Reading and Integrated Literacy Strategies (RAILS)

This article was downloaded by: [Old Dominion University] On: 17 December 2012, At: 07:40 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk (JESPAR) Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hjsp20

Reading and Integrated Literacy Strategies (RAILS): An Integrated Approach to Early Reading a

a

Robert J. Stevens , Peggy N. Van Meter , Joanna a

a

b

Garner , Nicholas Warcholak , Cindy Bochna & Tracey Hall

c

a

Department of Educational Psychology, School Psychology, and Special Education, The Pennsylvania State University, b

Research and Evaluation Mesa Public Schools, Mesa, AZ c

Center for Applied Special Technology Wakefield, MA Version of record first published: 04 Nov 2008.

To cite this article: Robert J. Stevens, Peggy N. Van Meter, Joanna Garner, Nicholas Warcholak, Cindy Bochna & Tracey Hall (2008): Reading and Integrated Literacy Strategies (RAILS): An Integrated Approach to Early Reading, Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk (JESPAR), 13:4, 357-380 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10824660802427611

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/termsand-conditions

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.

Downloaded by [Old Dominion University] at 07:40 17 December 2012

The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.


Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk, 13:357–380, 2008 Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1082-4669 print/1532-7671 online DOI: 10.1080/10824660802427611

Reading and Integrated Literacy Strategies (RAILS): An Integrated Approach to Early Reading Robert J. Stevens, Peggy N. Van Meter, Joanna Garner, and Nicholas Warcholak Department of Educational Psychology, School Psychology, and Special Education, The Pennsylvania State University

Cindy Bochna Research and Evaluation Mesa Public Schools, Mesa, AZ

Tracey Hall Center for Applied Special Technology Wakefield, MA

The goal of this project was to develop and test the efficacy of a research-based early reading program that provided integrated reading instruction in kindergarten through 2nd grade. The Reading and Integrated Literacy Strategies (RAILS) program provided integrated instruction in word reading, vocabulary development, and comprehension to students in regular and self-contained special education classes in 2 schools serving low-income populations. Teachers provided explicit instruction in the alphabetic principle, phonemic analysis, word reading, vocabulary development, listening comprehension, and reading comprehension. Classes were organized so students received 2 periods of reading instruction daily, a longer morning period of instruction and a shorter afternoon review of instruction. The students in the RAILS program had significantly higher performance on standardized reading and language achievement tests, as well as on individually administered tests of phonemic awareness and reading fluency. The implications

Requests for reprints should be sent to: Robert J. Stevens, 202 CEDAR Building, Penn State University, University Park, PA 16802. E-mail: [email protected]

357

358

STEVENS ET AL.


for research-based instructional practice that integrates instruction in word reading, vocabulary, and comprehension are discussed.

One of the greatest challenges facing educators today is the design of effective instruction for children at risk of reading failure, or those already struggling with learning to read. In recent years, there has been general agreement that these children will benefit from neither whole language nor phonics instruction alone, but rather instruction that is balanced. Furthermore, within this balanced structure, instruction should be explicit, intensive, and planful (O’Connor, 2000; Zigmond, 1997). In this article, we report on an effort to follow these recommendations and design an effective reading program for children at risk of reading failure. This program, labeled Reading and Integrated Literacy Strategies (RAILS), was implemented in both general and special education classrooms in kindergarten through second grade. Similar to other views of effective reading instruction (e.g., Cunningham & Hall, 1998; Stahl, 1998b), when developing the RAILS program, we were concerned about the components of the instructional program that must be present to achieve balance across the curriculum. In addition, at the urging of several reading educators (e.g., Pearson, Raphael, Benson, & Madda, 2007; Reutzel, 2007), we were concerned with how these components could be blended to support instruction that would be ‘‘more than the sum of its parts’’ (Pressley, 2006, p. 1). As a result, a unique contribution of the RAILS program is the attention paid to integration across curricular strands as a guiding principle for instructional design. This principle was used to align lessons so that children could readily perceive the connections across components of reading skills. In the following pages, we report on an evaluation of RAILS and use this evaluation to show a program of reading instruction that is explicitly concerned with both component balance and integration. We begin this discussion by providing the context for RAILS and giving an overview of the program. This section is followed by a review of the reading and reading education literature that most directly influenced the design of the RAILS program, as well as a more complete description of the program itself. CONTEXT AND OVERVIEW Development of RAILS began when a team of university researchers were contacted by Special Education administrators from a local school district who were seeking help with their reading program. The presenting problem was a common one: Although good readers in their schools were successfully developing their reading abilities, struggling readers were falling


READING AND INTEGRATED LITERACY STRATEGIES

359

behind. A series of discussions and visits to classrooms resulted in several determinations for the design of a new reading program. First, a new reading program needed to include methods of explicit instruction that would support learners’ acquisition of specific reading skills (Foorman, Francis, Fletchers, Schatschnieder, & Mehta, 1998). Second, we needed to develop supplemental materials and lessons to support this instruction. Third, the current reading materials needed to be reorganized to support instruction that was more planful, systematic, and connected. Fourth, the team agreed that teachers needed an instructional program that was sequenced to allow for organized and flexible application across classrooms and age groups. And, finally, teachers could retain many of the literacy activities already in use in classrooms, but needed to refocus these to provide practice and emphasize skills covered during explicit instruction. The end result, as is detailed in forthcoming sections, was the development of the RAILS program. Designed for implementation in kindergarten through second grade, in both general and special education classrooms, this program focused on instruction in word reading, vocabulary development, comprehension, and fluency. The new curriculum materials were written so that, for any given day, the classroom teacher could access newly written phonics and vocabulary lessons and an index to indicate which basal or authentic text should accompany those lessons. In addition, scripts were provided to support delivery of instruction as teachers learned the explicit instruction methods. The design of these lessons, the specific reading abilities that were addressed, and the connections across these were informed by the literature on effective reading instruction.

