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This is the Reading Instruction Show.

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I'm your host as always, Dr. Andy Johnson.

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Topic of today's podcast is the merchant and beginning writers.

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Yes, writers.

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Now, during COVID, I did some online tutoring with kids who struggled with their reading.

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This is an important professional development activity for me because it keeps me in touch

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with what I do and why I do it.

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And it also gives me a chance to test out a lot of the new strategies and ideas.

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Now with each kid I work with, I have a general plan worked out in my head before I began

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working with them.

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This plan is based on the diagnostic data that I've collected using a qualitative reading

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inventory.

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But here's the thing.

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Once I start working with a kid, I always find that I need to make changes.

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So it was with Tilda.

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I was working with Tilda twice a week.

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She was my niece who was in first grade and she was struggling with her reading.

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She hated reading because she wasn't good at it.

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She's a sensitive young lady and her emotions were triggered by her constant failures.

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So when we started, I continued to collect data.

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Now not the test kind of data, but the important kind of data where I watch students and see

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their reactions as we interact.

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And I could see by Tilda's facial expressions, the tone of her voice and her constantly looking

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away that she was a bit apprehensive, maybe even fearful.

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By the way, this type of data is the good stuff.

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The data that can't be quantified by standardized measures.

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Students' emotional state, their social context and their life experience cannot be reduced

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to a metric.

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So back to Tilda.

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We started each session with a language experience activity.

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This is a simple yet powerful writing activity to use with beginning and struggling readers,

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but also writers.

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Here the student describes an experience and the teacher writes it down on a computer,

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a touchscreen, a poster or a notebook, someplace where they can see the print taking place.

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This can be done individually in small group or even in large group.

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And as you transcribe, you change students' incorrect grammar into correct grammar and

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demonstrate punctuation.

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Scaffolded oral reading is then used to practice reading using students' own words and experiences.

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The story, that's what we call their individual daily writings, is read until fluency is achieved.

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And this usually occurs after two or three rereads.

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Finally, analytic phonics is used to do many lessons related to letter sounds and patterns.

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And these stories are saved for reading practice on another day.

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That is the language experience approach or activities.

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Now during the first sessions, I'd asked Tilda what she wanted to write about.

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Her minimum was two sentences, which is very appropriate for first grade.

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At first I had to drag these two sentences out of her.

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Even though I was her uncle, I was still just a bald-less bald head that popped up on the

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screen twice a week.

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Before this tutoring, I really hadn't spent a lot of time with her.

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There was no relationship.

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There was no reason for Tilda to trust me.

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So to get her to talk so we could do language experience, I'd have to ask her questions.

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What should we write about today, Tilda?

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I don't know.

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Should I write that down?

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I don't know.

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No.

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Did you do something fun yesterday?

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Yes.

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What did you do?

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I played on the swings with Molly.

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Can I write that?

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Yes.

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Okay.

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So I wrote, I played on the swings with Molly.

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What else should I write?

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I don't know.

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Was it fun?

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Yes.

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How about if we write that?

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It was fun.

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Okay.

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I played on the swings with Molly.

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It was fun.

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That's how it went.

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You get the picture.

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Each new tutoring session started by reading what we wrote the last session.

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Then we'd write our new story.

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Now after a bit, Tilda began to trust me.

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This was because I didn't make her experience failure.

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And she found that I was interested in what she did.

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And I listened to what she had to say.

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I didn't have to work so hard to get the two sentences from her after a bit.

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And then after a couple more weeks, she became a bubbling geyser.

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She had stuff she wanted to say.

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She started thinking about what she wanted to say before our sessions.

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Our stories went from two sentences to four, five, and six sentences.

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And then a very interesting thing happened.

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She started writing on her own at home using temporary spelling.

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She began using writing for real purposes.

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She wrote notes to her parents, little reminders, and she used writing to express her feelings.

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It was incredible.

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And since writing is the best way to develop the syntactic queuing system used to identify

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words while reading and it reinforces letter sound relationships, her reading began to

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improve.

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Imagine that using real authentic writing to enhance real authentic reading.

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And then the head of her younger sister, Frida, who was four at the time, began popping up

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on the screen as Tilda and I were working.

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She wanted to see what Tilda was doing.

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She decided that she wanted reading lessons as well.

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And Frida saw her sister using writing to communicate ideas, so she decided that she

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wanted to do this writing stuff.

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That shows that writing is best learned in a social context.

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So she began using letters and mostly scribbles to write.

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Now this shows the power of the social and emotional context of learning and the modeling

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that naturally occurs when younger children observe older children.

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And this is why a multi-grade classroom can be such a powerful learning model.

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Now there are three big ideas to take from the Tilda story.

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First, it was the power of ideas and the response to ideas that invited Tilda to start writing

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on her own.

