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Teachers' Perceptions Of The Reading Achievement Gap Between High-Achieving Students And Below-Basic Students, Helen Anne Iaconelli

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Atlantic Avenue Elementary School (AAES) experienced reading achievement gaps between high-performing students and below-basic students within the school reading curriculum and balanced literacy framework. Vygotsky's theories of scaffolding and zone of proximal development served as the framework guiding this project, which used a qualitative case study design to explore reading teachers' perceptions of the ways in which they were addressing this reading achievement gap. Individual interviews, classroom observations, and lesson plans were the sources of the qualitative data collected from 6 reading teachers. The data were coded manually using emerging and constant-comparative strategies to identify common themes. The themes that …

Teachers' Perceptions Of An Integrated Third Grade Curriculum's Effects On Students' Reading Achievement, Charlene Lane Bazemore

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

School leaders in a Virginia urban school district designed and implemented a reading-infused integrated curriculum to address Grade 3 students' struggles to read and comprehend grade-level text. Informed via a constructivist approach, the curriculum integrated the core subjects, reading, and service learning for developing competent readers, thinkers, and problem solvers. This instrumental case study focused on 13 Grade 3 teachers' perceptions of the integrated curriculum in regards to their students' reading achievement. Qualitative data were collected from face-to-face interviews, students' progress of work documents, and the district's integrated curriculum unit. Open coding was employed to analyze the data. Inductively, triangulated …

Factors That Affect The Reading Comprehension Of Secondary Students With Disabilities, Karen L. Sanford

Doctoral Dissertations

Factors that Affect the Reading Comprehension of Secondary Students with Disabilities

Thirty-million Americans are considered functionally illiterate and are unable to complete job applications or understand health care forms. Fifty-seven percent of adults with disabilities believe that job opportunities are limited due to their poor reading ability. Without strong literacy skills, post-secondary college and employment options are limited. The genesis of adult literacy issues can be linked to below-grade level reading at the elementary and secondary school levels. For students with disabilities (SWD), reading deficits are rampant and lead to low self-efficacy and higher drop-out rates. While reading difficulties are …

Social Factors Influencing Early Reading Development From Kindergarten To Grade One In English-Speaking Public Schools In Ontario And Quebec, Katherine Wood

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This research study examines the influence of providing parents with early literacy or socio-emotional instruction on their children’s performance in reading and social skill development. Parents were offered four interactive workshops designed to assist them in identifying everyday opportunities to reinforce either early reading skills or early social skills development. Two reading skills approaches were explored, traditional text reading and traditional text reading with computer-assisted learning opportunities. These two reading approaches were contrasted with a set of social development workshops derived from social-emotional learning models. Children’s performance was measured at three time intervals from early kindergarten to early in grade …

Hesitation Rate As A Speaker-Specific Cue In Bilingual Individuals, Jamie Lynn Armbrecht

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Hesitation use is common among all speakers, regardless of whether they are engaged in their dominant or non-dominant language (Fehringer & Fry, 2007; Reed, 2000). The question is whether a bilingual speaker will engage in the same types of hesitations in both languages. If hesitation patterns can be identified consistently across speakers regardless of language, their use as an acoustic cue for speaker identification may be possible. This study examines differences in hesitation use across languages and speaking contexts (reading vs. conversation) in bilingual speakers.

Twenty Spanish-English bilinguals (ages 19 -31 years) were tested as part of a larger speaker …

The Role Of The Interruption In Young Adult Epistolary Novels, Betty J. Herzhauser

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Within the genre of young adult literature, a growing trend is the use of epistolary messages through electronic methods between characters. These messages are set apart from the formal text of the narrative of the novel creating a break in the text features and layout of the page. Epistolary texts require a more sophisticated reading method and level of interpretation because the epistolary style blends multiple voices and points of view into the plot, creating complicated narration. The reader must navigate the narrator’s path in order to extract meaning from the text. In this hermeneutic study, I examined the text …

Reading English Literature And Korean Scholars' Search For "Authentic Subjectivity", Jonggab Kim

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Reading English Literature and Korean Scholars' Search for 'Authentic Subjectivity'" Jonggab Kim discusses the ambivalence of Korean scholars toward the reading and analysis of English-language literature because of its perceived threat to Korean national identity and a route to internationalization. Kim's study is an attempt to evaluate a dual strategy of reading, one that involves both sympathy and antipathy. Kim postulates that what Korean scholars need is not a national practice of reading, but the type of reading that takes into account Korea's historical situation with the knowledge of the field or period of the text. Based …

