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How oral content vocabulary language transfers to student writing
Get PDFThis action research investigated how oral content vocabulary used during oral discussion transferred to students’ academic content writing. In order to accomplish this, four students in fifth grade received explicit vocabulary instruction. The guiding question of the study was: Will the students transfer content vocabulary used in oral discussion to their content area writing? The researcher hypothesized that the students would use more academic content vocabulary during discussion than in their content area writing. An eight-week intervention was conducted. First, student academic content language used orally during discussion was tracked. Next, student writing was analyzed for usage of the same target vocabulary. Then data from these samples were compared. The results showed that explicit instruction of academic content vocabulary fostered an increase in target vocabulary words used in both oral discussions and in student writing. During the intervention, students used more academic content vocabulary during oral conversations than in their writing. There were positive student outcomes in that a higher number of academic content vocabulary words were used in content area writing after the intervention
Case study of a student with an emotional behavioral disorder: an increase in reading fluency and its effect on reading comprehension and behavior in the general education classroom.
Get PDFThis study investigated the effect an increase in reading fluency had on reading comprehension and on-task behavior in the general education classroom. The participant was an 18 year-old with a cognitive disability and emotional behavioral disorder. The intervention included repeated reading, vocabulary, partner reading, comprehension questions, and weekly classroom observations. Data collected throughout the course of the intervention were pre- and post-tests, parent and teacher questionnaires, and measurements of reading fluency, comprehension, and on-task behavior in the classroom. Results showed small gains in reading fluency and on-task behavior in the classroom, but no change in reading comprehension. Some limitations that may have affected progress include: the limited number and length of intervention sessions, amount of time devoted to classroom observations, and participant\u27s attendance. Further research is needed on effective literacy interventions to determine a relationship between reading fluency, comprehension, and on-task behavior in the classroom for students with disabilities
Effects of an inference intervention for a third grader with a math disability
Get PDFThis case study investigated the effects of a repeated intervention, aimed at improving a third-grade student’s ability to make inferences while reading. The participant was a 7 year old, black male from an urban, Midwest city who qualifies for special education services in the category of Specific Learning Disability (SLD) for mathematics. Making inferences was chosen as the focus of the intervention because this skill is critical not only to reading comprehension, but also to the comprehension of story problems in math, which is the student’s area of need. The strategy “background knowledge + textual clues = inference” was used to infer missing words in cloze sentences and infer obscured sentences in passages, as well as answer implicit questions regarding instructional level texts. The results indicate that the participant improved in the three main intervention activities included in the daily procedures, as well as in an informal inference assessment using pictures. However, the participant’s scores for implicit questions on the QRI-5, a reading assessment, did not improve. The participant’s progress was complicated by struggles to attend tasks. Although the results suggest that the participant gained some of the foundational skills necessary for making inferences, it is evident that the skills have not yet transferred to making inferences for longer, more challenging passages, such as those found in the QRI-5
Using Words Their Way to increase spelling accuracy
No full textThis study was conducted in a classroom fourth grade classroom to determine whether or not the use of the Words Their Way (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton & Johnson, 1996) spelling program would lead to an increase in accuracy of spelling during writing activities. This study was conducted over a six-week period during the 2012 - 2013 academic school year. The fourth grade classroom that participated in the study was located in Janesville, Wisconsin. The researcher found a correlation between additional spelling work using Words Their Way and accuracy of spelling during writing assignments. The data collected concluded that additional practice in spelling led to more accurate spelling across other writing tasks
Increasing oral reading fluency through a targeted intervention
Get PDFThe case study examines an intervention aimed at increasing oral reading fluency in a struggling second grade reader. The intervention was designed around the student’s literacy needs, current literacy research, and Common Core State Standards. The intervention utilized repeated readings, phonemic awareness instruction, phonics instruction, self assessment, corrective feedback, and modeling to increase oral reading fluency. The intervention took place for five weeks with a total ten intervention sessions. Results of the study suggest that the intervention was effective as overall oral reading fluency increased. Results also suggest that corrective feedback, instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics, and self assessment are effective instructional methods to increase oral reading fluency in addition to repeated readings
