00.00
Introduction
Hello there. Welcome to the Structured Literacy Podcast. My name is Jocelyn and I'm so pleased to welcome you here today. The Structured Literacy Podcast is here to help you out with all things teaching, and this week we are going to tackle another of the tricky things that it's hard to let go of. In episode six, I outlined why it is so scary to let go of guided reading, and today we're going to look at why it's so scary to let go of benchmark reading assessment.
Now, these assessments are something that have been in schools forever in a day, and they've come to be understood as a way for us to track student growth and progress through their reading development. Now, the challenge with a benchmark assessment is that they are usually written to align with a series of level texts that will be represented by a number or a letter and unfortunately they don't actually measure the thing that we think they do. We like the number or the letter that comes with them. We like being able to graph results. We like being able to have measurable growth, and those are great things, but unfortunately, the levels that are assigned to levelled reading benchmark assessments are nothing but somebody's guess about what this thing means.
We have also somehow come up with an alignment between particular grades here in Australia and the levels of those texts. So I don't know where it started that somebody might say, well, by the end of foundation, we want them reading a level five or a level 12, or any of these other levels. And I can tell you that a number of times in quite large groups of teachers, I've said, please pop in the chat box the number that you expect students to be at by the end of year one and the range of answers is wildly different.
Even though intellectually we might, with our new understandings of the science of reading and learning and structure literacy, know that those benchmark reading assessments are not going to get us what we really need to know in terms of student progress, it can still be really hard to let them go.
It can be difficult to help parents understand how we're now measuring growth in their children's reading development. And when it comes to that, all important, communicating with the principal who we know loves a good graph. It can be hard to define success, but redefining success is really the first step in helping us move on from these benchmark reading assessments.
So there are several elements to look at here. We need to look at foundational skills first and foremost, children will not progress to reading fluency and automaticity and strong comprehension if they don't have strong foundational skills. So one of the things we need to look at is what is the phonics growth and the phonics understanding of our students.
When we're trying to find a measure of this, that can be a little tricky though because our curriculum here in Australia is notoriously light on detail when it comes to what students need. So my suggestion for you is to have a look at the phonics program or tool that your school is currently using and look at the recommendations. Strong quality, systematic synthetic phonics programs or tools are going to have an outline of where it is hoped students are by certain times in their school life, follow that as the guideline for what you're heading towards.
Other things to think about are what does it mean to measure growth at the text level? So we are used to doing this benchmark assessment and often as early as the start of the foundation year, maybe the end of term one. And there are certain states screening assessments and on-entry assessments that actually include a predictable text. one of those texts that's easy to read, that's got the same sentence structure, and we just change out the last word, and we can figure that out by looking at the picture, and so that can be really frustrating, and it can help actually undermine our new learnings.
04.32
What about the mandatory state assessments?
So we're on this path of new learning about assessment, and then this assessment that our state has given us to use has something completely different. Trust me, it's okay to rely on the guidance and the best evidence that we have around structured literacy, and sometimes we need to just pop things into the invisible box of things that don't make sense, put them on the shelf, and then not worry about them. Then we just get them out those couple of times of year when we have to, and then we put it back in the box and pop it back on the shelf.
Because if you are trying to reconcile some of the unfortunate advice and tools that we are asked to use with what the evidence around reading instruction tells us, you really could send yourself around the twist. So try and put things in different compartments in your brain. These are the things that make sense that we're going to put our energy into. These are the things that don't really, and we're not gonna think too hard about them. They're just there. We just have to deal with them as a consequence of having our job. It's unfortunate, but this is one way we can look after ourselves.
05.38
What are our options?
But when it comes to text level assessment, what are our options? The best thing to do is to seek assessments that are norm referenced. So large numbers of children have been assessed, and some pretty robust data has been produced about what we can expect our students to be reading by different grades.
This is very different from the designer of a levelled text program or tool, coming up with an idea about what we think or sort of these whispers amongst the teaching community about which level we think students should be at.