Using Literature For Project Based Learning, Jacquelyn Urbani

Collected Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Writing & Linguistics News, Georgia Southern University

Writing & Linguistics News (2012-2022)

• Peter Cashwell campus visit & The Harbuck Scholarship reading and reception

Student Perceptions Of Strategies Used For Reading Hispanic Literature: A Case Study, Rebecca Leigh Brazzale

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study investigated the experiences of students during their reading tasks for their university Spanish courses during the Fall 2013 semester at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. The purpose of this research was to explore what types of reading strategies university Spanish students use during literary readings tasks and their perceptions of the reading strategies they use. This case study employed stimulated recall protocol interviews, student reading logs and student notes in texts. Interviews were conducted within 24 hours of the reading, while reading logs and notes were completed during the reading. The data collected were analyzed for …

Supporting Collaborative Efforts In Implementing Evidence-Based Reading Interventions: The Role Of Online Databases, Gina Coffee, Adam S. Kennedy, Markeda L. Newell

Education: School of Education Faculty Publications and Other Works

The purpose of this article is to provide an explanation of how effective reading interventions are identified. Through a review of the National Reading Panel’s general findings, along with a review of systems currently used to evaluate and disseminate specific reading interventions, a discussion of what works in reading is presented. The Evidence-Based Intervention (EBI) Network is presented as a resource for facilitating collaboration across disciplines. Finally, a framework to guide collaborating professionals in the implementation of evidence-based reading interventions is proposed.

Self-Reported Practices Of And Attitudes Toward Reading Among Elementary-Aged English Language Learners, Sarah M. Akers

Educational Specialist, 2009-2019

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of self-reported attitudes toward and practices of at-home reading on English reading abilities in English Language Learners in 3rd through 5th grade. Students' English reading abilities were measured in terms of fluency, vocabulary/background knowledge, and comprehension. Scores from the school district's reading benchmarks and English language mastery test were also obtained. Attitudes toward both academic and recreational reading were assessed, and a survey was administered to obtain information regarding students' self-reported at-home practices of reading and access to reading materials. Data was collected in early spring and again in late …

Effects Of Licensed And Unlicensed Negation On The Activation Of Negated Concepts, Kevin Autry

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Research on the activation of negated concepts has demonstrated situations in which negated concepts are less active than non-negated concepts (e.g., MacDonald & Just, 1989) as well as situations where negated and non-negated concepts are equally active (e.g., Autry & Levine, 2012, in press). Based on the pragmatic inference hypothesis (Levine & Hagaman, 2008), the present experiments tested the hypothesis that the activation level of negated concepts is a function of the context in which they occur. In two experiments, the activation level of target concepts was measured following licensing or non-licensing contexts using lexical decision and reading times. Although …

An Exploratory Study Of Purposeful And Strategic Communicative Techniques To Teach Vocabulary From Core Reading Programs To English Learners, Danell Bench Mieure

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This study investigated the effect of instructional practices when teaching vocabulary from a core reading program to English learners. Participants were 73 fifth-grade English learners nested in classrooms of 11 teachers who were randomly assigned to the instructional treatment group or to the comparison group. Both the treatment and comparison groups were taught vocabulary words from the district-adopted core reading program. The treatment group implemented an intervention specifically designed to teach vocabulary using techniques with the potential to increase vocabulary acquisition of English learners situated in principles of the communicative approach. Data were collected on a mastery test that measured …

A First Grade Teacher’S Implementation Of The Multicultural Read Aloud Lesson In Voices Reading: How Active Participatory Structure And Personal Relevance Are Used To Mediate Text Engagement, Kristen B. Doorn

Open Access Dissertations

This study focuses on the implementation of a multicultural, instructional read aloud lesson by a first grade teacher using the Voices Reading literacy curriculum during a six-week summer academic program for students at risk for academic failure who lived in a primarily black, low income, urban community in the southeastern region of the United States. The study examined how the teacher promoted an active participatory structure during the read aloud lesson and how this aspect of her teaching was guided by the curriculum and program context. The study used a case study approach to qualitative research (Creswell, 2006) and thematic …

Gjr Volume 37 Number 1 Spring 2014, Lina Soares, Christine Draper

The Georgia Journal of Reading Archive

The Georgia Journal of Reading's Spring 2014 issue includes:

Message from the Editors by Lina B. Soares and Christine A. Draper (pg. 4)

President’s Page by Loleta Sartin (pg. 5)

Quantum Shifts by Gerald Boyd (pg. 6)

Literacy Coaching: Providing Leadership and Support for the Next Generation of Teachers by Katie Stover and Crystal Glover (pg. 8)