PRINCIPLES OF AN EFFECTIVE READING PROGRAM In the literature on reading instruction, there is consensus that effective instructional programs are balanced (e.g., Pressley, Rankin, & Yokoi, 1996; Pressley, Wharton-McDonald, & Hampston, 2006; Reutzel, 1998). In attempting to understand what balance is, however, researchers have offered several different points of view (Van Meter, Stevens, & Garner, 2002). Stahl (1998a) for example, has argued that reading instruction should pursue the three goals of accurate and automatic word reading, text comprehension, and an appreciation of and love for reading. In this conception, balance must be achieved not within a lesson or even a day but rather over time as children’s developing skills lead to changes in instructional needs. Fitzgerald (1999) offered a description of balance that is focused on the philosophy that underlies the desire for a balanced reading curriculum. She argued that balance must be understood as a set of beliefs rather than


360

STEVENS ET AL.

as a set of specific practices. Among these is the belief that, to acquire conventional literacy skills, children must acquire varied and equally important types of knowledge. Similar to Stahl’s (1998a) list of goals, this knowledge includes the phonological knowledge necessary for word reading, comprehension knowledge needed to understand text, and a ‘‘love of reading’’ (Fitzgerald, 1999, p. 103). Pearson and colleagues (e.g., Pearson & Raphael, 2003; Pearson et al., 2007) described balance as a series of independent elements (e.g., teacher’s role, skill contextualization, etc.), each of which varies along context and content continua from one extreme end to the other (e.g., maximum control, minimum control, etc.). According to this perspective, balance is achieved through flexible coordination of these elements. Pearson et al. (2007) emphasized that balance cannot be achieved by thinking in terms of single dimensions of reading instruction. Rather, balance can only result through an understanding that effective instruction is multidimensional. As these three examples illustrate, there are differences in how respective authors understand and describe balanced instruction. Despite these differences, there is also convergence around critical aspects of what defines this instruction. First, balanced reading programs provide instruction that targets a number of specific reading abilities (Reutzel, 1998; WhartonMcDonald, Pressley, & Hampston, 1998). Common among these is instruction aimed at teaching developmentally appropriate word reading skills (e.g., rhyming, segmentation, etc.), promoting vocabulary growth, teaching text comprehension, and building fluency. Second, teachers who use balanced programs employ different methods of instruction. Of particular importance for struggling readers and children at risk for reading failure, these methods include explicit instruction in critical reading skills such as sounding out words and using comprehension strategies. Taken together, these descriptions indicate that balanced literacy programs provide instruction on a variety of reading abilities using a variety of teaching methods. What these descriptions do not inform, however, is precisely how these varieties can be combined so that the program is not only balanced, but also coherent across components. This missing element is particularly troublesome, given the warnings of several reading educators that, in striving to achieve balance, one must be careful not to create a curriculum that is a hodgepodge of instructional activities (Pressley, 2006; Reutzel, 1998). As Stahl (1998b) so eloquently phrased it, one must be careful not to create ‘‘Frankenclasses’’ (p. 32). In the RAILS program, we addressed this need by paying particular attention to how instruction was integrated throughout the day and across program components. In the section that follows, we describe the RAILS program in more detail. Included are explanations of the structural changes


361

made to classrooms, the curricular strands of the RAILS program, the cycle of instruction, and a description of some extension activities that complimented direct instruction lessons. Also included in this program description is a section detailing what we mean by integration, why it is important, and how this need was addressed in the RAILS program.


READING AND INTEGRATED LITERACY STRATEGIES (RAILS) Structural Change Recent research has shown that allocating more time for reading instruction is particularly effective for students in low-achieving schools or schools that serve a high percentage of disadvantaged families (Pinnell, DeFord, & Lyons, 1988; Slavin, 1999). Commensurate with those recommendations, the instructional day in RAILS classrooms was reconfigured to include two reading periods. There was a typical reading period of 60 to 90 min in the morning and a second, shorter reading period in the afternoon of approximately 20 min. Teachers provided initial instruction and practice on decoding, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension, as described in the following, during the morning reading time. These lessons were primarily done in whole-class settings. During afternoon reading periods, teachers provided additional practice on the skills and activities taught in the morning. Typically, this involved review and practice of new decoding skills and vocabulary words. Unlike previous research that used afternoon reading periods for tutoring (e.g., Madden, Slavin, Karweit, Dolan, & Wasik, 1993; Pinnell et al., 1988), the RAILS program provided all students with additional literacy practice in the afternoon. This was seen as a logistically simpler way to address the need of this at-risk population for additional practice to help them retain what they had been taught that day.

Curricular Strands There were four curricular strands in the RAILS program; these addressed the specific reading abilities of word reading, vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency. The emphasis across these strands changed from kindergarten through second grade as a response to the developing skills and changing instructional needs of the students. Within the word reading strand, for example, lessons included explicit instruction on phonemic awareness skills such as segmenting and blending. For more advanced students, however, instruction in this strand emphasized decoding skills. Additionally, within the comprehension strand, as children began reading meaningful stories,

362

STEVENS ET AL.


teachers eliminated the listening comprehension component, spending more time on comprehension during students’ independent story reading. Word reading. To read words, children must be able to break the orthographic code (Adams, 1990; Goswami, 2000). To do so, they must be aware of the sound structure of words and the correspondence between visual letters and phonemic sounds. In addition, as word and phonemic knowledge increases, children must learn strategies for sounding out and decoding words. In the RAILS program, the word reading strand was taught through direct instruction on the alphabetic principle and phonemic analysis and word reading. Alphabetic principle. The alphabetic principle, an understanding that letters correspond to sounds in words, is an important prerequisite skill on which phonemic analysis builds (Adams, 1990; Ehri, 1991). Although many children begin kindergarten with a firm understanding of the alphabetic principle, those at risk of reading failure may lack this foundational knowledge and are in need of explicit instruction to build this important skill area (Ehri & McCormick, 1998). In the RAILS program, instruction in kindergarten classrooms began with lessons to build this knowledge. In these lessons, children were shown a visual symbol for each letter and taught the most frequent phonetic sound corresponding to the letter. Initial lessons focused on high frequency letters so that students could begin applying what they learned in phonemic analysis and word reading activities. As knowledge of individual letters built over time, these lessons began to include common blends such as th-. Lessons included explicit instruction in which the teacher presented the letter and modeled the sound. Children then practiced this association through choral and individual responses. Practice at discriminating the visual symbol was given by showing children a chart that contained many symbols, some of which were the target letter. As the teacher pointed to each symbol, children indicated if that symbol was the correct letter for the target phoneme. Individual letters were repeated on multiple days until children had mastered the sound–symbol relationship. In subsequent days, teachers reviewed previously taught letters to allow for additional practice. Phonemic analysis and word reading. In addition to mastering the letters of the alphabet, children also benefit from explicit instruction in the phonemic analysis skills needed to read words (National Reading Panel, 2000). This is particularly true for struggling readers (Chard, Simmons, & Kame’enui, 1998). In the RAILS program, students were explicitly taught and practiced phonemic analysis skills such as segmenting and blending. As students mastered sound–symbol relations, the lessons contextualized the skills in simple word reading activities. From simple words, the lessons


