Tuesday, September 23, 2025

ELAR Updates for the Panhandle (Regions 14, 16, & 17)

 Howdy - 

CREST - Coalition of Reading and English Supervisors of Texas -  met virtually today for our Fall Forum. 

Welcome: 

As the regional representative for the organization, I'm hoping to connect especially with Panhandle Leaders and those in Texas Regions 14, 16, and 17. My email is shonarose67@gmail.com if you would like to connect about CREST and TEA content. 

Access Membership Perks: 

If you would like to receive information like what I have included below, join the organization.We are rebuilding our membership and databases. You can join here to receive similar information after the next conference. Detailed notes and advance notice of items of importance are key benefits of membership. You'll have what you need to turn around the training and informational pieces to your staff. 

Notes and Resources from the Conference: 

Leadership and representatives took notes for you to summarize the sessions and major ideas. 

Tosh McGoughy walked us through the changes since 2007 and provided guidance for planning lessons all the way to selecting curriculum resources. You'll find her presentation and CREST notes here:  Ensuring a Literate Texas. 

From TEA, Jenny Gaona and Tamara Robert shared their progress on tools to integrate Social Studies and ELAR TEKS. For notes and draft links: K-5 Cross-Curricular Connections for Social Studies and RLA.

Guiomar Andújar presented information on the ELPS updates. I did not attend that session. You can read about the process here.

Tricia Cave with ATPE provided a legislative update. Click for the slide deck and notes.

Collin Dempsey from TEA shared processes and products from the IMRA process. For slides, links, and notes:  From Rubric to Resources: Using IMRA to Drive Instructional Materials Decisions

Caroline Sweet presented: Languages Art: Fostering Reading and Writing Classrooms that Value Students' Languages. This site explains her book and resources with Patterns of Power in Spanish. 

Travis Leach ended the day with a presentation on Revision - he used the revision process as the mode for the presentation itself. Brilliant. His presentation is here: Revision as a Way of Life: An Educator's Guide to Intentional Change

Kalahari in January: 








Wednesday, September 17, 2025

More on vocabulary...

I've been doing a bit more research. 

Vocabulary is a rope - It begins with oral language and stories (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, 1993). As instruction enters the picture, teachers add orthography, writing, and reading. Then, as folks grow, they go through stages of vocabulary development that match - of all things - spelling. We can interpret their 1: errors to determine their theories of decoding at points of difficulty and to 2: pinpoint gaps in their developmental known word bank: lexical quality, phonology, semantics, syntax, and 3 working memory and brain systems. This allows us to determine their general word knowledge and specific word knowledge with layers of schema, alphabet, pattern, and meaning within a developmental progression that ALSO - of all things - matches the History of English. Little Saxons from our German origins, Little Anglo-Normans with the Normon conquest and vowel shift, to the Greek and Latin influx during the Renaissance. (Example - muscle, muscular, musculature all came from a word for mouse in Latin - musculus. The rippling movement under the skin of a running rodent helped the Romans explain what muscles were doing when studying anatomy (Venesky, 1999; Templeton et al., 2015). History + words = meaning. So cool. 

There's more to all of this in Chapter One of the Updates Word Study (for Phonics, Spelling, and Vocabulary Instruction): Formerly Words Their Way TM. But...the question remains...how do we assess vocabulary in a way that informs instruction for vocabulary purposes? 

          Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, and Johnston recommend these assessments as a beginning: 


2. Upper Level Spelling Inventory (USI) 
3. McGuffey Qualitative Spelling Inventory 

 

Wednesday, September 10, 2025

Braided Rivers Theory of Reading, Writing, and Thinking

There is no settled Science. Pearson

Science of anything is not simple. Me. 

Braided rivers are geological formations where water seeks it's path to it's lowest point. Water's path back to the origin is often invisible - one environmental cycle over another. The mind's acquisition and use of literacy are no different. 

The Science of Reading movement often focuses on five pillars of the thing - phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension - each supported (and not supported) by a wide range of research that often doesn't say what we are told it says. Sigh. 

