Summary
Article:
Walking
With Rosie:
A
Cautionary Tale of Early
Reading
Instruction
name
Heritage
University
Table of
Contents
Introduction......................................................................... 4
Evidence
Presented.............................................................. 4
Conclusion........................................................................... 5
Contribution......................................................................... 6
Summary............................................................................. 6
Background
This article is
written by Gina Biancarosa, David Coker, and Rebecca Deffes who at the time
were doctoral students at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, and Connie
Juel, a professor of education and Director of the Jeanne Chall Reading Lab,
Graduate School of Education, at Harvard University.
Their research
evaluated a longitudinal low-income sample of almost 200 early readers from
preschool through first grade.
Sixty-eight percent of the students qualified for free or reduced
lunch. Sixty percent were African
American, thirty-five percent were white, and five percent were of other ethnic
origins. Fifty-one percent were male and
forty-nine percent were female. By
studying the word reading and vocabulary knowledge of these students in the
context of the instruction they received, they documented patterns in teaching
that influence literary skills. They
began by evaluating students' development in decoding and vocabulary from
preschool through first grade using the Woodcock Diagnostic Reading Battery
(Biancarosa, Coker, Deffes, & Juel 2003).
To understand the relationship
between the students' development in literacy skills and the kinds of
instruction they received in kindergarten and first grade, observers from the
research team visited thirteen kindergarten and first grade classrooms every
three weeks during language arts instruction, which typically lasted 90
minutes. On a laptop computer, the observers
recorded what they saw and heard in the classrooms and coded their narratives
for the types of literacy activities that predominated during the instructional
time. These detailed observations allowed them to estimate how much of each
type of activity an individual student experienced during kindergarten and first
grade (Biancarosa, Coker, Deffes, & Juel 2003).
Introduction
Schools that focus entirely on teaching
decoding skills in the early grades neglect the essential vocabulary knowledge
that student’s need to become competent readers. The authors suggest that teachers need to
present lessons that encourage students to develop comprehension skills, which
build on vocabulary knowledge, and decoding skills. Students need to contextualize the word’s
meanings, sounds, and spelling. This
approach is called anchored word
instruction.
Many students may
appear to be progressing well according to reading assessments in the early
grades because tests at this level have relatively simple words and content. But when these students reach the later
grades, their lack of vocabulary knowledge becomes increasingly apparent
(Chall, Jacobs, & Baldwin, 1990; Cunningham & Stanovich, 1997; Juel,
1988).
But the reading field's
current preoccupation with decoding skills and its lack of attention to
teaching vocabulary and listening comprehension in the early grades may result
in an imbalance in instruction and seriously compromise students' vocabulary
development (Biancarosa, Coker, Deffes, & Juel 2003).
Evidence Presented
Data showed that the students in
their sample demonstrated a relative weakness compared with national norms in
both letter-sound identification and oral vocabulary when they began preschool,
as do many students living in poor neighborhoods (Hart & Risley, 1995;
Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998). Each
year, the students' decoding skills improved. By the middle of first grade, their average
decoding skill score was slightly higher than the national norms. This score represented considerable growth
over two school years.
The assessments of vocabulary
development through first grade, however, painted a less promising picture. The gap between the students in the sample and
national norms remained the same over time. Although the students made gains in oral
vocabulary from year to year, they did not catch up overall to their more
advantaged peers.
They
found relationships in first grade between performance in oral vocabulary and
two forms of instruction associated with word recognition. First, first graders who received more
anchored word instruction tended to score higher in oral vocabulary. [JM2] The
more anchored word instruction they received, the higher they scored in oral
vocabulary in first grade. In contrast,
more instruction in letter-sound relationships was associated with lower
vocabulary scores. In particular, the more a student
experienced unanchored letter-sound instruction, in which the focus
remained on the letter sounds rather than references to word meaning, the lower the
student's oral vocabulary scores.[JM3]
Conclusion
Several conclusions should be considered from this research: (1) Teachers
in the study effectively delivered instruction that fostered students' word
reading skills. The teachers' strategies included emphasizing word study in
kindergarten and delivering differentiated instruction to small groups of
students. (2) Oral language exposure
does not seem in itself to significantly promote students' vocabulary growth in
the early grades, and (3) Attention to the letters and sounds of words in kindergarten
appears to foster students' vocabulary growth. [JM4] Attending
to words as specific units of language to be analyzed might promote beginning
readers' early word awareness and, consequently, their oral language
development. When teachers carry over
this emphasis on letter-sound instruction into 1st grade, however, it may have
detrimental effects on oral vocabulary progress.
Contribution
As a second grade teacher, this
article depicts a trend that I see occurring in my on classroom and resonates
with what I believe to be true. When
teachers focus instruction solely on reading words, rather than on making
meaning of text, they pay less attention to building students'
vocabularies. Of course, this does not
mean that schools should curtail letter-sound instruction. Rather, teachers should augment such necessary
and effective instruction with more substantive attention to vocabulary and
comprehension in the early grades.
In the beginning of the year, I have
noticed a deficit of comprehension and vocabulary skills in my ELL
students. With a concentrated effort in
these areas, my students have made quite remarkable improvements.
Summary
According to this research, effective
early reading instruction must help students learn to identify words and
know their meanings. With so much
research emphasizing the importance of early development in both word reading
and language skills, we must consider how to provide instruction that fosters
students' vocabulary development without losing the promising results of
effective instruction in decoding. It
does little good, after all, to be able to sound out words if you have no idea
what they mean.
Reference
Biancarosa, G., Coker, D., Deffes, R.,
& Juel, C., (2003). Walking with
Rosie:
A cautionary tale of early
reading instruction. The First Years of School, April 2003
60(7),
12- 18.
Educational Leadership Publications.
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