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“Learning To Read With The Magic Seeds”: A Pilot Test Of A Parent Shared Reading Program, Mary Jean Strong Jan 2024

“Learning To Read With The Magic Seeds”: A Pilot Test Of A Parent Shared Reading Program, Mary Jean Strong

PCOM Psychology Dissertations

The current study was a pilot study to assess the feasibility of “Learning to Read with the Magic Seeds,” a four-week shared reading program, and its effectiveness in changing parental beliefs about literacy. Two groups of parents of preschool-aged children with different demographics participated in the study. Parents completed the Parental Reading Beliefs Inventory prior to and after the four sessions. The first session included an introduction, assessments, and a conversation about literacy beliefs, practices in the home, and the importance of talk. Subsequent sessions focused on extending book talk, phonological awareness, and developing print awareness. During the session, the …

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Representation Is Everything: The Impact Of Diversity In Literature On The Racial Identity And Psychological Safety Of Black Youth, Zaakirah B. Fulani May 2023

Representation Is Everything: The Impact Of Diversity In Literature On The Racial Identity And Psychological Safety Of Black Youth, Zaakirah B. Fulani

Educational Specialist, 2020-current

This study addresses the issue of U.S. schools often acting replicating the same racist/discriminatory practices that play out on a national level, resulting in school being an unsafe environment for Black and other REM students. A lack of psychological safety in schools, according to research, can lead to decreased academic achievement and engagement, feelings of stress and anxiety, and a negative school experience. This study proposes that using culturally relevant texts in curriculums can enhance psychological safety for Black students in order to cultivate safe school environments for REM students. Using an analysis of qualitative data from focus group discussions …

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Updating Of Protagonist Information In Narratives, Luke Mcclanahan May 2023

Updating Of Protagonist Information In Narratives, Luke Mcclanahan

Psychological Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

The purpose of the present research was to further examine contested findings in the research literature surrounding the processes readers use to maintain and update their mental representation of contextual information in a text. Research indicates that whether information is directly relevant to the goal of a story’s protagonist influences whether it will be used as a basis for later validation (Levine & Kim, 2019; Levine & Klin, 2001; Lutz & Radvansky, 1997). Some prior research that indicates that participants fail to validate inconsistent contextual information (Albrecht & Myers, 1995; Smith et al., 2020; Smith & O’Brien, 2012) relies on …

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Does A Sender’S And Recipient’S Relationship Influence Readers’ Interpretation Of Message Tone?, Allison Arp Aug 2022

Does A Sender’S And Recipient’S Relationship Influence Readers’ Interpretation Of Message Tone?, Allison Arp

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Given the importance of computer-mediated communication (CMC) and the uniqueness of the cues that have meaning in this environment, research is warranted to investigate how the relationship between the people communicating via CMC might impact the way the message and cues are interpreted. This study aims to investigate whether different inherent levels of authority and familiarity between a message sender and recipient affect how email tone is interpreted. Previous studies demonstrate that when individuals communicate with authority figures, they employ different strategies than when communicating with peers. Furthermore, individuals adapt their behavior to mimic the interactants behavior, which in turn …

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Influences Of Sentence Context And Individual Differences In Lexical Quality On Early Phonological Processing During Silent Reading, Sara Milligan Jun 2022

Influences Of Sentence Context And Individual Differences In Lexical Quality On Early Phonological Processing During Silent Reading, Sara Milligan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The current thesis investigates the role of sentence context and individual differences in the quality of sub-lexical representations of words in activation of phonological forms during silent reading. More specifically, this study aims to determine how these situational and participant-level factors influence the use of phonology to aid word recognition during parafoveal processing, before a reader directly fixates the word. Therefore, I manipulated sentence constraint in two eye tracking during reading experiments (one using real-word and one using pseudoword parafoveal previews) that utilized the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm (Rayner 1975) and measured individual’s scores on assessments of spelling ability, phonological decoding …

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Investigating How Reading Enhances Empathy: A Longitudinal, Diary Study Of Everyday Reading Habits, Caleb H. Mitchell Jan 2022

Investigating How Reading Enhances Empathy: A Longitudinal, Diary Study Of Everyday Reading Habits, Caleb H. Mitchell

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Empathy is the social glue that holds people together, and one way to enhance empathy is through reading fiction. Though reading can enhance empathy, there is little understanding of the mechanisms by which it does so. The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate how time spent reading enhances empathy. I posit that two reading experience variables, narrative transportation and reading flow, mediate the relationship between reading and empathy. This is because transportation, feeling absorbed into a story, helps bring characters to life and increases readers’ emotional connections, and reading flow, a balance between skill and challenge while reading, can …

