The New Art and Science of Teaching Reading. Robert J. Marzano
language Becoming sensitive to the grammatical constraints of written sentences Understanding basic genres of written language Acquiring knowledge about the world and particular topics Using basic meaning-making strategies
Source: Duke & Carlisle, 2011; Purcell-Gates, Duke, & Stouffer, 2016; Tunmer & Nicholson, 2011.
Students who lack literate cultural capital often struggle when learning to read. However, research shows that high-quality teaching can compensate for these deficits. Catherine E. Snow, Michelle V. Porche, Patton O. Tabors, and Stephanie R. Harris (2007, as cited in Duke & Carlisle, 2011) find that students from home environments that were rated low (regarding literacy experiences and support) still made expected gains in reading achievement if they were in classrooms that were rated high (regarding literacy instruction) for two consecutive years. In contrast, only 25 percent of students from low-rated home environments made expected gains if they were in a high-rated classroom for one year, and none made expected gains if they were in low-rated classrooms. These findings indicate that high-quality reading instruction is of paramount importance in ensuring that all students learn to read.
As we mentioned previously, the hallmark of high-quality reading instruction is what Victoria Purcell-Gates, and colleagues (2016) call “a diagnostic approach to teaching reading.” Such an approach “results in greater reading achievement by learners, is documented as a key element of successful classrooms, and is statistically related to reading achievement (p. 1241).
To implement a diagnostic approach to reading instruction, we believe that teachers must understand how reading skill develops. If a teacher has a mental model of the skills reading requires and an understanding of the continua along which those skills develop, he or she can assess a student’s current status for each skill and determine what the student needs to learn next to improve. Such a mental model can also help a teacher understand how various reading skills interact with each other, and the ramifications of low or high skills in particular areas. In figure 1.1, we present a model that teachers might use to conceptualize the development of skilled reading. In the remainder of this introduction, we present research supporting the model.
Figure 1.1: Development of skilled reading.
Notice the headings at the top of each column and at the bottom of figure 1.1: foundational skills, word recognition, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Scott Paris and his colleagues (Afflerbach, Pearson, & Paris, 2008; Carpenter & Paris, 2005; Paris, 2005, 2008; Paris, Carpenter, Paris, & Hamilton, 2005; Paris & Luo, 2010) offer a helpful distinction when thinking about these elements: they differentiate between constrained and unconstrained reading skills. Constrained skills, such as fluency and word recognition, are those that develop in a fairly linear way and that students can learn to master in a relatively short period of time. We indicate this in figure 1.1 by the closed columns representing word recognition and fluency (on the left side of the figure). Unconstrained skills, such as comprehension and vocabulary, develop organically and continually over long periods of time; they have the potential for unlimited growth. These appear in the open columns representing vocabulary and comprehension (on the right of the figure). We also consider foundational skills (at the bottom of the figure), such as concepts of print and tier one vocabulary, to be constrained skills. Readers will note that listening comprehension is an exception; it is represented with a closed column. Research by Nell K. Duke and Joanne Carlisle (2011), which we address in a later section, indicates that listening comprehension improves and is useful up to a point, but then becomes less important than reading comprehension as texts become more complex. Therefore, we represent it with a closed column.
Foundational Skills: Concepts of Print and Tier One Vocabulary
Concepts of print are basic ideas about how print (generally) and books (in particular) work (Clay, 2000, 2013). Table 1.5 (page 18) lists selected concepts of print.
Table 1.5: Selected Concepts of Print
| Concept of Print | Description |
| Book Handling | All books have covers and pages that people read in a specific order. |
| Vertical Reading Direction | Reading in English goes from the top of the page to the bottom of the page. |
| Horizontal Reading Direction | Reading in English goes from left to right, line by line. |
| Page Order | People read book pages in a specific order. |
| Print Function | The function of print is to carry meaning. |
| Print-to-Speech Correspondence | One printed word corresponds to one spoken word. |
| Role of Punctuation in Print | People use punctuation to signal types of sentences and the ends of sentences. |
| Letter-Word Discrimination in Print | Words and letters are different; people use letters to make words. |
Source: Adapted from Zucker, Ward, & Justice, 2009.
Regarding vocabulary, Isabel L. Beck, Margaret G. McKeown, and Linda Kucan (2002) categorize vocabulary terms into three tiers. Tier one terms are those that most native speakers already know because they frequently hear them in oral conversations (for example, clock, happy, and baby). Most native English speakers will acquire tier one terms from oral conversation and will not need instruction in them. However, English learners or students from home environments that lack rich oral language experiences will likely need direct instruction in these words. Robert J. Marzano (2010b) compiled a list of 2,845 of these terms, organized into 420 semantically related clusters; visit go.SolutionTree.com/instruction for a list of these terms and their clusters.
Constrained Skills: Fluency and Word Recognition
Fluency is the ability to read accurately and with appropriate expression at an appropriate pace. Most definitions of reading fluency include three components: (1) prosody, (2) accuracy, and (3) automaticity (Kuhn, Schwanenflugel, Meisinger, Levy, & Rasinski, 2010). Prosody is the extent to which oral reading sounds like oral speech; it involves the stress placed on syllables, vocal intonation, and pace of reading. Accuracy is reading words correctly, and automaticity is reading words quickly and without conscious attention to the process (Cunningham, Nathan, & Raher, 2011; Rasinski, Reutzel, Chard, & Linan-Thompson, 2011). Accuracy and automaticity are the twin goals of word recognition development. Figure 1.2 illustrates the relationship between word recognition and the three components of fluency.
Figure 1.2: Relationship between word recognition and the components of fluency.
As shown in figure 1.2, two components of fluency—accuracy and automaticity—are required for students to effectively read the words on a page. Adding prosody allows students to read the words with expression, proper phrasing, and appropriate intonation. Accordingly, we discuss word recognition (accuracy + automaticity) first and finish with a discussion of prosody.