Classroom Literacy Instruction Research Articles

Breaking boundaries: Word analysis strategies that draw on students' full linguistic repertoires

AbstractThis paper examines the need to integrate students' full linguistic repertoires into literacy instruction in middle and high school classrooms. Traditional monoglossic approaches often neglect the linguistic assets multilingual students bring, limiting their academic potential. Drawing on translanguaging theory, this paper explores three strategies—bilingual morpheme mapping, comparative morphological analysis, and multilingual word walls. These strategies seek to enhance vocabulary instruction by utilizing students' home languages and ultimately cultivating a deeper understanding of word formation and meaning. The benefits of such approaches extend beyond multilingual students, offering all students more comprehensive vocabulary knowledge across disciplines. While the advantages of these methods are evident, the paper also identifies limitations and calls for further research to explore the long‐term impacts on literacy development. By advocating for professional learning focused on translanguaging and morphological instruction, this paper highlights the need to incorporate word strategies that enhance literacy for all students.

Towards the adoption of a balanced approach to literacy instruction in LESLLA classrooms in Québec, Canada

The current study reports on an action research project taking place in two Quebec adult education centres and aiming to create learning opportunities for LESLLA learners of French to pursue their literacy development journey beyond the advancement of their technical skills. More specifically, our research objective was to highlight the challenges and affordances faced by the participating teachers during the study in order to show how instructional change in favour of a more balanced approach to literacy instruction can occur during an action research project involving close mentoring for teachers. To do so, we first described the participating teachers’ meaning-focused literacy teaching practices during non-participant observation sessions in four teachers’ classrooms over the course of 6 weeks, totalizing 25 hours of observed teaching practices. Although the vast majority of all practices observed were code-focused, some instances of meaning-focused teaching practices were identified. During two training sessions, these practices acted as a starting point for exploring new meaning-focused practices that were then piloted with their students. We observed that, in the course of an action research project consisting of iterative cycles of reflection, action, and evaluation, implementing activities aligned with a more balanced approach to literacy instruction seems possible among teachers who typically rely on code-focused activities.

A mixed methods study of teachers’ use of feedback within middle school social studies classrooms to promote reading comprehension

BackgroundAlthough feedback is consistently shown to have a positive effect on student achievement, there is also large heterogeneity in effect based on a variety of factors including how teachers use it in the classroom. Understanding how teachers use feedback as part of their content area literacy instruction in inclusive middle school social studies classrooms is therefore a worthy object of investigation. AimsThis paper applies an explanatory-sequential mixed-methods design to an existing dataset. We leverage this dataset to first understand whether teachers' feedback use improved students' ability to read social studies texts with understanding and acquire social studies content knowledge from text. It then characterizes the feedback teachers used and draws conclusions on how feedback's form may have influenced its effect. SamplesQuantitative analysis included 8865 min of audio recorded classroom instruction from 28 teachers in the United States. Additionally, social studies knowledge acquisition and reading comprehension achievement measures were collected from 893 students. Qualitative analysis included 37 transcripts of audio recorded lessons (38–65 min each) from five randomly selected teachers. MethodsQuantitative analysis preceded qualitative. Quantitative analyses included coding of all 8865 min to determine presence of feedback found effective by Hattie and Timperley (2007). This coding was used in a fixed effects model to investigate the effect teacher feedback use had on student reading comprehension and knowledge acquisition outcomes. Qualitative analysis included a collective case study of patterns of feedback use. ResultsFeedback did not have a substantial association with scores on the content knowledge or reading comprehension measures. Teachers’ feedback patterns suggest they frequently missed opportunities to help students understand goals and self-regulate their behavior as they moved toward them. ConclusionsThe ineffective forms of feedback displayed by teachers likely reduced feedback's effect on student outcomes.

Measuring Preschool Teachers' Language Use During Shared Book Reading With Children With Developmental Disabilities: A Pilot Study

Purpose: Opportunities to actively engage in literacy instruction should be accessible to all students in the classroom. Shared book reading provides a literacy-based context in which teachers may adapt their communication to allow students with a range of abilities to participate. The current study examines teacher communication during shared book-reading activities to understand what specific strategies teachers are using when children with developmental disabilities are included. Method: A shared reading activity was video-recorded in one classroom with and one classroom without students with developmental disabilities. Quantity of teacher communication was measured using the Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT) tool, while communication functions were measured by adapting the Systematic Assessment of Book Reading. Survey methods reported teachers' typical classroom literacy instruction. Results: While both teachers used similar amounts of language, the teacher with students with developmental disabilities in her classroom used more literacy-related functions (e.g., referencing letters, phonics, decoding) to discuss print concepts and slightly greater communication to support comprehension of the story. Both teachers reported rarely—if not at all—using technology as an instructional strategy. Conclusions: SALT, an adapted assessment, and survey methods may capture differences in teacher communication during shared reading within heterogeneous classrooms. Understanding more about teacher communication yields important implications for intercollaborative practice to allow support for students with a range of abilities within inclusive literacy-based instruction.

In word and deed: Embodying early literacy learning in gestures and postures

Background: The context of this research is reading literacy instruction in Foundation Phase classrooms in South Africa. Although large-scale studies have researched learner performance, little is known of the nuances of teachers’ practice, particularly in the non-verbal realm. This research seeks to address that gap.Aim: This research investigated teachers’ gestural and postural enactments during reading literacy instruction in the Foundation Phase. It identified and described these enactments to understand their function.Setting: The research sites comprised three Grade One classrooms in suburban government schools. The research focused on the Foundation Phase speech event ‘Reading on the Mat’, a variation of Group Guided Reading.Methods: This article presents a strand of a linguistic micro-ethnography. An analysis of the forms and styles of communication showed the salience of gestures and postures in teachers’ practices. The research used an established framework to analyse non-verbal communication and also generated a framework to analyse postural communication.Results: These teachers deployed gestures and postures to enact their instruction. Learners embodied their learning by copying gestures and using them in recall. Postures were used to provide signals to learners and visitors related to the function of activities on the Mat.Conclusion: The article concluded that gestures and postures can be deliberately employed in the service of literacy teaching in the Foundation Phase. Their analysis can also reveal the function of enactment practices to researchers.Contribution: This article adds to the understandings of embodied practices. It presents original categories that may be useful in similar research into teachers’ practices.

Case Study of Experiences with Transmediation for a Student with Learning Disabilities

This case study explored the experiences with transmediation by a fourth grade student with learning disabilities (LD) and his teacher. Findings revealed that the student encountered mixed responses to his practices by the classroom community. Underlying these perspectives were issues of social capital contributing to the power dynamics of the classroom, and two contrastive provincial curriculum documents guiding classroom literacy instruction and assessment. Drawing on these findings, we discuss the nuances and complexities of transmediation for students with diverse learning needs.

Improving K-12 Classroom Literacy Instruction with the Model of the Complete, Literate Student: Shared Perspectives by MSEd Reading Program Graduates

Improving K-12 Classroom Literacy Instruction with the Model of the Complete, Literate Student: Shared Perspectives by MSEd Reading Program Graduates

Impacting Change in Classroom Literacy Instruction: A Further Investigation of the Better Start Literacy Approach

A controlled intervention study supported the effectiveness of teachers implementing an integrated intervention (Better Start Literacy Approach; BSLA) to accelerate foundational literacy skills for children in Year 1 with low levels of oral language ability in a community with significant challenges to effective teaching and learning (Gillon et al., 2019). As part of an implementation approach, the current study aimed to investigate whether teachers from less challenging contexts can successfully implement the Better Start Literacy Approach with reduced support from researchers. Two schools with a total of 93 Year 0/1 children participated in the teacher-led classroom literacy intervention, with 20% of sample classified as linguistically diverse. A series of research questions explored the impact of the intervention on children’s foundational literacy skills. Repeated measures general linear models demonstrated a positive impact of the intervention for the research group compared to the control group. Further analysis demonstrated the intervention was equally effective for linguistically diverse learners. The findings have important implications for better understanding the effectiveness of the BSLA in differing contexts and for linguistically diverse learners, further adding to the research for this literacy intervention.

Identifying Student Misconceptions in Biomolecular Visualization in the Context of the BioMolViz Framework

BioMolViz is a community dedicated to improving visual literacy instruction in biology, chemistry, and biochemistry classrooms. To help instructors approach biomolecular visualization instruction, visual literacy concepts are catalogued through the BioMolViz Framework, which presents overarching themes that are subdivided into learning objectives and goals. A main focus of our project is the creation of open‐access assessments associated with each of the Framework learning goals. Through nationwide workshops held over the past four years, faculty teams wrote and revised assessments to probe students’ visual literacy utilizing the BioMolViz Framework. As part of a pre‐workshop activity, we asked faculty to identify student misconceptions in visualization that they observed in their teaching. These were collected, mapped to the framework, and coded for Bloom's taxonomy level. Frequently mentioned misconceptions of broad relevance to biomolecular visualization skills were mapped to the BioMolViz Framework and formatted into a biomolecular visualization literacy misconception survey. We present the process of survey development and invite educators from any higher education institution to contribute to understanding the prevalence of these misconceptions among student populations by participating in our survey. We hope the survey data will allow the community to develop better pedagogical approaches to biomolecular visualization through awareness of student misunderstandings. Our collective contributions can help our students overcome the most common challenges in biomolecular visualization while improving abilities in this foundational skill set.

Building on Linguistic Strengths: Tenets of a Culturally Sustaining Teacher

AbstractChanges in the U.S. demographics over the past few decades reflect the growing diversity in American classrooms as more students come to school speaking, reading, or writing two or more languages. By building on students’ full repertoire of linguistic and cultural resources, educators have the potential to transform literacy instruction in multilingual classrooms. This article showcases four tenets of culturally sustaining teaching and details how preservice teachers in a reading practicum enacted these four tenets by recognizing and building on bi/multilingual students’ linguistic and cultural strengths. The article concludes with a discussion of how these enactments suggest new possibilities for literacy educators in similar contexts.

Improving literacy instruction in co-taught middle school classrooms to support reading comprehension

We examined the effects of a professional development (PD) with coaching model designed to improve literacy and co-taught instruction for students with and without disabilities in co-taught content-area middle school classes. Eleven co-teaching pairs in nine schools were randomly assigned to the Content Area Literacy Instruction (CALI) condition (n = 7 pairs) or a business-as-usual comparison condition (n = 4 pairs). All 22 teachers individually completed researcher developed pre- and posttests of teacher knowledge and skills and perceived effectiveness of their personal ability and their co-teachers’ ability. At pre- and posttest, students (n = 212) completed three measures of reading comprehension. CALI teachers demonstrated significantly higher scores than comparison teachers at posttest on a measure of knowledge and skills, perceived personal effectiveness, and perceived co-teachers’ effectiveness. All CALI co-teaching pairs demonstrated high levels of fidelity. Students in the CALI classrooms demonstrated significant gains on an essential aspect of a researcher-developed measure of reading comprehension. However, the treatment effect was non-significant for the two standardized measures of reading comprehension. Results provide initial support for a model in improving teacher instructional outcomes and student academic outcomes.

Translanguaging Pedagogy as an Enactment of Authentic Cariño and an Antidote to Subtractive Schooling


 
 
 This article explores translanguaging pedagogy through the lens of the politics of caring, subtractive schooling, and authentic cariño (composed of intellectual, familial, and critical cariño). We begin with a broad overview of translanguaging and situate it in the theoretical frameworks of the politics of caring, subtractive schooling, and authentic cariño. We ground our approach in the notion that educators must hold heteroglossic language ideologies. We draw upon examples from literacy instruction in bilingual and ESL fourth grade classrooms to argue that translanguaging pedagogy can be seen as an enactment of intellectual, familial, and critical cariño. We conclude with a call for teacher educators to consider enacting authentic cariño and translanguaging pedagogy in their university classrooms by making space for bi/multilingual pre-service teachers to use their full linguistic repertoires. In this way translanguaging pedagogy, politically aware authentic caring, and authentic cariño can be viewed as part of a broader program of preparing teachers to value authentic ways of bilingual languaging and biliteracy development.
 
 

Reframing Literacy in the Discipline of Science with the Disciplinary Literacy Observation Tool (DLOT)

AbstractThis article explains how teams of special educators, science teachers, literacy consultants, and administrators can use the Disciplinary Literacy Observation Tool (DLOT) and accompanying planning tool to improve disciplinary literacy instruction in inclusive secondary science classrooms. The DLOT was developed in partnership with practitioners as a tool for professional development and coaching. First, the tool's development and five dimensions are described: (a) aspects of disciplinary literacy in science, (b) instructional grouping, (c) student engagement, (d) quality of pedagogy, and (e) overall quality. Then, an illustration is provided for how special educators can collaborate with science educators and other colleagues to use the DLOT to identify, document, reflect upon, and set goals regarding disciplinary literacy instruction in science in ways that benefit students with learning disabilities. With the DLOT, practitioners can approach literacy integration in science to address both general and discipline‐specific strategies aligned synergistically to Common Core State Standards and Next Generation Science Standards through three‐dimensional science learning.

Neurocognitive Predictors of Response to Intervention With GraphoGame Rime

This study explores the neurocognitive predictors of response to intervention with GraphoGame Rime (GG Rime), an adaptive software game designed to aid the learning of English phonics. A cohort of 398 children (aged 6–7 years) who had participated in a recent randomised controlled trial (RCT) of GG Rime in the United Kingdom were studied. Half were randomly assigned to play GG Rime and the other half were assigned to Business As Usual (BAU). A series of pretests were given prior to the intervention to all participants, designed to measure phonological awareness skills, executive function (EF) skills and the ability to synchronise finger tapping to a rhythmic beat. Rhythmic synchronisation has been linked to reading readiness and early reading attainment, and is related to phonological awareness. Individual differences prior to the intervention in all three types of measure were significantly associated with progression through the game. Gender was also important for progression through the game, with boys progressing significantly further than girls. Vocabulary was not a predictor of progression through the game. Playing time, rhythmic synchronisation, phonological skills and EF skills did not differ by gender. Once playing time and non-verbal cognitive ability were controlled, phonological awareness, EF, rhythmic synchronisation and gender all remained significant predictors of progression through the game. In further analyses comparing these predictors, their interactions and controlling for the autoregressor of prior responsiveness to phonics instruction, phoneme awareness and EF skills were the strongest unique predictors. Analyses with the whole cohort (analysing BAU and GG children independently) showed that all neurocognitive measures contributed to progress in reading and spelling over the school year. We conclude that individual differences in phonological skills and EF skills predict which children will benefit most from computer assisted reading interventions like GG Rime. Further, boys respond better to this computerised intervention than girls. Accordingly, to be maximally beneficial to poor readers, the supplementary use of GG Rime in addition to ongoing classroom literacy instruction could be especially targeted to boys, but should be accompanied by a focus on developing both oral phonological awareness and EF skills.

Disrupting ableism: Strengths-based representations of disability in children’s picture books

Children’s literature is a powerful influence on the social construction of perceptions and narratives, and it is critically important that all children see themselves represented in the books in their classrooms. However, strength-based views of characters with a disability are rare in children’s picture books, meaning that children with a disability may not see themselves reflected in the books on their classroom shelves. Even worse, books may reinforce limiting, ableist stereotypes and myths about people with disabilities and their lives. Representing characters with disabilities in strength-based ways in children’s literature, where “the person’s own abilities and strengths are explicitly considered [and] empowerment of the person has a high priority”, could educate able-bodied students about disability, promote attitudes of acceptance and strengthen perceptions of self-worth among students with disabilities as well as their typically-developing peers. We conducted a qualitative content analysis of 34 exemplar picture books featuring a main character with a disability. Low occurrence disabilities such as visual impairment were more frequently represented than high incidence disabilities such as a specific learning disability, but the main characters in our highest rated books modelled self-awareness, agency and acceptance. These books disrupted ableist myths about disability and provided the reader with tools to push back against both implicit and explicit stereotyping, teasing and bullying. By incorporating children’s picture books with strength-based representations of disability into research and teaching for primary classroom literacy instruction, we can reinforce valuable social emotional skills that foreground respect for the humanity and dignity of all students.

Literacy across the Disciplines: Development and Validation of an Instrument to Assess Literacy Instruction in Middle and High School Classrooms

Nationally published research suggests middle and high school educators are often experts within their respective disciplines, but they may be unprepared to effectively consider literacy needs and ways to incorporate literacy within their discipline. To better understand teachers’ perceived capabilities in their ability to teach and incorporate components of literacy within their classroom, we developed a survey to measure teacher self-efficacy in teaching content-area and disciplinary literacy. We explain the four stages of validation and provide examples of needed revisions to our survey. The survey was designed for immediate use with middle and high school teachers in South Carolina, but it could be used by any school, district, or state.

Teaching reading through Direct Instruction: A role for educational psychologists?

Educational psychologists can play a number of roles within education settings. They are often called upon to assist with the assessment and treatment of disability issues, student behaviour and mental health problems, parent and teacher liaison, and counselling, to name a few. Less frequently pursued is an active role in establishing and evaluating both general classroom and remedial literacy instruction. A lack of success in the literacy domain can have far-reaching effects on students’ educational and social and emotional development. Further, it has been noted in national and international reports that the accumulated evidence for effective literacy instruction has not had the impact on policy that it deserves. Educational psychologists are well placed to assist schools to develop an evidence-based perspective that can provide a marked improvement in the literacy development of students. One such model with a long research history is Direct Instruction. This article will describe the model, and consider how it might be profitably employed in schools.

An Evaluation of the Efficacy of GraphoGame Rime for Promoting English Phonics Knowledge in Poor Readers

Here we report further analysis of data drawn from a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) run in the United Kingdom designed to evaluate the efficacy of an adaptive software game to aid the learning of English phonics, GraphoGame Rime. We evaluate the efficacy of GraphoGame Rime for the “top half” of players in the RCT, children aged 6 to 7 years who played above the group mean play progress point (95 children). We also analyse 3 sub-groupings of this cohort. The GraphoGame family of games in different languages was originally designed to support children at family risk of dyslexia, hence we analysed data for the subgroup of the GraphoGame Rime children who were struggling in school and had Individual Education Plans (IEPs). Secondly, we analysed data from the younger children in the RCT, born in the Spring and Summer months, as international studies of GraphoGame have found the strongest effects during the first year of reading tuitionand our participants were in their second year of reading tuition. Finally, we analysed GraphoGame Rime data from players in schools rated as “requiring improvement”. Schools that are found to be “requiring improvement” in the United Kingdom are encouraged to use additional teaching strategies to achieve better outcomes. GraphoGame Rime is relatively cheap to acquire and easy to implement, hence if it offers significant gains over “business-as-usual” this would be a valulable additional strategy for such schools. We find that GraphoGame Rime is more effective than “business-as-usual” in developing knowledge of English phonics for all of the groupings analysed. We conclude that the supplementary use of GraphoGame Rime in addition to ongoing classroom literacy instruction can benefit children in learning phonic decoding and spelling skills.

Fostering Participation During Literacy Instruction in Inclusive Classrooms for Students With Complex Support Needs: Educators’ Strategies and Perspectives

Existing research has documented evidence-based practices that are effective for supporting students with complex support needs (CSN) to learn academic skills. However, there is a need to learn more about effective instructional strategies for students with CSN during literacy lessons in general education classrooms. In addition, there is a need to understand general education teachers’ perspectives on these strategies, including how they learned about them. The purpose of this study was to understand (a) the extent of participation of students with CSN in literacy instruction and activities in general education classrooms, (b) the supports educators provide during these activities, and (c) how educators learned about the strategies they use in their classrooms. We observed nine students with CSN and conducted follow-up interviews with their classroom teachers. Overall, students participated in academic activities for a majority of observations, and these activities addressed a variety of different literacy skills. Educators used research-based instructional practices to support the students including prompts and visual supports. During follow-up interviews, general education teachers described the strategies they used to support students with CSN, and they described how they learned about these strategies. Implications for future research and practice are presented.

Implementing Evidence-Based Reading Practices in K–3 Classrooms

Rigorous reviews of reading research over the past 2 decades agree on evidence-based practices in K–3 classrooms. Yet results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show that about one-third of the nation’s 4th graders are proficient in reading—an inadequate percentage for a nation that demands a literate citizenry and workforce. The first objective of this article is to provide an overview of the evidence-based reading practices recommended in K–3 instruction based on systematic reviews and meta-analyses of classroom instruction and intervention studies. The second objective is to provide a brief overview of essential features of multitiered systems of support for implementing evidence-based reading interventions in grades K–3. The third objective is to provide resources to help practitioners implement evidence-based literacy instruction in primary grade classrooms and in intervention settings.