3 Literacy Practices to Stop Now in your K-2 Classroom (and what to try instead!) // Literacy Tips 

I do find it interesting that a lot of these old practices are frowned upon even though the data says that students are reading less now than they did years ago. It's similar to the new age thought that phonics should be banished and focus on "whole word" Now in 2022 educators are realizing that phonics should NEVER have been phased out. In my small groups, I am intentional about read-alouds. I read aloud once to demonstrate fluency and then I have the group read aloud to me, then I have the students do a variation of "popcorn" reading of the passage again. Fluency is about listening to others read and practicing intonation, pauses, and dips. It is similar to Reader's Theather where everyone has a line, and MOST educators agree that Reader's Theather is a good teaching practice.

Very helpful video, especially for newer teachers! I feel like the past two years with Covid restrictions, we've probably all been limited in the small-group activities we could do. I don't currently use any of the three "strategies to stop", but one thing I picked up here and am excited to try is front loading vocabulary before the reading our weekly story. I always preview our skills for the week on our focus board, but I love the idea of having a vocabulary talk right before we read the story chorally. That way students will have a peg to hang their learning on when we come to vocab in the story. Thanks!

I think choral reading is great when the students actually read at the same pace. If there are still multiple paces of reading going on at the same time it can cause students to have a harder time concentrating and focusing on reading comprehension.

Thanks for sharing such insightful information and tips. Great video.

This was so good and helpful. Have you ever done anything like this for math or other subjects? Thinking about what I’m doing and how others may be doing it differently is so valuable. Teachers need to be always learning too.

I have not used Round Robin for a long time. And, I never used popcorn reading. When students read during group, I have them whisper read, except the student that I want to listen to and that student will read aloud. Love your videos.

Love your videos. Thanks so much. I have stopped popcorn reading years ago. I have done whisper reading during guided reading and it works well. I have a poem that is focused on the sounds we are learning and we do coral reading with the poem. The kids love it when we read the poem in different voices. I get the kids to circle words or letters that are at their level.

THANK YOU! Your videos are so helpful!

Learning so much from you! I’m a retired teacher, who tutors at home since COVID

I am a student teacher at the moment and your videos are so helpful!

Thank you so much! I am a new teacher and I have learnt so much from you! I really appreciate all your videos.

Could you please time stamp your important points in your video? All you have to do is write the time stamp in the description and RU-vid will automatically tag it (post-hoc). Also, I would appreciate it if you included a link or something to the studies you mention in your videos. Your content is fantastic btw ^_^

I continue to be very intentional about not using "good readers/writers." Watch out for materials that contain these phrases they are everywhere! Whisper reading and choral reading are great for whole and small groups.

I've actually been learning about and using reading aloud in small groups as a great way for 1) the teacher to quickly hear how they are doing (small group time is tight and I want to utilize every moment) 2) it gets all students tracking with eyes on the print and hearing it read correctly mutliple times 3) allows students to hear a process for figuring out a word. I've used whisper reading in the past and some of my students were making errors as they read on their own while I was listening to other students, sometimes pretending they were reading all the pages to be the first one finished (even though I have them start the text over if they finished early). In the later case, they may be reading a text making errors multiple times while I might be working with other students before I get to them. What I'm noticing now is reading aloud together in small group gives them a firm model for decoding the words correctly and practice in using different decoding strategies. I too felt having students reading aloud for each other was a taboo routine. My thinking was challenged when I became a part of the Reading Simplified community. So now we read chorally, students have a chance to read aloud and then listen to members of the group read parts of a text, and then partner read and coach their partner. I love all your videos and enjoy watching them. Just offering a different viewpoint on the student read aloud strategy. Thanks for all your informative videos!

Very useful tips, I appreciate it!

good point about "good readers, good writers".... popcorn reading I have found ineffective due to students' reading skills.they like being called by classmates and participate in an activity but beacause of their uneven reading skills it didn't teach them how read correctly. Choral reading models accurate reading and then practice it in small groups,extra practice that's what they need a lot.Thank you Susan for bringing it up :)

Good new information….thank you : )

Thank you so much. Really loved these strategies

Thank you! Could you give me some links to the researches you are talking about?

Hi Susan really love your channel.. Can you cite the research articles that suggest that the literacy practices we need to stop now are not beneficial to our learners. Much thanks

May I ask, what is the best Reading practice for virtual teaching? Basically we "popcorn". I only have each group for 50min 3xs a week and we read the first 20mins. In person I did all the methods you recommended...but virtually I can barely hear one student at a time🤷‍♀️ BTW...I use ALL your phonemic awareness activities!!! I'm a homeschool teacher in my retirement years!! And, I'm passing on your info on a daily basis to our moms!! Update...tried this week. In my 2 fluency classes I have broke partners into the breakroom to practice their fluency phrases and then to partner read, while I check in to hear them for a minute or two! Not sure what else to do?

Is there a planning page or teacher text that guides us with the whole comprehension rather than isolating skills?

Wow..... this is what I do with my special education students. For my non-verbal kids I have them point to the words mixed up so they can show their peers and adults that they can indeed read.

Non-teacher here: I *hated* popcorn reading in school! I was bored at the slow pace, and eager to know what the story was, so I'd be reading ahead. Thus when I was called on, I'd have to flip back to material I'd already read. I was always a little embarrassed when this happened, so I can only imagine how painful it was for the struggling readers. I do remember that one year a teacher was trying to shame another student for reading too fast, and told him, "You can't read any more, because we can't understand you." This was a mistake, because to my mind, she'd just told me how to get out of the onerous task of reading aloud. So when I was called on, I tore through the passage reading the words as fast as I could possibly pronounce them, hoping to also get an exemption from reading aloud. If I recall, the teacher didn't seem to know what to say to me. She seemed a bit dazed as to how that had gone so wrong. 😄 I suspect if I were in school today, I'd have been diagnosed as being on the spectrum. A lot of attempts at social control went right over my head.

My students love the "round robin" reading in small groups. All texts are at student's level. Not a big fan of whisper reading, it is hard to hear them and they tend to mumble.

Do you have any tips for 3rd graders?

I understand the "good readers" issue but it sort of reminds me of "I can" statements

I strongly dislike whisper reading. I can’t hear what they’re saying.

None of these ideas are new. Basal methods such as Treasures or Journeys did ALL of these things with meaningful and engaging anthologies of time tested and, in many cases, medal awarded stories. They front-loaded vocabulary, introduced a skill (which was going to come around again and again. In whole group we read the the stories in chorus. Then in small-group I could differentiate and target their more specific needs with the leveled readers which, by the way, used the same vocabulary as the whole-group story. Also as the year progressed, the stories grew in length, words per page, and reading level. I don’t understand why so many districts threw out the baby with the bath water.