is not yeah yeah it is I was about to be more kind I won't be I will say this I have no confidence in School sitting down with a kid having
13:00 - 13:30 them read to you from a great level passage or a couple of them you know even an easier one and more difficult one I those that can be really helpful information but the issue is we tend to look at the score and make all the decisions on the score it's that score that has no reliability that you know it's the score that the problem that's one of the advantages of you know of dibl and arcadians and all of those is is you actually have a kid read to you which I still think are invaluable data but not in a running record one so I
13:30 - 14:00 will be clear about that my issue with with Running Records is there's too much subjectivity it depends on decision you're making right so if you're just want to work with a kid and you're just kind of assessing them informally any a running record type approach where you just kind of Judge things is totally fine but if you're using it to screen kids or using it to make you know decisions that will involve different interventions and resources when those data aren't reliable enough so that's why something like aadience or or tibbles or all those others easyc M
14:00 - 14:30 fastbridge um as web those give you a more fra a more structured framework that is not subjective but has much much much less subjectivity and therefore the data are more reliable and they don't take long right I mean I love using aadience in my classroom and progress monitoring it's it's two minutes you know and and it lets me know if okay we're on track or oh let's revisit what we're doing because we need to change something yeah we spend that school terribly inefficient when it comes to
14:30 - 15:00 assessments uh you know we have this mindset that well 30 minute of assessment will give you more data than a one minute of assessment no it'll it'll give you different data maybe but but not necessarily better I think we waste a lot of time in schools with assessments Le schools that assess kids with every kid gets Dibbles map B panel you know that is such a waste of time I tell schools when you do that look at the decisions you make if you're making if you're for example identifying all the same kids as needing help in all
15:00 - 15:30 three of those measures pick the cheapest one and use that yeah that's a good point and I know I as a literacy coach I was um guilty of that too we we also embrace the ftis and benel Benchmark system and that was decades ago just to clarify but I do want to say too I think an unintended outcome of that is that teachers start viewing assessment as separate from teaching it's something we do the first two weeks of school and then we teach right and
15:30 - 16:00 let to your point Matt there is a huge range um you can look at a level M five kids on that level they're all on that level for different reasons their accuracy is different their you know automaticity is different um from one kid to another so I appreciate that we're having this conversation I just have one more question related to this how does decodable text relate to the conversation we're having so decodable texts are a very specific tool decodable
16:00 - 16:30 texts are designed to help the kids practice the skill you just Tau you you have to do that but that's you can't have good instruction without that stepping sequence so decodable texts are are different they're designed now a decodable text means that there are some you know some things you just taught the kid but then there's other things that the kid has already been taught and so they're not it's not new material so by
16:30 - 17:00 definition a decodable text should be an instructional LEL because the new stuff that's involved in there should be the things you just taught them so by definition instructions going well every decodable text should be an instructional level for that kid and then use that decodable text to have them practice what you just taught them but you certainly are probably going to be having the kid engaged in other types of reading as well uh and you know we want to make sure we have children able to read the text that reading for that purpose as well the child should be
17:00 - 17:30 doing more connected text reading than just a decodable text yeah agreed and that's one thing I think is so exciting I just finished you know my first year teaching first grade and I love that moving them from decodables to regular texts and just kind of gently helping them and some of them needed more scaffolding and it was so exciting to see and be able to all a sudden apply all those bonic skills we've been learning you know in a text yeah and
17:30 - 18:00 that they get excited about that too I yeah my heart will forever be in first grade and that's one reason um just to see them become grownup readers right before your eyes um what I do have a question too about in first grade I could control how often my students read whether that well it was always out loud at that point but I have worked since with a lot of teachers who are teaching older grades and Dell you can really relate to this I'm sure um in other subject areas that have
18:00 - 18:30 never heard their own students read They're making a lot of assumptions about those older Learners that they've been taught to read or that their reading is for some students maybe more proficient than they um assume what do you recommend in those kind of settings well a while ago working with a school a secondary school district but they were wanted to start an mtss system with the the high school and the representative of the ELA Department was on the team
