Teachers\u27 Perceptions of Word Callers and Related Literacy Concepts

The purpose of the study was to investigate teachers\u27 perceptions of word callers as they relate to the concepts of reading fluency and reading comprehension. To this end, second grade students (N = 408) completed a series of reading fluency and reading comprehension assessments, and their teachers (N = 31) completed word caller nominations and a questionnaire regarding their concepts surrounding these issues. Our findings suggested that teachers often over nominated children as word callers. Further, questionnaire data indicated a great deal of ambiguity and inconsistency exists regarding teachers\u27 understanding and use of the term word caller. By contrast, teachers seemed to possess a veridical understanding of the related terms reading fluency and reading comprehension

Theory of Mind in Deaf Adults and the Organization of Verbs of Knowing

Naive theories of mind provide an organizing scheme for concept formation and categorization. Additionally, they highlight what is important within a domain. This study investigated how deaf adults with hearing parents organize 17 cognitive verbs of knowing as a way of describing their naive theory of mind. Deaf adults rated on a 1 to 7 scale the similarity of pairs of cognitive verbs in terms of whether "the words are alike or different based on how you would use your mind when you do that mental activity. " We directly compared the similarity of cognitive verbs in these deaf adults with data collected in earlier research describing the organization of cognitive verbs in hearing adults. We conducted multidimensional scaling, additive similarity tree, and Pathfinder analyses to assess global, categorical, and local relations in the domain. Deaf adults ' theory of mind revealed a distinction among mental verbs in terms of information-processing components and constructive certainty components. In all analyses, the deaf group showed a very similar organization to that of hearing adults examined in previous research. We conclude that, although deaf adults might be expected to view cognitive processes differently than hearing adults, they nonetheless exhibit a theory of mind that is highly similar to that of hearing adults. Naive theories of mind are likely to be important in guiding daily activities and in the production of strategic behavior (dark, 1987). One's naive theory of mind represents one's ideas about how the mind operates and how one knows or comes to know something

Myth and Reality of the Word Caller: The Relation Between Teacher Nominations and Prevalence Among Elementary School Children

The purpose of the study was to investigate (a) the prevalence of word callers in elementary school, (b) the accuracy of teachers\u27 word caller nominations, and (c) teachers\u27 conceptualization of reading fluency and reading comprehension. To this end, 2 cross-sectional studies of second- and third- (N = 868) and of third- and fifth-grade (N = 202) children were conducted. Our findings suggest that word callers occur infrequently in the primary grades but that they are more prevalent in late elementary school. Regardless of grade level, teachers often overnominated children as word callers. Furthermore, a great deal of ambiguity and inconsistency seems to exist regarding teachers\u27 understanding and use of the term. These findings suggest that the term should be used relatively rarely and that reading educators should be cautious about their identification of word callers in early elementary school

Insights into Fluency Instruction: Short- and Long-term Effects of Two Reading Programs

The purpose of the study was to examine short- and long-term effects of two instructional approaches designed to improve the reading fluency of second grade children: Fluency-Oriented Reading Instruction (or FORI; Stahl & Heubach, 2005) and a wide reading approach (Kuhn et al., 2006). By the end of second grade, children in the wide reading classrooms showed better fluency and self-concept compared to children in control classrooms. Classroom observations indicated children in FORI classrooms were more likely to be off-task than controls. However, by the end of third grade, children in both programs displayed better comprehension. We conclude that extensive and long-term focus on the oral reading of complex texts using practices that scaffold reading in second grade is beneficial for the long-term development of reading comprehension skills