Language and Literacy Education Commons^™

Using Physical Activity To Improve Reading Comprehension, Jensen Flanigan

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

Student reading proficiency lags grade-level expectations in the majority of the United States. Much research has demonstrated the moderating impact of student motivation on reading scores. The purpose of this action research was to study the effects of physical activity on reading motivation and reading comprehension, with a special focus on readers at risk for reading deficiencies as identified by FAST testing. The research was carried out on eighteen third grade students in rural Iowa, seven of whom were at risk for reading deficiency. The use of physical activity had a positive effect on both reading motivation and reading comprehension, …

Using The Transactional Reading Theory To Galvanize The Meaning Of Construction Process And Promote Fourth Grade Students Reading Comprehension, Cognition, And Motivation, Tamara Gatewood-Williams

Theses and Dissertations

The sequential mixed-methods study was conducted to examine the effects of a transactional intervention with emphasis on background knowledge, questioning, and motivation, that galvanize the meaning of the construction process to internalize strategies, promote engaging discussion of the text, and shift students from the observer to the participant, to the mediator. Participants included two fourth grade teachers, thirty-nine fourth grade students, and twelve fourth grade students who were selected from the thirty-nine to participate in the qualitative phase of the study. Quantitative data pre-and post-data were collected to assess student's cognition and motivation. Quantitative data revealed the intervention influenced background …

The Relationship Between Derivational Morphology And Reading Comprehension For Spanish-Speaking Language Minority Students In Fifth-Grade, Claudia Crespo Crespo Lee

Theses and Dissertations

This correlational study investigated the direct and indirect relationships derivational morphology had to reading comprehension for Spanish-speaking language minority students in the fifth-grade. It also investigated the direct and indirect effects Spanish phonological awareness had on reading comprehension. Multivariate path analysis was used to investigate the unique relationship the independent variables (derivational morphology, vocabulary, language comprehension, decoding, and Spanish phonological awareness) had on reading comprehension for fifth-grade students (N = 71). The results indicated derivational morphology significantly contributed to reading comprehension after controlling for vocabulary, language comprehension, and decoding. The results further indicated that Spanish phonological awareness was not statistically …

Korelasi Pola Gerakan Mata Dengan Kemampuan Membaca Pemahaman, Rosita Rahma, Jatmika Nurhadi, Aswan Aswan

Bahasa dan Seni: Jurnal Bahasa, Sastra, Seni, dan Pengajarannya

This study aims to determine the relationship between eye movement patterns and reading comprehension skills. Data were collected from 20 participants during reading comprehension activities using the Tobii Eye Tracker. Hypothesis testing conducted using the Chi-square Test through Crosstabs analysis shows the value of Asymp. Sig. (2-sided) 0.788 > 0.05, which leads to a conclusion that Ho is accepted and Ha is rejected. Therefore, we conclude that there is no relationship between eye movement patterns and the reading comprehension ability among the participants. This is because eye movement patterns are visual technical in nature, while the ability to read comprehension is …

Writing That Values Multiple Ways Of Knowing: Supporting Early Career Teachers’ Efforts To Promote Literacy Development, Lauren A. May, Heather Wright

Virginia English Journal

Early career secondary English teachers manage challenges that complicate their efforts to support students’ literacy development, including feelings of inadequacy as teachers. This paper focuses on low-stakes writing strategies that teachers might use to promote literacy development in the classroom and decrease their feelings of inadequacy. The authors, Lauren and Heather, use the lenses of dialogic pedagogy and the reflective turn to draw upon literature on the blending of reading and writing instruction and elements of autoethnography to examine their efforts to support students’ literacy development. Working from the literature and pedagogical reflections, the authors offer suggestions for instructional practice …

Simplified But Not The Same: Tracing Numeracy Events Through Manually Simplified Newsela Articles, Ellen C. Agnello

