Should We Teach Reading Strategies In Isolation Or In Combination?

I recently posted a thread on Twitter which attracted some opposition. The thread went like this:

If you are currently planning reading lessons that don't have a focus on developing just one strategy (i.e. retrieval or inference) then I suggest that you might revisit your plans, changing them so that only one strategy is focused on at a time. I would suggest that one lesson spent on one reading strategy followed by another lesson on a different strategy is not enough for teaching children the strategies they need to be able to comprehend well. A sequence of lessons focused on just one strategy is preferable. 

Within reading teaching sequences that focus solely on one strategy ensure that you model answering questions and give children chance to practise answering similar questions with similar answer structures. If you truly want children to improve their reading strategies make sure plenty of your lessons are focused solely on one main strategy rather than always asking a range of questions. 

Planning lessons that expect children to exercise a range of strategies will help them to understand the whole text BUT won't provide the best opportunities to focus on the development of a particular strategy, meaning they are less likely to improve in their use of it. For example, if you want children to become better at making inferences plan several lessons where ALL the questions you ask are inference questions EXCEPT where retrieval and vocabulary questions will help children to make better inferences. 

When teaching reading strategies it is my belief that whole sequences of lessons should focus on just ONE of those skills UNLESS using other strategies helps children to practice the focus strategy of the lesson.

Whilst replying to people who opposed my ideas I found it necessary to clarify some matters:

• within such a lesson other strategies may be employed, but usually in support of the focus strategy
• by using the word focus I mean that that strategy would be in the spotlight being the thing you intend children to improve at, but that this would not mean other strategies weren't used in support
• such lessons should only be taught when wanting children to improve their use of a particular strategy and shouldn't be imposed on children who can already sufficiently use the strategies
• in such a lesson, a teacher wouldn't attempt to suppress the use of already strong strategies that children wanted to use
• this shouldn't be the only reading provision that a child receives - there should be plenty of additional opportunities for children to naturally employ a full range of reading strategies whilst reading
• these lessons should be taught with a view to children eventually becoming independently responsible for using the strategy alongside a range of other strategies in their reading

Since writing this I have clarified further what is meant by 'strategies'

The EEF guidance report 'Improving Literacy in Key Stage 2' says that 'the following strategies should be modelled and practised to ensure they become embedded and fluent: prediction, questioning, clarifying, summarising, inference, activating prior knowledge'. It goes on to suggest that for each strategy children should 'learn three things: what the strategy is, how the strategy is used, and why and when to use the strategy.' It goes on to state: 'Developing each of the strategies requires explicit instruction and extensive practice... These strategies can be introduced in isolation, but pupils should also be taught how to integrate combinations of strategies to develop effective comprehension of different texts'. 

And it is the aforementioned isolated introduction with which I am concerned. By singling strategies out for those not yet adept at using them, then explicitly modelling how they can be used and then giving children time to practise using them, children will improve their ability to use particular reading strategies in combination with others.

And, as already mentioned, I think it is difficult to develop such independence in the combining of strategies by only spending the odd lesson on each one. Sustained modelling and practise of the same strategy which follows the gradual release of responsibility model (an explicit description of the strategy and when and how it should be used; modelling of the strategy in action by teachers and/ or pupils; collaborative use of the strategy in action; guided practice using the strategy with gradual release of responsibility; and independent use of the strategy) is surely more likely to have an impact.

