Rising up: Allegheny K-5
Reading to Learn at Allegheny Traditional Academy

2019 | Written by Faith Schantz, Report Editor

Third grade is often called the make-or-break year for reading. But what does it mean to be a reader in 3rd grade?

According to Pennsylvania standards, proficient 3rd grade readers have many ways of engaging with text. They summarize the argument an author is making: “The main thing this is telling me is….” They question a character’s motivation: “Here it says she…so why did she…?” They compare texts to see which is more persuasive: “This one made me see….” They recognize sequence: “To set up this experiment, it tells me that first I have to….” They discover shades of meaning and respond to tone: “What this is really saying is….” In the language of one of the standards statements, they “read on-level text with purpose and understanding.”

It’s clear that eight- and nine-year-olds who are still struggling to “decode” grade-level words, or who pronounce words without grasping their meaning, won’t be able to meet the standards. They are also likely to continue struggling with reading as they move through later elementary, middle, and high school. Research shows that children who can’t read well by the end of 3rd grade fall further and further behind in all academic subjects, which largely depend on the ability to read. One long-term study suggests that students who aren’t able to read well by 3rd grade are four times less likely to graduate from high school than proficient readers. There’s a social cost for students as well, in humiliation, shame, and behavior born of frustration.

By the measure of the state test, the PSSA in English Language Arts, 704 PPS 3rd graders were not reading proficiently by the spring of 2019, up from 641 the previous year. Overall, in 2019 only slightly more than half of the district’s 3rd graders scored in the Proficient and Advanced ranges. Within district-wide figures there is great variation by school, including in scores for black students. While experts say no single instructional method ensures success, it’s worth taking a look at how one school in our district that consistently gets better results approaches the teaching of reading, arguably the most important task for any elementary school.

Pittsburgh Allegheny K-5 is a “traditional academy” magnet school located in Allegheny Center on the Northside. As a “whole school magnet,” it can accept students from any part of the city, but most come from the surrounding neighborhoods. Seventy-six percent of its students are economically disadvantaged, similar to the district’s K-5 average. The school’s reading scores aren’t average, however. Over the past four years, the percentage of Allegheny’s black 3rd graders scoring in the Proficient and Advanced ranges on the reading portion of the PSSA was 16 to 38 points higher than the district average for black 3rd graders. Since 2017, Allegheny’s white 3rd graders have also outperformed their counterparts, with Proficient/Advanced scores 13 to 23 points higher than the average. (Other racial/ethnic subgroups were too small for results to be reported consistently.)

Reading isn’t a static pursuit, as anyone who has fallen in love with a book can attest—it involves the mind moving over the page as well as the eyes. When Principal Molly O’Malley-Argueta describes reading instruction at Allegheny, she talks about movement: students moving from chair to rug as they read independently and learn in groups, a cycle of professional development that supports teachers’ work, and students and teachers leaving the building to learn from the world outside. Within this flow of activity, O’Malley-Argueta says, reading instruction should be challenging, tailored to individual needs, incorporate student choice, and help build the productive learning habits known as “habits of mind.”

O’Malley-Argueta came to Allegheny nine years ago after serving as an assistant principal at the high school level. When she first observed an elementary reading class, she says she didn’t even know what she was looking at. Once she had gained a better understanding, she thought, “I don’t see a lot of reading going on.” Because they hadn’t been asked to, students couldn’t read for long periods without “wandering off.” Her solution was to add a framework that would help teachers structure class time, with the goal of meeting individual needs and supporting more independent learning. The one she chose, “Daily 5,” involves five main elements: reading to oneself, writing and revising, reading to another person, listening to someone read, and “word work”—activities that develop spelling and vocabulary learning.

Using a framework gives teachers a routine to follow that specifically allows for addressing students’ individual needs. During the literacy block at Allegheny, “The teacher is conferencing with students one-on-one, or she pulls a small group to the carpet and she’s either reinforcing skills or she is enriching,” O’Malley-Argueta says. Meanwhile, other students write or read on their own. Children choose from a menu of options—and “when you’re 10,” she says, “you think, ‘Oh my goodness, I can pick what I can do in class, how cool is this?’” With guidance, they also select books that are a “good fit” to read independently. At the same time, students who need more structure may benefit from the predictability of the routine.

