What Did Teachers Do So That Students’ Literacy Gains Sustained Significance Two Years Later?

Dr. Cathy Collins Block

Professor of Education

Texas Christian University

P.O. Box 297900

Fort Worth, TX 76129

1-817-257-6789

FAX 1-817-423-0410

Email: c.block@tcu.edu

“Let him teach others who himself excels.”

---William Pope

“Excellence is an art. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then is not an act, but a habit.
---Aristotle

Since 1850 educators have worked to identify means by which young children can enter the world of literacy with greater ease and success (see Smith, l989 for a historical review). One hundred and fifty years later, elementary teachers identified his issue as the most important that today’s researchers should address to improve primary-grade reading instruction (Juel & Minden-Cupp, 2000). As Bond & Dykstra (l967) proposed: “to improve reading instruction, it [will be] necessary to train teachers of reading rather than to expect a panacea in the form of materials” (p. 416). Sacks and Mergendoller (l997) agreed that “more studies needed to be conducted to reveal “the complex interplay of literacy tasks [and] instructional beliefs . . . embracing quantitative and qualitative methodologies . . . in naturally occurring classrooms [to discover] specific classroom contexts and interactions [that were] most supportive for children unfamiliar with the conventions of literacy” (p. 737).

Despite all that we have learned, we have only begun to identify philosophical and instructional actions that lead to sustained literacy gains (Block, 2000; Juel & Minden-Cupp, 2000; Pressley, Allington, Wharton-McDonald, Block, & Morrow, 2001). In this article, I report statistically significant differences that exist between the beliefs and instructional actions of teachers whose students significantly outperformed schoolmates across the hall (who came from the same neighborhoods and socioeconomic backgrounds, but who received instruction from a teacher whose hard work and philosophical beliefs did not lead to as large literacy gains). My purpose is to better understand the pedagogic subtleties that enrich literacy instruction, and to identify new directions for enhancing the professional competencies of literacy teachers.

The theoretical framework that drives this study is based on the cognitive and socio-cultural principles that Vygotsky (l967) proposed. Students who are scaffolding by experts can increase their literacy competencies beyond what would be possible without this additional support. Which teacher-supports enable largest literacy growths? From a socio-cultural perspective, the learning climate and personal interactions that the teacher creates have a great impact on the amount of students’ literacy growth (Beach, l972). We also embraced the philosophy that students assume active roles in constructing their literacy (Moll, l990; Vygotsky, l967; Wertsch, l991). What students do will depend greatly on the instruction they receive; the classroom context driven by their teacher; and, the instructional materials their teachers select. For these reasons, I focused attention on the centrality of the teacher (as opposed to the centrality of a particular instructional approach) to discern the qualities that contribute to literacy growth.

Past studies suggest that several challenges must be overcome before we can reliably identify effective teachers. In previous research, teachers were asked to rank themselves as to their levels of effectiveness in teaching literacy (e.g., Dillman, 1978; Warwick & Lininger, l975). Such data had limitations because self-reports can contain response biases, ingratiation, deception, self-degradation or self-ascension, and a tendency to answer questions in a way that conforms to the dominant cultural mores in a school, district, and nation. In other studies, effective teachers were identified by the nomination of only one superior. These data could produce similar interpretive ambiguities, seemingly because such ratings can be influenced by teachers’ compliance with, and responses to, authority figures, as well as by whether or not teachers agreed with the nominator’s educational philosophy (Bond & Dykstra, l967/l997; Block 2001). In addition, the large disparities that exist between the resources available to teachers in different districts have masked teacher effectiveness (Wilkerson, l998; Wolcott, l988). To dismantle these masked effects it is important to identify effective and less effective teacher actions and philosophical beliefs within the same school, and to use student performances on reading and writing tasks as criteria. Without such data, the best research can achieve is to come closer to a description of classrooms and teachers that have the “look and feel” of effective learning communities.

This article is based on a longitudinal study that was a longitudinal component of an OERI national study at the National Center for English and Literacy Achievement at the State University of New York-Albany. Data analyses occurred in three phases. In Phase 1, indices of teaching effectiveness were computed; and, Phase 2 analyzed end-of-grade 2 literacy performances of students who experienced effective versus less effective teaching in grade 1. This article reports Phase 3, which identified the significant philosophical and pedagogical differences between effective and less effective teachers. .

