Katherine Stahl

Everything You Wanted to Know About Phonics (But Were Afraid to Ask)

The authors review basic principles underlying word learning and phonics instruction. These principles are applicable to many primary-grade classrooms. They then discuss approaches to teaching phonics. Finally, they draw some tentative conclusions on how an integrated language arts program that includes phonics might look in a first-grade classroom.

The Effects of Three Instructional Methods on the Reading Comprehension and Content Acquisition of Novice Readers

This study explores the effects of 3 instructional methods: Picture Walks (Clay, 1991; Fountas & Pinnell, 1996), KWL (Ogle, 1986), and the Directed Reading-Thinking Activity (Stauffer, 1969) on the reading comprehension and science content acquisition of novice readers. The participants were 31 second-graders with an instructional reading level that was approaching grade level. A replicated Latin Square, within-subjects repeated measures design was employed that examined 4 treatments: 3 intervention groups (PW, KWL, DRTA) and a control group. The primary analysis evaluated treatment effects by conducting one-way repeated measures analyses of variance (ANOVA) on all measures, using the group as the unit of analysis. Results indicated that the picture walk and DRTA yielded statistically significant effects on reading growth as measured by a timed maze task. Analysis of Cued Recall indicated that the DRTA yielded statistically significant effects in reading comprehension and science content acquisition. KWL did not yield significant effects on measures of comprehension or content acquisition. Student interviews provided evidence that the participants possessed declarative, procedural, and conditional knowledge of the strategic processes that are the foundation for the 3 interventions, activation of prior knowledge, and prediction. However, the likelihood of the participants putting that knowledge to effective use seemed to be dependent upon the amount of teacher scaffolding provided by the instructional procedure.This study explores the effects of 3 instructional methods: Picture Walks (Clay, 1991; Fountas & Pinnell, 1996), KWL (Ogle, 1986), and the Directed Reading-Thinking Activity (Stauffer, 1969) on the reading comprehension and science content acquisition of novice readers. The participants were 31 second-graders with an instructional reading level that was approaching grade level. A replicated Latin Square, within-subjects repeated measures design was employed that examined 4 treatments: 3 intervention groups (PW, KWL, DRTA) and a control group. The primary analysis evaluated treatment effects by conducting one-way repeated measures analyses of variance (ANOVA) on all measures, using the group as the unit of analysis. Results indicated that the picture walk and DRTA yielded statistically significant effects on reading growth as measured by a timed maze task. Analysis of Cued Recall indicated that the DRTA yielded statistically significant effects in reading comprehension and science content acquisition. KWL ...

Complex Text or Frustration‐Level Text: Using Shared Reading to Bridge the Difference

Challenging texts can be made accessible to students by increasing the level of instructional scaffolding. This article describes evidence-based models of shared reading that support reading development across the elementary years. Shared Reading Experience (Holdaway, 1982), Fluency-Oriented Reading Instruction (Stahl & Heubach, 2005), think-alouds, and high-level discussion enable students to successfully read texts that might be considered frustration level if relying upon traditional criteria for determining difficulty.

Applying New Visions of Reading Development in Today's Classrooms.

Constrained skills theory is a reconceptualization of reading development that suggests a continuum of skills, with some, such as letter knowledge and decoding abilities, more tightly constrained than others, such as phonological awareness and oral reading fluency. The most constrained skills consist of a limited number of items and thus can be mastered universally within a relatively short time frame. The least constrained skills, vocabulary and comprehension, are learned across a lifetime, broad in scope, variable among people, and may influence many other skills. This article addresses the important implications of this theory for classroom practice, curricula, and assessment. Finally, cautions are issued regarding the potential to overemphasize the assessment and instruction of constrained abilities in an effort to enhance the likelihood of the successful long-term acquisition of unconstrained abilities.

Beyond March Madness: Fruitful Practices to Prepare for High-Stakes ELA Tests

Successful implementation of the Common Core State Standards (2010) will require an alignment between learning standards, effective instruction, and the new assessments designed by the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Career (PARCC) and Smarter Balanced (SB) consortia. Both the CCSS and the new generation of assessments call for students to comprehend and respond to complex texts using text evidence and high levels of thinking. Traditional test preparation that focused on isolated skills is not likely to be effective in preparing students for success on the PARCC or SB tests. Instead, fruitful practices are likely to be (a) teaching integrated content units, (b) teaching comprehension strategies, (c) providing opportunities for high levels of speaking, listening and thinking about texts, (d) using official writing rubrics, and (e) providing diagnostic interventions for at-risk readers.

Translating Policy to Practice: Initiating RTI in Urban Schools

This mixed methods study explores the pilot implementation of a Response to Intervention framework in the first grade classrooms in three urban schools. Two schools in a fully implemented condition (FI) with a facilitator and a partially implemented condition (PI) without a facilitator were investigated using student achievement data, field notes, teacher questionnaires, and teacher focus groups. Repeated measures ANOVA indicate that student risk levels measured by DIBELS phonemic awareness and decoding tasks were reduced in both conditions but favored the FI condition. Qualitative evidence indicates that programmatic changes were implemented in one year, but more complex paradigmatic changes did not occur.

Collaborative Reasoning: Language‐Rich Discussions for English Learners

Collaborative Reasoning (CR) is a peer-led, small group discussion approach that aims to promote intellectual and personal engagement in elementary school classrooms. In CR, students read a text that raises an unresolved issue with multiple and competing points of view. Students are expected to take positions on a big question, support the positions with reasons and evidence, carefully listen, evaluate, and respond to one anothers arguments, and challenge one another when they disagree. Multiple studies provide evidence that CR positively impacts thinking, the level of talk and the quality of written essays by participants. This article summarizes the body of CR research and presents the results of a study of CR with English Language Learners (ELLs). Finally, implications and practical suggestions for applying CR with ELLs are provided.

Devillainizing Video in Support of Comprehension and Vocabulary Instruction

In the classroom, teachers have long used videos as an addendum to the instruction they provide. Still, using video is often seen in a negative light and is used sparingly. This column calls upon research from a variety of fields that supports the use of video to enhance literacy instruction in classrooms. Relying on both theory and practice, the authors highlight several promising areas of research that utilize video as a teaching tool to develop comprehension and vocabulary proficiency in tandem with print-based literacy practices. The authors make practical recommendations for teachers looking to incorporate video into the literacy instruction they provide to students in the classroom.

Reading Reading Research: A Multivocal Review

Book reviewed in this article: Handbook of Reading Research, Volume III. Edited by Michael Kamil, Peter B. Mosenthal, P. David Pearson, and Rebecca Barr. 2000.