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This is to certify that the
dissertation entitled

A Study of the Effects of an Open and Prescriptive Home
Reading Program on the Students, Parents, and Teacher in a
Second Grade Classroom

presented by
Leslie Ann Pettway

has been accepted towards fulﬁllment
of the requirements for the

Ph.D. degree in Curriculum, Teaching, and
Educational Policy

CW/eM-«w

Major Professor’s Signature

 

May 7, 2003

 

Date

MSU is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution

A STUDY OF THE EFFECTS OF AN OPEN AND PRESCRIPTIVE HOME
READING PROGRAM ON THE STUDENTS, PARENTS, AND TEACHER IN
A SECOND GRADE CLASSROOM

By

Leslie Ann Pettway

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Teacher Education
2003

AN ABSTRACT

A STUDY OF THE EFFECTS OF AN OPEN AND PRESCRIPTIVE HOME

READING PROGRAM ON THE STUDENTS, PARENTS, AND TEACHER IN
A SECOND GRADE CLASSROOM
The purpose of this study was to investigate a home reading program that I

sponsored for several years as a ﬁrst and second grade teacher and to examine
how well this program met the needs of less advanced readers in my classroom.
This study pursued this goal by investigating the effects of giving parents general
information about hearing their children read and comparing this with the effects
of training parents in a prescriptive hearing reading technique called Paired
Reading. The participants in this study were two second grade boys, who were
less-advanced readers, and their mothers. A variety of data was collected
including videotapes of home reading interactions, attitude surveys, and
audiotaped parental interviews. Videotapes of reading sessions served as a main
data source and were subjected to discourse analysis to determine how the two
kinds of home reading programs inﬂuenced the nature of parent—child reading
interactions and parental beliefs about reading. This study found that Paired
Reading signiﬁcantly altered the reading interactions and parental beliefs for one
mother-son dyad, but did not signiﬁcantly inﬂuence the home reading interactions
or parental beliefs for the other mother-son pair. The quality of the coaching and a
similarity between pre and post-parental intervention scaffolds reduced Paired

Reading’s impact in one home. However, Paired Reading exerted a stronger

inﬂuence over the nature of parent-child interactions in both homes than the

Home Reading Program

Copyright by
Leslie Ann Pettway
2003

This dissertation is dedicated to my mother, Oretha Taylor and my son, Hugh
Lawson Pettway IV.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The love, support, assistance, and conﬁdence of many people contributed
to this dissertation. First of all, I would like to thank my parents Oretha and Alvin
Taylor whose constant encouragement, ﬁnancial assistance, and most importantly
ﬁ'ee babysitting made it possible for me to complete this dissertation. From an
early age my mother instilled in me a love of learning, a hearty work ethic, and
strong belief to “always ﬁnish what you start.” I must also thank my grandmother
and sisters for their moral support as well as my computer savvy brother for
providing technical assistance whenever needed. I thank the many relatives who
expressed pride in my pursuit of a graduate degree. Most of all, I thank my little
son Hugh for accepting the many hours that his mama spent at the computer
rather than playing with him in the long, hot summer months during which much
of this report was written.

A sincere, heartfelt thanks to the chair of my committee Dr. Cheryl
Rosaen for her knowledge, guidance, and patience during the many years that it
took to complete this degree while maintaining my elementary level teaching
position. Her insightful comments and belief in the signiﬁcance of this study
were extremely helpful and inspiring. Her adeptness and published case study
research provided an essential foundation for my ability to structure this study’s
design

Great appreciation is extended to Dr. Patricia Edwards, Dr. Helen
Featherstone, and Dr. Susan Florio-Ruane for serving on my dissertation

committee. Their respective expertise and published works in the areas of parent

education; teacher research and learning; social linguistics and discourse analysis
were instrumental in enhancing my background knowledge of parental
involvement in home reading as well as my data analysis approach.

I must also thank Dr. James Gavelek who in the early years of my doctoral
study gave me an appreciation of the works of Lev Vygotsky and social
constructivist thought. I appreciate both the time that he took to listen to my
research ideas and his belief in my ability to express those ideas through scholarly
writing.

I would like to thank the two boys and their mothers for participating in
this research. They accepted me into their homes. They also trusted my efforts to
assist, improve, and learn from the boys’ at home oral reading performance.

A sincere thanks to both Flemish translators Ms. Martine whose last name
I do not know and Mrs. Martine Oeyen as well as the Spanish translator Mrs. Lilia
Rivera for providing indispensable translations and donating their time free of
charge. Much of the most crucial data in this study came from the participant
discourse that these women translated.

I thank all the teachers that I have worked with over the years that have
shared great ideas, which helped me improve my instruction. I also extend thanks
the Rochester Community School District for allowing me to pursue my doctoral
degree while teaching. Thanks to the Board of Education for approving my
educational leaves of absences and sabbatical. Thank you to the human resource
director Mr. Larry Westley and assistant superintendent Dr. Minnie Phillips for

their assistance. Thank you to both of my principals Dr. Carmen Ziegler and Mrs.

Judith Shorkey for their moral support and encouragement. Thank you to Mrs. Jan
Kopera for providing me with standardized testing material. A special thanks to
Mrs. Denise Fuller, an effective reading teacher, who’s Book Exchange Program
served as the model for my Home Reading Program. And thank you to Ms. Diane
Bass, an excellent teacher who continues to be my ﬁ'iend, colleague, and source of
inspiration.

. I would also like to acknowledge Michigan State University for accepting
me into their undergraduate and graduate level educational programs and
providing me with scholarships that made the pursuit of this degree ﬁnancially
possible. In particular I would like to thank the Holmes Scholarship Program for
it’s generous ﬁnancial support as well as the opportunity to network with other
teacher education doctoral students ﬁom around the country. My educational
experience at Michigan State University has been extremely rewarding due to the
many wonderful professors, students, and graduate assistants that have inﬂuenced
my understanding, growth, and stance towards continued learning in the ﬁeld of

education.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES ......................................................................... xii
LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................... xiv
CHAPTER 1
LITERATURE REVIEW .................................................................. 1
Home Reading: Issues, Questions, and Concerns .............................. 1
Encouraging Home Reading in my Primary Grade Classroom. . ....2
The Beneﬁts of Hearing Children Read ................................ 3
My Changing Perspective of Home Reading .......................... 5
Turning to the Research Literature .............................................. 9
Research on Parent-Chﬂd Reading Interactions ..................... 10
Program Evaluation Studies ............................................ l7
Prescriptive Home Reading Programs ................................ 26
Reasons Open Approaches Still Prevail .............................. 32
Beliefs About Reading ............................................................ 41
Three Prevalent Views ................................................... 41
Home Reading Programs and Reading Beliefs ....................... 43
The Rationale for Probing Parent and Teacher Beliefs About
Reading .................................................................... 44
The Formulation of a Teacher-Research Study ............................... 45
Learning Goals ........................................................... 47
The Questions that Guide This Study Are As Follows ............. 48
Why This Study Is Important ................................................... 49
CHAPTER 2
RESEARCH CONTEXT AND METHODS .......................................... 52
The Teacher and Her Reading Instruction Philosophy ...................... 53
Reading Instructional Philosophy Leads to a Home Reading
Program .................................................................. 59
Home Reading Program Components ........................................ 60
Decision to Conduct Teacher-Research ....................................... 64
Strengths and Limitations of Engaging in Teacher-Research. . ...66
The Negotiation of Multiple Roles ................................... 69
Theoretical Orientation and Assumptions .................................... 71
Research Site ..................................................................... 73
The School Setting ...................................................... 73
The Classroom and Students .......................................... 74
Participant Selection ............................................................. 74
Kirk ........................................................................ 76

Luis ........................................................................ 78

Introductory Participant Meeting ..................................... 79
Research Design ................................................................... 80
Summary of Research Questions ...................................... 81
Pre-Intervention Phase .................................................. 81
Post-Intervention Phase ................................................. 82
Elimination of Test Score Data ....................................... 83
Data Collection ................................................................... 85
Pre-Intervention Videotaped Data .................................... 86
Pre-Intervention Interview Data ....................................... 87
Attitude Survey .......................................................... 88
Paired Reading: Training, Program, and Materials ................. 89
Data Analysis ..................................................................... 96
Analysis of videotaped Data ........................................... 96
Preliminary Findings ............................................................ 105
Pre-Intervention Findings ............................................. 105
Post-Intervention Findings ............................................ 1 10
CHAPTER 3
PRE-INTERVENTION FINDINGS .................................................. l 12
Parental Response Strategies in Hearing a Child Read ..................... 113
Participant Book Strategies ........................................... 113
Elsa’s Reading Response Moves and Strategies ................... 114
General Tenor of the Interactions .................................... 128
Elsa’s Beliefs About Reading ......................................... 133
Lola’s Reading Response Moves and Strategies ................... 134
General Tenor of the Interactions .................................... 144
Lola’s Beliefs About Reading ........................................ 148
Comparing Elsa and Lola’s Beliefs .................................. 149
Comparing Home and School Oral Reading Response Strategies ........ 151
The Educational Quality of the Home Reading Sessions .................. 154
CHAPTER 4
POST-INTERVENTION FINDINGS ................................................. 160
Parental Response to the Paired Reading Training .......................... 160
Training Sessions ....................................................... 160
Elsa’s Initial Response to and Proﬁciency With Paired
Reading .................................................................. 163
Lola’s Initial Response To and Proﬁciency With Paired
Reading .................................................................. 175
Parental Application of the Paired Reading Technique ..................... 181

Overview ofKirk and Elsa’s Paired Reading Experience.........181
Elsa’s Paired Reading Response and Error Correction

Strategies ................................................................ 182
General Tenor of the Interactions .................................... 192
Elsa’s Post-Intervention Reading Conceptions and Beliefs ....... 197

Overview of Luis and Lola’s Paired Reading Experience... ......204
Lola’s Paired Reading Response and Error Correction

Strategies ................................................................ 204
General Tenor of the Interactions .................................... 210
Lola’s Post-Intervention Reading Conceptions and Beliefs ...... 216
Exploring The Reasons for Different Results ...................... 218
CHAPTER 5
IMPLICATIONS OF FINDINGS ...................................................... 222
Implications for Teachers, Schools, and School Districts .................. 222
Program Costs .......................................................... 226
District-Wide Paired Reading Initiatives ............................ 227
Modifying the Scope of Paired Reading ............................ 234
Implications for Researchers ................................................... 235
Implications for My Personal Classroom Context .......................... 236
In Conclusion: The Value of Teacher Research ............................ 238
APPENDICES ........................................................................... 240
BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................ 257

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Data Set: Number-Type of Data .............................................. 85
Table 2: Research and Data Collection Timeline ...................................... 95
Table 3: Participant Book Selections .................................................. 114
Table 4: Elsa’s Error Correction Moves .............................................. 115
Table 5: Use of Multiple Scaffolding Strategies ..................................... 117
Table 6: Kirk’s Session Two Transcript .............................................. 119
Table 7 Elsa’s Non-Error Related Moves ............................................. 122
Table 8: Elsa and Kirk’s Tense Exchanges ........................................... 130
Table 9: Lola’s Error Correction Moves ............................................. 134
Table 10: Luis’ Appeals for Assistance ............................................... 136
Table 11: Luis’ Session Two Transcript ............................................. 138
Table 12: Lola’s Non-Error Related Moves ......................................... 139
Table 13: Participant Book Selections ................................................ 163
Table 14: Follow-Up Session-Challenge With Synchrony ......................... 166
Table 15: Follow-Up Session-Improved Synchrony ............................... 168
Table 16: Examples of Kirk’s Signals to Read Solo During Session Six ........ 172
Table 17: Excerpt ﬁom Session Eight ................................................ 173
Table 18: Example of Synchrony ...................................................... 175
Table 19: Example of Luis’ Disengagement ........................................ 178
Table 20: Comparison of Pre and Post error Correction Moves ................. 183
Table 21: Comparisons of Other Pre and Post Intervention Moves ............. 186

Table 22: Samples of Elsa’s Comprehension Moves From 3"l Paired

Reading Session ...................................................................... 189
Table 23: Sample of Elsa’s Comprehension Moves From 4th Paired

Reading Session ..................................................................... 190
Table 24: Kirk’s Paired Reading Survey Responses ............................ 196
Table 25: Elsa’s Paired Reading Survey Responses ............................ 196
Table 26: Elsa’s Second Paired Reading Survey Response .................... 201
Table 27: Comparison of Pre and Post Error Correction Moves .............. 205
Table 28: Comparison of Other Pre and Post-Intervention Moves ............ 206
Table 29: Luis’ Paired Reading Survey Responses .............................. 214
Table 30: Lola’s Paired Reading Survey Responses ............................ 215
Table 31: Lola’s Second Paired Reading Survey Response .................... 218

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Diagram of Paired Reading Method ........................................ 162

xiv

CHAPTER 1
LITERATURE REVIEW
Home Reading: Issues, Questions, and Concerns
Currently there are a number of school or teacher-initiated parent
involvement programs that encourage parents to listen to their children read.
Typically these programs, designed for children in the primary grades, provide
students with books to read aloud to their parents at home. Even in the absence of
formal parent listening programs, many teachers suggest that parents support their
children’s reading development by hearing them read. A survey conducted by
Becker and Epstein (1982) in the US. indicates that listening to children read is
the parent involvement strategy that teachers recommend most frequently. Many
programs are based on the assumption that parents will support children’s reading
development in positive ways but researchers have discovered great variations in
children’s home literacy environments (N inio, 1983; Purcell-Gates, 1996; Teale,
1987). In fact, research suggests that certain parental listening behaviors my
ﬁ'ustrate low achieving readers resulting in counterproductive home reading
experiences (Bergin, Laney, and Draper, 1994; Topping 1985; Tracey, 1995).
Rather than assuming parents know how to respond to children’s oral reading
eﬂ'orts, some programs have created extensive parent training components
(Edwards, 1994; Glynn 1996; Toomey, 1993; Topping, 1987). However there has
been debate over the most effective and eﬂicient way to educate parents to
respond appropriately to their children’s oral reading efforts as well as

disagreement over the types of programs schools should offer (Auerbach, 1989;

Harmon, 1995; Toomey 1993). Consensus among home reading researchers
primarily lies in the belief that involving parents in hearing children read can be a
beneﬁcial practice. Researchers also agree that further study of parent-chﬂd book
reading interactions in naturalistic settings is needed to inform current
intervention efforts (Harmon, 1995; Evans and Baraball, 1993; Lindsay, Evans,
Jones; 1985; Toomey, 1993; Topping and Wolfendale, 1985).

Issues being raised in the home readingl literature regarding how this
practice aﬂ‘ects low achieving readers, what differences exist between parent and
teacher listening techniques, and how parent training needs should be addressed
have arisen in my own experience as a primary grade teacher who sponsors a
home reading program. Attempts to address these concerns and a desire to make
home reading more supportive of student and parent needs underscored the utility
of conducting research into the nature of parent child reading interactions in the

home environment and served as the principal motivation for undertaking this

study.
Encoyggmg’ Home Reading in My Prirnarv Grad; Classroom

 

The complexity involved in asking parents to listen to their children read
was not apparent to me when I ﬁrst began sponsoring a home reading program in
the predominantly middle class, suburban school where I teach. Since a large
portion of my reading instruction was devoted to listening to children read, asking
children to continue this practice at home seemed a reasonable way to enhance

students’ literacy growth. A study reported by British researchers in 1980 attests

 

‘ In this report the term “home reading” refers to the practice of children reading aloud to parents
and all the verbal and nonverbal forms of communication that accompany this event. In this paper
home reading does not refer to parents reading storybooks aloud to children.

to the importance of parental involvement in reading. Hewison and Tizard (1980)
found that the most signiﬁcant inﬂuence on working class children’s reading
achievement was mothers hearing children read on a regular basis. Although I
was unaware of this study when I ﬁrst initiated a home reading program, my
belief in the utility of parents hearing children read was what led me to sponsor a
program of this kind. In order to understand why parents listening to children
read may exert a positive inﬂuence over children’s reading development, it is
useful to examine what happens when teachers hear reading in school.

m Beneﬁts of Hear_ing Children Rea_d_

There are many reasons teachers of beginning readers ﬁnd listening to
children read individually or in small groups an essential task. First of all, hearing
reading presents an opportunity to monitor children’s reading development and
diagnose reading errors (Arnold, 1982). Teachers use this diagnostic information
to adjust teaching methods and identify which strategies should be reinforced with
students. Additionally, occasions for on-the-spot instruction occur when teachers
hear students read. Oral reading provides an opportune time to teach children
how to self-correct and monitor their own reading, attend to context clues, and
augment comprehension (Clay, 1972). While oral reading is taking place teachers
can also focus on presentation issues such as reading with expression, reading
clearly, and reading at an appropriate pace. Topping (1985a) lists four important
elements of hearing children read: practice, feedback, reinforcement, and
modeling. Practice helps children improve ﬂuency, vocabulary, retention, and

oral reading presentation. The feedback teachers offer enables students to become

independent readers and praise reinforces children’s progress towards
independence. Finally, student growth is augmented when teachers model the
type of performance students should strive for when reading various texts.

The educational beneﬁts associated with hearing children read in school
seem to provide educators with a strong rationale for extending this practice into
the home environment (Morgan, 1985). Topping (1985a) suggests that the factors
of practice, feedback, reinforcement, and modeling become even more powerful
when parents rather than teachers serve as listeners. This is because reading at
home aﬂ‘ords greater one-on-one attention and less interruption than classroom
teachers can typically offer (Harmon, Jackson, and Weinberger, 1986; Topping,
1985a). Feedback, praise, and modeling are also more signiﬁcant coming from
loved ones who may have higher expectations for success than teachers (Harmon,
1995; Topping 1985a). Topping (1985a) recognizes that not all parents assert a
positive inﬂuence over home reading. Despite good intentions some parents
undermine the reading event by highlighting minute errors and insisting on
counterproductive error correction techniques, causing student frustration.
Parental involvement is potentially more powerful than teacher interaction if
parents avoid an over reliance on phonic analysis and emphasize praise rather
than negative feedback. In order to increase parental listening effectiveness
Topping recommends that parents are trained to respond appropriately to their
children’s reading efforts. He is a strong proponent of a particular kind of home
reading interaction called paired reading, which will be described later in this

chapter (Morgan, 1976; Topping, 1999).

My Chang_1r_i' g Perspective of Home Reﬂng

In contrast to Topping’s emphasis on the importance of training parents,
the home reading program that I implemented with my ﬁrst grade students did not
provide parents with extensive education or training. Rather, my program was
based on the assumption that with minimal guidance, parents can effectively
interact with children during home reading sessions. Adopting a formal home
reading program represented a more systematic attempt to inﬂuence student
reading habits than I had previously initiated in my four years as an early
elementary teacher. In previous years I supported home reading by merely
reminding parents about the importance of reading to and with their children and
by periodically requesting that students practice their in-class reading assignments
at home. Since I never knew how extensively parents followed this advice,
establishing a home reading program gave me greater assurance that children
were reading at home on a regular basis. By giving students a much greater
opportunity to practice oral reading than they received in school, I believed home
reading would provide students with greater opportunities to practice decoding,
word recognition, and ﬂuency skills with adult support. Moreover, reading to
parents at home on a daily basis could potentially encourage discussion about
books, foster positive attitudes towards reading, and promote reading as a
rewarding leisure-time activity.

After purchasing and borrowing books from different sources I was able to
implement a design called the Home Reading Program, which was developed by

another teacher at my school. I began the Home Reading Program by ﬁrst

introducing program procedures and rationale to parents during a district
sponsored curriculum meeting held at the beginning of every school year.
Basically the program consisted of four steps. First, students selected a book ﬁ'om
a children’s literature collection speciﬁcally assembled for this program.

Children were strongly encouraged to select books that corresponded with their
reading levels, which typically ranged from the pre-emergent to the independent
stage of reading development.2 Second, students read these selections aloud to
their parents at home. Third, after listening to their children’s oral reading eﬂ‘orts,
parents signed and dated a form on which they (or their children) recorded the
book’s title and author. Finally, children returned their books and slips to school,
and then selected another book to read at home that evening. This program
continued until the end of the school year.

At this meeting I also gave parents suggestions on how to respond to their
children’s oral reading performance. My recommendations were very general in
nature. I spoke about the importance of ﬁnding a comfortable place to read,
reminded parents to praise their child, spoke brieﬂy about strategies children
should use to decode unknown words, and outlined program procedures. Many of
these suggestions were listed on a sheet of paper that I passed out to parents.
Parents were instructed to have children read to the end of the sentence and use

the sentence’s context, picture clues, and their knowledge of letter sounds to guess

 

2 The district where I teach provides a description of each stage for parents on the back of student
report cards. A copy of this form is provided in appendix A. Books were divided into three color-
coded levels based on text diﬂiculty determined by myself: yellow for emergent-early readers, red
for early-transitional readers, and blue for transitional-independent readers. Within each color-
coded category there were a range of difﬁculty levels so there was a loose rather than an exact
match between a child’s reading ability and his or book selection.

words. If children remained unsuccessful after trying these strategies then parents
should supply the word. Parents were told to only correct errors that changed the
meaning of a sentence. Minor errors such as replacing ‘home’ for ‘house’ were to
be ignored to sustain ﬂuency. Parents were encouraged to discuss illustrations and
story events. This annual introduction to home reading tended to be quite brief
since I covered the entire second grade curriculum along with other school related
concerns during this hour-long meeting.

Thus, a quick introduction to the program during a curriculum meeting
and a sheet of parent tips were the only forms of parent education offered through
my program. I ﬁrmly believed that this introduction would enable parents to
successfully listen to their children read although I had no means of determining
if this belief was valid. Of course I made myself available to answer any parent
questions or concerns throughout the year. I found however, that only a small
number of parents raised questions or sought advice on an ongoing basis. At the
end of the ﬁrst year I concluded that my home reading program had been
successful in many ways. Throughout the program students displayed great
enthusiasm for reading books and parents expressed delight over the reading
growth they observed their children making. Rather than viewing parental
questions as problenmic I believed these inquiries demonstrated that the program
led to better communication with parents concerning how to assist their children’s
reading eﬂ’orts and allowed me to emphasize the importance of children

practicing reading outside of school.

I continued the program as a second grade teacher because of the positive
response I received from ﬁrst grade children and parents. However, as I prepared
for another year of the program I started viewing parent questions diﬂ‘erently.
Besides showing that parents wanted to learn more about helping their children
read, parent questions may have also meant that parents needed more guidance
than the program provided. Moreover, I wondered if there were parents who had
questions but were unable to bring their concerns to my attention. Toomey (1986)
argues that parent-involvement programs often favor “high-contact” parents who
feel comfortable dealing with schools, but fail to impact the “silent” parents who
want to support their children’s education but, for various reasons, are unwilling
or unable to seek advice from school.

Sending books home and collecting parent signature forms provided no
information about the nature of reading interactions in the home environment nor
revealed how to insure that home reading was a positive experience for students.
Therefore I began the second year of the Home Reading Program with many
unresolved questions. I was curious about what actually occurred at home when
children read aloud to their parents. Was reading at home a beneﬁcial experience
for all students? Were there detrimental aspects to this program and if so what
were they? How much teacher intervention should take place in home reading
programs? What was the most effective and efﬁcient way to provide parents with
information and guidance?

The notion that home reading programs should be based on more

infomration concerning parent child book reading practices is supported by

Tracey (1995) who points out that not much is known about what actually takes
place during home reading sessions. Most home reading research focuses on the
effectiveness of programs and tests whether programs improve children’s reading
performance. Far fewer studies examine what happens at home when children
read to parents. Tracey (1995) suggests there are two important reasons why a
greater investigation of parental listening habits is warranted. First, it is not
known whether home reading is a worthwhile experience for at-risk readers.
Second, parents are constantly seeking information about how to support their
children’s reading development. Additional research on home reading may
enable teachers to provide parents with strategies that go beyond teacher-based
techniques. Tracey (1995) writes “investigations of the ways in which parents
naturally assist children dining children’s at home oral reading can allow
researchers to identify parental helping strategies that are and are not, supportive
of children’s literacy development. This information can then be shared with
parents” (Tracey, 1995, p. 256).
Turning to the Research Literature

The research literature on home reading falls into two categories: research
on reading interactions between parents and children (reading interaction studies)
and research on home reading programs (program evaluation studies). A majority
of the research on home reading focuses on program evaluation. Far fewer studies
examine parent-child reading interactions in the home environment. In the next
section I will discuss the ﬁndings of three studies that investigate parental

responses to children’s oral reading efforts.

_Re_se_areh on I’grgnt-Chﬂd Reading Interactions

The few studies that investigate home reading interactions between
parents and children conﬁrm Topping’s (1985c) assertion that parents differ
widely in their ability to respond to children’s reading eﬁ'orts. The ﬁrst study that
I will summarize evaluates the quality of parental helping strategies. The two
other studies compare parental hearing reading strategies to teacher techniques.

Bergin, Laney, and Draper (1994) discovered great variation in parental
hearing reading strategies when they studied parent-child reading interactions
within a white, working class population who did not receive any hearing reading
advice ﬁom researchers. Thirty-two parents were invited to school to listen to
their kindergarten or ﬁrst grade children read. The children’s reading abilities
ranged ﬁ'om those who had reached the independent reading stage early (in
Kindergarten) or late (at the end of ﬁrst grade). While this study did not take place
in the home environment as some have recommended (Toomey, 1993; Tracey,
1995), “a stimulated home setting” was created in the classroom where
researchers videotaped parent-child reading dyads. Researchers analyzed a
number of features including the age and reading ﬂuency of the child, the child’s
affect while reading, parent error correction tactics, parent/child commentary
during the reading, questions during the reading episode, stated purpose for
reading, and book selection.

Great variations in parental responses were detected within this
homogeneous population with parents’ error correction tactics ranging ﬁom

phonics-based methods to more meaning-focused approaches. Researchers

10

noticed that certain interactional features corresponded to the child’s ﬂuency
level. For instance, parents who employed a more meaning-focused coaching
style tended to have ﬂuent readers, while the children of parents who relied on
phonics-based strategies were usually less ﬂuent. Bergin, Laney, and Draper
(1994) summarized their results as follows:
Pairs who view the child’s reading as a source of ﬁm, keep the
story ﬂowing without letting the child get bogged down in
decoding (by using semantic-oriented rather than decoding
oriented correction tactics), encourage questions about the story,
and express humor while reading have children who are more

ﬂuent and more positive about reading. (Bergin, Laney, Draper,
1994, p.72)

The fact that certain parent coaching styles were associated with greater ﬂuency
while other styles were not led these researchers to conclude that their study
“underscored the need for educators to convey more information to parents about
how to be a good coach to the beginning reader, rather than just telling parents

and children to read at home more.”(Bergin, Laney, and Draper, 1994, p. 74).

Comparisons of parent and teacher hearigg reading strategies.

 

Sociolinguistic research indicates that discrepancies between home and school
learning expectations can adversely impact students’ school experience and
performance (Au, 1991; Heath, 1982; Michaels, 1981; Schultz, Florio, and
Erickson, 1982). In the case of home reading, home-school discrepancies could
exert a negative impact on reading at home since contradictory listening styles
could confuse and ﬁ'ustrate novice readers, causing them to resist assistance
offered by parents. Studies by Evans and Baraball (1993) and Harmon, Jackson,

and Weinberger (1986) compared parent hearing reading tactics with teacher

11

techniques. The purpose of these comparative studies was to determine if
beginning readers received Consistent information about reading from parents and
teachers.

Evans and Baraball (1993) hypothesized that most parents would support
their children’s reading efforts with phonics-based strategies. To test their premise
these researchers surveyed the reading beliefs of 19 middle-class parents and 12
teachers and analyzed how beliefs about reading inﬂuenced parent listening
practices. Evans and Baraball (1993) discovered that the majority of parents
surveyed held a phonic-based view of reading while most teachers surveyed
stated they followed a whole language instructional approach. Inquiry into how
parental listening strategies affected home reading interactions was achieved by
analyzing audiotapes of children reading to parents at home. A researcher was
present during the audiotaping. As with the Bergin, Laney, and Draper (1994)
study, the researcher did not provide parents with advice on how to hear children
read.

The audiotapes revealed that parents who viewed reading from a phonic-
based perspective used decoding cues to assist their children’s reading. These
parental response strategies contrasted with the majority of teachers who said they
placed minimal emphasis on phonics cues. Unlike the Bergin et a1. (1986) study,
Evans and Baraball (1993) did not ﬁnd a correlation between children’s reading
ability and the parent’s use of phonic-based, decoding techniques but, Evans and
Baraball (1993) did observe occasions when parents seemed ﬁ'ustrated because

children were unable to “sound out” words. Evidence of tension between parents

12

and children led Evans and Baraball (1993) to question “whether consistency in
parent and teacher beliefs and approaches might be important for children (sic)
reading development, motivation, and attitude towards reading at home or at
school” (p. 8). Evans and Baraball (1993) did not analyze teacher-student reading
interactions to determine how consistent teachers’ hearing reading strategies were
with their stated whole language beliefs. This fact weakened the claim that
inconsistent reading experiences between home and school actually existed.

While the study by Evans and Baraball (1993) emphasizes the differences
that may exist between listening strategies utilized at home and in school, Harmon
(1995) cites several British studies, which stress the similarities between parent
and teacher listening techniques. He writes:

Studies of the role of parents, whether working class or middle-

class, in the development of language and thinking in young

children, give grounds for expecting that parents’ teaching

strategies in the home could compare favorably with what teachers

can provide in school (Tizard and Hughes, 1984; Wells, 1985). A

small scale study carried out at Shefﬁeld by Alan Colcombe (1984)

found considerable similarities in how parents and teachers hear

children read. There were some indications that teachers praised

more (possibly rather liberally), that children may have taken more

risks with parents in attempting difﬁcult words, and that teachers
were more active in promoting comprehension.

(Hannon, 1995, p. 91)

A large-scale study conducted by Harmon, Jackson, and Weinberger (1986), and
summarized by Harmon (1995) also suggests that parents and teachers respond to
children’s reading performance in similar ways. The study analyzed the parental
listening techniques of a predominantly white, working class group of parents
participating in a British home reading program called the Belﬁeld Project. The

program involved primary grade children taking books home from school to read

13

to their parents. Teachers monitored student participation and communicated with
parents through the use of record cards that were carried home with the books. At
the outset of the program parents attended meetings where parents were given
suggestions on how to respond to their child’s oral reading in positive ways.
Although Harmon (1995) downplays the signiﬁcance of this advice by stating
parents “were given no special training,” parents did in fact receive some advice
through these meetings along with home visits by researchers and general tip
sheets. This raises the possibility that this guidance, even if limited, may have
accounted for some of the observed similarities between parent-teacher hearing
reading approaches.

The parents of about 50 children took part in Harmon, Jackson, and
Weinberger’s (1986) study which involved audiotaping reading interactions at
home and comparing them to audiotapes of children reading to their teachers in
school the next day. Analysis of these tapes indicated that while there were great
variations in the ways adults responded to children’s reading efforts, as a group,
parents primarily chose the same error correction techniques as teachers. The
most frequent error response chosen by teachers and parents was providing words
while the second most ﬁ'equent response technique was giving strategies. Both
groups used phonics or decoding tactics infrequently. However, teachers
emphasized comprehension throughout the reading to a greater extent than
parents, who tended to focus on comprehension issues when errors were made.
According to Harmon (1995) this study demonstrated that parents can effectively

listen to children read but he also acknowledged that both groups would beneﬁt

14

from reviewing coaching strategies and discussing better ways to respond to
students’ oral reading efforts. Citing the need for additional research Harmon
(1995) stated “there is obviously scope for much more research in this ﬁeld
involving different samples of parents and teachers and closer observations of the
adult-child interaction in relation to text” (Hannon, 1995, pp. 96-7).

Implications for practice a_n_d future research. The aforementioned reading
interaction studies reveal that great variation exists in the ways parents respond to
children’s reading performance. In their study, Evans and Baraball ( 1993) found
that beliefs about the reading process inﬂuenced parental listening techniques.
The majority of parents interviewed by these researchers possessed a traditional,
phonics-based conception of the reading process, which conﬂicted with teachers’
stated whole language philosophy. Evans and Baraball (1993) suggested that
future research should explore how a conﬂict between home and school views of
reading impacts children.

While it is clear that many parents effectively interact with children during
home reading sessions, the study by Bergin, Laney, and Draper (1994) concludes
that an over-reliance on phonics techniques on the part of some parents results in
negative reading sessions. Since a phonic-oriented listener stops the reader at
every error the reading becomes cumbersome, ﬁ'ustrating both parent and child.
The child’s ability to read ﬂuently and comprehend text is also compromised
when decoding is the primary response strategy insisted upon. Bergin, Laney, and

Draper contend that meaning-oriented parent-listening strategies lead to more

15

productive home reading interactions. These researchers reason that their ﬁndings
demonstrate the importance of educating parents to listen to their children read.

Although the study by Hannon et a1. (1986) highlights similarities
between parent and teacher techniques, Harmon (1995) still recognizes the
importance of educating parents and teachers about adult-child reading
interactions. He states that the differences between parent and teacher techniques
could serve as rich sources of information for both groups. Rather than assuming
hearing reading superiority rests with teachers, Harmon (1995) argues that
attempts to improve home reading programs should be based on a collaborative
outlook. “T eacher-parent collaboration in improving strategies could be
practicable, and it could be very fruitful for those concemed- provided of course
that it was recognized that teachers might learn from parents, as well as parents
ﬁ‘om teachers” (Hannon, 1995, p.98). Encouraging parents and teachers to share
their hearing reading approaches, Harmon points out, could result in alternative
hearing reading strategies to be used by parents and teachers alike.

The studies summarized so far address what happens when students read
to parents at home. The Bergin et al. study (1994), in particular, calls attention to
the issue of educating parents on how to listen to their children read. A question,
which remains pertinent after reviewing interaction research studies, is what
constitutes the most efﬁcient and effective way to provide parents with guidance?
Bergin, Laney, and Draper (1994) insist that teachers need to provide parents with
information about productive home reading strategies. Harmon (1995), on the

other hand, cautions against being overly prescriptive with parents and urges

16

teachers to approach home reading from a more open standpoint. He supports
educational approaches that value parental expertise over training that transmits
rigid school-based techniques.

Differences in the ﬁndings of these reading interaction studies attest to the
varying eﬂ‘ect context exerts over parent-chﬂd reading interactions. For instance,
Bergin, Laney, and Draper (1994) discovered a correlation between parental use
of phonics-based strategies and a child’s reading level but Evans and Baraball
(1993) did not ﬁnd this correlation. Moreover, Evans and Baraball (1993)
reported discontinuity between parental reading beliefs and the reading beliefs
professed by teachers while Harmon, Jackson, and Weinberger, (1986) found
great similarity between parent and teacher beliefs.

Home reading interaction studies also underscore the importance of
teachers supporting parent involvement efforts by communicating, educating, and
cooperating with parents. Bergin, Laney, and Draper (1994) conclude that parents
would beneﬁt from greater teacher support with home reading because some
parents utilize counterproductive error correction techniques. The effects of peer
support can be especially frustrating for low achieving readers (Bergin, Laney,
and Draper, 1994).

Prom Evaluation Studies

Home reading interaction research indicates that parent education is
important, but does not propose optimum parental listening procedures nor
indicate what degree of parent education is appropriate. The debate over ideal

parent educational standards has taken place, instead, in the research literature on

17

home reading program effectiveness. Home reading program evaluation studies
highlight the importance of determining how programs affect parents and
students, using information ﬁ‘om these evaluations to educate parents, and
devising methods to monitor home reading interactions. Researchers who critique
home reading programs express strong views about the type of program design
they believe schools should sponsor.

In the following section I will review key program evaluation studies to
explain the reason for debate and point out features identiﬁed as prerequisites for
effective home reading program designs. I will also discuss why this body of
literature has yet to inﬂuence the majority of practitioners who sponsor home
reading schemes. Programs that give parents only minimal hearing reading
advice and tail to monitor the quality of home reading interactions continue to
ﬂourish. By summarizing the research on program effectiveness and its lack of
inﬂuence on practice I hope to demonstrate the aptness of this study which calls
attention to the exigency of improving parent/teacher support of children’s oral
reading habits.

The majority of home reading program research consists of test-based
evaluation studies which examine the link between participation in home reading
programs and reading test scores (Topping and Lindsay, 1992; Toomey, 1993;
Harmon, 1995). These test-based studies, most of which have been conducted in
Britain, indicate that involvement in certain types of home reading programs
signiﬁcantly improves students’ reading achievement (Mudre and McCormick,

1989; Tizard, Schoﬁeld, and Hewison, 1982; Topping and Wolfendale, 1985).

18

According to the literature, home reading programs fall into two basic categories:
programs that include extensive parent training components and programs that do
not. These two programmatic approaches reﬂect different beliefs about the
capability of parents to hear reading as well as contrasting views over which
student population home reading programs should target.

an (parental listepr_ng° ) and prescriptive (parental training) prom.
Programs characterized by a limited amount of parent education are referred to by
Harmon (1995) as “open approaches.” Toomey (1993) calls these same types of
programs “parental listening schemes.” Open-parental listening programs assume
hearing children read is a fairly straightforward activity that mainly requires time
and patience on the part of parents. Harmon (1995) deﬁnes these programs as
those which give “ parents general advice to hear their children read in a relatively
unstructured way, for example to sit close to the child, not to criticize ‘mistakes’
or to have the TV on, to talk about stories and to make the activity enjoyable”(p.
24). Many open-parental listening programs disseminate written suggestions on
appropriate listening behaviors. Typically, these written sheets of advice suggest
how parents should respond to reading errors and outline what parents should and
should not do when listening to their child read. Classroom teachers who believe
in the importance of parent involvement in reading often sponsor open-parental
listening approaches. These kinds of programs typically are designed for an entire
classroom of children, operate for the duration of the school year, and in many
cases do not include provisions for evaluating, monitoring, and perfecting parental

listening techniques.

19

Toomey (1993) refers to the second category of programs as “parental
training schemes” while Harmon (1995) calls them “prescriptive approaches.” 3
Prescriptive, parent-training programs teach parents to respond to children’s oral
reading performance in detailed, prescribed ways. Toomey (1993) reports that
these types of programs “give parents training in quite speciﬁc procedures in
hearing their children read, which involves explanation, modelling (sic) and
observation and correction of parents’ practice” (p. 223). These programs, which
are oﬂen initiated by university researchers or reading clinicians are geared
towards older, low-achieving readers. Prescriptive-parent training programs last
for weeks or months rather than the length of the school year and often monitor
parental response techniques through home visits as well as through other
ongoing forms of commimication such as journals or phone conversations.
Researchers who write about home reading program effectiveness disagree about
the merits of open versus prescriptive program designs.

Two groundbreak_mg' studies. The idea that schools should encourage
children to read to parents at home on a regular basis evolved from an inﬂuential
research study conducted in the late seventies by British researchers Hewison and
Tizard (1980). These researchers surveyed the home reading experiences of seven
and eight year old students from an ethnically homogeneous, working class area

of England and found that mothers hearing reading had a stronger inﬂuence on

 

3 In an article entitled “Parents hearing their children read: a review. Rethinking the lessons of the
Haringey Project” Toomey_(l993) reviews 40 home reading program studies and divides them I
into two categories: ‘parental listening” studies of and ‘parental training” studies. He applies this
distinction between research studies to program designs. Thus parental listening programs
correspond to Hannon’s deﬁnition of open approaches and parental training schemes correlate

with Hannon’s deﬁnition of prescriptive designs. Throughout the remainder of this paper I will use
Hannon’s terms to refer to actual programs and Toomey’s terms to refer to the research studies

that analyze the eﬂ'ects of open and prescriptive programs.

20

student reading achievement than factors such as the child’s intelligence level or
the mother’s language background. While survey results ﬁom 107 parental
interviews indicated a strong relationship between mothers hearing reading and
improved reading ability, Tizard and Hewison (1980) acknowledged simply
showing interest in their children rather than the activity of hearing children read
could have contributed to higher rates of achievement among participants. Thus
the limitation of the survey method prohibited researchers from declaring a
deﬁnite causal relationship between parental listening and student reading
attainment.

In order to determine whether this causal relationship could be established
researchers Tizard, Schoﬁeld, and Hewison (1982) investigated what would
happen if parents were actively encouraged to hear their children read on a regular
basis. A two-year experiment was conducted with students from six junior schools
in Haringey, an ethnically diverse working class community in northern London.
This study involved over 2,000 students. Schools were randomly assigned to a
parent involvement, teacher assistance, or control group. Students in the parent
involvement classrooms read books provided by the school to their parents two to
four evenings a week. Although parent training was not provided, researchers did
conduct multiple home visits with all participants during which they observed
home reading interactions and gave advice on appropriate listening techniques.
Students in the teacher assistance cohort read in small groups to a remedial
reading teacher who not only listened to children read, but also provided general

reading instruction during sessions which took place in school four times a week.

21

The control group received no intervention. This intervention plan lasted for two
years. By the end of the program it was found that children in the parental
listening group achieved signiﬁcantly higher gains in reading, measured by pre
and post intervention standardized test scores, than children in the school-tutored
or control groups. These ﬁndings seemed to support a causal relationship
between home reading and reading improvement, leading Tizard, Schoﬁeld, and
Hewison (1982) to conclude that “children who receive parental help are
signiﬁcantly better in reading attainment than comparable children who do not”
(p. 14).

Home reading becomes a prevalent parent-involvement activity The
results of the research by Tizard, Schoﬁeld, and Hewison, which became known
as the Haringey study, were widely publicized by the British media and led to a
proliferation of home reading programs in British schools during the 1980’s and
1990’s (Harrison, 1995; Harmon, 1995; Toomey, 1993). Haringey’s program
design became widely adopted, not only due the scheme’s reported success, but
also because it did not require a great deal of parent training and thus did not
place excessive demands on teachers. The fact that the Haringey project achieved
strong results without elaborate training requirements was emphasized by Tizard,
Schoﬁeld, and Hewison (1982) who proclaimed that an important aspect of their
research was:

The fact that teachers and parents working in collaboration did

improve the academic performance of the children without the

parents being given any special training in the techniques of

tutoring, other than advice and brief demonstrations during the
monitoring of home reading or at meetings of home reading or at

22

meetings with the class teacher. (Tizard, Schoﬁeld, and Hewison,

1982, p.13)

School or teacher-initiated home reading schemes based on Haringey’s
design are referred to by Harmon (1995) as open approaches because as with the
Haringey Project, coaching decisions remain “open” to parent discretion and
training in speciﬁc listening procedures is not required. Programs modeled after
Haringey usually do not include the home visits that were an integral part of the
university-initiated Haringey Project (Toomey, 1993), probably because most
teachers do not have the time or resources to add this monitoring feature to their
teaching responsibilities. In some programs teachers and parents correspond
through diaries that travel with students, however, not all programs have even this
monitoring provision.

The absence of parental monitoring conditions in many open home
reading programs concerns critics who argue that sending pamphlets home or
giving parents general advice through introductory meetings does not ensure that
all parents will respond to their children’s reading efforts in a suitable manner
(Topping and Wolfendale, 1985; Toomey, 1991; Toomey, 1993). Home visits are
viewed by some as an essential program feature that allows home reading
sponsors to provide continued guidance and support to parent-child reading
dyads. During these visits, sponsors observe parents listening to children read and
intervene whenever an imprOper response behavior is noticed. For instance, if the
parent is not giving the child opportunities to self-correct, the observer might at

some point model pausing after an error to allow for self-correction. Without

23

home visits or other ways of monitoring parent-child reading interactions home,
reading program sponsors have no way of assessing parental listening techniques.
Challepges to tltegeneraﬁzpbmty of Har_mg° ey’s ﬁndings. Opponents of
open approaches also challenge the generalizability of the Haringey Project’s
ﬁndings, pointing out that additional studies failed to achieve Haringey’s positive
results. Tracey and Young (1994) surveyed the reading habits of children ﬁ'om
ﬁrst to third grade and found that at risk readers read aloud to their parents as
frequently as their advanced peers in ﬁrst grade and more frequently than
advanced readers in second and third grade. These ﬁndings caused Tracey (1995)
to dispute the Haringey study’s claim of a causal relationship between frequency
of practice and improved reading attainment. Additionally, Toomey (1993) cites
four Haringey-inspired parental listening studies of open programs conducted by
Friend (1983); Ashton, Stoney, and Harmon (1986); Bloom (1987); and Harmon
(1987), which failed to detect a signiﬁcant correlation between home reading and
improved test scores. Of these four studies, the most widely publicized one was
the study reported by Ashton, Stoney, and Harmon (1986) and Harmon (1987).
Known as the Belﬁeld Project, this British study followed the Haringey model
closely. Approximately 72 children were involved in the study, which lasted
three years. Participants were asked to read books selected in school to their
parents ﬁve evenings a week. Parents received general tips on how to respond to
their child’s reading. Research assistants visited participant homes to monitor
reading interactions and to provide further guidance when needed. After the third

year participants were tested and their scores were compared to the scores of pre-

24

project children. No signiﬁcant difference between each groups’ test performance
was detected. Toomey (1993) does list several parental listening studies that
produced gains, but these studies differed ﬁom most open programs because
many were designed only for low achieving readers and their average duration
was only for a few months. ’

The failure of several follow-up studies to replicate the success of the
Haringey Project has caused Toomey (1991, 1993) to question the effectiveness
of open home reading approaches, especially for low achieving readers. Research
on prescriptive-parental training programs, on the other hand, indicates that these
schemes are highly effective in improving students’ reading achievement (Mudre
and McCormick, 1989). Toomey (1991, 1993) maintains that prescriptive
programs are successful because they exclusively target low achieving readers,
provide parents with instruction and modeling of speciﬁc hearing reading
procedures, and establish methods of monitoring and guiding home reading
interactions. Toomey (1993) laments that for many, Haringey’s successful results
implied home reading programs could augment student reading achievement
without including provisions for extensive parental support. He states:

It would be premature to discard the Haringey model, and we

certainly do not have grounds at this stage for rejecting the well-

tried practice of sending books home from school for parents to

hear their children read. But the success of the Haringey study has

tended to sanction the continuation of this practice in a way that

ignores the need for help for those children most at risk of reading
failure- low-competence readers whose parents do not know how

 

" The open program-parental listening studies T oorney (1993) cites as positively inﬂuencing
reading growth with low achieving readers are studies by: Ashton, Stoney, and Hannon (1986),
Bartlett, Hall, and Neale ( 1984), Gaines (1984), Knapman (1985), Sigston et a1., and Swinson
(1985). The open program examined by Ashton, Stoney, and Harmon was non-selective but
showed improvement among low-achieving readers.

