The Efficacy of a Reading Pull-out Intervention on Student’s Rate of Improvement and Positive Reading Attitude

The ability to read is an essential skill that has been proven critical to education and everyday life. The present study compares two different reading classroom instructions and student’s rate of improvement. The independent variable included student’s reading instruction. Conditions included first, second and third grade students in a mainstream reading instruction and first, second and third grade students in a pull-out reading intervention instruction. The nature of Response-to-Intervention and the purpose of this pull-out reading intervention for at-risk readers, led this study to predict that the pull-out reading intervention group would demonstrate a higher rate of improvement than students in the mainstream classroom. Along with the rate of improvement hypothesis, this study predicted that students in the pull-out intervention would score significantly more positive reading attitude scores and that a student’s rate of improvement would correlate with their score on the reading attitude survey. Pre-and post-assessment data was collected after obtaining permission from Wooster Township Elementary and the assessments were not administered or created for this study. This study used existing data from the AIMSweb reading assessments that are apart of Wooster Township’s regular school year testing schedule. This study did administer the reading attitude survey, which was specific to the study, during the same time the students were taking their post AIMSweb assessments. Specific analyses found that there was no significant difference between condition’s rate of improvement and only mainstream first grade students demonstrated a significant positive correlation between their rate of improvement and reading attitude scores

Community informatics for youth: Using new digital media to foster personal growth and community action

During fall 2007 a new collaboration between the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the Extension 4-H network was initiated. Funded by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services, the goal of this collaboration, titled the Youth Community Informatics (YCI) project, is to develop and integrate new and existing strategies to involve youth ages 11-18 from underserved communities in using information and communications technologies to meet community goals. By involving youth from these communities, it is reasoned a sustainable program can be developed through the provisioning of new generations with the knowledge they need to face an information-oriented society. The project is modelled on the work of John Dewey and the American Pragmatists and seeks to create communities of inquiry that bring together professionals, pre-professionals, community youth leaders, and community youth to address community goals in underserved communities. This paper will review the early development of an YCI pedagogy and inquiry units as a means of sharing the curriculum, in addition to highlighting the lessons learned from the first year of this project.published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe

Characterizing optimal intervention intensity : the relationship between dosage and effect size in interventions for children with developmental speech and language difficulties

Although Warren, Fey and Yoder (2007) have described the key components of "dosage", one needs to go beyond description if one is to understand "optimal" dosage, specifically one needs to relate the characteristics of the intervention to the size of the intervention effect. This study examines the association between dose, intensity, and effect size in 20 randomized controlled studies taken from a few systematic reviews focusing on interventions aiming to ameliorate vocabulary, phonology, and syntax. Reporting of dosage characteristics is an important issue. Our analysis shows that "teaching episodes" and "dose form" are rarely reported in the included studies. The other dosage characteristics are present but not always reported in a transparent fashion. Session length and cumulative intervention intensity is lower for phonology interventions than it is for vocabulary intervention. Dosage, however defined, is not directly associated with outcome, although the level of association varies across the three interventions, for example appearing stronger for vocabulary and phonology than syntax. Taking the three interventions together the dosage components are related to the intervention effects size, but the sample is small and the association is not statistically significant. This study concludes that, while the framework suggested by Baker (2012) and adapted from Warren et al. (2007) is useful but without reference to the effect size of a study, it can only ever tell half the story. One needs to be able to relate dosage to outcome, asking questions about the relationship between the different dosage characteristics and the intervention effect size. Given the available data, it is not, at this stage, possible to make recommendations about optimal dosage. © 2012 The Speech Pathology Association of Australia Limited