Significance of Prior Knowledge Activation: A Close Look at a Bilingual Kindergarten Student’s Response to a Poem by Alma Stevenson (pg. 14)

The Effect of Explicit Instruction with Writing Conventions Among Preservice Teachers by Laurie A. Sharp (pg. 18)

Tacky and a Tambourine: …

The 'Literacy' Idea, Ross Turner

Assessment GEMS

A central reason why researchers and practitioners refer to domain literacy is to draw attention to the kinds of things students learn in the domain. In a traditional learning domain the focus might be on the acquisition of discrete facts, skills and procedures that have little obvious connection or utility. In a learning domain with a literacy orientation, the focus is on applying the domain’s facts, skills and procedures to support creativity and inventiveness, to solve novel problems and to deal with the kinds of challenges that life presents outside the classroom. In the case of mathematics, for example, a …

The Early Grade Reading Assessment: Assessing Children's Acquisition Of Basic Literacy Skills In Developing Countries (Superseded Version), Australian Council For Educational Research

Assessment GEMS

The Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA), administered individually in about 15 minutes, measures the most basic foundation skills for literacy acquisition in the early grades. The assessment was developed by the Research Triangle Institute (RTI) through funding provided by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the World Bank (Gove & Wetterberg, 2011), in addition to resources provided by RTI. The EGRA was developed to provide a battery of assessments of basic reading skills for developing countries to monitor the status of early reading in primary schools. The assessment tool was first implemented in The Gambia and Senegal …

A Comparison Of Individual And Partner Reading In A K-2 Classroom: An Emphasis On Comprehension And Focus, Cheyenne Meyerpeter, Cara Simonds

Education Undergraduate Research

No abstract provided.

The Neural Substrates Of Natural Reading: A Comparison Of Normal And Nonword Text Using Eyetracking And Fmri, W. Choi, Rutvik Desai, J. M. Henderson

Faculty Publications

Most previous studies investigating the neural correlates of reading have presented text using serial visual presentation (SVP), which may not fully reflect the underlying processes of natural reading. In the present study, eye movements and BOLD data were collected while subjects either read normal paragraphs naturally or moved their eyes through “paragraphs” of pseudo-text (pronounceable pseudowords or consonant letter strings) in two pseudo-reading conditions. Eye movement data established that subjects were reading and scanning the stimuli normally. A conjunction fMRI analysis across natural- and pseudo-reading showed that a common eye-movement network including frontal eye fields (FEF), supplementary eye fields (SEF), …

Grade Retention Practices Within An Rti Framework : A Survey Of School Psychologists' Perceptions, Elizabeth Johnson

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The overall effects of retention have been identified as among the least effective of all educational initiatives; despite this, retention continues to receive support from a variety of professionals within the school setting. More recently, Response to intervention (RTI) has taken the forefront in terms of educational reforms, and many across the US are now implementing the model in an effort to conform to special education law and meet standards. Arguments are being made that practitioners should be implementing formative and evidence-based interventions, such as those found within the RTI framework, to improve the outcomes of struggling students in place …

Effects Of A Cross-Age Peer Tutoring Intervention On English Language Oral Reading Fluency In A Belizean Grade School, Marcia Ruth Sytsma

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

A cross-age peer tutoring program was implemented in a small rural school in west central Belize, Central America. All students at the school were native Spanish speakers, and all general instruction was conducted in English. The program was devised to supplement existing reading and language arts instruction at all grade levels. Progress of both tutors and tutees was monitored on a weekly basis using DIBELS Next measures. Twenty-nine students started the program, with complete data available for twenty-one students: seven tutee-tutor pairs, and seven matched students who participated as controls. Three main hypotheses were tested with the present study. These …

Designing An Instructional Intervention Using Karaoke To Develop Key Reading Skills, Travis James Ross

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to design, pilot, and evaluate the effectiveness of a teacher-led intervention using karaoke to improve the reading skills. Elements from previous research (Biggs, Homan, Dedrick, Rasinksi & Minick, 2008; Gupta, 2006) were adapted and integrated with the structure of Writer's Workshop (Calkins, 1991; Graves, 1983) to create an intervention referred to as Karaoke Workshop. The researcher, who also participated in the role of the after-school intervention teacher, adapted existing instructional and design methods and the efficacy of the adaptation of these methods in this context was part of the pilot nature of this study. …

Vocabulary And Reading Comprehension Intervention: A Focus On Students In The Late Elementary Grades, Melissa L. Dol

