When You Listen to Your Students Read feat. Erin Hanrahan

Erin Hanrahan, a middle school English and journalism teacher based in Woodstock, Vermont, joins host Rose Else-Mitchell to explore what fluency can mean for older readers. Erin shares how hearing her students read aloud woke her up to the issues of striving older readers. She understood patterns she hadn't previously recognized: students guessing at multisyllabic words, reading slowly, choppily, and struggling with phrasing even while they could discuss some of the ideas in a text.

Rose and Erin discuss why oral reading practice belongs in every secondary classroom, not just in intervention rooms, and how Erin now builds daily opportunities for students to read complex text aloud, with explicit support for multisyllabic words and word structure. They also dig into the harder questions around vocabulary: which words do students need to truly own, which simply need to be decoded or defined in context, and how can teachers build the background knowledge students need to understand a complex text without spending the entire class period on vocabulary?

References and Resources:

• The Stern Center for Language and Learning
• The Goyen Foundation's Teachers Teach Teachers program
• Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson
• Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
• The Extinction Trilogy by Lydia Millet
• Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery
• Middlemarch by George Eliot
• Science of Reading Center at SUNY New Paltz

Credits:

• Guest: Erin Hanrahan, Middle School English & Journalism Teacher, based in Woodstock, VT
• Host: Rose Else-Mitchell, Executive Director of the Science of Reading Center at SUNY New Paltz
• Produced by the Science of Reading Center at SUNY New Paltz, Rose Else-Mitchell, and Onalee Smith
• Original music and audio editing by Ross Gentry

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Keywords: science of reading, adolescent literacy, secondary literacy, middle school reading, reading fluency, fluency instruction, reading comprehension, word recognition, oral reading, oral reading practice, multisyllabic word reading, multisyllabic words, decoding, syllabication, morphology, word structure, phrasing, prosody, vocabulary instruction, vocabulary depth, vocabulary prioritization, background knowledge, knowledge building, complex texts, grade level text, secondary English, middle school English, English language arts, reading intervention, structured literacy, explicit instruction, general education, struggling readers, reading confidence, student engagement, reader identity, literacy instruction, evidence-based reading instruction

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Transcript

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Rose Else-Mitchell 0:47

Welcome to Reading Realities, a podcast about what it really takes to change how we teach reading. I'm your host, Rose Else -Mitchell, Executive Director of the Science of Reading Center. Today I'm joined by Erin Hanrahan, a middle school English and journalism teacher in Woodstock, Vermont. We talk about what happens when a secondary teacher realizes that students' struggles with comprehension may actually be connected to fluency. Often we hear teachers of adolescents wonder, when would I fit in fluency? Erin's answer is all the time and with every text opportunity. Erin also shared a brilliant lesson where she builds background knowledge to approach a challenging text, building empathy and vocabulary at the same time. And somehow we also talk about Sir Toby Belch from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. Let's get started.

Rose Else-Mitchell 1:42

Welcome, Erin, to Reading Realities. Thanks so much for being here.

Erin Hanrahan 1:45

Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Rose Else-Mitchell 1:48

Let's start with your journey. I feel like it's got some similarities to mine, except you kept on doing the work with kids in classrooms and I took a different path.

Erin Hanrahan 1:57

Well, my path started as a journalist and I transitioned to teaching high school almost 20 years ago. I was teaching social studies and English in Montana and then Alaska. And I was noticing that even students in my AP US history class were not necessarily fluent readers. At that time, I had like no skills to help them at all overcome that challenge. And kids would say things to me like, makes sense when I read it in my head. I just can't read it out loud. And I would say, okay, great. It's horrifying now.

Rose Else-Mitchell 2:31

Not my problem.

Erin Hanrahan 2:32

I was like, I don't know, someone should do something about that. But you know, I think like most secondary teachers, I had had zero training in my transition to teaching program, um, which was a master's program, zero classes on how to help students with reading, comprehension, and fluency. So I moved to Vermont in 2014 and I transitioned to middle school at a K-8 school, which I think by the nature of the configuration had a higher emphasis on literacy. It was there that I started giving the FP test to my students, which we don't do anymore. But that was really the first time I'd ever sat down and heard all of my students read aloud. And that kind of clarified for me that the kids who were struggling with comprehension were in fact the same kids who were not fluent readers and that really we needed to do something about fluency. So since then I've been on a bit of a journey. I took a course through the Stern Center here in Vermont called Time for Teaching, which introduced me to the concepts of the reading rope and phonemic awareness and syllabication. And I was, I think, the only teacher in that class teaching beyond second grade. And I was like, everyone should know this. We all need to be taking this class. So it's it's been a journey since then.