A few contributors to the thread provided some interesting additional reading:

Daniel Willingham's 'Infer this...' blog post discusses the findings from some research and how it supports his interpretation of the effect of comprehension instruction in that, in the case of teaching inference-making as a strategy, 'it alerts students to the importance of making inferences, and perhaps more broadly (for less skilled readers) that it is important to THINK while you read. But practising inferences does not lead to a general inferencing skill for two reasons. One, as noted, inferencing depends on the particular text, and two, whatever cognitive processes contribute to inferencing are already well practised from use in oral language---we continually draw inferences in conversation.' He summarises saying 'comprehension instruction is a great idea, because research consistently shows a large benefit of such instruction. But just as consistently, it shows that brief instruction leads to the same outcome as longer instruction'.
Tim Shanahan's 'Teaching Reading and Reading Comprehension Strategies' blog post summarises: 

'I would definitely teach comprehension strategies. The way I think of strategies most basically is that they give readers some tools they can use independently to make sense of what they read... Some programs [teach and gradually release responsibility] with multiple strategies, all at one time, and others teach the strategies one at a time, adding them together as you go (both approaches work—but I find the latter to be simpler and easier to teach). You can usually teach a strategy well in 3-4 weeks if you have students practising with lots of different texts... Summarising a newspaper article is different than summarising a story, and both are different than a science chapter. Make sure that the students are learning not only the strategy, but the content of the texts too. Finally, remind the kids from time to time to use their strategies or engage them in strategies discussions.'

The IES Practice Guide 'Improving Reading Comprehension in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade'  has as its first recommendation that we 'Teach students how to use reading comprehension strategies'. It states: "Good readers use many forms of thinking and analysing text as they read. It is therefore important to teach beginning readers strategies for constructing meaning from text. A strategy is the intentional application of a cognitive routine by a reader before, during, or after reading a text  Comprehension strategies help readers enhance their understanding, overcome difficulties in comprehending text, and compensate for weak or imperfect knowledge related to the text. The strategies may be taught one by one or in combination. Both approaches can improve reading comprehension, so the panel recommends that teachers choose the approach they are most comfortable with in the classroom. Teachers should also help students learn how to use comprehension strategies independently through the gradual release of responsibility. When releasing responsibility to students, however, be mindful that students differ in the extent of modelling or support they need from teachers in order to use strategies effectively."

Although all three resources go into more detail than the quotations I've included here, and I'd recommend that you read them for yourselves, there are some general things I'd like to pull out of what we've read:

• It would seem that whilst Willingham agrees that comprehension strategies should be taught, he also thinks that research shows that the amount of practise time children get is not important. He points out that the main outcome we should be aiming for is that children remember to use strategies - in this view, the only benefit of repeated practice of particular strategies then is that children will have practised them so often that they never forget to employ them. But with inference-making for example, if children are not aware of the vast array of possible questions they might ask of a text in order to infer necessary information they might never know to ask those questions of a text, even when they do remember that they should ask questions of a text to ensure they have made necessary inferences. It is only possible to expose children to such a vast array of possible questions through a whole sequence of lessons, or, admittedly, a range of disconnected one-off lessons or questions within lessons over a longer period of time. A one-off lesson or question, with little time spent on it, is surely less likely to prompt a child to remember to use inference-making strategies than the recollection of a whole sequence of focused lessons.
• Both Shanahan and the IES guide state that strategies can be taught in isolation (as does the EEF guidance report) but that strategies can also be taught in combination and that the choice is down to teachers. So perhaps, my belief in teaching strategies in isolation is just a personal preference - mine and Tim Shanahan's! To my mind though, that intentional application of a cognitive routine is a lot easier to approach as a teacher if I, and the children, are only having to think about one cognitive routine whilst we are teaching it and learning it. The potential benefit in doing this is that it limits the cognitive overload that might come with trying to learn and practise too many new strategies all at once when you aren't sufficient in using one, some or all of them.
• The IES guide recognises that some students will need different amounts of modelling and practise before they can apply it independently and consistently. It will be the case that, if you teach strategies in isolation, some children will move beyond the need for this and therefore will not need to be involved in such activity as the explicit teaching of isolated strategies - this is common sense.

