Beginning Reading Instruction is the strategies used to teach students how to read. Research shows that students improved most in a contemporary classroom which included meaning-emphasis reading instruction, shared reading experiences, the use of big books, overall story meaning and skills taught in context as opposed to a classroom that focused on phonics oriented, traditional skills, round robin reading, commercial reading programs and accurate oral reading instruction.
Seminal Research
Sacks, C.H., & Mergendoller, J. R. (1997). The relationship between teachers' theoretical orientation toward reading and student outcomes in kindergarten children with different initial reading abilities. American Educational Research Journal, 34, 4, 721-739.
Sacks and Mergendoller studied 132 kindergartners in eleven classrooms. They found the children who scored the lowest on entry into kindergarten improved the most in reading achievement in classrooms with contemporary, meaning-emphasis reading instruction and improved the least in traditional phonics-oriented classrooms.
According to sack and Mergendoller children need and emphasis placed on meaning and not phonics type instruction.
Reutzel, D.R., & Cooter, R.B. (1990). Whole language: Comparative effects on first-grade reading achievement. Journal of Educational Research, 83, 252-257.
Reutzel and Cooter studied 91 first-grade children in four classrooms, two that used shared reading and other contemporary reading instructional strategies and two that had a traditional skills reading program.
Reutzel and Cooter found the children in the contemporary classrooms with shared reading became significantly better readers at the end of the school year than the children in the traditional skills classrooms (p<.01).
According to Reutzel and Cooter shared reading aligns with better readers.
Milligan, J.L., & Berg, H. (1992). The effect of whole language on the comprehending ability of first grade children. Reading Improvement, 29, 3, 146-154.
Milligan and Berg studied 165 first-grade children, 82 in classrooms with contemporary reading instruction and 83 in classrooms with traditional reading instruction.
Milligan and Berg found the middle and lower-achieving children with the contemporary reading instruction were significantly better in reading comprehension than the middle and lower-achieving children with traditional reading instruction, especially the lower-achieving children. They also found the high, middle, and lower-achieving males with the contemporary reading instruction comprehended text significantly better than the males with traditional reading instruction.
According to Milligan and Berg, children attain higher comprehension when instructed by contemporary reading strategies.
Eldredge, J.L., Reutzel, D.R., & Hollingsworth, P.M. (1996). Comparing the effectiveness of two oral reading practices: Round-robin reading and the shared book experience. Journal of Literacy Research, 28, 2, 201-225.
Eldredge, Reutzel, and Hollingsworth studied 78 second-grade children, some in classrooms with shared reading (also known as shared book experience, or S.B.E., an instructional technique where the teacher points to the text in full view of the children as s/he reads to the children) and some in classrooms with traditional round-robin reading (an instructional technique where the teacher has the children take turns reading consecutive parts of a story orally).
Eldredge, Reutzel, and Hollingsworth found that shared reading typically moved average students from the 50th to the 80th percentile in word analysis, i.e., letter-sound correspondences, on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills.
Eldredge, Reutzel, and Hollingsworth also found the average students in the shared reading group became 20% better in oral reading than the average students in the round-robin group.
Eldredge, Reutzel, and Hollingsworth found while all groups—above average, average and below average—benefited from shared reading, the below-average students benefited the most. The below-average students in shared reading became 41% better in oral reading than the below-average students in round robin reading.
As indicated by Eldredge, Reutzel, and Hollingworth, shared reading increases oral reading, word analysis, and letter-sound correspondence, and is a better practice than round robin reading.
Elley, W. (1998). Vocabulary acquisition from listening to stories. Reading Research Quarterly, 24, 174-187.
Elley found that even without any explanation of vocabulary, the children who listened to stories learned statistically significantly more vocabulary that those who did not. With some teacher discussion of vocabulary, the children learned even more. They learned vocabulary through experience, through the rich, lived context that gives words their value and utility.
Elley found that children can learn new vocabulary incidentally from having illustrated storybooks read to them. The teacher’s additional explanations of unknown words as they are encountered can more than double vocabulary gain. The evidence indicates that students who start out with less vocabulary knowledge gain at least as much from the readings as the other students, and that learning is permanent.
According to Elley children learned more vocabulary and even doubled that amount when vocabulary was discussed when they took part in listening to stories. More is learned in context through experience.
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (2000). The report of the National Reading Panel: Reports of the subgroups (comprehension). Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
This report concluded the nature of the interaction (emphasizing active participation) during storybook readings may also have an impact on learning (p. 4 - 21).
Studies found that student-initiated talk or active participation was important (p. 4 - 21).
This report stated active learning is best (p, 4 – 26).
As per the NRP, students are impacted by being active in reading participation.
Kamil, M. (2004). Vocabulary and comprehension instruction: Summary and implications of the National Reading Panel findings. In P, McCardle & V. Chhabra (Eds.), The voice of evidence in reading research (pp. 213 – 234). Baltimore, MD: Brookes Publishing.
Kamil found students learn words better if they are actively engaged in the task of inferring vocabulary meaning from context rather than simply being given the definition.
Kamil found not only do students need to encounter vocabulary words frequently, but they should also be given items that are likely to appear in contexts…The context in which a word is learned is critical. Lists are generally less effective that connected texts (p. 218).
