Melissa & Lori Love Literacy ™

Ep. 210: How Can You Improve Fluency for Older Students? with Janee' Butler

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Fluency is complex, especially for older students.

In this episode, Janee' Butler shares:

  • how fluency instruction looks from early grades to secondary
  • about challenges students and teachers face, 
  • practical strategies for improving fluency,
  • a reminder not to forget about student motivation, especially for older students struggling with reading fluently. 

The Big Takeway: Reading fluency is essential for older students to be able to comprehend what they read. Teachers need the knowledge of how to help each student!

Want to Learn More? 


We answer your questions about teaching reading in The Literacy 50-A Q&A Handbook for Teachers: Real-World Answers to Questions About Reading That Keep You Up at Night.

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Melissa:

We have taught older students who have arrived in our 5th, 6th, 9th and even 12th grade classrooms, who are not reading fluently, and there are so many challenges teaching older students who have gaps in their reading skills.

Lori:

Today you'll hear from Janae Butler, a director at the Center for Literacy and Learning. If you're a teacher in grades 3 through 12, this episode is jam-packed with fluency tips and tricks to try in your classroom tomorrow. Hi teacher friends, I'm Lori and I'm Melissa. We are two educators who want the best for all kids, and we know you do too.

Melissa:

We worked together in Baltimore when the district adopted a new literacy curriculum.

Lori:

We worked together in Baltimore when the district adopted a new literacy curriculum.

Melissa:

We realized there was so much more to learn about how to teach reading and writing Lori, and I can't wait to keep learning with you today.

Lori:

Hi everyone, we can't wait to talk all things fluency for older students today.

Melissa:

And we're here with Janae Butler. She was a first grade teacher and she is now the Director of Program Design and Implementation at the Center for Literacy and Learning and she's one of our friends from the Plain Talk about Literacy Conference. So excited you're here today, janae Hi guys, thank you for having me.

Lori:

Yeah Well, we're super excited because we can't wait for you to share some practical tips for teachers on how to improve students' fluency. But before we get there, we thought we should take some time to define fluency. So, janae, what does it take for a student to be a proficient, fluent reader, and how does that change as students move through the grade levels?

Janee' Butler:

that change as students move through the grade levels. Yeah, so it does look very different from grade to grade, right? So when we start at grade one, a lot of the time we tend to focus on just strictly accuracy, right. We focus on the phonics and we try to get them to be good decoders and eventually we move to a space where they should not be decoding every single word on the page, especially in first grade. That text, you know, is so overly simplified. At that stage they should be able to read that fluently.

Janee' Butler:

But then, when we get to second and third grade, we see a shift, especially in third grade. But in second grade what we begin to see is that we have more content inside of it. More genre is starting to come at play. So the sentence structure tends to change and a lot of our second grade teachers tend to sit in the space of just fluency as far as the expression and the rate, and we forget the comprehension piece, right? So when we get to third grade, that's when it's just like total bang. Everything is thrown at you. Literacy definitely changed. You begin to see that ship start to steer in a different direction and you begin to see that students are now in a space where they have to understand genre right. They have to have some sort of literary knowledge when it comes to just reading. So that fluency is now not just, or that proficiency is now just not based in fluency. But now most third grade teachers were focused on that outcome. Can you write about it, can you speak about it, can you have a conversation about it right, can you analyze it? So when we think about fluency just at its basis, we think about accuracy, we think about the rate and we think about the expression.

Janee' Butler:

But when we're in these silos, grade levels, we tend to think about fluency differently. We think about it holistically, we think about it in a space of what's the outcome that I need or the product that I need from my particular students. So most of the time we have to take a step back, especially in third grade. What did they come with? What did they miss?

Janee' Butler:

So in third grade we really should be beyond that accuracy in rate, in expression. We should really be in a space where they're readers, they're now comprehenders. Can they truly comprehend what they're reading? Can they bring something to the text beyond what's given? And in second grade we're trying to really fine tune that fluency, but what we find is that the decoding is not there because some things have been missed in first grade, right. So it is oftentimes it's very murky waters when we try to define fluency upon grade levels, because it changes and then you have a different body of students every single year, so that changes how you approach things. But by the time they leave third grade they should be in the space of being able to speak about a text, write about a text and be independent readers and thinkers. And we have to really ask ourselves is that happening in third grade by the time they leave us.

