SoR Challenge - 1 Take the Science of Reading Challenge Andy Johnson, Ph.D. Minnesota State University www.teaching-reading.com “We should pass a law mandating that Science of Reading zealots spend time in the structured literacy classes that they have worked so hard to mandate. They should be forced to experience the reading class of a teacher who’s been forced to adopt a scripted, one-size-fits-all reading program. Better yet, they should be required to spend a week teaching in a 1 st grade classroom. It’s easy to have all the answers when you’re sitting on the couch reading People magazine.” Time in School World States vary, but on average there are 180 days of school each year. The average school day is about 7 hours. This means children generally spend 1,260 hours a year in school. How many of these hours are spent in reading instruction? Some suggest that 90 minutes a day should be devoted to uninterrupted reading instruction (Denton, Foorman, & Mathes, 2003). This would be 270 hours a year. However, the average length of reading class is about 60 minutes (Rosenshine, 2015). This is 180 hours a year of reading instruction. But time is not always time. That is, there are different types of time in School World. Allocated time is the amount of time allocated for instruction. For reading, that would be the 60 minutes from the start to the end of the class. Within this time, it is assumed that there is student movement, administrative duties, and organizational types of things occurring. Off-task time (OTT) is when students are doing things unrelated to the lesson or learning objective. This usually means they’re doing what you don’t want them to do. This is not a good type of time. We’d rather not have OTT – but kids being kids, you must expect a certain amount of this. Time-on-task (TOT) is the time when students are actively engaged in learning activities. You can see by their behaviors that students are doing something, and that something is related to the lesson or designed learning experience. But just because they’re doing something, doesn’t mean they’re thinking about it. It doesn’t mean they’re cognitively engaged. It just means that physically, they’re doing what you want them to do. They’re going through the motions. You can go through the motions without learning anything. Usually, in reading class when students are back at their desk filling out worksheets, this would be considered time-on-task. Doing low-level skill and drill activities would also be considered time-on-task. But it doesn’t mean any learning is going on. Academic Engagement Time (AET) is the time when students are cognitively and behaviorally on-task and engaged in learning activities that are within their zone of proximal development. Here students are paying attention, completing work, listening, or engaged in relevant discussion. They’re thinking about what they’re doing. This is better than TOT. Students aren’t just going through the motions, rather, they are thinking about what