Learning to be a good reader also involves developing habits of mind. Reading independently builds stamina. Pushing through challenges, such as reading slightly beyond one’s level or writing an ambitious story, builds persistence and the ability to learn from mistakes. Readers also need strategies, O’Malley-Argueta says: “When you don’t know, what do you do, what are your next steps?” Along with using context clues, she likes to see students “making a mess of the text” with underlining, question marks, and notes to reinforce understanding.

When she visits primary grade reading classrooms, O’Malley-Argueta wants to see the explicit and accurate teaching of phonics (the connection between letters and their sounds) and phonemic awareness (the ability to distinguish units of sounds, such as hearing three sounds in “dog,” /d/ /o/ /g/, and three sounds in “wish” even though it has four letters, /w/ /i/ /sh/), along with questioning and discussion designed to build understanding. If she herself doesn’t know something, the school’s literacy coach is a resource for her as well as her teaching staff, particularly for phonics instruction. In grades 3-5, O’Malley-Argueta says, “Although we are definitely still teaching phonic elements, it should be multi-syllabic words, we should be looking at root Greek, prefixes, suffixes,” as appropriate for the grade or “maybe a little bit above” grade level. Overall, teachers should understand the philosophy behind reading instruction and be “putting it into practice and making it applicable to students.” Their principal does not want or expect to see teaching that asks only for memorization, such as “choral reading” (all students reading the same text aloud), “popcorn reading” (each student reading aloud an assigned sentence or paragraph), or spelling instruction that depends on lists and tests without reference to children’s writing.

To determine where students are as readers, the district uses an assessment system called DIBELS, which involves one-on-one screening for beginning reading fluency and comprehension. O’Malley-Argueta and her staff also use a tool called IRLA (Independent Reading Level Assessment) that allows for a finer-grained analysis. Along with looking at such data, O’Malley-Argueta says she will pull a child aside if she has a concern, and ask him or her to read aloud and answer questions about the text.

Looking at the work students produce during a lesson and comparing it to a standard is another form of evaluation, one that is more integral to the deep, daily work of teaching. At Allegheny, reviewing student work is part of a cycle of professional learning that helps teachers know whether their instruction has been effective. Together, teachers plan lessons, observe and provide feedback on one another’s teaching, look at the work that was produced, and decide what changes need to be made. O’Malley-Argueta reorganized the master schedule to give teachers this kind of time during the school day, which she says has been one of her most innovative changes.

To address the racial and economic achievement gap that exists to varying degrees in all district schools, O’Malley-Argueta and her staff design “learning experiences” to build students’ knowledge of the world. “When you have background knowledge [that] your mind stores, you create mental models,” she says. For example, “If I’m reading a text about baseball and I’ve played baseball, I can visualize what’s going on, so that helps me comprehend and retain that comprehension.” Instead of trying to “frontload” knowledge by lecturing or giving reading assignments, teachers draw on the resources of the city. Allegheny is uniquely situated within walking distance of the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, the Mattress Factory museum, a branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, and the National Aviary, all of which students regularly visit. Children learning about sloths in science class have sketched the resident sloth at the Aviary and written reflections on their observational data. To understand tall tales, such as fantastical stories about how landscapes were created, 4th graders walked to Point State Park to view the city’s landforms. Back at school, they wrote their own tall tales. O’Malley-Argueta says, “These are the opportunities we want our students to have.”

She knows that many people judge schools solely by their PSSA scores, and she, of course, hopes her students will do well on the tests each year. But there’s another picture in her mind when she thinks about how outsiders view the school. It’s a vision of adults coming across Allegheny students out in the world, building the knowledge that—along with skillful teaching—can put them on the path to being proficient readers. Imagining it, she says, “Isn’t it wonderful to see [students] sitting all over the place on blankets, sketching, writing, asking questions? That’s amazing.”