Has the Presence of First‐Grade Core Reading Program Academic Vocabulary Changed Across Six Decades?

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to examine possible shifts in the presence of academic vocabulary across the past six decades for a continually best‐selling first‐grade core reading program. The authors examined seven program years dating from 1962 to 2013 and computationally determined four categories of academic vocabulary (science, mathematics, social studies, and general academic) in each program. The primary research question was, Did the volume of academic words in a program year rise with advancing years? A secondary supplementary question was, Did the propensity toward academic affinity of a program considered as a whole rise with advancing years? The authors employed two types of academic word measures: (1) A word was deemed to be academic or not, and if it was academic, it was assigned to one of the four academic categories, and then academic words were counted; and (2) a novel measure, academic affinity, was a continuous measure of the probability that a word was academic (in each of the four academic vocabulary categories). The authors conducted Poisson regression modeling and hierarchical generalized linear modeling. The main conclusions were that later first‐grade core reading program years included a moderately higher volume of science, social studies, and total academic words as compared with earlier years and that the science, social studies, and general academic affinity of the program as a whole was statistically higher in later years, but in practical terms, the change was not remarkable.

Features of Known and Unknown Words for First Graders of Different Proficiency Levels in Winter and Spring

“…Measures such as the 10 categories used by Menon and Hiebert are efforts to describe decodability demands more directly. The latter proved to distinguish first-and second-grade students' reading achievement in the Fitzgerald et al [10] study. However, the Menon and Hiebert measure would benefit from validation of the difficulty that blends and digraphs add to short and long vowels and of patterns of vowel + r. A study such as that conducted by Pirani-McGurl but with kindergarten and first-grade students, not students who already have a modicum of reading proficiency, is needed.…”

“…The Hasbrouck and Tindal [60] norms suggest changes in the oral reading proficiencies of first-grade students. These changes have occurred even while instructional texts have increased in complexity [10]. Whether the texts of ORF have increased in their complexity over the period represented in the Hasbrouck and Tindal norms has not been documented.…”

“…In theoretical perspectives of word recognition, at least a modicum of repetition with words or word patterns is assumed to serve as a mechanism for development of alphabetic knowledge [9]. A substantial change occurred in perspectives on beginning texts, however, in the early 1990s, when large states mandated use of authentic texts rather than texts with controlled vocabulary [10]. As Foorman et al [11] showed in their analysis of first-grade reading programs published after this change, even texts designed to promote decodable words have a variety of word types.…”

First-Grade Reading Instruction and Reading Growth: Asian Language Minorities and Native-English-Speaking Peers

“…However, the main work of learning to read is “code breaking” (e.g., Adams, 1990; Gentry, 2006). In addition, early-grade texts tend to be designed for easy comprehension, with texts supporting understanding through pictures, vocabulary familiar in oral language, short sentences, and content familiar to young children (Fitzgerald, Elmore, Relyea-Kim, Hiebert, & Stenner, 2016). In other words, early-grade instruction and texts may have contributed to a lack of relation between instructional meaning emphasis and children’s reading growth.…”

Academic Vocabulary Networks Matter for Students’ Disciplinary Learning

“…To our knowledge, virtually nothing had previously been documented about academic vocabulary networks in elementary grades disciplinary textbooks. There is some minimal evidence that vocabulary meanings in a first‐grade core reading program are more challenging in more recent year programs (e.g., Fitzgerald, Elmore, Relyea‐Kim, Hiebert, & Stenner, 2016), and that the volume of academic vocabulary in that reading program increased across past decades (Fitzgerald, Relyea, Elmore, & Hiebert, in press). But, again, examination of vocabulary networks has been scarce.…”