Ruth Wharton-McDonald

University of New Hampshire | UNH · Department of Education

This article reports on a collaboration among three teacher educators to facilitate pre-service teacher (PST)s’ equity literacy through a social-justice themed afterschool program for elementary-aged children that was embedded in PSTs’ coursework. The teacher educators engaged in practitioner inquiry (e.g., Anderson, Herr, & Nihlen, 2007; Cochran-S...

The authors share findings from a study that incorporated two types of participatory interview approaches (conversational drawing interviews and walking tour interviews) to elicit young students’ (K–2) motivation‐related perceptions of a reading intervention to better understand and support their motivation for doing reading in the program. All 14...

The authors emphasize the importance of cultivating autonomous motivation for literacy in early childhood by supporting students’ basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness while building foundational skills. Additionally, the authors highlight four key findings specific to early childhood (pre‐K–2) literacy development: th...

Literacy instruction in first-grade classrooms in five U.S. locales was observed. Based on academic engagement and classroom literacy performances, the most-effective-for-locale and least-effective-for-locale teachers were selected. The teaching of the most-effective-for-locale teachers was then analyzed, including in relation to the teaching of th...

Literacy instruction in first-grade classrooms in five U.S. locales was observed. Based on academic engagement and classroom literacy performances, the most-effective-for-locale and least-effective-for-locale teachers were selected. The teaching of the most-effective-for-locale teachers was then analyzed, including in relation to the teaching of th...

An important goal in every first-grade classroom is to get children reading--but how? This book examines current research on first-grade literacy instruction and shows how it translates into what good teachers really do in the classroom. The book's authors, premier early literacy scholars and educators, describe several studies of effective beginni...

Classroom observations and in-depth interviews were used to study 9 first-grade teachers from 4 districts who had been nominated by language-arts coordinators as outstanding (N = 5) or typical (N = 4) in their ability to help students develop literacy skills. Based on observational measures of student reading and writing achievement and student eng...

Observed literacy instruction in 6 4th-grade and 4 5th-grade classrooms over 1 yr. Using the method of constant comparison, the study identified commonalities among classrooms in reading and writing instruction, instructional materials and goals, management, and classroom motivational orientation. Teachers in all classrooms provided a combination o...

Children are ready to begin learning how to read at about six years of age and do so in six to eight years. This chapter illustrates the concepts of excellent reading as constructively responsive reading, the information processing components that interact to produce constructively responsive reading, emergent reading during the preschool years, ph...

This article addresses the myth that children will be able to comprehend a text simply because they can decode words in it. Evidence is provided to support the claim that developing readers benefit from explicit teaching of comprehension strategies via direct explanation and modeling of strategies. Transactional strategies in which readers interact...

Grade 5 teachers, who were nominated by their supervisors as effective in educating their students to be readers and writers, responded to questionnaires about their practice. The teachers claimed commitments to (a) extensive reading at the heart of their reading instruction; (b) diverse instructional activities (e.g., whole-group instruction, smal...

Surveys and observes highly effective primary-level teachers. Describes their classroom characteristics and instructional practices, particularly the deliberate and well-planned integration of explicit skills instruction and authentic reading and writing experiences. (SR)