Participants

Teachers. Eight teachers from four Texas school district participated in this study. Due to its large size, varied student populations, and its influence on policy, curricular issues, and educational publishing, Texas provided a rich cross-section of the main issues affecting first-grade teaching in the l990s (Bowler, l978; Farr, Tulley, & Powell, l987; Hoffman et al, l998). Each school providing teachers for the study had received the highest academic ranking (i.e., Effective) given by the Texas Educational Agency. Effective Ranking meant that (a) at least 90% of the students passed the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills, regardless of the socioeconomic level of students served by the school; (b) the dropout rate was less than 1%; and, (c) student daily attendance was 94%+. The study was conducted in schools meeting generally high standards.

Classes contained no more than 22 students because of state law, and schools varied in size from 300 to 750 total student population. All teachers (a) used a district-wide adopted basal reader and children’s literature as the major sources of instructional materials; (b) had more than 100 children’s books on shelves in the room, (c) placed posters around the room, (d) followed a center rotation system, (e) utilized many supplemental teaching aids, and (f) had one to three computers in their rooms. Instructional materials fell within a range identified as less effective of first-grades in the l990s (Baumann et al., l998). Literacy instruction occurred in 90-minute blocks.

In the high socioeconomic school ( School l in District 1), primary teachers met as a team and planned interdisciplinary units. These teachers also conferred with other teams in their building to develop school-wide curricula, and integrated math and language arts daily through children’s literature. In the middle socioeconomic school (School 2 in District 2), when the team gathered, one teacher (an effective teacher in this study) was its leader. In reality, this group functioned by fellow teachers merely borrowing the units created by this leader. In the middle-to-low (School 3 in District 3) and low (School 4 in District 4) socioeconomic schools, teachers planned independently. No interdisciplinary units existed.

Multiple-person observations, two formal and several informal interviews, video-audio taped transcriptions, standardized test scores, student reading records, and writing samples became data sources. Three researchers observed classrooms seven times---two researchers at a time for two visits and five visits by single researchers. In the classroom, researchers adhered to the privileged observer approach (Wolcott, 1988). Observers tried to be unobtrusive by minimizing their interactions with teachers and students to (a) take detailed field notes, (b) attend to the teaching process, and (c) record student performances as objectively and thoroughly as possible. Consistent with the recommendation of Spradley (1979), their purposes were, as much as possible, to document what was said and done during a less effective day. Methodological triangulation occurred in several ways (see Author, 2000 for a complete description). First, two researchers visited each classroom and agreed upon the conclusions derived from the observational data. Teachers member checked data by providing the rationale for specific classroom actions; and reading observation reports and interview data to verify that the contents accurately reflected their intentions for specific instructional episodes. Whenever teachers’ rationales differed, transcripts were altered to match teachers’ intentions.

The analysis focused on identifying categories of what teachers and students did and said as part of literacy instruction. No a priori determinations were made to search for specific types of actions to the exclusion of others, nor were observers asked to pay special attention to particular dimensions of literacy instruction (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Categories were refined and gaps in information were filled as subsequent observations occurred, until no new categories emerged. The analysis also involved tracking the six targeted case study students in each class to create profiles describing each child’s interactions with his or her teacher. The audio- and videotapes for each class, as well as the interview data permitted analyses of the social roles adopted by teachers as they lead small group literacy and one-to-one interactions with children. Two in-depth interviews were conducted, with these aimed at elucidating the teachers’ philosophies and instructional actions. The first, completed six months into the study, contained 14 questions concerning teaching philosophies. The second, completed eight months into the study, contained 17 questions concerning instructional practices, as reported in Author (2000). These data were quantified and analyzed statistically.

Seven measures determined Teacher effectiveness (described in more detail in Author, 2000). The first was an analysis of 144 hours of field notes, observations, and video/audio tapes to discern percentage of students on task during 90-minute literacy blocks, as an indicator of the total number of minutes spent in learning by six target students (see Author, 2000 for a full description of all measures of effectiveness). The second measure was the average reading level of books that the six targeted students self-selected to read at the end of grade 1. The third was the average number of books read by the targeted students during the last month of grade 1, because this measure has demonstrated to discriminate between successful and less successful beginning readers (Allington, 1997; Allington & Cunningham, 1994; Durkin, 1990; Stanovich, 1986). The fourth measure was the average of targeted students’ literacy scores on the Terra Nova Basic Battery, at then end of grade 1. The fifth was the average writing ability of the targeted students, based on the coherence of stories they wrote and the percentage of sentence free of grammar, punctuation, spelling, and capitalization errors, at the end of grade l. The sixth was the total standardized reading score on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills of targeted students at the end of grade 2. The seventh measure was the average writing ability of targeted students at the end of grade 2.