Melissa:

Yeah, it's so interesting how I love the word you used was murky waters, right, or the phrase you used, murky waters, because it is so many different things that go into fluency and you mentioned those ones, the big ones that go into fluency accuracy, rate expression. They're the ones we hear all the time. Can you talk a little bit more about? You've mentioned other genre, comprehension, even writing and speaking. How do those connect back to the fluency? I just want to make sure we stamp that.

Janee' Butler:

So for fluency, if we do not attend to fluency at its very basic level, for those students where it's isolated, what tends to happen is, by the time they get to a space where they have to be able to write, they have to be able to speak, they have to be able to analyze we know that if they're not reading with ease or with little effort, at that point in time all of that is lost.

Janee' Butler:

We know they're spending a lot of their time, that cognitive flexibility that they should be having within the brain. They're spending a lot of that time focusing on just reading a text alone. So you'll hear the choppiness, you'll hear the rate being slowed down, you'll lose the expression and if you know the expression isn't there, then they're not comprehending what's actually on that page, right? So then when they go to speak about it, they're like what did I just read, right? And then you can't write about what you don't know about. So how am I going to be able to write about it? I couldn't even speak about it, right? So you lose a lot of the warning outcomes that we talk about in upper ed spaces. We lose those outcomes because our students are solely focused on the task at hand and for them that task is getting just through that text, so everything else is just lost to them.

Melissa:

Yeah, and, like you mentioned, the texts just keep getting more difficult and different varieties of text, and that's hard when you're still dealing with those very basics of reading.

Janee' Butler:

Right.

Lori:

For sure it's reminded me of a graphic that we have in our book, or an image that we have in our book, melissa, of the brain where, when students are focused more on the accuracy and decoding piece, that's, like you know, more pink in the brain and that's a really big oval. Imagine that in a graphic in your brain. And then, as they start to transition to having accuracy mastered, then that pink circle shrinks because they need it less and less often and then a bigger circle grows for all the other things that you just talked about, Janae.

Janee' Butler:

Yeah, absolutely. And we call that cognitive overload, right, when they're just in that space where they're just being overworked, and then that's when you lose the beauty of just learning, the beauty of reading, and that's when our students tend to start to say I don't like to read, right, you don't like what you're not good at, right. I have my son right now. He's trying we're in a space he's for, so he's trying to get him to, you know, start writing. He's writing certain letters he can read to no end. He cannot or he does not like to write because he's not as good at it. So that never leaves you. Even you, when you're young, you know when I'm not good at something, I don't want to do it. So a lot of students, that's what happens, especially in your upper grade levels, then secondary spaces, middle school spaces, you tend to find your students who have lost the desire to learn because they figure they're not good at it.

Melissa:

Yeah, absolutely. Lori and I both taught at the upper grade levels, lori at upper elementary, I've taught middle. We both did high school. So we, we saw those challenges firsthand and you're I mean students come at all different levels. Right, there's different things that they're missing when they get to you in those upper grades. So we wanted to actually ask you about the challenges you know and we we know that it's actually challenges both for the student, like the one you were just talking about, but also challenges for teachers, and we know that because we experienced it. But let's start with the students. I want to dig in a little more there. So can you share about some other challenges that students face because they don't come as fluent readers?

Janee' Butler:

Yes, so in secondary, of course we can. We can really list out what tends to happen in secondary. Right, the need for them to be able to be in within a text is very, very significant to their learning at every single, in every single content area, right? So we begin to see a lot of those behavior challenges that teachers face, but students face as well. Right, we begin to see the lack of motivation, that intrinsic motivation. We begin to see that decrease within students. We often see a lot of students because of it. They tend to drop out. Right, and there's many other elements.

Janee' Butler:

That happens when you're in secondary, because now you are stepping into a space of adulthood eventually and you are much more aware of your strengths and weaknesses. So when you tend to be in a space of being aware, self-aware, what you can do is much harder. It's a challenge for anybody to pull you out of that unless somebody gives you that real attention, right, that intentional attention. And in middle school what tends to happen is there is a there a lot going on. The hormones are changing, your friend groups are changing. You may have switched schools. There's different curriculums. I mean in, you know, I'm in New Orleans, so we have a charter network and not every charter has the same curriculum. So that also places a challenge and a burden on certain students. So if you, in a lot of our schools, go from K to eighth grade, so they spent majority of their school career within a certain curriculum and then by the time they get to high school, the curriculum changes, right? The expectations also changes. So then you are trying to navigate an entirely new rigor of content, along with these skills that you should have come with, these ancillary skills that you should have come with, as well as what are the requirements that I now have in a secondary space, right? So that's a big skip for a middle school student.

