Predicting Second and Third Graders’ Reading Comprehension Gains: Observing Students’ and Classmates Talk During Literacy Instruction Using COLT

ABSTRACT

This paper introduces a new observation system that is designed to investigate students’ and teachers’ talk during literacy instruction, Creating Opportunities to Learn from Text (COLT). Using video-recorded observations of 2nd–3rd grade literacy instruction (N = 51 classrooms, 337 students, 151 observations), we found that nine types of student talk ranged from using non-verbal gestures to generating new ideas. The more a student talked, the greater were his/her reading comprehension (RC) gains. Classmate talk also predicted RC outcomes (total effect size = 0.27). We found that 11 types of teacher talk ranged from asking simple questions to encouraging students’ thinking and reasoning. Teacher talk predicted student talk but did not predict students’ RC gains directly. Findings highlight the importance of each student’s discourse during literacy instruction, how classmates’ talk contributes to the learning environments that each student experiences, and how this affects RC gains, with implications for improving the effectiveness of literacy instruction.

Acknowledgments

We thank the Individualizing Student Instruction (ISI) Project team and the children, parents, teachers, and school participants. Funding was provided by the U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, Grant # R305A160399, and in part, R305N160013, R305A160404, R305F130058, R305N160050 and R305B070074, and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Grants # R01HD48539, and in part, R21HD062834, and P50HD052120. The views expressed in this paper are ours and not the funding agencies. Dr. Connor has an equity interest in Learning Ovations, a company that may potentially benefit from the research results. The terms of this arrangement have been reviewed and approved by the University of California, Irvine in accordance with its conflict of interest policies. Information on data sharing is available from the corresponding author.

Conflict of interest

None of the authors had a conflict of interest when the study was conducted. Dr. Connor may have a conflict of interest now, which has been reviewed and approved by the University of California, Irvine in accordance with its conflict of interest policies.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development [R01HD48539]; Institute of Education Sciences [R305A160399, R305B070074, R305F100027].