Collaborating to improve literacy outcomes.

Abstract

In an attempt to improve student performance on high stakes standardized testing, teacher educators from the University of Tennessee and teachers from one urban elementary school have collaborated in the development of a community- and school-based vocabulary initiative. Using research related to vocabulary and reading as a basis for our planning, we organized teams responsible for developing and implementing a series of vocabulary activities. This article contains links to vocabulary research and descriptive information about these efforts.

Introduction

Reform in urban schools is a key topic in the popular media and professional literature (e.g., Aubry, 1999; Delpit, & Dowdy, 2002; Haberman, 2000; Johnson, 2000; Ladson-Billings, 2001). Both genres contain everything from dramatic success stories, to calls for radical reform, impassioned recounting of the injustices and inequities found in public education, and recommended solutions to public school failures. Some writers describe changes needed in teacher preparation, while others center on school-based reform through curricular change, increased accountability, parent involvement, and so forth. Some attribute successes or failures to the quality of teaching, while others address the need for particular instructional techniques, cultural relevance in instruction, or consistent high behavioral expectations for all children. Collaboration is one important element throughout these recommendations. It can refer to a variety of potential relationships, including those between the school and community, teachers and parents, teacher educators and the schools, and administrators and teachers.

We offer a look at one such collaborative effort that involves teacher educators, classroom teachers, school-based administrators, community leaders, local businesses, and parents. In this project, we attempt to integrate the potentially conflicting goals of increasing student performance on standardized tests, teacher input and decision-making in reform, parental and community involvement, and links between a teacher preparation program and an elementary school. This article includes a brief description of how the project was conceived and initiated, links to research on the efficacy of vocabulary instruction, components of the initiative, and issues associated with its implementation.

Focusing on Vocabulary

The vocabulary initiative, supported by Urban Impact, a teacher education grant, grew out of discussions between teacher educators, community leaders, and the faculty and staff at one urban elementary school. The story begins when an established urban/multicultural teacher education program underwent significant personnel changes at approximately the same time that standardized test scores at the elementary school dropped below acceptable levels. Although we differed in our beliefs about the value and meaning those scores held, everyone agreed that improving test performance was a necessary goal. The school is an urban technology magnet with 650 students, of whom approximately 88% are African American. A growing number of students do not use English as their first or primary language. Eighty-nine percent of the students qualify for free or reduced lunch; many also live in contexts challenged by some of the correlates of poverty. In 1996, the school was redesigned to appeal to a more diverse student population and technology was seen as the magnet of attraction. The intent was to create a school rich in technology to increase racial diversity among students and teachers. State of the art technology was installed to enhance student learning opportunities, including a TV studio and computers in every classroom. Despite these resources, low academic performance, particularly in math and language arts, stigmatizes the school.

The team of teacher educators knew we needed to establish a trust-based relationship with the teachers at the school to achieve honest discussions about reform. We were uncertain of the extent to which we shared common perspectives toward effective teaching. Teachers were hesitant to openly express perspectives contrary to instructional policies of the school system, which tend to emphasize direct instruction over constructivist teaching. Thus, collaboration began with a sense of wariness from both teachers and teacher educators and skepticism from participating community leaders, uncertain if their voices would be heard.

Crafting a Collective Vision

Through a series of small meetings, we found common ground. Teacher educators presented an overview of current research on effective reading instruction and shared their beliefs and biases. Teachers described programs in place at the school and gradually revealed their opinions about them. The teachers had previously elected to adopt the Literacy Collaborative (Williams, 1999), and already had a teacher participating in a three-year training program. Teachers had committed a significant amount of time and energy to learning about this approach. School administrators supported the program, purchasing needed books and materials, and allowing teaching assignments that made it possible.

The teacher educators and community leaders were invited to join the school's faculty and staff for their annual spring retreat. Over 90 persons came together to spend the day articulating a means to an end. The end was improved child outcomes. The means of measuring that outcome was standardized test scores. The current test scores were well below standards any of us found acceptable. Something new and different was needed. The teachers lamented that children reading below grade level were doomed to low scores. Even if a child improves in reading ability an entire grade level, that progress may not be apparent when the test is still well above that child's reading ability. Teacher sentiment was evident; reading ability determines performance on all components of the test, not just the reading section.

