End Of 8th Grade Research Articles

Teaching phonics in the context of children's literature or spelling: Influences on first-grade reading, spelling, and writing and fifth-grade comprehension.

First-grade children's reading, writing, and spelling competencies in 2 different instructional contexts for teaching phonics were examined. Reading, writing, and spelling abilities were measured at the beginning, middle, and end of 1st grade. Children were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 treatments designed to teach grapheme-phoneme correspondences, blending, and segmenting. In 1 treatment, children generated spellings for words, and in the other treatment, phonics instruction was embedded in literature. The spelling treatment was significantly better for spelling phonetically regular real and pseudowords, reading phonetically regular pseudowords, and written story length. It was also more beneficial for low-ability children's reading of connected text. There were no treatment effects on reading uncontrolled words in text. At the end of 5th grade, spelling-context children had significantly higher comprehension than did literature-context children. Discussion focuses on phonological processing while spelling and the effects of the instructional press of context-embedded and context-reduced instructional approaches in 1st grade.

School Mobility and Students with Emotional Disturbance

We examined the school mobility of a cross-sectional sample of 70 secondary-age youth with emotional disturbance (ED). Data were collected through an archival review of school records. Students’ school mobility histories were examined in terms of the overall number of schools attended in the elementary school years, as well as the timing of the moves that were made. Findings indicate that sample students experienced high rates of school mobility with 66% having changed schools at least once by the end of 2nd grade and 89% having changed schools at least once by the end of 5th grade. Strategies for minimizing school mobility and the impact of high rates of school mobility are reviewed.

Naturally Occurring Changes in Physical Activity Are Inversely Related to Depressive Symptoms During Early Adolescence

Objective: We examined the relationship between naturally occurring changes in physical activity and depressive symptoms across a 2-year period among adolescent boys and girls. Methods: Participants (N = 4594) reported their frequency of physical activity outside of school and completed the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression scale in the Fall of 1998 (beginning of 7th grade; baseline data), Spring of 1999 (end of 7th grade; interim data), and Spring of 2000 (end of 8th grade; follow-up data). Results: Latent growth modeling indicated that a 1 SD unit change in the frequency of leisure-time physical activity was inversely related to a .25 SD unit change in depressive symptoms. This relationship was attenuated but remained statistically significant when simultaneously controlling for the confounding variables of sex, socioeconomic status, smoking, alcohol consumption, and the value participants placed on their health, appearance, and achievement. Conclusions: Naturally occurring changes in physical activity were negatively related with changes in depressive symptoms. The results encourage randomized controlled trials to experimentally determine whether an increase in physical activity reduces depression risk among adolescent boys and girls.

Long-term reductions in sexual initiation and sexual activity among urban middle schoolers in the reach for health service learning program

To evaluate the sustained effectiveness of a middle school service learning intervention on reducing sexual initiation and recent sex among urban African-American and Latino adolescents from 7th grade through the 10th grade. During the fall of seventh grade and again in eighth grade, students were randomly assigned by classroom to participate either in community youth service (CYS) or not (controls). Service learning is an educational strategy that couples meaningful service in the community with classroom instruction. Students in both intervention and control conditions received classroom health lessons. Surveys were conducted at seventh grade baseline and at the end of 10th grade, approximately 2 years after intervention. Self-reported sexual behaviors of youths who had participated in CYS were compared with those of controls receiving classroom curriculum alone (n = 195). CYS participants were significantly less likely than controls to report sexual initiation (2 years CYS, odds ratio [OR] = 0.32; 1 year, OR = 0.49) as well as recent sex (2 years CYS, OR = 0.39; 1 year CYS, OR = 0.48). Among those who were virgins at seventh grade, 80% of males in the curriculum-only condition had initiated sex, compared with 61.5% who received 1 year of CYS, and 50% who received 2 years. Among females, the figures were 65.2%, 48.3%, and 39.6%, respectively. A service learning intervention that combines community involvement with health instruction can have a long-term benefit by reducing sexual risk taking among urban adolescents.