363


proceeded to reading simple stories with controlled vocabulary. The phonemic analysis instruction was a primary component in kindergarten and first-grade instruction. Like the instruction on individual letters, these lessons included teacher modeling and guided practice with review opportunities following on subsequent days. By second grade, students had mastered most of the necessary phonemic analysis and word attack skills and the instruction shifted to more emphasis on reading fluency.

COMPREHENSION Clearly, the ability to comprehend connected texts is a critical part of skilled reading. In developing comprehension skills, children learn that the stories they read have a predictable structure and that knowledge of this structure can be applied to aid comprehension (Brown, 1981; Oakhill & Yuill, 1996). Importantly, it is also in the context of experiencing connected texts that children have the opportunity to see the purpose of their reading skills. Although many children experience rich, connected texts in the home environment, many struggling and at-risk readers come from families in which there is little reading or discussion of connected text (e.g., Yaden, Rowe, & MacGillivray, 2000). In the RAILS program, experience with text was emphasized and used as the context in which children learned about comprehension processes. This strand of the program began with listening comprehension in kindergarten classrooms and moved to reading comprehension by second grade. Every kindergarten, first grade, and special education RAILS classroom was provided with a set of authentic children’s storybooks. These trade books were selected to support instruction in both the (listening) comprehension and vocabulary strands. The characteristics of these stories and how they were used are described in the following sections. Listening comprehension. Daily, during kindergarten and first grade, the teacher read children’s literature (trade books) aloud to the students. In the context of these readings, teachers provided explicit instruction on the elements of narrative story structure and modeled the use of this structure knowledge in story comprehension. By teaching children about story structure in the absence of attentional demands to decode words and decipher syntax, it was believed that children would be able to allocate resources to the application of the structure strategy and story comprehension. In this strand of the program, teachers explicitly taught the elements of narrative structure. These elements were character, main character, setting, problem, and solution. The teachers taught the element by explicitly defining the element and how students could identify it in a story. During initial


364

STEVENS ET AL.

lessons, teachers read short, contrived texts in which the target element was salient. Teachers used these texts to model how to identify the element in context. Students were also given guided practice on additional contrived texts. After an element had been introduced, subsequent lessons included reviews of the defining features. Each day, the teacher followed the lessons with orally reading children’s stories and discussing the story element in the context of the story. The project staff selected specific storybooks and sequenced them to compliment instruction on structure elements. Each day, the teacher read a story in which the target element (e.g., main character) was salient and provided a good opportunity for students to practice identifying the element. The teacher also embedded reviews of previously learned story elements in the discussion of the story. The goal of the instruction was also to develop generalizable comprehension skills that would aid the children when they began reading stories themselves. Reading comprehension. In the latter part of first grade and early second grade, the program emphasis shifted away from listening comprehension and increased student’s practice reading independently, focusing on reading comprehension as the students began reading stories on their own. In these reading comprehension lessons, the emphasis was placed on children’s application of comprehension processes in the context of reading. These lessons were structured by questions that students would discuss and answer with a partner. (See sections related to fluency, following, for a more extensive explanation of partner reading.) The questions focused on both elements of the narrative structure and meaningful parts of the story. After children had read a story with their partner, they read and discussed questions about what they had read. As the stories became longer and more sophisticated, the students stopped halfway through the story to discuss questions about what happened in the first part of the story and make predictions about how the story might end. After reading the second part of the story, the students discussed what happened and how the problem in the story was solved. The goal of the reading comprehension activities was to improve children’s comprehension of what they had read by discussing the story with a peer. The activities were also intended to promote active comprehension. Vocabulary development. Vocabulary knowledge is another critical aspect of skilled reading. Not only is knowing the meaning of the words necessary to understand connected text, this knowledge can also help children to decode words that are unfamiliar in their printed form (Adams, 1990). Although the rate of children’s vocabulary growth far outpaces the



365

number of words that can be taught through explicit instruction (e.g., Nagy & Scott, 2000), children’s vocabulary knowledge does benefit from the inclusion of specific vocabulary instruction (Beck & McKeown, 2007). In the RAILS program, teachers provided explicit instruction on vocabulary with a focus on concept development. Early lessons (i.e., those at the kindergarten level) taught vocabulary words common to school learning tasks. Later vocabulary lessons explicitly taught vocabulary taken from the context of stories children were going to read, either during listening or reading comprehension lessons. For each story that was read in the comprehension strand, two to three words were selected for vocabulary instruction. To identify words appropriate for this instruction, we considered several criteria: (a) children were unlikely to know the meaning of the word, (b) the meaning of the word played an important part in understanding the story, and (c) the relationship between the part of the text in which the word appeared and elements of the narrative structure. In addition, we looked for words that contained properties that complimented instruction in the word reading strand. Obviously, it was not possible to always locate words that matched each of these criteria, but efforts were made to match as many as possible. The teachers taught vocabulary explicitly by stating the word and providing the definition. Children practiced the word and definition through group and individual turns. As the word was taught, teachers showed the word in print to help children build connections between oral and visual forms of the word. As the lesson progressed, teachers often invited students to expand on the given definition and elaborate their understanding. When the new words were encountered in the story, children again practiced the definition and discussed the meaning of the word in the context of the story. Reading fluency. In recent years, reading educators have become increasingly aware of the need to support children’s development of reading fluency. Fluency, often described as the bridge between word reading and comprehension, involves accurate and automatic word recognition, as well as reading with expression (Rasinski, 2004). When children can read fluently, cognitive resources are freed from attention to lower level demands and can be applied toward higher level comprehension processes (Kuhn & Stahl, 2003). Although a variety of specific techniques have been proposed to promote fluency (Kuhn & Rasinski, 2007), they all share one critical feature: often and repeated practice with the reading of connected text. In the RAILS program, instruction on reading fluency began in the latter part of first grade, as soon as children began to read independently, and continued through second grade. The students engaged in partner reading, in which children read aloud to a partner while a peer listened. Students

