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| Using Behavioral Principles to Improve Literacy Skills |
| Saturday, May 29, 2004 |
| 1:00 PM–2:20 PM |
| Gardner |
| Area: EDC |
| Chair: David E. Forbush (Utah State University) |
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| Using Contextual Clues as Discriminative Stimuli to Teach Vocabulary to English Language Learners |
| Domain: Applied Research |
| CHANG-NAM LEE (Whitworth College) |
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| Abstract: Vocabulary plays a crucial role in reading, writing, speaking, and ordinary conversation. Although normally developing individuals acquire and use vocabulary without strenuous effort, acquiring it and using it properly challenges students from culturally and economically disadvantaged families and English language learners. Targeting these populations, the current author, colleagues, and teacher candidates have developed a method and materials to use contextual clues in purposefully created stories as discriminative stimuli for stimulus control. In other words, we have created stories containing multiple, explicit clues conducive to the meaning of target vocabulary words and their proper use. Currently, the method and materials are being tested with English language learners. We are collecting data using a permanent product measure of cloze-type, multiple-choice items. We are also using a pretest-posttest group design and a multiple-baseline design. This proposed presentation will introduce the method, materials, and the data currently in progress. |
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| Systematic Use of Multiple Book Preference Assessments to Increase Student Reading Engagement |
| Domain: Applied Research |
| DAVID E. FORBUSH (Utah State University), Donald M. Stenhoff (Utah State University) |
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| Abstract: “National longitudinal studies show that more than 17.5 percent of children in U.S. schools will encounter reading problems in their first three years of schooling” (National Reading Panel Progress Report, 2000). In the book Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children, Snow, Burns and Griffen identify three primary obstacles that account for the majority of early readers’ problems. The first obstacle is difficulty with understanding and applying the alphabetic principle or sound symbol code. The second obstacle is failure to transfer comprehension skills of spoken language to reading and the final obstacle, which magnifies the first two, is initial reduction and in some cases eventual termination of all reading engagement. One critical element of increasing reading engagement is matching books to individual student interests. Common strategies used to match books to student interests include delivering a reading interest survey to a student, asking a student about their reading interests, and providing a variety of books so a student can individually identify high interest books. Unfortunately, these strategies do not directly or systematically assess student reading interests. Stimulus preference assessments may provide a systematic method for matching books to student interests. The purpose of this presentation is to describe the effects of preference assessment on matching books to student interest and the subsequent effect on reading engagement. |
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| Reciprocal Peer Tutoring Effect on Sight Word Learning, Retention, and Generalization of Urban Elementary School Students |
| Domain: Applied Research |
| SUHA M. HASHEM AL-HASSAN (The Ohio State University), Ralph Gardner III (The Ohio State University), Shobana Musti-Rao (The Ohio State University), Gwendolyn Cartledge (The Ohio State University) |
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| Abstract: Peer tutoring is an instructional strategy that actively engages students in learning and promotes mastery, accuracy, and fluency in content learning. The purpose of the study was to examine the effects of reciprocal peer tutoring as a supplemental teaching method to the more traditional teaching method that teachers are using in classrooms to teach high frequency sight words to urban elementary school students. All participants were typically developing children designated by their teachers as academically at-risk. A reciprocal peer tutoring model was used allowing each student to be both tutor and tutee. A multiple baseline design across students was used to analyze the effects of peer tutoring on sight words learned, maintained, and generalized. Results showed that participants learned, maintained, and generalized more words during the peer tutoring condition. The results also showed that during peer tutoring all participants were able to learn, maintain, and generalize additional weekly sets of unknown sight words. |
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