Bootstrapping: Help for the Struggling Reader

Yvonne Skoretz
Curriculum & Instruction

Marshall University

Abstract: This action research study documents one teacher’s implementation of Clay’s (2001) literacy lesson format as an intervention model during Tier II instruction in a West Virginia elementary school. Individual tutoring sessions occurred over five weeks with a first grade student. DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) (Good & Kaminski, 2002) assessment data collected before, during, and after the intervention reveal an improvement in phonological awareness and knowledge of the alphabetic principle. The author asserts that it is the quality of instruction during the implementation of literacy lessons that led to gains in literacy acquisition skills. 

Introduction

Bootstrapping, a term coined by Stanovich (1986), refers to readers learning more about reading every time they read independently. This is the goal of reading instruction. Clay & Cazden (2007) agree that instruction should focus on helping readers attain a self-improving system. They state, “When they read texts of appropriate difficulty for their present skills, they use a set of mental operations, strategies in their heads, that are just adequate for more difficult bits of the text” (p. 40). When students engage in this process, they use present strategies to build or construct new strategies. The text, in itself, is scaffolding the reading for the child. The text requires the child to access certain strategies in order to make sense of the reading. When those strategies are not effective, the child must problem solve and construct another strategy to be successful. When the child has difficulty constructing another strategy, the teacher must collaborate with the child to help him develop an effective strategy.

Most students will successfully create a self-improving system through the instruction presented in the reading curriculum in the classroom. Clay (2001) estimates that 20% of students will struggle to effectively create this system regardless of what reading program is used. The West Virginia Department of Education, acknowledging this same trend, created the Response to Intervention (RTI) model to prevent reading failure that would most likely occur if intervention was not provided to these students (Torgesen, 2004). RTI consists of three tiers. Tier I includes 90 minutes of uninterrupted reading instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension occurring for all students in the regular classroom. Tier II consists of an additional 30 minutes of reading instruction by a reading specialist or special education teacher for 12 to 20 weeks. Tier III consists of two 30 minute sessions of reading instruction each day in addition to the core 90 minutes of reading instruction provided by the classroom teacher lasting months to years. To determine which instructional tier most effectively meets students’ needs and to monitor the effectiveness of the instruction they are receiving, Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) assessment data is collected on each student (Good & Kaminski, 2002). Depending on the student’s grade level placement and time of the year, specific tests are individually administered. For example, in the beginning of first grade, students are assessed on their phonological awareness and knowledge of the alphabetic principle. These areas are essential in literacy acquisition (Ball & Blachman, 1991).

While all students receive Tier I instruction by the classroom teacher, those who do not meet the benchmark goals in literacy are referred for additional Tier II instruction. These students are not progressing in reading as they should. Intervention is provided in an individual or small group setting to assist students in developing the reading strategies that successful readers use. Clay (2001) believes there are multiple paths leading to the same outcome. With the development of tiered instruction, it is evident that the West Virginia Department of Education agrees. Struggling students are given the opportunity to develop into fluent, independent readers.

In “Closing the gap through professional development: Implications for reading research” Doubek and Cooper (2007) state there is a gap between reading theory and practice in the schools. Documentation of how “reading methodologies are taught and applied in the field” is needed (p. 413). The authors suggest researchers need to examine how the purposes of reading lessons are determined and the interplay of student interest and choice in designing those lessons. The following action research study documents the implementation of Clay’s literacy lesson format as an intervention model during Tier II instruction to determine whether it is a viable model to improve literacy skills.

Background

Constructivist teachers act as coaches to help students build mental frameworks. Since teachers can expect that students learn differently from one another, differentiated and flexible instruction is required as no technique will successfully work for every student and in every situation. Students must initiate the learning. It is only then that the teacher is able to assess what strategies the student has under control to determine what strategies the student has yet to develop. A teacher must listen carefully to analyze the student’s needs to be able to provide effective feedback. According to Allington (1983) teachers often point out errors as students are learning to read to help the child correct the error, so that the student can read error free. Clay (1993) differs in her approach as she believes errors provide a way to determine what processes the student has under control and what processes need to be further developed. She focuses on the strategies a reader uses to get at a known word and then on the strategies used to get other unknown words. Engaging students in problem-solving behaviors creates an atmosphere where generative practices are praised, rather than individual items learned, such as sight vocabulary or individual letter-sound correspondences (Clay & Cazden, 2007).