Janee' Butler:

And then in middle school we're just trying to figure out where do I fit in all of this socially? Where do I really fit? How does learning fit? How does literacy fit? What's the motivating factors for me to be fluent within a certain just language? In general? Right, that we tend to miss, that we often want to just navigate the academic space, but there is a lot of emotional things that are going on, trying to figure out what am I good at? Who am I as a student? Right, finding my own voice?

Janee' Butler:

I tell teachers all the time in first or really just in that lower elementary space, we're trying to get you in a seat, trying to get you to pay attention, trying to get you to focus, and a lot of the times we tend to go tone deaf to our students. We don't hear them quite as much because they're trying to give, give, give and give and by the time they get to fourth grade, by the time they get to middle school and high school, where in that has their voice returned? Right? Where in that have that child? That was very expressive. Where is that now within that piece? Because that is huge for literacy, because you have to be able to speak about what you're going to write about. And we have to remember that we are trying to birth not only good readers but we're trying to get them to a space where they are active learners, they have their own thoughts, they can analyze the text because they have their own thoughts. So I know it's kind of going on a tangent, but we have to remember that they're humans and we have to get them in a space of understanding what's going on within themselves, as well as the language that they're bringing to that actual literacy piece within context that they're reading and trying to navigate all the emotional elements that are happening.

Janee' Butler:

When we're in middle school space, when we're in that upper elementary space, we probably have a more handle on our students and we know what can be the challenges for them. It's more isolated at that point. Right In upper elementary and secondary it's not isolated skills anymore. Everything is comprehensive, everything comes together and makes that whole literacy journey for them, whereas in those elementary, lower elementary and upper elementary spaces we tend to have an idea of where they have fallen short in their journey as far as those foundational skills and we can kind of catch them up at that point.

Janee' Butler:

So the biggest challenge that I see for upper and secondary spaces is that they have to figure out where do I even start? How do I even get the ball rolling to get the student to where they need to be without compromising the actual grade level appropriateness they should be within, like how do I not compromise that and still attend to what they really need? And that is the biggest challenge that I think that our teachers are going to have and for our students, the biggest challenge is that motivating factor. What's going to get me to want to do for, not only for the teacher, but really for myself. What's going to get me to really want to put the best effort to do?

Lori:

Such a good point. You're taking me back to my high school days and I'm just thinking. You know it does compound by the time they're in high school. It's just like there's so many things. You're just sifting through sand trying to figure out okay, what does this student need to be able to read with accuracy? What does this student need to be able to read with expression? Right, like you're really digging in but then also thinking about them holistically as a person, because they are their own people, and what are they doing that is to distract you or to distract them from this problem, right In our pre-call.

Lori:

Janae, you mentioned at the high school level students often you know you mentioned it here too but they often drop out, and so I think my key takeaway here is like there, it's just the whole child at that point is really, really important and making those connections, as well as sifting through to get to the root of these reading difficulties, these, you know what is making their fluency struggle at the, especially at the secondary level. I do want to talk about the teacher challenges. I just think that's really important too. We're kind of alluding to it, but just to kind of name it. So the student challenge becomes a teacher challenge, right? Because there are so many things lacking at the system level, and I'll just name a few. So, like a lack of interventions, scheduling struggles, curriculum choices, just so many more. I could go on. But I'm wondering if you could kind of share what the challenges are for teachers and what to do if students aren't proficient readers at that point.

Janee' Butler:

Right? So in high school, we tend to see the schedule be the biggest issue, right? Or do we even have anyone in the building who have the necessary skill set and capacity to teach at those set levels? Because most of the time, our high school systems are employing people who are high school teachers who've been through secondary training, teachers who've been through secondary training. They necessarily have not been through an elementary space or in elementary space or been through the set trainings that we have to go through when we are in or going through elementary training for it to be a teacher.

Janee' Butler:

So what we tend to see is the scheduling is an issue, because I can throw out what assessments to use, I can say what curriculum to use, I can say what supports you can be using, but if you don't have the time to do them, they're no good to any teacher, right? So the scheduling is one of the major factors here when it comes to those students in secondary spaces, as well as them having the credits in order to graduate. So we're looking now at this legal document that's telling us that they have to have so many credits, right, and so many hours within this content area. Where can I pull from to give them what they truly need to be successful. And that's where a lot of our secondary administrators are in the space of how do I navigate this and how do I leverage my schedule to get what I need out of it as an educator and to give what I need to my particular students. So that is one of the biggest challenges that I see when it comes to those secondary spaces. The other challenge is pinpointing what is the biggest concern for those particular students and how do I do that? What assessments am I pulling from right? Who's going to administer that actual assessment, right?