What Distinguished Effective Teachers?

Students taught by effective teachers descriptively distinguished themselves from less effective peers. End-grade-2 writing and reading scores from children who had been targets in grade 1 revealed that three first grade teachers’ students maintained their statistical advantage in literacy until the end of grade 2 (t(7) =2.15, p < .00l). What is most striking is that there is a clear effect of the quality of grade-1 teaching, with twelve of these indices comparisons retaining their statistical significance at the end of grade 2. The following differences were statistically significant.

Philosophical Differences

When the number of statements that teachers made concerning their philosophies of literacy instruction was analyzed, three significant differences were revealed.

Effective teachers talked about philosophies by referencing individual students with whom they had applied specific theories. Relative to the number of philosophical statements made, three effective teachers expressed more beliefs (M=6.18, SD=.50) per oral explanation of actions than did less effective teachers (M=3.42, SD=.75), p < .01. Data indicated that highly and less highly effective could “talk the talk.” They knew the latest literacy terminology.. More effective teachers were applying research more explicitly. They more significantly cited specific examples in which they were using data with individual children. Discriminators between effective and less effective teachers were that the former providing statements that contain examples with student names, and focused less on the “average” and more on the “individual. In addition, these teachers read seven (as compared to three by less effective) literacy journals in a year.

Effective teachers believed they could adapt instruction to meet students’ special literacy needs. These teachers ranked themselves as “5.00" (highest possible ranking; SD=.25); less effective ranked themselves as “2.75" (below average SD=.62), p < .05 in meeting the literacy needs of special students. Effective teachers averaged 4.15 (SD=.50) instructional modifications a day for students with special needs compared to .50 (SD=.25), p <.01 for less effective teachers. Effective teachers believed that no barrier to students’ literacy development was greater than their own professional competencies to overcome it. Effective teachers’ modified instruction in four ways: (1) they used a distinct teaching cycle; (2) taught opportunistically, (3) monitored vigilantly, and (4) held several one-to-one-conferences each day. Moreover, they took the initiative to implement new instructional strategies more rapidly than less effective teachers; they did not wait until a district mandated the use of a new teaching strategy.

We created the acronym TRIO to describe the teaching cycle that effective teachers follow. Each letter in TRIO designates one stage in this cycle. T stands for teaching strategies to students, and effective teachers taught more than one (and up to fifteen) literacy strategies a day. R denotes re-teaching, which effective teachers did at least by the end of each week for students who had not mastered the concepts during the week. These re-teaching sessions occurred in small groups that contained only those who had not mastered the concepts taught. Exemplar teachers retaught concepts in different words with different examples in small groups. They taught students to decode by attending to the whole word, letter-sound correspondences, onset-rhymes, context clues, attention to medial vowels, and syntactical clues. As one effective teacher told us “Isolated phonics teaching is not enough to produce strong readers.”

I designates individualization. Throughout the week, in one-to-one sessions, effective teachers retaught , on a one to one basis ,those that they had retaught. Effective teachers believed that students who did not learn concepts in small groups required one-to-one, personalized instruction before they could learn. O, representing the last stage in effective teachers’ instructional cycle, occurred when personalized instruction did not produce desired results. Effective teachers call upon Other resources and people to teach individual concepts through different words and methods. Other people were peers, adult volunteers, and resource teachers. Other materials were leveled books, teacher-made materials, hands-on letters, language experience approaches, and alternative programs.

