District Literacy Improvement: Six Key Takeaways

Image: Progression by Jill Pelto

In 2019, Glean Education sat down with Dr. Jack Silva, Assistant Superintenden and Chief Academic Officer, to discuss his work in Bethlehem Area School District (BASD) on the initiative Reading By Grade Three (RBG3) focused on student literacy improvement. At the time, only 60% district’s students were leaving third grade with proficient reading skills. They knew there was a problem that needed to be fixed.

The district set out on a multi-year initiative to turn things around and set a goal of having 90% of students proficient in reading by the end of third grade. Creating a “high expectations, high support” environment, BASD set out on a five-year plan to build teacher knowledge, establish effective systems, and deliver high-quality instruction that would ensure secure students have the foundational reading skills to drive their future academic success. 

Interested in undertaking a similar initiative in your district? Dr. Jack Silva shared with Glean Education our Ed Leaders Podcast some key takeaways that led to the ultimate success of this initiative.

1. Instill a Common Understanding in School Leaders

Before offering any training to teachers, the sixteen BASD district principals engaged in a professional development program rooted in the Science of Reading. Through this training, BASD administrators explored modules that helped to build foundational knowledge about current research behind reading and spelling instruction and what effective instruction should look like in the classroom.

During the first year of the program, school site leaders worked together to gain enough knowledge to oversee and support educators.  “There were 28 days during the school year where principals came down to the education center,” explained Dr. Silva. “We really made them instructional experts before we ever started talking about reading with the teachers.” 

Administrators delved into understanding the cognitive processes behind reading acquisition and what educators need to know to deliver explicit reading instruction – things they may have only been taught briefly or not at all in pre-service training. 

2. Build Collective Efficacy by Having School Leaders and Educators Learn Together 

During year two of rollout, BASD school leaders followed up their own training with another year of training alongside their district staff. 

According to Dr. Silva, this professional development experience helped to establish a level of comfort between school leaders and educators and created room for teachers to ask questions, adjust mindsets and try new strategies. “We adopted the philosophy that there is no failure except failing to try,” said Silva.

Educators felt empowered to engage in courageous dialogue around the district's literacy curriculum while considering changes to instructional practice. During this phase, Dr. Silva emphasized the importance of developing professionals as a whole rather than evaluating their performance. 

3.  Be Intentional About Rollout  

Implementing change of this magnitude is a long game and it’s important to be intentional about rollout to optimize impact. Dr. Silva explained how BASD prioritized long-term success and made sure the approach was methodical and intentional to optimize success. At BASD, the school improvement plan was implemented one grade level at a time, beginning with kindergarten with a rollout that included a new grade level each subsequent year. 

The district prioritized building teacher knowledge grade-level by grade level starting with the earliest and moving toward later grades with the goal of building a strong foundation in literacy from the bottom up. 

As knowledge among BASD educators grew, it became evident that a new curriculum aligned with the science of reading would be needed. “We knew that we were going to have to invest in a new curriculum, but I was unwilling to do that until we had the knowledge behind it,” said Silva. 

4. Keep the School Board in the Loop By Sharing Efficacy Data

In order to ensure that the program progressed successfully, Dr. Silva provided the BASD School Board with consistent updates. Delivering this messaging helped to maintain the momentum, and ultimately, helped to contribute to the success of the RBG3 program. “If our school board wasn't providing the resources [and funding], that could take us off the rails. So we gave them constant updates of what we were doing and they became very strong supporters,” said Silva. 

5. Create a New Ecosystem for Literacy Development

Creating a new literacy program entails developing a scope and sequence that aligns with the material. Implementing a reading program like BASD’s RGB3 requires the development of several pieces that work together including, but not limited to, leadership training, professional development, and curriculum adoption. “Those types of things create a universe for literacy development and you had to make sure that you were developing all of those relative to each other in the best way that you could,” said Silva. 

6. Leave Room for Adjustments but Maintain Fidelity 

What may work in theory can be different when put to practice. BASD school leaders left room for adjustments that needed to be made when the real work of implementing the training and new curricula began to happen in the classrooms. School leaders understood that, overall, dedication to implementation fidelity and data was at the center of BASD’s Reading by Grade Three initiative.

Success followed when school leaders led sites that had educators with deep background knowledge of the Science of Reading, materials that support practice, the assessments to track progress, and the understanding of how to intensify for those falling behind.

BASD did indeed find incredible success through this initiative. By June 2017, only one year into the initiative, 88% of the district’s kindergarteners were reading at grade level, up from 46% when school started in September, and up from 71% the prior year. That progress continued over the next several years.

Are you interested in learning how you might support this type of initiative in your district? Feel free to reach out to us at Glean Education to learn more about how we partner with schools and districts to support these types of initiatives.

