SCHOLASTIC LITERACY
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I believe the vocabulary lesson and the students' required use of vocabulary really had a major impact on student achievement. These improvements may also be tied to a perceived increase in student engagement. Teachers reported high levels of student interest and engagement when using Scholastic Literacy. Most teachers (61.4%, n = 27) agreed with the statement that “Students were engaged in Scholastic Literacy.” This is attributed to how the program “invites students to the discussion” and “sparks their thinking.” Additionally, teachers felt that Scholastic Literacy has helped students persevere when learning new concepts (54.5%, n = 24). Summarily, a focus group teacher was quoted as saying, “The growth makes you speechless.” Program Attitudes Teachers were asked to identify strengths and weaknesses of the Scholastic Literacy program, and responses were plentiful. Although teachers had different experiences with Scholastic Literacy, this depended on their school, support network, and personal motivation to implement the program with fidelity, so this section will only discuss the emergent themes in the collective responses and not list every single quality of the program that was given as a strength or weakness. Naturally, the question, “What do you like best about Scholastic Literacy? Least?” invites responses with wide- ranging criticism and praise for the program, some of which are highly individual and anecdotal. The following section presents the most common patterns and emergent themes in teacher responses. 2 Strengths The most commonly identified strength of the program was the diverse range of highly engaging and “excellent” texts and the Read-Aloud activities that are structured around them. Teacher respondents on the survey and in focus groups appreciated the quality of texts, with one teacher saying, “I mean, it’s Scholastic . Of course, their texts are good.” Specifically, teachers liked the “authenticity” of the texts and the deep selection of genres and stories, which made them “not feel like workbook texts.” Programmatically, teachers like the predictability that Scholastic Literacy creates in the classroom. The structured program helps students to “know exactly what is going to happen” and “takes the stress off of teachers.” Other teachers agreed that the
2 Additionally, a separate survey was administered to 64 teachers in the same district by Scholastic, and the results largely concurred with the findings from the CRRE survey. The strongest components of Scholastic Literacy, according to teachers, were the diversity of texts (62.9%, n = 39), the informational texts (59.7%, n = 37), literacy selections (58.1%, n = 36), and vocabulary development (50%, n = 31). The weakest components were identified as writing instruction (85.2%, n = 52) and phonics instruction (59%, n = 36).
© Johns Hopkins University, 2023
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