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Exploring the Research Behind Paired Oral Reading with Jake Downs

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Episode 224 

Helping students become fluent, confident readers isn’t always easy—especially when they’re still sounding out words and struggling with comprehension. That’s why Synchronous Paired Oral Reading Techniques (SPORT) is a game-changer.

In this episode, we’re joined by Jake Downs, assistant professor at Utah State University and host of the Teaching Literacy podcast, to break down:
✅ What SPORT is and why it works
✅ How to implement it tomorrow with minimal prep
✅ The research behind fluency, comprehension, and confidence gains

If you're looking for a practical, evidence-based way to help students become stronger readers, this episode is for you! 🎧


RESOURCES 


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 :

helping students become fluent, confident readers isn't always easy. It can feel frustrating for students if they are still sounding out words and struggling to make meaning. Building fluency in students is critical and having a structure for teaching and practicing fluency is even more important that's where synchronous paired oral reading techniques or sport comes in.

Lori:

In today's episode we're talking with Jake Downs, assistant professor at Utah State University and host of the Teaching Literacy podcast. Personally, it's one of our favorite podcasts. Jake will break down exactly how sport works, how you can start using it tomorrow and what the research says about its impact on fluency, comprehension and confidence. 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 realized there was so much more to learn about how to teach reading and writing.

Melissa :

Lori, and I can't wait to keep learning with you today.

Lori:

Hi, jake, welcome to the podcast. We're so happy you're here.

Jake Downs:

Hey, melissa and Lori, Thanks for having me on the show. Glad to be here today.

Melissa :

Yeah, thank you. We've been on your podcast, now you're on our podcast. We are so excited.

Jake Downs:

Lots of great stuff to talk about.

Melissa :

Yeah, and we're talking all about synchronous paired oral reading, or really fun acronym we get to use this whole time is SPORT. So for teachers who may not be familiar with this, can you just give everyone a quick overview of this? Synchronous paired oral reading? And the T is techniques correct.

Jake Downs:

Yes T. Techniques yeah T techniques.

Jake Downs:

So sport is pretty straightforward it's a pairing between a higher achieving reader and a lower achieving reader and this pair will synchronously, corally read a text or a series of texts, and it can be the tutor. The lead reader can be a same age peer, can be a cross age peer or can be an adult peer as well. So more practically, you know what that means is there can be lots of different configurations that fit that definition. So this is something that can fit into your core instruction, your tier one reading time. It can fit into content area text. When you use those. It can be supplemental reading that occurs during the day, or it can also be something a bit more structured, with some adult tutoring or intervention that happens, and I'm sure we can get to each of those throughout the conversation.

Lori:

So it sounds really flexible. It sounds like a flexible technique and I'm curious how you learned about it and what made you interested in studying it.

Jake Downs:

Yeah, the short version is when I was very first beginning my doctorate program, I was a fourth grade teacher by day, a PhD student by night and there was a study on dyad reading, one specific type of sport, that had just been published and had been done here at Utah State and my principal had.

Jake Downs:

There was a flyer that the state of Utah, usbe, had kind of done, a little flyer kind of talking about the study and the results.

Jake Downs:

And my principal had somehow gotten a hold of that and Shelly Healy gave that to me and said hey, I know you're starting a PhD, I know you're interested in reading research, you might be interested in this. And one of the authors on that study was Dr Kit Moore, who just happened to be over the doc program and was sort of my initial advisor. And so I started talking with her about the study and I was teaching fourth grade so I was really caring about how do I help my students access grade level text, challenging text, how do I support my students who need support? And it just kind of evolved and blossomed from there. So I ended up doing we did a study that was published in 2020. And then I ended up doing my dissertation that looked at sort of a constellation of practices that have that paired oral reading between a higher achieving reader and a lower achieving reader and that's, you know, now been published in a couple different places as well. There's a much longer version, but that's the brief version.

Melissa :

Let's just dive in. People want to know what does this actually look like in their classroom, and you mentioned, you said, dyad reading is like one example. So I'm assuming what we're talking about here is not just one way to do this right, but this it's more of an umbrella, like the synchronized I'm going to get it wrong again synchronous paired oral reading techniques. There's several of them, correct? So can you talk to us about, like, what are all those different techniques and what's what's the kind of the common denominator between them?

Jake Downs:

Yeah.

Jake Downs:

So for the nerdy folks, the forum, the four sub practices that when I went out to the literature and I tried to see, okay, what are the practices that use parallel reading between a high achieving reading and a low achieving? Those four practices were neurologic impress method, which was developed in the US in the 60s and has been in and out of the literature. Studies have been done on and off for the past 50-ish years. There's paired reading, which is the UK version, capital P, capital R on paired reading. It's a specific approach. Then there is dyad reading, which those two ones I just mentioned in the early days used a lot of adult tutoring. Newer versions have started to be more flexible and use peer tutoring or adult tutoring. So one version that's just exclusively peer tutors has been called dyad reading. And then Dr Chase Young, who you've all had on the podcast I've had on my podcast. He'd had an innovation in the 2010s called Read to Impress, which was an adult tutor with a reader and they would synchronously read the text but then it's stacked in repeated reading and so the student would go back and reread portions of it. That broad literature and in reading the past 60 years of research on this, there's different times that I think would be really practical for teachers to use it during the day and these are all to one degree or another demonstrated in the literature. But it's something that is usable for core reading instruction time and we can get into the nuts and bolts of what that can look like.

