Henderson 1

Connie Henderson RE 5710 Comprehensive Question # 2 Dr. Moorman Spring 2011

I entered graduate school over two years ago to earn a Masters in Reading Education. Even though I am a retired elementary teacher I wanted to learn more about how to teach students to read. I may use this knowledge as a Mentor to ILTs (Initially Certified Teachers). However, my primary goal has been to prepare myself to help students who are struggling readers become successful readers. My intent has been to work with early elementary students, intervening as soon as possible to prevent struggling readers so they won’t become students who fail to learn to read.

As I near the end of my Masters I realized I don’t know enough about what to do with older struggling readers in upper elementary grades and beyond. If I were asked to Mentor a teacher of older struggling readers what programs, approaches, and practices could I recommend? If I were tutoring an older struggling reader where would I begin? How would I advise his parents or teachers? What research could I cite that has shown the value of what I might suggest? Thus my search began with the question: How can we help older struggling readers?

Reutzel, D.R., & Smith, J.A. (2004). Accelerating struggling readers' progress: a comparative analysis of expert opinion and current research recommendations. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 20, 63-89.

This article compares Rona Flippo’s (1998) “Expert Study” to three research reports. The authors were searching to answer the question: Does expert opinion square with research recommendations for helping young struggling readers? Rona Flippo’s book In Serach of Common Ground (2001) was intended to heal wounds of a deeply divided profession during a time many people called the Reading Wars. Her book was intended to provide a “display of professional unity” about the teaching of reading. Three major influential reading research reports were chosen as a comparative context for further analysis of the “Expert Study” findings (Flippo, 1998). The three studies chosen were:

  • Snow, C. E., Burns, M. S., & Griffin, P. (1998). Preventing reading difficulties in young children. Washington DC: National Academy Press.
  • Heibert et al. (1998). Every child a reader.The University of Michigan: The Center for Improvement of Early Reading Achievement (CIERA).
  • National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (2000). Report of the National l Reading Panel: Teaching Children to read. Washington, DC.

Areas of convergence between Expert opinion and Research reports were extensive. The article gives a full discussion of each recommendation. The list of convergent ideas includes:

  • Read aloud
  • Develop children’s oral language and conceptual understanding
  • Discuss texts and stories read
  • Explicitly model and scaffold strategies
  • Demonstrate application of comprehension strategies
  • Provide adequate independent reading time (in and out of school)
  • Increase volume of reading
  • Practice daily
  • Integrated instruction
  • Engage and motivate students
  • Provide for student choice of reading material
  • Provide access to a variety of reading materials … narrative and expository
  • Establish daily writing instruction and practice
  • Integrating instruction: reading and writing as well as with other curricular studies
  • Material should be just right, not too easy or too hard

The national reading research reports diverged from the Expert Opinion study by adding substantially to the practices that facilitate learning to read. The recommendations I feel are most important to older struggling readers include:Restructure schools where failure is pervasive. Offer Struggling Readers: Additional Time, Additional Services, Expert Instruction, Additional Resources, Intensive Instruction, and Individual Attention. Tutors and Aides are not to offer primary reading instruction.

The authors end their article with: “The results of this comparative analysis sought

to bond the opinions of the reading experts in the “Expert Study” with the findings and recommendations of other contemporary reading research reports in search of broader common ground to help all children learn to read---especially those children who struggle!”

Rasinski, T., Rikli, A., & Johnston, S. (2009). Reading fluency:more than automaticity? more than a concern for the primary grades?. Literacy Research and Instruction, 48, 350-361.

Reading fluency has traditionally been thought to be a goal of reading that is taught and mastered in the elementary grades. The authors challenge the idea by investigating the role of reading fluency as a contributing factor to proficiency and difficulty among intermediate and middle grade students. This study investigated the question: What is the relationship between reading comprehension and fluency as measured by prosody (phrasing, intonation, pace etc.)?

The report of the National Reading Panel (2000) has led to recognition of reading fluency as a key element in successful reading programs in the primary grades. Jeanne Chall’s work (1983) identified attainment of reading fluency as one of the earliest stages of reading achievement. La Berge and Samuels’ (1974) theory of automaticity proposes that readers who have not yet achieved automaticity in word recognition must use significant cognitive energies to decode words. So much energy is used decoding words little energy is left for comprehending text. Reading fluency has a second component, prosody that is often overlooked in studies of fluency and fluency instruction (Rasinski, 2006). Most reading scholars doing work in fluency have identified prosodic reading as an essential component of reading fluency (e.g. Allington, 1983; Kuhn & Stahl, 2000; National Reading Panel, 2000; Rasinski & Hoffman, 2003). The authors found recent research has suggested that the issue of reading fluency goes beyond the primary grades. Among ninth-grade students Rasinski et al. (2005) found that fluency, as measured by rate, was significantly correlated with reading comprehension.

For this study public school students in grades 3, 5, and 7 were tested using the Stanford Achievement Test. In addition digitally recorded oral reading samples from every student were scored for prosodic reading.

Results of the study showed:

1. At all three grade levels prosodic reading was significantly associated with silent reading comprehension.

2. At all three grade levels a significant and substantial portion of the variance in silent reading comprehension is shared or could be attributed to variance in reading fluency.

3. The correlations between fluency and comprehension were significant at all three grade levels.

There is a wider spread in prosodic reading as students progress through the middle grades.

The findings of the study validate the importance of reading fluency, whether it is measured by prosody or automaticity, especially in its relationship to comprehension. Reading fluency was strongly and significantly associated with reading comprehension with all three grade levels assessed. Instruction aimed at increasing fluency may have a positive effect on reading comprehension. Fluency continues to have importance beyond the primary grades.

Wexler, J., Vaughn, S., Edmonds, M., & Reutebuch, C.K. (2008). A synthesis of fluency interventions for secondary struggling readers. Education Research Complete, 21, 317-347.

The authors created a synthesis to summarize the research on the effectiveness of fluency interventions in enhancing fluency and comprehension for struggling readers in grades 6-12, the most common grades for secondary students. They believed synthesizing the literature in this area will assist in identifying effective practices for teachers and guidelines for additional research. An extensive search of the literature between 1980 and 2005 yielded 19 intervention studies that provided fluency interventions to secondary struggling readers and measured comprehension and/or fluency outcomes. The study attempted to answer this question: What fluency interventions are associated with effective outcomes for secondary struggling readers?

La Berge and Samuels (1974) were two of the first researchers to bring fluency to the forefront as a critical element in the reading process. They proposed to be an efficient reader a student should be able to recognize and identify words instantly and then connect the words as they read to make meaning. Perfetti (1985) extended this theory when he explained that focusing on decoding consumes memory capacity, which inhibits comprehension. Chall (1983) described 6 stages of learning to read. Chall suggests that after mastering the “ungluing from print” stage 3, it should be easier for students to read for meaning. More recently researchers such as Wolf and Katzir-Cohen (2001) have shifted their work to address fluency as a skill that must be honed when acquiring literacy instead of as an outcome of a series of skills.

Most intervention studies addressing the effectiveness of fluency instruction have been conducted with elementary students. The importance of fluency actually extends into the upper grades as well (Rasinski, et al., 2005). Effective fluency interventions at the secondary level may be necessary for students who are at risk readers, regardless of their age. For secondary students who must keep up with large quantities of text written at challenging levels (Swanson & Hoskyn, 2001), not being able to read fluently makes it difficult to keep up with content and class demands (Woodruff, Schumaker, & Deschler, 2002).

Being able to read text fluently, however, is not necessarily sufficient for secondary students to be able to comprehend the complex text they encounter. The trend from the fluency studies in this synthesis show that improved reading rate does not always result in improved comprehension (e.g. Rashotte & Torgeson, 1985). Other researchers concluded “…gains in fluency from a repeated reading intervention do not necessarily generalize to other reading tasks such as passage comprehension and word attack skills (e.g. Conte & Humphreys, 1989).It is important that gains from time spent on a fluency intervention are transferable to unpracticed passages and have a positive effect for word comprehension and word reading accuracy. Rashotte and Torgeson (1985) and Homan et al. (1993) demonstrate that reading text repeatedly may improve reading rate, but participants did not demonstrate as many gains in comprehension and word reading accuracy as those who read an equal amount of text non-repetitively. Findings indicate that repeated reading interventions that incorporate the opportunity for students to preview the text with a model of good reading or someone to provide corrective feedback, make more gains in rate than students who do not preview the text or preview the text silently or on their own (e.g. Skinner et al., 1997).

Keehn, S., Harmon, J., & Shoho, A. (2008). A study of readers theater in eighth grade: issues of fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary. Reading and Writing Quarterly, 24, 335-362.

The study was done to investigate the use of Readers Theater among middle school students, the majority of whom were struggling readers , as a means for sustaining oral reading practice, offering feedback regarding their oral reading, and providing motivation through authentic reading. The authors sought to answer a number of questions:

1. What effect did participation in Readers Theater have on the reading level of eight graders, many of whom were struggling readers?

2. What effect did participation in Readers Theater have on the prosodic aspects of fluency (phrasing, fluidity, expression) in the oral reading of eighth graders?

3. What effect did participation in Readers Theater have on the reading comprehension of eighth graders?

4. What effect did Readers Theater have on vocabulary learning?

5. How did eighth graders respond to Readers Theater?

In 1989, the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development issued a wake-up call to the education community about the plight of adolescent learners in this country. The council asserted that middle schools may be “the last best chance” for many students to acquire necessary skills for success in the future (Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development, 1989). Ivey (1999) found that middle school readers’ inclination toward reading and their performance to be a function of the instructional environment. Her study suggests the correct classroom environment may have the potential to counter the challenges of low performance and apathy toward reading. Fluency is a critical component of skilled reading. Children who do not develop reading fluency continue to struggle to read (Allington, 1983; National Reading Panel, 2000).

Many fluency experts (e.g., Allington, 1983 Samuels, 1988) argue the most compelling reason to focus instructional efforts on students becoming fluent readers is the strong correlation between fluency and comprehension. Fluency seems to be a contributor to comprehension by freeing cognitive resources for interpretation (Samuels, 1979), but fluency also seems to be an outcome of comprehension as effective oral reading involves preliminary interpretation and understanding (Briggs & Forbes, 2002; Schreiber, 1980). Proficient readers bring a wealth of word knowledge that enables them to construct meaning across a variety of texts (Anderson & Freebody, 1981; Bauman & Kame’enui, 1991; Davis, 1944; Nagy, 1988). Beck and her associates (Beck, McKeown, & McCaslin, 1983; Beck, Mc Keown, & Omanson, 1987; Beck, Perfetti, & Mc Keown, 1982) assert that students need to discuss words, understand the relationships among words, and encounter new words repeatedly in meaningful contexts in order to internalize word meanings. Studies (Martinez, Rozer, & Strecker, 1999; Millin & Reinhardt, 1999) affirm the potential of Readers Theater to promote students’ oral reading fluency. These researchers attribute the fluency growth from Readers Theater to the value of the repeated reading within a motivating context, as well as the “coaching” and modeling provided by the teacher during Readers Theater rehearsals.

The study was conducted in a low socioeconomic Title I school in Texas. The 36 eighth grade students (60% Hispanic 33% African American) were in two reading classes taught by the same teacher. One group was taught for 8 weeks using Readers Theater, the other group was taught with more traditional literary and vocabulary instruction. Stories to use for Readers Theater were chosen based on student interest, suitability for Readers Theater, and readability levels. Texts ranged from fifth grade to seventh grade based on Fry (1977) readability formula.

Readers Theater students out gained comparison group students by a statistically significant margin in growth in reading level as measured by the Ekwall/ Shanker Reading Inventory. On the same test on a sixth grade passage the Readers Theatre group did significantly better than the comparison group students on both fluency and expression. Readers Theater students demonstrated higher levels of comprehension than the comparison group as measured by the Ekwakk/Shanker Reading Inventory but was not seen as a significant result. Readers Theater students nearly doubled the vocabulary acquisition of words of their peers in the comparison group. Readers Theater seems to have increased students’ motivation to practice oral reading and may have fostered success as a reader through public performances.

Fisher, D. (2001). Cross age tutoring: alternatives to the reading resource room for struggling readers. Journal of Instructional Psychology, 28(4), 234-240.

Peer tutoring has been suggested as an appropriate intervention for young readers. Students in this study were struggling middle school readers. Students at one school served as peer tutors in first and second grade classrooms in a nearby school. Students in the control school attended a remedial reading class. The study was done to compare the results of a cross-age tutoring program with a traditional remedial reading class.

Adolescent readers who struggle in reading have often been placed in remedial reading classes or placed in special education programs (McLesky, Henry, & Axelrod, 1999). Concerns about these remedial/and or segregated placements have been raised (Vaughn, Moody, & Schum, 1998). Some argue that separate educational interventions do not result in significant educational gains and believe that a more inclusive and student-centered approach is warranted (Kennedy, & Fisher, 2001; Klinger & Vaughn, 1999). Evidence from successful middle school reading efforts suggest that students need to read texts at their instructional level. They also need opportunities to engage in dialog about texts and to write about their responses and reactions to text (e.g. Fearn & Farnan, 2001). Peer tutoring is one way middle school teachers can accomplish these instructional goals (Thorpe & Wood, 2000).

Cross-age tutoring involves an older student, under a teacher’s guidance, who helps one or more younger students learn or practice a skill or concept. The middle school students in this study had been identified to be “significantly below average” according to the state achievement test and were required to attend a reading class. Three inner city schools were chosen for the study, two middle schools and one elementary school. The elementary school was a feeder school for both middle schools. The cross age tutoring class followed the Strategic Reading class recommendations developed by Thrope and Wood (2000). In general, the teacher developed lesson plans for the tutors. On Monday the teacher modeled the lessons and tutors had time to practice. On Tuesday and Thursday the tutors interacted with the tutees. On Wednesday and Friday the teacher modeled reading harder text to the tutors and they responded in journals. Sometimes they created the text for wordless books. They kept notes about the responses and progress of their tutees. Cross age tutoring gives students the opportunities to read text written for much younger students for a specific purpose and to plan instruction for others.