Effects of vocabulary interventions on the comprehension in the science content area
Get PDFThe purpose of this case study was to determine if the use of specific vocabulary interventions increase comprehension in the science content area. This was a comparison study which compared the effects of two vocabulary interventions. Half of the study used the Frayer model, while the other half used Learning vocabulary in context reading strategy. The hypothesis was that both learning interventions will increase comprehension, but the Frayer Model will be the more effective intervention for increasing comprehension. The intervention plan and procedure were connected to with current research on comprehension in the content areas. The student received 15 intervention sessions, each of which was 60 minutes long over a four-week period. Analysis of pre and post test results showed improvement of comprehension skills from both interventions types, but the Frayer Model was the more effective intervention
Effect of explicitly teaching expository text structure to learning disabled and at-risk readers
Get PDFThis study examined comprehension effects of explicitly teaching expository text structures to four Caucasian male students in a sixth grade general education classroom in a rural Minnesota town. The criteria to participate in the study required participants to possess a learning disability or have been identified as an at-risk reader by standardized testing data. The researcher used leveled expository text passages from Leslie and Caldwell\u27s (2010) Qualitative Reading Inventory – 5 as pre- and post-assessments to gauge growth. The researcher guided the students through a five-week intervention focusing on a new nonfiction text structure each week. The nonfiction text structures that were covered included: Goal/Action/Outcome, Problem/Solution, Concept/Definition, Cause/Effect, and Proposition/Support. The results of the study showed all four students exhibiting a two or three level growth in their nonfiction instructional reading levels throughout the intervention. The results of the study paralleled the findings of similar research on the benefits of expository text structure training
Connection between fluency and comprehension through the use of readers\u27 theater
Get PDFThroughout my teaching career I have been curious as to why some students are able to comprehend a reading passage with greater ease than other students. I have taught first, second, and third grade and in all three grades I observed similar issues with the students who have difficulty with comprehending a reading passage. Most of the students I worked with who had difficulty with comprehension also had a hard time reading fluently. This made me wonder if reading fluency had an impact on reading comprehension. A fluent reader is one who can orally read at an appropriate rate and use expression to show the reader understands the meaning of the text (Griffith & Rasinski, 2004). After discussing this thought with many other teachers and reading research articles, I wondered if using Readers’ Theaters in the classroom to improve students’ reading fluency would in turn improve students’ reading comprehension. Due in part to my collaboration and research I explored the following research question, Does student fluency through the use of Reader\u27s Theater increase the student\u27s comprehension
Effects of oral and written dialect-shifting instruction on the oral and written word accuracy of African American English-Speaking
Get PDFThis action research studied the effects of oral and written dialect-shifting instruction on the oral and written word accuracy of African American English-speaking second graders. Participants in this study were urban African American English-speaking second graders, all of whom qualified for free or reduced lunch. The intervention consisted of explicit instruction in phoneme-grapheme matching using dialect-sensitive words with an intervention group (N = 4) while a control group (N = 4) received no outside instruction. A pre- and post-test design was used to assess miscues and self-corrections on an oral reading passage and misspellings on a writing sample and list of dialect-sensitive dictated words. Additional analyses of the miscued, self-corrected, and misspelled words were conducted to determine if any had one of eight features commonly modified in African American English. The intervention took place over four weeks, during which the researcher met with students 4 times per week for approximately 30 minutes per session. Results of the study reflected an increase in all miscues and misspellings for the intervention group, while the control group experienced a decrease in these areas. The data also showed a decrease in all self-corrections for both groups, although the decrease was greater for the intervention than control group. The researcher concluded that a larger sample size, longer implementation of the intervention, and more explicit teaching of the correlation between phoneme-grapheme matching skills and their application in oral reading and writing contexts would have resulted in increased oral and written word accuracy
Incarcerated males with disabilities; how many are there?
Get PDFThe purpose of this study was to examine the number of inmates ages 18-21 with disabilities, the type of their disabilities, the cost of housing inmates and the rate of recidivism. This study also examined the number of students with disabilities ages 18-21, in schools receiving special education services. These ages were chosen to include adults in their earliest years which made it possible to compare populations of inmates to school students. The Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) states that a person must receive special education services until age 21 should they desire i