Jake Downs:

But you know also if I'm using content area tech, so I'm using you know I'm fifth grade my seed standards. I'm looking at how energy moves through an ecosystem. If I have a text on that, you know I can use parallel reading in my classroom to do that. It can also be supplemental reading during the day. You know, sometimes we just want to stack in more opportunity for students in connected text for longer periods of time to build stamina, to help get them engaged in text, help them find text they really enjoy. But it can also be used as intervention or an additional level support of if I have a student that is really needing some growth in reading fluency. So support and accuracy support and ORF myself as a teacher or I might have a paraprofessional or I might have a parent volunteer that I can train to go and do some of this with a student. So those are kind of the times that it might work and we can get into brass tacks, what each of those look like.

Jake Downs:

But thinking it's flexible also is like well, I could use students within my classroom to be a lead reader, to be a tutor. I could use students in the next grade up, you know, from the fourth grade teacher down the hall, the fifth grade teacher down the hall. I could pull some of those students we find a common time, have them be lead readers. But it could also be adult tutors. And what I like in some of Chase Young's studies. Chase Young's studies is you know he's used the people at the front office. He's used the janitor is you know he's used the people at the front office. He's used the janitor. I mean sort of any, any body within the school that is you know that can read and that's viable as a tutor. You know he's pulled those adults in to help support some of these lowest achieving readers and being able to develop in their accuracy, their fluency and comprehension.

Melissa :

Just a quick side note at my son's school they do like a PBIS type thing, you know, where they earn bucks of some kind and then they turn those in to get something and one of the prizes that is like the most popular is the fifth graders and the fourth graders get to go read to the kindergarten and first graders and they love it. I mean, like you know, they teachers love it because it doesn't it. I mean, like you know, teachers love it because it doesn't cost any money to do anything. You know, but it's also like the kids love reading to the younger kids. It's really, really cool.

Jake Downs:

That's such a great point, right. That like that is a win, win, win, win. Like that for kindergarten and first grade kids. Like the fourth and fifth grade students are just like the coolest, like they are at the peak of what it means to be cool. But for whatever reason, like fourth and fifth graders when they sometimes get a little. I mean, I've got a fifth grader at home, right, and he's starting to get a little too cool for some things. But I guarantee you if his teacher said we're going to read to kindergartners, he'd be all in. Cost effective, right, it doesn't cost any money. It's a little bit of time. But we don't even need special books. Like what books are you already using? Like, why reinvent the wheel? Like, let's just bake with the flour we've got and figure out effective ways to, you know, to do things with the existing ingredients we've got.

Melissa :

Can we talk a little bit about what happens in those? Because you know, I'm thinking as a teacher now, like okay, I have my tutor and my tutee and they're reading together, but like are there specific things that should be happening? Were they the same in all of those that you mentioned or were they different?

Jake Downs:

Yeah, the basic ingredient here is the lead reader and the assisted reader are choral, reading the text out loud at the same time. Now there are some, you know, some variations with that, but like, let's say, you know, maybe let's take of kind of the different configurations, the times I've mentioned, let's just talk supplemental reading, because that's kind of the, I think, the most simplest to talk about first. So let's say, I want to find I have my core reading time, I have intervention time, but I also have maybe a 15 or 20 minute slot. That's like. You know, sometimes you just get those weird gaps in your schedule where it's like, oh, I have computer lab on Monday and Wednesday. Well, what do I do on Tuesday and Thursday during that time? So that would be a great time to say you know what, maybe I want some supplemental reading time for my students to be able to be able to have time in texts that are engaging, but also be able to have extended time in text where we're not. You know, sometimes during reading instruction, our instruction starts to sliver up the text into small chunks, which we do need. Like instruction is a good thing, like we should be teaching texts and teaching them very well, but we also, I think, want to find times to complement that with more extended time in text where students can, you know, work on things like stamina, be able to, you know, quote, unquote, like get into a text. So like a little half hour gap or 20 minute gap a couple of times in the week would be a great time for that. So if I had, if I had, let's say I had my class and you know we were doing something like that I might divide my class up into half. I might divide my class up into thirds, and what it would be is like if I was, if I just was dividing my class in half, that the students that were in the higher achieving half of the class they would go and read connected text with the half of the class that was lower achieving.

Jake Downs:

Now, as far as the text, there's a lot of, there's flexibility in what you could choose. You know it can be 100 percent self-selected text, right that the students are saying, hey, what book are you reading at home? And that can be the text that's read the pair. Here they are reading the same text out loud. Sometimes students have, at least in my experience, like when you go in, especially like your students who have the most room to grow, your students that are the lowest achieving in the class. If you take them to the library and you say, hey, go tear it up, that might be too much choice for them, right? That they might not, you know. So sometimes it's easier for the teacher to say, okay, hey, what are you, what genres are you interested in? You know, and maybe, like, as a teacher, curate a smaller selection of texts for students to choose from.

