Preparing novice teachers to develop basic reading and spelling skills in children

Abstract

This study examined the word-structure knowledge of novice teachers and the progress of children tutored by a subgroup of the teachers. Teachers' word-structure knowledge was assessed using three tasks: graphophonemic segmentation, classification of pseudowords by syllable type, and classification of real words as phonetically regular or irregular. Tutored children were assessed on several measures of basic reading and spelling skills. Novice teachers who received word-structure instruction outperformed a comparison group of teachers in word-structure knowledge at post-test. Tutored children improved significantly from pre-test to post-test on all assessments. Teachers' post-test knowledge on the graphophonemic segmentation and irregular words tasks correlated significantly with tutored children's progress in decoding phonetically regular words; error analyses indicated links between teachers' patterns of word-structure knowledge and children's patterns of decoding progress. The study suggests that word-structure knowledge is important to effective teaching of word decoding and underscores the need to include this information in teacher preparation.

Promoting Special Education Preservice Teacher Expertise

“…In our review, several studies of reading and mathematics revealed teacher educator approaches to integrating how to teach content with the procedural knowledge necessary for implementing instruction and knowledge of student performance (Alexander, Lignugaris-Kraft, & Forbush, 2007;Paulsen, 2005;Spear-Swerling, 2009;Spear-Swerling & Brucker, 2004). Mostly, these approaches involved contentfocused methods coursework combined with highly structured field experiences.…”

“…Similarly, in the area of reading, researchers have demonstrated that carefully designed coursework accompanied by structured field experiences enabled preservice teachers, both those with and without prior teaching experience, to grow in their content knowledge for teaching reading and in their ability to promote student reading achievement (SpearSwerling, 2009;Spear-Swerling & Brucker, 2004). In the e studies, preservice special education teachers enrolled in a language arts course in which they learned about reading development, struggles that students encounter, English word structure, phonics, and reading assessments.…”

Starting small: Building preschool teacher knowledge that supports early literacy development

“…These studies reiterate the need to strengthen teachers' disciplinary knowledge of spoken and written language structures. This call to increase teacher knowledge is bolstered by a growing body of research that has revealed significant links between teacher knowledge and practice, and most importantly, student reading achievement (Foorman & Moats, 2004;McCutchen, Abbott et al, 2002;Spear-Swerling & Brucker, 2004). The results of these studies demonstrate that educators who have knowledge of phonological awareness and the alphabetic principle, and understand how to apply such knowledge in classrooms, can positively affect student outcomes (Bos et al, 1999;McCutchen & Berninger, 1999;O'Connor, 1999).…”

The Effect of a Proposed Training Program Based on the Reflective Model on the Teachers’ Reading Practices in Mafraq

“…This idea is highly stressed by many educators such as Block and Israel (2005), Bos, Mather, Narr, and Babur (1999), Darling-Hammond (2000), Harries and Sass (2008), Snow (2002), Spear-Swerling and Brucker (2004).…”