Three points of the phonics triangle: An equilateral relationship among pseudoword reading, name reading, and spelling

This study evaluates the relationship among three commonly administered phonics measures. Pseudoword Decoding, a norm-referenced assessment from Wechsler Individual Assessment Test - II (WIAT-II), the Primary Spelling Inventory and the Names Test, criterion-referenced instruments, were administered to a general population of 56 second-grade students with mixed reading abilities. The Elision subtest, a norm referenced assessment from the Phonological Awareness composite on the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (CTOPP), was also administered to all 56 students to discover whether the phonics measures correlated with it. Pearson product moment correlations were used to compare the four measures. Significant correlations were found among all the measures. The phonics measures were most strongly correlated ranging from .778-.845. Students shared their perceptions of and preferences for the measures. Implications for classroom assessment of phonics are discussed

Integrated intervention in a second grade classroom

v, 95 leaves : 28 cm. --Through the presentation of an integrated intervention program an attempt was made to minimize difficulties with the reading process experienced by eight underachieving grade two students. The literature review presented suggested that early reading acquisition had always been associated with developmental strengths in the visual, auditory and motor modalities and in oral language facility. The integrated intervention program focused on activities for developing these areas through the presentation of the McInnis structure for acquiring alphabetic coding and decoding skills, language processing skills, spatial and directional skills and a specific language of instruction. This structure was presented using the Nelson Networks grade two language arts content and the students' oral and written language. Through daily presentation, using a small group context, students were involved in an integrated grade two program for a four month period. This program resulted in growth in the visual, auditory and motor modalities and in increased oral language facility. It resulted in minimizing or eliminating difficulties with reading acquisition for all eight students. Pre and post testing indicated increased achievement levels with all eight students achieving at or near their expected grade level

Growing phonological and morphological knowledge and improving spelling outcomes in Year 2 primary school children through Explicit Instruction and contextualised dictation

Using Explicit Instruction (EI) to teach spelling is controversial because teaching approaches vary considerably in the contemporary classroom. Teachers may privilege visual over linguistic strategies and include target words based around themes, rather than the phono-morphological structures of words. There is also little current research about the benefits of using sentence dictation to practise taught spelling skills and thus to increase the likelihood of developing spelling automaticity. Spelling automaticity is important because it complements crucial reading and writing skills. Developing fluent spelling through EI, followed by sentence dictation, was a specific focus of this study. Two primary schools in rural NSW and a total of 30 teachers were involved in this mixed methods research. One of the schools was used as a comparison school and the other was the intervention school. All 30 teachers involved in the study completed a knowledge survey about the components of the English spelling system considered essential to teach spelling explicitly. From this data, the specific knowledge of the teachers involved in the Year 2 intervention, the Learning Support Teacher and the Acting Principal, was extracted. The two Year 2 teachers in the comparison school received professional development on meaning-based approaches to spelling, whereas the five teachers at the intervention school received professional development on EI techniques and word level components of the English spelling system. Mid-intervention teacher interviews gathered data about their feelings on implementing EI techniques in practice. Post-intervention quantitative tests and interviews allowed in-depth and rich understandings of aspects that either enabled or hindered implementation of the intervention. The spelling competence of 60 students at the two schools was also assessed before any intervention took place. The 35 Year 2 students in the two classes at the intervention school received EI in the phonological and morphological aspects of words, editing, and contextualised sentence dictation during Term 3. The 25 students in the Year 2 class at the comparison school continued their established literacy routine. Interviews with randomly selected students from both schools facilitated an exploration of their feelings about spelling approaches used during the term. The findings showed that spelling results in both schools improved as expected. However, overall the intervention school had superior results to the comparison school; one class in the intervention school consistently outperformed all other classes in word spelling and dictation assessments with moderate to large effects. Many of the teachers demonstrated an increase in morpheme knowledge, but not in word structure. In this study the EI spelling Lesson elements were reinforced by teaching strategies that included contextualised editing tasks and daily sentence dictations. These tasks were embedded in the term science theme of Insects, which was chosen in collaboration with the intervention teachers. The dictation component, a previously underutilised tool, involved students writing two lines from a contextualised poem, each day. In Australia, current methods of teaching spelling remain varied and contentious. Teachers who are engaged in improving spelling knowledge may find that using EI strategies reinforced by contextualised dictation can improve outcomes for all students

