Education Commons^™

The Professional Development Practices Of Two Reading First Coaches, Charlotte A. Mundy, Dorene D. Ross, Melinda M. Leko

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

To establish job-embedded, ongoing professional development recent policies and initiatives required that districts appoint school-based coaches. The Reading First Initiative, for example, created an immediate need for coaches without a clear definition of coaches’ responsibilities. Therefore, the purpose of this case study was to investigate how two Reading First coaches interpreted and enacted their professional development responsibilities. Cross-case analyses identified similarities and differences in coaches’ enactments. Findings revealed that while each coach engaged in similar professional development responsibilities (e.g. modeling, observing, and classroom walkthroughs) their approach to these responsibilities differed — collaborative versus expert driven. These differences in approaches indicate …

Café Culture: Promoting Empowerment And Pleasure In Adolescent Literacy Learning, Brandi Gribble Mathers, Amanda J. Stern

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

The 160 third, seventh, and eleventh-graders involved in this study agreed, almost unanimously, that reading was“important.” Participants cited the empowering benefits of reading as they justified this opinion. However, with regards to the enjoyment of reading, fewer middle and high school participants reported “liking” reading than their elementary counterparts and fewer reported reading in their free time.

One solution to this dilemma involves providing adolescent students with a context devoted solely to pleasure reading. In doing so, educators can look to an institution that boasts both an historical link to literate culture and current-day pop culture appeal: the coffeehouse. When …

The Relationship Of Student Family Structure And Absence Type To Reading Achievement, James Hixson

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Middle school students are affected to different degrees by absences from school. While social learning theory suggests students acquire new skills through observation and modeling, some students are more able than others to compensate for school absences. Research has shown that a student's family structure can influence achievement. Unexcused absences have also been linked to lower achievement than excused ones. Excessive unexcused absences have also been associated with family problems including insufficient support for school endeavors. This quantitative causal comparative research study will examine the relationship between family structure and absence type to reading achievement in a Title I school. …

Interactive Whiteboard Use: The Catalyst Of Student Achievement, Tenneille Terrell Lamberth

Dissertations

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 forced school districts to become more accountable by requiring all students to read on grade level by the year 2014. However, President Obama’s educational policy shift is allowing states to develop their own accountability and improvement system. This study examined fourth and eighth grade math achievement on the Mississippi Curriculum Test, 2nd edition and interactive whiteboard use, attitudes and perceptions, and professional development. Data were collected from 21 participating Mississippi Gulf Coast area schools to determine if a correlation existed between fourth and eighth grade math achievement and interactive whiteboard use, …

The Effect Of Teachers’ Expectations And Perceptions On Student Achievement In Reading For Third And Fifth Grade Students, Alfreda Ragland Williams

Dissertations

All too often, a student’s lack of success is blamed on his or her background, and/or the parent or the parent’s educational level. Many factors such as socioeconomic conditions, student behaviors, attendance, and teacher demographics can directly or indirectly affect class environment, classroom management, interaction with students, and equal treatment of students. In addition, a teacher’s perception of students plays a vital role in the teacher’s expectations, interactions, and relationships with his or her students. The purpose of the study was twofold. First, this study investigated the relationship between teachers’ expectations of equal treatment of students, class environment, interaction with …

Middle School Students’ Perceptions Of Their Interests In Reading As Defined By Engagement And Social Interaction When Using Sustained Silent Reading, Ssr, And Peer Interests Reading Strategies, Pirs, Regina J. Ware

Dissertations

Alarming statistics report that middle school students are not reading as much as they should be reading. This study is an examination of two interventions that were incorporated into the regular curriculum to determine if these two reading interventions would encourage this researcher’s students to read more. The “Nation’s Report Card” (NAEP, 2010) showed that eighth graders were reading less on the 2009 exam than indicated by the score they received in 2007. This data intensifies the importance of encouraging reading in middle school students. To help the students in Blue Sky Middle School improve their reading habits, this researcher …

The Correlation Between The Three Reading Fluency Subskills And Reading Comprehension In At-Risk Adolescent Readers, Craig Courbron

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this study was to determine which of the three reading fluency subskills were most strongly correlated with reading comprehension in adolescent at-risk readers. The participants were 82 adolescent males (ages 13-19) who had been committed to a juvenile detention facility. Archival data from a two-year period was collected from a maximum security juvenile detention facility in a rural section of the Northeastern United States. The Measures of Academic Progress test was used to collect reading comprehension data; the Qualitative Reading Inventory-4 test was used to collect reading speed and reading accuracy data; the Multidimensional Fluency Scale was …

Sensitivity To Probabilistic Orthographic Cues To Lexical Stress In Adolescent Speakers With Autism Spectrum Disorder And Typical Peers, Joanne Arciuli, Rhea Paul

Communication Disorders Faculty Publications

Lexical stress refers to the opposition of strong and weak syllables within polysyllabic words and is a core feature of the English prosodic system. There are probabilistic cues to lexical stress present in English orthography. For example, most disyllabic English words ending with the letters “-ure” have first-syllable stress (e.g., “pasture”, but note words such as “endure”), whereas most ending with “-ose” have second-syllable stress (e.g., “propose”, but note examples such as “glucose”). Adult native speakers of English are sensitive to these probabilities during silent reading. During testing, they tend to assign first-syllable stress when reading a nonword such as …