Effective Classroom Contexts to Develop Literacy and Attention Skills for Typical and At-Risk First Grade Students

Inattention and reading problems are commonly recognized as co-occurring difficulties that are associated with academic underachievement. However, studies in both domains of research tend to focus on discrete interventions, with fewer observational studies of naturally existing teaching practices associated with growth in children's reading and behavioural development. The present study used a nested design (n=18 classrooms; 285 first grade students) and hierarchical linear modeling to assess different aspects of literacy teaching as predictors of change in students' reading and attention in a sample of first grade students in Quebec. Observations of literacy teaching were obtained using the Classroom AIMS Instrument (Roehrig, Pressley, Dolezal, Mohan, & Bohn, 2003), which assesses teaching quality in the areas of Classroom Atmosphere, Literacy Instruction, Classroom Management and Student Engagement. Significant variation existed between classrooms (accounting for 8-15% of the variation) across reading measures as well as teacher's attention ratings. For reading comprehension, students' initial reading ability interacted with classroom factors in predicting students' reading comprehension outcomes. For students who started the year with high reading skills, classroom management predicted higher rates of growth in reading comprehension. In contrast, for students who started the year with weaker reading skills, student engagement predicted higher rates of growth in reading comprehension. However the AIMS factors did not predict change in students' word reading and attention across the grade one year. For students at risk of attention difficulties, the overall quality of the teaching environment was an important predictor of growth in their listening comprehension skills. Students with mild attention difficulties who experienced high-quality teaching made significant gains in listening comprehension compared to students who were in less effectively taught classrooms. These results have implications for further studies exploring the contribution of literacy teaching practices to students at risk of attention problems.