- Blog Home | About the Authors
-
Recent Posts
- In Independent Study of Fast ForWord, Sixth-Grade Students Exceed Expected Gains
- Tomorrow is Digital Learning Day – Don’t Miss It!
- Helping Low-SES Students Thrive
- What Does The Marshmallow Experiment Tell Us About Self-Control?
- Seldon’s Story: Testing Out of Special Education
- Poverty in American Schools: What Educators Can Do
- School District Technology: Plan or Blueprint?
- Building Your Child’s Self-Confidence
- Six Reader-Selected Posts in Honor of Our 2nd Blogaversary
- Blended Learning Implementation Strategies for the K-12 Classroom
-
Categories
-
Archive
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
-
Blogroll
Showing posts with tag reading comprehension Show all posts >
Fifth Graders Make Significantly Greater Gains than a Comparison Group Across Multiple Subjects After Fast ForWord
- December 27, 2011 by Melissa Agocs
We are unable to detect Flash Player 9 or higher on your system.
(Flash Player 9 or higher is required for this presentation)
Download the most recent version of Flash Player.
The Grand Forks Public Schools in Grand Forks, ND, wanted to evaluate the effects of the Fast ForWord® products on the academic achievement of their students. A study was designed such that students at one elementary school used the Fast ForWord products and comparable students at a different elementary school served as the comparison group. Both elementary schools fed into the same middle school and the study participants were in the fifth grade at the time of Fast ForWord use.
Students used the 30-minute protocols, which call for students to use the Fast ForWord products for 30 minutes a day, five days per week for 12 to 16 weeks. Students used the products for an average of 132 days across 11 months.
The Measures of Academic Progress, abbreviated as MAP, are state-aligned computerized adaptive tests, administered by the district each spring. They accurately reflect the instructional level of each student and measure growth over time. The Grand Forks Public School District uses the MAP to assess students in third through eighth grades.
A comparison of the fifth graders at the two elementary schools showed that students at the school using FastForWord products made significantly greater improvements in all areas tested compared to the students at the school that did not use the products. The areas tested were reading, language, and math, with the study results demonstrating that the products can positively impact achievement across multiple subject areas.
Related Reading:
Longitudinal Study Shows Significant Fast ForWord® Gains Endure Over Time
Students Exceed State Average on TAKS after Fast ForWord, Maintain Gains
Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!
Categories: Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning, Scientific Learning Research
BrainFit Studio Accelerates English Learning with Brain Fitness
- November 22, 2011 by Cheryl Chia
BrainFit Studio is a Singapore-based network of learning centers designed to build brilliant brains and keep them fit. More than 8,000 children have passed through its classes over the past 10 years accelerating their learning, building fitter brains, and achieving continued academic success.
Five Brain Pillars
BrainFit Studio has designed a total brain fitness training program that builds five brain “pillars”:
- SMART Moves enhances the Sensory Motor Pillar
- SMART Vision strengthens the Visual Pillar
- SMART Focus develops the Attention Pillar
- SMART Emotions builds the Socio-Emotional Pillar
- SMART Listening (the Fast ForWord® program from Scientific Learning) optimizes the Auditory Pillar
SMART Listening, SMART Vision
In May 2011, BrainFit Studio launched the first of its four BrainFit Classrooms in Singapore. BrainFit Classrooms provide brain fitness training in fee-based learning centers to students from 4 to 12 years old who seek to improve their English language learning.
The threefold English learning course curriculum is aligned with the Singapore Ministry of Education’s English Language Syllabus, brain fitness training activities, and the Fast ForWord and Reading Assistant™ products. Students learn via a blended approach including both instructional contact time and online learning. Just six months in, students are already showing improvements, including an increase in school examination grades.
BrainFit Studio’s latest offering, the Brainy Programme for preschoolers, was launched in September 2011. BRAINY SAM and BRAINY TAD are two modules which, using an early childhood education approach, bring little ones through BrainFit Studio’s hallmark SMART programs.
BrainFit Studio has eight BrainFit Studios and ten school collaborations across Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines. The work of training fitter brains continues each day through these centers, with parents and teachers reporting significant changes and improvements in their children.
BRAINY SAM and BRAINY TAD are trademarks of BrainFit Studios.
Related Reading:
Scientific Learning Around the World
Unlocking the Potential of English Language Learners
Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!
Categories: Brain Fitness, English Language Learners, Fast ForWord
Joel’s Story: My Nephew’s Reading Skills Improved 1½ Years in 3 Months with Fast ForWord
- October 27, 2011 by Norene Wiesen
We are unable to detect Flash Player 9 or higher on your system.