366

STEVENS ET AL.


alternated reading and listening roles with each paragraph. The goal of the partner reading activity was to provide a high quantity of oral reading practice to help students develop reading fluency, an important element to facilitate proficient reading comprehension. Partner reading took place daily and included opportunities to reread earlier texts. This type of consistent and repeated practice is critical to help children develop the automatic skills necessary to support both fluent reading and comprehension (Kuhn & Rasinski, 2007). Curricular Integration Psychological models of the reading process typically parse apart the cognitive mechanisms involved into a series of specific reading abilities. In her seminal book Beginning to Read, for example, Adams (1990) described word reading through a series of three processes: the orthographic processor for recognizing and dealing with visual letter symbols, the phonological processor for processing phonemic sounds, and the meaning processor for handling vocabulary knowledge. Similarly, in his model of reading, Stanovich (1984, 2000) discussed the interactions between bottom–up and top–down reading processes. Although these models discuss reading through these separable abilities, equal emphasis is placed on the idea that reading requires fluent, coordinated, and integrated use of these abilities. Moreover, in learning to read, ‘‘the parts of the reading system must grow together. They must grow to and from one another’’ (Adams, 2004, p. 1221). These models greatly influenced our conceptualization of effective instruction for struggling readers. On the one hand, we knew that planful and systematic instruction was necessary to build knowledge and skills within specific reading abilities. It was in this spirit that the four curricular strands of the instructional program were developed. Just as important, however, we also believed that the structure of the instruction must support children’s understanding of how these abilities are related. Specifically, as children learn to read, the instructional environment must help them to build the internal connections that integrate the various specific abilities. Accordingly, we believed that an effective reading program must be concerned not only with the balance of children’s development across reading abilities, but also with the integration of these components (Van Meter et al., 2002). According to psychological models of reading, these connections are made at the element level. Thus, when the visual symbol for the r is connected with the phonetic representation of =r=, a link is made between orthographic and phonological processors (Adams, 1990, 2004). Furthermore, when the r is shown in the vocabulary word ripe, and the teacher says the



367

word=ripe=, connections can be made between meaning, orthography, and phonology. When ripe is encountered and explicitly pointed out in a subsequent story, children are supported in building connections between word reading, vocabulary, and comprehension processes. These connections are imperative for skilled reading as they permit children to understand how lower level reading processes (e.g., word recognition) are related to higher level reading processes (e.g., comprehension). In the development of lessons for the RAILS program, we paid particular attention to how connections across the strands could be made transparent and explicit for children. Toward that goal, lessons were organized within and between strands so that elements would match across the strands. One obvious example of this integration is the embedding of vocabulary words in the stories used as part of the comprehension strand. As noted earlier, several of the criteria that guided the selection of vocabulary words involved attention to connections between vocabulary and other reading abilities. Another way in which this goal was realized in the RAILS program involved the selection of stories in which the elements of word reading instruction would be made salient. For example, when students were learning the h sound–symbol relationship in the word reading strand, the teacher read the story The Woman Who Sold Hats during the listening comprehension strand. This integration not only contextualized what was taught, but also provided a variety of kinds of practice. Although teachers typically did not engage in explicit word reading instruction in the midst of comprehension lessons, they would point out the presence of the element and guide children in practice. Efforts such as these were carried out throughout the development of the RAILS program. In addition, teachers explicitly drew children’s attention to these connections by pointing out overlapping elements. Through this mechanism, the RAILS program supported children in developing skills across the range of specific reading abilities, as well as acquiring an understanding of the connections across these abilities. Instructional Cycle Previous research has well documented the efficacy of explicit instruction for promoting student achievement in literacy instruction, particularly for disadvantaged and low achieving students (Foorman et al., 1998; Rosenshine & Stevens, 1986). In explicit instruction, the teacher leads and directs instruction, provides systematic practice with feedback, and reteaches material when incorrect student responses indicate flaws in students’ understanding. Effective explicit instruction actively engages students


368

STEVENS ET AL.

through a high quantity of practice and increases the probability of success by providing systematic instruction and feedback. Each lesson in each curricular strand used a similar cycle of explicit instruction. The teacher initiated the instructional activity by presenting new information to the students (e.g., introducing vocabulary words). The teacher engaged students in guided practice following the presentation, guiding them in their initial use of the new instruction and providing feedback when necessary. Once students exhibited some degree of understanding of the new skills (as noted by correct responses during practice), they typically moved on to more independent practice. For example, older students engaged in follow-up activities (as described) at their seats, typically working with a peer. Extension Activities In addition to the explicit instruction lessons described with curricular strands, teachers in RAILS classrooms were also encouraged to engage students in extension activities that provided opportunities for children to use and practice their developing skills in different contexts. These extensions involved more student-directed activities and engagement in connected literacy behaviors. In one activity that was described for teachers, for example, children practiced using new vocabulary words and the elements of narrative structure to create their own stories. In addition, classroom teachers were encouraged to retain other literacy activities that were a part of their more traditional instruction. In classrooms, for example, there were free reading periods and some of the teachers had audiotapes so that children could read along in story books. Classroom teachers also involved children in typical literacy activities such as reviewing the morning message or writing letters home. Although the RAILS program emphasized the explicit instruction lessons described within curricular strands, teachers were encouraged to incorporate extension activities whenever possible to enrich children’s literacy experiences.

