Primary Grade Classrooms Research Articles

The Relationship between Formative Assessment and Summative Assessment in Primary Grade Mathematics Classrooms

This study used hierarchical linear modeling to examine the relationship between data from an internet-based mathematics formative assessment and data from a mathematics summative assessment for primary grade learners (ages 5-7). Results showed a positive relationship between formative assessment data related to the concepts of counting and decomposing numbers and summative data. This relationship was stronger in classrooms where students demonstrated lower average performance on the formative assessment data. The results suggest that formative assessment can be more beneficial to encourage low-achieving students in primary-grade mathematics classrooms. Therefore, we recommend teachers use formative assessment practices more frequently in low-achieved primary grade classrooms. The formative assessment process includes the cycle of data collection, data analysis, planning future instruction, and examining the impact of that instruction through cycling back to data collection. This study contributes to the field by providing more empirical data about the relationship between formative and summative assessment with primary grades’ learners.

Fostering Independence While Teaching Students With or at Risk for Reading Disabilities

The Gradual Release of Responsibility (GRR) model for instructional delivery is well supported by research evidence and is often identified as a critical element of instruction for students with learning difficulties. However, there are challenges associated with effectively releasing responsibility to students. This may be especially true during instruction for primary-grade students with or at risk for learning disabilities. In general, educators want to provide a high level of support to young, struggling students in order to ensure that they feel successful and bolster their confidence. However, too much support means that students are not provided with opportunities for independent practice or independent mastery of content being taught. This article describes the GRR model of instruction and provides specific guidance and resources to support special education teachers in implementing the GRR model during small-group reading instruction in primary-grade classrooms, with a particular emphasis on facilitating group and independent practice.

Narrative Instruction in Elementary Classrooms

This study examined the amount and types of narrative instruction (i.e., story comprehension, oral storytelling, and story writing instruction) that general education English language arts teachers provide to students in grades 1 through 4. The research team conducted 121 approximately 30-minute classroom observations. Educators were asked to teach a lesson focused on narrative comprehension or production (i.e., on “understanding literary text or creating stories”). The amount and type of story instruction provided to students varied across classrooms. Forty-four percent of observed minutes were devoted to story comprehension; 10% of minutes addressed story writing. Teachers spent no time working with students on oral storytelling. Findings suggest that story production may not be an instructional focus in many primary-grade classrooms. In addition, from both a macrostructure and a microstructure standpoint, typical narrative instruction may omit elements of narrative language instruction that are associated with improved narrative comprehension, oral storytelling, and writing outcomes.

Transitioning from primary-grade classrooms to infant/toddler rooms: early childhood preservice teachers’ growth and challenges

ABSTRACT This qualitative study explores how a group of preservice teachers, all of whom had been well prepared to become primary-grade teachers, made a transition into infant/toddler group care settings. The authors used the teachers’ daily journal entries, individual interview, document analysis (course syllabus, weekly planning sheets), and weekly team planning meetings as data sources. Findings revealed that the teachers initially struggled to work with the infants/toddlers and that their long-held notions of children, teaching, and learning were challenged. Yet, their daily work with the children over 15 weeks of practicum helped them deepen and broaden, and become more skillful and insightful of early childhood education, which the teachers found applicable to primary-grade teaching.

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.

Measurement of Classroom Acoustic Parameters in the Public Schools of Medellin

Given the importance of classroom acoustics in the academic performance of school grade students, this research aims to assess the acoustical performance of a number of primary and secondary grade classrooms in public schools in Medellin, Colombia. Standardized measurements of classroom noise and reverberation time were taken in 26 classrooms located in seven public schools. The results revealed excessive noise and reverberation problems in all the classrooms assessed. The cause of this poor acoustical performance seems to be an inappropriate architectural design that prioritizes natural ventilation over classroom sound insulation and the lack of sound absorption materials to control classroom reverberation.