References:

1. Hanford, Emly. “Why Millions of Kids Can’t Read and What Better Teaching Can Do About It.” Morning Edition,  2, January, 2019, https://www.npr.org/2019/01/02/677722959/why-millions-of-kids-cant-read-and-what-better-teaching-can-do-about-it.

2. “What It Takes in to Ensure Students Are Reading At Grade-Level By Third Grade.” Ed Leaders in Literacy from Glean Education, 20, October 2019, https://www.gleaneducation.com/ed-leaders-podcast/dr-jack-silva.   

3. Satullo,  Sarah K. “Bethlehem schools set a bold reading goal 5 years ago. How close have they gotten?” Le High Valley Live, 10 March 2020, https://www.lehighvalleylive.com/news/2020/03/bethlehem-schools-set-a-bold-reading-goal-5-years-ago-how-close-have-they-gotten.html. 

4. Von Bergen, Jane M. “A Better Way to Teach Reading.” The Philadelphia Citizen, 17 May 2021, https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/better-way-teach-reading/. 
   

A Note of Appreciation from Glean Education

By Jessica Hamman, Founder & CEO of Glean Education

In May 2015, while working as a Literacy Interventionist in Northern California I received a handwritten note from a colleague who taught 4th grade in the classroom next to me. It read, Jessica, I'm grateful our walls are so thin that I get to hear your wonderful lessons and the excitement in your students' voices. Thanks for all you do. -Amanda.

Teaching is solitary business. At times it may feel that the energy, passion, and planning that we pour into our work goes unnoticed. That note, however, reminded me that though we may feel isolated while teaching, we are never alone.

Now in May 2020, school closures have no doubt forced you to feel more isolated than ever. But please keep in mind that while Zooming with your students, just out-of-sight but well within earshot are parents, siblings, and fellow teachers who hear your wonderful lessons and notice your hard work. Thank you for all you do.

School Leadership in the Time of Coronavirus

An Interview with Lori Cohen, A school Leader in Saddle Brook, New Jersey, on What She’s Learned as a First-Year Principal During the Covid Crisis.

Photo by ckturistando on Unsplash

By Jessica Hamman, Founder and CEO of Glean Education (Also published on Medium.com)

It was early April, only two weeks into the Coronavirus school closures in the US, when I first heard about Lori Cohen and the work she was doing in her small suburban school district in Saddle Brook, New Jersey. I was told she was a first-year principal dealing with the monumental task of supporting teachers, staff, and students with the shift to remote learning during the Covid crisis. I was also told she was doing well…really well.

We reached out to Ms. Cohen and she graciously offered us an interview so we could learn more about how she was managing, what she had learned along the way, and how she keeps working to move forward. Thanks for reading.

Jessica Hamman: Thank you so much for being willing to be interviewed for our blog. First off, we know you live and work as an elementary school principal in North Jersey which has been particularly hard hit by the Coronavirus. How are you and the families in your school doing?

Lori Cohen: I am doing well. My family and I are all healthy and we have adjusted to working at home.  There have been several families in my school community who have been directly affected by the Coronavirus, but they have made full recoveries.  Unfortunately, some staff members lost loved ones and that is a tragedy.  Governor Murphy has just announced that schools will not reopen for the 19-20 school year so we are all digesting that news.  

JH: Can you tell me how long you've been in administrative work? What lead you to this position?  

LC: This is my first year as a school administrator.  I have 22 years of classroom teaching experience, primarily as a 4th-grade teacher.  After many years of teaching, I felt ready to take on the challenge of becoming a school principal.  I wanted to have a more global impact in a school and implement initiatives to promote a love of learning with an emphasis on the importance of social and emotional learning, as well as core content subjects.  I am now working as the principal of Franklin Elementary School, a K-6 school in Saddle Brook, NJ.  I am thoroughly enjoying my new role and feel blessed to work with such dedicated teachers and a supportive administrative team.  

JH: Let's talk remote learning. When did your school close down and what were some of the first things that concerned you as the leader of your school with the closure and the switch to learning-from-home?  

LC: Our students left school on Friday, March 13th with two weeks worth of work.  Teachers provided their students with packets of activities and assignments to engage them and keep their minds and bodies active.  Primarily, my greatest concern was how can I keep my school community connected despite everyone being isolated in their own homes?  How can I make sure that students are doing their work and not feeling overwhelmed?  How can I make sure my teachers are feeling supported?  

“Without a doubt, this experience has taught me just how amazing and remarkable teachers are.” -Lori Cohen

JH: Can you set the scene for us about what that first week of remote learning was like? What were some surprising successes? What were some unexpected barriers? 