It's important to note though that the two freely available assessments, well, there's actually more than two, but the two big ones that come up quite frequently are Acadience and Dibels. Now those two assessments from the US are screeners. They're not going to give us a number. They're not going to give us a definitive indication that this is the level that these children are at. What they will do for us is help us identify which children are at risk and which children have the greatest chance of success in their reading into the future. That in itself can be a tricky thing to get our head around.
06.53
I know it's not useful, but it's comfortable.
There are some norm reference assessments that you can purchase that do give you a reading age, but when we're looking at those free tools, those free screeners, we need to be prepared that we are not gonna have that comfy number, that even if in our head, one side of our brain says, no, no, no, that's not actually gonna do for us what we think it will. The other side says, oh, but it's so comfortable, and I really like it.
We need to make a shift, and it's okay to feel a little unsure about that. Now these benchmark levels are in some ways, like a security blanket or they can be a little like training wheels, and when we have training wheels on our bike when we are little, we're riding our bike along, and the training wheels give us this false sense of security. They actually don't require us to balance all that much or if at all. And then one day someone decides it's time to take the training wheels away, and all of a sudden we have to balance for ourselves now, understandably, that makes us feel really, really wobbly. We thought we had this thing figured out, and now we feel like we absolutely don't. Those training wheels gave us a sense of security that did not mirror reality. And we need to be able to take a risk and trust the process and put one foot in front of the other.
Now when the training wheels are taken off, we have two choices. We can understand that feelings of being nervous or scared or you know, downright terrified are normal. When we are moving away from the comfortable and say, okay, time to get our loins team, we're going to just work with this. Put one foot in front of the other and do this thing because what happens, I'm gonna go back to the bike analogy here again. When you take the training wheels off, and you give it a go, and you're terrified, but you do it, and you've got someone standing next to you saying, "Oh, good job, keep going, well done. Put your foot on the pedals. Pedal, pedal, pedal. Straighten up those handlebars. Oh, you're doing such a good job!" After a little while, we come to feel what that feels like to actually balance ourselves and we feel successful, and we can understand how to operate this thing.
09.14
Leading or alone?
It's the same with our teaching practice. If you are a leader supporting your team to work through this wobbly time of moving away from this very comfortable tool. We need to give people lots of encouragement, and if you are that person who's a one person band in your school, trying to move away from this comfort zone tool, talk to yourself in the way that you would speak to others. Tell yourself, hey, this is going to be okay. One foot in front of the other. Let's just put our feet on the pedals and go, let's figure out how this works so that we can see actually that we are not going to break the children, that we are going to be okay. And that with these more reliable tools, we are going to have a greater sense of accomplishment and certainty in the long run. But we've kind of got to go through this messy middle of uncertainty first.
It's really important when we are moving to something new that we keep things simple. So we want to set these short-term targets. We want to define success. Sometimes that means going back to the phonics, going back to that word level fluency, to measure those short-term successes until we get to the point where students are going to start making some growth in those norm referenced assessments.
10.37
The brutal reality.
Now the brutal reality is that often those level text benchmark assessments, the number's not the only thing that gives us a full sense of security. Children can appear to be reading well, and then we give them something a little more complex without pictures, and we get a really accurate sense of where they're up to in text level reading, and it's not as good as we thought it was.
If that happens, it's really important that we stay out of judgment of ourselves and each other. That we look at each other in the eye and say it's going to be okay. We recognize some of the brutal truth about these results, but actually what we have is this almost crazy faith that everything's going to be fine, that we have it within our control, within our power, through applying these principles of structured literacy, we have it within our grasp to positively impact student results. So today may not be so fun looking at our data, but tomorrow is a day of hope and a day of action and a day of positivity, as will the next one be, and the one after that, and the one after that.
11.55
Don't Wait. Celebrate!