18:30 - 19:00 and I kept deferring to that person about literacy and finally she stopped me and said man I appreciate how respect for your being but she goes you understand my major in college was literature not literacy this the quote asking whatever you want to know about Shakespeare I do not know how to teach kid how to read so I do think that we have to spend more time with secondary pre-service teachers and in service teachers just the basics of read just as they know what fluency is what what
19:00 - 19:30 comprehension is you know and some basic ideas of what the coding is they don't need to be literacy expert absolutely they don't need to but I will say that a very basic knowledge of literacy at the secondary level makes social studies and science wonderful opportunities for literacy instruction and in and intervention it's not a complicated process we can pull materials that align with the scope and sequence of the curriculum and have them do practice you know we do repeated reading with social
19:30 - 20:00 studies content super easy for example so it doesn't take much I do think we have to be a little more intentional and just support those teachers both pre-service and and inservice but when we do we have a wonderful opportunity to to help build both content knowledge and that they receive fact I have a grant now we're doing that very thing at the middle school level we're looking for uh schools to to infuse literacy practices into social studies mostly vocabulary work mostly well lots of vocabulary and trying to see its effect see if we can
20:00 - 20:30 see increases comprehension but more importantly not more importantly but more likely will these kids who are struggling readers now be able to access the content more effectively so just a little bit of work with the secondary level we can increase reading skills and increase uh content acquisition yeah man I'm taking notes there's a lot to be done H especially in that space I know I'm teaching a graduate level course and about half my students right now are
20:30 - 21:00 teaching in high school and they've T they're taking the course because of this because they know that they have students who can't read and they want to help and I am glad to hear you say that they don't have to be reading Specialists because I get overwhelmed thinking oh how can I teach them everything they need to know but you're right if they do know the basics then it kind of becomes the challenges probably are more systemic at that point than they are with the teacher in the classroom I guess what's your class your te stasy um it's foundational knowledge
21:00 - 21:30 of literacy it's for the literacy specialist endorsement here in the state oh it's great they're taking that a 10th grade social study teacher probably doesn't need to have a strong background in teaching morphology for example you know but if they know what reading fluency is and and how to build reading fluency and how doing so directly improves comprehension that's probably the level of upscale yeah and that's a great segue because fluency is another topic we want to talk about and I have I
21:30 - 22:00 want to actually have Lindsay share to start that she has implemented something that you recommend and Lindsay just talk about your experience with that and what you've seen well it's called partner reading paragraph shrinking and I learned about it from you Matt um he did a presentation for Paton and um you know that year I was teaching second grade and this intervention is designed for second through eth graders and it was at the beginning of the year
22:00 - 22:30 and I remember I was already just frustrated because I had um you know half my class was well below the Benchmark The kence Benchmark and um and I'm just thinking what am I gonna do how do I you know and so he gave this presentation about a classwide reading intervention and I just I was like oh my gosh that's exactly what I need I need a classwide intervention because I can't you know it's like so hard to do intervention or over half your class and um it's really simple um there's
22:30 - 23:00 many research there's you know Matt you I guess did the research study on it and it's um you it's a pair down version of Pal's Pals right and so I think our class median was 50 words correct per minute I did this intervention for two weeks and our class median was 64 words correct per minute at the end of two weeks and I was just sold so I you know kept doing it through out the week but I'm always just saying how grateful I am
23:00 - 23:30 for that presentation that you gave and your work on that Matt because that has just made such a difference in my classroom you probably remember when you tweeted about that yes October 12 2021 emailed you and asked if I can if I if you don't mind if I share that tweet I screenshot it I put it in lots of presentations and I'm looking at it right now oh cool the second grade 50 words a minute to 66 I love that you do that and I plug your website every time I present I tell them the ways I understand that you made not changes to
23:30 - 24:00 the intervention but to make it more kid-friendly and it's really cool that intervention came from working with press path toting excellence in school sites when I was at Minneapolis in Minneapolis at the Minnesota Center Reading resarch we developed this really cool Intervention Program and when we were started wunning the interventions we had a huge Grant from Target Corporation so we were drunk on money we had all kinds of money and so I had 24 research assist so if I saw what you thinking of earlier