Rose Else-Mitchell 3:49

Yeah. Yeah. So for secondary teachers who are listening, when you say you heard students reading and they weren't fluent, what did you hear?

Erin Hanrahan 3:57

I heard students just replacing multisyllabic words with other words. And, you know, we know those multisyllabic words are the rich words that are so key to comprehending texts. But it would be, you know, say we were reading the Declaration of Independence or any primary source documents with challenging words. I'd hear kids struggle with phrasing. I'd hear them struggle with prosody and also just to read accurately multisyllabic words.

Rose Else-Mitchell 4:25

Yeah. And when students struggle with phrasing, it's sort of choppy and doesn't

Erin Hanrahan 4:32

choppy and slow.

Rose Else-Mitchell 4:34

Yes. Yeah. So what what did you do when you started to hear this correlation between a lack of comprehension and a lack of fluency?

Erin Hanrahan 4:43

Well, at first, my strategy, I I sort of dug into intervention, which I now feel like I should have just been implementing these strategies in my classroom for everybody the whole time.

Rose Else-Mitchell 4:58

Right, right.

Erin Hanrahan 4:59

But I took a Wilson JustWords course and I started doing intentional fluency practice. That program has a lot of phrasing practice integrated in it and intentional reading aloud with students, whether it's like close reading, partner reading, reading one-on-one with me, so that they were having that practice, reading accurately. And then over time, it kind of became clear to me with the help of a colleague that we can't intervene our way out of this, and that in fact every student benefits from uh oral reading practice with grade level appropriate text. And so now I'm starting to integrate that practice more in my general ed eighth grade English classrooms.

Rose Else-Mitchell 5:44

Right.

Erin Hanrahan 5:44

So that really every day all students are reading aloud to some degree.

Rose Else-Mitchell 5:49

Yeah, either to each other or to you. And they're doing that with content, you know, the the social studies textbook or a primary source document or something.

Erin Hanrahan 5:59

Absolutely. We still read the Declaration of Independence, only now I do it in eighth grade instead of in AP US history, and it looks different, right? I will model it. I'll read the opening paragraphs aloud, and then students will read sections of it along with me, or maybe they'll whisper read it, and then they'll read it with a partner. And we're reading it multiple times. Right. And so they're getting that practice with phrasing and seeing those words, and we're previewing the vocabulary ahead of time and saying those words aloud, like unalienable, so that we know they're not going to stand in the way of our fluency.

Rose Else-Mitchell 6:34

You shared earlier that part of the way that you understood that it was a fluency issue was that you started using fluency assessments. Tell me how that happened and what you learned when you first did that.

Erin Hanrahan 6:45

Well, honestly, somewhat embarrassingly, it happened like against my will. I was a little bit like

Rose Else-Mitchell 6:51

assessments against my will held hostage by an OMRF.

Erin Hanrahan 6:56

Yes. I really resented having to do the FP when I took this job teaching middle school. You know, teaching middle school is a whole different animal, and I love it now. But um at the time, I was like, how am I supposed to take three days out of my classroom to do this long one-on-one assessment with kids, write subplans? It seemed really cumbersome to do in a middle school setting. Um but and I know the FP like is a flawed assessment, or we understand it to be now. But for my own personal journey and growth, like it took that to understand that when kids tell you it makes sense in their head, but they can't read it out loud, that's kind of garbage. Like they might believe that, but it's not the case. They don't understand it if they can't read it fluently.

Rose Else-Mitchell 7:46

Right. It is the the bridge between word recognition and and and true understanding and and meaning construction. So you're right, it kind of makes sense in my head, is a very teenage thing to say, isn't it?

Erin Hanrahan 7:59

Yeah, yeah. But I mean, in my defense and fluency is not part of the common core standards in middle school. And I always kind of fell back on that. I was like, why am I doing this? This is not even something I assess. And, you know, I came to teaching in the age of the common core, and I was like, everything I do in my classroom should be tied to a standard that I'm going to assess that is meaningful. And so why would I spend time on this skill that is not something I'm going to assess?

Rose Else-Mitchell 8:24

Wow. The dedication that you have to getting it right, but the feeling that it wasn't quite the right thing to be getting right is really uh is kind of profound. Yeah. And of course, it isn't a standard, and it isn't a skill. It's like an underlying kind of competency and set of lots and lots of skills in terms of students' ability to decode.