(Flash Player 9 or higher is required for this presentation)
Download the most recent version of Flash Player.
This post is the fifth in a series aimed at sharing the success stories, both personal and professional, that Scientific Learning employees witness every day.
Joel’s Story:
“The story is about my nephew. He has moved around a bit because his father is in the military. He has had a little bit of a break up in his school experience and his first several years of school.
They could never quite pin down what wasn’t working for him, but he just wasn’t maximizing his potential. His mother knew that and my sister knew that but they couldn’t ever get him long enough in one place to ever nail down what was going on.
Finally they got a test done in the 4th grade that showed he was two years below reading level. He could read pretty well but he had a hard time comprehending what he was reading and understanding what it meant. We also uncovered that sometimes he struggled with unfamiliar words so we suspected that there might be some decoding issues as well. I said to put him on [Fast ForWord] Language v2. He ran through Language v2. His initial RPI scores indicated that he was two years below grade level and he was struggling with decoding and reading comprehension.
He finished Language v2 in just over 3 months and his RPI—Reading Progress Indicator—scores went up one and a half years. He finished his way through [Fast ForWord] Language to Reading v2 and he now is reading on grade level.
He is in a small, small school district in the Midwest and may not be there long because of the nature of his father’s job. Both his father and mother were amazed by the results of the Fast ForWord programs.”
Related Reading:
Building Fluent Readers: How Oral Reading Practice Helps Reading Comprehension
The Essential Nature of Developing Oral Reading Fluency
Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!
Categories: Family Focus, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning
Building Fluent Readers: How Oral Reading Practice Helps Reading Comprehension
- October 25, 2011 by Cory Armes
In my former work as a teacher, one of the best moments of the day in my classroom took place when I read aloud to my students. It was a magical time for all of us as the words on the page and the characters in the story seemed to come alive right before us as I used different voices and accents. Sometimes I read very fast and other times I created long pauses that kept my students hanging, wondering what would happen next. I wanted them to love reading as much as I did – to enjoy that excitement you feel when you solve a mystery, are saved from catastrophe, or discover a wild and wonderful new world. Sharing this gift with my students was possible only because I am a fluent reader.
In his book The Fluent Reader, Dr. Timothy Rasinski says that fluency is a critical but sometimes ignored link between the basic reading of words and achieving comprehension. With fluency, the foundational skills of phonics and word recognition have progressed to the point that only a minimal amount of cognitive energy is needed for decoding so that the reader can focus on understanding what is being read. When you are a fluent reader, you are able to read easily and efficiently with prosody, or meaningful expression, and that enhances your comprehension.
Students must have some degree of fluency in order to comprehend text, so if you have students who easily understand what is read to them but have difficulty when reading independently, fluency may be the source of that problem. A study of fourth graders sponsored by the US Department of Education demonstrated that the most fluent readers had the strongest comprehension scores. In addition, every decline in oral reading fluency in the study had a corresponding decline in reading comprehension.[i] The study was replicated ten years later with about 1,500 students and had similar results.[ii] In both studies, close to half of the students who were not adequately fluent in reading also demonstrated significant problems with comprehension.
Practice is essential to learning and mastering any skill – sports, music, cooking, etc. - so it makes sense that this also would apply to the skill of reading. By including consistent oral reading practice during the school day, the reading process becomes transparent so it can be observed, examined and supported until students become independent readers. Readers must transition from being tied to the individual words so they can achieve higher levels of comprehension as they read. A great way to encourage this is through repeated oral practice of the same reading selection, which helps students with word recognition, fluency and prosody as well as general reading and comprehension.
There is something special about reading aloud regardless of who does the reading. Oral reading is a powerful tool that can help students not only learn to read fluently but also to experience the joy of reading.
The transition from rote to rapture - that’s what fluency can do for you.
Want to learn more? Check out Dr. Rasinski’s free on-demand webinar on scilearn.com, Teaching Fluency: The Neglected Goal of the Reading Program.
[i] Gay S. Pinnell et al. Listening to Children Read Aloud: Data From NAEP’s Integrated Reading Performance Record (IRPR) at Grade 4, 1995. http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/permalinkPopup.jsp?accno=ED378550
[ii]Mary C. Daane, Jay R. Campbell, Wendy S. Grigg, Madeline J. Goodman, and Andreas Oranje. Fourth-Grade Students Reading Aloud: NAEP 2002 Special Study of Oral Reading, October 2005. http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/studies/2006469.asp
Related Reading:
The Essential Nature of Developing Oral Reading Fluency
How Learning to Read Improves Brain Function
Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!