Jake Downs:

But one important consideration here is right now there's a lot of conversation around grade level text. Here is right now there's a lot of conversation around grade level text and there's a lot of conversation around how do we scaffold readers up rather than water our texts down? And I think, teacher, and I think that's absolutely right, you know, I mean, every metaphor breaks down at some point. But I tend to think of like text complexity, like strength training, right, like if I'm only ever lifting the weights I'm already good at lifting, it's going to be really hard to get stronger. But if I'm systematically doing weights that stretch me, I am going to get stronger over time. And I think that's an analogy that Shanahan has used a couple times as well, but it doesn't have to be.

Jake Downs:

I don't have to be super duper worried that the text that the student is reading aligns directly with their independent reading level.

Jake Downs:

Because they have a scaffold, they have a lead reader that's going to be synchronously reading that text out loud at the same time. And so this is where some of the dyad reading studies are interesting, because they've studied students that are two, three or four grade levels above the independent reading level of the assisted reader and they found that students actually do really well with that. And so if I'd say I'm a third grade teacher, well I probably have students that are reading at a second grade level. I might have a few that are reading at a first grade level. So a grade or two grade levels above is grade level text, and so we can give them the opportunity to select a text that they're going to enjoy and then they can read that text synchronously out loud with a lead reader a couple times a week. You know 15 to 20 minutes, and the average effect across all of those like so that should yield, you know, a medium, a decent effect over about 60 instructional days following 15 to 20 minutes a couple times a week.

Lori:

That's so great. So I think the question that is in everyone's brain right now, jake, is which students should be the tutees and which students should be the tutors. How do you figure that out? And then, what does the teacher do while those kiddos are working together? Like there's the lead reader, and which I guess I was calling the, the two, like which I just referred to as the tutor Right, and then there's the not the lead reader, which would be like the quote 2T, but lead reader sounds much better, I think, when we're podcasting and then trying to say 2T. That's a hard word to say podcasting.

Jake Downs:

So I can, I can type it, but I also have a fifth grader at home that I just I can't say 2T in my house anymore, you know. So yeah, tutor, lead reader, assistant reader.

Lori:

There we go. Okay, we're all on the same page. Now Take it away.

Jake Downs:

So yeah, those terms are synonymous there. So the question being you know who should be tutored and like what would the selection process look like? Well, I think a good rule of thumb to follow is OK the students that need support are the ones that get it, and the students that need the most support get the most support. So if it were me this is where I diverge a little bit from the literature A lot of the studies have done just like comprehension level and used that to match students. I think one of the studies Matt Burns had last year showed that it's probably actually going to be better to do that by probably accuracy or the ORF measure. So if it were me, I would take my OR reading fluency data from DIBLES 8, from Acadience, from something similar like that, and I would like in my Google Sheet. In Excel I click on the first row, go to data, make a filter and then I can sort highest to lowest really easily. So I would take either my accuracy column, maybe my ORF column and sort that from highest to lowest and then split that in the middle. So if I have 20 kids, the student ranked number one with accuracy would be reading with the student ranked number 11, you know, two with 12, you know, so on and so forth. So then nine, well, I guess actually 10 would then be reading with 20.

Jake Downs:

Uh, one question I get asked is uh, you know well what, if, like, 5 and 15, you know, aren't a good pairing, you know you don't have to, you don't have to. This isn't a perfect science, like it's not that the magic brew is that 5 has to be with 15, and so you absolutely can take in student considerations as well, how well the students get along or don't get along. You know, the two students that should absolutely like not be working together at any point during the day as much as possible, right, like those don't have to be the partners. So there's the principle here is a lead reader and assisted reader, and that the lead reader is more as a higher achievement level than the assistant. So there's flexibility there.

Melissa :

I'm curious if you've ever done it where I'm looking at like student number one is actually paired with the lowest student because I just I have, yeah, 20. I have in my head, like you saying that that you know, make sure that the student that needs the most support gets the most support and like, well, would it be more beneficial for them to be with the highest reader in the class?

Jake Downs:

yeah, that's such a great question and this is where there there aren. There's not studies in this area. So I'm going to speak to you from. This is just Jake's classroom experience and observation and thoughts. Reader 20 is so big that sometimes the reader one is getting frustrated. You know they are serving as a tutor we need to remember that and so they are providing support. The benefit they're getting is just the benefit that they would receive from oral reading connected text, and so sometimes I've seen those readers actually get a little bit more frustrated when there's that big of a difference. And so when I think about, okay, the students needing the most support get the most support, that's where I start to think is there a parent volunteer? You know, is there? Can I beg or borrow paraprofessional time for 15 or 20 minutes?

Melissa :

Right or Lori asked what does the teacher do during this time?