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The Effectiveness Of A Caregiver Delivered Phonics Intervention For At-Risk Students, Iwalani Dela Paz-Miller Jan 2022

The Effectiveness Of A Caregiver Delivered Phonics Intervention For At-Risk Students, Iwalani Dela Paz-Miller

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Reading skills are important for students' academic success. Phonics specifically is a foundational skill which is necessary for reading fluency and overall reading proficiency. Additional support outside of the classroom can be beneficial for those struggling and at-risk. There are various strategies and interventions that can help students' gain important academic skills. In addition to various reading skills and interventions, parents and caregivers can help implement interventions within the home setting to support students in their academic growth. Overall, the research has documented the effectiveness of reading intervention delivered by parents and caregivers, but there is little research on caregiver …

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Literacy And Covid-19 : Elementary Students' Reading Performance Through A Global Pandemic, Emmett Mcgregor Schweiger Jan 2022

Literacy And Covid-19 : Elementary Students' Reading Performance Through A Global Pandemic, Emmett Mcgregor Schweiger

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The critical area of literacy instruction has long relied on the use of measurement tools and the resulting data to identify at-risk readers and deliver needed supports. When the COVID-19 pandemic caused disruption to education, measurement practices were altered and there was limited existing research available to predict the potential impact of the pandemic on literacy development. The primary purpose of this study was to examine the reading performance of students in a Southern Tier New York elementary school before and during the pandemic, utilizing existing data from fall 2019 to spring 2021. Additionally, this study sought to evaluate the …

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Efficiency Of Teaching Sight Words In Similar Vs Dissimilar Sets, Jensen Chotto Nov 2021

Efficiency Of Teaching Sight Words In Similar Vs Dissimilar Sets, Jensen Chotto

LSU Master's Theses

Early reading intervention can decrease the likelihood that children who struggle with reading develop long-term reading problems. Due to the prevalence of words that cannot be read phonetically in the English language, sight word instruction is required to supplement phonics instruction. In this study, we compared the effects of creating sets of sight words with the same starting letter (3 words per set, 3 total sets) versus distributing words with the same starting letter across sets when assessing acquisition of the combined set (9 words) in five 4-to-6-year-old children using a combined adapted alternating treatments design and pre-posttest design. All …

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The Map Reading Probe’S Effectiveness In Predicting Performance Within An Rtiisystem, Richard J. Scherr Jr Jan 2021

The Map Reading Probe’S Effectiveness In Predicting Performance Within An Rtiisystem, Richard J. Scherr Jr

PCOM Psychology Dissertations

Public-school districts nationwide are utilizing student progress toward proficiency on state-wide achievement assessments as their means of monitoring student achievement. Of late, the three-tiered system of reading instruction and intervention (RtII) has shown the most promise to increase reading proficiency levels schoolwide. However, little research exists to support the use of the MAP reading probe within an RtII framework for advancing reading achievement. This study provides a statistical analysis of the use of MAP as a predictor of reading performance on statewide assessments in a suburban K-5 elementary school currently utilizing RtII as a means of advancing student achievement in …

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Metacognitive Strategies Used For Reading Comprehension Among Adult Postsecondary Learners, Mary Lukes Jan 2021

Metacognitive Strategies Used For Reading Comprehension Among Adult Postsecondary Learners, Mary Lukes

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractA significant positive correlation between higher metacognitive strategy use and better reading comprehension among native English-speaking children and adult learners of English as an additional language, consistently presented in the literature, has not been consistently or directly found among native English-speaking adult high school graduates who enroll in postsecondary learning programs such as university programs. Consequences for adult learners with lower reading comprehension scores at college entry include significantly lower earnings over their lifespan due in part to greater risk for not completing a postsecondary program. This nonexperimental cross-sectional study was guided by two theoretical frameworks, one for adult reading …

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The Time Course And Interaction Of Emoji And Text Processing During Natural Reading : Evidence From Eye Movements, Eliza Barach Jan 2021

The Time Course And Interaction Of Emoji And Text Processing During Natural Reading : Evidence From Eye Movements, Eliza Barach

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Emojis are nonverbal elements used in text-based communication that may function like gestures in spoken communication (Feldman et al., 2017; McCulloch & Gawne, 2018). Like words, emojis can convey semantic information and support message comprehension (Lo, 2008; Riordan, 2017b). Nevertheless, the cognitive and perceptual processes involved in emoji recognition and integration during reading remain unclear. Specifically, it is unclear how early semantic processing of emojis begins as well as how emojis and text interact during reading. Such empirical questions have implications for contemporary models of eye movement control, such as E-Z Reader (Reichle et al., 1998, 2012) and SWIFT (Engbert …

