AN EXAMINATION OF FIRST GRADE READING INSTRUCTION IN SCRIPTED AND NONSCRIPTED FIRST GRADE CLASSROOMS BY MARGA MADHURI
A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Claremont Graduate University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate Faculty of Education.
Claremont, California 2006
Approved by: ______________________________________ David Drew, Ph.D., Chair
Copyright by Marga Madhuri 2006 All rights Reserved
We, the undersigned, certify that we have read this dissertation of Marga Madhuri and approve it as adequate in scope and quality for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
Dissertation Committee: ______________________________________________ David Drew, Ph.D., Chair
______________________________________________ Gail Thompson, Ph.D., Member
______________________________________________ Philip Dreyer, Ph.D., Member
Abstract of the Dissertation An Examination of Reading Instruction in Scripted and Nonscripted First Grade Classrooms by Marga Madhuri Claremont Graduate University 2006 The purpose of this study was to examine first grade reading instruction in classes that used either a scripted or nonscripted application of the same state-adopted reading program. The research group included seven first grade classrooms taught by teachers with seven or more years’ experience. All classrooms were in schools that exceeded the state average of students classified as English Language Learners and students who received free/reduced meals. Each class had 20 students or less. Data included field notes from five to seven observations in each classroom during the language arts block. Students completed an attitude survey during the second and eighth months of the school year, and a reading comprehension assessment during the fourth and eighth month of the year. Several students from each class were randomly selected for an interview about their attitudes towards reading and their reading behaviors in school and at home. During informal discussions during the observations, and a formal interview at the end of the observation period, teachers shared their comments and observations about the reading program and its application. Results from an analysis of covariance indicated that there were no significant differences between students’ reading comprehension abilities as a result of the type of
instruction they received. However, there were small but statistically significant differences as indicated on a t-test in students’ attitudes towards reading as a result of the type of instruction they received. The results suggest that although the type of reading instruction first graders receive may not have affect their reading abilities, students’ attitudes and motivation towards reading may be impacted by the type of reading instruction they receive.
Dedication This dissertation is dedicated with gratitude, respect, and deep love to my companion and life partner Rocannon MacGregor
Acknowledgments They say it takes a village to raise a child. I say it takes even more to complete a doctoral program. I am truly grateful to all the people who have guided and supported me as I moved through this process. It is with pleasure and gratitude that I acknowledge their contribution. I first acknowledge the members of my dissertation committee, David Drew, Ph.D., Gail Thompson, Ph.D., and Philip Dreyer, Ph.D. I am thankful to my chair, Dr. Drew, for his statistical feedback, calming influence, and for the hands-on experience I received in his courses. This gave me the preparation to face and embrace the challenges of doing research in public schools. I am especially grateful to Dr. Thompson for her provocative insights and keen editorial comments. And finally, my gratitude to Dr. Dreyer, for asking the questions that made me reconsider the study and see it in a new light. I have tremendous appreciation for the first grade teachers who opened up their classrooms and embraced me with their warmth and insights. I respect their choices as professionals, and their dedication to helping their students grow, amidst sometimes challenging situations. Thank you to the first graders in the research group who always welcomed me with smiles, and for their enthusiastic participation in the assessments, surveys and interviews. I would also like to thank my colleagues at the University of La Verne for their feedback, encouragement and support as I simultaneously learned the university culture and completed my doctorate. Thanks especially to Dr. Valerie Beltran, for her sharp eye
vi
and comments on the survey, and all the tips along the way that helped the process go smoothly. I acknowledge my father, Vernon Sternhill, M.D., for sharing his love of books and reading with me for as long as I can remember, and for instilling in me a joy in education that has truly made me a lifelong learner. To my chosen family, I appreciate your support as I moved through this process. To Joella, Leela and Chapin, your smiles, encouragement and emails kept me going. To Dr. Wanna Zinsmaster, my higher-education mentor, I appreciate your insights and reflections that helped me stay centered during pivotal times. Thank you to Mike-thePrinter for the printing (and tortillas) you donated to the project. Special thanks to my soul sister, Tara, for your smiles, notes and understanding, and for your willingness to tag-team so many times. And thank you to Alima, for your spiritual support. Finally, I wish to express my deep gratitude to my companion, Rocannon MacGregor, who time after time has seen things in me that I had yet to see in myself. I appreciate your helping me stay balanced and remember that there is life outside papers and courses. I appreciate that we were able to enhance our relationship through this process, and am grateful for your guidance.
vii
TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION……………………………………………………………………v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………………..vi TABLE OF CONTENTS…………………………………………………………vii CHAPTER
PAGE
1. INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………….…1 Significance of the Study……………………………………………………...3 Research Questions……………………………………………………………4 Conceptual Framework………………………………………………………..5 Definition of Key Terms………………………………………………………7 Study Design and Limitations………………………………………………..12 Organization of the Dissertation……………..………………………………15 2. BRIEF HISTORY OF READING INSTRUCTION IN CALIFORNIA & REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE…………………………………………..16 An Overview of the Reading Wars…………………………………………..16 The Golden Age of Teaching: The 1987 Frameworks and Non-Traditional Assessments in California…………………………………………………….17 New Tests Drive Instruction………………………………………………….21 New Standards, New Standardized Tests…………………………………….26 Scripted Reading Programs…………………………………………………..29 Standardized Tests Drive Curriculum . . . Again……………………………..32 The National Reading Panel……………………………………………….....35 So What Does Good Reading Instruction Look like? …………………...…...42
viii
CHAPTER
PAGE
Conclusion…………………………………………………………………….49 3. METHODOLOGY……………………………………………………………51 Restatement of the Problem…………………………………………………..51 Criteria for Teacher and Classroom Selection……………………..…………51 Data Collection……………………………………………………………….59 Permission to do Research……………………………………………………67 Data Analysis…………………………………………………………………68 4. TEACHERS AND READING INSTRUCTION: CLASSROOM OBSERVATIONS…………………………………………………………….70 Teachers from District A……………………………………………………....70 Teachers from District B……………………………………………………....95 Teachers from District C……………………………………………………...108 5. FINDINGS ABOUT THE RESEARCH QUESTIONS………………………123 Classrooms in Context……………………………………………………..….123 Research Questions……………………………………………………..……..125 Other Findings……………………………………………………..…………..141 6. SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS……………..154 Restatement of the Problem……………………………………………………154 Review of the Methodology……………………………………………………155 Findings……………………………………………………..………………….156 Conclusions and Discussion…………………………………………………....157 Implications……………………………………………………..……………...167
ix
CHAPTER
PAGE
Recommendations for Further Research……………………………………..172 REFERENCES…………………………………………………...…………..175 APPENDICES……………………………………………………..…………191 A. Student Attitude Survey: “How do you feel about reading?”…….191 B. Student Interview Protocol………………………………………..196 C. Consent Forms…………………………………………………….198 D. Teacher Interview Protocol………………………………………..205
x
List of Tables Table 3.1
Characteristics of Teachers, Schools and Classrooms Included in the Study……………………………………58
Table 4.1
Go Chart…………………………………………………78
Table 4.2
Tree Map…………………………………………………81
Table 5.1
API Scores per School and Mean Scores Per Group for the 2002-3 and 2003-4 School Years………………………124
Table 5.2
Gates MacGinitie ESS Means and ANCOVA Results…126
Table 5.3
Measure of Internal Consistency for the Attitude Survey ……………………………………………...…..127
Table 5.4
Total Means from Fall & Spring Attitude Surveys. ……128
Table 5.5
Teachers' Attitudes Towards the Houghton Mifflin Reading Program…………………………………………………140
Table 5.6
Total Observation Time and Percentages Using the HM Program…………………………………………………141
Table 5.7
Total Instructional Activity Time Per Teacher, Presented by % of Observed Minutes Spent on Each Task…………..148
Table 5.8 Students’ Responses to Interview Questions Reported as Percentages………………………………………..…...150
xi
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Although most people can agree that children need to learn to become good readers, and that good reading instruction is important, selecting the best methods for teaching young children how to read has been a long, heated, and tremendously controversial topic in the United States (Smith, 2002). With the current focus on standards and assessment in the public schools, many early elementary teachers are now mandated to follow the verbatim directions (Allington, 2002a) that accompany commercially produced reading programs, also called scripted programs (Meyer, 2002). In many schools, particularly schools with high populations of English language learners (ELL) and socioeconomically disadvantaged children, teachers must follow the programs’ prescriptive guidelines and pacing or face sanctions (Garan, 2002: Meyer, 2002; Monzo, 2004). My objective with this study is to determine if teacher application of a state-adopted reading program—scripted versus nonscripted—makes any significant differences in first grade students’ reading attitudes and abilities. With so many students impacted by scripted reading instruction, educators and policy makers need to consider if there are any negative consequences for children when their teachers are required to follow the script. Of primary concern, of course, is whether these programs and their accompanying scripts offer quality literacy instruction. Are children learning to read, and are they motivated to want to read? This study is significant because if schools and school districts continue to mandate the use of scripted instruction, there should be some evidence that requiring teachers to follow the script is making a positive impact on children’s ability and motivation to read.
1
2 In the preface to the California Language Arts Framework (California Department of Education, CDE, 1999), the authors explain that California educators are to teach reading for pragmatic reasons such as economic opportunity, as well as to “instill in students (1) a lifelong love of reading; (2) a facility and joy of communicating through language; and (3) a deep appreciation of literary and informational text . . .” (p. viii). Teachers who are forced to use scripted materials may feel stifled in their ability to succeed in teaching these aesthetic pleasures of reading and language use, because they don’t have the freedom to adjust their instruction to meet their students’ interests or needs (Meyer, 2002; Shelton, 2005; Yatvin, 2005). I first encountered the use of scripted programs in the late 1990’s when I was teaching children’s literature courses to pre- and in-service teachers at a state university. Many of my students complained about the stringent requirements of the scripted components of the programs, and how they felt stifled in their ability to use the quality literature and activities they were learning in my course and their teacher education program to support their students’ literacy growth. I began doing observations in classrooms and talking to teachers about the scripted components of these programs. I did not like the rigid structure of the scripts, and designed this study to see for myself if the script had any impact on children’s ability and attitudes towards reading. I admit to a prejudice against scripted instruction, and have tried to keep my personal predispositions from interfering with an accurate report of the data. I did this in several ways. The reports of classroom observations came directly from my field notes, which were pure accounts of classroom instruction. Except where I explicitly included personal commentary, I recorded only the actual events that occurred, and I invite readers
3 to draw their own conclusions about these. In order to have something more measurable than the descriptive notes, I included quantitative data through the attitude survey and reading comprehension assessment. Significance of the Study Public schools in California that want to use state money to purchase textbooks must buy books that are state-approved (CDE, 2005). In the current Reading Language Arts adoption cycle, only two programs were approved for basic reading instruction in grades K-6. The first is called Open Court Reading, and is published by SRA/McGraw Hill. The second is called Houghton Mifflin Reading: A Legacy of Literacy, published by Houghton Mifflin. Both met the state requirements for adoption, which include reading instruction for 2.5 hours in first through third grades, and teachers’ manuals that tell teachers “what to teach, how to teach, and when to teach” (CDE, 2005, Criteria Category 5). The teacher’s manuals literally instruct teachers what lessons to teach, in what order, and even what to say to their students. It is teacher application of the program that determines whether it is scripted or not. Some districts that purchase these programs do not require that teachers follow them by the script (as in the schools in District A in this study), and allow teachers to select which components of the programs to use, and when. Although there are no data that I could find that state how many schools in California are required to follow the script, entire districts such as District B (which includes over 20 elementary schools) in this study, are making such requirements. Since some schools require that teachers follow the script, it is important to determine if scripted instruction really supports language arts development in children, and provides them with the motivation to become “lifelong lovers of reading” (CDE, 1999, p. viii).
4
The results of this study may have implications for school and district policy makers regarding classroom instruction. At one level, results may indicate that there are no significant differences in the reading skills of children using scripted programs and those who do not. Furthermore, reading abilities and attitudes may be negatively impacted by scripted instruction. If either of these results is found, policy makers may want to reconsider the requirement that teachers follow the script. Research Questions In conducting this study, I hope to determine whether or not differences in instructional delivery in scripted versus nonscripted classrooms affect children’s reading outcomes. I feel that teachers should be allowed to choose how to deliver reading instruction in response to the needs of their students, but I conducted this study to determine if in fact students would be better served if teachers followed the script. The questions that drive this research are as follows: (1) Will teacher application—scripted or nonscripted--of the same reading program significantly affect children’s ability to comprehend what they read? (2) Will teacher application—scripted or nonscripted--of the same reading program affect children’s attitudes towards reading? (3) How do experienced teachers feel about applying the program (scripted or not), in terms of students’ attainment of reading skills? Good teachers modify their instruction to meet student needs (Pressley et al, 2001), and when that option is virtually eliminated—as in the case of scripted reading programs--students may be limited in their ability to succeed. I hypothesize that there will be differences in classroom environments and instructional delivery between scripted and
5 nonscripted classrooms, and that these differences may have an impact on student outcomes in terms of reading ability and motivation. I further propose that if there are no significant differences between how children were taught and students’ scores on an assessment of reading comprehension, then mandating scripted reading programs may not be necessary, and teachers should be allowed the option to use the reading programs as they deem necessary to assist their students in succeeding in reading. Conceptual Framework The conceptual framework through which this study is viewed takes into account many of the factors that are involved with reading, which include the ability to recognize the orthographic symbols on the page and to interpret them in a meaningful way (Goodman, 1996). Reading instruction must be comprehensive and include instruction about meaning-making as well as decoding (Gunning, 2005; Weaver, 1994). What makes the process of reading and meaning-making so complex is that readers bring personal experience, language background, literacy background, sociocultural influences, in short, all of who they are, to the act of reading (Smith, 2004). The reading process involves more than just the decoding of text (Goodman, 1996; Smith, 2004). In order to make sense of print, readers engage three cueing systems—graphophonic, syntactic and semantic (Goodman, 1996). The graphophonic cueing system refers to the process by which readers use phonics to decode the words they see (Goodman, 1993). As they are reading, readers may ask themselves, “Does that look right?” Often, heavy reliance on the graphophonic cueing system leads to errors in meaning that students do not always notice. For example, if a sentence reads, “The jockey fell off the horse,” a child may read, “The jockey fell off the house.” “House” and
6 “horse” are visually similar and it is easy to miscue them. Therefore just relying on what a reader saw will not necessarily lead to reading accuracy. The syntactic cueing system relates to the structure or grammar of language (Gunnning, 2005). When readers are reading, they may ask themselves, “Does that sound right?” In the example, “The jockey fell off the horse,” a child who replaced “horse” for “house” may not catch the error using syntactic cues because both “horse” and “house” are nouns, and are appropriately placed according to the rules of English syntax. However, a child who is paying attention to the meaning or semantics of the sentence will notice the error because the sentence will no longer make sense. A jockey is much more likely to be on a horse than a house. This child will go back and reread the sentence, looking to correct the error. In his seminal work Understanding Reading, Frank Smith (2004) describes how readers use all their knowledge about language to make sense of print. Instruction in reading, then, must include bringing children’s awareness to all three cueing systems. Gutierrez, Baquendano-Lopez, and Turner (1997) discuss the role of language use as the “core of our social, emotional, and cognitive experiences” (p. 369). Therefore, language arts instruction should embrace those roles and go beyond teaching the fundamentals of language structure to employ modalities that give students experience in a variety of language uses. The authors claim that becoming literate is a two-pronged process, requiring the acquisition of language skills and sociocultural forms and functions. Furthermore, they propose that the three aspects of children’s experience should become resources in the class: the children’s language, their cultural knowing and the everyday practices of the classroom (Gee, 1996). Instruction that ignores the personal
7 aspects of the students’ inner lives will not allow students to become engaged, motivated readers. Reading is not a robotic task. Just learning the mechanics of reading will not lead to engaged readers (Guthrie & Wigfield, 1997; Meyer, 2002; Smith, 2004). My conceptual framework, then, suggests that there are multiple factors that are required to provide quality reading instruction. A reading program may offer valuable tools and resources for developing reading in children, but responsive teachers are needed to mediate between the program’s tools and the needs of their students (Allington, 2002b; Bond & Dykstra, 1967; Pressley et al, 2001). Requiring teachers to “follow the script” removes that essential component of teacher immediacy and responsiveness, and limits teachers’ efforts or ability to instill in their students a desire to read. Definition of Key Terms Below are some key terms and definitions that are commonly used in discussions of reading instruction and are used in this study. Acedemic Performance Index (API)--The API is used to measure school and district performance based on student standardized test scores. The API is used to rank schools into “deciles,” with one as the lowest, and ten as the highest. It is also used to compare schools with similar student populations and to determine eligibility for rewards or intervention (Ed-Data, 2005) Anecdotal records – Anecdotal records are observational notes made by the teacher that describe children’s significant behaviors. Teachers may record students’ book-handling skills, topical interests, ability to follow print conventions, or any behavior that sheds light on students’ literacy development (Gunning, 2005).
8 Balanced reading programs – Reading programs that are balanced offer an appropriate blend of systematic skills instruction with quality literature, authentic writing assignments, and active engagement and motivation of both teacher and students (Garan, 2002). It is up to the teacher to determine the type of instruction her students need, and when they need it (National Reading Panel, 2000). Choral reading – This is an oral reading process in which two or more children read aloud the same text at the same time. This gives the teacher the opportunity to hone in on different children’s reading and monitor their progress. Choral reading fosters fluency, and provides support for struggling students who can listen to their classmates’ pronunciation if they need help with particular words (Gunning, 2005). Decodable texts – Decodable texts are selections that are written using phonics elements that have already been taught (Gunning, 2005), with the addition of some high frequency words or familiar clauses. For example, if students have been studying the short /a/ sound, they may read a passage such as, “Pat sat. The cat sat. Pat and the cat sat.” Because of the controlled nature of decodable texts, the language sometimes lacks the flow and predictability of text using more natural language, making decodable texts difficult to read and comprehend (Gunning, 2005; Martens & Goodman, 2005). Decoding – Decoding is the process of changing one code of symbols to another. In reading, this is the process of changing written symbols into sounds and words. The challenge with decoding text written in English is the irregularity of the relationship between the symbols and the sounds they represent (see phonics) (Savage, 2004).
9 High-stakes test – A high-stakes test is one in which the results are used to make important decisions, such as passing a child on to the next grade, rating a school, or allowing a student to graduate (Gunning, 2005). No Child Left Behind (NCLB) – The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) (Bush, 2002) was adopted into law in January 2002. NCLB contains the most comprehensive changes in kindergarten through 12th grade education since the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965 (Cuban, 2004). NCLB changes the federal government’s role in K-12 education by requiring schools to describe student progress in terms of content and performance standards tied to assessments at benchmark grade levels (Cuban, 2004). Norm-referenced test – In a norm-referenced test, students are compared with a group of peers chosen to be representative by age or grade (Gunning, 2005). “Questions are designed so that 75 percent of the test-takes will score at or above 25 percent, 50 percent will score at or above 50 percent, and 25 percent will score at or above 75 percent. A score of 50 percentile is average” (Moustafa & Land, 2005, p. 65). Onsets – An onset is the consonant that comes at the beginning of a syllable. Not all syllables have onsets (Moustafa, 1997). For example, in the word “dog,” “d” is the onset. In the word “all,” there is no onset. Phonics/Phonetic principle – Phonics, also called the phonetic principle or alphabetic principle, refers to the understanding that written letters represent spoken sounds. The challenge with teaching phonics in English is that there is not a one-to-one correspondence between sounds and letters, due to the fact that there are 26 letters and
10 roughly 44 sounds (Savage, 2004), with variations according to dialect and accent (Goodman, 1996). Phonemic Awareness – Phonemic awareness is the understanding that words are composed of smaller units of sound, called phonemes (Savage, 2004). Phonemic awareness activities support children in their ability to recognize and manipulate the individual sounds in words (e.g. replacing the beginning sound of “bit” with the /h/ sound produces the new word “hit.”). Predictable texts – Predictable texts have a set pattern, with rhymes or repeated phrases (e.g. I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly) that children can use in order to predict what the sentences (or words) are going to say (Gunning, 2005). Reading First schools - These are low-performing schools (as determined by scores on state standardized tests) that applied for and received federal money from the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) (Bush, 2002) to improve reading instruction in grades kindergarten through third. Schools must use “scientifically based” reading programs approved by the state, appropriate valid and reliable assessments, and ongoing professional development in state-approved professional development programs (CDE, 2002). Rimes – A rime refers to the vowel and any consonants that follow the vowel to the end of the syllable. All syllables have rimes (Moustafa, 1997). For example, in the word “dog,” “-og” is the rime. Running records – A running record is an individual reading assessment. When giving a running record, a teacher listens to a child reading a text near the child’s reading level. The teacher will record any errors or miscues (Goodman, 1996), analyze the source of the
11 errors, note any other reading behaviors, and determine an instructional plan based on the child’s needs (Fountas & Pinnell, 1996). Scripted reading program - Scripted reading programs are characterized by very explicit teacher’s manuals with instructions for teachers to follow verbatim when using the program with their students (Moustafa & Land, 2005). In a “scripted” classroom, all activities are to be followed in the order presented, and the teacher’s instructions are to be read word-for-word from the manual (Meyer, 2002). Sometimes districts purchase these programs but allow their teachers some flexibility in their application. These teachers are not required to read the “script,” and may choose the activities that are more suited for their children, leaving other activities out of their instructional day. Skills-based instruction - In phonics-based or skills-based programs, students begin by learning about the parts of reading--letter-sound relationships, word families, phonemes-and then apply this information to the reading of decodable texts (Moustafa, 1997). Socioeconomically Disadvantaged Students are classified as socioeconomically disadvantaged if their parents do not have high school diplomas or if they are receiving free/reduced meals as a result of low family income (Ed-Data, 2005). Sustained Silent Reading (SSR)—SSR is allotted time for in-class reading. Children may select their reading materials, and the class and teacher read together for a fixed amount of time on a regularly scheduled basis. A complete SSR program includes eight factors (Pilgreen, 2001)—allotted time to read, access to interesting materials, appealing materials, staff development, conducive environment, encouragement, nonaccountability, and follow-up activities.
12 Systematic phonics programs - Systematic phonics programs are characterized by having a planned sequential set of phonic elements, which are taught explicitly and systematically (National Reading Panel, 2000). The goal is to enable learners to acquire sufficient knowledge and use of the alphabetic code so that they can make normal progress in learning to read and comprehend written language . Whole language - Whole language is a pedagogy of integrated reading instruction that promotes the use of quality literature and authentic reading materials (Savage, 2004). Teachers teach strategic skills based on students’ needs (Goodman, 1996). Arguments against whole language state that students do not learn the fundamentals of phonics and decoding, which limits their reading abilities. Word wall – Teachers use word walls, words hung on a wall in alphabetic order, to reinforce patterns and high-frequency words (Gunning, 2005). Words may be drawn from stories read in children’s reading program, trade books or any other source the teacher feels is appropriate. Study Design The conceptual framework for this study evolved from my education as a Reading/Language Arts Specialist and my experience as a language arts teacher. Furthermore, my observations (done prior to the current study) in multiple schools throughout five districts in southern California allowed me to see a wide array of reading/language arts instruction in the early elementary grades, and I had an opportunity to experience and compare first-hand the vast range of student responses in classes that used scripted and nonscripted reading instruction.
13 Therefore, I wanted to design a study to determine if teacher application of a reading program did in fact impact student outcomes. I selected a total of seven classrooms from similarly situated schools, with higher-than-state averages of students classified as English language learners (ELL) and receiving free/reduced meals. The teachers, from six schools and three school districts, had more than seven years teaching experience in the early grades, and were referred to me by principals or reading specialists as quality teachers. Although all teachers used the same reading program, three of the teachers were required to follow the program by the script, and four were not. I included quantitative measures of students’ reading comprehension and attitudes towards reading which children completed twice during the school year. A total of 116 children were included in the study. I observed each class five to seven times during the language arts period to see how the differences in the application of the reading program might affect the atmosphere of the classroom and student response to the instruction. Finally, I discussed the reading program and its application with the participating teachers and interviewed selected students in each class as a follow-up to the attitude survey. Limitations One of the limitations of the study is the measure of the students’ reading abilities. A single reading comprehension assessment will by no means give a complete picture of a child’s reading ability (Gunning, 2005). Children in first grade who are struggling with word recognition and decoding will be limited in their ability to comprehend the passages. Furthermore, some of the passages may have had questions or topics for which students had no previous experience or background knowledge
14 (Goodman, 1996), again limiting their ability to comprehend the passage. Also, the construction of the test included a passage to read, and students were to select an illustration that best fit the passage. Some of the illustrations from which children had to select may have seemed unclear or obscure, making it difficult to choose the correct answer. It would have been ideal to include a running record, an individual assessment in which the child reads aloud, the miscues are coded, and comprehension can be assessed through a retelling or comprehension questions (Silvaroli & Wheelock, 2003), but teachers, particularly in the scripted classes, said they could not afford to give me the time to assess the children in this way. Finally, there are many components of reading instruction that factor into students’ reading abilities, and some were not included in the study. Writing, for example, can play a key role in learning to read (Graves, 1991), and although there were differences in teachers’ writing instruction, time limitations made it impossible for me to analyze students’ writing samples or make many connections between writing instruction and reading ability in scripted and nonscripted classrooms. One limitation of the study was the challenge in getting parents to sign and return permission slips. Some teachers were more rigorous about getting permission slips returned, and I excluded students’ scores on the comprehension assessment and attitude surveys if they did not have permission to participate in the study. Another limitation was student absenteeism on the day of the assessment. If students missed the attitude survey or reading comprehension assessment because they were absent, there were no opportunities for them to complete these. Consequently, there were fewer students in the database/research group than the total number of students in
15 each classroom. Another limitation to the study was student mobility. Some students present at the beginning of the year had moved before the year’s end, while other children joined the class mid-year. Therefore, some children have fall scores but not spring scores, and vice versa. Organization of the Dissertation This study is presented in six chapters. This first chapter introduced the importance of the study, definition of terms, the research questions, the conceptual framework and limitations of the study. Chapter two provides a current history of the issues surrounding reading instruction both in the United States and specifically in California, a review of the literature that addresses what researchers have reported as important for early reading instruction, and classroom features that motivate children to read. Chapter three describes the methodology used in this study. Chapter four provides a description of each teacher including an account of a typical day of reading instruction in her class. Chapter five presents the results of the findings, and chapter six presents a summary and conclusions drawn from the study, followed by references and appendices.
CHAPTER 2 A BRIEF HISTORY OF READING INSTRUCTION IN CALIFORNIA & REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE An Overview of the “Reading Wars” The debates over the best way(s) to teach elementary reading have been raging almost since the inception of American public schools (Smith, 2002). Many people, including religious leaders, parents, politicians and journalists, feel that they know the best way to teach reading, think that they should have an equal say about reading instruction in public schools, and some will fight tooth and nail with anyone who tries to argue against them (Berliner & Biddle, 1995; Boyd & Mitchell, 2001; McDonnell, 2004). Whether teaching reading stemmed from a desire to give children the ability to read religious texts, to teach civic duty or to provide for economic success, reading instruction--both methods and materials--has been an area of debate and societal concern for most of the history of the United States (Smith, 2002). The current debate over reading pedagogy--dubbed “The Great Debate” or “The Reading Wars”—is rooted in the early 1900s (Chall, 1996) when William S. Gray and others argued for greater balance in elementary reading programs. At that time, early reading instruction involved heavy emphasis on intensive phonics instruction (Baumann et al., 1998). What followed was a controversial change from direct phonics instruction to a whole-word or “look-say” approach (Ravitch, 2001). Children were memorizing lists of key words and applying their word knowledge to new words they encountered in reading (Smith, 2002). Phonics proponents complained that children were not learning the
16
17 necessary skills to decode new words, and the seeds of the controversy were planted (Smith, 2002). In the last 50 years, many doomsayers have proclaimed that the public schools are failing children and society due to high rates of illiteracy. Flesch’s (1955) Why Johnny Can’t Read, Chall’s (1967) Learning to read: The Great Debate, and the National Commission on Excellence in Education’s report, A Nation at Risk (1983) all made claims that a literacy crisis exists and have pointed to poor reading pedagogies as the cause of low literacy rates. The conflict over phonics instruction versus the look-say approach in the early 1900s evolved into the contemporary phonics versus whole language debate. The Golden Age of Teaching: The 1987 Frameworks and Non-Traditional Assessments in California California and Whole Language The 1980s saw a unique trend in early reading instruction, made formal when California adopted its English Language Arts Framework in 1987 (CDE, 1987). When the 1987 California Language Arts curriculum was developed, its creators looked to naturalistic studies indicating that children learn to read through the use of meaningful texts as opposed to skills-based basals (Freeman & Freeman, 1998; Pressley et al, 2001). Referred to as “whole language,” the new pedagogy became the model for adoption of a similar pedagogy in many other states (Allington, 2001; Pressley et al, 2001). The introduction to the 1987 curriculum framework for English-Language Arts (ELA) instruction reads, “We are in the midst of a revolution—a quiet, intellectual
18 revolution . . .” (CDE, 1987, p. 1) The new frameworks were revolutionary by suggesting that content can be taught in more holistic, context-based situations. The ELA framework called for an emphasis on good literature as the keystone for reading instruction, and textbook publishers selected quality children’s literature for use in their anthologies. When the California State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Bill Honig, introduced the 1987 ELA framework, he wrote: An analysis of the way reading has come to be taught reveals that we have been relying on an almost assembly line approach. . . . Students spend very little time actually reading. . . . The framework acknowledges that structuring an Englishlanguage arts program cannot be limited to the completion of meaningless worksheets. . . . Instead of teaching a skill-based program using brief, unfocused narratives which lack meaningful content, we suggest a teacher utilize a program that encourages reading significant literary works which reflect the real dilemmas faced by all human beings. (Honig, 1988, pp. 237, 239) The new framework was considered cutting-edge (Kirst & Mazzeo, 1996), and it included a comparison of features considered effective and ineffective for Englishlanguage arts programs. Some of the effective features that are listed in the introduction section of the framework included: (1) the use of quality children’s literature that addressed universal values and dilemmas; (2) emphasis and integration of listening, speaking, reading and writing in meaningful contexts; (3) a phonics program that was simple and taught in the context of meaningful reading; (4) an environment where students read widely; and (5) assessment that encompassed the goals of the Englishlanguage arts program and was aligned with what students are expected to learn.