One effective teacher described her TRIO cycle as follows: “I foster students’ self-esteem, causing them to believe that they can read. This goal, coupled with a pretty strong skills program is the key. Children of all levels of reading ability can build words, once you show them how the words are built. Then, the children at higher levels are making bigger words. I throw out in class ‘tion’ says /shun/, so many children begin that day to change ‘shun’ to ‘tion’. Next, I modify for those children that don’t get it by re-teaching and restructuring my groupings. Having a very structured environment and clear, high expectations from me consistently and continually is also very important to my students. This consistency and continuity is demonstrated every time a child turns in a paper and, if he or she doesn’t do it right, having that student go back and check it over and working through it with them. I also think that success depends on children doing a lot of reading and rereading of predictable and pattern books. This way, students can gain the confidence that “I can read.” [They need] a lot of take-home support reading, a lot of strategies like using contextual skills and “thinking till the end”. All of these instructional steps are important [Audio transcription lines 56-72, January 15].

Opportunistic teaching occurred when students worked alone, in small groups, andf during whole-class lessons, as shown in an excerpt from one effective teacher’s November observation (see Table 1). It occurred while students read a big book aloud, as a whole class activity. It represented only one-third of the instruction that occurred in that class’s morning literacy block (i.e. only from 9:10 to 10:00). In contrast to this teacher’s lesson, less effective teachers used only one strategy to meet special literacy needs (i.e., one-to one conferences). Moreover, in less effective teachers’ rooms, students with special needs were required to perform the same tasks and received the same types of feedback as their more competent peers.

Effective teachers knew how their instructional program contributed to students’ literacy growth. Effective teachers could cite what part of their actions, instructional program, or teaching repertoire had scaffolded the success of individual students. As one effective teacher related, “My children do a great job of expanding their reading and writing because we study many new concepts and words every day. Students compose and construct their own written communications for at least 45 minutes every afternoon in my classroom,” stated Teacher 1 [Line 862-863, Interview Transcript, January 15, l997]. Conversely, less effective teachers did not hold as high a level of self-efficacy. They did not judge their programs or their teaching repertoires to be special. As volunteered by a less effective teacher: “I do not feel that there is anything in my classroom which I would nominate for an award or television feature because I am just doing my job as is any other teacher in my building and thousands of others in this state” [Line 59-61, Interview Transcript, January 25, l997]. They also attributed students’ success (or lack of it) to external factors such as the socioeconomic levels in students’ homes, parents’ values, school-wide literacy activities, and/or to the students’ themselves. As another less effective teacher stated, “My students who have homes with two parents, and families where the dads are involved with school life, will learn to read by May. Those who don’t, won’t” [Lines 444-446, Interview Transcript, January 26].

Aside from the above beliefs, effective and less effective teachers’ philosophies did not differ statistically. Differences were not found on the number of new materials that teachers wanted to add to their programs, aspects of the program they desired to change, how they planned instruction, general philosophical approach to beginning reading instruction, commitment to phonics and/or whole language approaches, or types of assessments used.

Distinctions in Instructional Actions

We observed nine instructional actions that distinguished effective from less effective teachers of six-year olds.

Variety in Literacy Instruction

Effective teachers ‘cast a larger literacy net’ teaching more content in less time using more varied approaches. Effective teachers taught more concepts and they taught these in multiple ways. For example, effective teachers averaged four books or stories read by, with, and to students, and two student-composed writings per week. Less effective peers focused instruction around no more (and often less than) one story from the basal or children’s literature selection, and less than one student-written composition a week. Highly effective teachers taught opportunistically during every lesson, as illustrated in Table 1. While every lesson contained at least one major objective, review of prior instruction occurred in every lesson as well as immediate mini-lessons in response to student questions. Table l illustrates one effective teacher exchange. 18 concepts were referenced and four stimuli generated these instructional episodes (as indicated in the brackets after each episode). Effective teachers responded to opportunities to teach specific objective relative to decoding, comprehension, and fluency as they arose every day in the text, discussions, students’ needs, and student inquiries.

As a second example, during the first 45 minutes of one day’s literacy block, an effective teacher taught: (a) 31 new words in a student-generated KWL chart, from which all students were to select 15 words to include in stories which they created individually [because this activity was the introducing to the teaching of adjectives, and the use of more descriptive nouns and verbs when writing]; (b) the “r controlled vowel” phonic generalization; (c) structural analysis; and, (d) how to blend words which have /ch/, /sh/, and /sch/ as beginning or ending consonant digraphs. On the same day, across the hall, a less effective teacher only taught the letter “h” and its sound.

Every day, students had a different literacy activity to look forward to. To illustrate the depth and uniqueness of each day’s literacy adventures, picture how the following could capture a child’s desire to learn.

An effective teacher dimmed the lights to open the day, and this was the first time for her to do so. Students sat quietly huddled together in silence on the sharing rug. On the previous day, this teacher had helped Marcus, the student that was to share today, make a costume fitting of a royal prince. The teacher gave an audible drum roll, Marcus marched into the room, and he regally adjusted his cloak as he reclined in the author’s chair. As he readied himself to unveil his masterpiece, the audience held its breath. In tense anticipation, eyes were glued to the author as he slowly lifted the front cover away from the book, and the teacher turned on the lights. The title was revealed: “The Amazing Adventure of the Gallant Prince. Students clung to every word Marcus read, and correctly answered ten questions that he asked about his book upon recitations’ end.

Integrated reading and writing in content disciplines, and this difference was statistically significant. Effective teachers performed almost twice as many integrations of literacy objectives teaching in content area class times than did (M = 9.00, SD = .75) less effective teachers (M = 5.00, SD = 1.25, t(7) = 4.9, p <.01). Activities changed every day, as illustrated in one week’s progression of the opening activity for the literacy block in one effective teacher’s class the first week of April. On Monday, class began with a student reading his story about what he and the Class Bear did that weekend at home and then he chose a classmate to have the bear to take home that night. On Tuesday, the students entered to find their teacher in an apron cooking Macaroni that was used to create the letters and sounds of consonant blends from songs they sang. Then they wrote the last verse together to sing to second graders later that day from the class-constructed chart. On Wednesday, students began the day by selecting their own theme-related book to read silently, from a large collection of books that the teacher had placed in milk cartons in the centers of student tables. Thursday’s lesson opened with students creating a language experience story using all the content words and literacy strategies (e.g., sequencing, predicting, and listing three adjectives with commas) that they had learned in their pasta food unit that week. On Friday, students listened to a classmate read a story from the city newspaper, one about the student winning a writing contest. Then, students cut up sentences built from words on the wall and words from their food unit bulletin board to construct new statements.

Asked parents to assume up to seven roles in their children’s literacy development (M = 5.07, SD = .45) whereas less effective teachers averaged only one (M = 1.08, SD = .25), and this difference was statistically significant (t (7) = 3.69, p < .01). Effective teachers asked parents and guardians to (1) sign that their child had read (or had been read to by their parent from) a book that the teacher enclosed; (2) help their child identify and bring their favorite books and literacy samples to school to share; (3) send common household items to be used in the teaching reading and writing, (4) re-administer a spelling or sight word list [learned during the week] that night at home with the results to be returned to the teachers the next day; (5) supervise their child’s writing in their journals about experiences at home [with or without the Class Teddy Bear that was taken home with students regularly] which would be read in class the next day; (6) volunteer at least once to participate in a literacy project at school; and, (7) read the class newsletter and send ideas to school concerning students’ literacy at home, to be included in the newsletter, that validated the performances that the teacher witnessed at school. Effective teachers also scheduled parents to read regularly with students in small groups and in one-to-one settings at school. They, and not their principals or reading coordinators, initiated this involvement.

Held high expectations for all children. Effective teachers taught in the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, l966). Children worked continuously, were highly engaged, and strove to reach the high expectations they set for themselves because the daily schedule was well planned. Every minute was spent on academic tasks. These tasks rotated each 20 minutes so that students’ attention spans were never stretched beyond their developmental limits. Most students completed a task in approximately 8-12 minutes and had another equally engaging and challenging one to begin immediately, with only five to fifteen second intervals between to orient them to the new task. Students were taught to manage their own routines, who was to lead the groups, where papers where to be placed, and what to do when all tasks were completed before the 20-minute segments ended.

Effective teachers provided assistance, in the form of personalized, tailored instruction as needed by students. They monitored students as they read and wrote, alert for moments to intervene and scaffold so students could overcome obstacles the moment that difficulties arose. When students had studied a concept for some time, these teachers demanded mastery and perfectly completed work samples relative to that concept. Emphasis on individual attention was paramount. Every day we observed effective teachers working one to one. For less effective teachers, this was not a daily occurrence.

Effective teachers often made statements to their students such as, “What do I expect?” and they would voice back what a teacher expected generally and specifically for a particular lesson. Then they would ask the students, “What do you expect of yourselves?” and they would voice back that they expected themselves to do a good job that day. Their rapid pace of instruction, teaching at the point of need, and expanded explanations communicated that all students must continuously think at high levels “just to keep up.” For example, whenever a student gave a partially correct answer during a whole class conversation, one effective teacher would turn to the group and say: “Tell me what [a student’s name] did right in that answer,” requiring all students to sustain continuous, high levels of thinking while listening. Effective teachers’ high expectations also demanded students’ reflections upon why they gave an answer. In contrast, less effective teachers unintentionally communicated lower expectations through their direction-giving, instructional talk, and teaching actions. To illustrate, a less effective teacher continuously began big book lessons by saying: “Read along with me if you like.” and, with this freedom to choose, most students’ eyes wandered around the room instead of focusing on the words in the book. Similarly, before making some writing assignments, she would say: “You don’t have to write that much if you don’t want too, only two paragraphs if you can.” Students could guess randomly before she told them answers to questions she asked. She did not describe how to generate thinking processes unaided, or how to find answers for themselves.

Encouraged Student Initiative. Students talked about literacy concepts more in effective teachers’ classrooms. These teachers incorporated instructional actions that stimulated pupil initiative. In total, we identified eight categories of actions that increased students to take more initiative to learn literacy. These actions are listed, and examples for each are cited in Table 2. For example, in one effective teacher’s class, six students express their reasoned judgments to open-ended questions (such as “Why do you think this author picked this title?”) before she asked a seventh student to summarize the group’s thinking and to move the discussion forward. Similarly, when compared to less effective peers, effective teachers also offered more flexible topic choice and broader parameters for students’ writing. They did this while simultaneously directing students’ attention to, and reminding students about their expectations that students will master two or more, specific writing conventions during each composition activity. In addition, effective teachers spent less than five minutes of a reading period in non-textually related activities, such as drawing pictures or cutting and pasting without a reading practice component and purpose. To illustrate, in effective teachers’ classrooms students would not go to centers to cut out pumpkins, color them, and paste them on paper during the Halloween unit. Instead, these students may go to a center and label the parts of the pumkin (i.e., stem, leaf, eyes, mouth, nose, candle, lid, etc. to a picture that had been drawn by the teacher or another student the day before and duplicated for all to share in that students’ artistic prowess).

Corrected Teaching Errors. In effective teachers’ classrooms, no uncorrected evidences of teaching errors occurred during the 14 hours of observations. In contrast, less effective teachers averaged 1.2 incidents of incorrect instruction per observation. Many of these errors seriously interfered with students’ literacy development because students expressed confusion immediately after individual teacher statements. For example, in one less effective classroom, the teacher made a statement that all sentences ended with a period. When a student asked why they had completed the worksheet yesterday that asked them to decided which sentences ended in periods or exclamation points, the teacher answered by admonishing the student for interrupting her. In that same day, students were taught that ants breathed through their antennae, and semantic maps were drawn incorrectly on the board and students were asked to copy them in their incorrect form.

Provided specific feedback statements, in a form that challenged, individualized, and personalized instruction. Effective teachers’ feedback targeted a specific area in which an individual had grown or could grow by exerting a little more thought. It did so by providing just enough guidance so that students did not give up in frustration, and yet not so much help as to deny students’ personal satisfaction in learning because all of the thinking was done for them by their teachers. These teachers described exactly what literacy growth students’ samples demonstrated, asked why they performed the literacy objective as they did, and challenged the student to rise to the next higher level of mastery. This feedback cycle did more than praise individual student’s attempts, but it provided data that could keep them challenged and scoring on PAR. We labeled this feedback cycle as PAR: Praise, Ask why, and Raise to the next level of capability. Effective teachers response to students by acknowledging a segment of the literacy process that the student executed well. They do not end their feedback statements at that point, however, They add a second statement in which they ask students what they were thinking to complete that literacy task or process accurately. Then, they conclude their feedback with a challenge to rise to a next higher application of that literacy ability. For example, one effective teacher modeled the PAR feedback cycle in this way: “I like the way you wrote your summary. Why did you begin it with the words ‘in summary’? (Student explained their reason.) When you read, these words will be a clue to you that the author is about to summarize just like you did. When you write tomorrow, try to use other order words on our Word Tower, such as ‘first, second, and last’ and I will check to see if you have learned to use these as well as you have used ‘in summary’ today. Your writing is improving and I know you must be proud, as I am” [May 11, Observation Notes, Line 222-224].