Exploring the Role of Student Teachers’ Self-Efficacy Beliefs and Teacher-Student Relationship Quality in Students’ School Adjustment Competencies

Introduction. The goal of this study was to examine the relationship between teacher-student relationship quality, student teacher’s self-efficacy belief, and students’ behavioral and academic orientations. In this way, the current research might be helpful to understand and document the direct and indirect impacts of teacher self-efficacy beliefs on the linkage between the quality of teacher-student relationship and students’ school adjustment.Method. The sample for this research project comprised primary and elementary grade classrooms and their student teachers, who are enrolled in teacher education programs at a large university in the Southwestern region of the United States. Eighty-seven student teachers (81 female, 6 male) reported on their perceived relationships with 258 primary and elementary students (168 Female, 90 male.Results. As hypothesized, children with high ratings on relational conflict with teachers were also perceived as more behaviorally deviant and less competent socially and academically. The reverse trend was identified for children with high ratings on relational closeness and dependency.Discussion or Conclusion. In addition, the current study showed that teachers with higher self – efficacy beliefs are more likely to build closer and warmer relationships with their students because they had more confidence in their capacity and skills to employment of effective classroom management skills and ability to enhance students’ engagement.

You can count on your fingers: The role of fingers in early mathematical development

Even though mathematics is considered one of the most abstract domains of human cognition, recent work on embodiment of mathematics has shown that we make sense of mathematical concepts by using insights and skills acquired through bodily activity. Fingers play a significant role in many of these bodily interactions. Finger-based interactions provide the preliminary access to foundational mathematical constructs, such as one-to-one correspondence and whole-part relations in early development. In addition, children across cultures use their fingers to count and do simple arithmetic. There is also some evidence for an association between children’s ability to individuate fingers (finger gnosis) and mathematics ability. Paralleling these behavioral findings, there is accumulating evidence for overlapping neural correlates and functional associations between fingers and number processing. In this paper, we synthesize mathematics education and neurocognitive research on the relevance of fingers for early mathematics development. We delve into issues such as how the early multimodal (tactile, motor, visuospatial) experiences with fingers might be the gateway for later numerical skills, how finger gnosis, finger counting habits, and numerical abilities are associated at the behavioral and neural levels, and implications for mathematics education. We argue that, taken together, the two bodies of research can better inform how different finger skills support the development of numerical competencies, and we provide a road map for future interdisciplinary research that can yield to development of diagnostic tools and interventions for preschool and primary grade classrooms.

Rhythmic rituals and emergent listening: Intra-activity, sonic sounds and digital composing with young children

(Re)Entering data from a networked collaborative project exploring how sound operates as a mechanism for attuning towards cultural difference and community literacies, this article examines one primary grade classroom’s participation to investigate the rhythmic rituals of ‘emergent listening’ in early childhood literacy. Thinking with sound studies and more posthuman ways of knowing/being/doing, this article details how the sonic was felt not only as an actor on the scene of young children writing but also as an intra-active agent of what the teacher called ‘making space’ and community. Exploring ‘emergent listening’ through a diffractive entanglement of stories and concepts, this paper focus on two pieces of early writing: a digitally produced audio clip and a ‘body built’ (Ms Lionel’s words) tableau depicting the sensorial process and thinking behind children’s making moments. The findings highlight how particular actions of emergent listening generated new forms of embodied knowledge-in-motion. Encouraging educators to consider the modal affordances of sound and sonic composition, this article expands definitions of young children composing with material realia and explores how, as this article suggests, emergent listening opens up pedagogical spaces where creative energies are generated and mobilized to bring to fruition an ethico-onto-epistemological world view.

A small-scale, feasibility study of academic language time in primary grade language arts

ABSTRACTA small-scale feasibility study was conducted to explore the implementation of academic language time (ALT) in primary grade classrooms with and without access to digital devices. Academic language time is a structural change that dedicates a portion of language arts instructional time to direct vocabulary instruction using evidence-based techniques. Over a 6-week period, teachers and students in eight urban primary grade classrooms participated in the study. Fidelity of implementation and students’ pre- and post-vocabulary performance were used to gauge the ease and effectiveness of implementation as indicators of feasibility. Results showed that a majority of classrooms, print and digital-enriched, met fidelity benchmarks, suggesting ease of implementation. All classrooms showed pre/post-gains in students’ vocabulary learning, indicating effectiveness of implementation. The wide range of fidelity across classrooms, however, suggests that a more nuanced analysis of fidelity may be required to improve the implementation effectiveness of ALT for purposes of replication.

Get Them Talking! Using Student-Led Book Talks in the Primary Grades

This teaching tip details one teacher's implementation of student-led book talks in her primary-grade classroom. The author describes a simple gradual-release method that she has successfully used with her students in order to get them talking about the books that they are reading independently. She found that when used in the readers' workshop model, student-led book talks not only help to create a vibrant reading community in which students discuss books and recommend them to one another but also help to develop students' oral language skills, which correlates well with the Common Core language arts standards for listening and speaking.

