Coming to Know: One Teacher Widens and Deepens Her Knowledge about Struggling Students

Abstract

Background As part of their graduate studies, university students seeking a master's degree in language and education enroll in a graduate reading practicum held during the university summer session. In an arrangement with a local public elementary school, practicum participants worked on the school's campus in a classroom setting and with struggling readers. Children were so designated by their classroom performance but more so by their failure to reach a passing score on the statewide achievement test in reading. As a way to offer additional help in reading and boost their achievement level, struggling readers were required to attend summer school. Graduate practicum participants provided some of the necessary instructional help that was offered. This arrangement became the means not only to aid struggling readers but also to enable the graduate students to gain further insights into the teaching of reading. Graduate students read the selected course materials--all related to effective theory and practice as well as classroom assessment theory and measures. The readings and the work of the session called attention to thoughtful literacy (Allington, 2009, p. 116). Informed by the readings, the graduate students had the opportunity to teach reading approximately 90 minutes a day for an entire five-week summer session. Following the daily teaching, the university professors in charge of the practicum and the graduate students gathered together for debriefing sessions. The conversations centered on the reading instruction that was implemented and the children's responses. These daily sessions were a venue for collective reflections and an opportunity for graduate peers to aid each other in further planning of the on-going reading instruction and increasing their knowledge about the teaching of reading. The graduate students also wrote individual reflective journals based on their work with the children and relative to the assigned readings. The daily journal entries further served as an important springboard for discussions during the debriefing sessions. In sum, knowledge gained from the readings, which served to inform the instruction offered to children in combination with the insights of the collective debriefings and the reflective writing, would enable the graduate practicum students to come to know more about teaching reading. Specifically, they would come to know more about teaching struggling readers. Framework for the Study In light of the context described at the outset of this article, one of the goals of the practicum experience was to think about countering what is often the instructional diet provided to struggling readers. As Allington (2009) describes the situation, teachers create instructional environments, even interventions, whereby struggling readers work on reading skills and not on actual reading. According to Allington (2006), teachers need to think about thoughtful literacy (p. 116), whereby students read and discuss with a focus on comprehension that results in higher student achievement. The summer practicum challenged the graduate students to provide the children with reading experiences that would be characterized as thoughtful literacy. To aid in accomplishing the latter, a reading workshop format, with its focus on ample opportunity for actual reading, undergirded the daily instruction for children (Roller, 1996; Serafini, 2001, 2006; Tompkins, 2010). Books with a range of reading levels were made available to children, children self-selected books to read, and personal responses to the readings--written and oral--were encouraged and often shared with peers and graduate students alike. Teacher/student conferences to discuss children's readings were a daily occurrence. Allington's thoughtful literacy thus played out in lesson preparation and in the choice of instructional materials. The complexities of teacher education and published calls for reform in teacher education are well documented (e. …