Kamil found structuring vocabulary instruction to include group learning formats has found empirical support…Vocabulary learning should entail active engagement in learning tasks…Students may learn vocabulary…when they are simply listening to other students respond (p. 219).
According to Kamil student learn best when they are actively engaged with vocabulary in text, rather than lists or definitions. Students learn from participation in class discussion even if they are only listening to their classmates. The key is they are active in learning process of vocabulary, and this allows them to encounter the vocabulary more often.
Snow, C.E. (2000). Brookings paper on education policy: Comment by Catherine Snow of the federal bilingual education program (pp. 244 – 255). Washington, DC: Brookings Institute Press.
Snow found the super ordinate prevention strategies identified by the committee were: (1) ensuring that all children have access to excellent, language- and literacy-rich school environments (p. 245).
As said by Snow student respond best to language and literacy rich school environment.
Elley, W. (1989). Vocabulary acquisition from listening to stories. Reading Research Quarterly, 24, 174-187.
Elley, W., & Mangubhai, F. (1983). The impact of reading on second language learning. Reading Research Quarterly, 19, 53-67.
Elley, W. (1991). Acquiring literacy in a second language: The effect of book-based programs. Language Learning, 41(3), 375-411.
Dickinson, D.K., & Smith, M.W. (1994). Long-term effects of preschool teachers’ book readings on low-income children’s vocabulary and story comprehension. Reading Research Quarterly, 29, 105-122.
Elley and Mangubhai found in the “book flood” studies in which the researchers flooded dozens of classrooms with high-interest books and trained teachers in shared reading instruction. The results showed that not only the thousands of ESL students in the study improved in reading, they also improved in writing.
Elley, Dickison, and Smith found long-term benefits of reading aloud on low-income children’s reading comprehension and vocabulary. They concluded that reading aloud to students helps them develop their listening comprehension.
According to Elley, Dickison, Smith, and Mangubhai story comprehension, and writing is positively affected by being read to by teachers trained in read alouds using stories that are of high interest.
Garan, E. (2007). Smart Answers to tough questions. New York: Scholastic.
Garan found that reading aloud to children is a powerful predictor of reading success. When children are read to, they learn many important language skills and concepts about print in a warm and nurturing low-stress environment. Reading aloud to children has a positive effect on kids’ brain development. Those children who have not been read to are at a disadvantage. Teachers need to provide the experiential background of stories through read-alouds to level the playing field and to help narrow the achievement gap.
In keeping with Garan students who are exposed to read alouds learn language skills, and concepts in a safe environment. This positive experience increases brain development. Classrooms that participate in read alouds provide background knowledge of stories in a way that all kids can understand and learn from. Read alouds is a technique that is a way to reach all the learners in the classroom.
Durkin, D. (1966). Children who read early: Two longitudinal studies. New York: Teachers College Press.
Wells, G. (1986), The meaning makers: Children learning language and using language to learn. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Durkin and Wells found the big book shared experience replicates the sharing of text children and parents experience at home.
Durkin and Wells pointed out that the way big books are presented in similar to the experience of reading at home with your parents.
Anderson, R.C., Wilkinson, I.A.G., & Mason, J.M. (1991). A microanalysis of the small-group guided reading lesson: Effects of an emphasis on global story meaning. Reading Research Quarterly, XXVI, 417-441.
Anderson, Wilkinson, and Mason studied 149 third-grade children in six classrooms. They asked the teachers to teach their students four lessons, two lessons with an emphasis on overall story meaning and two lessons with an emphasis on such things as letter-phoneme correspondences and accurate oral reading.
They found that the lessons that emphasized overall story meaning led to better outcomes in relation to factors such as students' recall, oral reading, story interest, and lesson time. While all of the reading groups—high, average, and low—benefited from the emphasis on meaning, the average and low groups especially benefited from it.
According to Anderson, Wilkison and Mason kids are more interested and will have better comprehension if the lesson emphasizes story meaning and not sounding out the words correctly.
Cantrell, S.C. (1999). Effective teaching and literacy learning: A look inside primary classrooms. The Reading Teacher, 52, 4, 370-378.
Cantrell studied 49 children in 8 multi-age primary grade classrooms, four that focused on reading for meaning, the writing process, and skills taught in context and four that did not promote meaning-centered reading or the writing process and taught skills out of context. At least 50% of the student population in each school was classified as low income, based on eligibility for free and reduced-price lunch.
Cantrell found the children in the classrooms that taught skills in context did better than the children in the classrooms where skills were taught out of context on every measure of literacy achievement including reading comprehension, fluency, and phonics as well as writing organization, word choice, grammar, and spelling. They also did significantly better on the Stanford 9 assessment of reading and writing as shown in the following table.
Percentile Score1
Stanford 9 Skills taught in context Skills taught out of context
Comprehension 67 41
Word analysis 47 37
Spelling 66 38
Language 76 36
1Scores above the 50th percentile are above average nationally and scores below the 50th percentile are below average nationally.
According to Cantrell, students who learned in context did better on skills such as reading comprehension, fluency, phonics, writing organization, word choice, grammas, and spelling than kids who learned out of context.
Mullis, I., Campbell, J., & Farstrup, A. (1993). NAEP 1992 Reading Report Card for the Nation and the States. Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics.
The 1992 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tested large numbers of fourth-grade children in 42 U.S. states.