There is no doubt in my mind that Scarborough's Reading Rope represents key concepts for literacy pedagogy. But it's not simple. But it's not a panacea for reading woes represented/misrepresented by NAEP and other tests. And the rope and pillars are not the end-all-be-all of scientifically based literacy instruction. And some of the interpretations and implementation in school is flat out nonsense - as the data show us. That simple view just doesn't play out equally in educating the masses or the individual humans we serve. 

Reality is more like the braided rivers analogy - when a path of literacy is blocked - even if it is one of the five pillars, water goes around the obstacle. And the mind -the source of the flow - has multiple streams. All are valid. 

As we've worked with the learners in Unity Learning Communities - the kids have told us these truths through their behaviors and explanations of their learning processes for literate life. 

Here's their trajectory - 

Decoding - encoding - word knowledge - fluency - comprehension = "failure" They've had THE science. They've had the kitchen sink as well. For some, they've encountered the Hoover Dam. Pinched off from the flow of thought - as with electricity - controlled by arbitrary needs for accountability and control over educational curriculum and philosophy. 

Life has presented obstacles that made elements of this path insurmountable for some learners. And some of the problem is that other rivers are not allowed. Shameful. 

What we are seeing is that poverty, trauma, and educational-theoretical malapropisms - and none of it is funny - have become obstacles to literacy acquisition.

There's other rivers out there, y'all. And our kids can travel them to destinations unknown. It's time to recognize the braided rivers - and complex - view of literacy. 

These are some of the rivers that we have found in our explorations with learners: 

Thinking and Reasoning: The decoding-encoding flow: learners hear and represent sounds. Where there are gaps in alphabetic principles and print concepts - what is the learner's response and bank of choices at the point of difficulty? When there are gaps in the principles and concepts - is the learner aware of the gap? When there are gaps - does the learner have resources for information search and discovery? 

Thinking and Reasoning: Word knowledge: learners use semantics with breadth-depth, precision, links to schema, and contextual reasoning. The point here is derivational constancy in decision making about words. Inextricably woven through meaning and desire to communicate, create, curate, and critique, learners use synonyms, antonyms, word origin, context, emotional vocabulary, discipline specific terms and norms of language, registers, and tools synchronously and collectively. Words are never just sounds or terms hanging loose in a universe of nonsense. Yet - that's not how we've been taught to develop word knowledge. 

Thinking and Reasoning: The approach to struggle. Our learners often believe that text doesn't make sense. They try to follow the rules, but know that in the end - they just don't get it. They believe something is wrong with them. They tell us that they try to do what they are told - but it never works or makes sense. As Nottingham tells us, learning is about Eureka! I found it. I found it. I found it. Learners have to make the path in their brain. No one can really make that road for them. No one can tell them about it. Learners are the ones doing the finding. And often, they don't find what we thought they should. And what they find for themselves is brilliant. Learners decide what it is. It is the learner that knows and can find the way around the struggle. Yet - that's not how we teach. 

Thinking and Reasoning: Working memory and holding an idea for inspection. Blame whatever you'd like - but the reality is: learning requires a certain capacity to carry ideas, rotate them with cognitive manipulation and test theories about meaning, purpose, and use. But are we shortening or lengthening working memory with our approach? Are we showing learners how to hold ideas, store and retrieve them, or how to connect them to beauty and power? Are we showing learners how to manage emotions and complex situations that help mediate cognitive struggles? Do we show them how to activate background and schematic families of thoughts that overlap with ideas, concepts and facts like a prizmed Venn diagram (taxon vs locale)? 

Thinking and Reasoning: Expanding definitions, types, and uses of fluency. Rasinski and fluency. I can't say any of that better than him. Other than to remind folks that we are using fluency as tool. We adjust fluency based on our purposes and needs in concert with that of the author's grammatical artifacts of prosody. 