19
The 1987 ELA framework took into account research in constructivist psychology, linguistics, ethnography, literary theory, and child development (Goodman, 1998; Ravitch, 2001; Weaver, 1990). Students interacted with high interest, quality literature with language that was rich and varied, characters that were interesting, plots and themes that were meaningful. Students first had the opportunity to explore and respond to the text. In the ideal, elements of the text were then broken into component parts for word study, phonics, syntax, writing conventions and so on (Goodman, 1986; Weaver, 1990). The ELA framework, accompanied by the new mathematics, social studies and science frameworks, (Carlos & Kirst, 1997) was designed to encourage teachers to change from teacher-centered to student-centered classrooms, and from individual content areas to interdisciplinary learning that actively engaged students in constructing knowledge through hands-on, cooperative, and active-learning strategies (Chrispeels, 1997). To induce teachers to implement the new English-language arts framework (which was not law), policymakers adopted literature-based textbooks and expanded funds for School Improvement Programs to give more local control to schools. Subject-matter projects, designed to support professional development opportunities for Teachers, expanded throughout the state. County offices of education, and staff development at schools all worked to support teachers in implementing the new frameworks. According to Chrispeels (1997), more than 196,000 regular classroom teachers participated in these events. Unfortunately, there were no data to indicate the
20 degree in which quality whole language instruction was actually implemented (Boyd & Mitchell, 2001), an issue that will be addressed in the following section. Challenges for Implementation Because the new framework was not law, teachers who did not have a constructivist bend continued teaching with a more skills-based pedagogy despite the current environment (Chrispeels, 1997). This was in part supported by the fact that when the new curriculum first came out, the state assessment—California Assessment Program or CAP--was still skills-based and not aligned to the curriculum (Carlos & Kirst, 1997). Teachers faced the challenge: Teach the curriculum or teach to the test. Throughout the state, teachers resisted the “top-down” requirements to make curricular changes (Freeman & Freeman, 1998). I saw this in my school as well through staff resistance to creating a school-wide silent reading program (Pilgreen, 2001) and teachers complaining about the writing they were asked to incorporate into their content areas. Chrispeels (1997), Freeman and Freeman (1998) and others discuss some of the other difficulties with implementation of the new frameworks. These include severe budget cuts in California schools that limited teacher resources and staff development (Brandt, 1989; McDonnell, 2004), a mismatch between the curriculum and the tests (Kirst & Mazzeo, 1996), and the vast increase of the number of children from socioeconomically disadvantaged families (Boyd & Mitchell, 2001) and students classified as English language learners (ELL). From 1988 to 1997 the number of ELL in California’s public schools doubled from 652,000 to 1.4 million (Freeman & Freeman, 1998). Teachers were not prepared to work with a linguistically diverse group of students. As many as five or six different languages could be spoken in the classroom at
21 one time, and many teachers found it difficult to make their curriculum accessible to the burgeoning numbers of LEP students (Freeman & Freeman, 1998). However, the California state assessment system was reexamined and changed to accommodate and align with the new curriculum frameworks, an issue that will be addressed in the following section. New Tests Drive Instruction Originally designed in the 1970s and first implemented in 1972 (Kirst, 2002), the California assessment program (CAP) a multiple-choice exam, was designed to measure school and district effectiveness, and not the individual progress of students (Carlos & Kirst, 1997). However, in the late 1980s, the last few years that the CAP test was implemented, some changes were made, such as the inclusion of a writing component, in an attempt to align the test with the frameworks (Chrispeels, 1997; Kirst & Mazzeo, 1996). However, due to political disputes, funding was eliminated for the test in 1990 (Kirst, 2002), in part because the test did not report individual student progress (Boyd & Mitchell, 2001). The California Department of Education (CDE) began work on the California Learning Assessment System (CLAS), a non-traditional standardized test whose purpose was multilevel. The CLAS was given to children in grades four, five, eight and ten (Honig, Alexander & Palmer-Wolf, 1996), CLAS was intended to: (1) measure student success in a way that could be reported to parents and used by teachers to inform their instruction; (2) inform and drive instruction at the classroom level consistent with the frameworks; and (3) serve as a professional development tool (Carlos & Kirst, 1997; Chrispeels, 1997).
22 The language arts component of the CLAS took three days to administer. On day one, students were given a story or long passage to read. The reading was presented on paper with wide margins, and students were asked to write personal responses to the text in the margins, answer open-ended questions (Kirst, 2002), and fill in the “open-mind” diagram (an outline of a head in which the children were to write what the character might be thinking.) This portion of the test was collected and evaluated on the amount and quality of students’ responses. Day two consisted of group discussion. Individuals were given a packet of materials and another text related to the previous day’s reading to discuss and complete in their groups. For example, one activity included the outline of the head of a character from the story. Students were to write what that character might have been thinking and/or feeling during a particular section of the story. Groups discussed aspects of the story and responded to open-ended questions. On the third day of the exam, students were given a writing assignment related to the reading (Lorraine McDonnell, personal communication, October 13, 2005). The CLAS reflected a constructivist approach to teaching and testing (Boyd & Mitchell, 2001), and it drove language arts teachers to use literature-based activities and cooperative learning strategies in their language arts programs. Furthermore, it proposed that the responsibility for writing instruction lay not just on the English teachers or during the language arts period, but that writing must be taught across the curriculum (Chrispeels, 1997). Yet, the CLAS’s debut coincided with the publication of scores on a national reading assessment that increased the controversy over the use of the test (McDonnell,
23 2004). The 1987 RLA frameworks, and whole language instruction, were challenged as unsound pedagogy, an issue that will be discussed in the following section. Crisis in California When the 1994 National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) reading scores were published, California was tied for last place in reading achievement (National Center for Education Statistics, 2005). Critics of the 1987 Language Arts Framework and whole language claimed that the “drop” in California’s reading scores was due to whole language instruction, and cried for a return to skills-based instruction (McQuillan, 1998). This reignited the reading controversy and created what Krashen (2002) calls the “urban legend” that the “great reading plummet” was due to whole language pedagogy. Krashen and others (Boyd & Mitchell, 1999; Dressman, 1999), offer several salient arguments suggesting that there never was a “plummet” in California reading scores. He points out that 1992 was the first year that the NAEP scores were reported by state, in which California ranked thirty eighth out of the forty one states participating (Krashen, 2002; McQuillan, 1998), and suggests that California’s reading scores may have been just as low prior to the implementation of the new reading pedagogy. He bases this probability on the fact that student scores on the CAP remained essentially the same (Dressman, 1999; Krashen, 2002). Furthermore, California also ranked lowest in the number of books available to its students--in classrooms, school and public libraries--and highest in student-to-teacher ratios. Both Krashen (2002) and McQuillan (1998) attribute low reading scores to low availability of reading materials and large classroom sizes. Regardless of the reason, there is a belief that there is both a statewide, and even nationwide, need to improve reading instruction (Berliner & Biddle, 1995). Furthermore,
24 in order to improve international competitiveness and to solve what is represented as a crisis in literacy and education, (despite arguments to the contrary, e.g. Berliner & Biddle, 1995) a “back to basics” literacy program has been instituted across many states, making its way into federal policy. Curriculum reforms, adoption of academic standards, comparative national testing, and benchmarking of literacy are being instituted, and teachers and administrators are held accountable for student success (Goodman, 1998). Many of these beliefs led to the demise of the CLAS, and the reintroduction of a more traditional standardized assessment in California. This will be addressed in the next section. The Demise of the CLAS Bad publicity, conservative and religious group protests, poor media coverage (Kirst & Mazzeo, 1996) and California’s devastatingly low reading scores on the 1994 NAEP exams led to the demise of the CLAS after only two years of implementation. McDonnell (2004) describes the process by which the CLAS was developed, and finds it notable that the policy was written and implemented with very little notice or fanfare. However, opposition, stemming from conservative religious and legal groups (McDonnell, 2004), began shortly after the administration of the test, and was initiated out of concern about individual test questions. The items of concern came mostly from the language arts portion of the assessment. According to McDonnell (2004): One question asked students to discuss family matters (for example, “Why do you think some teenagers and their parents have problems communicating?”—an item on the eighth-grade exam); to question authority (“Think about a rule at your school—on the playground, in the cafeteria, or in the
25 classroom—that you think needs to be changed. Write a letter to the principal about a school rule you want changed.”—a fourth-grade item); or to delve into people’s psyches (an “open mind” question showing a picture of a head with nothing in it and asking students to read a literature passage and to fill the head in with symbols, images, drawings or words showing what a character was thinking). (McDonnell, p. 66) The opposition groups generated a great deal of publicity around the CLAS, which was only one of the six significant factors McDonnell (2004) claims led to its downfall. Other factors leading to the downfall of CLAS included the narrow focus of the creators of the test and a lack of public involvement or legistlative oversight in its creation; limited time and budget in creating and administering the test; and diminished political leadership. This was in part caused by the forced resignation of State Superintendent Bill Honig, for financial irregularities (Boyd & Mitchell, 1999), just prior to the beginning of the controversy.1 McDonnell (2004) cites CDE officials who feel that Honig’s charismatic energy and political savvy could have saved the test had he remained in office. Perhaps the most important factor leading to the CLAS’s demise was the media attention given to the CLAS. In 1991-2, McDonnell (2004) claims that fewer than 20 articles in the Los Angeles Times on average per year were devoted to state assessments (and only three in 1993). In 1994, 171 CLAS-related articles appeared in the Los Angeles Times. Seventy five percent of the articles focused on the controversy, keeping it in the public eye. Some newspapers printed passages and questions as “samples” of test items 1
Honig was one of the most important champions of the CLAS, particularly regarding the pedagogical component of the assessment (McDonnell, 2004).
26 that had never been intended for use on the CLAS, yet dealt with controversial topics according to some of the groups protesting the CLAS. However, the CDE did not comment on these reports due to its attempt to keep items confidential, and this created even more controversy. Furthering the struggle with CLAS, two of the opposition groups offered pro bono legal services to parents who would serve as plaintiffs in lawsuits against the CLAS (legal service was also offered to school boards who wanted to oppose the state). The cases brought to trial focused on the California Education Code which limited schools in their ability to ask question about “ ‘the pupil’s personal beliefs or practices in sex, family life, morality or religion, or any questions about his parents’ beliefs or practices in sex, family life, morality and religion’” (cited in McDonnell, 2004, p. 74). Although the cases were lost, one San Bernardino Superior Court judge ruled that parents could choose to have their children “opted out” of the CLAS test. Five percent of the parents of students in tested grades chose this option (amounting to 61,000 out of the 1.2 million students eligible to take the test in 1994). As a result of these and other factors, CLAS was not reauthorized, and for three years there was no state assessment. Californians “were . . . plunged into darkness, as the state returned to allowing each school district to choose its own test” (Kirst, 2002, section 2). New Standards, New Standardized Tests With the discontinuation of the CLAS, a change in state superintendents, and a new governor, “political changes splintered state leadership and policy direction. No single entity was in charge of mandating, developing, and carrying out California
27 curriculum reform” (Carlos & Kirtz, 1997, Conclusion section). As a result, districts that had been early implementers of CLAS were still engaged in creating assessments and teaching that followed the principles of CLAS (Chrispeels, 1997). However, following the release of 1994 NAEP reading scores, the governor’s reaction was to pass a law generating new state standards and a new assessment program. The Standardized Testing and Reporting System (STAR) was created, along with the formation of a commission to develop “academically rigorous” standards in all major subject areas, at every grade level (Kirst, 2002). This came at a time when the Clinton administration created federal funding for the development of state academic standards, requiring states to link assessments to the standards in order to receive funding (Ravitch, 1995). The logical sequence was for the standards commission to create state standards, and then create an assessment that would be linked to these standards. The new Reading/Language Arts content standards for California were adopted in 1997; however, an assessment linked to the standards had not been created. In the meantime, Governor Wilson signed a law requiring all public school districts to use a single standardized test to assess children in grades two through eleven. The State Board of Education selected the Stanford Achievement Test, 9th edition (SAT 9), a norm-referenced test (Moustafa & Land, 2005). It wasn’t until spring 2003 that a norm-referenced test aligned to the California state standards, the California Achievement Test, 6th edition (CAT 6), was adopted (Ed-Data, 2005). New Texts to Match the Standards With the adoption of the state standards for language arts in 1997, another pedagogical shift occurred in classroom instruction. The standards called for explicit
28 instruction in phonics, and teachers were required to move away from literature-based, whole language instruction to more skills-based instruction. In order to insure that teachers teach to the ELA standards, California’s State Board of Education gave specific guidelines to textbook companies for producing texts to be used in the state (see 2002 Reading/Language Arts Evaluation Criteria, CDE, 2005). Because California is a “textbook adoption” state, not a “local control” state, state policy makers, not individual school districts, decides which textbooks can be purchased with state money (Moustafa & Land, 2005). Therefore, in order for a school district to utilize state funding for the purchase of texts, these texts must be approved by the State Board of Education (Moustafa & Land, 2005). In 2002, only two basic reading/language arts programs for grades K-6 were approved by the California State Board of Education for purchase by schools using state money (2002 Primary RLA/ELD Adopted Programs, CDE, 2005). These two programs are Houghton Mifflin’s Houghton Mifflin Reading: A Legacy of Literacy, and SRA/McGraw Hill’s SRA/Open Court Reading. Back to Basics: The Pendulum Swings Again With the adoption of new standards and textbooks, language arts instruction moved in almost the exact opposite direction from the intent of the reforms of the late 1980s/early 1990s. The new policy initiatives of the late 1990s called for a “balanced and comprehensive reading and writing program,” mandating different approaches to teaching reading. “The ‘new’ balance was to concentrate on teaching phonics, phonemic awareness, decoding, word-attack skills, sound-symbol relationships, the structure of English, and spelling as explicit and discrete skills. Although core literature and teaching
29 skills within the context were not abandoned, they were clearly de-emphasized and not rewarded” (Chrispeels, 1997, p. 474). California schools began to purchase the new texts that were approved for the 2002 state adoption, and the texts—along with their accompanying teacher’s manuals which prescribe how to teach—have the potential to lever much more control over reading instruction than the whole language adoption of 1987. In fact, the K-8 RLA/ELD Adoption Criteria 5 (CDE, 2005), states that “the teacher’s edition describes: what to teach, how to teach and when to teach” (Criteria Category 5). In many cases teachers were required to follow the format of the teacher’s manuals exactly (Meyer, 2002), earning the title of “scripted” reading programs. The next section describes the research regarding these programs. Scripted Reading Programs With the adoption of state standards in California, decisions about how to teach to the standards were to be left to local control. In the Message from the State Board of Education and the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, prefacing the state standards, readers are told: Standards-based education maintains California's tradition of respect for local control of schools. To help students achieve at high levels, local school officials and teachers . . . are encouraged to take these standards and design the specific curricular and instructional strategies that best deliver the content to their students. (CDE, 2001) The adoption of two similar, scripted reading programs limited schools in their ability to purchase texts. In order to use state funding for textbooks, schools must purchase state
30 approved texts. Few public schools could afford to purchase texts without relying on state funding (Moustafa & Land, 2005). As a result, local decisions about how to teach reading were restricted by the available materials. Responding to the pressures from district officials and school boards to raise students’ reading scores (Meyer, 2002), many school administrators require teachers to adhere strictly to the teacher’s manual or script. Teachers are told what to say, when to say it, what probable student responses will be, what lessons to teach, how to teach them, and in what order (CDE, 2005). (For a detailed account of scripted reading programs, see Meyer, 2002). One North Sacramento teacher overheard her superintendent say, “’I want to walk from classroom to classroom at the same grade level, with no interruption of instruction. I want to be able to hear the next sentence when I enter the next room. I want no interruption in continuity’” (Posnick-Goodwin, 2002, p. 6). According to Allington (2002a), “a veritable trove of scientific research tells us that effective teaching is not standardized and cannot be scripted” (p. 28). In fact, in a comprehensive report of reading instruction (Bond & Dykstra, 1967), which included indepth studies of 27 different reading programs used in first grade classrooms across the United States, researchers found that reading programs were not enough in helping children learn to read. The researchers discovered that a combination of programs often was superior to individual reading programs, and that any program would not be equally effective in all situations. This finding was corroborated in the International Studies of Educational Achievement (Elley, 1994), a study that examined reading instruction around the world. In her chapter, “The Teaching of Reading,” Lundberg (1994) writes:
31 It is highly unlikely that a universally best method for teaching reading can be defined. The effectiveness of a method depends much on the details of its implementation, its materials, its students, its cultural context and the compatibility of each with the other. (p. 149) That information notwithstanding, scripted reading programs were adopted by the state, and many of the elementary schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the nation’s second largest school district, credited increases in their SAT 9 (Stanford Achievement Test) scores to the use of the McGraw Hill reading program, Open Court (Trelease, 2004). Moustafa and Land (2002), however, wanted to check the claims that Open Court made a substantial difference in students’ reading success, especially economically disadvantaged students. Examining SAT 9 scores of LAUSD schools, Moustafa and Land found that there were no significant differences between the average SAT 9 reading scores of schools using Open Court and schools using nonscripted reading programs serving similarly disadvantaged children. In a study presented at the American Education Research Association’s annual conference, Slayton (2003) stated that in a broad study of 44 randomly selected second and third grade classrooms from LAUSD, teachers using Open Court were not teaching reading comprehension successfully. This was indicated both by low scores on standardized achievement tests and hours of classroom observation. Slayton’s study suggests that having the right materials is not a guarantee that students will learn the strategies and skills they need to be successful readers or learners. Elementary teachers who were using the Open Court (McGraw Hill) and Invitations to Literacy (Houghton Mifflin) programs are ambivalent about the quality and
32 success of the programs. In a survey of teachers (n=56) using the two adopted texts (Madhuri, 2003), 84 percent stated that they felt the programs took too much class time, that there were too many activities, and that they were constantly behind the schedule. Teachers found the schedule too hard to follow, that there was not enough time to help students individually, and that too much time was spent assessing students (Samway & Pease-Alvarez, 2005; Shelton, 2005). Although some teachers liked the structured format and consistency of the programs, these teachers said that they would like to have had more choice about which activities they used and be able to tailor the programs to their students’ needs (Shelton, 2005). One of the motivating factors for teachers to use the state adopted programs “by the book” is the increased pressure by administrators to show high scores on state standardized tests. In this time of high stakes testing, where funding, promotion and sometimes graduation depend on children’s test scores (Gunning, 2005), teachers, schools and districts are being held accountable for students’ scores on standardized tests. Some of the impacts of the tests are described in the next section. Standardized Tests Drive Curriculum . . . Again Like the reforms of the early 1990s, the standardized test is driving language arts instruction once again (McNeil, 2000; McNeil & Valenzuela, 2001). Because standardized tests are being used to measure schools’ success in teaching to the standards, teachers, students and administrators are concerned about test scores (Meyer, 2002). In the current environment of high-stakes testing, many eventualities depend on test scores. Scores are published by school, and schools are required to show appropriate growth in their Academic Performance Index (API) (Bush, 2002). Some schools received financial
33 rewards for meeting their API goals, while other schools faced sanctions for failure to reach their API (Moustafa & Land, 2005). Because so much is riding on the results of the tests, more and more class time is spent teaching specifically to the test (McNeil, 2000). Many researchers have reported on the way that current standardized testing drives curriculum in a much different way than the reforms of the late 1980s. The new reforms and standardized tests create classroom environments that are skills-driven, context-reduced, and where student learning is focused on the test rather than authentic activities (McNeil, 2000; McNeil & Valenzuela, 2001; Valencia & Villareal, 2003). There is so much pressure for schools to raise test scores that teachers may spend several hours per week drilling students in test-taking strategies such as how to bubble in answers and eliminate obviously incorrect answers. “In the name of ‘alignment’ between course curricula and test, [test] drills are becoming the curriculum in our poorest schools” (McNeil & Valenzuela, 2001, p. 132). Researchers claim that even when children score well on standardized tests, this may only be an indication of the match between class instruction and the test, rather than a measure of children’s real ability to apply the skills in practice (Cunningham & Allington, 2003; Gutierrez et al., 2002). Heubert and Hauser (1999) argue that “teaching to the test” can invalidate test results, and that scores can be raised without actually improving the broader set of academic achievement that the test is intended to measure. Raising Scores or Cheating? In order to show school wide improvements in test scores, some schools have resorted to dishonest practices. For example, in a Houston high school that had been rated “exemplary,” the highest level of achievement according to state standards,
34 administrators were discovered tampering with student data. Once the data were readjusted to reflect more realistic numbers, the school was downgraded to “low performing” (Dobbs, 2003). Continued examination of Houston schools uncovered at least 14 other Houston high schools with student records that were wrong or had missing information (Houston Chronicle, 2004). In one school, ninth grade students who were thought to be too low in math to pass the tenth grade state test were required to repeat the ninth grade and then skipped to eleventh grade to avoid low passing rates on the test (Dobbs, 2003). At the elementary level, dishonest school practices designed to show the school in the best light include sending remedial students on a field trip on the day of the test, urging parents to keep their low-performing children at home during testing days, or blatant cheating by altering the answer sheets (Allington, 2000; Cunningham & Allington, 2003). Another strategy intended to raise tests scores was to urge teachers to target attention and resources only to the middle level students, those believed able to pass the tests with help. Teachers were supposed to ignore high level students who were already likely to pass, and the low level students believed unable to pass regardless of any assistance they might receive (Allington, 2000). Other studies regarding standardized tests relate students’ negative attitudes towards testing (Wong & Paris, 2000) and developmental decreases in effort on tests. As students got older, they were less willing to try hard on standardized tests (Paris, Roth & Turner, 2000). Clearly high-stakes testing is producing “unintended consequences” (Jones et al, 2003) that should not be ignored.
35 Following is a discussion of a nationally influential study produced at the behest of Congress. The recommendations from the study were largely used in the formation of reading programs around the nation. The National Reading Panel The results of the most recent government study, in this case commissioned by Congress, have become the basis for federal education policy (Shanahan, 2004) and have had an enormous influence on the current trend of phonics-based reading programs (Garan, 2002; Yatvin et al, 2003). The study was conducted by the National Reading Panel (NRP), which produced a 500 page report called Teaching Children to Read (NRP, 2000a). In 1997, the NRP was charged by Congress to “’assess the status of researchbased knowledge, including the effectiveness of various approaches to teaching children to read’” (NRP, 2000a, p. 1-1), in order to “settle—to the satisfaction of the government of the United States—the poisonous disagreements that had plagued reading education” (Shanahan, 2004, p. 236). The NRP’s task was to review the research, determine what the research findings were, and evaluate the readiness of the field to employ on a wide scale what was found. In the methodology section, the NRP report explains its criteria for selecting the areas of reading to be studied, and the procedure for selecting studies to be used in its analyses. This process was to include studies that were published in English and in refereed journals. Studies had to focus on children’s reading development from preschool through grade 12. Studies were examined for appropriateness to the particular topic or research question, and the Panel chose to limit their search, for the most part, to studies with experimental or quasi-experimental designs. The panel was then divided into
36 committees to research particular areas of reading instruction, with some members serving on several committees. The report of the NRP has had a significant impact on current reading pedagogy and policies (Garan, 2002). Therefore, some of the panel’s process and findings are explained in greater detail below. The report addresses five components related to reading instruction: alphabetics (broken into two sections, phonemic awareness and phonics), fluency, comprehension (broken into three sections: vocabulary instruction, text comprehension instruction, and teacher preparation and comprehension strategies instruction), teacher education, and computer technology. Most significant to this research are the sections on phonics, fluency, and comprehension, which will be addressed in the following sections. NRP on Phonics After establishing criteria for selection, which were in keeping with the Panel’s previously determined criteria, the phonics subgroup included 38 studies in its analysis. The majority (76 percent) of the studies examined reading or spelling single words, and twenty four percent of the studies involved the reading of text (NRP, 2000a, p. 2-92). One challenge for the subcommittee, besides finding research that met the criteria for inclusion, was the fact that the studies were skewed in favor of first grade students or children with reading problems. Few studies of kindergartners and students in grades 2-6 were included (NRP, 2002). In spite of these limitations, the committee reported that systematic phonics instruction was important for beginning readers, but not as helpful for readers who already can read, even if they are low-level readers. The committee stated that systematic
37 phonics instruction needed to be part of a “balanced reading program,” and not the entire program. The report recommends that in first grade teachers provide: controlled vocabulary texts that allow students to practice decoding, and they can also read quality literature to students to build a sense of story and to develop vocabulary and comprehension. Phonics should not become the dominant component in a reading program, neither in the amount of time devoted to it nor in the significance attached [emphasis added]. (NRP 2000a, 2-136) There are some cautions provided in the report. One regards the application of “intensive, systematic” phonics instruction. The authors point out that the word “intensive” is undefined, so it is not clear how much phonics instruction should be offered in kindergarten and first grade, and how much or how long phonics instruction should be extended in the later grades. The NRP also includes a caution relating to scripted materials for teaching reading. The authors of the report recognize that teachers will be working with students of different reading levels, and that the ideal would be to group children in order to meet their instructional needs. The report states that scripted reading programs do not support teachers in doing this, but instead notes that many phonics programs commonly present a fixed sequence of lessons scheduled from the beginning of the year to the end. Finally, the authors state that the role of the teacher needs to be better understood (Bond & Dykstra, 1967). NRP on Fluency Fluency, the ability to read text with speed, accuracy and appropriate expression, is receiving increasing attention (NRP, 2000a), with the belief that readers who are not
38 fluent will have more difficulty with comprehension. The fluency subgroup examined a total of 98 fluency studies, which utilized many different instructional procedures. In total, the NRP concludes that the types of treatments—delivered by parents, teachers, researchers, peers or even by the students themselves with tape recorders or computers—all showed the largest positive effects on students’ word recognition and fluency measures, and little effect on comprehension. The report suggests, however, that in several comparisons the effect on reading comprehension was high, and cites Faulkner and Levy’s (1999) speculation that focus on fluency instruction impacts “‘the lowest level readers [who] improve in word recognition and the highest ones [who improve] in comprehension’” (NRP, 2000a, p. 3-18). The NRP examined other avenues widely used to support increased fluency and reading skills in general, which include programs that encourage students to read a lot. These would include independent reading programs such as sustained silent reading (SSR), commercial programs such as Accelerated Reader, and corporate incentive plans (e.g. Pizza Hut’s Book It). Of the hundreds of studies mentioned in the report that address increased independent reading, the fluency subgroup narrowed its search to 14 studies that fit its methodology. Although the NRP states that vast amounts of correlational evidence point to the success of these programs in helping students become better readers, the NRP cautions that correlation does not suggest causation. The NRP wrote that due to poor research designs in the studies they examined, the fluency subgroup could not conclude that increased reading had a positive impact on reading fluency or achievement. NRP on Comprehension.
39 The subgroup on reading comprehension directed its attention to three components of reading comprehension: vocabulary, comprehension instruction methods, and teacher preparation and comprehension. Vocabulary. The Comprehension Subgroup reported that the vocabulary studies available for inclusion were limited, and in this case, the Panel found no research on vocabulary measurement that met the NRP criteria (NRP, 2000a, p. 4-17). As a result, the subcommittee provided a detailed review of the implicit evidence. In the vocabulary section, the NRP reported that both implicit and explicit teaching of vocabulary make a positive difference in students’ vocabulary learning, and that vocabulary instruction leads to gains in comprehension. Furthermore, the NRP claims that vocabulary can be learned incidentally in the context of storybook reading or listening to others read. Another finding states that multiple exposures to new vocabulary in authentic contexts, and active engagement in learning are both valuable for acquiring new vocabulary. Comprehension instruction methods. Of the 203 studies related to comprehension instruction that were included in the Comprehension Subgroup’s database, the majority of them studied grades three through six. Lower grades were taught comprehension strategies as part of experimental curriculum, and higher grades (above grade six) focused on less able readers. The Comprehension Subgroup reported that the instruction of cognitive reading strategies improves reading comprehension in readers, even when the readers have a range of ability levels, such as students who are poor readers but adequate decoders. This improvement occurs when teachers demonstrate, explain, model and implement interaction with students in teaching them how to comprehend a text.
40 The subgroup notes that teaching comprehension strategies requires knowing the appropriate situation for applying the appropriate strategy, and that students must learn a range of strategies and appropriate applications for their use. This requires that students develop independent strategic reading abilities through subtle instructional distinctions that go beyond drill and traditional approaches to strategy instruction. “It may be necessary to free teachers of the expectation that they follow directions narrowly. . . . Effective reading instruction is associated more with independent teacher action than with implementation of basal text prescriptions” (NRP, 2000a, pp. 4/47-4/48). The subgroup also reported that one of the common aspects of individual and multiple strategy instruction is the active involvement of motivated readers who read more text as a result of the instruction. They state that these motivational and reading practice effects may be important to the success of multiple strategy instruction. Finally, strategy instruction should occur in naturalistic contexts for the best results. Teacher preparation and comprehension strategies instruction. The NRP found only four studies for use in the analysis of teacher preparation and comprehension instruction. However, the report states that teaching one strategy at a time, and then trying to teach students how to apply each strategy at the appropriate times during reading, is not as effective as teaching responsively and opportunistically to students’ needs as they arise in natural contexts. In order for this to happen, teachers need to be well versed in both the kinds of strategies good readers use, and the kinds of instructional strategies they can use to present these strategies to children. The focus of the review examined studies that addressed the need for teacher preparation in the implementation of strategy instruction in naturalistic classroom contexts. The NRP found that teachers can
41 be trained to be effective in teaching comprehension to their students in naturalistic settings, which in turn will lead to improved reading. Critiques of the National Reading Panel Report Many of the findings of the NRP report (2000a) Teaching Children to Read, and the report’s summary (2000b) have been challenged by a number of authors (Allington, 2002a; Cunningham, 2001; Garan, 2002; Krashen, 2001; Krashen, 2005; Ohanian, 1999), who claim, among other things, that the research included in the report was too limited and that it ignored a greater body of research of more scope and depth. The report even included a panel member’s minority report, challenging the process and findings of the panel (Yatvin, 2000; Yatvin, 2002). Furthermore, close reading of the report suggests caution and care when applying some of its findings to early reading instruction (Garan, 2002; NRP, 2000a). Perhaps part of the problem for the National Reading Panel was its attempt to collate data from an inordinate amount of research, with limited time, funding and logistical support (Yatvin, 2000). In fact, the Panel applied to Congress to extend the original six month deadline by a year (NRP, 2000b). Other criticisms of the NRP address the contradictions within the report (Krashen, 2005), and contradictions between the actual report, a summary of the report (NRP, 2000a), and a promotional video made from the findings (NRP, 2002) (Garan, 2001; Garan, 2005). Finally, the members of the panel itself were called into question. As Yatvin (2002) points out, none of the members were currently primary level teachers of reading, and notes that one member, a medical doctor whose research related to the area of brain activity in reading, had no actual experience in reading instruction (Yatvin, 2002).
42 Although the National Reading Panel did comprehensive searches to determine the best methods for reading instruction, their methodology and selection excluded many studies. The next section reviews some of the additional research on the components that support good reading instruction. So What Does Good Reading Instruction Look Like? In order to determine what elements are important for successful reading instruction, the American government has funded study after study, including studies that analyze the studies (Adams, 1990; Bond & Dykstra, 1967; National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983; National Reading Panel, 2000a), to determine exactly which factors lead to reading development among young children. Unfortunately, federal and state governments then make what often turn out to be poor, or at best too rushed (as in the California CLAS debacle) policy decisions based on these studies (Allington & Woodside-Jiron, 2002; Garan, 2002; McGill-Franzen, 2000). However, amidst all the debates and deliberations, there are some overriding themes that continue to emerge as essential for reading development. In order to best summarize some of the research on good reading instruction, I have grouped the information into three categories: (1) Phonics/Skills Instruction, (2) Motivation, and (3) Teacher Effectiveness. Although there is a great deal of overlap in these categories, I will try and differentiate them in order to highlight some of the main points from each. Explicit Phonics/Skills Instruction Phonics instruction, which is central to the reading debates, has played a role in reading instruction for most of the 3,000-year history of early reading education (Pressley et al, 2001). Some of the most influential and oft-quoted studies of reading instruction
43 state that systematic phonics instruction is necessary in early reading instruction (Bond & Dykstra, 1967; Chall, 1967, National Reading Panel, 2000a). Contrary to popular belief, there is a tremendous amount of agreement on the need for teaching phonics. The dispute, however, lies in the way phonics is taught (Baumann et al., 1998). For example, Moustafa (1997) found that first graders use their knowledge of known words, or parts of known words, (e.g. onsets and rimes), to read unknown or even made up words, rather than their knowledge of letter-phoneme correspondences. Therefore, Moustafa (1997) concluded that teachers should focus on teaching children the sounds of letters representing onsets and rimes, and to make analogies between familiar and unfamiliar print words in order to pronounce unfamiliar print words. In an earlier study with slow learners in first grade, Bridge, Winograd and Haley (1983), found that using predictable texts supported students in learning to read more target words than children who were reading typical preprimers. Furthermore, like Moustafa (1997), Bridge, et al. (1983) discovered that since predictable and pattern books contained words with common phonograms or syllables (rimes), “reading and writing activities that focus on the rhyming words in pattern books lead children to induce some of the rules of letter-sound correspondences. Thus, they learn to recognize unfamiliar words by analogy to similar known words, a major word recognition strategy” (Bridge et al., 1983, p. 890). Finally, Bridge et al. (1983) discovered that using predictable books encouraged students to use context clues when encountering unfamiliar words, rather than just relying on graphophonic cues (the way the words look on the page), as the children using preprimers did.
