Teachers’ instruction and students’ vocabulary and comprehension: An exploratory study with English monolingual and Spanish-English bilingual students in grades 3-5

Silverman, R., Proctor, C. P., Harring, J.R., Doyle, B., Mitchell, M.A., & Meyer, A.G. Teachers’ instruction and students’ vocabulary and comprehension: An exploratory study with English monolingual and Spanish-English bilingual students in grades 3-5. Reading Research Quarterly, 49(1), 31-55.


It is clear from what I read here that we still have a long way to go when it comes to educating teachers about how to provide the kind of literacy instruction that helps all learners read and think at the levels they will need to succeed in society. With the Common Core State Standards rapidly shaping the educational landscape, there will be increasing pressure to make sure students have high-level reading skills.

The study described here looked at the nature of vocabulary and comprehension instruction implemented in 33 third, fourth, and fifth grade classrooms. Specifically, the researchers observed, recorded and classified teacher talk (at the level of “utterances”) and coded all talk surrounding vocabulary and comprehension instruction. Samples of children within each teacher’s classroom were tested using seven different measures and at three times during the year. Measures looked at varying aspects of vocabulary and comprehension learning. Elaborate statistical analyses were done on resulting data, with the aim being to find relationships between the kind of talk teachers did and their students’ vocabulary and comprehension learning. The researchers were particularly interested in whether the relationship would differ for children who spoke Spanish in their homes (called “bilinguals” here--there was a significant population of these students in the school) versus children whose home language was English (called “monolinguals” here).

Perhaps the most disturbing finding was that overall, the researchers observed very little differentiated instruction in these classrooms, even though differentiating instruction to meet student needs is part of the credo in most of today’s teacher education programs, and indeed, is a prominent piece of accreditation standards for teacher education. We can talk the talk about differentiating, and incorporate it into all kinds of documents, courses, and resources, but the study described here indicates that it is still not happening in a lot of classrooms. The sample in this study was large enough that the findings give me pause, and it resonates with what I have observed for many years, and continue to observe, in my work in schools. The old whole-group, teacher directed, literal comprehension-focused instructional model is still prevalent in elementary classrooms, even though we’ve known for decades that it does not work well, especially for children with challenges, including those who do not speak English at home.

The above finding almost stopped me in my tracks, but I read on into this meticulously developed study and learned more and more about how vocabulary and comprehension looked in the target schools. The coding system for types of vocabulary and comprehension utterances the researchers observed was particularly helpful; they are provided in full in an appendix. I can use these coding categories to talk with the teachers and teacher candidates I work with as we think about how to design good vocabulary and comprehension instruction. I am already planning to share Silverman et al’s findings in my literacy methods courses. If we can discuss what the researchers here saw, and how it related to student learning, that is potentially a valuable discussion. After many years as a literacy educator, I don’t have overwhelming optimism that these discussions on their own can make a difference in the classrooms of those in my courses, but at least it would be a start.

There’s a lot to be mined from the findings here, but a few things really stood out. It is clear to me that we need to concentrate more on vocabulary and word study, and that we need to make sure teachers know that such instruction needs to go beyond just providing definitions and teaching children how to look words up. Those things are all right to do, but we need to go further and look at how words work and how they are formed, and how they function as parts of sentences and as parts of ideas. It is also clear to me that we need to work harder at developing inferential comprehension with all kinds of texts. As a literacy educator, I need to work harder at modeling, scaffolding, and providing opportunities for teachers to learn how to teach these kinds of higher level literacy outcomes. Many teachers obviously do not know how to do that, or don’t feel confident about doing that, or may not even realize that the kinds of instruction they are implementing limit their students’ learning and possibly those students’ ability to succeed. If this study is any indication, we have a long way to go.

One interesting finding here was that direct comprehension strategy instruction had a positive relationship to comprehension measure scores for the “bilingual” students, but no relationship to the scores of the “monolingual” students. That resonates with some of the recent research on the problems that have been documented for many students from Spanish-dominant homes who speak English fairly fluently in conversation, but have problems with “academic” English. Strategy instruction may provide a boost for those students, but may not be helpful for all students.

I finished reading about this study with a sense of concern that led me to think once again about how I am working with future teachers, and I’ve already revised some of the instruction on vocabulary and comprehension that will be a part of my courses in the near future. I had an overwhelming sense as a literacy educator that I had work to do, and I’ve already begun on that.