hello my name is Leslie Dell and I'm one of the authors of the new Pearson
resource called ebn in French IBL in English
IBL is also is a early reading screening kit for our emerging and beginner
readers so in this webinar I will be first of all exploring the resource
we'll be unpacking it together then we'll look at some of the educational underpinnings and finally we'll look at
an evaluation example of the resource so to start with the exploration piece
we know that reading instruction is complex and screening for learner needs
is multifaceted we asked ourselves four questions when we started creating the
resource one is how can we screen for specific reader needs of our different
students and how can we accurately identify their strengths but also how
can we better Target our own reading lessons and interventions and then how can we ensure that our next steps and
interventions are closely linked to the specific needs of the reader in the
resource design we have a small group screening approach which really allows the teacher to observe and Screen a few
students at a time and in a really short period of time in addition students will
have the opportunity to express themselves orally and demonstrate skills
related to essential reading components we know that oral language is essential
especially in the second language and the teacher provides those real and
authentic learning situations in addition the data collected allows
the teacher to accurately Target Concepts that would be taught then in subsequent reading lessons and small
group interventions and it gives you a really a good profile of the teach of
the student where they are in their reading skills and that information will then allow you to strategically
intentionally and systematically plan instruction so IBL is a reading screening tool based
on evidences of best practice in Reading instruction it's a tool that accurately identifies the needs of the learner and
it allows teachers to gather information about the five different reading components and we also the the tool also
records observations on reading appreciation and metacognition
so IBL was really designed so that teachers can identify the specific needs
of readers for those who are just learning how to read the ones who are in the emergent and beginning reader stages
it really is a springboard it's a fresh start for Effective and intentional literacy learned lesson planning and it
really allows you to address the student gaps quickly and put in the strategies
that need to be put into place so IBL is not designed for formative
assessment purposes IBL measures the extent of phonemic awareness skills it
really is that check-in that we so we know where students are with her phonics
knowledge with their vocabulary range which is even more important
um and even more important component when it comes to a French Learning in a second language the reading fluency and
accuracy skills and also comprehension strategies so really in short it's a screening tool
it is there to identify and Screen the reading strengths and needs of students
and by using the five essential components in reading it targets those and also it we rely on some fabulous
progression charts of the five components of reading so it's important because we really we
need to um identify and respond more accurately to the needs of our Young Learners and we need to also guide our
instructions so that's the two basic um components and objectives of this
resource are right there for you um I would just like to clarify that it
is a screening measure a screening measure is quick informal it's evidence-based it is used so that we can
provide immediate intervention and uh it is a screening measure it can be used to
identify difficulties in oral language development but that's not the scope of of what a screener is and certainly not
in this regard um in addition it's not a diagnosis and
it's not a label or a designation that is assigned really what a screener does is it allows teachers to better
understand how to help their students and so that the students receive immediate and targeted support
so in this kit um we have as I said really the assessment is done in small groups for
students up to maximum so it takes less time we have authentic situations uh it targets with more Precision so it to and
it also proposes the next steps that need to be done and it provides progression charts to help us plan those
next steps and it provides ultimately a clearer picture of our readers that leads us to that that strategic that
intentional and that systematic planning so who is the resource for well the
resources created for kindergarten degree 2 French immersion students it can also be used for french as the first
language students in minority situations and for grade three French immersion students who need additional support we
created ultimately this resource because it is a first and it that is designed to
identify the needs of learning to read in one second language in Canada French
and and uh it's vital really to acknowledge and address really that unique context of learning to read first
in one second or additional language within a diagnostic reading assessment
and also it's for to better respond to specific needs so why do we create the
resource well we did um focus groups across Canada and we had many Educators
respond we had actually 70 teachers who participated in the Prototype and they gave us some really valuable feedback
and the goal it really was to create a resource that took into account the particularities of learning to read in
one second language such as when we learn to read in our second language it's a longer processing time well
students have limited vocabulary limited oral production skills a less knowledge of graphene phoning Connection in French
and some transfer skills are less automatic such as the fanatical phenol phonological awareness
and comprehension piece so in addition teachers have been
requesting uh reading screening resource with evidence-based research on the
science of reading and best practices when learning to read in one second language and so they were requesting a
use of all five pillars to screen the readers they wanted a more efficient process and to evaluate in small group
settings and wanted real life and authentic situations and the texts they wanted to emphasis on oral language
during the assessment and they wanted frequent that vocabulary employed and
concrete evidence of reading needs without using a number a numbering system and they also wanted to know the
next steps and the specific interventions to guide the teacher so all of those elements we can actually find in ebl
so what are those five components the five components are phonological awareness