44 In a study of effective schools and teachers who were working with low-income children, Taylor et al. (2000) discovered that although teachers taught phonics explicitly, accomplished teachers were successful because they coached students in the use of word recognition strategies in the context of real reading. Flippo (2001) concurred that phonics should be taught in the context of real reading. In her “expert study,” Flippo collected comments and insights from 11 researchers who were widely recognized in the field of reading and literacy, and who represented three of the most prevalent philosophies of literacy instruction (“traditional, whole language, and interactive,” Flippo, 2001, p. 9). The study began by having each expert respond to a list of statements published by Frank Smith. Smith, a leader in the psycholinguistic movement, published statements that he felt would impede literacy learning. Over the course of 10 years, the experts communicated with Flippo, who collated two lists of items the experts agreed would work as either impediments or facilitators in helping children learn to read. With regards to phonics, the experts agreed that these things would make learning to read difficult: •
Teach the children in your classroom letters and words one at a time, making sure each new letter or word is learned before moving on to the next letter or word.
•
Drill children on isolated letters and sounds using flashcards, chalk or magnetic boards, computers, or worksheets.
•
Have kids read short, snappy texts [i.e. decodables] rather than whole stories.
•
Never give children books in which some of the words are unknown (i.e., words that you haven’t previously taught or exposed them to in some way). (Flippo, 2001, p. 13)
45 In contrast to the elements that would impede learning to read, the experts listed some variables that would facilitate learning to read. Some of these include: •
Use a broad spectrum of sources for student reading materials.
•
Provide multiple, repeated demonstrations of how reading is done or used.
•
Make reading functional.
•
Instead of deliberately separating reading from writing, plan instruction and individual activities so that, most of the time, students engage in purposeful reading and writing. (Flippo, 2001, p. 14)
Clearly researchers from a wide pedagogical spectrum agree that some explicit instruction of letter-sound correspondence is necessary; however, they agree that it is important to teach these skills in the context of reading text. Another area of reading research regards the balance of skill development with the exploration of text. Pressley et al (2001) claim that although skills instruction is important, it needs to be provided in the context of real reading situations and in response to children’s reading needs. The best teachers showing the highest student achievement integrated skills instruction with holistic activities. Students who are taught multiple skills and strategies for applying these skills, in the context of their reading and writing needs, learn to integrate and apply these skills independently (Allington, 2002b; O’Neal et al., 2004; Pressley et al., 2001; Taylor et al., 2000). Finally, studies show that integrated reading and writing in real or naturalistic contexts supports literacy development. Children who have an opportunity to read a variety of books in learning contexts (Worthy & Roser, 2004) will have the chance to apply previously learned strategies and learn new ones (Pressley et al, 2001). Another
46 factor that leads to reading development is when students have the opportunity to combine reading with other language processes (writing, speaking and listening) (Flippo, 2001; Pressley et al., 2001). Another significant component leading to reading success is children’s motivation to read. Some of the research which discusses factors influencing students’ reading motivation will be addressed in the next section. Motivation Motivation to read is an important component of reading instruction: (1) because motivation activates behavior (Guthrie & Wigfield, 2000); (2) because children who are motivated spend more time reading and are better readers (Gambrell, 1996; Guthrie & Wigfield, 2000 ); and (3) because supporting reading motivation and achievement is essential for improving the educational possibilities for children who find learning to read difficult (Gambrell, 1996). Motivated readers tend to have increased levels of engagement as they read, and therefore apply strategies and skills to get the most out of text (Guthrie & Wigfield, 2000). There are many classroom factors that foster children’s motivation to read (Guthrie & Wigfield, 2000). Some of the factors that support or lead to reading motivation are described below. Access to interesting reading materials is one factor leading to increased reading motivation (Pilgreen, 2001). Students need to have access to reading materials that are of interest and on a level that they can read (Allington, 2002b; Guthrie & Wigfield, 2000; O’Neal et al., 2004). In addition, children need the time and opportunity to read (Krashen, 1993; Pilgreen, 2001). Students who are in classrooms with a rich selection of books show high motivation for reading (Elley, 1992; Worthy & Roser, 2004).
47 Students also need opportunities for self-selection when it comes to reading. The role of choice in motivation in general, and reading motivation in particular, is well documented (Gambrell, 2001). Students who are allowed, and encouraged, to choose their own reading material expended more effort in learning and understanding the material (Gambrell, 1996; Gambrell, 2001). This corresponds with Flippo’s (2001) research, which found that children should have a wide array of materials to select from, and that one way to make learning to read difficult is for the teacher to select all the stories that children read. Children who have social interactions about books will be more motivated to read (Pilgreen, 2001). Collaboration “is the social discourse among students in a learning community that enables them to see perspectives and to socially construct knowledge from text” (Guthrie & Wigfield, 2000, p. 413). A classroom environment that fosters social interaction is more likely to foster intrinsic motivation than more individualized, solitary learning environments (Gambrell, 1996; Gambrell, 2001). Giving students the opportunity to work with peers and to discuss the books they have read with others have been widely reported to raise motivation and engagement (Daniels, 2001; Pressley et al, 2001; Worthy & Roser, 2004). Reading studies indicate that social collaboration promotes achievement, higher level cognition, and intrinsic desire to read (Almasi, 1995; Gambrell, 1996; O’Neal et al., 2004). Clearly there are activities and situations that can motivate children to want to read and become good readers. Not surprising, another factor that is key to student success is the quality of the teaching and teachers that students encounter. The next section reports on the research regarding teacher effectiveness.
48 Teacher Effectiveness Bond and Dykstra (1967), in the conclusion of their seminal study of first grade reading instruction, determined that a combination of reading programs was superior to any single reading program in supporting children in learning to read. Furthermore, they recommended that further research center on characteristics of particular teacher/learner situations, and that “to improve reading instruction, it is necessary to train better teachers of reading rather than to expect a panacea in the form of materials” (p. 123). Below I discuss some of the factors that are common to successful teachers of reading. Effective teachers of reading continually monitor their students. Effective literacy teachers use both formal and informal assessments on a regular basis to measure their students’ growth and to inform instruction (Pressley et al., 2001). Teachers use assessment: (1) to discover what a child can do independently and with assistance; (2) to document progress for parents and students; and (3) to summarize achievement over time (Fountas & Pinnell, 1996). Assessment can take the form of anecdotal records as teachers observe children reading throughout the course of the day (Fountas & Pinnell, 1996), running records in which teachers listen to children read and code their miscues while attending to their reading behaviors (Clay, 2000), or observations made during guided reading sessions (Fountas & Pinnell, 1996), as well as more formal assessments such as those accompanying basal programs or state-adopted tests. Effective teachers use the information gathered from formal and informal assessments to address their students’ individual needs. These teachers make decisions about how and what to teach based on their students’ strengths and needs. Teachers may teach short lessons or mini-lessons to the entire class when that seems appropriate
49 (Weaver, 1994), but will address individual needs in the course of guided reading lessons or individual assistance (Lapp et al., 2004; Pressley et al., 2001). Another practice used by effective teachers is flexible grouping. Traditionally, teachers grouped children according to reading ability. However, research in the 1970s and 1980s found this practice to lower students’ self-esteem and motivation (Lapp et al, 2004). Teachers began to use flexible or dynamic grouping (Fountas & Pinnell, 1996) as a way to limit the deleterious effects of ability groups for the lower achieving students. In flexible groups, students are grouped both heterogeneously and homogeneously, and group structure is frequently changed based on students’ needs (Lapp et al, 2004). Excellent teachers are constantly learning and reflecting on their practices. They observe their students, confer with peers, and examine their own practices. They learn new strategies and programs and apply them strategically when their students need them (O’Neal et al., 2004; Pressley et al., 2001; Worthy & Roser, 2004). Finally, effective teachers demonstrate a love for reading and model this to their students. They share books they enjoy, talk about their reading experiences, and model reading in class (Cunningham & Allington, 2003; Lundberg, 1994). Conclusion A broad look at the history of reading education in the United States shows that there have been a large number and wide range of programs and policies that have been determined to be most significant in helping children learn to read. An examination of reading policy just in California over the last 20 years depicts wide pedagogical shifts that have brought reading instruction from a structured skills-based format, to a more naturalistic approach with whole language, and back again. Throughout these changes,
50 standardized tests have played a key role in driving reading instruction. Yet despite all the debates over the best way to provide reading instruction to young children, the research does show some trends that lead to better reading skills among students.
CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY Restatement of the Problem The purpose of this study is to examine whether teacher application—scripted or nonscripted—of the same reading program affects students’ reading comprehension levels or attitudes towards reading. Since the publication of the National Reading Panel Report (2000), policy makers have been repeating the catch-phrase “scientifically-based instruction” as the cure-all for early literacy instruction (Allington, 2002a). As an educator of preservice teachers who must apply these “scientifically based” programs, I wanted an opportunity to observe how one of these programs (in this case, Houghton Mifflin) was used in classrooms with experienced, quality teachers who had different implementation requirements. I wanted to discover how teachers and students felt about the program, and if there were differences in student responses and outcomes to the different modalities of instruction. This chapter describes the methodology used to conduct the research. Criteria for Teacher and Classroom Selection In order to examine outcomes of scripted reading instruction as compared to nonscripted instruction, I had originally proposed to use eight classrooms in Reading First schools from two school districts whose teachers had different requirements for implementing the same reading program. However, initial observations made me aware that the requirements of the Reading First grant may drive instruction as much as district requirements, so I added non-Reading First schools to the study, and included classrooms from six schools in three districts.
51
52 In considering schools in which to work, I tried to select schools that were similar in terms of student population. I determined that each school should have more than the state total of 49 percent of its students receiving free or reduced priced meals (Ed-Data, 2005) and have more than the state total of 25 percent English Language Learners (ELL) (Ed-Data, 2005). My purpose in establishing these criteria is that schools serving these students traditionally get low scores on standardized tests, and many of the reading sanctions have been developed to serve these lower performing schools. Therefore, I wanted to discover if “scientifically based” reading programs are working to these children’s advantage. In terms of teacher selection, I established several criteria. I looked for teachers who were fully credentialed and had been teaching for more than five years. I wanted teachers with strong backgrounds in reading/language arts instruction and who were identified as exemplary teachers by principals or reading specialists. Finally, I looked for teachers who had similarly high levels of student-teacher rapport. Although this isn’t something I felt I could measure, I did initial observations in each classroom at the end of the school year to get a feel for the quality of student-teacher interactions. In my personal experience students learn better from teachers with whom they feel comfortable, have some connection and feel the teachers care about them (Pressley et al, 2001). I did initial classroom observations in all but one of the classes in the spring of 2004 to insure that the teachers met my criteria. Two of the teachers that I observed initially, although strong, had only taught for three and four years, and were replaced in my study by more experienced teachers. I did observations in a total of eleven classrooms, and selected eight for the study. Based on my initial observations (for all but
53 one of the teachers1) and discussions with every teacher that was finally selected for the study, I found that the teachers I observed had good rapport with their students, were knowledgeable in the area of language arts instruction, and were willing and available to participate in the study during the 2004-2005 school year. Accessing Classrooms Finding classrooms in which to work was not an easy task, even in the school district where I taught for 12 years. After I wrote letters to administrators at the district offices and gained permission to work with all three districts, I began my search for teachers with whom to work. I was able to find eight teachers in three different school districts who were willing to participate in the study. Described below is the process by which that occurred. All schools, teachers and students names have been changed to protect individual privacy. District A Having taught in District A for 12 years, this was a natural place for me to seek teachers with whom to work. However, since I worked as a middle school teacher, it was a little more challenging to get an “in” into elementary schools. There were three elementary schools in District A that had received Reading First grants, and teachers in the district were not required to follow the script, so I began my search with the Reading First schools in the spring of 2004. I first approached Franklin Elementary2, having done observations there in 20012002. Teachers at Franklin were committed to guided reading and small group instruction, and varied from each other in their lesson delivery. One of the first grade 1 2
Trusting in my colleague’s judgment about the teacher I hadn’t had a chance to observe. All schools’, teachers’ and students’ names are pseudonyms.
54 teachers I had previously observed, Mrs. Ovsepyan, a teacher with 15 years’ experience, again invited me into her room. I observed her class and teaching during the language arts period (to make sure it hadn’t changed drastically from previous years) and since her style and experience fit my criteria, I included her in my research. I called the principal at the second Reading First school in my district and explained that I was looking for excellent teachers who did not apply the program by the script. She explained that I was welcome in the school, but said that although they were not required to, teachers did follow the program by the script. This was consistent with my experience of the teachers I had observed at this school in 2001-2002, where reading instruction was largely skills-based, without a guided reading program and included a preponderance of whole class instruction and workbook activities (similar to the way the program works), so I thanked her and called the third school. I was referred to the reading specialist (whom I did not know) at the third Reading First school in District A, and she agreed to ask the first grade teachers at an upcoming grade level meeting if anyone would be willing to participate in the study. I was not pleased with this, because I know that hearing about something secondhand, without the researcher there to answer questions or concerns, often sounds like more work than it might really be. However, the specialist did not want me to come to the meeting and present my research in person, so I had to hope for the best. As I feared, no one was willing to participate. Through the secretary, I obtained the name of an outstanding teacher at the school, and called her to lay my case before her. She agreed to allow me to include her class in the study, but the next day I received a phone call from the principal
55 telling me that the teacher had felt put on the spot, and that the specialist already told me no one was interested in participating in the study. Hoping to have at least two teachers from a Reading First school in District A, I spoke with the Reading Specialist back at Franklin Elementary who referred me to Ms. Popovich, a teacher with 11 years’ experience. After an observation in her class and discussion with her about her experience, I added Ms. Popovich to my research, and Franklin became the only school in the study where I worked with two teachers. Following my classroom observations of the two Reading First teachers, I felt that teachers in Reading First schools may be more restricted by the Reading First program than I had originally thought. Even though the administrators did not require teachers in District A to adhere strictly to the Houghton Mifflin program, the Reading First requirements may have been driving the teaching. In the observation with Mrs. Ovsepyan, I noted that she used the workbooks and skills sheets more than she had in my previous observations. Upon discussion with her, she agreed that in fact she did some teaching to the test by having children complete the worksheets. The Reading First assessments were similar in format to the worksheets, and Mrs. Ovsepyan wanted the students to be familiar with that format. Therefore, I decided to add classes that were not in Reading First schools. I was fortunate to find two excellent teachers in two non-Reading First schools in District A, who taught in schools with a makeup of children similar to the first school. One teacher, Mrs. Marino, a teacher with 17 years’ experience, was referred by her principal as both experienced and outstanding, and Mrs. Johnson with nine years’ experience, came highly recommended by a second grade teacher and reading specialist
56 of my acquaintance. After observations and discussions with these two teachers, they were added to the study. In total, then, I had four teachers who were not required to follow the script from District A—two in Reading First schools, and two that were not in Reading First schools. District B As a full time professor, I often train new adjunct professors in the courses I teach. One such adjunct is a Reading Coach at District B, where many of the schools have Reading First grants, and where the teachers in all schools are required to go by the script. This adjunct agreed to assist me in finding teachers to work with. I observed two classes with dynamic, effervescent teachers; however, they had only been teaching three and four years, and I wanted teachers with more than five years’ experience. I was referred to a teacher, Mrs. Juarez, by a colleague of hers who was also a student in the Reading Master’s program at my university. Mrs. Juarez had been teaching for 16 years, and came highly recommended by the Reading Coach at her school. After an initial observation, and with her permission, I added Mrs. Juarez to the study. The second teacher in District B was referred by a coworker. Mrs. Stockton is a master teacher, came highly recommended by the Reading Coach at her school, and my colleague’s daughter felt fortunate to have been able to work with her as a student teacher. I contacted Mrs. Stockton, who had been teaching for 17 years, and after an initial observation, felt that she would be a good addition to the study. Both Mrs. Juarez and Mrs. Stockton taught in Reading First schools, and were required to follow the script. District C
57 The wife of the department chair in my university was an assistant superintendent at the time of my study in District C, where none of the schools in the district have Reading First grants, and it was my understanding that teachers were not required to follow the script (based on a discussion with a colleague who was a former elementary principal in District C). I was referred by the assistant superintendent to the Director of Student Achievement, K-5, who gave me the names of two teachers who were experienced and whom she felt to be outstanding teachers. I contacted the first teacher, Mrs. Monroe, who coincidentally was pursuing her master’s degree at my university, and observed in her class. She was an outstanding teacher with seven years’ experience, and agreed to work with me. By this time, it was the end of the school year, and I did not have time to do an observation in the second teacher’s classroom, Mrs. Parker, a teacher with 24 years’ experience. However, she had also been referred by a colleague who had been a principal in the district. So, after a discussion with Mrs. Parker, she agreed to allow me to observe for the following school year, and I added her to the list. Initially it was my understanding that both Mrs. Monroe and Mrs. Parker were not required to follow the script. However, as I discovered when I began my observations, Mrs. Monroe did not follow the script (based on her understanding that she was to use the program but could modify it as needed), and Mrs. Parker did follow the script. At this point, I had eight teachers lined up, and was ready for the school year to begin. I began doing observations during the second month of each class’s school year3 giving the teacher time to get to know her students and establish a routine. In late 3
Some schools were on year-round schedules and began in July and August, 2004. Others were on traditional schedules, beginning September, 2004.
58 October, I was informed that Mrs. Johnson, a teacher in a non-reading first classroom from District A, accepted a job from another district, and was therefore excluded from the study. Because I wasn’t informed about this decision until after I’d already completed one or two observations in each classroom and had administered the first round of attitude surveys with the children, I felt that it was too late in the school year to add a new class, and proceeded with seven classrooms. Table 3.1 summarizes teacher information and school demographics. In Chapter 4 I will present specific ethnic and language breakdowns for each school. Table 3.1 Characteristics of Teachers, Schools and Classrooms Included in the Study School/Teacher name
District Experience
Franklin Elementary Mrs. Ovsepyan Franklin Elementary Ms. Popovich Oaks Elementary Mrs. Marino Maturin Elementary Mrs. Monroe King Elementary Mrs. Stockton
District 15 years A
Alexandria Elementary Mrs. Juarez Victoria Elementary Mrs. Parker
Percentage of Students Receiving Free/ Reduced Meals (schoolwide) 79.6%
Percentage of Program Students Application Designated ELL (schoolwide) 58%
District 11 years A
79.6%
58%
District 17 years A District 7 years C
89.5%
56%
79.6%
49%
District 17 years B
95%
62%
District 16 years B
96%
District 24 years C
77.9%
Reading First Designation
Nonscripted
Reading First
Nonscripted
Reading First
Nonscripted Nonscripted
Non-Reading First Non-Reading First
Scripted
Reading First
Scripted
Reading First
Scripted
Non-Reading First
76% 40%
59
In terms of population density, the communities in which the schools selected from District A and District B were located were classified as mid-size city (Ed-Data, 2005), and the schools from District C were considered urban fringe of a large city. The similarities in population densities suggest that the schools were similarly situated. Due to class-size reduction, all classes had an analogous number of students, ranging from 1720 (with some fluctuation during the school year as children moved away or joined the class mid year). Data Collection Because I wanted to see if the type of instruction children received (scripted or nonscripted) had a significant impact on students’ comprehension or attitude towards reading, I designed a mixed-methods study (Creswell, 2003) combining classroom observations with quantitative data. This included an attitude survey designed for young children, interviews with randomly selected students, and a reading comprehension test. Classroom Observations I observed in each classroom during the language arts instruction for a total of five to seven visits per teacher. I began my observations during the second month of each class during the 2004-2005 school year, and completed them in the eighth month. During the observations, I took notes on a laptop computer, noting the classroom activity, its approximate duration, what the teacher said, and student responses and behaviors. I coded the data for the types of activities in which the teachers and students were engaged. Each observation lasted for a minimum of an hour and a half. In some classes, this comprised the entire morning period of language arts instruction, and in some classes this
60 was only a portion of the language arts instruction. For example, Mrs. Parker taught language arts from 8:00 a.m. through 9:30 a.m. and I stayed for the entire period during most visits. Mrs. Stockton began language arts instruction at 8:00 a.m. and continued through 11:30 a.m. For most sessions, my observations lasted from one and a half to two and a half hours. I feel that the observations I made were thorough enough to give me a good representation of each teacher’s style and type of instruction, and this was verified through my discussion with the teachers. Attitude Surveys In order to measure students’ attitudes towards reading, I wanted to create a survey that was quantifiable but appropriate for first grade students. I found a survey created by McKenna and Kear (1990) for young children, and used it as a model to create my own survey. The original survey consisted of 20 questions, divided between recreational and instructional reading (10 questions each). The survey I developed (see Appendix A), called “How Do You Feel About Reading,” has 16 questions. I revised the questions from the original, and had original artwork created for my version of the questionnaire. I had intended for the first set of eight questions to address attitudes towards independent or recreational reading, and the final eight questions to address reading instruction. I scored each child’s survey by hand, and I found an average for recreational reading, an average for instructional reading, and a total average. When totaling the responses, I realized that question one, which asked, “How do you feel about learning to read?” really could be related to recreational or instructional reading. Therefore, when tabulating the results for the surveys, I included the response to this question in both the recreational and instructional averages.
61 Each question begins with the stem, “How do you feel about . . .” and its completion relates to a component of reading. For example, one question relating to recreational reading asks, “How do you feel about spending free time reading at home?” To respond to the questions, students were asked to circle one of four drawings of a cartoon character (designed specifically for this study) of a lion displaying a range of emotions from excited to mad. This provided a four point likert-type scale to quantify their answers. Field Testing the Instrument In order to check on the appropriateness of the instrument’s use with first grade students, I showed the questionnaire to four colleagues, two of whom work in child development and two who had been elementary principals and teachers at primary grade levels. They made recommendations about the questions’ wording (e.g. one question that read, “How do you feel about reading instead of playing?” was removed because its intonation suggested that reading was not considered play or fun). They also recommended that the drawings be simplified. Once these changes had been made, I gave the questionnaire to twelve first graders in their last month of school during the spring of 2004, the school year prior to the beginning of the study. This was the class of one of the teachers in the research group, so the children were representative of the group who would be participating in the study, although it would be a new group that would be the actual participants. The children were given very little instruction. I just asked them if they would be willing to complete a survey on how they felt about reading. With a little clarification of some of the wording, the children were able to complete the questionnaire independently.
62 To insure that the children understood the questions and interpreted the drawings correctly, I sat with six children as they were answering the questions, and asked them to explain their answers. For example, question eight asks, “How do you feel about telling a friend or family member about a book you read?” One boy circled the last lion, the one who looks angry. I asked him why he circled that one, and he said, “I don’t like to talk about the books I read.” One girl circled the second (happy) lion for question seven, “How do you feel about reading during your off-track times?” I asked her why she circled that one, and she said, “I like to read, but I’d rather play.” Finally, I asked five children to explain what they thought each lion represented. They each responded appropriately, recognizing that the first lion was the most excited, the next lion was happy, the third lion looked bored and the fourth lion was angry. In every case, children seemed to be able to read most of the questions and answer them according to their feelings about reading, given limited or no explanation. Using the Instrument In the actual study, students4 completed the survey two times, once during the second or third month of their school year (depending on scheduling and availability), and again during the eighth month of the school year. I wanted to determine: (1) if there was a significant change in students’ attitudes towards reading from the beginning to the end of the school year, or (2) if there was a significant difference in attitudes between students in scripted and nonscripted classrooms. Students put their names on the surveys because I planned to continue the study in subsequent years and felt having names would 4
Because teachers wanted to maintain instructional consistency, all students who were in class on the day the survey was scheduled, completed it. The surveys included in the results of the study reflect only the 116 student responses of the children for whom I received parent consent forms.
63 make tracking the children easier. However, students and their parents were guaranteed confidentiality, and all children’s names will be changed in any written reports to maintain their privacy. I delivered the first round of the surveys a little differently in different classes, depending on the time each teacher was willing to allot for the project. In some classes, I gave the survey to the entire class at one time. Surveys were distributed, and I explained what each lion stood for. I then told the children I would read each question to them and ask them how they felt about different components of reading. I instructed them to circle only one lion per question that showed how they felt about the targeted aspect of reading. In all classes, most students seemed to understand the activity and completed it easily and appropriately. In other classes, I administered the survey in small groups or individually, having given the same instructions. I do not think the difference in administration had any significant outcome on student responses. Students all seemed to feel comfortable with the format of the survey, understood that I was asking how they felt and that there was no “right” answer, and many commented that it was easy and fun to do. For the second round of surveys, students in all classes completed them as a whole group. I reviewed the instructions with each group, and many of the children from each class remembered doing the survey, were excited to do it again, and reiterated how easy it was. I read through each question and gave the children time to respond, but many, who were much better readers by the end of the school year, worked ahead of me, completing the survey on their own. Since I was looking for aggregate results as opposed to individual children’s scores, and since teachers were working with time constraints, if
64 a child was absent when the survey was given, he/she did not have an opportunity to complete the survey. Student Interviews In order to learn more about students’ reading behaviors and access to books, I followed up with student interviews (see Student Interview Protocol, Appendix B). I read the questions from my laptop computer, and as students replied, I typed their answers in a separate form for each student. In the fall, I was unable to interview students in two of the scripted classrooms due to time constraints imposed on the teachers. However, in the spring the teachers invited me to come in the afternoon to complete interviews. There was no particular order to student selection for the interviews except that I tried to get a balance of boys and girls. In some classes, students saw what I was doing and were eager to participate. In other classes, I just randomly asked different children if they’d be willing to answer a few more questions about reading. Students with whom I spoke ranged in their reading abilities, attitudes towards reading, and experience with reading. Again, time constraints limited my ability to interview all children in each class, so I took a sampling. During the fall interviews, I was not able to conduct interviews in two of the scripted classrooms because the teachers could not afford to give up the time. One of the scripted teachers had me interview children during their lunch. However, in the spring, I was invited to interview children in those classes during the afternoon. One thing I noted was a range in students’ oral language skills, especially striking during the first round of interviews, but there were still noticeable differences at the end of the year. Some children were very fluent and comfortable in answering questions, while others were a little shy. Although many were ELL, I don’t think they had difficulty
65 understanding or replying because of problems with English, since students who spoke their first language volunteered to translate for them. These children exhibited limited language development in their primary language, and it is my opinion that the children were just demonstrating differences in their linguistic development. According to Wardle (2003), language development follows a predictable course, but the rate at which this occurs will vary greatly from child to child. Reading Comprehension Assessment My initial plan for the study was to use data from the Reading First assessments, which teachers are required to give at the end of every unit of study in order to meet the requirements of the Reading First grant. Adding classrooms in schools that were not receiving Reading First funding eliminated a common assessment for all classes, especially because children in first grade do not participant in state reading assessments. In order to measure reading ability, I decided to use the Reading Comprehension portion of the Gates MacGinitie Reading Test, 4th edition, level 1, form S (Riverside Publishing, 2000a) which is a norm-referenced assessment. The test has a format familiar to children. Each page consists of one “story” broken into three or four passages. Each passage has a panel with three pictures beside it. Children are to read the passages silently and independently, and then select the picture that most closely illustrates the meaning of the passage. To make their selection, children color in a circle under the appropriate picture. This is familiar to the children because in the Houghton Mifflin reading program, there is an accompanying workbook with similar types of question/answer worksheets that children complete as part of their class work.
66 I administered the test two times in the school year in order to determine if the type of reading instruction children received made a significant difference in their growth from the first test to the second, and on children’s comprehension abilities at the middle and end of the school year. Since the test was written for children in the fifth to ninth month of the first grade, (Riverside Publishing, 2000b) I administered the first round of the Gates MacGinitie assessment to all classes in January, 2005, which was the fifth month of actual instruction for all students. I administered the second round of the test during the students’ eighth or ninth month of school (depending on scheduling demands). To administer the test, I followed the instructions for administration. This included having the children complete a practice page, which illustrates the testing procedure and has sample questions. During both administrations of the assessment, I was able to determine that the children understood how to take the test, and they were given 35 minutes (in accordance with the instructions) to complete the test. I selected this assessment for several reasons: (1) It was designed to be administered to the whole group—and in some of the classrooms the teachers assured me that whole group administration (as opposed to an individual assessment) was the only option due to time constraints; (2) It only took 35 minutes to administer, and I did not want to take any more class time than was necessary; (3) It was written specifically for the middle to end of the first grade which seemed appropriate for assessing children in reading comprehension; (4) The scoring guide provided scale scores and normal curve equivalents which could be used for statistical purposes; (5) The scoring guide also
67 provided grade equivalents and percentiles which I could provide for each teacher as more feedback about her students. Permission to do Research Before beginning my research, I obtained signed letters of permission from the superintendents or their designees in all three school districts, and completed an application for approval from the Institution Review Board (IRB) of Claremont Graduate University. Included in my proposal were copies of the districts’ permission letter, consent forms for teachers and parents, and assent forms for students. After receiving IRB approval, I obtained approval from the principals of the schools in which my research teachers worked. Teachers then received packets with the teacher consent forms, parent consent forms, copies of the student attitude survey and interview protocol, and student assent form (see Appendix C). Teachers sent home consent forms to the parents of students in their classes. Parents were assured that children’s names and information would be kept confidential. Return rates varied from teacher to teacher (some teachers were more rigorous than others about getting forms returned). In classes with lower return rates, I sent home another round of forms with the children who had not yet returned them, and was able to get a few more signed forms. In total, I received 116 parent consent forms (out of a total of 135 students at the beginning of the school year). Before giving the first attitude survey, I handed out the student assent forms, explained who I was and the purpose of my study, and asked the students to write their names on the forms if they were willing to participate. All children were willing, and I collected their signed forms. Since some teachers preferred I do the surveys and comprehension tests as a whole group, they felt
68 that it would be better for all children to participate. All data and scores of the children for whom parents had not given consent were excluded from the study, and these children were not chosen for interviews. Data Analysis Answering the Research Questions Analysis of the data will follow the order of the research questions presented in Chapter One. To answer Research Question 1, “Will teacher application—scripted or nonscripted--of the same reading program significantly affect children’s ability to comprehend what they read?” an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was used to analyze teacher application and its effect on children’s scores for the Gates MacGinitie Reading Comprehension test (Riverside Publishing, 2000a). Since the comprehension assessment was designed to be administered to first graders from mid-year on, students already had four months of instruction before taking the assessment. Furthermore, some of the schools in the sample had lower API scores than others, suggesting that children from these schools may have begun the year with fewer literacy skills than others. Therefore, the ANCOVA was chosen to control for these differences. The winter scores were used as the covariate, the fixed factor was teacher application of the program, and the independent variable was the spring scores. The second research question, “Will teacher application—scripted or nonscripted-of the same reading program affect children’s attitudes towards reading?” was addressed by scores on the Reading Attitude Surveys. A t-test was calculated, using teacher application of the program as the independent variable, and student responses on the survey as the dependent variable.
69 To address the third research question, “How do experienced teachers feel about applying the program (scripted or not), in terms of students’ attainment of reading skills?” I will describe teacher responses taken from formal and informal discussions about the program, and provide descriptive data about teachers’ overall attitudes towards the program. Analyzing Other Findings Using observation notes and interviews with students and teachers, I will discuss common patterns and trends among the different classes and between scripted and nonscripted instruction. Some of the items I will address include how instructional time is used in each class. This information will be presented as descriptive data, and analyzed through discussion. A summary of class activities, and how much time each teacher spent engaged in the activity (given in percentage) will also be listed and discussed. I will also present the findings from the student interviews and discuss patterns and trends.
