Setting the right reading goals is essential.
But beware:
If those goals are based on an incorrect assessment…
Your diagnosis could be completely off-track.
This was precisely what happened to a capable 3rd grader who was mistakenly assessed at a 1st grade reading level.
We'll call her “Ava.”
Dad Questions Initial Reading Diagnosis
Once Ava had been tested,
Her reading tutor, at that time, recommended years of slow-paced, beginning-first-grade-level instruction.
— A diagnosis that would effectively halt her progress and diminish her potential.
Disheartened yet doubtful of the diagnosis of a first-grade reading level, Ava's father reached out to me for a second opinion.
…It was time to do some investigating.
After reviewing the results of the Barton assessment, I had a few questions.
This was a notable one, “Do you have any concerns about Ava's understanding when you read aloud to her?“
Dad said he had been reading aloud Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to Ava and she understood it well.
I felt the comprehension difficulties identified in the Barton assessment likely had more to do with the awkwardness of the decodable text and some poor reading habits than actual ability.
And – could be remediated quickly.
First step – Ava needed to be re-assessed.
San Diego Quick Assessment Yields Conflicting Results
I asked Ava's parents to use the San Diego Quick Assessment, a public-domain, norm-referenced measure of word identification.
Reading Simplified teachers use this as a quick proxy for overall reading achievement.
Ava's father quickly returned with the results shown below.
…Ava was instructional at the 3rd grade level!
This was a big sign to me, coupled with dad's observations of her language comprehension abilities – Ava wasn't in dire straits.
I knew it wouldn't take long to help improve her reading achievement.
I also knew –
– Jumping back down to 1st grade reading instructional levels and waiting for over a year to read chapter books was clearly not a good plan.
You can watch Ava using the San Diego Quick Assessment in the YouTube video below [about 2 min]:
Better Reading Diagnostics = Laser-Focused Reading Goals
Given the data that I now had from Dad, I was confident that I could remediate Ava's reading challenges in much less time than the reading therapist expected.
But since Ava expressed – she wasn’t a fan of reading,
I was worried that diving into short vowel, single syllable words (Barton Book 3) might bore her and cause further discouragement.
So, I asked if I could tutor her myself for free in exchange for the video recordings of our sessions.
And Ava's parents agreed.
I'll share these videos in an upcoming live Advanced Workshop inside the Reading Simplified Academy.
And, if you join, you'll see for yourself how rapidly Reading Simplified instruction works!
Targeted Reading Instruction Begins
So, I began tutoring Ava with Reading Simplified activities, starting with just 1 activity, Switch It, as a 5-day experiment to demonstrate the power of the activity alone.
When students play Switch It, we find rapid improvement in their
- sound-symbol processing,
- letter-sound knowledge, and
- general decoding and encoding abilities.
Progressively increasing the difficulty levels of phoneme manipulation in the context of words is an effective visual/auditory discrimination task that seems to quickly build code knowledge and processing.
And, as a result, students often become faster and more accurate with their word attack, even helping with multisyllable words.
In these two past Switch It only mini-experiments –
– A beginning 4 year-old student and a struggling Kindergarten student both demonstrated incredible growth in these skills in just 5 days, as can be seen here and here.
Ava and I had 5 brief lessons in a row within about 1 week's time just playing Switch It for about 10 minutes each time.
This slow start was primarily for my benefit to create a persuasive professional development lesson on the efficiency of Switch It.
Yet, it also served as a way to ease a busy, tired student into additional reading lessons after school with a stranger!
Then after the 5 days of Switch It only, I adopted the full 3-component Reading Simplified lesson plan for the remaining 3 lessons—each about 1 hour.
Corrected Misdiagnosis Impacts Skills Beyond Reading
After a couple of lessons, the parents noticed that reading homework was getting easier.
Ava was more accurate and less resistant.
Her dad gave me this happy update in a Voxer app message:
Dad shared another message (below) tearfully stating Ava had advanced so far she was getting straight A's – even in math!
She was also reading every night for pleasure—something that had never happened before.
Those 4 hours was all the intervention she needed to flourish in the months that followed.
Before the end of the school year, Dad did another check of Ava's word identification with the San Diego Quick Assessment and found that she was reading on the 5th grade level!
Yes, she was finishing 3rd grade yet reading like a student 2 years above her.
Such a profound leap ahead in her reading—after an initial plan by another therapist to drag her down into short vowel CVCC and CCVC words for early 1st grade level readers—is shocking.
What a difference a proper reading diagnosis makes!
Teaching Reading Doesn't Have to be Hard
Ava's triumph wasn't due to an accurate diagnosis alone.
At Reading Simplified, we put a high value on acceleration.
The accelerated nature of the Reading Simplified activities serves as a stark contrast to what might otherwise have been likely a 1-2 year “remediation” effort.
Stay tuned for an upcoming post, where I’ll elaborate on – acceleration and efficiency – a crucial aspect of reading instruction.
Teaching reading can be easier and less time-consuming than you've been led to believe, as my experience with Ava demonstrates.
From Frustration to Fluency in 4 Hours
Finally, at the end of the school year, I reached out to Ava's dad again via Voxer to see how her 3rd grade year ended up.
Again, he reiterated how, after just 4 hours of Reading Simplified instruction, this resilient student had not only caught up but had surpassed expectations, reaching a fifth-grade reading level and shattering the flawed reading goals set before her.
It was such a delight to hear that she's still enjoying reading every night for 45 minutes!
And Dad? Oh, he's over the moon about it…
So, is what we do at Reading Simplified…Magic?
No. 😉
But we do witness significantly faster rates of achievement compared to mainstream approaches.
– And that's why we want every teacher and child to have access to Reading Simplified.
If you haven't learned the system for making reading simple—what are you waiting for? 😉
Please join us inside our Reading Simplified Academy to learn the streamlined system that benefited Ava so well.
It's Your Turn!
Have you ever experienced a misdiagnosis? What's your opinion on Ava's experience?
Please share your thoughts below!
This is fantastic, Marnie, and so indicative of what can happen with the right approach with competent assessment, a knowledgeable tutor, and a motivated student. What a lifelong impact and difference you have made in “Ava’s” and her parents’ lives
Lauren, you’re the best! Thanks for taking the time to read and share your thoughts. 🙂
That is so wonderful. I am a RS “graduate” and just getting started. Where on the pathway did she start with Ava? I would love to “hear” her thinking as see made that determination.
Thanks!
Joanne
Thank you Joanne!! Good question. I did 5 days of just Switch It – simply to possibly have another example of a mini-experiment of the power of instructional simultaneity. Then we began on Step 2 of the 2nd grade and up Streamlined Pathway (i.e., the /oa/ sound).
I’ll be adding the videos of her instruction to this newer workshop inside the Reading Simplified Academy soon.
Also, this follow-up post explains more about her!