24:00 - 24:30 Lindsay you know 25 kids and 20 of them are low I I had the resources I just ran a bunch of small group interventions with all my research assistants and we saw the kids did really well but the number of kids scoring the proficient range didn't go up in the winter Ben assessment and it hit me you know Amanda Vander taught me this many years ago 2003 that without good core instruction Nothing Else Matters and so we panicked and we went and bought payout for all the teachers peer assisted learning
24:30 - 25:00 strategies which be mentioned I want be careful careful to plug that and let you know that's where this came from and we showed it to the teachers and the teachers basically said no we we don't want to do that and so we peeled everything else back and just brought it down to fluency and and partner paragraph shrinking is a comprehension technique but basically really focusing on fluency and the reason we did that was for a while there around you know early 2000s we saw a big push for reading fluency in the classrooms but reading fluency work has seemed to have
25:00 - 25:30 been forgotten a little bit more lately uh and you know um you know Tim Shanahan and Tim rinsky talk about this all the time but fluency is that way to build automaticity fluency is basically automatic decoding right and so if you're building fluency you're you're taking what they're learning into coding and making it automatic and we found two studies I've done saw that unless kids can read 60 words a minute in elementary school they tend not to comprehend so if I have a kid reading 30 words a minute the teacher says oh comprehension
25:30 - 26:00 comprehension comprehension the first thing I'm going to do is fix the fluency problem and most of the time when we do that the comprehension problem becomes much less severe and sometimes even just goes away so we said okay let's just build this fluency building practice and we did that for two weeks and we didn't pick two weeks we said try this to this first group of teachers here try this for two weeks just because we thought they'd agree for two weeks and they say okay sure we'll try for two weeks I said we'll come back we'll do an assessment we'll talk to you we'll see how it went
26:00 - 26:30 and I foret actually I probably here since I had that open but the medians the very first time we did it in second grade uh I do right here went from 81 words a minute to 104 and 87 words a minute to 115 just in two weeks and so um we have since studied this quite a bit and we published it we've done randomized trials we published it in various journals and such and you see that yeah this quick little 20 minute fluency practice every day for two weeks at elementary school three weeks at the
26:30 - 27:00 middle school sees results in pretty nice jumps and fluency and resulting comprehension Monica Romero a student of mine who just defended and is going to be an assistant professor next year at University of Texas Austin did her disputation on this and she was the first one to really study the effect on comprehension and comprehension is where we saw an even bigger jump so once we address that fluency issue we tend to see big jumps in in fluency and comprehension it's a connector between those lower parts of what we
27:00 - 27:30 call pH MCG a Sy phonics and then vocabulary and comprehension if we're talking about those fight VAR is it's really impactful Lindsay what were you gonna say yeah well I love it because it's just an opportunity to practice I think a lot of teachers just think fluency is going to develop on its own or silent reading is going to lead to fluent reading but they need more practice reading aloud and that's what the this intervention provides and then I was switched to first grade this year and so you'll remember Matt because I went back and forth with you like what
27:30 - 28:00 intervention did you use in first grade and and all this well I tried partner reading paragraph shrinking in first grade I waited until um it was the very end of January after our middle of year Benchmark and I just I started everyone out with decodables a decodable Passages and I'm like hey this is just an opportunity for them to practice to help you know automatize some of those skills and then I transitioned them into
28:00 - 28:30 regular texts as they were ready which was a little bit different for the different students and then I also had you know I took longer to introduce it so I didn't do paragraph shrinking at first and I took a little bit longer teaching them you know the first half of the intervention and then I had my literacy coach come in my room with me when we first had him try paragraph shrinking I'm like I don't know if this is too much for first graders help me know what you think we're going to walk around and listen and it was really exciting to see how
28:30 - 29:00 well they did so before the intervention they had 37 words correct per minute that was our class median and after I think I did it three weeks and it was 60 words correct per minute yeah and research continues to tell us that repeated reading is the best way to increase fluency right yeah you can make an argument uh best way but it's certainly an effective way but I will say the point Lindsay made which I think
29:00 - 29:30 is important it doesn't happen on its own in silent reading fluencing doesn't necessarily mean the translation to reading fluency uh that's why I I really encourage partner reading is great because it's they read to each other it's fun we Lindsay we rarely see behavior problems uh happen during this during this intervention you you were with first graders and the same thing because guess what you're giving them all something that they can be successful with and they're all engaged in doing something the entire time and in fact I when I gave a presentation on