Erin Hanrahan 8:45

Yeah. I think really for me, it took understanding that like kids will not get comprehension without the fluency piece. And comprehension certainly is a skill.

Rose Else-Mitchell 8:54

Yeah. So you also mentioned multisyllabic words and how you support kids in decoding those, not just reading them fluently. Share a little bit about how you make connections between sort of words that students may not have seen before, either in terms of concept and meaning, but also the ability to read a word that is unfamiliar in terms of its word structure.

Erin Hanrahan 9:18

Well, I a few years ago, my district uh invested in the rewards curriculum for intervention again. But it's a strategy, I think Anita Archer's strategy in that program is one that I've adopted for vocabulary in my general English classroom as well, where kids are identifying the prefix, identifying the suffix, underlining the vowels they see in between, and then we'll say the word together.

Erin Hanrahan 9:45

And we do a lot of previewing of vocabulary, not just in my classroom, but really school-wide. We have the Literacy Leadership Council. It's a group of teachers that's really trying to push this instruction in every content area and every class so that in science classes, this is happening too. It's not unique to me, but we're previewing vocabulary before we read content. And maybe there are eight words and we're just gonna say them aloud. Like I'll say them, you say them. And then maybe kids will have them written down and I'll say, circle one that you want to add to our word wall, or circle one that you've not heard before, or circle one that you haven't used in your writing in the last week.

Erin Hanrahan 10:23

And then we do a lot of work with vocabulary. Um, I use a template that was shared with a colleague from a colleague that includes, you know, for every vocabulary word, an image, a sentence, the part of speech, and then we do so we'll kids will define the words in their notebook. We'll do a lot of practice on whiteboards. Sometimes I'll have them sort the words before I even tell them what they mean. And then we'll talk about, you know, how would we turn this word into a noun? Or how would we turn conviction into a verb so that they can really own the word and use it in a variety of contexts?

Rose Else-Mitchell 11:02

I love that. The flexibility of understanding the concept, not just the word as a static idea. So, how do you think about the role of background knowledge and vocabulary? Because it's a bridge between the word recognition skills and comprehension by itself. And all of that sounds great, but it also sounds really intensive. Like how many words are you able to get through, and how do you get to the documents or the text?

Erin Hanrahan 11:28

Yeah.

Rose Else-Mitchell 11:29

If you're doing that much intensiveness with each word.

Erin Hanrahan 11:32

That's um that's a hard balance to strike. I'm not gonna lie. My favorite unit that we do in eighth grade is um a nonfiction unit around Brian Stevenson's book, Just Mercy. And it's an intense book. It's about a man who's wrongly convicted of murder and put on Alabama's death row. We read a young reader's edition of it, but there's a lot of vocabulary in there. I know that, like in order to read the book, we have to understand some key concepts. But I can't have 10 vocabulary words a day, or we'd never actually read the book.

Rose Else-Mitchell 12:03

Right, exactly.

Erin Hanrahan 12:05

Um, so it's been a learning journey for me. And part of what struck me when we first started reading this book was that some of my struggling readers weren't really invested in the plight of the main character who is a real guy. And, you know, there's been a movie made of this. It's a super engaging story. And they weren't able to empathize with him and to get into the story. And I realized it was really vocabulary and a lack of content and world knowledge that was kind of holding them back.

Erin Hanrahan 12:37

So I was like, really, to understand this story, to empathize with him, you have to understand the injustice that's being done. And to understand that injustice, the words you really need to know are the steps in our justice system because they're what is like being up-ended in this book, right? So I kind of work backwards and I realized we have like 10 words that we start with. And some of them are not hard words, like crime, bail, incarceration, and then they go all the way through exoneration. And I give kids these words. Usually before we even identify or define them, kids can recognize that these are steps in our justice system. If I say, what do all these words have in common? And then they'll cut them apart and I'll say, What order do you think these should happen in? And they'll kind of place them in an order, and then I'll show them the timeline and we'll take some notes and they'll say, This is how they're supposed to happen. So there has to be an indictment before there's a conviction, right? Before there's a trial, before there's a conviction.