The Impact of Direct Instruction on Elementary Students' Reading Achievement in an Urban School District

This article reports the preliminary achievement outcomes of the first 4 years of direct instruction (DI) reading, implemented in 6 Baltimore elementary schools. On the primary measure of reading comprehension, members of the original kindergarten cohort were, on average, reading at grade level (49th percentile) by the end of 3rd grade. Members of the original 2nd-grade cohort were nearing grade level (40th percentile) by the end of 5th grade. However, students at control schools (where other curricula to improve reading achievement were being implemented) were achieving at the same level, so there were no significant differences between the outcomes for the 2 groups (controlling for demographics and pretest factors). Future research, based on a well-established implementation (rather than the problem-filled early years of implementation experienced by these 6 schools) might uncover significant effects that were not evident at the time this article was written. DI appears to be a viable option for raising student reading achievement, even if this study has not yet yielded evidence that DI performs significantly better than other reading curricula. The call for educators and policymakers to consider the results of research when selecting reform models for high poverty schools (e.g., Slavin & Fashola, 1998) is heeded, at least occasionally. As Muriel Berkeley described elsewhere in this special issue, the search for a curriculum with a research-proven track record led members of the Baltimore Curriculum Project to select DI, even before it was identified as 1 of only 3 school reform models with strong evidence for improved student achievement by the American Institutes for Research report on schoolwide reform models (Herman et al., 1999). This article extends the circle by analyzing the first outcomes of an experiment that was motivated by previous research results.

Longitudinal Assessment of Aerobic Fitness in Middle School African-American Girls

This study presents 3 years of data from a longitudinal study designed to follow changes in VO2max and treadmill (TM) exercise performance in African-American girls throughout middle school. Subjects (N = 19) were tested 6 months apart during grades 6-8. VO9 and heart rates (HR) were measured continuously while each subject performed an incremental TM test to volitional exhaustion. Absolute VO2max (ml • min1) increased with time, while relative (ml • kg 1 * min1) values declined significantly from 6th to 8th grade. Treadmill time to exhaustion improved after the first test, but showed a significant decline by the end of 8th grade. Correlations between fall 6th-grade and spring 8th-grade aerobic fitness measures ranged from .35 to .57, indicating moderate tracking of these variables throughout middle school. Aerobic fitness values are low (compared to Caucasians) in African-American adolescent girls and show significant declines throughout middle school. Future studies should investigate anatomical, physiological, and behavioral reasons for the apparently low aerobic fitness seen in African-American girls.

Adolescents' Perceptions of Middle School: Relation to Longitudinal Changes in Academic and Psychological Adjustment

We present results of a longitudinal study of 1,046 adolescents in 23 middle schools that examined relations between adolescents' perceptions of their middle school learning environment during 8th grade (school goal structures, autonomy provisions, positive teacher regard) and changes in their academic motivation, achievement, and psychological adjustment from 7th to 8th grade. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that adolescents' school perceptions were significant predictors of their academic and psychological adjustment at the end of 8th grade after accounting for their demographic characteristics, prior academic ability, and prior adjustment assessed at the beginning of 7th grade. Perceptions of positive teacher regard and an emphasis on individual effort and improvement in school (school task goal structure) were associated with increases in academic values, feelings of academic competence, and academic achievement; and decreases in depressive symptoms from 7th to 8th grade. Perceived teacher reg...

Evaluation of a junior high school primary prevention program

A two-year primary prevention program for junior high school students was evaluated. The program consisted of drug education, “alternatives,” and affective in-service training for the students' teachers. Students in one junior high school received the intervention and students in another school served as a no-treatment control group. The students were pretested at the beginning of 7th grade and posttested at the end of 8th grade. Positive effects were found for females on several drug-related variables; few effects were found for males. The findings are discussed with regard to the individual prevention strategies.