METHOD Population The participating schools were three low-achieving schools in a small city school district in central Pennsylvania. The school district served a mix of working class and lower class families, with 45.8% of the students in the district receiving free or reduced-price lunch. The three participating schools

369


TABLE 1 Initial Reading and Language Ability (Grade Equivalent Score) RAILS


Grade Kindergarten First Second Primary special education Intermediate special education

Comparison

Reading

Language

Reading

Language

PK K.3 2.0 PK 1.9

K.5 K.3 2.0 PK 2.1

PK K.3 2.0 PK 2.0

K.5 K.3 2.1 PK 2.2

Note. RAILS ¼ Reading and Integrated Literacy Strategies.

ranged from 61.8% to 79.5% of students in free or reduced-price lunch, averaging 70.6% of the students in the study receiving free or reduced-price lunch. The majority (94%) of students were Caucasian and spoke English as their first language. The students in the participating schools were low achieving on standardized achievement tests. The average initial achievement for both the RAILS and comparison groups was below grade level norms. Grade equivalent scores of the students’ initial achievement are presented in Table 1. Students in kindergarten through second grade and self-contained special education classrooms participated in the study. Table 2 describes the number of classes and students at each grade level in each group. Kindergarten was a half-day program, so each teacher taught two classes (except for one teacher in each group, who taught one class for a half-day).

TABLE 2 RAILS and Comparison Classes and Students by Grade RAILS Grade Kindergarten 1st 2nd Primary special education Intermediate special education Totals

Comparison

Classes

Students

Classes

Students

3 3 3 2 1 12

84 62 50 33 18 247

3 4 3 1 1 12

54 67 58 17 19 215

Note. RAILS ¼ Reading and Integrated Literacy Strategies.

370

STEVENS ET AL.


The special education classes were self-contained classes for students whose disabilities were not well accommodated in the structure of the district’s regular classrooms. Students in these classrooms were significantly below their peers in academic performance or related behaviors. The classes were comprised of children with a variety of disabilities, including severe learning disabilities, developmental disabilities, severe speech and language disabilities, and Asperger’s Syndrome. Design The study used a quasi-experimental design with matched comparison classes in both regular education and special education. To guard against treatment diffusion, assignment to condition was made at the school level. This assignment took place in a meeting between building principals and project staff. At that meeting, the three principals agreed to participate and two of the three schools were chosen to implement the experimental RAILS model in their primary classes. Thus, although teachers were not randomly assigned to condition, it was also the case that RAILS teachers were not volunteers implementing the program. During the first year of the study, RAILS was implemented in kindergarten and first-grade regular education and primary grade special education classes. In the second year, we added second-grade regular education classes and the intermediate-grade special education class. In this way, all the students in these analyses except for the kindergarten students were in the RAILS program for 2 years. The regular education kindergarten students used the RAILS program for 1 year. Table 2 indicates the number of classes and number of students at each grade level. Matched Comparison Group The three schools were of similar socioeconomic status: School 1 (RAILS) had 79.5% of students on free and reduced-price lunch, School 2 (RAILS) had 61.8% free and reduced-price lunch, and School 3 (comparison) had 70.4% free and reduced-price lunch. The classes were matched on initial reading achievement, so there were no significant differences between the RAILS and comparison groups on reading or language achievement. These achievement scores are given in more detail in the Results section. Treatments Experimental. We trained the teachers in the RAILS model during the late summer, prior to the beginning of the school year. The training lasted



371

for 2 days and included explanations of the procedures and instructions on how to use the RAILS lesson manual. During training, project staff modeled the lessons and teachers were given the opportunity to practice and receive feedback. The project provided the teachers a detailed manual that explained how to implement each component of the RAILS program. The manual and supporting material contained all of the instructional materials required to use the RAILS procedures with their district-adopted reading series. In addition, the RAILS project provided the kindergarten and first-grade teachers with a collection of trade books and lessons for implementing the listening comprehension lessons. During the first months of implementation, the project staff coached the teachers on the RAILS procedures. This involved observing the teachers during reading instruction and providing feedback to improve the quality of implementation. On average, the teachers were observed at least twice a week during the first 3 months of implementation. As the teachers became proficient, the classroom observations diminished. By the second year, the project staff observed teachers in their second year of implementation approximately twice a month. Throughout the research, the project staff conducted meetings with teachers to discuss the program and its implementation. Initially, the meetings were held monthly, but by the second year, the meetings were reduced to approximately once every 2 months. In these meetings, the discussions focused on the principles of instruction that were used in the RAILS program, answering teachers’ questions, and resolving obstacles to program implementation. Comparison. The comparison teachers used traditional reading instruction methods with the district-adopted reading series. All of the teachers in the district used the Houghton Mifflin Reading series (Cooper et al., 2001). The comparison classes relied exclusively on the series for activities and materials for their reading instruction. They followed the teacher’s manual directions for introducing stories, teaching vocabulary, and for conducting follow-up activities. The majority of the student practice activities came from the reading series workbooks and from the suggested activities in the teacher’s manual. The comparison teachers had approximately the same amount of time allocated for reading instruction and the same number of students in their classes. Measures Achievement test. The project used the Metropolitan Achievement Test, 7th Edition (Balow, Farr, & Hogan, 1992), as the pre- and posttest for the study. For kindergarten, the reading subtests included word

372

STEVENS ET AL.


recognition, auditory discrimination, visual discrimination, and letter recognition. The language subtest was receptive vocabulary (language). For first and second grade, the reading subtests were vocabulary (selecting synonyms) and comprehension, and the language subtest on receptive vocabulary. Phonemic awareness assessment. A stratified random sample of students in kindergarten and first grade were also given an individually administered, experimenter-designed assessment that measured knowledge of letter–sound relations, telescoping, segmenting words, word reading, and sentence reading. The letter–sound subtest assessed children’s ability to correctly say the sound of randomly ordered letters in a 1-min interval. If there was no response for 5 sec, it was coded as a nonresponse and treated like an error. The score on this subtest was the number of correct responses in 1 min. There were 45 letter prompts, so scores ranged from 0 to 45. The telescoping subtest assessed children’s ability to say a one-syllable word made up of three sounds correctly when given the sounds in the word. For example the examiner would say ‘‘ffff uuuu lllll,’’ to which the correct response was ‘‘full.’’ This subtest assessed student’s phonemic ability of putting sounds together into a meaningful whole. The examiner recorded the number of correct sounds in the student’s response. There were 6 prompts each with three sounds, so scores ranged from 0 to 18. The segmenting test involved saying a one syllable (3 sounds, 3 to 4 letters) word to the student. The student was to say each individual sound in the word, segmenting the word into its component phonemic parts. This subtest assessed students’ ability to break words down into their component phonemic sounds. For example, the examiner would prompt by saying ‘‘fog,’’ and the correct student response would say the three sounds in order: =f==o==g=. The examiner scored the student’s response by noting how many of the three sounds they said correctly. There were 6 words, so students’ scores ranged from 0–18 on this subtest. The word reading subtest asked students to read aloud 12 phonetically regular, one-syllable words (e.g., hip) and 10 one syllable nonwords (e.g., shoom). This subtest assessed students’ ability to read words in isolation. We included nonwords to assess students’ ability to use their phonics skills to sound out words they had not previously encountered. This component of the subtest also allowed us to differentially assess students who knew words from more whole word instruction from those that had mastered phonics skills. It was highly likely that students who learned in a wholeword approach, as opposed to a phonics approach, would be less likely to correctly read the nonwords on the subtest. If a student did not respond to any of the prompts in 5 sec, they were told to go on to the next word.



