TESL Canada - Reading Recovery and the ESL Learner

TESL Canada Session
READING RECOVERY AND THE ESL LEARNER:
MORE THAN A MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE

Sharon Hodgson and Barbara Price

Reading Recovery, a program designed to meet the needs of grade-one children experiencing difficulty with fluent reading, was developed by Marie Clay in New Zealand. This article outlines ways in which this approach – conceived initially for L1 readers, and in fact extremely effective in that context – can also achieve remarkable results with ESL readers facing a similar challenge. First, Sharon Hodgson provides a brief overview of Reading Recovery, with special emphasis on assessment techniques, materials, support, integration and independence. Then, Barbara Price recounts her classroom experience as an ESL teacher who undertook training in Reading Recovery and employed the approach with ESL students in Etobicoke. She presents three case studies, exemplifying her own observations about learner progress along with insights from the pupils themselves and from family members.

Background (Sharon Hodgson)

At John English Junior Middle School in Etobicoke, we trained an ESL teacher in Reading Recovery. It was possible to do this because the ESL teacher had a relatively flexible schedule and, at the same time, the staffing of regular classes in the school was not affected. It quickly became apparent that Reading Recovery offered many significant benefits for the ESL learner. I will outline these powerful aspects of Reading Recovery in the first three parts of the paper; in the remaining parts, Barbara Price – ESL teacher at John English Middle School – will describe the experience from the practitioner's point of view.
Reading Recovery is an Early Intervention program for grade one children who are at risk in the area of literacy, developed by Marie Clay in New Zealand. It is an inclusive program. Children are not excluded for any delays, nor for lack of knowledge of English. The program consists of daily 30 minute lessons from a specially trained teacher, for a period of 12 to 20 weeks. Accountability is built into the program, with careful assessment and tracking.

What Makes Reading Recovery Effective with the ESL Learner?

Authentic Assessment
The Observation Survey devised by Marie Clay consists of several authentic tasks that give a broad- spectrum picture of the literacy competence of a six-year-old child. It is important to administer all the tasks in order to discover the strengths of the learner and to find a place to start in teaching. This kind of assessment can work effectively with any emergent reader (or non-reader) and it is particularly helpful for the ESL teacher who must design programs for learners who arrive with varying degrees of knowledge about print and about the reading process. The following tasks are included in the assessment.

Letter Identification
Teachers took for accurate and fast identification of letters of the alphabet. If the child does not know some letters, it is important to teach them and to develop the fast automaticity that will carry over into the student's reading.

Word Test
Here the student reads isolated high-frequency words. Again, the test suggests to the teacher a place to start teaching.

Concepts about Print
In a shared reading experience, students reveal their knowledge of conventions of print, awareness of reading behaviours such as directionality and one-to-one matching, finding the first and last letters of a word, and locating words in text. Because these tasks are directly related to curriculum goals, the results can provide a direction for modelling and teaching basic reading behaviours.

Writing Vocabulary
Here children are asked to write as many words as they can in 10 minutes. The results can help in programming and in monitoring progress in an aspect of literacy that is related to reading and fluent writing.

Dictation and Hearing Sounds in Words
Teachers dictate sentences designed to assess the child's ability to hear the sounds in words and to record them. Responsive teaching in this area, through shared writing and opportunities for pupils to construct words in their personal writing, is one way to develop this area of literacy.

The Running Record
This modified version of the miscue analysis captures reading behaviour so that it may be evaluated and analysed. From this careful monitoring, the teacher may observe shifts in the child's learning and respond appropriately with teaching prompts that give the student strategies to use on his/her own.

Book Choices
Reading Recovery is built around a collection of several hundred books that are levelled according to a sequence of difficulty. Teachers make careful choices each day, so that the child is supported by attempting books with just the right amount of reading work. Success ESL learners is built in, so that learning is always positive and, as a result, it proceeds quickly.

Meaningful Text
Children always read complete stories. In this way the ESL learner is presented with meaningful contexts and also learns the 'book language' that is essential for learning English and for learning to read. The result is rapid growth in language competence and reading skill.

One-to-One Support
One-to-one teaching, which is the basis of Reading Recovery, allows for a very refined individualisation of the program for the ESL learner, who may have a unique configuration of skills and gaps.
The teacher is trained to find and work in what Vygotsky (1978) calls the learner's "Zone of Proximal Development". Again, the result is accelerated learning. It is very important that ESL learners be brought up to the performance of the average band in the classroom as soon as possible. These students can then engage successfully with the regular program.