Jake Downs:

Yeah, yeah, or absolutely you know that you know the teacher during this time. Yeah, yeah, or absolutely you know that, uh, you know the teacher. Okay, I can a obviously be circulating and providing support, but, um, you know I might be able to. Then, okay, I'm going to work with the the lowest, or maybe I pull like the lowest two or three and we're doing it as a group. Um, I don't think there's anything that would prohibit that from being effective, as you know as well, and you might, might have just that star student at the top of the class that just is mature for their age, that can handle doing something like that, and that would be viable. But what the data show is an adult tutor has a higher effect than a peer tutor, which makes complete sense. But within a classroom context, there's a lot more peer tutors available than there are adult tutors, and so it's thinking flexibly of you know who, who you know. If I have adult support, I'm going to give that to the students that need it the most and then sort of triage from there.

Lori:

Jake, is there anything you want to say more about the benefit to the student who is the lead reader, who's doing the tutoring work? I think that that's a question that, like, I'm just thinking as a like a parent if I was a teacher, listening, I'd be like, oh, what if this parent comes in and says, like well, my kid's being a tutor for this other kid for 40 minutes a week. Right, Like, let's just pretend there's two 20 minute sessions. I would want to be able to articulate the benefit. Obviously it's practice reading, right and oral reading. Are there any specific benefits that we can call out?

Jake Downs:

Yeah, and this is where we're thinking about peer tutors. There's most of the studies measure the outcomes of the assisted reader. There's only a handful that measure any outcome from the lead reader And's only a handful that measure any outcome from the lead reader and there's only one that actually and those have, like compared lead readers compared to everyone else, like just compared to a general control group. There's only one study that specifically compared outcomes of lead readers in that were that were doing dyad reading in this case, versus students in the control group that were also in the top half of their class achievement-wise, and what that study found was the benefit was they didn't have any added benefit, but they also didn't suffer either that their outcomes were not lower. So the benefit they get is they're reading connected text for 20 minutes, and so that's when you might want to also think about and I think that's a valid concern. Like you know, if I'm a parent, I might not want my you know, my student to be a tutor for 40 minutes during the week. You know, I mean we kind of have to think we have to use that resource wisely in remembering that these lead readers, they are basically serving in a tutoring role. So that means I need to find other things during the day that is going to more directly support their needs. But also it can be, you know, maybe, okay, let's say I'm doing a science text, right, like let's go back to that, that how energy moves through an ecosystem text. Maybe I'm not doing the dyad reading with my whole class, that's a sport with my whole class. Maybe it's just the lowest achieving readers, like the bottom, you know. Third, or the students that really need access to that text. And then there's a pool I've trained maybe most of my class how to be lead readers, and then there's a pool I've trained maybe most of my class how to be lead readers, and so then, like that can rotate them.

Jake Downs:

So it's like, hey, sometimes your buddy reader is this person for a week and then we change and it's this person for a week, and so then it's not this like heavy concentrated dose, it's like a sprinkling of oh hey, here and there when we're reading text throughout the day.

Jake Downs:

Some of the students they read the text with, you know, with other students in the class, and so then it's not too much of a burden on those highest achieving readers, and there is one study that did that in the late 80s, where they were basically any supplemental any time that students were reading during the day students that were not at the grade level expectation for reading, that were still striving readers they read that text with a lead reader that was at grade level expectation and they rotated tutors fairly frequently. So it wasn't necessarily like here's our set aside time, it just was when we're reading text, we're going to pull in a lead reader to assist you with it, we're going to pull in a lead reader to assist you with it and we're going to rotate tutors. So that way it's never too much of a time burden, that we're not sapping too much instructional time away from those readers to support our lowest readers.

Lori:

Yeah, well, and I think that's such a good point. I love the idea of being flexible with your students right with their pairing of the students. I also was thinking, jake, while you were talking it, you mentioned the benefit of the connected text. It could be that they're also um getting that benefit of the connected text and um that practice with new vocabulary right, that they have it Like. I. I'm just thinking like very practically, as the teacher, I'd be pulling out some of like the very practical things, like if we're learning about energy, then I'm going to make sure we're going to have like really tough vocabulary in there that could be conquered on this read, because we know that the texts can be more challenging, like you said.

Jake Downs:

Yeah, and that's like, and this is a time where either, a, you know, we can use, like, whatever texts we're already using. We can use those as a way to effectively consume the text. But, you know, b, if we do want to add supplemental text, or they can and should be really engaging, engaging text, or like to your point. Okay, if I'm doing like, if I do want to pick some really challenging technical vocabulary, you know, then maybe before we read the text, I'm going to do a brief multi-syllabic routine. Let's peel off what prefixes do we see what suffixes? Let's underline the vowels. Okay, let's scoop, blend this. So here's how I read this word accurately. Here's what this word means. Now a word like photosynthesis. Okay, now let's split up, read the text. Okay, now we're going to come back. After we split up, read the text using sport, let's come back and talk about it. You know, it can really sort of naturally weave into other things that we're going to do to support word reading accuracy, to support vocabulary, to support comprehension as well.