Categories: Education Trends, Reading & Learning, Reading Assistant
Longitudinal Study Shows Significant Fast ForWord® Gains Endure Over Time
- October 6, 2011 by Melissa Agocs
We are unable to detect Flash Player 9 or higher on your system.
(Flash Player 9 or higher is required for this presentation)
Download the most recent version of Flash Player.
Every spring, the Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests, abbreviated CRCT, are administered to students in Georgia. The CRCT is designed to measure how well students acquire the skills and knowledge described in the Georgia Performance Standards.
Students are tested in reading, English/language arts and mathematics. This summary will concentrate on the reading results from the Clarke County School District in Georgia. The CRCT is given every spring to all students in grades 1-8, and the students included in this study were first through eighth graders during the time of the study.
A longitudinal study is a type of study that follows the same subjects over time. Clarke County students who used the Fast ForWord products generally started with the Fast ForWord® Language or Fast ForWord® Literacy series, with students then progressing through the Fast ForWord® Reading series. Students started on the products during different years, with some starting as early as the 2006-2007 school year, and others starting aslate as the 2010-2011 school year.
The first wave of Fast ForWord participants at Clarke County started using the products in the fall of 2006 and made statistically significant improvements on the spring 2007 CRCT with continued improvements in 2008 and the following years. Students in the second wave started using the products in the fall of 2007 and made statistically significant improvements on the spring 2008 CRCT.
After a third group started in 2008 school year, the group’s CRCT scores significantly increased and then continued to go up. Similarly, students who began using the products in 2009 and 2010 also started to show increases in their reading scores after Fast ForWord participation.
Each cohort exhibits a similar pattern in that after Fast ForWord participation started, on average, the group showed a steady increase in their CRCT reading scores with each passing year.
Looking at the students who started using Fast ForWord products in 2010, there was an increase in the percentage of students reaching reading proficiency, with 55% of students who were not proficient in 2010 crossing the proficiency threshold in 2011.
In addition to longitudinal results, data were also analyzed for certain demographic groups, including students who were receiving Special Education services and students with Limited English Proficiency. Both groups achieved statistically significant improvements on the CRCT Reading Test after Fast ForWord participation.
If you have questions on this study or any other Fast ForWord study, please feel free to contact our Customer Service Team.
Related Reading:
Fast ForWord® Language Series Has Greatest Impact of Any Intervention Listed by NCRTI
My Nephew Was a Struggling Learner (Not Anymore!): Carrie’s Story
Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!
Categories: English Language Learners, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning, Scientific Learning Research, Special Education
My Son Announced He Was Dropping Out of High School: Mary’s Story
- September 15, 2011 by Norene Wiesen
We are unable to detect Flash Player 9 or higher on your system.
(Flash Player 9 or higher is required for this presentation)
Download the most recent version of Flash Player.
This post is the fourth in a series aimed at sharing the success stories, both personal and professional, that Scientific Learning employees witness every day.
Mary’s Story:
I was hired at Scientific Learning in 2007 to educate people about the products as an Account Manager in the Midwest. At the same time that I got the phone call to find out if I had interest in talking to Scientific Learning, our ninth grade son announced to us that he was not going to high school and he was going to drop out. It took my breath away. Both his father and I have been educators for many years and we both hold advanced degrees.
I said, “Todd, you have to go to high school,” and he said, “But I don’t want to go.” I said, “But you have to,” and he asked, “Well, what would happen if I didn’t go?” I said, “It’s the law, Todd.” Then he said, “I can’t read. I can’t keep up with it. You guys have done everything for me that is possible but I can’t read. I can’t read at grade level.”
I called my son’s teacher (we convinced him to go to school) and I said, “Here’s the carrot. My son doesn’t have to do any homework until he finishes this product. This is his homework at night.” And every night he came home and did Fast ForWord.
And what he did is committed to doing 90 minutes a day and he was done is less than 4 weeks, and he did the post test and when I looked up the score my son had gone from seventh grade, one month reading level to tenth grade, two months reading level. He was a year above grade level and for the very first time in his life he said, “I love to read.”
All I can say is thank you to all the scientists that did all the work to bring this product to not only my son but to the parents and kids out there in America who need it so desperately.
