Tankersley - Coaching the threads of reading: helping teachers build reading success

In December of 2000, the National Reading Panel, a group convened to study the scientific research in the field of literacy, released a report summarizing their findings. This group identified five key areas of reading instruction: Phonemic Awareness, Phonics Instruction, Fluency, Comprehension, and Vocabulary Instruction. As a reading specialist and administrator, I was pleased to see the five areas summarized and presented by the panel, but to me there was a missing piece of the puzzle. I felt that there was a sixth thread that was also an important part of the teaching of reading. This thread was all the "higher order skills" that go beyond basic comprehension and allow students to evaluate, analyze, interpret, and synthesize. It is this thread that most upper-grade teachers struggle to help students develop in middle school and high school and even into the college years. As our world continues to evolve into a more science-based, technological, and global society, it is this thread that will be required for the workforce of tomorrow. Because it is so vital that students be able to think and process at the levels of analysis, synthesis, evaluation, and interpretation, this thread must not be lost in the broader context of simple "comprehension." Just as phonemic awareness is a pre-cursor to solid decoding, basic comprehension skills are a precursor to the higher-order thinking thread. It is clear to me from watching students develop as readers over the years that each of these factors is vital to the tapestry of reading and that no aspect of the reading tapestry can be missing if children are to become successful, thinking, and literate adults.

This book is dedicated to two women who made a difference in my own literacy development. The first is my mother, who exposed me to wonderful stories, rhymes, riddles, poems, and information that immersed me in print as soon as I was old enough to sit on her lap and listen. Books were constant companions in our home as I was growing up. Every trip to the grocery brought two new "golden books" to fill my bedroom bookshelf and stimulate my interest in becoming a lifelong reader and learner.

The second woman is Mrs. Gardiner, my senior AP English teacher. Mrs. Gardiner was the model of what a good literacy teacher should be. An avid reader herself, she modeled enthusiasm for literature in all forms. She demanded excellence from me in my literary analysis, interpretations, and critiques. She required that I stretch my capabilities in writing and would not settle for less than my best. My hope is that other students along the way will also meet a "Mrs. Gardiner" who will stimulate, challenge, and bring out the best in them as well.

The art of teaching reading is like weaving a beautiful tapestry. Like every tapestry, reading knowledge is made up of tightly woven, strong foundational threads. Each thread must be present to make the tapestry strong, able to withstand lifelong use, and functional through all seasons.

Effective readers know how to apply decoding skills to recognize words quickly and efficiently. Effective readers have good vocabularies in relation to their age and show high word recognition. Effective readers possess strong fluency skills. They can read with good expression, intonation, pitch, and phrasing. Effective readers understand and remember what they read. They can summarize and discuss material, and demonstrate comprehension of the text. Finally, effective readers can analyze and evaluate what is being read, synthesize the material, and make interpretations regarding the content of the material.

Effective readers have solid phonemic awareness and understand how to use phonics skills to decode words they encounter while reading. They have automaticity in word identification. Effective readers read with fluency and good expression. They have good comprehension. Effective readers can use world knowledge and background information to draw valid inferences and conclusions from texts, use comprehension monitoring strategies and repair strategies while reading, and use their knowledge of spelling patterns to assist with possible pronunciations of words they encounter while reading to increase comprehension. Effective readers are able to think about and evaluate what they are reading while they are processing and decoding the text.

Reading is a complex process made up of several interlocking skills and processes. The sum of these pieces is a tapestry that good readers use on a day-to-day basis to process text in their world. The tapestry of effective reading is woven from six foundational threads. Without each thread being present in the tapestry of an individual's reading abilities, there are holes and the weave cannot hold tight and cannot function for lifelong use. This book is for educators at all levels charged with helping to form the tapestry of literacy in their students. It presents the research behind each thread as well as many ideas for how skillful literacy and content-area teachers can structure the classroom environment to strengthen each thread. While some threads are more foundational than others, each thread is equally important and must be strongly woven into the tapestry. No strand can be missing. The six essential threads of reading are

1. Readiness/Phonemic Awareness
2. Phonics and Decoding
3. Fluency
4. Vocabulary and Word Recognition
5. Comprehension
6. Higher-Order Thinking

Reading does not have "traits" or "components" that can stand alone and be taught as isolated skills to students. The act of reading is an interlocking wholea weave of many skills and understandings. We must, therefore, weave foundational threads that grow ever tighter and stronger as the tapestry pattern begins to emerge in our students. Only when the foundation is strong can we begin to add the "decorative" pattern of higher-level processing to the emerging tapestry. When children do not have solid threads woven into their reading development, holes in the reading process develop and the whole fabric weakens. We see the results of this weakness in our middle and high school classrooms every day. Students come to us without adequate background skills, so the act of reading is difficult and troublesome for them. We can no longer allow this to happen. The world of tomorrow requires not only skillful readers but also high-level thinkers and processors of knowledge. As educators, we can no longer leave reading development for some but not for others. We must become master weavers for our students so that each individual can prosper in the competitive world of tomorrow.

While weaving is a complex process, it is an easily learned skill when learned from good mentors. Educators at all levels must be those mentors. There are many ways that good teachers can weave each thread in the classroom on a daily basis. The most effective teachers continue to demonstrate that effective literacy instruction is a balance of explicit teaching as well as holistic reading and writing experiences that, when combined, produce more capable readers (Pressley et al., 1998). Over the years, I began collecting some of these "weaving strategies" so that others might also learn to weave reading magic in their own classrooms. This collection is a compendium of "teacher lore" that has been gathered from actual classroom practice. Whenever possible, I tried to cite the original source of the idea or technique. In most cases, I found the same ideas in perhaps slightly different forms in multiple sources across multiple years, so tracing the original owner of an idea or technique was an almost impossible task. I hope that this framework and the ideas gathered here will help each teacher clarify in his or her own mind how the tapestry of reading is woven for each individual learner. Good teachers know that a wide variety of methods and strategies help build strong learners and that students respond differently according to their own backgrounds and learning styles. This volume contains reading ideas, strategies, and techniques that teachers can use to add variety to their teaching to strengthen the weave in the literacy tapestry. While some strategies are clearly more effective at the primary level and some more effective at the upper grade level, most of the strategies can be adapted with a little teacher creativity to work with all age levels. Teachers in content-area classrooms will also find strategies and techniques that they can modify to suit the age and subject matter they teach. As you use these strategies and invent new techniques or modifications of some of the ideas in this volume, I hope that you will send me additional ideas and share the techniques or strategies that are working to help build student literacy and high reading achievement in your own classroom. You can reach me by e-mail at www.threadsofreading.com.