Lori:

Such a good point. Yeah, I love that. And then it's not something that's like oh, the separate tutoring thing that we're doing we're not. We're doing sport as part of an integrated approach to teaching reading and writing.

Jake Downs:

Yeah, and that's a really good point that you know sometimes like to do a good study. It has to be very, I don't know, isolated isn't the right term, but you're trying to control for a lot of variables and so, like in a lot of the studies that are in this literature, they've sort of set up the tutoring thing as its own separate chunk during the day, which it totally can be. But the principle here, being a lead reader, an assisted reader, you know coral reading text out, you know coral reading text synchronously, you know like it can and it should be a technique, and one among many I don't want to oversell it among many that we can embed into our instruction to have text be engaging, to make sure that we're helping students access grade level text more efficiently. All right.

Melissa :

So we've talked a lot about texts, jake, but I've heard you say things like these should be challenging texts at grade level, maybe even above grade level, not at a student's independent level. And these connected texts, so making sure they're, we would love for them to be connected to topics they're learning about, reading about. I'm wondering about in like the core instruction, core ELA instruction time. Could this fit in there as well?

Jake Downs:

Yeah, absolutely, and you know, I think right now, along with the conversation on grade level text, there's a lot of conversation on core reading programs. I know in Utah our science reading legislation has required a lot of schools and districts to look at their core reading program and update and adopt new core reading programs, and I think, as I talk with other folks, that seems to be something that's happening in a lot of states here in the US. And so part of when I'm doing stuff with my core reading program is, you know, this can still be done and integrated with that. And this is actually where my thinking started to get a lot more flexible with this was there was a couple studies again from the late 80s that were actually done here in Utah, a little bit further south from me at Brigham Young University. That helped me started to think about how it could be done flexibly during. I mean, they called it basal time, but we'd probably say, you know, core reading time or tier one time or you know whatever that lingo is for when we're together reading, doing text stuff as a class. So they had an interesting approach in where and I alluded to this earlier, but Eldridge and College actually divided the class up into thirds. So rather than half and half, they divided the class into thirds. So what you had was the highest achieving group, that top third. They would just read the text in partners and then the teacher would have some like a graphic organizer, a little bit of extension work. Then the middle third and the bottom third. They did the choral reading of the text together. So it would be OK, we're in module four, you know unit one. Here's our text we're reading. That's how they would consume the text and then they would come back and the teacher would do whatever normal, whatever the instruction was going to be while they were reading the text. The students would actually just read straight through it and then come back and the teacher would do the instructional points afterward.

Jake Downs:

And I think that sort of solves the or mitigates at least a little bit. You know sometimes, especially when in the upper grades, like a fourth or fifth grade, you know your highest achieving readers, in a lot of cases they can fly, you know they, and so sometimes they get a little bit frustrated. Or it's more. Perhaps it's more adaptive, it's more responsive if highest achieving are working together and then the middle group, that could still use some benefit. You know that the extended oral reading practice is going to have more benefit for them. They're serving as lead readers for the lowest third and you know so it's that's perhaps a more productive way.

Jake Downs:

So they kind of did triad like split it into thirds that way. But it doesn't have to be. You know, like whatever normal text I'm doing during my core reading program time, you know I need to have a lot of tools in my tool belt. If there's one of me and 20 of them to say how are we going to read this text, how are we going to consume this text in a productive way, and how am I going to make sure that my students who struggle the most to access grade level text, how do I involve them in this text in a way that is also simultaneously promoting their reading accuracy, their reading fluency and also their reading comprehension. So that's one approach, but you could also split your class up into halves as well. I mean that would work just fine also. But I think that one example of splitting as thirds is an interesting way to think about it.

Melissa :

Yeah, and this reminds me of I'm going to do a real throwback, lori, get ready. Our very first episode six years ago was about, you know, fidelity to a curriculum, and this is kind of what we talked about with that like, yeah, there should be some flexibility because you know that core program might just say, like, read pages X to Z, right. And this is the perfect time for the teacher to bring in this kind of technique and go, okay, they are going to read those pages, how they do it. I'm going to bring this research-based technique in to support my students the way they need it.

Jake Downs:

Yeah, I'm a curriculum person. I like curriculum, I think curriculum is productive, I think curriculum gives a good framework for teachers. But I kind of go with the Goldilocks rule here that you know, looking at especially some of these like really big publishers that you know just mass producing the curriculum for millions of students. You know my classroom here in northern Utah, or practically Idaho, the specific reading needs accuracy, fluency, comprehension, but also like linguistic or cultural, like the type of text that's going to be responsible for them is going to vary, different than you know all of you there on the East Coast. So there is room to, I think. I mean this is where you know.

Jake Downs:

For me, too hot is that I'm just going to do exactly what the curriculum says and check. I checked all my boxes because then I've removed responsibility for myself out of the equation. It's now check. I did what the curriculum says. Whatever happens happens. But too cold for me is like okay, I'm just going to like throw out the curriculum and do whatever I want, because then that's a lot of time and prep and I'd rather have basic ingredients and then me decide how to spend my time on crafting the instruction, on implementing the instruction, rather than just sort of creating stuff from scratch. That's my sort of middle ground of not too hot, not too cold, but just right, and where a teacher can bring their knowledge, their expertise, their pedagogical knowledge, their science of reading knowledge, to be able to make that curriculum like transform it into something better than what it is as is. As written.

