Ep. 206: Climbing the Ladder of Reading & Writing with Nancy Young and Jan Hasbrouck

The inspiration for this book was a very popular infographic that you created , known as the Ladder of Reading and Writing . In the book , you shared that .

This infographic illustrates what we know from research right that learning to read and write in English is a complex process and it's influenced by many internal and external factors and because of this complexity , instruction can't be one size fits all .

So for our listeners who can't see because this is a podcast the letter of reading and writing , I'm gonna ask , Nancy , would you mind just kicking us off by describing what they would see if they looked at an infographic ?

One of the reasons it evolves my knowledge of the research is evolving and also I'm constantly trying to help people better understand the messages in a one-page visual and I'm really excited because I'm now describing it as a translational framework and this is thanks to Dr Katie Pace-Miles , who described it this way .

For me this spring , katie , to say this is translating the research .

It's a framework and it really is set up in a way that's easy for people to understand , because my focus way back when I first started , but continually my focus here is for classroom teachers , for learning support people , for administrators and for parents and caregivers to really understand the complexities in a way that they can wrap their heads around it .

The ladder of reading and writing at the top of the translational framework shows that reading and writing are both important as part of literacy skills and development In the center of the translational framework . The four different colors here represent the ease of rewiring the brain . The research very strongly indicates that humans are born to read .

We say For learning to read and write , the ease varies , there's a wide variation and in the research and I've started to use this much more myself they refer to the continuous distribution or the normal distribution , and I think that's really important for everybody to keep in mind these tumultuous times when people are really being bombarded with a lot of information

and trying to figure out what to do , not be a one size fits all , because our children vary in the ease at which they are going to rewire the brain , to master this skill that our culture has decided is important and I think is important .

So the wording in here and I'll just encourage people to go back and read it- later but the wording in here is represented of the instructional implications .

And then the wording on the side , and the wording has been carefully chosen and Jan actually was my sounding board for the last two revisions and the purple arrow that says differentiation , systematically designed and data informed . If you look at it you'll see it goes from top to bottom .

This is not just differentiation for one group and clearly we are going to have to differentiate from the beginning . And then systematically designed is also important and maybe we can get to it in the conversation . But again the word systematic has been used in conjunction with children , for whom it's more of a challenge .

But actually when you look at the research on advanced readers the little there is and gifted programming , you're still systematically designing programming and again that's really important to understand for differentiation it's not just oh well , we'll just , you know , let those who can already read sit in the corner .

And then data informed in Jan will probably address this but not just numbers , but observation , and I feel like we're in danger of losing teacher judgment or recognition of teacher judgment and so this I'd love Jan to speak to that later and then the blue arrow recognizing that there are environmental and within student factors that influence how children master skills

and how we're going to differentiate our instruction , and also how we're going to work with families and caregivers and so on . So all these things are important and I spent many , many , countless hours trying to explain it to people and writing blog posts and so on , and then you know this needs to be a book .

The book is full of information and , again , not everything is there , because there's so much you can fill a room . But I say to people now make sure you read the book when you're using this . People write me for permission and they have to read the book because they have to understand the messages so that we're getting the correct information across .

So that's the nutshell .

I say there's kind of four different areas on this continuum , although they blend together Right , so it's not cut and dry , but you know it's . Those are just so important for me . I know I , as a parent , I look at this and I think , ok , my kids going into kindergarten .

I know some kids somehow , before they get to kindergarten , already know how to read and my , my child , doesn't . And you know , looking at this , it's like , oh , that's okay . You know , it's like he's on this continuum where he needs to be . It's not . There's very few students in that green that just pick it up quickly .

You know , and as a teacher too , it's really helpful to see this too , because you know , sometimes you think , well , I did a really great lesson and I taught it really well , but not everybody got it . And it's like that's right . Right , like there's there's different places on this continuum where your students are .

And my question is like you have an entire chapter on this in your book , so there's a ton to say , but can you just give us an overview of you know , these four different areas on the continuum ? What might need to look different for them in instruction ?

We you know you can start from the top and go down or you can start from the bottom and go up , but let's start at the bottom for this discussion , looking at those students estimated , you know , and all of these percentages of course are estimations because we don't have , and we never will , all the researchers that look at how do we categorize children into

the different groupings that do reflect ease of learning . It always has to be estimation because we're talking about human beings . But I really think Nancy has done a very good job in quite accurately estimating based on , you know , sometimes conflicting research .

But in the red area , the estimation on the infographic is 10 to 15 percent of children are going to have the most difficulty in this climbing the ladder of reading and writing , for varieties of reasons , some of which we know from now decades of research , has something to do with the way their brains were genetically formed and developed .

They're born with , perhaps , a brain that works perfectly well , in fact maybe extraordinarily well in most things .

But one little aspect , and often a lot of that research is focusing in on the way the brain processes language or aspects of language , even narrowly , narrowly , narrowly , down to how the brain understands and processes the individual sounds of words , phonemes . That is one of the characteristics that many researchers are comfortable saying .

If that's in place to a moderate to severe level , we're going to call that dyslexia , or at least a characteristic of dyslexia . So the children in the red would include those students that many of us do refer to as having dyslexia or characteristics of dyslexia .

Bit in the infographic but in detail in the book that this what we've learned over actually 50 years or more of good , solid research about systematically designed , explicitly delivered instruction .

Nancy pointed out that that purple arrow indicates that systematically designed instruction that has a scope and sequence , thoughtful , an order of presentation , sufficient examples , that's beneficial . Systematically designed instruction is beneficial and necessary for all students , no matter where they are . The children in the red .

We have to be extremely careful about how instruction is designed and then on top of that we have to be extraordinarily concerned about how it's delivered .

When we think about delivery of instruction , that's where the term explicit instruction , sometimes called direct instruction where we show the students , we model , we demonstrate what it is , the new skill or knowledge , concept or construct is very carefully presented to the children , and then the key to explicit or direct instruction is the guided practice , where the child

works with a teacher , somebody in the teaching role , where we provide that amount of practice and that's one of the differentiators between the children in the red and the other children on the continuum is the amount of practice , especially guided , not independent practice .

Everybody gets independent practice eventually , but where the children in the red are going to need is extraordinary amounts of guided practice where a teacher is there to encourage and scaffold and , yes , that's right . So let's now move on or no , that wasn't right , so let's do a correction or let's back up a little bit .

That is the amount sometimes referred to as the dosage of instruction . It's the same stuff . Everybody has to learn the same stuff or acquire the same stuff through explicit instruction or through experience of learning . We want to prepare all those children , no matter the causal factors of them being in the red .

The research just continues to come in that says with carefully designed instruction , delivered with , delivered explicitly and then monitored progress , using that data to inform our decision Should we slow down , should we back up ? Can we move on ?

Important for all children , but especially , it's really in most cases really kind of a dosage issue the it's really , in most cases really kind of a dosage issue . And then we move to the students in the orange and it's really the same issues , but on a little bit of a light version .

Some of those children too are challenged learners for reasons that may have neurobiological or genetic considerations . Others may be affected and need to move a little slower , or that their ease is going to be a little bit more challenging than some students , for reasons we do not know .

But that's where the observation that Nancy mentioned we do need teachers to know about the whole range of development and of children , so they can look for that .

But we also want to be sure that all teachers have in their hands the good uh well-designed , efficient , not time-consuming uh data collection systems that allow them to to identify students needs um , pinpoint appropriate instruction and then then monitor students' progress along the way .

So not huge differences between those red children and the orange in terms of what kind of instruction . It really does come down a lot to dosage and dosage , particularly in how much time in that step of guided practice before they can move on .

I just have so many questions about the dosage Cause I feel like you know I love to connect , learning to read , to like sports , and if you think about how many times it takes to , in soccer , learn how to perform a corner kick that lands like right in the middle of the goal , some kids might really pick it up really fast and they might just , you know , 10

tries , 20 tries , right , because they have already had instruction in where they plant their foot , how they follow through , where on their foot the ball hits , et cetera . Other kids may have had that same instruction but just might not be able to do it yet .

They're still really trying to manage what their upper body's doing , what their lower body's doing , how it's different , you know , taking a corner kick versus shooting , taking a hard shot on the goal . And I just think that this dosage idea I'm just wondering is there a magic number that we need ? We don't know the number .

It's just like that corner kick , right , it's just lots of practice and some kids need more , some kids need less and what I'm hearing you say and I think you said in the beginning , nancy , is that observation is really important to think about how we move through these pieces , like where kids are kind of in these pieces of the ladder , steps of the ladder ,

rungs of the ladder .

When I get together with my researcher friends , it is one of the things that we talk about a lot , and it's going to . There never will be a number . What we have to prepare teachers for is the fact that some of those children in the red are going to need what may be extraordinary numbers of practice , but even that will vary .

We're never going to be able to say somewhere between 115 and 212 repetitions . We don't know that . It may be 300 , for some it may be 75 . That's dependent , though , not only on who that child is , but their environmental support and the kind of instruction they are receiving .

There can be and we say in the book over and over again there is no one program . There is not a magical program . There are certainly programs that are better than others , but even those better programs , you take the best ones . In the hands of teachers who may be more or less skillful , the child is going to be moving faster than other children . It's .

There's so incredibly many variables . So teachers have to be very well-informed . Teachers have to be very well-supported . I'm a big advocate , as you all know , of coaching and we need administrators to have this information . We need coaches , we need all the support in the world to do the best job we can , because we're never going to do it .

Yeah , dosage is a big challenge and there isn't a right answer , but we have to be prepared that some students and Nancy is going to be talking about this when she talks about the children in the light green and the dark green we have to be prepared . Some of those students need little or no amount of .

Their dosage is maybe zero because they've already learned it . The children in the red may need literally 200 . So how in the world do we manage that and be prepared for that ?

really careful to not generalize , and whenever we're talking , we're talking about for whom , and so I will talk about these areas .

But one thing I keep saying to people that I really believe and it's not just because I created this translational framework , but I really believe this needs to be at the beginning of every teacher training , because I'm worried that teachers are getting training that it's really directed towards one area , and right now there is a lot of focus on children in the red

, and I'm not . I've worked with children for whom learning to read is very difficult , so I'm not taking away their need .

What I'm saying is and Jan and I made this clear throughout the book and our chapter authors said that we need to provide instruction based on need , and I actually believe it's a disservice to teachers to lead them to believe that everybody needs what children in the red and the orange need actually believe .

It's a disservice to teachers to lead them to believe that everybody needs what children in the red and the orange need . Because when I first created my letter of reading and writing , it resonated so well with teachers . I didn't create it to do something like this one day .

I had no idea , but teachers kept telling me this is my classroom , this is my classroom , and right now a lot of my focus is on the green , particularly the dark green , because they're really being neglected , and there is one research article I often quote that I think says the word neglected . That I think says the word neglected .

And so when I present , people come up to me after and thank me because they say you know , I teach kindergarten and I have a child who can already read and I just wasn't sure what to do and nobody talks about it , nobody's recognizing the needs of this child . So we're really validating what actually is in classrooms . I realize classrooms vary .

There are some districts that have a much greater percentage of children who are already reading than others , and so choices need to be made . But training needs to recognize this . We need to honor what teachers see , but also , for new teachers what they're going to see and if we can start out saying there is a range , you are going to see the range .

Now , how do we support you ? And this is where , actually , we don't know if we could talk about it for hours . But this is where differentiation comes in , because we need to support teachers . And OK , how do we address this addresses ? So , going to the light green and dark green . Briefly , you probably would agree there's far less emphasis on these areas .

Children in the light green will read more easily and often those are the ones that people talk about on social media . Well , you know my child , my class has lots of children who are having no problems .

It doesn't mean that not everybody on the continuum learns implicitly , because there's been a lot of focus on that recently and , jan , when you were talking about repetitions , those repetitions will also be gained implicitly . How do we track those ? Because we don't know how many exposures they're getting , and so on . They're getting and so on .

But I put it here to get it into the conversation , because throughout the editing and writing of our parts of the book , my own learning of implicit was increasing , and I feel like this was something that was not mentioned when I first started to read about or learn about the research many years ago , and so I really am trying to get it in the conversation ,

and others are too , thankfully . But we were writing , we were doing the book when it really wasn't part of the conversation yet . But so implicit here means more opportunities to learn on their own , to learn in small group .

We're going to set up our instruction and we're going to provide what is needed explicitly to enable implicit learning to happen as part of our instructional program . And whereas in the red they're going to need much more guidance , as Jan was saying . So Mark Seidenberg and , actually , I think , stanislaw Stahan , they both use the word bootstrapping .

These children require far less bootstrapping , so why would we hold them back ? We're , you know , delaying them if we're holding them back . And then some children arrive already reading .

I think , melissa , you mentioned some who read early and easily , and I've certainly spent a lot of time reading the research on those children and have experienced that myself , because both my children learned to read on their own before school . And I didn't know any of this .

You know nothing , yes , and I didn't realize how extraordinary it was and I also thought that's great , don't have to worry about their school . Well , actually , as the parent of advanced readers , I became very active , you know , in grade one because their needs were not being met .

But in the chapter on advanced readers in the book , I also point out two other groups .

One is those children whose parents have taught them to read , and during COVID there was a lot of attention to the teaching of reading and a lot of parents were teaching their own children , and there's so much on the internet and so much information that I've talked to people , including researchers .

Researchers say , well , yeah , I taught my own children to read before they entered school . They wanted to make sure they had that . So we need to be aware of children who are coming , who may not have learned totally on their own , like my children , but they're already reading , and we need to recognize that .

The other group that I'm very aware of are children who are coming in from culturally , economically , linguistically diverse populations , especially economically , who the research indicates are more at risk for reading difficulties , but not all of them will have reading difficulties .

Some of them may already arrive already reading , but some of them just need a bit of bootstrapping , and I'm thinking of those who are intellectually above average , who are coming from backgrounds of poverty .

We really need to move them along as quickly as we can , and so this is where people talk about equity and they say , oh , we need to have equity , we need to focus on children who are struggling . I'm saying , well , what about those children who come in from backgrounds of poverty , who don't have books at home , who somehow are already reading ?

Maybe their you know family or caregiver or grandmother took them to the library . They learn to read very easily . We can't judge and , you know , say that . You know people from low SES backgrounds have no books like some of them , you know , so we need to be really careful .

But the research does say that when children come from households that don't have a lot of money , the school is what's really important to provide extra enrichment , to provide the support that they need to move along more quickly , to provide extra courses to , you know so it's even more important .

So with that helps not just cover the range but cover the equity issue that is often part of the conversation .

I think I remember myself , you know , in my first year of teaching people were talking about differentiation and I was like I don't even have this teaching thing down yet . I don't , I don't know how to change what I haven't even done yet , and I think differentiation is confusing if it's not well supported .

So you know , I'm thinking , if I'm a second grade teacher and I'm teaching a phonics lesson and I'm providing systematic , explicit instruction to my entire class , that I'm wondering if differentiation in that lesson could look like .

Okay , my students who I've identified as already getting the skill that I've taught right , they got it immediately as already getting the skill that I've taught right , they got it immediately . Then they are moving on to practice something related to that skill .

Maybe they're reading decodable books , maybe they are practicing , maybe even reading less decodable books right , transitioning into trade books . Maybe they're doing other partner activities , like some fluency activities that they might be able to move on .

Basically I'm trying to shift them and give them something different than the other students but potentially related Then my other students I can gather and maybe reteach and provide that dosage in a way that might be a different context or that makes sense for that group .

Many teachers are familiar with small group instruction , but that was organized around what we now have come to understand a faulty methodology of trying to match children to a particular level of book and then they would go off and read those books at their just right level and reading would then magically be happening .

