Effective Reading Instruction (Research Summary)

If we are truly committed to an educational system in which "no child is left behind," our nation must commit itself to attracting and nurturing highly effective, expert teachers. In the June issue of Phi Delta Kappan, University of Florida professor Richard Allington argues that the key to educational success is largely dependent upon improving reading proficiency, which results primarily from having effective teachers in grades one through four with the skills and tools needed to teach students to read.

In summarizing a decade of research and classroom observations, Allington posits six common features exemplary reading teachers possess.

• Time.
  Students of A+ teachers spend as much as half the day in reading and writing activities — a significantly higher proportion than in the average classroom. Extensive practice facilitates reading competency, and practice requires sufficient time.
• Texts.
  Reading materials of appropriate complexity must be readily available. Lower-achieving students, particularly, require books they can successfully read. Motivation to read is nurtured by prior success in reading.
• Teaching.
  Exemplary instructors provide ample doses of direct,explicit teaching. They model the cognitive processes, such as how to decode words that skilled readers must master.The best reading teachers model and demonstrate frequently throughout their lessons.
• Talk.
  Successful reading teachers had a higher rate of student talk than found in most classrooms. The quality of the student talk also differed. Rather than merely responding to teachers' questions, the student talk focused on ideas, problem solving, strategies, and hypotheses. The teachers also used more "open-ended" questions.
• Tasks.
  Longer and fewer reading assignments was the norm. The emphasis was upon reading whole books or extended small group research projects. Students were often given choices from a menu of possible tasks.
• Testing.
  In assessing student performance, teachers tended to stress effort and improvement more than achievement. This practice does require that teachers know their students well. Very little use of commercial test-preparation materials was observed.

Source: R. L. Allington. (2002). What I've learned about effective reading instruction. Phi Delta Kappan, 83(10), 740-747. To learn more about this topic, enroll in the PLS graduate course Learning to Read: Beginning Reading Instruction™. Call PLS at 1-800-526-4630 or check the PLS Web site (insert link to: http://www.plsregistration.com) for the course closest to you.

What Motivates Students to Read?

• Asking what I like to read: 100%
• Allowing me to select what I want to read: 90%
• Teachers who give me time to read at school: 85%
• Teachers who read aloud daily: 80%
• Teachers who have classroom libraries: 75%
• Teachers who read the books I recommend: 65%
• Listening to books on tape: 55%
• Teachers who provide places to curl up with a book: 55%
• Teachers who are "caught" reading: 55%
• Teachers who encourage talk about books in class: 45%

*Percentages add to more than 100 as students could choose more than one strategy. Survey of 500 7th and 8th grade students.

Source: T. Lesesne & K. Beers. (Spring 2002). STOMPing out illiteracy, Middle Matters. Used with permission.