Abstract
In this chapter, an evaluation study of an early writing approach called Kid Writing (KW) is described. KW bridges the gap between reading and writing and is fundamentally informed by research that shows that children's extensive practice with early writing through journaling improves their reading outcomes. Also, a key aspect to the KW approach is the view that parents are partners in their child's literacy development, and thus, KW engages parents through workshops tailored for multilingual, multicultural families. This evaluation study took place during Year 2 of a four-year implementation of KW across four elementary schools in one urban school district. Quantitative results show that KW supported the improvement of kindergarten and first grade students' reading and writing development. Qualitative findings, identified by teachers, coaches, administrators, and parents, demonstrate both the benefits and challenges of implementing such an approach. Recommendations and implications from the evaluation study are discussed.
TopIntroduction
In April 2019, PBS Newshour released a segment called, “What Parents of Dyslexic Children are Teaching Schools about Literacy” that discussed literacy curricular changes that occurred in Arkansas as a result of parents of dyslexic children who petitioned to have systematic phonics instruction provided to every child. The news segment unleashed a flurry of debates about how best to teach children how to read that engaged top literacy researchers and scholars in the field, and organizations, such as the International Dyslexia Association, who weighed in on the merits of phonics as the ideal literacy approach for children who struggle with reading difficulties. The editors of Reading Research Quarterly (RRQ), published a series in 2020 on the “Science of Reading: Supports, Critiques, and Questions” to further consider this topic from multiple perspectives (Goodwin & Jiménez, 2020; 2021). Among the articles featured in the special issue, was one written by Graham (2020), who argued that the “Reading Wars” and now the “Science of Reading” (SoR) have almost exclusively focused on children’s development of reading skills and how children’s writing development supports their reading development. While there is renewed interest in the SoR, there is also concern from researchers and educators about the intense focus on systematic phonics instruction as the primary approach to teach children how to read without a regard for other approaches. Shanahan’s (2020) article for the journal provided an overview of the history and use of SoR in public discourse. He argued that reading research has investigated methods and approaches that “[go] well beyond phonics instruction” and that other “curricular instructional approaches and interventions...must be considered part of any acceptable definition of a science of reading instruction” (p. S242). He cites Graham and Hebert’s (2011) research on how writing instruction can improve students’ reading development as an example of instructional approaches that should be considered as part of the SoR.
Several contributing authors to the SoR series raised critical questions about the rhetoric of what constitutes empirically sound reading research. Various authors argued that the research standards, established by initiatives like What Works Clearinghouse, have come to dominate the discourse on research-based practices in effect bypassing instructional approaches that provide evidence of promising practices that can support children’s development of reading skills (see Aukerman & Schuldt, 2021; Jensen, 2021; Yaden et al., 2021). Each of these authors have argued for an expansion of the frameworks and research methodologies that constitute the SoR. Research studies that showcase promising practices do not necessarily conduct experimental (i.e., randomized trials) and quasi-experimental studies (Petscher et al., 2021), yet this does not mean that an instructional approach to reading or writing is not capable of showing “promise” of supporting young children’s development in these areas. Researchers, like Shanahan (2021), who was one of the original architects of the National Reading Panel Report, recently argued that SoR research should include a range of methodologies, and relying on a singular approach to research limits the “robustness” of what can be discovered and learned.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Funds of Knowledge: A concept developed by Luis Moll, Cathy Amanti, Deborah Neff, and Norma Gonzalez in 1992 during their study of Mexican households. They describe the knowledge and expertise that parents pass down to their children, that are not necessarily related to school literacies, as “funds of knowledge.”
Developmental Writing Stages: Refers to J. Richard Gentry’s early work on the stages of spelling that was published in 1988 that enables educators to see how children are developing writing skills.
Science of Reading: Current topic in the field of literacy which debates how children acquire reading skills and what constitutes evidence-based reading instruction.
Applied Phonics: Highlighting phonological skills and concepts during reading and writing activities.
ESL/ESOL/ELL: Terms that are often used interchangeably in the field of TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). They refer to students whose first languages are not English.
Magic Line: A Kid Writing strategy where the student uses dashes or lines in place of words or phonemes when they are not able to decode the target word independently.
Early Literacy Skills: The preliminary skills developed as children learn to listen, speak, read, and write.
Phonological Awareness: The ability to blend, segment, and decode phonemes in the English language.
Stretching the Word: A Kid Writing strategy for teaching phonics where students are encouraged to listen for the phonemes in words that they want to use in their writing.
Adult Underwriting: A step in the Kid Writing approach in which the adult volunteer, parent, or teacher demonstrates how a child’s story is written using the correct conventions of the English language.