Because of that Well , actually the theory behind that it was not all that bad , but it doesn't work because of many things . One of the things is we skipped over the systematically designed explicit instruction that some of those students are going to need . They skipped right to independent practice , and that's not what those children need . Some children can do that .

So many teachers have never seen that . So one of the misunderstandings the way we move in education so often is from one swing of the pendulum to the other . So we were doing small group instruction and then teachers heard correctly that the way they were doing small group instruction wasn't working .

But they said oh , small group instruction doesn't working of people are misunderstanding SOR , this huge thing that people are treating real quickly and lightly . That SOR means you teach all the kids whole class until you have the MTSS tiers and then you have tier two is something different . Tier one needs to be differentiated .

But yeah , where do you figure that out ?

Well , we would just say to people buy our book and read chapter five , chapter five and I would say that I say it sort of flippantly , but for many decades I've had the opportunity to work with the author of chapter five , dr Vicki Gibson , who I met when I was a professor at Texas A&M University , which is in College Station , texas , and from early on I

remember people in my department of educational psychology saying you need to . There's a woman here in College Station that runs schools for young children and they're amazing and you need to go see them . Her name is Vicki Gibson .

So eventually I did and I remember the very first day of going to her school and she walked me around to see the different classrooms and there were two-year-olds and three-year-olds and four-year-olds and five-year-olds and four-year-olds and five-year-olds and she had them organized by generally by age , and she was managing the teachers were managing these children so that

there was some full class of age , appropriate instruction and then children moving fluidly and purposefully to various areas in the room . The three-year-olds were going to different kinds of areas of the room than the five-year-olds were , but how the children were moving around .

And then what I saw for the older children , starting at age four , were the academics that these children were achieving . The children were writing , they were reading , they were interacting verbally with each other and they were managing and organizing their own bodies to move around and engage with others . I'd never seen anything like this .

She says at the end of that tour , I said to her you need to write this down and she has in different places . But we enticed her to write this down in Chapter 5 of our book and she did so . There is an organization . She's done this for decades with some and many of the children in .

We did together to middle school and high school and Vicki and I co-taught at the college level and we did some of these things within our undergraduate college classes . You have to look at classroom organization first before you get to the differentiation of what do my dark green kids need , what do my orange kids need .

That will come and the whole purpose of doing this is so that you can figure out how to do appropriate instruction for all the students . But it starts with looking at how much time do you have , is this a full day , is it a half day , is it three hours ?

How much time , looking at different activities that you do want and where is that going to happen , organizing the room for those kinds of things .

And that's what it starts at the beginning organizing your time and then organizing the environment , which of course is going to look different for three-year-olds or 13-year-olds , but there's not special furniture or special rugs or it's just some spaces where the teacher can spend some time with some direct , explicit instruction in a small group that there's certainly time

for the full class together , and then different areas or groups for the students to do and then using data to form instructional groups that are very flexible . Vicki , from the beginning you don't lock kids into the low group or the high group .

You put students in instructionally appropriate groups , which may be appropriate for three to five days , and then they switch to a different group and those groups get mixed because a child who's receiving instructionally direct , explicit instruction in some beginning reading activity , because they may be a child who would be in the red or orange group .

They need that kind of instruction . But when they're working with their peer colleagues , because of other skills they have , they can mix with the children , all the children , and do really well . So it's hard to summarize all of what's in that incredible chapter , but it's decades of proven step-by-step do this . It really works .

The payoff is huge , I do remember . But it's so new , it's so different , it's hard to visualize . I do very clearly remember Vicki taking this model into a middle school where it was a top-down decision . The administrator said you all are going to do this , you're going to organize your classrooms this way .

And I can tell you the middle school teachers you can perhaps imagine were not real eager to do this . I was a middle school teacher . I understand .

And at the end of the day , though , he was very honest and he came up to Vicki and said I know I have to do this , I don't want to do this , but I'm going to do it because I'm told to do it , and then you're going to find out that it's not going to work with these kids .