The NAEP found that children whose reading instruction emphasized meaning outscored children whose reading instruction emphasized phonics.
It also found that children whose reading instruction had little or no emphasis on phonics outscored children whose reading instruction emphasized phonics (p. 30).
As stated by Mullis, Campbell, and Farstrup through the Reading Report Card kids scored better on emphasized meaning reading instruction than kids who were taught with only phonics.
Round Robin Reading
Stahl, S. (2004). What do we know about fluency? Findings of the National Reading Panel. In P.McCardle & V. Chhabra (Eds.), The voice of evidence in reading research (pp. 187-211). Baltimore, MD: Brookes Publishing.
Stahl found round robbing reading forces low-performing children to perform publicly [and] it is boring. He concluded that it wastes instructional time…In classes where round robin reading predominated; children read an average of 6 minutes per day with low-achieving readers often reading less than 2 minutes per day (p. 190).
Stahl found reading instruction is most effective when teachers actively monitor students as they are reading by “cueing children to use their knowledge of the words to decode unknown words in context (Clay, 1993) and assisting them in recognizing and correcting miscues” (P. 209).
In accordance with Stahl, round robin reading is more harmful than good. It puts kids on the spot and is boring. Round robin reading only allows one child to read at a time, not allowing teachers to actively monitor students.
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (2000).The report of the National Reading Panel: Report of the subgroups (fluency). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
The report found that round-robin reading has been criticized as boring, anxiety provoking, disruptive of fluency, and a waste of instructional time, and the use has been found to have little or no relationship to gains in reading achievement. With round robin reading students receive little actual practice in reading because in reading because no child is allowed to read for long (p. 3-11).
The report found The lack of attention to motivational factors by researchers in the design of phonics programs is potentially very serious because debates about reading instruction often boil down to concern about “relevance” and “interest value” of how something is being taught, rather than specific content of what is being taught (p.2-97).
The NRP basically said that round robin reading is boring, causes stress, and has little or no relationship to improving reading skills. This strategy does not allow much practice in the actual act of reading. If what you are reading is not of interest, you simply check out and the time allotted to reading instruction is wasted.
Guthrie, J. T., & Humenick, N. M. (2004). Motivating students to read: Evidence for classroom practices that increase reading motivation and achievement. In McCardle & Chhabra (Eds.), The voice of evidence in reading research (pp. 329-354). Baltimore, MD: Brookes Publishing.
Guthrie and Humenick found students with self-efficacy believe they have the capability to read well. They approach books with confidence and tackle challenging texts of difficult words with the expectation that they will master them. They have a “can do” approach to reading and learning from text. In contrast students with low self-efficacy are likely to say,”I can’t do it,” when faced with long passages, unfamiliar text, or new expectations for learning from a book. Without the energizing value of high self-efficacy, students are unable to sustain the effort required to learn reading skills or to become knowledgeable through print (p.331).
According to Guthrie and Hammock if the student has low self esteem they will think they can’t do it, but if they have high self esteem when it comes to reading they will have the mind-set that they can do it.
Phonic Awareness
Phonemic awareness and phonological awareness both involve the ability to focus on the sounds of spoken words rather than their meanings. While some interchange the terms, others make a distinction.
• Phonemic awareness is the ability to consciously analyze spoken words into phonemes. Phonemes are the smallest unit of spoken language that makes a difference in the meaning of a word. For example, the words pin and chin are each composed of three phonemes: /p/, /i/, & /n/ and /ch/, /i/, & /n/.
• Phonological awareness is the ability to consciously analyze spoken words into syllables, onsets and rimes, or phonemes. Onsets are any consonant sounds before the vowel in spoken syllables, such as the /p/ in pin, the /ch/ in chin, and the /p/ and /s/ in pencil. Rimes are the vowel sounds and any consonants that follow it in spoken syllables, such as the /in/ in pin and chin and the /en/ and /il/ in pencil.
Phonemic and phonological awareness are not phonics: phonics involves both letters and sounds.
Seminal research:
Bruce, D.J. (1964). The analysis of word sounds. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 34, 158-170.
Bruce found that five- and six-year old children are not able to consciously identify phonemes in spoken words. He gave children spoken words and asked them to make other words by deleting phonemes. For example, he said fork and asked the children to say it without the /k/; he said snail and asked the children to say it without the /n/.
Bruce found none of the five- and six-year-old children were able to do the task with any of the 30 words Bruce gave them. The seven-year-olds averaged only two correct answers. The eight-year-olds averaged about 50% of the words right. Only the nine-year-olds (equivalent to fourth graders in the U.S.) got almost all the words right.
According to Bruce children are not able to consciously identify phonemes in spoken words
Replication research:
Liberman, I., Shankweiler, D., Fischer, F.W., & Carter, B. (1974). Explicit syllable and phoneme segmentation in the young child. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 18, 201-212.
Liberman, Shankweiler, Fischer, and Carter had similar findings. They simplified the children's task by asking them to tap out the number of phonemes in a spoken word.
Liberman and her associates found that 83% of the kindergarten children they tested could not analyze spoken words into phonemes most of the time. That is, they could not abstract spoken sounds into units represented by single letters and digraphs before being taught to read. They also found that 30% of the children they tested at the end of first grade could not analyze spoken words into phonemes most of the time.