Note: In the program, we have learned that rate, accuracy, and prosody are just a part of the picture. When learners understand syntax (clauses, punctuation), tone, style, emotional vocabulary, and motivation of authors, speakers, and characters...everything changes. Even the decoding. 

We also experience fluency with typing - automaticity in typing so that we can keep up with our ideas as we compose. We become fluent in handwriting to track the flow and rhythm of our ideas and the pace of life. Fluency also means facility - think of the coloratura soprano - moving quickly into arpeggios and through different registers of the voice, throat, head, and chest. Agility with thinking - fluent in finding ways through and toward our goals and interactions with texts and each other. 

Thinking and Reasoning: The digital approach. We explicitly teach kids how to touch and hold books for the reading stance. We explicitly teach how to read static print. Digital texts are tremendously complex. Yet- where is the explicit instruction for the approach to reading pixels? 

There's more to say...but I need to think about some other stuff for a bit...



Am I wrong about vocabulary? Teach me what I don't know. Seriously

Well - I received an email asking if I knew of a vocabulary assessment that a teacher could use to assess the learner's level of vocabulary knowledge and place them effectively for instruction. 

Things to say: 

  1.  Well - I have a lot to say about vocabulary. I might be wrong. Teach me.
  2. In my experience, vocabulary assessments are often connected to programs that provide explicit instruction or practice on words that the publishers have divided into categories and levels that make sense only unto themselves. You have to buy the whole program and a bunch of workshit books each year. And  - none of the research shows that these programs work overall to improve comprehension, word knowledge or expressive language in speaking or writing. So...no.  
  3.  I asked Google Gemini to make me a diagnostic assessment. Here's the conversation: https://g.co/gemini/share/ada01a6b6733  
  4. I asked Google Gemini to list free stuff and paid stuff. Here's the convo: https://g.co/gemini/share/f815c6d546e5 Most of what they suggested is crap. 
  5. Avril Coxhead's list is a good place to start. She did her doctoral dissertation on this. Her approach and outcomes are similar to what Fry did with his lists. 
    1. Here's the convo: https://g.co/gemini/share/f815c6d546e5  
    2. and here is Avrils stuff: https://www.eapfoundation.com/vocab/academic/awllists/
  6. Some of what learners struggle with isn't exactly vocabulary - it's syntax of questioning that becomes its own kind of vocabulary or way of speaking. Often, this is one of the reasons on-level readers struggle with questions - we just don't ask the questions in that way in our classes. And when we do have syntactically and semantically mature questions and sentences and prompts - teachers paraphrase them without teaching kids how to diffuse the language structures. 
  7. Teaching Greek and Latin roots, affixes and derivational constancy from various languages (French, Italian, German, etc.). is probably the best move. There are sites that break them down by grade level. And there are assessments to measure knowledge and mastery.
  8. As far as I know, there isn't a great free and effective vocabulary assessment that can be easily administered by teachers in a whole class setting that also helps teachers know where to start kids at a particular level of vocabulary knowledge and then causes growth from there.  

Recommendations: 


The penultimate thought: 

Most of the ways learners are taught to acquire vocabulary are not supported by research. Looking stuff up in the dictionary isn't that helpful. Writing definitions isn't helpful. Completing workshits isn't helpful. ACT word lists and powerpoints and quizzes aren't helpful. Seek and finds aren't helpful. If it looks like a Chili's menu for children, skip it. Every research study ever done shows the highest vocabulary impact comes from wide reading: to, by, and with. 

