What are the foundational academic skills or tool skills?
The foundational academic skills are 1) fluent reading or decoding (being able to read the words on the page easily), 2) fluency with math facts (instantly answer single digit facts like 9+6 or 7×8), and 3) spelling correctly and easily. Educational researchers call them “tool skills” because they are the tools students need to do academic work successfully. These skills need to be developed to the point of fluency, where students can do them accurately, quickly and easily.
Why are foundational academic skills important?
These tool skills are critical because they form the foundation of academic work. Students who struggle to figure out the words on the page or who make a lot of errors, do not have much attention left to think about the message of the passage. Students who read correctly and fluently, can think about and benefit more from what they read. In elementary school students transition from “learning to read” in the primary grades, to “reading to learn” beginning in about fourth grade. By the end of third grade students should be able read fluently and easily. It can be measured by having students read aloud for a minute. They should be able to read 125 to 150 words per minute with very few errors. Conversely if students are still struggling with learning to decode in the later grades, (a) they will not get much help to improve that, and (b) they will not learn from or benefit from what they are assigned to read, and (c) they will not read for enjoyment. They are unlikely to ever be successful or enjoy school.
Students who can answer math facts instantly, without hesitation, are able to learn computation and higher math skills with relative ease. Those who are still counting on their fingers to do math facts in the upper elementary grades start falling behind in math. They come to hate it, because it is so onerous. Students who have not memorized the math facts do not succeed in high school math.
Students who struggle to spell, also become averse to writing. They avoid it and do not write well, as the struggle to remember how to spell words gets in the way of expressing themselves. Conversely, those who can spell easily find it far easier to express themselves in writing.
Are foundational academic skills an issue in many schools?
Yes. Back before the 1960s, these tool skills were the major focus[1] of the elementary years. Over the past few decades, unfortunately, most American schools of education have denigrated the importance of these tool skills. Worse yet, teacher preparation courses include almost no training for teachers to learn how to help their students develop tool skills. While some students develop proficiency in these skills without help from their teachers, the rest of the students need the teacher and the school to provide some focus and attention to fully develop these foundational skills.
What Parents should look for to evaluate foundational academic skills
It’s very easy for a school to proclaim that they care about foundational academic skills, (AKA tool skills) but don’t take their word for it. You really need to see evidence of it. Interestingly, the effort needed to teach these skills and to motivate students to build these skills requires that the school do things like post records and keep track of students’ success publicly. If an elementary school wants all its students to be able to readily read, they are going to have to have students read aloud and correct their errors. They are going to have to frequently measure students with timed readings and keep track of how they are doing. Parents need to look for the activity of reading aloud during reading class.
If the school wants students to acquire fluency in math facts, they are going to have to recognize students as they develop this skill—and you’ll see it on classroom walls somewhere. The same with spelling. If it is a priority, then you’ll see evidence of that on papers posted on the wall, or even spelling tests posted. You may also see words that are being learned posted on the wall.
Conversely, in schools where these foundational academic skills are not emphasized, you won’t see evidence of students striving to excel in these areas. If you see student papers posted, you’ll find uncorrected spelling errors and arithmetic errors. In a classroom where decoding is not emphasized, you may not hear any students reading aloud. When you do hear students reading, you’ll hear many errors made that are not all corrected by the teacher. If you visit an elementary classroom during reading and you do not hear students reading aloud and being corrected, you know that accurate decoding is not being developed. Don’t expect that school to teach your child to read.
How teachers can support foundational academic skills
It is quite hard for a teacher to support foundational academic skills in the absence of school-wide support for these skills. Most notably in reading decoding, it takes a school-wide structure and placement to get all students at the correct instructional level.
To develop decoding skills, students must be carefully grouped and instructed at their instructional level, where they can read 98% of the words in the material without help. That’s less than 1 error per sentence. To group students that precisely for reading instruction requires a school-wide effort and sharing students between classrooms. If a student is asked to read material in which he or she does not know several or even a couple of words in each sentence, the students will not be able to learn all those new words and will become discouraged. This is what happens in schools when the teacher is left on his or her own to do instructional grouping.
If students can be grouped at their instructional level in reading, you as the teacher must then learn to correct all errors in word reading. The procedure is to interrupt the student, tell them the correct pronunciation of the word, have the student repeat it, and then go back to the beginning of the sentence and re-read it. We want the student to learn to read the word correctly the second time through. Every time, with every word they don’t know. If you try to spare your student’s feelings, by glossing over errors they make when reading, they will have no opportunity to learn the words they don’t know. [The importance of proper instructional grouping becomes obvious if you are to correct all errors.] To be most effective you should keep track of error words and put them on the board and give students extra practice on reading those words in isolation. Practice in reading words in isolation (learning them) as well as reading aloud every day is essential.
Timed readings are essential to measure the growth of fluency in the early years of reading instruction. As students learn more and more words, they can read with greater fluency. Doing timed readings frequently tells you whether or not the student is progressing by being able to read more fluently and easily. You have to keep track of their correct words read per minute. Students who are not progressing need to be given extra time to read aloud with a partner who corrects all their errors. By fourth grade, students should be reading between 125 and 150 correct words per minute. Once they reach that level of fluency, they don’t need as much focus on timed readings. Students who are below 100 words per minute need intervention to develop their fluency, by daily practice reading aloud at their instructional level.
When it comes to developing math fact fluency, this takes time every day throughout the elementary years. Once a teacher starts trying to build this skill, they realize that they have to keep track of what facts the students know and what facts they still have to figure out. Teachers need a systematic presentation of what students need to learn as well as some review of what they’ve already learned. A teacher needs a systematic instructional program to keep this in order, such as Rocket Math. There needs to be at least 10 or 15 minutes a day devoted to math facts fluency development each day—but not much more than that. Students need to be encouraged to do the work to become fluent in math facts, so the teacher will need some way of motivating students by recognizing progress and celebrating it.
Spelling is also not supported in many schools and a teacher would need to find a spelling program to use to build the skill in the absence of a school-wide spelling curriculum. Learning words for a weekly spelling test is not a particularly effective way of developing spelling, but it is better than nothing. Writing words multiple times in a row is not effective for learning either. A better spelling curriculum is one that requires students to spell from the teacher’s dictation and do it on a daily basis. Also, dictating sentences and requiring them to be spelled correctly is a very good exercise as long as it is at the students’ instructional level of about 98% correct from the beginning. See Rocket Spelling. So again, the importance of careful instructional grouping becomes apparent.
It is important for teachers to know that spelling for the sake of spelling, as in a test, is far easier than spelling correctly while composing and writing a composition. Therefore, assigning a spelling test of words that students misspelling in their written work is not helpful. The error was usually only a result of not paying attention, and is easily corrected when the error is pointed out to the student. However, requiring students to re-do and correct any spelling errors in their written work is still very important.
How a school can support foundational academic skills
The most important curricular decision a school or district can make is the choice of a program for developing reading skills. The reading program they choose must provide systematic and explicit phonics to help students learn to break the code and learn to read. It must be decodable, meaning the material students are asked to read consists of words they have already had an opportunity to learn in earlier lessons. The program must include, at least for the first three grades, timed readings to ensure that students are developing adequate fluency. Some students need quite a bit more practice to develop reading skill, and therefore you have to measure their skill to see who needs extra work.
The reading program must have careful placement tests so students can be placed at their instructional level. This implies that some students will have to “walk” for reading (move to a different classroom where their level is being taught), so that all students can be placed at their instructional level. The program must require students to read aloud daily and to read accurately as well as be timed to see that they are developing fluency.
It is extremely rare for an eclectic or teacher-developed reading program to have these essential features. In fact, most commercial reading programs do not have these features. However, a program that does have these features can teach all students to read and succeed each year in developing reading skill. The school should be measuring the development of decoding fluency systematically. Then it will be clear whether or not the reading program is effectively developing fluency in reading.
Beyond choosing an effective reading program, the school administration must monitor the implementation as well as the student data on mastery of the material and the development of reading fluency. There must be clear guidelines on what to do to remediate students who are not improving in reading. There must be plan in place to provide extra reading practice for students who are not developing fluency at the expected rate.
An important truism about education is that the sooner you provide remediation and extra help the easier it is for the student to catch up. If you work with a student, who did not learn something from today’s lesson, later the same day, you can catch them up in five minutes. If you wait a week, it will take an hour to catch them up. If you wait a couple of months, it will take many days of work to get that student caught up. Therefore, the most important thrust of a school is to test frequently and begin remediation quickly. This should be the most important mission of the instructional leaders—to help teachers readily identify and quickly remediate any student who is not fully mastering the material.
To develop math fact fluency in all its students, an elementary school must have a math fact program. It is rarely sufficient to have a “math facts component” in the adopted math curriculum. Math fact fluency must stand by itself to be sure it is addressed daily. Then the teachers need to make it a priority to set aside time for focusing on it. Math facts have to be in the daily schedule and it cannot be skipped over. There need to be school-wide expectations on what the curriculum being used expects teachers to do.
Administrators should visit classrooms to be sure teachers are following the expectations of how fact fluency is to be developed according to the curriculum being used. Teachers must be expected to keep track of student progress and to test students to see if they are learning as they should. If the program does not develop noticeable improvement in math fact fluency, then it needs to be modified or replaced. Every student can develop fluency with math facts and it is malpractice to allow students to reach the upper elementary without knowing their facts.
For a school to effectively support spelling proficiency, there must be a spelling curriculum that is shared across the school. The school leaders must insure that all students are successful in the spelling curriculum, and that remediation is provided ASAP for any students who are not doing well. This means that if some students are far behind expectations for what they are able to spell, they may need to “walk” to a lower grade classroom to receive instruction at their level.
The second component in developing spelling skill is to hold students accountable for spelling correctly in all their written assignments. It begins by not allowing any papers with spelling errors to be posted on the board. All errors must be corrected before recognition.
There will be two types of spelling errors. One type will be words that have not yet been taught in the spelling program. Those should be corrected and the work re-copied to practice spelling the word correctly. The second type will be words that have already been taught in the spelling curriculum. Making errors on those words is not good and should have some kind of consequence on top of re-copying the assignment, such as writing the word ten times.
Remember, a focus on spelling in the elementary years means that students will learn to automatically spell words the right way, and it will enable them to express themselves more easily and fluently in life. The more words students know and spell automatically the more students can concentrate on their composition and the expression of ideas.
[1] More time was spent on the foundational academic skills than any thing else during the elementary years. All teachers knew these were the most important skills. They were measured and teachers knew that for students to succeed they needed to be good at these skills. It went on everyone’s report card. There were plans to help students succeed if they were struggling, sometimes even having students repeat a grade if they were not doing well with these foundational academic skills.