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Second, the scaffolding provided by the language experience activities gave her enough confidence

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to write on her own.

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Without the language experience activities, Tilda would have never started writing on

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her own.

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And third, writing isn't a skill that's taught as much as it's a skill that emerges and develops

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over time.

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When we invite students to write for real purposes, allow for lots of practice of authentic

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writing and teach little bits of things along the way, this skill emerges faster.

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However, when we focus only on teaching a bunch of low-level grammar, punctuation, and

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letter formation skills, it emerges more slowly.

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Now let's look at two approaches to early writing instruction.

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There are two basic approaches in these early grades.

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A skills-based approach and a child-centered approach.

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These are the two approaches.

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I guess there's a third approach, which would be no approach at all or no skills instruction

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at all.

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And, of course, this would be incredibly silly.

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I can't imagine anybody advocating an approach where you do not have any skills instruction

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taking place.

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So let's look first at the skills-based approach to early writing.

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A skills-based approach to writing instruction is built on the assumption that students

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must acquire certain skills before they can write.

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It assumes that children require a great deal of explicit instruction of a prescribed set

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of grammar, punctuation, and letter formation skills, handwriting, and spelling skills

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to be able to someday write.

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To which I say, pish posh.

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This approach does not reflect what we know about the brain and human learning.

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It's a Humpty Dumpty approach where children are taught to write by putting all the teeny

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tiny writing pieces together, one teeny tiny piece at a time.

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And when a teeny tiny writing skill is taught and mastered, the skills-based researchers

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all over the world screech with delight and flap their arms about exclaiming, see, we

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told you.

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A skills-based approach is the best.

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It's better than all the rest.

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And they march around the room with high knees singing their teeny tiny songs.

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However, mastering a teeny tiny skill does not mean that students know what to do with

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that teeny tiny skill when they're writing.

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It does very little to move students forward as writers, and it does not enhance their ability

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to express meaning with print.

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Now let's look at the child-centered approach.

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The child-centered approach is based on the child and how developing children learn best.

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And they learn best by messing about, by play, and by doing stuff.

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They learn best by approximating the end product in developmentally appropriate ways.

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To children, the teeny tiny skills-based approach is a series of meaningless abstractions

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that have nothing to do with celebrating stories and ideas.

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It also doesn't reflect what we know about the brain and human learning.

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Students learn complex skills best from whole to part.

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That is, they see the whole, they practice the whole, and they learn the skills within

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the context of this whole.

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In this way, the teeny tiny skills that are taught along the way make sense.

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With a child-centered approach, the child becomes the curriculum.

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New skills are taught as the child is ready for them.

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It's recognized as well that we aren't simply putting teeny tiny cogs on an emotionless

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machine, rather we're engaged in real learning.

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Real learning for children is intertwined and interconnected with children's language,

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social, emotional, cognitive, and physical development.

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That's part of an interconnected system.

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You can't really pull out a single teeny tiny element and address it effectively without

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considering the complete system.

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The child-centered approach is based on the theories of Piaget and Weigatzky and Ericsson

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and Marsha and Montessori.

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These were outstanding researchers whose theories were developed by observing real children

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learning within natural settings.

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They did not seek to isolate a variable in controlled settings like they were studying

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mice in a skinner's box.

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Children's literacy emerges naturally.

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Skills of any kind are best taught as students are ready for them.

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Instruction that takes place must be developmentally appropriate.

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If children are exposed to certain conditions, their global skills that are writing emerge

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faster.

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Consider this.

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Learning to write and learning to speak are a bit different, but there are some common

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elements.

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Let's just consider how children learn to speak.

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They're immersed in actual real-life speaking experiences.

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They're provided small bits of instruction in authentic speaking contexts.

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They're encouraged to speak about things that make sense to them and are of interest

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to them.

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They use language for real purposes and we expect them to learn differently and at different

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rates.

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We respond to them instead of correct them and we encourage their early attempts at

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successive approximations.

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We encourage their creativity and humor and language is used in play and social interactions.

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Using a child-centered approach, teachers create the conditions whereby all children

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can develop their full literacy capacities.

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We can learn a lot.

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Children learn to write when they're immersed in authentic writing experiences.

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They learn to write when they're provided small bits of instruction in their authentic

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writing contexts.

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They learn to write when they're encouraged to write about things that make sense to them

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and are of interest to them when they use writing for real life purposes and we expect

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children to learn to write differently and at different rates.

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We respond to their writing instead of correcting their writing and we encourage their early

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attempts and successful approximations.

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We encourage their creativity and humor when they write and writing is used in play and

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social interactions.

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This has been the reading instruction show.

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The next podcast will talk more specifically about creating the conditions for writing

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to emerge.