25

important their help can be and/or do not know how best to give it.
That is, by apparently demonstrating the lack of a need to train
parents, the Haringey study has encouraged the continuation of this
practice of expecting parents to hear reading without the beneﬁt of
guidance and training, advice all too welcome to busy teachers.
(Toomey, 1993, p. 231)

Toomey (1989) further suggests that Open home reading projects increase
educational inequality because in these types of programs, hearing reading advice
is given to the parents of high-achieving readers who are usually more willing to
approach a teacher with questions or concerns. Since the parentsof low achieving
readers are usually less likely to seek advice from teachers, open designs neglect
the families most in need of guidance concerning oral reading practice (Toomey,
1989). Toomey (1993) urges teachers to replace open programs with prescriptive
schemes. One that Toomey recommends above all other prescriptive programs is
the Paired Reading approach
Pres_<_:_rrp' tive Home Reading Programs

Paired RM’ . According to Harmon (1995) the most widespread British
prescriptive home reading approach is Paired Reading, which was developed by
researcher Roger Morgan (1976). It was ﬁrrther reported by Morgan and Lyon
(1979) and publicized through a study conducted by Bushell et al. (1982). The
Paired Reading approach consists of two phases. In the ﬁrst phase the parent and
child engage in simultaneous oral reading of a book the child has selected. During
this simultaneous phase the parent avoids reading ahead of the child so that the
reading is not reduced to a simple repetition of the adult’s words. When the child
makes an error the adult supplies the word, the child repeats the supplied word,

and simultaneous reading continues. Phase two begins once the child indicates

26

through a predetermined signal such as a nod, touch, or knock that s/he can read
without adult assistance. This independent reading phase continues until an error
is made, at which time the parent supplies the word and simultaneous reading
continues. If the child makes an error or pauses at an unknown word, the child is
given 5 seconds to correct the word. If a self-correction does not occur within ﬁve
seconds, simultaneous reading resumes until the story is completed or the child
again signals to read independently. Parents are encouraged to praise their child’s
efforts throughout the reading, especially when self-correction occurs. Home
visits or parent-teacher conferences are included to ensure that parents retain the

' procedure (Tepping and Whiteley, 1990). Paired Reading is designed to increase
student independence through parental scaffolding. Parents gradually reduce
support as students exhibit greater conﬁdence and proﬁciency. The practice of
pausing to allow a student to self-correct encourages students to monitor their
own reading while attending to the meaning of the text.

Although parents usually serve as tutors, anyone whose reading level
exceeds that of the child’s can serve as tutor, including peers or adult volunteers
(Topping and Whiteley, 1990). With Paired Reading a child may select a book
regardless of text difﬁculty, as long as the book is within the range of the tutor’s
reading ability.

Pause Prompt and Praise (PPP). Also developed in the early 1980’s,
“Pause, Prompt, and Praise” is a prescriptive approach that has experienced less
implementation (at least in Britain) than Paired Reading. Like Paired Reading, the

PPP approach developed by McNaughton, Glynn, and Robinson (1980) is

27

designed for remedial readers. First implemented in the Mangere Home and
School Project in New Zealand. This program relies on parental praise as a
mechanism to support reading accuracy. During a reading parents following a
PPP technique pause whenever an error occurs in order to give the child time to
self-correct. If a self-correction does not occur the parent prompts a self-
correction by giving the child certain cues. The prompts parents choose depend
upon the error. If the error makes sense given the context of the sentence, the
parent provides cues that focus on the appearance of the word, including phonics
cues. If the error does not make sense, the parent provides meaning-based
prompts such as read to the end of the sentence, reread the sentence, or read the
following sentence to determine the correct words. Throughout the reading
parents praise the child for reading accurately and especially for making self-
corrections. The intent of this program is to help students develop a repertoire of
strategies for deciphering unknown words. It is considered to be in line with the
psycholinguistic view of reading as a meaning making process that involves
utilizing graphophonernic, semantic, and syntactic cues.

The ﬁrst Pause, Prompt, and Praise study involved remedial reading boys,
8 to 12 years of age (McNaughton et al., 1981). The program lasted a little over
two months and participants showed gains by moving up in book level much
faster than they had prior to the program. Progress was also indicated by a
signiﬁcant improvement in standardized test scores. Favorable results were also
achieved in follow-up studies that investigated this home reading approach

(Glynn, 1985; Scott and Ballard, 1983; Topping 1985c) leading advocates of

28

prescriptive methods to consider PPP an alternative to Paired Reading (Harmon,
1995; Toomey, 1993). However, this program as described and disseminated by
McNaughton, Glynn, and Robinson (1980) was quite expensive to implement due
to parent training requirements (T oomey, 1993) and perhaps would be difﬁcult for
classroom teachers to adopt without outside support.

Moﬂ ed pmrﬂ reading design_s. Some prescriptive approaches tend to be
variants of the Paired Reading approach (Harmon, 1995). For instance, an
approach called Shared Reading involves simultaneous reading but excludes an
emphasis on error correction and does not include Paired Reading’s second,
independent phase (Greening and Speneely, 1984, 1987). Another divergent
method adds a phase in which the child reads alone after completing the ﬁrst two
phases (Bryans, Kidd, and Levey, 1985). A third method adds phases in which the
parent discusses text with the child, reads a portion of the text to the child, and
pauses at words the child can presumably read independently (Young and Trye,
1983). Studies of each of these Paired Reading adaptations report gains in student
reading achievement based on standardized test scores. In Britain, Paired Reading
modiﬁcations have typically been limited to university-initiated projects, failing
to capture the attention of schools like open approaches or the Paired Reading
method (Hannon, 1995).

Behavioral methods. Behavioral parent involvement approaches seek to

modify reading behaviors by reinforcing these behaviors targeted for change. 5

 

5 Both Paired Reading and Pause, Prompt, and praise were founded on the principle of behavior
modiﬁcation. They both stray ﬂour a strict behaviorist stance by emphasizing the reading of real
books and are considered compatible with psycholinguistic research on reading acquisition.

(T oomey, 1993; Topping,1985a).

29

They are based on the premise that reading achievement is dependent upon the
mastery of reading sub-skills. These programs train parents to improve a child’s
reading ability in such areas as letter identiﬁcation, phonics, word recognition,
and comprehension. Many never require the child to read actual books, but
instead focus on the acquisition of isolated reading skills. In some behavioral
programs parents are taught to reward student success with tokens or favors (Fry
1985; Keven and LeBow, 1973; Ryback and Stats, 1970; Vinograd-Bausell,
1987). Other behavioral designs train parents to use commercially produced,
direct instruction programs such as DISTAR (Englemann et a1. , 1983; Leach and
Siddall, 1990). Direct instruction programs are organized around intense, fast-
paced lessons on skills arranged in a hierarchical sequence. Scripted manuals
outline everything the instructor or parent is to say during lessons. Studies of
behavioral designs indicate that these programs are highly effective in augmenting
children’s achievement in the targeted skill area, however, the training
requirements and monitoring provisions tend to be time-consuming for both
parents and trainers (Toomey, 1993). Moreover, these programs have been
criticized for teaching skills in isolation and neglecting to portray reading as a
meaning-focused process (Harmon, 1995; Topping, 1985c).

21:9an compLarison: identifying the most effective method. Given the
abundance of evidence on the efﬁcacy of prescriptive home reading designs,
Toomey (1993) contends the educational community no longer needs research
that tests the eﬂicacy of prescriptive home reading approaches. Rather, what is

needed is research that will lead to the identiﬁcation of the best program design.

30

There are a few studies that have compared different program approaches.
Interestingly, the authors of these studies express different opinions regarding the
optimum program design and report conﬂicting information about the design
superiority of open and prescriptive home reading programs. Lindsay, Evans, and
Jones (1985) found no signiﬁcant achievement difference for students
participating in Paired Reading and an open approach called Relaxed Reading.
However, Leach and Siddall (1990) found that Paired Reading did inﬂuence
reading gains much more signiﬁcantly than an open hearing reading approach and
the Pause, Prompt, and Praise method. Yet, Winter (1985) determined that Paired
Reading and Pause, Prompt, and Praise produced equivalent reading gains in
students.

Design features that contribute to home readjmgmuccesm In terms of
adoption, Paired Reading remains the most pervasive prescriptive approach in
Britain (Hannon, 1995). Although there is an abundance of evidence which
supports Paired Reading’s effectiveness, there is no clear indication that Paired
Reading is superior to other schemes that devote equal effort towards educating
parents. The key elements in successﬁrl home reading schemes seem to be
providing parents with hearing reading strategies, monitoring parent-chﬂd reading
interactions, and coaching parents periodically throughout the program. Tizard,
Schoﬁeld, and Hewison (1982) note that the Haringey Project achieved
signiﬁcant results without parent training, however, Haringey’s inclusion of home
visits by research assistants who corrected parental techniques may be viewed as a

form of training (Harmon, 1995; Toomey, 1993). During these visits research

31

assistants did in fact teach parents over extended periods of time how to respond
to their children’s reading, even though a speciﬁc procedure was not
recommended. In this way, the Haringey Project, was less cpen than many of the
home reading programs currently thriving in schools. 6

Reasons Qpen Approaches Still Prevaj

 

While the beneﬁts of training parents seems obvious to many researchers,
open programs which are devoid of such training requirements continue to
ﬂourish (Harmon, 1995). This is particularly true in the United States where there
has been a less systematic and publicized investigation of home reading designs
than in Britain. I believe there are several reasons open programs tend to
dominate. First of all, due to the obscurity of home reading research and the
nature of program dissemination practitioners have not been challenged to view
this practice ﬁ'om a more critical perspective. Moreover, the manner in which
teachers learn about home reading schemes favors the adoption of cpen
approaches. Since many parents tend to respond favorably to open home reading
programs (Toomey, 1987) the need for changing or improving programs is not
recognized. The fact that open home reading designs are easier to implement and

more practical for classroom teachers to manage than prescriptive approaches also

 

‘5 Open programs that achieve gains typieally devote a great deal of energy towards parent
education as well. For instance, an open program developed by Dyson and Swinson (1982)
focused on parental learning needs by meeting with parents. During this meeting program
coordinators modeled hearing reading response strategies, listed these strategies in a booklet for
parents to take home, and showed parents a video of a teacher listening to a child read.
Participants communieated with teachers through record cards. This program did not offer home
visits. Knapman (1985) implemented an open program with learning—disabled students that
included six evening meetings, two additional maintenance meetings, telephone calls, and home
visits. These programs were considered “open” because the tips they offered were general in
nature and parents were allowed to make comments or suggestions. However, the components of
these two programs show that open programs fall along a continuum of minimal to more intensive
parent education provisions.

32

contributes to their prevalence. Finally, researchers tend to be very opinionated
concerning the merits of certain approaches and their debate may fail to inspire

change. Next I will explore each of the reasons for the predominance of open

programs more thoroughly.

Program d' urination and unknown alternatives. Open programs
continue to prevail because they are often the only approaches presented to
teachers. F or example, home reading gained prominence in my district through
inservice instruction and by word-of-mouth, meaning the idea spread from
classroom to classroom as interested teachers implemented programs. This
“grassroots” form of program dissemination favored an open approach mainly
because teachers were not aware of prescriptive alternatives. Teachers felt
sending books home would strengthen children’s reading skills by giving them
more opportunities to practice oral reading.

In my experience information about home reading programs has come
ﬁom other teachers, not university courses. I suspect this is the case in other
districts as well simply because fewer American researchers have conducted
investigations of home reading program effectiveness (Toomey, 1991). American
researchers tend to place greater emphasis on family literacy—a parent
involvement movement focused on the intergenerational literacy needs of
marginalized families who exhibit low literacy skills. Family literacy research
focuses on issues related to the adult literacy needs of parents (Auerbach, 1989;

Edwards, 1995; Harmon, 1995; Morrow, 1995; Wolfendale and Topping, 1996).

In the home reading tradition, interest in adult literacy is limited to the parent’s

33

role as a reading coach. The majority of articles, which deal with home reading
issues, appear in scholarly or foreign publication such as The British Journal of
Educational Psychology. Home reading has not captured the attention of the
American mass media as it has in Britain. An obscure scholarly focus on home
reading issues limits both teacher and parent knowledge about alternatives to open
programs and the importance of parent education provisions.

The popularity of home reading programs and potential pitfalls are noted
by Bergin, Laney, and Draper (1994) who state:

Many innovative early childhood intervention program as well as

school-initiated parent involvement programs urge parents to read

to and with their children. ..A weak link in this process is that

educators are not telling parents how to read to their children. Not

all parents may be interested in or have the skill to read effectively
to their child or serve as an effective coach for the child who is just

beginning to read. (Bergin, Laney, and Draper, 1994, p.53)
My study represents an attempt to gain a better understanding of home reading so
that I can provide parents with useful information concerning ways to support
children’s reading development. This investigation of parent-child reading
interactions has given me the opportunity to learn ﬁ'om parents and evaluate how
different kinds of programs inﬂuenced the quality of home reading interactions. A
detailed analysis of parent and child interactions is necessary in order to
determine how well any intervention meets participant needs. This report will
demonstrate the importance of taking a close look at what happens when children
read to parents at home and the shortcomings of automatically assuming parents

respond to their child’s reading performance in helpful ways.

34

Parental reapgm. In regards to parent enthusiasm for open programs
Harmon (1995) writes “one of the most consistent ﬁndings to emerge from
research into this form of involvement is that virtually all parents will participate,
and their participation can be maintained over a long period of time.” Likewise,
Toomey (1987) states “parents are usually most enthusiastic about home reading
programs.” Since parents often express great enthusiasm for home reading
programs teachers may conclude their program is satisfactory and increasing
parent training and monitoring requirements is not necessary. Rather than
providing extensive parent training for a large number of parents, teachers may
choose to only give ﬁrrther advice upon request. The limitation of this strategy
according to Toomey (1989) is that it fails to address the needs of parents who
avoid contact with school. Furthermore, the enthusiasm expressed by high-
contact parents reinforces the widely held belief that a minimal amount of parent
guidance is acceptable (Toomey, 1991). I found some validity to Toomey’s point
in relation to my own practice. When parents asked questions or sought advice on
hearing reading, in many cases, they were parents of high achieving readers.
However, when the parents of low achieving readers did ask questions or
mentioned difficulty with home reading it took me longer to help these parents
resolve issues. This fact caused me to wonder about the effect that home reading
had on low achieving readers. Conducting a research study gave me an
opportunity to focus on the home reading needs of less successful readers, since
as Toomey writes (1993), they are the ones who could beneﬁt most ﬁ'om more

effective intervention programs.

35

Ease of implementﬂon. Once books are acquired teachers can easily
implement and manage open programs without outside support. Prescriptive
programs on the other hand require that teachers possess the time and materials
necessary for training parents and monitoring parental listening behaviors. The
demands of prescriptive programs may be unrealistic for the busy classroom
teacher who typically takes sole responsibility for providing books and managing
a home reading program. While researchers emphasize the importance of parental
training provisions, there is less discussion about providing teachers with
compensatory assistance to make training a practical option. In my own
experience, home reading programs are not district mandates, but activities
classroom teachers support with their own resources. This is not always the case
in Britain, where prescriptive designs are more prevalent. There schools and
universities collaborate on both open and prescriptive reading initiatives. Topping
and Whiteley (1990) describe the amount of support teachers in one large British
school district received ﬁom a university research team who supported the
district’s adoption of Paired Reading.

In 1983 the Kirklees Local Education Authority established a

project to help schools to train, guide and support parents in the

use of the Paired Reading (PR) technique. Services offered to

schools included brieﬁngs on the PR technique for professional

staff, advice on project planning, input to training sessions for

parents and children, materials for training and evaluation, ﬁnance

to deﬁay the expenses of teachers making home visits in the

evening, general support and review meetings and arranging other
kinds of assistance. (Topping and Whiteley, 1990, p.15)

Open programs are much more feasible for teachers who lack the outside support

necessitated by prescriptive and even some open home reading initiatives.

36

Debate among researchers. Researchers agree that encouraging parents to
listen to their children read is an excellent practice but strongly disagree on how
this activity should be organized and supported in order to be educationally
beneﬁcial. A debate centers on which home reading program best meets the
needs of students and their parents. Researchers tend to be adamant in their
support of either prescriptive approaches such as Paired Reading or open
approaches. For example, Topping (1987) acknowledges the success of the
Haringey Project but strongly advocates Paired Reading as a way to strengthen
the effectiveness of home reading initiatives. In describing the rationale for
adopting a more prescriptive approach Topping writes:

Given the effectiveness of merely encouraging parents to hear their

children reading, attention then turned to increasing that

effectiveness by developing packages for training in coherent

techniques. It was hoped that these developments would not only

increase the absolute effectiveness of parental input, but also

promote parent involvement in a wider range of parents. (Topping,
1987, p.609)

Toomey bases his preference for prescriptive designs on studies that show that
these programs have much greater positive impact on student reading
achievement than open programs.

No study has replicated the success of the Haringey study and four
studies with relatively lengthy programmes of parent hearing
reading, without parent training procedures (as deﬁned in this
paper) and dealing with school populations unselected by reading
competence, have failed to demonstrate signiﬁcant gains for
children’s reading achievements as measured by standardized tests.
On the other hand, relatively short-term programmes with careﬁrl
training procedures for parents of low-competence readers have
shown repeated and substantial success. (Toomey, 1993, p. 229)

37

Toomey (1993) acknowledges that program duration and selectivity with regards
to participants are factors that may have inﬂuenced the higher success rates of
prescriptive programs. But in Toomey’s view, this possibility merely implies that
home reading programs should limit their duration and only target low achieving
students. In regards to the most ideal prescriptive program design Toomey
concludes that Paired Reading is the best approach for schools to adopt.

From the point of view of school practice, the clearly preferred choice among the
three training schemes is paired reading, which is simpler, easier to administer
and easier for training parents. It also is more suited to a school than to a clinical
situation and is capable of being used with relatively larger numbers of parents.

(Toomey, 1993, p.232)

Harmon (1995) challenges the notion that Paired Reading is the most
eﬂ‘ective home reading approach and rejects the idea that open programs should
be abandoned for more prescriptive ones. Harmon (1995) argues that program
comparisons carmot truly determine which type of program is better for several
reasons. First, test-based program comparisons are invalid because participants
often deviate from the prescribed approach. For instance, several home reading
studies indicate that eventually many parents abandon strict adherence to Paired
Reading procedures and resort to techniques found in open programs (Elliot,
1989; Harmon, 1995; Toomey 1993; Wareing, 1985). Second, rather than proving
the superiority of one approach over another, differences in program features

demonstrate the futility of comparing open and prescriptive programs. Harmon

38

contends test-based evaluations of open home reading programs are misleading
because these sorts of evaluations can only detect signiﬁcant gains in short term
programs that limit student participation to low achieving students. He states
“almost any approach has a positive effect if it is of short duration”
(Hannon,1995, p. 141). Also if open programs are implemented in schools where
parent involvement levels are already high, evaluations based on test scores may
underestimate the program’s effect on students. Finally, Harmon challenges the
validity of the studies Toomey cites. Harmon lists eight other studies of open
programs that have reported gains in student reading achievement.

Toomey (1993) lists four studies (Friend, 1983; Ashton et al.,

1986; Bloom, 1987; Harmon, 1987) and, pointing out that none of

them succeeded in replicating the Haringey effects, he concludes

that this approach can be discounted because of vague reporting

and too many differences between experimental and

control/comparison groups. That leaves two studies whose ﬁndings

conﬂict with Haringey. Against this there are at least eight other

studies which, like Haringey, have found gains (David, 1983;

Dyson and Swinson 1982; Crawford, 1983; Bartlett et al., 1984;

Lindsay et al., 1985; Webb et al., 1985; Burdett, 1986; Leach and

Siddall, 1990). Individually some of these studies have design

weaknesses (in no case fatal) but collectively they all tell the same
story- open approaches produce gains. (Toomey, 1993, p. 140)

Obviously, researchers have taken strong positions in support of open or
prescriptive approaches. Conﬂicting ideas about what constitutes an ideal
program abound. For instance, Toomey (1987, 1993) argues that low achieving
readers should be the main targets of school sponsored home reading programs,
prescriptive programs are superior to cpen ones, and Paired Reading is the most
reasonable prescriptive approach for schools to adopt; especially since limited

resources may make it difﬁcult for schools to offer a variety of programs. Harmon

39

(1995) contends that open schemes best meet the needs of the majority of
students. However, for those students and parents who are experiencing diﬂiculty
with open programs, Harmon (1995) suggests that teachers implement prescriptive
approaches such as Paired Reading or Pause, Prompt, and Praise with these
families.

Given the differing opinions of researchers, practitioners can ﬁnd
justiﬁcation for a wide range of home reading program approaches. Research
studies evaluating and comparing programs render dissimilar conclusions.
Conﬂicting research may convince some that program improvement or change is
not necessary. Supporters of open approaches often cite the Haringey study as
evidence that extensive parental training is not needed while others can turn to a
number of parent training studies for justiﬁcation for prescriptive approaches.
Still, the lack of consensus among researchers may convince others that a
combination of approaches is ideal. Combining the successful elements of various
approaches may be the best means of meeting family needs since there are
strengths and limitations in utilizing programs with different populations of
students.

Even though I respected the opinions of those who insisted prescriptive
programs serve low-achieving readers better than open designs, I still valued
providing an open program for all my students. While Paired Reading seemed like
an excellent approach for struggling readers, I did not believe this was an ideal
approach for competent readers, who might have found the requirement to read

simultaneously tedious and unnecessary. I agreed with Hannon’s idea that

40

teachers might supplement open designs with prescriptive approaches when
needed. But, was this a reasonable expectation to place on teachers who often
received no outside support for sponsoring home reading programs? Since this
study, which took place in my own classroom, involved comparing participant
experiences in two types of home reading programs I was able to explore the
feasibility of offering families different program options.
Beliefs About Reading

Rather than taking for granted that everyone lms the same conception of
the reading process, sponsors of home reading programs must recognize that there
are different views of reading and understand how these views can inﬂuence oral
reading interactions at school and at home. Below I describe three prevalent
reading philosophies, discuss how these philosophies are reﬂected in certain home
reading program designs, and point out why this study examined participant
beliefs about reading.
Three Prevalent Views

The phonics based "bottom up" tradj_t_io_n. Individuals who possess a
bottom-up view of the reading process believe students must be able to decode
and recognize words in order to decipher the meaning embedded in text (V acca,
Vacca, and Gove, 1991). Therefore, when coaching beginning readers individuals
holding a bottom-up orientation emphasize the smallest units of language such as
letters, sounds, and words before focusing on larger language units such as
sentences, paragraphs, and the entire text. Phonics instruction ﬁts into this

bottom-up model because phonic teachers insist that children master the smallest,

41

graphophonic units of language prior to being introduced to text. Skills are taught
in isolation. A lesson on each individual sound is taught prior to reading whole
stories or books. During oral reading word recognition is considered an important
instructional focus because according to this view comprehension depends on the
ability to recognize a high percentage of words. When children encounter
unknown words instructors who adhere to a bottom-up philosophy encourage
children to blend the sounds of the letter or “sound out” the letters to decode the
word. Children are typically prompted to decode unknown words before
proceeding to the next word. Comprehension, the ability to understand the
meaning of text, is viewed as a higher order skill that is acquired once students are
able to read ﬂuently.

The whole e "top-down" madition. Individuals holding a top-down
reading philosophy believe reading instruction should ﬁrst and foremost
emphasize meaning (V acca, Vacca, and Gove, 1991). According to this view a
reader’s prior knowledge and experience determines the reader’s ability to make
predictions about language units. Whole language instruction is considered a top-
down model because students are encouraged to understand the meaning of the
text, and rely on the meaning of the text to decipher unfamiliar words.
Comprehension is considered a prerequisite for developing phonics and word
recognition skills. When readers confront an unknown word the meaning of the
story is used to predict appropriate words or determine letter/sound patterns.
Phonics lessons emerge ﬁom the text as whole language instructors use stories to

teach letter recognition, letter sounds, and word recognition. Whole language

42

instructors involve children in reading, writing, speaking, and listening activities
while children are learning graphophonic information, rather than after children
have mastered this information. During oral reading, instructors holding a top-
down view encourage readers to use contextual cues to identify words, and place
less emphasis on decoding as long as word recognition and comprehension skills
are strong.

The interactive tradition. The main difference between bottom-up
(phonics) and tep—down (whole language) views of reading is what each view
insists must be taught ﬁrst to beginning readers. The bottom-up view focuses on
print ﬁrst and meaning later, while the top-down view focuses on meaning ﬁrst,
and print later. There is an alternative, which falls between bottom-up and top-
down views of reading. Individuals who hold an interactive view of the reading
process contend that making predictions about meaning and decoding skills both
enable readers to comprehend text because “neither prior knowledge nor
graphophonic information is used exclusively by readers” (V acca, Vacca, and
Gove, 1991, 21). Rather, there is an interaction between print and meaning as
readers analyze text. Instructors with an interactive orientation promote the
utilization of multiple strategies to make sense of language units. Beginning
readers are encouraged to develop metacognitive skills, or the ability to monitor
their own reading and rely on a variety of contextual, phonics, and semantic cues

to decode unknown words and augment text comprehension.

Home Rw' g Programma and Reading Beliefs

43

Topping (1985b), a strong proponent of Paired Reading, claims that this
method is compatible with a variety of reading beliefs and instructional
approaches. He writes “paired reading at home lies down perfectly happily with a
school reading curriculum based on a look-and-say, phonics, language experience,
pictograms, precision teaching, direct instruction or any other kind of approach”
(Topping, 1985b, p.113). Both Paired Reading and the PPP approach are
consistent with the interactive view of reading. The practice of pausing to allow
students to self-correct, utilized by both approaches, is intended to strengthen
children’s metacognitive abilities. Each technique emphasizes the importance of
children monitoring their own reading performance and relying on their
knowledge of semantics and phonics to ﬁgure out unknown words. Open
programs can also reﬂect an interactive reading philosophy. In fact, the tips that I
discussed and passed out to parents as a part of my open program reﬂect an
interactive perspective since the importance of self-correction and utilizing
various comprehension strategies is emphasized. However, it is questionable
whether the limited advice I gave parents about how to assist their children’s
reading performance inﬂuenced them to adopt an interactive perspective. This
study gave me the opportunity to investigate the extent to which my open
program inﬂuenced parental reading beliefs and the nature of parent-child home
reading interactions.

The Rationale for Probing Parent and Teacher Beliefs About Rem'mg

Sociolinguistic researchers argue that an understanding of communicative

tradition is one form of knowledge speakers must share in order to achieve

44

successful communication. This form of knowledge is deﬁned as a “shared set of
implied assumptions. . .about what are proper and expectable ways for people to
interact in various social occasions” (Schultz, J., Florio, S., and Erickson, F .,
1982, p. 88). The concept of communicative tradition can be applied to adult/child
oral reading dyads since during these interactions adults and children hold
assumptions about how the reading event should unfold. During the “act” of
hearing reading, an adult’s communicative standards for assisting a child’s
reading efforts are based on the adult’s philosophy of reading. The quality and
success of the reading interaction often depends on the child’s ability to adopt or
adapt to an adult’s communicative expectations. In the case of home reading, if
parents and teachers express different communicative views children may be
confused about how to respond during the reading interaction. Therefore, any
effort to assess the quality of home reading interactions must probe participant
understanding and expectations about the reading event. Determining the
teacher’s reading beliefs and comparing them to parental views of reading are key
issues that should be addressed when evaluating home reading interactions.
(Evans and Baraball, 1993).
The Formulation of a Teacher-Research Study

While a growing number of teacher-sponsored home reading programs
require primary age children to read at home to their parents on a regular basis,
many of these initiatives offer parents only limited advice concerning how to
respond to their children’s reading efforts. Moreover, these programs often lack

provisions to monitor the quality of home reading. This is problematic since

45

research on parent-child reading interactions implies that there is variation in the
way parents react to their children’s oral reading efforts (Evans and Baraball,
1993; Bergin, Laney, and Draper, 1994). In some cases, parents ﬁ'ustrate their
children by using counterproductive response strategies (Bergin, Laney, and
Draper, 1994). In terms of low-achieving readers, negative home reading
experiences may actually impede children’s reading progress by diminishing
positive attitudes towards books. Research on home reading program
effectiveness underscores the importance of educating parents on appropriate
listening techniques and establishing mechanisms to evaluate and improve the
quality of home reading interactions (Toomey, 1993). This study represents my
realization that the Home Reading Program that I sponsored may not have
sufﬁciently addressed the needs of low-achieving readers in my classroom, since
the program was not structured to evaluate, prescribe, or monitor the quality of
home reading interactions for these students.

In order to make home reading more responsive to the needs of low-
achieving readers and their parents I decided to conduct a research study in my
classroom. Through this research I wanted to explore the feasibility and
desirability of maintaining the open-based Home Reading Program for all
students, and supplementing this with a prescriptive approach designed for the
most at-risk readers in my classroom (Hannon, 1995). The study involved asking
the parents of two struggling readers to allow me to closely monitor their
participation in the Home Reading Program in the ﬁrst part of the school year.

During this phase of the study I videotaped the students reading Home Reading

46

books to their parents at home to learn more about the ways parents naturally
respond to their children’s reading efforts. I hypothesized that the limited
information that parents received about hearing reading through the Home
Reading Program would have little inﬂuence over the nature of reading
interactions in the home environment. I predicted that personal experiences and
beliefs about the reading process exerted a greater inﬂuence over parental reading
response behaviors than my limited advice. To investigate this premise I
interviewed parents about their reading knowledge and beliefs as their children
participated in the Home Reading Program. During this ﬁrst research phase I also
gave the student participants attitude surveys to discover how they felt about
reading.

The second phase of this study involved training these parents in the more
prescriptive Paired Reading approach and videotaping the parent-chﬂd dyads
utilizing Paired Reading at home. I wanted to learn whether and how Paired
Reading changed the nature of parent-child home reading interactions. I also
wanted to learn if parental reading beliefs and student attitudes about reading
changed after involvement with the Paired Reading approach. Therefore I
conducted post Paired Reading interviews with both parents and once again gave
both students attitude surveys. The areas of knowledge that I intended to gain by
conducting this teacher-research project are summarized below.

Learning Goals:
Understand the nature of home reading interactions between two low-achieving

readers and their parents, who have received minimal hearing reading advice ﬁ'om
the classroom teacher.

47

Learn about parental reading beliefs, conceptions of the reading process, as well
as student attitudes towards reading prior to utilizing the Paired Reading method.

Identify the similarities and differences between parental response strategies and
teacher response strategies.

Understand the nature of home reading interactions between low-achieving
students and their parents after the parents and children receive training in the
Paired Reading method. Document any changes that occur in parental response
strategies, reading beliefs, and student attitudes after families participate in the
Paired Reading method.

Detail the cost of incorporating Paired Reading into my classroom routine in
terms of the time and materials required by this program

The questions mat gr_ride this stud; are as follows:

1) What is the nature of parent-cth reading interactions after parents have
received general information about responding to their children’s reading
efforts? How do these home reading interactions compare to children’s
reading
experiences in school?

2) What beliefs about reading and understanding of the reading process do
parents express and exhibit after parents have received general tips on
hearing reading at home?

3) What are the effects of Paired Reading on home reading interactions
between parents and children? To what extent do the training methods
utilized in Paired Reading cause parents to change their approach to
hearing children read? To what extent are parent behaviors consistent with
the strategies and philosophy promoted by the Paired Reading Program?

4) How does Paired Reading inﬂuence parental beliefs about reading and

understanding of the reading process?

48

Why This Study Is Important

By analyzing closely the effects of giving parents different levels of
advice and training, this study not only compares the program processes and
dynamics of an open versus a more prescriptive design, but also builds on existing
knowledge about the nature of parent-child bookreading interactions in
naturalistic settings. A variety of researchers have stated that home reading
research needs to move away from test-based evaluations and undertake
qualitative studies in order to reveal more about program processes and dynamics
(T oomey, 1993; Harmon, 1995; Tracey, 1995). This study acknowledges this and
through the use of qualitative methods makes the views of participants a relevant
part of improving a home reading program. Harmon calls for research, which
explores why programs succeed or fail to stimulate positive home reading
interactions. This research:

Could be called ‘evaluation by participants’ since it draws upon

teachers and parents for data, examines what they do (and do not

do), takes their perspective seriously, and is also more feasible for

teachers to carry out for themselves. It means studying several,

processes, teachers’ views, and parents’ views. (Hannon, 1995, p.

130)
Harmon (1995) argues that this type of research would enable teachers to adjust
program features to participant needs and offer different program options based
on a child’s reading proﬁciency. Toomey (1993) also acknowledges that future
home reading research should focus on naturalistic observations of children

reading to parents in order to determine why parent involvement has the potential

to exert such a positive inﬂuence over student reading performance. He states:

49

Also required are observation studies of what goes on during

parent-child reading episodes, not only with respect to the

variables which are the subject of training. This review has

indicated that we are still much in the dark about why parental

involvement can be so beneﬁcial. (Toomey, 1993, p. 232)

Additionally this study will assess the costs of adding a prescriptive
program to a classroom teacher’s workload. Information acquired will
demonstrate how schools and classroom teachers can increase the productiveness
of home reading programs and strengthen partnerships between home and school.
One of the goals of this project is to demonstrate the importance of evaluating the
effects home reading programs have on low-achieving readers and their parents.
This report includes a detailed description of program implementation and
management issues such as book acquisition, text difﬁculty, record-keeping
procedures, parent communication methods, and scheduling within and outside of
the school day. This degree of detail is necessary for other teachers to determine
how this project’s ﬁndings relate to their own practice and to demonstrate that
analyzing the processes and dynamics of program implementation is a feasible as
well as essential option to add to home reading programs.

The remainder of this dissertation is organized as follows: in chapter two I
describe this study’s context by providing a detailed description of the research
setting, my reading instructional philosophy, further information about the Home
Reading Program, circumstances that motivated me to embark on this research
endeavor along with the theoretical assumptions on which this research project is

based. Additionally, chapter two outlines methodological procedures and

considerations including participant selection, research design, data collection,

50

data analysis, and an overview of preliminary ﬁndings. This study’s pre-
intervention ﬁndings are discussed in greater detail in chapter three. Chapter four
focuses on the post-intervention ﬁndings. Chapter ﬁve, the concluding chapter,
describes this research project’s implications for home reading initiatives, future

educational research, and my own classroom context.

51

CHAPTER 2
RESEARCH CONTEXT AND METHODS

This study follows a qualitative, case-study design. Ethnographic methods
and data collection procedures are employed to address the research questions. In
emphasizing the value of ethnographic and qualitative methodology Goetz and
LeCompte (1984) state “the purpose of educational ethnography is to provide
rich, descriptive data about the contexts, activities, and beliefs of participants in
educational settings”(p. 17). I have chosen this tradition- qualitative, teacher-
research, case study- as the most appropriate for addressing the questions that I
have about my practice because this tradition acknowledges the researcher’s
subjectivity and is particularly suited for closely analyzing the processes involved
in human interaction. Goetz and LeCompte explain, “case study analysis is
appropriate for intensive, in-depth examination of one or a few instances of some
phenomena” (p. 46). Moreover, in describing research designs conducive to the
nature of teacher-research Lytle and Cochran-Smith point out “almost by
deﬁnition, teacher research is case study- the unit of analysis is typically the
individual child, the classroom, or the school” (p. 466).

At the outset of this chapter I describe my reading philosophy,
instructional routine, and rationale for encouraging home reading in order to
reveal the educational and theoretical context ﬁ'om which this study emerges.
Next, I detail several components of the Home Reading Program. These details

are intended to facilitate a comparison between the implementation processes

52

required by an cpen versus a prescriptive home reading design (Harmon, 1995).
A discussion about my decision to conduct teacher-research reveals information
about my beliefs, biases, and research goals. This discussion is followed by a
description of my theoretical orientation as well as the assumptions on which this
study is based. Information about the research location, participants, research
design, Paired Reading procedure, data collection methods, and data analysis
come next. Chapter 2 concludes with a synthesis of the major themes that arise
ﬁom this analysis process.
The Teacher and Her Reading Instruction Philosophy

Involvement in teacher education courses, exposure to educational
research, observations of beginning readers, and my own trial and error attempts
to improve reading instruction have inﬂuenced my beliefs about reading
acquisition and shaped my approach to second grade reading instruction. First, I
believe that beginning readers should be given opportunities to read and listen to
real books throughout the school day. In accordance with this belief I design
activities and establish times when children engage in both silent and oral reading.
In the mornings children read literature or basal selections together in guided
reading groups. They also silently read self-selected books ﬁ'om classroom book
bins and listen to books on tape. Children reread stories with a designated partner
at least once a week. In the afternoons children can choose to read individually or
with ﬁ'iends during learning center time. During social studies and science lessons
students read and listen to me read non-ﬁction, folktales, and thematic stories. I

try to promote children’s love of reading and expose them to quality literature by

53

reading picture books every morning and a portion of a chapter book every
afternoon. Additionally, children are encouraged to write about and discuss
children’s literature and non-ﬁction selections at various times throughout the
day. Children are also asked to read aloud their own writing pieces to classmates
at least once a week ﬁom our classroom “author’s chair.”

Secondly, I believe in the importance of matching the text to the reader. In
order for children to successﬁrlly practice reading and improve ﬂuency, it is
important for children to read text written at their ﬂuency level. While this may
seem obvious, many of the literature-based anthologies currently used by schools
are quite diﬂicult for less-advanced readers (Hiebert and Pearson, 2000)]
Therefore I do not limit my instruction to the district adopted literature series.
Instead I incorporate a variety of materials into reading lessons including
children’s literature anthologies, trade books, basal readers, and children’s news
periodicals to provide appropriate text for the range of reading levels in my
classroom.

The importance of providing differentiated instruction for diverse learners
is a third personal belief. Traditionally, teachers have used ability grouping to
achieve this instructional differentiation, however, a great deal of criticism has

been leveled against this practice since ability grouping can result in educational

 

7 As Hiebert and Pearson (2000) report, until a deeade ago, books for beginning readers contained
corrtrolled vocabularies of high frequency and phonetically regular words. In the 1980’s these
types of readers received heavy criticism for their lack of natural language, interesting storylines,
and elevated vocabulary. By the 1990’s many publishers replaced basal readers with anthologies
of children’s literature so children’s literatm'e stories served as the text for beginning readers. My
district adopted a children’s literature series for 2"" through 5"I grade. I quickly discovered that
even the simplest stories in the beginning anthologies were too diﬂicult for struggling readers.

Hiebert and Pearson (2000) suggest that text difﬁculty is a major limitation of recent literature

based anthology series. Since, my school was new it did not have a cache of old basal readers, but
I managed to provide less advance readers with easier text by borrowing books ﬁ'om other schools.

54

inequality for low achieving students (Cunningham and Allington, 1994).
Researchers have identiﬁed instructional behaviors that support ﬂuency and
higher reading achievement for all levels of readers (Hoﬂinan, 1979;
McNaughton, 1981), but they lmve found that teachers predominantly utilize these
effective hearing-reading response methods with high achieving reading groups
(Allington, 1980, 1983). When listening and responding to advanced readers,
researchers suggest that many teachers focus on comprehension skills, ignore
insigniﬁcant reading errors, and promote self-correction by providing sufﬁcient
wait-time. Conversely, when instructing low achieving readers, teachers focus on
isolated skills, often interrupt the reading to correct insigniﬁcant errors, and limit
self-correction by providing insufﬁcient wait-time (Allington, 1980, 1983). Thus,
teachers reinforce ﬂuency and comprehension development more thoroughly with
advanced readers. Students in low reading groups spend more time working on
sub-skills than they spend reading books (Allington, 1983; Barr, 1995; Stanovich
1986). Although the intent is to tailor reading instruction to the needs of students,
rigid ability grouping practices have been shown to actually diminish rates of
achievement for less-advanced readers who end up being “tracked” into low
ability groups or classrooms for the remainder of their school career (Cunningham
and Allington, 1994; Gamoran, 1986).

Other evidence suggests, however, that providing differential reading
instruction in the earliest grades can be productive because learners have diverse
needs (Hiebert and Pearson, 2000). Advanced readers and average readers tend to

function well with literature based, trade book instruction (Jeul and Minden-Coup,

55

1999) while less advanced readers still need to develop phonics proﬁciency and
require reading rmterial written at a less demanding level than most trade books
(Jeul and Minden-Coup, 2000; Hiebert, Liu, Levin, Huxley, and Chung, 1995).
Rather than abandoning ability-based instruction entirely, some educators
recommend making small group instruction more ﬂexrble by changing the
composition of reading groups, combining grouping with whole class instruction,
and insuring that reading for meaning is the focus of every group (Cunningham et
al., 1996; Opitz, 1998).

To maximize the beneﬁts and avoid the pitfalls of small group reading
instruction in my own classroom, I form two heterogeneous groups of
advanced/average readers and one homogeneous group of struggling readers. This
formation allows me to teach students the speciﬁc skills that I think they need as
well as provide material written at an appropriate readability level. When children
in the homogeneous group reach a certain level of ﬂuency they are placed in a
heterogeneous group. However, there are children who remain in the homogenous
group all year.3 With the less-advanced reading group I reinforce letter-sound
relationships, teach phonics skills and work on sight words during a portion of
their guided reading time. A greater amount of this group’s time is devoted to
silent, oral, and repeated readings of stories. Small group instruction is limited to
three days of week. On the other two days, I utilize the district adopted basal
anthology series for whole group instruction, which exposes less-advanced

readers to elevated text and allows them to interact with advanced peers who

 

3 At my school, ability grouping ends at second grade. In subsequent grades teachers utilize
individualized or whole group reading approaches.

56

serve as positive reading models. During our whole group instruction time
children discuss stories, partner read, and engage in story-related writing
activities.

I am cognizant of the psycholinguistic view that readers acquire the ability
to read by leaming to simultaneously process the grapho-phonemic, semantic, and
syntactic layers of print while making predictions about text (Clay, 1979;
Goodman, 1970; Smith, 1971). Therefore, a fourth guiding principle is my belief
that beginning readers should be taught a variety of phonics and comprehension
strategies that will support their analysis of print and meaning. Each week a
different story serves as a source for mini-lessons on letter-sound relationships,
word meanings, and sentence structure. Prior to reading each story I probe the
children’s background knowledge about the subject and encourage children to
make predictions about story events. Discussion continues as we read the text
together. As we read I make on-the-spot judgments about how to respond to
children’s reading errors. If a child continues reading after making an error that
retains the meaning of the sentence I ignore it. If the error does not make sense
given the context of the sentence, then I interrupt the reader by either supplying
the word or encouraging the reader to utilize various correction techniques. When
a child stops at an unknown word, I encourage the reader to adhere to the
following sequence which is also posted on the classroom wall: 1) skip the
unknown word and read to the end of the sentence, 2) use the context of the
sentence to return to the unknown word and guess what would make sense in the

sentence, 3) use the letter sounds to ﬁgure out the word (Hall and Cunningham,

57

1998; Vacca et al., 1991). If the reader is still unable to decode the word after
using these strategies, I then supply the word. Once the reading is completed we
discuss the children’s personal reactions to the story. Children also answer
questions about the story both verbally and in writing.

My approach to guided reading reﬂects my belief that begirming readers
beneﬁt ﬁom reading aloud. As stated in chapter 1, reading aloud in the classroom
gives children an opportunity to practice their reading skills and receive
immediate feedback on their performance. The teacher is given an opportunity to
monitor, support, and encourage a child’s efforts by responding to the reader’s

decoding and comprehension approaches. If the child encounters difﬁculty, the
teacher is there to help. The text itself presents “teachable moments” for the
instructor to capitalize on. Practice in the presence of adult support assists the
child’s reading growth. Over time the child msters a level of diﬂiculty and
moves on to harder material until independence is achieved. Vygotsky (1962)
refers to this period of learning, during which a child develops cognitive
understanding through interaction with adult modeling and guidance, as “the zone
0f proximal development.” Vygotsky maintains that social interaction with a more

advanced learner is the key to developing higher psychological abilities. He

Writes:
In the child’s development. . . imitation and instruction play a
major role. They bring out the speciﬁcally human qualities of the
mind and lead the child to new developmental levels. In learning
to speak, as in learning school subjects, imitation is indispensable.
What the child can do in cooperation today he can do alone
tomorrow (Vygotsky, 1962, p. 104).

58

He ﬁrrther states
Our investigation demonstrated the social and cultural nature of the

development of the higher ﬁrnctions during these periods, i.e., its
dependence on co-operation with adults and on instruction”

(V ygotsky, 1962, p. 104-5).
Children need opportunities to practice their reading, but practicing alone is not
sufﬁcient when children are initially learning to read. An adult’s presence can
ensure that meaningful reading habits are reinforced, and unsuitable ones are
eventually eliminated. During the primary years, when children’s reading
competence is emerging or transitioning to an independent stage, practicing in the
presence of a higher ﬁrnctioning reader, such as the teacher or a parent, can
stimulate development and ultimately lead to independence from adult assistance.
Reading Instructional Philosophy Leads to 3 Home Readmg Program

The establishment of a classroom Home Reading Program was an
outgrowth of my belief in the utility of adults hearing reading. Extending oral
reading into the home environment seemed a reasonable way to increase
children’s opportunities to practice their reading with support. The primary
purpose of this program was to promote reading achievement and growth through
oral reading practice. With parental support emerging, early, and transitional
readers would practice decoding, word recognition, ﬂuency, and comprehension
skills. Advanced readers, who already possessed strong ﬂuency skills, would
focus on the content of books they read with their parents. The program,
therefore, would enhance the process of learning to read for some readers while

augmenting the process of reading to learn for others.

