Abstract of

Investigating the Instructional Supportiveness of Leveled Texts

James W. Cunningham, Emeritus, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA

Stephanie A. Spadorcia, Lesley University, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Karen A. Erickson, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

David A. Koppenhaver, Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina

Janet M. Sturm, Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant

David E. Yoder, Emeritus, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Leveled books originally selected by or produced for use in Reading Recovery or its regular classroom initiative are now also widely used in regular and special classrooms having no affiliation with Reading Recovery. The frequent use of these leveled books in settings other than Reading Recovery raises an important question: Do books leveled for use in Reading Recovery support other reading instructional emphases in addition to the ones that Reading Recovery teachers are trained to provide? The purpose of this study was to examine the curricular dimensions of books leveled for use in Reading Recovery in order to judge how supportive such texts are for early reading instruction emphasizing word recognition or decoding instead of, or in addition to, the three main cueing systems. The study found that Reading Recovery books, as a category of early reading instructional texts, provide only a moderate amount of support for word-recognition instruction and almost none for decoding instruction in the use of onsets and rimes. The study also found that books leveled for use in Reading Recovery do not consistently increase in word-level demands as their levels increase.

Abstract from Cunningham, J.W., Spadorcia, S.A., Erickson, K.A., Koppenhaver, D.A., Sturm, J.M., & Yoder, D.E. (2005, October/November/December). Investigating the Instructional Supportiveness of Leveled Texts. Reading Research Quarterly, 40(4), 410–427. doi: 10.1598/RRQ.40.4.2