Education Commons^™

Discourse In The Elementary Classroom, Kathryn Hardy

Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) in Literacy

As literacy standards across the country grow more rigorous, literacy practices need to follow suit. With the implementation of the Common Core Speaking and Listening Standards in 2010, classroom instruction in the facilitation of student discourse has become not only beneficial, but required. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of an instructional framework for student discourse called Statement Stem Discourse/Accountable Talk (SSD/AT). This instructional frame included discussion stems, teacher prompts, and guidelines for student responses. This study observed the impacts of discourse on 19 students over the course of six weeks. With a focus on questions …

Creating A Culture Of Literacy: Strengthening The Core Of Secondary Reading Instruction, Karen C. Waters, Charles Britton

Education Faculty Publications

The purpose of this paper is to articulate a plan to provide high quality literacy instruction in secondary content area classes that will yield the highest impact on student learning while addressing the needs of the lowest-performing students whose literacy needs cannot be ignored. This will necessitate a restructuring of the three-tiered format within which a systems approach for school improvement embeds a well-defined professional learning plan, and strong collaboration among content area teachers, reading professionals, and special educators to collaborate on the delivery of differentiated, cross-curricular instructional supports.

Researching And Reshaping Literacy Learning: Three Urban K-6 Teachers’ Ongoing Transformations Through Everyday Action Research, Kristin N. Rainville, Grace Enriquez

Education Faculty Publications

Given the vast range of diversity among children’s backgrounds and needs, literacy educators must consider multiple ways in which children learn and interact with texts. Moreover, policies that increasingly require frequent assessments of children’s literacy achievement place pressure on educators to find immediate ways to impact children’s learning. This qualitative inquiry explores three graduate students’ yearlong engagement in literacy-related action research within ethnically and socioeconomically diverse, urban K-6 classrooms. Grounded in a social practice perspective on literacy and a sociocultural perspective on literacy learning, we examined participants’ constructions of action research as they developed research questions, entered various research sites, …

Book Ends Program Is A Win-Win, Karen C. Waters

Karen C. Waters

Book Ends is a site-based University reading clinic that provides a nurturing and interactive environment that empowers children to increase their reading achievement through multimodal and research-based practices in literacy. Trained to administer multiple assessments, certified teachers pursuing advanced literacy CT State Certification provide one-on-one instruction that considers students’ interests and strengths while targeting the foundational skills of the common core state standards and the comprehension anchor standards. Each child is partnered with a certified teacher who shares the philosophy that children learn to read by reading and that success comes from many opportunities to practice. Weekly tutoring sessions last …

Using Shared Reading And Close Reading To Bridge Intervention And The Common Core, Karen C. Waters

Education Faculty Publications

While classroom teachers are grappling with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and its implications for instruction in the core curriculum, designing effective intervention to meet the needs of diverse struggling readers poses another challenge, especially because Response to Intervention (RTI) as an instructional framework frequently emphasizes the teaching of discrete skills. Experts have concluded that intervention focusing primarily on foundational skills without instruction in comprehension is not only contrary to literacy research, but also antithetical to the shift to contextualized literacy instruction, resulting in fragmented instruction for those most in need. At the same time, inherent within both CCSS …

A Clinical Practicum Experience To Prepare Teacher Candidates For Early Literacy Instruction, Karen C. Waters

Education Faculty Publications

The purpose of this article is to explore teacher candidates’ tutoring experiences within a university clinical practicum to acquire an understanding about how their unique interactions with struggling readers and research-based methodology contribute to their pedagogical understandings of literacy instruction.

This article spotlights teacher education and addresses the question of how teacher educators can guide teacher candidates in putting theory into practice with early readers. The author describes a scaffolded clinical practicum in which preservice teachers have the opportunity assess, teach and reflect on their work with children.