Making a Case for using Effective Reading Programs: A Program Evaluation of Wilson Fundations

Students who struggle to read at an early age are likely to continue struggling for not only the rest of their schooling, but the rest of their lives. Schools need to begin adopting research-based reading programs and measuring their effectiveness formatively throughout the school year. Research suggests that effective reading programs need to include phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. During the 2018-2019 school year, Wilson Fundations was implemented in K-2 at Summit Academy, a high-poverty Pre-K-8th grade school in Flat Rock, MI. The purpose was to uncover the potential effects of using Wilson Fundations as a reading program, while focusing on fidelity of implementation and the change in student achievement while the Wilson Fundations program was in place. To do so, I examined the teachers’ fidelity of implementation, student performance on Wilson Fundations unit tests, and I also used statistical analyses to compare the growth of student achievement on NWEA MAP from Fall 2018 and Winter 2019 to Fall 2017 to Winter 2018. Previous research assessed the impact of Wilson Fundations on special populations, such as special education and students needing tiered reading intervention, but failed to measure the effectiveness of Wilson Fundations on student achievement across entire grade levels as a Tier 1 reading program. The results in this study suggest that student achievement in reading across all grade levels in K-2 experienced a significant positive change while the Wilson Fundations program was being implemented (p \u3c 0.05). Based on the observations and RIT growth percentages on the NWEA MAP, the classrooms with the highest fidelity of implementation percentage also demonstrated the highest growth for their students

Understanding DIBELS: Purposes, Limitations, and Alignment of Literacy Constructs to Subtest Measures

DIBELS Next is frequently used as a universal screening and progress monitoring tool within a Response to Intervention (RTI) framework. Unfortunately, some misguided educational professionals are not utilizing the assessments as they have been intended, resulting in defective instructional practices and faulty decision-making. In order for DIBELS to be used effectively, teachers must have advanced knowledge regarding assessment practices, understand data analysis and interpretation, and deliver instruction that can positively influence the reading development of at-risk learners. The intent of this project is to provide educators with an understanding of the appropriate uses and limitations of DIBELS. Additionally, this project sets out to align each DIBELS subtest with its corresponding literacy construct. The concepts of phonemic awareness, phonics, and reading fluency are fully defined and general instructional recommendations are provided for each. Finally, a sample of teaching strategies that can be utilized to support the needs of students experiencing difficulties in each of these areas is highlighted

The Impact Literacy Coaches Have On Mississippi\u27s Lower-Performing Schools

The purpose of this study was to explore the impact literacy coaches had on Mississippi’s lower-performing schools. To guide the study, the researcher developed four research questions and four null hypotheses. The population of this study was derived from a sample of Mississippi students in Grades K-3 who were administered the Early Literacy STAR assessment for kindergartners and the STAR assessment for first through third-graders. This assessment was administered twice during the 2015-2016 school year. The pretest was given in August; the posttest was given in April/May. These students came from four different schools; two schools had literacy coaches and two schools did not have literacy coaches. The results demonstrated that schools that have literacy coaches had kindergarten students who demonstrated significant growth in reading when compared to their counterparts in schools that did not have literacy coaches. However, the results also suggested that schools that have literacy coaches working with second through third-grade students did not demonstrate significant growth in reading compared to their counterparts in schools that did not have literacy coaches; whereas, students’ literacy growth was actually harmed in first grade if literacy coaches were present

The design of an optimal typewriter-like keyboard

This thesis investigates the design of an optimal typewriter-like keyboard. An optimal keyboard is defined as one whose design is based upon the statistics of usage of the English language and the human factors of the typists. The design goal of such a keyboard is to minimize an objective function which relates the relative digraph frequencies and the stroking times of two key combinations