Mid-Year Freeze: Why Student Reading Fluency Might Be Stuck [episode 117]

Emily  0:37

Hey there. Thanks for joining us today. In today’s episode, we’re talking all about how to overcome the mid year freeze when it comes to students reading progress, and sharing a teacher approved tip for creative fluency practice.

Heidi  0:51

We start our episodes with a morning message just like we used to do at morning meeting in our classrooms. This week’s morning message is finish this sentence: I wish my students didn’t…

Emily  1:03

Didn’t smell like puppies when they came in from recess. But we got some thoughtful and some relatable responses from our Facebook community. Angela said I wish my students knew what they were capable of. Chantelle said I wish my students had more support from home. Ellen said I wish my students all read at grade level instead of six different levels, maybe even just three levels.

Heidi  1:27

Wouldn’t that be nice?

Emily  1:28

And Julie said I wish my students would follow directions. Now can you guess what the top response was? Many teachers said something similar. So we’ll let Cami speak for them all. She said I wish my students would stop talking and listen so we can get some learning done. I think we’ll need an episode just about that in the coming weeks.

Heidi  1:49

Oh, it’s definitely that time of year.

Emily  1:50

We’d love to have you join the conversation over in our Teacher Approved Facebook group.

Heidi  1:55

Now that we have reached the midway point of the school year, you might be seeing some red flags pop up that have you a little worried.

Emily  2:02

One of the most common mid year problems is that kids who were making good progress in the fall suddenly seemed stuck. You’re doing all the same things you were doing two months ago. But instead of improving, they’re stagnating.

Heidi  2:15

This is very common, especially with reading, we have four months of steady growth. And then it’s like they hit a wall.

Emily  2:21

Our second grade teacher listeners are probably very familiar with this. Kids are steadily moving along, they’re right on schedule, checking all the boxes, then it’s time for the transition from picture books, to chapter books and everything stops.

Heidi  2:36

And the second grade teachers are trying everything they know how to do until the end of the year. And then it’s time to send those stumbling second graders to become struggling third graders who becomes struggling fourth graders.

Emily  2:49

The statistics around this are really sobering. 33% of fourth graders in the US aren’t meeting reading benchmarks. And what happens when you fall behind in reading? Sadly, you’re much more likely to drop out of high school and become trapped in a cycle of poverty.

Heidi  3:04

So it’s so important that we do everything we can to help our students become competent readers.

Emily  3:10

If you are seeing a mid year freeze with your students reading progress, the first thing you need to do is pinpoint the problem. And assessment like dibbles or other time reading program is helpful at alerting us to issues but it doesn’t work to tell us why there’s an issue.

Heidi  3:25

So if you listen to our episode last week, you heard us compare timed readings to a thermometer. A thermometer does a great job at giving you information. You know this child has 101 degree fever that tells me that they’re sick, but do they have a cold or strep throat or heat stroke? The thermometer can’t tell me that. And a timed reading gives similar information. I can see that this child isn’t reading on grade level. But the assessment doesn’t tell me why.

Emily  3:55

So let’s do what we can to weed out the likely culprits. First off, does the student have sufficient decoding skills? This is where a nonsense word assessment can be helpful.

Heidi  4:06

Even if your school doesn’t use dibbles you can still test your students nonsense word reading, just Google nonsense word assessment and you will have a bunch of free options available.

Emily  4:16

When students struggled to read nonsense words you know they need structured phonics instruction. Look for a phonics program that includes assessment and a clear progression of skills.

Heidi  4:25

And I do have to add don’t get so caught up in finding a program that has the perfect skill progression because you will never find one.

Emily  4:34

It’s so true. At this point in time, there’s no agreement on the most effective order for teaching phonics skills. There isn’t yet a research backed order but most programs go from short vowels to consonant blends to long vowels with Silent E and onward from there.

Heidi  4:50

Yeah, that is the progression that we used for our own phonics resources. And our phonics program doesn’t have small group lessons, but it would be incredibly easy to switch the whole class lesson plans to a small group setting and we will link to our phonics lessons in the show notes.