59

Several aﬂ‘ective goals were also considered as possible program
outcomes. Reading at home might generate positive attitudes towards reading,
especially if the books were interesting and attractive to students. Therefore I
selected literature that I thought children would enjoy reading. I obtained books
with illustrations and books that were short enough to complete in an evening or
two. Additionally my selections included books that reﬂected the cultural
diversity of my classroom, acknowledged reading level differences, featured
award-winning authors or illustrators, and represented ﬁctional and non-ﬁctional
genres. I hoped this program would motivate children to want to read more.
Morrow (1983) points out “substantial numbers of children do not choose to read
either for pleasure or information” (p. 221). Therefore encouraging voluntary
reading was another program goal. Making parents more aware of their children’s
reading development was a ﬁnal program objective. By promoting daily parent-
child reading, the home reading program would give parents information about
their children’s reading progress over the course of an entire school year rather
than just at parent-teacher conference time. Consistently hearing reading could
raise parental questions, concerns, or issues that I hoped they would bring to my
attention. Of course many parents might regularly listen to their children read
without a formal programmatic arrangement. For them the existence of this
program would simply reinforce the importance of their parental involvement
eﬂ‘orts.

Home Reading Program Components

60

Progmm set-up. To set up the Home Reading Program I ﬁrst gathered a
range of reading materials based on the criteria mentioned above. During the ﬁrst
year of the program I borrowed books from our learning consultant, purchased the
majority of books ﬁ'om a wholesale distributor, and bought a few from book-order
companies. Books were not acquired all at once, but were bought at intervals. I
made purchases more ﬁ'equently in the ﬁrst few years of the program. All
purchases for the program were made with personal funds. Over the years some
families kindly donated books. Library books were never chosen due to the
possibility of loss, damage, and the fact tlmt they had to be renewed or returned.

After purchasing books I categorized each selection as emergent/early,
transitional, or expanding (advanced). Book classiﬁcation was informally based
on my own Opinion and judgment about text difﬁculty rather than scientiﬁc
readability formulas. I placed round, color-coded stickers on each book. Yellow
stickers were placed on emergent/early books, red stickers were placed on
transitional books, and blue stickers were place on advanced books. Books were
then placed in individual, gallon size, plastic Ziploc bags for protection and stored
in rubber dishpans on a classroom counter. This color-coded system allowed
children to efﬁciently ﬁnd books written at their ﬂuency level and return books to
the appropriate storage container. Within each reading level there was a range of
slightly easier or harder books, which supported a reader’s gradual progress over
time. In the ﬁrst years of the program, I devoted a great deal of time and care to
incrementally adding harder books to each dishpan to closely match the text to the

reader’s progressing abilities. This, however, proved to be extremely time-

61

consuming and created a storage problem. By the time this research project began
(the fourth year of the program), I resorted to making all Home Reading books in
each category available to children from the outset. This decision improved
efﬁciency at the expense of quality, since the likelihood of a slight mismatch
between children’s reading level and book level increased as a result of this
decision.

Implemenmation an_d involvemenp processes. With second grade students I
start the home reading program at the beginning of the school year, a few weeks
prior to discussing program procedures with parents. Since most ﬁrst and second
grade teachers at my school sponsor home reading programs, many parents are
already familiar with this practice by the time their child enters second grade. The
week before the program, I assess children’s reading ability to determine their
ﬂuency level. Children are then assigned to a yellow, red, or blue book level. A
short, explanatory paragraph about the Home Reading Program is sent home the
weekend before the program. On the program’s ﬁrst day children are taught to:
select a book, pick up a parent signature form, place the form inside the plastic
bag, take the book to their desk, record the book’s title on an individual log sheet
which remains at their desk, and place their selection in their bookbags at a
designated time. I instruct children to determine how well the book matches their
reading level by looking at a page and counting the number of unknown words. If
the number exceeds ﬁve then the book is too diﬂicult and they should make

another choice. On the second day the children turn in their signed signature slips

62

and make another selection. I used the parent signature forms to monitor student
participation and to keep track ofthe titles that each child reads.9

Parents are given more information about home reading and encouraged to
ask questions about the program at the September curriculum meting, described
in chapter 1. The program is presented as a second grade homework requirement,
not an optional activity. I pass out a hearing reading tip sheet to everyone in
attendance at the meeting. Every year one parent asks if the students can
substitute personal books for classroom books. My response is that parents
should, by all means, encourage the reading of personal books. However, for the
Home Reading Program I inform parents that I prefer students to utilize classroom
books. My familiarity with classroom selections enables me to answer any
questions families may have about the stories and monitor the kinds of books
students are reading. I recommend that children read personal books in addition to
Home Reading books or in place of home reading books whenever classroom
books are forgotten at school. If parents are unable to attend this curriculum
meeting, I send a tip sheet home with their child the next day. I periodically
comment on book care, promote continued participation, or give hearing reading
advice in subsequent parent letters.

I monitor and evaluate student Home Reading Program participation rates

throughout the year. Since home reading is considered a homework requirement I

 

9 As children turn in the parent signature I keep record of their participation on a daily checklist. I
also have created lists of yellow, red, and blue home-reading book titles and I photocOpy all three
of these lists on yellow, red, and blue copy paper for each student. Families record book titles on
parent signature slips. 1 refer to these slips to check oﬁ’ each title the child has read on the separate
color-coded sheets. These sheets are used for record keeping purposes only and are not distributed
to parents. The color-coding helps me to quickly ﬁnd the appropriate list.

63

communicate to parents about their child’s participation on report card comments
and during parent-teacher conferences. As stated earlier there is no mechanism in
place to assess the quality of home reading interactions in this program, thus the
reason for this study. Neither is there any formal survey of parent-student views
about the program. However, informal indication of general parental approval of
home reading exists. For example, conversations with fellow teachers reveal that
many parents at our school expect primary grade teachers to sponsor home
reading programs. Teachers who do not operate home reading programs have
stated that parents ask them to send books home “like the other teachers.” Parents
seem to view home reading as a mandated, district-supported activity rather than a
voluntary, teacher-supported initiative. Primary grade teachers who do not operate
home reading programs are pressured by parents to adopt this practice.
Decision to Conduct Teacher-Research

Noticeable parental support of home reading did not diminish my growing
curiosity about the eﬂicacy of the Home Reading Program, particularly for less-
advanced readers. These were the students who could beneﬁt most from the
additional practice tlmt home reading aﬂ‘ords. But they were also the students who
might be most adversely affected by negative or counterproductive home reading
sessions (Bergin, Laney, and Draper, 1994; Steinert, et al., 1981). As stated in
chapter 1, there were ﬁve areas of knowledge that I wanted to gain in order to
make home reading a valuable experience for the low-achieving readers in my
classroom. I wanted to learn what home reading interactions were like for these

students; discover if parents and teachers used similar hearing reading techniques;

ﬁnd out how training parents would affect home reading interactions; discover
how the adoption of a more prescriptive parental listening technique would affect
student attitudes about home reading and measure the demands that two home
reading programs would place on the classroom teacher.

Gallas ponders over the multiple ways teachers can reﬂect upon and gain
knowledge about their practice.

Where should teachers look for authority in reﬂecting on their

work? Do we look only to ourselves and our past experiences as

reference points in understanding the teaching and learning

process? Do we rely solely on the theoretical premises of scholars

and the research paradigms of educational researchers, many of

whom have never taught children, or taught little? Or do we look

both in and out, relying on our own instincts and our intuitive

understandings of children, as well as on the body of knowledge

that has come before us? (1994, p. 8)
This study embraces the learning process Gallas (1994) describes, as “looking
both in and out” of teaching experience to reﬂect and improve upon one’s
practice. I have chosen to engage in teacher research because this stance allows
me to intertwine “outwar ” scholarly expertise with the “inwar ” knowledge
derived ﬁ'om critically examining my unique educational context. As “a body of
knowledge” home reading research has taught me about the effectiveness of
parental training schemes and the importance of program evaluation (Hannon,
1995; Mudre and McCormick, 1989; Toomey, 1993; Topping, 1987, Tracey
1995). The detail present in many reports on home reading programs clearly
outlines implementation procedures, making it possible for teachers and schools

to adopt or adapt these plans. This literature, however, cannot provide information

on the particulars of my situation, namely what home reading is like for my

65

students, and how speciﬁc programs inﬂuence their reading development.
Teacher research allows me to carry on where educational research leaves 06,
teaching me how the generalities of the educational knowledge base manifest
themselves in my practice and the lives of my students. Teacher research also
furnishes a different kind of understanding than is derived from “looking only to
ourselves and past experiences” (Gallas, 1994, p. 8). While knowledge gained
ﬁ'om practical experience and reasoning is a naturally occurring, ﬁmdamental part
of a teacher’s knowledge base (Atkin, 1992), teacher research provides
practitioners with a “systematic and intentional” means of reﬂecting on, learning
from, and transforming practical knowledge (Cochran-Smith and Lytle, 1990, p.
3).

Strepgtg and Limitations of Engaging in Teac_her Resear_ch

The ultimate goal of this research project is to empower parents to

 

enhance student learning and achievement as it relates to reading outside of
school. I have chosen to accomplish this goal by documenting, analyzing, and
interpreting student and parent experiences in two different home reading
programs from the stance of a teacher researcher. This perspective is
advantageous because it allows me to tailor a research agenda to my own
particular interests and needs. In recent years there has been a mounting focus on
teacher-research as a credible form of educational inquiry. Advocates of this type
of study maintain that it represents an insider view often overlooked by
educational research. Lytle and Cochran-Smith (1992) write “teacher-researchers

are uniquely positioned to provide a truly emic perspective that makes visible the

66

ways students and teachers together construct knowledge” (p. 448). Since teachers
may raise different questions or issues than university scholars, acknowledging
teacher voices can expand the educational research agenda and enrich the
professional knowledge base. Engaging in the research process encourages the
development of favorable teaching dispositions and in that way enhances
professioml development. Wilson (1990) describes how researching her teaching
strengthened her interaction with students. She states

It was learning to be a researcher—leaming to look, listen,

respond, not assume, watch, entertain difference, and suspend

belief (or disbelief)—that I developed greater capacity to act on my

teacherly commitments to be moral, to hear and respect my
students, to understand my own limitations. (Wilson, 1990)

While there are many beneﬁts associated with teacher research, the
complexities and difﬁculties involved in conducting teacher research must also be
recognized. The issues of moral obligation, time, and subjectivity are three
inherent challenges of conducting teacher research. The decision to perform
research while teaching can create ethical dilemmas. For instance, should a
teacher withhold a beneﬁcial educational activity ﬁom a portion of her class in
order to maintain the integrity of a control group? Should a teacher observing a
troubling peer interaction, ignore it in order to make an important research
discovery? When the roles of teacher and researcher come into conﬂict, which
stance should take precedence? It is important to acknowledge the possibility that
moral conﬂict may arise during the course of research. Reports on teacher
research should address the investigator’s belief about moral obligations, identify

the occurrence of ethical dilemmas, and describe how these conﬂicts are handled.

67

My rationale for making methodological and design decisions or compromises
will be described in the data collection section of this chapter as well as in
subsequent chapters.

Incorporating research into one’s practice signiﬁcantly increases the
demands placed on teacher workload and time (Cochran-Smith and Lytle, 1990).
Time management has been identiﬁed as a pre-eminent challenge to individuals
conducting these kinds of studies (Goodnough, 2001). Some time management
decisions, such as postponing a data collection procedure to complete report
cards, are a matter of practicality. Unfortunately, in some cases, these practical
decisions can undermine the methodological integrity of the study. Teacher
researchers may ﬁnd it necessary to scale back on classroom projects, data
collection plans, or both Decisions based on time factors can also be ethical in
nature and involve the aforementioned moral conﬂict inherent in coupling
teaching obligations with research responsibilities.

Many teacher research studies adhere to an interpretive research design
rather than a positivist approach because it is diﬂicult to assume a detached, non-
participant stance when your own classroom, students, their parents, and even
you, the teacher-researcher are the research subjects. The interpretive research
tradition accepts a researcher’s subjectivity and through the adherence to
qualitative methods acknowledges rather than de-emphasizes this subjectivity. In
line with the interpretive tradition, teacher researchers oﬂen incorporate a variety
of qualitative data collection. techniques such as participant observation, ﬁeld

notes, journals, discourse analysis, interviews, and classroom work samples.

68

Cochran-Smith and Lytle state that teacher researchers typically use multiple data
collection techniques, which fortiﬁes validity and adds rigor to their
investigations.

In many respects the forms of documentation in teacher research

resemble the forms used in academic research, particularly the

standard forms of interpretive research. . .Like university-based

qualitative research, a strength of teacher research is that it often

entails multiple data sources that can be used to conﬁrm and/or
illuminate one another. (Lytle and Cochran- Smith, 1992, p. 7)

The use of qualitative methods and multiple types of data can enable teacher
researchers to successfully deal with the inherent challenges of subjectivity, moral
obligation, and time constraints. Moreover, the fact that teachers confront these
issues as a normal part of teaching, means that teacher research supplies the
educational knowledge base with an authenticity and relevance, which some
claim cannot be fully achieved by an exclusive reliance on university-generated
research (Atkins, 1992). The fact that as researchers teachers must conﬁ'ont the
same complexities they face as teachers is what adds pragmatic value to their
studies. Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1990) write “teachers use the interpretive
frameworks of practitioners to provide a truly emic view that is different ﬁ'om that
of an outside observer, even if that observer assumes an ethnographic stance and
spends considerable time in the classroom” (p. 7).
The Negotiation of Multiple Roles

Conducting research on my own practice meant that I was simultaneously
trying to negotiate three distinct yet overlapping roles:

As the teacher I focused on- incorporating this research study into my
instructional and work routine as an intervention for low-achieving readers.

69

«- As the researcher I focused on- analyzing closely how the program design
inﬂuenced home reading interactions, parental beliefs, and student attitudes.

. As the learner I focused on- learning how to implement the Paired Reading
Program

Teacher. The primary purpose for conducting this research study, in my role
as a teacher, was to help my students and their parents have successful home
reading interactions. I wanted to assist students, who were struggling
academically to become better readers and I thought that productive home reading
experiences would enable them to accomplish this goal. I also appreciated the
parents’ willingness to participate in this study so I wanted to accommodate their
schedules as much as possible. I gave precedence to my role as teacher in making
data collection decisions. For instance, I collected test data after school to avoid
interrupting the participants’ school routines.10 I rearranged the data collection
timeline to accommodate a participant’s vacation schedule. The decision to alter
the data collection timeline will be discussed ﬁrrther in the research design section
of this chapter since this decision changed the scope of this study.

Researcher. In my role as researcher, my purpose was to observe,
document, interpret, and evaluate student and parent experiences in these two
home reading programs. My focus as a researcher was to structure and implement
multiple data collection procedures at appropriate intervals throughout the study’s
duration. My research design followed a case study approach and utilized

videotape as a primary data source. In addition to videotape data I relied on

 

'° This test score data was dropped from the study for reasons that will be explained in an
upcoming section of this chapter.

70

parental interviews as well as written student and parent surveys to ﬁlrther probe
participant attitudes.

MDuringthisstudwaasalso familiarizingmyselfwiththe Paired
Reading technique. Since I had never implemented this technique before I was
faced with the task of quickly learning and implementing this approach with
parents. In latter clmpters, I critique my role as a Paired Reading coach since the
participants’ Paired Reading performance is inextricably tied to my performance
as a trainer. Since, as stated in the ﬁrst chapter, one of the main purposes of this
research project was “to make home reading more responsive to the needs of low-
achieving readers and their parents” (chapter 1, p. 42), I was also learning how to
improve my practice.

Theoretical Orientation and Assumptions

This research study is based on the theoretical assumption that there are
educationally supportive and non-supportive ways for adults to respond to a
child’s oral reading performance. My perspective on this issue is heavily
inﬂuenced by the interactive view of the reading process. In their textbook
entitled Reading and Learning to Read Vacca, Vacca, and Gove (1991) describe
this instructional orientation.

Interactive Models of Reading. These are models of reading that

assume that the process of translating print to meaning involves

making use of both prior knowledge and print. The process is

initiated by making predictions about meaning and /or decoding

graphic symbols. The reader formulates hypotheses based upon the

interaction of information from semantic, syntactic, and

graphophonemic sources of information. (V acca, Vacca, and Gove,
1991, p. 18)

71

This philosophical view directs my approach to reading instruction and hearing
reading. It also inﬂuences the judgments I make concerning the hearing reading
techniques employed by other adults. Thus, conclusions about the quality of home
reading interactions in this study are ﬂamed by this philosophical and
instructional bias.

I began this research project with several assumptions about the nature of
home reading interactions for students participating in The Home Reading
Program. I hypothesized ﬂat the curriculum meeting presentation about
constructive listening methods and written home reading directions had little
impact over the strategies parents utilized to support their children’s reading
efforts. Instead, parents' own schooling experiences and/or their conceptions of
the reading process were the primary factors shaping their hearing reading
techniques. I speculated that the home reading experiences of low-achieving
readers were somewhat different than their school experiences in terms of the
techniques utilized to scaffold their performance. However, I was uncertain about
the extent of this difference. I assumed that if parental listening techniques were
signiﬁcantly different than the techniques I utilized in school, tension or
ﬁ'ustration would arise during the home reading sessions. I expected to see a
greater reliance on phonics-based techniques because many parents were taught
this way in school. Moreover, low-achieving students in second grade typically
had not developed letter-sound proﬁciency therefore parents might encourage
students to practice phonics techniques during home reading sessions. I surmised

parental use of the Paired Reading technique would foster greater similarity

72

between parental scaffolding techniques and the approach followed in school.11 I
predicted that fostering greater similarity between home school reading sessions
would make home reading more productive for students and improve student
attitudes toward home reading and reading in general.
Research Site

The School Setting

This research project took place at a suburban elementary school where I
have taught second grade for several years. The school is located in a
predominantly white, middle to upper-middle class community north of a major,
mid-western city. It has an attractive, modern appearance, having been built in
1992. Due to the school’s designation as an English as a Second Language (ESL)
center and its location in the midst of an apartment-townhouse complex in the
southem part of this community, the school’s demographics are more socio-
econornically, racially, and culturally diverse than the district’s other elementary
schools. The school also has a more transient population than many of the other
schools. Children ﬁom almost every continent in the world have attended this
school, which annually has a population of approximately 585 students. The fact
that there is a university across town and a corporate headquarters of an
international automotive company in a nearby community means that the school

serves many families ﬁom foreign countries who are here temporarily for work or

 

” Training parents in school-based techniques is considered an acceptable practice in the home
reading research literature. However, educational researchers specializing in family literacy
research have strongly condemned what they refer to as the “transmission” of school-based
techniques to the home environment. According to many in the family literacy research tradition
training parents in school-based techniques devalues home literacy experiences and may
undermine culturally signiﬁcant literacy activities. While I obviously disagree with this argument,
family literacy researchers raise important issues about sensitivity, respect, and open
communication when working with families outside of the school setting.

73

educational purposes. Although there are other Title I schools as well as another
ESL center in the district, the school where this research takes place is the only
one that is designated both a Title I and ESL school.
The Classroom apd Students

In the fall of 1999, the year of this research project, I began the school
year with twenty-ﬁve second grade students. Out of these twenty-ﬁve students,
four qualiﬁed for Title I services, three received ESL support, and one student,
labeled emotionally impaired, received special education services. In line with my
school’s full inclusion policy, special needs students were given support in the
classroom along with remedial instruction in special needs classrooms. I set about
the task of learning my students’ reading capabilities, as I did every year, by
reviewing reports ﬁ'om their ﬁrst grade teachers and listening to each child read
passages ﬁ'om classroom books. If a child had difﬁculty reading books I judged to
be written at a transitional level, I also administered two word recognition tests
ﬁom district “wall wor ” lists.12 From these informal assessments I determined
that ten students were reading below second grade level that fall.

Participant Selection

As chapter 1 outlined, researchers have questiomd the eﬂ‘ects that home

reading has on low achieving readers whose parents may not respond

appropriately to their children’s reading performance (Topping and Wolfendale,

 

'2 The school district encourages primary grade teachers to teach high frequency words from a list
compiled by educational researcher Patricia Cunningham. This list is called a wall word list
because Cunningham (1991) recommends that teachers post these words on classroom walls or
bulletin boards so children can reference them when needed. The district has assembled a ﬁrst and
second grade wall word list, which includes Cunningham’s (1991) list of high ﬁ’equarcy words
along with a few additions.

74

1985; Toomey, 1993; Tracey, 1995). In my own practice I also became concerned
about the home reading experiences of my less advanced readers. I exclusively
targeted less-advanced readers for this study in order to determine the nature of
their home reading experiences and to ascertain whether families of struggling
readers would feel more successful with a prescriptive rather than an open
program design. In order to successfully combine research with teaching
responsibilities I decided to limit the number participants to two students. I also
decided to target the two most delayed second grade readers in the chrssroom. I
did not make any special effort to select students on the basis of gender or
ethnicity. The child’s level of reading attainment was the sole criteria considered
in selecting study participants.

Out of the ten students who were reading below grade level, eight were
reading at an early level; one child read at the emergent stage, and another
student, a war refugee from Eastern Europe, was a non-reader at this point in the
school year. This last student was not considered for the project since Paired
Reading required that children were at least beginning readers. Amongst the nine
remaining students, an emergent reader and a child reading at the early stage
exhibited the greatest diﬂiculty with word recognition, decoding, oral reading
ﬂuency and comprehension. I therefore decided to target these two students for
the research study. By coincidence, both students spoke English as a second
language and received ESL support. One student’s native language was Flemish;
the other student’s native language was Spanish. I contacted the mothers of both

students in October to describe this research project and to request their

75

involvement. Both mothers agreed to participate in the study. Although I opened
the project up to fathers as well, only the mothers and the two students
participated in this project.
ng

Kirk’sl3 enrollment at our school began in 1998 at the beginning of his
ﬁrst grade year. His English speaking skills were quite limited at the time of his
ﬁrst grade enrollment but quickly improved as the year progressed. He entered
second grade a few weeks before his seventh birthday. At the time of this study
Kirk lived in an upper middle class subdivision outside of our school’s enrollment
area with his mother, father, an eight-year-old sister, and two-year-old brother.
Kirk and his sister, who attended third grade, were bussed to our school in order
to receive ESL services. Kirk’s father was an executive at an international data
systems ﬁrm. His mother was a homemaker. She had graduated with a bachelor’s
degree in psychology ﬁom a university in Belgium. Both parents were ﬂuent
English speakers. Belgium was the family’s native country but Kirk was born in
Germany. His father’s ﬁrm had transferred the family ﬁom Belgium to Germany
prior to Kirk’s birth. During the family’s stay in Germany Kirk learned to speak
Flemish at home and had no contact with German speaking children. The father’s
ﬁrm then transferred the family to Argentina when Kirk was three-years-old. He
attended preschool and Kindergarten at a German-Spanish school in Argentina.
At this school Kirk spoke German with his teacher and Spanish with his ﬁiends
and teammates on the school’s soccer team. Kirk’s family stayed in Argentina for

three years until his father’s company transferred him to the United States where

 

‘3 Pseudonyms are used for children and their parents.

76

the family settled in the community where I teach. The family knew in advance
that their stay in America would last about two years. His father’s ﬁrm had
already arranged for the family to return to Belgium by December 2000.

By the time Kirk entered my classroom he had already been exposed to
three different languages in addition to his native Flemish language. He spoke
English ﬂuently and could communicate eﬂ‘ectively with his classmates and
teacher. He was quite soft-spoken in whole group settings, and did not speak
much during class discussions. He also did not speak to me very much unless I
directly spoke to him or asked him questions. However, with his classmates and
ﬁiends he spoke with greater openness and conﬁdence. His reading and writing
skills were at the emergent/early stage. He had difﬁculty recognizing and
decoding words. As a result he read aloud in a hesitant, choppy manner. In
September Kirk recognized thirty-four percent of the ﬁrst grade wall words and
read an emergent/early book at an eighty percent accuracy rate. Excluding the
non-reading student, these scores were the lowest in the classroom.

In October I contacted Kirk’s mother by phone and explained that
although it was early in the year I had concerns about Kirk’s reading skills. She
stated that she also had concerns. She pointed out that he had diﬂiculty reading
the Home Reading books that he brought from school. She was also worried that
Kirk could not read in his native language. I explained to her that as a graduate
student I was conducting a research project that involved teaching parents a
technique to help children practice their reading at home. I asked her if she would

be interested in participating in this study. When she replied that she would, I

77

arranged to meet with her after school to explain what participation would entail
for herselfand her son.
m

Luis began Kindergarten in December of 1997 at another elementary
school in the district that was located close to his home. Luis primarily spoke
Spanish at home. During his Kindergarten year Luis qualiﬁed for ESL services so
he was transferred to our school the next year for ﬁrst grade. He was seven years
old when he entered my classroom. Luis lived in a lower middle class
neighborhood with his father and mother. He had no siblings. His father was a
carpenter and his mother was a homemaker who had graduated with an
accounting degree from a college in Mexico City, Mexico. Luis’ father spoke
English ﬂuently. Luis’ mother was less conﬁdent about her English speaking
skills. When we ﬁrst spoke she cautioned that she might have diﬂiculty
understanding some things I said because of her emerging English skills. Overall
I believe that we communicated effectively in English. Luis’ family moved to the
United States ﬁom Mexico to be closer to his father’s parents who lived in a
nearby community. This move took place while Luis was a preschooler. They
brieﬂy lived in a Southwestern state prior to coming to this community in the
middle of Luis’ Kindergarten year.

By the time Luis entered my second grade classroom he could speak
English ﬂuently in addition to Spanish. He could not read Spanish. He was an
outgoing youngster who communicated effectively with his classmates and

teacher. Although he participated in class discussions infrequently, he spoke with

78

conﬁdence during informal conversations with peers and adults. Luis’ reading

and writing skills were at an early stage. In September Luis could identify eighty-
nine percent of the words on the ﬁrst grade wall word list, recognize sixty-two
percent of second grade wall words, and read an early book with eighty-four
percent accuracy. His oral reading skills were stronger than Kirk’s, but not as
strong as the other children in his group. He read early level text in a choppy,
word-by-word nmnner. He tended to stop at unknown words and wait for prompts
rather than attempt to decode these words without teacher assistance.

As with Kirk, I contacted Luis’ mother by phone in October to inform her
of my concerns about Luis’ reading proﬁciency. I informed her of this impending
research project and requested the participation of herself and her son. Luis’
mother agreed that she and Luis would participate. She explained that she had
been informed by Luis’ previous teacher that he was experiencing academic
difﬁculties at the end of the previous school year. She also intimated that she was
frustrated that she had not been informed of Luis’ struggles earlier. She felt that
he had not had a productive ﬁrst grade experience. She emphasized that she
would be willing to do whatever was necessary to help her son. She also agreed to
meet with me after school to learn more about the project.

Introductory Participant Meeting

I met with each mother-son dyad on separate days immediately after
school to explain the project. Kirk, his mother, and Kirk’s two siblings were
present at the meeting. Kirk’s siblings played elsewhere in the classroom while I

talked to Kirk and his mother. Luis and his mother were present at their meeting.

79

At these meetings I sat with each mother and son at a table in the classroom and
talked about the research project. I told them about Paired Reading and explained
that it had been used in England with children who needed extra support to
improve their reading achievement. I stated that unlike our classroom Home
Reading Program, which gave parents very little guidance about how to listen to
children read, the Paired Reading program trained parents in a speciﬁc listening
method. I told them that I wanted to learn, through this research project, whether
, some families would beneﬁt ﬁ'om receiving more information on how to support
children when they are practicing reading at home. I pointed out that according to
British researchers, children who participated in the Paired Reading program
made strong gains in reading growth. Therefore, I thought their sons might beneﬁt
ﬁ'om participating in this research project. I told the parents and the boys that the
project would begin in October and end approximately in May. I also outlined the
sequence of activities that the project would involve. Both mothers stated that
they were very interested in helping their sons improve their reading skills. They
would also be willing to meet after school and allow me into their homes to carry
out this research I asked the boys if they would be willing to stay after school one
day a week for a while and let me work with them at home on their reading. They
both agreed that they would.
Research Design
The research questions and study itself were divided into two distinct

phases. The ﬁrst phase occurred prior to the Paired Reading intervention, when

80

students were participating in the classroom Home Reading Program. The second
phase began after the participants received Paired Reading training.

Summary of Research Questions

PRE-INTERVENTION PHASE QUESTIONS

Wlmt is the nature of parent-cth reading interactions after parents have received
general information about responding to their children’s reading eﬁ'orts? How do

these home reading interactions compare to the children’s reading experiences in

school?

What beliefs about reading and understanding of the reading process do parents
exhibit after receiving general information about hearing reading at home?

POST-INTERVENTION PHASE QUESTIONS

What are the effects of Paired Reading on home reading interactions between
parents and children? Do the training methods utilized in Paired Reading cause
parents to change their approach to hearing children read? Are parent behaviors

consistent with the strategies and philosophy promoted by the Paired Reading
method?

What are the effects of Paired Reading on the reading behavior and attitudes of
low-achieving students?

Pre-Injerverlion Pha_§e;

In order to learn about the nature of parent-child reading interactions prior
to the Paired Reading intervention, I visited participant homes and videotaped
children reading Home Reading books aloud to their parents. I videotaped each
student reading at home on four separate occasions. In order to gauge the
students’ attitudes towards reading prior to their Paired Reading experience I gave
the students a written attitude assessment called The Elementagg Reading Attitude

Survey (McKenna and Kear, 1990). This survey was administered immediately

81

after all of the pre-intervention phase videotaped data was obtained. After
administering this survey to students, I interviewed both mothers concerning their
views about reading, conception of the reading process, and assessment of their
child’s reading ability.
Post-Intervention Phase

The second phase of this research study began with an after-school Paired
Reading training meeting. I met with each mother-son dyad separately on
different dates. At each training session the mother and son pairs watched a
video, which demonstrated and provided a rationale for the Paired Reading
technique. After viewing the video, the pairs practiced the technique and were
given an opportunity to ask questions about it. While they practiced I gave
encouragement, suggestions, and praise. At the end of the meeting I introduced a
Paired Reading journal We also set up dates for a follow-up training meeting as
well as dates for me to videotape Paired Reading sessions in participants’ homes.
The Paired Reading intervention lasted eight weeks. At the end of the follow-up
training meetings I brieﬂy interviewed the mothers concerning their views of the
Paired Reading method. Each mother-son dyad was videotaped using the
technique at home on four occasions to determine how Paired Reading changed
the participants’ home reading experience. After the eight-week program ended,
the students completed a survey called Paired Readrng' : What Do Ygr Thigh}
(Brailsford, Brimacombe, Coles, Hayden, Sanders, and Taylor, 1998). The boys
also completed The Elementagz Readmg’ Attitude Survey (McKenna and Kear,

1990) a second time so that I could compare students’ pre and post intervention

82

attitudes towards reading. The mothers ﬁlled out two Paired Reading surveys. I
interviewed the mothers about their reading views and their children’s reading
ability to ﬁnd out if the Paired Reading method had impacted or changed parental
reading beliefs. I also recorded parental reactions to pre and post intervention
videotapes and collected Paired Reading journals.
immigﬁon of Test Score Data

At the outset of this study I wanted to investigate whether Paired Reading
would improve Kirk’s and Luis’ reading achievement. My approach was to
measure program effectiveness through test score data obtained by a single-
subject experimental design (N euman and McCormick, 1995). Educational
researchers point out that implementing single subject experimental methodology
is an ideal way to examine the effects of an intervention on subjects because it
allows the researcher to attribute change directly to the intervention, rather than
other causes. In accordance with this research technique, assessment measures
must be given repeatedly until a stable level of performance is achieved before
and after an intervention. For this study I attempted a multiple-baseline-across-
subject design. This particular approach is used when the intervention is expected
to produce irreversible change, such as improving a child’s reading performance.
It requires that a baseline level of performance for two or more participants be
established during the same time ﬂame, while the application of the intervention
is staggered for each individual. The intervention is started ﬁrst with one subject.
When the ﬁrst subject’s performance reaches a baseline level, the intervention is

started with the second subject. The word recognition, word attack, and passage

83

comprehension sections of The Woodcock Mastery Tests (Woodcock, 1988) were
the standardized assessments used to measure reading achievement.

This original plan to probe Paired Reading’s effectiveness through test
score data was undermined by a scheduling change. In November and December
both students were given the aforementioned sections of The Woodcock Mastgy
13$ eight times to establish a baseline level of performance. Each test was
scheduled about a week apart and conducted before the pre-intervention
videotaping was scheduled to begin. During the last week of testing in mid-
December, Kirk’s mother informed me that their family was taking a Christmas
holiday in Belgium and Kirk would not be returning to school until the second
week in January. To accommodate the family’s vacation I moved the pre-
irrtervention videotaping that was scheduled to begin in December to January
when Kirk returned. '4 This change pushed the Paired Reading training that was
slated to start in January back to February. Consequently, the ﬁrst series of post
testing did not occur until March. Although there were noticeable increases in
both students’ post-test scores, the elapse of time between the pre-testing and the
intervention was too great to attribute this increase to the Paired Reading
program. Extraneous factors such as matrnation or the children’s school

instruction could have contributed to the higher test scores. Since I moved the

 

" This problem could have been resolved by adding another student to the study but researching
three students would have been too demanding that particular year. Another alternative was
dropping Kirk ﬁom the study and soliciting another participant, but as Kirk’s teacher I never
considered that an ethical option. Kirk’s mother was hoping this project would help her son.
Moreover, in my role as teacher I recognized that Paired Reading was speciﬁcally designed for
someone with Kirk’s needs. His scores on The Woodcock Mgstery Tests indicated that his
performance was a year below grade level in the areas of word recognition, word attack, and
passage comprehension. I wanted to discover whether participation in the Paired Reading program
would be a beneﬁcial experience for a delayed reader like Kirk.

 

84

intervention date to February, a causal relationship between Paired Reading and

improved reading achievement could not be established. The test score data,

which was designed to be a measure of program effectiveness had to be

 

 

 

 

disregarded.
Data Collection
Igble l: Dag Set: Number-Type of Data
KIRK/ELSA LUIS/LOLA

4 Videotapes of Home Reading 4 Videotapes of Home Reading Sessions
Sessions 1 Pre-Intervention Elemenm Reading
1 Pre-Intervention Elernent_a_ry Attitude Surveyt McKenna & Kear, 1990)
Read' g

Attitude Survgyt McKenna & 1 Audiotaped, Pre—Intervention Parental
Kear, 1990) Interview
1 Audiotaped, Pre-Intervention l Paired Reading Journal
Parental

Interview 8 Videotapes of Paired Reading Sessions

1 Paired Reading Journal

8 Videotapes of Paired Reading
Sessions

1 Audiotaped, Parental Paired
Reading
Follow-Up Interview

1 Post-Intervention Elernentlry
Reading

Attitude Survgt McKenna &
Kear, 1990)

1 Student Paired Reading Survey

2 Parental Paired Reading
Surveys

(Topping & Whiteley, 1990);
(NARSC,

1998)

l Audio-taped, Post-
Intervention, Parental
Interview and Viewing Session

1 Folder containing Kirk’s 2'“I
grade read-

ing assessments and report

 

 

l Audiotaped, Parental Paired Reading
Follow-Up Interview

1 Post-Intervention Elementa_r:y Reading
Attitude 8m McKenna & Kear, 1990)

1 Student Paired Reading Survey

2 Parental Paired Reading Surveys
(Topping & Whiteley, 1990); (NARSC,
1998)

l Audio-taped, Post-Intervention, Parental
Interview and Viewing Session

1 Folder containing Luis’ 2'“l grade read—
ing assessments and report card.

 

85

 

 

[ card. Table 1 (cont’d) I

 

Pre-Imerverrtion Videotaped Datg

As part of the Home Reading Program the boys chose yellow-level
classroom books to read aloud to their mothers every evening. In January I
videotaped Kirk reading these books to his mother Elsa and Luis reading these
books to his mother Lola on four separate occasions in each boy’s home, resulting
in a total of eight recorded sessions. I arranged to videotape the mothers and sons
in the places where they normally read together. My role during the pre-
intervention videotaping was strictly that of an observer. I did not give advice or
state my opinions about the reading interaction. A main purpose for this study was
to gain an understanding of what happened when students read Home Reading
books aloud to their parents at home. I wanted to examine the different ways these
parents assisted their children, the emotional responses the parents displayed, the
emotional responses the children displayed, the reading strategies children
initiated, the conversations that took place during the reading event as well as the
presence of non-verbal cues. I chose videotape as a primary data source because it
would allow me to capture and repeatedly view each reading event.

Multiple visits were made to each home in order to diminish what
Goﬁnan (1959) refers to as an individual’s “perforrnative stance.” Goﬂinan
maintains that individuals oﬁen intentiomlly or unintentionally adjust their
behavior for certain audiences. Moreover, observers cannot prevent others from
assuming a performative stance. The best an observer can do is devise methods to

detect whether someone is giving a performance. In the case of conducting

86

research in someone’s home it is even more difﬁcult to determine how much
performative behavior is being presented. When researching the home setting
Leichter (1984) suggests that ﬁequent visits may enable the researcher to gain
access to other manifestations of self on the part of participants, but even with
multiple visits researchers can only go so far in discovering aspects of family life
beyond a certain point. Leichter reminds those who conduct research in the home
to recognize that:

The glimpses that an observer obtains of a family’s life may shift

dramatically from one time to another. This supports the argument

that observers must be patient enough over a period of time to get
behind the most public behavior of the family, but it also indicates
the need for them to remain aware that they can rarely enter a

family beyond certain layers of communication and awareness.

(Leichter, 1984, p. 47)

My status as teacher and the presence of the video camera provided an
even greater incentive for participants to adopt a performative stance. Multiple
visits served to minimize this incentive by reducing the novelty of my presence so
that a realistic understanding of the home reading event could also be obtained.
Interview and attitude survey data, which could conﬁrm or disconﬁrm
interpretations of videotaped actions, was an additional way to substantiate claims
about home reading behaviors.

Pre-Interventgrnjpterview Data

Researchers point out that the contextual issues surrounding speech events

such as home reading, have signiﬁcant relevance to the layers of meaning

embedded in observed speech occurrences. Duranti and Goodwin (1992) write “it

is typically argued that the focal event cannot be properly understood, interpreted

87

appropriately, or described in a relevant fashion unless one looks beyond the
event itself to other phenomena”( p. 3). An individual’s reading philosophy and
schooling experience are contextual features that almost certainly impact how that
individual behaves when hearing children read. Therefore, I interviewed both Elsa
and Lola to learn about their perceptions of the reading process and their
assessment of their sons’ reading performance. I asked each mother if she
preferred to be interviewed at school or at home. Both stated that they would like
to be interviewed in school So, after the pre-intervention videotaped data had
been collected I interviewed each mother after school in my classroom on
separate days during the ﬁrst week of February. Elsa’s interview took place while
Kirk attended an after school enrichment class. Kirk’s younger brother played in
the classroom with blocks while I spoke with Elsa. Luis waited outside in the
hallway while I interviewed Lola. I audiotaped and later transcribed both
interviews. The four main questions that guided each parental interview were 1)
How did you learn to read in school? 2) What do you think are the characteristics
of a good reader? 3) Do you think your son is learning to read the same way you
did or a different way? 4) What do you think is the best way to learn to read? 4)
How well do you think your son is reading?
Attitude Survey

One of the goals of this study was to investigate whether Paired Reading
improved students’ attitude towards reading. To accomplish this goal I
administered an attitude survey called The Elementary Reading Attitude Sgrvey

(McKenna and Kear, 1990) to both students as they participated in the Home

88

 

Reading Program. Both students took the survey on separate days, after school in
the later part of January. I administered the same survey again after both students
completed the eight-week Paired Reading Program.
Paired Reading: Tm ' , Program, and Materials

Prom set-up. Many of the article$ and books on Paired Reading
describe how to purchase commercial Paired Reading Program kits. I ordered
such a package entitled Paired Reading: Poﬁtive Reading Practice, produced by
the Northern Alberta Reading Specialists’ Cormcil (NARSC) in Alberta, Canada
(Brailsford et. al., 1998). The kit includes a 30-minute training video and 81-page
training manual. The manual’s introductory chapter describes the Paired Reading
technique, summarizes related educational research, identiﬁes potential target
students, and lists the advantages of the approach. The manual’s second chapter
prescribes how to organize and implement a Paired Reading project. There is a
detailed outline for conducting an introductory training session, a follow-up
meeting, and a test-based program evaluation. The next part of the annual
describes how to use the training video. Trainers are encouraged to stop the tape
at certain segments and provide participants with scripted information about what
is being viewed. There is a question and answer chapter that responds to
ﬁequently asked questions or concerns. The last section contains handouts for
maintaining and evaluating the program. Program invitations, participant consent
forms, diary pages, participant tip sheets, and attitude surveys are included in this

last section.

89

Training meetm’ g.The materials provided by this curriculum package were
straightforward and very helpful. I trained Elsa, Kirk, Lola, and Luis by closely
following the guidelines outlined in the manual. Since I was also trying to
implement a multiple-baseline-across—subject design to evaluate this program, I
staggered the training meetings and implementation dates for each parent-child
dyad. I started the program with the lowest performing reader ﬁrst, Kirk. Kirk and
Elsa’s training took place the ﬁrst week in February while Luis and Lola’s
training occurred the second week in March. The organization of each training
meeting was basically the same.

Mother and son met with me in the classroom after school. First I brieﬂy
explained how Paired Reading came about, summarized the research that
supported it, and explained the stages of simultaneous and independent reading.
As the manual recommended, I showed the ﬁrst ﬁfteen minutes of the video and
paused the tape to highlight certain procedures. In this ﬁrst segment three
different tutor-tutee pairs demonstrated negative hearing reading interactions.
These three pairs subsequently demonstrated Paired Reading as a positive hearing
reading interaction. I stopped the tape to review the manual’s scripted
commentary emphasizing the supportive aspects of this method and to give the
participants a chance to ask questions. Then mother and son practiced the
technique with a classroom book, while I gave tips. Next we watched the rest of
the video. The second ﬁfteen—minute segment reviewed each step of the Paired
Reading process. Three additional tutor-tutee pairs modeled ﬁnding an

appropriate, quiet location; initiating Paired Reading with a signal; pacing and

90

praising during simultaneous reading; tracking text; signaling for independent
reading; supporting comprehension and incorporating discussion. After viewing
the video participants were given another opportunity to raise questions. At this
point I passed out a spiral bound Paired Reading journal containing handouts and
diary pages.

Journal handouts included a diagram of the Paired Reading method
(Topping and Whiteley, 1990) and a written review of steps (Brailsford et a]. ,
1998). I placed eleven diary pages inside the journal (enough for the eight week
program and more in case there was a desire to continue the program beyond the
eight weeks). A weekly calendar with boxes for participants to record the book
title, length of time, and comments about the daily Paired Reading episode
appeared on each diary page along with a place for teacher/sponsor comments.
There was a place for extended comments and questions on the back of each diary
page. The family took the journal home after the training session and then
returned it the next day so I could add a typed calendar of training, videotaping,
and testing dates for the remainder of the research project to the journal.

Pro gLam involvement processes. According to NARSC Paired Reading
guidelines participants should engage in this procedure a minirmrm of ten minutes
a day, ﬁve days a week. Participant diaries indicated that both families exceeded
these guidelines by typically reading six to seven days a week for longer than ten
minutes each day. Every Monday, the students returned their diary to school for
my review. I returned the journal, often with written comments, by the end of

class on Monday. For example, I might comment on the student’s book selection,

91

write encouraging statements such as “good work, you read for a long time,” or
reply to a parent’s written statements. The students were allowed to pick books
from home or from the classroom Home Reading Program containers. I informed
the mothers that the boys did not have to participate in the classroom Home
Reading Program while doing Paired Reading. However, both boys continued to
turn in Home Reading slips on the books that they read for the Paired Reading
program and I recorded their participation in both programs. A follow-up training
meeting was scheduled in each fanrily’s home about two weeks after the initial
training meeting (Brailsford et al., 1998).

At this follow-up session, I observed the Paired Reading interaction and
gave advice when I thought it was necessary. The program ended the last week in
March for Kirk and the latter part of April for Luis. I allowed the boys to keep
their Paired Reading journals at home in case they wanted to continue the reading,
but they were no longer required to turn them end to me for review. During the
last week in May I collected both journals as data for this research project.

Reseaich involvement processes: Videotapm’ g and parental m’ terviews.
During this follow-up session I videotaped the Paired Reading performance
including my coaching attempts. After shutting off the video cameraI interviewed
the mothers about their Paired Reading views. Prior to starting the interview I told
each boy that the practice session was over, but I needed to talk to his mother for
a minute. In both cases the boys decided to do something else in another area of
the house and were not present for the interview. These audiotaped interviews

were brief and open-ended. The main question that guided each short interview

92

was: What do you think of the Paired Reading Program so far? Since the duration
of the program was barely two weeks at this point, I decided not to ask questions
about parental reading beliefs. Instead I wanted to gain an understanding of their
early judgments of Paired Reading and determine whether their views would
change by the end of the program.

In addition to videotaping the Paired Reading follow-up metings I
videotaped each mother-son dyad reading at home on three more occasions (four
videotaped sessions per child) for a total of eight videotaped paired reading
sessions. I did not expect the parents to need coaching by the second videotaped
session, which occurred ﬁve weeks after Elsa’s ﬁrst training session and four
weeks after Lola’s ﬁrst training session. However, Elsa still needed to improve
her duet reading technique. So my coaching attempts appear on videotapes of her
second session as well. I decided that I would refrain from coaching and simply
videotape the next two Paired Reading sessions in Elsa’s household to see how
well she maintained the technique after the initial training and two follow-up
training sessions. The Paired Reading program ended for Kirk and Elsa in March;
it ended for Luis and Lola in April.

After the Paired Reading Program I gave each boy The Elementary
_Re_adra;gAtti_tude Survey (McKenna and Kear, 1990) for the second time and a
survey entitled Paired Readmg‘ : What Do You M? ﬁom the NARSC Paired
Reading Manual (Brailsford et al., 1998). The boys completed the surveys in my
classroom after school on separate occasions. In May I visited the participants’

homes for the last time. At these last meetings I gave the mothers two Paired

93

Reading surveys to ﬁll out, carried out the ﬁnal parental interviews, and
conducted participant viewing sessions of videotaped data. During the interview
at Kirk’s home, Kirk was playing with his srblings in the family room while his
mother Elsa and I talked in the nearby breakfast room. The children moved their
play upstairs when Elsa and I went to the family room to play the tapes. At Luis’
home Luis sat with his father on the living room couch while I interviewed his
mother Lola by the television set across the room. Before I left each home I asked
the boys to give me their Paired Reading journals. I thanked everyone for
participating in this project and gave each boy a Harry Potter (Rowling, 1998)
book as a present.