According to Liberman, Shankweller, Fischer, and Carter, most of the time kindergarteners could not analyze spoken words into phonemes. A small number of times 1st graders were able to analyze spoken words into phonemes.
Scholes, R. J. (1998). The case against phonemic awareness. Journal of Research in Reading, 21, 3, 177-189. Available at http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/rscholes/psa1.htm.
Scholes found that literate adults use their knowledge of spelling to help them do phonemic awareness tasks. He asked 70 university students questions such as "What word do you get when you delete the second sound in frame?" where the test word had common letter-sound correspondences and "What word do you get when you delete the fourth sound in faxed?" where the test word had less common letter-sound correspondences.
Sholes found when asked "What word do you get when you delete the fourth sound in faxed?", only 6% of the subjects correctly responded fact. (The x in faxed is pronounced /ks/. Thus, the fourth phoneme in faxed is /s/.) When asked "What word do you get when you delete the third sound in liked?", only 19% correctly responded light. (The letter d in liked is pronounced /t/.) Forty-three percent of the subjects incorrectly responded lied. Their responses demonstrated that they were using the spellings of faxed and liked rather than their pronunciations to respond.
According to Scholes most of the time college students are not able to analyze spoken words into phonemes.
Phonemic awareness training
Rosner, J. (1974). Auditory analysis training with pre-readers. The Reading Teacher 27, 379-384.
Seminal research:
Rosner replicated Bruce's work with kindergarten children (described above) but added instruction. He taught the phoneme deletion task to kindergarten children for a whole school year and had similar findings to those of Bruce
According to Rosner even after teaching kindergarteners for a school year, they were still not able to consciously identify phonemes in spoken words.
Replication research:
Treiman, R. (1983). The structure of spoken syllables: Evidence from novel word games. Cognition, 15, 49-74.
Treiman, R. (1985). Onsets and rimes as units of spoken syllables: Evidence from children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 39, 161-181.
Treiman, R. (1986). The division between onsets and rimes in English syllables. Journal of Memory and Language, 25, 476-491.
Treiman found that, even with training, eight-year-olds as well as adults have difficulty splitting spoken syllables anywhere but between their onsets and rimes.
According to Treiman, even after receiving instruction 8 yr olds and adults only had success in splitting spoken syllables between their onsets and rimes.
Research review:
Bus, A.G., & van Ijzendoorn, M.H. (1999). Phonological awareness and early reading: A meta-analysis of experimental training studies. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91, 3, 403-414.
Bus and van Ijzendoorn reviewed the findings of 32 published studies on phonological awareness training. They found:
• the studies varied widely in their findings, from a large effect size (r =.97) to no effect size (r = -.06) for phonological awareness training on reading (p. 406).
• the combined effect size of phonological training on reading of all the studies in the review was small (r =.21) (p. 406).
• among the four studies that reported the long-term effects of phonological training on reading, the combined effect size was not significant (r =.08, p<.06) (p. 406).
• phonological training that was not combined with reading or letters had less effect on reading (combined d =0.18) than phonological training that included reading (combined d =.88) or letters (combined d =.66) (p. 407).
According to Bus and Van Lizendoorn only a small number of studies were done on phonological training on reading. From the few studies it can be deduced that phonological training that is not combined with reading has less effect on reading that phonological training that includes reading.
National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching Children to Read: An evidenced-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. Reports of the Subgroups. Available at http://www.nationalreadingpanel.org/Publications/subgroups.htm.
The National Reading Panel reviewed the findings of 52 published studies on phonemic awareness training. They found:
• teaching children phonemic awareness with letters had more effect on reading (r =.67) than teaching children phonemic awareness without letters (r =.38) (pp. 2-21 & 2-22 & Table 3).
• long-term phonemic awareness training programs had a significantly smaller effect size on reading than short-term training programs: training programs that lasted 1 to 4.5 hours had a moderate effect size (r =.61); training programs from 10 to 18 hours had a large effect size (r =.86); training programs that lasted 20 to 75 hours had a small effect size (r =.31) (p. 2-22 & Table 3).
• phonemic awareness training had a significantly smaller effect size on reading when the training was conducted by teachers (r =.41 on immediate posttests; r =.32 on follow-up posttests) than by researchers (r =.64 on immediate posttests; r =.63 on follow-up posttests) (pp. 2-22 & 2-23 & Table 2).
According to the NRP children learn to read better with PA instruction with letters. PA training had the greatest effect when lasting 10-18 hours. PA training had greater effect when conducted by researchers as oppose to teachers, which leads me to believe that teachers require more training in teaching PA.
Scaffolding
Scaffolding is an instructional technique where the teacher models the desired learning strategy or task, then gradually shifts responsibility to the students.
Cole, A.D. (2006). Scaffolding beginning readers: Micro and macro cues teachers use during student oral reading. The Reading Teacher, 59, 450-459.
This comprehensive investigation revealed how scaffolders use multiple, simultaneous strategies within graphophonics, semantics, and syntactic, as well as within a frequently overlooked cueing system, pragmatics. Pragmatic cues are influences from the environment, human relationships, and the texts being used.
Cole found that preword readers, word readers, and fluent readers are scaffolded differently (Cole, 1995, 2004).