Emily  5:07

Now for students who can adequately decode words with predictable spelling’s, but still struggle with reading, maybe the problem is their sight word banks aren’t robust enough. Dibbles word reading fluency assessment or other sight word assessment can help you identify weaknesses in this area.

Heidi  5:24

For a long, long time. high frequency words, especially those words that you can’t sound out like said and beautiful, were taught with repeated drill. Remember that?

Emily  5:36

I had a whole weekly routine. We wrote them a bunch of times in different colors. We wrote them with their fingers in the air chanted the spelling’s and squeaky mouse voices, the voices slapping and snapping the consonants and vowels.

Heidi  5:49

Oh yeah, it was fun. Yep. But it turns out that that is not how brains learn to read, which is actually a kind of a relief. Because like, this doesn’t seem to be working. I must be the problem. Yeah. But it turns out it is much more effective to focus on mapping those tricky high frequency words than it is to clap and snap them.

Emily  6:08

Aww, sad. I like the clapping snapping. Word mapping helps the brain connect the sound and spelling patterns of words. These days, there are a lot of great resources out there for implementing meaningful sight word practice into your schedule. If you’re interested in incorporating sight word practice, a good suggestion is to look for heart word mapping materials.

Heidi  6:29

Today we’re not gonna go into great detail about high frequency words, because we need to keep this episode moving along with fluency. But if a deeper discussion on the subject would be beneficial, please let us know. We want to make sure that we are focusing our episodes on the topics that would be most helpful to you.

Emily  6:46

All right, what if it turns out students have a solid foundation of phonics and sight words, but they’re still struggling? What else can teachers try?

Heidi  6:54

Well, this suggestion might be a little unexpected. But I think it’s important to check the difficulty of what you’re expecting your students to read. Maybe you haven’t thought much about it, but a reading passage that you’re using for assessment is likely written on an end of grade level difficulty.

Emily  7:12

Yes. So if I’m testing students with a one minute reading, I want to know how they compare to grade level standards. Does this student’s reading match up with other kids their age? But if I have a student who is still making up lost ground on phonics and sight words, they are not yet reading at grade level.

Heidi  7:29

And this is where it can get a little confusing. Yes, there is benefit in assessing students with passages that are too hard for them. Right? I need to know how my students compare to grade level standards. So I can say, yes, they’re on track, or no, they’re falling behind. But practicing on passages that are too hard, will just produce frustration and defeat.

Emily  7:53

This is actually a very common issue. We see a lot of teachers insisting their students practice on grade level difficulty texts, even if those texts are too hard for their students to read independently.

Heidi  8:05

I think maybe the disconnect comes because it’s easy to think that the purpose of practicing fluency is to pass an assessment, because that’s really the only area that we kind of talk about it. But the truth is that the purpose of practicing fluency is to increase reading comprehension.

Emily  8:23

I have never played tennis before so watching me compete in a tennis match will let you identify what skills I lack.

Heidi  8:31

Spoiler it’s all of them.

Emily  8:33

First of all, rude.

Heidi  8:34

I can’t throw any stones or tennis balls because I also have never played tennis.

Emily  8:39

Well, when we had that PE class in college where we had to pass off PE skills and one of the ones I could not pass off was volleying the ball against the wall a certain number of times with a tennis racket. I never passed that one off, so I guess I guess she speaks the truth. Anyway.

Emily  8:54

Having a list of missing skills is useful. It helps you know where to target your instruction. But competing against competent players won’t help me develop those missing skills. It’s too overwhelming to produce results. I need to practice at my own very beginner, how do I even hold the racket and volleyball against a wall level in order to improve.

Heidi  9:16

Reading skills developed the same way, in order to improve students need to be working right on the edge of their ability, they should be able to independently read 95% of what’s in front of them. And then we’re just going to nudge them into that next 5%.

Emily  9:31

For your students who can read nonsense words accurately, and have a large enough bank of sight words but are still stuck check the text. Make sure that you’re not hampering them by insisting they practice fluency on texts that are too difficult for them to read fluently.

Heidi  9:45

But even when we build those strong foundations, and we carefully choose texts for our students to read, they still might struggle. And maybe that’s because they don’t understand that their reading should sound fluent.

