Title: Individualizing Student Literacy Instruction: Exploring causal implications of child X instruction interactions
1Individualizing Student Literacy Instruction
Exploring causal implications of child X
instruction interactions
- Carol McDonald Connor, Christopher Schatschneider
- Florida State University/FCRR
- Barry Fishman, and Frederick J. Morrison
- University of Michigan
- Institute for Education Sciences
- June, 2008
2Thanks and Acknowledgments
- Principals, Teachers, Students and Administrators
- ISI Team
- Elizabeth Crowe
- Shayne Piasta
- Stephanie Glasney
- Phyllis Underwood
- And everybody
- US Department of Education IES
- National Institute of Child Health and Human
Development
3Research behind the study
- In our research, we have found that the effect of
specific instruction strategies appear to depend
on students language and literacy skills - phonics, phonological awareness, comprehension,
vocabulary, book reading, sustained silent
reading, etc. - These are child by instruction interactions
- Correlational evidence from preschool through 3rd
grade
4Attending to the instructional needs of all
children
5Research Questions
- Can teachers individualize instruction?
- What is the effect of individualizing
instruction? - Intent to treat
- Study 1, N 616 students in 47 classrooms in 10
schools - Study 2, N 443 students in 26 classrooms in 7
schools - Is there a dosage effect? I.e., When teachers
individualizing with greater precision, do their
children show stronger reading skill growth? - Treatment of the treated
- This is where we relied on the video-taped
classroom observations - Study 1, N 461 students in 47 classrooms
- Does accessing assessment results affect student
outcomes?
6Schools
Study 1 22 treatment teacher and 25 control
teachers, 616 children
School Treatment School? Reading First? Total number first grade classrooms Core Curriculum of students on FARL
A No Yes 3 Reading Mastery 93
B Yes Yes 6 Open Court 96
C No Yes 6 Open Court 88
D Yes Yes 5 Reading Mastery 82
E No Yes 5 Open Court 57
F Yes No 4 Open Court 69
G Yes No 5 Open Court 67
H No No 7 Open Court 37
I No No 6 Open Court 24
J Yes No 5 Open Court 29
7Schools
Study 2 14 treatment and 12 control teachers,
443 children
School T or C F/R Lunch Level 3 Above FCAT 3rd Grade Reading Number of Students Reading First
A T 87 45 99 Yes
B C 60 69 94 Yes
C T 38 83 120 No
D C 33 83 109 No
E C 12 98 96 No
F C 9 81 145 No
G T 4 89 156 No
8The Intervention
- Both Treatment and Control
- Dedicated and uninterrupted language arts block
of about 120 minutes - Access to DIBELS scores 4 times per year
- Instruction
- Conceptualize instruction multi-dimensionally
- TM Instruction in small groups or individually
using homogenous skill based groups - Attending to the assessed skill levels of the
group - Provide A2i algorithm recommended amounts
- Professional Development
- 2 workshops and monthly meetings
- Classroom-based support bi-weekly
9Assessment to Instruction (A2i) software
- A2i was designed to make Individualizing
Instruction using assessment results easier for
teachers - A2i uses model algorithms based on our research
to compute recommended amounts and types of
instruction for each child in the classroom based
on his or her assessed reading and vocabulary
skills
10Algorithm results Effective patterns of
instruction
TM-CF
TM-CF
CM-MF
11Procedures
- Student Assessments
- 3 times during the school year fall, winter,
and spring - Woodcock Johnson-III
- Picture Vocabulary
- Letter-word Identification
- Passage Comprehension
- Classroom observation
- Video-taped
- 3 times per year fall, winter, and spring
- Field notes
- Noldus Observer Pro
- Coded classroom activities for randomly selected
subsample of children
12HLM Intent to treat results
Year 2 (2006-2007)
Year 1 (2005-2006)
13A quick look at A2i
- http//isi.fcrr.org
- Log in
- A2idemo
- Password
- Isi06!
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15Assessment to Instruction (A2i) Software
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19Output from A2i
20A2i Use and Reading Comprehension
HLM fitted growth curves controlling for fall
vocabulary, letter-word reading, curriculum,
FARL, and Reading First status. 464 GE 1.8, 468
GE 2.0,
21Treatment teachers use of A2i
Mean use 527 minutes versus 180 minutes in
Study 1 Classroom view mean 148 minutes Minutes
using Classroom View and Total A2i were
correlated r .86, p lt .001
22Teachers use of Child Information Screen
Mean Use 50 minutes No significant relation
between classroom view and child information
screen use.