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Impact Of A Nicu Bedside Reading Initiative On Self-Reported Maternal Stress And Mother-Infant Attachment, Lauren Lorenzi Quigley Dec 2020

Impact Of A Nicu Bedside Reading Initiative On Self-Reported Maternal Stress And Mother-Infant Attachment, Lauren Lorenzi Quigley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Premature birth and a corresponding hospitalization in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) presents infants and their families with an array of medical and psychosocial stressors that have the potential to impact neurodevelopment and social-emotional functioning in both the long-and short-term. Research has demonstrated the importance of family-integrated, developmental care interventions and a need for supportive environmental and sensory stimulation for the infant to optimize developmental, social, and emotional outcomes. Engaging parents in bedside care that fosters sensory development, supports cognitive and language skills, and lays a strong foundation for bonding and attachment can be monumental for the dyad. Implementation …

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Bilingual Children's L1 And L2 Word Frequency Effects: The Role Of Individual Differences, Astrid Michelle Portillo Jan 2020

Bilingual Children's L1 And L2 Word Frequency Effects: The Role Of Individual Differences, Astrid Michelle Portillo

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Bilingualism continues to grow among the world's population. Nevertheless, most research studies on language processing have focused on monolingual individuals, leaving questions about how language processing unfolds in bilingual individuals. Here, we investigated how individual differences in bilingual experience, indexed by current L2 exposure, impact eye movement measures of reading fluency, indexed by word frequency effects, in an understudied population: bilingual children. Prior eye movement research involving bilingual younger adults (aged 18 to 30) has reported a trade-off in L1 and L2 word frequency effects with greater levels of current L2 exposure (Whitford & Titone, 2012, 2017). We wanted to …

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Examining The Effects Of A Multi-Component Neurocognitive Intervention For School-Aged Children With Co-Occurring Adhd And Reading Difficulties, Alyssa L. Chimiklis Sep 2019

Examining The Effects Of A Multi-Component Neurocognitive Intervention For School-Aged Children With Co-Occurring Adhd And Reading Difficulties, Alyssa L. Chimiklis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Objective: Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) frequently exhibit impairments in neurocognitive pathways (i.e., deficits in sustained attention, response inhibition, processing speed, working memory, and cognitive flexibility). There is also extensive support indicating that youth with co-occurring ADHD and reading difficulties share pathological pathways and exhibit deficits in executive functions. Neither behavioral nor pharmacological interventions have been able to fully address executive dysfunction and/or reading deficits in this population. Computerized neurocognitive training interventions have been explored as a treatment alternative for youth with pure ADHD and have demonstrated some merit. Conceptually, computerized neurocognitive training programs that target overlapping pathways …

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Understanding The Effect Of Font Type On Reading Comprehension/Memory Under Time-Constraints, Elizabeth Dressler Aug 2019

Understanding The Effect Of Font Type On Reading Comprehension/Memory Under Time-Constraints, Elizabeth Dressler

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

This research study investigated the effects that font type and amount of time had on the reading comprehension. It was predicted that students restricted with time and given difficult-to-read font (Haettenschweiler) would perform more poorly because more cognitive resources are being utilized to decode the typography compared to an easy-to-read font (Times New Roman). Consequently, there would be fewer cognitive resources available to comprehend and remember the material. Previous research has consistently shown that subjects perform better from reading or memorizing words in difficult-to-read font. However, almost all previous research has consisted of short passages, thereby limiting ecological validity. Results …

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Predictability Of Curriculum-Based Reading Measures For Statewide Test Performance, Rebecca Sarah Mark Jan 2019

Predictability Of Curriculum-Based Reading Measures For Statewide Test Performance, Rebecca Sarah Mark

PCOM Psychology Dissertations

National legislation has led to an increasing need for school districts to demonstrate student reading progress using performance on statewide achievement tests as indicators of growth. This study added to previous research on the effectiveness of curriculum-based measurement (CBM) in predicting success on statewide reading achievement tests and determining whether a student is at-risk for poor performance on statewide tests. The current study analyzed the relationship between a CBM tool for assessing reading progress, the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS), and a statewide reading assessment, the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA). This study compared the predictive …

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Do Teachers Participating In A Therapy Dog Program Perceive An Impact On Students’ Attitudes And Behaviors Toward Reading?, Jenna M. Dragani-Reagan Jan 2019

Do Teachers Participating In A Therapy Dog Program Perceive An Impact On Students’ Attitudes And Behaviors Toward Reading?, Jenna M. Dragani-Reagan

PCOM Psychology Dissertations

No abstract provided.