29:30 - 30:00 it and I did a little video clip um showing my students all doing it you know I just kind of panned across the room and I remember in that presentation a teacher raised her hand and said well it looks like you don't have any behavior issues in your class so what about if we have kids that struggle with behavior and I'm like no I do but they like this activity they can do it say hello to the new reading Horizons Discovery the evidence-based foundational literacy program Educators asked for with Innovative technology to
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30:30 - 31:00 action to transform reading challenges into literacy success go to reading horizons.com product guide to download your program overview today we had a kid one time who was a very cute little boy but a emotional behavior disorder and um I forget the grade early like maybe third grade and the teacher didn't have the kid participate in this activity well and she had I came in saw that and said well you know can you try it and she was
31:00 - 31:30 hesitant but then she had this other boy who was a really really really high reader and she think the partner was going very well with him for this particular kid so she decided to switch that kid and she okay I'll take this kid with emotional behavi disorder and put him in there and see what happens and the first time he basically he and his partner got very little accomplished because he was so happy to be participating he giggled the entire time and I'm not kidding giggled the entire time and couldn't contain himself and he got the point where his partner who was this kind of quiet student started giggling too and they have a great time
31:30 - 32:00 but the next day he was on task the entire time and it worked really well with uh just in terms of being able to amazing to watch uh we had U we developed this in inner city miniapolis and we were in some schools with you know there were frequent reprimands Etc and and and redirects for Behavior never during this only once do we see a teacher say I really think I'd like to do something with behavior because they don't be on task as they want them to be so that teacher gave them a goal and she
32:00 - 32:30 gave them two behaviors I for the behaviors you know keep your voice low and talk about reading or something and she would walk by and if they're doing what they're supposed to be doing she would put a check mark on their little folder we give them and at the end of the week if they had some number of check marks they got some pass and she said that that took care the problem right there I like that that's a good idea um I sometimes I guess with the first graders paragraph shrinking sometimes they would I don't know if they were really off task though they
32:30 - 33:00 just would start well maybe a little bit they'd start talking a little bit more about it but it's usually just because they might you know need more help in directing or they usually were pretty good about raising their hand and saying you know we disagree on what who the most important you know person is in this paragraph and then I would go and help him but yeah that's awesome that be so yeah it was fun it is really great and I think it just emphasizes and with the last topic it emphasizes too students need to be reading out loud frequently in a school day and I know
33:00 - 33:30 there's been research done about how many minutes a student will read out loud in those early grades and it's minimal but we need to increase it I know when I was a beginning teacher I read research about fluency and we had just started giving the Dibbles assessment in my state and so I was really interested in how that develops but I think it was Tim rinsky and I read that if they were reading out loud for 20 minutes a day 20 to 30 and we had
33:30 - 34:00 read aloud time in my class it wasn't partner reading I wish I had known about that they literally were reading out loud each individual student at the same time every day and we had a lot of um processes and procedures around that but I think that made more of a difference than um a lot of other things I could have tried and of course it sounded you have to be able to tolerate a certain level of cacophony they were all reading different books but I really I think
34:00 - 34:30 that is one takeaway Any teacher could have right to increase the time their students are actually reading in the school day yeah but doing so in a structured manner yes is why a partner reading is so important you know just giving the kid you w s imply that but there's better higher quality or reading than activities than now so just make sure it's structured and and and engaging you know you can see really pretty positive growth in that quick little intervention yeah and again everybody's on task that
34:30 - 35:00 was really exciting to see and talk about okay we have had a lot um I know there's been a lot of conversation lately about pheic awareness and I I would say this whole conversation with or without letters um in instruction I I honestly think a lot of the we've talked about this a lot between the three of us the timing that this became known to people I think was problematic but talk to us
35:00 - 35:30 about I know you um I feel it you're strongly on the side of introducing letters with those phon names talk to us about that how you concluded that and what your your thoughts are about that practice well I'm gonna contextualize that abroad I hit that specifically um I of course as everybody at this call is is involved in are involved in each passionate about making sure instruction is based in science sure and I think
35:30 - 36:00 we've had many mistakes when it comes to literacy in the past and one of which is we tend to do a lot of hero Worship in literacy I keep threatening to do the study I've never worked so I don't want to make it everybody M but I want to look at the citations in the reading teacher reading teacher is a fine Journal it's a research practice journal I use it and a lots of colleagues who do uh but the citations I've noticed in the reading teacher tend to be today less P their search and they're citing a