Numeracy

New York-based education startup Newsela has quickly gained popularity with K-12 educators in the six years since its launch. Its website boasts that it serves 90% of schools in the United States including the 1.5 million teachers they employ and their 20 million students. But what makes it so popular? Teachers are drawn to its Common Core-aligned informational texts which facilitate content-area connections while exposing students to important current events. Likely the most appealing aspect of the platform is its compatibility with differentiation, as it makes available five iterations of each article at varying levels of complexity or Lexile which …

Understanding Competency Based Learning For Reading Literacy, Sri Aurobindo Society, Australian Council For Educational Research (Acer)

ACER India

Competency-based learning, unlike curriculum-based learning, emphasizes a student-centred approach to education. It is heavily driven by experience and discovery rather than lecture and memorization. The focus of competency-based learning is on what students understand and how they apply what they learn in real-life situations rather than what they remember. This learning framework for reading literacy is an effort to introduce competency-based learning to classroom teaching and learning in India to prepare Indian students for the rapidly changing future. It provides resources that can be used by schools and teachers for supporting secondary school students to acquire reading literacy and is …

Improving Reading Comprehension In Arabic English Language Learners, Amanda Watson

Masters Projects

While working at a charter school where students first language is Arabic, there has been a concern that Arabic English Language Learners (ELLs) often struggle with reading comprehension and teachers strive to find ways to fit additional instruction in with their rigorous reading curriculum. Therefore, the topic of this project thesis is how to increase reading comprehension for Arabic English Language Learners. It will look at the causes of why some Arabic ELLs struggle with reading comprehension and will briefly explore the differences between the English and Arabic orthographies. An increase and focus on phonological processing skills (specifically phonological awareness) …

Reading In Kapampangan, Filipino, And English: A Look At Multilingual Children In An Economically Challenging Philippine Community, Portia Padilla

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The present studies advance current understanding of the skills and processes involved in multilingual reading, especially in less researched alphabetic languages. These studies examined whether the dominant models in reading in English can explain the reading processes involved among low-income multilingual speakers of Kapampangan (L1), Filipino (L2), and English (L3) in the Philippines, a developing country. Kapampangan and Filipino use the same Roman alphabet that English uses. However, these two languages have transparent orthographies while English has an opaque orthography.

Study 1 examined the psycholinguistic grain size theory within the context of multilingual reading. There were three hundred twenty-six children …

The Effect Of Drama Based Instruction On Reading Comprehension, Janee Udalla

Innovations and Critical Issues in Teaching and Learning

Educators might believe that classroom drama is comparable to putting on a theatrical production and might avoid it because they fear it will involve time-consuming planning, use of props, and expensive scripts (McMaster, 1998). Unfortunately, this view can discourage educators from using an important teaching tool that can improve students’ reading comprehension skills. However, educators should explore the use of drama-based instruction and the benefits it may provide to their students. The methods teachers implement in the classroom greatly affect the attitudes and learning of their students (Author, 2008). Therefore, the purpose of this article is to identify the benefits …

Let's Read A Story!: Collaborative Meaning Making, Student Engagement, And Vocabulary Building Through The Use Of Interactive Read-Alouds, Shaya Helbig, Susan V. Piazza

Michigan Reading Journal

The interactive read-aloud has long been a practice during early literacy instruction in schools and in homes. Reading aloud to children provides a platform for teachers or caregivers to model meaning-making interactions with text. Students are able to collaboratively engage in conversations to create a collective understanding of texts. Interactions during a read-aloud can foster engagement, create meaning, and promote vocabulary acquisition. This article examines current research that supports the use of interactive read alouds to engage learners in meaning-making processes and translates research and theory into practical recommendations for effective interactive read-alouds.

The Impact Of Reading Intervention On Retained Elementary-Age Students, Elizabeth Lazar

Dissertations

Due to historically high rates of retained students, one low-performing school needed to fix the endless cycle of student failure. After implementation of a close reading program, participating students made growth on the state reading test. My main goal was to examine which key elements of this program supported retained third grade students resulting in learning gains. My data showed t-test findings with a statistically significant difference in both scale scores and achievement levels on the state reading assessment.