CHAPTER 4 TEACHERS AND READING INSTRUCTION: CLASSROM OBSERVATIONS In order to understand the similarities and differences between the types of reading instruction children received, I have included a description of each teacher and an overview of what reading/language arts instruction looked like in each class. In order to provide the broader context of each school’s demographics, I included the percentages of the amount of children who receive free/reduced meals schoolwide, and the ethnicities of and languages spoken by the children. When describing language arts instruction, I generally selected an observation that described the most typical day in each teacher’s classroom, and added descriptions from selected activities on other days if they typified something not described in the chosen observation. Following each classroom description are my subjective impressions of each class. All the observation information came from field notes. Teacher’s comments came from discussions during my classroom visits or informal interviews and clarifications after the observations were complete. Teachers from District A Mrs. Ovsepyan-Nonscripted Schoolwide Demographics at Franklin Elementary During the 2003-2004 school year, almost 80 percent of the children at Franklin Elementary received free/reduced meals. Fifty-eight percent of the student population of Franklin Elementary School was designated as English language learners (ELL). Of those students, 47 percent were Hispanic, 45 percent White (representing a mix of Caucasian
70
71 children who were born in the United States and those of Armenian descent), 4 percent Filipino and 4 percent were a mix of other ethnicities. In terms of the primary languages spoken by the children, of the 58 percent ELLs, 27 percent spoke Spanish as their first language, 27 percent spoke Armenian, one percent spoke Tagalog or Pilipino, and 3 percent spoke other languages (all data were obtained from Ed-Data, 2005). Mrs. Ovsepyan’s class exemplified the schoolwide percentages of SES, and ethnic and language makeup, including two children who were placed in her class mid-year with no English language background at all. Teacher Profile Mrs. Ovsepyan had been teaching for 15 years at the time the study began. She has a master’s degree in education, and was working on her second master’s degree/administration credential at the time of the study. Mrs. Ovsepyan is the only teacher in the study who was born outside the United States. In college, she majored in English literature in her native country, where she also taught high school. However, Mrs. Ovsepyan chose to teach at the elementary level when she moved to the United States. She claimed that to be a successful secondary teacher you had to be familiar with the culture (teens’ vernacular, their music and so on), but felt that that knowledge was less important for working with elementary students. Once she began teaching first grade, she fell in love with it. Mrs. Ovsepyan was referred to me by the Reading Specialist in her school, and is known and respected throughout her school as an outstanding teacher. Mrs. Ovsepyan is an incredibly caring teacher, and can discuss at length particulars about any child in her class. She is aware of their family situations (often this means divorce cases or financial challenges) and their needs as students. At the beginning
72 of the year, she gave all children a writing assessment and showed them to me to illustrate that many of the children in this class were particularly low performers. As a matter of fact, this group of first graders was targeted by the kindergarten teachers because they had unusually low skills, so much so that one of the other first grade teachers changed tracks so that she would not have to work with them. Mrs. Ovsepyan, however, felt a sense of obligation to teach them and felt that they in particular needed good teachers. Mrs. Ovsepyan’s classroom environment looks and feels like a work in progress, a place where children are creating and processing all the time. Bulletin boards have examples of student artwork, such as paintings that look Picasso-like, or projects like children’s dioramas of ocean scenes. Hanging around the room are chart papers with different poems the children have read. Also hanging are various circle and tree maps. These are charts, with information taken from shared readings or read alouds that are created collaboratively to support children in their writing (explained below). In terms of students’ seating arrangements, the children’s tables (two children to a table) were arranged in a large “U” at the start of the year, but by November they were rearranged into groups, with four children to a group. Each child has his/her own desk space, with a cubby underneath to hold books, journals and personal school supplies. On each table is a basket with books to read (including Phonics Library books from the HM reading program, trade books and children’s magazines) and school supplies (pencils, scissors, glue). There are learning centers arranged around the outside of the room (such as a math center, listening center with books on tape, phonics center, and writing center)
73 where individuals or pairs work on a predetermined rotating schedule during guided reading time. The room has a large rug area where students meet at the beginning of each day to discuss the daily calendar, read poems or do a shared reading with the teacher. Forming the boundaries of the rug area are bookshelves filled with books for free reading. Children can go to the classroom library to select books and read on their own or to each other when they have completed their other assignments. Reading and Wrting in Mrs. Ovsepyan’s Class Mrs. Ovsepyan is not required to follow the script, so it is difficult to describe a typical day in Mrs. Ovsepyan’s classroom. Although there is structure, each day varies. For example, every Wednesday at 9:30 a.m., as part of a school-wide program, a “Grandma Reader” comes to class to read aloud to the children. During one of my observations, the reader read four picture books, taking a total of half an hour. During and after each reading children were encouraged to respond to the book and had brief discussions with the reader about what they liked before continuing to the next book. Generally, reading instruction begins early in the day, usually after the morning activities. Morning activities may include calendar time where students identify the day, date, and weather. Sometimes students are given sentences to correct, such as “mi dog has to puppys they can do chricks.” [My dog has two puppies. They can do tricks.] Mrs. Ovsepyan explains that she doesn’t like to use the morning message from the program, but prefers to select errors from children’s writing to use in these practice sentences. During the third observation of October 19, 2004, I walked in at 8:40, and the children were assembled on the carpet. The teacher was holding up flashcards for the
74 students to read. Mrs. Ovsepyan held up the card for everyone to see, lowered it, and children said the word chorally. Mrs. Ovsepyan also used this opportunity to check their phonics knowledge and practice phonemic awareness. For example, she asked students to tell her the first sound in the word, change the first consonant sound to create a new word (e.g. change “pot” to “hot.”), or identify word families or rimes, the ending patterns in words (e.g. –ot or –op). At 8:50, Mrs. Ovsepyan announced that they were going to read a book. The children cheered, and Mrs. Ovsepyan opened a big book on an easel entitled Pearl’s First Prize Plant (Delaney, 1997). The cover illustration showed a smiling girl holding a plant, and sitting on either side of her were a smiling cat and a pig. Mrs. Ovsepyan guided the children into making predictions about the book based on the title and cover. One girl volunteered that she saw Pearl. “Who’s Pearl? How do you know who Pearl is?” Mrs. Ovsepyan asked. The girl replied, “She’s the girl holding the plant, and the title is about a girl and a first prize plant.” Mrs. Ovsepyan complimented the student, “Very good thinking,” and asked students what else they saw. They discussed who the characters might be, suggested that they feel happy because they are smiling and sitting proudly, and speculated the reason for their happiness; according to the title, the girl won first prize. Mrs. Ovsepyan reminded students that these were their predictions or guesses, and together they began to read the text. Students read chorally, and as they moved through the book, Mrs. Ovsepyan paused to check for comprehension and have the students make more predictions. She also directed their attention to the pictures, and they
75 noticed details and changes, including this information in their prediction-making. “Why did the illustrator draw all these pictures? We can read, can’t we?” asked Mrs. Ovsepyan. One child responded, “So we can think about the pictures.” Another said, “They give us clues.” With Mrs. Ovsepyan’s guidance, the class discussed how the illustrations indicated changes in time of day—the pictures got darker and then showed a moon and star in the sky. They noticed that the girl had a book and ruler, and predicted that maybe she wanted to read about taking care of plants and measure her plant’s growth. They noticed a nest that in one picture had only one bird, and in another picture the nest had four birds, showing that the eggs had hatched and that time had passed. The teacher complimented their predictions and observations, and they continued reading, verifying their predictions when possible. On one page, the text read, “’Wow!’ said Pearl, ‘You are the best plant I ever saw!’” and the children, attentive to the exclamation mark, read this with a great deal of expression. Mrs. Ovsepyan turned to me and commented, “They like to read! It’s music to my ears!” When they finished reading the story, Mrs. Ovsepyan had them infer the author’s message, and discover how to apply the theme to their own lives. They made personal connections about winning prizes, or as in this case, giving yourself a prize and being proud of your hard work. The children discussed what they liked about the story and at 9:35 they returned to their seats. Mrs. Ovsepyan stood at the chart paper at the front of the room to discuss the use of the apostrophe in Pearl’s name. In an aside, she explained to me that according to the teacher’s manual she was supposed to stop and teach possessives during the story, but
76 didn’t want to break the flow. Furthermore, Mrs. Ovsepyan told me that she was supposed to read only part of the story, but chose to continue because she said (to me and the children), “Readers don’t just stop in the middle of s story like this. Yes, in a chapter book, but not in a short story like this one.” Together, Mrs. Ovsepyan and the students discussed how apostrophes can sometimes replace missing letters, as in contractions, but in this case one child deduced that the apostrophe showed ownership. Mrs. Ovsepyan had the children come up with personal examples of ownership, such as “Armine’s best teacher,” “Armen’s best fastest horse in the West,” “Michelle’s fast sportscar.” Mrs. Ovsepyan recorded their input on the chart paper, writing the “‘s” with a red marker, and the rest of the words in black. Then students looked around the room, naming objects and things that belonged to the object (e.g. the table’s leg, the bear’s nose, the spider’s web). At 9:50, Mrs. Ovsepyan had the students get ready for recess, and they were dismissed. After recess, Mrs. Ovsepyan gave students instructions for seatwork. They were told what pages to do in a skills book (separate from the Houghton Mifflin program). She went over the instructions for the required pages in their Houghton Mifflin (HM) phonics workbook, and students were assigned handwriting pages to practice. At 10:15, Mrs. Ovsepyan called a group of five children over to her at the guided reading table (a kidney-shaped table with the teacher on one side and the children forming a semi-circle around her). She distributed a leveled book to each child, one that they read yesterday but had not yet discussed. “Is there a problem in the story?” Mrs. Ovsepyan asked to begin the discussion. “Let’s check.” Mrs. Ovsepyan drew their attention to a “GO” Chart, a laminated chart (so it can be reused) with columns for
77 organizing responses and predictions to stories. There are five columns in the chart, with sentence starters under each column. At the beginning of today’s meeting, the first two columns were already filled out. Mrs. Ovsepyan asked if they found the words “celebrate” or “work” in the story, and the children said “no,” so they were crossed off the chart. “How about the word ‘family’?” Mrs. Ovsepyan asked. “Yes,” said a girl, and pointed to the word on a page. “Good,” Mrs. Ovsepyan said. She put a check by the word and continued with the rest of the words. Moving to the column on story structure, they discussed whether the book was fiction or nonfiction, decided that it was fiction, and added this to the chart. The story was also written in a pattern. The children identified the pattern, and that was also added to the chart. Moving to the connections column, the teacher asked if anyone had been to the circus. No one had, but one girl saw a TV show about the circus, so Mrs. Ovsepyan added that to the chart, and told the children that the next time they read about the circus, they could make connections to this book (see Table 4-1).
78 Table 4.1 Go Chart Predictions
I think this story is about . . .
Vocabulary
I think these
Story Structure
Connections
I noticed . . .
Inferences
I infer . . .
words are in the story . . .
√ the circus
celebrate
fiction
√ clowns
work
Pattern-My (blank) has fun with (blank).
animals
√ family
√ getting ready for the circus
√ clown
It’s fun saw a TV show about the circus
It’s hard work
√ mother √ father
These children were dismissed to their desks and a new group was called to the guided reading table. The new group began a new book in this lesson. They were at a different reading level and had a more challenging text. Students made predictions about the story, did a picture walk, and then talked about strategies for decoding challenging words. “You can chunk it,” one child offered. “You can use picture clues,” another added. “You can sound it out and then see if it makes sense,” said a third student. After reviewing these strategies, the children began to read chorally. As they read, the teacher
79 attended to the children individually, listening to them read, coaching them when they were challenged, and asking them which strategies they used to help them get through a tricky spot. While the teacher was working with reading groups, the rest of the class was engaged in their work. On some days, children rotated through the centers, listening to books on tape to which they responded by writing and drawing about their favorite parts. In other centers they may be doing practice math problems, writing responses to prompts, doing practice phonics activities, or writing in their journals. Today, because they spent so much time on their shared reading, they were to complete their seatwork without going to the centers. Children were practicing the letter V in their handwriting books, which entailed writing a line each of a capital and small V, and then copying two sentences with predominantly V words (e.g. “Vera visits Virginia.”). In their practice books they were practicing with the short /i/ sound by filling in the missing letters and rewriting the sentences below (e.g. The m_ll is on the h_ll). Children worked quietly and easily, helping each other when it was needed. Those who completed their work selected books to read. One girl read a Scholastic Kids magazine; another read a phonics library book (these are decodable books that come with the HM program). Two girls went to the rug and selected books from the classroom library to read to each other. One boy dictated words aloud to a girl, who was writing them on her personal whiteboard. He was trying to see if he could trick her by selecting challenging words for her to spell (he did not succeed). One girl was writing a letter to her mother to thank her for a gift, and I assisted her with some of the spellings. At 11:20,
80 the teacher finished with the second guided reading group, and called the class to order. The children cleaned up and were dismissed for lunch. Thursdays are writing days, and children either read a text together or Mrs. Ovsepyan reads a text aloud to them. Since many of the formal writing lessons are similar, I’ll recount a description of a typical lesson. On October 21st, the children came in from recess, and at 10:20, Mrs. Ovsepyan read aloud an expository trade book on bats. Following the text, the children brainstormed all the things they learned about bats. Mrs. Ovsepyan recorded their thoughts on a circle map (a large circle drawn on chart paper). While recording, Mrs. Ovsepyan paused to have children spell the words for her. After recording everything they could remember, the children came up with at least three categories in which to arrange their information. Mrs. Ovsepyan changed to a different colored marker to circle all the words in the first category, “how bats look.” The children scanned through the items on the chart, and told her which items to circle. They followed the same process for the categories “where bats live” and “what bats eat.” Mrs. Ovsepyan helped them transfer the information to a tree map (Thinking Maps, 2004).1 A tree map is a graphic organizer which allows for categorization. It has a place for the topic, and then three columns below for the title and segments of each category. In this case, children again scanned the circle map, and read and spelled the items belonging to each category as Mrs. Ovsepyan recorded them on the tree map (see Table 4.2).
Teachers in District A were trained in the Thinking Maps program. Teachers at Franklin Elementary school use them in conjunction with Write from the Beginning (Thinking Maps, 2004), a writing program aligned with Thinking Maps, rather than relying on the HM writing program 1
81 Table 4.2 Tree Map Tree
Map
BATS
How Bats Look
Where Bats Live
What Bats Eat
Bats Have/Are: Fur
caves
insects
Mammals
barns
babies drink milk
Black
trees
fruits
2 wings
under roofs
not birds
sleep upside down
2 eyes night creatures
This process lasted until 11:05, when Mrs. Ovsepyan handed each child an 11x17 piece of paper with the outline of a bat on it and lines in the middle. She told them that this is where they would write their drafts about bats: “Remember to start each sentence with capital letters, and to indent. Remember, I want long, detailed sentences. I don’t want short, shrimpy sentences.” Together the class brainstormed some opening sentences, such as “I like bats,” or “I learned a lot about bats,” and then the children were told to write. “I’m done. Start writing,” Mrs. Ovsepyan said. To me, she confided, “I don’t help them when they write.” As I wandered around the room examining the children’s work,
82 one girl seemed to be having difficulty. I leaned over to help her, and she stopped me. “You’re not allowed to help me,” she said. Surprised, I stood up, backed away, and continued observing the children work. The children worked until they were dismissed for lunch at 11:20. At around 11:50, children began trickling in, sat down quietly, and continued working on their papers, although lunch wasn’t over until 12:00. At noon, the rest of the class entered, sat down and wrote. At 12:30, the teacher began calling students to the “author’s chair,” where they read their papers aloud and received comments about their papers from their peers and the teacher. Comments on Mrs. Ovsepyan’s Class Mrs. Ovsepyan’s teaching is dynamic and responsive to her students. Mrs. Ovsepyan likes to mix large and small group instruction, and children have many opportunities to engage in different kinds of activities. There is a relaxed, easy feel to the class. The tempo is always moving, but it does not feel rushed or driven. When Mrs. Ovsepyan is working with guided reading groups, children in the groups receive personal attention and coaching which is focused on their particular reading needs, and children have the opportunity to read a variety of books at their reading levels. Children who are not working with the teacher have a chance to work independently, to interact with each other, to rotate through learning centers, and the class has a quiet buzz of children who are interacting and engaged. The class is a reflection of school and district commitment to read aloud programs (Grandma Reader), guided reading (the school has an entire room filled with leveled books for use in guided reading instruction), and writing development.
83 Ms. Popovich -Nonscripted Teacher Profile Ms. Popovich also teaches at Franklin Elementary, and had been a teacher for 11 years at the time of the study. The students in Ms. Popovich’s class were also representative of the schoolwide demographics regarding SES, ethnic and language backgrounds (see the section entitled, Schoolwide Demographics in Franklin Elementary at the beginning of the discussion of Mrs. Ovsepyan’s class). Ms. Popovich came highly recommended from the Reading Specialist at Franklin, and holds a master’s degree in education. This was a challenging year for Ms. Popovich and other District A teachers, because the teachers had been working for over a year and a half without a new contract, and three years without a raise. In fact, every Wednesday was dubbed “black Wednesday,” and teachers throughout the district wore black to show teacher solidarity and disfavor with the situation. Feeling frustrated and discouraged, Ms. Popovich was seriously considering moving to Hawaii to teach, and had gotten applications to complete and send. Ms. Popovich’s classroom has tables, which seat two children, arranged in groups. There are two groups of six students, and two groups of four. The children have their own space, with a little cubby for storing personal belongings. The tables are arranged so that each child can easily see the large white board at the front of the room. There is an overhead projector that is centered in the front and which is projected onto the whiteboard, and Ms. Popovich uses the overhead frequently for various activities. Around the outside of the room are the math, writing, and listening centers. There is a guided reading table in the back of the room, and a large rug/group area that is lined with low bookshelves for easy access to the classroom library.
84 Reading and Writing in Ms. Popovich’s Class Ms. Popovich generally begins her class with routine morning activities, which includes the daily calendar. Children record the weather by coloring a sun, clouds, or other symbols, keep a cumulative tally of the type of weather for the year so far, and write in their daily journals. Journal topics are selected by the teacher and created together as a class. Ms. Popovich models the journal by writing on the overhead, and may reflect a topic of discussion or an event in the day. For example, during my second observation (Field notes, September 15, 2004), the journal began with, “Today is Wednesday. Today we are going to the library. Reading is fun.” After copying this into their personal journals, children were told to add their own thoughts about reading. Many children wrote, “I like scary books.” Others wrote about their favorite topics. Once children completed their journals, the children identified the “starts and stops,” by circling the beginning letter of the sentence with a green crayon (the “start”), and the period or final punctuation with a red crayon (the “stop”). As children worked, Ms. Popovich walked around the room listening to each child read his/her journal entry aloud, coaching children to make corrections as needed. For example, when Rhonda read, “I like to read book,” Ms. Popovich asked, “Which sounds better, ‘I like to read book,’ or ‘I like to read the book’?” Rhonda was able to hear the difference and make the correction. Often, children will add an illustration to their journal entries. Roughly these activities take 20-25 minutes. Following the journal activity, Ms. Popovich worked with the HM program. On her daily calendar, she allots an hour and ten minutes (generally from 8:35 a.m. - 9:45 a.m.) for Houghton Mifflin. Ms. Popovich chooses which activities from the program to
85 do in class, sometimes supplementing them with her own. For example, during the second observation, the class read a story from the anthology, A Hut for Zig Bug, chorally. After the reading, Ms. Popovich selected a child to read aloud one of the questions that accompanied the text. Then different children would volunteer to answer these questions. Following that, Ms. Popovich put a laminated chart up on the white board that said “Story Web” (this is not an HM activity). This mind map had a circle in the center with the story’s title and author. Reaching out from the center were different circles labled setting (where and when), problem, solution and main characters. Together, the teacher and children completed the web, using information from the Zig Bug story. During other sessions, the children may practice reading a short text on the overhead that highlights key words, or have a discussion about a story they are about to read. After recess, Ms. Popovich does her guided reading groups (generally from 10:05-11:10). Guided reading in Ms. Popovich’s class has a similar structure to guided reading in Mrs. Ovsepyan’s class. Ms. Popovich instructs the children on their independent seatwork, which usually includes proofreading a sentence, writing the spelling words in alphabetical order, and writing sentences using vocabulary words. At the centers, children listen to books on tape, and then respond by writing and illustrating their favorite part of the story; practice math activities such as using different small shapes to create larger shapes; write on a given topic at the writing center; and do phonics activities such as creating new words with the “–it” word family (e.g. bit, hit or lit). During guided reading, Ms. Popovich works with each group for about 20 minutes at a kidney-shaped table designed for small groups. Early in the year, she has the children reading from the HM anthology or the HM phonics library (decodable texts).
86 Later in the year, children read from leveled guided reading books, which are individual paperback or trade books. Ms. Popovich used the guided reading books because, “The children need more meat than what is offered in the HM anthology.” Ms. Popovich assesses her children three or four times per year, and puts them in groups according to their reading levels. Like Mrs. Ovsepyan, children read aloud, are coached in areas of need, and discuss what they’ve read. During their seatwork, children assist each other and are focused and working. One comment I wrote was, “There is a pleasant atmosphere in here—children are working, aware of when the teacher changes the wheel and that it’s time to change centers, and are trying to do their work successfully” (Field notes, January 11, 2004). During one of my observations, the “Grandma Reader” came to this class to read aloud to the children. Like Mrs. Ovsepyan’s class, the children gathered around the reader on the carpet, and listened to three books read aloud. The children seemed highly attentive and engaged, and Ms. Popovich claims that they really like to be read to, commenting that few of them are read to at home. Ms. Popovich likes to enlist different people to come to her class and read. The children also went to the school library once a week to check out books, and had time for silent reading after lunch at least four times per week. During silent reading, the children were allowed to select any book they wanted—choosing from their library books, phonics library books from the HM program, or take home practice books (photocopied decodables that are stapled together).
87 Ms. Popovich taught writing in the afternoon, which she said was a combination of writer’s workshop (Graves, 2003) and Write from the Beginning2 (Thinking Maps, 2004). Like Mrs. Ovsepyan, she said that she used thinking maps and graphic organizers to support the children in their writing. Comments on Ms. Popovich’s Class Ms. Popovich’s class has a very similar feel to Mrs. Ovsepyan’s (not surprising since they are in the same school). There are focus and direction, and enough structure for the children to understand what is expected of them, with enough leeway to account for individual differences. The children engage in whole group and small group instruction, and have opportunities to work independently or with their peers. The feeling in the room is one of no nonsense. Children have work to do and Ms. Popovich has high expectations that they will do it. However, they are supported by the teacher, a teacher’s assistant who comes in to work with children for who need extra help, and an off-track upper grade student who volunteers time to assist. I asked Ms. Popovich if becoming a Reading First school made a significant difference in her teaching, and she stated that it has had a positive effect. The reading coach has after-school meetings to train the teachers in elements of reading instruction that align with the grant, and has some really good ideas. Ms. Popovich said that it takes a lot of time on the teacher’s side, but it has been worth it. Furthermore, the teachers have gotten a lot of extra books for their classroom libraries—both expository and narrative—and they wouldn’t have had the resources for them without the grant. Her one complaint, however, is the requirement to post the standards. One of her colleagues got 2
Unfortunately I did not have an opportunity to observe writing instruction time in the afternoon.
88 “written up” for not having them posted. Ms. Popovich resents this, and feels that in first grade it is a waste of time. “The children don’t refer to them; it doesn’t add to the class. It is important to teach the joy of learning, not just information” (Field notes, January 11, 2005). Mrs. Marino-Nonscripted Schoolwide Demographics at Oaks Elementary At Oaks Elementary School, almost 90 percent of the children received free/reduced meals during the 2003-2004 school year. Fifty-six percent of the children were classified as ELLs. In terms of ethnic make-up, 73 percent of the children were Hispanic, 13 percent were Filipino, 10 percent were White, and 4 percent were a mix of other ethnicities. Fifty-two percent of the children classified as ELLs spoke Spanish, 5 percent spoke Pilipino or Tagalog, 4 percent spoke Armenian, and 3 percent spoke other languages (all of these data were obtained from Ed-Data, 2005). The children in Mrs. Marino’s class were representative of the schoolwide demographics. Mrs. Marino also had a student who was referred to the Student Study Team for possible learning disabilities, as well as a child who was held back at the end of first grade due to low achievement. Teacher Profile Mrs. Marino teaches at Oaks Elementary, which does not hold a Reading First grant, and had been a teacher for 17 years at the time of the study. Mrs. Marino holds three teaching credentials: a multiple subject credential, a learning handicapped specialist credential, and a severely handicapped specialist credential. She taught special education for eight years and has taught regular education classes for nine years. Mrs. Marino is
89 bilingual in English and Spanish, and also taught in a bilingual class for a year. Mrs. Marino continues to increase her awareness of all her students’ learning needs through continually monitoring their progress. She takes running records on average every six weeks, and takes anecdotal notes during guided reading to insure that she targets their instructional needs. Mrs. Marino’s classroom has a large carpeted area that faces a long stretch of white board, where the children meet for whole group discussion, read alouds or shared reading. Children’s tables, two children to a table, are arranged in a large “U” that surrounds the carpeted area, and children have personal space in their tables to store supplies, books and journals. There are two kidney-shaped tables for guided reading and group work along the outside of the students’ tables. There are also four learning centers arranged along the borders of the room. Arranged at the back of the class, within easy reach, are several bookcases which house the classroom library. Books are arranged in baskets by topic and genre. There are many levels of books for each topic so children can choose books of topical interest at their reading level. Hanging on the walls around the room are charts with different poems written on them. These are generally thematic poems (e.g. in October children learned two poems called “The Ghost” and “Five Little Pumpkins”). The children learn to recite the poems from memory, and accompany each poem with movements and gestures. They practice daily, with different children selected to lead the class each time. Reading and Writing in Mrs. Marino’s Class Mrs. Marino extends reading instruction throughout her day, with calendar activities and a morning routine to start the day, which includes discussing the date and
90 weather, counting how many days they’ve been in school (either by multiples of twos, tens or fives), and doing chants to discuss the weather, count the number of students present, and so on. The class then has math instruction, getting back to language arts after recess. During transition times, such as before recess, Mrs. Marino will select a book to read aloud to the children, mixing genres and topics. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, Mrs. Marino had a teacher’s assistant (TA) who worked with her during language arts time, and this is when she did her guided reading groups. During my third observation (November 15, 2005), Mrs. Marino began the language arts instruction by going over the morning message with the children. This is usually written on chart paper, and typically is a little note to the children describing the day’s activity (Mrs. Marino does not use the morning message from the HM program). For example, Mrs. Marino wrote, “we have nu reading groups today i hope you all like to read good books” [We have new reading groups today. I hope you all like to read good books.] Together, the teacher and children discussed the errors in the morning message, while Mrs. Marino made the corrections with different colored markers. She used green for capital letters (starts), and red for periods (stops). They counted the number of sentences, determined where the capital letters and periods belonged, and corrected any misspellings on the chart. Mrs. Marino then explained that they would be working in their groups. She wrote (and explained) students’ seatwork assignments on the whiteboard, which included rereading their poetry journals, doing two pages in their HM practice book, and writing the morning message in their journals. Some children were then called back to the guided reading table to work with the teacher, another group worked with the TA, and the rest of
91 the children completed their seatwork independently. When children completed their assignments, they chose a learning center to go to. At the guided reading table, Mrs. Marino handed each child a box of leveled books with his/her name on it. She instructed the children to select a book to read independently, and they began to practice, each child reading aloud softly. Mrs. Marino listened to the children read one at a time, reminding them of what they needed to work on (e.g. the “sh” digraph), and took anecdotal notes about what books they read, their degree of fluency and accuracy, and any words/skills that needed more attention. Mrs. Marino spent 20 minutes with each group. The teaching assistant (TA) helped children complete their workbook pages, taking about 10-15 minutes with each group. The children were excited to complete their work with the TA so they could go to the centers. While children worked on their assignments, there was a quiet hum as they assisted each other. Two boys were reading through their poetry journals, taking turns to read poems aloud to each other. These are collections of poems that they glue into their journals, and then copy on a facing page. One girl quietly read the poems aloud to herself, and other children completed their morning message and workbook pages. There were typically four learning centers available at any one time in Mrs. Marino’s class, and these changed throughout the year. One center was a math center. On this day, there was a box of dominoes in the center, a selection of narrative and expository books related to math, and toy clocks. Two boys chose to go to this center, and were playing with the dominoes. Each boy got an equal number of dominoes, and placed them on the table, face down. They each selected one to turn over, and the boy with the highest number of dots got to keep them both. They continued to play until one
92 boy ran out of dominoes. At the writing center, which is stocked with pencils and crayons, different kinds of paper, and letter stamps and ink pads, two girls used the stamps and stamp pads to stamp out their spelling words. Three boys were listening to a book on tape at the listening center. Children who finished at the centers selected books from the classroom library to read on the rug. Schoolwide commitment to reading. Mrs. Marino, and Oaks Elementary, demonstrated a high priority for reading, in part demonstrated by the large number of leveled, guided reading books available to all teachers, and the access to books students had. Children went to the school library once a week, where they checked out books, and spent time on the computer doing activities that supported reading and writing. The bookmobile—a portable library housed in a large van sent from the city’s public library-came to the school once a week as well. All children had library cards and checked out books from the bookmobile. Finally, the Nestle’s corporation adopted Oaks Elementary as part of the Reading is Fundamental (RIF) program, and three times per year, children went to the cafeteria where hundreds of books were available to choose from. All children in the school were able to select a free book to take home. Furthermore, each teacher--Mrs. Marino included—who wrote a plan for using her classroom library, received a selection of books donated by Nestle’s. Children checked out two books per week from the classroom library. Another proof of the school’s commitment to literacy is the “book buddy” program. Children in first grade had sixth grade “book buddies” to work with. The buddies met every week. The first graders selected a guided reading book to read to the sixth graders, and their older buddies checked out appropriate picture books from the
93 library to read to the first graders. During alternate weeks, the children played math games together. Comments on Mrs. Marino’s Class Mrs. Marino has a quiet style, perhaps due to her special education background. She is continually reminding her students to make good choices and that they are responsible for their learning. Her classroom supports independent learning, but she acts as a coach for her students, aware of their particular needs and addressing them regularly. Mrs. Marino includes opportunities for multiple language use throughout the day. For example, when the children have been focused for a long time, say during a shared reading session with the HM anthology, Mrs. Marino may break up the lesson. “Stand up,” she’d say, and they begin a chant (one that is written on one of the charts hanging in the room) acting out the motions as they chant: This is my left hand I hold it up high This is my right hand I touch the sky Left hand, right hand turn around Right hand, left hand touch the ground. The children all seem to enjoy doing these chants and poems. They also include them in their morning routine. For example, when talking about the weather, they will chant, “What’s the weather like today? Like today? Like today? What’s the weather like
94 today? _________ will tell us” (and the teacher will select a child’s name to fill in the blank). Mrs. Marino will take opportunities before recess or lunch to read aloud to the children. For example, during one observation, she read a rhyming, predictable book. “I want to share with you another story from our October box. This is my favorite story from the October box. This is called the Little Old Lady Who was Not Afraid of Anything” (Williams, 1988). As she read, she made some gestures to accompany the story, and the children modeled these. This was a pattern book that repeats and builds, and the children would chime in during the repetitive parts. Mrs. Marino paused to ask little prediction questions or let the children act out the words. Another time she read an expository book about the position of the sun in relation to the earth, introducing children to the concept of how night and day are formed (complete with a demonstration using a flashlight and students to cast shadows). During guided reading time, children have opportunities to get individual support from the teacher and TA, and opportunities to work individually on their assignments. They assist each other as needed, and have learned throughout the year to be increasingly more independent. Only two children are allowed at each center at a time, and sometimes there were conflicts when a third or fourth child wanted to join in. Mrs. Marino was clear that during guided reading she was not to be disturbed, and if they called out to her, she’d remind them of the rule and tell them they needed to find a way to solve the problem, which they inevitably did. As a result, children in Mrs. Marino’s class have multiple opportunities to work independently, and in large and small groups. They learn to collaborate with their peers, work out academic or social issues on their own, and interact in a variety of ways with different people.