And last - 

Vocabulary development has overlapping areas, like a complex venn diagram. There's more to vocabulary than assessing and teaching it. 
  • Systematic Explicit Vocabulary InstructionOften left out of today's instructional modes. TEA will be adding key vocabulary lists for each grade level. When I asked TEA about this, they said they were using Children's Writer's Word Book by Alijandra Mogilner and Tayopa Moliner and The Living Word Vocabulary: The Words We Know by Edgar Dale and Joseph O'Rourke to determine if words in passages matched the grade levels. I do not know if they are still using these resources. And - I feel like they weren't supposed to tell me about it. 
  • Incidental Vocabulary AcquisitionResearch shows that we acquire more vocabulary incidentally through wide reading (and comic books) than any other method. 
  • Content Vocabulary AcquisitionFor ELAR, these are our academic vocabulary terms for skills, characteristics, and genres. For ELAR texts themselves, the vocabulary comes from words central to the message, purpose, theme, or thesis. For SS - These are proper nouns. For Science: the vocabulary represents processes. For math: the vocabulary represents mathematics concepts and processes. FOR ELAR, we have content vocab about reading and writing itself. For content area specific words, these are terms that are used primarily in that content area and not used (or used differently) in another content area. 
  • Emotional Vocabulary/TraitsFor ELAR, much of our vocabulary development comes in the form of inferences readers make about character motivations, traits, and feelings; and tone/mood distinctions. These are the words we use to talk about the text and the author's craft and purpose. We don't always see these words in the texts themselves. Sometimes. But not always. How are we teaching and exposing learners to this line of words? Research tells us that many of our behavior problems are because people don't have the words to even name anything beyond the basic: happy- sad-mad-glad. 
  • Academic VocabularyI think this is often confused with content vocab. Academic vocabulary is really more about thinking and reasoning. It is also how those terms flow in phrases and clauses. It's not just about single words but how they are used in context of grammar and culture. People will tell you that academic vocab is about the content - but it's really about the ways in which we talk about and process the content to make decisions.  In ELAR, we have process level vocabulary for comprehension and composition that are parsed in multiple ways. 

Resources

Whew - Vocabulary rant over. I'll keep looking. 
SR

Friday, April 11, 2025

Testing Behaviors

 I was thinking about monitoring testing behaviors while doing hall duty for STAAR. Just brainstorming. Thoughts? 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mtZKhmzN3blbHVyHEvyToLUZ0lyWypxSAbIGq7uJ2dk/edit?usp=sharing 

Thursday, April 10, 2025

Teacher Ed: Developing a Watch List of Practices and Replacements for Literacy Ed

I'm teaching a graduate college class called Literacy Acquisition: Process and Pedagogy. GEEKING OUT and loving it.

In our main project, we develop a position statement on an important topic in literacy acquisition. Then we write a Watch List of what to look for in materials and in instruction that doesn't match the population we serve, the research, or the outcomes we seek for learners. 

The following is the example I provided for dyslexia instruction. 

Composing the Watch List: I'm focusing on problems I'm seeing in dyslexia instruction in the middle school age group. 

1. Students experiencing difficulty with dyslexia in middle school, and have already had science of teaching reading interventions in elementary school don't need more of the same stuff such as Read Naturally. If phonics didn't work the first time, then what makes us think it will work the next time? It's been my experience that kids who have to do tasks from early school time feel like they are being treated like babies and end up chunking any form of engagement out the door. Research tells us this is true as well: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED582893.pdf 
2. Carefully consider materials for inaccuracies and mismatches to the population you serve. 
Example one: The word is few. In the program, they code the word /f/ /yoo/. Um. Have you met a middle school kid? I'm not sure that eff you needs to be a part of our distractions during reading intervention. 
Example two: A common program asks learners to box off affixes and underline roots or base words. Prediction and minimum are the examples provided. The program coded prediction as: pre dict ion. Minimum was coded as min i mum.
SOOOOO many problems with this.
First - there is a misunderstanding of what root words are and how they are employed in words. If you use the meaning of "to say" in a word, you can use -dic- or -dict- depending on the Latin or Greek rules that govern the use. If you are wanting to say "small, limited, or short" the form is both -min- and -mini- depending on Latin and Greek grammar. The way the program divided and categorized the word messed up the meaning. 
Second - if we are teaching kids to read words - tion is a unit of meaning that makes a word a noun (which is also a Latin, Greek artifact). You really wouldn't ever divide the word without using the tion in the last syllable. For minimum, the root is -min- or -mini- depending on the grammar from the language of origin. Just like we had in prediction. The program also calls the /i/ syllable an affix by the coding. Ridiculous. There are no affixes in minimum. 
Third - What the heck are kids supposed to do with this information? Is it a reading activity? A vocabulary study? A syllabication activity? A distinction without a difference in application? An activity more suited for a person studying advanced linguistics? The activity is just a hot mess and should be avoided altogether unless the point is to cause confusion and develop a theory of reading that isn't altogether helpful. 
Basically - the program is flat out wrong in content and approach. Dangerous stuff. It's unlikely to reach the goals of supporting kids who already struggle with the code by asking them to code more stuff. This kind of junk HURTS kids. They score worse when they are through with the intervention than before they had the "support." 