Integration
Because the Reading Recovery student is maintained in a regular grade-one classroom, there are benefits to ESL learners because they are exposed to the rich language and print environment of the regular grade one.

Independence
For the ESL learner, independence in reading and writing is a powerful outcome of Reading Recovery teaching. The resultant boost in self-confidence raises the self esteem of the child. Once a child becomes a confident independent reader, there is a positive carry-over into other teaching learning situations. Empowering an ESL learner to excel in a regular classroom situation provides a success base that will continue for the rest of the pupil's academic life.

Recapitulation

While this outline of benefits to ESL learners is far from exhaustive, it does give an indication of power of the Reading Recovery program for the second-language learner. What it does not give, however, is a direct insight into the excitement that is generated between teacher and child as a non-reader gains skill and confidence in a matter of weeks; that is what Barbara Price can best describe in the following accounts.

Initiation into Reading Recovery for Emergent ESL Readers (Barbara Price)

I am an ESL teacher who presently works with 70 ESL children from two different schools, in grades 1 to 8. I also will service 2 to 4 primary-grade one ESL children who may have difficulty learning to read, by using the Reading Recovery Program. Reading Recovery has become part of my ESL Program. I do my Reading Recovery in the first part of each morning; each lesson lasts half an hour per child. During the balance of the day, I work with other ESL children in a variety of ways: for instance, by forming withdrawal literacy groups for shared writing, by having a three-times-a-week beginner/intermediate-skills program, through middle-school tutorial groups, by working in classrooms, by having shared reading and discussion groups, and by offering remedial help or after-school homework sessions.
For half of my career, I struggled with how to teach reading to grade-one children who were also second-language learners. When I transferred to John English School, Sharon Hodgson asked if I would be interested in learning the Reading Recovery Method. I didn't know very much about Reading Recovery at the time and told Sharon that I would like to think about it; I also had to receive special permission from the ESL Department and the Principal at the time, as the program involved a series of intensive training sessions. I eventually received permission from the Supervisor in charge of Special Programs in Etobicoke. He asked me why I wanted to take the program and I said, "because I wanted to be a better teacher". I would like to think of my move into Reading Recovery as an adventure.
Ian Morrison (1994) comments, "We are looking at helping any child who has reading difficulty without labeling that difficulty in any way whatsoever. We need to work with any child who requires help, regardless of any assumptions made about the child". This statement helped me make the decision to incorporate Reading Recovery into my ESL repertoire. With support from my present Principal, Saara Tatem – who was willing to take a risk and to continue this program after one year – from the ESL Department, from the Special Programs Department, and from Teacher Leaders Susan Keyes and Sharon Hodgson, the combined ESL and Reading Recovery Program continued with success into its second year at John English Middle School.
If success means helping at-risk second-language learners to read and to improve their use of oral English at the same time, then this has been achieved. Some of the children may still require additional support in the future, but their self-confidence as well as their use of oral English are much improved. All the children do learn how to read fluently. And the second-language parents who have been involved with the Reading Recovery Program have been encouraging and supportive.
I think that as educators we should whenever possible work together, with parents and classroom teachers, to support second-language learners in creative and innovative ways. We need to be risk-takers; certainly, if the administration in Etobicoke had not allowed me to take a risk with the combined ESL Reading Recovery Program, I never would have discovered that Reading Recovery could be used as a tool to help second-language learners read and speak English better. I can now use my new techniques from Reading Recovery to service all children in a classroom. I can teach learners to write fluently using shared writing techniques; I can introduce stories to learners in grades 1 through 8 by discussing the pictures in the story before beginning to read the story. Advance discussion of the pictures serves as an anchor for the reader. In illustration, I will present case studies of three children with whom I have worked successfully over the last two years.