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E-Books: Cognitive And Visual Effects, Hannah Degroot Jan 2019

E-Books: Cognitive And Visual Effects, Hannah Degroot

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Sight is incredibly important to daily life. One critical use of this sense is reading, which allows people to communicate and learn new things if the reader is able to effectively comprehend what he or she has read. The proliferation of technology has resulted in much of our reading today being done through digital media. Information-presenting screens are found nearly everywhere, including within the education system. While E-books can offer some advantages, their purpose would not be served if they hindered understanding. Additionally, excessive use of technological devices can bring about symptoms of eyestrain. It was hypothesized that E-books are …

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Predictive Nature Of Teacher Traits On Academic Achievement Of African-American Students, Lacoñia Rayelle Nelson Jan 2019

Predictive Nature Of Teacher Traits On Academic Achievement Of African-American Students, Lacoñia Rayelle Nelson

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Historically, biases, a lack of cultural diversity in teacher and administrative staff and misunderstanding about methods for teaching low socioeconomic students have related to the underperformance of African-American students when compared with their European American peers. Therefore, this quantitative, cross-sectional study was conducted to explore the impact of teachers' ethnicity, years of experience, and motives of hope and fear on the academic success of African-American students in reading and math. Data were collected from 55 7th- and 8th-grade teachers from a charter school system (25 reading teachers and 30 math teachers) using a survey and the Multi Motive Grid. Forward …

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Cross-Language Activation And Integration Of Concepts In Text Passages, Karly Meillyn Schleicher Jan 2019

Cross-Language Activation And Integration Of Concepts In Text Passages, Karly Meillyn Schleicher

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Learning from text requires the ability to efficiently activate and retrieve relevant concepts from long-term memory and connect these with new information that is being presented in the text. It is assumed that memory representations built from text can be influenced by both surface level information (i.e., word forms), or deeper, conceptual level information. The goal of the present study was to investigate the role of surface level features (i.e., language) influence memory representations developed from text. By recruiting Spanish-English bilinguals, the present study investigated how surface level features from a reader's two lexicons influences the activation and integration of …

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An Examination Of The Properties, Uses And Interpretations Of First Grade Reading Screening Tools In One School District, Amadee Meyer Oct 2018

An Examination Of The Properties, Uses And Interpretations Of First Grade Reading Screening Tools In One School District, Amadee Meyer

Doctoral Dissertations

Early identification of children who are likely to struggle to achieve reading proficiency is essential to providing them timely access to effective interventions. Thus, universal screening is a critical feature of preventative service delivery models that identify students at risk and provide early support for reading difficulties. As schools choose assessment tools for this purpose, three aspects of universal screening tools are especially important to consider: appropriateness for the intended use, technical adequacy, and usability. Using these standards for assessment review, this study investigated two screening tools commonly used to identify first-graders at risk for reading failure: the Aimsweb Tests …

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The Effects Of Perceptual Fluency On Emotional Word Recognition, Joseph M. Nidel Aug 2018

The Effects Of Perceptual Fluency On Emotional Word Recognition, Joseph M. Nidel

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

To investigate if making a word harder to read attenuates emotional influences like valence and arousal, we used a sample of Warriner and colleagues’ (2013) corpus with valence and arousal norms, a font manipulation from the perceptual fluency paradigm, and a word naming task. We found that, contrary to our hypotheses, emotional influences of words on RT were not attenuated in the disfluent condition; in fact, disfluency seemed to amplify the facilitative effects of high arousal. These results suggest that models of word recognition should consider the role that emotions play in recognition. They also provide limited support to models …

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The Effects Of Decoding Instruction On Oral Reading Fluency For Older Students With Reading Delays, Gaige J. Johnson Aug 2018

The Effects Of Decoding Instruction On Oral Reading Fluency For Older Students With Reading Delays, Gaige J. Johnson

Dissertations

Struggling older readers often have difficulty with early decoding skills (Tolman, 2005; Toste, Williams, & Capin, 2017). If they are unable to master decoding, they may have difficulty with more complex skills, such as passage reading fluency. The current study extends research on reading fluency for older students by evaluating the combined effects of a phonics procedure and a fluency-building strategy on their reading fluency. Participants were older students with below grade level reading performance who had deficits in oral reading fluency and decoding. Dependent variables were the number of correctly sorted word patterns and the number of correct words …

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Learning To Read In English: Vocabulary Knowledge, Phonological Awareness In Relation To Oral Reading Fluency In Chinese-English Bilinguals, Michelle (Ruyun) Huo Jan 2018