95 Teachers from District B Mrs. Stockton-Scripted Schoolwide Demographics at King Elementary During the 2003-4 school year, King Elementary reported that 95 percent of the students received free/reduced meals, and 62 percent of the children were designated as ELLs. Ethnically, 93 percent of the students were Hispanic, 3 percent of the children were African American, and 3 percent were White. Four percent of the children represented other ethnicities. All of the children at King Elementary who were designated as ELL spoke Spanish (all data were obtained from Ed-Data, 2005). Teacher Profile Mrs. Stockton works at King Elementary, and had been teaching in District B for three years. However, at the time of the study she had been teaching a total of 17 years, mostly with children from low-income families and in schools with high numbers of ELL. Mrs. Stockton has her master’s degree in curriculum and instruction, and worked as a representative for a publishing company to train teachers in the use of an elementary math program. She has also led parent education courses in math. Mrs. Stockton is a no-nonsense person, clear, direct, and straightforward. She is not the mothering type, and as she put it, “I don’t do shoelaces. I’m here to teach.” She has high expectations for all her students, and demands their best. Mrs. Stockton’s classroom has a large cubby space just inside the door in which the children put backpacks, coats, and other personal belongings. The room has round tables arranged in the middle of the floor. Three or four children sit at each table, next to their nametags, and each table has a basket with supplies in the center (pencils, crayons,
96 scissors, glue). In front of the tables is a long whiteboard and overhead. To the left of the table area is a kidney-shaped table where Mrs. Stockton calls children up for individual instruction or assessment. To the right of the tables is a carpeted area with a smaller white board on an easel that is used for reading morning messages and practicing letter-sound recognition. The carpet area is also where the children practice phonemic awareness and do shared reading. One wall bordering the carpeted area is the HM theme wall. Mrs. Stockton posts the theme of the unit, the story the class is currently working on, and the standards that are covered. Hanging around the room are sentence strips with children’s thoughts on different topics (such as “My favorite food”), a word wall with different words introduced from the programs organized by vowel sounds (e.g. one section has words with the short /i/ sounds), and a chart with the children’s names and their progress in reading lists of sight words. In the last corner of the room is another smaller carpeted area with the class library and four computers. Mrs. Stockton has an excellent selection of trade books for reading, however I never saw anyone in this section of the room or reading the class library books. Reading and Writing in Mrs. Stockton’s Class Mrs. Stockton’s district requires that the teachers follow the HM program exactly by the script. Mrs. Stockton is comfortable with this, and makes it explicit to the children, often reminding them how much they need to accomplish. My observations usually began at 9:00 a.m. When I arrived, the children would be working on their journals. Mrs. Stockton wrote the prompt on the board and usually
97 wrote her own response to model the process. Children would respond in their journals, show them to the teacher, who would make comments and corrections, and then volunteers would read their journals aloud to the class. During my second observation, on September 23, 2004, I arrived at 8:50. Children were responding to the prompt, “Write about your favorite food.” To model the process for the children, Mrs. Stockton wrote her own response on the whiteboard. “My favorite food is crab. Crab tastes so good and sweet. I like to eat lots of crab.” As Mrs. Stockton walked around the room, children would ask her how to spell names of foods, and she would prompt them to “sound it out” and find the spellings. For example, Billy was having a hard time with spaghetti. “Ssss….ppp…See what we do, Billy, is stretch it out and hear the sounds. You know what, this is your journal. It doesn’t have to be perfect.” Different children showed Mrs. Stockton their attempts with spaghetti, such as “spgede” or “spugegte.”3 One girl’s journal read, “My favorite food is spaghetti. I also like pizza.” Mrs. Stockton asked her how she was able to spell spaghetti correctly, and Kimberly answered that she saw it on the wall. One of the sentence strips that was posted said, “Jonathon likes to eat spaghetti.” Mrs. Stockton was highly impressed, and commented, “That is very smart. What a good use of the room,” and made an announcement to the entire class about how Kimberly used the wall to spell a word correctly. At 9:05, Mrs. Stockton instructed the children to move to the carpeted area. She began to write the HM’s morning message on the white board which read, “Hello, All [sic.] of you!” After pausing to have the students read aloud and discuss the comma and exclamation mark, she continued writing. “Our story for today is very funny. The story is 3
In fact, these are phonetically close spellings, indicating students’ increasing ability to correspond letters with sounds.
98 Hot Fox Soup, and it is my favorite. I love soup! Do you like soup too?” One child, upon reading this, asked, “I thought you liked crab?” Mrs. Stockton replied, “Remember, this is the program. I have to write what’s in the program, but my favorite is crab. Okay, let’s all read together.” The children chorally read the entire message, and Mrs. Stockton prompted them to come up and circle particular sight words in the message, such as “you” and “my,” and they discussed why the title was underlined. They counted the number of sentences, and reread the passage again, counting sentences as they read. At 9:30, the class left to get their school pictures taken, and reassembled on the carpet at 9:50. The children were instructed to sit in their rows, with a stack of anthologies at the head of each row. “Eyes on me. Okay, we have 1, 2, 3, 4…14 pages of work today [pages counted in the teacher’s manual] before we go to lunch. We don’t go until we finish the program. Okay, I’m going to say sounds, and you’re going to blend them into words, and you’re going to raise your hand when you know the word. . . . Fun in the /s/ /u/ /n/.” This is a phonemic awareness activity, and after practicing with several words, the teacher had the children pass out the anthologies. “Look up here,” she instructed, and clipped an overhead sheet on the whiteboard. It was too small for children to read, so she instructed them to go back to their tables, and put it on the overhead projector. The sheet read: Noodle Soup Kit Cat wanted soup. Nat Rat wanted soup, too. Kit Cat wanted noodle soup.
99 Nat Rat wanted hot noodle soup. Kit Cat got a vat, and Nat Rat lit a fire. “Is the soup hot yet?” said Nat Rat. “It is too hot for me,” said Kit Cat. “You can have it.” Together, teacher and children read the passage. Mrs. Stockton stopped at several points to check for comprehension, and they read through the passage again, with Mrs. Stockton using a pointer to point to each word as they read. At 10:00, Mrs. Stockton lined the children up for recess. The children returned to the class at 10:25, reassembled on the carpet, and returned to the story in their anthologies, Hot Fox Soup. After taking a little time to discuss a conflict that occurred during recess, the teacher got back to the program. Students looked at the page preceding the target story. It had a list of “words to know,” a selection of new words placed at the beginning of every selection in the HM program, along with practice sentences. “Okay, let’s read the words together. [Children and teacher read the list chorally]. Okay, this time I’m not going to read the words. You read them.” The children read the words again, and then went on to read the practice sentences that also preceded the story. Mrs. Stockton led a discussion on the meaning of the sentences. Next, they discussed the author and illustrator of the story, in this case the same person, making sure the children understood the difference between the two roles. Prior to reading, Mrs. Stockton drew students’ attention to a chart on the HM theme board distinguishing between fantasy and realism. The teacher told the children to consider, as they read, whether the story was fantasy or real. Together, teacher and
100 children chorally read the story. At the end, Mrs. Stockton took them back to the beginning and asked the comprehension questions from the anthology. After a few minutes of discussion, they read the story again. At the end of the story was a little poem, and at the bottom of the page in the anthology, it stated that the poem was an English traditional song, “Polly Put the Kettle On.” The teacher said that she didn’t know the tune, but Billy claimed to know it, and sang, “Polly put the kettle on, Polly put the kettle on, Polly put the kettle on, We’ll all have tea.” Students passed the books back to the head of the row, and they discussed whether the story was fantasy or real, and how they knew. “So was the story fantasy or realism? Mark, how do you know this story is fantasy? Real or fantasy?” Many students answered fantasy. “Jesus, how do we know it’s fantasy?” The children suggested different aspects of the story that suggested fantasy, and after a few more minutes of discussion, at 11:00, it was time for me to go. Typically, the children went to lunch at 11:25 or 11:30, so for the last portion of the morning the children completed worksheets at their tables from their HM practice books, or returned to the carpet to read a worksheet together. Comments on Mrs. Stockton’s Class Mrs. Stockton is a dynamic teacher and uses her enthusiasm and energy to keep the kids going when they begin to lag. However, there are some distinct differences between the atmosphere and feel of this class and the classes in District A. The walls of Mrs. Stockton’s classroom were starker than those in District A, lacking the displays of children’s artwork and projects. There were different types of text on the walls, including spelling tests and sentence strips that recorded children’s words. During all six of my
101 observations, the instruction was implemented entirely as a whole group. There was no small group teaching, there was limited peer interaction, and the only individual attention students received during my observations was when the teacher moved through the room to check journals or seatwork, or to give them assessments. Instruction was always teacher-centered and program-centered. Four times during my observations, there were direct references to the amount of the program there was left to complete, such as the one quoted above. During another observation, a child asked how many more pages, and when Mrs. Stockton counted two, the whole class cheered. Other comments about the program emerged from the children. For example, one child commented, “I like when we can write what we want,” in reference to a journal assignment. Mrs. Stockton replied, “Well, we sometimes write our own topic on Friday, day five. It says in the program [for today] to write about what you can do after school [showing the teacher’s manual to the child]. If that’s what it says to do, that’s what we do” (Field notes, October 27, 2004). In order to break up the instruction later that morning, Mrs. Stockton suggested, “How about I give you some seat work to get the wiggles out? When you’re working quietly, I’ll pass out pretzels. Okay. . . .” She proceeded to hand out and explain worksheets from the practice book for children to complete. The only books that children read or listened to during my time in the class were the HM anthologies and phonics libraries. With shelves of excellent children’s literature in an unused corner of the class, it seems a shame that the children didn’t have opportunities to read them.
102 Mrs. Juarez-Scripted Schoolwide Demographics at Alexandria Elementary Of all the schools in the study, Alexandria had the highest percentages of children from socioeconomically disadvantaged families and designated as ELL. Ninety-six percent of the children at Alexandria Elementary received free/reduced meals, and 76 percent were classified as ELLs. The majority of the children, 96 percent, were from Hispanic families, and 4 percent of the children represented varying ethnicities. Seventyfive percent of the ELLs spoke Spanish as their first language, while only 1 percent of the ELLs spoke a language other than Spanish (all data were obtained from Ed-Data, 2005). Atlhough most of the children in Mrs. Juarez’s class had some familiarity with English, one child was placed in Mrs. Juarez’s class mid-year who spoke no English at all. Teacher Profile Mrs. Juarez, who holds a Master’s degree in elementary education, teaches at Alexandria Elementary. At the time of the study, she had been teaching for a total of 16 years. She is an incredibly caring teacher, concerned and hopeful for each child’s success. Mrs. Juarez is fluent in Spanish, and up until the passing of Proposition 227, enjoyed teaching bilingual and Spanish maintenance classes. On occasion, she uses Spanish to translate instructions to children who are new to the country and do not speak any English (96 percent of the ELLs at Alexandria are Spanish speaking). Like Mrs. Stockton, the walls of Mrs. Juarez’s classroom are more bare than those of the teachers in District A. Hanging on her walls was a pocket chart filled with high frequency words and word families, some student work, and a daily schedule. There are two “carpet” areas that Mrs. Juarez has established for whole group instruction. Often,
103 she will instruct them, during times of transition, to pick up supplies and meet her in one, then the other of the carpeted areas, mostly to give the children an opportunity to move around and provide a change of pace. When doing seat work, students sit at round tables grouped in the center of the classroom. Their personal belongings are kept in cupboards at the side of the room, and each table has a basket with supplies. Materials such as anthologies, clipboards, and individual lap blackboards are kept on counters in different parts of the room, and are retrieved and put away as needed. Reading and Writing in Mrs. Juarez’s Class Like Mrs. Stockton, Mrs. Juarez is required to follow the HM script. However, the school has scheduled English Language Development (ELD) for the ELLs during the first part of the morning (from 8:30-9:15). Students are grouped according to their language levels, and the children leave their homerooms to go to the teacher who teaches at their particular level. Mrs. Juarez teaches an intermediate group for ELD, and at 9:20 her fulltime students return for the rest of the day. Despite the fact that the two teachers are required to follow the HM script, Mrs. Juarez’s class feels a little different than Mrs. Stockton’s. For example, Mrs. Juarez does not refer to the program so explicitly, and although she follows the lessons and format for teaching, her word choice may vary from the teacher’s manual when giving instructions and asking questions. During my fourth observation in Mrs. Juarez’s classroom, March 3, 2005, the children trickled in from their ELD classes and picked up a baggie of HM Phonics library books. The children selected partners, chose a place to sit somewhere in the room, and began to read aloud to each other. Once all the children had arrived, at 9:30 or so, Mrs. Juarez called them to order at the second carpeted area (the carpet areas are
104 designated Area One and Area Two). Today, they proofread a sentence written on chart paper. Following this, they read the morning message, also written on chart paper. Each child had a personal blackboard and chalk, and the teacher asked students to write particular words from the morning message on their blackboards. She then selected volunteers to circle the words on the chart paper. The children were instructed to put their blackboards away and move to Area One. Mrs. Juarez led them in some phonemic awareness activities in which the children segmented words and then substituted new sounds to create new words. Mrs. Juarez said the word “hook,” and the children said and clapped each sound, /h/ /oo / /k/. Mrs. Juarez had them remove the /h/ and replace it with /t/ to create “took,” and repeated the process to create “book.” Next, they replaced the “oo” with the long /e/ sound to create “beak.” “Now we’re going to read a story called ‘The Crow and the Pitcher.’ It’s called a fable,” Mrs. Juarez said, explaining what a fable is. She proceeded to read the fable aloud from the teacher’s manual. In the story, a crow cannot reach the water in a pitcher because the water is too shallow, so he drops rocks into the pitcher to raise the water’s level so he can drink. Mrs. Juarez demonstrated this with a pitcher of water. She first put plastic cubes in the water, but they floated so she tried seashells. These worked to demonstrate displacement and illustrate how the crow solved the problem. At 10:00, the children were excused for recess, and came back to the room at 10:20. When the children reassembled on the carpet in Area One, they began a little discussion of the story. “So what do we want to learn from this story?” asked Mrs. Juarez. “That we could put stones in.”
105 “Are you going to put stones in the pitcher?” “No.” “No,” Mrs. Juarez repeated. “We have hands. But he had a problem. Did he cry? Did he fly away? Did he get mad? What did he do?” “He solved it,” a child volunteered. “So if we have a problem, what should we do? Should we cry? That’s an option. Should we run away? That’s an option. Tell a partner what we should do.” The children took a few minutes to discuss options with each other, and then shared with the whole class. At 10:25, the teacher read a poem from the teacher’s manual to the class: I stood on my tiptoes, And I took a good look But all I saw was rain So I sat down with a good . . . and the children finished the rhyme with “book.” Mrs. Juarez pointed out that there are several words in the poem with the “oo” spelling, and they did some more phonemic awareness practice with these words, breaking “stood” into its four sounds, replacing the /b/ from “book” and creating “shook,” and “hook.” Then Mrs. Juarez made the phonics connection by writing “cook” on a white board that’s on an easel. She demonstrated how you can replace the “c” with “n,” “t,” and “l” to form new words, and then removed the ending letters to create “good,” “hood” and “wood.” Before sending the children off to collect their workbooks, she wrote, “My dad can cook good food.”
106 When the children returned to Area Two with their HM workbooks, they read the directions on a page that has “took” at the top, and were instructed to practice the same activity—replacing letters in words with the “oo” vowels to create new words. The children completed the page, and the teacher and children corrected it together. Mrs. Juarez asked individuals to read sample sentences from the workbook page aloud, and told me that she made notes on her own page for future reference. She recorded the sentences children read, and any errors they made. The children were instructed to put their workbooks away, and they came back to the carpet. At 10:55, Mrs. Juarez wrote the word “cookbook” on her whiteboard, and explained compound words. “When you put the word ‘cook’ with the word ‘book,’ you get the new compound word, ‘cookbook.’” She demonstrated again with the word “birdseed,” and then clipped chart paper to the whiteboard, with two columns of words: sail
bow
cup
boat
rain
pack
sun
shine
bake
cake
Mrs. Juarez demonstrated how to read the first word in the first column, “sail,” and then read the words in column two and see which made a new compound word. They all decided that the new word was “sailboat,” and Mrs. Juarez drew a line from “sail” to “boat.” They completed the chart, chanting, “When you put the word _____ with the word ____, you make the new compound word, _______.” Mrs. Juarez wrote two new columns of words on the whiteboard, and the children practiced the same activity.
107 Children were told to retrieve their workbooks, and they opened to another practice page that was similar to the class activity. They had one list of words, and selected a complementary word from the word bank to create compound words. They created “peanut,” “cupcake,” “rainbow,” “backpack,” and “hoptoad.” Mrs. Juarez and I discussed the fact that “hoptoad” is not a word, but the children recognized it because it was the name of a character in an HM story they read. At the bottom of the worksheet, the children were instructed to use one of the compound words in a sentence, and they shared these with the class. Upon completion of this activity, the children were dismissed for lunch and I left for the day. Comments on Mrs. Juarez’s Class Mrs. Juarez is an excellent teacher. Like Mrs. Stockton, she uses her energy and enthusiasm to keep the kids going when there are so many skills to cover. She is supportive of their learning, and aware of each child’s needs. However, she is sometimes frustrated by the lack of choice allowed by the program. Prior to the mid-year change in structure, the first grade teachers reordered the program in ways that they felt made more sense and offered more continuity. However, they were told by their administration that this was not permissible and that they should follow the order of the program. Like Mrs. Stockton’s class, the format in Mrs. Juarez’s class is teacher- and program-centered. Mrs. Juarez claims that there is no time for children to read or listen to trade books that are not part of the program. In order to provide individual attention in a meaningful way, Mrs. Juarez has to pull half the students from their physical education time. Since they meet for physical education for an hour once per week, children only receive focused attention every other week, consequently missing their physical
108 education time. Mrs. Juarez laments the loss of the fun science projects she was able to do before the HM adoption, the very limited amount of physical education time, and the lack of social studies, art and music. She is also challenged by the things in the program that don’t make sense, like having the children create a compound word that is not a real word. It is interesting to note, too, how the program has become part of the school culture. Besides the conversation about the corrective teaching day related above, I overheard many conversations in passing about the program and particular aspects of it, sometimes positive, sometimes negative. Teachers from District C Mrs. Parker-Scripted Schoolwide Demographics at Victoria Elementary Seventy-eight percent of the children at Victoria Elementary received free/reduced meals during the 2003-2004 school year. Forty percent of the children were classified as ELLs. Ethnically, 85 percent of Victoria’s students were from Hispanic families, 10 percent from White families, and 5 percent from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. Of the ELLs, 36 percent spoke Spanish, and 4 percent spoke a range of other languages (all data were obtained from Ed-Data, 2005). Like the other classes, Mrs. Parker’s children were representative of the schoolwide demographics. One child in the class was referred to the Student Study Team to be tested for special needs. Teacher Profile Mrs. Parker, who teaches at Victoria Elementary, had been teaching for 24 years at the time of the study, the longest of all the teachers included in the study. Mrs. Parker
109 came highly recommended by both the district coordinator for elementary instruction and a colleague of mine who worked as a principal in Mrs. Parker’s district. Mrs. Parker’s room is colorful and inviting. The carpet area is divided into colored squares, and Mrs. Parker uses the color of the squares as part of her classroom management (for example, children who are sitting on orange squares may read one section of a text, and those sitting on green read another, and so on). Because the school was undergoing renovation for the first half of the school year, Mrs. Parker’s room was temporary. However, she filled it with her vast collection of trade books, organized in baskets by topic. Children’s artwork covered the walls, and tables were arranged along the longitudinal section of the room. Children sat four to a table when doing seatwork, and moved from the tables to the carpet as appropriate for the activity. There was a kidney-shaped table where Mrs. Parker worked with children in need of special assistance. An overhead projector was in the middle of the room, projecting onto the large whiteboard running along the front of the room, and Mrs. Parker used it frequently to explain how to do worksheets or read passages or the morning message (alternating with chart paper). In the front corner were cubby spaces for children to put backpacks and personal belongings, and in the back corner were mailboxes for each child for messages and information. Reading and Writing in Mrs. Parker’s Class I had been under the impression that teachers in District C were not required to go by the script based on discussions with other employees in the district. However, at Mrs. Parker’s school, teachers were required to follow the script, and Mrs. Parker did so in a modified way. She followed the directions from the teacher’s manual, and taught the
110 lessons in order as they were presented, but she would also intersperse little poems, songs or breaks during the language arts instruction. This made her class different from the teachers in District B. Mrs. Parker began her language arts instruction first thing in the morning. She greeted the children and had a small personal discussion with each child as she took attendance, and if she noticed, for example, that a child had gotten a new pair of shoes, she would have the children sing the “New Shoes Song”: We get new shoes in the fall And new shoes in the spring And when we put on our new shoes We always have to sing. (Field notes, January 13, 2005) The following is a description of the language arts instruction during my second observation (Field notes, November 18, 2004). At about 8:15 a.m. instruction began. The daily message, from the HM program, was written on chart paper. Children sat on the carpet and followed along as Mrs. Parker pointed to the words and read them aloud. Good Morning, Class! What is your favorite season? Do you like fall? Do you like the cold of winter? Do you like to see flowers in spring? Mrs. Parker then had children come up and circle words from their story, such as sight words or high frequency words. She had one child come up and circle “what,” and the rest of the class spelled it aloud. Another child circled “is,” and another child circled “do.” They discussed why all the “do’s” were capitalized, and spelled “do” together.
111 They discussed phonics patterns, such as the long /o/ sound, and the tricky pronunciation of the word “of” (it’s pronounced “uv” although spelled “of”). After discussing various language aspects of the message, they turned to the content. Mrs. Parker had a child circle the question marks in the message. They determined that there were four questions, and Mrs. Parker called on different volunteers to answer the different questions. They read the message again, this time with full expression, attentive to the exclamation and question marks. Finally, a child was selected to take the paper home. The next piece of chart paper had a “wacky sentence” written on it, which the children corrected as a class. The sentence read, “thu mman iz mi dud?” [The man is my dad]. One child was selected to come up and make the first word a capital letter and correct its spelling. Another child corrected the spelling of “man,” and they continued through the sentence, ending by changing the question mark to a period since it was a telling sentence, not a question. When they were finished, the teacher deviated from the program and had all the children stand as she led them in a little exercise. “Touch your head. Touch your nose. Touch your ears. Touch your toes. Roll your knees. Bob your shoulders. Take a big deep breath, and another…” The children moved and stretched, and again sat down on the carpet. At 8:35, Mrs. Parker began the discussion of a text about the four seasons that they had read the day before. Mrs. Parker put a worksheet, divided into four squares for each season, on the projector. For example, one square had these words: Fall It is cool. Birds go south. Leaves fall.
112 Mrs. Parker pointed out the new words (underlined) the children were learning in this text and they practiced reading these words. On the bottom half of the transparency were the four seasons written again, with a small sentence and a word left blank. The children all received their own copies of the worksheet, and they completed it as a whole group. The directions said to select a word from the word bank that fit in the blank. For example, the worksheet read, We live in the South. It can get cool in the fall. We jump in the ___________ . It does not get too cold in the _________ . We do not get _________. Spring is not too wet. We dig in the ___________ . Together, the teacher and children tried to fill in the blanks. However there was not really enough context given to answer them correctly. The first answer was “leaves,” and the children got this correct. However, the next blank was a little confusing, both to the children and teacher, and they incorrectly guessed “summer.” When they incorrectly answered another question and Mrs. Parker discovered the mistake, she decided that it was not worth making the correction with the children. When they finished the task, children were instructed to get their anthologies. Once children were reassembled on the carpet at 8:50, they turned to the correct page and reviewed the “words to know.” The teacher put on a CD (that accompanied the program) of someone reading the text aloud. Music played, the title and author were
113 introduced, and children were instructed to turn the page when they heard a tone. As the children listened to the CD, most of them followed along in their books, some reading quietly, some reading aloud with the CD. At the end of the reading, Mrs. Parker had the children go back to the beginning of the text and they discussed what the text said about each season, including the illustrations in the discussion. For example, Mrs. Parker said, “Look at those three pages about the fall season. What did you learn about Fall? Look at the pictures; look at the words. What did you learn about Fall? John, what did you learn from this chapter, ‘This is Fall’?” John replied that it was hot. “Do you get hot in the fall?” asked Mrs. Parker. He said no, and said he gets cool. “Yes. Look at the picture on page 20,” Mrs. Parker instructed the class. “I look at the picture and learned something I didn’t know before. What do you learn from the picture?” The children volunteered that they saw squirrels storing nuts in their cheeks to take back to their homes. The discussion continued with the rest of the seasons. At 9:10, the children paired up, and spread around the classroom to partner read. They had the option of reading alternately to each other, or reading chorally. Mrs. Parker sat at the kidney-shaped table with four children to give them extra assistance. She set a timer and after ten minutes the bell rang and they were told to put their books away and come to her for a handout. Mrs. Parker began to sing, “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands . . .” All the children joined in, and when they were finished, they examined the paper they were given, another HM worksheet. There were four pictures representing each season, and the children were to cut out the sentences describing each season and glue them next
114 to the picture and name of the correct season. Children worked on this until 9:40, when it was time for recess. After recess, children got out the book baskets and selected books to read for sustained silent reading (SSR). Some children read to each other, while others sat alone and read. During my observations, children would bring books up to me to read to or with them. On this particular day, a girl asked me to read a version of “Little Red Riding Hood” to her. Another girl showed us that she was reading this too, and showed us what page she was on. Two other children asked me to read with them, and a third joined in with us. There was a friendly buzz as children read and collaborated. After 15 minutes of reading time, the teacher called the class to order with a little chant, “Ba ba ba ba ba…” and the children replied, “bum bum!” They discussed the importance of putting the books away in the correct basket, and Mrs. Parker reminded them that the colored dot on the book referred to its topic (e.g. a pink dot means the books are about colors). She talked a little about book-handling, and the importance of storing, with the spines out, so they don’t get ruined. Following SSR, the children learned math, and revisited language arts again in the afternoon. I did come one afternoon to observe, and Mrs. Parker read aloud from different quality trade books (this was a regular event), and continued working through the program. Comments on Mrs. Parker’s Class Last year was a challenging year for Mrs. Parker, with a combination of the school undergoing construction, being in a temporary classroom, and having to use the program “by the book.” As much as possible, Mrs. Parker tried to incorporate what she knows, based on years of experience, about working with young children and her
115 knowledge about children’s development to enrich her class. Although she followed the program, the little poems and chants did add to the class environment to make it feel less “rigid” than some of the other scripted classes. However, there was still a feel of that driven quality, moving from one skill to the next. Most of the instruction was whole group, but the children did get to partner up to read to each other and work on small tasks together, allowing for more interaction among the students. SSR time, which included allowing the children to select books of interest to read on their own or with friends, seemed to be an enjoyable time for the children. They were all engaged and liked to share their reading with each other. They also seemed to enjoy being read to, and often asked Mrs. Parker to reread a book she’d just read. These experiences added to the environment, making it more personal and connected. Mrs. Monroe-Nonscripted Schoolwide Demographics at Maturin Elementary Maturin Elementary reported for the 2003-4 school year that 80 percent of its students were classified as receiving free/reduced meals, while 49 percent students were ELLs. Eighty-eight percent of the student body were from Hispanic families, 8 percent were White, and 4 percent were from varied ethnic backgrounds. Of the ELLs, 48 percent spoke Spanish as their first language, and one percent spoke other languages (all data were obtained from Ed-Data, 2005). Mrs. Monroe had one child who was referred to the Student Study Team to be tested for learning disabilities, and she recommended that one child be held back in the first grade.
116 Teacher Profile Mrs. Monroe teaches at Maturin Elementary, and had been a teacher for seven years at the time of the study, during which she was working on her master’s degree in education. Mrs. Monroe’s classroom is an explosion of design and color. When you enter, there is a small teacher corner to the immediate right, bounded by personal cubbies for the children on one side, and bookshelves and cabinets on the other sides. At the front of this area is a basket of stuffed animals. There is a large stuffed dog named Gretta in the carpet/shared reading area to the front right corner of the room, and from time to time children are allowed to sit next to Gretta and pet her during shared reading. The carpeted area is lined with bookshelves, along with a large collection of big books for children to read during center time. There are also several rocking chairs and cushions, creating a comfortable, homey feel. Just about every inch of wall space was used to post something interesting. In one section, where the children do the daily calendar at the right front part of the room, there are multiple charts illustrating ways to count (by fives, tens, twos, odd numbers and so on). Another chart shows tally marks for the number of days they’ve been in school thus far; there is a large monthly calendar and more. Up on a reading wall is a big, colorful banner that says “Reading is FUN!” and another that says “Welcome” with a list of positive, supportive words like “Good work” and “Terrific.” There is a large word wall with each letter of the alphabet, and words are added to the appropriate spot on a regular basis. At one point, the teacher traced each child’s profile on black paper that was cut out and glued on a red background. Each child wrote an autobiographical story, and these
117 were pasted into the center of the profiles and hung on one wall. Children’s work, art, and a Writer’s Workshop board were all posted, changing throughout the year. Each week a different child was selected to be “Star of the Week.” The child would take home a large star cut from poster board to decorate, color, and add pictures as a way to teach the class about herself (usually this becomes a family project. One child even attached Christmas lights to hers). The child also took home a “Clifford” basket with a stuffed Clifford dog and Clifford books (complete with information on the care and feeding of Clifford). The children’s stars were hung from the ceiling, along with other projects created throughout the year, adding still more color and design to the room. Children sit at tables, two to a table, which are arranged in a U-shape all facing the front whiteboard/overhead projector, and stuffed animals are placed around the room—some, like birds, in cages (Mrs. Monroe worked for the Humane society, and cannot bare to have live pets in cages). Reading and Writing in Mrs. Monroe’s Class Although Mrs. Monroe teaches in the same district as Mrs. Parker, she was under the impression that she was free to use the HM program as she felt necessary, selecting the skills and activities her children needed, neglecting others she felt were irrelevant, and supplementing with materials as needed. Proceeding on that assumption, Mrs. Monroe created a class environment that was playful and fun, with a lot of opportunities for students to interact with language. It is hard to describe a typical day in Mrs. Monroe’s class. Although she has some standard activities, she is always embellishing with creative projects and themes to support children’s literacy development.
