Low-Ses Children's Success and Failure at Early Literacy Learning in Skills-Based Classrooms

Abstract

This study examined low-SES, urban children's ways of interpreting traditional skills-based literacy instruction in kindergarten and first grade. Thirty-five randomly selected children from three inner-city schools were tested for entering and end-of-first-grade knowledge of six domains of written language. Their scores on two standardized achievement tests were also collected. Twelve children were randomly selected from this sample for close observation over 2 years in their classrooms. Qualitative and quantitative analyses revealed four patterns of success/ nonsuccess in literacy development within the classroom context: (a) the Independent Explorer children who began kindergarten with the big picture of written language and successfully interpreted the skills-based instruction while engaging in numerous self-directed explorations of print, (b) the Curriculum Dependent children who did not have a big picture of written language from the start and exhibited major mismatches between their understandings and those required by the curriculum, (c) the Passive Nonweavers who failed to actively construct relationships between the many skill activities required of them, and (d) the Deferring Learners who moved from a knowledgeable active stance to a passive one after confronting mismatches between their knowledge of print and the curriculum.Literacy achievement, overall, among children from low-income, inner-city families consistently falls below national norms. At Grade 11, according to NAEP (1988), the average proficiency for these students falls at about the seventh-grade level for all students nationally. Drop out rates among these children have risen to 1

Débuts de la littératie, langue et culture : perspective socioculturelle

“…Avant l'intervention, peu de garderies disposaient de coins de lecture; 93% en avaient un après l'intervention. Les enfants dont les éducatrices avaient reçu un entraînement manifestèrent par ailleurs un niveau de développe-ment plus élevé de la conscience de l'écrit (Clay, 1979), de la compétence narrative (Purcell-Gates, 1991;Purcell-Gates et Dahl, 1991), des concepts de l'écrit (PurcellGates, 1996), du nom des lettres (Clay, 1979) que les enfants du groupe contrôle. Un suivi en maternelle a confirmé que les enfants du groupe expérimental avaient maintenu leur avance pour ce qui concerne le nom des lettres (Clay, 1979), la conscience phonologique mesurée par la reconnaissance de rimes et d'allitérations (Maclean, Bryant et Bradley, 1987) et les concepts de l'écrit (Purcell-Gates, 1996).…”

Children's Concepts of the Nature and Purpose of Reading in Different Instructional Settings

“…Current research indicates that when young readers' concepts are not aligned with the focus of instruction, undesirable results ensue. Without sound understanding of reading as a meaning-making process, that is, without having the big picture, children cannot benefit from being taught about the abstract or graphophonic innerworkings of print (Dyson, 1982;Purcell-Gates & Dahl, 1991).…”

Tom and Joshua: Perceptions, Conceptions and Progress in Meaning-Based Reading Instruction

“…Yet Tom's difficulty with learning to read cannot be laid at the door of an impoverished home background. Nor, since Kathrin was also his first-grade teacher, did he seem to have suffered from a mismatch between the holistic and meaningful view of literacy in his home and some sort of skills-based, meaning-free reading instruction at school, as has been postulated to cause some cases of reading difficulty in children from highly literate homes (e.g., Michel, 1994;Purcell-Gates & Dahl, 1991). In education, we often conclude that if the explanation for student underachievement lies not in the environment, it must lie within the student himself; indeed, this is sometimes the preferred explanation.…”