LC: The first week of remote learning was an "all hands on deck" type of approach to communicating with our students and families.  I created a communication log and shared it with their entire staff.  Homeroom teachers, specialists, our school counselor and nurse and myself, all pitched in to reach out.  We made phone calls and sent emails just to see how everyone was holding up.  One initiative that was helpful in keeping the community connected was having families email pictures of their students working at home and I would post them on the school Instagram account.  It was a way for our students to see their friends' smiling faces.  I also began having teachers make Voice Memos of our Morning Announcements and I would email those memos each morning.  The response was amazing!  The students and the parents loved hearing the voices of their favorite teachers and resuming a bit of their routine.  The PTO was also involved by organizing school spirit days each week for the students.  Spirit days included Pajama Days, Wacky Wednesday and wear your School Spirit Wear.  That helped to boost spirits and also encouraged families to send in their pictures to the Instagram account.  

JH: We are now on Week 8 of remote learning. In what ways does week 8 look different from week 1?  

LC: So now in Week 8, and remote learning is vastly different than how it began.  Our district made great efforts during Week 1 and 2 to provide each student in need of a technological device with a Chromebook so that they could be prepared to transition to virtual instruction which began the Week of March 30th.  Each teacher set up a Google Classroom for their students and our youngest students in K-2 were issued an email address in order to access the Google Classroom.  Now, teachers post assignments each day for their students to complete, and students have to complete an attendance question each day.  Teachers offer Google Meets throughout the week as opportunities to connect with their students and offer help and support.  Instruction is asynchronous which allows students to log on to complete their assignments according to their own schedule and they are not required to attend any live instruction sessions.  Teachers have been posting videos of themselves teaching lessons and have been providing feedback and comments on students' work.  Every night, students are treated to a bedtime story that a teacher has recorded which I email out to the community and post on their Google Classroom.  It sometimes feels like the school day never ends and that the amount of work to do and emails to respond to becomes overwhelming.  So on Monday, May 11th our district is offering an SEL day where students will participate in activities to promote health and wellness and teachers will not be posting new academic assignments.  And now that school is officially closed, we will begin our preparations for how to celebrate the graduation of our 6th graders to middle school in a new way.

“Though the current health crisis is so unfortunate, we have to focus on how lucky we are that we can still connect with our students, friends and family due to the power of technology. As a community, we can stay connected despite the challenges of not seeing each other physically.” -Lori Cohen

JH: What are some successes in remote literacy instruction you are seeing among your teachers? 

LC: For the upper grades, students have internet-based tools at their fingertips that allow them to better edit/revise written work.  Using Google Docs for assignments allows teachers to use it as a formative assessment of a student's skills and level of understanding.  It also is a way to provide personalized feedback in a seamless and timely manner.  Google Classroom's comment feature is a fantastic way to allow students to remotely confer with the teacher and their peers.  Additionally, students are reading and responding to more short stories. Our Kindergarten teachers are using Raz kids.  They have the students record themselves reading and then they provide feedback through a comment section.  They have been posting video lessons to teach new letters, sounds, dictation, rhyming, cvc words, etc.  They have done characters/setting lessons and are currently working on problem/solution.  They have the students listen to the Bedtime stories again and give assignments to reinforce these story elements.  Google Meets have focused on different aspects of learning.  For example, recently students read aloud their Weekend News.  Google Meets have also provided teachers to connect with their students for fun activities where they can work on their listening and speaking skills.  Many teachers have a Fun Friday or Wacky Wednesday where they can bring something to the Meet to share with their classmates, such as a favorite stuffed animal, toy or book.  

JH: Should this remote learning happen again in future school years, what are some things you would like to have in place to ensure successful implementation?  

LC: We have learned so much in such a short period of time.  To ensure success in the future, we are already planning for how we ensure that each student has access to technology at home.  As.a district, we are working on a one to one initiative that would provide each student entering 7th grade and above with a school-issued Chromebook.  We will be looking to repurpose Chromebooks from our HS to the lower grades in the elementary schools.  This would allow for all students to borrow a Chromebook for home instruction from the get-go should this type of crisis happen in the future.  Having students set up with online learning experiences prior to actually having to rely upon it as the only mode of instruction would help the transition process.  

JH: What has this experience taught you as an educator? 

LC: Without a doubt, this experience has taught me just how amazing and remarkable teachers are.  Not only did the teachers at my school and in my district and nationwide have to adapt and change to new teaching platforms and strategies in a moment's notice, but they also had to do this while taking care of their own families and their own health and well-being. They had to put on a brave face for their students and enter the unchartered territory without a roadmap to help them navigate the way.  And throughout, they remained focused and positive and made their students the priority.  Though the current health crisis is so unfortunate, we have to focus on how lucky we are that we can still connect with our students, friends and family due to the power of technology. As a community, we can stay connected despite the challenges of not seeing each other physically. 

If you’d like to learn more about Lori Cohen and the work she’s doing at Franklin Elementary School, you can visit her here: www.sbpsnj.org/Franklin.

Do you have an educator who you think should be mentioned in this series? Drop us a line here and let us know.