118 Mrs. Monroe begins the school day with calendar activities and songs (music is a large component of the class) and the children work on math until the 10:00 a.m. recess. After recess, the children work on language arts. Generally, Mrs. Monroe begins with the poem of the week, which the children memorize and recite orally. Poems include children’s classics, beginning with simple poems such as “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” and becoming more complex as the year progesses. As children recite the poems, they also do movements that accompany the words. Mrs. Monroe will put the poem on the overhead and practice it with the children. Then, a student volunteer comes up to the front to lead them in the poem again. Following the poem, the students whose job of the day is to hand out papers (the paper passers) pass out a half-sheet with the Daily Language Review from the HM program. This will have four or five short activities such as a little grammar reminder, compound words for children to create, and a sentence to correct. When it’s time for this, Mrs. Monroe calls out like a TV game show host, “And now…it’s time to…FIX…THE…SENTENCE!” with the children joining in and laughing. They correct errors in the sentence and the paper collectors gather these, while the paper passers hand out the morning message, also from the HM program. Mrs. Monroe duplicates the morning message for the children and posts one on the overhead. The children cheer when these are coming, and as they read the message they will do various activities in relationship to it (circle key letters or words, reread it with expression paying attention to end punctuation and so on) while Mrs. Monroe models on the overhead. After these activities, Mrs. Monroe has the children take a “brain break.” They all stand, and she leads them in a song or cheer. For example, during the first observation,
119 they chanted and danced, “Put your hands in the air like you just don’t care and dance . . . yeah yeah yeah . . . Dance 2, 3, 4 . . . We’re room 15 and we’re here today. We’re room 15 and we’re here to say . . . boom cha ka la ka la ka boom cha ka la ka boom cha ka la ka BOOM!” (Field notes, September 29, 2004). Following this, Mrs. Monroe may have the children do some phonemic awareness activities. One morning, Mrs. Monroe said, “Okay, stand up. We’re going to do a little blending, but we’re going to do a Simon Says blending. When you get the word, do the action. Okay, Simon says /k/ /i/ /k/” (Field notes, November 10, 2004). The children blended the sounds and said the word “kick” as they all kicked the air, practicing in this way several more words. When it’s time for shared reading, at around 10:45, Mrs. Monroe puts on a song, and as the children get their anthologies and move to the carpet, they sing and dance. Once they are seated, she stops the CD and gives them instructions. On one particular day, students were all assembled, and Mrs. Monroe looked up and said, “Now what are you all doing here?” Looking blank, one child responded, “Wiggling around?” Mrs. Monroe, still playing, reached out a hand to one child (as if to shake) and said, “Who are you?” “I’m Andy.” “Nice to meet you, Andy.” At this point the students caught on that she was playing and began introducing themselves and shaking hands with each other. Then Mrs. Monroe introduced the story for the day. In this case, during my second observation (November 10, 2004), the children were beginning a story that had an invitation. They
120 discussed different events they might get invited to, including an upcoming awards ceremony for which parents of children who were to get an award received invitations. They examined the words at the beginning of the story, and children recognized some of them as word-wall words. As they read through the words, Mrs. Monroe pointed out those that were phonetically regular and could be sounded out (like “pig”) and pointed out spelling words. She then reminded the children of the strategies to use if they came to a word they didn’t know. Before actually reading, Mrs. Monroe “puts her thinking bubble on and makes a prediction” (Field notes, November 10, 2004). Together teacher and students discussed the illustrations and made predictions about the story. Then Mrs. Monroe instructed the children to “echo read.” She read a passage, and they echoed her, modeling her expression and intonation. As Mrs. Monroe read, she paused and modeled thinking aloud as she tried to decode “tricky” words. “Dot Hen got a . . . [long pause]. Hmm . . . what’s my picture clue? She’s holding a paper. Let’s check . . . paper. Dot Hen got a paper” (Field notes, November 10, 2004). They continued moving through the story, pausing to discuss a word with an apostrophe (reviewing a previous lesson) or the meaning of the quotation marks. They finished reading through the story, and at 11:30 Mrs. Monroe played music as children put their anthologies away and got ready for lunch. After lunch, children had time for silent reading, and then Mrs. Monroe did her guided reading instruction. During this time, she read with a small group, and the other children rotated through centers—including an art center, big book center, journal writing, and buddy reading. Children worked quietly in centers, and there is a friendly hum as children work while the teacher reads with a small group. On odd days, Mrs.
121 Monroe used the afternoon time for writing instruction or art projects that tie-in to a theme of study. Comments on Mrs. Monroe’s Class I had done several observations in other classes before coming to Mrs. Monroe’s class, and one of my first comments follows: I love this class!! It reminds me that she is working with little children, not just robots who need to be taught skills. She keeps the pace moving, and covers curriculum, but interjects little things that keep them excited, engaged and positive. A lot of patting on the back, supportive comments, little songs and chants. The children really light up with this stuff. (Field notes, September 29, 2004) Aside from the songs and chants, Mrs. Monroe created a very supportive environment for all children. Throughout the day she would stop and have the children turn to a partner and say, “Good job,” or pat each other on the back. One child, Charley, seemed to have difficulty following the class, but whenever he did something well, one of the other children would report this with congratulations in her voice. When he was having a difficult time finding the correct page in the book or the right materials, the children would support him. There were almost no behavior problems in this class, whereas in other classes, particularly the scripted classes, the teachers frequently had to ask children to refocus, sit still or stay on task. The children in Mrs. Poe’s class had a lot of opportunities to be engaged and many chances to be successful. I particularly recall watching Charley, who
122 may be identified as having special needs, as he completed an art project. He was totally focused, and proudly showed me his work when he was done. Clearly he felt successful. Mrs. Monroe’s class is personally a refreshing reminder of what first grade is all about. All the singing and rhyming gives children the opportunity to play with language. Throughout the year, Mrs. Monroe embedded art projects for the children. The art projects, completed in connection with a theme, gave children, especially those who were more challenged in the academics, opportunities to be successful and creative (Gardner) Children made turkey puppets on which they wrote a paper about Thanksgiving. They created jellyfish and sea anemone to accompany a unit on oceans, and created different character puppets to accompany some of the stories in the HM anthology. There was an integration of academics and skills learning woven together by song, dance and fun. The children learned to take responsibility for their learning and to support each other in the process. The class had a welcome, friendly and playful feel.
CHAPTER 5 FINDINGS ABOUT THE RESEARCH QUESTIONS This chapter begins with a brief review of the demographics of the teachers, classrooms and school contexts. Presented next are the analyses conducted to investigate the three research questions identified in Chapter One: (1) Will the application—scripted or nonscripted--of the same reading program affect children’s ability to comprehend what they read? (2) Will teacher application—scripted or nonscripted--of the same reading program significantly affect children’s attitudes and motivation towards reading? (3) How do experienced teachers feel about applying the program (scripted or not), in terms of students’ attainment of literacy skills? Following the information regarding the research questions is summary information about the percent of classroom time spent in different literacy activities and student responses to the interview questions. Classroms in Context As stated in Chapter Three, I used a purposive sample for the classrooms that were included in the study. I looked for schools that exceeded the state percentages of ELL (25 percent, Ed-Data, 2005) and students receiving free/reduced meals (49 percent, Ed-Data, 2005) as reported for the 2003-4 school year. Regarding the schools included in the study, both measures were well above state norms. The percentage of children classified as ELLs ranged from 40 to 76 percent. Students receiving free/reduced meals ranged from 78 to 96 percent. In terms of teacher experience, teachers ranged from seven to 24 years total teaching experience. Although there is a range of students among the different schools who are from socioeconomically disadvantaged families and students classified as ELLs, one
123
124 measurable difference between schools were the scores on the Annual Performance Index (API). API is used to measure school and district performance based on student standardized test scores. The API is used to rank schools into “deciles,” with one as the lowest, and ten as the highest. It is also used to compare schools with similar student populations and to determine eligibility for rewards or intervention (Ed-Data, 2005). The API scores for the schools show a range that may have had an impact on student reading outcomes. Although API scores are a composite of schools’ grades 2-6 standardized test scores for reading and math, they can be an indication that children at the lowerachieving schools were lower achievers to begin with (although there are no data specific for kindergarten or first grade students in all schools included in the study since children in California are not tested until second grade). Table 5.1 shows the most recent API scores that were available to indicate the differences between schools. Although the state recommends that scores not be compared from year to year due to changes in calculations (Ed-Data, 2005), schools’ trends are apparent. As a group, the scripted classes came from schools with lower mean API scores for two consecutive years as compared to those of the nonscripted classes. Table 5.1 API Scores per School and Mean Scores Per Group for the 2002-3 and 2003-4 School Years Nonscripted Schools Franklin Oaks Maturin Scripted Schools King Alexandria Victoria
2003 Base API 700 691 631 2003 Base API 579 517 652
Mean 2003 API 2004 Base API for Group 690 674 694 636 Mean API for Mean API for Group Group 601 583 561 619
Mean 2004 API for Group 673.33 Mean API for Group 593.67
125 Research Questions The three research questions and the analyses conducted to find their answers will be addressed in this section. Research Question 1: Will teacher application—scripted or nonscripted—of the same reading program affect children’s ability to comprehend what they read? To answer Research Question 1, a univariate analysis of coariance (ANCOVA) was calculated for scores on the reading comprehension portion of the Gates MacGinitie Reading Test (Riverside Publishing, 2000a). The ANCOVA was run to determine if teacher application of the HM program (scripted or nonscripted) had a statistically significant effect on students’ comprehension scores, while accounting for the potential differences in students’ abilities as a result of the discrepancies in the API scores. Because the Gates MacGinitie is a norm-referenced test, raw scores were converted to equal-interval scores for statistical use. The raw scores merely represent the total number of correct answers. In a norm-referenced test, these scores have no meaning until they are converted into percentile ranks or other scores (Gunning, 2005). In this case, students’ raw scores were converted to Extended Scale Scores (ESS). The ESS are used for comparisons across grade levels and for determining grade equivalents (GE) (Riverside Publishing, 2000b; Gunning, 2005). The GE score characterizes a student’s performance as being equivalent to that of other students in a particular grade (Gunning, 2005). For example, a GE of 1.2 indicates the score an average student in the second month of first grade might receive.
126 In the ANCOVA, teacher application of the program was the fixed factor, the winter ESS were the covariate, and the spring ESS were the dependent variable. These results are shown in Table 5.2. Table 5.2 Gates MacGinitie ESS Means and ANCOVA Results Application
N (winter)
Nonscripted 62
Mean GE Na Mean SD GE ESS (spring) ESS Winter Spring 374.82 1.5 59 404.23 37.96 1.9
Scripted
358.52 1.4 48
48
387.53 38.60 1.6
F
Significance
.264 .609
a
The change in number from winter to spring resulted from student absences on the day of testing in spring. An examination of the ESS indicates that mean scores for students in nonscripted classes were higher than those for students in scripted classes (the case both in the winter and spring). These numbers were not statistically significant, with the Sig F for the ESS at .609. However, spring scores indicate that the children in the nonscripted classes had GE scores of 1.9, which is reflective of where students should be academically—in the ninth month of first grade. The children in the scripted classes’ GE scores, 1.6, were three months behind what would be appropriate for children at the end of the first grade. Research Question 2: Will teacher application—scripted or nonscripted—of the same reading program affect children’s attitude and motivation towards reading? Internal Consistency Reliability In order to measure the internal consistency reliability (Hoyle, Harris & Judd, 2002) of the attitude survey, a reliability analysis was conducted, with the results displayed in Table 5.3. The results indicate that the recreation and attitude components of
127 the survey approached internal consistency, while the survey as a whole, with an alpha of .84, is internally consistant. Table 5.3 Measure of Internal Consistency for the Attitude Survey Component of Survey N Chronbach’s Alpha Recreational Reading (Qs 1-8) 93 .72 Academic Reading (Qs 1; 9-16) 96 .79 Total Average (Qs 1-16) 92 .84 Scoring the Surveys Students were instructed to answer each survey question by circling only one response that most reflected their feelings regarding that question, and most children responded with only one response per question. On occasion, a child responded with two answers for one question, or missed a question. In those cases, the averages were tabulated by excluding the inappropriate responses and adjusting the total. Results for the Attitude Survey To answer Research Question 2, a t-test was used to calculate whether teacher application of the HM program (scripted or nonscripted) had a statistically significant effect on students’ attitudes towards reading. Averages were tabulated for students’ attitudes towards recreational reading (questions 1-8 of the survey), academic reading (questions 1 and 9-16 of the survey), and total attitude towards reading. In the t-test, teacher application of the program (scripted or nonscripted) was the independent variable, and the different attitude averages were the dependent variables. As Table 5.4 indicates, students’ fall scores were not significantly different for recreational, academic or total attitude towards reading. However, in the spring, students
128 in the nonscripted classes scored higher for all three areas measured. These scores were statistically significant with regard to students’ attitudes towards reading in both academic and total averages. Table 5.4 Total Means from Fall & Spring Attitude Surveys Fall 2004 Recreational Reading Average (Qs 1-8) Academic Reading Average (Qs 1; 9-16) Total Average (Qs 1-16) Spring 2005 Recreational Reading Average (Qs 1-8) Academic Reading Average (Qs 1; 9-16) Total Average (Qs 1-16)
Application Numbera Mean SD Nonscripted 52 Scripted
3.24
Significance
.51
45
3.27
.56
Nonscripted 52
3.33
.47
Scripted
45
3.19
.64
Nonscripted 52
3.23
.44
Scripted
3.16
.65
45
t
Application Numbera Mean SD Nonscripted 61
3.27
.42
Scripted
50
3.09
.61
Nonscripted 61
3.26
.47
Scripted
50
3.05
.65
Nonscripted 61
3.24
.39
Scripted
3.04
.59
-.230
.819
1.255
.212
.657b
.513
t
Significance
1.769b .081
1.977
a
50
.051
2.012b .047
The difference in the number of respondents varied as a result of: (1) student absences; and (2) more parent consent forms were returned after the first round of attitude surveys were administered. b
Equal variances not assumed
129 Research Question 3: How do experienced teachers feel about the Houghton Mifflin reading program and applying it (scripted or not), in terms of students’ attainment of reading skills? In order to answer Research Question 3, I used information from discussions and formal interviews with each teacher. Throughout my classroom observations, teachers discussed various aspects of the program, and at the end of the study I asked each teacher specific questions about reading/language arts instruction in her class (See Appendix D for interview protocol). Below is a narrative with each teacher’s thoughts about different aspects of the program. Teachers were asked to comment on the program overall, how they felt about using the program and whether they liked or would like to follow it by the script, the writing component of the program, if they supplement the program with outside materials, and about children’s access to books and silent reading time. All comments are derived from field notes or discussions with each teacher at the end of the observational period. Teachers from District A Mrs. Ovsepyan and the Houghton Mifflin Program (Nonscripted) When asked how she felt about the HM program, Mrs. Ovsepyan replied that she didn’t mind the HM reading program (although she liked the stories in the previous adoption better), but was glad she didn’t have to follow it exactly, because she felt there were far too many activities, and preferred to select those appropriate for her students. Furthermore, she liked the freedom to rearrange activities in ways that made sense in the context of her classroom. Mrs. Ovsepyan supplemented the HM program quite a bit. For example, rather than using the morning message, Mrs. Ovsepyan wrote poems on chart
130 paper for the children to read and discuss. “I like to do the poems. They need to see other vocabulary besides these phonics books. That is not enough. The stories get better, but I like to bring in the poems and have them write poems too. It’s fun.” In my earlier observations (from the 2001-2 school year), Mrs. Ovsepyan did not have the children completing worksheets. However, Mrs. Ovsepyan felt she needed to have the children learn how to do them to prepare for the unit tests required by the Reading First grant. The dates of the tests were predetermined, so she felt pressured to cover the material in time. Mrs. Ovsepyan didn’t feel the worksheets were important in assisting children in learning the material, but they needed to learn the skills required on the test (such as circling a word and drawing a line to its definition or bubbling in the right answers). Mrs. Ovsepyan and the other first grade teachers at Franklin Elementary did not like the writing instruction that accompanies the HM program, which was why they used the program Write from the Beginning (Thinking Maps, 2004). As a group, the first grade teachers examined the themes and prompts that were part of the program, and created new prompts. One complaint they had was that sometimes the prompts asked students to complete tasks that were inappropriate for first grade or were not aligned with the first grade standards. They also felt that the HM writing was too scattered and inconsistent. Guided reading was not part of the HM program, and this was where Mrs. Ovsepyan felt that she could go deeper with the children and provide them with individual attention at their reading levels. Finally, Mrs. Ovsepyan had her children do sustained silent reading at least three times per week, for 10 to 15 minutes. At the beginning of the school year, children read the class poems, phonics books or class books
131 they created. As they grew as readers, they selected books from the class library or used their guided reading books. Ms. Popovich and the Houghton Mifflin Program (Nonscripted) Overall, Ms. Popovich liked the Houghton Mifflin reading program, and of the three teachers that I observed in District A, followed it the most closely. She felt that it was sometimes difficult for her students, the majority of whom were English language learners, and so she “tweaked” it and made adjustments for her students. She would not feel comfortable if she had to follow the program by the script because “each class is different, and wouldn’t be able to get it.” Ms. Popovich felt that the writing component of the HM program was weak. She stated that the program didn’t begin formal writing until theme five, which was too late in the school year. Therefore, she supplemented it with the writing training she received from the district, using topics taken from the HM themes. Ms. Popovich felt that giving students access to books and time to read was important. She took her children to the school library every week, allowed students to take home books from the classroom library, and most weeks she gave her students time for SSR four times per week. Her students enjoyed being read to, and Ms. Popovich welcomed the “Grandma Reader” who came to read to her students once per week, and often invited friends and colleagues to come and read aloud to her students as well. Mrs. Marino and the Houghton Mifflin Program (Nonscripted) Mrs. Marino was very clear about her feelings towards the HM program. She does not feel the program is strong enough to stand alone for reading and writing instruction, and would not feel comfortable if she were required to teach solely from the program. For example, she stated, “The first anthology is so singularly focused on phonics and
132 decoding that it sorely lacks in providing material for comprehension and higher order thinking skills. I feel it is absolutely necessary to supplement the HM program with rich, descriptive literature to model and assess comprehension during this phase of the program.” Mrs. Marino also felt that beginning formal spelling lists until theme three was “too little, too late,” and created spelling lists with words taken from the stories in the anthology, and basic core and sight words. She also used her own lists to meet specific grade level standard skills (e.g., contractions, possessives, compounds, etc.). Mrs. Marino was particularly adamant about the writing component of the program. As she said, “The program's approach to teaching writing was not clear, concise, or sequential. There were some good activities and lessons, but alone, it would not be substantial enough to help most students achieve grade level proficiency in meeting the standards.” Mrs. Marino explained how writing had been a school-wide focus for the previous four years, and teachers worked across grade levels to create a more universal language for teaching writing. Teachers felt that they had been successful in teaching students basic writing skills and formula writing for assessments, but children’s writing had lost voice and personality. At the time of the study, the school had purchased 6 Plus 1 Traits of Writing (Culham, 2003), a guide to teaching good writing, and teachers were beginning to adopt some of the strategies to use in their classes. Mrs. Marino was excited about this process. Teachers from District B Mrs. Stockton and the Houghton Mifflin Program (Scripted) Mrs. Stockton loved the HM program. She was impressed after her very first year using the program, when all her children were reading at first grade level by the end of
133 the year (although some were below grade level in fluency). Furthermore, Mrs. Stockton said the district mandate to follow the script did not affect her teaching at all. She would teach the same way—following the program exactly as it is laid out--without the mandate. Mrs. Stockton believed that the reading program needed to be scripted because there were “so many teachers out there who are not good teachers. Even your less-skilled teachers are going to have successful students. At least there is some structure for teachers.” Mrs. Stockton gave the example of a teacher in her school who went into teaching because “every three months [on the school’s year-round calendar] he got a vacation.” In Mrs. Stockton’s opinion, he was not a rigorous or dedicated teacher, and she felt that teachers like this need to have the script. I asked Mrs. Stockton about SSR time in her class and the fact that I did not see children using any of the trade books in her classroom library. She told me that during the three hours of language arts instruction, she was restricted to using only the materials that are part of the HM program. If children had extra time in the morning after completing their proofreading sentences, an activity that usually occurred before my arrival, they were allowed to read phonics library books or decodables (from the program) that Mrs. Stockton kept in baskets on the children’s tables. It was also during that time (from 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m.) that Mrs. Stockton provided the Universal Access (UA) time, calling children up to her desk individually or in small groups to focus on particular skills for which they needed extra assistance. This time varied according to the rest of the children’s ability to work independently on their journals. Some days they were more focused than others, allowing her more time with individuals.
134 Mrs. Stockton was aware that many people complain about the writing component of the HM program, but she did not mind it. Although it started in theme three and was taught only on Fridays, she knew what the steps were and used them in the journals because it directly related to the lesson. “My kids have come out good writers. I don’t think it’s a bad program. People don’t know how to use it.” During the 2004-2005 school year, King Elementary did not have a librarian, so Mrs. Stockton’s children did not have the chance to check out library books. Mrs. Stockton was not too upset by this because she claims that often they got books that were too hard. Consequently, children would just look at the pictures and make up the story. Mrs. Stockton compensated by making photocopies of the “I Love Reading” decodables that came with the HM program. Children took home copies of these each week for practice reading at home. Mrs. Juarez and the Houghton Mifflin Program (Scripted) Overall, Mrs. Juarez said that she really liked the HM program. However, throughout my classroom visits, she gave me some insight into more ambivalent feelings she had about the program and its effect on the schedule and children. One time, she commented that the program was “hard driving,” and she always felt like the children had to rush: Hurry up and get the chalkboards; hurry up and move to the carpet. However, she also felt the need to give children these transition times as opportunities to move around a little. If she weren’t required to follow the script, there were some things Mrs. Juarez claims that she would change in her application of the program. Like the District A
135 teachers, Mrs. Juarez felt that the writing component of the program “was just thrown in and is not integrated.” However, she thought that the publishers were working to fix that. Mid-year, language arts time at Alexandria Elementary was extended until 1:15 in the afternoon to make sure that all components of the program were covered, and Mrs. Juarez felt that this time change was necessary in order to cover all the material. For example, after the observation described above, she still had a lot of “day one” material to cover, but expected to be able to finish by 1:15. During recess of observation four (March 3, 2005), she and another first grade teacher had a discussion about the “corrective teaching day.” Mrs. Juarez should have been doing that, instead of day one of the new lesson. (The school’s literacy coach posts a calendar stating where teachers should be in the day-by-day instruction). Mrs. Juarez’s colleague suggested that it was okay that Mrs. Juarez hadn’t done the corrective teaching day, but could just flip-flop lessons and do it the next day. Mrs. Juarez commented to me that she didn’t like the corrective teaching day. She felt that it interrupted the flow and was not connected to the regular instruction, but would do it because she was required to. Another challenge that Mrs. Juarez faced with the program was that each day, teachers were supposed to post a time chart specific to that day in the program. Creating these charts, along with all the other charts required each day, took a great deal of time, and in this case, Mrs. Juarez questioned its value.
136 For example, for the observation noted above, Mrs. Juarez had posted: Day 1, Thursday ELD
8:30-9:15
UA fluency
9:15-9:25
Opening routines
9:25-9:35
Literature
9:35-10:00
Phonics
10:15-10:55
Phonics library
10:55-11:15
Spelling
12:00-12:15
Word pattern board vocab.
12:15-12:30
Writing
12:30-12:45
Viewing
2:45-1:00
Structured writing (prewriting) Math
1:00-1:15
1:55-2:55
As Mrs. Juarez commented, this left no time for activities other than language arts and math. On Wednesdays, the children had an hour of physical education. During that time, Mrs. Juarez pulled half the students from physical education every other week in order to give them individual attention. Otherwise, the UA (universal access) time was supposed to be designated for individual help, but she didn’t feel that it was really adequate to meet students’ needs.
137 Mrs. Juarez felt that one important strength of the program was its consistency between grades. She felt that as children move through the program from kindergarten on up this will make a greater difference in their reading and test scores. Teachers from District C Mrs. Parker and the Houghton Mifflin Program (Scripted) Mrs. Parker resented having to follow the script. After 24 years of teaching, she felt that she has had enough experience and expertise to be able to select the activities to meet her children’s needs. It was not the program itself that she objected to, but having to follow it by the script. During the first observation, Mrs. Parker told me, “You’ve observed this program, so you can see their fidgetiness is because they are doing skill after skill.” To compensate, Mrs. Parker infused songs, rhymes, and movement into the class to break up the pattern and provide the children with some extra language and word play. Since Mrs. Parker’s school was not working with a Reading First grant, and sine District C had different implementation requirements than District B, Mrs. Parker, although required to follow the program sequentially and teach all the lessons, was not held as strictly to the program as Mrs. Stockton and Mrs. Juarez. Because she had such a strong commitment to reading, Mrs. Parker made sure to incorporate SSR in the mornings (reading from trade books outside the program) and read aloud time in the afternoons. In fact, she tried to read aloud in the morning, after lunch and before students went home. She felt that it was important to give her students opportunities to engage with quality literature in addition to the program. Prior to the adoption of the HM program, Mrs. Parker included guided reading with her language arts instruction, and was sorry that there was so little time for it. She
138 felt that the small group instruction was valuable for personalizing instruction. On a positive note, Mrs. Parker felt that the program exposed all children to more skills earlier on than they might have gotten before. Not all children learn the skills, but she felt that the early exposure is helpful. Consistent with most of the other teachers, Mrs. Parker felt that the writing instruction that came with the program was weak, and the district used a commercial program called Step Up to Writing (Sopris West, 2005) which she felt was a stronger, more sequential and structured program. Like King Elementary, Victoria Elementary had daily ELD time, which occurred at Victoria every afternoon right after lunch. Mrs. Parker said that the focus of ELD at her school was shifting from science and social studies to language arts. She was sorry about that, because she felt that the absence of hands-on experiments and activities was a real loss—those were the things the kids remembered and enjoyed the most. To compensate, Mrs. Parker was planning to take her children on two field trips, one to the zoo in Santa Anna, and another to KidSpace, a hands-on science center for children. Many of these children, she claimed, are from low-income families (giving me an example of children in her class who were homeless and lived in motels or with extended family members, while another child’s father is a member of a gang), and did not have the opportunity to travel or get much exposure beyond their neighborhoods.1 As a result, Mrs. Parker felt that these children needed more exposure than what the HM program provided. She felt
1
This is the case with students from all the classes in which I observed in this study. After I spent a day at an elementary school with children from middle and upper middle class families, I was astonished by the difference in backgrounds and opportunities for literacy development the children from more privileged families received at home, and how this impacted their ability to succeed in school.
139 that they needed quality literature, and experiences in school, to support them in building background knowledge. Mrs. Monroe and the Houghton Mifflin Program (Nonscripted) Overall, Mrs. Monroe liked the variety of materials the offered by Houghton Mifflin. “If you don’t have to do everything, there’s enough variety to meet kids’ needs.” Mrs. Monroe described an extra support handbook that accompanied the program. Mrs. Monroe used it to assist small groups or individuals who had specific needs, and she appreciated that these materials were provided with the program. She had also downloaded materials from the HM website to supplement some of the stories in the anthology (e.g., puppets that the children colored, cut-out, and used to retell the story). Mrs. Monroe would not have liked to teach strictly from the program because there was “so much packed every single day you’d be teaching it all day long.” Furthermore, Mrs. Monroe felt that she needed to supplement the program for the children reading at higher levels because it was not challenging enough, yet for the below-level children it makes a great leap from decodable, highly controlled texts to “full-on stories with more vocabulary and high-frequency words which is too challenging too quickly.” Regarding the writing component of the program, Mrs. Monroe felt that “it stinks.” She did not feel the instruction was at an appropriate level, and supplemented it with the district-adopted program Step Up to Writing (Sopris West, 2005). To support their reading development, Mrs. Monroe had SSR time for her students almost every day. The children had baskets of books on their tables to choose from, or they could read stories from the classroom library or their anthologies. Mrs. Monroe retyped the stories in
140 the anthology for children to read at home, and like Mrs. Stockton, photocopied the phonics readers for practice reading too. Table 5.5 summarizes teacher’s attitudes towards the HM reading program. Table 5.5 Teachers’ Attitudes Towards the Houghton Mifflin Reading Program Teacher & Application
Overall feeling about HM program Mrs. “Doesn’t Ovsepyan mind” (nonscripted) program
Comfortable teaching by the script
Opinion on the writing component of the HM program
Supplements program with outside materials Yes-with reading & writing materials Yes-with reading & writing materials Yes-with reading & writing materials Yes-with reading & writing materials No-not an option
SSR done in class Yes
Not comfortable
Weak-inappropriate & inconsistent
Ms. Likes the Popovich program (nonscripted)
Not comfortable
Weak-begins too late in year
Mrs. Marino Not (nonscripted) strong on its own
Not comfortable
Poor-not substantial enough
Mrs. Monroe Likes the (nonscripted) program
Not Comfortable
“It stinks”
Mrs. Stockton (scripted) Mrs. Juarez (scripted)
Loves it
Very comfortable
Doesn’t mind it
Really likes it
Somewhat comfortable
Weak-not integrated No-not an option
No
Mrs. Parker (scripted)
Program is okay
Resentful
Weak-nonsequential Yes-with & lacking structure reading & writing materials
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
141 Other Findings Instructional Time Per Class Table 5.6 lists the total amount of time observed, and the percentage of that time that teachers were actually engaged in using the HM program. Two of the teachers who were required to follow the script used the program for the entire time, but Mrs. Parker (from District C), who was required to “go by the script,” did not use the program 100% of the time. Since she was not teaching in a Reading First school, there was more flexibility in her teaching and ability to use non-HM materials during instructional time, as compared to the two teachers from District B.
Table 5.6 Total Observation Time and Percentages Using the HM Program Time
Ovsepyan Popovich Marino Monroe Stockton Juarez Parker (nonscripted) (nonscripted) (nonscripted) (nonscripted) (scripted) (scripted) (scripted)
Allocations Total Observed Time (in minutes) Percentage of Time Using HM Program
815
646
541
600
625
510
420
48%
57%
38%
51%
100%
100%
79%
Summary of Class Activities Although each teacher used the Houghton Mifflin program, there were differences among them, the least of which were evident in the scripted classrooms. During the observations, I noted what activity occurred and its approximate duration. I then read through all the observations and came up with coding categories (Creswell, 2003) delineating between the 23 different activities that occurred in each class. Below is the
142 name and description of each activity, followed by Table 5.8, which indicates the percent of observed class time teachers engaged in each activity. Autonomy support--Students have opportunities to select activities in which to engage from meaningful alternatives relevant to the knowledge and learning goals (Guthrie and Wigfield, 2000). During my observations, only one teacher, Mrs. Marino (nonscripted), gave students choices between different activities in which to engage. This activity was observed for 10% of the instructional time. Book on tape--Children listen to an interesting book on tape and create some kind of personal response such as writing and/or drawing their favorite scene. Two teachers in nonscripted classes, Ms. Popovich (5.5%) and Mrs. Marino (3% ) provided time for students to listen to and respond to books on tape. Comprehension--This is time spent discussing the meaning of text. In the classroom observations, comprehension was focused on three aspects: (1) Detail (D)-This is a comprehension strategy which focuses students’ attention on specific details from a text. (2) Inference (I)-This is a comprehension strategy in which students learn to draw conclusions not stated in the text but drawn from textual references. (3) Recall (R)-This is a comprehension strategy which focuses on factual recall from a story. The percentages provided in the table refer to the amount of time when wholeclass instruction was focused on reading comprehension. Although six of the seven teachers included some components of comprehension instruction, the amounts ranged from 2% to 11% of class time. Teachers who included guided reading also focused on
143 reading comprehensions strategies (Mrs. Marino, nonscripted, who did not include whole class comprehension discussions, spent more of her guided reading time focused on comprehension). Copy and Respond--This activity usually took the form of a journal assignment in which children would copy from the board or overhead and add an individual response. Only two teachers (both nonscripted) were observed engaging their students in copy and respond activities for 5% and 7% of their instructional time. Grammar/Proofreading--Students would make corrections to sentences that had intentional errors, and occasionally corrected their own writing. Issues such as proper punctuation, capital letters and spelling would be addressed. All teachers engaged in this activity, ranging from 4% to 19% of observed time. Guided reading In guided reading, the teacher works with leveled ability groups to support students in particular areas of need. Teachers would set up a rotating schedule and would meet with each group, on average, every day. Instructional time often includes children reading books at their ability levels. Students practice pre-reading, word recognition and comprehension strategies, and receive individual coaching and assistance in decoding (Fountas & Pinnell, 1996). All four of the teachers in nonscripted classes employed guided reading, ranging from 5% to 12% of instructional time. One of the teachers in a scripted class, Mrs. Parker, also used guided reading with selected students (as opposed to rotating groups) for 11% of the time.
