The Development Of First Graders’ Word Knowledge In Classrooms Where Teachers Are Implementing A Mandated Phonics Curriculum

This dissertation examined the reading and spelling development of 89 first-grade students in an instructional context where students received a minimum of 40 minutes daily mandated phonics curriculum. The National Reading Panel report (NRP, 2000) established the importance of including an explicit, systematic phonics curriculum as part of an effective literacy program for beginning readers; however, few attempts have been made to further investigate the role of such instruction on both early reading and spelling development as it unfolds in a naturally-occurring classroom context. Using a longitudinal design, this study captured the students’ development along several dimensions, including word recognition, spelling, and oral contextual reading. Results indicated that for students across three reading-readiness groups (low-, average-, and high-readiness at the start of first grade) there was a larger discrepancy between automatic word recognition skill than spelling skill, and this difference was most pronounced for students in the low reading-readiness group. The findings of this study complemented and extended existing theories of early reading and spelling development (Ehri, 1998; E. Henderson, 1981; Morris et al., 2003), suggesting that this specific instructional context may reveal a more nuanced trajectory for students who enter first grade with limited word recognition skill.