Janee' Butler:

So a lot of the times we see that our teachers they don't even know where to begin in secondary because they don't have the necessary literacy knowledge that we have at the lower level, because our skill set is so isolated that in their space it's not really as well as not. It's not isolated anymore, right? Well, it's not. It's not isolated anymore, right? So they have to figure out what training can I take so I can be best equipped? What assessments can I use? How do I train myself, or get them said training, to administer this test? Then the biggie on top of that is what if I have so many students who are falling across the entire spectrum. How do I attack that? Well, the scheduling is now into play. I may not have an interventionist to help me out, like we would see in our lower grades. How do I then do all of that Right? So they have to get very creative with time. And if they have the time let's say an idea where you have the time and the schedule is on your side and you have the bodies to do this in secondary spaces then you would have to put those students in set groups according to their decoding ability, that's if they can decode right.

Janee' Butler:

So at that decoding ability, you would then have to front load a lot of that information that you will see in your specific content areas and let's just say we're talking strictly ELA.

Janee' Butler:

You would have to front load a lot of that information in those said small groups. You're targeting that decoding deficiency, but then you're also taking them the grade level appropriate tech that you're learning in the classroom and you're also taking them the grade level appropriate text that you're learning in the classroom and you're presenting that to them before you present it to the whole group. So that way the motivation will skyrocket, because they've already seen the text. They're familiar with the text. You've talked about the text. You've read the text multiple times. You've done so much with this text in small group that when they're in whole group their esteem to be able to attend to the conversation, to be present, to be motivated to participate will go up much higher because they had some level of exposure to that text. So you really would have to front load a lot of that information before you put them in a whole group setting. Now how do you do that in high school?

Lori:

Is that the million dollar?

Janee' Butler:

question, that is, the million dollar question. What time do you have? What space do you have? How many groups are you now talking about at this point? How many bodies, as far as teacher, can do this work with you?

Janee' Butler:

So I mean, it's a lot of things that come into play and we know by the time they get to high school, our children should be identified. They should already have been through some sort of RTI process. So all of those things, all of those factors that we tend to in lower grades and we attend to through the bodies because we have the funding to do so, you don't have that in high schools, because their thought is this should have been caught way earlier. But we know that's not the truth. We know that's not true. And I tell teachers all the time I taught K-2, I know what you're getting and I just leave it at that. I know exactly what you're getting. So I know what you're up against. I totally understand it. And if it hasn't been corrected by a certain grade level, we know what's going to happen to them when they get to high school and it gets to middle school.

Melissa:

Janae, you brought me right back to my first year of teaching, which actually was in New Orleans, which is funny because you're in New Orleans as well. But I taught ninth grade and the student. But I taught ninth grade and I didn't even know where my students were at first. I was trained as a high school English teacher. So even English teachers that doesn't mean they have the training they need, because I was taught how to teach literature, how to teach high school standards. I was not taught how to identify where students needed to be with decoding and fluency and I had no idea.

Melissa:

But I was given in ninth grade class, I was given, along with the ninth grade textbook, a scripted curriculum that was supposed to help my students with those basic skills that I was supposed to do at the same time as the ninth grade curriculum and get this. All of my students said we had this same thing in middle school, like they had already done the same scripted curriculum, and I was just like what am I supposed to do with this? This is like this is a mess. I don't have. What am I supposed to do with this? This is like this is a mess. I don't have enough time. I have 30 students in my class and now I have a curriculum that's not probably very helpful, since they've already been through it and I don't know enough to do anything with this. So thank you for bringing up all those things, because I experienced them all in my first year of teaching and it was very hard.

Janee' Butler:

Yeah, the scripted curriculums. We tend to think that it solves all of the problems. Right, just give it to them. It's scripted, it's all there. But we know curriculums do not teach children, teachers do. And if that teacher doesn't bring a level of knowledge to it, we know what's going to happen when it's time for that instructional delivery.

Melissa:

So yeah, I had students all over. You know, I had one student who was a beautiful reader I mean, fluent isn't even the word to describe it. She was beautiful. I would have her read it aloud all the time because she was so beautiful at reading to students who were really struggling to even pronounce words. You know, it was all over the board and so one's curriculum for everybody was not yeah.