373

The student’s score on this subtest was the total number of correct responses across word and nonwords. Scores ranged from 0 to 22. The sentence reading subtest assessed students’ ability to read words aloud in the context of a meaningful sentence. Initial sentences were short and simple (e.g., ‘‘Tom can run fast.’’), and they gradually became longer and more difficult (e.g., ‘‘The dog laid down on the hard, bare ground.’’). The examiner noted any errors the child made during the oral reading. Any time the child paused for 5 sec, the examiner provided the word and it was marked as an error. The student’s score was the total number of words read correctly. There were 9 sentences ranging from 4 words to 9 words long. Scores on this subtest ranged from 0 to 67. In the analyses, the scores of the 5 subtests were added together to come up with an overall phonemic awareness score. This measure was intended as a more proximal measure of the impact of the explicit phonemic analysis and word attack instruction in RAILS. The subsample for this measure was determined by stratifying students by their initial ability, then randomly selecting 4 students from each ability level in each class to be tested. The phonemic awareness assessment was administered as a pretest in the fall and as a posttest in the spring. The interrater reliability of this measure was .91 on the pretest and .89 on the posttest. Reading fluency assessment. The reading fluency assessment was used as a posttest only. A stratified random sample of students (as described previously) in first and second grade was administered a timed oral reading assessment. The reading fluency measure was administered individually, with each student doing a 1-min timed oral reading of a passage. The passage was 247 words long. All miscues were recorded and the student’s score was the number of words read minus the number of miscues. This measure had an interrater reliability of .91.

RESULTS Because the study involved teachers in two treatments across three grade levels, we first analyzed whether there was a grade by treatment interaction, to determine if the treatment had a differential effect at different grade levels. These analyses were done using an individual-level ANOVA. The analyses indicated no significant interactions on either reading achievement; F(2,391) < 1.0, p > .10; or language; F(2,391) ¼ 1.3, p > .10. Because there were no grade-by-treatment interactions, we converted all achievement test scores to z scores and collapsed the results across grade levels. This provided more power for subsequent statistical analyses.

374

STEVENS ET AL.


Achievement Tests Pretests. The Metropolitan Achievement Test, 7th Edition (Balow et al., 1992) was used as a standardized measure of students’ reading achievement. To compare these scores across grade levels, the raw scores were converted into z scores so they could be collapsed across grade levels. An individual level ANOVA was computed on the pretest scores to determine if there were initial differences between the groups. An individual level ANOVA was used to increase the sensitivity of the analyses to identify existing pretest differences. Although the groups were initially matched, student attrition during the project may have led to differences in initial achievement of those students who remained. The analyses indicated no significant pretest differences on reading; F(1,391) ¼ 1.6; or language; F(1,391) ¼ 2.4; both p > .05. Although there were no significant differences on initial achievement, the RAILS students had lower average initial achievement than that of the comparison students, as shown in Table 3. Posttests. Initial posttest analyses were conducted using an ANCOVA with individual as the unit of analyses. Although there were no significant pretest differences, pretest scores were correlated with posttest scores and met the assumption of homogeneity of variance across conditions. Under these conditions, using pretest scores as a covariate increases the power of the analyses by reducing the error variance. The results indicated significant treatment effects on measures of reading achievement; F(1,458) ¼ 14.79, p < .001; and language achievement; F(1, 458) ¼ 14.45, p < .001. The means and effect sizes are presented in Table 3. TABLE 3 Reading and Language Achievement: Means, aStandard Deviations, and Effect Sizes RAILS Condition and test Pretest Reading Language Posttest Reading Language

Comparison

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

db

.05 .07

(1.0) (1.0)

.08 .09

(1.0) (.9)

.13 .16

.13 .12

(1.0) (1.0)

.09 .13

(1.0) (1.0)

þ.22 þ.25

Note. RAILS ¼ Reading and Integrated Literacy Strategies. a Z-score means collapsed across grade level. b Cohen’s d.



375

In this study, students were nested within classroom and classrooms (teachers) were nested within school and within treatment. In such a design, there is the potential for both teacher effects and school effects in spite of initial attempts to match groups, as described. Although there were an insufficient number of schools to adequately disentangle school effects in this study, we did use hierarchical linear modeling (HLM; Raudenbush, Bryk, & Congdon, 2000) as a way to disentangle the treatment effects from the classroom=teacher effects. The HLM analyses used classroom and treatment to predict students’ reading and language achievement test scores. The HLM analyses indicated a significant positive effect for RAILS on both reading achievement; t(22) ¼ 3.11, p ¼ .006; and language;, t(22) ¼ 3.15, p < .005. As shown in Table 3, the RAILS students scored .22 standard deviations higher on reading achievement, and .25 higher in language achievement. Given that standardized tests are designed to be stable, the magnitude of these effect sizes is of practical importance. The HLM modeling of the treatment accounted for 31% of the variance in students’ reading achievement and 54% of the variance in their language achievement. Phonemic Awareness Pretest. Phonemic awareness skills were assessed using an experimenterdesigned measure that included subtests that measured letter recognition, blending, segmentation, sentence reading, and nonsense word reading. An overall phonemic awareness measure was computed by adding the correct responses on these subtests. The pretest means and standard deviations for this measure, for both RAILS and comparison classrooms, are shown in Table 4. The phonemic awareness test was administered to students in kindergarten and first grade in the fall and again in the spring. An individual level ANOVA was used to increase the power to determine if there were initial differences between the groups on phonemic awareness skills. In the

TABLE 4 Phonemic Awareness: Means, Standard Deviations, and Effect Sizes RAILS (n ¼ 86)

Pretest Posttest

Comparison (n ¼ 61)

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

da

45.85 87.37

(34.1) (47.9)

47.33 73.67

(35.6) (44.8)

.04 þ.30

Note. RAILS ¼ Reading and Integrated Literacy Strategies. a Cohen’s d.