Celebrate your successes when they come. If you find things are looking better than you thought they were. That doesn't mean, oh, we didn't need this tool. That's a cause for celebration. Every time you can see improvement in your student outcomes, that's a cause for celebration. So, take those moments. Don't wait until every child is sitting at above expectations before you pat yourselves and each other on the back. When you go to a football match, or any sort of sporting event, you don't sit silently until the full-time buzzer and then cheer. You cheer all the way along. So, please cheer for yourself, cheer for your students, and cheer for each other. And you know what? That first step of, "let's conduct this assessment and look at our data", that's your first achievement. That's all you need to do for now. So if you are making this move, try not to focus on where we want to be in five years time because that goal's too big. That mountain's too high. Focus on what is our one next step that's going to move us to the next point in our journey. And once we've done that thing, it's time for Tim Tams and hot chocolates, and we can celebrate with each other.
Is it resistance or a need for reassurance?
If you are a leader supporting people who are feeling frustrated and nervous and worried, it can be a little tricky to keep a lid on our own feelings when we're supporting people who are feeling this way. And the reason is that when they're feeling this way, that often shows up as resistance. and it's easy to interpret resistance as lack of commitment.
So you have your staff who seem to be pushing back. So you had a meeting yesterday and everyone was all positive, and today, all of a sudden people are talking about, "Oh, do we really need to do this thing?" Rather than feel frustrated, have a think about what if this other person was just a little scared?
How would I approach this if this person was unsure and nervous and needing reassurance? Well, you'd give them reassurance. If you had a student who was resistant to trying new things, but you could see that they did have it within their capability, that they were able to do it, but actually they just needed a bit of help. What would you do? You would say, "Hey mate, it's ok. I'm here with you. I'm going to help you. I'm going to support you." So as a leader, (and sometimes remember that leadership is informal. It's the teacher in the classroom next to you as a leader in this thing, formal or informal.) don't make assumptions about people's perceived resistance because very often that is just them expressing their vulnerability. So, view it through that lens, and it's going to help you manage your wellbeing as well as theirs, and ultimately you will get much better outcomes.
14.44
How do I make this work for my school?
Just recently, I've had the opportunity to hear from some schools that I've been working with about this very fact, and when I hear that people who had previously appeared resistant were now complete advocates for structured literacy, in what was happening in their classroom and what a difference this made to the school, it just warms my heart so much. And it proves to me that, just like we never write a student off, we never write a teacher off or a colleague, because every single one of us wants to do a great job for kids.
We have to clearly outline what data collection and the measurement of progress is going to look like and have timelines. Don't make this an open-ended, you know, never ending piece of string. I've got all the metaphors for you in this podcast episode everyone! Outline this, so we've got timelines, so we have short-term and medium term goals, and this is nothing new for any of you. Make those goals specific. Make them time sensitive, make them achievable, make them relevant, and get people's voice when it comes to how we implement this thing.
Ask them. Ask your team and yourself to tell you what you don't feel like you have a handle on. So, when people are feeling nervous, think, what is it that's really my issue here? What don't I feel like I have a handle on? And if the answer is I don't feel like I have a sense of progress. Okay. We need to define that, and we should be able to put those numbers in a graph. So listen to what people are saying, ask yourself the questions and know that when we can address our concerns, we can absolutely affect positive change.
16.22
Conclusion.
So that is it for me on this podcast episode about why letting go of Benchmark Reading assessment is so scary. Fundamentally, it's because we are asking ourselves and others to move away from something that has felt really secure. Even though we know intellectually that it's not actually giving us what we need, we're still going to want to cling onto it as tightly as we can. So build trust, build support, and if you are on your own in this journey, in this moment, reach out to other people who can support you. If you're a Resource Room member we have the forum, we have our regular live get togethers. Be there for each other. We're all on the same team. We're all working towards that same goal, which is great outcomes for children. There are alternatives. There are many of them, and there are free ones, so you actually don't have to invest a lot of money. You will need to invest some cognitive energy, some emotional energy, and some time, but ultimately, it will serve your students much better if you do.
Thank you, everyone. I'll see you in the next episode.