Prior to each interview I asked Elsa and Lola to look at the last pre and
post intervention videotapes. Before showing the ﬁrst tape I gave both mothers
the following directions: "When you look at the tape please think about how the
reading session is going. Tell me about how your son is reading, how you are
helping him read, and what you notice most about the reading session." I gave
them the same directions prior to showing the post-intervention Paired Reading
videotapes. I solicited participant responses to videotaped data in order to
compare their perceptions of reading interactions with my own interpretations of
home reading events. In regards to analyzing videotape data Erickson (1982)
recommends that researchers test their emerging theoretical assumptions by
incorporating participants’ impressions of recorded events into the data set.

“Viewing sessions are another approach to testing the coherence and validity of

94

an analyst’s emergent theoretical perspective through what Cicourel (1976) calls

indeﬁnite triangulation of evidence” (Erickson, 1982, 229).

Immediately after showing videotapes from a pre and post intervention

session and recording their impressions I interviewed the parents about their home

reading experience with the two programs and asked their opinion of their

childrens’ post-intervention reading abilities. The questions which guided these

ﬁnal interviews were: 1) Describe to me what reading at home was like before we

started Paired Reading? 2) Describe to me what reading at home is like now, after

using Paired Reading? 3) What strategies did you use to help your son read before

Paired Reading? 4) What strategies did you use with the Paired Reading

approach? 5) Tell me about how your son read before Paired Reading and how he

readsnow?Attheendofthelastvisittoeachhomelaskedthemothersto

complete a Topping and Whiteley (1990) survey called Paired Readmg' -What is it

like? and the tutor version of Paired Readmg' : What Do You Thin_lg‘_? from the

NARSC manual (Brailsford et al., 1998).

Table 2: Research and Data Collection Tirneline

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

October ‘ January February March April May
Partici- Pre- Pre- Kirk’s post- Luis’ post- Parental
pant interven- intervention intervention intervention attitude
selection tiorr parental videotapes (3) videotape (1) surveys,
videotapes interviews interviews,
and participant
Kirk’s Paired Luis’ videotaped Kirk’s Paired viewing
Student Reading Follow-up and Reading session
attitude training and mother’s Paired Program ends
survey implementa- Reading 4-8—00
tiorr 2-8-00 interview
Kirk’s Luis’s post Kirk Collected
videotaped intervention completes Paired Readmg_

 

95

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 2 Follow-up and videotapes (l) attitude Journals
(cont’d) mother’s surveys
Paired
Reading Luis’ Paired
interview Reading
Program ends
4-21-00
Luis’ Paired
Reading Luis
training and complete
implementa- attitude
tion 2-24-00 surveys.
Data Analysis

A_n_ay§is of Videotapad Data
My approach to analyzing the videotaped data was to ﬁrst view the tapes

to gain a sense of each reading event as a whole. I amlyzed the pre-intervention
tapes ﬁrst, and then studied the post-intervention recordings. During these
preliminary viewings I made “running notes” (Erickson, 1982, p. 219) about the
general characteristics of each reading episode such as the time of day the
interaction took place, the room in which the reading occurred, the place where
the mother and son sat in the roonr, and the presence of other family members
during the recording. I also documented whether discussion about the book
occurred before, during, or after the book readings and described the overall tenor
of each interaction (Hoffman, 1981).

Pre-iratervenjion catal_og§. After documenting these general characteristics,
I reviewed session tapes again, this time noting places on the tapes where
noticeable changes in participants’ verbal and non-verbal behavior occurred
(Erickson, 1982; Florio-Ruane, 1987). On each tape I looked for changes in

emotion, shifts in communication style, unexpected interruption, and the

96

 

occurrence of non-reading commentary by participants. Whenever I observed one
of the aforementioned changes, I wrote down the counter numbers and described
participant speech that took place at these transition points. The purpose of
segmenting the tapes in this manner was to identify parts of the interactions that
stood out to me and therefore warranted closer examination (Erickson, 1982;

F lorio-Ruane, 1987). Elements that caught my attention when I reviewed Kirk
and Elsa’s pre-intervention tapes were the intensity of Elsa’s involvement
throughout the reading session, the choppiness of the interaction, Elsa’s singular
focus on the graphophonemic aspect of text, as well as the important role that
wait-time played in Elsa’s scaffolding strategy. The elements that were
prominent on Luis and Lola’s pre-intervention tapes were Lola’s distance from
Lot, her limited involvement throughout the reading, her exclusive use of one
intervention strategy, her insecurity with her own word identiﬁcation skills, and
her tendency to immdiately respond to Luis’s hesitation or miscues.

I made a second catalog of pre-intervention tapes. In this second round of
cataloging I decided to take a closer look at each participant’s physical demeanor
and tone of voice throughout the reading. I also paid greater attention to the boys’
behavior and speech in terms of their reading strategies and reactions to their
mothers’ intervention eﬁorts. Features that were noticeable in these second
catalogs were Kirk’s attempts to talk about the story, which were ignored by his
mother as well as instances when he challenged his mother’s corrections. I also

paid attention to Luis’ need to solicit help ﬁ'om his mother. Since Lola was not

97

 

closely monitoring Luis’ reading performance, some of Luis’ errors were ignored
unless he acknowledged them himself and asked for assistance.

Post-iratervenjjgn catalgga. My preliminary focus when reviewing post-
intervention tapes centered on analyzing the extent to which the pairs adhered to
the Paired Reading method. I cataloged shifts ﬁom duet reading to solo reading
and recorded coaching interruptions. Once again, I wrote down the counter
numbers and descriptions of participants’ actions where these shifts occurred. I
did not incorporate a great deal of participant speech in these ﬁrst post-
intervention catalogs. 11 mainly noted whether the pairs were reading in sync, if
parents remembered to praise, and if parents appropriately resumed duet reading
after student nriscues. This ﬁrst round of post-intervention cataloging allowed me
to determine which Paired Reading procedures the dyads adopted easily and
which techniques seemed more challenging for them to master. The catalogs
revealed that it took Elsa longer than Lola to fully master the duet-reading portion
of the Paired Reading technique. However, Elsa discussed the text with her son,
as the Paired Reading method recommends, while Lola, despite being reminded,
adopted this practice on only one occasion.

I reviewed and cataloged post-intervention events a second time. The
second time around, I continued to highlight changes in Paired Reading actions
but I also placed greater emphasis on the similarities and differences between pre
and post-intervention parental scaffolds and student behavior. I incorporated more
contextual inforrmtion about what participants were saying, the text that was

being read, and descriptions of participants’ non-verbal behaviors in these second

98

catalogs. The post-intervention catalogs demonstrated that Paired Reading
changed Elsa’s scaffolding behaviors more dramatically than Lola’s.

The catalogs contained details about my coaching behaviors as well as
participants’ responses to my coaching attempts. Repeated viewings of post-
intervention tapes allowed me to critique my coaching performance. I identiﬁed
strengths and limitations of my training technique as well as issues I would handle
differently in the future. After cataloguing the tapes I interpreted the educational
effectiveness of each session and compared parental interaction approaches to my
own methods of listening to children read. I also interpreted how parental
scaffolding strategies had changed in the Paired Reading phase of this study.

Transcgp' tion of videotaped daga. Transcribirrg the videotaped data was
another data analysis procedure that I engaged in to understand the comments,
statements, or questions that participants made during the home reading
interaction and to grasp the overall tenor of each home reading episode (Halliday,
1977; Hoﬂ‘rrmn, 1981). Discourse analysts point out that the act of transcribing is
indeed a form of analysis in its own right because the researcher must make
decisions concerning the representation of the recorded speech event (F lorio-
Ruane, 1987; Gee, Michaels, and O’Connor, 1992). Since I was interested in
detecting emotional changes or any signs of ﬁ'ustration during home reading
sessions I incorporated prosodic linguistic elements in the transcripts. Gunrperz
(1984) noted that various prosodic features of speech were meaningless in
isolation. However, combined with other constructs prosody enabled the listener

to interpret the speaker’s intention and stance. In order to document and analyze

99

the tenor of the speech interaction between parent and child during home reading
sessions I documented changes in loudness, pitch level, length of pauses, and
vowel elongations in the session transcripts. Below I have provided a list of
transcription conventions that were devised to represent prosodic discourse
variations. Additionally, in portions of the transcripts descriptions of the non-
verbal actions or gestures accompanying participant speech were included in

_T_r_anscription Guide

CAPS= louder tone

Italics= softer tone

/= breath

//= completion, period

. . . extended pause

?= unintelligible to transcriber

word= higher pitch such as in asking a question

{F lemish/Spanish}= Flemish/Spanish translation.

letter-= stretching out sound in a word

[Comment made that is not reading]
parentheses next to recorded utterances. Overlapping speech was marked with
text indentations preceded by a hyphen. All the videotapes (a total of sixteen)
were transcribed in their entirety so that they could be used to make an inventory
of parental response strategies.

Translation. During the videotaping both mothers reverted to their primary
language periodically on the tapes to speak to their children. Elsa spoke Flemish
ﬁequently to give directions to Kirk’s siblings, scaffold Kirk’s reading, or discuss
the books. Lola spoke Spanish less ﬁequently to give Luis directions. Since I

speak neither Flemish nor Spanish I needed to have portions of the videotapes

100

translated in order to gain a more thorough understanding of the speech that
transpired during the sessions.

Finding a Flemish translator was difﬁcult, but amazingly I found one
through the most informal and fortuitous circumstances.” I discovered that the
mother of one of my son’s classmates had a friend from Belgium who spoke
Flemish. I acquired this woman’s number and she agreed to come to my house to
translate the Flemish speaking portions of the tape for me. She did this, for no
charge, at my home on two occasions. We accomplished the transhtions in the
following nranner: with a television/V CR next to my computer we played the
tape, she translated the words, and I sat at the computer typing her translation into
the transcripts between brackets to distinguish Flemish ﬁom English speech. The
translator had me rewind the tapes repeatedly until she was conﬁdent in her
translation. It took us about three hours to complete translations of six out of the
eight videotapes on two different occasions. Unforttmately the translator was
unable to translate the ﬁrst two Paired Reading interactions in time for this study.
There were a few utterances that the translator stated were indecipherable to her
and were not translated. The translator attributed her difﬁculties in translating a
few of Kirk and Elsa’s statements to dialect variation, stating that Kirk and Elsa
sounded as if they were from Northern Belgium, whereas the translator was ﬁ'om

Southern Belgium.

 

'5 Actually two different Flemish speakers performed translation work for me. The ﬁrst was
acquired through Elsa. [hiring the study I asked Elsa if she knew anyone beside herself who could
translate tapes for me. Elsa told me a friend of hers could translate them if I sent the videotapes to
her home through Kirk. I did this during the spring of the study and received typed translations.
However, this did not work out well because she skipped many of the conversational exchanges
between Kirk and Elsa. Fortunately I was able to obtain another translator.

101

I asked a Spanish speaking paraprofessional ESL aide from my school to
translate Luis and Lola’s tapes. Like Lola and Luis, the Spanish translator was of
Mexican descent. She also came to my house and translated the tapes in the exact
same manner as described above. Both translators graciously donated their time
without charging me for their services.

The translations of the videotaped home reading sessions allowed me to
further understand the nature of parental scaffolding strategies and gave me
greater insight into the emotional states of participants. In Elsa and Kirk’s case,
the post-intervention translations were crucial because during the Paired Reading
sessions Elsa only talked about the content of the book with Kirk in Flemish.
Thus, in Elsa and Kirk’s case, the translations provided evidence that discussion
about the books took place and allowed me to interpret the meaning of these
discussions. Likewise, the one discussion comment that Lola made was spoken in
Spanish. The translations also enabled me to identify similarities and diﬁ‘erences
between parents’ pre and post-intervention response strategies.

Inventory of parental respon_se straiegias. Another way I sought to identify
parental response strategies and examine parental beliefs about reading was to
create an inventory of parental response strategies for each session ﬁ'om the
transcripts (See Appendix B). The inventories showed that Elsa used several
different strategies to support her son’s decoding, however, all the strategies that
she used centered on analyzing the sounds in the words. Lola, on the other hand,
rarely used any other strategy besides supplying the word for Luis. After these

inventories were completed I categorized scaffolds on the basis of instructional

102

purpose. I also tallied the number of times different scaffolds were used
throughout the session. Since the issue of parental wait-time surfaced as an
important pre-intervention issue for both mothers I decided to measure the length
of wait-time pauses after each child’s reading error or hesitation. Wait-time was
also an important issue in the post-intervention tapes since a four-second wait-
time was a major Paired Reading scaffolding strategy. I examined the length of
wait-time pauses by reviewing the videotapes, timing the noticeable pauses with a
stopwatch, and documenting the length of pauses on the parental response
inventories.

Interviews and surveys. I transcribed audiotapes of the parental pre and
post-interviews. Both mothers clearly stated their beliefs about reading during the
pre-intervention interviews. Elsa and Lola both expressed a phonics-based,
bottom-up conception of the reading process. Their assessments of their sons’
reading performance were based on a phonics orientation. In her post intervention
interview, Kirk’s mother was very forthcoming in her opinions about the beneﬁts
of Paired Reading. She gave speciﬁc details about how her views of Paired
Reading and her conceptions of the reading process in general were changed by
her experiences in the project. Lola was less speciﬁc in her statements about
Paired Reading, but stated that she believed Paired Reading had enabled Luis to
become a better reader. Lola’s responses to interview questions about the reading
process and the overall Paired Reading experience were brief. My analysis of the
parental interview data will be discussed more thoroughly in chapters three and

four. I combined information from parental interviews with parental responses on

103

the Paired Reading surveys in order to interpret parental attitudes and beliefs
about reading during the pre and post-intervention phases of this research project.
Interpretations concerning parental attitudes, beliefs, and knowledge about
reading were also derived through the process of reviewing and cataloguing
videotaped data.

During the Home Reading and Paired Reading phases ofthe study Kirk
and Luis completed the Mary Readipg Attitude Survey (McKenna and
Kear, 1990). This survey assessed student attitudes toward “recreational” and
“academic” reading. A “full scale” attitude score was achieved by combining the
recreational and academic parts of the assessment. In terms of making yearlong,
pre/post comparisons authors of the survey explained:

The pre/post difference would, in general, need to be 5 points or

more on either the academic or recreational subscale before any

real change could be assumed. On the total score, the pre/post

change would need to be 7 or 8 points. (McKenna and Kear, 1990,

Thgzlfighest score possible on each section of the attitude test was forty
points; the highest combined score was eighty points. In January, during the
Home Reading phase, Kirk achieved an attitude score of twenty-ﬁve in
recreational reading, twenty-nine in academic reading, and ﬁfty-four overall. In
May, after the Paired Reading Program Kirk’s recreational reading attitude score
was thirty, his academic reading score was thirty-nine, and his total score was
sixty-nine. Thus, Kirk’s attitude toward academic reading increased signiﬁcantly
after the Paired Reading program. The increase in Kirk’s recreational reading
attitude was also signiﬁcant. On both surveys Kirk’s view of academic reading

was more positive than his attitude toward recreational reading.

104

In January Luis’ pre-intervention recreational reading attitude score was
thirty-six, his academic attitude score was thirty-three, and his total reading
attitude score was sixty-nine. In May, he scored forty points on both the
recreational and academic sections of the attitude survey indicating a signiﬁcant
positive increase in Luis’ attitude towards academic reading after the Paired
Reading program. Since Luis’ pre-intervention recreational reading attitude score
was so close to the highest possible score of forty the increase in his recreational
reading score after Paired Reading did not register as a statistically signiﬁcant
increase. A more detailed account and interpretation of these scores will be
discussed in the next chapter.

Preliminary Findings and Additional Data Analysis
Pre-IngervenﬂonFjrALnga

Parental re§p_onse strategies My speculation that the Home Reading
Program had little inﬂuence over parent-child reading interactions in both homes
was conﬁrmed by my observation and data analysis of Kirk and Luis’ home
reading interactions with their parents. Both, Elsa and Lola followed my general
recommendations to ﬁnd a quiet, comfortable place to read, however, neither
mother responded to their child’s hesitation, errors, or miscues in the manner that
I had recommended through the Home Reading Program and it was clear that the
Program had very little inﬂuence over the parents’ reading response strategies.

The conclusions about the nature of parental response techniques were
derived by studying session transcripts, examining the catalogs of videotaped

data, and reviewing inventories of parental scaﬁ‘olding strategies. These

105

inventories were particularly helpﬁrl in augmenting my understanding of parental
approaches to hearing their children read. I used the discourse analysis term move
to inventory and categorize the verbal utterances that the parents made throughout
the reading. By using this term I was being consistent with related studies on the
subject of adults hearing reading (Carnbell, 1981; Gulliver, 1979; Harmon, 1995;
Hannon, Jackson, and Weinberger, 1986a).

Harmon (1995) points out that much of the research on adults hearing
reading has been conducted with teachers. He cited two studies, in particular, that
documented the strategies that teachers employed when hearing and supporting
children’s reading efforts. Harmon mentioned studies by Gulliver (1979) and
Campbell (1981), in which the discourse analysis concept of “move” was used to
describe and categorize the various strategies chosen by teachers to support
children’s oral reading endeavors. By examining tape recordings of six teachers
who listened to a total of forty-one children read, Gulliver identiﬁed ﬁfty-three
teacher moves, which he organized into ten categories. Campbell studied six
teachers who listened to 156 children read and outlined eight categories of teacher
moves “which differed signiﬁcantly from those found by Gulliver. In order of
observed frequency Carnpbell’s categories were asides, feedback, directions,
word recognition, comprehension, phonic analysis, providing words, and
welfare.” (Hannon, 1995, p. 90).

Hamron and his colleagues conducted a study, which differed from
Gulliver and Campbell’s because parental as well as teacher hearing reading

strategies were examined (Harmon, Jackson, Weinberger, 1986a). The intent of

106

the study was to describe and compare parental hearing reading strategies with
teacher techniques.‘6 The Harmon et at. study also relied on the discourse analysis
concept of move to identify the range of tape-recorded strategies that adults
utilized when listening to children read. In their list of tWenty—one types of adult
hearing reading moves Harmon et a1. differentiated between moves made in
response to reading errors and other moves. The study concluded that:

Responses to miscues were a larger proportion of the parent’s

moves (about two-thirds) than of the teacher moves (about Inlf). In

other words, parents were more likely to wait until a child was in

difﬁculty before making a move; teachers were nrore likely to take

initiatives at other times. However, when a careful look was taken

at how they did respond to miscues, it was found that teachers’ and

parents’ strategies were strikingly similar (Hannon, 1995, p. 93).

As in the Harmon et al. study I made a distinction between the Elsa and
Lola’s error correction moves and non-error related hearing reading techniques.
The parental inventories demonstrated that Elsa’s overall response strategy
represented a phonics-based approach while Lola primarily used a word supply
method. Both mothers’ strategies contrasted with the interactive approach that I
recommended through the Home Reading Program

Tenor; of home readm' g interactions In both homes the tenor of the home
reading interactions was not very positive and seemed more tedious than
enjoyable. In Elsa’s home I noticed instances of tension between mother and son
along with obvious rmnifestations of fatigue by Kirk. Therefore I went back

through the transcripts to document these occurrences. Lola’s inattention to Luis’

reading stood out in their interactiom, so I used the transcripts to document these

 

‘6 This study (Hannon et al., 1986a) was also summarized in chapter 1, pages 12-14.

107

occurrences as well. The catalogs and inventories enabled me to quickly ﬁnd
these instances on the transcript to support my claims.

Parental attitudes ameliefs. After compiling the parental inventories, I
scrutinized the pre-intervention parental interview data to see if parental reading
beliefs were consistent with their error correction strategies as well as with my
original hypothesis concerning the source of parental beliefs. I had hypothesized
that each mother would express a phonics-based philosophy because many
parents received this type of reading instruction during their elementary school
years. This assumption was conﬁrmed by the pre-intervention parental interviews.
As predicted, the Home Reading Program’s parental information component had
not been powerful enough to alter each mother’s personal views and beliefs about
reading. Both mothers professed a phonics-based conception of the reading
process and provided a rationale for their views based on their own educational
experiences in learning to read in their native language. Elsa stated that Flemish
was learned phonetically and Lola made the same assertion about Spanish. Elsa’s
belief in phonics instruction was evident and consistent with the way she assisted
her son during videotaped home reading sessions. One of Elsa’s most frequent
response strategies was to ask Kirk in Flemish “with what does it (the word)
start?”

Lola’s singular strategy of supplying Luis the words, however, was not
truly representative of the phonics-based philosophy she professed. This fact
represented a clearly discrepant event often talked about in qualitative data

analysis (Goetz and LeCompte, 1984; Florio-Ruane, 1987). To address the

108

possible cause of this discrepancy between Lola’s stated belief and her actual
error response technique I reﬂected on other interview statements both mothers’
had made about their views of school instruction and Lola’s statement about her
desire to help her son perform well in school.

Both Lola and Elsa believed school instruction exclusively followed a
whole-word reading philosophy and both were somewhat critical of this approach.
The criticism leveled against the school’s emphasis on wall words (see chapter
two, p. 75 for a deﬁnition of wall words) was an unanticipated outcome of the
parental interviews. When asked about how their sons were taught to read in
school, both Elsa and Lola stated that their children were taught to learn the words
but not taught to decode them. They both characterized wall word instruction as
the major reading philosophy promoted by the school and thought this approach
was less effective than the manner in which they had learned to read. However,
Lola never used phonics scaffolds with Kirk and her primary error correction
strategy was to provide Luis with the word.

Lola might have used the word supply approach, even though she believed
in the superiority of phonics instruction because it was consistent with her
interpretation of school reading instruction. Moreover, in her interview when
talking about providing words for Luis she said, “I tried to read the words. Maybe
it’s not very good for a decision.” This insecurity about her scaffolding strategy
coupled with her interpretation of school reading as being based on a wall word
approach possibly explained the discrepancy between her reading beliefs and her

actual scaffolding strategy.

109

Post-Intervention Findm' gs

I applied the same data analysis strategies utilized in the examination of
the pre-intervention data to understanding the post-intervention data. I nrade an
inventory of post-intervention parental scaffolding strategies. I documented
changes in the personal interaction between mother and son during the Paired
Reading interactiom. I also reviewed parental interview statements and parental
responses on post-intervention surveys. As a result, I concluded that participating
in the Paired Reading program signiﬁcantly changed the reading interactions in
Kirk and Elsa’s home and only slightly changed the reading interactions in Lola
and Luis’ home. A major difference between Elsa and Kirk’s pre and post
intervention interactions was that Elsa addressed Kirk’s questions and initiated
discussion about story content and illustrations. In accordance with the Paired
Reading method, word supply remained Lola’s predominant correction strategy.
Despite my encouragement to talk about the text and illustrations Lola rarely
discussed the content of a book with Luis during their Paired Reading sessions.

In chapter three I will provide a detailed analysis of the pre-intervention
data and ﬁndings. I match evidence from the data to my assertion that Honre
Reading exerted little inﬂuence over the home reading interactions in both homes.
Excerpts from parental interviews are included in this chapter to substantiate
claims about parental attitudes and knowledge about reading. I elaborate on the
physical demeanor and non-verbal stance of participants during pre-intervention
sessions, including descriptions of students’ reactions to parental hearing reading

strategies. I give a thorough account of the pre-intervention strategies that were

110

utilized in each home and compare these strategies to the ones I utilized in school.
I comment on the educational quality of each session in term of the implications

that parental strategies had for Kirk and Luis’ conceptions of the reading process.

lll

CHAPTER 3
PRE-INTERVENTTON FINDINGS
Home reading researchers have pointed out that little research has been
conducted into the ways parents naturally listen to their children read at home
(Evans and Barabal, 1993; Bergin, Laney, Draper, 1994; Harmon, 1995; Tracey,
1995). In commenting on the utility of researching at-home reading interactions
between parents and children Tracey writes:

Despite the ﬁequency with which shared literacy experiences are
recommended to parents, we know very little about how the

practice of children reading to parents is actually implemented and

what takes place during these encounters. For example, we do not

know if poor readers reading to their parents is actually a practice

that contributes positively to the child’s overall literacy

development or if it perhaps adds only ﬁ'ustrating, negative

episodes to the child’s experiences (Tracey, 1994, p. 256).
A major goal of this study was to determine how the parents of two low achieving
readers in my second grade classroom responded to their sons’ oral reading
efforts. These parents had received minimal information on how to respond to
their children’s reading perforrmnce through my Home Reading Program, which
I believed embodied an interactive instructional philosophy. I surmised that the
Home Reading Program had very limited inﬂuence over these parents home
reading interactions. This speculation was conﬁrmed by the data analysis
procedures discussed in chapter two.

In this chapter I provide details about the way these two parents responded
to their children’s reading attempts, interpret the tenor of these interactions, and

discuss both student and parent attitudes towards home reading. Additionally, I

conrpare parental reading interactions to the way that I support student oral

112

reading in school I conclude this chapter with an assessment of the educational
quality of my students’ home reading sessions.
Parental Response Strategies in Hearing a Child Read

In order to learn about Elsa and Lola’s strategies in supporting their son’s
reading efforts I videotaped Kirk and Luis reading to their mothers at home on
four separate occasions in January, prior to training the subjects in the Paired
Reading method. Videotape gave me the advantage of documenting both the
verbal and the non-verbal ways these two parents responded to their children’s
reading attempts. Moreover, videotape gave me insights into the climate of the
overall interaction since I could both listen to and view the reading sessions
repeatedly (Hoﬂinan, 1981). I analyzed parental response techniques by
transcribing the videotapes, rmking an inventory of parental verbal and non-
verbal responses, and organizing these responses on the basis of their instructional
purpose. I used the discourse analysis term move, as summarized in chapter two,
to describe and categorize the verbal utterances parents make throughout the
reading (Gulliver, 1979; Campbell, 1981; Hannon er al., 1986a).
Particrp' ant Book Selections

As a part of the Home Reading Program, Kirk and Luis appropriately
chose “yellow books” (see chapter two, p. 61) to read aloud to their mothers.
Table 3 details the books that Kirk and Luis read at each videotaped, pre-

intervention session

113

ﬂble 3: ParticipantﬁBook Selections

Kirk read-

Session 1: Arthm A Pick]; by Marc Brown

Session 2: The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss

Session 3: Here Com_e_s the Snow by Angela Shelf Medearis

Session 4: Babar and the Gh_o__st: An Baa! to Read Versipp, by Laurent De
Brtmhoﬂ’

 

Luis read-

Session 1: The Five Silly Fi_s_hermen by Roberta Edwards

Session 2: The Carrot Swd by Ruth Krauss

Session 3: Grizzwald by Syd Hoff

Session 4: Happy Birthday Danny and the Dinosaur! by Syd Hoff

 

Elsa’s R ' R nse Moves and Strate ies

In determining the types of parental response moves that parents made I
did not refer to other adult hearing reading studies to identify the moves but rather
derived the list of moves from the data in this study. The names I used to name
the moves may be similar to other studies, however. The moves that Elsa used to
respond to Kirk’s pauses or errors in order of highest frequency were: wait-time,
letter-sound or word question-prompts, providing words or phrases, modeling
how to sound out words, and negation. She also directed where Kirk should read
by pointing to the word or part of the word and saying “here.” Elsa used the
aforementioned moves in all four reading sessions. Other moves that occurred less
ﬁequently (in less than four sessions) were: directing or encouraging Kirk to
continue reading, contextual question-prompts, word-structure prompts, and

picture prompts.

114

Error correcgm m_oves. Table 4 provides an inventory of the types of

moves Elsa made in response to Kirk’s errors along with an example and the total

number of times she used each move across the four videotaped sessions.

Table 4: Elsa’s Error Correction Movea

 

TYPES OF PARENTAL
Moves

NUMBER AND EXAMPLES OF CUES

 

Wait-time

Elsa’s Coramenta/Queries Kirk reads
{Spoken in Flemish)[Seconds]
(171) The school...ball, team [5 sec]

Good... {With what did it start?) [8
sec}

We...slip, we slip Hmhm [4 see]

Slippers...{ With what does it start?)

[11 sec]

 

Letter-Sound or Word Question-
Prompts

(90) What’s that?
{With what does it start}
What’s that sound?
And that?
{And the last letter?)
What is that word?
{Which letter is on the end?)
What’s that there?
What’s written there?

 

Providing Word or Phrase

(70) Ofﬂce...fairs [7 sec] First.
Afrcd, Afraid.
Two flanks, Two ﬂakes.
Of. . .ar-row, [4 see] A real.

 

Models Sounding Out

(62) Said...[4 sec] Misss- Miss-tar
{No, what kind of word is that?) A-
Ah An-ge-l
Um, ch, chil children were, very

 

Negation

(53) {No} here (points)
N0
{N0, lbw}
{No, with what does it start?)
{No) what’s that there?

 

Directs Where to Read

(1 7) Hmhm. Here (points to top of page).

{Now here again about the pickles)

Good. Here.

There (points to the top of the page).

Just tree it. Just try it. Hm, here.
(Pointing to Where Kirk should read on
next page).

Yes, here, this.

{No, this. You already read this.
Now you

start with this sentence.)

 

 

Directs/Encouragg to Continue

 

(17) {Just a little more to read. This is the

 

115

 

 

Reading-Table 4 (cont’d) last one.)
(referring to page).
With his food. Hmhm. And then.
Be...

{With what does it start? Read.)
{Let’s look further.)

{And further...and ﬁrrther.)
{Keep going. Sit straight)

Good, good. {Keep going on.)

 

 

Repeats What Child Has Read (10) Flew? Flew.
And then one day. Hmhm. And

then one day.

Contextual Question-Prompts (3) No, what does he make here?
{What does he do?)

{What does he say? Wow what a big
spook. What happens then?)

 

 

Word Structure Prompts (3) It’s the same word as this. ,
What kind of word is that?
Here, his helmet.{lt’s the same.)
(word).

 

Picture Prompt (3) What’s that? (Points to picture).
Shakes.

No, what does he make here?
{Those two here.) (Points to the
picture).

 

 

 

 

The majority of Elsa’s scaffolding strategies of wait-time, letter/word
prompts, providing words, modeling sounding out words, contextual question
prompts, and word structure prompts focused on Kirk’s word recognition and
decoding skills. When Kirk paused at an unknown word the response Elsa utilized
most frequently was providing wait-time to encourage Kirk to independently
identify or sound out the word. The medium length of extended wait-time before
Kirk responded, Elsa prompted, or Elsa provided the word was ﬁve seconds long
with a range extending ﬁ'om four to eleven seconds in length. Out of the wait-time
pauses that were four seconds or longer Kirk was able to correctly decode the next
word thirty-six percent of the time. He failed to correctly decode the following

word sixty-four percent of the time.

116

When Kirk did not respond to Elsa’s wait-time moves Elsa would often
ask Kirk in Flemish “with what does it start?” prompting Kirk to use his phonics
knowledge to decode the word. Far less frequently Elsa would focus Kirk’s
attention on a word’s ending. Other times she would model the sound. A few
times she would focus Kirk’s attention on the structure of the word, “It’s the same
word as this.” Usually she would use a combination of strategies to assist Kirk’s
word recognition attempts. Table 5 demonstrates the variety of moves Elsa used
to help Kirk decode the word “night” during his reading of Arthur in a Pickle
(Brown, 1999).

ﬂble 5: Use of Multrp' le Scaft‘oldmg’ Moves
From Session 1 Transcript

Twp tion Guide: . . . extended pause, silence 4 seconds. Word= higher pitch
such as in asking a question. {F lemish/ Spanish}= Flemish/Spanish translation.

Kirk: That. . .. [Wait-time]

Elsa: {With what does it start?) [Letter-sound prompt]

Kirk: ing

Elsa: Na [Modeling sounding out the word]
Kirk: Noﬂng

Elsa: Ni-ght [Modeling sounding out the word/Word
supply]

Kirk: Night, Arthur, just played. . .with his food.

 

When Kirk read a word incorrectly, Elsa would often interject a negation
by saying no in either English or Flemish immediately after the error, rather than
allowing Kirk to notice the error himself by reading to the end of the sentence.
However, if his pronunciation or word selection were close to being correct Elsa
would typically ignore his error- a move tlmt supported his ﬂuency. For instance,
in the ﬁrst session Elsa ignored Kirk’s miscues of the words “Mister Ratbum”

when Kirk read, “Where, is your homework, Misthugburn? asked Arthur.”

 

117

Likewise, in session two Elsa ignored Kirk’s substitution of the word “wouldn’t”
for “won’t” until he repeated the same error on another page:

Book States: It won’t come up.” His Ether said, “I’m aﬁ'aid it

won—t come up.”

Kirk Reads: “It would. . .wouldn’t come up. His Ether said, I’m

aﬁaid it wouldn’t come up.

Elsa Corrects: Won’t

Kirk Reads: Won’t come up.

Providing words was a strategy that Elsa often used as a last resort after
she had prompted Kirk to look at the ﬁrst letter or modeled the sounds in the ﬁrst
syllable. Fifty-three percent of her word supply moves occurred after she had
ah'eady utilized other prompts to help Kirk decode words while forty-seven
percent of Elsa’s providing-words scaffolds took place immediately after Kirk’s
miscues. A transcript excerpt ﬁom the fourth session demonstrates the incidence

of both an immediate (*) and a delayed word supply response (" I'):

Kirk: Brushed. . .past.

Elsa: Good.
Kirk: Slipper.

*Elsa: Slippers. [Immediate supply of “slippers”]
"Kirk: Slippers. . . [Wait-time 11 seconds for word “face”]
Elsa: {With what does it start?) [Letter-sound prompt for word “face”]

Kirk: Vec.
Elsa: F - Face. [Models initial consonant sound/

supplies “Ece”]

Kirk’s word identiﬁcation difﬁculties along with Elsa’s immediate
corrections, combination of multiple scaffolds, and her heavy reliance on
extended wait-time made the reading episode seem extremely choppy and
disconnected. All four pre-intervention transcripts attested to this choppiness and

demonstrated that Kirk was rarely able to independently read a complete sentence.

118

A session two transcript of Kirk reading The Carrot Seed (Krauss, 1945)
appears below in table 6 and illustrates Kirk’s hesitancy and Elsa’s ﬁequent
interjection of multiple scaffolding moves. The layout of the transcript itself
portrays the choppiness of the interaction since the lines of transcript speech
rarely results in a complete sentence.

Table 6: Kirk’s Sessipn Two Tran_sc_ript

Transcription Guide

K= child
E= mother
CAPS= louder tone
Italics: softer tone
/= breath
//= completion, period

.. pause, silence
? = unintelligible to transcriber
mg: higher pitch such as in asking a question
{Flemish}= mother speaking in Flemish to son
1etter-= stretching out sound in a word
[Comment K. makes that’s not him reading]
-word= utterance stated at same time as utterance above.

Total Minutes of Reading: 5 minutes 11 seconds.

1 M: Okay/l {What do you think of the new book here?)

2 K: Why?

3 {Because we have to start reading it. )l/ Title//

4 K:. ..The ...... Croat/ Seed//

5 M: No {With what does it start?)

6 K: MI

7 M: Carrot/ Seed//

8 K: -Seed//

9 M: Okay/l

10 K: A little boy... planted a/ carrot seed/l His ma—mother said I’m...after
11 M: {No} What {kind of a} word {is that?)//...a—

12 K: Aﬁ'ed/l (sic)

13 M: Aﬁ'aidll

14 K: Aﬁaid it/ would... wouldn’t come up// His father said/ I’m aﬁaid/ it wouldn’t come up//
15 M: Won ’t//

16 K: Won '1 come up// And his big/ brother said! It won’t come up// ...... Evgy/
17 day the little boy ......

18 M: What's this right// {With what does it start?)

19 K: Pullded/ (sic)

20 M: Hmhm/l

21 K: Up the/ weeds//

22 M: Good/l ......... {With what does it start?)

119

K: Around

M: Hmhm

K: The seed/ and .........

M: {With what does it start?)

K: _S_//

M: Yeah/ ss-//

K: Ss-p. . . Springtail

M: Sprinklid/l (sic)

K: Sprinklid the. . .row/ with ......... water//
M: Uhuh/ good/l

K: But/ nothing/ came up” And nothing came up//
M: {[He is waiting.])

K: Everyonc/ taked

M: {No. With what does it start?)

K: Came-p

M: What’s that//

K: Keeped/l

M: Kept/l

K: Kept...saying it// Would Wouldn’t come up
M: Okay/l

K: ...But he ......... still...pulled/ up the! weed/ watered
M: {No// What 's that? With what does it start?)
K: ...Around

M: Hmhm/l

K: W there there (sic)

M: It! no/l

K: There

M: {No. With what does it start?)

K: Everyday/

M: Hmhm/l

K: He and ......... springtid/ the ......... growned (sic) with water//
M: Hmhm/l

K: And then/ one day/

M: Hmhm/l And then/ one day//

K: A ...cord

M: No {No. With what does it start?)

K: A cc-... cartood/l

M: Carrot/l

K: Carrot/l eame up// Just/ us the little boy/ had/ now/
M: Known/l

K: Known/ it/ would//

M: Uh {done} Good/l {We’re done)”

 

Another way Elsa responded to Kirk’s hesitation was to encourage Kirk to

continue reading by repeating words that Kirk read or directly telling him to read.

For instance, in session one when Kirk stated, “ﬂew” with rising intonation as if

he were uncertain that ﬂew was the correct word, his mother repeated “ﬂew” to

conﬁrm his choice of words. In session three, Elsa’s continuation prompts were

120

phrased as an order- “read, with what does it start?” or stated with impatience
“Here.” More often, as in sessions one and four, her continuation prompts were
phrased in a gentle encouraging manner-“Just a little more to read. This is the last
one;” “Let’s look further.”

During the pre-intervention sessions Kirk would often lose energy as the
reading progressed. This was especially noticeable in session four during his
reading of the book @bar and the Ghost (De Brunhoﬂ‘, 1986). Although _Bab_g
and the Ghost was an “easy-to-read” selection it was a long story with character
names that were challenging for Kirk. He started the reading session sitting up
straight but as the reading interaction progressed he began to rest his head on his
arm as he read, indicating fatigue. In the latter part of this reading episode, Elsa
began using contextual prompts to assist Kirk’s word recognition efforts, which
she had not used in the three previous pre-intervention sessions. For example,
Kirk read a page that showed an illustration of a character lying next to a knight’s
armor. Two of the sentences on the page stated: “He bumped into a suit of armor.
Crash!” (De Brunhoff, 1986 p. 10). On this page Elsa asked Kirk a question about
the context of the story and provided a picture cue to enable Kirk to identify the
word “eras ”. As this exchange took place, Kirk’s head was resting on his arms.
The tone of Elsa’s voice remained gentle and supportive.

Kirk: armor,

Elsa: Like here, hmhnr. {I think)...{What is he doing?)...
[Contextual prompt]

Kirk: {Who?}

Elsa: {Those two here.) (Elsa points with her ﬁngers to the
illustration).

Kirk: Father?
Elsa: Yeah, here, this. (Places her ﬁnger under the word “crash”).

121

Kirk: Crashed?

Elsa: Yeah. (She elongates her pronunciation, in a positive,

afﬁrmative tone).
Once, in session one and a couple of times in session four as the above excerpt
shows, Elsa utilized picture prompts, also contextual in nature, to assist Kirk’s
word recognition efforts.

Additional moves. In addition to responding to Kirk’s errors, Elsa made
other moves throughout the reading session that included motivating Kirk to read,
praising his efforts, responding to his statements or questions, commenting on
story events, commenting on his behavior, and expressing concern about his
welEre during the reading episode. She also introduced one story with a question,
made brief concluding comments, and occasionally spoke to her other children
during the session. There were also times when she laughed or shared a laugh
with Kirk about a part of the story. Table 7 shows these non-error related moves
in order of highest ﬁcquency along with the number of times they occurred in the

four pre-intervention sessions.

Table 7: Elsa’s Non-Error Related Move§

 

TYPE OF PARENTAL MOVES NUMBER AND EXAMPLES OF MOVES
Table 7 (cont’d)

 

Afﬁrmation/Conﬁrmation (116) Hmhm.

Yes {with a C) also.

Yes, good.

Yeah.

Right.

Okay.

Uhuh, good.

Yeah, cocoa {is mentioned there.)

 

Praise (50) Good.
Good boy.
Yes, M.

 

Responds to Child’s (11) Because we have to start reading it.
Questions/Statements Look said D.W. A pickle steeple.
I don’t know what a pickle steeple

 

 

 

 

122

 

Table 7 (cont’d) is.

Ah, okay.

{Oh yes, that.. .)

Hmhm.

{With what does it start?)
(Smiles). {Oh yes, that...)
{Here} (Stated with impatience)
Okay. Three balls of-
Chocolate milk.

Yes, here helmet.

Hmhm. Yes, it’s the same.

{N01} It’s pulled open its helmet.
{We read that already. We are at
this sentence now!)

 

Comments on Story Events (5) {Now here again about the
pickle.)

He is writing.

Hmhm. {He acts like an angel.)
(Points to picture.)

{He is waiting.)

{Wow what a big spook.)

 

Non-Reading Related Behavior (3) Keep going. Sit straight.
Comments Sit straight you’ll see better.

 

Welfare Are you tired?. . .We’ll read tonight.
Pre-reading comment (1) Okay. {What do you think of the
new book here?)

 

 

Concluding comments (4) Yes. Okay. You’re done.
Uh, {done}. Good. {We’re done.)
Show your book {yes}.

Okay, W}-

 

 

 

 

Elsa made back-channel vocalizations such as “hmhrn” throughout every
reading episode to afﬁrm or conﬁrm Kirk’s word choice and to motivate Kirk to
continue reading. Often Kirk’s rising intonation or pause would indicate his
uncertainty with his word choice so “hnrhm” was a way his mother pushed his
reading forward. She supported his decoding and self-correction attempts as well
as tried to motivate him by praising his efforts throughout all the sessions. She
gave meaningful and enthusiastic praise when Kirk read a complete sentence
independently or when he responded to her scaffolding prompt by successfully
reading a challenging word. She avoided giving praise in a dull, monotone

manner. An excerpt ﬁom the session three transcript demonstrates Elsa’s verbal

123

and non-verbal pleasure at her son’s success as he reads a complete sentence from
the book Here Comps the Snow (Medearis, 1996):

Kirk: Two ss-...Two,

Elsa: {With what does it start?)

Kirk: Two eyes, and one nose, for the snow-1mm.

Elsa: Good! Good! (smiling)

Although Kirk had difﬁculty identifying words and reading ﬂuently, there
were instances in which Kirk actively tried to understand the stories that he read.
However, his mother’s primary focus throughout most of the reading was to
augment Kirk’s decoding and word recognition skills. Therefore, she only brieﬂy
acknowledged his questions about story content. For instance, in session one Kirk
read the unEmiliar words “pickle steeple” from the story Arthur in a Pickle
(Brown, 1999, p. 13), looked at the illustration on the page, and then asked,
“where is it?” His mother responded by rereading the sentence, “Look, said D.W.
A pickle steeple,” then quickly added in Flemish “I don’t know what a pickle
steeple is.” Elsa’s tone and the rapidity with which she made the statement
implied that Kirk should keep reading. In session three Kirk read the phrase
“snowball ﬂy”, then abruptly stopped, looked at the picture and asked his mother
“where snowball ﬂy?” Elsa pointed to the picture with her ﬁnger, and in a slightly
impatient tone said “here”, then pointed back to the text, indicating that Kirk’s
should focus primarily on reading the words on the page.

Discussion about the book, illustrations, or story events was noticeably
absent during all four pre-intervention reading sessions. Each session began with

Elsa and Kirk sitting down next to each other at the kitchen table. Elsa initiated

each reading with a signal-word like “okay” and Kirk would start reading the title.

124

During the second session Elsa atypically introduced the book by asking Kirk in
Flemish “What do you think of the new book here?” Kirk responded “why?” in a
surprised tone, which suggested that Elsa had deviated from their normal way of
starting the home reading event. Even though Elsa asked the question in Flemish,
my presence may have inﬂuenced her to introduce the book in this “teacher-like”
manner.

Dming the reading sessions there were times that Elsa herself would make
brief comments about characters or story events such as “now, here again about
the pickle” during the reading of Arthur in a Pickle; “He is waiting” about the
character in The Carrot Seed; and “He acts like an angel” about the character in
Here Comes the Snow. Kirk never responded to these brief comments, but
continued with his word recognition efforts.

Elsa concluded the ﬁrst three sessions by enthusiastically saying “done” or
“we’re done.” Elsa ended the fourth session in the middle of the book because
Kirk was visibly Etigued. This was the only story during which she expressed
concern about Kirk’s welfare doing the reading. She asked him if he was tired a
few times. This was also the only session in which she addressed a non-reading
behavior by telling Kirk to “sit up straight” several times.

Non-verbal moves. The transcripts and parental response inventories
revealed that Elsa not only assisted Kirk’s oral reading through verbal prompts
but she was also very active in using non-verbal cues to guide Kirk through the
text. Her physical control of the reading activity stood out on all four pre-

intervention videotapes. She opened the book, turned the pages, creased the pages

125

so that they would stay open, and on almost every page pointed to the place where
Kirk should begin reading. She used her ﬁngers to track the text for Kirk, moving
them over or underneath the words as he read. Her pointing emphasized the letter,
word, sentence, or picture that she wanted Kirk to focus on. Sometimes Elsa
would drag her ﬁnger back and forth over the top of the word to guide Kirk’s
pronunciation of each letter’s sound. Kirk was left with a more passive role
throughout the interaction in terms of handling the book and monitoring his own
reading. When Elsa’s ﬁnger did not move onto the next word, this signaled the
occurrence of a nriscue. Thus Kirk’s opportunities to engage in self-monitoring
appeared limited since his errors were monitored for him through Elsa’s pointing
scaffolds.

Kirk’s Rasmuse to Elsa’s Pointing. There were times that Kirk stopped
Elsa’s pointing by moving Elsa’s hand away ﬁom the text. In session one while
trying to identify the word “everyone” he pulled his mother’s hand ﬁ'om over the
word during a pause, then proceeded to read the remainder of the sentence. Elsa
resumed her pointing on the next page. Likewise in session two during a pause,
Kirk looked at a word and frowned. When his mother asked, “with what does it
start”, he gently pushed her ﬁnger away with his ﬁnger, and went on to read the
word. She replaced her ﬁnger over the following words as he read. In these ﬁrst
two sessions there was no evidence that Kirk was bothered by his mother’s
pointing move. Rather, it seemed that by moving her ﬁnger he was merely trying

to get a clearer view of the text.