36:00 - 36:30 bunch of a bunch of opinion we get our heroes and we think whatever that hero says is true and sometimes that's okay I no it's never okay but sometimes you get away with it because the hero is a researcher Etc but then we've got people who I'm not g to call them out by name just listen to so the story Emily Hampford as is bra than I and she'll she'll call them all out my and did uh and we think just because they say it it it must be it must be true well we now know of course that's
36:30 - 37:00 wrong and what they were saying wasn't based in research ET so but now we're doing it again Advanced phic awareness hypothesis is exactly a hypothesis it's an interesting idea it's never been studied I would actually argue it's inconsistent with previous research but it's interesting idea that's never been studied well so is 3 K right let's learn from our mistakes let's see what we're you know let's look and see if this is really an effective practice or not before we start using it all across the country and so I heard about the
37:00 - 37:30 advanced foric awareness hypothesis I've never seen any studied about it so I to see if I could find something didn't find anything then all a I realized schools all over the country are doing these quick one minute drills and all these you know teaching here's the big issue for me here's why it became so interested is on the science of reading Facebook page science of reading where I show learn in college people post on there hey this kind of a kid I need help what do you recommend I have a fifth grader who's really struggling with reading what should I do do and people kept posting all these PO with awareness
37:30 - 38:00 inunctions B great no so I went back and looked at the original n reading panel the effect size for grade for preschool was 1.25 the first grade went down to 049 now they did second through sixth grade all one I I wish they would have broken up more and they didn't so I can't really report like fifth grade versus whatever but clearly the younger the kid is the the more effective putting with inventions are and the other one that really struck me was if it Ed letters as part of the instruction the effect size is 67 if it didn't it was 38 now that's
38:00 - 38:30 not zero point3 is not zero right but it's almost twice as effective to include letters most of the of the studies did include letters there are a small number of them that just did poic awareness only or did poic awareness for like a month and then taught letters most of the studies they either started letters like on the second week or letters were Incorporated throughout the entire intervention process so using
38:30 - 39:00 letters makes it more effective and it makes it more effective on putting awareness outcomes and it makes it more effective on reading outcomes so that's why I sort of got interested in this research and and started playing with it a little bit and thinking through a little bit more but clearly those are things that two things that jumped out at me was age and the inclusion of letters so if you if you includ letters again if you don't your effect size is not zero it's there's a positive effect but it's much more effective Ive if you include letters and by including letters
39:00 - 39:30 most of the studies did something like they would teach blending or segmenting and at the end teach them the three or four letters that made and not even so much teach I can teach the master you just show sort of show them the four letters that made the sounds they work on today like that type of thing just a quick little at the end of it just show them what letters you use or or do a a couple minutes on on teaching letter sounds as well I love that we're at the point um in teaching with science that we can refine our knowledge and I know
39:30 - 40:00 there that everybody's on a different learning curve and some people are just learning about the science for the first time but I really appreciated what you had to say about um hero worship I think we need to be careful of that one thing I've been really impressed with um with you and with Tim Shanahan honestly is that um and Tim Shanahan I've you know been familiar with my whole career but I feel like in many ways you do you do
40:00 - 40:30 that you follow the research in fact recently on Twitter I saw you kind of get into it with Tim Shanahan you're correcting him he' CED he'd said there's no research on and you said you were wrong here they are right I appreciate that because the focus isn't on that person it's on the facts or you know what we know part of the problem with that whole phic awareness thing you pointed out accurately is that you know well if so and so says it it must be true kind of a thing I also think it
40:30 - 41:00 became so divisive because of that in part that as a whole we weren't so solidified in the science we had didn't have um foundational knowledge enough to say okay let's look at this objectively it kind of upended the apple cart for a lot of people I think and so it became more of an issue than if it were to come up now that's just my anexpert opinion and you know Stacy another thing and and I'm so glad we're talking about this and
41:00 - 41:30 Matt you did such a good job of of diving into this area that can be fairly contentious uh we need to be careful too to remember that something that we read or learn we need to stay closer to what we read and learned as we get into teaching so I see a lot of practices that then take off once a teacher's in a room sometimes and pretty soon you're doing 15 20 minutes of something and you don't even have anything to originally back it up you started with a good idea but you have to make sure you're maintaining your knowledge and checking
