A SURVEY OF INSTRUCTIONAL PRACTICES OF PRIMARY TEACHERS NOMINATED AS EFFECTIVE IN PROMOTING LITERACY

Kindergarten (N = 23), grade 1 (N = 34), and grade 2 (N = 26) teachers , who were nominated by their supervisors (N = 45) as effective in edu cating their students to be readers and writers, responded to 2 questi onnaires about their practice. As expected, there were shifts in repor ted practices between kindergarten and grade 2, although there was muc h more similarity than difference in the reports of kindergarten, grad e 1, and grade 2 teachers. The teachers claimed commitments to (a) qua litatively similar instruction for students of all abilities, along wi th additional support for weaker readers; (b) literate classroom envir onments; (c) modeling and teaching of both lower-order (e.g., decoding ) skills and higher-order (e.g., comprehension) processes; (d) extensi ve and diverse types of reading by students; (e) teaching students to plan, draft, and revise as part of writing; (f) engaging literacy inst ruction (i.e., instruction motivating literate activities); and (g) mo nitoring of students' progress in literacy.