Reading Growth in High-Poverty Classrooms: The Influence of Teacher Practices That Encourage Cognitive Engagement in Literacy Learning

Barbara M. Taylor
P. David Pearson
Debra S. Peterson
Michael C. Rodriguez

  The occurrence of phonics instruction was greater in first grade than in grades two through five. Further, the more that explicit phonics skill instruction was observed in grades two through five, the lower the growth in reading achievement. Across all grades, greater amounts of time were spent on vocabulary than comprehension skills and strategies. Across all grades, little higher-level questioning or writing related to texts was observed. Lower-level questioning was observed at higher rates. In this study, across all grade levels, students were more often engaged in passive responding (turn-taking, listening to the teachers, recitation) than active responding (reading, writing, manipulating). Assessment results indicated that teachers who emphasized higher-order thinking either through questioning or assigned tasks, promoted greater student achievement in reading. Even modest levels of occurrence of higher-level activities resulted in substantial growth in student achievement. Descriptions of teachers who use higher level questioning are contrasted with teaches who asked primarily lower-level questions to identify higher-level teaching characteristics. In story-questioning practices, teachers engaging in high level questioning showed more likelihood of discussing theme, character, and relationship of story to students, and spent more time in student discussion. Low-level questioning teachers focused more on story events, recall, and prediction. The authors acknowledge that, because teachers in the study were already participants in a literacy reform project, generalizability is limited, but feel that the study does suggest that how teachers teach, in addition to what they teach, is an important part of a framework for reading instruction.