Erin Hanrahan 13:41

And then once they know that, then when we start the book, and in chapter one, Walter is put on death row before he's even had a trial. Kids have the capacity to be shocked and to feel that injustice and to empathize with him because now they know that that's wrong. And so the vocabulary words, I guess like I had to let go of some vocabulary words that show up in the text like vehemently and dilapidated, and some of those rich describing words in order to focus on the core concepts that they really needed in order to understand what was happening. And we'll still practice those other words so they don't get in the way of fluency, but maybe there's less of an emphasis on being able to define them and to own them as long as kids kind of can get these steps in our justice system. So I guess for me, that's a long-winded way of saying it's been a learning process, and I've had to kind of prioritize the vocabulary that's most important.

Rose Else-Mitchell 14:43

That is such a brilliant, brilliant description and analysis of why vocabulary is important and how to be savvy and prioritize, and how to choose groups of words that are a mixture of sort of tier two and tier three, right? And helping students not just with the empathy, but with the overall concepts of in the book. And I think this is one of the challenges people have when faced with vocabulary and students who don't have enough, as you say, word and world knowledge is where do I start and how do I decide? And the text has to do some of that, and your understanding of what is challenging vocabulary needs to do some of that. But I love that.

Rose Else-Mitchell 15:27

We have a strategy that we work with teachers on, which we call semantic gradients, which is meanings of words, you might be familiar with it. And you can do it from, you know, one extreme from say hot to cold using very simple kindergarten words, but you can also do it up at AP. But the whole point is there's nuance as kids talk about the difference between those ideas. And so being able to become more word conscious as well as familiar with those kinds of words is I think the art of trying to build background knowledge, isn't it? It's not just individual word teaching.

Erin Hanrahan 16:01

Absolutely. And getting kids to use the words in conversation, whether they're evaluating them or putting them in order or doing something with those words so that they're owning them and practicing them.

Rose Else-Mitchell 16:12

You know, I love every year how there's always a word of the year. And it tends to be a bit more pop culture than something we might want kids to use in their writing, but uh, at least it's bringing that semantic awareness to the fore. The other idea that it sounds like you're working with is students' kind of personal lexicons so that they're starting to build connections for themselves. Is that an area you've dived into?

Erin Hanrahan 16:32

I would like to do more of that. I try to encourage students to use these words in their writing and to use them in different forms in their writing. And we do that in formal ways when we're writing summaries. I also have students regularly just write notes to each other. I think authentic writing is super important. And so, you know, once every couple of weeks, I'll just give them a nice piece of paper and say, like, write a kind note to somebody in your challenges to try to integrate a form of one of these five words. Or, you know, and I'm actually not gonna know if they do that or not because they're gonna deliver it hopefully to its intended recipient. But I hope that that's encouraging them to own the vocabulary as well.

Rose Else-Mitchell 17:14

You do have research on your side too, in terms of helping to consolidate into memory the handwriting process. However, there is also really good research that students that struggle to write can really benefit from the experience of word processing, whether that's in the creation of something, whether it's in the editing, whether it's in a notion of self-efficacy, that they can see that they've written something that's not really, really messy and starts to make them feel particularly as teenagers that, you know, they're incompetent. But I am very passionate about this question myself, not just for writing, but also for reading. You know, when AI can summarize everything for you, when it can read it aloud for you. Again, very useful accommodations for students with disabilities. But what are we losing cognitively when we let it do that?

Erin Hanrahan 18:05

I had a student a number of years ago who had an accommodation. His parents were really strong advocates and argued that he should never have to read aloud in class. And I look back on that now and I think I would hope that we would push back and find a way to meet that accommodation in a different way or to work differently for that. Because really, what that's saying is this student is never going to become a better, more fluent reader. And I totally understand, you know, I don't ever want a kid to feel ashamed or embarrassed in my class. I don't think any teacher does. But I also feel like, what are we doing if we're not helping him? You know? And I sometimes wonder if we're going too far with writing in that direction, too.

Rose Else-Mitchell 18:53

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned a couple of students as we've been talking. Maybe could you share a story about a student that you feel like you really impacted by the changes that you started to make?

Erin Hanrahan 19:05

Sure. This particular student, he had been a struggling reader for a number of years. And he was actually one who was really resistant to reading aloud when we first started. He was a quieter student, loved to draw, super sweet. But I started by asking him to read with just me in class. And we ended up that year, we we read a play aloud. At the end of the year, we read Twelfth Night. And he ended up choosing one of the largest parts to perform and read it in the original.

Rose Else-Mitchell 19:37

Who was he?

Erin Hanrahan 19:38

He was Sir Toby Belch.

Rose Else-Mitchell 19:41

Wow. How fun.

Erin Hanrahan 19:43

Yeah, yeah.

Rose Else-Mitchell 19:43

That's totally acting out. Yes. He we could do our English teacher thing.