126

In the third session however, Kirk responded in a way that revealed
irritation with his mother’s ﬁnger-tracking move. While attempting to read the
sentence “Soon everything is bright and cold and white ” (Medearis, 1996, p. 13),
Kirk wanted to skip the unknown word “everything,” read to the end of the
sentence, and return to the unknown word. He moved his mother’s hand away
ﬁomthe text so he couldtrythis:

Elsa: Okay. Here, soon.

Kirk: Soon is

Elsa: {No, with wlmt does it start?)

Kirk: Yeah.

Elsa: Here.

Kirk: {Yes, looki. First I do this and thenI can do that.}(Points, showing

with his ﬁnger that he wants to skip the word “everything”).

Elsa: Ah, okay.

Kirk: Is . . .brink

Elsa: Bri-ght

Kirk: -Br ...... {No, don’t do that. (Said with irritation, referring to

pointing. Pushes his mother’s hand away). Go back.)

Elsa: {Oh yes, that.) (Laughs as she says this and places thumb over word
everything).

Kirk: Everything.

Elsa: Good.

I found this exchange interesting for a couple of reasons. First of all, in sessions
one and two Kirk never openly challenged his mother’s scaffolding techniques.
Even more interesting to me as his teacher was the Ect that he was resisting his
mother’s pointing technique because he wanted to implement the decoding
strategy that I emphasized in school in terms of skipping the unknown word,

reading to the end of the sentence, and using the context of the sentence and the

letters to ﬁgure out the word. This exchange represented the ﬁrst demonstration

127

that he was implementing this school-based strategy during home reading
episodes.

Later in the third session, Kirk made another comment about Elsa’s
pointing, but this time he did not seem irritated. Instead, he calmly and quietly
explained that her pointing had caused his error because her thumb covered part
of the word:

Kirk: “balls to”

Elsa: Ne

Kirk: “of”...You did like this so I thought...(Covers part of the
word with his ﬁnger).

Elsa: Okay. “Three balls of. . .”

Kirk: “of snow.”

In the fourth session Elsa held her youngest son in her lap while she
listened to Kirk read. This session began differently than the previous three
because Kirk started oﬂ'holding the book and turning the pages rather than Elsa.
For the ﬁrst two minutes of the session Elsa did not trace her ﬁngers over or under
every word but only reached over and pointed when Kirk was having diﬂiculty
with a word. During a long wait-time pause Elsa resumed her practice of tracing
her ﬁnger over every word and turning the pages for Kirk. As the reading
proceeded she occasionally stopped tracking for a page or two.

Gengpal Ten_or of the Interactions.

Stithg. All of Elsa and Kirk’s pre-intervention sessions took place at a
long kitchen table, where Elsa’s older children typically completed their daily
homework assignments. The children’s artwork and school notes were displayed

on a nearby bulletin board and the kitchen appeared to be a very comfortable and

productive place for the children to concentrate on their work. During most of the

128

sessions Kirk’s older sister worked quietly on her homework across the table from
Kirk and Elsa. Kirk’s two-year old brother either sat in his own chair playing with
toys, sat in his mother’s lap, or moved about the room during the reading. Besides
a few vocalizations, Kirk’s brother was usually quiet during the interactions since
Elsa provided him with toys, a paciﬁer, or a bottle. In the third session, however,
he made a great deal of noise and was eventually taken from the room by his older
sister. The kitchen table was an appropriate place for home reading sessions
because it enabled Elsa and Kirk to sit side by side and clearly view the text.
Besides the aforementioned sounds ﬁom the two-year old, the room was
otherwise very quiet throughout the readings.

Personal interaction. For the most part mother and son responded well to
each other during the home reading sessions and generally communicated in
warm, respectful tones. Each pre-intervention reading event started off with Elsa
smiling. Kirk sometimes returned her smile, but their Ecial expressions quickly
became more serious as Kirk immediately encountered difﬁculty reading the title
or the ﬁrst page. Elsa’s overall demeanor was attentive, patient, encouraging, and
supportive. Kirk concentrated and usually followed his mother’s directions. While
the general tenor of each session was respectﬁrl and focused, tensions between the
two surfaced periodically. There were only a couple of times during sessions one
and three that Elsa’s voice became sharper, suggesting Etigue or ﬁ'ustration with
Kirk’s struggles. For instance, about four minutes into session one, a noticeable
change in Elsa’s voice occurred. Her voice took on a curt, impatient edge as she

asked, “with what does it start” or “what’s that”. Her voice softened several

129

scaffolds latter. During session three there was noticeable impatience in her voice
when she responded “Here” to Kirk’s question- “where snowball ﬂy?” In session
four Elsa’s voice remained calm and subdued except when Kirk raised his voice
and/or challenged Elsa’s corrections.

As stated earlier, Kirk’s resistance to Elsa’s corrections appeared for the
ﬁrst time in the third session when he complained about her pointing scaﬂ‘old.
During this third session he also non-verbally challenged a couple of Elsa’s verbal
scaffolds. For instance, when reading the phrase “snowballs ﬂy ” Kirk read,
“snowball ﬁght.” His mother said “no” in Flemish, Kirk nodded yes implying that
“snowball ﬁght” was correct. Another time Kirk read “cold airs” instead of “cold
ears.” Elsa replied “no” but Kirk nodded his head yes. After which Elsa said “e”
then Kirk correctly read “cold ears.” During the forum session, in which both
Kirk and Elsa appeared fatigued, Kirk Openly challenged Elsa’s scaffolds several
times, often in a cantankerous tone. Table 8 lists these exchanges that occurred in
session four.

Table 8: Elsa and Kirk’s Tense Exchanges

Bold= louder tone.

Italics= soﬁer tone.

Italics= argumentative tone.

m: higher pitch such as in asking a question.

{Flemish}= mother or son speaking in Flemish.

Table 8 (cont’d)

Elsa: {With what does it start?)

Kirk: {But I’m reading it ......... critical. (His head lying down on his hands, near
table).

Elsa: Creaked.

Kirk: lt wa...puh plead. (His is head lying on his hands, near table).
Elsa: {Na}
Kirk: Yah. (His is head lying down on his hands, near table).

Elsa: P- Pu.

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Kirk: Open...it’s...hand

Elsa: Helmet.

Kirk: Helm. What? (Frowning, his head is lying down on hands, near table)

Elsa: Yes, his helmet. (Points to the picture)

Kirk: His helm.

Elsa: Hmhm, his helmet.

Kirk: lt-

Elsa: {No}

Kirk: {Yah, I don’t see anything} (Frowning, his head is lying down on hands, near
Table).

Elsa: {No} It pulled open its helmet. {We read that alregg. We are at this sentence
2321-}

 

Although instances of Kirk’s resistance and Elsa’s irritation were
inﬁ'equent, the appearance of contention highlighted the diﬂ‘erences between
home and school reading. Kirk did not raise his voice in response to my
corrections in school. However, at home in the fourth session when he was clearly
fatigued, he openly expressed his ﬁustration. Cazden (1985) has pointed out that
the unique nature of the teacher/student relationship might cause students to
consider teacher interventions less personal and therefore less bothersome than
parental corrections. Moreover, children probably tend to be more reserved in
school, but more comfortable expressing feelings such as frustration in the
intimate and personal home setting.

Hard work. As mentioned earlier, there were many pauses, errors, and
prompts interspersed throughout the entire reading episode, which made the
reading event as a whole seem quite laborious. Despite the occasional laugh at a
picture or a phrase, Elsa and Kirk’s interaction did not seem ﬁm or enjoyable.
Bergin, Laney, and Draper (1994) have described how some parents convey a
“just get through it” attitude when hearing a child read. These researchers point

out that “parent-child interaction for poor readers stresses form; they seem to

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operate from a motto of ‘reading is work!’ where storybook reading is a time for
skill practice” (Bergin, Laney, and Draper, 1994, p. 72).

Kirk and Elsa’s home reading interactions were consistent with this view
that “reading was work.” There was minimal discussion about story content and
Elsa only brieﬂy addressed Kirk’s questions about words or pictures. Although
Elsa nnde a few brief comments about story content, the transcripts and parental
response inventories revealed that her main instructional focus was to help Kirk
with word recognition and to stop Kirk’s digression ﬁom reading words on the
page. The parental response inventories also demonstrated the prominence Elsa
placed on decoding letter sounds, identifying words, and completing the story. At
the end of pre-intervention home reading sessions Elsa cheerﬁrlly announced,
“we’re done” and Kirk sighed and smiled slightly. Both seemed quite relieved
that the reading event was over.

Kirk’s attitude. Kirk’s responses on The Elemenm Readmg' Attitude
My (McKenna and Kear, 1990) indicated that home reading was not a
pleasurable experience for Kirk. The survey provided participants with form
response options: happiest face, happy face, sad face, and saddest face. Kirk
responded to the survey’s question “How do you feel about reading in school?”
by circling the happiest face on the survey. When the survey asked, “How do you
feel about reading for ﬁm at borne?” and “How do you feel about reading your
school books?” Kirk circled a sad face for both questions. He circled the saddest
face when the survey asked, “How do you feel about reading during summer

vacation?” His recreational attitude score of twenty-ﬁve was lower than his

132

academic reading score of twenty-nine suggesting that he preferred reading for
academic reasons over reading for recreation. His overall reading attitude score of
ﬁfty-forn' out of eighty possible points placed him at the thirty-ﬁfth percentile in
the survey’s reading attitude ranking for second grade students.

El_s_a’s Beliefs About Reading

In addition to the videotapes, catalogs, transcripts, and parental response
inventories my pre-intervention interview with Elsa conﬁrmed that she held a
bottom-up, phonics-based philosophy of reading instruction. This phonics
orientation was consistent with the way Elsa stated that she learned to read. She
said, “I learmd to read, or in Belgium we learned to read phonetic. The alphabet,
but more phonics. And you have to, how do you say- to analyze the words. And
so you learnto read. And so itser spellingallthe lettersandthewords.”

When I asked Elsa how she thought her son was learning to read in our
school she said, “I have the impression from last year that you have to recognize
the words and he learned some words by heart, and when he sees the ﬁrst letter,
he knows oh it’s ‘do’ when he sees the ‘d’. It’s not ‘does’ but ‘do’. It’s not ‘dark’
but ‘do.’ Things like that. So he recognize (sic) the words,” but, she lamented,
“He doesn’t analyze them. So if it’s a strange word he cannot read it.” In
response to my request to describe the characteristics of a good reader Elsa
explained, “I think if you analyze the words, letter to letter. Yes. Then you can
read. Even when it’s a strange word that you have to look up afterwards in the

dictionary, that you don’t’ understand, that you never hear about. But you can

133

analyze, you can read it, and look it up in a dictionary. Then know what it is.”
Elsa described a poor reader as someone who did “not recognize the letters.”

The importance that Elsa placed on being able to sound out or “analyze”
the words was evident in her prompt “with what does it start?’ which she used
repeatedly throughout all four pre-intervention sessions. Her statements reﬂected
the bottom-up philosophy that the reading “process is initiated by decoding
graphic symbols into sounds” (Vacca, Vacca, and Gove, 1991, p. 18).
Loh’s Readmg' Rmnse Moves and Strategies

Providing words was the primary move that Lola used to respond to Luis’
hesitations or errors. Excluding wait-time, the providing words move comprised
about ninety-ﬁve percent of Lola’s error correction scaffolds. Other moves that
Lola utilized, far less frequently were: repeating a correction, modeling part of the
word, pointing to a word, and a question prompt.

E¢rmr correction moles, Table 9 provides an inventory of the types of
moves that Lola made in response to Luis’ errors along with examples and the
total number of times she used each move during the four, videotaped sessions.

Table 9: Lola’s Error Correction Moves

 

TYPES OF PARENTAL MOVES NUMBER AND EXAMPLES OF CUES

Lola’s Comments/mews Luis reads
[Seconds]

 

 

 

 

134

 

Table 9 (cont’d)

 

Providing Words

(122)0ne...[2 sec] Fine. Fine day ﬁve
ﬁshermen.
But...[2 see] no thank you came up
Nothing
River only came to his...[2see] kids
knees.
Today I’m a...[lsee] bully (Tilt:
book towards Mom) Million years.

 

Wait-time

(68) Fishing on their boat...[2 see] Four.

And then one day a...[2see] carrot
came up.

Grizzwold always got...[2 see]
(Shows mom book) what’s that?
had the dine...[3 see]

Dinosaur

 

Repeats Correction

(2) Noise. No. Noise.
Everybody. Huh? Everybody.

 

Models Part of the Word

(2) Mount. Mountain.
Range. Raga

 

Pointing to the Word.

(1) They went one, tw0...(Mom points)
three, four

 

RepeatsAWordLuisRead

(1) Fine day, ﬁve, ﬁshermen, Fishermen.
Fishermen went,

 

 

Word-Question Prompt

 

(1) What is your word?

 

There were noticeable wait-time pauses throughout each session, but the

length of the pauses was quite short. The medium drn'ation of wait-time across all

four pre-intervention sessions was two seconds long. After a brief pause, Lola

would almost always supply the word. Her responses typically were given in a

soﬁ, calm voice. She would sometimes say her son’s name after giving him the

word- “Grizzwold, Luis.”

After wait-time pauses Luis was able to correctly decode the next word

about twenty-nine percent of the time. He failed to decode the next word seventy-

one percent of the time, but as stated above, be was not given very long to decode

before being given the word. Sometimes before Lola supplied the word Luis

would identify the next word or would verbally appeal for Lola’s assistance. Luis

135

 

also non-verbally signaled for assistance by tilting the book in Lola’s direction.

Instances of Luis asking for help appear on the table below.

Table 10: Luis’ Appeals for Assistance

From Session Three Transcript ,
Transcription Guide: . . . extended pause, silence 4 seconds, [Comment L. makes
ttmt’s not him reading]

Luis: No trouble, going into, caves to sleep. [I don ’t brow this/4

Lola: Grizzwold.

Luis: Grizzwold, always (sic) got. . . [4 sec](Leans forward to show morn
the book).

[What’s this?] Story, Stu,

Lola: Stuck.

 

The session one-transcript excerpt below demonstrates how quickly Lola
responded to Luis’ miscues, providing him with little or no wait-time. In the
transcripts an ellipsis (. . .) stands for an extended pause of 4 seconds or more and
a forward slash stands for a breath. Lola responded so quickly in this exchange
that no ellipsis indicating extended wait-time appears.

Luis: So he began to count/ one two there!

Lola: Three/l

Luis: Three/

Lola: Four//

Luis: Four// I see! four//[l.8 sec]

Lola: F isherman/l

Other moves that Lola used to respond to Luis’ reading eﬁ‘orts occurred
inﬁ'equently, sometimes only in one session. Once, Luis paused alter reading
“One ﬁne day, ﬁve, ﬁshermen-”and Lola repeated the word “ﬁshermen” to
encourage Luis to continue reading. On another occasion Lola pointed with her

ﬁnger to a word when Luis lost his place in the story. Twice she repeated

136

corrections that Luis misread. For instance, in session three Lola supplied the
word “noise,” Luis read “no,” Lola repeated “noise,” then Luis correctly read
“noise in the forest.” She also prompted him by modeling part of the word. In
session three, for example, Luis brieﬂy paused alter reading, “You won’t ﬁnd one
up here, said the”, his mother softly prompted, “mount” and when Luis still did
not respond Lola told him “mountain.” Once she prompted him to continue
reading by asking, “what’s your word?” The aforementioned error correction
techniques of repeating corrections, modeling part of the word, pointing to a
word, repeating a word Luis read, and supplying a question prompt made up a
mere ﬁve percent of Lola’s pre-intervention scaffolding moves compared with the
ninety-ﬁve percent usage of the providing words technique.

Lola’s heavy reliance on the providing words scaﬂ‘old supported Luis’
reading ﬂuency and made the reading ﬂow, but did not teach Luis to monitor
whether his reading made sense in accordance with the interactive philosophy that
I emphasized in school. In the second session, for instance, during Luis’ reading
of The Carrot Seed (Krauss, 1945), Luis had a high level of success with the
book. His mother only provided one scaﬂ‘old throughout the entire reading, which
supported Luis’ ﬂuency, but there were a few nonsensical errors that were never
acknowledged. Neither Luis nor Lola recognized these errors, which undermined
the meaning of the text.

The session two transcript below highlights both the ﬂuidity of Luis’
reading performance and the occurrence of unchecked, nonsensical errors, which

are displayed in bold font.

137

Table 11: Lui_s’ Session Two Tweript
Length of Reading: 2 minutes and 38 seconds (2:38)

T: Okay L./ you want to show me the title againl/
M: {She cannot see it.}
T: Okay, greatl/
L: The Carrot Seed/l (turns to title page) The Carrot Seed/l A little! boy!
planted a/ earrot seed/l His mother said! I’m aﬁ'aid/ it won’t came up// His
father said! I’m aﬁaid it won’t came (sic) up // And his big! brother said! it
want won’t come up// Everyday! the little boy/ pulled! up! the! weds! (sic)
around the! seed// And...sp-/ speckked (sic) the! ground with! water//
But. ..no thank you came came up//
10 M: But nothing//
11 L: But nothing came up// And! nothing came up// Everyone keeps! saying it
12 won’t ea come up// But he still! pooved (sic) up the weds (sicy/ around it
13 everyday and... st-u— Stuckked the ground! with water// And then one day!
14 a.. .carrot came up// Just as/ the little boy had! know (sic) it would// [Story
15 completelll It’s the end!/
T: Okay great/l M you Luis.

\OMQGMbWN—s

One reason that Lola might not have responded to these errors was
because she did not have a direct view of the text. Since Luis held the book
upright for most of the reading, his mother who was sitting a short distance away
from him on the couch, could not see the text. During most of the reading Lola
monitored Luis’ reading of The Carrot Seed (Krauss, 1945) by listening rather
than viewing the page. When Lola heard Luis read “but no thank you came up”
she leaned towards the book, looked at the text, and read the words “but nothing”
to Luis which led Luis to correct his miscue. However, she did not respond to
Luis’ incorrect reading of the words weeds, sprinkled, and pulled.

Throughout the four pre-intervention sessions, Luis’ primary strategy was
to try to immediately identify the word. He would occasionally try to sound out
words. Sometimes he would substitute nonsense words such as “he M up the
M” for actual words like “he pulled up the weeds” (see transcript above) and

continue reading. Often he would ask his mother to simply tell him the word. Luis

138

never initiated or implemented a repertoire of strategies taught in school such as
reading to the end of the sentence, looking at the pictures, or asking questions
about the story content to augment his word recognition abilities. His successful
and accurate reading of text relied heavily on his mother’s word supply scaffolds.
Moreover he never initiated discussion about the text.

Additional moves. In addition to responding to Luis’ pauses and errors
Lola also commented or directed him to display the title for the video camera,
responded to a question by Luis, posed a question to Luis, and expressed
uncertainty with her own word identiﬁcation accuracy. The occurrence of these
other, inﬁ'equent moves appear on table 12 below.

Iable 12: Lola’s Non-Error Related Moves

 

TYPE OF RESPONSE NUMBER AND EXAMPLE OF
RESPONSES
Lola’s Comments/Queries Luis reads

 

Comment/Direction/Command
(7) She has to see the title.
She cannot see it. (Meaning show the
book)
Show the book.
Hurry up.
Let me see. (Referring to a word.)
Read louder. What?
Read louder. (Repeated after Luis
asked
What?)

 

Expresses Uncertainty (2) I don’t know. Deleated? I don’t know.
Footprint. I don’t know. Footprint.

 

Responds to Child’s Statement (1) Until here? Hmhm.

 

 

 

Poses a Questions (1) What’s your {Spanish}?

 

 

Moves that were noticeably absent during all four pre-intervention
sessions were comments about the story, praise, and expressive responses such as

laughter. Aside ﬁ'om directions to hold the book up for the video camera, there

139

were no introductory or closing comments, discussions, or questions. Luis would
initiate each reading session by reading the book’s title. At the end of session one
Lola made a concluding remark in Spanish, reminding Luis to allow me to record
the title of the book on the camcorder— “she has to see the title.” In session two
Luis signaled the conclusion of the reading event by stating, “It’s the end” with
excitement. He then stood up and asked his mother in an impatient tone “can I go
now?” In sessions three and four Luis marked the end of the story by simply
closing the book and looking at the video-camera.

My between non-verbal demeanor and verbal suppgrt. In cataloguing
Lola’s non-verbal responses to Luis’ reading efforts, there were not many
instances in which Lola supported Luis’ reading of text through the use of non-
verbal prompts, although in session-one Lola pointed to the text on one occasion
to help Luis ﬁnd his place while reading. Luis held the book in all four pre-
intervention sessions. During every session Luis turned the pages and decided
when to track the text with his own ﬁnger. The fact that Luis was able to
conﬁdently and independently handle the book minimized the need for Lola to
utilize non-verbal scaffolds such as pointing to the text as Luis read.

Instead of documenting how her non-verbal behavior supported Luis’
reading performance, I monitored and catalogued Lola’s attention to Luis’ reading
efforts. Her position to the book, the focus of her gaze, and the non-
acknowledgement of errors caused me to question how closely she attended to
and monitored Luis’ reading eﬂ'orts during the pre-intervention sessions. In the

ﬁrst session during the reading of The Five Silly Fishermen (Edwards, 1989) Lola

140

was very attentive throughout the entire reading. She exhibited less attentive
behavior in the last three sessions, especially in sessions two and four.

In session one, she was sitting about a foot away ﬁ'om Luis on the curve of
their sectional couch. With her back against the sofa she could still see the pages
of the story as Luis read. He also sat with his back against the couch. During this
session Lola’s eyes followed the text as Luis read. At one point she pulled a page
down in order to see the text better. This was also the session in which she
pointed with her ﬁnger to a word in the story after Luis loss track ofwhere he
should read next. Both her verbal and non-verbal actions indicated a reasonable
degree of attention.

In session two Lola and Luis once again were sitting a foot apart on the
couch, but this time Lola was leaning forward while Luis’ back rested against the
back of the couch. At ﬁrst Lola could see the pages since the book was facing up
asitlayonLuis’ lap. Aboutaminute intothereadingLuisliftedthebookand
held it upright as he read, so that his mother could only see the back cover.
Subsequently, Lola’s gaze moved back and forth from the book’s back cover to
Luis’ eyes as he read. She could not see the text and only made a move to see the
textwhenLuisread“butnothankyoucameup.”WhenLuisreadthatphrasehis
mother recognized through listening that an error had been made. She leaned
forward, looked at the text as Luis laid the book down to Run the page, and
corrected his miscue by supplying the words “but nothing.” More often, as the
session two transcript (see Table l 1, pp. 137) demonstrated, Lola did not

acknowledge Luis’ reading miscues because she could not see the text as he read.

141

For instance, as Luis read “Everyday, the little boy pulled up the, weds around the
seed” his mother was looking at his face but not the page. She did not supply the
correct word “weeds”.

In session three mother and son were in a similar position as they were in
the beginning of session two. The book rested on Luis’ leg and was located more
than a foot away from Lola. From this position Lola had an upside-down view of
the text since they were sitting in the curve of the couch. For a while Luis held the
book up a bit, which made it diﬁcult for Lola to see the text. Her gaze moved
back and forth from the book to Luis’ eyes as he read. When she detected a
hesitation or an error she would lean forward to get a closer look at the text and
she responded if needed. She did not acknowledge several of his nonsensical
errors. Luis also appealed for help several times during this third pre-intervention
session. Luis eventually sat forward with the book in his lap, giving his mother a
better view ofthe text. As a result Lola started holding the pages ofthe book
down and closely monitored Luis’ reading performance throughout the remainder
of the session.

Lola’s attention decreased in session four during the reading of I_{_appy
Birthday Dm and the Dinosaur (Hoﬁ‘; 1995). At the beginning of the reading
she had an upside-down view of the text but quickly loss that view after Luis
raised the book upright blocking her view of the text. Throughout the reading she
listened more often than she viewed the text. She also had a tired appearance and
restedherheadinherhandwithherheadtumedinLuis’ direction. Hereyeswere

predominantly focused on the back of the book or on her son’s face rather than on

142

the text. She corrected when she heard an error or received an appeal for
assistance ﬁ‘om Luis. She did not acknowledge errors on several occasions. For
instance, at the point where the book stated, “I am six years old today, said
Danny” Luis read, “I’m sick yea-yesterday or today. . .said Danny.” Even though
the error changed the meaning of the sentence, Lola did not correct the error nor
couldsheseethetextwhentheerrorwasmade.DuringthisreadingLuisalso
skipped an entire page of the story. However, because the book was tilted away
ﬁom Lola, she did not acknowledge nor did she seem aware that Luis had skipped
a whole page.

The fact that Lola spoke English-as-a-second-language complicated my
assessment of her non-acknowledgement of Luis’ errors. I had to consider the
following question: Was her non-acknowledgement due to inattention or limited
English proﬁciency? The pre-intervention tapes alone did not give me a clear
answer to this question. Aspects of her non-verbal behavior such as the focus of
her gaze and her position to the text suggested that she was not paying great
attention to Luis’ reading efforts. However, her mispronunciation of some words
and her expressions of uncertainty (see Table 12, page 138) about her word
recognition skills indicated that even if she saw the text she might not have
recognized certain errors. The videotapes of the Paired Reading interactions
(which will be discussed in chapter foru') showed a signiﬁcant change in Lola’s
non-verbal behavior. In the post-intervention, Paired Reading sessions she sat
closer to Luis, always had a clear view of the text, and her gaze followed each line

of text closely. Although she rrrispronounced some words, she recognized and

143

acknowledged almost all of Luis’ errors. This observation led me to conclude that
inattention did play a strong part in Lola’s tendency not to acknowledge
nonsensical miscues during the pre-intervention sessions.

General Tenor of the Interactions

_S_et_t_ipg. All of Lola and Luis’ pre-intervention sessions took place on their
sectional, living room couch. The living room was a very comfortable, cozy, and
quiet location for the reading interaction to take place. Even though a television
set and stereo were located in the room, these items were never on during the
sessions. Other relatives or ﬁ'iends were present in the home on a few occasions
but they usually stayed in other rooms, retrained perfectly quiet, and never
created any noticeable distraction. '7 The living room couch served as an
appropriate place for the home reading event, except for the fact that during most
of the reading interactions Lola did not attempt to secure a clear view of the text
as Luis read. Luis tended to sit back in a relaxed position, with his feet up on the
couch while Lola tended to sit upright and forward.

Personal interaction. Mother and son responded to each other in cordial,
relaxed tones during all four pre-intervention sessions. Most of these sessions
started oﬂ‘with Lola smiling as Luis began reading the title. In session one both
initially seemed somewhat uncomfortable and a little embarrassed about being
videotaped by the camcorder. However, once Luis started reading, the pair

became more at ease.

 

'7 In the third session a visitor who arrived shortly after Luis started reading, sat quietly off-
camera in the same room while Luis read to Lola.

144

Lola’s overall demeanor throughout most of the pre-intervention sessions
was calm but also fatigued and detached. As previously mentioned, she was very
attentive during the ﬁrst session but her attention seemed less focused during the
last three sessions. Luis and Lola never initiated any comments, discussions, or
questions about story events. Moreover, little variation existed in Lola’s response
techniques and Luis’ reaction to his mother’s scaffolding efforts. The general
tenor of the interactions reﬂected a mundane, boring, and tmeventful tone.
Tension between the pair during the reading event never really surlhced except in
the third session in which both Lola and Luis expressed a small degree of
impatience and irritation. They also appeared fatigued as the reading proceeded.
The book Luis read during this session was longer and harder for Luis than the
book he read in session two. Lola and Luis both produced more non-reading
related commentary in this pre-intervention session than in others. Lola uttered
four directions and one question-prompt. Luis appealed for help three times and
made one comment about where to read next.

At the beginning of session three, a family ﬁ'iend or relative arrived at the
ﬂoat door, brieﬂy interrupting the reading. Both Luis and Lola got up to greet the
visitor. Luis returned to the coach while Lola led the visitor to an off-camera seat,
next to the couch. Although the visitor remained extremely quiet throughout the
session, her presence might have subtly inﬂuenced the tenor of the interaction
between Lola and Luis. When Lola retrn'ned to the couch she said “Okay Luis”
then in a noticeably slnrper tone she said, in Spanish, “hurry up.” Luis responded

by reading. A bit later Luis paused while attempting to read the word “footprint”

145

Lola stated, “Let me see. Footprint?” laughed self-consciously, and then stated, “I
don’t know. Footprint.” Her expression of uncertainty might have also been
inﬂuenced by the visitor’s presence. Another tense moment occurred when Lola
interrupted Luis to tell him, in Spanish, to read louder. Luis displayed irritation by
asking, ‘that” in a raised tone. Lola then repeated her command to read louder.
Luis paused at the word “Grizzwold” Lola impatiently asked, “What’s yom'
word?” Her impatience might have been due to the fact that Luis had, since the
beginning of the story, repeatedly experienced difﬁculty identifying the word
“Grizzwold.” Luis gave a cheeky reply in response to Lola’s question “what’s
your word?” by elongating his response “okaaay”. He then quickly asked, “What
is it?” His mother raised her voice and stated “Grizzwold” in an exasperated tone.
. This was the last noticeably tense exchange that occurred in this reading session.
After that moment, Lola and Luis’ tones both become more accommodating and
gentle. Their exchanges remained cordial to the end of the session. The small
degree of tension that occmred in session three was atypical of most of the Lola
and Luis’ exchanges and, as previously stated, might have been inﬂuenced by the
presence of the visitor.

A feature that was quite evident during all four reading episodes,
especially the last two, was the sense of boredom that both Lola and Luis
displayed during their reading interactions. There was no sense of enjoyment or
interest in the books that they read. Not once did they exchange a laugh or make a
comment about story events. Luis in particular often displayed signs of disinterest

during reading episodes. For instance, in session two, as he turned to the next

146

page, Luis rolled his eyes and mockingly mouthed the words that he previously
read with a frown. He perked up with surprise when the story The Carrot Seed
(Krauss, 1945) was over so quickly and announced, “its the end!” He then quickly
got up and impatiently asked, “Can I go now?” His actions conveyed his sense of
relief that the obligation to complete a homework assignment was over. During
sessionthree heraisedhisvoice and made aloud, weary sighasheread “YOU
LOOK just like a-”, he took a breath and his mother ﬁnished “a real bear.” Near
the end of session four, Luis looked tired and bored as he rubbed his eyes,
brushed his hair back, and wiped his hand across his forehead before resuming his
reading of the text. Luis read in a slightly animated voice during the ﬁrst session,
but in the last three sessions Luis read in a monotone, listless manner. Lola’s
scaffolds were delivered in a similar dispassionate voice.

Hard work. Like Kirk and Elsa, Luis and Lola’s reading episodes reﬂected
a philosophy that reading was hard work. Their pre-intervention reading sessions
deﬁnitely conveyed the idea that reading was a tedious task to get over with as
quickly as possible. Both mother and son seemed tired and bored with the books
that Luis read. As stated earlier the books never sparked any commentary by
either Luis or Lola. Luis’ countenance at the end of each episode expressed relief
that the event was completed. He immediately sat up straighter after reading the
last sentence, signaling his readiness to end the activity.

Luis’ attitude. The disinterested attitude that Luis displayed towards home
reading during the videotaped sessions conﬂicted with his responses on T_he;

Elementanj ReadLng Attitude Survey. In January, immediately after the

147

videotaped pre-intervention sessions, Luis scored thirty-six out of forty possible
points on the recreational reading section and thirty-three out of forty points on
the academic section. His combined score of sixty-nine points placed him at the
seventy-ninth percentile ranking for second grade readers. In response to the
question “How do you feel about reading for fun at home?” Luis circled the
happiest face. In response to “How do you feel about reading in school?” Luis
again circled the happiest face?” When asked, “How do you feel about spending
ﬁ'ee time reading?” and “How do you feel about reading during summer
vacation?” he circled happy faces for both questions. These responses and his
attitude ranking reﬂected a much more positive attitude towards reading than was
demonstrated by his verbal and non-verbal demeanor during the home reading
sessions. It was possible Luis was responding the way that he thought that he
should rather than actually contemplating how he felt about reading. Luis may
have viewed the survey as having correct/incorrect answers instead of viewing the
survey as an opportunity to express how he actually felt about reading. It was also
possible that he was trying to please me his teacher, with his positive responses on
the survey.
I_.ol_a’s Beliefs About eagipg

In her pre-intervention interview Lola revealed that she held a phonics-
based philosophy about reading and reading instruction. Like Elsa, Lola’s reading
beliefs seemed to be heavily inﬂuenced by her own school experiences. When I
asked her how she learned to read in school, she said, “We learned about, how to

sound the letters. Only the letters end with “a” or something and all the letters end

148

in this way.” Lola felt that the reading instruction that Luis received in school was
different ﬁ’omthewaythatﬂiehadleamedto read. She stated, “Ithinkthatthey
give them wall words and they memorize them. Oh yeah. And, I don’t know, but
it’s diﬁ'erent because you only, in Mexico you only learn the letters. . .few letters
and you have to write all the words.” When I asked Lola which instructional
approach was better Lola asserted, “In Mexico is better. Or, maybe because, like
the ‘a’ is only one sound. ‘Always’ is ‘ah’, ‘anyway’ is ‘ah.’ So its more easy.”
Lola went on to say, “In America, they only, memorize the wall words. And only
they can read the wall words. In Mexico you learn, the sounds, in any wall word.
In any, you lmve to write any word.” Lola stated that she believed a good reader
possessed the ability to look at the sounds and ﬁgure out how to read any word.
In terms of Lola’s assessment of her son’s reading ability Lola stated, “I think he
started to read better, just a little bit, in my opinion. It’s difﬁcult because I can’t
help him a lot. But I think he’s okay now.” During a second interview in which
we discussed Paired Reading I learned that Lola thought the home reading
mom had helped Luis strengthen his reading skills. “So like, everyday Luis
brings one book. Is help for him and for me too. Yeah.”
Comg' Elsa and Lola's Beliefs

The similarities between Elsa and Lola’s pre-intervention interview
comments were striking. Even though they came from different language
backgrounds both mothers expressed a phonics orientation to reading instruction
derived ﬁ'om their own school experiences, characterized their son’s instruction as

being based on a “wall words” approach, and believed that phonics was a superior

149

instructional approach to “wall words” instruction. Both mothers also
acknowledged that the structure of their native language was different than
English and might be more consistent with a phonics approach than English.
Although I personally believed that “wall words” were just a small component of
our school’s reading program, it was enlightening to see how parents viewed the
school curriculum In that year, with those two parents, these interviews proved
that I had not successfully communicated the main interactive philosophy of
reading that I felt my reading program embodied.

The mothers differed in their assessment of their son’s reading skills. Elsa
expressed great concern about Kirk’s reading abilities shortly after the last
videotaped pre-intervention session whereas Lola thought that Luis was making
modest improvement. In actuality Luis was a more ﬂuent reader than Kirk. The
transcript of each student reading The Carrot Seed (1945, Krauss), cited earlier in
this chapter, illustrated this fact.

Elsa and Lola also differed in the way their personal beliefs about reading
were mnifested in their hearing reading methodology. Elsa’s reading response
strategies were extremely consistent with her stated instructional philosophy. She
believed in a phonics-based approach and utilized letter sounds and decoding
prompts to support Kirk’s reading efforts. Lola, on the other hand, stated that she
believed in phonics instruction but mainly supported Luis’ reading efforts through
a word supply approach. She never encouraged Luis to focus on the letter sounds,
decode, or sound out words. Although a word supply approach was inconsistent

with Lola’s instructional philosophy, this approach represented the strategy that

150

Lola believed was emphasized in school. Lola indicated that she wanted to follow
thesamemethodologythatwasutilizedinLuis’ school. Duringthesecond
interview, she stated “I think it is very different like in my country than in
America—different letters, different sormds, or if he lives in America, he has to
read like Americans so for me no problem.” Uncertainty about appropriate
instructional techniques might also have contributed to Lola’s heavy reliance on
the word supply approach. In discussing her home reading support Lola
confessed “It’s difﬁcult for me. I can’t help him.” In critiquing her word supply
approach Lola stated, “I tried to read the words. Maybe it’s not very good for a
decision, and if he doesn’t understand, I told him the word.”

Comparing Home and School Oral Reading Response Strategies

Elsa’s error response moves such as providing wait-time, encouraging the
reader to sound out the words, praising the reader’s efforts, and using contextual
prompts were also moves that I utilized in school. I also used the word supply
scaﬁold that both Elsa and Lola relied on. The main difference between Elsa and
Lola’s listening strategies and my approach to hearing reading in the classroom
was the ﬁequency with which I used the aforementioned moves. Another major
difference was the fact that I incorporated a wider range of moves in response to
reading errors or miscues than these two parents. Furthermore, at home Kirk and
Luis received personal, one-on-one support. In school Kirk and Luis received oral
reading support in a small group or whole group setting. Thus, in school Kirk and
Luis orally read a smaller amount of mterial, read aloud for a shorter amount of

time, and received less personal, one-on-one attention than they did at home.

151

As stated in chapter two, I responded to students’ oral reading hesitation
and miscues by encouraging students to recognize their own errors, self-correct,
and utilize a variety of strategies to decode unknown words. When a student
paused at an unknown word, I gave the student wait-time, as Elsa did. If the
student still could not read the word, I did not always give the student an
immediate prompt, but often encouraged the student to skip the word and read to
the end of the sentence. The context of the sentence often enabled the reader to
then go back and decode the unknown word. If the context of the sentence did not
lead to the word being identiﬁed, I would prompt the student to apply Iris/her
phonics knowledge to the word. I might, as Elsa often did, ask the reader to look
at the initial consonant, break the word apart, or produce each sound in the word.
If the student remained unsuccessful I would simply supply the word. When a
reader made a miscue that did not alter the meaning of the sentence I did not
interrupt with a correction and instead ignored the error. If the miscue did not I
make sense, I often waited until the end of the sentence to interrupt in order to
give the reader a chance to self-correct. A prompt that I often used in this situation
was “did that sentence make sense?” Like Lola, I sometimes gave the reader the
word immediately after a miscue had been made. For instance, if the page was
extremely difﬁcult for the reader and/or I had already prompted the reader to use
the end of the sentence strategy with previous words on the page, I would adopt
the word supply scaffold to retain ﬂuency. During a child’s oral reading episodes
I always had to mkejudgment calls on how to assist the reader and whether to

used delayed or immediate prompts. Thus, for Kirk and Luis one of the main

152

differences between home and school reading, was that in school the boys were
encouraged to use many different types of word identiﬁcation strategies rather
than just relying on decoding or being given the word.

In terms of Kirk’s experience, school reading differed from home reading
because at home his mother Elsa assumed responsibility for physically handling
thebook. IntheclassroomKirkwasexpectedto handlethebookhimself He was
responsible for holding his own book, turning the pages, and tracking the text
with his ﬁnger or a guide.

The book reading episodes in both homes lacked an extensive introductory
or closing component. The book reading episodes began with Kirk and Luis
reading the title and immediately proceeding to the ﬁrst page. In my classroom,
however, each oral reading event had a deﬁnite introduction and conclusion.
Before reading a book the students and I engaged in introductory activities such
asdiscussmgthetﬁk,mlkmgabomthecover,makingpredictionsabomwhatthe
story would be about, and talking about vocabulary words that would appear in
the story. Discussion about story events, elements of literature, and vocabulary
continued as each student read portions of the story aloud. Once the reading was
complete students were asked questions about the story and asked to compare
story events to their own experiences.

While I did not expect home reading episodes to completely recreate what
I as a professional classroom educator did in the school, I had hoped to see more
discussion about story events take place during the home reading interactions.

The fact that little to no discussion about the stories took place in either home was

153

another indication that the Home Reading Program was not fostering the kinds of
interactions that I had envisioned.

The Educational Quality of the Home Reading Sessions

The main goal of my school sponsored home reading program was to give
students an extended opportunity to practice reading with adult support. As stated
in chapter two, the home reading program was intended to enhance students’
word identiﬁcation, vocabulary, comprehension, and ﬂuency skills. There were
also affective goals of fostering positive attitudes towards books and reading.

Conducting videotaped observations of Kirk and Luis reading at home
allowed me to assess the extent to which these educational goals were being met
and to consider the conceptions of the reading process that were being
emphasized dming these home interactions. In Kirk’s home the idea that
processing letter-sounds enabled one to read was being reinforced above all other
aspects of the reading process. Kirk was given abundant opportunities to practice
identifying initial consonant sounds and to sound out unknown words.
Throughout the session Elsa attempted to teach Kirk decoding strategies that
would enable him to decipher words without assistance. She insisted on accuracy
and frequently interrupted as soon as an error occurred to prompt or provide a
correction. She appropriately praised his efforts and usually supported his reading
attempts in a patient, encomaging nranner. Her singular emphasis on word
identiﬁcation might have improved Kirk’s ability to sound out words, however, it
did not address his vocabulary knowledge or his comprehension skills. Moreover,

her constant interruption seemed to actually undermine Kirk’s reading ﬂuency

154

and his conﬁdence. The high degree of correction produced extremely choppy
pre-intervention reading episodes. Additionally, Kirk did not always take the
initiative to try non-decoding oriented strategies. Instead he hesitated for long
periods of time until receiving a prompt ﬁom his mother. When he did try other
strategies such as asking about the meaning of words or utilizing picture cues his
efforts were quickly dismissed or ignored.

Therefore, in terms of the educational quality of Kirk’s sessions, home
reading achieved the very narrow objective of allowing Kirk to practice his
decoding skills at the expense of enhancing his reading ﬂuency. Vocabulary
knowledge and comprehension were never addressed during his home reading
interactions. The lack of conversation about the text, Kirk’s non-verbal demeanor,

instances ofirritation with his mother scaffolds, along with his responses on The;

 

Elementary ReadingAttitude Survey (McKenna and Kear, 1990) indicated that
home reading was not a pleasurable experience for Kirk and the Home Reading
Program was not meeting it’s affective goal of fostering positive attitudes about
reading. Reading books aloud to his mother was probably better for Kirk than not
reading at all, however, the reading interaction fell far short of its potential due to
the narrow focus on decoding and the lack of conversation about story events.

In Luis’ home the singular focus on the word supply strategy supported
Luis' ﬂuency to some extent, especially with easier material such as The Carrot
Sﬁd (Krauss, 1945). The reading moved forward and did not get bogged down
with multiple error correction techniques; however, the use of word supply alone

did not seem to foster independent word recognition strategies. When Luis came

155

to an unknown word he rarely tried to sound it out and never attempted to apply
contextual word recognition strategies. Frequently, when Luis hesitated or made
an error his mother provided him with little or no wait-time to sound out the word.
If his mother did not supply the word in a rmtter of seconds he would often ask
her for the word or read a nonsensical word. Thus Lola’s word supply strategy
inﬂuenced Luis’ own strategy, which at home, was to primarily ask for adult
assistance when faced with an unknown word. Since there were no discussions
about story content, Luis’ vocabulary knowledge and comprehension skills were
not enhanced during their sessions. The nature of Luis and Lola’s reading
interactions portrayed reading as mainly a word identiﬁcation process. Home
reading gave Luis the opportunity to practice his oral reading ﬂuency, but as with
Kirk, Luis’ overall home reading experience fell ﬁrr short of both its academic and
affective potential.

The issue of wait-time proved to be a noticeable and intriguing element of
the reading interactions in both homes. Wait-time was a prominent scaffolding
strategy that Elsa used extensively and the duration of her wait-time seemed quite
lengthy. Conversely, a lack of wait-time characterized Lola and Luis’ home
reading interactions with Lola rarely providing Luis with a wait-time that
exceeded two seconds.

The differential use of wait-time in the two homes reﬂects an ongoing
debate among reading researchers over the merits of delayed versus immediate
feedback. Leach and Siddall (1990) summarize these opposing views, pointing

out that Clay (1979) and McNaugton (1988) support giving children adequate

156

wait-time on the basis that this encourages children to self-monitor and self-
correct their own reading; thereby fostering independence ﬁ‘om adult assistance.
Englemann (1980), on the other hand, maintains that leveled text and immediate
response to student errors is what fosters ﬂuency and independent reading
(Englemann, 1980). Leach and Siddall describe how different prescriptive home
reading programs embody these competing error correction theories, writing:

The Pause, Prompt, Praise method utilized here is based on the

productive view of errors, whereas the Direct Instruction approach,

through its programme design features, plans to minimize errors.

ThePairedreadingmethodfallsbetweenthetwointhatitisnot

programmed to prevent errors but that when errors occur,

immediate corrective feedback is given without prompts to gather

information ﬁom them (Leach and Siddall, 1990, p. 350).

Assessing the dynamics of the home reading interactions in each home,
has lead me to entertain the possibility that both views are correct. The decision
whether to used delayed or immediate feedback may need to be based on the
situation, the text difﬁculty, and the child. For instance, in Kirk’s case Elsa’s
constant use of wait-time led to an extremely choppy, disconnected, and
wearisome oral reading episode for Kirk. At the same time, Luis’ reliance on his
mother’s immediate corrections enhanced his ﬂuency but minimized the
importance of self-monitoring. Even if an error did not make sense Luis often
continued reading. Rather than following one view exclusively the decision to use
delayed or immediate feedback is a judgment call the adult listener needs to make
depending on the speciﬁc circumstances that are unique to each oral reading

episode or child’s unique reading style. In the next chapter I will elaborate on how

157

Elsa’s delayed responses and Lola’s immediate feedback were affected by the
Paired Reading methodology.

In both homes the emphasis on word recognition coupled with the absence
of comprehension scaffolds typiﬁed the experiences of low-achieving readers.
Research on adults hearing reading has focused on the differential treatment that
advanced and less-advanced readers receive in school and at home. Cazden
(1988) has written about the tendency of teachers to differentiate instruction for
children in high and low reading groups. With high groups, researchers have
found that teachers engage in less error corrections and tend to stress reading
comprehension and ﬂuency skills. In low groups teachers ﬁequently interrupt
students’ reading efforts to correct pronunciation or word recognition errors while
placing a greater emphasis on phonemic awareness rather than on comprehension
skills.