Case Studies

Jasmin
Jasmin arrived from Algeria in September. She turned six in November and had never attended school before. She spoke no English, but did speak fluent Arabic and understood some French. On the Observation Survey in the fall, she scored 0/21 on Letter Identification. She then went on to score 0/20 on the Word Test, 2/24 on Concepts about Print, 0 on Writing Vocabulary, and 0/37 on Dictation, and she could read only a very simple beginner-level book. She was considered at risk in reading in relation to other children her age. We began working together in April. By lesson number 48, towards the end of May, Jasmin was reading at level 12. In the middle of June, she was reading at Level 16 and she completed the Reading Recovery program. Her fluent reading and her ability to speak the English language had improved considerably. By June 6, her Spring scores on the Observation Survey were: 47/54 on Letter Identification, 16/20 on Word Test, 19/24 on Concepts about Print, 22 on Written Vocabulary. and 34/37 on Dictation.
Jasmin's family are all very proud of her reading progress. Jasmin's teacher said, "It [Reading Recovery] gives the kids an extra push; so, they view themselves as readers. It most definitely has helped" Jasmin's oral English greatly improved and she is now reading more fluently. Her family members take turns listening to her read at home. They are also learning English at the same time that she is.

John
John was one of the first Reading Recovery students whom I worked with last year. He was born in Poland and then lived with his family in Montreal. He continued to speak Polish and in fact returned to Poland for a trip after attending part of a senior-kindergarten program. John was to be referred for possible placement in a special-programs primary class because of his lack of progress in senior kindergarten and his short attention span. His assessment was never completed because he left for Poland on a trip. Instead, he received Reading Recovery help after an Observation Survey was completed. His Fall scores indicated difficulties in all areas of literacy development. His scores were 25/54 on Letter Identification, 0/20 on Word Test, 9/24 on Concepts about Print, 3 on Written Vocabulary, 0/37 on Dictation and 0 on Text Reading.
With lots of reading support at home, and with Reading Recovery assistance, he subsequently completed level 16 in reading and is now one of the top readers in the grade two class at another school. Both his classroom teacher at the new school and his Mother consider him to be a very good reader, even though he still has a short attention span. He learned to read well and his present grade-two teacher – who was interviewed – said, "It is hard to believe that he was a Reading Recovery child; I could believe ESL. He has a short attention span but he is the second top reader in the grade two's".
His Spring Observation Survey showed 54/54 on letter identification, 20/20 on word test, 18/24 on Concepts about Print, 30 on Written Vocabulary, 36/37 on Dictation and level 16 on Text Reading. John's Mother said, "John's English is now better than his Polish. He worked so hard last year that I gave him a break for two months. But when he chooses a book now, and reads titles, I am very pleased".

Janice
Janice's story was similar to John's. She was not progressing in senior kindergarten and was in the process of being referred for an assessment for a possible placement in a special-programs primary class. On the Observation Survey in the Fall, she scored 41/54 on Letter Identification, 0 on Word Test, 6/24 on Concepts about Print, 3 on Written Vocabulary, 0/37 on Dictation, and Level l on Text Reading. After receiving Reading Recovery help, her Spring scores on the Observation Survey were 54/54 on Letter Identification, 20/20 on Word Test, 18/24 on Concepts about Print, 30 on Written Vocabulary, 36/37 on Dictation, and Level 16 on Text Reading. She now reads very well and with self-confidence in grade two. Her family is very proud of her remarkable progress. Her teacher in grade two finds it hard to believe that she was a Reading Recovery child.
During an interview in Janice's apartment, her father – who is Spanish-speaking and very shy – found the words to express his views on Reading Recovery Program very feelingly: "I think that I could see the difference. She is more enthusiastic than before. The ESL program is a very nice program. I recommend that the program continue. It is a very good help, one of the very best programs that I know".

Note
The names of the children in the case studies have been changed.

Acknowledgements
Barbara Price would like to recognize the help and encouragement provided by the Etobicoke Board of Education; contact people, Sharon Hodgson, Susan Keyes, Teacher Leaders, Etobicoke Board of Education; the Principal, Vice-Principal and Staff of John English Middle School; the parents involved in the program; and her family.

The Authors

Sharon Hodgson is Reading Recovery Teacher Leader, Etobicoke Board of Education. Barbara Price, formerly an ESL teacher at John English Middle School, is now a chairperson at Elmlea Junior School, Etobicoke Board of Education.

References

Morrison, Ian (1994) Keeping It Together. Linking Reading Theory to Practice. New Zealand: Lands
Publishing Limited.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978) Mind in Society: Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Eds. M. Cole,
S. Scribner, V. John-Steiner, and E. Souberman. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press.

TESL Canada SessionREADING RECOVERY AND THE ESL LEARNER:MORE THAN A MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE