“He's already decided he wants to fail 1st grade.”
“Whaaaat????” you may be thinking to yourself.
What a crazy statement!
But, in my first job as an instructional coach, I actually heard these words from a primary teacher.
And here’s the kicker:
It was only October, just a couple of months into this 6-year-old's first-grade year. 🙁
True story. [But one with a happy ending. Stay tuned.]
Your Primary Reading Tools Matter
Like you may be feeling right about now, I was deeply chagrined.
How could the child’s teacher have already given up on him, with his first year of primary school just starting?
You may want to paint this teacher as “one of those teachers,” but I urge you to pause and consider her.
As I worked with her more and observed her classroom, I discovered she deeply loved her students and sacrificed for them out of this love.
…And she was, sad to say, facing a common problem.
The thing is – she was worn down.
Her school was a school in crisis – with many struggling primary readers.
Every.
Year.
There were few personnel resources, and the principals who came and went as if on a merry-go-round were inconsistent and unreasonable with their demands on teachers.
ALL of the children were from low-income environments, too.
So, when a feisty young student who wasn’t making gains in reading also resisted doing work, she said what she felt,
“He’s already decided he wants to fail 1st grade.”
A tragic statement for any teacher to make, indeed.
If his 1st-grade teacher didn’t believe in him….who would?
Unless you’re in a rare school where all the kids are above average – you’ve probably felt something like this before.
The discouragement.
The Resistance.
If you’re like me and you’re honest with yourself, you can probably admit to wondering,
“Is there really anything I can do for this student anymore?… I’ve tried everything!”
I’ve been there!
Primary Readers Who Get Stuck: A Common Challenge
Now, however, I have a different set of tools.
And that makes all the difference.
In addition to the many obstacles that lay in the way of this teacher – who seemed to have given up on her student –
– she had poor tools for the teaching of primary reading.
And he just wasn’t getting it with her tools.
Look at it this way:
What if you were trying to nail a hole in the wall with these objects on the left?
You wouldn’t get much power or traction with these, right?
Every year, many kids face the same troubles in school because they realize—they know—they aren’t “getting” this reading thing.
It’s a huge hit to their confidence.
They see other kids moving along—learning to read.
But they aren’t.
So…they misbehave.
They withdraw.
They resist learning.
Again, even if you live in an area where all the children are above-average – in the U.S. – nearly 67% of 4th graders aren’t proficient at reading (according to the NAEP).
So you know these types of students are not just a rare occurrence.
The Antidote: Reading Simplified Tools
When our discouraged teacher learned a few simple techniques for teaching primary reading – her toolbox was transformed.
To begin with, she tried Build It, the precursor to Switch It.
To her surprise, her struggling readers rapidly gained:
- phonemic awareness,
- letter-sound knowledge, and
- early decoding and spelling abilities.
Next, she used the Blend As You Read decoding approach during Read It and Guided Oral Reading.
And what did she discover?
What used to seem baffling to her young, struggling readers – was now clear.
They were decoding more and more words.
Independently!
So, she forged ahead with her new tools.
Next up: She tried Sort It.
This tool helped her implement an efficient system for organizing Advanced Phonics knowledge.
Her students were now learning and applying challenging long vowel spellings (e.g., ee, ea, ie, e_e, y, e, etc.) more quickly and efficiently.
Our teacher began to feel hope.
For the first time ever, she realized she could control reading outcomes in her classroom.
And…in the spring, there was no more talk about his “deciding he wants to fail 1st grade.”
The tools you use matter.
Thus the sooner you implement them – the better.
You may be at the beginning of your school year.
Or maybe you’re already heading into the long stretch toward end-of-year testing and the countdown to summer.
– Take a moment to think about your readers.
Do you have access to tools that unlock the code for even the most challenging student?
Why Reading Simplified? Speed!
With Reading Simplified activities, I regularly observe children gaining 1-3 years of reading achievement growth….after only 12 hours of instruction.
Just 12 hours has changed the path for:
– Primary readers.
– Struggling 4th grade readers.
– Dyslexic high school readers.
– Even adult readers.
In other words…
You still have enough time left in the school year to make a whale of a difference in the lives of your beginning or struggling readers.
Case Study: Jaden, a Struggling Primary Reader
As a reading tutor, I often encounter cases highlighting the challenges many students face with literacy.
One such example is “Jaden,” an eighth-grade student who came to me experiencing intense frustration and a sense of failure with reading and spelling.
His mother shared the following reflection during our first assessment:
Jaden has struggled with both reading and spelling all of his school years. Reading in K and 1st grade was a horrible experience for him, my husband, and I. It was torture to try to help him with reading homework. He hated it and really struggled.
Today, reading is still always a struggle. He often stumbles over words when reading aloud. He struggles with homework and asks for one-on-one help nightly.
Language arts is his weakest class. Spelling and vocab words are extremely hard for him. The “spelling rules” are extremely difficult for him. They simply make no sense.
A teacher once told me “When he’s in college, he will just use spell check anyway.” But looking things up in a dictionary is impossible because he has no idea of how to spell them to look them up.
When I assessed this 8th grader, I could see why he was frustrated!
He had an oral language ability better than 81% of students his age.
And yet, his word reading and decoding abilities were vastly different:
| Initial Woodcock-Johnson Reading Mastery Test | Grade Equivalent |
|---|---|
| Word Identification | 6.4 |
| Word Attack | 4.6 |
| Morrison-McCall Spelling Test | Grade Equivalent |
|---|---|
| Spelling | 4.7 |
His ability to read words in a list (Word Identification) was 2 years behind his grade level and even many more years behind his language aptitude.
His ability to attack nonsense words (Word Attack), demonstrating his underlying sound-symbol processing skills, or sound-based decoding, was 4 grades behind!