Whilst I know there are still many out there who would disagree with me, I think I would still advocate the teaching of reading strategies in isolation for readers who are not yet strong in the use of particular strategies. Certainly, for teachers who are hoping that, for example, children in their class get better at making inferences, I would recommend, instead of asking the odd, random inference question in a discussion or as part of a written reading comprehension, that lessons are more focused on the modelling and practise of particular kinds of inference questions about a range of texts. Without taking this approach teachers leave the learning of particular strategies to chance, hoping that children gain certain skills as a result of random exposure to infrequent opportunities to practise those strategies.

I've not fully thought through the implications of the following analogy but it's one a few have used in support of my position. We wouldn't teach children to solve a complex maths problem that required the use of several different maths facts and strategies until children were able to each one individually. Imagine a problem that required children to complete some multiplication, some division and to have a good idea about percentages and measures - we would first teach extensive learning sequences on each of the constituent parts before expecting a child to understand how to complete the question.

In reading, we are not afforded the luxury of being able to teach things in such isolation - a spiral curriculum approach is necessary, partly facilitated by increasing the complexity of the text. For example, decodable books used in the Early Years and KS1 require very little comprehension, for example, whereas whole novels used in KS2 require children to decode, recognise words, utilise background knowledge, retrieve and infer information, summarise and so on. Along a continuum in the middle of those two extremes children use age-appropriate books which allow them to exercise existing word recognition and language comprehension strategies and skills.

However, at any point along that continuum a child might struggle with any one of the strategies that they usually use. It might be that one child finds themselves in this position, it might be a group of children and it may be a whole class. At this point it might be useful to isolate the strategy they are particular struggling with and teach them accordingly, modelling and giving practise time across a range of age-appropriate texts whilst releasing the responsibility to them so that they can eventually use the strategy independently in the texts they are currently reading.

Whether or not we will all agree with my stance, I'm sure that more of us would agree that a great deal of thought needs to be put into how we go about teaching children to read. Over the years I have been guilty of expecting children, particularly those with limited reading experience, to just absorb the ability to comprehend well through the odd read aloud and the rare comprehension task - this didn't work. My reaction to this has been to seek structured approaches to teaching children the strategies they need to be able to read well, the focus of this blog post being one of them.

If you would like Aidan to work with you on developing reading at your school, please visit his website at https://www.aidansevers.com/services and get in touch via the contact details that can be found there.

Book Review: 'Max and the Millions' By Ross Montgomery

As with all good children’s books these days, this isn’t just a straight yarn. ‘Max and the Millions’ by Ross Montgomery begins by introducing one of the unlikely heroes of the story - a school caretaker with more than just a knack for building intricate models of anything and everything. Next we meet Mr Pitt the typically unlikeable headmaster. And then we encounter the story’s other (full-size) hero: Max, who is hiding in a cupboard. Max loves making models; he’s also deaf. This representation of a ‘minority group’ is important in children’s literature. Montgomery writes sensitively and convincingly about the trials a deaf child might face making this an important lesson in empathy for young readers.

Although this is a story about how a warring society of magically created microscopic people are rescued by a seemingly improbable pair of pre-teen boys and a hoard of pony-obsessed 5 year old girls on a sugar-bender, it is also a story about friendship, fitting in, integrity and small things mattering. Whilst Lower Key Stage 2 children will enjoy the miniature adventures of King Luke and his trusty flea as he fights the Bin King and the Red Queen, they will also be caused to think about how first impressions don’t always count, how kindness and selflessness are key characteristics to develop in oneself and how forgiveness is an essential ingredient for peace and friendship.

The story’s absolute highlight comes when (slight spoiler alert) the tiny Luke becomes king of the united people of The Floor (the minute kingdom the small people inhabit). The power goes to his head and, despite his friend Ivy’s warnings, he forgets the golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you with disastrous consequences. Even if no other part of the book is used as a talking point between adults and children, this part should be; it opens up a safe space in which to discuss politics and has parallels to current situations that are playing out on the world stage. The headmaster’s despotic antics throughout the book also provide opportunities to discuss similar issues.