Cole found Teachers must have a broad spectrum of internalized cues for use with scaffolding—ones they can employ at a moment’s notice. Devoid of such internalized
options, teachers overuse and abuse particular cues, such as “sound it out” or “tell.” This cue overuse has been deemed ineffective (Chinn et al., 1993; Jenkins & Larson, 1979; Perkins, 1988; Taylor et al., 2002).
Cole’s study included four urban and three suburban 1st grade teachers a part of a diverse group, working with diverse readers too. Each teacher selected two students, one novice and one fluent reader; but the students varied in gender, race, and age (from 6.9 to 7.10 years). Four teachers and their students used a commercial reading program each day; the three others used a literature-based approach. Regardless of whether the student was a novice or fluent reader, each teacher preselected an unrehearsed challenging text, which she predicted would present some difficulty and thus a need for scaffolding. Students were expected to experience 5 to 10 difficult parts or words in a 100-word section.
Cole found These demonstrated that teachers provide novices more scaffolding time,
more touch-the-page finger pointing, more voiced praise and affirmation, and a greater number of interruptions.
Cole found Teachers integrated the micro and macro in ways that led readers toward a semantic match for existing graphophonic micro cues, but they also integrated
S–S strategies that led readers toward the macro and fluency.
Cole found when readers are more fluent; scaffolders offer mostly macro processing cues that prompt students to expand meaning. Novices need lots of experience and scaffolding within the micro context, which involves a focus on words, sound patterns, syntactic flow, and semantic details
Cole found when the teachers interrupted, detaining the novice for sometimes over a minute, it took a toll on both fluency and meaning. It appeared that when cues pulled readers away from the text, fluency was harmed; whereas, when cues were directly related to the text, fluency was supported.
Teachers in this study used multiple, simultaneous primary cues from all cueing systems: they uttered the actual sound (a G cue); they marked a pictorial event, such as running (an S–S cue); they uttered or masked part of the word (a G cue); they
quickly reread (an S–S cue); and they gesturally prompted readers to reread and read on (S–S). These tactics help keep fluency and meaning going when readers stumble.
This research demonstrated that, in the first grade, teachers used mostly sustaining feedback. Such ongoing, in-process support is offered both verbally and generally, but with a far greater incidence of marking and emotive gestural behaviors. To support fluency and meaning, scaffolding moved readers back and forth between micro and macro contexts. But occasionally, teachers focused their cues on one small textual element, causing readers to become mired in the micro. Thus, fluency suffered. When teachers used distantly related (secondary) cues, they drew readers away from the text and interrupted the flow of reading. Their primary cues had a more direct effect on the novice’s decoding and, consequently, on his or her fluency.
This work validates existing research, indicating that scaffolding behaviors change as development changes. It demonstrates that, compared to fluent readers, novice readers experienced (1) lengthier scaffolding periods, (2) more praise and affirmation,
(3) more interruptions during the process and (4) more gestural marking behaviors. All teachers differentiated their instruction in these ways.
According to Cole scaffolding supports emergent readers by the use of 4 types of cuing systems: Graphophonics, syntactic, semantics, and pragmatics. These are carried out though verbal and gesturally cues, which moved readers back and forth between micro and macro contexts. Primary cues showed to be most effective because they stayed with the context of the story. More scaffolding is needed for beginning readers, and as they progress less is necessary. Effective use of scaffolding using multiple cueing systems is a positive practice that could be used for emergent and developing readers.
Mcintyre, E., Kyle, D.W., & Moore, G.H. (2006). A primary-grade teacher’s guidance toward small-group dialogue. Reading Research Quarterly, 41(1), 36-66.
This study contributes to the literature on classroom dialogue by illustrating how
one teacher scaffolds young students’ participation in dialogue and construction of meaning in one second grade classroom that serves students typically at risk for school failure.
This study focused on how one teacher promoted small-group dialogue about books and literary concepts in her second-grade classroom that served poor and working class rural students, a population typically at risk for school failure. Specifically, we focused on how the teacher guided the students from the beginning of a lesson sequence in ways that led to dialogue and the construction of new understandings. As stated, we found patterns of Gayle’s guidance that ranged from traditional to dialogic discourse. We also found her patterns of talk to be related to the characteristics of her classroom culture in its broadest sense.
Thus, it is evident that teacher-fronted talk and true dialogue are not mutually exclusive as shown by these responses and further illustrated by the successful appropriation of dialogue into students’ written texts. Therefore, we argue that teachers need to be “frontal” at times—to demonstrate, explain, and define in order to lead students to complex literary academic understandings.
This contribution is significant for understanding that these dialogic episodes do not just happen naturally in classrooms but must be choreographed in a sense.
Mcintyre, Kyle, and Moore found that developing a dialogic classroom is not just
about developing skills, but about ensuring an overall classroom that promotes collaborative work and the sharing of ideas.
According to Mcintyre, Kyle, and Moore classroom dialogue is an essential of attaining meaning from discussions. Dialoguing provides the students with a model on how to discuss and listen to facts and ideas that are being contributed to the discussion. The teacher approaches each situation differently. Some students need more help in discussing, where others may simple need a reminder, or even affirmation they are on the right track. It is important that the teacher develop a safe environment, and build rapport with students in order for dialoguing to be the most effective.
