@$:[AT]bodyindent: Why do struggling readers continue to struggle? The question of why struggling readers continue to struggle may be answered by examining the school structures that are in place for these students. Are schools creating schools days where struggling readers struggle all day? How much time in the school day is used to help struggling readers? Are intervention lessons designed for struggling readers aligned with the class instruction? Are struggling readers spending the majority of their time reading books that are too difficult for them? Are expert teachers of reading providing the intervention lessons and teaching in the classrooms? Is literacy professional development systematic and building on the instructional needs of students and teachers, rather than the promotion and training in the use of commercial materials? All students, and especially struggling readers, need books to read at appropriate levels accurately, fluently, and with understanding all day, with the guidance of expert teachers in reading instruction. Students must have books in their hands! With differentiated curriculum material, we should also expect to see smaller instructional groups and side-by-side teaching, instead of whole group instruction. Reading instruction must be explicit with much scaffolded support all day long. So how do we do this?Coordinate intervention with core classroom and deliver intervention by expert teachersIntervention lesson design should take its cues from the classroom instruction. This can be done through instructional coordination. Instructional coordination does not mean giving students more of the same. Rather it includes five principles for both the intervention and class programs:n Maintain focus on comprehension even as fluency is emphasizedn Use shared readings and other strategies to familiarise students with the storiesn Provide support through many repeated readings of the grade-level textsn Engage in daily partner reading as an alternative to round robin readingn Drastically increase the amount of reading done at school and homeAdditionally, the notion of shared knowledge is needed in schools. Shared knowledge is when the classroom teacher is aware of the intervention lessons and intervention teacher is aware of the classroom reading lessons. One way to do this is for the intervention teacher to go to each struggling reader's classroom every day. A lot can be learned by just stepping into a classroom for a minute or two every day. A second way to deepen shared knowledge is to develop teachers' expertise in reading development. Adaptation of any reading lesson based on student performance will require the teacher to have the expertise to note the performance and then plan a useful lesson adaptation. Currently, too many teachers lack this level of expertise. A third step is to develop all teachers' abilities to use running records procedure to document student reading development and strategy use. Running Records procedure involves recording the oral reading performances of students. From these records, teachers can document strategy use as well as the appropriateness of the text and student-reading rate and fluency. Increasing teachers' expertise about reading improves the instruction they provide. Providing professional development on a common reading assessment tool is also important. That is because coordinated reading lessons are more likely when everyone (psychologists, learning support teachers, reading specialists, classroom teachers and administrators), speak the same language, use the same assessment outcomes, and share the same curriculum focus. Schools must consider the question of whether they have in place the processes that ensure they are hiring the most effective teachers of reading. One of the greatest disservices to struggling readers is to give them teacher aides/paraeducators or to uncredentialed persons to provide additional instruction. Simply stated, teachers that are more expert produce better reading results. "Would you be surprised if an expert auto mechanic did a better job fixing your car than you could? Could an expert surgeon do a better job of removing one of your teeth than you could? Expertise is critical to high levels of success." R. Allington, 2009 Expert teachers of reading instruction are far better at matching struggling readers with appropriate texts to read with high levels of accuracy and understandings. Expert teachers of reading know more about text difficulty levels and about student reading levels. They know more about introducing a text effectively and more about guiding students through a text. Expert teachers of reading create effective intervention mostly on their own. "Highly scripted instructional packages cannot attend to learner differences and provide instruction informed by the child's responses. What makes scripts less effective than good teachers is that good teachers do what scripts cannot do-they take charge of professional knowledge, manipulate it, and adapt it to changing instructional situations." G. Duffy, 2004. Expert teachers of reading engage their students in much more reading and writing activity, making sure students have access to a variety of texts they can actually read accurately, fluently and with understanding. A key characteristic of exemplary teachers of reading is the size of their 'tool box' for teaching strategies-they are adaptive to selecting and using various approaches to achieve high success. These teachers consistently model the strategies they teach and encourage discussion about what students are reading. Effective teachers have extensive knowledge of teaching and subject matter; bring about high student achievement; use observational techniques to record how well they meet their instructional intentions and examine their teaching to become teachers that are more resourceful. These teachers continue to take responsibility for their own professional growth, even in the absence of school structured professional development. What sort of professional development improves teaching and learning? The research is quite clear: n Standard treatments for all teachers seem less effective than tailored professional development and coaching.n Teaching teachers about literacy learning and teaching seems more powerful than training teachers to use products.n Continuing professional development activities work far better than one-shot workshops.n Collaborative professional development works better at improving teaching than "go it alone sessions". The availability of ongoing, high quality professional development in reading for all teachers is critical.Most importantly, effective teachers produce accelerated reading growth among the struggling readers. They do this by providing classroom-reading lessons that meet students' needs across the school day in science and social studies, for instance, as well during the reading block. Far more attention is needed to ensuring that every teacher is an expert in reading instruction for struggling readers. For more about Excellent Reading Teachers, go to www.reading.orgMatch reader and text levelWhenever we design an intervention for struggling readers, the single most critical factor that will determine success of the effort is matching struggling readers with texts they can actually read with a high level of accuracy, fluency and comprehension. High levels of reading accuracy produce the best reading growth. We have come to understand that there are three levels of text difficulty-independent, instructional and frustration (hard). Texts that are read where a student has complete understanding and no frustration are considered the independent level. A text where the student can read satisfactorily with teacher direction and guidance is the instructional level. When a student struggles with the words, ideas and fluency this is the frustration level. Lots of independent reading produces what can be referred to as 'high success reading'. This is important because success reading builds motivation for reading and more reading produces better reading. Something to think about is 'good readers' read texts they experience high success as they read them accurately, fluently and with comprehension (all day!). This steady diet of high-success reading is what produces their above average reading growth, year after year. Successful reading produces the motivation to keep reading. Therefore, by providing struggling readers with easy access to appropriate texts we may be directly addressing the motivational problem that many struggling readers exhibit. Keep in mind that when a student is engaged in high success reading, high quality problem-solving thought processing can occur. This means the reader is using various skills while reading-purposefully. These range from decoding on word recognition to deciding whether to skim or study the text material; summarize or critique the text; create mental images or to take notes, or both; slow down on speed up reading. Every skilled reader makes these sorts of decisions every time he or she reads. Finally, high success reading builds stamina-the ability to read independently for long periods uninterrupted. Although this is developmental, it improves as reading proficiency develops and reading practice is extended. Dramatically increase reading activity and use texts that are interesting to studentsReading intervention programs must engage students in actual reading. A dramatic increase in reading volume produces accelerated reading growth. Practice is very important in the development of proficiency. What is key to thinking about an intervention design is finding out just how much reading the struggling readers do during both their classroom lessons and during the intervention reading lessons. Does the volume of reading struggling readers do, match the volume of reading the better readers are doing during the same periods? Why is reading volume critical? "Struggling readers need to read a lot because it is during the actual reading that they can produce all those complicated strategies and skills they are developing in unison." Allington, 2009Intervention designs must not only teach better word reading skills and strategies but also fluency with appropriate phrasing and expression and comprehension. The ability to read words at a glance is largely the result of high success reading and reading volume. A first step for schools looking to implement interventions that dramatically increase reading volume is to ensure there is an adequate supply of books that students find interesting and they can read accurately, fluently, and with understanding. There must be easy access to interesting books. When classrooms provide students with easy access to a wide range of interesting texts, the effects on comprehension and motivation to read are great. The truth is none of us read much of anything, that we do not find interesting. Reading texts that have been self-selected, texts of interest to the student might be just the key for undermining all those struggling reader behaviours (inattention, little reading stamina, limited learning, and a lack of enjoyment). The research on engaging students in reading points to choice and interest as key topics in the design of effective lessons. (Hidi and Harackiewicz, 2000) Choice of texts to read and helping students learn how to select books requires teachers to know something about students backgrounds, hobbies and interests-something a standard lesson from a commercial package cannot do. Teachers can also take the opportunity several times a day to say a few words about different books so that students have some information about books they might want to read. This strategy has been referred to as "blessing books" Gambrell, 1996. Ensuring that every struggling reader has easy access to interesting and appropriately, difficult books will go a long way in fostering greater amounts of voluntary reading. Also, give specific 'verbal praise' for struggling readers to help them overcome their attributions of failure to their own intellectual abilities (when more often it is due to lack of quality reading instruction).Use very small groups and focus instruction on meta-cognition and meaningSmaller intervention reading groups of no more than three students provide far more individualized attention than larger groups. Ideally, the most critically needy students should receive one-on-one intervention by the most expert teachers of reading. However, small groups of no more than three students of similar reading levels and needs are best. However, intervention instruction to small groups of students should be scheduled so that they provide additional reading instruction and not replace the class reading instruction. Consideration can be given to restructure the school day so that every school offers before and after school intervention lessons through role re-design or flextime scheduling (working different schedules) or both. In addition to increasing the time for reading, ensuring the interventions are either one-on-one or small groups of no more than three students, must be exemplary instruction in meta-cognitive and text comprehending skills and strategies. Meta-cognition is the ability to monitor what you are doing while you are doing it. When it comes to reading, probably the most important meta-cognitive ability is monitoring whether the text you are reading is making sense as you read it. This type of reading instruction focuses on meaning and means of constructing meaning, provides students with opportunities to discuss what was read, integrates reading with other subjects; teaches word study explicitly and in the context of reading and writing continuous text. This type of teaching is more likely to accelerate reading development rather than narrowly teaching one part of the reading process (letters and sounds, perhaps). Developing independent use of meta-cognitive strategies requires that we model and demonstrate. Lessons can be created with books where there is time to preview the book and activate background knowledge, thereby providing a basis for what the book is about. Struggling readers must be taught how to slow down or pause reading at difficulty, look back for more information, read aloud to provide some auditory feedback, sound out words, use analogy to known words or contextual guessing, skip a word and reread. Simply stated-preventing reading failure requires us to rethink past practices of intervention in order to achieve acceleration in reading achievement. [AT]bodyfrank:Next month: A Parent's Guide to Spelling and Vocabularyliteracymatterslogic.bm