This well-written book is a great choice for parents and teachers of children who have expressed interest in world affairs but who might be too young to fully understand the complexities and unpleasant details of the situations. It’s also recommended for fans of stories such as Terry Pratchett’s The Carpet People stories – those young but capable readers who are quite at home in stories with impossibly fantastical settings.

From the @BradResearchSch Blog: 9 Things You Didn’t Know About Being A Fluent Reader

My latest blog post for Bradford Research School takes a look at what's going on behind the scenes when someone is reading fluently. In it I suggest that there are 9 things teachers might not consider when teaching and assessing fluency in children's reading. Each of the 9 points is a development of information provided in the EEF's 'Improving Literacy in Key Stage 2' guidance report. The 9 points are as follows, but you'll have to click through to the Bradford Research School blog to find out a little bit more:

1. Decoding and sight recognition both have a part to play
2. There are no quick ways to develop reading fluency
3. The more you read, the more fluent you’ll be
4. You’re not a fluent reader unless you understand what you read
5. In order to read fluently you have to find and infer information
6. Fluent readers bring more to the text than they realise
7. A good vocabulary unlocks fluency
8. Fluency can be modelled
9. Scarborough’s Reading Rope can be used diagnostically

Click here to read the whole article: https://bradford.researchschool.org.uk/2018/03/03/being-fluent-reader/

From The @TES Blog: We Should Balance Out, Not Destroy, The Pipe Dreams Of Our Students

“I left school at 14 and look at me now: I’m a millionaire!”

“I didn’t get anything higher than a C in my GCSEs but now I’m a celebrated author…”

“I’m rich and famous and I only got one O level!”

As predictable as testing season arriving in schools is the abundance of people telling our students that exam performance does not matter. There are even articles with titles like “These famous people prove you don’t need to do well at school to be highly successful!” and “10 Celebrities who are winning at life despite failing school!” to re-enforce the point...

Click here to read the full article: https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-views/why-we-should-balance-out-not-destroy-pipe-dreams-our-students

Book Review: 'The Children of Castle Rock' by Natasha Farrant

‘The Children of Castle Rock’ is a daring new adventure story in the tradition of all good boarding school novels. Lovers of Harry Potter, Malory Towers and The Worst Witch will immediately find something in this new story that they identify with. The boarding school setting allows for the all-important parentlessness that so often sets up the protagonists of children’s books to have rip-roaring escapades that their parents would never allow. Farrant brings Famous Five-style adventure right up to date with mobile phones and various other trappings of modern life.

Except in Natasha Farrant’s latest book it is some mysterious communication from Alice’s largely-absent dad that prompts her and her friends to abscond from school to embark on a crazy adventure across remote areas of Scotland. The fact that the Stormy Loch’s behaviour management ethos doesn’t follow the normal strictness found in other fictional schools makes matters worse… or better… depending on which way you look at it.

The main theme of this book really is children’s relationships with adults: Alice’s mum has died, her dad is pretty useless, and she’s actually closest to her Auntie, the aptly named Patience. Fergus’ parents have split up and are not amicable and Jesse lives in the shadow of his older brothers and is desperate initially to win his parents’ favour with his violin playing. The teachers at the school are a rag tag bunch headed up by the Major who is quirky, to say the least – a rather progressive ex-army man who challenges all stereotypes of head teachers in children’s fiction. The book crescendos with some unexpected outcomes where children’s relationships to adults are concerned – I won’t spoil it, but this isn’t your typical children’s book ending.

The book has a very strong narrator presence making it unlike any other children’s book I’ve read. Farrant often hints at things are to come, referencing future parts of the story that are relevant to events that are happening at the point of narration. The narration is where the playfulness of this story comes leaving the characters largely to get on with the serious business of embarking on their quest to subvert the orienteering challenge in order to transport a secret package to a rendezvous with Barney, Alice’s shady father. Along the way the children experience the joys of wild swimming, fishing and camping, torrential rain and storms, breaking and entering, food poisoning and being chased by proper baddies, not to mention the highs and lows of pre-teen friendship.