phonics vocabulary fluency and accuracy and comprehension
and we can find that all of these five components are intricately linked in all of the activity sheets that are based on
the readers we also have some percussion charts and this is really the core of the resource
the progression charts that there's one for each of the um Five Pillars the five
components they are specifically designed for our L2 Learners and there's a flow in the progression charts it's
organic it's not necessarily linear a student may skip some and and have to go
back or stay in one of the components for a longer period of time you can see that their color they go from our
beginner reader this is one that's on phonological awareness and then it goes over to your beginner reader and all of
our interventions are in each of the five components are in each of the
activity sheets are based on these progression charts so it's linked together very intricately
now we'll talk about the text so the selection of the IBL text that we gave a
priority to really a simplification of the reading stages there are only three stages that were chosen from
kindergarten to grade two 20 texts were chosen informative narrative in nature there are also new
texts they are authentic real life situations there's a variety of them they're visually really appealing
there's different levels of complexity we also have some existing texts from the mythology and evil Canada series and
we even have these wonderful information cards that are also a part of the merging reader that can be used that are
used then when we look at the stages how we would Define the stages and I'll just go
over this briefly um obviously you can go into more detail when you have a guide the emerging stage
is our Discovery stage that's when we're just beginning the association between the oral and the written the texts are
repetitive and familiar at the beginner stage we have SIMPLE texts with familiar topics
um they tell a story in their own words we have very diverse profiles for our
beginner readers and the early and beginner that's when you're in between both stages so you could be at the end
of the emerging stage and just starting at the early part of the beginner stage so when we look at the text basically
you can see the one text here or in a beginner stages and these texts are the ones where we actually use the
information cards with that are read to by the teacher and then here we have uh
the oscillating between the two stages and over here we have our beginner reader stages and as you can see
sometimes we use the same text but we use the text and we exploit it
differently according to the different level and really just looking at two
pages are enough to actually cover all five pillars
and here's an example of the text I love them they are Canadian based and they're
excellent authentic real life context this is a series um just an example of some of the series
this is a series of evil Canada um this is a theories when it's our own series from eBay you can see it written
specifically for this resource they're down here um and they're fabulous this is
um uh the IBL resource for emerging and this is um Vivo Canada one of the resources so
you can see that for the beginner reader so you can definitely see the difference this is that is our emerging reader and
this is one that we see at the beginner side is
uh and the steps to the screening now so first of all there's a preparation State
the screening takes place taking the notes and then planning for intervention
so the screening allows us um to identify and Target the learning process the specific needs of each
student and then how to support the learning of reading skills additional points that
um the proposed tasks should already have been taught in a group class instruction such as if I am going to say
this book is about for a comprehension activity I would have already used that type of phrasing and done that type of
activity in a whole group setting so it's it's skills and and that tasks that
have already been addressed to the whole group The IBL also allows us to obtain
data on the five components of learning in a single 20-minute small group session it again it's not as a summative
assessment it doesn't for example address all the commutative competencies that we would find in a given program of
studies so when we look at the student and teacher profile each booklet so if I
have a booklet here I have one here called Jamal you see no yes it is
accompanied by two teacher cards and one teacher card is for it has easier
activities on it and one teacher card has is for the more complex activities
and then you have two student sheets one is for the easier activities uh have easier activities and one has more
complex activities and so uh a student and it can be decided upon by the
teacher if they want to go through both activities in for that group of students that they have around them so let's take
a look at it to the right you see one of the activity sheets and those are based on all five competencies in in Reading
what you would do to start is you would select students that have a similar profile and each student would receive a
text and then the teacher reads the text to the group of students up to a maximum of
four and it's recommended that the student follow along in the younger in their emerging level with their finger
as the teacher is reading uh it's designed the sheets as you can see are designed really to easily indicate the
up for understanding you underline your circle Etc each student then after the
teacher has finished reading the book each student would then receive an activity card and the teacher would read
aloud the instructions so we can see that that idea of comprehensible input there's a lot of reading and then as you
see when we take a look at how the activity are the activities are addressed is there's lots of discussion
and oral interaction um Within These ticks um activities and
so you pass through the activities one at a time as each student completes them you do it all together and you note the
observations on the teacher card and what does the teacher card look like well this is an example of the teacher
card basically these are the instructions that I just went through this is an activity based on
comprehension we have our um what the stock the student can do
the I can statements that we pulled from the progression charts what is in
italics is what the teacher is to say to the students the instructions that they give and
and then here is how you record your observations so here we can see that what is highlighted in yellow is what we
need to go back and address later because the student perhaps didn't um respond to it completely or respond