Phonics
Phonics is letter-sound correspondences. The units of sound can be syllables, onsets & rimes, or phonemes.
• Onsets are any consonants before a vowel in a syllable (e.g., /dr/ in drum). Rimes are the vowel and any consonants after it in a syllable (e.g., /um/ in drum).
• Phonemes are the smallest unit of spoken language that makes a difference in the meaning of a word, as the /d/, /r/, /u/, and /m/ in drum.
Seminal research:
Clymer, T. (1963). The utility of phonic generalizations in the primary grades. The Reading Teacher, 16, 252-258.
Clymer found that most letter-phoneme generalizations are unreliable. He looked at four popular reading programs for children and chose forty-five of the most clearly stated phonics [letter-phoneme] generalizations in these programs. He then compared these phonics generalizations with the words used in the stories in these reading programs.
Clymer found that most letter-phoneme generalizations do not work much of the time. For example, of over thirty vowel generalizations tested, only half of them worked at least 60 percent of the time.
According to Clymer most letter phoneme generalizations are unreliable; they do not work most of the times.
Replication research:
Bailey, M.H. (1967). The utility of phonic generalizations in grades one through six. The Reading Teacher, 20, 413-418.
Burmeister, L.E. (1968). Usefulness of phonic generalizations. The Reading Teacher, 21, 349-356.
Emans, R. (1967). The usefulness of phonic generalizations above the primary grades. The Reading Teacher, 20, 419-425.
Bailey (1967), Burmeister (1968) and Emans (1967) did similar studies and had similar findings.
Related research:
Berdiansky, B., Cronnell, B., & Koehler, J. (1969). Spelling-Sound Relations and Primary Form-Class Descriptions for Speech Comprehension Vocabularies of 6-9 Year Olds. Technical Report No. 15. Los Alamitos, CA: Southwest Regional Laboratory for Educational Research and Development.
Berdiansky, Cronnell, and Koehler found the English writing system is a complex maze of over 211 overlapping letter-phoneme correspondences. They analyzed over 6,000 one- and two-syllables words within the comprehension vocabularies of children ages six to nine years old.
Berdiansky and her colleagues found 69 letters and digraphs (letter pairs that represent a single phoneme) used to represent 38 phonemes, but the letters and digraphs were related to the 38 phonemes in 211 overlapping ways. To illustrate the complexity they found, the letter o is pronounced one way in no, another way in to, another way in won, and yet another way in woman. The letters ow are pronounced one way in now and another way in snow (which is the same as the o in no). The letters oe are pronounced one way in shoe, another way in does (when does is a verb, not a noun), and yet another way in doe (which is the same as the o in no and the ow in snow).
According to Berdiansky, Cronnell, and Koehler the English writing system is confusing, and fails to follow “the rules” most of the time.
Adams, M.J. (1990). Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.
Adams found it’s counterproductive to spend a lot of time teaching vowel sounds. Consonants are more likely to have one-to-one letter sound correspondence that vowels. Vowels are rampantly irregular in the English…writing system (p.76).
According to Adams more time should be spent on teaching consonant sounds because they are regular as oppose to vowel sounds that are irregular.
Learning phonics
Manning, M, Manning, G., Long, R., & Kamii, C. (1993). Preschoolers' conjunctures about segments of a written sentence. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 8, 1, 5-11.
Manning, Manning, Long, and Kamii found that as children develop they are able to use their knowledge of word order to figure out unfamiliar print words in written sentences before they are able to use their knowledge of phonics to figure out unfamiliar print words. They studied 38 three-, four-, and five-year old children's untaught understandings of sentences that are written in front of them and read to them.
Manning and her colleagues found children who were not yet able to use phonics (letter-sound correspondences) to figure out print words in sentences were able to use word order to figure out print words. This finding suggests that children can learn to read using shared reading (a technique where the teacher points to the words in full view of the children as he/she reads to the children) before they can learn phonics.
According to Manning, Long, and Kamii children can learn to read using shared reading before they can learn phonics. Children rely more of word order than phonics.
Goswami, U. (1986). Children's use of analogy in learning to read: A developmental study. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 42, 73-83.
Goswami, U. (1988). Orthographic analogies and reading development. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 40A, 239-268.
Goswami U., & Mead, F. (1992). Onset and rime awareness and analogies in reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 27, 150-162.
Goswami found that children who have begun to read use analogy between familiar and unfamiliar print words to figure out how to pronounce unfamiliar print words. She showed children in the U.K., in grades equivalent to U.S. kindergarten, first and second grade, pairs of print words with similar letters such as hark & lark and hark & harm. She told each child one of the words in the pair and then asked the child to tell her the other word in the pair if the child did not know it in the pretest.
Goswami found that children who had begun to read were able to use the word she read to them to figure out how to read the second word in the pair when the letters represented similar rimes (e.g., the -ark in hark & lark) but not when the letters represented similar phonemes within rimes (e.g., /a/ and /r/ in hark & harm) (p<.01).
According to Goswami children utilize rime patterns when encountering a word that is unfamiliar.
Moustafa, M. (1995). Children's productive phonological recoding. Reading Research Quarterly. 30, 3, 464-475.
Moustafa found children's knowledge of analogous print words better explains their correct pronunciations of unfamiliar print words than their knowledge of letter-phoneme correspondences (p<.001). She showed 75 first grade children common words such as green and black and analogous unusual words such as grack created from letters representing the onsets and rimes in the common words.
