Book: Differentiated Reading Instruction: Strategies for the Primary Grades

Sharon Walpole & Michael C. McKenna

Walpole, S & McKenna, M. Differentiated Reading Instruction: strategies for the Primary Grades. The Guildford Press, New York (2007) ISBN09781593854126

Chapter 2: Using Assessment to Differentiate Instruction

pg 15

Progress Monitoring Measures

Once differentiated instruction begins, teachers must periodically check to see whether their efforts are paying off. Imagine a dentist who identifies a cavity, x-rays it to diagnose its exact size and shape, and then begins drilling without ever stopping to inspect the results. As absurd as this example may sound, something very similar can easily happen if we get into the habit of teaching without monitoring. The danger is that once we have identified a specific need, we may overteach to correct it. This may happen because we have access to ample materials, because we feel we must carry a particular series of lessons to a logical end, or simply because we enjoy teaching a particular skill or strategy. Progress monitoring tests can avert this problem. More importantly, they can alert us to instances where there is little or no response to the intervention so that we can adjust our approach before more time is wasted. For such tests to work properly, they must be given on a regular basis.

There is little research to help us recommend the proper frequency with which to administer progress monitoring assessments. Formal progress monitoring systems may make it possible to monitor progress on a weekly basis, but teachers can also use assessments that may accompany core materials.

Conceptually, progress monitoring must be part of every differentiated lesson in that we want teachers to attend to the degree to which students are succeeding during the lesson. It is important to check whether additional progress monitoring assessments are available. If not, teachers can inspect performance on tasks a student attempts during differentiated instruction. This is called curriculum-based assessment. It might entail scores on phonics exercises, a sight word inventory, or words correct per minute occasionally computed by a teacher during oral reading.

Periodic progress monitoring tells us two things: whether the child is progressing as expected and when the diagnosed need has been addressed. Toward these ends, it is important to keep track of student performance over time. We can do so by charting progress for each of the students receiving the differentiated instruction so that a trajectory for each child can be analyzed. 

Pp 20

Guiding Questions about Word Recognition

The link between word recognition and reading comprehension is the first possibility we explore. We begin with two related questions, the answers to which will tell us whether we must go further down this path.

1. Does the child make use of context to monitor his or her reading? Proficient readers use context as they read, but they use it differently than poor readers.

Consider the following sentence:

She signed a legal contract.

When you got to the last word, you knew the first syllable was accented because in this context contract must be a noun. Now try this sentence:

As they cool, metal objects contract.

This time context helps you quickly discern that contract is a verb and that the second syllable must be accented. A poor reader may not use context in this way and may mispronounce the word. More importantly, the struggling reader will often attempt to use context to figure out what the word is in the first place because of poor decoding skills. Consider a beginning reader faced with this sentence:

The cowboy rode a brown horse.

The child who substitutes pony for horse is revealing an overreliance on context.

Although once thought to be evidence of mature reading, these substitutions are now recognized as attempts to compensate for decoding deficiencies.

To answer the guiding question, look to the pronunciation of multiple-meaning words, especially in cases where the more frequent pronunciation is not indicated. Also, look at the nature of words substituted during oral reading. If a child is using context to supplement weak decoding skills, other guiding questions about decoding should be addressed.

2. Is the child fluent?

3. Does the child have adequate sight word knowledge?

4. Does the child have adequate knowledge of decoding strategies? Even for the child with a weak sight word vocabulary, you must address this question. Remember that you have already determined that the child is not adequately fluent, and there may be two factors underlying the problem: automaticity, especially with high-frequency words, and phonics knowledge.

Pp25

What concepts of print does the child have? At the most basic level, a child, especially a very young child, may lack an adequate notion of how print works. A child with little idea of the purpose of reading may also have limited conceptualization of printed language. We find that this is rarely the case after the first grade, but it is a possibility that should not be ignored.

To answer this guiding question, structured observation is helpful. With an open book between you and the child, ask where the words are and where you would start reading. Have the child trace a finger along the first line and then move it to the beginning of the next line. Place two note cards on the page and demonstrate how they can be pushed together to reveal less print or spread apart to show more. Ask the child to slide the cards together until one word is visible.

Then one letter. These tasks can quickly reveal whether print concepts are firm. In sum, the following concepts are crucial to understanding how English print functions. Each can be readily assessed informally:

• Letter boundaries
• Word boundaries
• Left-to-right directionality
• Top-to-bottom directionality, with return sweep
• Front-to-back directionality for multiple-page texts.

We find that teachers know that print concepts are important, but they do not always use assessment data to determine whether or not to teach them during differentiated instruction. In fact, we often see teachers using valuable small-group time to teach print concepts that their students have clearly already mastered.

Pg 31

Chapter 3: Differentiating Phonemic Awareness Instruction

In order to build phonemic awareness in children, you need to be able to segment phonemes yourself. This may not be as easy as it sounds. There are a few
things about phoneme segmentation that are a bit difficult for skilled readers who
already know how to read and spell virtually all words. The key concept to know
is that while English is an alphabetic language, not all phonemes are represented
by one and only one letter. Rather, each of the 44 phonemes in English might be
represented by many different graphemes. The word though has many letters, but
only two phonemes–the digraph sound /th/ and the long vowel sound /o/.