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In the context of a longitudinal, four-year study of reading instruction in low-performing, high-poverty urban schools, we surveyed teacher knowledge of reading-related concepts, and established a modest predictive relationship between teachers' knowledge, classroom reading achievement levels, and teachers' observed teaching competence. There were significant associations among these variables at the third and fourth grade levels. To obtain this result, measures of teacher content knowledge in language and reading were refined in a three-stage process. Our purpose was to explore the type and level of questions that would begin to discriminate more capable from less capable teachers, and that would have a predictive relationship with student reading achievement outcomes. After experimenting with measurement of K-2 teachers' content knowledge (Form #1), we piloted a Teacher Knowledge Survey with 41 second and third grade teachers in one study site (Form #2). We then refined and expanded the Survey (Form #3) and administered it to 103 third and fourth grade teachers in both project sites. Teachers' misconceptions about sounds, words, sentences, and principles of instruction were pinpointed so that professional development could address teachers' needs for insight and information about language structure and student learning.
Current educational policies at the federal, state, and district levels call for direct, explicit, systematic teaching of reading and language concepts to beginning readers and to students at risk for reading and spelling difficulties. Five principal components of instruction named in the federal Reading First legislation (phoneme awareness; phonics, word study, and spelling; reading fluency; vocabulary; and text comprehension) (Armbruster, Lehr, & Osborn, 2001) encompass language instruction at the phoneme, grapheme, syllable, word, sentence, and discourse levels. Even if they use a structured program, teachers need specific and explicit linguistic knowledge to recognize and address the needs of all children on the continuum of reading and language proficiency.
Phonological awareness instruction, for example, requires the teacher to differentiate syllables (e.g., com-plete) from onsets and rimes (c-om; pl-ete) and to count, produce, blend, segment, and manipulate the individual speech sounds in words (c-o-m-p-l-e-t). Phonemes must be differentiated from letters to clarify for learners the nature of speech to print correspondence (e.g., which and witch; each have three phonemes and five letters). Phonics instruction in English requires the teacher to lead students through multilayered, complex,...