“10 pillars? Coach Clark what are your talking about? There are five!”

Let me explain! In 2000, the National Reading Panel came out with the five pillars of reading instruction.

They are as follows:

• Phonics
• Phonemic Awareness
• Comprehension
• Vocabulary
• Fluency

Although it has been 20 years, these five pillars continue to be the basis for effective reading programs.

It was interesting then to find an article by Richard Allington suggesting another five pillars to support our readers.  He states, “I believe there are at least 10 pillars of effective reading instructional design. There likely are even more, but I’m going to suggest five additional pillars for which there exists a substantial body of experimental research.”

The five additional pillars the Richard Allington suggests are as follows:

1. Classroom organization

“Effective reading instruction provides a balance of whole group, small-group, and side-by-side lessons every day.” (Allington, 2005)

I would add classroom management to this section. Our classrooms are increasingly diverse and creating a management system that supports whole group, small-group and side-by-side lessons, is a must!

2. Matching Pupils and Text

“…effective reading instruction provides differentiated instruction.” (Allington, 2005)

 “Because children differ, no single text nor any single task can be appropriate for all children in a classroom—much less a grade level.” (Allington, 2005)

I would add digital texts to this section. Digital texts should be considered in a balanced reading diet, in addition to add-ons such as ReadWriteGoogle that allow students to access text that is above their decoding level, but at their comprehension level.

3. Access to interesting texts, choice and collaboration

Allington refers to a meta-analysis by Guthrie and Humenick that looked at the impact of several features of lesson design on outcomes. Allington (2005) said, “Each of the factors they studied—easy access to an array of interesting texts, providing students choices about what to read, and allowing for opportunities to collaborate with other children while reading—produced impacts that were larger than those reported by the National Reading Panel for the presence of systematic phonics instruction.”

I would add nonfiction texts to this section. I love reading nonfiction and writing nonfiction. I have found that our most reluctant readers and writers can be transformed by zeroing in on their most passionate subject matter.  I have found that when students work together through texts, whether reading or writing, there is more engagement and higher levels of motivation.

4. Writing and Reading

“…reading and writing have reciprocal relationships with each other. Composing can enhance comprehension. Spelling can facilitate decoding. And so on.” (Allington, 2005)

I would add annotation to this section. I worked with students as young as grade one demonstrating the importance of “reading with a pencil”. We need to show students how to record the “tracks of their thinking.”

5. Expert tutoring

“Struggling readers benefit enormously from access to tutoring.” (Allington, 2005)

I would add small group intervention to this section. I know that one-to-one intervention is challenging to provide in most schools. I do believe in some type of small group intervention.  Leveled Literacy Intervention has proved impactful at my last three schools. Recently, our school division piloted a grade one reading project focused on developing phonemic awareness skills. Due to Covid, the project ended but there was noticeable improvement with the students in my small groups.

Richard Allington (2005) ends the article stating, “Any design that fails to attend to these 10 pillars of effective reading cannot truly be called research based. I don’t think any reading program design that ignores or under emphasizes any of the 10 pillars can be expected to develop the reading proficiencies of all students, especially the reading of struggling readers.”

What are your thoughts? When you examine your teaching experience is there one or more pillars that you would like to develop further?

It is definitely something to think about. 🙂

Until Next Time,

Love Coach Clark

Reference

Allington, R. (2005). The Other Five Pillar’s of Effective Reading Instruction. Reading Today. 22(6), 3

Last post, I unpacked the grade 4 Language Arts illustrative outcomes to highlight that there are many skills, processes and content to begin planning your year.

I want to make it clear: the outcomes are the basis of your teaching and not a teaching resource.

By following the outcomes, you have a solid base to select other resources and materials with confidence; you will not find yourself wondering if you are on track with language arts.

Today let’s look a the notion of  “text”.

Text as defined in the program of studies: “texts refer not only to print but also to oral and visual forms that can be discussed, studied and analyzed. In addition, texts are affected and influenced by how they are transmitted, whether by computer, television, radio or book. Students need knowledge, skills and strategies in all six language arts to compose, comprehend and respond to such texts.”

Oral texts include storytelling, dialogues, speeches and conversations.

Visual texts include pictures, diagrams, tableaux, mime and nonverbal communication.

Combinations of oral, print or visual texts include videos, films, cartoons, drama and drum dancing.

Take a moment to think about your classroom.

Have you considered all the different types of text, beyond printed books?

 

 

In the program of studies examples of actual titles and other types of text are referred to in the illustrative outcomes for each grade level .

Types of text are noted in 2.2 (experience various text) and 3.2 (use a variety of sources) for each grade level.

(Note the program of studies is from 2000, so there is reference to outdated forms such as CDROM and card catalogs, yet the term “media” does help us to include all modern forms of text that have evolved since then)

Let’s go deeper…

Grade 4

2.4 Experience various texts.

experience oral, print and other media texts from a variety of cultural traditions and genres, such as personal narratives, plays, novels, video programs, adventure stories, folk tales, informational texts, mysteries, poetry and CDROM programs

3.2 Use of a variety of sources. 

locate information to answer research questions, using a variety of sources, such as maps, atlases, charts, dictionaries, school libraries, video programs, elders in the community and field trip.

This is what grade 4 looks like.

Visual Text	Short Text	Long Text	Informational	People and Places
Posters	Cartoons	Adventure Novels	Articles (paper and digital - web)	Museums
Plays	Comic Strips	General Novels	Advertisements	Field Trips
School Performances	Poetry	Historical Novels	Jingles	Elders in the Community
Logos	FolkTales	Mysteries	Reference Books (Textbook, atlas, dictionary,maps)	Libraries or Learning Commons

Note: printed/digital text can be long or short.

Looking for more ideas…

In most schools, there are Fountas and Pinnell Assessment Kits. Within those kits is a book called the Continuum of Literacy Learning. This book is a guide to teaching the whole year. Refer to the Read Aloud and Shared Reading sections for other text ideas.

Public libraries also have a digital collection. Digital collections include read along books (books that have words on the screen that are read to students), audio books (listen to the book, no text provided) and regular digital books.  Public library collections can be used in the classroom and at home. Students have free access to public libraries.

Below is a list of  my other favourite sources of digital text

• Gocomics.com  is an excellent source for comics/cartoons. Note that full panel comics are published on Sundays.
• Dogonews.com has a variety of news articles for kids.
• Wonderopolis.com is a treasure trove for interesting wonders and has a read aloud feature.
• Kidshannon.com is a portfolio for illustrators with a variety of visual texts. This is also a great source for writing prompts. Specifically, this site addresses outcomes that refer to illustrators, for example: grade 4 -2.2.-discuss a variety of oral, print or other media texts by the same author, illustrator, storyteller or filmmaker.
• commonlit.org is a site for articles that can be displayed, printed or sent to google classrooms. I found this site had interesting topics with readability levels that supported my struggling readers in junior high. This is also a site to share with your K and E teachers.

Take a moment or several, to explore these sites and begin to a list of “texts” that you would like to have in your classroom. Don’t forget the content areas that you will be teaching.  Are there text connections to Science, Math and Social?

Next time we will go deeper in our discussion of classroom libraries.

Until Then,

Love ya!

Coach Clark