144 Individual assessment—The teacher gives a one-on-one assessment with a child, such as a running record, where she listens to the child read and codes the errors or miscues (Fountas & Pinnell, 1996). Only one teacher, Mrs. Stockton (scripted) was observed engaging in this activity for 3% of the time. However, other teachers, Mrs. Monroe and Mrs. Marino (both nonscripted), reported doing individual assessments as well. Letter recognition--Letter recognition includes recognizing letters and/or letters and sounds. Only Mrs. Monroe (nonscripted) and Mrs. Parker (scripted) were observed doing this activity, for 1.7% and 2% of the time, respectively. Oral language development—Oral language development included engaging the children in practice with oral language activities such as reciting poems or singing songs. Two teachers, both nonscripted, gave their students explicit time for oral language development, 4% and 8% of instructional time. Penmanship—Penmanship includes practice making letters/words on a page. Sometimes penmanship was wrapped into phonics or sight-word recognition activities, for example when a teacher would show the children a word and have them write it on individual whiteboards or chalkboards. Four teachers, two scripted and two nonscripted, had their children practice penmanship (more towards the beginning of the year), ranging from 1.6% to 10% of classroom time. Phonemic awareness—Phonemic awareness is practice manipulating the sounds in words (as opposed to letters). Like phonics, phonemic awareness practice was often included in other activities, but was coded when it was the main activity (Adams, 1990). Three teachers (two scripted and one nonscripted) had explicit phonemic awareness practice, ranging from 1.3% to 6% of classroom time.
145 Phonics—Phonics activities included practice with letter/sound recognition with either writing, workbook pages, or in phonics-based texts. Phonics instruction was often woven in with other reading opportunities such as shared reading or shared writing. For this study, an activity was coded as a phonics activity when it was the main activity. All seven teachers engaged in explicit phonics activities, however the range of application varied. Three classrooms (two scripted and one nonscripted) engaged in phonics activities from 24% to 26% of their instructional time. The other four teachers used explicit phonics from 4% to 14% of their instructional time, and these included one scripted and three nonscripted classes. Practice reading--Children practice reading from assigned texts, either individually or with a partner. This was not SSR time. All but one of the teachers (in a nonscripted class) had children practice reading assigned texts, from 2% to 12% of instructional time. Project—Creating a project involves children engaged in creating an original art project (beyond coloring a worksheet). Three of the teachers, two nonscripted and one scripted, had children doing projects, from 3% to 17% of the instructional time. Read aloud—The teacher/reader reads interesting texts aloud to children. Often this is followed by personal responses and limited comprehension checks, since the focus is on enjoyment (Gunning, 2005). Five of the seven teachers (four scripted, one nonscripted) had read aloud time in their classes, from 4% to 7% of the instructional time. Selecting books--Children have the opportunity to select single-authored works in which the text matches the topic, interest and cognitive competency of the reader. Providing an abundance of high-interest texts in the classroom enables teachers to adapt their reading instruction to the preeixisting motivations of students (Guthrie and Wigfield, 2000).
146 These books are used for SSR and take home reading. One teacher in a nonscripted class was observed, for 10% of classroom time, giving students opportunities for book selection. Shared reading--In shared reading, the teacher reads a text with the entire class, sometimes with a big book, sometimes with student anthologies. The teacher uses this opportunity as a teaching tool, and may stop to ask questions, point out information, or talk about pictures and how to use them for comprehension aids. Shared reading often includes comprehension and word recognition strategy instruction, and a prereading discussion (Gunning, 2005). Six of the seven teachers engaged in shared reading activities during the observations (with one teacher from a nonscripted class excluded). Their time ranged from 5% to 18% of instructional time. Shared writing--This is writing done as an entire class, with the teacher recording children’s responses on the overhead or whiteboard. Children then copy the writing into their individual journals. Four teachers engaged their students in shared writing, three in nonscripted classes and one in a scripted class. They ranged from 8% to 12% of instructional time. Spelling—This is explicit spelling instruction, including giving students time to practice spelling words or taking spelling tests. Two scripted classes and two nonscripted classes were observed practicing spelling, from 1% to 5% of the instructional time. Strategy instruction--Strategy instruction consists of teachers’ direct instruction, scaffolding, and guided practice in using different strategies for support in word recognition and comprehension of texts (Guthrie and Wigfield, 2000). One nonscripted
147 class engaged in strategy instruction for 4.5% of the instructional time, while two scripted classes spent 1.4% and 10% of their instructional time on strategy instruction. Sustained Silent Reading (SSR)--This is free reading time with books of choice (Krashen, 1993). Students are not held accountable for SSR, however there may be follow-up activities for discussion or elaboration of the reading experience (Pilgreen, 2001). Three classes were observed doing SSR, two nonscripted classes and one scripted class, from 6% to 12% of the instructional time. Word recognition--Students practiced recognizing sight words or using strategies for decoding words. Sometimes flashcards were used. Often this activity included phonics reminders (of patterns and word families) and letter recognition. All three of the scripted classes, and one of the nonscripted classes, engaged in word recognition, from 7% to 23% of instructional time. Writing composition--Students have opportunities to compose something independently, usually in response to a topic, e.g. a trip to the beach. Two nonscripted classes and one scripted class engaged in writing composition, from 7% to 12% of the instructional time. Table 5.7 depicts the total percentage of time in which teachers and students were actually engaged in each activity during the language arts time block. The dash indicates that the activity was not observed in the given classroom.
148 Table 5.7 Total Instructional Activity Time Per Teacher, Presented by % of Observed Minutes Spent on Each Task Activitya Autonomy Support Book on Tape Comprehension (Detail, Inference, Recall)
Copy & Respond Grammar/Proofreading Guided Reading Individual Assessment Letter Recognition Oral Language Devt. Penmanship Phonemic Awareness Phonics Practice Reading Project Read Aloud Selecting Books Shared Reading Shared Writing Spelling Srategy Instruction Sustained Silent Reading Word Recognition Written Composition TOTAL a
Ovsepyan Popovich Marino Monroe Stockton Juarez Parker (nonscripted) (nonscripted) (nonscripted) (nonscripted) (scripted) (scripted) (scripted) 10 5.5 3 10 2 10 4 8 11 (D, I, R)
(D, R)
4 11 5 13 12 4 10 10 -
7 12 12 24 4 4 5 8 5 4.5 -
9 12 100
7 100
(D, I, R)
(D, R)
(I, R)
(D, R)
5 19 11 4 10 10 2 7 10 3 6
5 5 1.7 8 1.3 4 6 17 4 8 13 10
11 3 1.6 6 26 3 3 18 3 1.4 -
10 3 25 10 10 1 10 -
4 9 2 4 14 8 6 2 12 12
100
7 100
11 9 100
23 100
16 100
These activities occurred only during the times of my observations. Teachers engaged in some activities, like SSR, during times when I was not present to observe them.
149 An examination of Table 5.7 shows that there is quite a range of instructional time spent on different activities. There were only two categories in which all seven teachers were observed, phonics and grammar/proofreading. However, the table can be somewhat misleading because many activities overlap. For example, the comprehension category overlapped with guided reading. Therefore, although Mrs. Marino did not spend any whole group time on reading comprehension activities during my observations, she did spend 11% of her classroom time in guided reading groups. During this time, children participated in small group instruction, which included focused discussions of comprehension and comprehension strategies. Only one teacher offered autonomy support, which is an important component leading to reading motivation (Guthrie and Wigfield, 2000). A closer examination of trends regarding instructional time will be addressed in the final chapter. Summary of Student Interview Responses After giving the attitude surveys, students were randomly selected to be interviewed (see Interview Protocol, Appendix C). When conducting the interviews, I attempted to talk with a similar number of boys and girls. During the fall interviews, I was not able to conduct interviews in two of the scripted classrooms because the teachers could not afford to give up the time. However in the spring, I was invited to interview children in those classes during the afternoon, after the completion of the language arts block. Table 5.8 indicates the percentages of student responses per question.
150
Table 5.8 Students' Responses to Interview Questions Reported as Percentages Can Good Reader Access to Books Knows Likes Most About Reading Likes Least About Name a Someone Reading Who Likes to Favorite Book Read Categorized Yes Sort No Class School Public Book Books At At Learn Story Pictures Fun Other Nothing Hard Boring Other elements words Student of library library library store at School Home Responses home Nonscripted 85 Fall Responses (N=27 15 girls/12 boys) Scripted Fall 86
15
0
67
93
70
48
96
89
96
96
37
19
15
26
3
63
26
0
11
0
14
71
0
43
29
100
100
100
100
71
0
29
0
0
43
43
0
14
7
3
62
93
76
48
90
97
97
93
45
20
14
14
7
69
10
7
14
12
0
46
67
29
54
83
75
79
96
50
8
13
29
0
58
21
48
13
Responses (N=7 3 girls/4 boys) Nonscripted 90 Spring Responses (N=29 13 girls/16 boys) 88 Scripted Spring Responses (N=24 12 girls/12 boys)
151 Student Interviews Trends in Student Attitudes Towards Reading The findings from the interviews showed some trends in connection to students’ reading attitudes, which will be discussed below. Since different children were interviewed in fall and spring, it may be hard to draw conclusions about improvements or changes from fall to spring, so instead the percentages may be averaged for the purposes of discussion. Good readers. There were similar percentages of children in both scripted and nonscripted classrooms who felt they were good readers and “sort of” good readers. However, the children in the scripted classes reported higher percentages of children who considered themselves to be poor readers. Access to books. One, perhaps surprising, finding was that a high percentage of all children, over 80%, had a selection of personal books at home to read, which is not in keeping with the stereotyped beliefs about children coming from socioeconomically disadvantaged families (Compton-Lilly, 2003). Yet, overall, the students in the scripted classes had the lowest percentages in regards to access to books. Knowing someone who likes to read. Many of the children who were interviewed could name someone at school and at home who liked to read, and many of them were read to by a family member. The students in the scripted classes had lower percentages (in the spring) than those in the nonscripted classes. Most children in both groups could name a favorite book (or favorite series). What children liked about reading. Both groups seemed to agree that the reason they most liked to read was in order to learn something. The second highest response to
152 this question for the nonscripted students was “fun” in the fall, but changed to “story elements” (such as plot or character) in the spring. The scripted students’ most popular second response to the question, “What do you like most about reading?” for the fall was that they liked the pictures, and their second most frequent response in the spring was “fun.” Some of the reasons children gave that were classified as “other” in regards to the question, “What do you like most about reading?” were that they liked the particular topics or subjects of the books they read (e.g., animals), or they thought that reading was funny or easy. What children did not like about reading. When asked if there was anything they did not like about reading, most children in both groups responded “nothing,” meaning there wasn’t anything they didn’t like. More of the children in the scripted classes thought reading was boring, and didn’t like the “hard words” as compared to the children in the nonscripted classes. Some of the responses children gave for the “other” category were that they didn’t like it when their siblings made fun of them, they did not like being forced to read, and they did not like reading about a topic for which they had no interest. Summary of trends. Overall, there did not seem to be any wide gaps between the two groups of students in regards to their general feelings about reading or their ability to access books to read. Perhaps the strongest factor that differentiated the two groups pertained to what they liked least about reading. In the fall, none of the children thought reading was boring. In the spring, 7% of the children in nonscripted classes felt reading was boring, while 48% in the scripted class felt that way. This corresponds with the
153 attitude surveys, which indicate a similar drop in attitude towards reading for the students who were in scripted classes.
CHAPTER 6 SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS This chapter presents a summary of the study, along with conclusions, implications for action, and recommendations for further research. A brief review of the purpose, methodology and research questions will be included, as well as a discussion of the results presented in Chapter 5. Restatement of the Problem When the California Department of Education adopted its basic reading programs for K-6, it insured that the teacher’s manuals of these programs could tell teachers “what to teach, how to teach and when to teach” (CDE, 2005, Criteria Category 5). The CDE selected two reading programs for its 2000 adoption, and some districts and schools throughout the state require teachers to follow the adopted reading programs verbatim or by the script. Not only are teachers being required by their schools or districts to follow the lessons exactly as designed by the publishers, but many are not allowed to supplement these lessons or delete any components. The purpose of this study was to determine if teacher application of the same reading program, in this case published by Houghton Mifflin (HM), impacted first grade students’ reading ability and attitude towards reading. With the California adoption of two reading programs with the potential for scripted instruction, educators and policy makers need to consider the ramifications of requiring teachers to follow the script and its impact on young readers.
154
155 Review of the Methodology As discussed in Chapter 3, seven first grade classrooms with similar levels of students designated ELL and receiving free/reduced meals were selected for the study. These classrooms, in six schools and three districts, had teachers with more than seven years’ experience each. Four classes were classified as nonscripted because teachers had the opportunity to use the HM reading program as they chose; in three classes teachers were required to follow the script. Data were collected in order to answer the three research questions: (1) Will teacher application—scripted or nonscripted--of the same reading program significantly affect children’s ability to comprehend what they read? (2) Will the application—scripted or nonscripted--of the same reading program affect children’s attitudes towards reading? (3) How do experienced teachers feel about applying the program (scripted or not), in terms of students’ attainment of reading skills? In order to answer research question one, students took a reading comprehension assessment in the fourth and eighth month of their school year. The scores were tabulated and means compared through an Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) to control for the potential differences in students’ reading abilities at the beginning of the school year. To answer research question two, students completed a specially designed attitude survey in the fall and spring to measure their attitude towards reading. The scores were tallied and the means compared through a t-test. Observations during language arts instruction were made in all classrooms to provide qualitative data regarding the types of reading instruction that occurred, and to answer research question three, teachers were interviewed regarding their experience in using the program and their feelings about
156 following the program by the script. The results of these data were presented in Chapters 4 and 5. Findings The findings in this study suggest that there may be very little difference in student ability, and some difference in student attitude towards reading as a result of the kind of teacher application of the Houghton Mifflin reading program. Following is a review of the major findings as analyzed through the results of the three research questions. Research Question 1: Will teacher application—scripted or nonscripted--of the same reading program significantly affect children’s ability to comprehend what they read? The results of the ANCOVA indicate that using the winter ESS scores for the Gates MacGinitie test as a covariate, teacher application did not make a significant difference on students’ extended scale scores in the spring (see Table 5.2). However, there were differences in students’ grade equivalent (GE) scores, with students in the scripted classes earning a GE of 1.4 in winter and 1.6 in the spring (two months growth), whereas students in the nonscripted classes, grew four months, beginning with a GE of 1.5 in the winter to a GE of 1.9 in spring. Although GE scores cannot be used for statistical evaluation (Gunning, 2005), this is a result that warrants further study. Research Question 2: Will the application—scripted or nonscripted--of the same reading program affect children’s attitudes towards reading? According to the results of the t-test calculated for the fall scores of the attitude surveys, there were no significant differences between children’s attitudes towards reading. Since the surveys were administered during the second month of the school year,
157 this suggests that all children began school with similar attitudes towards reading. The results for the spring surveys indicated that children in the nonscripted classes had better attitudes towards reading, and the t-test results show that teacher application of the program did make a statistically significant difference regarding attitude. Research Question 3: How do experienced teachers feel about applying the program (scripted or not), in terms of students’ attainment of reading skills? Although all seven teachers felt favorably toward the program overall, six of the seven teachers stated that they would prefer to have more choice when using the HM reading program as part of their language arts instruction. These six felt that each group of students had different needs, and the teachers said that they would prefer to select the components of the program that most suited their students, and be able to rearrange the order of the lessons as needed. Furthermore, these six teachers felt that the writing component of the program was weak and needed supplementation or revision. Only one of the seven teachers stated that she preferred to use the program in its entirety, as presented by the publishers, and would not make any changes to the components, order, or writing portion. The following sections discuss the results of the different findings in view of the particular classroom contexts, and a consideration of whether the type of instruction children received impacted their reading attitudes and abilities. Conclusions and Discussion Reading Comprehension Scores Reconsidered One conclusion that may be drawn from an examination of the results reported for Research Question 1, that children in nonscripted classes made the same growth on a
158 reading comprehension assessment as did children in scripted classes, suggests that teacher application of the same reading program may not make a significant difference in students’ reading comprehension scores. If children in both groups made similar kinds of gains, then perhaps the requirement that teachers follow the script should be waived-especially in light of the fact that children in nonscripted classes made greater gains in their Grade Equivalent (GE) scores from the winter to spring. Children in the nonscripted classes grew from a GE of 1.5 in winter to 1.9 in spring, whereas the children in the scripted classes only grew from a GE of 1.4 to 1.6 (See Table 5.2). One notable factor about teacher application is the actual instructional time teachers spent using the program. Table 5.7 reports the total percentage of time teachers used the program during the observations. Teachers in the nonscripted classes used the program less often than might have been predicted, ranging from 38% to 57%. Teachers in the scripted classes used the program from 79% to 100% of the observed time. One conclusion we may draw is that children can make the same amount of reading growth using the program for less time. Although the research group is too small to draw any generalized conclusions, this suggests that given a choice, teachers will supplement other materials and instruction during language arts time, not relying totally on the given program (Weaver, 1994). Participating teachers in this study who were in nonscripted classes rearranged lesson presentations, selected which lessons to teach (and which to delete) in order to meet their students’ needs, supplemented the HM program with other materials, and taught in combinations of whole and small groups (Weaver, 1994). One question regarding the results from Research Question 1 is whether children were at similar reading levels to begin with. An examination of the mean API scores for
159 both groups of schools (scripted and nonscripted) indicate that in fact, over a two year period, API scores were lower for the scripted schools (see Table 5.2). Although API calculations change yearly, and it is not recommended that comparisons be made from year to year (Ed Data, 2005), the scripted schools were low in both years and this trend is evident in previous years as well. Since API scores are based on the schoolwide report of state tests given to children in second through eleventh grade, the actual children in the research group had not taken the tests, but clearly the trends indicate that students from the scripted schools have had lower scores than those in the nonscripted schools . This indicates that the two groups were not at similar levels to begin with. Thus I conducted a covariance analysis to control for pre-intervention differences. However, one of the scripted schools, Victoria Elementary, had API scores that were comparable to those in the nonscripted group. The closest match taken from both years was Maturin Elementary, a school from the same district. When the spring ESS from the Gates MacGinitie assessment from just the two schools are compared, the children from Maturin Elementary scored significantly higher in their spring reading assessment, earning a mean ESS score of 425.75, as compared to the students at King who earned 372.18, with a significance of .01. Again, this is too small a sample from which to draw any general conclusions, but it does suggest the need to reexamine the efficacy of sole reliance on scripted reading instruction. Children’s Attitudes Towards Reading An examination of the results reported for Research Question 2 showed that although there were no significant differences in children’s attitudes towards reading between students in scripted and nonscripted classrooms at the beginning of the school
160 year, children in nonscripted classes had significantly higher attitudes towards reading by the end of the year. There could be many factors that could have impacted children’s attitudes towards reading aside from instructional delivery, such as the amount of reading engagement and encouragement children receive at home (Gambrell, 1996). However, based on the interviews with children about their basic reading habits, children did not seem to differ in general. Most children, in scripted and nonscripted classes alike, said they liked to read, could identify themselves as good readers and provide a reason for saying so, could identify a favorite book or topic for reading, had someone at home who read with them or liked reading, could identify a peer who liked to read, and had access to books at home for reading. Given that many of these factors affecting reading were similar, perhaps one of the key differences in children’s attitudes towards reading is a result of classroom environment (Gambrell, 1996; Guthrie and Wigfield, 2000) instructional delivery. In the nonscripted classes, children had time in class to work with peers, to rotate among learning centers, to participate in small group activities and receive individualized instruction, and to make some choices regarding their reading instruction time. According to Guthrie and Wigfield (2000), all of these activities can have a significantly positive impact on children’s motivation to read. Furthermore, the children in nonscripted classes who participated in SSR were allowed to select their own materials to read. Children could select books from the school and classroom libraries, and had more access to a range of books than children in the scripted classes. This may also have contributed to their increased positive attitudes towards reading (Krashen, 1993; Pilgreen, 2001).
161 Teachers Attitudes Towards the Houghton Mifflin Program Regarding Research Question 3, an examination of teachers’ attitudes towards the HM reading program, all seven teachers agreed that the HM program provides a lot of materials (the complaint being that there are too many lessons and materials to cover), and that overall teachers felt it was a good program. Six of the seven teachers qualified their answers, however, by claiming that the writing component was weak, and felt that if given a choice they would modify their use of the program to meet their students’ individual needs. Only one of the seven teachers felt the program was strong across the board, and would follow the program by the script even if she were not required to do so by her district. This finding coincides with a pilot study done with teachers who were using three different reading programs—Houghton Mifflin, McGraw Hill’s Open Court, and Harcourt Brace’s Signatures (Madhuri, 2003). All teachers (N=56) felt that each program had positive and negative aspects. Teachers preferred to select components of the program to include in their language arts instruction, and supplement or delete as they felt appropriate in supporting their students’ literacy growth. This coincides with Bond & Dykstra’s (1967) findings that reading programs were not enough in helping children learn to read. The researchers discovered that a combination of programs often was superior to individual reading programs, and that any single program would not be equally effective in all situations.
162 Instructional Time—What’s Going on in First Grade? Phonics Instruction An examination of Table 5.8, which lists percentages of class time engaged in different kinds of instruction, suggests some interesting trends about the current environment of reading instruction. Three of the seven teachers, two in scripted classes and one in a nonscripted class, used about 25 percent of reading instruction time teaching explicit phonics. For two of these classes, Mrs. Stockton’s and Mrs. Popovich’s classes, phonics instruction was the largest block of instructional time, larger than shared reading, practice reading or comprehension instruction. In the third class, Mrs. Juarez’s class, phonics instruction, when coupled with word recognition--which is similar to phonics in this context as children practiced phonics to read words out of the context of text—made up a total of 48 percent of reading instructional time. One conclusion that is suggested by this is that the HM reading materials themselves are heavily laden with phonics instruction. That explains how Mrs. Popovich, who followed the HM program more than any of the other nonscripted teachers although she was in a nonscripted class, had such a high percent of phonics instruction (see Table 5.8.). This is the case despite the recommendations of the National Reading Panel report (NRP) that, “phonics should not become the dominant component in a reading program, neither in the amount of time devoted to it nor in the significance attached” (NRP, 2004, p. 2-136). Another conclusion drawn from this trend in some classes is that there may be no need for such heavy reliance on explicit phonics instruction, because the children who participated in a wider variety of reading instruction scored better overall on the reading assessment.
163 Another aspect in regards to phonics instruction is not in its value overall but in its delivery. Based on the classroom observations, much of the phonics instruction presented in the HM program included drilling children with “isolated letters and sounds using flashcards, chalk or magnetic boards . . . or worksheets” (Flippo, 2001, p. 13), which according to Flippo (2001) are good ways to make learning to read difficult. In fact, this was a complaint by some of the teachers. For example, Mrs. Marino felt that it was imperative to supplement the HM program during the early units of instruction with rich literature that provided comprehension opportunities. Mrs. Ovsepyan felt that it made no sense to have comprehension questions from the decodable books, because there was no story line or characterization from which to create meaning (although she felt compelled to discuss them since the children would be faced with similar questions in their Reading First unit assessments). In fact, a body of research suggests that using predictable texts which have set patterns, rhymes and/or repeated patterns, support children in decoding text (Bridge et al., 1983; Martens and Goodman, 2005; Moustafa, 1987). Martens and Goodman (2005) found that the use of decodable texts acted as hindrances in reading fluency and accuracy. Children who read predictable texts read more efficiently. “The natural language patterns, repetitive syntactic sequences, redundancy between print and illustrations . . . supported [children] in demonstrating strategies that allowed them to integrate cues, solve problems, and predict and construct meaning” (Martens and Goodman, 2005, p. 90). On the other hand, the authors suggested that decodable texts teach readers to focus on words and graphophonic cues, not what they know about language or the world.
164 Reading Comprehension Another look at Table 5.7 reveals that in two of the scripted classes, teachers spent very little instructional time in reading comprehension activities. In Mrs. Juarez and Mrs. Stockton’s classes, only 10 and 11 percent of their reading time, respectively, included comprehension activities. For all other teachers, students received whole-class instruction in comprehension from zero to 10 percent of the time, but then students received small group comprehension instruction in their guided reading groups (ranging from 5 to 19 percent of total instructional time). Combining guided reading and comprehension instruction, teachers incorporated from 15 to 21 percent of instructional time in reading comprehension activities, which is an increase from 5% to 10%. According to the NRP, instruction in comprehension strategies supports reading comprehension, and the use of cognitive reading strategies such as graphic organizers (as seen in Mrs. Ovsepyan and Pieprzyca’s nonscripted classes with the Go-chart, Tree map and Story web), supports children in their ability to organize and comprehend textual information. Therefore, teachers should be encouraged to incorporate more of these kinds of strategies in their instruction, rather than being required to adhere so closely to the HM program and its perhaps overemphasis on phonics. The NRP cautions that teachers must be “free . . . of the expectation that they follow directions narrowly. . . . Effective reading instruction is associated more with independent teacher action than with implementation of basal text prescriptions” (NRP, 2005, pp. 4/47-48). Furthermore, the NRP states that teachers need opportunities to work with children in the context of textual reading, such as the teachers who worked with guided reading groups, to provide them with comprehension strategies as the needs arise (NRP, 2005).
165 Finally, Pressley et al. (2001) found that skill instruction—either phonics or comprehension—needs to be provided in the context of real reading situations and in response to children’s reading needs. The best teachers showing the highest student achievement integrated skills instruction with holistic activities. Students who were taught multiple skills and strategies for applying these skills, in the context of their reading and writing needs, learned to integrate and apply these skills independently (Allington, 2002b; O’Neal et al, 2004; Pressley et al., 2001; Taylor et al., 2000). Children’s Reading Motivation and Attitudes There are many classroom factors that foster children’s motivation to read (Guthrie & Wigfield, 2000), and some of these were observed in the classrooms included in this study, most notably in the nonscripted classrooms. One essential factor regarding reading motivation is access to interesting reading materials (Allington, 2002b; Krashen, 1993; O’Neal et al., 2004; Pilgreen, 2001). Access to books that were not part of the HM program was prohibited during reading instructional time in two of the scripted classes. If children in the scripted classes did have time for independent reading, they were only allowed to read materials from the program. Early in the school year, this meant children were limited to the decodable books in the HM phonics library, or decodable texts (I refrain from calling them books) that were photocopied, stapled together, and sent home for practice. In contrast, children in the nonscripted classes had more access and exposure to a wider array of books. Classroom teachers, and sometimes visitors, read aloud quality trade books, modeling good reading skills such as phrasing and expression (Gunning, 2005). The children visited the school library on a regular basis (often weekly) to select
166 books, and in one case, children also selected books from the city library’s bookmobile. Two schools in the study were connected with the Reading is Fundamental (RIF) program, and children were allowed to select free books three times during the school year. Children participated in SSR time in class, during which they could select books from the HM program, the classroom or school library, or books they brought from home (Pilgreen, 2001). This is especially important, I feel, because there were children reading far above grade level, and limiting these children who were already reading chapter books to decodable texts seems criminal. Another factor that increases reading motivation (Gambrell, 1996; Pilgreen, 2000) is providing children the opportunity to discuss the books they are reading. Children in the nonscripted classes had time during learning centers and in their guided reading groups to discuss books they were reading. Gambrell (2001) felt that a classroom environment that fosters social interaction is more likely to foster intrinsic motivation than more individualized, solitary learning environments. The environment in the scripted classes was one of teacher-dominated, whole group instruction. Although there were discussions about what was read, they always followed the format produced by the HM program, and not all of the children engaged in these whole group discussions. Students need the opportunities to work with peers and discuss the books they have read. These activities have been widely reported to raise motivation and engagement (Daniels, 2001; Pressley et al., 2001; Worthy & Roser, 2004). The current study supports these findings. Although students in both groups had almost identical scores on their attitude surveys at the beginning of their school years, students in the nonscripted classes maintained their scores, whereas students in the scripted classes had significantly lower scores by the end
167 of the year. Perhaps one explanation for this difference is classroom environment, but certainly this is a significant finding. Students who like to read tend to read more frequently, deriving all the benefits that accompany increased reading practice (Krashen, 1993). It is my opinion that this is a significant finding, and one that should be monitored closely. It is truly a disservice to provide reading instruction that diminishes students’ desire to read. Implications Throughout the history of American public education, there has been extensive controversy over reading education regarding methodology, pedagogy and curriculum, perhaps never more so than now. Over the last twenty years, reading education in California has taken some drastic turns, resulting in the current environment of controlled reading instruction through scripted reading programs. Perhaps one of the contributing factors to the increased control in reading instruction was the 1996 reform policy of classsize reduction. Due to the pre-existing shortage of credentialed teachers, many teachers with no credentials and limited or no training in reading instruction were hired to teach with emergency teaching credentials (Wexler et al., 1998). Scripted programs were one solution to this problem, although Moustafa and Land (2002) found that students in classes with new or inexperienced teachers who used these programs did not do as well on reading assessments than children in classes with similar teachers who used a nonscripted program. Nevertheless, how the programs got into the classrooms is not as much at question as how well they are providing students with quality reading instruction. This study adds to the growing body of research regarding scripted reading programs, and has
168 implications for all those responsible for reading instruction—policymakers, administrators, teachers, and parents. Implications for Policymakers Policymakers include those at the federal, state, and district levels who are responsible for policies regarding the training and hiring of teachers, and for initiating and implementing state and federal mandates. The National Council of Teachers of English’s (NCTE) legislative platform (NCTE, 2006a) advocates policies that promote high quality professional development for language arts teachers, so that they can select from a broad range of research and strategies when preparing their language arts instruction. Furthermore, the NCTE (2006a) recommends that Congress evaluate Reading First, to examine the long-term effects of the policy on children’s ability, behaviors and attitudes towards reading, and its effects on students’ skills in writing, literary study and oral language. Furthermore, the NCTE recommends that Congress compare the outcomes of programs focused on isolated skills to those with integrated approaches, especially with regards to students’ abilities to read and write a variety of texts. The NCTE cautions against the promotion of a narrow range of commercially motivated professional development programs and products, and recommends the use of high quality, locally designed programs that reflect the needs and cultures of the communities in which they are used (NCTE, 2006a). Implications for Administrators One implication for administrators is to reevaluate the requirement that teachers follow reading programs exactly by the script. In a position statement published prior to
169 the authorization of the No Child Left Behind Act, the NCTE, along with 64 other organizations, published a joint position statement. This included an attempt to urge Congress and the U.S. Department of Education to “shift the focus from packaged reading programs to initiatives that respect teachers expertise in educating all children to read and write” (NCTE, 2006b). Rather than making sure teachers adhere strictly to the program, administrators should instead make sure that children are making steady reading growth. The Reading/Language Art Framework for California (CDE, 1999) recommends that administrators: •
Are knowledgable about the English-language arts content standards and effective language arts programs. They work with teachers [emphasis added] to create a coherent plan in the school for language arts instruction that is based on assessment . . .
•
Ensure that all teachers are well trained in reading and the language arts and support teachers in their implementation of effective programs. (CDE, 1999, pp. 16-17)
Furthermore, administrators need to plan for regular professional development for teachers in their continued growth of reading instruction. The Framework (CDE, 1999) makes recommendations regarding professional development. These include teacher participation in the planning of their own professional learning, time that is allocated for educators to reflect, discuss, analyze and refine their own professional practices, and that administrators commit to ensuring support, ongoing follow-up and evaluation of professional development.
