The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of Kindergarten Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (K-PALS) for students with disabilities. Additionally it looked to see if there was a correlation between the amount of training the teacher received and the students’ success. The team of authors used a variety of statistical methods to determine the effectiveness in both of these areas. A random group of 89 kindergartners, from 47 different classrooms in Minnesota schools all with individualized education programs, were divided into three different test groups. These groups were control, K-PALS Level 1, and K-PALS Level 2. The study concluded that the K-PALS students outperformed the control group on alphabetic and oral reading measures.
Problem
Proficient reading is strongly related to the academic success of students from the very beginning of their education. There is such a heavy weight of importance put upon the shoulders of elementary teachers and students to build a foundation of phonological awareness and phonics instruction to help foster the student’s reading success. Some of the biggest educational challenges that elementary children face are difficulties in reading. This is especially prevalent among children with disabilities. Unfortunately the outcome for struggling readers is very poor unless effective intervention is put in place early on in the child’s educational career. This concern leads educators to seek programs that will provide beneficial instruction to all students in the general education classroom setting. One such program is Kindergarten Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (K-PALS).
The intent of this study was to answer two main research questions: (1) Does partic...
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...onclusion and Implications
Overall Assessment
As an elementary reading teacher, closing the gaps in reading is an area that I strive daily to help my students achieve. Finding strategies and interventions that will reach some of my lowest performing students is always a challenge. Even if this program would help a few children out, I think that it would be a beneficial program to try. It is important to remember that no matter how beneficial a program may seem, there is never going to be a program that works for all students. That is why as educators we must constantly strive to find new and engaging methods to help all of our children reach their full potential. I feel like this article was one that proved to be beneficial for the authors study and the findings helped some children with learning disabilities have another option for them to be successful.
This is a reading intervention classroom of six 3rd grade students ages 9-10. This intervention group focuses on phonics, fluency, and comprehension. The students were placed in this group based on the results of the DIBELS Oral Reading Fluency assessment. Students in this class lack basic decoding skills.
With such high numbers of adolescents falling below basic in reading, illiteracy is a battle that must be fought head on. The largest dilemma with the struggle is the number of variations that cause adolescents to become reluctant, unmotivated or struggling readers. Fortunately, a large number of strategies exist to encourage and strengthen readers of all ages, proving that adolescence is not a time to give up on faltering students. Rather, it is a time to evaluate and intervene in an effort to turn a reluctant reader into an avid one (or near enough). Ultimately, educators must learn to properly assess a student’s strengths and weaknesses (Curtis, 2009) and pair them with the proper intervention techniques. If one method does not work, countless others exist to take its place.
Catherine Cangany’s article Fashioning Moccasins: Detroit, the Manufacturing Frontier, and the Empire of Consumption, 1701-1835, cover the main theme 18th century Detroit. Cangany explores how the moccasin, a fashionable and practical shoe, transformed from a shoe exclusively worn by native groups to a highly fashionable shoe that French and British colonies started to integrate into their own culture to taking the moccasin to manufacturing and becoming Europeanized. Though out many decades, the process of creating moccasins became more ‘industrial’ which made them a symbol of native culture to East Coast fashion. Cangany’s article examines how the production of moccasins became so popular and fashionable among European colonists that eventually moccasins no longer were a native creation.
Response to intervention (RTI) is an assessment procedure that consists of a multi-step approach to progressively intensive intervention and monitoring within general education for purposes of improving achievement outcomes and accurately recognizing students with learning disabilities. Components of the RTI process include universal screening, multi-tiered levels of support, evidence-based intervention, and using students' responsiveness to evaluate the status of their progress (Jenkins, Schiller, Blackorby, Thayer, & Tilly, 2013). Universal screening measures for students are not likely to result in definite identification for special education. Before students are placed they must be correctly identified with a precise assessment procedure. Many students who are at risk, or struggle academically are assessed with the RTI model to prevent failure and determine eligibility of services. Students, who are identified as at-risk for reading difficulties are provided with additional instructional interventions, also known as tier two intervention, in addition to their regular curriculum instruction. Students with persistently insufficient response to tear two interventions are given more intensive interventions at tier three levels (Denton, Vaughn, Tolar, Fletcher, Barth, & Francis, 2013). These interventions provided are specific to each individual students needs and implemented in accordance to recommendations from their teachers. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the reading curriculum focusing especially on tier two and tier three instructional interventions of the RTI model.