As stated in chapter one, Bergin, Laney, and'Draper (1994) found that
parents of advanced readers tended to supply their children with more meaning-
focused prompts while parents of less advanced readers emphasized decoding
techniques. Tracey and Young (1994) found that mothers of advanced readers
produced more comments and questions during home reading than mothers of less
advanced readers. Tracey (1995) asserted that studies on adults hearing reading
should encourage educators to inﬂuence the home reading experiences of at-risk
readers, writing:

The studies examined on this topic suggest that important

differences do exist between the ways in which mothers of at-risk

and accelerated readers help their children during their oral reading
at home. More important, the diﬁerences between the helping

158

behaviors of mothers of at-risk readers and mothers of accelerated
readers are observable even when the text read has been
individually matched to the child’s ability level. Practitioners can
use the knowledge that mothers of accelerated readers ask more
questions and rrrake more comments during children’s oral reading
than do mothers of at-risk readers to help parents of at-risk readers

improve their coaching style (Tracey, 1995, p. 266).

In chapter four I will discuss how participating in the Paired Reading
Program changed the nature of reading interactions in Kirk and Luis’s homes.
Speciﬁcally I will describe the extent to which the Paired Reading technique
inﬂuenced parental error correction strategies, altered participants’ non-verbal
behavior, changed the tenor of the reading interactions in each home, and affected

parental beliefs about reading.

159

CHAPTER 4
POST-INTERVENTION FINDINGS

In this chapter I will ﬁrst describe how Elsa and Lola responded to the
Paired Reading training and how their use of the Paired Reading methodology
evolved over the mm of this study. I will then discuss the observed effects
Paired Reading exerted over each mother and son’s home reading interactions. I
will describe the extent to which the Paired Reading training methods changed
Elsa and Lola’s approach to hearing their sons read as well as demonstrate how
Paired Reading altered the tenor of home reading interactions. Finally I will
assess whether the Paired Reading approach changed parental beliefs about
reading and understanding ofthe reading process.

Parental Response to the Paired Reading Training

Tm ' Sessio

As stated in the second chapter, which described this study’s research
context and methodology, Elsa and Lola received training in the Paired Reading
method at separate times after school. Elsa and Kirk’s training began in February
andLolaandLuis’trainingbeganinMarch. I followedthetrainingprocedures
(see chapter 2, p. 80) outlined in the NARSC Training nunual (Brailsford et al.,
1998). Each of the training sessions involved providing participants with a brief
overview and rationale of the technique. I then played the ﬁrst halfof an
explanatory video and stopped the video to discuss and answer questions about
the Paired Reading procedure. At this time I also gave participants a chance to

practice the technique and provided a critique of their efforts before playing the

160

second part of the video. Finally I passed out handouts and set up subsequent
dates to assist and observe the participants engaging in Paired Reading at home.

Figure l, on the next page, displays a diagram created by Topping (1987).
Thediagramsummarizesthebasicstepsofthe PairedReadingprocess, showing
how the Paired Reading procedure: 1. Starts with a child selecting a book. 2. The
child and parent discuss the book. 3. The child and the parent read the sentences
together until the child signals for solo reading. 4. Solo reading continues when
the child nukes an error. The table demonstrates that when an error occurs the
parent should wait four to ﬁve seconds for the child to self-correct. If no
correction occurs then the parent supplies the word.

The diagram on the next page was introduced and reviewed with each
mother during the parent-training meeting. The diagram also appeared in the ﬁ'ont
of the Paired Reading journal so that the participants could refer to it at home.

The Paired Reading Program did not place restrictions on the text
diﬁculty of the book, so Kirk and Luis were allowed to select any book that
interested them. Both Kirk and Luis selected much harder books for Paired
Reading than they had been allowed to read as a part of the Home Reading
Program. Each boy only chose one “easy-to-read” book ﬁ'om orn' classroom
Home Reading collection (see Table 13, p.162). For three out of four videotaped,
post-intervention sessions Kirk did not select classroom books, but instead read
books ﬁom home. All of the books that Luis read for the post-intervention
sessions came ﬁ'om our classroom’s Home Reading collection. Three out of four

of Luis’ choices came from our classroom’s most advanced, blue book crate (See

161

chapter two, p. 61 on color-code). Table 13 details the books that Kirk and Luis

read during each videotaped, post-intervention session.

Figure l D'

Parent and child read together (duet)

Carat reading

Praise

 

Fl

Parent aghild discuss book

before reading.

at the child’s pace. ‘

B

P

Child signals T read alone (solo).

Parent praises child for signaling.

Child reads aloud alone (solo).

I l
l I
Correct reading
error reading of hard
words.

Praise

Child continues to read alone (solo).

\l\i—

Increasing span of Self- correction
of correct reading

162

of Paired Readin Method 0 in 1987
Child selects reading material
based on his interest.

 

Any child error
orpausewithin
4 or 5 seconds

ll

Error Correction
Parent says word

correctly (may
point to error.)

Child repeats
correction.

Pair resumes reading
together (duet).

Any child
error or no
response
in 4-5
seconds.

3

 

Error correction listed above, pair resurn
(duet) reading together. i I

Table 13: Particrp° ant Bog Selections

(#) = Number of Post-intervention, Paired Reading Session

* = -to-Read, Yellow Book Selection
Kirk read-
Session 5(1): The Knigm at Dawn by Mary Pope Osborne
Session 6(2): The Wolve§ Ate My Homework by Faith McNulty
Session 7(3): The Wolvea Ate Myliomework by Faith McNulty
Session 8(4) Anansi’s Narrow Waist: An Aﬁic_an Folk Tale" retold by Len
Cabral

Luis read-

Session 5(1) J'mgle Bear by Stephan Cosgrove

Session 6(2) Rex and Lﬂy’ : Playtime" by Laurie Krasny Brown
Session 7(3) An American Tail: F ievel Goes West by Charles Swenson
Session 8(4) Martha Spgaakg by Susan Meddaugh

 

Elsa’s Inrt'_i_al Response To ad Proﬁciency With Paired Reading.

At the end ofthe training session after Elsa and Kirk had watched the
entire training video and had practiced the technique, I asked Elsa what she
thought of the Paired Reading method. She responded with great skepticism and
commented that the method “seemed strange” but she would try it. One day after
school, midway between the initial training meeting and the follow-up training
session, I asked Elsa how the program was going. I was taken aback by her
disapproval. She was so critical in her response that I was worried that she would
drop out of the study. She stated that she thought the duet reading requirement
was “strange and didn’t rmke sense” because Kirk was merely mimicking her.
She did not feel that duet reading would enable Kirk to become a better, more
independent reader. I responded to her criticism and concerns by pointing out that
duet reading was designed to help Kirk improve his ﬂuency and asked her to give

the mom a chance. She reluctantly agreed to continue.

163

By the follow-up training meeting, which was also the ﬁrst videotaped
training session, her attitude toward the program had improved somewhat. After
the Paired Reading interaction was completed I interviewed her concerning her
views about the Paired Reading technique. I began the interview by asking her
“What do you feel about Paired Reading so far?” Her response to this open-ended
question revealed that while she still did not believe that the Paired Reading
Program improved her son’s reading skills, she did feel that the program
improved his attitude towards reading.

She stated, “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s only two weeks. It’s okay. But, the
positive thing is I can see that Kirk likes to read. He goes to room, up to his room,
off or together with his sister Nola, and they are reading. They are really reading!
Before he never touched a book on his own. It was more, looking at the pictures.
And now it’s -he takes the book and he loves to read when he knows what it’s
about. And he reads it.”

Despite the positive change in Kirk’s enthusiasm for reading that Elsa
attributed to the Paired Reading Program, she still had doubts about the
effectiveness of the program in terms of enhancing Kirk’s reading ability. She
continued to be skeptical about the utility of the duet-reading requirement and
found it difﬁcult to achieve synchrony with Kirk. Elsa believed the duet reading
process did not encourage Kirk to pay attention to the words, nor perfect his
decoding skills. She clearly preferred the solo reading portion of the technique.
She explained,

It’s like when we are reading together, we are starting reading
together. The ﬁrst sentence is okay. But then it starts, when he has

164

difﬁculties, then it’s like I have to wait, and then he’s reading it,
then I say it (referring to word supply correction), and he’s saying
it after me, and then the rhythm is gone. He’s reading, but then
quick and then, slow. And then it’s like- and if you are reading
together he, it’s like he doesn’t pay attention to the words he’s
reading. It’s like because yesterday also it was ‘the’. He knows
howtoreadthe! Andhesaid ‘he.’ Itwasonly ‘h-e’ andthenwhen
we started to read again, he was following me. So. And if I don’t
say anything be- it’s strange. It’s so strange. It’s- and thenI say, I
tell him, Kirk read alone.

She went on to say:

When he reads alone, it’s okay. And if he says. . .words and when
he reads the words wrong I say it and he repeats me, but he doesn’t
pay attention how it’s written. We read it together it’s strange. It’s
okay. I meanI think it, ifI would do itwithNolaitwould go but
with Kirk, because he has some difﬁculties at the start...it’s
strange. I think with an adult it’s a- it’s not- I don’t know.”

Elsa’s statements above revealed her ﬁ’ustration with the duet reading
procedure. She believed that because Kirk had “difﬁculties” reading, it was hard
for her to pace her reading to his. Elsa felt that duet reading taught Kirk to merely
“repeat” words rather than learn to read the words independently.

Elsa admitted that her belief in the superiority of the phonics-based
approach to reading might be the source of her skepticism and discomfort with the
Paired Reading approach. She also expressed concern that the technique would
not help Kirk learn to read in his native language. Elsa reasoned,

Maybe it’s like I believe too strong at reading phonetic and that’s

why I lmve the problem, not Kirk. Mainly I have the problem with

it. That’s it. Because it’s not only in English that he has to know to

read, but afterwards, also in Dutch. After one year we will go back

toBelgiumsohehasto,andhecannotreadinDutchorinanother

language. It’s only in English he does. He, even we speak Dutch at
home. He cannot read Dutch.

165

She implied that she believed that strengthening Kirk’s phonics
knowledge would improve his reading of other languages.

I think it’s also the idea. How to read. To analyze, and then, once,

and then he can recognize. But to analyze, it’s important I think.

But a, so he will have problem when we go back. So it’s not. I

think it’s (Paired Reading) okay if he only had English, but with

several languages...

Elsa’s discomfort with the duct reading portion of the Paired Reading
Program, which she described in her interview, was clearly evident when I
observed Kirk and Elsa utilizing Paired Reading during the follow-up training
session. Timing her reading so that she achieved synchrony with Kirk was the part
of Paired Reading technique that Elsa had the most difﬁculty adhering to in the
follow-up training session. She often lagged behind Kirk and tended to revert to a
parental listening stance by not starting the duet reading after Kirk made an error.
She also occasionally allowed her wait-time to exceed Paired Reading’s
recommended four to ﬁve second time frame. The transcript of the follow-up
session displayed in Table 14, which was also the ﬁrst videotaped, post-
intervention session, illustrated Kirk and Elsa’s diﬂiculty with synchrony.

Table 14: Follow-Up Seasion—Challepge With Smchrony

Transcript 5

K= child

M= mother

D+(bold script): duet reading (child and parent reading simultaneously)
(Initial in parentheses)= person reading alone in midst of duet

D: I’m going to ...... Ki(K)ll her ...... muttered(M) muttered(K) J(M)ack/l

He...threw(1w threW(K) threW(M) his...stuﬁ(K) stuft(M) into! his! bag/
and...moved(K) moved(M) towards(M) towards(K)...the... ...draw
bridge(M) drawbridge(K)// He hoped on(K) no(M) no one... e would(K) see
him/[It was... get(K)ting darker(M)// It(K) it(M) dark darker(K)// It must
be! night/l When when(K) he got to the! bridge he started! When(K) he(K)

O\Ut-bU-DN'-‘

166

Table 14(cont’d)
7 (M points to word)
8 M: Here//

While Table 14 above shows the pair’s struggle with achieving synchrony,

the following excerpt highlights Elsa’s tendency to perhaps revert to a parental
listening stance by not starting duet reading immediately after Kirk’s errors.18

Duet: Let.... [6 sec] Horses(M)

Kirk: horses that cow

Elsa: Clocked

Kirk: Clocked

Duet: Over the!

Kirk: grave/l

Elsa: Good {boy}... [7 sec] cobblestones/l

Kirk: Cobblestones/l

Elsa: Hmhm//

Kirk: ne!

Elsa: Hmhm/l gag/l needs

Elsa also resumes the afﬁrmation (hmhm) move that she utilized so frequently
during the pre-intervention sessions.

Not too long after the above exchange I interrupted the reading by saying
“Okay. Let’s stop for a moment here” so that I could give Elsa and Kirk coaching
advice to improve their duet reading technique. I turned the camcorder off during
this coaching episode and instead audiotaped the coaching interaction. During this
coaching episode I commended Elsa for remembering to praise Kirk and

discussing part of the story with Kirk in Flemish. I encouraged her to continue to

 

" I emphasized “perhaps” because I never captured Kirk tapping or signaling to adopt solo
reading on the videotape of this follow-up session. During a coaching episode that will be
described in the next paragraph I asked Elsa if Kirk was tapping her? She said “once.” Since one
of his hands remained under the table throughout the session, it is possible that be tapped without
me seeing him. After the coaching session he read solo without me seeing him tap Elsa, but again,
it was possible that he tapped her under the table.

167

discuss the story with him every few pages. I also reminded her to keep her wait-
time within a four to ﬁve-second interval as a way to improve the rhythm of the
duet-reading phase. I stated that I didn’t notice Kirk tapping for solo reading and
asked if be tapped once? Elsa replied “once,” then I reminded her to praise Kirk
whenever he tapped to read solo. Elsa expressed concern that Kirk was echoing
herratherthanreadingwithher. To addressherconceml suggestedthatshetryto
pick up the pace herself. I said, “You just need to increase your pace so that you
are saying it together.” Once again I reminded her not to allow her wait-time
exceed four or ﬁve seconds, by telling her to “Shorten the pauses.” Table 15
shows the improved synchrony that the pair achieved immediately after the
coaching interruption. ‘

Table 15: F ollow—Up Sesaion-Improved Synchrony

36 M: {Dutch} One

37 D: Two three/l He... peered into the darkness! darkness(K)//

38 M: Good//

39 D: There was Annie/l She wasmhiding behind a...well in

40 the...cen(M)eenterl of the courtyard]! She wa(K) waved at him/I
41 Jack

42 waved! back(M) back(K)ll He wanted(K) waited(M) waited(K)

43 un(M)til

44 till(K) the boys! and horses

45 M: Good//

46 D: ...disa(M)disappuredllInsaid(K) side(M) inside(K) the stable]!
45 M: Good/l

 

After this improvement, the pair started to lose synchrony again. However,
I did not interrupt to coach this time, but decided to let them ﬁnish the reading. At
the end of the session Elsa made a positive comment about Kirk’s reading ability.
She stated “But sometimes I’m amazed that he can, wow, read like ‘breath’ and

‘breathe’ and ‘noise.”’ I interjected that Paired Reading “makes him feel more'

168

successful because he knows that there’s a safety net there for him when he needs
it, so actuallyithelpsh'nnto takemorerisksandbytakingtheriskshe’sreading
larger and larger words.”

I rmde this comment advocating the program even though I wasn’t fully
sure of the beneﬁts of the program at the time. Since I was in the midst of
engaging in teacher-research I had not yet closely scrutinized the data. However,
in order to keep participants enthusiastic about trying the technique, I felt I needed
to be positive about the Paired Reading method. Thus, I made supportive
comments based on the informal observations I had made by that time as well as
on the Paired Reading research literature, which this study hoped to build upon.

During session six (which was the second post-intervention session) Kirk
and Elsa read a book that they had already started on a previous evening. One
clearly evident difference between the pre and post-intervention sessions was
Elsa’s focus on discussion and comprehension. At the beginning of this session I
asked Kirk “When you started the book, what did you do ﬁrst." Kirk indicated
that he did not remember, his mother laughed and said, “We talked about the book
and the title.”19

I replied, “Oh great. So you did talk about the content before actually
reading.”

“Yes, yes because the title is really something for Kirk, The Wolves; Ate

My Homework.”’ Elsa laughed.

I laughed, “Okay. Alright.”

 

’9 Kirk’s shyness towards me was something that typiﬁed our personal interaction. I was never
able to pinpoint the cause of it, but it was typical for him to respond to me with only a non-verbal
reply, give me a short response, or not respond to my questions at all.

169

“And then we started to read and talked about the pictures,” said Elsa.

The fact that Elsa mentioned talking about the title and the pictures before
reading the book demonstrated a change from the pair’s pre-intervention sessions
in which this type of comprehension move never happened. Elsa and Kirk still
required coaching during the second post-intervention session to improve their
duetreadingperformance. Inthissession, Kirkvisiblytapped Elsato signalhis
desire to read solo. Elsa occasionally abandoned Paired Reading for a parental
listening stance by not immediately beginning duet reading after Kirk’s errors:

87 Duet: Like us wolves hunt in [Tap]
Kirk: a
Elsa: Good [Appropriately Praised Kirk for tapping to read 3010.]
Kirk: Grope.
Elsa: Group.
Kirk: Group, or, pack and [Duet readmg' should have resumed with
we”)
Elsa: Good.
Kirk: ...[5 sec] share,
Elsa: Good!
Kirk: That they lake.
Elsa: What they kill.
Kirk: What they kill.
Elsa: Good.
100 Duet: The most [tap]

A few lines later Elsa once again did not begin Paired Reading after an error.

114 Duet: Always ......... [6 sec]
Elsa: Close.
Kirk: Close, is the lﬂet reading should have resumed aith “cigse.”]
Elsa: MmMm.
Kirk: And...[5 sec]
Elsa: Ready
Kirk: Ready to. . . [4 sec] craft IMet reading should_have resuared wit_h
m3?
Elsa: Care.
Kirk: Care
Elsa: Hmhm.
Kirk: for each others.

170

Elsa: Good.

Kirk: This
127 Teacher: -I’m going to stop you right there just for a minute.

At the end of the excerpt cited above I interrupted their interaction to
provide coaching advice. I allowed the camcorder to continue to record this and
all other coaching interruptions during this second post-intervention session. I told
Elsa, “After he makes an error you want to try to pick up that duet reading as soon
as you can.” She responded with an “okay,” and the pair resumed the Paired
Reading. There were 278 lines of talk on this second post-intervention transcript.
After the ﬁrst coaching episode I interrupted their reading interaction on line 161
to remind Elsa to respond to an error, on line 168 I complimented Kirk on his
pointing, on line 208 I complimented Kirk on decoding a difﬁcult word during
solo reading, and ﬁnally on line 226 I once again reminded Elsa to start duet
reading after Kirk’s error. The interaction that prompted this ﬁnal coaching
episode appears below:

220 Duet: Out the wolf [Kirk’s hand is under the table. He may have tapped

Elsa.

Kirk: Like...things about...

Elsa: Sasha, it’s a noun. [Deviatgs ﬁ‘om Pa_ired Readmg' E! addmg'
explanation“it’s a noun" to word sappy, and not starting duet
readmg' .]

Kirk: Session

Elsa: Sasha, it’s the noun.

Kirk: Sesha. First —[I interrupt with a coaching suggestion]

During this ﬁml coaching interruption I complimented Elsa for talking with Kirk
about the book, but pointed out that the reading was not ﬂowing too well because

the pair was reading out ofsync. I suggested, “When he makes an error,just make

171

sure that you say it together.” Then I modeled what I meant by saying with Kirk

and Elsa “Sasha. First” which prompted Elsa to resume duet reading until Kirk

tapped for solo reading.

Elsa’s diﬂiculty with the synchrony might have been due to her
philosophical resistance to the notion of duct reading, which she professed in her
Paired Reading interview. Furthermore, Kirk demonstrated such high motivation
to read on his own, he often tapped to read solo after only two words. The high

incidence of Kirk’s signals to read solo might also have discomaged Elsa’s

adherence to duet reading.
The transcript excerpt displayed in Table 16 shows that Kirk would tap to

read solo after reading only two or three words simultaneously with Elsa.

Table 16: Examples of Kirk’s Siggrls to Read 8019 Dui‘r_ng' Session Six

D: Played with them [tap]
K: And they! became

M: Good/l

K: Friends ....... Beet/l

M: Best/l

K: Best//

M: Good job// Uhuhll

D: Ben told [tap]

K: Me what all... at all...willed wild
M: Good/l

K: Anirmls! wolves are!/ ...Best
M: Good yah/l ...... suited/l
K: Stood!

M: Suited! suited is the thing//
K: -suited

M: Hmhmll

D: To live [tap]

K: With hunt

M: Humans/l

K: Humans/l

M: Hmhm/l

 

 

 

I72

By the third post-intervention session, Elsa had improved her Paired
Reading technique. She appropriately resumed duet reading after Kirk’s errors
and even coached him on adhering to Paired Reading methods. For instance,
whensheandKirkgot out ofsync sheremindedhiminFlemishto “sayit
together.” She also remembered to comment about story events, to talk about
pictures, and to elaborate on the meaning of vocabulary words. Although Kirk
did not do much talking, Elsa, unlike in the pre-intervention sessions, took the
time to address Kirk’s occasional questions or comments. After the third Paired
Reading session was over, I mentioned that Kirk did not talk much during the
reading and asked ifthe interaction represented his typical behavior.20 She smiled
and shook her head no. Next I asked if his reserve was due to my presence. Elsa
replied yes and went on to say that usually Kirk got so excited about his reading
that he often stopped in the middle of the page to talk about story events with her.
During the fourth post-intervention session, Elsa continued to strongly adhere to
the Paired Reading method in terms of her response and discussion moves, except
at the very end. At the end of this session, as shown in Table 17, Elsa reverted to a
parental listening stance in attempt to support Kirk’s solo reading efforts, which
except for one word identiﬁcation error had been largely successful.

Iabie 17: Excerpt from Segaian Ejghi
D: He felt a/ tug]! Oh/ ynms...yums(K) he said]! Other another

anothertK) [tapl/I
K: Tug/l Oh/ rice! and! beans he said//

M: Goodl/

K: He felt...o ano another
M: Hmhm/l

K: Tug! and! then! another//

 

2° See session 7 ﬁeld notes in appendix, immediately following the session 7 transcript.

173

Table 17 (cont’d)

M: Hmhm/l Alrighty/l

K: The string got! tighter!

M: Good/l

K: And tighter/l

M: Good yah/l

K: ...Then the...then they...passed!/

M: Sn-snacked

K: Smoked/l

M: Okay/l Okay/ here/ ha/l What’s that// |E_lsa should adopt duet reading, but
instead she supplies a question prampt
to enco e Kirk’s inde ndence.

K: Now you know! why! spiders! have ...... eat!

M: Eight/I

K: Eight!

D: Legs and! very ...... narrow(M) narrow(K) waists/l

 

The tendency for parents to replace Paired Reading techniques with their
own persoml reading response strategies has been documented in studies
designed to evaluate the effectiveness of the Paired Reading method. “Several
studies of involvement processes in paired reading suggest that, in practice, some
parents deviate from the prescribed approach and lapse into strategies close to
those found in open approaches (Toepritz, 1983; Wareing, 1985; Winter, 1990)”
(Hannon, 1995). In this study, Elsa’s experience underscored the value of
conducting follow-up meetings and home visits to monitor, evaluate, and support
parental Paired Reading efforts. Wrthout these additional meetings and training
sessions Elsa might have abandoned prematurely the program altogether.
Although there were some deviations from the technique during the third and
fourth post-intervention sessions, Elsa’s adherence to the technique was stronger
in these latter sessions than in the ﬁrst two post-intervention Paired Reading

episodes.

174

Lpla’s Initial Response To and Proﬁciency With Paired Rezamg

At the end of the initial parental training meeting Lola seemed quite
receptive to the idea of Paired Reading and communicated her strong desire to
help her son become a better reader. Unlike Elsa, she did not express any doubt or
criticism about the Paired Reading approach. During the Paired Reading
interview, which took place immediately before the follow-up training session, I
asked Lola “what do you think about this program so far?” Lola replied, “Okay. I
think this- I want to do anything for him. Ifit’s good for him. I want to do it. I
want to make my son learn English. I can read. It’s okay.” She went on to say,
“I think it’s very different like in my cormtry, than in America. Different letters,
different sounds or if he lives in America, he has to read like Americans so for
me, no problem. We are great for American practice,” laughed Lola. I interpreted
Lola’s comments to mean that she was placing her trust in me to know what was
best for her son since teaching was my profession. Lola’s response did not reveal
much about her personal feelings or attitudes about Paired Reading, but implied
that regardless of what she personally felt about Paired Reading, she was willing
to try the method in order to help Luis improve his reading ability.

During the follow-up training session, which was also Lola and Luis’ ﬁrst
videotaped, post-intervention session, the pair initially demonstrated proﬁciency
with the duct reading procedure. An excerpt taken from the beginning of this
follow-up session attests to their ability to successfully engage in duet reading:

Table 18: Emle of Syn_<_:hrony

M: One two three//
D: He walked and walked! searching everywhere for father snow/l But

175

Table 18 (cont’d)
he found nothing!! Slowly! the big sky began to darken with heavy black
clouds until it was still! daytide Jingo found himself walking in the dark
alone/l Suddenly one than two(L) crystal dark(M) dark(L)
L: Alone/l
M: Whoa crystin (sic) snowﬂakes
D: Gently ﬂoat down down and landed at the/I [tap]
L: The every! a very tip of his, [2 sec]
M: Tinyl/
L: Tiny!
D: Black nose/l Jingo Bear looked
M: looked around
D: accidently/ for he knew that(M)
-what(L) that(M) where there are snowﬂakes/l
There (L) there(M) must(M) also(M) '
-always(L) be Father snow and his gift! of the
session(sic) of a snow//

 

As this follow-up meeting progressed I quickly noticed the continuation of
Lola’s pre-intervention habit of not praising Luis for his reading efforts. The
Paired Reading method called for parents to praise their child for signaling to read
solo, reading correctly, and self-correcting in order to reinforce positive reading
behavior and motivate the reader (Morgan, 1985; Topping, 1985). I interrupted
Lola and Luis’ reading interaction to remind her to encourage Luis to read solo by
praising him whenever he signaled to read independently. She replied that she
was too embarrassed to praise Luis in ﬁont of me because she praised him by
kissinghim. I implored her not to be embarrassed byhermethod ofpraiseand
suggested that she praise him verbally as well.

After this suggestion I reminded her to discuss the content of the book
with Luis by saying, “And then at the end of the page, don’t forget, you want to

discuss with him what’s going on, okay?” Lola expressed discomfort with her

176

limited knowledge of English vocabulary. She said, “Okay. But I don’t
understand the words. Just, I try but I don’t know.” I asked her if she could
discuss the pictures in the book. Luis quickly answered for her in a protective
manner, saying “probably the pictures.” Lola spoke up for herself and said,

“Yeah, I can understand. But in the last part I don’t know what is that.” She
pointed to a word on the page. I sat down next to Luis on the couch and spent the
next several minutes talking with Lola about the meaning of words on the page. I
thanked her for letting me know that she didn’t understand some of the words and
encouraged her to discuss the part of the story that she understood with Luis. I
also suggested that she use the Paired Reading joln‘nal to write down any
questions that she had. I informed her that I would respond to her questions in
writinginthejoumal. Afterthiscoachingbreak, whenPaired Readingresumed,
Lola verbally praised Luis, but did not include the kissing. However, Lola never
initiated a discussion move during this follow-up session.

My next coaching interruption was initiated by Luis’ disengagement from
the Paired Reading process. He began to occasionally stop reading and simply
listened to Lola read alone. The third time this happened, Lola prompted Luis to
resume reading by calling his name. The reason for Luis’ disengagement may
have been that Lola’s pace was too fast for him given the difﬁculty of the text.
Although their duet reading started off well, by this point in the session the pair’s
synchrony had diminished.

Below, 3 segment of transcript delineates the instances of Luis’

withdrawal from the Paired Reading activity.

177

Table 19: Example of Luis’ Disengagemeni

M: And a ﬂash of magic Father Snow... wi(L) wished them(L) them al
back to Jingles Bear cave/l Once there! he laid

 

M: down peaceable [Luis stops readmg' ]
D: sleeping bear right
M: between Little Mann [Luis stops reading]

 

D: And Big Papal! Just now the shadow formed/l There is a Father
Snow! but I never come to you while you’re awake because it is into a
sleep you(M) must go]! In a burst of st(L) starshine(M) and
M: Moonglow he cast...ah Luis/l [Luis stop§ reading' , mother calls his name]
L: He cast
M: The length of Autumn Fal. . .ah Luis/I [Luis stops reading, mother calls him]
D: Into the magical seasion (sic) of snow/! Then with a sweep on
M: His arm/and awavelLuis [Luis stops readmg' , mothercalls his name]
L: Wave

D: On his hand(M) [Liaterrupt to encourage Luis’ firll particip' ationl

 

After he stopped reading several times, I intervened by saying, “Okay, you’re
getting out of sync a little bit cause Luis, your mom is reading but you’re not
reading. So you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to sit over here.” I sat
down on the couch next to Luis and said to him, “Maybe if you point to the
words, this will help you keep track of the words. So let’s start all over, here at
this paragraph.” I said to Lola, “On this page you sound really good. ..but when he
gets to the point where he’s letting you read and he’s not doing his part so much,
you want to make sure that you’re kind of following him. So, if he doesn’t say a
word, you don’t say a word. You wait, and then you give him the four seconds.”21
Then I modeled the duet reading procedure by reading with Luis as his mother
looked on. After this coaching intervention Luis remained on task and their duet

reading stayed in sync throughout the remainder of the session.

 

2' The duet reading advice that I gave Lola, to slow her pace down was exactly opposite to the
advice I gave Elsa in terms of increasing her pace. This fact highlights the utility of home visits
and washing because parent/child pairs might respond to Paired Reading diﬂ‘erently. Pairs have
unique strengths, weaknesses, and training needs.

178

Training lapse. Luis picked an “easy-to-read” selection for the second
post-intervention session. The Paired Reading process went quite smoothly for
Luis and Lola during this session. They remained in sync during duet reading,
Lola remembered to praise Luis whenever he tapped to read solo, Luis read
independently on many occasions, and when he made an error Lola supplied the
word, then read with Luis until Luis signaled for independent reading. Although
this session represented Luis and Lola’s mastery of most Paired Reading
procedures, it also represented my shortcoming as a trainer. Wait-time and
discussion were two areas that Lola needed to improve. The fact that I, as the
coach did not recognize or address these issues at the time meant tlmt I needed to
take responsibility for any observed limitations in Lola’s approach.

Lola did not initiate any discussion moves during session two, or in the
fourth Paired Reading session, although she did make one discussion move in the
third session. Prior to the second Paired Reading interaction I reminded Lola to
discuss the book, but I did not insist upon it during the session. It was with this
particular issue that my role as teacher took precedence over my role as
researcher. The decision not to press the issue with Lola was made on the basis of
0m parent/teacher relationship. I sensed her uneasiness with the discussion aspect
in the follow-up session, discomfort with some of Luis’ book selections, and felt
uncomfortable insisting that she initiate discussion. As her son’s teacher I thought
I had the right to give her advice, but not the right to absolutely insist that she do
something that she was not comfortable doing. Moreover, I thought tlmt if Paired

Reading became burdensome to her she might not continue the practice. I had

179

already reminded her to talk about the pictures, what else could be done? As the
events were taking place, my answer to this question was “nothing more.” But as
a researcher looking back analyzing the tapes and reviewing my coaching
performance, I recognized my failure. I could have modeled how to introduce the
book, how to talk about the illustrations, and how to ask questions at the end of
the story just as I had modeled the pacing for duet reading. As a learner I have
recognized the missed opportunity to promote talking about books to Lola. As a
result of analyzing and critiquing my coaching performance I have learned the
importance of giving equal weight to both the discussion and reading aspects of
the Paired Reading process.

A second element that slipped my attention during the real time of the
post-intervention sessions was the length of Lola’s wait-time. While I was
videotaping the Paired Reading sessions it seemed that Lola was providing Luis
with adequate wait-time. However, during the data analysis portion of this project,
long after the Paired Reading program was over, I noticed as I reviewed the
videotapes that Lola’s wait-time was still falling short of Paired Reading’s
recommended four to ﬁve second time ﬁ’ame. Thus, I have learned the importance

of actually using a stopwatch to time a participant’s wait-time during the training

sessions.
The appgajjpce of a discgsjon move. At the outset of the third session Lola

 

expressed some concern about the text in the book An American Tale: Fievel
Goes West (Swenson, 1991). While ﬂipping through the pages she stated to her

son in Spanish “Wait, wait. The print is very small.” Sensing Lola’s discomfort I

180

reminded her that she and Luis did not have to read the entire book during one
session. She told me in English “I think this book is longer than we planned.” I
encouraged her to stop whenever she wanted. Once the reading started Lola and
Luis read well together and made smooth transitions between the duct and solo
reading phases of the Paired Reading method. For the ﬁrst time in both the pre
and post-intervention sessions, Lola made a discussion move. In the midst of duct
reading Lola stopped to explain a character’s actions and assess Luis’
comprehension. This discussion move appears below.

D: And once we get there! we’ll be so nice to the little critters]! They
helped us build a Cat a world...emper (sic)// And he laughed// They
buried all mouse stuff/l

M: {Themouseistryingtotrapthemi-Thecatistryingtotrapthemice.you

Understand7}

L: Yes

M: Good/ okay//
The last Paired Reading session unfolded much like the previous one except Lola
did not initiate any discussion about the story. She stopped the reading on a page
that displayed the highest amount of words in the story.

Parental Application of the Paired Reading Technique22
Overview of Kirk and Elsa’s Pa_ired Rm
Participating in the Paired Reading procedure made a signiﬁcant impact

on the nature of home reading interactions for Kirk and Elsa in terms of the
scaffolding strategies that she utilized with Kirk, the ﬂow of the entire reading

event, the tenor of the interactions as well as Elsa’s knowledge and attitude

 

22 I was unable to acquire translation for the ﬁrst two Paired Reading sessions, so any moves that
were spoken in Flemish are not included on the error correction tables. However, all moves made
in English are included.

181

towards helping her son read. During the Paired Reading episodes Elsa
signiﬁcantly reduced her emphasis on phonetic analysis, responded to Kirk’s
questions about content, and incorporated story discussion into their exchanges.
There were fewer correction interruptions with Paired Reading than there had
been during the home reading sessions. Kirk’s demeanor in the Paired Reading
sessions seemed more upbeat. He did not display the resistance to his mother’s
correction efforts, evident in the Home Reading sessions. Elsa’s attitude toward
Paired Reading became more positive the longer she and Kirk participated in the
program. She indicated in her post-intervention interview that not only did the
Paired Reading program encourage her son to read more at home, but it also
showed her the importance of talking with Kirk about what they were reading.
E_ls_a’s Pa_ired Reading Responspand Error Correction Strategies

The moves that Elsa used to respond to Kirk’s hesitations and pauses as a
part of the Paired Reading Program in order of highest frequency were: providing
words, wait-time, repeating what Kirk read, directing where to read, modeling
sounding out words, negation, pointing to a word or part of word, directing or
encouraging Kirk to continue reading, and letter-sound or word question prompts
(see Table 20, page 183).

Prior to the Paired Reading program, wait-time, letter-sound/word
question prompts, and providing words were Elsa’s three most ﬁequent error
response or hesitation moves. During the Paired Reading Program, providing
words and wait-time became Elsa’s most ﬁ'equent error response techniques while

repeating a word that Kirk read was a distant third in ﬁequency. Excluding wait-

182

time, providing words made up twenty-one percent of Elsa’s pre-intervention
moves compared to thirty-ﬁve percent of her post-intervention moves. Since
providing words, praise, and wait-time were the only three reading response
moves that the Paired Reading Program recommended, this change was
predictable. Although the program did not train parents to adopt other response
moves, many of Elsa’s pre-intervention response techniques cited in the
paragraph above periodically resurfaced during the Paired Reading Program,
albeit, far less frequently than they appeared during the pre-intervention phase.
The decreased ﬁequency of two phonics-based moves, letter/sound prompts and
modeling sounding out words, represented one of the greatest changes in Elsa’s
pre and post intervention error response techniques. Excluding wait-time,
letter/somd prompts made up twenty-seven percent of Elsa’s pre-intervention
error correction moves but only one percent of her post-intervention prompts.
Additionally, modeling sounding out words made up nineteen percent of her pre-
intervention error correction moves but only two percent of her post-intervention
correction responses.

The table below compares Elsa’s pre and post intervention error response
moves and displays the total number of times each move occurred across four pre
and post home reading sessions. Each side of the table lists the error correction

moves in order of highest ﬁequency.

Table 20: ComLarison of Pre and Post Error Correction Moves

 

 

Pre-Intervention Home Post-Intervention Paired Reading
Reading Phase Phase

 

 

 

 

183

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 20 (cont’d) Wait-time (70)

Wait-time (171)

Letter-Sound/Word Providing Words/Phases (70)
Question Prompts (90) Models Sounding Out (3)
Providing Words/Phrases Negation (3)

(70) Directs Where to Read (8)
Models Sounding Out (62) Directs/Encourages Continued
Negation (53) Reading (2)

DirectsWhereto Read (17) Repeats Word ChildHas(13)
Directs/Encourages

Continued Reading(17)

Repeats What Child Has

Read (10) Explains Part of Speech (1)23
Contextual Question

Prompt (3)

Word Structure Prompt (3)

Picture Prompt [3)

 

 

Table 20 not only shows how moves other than providing words decrease in
ﬁequency during Paired Reading sessions, but also demonstrates that Elsa utilized
fewer kinds of error response techniques during this phase of the study. Providing
words and wait-time are the only techniques recommended by the Paired Reading
method, so the occurrence of other techniques during the post-intervention phase
illustrates how Elsa periodically strayed away from complete adherence to the
Paired Reading method.

Something that the table did not show is the reduction in Elsa’s use of
nmltiple prompts in post-intervention sessions. During the home reading phase of
the study when Kirk made an error, Elsa sometimes responded with three
different prompts to scaffold. For instance the ﬁrst pre-intervention session Elsa

assisted Kirk’s reading of the word “principal” with several kinds of prompts.

 

2" “Explains part of speech” is an error correction move that only owned in the post-intervention
phase. The move occurred in the second post-intervention session when Elsa replied, “Sasha-it’s a
noun” to help Kirk decode the main character’s name.

184

Kirk: Burn/l Go to the
Elsa: What Ls; it// {With what does it start?}
Kirk: E...
Elsa: Pri-
Kirk: Pri-
Elsa: Prin-ci-
Kirk: Prin-ci-pa_l//
Elsa: Hmhm/
During the Paired Reading Program, Elsa typically responded to an error with
only the two Paired Reading moves of wait-time and providing words. For
instance, in the ﬁrst Paired Reading session Kirk read:

Kirk: Thenhe...[4 sec]

Elsa: Dashed

Kirk: Dashed into
The reduction in the number of error correction prompts that Elsa utilized to
respond to an error made the Paired Reading sessions sound less choppy than the
pre-intervention sessions. Even though the pair experienced a problem with
synchrony during the ﬁrst two Paired Reading sessions, their attempts to engage
in duet reading still moved the reading forward. Duet reading allowed the dyad to
avoid the constant stops, pauses, and discontinuity of the pre-intervention
sessions. The transcript below, demonstrates that even though Elsa and Kirk were
reading out of sync, the reading was still moving forward rather than stopping for
extended periods of time after Kirk’s miscues.

Transcript Five Excerpt from the ﬁrst Paired Reading session:

9 D: Across the wooden ......... planks(M) planks carried(K) crea-ked(M)

10 creaked under his feet// He ...... pored(K) peered(M) peered over the...

11 ......... edge(M) edge(K) of the bridge/l We’re(K) were(M) were(K)
there

185

12 any... crocodiles(M) crocodiles(K) in the...moatl/ He

cou(K)
l3 couldn’t(M) couldn’t(K) tell/l Hit(K) help(M) help(K) someone shouted]

l4 A(K) it(M). --cr000di16(K) guard(M) guard(K) ”S(K) on(K) top 0
15 the...croco(K) castle(M) castle(K) ...... well wall(K) was(K) looking

down//
16 S(K) Jack... ...dashed(M) dashed(K) across the bridge/l He ran

17 ov(K) through...thcl castle(K) castle(M)//...getting(K) gate(M) gate(K)

and
into/ the...court(M) court(K) yard/l

Other non-error related moves that Elsa used during the Paired Reading
Program were praise, afﬁrmation/conﬁrmation prompts, responding to Kirk’s
questions, expressing uncertainty about vocabulary, and a number of
comprehension related comments and questions. Elsa also frequently utilized
praise, afﬁrmation/conﬁrmation, and responding to Kirk’s questions during the
pre-intervention sessions. The table below compares the instances of these three
moves across four pre-intervention and post- intervention sessions.

T_able 21: Comparisons of Other Pre and Post Ipterventimr Moves

 

 

 

 

Pre-Intervention Home Post-Intervention Paired Reading
Reading Phase Phase

Afﬁrmation/Conﬁrmation Afﬁrmation/Conﬁrmation (47)

( 1 l6) Praise (86)

Praise (50) Responds to Child’s

Responds to Child’s Questions/Statements (5)
Questions/Statements (ll) Comments Vocabulary/ Story Events
Connnents on Story Events (14)”

(5) Behavior (1)

Behavior (3) Pre-reading Comment (1)

Welfare (1) Poses a Question (1)

Pre-reading Comment (1)

 

 

As stated in chapter three, in the pre-intervention reading episodes Elsa tended to

give Kirk brief responses to his questions and quickly redirected him to reading

 

2’ For the moves that appear under the afﬁrmation/conﬁrmation move on the Paired Reading side,
the numbers listed do not include the Flemish speech that was not translated in the ﬁrst and second
Paired Reading sessions.

186

the text. For instance, in the ﬁrst pre-intervention session Kirk asked about a
pickle steeple-“where is it?” his mother quickly reread the sentence and said “I
don’t know what a pickle steeple is.”

In the third Paired Reading session, in the midst of a discussion Kirk
asked, “What did he do?” Elsa responded, “Yeah, okay. When he did something
wrong, this wolf does it, high ranking and it means don’t do that again.” In the
fourth Paired Reading session Elsa also took the time to directly address Kirk’s
question, even though she stated that she did not know the answer at ﬁrst. When
Kirk asked “Why?” referring to why a string was tied around the main character’s
waist. Elsa replied, “I don’t know but the spider is saying that. She likes it but she
is in a cocoon and she cannot get out. That is why she says put a string around me.
And they are helping her.” Elsa then redirected Kirk back to the text by asking,
“So what is mentioned here?” Later in that same session Kirk asked, “Why do
they put a string around his waist?” Elsa at ﬁrst ignored his question by stating
“here” and pointing to the text for Kirk to continue. But she then changed her
course by providing an extended answer to his question. She replied, “Good he
wants to join for dinner, don’t you think so? But he can’t because he has no arms
andlegs,andiftheyputastringaroundhiswaistthenhecaneat. Whatdo you
think? Don’t you think so? I think also and those people always allow him to join
for dinner.” Kirk started reading again.

Thus, during the Paired Reading session Elsa supplied more elaborate
answers to Kirk’s questions. For instance, in the third pre-intervention session

Elsa gave a one word response to Kirk’s question, “where snowballs ﬂy?”

187

However, in the last Paired Reading session, even when she did not know the
answer to Kirk’s question ‘Vvhy (is a string tied around spider’s waist)?” she gave
Kirk’s question serious consideration rather than simply saying, “I don’t know”
indicated by her lengthy response. “I don’t know but the spider is saying that. She
likes it but she is in a cocoon and she cannot get out. That is why she says put a
string around me. And they are helping her.” Dining another exchange Elsa not
only provided an answer to his question but also invited him to talk about the text
as well.

Another difference between the pre and post intervention moves was the
emergence of Elsa’s expressions of uncertainty about her vocabulary knowledge
during the Paired Reading sessions. For instance, in the third Paired Reading
session Kirk read “with...” and Elsa responded, “squeals, I think it’s a hug.” In
the fourth Paired Reading session Kirk read “Yams” and Elsa replied, “Yams, I
thinktheseareﬁ'uits,butl’mnotsurewhatitis,butlthinkthisisﬁ'uit.”These
expressions of uncertainty about vocabulary words did not occur in the pre-
intervention sessions probably because in those sessions Elsa’s primary focus was
on supporting Kirk’s decoding skills. Elsa did not take the time to extensively
discuss story events or vocabulary words. As a result of the Paired Reading
training, however, Elsa started producing more comprehension and discussion
moves. This new focus on scaffolding reading discussion and comprehension
probably led Elsa to explain vocabulary meanings to Kirk as well as admit that
her deﬁnitions might not be accurate. In the story A_n_ans_i’s Narrow Waiat (Cabral,

1993), “yams” played a central part in the story’s plot. So, from my perspective as

188

a teacher, it was quite appropriate that Elsa tried to address and enhance Kirk’s
understanding of this term.

The number and types of comprehension-related moves that Elsa made
during the Paired Reading sessions stood out as the most noticeable difference
between the pre and post intervention sessions. During the pre-intervention phase
of this study, Elsa made only a few brief comments about story events. For
instance, in the ﬁrst pre-intervention session, the only comment Elsa made about
the story was “Now here again about the pickles.” During the second interaction
Elsa never made a comment about the story but she did introduce the book by
asking Kirk “What do you think ofthe new book here?” In the third session she
stated, “He acts like an angel.” For the ﬁrst time during the fourth pre-
intervention episode she asked Kirk comprehension questions about the text along
with making one comment about a story event, “wow, what a spook.” Thus Elsa
made a total of four brief connnents about text over the course of four reading
sessions.

During the post-intervention sessions there was an increase in the number
and variety of Elsa’s comprehension related moves. She deﬁned vocabulary,
discussed what was happening in the pictures, and asked Kirk questions during
the reading. Below are samples of comprehension related moves ﬁ'om the third

and fourth Paired Reading transcripts.

 

Table 22: Smles of Elsa’s Commehension Move§ From 3"1 Raid gating

ession

 

Discusses Picture K: With .........
M: Squ/(Points to pictures) {I think

 

 

 

it b a hug}

189

 

 

Table 22 (cont’d)

K: -Squinces//

D: Squeals...

D: Wolf...

M: {Look hedoes it.) High ranking/l
K: Mad...