376

STEVENS ET AL.

TABLE 5 Reading Fluency: Means, Standard Deviations, and Effect Sizes RAILS (n ¼ 77)


Posttest

Comparison (n ¼ 67)

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

da

57.4

(32.2)

46.57

(27.4)

þ .36

Note. RAILS ¼ Reading and Integrated Literacy Strategies. a Cohen’s d.

fall, there were no significant differences between the treatment groups on their phonemic awareness scores; F(1,148) < 1.0. As indicated in Table 4, the phonemic awareness scores of students in both RAILS and comparison classrooms were very similar on the pretest measure. Posttest. To evaluate the effects of the RAILS program on students’ phonemic awareness skills, the scores on the spring administration of this posttest were compared across RAILS and comparison classrooms HLM analyses indicated a significant effect on phonemic awareness; t(15) ¼ 2.93, p ¼ .011, with students in RAILS significantly outperforming students in comparison classes on phonemic awareness. As indicated in Table 4, students in RAILS scored þ.30 standard deviations higher than did those in the comparison classes. Reading Fluency Measures of reading fluency were taken in both RAILS and comparison first- and second-grade classrooms at the end of the school year (posttest only). Reading fluency was operationalized by counting the number of words a student read correctly, minus incorrectly read words, during 1 min of reading connected text. HLM analyses on the reading fluency measures indicated a significant effect on reading fluency, t(12) ¼ 2.51, p ¼ .028. The means, shown in Table 5, indicate that the RAILS students significantly outperformed the comparison students in reading fluency, with an effect size of þ.36 standard deviations.

DISCUSSION A unique contribution of this research is the attention paid to the integration across curricular strands. In learning to read, children must develop



377

not only knowledge and skills within specific reading abilities, but also develop these abilities in conjunction with one another. The interconnections across these abilities allow for them to be used in coordinated ways during literacy activities. In the RAILS program, we addressed this need by attending to the connections that could be made across curricular strands. We believe that it is the lack of attention to integration as a critical need that has contributed to much of the confusion about what defines balance and what distinguishes effective balanced programs from less effective programs (Van Meter et al., 2002). Although the need for integration is addressed in the literature on balanced instruction, there is little explicit attention paid to how this can be achieved. In his urging that educators avoid designing ‘‘frankenclasses,’’ for example, Stahl (1998b) acknowledged the danger of classrooms that have many important parts, but lack coherent organization. He stopped short, however, of identifying a specific design principle that may move classrooms from the realm of horror movies into unified, coherent instruction. Likewise, the importance of integration in classroom instruction comes through in the work of Pressley and colleagues (e.g., Pressley, WhartonMcDonald, & Hampston, 2006; Wharton-McDonald et al., 1998) on exemplary Grade 1 classrooms. In this research, observations were made in both exemplary and ‘‘good’’ reading classrooms in an effort to locate the instructional elements that made the exemplary classrooms so effective. A number of distinguishing characteristics were found such as effective use of scaffolding and high-density instruction. Also contained in this list is the observation that instruction was well integrated (Wharton-McDonald et al., 1998). It is not our contention that the other elements on this list are unimportant. Rather, we argue that integration should be removed from within the list and elevated to the position of a central organizing principle through which instructional activities can be understood. To understand this, let us briefly consider a student’s experiences in a reading program. First, phonemic awareness and phonological processing skills are taught in which the student learns that words can be parsed into separable sounds and sounds can be manipulated to make words. Letters are also taught, often in conjunction with their phonetic properties. Classrooms also contain rich language experiences in which the child is exposed to a variety of vocabulary words and literacy activities. The student moves from one of these lessons to the next, all in the hopes of putting the pieces together and developing the skills of an independent reader. The problem that one must recognize, the problem that we sought to address in the RAILS program, is that for the uninitiated, the relationships across these instructional

378

STEVENS ET AL.

activities are not transparent. Thus, there is a need for these connections to be made explicit within the context of the instruction.


LIMITATIONS The design of this study was limited in that there were an insufficient number of schools to adequately disentangle potential school effects from class-level effects and treatment effects. Although these results are positive and promising, larger scale field trials of the RAILS model are warranted to further elaborate the effects of the model on student’s achievement. REFERENCES Adams, M. J. (1990). Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Adams, A. J. (2004). Modeling the connections between word recognition and reading. In R. B. Ruddell & N. J. Unrau (Eds.), Theoretical models and processes of reading (5th ed., pp. 838–863). Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Balow, I. H., Farr, R. C., & Hogan, T. P. (1992). Metropolitan Achievement Test 7. San Antonio, TX: Harcourt Educational Measurement. Beck, I., & McKeown, M. (2007). Increasing young low-income childrens’ vocabulary repertoires through rich and focused instruction. Elementary School Journal, 107, 251–273. Brown, A. (1981). Metacognitive development and reading. In R. Spiro, B. Bruce, & W. Brewer (Eds.), Theoretical issues in reading comprehension (pp. 452–482). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Chard, D. J., Simmons, D. C., & Kame’enui, E. J. (1998). Word recognition: Instructional and curricular basics and implications. In D. C. Simmons & E. J. Kame’enui (Eds.), What reading research tells us about children with diverse learning needs: Bases and basics (pp. 169–181). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Cooper, J. D., Pikulski, J. J., Ackerman, P., Au, K., Chard, D., Garcia, G., et al. (2001). Houghton Mifflin reading. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Cunningham, P. M., & Hall, D. P. (1998). The four blocks: A balanced framework for literacy in the primary classroom. In K. R. Harris, S. Graham, & D. Deshler (Eds.), Teaching every child every day: Learning in diverse schools and classrooms (pp. 32–76). Cambridge, MA: Brookline Books. Ehri, L. C. (1991). Development of the ability to read words. In R. Barr, M. L. Kamil, P. Mosenthal, & P. D. Pearson (Eds.), Handbook of reading research (Vol. 2, pp. 383– 417). White Plains, NY: Longman. Ehri, L. C., & McCormick, S. (1998). Phases of word learning: Implications for instruction with delayed and disabled readers. Reading & Writing Quarterly: Overcoming Learning Difficulties, 14, 135–163. Fitzgerald, J. (1999). What is this thing called ‘‘balance’’? The Reading Teacher, 53, 100–107. Foorman, B. R., Francis, D. J., Fletcher, J. M., Schatschneider, C., & Mehta, P. (1998). The role of instruction in learning to read: Preventing reading failure in at-risk children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 90, 37–55.