I didn’t have much time with Jaden because of his distance from me and the parents’ limited budget, but I knew I had the tools to change these scores.
Here are the tools that I used with Jaden:
- Switch It
- Sort It (1 week each for long “o,” “e,” “a,” etc.)
- Re-Reading of texts that target the week’s sound
- Guided Oral Reading using advanced texts
In just under four hours of instruction spread over six weeks, Jaden transformed as a reader, thanks to the more effective tools that empowered him to crack the code.
The written code started to make sense for the first time – and he learned how to decode unfamiliar words.
Here’s what his mother wrote about Jaden’s reading after those 4 sessions:
Before I met Jaden – he had given up.
Many of his teachers had given up.
But, after a short instructional period, his life as a reader, learner, and student changed.
Not every child has this fast of a turn-around.
But I do expect similar changes in terms of instructional hours.
– Not semesters.
– Not years.
Which student or students are you wondering about right now?
Here are some Primary Reading Simplified activities to try with them now:
- Build It will establish basic phonemic awareness and early letter-sound knowledge for those who don’t know most of the consonants and short vowels.
- Switch It will jumpstart a host of reading challenges/needs.
- Read It will be the “Aha!” the student has been missing all along.
- Sort It will be the fastest way for the student to begin recognizing all those hairy advanced vowels.
- Guided Oral Reading of mostly decodable texts will quickly develop underlying word-reading strategies.
- Re-Reading for Fluency will help students learn oodles of high frequency words each day and gain confidence.
How To Get Started with the Reading Simplified Academy
There’s no need to spend hours trying to figure it out on your own.
We've got you!
When you join our Reading Simplified Academy, we’ll give you the blueprint with all the tools and support you need to succeed.
No frustration.
No stress.
Just better results – faster.
Inside the Reading Simplified Academy, we guide you through:
- how to teach these activities,
- when to use them and with whom,
- how to give smart feedback, and
- how to meet every learner’s needs with a simple framework.
In addition, the Reading Simplified Academy also includes hundreds of differentiated student materials for grades K-6….
AND a discussion board where you can get any question answered by me every weekday.
As a private reading tutor, I use these activities mostly one-on-one.
But, most of the participants in the Reading Simplified Academy use this handful of activities in small groups.
As I said earlier, the Reading Simplified system allows students to move 1-3 grade levels in just 12 hours, on average.
With the time you have left, is this not achievable for you and your students?
Take a moment to reflect on what you can accomplish if you’re in the final stretch.
Now, imagine the possibilities if you have the luxury of starting the academy at the very start of a brand-new school year!
Here’s what one participant experienced with her 9-year-old student after just 2 months inside the Reading Simplified Academy:
There were even times that I wondered if he was dyslexic or something…He has gone from spelling out almost every word while reading and being unsure of his sounds to READING quite fluently – it's amazing !!!!!! I rushed through the course because I had become quite desperate to help him. It was like air to a suffocating person?
The “Read It” part of the course was HUGE like a lightbulb moment for me. The “Sort It” part has also been amazing. I thought that it might confuse him but it didn't. He got it so quickly, we are still working through some of the exercises but the improvement has been unbelievable.
Truly truly, I am so so grateful.
Many, many, many Thanks.
She decided to break the cycle – table the ineffective tools – and try a fresh approach (with the right tools) to support her student struggling with primary reading.
And in just days and weeks, she turned the tide of failure and frustration for him.
Whether you join the Reading Simplified Academy or study the resources on this blog, the key is to take action right now.
Will you commit to trying another set of tools?
Will you commit to squeezing every last drop of instructional power out of the last few months of school?
Not by burning the midnight oil with the same tired tools—but by releasing a fresh arsenal of powerful tools that actually do the heavy lifting for you.
Do you still use dial-up internet…grab a phonebook to look up a number…, or spend time rewinding your tapes?
I didn’t think so…
Teaching primary reading CAN and absolutely WILL be simplified – when you upgrade your tools.
Now I know,
Many will read this, envision a hint of far greater possibilities, and then head back to their Netflix binge or sink full of dishes…and forget.
But what if?
What if you’re different and you commit to one more attempt at something new?
Imagine the immense joy and pride of knowing your actions provided the same life-changing transformation experienced by the children above.
Your tools matter. It’s that simple. 😉
Your Turn!
Do you have any students who are stuck – in primary or beyond? What would you like to see transformed in their life? Please comment below!
HI Marnie,
I have been doing your streamlined activities for the past month with my son. He is in 4th grade. He reads a level N according to F & P.
I see growth in the past month. He is working on applying the sounds he knows to new words. I find when he reads from a list or the word in isolation he shows he is able to decode it, however he sometimes misses words he can decode in isolation when it’s in a lengthier book. I see growth.
Teachers at school report plateaus.
They tell me he is stuck. I will continue with your 3 activities as I think they are so good. Please guide me though on moving him to the next level. He has the basic code, he’s working on the advanced code. I just want teachers to see the growth that I see.
Joanna, great to see the growth! Still making errors in longer texts is normal. Keep correcting him or tapping the pencil where the error is made (or giving him a correction for the confused vowel sound etc.). He’s training his eyes in longer passages, so to speak, so it takes awhile AFTER sound-based decoding is established.
It’s hard to say what you should do next based on this info alone. Please consider getting trained in the whole system by joining the Reading Simplified Academy. Once several levels of the Advanced Code are mostly mastered, he should show growth that the teachers see. Another piece that may be important is Re-Reading for Fluency? Are you having him re-read a short selection daily until it’s fluent–“mastering” one a day? Also, be sure you’re asking for a summary from him after each passage.