Reaching third-grade reading goals

In classrooms across New Mexico, nearly 26,000 students are in third grade. Just under half of them — about 12,000 children — score in the “nonproficient” range on reading tests.

It doesn’t mean they don’t know how to read; it means they have failed to pass the state’s reading test that sets benchmarks for where a child should be at the end of third grade. Those benchmarks include being able to read certain texts aloud fluently, to summarize the main ideas after reading a text and to use context to figure out unknown words.

During the most recent school year, 287 of those 12,000 kids were held back for another year of third grade and another crack at getting the concepts that add up to being a competent third-grade reader.

Gov. Susana Martinez tried three times to persuade lawmakers to change state law to force more students to repeat third grade. This year, the third-grade retention proposal was back again and was killed by Democrats in the education committees of both the House and the Senate.

With flunking them off the table again, it seems like a great time to try to understand what works to get through to struggling readers before they get to the end of third grade.

New Mexico now has a small army of reading coaches — 46 of them spread out over 57 school districts — paid for by the state Public Education Department under New Mexico Reads to Lead and tasked with identifying struggling readers as early as kindergarten and bringing up their skills. Ten of those coaches are at the state’s largest district, Albuquerque Public Schools.

When I hear “reading coach,” I picture a specialist who sits down with groups of kids or individuals and sounds out words or works on decoding texts.

Some schools have those types of coaches, but that’s not how New Mexico Reads to Lead works. Its reading coaches work with classroom teachers to give them the tools to more effectively teach reading, but they don’t work one-on-one with students.

APS identified elementary schools with the most struggling readers and put a reading coach in each.

When I sat down with Pamela Christy, who just took on the job of overseeing the APS program, I thought she might be able to let me in on the secret that will turn our reading numbers around.

Instead, she told me in all honesty, “There is no magic formula.”

Teaching reading involves working on the foundational skills — recognizing letters and letter combinations and knowing how they sound; learning what words mean; and being able to decode those letters to read with speed, intonation and comprehension.

You do that by … doing that, breaking down the basic components, working until you master them and then reviewing those skills and building on them.

The state’s new Common Core standards expect a lot from children leaving kindergarten. They must be able to recognize and name all lowercase and uppercase letters of the alphabet, be able to isolate the sounds in most consonant-vowel-consonant words (cat, lip, sun), to recognize and produce rhyming words and to read a number of common words (the, she, I, to, of, do, does) by sight.

Some kids know how to do all that and more on their first day of kindergarten. Most don’t. Some come in without even knowing the ABCs.

At the very beginning, a student is shown a letter and told its sound. Next comes working on writing that letter and recognizing it in words.

“And then it becomes more intricate as you go on,” Christy said. “It’s building blocks.”

By the time kids are nearing the end of third grade, they’re expected to be able to read some pretty complicated texts and summarize their main ideas.

Why do some kids struggle to learn how to read? Research establishes relationships between lower student performance and poverty, nutrition, absences, English-language deficiencies and lack of exposure to words in early childhood. Poor instruction can also be a factor, and that is where Reads to Lead aims its efforts. You can change only what you can control, after all.

In analyzing the previous APS curriculum, Christy said she found it used versions of stories with simplified language. Now, teachers are allowed more freedom to choose texts with richer vocabulary.

Repetition is important, so the schools with Reads to Lead dedicate 90-minute blocks to reading daily.

“Research shows that just exposure alone to words, to concepts is going to help these students,” Christy said. “Repetition and putting it into practice.”

In the case of children who are struggling, or who are repeating a grade because of problems with reading, Christy said teachers understand that they have to switch up their lessons.

“Differentiating your instruction is key when you have a reader who’s struggling,” Christy said.

If a student is having trouble with the concept of silent e, for example, a teacher could put that student to work building silent e words with letter tiles, pair that student with another who understands the concept and have them read aloud together from a text or act out that text with a group in “reading theater.”

In Thursday’s column, we’ll go to a kindergarten and a third-grade classroom to see it all in practice.

UpFront is a daily front-page news and opinion column. Comment directly to Leslie at 823-3914 or llinthicum@abqjournal.com. Go to www.abqjournal.com/letters/new to submit a letter to the editor.