to it correctly this would be another one on comprehension sometimes in the
higher levels we have two comprehension um and we have less on uh um
phonological awareness as the child becomes more and more of a confident
reader and this is on Phonics we'll just look at the next slide here we also have
metacognition it's really important that our students are aware and recognize and
acknowledge their strengths so these um these sheets can be laminated and used for each of the books and we also have
reading appreciation it also is important that the child is freely expresses when what they um their
overall appreciation of reading what did they like about the book what did they did they like the words do they like the
pictures do they like how how Madame read the story to them and we have the language structures that are there as
well again recommended that these be laminated so they can be reused and also at the end we have a global
view of reading so the student has manipulated and worked with the text but
they may not have read the entire story and the entire text and this is an opportunity to do it it is optional it
is up to the teacher judgment as to whether or not they want them to read part of the you know a few pages or to
read the entire text again you can see this will allow um there's a point where
we can actually if they're reading it to whatever extent we can note that right here on the card so additional points
for the screening if you if the teacher chooses to repeat and reformulate or perhaps change a bit of the way we have
written instructions that's totally accepted uh it was encouraged actually for a student to go back to the text and
verify for comprehension uh that's considered a good strategy round robin
reading is discouraged it often places stress on the learner and we don't want that if when the students are asked to
read part of the the text or the entire text we encourage that they read it softly under their breath and in the
small group setting extra points is we have not used any
nonsense words every word is considered a nonsense word when you're a beginner reader in your second language oral
comprehension we know is a precursor to oral production so really we have really
worked on that discussing the text orally which allows for deeper understanding especially in a second
language setting so when the resource is purchased you will get this guide and
which has all the fish in them and it has all the objectives it goes much deeper into the components of the five
pillars of IBL the screening steps and other important points you also will
receive a copy of such a long second which if you will see is base it has
interventions for each of the Five Pillars um over 200 of the interventions are
there here is just an example of a couple of them that you can find they are fabulous it's a well-loved resource
and um a wonderful addition to the kit so in the kit you have your laminated cards
you have your 15 texts in packages of four you have all of the reading texts
we call them the fish and the teaching guide it's suttonia as well and the digital files are absolutely fantastic
because it really allows you to organize them as you go into organizing them on your binder so due to a good hard look
at those digital files and how you can really use them in this um so I just
want to take a brief moment and go into some of the instructional foundations of
the resource there's been a lot of talk about the reading Wars um really that emerged from an
Australian context in the late 1900s it's hats at ups and downs more recently
it's been characterized by as uh phonics versus balanced literacy although
balance literacy has often been mistaken with whole language and in any case we won't know that theoretical debate is
not easily understood or resolved and in the meantime teachers must still teach reading so we don't want to throw the
baby with a bath water at all um I would like to just talk briefly
about teaching reading is rocket science is a it's a great article if you've never read a piece of research we do
know that in Canada 30 of students perform below average in Reading um it can be prevented research has
estimated that 95 of students can read by the end of grade one there was a
report that came out uh you know Ontario very recently it it said that the system
was failing students with um reading disabilities that looked specifically at reading skills this report and that it
wasn't using um the public system wasn't using evidence-based approaches to teaching students how to read
um there was Echoes of the report that have reached across Canada 157 recommendations were made addressing
curriculum and instruction early identification and reading interventions among many other things I've highlighted
that because that's where we are with ebl and um over the past five decades there's
been so much so many studies that have been done in the classroom clinical studies that have consistently showed
that we need to do explicit instruction in the foundational skills to give students a clear advantage in Reading
um in that and really those foundational skills um are phonical phonological awareness
phonics reading fluency and spelling and this is also synthesized out of interest in the National reading panel and in the
National early literacy panel so back to this report we know that the
majority of students need to decode learn how to decode words
and that it needs to be taught and direct explicit and systematic Manner and we need to always keep in mind of
course the ultimate purpose of Leaning reading which is to learn and to enjoy and to understand and we need to
actually think of to meet those profiles those diverse profiles of all our Learners we need to adapt and assess our
lessons really to suit those individuals and those different groups so the Scarborough reading broke is very
well known we have that whole all those strands of language comprehension and then all the strength of word
recognition and that word recognition when it's more and more automatic and that language comprehension when it's
more and more strategic leads us to that skilled reader who can has that fluid
execution of the coordination of word recognition and text comprehension and
this has been Illustrated in so many different ways that comprehension employees plus the decoding is what
equals language comprehension and I love this house which shows really the
components of you know reading comprehension and thoughts the reading of The Words which really reads reading
um understanding the language interfering inferences structure of text verifying comprehension and it leads to
really reading comprehension that's ultimately where we want to be but we also recognize the importance of of