Related Reading:
Language Skills Increase 1.8 Years After 30 Days Using Fast ForWord
Implementation Fidelity: Maximizing Your Fast ForWord® or Reading Assistant™ Investment
Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!
Categories: Brain Fitness, Family Focus, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning
Leigh Ann’s Story: Making a Difference in Children’s Lives
- August 4, 2011 by Norene Wiesen
We are unable to detect Flash Player 9 or higher on your system.
(Flash Player 9 or higher is required for this presentation)
Download the most recent version of Flash Player.
This post is the second in a series aimed at sharing the success stories, both personal and professional, that Scientific Learning employees witness every day.
Leigh Ann’s Story:
“Hi, my name is Leigh Ann. I’m a BrainPro Representative with Scientific Learning and I have a few stories I would like to tell today about some outcomes that have really touched my heart.
The first story I want to tell is about Henry. He’s eleven. He lives in Michigan and his mom was really very excited to tell me this story. At eleven, he couldn’t spend more than fifteen to twenty minutes reading, and a month after he started our software he spent three hours in the hammock in his backyard reading a book from cover to cover. And when he was finished he ran in the house and he goes, ‘That was fun!’ And his mom was just so thrilled when she told me that story.
There was a seventeen-year-old boy in Canada, and the Internet where they lived was not strong enough to deliver our software into the home. So he had to drive forty minutes one way to his dad’s office. So he drove an hour and twenty minutes each day. That boy’s life completely changed. His parents said he’s a different boy. He saw himself catching up to the smarter kids in class. It completely, totally changed his life.
And those are the stories, those are the things that help me get out of bed every morning and get to work with a big smile on my face and know that I’m make a big difference in children’s lives.”
Related Reading:
Jolene’s Story: “I Saw Tremendous Change”
Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!
Categories: Family Focus, Reading & Learning
Students who Struggle in the Mainstream: What their Homework Patterns May Tell You
- August 2, 2011 by Jacqueline Egli
Ms. Egli is Executive Director at Bridges Academy in Winter Spring, FL.
Students who maintain average grades, but appear to be expending an excessive amount of time and effort to maintain those grades may have underlying learning deficits. As educators, we shouldn’t overlook the fact that students who require more time for completing assignments seem to show a disparity between what they have learned in class and how they perform on high stakes assessments. They may in fact be struggling with various learning challenges such as weakness in memory function, inability to process large volumes of information, vocabulary deficits and poor abilities in written expression.
Working with University of Central Florida Communications Disorders doctoral candidate Janet Proly, I had the opportunity to collaborate on a single-subject designed study of three promising high school students who appeared to be successful in their classes but also had significant hidden learning deficits.
The three students, twin 10th-grade boys in a general education program and a 12th-grade student who attended a magnet health and science academy, expressed concern over their struggle to keep up with their respective workloads of studying, reading and comprehending assignments, and their performance on tests like the FCAT. All reported that it took them three times the amount of actual time to complete their homework, citing that they had to re-read assignments multiple times in order to master the information. This inefficient learning caused all three boys to receive lower than expected scores on the state assessment, possibly compromising their ability to obtain a standard high school diploma. All three students approached me to inquire about participating in a summer reading program hosted by Bridges Academy, and thus became candidates for our collaborative study on the impact of improving reading fluency using computer technology for intervention.
Proly and I structured a single subject design study to determine the impact of using computer technology formulated to improve processing and working memory, as well as oral reading fluency. We modeled our study after the 2010 study published by Wexler, Vaughn, Roberts, and Denton.[i] The school offered a summer program to the three students. Using the Fast ForWord Literacy and Reading Assistant products for the six-week planned intervention would address recommendations for an alternative fluency intervention with a higher degree of intensity, and the inclusion of interventions that focus on processing.
After an initial assessment, the students participated in the intervention. We conducted a post-intervention assessment, and then assessed the students once again six months after the intervention. All three students demonstrated significant improvement in their reading fluency, and gains of more than two years on average in word attack and comprehension skills. The three students sustained these gains even though all three were no longer receiving any support or intervention.
This study, along with the focus on adolescent literacy, has increased interest in addressing the needs of middle and high school students who report these kinds of challenges in three specific programs: the UCF Communications Disorders Clinic; the UCF Communications Disorders Doctoral Program; and the Bridges Academy private school. As our results indicate, these short term computer interventions, through focusing on working memory, reading fluency and processing speed, have significant potential to help capable students succeed both in classes and on annual assessments.
