"Placing children in the middle of literacy": instructional practices in a print-rich second grade classroom where all readers succeed
Abstract
The purpose of this research was to identify and describe the instructional
literacy practices of a second-grade teacher would help to explain why her lowest
achieving readers were successful with reading. This teacher was selected
because she provided her students with a print-rich environment and her students
had good, conceptual understandings of literacy. Qualitative research methods
were employed to document and describe (a) the kinds of texts and opportunities
to engage with those texts this teacher made available to her struggling readers;
(b) the teacher’s intentions and purposes in providing these opportunities for her
struggling readers; (c) the ways in which the struggling readers talk about reading
and writing in this classroom. One teacher and four of her low-income, minority
students were observed for three months as they engaged in literacy events across
subject areas. Data for this study included field notes from observations, student
and teacher interviews, and digital images of texts created and used in this
classroom. The findings from this study indicated this teacher was a
knowledgeable decision maker. She skillfully incorporated her goals for reading
instruction with students’ developmental needs. This teacher surrounded her
students with a plethora of print and engaged them in a wide variety of reading
and writing materials of varying formats and genres. She purposefully engaged
her students in meaningful acts of literacy that were centered on the creation and
use of student and teacher authored texts. Student and teacher created texts
claimed every available space in the classroom and were a significant part of the
daily lives of the students in this study. These texts were the avenue through
which this teacher created an identity of “author” and “expert” in her struggling
readers and the struggling readers talked about themselves as such. The findings
of this study indicate that the creation and use of these texts within a print-rich
environment under the guidance of a skillful teacher may have contributed to the
conceptual understandings of literacy that were developing in these young
readers.
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