Jennifer had taught eight years of first grade, completed her student teaching under Michelle’s guidance, and held a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction. Lori had taught for 18 years, but this was her first year in first grade. Her previous experience included kindergarten for the greatest length of time, with one year of second grade, and some early childhood. She held her master’s degree in curriculum and instruction and an Ed.S. in curriculum leadership.
The teachers received professional development in two ways: one week of summer training followed by year-long support. The summer week-long professional development was provided by an alphabetics expert, Tamara, who had previously been trained by national alphabetic experts. Further, prior to this research study, Tamara had taught hundreds of students who struggled with reading, and she educated many teachers. During this summer training, Tamara taught vowel and consonant sounds in isolation by focusing on the mouth placement for articulating these sounds. She also taught teachers how to segment and blend sounds in child friendly ways using kinesthetic activities such as putting each letter on a sound dot. Tamara taught short vowels, long vowels, r-controlled vowels, and ambiguous vowels by creating a mnemonic visual representation. Tamara also instructed teachers on how to identify the types of errors students make when reading and spelling and how to provide the right instruction to improve students’ knowledge.
Additionally, Tamara modeled how the alphabetic principle merges with comprehension knowledge by reading single words and words in context. Formative student assessments that measured the aforementioned concepts along with a developmental scope and sequence were an essential part of the training. Appendix B provides some information about the developmental scope and sequence.
A second phase of support occurred during the school year when Tamara visited the teachers four times for observation, co-teaching, and feedback. The teachers also met weekly to collaborate with their literacy coach. Alphabetics was only a part of the entire literacy curriculum used by the teachers throughout their first grade literacy block. They instructed students in fluency, vocabulary, comprehension strategies, and writing through whole group, small group, and individual structures.
Data
I conducted four classroom observations during the school year (October, November, February and April) to determine teacher effectiveness. I also conducted interviews with the teachers in May to solicit teachers’ knowledge and perspective in teaching beginning readers and obtain some in-depth insights about their beliefs.
I followed several steps when analyzing the qualitative data (Merriam, 2009). First, I began by transcribing the observations and interviews. Next, I read through each transcript and identified the themes. After developing the themes, I read the data sources a second time to ensure the findings were correctly represented. Finally, I read the data a third time looking for additional information that supported my research goal. Following are findings from the three themes: teachers’ increase of knowledge, improved quality of instruction, and student growth.
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After the professional development, these teachers felt empowered to present alphabetic concepts in meaningful and powerful ways for their students to master.