Emily Rodgers

Interactions That Scaffold Reading Performance

In this article, findings from case study research of two effective literacy teachers are presented in order to describe in rich detail the nature of effective scaffolding. The teachers worked one-to-one with first-grade students who were experiencing extreme difficulty in learning to read. The complexity of scaffolding is described in terms of the instructional decisions that teachers must make on a moment-by-moment basis about the kind of help (what to work on) and level or amount of help to provide at points of difficulty during reading.

Scaling and Sustaining an Intervention: The Case of Reading Recovery

ABSTRACT In every school district across the country, every year, initiatives are adopted with the goal of improving the literacy performance of young students, and, just as frequently, these initiatives fail or quickly become passing fads. In this article, Rodgers reviews literature related to scaling educational innovations and describes challenges and barriers to implementing and maintaining evidence-based reform. Using Reading Recovery as a case example, she describes features of the intervention that are thought to be linked to its longevity in terms of scalability and sustainability. She also shares lessons learned from the most recent period of its expansion with the 5-year grant to scale up Reading Recovery across the county. Implications from this article include the importance of adopting an initiative that has a well-articulated design, collecting data on the progress of the students served, and having a person in the district who acts as a redirecting agent, maintaining the design of the initiative and guarding it against tendencies to pare down the design.

Developing an observational rubric of writing: Preliminary reliability and validity evidence

The purpose of this paper is (1) to report on the design of the early writing observational writing rubric designed to observe and describe change over time in the writing of children emerging into conventional literacy (ages 6–7) within an instructional setting and (2) to investigate the initial reliability and validity of the rubric. We used an extant data set that included 52 videos of writing instruction in Reading Recovery lessons (approximately 520 minutes) and pre- and post-intervention test data, for 24 students, taken at multiple time points across a 20-week period. Dependent sample t-tests and HLM were used to ascertain if the rubric was sensitive to change over occasions. We also considered if the scores correlated with external literacy measures. The findings suggest that the rubric has good initial reliability and validity and is a useful tool for researchers to observe and measure change over time as young children write in an instructional setting; further validation work is required for use in other settings.

Turning around the Progress of Struggling Writers: Key Findings from Recent Research

Abstract Purpose To identify features of teacher support associated with children who made accelerated progress in writing in an early literacy intervention. Design/methodology/approach Mixed methods were used to describe the paths, rates, variability, and potential sources of change in the writing development of 24 first grade students who participated in an early literacy intervention for 20 weeks. To describe the breadth and variability of change in children’s writing within a co-constructed setting, two groups who made high and low progress were identified. Findings We focus on one child, Paul, who made high progress (became more independent in the writing of linguistically complex messages) and the features of teacher support that this child received compared to those who made lower progress. We compare him to another child, Emma, who made low progress. Teacher support associated with high progress included a conversational style and flexibility to adapt to the child’s message intent as the student composed, supporting students to write linguistically more complex and legible messages, and supporting students to orchestrate a broad range of problem-solving behaviors while writing. Practical implications We describe how teachers can support children to gradually take control of the composition process, how they can recognize complexity in early written messages and we provide suggestions as to how teachers can systematically assess, observe, and support children’s self-regulation of the writing process.

Differences in the Early Writing Development of Struggling Children Who Beat the Odds and Those Who Did Not

ABSTRACT We used mixed methods to examine differences in the early writing development of children, identified as at risk of literacy difficulties, in the context of Reading Recovery (RR). From an extant dataset of 24 children, we identified those who made fast progress (n = 6) and those who did not (n = 8). We studied change over time in the sources of information they used and problem-solving actions they took over the course of the intervention. We developed a writing rubric to analyze videos of writing interactions (280 min) and written messages (N = 674). Results demonstrated that the fast-progress group had higher end of intervention ratings for multiple dimensions of writing. HLM analysis showed that the fast-progress group had higher rates of growth in their use of sources of information (spelling and letter-sound relationships) and observable problem-solving behaviors. Fast- and slow-progress groups did not differ in what they wrote but, for both groups, dips in legibility coincided with increased linguistic complexity. By juxtaposing descriptions of writing development for both groups, results provide useful information for instruction and intervention.

Literacy Achievement Trends at Entry to First Grade.

Recent shifts in policy and practice have brought an increasingly more academic focus to the early grades, evidenced in rising standards and the now widely accepted notion that kindergarten is the new first grade. These views however are mostly supported by teacher and parent self-reports and not by an analysis of literacy achievement data. We created an up-to-date literacy profile for beginning readers using a multiple cohort database that contained achievement data for students at entry to first grade (n = 364,738) in the same schools (n = 2,358) over a 12-year period starting in 2002. Our finding that overall beginning of first-grade reading achievement for both low achieving and more typically achieving students improved measurably between 2002 and 2013 provides empirical support for the growing academic focus in the early grades. However, our findings about the differential nature of that progress for low achieving students compared to those more typically achieving raise new questions and concerns about a growing literacy achievement gap in the early grades.