My recommended policy change provides elementary students with a district-wide close reading program to teach comprehension strategies. Through policy measures, I …

Corpus-Based Data-Driven Learning In Reading English For Academic Purposes, Ira Rasikawati

Education Dissertations

One of the second language (L2) instructional approaches perceived as promising is data-driven learning (DDL) – the use of computer-generated concordances for language teaching and learning. DDL provides students with the opportunity to analyze language forms across contexts found in the concordance output. Notwithstanding the growing research support, DDL has not been widely adopted in L2 classrooms. Studies examining the use of DDL have mostly been carried out in a case study context with a small sample size. To bridge the gap between research and instructional practices, more empirical studies are needed to corroborate the claim that exposing students to …

Exploring The Influence Of Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (Pals) In Increasing Reading Comprehension Of Grade-Level Biology Text And Biology Self-Efficacy In Students With Learning Disabilities: A Formative Experiment, K. Lea Priestley

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The present study used a formative design experiment framework which does not answer a research question but addresses a pedagogical goal. The goal of this study was to determine the influence of Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS) on the reading comprehension of grade-level biology text and biology self-efficacy with students diagnosed with learning disabilities. As a result of this intervention, it was expected that students would better understand biology text and feel better about themselves as a biology student.

Students were separated into pairs, or dyads, with each pair having a stronger reader and a weaker reader. These dyads participated in …

Progress In International Reading Literacy Study: Measuring And Making International Comparisons Of Student Achievement In Reading, Australian Council For Educational Research

Assessment GEMS

Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) is an ongoing, cyclical international study of student achievement in reading. It is directed by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). PIRLS measures the reading comprehension performance of students and collects a wide array of contextual information about students, schools, curricula and educational policies and systems. PIRLS is designed to inform educational practice and policy by providing an international perspective of teaching and learning in reading literacy.

Mocca College: An Assessment Of Inferential Narrative And Expository Comprehension, Mark L. Davison, Ben Seipel, Virginia Clinton-Lisell, Sarah E. Carlson, Patrick C. Kennedy

Education, Health & Behavior Studies Faculty Publications

MOCCA-C is an assessment of adult reading ability designed for early diagnosis of reading problems, for formative assessment in reading intervention planning, for assessment of reading improvement over time, and for assessment of reading intervention outcomes. It uses both narrative and expository reading passages and it currently has four forms. Two goals of this research were to compare narrative and expository passages on (a) their difficulty and (b) their ability to discriminate between good and poor readers. An additional goal was to assess whether narrative and expository passages measure the same or different comprehension dimensions. A final goal was to …

Using The Question-Answer Relationship Strategy To Improve Listening Comprehension In Young Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Lisa A. Phalen

Communication Disorders & Special Education Theses & Dissertations

A well-established research base indicates that many children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience deficits in reading comprehension skills. There is currently limited research which examines the relation between the communication and language impairments in ASD and emergent literacy skills in early childhood. Listening comprehension has been identified as one emergent literacy skill closely linked to reading comprehension development. The purpose of the study is to examine the effects of the question-answer relationship strategy (QAR) and QAR cue cards as a shared book reading intervention package on the listening comprehension skills of children with ASD. A single-subject concurrent multiple-baseline …

Using Think-Alouds To Support And Enhance English Language Learners' Comprehension Of Multimodal Texts, Daibao Guo, Eun Hye Son, Katherine Landau Wright

Literacy, Language and Culture Faculty Publications and Presentations

Research has demonstrated that elementary students may not be skilled interpreters of multimodal science texts (McTigue & Flowers, 2010). This challenge may be enhanced for English language learners (ELLs), whose language skills are still developing. Therefore, in this qualitative case study, we implement think-aloud protocols to understand three striving ELL readers’ comprehension processes and use of comprehension strategies. Then we collaborated with three pre-service teachers to design individualized comprehension instructions. After 7-weeks of intensive tutoring, findings show students were able to use a greater variety comprehension strategies. Classroom implications are discussed to provide best instructional practice for striving ELL readers.

