Beverly E. Cox

Building on theoretical principles gleaned from Reading Recovery to inform classroom practice

The authors, both of whom are outside the network of scholars and practitioners typically associated with Reading Recovery, describe the instructional and teacher professional development components of the program and review related research. They then explore the theory and instructional assumptions on which RR is based, positing that both have implications for effective classroom instruction. In fact, they argue that the theory and assumptions of RR can be considered as core to good literacy instruction for all children.

At-risk readers developing expertise in register switching: evidence from cohesion analysis

Register refers to the variety of language that is appropriate for a particular situational context. This study examines young children’s development of register switching expertise as they become independent readers. Participants were 17 first graders identified by their classroom teachers as at-risk readers and admitted into an early literacy intervention program called Reading Recovery. At both the beginning and end of Reading Recovery, each child was asked to share a story about a personally relevant topic in a face-to-face, conversational context and then dictate that same oral tale as an autonomous/written text intended for a reader audience. The 68 texts (34 oral and 34 written) were analysed for their use of register-appropriate cohesive linguistic choices. It was found that as these at-risk children grew from emergent to independent, strategic readers, they were concurrently developing skills in constructing written register texts by recontextualising the cohesion language patterns in their oral register texts. It is suggested that developing expertise in register switching may compose part of the process of learning to read and write. This finding is discussed in the light of relevant literacy and educational research.

At-Risk Preschoolers' Emerging Control over Literacy: Issues of Observation, Evaluation, and Instruction.

I suggest guidelines for observing young childrens developing control over their thinking and text‐making knowledge as they compose (i.e., dictate) a text for other children to read. Strategically controlling ones thinking processes in order to accomplish a task is called metacognition (Flavell, 1978). It is an important knowledge significantly related to proficient reading and writing among older students. I present evidence of distinct, observable differences between at‐risk and not‐at‐risk preschoolers’ knowledge of what a literary piece should be like and how to monitor the product to make sure it meets the needs of an audience. These differences are also related to the childrens emergent reading level. Guidelines for observing such differences are presented, implications for the classroom are discussed, and cautions relative to both observations and instructional interventions are suggested.

Recall of categorized and unrelated lists with complete versus discrete presentation and fast versus moderate presentation rates

In Experiment 1, free recall was higher after complete presentations of 20-word lists for 48 sec than after one list presentation at a 2.4-sec rate or four presentations at a 0.6-sec rate. The latter two conditions yielded nearly equal free recall; there was no interaction between list type and presentation condition. Category clustering was greater with complete than with discrete presentation, but within conditions, there was no relationship between clustering and free recall. In Experiment 2, instructions to use our organizational study strategy with complete lists did not improve recall. These results do not support an organizational-strategy explanation of the superiority of complete presentation. The presentation-rate results are consistent with prior data that had indicated a similarity of effectiveness for free recall of rates from about 0.5 to 3 sec; implications of that conclusion are discussed.