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Same Language Subtitling

RUNNING HEAD: SAME LANGUAGE SUBTITLING

Same Language Subtitling:

The Use of Subtitled Music as a Reading Activity

In a High School Special Education Classroom

W.Greg McCall

Action Research Project

University of Phoenix

MAEDCT-EDD 576

Research Proposal Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the degree of Master of Arts in Education

University of Phoenix

2005

Abstract

Same Language Subtitling: The Use of Subtitled Music as Reading Activity in a High School Special Education Classroom. Wayne McCall, 2005: Action Research Project Report, University of Phoenix, MA in Education focus on Curriculum and Technology. Technology Incorporation/Technology in English Education/Captioning as Reading Activity/Subtitling as Reading Activity/Lyrics and Music as Reading Activity/Technology Incorporating Video Subtitling and Music in English Classroom/Special Education English Classroom and Technology Incorporation..

This action research project was designed to examine the potential of incorporating Same-Language-Subtitling or Subtitled Music (SLS) as a repeated reading activity within Special Education English classrooms. The intervention was designed to use the presentation strength of SLS and technology to increase the amount of class time that students are actively engaged with reading text.

The goal of this action research project was to improve reading engagement and growth. The basic SLS activity involved students repeatedly viewing a short SLS video (typically Broadway Musicals), while completing response worksheets (typically cloze script).SLS was used as an entrance activity during transition and first 15 minutes of each class.Students quickly mastered the technology and programs to both create and run the reading activity semi-independently.Overall, student attitude, engagement and reading comprehension levels improved during the course of this study.

Permission Statement

As a student in the MAED Program I do (x) do not ( ) give permission to the University of Phoenix to distribute copies of this action research report on request from interested individuals.

Wayne Greg McCall October 17, 2005

Table of Contents

Chapter I: Introduction
Problem Statement / 5
Purpose / 5
Description of Community / 6
Description of Work setting / 6-8
Writer’s Role / 8
Chapter II: Study of the Problem
Problem Description / 8
Problem Documentation / 9
Literature Review / 8-12
Causative Analysis / 12-14
Literature Review: Same-Language-Subtitling / 14-19
Chapter III: Outcomes and Evaluations
Goals and Expectations / 19-20
Expected Outcomes / 20-21
Measurement of Outcomes / 21
Analysis of results / 21-22
Chapter IV: Solution Strategy
Statement of Problem / 22
Discussion / 23-24
Description of Selected Solutions / 24-27
Project Calendar Plan / 27-37
Chapter V: Results
Results / 37-46
Discussion / 46
Recommendations / 47-49
Plans for Dissemination / 49
References / 50
Appendices
A: Reading Surveys
B: Reading Rubric
C: Reading Observation Sheet
D: Application for Conducting Research / 55
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62-66
Charts
Figure 1: School Ethnic Makeup
Figure 2: Special Education Students by Certification 2005
Figure 4: Weekly Class Activities – Pre-intervention
Figure 5: Weekly Class Activities –Week 8-12
Figure 7: Engaged Reading Rubric
Figure 8: Responses to Reading Survey
Figure 9: Reading Growth by Grade Equivalency
Figure 10: CHS SPED by Certification 2005
Figure 11: Intervention Group by Certification
Figure 12: Mean Growth in Scaled Score
Figure 14: Mean Reading Growth
Tables
Figure 3: Summary-Minutes Per Week on Tasks
Figure 6: Classroom Activities
Figure 13: Classroom Observations / 6
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Chapter 1: Introduction

Problem Statement

In a review of assessment records it was found that many of the Special Education students at CHSduring the 2002-2003 school year wereexperiencing less than a quarter of a year growth per year in their reading skills as assessed by both the Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test (SDRT) and by Accelerated Reading’s STAR Reading Assessment. CHS’s Learning Disabled (LD) population averaged reading levels that are more than three years lower than their regular education counterparts. In comparison to their regular education counterparts, these students spent minimal time and focus on reading activities and tended to be resistant to many supplementary reading activities.

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to determine whether including Same-Language-Subtitling (SLS) activities in a reading class would increase the amount of time that special education students were actively engaged in repetitive reading activities and thereby impact their reading growth. At this state in the research, the SLS activities will be defined generally as the use of video subtitling and editing technology applied to music video and other multi-media presentations.

Recent computer technology developments have made both subtitlingpresentation formats and video editing programs available and economic for classroom applications. Same-Language Subtitling, which incorporates both music and dynamic audio with subtitling and video, can be used as an interactive reading activity. This type of activity should impact learning disabled student’s language and reading levels by increasing the time in which they are actively engaged with language and reading. An experimental study is needed in order to determine the impact of SLS on reading engagement, and to develop extended literacy applications.

Description of the Community

CHS serves the Kaneohe area of the island of Oahu in the State of Hawaii. Kaneohe is a community of about 50,000 people. The community is a largely middle class suburban population that is comprised of a mix of single-family homes, condominiums, and public housing units. There are mostly small businesses, light industries, and truck farms in the area. Most of the student’s parents work in Honolulu, which is fifteen miles away.