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Literacy skills are key to success in school, career, and everyday life. Despite school curricula being strongly focused on literacy development (Ministry of Education, 2006), many children continue to fall behind the expected literacy skill levels for their grade (Education Quality and Accountability Office, 2012a, 2012b; National Center for Education Statistics, 2011). The present study evaluated a literacy intervention, Better Reading for School Success (BRSS), accompanied by a parent/guardian literacy workshop and weekly tips regarding how parents and/or guardians can promote literacy skill development at home. The BRSS was also evaluated as a subsection of family literacy afterschool programs, ‘Get …

The Influence Of Montessori-Based Literacy Instruction And Methods On Reading Achievement Of Students In Grades 3, 4, 5, 6, And 7, Frances Bowman

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Abstract

This study examines the influence of Montessori-based literacy curriculum and instruction on student achievement in Grades 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7. I studied 71 matched pairs of urban charter school students (n=142) to determine if there was a statistically significant difference in reading achievement, as measured by the Maryland School Assessment (MSA), between students who were instructed by their teachers in Montessori literacy methods and curriculum and students from a nearby charter school who were instructed by their teachers using a basal reading method. T-tests were used to compare the mean scores of the combined grade levels …

(Re)Discovering Retrospective Miscue Analysis: An Action Research Exploration Using Recorded Readings To Improve Third-Grade Students’ Reading Fluency, Melissa Born, Reagan Curtis

i.e.: inquiry in education

An action research project was undertaken focused on integrating recorded readings and Retrospective Miscue Analysis (RMA) into center-based instructional time in a third-grade classroom. Initial DIBELS test results were used to select 6 struggling readers, all of whom showed improved fluency in response to our instructional interventions. The impact of these instructional approaches on the teacher and her students is discussed, as is the impact on the teacher of engaging in action research. The article concludes with practical ways to implement recorded readings and RMA into classrooms in order to boost student motivation, attitudes toward reading, reading fluency, and comprehension.

The Academic And Motivational Impact Of California Gateways And Lexia Reading On English Language Learners With Disabilities, Rebecca Hayley Wilner

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This study examined the effectiveness of California Gateways in combination with Lexia Reading on the reading fluency and comprehension skills of 4th and 5th grade English Language Learners with mild to moderate disabilities. Oral reading fluency and maze passage fluency were examined. To evaluate the motivational impact of the intervention, participants completed a pre and post Motivation to Read Profile. A multiple baseline across participants design was used to evaluate the use of daily California Gateways lessons and Lexia Reading intervention with five students who are English language learners and have been identified with disabilities. Curriculum Based Measurement probes were …

The Role Of Young Hoosier Book Award Nominees In The Classroom: Using Approaches To Multicultural Education As A Lens For Evaluating Literature, Shaylyn Barrie Marks

Open Access Dissertations

This study demonstrates the need for the integration of multiculturalism in the K-12 curriculum as well as provides a heuristic based on the work conducted by Sleeter and Grant (2009) to evaluate literature for level of multiculturalism. In the study, the researcher uses an evaluate heuristic to critically analyze and evaluation ten of the books from the 2011-2012 Young Hoosier Book Award (YHBA) nominee list. The heuristic created for this study is applied to the books appearing on the YHBA nominee list to evaluate each book on an individual basis, but also by association, the types of books that that …

Grammar Enhanced Biliteracy: Naskapi Language Structures For Facilitating Reading In Naskapi, William Joseph Jancewicz

Theses and Dissertations

The Naskapi language is the language of instruction in the early primary grades of the school in the Naskapi community. Only recently have Naskapi-speaking teachers received formal instruction in pedagogy, with a cohort of Naskapi teachers following courses for their Bachelor of Education degree towards careers teaching in the Naskapi language in their local school. These adults are highly motivated to become literate in their mother tongue in order to teach or prepare curriculum materials in the Naskapi language. This thesis explores how basic grammatical structures can be mastered, and provides insight into the form that pedagogical grammatical instruction should …

Scientifically Based Reading Research Strategies In The Preschool Classroom: An Investigation Into Quality Early Childhood Reading Practices And Literacy Acquisition In One Northern Michigan Early Reading First Program, Yvonne Donohoe Mccool

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

A growing body of research has emerged to support the concept of providing early childhood education as a quality investment for our children, unlocking early potential and creating lasting impacts related to school success and beyond. Several landmark studies indicated that a quality education targeted at our youngest learners has the ability to yield impressive returns academically, economically, and socially. Early childhood education is credited with reducing costs associated with educational remediation, retention, and special education services. More important, early childhood education is associated with the prevention of early learning difficulties and overall improved education outcomes.

On the foundation of …