Lori:

Okay, so we didn't prepare you for this question, Jake, but I'm wondering have you talked with any kids who have used the sport routine? Or is there any the technique, or is there any notes anecdotally in the research from the kids, Like what they said about it? What they said about it?

Jake Downs:

This is great. I love an impromptu question like this. So let me I can first speak to.

Jake Downs:

When I was doing this in my classroom as a doc student, there was a couple like there was a couple students that I talked with parents and parents brought the kids to school early and you know, I said hey of anyone in my classroom who would you want to read with twice a week, and this of course he picked his best buddy right and this student needed a lot of support. You know, it was just sort of classic symptoms or not symptoms, but classic data set that to me said dyslexia, right, so they would come and they would read before school twice a week, and I tried to make it like as cozy as possible. So it's like, oh, you get my softest chairs right and you can be right here next to my desk while I'm prepping things. And occasionally it's like here's a granola bar, here's a fruit snack. I mean it doesn't take a lot, but they had a lot of fun with it. But also I mean he did experience good growth. So and I have a couple other kind of smaller experience like that.

Jake Downs:

But there are a few studies that and this again comes more so from the dyad reading literature which your listeners probably not care about, the nuances of the different literatures here. But there was one study where they just sort of asked open-ended student responses about it. And then there was another study where they kind of did a more structured response with attitudes and the students by and large the assisted readers, enjoyed it. Now some of the tutors, especially on the attitude survey, that one, they did kind of show that they didn't love it. But in this study they were dyad reading every day for 20 minutes for 90 days.

Jake Downs:

So, it's like over half a year, there is definitely potential for burnout. From my experience and sort of triangling with that with the 2018 study that I just have this crazy belief that students actually really enjoy it when they're in really good text and when they can access that text really well. And so I'm thinking of one of my specifically one of my readers that she was a striving reader in fourth grade, so she was below benchmark on accuracy and or and comprehension. She was also a multilingual learner. Her family had, you know, migrated from Northern Mexico, so she was. She'd been in the US for probably three or four years, so most of her. She's probably in kindergarten, I think, when they'd moved here.

Jake Downs:

But she was very hesitant to participate in class. I had to structure a lot of that to make sure she was getting lots of oral language experience. But you know she was reading a book on. It was some sort of horse book. That's all I remember and I don't. Horse is a genre I don't do in books or in movies. They're just too sad. But she really loved this book.

Jake Downs:

But you know she was able to and I know this is kind of like a corny, but there's no way she would have been able to read that book independently by herself, but bringing in an adult tutor to read with her twice a week for 20 minutes, and it was just a parent in my class that I said, hey, I need some volunteers who will volunteer. You know she was able to read a book that she would never be able to access otherwise. So I think there's room there for more like empirical research on engagement, on sort of their attitudes, on their experience. But you know you bundle that together that they're reading a text more challenging than they'd be able to read otherwise. The text is probably more interesting than you know.

Jake Downs:

If I'm a fourth grade reader but I can only read first grade text, there's a point where Magic Treehouse starts to not really pull my attention anymore, but I'm also okay. So the syntactic complexity, the range of vocabulary, the I mean all of that sort of stacks together to say you know what? This, this, I think it really is a viable, you know, one practice among many, but a way to think about how do we get kids into grade level text, into more challenging text? But thinking of more challenging text as generally being there's a lot more interesting stuff happening in grade level text than below grade levels text.

Lori:

So are there any challenges to this? I feel like I want to talk a little bit about that because I think that you mentioned some right like the partnership adjustments you mentioned that earlier and how to kind of navigate that but are there any other challenges that teachers should consider when they're thinking about implementing sport?

Jake Downs:

Yeah, so we've definitely talked about yeah, there's, you know, just partnerships as needed. Right, there's not a hard and fast rule here. We have also addressed a little bit that, the peer burnout on the lead reader side. You know that's something to watch for as well, and I think the way to avoid that is, you know, one, okay, can I find a way to rotate tutors or adjust tutors? So, as a teacher, the easiest thing for me is going to be to split my class in half. Everyone's reading, you know, everyone's engaged. I can sit back and drink a diet Coke, but that might not be best for, like, my students. And so maybe thinking about splitting things up into thirds, maybe thinking about, you know, maybe it's just the lowest quarter of my students that are going to get sort of a lot of support, which gives me three quarters of my students, or maybe the top two thirds of my students or half my students, that can sort of rotate in and out of tutors. I also think it can be a, you know, maybe it's today I'm using it as a way to read our core reading text, tomorrow I'm using it to do our science text on how energy moves through an ecosystem, and then Thursday, you know, hey, I've got some funny giggle poetry. You know, like Chase Young's all over giggle poetry, like here I've curated you know five or 10 giggle poetry poems. We have that weird 20-minute chunk where we're not doing computer lab. Let's do that on Thursday. Like it doesn't have, it can also like sort of be flexible with the difference. So I think always shaking it up is one way to sort of avoid that burnout, you know.

