Psychology Commons^™

The Effects Of Prompts And Comprehension Assessment On Oral Reading: Moderating Effect Of Reading Skills, Bethany Evelyn Forbes

Doctoral Dissertations

Words correct per minute (WCPM) scores, derived from oral reading fluency (ORF) assessments, are used, in part, to make decisions regarding special education eligibility. WCPM scores are sensitive to environmental factors such as the presence of a stopwatch, administrator characteristics, and instructions. Using sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade middle school students, we replicate and extend previous research on the effects of environmental prompts on ORF scores by instructing students to read fast and investigating the reading skill-by-instructions interaction. We also evaluated how students who had been were instructed to read fast (phase two) responded to subsequent (phase three) standard instructions and …