The book is aimed fairly and squarely at children of a similar age to the children in the book – upper key stage two and lower key stage three children will love this story. There are some starred out expletives which give it a little edge, and leave little to the imagination – something to consider when using the book in school or recommending it to children. With a diverse set of characters, themes that are relevant to the lives of many children and a main character who loves writing, there is also definite scope for this being used in the classroom as a stimulus for discussion. A recommended read.

From The @thirdspacetweets Blog: EEF Report Summary: Putting Evidence To Work

My work with Bradford Research School has really turned me on to the work of the EEF. So when they release another a guidance report I'm always keen to read it first to find out what its implications are. The latests one applies to all subjects and all schools but here, in this blog post for Third Space, I outline how I should have used it had it been published in time, and how I will use it in the future to introduce any new changes.

Winds of change blew in the world of primary Maths when the 2014 National Curriculum was introduced. We now had to teach some things sooner, other things later, some things not at all and there were additions too (hello, Roman numerals!). The ‘new’ holy trinity of Maths teaching and learning were introduced: fluency, problem solving and reasoning.

Then the SATs gradually changed. The calculation paper had already been done away with; next to go was the mental Maths test, replaced by the arithmetic test. And the reasoning tests appeared to begin to assess how pupils were doing on the 2014 curriculum ahead of schedule. The two new reasoning papers were perceived by many to be more difficult than before.

And so, up and down the land, Maths leaders and teachers have been making changes to the way the subject is taught in their schools...

Click here to read on: https://thirdspacelearning.com/blog/eef-putting-evidence-work-report-slt-summary/

Year 11 Hell: Why More, More, MORE Is Not The Answer

Recently a secondary teacher got in touch with me asking if I'd consider sharing something he had written about something that was going on in his school. The following blog post is what I received. It details some worrying practices which appear to be impacting heavily on both student and teacher wellbeing. I echo the author's summary here: there surely is another way. Is this common practice? Are schools tackling the same issues in better ways? I'd love to hear your own experiences of this.

Year 11 students, their teachers and their parents are at breaking point. The most frustrating thing is that we’ve seen this coming for years, and we’ve done nothing about it.

It’s Saturday afternoon. In our house, the major concerns are who will win the race to the bath to warm up after my son’s football match and whether we should prepare the roast to eat before The Voice or during it. I’m wondering whether I can face the pile of odd socks which are glaring at me from the sofa. This is about as stressful as Saturdays get here.

As I write, year 11 are at school. They had English all morning then moved onto Maths. They’re in every Saturday between now and June. The rest of the school finished at 3.25 each day, but Year 11 have an extra hour at the end of each day. Subjects battle for prime positions – Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Science drew the short straw with Fridays – but the students all come, even if it does mean being rounded up and herded from their previous lesson by a pastoral team with apparent infinite patience, who must be clocking at least 30k steps a day as they prowl corridors to check on non-regular coats and chewing gum.

Last year, a respected group of educators put forward the suggestion that core PE should be pulled for Year 11, to give them more time to focus on core subjects. Thousands of schools have gone with this idea, it would seem. So, instead of running around on a field, students are filtered into English, Maths or English AND Maths depending on which week it is where the moon is in its current cycle. Trying to ensure the right students are in the right places depending on the latest half-termly data available is a feat requiring the skills of an aeronautic engineer.

After the mock results came in, the school went into panic. I can’t remember, in my ten year career, this ever not happening. ‘MORE!’ ‘We need MORE!’ MORE resources, MORE time, MORE Walking Talking mocks!’ say the heads of the core subjects. If we don’t, they’ll all fail! The school will be plunged into Special Measures if we don’t throw every spare moment, every resource, every initiative at Year 11.