So he dutifully did it step by step , and became a huge advocate , said my kids are happier than they've ever been . I have no classroom management issues anymore . The parents are happier . They're all saying what is going on in your classroom . I'm having more fun teaching than I ever had before . I will never go back . And he actually has a picture .

There's a picture on a book that she published about how to do this at middle school , and he and his classroom are on the cover of the book . So it is different . It's really different , but it does work .

And that's one way , certainly at a classroom level , but another model that allows for differentiation , especially when the range of your class is very large is to think about doing more cross-grade reorganization .

So if there's a bunch of children or a handful , usually perhaps of the kids in the dark green who are quite more advanced in their reading there may be a few across several classrooms Let those children be grouped together and receive the appropriate instruction , not just send them to the library and let them do or put them on a computer .

Those children deserve instruction , but we have to reorganize our schedules , our resources to do that , and I know Nancy has lots to add to this .

Vicky talked about how the children were always talking in their groups and there's a focus these days on you know , we need to have our children communicating more and talking more and maybe they aren't talking enough .

And then we have whole class and you look and they're all sitting there and if they're talking they're talking one at a time and it really struck me when Vicky talked about this opportunity to converse with each other . That is so important .

That comes out of of um this you know , a small group experience and actually I it didn't go in the book , I didn't see it in vicky's um , vicky's chapter , uh . But when um I read her work and and went to her school , I noticed one of the jobs .

It has different jobs for different children , which which is great , you know teaching the responsibility , and one of the jobs was I think it was noise regulator or something . I thought , oh , my son would have loved that . Like , excuse me , everybody's getting too loud . So people say , oh , you know it's going to be noisy .

Well , you manage it and that's you know . So many people have kind of raised reasons to not differentiate and Vicky's chapter is all about well , this is how you deal with it . This is how you deal with that . The other thing that Vicky talked about was the development of self-regulation skills and again , this is getting a lot of attention these days no-transcript .

That's really important to have that consistency . And the other thing that I have seen where it falls down in terms of cross grade is leadership and scheduling . Leadership needs to really be careful with the scheduling and put this as important . Jan mentioned teachers were differentiating and I really again want to honor that .

Teachers realized that the variations and we're trying to do this and we need to recognize their gut . You know this is what we need to do . What we need to do and we need to pull that back under . You know this , quote SOR and and use really good management strategies to do it .

One of the things when Jan talked about different children doing different things in in different areas of the classrooms in . In our book we have a chapter on technology and technology , of course , is just getting well I want to say better and better , but I don't know , sometimes it's kind of scary what's happening .

But certainly there are a lot of advantages in terms of technology for the classroom and there are lots of ways you can differentiate using technology . Differentiate using technology and for people wondering well , you know , is there research for differentiation itself under the science of reading ? I refer people to the work of the late Carol Connor and her colleagues .

You know study after study after study showing we need to differentiate and we need to take into account the child skills and the characteristics . And actually her studies showed that if we hold children back and require them to , say , receive phonics instruction they don't need , they're actually delayed .

And that actually aligns to what the research that I found in the gifted ed field that these students will be delayed .

And I realized I didn't talk about instruction for the students in the dark green , but when Jan talked about grouping students based on need and those students already reading within their groupings they can have , for example , comprehension instruction using more complex texts . They don't need to read decodables .

You know those , you know the books that are for beginning readers . We need to make sure we're not giving them what beginner readers need or may need , depending on where they are , and so on .

So the complex text and then comprehension questions , and there are programs and I won't mention names , but there are good programs that are being studied that provide steps , and so it's back to that design that Jan and I talked about .

These programs are designed for comprehension for advanced readers and a number of them will be above average intellect and they need higher level thinking . They need , you know , complex , demanding tasks and they need rigor and they need to be challenged . So this is what we can provide using a differentiated approach .

And I know I've seen the question a lot from teachers where , well , if we're not doing this leveled you know , if we're not finding the levels anymore , then what do we do ? How do I assess my students to know where they are ? So I know we're low on time , but if you can give your like top tips for assessment to make this differentiation even happen .