What does a successful reading performance sound like? Often times it sounds like a reader who accurately, quickly, and easily identifies words so that the reading sounds like spoken language. According to the National Reading Panel, a fluent reader is characterized as one who can perform multiple tasks – such as word recognition and comprehension – at the same time (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000). While comprehension is the goal of reading, fluent reading often is the marker that the reader is performing the tasks of word recognition and comprehension concurrently.

Masson (1987) claims successive rereading of familiar texts improves reading speed because the reader had previously attended to perceptual operations such as letter identification and word identification. During the rereading, the reader is then free to attend to other operations so that the result is fluent oral reading. Although it is not clear whether the fluent rereading occurred due to fewer demands on the perceptual operations, increased memory of the text, efficient strategy use, or effective use of orchestrating the demands of the reading task, it is clear that the student reader is developing a self-extending system of processing text that will lead to a successful reading experience (Clay, 2001).

Johnston (1993) explains four possible behaviors that are observed when a child reads text. One, the child reads the word accurately. Two, the child self-corrects an error thus revealing that he is on the verge of knowing and identifying the word. Most importantly, he is developing a constructive approach at arriving at that word. Three, the child knows an error occurred but does not know how to correct the error. In this case, the child is ready for instruction that might make it possible to avoid making the error in successive readings. Four, the child makes an error but does not know that an error has been made. This may signal that the reading material is too difficult or the child may not be developmentally ready for instruction in how to correct or avoid making the error in future readings.

Responding appropriately to each of these scenarios requires a skillful teacher who knows how to vary the levels of support for the reader. Successful readers use information from four cues simultaneously to monitor and integrate information. According to Clay and Cazden (2007) these cues are semantic, syntactic, visual, and phonological. Consider the following sentence, “There was a funny man,” to illustrate each of these cues in context (see Table 1). Semantic refers to the meaning. Fanny is substituted for funny when the child reads, “There was a fanny man”. The semantic cue has been ignored. If the child does not correct the error on his own, the teacher can ask, “Does that make sense?” or “What does a fanny man look like?” This allows the child an opportunity to correct the error. Syntactic refers to the sentence structure. When a child substitutes sam for saw, he ignores the syntactic cue. “There sam a funny man.” If the child does not self-correct, the teacher may ask, “Does that sound right?” or “Can we say it that way?” Visual refers to the letters (graphemes) and spelling (orthography). When a child substitutes here for there, the child is ignoring the visual cue. “Here was a funny man.” Although the word makes sense and sounds right, it does not look right as t-h says /th/ and not /h/. The teacher can respond with “Does that look right?” Phonological refers to the sounds of oral language. As the child reads here for there, the teacher would ask, “What would you expect to see at the beginning of here?” If the child responds with h, the teacher would say, “That’s correct. What letter do you see at the beginning of this word?” If the child responds with t, the teacher would ask, “Can that be right?” Guiding the child towards creating a strategy to check his use of the cues is important in developing a self-improving system.
 

Readers must also attend to these cues in their writing. Pearson (1990) asserts that learning reading supports writing improvement and learning writing supports reading improvement. He states that they “are driven by the same underlying cognitive and socio-cultural processes…reading is an act of composing” (p. v). Clay (2001), too, stresses the mutual supportiveness of reading and writing as “writing prevents learners from neglecting or overlooking many things they must know about print, and reveals things about the learners’ ways of working that their teachers need to know about” (p. 18). As students become aware of the sounds they hear in words (phonemic awareness), they begin to be able to break the word into the parts (phonemes) they hear, say the parts, and then attend to representing those parts with letters (alphabetic principle). She feels so strongly about this point that she states, “When teachers do not include writing daily in early intervention lessons they are severely limiting the child’s opportunities to learn and they are contributing to slower progress overall, at a time when it is most important to learn quickly” (p. 18).