Emily  9:59

Yep, kids might not even know what fluent reading is. I have seen this when I volunteer at my kids school. And I’m reading with these students in the hall. And often I will compliment them on something like, Oh, you did such a great job pausing it for punctuation and things like that. And they’re looking at me like, Why? Why are you saying this? Weird thing to say? So, I would say most kids are not at all familiar with what fluent reading is and what it looks like.

Heidi  10:27

So as a reminder to everyone, the components of fluency are accuracy prosody and rate. And because it’s hard for kids to remember that their reading should sound prosotic, we like to split that component into expression and phrasing.

Emily  10:43

But admit it you like saying prosotic, because it makes you sound so smart.

Heidi  10:46

And at no point did I have to Google how to pronounce that.

Emily  10:51

We’re just so smart. But expression and phrasing are much easier to remember and much easier to teach.

Heidi  10:57

And the teaching part is important because students can’t hit an invisible target. Right. Like Emily mentioned, if we want students to use phrasing in their reading, we have to teach them how to chunk words into meaningful phrases. If we want them to read with expression, we have to teach them to pay attention to punctuation and tone.

Emily  11:14

Ideally, your fluency program has two components instruction and practice. The nice thing about fluency instruction is that unlike math or science, your lessons can be very short, a two to three minute mini lesson every day will do wonders for your students fluency.

Heidi  11:30

Plus fluency practice is a lot of fun. If you’re doing it right. You’re giving your students freedom to play around with the words, we’re letting them experiment with how expression and phrasing work to create and change meaning. It’s kind of like letting your students get out the markers after only using pencils.

Emily  11:48

We’ve got lots of fun ideas for fluency mini lessons, so make sure to come back for next week’s episode, where we’ll share five of our favorite teacher approved ways to practice fluency.

Heidi  11:59

And if you don’t want to plan your own fluency mini lessons, and it can’t blame you, you’ve got enough to do, make sure to check out our fluency in a flash mini lessons. That way you can have engaging thoughtfully designed lessons all ready to go for every single day of the school year, plus some.

Emily  12:16

Oh yes, more than you can ever need. Now, let’s say you are doing all the things, some of your students rates still aren’t increasing. Well, what do you do?

Heidi  12:26

Well, even though it irks me, that rate is even a part of the conversation around reading, it is still important, I guess. So our brains are wired to pick up content at the speed of normal speech. If the information comes at us too fast, important details are lost. If the information comes at us too slowly, important connections are missed.

Emily  12:49

That’s because the brain processes the written Word through the same systems as it processes speech. So what starts out as printed words on a page ends up as speech sounds in the brain, which is why rate impacts comprehension.

Heidi  13:03

Now, how do we get those reading rates to increase? We need a three step approach to modeling, repeated reading and feedback.

Emily  13:12

When it comes to modeling, we want to make sure struggling students are engaged the whole time. So instead of just listening to you read a passage out loud, make sure they have a copy of the text and ask them to whisper read along with you.

Heidi  13:24

You could do this in a small group or a one on one setting. Or maybe you could record yourself reading and have your students read along with the recording.

Emily  13:33

Obviously, you need to adjust your rate to something more comfortable for your student. Your normal rate is way too fast for a struggling reader. And our normal rate is just insane. We talk way too fast.

Heidi  13:46

If you teach older students, you could also use reading partners with a more capable reader partner with a struggling reader and ask them to read the passage together. The upside to this is that multiple students can be supported at one time, and it’s not falling solely on your shoulders as the teacher. The downside is that you have to teach the students how to be supportive partners, and you run the risk that the time spent practicing maybe isn’t the most beneficial. So I guess kind of pick your poison there.

Emily  14:18

When students have had modeled reading, they can practice the text independently. If they’re old enough, they can set a timer and track their own words per minute. They’re not old enough for that you can have them practice reading a passage until they can read it accurately and expressively.

Heidi  14:33

One tool that can help here is recording students reading the passage, and then having them listen back. This can help them recognize places where their reading isn’t as fluent as we would like.