Community leaders expressed deep concern for the children. They had taken the time to study and compare test scores in the community and throughout the state and they desperately wanted to understand the problem and contribute to the solution. While they wanted to support the existing teachers and administrators, they really challenged them to explain why these children were doing so poorly year after year. A local pastor who was participating in the discussion confronted the group by saying, "I don't care what changes you have made, either in the school or the university, it's still my kids who are still at the bottom of the list every year." "They're our babies," chimed in another minister, "we're sending you the best we have. Even though parents don't always know how to help their children, we know they want to."

The teacher educators wanted to contribute to improving student test performance without criticizing the efforts teachers were already making. We accepted the goal of raising test scores, because it was of the highest priority to the teachers and school administrators. Yet, it was hard to abandon other lofty goals we had acquired from the effective urban teaching literature, such as culturally relevant teaching (e.g., Delpit, & Dowdy, 2002; Ladson-Billings, 1995).

Vocabulary development emerged as a possible means to raise test scores, increase reading comprehension, and forge links to parents and the community. We know vocabulary growth plays a critical role in progress in reading (NRP, 2000). Through vocabulary development, students should not only improve their test scores on the vocabulary items, but also improve on other sections of the reading test and other test components. During the retreat, teachers worked in grade-level teams with teacher educators and community leaders sprinkled throughout to begin fleshing out ideas. By the close of the day, there was school-wide enthusiasm and support for the project that eventually became known as Partners for Accomplishing Literacy Successfully (PALS).

Vocabulary Instruction as a Means to Improving Reading

There are estimates that school materials between grades 3 and 9 contain 88,533 distinct word families (Nagy & Anderson as cited in Baumann, Kame'enui, & Ash, 2002). Clearly, becoming acquainted with these words and their meanings is a key component of education. How to make students familiar with needed words, so they can recognize them in oral and print language, use them meaningfully, and apply their knowledge under testing conditions is at issue. The intention of the PALS program was to support and extend learning opportunities for students, particularly in their vocabulary development. Although not a part of the classroom instructional program, it needed to be consistent with research-based vocabulary instruction.

Recent compilations of research on vocabulary instruction support the efficacy of vocabulary instruction as a means to support increasing reading comprehension (Baumann, Kame'enui, & Ash, 2002; NRP, 2000; Sweet & Snow, 2002). However, the nature of that instruction must be consistent with the characteristics of effective instruction. Three principles of effective vocabulary instruction are: (1) give both context and definitions, (2) encourage "deep" processing, and (3) give multiple exposures (Stahl as cited in Baumann, Kame'enui, & Ash, 2002). It must be matched to the child's age and ability level, involve repeated exposure to words in various contexts, and offer a balance of direct instruction with opportunities for incidental learning. Instruction should not be dependent on a single approach and must actively engage the student. An intensive long-term program of vocabulary instruction can improve word learning and comprehension of text containing those words (Beck, McKeown, & Omanson, 1987). Students need repetition and exposure to vocabulary across settings. Students should have incidental opportunities to encounter vocabulary throughout the instructional day as well as at home and in the community.

Word knowledge is connected to "the immediate task environment in which the word is embedded" (Baumann et al., 2002, p. 756). In this case, the task environment is a standardized test. Baumann, Kame'enui, and Ash conclude from their review of vocabulary instruction research that rote vocabulary learning methods do strengthen vocabulary development, but do not directly improve passage comprehension. They confirmed that a comprehensive program of rich vocabulary instruction is an effective way to teach word meanings and improving comprehension. They observe, "when a word is embedded in a rich context of supportive and redundant information, the learner might be more likely to acquire its meaning than when the same word is found in a lean context (i.e., it is surrounded by other equally difficult words)" (p. 756).

Partners for Accomplishing Literacy Successfully Initiative (PALS)

Collaboration is the cornerstone of PALS. The primary goal is to build a network of support to positively influence student academic performance through vocabulary development. PALS is guided by ecological theories suggesting that behaviors must be understood within natural settings (i.e., family, school, community, institutions) that shape and influence them (Meisels & Shonkoff, 2000). We seek to increase our understanding of the daily contexts that students experience and to use this awareness to make appropriate contextual linkages to support them. Our intent is to create greater alignment of goals and expectations that ultimately improves instruction and learning.

Next, we offer a discussion of the planning and preliminary implementation phases of the initiative's evolution.