Oops Pounce Quick Run!: An Alphabet Caper by Mike Twohy (review)

Reviewed by: Oops Pounce Quick Run!: An Alphabet Caper by Mike Twohy Jeannette Hulick Twohy, Mike Oops Pounce Quick Run!: An Alphabet Caper; written and illus. by Mike Twohy. Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins, 2016 32p ISBN 978-0-06-237700-5 $17.99 R 4-7 yrs A mouse is “Asleep” in a recliner within the walls of a human house, when a “Ball” comes flying into his abode, and the ball-into-stomach impact forces him to “Catch” it. The ball belongs to a “Dog” who puts his “Eye” up to the mouse hole and plunges in his “Feet” to retrieve the ball, while growling “Grrrr.” With a “Help!” the mouse is on the run, and a chase ensues through both the human house and the remainder of the alphabet. Somewhere between T and Y, though, the two forge a tentative friendship and settle down for a snooze with a concluding “Zzzzz.” A few of the words are shoehorned into the formula (e.g., “Very cool” for letter V), but overall this is an amicable abecedary romp. The initial letter of each word or phrase is printed in a vivid color, which contrasts with the black type of the remaining letters, and the large font ensures that the words will easily be seen across the room. The text words are, for the most part, easily decodable, expanding the usefulness to the easy-reader crowd as well. The cartoonish India ink and felt-tip pen illustrations are effective in conveying the story beyond the minimal text; animated lines and streaks transmit the urgency of the pair’s motion, while plentiful white space allows the large words and the two emotive animals to take center stage. Primary-grade classrooms and libraries will find plenty of curricular use for this, and kids will enjoy the lively story and opportunities for full-voice exclamation. [End Page 441] Copyright © 2016 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Utilizing Nonfiction Texts to Enhance Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary in Primary Grades

Many primary grade students are not afforded nonfiction-rich opportunities, with fiction comprising the majority of books read aloud in classrooms. With the Common Core Standards recommending that half of the texts made available to students be nonfiction, educators are increasing their use of informational text. The present study explored the impact of explicitly teaching reading comprehension and vocabulary strategies with nonfiction text compared to fiction text in primary-grade classrooms. Two first-grade (n = 39; 25 male, 14 female) and one second-grade class (n = 20; 13 male, 7 female) participated in the quantitative study that followed a repeated measures design in which the students alternated every 2 weeks between fiction-based instruction and nonfiction-based instruction for a total of 8 weeks. Vocabulary and use of comprehension strategies were assessed at the end of each 2-week period. Overall findings indicated that students were better able to apply the comprehension strategies and define vocabulary following nonfiction-based instruction; they also were more motivated to read informational text. The authors recommend that teachers use more nonfiction texts in the primary grades to support students’ reading comprehension and vocabulary development.

Extra! Extra! Read All About It

Research revealing the continued dominance of narrative texts in primary-grade classrooms, coupled with shifts in the American cultural and textual landscape, have prompted educational policy urging teachers to increase the variety of informational texts students read and the authenticity with which students use those texts. The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate how one first-grade teacher scaffolded students’ meaningful engagement with a nontraditional classroom text, a local newspaper, through daily interactive read-alouds. Data sources including expanded field notes, transcripts of naturalistic observations, and teacher interviews were analyzed inductively using methods of constant comparison and discourse analysis. Purposefully selected topical episodes highlighted the characteristic of newspapers as dynamic texts that privilege real-time information. Analysis identified that the teacher scaffolded engagement through thoughtful selection of content, improvisation aimed at creating connections, acknowledgment of uncertainty, and positioning of students as members of the community of people who follow current events.

Restructuring Sharing Time for English Learners and Their Parents

AbstractIn this article, the authors discuss how sharing time, a staple classroom practice in primary grade classrooms, was modified to increase involvement among parents of ELLs. The authors discuss the benefits of modifying sharing time to focus on specific cultural artifacts from ELLs’ native culture. This modification allowed for meaningful conversations and planning to occur between ELLs and their parents. The sharing time presentation also increased the interest and knowledge of the ELLs and their classmates about their native culture.

