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Find out in this Q&A with the authors of Next STEPS in Literacy Instruction: Connecting Assessments to Effective Interventions |
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About the authors
 Susan M. Smartt, Ph.D., serves as senior research associate at the Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality at Vanderbilt University. Her research focuses on improving teacher preparation for reading teachers. Dr. Smartt travels the U.S. extensively presenting workshops for classroom teachers and administrators. She provides educational consulting services and training to states and local school districts on school reform, reading intervention for low-performing schools, the use of data to inform practice, the development of Response to Intervention initiatives, and the implementation of scientifically based reading programs.
Deborah R. Glaser, Ed.D., is an educational consultant and professional development provider. She has served as director of education of the Lee Pesky Learning Center, where she oversaw the development of remedial programs for individuals with dyslexia. She consults with national policy institutes regarding quality reading instruction and teacher preparation, and assists schools and districts with the implementation of scientifically based reading programs and the strengthening of collaborative efforts toward improved instruction and student reading abilities.
Dr. Glaser has assisted universities with the development of research-based reading curricula and established training and consultation programs to support the success of U.S. state and national reading initiatives. Questions? Customer Service: |
Q: What is "Next STEPS"? A: Next STEPS is a program for teachers who want to take the data they've collected from formative assessments such as DIBELS, AIMSweb, FAIR, and TPRI, and plan evidence-based instruction for their students. Primarily, it is designed to be used with small groups of students rather than in a whole-class setting. Next STEPS takes the teacher through a step-by-step process of analyzing the test data, forming small groups, making decisions about what to teach based on the data, selecting appropriate instructional materials, testing deeper with diagnostic screening instruments, and monitoring student progress to determine whether the instruction is effective. It guides teachers in not only what to teach (content) but also how to teach effective, evidence-based teaching practices. Next STEPS provides a lesson-plan format that incorporates research elements essential for student success. The result is a well-informed teacher who knows the needs of each of her students, who can differentiate between individual needs, monitor progress, and improve the reading progress of low-performing students specifically. Q: It is not unusual for teachers to have the results of an assessment and to have plenty of reading activities but not be sure how to put the two together. How can teachers use Next STEPS to link the two for best results? A: Noting areas in need of improvement, teachers can find the chapters in Next STEPS that correspond with the 5 "Big Ideas," or essential components, of reading instruction—phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. There they will learn how to teach the component effectively and which activities or strategies will help the student improve in that area. Activities are listed in each chapter so there is no guessing which activities or strategies go with which component. For example, if a teacher has data from the DIBELS Phoneme Segmentation Fluency measure, he would look in the Phoneme Awareness chapter and find additional information about how to teach phoneme awareness at the sound isolation, segmentation and blending stages of development. Q: You train extensively on Next STEPS; what are common issues you hear about from teachers? A: The most common challenge we hear from teachers is how to take the data, the numbers from tests, and turn them into instructional recommendations. Teachers have been accustomed to teaching in whole-group, total-class formats and when they become more aware of the opportunities for success for their struggling readers in small group instruction, they wonder how to go from whole group instruction to small group instruction. That's a big jump! In Next Steps, we take teachers from the assessment stage to breaking down the classroom into small groups for more specialized instructional focus. We refer to this process as "sorting" the students into instructional groups (we even have grids and charts for sorting) and developing the instructional focus for each group. Finally, teachers use the STEPS lesson-plan format for planning instruction. Q: How can teachers keep the rest of the class meaningfully engaged while they providing small-group instruction? A: When management is an issue, teachers may find that many of the practice activities in Next STEPS work nicely in independent or paired centers. Once students are familiar with the routines of an activity, teachers can set up centers and use that activity over and over again by changing the word and text items to match what the students are learning. Q: What can a teacher do when selected interventions don't seem to be working? A: When interventions aren't working, the first change should be instruction. Some questions teachers can ask to guide their decisions are, Am I providing enough practice time? Is the task too difficult? Am I requiring multiple responses to engage the student fully? Do I need to take this child's case to my problem-solving team for ideas? For further guidance, teachers may want to refer to the Teacher Behavior Checklist in the Effective Teaching chapter. There they will find ideas for effective teaching techniques such as student unison responses, modeling for students, and scaffolding instruction. Posting the checklist where they can regularly assess their application of effective teaching techniques will help them improve their interaction and instruction. Q: Your book offers pointers on how to teach fluency, one of the less-covered elements of the 5 Big Ideas of literacy instruction. Do you have any recommendations that seem to particularly resonate with teachers? A: There is one big a-ha moment that everyone seems to experience which is related to the Oral Reading Fluency Decision Tree located in the Fluency chapter of the book. Many teachers have been under the misconception that if you want students to improve their fluency you have to give them time drills frequently, over and over and usually at the grade placement level—not on their actual reading level. With the Oral Reading Fluency Decision Tree, we help teachers understand there are many factors that contribute to being a fluent reader such as being able to read the words! Students must have the underlying or precursor skills in phonemic awareness, phonics, sight word knowledge, vocabulary or word knowledge and be able to integrate these skill in order to read fluently. With the Decision Tree. teachers learn how to identify where the break-down in skill knowledge may occur when students are not at benchmark on oral reading fluency measures. Teachers are given additional diagnostic assessments in Next STEPS to "peel off the layers," i.e., to determine exactly which skills are missing or which sight words need to be taught on Monday morning, for example. The teacher then has the collection of activities and strategies to teach the missing component— whether it be phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, or comprehension. |
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