41:30 - 42:00 yourself to make sure you're you're staying on the track because it's pretty easy to get off track sometimes with something that feels good or feels right and to make sure you check and maintain where you're at it's always a good idea we also remember as I said earlier data never generalized to or from an individual you do something it works for one kid or a classroom we have no idea why that did or didn't work uh and we tend to think oh well it work for that kid so it must be something that's better than whatever else is and and we don't know it to be true quick story I used to do a lot of work with Chris Riley Tillman who's now a Dean so he
42:00 - 42:30 doesn't you know join me in presenting and researching as much anymore but he uh he and I used to do trainings on interventions and he tells the story about trying to identify what the cause is because he does Behavior I do reading math but he as a kid that they written a behavior plan and tried everything they could try and then all of a sudden the kids started doing wrong this is it we found found the behavior and invention this is it then spring break happened and they came back from Spring Break and the kids's Behavior was as bad as ever so they talked to the parents and and
42:30 - 43:00 found out that the parents told the kid look there's two weeks until a spring break you do really well between now and then and we'll take you to Disney and so so it had nothing to do with the interventions we we that happens a lot in education kids do better and we don't really know why we assume it's because what we're doing right then at that very moment it may or may not be so we take that learned lesson and apply it next year and assume we'll see the same results we may not so if you see something that works and try it again and not saying don't do that absolutely but be sure to be assessing it
43:00 - 43:30 objectively as well to make sure it really was what you were doing in that in that mons teachers as Learners and scientists and then we look for those kind of things right um so I know that you had made mention to me that you were excited uh to move to the University of Florida and that part of what you get to focus on is dyslexia and how will that look and what is your interest and and background with dyslexia yeah reading disability is always my my big passion I love those
43:30 - 44:00 kids um my work with dyslexia is a couple things I tend to look at things from the assessment perspective so I I like to look at screening I I do intervention work as well and I can talk about that but but I look I focus a lot on screen right now because of the decoding dyslexia movement so decoding dyslexia is a wonderful movement I'm about to to disagree with them so I give my nice words ahead of time which because they they're wonderful parent it's mostly parents I was involved in the decoden dyslexia group in Minnesota
44:00 - 44:30 before I moved here so that would have been around 2003 20 I'm sorry 2014 2013 and they were fabulous and everything they said was right on we need to making sure higher quality fin instructions happening was it was great my disagreement with them was I don't think the reason your kids aren't doing well is because they have to I think they're not doing well because we're not teaching them as they as they need and so I'm a little hesitant to you know be identifying children with dyslexia as an explanation as to why they're not doing
44:30 - 45:00 WR is good so because of that I I looked at some some screening measures because as the coding dyslexia Movement we see every state in Country Now basically has a dyslexia law in the books and most of them deal with screening so we did a study and we saw that Sally shawood scale called The shawood Sex screen and dibles and we use the ctop the comprehensive test of chronological processing as our criterian because we
45:00 - 45:30 don't want worry about being diagnosed dyslexia or not that to confusing no did the kids have effective phological processing or not if they didn't that was disected and we found that dibles uh predicted or got it right you know 8 85% of the time actually actually a PR for reader is even better like 90% whereas the shadewood scale was less than 50% active and so has terrible accuracy to to be a screener and I will still contend two things number one
45:30 - 46:00 schools waste too much money I said earlier time we also waste a lot of money we want to buy the new thing and so go out and rush out and buy this new scale and honestly the second point I want to make is the best way to assess reading is to have the kid read and so Dibbles screened better for dyslexia than any disia screen and res saw and I don't mean Dibbles per se but but you know Dibbles is great all those M or influency measures are probably better screeners of Dyslexia than most measures
46:00 - 46:30 we we purchase in um Rand look at Rand rand's a great example rapid automatized naming rapid automatized naming has been long linked to to reading problems and Rapid automatized naming predicts reading best if the measure is something like letter sounds or letter names pictures shapes the correlation with them in Reading measures drops quite a bit to you know
46:30 - 47:00 335 so if again the best measure of ran is letter names unless the kids don't know the letter names right so if it's a preschool and they don't know the letter names you can't that's not a measure of R that's not a measure of letteres them but if they know their letter names it's a better measure of land than anything else we can buy so sit down with the kids see the not or letter that's probably a better indicator of reading the ulty than almost anything else we can do yeah well said and I I do think
