Reading intervention targets middle schoolers
Middle school students lacking in basic reading skills
rarely get the intervention they need on these skills because their teachers and
peers are busy working to meet the curriculum objectives for their grades.
In a recent study in the Australian Journal of Language and
Literacy, a team of researchers describe a research-based reading
intervention for middle-school students they found effective in improving the
reading comprehension of a disadvantaged group of seventh graders in one school
in Australia. Called QuickSmart, the program was developed at the University of
New England in Australia. Participating in the study were 47 students from a
school that had a large population of Aborigines, Torres Strait Islanders and
refugees and a significant number of students from families with unemployed
parents.
All but one student improved on a standardized reading
comprehension test as a result of the study. "Although it is accepted that improvement on standardized
measures is hard to achieve through intervention research, all but one of the
Year 7 students increased their post-test percentile rank scores," report the
researchers. The average percentile score for QuickSmart students at
pre-test was 34.42 (21.9) compared with 52.7 (25.5) percentile points at
post-test.
The QuickSmart lessons focus on word recognition, vocabulary
knowledge, fluent reading and use of comprehension strategies. Each lesson
followed a sequence of learning activities that included automatic word
recognition, repeated reading of texts, practice of memory and retrieval
strategies, timed independent practice activities.
Major goals of QuickSmart are to help students to become quicker
and more accurate as well as smarter in their strategy use while reading.
The response time for word recognition decreased from 1.3
seconds pre-test and .63 seconds post-test, the researchers report, and the
response time for sentence comprehension decreased from 6.92 seconds pre-test to
2.42 seconds post-test. Increased automaticity
"This result supports
the proposition that increased accuracy and automaticity in basic academic
skills results in improvements on more challenging literacy activities," the
researchers say. "In general, poor readers take more time to decode words, and
have more difficulty constructing meaning from text because their limited
working memory capacity is allocated almost entirely to decoding," the
researchers note.
"Students with learning difficulties are visibly 'slowed down'
by their lack of automaticity," the researchers write. "Automaticity
develops when processes 'become fast, obligatory and autonomous, and require
only limited use of cognitive resources.'"
An important feature of QuickSmart is the use of the
Computer-based Academic Assessment System (CAAS) developed at the University of
Massachusetts at Amherst. CAAS is a software package with record-keeping
capabilities that measures simple perception, letter naming, word, naming pseudo
word naming, concept activation and sentence understanding. Students respond to
the computer-based tasks by answering into a computer microphone. CAAS
measures how rapidly and accurately students complete their tasks. Students
quickly get results in a graph or report form that is easy for them to
interpret.
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here. In the study, brief CAAS assessments on a particular skill were
administered at the end of most lessons. The information was useful in teaching
and learning and also became a powerful motivator for the students, the
researchers say. Students and teachers got other on-going assessment data from
flashcards and other timed activities, repeated reading, worksheets and from
reading books.
"Of major importance in this research is the finding that when
placed in a motivational and supportive environment, low-achieving middle-school
students will, over time, replace ineffective and resource-draining strategies
with more appropriate and more efficient mental processing.
The QuickSmart program ran for 32 weeks with Year
7 students over three consecutive school terms. The students attended lessons in
pairs for three half-hour sessions each week with the same instructor. Students
were matched with peers who had similar learning obstacles whenever possible.
The authors note that the program helps meet social and
emotional needs of children at this developmental stage. The program helps build
the confidence of students who, having experienced repeated failures in school,
are likely to be low in self-esteem. The intervention also addresses the
importance of peer connectedness and group interactions for students in middle
school, they add. While QuickSmart provides an individualized, responsive and
carefully monitored intervention, it takes considerable financial and human
resources to operate it, the researchers note.
"Improving the reading achievement of middle-years students
with learning difficulties," by Lorraine Graham et al., Australian Journal of
Language and Literacy, Volume 30, Number 3, 2007, pp. 221-234.
Published in ERN December 2007 Volume 20 Number
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