Do You Get The Picture?: A Meta-Analysis Of The Effect Of Graphics On Reading Comprehension, Daibao Guo, Shuai Zhang, Katherine Landau Wright, Erin M. Mctigue

Literacy, Language and Culture Faculty Publications and Presentations

Although convergent research demonstrates that well-designed graphics can facilitate readers’ understanding of text, there are select situations where graphics have been shown to have no effect on learners’ overall text comprehension. Therefore, the current meta-analytic study examined 39 experimental studies published between 1985 and 2018 measuring graphics’ effects on readers’ comprehension. We first quantified the overall effect on reading comprehension. Then, we considered interactions with learners’ characteristics, graphic types, and assessment formats. Our analysis revealed that the inclusion of graphics had a moderate overall positive effect (Hedges’s g = 0.39) on students’ reading comprehension, regardless of grade level. Regarding graphic …

Examining Elementary Students' Purposeful And Ancillary Prior Knowledge Activation When Reading Grade Level Texts, Courtney Hattan, Daniel L. Dinsmore

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

Prior knowledge activation is a crucial component of reading comprehension. Previous studies have examined students’ prompted (or solicited) purposeful knowledge activation, which occurs when the explicit goal is to activate knowledge, as well as ancillary knowledge activation, which is when students indirectly use their prior knowledge to fill in gaps in the text, form an opinion, or question the author. However, little is known regarding elementary students’ unprompted (or unsolicited) purposeful and ancillary activation of prior knowledge while reading grade level texts. The purpose of the current study was to (a) examine differences between third and fifth grade students on …

Crossing The Final Frontier: Exploring The Numeracy Demands Of Texts Read In English Language Arts, Ellen C. Agnello, Kevin M. Agnello

Numeracy

Incited by the National Assessment of Educational Progress’ 2009 Reading Framework and the Common Core State Standards, recent shifts in national education goals have urged English language arts teachers to make curriculum adjustments. One such adjustment is to shift their focus from fiction, which has traditionally dominated the curriculum, to nonfiction. Doing so has the potential to increase students’ exposure to informational texts which often employ numeric modes to represent quantitative data, thus necessitating numeracy knowledge. This article presents a study of 60 nonfiction texts taught in secondary ELA classrooms. Through analysis of these texts, it addresses the questions: Which …

Improving Literacy Outcomes For Adolescent English Language Learners, Grace Diaz-Peterson

Graduate Teacher Education

As the population of English Language Learners in United States public schools has risen significantly in recent years, the unique academic challenges these students faced, particularly in middle and high school, became more apparent. A widening reading and vocabulary gap between English Language Learners and their native English-speaking peers posed particular barriers in secondary content area classes, where many teachers reported feeling ill-prepared to meet the specialized linguistic needs of their English Language Learner students. This paper analyzed a mix of recent, available qualitative and quantitative research on best practices to improve literacy outcomes for adolescent English Language Learners. As …

Sources Of Missed Understanding: A Framework For Diagnosing Comprehension Breakdown, Tarr Jennifer

Dissertations

This research sought to understand how a formative assessment framework created by the researcher (called the Sources of Missed Understanding construct) would be used by teachers to diagnose students’ reading comprehension challenges during authentic reading instruction, and to understand the context and supports teachers needed to use the tool effectively. A design experiment methodology was used to follow the diagnostic processes of five reading specialist candidates, each working one-to-one with an upper elementary or middle school reader during a five week summer university-based tutoring setting, resulting in five case studies and cross case analysis. This study shows that teachers who …

The Impact Of Collaborative Strategic Reading On Esl International Students’ Reading Comprehension And Metacognitive Awareness In College, Fatima Benlyazid

Education Dissertations

Many ESL international students struggle with academic reading, which hinders their success in American colleges. Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR) is a multi-component approach that trains struggling readers to apply a set of cognitive and metacognitive strategies to enhance their reading comprehension and content area reading. This quasi-experimental nonequivalent control group pretest-posttest study aims to evaluate the effect of CSR on ESL international students' reading comprehension and their metacognitive awareness in college. The researcher employed Degrees of Reading Power (DRP) and Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory (MARSI) measurement tools to collect the data. Capturing students' perceptions of CSR in the …