Emily  14:44

Then it’s time for feedback. Set a goal with your reader. Maybe it’s a rate goal of increased words per minute, or maybe it’s a comprehension goal, like read to find out why his feelings changed during the story. Next, have your students read the passage aloud and let them know how it went. Make sure to start with the celebrations. When we point out what students are doing well, it motivates them to keep doing those things in the future.

Heidi  15:08

Yeah, like Emily mentioned, sometimes kids aren’t even aware of what they’re doing well as readers, if we aren’t the ones pointing it out to them. It goes back to, you know, trying to hit that invisible target. When we celebrate what’s going well, students are much more able to repeat those things going forward.

Emily  15:26

Then see how well your student met their goal. Did they accurately read enough words per minute? Are they able to answer comprehension questions? What something the reader could do better going forward?

Heidi  15:37

Another way to give feedback is to record words per minute on a reading graph. And full confession, Emily and I really resisted this for a long time, because we didn’t want students thinking that rate was the most important component of reading. But we have come around to it since then.

Emily  15:55

Yeah, because marking progress on a graph is really motivating. When you have a clearer picture of how much you’ve improved, you’re more willing to keep working.

Heidi  16:04

You can also train your students to listen and give feedback to each other. Just remember that repeated readings are more effective when they are adult lead.

Emily  16:13

But that doesn’t mean it has to be teacher led. If you have parent volunteers or a classroom aide or literacy support staff, they can all be taught how to give feedback on reading.

Heidi  16:23

You can also send repeated readings home for homework, which is what we love to do. And we have lots of passages that are designed specifically to be used at home.

Emily  16:32

We worked really hard to write passages that are worthy of being read multiple times. Each passage includes custom illustrations by us, and comprehension support as well.

Heidi  16:44

Yeah, not all passages are created equal if you look around enough. And since parents are the ones giving the feedback, we also made sure to include helpful tips for each passage.

Emily  16:55

And even though our passages are designed as homework, we have lots of teachers who use them for in class practice. And then that parent tip is just helpful parent education when you send the passage home if you do that. If you’re interested in reading passages for your class, we will link to ours in the show notes.

Heidi  17:12

We have given you a lot to chew on in this episode.

Emily  17:15

We’re like we’re gonna keep this so simple. No, nope.

Heidi  17:19

Hey, turns out struggling reading is a complicated issue. And if you find that your student’s progress has come to a mid year freeze, particularly if you’re facing that second grade stumble. Remember these suggestions. Start by making sure the foundational skills of phonics and sight words are in place.

Emily  17:38

Also make sure the materials you’re asking students to read are at the right difficulty. Err on the side of practicing with something easy rather than practicing with something too hard.

Heidi  17:48

And your fluency program should have two components instruction and practice. So teach the components of fluency like phrasing and expression. And when it’s time to practice, use repeated readings with feedback to boost your students rate and comprehension.

Emily  18:05

We’d love to hear what you do to help your struggling readers come join the conversation in our teacher approved Facebook group.

Emily  18:12

Now let’s talk about this week’s teacher approved tip. Each week, we leave you with a small actionable tip that you can apply in your classroom today. This week’s teacher approved tip is practice fluency with a mini lesson every day. Tell us about this, Heidi.

Heidi  18:27

Well, I know we said that in next week’s episode, we are sharing our favorite fluency mini lessons. But I couldn’t resist sharing this one today. And I love fluency many lessons because students just have so much fun with them. And it’s so nice to have a lesson that everyone is just enjoying.

Heidi  18:43

But the real magic with these is that they are easy on the teacher. You really only need a whiteboard and a couple of minutes. And where else in education do you get such an easy win?

Emily  18:54

So the activity we’re going to share is called Watch Your Tone. All you have to do is write a generic sentence on the board. Think of something like I didn’t think this would happen. You want a sentence that has five or six words in it. And then practice reading it fluently a couple times as a class.

Heidi  19:11

And then have some fun with it. Ask your students how their voices would change if you change the setting. Maybe someone was making soup and a boiled out of the pot and all over the kitchen. How would that person say? I didn’t think this would happen.