23HLM Results
24Conceptualizing Classroom Instruction
- Student versus Classroom level
- Most observations are conducted at the classroom
level - Student level observations children who share a
classroom experience different learning
opportunities - (Connor, Morrison Slominski, 2006)
- Multiple Dimensions of Instruction
- Teacher/child-managed versus Child-managed
- student-teacher interactions
- Meaning versus Code focused or Explicit vs
Implicit - Content of instruction
- Whole class, small group, or individual
- Context
- Change across the school year
- Time on task across and within the school year
25Teacher/child managed (TM) Teacher/child managed (TM) Peer child managed (CM) Peer child managed (CM)
Code-focused (CF) Meaning-focused (MF) Code-focused (CF) Meaning-focused (MF)
Whole Class or classroom level (TM-CF) The teacher writes run on the board and asks students to break the word into /r/ /u/ /n/ and then blend the sounds together to form /run/. (TM-MF) The teacher reads a book aloud to the class. Every so often he stops to ask the children to predict what is going to happen next. (CM-CF) All students complete a workbook page on word families (e.g., cat, bat, sat) while the teacher sits at her desk and reviews assessment results. (CM-MF) All students write in their journals while the teacher writes in her journal.
Small Group Pair (TM-CF) The teacher reads a list of words aloud and the small group or pair of students put their thumbs up if they hear the long o sound and thumbs down if they do not hear the sound. (TM-MF) While reading a book to a small group of children (or pair), the teacher asks students to make predictions about what will happen next. (CM-CF) Two students take turns testing each other on reading sight words on flash cards. (CM-MF) A group of students work together at a center using flash cards to make compound words, which they then define and use in a sentence.
Indivi-dual (TM-CF) The teacher works with an individual student and is timing how long it takes him to read a list of sounds. She then provides feedback on word attack and sight word strategies (TM-MF) During a shared reading activity, the teacher assists a student individually on using comprehension strategies to enhance understanding (CM-CF) A student completes a worksheet where he must color the pictures for which each name includes the long a sound. (CM-MF) After listening to a book on tape, a student fills out a worksheet that asks her to answer questions about the characters and to provide a summary of the story.
26ISI Coding Scheme
Child-managed Pair 4.1. Literacy Codes 4.1.2.
Phoneme Awareness 4.1.3. Syllable
Awareness 4.1.4. Morpheme Awareness 4.1.5.
Onset/Rime Awareness 4.1.6. Word
ID/Decoding 4.1.7. Word ID/Encoding 4.1.8.
Fluency 4.1.9. Print Concepts 4.1.10. Oral
Language 4.1.11. Print Vocabulary 4.1.12.
Reading Comprehension 4.1.13. Text
Reading 4.1.14. Writing 4.1.15.
Library 4.1.16. Assessment
4.1.2. Phoneme Awareness
4.1.2. Phoneme Awareness 4.1.2.2.
Blending 4.1.2.3. Elision/Initial 4.1.2.4.
Elision/Final 4.1.2.5. Elision/Vowel 4.1.2.6.
Elision/Medial 4.1.2.7. Substitution/Initial 4.1
.2.8. Substitution/Final 4.1.2.9.
Substitution/Vowel 4.1.2.10 Substitution/Medial
4.1.2.11 Segmenting/Counting
27TCM Small-group Code-focused
28Distance from RecommendationsObserved A2i
recommended amounts
Absolute Values
Simple Differences
ES (d) .42 for TCM-CF and .41 for CM-MF
29Results
- Total amounts of small group and individual
instruction did not predict student literacy
growth - TM-CF
- CM-MF
- CM-CF
- Total amount of TM-MF positively predicted
students passage comprehension skill growth - What about DFR?
30Distance from Recommendations (SS)
31Distance from Recommendations (SS)
32What about childrens behavior?
- Behavioral Regulation Study 1
- Head to Toes Task
- Attention , working memory and task inhibition
- Positively correlated with teacher-reported
social skills - Negatively correlated with behavior problems
- Fall skills predict reading and vocabulary
- A high proportion of children with weak BR skills
is systematically related to weaker growth in
reading skills - What effect does ISI have on students BR skills?
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34Upcoming Challenges
- Progress monitoring assessment of reading and
language/vocabulary skills for all students - Semantic-matching task
- Word Match Game
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36Future Plans
37Implications
- Child X instruction interactions appear to be
causally implicated in the widely varying
achievement observed within and between
classrooms - Individualizing student instruction may promote
students reading and language skills - It also seems to have an effect on their BR
- Instruction varies between classrooms
- Instruction varies for students within classrooms
38Implications
- We can make using assessment to guide instruction
more accessible to teachers. - When this information becomes more accessible, we
can potentially - increase the efficacy of their classroom
practices - enhance students outcomes.
- Within the context of a randomized control field
trial conducted in a diverse group of schools
including high poverty schools - Causal implications of child-by-instruction
interactions - Assessment-guided individualized instruction may
promote stronger literacy outcomes.
39Thank you! And Questions?