Small-group word study: Instructional conversations or mini-interrogations?

Ganske, Kathy, & Jocius, Robin. (2013). Small-group word study: Instructional conversations or mini-interrogations? Language Arts, 91(1), 23-40.


This article is a reminder of how important it is to make sure students are active learners and fully engaged in literacy instruction. In order to achieve that, elementary school teachers have to be willing to relinquish some of the control they typically exert over the talk that goes on in classrooms. The observations that Ganske and Jocius did in several third grade classrooms illustrate how ubiquitous certain classroom patterns are, how deeply ingrained they are, and how much those patterns can inhibit learning.

In the classrooms observed in the study, small-group word study instruction was dominated by teacher talk, low-level closed questions, and the well-known and universally-experienced Inquiry, Response, and Evaluation (IRE) format. In IRE, teacher talk dominates, the focus is on teacher questions and wrong/right answers, and the students are expected to provide those answers. IRE pervades education, even though we know there are better ways to engage learners. It is difficult for anyone to engage with word study that follows the IRE model. Today’s children have even less tolerance for it than those in earlier generations. No wonder Ganske and Jocius found few of these word study sessions that lasted more than a few minutes. As one who has done classroom observation research myself, I felt for these researchers. They had to be on their toes to observe these word study sessions; if they had blinked they could have missed some of them entirely!
Ganske and Jocius attribute the prevalence of this kind of instruction to the pressures of testing on teachers. I’ll grant that it doesn’t help. Adding testing pressure adds to teacher uncertainty and that ever-present classroom feeling of “too much to do and too little time.” While I recognize this pressure as very real, I have to think that there is more to it than that. Why do we cling to these time-worn models that, if we really reflected on it, didn’t work for us as students and really don’t work for our students now? Is it just because instruction that is active and engaging takes up more classroom time? Or is there more to it than that?

For one thing, engaging instruction that promotes active learning is harder to do well than IRE is, and it requires a deeper, more engaged kind of planning and teaching. A teacher needs to be an active, engaged learner him/herself to do that kind of planning and teaching. I’ve done both unengaged and engaged teaching, both with children and with adults, and I can say unequivocally that engaged teaching is a lot harder than unengaged teaching. That kind of teaching requires time dedicated to investigating and designing materials and methods, and time to concentrate and focus. If I want to have that time, I have to find ways to make time, to prioritize that kind of thinking, and to carve it out of my very full life. In my own situation, I find I have to actually schedule blocks of time for thinking about teaching, and make them sacred. A few of the best elementary teachers I know do the same. Two teachers I know well (both of them award-winning, exemplary elementary teachers with families to care for and very full lives outside the classroom) have chosen one day a week when they stay after school for up to three hours just to work on devising instruction that will engage their students. For me, it is what I do on Friday afternoons when our campus is almost deserted. The elementary teachers who stay after school have made special childcare arrangements, and they (and I) have supportive spouses (who often take us out for dinner after our planning sessions). This happens almost every week, and it is inviolable.

What keeps us going with this? It’s because it’s worth it. Teaching is so much more fun when children are learners, and have ownership. Words can really be fascinating, and watching the children’s minds work as they begin to grasp that is absolutely intoxicating! Teaching is harder this way, and we have to give up some of the control, but oh my—it is so much more fulfilling! After reading this article, I wanted to dig deeper into strategies for engaging children in word study. Ganske and Jocius give us a few suggestions and some good places to start in the sidebars here, but it’s just a nibble and an appetizer. I want to dig deeper and find ways to share what I learn with the future teachers I work with, who get to go out and work with children in classrooms. I’d love to see a love of words and of learning about words take hold with some of those future teachers and their students.