Nancy L. Roser

Text Leveling and Little Books in First-Grade Reading.

In this study, we investigated the reliability of two current approaches for estimating text difficulty at the firstgrade level: the Scale for Text Accessibility and Support (STAS-1) and the Fountas/Pinnell system. We analyzed the performance of 105 first-grade students in texts leveled using these systems in the areas of rate, accuracy, and fluency. Students read these texts under three support conditions: sight reading, read-aloud (modeled), and previewed. The predictive validity of the two rating scales was supported by the performance data. Statistically significant effects were found for the various support conditions. Further, our analysis suggests potential benchmarks for first-grade performance: 95% accuracy; 80 words per minute; and a fluency rating of 3 (on a 1–5 scale).

Pull Up a Chair and Listen to Them Write: Preservice Teachers Learn From Beginning Writers

This qualitative study was conducted in the context of a preservice teacher education program with a focus on early literacy. The study focused on the insights preservice teachers gained from working closely beside one emergent writer. The authors report on six focus cases and identify five cross-case themes—describing preservice teachers who (a) approached young children’s efforts to compose texts with deep appreciation regardless of the child’s level of development; (b) deeply valued the time spent near a young writer and described their own learning as emanating both from the writer and the writing; (c) gained an understanding of how literacy emerges/develops, and made efforts to take up the discourse of literacy teachers; (d) talked sensitively about the importance of their teaching moves—the “just right” invitations or steps that enabled children to take risks; and (e) valued the purposeful writing that emanated from children’s interests and lives and motivated them to write. The findings are interpreted within Grossman’s (2011) framework for reenvisioning teacher education as “practice” supported by representations, deconstructions, and approximations.

Real Communication-Key to Early Reading and Writing

Abstract An impassioned call for meaningful experiencing of “language and gratifications standing behind the printed word.”

Writing to Understand Lengthy Text: How First Graders Use Response Journals to Support Their Understanding of a Challenging Chapter Book

Chapter books present young readers with many more challenges than do the picture books that initiate them into reading. This case study investigation explored ways in which three first graders used their literature response journals to help them negotiate their first chapter book read aloud. Findings of the three case studies revealed that the children continued their engagement in the story world as they wrote in their journals. The children relied on different strategies and focused on somewhat different facets of the story world as they wrote and drew in their journals. However, the strategies they used were ones that held great potential to support meaning making in a complex text world.

Basal Readers and Language Arts Programs

In school, children sometimes learn lessons about reading and reading instruction that are inconsistent with knowledge about language and learning. This article opens with a description of a basal reader-driven lesson typical of those that we have seen dozens of times. It serves as an illustration of miscommunication with children about the nature of reading. After describing a language arts program and defining a basal reader, the considerable mismatch between the two is argued in the form of several concerns: that language arts programs unite reading with listening, speaking, writing, and the rest of the school curriculum; that children meet print in a range of contexts; that children be active users of language; and that children engage in thinking and problem solving. These concerns are illustrated in the work of informed, decision-making teachers who, instead of abdicating their teaching responsibility to a book, have taken charge of their reading programs. Each teacher consults the basal as one of many possible resources to determine if it might play a role in a lesson. Readers are invited to compare the messages for children that are communicated by the reader of a teachers manual with the messages that emanate from the professionals. We conclude by calling the basal reader an optional tool in the classroom of a teacher who knows children and language, teaching and learning.

Evaluation and the Administrator: How Decisions are Made

The investigator describes how principals, supervisors, and central office personnel made decisions in public school reading programs. The study compares the actual decision-making processes with a theoretical model of rational decision making. Typical decisions for administering and supervising a school reading program were obtained from job descriptions and from literature in reading education. Test subjects identified their respective decisions. Through interviews, these administrators and supervisors described the processes by which their identified decisions had been made and compared the descriptions with a representative rational model of decision-making in order to determine how real life decision-making processes approximated a theoretical model. Regardless of staff position, there appeared to be no difference in group ability to identify respective administrative decisions. Analysis of the actual decision-making processes employed by administrators indicated an incomplete awareness of a rational decision-making prescription. Past experience and intuition, rather than attempts to identify alternative actions and to weigh these for relative merit, were the basis of the greatest number of decisions.

“I Couldn’t Have Learned This Any Other Way”: Learning to Teach Literacy across Concurrent Practicum Experiences

ABSTRACT The authors, a team of literacy teacher educators who are focused on extending our own understandings of preservice teacher (PST) learning, conducted a cross-case analysis of how PSTs learned to teach literacy in three concurrent practicum experiences. We draw on Grossman’s framework of representations, decompositions, and approximations to describe and interpret what PSTs learned. Through a focus on one student, Deanna, the authors illustrate three findings: PSTs came to value the variety of forms of students’ literacies that reflected their ages, language backgrounds, and cultures/identities; they came to understand that relationships are essential to teaching and learning, and building relationships requires “putting myself out there” as well as “getting to know you”; and coming to know about students’ literacies in contexts in which students can talk, read, make images, and write from life allowed PSTs to coconstruct a curriculum that followed the students’ leads. The concurrence of practicum experience allowed for deepened reflections and understandings of literacy teaching. To extend Grossman’s work, the authors suggest the importance of using artifacts of PSTs’ own practices as representations in a cycle of reflection.

A Digital Tool Grows (and Keeps Growing) from the Work of a Community of Writers.

This article reports on a collaborative inquiry into the use of a researcher-designed digital tool for the support of writing instruction in elementary classrooms. The digital tool in question is an online collection of original writing samples produced by elementary children that was conceptualized as a resource for coaching new writers using easily retrievable samples of “gems” produced by other young writers. This article describes the teacher education context from which the design of this tool emerged as well as the evaluation of this tool by a group of Master Reading Teacher candidates. Grounded in the literature on the use of mentor texts in writing instruction, this article highlights the role that authentic child-authored texts can play in supporting teachers’ instructional moves. The article ends with a discussion of implications for enhancing teacher professional development through the use of digital tools that can be utilized to promote reflective inquiry into writing pedagogy.

Summary of investigations relating to reading

DRAWS from the published research literature and reviews the findings of the 236 reading studies reported within the one year period from July I, 1964 to June 30, 1965. Studies are categorized into six major areas, each of which has several subdivisions. As in past years, the majority of studies reported was classified into two of the six major topic areas: the Physiology and Psychology of Reading and the Teaching of Reading. Under the designation, Physiology and Psychology, two subdivisions contribute the greatest quantity of studies: Visual Perception and Factors Related to Reading Disability. If the sheer number of research articles reported is a criterion measure, the area of beginning reading methods holds most interest for researchers whose studies are reported in the Teaching of Reading category. In the same section, a number of reports on the effectiveness of college reading programs is also reviewed. The majority of studies reported in the Sociology of Reading is concerned with readership of various types of printed materials. The present summary also includes a listing of other bibliographies of specific aspects of reading research. The annotated bibliography supplements the written text, providing information about the plan of each study.