Two groups, working on different strands of the initiative, contributed to the initial planning phase. The collaboration work group was comprised of representatives (i.e., parents, community leaders, school faculty and administrators, teacher educators) from the retreat meeting described earlier. Monthly parent meetings were also held to increase family and community participation, build trusting relationships, and explore ways families and community providers might extend and reinforce literacy experiences. Over the summer of 2002, a work group was formed to concentrate on vocabulary activities to enhance literacy skills. These volunteers included representatives from each grade level and two teacher educators from the university. The group was responsible for generating a word list for each grade level and accompanying activities to engage children in learning words in meaningful and enjoyable ways in different learning settings at school and beyond.

The following objectives emerged from the working group to guide the implementation process: to engage a network of partners representing the various environments children experience daily to support the goals and objectives of PALS; to identify a set of words for each grade level and develop a variety of appropriate activities to engage children in enjoyable, exciting, and meaningful learning opportunities; to develop a model and mechanism for training PALS partners and volunteers and strategies for promoting and marketing its goals and activities; to continuously reflect on the process and make appropriate adjustments and changes as needed. Ideas and activities generated by the groups are summarized below:

Engaging the support and involvement of families. This included informal gatherings especially designed to connect with families and generate involvement in literacy activities at home.

Connecting community and business with school. This included the development of a "symbolic" word wall in the school cafeteria or gym for frequently used words and other words emanating from student experiences in natural environments (i.e., classroom, home, before- and after-school providers, church, play). Students could collect words as they do with game cards and use them in interactions with peers and adults and bring them to school to build the word wall (e.g., Pauwels & Hess, 2001). It also included the development of materials for local churches to use to engage children and their families in literacy related activities. Churches can promote vocabulary interactions with students in a variety of ways. For example, a one-page sheet for children featuring a variety of word games to accompany the Sunday church program was designed to introduce new words for the week and generate informal conversations about words with children.

Enhancing traditional forms of communication with vocabulary activities. This included adding "weekly words sentences" on monthly calendars to engage parents in reinforcing vocabulary words used in school at each grade level. When students returned their signed calendars and shared their experiences with word interactions, they received a book as a reward.

Training for community-based service providers. This included training modules for service providers (i.e., before- or after-school care) to increase understanding of research-based literacy techniques and to create greater alignment of goals, activities, and strategies that promote vocabulary development.

Four types of activities have been introduced during PALS' initial phase of implementation. (1) Monthly calendars to link school and home. Beginning with the first month of the school year, teachers sent home monthly calendars. Calendars included "high frequency words" selected from an established list to encourage family members to use the words at home. Teachers created sentences to support vocabulary learning in meaningful and contextual ways. (2) Word cards, games, and activities. Teachers downloaded words from the Interact and laminated them for use in a variety of word games and activities. (3) Technology strategies to motivate involvement. Students developed a video commercial designed to highlight vocabulary words and generate excitement about the monthly calendar activity. Prior to sending the calendar home, the production was featured daily in each classroom for about one week. (4) Parent meetings to increase family involvement. Monthly parent meetings were held in different locations throughout the community and included a light dinner, child care services, and opportunities for individual and group discussions about school reform and strategies to improve student achievement.

Conclusion

Hope and commitment contributed to the conception of PALS. The excitement and energy that gave birth to the initiative have sustained it through each phase of its evolution. Each step along the journey has offered useful lessons and insights. We have learned that despite the negative influences of poverty, the family context is uniquely rich with natural opportunities to enhance literacy in enduring ways. Partnering with families is our greatest challenge. Families are diverse and connect with schools in different ways, through different paths, and on different levels. Successful partnership is an investment with enduring benefits. We have learned about the blend of community and culture and ways it serves to influence family values and functioning. We believe, as a long-standing and respected institution in the community, the church can be a viable conduit for communicating value and support for the literacy goals of PALS. As a minister attending one of the meetings said, "We want to be an integral part of the solution, not used just to identify problems." The church is in a unique position to reinforce and affirm values and benefits associated with school success. We believe there is "buy-in" and strong support from a broad base of individuals who are committed to changing the trajectory for students of this urban school. PALS represents a rich mosaic array of knowledge, experience, and linkages that emerged from a thoughtful and energizing process. The real challenge is sustaining a partnership system to negotiate the resources and support students' needs for achieving positive literacy outcomes.

References

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Gina Barclay-McLaughlin, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN Susan M. Benner, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN

Barclay-McLaughlin, Ph.D., is Associate Professor at Dept. of Theory and Practice in Teacher Education College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences. Benner, Ed.D., is Professor and Interim Department Head, Dept. of Theory and Practice in Teacher Education College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences.