child language disorder

Child Language Disorders

Title: Readability Case Study and Scenarios

Reference: Gail Portnuff Venable, MS. “Readability Case Study and Scenarios.” Topics in
Language Disorders 23 (2003): 248-51

Summary: Li Moon, a resource specialist in the Hillsborough City School District in Northern California has completed a study about the use of readability measurement. The surrounding school districts (Hillsborough City School District, Millbrae Elementary School District, and San Bruno Park Elementary District) are using oral reading to enhance students literacy. These schools are using the Open court Reading series in order achieve this goal. The teachers were given many short reading passages at each grade level and the students would then read the passages aloud and the teachers would then monitor the students’ progress throughout the year.
The program was doing well to improve student literacy, until there became a problem with the fluency monitoring. The teachers would administer the prompts to the children in three different levels. They would collect their data on the students by recording the number of words read correctly per minute. The scores seemed to improve at all levels in the first through fourth grade and at the first and second level of fifth grade during the first year. But, at the third level of the fifth graders the scores took a huge drop. The scores continued to drop the following year at the same level as well. The teachers reported their problem and the passage at the fifth grade level was more difficult than the passage of the sixth grade level. When the passage was later analyzed, it was placed at the 9th and 10th grade level. The committee examined all the prompts and assessed the readability levels of all the passages. They chose two prompts for each grade level and devised a protocol whereby the teachers will use the same prompts at each of three points during the year. The teachers will give the difficult prompt first and if the student scores in the 50th percentile, the student will not require any further testing. The student’s success with a reading will depend on the difficulty of the text and the students background knowledge and own interests.
“The hope of this study is that it will better serve to signal the progress of individual students, some of whom have lang...

... middle of paper ...

...reader, is not likely to appeal to a delayed fifth grader.
Personal Reflection: To me, it seems as though readability is a very tough aspect to measure success or failure. I feel that the best possible way is to read the same passage 3 times through out the year and record progression. I am currently a high school JV soccer coach and I use this formula every year with my soccer teams. I watch them play in the beginning of the year in a game and I assess them. I then figure out what needs to be worked on and we practice that day in and day out. I watch them again mid-season and do the same procedure again. I watch them a final time at the end of the year and see how much we have progressed. This is, to me, the best way to see if someone is understanding something and how much they are learning. I think that I was a great idea for them to switch the study to this formula. Making them read different passages that are harder each time would be like me taking my soccer team and making them play against beginners, then high school varsity and then pro teams and then looking to see how they have progressed. Im sure by the time they play the pro team, they are going to look pretty awful.