Instructional Practices that Hold Promise for Promoting Young Students’ Language Development and Comprehension

An exploratory analysis of data from more than 1,000 Title I classrooms has identified four instructional practices that show promise for improving young children’s language development and comprehension. A new evaluation brief released today (Aug. 16) suggests these practices are areas for further study. The Institute of Education Sciences released An Exploration of Instructional Practices that Foster Language Development and Comprehension: Evidence from Prekindergarten through Grade 3 in Title I Schools, which provides results from a study that measured a wide range of instructional practices through classroom observations and assessed student reading achievement growth during the 2011-2012 school year. The study was administered by the National Center for Educational Evaluation and Regional Assistance, a center within IES. The practices identified in the brief were related to student growth in language skills or comprehension, based on an exploratory analysis of data from over 1,000 PreK – Grade 3 classrooms within 83 Title I schools. The practices that were most consistently related to student growth include: • Engaging students in defining new words during or after reading a text • Helping students make connections between their prior knowledge and the texts they read • Promoting higher-order thinking by asking questions that require students to analyze information, explain their thinking, and develop new ideas • Focusing students’ attention on the meaning of a text before reading it, such as by introducing the topic and encouraging predictions