Janee' Butler:

And just think about that. As a ninth grade teacher, you notice that there's a student in the classroom. They can even pronounce the words correctly. How many of our ninth grade teachers can really say that, oh, that's probably an oral language deficiency. How long have you had that? Is it a speech delay? Right. And I even tell my kinder teachers you don't know what you're getting, right. You don't know if they've been to pre-K, you don't even know if they stepped foot in anybody's daycare or child care center. You have no idea what this child's milestone developments were as an infant, right? So there's a lot of things that we tend to negate when it comes to servicing our students. We just and just think about it when they're in up, elementary, middle and high school. Right, it's now I need you to produce. I need you to be taking this standard-based assessment and be masterful at it.

Lori:

And what I think gets me too is that we ask our secondary teachers to do so much, but most of the time I would say the majority of the time, they're given so much less time than the elementary. Like you know, and I remember having a coaching, being a coach for multiple schools and talking with a leader in one of the schools I was coaching and the middle school classes were implementing you know that next year they were implementing a 90 minute curriculum. It would take them 90 minutes to do a lesson as per the curriculum. The leader had in the schedule, 45 minute class periods, and I said I really don't understand how this is going to work. I feel like you're setting everyone up to fail, like including you and me, and like, literally, and the students and everyone.

Lori:

I'm trying to say this very eloquently and it wasn't working. The teachers ended up with the 45 minutes and it was disastrous. You know, I just think, as in schools, yeah, I know there are a lot of things that we have to deal with, but I think that we, if we can control the controllables and the things that we can do to set teachers and students up for success, like those are the things we, we can do. So, melissa, I know that you're going to transition us to talk about what we can do, because Janae is going to tell us some helpful tips.

Melissa:

Exactly that's what I was just about to say. I mean, like we have definitely talked a lot about challenges, but you know our listeners want to hear what they can do. And I just wanted to bring up I know, one thing that you know we, I think all used to rely on a little bit was kind of that whole guided reading level text idea where it was like, okay, well, I'll find a different text for this student and that will solve problems and it probably did mitigate some of those challenges that you brought up, but it doesn't really solve the root issue that we want to solve. So can you share some tips for teachers who might be in this place of having a shorter class time, you know not really having the intervention that we hope we could have, but what are some things they can do to try and help the students they have in front of them to become fluent readers?

Janee' Butler:

The biggest thing that I can say is try to figure out whether it be through an assessment, whether it be informal or formal try to figure out what's your greatest need within that classroom. The biggest thing that I tend to see as our students progress past that fluency stage and we're now in that language comprehension layer, is that they miss a big piece of language how to sift through the language and really understand the language that they're in. And a lot of the time it's because in lower grades we are so isolated and trying to get them to just read that we forget there's a whole nother layer of language that's at play and if we can get all of our teachers in a space of just understanding that we're teaching our students a language system and not just how to read, they will be in a much better space by the time they get to, um said, middle school and high school.

Melissa:

Do you have any concrete examples for that?

Janee' Butler:

Yeah. So, for example, when we have and this is the best example I can give you I want you to think about your EL students and this is easy because we can level with and understand this, because they're coming to a language that is very, very new, right, we have no idea where they are in their language system, and usually we do test them when they come into a public education setting, right, we do that at-home survey to see where they are in their language development. And when you have students who've never, who's never, been in the language itself per se, of course the reading is hard, but the language itself is hard, right, that oral language development is just hard. So, like when our EL students they're like kids, almost like little babies, toddlers, new in the system, but they're very literal thinkers. I see what you're saying, I'm new to this, I'm very new to this language. And then I start speaking to you or I give you text that has very nuanced structures or is very pretty and fancy, or start using terms like I'm so blue and you think about what that means, and like blue, you're not a color, like it's very literal, right, and they understand that that's language play, that I'm saying I'm sad, or you are a doll, I'm singing, she's nice, and they they're thinking, oh, an actual doll. They're very new to the language.

Janee' Butler:

So when I don't teach my students the language systems at a very early stage, when I get to high school, what happens? The text is very rigorous. We do not speak how we write. I don't care what anyone tells you. Our students learn language, or the language that they, the academic language or the academic style of literacy that we see. They learn it through reading. They learn it through those rigorous style texts that have text complexity all through it, where there's different arrangements and orders of your sentence structures, and half of the time our students have not been exposed to that. So in a high school space they're struggling to even understand what's going on in the text because it's dense, the sentence order is all over the place, it's lengthy, you have the author's voice in it, you have literary devices. That's coming to play. You have so many themes, content, vocabulary, yes.

Janee' Butler:

So as a teacher I really have to take a step back, look at that text and say, whoa, what's going to give my students the most trouble? Right, and when I usually do like so at the center, you know we do training and when we would do training for our upper school students, our upper school educators, we would tell them to really annotate that text. I don't care how many times you've read that book, you need to read it again from the lens of what do my students now need or what they will now struggle in. So I would tell, get them three highlighters. Take those three highlighters and have each highlighter be something that you're looking for. Your pink will be the key vocabulary. Your green will be the sentence density and order. Which one of those, or how many of those sentences, or pinpoint the sentences that will give them difficulty. Have your last color be an ancillary for miscellaneous or whatever else you think is going to happen within that text while they're reading it.

Janee' Butler:

Show your students that you're doing this right. I tell teachers all the time I don't know about you, but when I read, especially if I'm reading a content heavy book I have notes, post-it notes, all through it. I have stuff written in the margin. I have all sorts of highlighters written out. Show your students what it takes, all of those cognitive lows that we go through as a reader, that that never leaves you, that you can do the same thing.

Janee' Butler:

But the biggest thing is really taking a step back and looking at how dense is this text for my students, what exactly is going on in this story so that they truly understand, or they truly understand what's the author's purpose? How many of us understand? What's even the purpose of us reading this today? What content is inside of this that I need to know? What background knowledge I need to know? A lot of us like to jump right into that text without doing any of the legwork to really understand what's going on in it. What will give my students the most difficulty? How am I going to attend to those difficulties, right? What am I really going to do for those students who cannot read at all? Right, that I know who have just difficulty just getting past the first page? And you really have to take a step back and really plan and not be such a okay, I'm going to just read from a script.

Melissa:

You really have to plan. Yeah, and I just wanted to add everything you just said too, I think is really helpful for assessments, because I think too often when reading assessments we give them something to read the questions and then when, when teachers are analyzing, we're only looking at the questions and the responses of how they did, but I think analyzing the text of that assessment, it gives you so much more information than you can get just from how they answered it.

Janee' Butler:

So much more and you get a level of engagement that you normally would not get right. And you also. Teachers also want to realize that when they're in middle and high school you want to start to take a back seat right. Lower grades, I mean. I had an administrator. I love her to death. She would always tell us if you're going home tired, then that means you're doing the work and they're not doing enough of it. Right. And in lower school that's hard to do. You know they're not independent yet.

Janee' Butler:

But in upper elementary and high school that is very true. At a certain point you should be able to take a step back. If you've given them all the necessities to succeed, you should be able to take a step back and allow less teacher talk and allow more student talk, allow that student discourse. And the only way you're going to get that student discourse if you give them the said things that they need, those tools like annotating a text, being able to recognize and think about what you're thinking. That's a true thing you know. So how do you get them in that space to be independent thinkers and doers in your classroom? And it does take a lot of legwork at the beginning. It does especially if you have students who are not used to that style of teaching.

Lori:

Yeah, I love that. I love that you're the way that, just like going home and being like, oh my gosh, if I'm tired, I'm doing more work. I think of it like I think about me as a parent. I'm always trying to work myself out of a job. Right, I don't want to go to college with my kid, I don't want to live in her house and make her lunch every day. We want to be working ourselves out of a job so that our students are, by the end of the year, those independent thinkers and readers and writers, or at least well on their way, especially in those older grades.

Lori:

And what I want to add to what you just said is that we can do this for any subject. We are not just talking about ELA here. Science teachers, social studies teachers, health teachers everyone can rally around this idea of getting into the text that students will be reading. Students will be working with and using those three highlighter colors. I love that. It's such a practical approach in saying you know what's the key vocabulary, where are the tricky sentences or the tricky parts here that they're going to struggle with? And then miscellaneous color and maybe that's like oh, my struggling readers are really going to struggle with this pronoun here because they might not be sure what it refers to and just kind of like annotating, like that.

Lori:

And I think, then, that we can create opportunities for like, for example, for repeated readings of chunks of text where, as teachers, we can say like, oh, this part's really, really important.

Lori:

I'm going to pull that out. This is going to be a part where, when students come in as their entry work you know, I'm thinking secondary grades you always have that like five minutes between classes and the two minutes of students sit down and start their class period and you're, you know, you're. I feel like I was always looking for something meaningful to do during that time. That could be the time where you're pulling out the paragraph that is really important, where students are partner reading with each other. Maybe they're independently reading it aloud, maybe, if there's a group of students you know might struggle with it, maybe you have them pulled over to the side and you're just reading it to them. Everybody else is reading together. There's just so many creative ways to approach this and think of it like we're problem solvers, right, rather than just like a constant cycle of oh my gosh, this is overwhelming at the secondary level. So I really appreciate your like really tangible recommendations.

Melissa:

Today. I'm wondering if you have any tips for if students are still struggling with decoding, and I mean, I'm trying to think, are there ways you can work in with like multisyllabic words and things that don't make it feel like, oh, we're going back to what we did in kindergarten and first grade.

Janee' Butler:

Yes, I am so glad you said that, because teachers have to be aware that of course we talked, we hit on this earlier, where the emotional state is now there, the self-esteem, the self-worth, um, everybody being aware of who's smart, who's not, who can read, who cannot, that sort of thing. Conversations are happening now in those spaces so they really have to be aware of what they're putting in front of those students. That can be overly simplified phonics skills or in their head, these are for babies, this is for first graders. This is not my grade level.

Janee' Butler:

So the way that I tell teachers to attack that is use that syllable division, to use the six syllable types within much larger words. So you can do this by using those six syllable types. With those six syllable types will span all of your phonics skills and if you teach it in such a way to see the actual parts in a word and then will leverage you into a space of teaching the morph actual parts in a word, and then we'll leverage you into a space of teaching the morphemes in a word, but then leverage you into a space of being able to teach the etymology of words, you can definitely get them up to speed much faster. Does it take a skilled teacher to do this? Yes, but I would root them in a space of using your, your, um, your six syllable types, using syllable division to help anchor them into those spaces. So, use the morphology, use the animatron.

Janee' Butler:

One of my favorite books and I may have it in my office, guys, one of my favorite books, I think you guys remember, is it katherine grace? I think it's phoneme grapheme.

Lori:

Well, let Melissa's going to find it really quickly.

Janee' Butler:

Yeah, it's one of my favorite books. It's all about syllable division, how to teach it. It gives you words that are not common to the average reader, so it really hits on vocabulary. It's absolutely amazing reader. So it really hits on vocabulary. It's absolutely amazing.

Melissa:

It's a big, thick spiral but it's now published by really great reading, I think. Yeah, phonics and Spelling Through Phoneme Grapheme.

Janee' Butler:

Mapping by Catherine Grace. Yes, and it's all rooted in the six syllable types. It is absolutely phenomenal. I tell any teacher who's in this space whether in second and above, this is what you need to use.

Melissa:

That's so fun. I would never think this book for second and above. Just from the title I would think, oh, this is for a K-2 teacher. So I'm really glad you recommended it.

Janee' Butler:

The vocabulary, because I used it with a third grade student before and because he was at a level that was so high and the vocabulary that's inside of that book is phenomenal. It and that's the type of vocabulary that you want to give to your older students to make sure that you're not in the space where it's overly simplified phonic skills. That is also going to help leverage them into a space to speed up their oral language, to speed up their vocabulary development so that when they're in said content areas they're able to get through the text much quicker than they probably would or have a better understanding. So that is one of my favorite books to recommend, because a lot of people are like well, how do I do that? Like she shows you, she gives you the stages. It's absolutely phenomenal.

Lori:

Awesome. We'll link that in our show notes for everyone too, All right. So, Janae, is there anything else you want everyone to know about in relation to this topic? Like one thing to leave everyone with.

Janee' Butler:

I will say that, and I know a lot of people say this when we talk about K-2 literacy instruction. But that robust phonics system, that scope and sequence that we need to have and this is more for a declaration to our admins and our school agencies to really think about, what are our students missing in that nine month span that we have with them? Because that is what's really keeping our students in this space and teachers in the space of trying to catch up. Right, we all know, in nine months of school, we tend to think that, oh, we have them for nine months, they'll be getting those nine months. They're going to hit everything in the curriculum and we know that does not happen in education.

Janee' Butler:

So we really have to take a step back as third grade teachers, as fourth grade teachers, as sixth grade teachers, because this is the time to catch them up, to really say what did they miss in second grade? What did you not teach? It takes a lot of cross-grade level planning when did you stop in your curriculum? As a second grade teacher? What are the struggles that I'm going to hit? As far as my standards this is now looking at the vertical progression of standards right, what did I not tend to or could not tend to as a teacher for those grade levels that's below me or that's coming after me, and if we can do that, we're able to put those teachers at a different space to be able to attend to what they did miss. What can I now teach at the beginning of the school year to really focus on that they may have missed, to make sure that I set them up or I put them on a different playing field to be able to do what they need to do in fourth grade at grade level, do what they need to do at grade level in sixth grade, right, and that's where you tend to see the issues, because we know that literacy changes by the time they get to fourth grade. It's so content specific, it's so content heavy. I'm expecting them to pick up a pencil and actually, right now, type right.

Janee' Butler:

So now you have an add layer, right, I have to now write it and then type it or something, just go straight to typing it and that's a whole nother conversation, but you know. So you have to really think about what are they missing? And it's not something that's taboo, it's not something that we should really put a lot of emphasis on. Oh, the teacher missed it and didn't do this. It's more so of listen. We had all this to do within a school year. We missed this many days. Covid happened, whatever happened, this is where we left off.

Janee' Butler:

And, as a third grade teacher, this is where you need to pick up, because if you don't pick up here, they will struggle for you when you get to your later lessons or in the conversation about rigorous text. They're going to struggle, so we have to have those tough conversations. Conversation about rigorous text they're going to struggle, so we have to have those tough conversations. Edmond has to force our teachers to have those tough conversations and to be transparent, because that's the only way our students are going to grow and it's the only way that, as educators, we won't be in a space of trying to spin our wheels much later in their academic careers.

Janee' Butler:

In my high school and middle school, I would say give yourself grace and give your students grace. The best thing you can do is to build your relationships. Some of the best teachers you'll find in secondary are the ones who spend time building the relationship. If you build that relationship with those students, you will find they will do more for you than they would do for themselves. And that is the biggest thing that we want our students to be in the space of finding an ally, an adult ally that can guide them through this, especially if they're struggling in certain areas.

Melissa:

And I love how you said that it's not a blame of the student, it's not putting blame on the teacher, it's just being honest about where everybody is so that we can help the students be as successful as we can.

Lori:

Yeah, and a big plug there for high quality curriculum materials, because when you have those materials it makes it a whole lot easier to do what you just described.

Janee' Butler:

And don't be afraid to go find your lower grade teachers, your elementary teachers, and ask them hey, what screeners should I be using? Some really good ones. You can go on really great reading. They have some that span second to 12th grade. If you're looking for a diagnostic decoding survey, dibbles, go all the way to eighth grade. If you don't understand, don't understand dibbles. Find somebody who does.

Janee' Butler:

There's many social media pages, groups like the science of reading. What I didn't learn in college, what's dibbles? Fine, go on to those platforms. Join them as a second grade, as a secondary educator, as a middle school educator. Join those lower grade platforms that you can ask those questions and it's a safe space to ask, right? So you have other screeners, like Rise.

Janee' Butler:

So you just ask those questions like what screeners should I be using or could be using for my older students and you really want to focus on can they simply decode? Because if they spend too much time trying to decode the print, you know everything is lost. I have to get them to a threshold where the decoding is complementing the comprehension. If I'm not there, the comprehension will not happen. You have to get them to a space of can they simply decode for me? Can they understand or can they read, rather for accuracy for that particular text. And if you got them there, then you know that your space that you need to now move through is understanding that rate and that expression and really still giving them that language development, like, don't lose the oral language development, they have to understand the language.

Lori:

Well, we could talk all day, janae, but can you tell our listeners where they can find you? Are you doing any conferences or anything in the fall, or maybe in 2025? Maybe you want to plug Plane Talk coming up.

Janee' Butler:

Well, you guys can always find me at Plane Talk. That is my duty every single year. I have spoken at Plane Talk before, I'm not sure, but I'm going to speak at 2025. But if you certainly would like to connect with me, I will be at Plane Talk always in New Orleans, at the Hilton Riverside. This year or this coming year, it will be the February 12th through the 14th. Check me on that. We are in the thick of planning. You can always find me or you can always email me at janae at mycllorg. You can visit us at mycllorg and you'll find all my contact information there as well. I'm always all over. I'm always at different conferences. We do travel, so if you ever need me to come out and speak or do anything, I am your girl. So I look forward to connecting.

Melissa:

Well, thank you so much for this conversation. It has really brought me back to my teaching days, especially in the high school, which I haven't thought about in a while. So thank you for bringing up all those challenges that we know teachers are facing, but also giving some really great ideas and resources to be able to fill in those gaps that we know our students need.

Janee' Butler:

So thank you so much, denae. Thank you, guys, for having me.

Melissa:

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Lori:

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Melissa:

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Lori:

We appreciate you so much and we're so glad you're here to learn with us.