Striving Readers: Students who are not independently reading at a level expected for the grade they are in, or the age they are. These students require additional information to help them develop the reading abilities necessary for the grade level text.
Striving Writers: Striving writers are students who are not independently writing at the grade level they are in or at the expected level for their age. It can be lack of knowledge about phonics, disorganization, and feeling overwhelmed because writing skills can be more difficult than reading.
Decoding- Reading
Encoding- Writing
Reading and writing are reciprocal/ symbiotic; however, encoding is more difficult than decoding for many students. Reading application looks like reading increasingly complex text across the grade level. Writing application looks like 3 types of writing (informational, expository, narrative), writing about reading, writing with correct conventions (spelling, punctuation), writing with organization, and writing with creative elements (voice, style, audience)
Proficiency- Refers to a system of instruction, assessments, grading, & academic reporting that are based on students demonstrating that they have learned the knowledge & skills they are expected to know to progress in their learning. If a student does not meet the expected learning standards, they are "below proficient" and will need to receive additional instruction, practice time, & academic to support to help them meet proficiency.
Grade level band for text complexity- Represents what a child is expected to understand and read at each grade level. Does not predict a student will respond to a text. Does not account for interest, motivation, or diversity of a text. Some students may be able to read a book that is far above their grade level band for text complexity because the student is interested in the book.
Developmental levels for reading and writing- "The five stages of literacy development include emergent literacy, alphabetic fluency, words and patterns, intermediate reading, and advanced reading." Ideally this is used to choose books at students reading level that have enough difficulty level to enhance growth in the reader. Usually books are chosen with 90-95% accuracy and reading rate based on their appropriate age and grade-level.
Instructional Intervention/ small group instruction (not those who have a learning disability)- Instructional intervention/ small group instruction is a teaching strategy used to assess the needs of students individually and provides more in-depth instruction to help students grow in the area where they need to grow specifically. Some instruction strategies for small groups for struggling readers and writers include phonics and phonemic awareness instruction. You can do screeners such as the core phonics screener or fluency screeners, to assess where each individual is with that specific skill you are assessing. This allows the instructor to identify what each student's individual challenges are, and they begin to discover how to help these students improve. In the small groups, you can do activities such as sound sorts, word ladders, and decodable word sheets. YouTube video discussing small group intervention activities for K-2
Progression of Phonics Instruction
Kindergarten:
-recognizition
- letter-sounds
-blending simple consonant words
-CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant)
First:
-consonant blends (bl, cl, tr) and digraphs (sh, th, ch)
-long/short vowel
-magic e words
-ending consonant blends
2nd:
-Vowel teams
- r-controlled vowels
3rd:
-Syllables(open, closed, vowel consonant e)
- prefixes/suffixes
-root words
4th and 5th:
-Multisyllabic
-advanced phonics
- irregular words
Instructional Strategies for Striving Readers and Writers
Repeated Reading- in small group, offer the same text and a collection of previously read texts for opportunities to build stamina, reread to each other, “perform read”
Chunking text-only producing one paragraph instead of an entire report.
Providing mentor texts that grasp their interest
Partner-Pairing: Pairing a strong reader with a struggling reader
Build students' general content knowledge not only content-specific knowledge
Focusing on improving students' vocabulary and spelling
Providing Sentence Frames
Small Group Intervention Instruction
Think-Aloud/ Teacher Modeling
Scaffolding Instruction- The student needs to be challenged (don't set the bar too low or too high) include questions of varying rigor
High-Quality Materials- include visuals, have students practice different literacy skills such as listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
RESOURCES
Three Recommendations for Greater Reading Proficiency | Reading Rockets
Proficiency-Based Learning Definition
What is Alphabetic Principle: 5 Stages of Early Literacy – KathleenJasper
Literacy Development: The 5 Stages for Developing Literacy
Grouping Students Who Struggle With Reading | Reading Rockets
7 strategies to use with struggling readers | Edutopia