 

 

 

Explains pictrne, explains D: That]!
concept/term “high ranking”, M: {Okay/yah/ okay/l (Pointing to the
responds to Kirk’s question. pictures) High ranking{See
when helooksaboveandtheotherone
lmksdowmanditmeanshecannot
do that.)
K: {What did he do?)
M: Yah/ okay/l {When he did something
wrong, this wolf does it, high making, and
it means don’t do that again}
D: The other wolves will appriseGQ
Talks about the pictures, M: {Look he also puts his head down}
explains concept of bowing, Bowiny/
responds to question/comment K: (Points to picture) {Dutch}-Not
by Kirk. Translated

 

M: {This one looks up to sayyou can not
doit, andtheotheronelooksdownto
saysorry I did this. You seehelooks
down and that means bowing}
D: It’s head [tap]

 

Table 23: Sﬂple of Elsa’s Comprehension Moves From 4"I Pa_med ReaA’nag

$958121;

 

 

Table 23 (cont’d)
Explaining vocabulary term,
responds to question, and
explains character’s actions,
poses questions.

D: Al string around me(K)
my(K)...waistl waist/I

-my(M)
M: That’s big/ lair/l (Points to picture)
{Waist it means the belly}
D: He said]!
K: Looking at pictures/l {Why do they put
a string around his waist?}
M: {Good he wants tojoin for dinner,
don’t you drink so? but he can’t because he
hasnoarms and legs, and iftheyputa
string around his waist then he can eat.
What do you think? Don’t you drink so? I
think also and those people always allow
him to 10in for dinner} Here//

 

 

Explaining a vocabulary term.

 

D: I love/ was
K: Yams

M: Yams (Pointing to picture) Okay/l Let’s
begin ﬁ'om- {Yams, I think these are his,
but I’m not surewhat it isbutlthinkthis
ﬁ'uit.}{0kay let’s start again from the

beginning-}

 

190

 

 

 

OT able 23 (cont’d)

 

Referring to pictures, D: We’ll eat some(K) sss(M) soon/l

t commenting on story event. M: Hmhm/l (Turns page and talks about
Table 24 (cont’d) pictures in) {He can join
h for dinner. }

 

Checking comprehension, D: Around my. wait(K)

discussing the pictures, M: Waist/ good/l Waist {You see?}
responding to Kirk’s questions, K: Uhuh/l {Why}

explaining cause and effect M: (Pointing to and talking about pictures)
1' element in story, and identifying {I don’t know but the spider is saying that.
the character’s name. She likes it but she is in a cocoon and she
cannot get out. That is why she says put a
string around me. And they are helping her.
So what is mentioned here?}

"1 D: Told(K)

-Tug(M)

0 K: Tug the. . .st

D: String...w-(K) when] the...yamsl

v are ...... done/l Then] I’ll! come]

back/l

M: Hmhm/l We ’11 see what it is/ Wow/

3 okay/ here//

K: ...Yancy

Is M:{That’s Anansi, that’s the name of the
spider.}

K: Anansi. . .

 

 

 

 

that emerged in the post-intervention sessions were those related to initiating and
keeping the timing of duct reading. To signal duet reading and maintain
synchrony, Elsa would follow the Paired Reading practice of counting to three or
remind Kirk to “say it altogether.” After providing a word Elsa often said,
“repeat” to prompt Kirk to mimic her correction.

Since Kirk often chose long books, including chapter books, for Paired
Reading, three of the four videotaped Paired Reading sessions began in the
middle of a story rather than at the beginning. During the ﬁrst Paired Reading
episode Kirk and Elsa had a short discussion in Flemish about where to resume
their reading. At the outset of the second session Elsa brieﬂy talked about the

pictures before she and Kirk began duet reading. In the third Paired Reading

191

episode there was no introductory discussion at all, the pair simply began reading
where they had left off the day before. In the ﬁnal videotaped Paired Reading
session Elsa made a brief introductory comment, “Look, that’s a nice book,”
before Kirk started reading the title. At the end of the third and forum Paired
Reading sessions Elsa concluded the reading by asking Kirk questions about the
story and summarizing story events as she ﬂipped back through the pictmes. This
behavior contrasted with the pair’s pre-intervention tendency to conclude the
reading by simply closing the book.
General Tenor of the Interactions

Settmg' and mm] interaction. The Paired Reading interactions took
place in the same location as the Home Reading exchanges, at the kitchen table.
As before Elsa sometimes held her two-year old son in her lap as she and Kirk
engaged in Pair Reading. While the physical setting of the Home Reading and
Paired Reading sessions termined the same, the personal interaction between Kirk
and Elsa seemed more relaxed and harmonious. There were no signs of tension or
frustration; no instances in which Elsa raised her voice or Kirk resisted his
mother’s correction attempts. Kirk never pushed his mother’s hand away from the
text as he did in a couple of pre-intervention sessions. The reading exchange
seemed less choppy and more ﬂuid than the pre-intervention sessions because
there were less pauses and correction interruptions.

Kirk and Elsa smiled at each other in the beginning of the ﬁrst session as

they prepared to perform Paired Reading with the book The Knight at Dawn
(Osborne, 1993) for the ﬁrst time in front of the camera. Kirk and Elsa were

192

sitting very close to each other, with Kirk leaning in front of his mother’s
shoulder. Kirk, rather than Elsa, tracked the text by pointing to every word on the
page with his index ﬁnger. Although I noticed a problem with Kirk and Elsa’s
synchrony, their reSponses to each other remained positive throughout the
interaction. At the end of the session Elsa turned and complimented her son on
reading difﬁcult words on the page. Even though Kirk was reading a chapter
book, Kirk and Elsa were completing the pages of this book at a steadier, more
ﬂuent pace than Kirk read the pages ofthe easier books he had selected for the
Home Reading sessions. Kirk remained very alert and attentive throughout the
entire session.

At the beginning of the second Paired Reading session all three of us
shared a laugh about the title of the story ﬁe Wolves Ate My Homework
(McNulty, 2000). Kirk and Elsa sat next to each other while Elsa’s youngest son
sat in her lap. Kirk appeared highly motivated to read this book independently.
Even though the book was challenging, Kirk tapped for solo reading very
ﬁequently throughout the session. I interrupted to remind Elsa and Kirk to track
the text and Kirk started tracing his ﬁnger under every word throughout the
reminder of the session. He occasionally rested his head on his hand, in this
session, but then he would perk up and sit up straight as he focused on reading the
words on the page independently.

Kirk smiled as he tapped his mother to begin the third Paired Reading
session. Mother and son were sitting side by side. Kirk was sitting upright and

traced his ﬁngers under the word. In the pre-intervention sessions Kirk would stOp

193

at an unknown word and wait for his mother to prompt him or supply the word. I
noticed in this session that when Kirk came upon unknown words he tried to
decode and nuke correct guesses. As with the other Paired Reading sessions he
seemed quite attentive and motivated to read solo when he was able. Kirk and
Elsa maintained their synchrony well during duet reading. Four minutes into the
reading there was a slight change in the interaction as Elsa started tracking the
text instead of Kirk. When Elsa discussed terms and talked about the pictures,
Kirk raised his own questions. Elsa gave extended responses to Kirk’s queries.
Their focus was not relegated to only the words, but they were also actively
engaged in comprehending the story. Near the end of the reading, Elsa reverted
back to a parental listening stance on a few occasions, by not starting duet reading
when Kirk made an error. But for the most part she closely followed Paired
Reading procedures during this session.

By the fourth session, Elsa has resumed her old habit of controlling the
book by opening it, creasing down the pages, and tracking the text for Kirk. Kirk
began to open the book, but his mother gently slid it away and opened it for him.
In this story, Elsa discussed story events on almost every page. This was the ﬁrst
Paired Reading session that Kirk yawned a few times and appeared tired, yet he
remained very focused on the reading, tapped to read solo often, and asked a
question about the story which Elsa answered.

Reading for mean—mg' . The impression that was conveyed in the Paired
Reading tapes was that reading was treated as an occasion for obtaining meaning

or understanding about the story’s subject matter. In each Paired Reading session

194

Elsa talked with Kirk about the text and in the last two sessions Kirk himself
raised questions. Kirk might have felt ﬂee to talk in these later sessions because I
reﬁained from coaching during the last two interactions. Throughout the Paired
Reading sessions Elsa encouraged Kirk’s participation by asking him questions
and providing extended responses to his questions. The atmosphere of each Paired
Reading session seemed more comfortable and relaxed than the Home Reading
sessions.

Kirk’s attitude. Kirk seemed more attentive, alert, and at ease in every
Paired Reading episode than he had been dining the pre-intervention interactions.
He smiled at the beginning of every videotaped Paired Reading event. After the
Paired Reading Program, Kirk’s recreational reading attitude on The Elementm
Reading Attitude Survey (McKenna and Kear, 1990) had increased ﬁom twenty-
ﬁve in January to thirty in May and his academic reading score increased from
twenty-nine in January to thirty-nine in May. Both were signiﬁcant increases
(McKenna and Kear, 1990). His combined attitude score had increased ﬁom ﬁfty-
four in January to sixty-nine in May moving him from the thirty-ﬁfth to seventy-
ﬁfth percentile for second grade students. In May, Kirk circled a happy face in
response to the survey’s question “How do you feel about reading for ﬁm at
home?” and the happiest face for “How do you feel about reading your school
books?”

After the Paired Reading Program Kirk also completed a survey ﬁ'om the
NARSC manual entitled Paired Reading: What Do You Think (Brailsford et al.,

1998). Kirk completed this survey after school in my classroom. The survey and

195

his underlined responses are indicated on Table 24 below. Table 25, which
displays Elsa’s answers to the same survey, immediately follows Table 24. There
are some differences in their assessments of Paired Reading’s effect on Kirk’s
reading attitude and comprehension.

Table 24: Kirk’s Pa_ired Readiag Survey Respons__e§

 

 

Are you...

Reading more about the same reading less

Staying with the same kind of book about the same reading different kinds of books
Understanding books more about the same understanding books less

Table 25 (cont’d)

Are you...

Lees conﬁdent in reading about the same more conﬁdent in reading

More willi_r_r_g to read about the same less willing to read

Less interested in reading about the same more interested in reading
Enioyingreading more about the same enjoying reading less

When reading out loud, are you...

Making more mistakes about the same making less mistakes

Kgping a steadier ﬂow about the same stopping and starting more
Reading in a lifeless, boring way about the some reading with more life and
Would you like to...

Continue Paired Reading as often as now? _
Continue Paired Reading but not so often? L
Continue reading practice but in a different way? _
Table 24 (cont’d)

On the back of the paper, please add any other comments about the usefulness of Paired Reading,
your progress, etc. No response by Kirk.

Table 25: Elsa’s Pa_ired Readmg' Survey Reamnses

 

 

 

Is your student...

Reading more about the same reading less

Staying with the same kind of book about the same reading different kinda of books
Understanding books more about the same understanding books less
Is your student...

Less conﬁdent in reading about the same more conﬁdent in reading

Mare willing to read about the same less willing to read

Less interested in reading about the same more interested in reading
Enjoying reading more about the same enjoying reading less

When reading out loud, is your student...

Making more mistakes about the same making less mistakes
Ke_eping a steadier ﬂow about the same stopping and starting more

Reading in a lifeless, boring way about the same readingwith more life and

 

Would you like to...
Continue Paired Reading as often as now?

196

Continue Paired Reading but not so often?
Continue reading practice but in a different way?
Tutor in another area, like math or writing? _)_(_

On the back of the paper, please add any other comments about the usefulness of Paired Reading,
your progress, etc. Elsa ’s response: Reading more= -on his own

-more spontaneous

-Iittle ?
We would like to continue Paired Reading as often as now. But we would also like to try it on
other areas where Kirk has problems with

While Kirk’s comments about Paired Reading were favorable, his
mother’s comments were even more positive. Unlike Kirk she noted that he was
reading diﬁ‘erent books and seemed more interested in reading. Both Kirk and
Elsa thought that Kirk was reading with more expression and making fewer
mistakes.

Elsa’s Post-Iratervention ReﬂugaConceptions aad Beliefs

In May I visited Kirk and Elsa’s home for the last time to show Elsa
videotapes of two Paired Reading sessions, record her reaction to the viewings,
and interview her about her post-intervention beliefs and conceptions of the
reading process. I showed Elsa videotapes of the third pre-intervention and post-
intervention sessions. I chose the third pre-intervention session because I believed
it represented the best Home Reading session in terms of Kirk’s performance; I
then matched it with the third Paired Reading session. Elsa watched the pre-
intervention videotape ﬁrst. Afterwards she commented and responded to my
interview questions. Next she viewed the post-intervention session, commented,
and responded to my additional questions. Her verbal responses were audiotaped.

I concluded my visit by asking Elsa to ﬁll out a written Paired Reading Survey

197

form, collecting Kirk’s Paired Reading Journal, and giving him a book as a gift
for his participation in my teacher-research project.

In her reaction to viewing the pre-intervention tapes, Elsa described what
reading at home was like for herselfand her son prior to participating in the
Paired Reading Program. Her reaction acknowledged her phonics-based
orientation during the Home Reading sessions as well as her singular focus on
scaffolding Kirk’s word recognition skills at the expense of other aspects of the
reading process. She stated:

Oh, my account is that we were more, or maybe I was more

concentrated on the letters than on the pictures of the book. Oh it

wasveryimportant forKirkbutIcouldn’tseeit,sothatwasthe

main thing that I noticed. And he tried very much (laughs), Kirk.

But I was more for the words you know, to read. And that, yes,

that’s the main thing that I can see now on video. Yes.

Elsa’s description of what reading at home was like after the Paired
Reading Program emphasized the important role that discussion and talking about
the story assumed in their post-intervention interactions. As a result of the Paired
Reading training Elsa stated:

Now we are doing it’s, discussing at ﬁrst or talking about the

pictures, about what the title of the book. Telling things about it,

even when it’s not the story of the book but what he thinks about

the title, the subject. And then when he doesn’t know the word, he

looks it up in the pictures, maybe he can ﬁnd it or in the context.

Elsa still believed in the importance of decoding or “analyzing the words.”
However, after Paired Reading she also realized that Kirk needed to develop

additional methods of ﬁguring out unknown words. She pointed out that before

198

receiving the Paired Reading training she only focused on the word recognition
aspect of the reading process.

It was okay the words, and Kirk please words, the letters (laughs).

When he couldn’t read a word I told him. . .with what starts the

word, which letter? So he could analyze the words and then he

knows the words. But it was wow, I (laughs) now can see that it’s

not only, it’s also analyzing the word, with the letters, but uh there

are a lot of words, starting with the same letters, so and if he can

look itup inthepictures, thenheknowswhat it is. Wow. Because

it’s, I think, it’s also that afterwards he reads more ﬂuent, because

he feels more comfortable...Both of us are interested in it. And

then he can, it’s like when he’s looking at the book it’s not only the

words, but its one page, pictures and words, and then, wow.

Her statements reﬂect a movement away from a belief in a phonics-only
approach towards a belief in a method that incorporates other reading strategies
such as looking at the pictures to decipher the words in the story. Unlike her pre-
intervention belief statements, her comments after the Paired Reading Program
highlight the importance of promoting a child’s understanding during the reading
process. Elsa’s conception of the reading process had changed ﬁ'om being just
about decoding the word to focusing on the meaning of the story as well as
enjoyment. She talked about how being “interested” in the story helped them to
focus on more than just the words but also the whole “page, pictures and words.”
Her post-intervention comments are consistent with the interactive view that
learning to decode and reading for meaning both play an important role in
enabling one to read independently and ﬂuently.

Shortly after her statements above, Elsa was shown the videotape of the

third Paired Reading session. In comparing her son’s reading performance before

and after the Paired Reading Program Elsa stated:

199

Oh I noticed that Kirk was more interested in reading the book. At
ﬁrst it was more looking at what the story is about, but once he got
the story it went very well with us reading and he had the attention
of me. So we talked about it. What I did wrong is sometimes I put
my hands on the pictures [referring to when she tracked the text].

Elsa remembered her earlier reservations about the effectiveness of Paired
Reading’s duet reading requirement. She explained:

And because of both were talking about the book is about, he read

more ﬂuently, wow. That’s a big difference from the ﬁrst. I mean I

had some problems with the reading together. But I mean, now

okay. After working- but it was still fair that only, that Kirk has the

feeling we’re talking about the story. That was a big

difference. . .Before the program, and we were reading together,

which was really like uh, Kirk you have to read, I listen and it was

more you have to tell me the story and not both. It was more like

learn to read instead of enjoying it. Oh yes. Oh yes. A big

difference.
Although Elsa’s View of the duct reading procedure became more positive near
the end of program, she clearly felt that the discussion component of the program
made the greatest impact on improving their home reading interaction. She
mentioned the utility of adding discussion throughout the audio-taped interview,
but only mentioned duet reading one time, saying, “I mean I had some problems
with the reading together. But, now okay. After working.” One reason for her
reservation about duet reading might have been that she found it difﬁcult to
master at ﬁrst. On a second written survey cited below Elsa wrote about the
challenge of adopting the Paired Reading technique, writing-“in the beginning it
was not easy.”

Elsa credited the program for improving Kirk’s enjoyment and interest in

reading. She felt that his improved attitude towards reading enhanced his

200

conﬁdence in his reading ability and in turn strengthened his word recognition
skills. She alluded to Kirk’s tendency in the pre-intervention reading episodes to
miscue the same word repeatedly, contrasting this with his post-intervention
ability to correctly identify a word after one initial miscue.

What was amazing, the ﬁrst video that I now saw now, Kirk was
not sitting still. It was like okay I have to do this. I have to learn to
read. But now he didn’t have the feeling that he’s learning
something. He’s doing it. Joy! I have the attention. (Laughs) And
sohewasmoreconﬁdentwiththereadmgthenTheﬁrstpages
and the last pages was also a difference, on his own. Just knowing
what’s the story about and he knows the story. He knows the
words that he used before. And then he uh he use it or reused it
afterwards. He had it in his mind. Wow, mmm, great. That’s
wonderﬁil.

Elsa concluded our interview by articulating her belief that Paired Reading was a
“more pleasant way” to help Kirk with reading than her prior pre-intervention
methods.

Another assessment of Elsa’s view of the Paired Reading Method was

acquired by asking her to ﬁll out a Paired Reading Survey by Topping and

 

Whiteley (1990) entitled Paired Reading: What Is It Like?, after the
aforementioned audio-taped interview. Her responses to this second Paired
Reading survey are listed below.

Table 26: Elsa’s Second Paired Reading Survey Response

 

 

Elsa indicated the following about the Paired Reading experience:

It was hard to ﬁnd a good place to read.

The Record Sheet (reading journal) was a help.

It was easy to get books.

It was hard to ﬁnd time.

It was hard to do.

I liked doing it. -To this response Elsa added “now but in the beginning it was not easy. ”

Elsa indicated Paired Reading has led to:

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Table 26 (cont’d)

Getting better at all kinds of reading.

I want to go on doing Paired Reading.
Liking reading better.

Getting on better with each other

I will tell other pwple about Paired Reading.

In response to the question-Can you tell :3 one thing we can do to make Paired Reading
better? Elsa wrote: The demonstration was too positive in the beginnings so that it was almost
“unbelievable ” to reach the goal of the program. But once started the program with the coach-
student-morn it started to be realistic and so we reach the goal. So the video wasn ’t a great help
for me.

While Elsa clearly thought that the discussion aspect was the most
beneﬁcial part of the Paired Reading method my comparisons of the pre and post—
intervention sessions led me to conclude that both the discussion and duet reading
played an equally important role in improving the tenor of the home reading
interactions. The duet reading gave Kirk the support he needed without detracting
from the ﬂuency of the story. The importance of supporting the oral reading
ﬂuency of struggling, ESL, students has been cited by Li and Nes (2001). These
researchers studied the effects of utilizing the Paired Reading Program with four
ESL students in the school setting. Li and Nes pointed out:

For ESL students who have limited English proﬁciency, paired
reading has a nmnber of advantages over traditional classroom
reading instruction. First, paired reading reduces students’ pressure
and anxiety, which they often experience in reading classes at
school. ..Second, paired reading gives ESL students more
opportunity to practice reading in a new language. ESL students
with limited English proﬁciency need constant modeling and
feedback. . .In addition, the intervener varied the reading speed
according to the difﬁculty level of the reading material and the
reading level of the students. Thus, the students always felt the
challenge, which was needed to stimulate their greater eﬂon. At
the same time, the challenge was not so overwhelming that it
ﬁ'ustrated the students. (Li and Nes, 200] , p.59)

202

For Kirk, the duet reading component of the Paired Reading technique seemed to
reduce the anxiety and ﬁ'ustration that was apparent during the pre—intervention
sessions when he was strongly encouraged by Elsa to only focus on the phonemic
and word recognition features of print. As I stated to Elsa in one of the coaching
sessions, engaging in duet reading seemed to provide a “safety net” that allowed
Kirk to continue reading and focus on the message of the print, even if he was not
able to immediately identify all the words on the page.

I concur with Elsa’s interpretation that adding discussion to the interaction
had a positive inﬂuence on Kirk’s attitude and interest in reading at home.
Moreover talking dm'ing their reading conveyed the idea that the reading process
was ultimately about deriving meaning from text. Discussion also encouraged
Kirk to rely on the context of the story to assist his word recognition efforts.
Bergin, Laney, and Draper (1994) found that parents who utilized discussion and
semantic-based correction techniques stimulated a child’s interest, enjoyment, and
understanding of the story; improved their child’s aﬁ'ective demeanor during the
interaction; and enhanced their child’s reading ﬂuency. They wrote:

This study suggests that pairs who view the child’s reading as a

source of ﬁm, keep the story ﬂowing without letting the child get

bogged down in decoding (by using semantic-oriented rather than

decoding-oriented correction tactics), encourage questions about

the story, and express humor while reading have children who are

more ﬂuent and more positive about reading. (Bergin, Laney,

Draper, 1994, p. 72)

Paired Reading enabled Kirk and Elsa to focus on the meaning of stories rather

than focusing their attention solely on the grapho-phonemic elements of text. This

change represents a transformation in Elsa’s thinking concerning what the focus

203

of the reading process should be. Prior to Paired Reading, Elsa’s focused only on
helping Kirk identify the words in the story. After Paired Reading, Elsa
recognized the importance of helping Kirk comprehend story events.
Overview of Luis and Lola’s Paired Reading Experience

Partaking in the Paired Reading Program made a difference in Lola’s non-
verbal listening behaviors. Dun'ng Paired Reading Lola sat where she could see
the text at all times and she paid closer attention to what Luis read. She also added
praise to her listening strategy. There was a great deal of consistency between the
tenor and ﬂow of the Paired Reading and Home Reading sessions in Luis and
Lola’s home. Providing words was Lola’s primary error correction strategy during
the Home Reading exchanges and remained so in the Paired Reading episodes.
Lola’s use of the word supply move made both kinds of interactions ﬂow quite
smoothly. The tenor of the Home Reading and Paired Reading sessions were quite
similar. Luis and Lola’s demeanor during both the Home Reading and Paired
Reading sessions conveyed the idea that reading was a task to get over with as
soon as possible rather than an experience to enjoy. There was little evidence that
Paired Reading inﬂuenced or changed Lola’s attitude or conception of the reading
process. Lola’s previous use of word supply as her primary error correction
strategy and my failure to convince Lola to signiﬁcantly engage Luis in
discussion were two factors that minimized the differences between Home
Reading and Paired Reading interactions in Lola and Luis’ home.

Lo___la’s Paired Reading Rgppnse and Error Correction Strategies

 

 

204

The moves that Lola used to respond to Luis’ hesitations and pauses
during the Paired Reading Program in order of highest ﬁequency were: providing
words, wait-time, directing where to read, repeating a word that Luis read, and
prompting Luis to correct his own error. The table below compares Lola’s pre and
post-intervention error response moves and lists the total number of times each
move occurred across the four, videotaped Paired Reading sessions.

Table 27: Comparison of Pre and Post Error Correction Moves

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pre-Intervention Home Post-Intervention Paired Reading
Reading Phase Phase

Table 27 (cont’d)

Providing Words (122) Providing Words (92)

Wait-time (68) Wait-time (20)

Repeats Correction (2) Repeats Word Child Has Read (1)
Models Part of the Word

(2)

Table

Pointing to the Word (1)

Repeats a Word Luis Read

(1) Directs Where to Read (3)

Word Question Prompt (l) Prompts Child to Correct Word (1)

 

 

 

The table shows that Lola’s most ﬁ'equent pre-intervention prompts of providing
words and wait-time continued to be her most utilized error response moves
during the Paired Reading Program. The remaining error correction moves cited
on both the pre and post-intervention sides of the Table occurred infrequently and
there was a reduction in the types of moves utilized during Paired Reading.

There was also very little difference in Lola’s pre and post-intervention
use of wait-time. In both the pre and post intervention sessions Lola’s wait-time
averaged about 2.5 seconds. As stated earlier, this factor indicated a coaching

failure on my part. During the videotaping of the Paired Reading sessions, it

205

sounded to me as though Lola was pausing for four seconds, so I never intervened
to instruct her to lengthen her pauses. After reviewing the tapes and actually
timing the pauses it was clear that she only met Paired Reading’s required wait-
time length once, when she paused for ﬁve seconds in the third Paired Reading
session.

Other non-error related moves that Lola used during the Paired Reading
sessions were: praise, voicing concerns about her reading skills or the book level,
expressing uncertainty, discussing a story event, responding to her son’s
comment, and responding to her son’s laughter. The table below compares Lola’s
non-error related pre and post intervention moves.

Table 28: Cm'ison of Other Preand Post-Intervention Moves

 

 

 

 

Pre-Intervention Home Post-Intervention Paired Reading
Reading Phase Phase
Comment/Direction! -----—--
Comrnand (7)
Expresses Uncertainty (2) Expresses Uncertainty (2)
Responds to Child’s Responds to Child’s Statement (1)
Statement (1) Poses a Question (I)
Poses a Question (1) Praise (40)
Voices Concern Skills/Book Level (4)
Discusses Content (I)
Responds to Child’s Laughter (I)

 

 

The greatest difference between the two intervention phases was the post-
intervention occurrence of praise, which was a key Paired Reading training
procedure. In the ﬁrst Paired Reading session Lola did not adopt this practice until
coached. At ﬁrst she expressed embarrassment at praising Luis in front of me, but
at my urging she reluctantly began to praise him as the Paired Reading technique

required. She ended up praising him three times in the ﬁrst Paired Reading

206

session and dramatically increased her instances of praise throughout the three
remaining sessions. Luis often responded to her praise of “good Luis” by politely
saying “thank you.” During the ﬁrst Paired Reading session, Lola also resisted my
suggestion to engage Luis in discussion throughout the reading, as the Paired
Reading method recommended. Lola explained that she did not discuss the text
because she did not understand many of the words in the story. I sat down next to
her and provided her with deﬁnitions of several words that she had questions
about.

As in the Home Reading sessions, she twice expressed uncertainty about
her pronunciation of words during a couple of Paired Reading sessions. For
instance, in the ﬁrst Paired Reading session, Lola said, “chuckle” but Luis replied,
“chickle” and Lola laughed and softly said, “I don ’t lmow.” Once more in the
second Paired Reading session Lola read, ”Tipitee”,(Mrs. Tiptoe) Luis repeated,
and then Lola stated, “oh, I don’t know.” Lola also expressed concerns about the
difﬁculty or length of the text. For instance, at the beginning of the third Paired
Reading session Lola ﬂipped through the pages of An American Tail: Fievel Goes
1&5; (Swenson, 1991) as Luis began to read the title. Lola quickly interrupted
him and said, “Wait, wait. The print is very snull.” I reminded her that she did not
have to read the whole book during this one session. She said, “I think this book is
longer than we planned.” I replied, “Stop whenever you feel like it” and Luis and
Lola read the title together. At the end of the last Paired Reading session Lola
expressed concern to Luis about the amount of words on the page and suggested

that they stop the reading session at that point.

207

During the third Paired Reading session, Lola did initiate one, brief
discussion in Spanish about a story event. At the time that this discussion move
occurred, Luis and Lola had just ﬁnished duet reading a page of the story.
However, while this exchange was taking place I did not know what she was
saying to Luis since she was speaking in Spanish:

D: Mice right were we want them]! Cat R. Waul was saying to his gang]!
They(L) They(M) believed all our lies about Green River// And once we

get there! we’ll be so nice to the little critters// They helped us build a Cat
R. Waul...empire// And he laughed// Their very own mousetrap/l

M: {Themouseistryingto trapthemi-Thecatistryingtotrapthemice.}

M: {Did you understand?}

L: Yes (Luis nods yes)

M: Good/ okay/l

D: The little mouse! landed safely on soft/ desert] sand//[Tap]

Although this was a modest, one time occurrence, its appearance suggested that,
with better coaching support and advice, Lola nright have produced even more
discussion moves. The fact that she also asked if Luis understood what she was
talking about was another, positive, new move that Lola employed to assess Luis’
comprehension. In the last Paired Reading session Luis laughed at a sentence that
he found humorous in the story and Lola responded by smiling. This instance of
laughter was the ﬁrst in all eight sessions, and was quite atypical of the
disinterested feeling Luis conveyed during the pre-intervention sessions. While
new moves such as discussion, assessing comprehension, and even an instance of
laughter emerged during Paired Reading sessions, they did not occur ﬁequently
enough to render a signiﬁcant, qualitative difference between the pre and post-

intervention sessions.

208

Like the pre-intervention sessions, Luis and Lola began their Paired
Reading interactions by immediately reading the title of the book and proceeding
to the next page. There were no introductory or concluding conversations about
the book. Luis and Lola completed the whole book during the second Paired
Reading session. In the other three sessions, Lola would conclude the reading by
simply telling me when she wanted to step. For instance in session three she
brieﬂy spoke to Luis in Spanish before telling me “Okay, we want to stop here.”
At that point Luis closed the book and the session was over without any
discussion or review of what had been read.

The remaining moves that Lola utilized during the post-intervention phase
were ones that supported the Paired Reading procedure, such as counting to
initiate duet reading. Like Elsa, Lola would periodically revert to a parental
listening stance by not immediately beginning duet reading after an error. In the
second Paired Reading session for instance, Lola corrected a proper noun without
picking up duet reading:

L: Triptoe

M: m

L: Tipitee/l

M: Oh I don’t know//

L: At same class dance/l Push up/ said Rose/l Jumping Jack/ said Jack// Hot
cocoa! said Rex// The class/ warmed up// They did push u ups/I They did jump a
Jliﬂflsl/r/mping jacks/l Rex warmed up too// [tap]

In the excerpt above Lola might have predicted that the proper noun would be the
only word in the next few sentences that Luis would have difﬁctu with, and thus

reﬁ'ained from starting duet reading. However, after Luis’ miscue with the words

209

“jumping jacks” she immediately began the duet reading. For the most part, Lola
and Luis followed the program’s oral reading procedures well. After receiving
coaching advice Lola remembered to praise Luis at appropriate times and the pair
smoothly moved back and forth between duct and solo reading.
General Ten_or of the Interactions

Settm' g and mgnal interaction. The Paired Reading interactions took
place in the same location as the Home Reading sessions, on the living room
couch. Keeping in mind Lola’s pre-intervention tendency to sit far from the book,
I recommended that Luis and Lola engage in Paired Reading in the kitchen, at a
table. However, Lola stated that they would be more comfortable on the living
room couch, so all of the videotaped Paired Reading interactions occurred there as
well.

The couch proved to be an appropriate place for the Paired Reading
sessions because, unlike in the pre-intervention phase, Lola and Luis sat close
together, holding the book between them. Since Lola quickly adopted the training
video’s suggestion that “pairs generally sit side-by-side with the reading material
placed equally between student and tutor”(Brailsford et. al., 1998, p. 44), she paid
much better attention to Luis’ reading efforts during Paired Reading than she had
during the Home Reading sessions. Her eyes followed every word during duet
reading and solo reading. Therefore she did not ignore Luis’ nonsensical errors as
frequently as she had throughout the pre-intervention phase.

In the ﬁrst Paired Reading session, Luis and Lola started off reading in the

middle of the story since they were starting from where they had left oﬂ‘ the day

210

before. Lola held the book in her hand and tracked the text with her ﬁnger, as she
and Luis read together, word-by-word in a dull, monotone voice. I interrupted
after a while to provide coaching advice in response to Luis not reading. After the
pair resumed reading I interrupted on three more occasions: twice to compliment
the pair on their duet reading and once to help them get back on track when they
got out of sync again. At the end of a page I reminded Lola to slow down a bit
because she was reading ahead of Luis. By the end of this ﬁrst session both Luis
and Lola appeared tired. It did not seem like they enjoyed the story very much
However, Lola and I shared a laugh at the end of the session about her response
when I misinterpreted what she had said:
T= Teacher
T: Any questions// Do you do you want to try one more page//
M: No I’m ﬁnished//
T: Okay/l Okayl/ ...... Oh you want you want to ﬁnish or are you-
M: No// Just ﬁshed
T: Oh you’re ﬁnished (Laughs) Okay/ okay//
M: (Waves her hand, leans back and laughs)
Lola said, “just ﬁnished” in a way that implied that the reading had “ﬁnished her
off.” I interpreted her joke as meaning that the session had not turned out as well
as she had anticipated it would.

By the second Paired Reading session, Luis and Lola improved upon their
Paired Reading technique. The book that Luis read for that session was an “easy-
to-read” book, entitled Rex and Lilly: Playtime (Brown, 1995). Lola and Luis
seemed more relaxed throughout this and the following Paired Reading sessions.

At the outset of session two they were sitting close together and Lola was smiling

211

as they began reading together. Unlike in the pre-intervention tapes, Lola
monitored Luis’ reading very closely, looking at every word as he read. They
smoothly switched back and forth between duct and solo reading. Lola read in a
monotone voice, Luis read with slightly more expression. Once the reading was
completed both Lola and Luis looked up at the camera. Lola smiled, Luis has a
serious look on his face. The reading ended without discussion. At the outset of
the third session Lola expressed concern at the size of print and length of the
book. Besides the fact that the books that Luis selected for the third and fourth
Paired Reading sessions were more difﬁcult, these sessions were quite similar in
tone to the second session.

Reading as work. Lola and Luis related to each other in a comfortable,
respectful manner. Lola smiled a bit more in the post-intervention phase than she
had during the pre-intervention interactions. In the Paired Reading training
meeting Lola intimated that she would do anything to help her son. Her smiles
might have expressed the satisfaction she felt at doing something extra to help
Luis. The two correctly applied the reading portion of the Paired Reading method
but the overall tenor of the sessions remained uneventful. As with the pre-
intervention sessions, Lola and Luis did not seem to be deriving much joy nor was
their interest stimulated by the books they were reading. They dealt with Paired
Reading in a mechanical, task-oriented manner. They quickly adapted to the oral
reading aspects of the program, but never really adopted the comprehension

component. Besides a brief discussion in the third session and a laugh shared

212

between Luis and Lola in the fourth session, there was no conversation about or
reaction to story events on the part of either Lola or Luis.

Luis’attitude. Luis took his reading seriously, and worked hard on the
words throughout every session. One main difference between his pre and post
reading behavior was that Luis never appealed for Lola’s assistance during any
Paired Reading session. Luis’ need to appeal for help was eliminated by the safety
net of duct reading. Luis did not display much visible interest in any of the stories
that he read during Paired Reading, however, he was clearly motivated to select
challenging books for these interactions. As in the pre-intervention sessions, Luis
never initiated a discussion nor posed a question about story events. Luis’
demeanor seemed the same. His approach to the reading interaction was serious
and obedient, but there were no overt displays of interest in the stories that he was
reading. He frequently tapped to read solo, demonstrating an admirable goal to
read independently.

Once again, his seemingly disinterested demeanor on the videotapes
contradicted his responses on The Elementag Reading Attitude Survey
(McKenna and Kear, 1990). Luis increased his recreational reading score from
thirty-six in January to forty in May. He increased his academic reading score
ﬁ'om thirty-three in January to forty in May, which indicated a signiﬁcant
improvement. After the Paired Reading Program Luis scored the highest points
possible on both the recreational and academic sections of the survey, which
placed him in the ninety-ninth percentile for second grade students. He

accomplished this score by circling every single happiest face on the survey. The

213

 

 

 

 

 

di

discrepancy between his survey performance and his demeanor during Paired
Reading meant that either Luis was uncharacteristically subdued the four times I
visited his house or he simply circled the happiest face for every attitude item
without considering the question. Perhaps he responded the way he thought his
teacher wanted him to in an attempt to show his appreciation for receiving extra
reading support. Perhaps the Paired Reading program did increase his attitude
towards reading, even though his survey responses might have been somewhat
exaggerated.

After the Paired Reading Program Luis also completed a Paired Reading
survey item the NARSC manual (Brailsford, 1998) entitled Paired Reading: What
Do You Think. The survey and his underlined responses to survey questions
appear below. Table 29 reveals Lola’s responses to the same survey.

Table 29: Luis’ Paired Reading Survey Responses

 

 

 

 

 

 

Are you...

Rea_d_ir_rg more about the same reading less

Staying with the same kind of book about the same reading diﬂ‘erent kinds of books
Understanding books more about the same understanding books less

Are you...

Less confident in reading about the same Are you...

Reading more about the same reading less

Staying with the same kind of book about the same reading diﬂ‘erent kinds of books
Understanding books more about the same tmderstanding books less

Are you...

Less conﬁdent in reading about the same more conﬁdent in reading

More willing to read about the same less willing to read

Less interested in reading about the same more interested in readigg
Enjgyj' ‘gg reading more about the same enjoying reading less

When reading out low, are you...

Making more mistakes about the same making less mistakes
Keepingg steadier ﬂow about the same stopping and starting more
Reading in a lifeless, boring way about the same reading with more life and

Would you like to...

Continue Paired Reading as often as nov/I __
Continue Paired Reading but not so often? L
Continue reading practice but in a different way?

214

Table 29 (cont’d)
On the back of the paper, please add any other comments about the usefulness of Paired Reading,
your progress, etc. No response by Luis.

Table 30: Lol_a’s Paired Readng Survey Responses

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is your student...

Reading more about the same reading less

Staying with the same kind of book about the same reading different kinds of books
Understanding books more about the same understanding books less

Is your student...

Leas conﬁdent in reading about the same more conﬁdent in reading
More willingto rea_r_l about the same less willing to read

Less interested in reading about the same more interested in reading
Enjoying reading more about the same enjoying reading less
When reading out load, is your student...

Making more mistakes about the same makingless mistakes
Kgping a steadier ﬂow about the same stopping and starting more
Table 30 (cont’d)

Reading in a lifeless, boring way about the same reading with more life and
Would you like to...

Continue Paired Reading as often as now? __)_(~_

Continue Paired Reading but not so often?
Continue reading practice but in a different way?
On the back of the paper, please add any other comments about the usefulness of Paired Reading,
your progress, etc. No response by Lola

Luis and Lola’s survey responses indicated that they held a positive attitude
towards their experience in the Paired Reading Program

While it is important to measure participant attitudes towards home
reading programs, survey data and participant self-report can be problematic,
because participants often feel positive about any extra support provided by the
teacher or school. For instance, T oomey (1987) has described the tendency of
parents to express positive attitudes about programs even when formal evaluation
indicates the programs had little to no effect on a student’s reading performance.

Citing several studies, Toomey writes:

215

Gray (1975) in a review of British intervention studies points out

that parental enthusiasm for the intervention is often not supported

by ‘objective’ evidence on the children’s learning. Toomey

(1986a) found parental reports of the eﬂ‘ectiveness of home

reading activities well predictive of reading success, but pointed

out that parents may be witnessing reading development, which is

also likely to be the result of in-school instruction. This points up

the need for triangulation in assessment of the success of programs

(Winter, 1985). (Toomey, 1987, p. 26).
Luis and Lola probably truly held positive views of their Paired Reading
experience and the extra attention given to them by the classroom teacher.
However, the videotaped data demonstrated that any positive feelings generated
by the Paired Reading experience did not dramatically change Luis and Lola’s
pre-intervention behavior and tenor of the home reading interactions. Moreover,
there was no evidence to suggest that the program radically changed Lola’s
beliefs about reading or conceptions of the reading process.
Leplp’s Post-Intervention Reading Conceptions and Beliefs

In May I visited Lola and Luis’ home for the last time to show Lola
videotapes of their last pre and post-intervention sessions, record her reaction to
the viewings, and interview her about her post-intervention reading beliefs and
knowledge. In Lola and Luis’ case there was no real motive for picking the last
tapes other than they represented the end of both phases of the videotaped portion
of the study and because they were so similar throughout. At the end of my visit,
Lola ﬁlled out a second Paired Reading survey, Luis gave me his Paired Reading
Journal, and I gave Luis a Harpy Potter (Rowling, 1998) book as a token of my

appreciation for his participation in this study.

216

Lola’s responses to the viewings and interview questions were quite brief.
After viewing the pre-intervention videotapes she said, “What I thought about, I
can understand, because he was reading with a lot of problems. And, I can
understand the idea.” She stated that before the Paired Reading Program “he was
reading too bad.” When I asked, ‘Vvhy do you describe his reading as bad?” Lola
replied, “he stopped a lot”. When I asked her to describe the strategies that she
used to help Luis prior to Paired Reading she said “I told him the word.”

Lola reacted to the second Paired Reading tape by saying “I think Luis
reads much better. And he wants to read by himself, all the time, and he does.” In
terms of her Paired Reading strategies she explained that she “read with him.”
When I asked her to compare how her son read before the Paired Reading
program to how he read afterwards, Lola stated, “Now he feel more comfortable,
and he wants to read. When we went to the library he picked the books. I don’t
know if it’s difﬁcult or not. You know, I like when he like something and he’s
interested, it’s interesting.” Lola reactions to the videotapes and interview
questions indicated a post-intervention improvement in Luis’ reading attitudes,
also strongly implied by Luis’s survey responses, but not corroborated by his
reserved behavior during Paired Reading interactions. She cited the duet reading
procedure of “reading together” as a memorable Paired Reading strategy. Her
responses did not reveal a change in her belief or knowledge about reading. Given
the consistency between her pre-intervention and post-intervention use of

providing words as her primary error correction strategy, her experience with

217

Paired Reading probably conﬁrmed her pre-intervention belief that a word
approach is the way to learn “to read like Americans.”
After the interview, Lola ﬁlled out another Paired Reading survey. Her
responses appear below.
ﬂble 31: Lola’s Secdnd Pﬁred Reaing Survey Response

Lola indicated the following about the Paired Reading experience:
It was easy to ﬁnd time.

It was easy to learn to do.

The Record Sheet (journal) was a help.

It was easy to get books.

It was easy to ﬁnd a good place to read.

I liked doing it.

Paired Reading has led to:

Getting better at all kinds of reading.

Liking all reading better.

I want to go on doing Paired Reading.

I will tell otha' people about Paired Reading.

In response to the question-Can you tell [3 one thing we can do to make Paired Reading
better? Lola wrote: I think it works very good for Luis and for me. Thank you for take care of us.

Like her responses on the ﬁrst Paired Reading survey, Lola’s responses on this
second survey were quite positive. She expressed her appreciation for my
assistance. I noticed that there were no negative comments or constructive
criticism. While I believed Lola truly had positive feelings about her experience, I
was hoping that she would also comment on what was hard, difﬁcult, or
unpleasant about the program
ExploripgThe Rem For Differentﬁ Results

Why did Paired Reading signiﬁcantly alter home interactions for Kirk and
Elsa, but did not dramatically change home reading interactions for Luis and
Lola? As stated earlier I believe there are two reasons Paired Reading did not

signiﬁcantly inﬂuence the nature of Luis and Lola’s home reading experiences.

218

First of all, as a coach, I failed to adequately train Lola to incorporate discussion
into her Paired Reading interactions and extend her wait-time. Secondly, the
providing words prompt, one of Paired Reading’s train error correction
techniques, was already being heavily used by Lola in the pre-intervention phase.
Thus, there was nothing to really change the characteristic and tenor of the Luis
and Lola’s interaction.

Perhaps another prescriptive strategy such as Pause, Prompt, and Praise
would have been more appropriate for Luis who was already a more ﬂuent reader
tlmn Kirk. Lola’s almost singular use of the word supply move made him highly
dependent on adult assistance. Luis did not seem to initiate word identiﬁcation
strategies other than waiting to be told or guessing a word. Therefore, he might
have beneﬁted from practicing applying the Pause, Prompt, and Praise strategy of
reading to the end of the sentence before using the context and phonics
knowledge to identify the unknown word. This was also the strategy that Luis was
encouraged to use in our classroom. Kirk, on the other hand, had a problem with
ﬂuency, and a more limited sight word vocabulary than Luis. For Kirk, the Paired
Reading techniques of supplying words and duct reading beneﬁted him because
these techniques promoted his reading ﬂuency.

During the pre-intervention phase, Elsa gave Kirk delayed feedback,
usually waiting ﬁve-seconds or more before prompting a correction. Lola, on the
other hand, gave Luis immediate feedback, quickly supplying him with a word.
Ironically, it seemed that the opposite strategy was more appropriate for each boy.

For instance, Kirk beneﬁted from Elsa providing more immediate feedback by

219

cutting down on her prompts. On the other hand, Luis might have beneﬁted from
more delayed feedback so he could strengthen his ability to self-correct. As stated
in chapter three, Leach and Siddall (1990) have summarized the debate over
whether it is better to supply learners with delayed or immediate feedback:

There has been a continuing debate about the role of errors in
learning to read and the optimum way to deal with them in the
instructional context. One view is that errors play a central
productive role in that children learn to be more self-regulated
readers if they are helped and prompted to obtain appropriate
information from them (Clay, 1979; McNaughton, 1988). The
opposing view is that, in order to facilitate retention and increase
rates of learning, errors should be minimized by programming for
high success using graded discrimination, massed examples, pre-
teaching, prompts, and immediate corrective feedback
(Englemann, 1980). (Leach and Sidall, 1990, p. 330).

Leach and Siddall (1990) go on to say that Pause, Prompt, and Praise represents
the ‘produetive view” of reading errors and Paired Reading falls somewhere in
the middle of the two views.

Topping (1985) concedes that the Pause, Prompt, and Praise approach
might be more effective with some readers than Paired Reading. In making this
assertion Topping writes (1985):

It is worth reiterating that the various techniques of parental
involvement in reading are as similar as they are different.
Indisputably there are strong theoretical tensions between some of
the methods. For instance, Paired Reading speciﬁcally instructs
parents to intervene if the child cannot successfully read a word
within ﬁve seconds at the most, while Pause, Prompt and Praise
speciﬁcally instructs parents not to intervene until the child has
failed to read the word for at least ﬁve seconds. It is true that
Glynn’s contention that the former practice results in over-
dependency and inhibits development of self-correction strategies
can be seen to apply to a small proportion of children in Paired
Reading projects (Topping, 1985d, p. 290-1).