Where Do We Go From Here?

We identified three philosophical beliefs and nine pedagogical actions that teachers pose which resulted in their six-year-olds attaining significantly higher levels of literacy success than same-ages schoolmates. These beliefs and actions appear to have contributed to students’ abilities to sustain this statistically significant advantage over their schoolmates by the end of second grade, even when these students went to different teachers. The following qualities of effective teachers existed regardless of the socioeconomic levels and ethnic backgrounds of students taught.

Highly effective first-grade teachers’ instructional philosophies differed from less effective peers in that they: (1) applied data more specifically, more frequently talking about individual students with whom they had applied definite theories; (2) believed that they could adapt instruction to meet students’ special literacy needs; and, (3) knew how their instructional program contributed to students’ literacy growth. Effective teachers differed significantly in their instructional actions from less effective peers in that they (1) added variety to daily literacy instruction; (2) taught more content using more varied approaches; (3) integrated reading and writing in content disciplines more frequently; (4) asked parents to perform seven roles in their children’s literacy development; (5) held high expectations for all children; (6) encouraged student initiative in eight ways; (7) maintained classroom discipline, (8) corrected teaching errors; and (9) provided specific feedback statements, in a form that challenged, individualized, and personalized instruction, by PAR (Praising, Asking why, and Raising the bar).

Data suggests that we may be well served if we assist more teachers to use the 12 indices that the best of the best educators used to meet students at their points-of- need. Further, data suggested that deficits which students experience from less-effective teaching in the first year of school is not eradicated by the second. Addressing the nature and quality of children’s educational environments in the first year of elementary school is likely to be a critical component in the process of establishing a world in which all people value and enjoy literacy. Highly effective teachers were explicit when developing word-level skills, but they also contextualized this explicit instruction in real reading and writing activities. Such instruction cannot be packaged in “teacher-proof” scripted lessons. This study offered dramatic support for the conclusion that the instruction that six-year-olds receive matters a lot. The diversity of classrooms studied generated confidence in the findings reported

Finally, although we have walked inside effective, complex learning communities and identified distinctions that created superior achievement. Now that we can better recognize, honor, and provide support for this complexity, can we assist others who do not possess these qualities to develop them? Data suggests that if we are to promote higher literacy achievement, an important step may be to work with more preservice and inservice teachers in developing teaching qualities and beliefs that are consistent with those identified in this study. Our data suggest that these traits foster a development of reading and writing in six-year-olds that sustains until the end of second grade. The ultimate goal is that more children can enter the world of literacy with greater ease and ever-increasing levels of power, fluency, and pleasure.

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Table 1

Literacy Objectives Taught (And Stimuli that Spurred the Opportunities Teaching) In A 45-MinutePeriod

By A Highly Effective First Grade Teacher

l. Why authors use “bubbles” and quotation marks to show characters’ exact words and how students can use punctuation marks while they read [This was one of the teacher’s a priori objectives for this formal lesson]

2. Why authors’ choose the titles that they do [This objective was taught because a by asked a question about why the author choose the title that he did.]

3. What was different about the moral of this fiction book, as compared to the non-fiction book on the same theme that they read yesterday and others that students suggested by performing a Venn Diagram activity to compare and contrast this book [This objective arose in response to students’ sparked interest in the topic of the differences between this book and the book that was read yesterday about the same subject.]

4. How to always begin reading from the left of the line to the right and from the top to the bottom on every page [This objective occurred when a student pointed to an incorrect location when the teacher reviewed this previously taught concept.]

5. How to use inflections in their oral reading to make their character’s words more interesting and why it is important to use the inflection of raising their voice to indicate that they have read a question, always, even as an adult reader [This mini-lesson occurred when one student made a spontaneous comment and gave his teacher the compliment that he liked the way she was reading each character with a different voice.]

6. Why question marks are used [This objective arose in response to a student’s question.]

7. Where authors’ biographical information is found in books [This opportunistic teaching arose because this was the first book that she had read in a shared reading when this information was available to teach to her students.]

8. What is the difference between alligators and crocodiles [This objective arose from book’s content. Both animals were included but the differences between the two were not explained. The teacher went to an encyclopedia to model to students how they can answer similar questions for themselves when they become confused or have questions while they read silently.]

9. What the word “compare” means [This objective arose in response to a student’s question.]

10. What the word “contrast” means [This objective arose in response to a student’s question.]

11. When was it proper to use pronouns in students’ writing? [This mini-lesson occurred because many examples appeared in the book in which the author had judiciously and appropriately used pronouns, and because the teacher knew that her students were overusing pronouns in their journal take-home writing assignments each night.]

12. When it is proper to say or write: “I and my puppy” versus “me and my puppy” [This instruction occurred as an answer to a student’s question concerning this issue that was raised in her mind by a sentence the class had just read orally in the big book.]

13. How to use the silent “e” rule for phonetic analysis of words [This objective was to prepare students to write words taken from this book in their center later in the morning. It was an a priori objective that the teacher established.]

14. How students can demonstrate that they know the “naming parts of the sentence’ [This instruction was a prelude to an activity that students would do next in their centers. Students were to underline the subjects of every sentence that they wrote concerning Egypt that would begin in just a moment. Students did six sentences together from the book that students choose.]

15. How to indent a new paragraph every time a new speaker talks in their writing when they are writing the exact words that a person says [This was an objective that arose because the content in the book demonstrated it repeatedly.]

16. How to use “first,” “next,” and “then” as clues to order the important events in a story. [This instruction was an a priori objective established by the teacher as it was to be one of the objectives that she would grade at the end of the students’ writing workshop that afternoon.]

17. What the endings “er” and “est” mean [This objective was in response to a student’s question.]

18. When to use capital letters when they write and what they mean when they read words in their books that contain capital letters. [This objective was included because many students are beginning to use capital letters correctly in their writing samples and are growing curious about the rules to follow in doing so.

Table 2

Statements that Increased Students’ Initiative to Learn Literacy

1. Asked students to explain how they successfully comprehended and decoded, (e.g., After a student read a word correctly, the teacher said: “You just read ‘school’ correctly. How did you know that word?”

2. Allowed up to (but usually not more than) six students to express their answers to questions (e.g.. “Why do you think this author picked this title?”). Then, they asked a student to summarize the group’s thinking before moving on.

3 Afforded students a choice to contribute or not to contribute during discussions (e.g.. “Do you want to pass think about it for a minute. or ‘call a friend’ for a clue?”). When the teacher judged that a student knew an answer but needed a few moments to recall it, a statement similar to the following was made: “Let’s give Brian a moment to write and when he is finished we will move on. [Silence.] As soon as Brian had finished writing a note on his paper, Brian said, “OK.”, and this was the signal that the discussion was ready to move on. Brian knew that the time to formulate his ideas was important, important enough to hold the class in pause for a moment.

4 When a student raised a hand first in a discussion, teachers rewarded that student’s rapid thinking while increasing other pupils’ time for reflection by saying: “Great [student’s name]! I have one idea that is ready to be shared! As we give others a little more time to think, improve upon your idea and how you want to say it.”

5 Did not allow students to “piggy back” on someone else’s comments without thinking. As a result, students did not repeat the same concept over and over during classroom discussions. e.g., “Now, we are all stating sports ideas, so we know that we can add any sport we want to our stories. You can write ‘They played football. They played soccer, and so forth.’ So, it’s time to change our thinking. What other topics do you want in our stories?”

6. Whenever a student gave a partially correct answer, teachers rewarded that student and enabled him or her to learn which aspects of the answer were correct, by immediately turning to the group and saying “Tell me what [ student name] did right in their thinking to come to that answer.”

7. Whenever students noticed discrepancy between themselves and other students’ abilities, the teacher would state that the differences that they observed occurred because someone had had less practice with the concept to be learned, and not that some were less able than others. The teacher assured that this child could practice with her and other classmates.

8 Usually. the teacher did not begin reading response sessions by posing their own questions to students. The teacher waited after an oral or silent reading experience, and allowed students to be the first to make comments or ask questions about the material read. If no comments were made, the teacher would ask questions that enabled students to initiate their own relationships to the reading (e.g., “What question do you think that I would ask about this book/story? Why?”; “Which of these words from this list on the board do you know, and how do you know it?”