Erin Hanrahan 19:48

Well, I think there was a lot going on there with his personal growth that year, but he ended up, you know, our we do the star benchmark assessment three times throughout the year. And he ended up going from red to yellow to green. He just grew so much. And he was getting the oral fluency practice in class, but he was also getting the rewards program in our tier two intervention class. And he showed such growth in his reading, but even more importantly, he showed such growth in his confidence and the way he was interacting with his classmates. And that for me was such a powerful thing to see. Was this young man going into high school feeling like

Rose Else-Mitchell 20:26

Sir Toby Belch?

Erin Hanrahan 20:28

Yeah. Exactly.

Rose Else-Mitchell 20:30

That's awesome. Oh, I love that story. I wish I could see a picture of him. I could really, I could really see the whole experience. That's wonderful. Uh well, I could uh talk to you for a lot longer. But as we're closing, maybe you can share just one book or a resource. It can be professional or even better, personal that you'd recommend to our uh listeners and uh fellow educators.

Erin Hanrahan 20:54

Okay. Um I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go personal. I'm gonna

Rose Else-Mitchell 20:59

Great.

Erin Hanrahan 20:59

Uh I've been reading, I'm a big fan of fiction, and I've been reading uh Lydia Millett's Extinction trilogy. I'm on the third book right now, and it's really good. I'm really enjoying it. And the main protagonist is a guy named T, and he's kind of very financially successful, but alienated. I think it deals with a lot of interesting themes that are appropriate to our time.

Rose Else-Mitchell 21:24

Very good. All right, now we're gonna do a lightning round. You ready?

Erin Hanrahan 21:27

Okay, yeah.

Rose Else-Mitchell 21:28

Hardcover or paperback?

Erin Hanrahan 21:30

Paperback.

Rose Else-Mitchell 21:30

New book, used book, library book. Used book, audiobook or print?

Erin Hanrahan 21:35

Print.

Rose Else-Mitchell 21:37

You read one book or several at a time sitting on your nightstand?

Erin Hanrahan 21:41

Several at a time.

Rose Else-Mitchell 21:42

I I thought that. Classics or contemporary?

Erin Hanrahan 21:45

Contemporary.

Rose Else-Mitchell 21:47

Do you annotate and dog ear or you keep a book beautiful and pristine?

Erin Hanrahan 21:51

I keep a book beautiful and pristine, unless it's in my classroom. And last question. Would you rather meet your favorite author or your favorite literary character? And who would it be? Wow.

Rose Else-Mitchell 22:02

I know it's the worst question for an English teacher, I think.

Erin Hanrahan 22:05

Oh my gosh. I don't know. I think I would probably rather meet my favorite literary character, but I I I couldn't possibly decide who that would be.

Rose Else-Mitchell 22:17

Me either. Sometimes I think Dorothea Brooks from Middle March.

Erin Hanrahan 22:22

It would definitely have to be a female heroine. I mean, I go back to Anna Green Gable.

Rose Else-Mitchell 22:28

Oh, that's so good. That's great. Well, thank you so much, Erin, for spending time with us and sharing your stories.

Erin Hanrahan 22:34

Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

Rose Else-Mitchell 22:41

Thanks again, Erin, for joining us for this episode of Reading Realities. And thank you all for listening.

Rose Else-Mitchell 22:46

We know that fluent word recognition is the bridge to comprehension. And Erin has seen that connection play out with her own students many times. Her response has been to build regular, purposeful oral reading into her classroom rather than treating fluency as something that only belongs in invention or when she's assessing.

Rose Else-Mitchell 23:06

I also love the way Erin talked about vocabulary. Instead of trying to teach every unfamiliar word one by one, she worked backwards from the text and asks, what do my students need to know in order to understand what's happening here? Such a practical way to make decisions about what consequential vocabulary to teach to access the meaning of a text.

Rose Else-Mitchell 23:26

Erin's story of one of her students reminds us too that it isn't just the utility of learning to read that teachers are brokering each day. It's about helping those students become more confident, capable, kind humans.

Rose Else-Mitchell 23:39

If you'd like to learn more about our work or to share your story on a future episode of Reading Realities, you can reach us at scienceofreading at newpaltz.edu. You'll find that information in the show notes too. If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next. And also share it with a colleague or an educator in your life. And if you could take a moment to rate and review the show, it would really help us reach more educators doing this work. We'll be back soon with more conversations from educators navigating the realities of reconstruction. Thanks for listening