Supporting Executive Functioning Skills through Goal-Driven Reading Instruction

by Gabriel Ortiz

The guest on episode 1 of To the Classroom podcast with Jennifer Serravallo was Kelly Cartwright—Professor of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Teacher Preparation at Christopher Newport University. They discussed Duke and Cartwright’s (2021) Active View of Reading Framework which incorporates current research on executive skills. The model shows how certain Bridging Processes such as fluency, vocabulary and cognitive flexibility help to connect Word Recognition and Language Comprehension. She suggests that goal setting around active self-regulation and executive functioning skills could have a positive reciprocal relationship.

Cartwright defines executive functioning as mental skills (the most important being working memory, cognitive flexibility, and self-control) that help people manage complex tasks to achieve goals. These skills are vital for reading because people who possess strong executive skills are more able to manage their time and approach their reading strategically; they know the actions they must take to be able to reach a goal. Conversely, children who come into the classroom with low executive skills are at risk of not reading as well. As a result of not reading well, their executive skills don’t grow as much. To quote Cartwright in this podcast, “it creates a vicious cycle instead of a constructive one.”

The good news is that teachers can do something about it! By helping children improve their reading skills, they can enhance their executive functioning skills, and by helping them to improve their executive skills, they can enhance their reading.

But what is the most effective way to do this?

Well, both Serravallo and Cartwright concur. Teachers must develop goals for, and with, their students around self-regulation, language comprehension, word recognition, fluency, vocabulary, and print concepts. Once we identify the most pressing goal through assessment, we select a skill to work on and then provide children with procedural strategies to practice and improve upon these skills while offering timely feedback. Therefore, goal setting should be an essential component in every school, for every teacher, in every class.

Here’s how you can take it to YOUR classroom:

Step 1: Assess Students' Reading Abilities

Before setting reading goals for students, it's important to assess their current reading abilities across several categories, or goals. Some possible goals include Emergent Reading, Engagement, Accuracy, Fluency, Plot & Setting, Character, Themes, Main Idea, Key Details, Text Features, Vocabulary & Figurative Language, Conversation and Writing About Reading (Serravallo 2023). Within each goal, there are a range of assessments you may use to assess their skills along a standard of progression. For example, you may listen to students read aloud while taking notes on accuracy and fluency, or you can administer prompts as they read a text, and then evaluate the quality of their response related to character or theme. By doing so, you can identify students' strengths and weaknesses within these different reading goals. 

Example: Mr. Ortiz wants to set a reading goal for his 6th grade student, Pedro. Mr. Ortiz has Pedro read from a text while he takes notes about Pedro’s ability to read accurately and fluently. Afterwards, he asks Pedro comprehension questions around Plot & Setting, Character, Vocabulary, and Theme.

Step 2: Choose a Relevant Goal

The goals mentioned above are from Jennifer Serravallo's Reading Strategies Book 2.0. In this book, she organizes reading skills into 13 goals. These goals are presented as a Hierarchy of Action - not importance - which helps teachers choose relevant strategies, offer feedback tied to goals, and provides a student a way to practice.

Using this hierarchy, you can choose a goal that is most relevant to your student’s needs and interests and that aligns with your grade level standards. It’s probably likely that your student will need to work on most, if not all, of these goals over time as they encounter more complex texts along their reading journey. Rather than try to teach everything at once, we start from the top of the Hierarchy of Action and work our way down. Stop at the first area of need and set that as a goal. While reading is very rarely linear, this gives you a way to be responsive to your student’s assessment by considering the most pressing need.

Example: Based on Pedro’s results, Mr. Ortiz recognizes that his student has several areas of need: Accuracy, Fluency, Plot & Setting. All these goals are equally important, but to understand Plot and Setting, Mr. Ortiz feels that Pedro first needs to work on some core bridging processes – namely fluency and accuracy. As he becomes more automatic in these areas, his cognitive energy will be freed up to work on strategies to deepen understanding of plot and setting. Mr. Ortiz considers which of the two is the more pressing goal for Pedro. He decides that before Pedro can work on fluency, he must learn how to read accurately.  In a goal-setting conference (Serravallo, 2018), Mr. Ortiz shares the notes he took while Pedro read aloud and asks him to reflect with the question, “What do you think would help you most as a reader?” Pedro is self-aware and realizes that becoming more automatic with word recognition is a good first step, he has ownership over this goal and is motivated to work on it.

Step 3: Choose Specific Skills to Work on Within the Goal

Once you have chosen a relevant goal, select a specific skill to work on. For example, within the goal of Accuracy, there are several skills to conquer such as tracking, blending, decoding or self-monitoring. Skill progressions can help you match the assessments you give your students to specific strategies that your students need to progress within the skill. Use these progressions to find strategies aligned to your grade level standards. Remember, development is rarely linear, and it's unlikely that all children will develop skills in the same order or at the same rate. Provide targeted, individualized instruction to each student, on strategy at a time, to avoid overwhelming them with a heavy cognitive load.  

Example: Mr. Ortiz utilizes the Progression of Skills on Accuracy as a guide, and he decides to teach Pedro how to “decode longer, multisyllabic words by recognizing and correctly pronouncing words with more complex letter strings and blending parts together” (Serravallo 2023).

Step 4: Choose a Strategy to Teach, Practice, and Provide Active Feedback

After you have set a reading goal and determined a skill to work on with your student, it's important to get to work. Choose a strategy, teach it explicitly and then let them practice. As they work, coach them by offering prompts that “course corrects, nudges them along, or points out what they did well” (Serravallo 2023, p. TK). As a rule of thumb, think more practice, less talk. Your student will independently work on this strategy over the course of the week, and you will check in periodically. The following week, determine whether they need more guidance on the strategy. If not, compliment them on what they are doing well, and celebrate that they are ready to learn a new strategy within the goal. 

Example: Mr. Ortiz reminds Pedro of the goal he chose and offers him the first strategy to help: Strategy 3.20: Cover and Slide. The strategy has relevance to Pedro since it’s aligned to his goal. Mr. Ortiz quickly models the strategy then allows Pedro to practice. As the student struggles, Mr. Ortiz provides feedback that specifically addresses Pedro’s challenge. He tells Pedro, “Blend the sounds before you uncover any more of the word.” Pedro tries again and succeeds. Mr. Ortiz specifically compliments him on using the strategy to read through the word, left to right. He gives Pedro a visual reminder—the steps of the strategy on a sticky note—and sends him on his way to apply the strategy independently. He will check in with Pedro soon, and if the student shows ownership of the work, Mr. Ortiz has decided to teach him Strategy 3.23 – Take the Words Apart, Then Put It Back Together.

In conclusion, through the process of assessing your student’s reading abilities, choosing relevant goals, teaching necessary skills and strategies, and providing active feedback, you not only help them improve their reading, but also improve their executive functioning. This will create a constructive reciprocal relationship between the two, and not a vicious one that erodes motivation and engagement.

 

References:

Duke, N.K., & Cartwright, K.B (2021). Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1), S25-S44.

Serravallo, Jennifer (2018). Teaching Reading in Small Groups.

Serravallo, Jennifer (2023). The Reading Strategies Book 2.0.

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