170 Implications for Teachers There are a variety of factors that lead to students’ reading success, and certainly the use of good materials is one of these factors. However, perhaps the most significant factor is the classroom teacher. “Teaching is the one process in the educational system that is designed specifically to facilitate students’ learning. . . . Much of what our society expects children to learn, they learn at school, and teaching is the activity most clearly responsible for learning” (Stigler & Hiebert, 1999, p. 3). In its position statement regarding excellent reading teachers, The International Reading Association (IRA) suggests that excellent reading teachers: •
understand how literacy develops in children
•
can assess progress and relate instruction to previous experience
•
know a variety of ways to teach reading
•
provide a range of materials and texts for children to read
•
tailor instruction to individual students. (IRA, 2006)
When teachers are required to follow a scripted reading program and are impeded from providing the kinds of quality instruction that research has shown repeatedly to work, it can be frustrating and disheartening, as Shelton (2005) discovered in her study. One point that the current study emphasizes is that if teachers are going to be made accountable for student reading success, then they should be allowed to select the kinds of instruction they deliver and the way in which it is delivered. In order to be successful in this endeavor, teachers need to be experts in the area of reading instruction, and continue to engage in professional development to keep themselves in tune with the research and practices that support their classroom instruction (IRA, 2006). This is especially
171 important for teachers who are not strong in literacy education, as mentioned by Mrs. Stockton in her argument in favor of scripted programs. Perhaps the program is a beginning for such teachers, but as the research suggests (Bond & Dykstra, 1967; Moustafa & Land, 2002; Weaver, 1994), reliance on a single program is not enough. Teachers should be strong in both assessing students’ needs, and have training in a range of research and strategies to help students address those needs (NRP, 2000a). If teachers find that some of those needs can be better met with supplemental materials, than they should be allowed, even encouraged, to use them. Implications for Teacher Educators Teacher education programs are responsible for making sure that teachers are well-prepared to work with the broad range of students they will face in their classrooms, including students with varying reading abilities and diverse language and cultural backgrounds. One area that teacher education programs can support teachers in reading instruction is by training them to evaluate their reading programs in light of their students’ needs, and how to adjust and even supplement these programs when necessary (IRA, 2003). The IRA also recommends that teacher preparation programs provide appropriate knowledge in: •
instructional strategies and materials
•
assessment, diagnosis and evaluation
•
creating a literate environment
•
opportunities for ongoing professional development. (IRA, 2003)
172 Implications for Parents Parents can assist their children in becoming strong readers by supporting literacy development in the home (National Center for Family Literacy, 2003). This can be done orally through shared time telling stories or looking at picture books and retelling the story. Parents can also read aloud to children, have children read aloud to them, and take their children to the library to select books and engage in library activities such as storytime (NCTE, 2006). Parents can model reading by reading frequently themselves, and providing children with books to read on their own (Trelease, 2001). Teachers can refer parents to online resources such as the National Center for Family Literacy (NCFL, 2003), Trelease-on-reading.com (Trelease, 2006), the NCTE’s Guideline: Read Together (NCTE, 2006), and the American Library Association (ALA, 2006). Teachers can provide family activity nights in which parents learn strategies to support their children’s literacy growth, and discuss these strategies during open house, back to school night, and parent-teacher conferences. Recommendations for Further Research The purpose of this study was to determine if teacher application of a reading program—scripted or nonscripted—made a difference in first grade students’ reading attitudes and abilities. One of the major limitations of the study is the small sample size. Seven classrooms cannot hope to represent the range and variation of teachers and classrooms, even if focused on schools with high percentages of children who are ELLs and come from socioeconomically disadvantaged homes. Further research could include multiple classrooms, comparing a broader range of students. It might also be interesting to see if there are differences in the abilities of students who come from more affluent
173 families: how might they respond to scripted instruction as compared to their peers in nonscripted classes? Another limitation of the study is the short range of time in which the study was conducted. Students took a reading comprehension test during their fourth and eighth months of first grade. This may not have been enough of a gap in time to measure what effect scripted or nonscripted reading instruction might have on comprehension and attitudes towards reading. Therefore, one recommendation would be a longitudinal study, in which children are evaluated throughout their elementary school years in terms of attitude and motivation to read. It would be particularly interesting to measure students’ reading abilities and attitudes in the upper elementary grades, to see, for example, how children do in fourth grade, where the phenomenon termed the “fourth grade slump” (Chall et al., 1990) particularly affects children from socioeconomically disadvantaged homes. Do the skills and instruction that children receive in the primary grades support them in the levels of reading comprehension necessary to succeed in the higher grades? Finally, we must consider teacher motivation and attitude when we consider scripted reading programs. One of the challenges educators face when they are required to use the script against their will is a sense of discouragement and disheartenment (Meyer, 2002). Some experienced teachers feel their professionalism is undermined and their experience discounted when they are told “when to teach, what to teach and how to teach” (Shelton, 2005). As a result, teachers are required to abandon their experience, their training and their instincts about how children learn and acquire a love for literacy, and follow a publisher’s ideas about teaching. They are not allowed to respond to individual children’s needs except during the “universal access” time, a brief time
174 allotted to teachers for “individual help.” Provided that these publishers have accounted for the research that states that children do need explicit skills instruction (Adams, 1990; Chall, 1967), there is no research that this researcher could find that suggests that if a teacher follows a script, children will learn to read or love to read. In California, one of the goals in the Reading/Language Arts framework is that all children acquire a “lifelong love of reading” (CDE, 1999), it is questionable that that will happen through scripted reading programs alone.
175 References Adams, M. (1990). Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Allington, R. L. (2000). How to improve high-stakes test scores without really improving. Issues in Education, 6, 115-125. Allington, R. L. (2001). Does state and federal reading policymaking matter? In T. Loveless (Ed.), The great curriculum debate: How should we teach reading and math? (pp. 268-298) .Washington D.C.: Brookings Institute. Allington, R. L. (2002a). Troubling times: A short historical perspective. In R. L. Allington (Ed.), Big brother and the national reading curriculum: How ideology trumped evidence (pp. 3-46). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Allington, R. L. (2002b). What I’ve learned about effective reading instruction from a decade of studying exemplary elementary classroom teachers. Phi Delta Kappan, 83, 740-747. Allington, R. L., & Woodside-Jiron, H. (2002). Decodable text in beginning reading: Are mandates and policy based on research? In R. L. Allington (Ed.) Big brother and the national reading curriculum: How ideology trumped evidence (pp.195 216). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Almasi, J. (1995). The nature of fourth graders’ sociocognitive conflicts in peer led and teacher-led discussions of literature. Reading Research Quarterly, 30, 314-351. American Library Association (2006). Homepage of the ALA. Retrieved March 20, 2006, from http://www.ala.org/
176 Baumann, J., Hoffman, J., Moon, J., & Duffy-Hester, A. (1998). Where are teachers’ voices in the phonics/whole language debate? Results from a survey of U.S. elementary classroom teachers. The Reading Teacher, 51, 636-650. Berliner, D., & Biddle, J. (1995). The manufactured crisis: Myths, fraud, and the attack on America’s public schools. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Bond, G. L., & Dykstra, R. (1967). First-grade reading studies. Reading Research Quarterly, 2, 9-142. Boyd, W.L., & Mitchell, D.E. (2001). The politics of the reading wars. In T. Loveless (Ed.) The great curriculum debate: How should we teach reading and math? (pp. 299341). Washington, DC: Brookings Institute. Brandt, R. (1989). On curriculum in California: A conversation with Bill Honig. Educational Leadership, 47, 10-13. Bridge, C. A., Winograd, P. N., & Haley, D. (1983). Using predictable materials vs. preprimers to teach beginning sight words. The Reading Teacher, 36, 884-891. Bush, G.W. (2002). No child left behind act. Washington, DC. Retrieved July, 2005, rom http://www.ed.gov/nclb/landing.jhtml California Department of Education. (1987). English/language arts framework for California public schools: Kindergarten through grade twelve. Sacramento: Author. California Department of Education. (1998). English/Language Arts Content Standards for California Public Schools. Sacramento: Author.
177 California Department of Education. (1999). Reading/language arts framework for California public schools: Kindergarten through grade twelve. Sacramento: Author. California Department of Education. (2001). Message from the State Board of Education and the State Superintendent of Public Instruction. English-language arts content standards. Retrieved January 12, 2004, from http://www.cde.ca.gov/standards/reading/message.html California Department of Education. (2002). California’s reading first plan as approved by the United States department of education. Retrieved September 15, 2005, from http://www.cde.ca.gov/nclb/sr/rf/index.asp California Department of Education. (2005). Instructional materials: 2002 primary RLA/ELD adopted programs. Retrieved September 23, 2005, from http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/rl/im/ Carbo, M. (1988). Debunking the great phonics myth. Phi Delta Kappan, 70, 226-240. Carlos, L., & Kirst, M. (1997, March). California curriculum policy in the 1990s: “We don’t have to be in front to lead.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, IL. Retrieved September 25, 2005, from http://www.wested.org/policy/pubs/full_text/pb_ft_cacuric.htm Chall, J. (1967). Learning to read: The great debate. New York: McGraw Hill. Chall, J. (1983). Learning to read: The great debate (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw Hill. Chall, J. (1996). Learning to read: The great debate (3rd ed.). FL:
178 Harcourt Brace. Chall, J., Jacobs, V., & Baldwin, L. (1990). The reading crisis: Why poor children fall behind. MA: Harvard University Press. Chrispeels, J. H. (1997). Educational policy implementation in a shifting political climate: The California experience. American Educational Research Journal, 34, 453-481. Clay, M. (2000). Running records for classroom teachers. Auckland, New Zealand: Heinemann. Compton-Lilly, C. (2003). Reading families: The literate lives of urban children. NY: Teacher’s College. Creswell, J. (2003). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Cuban, L. (2004). The blackboard and the bottom line: Why schools can’t be businesses. Cambridge, MA: Harvared University Press. Culham, R. (2003). 6 + 1 Traits of writing: The complete guide for the primary grades. NY: Teaching Resources. Cunningham, J. W. (2001). The National Reading Panel report. Reading Research Quarterly, 36, 326-335. Cunningham, P., & Allington, R. (2003). Classrooms that work: They can all read and write. Boston: Pearson. Daniels, H. (2001). Literature circles: Voice and choice in book clubs and reading groups. York, ME: Stenhouse. Delaney, A. (1997). Pearl’s first-prize plant. NY: Harpercollins.
179 Dobbs, M. (2003, November 8). Education ‘miracle’ has a math problem: Bush critics cite disputed Houston data. Washington Post. Retrieved January 19, 2004 from http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wpdyn?pagename=article&node= & contentId=A141172003Nov7¬Found=true Dressman, M. (1999). On the use and misuse of research evidence: Decoding tow states’ reading initiatives. Reading Research Quarterly, 34, pp. 258-85. Ed-Data (2005). Education Data Partnership. Retrieved December 9, 2005, from http://www.ed-data.k12.ca.us/welcome.asp Elley, W.B. (1992). How in the world do students read? Hamburg, Germany: International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. Elley, W.B. (1994). The IEA study of reading literacy: Achievement and instruction in thirty-two school systems. Great Britain: The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. Flesch, R. (1955). Why Johnny can’t read and what you can do about it. New York: Harper & Brothers. Flippo, R. (2001). Points of agreement: A display of professional unity in our field. In R. Flippo (Ed.), Reading researchers in search of common ground (pp. 7-21). Newark: DE: International Reading Association. Fountas, I., & Pinnell, G. (1996). Guided reading: Good first teaching for all children. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Freeman, D., & Freeman, Y. (1998). California reading: The pendulum swings. In K. Goodman (Ed.) In defense of good teaching: What teachers need to know about the “Reading Wars” (pp. 73-85). York, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.
180 Gambrell, L. (1996). Creating classroom cultures that foster reading motivation. The Reading Teacher, 50, 14-26. Gambrell, L. (2001). What we know about motivation to read. In R. Flippo (Ed.), Reading researchers in search of common ground (pp. 129-143). Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Garan, E. (2001). Beyond the smoke and mirrors: A critique of the National Reading Panel report on phonics. Phi Delta Kappan, 82, pp. 500-507. Garan, E. (2002). Resisting reading mandates: How to triumph with the truth. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Garan, E. (2005). Murder your darlings: A scientific response to The voice of evidence in reading research. Phi Delta Kappan, 86, 438-443. Gee, J. P. (1996}. Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses. NY: Routledge-Falmer. Goodman, K.S. (1986). What’s whole in whole language? Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Goodman, K.S. (1993). Phonics phacts. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Goodman, K.S. (1996). On reading. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Goodman, K. S. (1998). Who’s afraid of whole language? Politics, paradigms, pedagogy and the press. In K.S. Goodman (Ed.), In defense of good teaching: What teachers need to know about the “Reading Wars” (pp. 3-37). York, ME: Stenhouse Publishers. Graves, D. (2003). Writing: Teachers & children at work. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Graves, D. (1991). Build a literate classroom. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Gumperz, J. (1986). Interactional sociolinguistics in the study of schooling. In J.
181 Cook-Gumperz (Ed.), The social construction of literacy (pp. 45-68). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gunning, T. (2005). Creating literacy instruction for all students. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Guthrie, J. T., & Wigfield, A. (2000). Engagement and motivation in reading. In M. Kamil, P. Mosenthal, P. D. Pearson, & R. Barr (Eds.), Handbook of reading research, vol. 3 (pp. 403-422). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum,. Gutierrez, K., Asato, J., Pacheco, M., & Moll, L., et al. (2002). “Sounding American”: The consequences of new reforms on English language learners. Reading Research Quarterly, 37, 328-343. Retrieved February 20, 2003, from the Proquest database. Persistent URL
Gutierrez Gutierrez, K., Baquendano-Lopez, P., & Turner, M. (1997). Putting language back into language arts: When the radical middle meets the third space. Language Arts, 74, 368-377. Heubert, J. P., & Hauser, R. M. (Eds.) (1999). High stakes: Testing for tracking, promotion, and graduation. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Houston Chronicle. (2003, January 15). HISD board upholds reprimand for whistleblower. Retrieved January 19, 2004, from http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/2355818 Honig, B. (1988). The California reading initiative. The New Advocate, 1, 235-241.
182 Honig, B., Alexander, F., & Palmer-Wolf, D. (1996). Rewriting the tests in California. In J. Boykoff-Baron & D. Palmer-Wolf (Eds.) Performance based student assessment. 95th Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Part I. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hoyle, R., Harris, M., & Judd, C. (2002). Research methods in social relations. Stamford, CT: Thomson Learning. International Reading Association (2000). Excellent reading teachers: A position statement of the International Reading Association. Retrieved February 16, 2006, from http://www.reading.org/resources/issues/positions_excellent.html International Reading Association (2003). Investment in teacher preparation in the United States. Retrieved February 16, 2006, from http://www.reading.org/resources/issues/positions_preparation.html Jones, M. G., Jones, B. D., & Hargrove, T. (2003). The unintended consequences of highstakes testing. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Kirst, M. (2002). Swing state. Education Next. Retrieved September 26, 2005, from http://www.educationnext.org/20022/44.html Kirst, M., & Mazzeo, C. (1996). The rise, fall, and rise of state assessment in California: 1993-1996. Phi Delta Kappan, 78, 319-324. Krashen, S. (1993). The power of reading: Insights from the research. Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited. Krashen, S. (2001). More smoke and mirrors: A critique of the National Reading Panel Report on fluency. Phi Delta Kappan, 83, 119-124. Krashen, S. (2002). Whole language and the great plummet of 1987-92. Phi
183 Delta Kappan, 83, 748-753. Retrieved March 15, 2003 from the Proquest database. Krashen, S. (2005). Is in school free reading good for children? Why the National Reading Panel Report is (still) wrong. Phi Delta Kappan, 86, 32-35. Laborde, G. Z. (1984). Influencing with integrity. Palo Alto, CA: Syntony Publishing. Lapp, D., Flood, J., & Collins-Block, C. (2004). What types of assessment really inform instruction in an urban school? In D. Lapp et al (Eds.) Teaching all the children: Strategies for developing literacy in an urban setting (pp. 220-230). NY: Guilford Press. Lundberg, I. (1994). The teaching of reading. In W. B. Elley (Ed.) The IEA study of reading literacy: Achievement and instruction in thirty-two school systems (pp. 149-192). Great Britain: International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. Madhuri, M. (2003). An examination of reading instruction through three different reading programs. Unpublished manuscript, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, California. Martens, P., & Goodman, Y. (2005). The influence of decodable texts on readers strategies. In B. Altwerger (Ed.) Reading for profit: How the bottom line leaves kids behind (pp. 78-95). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. McDonnell, L. (2004). Politics, persuasion and educational testing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
184 McGill-Franzen, A. (2000). Policy and instruction: What is the relationship? In M. Kamil, P. Mosenthal, P. D. Pearson, & R. Barr (Eds.) Handbook of reading research, volume III (pp. 889-908). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. McKenna, M. C., & Kear, D. J. (1990). Measuring attitudes towards reading: A new tool for teachers. The Reading Teacher, 43, 626-630. McNeil, L. (2000). Contradictions of school reform: Educational costs of standardized testing. New York: Routledge. McNeil, L. and Valenzuela, A. (2001). The harmful impact of the TAAS system of testing in Texas: Beyond the accountability rhetoric. In G. Orfield & M. Kornhabor (Eds.), Raising standards or raising barriers? Inequality and highstakes testing in public education (pp. 127-150). New York: New Century Press. McQuillan, J. (1998). The literacy crisis: False claims, real solutions. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Meyer, R. (2002). Phonics exposed: Understanding and resisting systematic direct intense phonics instruction. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Monzo, L. (2004). Defining literacy for urban Latino youth through mandated commercial reading programs: A case study. Paper presented at the annual conference of the American Education Research Association, San Diego, CA. Moustafa, M. (1997). Beyond traditional phonics: Research discoveries and reading instruction. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Moustafa, M., & Land, R. (2002). The reading achievement of economically disadvantaged children in urban schools using Open Court vs. comparably disadvantaged children in urban schools using non-scripted reading programs
185 [Electronic version]. Urban Learning, Teaching, & Research Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association, pp. 44-53. Moustafa, M. & Land, R. (2005). Scripted reading instruction: Help or hindrance? In B. Altwerger (Ed.) Reading for profit: How the bottom line leaves kids behind (pp. 63-77). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. National Center for Education Statistics (2005). The Nation’s Report Card: National Assessment of Educational Progress (home). Institute of Education Sciences: U.S. Dept. of Education. Retrieved July 20, 2005 from http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/sitemap.asp National Center for Family Literacy, (2003). A parent’s guide to reading with your child. Retrieved March 15, 2006, from http://www.famlit.org/Resources/ReadingTips/ParentsGuide/index.cfm National Commission on Excellence in Education (1983). A nation at risk: The imperative for educational reform. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office. National Council of Teachers of English (2006a). NCTE legislative platform. Retrieved March 23 from http://www.ncte.org/announce/124239.htm National Council of Teachers of English (2006b). Position statement: Resolution on reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Retrieved February 16, 2005, from http://www.ncte.org/announce/124239.htm National Council of Teachers of English (2006c). Read together: Parents and educators working together for literacy. Retrieved March 20 from http://www.ncte.org/about/over/positions/category/read/107659.htm
186 National Reading Panel (2000a). Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching children to read: Reports of the subgroups. Washington DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. National Reading Panel (2000b). Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching children to read. Washington DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. National Reading Panel (2002). Teaching children to read (video, 2nd edition). Washington DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Nieto, S. (1999). The light in their eyes. New York: Teacher’s College Press. Ohanian, S. (1999). One size fits few: The folly of educational standards. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. O’Neal, S., Nelson, S., Gaines, L., & Valentino, A. (2004). Literacy learning for every child in an urban classroom: Can we raise scores and scholars? In D. Lapp et al. (Eds.), Teaching all the children: Strategies for developing literacy in an urban setting (pp. 153-160). NY: Guilford Press. Paris, S. (2000). Trojan horse in the schoolyard. Issues in Education, 6, 1-17. Paris, S., Roth, J., & Turner, J. (2000). Developing disillusionment: Students’ perceptions of academic achievement tests. Issues in Education, 6, 17-46. Pilgreen, J. (2001). The SSR handbook: How to organize and manage a sustained silent reading program. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook. Posnick-Goodwin, S. (2002). Scripted learning: A slap in the face? California Educator, 6, 6, 10, 14, 16. Pressley, M., Allington, R., Wharton-McDonald, R., Collins Block, C., & Mandel
187 Morrow, L. (2001). Learning to read: Lessons from exemplary first-grade classrooms. New York: Guildford Press. Purcell-Gates, V. (2002) “. . . As soon as she opened her mouth!”: Issues of language, literacy, and power. In L. Delpit & J. Kilgour -Dowdy (Eds.), The skin that we speak (pp. 121-141). New York: The New Press. Ravitch, D. (1995). National standards in American education: A citizen’s guide. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution. Ravitch, D. (2001). It’s time to stop the war. In T. Loveless (Ed.) The great curriculum debate: How should we teach reading and math? (pp. 210-226). Washington D.C.: Brookings Institute. Riverside Publishing (2000a). Gates MacGinitie reading tests, level 1, form S. Itasca, IL. Riverside Publishing (2000b). Gates MacGinitie reading tests: Directions for administration. Itasca, IL. Riverside Publishing (2004). Gates MacGinitie reading tests support. Retrieved December 22, 2005, from http://www.riverpub.com/products/group/gmrt4/support.html Rosenblatt, L. (2005). Making meaning with texts: Selected essays. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Samway, L.D., Pease-Alvarez, L. (2005). Teachers’ perspectives on Open Court. In B. Altwerger (Ed)., Reading for profit: How the bottom line leaves kids behind (pp. 142-155). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Savage, J. (2004). Sound it out: Phonics in a comprehensive reading program. Boston: McGraw Hill.
188 Shanahan, T. (2003). Research-based reading instruction: Myths about the National Reading Panel report [Electronic version]. The Reading Teacher, 56, 646-656. Retrieved July 26, 2005 from Proquest database. Document URL: http://0www.umi.com.garfield.ulv.edu/pqdweb?did=322947221&sid=2&Fmt=4& clientId=11819&RQT=309&VName=PQD Shanahan, T. (2004). Critiques of the National Reading Panel Report: Their implications for research, policy, and practice. In P. McCardle & V. Chhabra (Eds.), The voice of evidence in reading research (pp. 235-265). Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes. Shelton, N.R. (2005). First do no harm: Teachers’ reactions to mandated reading mastery. In B. Altwerger (Ed.) Reading for profit: How the bottom line leaves kids behind (pp. 184-198). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Silvaroli, N., & Wheelock, W. (2003). Classroom reading inventory. NY: McGraw Hill. Slayton, J. (2003). Do as I say, not as I do: The misuse of structured reading programs. Paper presented at the annual conference of the American Education Research Association, Chicago, IL. Smith, F. (2004). Understanding reading. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Smith, N.B. (2002). American reading instruction. Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Sopris West (2005). Step up to writing. Retrieved November 28, 2005 from http://www.stepuptowriting.com/default.asp Stigler, J., & Hiebert, J. (1999). The teaching gap. NY: The Free Press.
189 Taylor, B. M., Pearson, P. D., Clark, K., Walpole, S. (2000). Effective schools and accomplished teachers: Lessons about primary-grade reading instruction in low income schools. The Elementary School Journal, 101, 121-165. Thinking maps (2004). Retrieved November 4, 2005 from http://www.thinkingmaps.com/ Trelease, J. (2001). The read aloud handbook. NY: Penguin. Trelease, J. (2004). Two researchers chase the facts about Open Court and California reading scores. Retrieved January 20, 2004, from http://www.treleaseon-reading.com/whatsnu_jfriday.html Trelease, J. (2006). Trelease-on-reading.com. Retrieved March 20, 2006, from http://www.trelease-on-reading.com/default.html Wardle, F. (2003). Introduction to early childhood education: A multidimensional approach to child-centered care and learning. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Weaver, C. (1990). Understanding whole language: From principles to practice. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Weaver, C. (1994). Reading process and practice: From socio-psycholinguistics to whole language. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Wexler, E., Izu, J., Carlos, L, Fuller, B., Hayward, G., & Kirst, M. (1998). California’ class size reduction: Implications for equity, practice and implementation. PACE WestEd. Retrieved February 16, 2006 from http://www.wested.org/cs/we/view/rs/118 Williams, L. (1988). The little old lady who was not afraid of anything. NY: HarperTrophy.
191 APPENDIX A Student Attitude Survey, “How do you feel about reading?”
192
193
194
195
196
APPENDIX B-Student Interview Protocol
197
Name ___________ Date _______ Teacher __________ School _____________ 1. Do you think you are a good reader? What makes you think so?
2. Where do you get the books that you read (examples provided): _____classroom library _____school library _____book order forms from your teacher _____public library _____bookstore _____other 3. Do you know anyone at home or school who likes to read? Who?
4. Do you have a favorite book? What is it?
5. What do you like most about reading?
6. Is there anything that you do not like about reading?
198
APPENDIX C-Consent Forms
199
Informed Consent Form for Teachers Comparing Reading Instruction in Scripted and Nonscripted First Grade Classrooms You are being asked to participate in a research project conducted by Marga Madhuri in the School of Education, Claremont Graduate University (CGU).You are being asked because you are an experienced first grade teacher who can provide insights into the application of the Houghton Mifflin reading program. PURPOSE: The purpose of this study is to examine student and teacher attitudes, and student ability levels, in classrooms that use Houghton Mifflin exactly as prescribed by the teacher’s manual as compared to classrooms that are more flexible in their application of the reading program. PARTICIPATION: You will be asked to allow me to observe your language arts instruction approximately once per month until you have completed unit eight in the Houghton Mifflin program. I ask that you allow me to give your students two Reading Attitude Surveys, once at the beginning of the school year, and once at the end of unit eight. I plan to randomly select students for short interviews about reading during the course of my observations. I will also ask you some questions about the Houghton Mifflin reading program and its implementation in your school. I will ask students to take the Gates McGinitie reading comprehension assessement midyear and at the end of the year, and may collect writing samples. I expect your direct participation to take about one hour, as well as the hours in which I will observe you in your language arts instruction (approximating 14 hours). RISKS & BENEFITS: The potential risks associated with this study are that your students will be answering questions during class time, and this may detract slightly from time to complete their work. Furthermore, your students may be uncomfortable talking to a person who is not their regular teacher. I expect the project to benefit you by giving your students a chance to consider themselves as readers, and self-reflect on their reading motivation, ability and needs. Furthermore, you will benefit by having information about how to help motivate your students to become better readers. In addition, I expect this research to benefit the educational field and society as a whole by providing information about current reading practices to see if today’s reading instruction supports children’s reading skills and motivation to read. VOLUNTARY PARTICIPATION: Please understand that participation is completely voluntary. Your decision whether or not to participate will in no way affect your current or future relationship with CGU or its faculty, students, or staff. You have the right to withdraw from the research at any time without penalty. You also have the right to refuse to answer any question(s) for any reason, without penalty.
200
CONFIDENTIALITY: Your individual privacy will be maintained in all publications or presentations resulting from this study. Your name, and the name of your school and district (as well as your students) will be coded, and all information will remain confidential. Individuals will be referred to by pseudonyms if they are mentioned in the final research document or any publications that may follow from the study. All data and records will be kept on my personal computer, and will not be accessible to anyone else. If you have any questions or would like additional information about this research, please contact me at 909.593.3511 X4673 or [email protected]. You can also contact my research advisor, Dr. David Drew, at 909.621.8075. The CGU Institutional Review Board, which is administered through the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs (ORSP), has approved this project. You may also contact ORSP at (909) 607-9406 with any questions. A signed copy of this consent form will be given to you. I understand the above information and have had all of my questions about participation on this research project answered. I voluntarily consent to participate in this research. Signature of Participant ________________________________ Date ________ Printed Name of Participant _____________________________ Signature of Researcher ________________________________ Date ________
201 Parent Consent Form for Reading Research Project Your first grader, ___________________, is being asked to participate in a research project conducted by Marga Madhuri, a doctoral student from the School of Education at Claremont Graduate University (CGU). You are being asked because your child is a student in Ms. _____________’s class, and she agreed, with district permission, to allow Ms. Madhuri to conduct this study. PURPOSE: The purpose of this study is to determine how children in first grade feel about reading. The researcher also wants to examine the increase in children’s scores on unit tests in classes that use different types of reading instruction. PARTICIPATION: Your child will be asked to answer some questions on a reading survey both at the beginning and middle of the school year. This should take a total of 20 minutes (10 minutes per survey). Ms. Madhuri will give your child the Gates McGinitie reading comprehension assessment and use the scores in the study. Your child may have the opportunity to discuss his/her feelings about reading, submit examples of his/her writing, and to continue in the study throughout elementary and middle school. RISKS & BENEFITS: The potential risks associated with this study are that your child will be answering questions and taking the reading assessment during class time, and this may detract slightly from time to complete his/her work. Furthermore, your child may be uncomfortable talking to a person who is not his/her regular teacher. The project may benefit your child by giving your child a chance to consider him/herself as a reader, and self-reflect on his/her reading motivation, ability and needs. Furthermore, the teacher will benefit by having information about how your child’s reading ability, and can your child to become a better reader. In addition, this research may benefit the educational field and society as a whole by providing information about current reading practices to see if today’s reading instruction supports children’s reading skills and motivation to read. COMPENSATION: There will be no compensation for your child’s participation in the study.
202 VOLUNTARY PARTICIPATION: Please understand that participation is completely voluntary. Your decision whether or not to allow your child to participate will in no way affect his/her current or future relationship with ____________ Elementary School or its faculty, students, or staff. You have the right to withdraw your child from the research at any time without penalty. Your child also has the right to refuse to answer any question(s) for any reason, without penalty.
CONFIDENTIALITY: You and your child’s individual privacy will be maintained in all publications or presentations resulting from this study. Pseudonyms will be selected for the names of your child, teacher and school when names are used in the final report or for publication. In order to preserve the confidentiality of your responses, the researcher will create a coding system in which each child will be assigned a number. If you have any questions or would like additional information about this research, please contact Marga Madhuri (909) 593-3511 Ext. 4673 or [email protected]. You can also contact the researcher’s advisor, Dr. David Drew, at (909) 621-8075 or [email protected]. The CGU Institutional Review Board, which is administered through the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs (ORSP), has approved this project. You may also contact ORSP at (909) 607-9406 with any questions. A signed copy of this consent form will be given to you if you request it. I understand the above information and have had all of my questions about participation on this research project answered. I voluntarily consent to participate in this research. Signature of Parent/Guardian __________________________Date ______ Printed Name of Parent/Guardian _____________________________ Signature of Researcher __________________________Date______ (Check one) ____ Please give me a copy of this form ____I do not need a copy of this form
203
Informed Assent Form for Reading Research Project My name is Ms. Marga and I am from the School of Education at Claremont Graduate University. I am asking you to participate in this research study because you are in Ms. ______________’s class, and she invited me to come to your class.
PURPOSE: In this study, I am trying to learn more about how first graders learn to read, and about how first graders feel about reading.
PARTICIPATION: Twice this year you are going to answer some questions about reading. This should take about 10 minutes now, and 10 minutes later in the school year. I will ask you to take two reading tests to see how much you grow as a reader. You may be chosen to talk to me about how you feel about reading, turn in samples of your writing, and to continue your participation in the study in later years throughout elementary and middle school.
RISKS & BENEFITS: The only risk in answering these questions is that it may take time away from your regular work. You may like it because you may want to talk about reading and see for yourself how you feel about it.
204
VOLUNTARY PARTICIPATION: I have already asked your parents if it is ok for me to ask you to take part in this study. Even though your parents said I could ask you, you still get to decide if you want to be in this research study. You can also talk with your parents, grandparents, and teachers (or other adults if appropriate) before deciding whether or not to take part. No one will be upset if you do not want to participate or if you change your mind later and want to stop. You can also skip any of the questions you do not want to answer. You can ask questions now or whenever you wish. If you want to, you may call me at 909-593-3511, extension 4673. Please sign your name below if you agree to be part of my study.
Printed Name of Participant ___________________________ Date _______
Signature of Researcher _________________________ Date __________
205 APPENDIX D-Teacher Interview Protocol
206
Teacher Interview Protocol 1. Overall, how do you feel about the Houghton Mifflin program?
2. Would you (or do you) like to follow the program exactly as scripted? Why or why not?
3. What is your opinion of the writing component included with the Houghton Mifflin program?
4. Do you supplement the program with outside materials? If so, what kind?
5. Do you incorporate Sustained Silent Reading into your regular class schedule?
6. What kind of access do children have to books? Do you visit the school library on a regular basis? Do they have access to the books in the classroom library? 