Reading Initiative Inquiry Studies

The Reading Initiative professional development curriculum is organized into inquiry studies, or units of curriculum focused on particular literacy issues.  The full RI contract includes one yearlong study or two semester-long studies per year. Each Reading Initiative study group may use different studies, depending on the context of the site and the experiences of the group members.  Site leaders play a key role in tailoring the curriculum to the questions and needs of each group.  Overviews of the inquiry studies follow below.  You may access the 18-20 page overview and bibliography of each study [PDF format] by double-clicking on the title.  Studies are color-coded by which year in the 3-year cycle they have most often been used:   Year One   Year Two   Year Three.

Study Group and Coaching Resources
Successful study groups take the time to develop operating principles: How will we work together? They use student data to define goals: How can we use data to become better “kidwatchers” and increase achievement? They reflect on new learning and make changes: What changes will we make in our group, in our classrooms, at our school? Add this strategy-rich resource notebook, organized by these questions and more, to your professional library today!

Includes …
· Study group experiences to address the literacy challenges in your school
· Protocols for peer observation and debriefing
· Vignettes and recommendations from coaches, administrators and teachers
· DVD with video footage of educators asking questions like yours
· Over 300 pages of articles addressing literacy coaching and teacher learning

Available in the NCTE Online Store.  $200 nonmembers/$160 members. 

You will learn more about: Assessment: Miscue, Reading conferences Book-handling knowledge Burke Reading Interview Family writing backpack Guided reading; Shared reading Kidwatching Literature circles Phonics rules; Onsets and rimes Reading strategies Reading, Writing, Viewing Workshops Spelling strategies Working with families

Early Literacy 
The focus of this study is young children's learning, and specifically, their use of literacy from their  preschool years through age eight.  The study is designed to function simultaneously on two levels.  The first level invites you, as a study group member, to think about yourself as a learner, teacher, and scholar.  At the outset of the study, the whole group considers the conditions necessary to support all of you in collegial, professional conversations throughout the full year inquiry.  With your colleagues and interested others (the children in your classroom, members of the school community who are not part of this study group, parents and other caregivers, and others beyond your immediate school community), each of you will be engaged in six, interconnected inquiry cycles. Through professional conversations, readings, demonstrations, writing, viewing, and representing (expressing your ideas in a wide range of different ways), you will be building upon your current early literacy knowledge base.  At all times, you will be urged to critically reflect on your present beliefs and practices and to strive to bring them into alignment.  Because, ultimately the purpose of this inquiry is to make a difference in the literacy learning of the young children you teach, there will be many opportunities to experiment with—or "try on"—new teaching and learning strategies with young learners, within a supportive learning context for everyone.  Finally, this study invites you to explore "critical literacy" ("the opportunity to use language in powerful ways to get things done in the world", Comber, 2001) and to decide what this literacy concept means for you personally and as a member of a professional and school community. A yearlong study. Serebrin, Long, Egawa

Exploring Visions of Literacy Learning
Welcome to the NCTE Reading Initiative and this Inquiry Study:  Exploring Visions of Literacy Learning.  Your study group is one of many that are embarking on a professional journey none of us can fully predict.  Yet, the NCTE leaders who have authored the experiences you’ll find here are masters at creating invitations for educators.  They’ve worked with study groups themselves and have generously shared their best strategies; thus, we are confident the experiences will be rich ones that help your school community rethink its literacy practices.  For instance, through considering the bold visions of several leading educators (Cambourne, Halliday, Harste, Harwayne), as well as the vision of another Reading Initiative study group, your school community is invited to step back and carefully contemplate, What IS literacy? What kind of literate beings do we want to create?  You will consider the value of your own learning history and examine the beliefs about reading and writing that shape your classroom practice. You will read the work of teachers and researchers asking questions similar to your own and you will document all this learning in a personal literacy portfolio.  Reading experiences that your group lives together can translate directly into teaching plans for tomorrow. Everyone will emerge from this study with new ideas, new tools, new questions, and a new lens through which to view literacy learning.  The path you create may seem familiar to others, but it will be your own. 
Burke, Crafton, Egawa, Harste, Martens, & Stephens

Understanding
and Supporting Readers
In this study, you will learn about or refine your understanding of the components of Reading Workshop.  We begin by living as readers and writers ourselves and then explore how to create supportive contexts for the learners in our classrooms.  Video footage from a number of classrooms will serve as a series of possibilities as you reconsider your own teaching.  You are further challenged to pull from the wealth of strategies included in these materials to weave into your literacy curriculum.  Donnelly, Egawa, Files, Mills, & Stephens 

You will learn more about: Instruction for different miscue profiles Interest inventories Kidwatching Literacy assessments Literacy portfolios Narrative portrait development Reading conferences Reading student artifacts Running records TORP

Literacy Portfolio
The final result of this inquiry study will be the compilation of a Literacy Portfolio on a targeted reader.  The data included within the portfolio will come from strategies and tools you were introduced to in Year One of the Reading Initiative and for which you gathered data both on yourself and younger learners.  This study revisits the concepts of miscue analysis, kidwatching, close observation, and what some educators call “case study.”  We use the overarching concept of Literacy Portfolio to pull all of these together. You will be challenged to extend your knowledge and use of assessment tools, to suspend judgment about what the behaviors you observe might mean, and to carefully plan for future instruction—a process known as assessment as inquiry. Finally, you will organize all this information in a thoughtful and useful way. 
Burke, Crafton, Egawa, Long, Martens, Mills, Smith, and Stephens 
 

Reading Content: Making Sense with Expository Texts
In this Inquiry Study, you will explore the process of reading expository texts and how to support readers as they construct meaning from these texts. You will begin by considering your own reading of expository texts—the strategies you use to make sense of them, and how expository texts are similar to and different from narrative and other types of texts.  You will then examine aspects of expository texts, such as text structures, vocabulary, and building background knowledge, and discuss how these influence readers. To support your inquiry, numerous strategies and opportunities to "live through" a content study are provided. 
Prisca Martens & T. Gail Prichard