The Reading Comprehension Strategies Of Second Language Learners: A Spanish-English Study, Karen Acosta

Dimensions

This study identified the reading comprehension strategies that English-speaking college students enrolled in beginner, intermediate, and advanced Spanish language classes at a major Midwestern university in the United States used to comprehend a text in their second language. The findings suggest that readers tended to use the same comprehension strategies when approaching a text in their second language, regardless of their proficiency level. However, there was a qualitative difference in how these strategies were used by readers of low, middle, and high proficiency in Spanish. Readers of all levels used their first language when reading in their second language.

Lexical-Level Predictors Of Reading Comprehension In Third Grade: Is Spelling A Unique Contributor?, Kimberly A. Murphy, Laura M. Justice

Communication Disorders & Special Education Faculty Publications

Purpose:

Considerable research effort has focused on understanding reading comprehension and reading comprehension difficulties. The purpose of this correlational study was to add to the small but growing body of literature on the role that spelling may play in reading comprehension, by investigating the full range of lexical-level literacy skills and whether spelling makes a unique contribution. This study also explored whether these relations vary with the spelling scoring metric.

Method:

Data were collected from 63 children attending Grade 3 in a Midwestern state. In addition to measuring reading comprehension, word recognition, and vocabulary, 4 spelling scoring metrics were examined: …

The Power Of Pictures: Drawing On Visual Sign-Systems To Teach Inference In Gerstein’S The Man Between Two Towers, Shannon Howrey

The Journal of Balanced Literacy Research and Instruction

The ability to infer while reading is a critical part of meaning-making. Readers who infer go beyond the literal words on the page by adding information to the text and making implicit connections between the text and their prior knowledge (Barr, Blacowicz, Bates, Katz, & Kaufman, 2013). This skill allows them to establish causal relationships between story events, connect the events to their personal experiences, and determine relationships, motivations, and emotions within and between characters. Drawing on dual coding theory and visual literacy principles, the author demonstrates how the lines in the illustrations of The Man Between Two Towers assist …

Review Of Think Big With Think Alouds: A Three-Step Planning Process That Develops Strategic Readers, Susan J. Chambre

The Language and Literacy Spectrum

In Think Big with Think Alouds: A Three-step Planning Process That Develops Strategic Readers (2017), Molly K. Ness provides classroom teachers with a detailed three-step process for developing think aloud procedures during classroom literacy instruction. The book assists teachers in identifying stopping points in narrative and expository text. Ness also includes multiple scripted think alouds with comprehensive explanations for both narrative and expository text. Additionally, practical tips for promoting student adoption of higher order thinking skills are provided in the form of sentence starters and strategy symbols. The procedures outline in Think Big with Think Alouds will empower classroom teachers …

How Oral Reading Fluency And Reading Comprehension Are Intertwined, Ivy Rath

Dissertations, Theses, and Projects

The purpose of this study was to determine if there was a correlation between oral reading fluency and reading comprehension. Specifically, the study focused on finding if a student who is a highly fluent reader is also strong is comprehension and if a student is a low fluent reader, then they are also low in comprehension. Students were baseline tested at the beginning of the second semester to see where their oral reading fluency and reading comprehension scores were. Throughout the second semester of school, students were progressed monitored based on their baseline scores. Through careful analysis of the data …

We Aren't Living Happily Ever After: Embodying Characters In Readers Theater To Promote Comprehension, Cassandra Angley

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Readers Theater is an old genre of Theater integrating oral interpretation and presentational Theater. The high interest of the scripts chosen for a Readers Theater production and the repetition of rehearsing text promotes fluency, expressiveness, and motivation. Readers Theater is one method that may support comprehension by developing students’ understanding of character. Very few Readers Theater studies measure comprehension. I set-up a study where nine fifth and sixth-grade students from a summer literacy program each embodied a character. I wanted to know if Readers Theater could help teach character comprehension. I created a comprehension assessment tool, called a Character Map, …