Wednesday, April 2, 2025

Getting them to read (,) right (?)

 Getting them to read right. As in correct.

Getting them to read, right? Like, at all. 

Right now, our biggest hurdle is getting kids to read. 

  • They are still reading the questions and scanning. 
  • Or they are just reading the questions and choosing an answer. 
  • Or they are reading, struggling to make it make sense.
  • Or they start reading and get tired.
  • Or they look at it, and realize they are bored already.
None of our lessons and reviews on TEKS and questions are going to amount to a hill of beans - or even cow patties - if they aren't even reading. On all the days ending in y or on the test day. 

Here's some ideas: 

Show me your screen: 

Have kids open up their screens and show you what they do first, second, and third. Have them show you what they do with the tools. Then tell them to stop all that crap, expand the text, turn on the damn line reader, and actually read the thing. 

Manage your energy: 

Look. On test day, we get tired. It makes sense to start with the hard stuff first. Use the next key to next all the stuff until you see the pencil. This is the icon that tells you that that passage has the long text you have to write. Start there. Read the second paragraph in the prompt and use that to set your purpose - reason - for reading. 

Then find the questions that ask you to use two passages. Now read the first passage and answer those questions. Then read the second passage and answer those questions. Then use both passages to answer questions about both of the passages. 

Then go back to number one on the test and do those parts after you take a break. 

Stop Boring Yourself

Guys, when I listen to kids read...it's torture. As teachers, we have to back up and teach people how to stay interested in a text by reading with prosody. The voice in their head - their reader's ear - can't be boring. There must be emphasis, tone, phrasing, soft and loud...an actor reading lines in their head, a grandma reading a story, a newscaster explaining a disaster, a podcaster on a true crime series, a youtuber unveiling a toy or doing a game walkthrough, some crazy-Texas-accented-eccentric-white-lady-who-overdoes-it-all... Something interesting. Anything but that monotone bored teenager in the seat and stuck in a room for five hours. Seriously, why would they torture themselves like that? Stop the madness. 

Point of Difficulty

There's a lot involved in reading. And kids need a strategy for each component when they struggle. 

Decoding - try breaking up the letters, three at a time and stacking them on top of each other
con
trib
ute
Say each line one at a time. Then put it all together. If it sounds like a word you know, you are good to go. If you don't know the word, have the dictionary tool say it for you so you can figure out the meaning that goes with the sounds. 

Purpose - Decide what genre it is. That helps you know what to expect and the voice you need to hear in your head. Are you grandma reading a story, a slam poet, or a documentarian? 

There's more to say...but our instruction has to help kids know what to do when stuff doesn't make sense.

Understand Why

Most kids think they have to do well to pass the grade or to graduate. That's actually not why. The real why is that Texas wants to know that they aren't releasing a giant population of fools into the world. And people who can't read something and use it to make decisions -well, they are easily fooled. The world will take advantage of folks like that. The point of all the assessment is to determine if learners are capable of making decisions that make their lives better. Sure - the test isn't really gonna make life better. But knowing the true purpose and showing competence to get the thing over with sure does make the retesting pain shorter. 

NOTE- I'm working with some specific lessons to resolve these issues with Unity Learning Communities - we'll be trying them out and reporting on the impact.