Myth and Reality of the Word Caller: The Relation Between Teacher Nominations and Prevalence Among Elementary School Children.

The purpose of the study was to investigate (a) the prevalence of word callers in elementary school, (b) the accuracy of teachers' word caller nominations, and (c) teachers' conceptualization of reading fluency and reading comprehension. To this end, 2 cross-sectional studies of second- and third- (N = 868) and of third- and fifth-grade (N = 202) children were conducted. Our findings suggest that word callers occur infrequently in the primary grades but that they are more prevalent in late elementary school. Regardless of grade level, teachers often overnominated children as word callers. Furthermore, a great deal of ambiguity and inconsistency seems to exist regarding teachers' understanding and use of the term. These findings suggest that the term should be used relatively rarely and that reading educators should be cautious about their identification of word callers in early elementary school.