The Intervention

This action research study occurred over the course of five weeks in September and October, 2007. I met with first-grader Lilly, a pseudonym, on 20 different days for 30 minute lessons. Lilly was referred for Tier II intervention based on results of the DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) (Good & Kaminski, 2002) administered in September, 2007 by the school’s intervention specialist. Her scores indicated two weaknesses. The first area of weakness was phonological awareness (particularly, the ability to segment and produce individual phonemes in a word) as measured by the phoneme segmentation fluency test (Kaminski & Good, 2002). Her second area of weakness was a lack of knowledge in applying the alphabetic principle (which refers to the ability to blend letters into sounds to decode words) as measured by nonsense word fluency (Good & Kaminski, 2002). To address these areas of weakness, the literacy lesson format was implemented as outlined in Change Over Time in Children’s Literacy Development (Clay, 2001).    

The literacy lesson followed a structured routine consisting of seven activities:

1. rereading several familiar texts;

2. read yesterday’s new book while the teacher takes a running record;

3. letter identification and word study;

4. composing and writing own sentence or story;

5. cut-up story and reassemble;

6. introduce new book; and

7. read new book.

A brief description follows along with samples to contextually demonstrate each of these components. L refers to Lilly, the first grade student.

1) Rereading several familiar texts

The student rereads several familiar texts that have been introduced previously in tutoring sessions. Books selected are ones that the student is able to read with 90% accuracy but still offer some processing challenges. The focus is fluent reading and using prompts from the four cues to correctly identify the words.

2) Read yesterday’s new book while the teacher takes a running record

This is the book that was introduced and read during the previous day’s lesson. The teacher documents the child’s reading with a running record. This reading is used to assess strategies the child uses while reading independently and to identify strategies that need to be developed further. The text should be read with 90-94% accuracy to be appropriate for instruction. If it is too easy, it does not offer enough processing challenges. If the text is too difficult, the reading experience will be frustrating for the child and comprehension will be compromised.

The running record in Figure 1 documents Lilly’s reading of We Like To Play (Tarlow, 2000). The √ indicates a correct word response. An error is noted when an incorrect word is written and underlined above the passage. An SC represents a self correction. In this example, Lilly read 92% of the text accurately.

Figure 1 Running Record

3) Letter identification and word study

In this portion of the lesson, the student manipulates plastic magnetic letters to identify specific letters, “taking known words apart into component letters and reassembling them, and to taking them apart to construct new (similar words)” (Clay, 2001, p. 229). The teacher prompts the child in problem-solving activities to direct attention to letters, phonemes, patterns, clusters, syllables, and words.

The letters t, p, a, n are laid on the table. Lilly is asked to identify each letter and its sound. Then, she is asked to create the following words: tap, pat, pan, and nap (see Figure 2). After she forms each word, she points to each letter and says its sound. Then, she runs her finger under the word to blend each sound to decode the word. Prompts to check the word to make sure she is right in her choices guide the activity.

Figure 2 Letters

4) Composing and writing own sentence or story

In this activity, the student and teacher compose a sentence orally. The sentence may relate to the story or to something that is relevant in the child’s life. Clay (2001) states, “the teacher insists upon the learner hearing and recording the sounds in some words in the message, helps the learner to use what he or she knows to get to new words, and expects high frequency words to be put down quickly” (p. 229).  

In this lesson, Lilly chose to write, “I want to be a princess for Halloween.” As the sentence is dictated, the teacher writes it down on a strip of paper. She begins writing the sentence and when she is unable to proceed, the teacher uses prompts that focus on isolating the sounds (phonemes) in the words. Boxes are then drawn to represent the number of phonemes in the word. Lilly runs her finger under each box and then begins to fill in the letters of the sounds she knows. For example, in the word want, she knew that the /w/ was represented with a “w” and she wrote it in the first box. She knew the word ended with /t/ so she wrote “t” in the last box. The teacher writes the letters “a” and “n” in the second and third boxes as these sounds are difficult to hear and represent. Using analogies to get to unknown words by using known words is illustrated with me and be. Since she knew how to write me as observed in previous lessons, she was able to transfer that knowledge to create the word be (see Figure 3).

Figure 3 Sound Boxes

Lilly wrote the sentence in Figure 4. It is a product of problem-solving as she attended to the following features as she created the text: meaning, conventions of print, such as directionality, spacing, capitalization, and punctuation, and phoneme identification, segmentation, and alphabetic principle. As the tasks get easier for the child, the sentence complexity increases to provide new challenges (see Figure 5).

Figure 4 Writing Sample

Figure 5 Writing Sample of a Complex Sentence

5) Cut-up story and reassemble

In this portion of the lesson, the teacher uses a pair of scissors to cut off each word in the dictated sentence as the student reads it aloud. The words are mixed up and the child must reassemble them in the correct order. The student then reads the sentence orally. 

6) Introduce new book

When the new book is introduced, the teacher selects deliberate teaching points based on the child’s daily lesson records. The teacher introduces the new book by first calling attention to the topic, title, and characters. Introducing unusual words or phrases helps the child to anticipate and rehearse what the story will say without actually reading it. Clay and Cazden (2007) state that the book introduction should focus on “attention not in isolation but within the complexity of that text for this particular individual child” (p. 43). 

As the teacher introduced Who lives in the Sea? (James, 1997), the different creatures that live in the sea are named. Unusual words are pointed out. For example, because Lilly identifies a star fish, it is pointed out that the author refers to it as a sea star. Also the pattern of “It lives in the sea,” is repeated as she identifies each creature. Although it may sound like casual conversation, it is intentional as the teacher calls attention to phrases and vocabulary in the text.

7) Read new book

In this portion of the lesson, the student orally reads the new book. During the initial reading, the teacher “promotes emerging skills, allows for the child to work with the familiar, introduces the unfamiliar in a measured way, and deals constructively with slips and errors” (Clay, 2001, p. 44). The interaction is described as attempting, prompting, helping, teaching, and modeling (Clay, 2001).

Findings

Implementing the literacy lesson framework revealed an improvement in Lilly’s phonological awareness as measured by the DIBELS phoneme segmentation fluency test and improved knowledge in applying the alphabetic principle as measured by the DIBELS nonsense word fluency test.

The fall benchmark for Phoneme Segmentation Fluency is 35 phonemes. On September 18, 2007, Lilly produced nine phonemes correctly. On October 10, 2007, she produced 34 phonemes correctly. On October 26, 2007, she produced 40 phonemes correctly, exceeding the benchmark goal (see Figure 6).

Figure 6 Phoneme Segmentation Fluency

The Nonsense Word Fluency fall benchmark goal is 25. On October 1, 2007, Lilly received a score of zero and was identified as high risk. On October 22, 2007, she received a score of nine, and on November 12, 2007, she received a score of 13. While she is not yet meeting benchmark goals, she is developing a self-improving system (see Figure 7).

Figure 7 Nonsense Word Fluency

Emergent Themes

While reviewing Lilly’s running records, writing samples, and anecdotal notes, three themes were discovered.

Theme 1: The familiar rereading is essential in improving confidence in reading. Fluency follows confidence.

Although each day’s lesson began with the familiar rereading, little time was initially devoted to this portion of the lesson. It was at first treated as warm-up to get ready for the real work in the other components of the literacy lesson: problem-solving to construct new words, creating messages in writing, and reading a new book. At about the eighth lesson, a decision was made that it was time to increase the difficulty of the text. Lilly had received several running record scores with 95-100% accuracy. She was monitoring her reading as evidenced through self-correcting errors. Excitedly, the teacher stated, “Lilly, you are doing so well. It is time to move up to the next level.” Surprisingly, she shook her head no. Upon reflection, her reaction should not have been surprising at all. She had limited opportunities to coordinate the reading work. Such practice is essential in building confidence and fluency. Returning to Change Over Time in Children’s Literacy Development (Clay, 2001), it was apparent that the weight and importance of this activity had not been realized.

Clay (2001) justifies the importance of rereading familiar books. She states, “This is the time when readers orchestrate (pull together in appropriate sequences) their strategies, decision-making, problem-solving and executive control sensitivities and responsibilities” (p. 228). She cautions that the text should be one that still offers some processing challenges. The idea is to provide opportunities where the student reader has many of the operations under control, so that his cognitive resources are available to attend to an operation that is not yet fully under control. In this way, the text is able to offer support for the reader. The child is able to work with the familiar text while problem-solving the unfamiliar text in a measured way (Clay & Cazden, 2007). The familiar rereading portion of the literacy lesson allows the child “to return to, and discover, more aspects of the text than he understood the first day” (p. 46). It is clear that this is not just a time to warm up to reading but an essential component of the lesson. 