Improving Language-Focused Comprehension Instruction in Primary-Grade Classrooms: Impacts of the Let’s Know! Experimental Curriculum

This quasi-experimental study was designed to test the impacts of a curriculum supplement, Let’s Know!, on the quantity and quality of language-focused comprehension instruction in pre-kindergarten to third grade classrooms. Sixty classrooms (12 per each of pre-K to grade 3) were enrolled in the study, with 40 teachers assigned to implement one of two versions of the experimental Let’s Know! curriculum and 20 assigned to a control condition, in which they maintained their typical language-arts curriculum. Classroom observations, 90 min in duration, were collected near the end of the first unit’s completion, about 4 to 5 weeks into the academic year. These observations were coded to examine impacts of Let’s Know! instruction on two outcomes: (a) teachers’ use of 18 language-focused comprehension supports and (b) general classroom quality. Study results using quantile regression showed that Let’s Know! teachers used a significantly higher number of language-focused comprehension supports during Let’s Know! instruction compared to the control teachers during language-arts instruction; the same finding was also true for general classroom quality. Quantile regression results showed the greatest differentiation in instructional quality, when comparing experimental and control teachers, for teachers in the middle of the distribution of general classroom quality. Study findings highlight the value of language-focused curricula for heightening comprehension-specific supports in pre-K to grade 3 settings.

Extending the Conversation: Learning from Our Youngest Writers: Preservice Teachers in Primary Classes

Authors Roark Mulligan and Kay Dawson describe a project in which preservice teachers worked in primary grade classrooms, focusing on mentoring young children in writing. In spite of the authors’ initial fears that preservice teachers would find these experiences irrelevant, the authors found that the preservice teachers “witnessed a rapidity of development that could not be observed on any other grade level.”

The Influence of Prior Knowledge, University Coursework, and Field Experience on Primary Preservice Teachers' Use of Reading Comprehension Strategies in a Year-Long, Field-Based Teacher Education Program

This descriptive study employed mixed methods to explore preservice teachers’ initial knowledge and subsequent use of explicitly taught reading comprehension strategies in primary grade classrooms during a year-long, field-based teacher preparation program. Self-Knowledge Rating Surveys, Strategy Multiple-Choice Tests, strategy logs, lesson plans, self-evaluations, mentor teacher/university liaison evaluations, and interviews with university liaisons comprised data sources. Research questions addressed what reading comprehension strategies primary preservice teachers self-reported they knew; what they demonstrated they actually knew via testing and implementation; and how the self-reports, test results, and implementation compared. Results indicated that neither knowledge nor prior exposure to research-based comprehension strategies transferred into teaching when strong external influences that did not support strategy use such as scripted programs, district policies, high stakes testing environments, and public school mentor teachers’ examples of teaching were present.

‘We’ve been doing it your way long enough’: Syncretism as a critical process

This article takes a new look at issues of marginalization and equity in literacy practice by focusing on the concept of syncretism and teachers’ creation of opportunities for young children to draw on knowledge from multiple worlds as, together, they construct new texts, contexts and practices. Recognizing that the strengths and needs of too many students from minoritized communities are not being met, this piece draws attention to the importance of teachers’ appreciation of syncretism as a powerful learning process for challenging discriminatory and exclusionary practices. Drawing on theories of syncretism, and critical and culturally relevant pedagogies, the authors introduce critical syncretism as a process in which teachers and children privilege traditions and practices typically marginalized in schools for the purpose of supporting achievement and broadening worldviews. The article provides examples from two primary-grade classrooms illustrating ways that the teachers made specific moves to change classroom power structures. Whereas White, middle-class, Standard English ways of knowing had been privileged by the school district’s choice of instructional materials and recommendations for teaching practice, the teachers’ new practices opened up possibilities for syncretism by embracing knowledge, languages, traditions and practices from students’ homes, communities and African heritage, as well as from school.

What Do Children Write in Science? A Study of the Genre Set in a Primary Science Classroom

This article reports on the types of scientific writing found in two primary grade classrooms. These results are part of a larger two-year study whose purpose was to examine the development of informational writing of second- and third-grade students as they participated in integrated science-literacy instruction. The primary purpose of the present article is to report on the “genre set” (Bazerman, 2004) established in this community around science instruction. Using Halliday’s (1993) Systemic Functional Linguistics approach and Hasan’s (1985, 1994) Generic Structure Potential, I describe the genres of scientific writing and drawing activities in which these children regularly participated. Findings indicate that children participated in several distinct scientific genres, some of which were flexible, and some of which were highly constrained by the teachers. Each of the genres represented a distinct purpose, structure, and linguistic nature of scientific discourse. The influence of this particular genre set on children’s appropriation of scientific discourse is discussed.