220

Topping’s statements as well as the differential effects Paired Reading had on
reading interactions in the two homes supports the contention that student reading
behaviors should be considered when deciding the type of prescriptive home
reading program to offer families (Harmon, 1995). However, it would be
impractical to suggest that individual classroom teachers, on their own, could
provide parents multiple types of programs due to cost in time, materials, and
workload. Building programmatic choice into school intervention efforts would
have to be organized or offered on a school or district level. In the next and ﬁnal
chapter I will write about this study item the perspective of a classroom teacher
and discuss the relevance that this study’s ﬁndings have on my practice as well as
the practice of other reading teachers of primary grade students. I will also discuss
what the implications of this study are for educational researchers and school

administrators who might sponsor home reading programs on a district level.

221

CHAPTER 5
IMPLICATIONS OF FINDINGS

In this chapter I will discuss the lessons learned by comparing the effects
of participating in an open and prescriptive program on the home reading
interactions of two low-achieving readers and their parents. First I will suggest
lessons that districts, schools, and classroom teachers can glean ﬁom this study’s
probe of two different types of home reading programs. Next I will discuss what
the implications of this study are for home reading researchers and suggest topics
for future study. Finally I will conclude this chapter by describing what this study
means to me personally as I contemplate the future of my approach to home
reading and the value of engaging in teacher-research.

Implications for Teachers, Schools, and School Districts

One of the main purposes of this study was to investigate the extent to
which an open home reading program, which provided parents with minimal
hearing reading advice, inﬂuenced parental beliefs and behaviors during parent-
child reading interactions. As the ﬁndings discussed in chapter three indicate,
home reading exerted little or no inﬂuence over the ways Elsa and Lola responded
to their son’s reading efforts at home. Neither mother followed the brief advice I
gave parents in the Home Reading program concerning how to respond to student
errors. Moreover, in Lola’s home, reading behaviors that proponents of open
programs assume parents employ, such as sitting close to the child and attending
to the text as the child reads, were not adopted by Lola during this study’s Home

Reading Phase. The Home Reading Program failed to inﬂuence parental beliefs

222

about reading or conceptions of the reading process. While the Home Reading
Program represented an interactive perspective of the reading process, both
mothers professed a belief in the superiority of phonics-based instructional
strategies during the Home Reading phase of this study. The expectation that
reading at home would be an enjoyable experience that would motivate students
to develop positive attitudes about books was not met. In both homes, the reading
interactions in the open program phase of this study tended to be a tiresome,
ﬁ'ustrating experience. These ﬁndings support the contention that classroom
teachers who sponsor home reading programs should not assume that merely
sending books home with a few general tips results in parents interacting with
their children in recommended ways. The ﬁndings conﬁrm the utility of assessing
the nature of home reading interactions and offering parents more extensive
guidance or training to assist their hearing reading efforts if needed. This is
particularly true for low-achieving readers, who might be more adversely affected
by counterproductive home reading interactions than proﬁcient readers.

There are several ways teachers can learn about their students’ home
reading experiences without conducting an extensive research project. A less
formal way to ﬁnd out about home reading is to send out parental questionmires
asking parents to describe what the strengths and limitations of their home reading
experiences are and to write about any problems that they face at home. Another
way to strengthen a home reading program is to develop a strategy for ongoing
communication throughout the year. In Britain, many of the record cards tlmt are

sent home with books also have spaces for parental comments or questions

223

(Harmon, 1995). Making phone calls to parents to ﬁnd out about their home
reading experiences can also be informative. Once the beliefs, attitudes, and
experiences of parents and students are known, the teacher can then work out a
plan with families to make home reading more rewarding. Moreover, it is
important for teachers to communicate their reading philosophy and clearly
explain how the reading efforts of the students are supported in school.

An important idea that I learned from this study is that I need to do a better
job communicating the elements of my reading instructional approach to parents.
I could do this through parent letters, handouts, and conferences. Improving
instruction or parent communication does not always mean adding programs to
the curriculum. It sometimes means taking advantage of the structures that already
exist.

As stated above, surveys and questionnaires are one way to gain insight
into parental beliefs and the nature of children’s home reading experiences. The
questions that guided this study’s pre-intervention interviews could easily be
turned into a written questionnaire that is given to parents to determine their
beliefs about reading and demonstrate how parents support their children’s
reading interactions at home. A wealth of information could be gained by asking
parents the following questions 1) How did you learn to read in school? 2) What
do you think are the characteristics of a good reader? 3) Do you think your child
is learning to read the same way you did or a different way? 4) What do you think
is the best way to learn to read? 5) How well do you think your child is reading at

home? 6) What do you do to help your child ﬁgure out an unknown word or

224

correct an error? 5) Do you and your child talk during the reading, if so what do
you talk about? Once again, record cards, reading journals that travel between
home and school, and phone calls are informal ways that teachers can probe the
nature of their students’ home reading experiences.

Once teachers probe their students’ home reading experiences, teachers
are sure to ﬁnd great variation in parental techniques, views, and competence,
which implies that one type of program might not be appropriate for all students.
Open programs that educate parents but also recognize parental expertise might
be more appropriate for average and above-average readers because the parents of
these readers typically support their children’s reading efforts in meaning oriented
ways and may ﬁnd the restrictions of prescriptive approaches unnecessary
(Bergin, Laney, Draper, 1994; Tracey, 1995). Prescriptive programs, like Paired
Reading, might be more suitable for struggling readers because these programs
target skills that these readers are typically weak in such as ﬂuency or self-
eorrection. In fact, Paired Reading and Pause, Prompt, and Praise were
speciﬁcally designed for older, struggling readers (McNaughton, Glynn, and
Robinson, 1980; Morgan and Lyon, 1979). The notion that novice readers have
diﬂerent leaning needs has led Harmon (1995) to suggest that schools should offer
more than one type of home reading program As cited in chapter one, Harmon
reasons:

In the case of the open approach, I would argue that it should be

considered as a basic form of involvement in the early school

years, provided that parents are supported in reﬂecting on their role

and that it is supplemented ﬁom time to time with other
approaches if children are not progressing (Hannon, 1995, p. 143).

225

A major goal of this study was to determine the feasibility of sponsoring
two different kinds of home reading programs for the children in my classroom by
supplementing the Home Reading Program with the Paired Reading Method. I
accomplished this by requiring all of my students to participate in the Home
Reading program while oﬂ‘ering the Paired Reading Program to my two most
struggling readers. Sponsoring an additional home reading program was not
ﬁnancially costly, but it was extremely costly in terms of the time that it took to
prepare, implement, and maintain the program
Prom Costs

The Paired Reading training kit produced by the Northern Alberta Reading
Specialists’ Council (1998) and distributed by Filmwest Associates Limited cost
about $120.00 to purchase in 1999 when this study began. Since the training kit,
which included a video and accompanying manual with reproducible pages could
be used repeatedly, the purchase of training materials served as a one-time
expense. The Woodcock Mastery Tests (Woodcock, 1988) that were originally
planned for this study but eventually disregarded for reasons explained in Chapter
two, were available through the Learning Consultant’s oﬁce at my school. So I
there were no monetary costs associated with acquiring formal evaluation
materials. Kirk and Luis were given the option to select books for Paired Reading
item a classroom collection already assembled for the Home Reading Program

As expected, the time required to implement Paired Reading and to study
program effects through teacher research ended up being the most costly aspect of

adding the Paired Reading Program to the curriculum Most of the activities

226

associated with implementing and maintaining the program took place outside of
the school day, primarily after school. Implementing the program and assessing
program effects through a teacher-research project involved spending about
twenty minutes with each mother after school to introduce the program and about
twenty to forty minutes after school on sixteen different occasions to administer
the Woodcock Mastery Tests (Woodcock, 1988) prior to the Paired Reading
intervention. Another twenty to forty minutes were spent administering the
second round of tests on sixteen more occasions after the Paired Reading
program The after school Paired Reading meeting lasted about one hour for each
parent/child dyad. About an hour was spent outside of school hours visiting
students at home and videotaping the interactions sixteen times during the pre and
post-intervention phases of this study. Finally, I spent about three to four hours
conducting parental interviews, and administering attitude surveys.

I thought the program was worthwhile. However, in the ﬁrture, my own
family obligations would preclude me from spending the amount of time after
school that I devoted to this study. In a later section I will discuss how the
approach that I followed in this study could be modiﬁed to make it more practical
for individual classroom teachers to implement.
mes/”lg: Paired Reading Initiatives

The NARSC training kit (Brailsford et a1, 1998) greatly facilitated the
parental training aspect of the program in terms of providing materials, organizing
the program, making suggestions about implementing formal testing materials,

and assessing participant attitudes. The kit provided a straightforward set up and

227

implementation plan. However, it was an extremely time-consuming program to
operate due to the amount of hours involved in appropriately training parents,
testing participants, visiting participant homes, surveying participant attitudes,
and armlyzing performance data to present to parents. The program as outlined in
the NARSC manual (Brailsford et a1, 1998) was a very dermnding, involved
program for a classroom teacher to sponsor individually, as I did for the study.
With school level or district-level support, however, the Paired Reading Program
is one viable approach to enhancing the learning opportunities for at-risk readers
and promoting home school communication in relation to supporting children’s
reading development.

One of the most efﬁcient means of implementing Paired Reading is
through district wide initiatives that provide teachers with the training, materials,
and compensatory support needed for successful implementation. Topping and
Whiteley (1990) described a well-supported district-level Paired Reading
initiative sponsored by the Kirklees Local Education Authority in England during
the 1980’s. The British educational authority provided training materials, teacher
in-services, facilities and trainers for parent/child participants, and compensation
for teachers who made home visits. Likewise, in Akron Ohio, the Akron Public
School district has assimilated the Paired Reading Approach into their Chapter 1
Program, combining it with their Reading Recovery project (Rasinski and
Fredericks, 1991 ). At ﬁrst the program was oﬂ’ered only to Chapter 1 parents and
children who were trained by their district Chapter 1 teachers. The positive

response of Chapter 1 families led other parents whose children were not Chapter

228

1 students to attend Paired Reading training sessions held in Akron schools. “In
some schools teachers made home visits to train parents who could not attend the
training sessions held in the school” (Rasinski and Fredericks, 1991).

Even though my program was much smaller in scale than the ones
described above, there were important lessons that could be gleaned from my
study that are applicable to even the largest scale intervention initiatives. A major
implementation lesson learned from this study is the importance of program
evaluation. No initiative large or small should neglect this facet. The fact that Elsa
and Kirk’s experience was so different than Luis and Lola’s highlights the
importance of evaluating participant performance, attitudes, and knowledge in
multiple ways throughout the duration of a program

Although my attempt to include formal evaluation into this study was
unsuccessful due to a validity issue, programs of all scales need to make serious
attempts to measure whether Paired Reading is actually making a signiﬁcant
impact on student learning, because if it is not then other intervention approaches
could be tried. The NARSC manual (Brailsford et a1, 1998) encourages Paired
Reading program sponsors to incorporate formal evaluation procedures into
program initiatives. In writing about the need to formally evaluate Paired Reading
schemes Topping aptly points out

Just because spectacular results have been achieved in some

places, that doesn’t guarantee you will get them right there where

you are. Especially with your ﬁrst effort, you need to know how

successﬁrl you have been and how you can improve effectiveness

even more in the ﬁrture. Then circumstances will change or you

will want to do something a little differently, so evaluation remains
essential- a continuous cycle. (Topping, 1999, p. 53)

229

Simply administering standardized tests before or after the Paired Reading
program is an inadequate method of measuring program eﬂ'ectiveness when the
number of target students is small because any increase in scores could be
attributed to maturation or school reading instruction rather than to the
intervention itself. Programs with small numbers of student participants need to
employ a single-subject testing methodology, as I tried to do with this study,
rather than simply rely on pre and post comparison tests (Neuman and
McCormick, 1995). Pre and post groups are feasible if there are large groups of
students participating in the intervention and control groups are included in the
testing.

Otherwise, employing a single-subject methodology that requires
obtaining a baseline level of performance is the only valid, but time-consuming
way to make claims about the intervention’s effects on student achievement. The
important lesson I learned about implementing a single-subject design is that
timing is crucial to the validity of the evaluation. A series of pre-tests should be
administered in close proximity to the start of the intervention and a series of post
tests should be in place immediately after. Kratochwill and Levin (1992) provide
an in-depth explanation of single-subject design. However, their book on the topic
is written on the level of university-trained statisticians rather than classroom
teachers. A more teacher-ﬁiendly explanation on how to correctly implement
single-subject evaluation methods is provided by Neuman and McCormick (1995)

and Topping (1999).

230

Formal evaluation alone however, is not enough to provide program
sponsors with in—depth information about how the program inﬂuences parent child
home reading interactions. The audiotaped, interview data that I obtained in this
study gave me a great deal of knowledge about the degree to which Paired
Reading inﬂuenced parental belieﬁ and knowledge about reading. Interviews
coupled with attitude surveys can give program sponsors information about the
causes of participant improvement or stagnation. Interviewing Elsa and ﬁnding
out about her strong phonics-based beliefs helped me understand the reasons for
her resistance to duet reading, and why it was such a difﬁcult procedure for her
adopt. Knowing the cause of her resistance, as a program sponsor, helped me to
maintain the patience to stick with her and not give up on her participation.
Finding out that Lola’s beliefs did not change forced me to take a critical look at
my own performance as a coach, as well as consider the possrbility that the Paired
Reading program might not be the best prescriptive program to promote a
substantial improvement in Lola and Luis’ home reading interactions.

Thus interviewing parents before and after the Paired Reading program is
another time-consuming but extremely helpful way to determine the impact
Paired Reading has on participants. Harmon (1995) urges home reading program
sponsors not to underestimate the importance of evaluating participant views.

The importance of parents’ views is obvious. The whole point of a

programme is to gain their active, positive involvement in

children’s literacy development. An evaluation therefore has to

include asking parents whether they have been active, how they

have been active and what positive and negative views they have

about the experience. . .Parents are also well placed to tell us about

children’s views, which are diﬂicult to discover directly (Harmon,
1995,p.l38)

231

Whether Paired Reading is offered through a large-scale project administered
across an entire school district or through a small-scale program run by individual
schools or teachers, there should always be some sort of mechanism in place to
monitor participant views and possible changes in those views throughout the
program. Edwards, Fear, and Harris, (1994) describe numerous ways to learn
about and incorporate parent views into home reading initiatives.

For the purpose of this teacher-research project I interviewed parents in
person, but written surveys, questionnaires, and interactive journals are other
ways to probe participant views that are less time-consuming for program
sponsors to administer. The questions that I asked Elsa and Lola in this study
concerning their reading beliefs could easily be presented to participants in a
written questionnaire form.

The visits to participant homes gave me a wealth of infornmtion about the
effects of both the Home Reading and the Paired Reading program that I do not
think I could have achieved by observing parent-chﬂd reading interactions
elsewhere, such as in my classroom after school. Going to their homes gave me
insights about the participants’ demeanor and personal interaction that might have
changed if they were in a less familiar and intimate setting. Moreover, by visiting
participant homes I could assess the appropriateness of the place the pair
performed Paired Reading as well as judge the degree of distraction that was
present. As a program sponsor and coach, observing the pairs reading at home

gave me insight into why the program was or was not working and information

232

about how to make the program more successful for participants. In Lola’s case
for instance, if I had only watched Lola listening to Luis read in school where the
pair probably would have sat next to each other at a table, I never would have
understood that the pair's home reading experience was being undermined by how
Lola sat with Luis at home during their Home Reading exchanges.

Therefore, Paired Reading program sponsors should not underestimate the
power of home visits. Although they are time-consuming and dramatically
increase the cost of ﬁnancing a project if teachers are compensated for their time,
home visits are an essential means of monitoring whether or not parents are
correctly implementing Paired Reading procedures. Moreover, home visits
provide another source of information that mere test scores cannot provide. If
standardized tests are utilized to judge the effectiveness of a Paired Reading
Program, but there has been no attempt to ﬁnd out if participants are actually
implementing the Paired Reading procedure, the test score data is useless, because
the tests are evaluating a program that doesn’t exist in practice.

Toomey (1993) and Harmon (1995) contend that home visits signiﬁcantly
contribute to the effectiveness of Paired Reading and other home reading
programs. Toomey states home visits are particularly effective with low-income
families. According to Toomey (1993) evaluation studies of Paired Reading
programs show that:

Even in the lowest SES group, home visits increased pre-post gains

in accuracy to a statistically signiﬁcant degree. For the top two

quartiles of SES it was diﬂicult to make conclusions about the
effects of home visits to show an effect. (Toomey, 1993, p. 228-9)

233

Topping, however, downplays the signiﬁcance of home visits. He cites his own
work writing “Topping (1995) found in Paired Reading projects that although
home visiting improved test outcomes, disadvantaged families still registered
signiﬁcant test gains without it” (Topping, 1996, p. 157-8).
Modrf_‘11_n_' ' g the Scope of Paired Ready

Although incorporating home visits into programs is ideal, they may be
too costly for smaller scale projects. The key to rmking Paired Reading more
feasible for individual schools or classroom teachers to implement on their own is
eliminating rmny of the after-school requirements, including home visits.
Incorporating as much of the program as possible into the school day reduces the
cost and burden of Paired Reading for sponsors with limited resources. Inviting
parents to school to receive the training during the school day, incorporating
testing and attitude surveys into the classroom routine, and incorporating aspects
of the Paired Reading program into existing remedial education efforts are ways
that individual teachers or schools could make the Paired Reading program more
manageable when ﬁnancial support is restricted. Offering Paired Reading
programs through summer school initiatives could be an additional way to offer
the program to families at a reasonable outlay.

Another approach to modifying Paired Reading and making it more
realistic for classroom teachers to implement with minimal cost is to replace
parents with cross-age or same-age tutors (Topping and Whiteley, 1990).

However, this takes the program out of the realm of promoting home-school

234

collaboration. Replacing parents with other Paired Reading tutors, however, is
sometimes necessary if parents are unavailable or unable to read English.
Implications for Researchers

The results of this study are consistent with the large body of research
which concludes that prescriptive programs like Paired Reading are worthwhile
options for teachers, parents, and schools to adopt to support the reading
development of struggling readers. The modest change experienced by Luis and
Lola precludes me ﬁom strongly questioning Paired Reading’s effectiveness
because my coaching weaknesses may have diminished Paired Reading’s impact
over their situation. However, Lola and Luis’ experience does raise the possibility
that other prescriptive programs may be more appropriate with certain types of
students. There is a need for more research that examines how different types
students with unique learning needs are affected by different parent training
programs. There also needs to be more comparative studies on the most eﬂicient
way to inﬂuence parental hearing reading behaviors in a positive manner. Toomey
(1993) concurs, writing “what is now needed are studies which will tell us how
little training we can get away with to produce valuable effects, and guidance
about exploring which techniques are appropriate in which circumstances”
(Toomey, 1993, p. 234).

This study examined the short-term process effects that the Paired Reading
Program exerted over student and parent behaviors over the course of a couple of
months. More longitudinal, process oriented studies are needed to determine how

families maintain the effects of prescriptive programs over time. In the case of the

235

participants in this study, it would have been informative to see how home
reading behaviors and beliefs evolved a year after the program. Moreover, there
should be more process-oriented studies that investigate the home reading
experiences of average and above average readers in open programs and studies
that involve reading interactions with other family members, especially fathers
(Hannon, 1995) so that practitioners can learn better ways to work with ﬁmilies
to maximize productive reading interactions between children and adults in and
outside of school.
Implications for my Personal Classroom Context

Participating in this teacher-research project has convinced me of the
value of the Paired Reading approach. The program made a positive difference in
both subjects’ homes, albeit it was more successﬁrl for one pair than the other.
Realistically, family obligations would prevent me from spending the amount of
time on maintaining a Paired Reading program that I spent in this teacher research
project. However, it is possible that I might implement this program again in the
future by employing some of the modiﬁcations listed above if I become extremely
concerned about a particular student's progress. In my classroom, I foresee
training my Title 1 paraprofessional to utilize the program in the classroom with a
very needy student. I also foresee working with parents again on the project.
However, this would probably only happen if all training, monitoring, and
assessing could be completed at the school site. As the Paired Reading literature
has repeatedly stated, the beauty of the Paired Reading concept is that it is so

adaptable, ﬂexible, and compatible with a wide range of reading and parental

236

intervention perspectives (Li and Nes, 2001; Toomey, 1993; Topping, 1985b;
Caimey, 1996).

Studying Elsa and Lola’s error correction strategies so closely not only
caused me to reexamine issues related to home reading but also reminded me to
reﬂect on my own hearing reading strategies. Engaging in this research reaﬂirmed
the importance of promoting discussion. In responding to student errors it is easy
to overemphasis one response move. This study has underscored the importance
of focusing on what I am doing when I am listening to students read in order
make sure that I am supporting and modeling a wide range of strategies during
guided reading instruction.

Even if I never implement the Paired Reading Program again, the insights
that I have gained by comparing the effects of two diﬂ‘erent kinds of home
reading programs and engaging in the rigors of teacher-research have given me
ideas about how to change my open Home Reading program to better meet the
needs ofthe families in my classroom First ofall, I plan to expand the parent
education component of my program by restructuring the initial Meet the Teacher
Curriculum Meeting to provide more time to go over program components. I plan
to provide more succinct information by changing the handouts that I distribute to
surmnarize the program at this initial meeting. I plan to utilize handouts and
discussion to emphasize error correction strategies with parents more. Hall and
Cunnigham (1998) have created a reproducible poster that summarizes a
correction strategy based on the interactive perspective that I plan to distribute

and encourage parents to display in their homes. I am also considering offering an

237

additional after school meeting for interested parents in which I would model the
way that I support oral reading in school. This additional meeting would follow
the model provided by Swinson (1985) whose open program, described in
Topping and Wolfendale’s Parental Involvemaat in Children’s Reading,
emphasizes the interactive reading correction strategy that I have referred to
throughout this study. In this way, the Swinson approach is closer to the Pause,
Prompt, and Praise approach than it is to Paired Reading.

In Conclusion: The Valueof Teacher-Research

In chapter 1 I described the event in my professional life that motivated
me to conduct a teacher-research study on my classroom Home Reading Program
I stated that I was curious about the program's effects on low-achieving readers
and had a hunch that another type of program would better serve their needs. The
art of teaching is to act on your hunches and take risks to improve your practice
by trying innovative programs. However, the science of teaching is to develop
ways to rigorously examine the eﬂ‘ects of innovations on the students that you are
trying to help.

Engaging in teacher-research is a time-consuming, exhaustive process and
cannot be applied to every question, every hunch, or every innovation that is
encountered in the course of teaching. However, undergoing the process of using
research standards to improve practice at some point in a professional career can
be an empowering experience. I could have purchased the program and
implemented the Paired Reading procedure with the two families without closely

examining what was going on in their homes, or soliciting their views about

238

reading, reading numerous studies, and writing about the whole experience.
However, the fact that I went through this process gave me an understanding of
the strengths and limitations of cpen and prescriptive designs that never could
have been achieved without closely examining my practice.

As a result of this study, my interactions with parents and students as it
relates to home reading lmve changed and will continue to evolve. The
professional development aspect of conducting research on one’s practice often
goes beyond just the research question or topic of study. Going through the
practice nurtures the habit of constantly reﬂecting on one’s practice in formal and

informal way in hopes of improving one’s teaching performance.

239

APPENDIX A
STAGES OF READING
Excerpt from 1999 school district report card.

 

 

EMERGENT STAGE

Knows conventions of print (left to right, return
sweep, top to bottom).

Identiﬁes upper and lower ease letters

and matches some with sounds.

Uses pictures as clues to the story line.

Retells familiar stories and rhymes.
Recognizes frequently used words and phrases.
EARLY STAGE

Uses letter-sound relationships, context, and
picture clues to decode words.

Recognizes cornmon blends, common
diagraphs and vowel patterns.

Roads on and rereads to obtain meaning.
Predicts outcomes & retells stories in sequence.
Reads predictable, familiar or practiced text.
Reads many high ﬁ'equency words in context.
Reads unfamiliar text with support.
TRANSITIONAL STAGE

Identiﬁes most vowel sounds.

Recognizes common vowel patterns and high
use phonograms (word families)

Monitors and checks own reading by applying
a variety of strategies.

Understands that punctuation enhances
meaning.

Identiﬁes the characters, setting, and main idea
in stories.

STAGES OF READING

 

 

TRANSITIONAL STAGE (con_t.)
Recalls facts ﬁom informational books.
Reads familiar and unfamiliar text.
EXPANDING STAGE

Consistently applies decoding strategies.
Makes in-depth predictions and draws
conclusions using supporting evidence.
Identiﬁes main idea in informational &
narrative text.

Retells the sequence of a complex story with
increasing detail.

Identiﬁes before, during and after reading
strategies.

Reads silently for extended periods of time.
Reads independently from a variety of materials
for different purposes.

Reads chapter books and nonﬁction texts of
particular interest.

REFINING STAGE

Relates main idea to real life situations.

States main idea with supporting details.
Interprets maps, charts, and graphs.
Recognizes key word to identify text structure.
Reads and follows more complex directions.
Loeates information from a variety of
appropriate sources.

Read a variety of literary forms.

Understands ﬁgurative language.

 

240

 

APPENDIX B
PRE-INTERVENTION PARENTAL RESPONSE INVENTORY

Parent Hearing Reading

Pre-Intervention (1 -1 7-00)

From Transcript 1

Arthur in a Picﬂ

Length of Interaction: l 1:04:20-1 1:22:10 AM.
Length of reading: 17 minutes (17:43)

Kay

L number = transcript line number

Italics = multiple response types per line.

{ } = spoken in Flemish

+ = Child was able to correctly decode the next word or phrase.

- = Child was not able to decode the next word prior to mother’s
intervening response.

PARENTAL RESPONSE INVENTORY

 

TYPES OF RESPONSE NUMBER AND EXAMPLES OF
RESPONSES [Mother K
statements] [Child’s statements]

 

Wait-time. Inventory of L2-l [Ssec]+ The school. . .ball
pauses that are less than 4 L4-l-

seconds. (35) L10—1 [4sec]- Said. . .Misss-
[#sec]= 4 seconds or L12-l-

longer. —number refers to L14-1+

number ofpauses inthe Ll6-l+

transcript line.(90) Ll8-l [7 sec]+ooo¢ What’s can...

vame did
But Arthur.

L20—4 +4++

L22+

L28-1 [6 sec]-Bum. Go to

the. . . {What is it}

L30-1 [4 sec]-Ta. . .Pri-

L36-

L40-

L44-

L46-1 [7 see]-Ofﬁce. . .fairs. First.
L48-l [8 sec]+r=im thing, inthe...moming.
Good.

1450'] [4 SOC]-You’re, in a pickle. .no. Now.
L54-l [4 sec]-That...{With what does
it start?}

L60-l [4 SOCJ+NighL Arthur just

 

 

 

 

241

 

 

 

played. . .with his
food

L63-1 [5 sec]-He...{With what does it
start?}

L75-1-

L81-l-

L83-1 [4sec]-Again, a. . .What’s
that? ‘

L99-1 [4 sec]-. ..st, st, s-tee Sta-
L107-1 [4 sec]+The pickle police
said. . .T

L112-1 [4 sec]-Hrnhm...{With what does
it start?}

L115-1 [6 sec]-Flew...{With what does
it start?}

119- ‘

L128-1 [5 sec]-{With what does it
start?}...Pi-

L131-

L133-1 [4 sec]-. . .there. Th— threw.
L135-1 [4 sec]+Threw down

a. . .rope.

L139-1 [8sec]-The...{With what does it
start?}

L143-1+

LI57-{No}-l [6sec]-{No}...P...
L158-

L178-l [4 sec]+ Light. . .that he, did, said
Pickle Toes.

L181-l {5 sec]-{With what does it
start?}...a-
Ll90-l [5 SCO]+N0...'I'hey’Il.

L192-1 [6 SCC]-Hmhm...{With whatdoesit
start?} sh-

Ll96-l [5 sec]-Shouted. . .Judge.
L198-1-
L204+

L208-1 [5 sec]-0n a pickle. ..{With what does
it

L2l4-l+

L216-1+

L218-1 [4 SGC]-Day he said. Just...justtreeiL
Justtry

Start?)

it.
L221-l [8 sec]-For. . . {With what does it
start?}
L224- 1 -
L225-2- -
L23 7-1 +

 

242

 

 

 

 

L239-1-

L251-1+

L257-2+ +

L259-1 [6 SOC]-I’ve had it...{With whatdoes
awn}

L263-1+

L273-1 [7 sec]+ Yeah, green....said
suddarly.

L275-1-

L277-l-

L283-#H- [4 SCC]-At sdrool, Arthur, went,
mam-dam

L289-l [4 sec]+ Can’t, not. . .t, tell.
L29l-l-

L295-1+

L300-2+ +

L306-1+

L308-l-

1314-]-

L3 1 8—1 [6 SOC]-Anhur...{Withwhatdoes it
sure}
L328-1 [4 SCC]+Aye ate. Wlm’s am there.

...ss
askeded.

L330—3+ + —

 

 

 

Supplies Word or Phrase
(35)

 

L3 Hand.

L47 First.

L51 Now.

L68 Tossed.

L72 Turned.

L78 Again.

L88 Until.

L114 Flew.

L134 Th- threw.
L159 People.

L161 Steeple people.
L177 Light.

L197 Judge.

L199 Picklepuss
L203 Jailor. Hmhm
L213 Eat. Hmhm
L219 Just try it. Hm here.
L232 Donuts.
LL236 Flakes.

L224 What’s that?(Points to
pictureLShake

 

243

 

 

 

L250 For dinner.

L276 {No}, went.

L284 Right.

L288 Can’t.

L293 A lie.

L294 Lie.

L296 My.

L31 1 Well

L315 Thank. Hmhm

L325 Great.

L327 Aye, ate. What’s that start
with?

L331 {No}. Pickle.

L337 Cabbage.(90 noticeable chapges)

 

 

Question about Letter,
Letter Sounds, or Words
(42)

 

L5 What’s that?
L13 What’s that?
L1 7 What’s that?
L29 {What’s that?}

{With what does it start?}
L37 What’s that?
L41 Wlmt’s that?
L55 {With what does it start?}
L62 And then?
L64 {With what does it start?}
L76 What’s that?
L82 What’s that sormd?
L84 What’s that?
L86 And that?
L112 Hmhm...{With what does it
start?}
L116 {With what does it start?}
L120 {No, with what does it start?
And then

Yes}

L128 {No, with what does it start}
L140 {With what does it start?}
L148 {With what does it start?}
L181 {With wlnt does it start?}
L193 {With what does it start?} Sh-
L209 {With what does it start?}
L222 {With what does it start?}
L224 {With what does it
start?} .. .Break.
L226 {With what does it start?}
L228 {And the last letter?) Doe-n
L240 {With what does it start?}

 

244

 

 

L244 What’s that?(Points to

picture) Shake

L246 {With what does it start?}
{With what does it start?}
{What’s that?}

L260 {With what does it start?}

L264 {No, what does it start

with?}Tr—

L266 What’s that? Turn-

L278 {With what does it start?}

L286 {No}...what’s that?

L301 {No}, what’s this? Prin-

L319 {With what does it start?}

L323 {No. With what does it start?}

L327 Aye, ate. What’s that start

with?

L333 {With what does it start?}

 

 

Afﬁrmation/Conﬁrmation
of Child’s Reading, Error
Correction, or Sounding
Out Attempt

(43)

 

L7 Yeah,
L9 Hmhm

L15 Hmhm
L35 Hmhm
L39 Hmhm
L41 Uh huh
L61 Hmhm
L90 Hmhm Here (points to top of
page)
L98 Hmhm
L104 Yes
L112 Hmhm...{With what does it
start?}
L120 {No, with what does it start?
And then
Yes}
L124 Yeah
L132 Hmhm
L142 Hmhm
L146 Hmhm
L163 Hmhm
L165 Hmhm
L173 Hmhm
L175 Hmhm
L179 Okay
L191 Hmhm
L203 Jailor. Hmhm
L205 Hmhm
L207 Hmhm

 

245

 

 

L211 Right

L213 Eat. Hmhm

L217 Hmhm

L238 Hmhm

L248 Yah. De

L252 Hmhm

L262 Yeah row--

L268 Hmhm

L273 Yeah. Green.

L290 Hmhm

L283 Hmhm

L305 Hmhm

L307 Hmhm

L315 Thank. Hmhm

L321 Hmhm.

L327 Aye, ate. What’s that start
with?

L329 Hmhm.

L339 Yes. Okay. You’re done.

 

 

Models Sounding Out
Letters, Part of Word, or
Whole Word. (36)

 

L7 home-

Lll Misss—

L23 Ru-

L25 Rat

L27 Burn

L31 Pri-

L33 Prin-ci-

L45 Of-ﬁce

L57 Na-

L59 Ni-ght

L66 Ta

L70 Tur-

L100 Sta-

L193 Sh-

L122 Slo-

L130 Pi-lot

L134 Th-threw

L150 Stee-

LI8I {With wlurt does it start?}-l
a.

L183 Ab-so-

Ll85 Lue-

L187 —1y

L193 {With wlmt does it start?} Sh-
L224 {With what does it
start?}...Break.

L228 {And the hast letter?} Doe-n

 

246

 

 

L230 Nnn

L234 Fli-

L242 Sh

L248 Yah. De

L264 {No, what does it start
with?}Tr-

L266 What’s that? Tinn-
L270 {No}-G

L301 {No}, what’s this? Prin-
L303 {No} Princi-

L33I {No}. Pickle.

L335 Cab

 

Praise(17)

L1 7 Good.

L19 Good.

L49 Good.

L53 Good.

L92 Good.
L106 Good.
L110 Good.
L126 Good.
L136 Good.
L138 Good.
L144 Good. Here.
L152 Good.

L254 Good. {Here}
L258 Good.

L274 Good.

L280 Good.

L282 Good.

 

 

Negation-Informing Child
of an Error (28)

 

L74 {No} here.

L80 {No}

L86 No

L94 {No, boy}

L96 {No}

L102 {No}

L120 {No, with what does it start?}
{And then yes.}

L128 {No, with what does it start?}

L256 {No}

L270 {No}

L276 {No}, went

L286 {No}...What’s that?

LI57-{No}...

L169 {No}

L171 {No}

L189 Mun

 

247

 

 

L215 MmMm

L255 {No}

L264 {No, what does it start
with?}Tr-

L270 {No} -G

L276 {No}, went

L286 {No}...What’s that?
L299 MmMm/

L301 {No}, what’s this? Prin-
L303 {No} Princi-

L313 {No}

L323 {No. With what does it start?}
L331 {No}. Pickle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Directs Where to Read (5) L90 Hmhm Here (points to top
of page)
L110 {Now here again about the
pickles}
L254 Good. {Here}
L138 There (points to top of page)
L144 Here
L219 Just try it. Hm here.
Structural Analysis Hint
(1) L82 It’s the same word as this.
Aside (3) L110{Now here again about the
pickles} {Mr. Pickles}
L167 Laughs
L201 Laughs
Repeated Correction (2) L118 Flew
L195 Shouted.
Reads Text (As Response L54 Look said D.W. A pickle
to Child’s Question) (2) steeple. Do
you know what a
L155 pickle steeple is?
Refers to picture (1) L244 What’s that?(Points to
picture) Shake
Directs Child to Read L309 {Read again}
Again (Reread) (l)
Encouragement to L317 {Just a little more to read.

Continue (2) L317 {Just a

little more to read. This is
the}

Last one. (Referring

to page.)
L339 Yes. Okay. You’re

done.

 

This is the}
Last one. (Referring to

page.)
L339 Yes. Okay. You’re done.

 

248

 

APPENDIX C
PRE-INTERVENTION TRANSCRIPT
Transcript 7
Paired Reading
K. 3-9-00

Tm’ tion Guide

K= child

M= mother

B: little brother (toddler)

S: older sister (third grader

D+(bold script)= Duet reading (child and parent reading simultaneously)
(initial in parentheses)=person reading alone in midst of duct
CAPS= louder tone

Italics= softer tone

/= breath

//= completion, period

. . . extended pause, silence 5 seconds

.% unintelligible to transcriber

mad: higher pitch or rising pitch as in asking a question
Egg? lower pitch

{dutch}= mother speaking in Dutch to son

letter-= stretching out sound in a word

[Comment K makes that’s not him reading]

-word= utterance stated at same time as utterance above.

[tap]= K’s signal for reading alone.

1 M: Okay/ good/l [tap]

2 K: Puppies are the ...... (Little Brother is making lots of)
3 M: Pride/l (background noise. Older sister )
4 K: Pride (responds to little B.)

5 D: and joy of the [tap] (Noise continues intermittingly

6 K: wolf... pack/l (line 139)

7 M: Hmhm//

8 K: But wolves ......

9 M: Avoid//

10 K: Avoid/

11 M: {Dutch}T—Tells other son {“You have to [draw] on paper.”}

12 D: Avoid having too many ? ? [tap]

13 B: -MAMA/ MAMA

14 K: And his gentle mat has only one litter/ a yar

15 M: A year//

249

16 K: A year

17 M: {Dutch to B} {Wait a moment}.

18 K: but the

19 B: -WAH

20 D: Other wolves do not mate [tap]

21 M: Good/l {Dutch to B and/or S} {Children give me the markers. Nele, there
is another marker behind there. }

22 K: -But/ mother is. . . rushing the
23 M: Raising/ _se_e/_/ (points to word) {Dutch} {Say it again}.
24 K: Raising”

25 M: But {Dutch}//

26 K: But raising/l

27 M: But share//

28 K: But

29 D: Share in...raising the...litter’s

30 M: Good/l [tap]

31 K: Puppies/l

32 M: Hmhm/l

33 K: When the puppies are old ...... one

34 M: Enough/l

35 K: Enough

36 M: Hmhm{Dutch-ensow} {Say it altogether again. }
37 D: Enough [tap]

38 M: Good//

39 K: Enough to/ eat/ met

40 M: Meat//

41 K: Meat//

42 M: {Dutch} {Say it again}.

43 D: Meat!

44 M: Good//

45 D: The others ...... bring it

46 M: Good//

47 D: To [tap]

48 K: Them/l Wolves carry meat by. . .swallowing
49 M: Yeah/l Good yah/l

50 K: -a piece/ wolves

51 M: Whole/l

52 K: Whole/l

53 M: Good//

54 K: This

55 D: ?

56 B: -{DUTCH}

57 S: Hurry up//

58 D: ...bringing it up in the...

59 K: bring/

60 M: den...denl/

250

61 K: Den/l
62 M: Good//
63 D: This... ..
64 M: Sounds/l
65 K: Sounds ......... dissicult (sic)
66 M: Disgusting/I Good/l {Dutch} {Say it all together again}.
67 D: Disgusting [tap] ‘
68 K: But the meat could. . .could not
69 M: -Comes//
70 K: Comest
71 D: Out ...wit(K) a(K) fresh and ...... clain(K)// [tap]
72 M: cleau(M)// Good yah//
73 K: The/ puppies...say...thanks
74 M: Good/l
75 K: With .........
76 M: Squeals/l {Dutch}(Points to pictures) {I think it is a hug. }
77 77 K: -Squinces//
78 D: Squeals...
79 M: Ah
80 K: A lot/ lot
81 M: And
82 K: And
D: Lots of kisses”
83 M: Good yah/l {Dutch to B}Good boy
84 D: That never(K)
85 M: Ne/ that//
86 K: That. . .
87 M: Evening
88 K: Evening
89 M: {Dutch-ensow} {Say it together. }
D: Evening |tap|
K: Ben/ showed/ us ......... flims
M: Films/l Good//
93 K: To ......
94 M: Illustrate//
95 K: Illa Illustrate
96 D: How ......
97 M: Human//
98 K: Human//
99 M: {Dutch} {Say it together. }
100 D: Human
101 K: Wolves can be/
102 M: Good//
103 K: Like the/ fathers of o (sic) family/l The top wolfs (sic) is. . .ranpering
104 M: Respected/I
105 K: Respected/l

251

106 M: {Dutch} {Repeat}

107 D: Remted

108 M: Good [tap]

109 K: By all the others/ each
110 M: Good//

111 K: Wolfin/a/pack/l

112 M: Good//

113 K: Also/ has/ its .........
114 M: Place//

115 K: Place//[tap] There is ...... seen
116 M: Seldom/l

117 K: Seldom/

118 D: Any [tap]

119 K: Need to/ fake

120 M: Fight//

12] K: Fight/l

'122 M: Hmhml/

123 K: Any

124 M: -An/ An//

125 K: An/ around/

126 M: Argumentl/

127 K: Argument/

128 D: About

129 K: The rank/

130 M: The rank/ good/l [tap]
131 K: Rank/canbesmen/ smid/
132 M: S-Settled/l

133 K: Settled/ with boys

134 M: Body//

135 K: Body lang

136 M: Language//

137 K: Language

138 M: Body language// {Dutch}// {repeat}
139 K: Body language//

140 M: -Good//

141 M

142 K: Hard/

143 M: Hde good//

144 K: Start

145 M: -Stare

146 K: Stare/

147 D: For a(K)

148 M: From a//

149 K: From

1503315

151 K: ...high rock//

252

152 M: High ranking

153 D: Wolf ............

154 M: {Dutch} High ranking/l {Look he does it}

155 K: Mad. . .

156 D: Wolf means(M)

157 K: Means... Don’t pull

158 D: That//

159 M: Dutch// (Pointing to the pictures) High ranking {Dutch} Ml yah/
okayl/ {See, when he looks above and the other one looks down, and it means
he can not do that}

160 K: {Dutch} {What did he do?)

161 M: Yah/ okay/I {When he did something wrong, this wolf does it, high
ranking, and it means don ’t do that again}

162 D: The other wolves will apprise(K)

163 M: Apologize/l

164 M: {Dutch} {Say it again}.

165 D: Applogize

166 M: Good// [tap]

167 K: By...following/

168 M: Bowing/l

169 K: Bowing

170 M: {Dutch} Bowing/l {Look he also puts his head down}.

171 K: (Points to picture) {Dutch}

172 M: {Dutch}Bowing {Dutch} {This one looks up to say you can not do it, and
the other one looks down to say sorry I did this. You see he looks down and
that means bowing. }

173 D: It’s head [tap]

174 K: And looking/ away//

175 M: See it here// (Pointing to picture)

176 K: ...When two wolves are... aarug

177 M: Argue/l

178 K: Argue/l

179 M: Good//

180 D: The...higher

181 K: Higher rock/

182 M: Higher ranking/l

183 K: Ranking/

184 M: {Dutch} {Repeat}

185 D: Higher ranking]

186 M: Good//

187 K: Wolf7

188 D: Holds! itstail(K)

189 M: Good/l ...... {Dutch} {What can it be?}

190 K: Hangingl/

191 M: High//

192 K: High//

253

193 M: {Dutch} (Pointing to pictures) Higher making wolf {Dutch} {You see this
one lifts his tail because he is higher ranking. wolf And this one has his tail
low.}

194 K: {Dutch}

195 M: {Dutch} {Look that will be mentioned here. @oints to text). Okay,
continue reading}

196 D: If [tap]

197 K: The other/ argues

198 M: Agrees”

199 K: Agrees/ to...take ......

200 M: -take ......

201 K: seacond (sic)

202 M: Second/ good” [taps]

203 K: Second play/

204 M: Good”

205 K: Play//It .........

206 M: Crooches (sic) {Dutch} {1 think it is}-

207 K: Crooches/

208 D: With [tap]

209 K: It’s/ tail...low”

210 M: Yeah/ {Dutch} (Discussing pictures) {Look this one, (points to picture)
and this one has its tail high This one is sorry for what he did (points). And
this one says hey you can not do that. Look, let’s continue reading to see what
else they can. . .}

211 K: It may/ lank...

212 M: Lick”

213 K: Blick”

214 M: Lick/l

215 K: Lick/

216 M: Hmhm”

217 D: the [tap]

218 K: Others/ mother/

219 M: Month”

220 K: Mouth”

221 M: Hmhm

222 D: And...anoth

223 M: Even”

224 K: Evenl. ..roll

225 M: Good//

226 K: Other

227 M: Over”

228 K: Over/

229 D: On it’s back/_l

230 M: Yeah” {Dutch} (K nods} Good {Dutch} Yeah {Dutch} {See it here. Good
boy. Do you remember what you read, what is he doing?}

231 K: {Dutch} (Points to picture) {He says sorry}

254

232 M: Yeah/ okay/l

233 T: Are you ﬁnished with this”
234 M nods: Yeah//

235 T: Okay/ thank you very much//

255

APPENDIX D
FIELD NOTES EXCERPT
Field Notes

3-3-00

Videotaped K--- reading at home today. He read a very diﬂicult informational
book called The Wolves Ate My Homework. I was surprised at the diﬂicult words
he read without support. He was also self-correcting more. The growth in his
reading at home is far more obvious than in the school’s guided reading group. In
school he still struggles with books written at a high ﬁrst early or early second
level. He reads less conﬁdently at school. (Although today he read during a
running record he read very ﬂuenty-the most ﬂuent I’ve seen in school up to this
point). Today at home he seemed very conﬁdent, and frequently requested to read
alone despite the diﬁicult level of text. I asked his mother if she noticed
progressed since the program began? She said yes but said she doesn’t know
whether to credit the program or his maturity. I believe she still harbors some
skeptism towards the actual effectiveness of the program. She views PR as a
motivational rather than instructional inﬂuence. She said the program has made
him very motivated to read. She says he loves to read and she thinks its because
he has her support throughout the reading. He is willing to take more risks. She
believes the program gives him conﬁdence. She is very pleased at how much he
wants to read. She believes his desire and enthusiasm for reading is much greater
than before the program. She likes the structure of the program. She believes it
encourages him to listen to her more and not just resist what mom is saying. She
referred to it as “a third party” that K. is more willing to listen to.

K--- didn’t discuss much during the reading. I asked his mom if that was typical.
She smiled and shook her head-no. I asked is because I’m here? She nodded and
said yes. She went on to stay that K--- now gets so excited about his reading if
often stops in the middle of the page to talk about what going on in the story or
what the content of the text is about.

In school we teach children to read to the end of the sentence when they come to a
unknown word. PR allows the child to put this strategy into practice. PR provides
a structure for parent child reading dyads to follow at home that is consistent with
what is emphasized in school.

256

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