Description of the Work Setting

CHS sits on a 32-acre campus. In the 2004-2005 school year CHS had 110 classrooms, 134 teachers, and a student population of 2,112 in grades nine through twelve. The school’s ethnic makeup had remained stable over the previous three years. The school’s ethnic breakdown was: 37% Hawaiian or part Hawaiian, 25% Asian, 13% Caucasians, 9% Pacific-Islander, 8 % Filipino-American and 4%African-Americanand 4% other groups ethnic groups. The student population wasfairlydividedbetween males at 51% andfemales at 49%.

There were 334 students in the special education program (SPED), which represented sixteen percent of CHS’s student population. The number of SPED students had been in the 16-19 percent range for the previous three years. Fifty-three percent (177) of the students in the SPED program were classified as Learning Disabled (LD). Sixteen percent (53) were classified as Emotionally Impaired (EI), and six percent (20)were Attention-Deficit/Hyper-Active Disorder (ADHD) followed by smaller groupings of other certifications.Sixty-eight percent (227) of the SPED students attended SPED English classes. Twelve percent (41) of the SPED students were mainstreamed into general-education English classes. The remaining 20% were in self-contained classrooms or alternative settings.

Participants in this study included of students in CHS’s special education program: 149 students, four teachers, two Educational Assistants, and two Administrators. The intervention study group included 51 students from the special education program, two teachers, and one educational assistant. The remaining students and staff participated in surveys and assessments, and data collection.

The writer’s classroom was one of the four SPED English class, and was used as classroom setting for the study intervention group. The roomwas an air-conditioned portable type building. The lighting was florescent, and could be controlled to the extent of turning off either the front half of the room or turning all lights out for a mostly complete blackout. The room was intended to seat 30 students. There was seating for 16 in standard school chair-desk combinations, and one large worktable with four chairs. The room was equipped for broadband Internet access with six computer stations. The room was also equipped with two 600 lumens projectors, a sound system with digital video, and an Elmo overhead presenter. All equipment was secondhand acquired for nominal costs from the local state surplus office. The classroom had no additional budget for technology.

Writer’s Role

The writer was the instructor of described classroom and had been employed as a teacher in the SPED program at CHS for fourteen years. The writer wasone of four teachers responsible for instruction in CHS Special Education English classes.The writer’s classroom was the primary setting for inclusion of SLS activities in the reading program. The writer’s students formed the intervention study group. The writer located and created SLS materials. The writer incorporated SLS music activities into an ongoing directed reading program and devised additional activities to engage students with subtitled video programs. The writer assessed students’ work to determine effectiveness of the activities and to adapt activities to individual class needs. The writer trained students in use of computer subtitling programs and associated Internet programs and technology. The writer reviewed and reported on pre- and post reading assessments and surveys.

Chapter II: Study of the Problem

Problem Description

In a review of assessment records it was found that many of the Special Education students at CHS during the 2002-2003 school year were experiencing less than a quarter of a year growth per year in their reading skills as assessed by both the Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test (SDRT) and by Accelerated Reading’s STAR Reading Assessment. CHS’s Learning Disabled (LD) population averaged reading levels that are more than three years lower than their regular education counterparts. In comparison to their regular education counterparts, these students spent minimal time and focus on reading activities and tended to be resistant to many supplementary reading activities.

Problem Documentation

At CHS there were several types of assessment records that could be accessed to verify academic growth by student population: state-wide there is a biannual administration of the California Achievement Test (CAT), school-wide there is the Nelson-Denny Reading Assessment, and within the Special Education Department (SPED) there are Individualized Education Program (IEP) records, which include annual reading assessments using the Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test (SDRT) and Renaissance Learning’s computer-administered Standardized Test for Achievement in Reading (STAR). These four assessments are recorded each year in special education I.E.P. records, along with addition work samples to track yearly growth.

For the purpose of this study 149 IEP records, including SDRT and STAR records, were reviewed for SPED students in either SPED English classes or General Education English classes. A review of SDRT scores for the previous two years indicated an average reading level of 5.37-Grade Equivalency (GE) during the 2002-2003 school year with an average gain by following year of .24 GE.

Literature Review

According to National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (2000), approximately ten million children in the United States have difficulties learning to read. Of that population, from ten to fifteen percent will eventually drop out of high school and only two percent will complete a four-year college program. Further, surveys of teens with criminal records and/ or substance abuse indicate that about half of these students are struggling readers (Lyon, 1998). Nationally, an estimated 80% of Learning Disabled (LD) students have difficulty reading (Foorman, Fletcher, & Frances, 1997). Studies have shown that students with even a mild reading impairment do not read for fun (Sousa, 2004). For these students, “reading requires so much effort that they have little energy left for understanding what they have just read” (NICHD, 2000, Introduction) This pattern of resistance to reading activities can be observed in most special education students.

In April 2000, the National Reading Panel (NRP) released "Teaching Children to Read." The panel determined that effective reading instruction includes teaching children to: break apart and manipulate the sounds in words (phonemic awareness), recognize that sounds are represented by letters of the alphabet which can then be blended together to form words (phonics), practice what they've learned by reading aloud with guidance and feedback (guided oral reading), apply reading comprehension strategies to guide and improve reading comprehension. While their study was not conclusive, they indicated several practices and needs that will impact future studies of technology and literacy. The report repeatedly emphasizes the importance of Phonics in early-stage reading development, but stresses that instruction need not be in isolation from other reading activities. Further, that the practice of Repeated Readings, and Rehearsed Oral Readings were found to have strong impact on developing fluency and comprehension in both emergent and struggling readers. This study noted that there were multiple possibilities to explore the impact of various reading formats, including technology (Schacter, 2003). Directly related to technology in the classroom, the NRP found that many students benefited from the addition of multi-media instruction to conventional instruction, and that the rapidly developing capabilities of computer technology may hold promise and needed further exploration. (NICHD, 2000). This report supports incorporation of both technology and activities that support and reinforce Repeated Readings, Rehearsed Readings, Phoneme and Vocabulary practice.

According to Dr. Barbara Foorman (2004), of the NationalResearchCenter on Learning Disabilities, directly teaching decoding and phonological analysis skills is necessary for emergent level readers; however these are not sufficient for successful reading. Students that have basically mastered phonic decoding students need to rapidly increase decoding fluency. Further the practice of Repeated Readings, and Rehearsed Oral Readings were found to have strong impact on developing fluency and comprehension in both emergent and struggling readers. “Students who undertake oral reading guided by teachers, peers or parents showed significant, positive gains in word recognition, fluency and comprehension across a range of grade levels” (NICHD, 2000). Comprehension processes may also need to be directly modeled. Immersion in literacy, and increased engagement also were demonstrated to have a strong impact on a wide variety of readers. Many of these studies made use of alternate reading sources, such as newspaper articles and Internet chat (Foorman, 2004).

One major factor that has been demonstrated to impact reading growth is the amount of time a student spends in reading related activities. Sheer reading volume, how much a child will read in and out of school has a major impact on reading rate, fluency, and academic growth. Studies have shown that people with even just a mild reading impairment do not read for fun (Cunningham Stanovich, 1998a; Cunningham Stanovich, 1998b).Special education students can differ dramatically in time spent in reading activity when compared to their regular education counterparts. For this population, time spent in reading activities typically decreases in the middle and high school grades (Cunningham and Stanovich, 1998a). When examining voluntary reading it has been found that there can be a range of from “lessthan8000wordsread” per year by struggling readers to “over two million words”per year by normally progressing readers(Anderson, Wilson, & Fielding,1988).According to G. Linehardt (1998), teachers need to actively target activities that increase “engaged” or “time on task” activities.

Causative Analysis

There are a number of factors that may contribute to poor reading growth. There may be neurological, familial genetic, social and or cultural disadvantage, or instructional causes to poor reading growth. There can also be a cyclic relationship between poor decoding skills, poor fluency, low comprehension and avoidance behaviors that further damages reading growth. In addition self-esteem factors can impair reading growth;struggling readers are often very aware that their classmates have mastered basic reading skills while they have struggled to keep pace. While their peers have transitioned from learning to read to reading to learn, struggling readers fall behind in the acquisition of general knowledge; they lack much of the learning experience their peers are gaining. (Sousa, 2004; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000). These factors may interact with each other, and may all contribute to poor reading growth.

When a student is labeled “Specific Learning Disabled” the presumption is often that reading difficulties are primarily caused by a physical impairment in the function of the brain (Sousa, 2004). Neurological studies explore the question of how improved reading alters brain function, and how neurological metabolism promotes or impairs growth. There are studies that indicate that there is a difference between poor readers and good readers on a metabolic level when involved in language activities. Difficulties with reading also often run in families, and may have a genetic level component. Genetic component studies attempt to identify the different genes that may influence the reading process. However, many of these same studies also indicate that familial environmental factors also have major impact. For example, parents who struggle to read are less likely to read to their young children, and are less likely to model reading in their home lives (Sousa, 2004; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000).

Many of the SPED population are categorized as socially or culturally disadvantaged. This grouping is marked by low childhood exposure to print material, family illiteracy, or peer grouping that devalue reading activities. Logically, if a student spends limited time in an activity, they are more likely to experience limited skill growth in that activity. There are also lifestyle factors that may impair learning overall. Many students struggle with social issues that may impair reading growth. Dysfunctional families, unstable home lives, economic difficulties, substance abuse all affect a student’s ability to function in daily life. (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000)

Finally, there are instructional factors that impact reading growth. Many studies that demonstrate that LD populations will experience normal reading growth if basic skills can be taught at the elementary school level (Sousa, 2004). These studies tend to indicate that early instruction approach and interventions may be the most crucial factor in predicting reading success.