379

Goswami, U. (2000). Phonological and lexical processes. In M. L. Kamil, P. B. Mosenthal, P. D. Pearson, & R. Barr (Eds.) Handbook of reading research (Vol. 3, pp. 111–125). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Kuhn, M. R. & Rasinski, T. V. (2007). Best practices in fluency instruction. In L. B. Gambrell, L. M. Morrow, & M. Pressley (Eds.), Best practices in literacy instruction (3rd ed., pp. 204–219). New York: Guilford. Kuhn, M. R., & Stahl, S. A. (2003). Fluency: A review of developmental and remedial practices. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95, 3–21. Madden, N., Slavin, R. E., Karweit, N. L., Dolan, L., & Wasik, B. A. (1993). Success for all: Longitudinal effects of a restructuring program for inner-city elementary schools. American Educational Research Journal, 30, 123–148. Nagy, W. E., & Scott, J. A. (2000). Vocabulary processes. In M. L. Kamil, P. B. Mosenthal, P. D. Pearson, & R. Barr (Eds.) Handbook of reading research (Vol. 3, pp. 269–284). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. Reports of the subgroups. Bethesda, MD: National Institutes of Health. Oakhill, J., & Yuill, N. (1996). Higher order factors in comprehension disability: Processes and remediation. In C. Cornoldi & J. Oakhill (Eds.), Reading comprehension difficulties: Processes and interventions (pp. 69–92). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. O’Connor, R. E. (2000). Increasing the intensity of intervention in kindergarten and first grade. Learning Disabilities Research and Practice, 15, 43–54. Pearson, P. D., & Raphael, T. E. (2003). Toward a more complex view of balance in the literacy curriculum. In L. M. Morrow, L. B. Gambrell, & M. Pressley (Eds.), Best practices in literacy instruction (2nd ed., pp. 23–39). New York: Guilford. Pearson, P. D., Raphael, T. E., Benson, V. L., & Madda, C. L. (2007). Balance in comprehensive literacy instruction: Then and now. In L. B. Gambrell, L. M. Morrow, & M. Pressley (Eds.), Best practices in literacy instruction (3rd ed., pp. 30–53). New York: Guilford. Pinnell, G. S., DeFord, D. E., & Lyons, C. A. (1988). Reading recovery: Early intervention for at-risk first graders. Arlington, VA: Educational Research Service. Pressley, M. (2006). Reading instruction that works: The case for balanced teaching (3rd ed.). New York: Guilford. Pressley, M., Rankin, J., & Yokoi, L. (1996). A survey of instructional practices of primary teachers nominated as effective in promoting literacy. Elementary School Journal, 96, 363–384. Pressley, M., Wharton-McDonald, R., & Hampston, J. M. (2006). Expert primary level teaching of literacy is balanced teaching. In M. Pressley (Ed.), Reading instruction that works: The case for balanced teaching (3rd ed., pp. 240–288). New York: Guilford Press. Rasinski, T. V. (2004). Assessing reading fluency. Honolulu: Pacific Resources for Education and Learning. Retrieved on July 23, 2008, from http://www.prel.org/products/re_/ assessing-fluency.htm Raudenbush, S., Bryk, T., & Congdon, R. (2000). HLM 6 hierarchical and nonlinear modeling. Lincolnwood, IL: Scientific Software International. Reutzel, D. R. (1998). On balanced reading. The Reading Teacher, 52, 322–324. Reutzel, D. R. (2007). Organizing effective literacy instruction: Differentiating instruction to meet the needs of all children. In L. B. Gambrell, L. M. Morrow, & M. Pressley (Eds.), Best practices in literacy instruction (3rd ed., pp. 313–343). New York: Guilford. Rosenshine, B. V., & Stevens, R. J. (1986). Teaching functions. In M. C. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (3rd ed., pp. 376–391). New York: Macmillan.


380

STEVENS ET AL.

Slavin, R. E. (1999). Educating young students at risk of school failure: Research, practice, and policy. In R. J. Stevens (Ed.), Teaching in American schools (pp. 103–120). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall. Stahl, S. (1998a). Teaching children with reading problems to decode: Phonics and ‘‘not phonics’’ instruction. Reading and Writing Quarterly, 14, 165–189. Stahl, S. (1998b). Understanding shifts in reading and its instruction. Peabody Journal of Education, 73, 31–67. Stanovich, K. E. (1984). The interactive-compensatory model of reading: A confluence of developmental, experimental, and educational psychology. Remedial and Special Education, 5, 11–19. Stanovich, K. E. (2000). Progress in understanding reading: Scientific foundations and new frontiers. New York: Guilford. Van Meter, P., Stevens, R. J., & Garner, J. (2002) Exploring why effective balanced reading instruction is effective: The case for balance and integration. Pennsylvania Educational Leadership, 21, 48–55. Wharton-McDonald, R., Pressley, M., & Hampston, J. M. (1998). Outstanding literacy instruction in first grade: Teacher practices and student achievement. Elementary School Journal, 99, 101–128. Yaden, D. B., Rowe, D. W., & MacGillivray, L. (2000). Emergent literacy: A matter (polyphony) of perspectives. In M. L. Kamil, P. Mosenthal, D. Pearson, & R. Barr (Eds.), Handbook of reading research (Vol. 3, pp. 425–454). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Zigmond, N. (1997). Educating students with disabilities: The future of special education. In J. Lloyd, E. Kame’enui, & D. Chard (Eds.), Issues in educating students with disabilities (pp. 377–390). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.