Guiding Young Readers

In this Kappan column, Newark school leader Paul Bambrick-Santoyo (citing Lucy Calkins) says American educators have a choice with the Common Core State Standards: “We can read them as if we were curmudgeons, or we can read them as if they were gold.” The curmudgeonly reaction comes from how rigorous and demanding the new standards are. The gold reaction comes from watching students flourish as readers and reach levels of proficiency we didn’t dream were possible. 

The key to good Common Core reading instruction, says Bambrick-Santoyo, is “directing the right correction to the right student at the right time.” That’s what great teachers do and that’s what develops effective reading habits rather than reinforcing ineffective ones. He describes an interaction in a second-grade classroom as students read The Bully with their teacher, Juliana. A student named Bianca confuses two characters and gives an incorrect answer. The teacher has students look back at the book, and the girl figures out the answer. Drawing on Bianca’s answer, Juliana draws a chart showing the main characters and what each says and thinks, and the whole class understands. 

“In so many ways, this instance was utterly ordinary,” says Bambrick-Santoyo: “A student makes an error, and a teacher corrects it. Yet beneath that surface observation lays the heart of Bianca’s growth: Juliana used prompts that allowed students to identify their error and learn how to use the text to sharpen their understanding.” Juliana was helped by a prompting guide for the story and knowing that students at this particular reading level would have difficulty keeping track of multiple characters. Some of the prompts in the guide:

• Compare these characters: __________ and __________.
• What did ___________ say?
• What is ___________ thinking?
• Who were the important characters in the story?
• Who is telling the story?
• How was the character feeing when the other characters did __________ __________?

In just a few weeks, this kind of teaching brought about dramatic improvements in Bianca’s reading skill and confidence. Now she can keep track of multiple characters, understand their emotions, and cite text evidence for her conclusions. “At its heart,” concludes Bambrick-Santoyo, “implementing the Common Core standards for reading is about developing those habits – in short, giving readers like Bianca the opportunity to fly.”

“Bianca and the Common Core” by Paul Bambrick-Santoyo in Phi Delta Kappan, May 2013 (Vol. 94, #8, p. 70-71), www.kappanmagazine.org; the author can be reached at

pbambrick@uncommonschools.org. 

From the Marshall Memo #486