In the study by Hollins et al. (2004), although initial teaching practices were not specifically described, the authors talked about how early meetings of the 12 participating teachers focused primarily on the challenges of trying to teach low achieving African-American students successfully. They noted that by the tenth meeting, the teachers had shifted to a more strategic focus as they designed a new ‘‘approach to language arts instruction that involved letter writing, a poetry project and class books, and employed the writing process’’ (p. 258). As a part of this process teachers used strategies that included, ‘‘visualization techniques’’ to help children understand their reading, manipulation of site words using flash cards, and different strategies for having the children change words to make new ones (p. 259).