Individualizing 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

Thanks 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

Research 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 3 rd grade

Attending to the instructional needs of all children

Research 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?

Schools School Treatment School? Reading First? Total number first grade classrooms Core Curriculum % of students on FARL ANoYes3Reading Mastery 93 BYes 6Open Court96 CNoYes6Open Court88 DYes 5Reading Mastery 82 ENoYes5Open Court57 FYesNo4Open Court69 GYesNo5Open Court67 HNo 7Open Court37 INo 6Open Court24 JYesNo5Open Court29 Study 1: 22 treatment teacher and 25 control teachers, 616 children

Schools Study 2: 14 treatment and 12 control teachers, 443 children SchoolT or CF/R Lunch Level 3 & Above FCAT 3rd Grade Reading Number of Students Reading First AT87%45%99Yes BC60%69%94Yes CT38%83%120No DC33%83%109No EC12%98%96No FC9%81%145No GT4%89%156No

The 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

Assessment 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

Algorithm results: Effective patterns of instruction TM-CF CM-MF TM-CF

Procedures 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

HLM: Intent to treat results Year 1 ( ) Year 2 ( )

A quick look at A2i Log in  A2idemo Password  Isi06!

Assessment to Instruction (A2i) Software

Output from A2i

A2i 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, AE = 8.2 years AE = 6.0 years

Treatment 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 <.001

Teachers’ use of Child Information Screen Mean Use = 50 minutes No significant relation between classroom view and child information screen use.

HLM Results

Conceptualizing 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

Teacher/child managed (TM)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.

ISI Coding Scheme Child-managed Pair 4.1. Literacy Codes: Phoneme Awareness Syllable Awareness Morpheme Awareness Onset/Rime Awareness Word ID/Decoding Word ID/Encoding Fluency Print Concepts Oral Language Print Vocabulary Reading Comprehension Text Reading Writing Library Assessment Phoneme Awareness Blending Elision/Initial Elision/Final Elision/Vowel Elision/Medial Substitution/Initial Substitution/Final Substitution/Vowel Substitution/Medial Segmenting/Counting

TCM Small-group Code-focused

Distance from Recommendations Observed – A2i recommended amounts Simple Differences Absolute Values * ES (d) =.42 for TCM-CF and.41 for CM-MF *

Results 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?

Distance from Recommendations (SS)

What about children’s 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?

Weaker Fall HTKS Raw Score Stronger Fall HTKS Raw Score

Upcoming Challenges Progress monitoring assessment of reading and language/vocabulary skills for all students Semantic-matching task  Word Match Game

Future Plans

Implications 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

Implications 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.

Thank you! And Questions?