In 2008 alone, over 20,000 high school students in the state of Florida dropped out of the public high school program. Did they leave because it was simply too hard to keep up? Could we have kept them in school if we had been able to provide a short term intervention that could not only have engaged them, but improved their learning and achievement? My collaborators and I all believe the answer to both of these questions is, absolutely, yes.
So what comes next? Our plan is to work together on an expanded study for the 2011-12 academic year that will take place at the private school and the UCF Communications Disorders Clinic. In reaching more participants, our plan – and our hope – is to continue to demonstrate program effectiveness and change the lives of more students for the better.
[i] Wexler, J., Vaughn, S., Roberts, G. & Denton, C.A. (2010), The efficacy of repeated reading and wide reading practice for high school students with severe reading disabilities. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 25(1), 2-10.
Related Reading:
Inspiring Fluency: One School’s Journey to Improve Reading Skills
One Half Year Increase in One Month with Reading Assistant
Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!
Categories: Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning, Reading Assistant, Special Education
Reading in the Real World
- July 26, 2011 by Corey Fitzgerald
Reading is an active and complex task that requires the brain to use a multitude of cognitive skills and mental processes to develop meaning and comprehension from written text. Being able to read high-level text independently and fluently is essential for high achievement, not only in academia but also in the workplace and through numerous life tasks. However there is a serious gap between many high school seniors’ reading ability and the reading requirements they face after graduation.
Consider the chart below. The Lexile Measure for reading level of high school literature and textbooks falls short of the level typical of college, military and workplace material. And when you take into consideration the reading level of most standardized assessments for high school students, a Lexile range of 1000-1100, the gap becomes even more evident. Simply put, students are leaving high school with limited exposure to higher-level text and contact with reading standards and assessments that don’t adequately align to meet the real world conditions they’ll be confronted with.
Research conducted by ACT’s College Readiness Benchmark for Reading indicates that just over half of our nation’s students who are on a college preparatory track are able to meet the demands and rigor of postsecondary and workplace requirements. And if that isn’t daunting enough, data from the most recent reading assessment conducted by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reveals that only 38% of high school seniors tested at or above proficiency for 12th grade standards. This bodes ill for the ability of Americans to meet the demands and challenges of a highly competitive global marketplace and begs the question, “Why aren’t our schools’ reading standards higher?”
Studies show that aligning high school standards to college and workplace expectations is a critical step toward giving students a solid foundation in the academic, social and workplace skills needed for success in a postsecondary education or career. The American Diploma Project has found that there is a common core of knowledge and skills, particularly in English and math, that students must master to be prepared for both postsecondary education and well-paying jobs. The research shows that there is a strong correlation between scores in high school math and English and wages earned once in the workplace. Students who are taking below-average or functional/basic classes increase their likelihood of being employed in a low-paid or low-skill job, compared to students in the top quartile who earn significantly more in the decade following high school than their ‘average’ or low performing peers.
As we seek to curtail the disparity between what’s taught in K-12 classrooms and what’s expected in the real world, it’s important that we coordinate with our local and national education and business leaders, help them to provide a cohesive approach to improve the rigors of academic coursework, promote relevant and innovative learning opportunities for all students, and share information and resources that advance the coordination across the K-12 and postsecondary sectors of our society. And by all means if you can read this, thank a teacher!
References:
Malbert Smith III, Ph.D. Bridging the Readiness Gap: Demystifying Required Reading Levels for Postsecondary Pursuits. Lexile.com.
Related Reading:
The Essential Nature of Developing Oral Reading Fluency
Adolescence: What’s the Brain Got to Do with It?
Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!
Categories: Education Trends, Reading & Learning
Inspiring Fluency: One School’s Journey to Improve Reading Skills
- July 21, 2011 by Jacqueline Egli
A focus on core reading skills has recently been promoted in college coursework for beginning teachers, statewide initiatives for student achievement, and professional development for teachers across the curriculum in all levels of education. One of the five core skills, fluency, is still being heavily debated among the researchers, but is gaining traction as an instructional skill that is necessary to the efficiency of reading. Differences in word reading or naming speed, two aspects of fluency, have been identified as early as kindergarten levels in struggling readers (Wolf, Bally, & Morris, 1986), and can continue to be tracked into middle and high school (Meyer, Wood, Hart, and Felton, 1999). Many students who struggle and are identified as having reading deficits have difficulty with reading speed and accuracy.