A Clinical Practicum Experience To Prepare Teacher Candidates For Classroom Literacy Instruction, Karen C. Waters

Education Faculty Publications

There is a pervasive reading crisis in the United States. Critics, including policymakers, educators, literacy scholars, and professional educational organizations have openly accused university teacher preparation programs of not preparing candidates to deliver effective reading instruction. This qualitative study used narrative inquiry to explore ways in which teacher candidates' participation in a research-based university clinical practicum contributed to their pedagogical understanding of literacy instruction. Conceptually this study was based on constructivism and the ideas of Dewey, Freire, Vygotsky, and Schön. Data collection included multiple interviews and observations to determine how teacher candidates' participation in clinical practicum affects their assumptions about …

Strategy Instruction And Lessons Learned In Teaching Higher Level Thinking Skills In An Urban Middle School Classroom, Karen C. Waters

Education Faculty Publications

Through a compilation of standards-based lesson plans for small- and whole-group instruction, this chapter offers a humorous and heartbreaking perspective of the author's experiences during a yearlong university partnership “Book Bistro” in a 7th grade classroom with urban adolescent struggling readers. Using a combination of leveled, fictional, nonfictional, and culturally relevant text, the chapter is written as a personal narrative to address higher level thinking through systematic instruction in comprehension, vocabulary, fluency, and structural analysis. A step-by-step implementation procedure for each of the research-based strategies is presented, including concept of definition, discussion web, probable passage, pointed reading, semantic feature analysis, …

Literacy Initiatives In The Urban Setting That Promote Higher Level Thinking, Karen C. Waters

Education Faculty Publications

How does an urban district become a twice-nominated candidate by the Broad Foundation? In a district in which 72 languages are spoken, 38% of the students live in homes in which English is not the dominant language, and 91% of the population is minority (African American, Asian, and Hispanic), this largest school district in Connecticut not only made student learning a priority, but focused on higher level thinking as part of the process. This chapter provides insight to grassroots implementation of district and department initiatives over the course of five years that emphasized cognitive and metacognitive strategies in advancing the …

School, Home, And Community: A Symbiosis For A Literacy Partnership, Karen C. Waters

Education Faculty Publications

With the belief that fertile ground for a literate environment is created through lots of oral language, ancestral anecdotes, and reading a variety of genre in fiction and nonfiction, it is possible to link home and school literacy communities. This chapter describes the connection between district literacy events and functional home activities as the basis for a partnership in developing higher level thinking that transcends the classroom. At monthly get-togethers, families were encouraged to participate in the very activities that were used in the classroom as part of the district's literacy block. In helping families acquire a few basic strategies …

Disrupting Preconceptions: Postcolonialism And Education, Ed. By Anne Hickling-Hudson, Julie Matthews, And Annette Woods, James C. Carl

Education Faculty Publications

Book review by Jim Carl:

Hickling-Hudson, Anne, Julie Matthews, and Annette Woods, eds. Disrupting Preconceptions: Postcolonialism and Education. Brisbane: Post Pressed, 2004.

ISBN 1-876682-56-6

The book grew out of a conference held in August 2001 at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. It is composed of a collection of thirteen essays that address postcolonialism in education. The presenters examine the postcolonial in educational structures and practices in Asia, Africa, North America, and Australia, but the colonial legacy remains—the language of the conference is English, the publisher is Australian, and the book is printed in Great Britain.

Overall, this …

Putting Humpty Dumpty Together Again: What's Right With Betsy, Elaine R. Silliman, Louise C. Wilkinson, Robin L. Danzak

Communication Disorders Faculty Publications

Betsy is a telling case of the struggles and victories of a youngster who has grappled with a language learning disability for most of her 17 years. Her story is a fitting way to conclude this volume because she represents how a child with motivation and resilience can confront the educational and interpersonal obstacles she has experienced. Her story, which predates the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and the 1997 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, is a metaphor for the ongoing debates in theory and practice about the meanings of a learning disability versus a …

Chocolate Bunnies And Pork For Passover: The School And Home: A Symbiosis For Family Literacy, Karen C. Waters

Education Faculty Publications

This article explores the literacy partnership between school and family when intergenerational stories are made public.