47:00 - 47:30 with decoding dyslexia I look at it from a sociological perspective as well they were able to move the Mark um and get a lot of legislation in that helps us to meet the needs of any student again it helps me really emphasize with my pre-service teachers the importance of knowing what goes into reading development because if you can identify where that break break down is and you know how to fill that Gap then all of
47:30 - 48:00 our students are going to have a much better chance of being fluent readers and comprehending and doing all the great things um that we can do once we can read fluently well I was about to say the S my opinion the science of reading movement was born out of De decep it was that push from that group that finally got the country to sit up and say wait something's not working I actually teach at the beginning of my semesters the history of reading and I include Emily hanford's right in there because of the way she brought the
48:00 - 48:30 attention in concert with decoding dyslexia and groups like that um we owe a lot to them and I think systemically they're great entities and groups Lindsay go ahead sorry well I agree with that I'm so thankful for Emily and accoding dyslexia it's great um I just had a question about ran so I have you know I use aadience formerly known as Dibbles necks so we have letter naming fluency uh in indicator what's the difference between that and ran if you were to untime it and show every kid the
48:30 - 49:00 letter and they know all the names so then it's simply a measure of how quickly they see that's a measure of rain if they don't know the letter names then it's no longer a measure of rame that's why you have to use something like pictures or colors or something like that where the kids know all the stimulus if to tell you what it is it's just simply a measure of how quickly they can see if they know the letter names it's a measure of R that's a great point and something for all teachers to be aware of especially if you're using a CBM like that has that major in it I
49:00 - 49:30 know our time is coming to a close Donell Lindsay do you have any other questions for Matt no I don't have any questions but Matt I have sure appreciated this conversation it's been fantastic and it should set an example for having good conversations and you can talk about things that maybe you find challenging you know maybe you had your heart set on something but there's still room and should always be room for a conversation about well maybe you haven't thought about this have you looked at at that I think this been a great example of that thank you so much Matt thank you and and I do wish we
49:30 - 50:00 would have those conversations more people practitioners through social media they interact with researchers now but they have to remember researchers are usually some of the least socially skilled people you'll ever meet right and so and so I'm used to saying to someone a colleague next door saying well no you're wrong you know Johnson and Thompson in 2008 found this you're wrong and so we don't have a good skill set to have these conversations so I really encourage you to uh to engage uh but recognize if they're blunt it's just
50:00 - 50:30 that's how we talk to each other and we as researchers need to do a better job and I've learned that you know Donna taught me that and all the social media really taught me that you have to learn how to talk to a practitioner and so I really think we should work with researchers to learn how to do that better as well yeah actually being a literacy coach taught me that sometimes the hard way so yeah I think it's a very valid point Lindsay and I joke about this all the time sometimes we get called Candid that's a word but um yeah Lindsay what
50:30 - 51:00 were you gonna say oh nothing this was great thank you so much Matt for being on and also for always answering my questions whenever I email you well thank you I love the work you do thank you so much for being our second guest and for all the conversation thank you for sharing your knowledge and thank you for the things you've studied and your contributions We Wish You A lot of luck in Florida I think that's exciting and what a power Powerhouse you and Holly Lane all in the same
51:00 - 51:30 Department right yeah it's weird offices will be next to each other I can't oh wow great that's gonna be awesome well we look forward to more contributions then from both of you thank you so much thank you Matt anything else you'd like to discuss or leave with us any wisdom or I love this podcast and uh I I am a subscriber and have listened before obviously and um I really appreciate the translation of the work that you do and research that goes on into a very
51:30 - 52:00 consumable format so thank you for doing that well thank you very much okay well thank you all for joining us for this episode of literacy talks and we'll see you on the next episode thanks for joining us today for literacy talks the podcast series for literacy leaders and champions everywhere we hope you'll join the science of reading Collective our free community so you can stay current with the profession's newest thinking free webinars resources and more visit
52:00 - 52:30 literacy talks online for access to all episodes and more at reading horizons.com literacy talks it's an exciting time to teach reading and help all students reach grade level proficiency this school year literacy talks comes to you from Reading Horizons where reading momentum begins join us next time