Jake Downs:

The other one is just thinking a little bit about text complexity, grade level text, challenging text, and when I was talking about this once with a group of teachers and I was talking about how you know there's just a small handful of studies that have done students in text two or three or four grade levels above their independent reading level, and the teacher's like I can't even get my kids to like read grade level text. And now you're saying I have to read above grade level text and that's a fair point. But I think the way I'd respond to that is saying well, that's a nuance of how it was conducted in a research study, you know, to see how much stretch is too much stretch. You know, is stretch a viable way to promote accuracy and fluency and so it doesn't have to be that when you're using it in your classroom, I mean you could curate bins. That's a popular way of okay, here's a bin Purple is this Lexile to this Lexile, red bin's this Lexile to this Lexile, and you have kids read two or three grade levels above their independent reading. That's one way to do it.

Jake Downs:

But again, going back to if I'm a fourth grade teacher, I probably some of my struggling students are striving students. They're in a second grade level, so two grade levels above would be grade level tech. So I don't think text curation is always it's always a rabbit hole we can go down as a teacher and it's something that I'd rather streamline the text curation process, which is going to free up time for me to think about the implementation, like teaching that text. So I would say, you know, just start with what text are you already using, because if those are grade level text, grade level is challenging enough in the era of Common Core. Let's just start there.

Jake Downs:

What are texts that are already achieving our content learning objectives, our ELA objectives? What are the texts we're already using? And start there what are texts that are already achieving our content learning objectives, our ELA objectives? What are the texts we're already using and start there. But if we're doing supplemental stuff or other stuff during the day, we don't have to get super ticky tacky about like it has to be exactly two grade, let's just is there a text the students enjoy? That's also going to give them challenge when we're talking supplemental reading, I think is. I mean there's going to be variation, but I think that's good enough in the ballpark to at least start with for a classroom teacher. Pragmatically.

Melissa :

Jake, I'm also thinking one of the challenges that could definitely happen would be more of like a management situation, and I'm wondering if you have any tips for training or you know how do you get students ready to do this before they do? Especially, I'm thinking of those lead readers like how do they know what their role is?

Jake Downs:

That's such a great question and I'm glad you asked that because that is a part of this that I haven't addressed yet. So, however, I'm doing it. So let's say that I've got three parent volunteers that are coming in twice a week. I need to train those volunteers. It doesn't take long. This isn't rocket science, but it is. There is a structured protocol here, right, you are corally reading the text with the student out loud for 15 to 20 minutes and maybe coaching them to say, hey, if it's an adult, this generally I think works a little bit better with adult tutors. But twice during that session you're going to pause and let the students reread a chunk of that text. It can be a paragraph and then over time maybe build up to a half page or a whole page, and so it's adding in some repeated reading. So the student is reading part of that text independently. It's kind of alternating between choral reading but then also an independent read, but it's stuff that's already been read out loud and you just model that for them. So it can be it really can be just take one session and, instead of doing the thing you know, just train your adult tutors how to do it, just model how to do it and like when I would do it, I'd just get out a text with one of the parents and I would just show exactly what it looks like and that's generally enough to make it work. And you could also I mean there's lots like multi-syllabic vocabulary, I mean that easily can stack in other evidence-based things as well for what a volunteer would be capable of doing. Now, when I'm with my students, you know, I just keep it like very like I do train them right. So I would, whoever are going to be my lead readers, you know, I would say, hey well, sometimes in class we're going to do, we're going to do sport, where I have whatever you know or whatever kind of fancy nickname I want to call it, and I just would explain them really plainly how to do it. And I'm probably not getting you know, and I just would explain them really plainly how to do it and I'm probably not getting into like, oh well, you're the higher achieving group, I'm just going to. I just keep like this is what we're doing and this is going to be great for everyone, and I just kind of frame it as that. And again, I would have like just a quarter sheet that says you know, eyes on text reading out loud. At the same time it just sort of has my classroom protocol, and then I would model it with a student and then I'd have them just pair up for like two minutes to practice it, and then they would keep that sort of like that laminated square cut out that they can keep, and then they just do that whenever they're being lead reader. And then I'd also, hey, talk with the assisted readers, or I talk with the group as a whole and just say, hey, we're going to do this. Sometimes it's just really important because it's going to help.

Jake Downs:

Reading text can be hard, and so this is a way that we can all be engaged and able to understand and access the text that we're reading, and then just kind of go over the simple protocol so it doesn't take a lot but it does. That is an agreement that has to be there and then so, like most things right, like a clear protocol, a clear structure, you know, model it to sort of get it going, and then that is a thread you have to pull. So every couple of weeks it's like, hey, hey, just a reminder, here's what I'm seeing. You know all the classroom management stuff, but hey, you know, just a reminder, this is what it looks like, this is what it should sound like, and, you know, just to keep the expectation there. So so, just so that time can be used really productively. Right, we want every instructional minute to be maximized in its potential.

