The Evolution of Transactional Strategies Instruction in One Teacher's Classroom

Abstract

In this study, 1 teacher taught the same story for 3 consecutive years to 3 comparable groups of second-grade, low-achieving students. An interaction-tracking and coding scheme was used to analyze the 45-minute lessons for changes in interactional patterns, participation among group members, instructional focus, strategy instruction, and prompted and self-regulated use of strategies by students. By year 3, students participated more actively in story discussion and used strategies with less teacher prompting to support their interpretations and responses to text. These changes appeared to occur because of modifications in the teacher's instructional practices. The instruction that emerged during the third year could be characterized as transactional strategies instruction, an approach that involves teaching reading group members to use comprehension strategies as they jointly construct interpretations of text.