Theme 2: The child must initiate the learning and do the work. 

Instruction must be well planned to maximize its effectiveness (Hall, 2006). While the framework of a literacy lesson is structured, the teacher maintains flexibility within that structure to meet the needs of the child. Instructional decisions are made minute by minute. The goal is to have the child gain as much control as possible in processing print. As Lilly initiated the learning, I followed her lead acting as a collaborator in constructing strategies.

When teachers become so focused on an agenda, they often miss out on important teaching points (Clay, 2001). As teachers listen more and instruct less, they become in tune with the student’s needs and are able to provide appropriate feedback to assist the child in problem-solving the text. Clay (2001) quotes Wong, Groth, and O’Flahaven (1994) in describing this type of teacher.

…seem to know from moment to moment what text to focus on, when and how to prompt, when to tell, when to coach, and when to allow readers to direct their own learning. Learning to teach in the zone of proximal development enables the teacher to determine with some confidence what text will be challenging enough and when each scaffolding behavior is appropriate. (p. 231)

In order to be an effective resource for the child, the teacher must be thoughtful and precise in giving feedback.

Theme 3: Writing and reading serve as useful resources for the other.

As Lilly became more proficient in her writing, she became more proficient in her reading and vice versa. Because she was required to break words apart sound by sound, her attention became focused on the sequence of the letters. As she applied this concept to reading, she began to look at each letter in the word and then make the sound. She then began to progress to blending the sounds. In the beginning literacy lessons, Lilly would often guess at an unknown word from a picture in the text. She often would only use the first letter as the basis for her guess. An example of this is documented in the running record, the second component of the literacy lesson, when Lilly substituted the word push for pull and pull for push.

In Clay and Cazden (2007, p. 46-47) the different types of supports and activities that occur during the writing portion of the lesson are outlined. These include the following:

• Calling attention to the sounds of words and spelling patterns in writing

• Prompting visual memory of previous experience with written words

• Drawing boxes (Clay, 1985; adapted from Elkonin, 1973) to correspond to the sounds (phonemes, not letters) in the word

• Asking the child to develop and use her visual memory

• Praising strategies, even if the result is only partially correct

• Introducing new information

• Increasing the difficulty of the task

As Lilly engaged in these processes, her strategy use in getting at an unknown word increased.

Tierney and Pearson (1983) describe reading as a process of composing. When reading and writing are connected, students develop a clear concept of literacy (Shanahan, 1988). Clay (2001) contends that as we involve students in learning using multiple senses as we do in reading and writing, learning is strengthened because multiple messages from different sources can be checked against each other. She also states that writing helps readers enlarge the knowledge upon which to draw, provide additional opportunities to process print, use and refine strategies to check information, and reinforce that the purpose of reading and writing is to construct messages.

Conclusion

Clay (2001) describes “reading as a symphony being played, rather than a solo performance on a single instrument” (p. 4). As students rehearse individual elements, reading increases in power and flexibility. Growth is evidenced as changes in the students’ perception and cognition become apparent in print processing. One of the most neglected aspects of the literacy lesson, familiar rereadings is essential in that it provides the opportunity for the student to orchestrate the reading act in all of its complexity. When students work with sounds and letters to form words, auditory and visual perception are reinforced. As students encounter words in print, they must be able to attend to them accurately and quickly. The time spent on composing sentences and constructing strategies to build words is well used as students begin to apply this knowledge during the rereading of familiar texts. As students gain mastery of individual letter identification, attention is shifted towards identifying and producing phonemes, clusters, syllables, and whole words as students improve visual perception and master this information in both isolation and context (Clay, 2001). 

The quality of instruction delivered during the implementation of the literacy lesson will determine its success. Fisher and Frey (2007) in citing Fullan, Hill, and Crevola (2006) state,

We do not need more prescriptive, scripted curriculum or instruction. Instead we need precision in our teaching. This precision comes when teachers have an extensive knowledge base and make expert decisions based on data about the instructional needs of their students. (p. 32)

A proficient teacher can support the child through careful and thoughtful prompting to assist the child in developing a self-improving system that will lead him/her to become a successful reader.

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