So, at the end of December, tutor time for Year 11 was replaced by TTI. That’s tutor time intervention to the rest of you. Instead of spending their morning with the form tutor and fellow tutees most of them have known since Year 11, they go to Maths and Science. Instead of having a chance to read a book, finish off a bit of homework or catch up on the news, they are having extra lessons for half an hour each morning. Instead of sharing a joke or having someone who knows them really well checking in on the latest family challenge or holiday plan, their daily dose of English, Maths or Science rises in some cases to over three hours a day.

It’s a Catch 22. All schools are doing it – or at least, that’s the perception. Whatever the rating of your school, you are under pressure to be keeping up. Perish the thought that you might lose your ‘Outstanding’ rating, drop back into RI when you were only recently deemed ‘Good’ or indeed face your entire SLT replaced by a SWAT team of Future Leaders if your school finds itself once again below par. Should you dare to suggest that Year 11 might have one whole holiday without a single day in school, you might slip behind the rest.

I’m not lucky enough to teach a ‘core’ subject. I’m part of the ‘non-core’ as a historian. But I’m better off than the third tier subjects – the arts. My poor colleagues in Drama! Their new written exams are terrifying. It’s no longer a subject for students to demonstrate their creative strengths. They have to be able to analyse stage directions at length – in writing. There was a great opportunity recently to take our students to the battlefields of Northern France recently. It would have been a long weekend – they’d have missed three lessons in total. One of these would have been Science. I may as well have asked for a year off to perfect my crochet skills. Snowball chance in hell. We didn’t go.

We ‘non-core’ subjects have to fight for time with our students. ‘It’s too late!’ we are told when requesting a half day over half term. Maths, English and Science booked theirs in weeks ago! As if we are somehow being granted a huge favour by being allowed to come and work with students during the holiday we too so desperately need.

Now, there are two schools of thought on this, based on the teachers I’ve talked to. Yes, they may be doing 7 lessons a day, but that’s ALL they’re doing, say some – and we can all picture the student who can never take their coat off or get out their pen without being asked about 500 times. The one who could do with a direct intravenous shot of the sense of urgency that the rest of us are feeling. The boys who regress to the age of 5 – happens at this time of year like clockwork. The ones whose parents learn they’ve been communicating using a series of animal noises throughout the school day. The ones who will do ANYTHING to pretend it’s just not happening.

But there’s also this: I don’t go more than a couple of days these days without finding a hitherto quiet and studious student – the kinds whose name you probably wouldn’t know unless you teach them yourself - crying in a corridor. I sit them down, offer them chocolate (it usually does the trick – at least for a few minutes) and ask what’s wrong. ‘I don’t know!’ is almost always the answer. They are overwhelmed, exhausted and their struggles at home funnily enough haven’t diminished to cater for the extra demands of being in Year 11.

And then there are the students who actually love History, have always worked extremely hard, but who literally are unable to find a couple of hours at home to study, because they’re so wrung out from being stuffed like Christmas turkeys with equations, formulae and quotes from Twelfth Night.

Oh, and the teachers. Yes, them. A colleague of mine with two children under 6 at home is on her fourth Saturday at work. We all know she’s dedicated, but she seems to believe that her dedication will come into question if she doesn’t ‘step up’.

I overheard a parent of a Year 11 student telling a mutual friend that she’d like to ‘crawl into a corner and hide’ until it’s all over. The level of hysteria, the level of panic, is quite simply untenable. Only in ten years, I’ve not seen an alternative. At the moment, we are destined to send out into the workforce a generation of highly-strung individuals who have learned through experience that someone else, rather than sending them off to work independently, will always give up weekends and holidays for them, photocopy a rainforest’s worth of resources and put a pen in their hand if they can’t be bothered to root around in their bag. We bang on about building resilience and independence, but our actions – our constant supply of MORE makes these aims laughable.

Vic Goddard said recently, ‘there is always another way’. We need to find it. Now. Because all we’re doing is pouring oil onto the wreckage of the profession we love.