SensAble Literacy Camp 2

If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” Albert Einstein

While I was a classroom teacher, I administered a variety of formative and summative reading assessments: district assessments, state assessments, online assessments and assessments designed by textbook publishers.  However, none of these assessments told me nearly as much as one that seemed to create itself.

A Sound Check followed by a running record reveals more useful and individualized data needed to intervene with reading than any of the more complex assessments listed above.  What is a Sound Check?  A Sound Check first assesses if a struggling reader knows  the short vowel sound and hard consonant for each of the twenty-six letters of the English alphabet followed by the six  digraphs (th, sh, ch wh, oo, and ee). The Sound Check evolved from the Souns® for Literacy tracking sheet.

Letter-sound knowledge is critical for decoding and attacking new words.  Many students are missing chunks of this basic knowledge. On day one of the camp, the student was directed, “I know you know you the letter name.  I want to know the sound of the letter.  Please pick up the letter and hand me each letter while saying the sound it makes.”

Immediately following a Sound Check, I carefully listen to a child read and keep a running record to track the percentage of words read accurately  The most helpful listening is done with the help of a video since it can be easy to miss errors.  (A video allows close analysis of a reading.)

I do no explicit work with comprehension strategies like visualizing or inferring.  None. Zero. Zip.  Rather, I try to correct reading accuracy issues that impact comprehension.  Last summer was the first time I attempted this intervention strategy with struggling readers in a four day camp.  The second camp reveals promising results!

                                  SensAble Literacy Camp

Day 1: Determine letter sound knowledge using a Sound Check and running record revealing the student’s reading accuracy  at the student’s grade level.

Days 1-4: Use the Sound Check and running record data to determine instruction using a variety of activities specific to student needs.

Day 4: Follow up with a Sound Check and running record to determine success.

After checking letter sounds, each student was asked to read a passage at his/her grade level.  A running record revealed the percentage of words the student was reading correctly, if the student was self-correcting and if sight words were being intermixed.

Day 1 (Preassessment) Results

	Grade in School	Days t at Camp	Letter Sound Knowledge Day 1	Digraph Knowledge Day 1	Errors Day 1	Self Corrections Day 1	Running Record Day 1
Student 1	3	3/4	13/26	4/6	22	0	91%
Student 2	4	4/4	24/26	6/6	15	0	95%
Student 3	5	4/4	22/26	5/6	9	0	97%
Student 4	2	4/4	16/26	5/6	6	3	96%

Sight Word Errors

This finding was unexpected but I’ve noticed it enough times now it is worth mentioning. Sight-word intermixing is common among struggling readers and may be a unintended consequence of the way the child was taught basic literacy skills.  As Steven Pinker’s book, Words and Rules reveals the brain as an active and natural pattern decoder.  Intermixing sight words memorized on flash card instead of learning the word by reading it in context could be the reason.  Logic suggests memorizing words on flashcards as especially problematic for students whose native language is not English as the student may not have mastered the word in the English language before memorizing it out of the context of reading.

	Actual Word on the Page	Word Read by the Student
Student 1	did	had
Student 1	being	bring
Student 2	that	the
Student 2	though	through
Student 2	at	out
Student 2	A	He
Student 2	he	had
Student 2	that	the
Student 2	On	One
Student 2	has	was
Student 2	everyone	everybody
Student 3	that	the
Student 3	had	has
Student 3	wanted	went
Student 4	It	I
Student 4	eaten	another

During camp, students were explicitly taught letter sounds using Souns. They played sound bingo, did word family work, made up games of their own, like Sound Ball, practiced building words on a Souns Mat, practiced breaking three letter words into the consonant-vowel-consonant sound and practiced reading passages chosen to address sound deficits.  If the student did not know /g/, a reading passage with /g/ was chosen.  Students learned the “magic e” rule, the rule about when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking, and practiced making words.  Students practiced making words using Patricia Cunningham’s Making Words book with plastic letters to help establish the natural pattern of the language in the mind of the child.  We also practiced reading simple sight word poems, practicing sight words in context.  Every bit of the camp was determined by the data on day one about what the student did not know.

 

Day 4 (Post Assessment) Results

The exact same assessment was given and videotaped on day four of the camp and it revealed success.

	Grade Level	Days at Camp	Letter Sound Knowledge Day 1	Letter Sound Knowledge Day 4	Digraphs Knowledge Day 1	Digraphs Knowledge Day 4	Errors Day 1	Errors Day 4	Self Corrections Day 1	Self Corrections Day 4	Running Record Day 1	Running Record Day 4
Student 1	3	3/4	13/26	23/26	4/6	6/6	22	4	0	4	91%	98%
Student 2	4	4/4	24/26	26/26	6/6	6/6	15	4	0	5	95%	99%
Student 3	5	4/4	22/26	25/26	5/6	6/6	9	5	0	4	97%	98%
Student 4	2	4/4000	16/26	21/26	5/6	6/6	6	3	3	3	96%	98%

On day four, all students showed improvement in every area assessed.  Each student had mastered most if not all of the 26 letter sounds.  Of the six digraphs assessed, all students remembered them.  All of the students  self corrected more and intermixed sight words less.  Most importantly, the accuracy rate for reading improved for all four students.

SensAble Literacy Camp was a success!

Recommendations for teachers working with struggling readers at any age:

1) Check letter-sound knowledge using a Sound Check followed immediately by a running record.  Listen carefully and see what you notice!

2) Explicitly teach letter sounds, word families and language patterns based on what the Sound Check and running record reveals.

3) Make sure to point out errors to students who are incorrectly reading and intermixing sight words.  Say, there is a big difference when I say, “Go over there.” or “Go over them.”  There is a big difference when you read sight words incorrectly as well.  Meaning can get confused or lost.

4) Always teach instant words or sight words in the context of reading.  Never use flash cards as these teach sight words or instant words out of context.  Teaching this way may inadvertently lead to decreased comprehension.

SensAble Literacy Camp was made possible by a research grant funded by Pi Lambda Theta and Phi Delta Kappa, honors societies in education.  The grant purchased the materials used for literacy intervention.  Results will be included into a final paper coming this summer.  Stay tuned!