Moustafa found that 95% of the time children could pronounce the unusual words, they could also pronounce the analogous common words used in the study. In contrast, only 64% of the time the children could pronounce the unusual words, they could correctly identify letter-phoneme correspondences used in the words.
Moustafa also found the more print words children learn to recognize, the better they are able to correctly figure out print words they have not seen before (p.<001).
According to Moustafa children use their knowledge of print words to figure out unfamiliar print words as opposed to sounding out the words. Therefore children who are exposed to more print words are better able to figure our print words they have never seen.
Phonics instructionSeminal research:
Freppon found children with contemporary literature-based reading instruction are more successful at sounding out unfamiliar words when reading than children with traditional reading instruction. She studied 24 first-grade children in four classrooms, two with a contemporary literature-based reading program that focused on meaning and two with a traditional reading program with skills taught out of context.
Freppon, P. (1991). Children's concepts of the nature and purpose of reading in different instructional settings. Journal of Reading Behavior, 23, 2, 139-163.
Freppon found the children in the contemporary classrooms had a better sense that reading was constructing meaning with print. She also found that the children in the contemporary classrooms needed to sound out words less often, but when they did so, they were almost twice as successful as the children in the traditional classrooms. While the children in the contemporary classrooms were successful 53% of the time they sounded out words, the children in the skills classroom were successful only 32% of the time.
According to Freppon children that are exposed to a contemporary classroom are better able to construct meaning with print and sounded out words less often (but if they did were twice as successful) than children taught in a traditional classroom.
Replication research:
Eldredge, J.L., Reutzel, D.R., & Hollingsworth, P.M. (1996). Comparing the effectiveness of two oral reading practices: Round-robin reading and the shared book experience. Journal of Literacy Research, 28, 2, 201-225.
Eldredge, Reutzel and Hollingsworth found that second grade children in classrooms with shared reading learn phonics better than children in traditional classrooms with round robin reading. They studied 78 second-grade children, 39 in classrooms with shared reading (where the teacher points to the words in full view of the children as he/she read to the children) and 39 in classrooms with traditional round-robin reading (where the children take turns reading successive parts of a story out loud). In the shared reading classes the teachers demonstrated words and word parts when they reread stories. In the round robin classes the teachers emphasized correct oral reading and provided letter-level or "sound it out" corrective feedback.
Eldredge, Reutzel and Hollingsworth found that shared reading typically moved average students from the 50th to the 80th percentile in word analysis (phonics) on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills.
Eldredge, Reutzel and Hollingsworth found that average students in the shared reading group became 20% better in oral reading than the average students in the round-robin reading group.
Eldredge, Reutzel and Hollingsworth found that while all students—above-average, average, and below-average—benefited from shared reading, the below-average children especially benefited from shared reading. The below-average students in the shared reading group became 41% better in oral reading than the below-average students in the round robin group.
According to Eldridge, Reutzel, and Hollingsworth children exposed to contemporary classrooms with shared reading learn phonics better than children in traditional classroom with round robin reading. Shared reading provides the children with modeling in context, and round robin reading cued the child out of context using phrases like: “sound it out”. More children benefit from shared reading, and that success then carries over to oral reading.
National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching Children to Read: An evidenced-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. Reports of the Subgroups. Available at http://www.nationalreadingpanel.org/Publications/subgroups.htm.
The National Reading Panel reviewed the findings of 38 published studies on phonics instruction. The Panel noted (p. 2-107) there are four different ways of distinguishing words:
1. decoding (using letter-sound correspondences, or phonics)
2. sight recognition
3. analogy to words already recognized
4. prediction (using memory for the text and knowledge of language to anticipate words)
In regards to phonics instruction they found:
• Phonics programs varied widely in their effectiveness, from a very large effect size of d = 3.71 to a negative effect size of d = -0.47, depending on the program, the unit of instruction (whole class, small group, or tutor), grade level, control group, and reading outcome used to measure effectiveness (e.g., word identification or comprehension) (pp. 2-193, Table 4 on pp. 2-155 & 2-156, and Appendix G on pp. 2-169 through 2-176.)
• The effect size of synthetic phonics programs that teach letter-phoneme correspondences, larger-unit phonics programs that teach larger subparts of words such as onsets and rimes, and miscellaneous phonics programs did not differ statistically from each other (p. 2-132).
• Phonics instruction improved reading growth among at-risk kindergarten (d = 0.58) and at-risk 1st grade (d = .74) children but failed to exert a significant impact on the reading performance of low-achieving readers in 2nd through 6th grades (d = 0.15) (p. 2-94).
According to the NRP phonic programs varied widely in effectiveness. Phonics instruction improved reading growth among at risk: kindergarteners, and 1st graders, but had no impact on any other at risk grade level.
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (2000). The report of the National Reading Panel: Summary booklet. Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
The NRP points out:
• Phonics is a means to an end…In implementing systematic phonics instruction, educators must keep the end in mind and ensure that children understand the purpose of learning letter sounds and that they are able to apply these skills…in their daily reading and writing activities (p.10).
• Phonics instruction that focuses too much on the teaching of letter-sounds and not enough on putting them to use are unlikely to be effective (p.2-97).