Melissa :

Yeah. So, speaking of that potential, I think you've mentioned a few times about the benefits. But I'm curious let's get like a little bit nerdy here with the research. Like you looked at all the research on this technique like what give, give some teachers like the why, why they should do this, what, what have you seen in the research that would?

Jake Downs:

would make me want to do this in my classroom. So our conversation stemming from my dissertation research. So I I looked at every study that's had that exact protocol higher achieving reader, lower achieving reader, synchronously reading connected text and I pulled studies, all I mean, I did a comprehensive review. So it was all the way back to the 60s. Long story short. So what I found across that is there's medium to large effects in fluency and comprehension and that's with that average dose of, you know, 15 to 20 minutes, probably three to four times a week. That should be enough to yield those medium to large effects over the course of 12 weeks. Now they were both above. You know, if you follow like Hattie's cutoffs for effect sizes, they were both above 0.4. If you follow like Cohen's cutoffs for effect size, they were medium to large. But what was interesting to me was that the comprehension effects were actually larger than the fluency effects, which struck me as interesting because choral reading text together, that's more of a fluency print exposure reading volume. There's not a lot of teaching comprehension things happening there. So that is an interest and there's a couple of reasons why that might be the case. Well, it could be the case that students are accessing text that they wouldn't be able to otherwise. So they're being introduced to more sophisticated vocabulary, sophisticated language knowledge structures et cetera. That is benefiting their comprehension, like that's wonderful. But it could also be and I don't want to get too nerdy here but a lot of the effects on the fluency side were especially the older studies were accuracy percentage in connected text. Well, accuracy has a ceiling of 100. So if a student started a study with 96%, they only have 4% to grow, which makes it hard to like. You can't have a super large effect when you only have four to go. So but there is research indicating that it does support the fluency as well, and that's primarily how it's talked about in the literature is comprehension and fluency.

Jake Downs:

I think there is also this like print exposure. I think there is also this like print exposure, reading stamina, flair to it, and I briefly addressed this earlier. But we're always like I believe in teaching, I believe in instruction, so we should be teaching our readers. But a lot of times I notice in tier one instruction, the actual reading students do sort of get slivered and diced up among the instructional things that are happening and we part of.

Jake Downs:

I think developing really strong literate readers means that we want to have readers that are, that can persevere through text, that can read text for longer than a minute.

Jake Downs:

You know, we've all had the experience where reading with a student and like especially like I think of, like when I was progress monitoring a student on an ORF passage and they like start out so strong for like the first 10 seconds and even by like the 60 second mark, like they've just like wilted right, like. So we do want to build up their automaticity so that they can process text with low cognitive bandwidth, because, well, one, that's going to free up more bandwidth for comprehension, but two, like we want to be able to help them sustain being able to read text for an extended period of time, for 15, 20 minutes. So I think there is this an aspect there that if we're just reading text for 20 straight minutes in a structured way, I think there's benefits there that that's hard to quantify. But, especially when I think of striving readers, that's something they're probably not getting at other chunks during the day and I think that's a really good. That's something really good that we can scaffold for them as well.

Lori:

Jake, this is awesome. Is there anything else? Is there anything we've missed? Anything you want to leave our listeners with before we sign off today about sport?

Jake Downs:

I can share with you all. If folks want to like go and get into like the stuff I've written on it, I can leave you all at like a link to Google Drive folder or something where I have a link tree link that folks can go in and read more. You know, read more about it. But you know I would just emphasize that this isn't a silver bullet, right. This is one approach among many. You know this is one tool in a very big tool belt, but I think it is a viable way to help, say, any text I want to consume during, any text we were reading during the day.

Jake Downs:

I want to be able to consume that productively Because if I consume it productively, if I read it in a fluent way, then that means there's more stuff there to comprehend, because the student collected more things in the text along the way. You know if that makes sense. And so, whether it's this method or other methods, that the text we consume is so important that there's no like the text we use should matter. They should be texts that are content area, informational texts, like no junk texts. And we're always thinking how do we use these texts wisely, especially for striving readers that are still working to reach grade level accuracy, fluency, comprehension expectations. I think that would be my like. Final word on how this fits into broader instructional things.

Melissa :

No junk texts. I think we should make a t-shirt, yeah let's do it.

Jake Downs:

Let's do t-shirt, coffee mugs, we'll do it, all Stickers.

Lori:

Well, thank you so much. This is great. I know I can't wait to try this. So thank you so much for all your good work and for talking about it with us.

Jake Downs:

Pleasure to be here.

Melissa :

Thanks for the work that you all do To stay connected with us. Sign up for our email list at literacypodcastcom, Join our Facebook group and follow us on Instagram and Twitter.

Lori:

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Melissa :

Just a quick reminder that the views and opinions expressed by the hosts and guests of the Melissa and Lori Love Literacy Podcast are not necessarily the opinions of Great Minds PBC or its employees.

Lori:

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