Learning To Read In English: Vocabulary Knowledge, Phonological Awareness In Relation To Oral Reading Fluency In Chinese-English Bilinguals, Michelle (Ruyun) Huo

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Second language (L2) acquisition has received increasing interest due to the large number of people immigrating or learning an L2 (e.g., Statistics Canada, 2016). Word reading fluency has been found to be a strong predictor of text reading fluency and comprehension (Fuchs, Fuchs, Hosp & Jenkins, 2001). For people learning to read in L2, skills such as oral reading fluency serve as an indicator of overall reading competence in their L2. The current study examined oral reading fluency in relation to vocabulary knowledge, rapid naming (RAN) and phonological awareness in English and Mandarin in Chinese-English bilinguals. Participants included 40 Chinese-English …

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Cognitive Behavioral Therapy As A Supplemental Treatment For Adolescents With Learning Disabilities, Peter John Arsenault Jan 2018

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy As A Supplemental Treatment For Adolescents With Learning Disabilities, Peter John Arsenault

PCOM Psychology Dissertations

This study explores cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) as a supplemental treatment with a sample of adolescents with learning disabilities (LD). Research overwhelming reflects the theory that children and adolescents with LD are more likely to manifest anxious and depressive symptomology. CBT is an evidence based intervention for anxiety and depression. However, there is a gap in the knowledge of treating LD with CBT. The study hypothesizes the theory that maladaptive metacognitive interpretation of the LD diminishes the effects of the evidence based academic intervention. The study sought to explore whether or not adolescents with LD would experience enhanced academic and …

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Do Spellings Of Words And Phonemic Awareness Training Facilitate Vocabulary Learning In Preschoolers?, Robin O'Leary Jun 2017

Do Spellings Of Words And Phonemic Awareness Training Facilitate Vocabulary Learning In Preschoolers?, Robin O'Leary

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The purpose of this study was to examine the contribution of phoneme awareness training and orthography to the learning of new vocabulary words by partial alphabetic phase readers. We hypothesized that four and five year old children taught to segment words with letters would outperform those trained with shape markers and those that received no segmentation training on an invented spelling task. We also hypothesized that students seeing the spellings of new vocabulary words (names) would learn the words in fewer trials, remember the names and features better and would be able to better recognize letter labels when presented alone. …

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The Effect Of A Font Intervention For 4th And 5th Graders With Dyslexia, Steven L. Powell May 2017

The Effect Of A Font Intervention For 4th And 5th Graders With Dyslexia, Steven L. Powell

Educational Specialist, 2009-2019

Dyslexie is a font developed by Christian Boer specifically to enhance reading fluency in students with dyslexia. The present study examined its potential impact on the performance of 36 4th and 5th grade students with SLD on story reading. We found that Dyslexie, when compared to other common fonts that have been adjusted to control for Dyslexie’s large size and spacing, appears to have no effect on readers’ ability to read text correctly, comprehend text, or read faster.

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The Effect Of Font Type On Sight Word Reading Performance Of 4th And 5th Grade Students With Reading Disabilities, Denton S. Warburton May 2017

The Effect Of Font Type On Sight Word Reading Performance Of 4th And 5th Grade Students With Reading Disabilities, Denton S. Warburton

Educational Specialist, 2009-2019

Reading interventions are a crucial component to combat barriers associated with reading difficulties. Within the education realm, nearly 50% of students who receive special education supports have a Specific Learning Disability (Gargiulo, 2006). As a result, the development and implementation of effective and targeted interventions is critical. Christian Boer developed a font called Dyslexie to help remediate reading difficulties of individuals with Dyslexia (Boer, 2011). However, studies by de Leeuw (2010) and Pjipker (2013) provide inconsistent supportive evidence, regarding the effectiveness of Dyslexie. The current study sought to examine the effectiveness of Dyslexie as compared to Arial on sight word …

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Comparing Two Individually Administered Reading Assessments For Predicting Outcomes On Sage Reading, Meighan Noelle Stevens Mar 2017

Comparing Two Individually Administered Reading Assessments For Predicting Outcomes On Sage Reading, Meighan Noelle Stevens

Theses and Dissertations

Accountability for student learning outcomes is of importance to parents and school and district administrators, especially since the passage of The No Child Left Behind Act in 2001. The requirement for high-stakes testing to measure progress has fostered interest in ways to monitor student preparedness during the school year. This study used 2014 and 2015 test data from of 154 students from one elementary school to measure the correlation between individually administered Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement Brief Reading and DIBELS Next reading assessments and outcomes on the high-stakes Utah SAGE test. This correlational study used Pearson correlation coefficients to …

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