• The problem here is that phonemes in English may not be phonemes in ESL students’ first language…To perceive phonemes, speakers use categories that were constructed in their minds when they learned their particular language (p.2-41).
• If teachers have students who are learning English as a second language, they need to realize that their students are almost bound to misperceive some English phonemes because their linguistic minds are programmed to categorize phonemes in their first language, and this system may conflict with the phoneme categorization system in English (p. 2-32).
• Phonics instruction appears to contribute only weakly, if at all, in helping poor readers apply these decoding skills to read text and spell words (p.108).
• It is important to recognize that children will acquire phonemic awareness and phonics in the course of learning to read and spell even though they are not taught PA explicitly.
According to the NRP phonics instruction should be taught in context so students understand the meaning of instruction. Students need to know why they are learning the sounds of the words, not just doing something else their teacher has told them. When it comes to ESL students phonics instruction will be more difficult because they are referring back to their first language when encountering a new word. Students will learn to read and spell even if they are not taught phonics.
Ehri, L.C. (2001, June. July). National Reading Panel Report: Work praised, but distortion fears persist [interview]. Reading Today.
Ehri state the report did not single out any one to teach reading. Rather, multiple ways were found to be effective (p.4).
According to Ehri there is not one “right” way to teach reading. Teaching reading though multiple ways is more successful.
Samuels, S.J. (1984). Editorial. Reading Research Quarterly, 19, 390-92.
Samuel stated depending on the variables as well as the degree of motivation and prior knowledge brought to the task of learning to read, it is highly likely that some approaches to instruction would be better for some children and different approaches should work better for other children (p.390).
According to Samuels factors play into the best approach that should be used with each child, and different children call for different approaches.
Reading to Children
Seminal research:
Heath, S.B. (1982). What no bedtime story means: narrative skills at home and school. Language in Society, II, 49-76.
Heath, S.B. (1983). Ways with Words. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Heath found children who are read to interactively become better readers than children who are not read to interactively or not read to at all. She studied adult practices of story reading to preschool children in three neighboring communities.
Heath found (1) in the community where the children tended to do well in reading throughout school, the parents provided their children with children's books and read story books to them interactively (as they read to them, they made sure their children understood what was being read to them), (2) in the community where children tended to do well in the early elementary grades but not the later elementary grades, the parents provided their children with children's books and read story books to them but did not interact with their children when they read to them to ensure their active involvement and understanding, and (3) in the community where the children tended to do poorly in reading in school, the parents valued school and saw it as a means of economic advancement for their children but did not provide their preschool children with books and did not read stories to them.
According to Heath children who are read with interactively become better readers than children who weren’t. Children need more that just having the books and being read with. They need someone to make sure they understand what was being read.
Replication research:
Wells, G. (1985). Preschool literacy-related activities and success in school. Literacy, Language, and Learning. Eds. D. Olson, A. Hildyard, and N. Torrance. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Wells, G. (1986). The Meaning Makers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Wells found that children who are read to become better readers and achieve more in school.
Wells observed children from a full range of economic and educational family backgrounds in their homes over a nine-year period—from the time they were fifteen months old until they were ten years old.
Wells found children who had been read to in their pre-school years had more knowledge of print when they entered school.
Wells also found that there was a significant relationship between children's knowledge of print when they entered school and their achievement in school.
According to Wells children who are read to achieve more in school and become better readers. The more children understand about the knowledge of print when entering the school, the more they will achieve. This comes from being read to at an early age.
Feitelson, D., & Goldstein, Z. (1986). Patterns of book ownership and reading to young children in Israeli school-oriented and non-school-oriented families. The Reading Teacher, 39, 924-930.
Feitelson, D., Kita, B., & Goldstein, Z. (1986). Effects of listening to series stories on first graders' comprehension and use of language. Research in the Teaching of English, 20, 339-356.
Feitelson and Goldstein found children who are read to become better readers. They studied kindergarten children's home environments in neighborhoods where children tended to do well in school and in neighborhoods where children tended not to do as well.
Feitelson and Goldstein found that in neighborhoods where children tended to do well in school, 96% of the children were read to daily and 45% of these children were read to for half an hour or more a day. In contrast, they found that in neighborhoods where children tended to do poorly in school, 61% of the children were not read to at all.
Feitelson and Goldstein also found that in neighborhoods where children tended to do well in school, almost half of the children were read to regularly before they were two years old. In contrast, in neighborhoods where children tended to do poorly in school, none of the children were read to until they were four years old.
Feitelson, Kita and Goldstein found that reading to children in school increases children's reading achievement. They studied four first-grade classes, one where the children were read to from series stories the last twenty minutes of the school day at the request of the researchers and three where the children were not read to in class.
Feitelson, Kita and Goldstein found as the experiment was in progress that half of the children in the class that was read to spontaneously bought or borrowed copies of the series books and read them during their breaks and free time at school. At the end of the six month study Feitelson and her colleagues found the children in the class that had had stories read to them daily in school read better than the children that had not had stories read to them.
According to Feitelson and Goldstein children are better readers, and more successful in school if they were read to. Adding Kita into the research conducted brought about the information that if kids are read to spontaneously using series books for at least 20 minutes borrowed a copy of the series book and read them on their own free time, and ended up being more successful at reading than classes that were no stories were read to them.
