Word Work

Promoting Change

Accountability is pressing for higher teacher effectiveness in the form of increased student performance while at the same time reducing staff development opportunities. For instruction to improve students’ reading and writing skills, teachers must go beyond utilizing traditional instructional modes (Darling-Hammond & Sykes, 1999). Therefore, professional development is a critical element of such interventions.

Professional development begins with two days of intensive staff development. These sessions focused on modeling strategies for vocabulary development, narrative and expository reading-writing, and decoding-spelling, with an emphasis on critical thinking and group processing. Training emphasize active participation and dialogue. Immediate application supported by coaching and assessment feedback. Weekly teacher/ trainer meetings ensure that metacognition and higher-level thinking remained in focus.

This professional development model leads to substantial changes in teachers’ practices. Rather than relying on scripted basal lessons and worksheets, teachers stressed student analysis of real texts using graphic organizers, higher order thinking, and group processing. Students regularly engaged in authentic writing, integrating vocabulary and decoding skills.

For more information, please view the following presentation:
Promoting Conceptual Understanding of English Orthography