Leveled Text, Leveled Students – Can we do better?
January 16, 2012 in Challenges, Comprehension, Reading, Struggling Readers
How would you like to spend your school life in the bottom reading group? No matter what native flower or other cutesy name the group is given, there’s no fooling the students in the bottom reading group and Samantha for one isn’t a fan. Recently Samantha spoke to the camera about her experience as a student who has lived her classroom life in the bottom reading group, and she was forthright – “I don’t like it.”
The more the interview with Samantha progressed, the clearer I was that Samantha was no slouch in reading. She could talk at length about the comprehension strategies she’d been learning, and when and how to apply them. Shortly after interviewing Samantha, I read a challenging article by Australians Kath Glasswell and Michael Ford, entitled Let’s Start Leveling about Leveling. The article fed into my own beliefs that leveling has become a somewhat inflexible and idealistic response to the challenging task of teaching children to read. What are the issues with leveling? Well, three things to begin with:
- The methods we use to level students.
- The methods we use to level texts.
- The purposes we put leveling to.
Now Glasswell and Ford are the researchers, so I recommend you read their article. However, I need to say very clearly that every time I’m in a classroom as part of my CSI Literacy work, I see highly intelligent young people who should not (in my view) be in the bottom reading group. These students love to be liberated, by being included in whole-group discussions about digital texts that they‘re sharing with the teacher and their peers. Their enjoyment of strategic and vocabulary learning, and their enjoyment of oral language – theirs and their peers – shines on their faces.
In CSI Literacy we break the mold by freeing students from their leveled groups and their leveled texts. We bring them together in a classroom learning community and have them share their ideas about texts that are they are able to access through the supportive scaffolding of their teachers and their peers. And they love it!
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I wish I could have read the article. It was not available to non subscribers. I have had very specific ideas for a long time about literacy and what works and what does not. I agree that leveled texts are too strictly used and often leave readers feeling unmotivated and discouraged about reading. I don’t think reading should be all about decoding either. Readers can access printed material even if they don’t know every single word.
Thanks Linda, good to read your comments. In an interesting observation, I have seen students who are struggling with decoding, and unmotivated in their reading groups come back to decoding after they have had high-level strategic instruction in comprehension. It seems paradoxical doesn’t it? Many educators think poor decoders should have lots of decoding instruction and practice. But giving a struggler a lot of what they’re poor at is clearly unmotivating. Whereas giving them high-level strategic instruction by way of difficult texts that they can read (with support such as read-aloud; teacher think-aloud; digital scaffolds in text etc), talk and think about in a rich and warm classroom environment can set them on a pathway to success where they then realize WHY they need to able able to decode – to bring meaning to the text they are really engaged by and want to understand – so they willingly go back and work at their decoding. Thanks for your comments, Neale Pitches
I agree and disagree with leveled learning. I have 2 segments in my 3rd grade class when students are working on reading. During one of those times the books are leveled so that I can target comp and vocab, but more importantly to attack fluency. The other time in my class, students are reading the books they have chosen and they are not given a level or a range to choose from.
Hi Brandy, I admire your decision to have flexible groups. In the case of CSI Literacy we encourage that instruction takes place in mixed groups, with multiple scaffolds in place to bring the text to the students (read-aloud, teacher think-aloud, peer discussion, digital scaffolds in texts. Students really respond to difficult texts, especially when there is good support wrapped around them so they are not left on their own to struggle. But they LOVE being included with their more illustrious peers, and to be able to talk with them about the texts. Thanks for your comment, Neale Pitches
As a former high school remedial reading teacher, I had to fight the idea that these students need decoding practice. It is my belief that these students need to read. The material does not matter, as long as they are reading. While reading, there should be an activity for them to do,for example; underlining, note taking in the margin, circling, and using different colors of ink. Highlighting had to wait until they knew what to highlight. Through this reading, writing, and skills teaching we were able to raise our reading test scores two years in a year, and for a student who enters high school with a 4.0 reading score, that is a big jump.
Thanks Carol, I agree that student text scores can be accelerated by focusing on higher-order strategies while reading, rather than doing lots of skills worksheets. I admire your commitment to your students. I think it may matter what they are reading in one sense – if we can get them reading material that is a little ‘too hard’ for them by scaffolding them – with read-to; modeled reading; and digital and peer support (scaffolds) I think we can move them substantially. Your comments about annotation of the text are echoed in the research – it’s very good for students to annotate text as they read. Once idea I picked up (didn’t invent it I’m sorry to say) is to give students a piece of acetate (OHT transparency perhaps) and have them annotate the text on top of the acetate. Then have them swap with a neighbour and dicuss who annotated what in response to your instructions – Kyran Smith in New Zealand does this and the students can see each other’s thinking. This is especially good of you don’t want to ruin the text by annotating directly onto it. Thanks for your comments, Neale
Book marked, I really like your blog!