Student achievement and academic performance outcomes

Student Achievement at the Elementary Level

One of the most important assets of a nation is its children. We regard children as precious because they constitute our future. The way in which a nation will develop and be successful in the future is its children. Today, children are even more precious because the very survival of humanity as a whole depends on them. Whether we can survive environmental disasters like global warming and pollution depends not only upon the actions we take today, but also upon the action our children will take in the future towards cleaning up and maintaining a sustainable Earth. The ability of children to become useful and contributing global citizens in the future will depend upon our ability to educate them effectively. The most important years of a child's education occur at the elementary level. This is the formative phase, during which the future of a child's education is determined in terms of motivation and achievement. As such, elementary achievement depends upon many factors, including teachers and the way in which instruction is provided.

Of course, one of the most important components of elementary instruction is the actions teachers take in the classroom. Arlington (2014) suggests that there are specific actions successful teachers take to ensure a sound basis of literacy among elementary school learners. The first of these is time.

"Time," according to Arlington (2014) refers to the time teachers spend on reading and writing in the classroom. The author notes that there should be a sufficient amount of time allocated to specifically reading and writing activities in the classroom. The suggestion is to allocate at least half of the school day to these activities.

Arlington also suggests that teaching should occur in terms of "active instruction." This means that a sufficient amount of planning and time should be allocated to actively teaching reading and writing strategies to help students develop their skills in these literacy areas. Simply allocating time for students to read and write will therefore not be sufficient to help them develop the literacy skills they will need throughout secondary and tertiary education and as successful adults in the world they will face when they leave school.

The other four "Ts" of Arlington's code for effective elementary classroom instruction towards literacy include "Texts," "Talk," "Tasks," and "Test." These are all components of teaching that are vital in order to help students fully develop their literacy skills during the elementary years. Texts, for example, should not only be appropriate for a student's ability level, but also sufficiently challenging to ensure development towards fluency. All the components focus on valuing both a student's ability and his or her potential for future development.

Another important component of student achievement at the elementary level is differentiated instruction, as investigated by Koeze (2007). Koeze suggest that the differentiation of choice and interest in combination to the learning styles of students play an important role in their achievement. As such, elementary teachers should inventory the learning styles represented in their classrooms in order to effectively implement differentiation in their instruction strategies.