Although there seems to be a significant and growing body of research on reading skills, including fluency, there is still much to be learned about the impact of fluency on overall learning. The typical definition of fluency is “the ability to read connected text rapidly, smoothly, effortlessly and automatically with little conscious attention to the mechanics of reading, such as decoding” (Meyers and Felton, 1999). Reading fluency problems of children with reading difficulties, according to Torgeson (2006), are a result of students’ difficulties forming large vocabularies of words that they can recognize “by sight” or at a single glance. If students receive “powerful and appropriately focused interventions many of them can become accurate readers and their reading comprehension improves as a result of being able to correctly identify more of the words in text” (Torgeson, 2006).
Bridges Academy, located in Winter Springs Florida, serves students with specific learning disabilities. The overall purpose of the program is to remediate the learning gaps for the students and to “bridge” them back into mainstream schools with mainstream curriculum. Ninety-nine percent of the students who attend the school have an identified deficit in reading and many are considered to be dysfluent readers. Several years ago, Bridges Academy incorporated a computer-based instructional tool, Reading Assistant software, that provided a highly focused intervention for fluency to address the skill development of reading fluency, as a trial implementation.
For the pilot program, 10 middle school aged students were selected to try the Reading Assistant program. Each middle school student was invited to participate, if they desired to do so, during their homeroom time at the end of the day. Homeroom time, of course, is a very social time and many of the middle school students looked forward to spending some time connecting with their peers before leaving campus for the day. Each of the students was asked to commit to no more than 10 days, so they did not feel that they were giving up their social time for the rest of the school year.
To get familiar with the program and the process, each student was assigned a level of the computer program that was instructionally suited to their present independent reading level. The requirements were straightforward. Students were to listen to a selected story read aloud on the computer a total of three times. Then each student was required to review any words that were unfamiliar to them by selecting the word and seeing or hearing an example of that word in a picture or sentence. After this initial step the students were required to orally read the story selection. Words Correct Per Minute (WCPM) was tracked by the software and students were directed to complete a series of comprehension questions when done. One key component unique to this product was the requirement that the student listen to their own voice recording of the selection after each of the three required oral reading samples.
The interest and enthusiasm amongst these 10 middle school students as the project began was very exciting to the faculty and administration. All 10 students shared information with their parents and their classmates about the project and the way the program worked. During their lunch break, they discussed the various stories that they were reading amongst themselves and shared their present WCPM scores with their peers with tremendous pride! These students would celebrate their promotion to a new story with a “high five” and pored over their data reports at the end of the week to see what types of gains in fluency they were making. What was most encouraging? All 10 of the students chose to work on the program for the duration of the school year, a period of eight weeks. One student even elected to come back to the campus during summer vacation to complete the stories he was reading, so he could reach his own set goal of 200 WCPM!
The impact of this implementation of the Reading Assistant program is now being realized across the campus at Bridges Academy. All students who are reading above a second grade level are provided access to the Reading Assistant program two to three times a week, throughout the school year. Students who are preparing to “bridge” to a new school program are provided the opportunity to work four afternoons a week as an after school option, so that they may increase their proficiency rate with above grade level material in preparation for their move to the mainstream schools. Every January through April, 80% of the students eligible for bridging can be observed working in the afterschool program. What is most impressive is that these students have chosen to participate in this afterschool program!
The assessments, data analysis, and individual summary reports built into Reading Assistant track the overall impact of the program in improving reading skills for student participants. Bridges Academy staff and administration are pleased with the overall improvements in the students’ reading skills and confidence. The students perceive themselves as readers, and parents report that the students are now becoming more confident readers who enjoy reading--many for the first time!
References:
Meyer, M.A., & Felton, R.H. (1999). Repeated reading to enhance fluency: Old approaches and new directions. Annals of Dyslexia, 49, 283–306.
Meyer, M.S., Wood, F.B., Hart, L.A. & Fenton, R. H. (1999) Longitudinal course of rapid naming in disabled and non disabled readers. Annals of Dyslexia, 48, 89-114.
Torgeson, J.K. & Hudson, R. (2006) Reading fluency: critical issues for struggling readers. In S.J. Samuels and A. Farstrup (Eds.). Reading Fluency: The forgotten dimension of reading success. Newark, DE: International Reading Association
Wolf, M., Bally, H., & Morris, R. (1986) Automaticity, retrieval process and reading: A longitudinal study in average and impaired readers. Child Development, 57, 988-1000.
Related Reading:
Truth in Numbers: School Achieves Statistically Significant Improvements on TAKS
The Essential Nature of Developing Oral Reading Fluency
Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!
Categories: Reading & Learning, Reading Assistant, Special Education
