Supporting Struggling Readers and Writers in Secondary Schools

An urgent problem

We know a lot about the risks for young people who continue to struggle with reading and writing in secondary school. They are more likely to face lower economic outcomes, their health and wellbeing are at higher risk, and they'll have fewer opportunities to get the jobs or the kind of work they really want.

Students who still struggle to read or write by the time they reach secondary school need highly specialized support to catch up. Schools are under pressure to provide this literacy support, but the guidance on what exactly to do and how to do it has been limited. This is particularly true for secondary schools.

It was wonderful to welcome Melanie Henry to share key findings from her PhD research into how to support young people who continue to struggle with literacy in secondary school. Below are some of the key points from her webinar.

Response to Intervention (RTI) in secondary schools

Discussion around literacy intervention in schools often revolves around a multi-tiered support system known as response to intervention (RTI). This model is borrowed from public health and is focused on prevention.

RTI is made up of three tiers:

• Tier 1: The core classroom instruction that all students receive, and ideally, this should meet the needs of about 80% of all learners.
• Tier 2: Students who need extra help to keep up with Tier one receive an additional, more intensive dose of support in Tier two. This is short-term, small-group, and intensive instruction designed to help these students engage with Tier one.
• Tier 3: Between 2 and 5% of students will require ongoing, intensive, and individualized instruction from someone who is highly specialized. Ideally, these students will continue to receive Tier two support and also have access to Tier one instruction.

Ultimately, the goal is to make Tier one instruction so effective that it prevents students from needing these more intensive supports.

Henry provided an important overview of the problems faced in trying to implement RTI in secondary settings. According to Henry, the biggest challenge in secondary schools is the sheer number of students already at risk. In government schools across Australia, more than one in five teachers report that they think over 50% of their students are struggling with literacy. That is a staggering number, representing tens of thousands of learners.

Remember, in an ideal world, about 80% of students should benefit from Tier 1 instruction. Somewhere between 15 and 20% might need a small group, short-term intervention, and then you have around 2 to 5% who require intensive, ongoing Tier 3 support. If 50% of students are struggling with literacy the RTI model will be under incredible strain in these schools.

Specific Challenges faced by secondary schools

Secondary school teachers know how complex their environment is: rigid timetables make it hard to introduce something new. Getting time for training can be tricky and costly. And we're working with adolescents who are at a sensitive time in their lives. They're doing a lot of developing, they're trying to work out who they are, they're trying to navigate social and emotional complexities, and being behind their peers can cause considerable stress.

At the same time, as Henry noted in her presentation, the role of a literacy leader is HUGE and often it is not a substantive role. Here is a non-exhaustive list of duties that a typical literacy leader is expected to undertake based on Henry's research:

• Ensuring students receive necessary interventions.
• Pushing for support from school principals.
• Working with parents to advocate for system-level support.
• Delivering small group interventions while managing classroom teaching.
• Supporting professional learning communities within the school.
• Providing coaching to fellow educators.
• Leading regular whole-school professional learning sessions.
• Conducting and analyzing student assessments.
• Deciding which students receive interventions.
• Writing and managing individual education plans (IEPs).
• Running student support group meetings.
• Resource Management: Handling funding applications, budget management, and resource allocation.

There are so many students who require intervention and support, but resources are finite, leaders are stretched. Schools have to make really hard decisions about who gets the support. There are more students in need than schools typically have the capacity to provide for, which can be quite disheartening for many teachers.

How schools currently assess and intervene

Despite these challenges, facing a clear problem when it comes to reading and writing, educators are making efforts to assess and intervene to help secondary school students catch up. Based on Henry's research, here is a summary of how schools typically coordinate their assessment and intervention.

Selection Process:

Schools typically follow a structured selection process involving initial screening or referral to identify students at risk. This is often followed by diagnostic or placement tests to determine the starting point for intervention programs. Additional factors such as school reports, referrals, diagnoses, and input from teachers, as well as student behavior, also get considered. However, multiple tests and the time taken to administer them can raise concerns, especially when resources are limited, leading schools to prioritize the most in-need students for intervention.

Choosing an assessment:

Henry has found that there is a huge variance in the different assessments being used across schools:

"There are a lot of issues with using different assessments, particularly such a wide range. Some of these assessments are not literacy assessments. They don't assess either reading or spelling. Some of these assessments are what are known as level B assessments, which are for clinical rather than school use and level B assessment are typically used by speech pathologist, by a psychologist. They require a higher level of training than what teachers typically have access to. What we can see here is that there is no clear advice from systems on which assessments to use, how to use them, which is why we're seeing this real mix."

Here is a a non-exhaustive list (you can see the full list of over 30 assessments in the webinar video):

• Assessing Literacy and Numeracy (ALaN) tools
• Best Start
• Burt's Reading Test 1981
• Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (C-TOPP)
• Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals (CELF-5)
• Compass OARS
• Digital Assessment Library (DAL)
• Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS)
• Essential Assessments
• E-Write
• General Ability Test (AGAT) 2nd edition
• Hertfordshire Sentence Reading Test
• Middle Years Assessment Test (MYAT)
• Morrison-McCall Spelling Scale
• MOTiF (not specified)

Henry has found similar variance exists when it comes to choosing the actual intervention program. Here is another non-exhaustive list:

• Corrective Reading
• Direct instruction
• Fountas & Pinnell
• MacqLit
• No Red Ink
• Orton Gillingham
• QuickSmart Literacy
• Reading Tutor
• Renaissance Reading
• Rewards
• Soundwaves
• Sounds-Write

Progress Monitoring:

Progress monitoring, crucial for adjusting teaching and evaluating intervention effectiveness, was less emphasized by participants. Attendance was the most closely tracked metric.

Staffing:

Intervention delivery often involved both teachers and non-teaching staff, like education support staff. Many of the participants in the study were teachers providing the intervention. However, non-teaching staff were also often providing intervention. In some cases, they had full responsibility for the program, while in others, they worked as part of a team.

Physical Settings:

Intervention settings varied, with most teachers having a designated literacy space. The quality of these spaces was significant, with better-equipped rooms enhancing the learning environment. However, ideas like "literacy gardens" or outdoor sessions, while appealing to adults, might not be suitable for young people concerned about being seen by their peers during interventions.

Group Sizes:

Intervention group sizes ranged from individual sessions to small groups and full classes, with sizes varying from 2 to 20 students. Group size was influenced by factors such as absenteeism and student behavior, which often led to smaller, more manageable groups, though this sometimes limited the number of students who could receive intervention.

Scheduling:

Scheduling interventions posed significant challenges. Options included skipping an entire subject, skimming time from various subjects, or maintaining a consistent intervention schedule. Each approach had its own tradeoffs, particularly concerning the impact on students' regular curriculum.

Dosage:

Session lengths varied widely, typically lasting one class period and occurring three to four times a week. However, the variation in the duration of interventions raised concerns, particularly for students far behind their peers, as limited sessions might not be sufficient to close the literacy gap.

Recommendations for supporting struggling readers and writers

Based on her systematic review of research focused on recommendations about what works for various domains of reading and how to best implement these supports:

Word Recognition:

• Adolescents benefit from instruction on both "sight words" and phonics, but interventions that match the students' specific gaps make the most impact.
• Educators may wish to implement systematic, explicit instruction or programs to teach basic reading skills to improve sight word recognition, oral reading fluency, and comprehension to students who have not yet mastered these skills.
• Match the instruction to the students' needs and monitor to assess whether students are responding or it needs adjustment.
• Caution should be taken when considering computer-assisted learning to address word recognition difficulties with older students.

Vocabulary:

• Teach vocabulary intentionally.
• Teach independent word-learning strategies.
• Focus on developing semantic networks.
• Increase opportunities for discussion and writing.
• Provide a motivating and rich language learning environment.
• Mnemonic strategies are effective for learning vocabulary and content for students with learning and other disabilities.

Fluency:

• Teaching word reading skills impacts fluency.
• Wide reading could have similar impacts on fluency, and teachers may wish to increase the amount and types of texts read.
• Practitioners should not rely on repeated reading alone as a fluency intervention. Wide reading could have similar impacts on fluency, and teachers may wish to increase the amount and types of texts read.

Comprehension:

• Both strategy instruction and instructional modifications have positive effects, but teachers should preference strategy instruction, particularly self-monitoring and main idea strategy (high effects).
• Multi-component instruction with vocabulary is associated with higher effects.
• Multicomponent interventions with ELA and social studies texts can be used to support students with reading difficulties.

General:

• Systematic explicit instruction, direct instruction, and repetitions are effective for older learners.
• Instruction should match the needs of the student.
• Teacher training to modify instructional language positively impacts written expression and listening comprehension but not reading comprehension.

Dosage and Maintenance:

• Interventions should be 6 hours or more to increase the likelihood that gains will be sustained.
• Intensive interventions lead to significant gains, but the required level of intensity to maximize gains remains unclear.
• The definition of "intensive" is inconclusive from this review.

Setting:

• Interventions are most effective when delivered in settings exclusive to them, outside of the general classroom.

Conclusion

A huge thank you to Melanie Henry for kicking off the Spellcaster webinar series. The incredible research she's doing is invaluable for secondary school educators and their students. I am excited to see what further fruit it bears.