Solving the Remote Learning Problem

How Adopting a Pilot Mentality Can Help Schools Innovate Under Pressure and Create a Quality Improvement Culture

By Jessica Hamman, CEO of Glean Education (Originally Published on Medium)

The United States public education system does not accept new things quickly or easily. Maybe you’ve heard the popular analogy that trying to create change in education is like trying to turn a barge at sea. But with the emergence of the Coronavirus mid-year 2020, the US education system has — in a matter of weeks — spun 180 degrees into waters of change.

With many of the nation’s school campuses closed indefinitely due to virus concerns, the US education system is trying something truly new: wide-spread remote learning. Without a doubt, the US education system is facing the single greatest opportunity for innovation and quality improvement in our in our lifetime.

Now we need to help school leaders and teachers to make good on it.

The Problem

Schools have been forcefully immersed in online learning, a platform they are mostly unfamiliar with. Online learning is obviously not a new concept, but many schools haven’t used it as an instructional medium and are facing major implementation hurdles. Paradoxically, schools have rushed into remote learning to “ensure access and continuity of learning,” yet many are noticing that students with disabilities and those without access to technology are being slighted or left out all together.

There is no doubt that there will be a steep learning curve for districts as they negotiate this new online territory, but they will certainly figure it out in time. Many districts are already putting the pieces together and finding success. The bigger issue is how schools and district approach this change (and other ones like it) without a clear strategy for innovation.

The Solution

Administrators can make the most of this opportunity (and place their schools on a track of continual innovation and improvement) by doing what start-ups and successful private companies do: run pilots and implement a quality improvement cycle. Schools need time to learn, test, and iterate and put this method into practice.

Quality Improvement is a research-based approach that creates a system to innovate, test, and improve outcomes in a continuous cycle. QI is used by organizations of all size — from small business start-ups to mammoth industries like healthcare where critical to their sustainability and success. This approach could and should be used in education organizations as well to support innovation and improvement.

This study by Dr. Bethany Fillers, PhD. from Eastern Tennessee University shows the importance of using the Plan Do, Study, Act protocol on implementing quality improvement in education.

Fillers, Bethany. (2019). Sensemaking in the Process of Inquiry: A Qualitative Case Study of a Networked Improvement Community. 10.13140/RG.2.2.22104.34569.

Dr. Fillers offers three guiding questions (see infographic) for administrators to ask as they design their pilot. “What are we trying to accomplish? What changes might we make and why? And how will we know that a change is an improvement?”

Here are the steps to follow when thinking about setting up a pilot:

• Come up with an approach to test. (Plan)

• Pilot the approach. (Do)

• Collect data to see if the approach was effective. (Study)

• Make changes to the approach based on the data and implement. (Act)

Administrators and teachers may wonder how this works in a school setting (and under pressure), but implementation is easier than you think. Here are four things

1. Promote a Culture of Collaboration through Transparency: School leaders don’t have to be experts in everything. Tell stakeholders that you are testing a new approach through a pilot (in this case remote learning) and will need everyone’s support to see if the approach is successful.Strong communication about the pilot helps to create a culture of collaboration that will help ensure future innovation down the road. Tell all stakeholders that they have a role in the success of the test.

2. Cultivate a Data-Driven Culture Where Feedback is Welcome: Historically, schools have not been a place that opens up itself to feedback from some key stakeholders, but experts argue that this is a key aspect of successful innovation culture. Let all players know that feedback matters and set up ways to solicit feedback so that it can be used to assess the pilot approach.

3. Collect both Qualitative and Quantitive Data: What does this look like for remote learning? You can collect qualitative data through short stakeholder surveys or interviews (like Google Form, Survey Monkey, or Typeform). You can collect quantitative data by using student assessments you may have used in the traditional classroom to see if the new approach is as effective at reaching student learning goals relative to their previous performance. This list from the Pell Institute has some great ideas on data sources.

4. Set Reasonable Testing Boundaries: Think about how long you will run the pilot test and be clear about the duration with all stakeholders. For example, “We are going to pilot this approach to remote learning for one week after which we’ll assess how it went and revise it based on what we learn.”

5. Consider Assumptions: Every idea has assumptions behind it, but they aren’t always conscious. When launching a pilot, consider the assumptions you’ve made when piloting an idea. This article from MIT’s Sloan Business School Management Review shows how testing assumptions will help you understand how and why the pilot was successful or unsuccessful and revise your pilot for future success. For example, in moving to a remote learning setting from a traditional learning setting, one assumption schools are making is that all students have technology. If this assumption is true and technology is not a barrier, then students can access their learning. But there may be other assumptions at play that create barriers to implementation. Make sure you consider all the assumptions that go into a particular idea.

The conditions for innovation have been thrust upon us. This could be the moment we have been waiting for. Now we need to support district and school leaders to learn how to use change to their advantage and so our education system comes out stronger on the other side.

Also posted on Medium.

Is Your Remote Learning Accessible for Students with Disabilities?

Four Easy Ways to Make Your Lessons Inclusive

By Jessica Hamman, Founder of Glean Education (Originally Published on Medium)

Over 10 years ago, I made the transition from traditional to online instruction. The switch was not nearly was easy as I had thought it would be. My mindset as a teacher shifted gradually as I began to see just how different it was to create an engaging, inclusive, and differentiated environment online.

As school campuses across the country close in mid-March 2020 due to the Coronavirus outbreak, districts are asking teachers to plan remote lessons for students for the very first time. For many teachers (especially K-5), remote and online instruction is uncharted territory and many are scrambling to create great lessons in a totally new learning space.

In addition, teachers may not be aware that there are compliance standards related to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) that must be met to ensure that our remote learning environments to be as accessible as our face-to-face classrooms for students with disabilities.

Here are four practices that will help you design more inclusive and accessible remote learning plans for your students:

1. Create content with ADA compliance and students with disabilities in mind: Online learning designers know that all content must be ADA compliant, but because this many teachers’ first foray into remote learning they may be unaware of what they need to consider to be compliant and inclusive. Here is a great article with some reminders of ADA compliance for online learning. When complying with ADA think about your video content, audio content, text, and accessibility tools. A checklist of things to remember while designing content is included at the bottom of the article.

2. Use varied approaches to assess learning: Because you are not present for impromptu Q&As and regular quizzes, be creative (but consistent) about your assessment practices. Use tools like Typeform for surveys, Kahoot for polls, Google Hangouts and Chat for discussions and live streaming, video, audio, verbal and written responses.

3. Differentiate reading assignments for different student abilities: There are some great tools that can allow students to access current content at their appropriate reading level. For example, Newsela articles for your students that adjust to different reading levels on the same topic.

4. Accept multiple ways to engage with and respond to writing assignments: For struggling learners and students with disabilities, the increased emphasis on text in remote learning can be taxing. Give student different options for responding to assignments like creating audio recordings, having an adult transcribe responses, or using speech-to-text.

Do you have other ideas to help make remote learning inclusive? Share them with us!

8 Research-Backed Ways to Aid Struggling Emergent Readers

Many kindergartners will pick up the foundational skills of reading relatively easily, but some will struggle. Here’s what the research says about how to support them.

By Jessica Hamman

First Published on Edutopia.Org on December 5, 2019

Ms. Brown is a kindergarten teacher sitting with her new class on the first day of school. One of her main tasks this year will be teaching this group foundational literacy skills, including rhyming, sound-letter correspondences, blending (reading), and segmenting (spelling). Ms. Brown has taught for long enough to know that though they may look like blank slates ready to learn to read, her students are not all starting from the same place.

Some of these students are already readers. The others aren’t—we call them emergent readers. The emergent readers are not all alike: Some will pick up the foundational skills relatively easily, while others will, despite exposure, have difficulty learning to read. The trick is teasing these two groups apart in order to differentiate appropriately for them.

How will Ms. Brown tell the difference between her typically developing emergent readers and her struggling emergent readers?

Over the coming weeks, she’ll be working on the foundational skills with all of her students. While the typically developing emergent readers will pick them up, the struggling emergent readers will continue to have difficulty with:

• distinguishing and generating rhymes,

• manipulating the sounds of words,

• retaining new sound-letter correspondences,

• gripping their pencil,

• identifying letters, and

• writing letters.

In the past, it was commonly believed that these struggling students just needed more time to catch on. But current research shows that these students don’t just need time—they need rigorous instruction in the foundational skills of reading to make strides in catching up to their grade-level peers.

RESEARCH-BACKED WAYS TO SUPPORT STRUGGLING EMERGENT READERS

1. Use direct, explicit instruction: Research shows that struggling emergent readers learn best through explicit, direct, intensive instruction. When engaged with instruction that includes explanations, modeling, and guided practice, students make significant gains over peers who have not been taught using explicit, direct instruction.

2. Teach systematic phonological awareness: Struggling emergent readers have been found to have a common core deficit in phonological processing. Luckily, this can be remediated with intensive instruction. Strengthen your students’ ability to distinguish and manipulate the sounds of language: Start with the simplest subset of this skill, rhyming, and build to the most complex, phoneme manipulation. Doing so has a powerful impact on students with and without difficulties. Researchers have provided a roadmap of best practices for phonological awareness instruction in the classroom.

3. Teach sound-letter correspondences faster than a letter a week: Struggling emergent readers have difficulty connecting the sounds of language with their written symbols, most likely due to the aforementioned phonological processing deficit. Some kindergarten curricula introduce one letter a week, but research shows that introducing letters faster boosts children’s letter knowledge. Though it may feel contrary to instinct, make sure that you pick up the pace for your struggling emergent readers. These students need more exposure to letters, not less.

4. Teach sight words paired with pronunciation: Struggling emergent readers have difficulty instantly recognizing common spelling patterns and creating an orthographic map of our written language. Research shows that teaching sight words by having students pronounce them out loud and pointing out how the sounds pair to the letters increases their ability to store the written form in their memory and create an orthographic map of the word.

5. Teach handwriting: Research shows that guiding students to develop handwriting fluency is a powerful intervention for struggling readers and may even prevent attention problems and other language-based academic difficulties.

6. Teach blending (reading) and segmenting (spelling): Struggling emergent readers need 25 to 50 exposures before they master concepts, and they need lots of opportunities to make connections. Research shows that phoneme blending and segmenting support increased word learning in students. Memorization of whole words is a struggle, but blending and segmenting force students to see each letter-sound correspondence, helping them understand why a word sounds the way it does.

7. Know best practices for intensifying instruction: Struggling emergent readers may need more opportunities to master skills than typical emergent readers and may learn best in small groups. A module from Vanderbilt University walks teachers through the considerations of intensified instruction, including using data to inform instruction, creating intensified lessons, and changing instruction dose, time, and location.

8. Understand the basic constructs of literacy and explicit instruction: Struggling emergent readers need to understand why English works in the funny ways it does. Research shows that students have more reading growth when their teachers have more knowledge of literacy concepts and direct instruction classroom practices.

With the research linked to in this article, a teacher can craft a program to support struggling emergent readers, one that includes intensive systematic instruction in phonological awareness, sound-symbol correspondence, blending and segmenting, handwriting instruction, and sight words. In addition, knowing best practices to intensify instruction and track data on instruction will enable teachers to better tailor instruction to those readers who may be struggling.

Ms. Brown’s class may not be starting on a level playing field, but because she’s aware of the ways to support those readers who need more support, they can end on one.

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What Teachers Should Know About Dysgraphia

By Jessica Hamman, CEO of Glean Education (Originally Published on November 21, 2019 on Edutopia.org )

Jeremiah is a student in my second-grade intervention classroom. He’s verbally expressive, full of positive energy, and eager to please. He’s been sent to me because benchmark assessments reveal he’s below grade level in reading.

Once he’s in my classroom, a more pressing issue comes to light. If Jeremiah is slightly below grade level in reading, he is significantly below it in writing. He’s nearly 8 years old, and his letters are not uniform, his spelling is inaccurate, and written tasks are laborious for him. I also note the social-emotional effects when he’s writing: This energetic, social boy melts into a quiet anxiety, twisting his hair and not making eye contact.

I ask Jeremiah’s teacher about his writing skills. She has seen the same things I have, and explains that his writing is difficult to decipher and his assignments are never complete. She also reports that previous teachers have also aired similar concerns. She and I suspect that Jeremiah is struggling with dysgraphia.

UNDERSTANDING DYSGRAPHIA

If you feel uncertain about what dysgraphia is, you’re not alone. Michael McCloskey and Brenda Rapp, researchers at Johns Hopkins University, explain that dysgraphias are “common and have significant consequences for those who suffer from them, yet these deficits have received relatively little attention from researchers.”

Currently it’s estimated that students with dysgraphia make up 7 to 15 percent of students in general ed classrooms. In order to support all our students, it’s critical that teachers better understand what dysgraphia is, what it looks like, and how to support students who struggle with it in the classroom.

According to McCloskey and Rapp, dysgraphia is unexpected difficulty with acquisition and production of spelling and writing skills. The word unexpected is an important part of this description because dysgraphia—like dyslexia—is not related to intelligence and persists despite adequate learning opportunities.

Studies show that students with dysgraphia have a core deficit in phonological processing, which means that these students have difficulty manipulating the sounds of language. Recent research shows that students with dysgraphia also have deficits in two other cognitive abilities: auditory processing and visual processing.

This does not mean that students with dysgraphia have difficulty hearing or seeing. Rather, due to natural variations in their cognitive abilities, students with dysgraphia have difficulty processing what they hear and see.

HOW DOES DYSGRAPHIA AFFECT STUDENTS?

Effective writing depends upon the complex process of manipulating speech sounds (phonemes), pairing them with written images (graphemes), and then producing those learned images from memory. And with multiple cognitive variations at play, dysgraphia, like dyslexia and developmental language delay, occurs on a spectrum.

To better understand the processing differences that students with dysgraphia struggle with, consider this analogy: You enter a destination into Google Maps, but instead of being directed onto the wide-open highway, you find yourself on windy back roads, and the trip takes three times longer than it should. You still get to the destination, but you have to focus harder because of the roads taken.

This is what happens when a student with dysgraphia works on a writing assignment. While their neurotypical peers take the wide-open highway and quickly complete the task, students with dysgraphia default to back-road navigation. When they arrive at their destination, their work, compared with that of their peers, looks sloppy, misspelled, and incomplete—a poor reflection of the effort it took them to get there.

How do you know if a student has dysgraphia? Keep an eye out for these red flags:

• Poor phonological awareness

• Poor pencil grip

• Persistent inconsistent letter formation

• Illegible writing

• Slow writing fluency

• Difficulty copying visual information accurately

• Inaccurate spelling

If you suspect that a student is struggling with dysgraphia, refer them to your school’s child study team for evaluation.

REMEDIATION AND ACCOMMODATIONS

There are quite a few recommendations to support remediation of dysgraphia. Systematic phonological awareness and spelling instruction speeds up processing and improves spelling accuracy. The book The Intensive Phonological Awareness Program is an easy-to-use, evidence-based phonological awareness intervention that teachers can use in their classroom.

Systematic handwriting instruction improves writing legibility and fluency, and Arizona State University Professor Steve Graham has written a handy guide for teachers looking to implement systematic handwriting instruction in their classroom; it includes a checklist of best practices.

Classroom accommodations are critical for students with dysgraphia because they provide an on-ramp that allows these students to access the highway and produce work more in line with their intellectual ability. Because of the cognitive variations that contribute to dysgraphia, accommodations should be student specific. A comprehensive list of classroom accommodations can be found at Understood.org—here are just a few helpful options:

• Allow extra time on written assignments

• Allow speech-to-text tools, or teacher or peer scribes for written assignments

• Allow students to write numeric formulas as opposed to math word problems

• Provide a written copy of whiteboard notes

• Create an inclusive classroom that allows all students to use accommodations, not just the students who need them

My student Jeremiah continues to make solid progress with intensive phonological awareness, spelling, and handwriting instruction. He was also found eligible for both occupational therapy and special education services—he’s now getting the support he needs. Hopefully, with increased awareness other students with dysgraphia will too.

Five Tech Tools that Improve Student Learning Outcomes

By Jessica Hamman, CEO of Glean Education

Each year, new edtech tools appear on student screens promising to help teachers in their quest to support learners with increasingly diverse needs.

But there is a well known disconnect between tech adoption and tech use in the classroom. Recent data from an EdWeek Teacher Survey shows that while over half of teachers reported district adoption of new technology, less than 50% of teachers reported receiving the training they needed to properly implement those tools in the classroom and 15% of teachers reported receiving no support at all.

Why is this problematic? Because many tech tools are carefully designed, research-based programs that can help teachers differentiate and intensify instruction to better meet individual student needs. But without proper training and implementation support, many teachers don’t use the tools at their finger-tips. In a recent study by  Education Next , researchers found that nearly 70% of software licenses purchased by districts go unused. This is truly a missed opportunity.

In an effort to build awareness about some of the impactful tech tools available to teachers, I’ve compiled a list of five tried-and-true computerized intervention programs that can be used in the classroom to improve student learning outcomes. They are also programs that demonstrate a commitment to teacher training about their product and relevant content areas. With such support, teachers may be more likely to put these helpful tools to use their classroom.

1. Lexia Core 5: Lexia Core 5 is a reading instruction software that supports emerging and struggling readers. Lexia provides a highly personalized learning experience that touches upon all the 5 components of literacy: phonological awareness, phonics, reading fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Lexia can be used in the general education (or Tier 1) classroom in tandem with direct, systematic, Structured Literacy instruction to provide practice opportunities for previously taught concepts or in the intervention classrooms (Tier 2 & 3) to provide targeted, differentiated instruction. For Lexia to be used most effectively, teachers should always supervise students to be sure they are truly engaging and not just pushing buttons. Teachers should also use analytics collected by the software to track student progress and provide intensified in-person lessons when students are not progressing. Teacher training is supported through a resources page on their website where they host articles, webinars, and white papers on using Lexia effectively.

2. Read Naturally Live: Read Naturally is a computer-based reading intervention that focuses on oral reading fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension. Designed with reading fluency best-practices in mind, Read Naturally Live (and their app One Minute Reader) guides students through repeated oral readings of rich non-fictional content. Read Naturally is not adaptive like Lexia Core 5, so teachers must stay on top of student placement and monitor settings to ensure progress is begin consistently made. One great aspect of Read Naturally is the way the company fosters the school-home connection by encouraging teachers to set up their student’s families with ReadLive to use over the summer. Teacher training is a key aspect the Read Naturally strategy. Training opportunities include video tutorials, live expert-led webinars, and full-day in person seminars to train teachers on best-practices.