fluent see of decoding of phonological awareness and Etc so all those pieces
are a part of the house um there's been lots of lots of good
documents have been created when we look at the key features of structured literacy we we see that it needs to be
explicit systematic and sequential and and this comes back again and again that
looking at letter and sound relations and and vocabulary and all these pieces that come together text structure right
um and also we know that all students can learn to read fluently if they have access to
explicit systematic and science-based instruction in the basic reading skills but it needs to be coupled with early
intervention and identification especially for those few students who may be struggling how to read
and learning how to read so IBL formally assesses these core competencies and um
we can see that there's this enormous body of scientific research that advocates for this explicit and
systematic instruction on the basic skills to support effective reading and that and they are in the right to read
report it says well that's phonemic awareness um graphical funimix systems decoding
spelling reading words and stories to consolidate word reading and accuracy
and reading accuracy and speed and that reading and stories is really where we
see we're coming through also with IDL so IBL is based on the five pillars of
reading and that is actually supported in grad and in large part by the national reading panel and the five Big
Ideas they play a critical role in Reading initiation and uh we IBL
supports early screening and targeted interventions we know that screening is
an essential part of a systematic and comprehension comprehensive approach to
reading and the earlier we identify um the better really and identifying we
know that if we'd identify early it really will reduce the need for more expensive and intensive services in the
long run and IBL recognizes that importance of early reading we really
want to be able to begin to the programming before the students
experience significant difficulties and by if it's done correctly if it's
combined with early evidence-based instruction early identification that will reduce the likelihood of the
student needing any professional evaluation further on by a psychologist
or by a speech-language pathologist and so what can we do let's take a look at
IBL and uh what does it look like and how are we doing that early identification so this is
um uh an activity sheet right here on the right side for the text jammons and
this is the comprehension question this is what the student would answer and it's based after the teacher has read
the text to the student and now the teacher is reading the instructions what the two students the teachers reading is
in italics our next activity would be for phonological awareness and the
student has to identify um the sound in the word whether it's at
the beginning or at the end of the word if we look at Activity 3 this teacher
would read here they'd have to actually find in the text a word
um find the word if they can find the word or who so that's identification of words and here we have a fluency and
accuracy so here there being a aware of punctuation so they're reading um some
sentences are in the text and they're identifying uh where is the the capital letter and
where is the the period and then when we look at the fifth activity that is
phonics and this um they are pronouncing a word they teach us pronouncing a word the student is listening to the sound
and they're finding a word in the text with that has that sound so you see
we're working with the text and then the rest of the activity sheet is really the
student we bring out the card for um reading appreciation and the card for
um metacognition and finally if determined by the teacher it's an optional activity each student would
then read the entire text or read part of the text
if we look at um something that another text which is this text is detached Pack 2 and this is
from the a series of mathology and uh this is for our lect the one the one the
second stage which is in between your um beginner and uh you're emerging and
your beginner reader so same thing a little bit of a higher level up and here
starting with comprehension and this is basically talking about the text after
the teacher has read the text to the students and then activity two is your
phonological awareness where they are segmenting a word into sounds and that
is how they are identifying the number of sounds over here so each text it's showing how you can exploit and work on
the five language pillars and then we have our phonics here where the student is identifying sounds and that are more
complex we can see but these are words that have are found in the text and then
vocabulary again these are words that are found in the text can they recognize the words and then we move on to fluency
and precision and that's when we're looking at groups of words that are go together and are they able to fluidly
and precisely and accurately say those words um together and then also within a
sentence that's found in the book and then so I just want to move on now to how we
can actually organize the resource once it's acquired so these are some
um photos that were shared with us from a school who has purchased the resource you can see here that they put the
beginner at readers into part one and part A into binders so the beginner are
emerging I should say and emerging beginner readers and then just the beginner readers into the next binder
what they've done is in each um they've put all of the books into one
of the plastic uh um pochette I guess I could say and then if you turn and you
see here what they've done is these are easily photocopy you can photocopy them from the link that's provided for you
and then these are where you would record all of um and you would just record differently
um all the those are the teacher sheets the easier ones and the more complex ones
this is another way that it can be organized it can be organized also into a file folder and you can see that they
have the names of the texts here and whether it's speech a or whether it's speech Bay
it is recommended that when you come to these student fish activities that you
would want to laminate these so that it can be reused and then these are where the teachers would record all of their
data so that brings me to the end of this very short presentation if you have any
more questions if you'd like to go further into it I'd invite you to discover the Implement implementation
support site at the following link right here and I wish you all the best as you
use this resource in your classroom and as you identify the needs of your readers and as you plan your future
interventions thank you so very much