This ten week study examined the impact of the teachers instructional strategies in teaching phonemic awareness to kindergarten and first grade students. Three questions were explored. These questions were: (a) How do teachers determine the appropriate instructional strategies to use in teaching phonemic awareness?, (b) What are the similarities and differences that each teacher demonstrates in implementing appropriate instructional strategies in teaching phonemic awareness?, and (c) How have the teachers efforts in implementing a Reading First program been rewarded? The participants in this study are two first grade teachers, two kindergarten teachers, and one kindergarten and first grade reading interventionist.
Qualitative methods of single, cross case analysis were utilized for this study with data sources that included: field notes, responses from questionnaires, and the researchers observations. During the 90 minutes of uninterrupted reading instruction, the teachers were required to teach explicitly and systematic phonemic awareness from the prescribed method in the reading manual.
The prescribed method consisted of verbatim scripts of: what the teachers should say, how the teachers should say it, and the answer for the students response. Data gathered showed that teachers used explicit and systematic instructional strategies when teaching phonemic awareness from the prescribed reading series; however, some teachers used additional instructional strategies to teach phonemic awareness. There were differences and similarities that were prevalent across grade levels. The differences of the instructional strategies consisted of utilization of hand motion and other techniques and using phonemic awareness in context. The similarities of the strategies utilized included sounding out individual phonemes, segmenting phonemes, phoneme counting, and adding, deleting, and substituting phonemes.
The teachers were intrinsically motivated by their students progression. The teachers ability to impact phonemic awareness instruction is indirectly a result of their desire to be adequately prepared to deliver phonemic awareness instruction. The students satisfactory progress in attaining the appropriate reading level suggests that the teachers positively impacted instruction.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-04112007-182226 |
| Date | 12 April 2007 |
| Creators | Longmire, Gwendolyn Jackson |
| Contributors | James H. Wandersee, Earl H. Cheek, Jr., Pamela B. Blanchard, Paul Mooney, Hugh W. Buckingham |
| Publisher | LSU |
| Source Sets | Louisiana State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-04112007-182226/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached herein a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below and in appropriate University policies, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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