3. Dreambox Learning: Dreambox Learning is an adaptive, gamified learning platform provides an excellent complement teacher-led instruction. Dreambox Learning provides Common Core Standards aligned enrichment and intensified instruction in math. Teacher training is supported through an impressive collection of resources including white papers, videos, guides, and webinars on their website. They’ve also host a Blended Learning Community on EdWeb.com featuring webinars on topics relevant to using Dreambox to support instruction, providing an opportunity for administrators and teachers using the tool to connect.

4. Prodigy: Prodigy is a gamified math learning program that is personalized, adaptive, and seriously fun. Students work their way through increasingly challenging math concepts while their gravitars face battles and earn points. Administrators, teachers, and parents can track student use and progress. Teacher training is encouraged and available in the resources section of their website.

5. Learning Ally: Though technically not an interactive intervention program, this list wouldn’t be complete without a mention of Learning Ally. Learning Ally is an organization that provides human-read audiobooks for students. Audio books are a powerful accommodation for students with text-based learning disabilities like dyslexia, but can also be used as interventions for building the vocabulary, comprehension, and background knowledge necessary to succeed in school. Learning Ally works with 16,000 schools and districts across the country, so it’s quite possible your school has access to Learning Ally already and use of audiobooks in the classroom can be a total game changer that levels the playing field for students struggling with text. Learning Ally also has a growing resource bank of articles, courses, and videos to support teachers teachers to use audiobooks more effectively in their classrooms.

Pop into a K-12 classroom on any given day and you can see the challenge teachers face to meet the learning needs of all their students. Using edtech tools that prioritize teacher training enables teachers to be more effective and consistent in their use programs which, in turn, enables them to better support all students.

Best Practice: Making the Most Out of Computerized Intervention Software

By Jessica Hamman, Founder & CEO of Glean Education

In Fall 2015, I was a newly-hired reading interventionist at a Northern California public elementary school pouring over my class schedule for the year. I was trying to make sense of what I saw: lists of students grouped by computerized intervention programs. I realized from the schedule that my primary role was to supervise students using these interventions. I felt deflated - had my role as a teacher really been reduced to no more than a computer proctor?

I immediately brought the schedule to my principal and proposed an alternate scenario, one in which I delivered direct, explicit instruction supplemented by the computerized intervention tools the school had invested in. She agreed.

Computerized interventions are a part of today’s intervention classroom, whether we teachers are ready or not. I used the experience as an opportunity to better understand what benefit my students could get from these programs, how they worked to promote progress, and why the administration had such confidence in them. 

The year was an excellent learning experience and one that helped me see technology in the intervention classroom in a new light. I found myself using new technologies with increasing confidence and enthusiasm. I used Lexia Core 5 for support with phonological awareness, phonics, and word reading. I used ReadNaturally to boost student reading fluency and comprehension. I used LearningAlly to support students with audiobooks to ear read assigned texts and prep for projects in their general ed classes. I used the Google extension Read & Write from TextHelp to allow students to use text to speech and speech to text and promoted the use of Fluency Tutor from TextHelp for students to track their reading at home. There was no doubt that these programs promoted progress in my students that I would not have seen with direct instruction alone. I realized that when teachers are deliberate and intentional about the way they use computerized interventions, they can be excellent tools to propel student progress.

To get the most from the tech tools in your classroom, keep the following tips in mind:

• Ensure that the chosen intervention targets the learners' specific deficits - Just because it's the district-sanctioned application for intervention, doesn't mean it's appropriate to all the learners in your group. Make sure that each intervention solution is targeting the right area of difficulty for each student.

• Configure the program to ensure proper intensity for each student's individual profile - Web-based intervention programs can often be tailored to maximize student learning. Check the settings before starting with each student utilize functions to intensify instruction as necessary.

• Watch student-use closely to ensure each child is responding to prompts and not just pushing buttons -  When using iPads and computers to access intervention software, sometimes students and teachers can go on auto-pilot and not really fully interacting with the program. Watching a student the entire time they're using the program will ensure that they are using the program as intended and will also ensure better results.

• Progress monitor often using a CBM (Curriculum-Based Measurement) to see if the computerized interventions are working to stimulate progress and close the gap with peers - Progress-monitoring a very important role when using computerized interventions. Often a program will have its own progress reports and they should be taken into account as well, but using a CBM will give a teacher an idea of how the child is progressing outside of the program as well. EasyCBM is free for teachers and a great way to track student progress and chart students against national norms.

• Sign up as a user on the publisher website to take advantage of product-specific professional development opportunities - Publishers often offer resources or other professional development specific to their product like expert-led webinars. This can help teachers implement the computerized interventions more effectively with their students and connect them with a learning community of teachers who may be using the programs with their students as well.

With the growing influence of technology in our classrooms, becoming comfortable with the tools at our disposal is increasingly becoming part of the teacher job description. An amazing educator I once worked with put it well when he said, “Technology won’t make you a good teacher, but a good teacher using technology well can do ridiculously awesome things.”