This study sought to answer three research questions. Although the questions have been presented in previous chapters, they are worth presenting again.
The causes of reading difficulties often arise because of learning disabilities such as dyslexia, poor preparation before entering school, no value for literacy, low school attendance, insufficient reading instruction, and/or even the way students were taught to read in the early grades. The struggles that students “encounter in school can be seen as socially constructed-by the ways in which schools are organized and scheduled, by assumptions that are made about home life and school abilities, by a curriculum that is often devoid of connections to students’ lives, and by text that may be too difficult for students to read” (Hinchman, and Sheridan-Thomas166). Whatever the reason for the existence of the reading problem initially, by “the time a [student] is in the intermediate grades, there is good evidence that he will show continued reading g...
Talks about how the earlier reading disabilities are detected the better. With proper encouragement and tools students will have more motivation for reading throughout their lives.
...ding Panel. Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction(NIH Publication No. 00-4769). Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
Research and studies that have been conducted for the Early Literacy Skills Builder by the Attainment Company (Browder, Gibbs, Ahlgrim-Delzell, Courtade, & Lee, in press) prove that this literacy program is effective in teaching students with moderate and severe disabilities. The teaching strategies used in this literacy program are based on scientifically based reading research. The purpose of this literature review is to familiarize myself and other educators with the effectiveness of this program.
Hugh, W. C., Fey, E. M., & Zhang, J. B. (2002). A Longitudinal Investigation of Reading Outcomes in Children With Language Impairments. Journal of Speech, Language & Hearing Research, 1142-1157.
As a teacher, you need to encourage all attempts at reading, writing, speaking, and allowing children to experience the different functions and use of literacy activity (The Access Center, n.d.). Moreover, it is crucial for educators to understand phonological awareness and phonics; know what constitutes good children’s literature and how to use it; know children who need additional assistance with beginning reading and writing (Cunningham et al, 2004 as cited in McLachlan et al, 2013, p. 112). Educators also need to plan effective activities to assist children experience reading aloud, listening to other children read aloud, listening to tape recordings, and videotapes so children have opportunities to integrate and extend their literacy knowledge (The Access Center, n.d.). Morrow (1990 as cited in The Access Center, n.d.) notes that classroom with greater teacher facilitation promote literacy behaviours, so it is educators’ role to provide literacy rich
The Institute of Literacy, Bursuck & Damer, Shapiro & Solity all concur that teaching phonemic awareness in a whole group setting is beneficial. To increase success, the authors established a need for extra support and differentiation lesson is also needed with the whole group. According to Shapiro, Solity (2008) Bursuck and Damer using whole group instruction “was beneficial if the teacher also used differentiated learning.” Along with whole group instruction, students would receive differentiated activities; students at a “lower reading achievement would be given more practice on the previously learned material, while higher achievement students would receive an opportunity to progress in new vocabulary or material” (p. 614). To support struggling students, Bursuck & Damer (2011) set up a similar system of a three-tier instruction where students receive extra support, depending on the students needs, in the company of the whole class instruct...
Reading and writing is a key part of everyone’s life. There has been some encouraging levels of reading development in primary school assessments. According to the National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy report (2015), 95.5% of students achieve at or above the national minimum standard of reading. It is important to know effective ways to teach reading so children can become active problem solvers to enable them to read for meaning or for fun. Over the years, there has been a big amount of research into the most effective ways to teach reading skills to students. There are some systematically taught key skills and strategies that help achieve these levels of reading. Some of these skills include phonological awareness, phonemic awareness,
Reading is an essential skill that needs to be addressed when dealing with students with disabilities. Reading is a skill that will be used for a student’s entire life. Therefore, it needs to be an important skill that is learned and used proficiently in order for a student to succeed in the real world. There are many techniques that educators can use to help improve a student’s reading comprehension. One of these skills that needs to be directly and explicitly taught is learning how to read fluently for comprehension. “To comprehend texts, the reader must be a fluent decoder and not a laborious, word-by-word reader” (Kameenui, 252). Comprehension can be difficult for students with learning disabilities because they tend to be the students that are reading below grade level. One strategy is to incorporate the student’s background knowledge into a lesson. This may require a bit of work, but it will help the students relate with the information being pres...
Roberts, T. (2003). Effects of Alphabet-Letter Instruction on Young Children’s Word Recognition [Electronic Version]. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95 (1), 41-51.