Emily  19:27

This activity is great for discussion and experimentation. You can have some volunteers share their ideas with the class and then let kids practice with partners. Maybe you could have the whole class tried together. And then you could talk about what the students did with their voices to convey that dismay. Did they stress certain words did they make their voices go up or down are louder or softer? This is helping students recognize how we add meaning to our reading.

Heidi  19:54

And you can take this even further by keeping the same sentence but changing the scenario. Maybe a kid woke up on their birthday and found that they had gotten a pet unicorn as a gift. How would they say I didn’t think this would happen? Probably gonna sound very different from the soup situation, even though the words are the same.

Emily  20:13

Not only is this a fun activity, but you can do it for just a couple minutes easy peasy and everyone has a great time and learns.

Heidi  20:20

We included this activity in our seasonal fluency in a flash resources. So for St. Patrick’s Day, we have the sentence. This turned out different than I expected. And students can practice reading it like they woke up and everything has turned green. And then you can have them practice reading it like they were tricked by a leprechaun, which is probably gonna sound a little different. And then my favorite is they can read it like they decided to try dancing an Irish jig. And maybe that has gone well or maybe it hasn’t.

Emily  20:50

So much fun. We will put a link to our fluency and a flash mini lessons in the shownotes.

Heidi  20:56

To wrap up the show we are sharing what we’re giving extra credit to this week. Emiy what gets your extra credit?

Emily  21:02

I’m giving extra credit to the Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion by Beth Brower. I’m so glad you like you gave me volume one of this series for our book flood lunch that we do in December. And it was such a delight that I’m continuing on through the series. So the year is 1883.

Heidi  21:22

You gotta say picture it like Sofia.

Emily  21:24

Picture it. London 1883 and Emma M. Lion has returned to her London neighborhood of St. Crispian’s on a quest to take back possession of her rightful home from her eccentric and odious cousin Archibald, who is intent on sabotaging her efforts. The neighborhood has so many charming characters, including a friendly ghost of a Roman centurion who steals things from one house and leaves them in other houses.

Emily  21:52

I can’t say I’ve loved a book this much in a long time. And it’s such an easy read. And there’s a bunch of books in the series and they’re all really short. So I highly recommend this. If you like historical fiction with charm, small town I mean, it’s got Gilmore Girls vibe and Jane Austen vibes. Like I can’t say enough good things about this series.

Heidi  22:13

I’m definitely gonna have to read that now.

Emily  22:14

I can let you back up. What are you giving extra credit to Heidi?

Heidi  22:19

Well, this is very unexciting, but my extra credit goes to my folding luggage rack. Goes no witty banter, but I have come to love this thing anyway, it’s nothing fancy. It’s just like the kind of thing that you find in a hotel room with a couple legs that you unfold the says you case on and I originally bought it because I wanted to be able to pack my suitcase without having to put dirty luggage on my bed.

Heidi  22:44

But I have recently drafted it into helping me anytime I’m like organizing or decluttering or decorating, I can set boxes or bins on it as I empty them or fill them back up. It’s just been so handy to be able to you know pull out the Easter decorations without having to bend or crouch down every time I guess I sound 100 years old. Just so convenient. And they have lots of different variations on these luggage racks. But I just bought a cheap one for less than 20 bucks and it has been great.

Emily  23:14

Well I won’t have to bust out my luggage rack and put it to work.

Heidi  23:17

And especially because it doesn’t work for your suitcase.

Emily  23:20

No it does not Mine is the kind yes that opens up in the middle and has two full sides. If you have one that just the lid opens then my luggage rack would work for it but it does not work for my current luggage. So that’s might as well put that luggage rack to work.

Heidi  23:35

I was looking for a solution for that thinking maybe they had some kind of magic luggage rack they don’t maybe just have to buy two.

Heidi  23:44

That’s it for today’s episode. Overcome the mid year progress freeze in reading by assessing your students foundational skills, making sure your students are practicing at the correct level of difficulty teaching fluency skills and using repeated readings.

Heidi  23:58

We are rounding out the best suggestions for end of your test prep for an upcoming episode of the podcast. If you have a teacher approved test prep tip please send it our way at [email protected].