Browsing by Subject "Reading Fluency"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Examining Effects of a Repeated Reading Intervention and Predictive Effects of Student Inputs
    (2015-12) Snidarich, Stephanie
    The ability to read fluently is associated with positive outcomes in school and adulthood. Low reading achievement is thus a critical issue—a remarkably pervasive problem among students in certain demographic groups, and one that persists in spite of an ever-expanding knowledge base of effective instructional approaches and interventions. One possible factor may be that struggling readers are not doing or receiving “enough of what works”—specifically, that the dose of effective strategies has been insufficient to develop reading proficiency. Research supports that quantity and quality of practice are important to developing fluency in a practiced skill such as reading (Bryan & Harter, 1897; Chase & Simon, 1973; Ericsson, Krampe, Tesch-Romer, 1993; Geary, 1995; Williams & Hodges, 2005). Related to this notion, two additional factors, (1) time spent away from school (e.g., summer break) when students may not have access to literacy activities and (2) student responses and behaviors during reading instruction or intervention, may influence the development and maintenance of reading fluency This study examined the effects on oral reading fluency of a repeated reading intervention implemented during a short (four-week) summer program with students whose reading was accurate but slow. Also examined was the degree to which student input variables related to treatment implementation (i.e., accuracy, minutes of intervention attended, number of 1 min readings completed, number of words read, and student engagement) predicted changes in oral reading fluency. Participants included 79 students in second and third grades who were at or below the 50% percentile for reading rate according to grade level norms, but able to read passages with at least 93% accuracy. Students were randomly assigned to an intervention group that received core literacy instruction delivered by their summer school teacher and a supplementary repeated reading intervention implemented four times per week, or a control group that received core literacy instruction only. Overall, the repeated reading intervention increased oral reading fluency more than core instruction alone. Post hoc analysis also indicated that the intervention was more effective for relatively high-level readers (26-50th percentile) than for low-level readers (0-25th percentile). Additionally, the cumulative number of words read correctly across all intervention sessions attended was the only significant predictor of posttest oral reading fluency. Results of this study were contextualized within existing research on reading fluency intervention and treatment implementation. Implications for practice were discussed along with limitations of the study and directions for future research.
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    Repeated Reading with and without Vocabulary Instruction: Outcomes for English Language Learners
    (2015-05) Brandes, Dana
    This study compares a repeated reading intervention with and without vocabulary instruction on the reading fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary knowledge of English Language Learners (ELLs). Third-grade ELLs (N=31) who were performing below grade level in reading completed one session of repeated reading (RR) and one session of repeated reading with vocabulary instruction (RRV). Using a within-subjects design, condition and passage order were counterbalanced across participants. Dependent measures included Curriculum-based Measures of Oral Reading (CBM-R), researcher-developed literal and inferential comprehension questions, and the Two-Questions Vocabulary Measure (TQVM; Kearns & Biemiller, 2011). Repeated Measures Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) revealed statistically significant main effects of instruction for RRV with large effect sizes for comprehension (p < .001, g = .73) and vocabulary knowledge (p < .001, g = .98) but no statistically-significant differences for reading fluency or vocabulary word-reading accuracy. Results suggest RRV may be an effective intervention worth examining for longer durations and with larger samples of ELLs.
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    What differentiates a fluent reader from a non-fluent reader and how should we assess it: implications for the classroom.
    (2011-12) Alt, Shirley Jean
    Assessing Reading Fluency There were three questions being asked: 1) Does an adjusted words per minute score measure reading fluency, 2) Is an adjusted words per minute score predictive of reading fluency, and 3) What characteristics distinguish a fluent reader from a non-fluent reader? There were two studies conducted to address these concerns. Study 1 consisted of sixty college students and Study 2 consisted of twenty-three second graders, twenty-five fourth graders, and twenty-one sixth graders. It was found that an adjusted word per minute score on the oral reading assessment was neither correlated with nor predictive of reading fluency, for either study. With regard to distinguishing characteristics, there were no consistently significant findings other than accuracy between fluent and non-fluent second graders on the open-maze sentence and paragraph delivered sentence-by-sentence assessments. The fact that the results were mixed with regard to reading speed and accuracy being distinguishing factors between fluent and non-fluent readers on the oral reading assessment, and the fact that, the results were also mixed with regard to the Lexical Decision Task should make one wonder if perhaps reading speed and accuracy are actually natural by-products of maturation and not necessarily secondary characteristics of reading fluency. Assessing Reading Fluency These findings lend credence to the theory that current intervention practices in the schools may be teaching our students to ―bark‖ at text. They also lend credence to the idea that there may be a third pathway for processing words/text, a pathway that contains a semantic module that isn‘t quite fully developed and is in fact in the learning process. Finally, the findings also support the idea that development of gist in the phonological store may depend on a student‘s ability to metacognitively monitor their reading to the point of being able to retain more appropriate gist of sentences rather than trying to rehearse a complete replication of the whole sentence. To this end, it was proposed that a longitudinal (mixed methods) study be performed to assess these qualities.